The Tongues of Angels

by Reynolds Price

  So I worked on that job exclusively in Cabin 16. I told my boys it was a walking baton, like an officer’s swagger stick. And they asked no probing questions about the primitive snake and boy. Just an occasional “Is that Ray’s snake?” and I’d say “Yep.” They must have assumed the head was me.

  As the painting reached conclusion though, a sudden small fame spread through the camp. There was hardly a camper or staff member, down to the waiters, who didn’t make at least one visit to the terrace where I continued working for a good part of each day. Some just watched in humming silence, but even the silent watchers would thank me before they left. And every spoken comment was good; it was my introduction to aesthetic praise. The great Sargent said “A portrait is a picture with a little something wrong around the mouth.” That summer I might have said “A realistic landscape is a painting your average citizen wants.”

  And one of the boys at Juniper explained the reason when he studied the picture and finally said “That’s a place I’d really like to be.” A smart aleck said “It’s where you are, stupid.” But the first boy said “No, it’s safer.” One of the boys from Texas asked the price. I underestimated, saying five hundred dollars. And he was ready to phone his father then and there and secure the sum from his trust fund. Several more said their fathers would buy it on Sunday. I had to say “No, this one’s mine.” In the face of Rafe’s refusal, I’d made that decision.

  * * *

  On the Thursday night of that last week then, I went through a counselor’s normal duties. In this case I helped my boys collect their various acquisitions for packing. Headdresses, lanyards, bracelets, pottery bookends, slingshots. I even had the previously unknown oddity of hearing one camper in quiet tears after taps. Five weeks were too short; he didn’t want to go home. But after I’d lain on my bunk long enough to hear them all asleep, I got up and put on my dress whites. They consisted of a long-sleeved shirt, duck trousers, socks and white buck shoes. Since the night was normally cold, I wished for a white coat but had to fall back on a red lumber jacket. Then at a little past nine, I took the flashlight and headed for the campfire ring with no certain notion of what to expect.

  On the walk over I was nearly swamped by a wave of embarrassment. Twenty-one years old and here I was, dressing up for induction into a nonexistent Indian tribe consisting almost entirely of white men and boys. What next?—membership in my local Moose Lodge? I actually stopped and stood thinking for a good thirty seconds.

  This was something I could tell to Mother. But gentle as my girl Viemme was, I knew I’d better not run it past her. She’d laugh all night. I’d been thinking of Viemme more and more lately, mostly at night. After the one bad long-distance experience, I’d never tried again to phone her. In matters of the heart, I can shoulder my way past a lot of cheating, if I don’t have to watch. But she and I had kept up a healthy blizzard of mail between Maine and the Smokies. My marginal drawings had got even warmer, and both of us claimed to be counting the days till we met again. I was sure we’d soon be reviewing our big postponement—not the question of marriage but a final Yes or No on the fuming issue of All-the-Way.

  Suddenly Kevin was behind me in the dark. “You by any chance headed for this thing of Day’s?”

  I said “Just maybe.”

  Kev laughed. “I know. But we’re artistes, Bridge. And this is life. Let’s plunge and drink!”

  When we got there, it was pitch dark. I heard some whispers down in the ring itself, so we started walking towards them. I figured they’d stop us if we weren’t wanted yet. My own dark rambles had taught me how to navigate here in utter night. So when Kev said “God, I’m blind at last,” I said “Hang on.” He stepped behind me, both hands on my shoulders; and I led him down like what he claimed to be. Nobody stopped us and when we got there, the voices were Mike, Bright Day, Sam and Chief. They seemed to be working on something in the dark. For an instant the air felt sinister to me. I remembered childhood well enough to know that people can change in the crack of a moment, from good to evil, with bloody teeth. Who were these men now, and were they still men? But with Kev behind me, we walked on down. When we whispered our names, what sounded like Day matter of factly asked us to sit on the first row of benches.

