The Tongues of Angels

by Reynolds Price

  Sam looked to Chief. “You want me to tell it, sir?”

  Chief shut his eyes and nodded.

  So Sam began. Simm Burwell, the riding counselor, had climbed to the prayer circle right after supper. It was just before seven and still daylight. When Simm got there he went like everybody else to the valley side and watched the view. Nothing felt unusual, no strange sounds. But when he went over to plant his stick, he saw a body lying behind the thicket. The face was up and Simm knew him at once—“Simm said he’d have known Ray anywhere, looked just exactly like he did last night when he lit the big fire.” He was wearing his whites, and they weren’t even dirty. No sign that he’d struggled on the ground. In his hand was a stick he hadn’t used yet. Simm said his skin was hot to the touch. Not feverish but hot as a working man. No sign of blood or even a wound.

  With good sense Simm rushed back to camp. It would take more than one man to carry Rafe down the few steep yards. But within half an hour, they had him at the bottom where the nurse checked his heart. It was beating weakly. So Simm, Chief, Sam and the nurse all took him to Asheville in the station wagon.

  The doctor who saw Rafe through the snakebite was there. It didn’t take long till he came to the lobby and told them plainly that Rafe had suffered a massive cerebral hemorrhage. He urged them to come back out here and wait. It might be minutes. It might be years. Chief wanted to stay, and they all waited in the lobby till midnight. Then the doctor came back and said the same thing. No change, go home.

  Till then in Sam’s story, I hadn’t even thought of words. My mind was too cold. But now I asked “What’s the real prognosis?”

  Chief looked to Sam.

  Sam said “Very bad. If we could just have found him sooner. The doctor said that, by the time he saw Ray, pressure from the internal bleeding had already done too much brain damage. There’s really so little spare room in the skull. He said he felt there was no chance of Ray waking up. But he also said that, with this strong a body, the boy might well linger for years in a coma.”

  I said “We can pray he doesn’t get that.”

  Chief spoke up at last. “No, we leave that to God.”

  Which was what we did. We cowed in place and waited for an end. At Sam’s suggestion we brought our sleeping bags down to the lodge and slept on the floor. Or got still and dark. I heard a few sighs from Roger, Kev, Simm and Possum but no real sleep. My mind still wouldn’t work. In some act of kindness I’d learned that night, it went entirely flat and gray. Very few words came and no strong feelings. No blame or guilt or grief or hope, just a blurred refusal to believe the worst. Surely I wouldn’t be struck this hard twice in one year. Even then, you’ll notice, it was all about me.

  I figured the others were deep asleep, but suddenly Kevin sat up and said “Wrong.”

  It woke everybody. Simm said “Wrong what?”

  But Kev had forgot. It was part of a dream. Anyhow he lay back, then laughed and finally told everybody about the horse, him finding his three boys humping the mare. Back in the dark I cringed at his timing. But once he got to the laughing end, he said “It was Ray that saved their necks.”

  Simm said “Doesn’t sound like their necks needed saving.”

  Then Kev told a story I hadn’t known. He said “I was going to go tell Sam and get his advice. But the boys ran to Ray, and he waylaid me walking down here. He challenged me to a tether-ball match. To cool my jets, I thought ‘Why not?’ But Ray beat me, hands down. I congratulated him and turned to leave, but Ray said ‘Whoa there. You headed to Sam?’ I said ‘Sam or Chief.’ Ray said ‘It would stop Chief’s heart right now.’ I said ‘Ray, this is no problem of yours.’ He laughed and said ‘Kev, you don’t understand. You lost your chance.’ I begged his pardon. He said ‘We played that tetherball match to see if you got to be a damned spy or not. You lost and thereby lost your spy license. You are now Camp Juniper’s luckiest man.’ I asked him how so and reminded him, in any case, I hadn’t agreed to play by his rules. Ray said ‘Maybe not but see it this way—I’m helping you spare a poor kind lady’s name. She was just doing her bit for teenaged morale.’ I asked ‘What lady?’ He meant the mare.”

  Simm said “Adelaide? Lord, she’s been serviced by so many boys, she backs up every time she hears one speak.”

  That led to a string of other stories about Rafe. I no longer felt they dishonored him, and I knew more stories than all of them together, but I let them talk and just lay still. I even think I dozed in and out of the long discussion. I was wide awake though when Roger spoke.

  He’d been silent like me, but he finally said “I feel like he’s gone.”

  I had to speak then. I said “No don’t.” Just saying the words might force him to go.

  Roger said he was sorry. It had just passed through his brain that instant.

  And at that point everybody gave up hope, including me. Nobody said so and I at least denied it to myself. But we knew that Roger had told the truth. And somehow that let everybody sleep. Even I slept maybe three whole dark hours.

  Right before dawn Sam opened the door. Somehow in sleep I knew he was coming. I knew what he’d say, and I managed to say in my mind Please, God. It was the closest I’d come to taking his name in anything more than vain for some months. I remember noticing that Sam had shaved.

  He opened his mouth and it stayed a black hole till he finally said “The doctor just called. Ray died at four-thirty. I’ve reached his father and he’s flying in early. Mrs. Chief says everybody come to the house as soon as you’ve washed. She’s cooking breakfast.”

  Even though we’d eaten one breakfast already, that was some kind of blessing. The ancient balm of food on grief. Remember how, at the end of the Iliad, old Priam and Achilles—mortal enemies for years—settle the transfer of Hector’s corpse? Then they sit down to eat, exhausted but hungry men again.

  * * *

  Very little was said and at first I was glad. Then after coffee and a little hot food, a pocket of guilt burst inside me. At first it was mindless, no logic or reason. Next it made me feel like a bereaved family member who was getting no notice. I didn’t say so. I joined the others in eating corn fritters with maple syrup, bacon, a world of fresh milk and strong coffee.

  Shocked as we were, Chief forgot to say grace.

  By the end of the meal though, Mrs. Chief remembered. She said “Oh Albert, we didn’t give thanks.”

  That seemed almost worse news to him than Rafe’s. He rose in place and, thank God, didn’t suggest that we touch, no chain of hands. I might not have made it. He said “Great Father, we’re speechless here beneath this unfathomable stroke of your hand. Your will be done. And we thank you for all that’s left to the living. Help us see what it is and where to find it.”

  I remember wishing I’d ever known a preacher with a mind that fast, that hugged the ground of life that close and responded that soon.

  No one said “Amen” but Day, who just then stood in the door.

  As Sam began to portion out duties for the general cleanup, Chief’s eyes called me over. He said “Bridge, meet me in the Thunderbird office in ten minutes please.”

  I was still too stunned to be afraid. I could only guess what he’d ask me first.

  As I waited in the office I’d cleaned so thoroughly two days ago, I came much closer to breaking down than I had before. Again not from guilt and any kind of anger but just from the weight of the year behind me. I was twenty-one years old, but three score and ten? Who on Earth could stand it? I remember thinking I’d burn the picture. I’d never be able to see it again, and a funeral pyre might just be called for.

  When Chief came at last, his first question was “Had Ray said anything to you, last week in Asheville or back out here, about any such climb?”

  I had no master plan for a cover story. I simply took one step at a time. “Sir, he asked to climb up there with me late yesterday afternoon. I told him no.” Strictly speaking that was true.

  Chief said “Good for you. I’m rel
ieved. He asked me about it too, more than once in recent years.”

  I said “Sir, Rafe told me you showed him the way.”

  Chief’s old stiffness returned; he lurched back. “When?” “He said he climbed up there with you several years ago.” Chief actually smiled. He had caught his boy in one more tale. “I promised I’d take him when he was sixteen, if he came to Tsali or even as a visitor. But I plainly said ‘Not one day sooner.’ ” Chief went to the mimeograph machine and examined it closely with a clean forefinger. I’d left it spotless. Suddenly he turned round, faced me head-on and said “Did you love him?”

  A hand grenade lobbed through my teeth could not have hit me harder. Thirty years ago people didn’t just wind up and pitch such curves. I quickly tried to read Chief’s meaning, his Christian background, his pithy sermons. I said “I loved what I saw deep in him.”

  Chief’s big eyes filled and he nodded fiercely. “Can you give it a name? What was it, Bridge?”

  To this day now, I couldn’t tell you where I got what came. I said “ ‘Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels and have not charity—’ ”

  Chief kept on nodding. “Yes, say it. Say it.”

  I quoted onwards as far as I could. Then Chief took over and, between us, we made it somehow to the end. “ ‘And now abideth faith, hope and love, these three. But the greatest of these is love.’ ” We both substituted love for charity.

  I said “What I mean is, love worked Rafe.”

  Chief nodded “To death. It absolutely killed him.”

  Again I wonder where we got such words. Never underestimate the combinations at the fingertips of any two men raised on the King James Bible, a lifetime of sermons and hundreds of hymns. I thought at the time Maybe we are two fools babbling this early, or maybe we’re inspired or dead with exhaustion or all the above. I can’t speak for Chief; but maybe I meant that Rafe Noren lasted as long as he did because he plainly prized the world, all he could see that was not stingy, joyless or cruel. I still think the same. Anyhow not even adult men should get full blame for what they say in the wake of such news. At least we didn’t say Rafe was better off.

  The moment Chief left I wanted to rush to the office. Even in the presence of Clara and the secretary, I’d call Viemme in Maine or Murmansk. I’d find her this time, if it took all morning or into the night. It felt as urgent as hauling Rafe to Asheville the day of the snakebite. I didn’t yet know how Death and Eros use the same wires in our sparsely wired body. God also often employs the same circuit. So I actually locked the Thunderbird door and was on my way. I would find a person whose body I knew, a woman that trusted her body to me and would trust it again, more fully now. And with the simple sound of her voice, I’d somehow cool the fever that burned me.

  But there was Mike Dorfman at the office door. His eyes were red and, without a word, he pressed both his hands down hard on my shoulders.

  I said “This just about ends it, Mike.” I had no clear idea what I meant.

  He nodded hard and said “Wazhinska.” Then he stepped back to look. Like Chief, Mike could stare down a charging rhino.

  I managed to bear it without shying off.

  So he said “Wazhinska” again and moved away.

  I waited in place till Mike was well gone. More than anyone here, I knew I’d miss him in years to come. I also knew we’d never meet again. I was right in both things. Then I turned and went on uphill.

  We counselors spent a day storing the bedding, sweeping out cabins and clearing the grounds like punished children. By now my mind kept saying I’d caused it. If I’d done my job and discouraged Rafe’s climb. If I hadn’t been so on-fire in his presence, I might not have pressed him to plan a climb. A child just back from a rattlesnake bite—who did I think I was dealing with? If after all I had understood that Raphael Noren was still a child and couldn’t consume a full man’s diet, he might be a man among us now. But who was a man? Hardly me, that day. I was in deep trouble and nowhere to turn.

  Late in the morning I saw Kev moving downhill with something in his arms. I was powerfully tempted to call him back and tell him, to let him decide what I should do next. Go to Chief, confess and take the blame? But what here and now would blame amount to? It could only add up to deeper grief for a few helpless people. Then something stopped me from calling out. But I ran to catch Kev. And when I got there, I saw what he had—a cardboard box half full of Rafe’s things.

  Kev had packed the few clothes and belongings. And he opened the lid without my asking. “Anything of yours here?”

  “Oh no,” I said truly. And I knew not to rummage. Rafe had told me his dance regalia was stored in Mrs. Chiefs room. He said he didn’t trust them anywhere else—“These boys would just ruin that as well.” But laid in the top of the box was the single feather he’d worn, pointed down, after dancing in the tribal induction and the Ghost Dance.

  When I picked it up, Kevin said “You keep it.”

  “You think I should?”

  “If you want it, you should. Nobody will know.”

