Arilla Sun Down

by Virginia Hamilton

  There were some seven men plus the three fallen and lassoed. The seven began pulling at the fallen until they finally had the dudes on their feet. At once all ten of them commenced pulling against Sun’s rope. Quickly Sun turned Jeremiah to face them and pulled the other way. It was an uneven struggle even with the power of Jeremiah. For the men were pulling in heaves that seemed to keep Jeremiah off balance. But that beautiful horse would have burst his heart just to help Sun win if the most surprising thing hadn’t happened right then.

  These young high-school kids, the cut-ups who like to pretend they are some like Sun, began to come off that area around the standpipe just about the same way the older men had come off the hill. Only, these came off faster, swaggering some for the girls that were with them to see. A few of them were big and husky, bigger than Sun, being football boys and the like, rather than track-and-field and horsemen like Sun Run. They were not in his class, but they didn’t know it yet. They were soon to find out. Sun always did prefer to stand by himself and fall by himself.

  They caught hold of Sun’s lariat below Jeremiah and lined themselves out along the rope. So that now Sun had this team pulling one way against this team of ten men pulling the other way, with this ten feet of strained, empty rope between the two sides. It was the weirdest-looking tug-o’-war I or anybody else out there had ever seen. It was done in silence, with the older men looking grim and sweaty and the boys on Sun’s side with feverish eyes and that insane grinning just like Sun’s own. And with my dad off to one side in his pure-white suit. He was looking out above and beyond Sun’s head, like he was seeing something far away, yet something under a microscope, like some scientist.

  And Mom. She had come up against that empty space of rope between the two sides. Her chiffon dress was sticking to her now from the heat. She reached over and clutched the rope on one side of her, then reached and clutched it on the other side. To bring the two teams together, I guess, the way she will gather the folds of cloth to cinch it under a waistband.

  “Please now,” she said. “Jack, please now. Let’s put an end to this before someone —”

  My brother ignored her. He had his hands full. No one but him and me seemed to notice the danger. The young dudes pulling were too busy showing off their style and trying to win. The old guys had to beat the young dudes if it killed them. Sun was having a time with Jeremiah, who had got himself frightened because of all the human beings closing in on him. A section of the crowd had eased off the hill and that area around the standpipe, too, to close in around the tug-o’-war. Young girls had to start screaming and older women were shouting, either egging their men on or telling them to quit acting like a bunch of city dudes at a farmer’s auction.

  So that bodies of human beings pressed in around that grand horse until he was near frantic with fear. Faithful Jeremiah didn’t want to hurt a soul. Sun knew that and I knew that; but still, he was going to rear. My brother broke out in a cold sweat trying to keep Jeremiah from trampling those boys right in front of him. I swear, I thought Sun’s muscles would jump right out of his skin. He couldn’t hold Jeremiah back another minute, and in a flash he did what he had to do. I mean, Sun has the strength of a track-and-field star going on across country. And with that last, perfect strength he held Jeremiah steady with one hand for maybe five seconds while he reached over to his side. He pulled out this knife he carries in a trick seam along his leggings. And he cut that rope of a lariat just out from Jeremiah’s nose. Honest to goodness, it was like somebody had thrown a handful of popcorn on a red-hot stove. Men and boys flew to this side and the other, and fell in two heaps of head-over-heels and bruised knees. Mom was jostled some, but she was still on her feet. She dropped the rope like it was on fire.

  All had happened like lightning, with men and boys flying out and falling back, with Mom dropping the rope, and with Jeremiah almost sitting down on his rump when all of that force gave away. Should of seen those boys scrambling away from there, too. And Dad, in his white suit so spotless, with sparks dancing in his eyes, which never left looking at the sight of Sun. Then, Sun Run wheeling Jeremiah to get out of that field, and the crowd falling back to let him through. All this like each part had been one whole that had to break up in pieces around Sun Run. That was his power.

  It still wasn’t over, either.

  3

  The crowd opened up in front of that great beauty of a horse moving, and Sun with his head held high and eyes flashing. My brother wasn’t quite smirking, but he was for-sure getting out of there. He realized before anybody that in the next minute those boys and men he’d caused to fall down and look stupid were going to turn on him, as sure as pieces of the day would again collect around him and become the night.