  That was when I realized we were almost late. Roger the swimming counselor was already seated and waiting. So was Jim Todd, a senior boy who’d been at Juniper for six summers and was the one other camper besides Rafe who’d really studied Indian lore on his own at home. Nobody was using flashlights, but by then my eyes were more open to the dark, and I could tell they were all in whites like me. For me that was the first sure sign that we were in for something impressive and not just a time-and-place-bound joke.

  Since Kev and I were the last ones expected, the ceremony began. Mike’s familiar tom-tom started a quiet beat, then the sound of steps in the sandy ring, then the small light of tinder being blown on. In another minute a well-laid tent of dry wood was burning brightly, and I could see that the fire lighter was Rafe.

  So far he was wearing the only Indian gear I’d seen tonight. It wasn’t his eagle-dance wings though, just the new moccasins and a different breechclout made out of what seemed like real deerskin. The other boys had made theirs out of tan corduroy. At first he looked like a dressed-up boy, but then the firelight went to work. And soon it had given Rafe the air of genuine power he’d worn the first time I saw him here.

  The tom-tom shifted to a faster beat, still muffled as if to keep our secret. And Rafe began a dance I’d never seen. Whether it was a traditional piece like the eagle dance, I never knew. Nobody gave it a name or a background that night. And thereafter the way things went, I never thought to ask. If I’d had to guess, I’d have said it represented some version of the Prometheus story. Right off, it seemed to portray a fire stealer or at least a fire giver, somebody trying to help mankind with heat and light.

  Or it could have been a whole-cloth invention by Rafe. All the gestures described some relation among the dancer, the starry sky beyond us, the blazing wood in our midst and the cold horizontal world at our feet. Then we four at ringside were woven into his final moves. He took a glowing stick from the fire and passed it slowly before us, eye level. I noticed that everybody’s eyes went to Rafe; nobody watched the ember. As if we all half-expected him to strike and blind our eyes.

  His face to be sure gave no hope of mercy. He looked as neutral as any great raptor, fixing its prey. But of course he returned the stick, harmless, to the fire. Whatever Rafe meant or whoever dreamed up the story he was telling, whatever he’d stolen and brought to Earth from whom and wherever, I at least felt glad. It felt like a serious blessing. One that would work, not just a pleasant hope.

  Maybe the hint of theft that I felt in the dance was something born in Rafe, that built-in outlaw edge that clung to his every act. His eyes were so intimately connected to every other moving cell in his body that they were constantly changing the message they delivered. More than half the news he brought, that night, seemed to be various shades of joy—a deep delight. But there were odd moments when his eyes went cold again or his lips clamped in anger. What happened later makes it urgent to state that now as a fact. Rafe Noren on that Thursday night was a changed boy again. This time he was really more joyful than not, though of course he never smiled.

  I’d only seen him dance once before, not counting the time I caught him rehearsing. I’ve already described that uncanny change. But it’s even more important to affirm that, though I’d recently felt his anger, I still thought his skills were finer on a second look. I knew then, as I know today, that this boy could be put on any stage anywhere and more than hold his own. No other male dancer of my experience, except the great Uday Shankar from India, lorded the common air with a nobler strength.

  He ended again in a crouch. This time he knelt at Bright Day’s feet. Day’s hands reached out and pressed the boy’s shoulders. Then the boy rose and left the ring quickly.

  Day stood in the fireli
ght and talked for no more than two minutes. He was dressed in full Sioux regalia—a deerskin shirt and trousers, intricately beaded, and a real eagle-feather bonnet that swayed to a life of its own with every step, in drafts from the fire and the cool occasional wind from the lake. In American dress Day had looked mildly pudgy. Now that was all changed. He was lean and growing taller as he spoke.

  In later years I’ve been professionally hypnotized many times, mainly for memory exploration in connection with a series of etchings, scenes from my childhood. So I know I speak accurately in saying that by then, there in the ring, I was hypnotized and have no detailed memory of the words. I only know that Day didn’t speak in Hiawathan sentimentalities about Brother Wind and Mother Stream.

  He spoke of the fact that the tribe at Juniper, founded more than twenty-five years ago by Albert Jenkins and Michael Dorfman, still had fewer than twenty living members. I think he said that all were inducted for “quiet valor” and that six of them had died in war.

