Arilla Sun Down

by Virginia Hamilton

She touches my arm. “Money, how we know you’re not hurt yourself?” she says kind of nice to me.

  “If she come all this way, she has to be all right,” Jake tells her, somewhere behind her.

  “Oh, I just forgot! It wasn’t no car they was in.”

  I lie there facing the rink, with just these older people going around and around. My eyes close, but I open them up on the movement going around. That music so fills me with restfulness. My chest is aching from breathing so hard. I’m warming up, though, and easing my boots up onto the bench.

  “No. Thanks,” I tell the lady who has come back with a cover for me. And she goes away.

  I close my eyes and I’m still on Running Moon. Still riding up and down in a sickening motion. I open them up fast.

  Thank goodness it’s over. Don’t think about Sun out there. Dad will get there quick. I did it. I got help. I rode well and did it all.

  I’m following a skater. Eyes glued to his tan jacket and green bow tie. It slowly dawns that this is my friend, old Long Neck. Riding close up to the rail every time he swings near me. I raise up to see better. He gives me a long look and does some beautiful pulls and lifts. Gives me a wink on the go, stroking through Waltzing Matilda.

  But I can’t keep my eyes open. How in the world did he know me like this? Probably didn’t. Just him winking at any young woman.

  Me, a woman?

  And I’m out like a light.

  11

  We had started out on this old two-lane, which probably wouldn’t have been such terrible bad news on any average dry day. But this morning it was black and sleek with wet. It was snowing again and I had visions of us hitting this streak a ice and going into one of those long, horrible skids that end in an explosion. I had sure wanted to start out on the I-75, the divided highway that most cars and big semis will take going for the long haul. But once you’re on the interstate, you don’t often come off; and I had to make a bus change for the one that could make my stop. And it’s still snowing. Has been ever since I barely made the change in time back down the way. The first bus was that late coming off the two-lane.

  I said to Mom this morning before I had to leave, “Why do I have to go out that way first when it makes better sense to get down there and then go over?”

  She said right back, “It’s as broad as it is long. Better that you change at a smaller place than at a station as confusing as the one in Cincinnati. It’s bad enough to send a twelve-year-old.”

  That’s how I knew she was so worried by my going.

  “Arilla, you will be just fine, I know you will,” she said, hugging me. “Don’t worry about bad weather, the drivers are used to it. And when you have to make the change, don’t get upset if you have to wait. Even if the bus is an hour late, you wait right there, don’t take a ride with any stranger.”

  Only, she didn’t warn me that maybe the first bus would be late, with the second one about to pull out by the time I get here. I had to run like hell, and I never curse, either. Didn’t have time to get some food, or look around, or even to buy a magazine. I just had time to throw me and my bag on, and lucky to find a seat in front.

  I am by the window and I notice I’m holding on to the arm rest hard enough to cause a backache. I ease up and try to relax. Just stare at the back of the driver and try not to look down the highway. It’s the divided I-75, which I thought would be a whole lot better but it’s not. I still worry about skidding and I wonder if we stay on it for the whole way. I tried to ask Mom every detail, but I didn’t know to ask her about the route. So I have to go and wonder if my overnight case is on the rack above when I know full well I put it there. What if I didn’t? What if I left it on the other bus? If I make it through this without a hitch, will I ever be the same again? Wasn’t even the same before I got on the first bus; the first bus I was ever on, too. I haven’t been the same since Sun Run got it in the ice storm.

  He was so lucky. They said he could’ve broken his neck. And lying out there for so long until Dad and some men got there in the jeep to cover him and keep him warm. They wouldn’t dare move him. Until this emergency crew finally comes to lift Sun on out of there. That squad can just about get anybody out of anything, even from out of deep wells. Sun didn’t have not a bit of frostbite. That was because the weather kept warming and cooling in that awful day of pure strangeness and disaster in November-dismal.

  He had a concussion from falling and not from that dumb bird. The bird just must have shocked and stunned him. He had a broken arm in four places from shoulder to the wrist. Multiple fractures, Mom said. And a badly sprained knee that swelled up bigger than a cantaloupe.

  In the hospital for over a week, mainly because of that bad-swollen knee and partly because his head hurt him for about three days after his fall. Wonder if he’ll ever be able to run long-distance like he use to?

  I just keep going over and over it, like it is on this track in my head.

  The doctors make sure of everything by doing some observations of his brain. Some X-rays of his skull to see if it was cracked. I could’ve told them Sun had always been cracked in the head, but I didn’t have the nerve. Mom came home the first full day he was in the hospital saying Sun couldn’t remember falling off Jeremiah.

  I told her, “Well, he did too fall — do you think I would lie?”

  And Dad said no, of course not, they knew he had fallen. And Mom said it was just that Sun couldn’t recall anything about a bird hitting him and then him falling.

  I don’t think a soul believed me about them birds falling like some toy planes out of the sky until Sun was better and able to tell them how true it was. Or was it that some of the rescuers discovered some dead ducks under the brambles — I can’t remember, exactly. Anyway, Sun was remembering everything by the second day and we got Mom to lie down for a while. Even if Sun hadn’t remembered and even if they didn’t find some dead ducks, they’d a had to believe me by what Dad and me saw all over the town after the storm. That storm finally was over. It turned for-real cold, and the ice over everything got as hard as granite.

  Dad came by to get me at the skating rink, still using the jeep. Come to get me after I slept there for a long time with all the music and skate noise like it was Rockabye Baby. Nobody could rouse me, and the skate people were getting kind of worried I might have fallen myself. But finally Dad got me awake and up and out in the jeep, which was covered with mud icicles clear to the windows. He said he’d already got some men to take care of the horses and I was glad of that.

  We went toward town and all around, trying to find a way home that wasn’t too bad with ice, and wasn’t uphill, either. We finally had to go by way of the cemetery roads, and it almost getting dark, too. But light enough still, because the sky had cleared to this cold white light. And coming around that back way was when we began to see something queer.

  Birds, but little sparrows this time, just lining every telephone wire. We could see them from a distance, just sitting up there in endless rows trying to keep warm. Only, when we got close, we could tell for sure all of them were stone dead. Frozen to the telephone wires in little ice shrouds, Dad called it. Frozen stiff in rows, like plastic packages in the supermarket.

  It was the most awful thing I’d seen that day. Even worse than Sun getting himself hurt, because that really hadn’t hit me good. But all those little birds trying to wait out the storm; and then trying to get out of there only to find that all those tiny feet had got covered and frozen right to the wires.

  The next day it warmed above freezing. You’d see sparrows with one foot sticking straight out from the wire, like they were going to walk off it. But when the other feet melted loose, the birds started plopping to the ground. Garbage crews had to go around with big cans and shovels to scoop them up. I don’t know how many of them in big cans taken to the town incinerator.

  Something about those birds frozen like that that day really got to Dad. Or else it got him to thinking about how Sun just might have got frozen and dead out
there in the glen. I don’t know, but something about it struck him deep. He just got sadder and sadder. And maybe that’s why I’m on this bus.

  My whole time that week without Sun was maybe the strangest of all. Well, I know that now, but I sure couldn’t see it then. All at once I was just so active. Running like crazy from one dumb thing to another and never getting all of it done. I never reminded myself that I didn’t have any more to do that week than I ever had. Except to take care of Jeremiah, too, as well as my own Running Moon. It’s like I got so involved with everything. I got really deep into school, couldn’t get enough of it. Couldn’t wait for it to start every day and I felt sick at heart to see it end. Study-hall time, I’d do so much math and get so full of these number base systems. I wrote this story, too, about a world called Evif where everything in numbers was done with base five. Like 0, 1, 2,3,4 and, next, 10 through 14 and 20 through 24. On and on. It took 2400 years for the Evifgnis to discover that the name of their world was Five spelled backward. It was the woman Eno-A who found it out.

  The ride is long. The ride is long. That goes through my mind until I can’t stand it.

  But that next Saturday I got so busy doing my homework and some beginning algebra. Mr. Wiggins told me, “Arilla, you sure are leaping ahead on your math.” Truth. All week long I’d been taking the facts test for fractions and decimals. I passed them and some for percentages and dividing. I passed them all and no more than three mistakes on each one. I even stunned myself. Now I’m beginning some algebra, ahead of most of the kids.

  On Sunday I knew my brother would be coming home from the hospital, but I just got so busy. I had to go out to see to Running Moon and Jeremiah. Clear out to the Trebiens’ and the road not even sanded. I didn’t much mind it — old Jeremiah sees me and breaks away from the other horses. He was looking for Sun, I guess. So I sat on the fence and talked to him for a long time, telling him how Sun wouldn’t be coming for a good while, that he was going to have to let me ride him or let somebody else do it. I know the Trebiens will get some student helpers to take care of him in handling. But they’ll never be as good and expert as Sun is.

  I take Running Moon for a short ride, which doesn’t make sense, getting all the leathers on her and then taking them off again. I just did it from habit and not for much pleasure. Rubbing her down, picking her hooves, brushing her. And come home late from sitting on the fence by Jeremiah. I’ve got used to the dark, walking so fast all the long way back. It’s like I know there are no phantasmagorias for real like there used to be. Just little small ones way back in my head. I’m home and it’s like I’m all pure physical, with no mind for thinking through the dark like that. The sound of the Skateland meets me halfway and it won’t make a register going bing-a-ling like it used to. I leave it waiting in the road.

  My head knocks against the bus window. I startle up in my seat. Buses with their gentle roll and sighing air brakes never let you know if you are sleeping. Just some dozing, I guess, for we have come off the divided highway. I’m sure glad of that. Mom told me that toward the end I will see little towns where you wonder why anyone ud want to live, they are so washed up and no people showing.

  This guy sitting next to me all the way is dressed like some trainman and with a black lunchbox on the floor, crowding my feet. This guy twitches a lot in his sleep, so I’ll stay clear over by the window because it’s weird to see someone twitching like that. Probably some nightmares. But pretty soon he gets off at a place called Aurora. A lot of people get off.

  I settle back and stare out. We follow a narrow road, like going off and being lost in a country of white with snow fields going on forever. I do feel safer on it, since the bus can’t go so fast and because there doesn’t look to be any patches of ice. Just thick snow already plowed and packed down hard. It’s not snowing here, either. The sky is this mass of gray high up, with a white sun looking for a world like a moon. Peeking through and racing along with us every now and then. Wonder if it knows it’s me. Girl, don’t be silly. But who’s to say if it does or not? You never can tell.

  Folding my hands together over my shoulder bag and feeling the trembling in them. Up to the edge of my nerve, for sure. But no matter how hard I try to be calm, there is still that feel of nerves in my fingers or in my stomach. It’d be awful to get bus-sick way out here and have to stop the bus and puke on that white snow. Just settle back and close your eyes. You know it’s been this way since Sun was hurt and the whole week after clear up to now. Maybe it all really is too much for someone as young as me. Don’t think that. Because I have to do it. Because Sun is laid up and can’t do it like he always has.

  This shoulder bag is like all the girls in school have. They are made up in the same quilted material, but they can be of different shapes and colors. Mine is a blue print; real nice, with an over-flap and a big brown square button to hold the flap in place. And shaped almost round with gold stitching up and down the wide shoulder strap. Everything I need is in this bag and never will I take my hands off it. Oh, I’m so glad Mom let me wear my leather jacket and corduroys with just a wool sweater underneath, and my boots. I always do get overheated.

  But my life depends on my shoulder bag. There’s my wallet in it, my comb and brush and some make-up I sneaked out and which I never use hardly at all. Just some powder and a little lipstick to give me some color. There’s a pack of tissues and a card with the address. And more than enough money in the wallet to buy my ticket home if I have to.

  Now that brings me some panic again, having the money to return. I force myself calm by holding my bag as tight as I can for a minute. Asking Mom why the need for the money, I remember, and she said, “Just in case you need it.”

  And I said, “Do you think Dad won’t want to come home?” She looked at me like nobody ever said that out loud before.

  Mom said, “Arilla, someone has to go, to show our great concern.”

  And I said, “But do you think he wouldn’t come back on his own?”

  And she said, “I won’t think that far. I can’t.”

  The mystery of grown-ups, I tell you. All of it, everything, leaves me with my nerve up to the edge. And even worse since that Sunday they brought Sun home, and the way I forgot all about how he was going to be there. No, I didn’t forget; I knew he would be there, but I was being so active. Just not thinking and come bounding into the house. Glad to be out of the dark outside, even when I wasn’t too scared of it anymore. I came in, not aching tired at all; at least, I wasn’t thinking about tiredness. Wasn’t thinking at all. I was in a movement of hurrying and no mind to work anything out right.

  I bounded up the stairs. And with no thought, only moving and going. I couldn’t wait to see my brother. Knew without knowing he’d be there. Knew, and being mindless with knowing, that he’d be ready with the fast word and the put-down. Just a complete picture of the way it’d always been, with no words to go with it. No thought. Every morning Sun is up before me. And always at night he goes to bed after I’m asleep. So seeing him all at once that Sunday was the worst shock anybody named Arilla ever had.

  Mom was sitting there by his bed. Sun was lying down and I don’t think I’d ever seen him when he wasn’t sitting or standing. Him, forced to lie down by the worst-looking bandages, and a cast to lie just so still. There was an inch-wide band around his head, the awfulest, whitest headband he ever wore. He had this white cast clear across his shoulder and down his arm, with this tongue-like part coming out under his hand, like to rest his hand on it. And this real inflated wrap of plastic all around his knee for to cushion it, I guess.

  I came in there with this fluorescent light by the bed for him to read by, shining down on him. Such a white light, it made that cast and bandages become the same as the white sheet. It made it look like half of some kid was lying there. When I adjusted to it, I could see it was a whole person there, but not one that was my brother at all. Some teenage kid looking pitiful and weak, with a big bruise across one cheek, and a lot of skin scrap
es looking red and bloody all over his lips and on his chin, which was a little swollen.

  So stunned, the kid lying there couldn’t’ve been my big brother. Couldn’t and never was. Only, the next second I knew it was and always had been. And he didn’t have a smart thing ready for me. Not a “Hello, Moon, what’s up?” Or “Hey, Ms. Moon Maid, get me some coffee, can’t cha see I’m injured worse than a Comanche?” He was looking right at me but with no kind of force of command. Oh, his eyes! They just had all kinds of pain in them, pain like I couldn’t figure. And oh, so slowly, he turned his face into the light and let his eyes close shut.

  Inside me that day, it wasn’t just that the Sun had fallen. For sure and for real, down and out. But that he could never rise again the same. Never as bright, never as fierce and powerful for me again. Which left me with nothing for-sure certain.

  And the first time in that long period of Sun being hurt and me going for help … The first time in that long week of me being so all-fired up and active … Standing there, with Mom looking worried from me to Sun, I covered my face with my hands and cried in the worst sobbing I’d ever done. Until Mom come to her senses and got me on out of there.

  Why I had to bawl like that, I’ll never know completely. It sure wasn’t all crying for my brother. It was some for me, too. Because I’ll never quit seeing the sight of him just ordinary, like any other hurt kid. And some relief, I guess, that it wasn’t me lying there. And sorry, awful sorry that it had to’ve been him and not me. Somehow, someone like Jack Sun Run should never have to find himself down. Because of what it must feel like, picking yourself up.

  Even later on, when he called for me to come back in there, it wasn’t the same old Sun. I’d just been lying there in my room, so real ashamed for crying and tired out but still full of a lot of nervousness. I went on in there kind of hangdog, afraid he might laugh. And he’s still lying there. I say to him, “What do you want, Jack?”