  Kev was righter than he would ever guess, but I chose to obey him. I took the feather and the beaded headband back to my cabin. After all Rafe had willed the headband to me; the eagle feather came attached. And hadn’t the child been named Kinyan, Airborne? To this day I have it, a strong wing feather wrapped with buckskin at the quill end and the cowhide head-band, beaded in blue. Moths have chewed at the edge of the feather, but I mean to go on keeping it still. It hangs on a nail by the painting itself. They’d have lasted longer, stored behind glass; but I wanted them close and still don’t regret it.

  Right up till I left Juniper, no one asked me if I’d ever heard Rafe speak of headaches or weakness. The doctor had told Sam that the autopsy showed Rafe had suffered the rupture of an aneurysm. He also said that sudden deaths in childhood were often the result of congenital weaknesses in an artery wall— children who fall off a low sofa and die on the rug, football players in light spring practice. So maybe Rafe’s problem had been there since birth; maybe it was weakened by snakebite or maybe by the climb to the prayer circle. Or maybe not, to any of those. The doctor apparently was one of the thousands, rarer then than now, who see malpractice suits in every bed and are more concerned with shielding their funds than in understanding a fact as plain as one boy’s death and the rings it left in the water around him.

  I kept my own questions to myself. I’d learned, with my father, not to try to answer every big question the moment fate asks it. Maybe strangely, the thing that concerned me most in my last hours at camp was what to do with my painting. The urge to burn it had luckily cooled. I could give it to Chief, for the lodge fireplace. Or leave it for Rafe’s father, Mr. Noren. But nothing I’d heard about him made me want to. In any case it would raise more questions than I needed to face.

  Roger said we had plenty of room in the car.

  And at the last minute I went to get it. As I was leaving the art room, I saw Day across the hall. He was sitting by a window, just looking out. So I went in to say one more goodbye.

  Day called me Wazhinska too and thanked me for my presence in his classes. He wondered if I’d be back next summer?

  I had to tell him that was unlikely. I hoped to be in Europe.

  He gave no visible response to that, and I was on the verge of turning to leave when Day said “Were you the one who told him to go?”

  It was almost the longest sentence I’d heard him say, and again it struck me hard. My mind was just calm enough to assume that go meant to go on the climb, not the way towards death. And I also could hear that no blame was involved. I said “Why would you think that?”

  Day’s face was as blank as the sky outside. “He did what you did.”

  I expressed my genuine amazement. Rafe had seemed as different from me as anyone I’d known. Then I asked how Day knew that I’d climbed to the circle.

  He said “One of your boys told me about the stick you carved, with the snake and the head of Kinyan.
”

  So much again for my earlier sense of being ignored.

  Then Day expanded. “I knew him from the summer his mother was killed. From then till last year, he was the same— bitter and hurt. He was different this summer, more serious and always laughing. I saw him watch you, every day in here. Everywhere he went, he watched you work. When you were gone, he could talk and move like you.”

  “Yes, he teased me a lot.”

  Day said “Not teasing. Last week when he picked your tribal name, he said he needed a brother like you. But you were too late.”

  I could barely hear it, it cut so deep. Rafe had picked my name? But I had to know more. “Did Rafe say I was too late or did you?”

  Day said “Not I.”

  I wanted to get out fast forever but held my ground and told myself that this was food for thought for a far distant day. Rafe thought I’d have made a useful brother, but I came too late. The news was much too charged to handle, now at least. And since I’d still heard no trace of blame in Day’s voice, I turned the tables. “Were you the first one to teach him dancing?”

  Day nodded and actually smiled. “The first summer I came here was the summer I mentioned. Ray had seen his mother killed. The day he met me here in this room, he drew me aside and told me the story. He asked me to tell nobody else. He said he wanted an Indian to know.” At that Day smiled again, for maybe the third time all summer. It looked as natural as if he did it daily. “I led him down to the ring that day and began to teach him. Someway I started at a very high level, with the eagle dance. I’ve never known why. I’d had classes for other boys. But they never learn it. It was a thing I knew I could give Ray. Ray had the long legs for it and the mind. And he did learn, fast. Better than anybody I’ve seen, except my older brother Chester Bad Boy. I’m not a good dancer, but I know the old ways and can teach the right boy. Ray was right. And I think it helped him at first, for a while—a few minutes at a time. It was what I could give him.”