  I’m sure of the “quiet valor.” I thought how well it applied to Day but also Chief with his half-mad hopes and Rafe with his whole battered graceful life. I wondered of course where they saw it in me. Before my long nights with Father, I’d have turned back the words. But that night at Juniper, even with the ghosts of six dead men as my predecessors, I stood still at least to see if the words would settle on my head.

  Day motioned to Chief and Sam. Mike had slowed the beat again but kept it going. They rose and stood by Day. Then Rafe materialized again out of the night and joined them as an unquestioned equal. He was still wearing just his breechclout and now a single down-hanging feather, and I wondered how he could stand the chill. But it shocked and then pleased me more to think that he’d kept this secret five weeks—how these grown men had honored his courage.

  One by one Day called up Kevin, Roger, Jim Todd and me. Holding each feather in both his broad hands, as if it were an actual burden, Day handed us all an eagle feather bound at the quill end in buckskin. And he gave us each our name.

  Mine was Wachinton, which he said meant “Wise.” I tell that only for the cruel irony, triggered by me, that was already blundering down upon us. I’ve said that Mike sometimes called me Wise One because of my lifelong interest in the people we slaughtered to seize this land. So there’s no reason to think that Day or any of the older members had a sarcastic intent. I do remember thinking that it sounded surprisingly like Honest George. I can’t remember the other names, but Kevin’s translated as something like Lightning Hands and Roger’s as Otter.

  Then the drum returned. Rafe stepped from the front bench back towards the fire. And in that simple three yards’ distance, he changed from boy to priest again. He danced three wide turns around us, raking a quail-wing fan down our chests. I tried to find the boy I knew. I was hunting the boy that was scared in Asheville and that laughed here by day or was forced to watch an ultimate horror on his own home floor. But all I could see was this shadowy dancer, held by whatever dream moved him on.

  When we’d sat down again, Day stayed by the fire. In its dryness it had already sunk to glowing coals. Day pointed to Mike. The beat grew louder and Day alone sang the prayer to Wakonda the Great Spirit which Mike had taught us ten weeks before. The sound of the words in an Indian mouth was different from what I’d grown to expect. And that’s what I still hear clearest from the night. A lone and entirely dignified praise, no trace of begging.

  All my life I’ve been an easy weeper. My eyes tear freely at the least intensification of gladness, almost never at anger or grief. I fog up for instance at TV commercials that advertise long-distance phone calls—sons calling their mothers who drown in tears. But I’m desert dry, though sympathetic, at the sight of pain in the same room with me. It’s a genetic legacy from my father, whose sisters always called him Works— short for Waterworks. So when Chief and Sam came over to shake our hands, my face was a little streaked. Then Day himself came and also ignored my embarrassment.

  But when suddenly Rafe was there, with an army jacket added to his breechclout, I thumbed at the tears.

  So that of course was what he saw. He said “Wachinton, Wise Old Weeper.” He raked my face again with the quail fan. Then he moved away with the older men, who vanished in darkness.

  In another place and time, I might have felt excluded or wondered anyhow what plans they had that omitted me. I don’t recall any envy however. Maybe it was a natural result of my ten weeks as father to fourteen boys, but the main thing I thought was “Rafe’ll catch flu if he doesn’t get dressed.” Then in silence Kevin and I climbed back to our cabins together.

  Kev spoke only when I turned off. “I’d never have guessed they could make it work.”

  I could only agree and, though the air was more than chilly by then, we sat on the steps of Cabin 16 and talked for a while. Since our Sunday together at the Thomas Wolfe house, we’d silently agreed to spend less time with one another. And while Kev had his Yankee coolness, I quickly felt that he now regretted the fact as much as I. Maybe he’d shied from my hot involvement in painting and Indian lore. I knew he shied from the sight I showed him that Sunday in Asheville, a goon half ready to rescue a knocked-up hillbilly girl and ruin his own fate. And I’d held back from a person who watched but really wouldn’t judge me.