  Anyway, folks get nervous around a kid who’ll carry a knife between his teeth. Sun Run had clenched the knife in his teeth so he could use both hands to control Jeremiah. Sun thought he couldn’t get along without that knife, although he seldom used it for anything. And it was the hardest thing for my dad to teach him that, to most folks, a knife was just about as scary as anything with a trigger.

  At the other end of the space folks had opened up for Sun and Jeremiah came some policemen out of two cruisers parked in the parking lot at the edge of the green, just in case. It was the Fourth, after all. Any big crowd on a hot holiday could mean any kind of trouble. So these police had been hanging around outside of the grounds, talking to pretty ladies and helping the elderly get their camp chairs out of their cars. Giving themselves an untarnished image.

  The cops came walking in, not too fast. Seeing the crowd gather, they must have thought maybe a fistfight had broken out. So they come on in kind of easy, not wanting to get the crowd all excited. What did they have to see but Jack Sun Run struggling toward them, looking for the world like an improvement on Sal Mineo in Cheyenne Autumn?

  “Wait a minute,” one of the police said to the other, “isn’t that the half-Indian kid?”

  “You mean the half-colored one?” the other cop answered.

  My dad always did say that if you could separate the town police from their shiny black cruisers, you’d discover they had flesh and blood from the waist up only. He said the rest of them was pure yellow ether. And if they couldn’t solve a crime from behind their steering wheels, my dad said, well then a crime hadn’t ever been committed in the first place.

  So there was my mighty brother, Jack Sun Run Adams, with the two cops in the lead kind of easing up on him. He had that knife still clenched in his teeth and he had Jeremiah’s reins loose but short-up in case the horse thought about rearing. Jeremiah was stepping forward and then side to side, like, given a chance, when he saw an opening he was going to break out of there no matter what Sun Run did.

  “Don’t you know that knife is a concealed weapon?” one of the cops yelled up at Sun.

  “Does it look like I’m hiding it?” Sun said through his teeth, right back at him. “Watch it. Horse got hisself riled.”

  “Come on down from there, then,” the cop said. There were four police and they sure knew that the crowd had hushed and was watching them. They were hesitating just to one side of Jeremiah and Sun, like they didn’t know if they should capture them or wait to see if Sun would come down.

  “Listen,” Sun said, in a gurgling voice because of the knife, and swallowing hard.

  Everyone could sense the danger from just that one word. And everybody did listen:

  “Getting him out of here ’fore someone is hurt. Now back off.”

  At which point my brother, the Sun, got Jeremiah true forward in that grand way that horse could move. Jeremiah’s shoulders and quarters were rippling under that dark coat, which will look black except under the strongest sunlight, better than the finest war-horse in the best Technicolor cowboy-and-Indian western.

  Sun and Jeremiah made it seem like the whole Cheyenne nation was parading out of the park right behind them. And nobody said one word. Not the crowd. Not the tug-o’-war boys, or even the police
. Jack Sun went on through the parking lot and out into the street, right down the middle, where he let Jeremiah open in a pure, easy gallop. Until the sight and sound of them had vanished into the sunset — except that the sun would go down behind the park. He was headed east, but that was the picture and the “aura” of Jack Sun Run Adams.

  My brother was supreme that Fourth of July. The way he could get a crowd and a third of the police force to listen to him like that. And he being just an old fifteen-year-old going on sixteen that winter. I mean, with a word, make ’em understand his deepestmost knowledge in an instant and make them obey. I haven’t learned that in an entire month of talking.

  Nothing more happened. Sun left and the cops moved into the crowd. I don’t think they ever found out what really happened out there. The tug-o’-war men and boys were partly guilty themselves for the trouble. And the three dudes who hadn’t shown proper respect for my mom or Sun — I never did know which had set my dad off — sure couldn’t prove that Jeremiah would’ve trampled them. It all ended in a kind of letdown for all concerned. Mom just turned and walked out of there with Dad following her. I stayed a minute or two, to pick up what was left of Jack Sun’s lariat, and to see if anyone was going to make a lie and press charges against him. Once in a while folks will press charges against him when he lets Jeremiah canter across some lawns. No one did, so I left. Nobody noticed me leaving any more than they’d seen me coming.

