And he says, “I thought I wanted something to drink, but I changed my mind.”
So I ask him, “Can you get on up?”
And he says, “Not without hurting a whole helluva lot.”
I ask him, “Does it hurt you all the time?”
And he says, “Moon, it don’t hurt unless I try to move around. Then my knee about kills me. But it’s nothing like laying out there and coming to a second.”
“I can go to town. I can get you some stuff, magazines,” I tell him.
“In the dark?” he says.
I didn’t much want to go in the dark, but I would have.
“No,” he says, “Angel is bringing me some things when she comes over later.”
She did, too. Brought him magazines and a book and three apples. I expect Angel will be coming to sit with him as long as he’s laid up.
But right then, when we were there talking by ourselves, Jack had to go say how I’d saved his life. Made me real uncomfortable and embarrassed.
“I have to thank you for keeping your cool and not going into a screaming fit,” he says. “I can recall hearing you scream like an ole twelve-year-old, which you are. And somewhere in there I said to myself, ‘Oh, well, that tears it, brother, you have had it.’ But you went on and did it right — how’d you ever catch the horses?”
“Well,” I say, just looking around the room for to not have to look straight in his eyes. His room had a handsome Indian blanket on one wall. And some colorful drawings of people on horseback and some old photographs of them around their teepees with some soldiers who were white.
“I clapped my hands as hard as I could,” I tell him. “I thought I wasn’t never going to stop, either. But then Running Moon comes to me and Jeremiah just follows.”
“And you make it on back,” Jack says.
“I made it back to the Skateland.” I all at once notice the rink noise. Jack does, too. We listen a minute, but neither of us say a thing about it.
“How you were able to do that,” he says, serious. “How you got those animals going on the ice and everything. You’ve come to be a horsewoman and you kept your cool.”
“Cut it out,” I tell him. Feeling real pleased and embarrassed at once.
When he says, “So what do we call you?”
“What?”
“What name do you want?” he says. “Now that you’ve gone and done this great thing, you can’t go on being Moon.”
I had to laugh, and feeling good, because he’s like his old self. Only, I see he isn’t laughing at all. Maybe a new kind of kidding, but I can’t tell for sure.
“See, you counted coup,” he says. “That’s the Amerind way of the old times for doing something spectacular. Say there are a hundred of the enemy have you surrounded and only twenty of you fighting them. And you ride out like crazy and tap one of the enemy on the shoulder. And get out of there in one piece while bullets fly all around you.”
“Really?”
“You know it,” Jack says. “That’s counting coup.” All at once, he acted like he knew something which I didn’t, and grinned kind of like he was ashamed.
“We really aren’t enemies,” he says. Then, real quick: “But you did something more or less remarkable. So what’ll we call you — Girl Who Saves The Sun? or Rides The Horse Fast? What name do you want?”
I’m sitting there with my mouth open. And knowing the name but I don’t want to say it.
How he can look so weak and thin but older at the same time!
“So. You already have one,” he says. “So what is it? Come on, you can tell me.”
“If I did, you’d just have to laugh,” I say.
“I won’t laugh, promise,” he says. “Because this is very important stuff.” And not a hint of teasing. “You know it,” he says. “This is no joke.”
Arilla Sun Down. But I won’t say it.
“I’ll say it when for sure I have it right,” I tell him, looking at my hands so as not to see his eyes.
I don’t move. I can feel him staring so hard at me.
When he says, “It has the sun in it, doesn’t it?”
Just a mind reader! It shocks me so! “Jack … Jack …”
“It’s okay,” he says. “It won’t make me any less.”
I don’t believe him. “Jack, you got it all wrong,” I tell him.
“A name with the sun in it will make you a lot more than you were,” he says. “I bet it’s got the sun in the center, the way it should.”
“Jack, I am just not ready to tell my name,” I say.
Arilla Sun Down. Crackling in my mind.
It means I brought him down. Which isn’t the truth, I didn’t have a thing to do with his accident. Still, it’s a name for all that happened out there that day. But it isn’t enough. There’s more somewhere. Like I am much more of something than Sun Down way deep inside.
“I’ll probably just go on and call you Arilla, or Moon,” he says, “until you get up the nerve to tell me.” Just smirking.
“You can,” I tell him. “I don’t have it ready, is all.”
And to get off the subject, I ask him, “Jack, you still thinking about leaving? Like you were talking about the day of the accident?”
Turning away. At last he says, “May take me a little longer now.”
“So you’re still planning on getting out of here.”
“I guess,” he says.
“Don’t you know?”
“Moon, I don’t feel like talking about it no more. So why don’t you skip on out of here and find yourself some jacks to play with?” Just cold.
“Well, I see that fall didn’t knock out some of your mean streak,” I tell him.
But I wasn’t mad. I walked on out of there, and glad to go, too. I could tell he was thinking about leaving; but, for sure, he didn’t want to go.
Back in my room again, all of the crying had gone out of me. I guess growing up is just awful when it first hits you you have to do something for your life. Glad to have a brother to do it before me, too. And maybe from him I could get an idea how to do it when it came to be my turn.
Should’ve been grateful that Jack was still alive and getting well. Oh, but I’ll never forget how grand he could be! A-galloping away on Jeremiah. And bareback — just golden! Of The People.
Now his power is gone for us both forever. And that sure is some kind of sad.
12
Terrified, I jump up like an idiot and knock myself practically senseless on the overhead rack — boiiiing! sounding in my head.
“Ouch! Oooh!”
I’m surprised there’s a dude sitting next to me. Must’ve got on back a ways and I never even noticed. Dozing, he comes to and throws up his hands like I’m a robber or something.
“I’m sorry.” I don’t know why I say it to him. Just so embarrassed, I guess.
I was thinking so hard when the driver announced the town. Then it dawned on me I was about to miss my stop. Now I’ll have a headache the rest of my life from terrifying myself.
I make a move and step over the dude; my head is killing me so with this burning white pain where I banged it. Oooh! Practically takes my breath away. But I get into the aisle and reach for my case on the rack. It’s not there! Yes, ’course it is, but I have to stretch real hard to get it. My hurting head is leveling out into this itching sting.
Someone helps me get the case. “Thanks.” Don’t look around to even see who it is. The whole bus must’ve heard me knock myself practically senseless. I get on out of there quick as I can. In a minute I’m off that bus I hope forever.
Don’t look around and you won’t see folks staring and wondering. Wondering if you are too young to be traveling by yourself. Right then I remember my shoulder bag. Oh, no! But I have it — what a fool I am! I’m holding on to it for dear life and didn’t even know it.
Why am I just forever being so self-conscious! And I try to calm down. I go straight inside the bus building and set my suitcase down by my feet. Open up my shoulder bag
and get the address out. Just calming down and reading it over. Mom wrote it down: You go straight out the front of the station and turn left. It’s two blocks up the left side of Third Street. You come to the sign and you go in and ask for the lady.
So I pick up my suitcase, put the address back in my bag and not look around at anyone. I get on out of there to what looks like the front part. Then I’m on the street and back home.
It’s so funny. This was my hometown, I guess you would call it, but there never was a bus station. It’s just a dinky town with only a main street. I don’t believe I was much fond of it. How you forget! Or want to, when you don’t care for something. But I do know this street, which is not the main one but the one after the main one. It has a small supermarket place called Cantrell’s and, across the way and up, a new-looking kind of coffee shop. The movie house is on the main street.
We never lived in town but near some low hills next to it. I look on over that way, but two- and three-story buildings block the view. I hurry on up the street, with dirty snow piled up and down each side. The streetway is mostly clear and shining black. Not far. One block, then two — I can see the sign. And then I’m there, with the red neon saying MONTANA INN — ROOMS — VACANCY.
I go up the steps and inside. There is this small entry room with a desk along the right wall. There is a lady at the desk, marking on a list of some kind and using an adding machine. Behind her is this big plaque full of keys and little boxes on the wall. The lady looks up as I come in. Gives me a once-over real slow, which scares the daylights out of me. Does she think I’m running away and wanting a room for myself? My stomach turns over and I realize I’m standing there like a fool. I come forward, put my case down next to the desk. She is working the adding machine all of the time and doesn’t give me another glance. Knowing I’m there, too, and acting like that.
So I hold my breath and say, “I’m looking for Mrs. Luze Montana.” Almost in a whisper, I’m so flat-out scared.
The lady never looks at me. Fingers never stopping their move over some numbers on the machine. She just starts yelling her head off. “Luze! Luze, someone for ye!” Like that. Just awful.
Some folks are just unfriendly. Even when I know it, it still hurts for somebody to treat you like nothing.
Pretty soon another woman comes out from a door I never noticed on down from the desk. She sees me, but doesn’t smile, either. Man, this is some place. She comes on to the desk. With a name like Luze Montana, you’d think she’d look different. Guess I expected her to look much more Amerind. But you have to look real hard to see it, and if I hadn’t been told, I’d a missed it altogether.
Not too tall. Thin as a rail and long, reddish hair. Her eyes are dark and so nice-looking; all at once I know that not smiling doesn’t mean she isn’t going to be friendly. Maybe this isn’t even Luze Montana.
“You looking for somebody, honey?” she says, in a real husky way.
“Looking for my dad, but are you Luze Montana?”
“I’m Luze Montana.” She says it like she’s getting tired of saying it. “Now, what’s your dad’s name?”
“My dad is Sun Adams,” I tell her.
“Oh, sure,” she says. Gives me a watchful smile, I guess you’d call it. “Okay,” she says, and sort of laughs.
So Dad is here. I didn’t dare think it, but in my mind I was afraid he wasn’t here and never had been. I pick up my suitcase. “Can I see my dad?” I ask her.
“I think he’s out,” she says, “but I’ll show you to his room.” She takes a key with this tag on it off the wall plaque.
I get the feeling she is used to showing kids to rooms of their fathers. Or even wives.
“You come by bus?” she asks as we climb some stairs. She’s a step on ahead of me, looking down sideways at me.