  We both understood it was too late now. It’s one of the first great adult sadnesses, coming to see what you’ve chosen to waste, an hour too late. Kev and I wouldn’t know each other, a week from now. Something told me Kevin was thinking the same. And wild as I then was, I said “I’m sorry.”

  Kev waited and then said “Don’t be.”

  It was the first heavy advice he’d given since steering me away from the Wolfe house, and somehow it made me laugh.

  For all his distance Kev was a ready laugher, but this time he held back. He waited and then said “I know it just happened. I don’t blame you.”

  I saw he’d misunderstood me but how? I didn’t want to know.

  Then he explained. “You probably saved Ray from a lot worse sickness. You heard him calling and I didn’t. I asked Sam that night if I couldn’t hitch into Asheville and stay, send you on back to camp. But Sam said ‘Leave it.’ And Ray came back, saying you did fine.”

  It had never dawned on me that, cool as Kev was, he might have felt trumped. But I only said “That was just how it broke.” And then I said “Rafe’s a unique creature.” Since Asheville, I’d assumed that Kev didn’t know the history of Rafe’s disaster.

  He said “I’d trust Ray Noren with my life.”

  If Kevin had chosen that moment to tell me at last that he was an incognito Trappist monk, he couldn’t have surprised me more. So it was in shock that I said “It’s his own life that’s chancy.”

  Kev waited again and said “He won’t make it.”

  At that point the chill of the night had reached me, and I gave a hard shake.

  “Me too,” Kev said and stood to go.

  * * *

  After what seemed an endless black hour in my bunk with all the unconscious boys around me, I got back up, dressed warmly and went out to exhaust myself. Nothing specific was on my mind, though I did keep thinking You’ll leave here soon. You rescued the boy. And none of this time here will follow you home. I walked all the way out to the highway. I toured camp twice and was still soaring high. By then I’d decided I was still responding to the ceremony, the way it had skated its thin-ice path to a safe completion. So I went back down to the ring and sat. I wasn’t thinking about Rafe at all, certainly not about Rafe as a problem. By then I was thinking solely of me. I still had enough of the monstrous self-absorption of the secure child to be easily drownable in my own concerns.

  In no special order, those concerns were the feasibility of life as a painter, the financial chances of study abroad, my duties to Mother, the hole in my heart that needed love and still had nothing but smiling compliant unhaveable Viemme. And always still, the deep-cut memory of my father’s last breath, his dre
adful fight to stay. It had not been a fight walked through by an actor enlarged on a screen but a man my size that I’d known since birth. The one man involved in my creation, ended for good and in my presence.

  After maybe a long half hour of that, I heard a quiet voice say “Prayer is answered.” It was unquestionably Rafe, though at first I couldn’t find him.

  He hove up out of the far lakeside, in dungarees and his army jacket. At first he stopped in the midst of the ring and stirred the ashes of our recent fire. Once he satisfied himself the coals were dead, he came and sat two rows behind me. Through what came next then, we both faced out towards the hidden audible lake. Our eyes never met—no reason to, in such thick dark.

  Rafe said “You were right, a damned raw baby.”

  “Who?”

  He said “Me.” Then he waited. “Trying to punish you.”

  I said I noticed he had seemed cool.

  Rafe said “Those two nights alone in Asheville turned out to be a lot more than I needed. I tried to blame you.”

  I said “You know I offered to stay. The world’s mean enough; charity begins at home.”

  Rafe said “Faith and hope?” It sounded like a question.

  So I asked what he meant.

  “Faith, hope, charity—the big three,” he said. His random knowledge was always ambushing my expectations, and this was the first time I’d heard him move towards theology. Before I could think of a question to ask, he quoted St. Paul. ” Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity—’ ”

  I couldn’t get upstaged here. ” ‘—I am become as tinkling brass or a sounding cymbal.’ ”

  “What’s a symbol?” he asked. “Like ‘Home of the brave’?” I didn’t think to wonder if he was still teasing. I set him straight and also told him that St. Paul’s charity meant brotherly love. Then I suspected he knew it all: