Run takes my boots and my coat. He takes my father’s hat. He throws boots to the floor. My coat stands up stiff green ice and snow on a floor. Hat is a ball of snow.
Now they lift me into a tub. I have seen James-Face wash fish in such a tub. I am to be made a fish? They stick my legs into the tub. I see my knees like red knots in a water. They pull my hands and arms in, too. I feel weight of water, but I do not feel what must be cold water. I feel something not quite warm and then a feeling is gone.
Old James holds me up in the water. I watching his face, seeking a sign through dark glasses he always wears. He speaks to Run, and Run hurries. Taking a pot and spoon, and with a spoon Run digs in the clean-grease jar. Lumps heaps of grease in a pot. He throws wood and coal into a stove. He sets a pot on the stove eye. Soon Run is back from a stove with the pot and James False Face tells him how to do.
They work fast. Jack Sun Run brings two old towels. James lifts me from a water. Holding me, dries with one towel my hands and arms, feet and legs. Jack Sun hands another towel and James tears it into strips. Run puts his hands in a pot and cups his hands full of melted grease. Spreads grease over one of my hands and my arms. And James-Face wraps all up my arms with the strips of towel.
“Can you feel the warmth, little moonflower?” so saying James False Face.
“Quickly now,” he says to Run when I cannot answer. They have my hands and my arms wrapped and finished. I am feeling needle pricks all up and down my arms when I hear voices and sounds rushing. So sleepy am I now, trying to stay wide awake to see who is coming. Jack Sun spreading grease over my feet, rubbing. Rubbing it into the toes, when Mother bursts open the door. The door bangs a wall. Father comes in. Lines and wrinkles stiffen cold in a face very sad. Closing the door, my great Stone Father.
“Why did you bring her here?” Mother says.
No one else speaks a word. Quickly, old James helps my brother with the grease and wrappings. Looking at Mother only once, old James. I think I see his eyes running behind his glasses. Never has he stayed in a room with my mother. Wait to see him make a sign and leave. He does not do either. He rubs my foot in strong hands and wraps it up.
“Oh, no,” Mother says.
“Jack,” she says. “I thought at least you would have more sense.”
She comes to kneel before me.
“Baby,” she says. Patting wrappings. “Arilla, does it hurt?”
“Mother,” I say. Hearing my own voice this time. All at once, everything begins to hurt me. I cry and cry.
“Give her to me!” Mother pushing James aside. Taking me.
“Pain is good,” old James says to Father. “Means life.”
Mother holds my face to her neck. She carries me to a rocking chair and we rock. And we rock. Crying, I have oh so many shivers. Jack-Run brings a blanket. I feel him place it about me. I have never known my brother to bring me anything.
Father builds up the kitchen fire. James False Face is standing the way he will lean above a stream watching fish. Shoulders hunch high. Arms at his sides are still. So close to me I smell the woods and dinner fires burning.
“James False Face,” I say.
“I hear you,” old James says.
Rememory. Fish baked in soil of clay, tasting so sweet.
Closing my eyes, I say, “Tell a story.” Mother rocks and will not send old James away. Jack Sun Run is being quiet. Great Sun, Stone Father, is over there.
James-Face leans above me. He talks a telling in the old way. He has taught me how to see pictures in bunches of his words. Rememory. Bunches he calls children: “little moonflower, children are bright blue today and wish to play with you.”
Now I listen to his telling as in a sleep, and I see:
“came one long time The People were the only ones. they looked the same and spoke the same when they needed to speak. where they were, the forever forest was one immense silence. The People were mostly quiet, knowing how to speak with their hands to one another. the land of the forest was sacred to The People, never to be abandoned by them and never to be sold. thus, The People lived where their spirit was one spirit and the unseen power which filled the forest. all of the forest had the unseen power; and through great effort they made contact with each animal and each tree.