  One thing can be said for Sun and Mom and Dad. You always know when they are in the vicinity. And that leaves me out. I never did get to see the fireworks, either. I guess I could’ve stayed, but who wants to sit by herself at the fireworks? Anyhow, I had to get back home to find out what Sun was doing.

  That’s always the way it is. Just like today on my Birthday. Instead of being happy about my party, I’m worrying just where and when Jack Sun will enter into it and take it over. I swear, nobody else in the world is twelve and feeling the way I do.

  When the party girls and I reach South Ekker Avenue, we walk down just a couple of blocks to Ryder Ripple Road. Like I say, they were talking not to one another. One of them would say something and another one would say something that had nothing to do with what the first one had said.

  These girls are mostly thirteen going on fourteen.

  “Dang it, I hate this dress!” Marianne Earley bursts out, pulling at the new, awful dress hard enough to tear it from the shoulders. She looks to be about twelve, but she is the only one of us who is already fourteen. She has this straight black hair so wispy thin. It just covers her head like some dirty, dusty cloth. Like everyone else, she is stuck on Jack Sun, but he doesn’t even know she’s alive.

  The dress she is wearing is a white, sheer material from the neck to the waist with an underslip to go with it — she’ll be chilled in it when the sun goes down. But the bottom half of the dress is this green plaid material. The whole thing is supposed to remind you of 1940 or ’50 or something. Seeing the dress, I don’t know why anybody’d want to be reminded.

  “I refused to go to gym today,” said Sue Patterson. “I know Miss Binns is going to flunk me, but I don’t care.”

  “Did all my homework in T-C,” Lou Ann Gregg cut right in on Sue. “Usually I can just relax when I get home. Because Mama don’t get home until six and Daddy not until six-thirty. I don’t have to start dinner until five-thirty.”

  Who cares? But that’s the way they were talking. Every one of them had something to say but Angelica Diavolad. Angel is what Jack-Run calls her. And when he calls “Angel?” she walks over to him just as smooth as you please. He will give her a hand and a stirrup up and off they’ll go on Jeremiah, to ride on the paths in the glen until darkness. Now, the fact that Sun Run likes her is probably the best and the worst thing that could happen to Angel. She’s a runner just the same as Sun is, and the best basketball player on the girls’ team. There is a fight going on in this town at the School Board whether Angel is good and strong enough to play on the boys’ middle-school team.

  In track and field there’s no difference between high-school and middle-school girls’ teams. There is just one track-and-field day, and Angel always shows off real well. Boys like to tease and say that all we have to do is put Sun at the finish line of the 880, which is the half-mile run, and Angelica Diavolad will win it every time for our school. It’s true. Whenever Sun is there, she wins. He stands there waiting, and when she crosses the line first, he gives her a look that makes the other girls in her group so jealous. We all know she would win without him, but maybe she wins better and faster with him there.

  Angel does her schoolwork the best, and she plays the cello for hours, and never fools around even for a half-hour at Gahagan’s Drug Store and Luncheonette after school. Sometimes she will stop at the Milktop, which is the best old ice-cream parlor, but she won’t talk to anybody much, except for maybe Sun. Her father doesn’t much like Sun. None of the fathers around here care for him. For he is the only reason Angel will forget about her cello practice once in a while, or her homework.

  One time her parents let Sun take her to the movies. He should’ve had her home at quarter of ten, but Sun didn’t get home himself until twelve-thirty. I know one thing, her dad was at our house the next morning before school, on his way to the funeral home where he is director. He caught my brother just as he was coming out the door. I couldn’t hear what they were saying where I was standing behind the curtain. But I sure saw Monserrat Diavolad’s face and the back of his hand right under Jack Sun’s chin. His mouth was going a mile a minute, too. Then he turned and jumped behind the wheel of his black Mark IV, slammed the door and took off. Ever since, Sun and Angel have to be more careful. Sun never got the chance to take her to a movie again. But I see her with Sun in our secret nighttime, which is another story. In public he will once in a while give her a ride home from school when he takes it into his head to saddle up Jeremiah.