“came another long time of terrible change when the forever forest and the immense silence was broken. the Irinakoiw came walking with his anger in a pouch, followed by the white man, who carried an ax and war in a basket on his back. they walked closely on the same path. one season the Irinakoiw would lead; the next season the white man would lead. Never could they decide who would lead forever, and so they hated one another. the white man took his ax and felled a tree. the Irinakoiw tripped over it as the white man had hoped. but the white man was also a clumsy man and he in turn tripped and fell over the Irinakoiw. there they lay, with anger in a pouch and war in a basket spilling out over the sacred land of the forest. The people fought anger and war, which spread around them. but it was no use, for there is no winning over anger and war.
“in a final time one of The People went walking. he searched for a place to stay and for peace. he found no pipe of peace to smoke and he found no home. but he did find a field with one last flower untouched by anger or war. he was comforted and lay down by the flower. the moon brought a blanket to cover him, and he fell into a weary sleep. sleeping, he breathed upon the flower the goodness of his kind. dreaming, he made signs, and the flower watched and understood.
“at the end, the one who went walking found rest at last. as he ceased to dream, he ceased to breathe. the little flower had become strong so near to one of The People and shielded by the moon’s blanket. grown from soil untouched by anger or war, the flower understood the land. she knew the way of The People and she held on to her seeds for a better time.”
All still. James-Face leans above me. Finished telling in an old way.
“Moonflower,” he saying softly.
“Hear you, too,” saying so sleepy.
“Have your dreams now and hold on tight.”
Hearing the door close softly. Soon as he’s gone, Mother saying: “The doctor not a mile away and he covers her with grease.”
Jack Sun Run says: “It worked and we didn’t have to pay”
Mother says: “But what if it hadn’t, what about that?”
Jack-Run says: “James-Face is never mistaken.”
Father says: “It’s my fault. She heard me sledding. I take the blame.”
Mother says: “It’s your fault for acting the fool every winter night.”
Run says: “It’s not his fault, it’s your fault. You take the blame.”
Father says: “Run, that’s enough.”
Run says: “Mother, you wanted a baby. We were just fine the way we were. It’s your fault.”
Father say: “Enough, Sun Run.”
Mother says: “I know one thing, Jack. If you are ever cruel to her, you’ll answer to me. I know that.”
Run says: “I’m never cruel to her. I’m never one way or another.”
Father says: “He is just acting strong. He is just the young warrior. Did you see how he saved us, how he roped us in?”
Mother says: “Why the need for saving? It should never have happened.”
Run says: “I am never cruel. I don’t care one way or the other.”
Mother says: “We have got to get away from here.”
2
For sure, my Birthday would be a disaster. I mean, worse than the time they tell about when that Learjet piloted by some rock-and-roll star-boys crash-landed in Wilson Onderdock’s Black-Angus pasture a mile outside of town. Knowing something about Black Angus and Onderdocks gives a clue to what kind of engagement went on in that cow pasture for half the night. Even if one of the star-boys was bleeding all over the place, Wilson Onderdock said nobody was getting any blood transfusion and an ambulance ride until his prize bull hanging in little chunks on the fence was paid for.
My Birthday was
shaping up to be the same kind of for-real bust. I would be surprised if there wasn’t a little blood and guts somewhere in it, too. Because any event that had me at the edge of it when I was supposed to be dead center, and had Jack Sun Run at the center when he shouldn’t’ve been there at all, was doomed any sixteen ways you wanted to look at it. It was just that with my brother being the Sun, if the day didn’t naturally revolve around him, then it couldn’t happen. It hadn’t even been formed yet. Or it was a piece of clay; and no matter how I might want to mold it, my brother, Sun Run, would come along and have to flatten it. He’d smack at it, beat it and work it over into whatever kind of shape suited him. That was his power.
By the time school was out, I was one wreck trying to figure out just how Jack Sun would manage to destroy anything. Having to sit through Chorus, which I hate, and then Math, which I despise, and Assembly in I have to admit a pretty neat dress and in shoes which have always hurt my poor feet, I’m sure would have caused any other kid I know to pull a stomach upset.