  Oh well. I figure if Sun likes Angelica Diavolad, she has to be all right. She never smiles, and I wonder if she knows just why Sun chose her from all the other girls. She is his girl-friend as much as you could say Sun has a girl-friend. Sometimes he will go off with some nobody of a girl in the high school for hours, but most of the time he is by himself or with Jeremiah.

  And here I am thinking about Sun again. He just seems to surround my life every other minute. I wish my party was already over.

  The girls and I have to pass the Municipal Building on the west side of Ekker Avenue and cross the intersection at Ryder Ripple Road. Mom’s studio is south, on the east side of the road. I like best walking home from school so I can pass by the Municipal Building. It is this really huge old brick mansion place, but bigger than that, with white trim, and wings going in every direction. There is a long walk as wide as a street up to it in the middle of a grand lawn. It has a flagpole and an American flag waving. It is so quiet, with just police cars and town-government cars parked out in front. Once I saw this woman run down the avenue and scream on up the steps and inside. I waited to see, but they hustled her back out into an unmarked car and I never did find out what she was screaming about. She wasn’t bleeding or anything.

  Mom says she went to school in that beautiful building. I said, How come she went to school in a Municipal Building? And she said, Well, it wasn’t a Municipal Building then. She said they added the wings onto it. When it was a school, it was the central building, with black fire escapes which they had to walk down from the Sixth Grade at the very top; and with swings and slides and sandboxes and recess periods. She says it was a school she will always remember because of the good times and sweet innocence. Mom and her girl-friends walking around and around the building at recess. Locked-arm, there were five of them — around and around — and no boy could bust in on them, nor no girl who wasn’t one of the five in her group, they were such good friends. I said I felt sorry for the girls who couldn’t be in her group. And she said, Arilla, you would think of that.

  The girls with me going to m
y party. I bet they sure wouldn’t lock arms, being too old-acting. Each has a present for me and I hope to goodness they didn’t buy me that rock jewelry that is the sudden rage all over town. One thing I hate more than anything in the world is a kind of polished stone that everyone has to have because everybody else has it. One bunch of kids will discover that polished stones can look like the real thing, and in a matter of days the whole town has them like an epidemic. I bet Angelica Diavolad is the only one of these girls that would spend some time getting me something nice. Her whole family is that way. They don’t just go out and buy things, but think about what they want and then buy. People laughed at them for waiting months to buy living-room wall-to-wall carpet and living-room furniture. The whole time they waited, they sat on cushions on the floor and people talked about this rich funeral director sitting in his living room on cushions thrown down on bare floors. Yet, when that furniture and carpet finally did get picked out and finally did arrive, it was just about plush perfect. Furniture custom-made and shipped from some place south, like New Orleans. Angel says it will last forever, and people said they wouldn’t want furniture that lasted forever. But people aren’t Monserrat Diavolad, either.

  Here we are. The intersection at Ryder Ripple and South Ekker is always busy this time of day. Both streets are wider here as you turn the corner. There are two traffic lanes in both directions on Ryder, with a parking lane on each side. Parking lanes are always full, and traffic lanes are crowded with cars and trucks hurrying on out of town. But the sidewalks are mostly empty. Sometimes you come down here just off the main part of town and you’d swear that all of the people had vanished, if it weren’t for the cars.

  From Mom’s studio we can now be seen coming. The front of the Beaux Arts is glass, including the door. We see shadows behind the dark glass, and the girls just all at once go wild, right there in the street. I mean, when they were nice, dressed up and for-sure going to my party a second ago, they become like ponies after a spring rain, shivering and prancing in the ground fog and gliding in the mist. Girls older than me can change like that, from something worse than ordinary into these creatures out of mysteries, and right before my eyes. I don’t know what causes them to change. It hasn’t rained in a week, and I know for sure not one of them’s done any outside reading since the last book report.