Why is it girls always get the lousy jobs? I mean, someone ought to complain to the Student Council. Because somebody made all the Seventh Grade girls divide into two groups. This one group had to collect money from the boys and buy flowers; and the other group had to bake cookies — I mean, had to, and right in school. Then the flowers and cookies had to be taken over to Mercy Medical Clinic, where Patricia purple-prissy Reynolds was recovering from being knocked off her ten-speed rip-off by Logan’s Cleaners’ panel truck. I mean, there is this whole crew of purple-prissies in school who shouldn’t even be allowed tricycles, let alone ten-speeds out of control all over town.
The less said about Patricia Reynolds is probably the better. I don’t get wise with her on account of her dad’s some kind of big deal in the State House of Representatives. Some kids do. But I dislike her pure and simple because she is a stuck-up, gross-out idiot. Maybe next time she’ll plow into a freight train. Still, I figure her father deserves whatever pleasure he can get from being a Representative, whatever that is. At least he does if he works as hard as my own Stone Dad.
I said to my own dad after Patricia got knocked senseless by the cleaners’ truck: “Did you go and vote for Lou Boyd Reynolds?”
And my dad said, “I’d a sooner vote for a honey-dipper with advanced leprosy before I’d vote for that clown.”
“What in the foggy world is a honey-dipper?” I asked him.
And my dad leaned back and said in that soft way of his, “You mean you’ve forgotten old James False Face?”
Now, that took me back. I felt real queer a minute and I got sort of confused all in my mind. “Well, I don’t know,” I said, which is my way of giving myself time to think, or not telling the truth, or not wanting to talk, depending on the scene. In this situation I was truly trying to think back. “I know James was old,” I said finally. “But his hair wasn’t ever so much gray, but black. I remember he was an Indian.”
Dad’s face kind of looked unhappy when I said that. “James-Face never much took to the name Indian, so don’t use it,” Dad said. “Use Cherokee or Santee, depending on which people you are talking about. Or you can say The People, which is what old James used to say most of the time.”
I stayed quiet to see where Dad was going with it. For some reason, I didn’t want him to go too far. Pretty soon, though, he was back in a good mood, like always.
Dad said, “James False Face became the honey-dipper back in Cliffville, where we lived. Oh, he could do marvelous work. He knew how to make all kinds of things from the old time, too. But a honey-dipper was a man who went to the trouble for little reward to clean and whitewash outhouses once or twice a year. That’s why they called James the honey-dipper.”
“No kidding?”
“Truth,” Dad said.
James False Face. I get the feeling I was always with him. A cleaner of johnnies-on-the-outside. ’S what my brother liked to call them. I don’t remember ever seeing old James at work, either. But thinking back always makes me feel like I’m coming down with something incurable.
Anyway, I don’t know a soul who ever thought much of the Reynoldses, mainly Patricia, even if her mother was in the school every day as the school psychologist. She and Mr. Representative Reynolds were divorced. And lucky I wasn’t one of the three girls that had to go with one of the aides into that smelly clinic and bring Patricia the flowers and cookies and have to talk to her. But two of those girls were coming to my Birthday.
I can hear her now: “You’ll have to stand, you can’t sit on my bed.” Just as selfish and stuck up as ever. “Mommy says I can’t take any pain at all. Every time I close my eyes, I can see that truck running me down.” Running her down! Ten speeds for a pea-brain. She was showing off for Joey Montgomery and ran smack into that truck.
Thank goodness I don’t have to worry about not inviting her to my party. Not that I’d ever invite her as much as a block away from where I happened to be. Not that Patricia would come, either. She’s a regular at one of my mom’s dance classes, Advanced, and then pretends she doesn’t know me in school.
My mom. She always will say, “Arilla, I have to admit that one of my great disappointments is the fact that you refuse to learn The Dance.”
I always answer her right back: “Dear Mother, my biggest sorrow since we moved here is the fact that my mom has to be the dance teacher for the biggest snobs in town.”
We talk that way to one another sometimes. It is like joking and not daring to laugh. I can’t explain it, exactly. My mom’s the one who wanted me to have a Birthday. She and Jack Sun Run. I didn’t care one single bit.
“Think of all the presents you’ll get,” Mom told me.
“Makes no difference to me,” I told her, “so long as you and Dad get me something nice.”
“And your brother?” she said.
“Probably give me a rusty horseshoe wrapped in manure.”
“Arilla!”
So now I have to wait for these girls we picked for my Birthday to come out of school. They mess around so much flirting and take so long. I was the first one out of Assembly, beat it to my locker and was outside with my books before the buzzer stopped, almost. There’s no reason to hurry, except that I’m so nervous. I never had a party before. Of the six girls we invited, two of them left for the clinic before Assembly and barely got back in time. Now they have to make an oral to the Teacher-Counselor. And I heard they have to clean up the dishes they used for baking cookies. I mean, that’s the way they treat B students while pea-brains get served in bed!
So I wait, sitting on one of these concrete slabs which are scattered around. Supposed to be some kind of indestructible, modern seating arrangement for us kids in front of our modern, indestructible, windowless, one-room open school. I don’t hate the school here; but if I want to be cool, I can’t say that out loud. I really like it. The only time I ever get scared is in cyclone season when we are like sitting ducks in a box. No inner walls, no basement to hide in. I like to sit here, though, watching the kids flow out, running for buses.
One girl for my party straggles out and then another. They look real nice, too. We say hello. I try not to look at the presents they are hiding against them on top of their books when they sit down near me at the other end of the concrete. They are older-looking, being in the Eighth Grade. Mom says all the girls out here are overgrown, corn-fed. Not a one of them refused to come to my party and I can’t think of anything to call over to them. It’s okay, though, with so many kids flowing out and yelling, and some sitting around, waiting for parents to drive them home. We are all pretty worn right after school, anyway, although I always do pick up a little after four o’clock. It looks like it’ll be four before we get out of here.
This place is a campus, with the middle school and then the high school across the road and the parking lot from the middle school. Another girl comes out. She gives me a smile and a nod and sits over with the other two. They are glancing over their shoulders toward the h
igh school. I’m doing it, too, before I realize it, before I figure we are not just anxious about my Birthday but about my brother, Sun Run, over at the high school. Then I get kind of mad and start arranging my books and looking up assignments like I wasn’t thinking about Sun at all.
It’s a peculiar position I hold with these girls. Everybody looks on my family as this peculiar bunch. I don’t suppose anybody’d notice me at all if it weren’t for Mom and Jack and my dad. Mom grew up in this town of ten thousand. When we came back to live here, right away Mom opened her dance studio on Wheeler Avenue, and from the start she did real well. She could coax any brat of any age into one of her classes, stopping their moms on the street or calling up their homes. She seems to know everybody in town, from the mayor to the garbage collector.
One time Mom explained to me how things were. “My family has lived here for at least a century. Of course, my parents both passed away — Arilla, I’m sorry you never knew them, they were so good to me — and others have left and come back and left again, great-aunts and cousins. Some few do still remain. We were never close, but we are still relatives. I have credit in this town.…”
I never ask why we never came back to visit because I guess I know she, and the rest of us, never quite fitted in.
Mom said, “A town full of generations of your kin owes you something — I don’t know why in the world I waited so long to come home.”
She had credit, all right. She’d go through the phone book, letting her fingers do the walking down the names until she came to the ones she knew. She’d call up a number and, like, say, “Mrs. Hamrand? This is Lillian Adams. You may remember me as Lilly Perry over in the west town? Yes! Yes! That was my father! Well, for heaven —” And off she’d go talking for a half-hour, ending up making two lines in her dance-class book for the Hamrand girls.
Arilla Sun Down Page 2