I just nod and smile.
“A lot of people come by bus now that we have a stop here,” she says. “Where is the boy that usually comes for your dad?”
“What?”
“The boy,” she says. “The other Sun usually comes to fetch your dad.” She is making it all seem lighthearted. I feel better all of a sudden.
“He had an accident, so I had to come.”
“Oh, does your father know? Wasn’t too bad, I hope.”
“Oh, sure, Dad knows,” I tell her. And realize it must sound strange to her that Dad went off with his boy in an accident. “My brother is much better now.”
We climb another set of stairs and then go down this hall with a green runner. We stop at a door with a yellow number 18. Luze Montana takes the key and opens the door.
“Go on in,” she tells me. “Take the key, case you get bored and want to go out. There’s a shop up the street on the other side — a food shop. They have hamburgers.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Montana.” Taking the key.
Luze Montana pauses like she will ask me some more questions. “I’d find someone to get your dad if I knew for sure where he was.” An opening for me to say things, but you don’t want to open up with strangers, Mom says.
“I’ll just be glad to wait,” I tell her.
“Well. I’m positive he’ll be back by dark. I’ve known your dad a long time.” She really smiles. Wonder if there’s any meaning in that other than the words, but I guess not.
“He’s as steady as they come,” she says.
So why does he go off like this? is what I’m thinking, and maybe she thinks I will say it. I won’t. I stand there looking at her for as long as she can stand looking at me.
She closes the door. Man. Some strange people and places in this land, for sure. I breathe a sigh of relief and fall on the bed. Kick off my boots and hold my head for a minute. Let the little tremors of nerves all over me find their way on out of my senses. Close my eyes and breathe just as regular as I can. What a long way! I turn over.
Just a room. But it’s sure good not having some people looking you over. So strange! I ease the shoulder bag off and think I am sitting on my own dad’s bed. Awful strange, in a room that’s your father’s and you never knew it existed until a few days ago.
Mom coming to me the other day and saying, “Arilla, your father is missing.”
I said, “What?”
Then she told me how Dad had skipped again, driving the college jeep he always uses. It’s a crime I never noticed he was gone. But Dad is back and forth so much in between the college dining hours. And me being so busy with Sun hurt and all. I just simply did not at all realize he was gone, which is pretty awful of me, I guess.
“You’re going to have to go get him,” Mom said to me.
And I said the first thing comes in my head, “You are kidding me!”
“Sun can’t go,” she says. “Someone has to. I have to take care of Sun and keep things going. You will have to take the bus and get him.”
“Mom, I’ve never been on a bus in my life,” is what I told her.
“You follow my directions and you’ll be fine.” That’s what she tells me.
I went running to Jack Sun. And tell him, “Mom says I have to go get Dad!”
And he says, “Wow, Moon, here’s your chance to count coup again.”
“Forget it! I’m not going,” is what I say right back.
He looked so solemn, but before he could say another thing I told him, “I don’t get it why Dad goes and why someone has to go find him. What’s wrong with him — why does he do it?”
“You do what you’re told,” he says.
And then I told him I’d never understand him or any of the rest of it. “This is the queerest, dumbest family that ever there was.” I remember saying that.
“Maybe so,” he said, “but it’s what you’ve got.”
So here I am. I sit up on the bed.
I made it this far. It wasn’t so bad, except for practically busting my head wide open. So this is what I’ve got, too. A disappearing dad. A dancing mother. And a half-killed, crazy brother. That’s it. So here I am.
And look aro
und at the room. Just a small room. There’s like a foot-locker kind of trunk at the foot of the bed. Latches up, like it’s been opened. I notice other things. Little things. A long pipe on a little table. Moccasins in a plastic wrap, opened, like they’d been maybe in the trunk and taken out and handled.
Looking at the trunk, will it matter if I open it up again? So I do.
Well, it is crammed full. Things wrapped in paper or cloth; some plastic-wrapped things opened a little and left that way on top. Some really old things, I can tell. Each has a tag stapled on. I pick up a thing wrapped in blue material. I get on my knees and unwrap it. It’s a silver bridle, so beautiful, with a tag saying, From James. Another wrapping has this stone going through a handle of wood, like a stone hammer. It has a tag, says, From Small Dog. There are whole hides like paintings of scenes. Leggings and belts with beadwork and turquoise. And a whole pack of moccasins, some not even finished.
Wonder why all this stuff is kept here. Dad must always have this room with the trunk. Or moves the trunk to whatever room she gives him when he comes back here?
I put the things where they belong and close the trunk. Sitting on the bed again, I can hear the street out the window and some music coming from some rooms. There’s a table with a lamp, by the bed. I reach and turn on some light. A little lamplight is warming; makes the night come quicker.
I am three parts hungry and ninety-seven parts awful nervous.
Is this what you’re supposed to do, sit and wait for him? Mom didn’t tell me he might be out. If he was here, it never entered my mind he might not be in the room. I’m still some scared inside. It takes a while to get along with the new, I guess.
There’s a pair of shoes by what you’d call a standing closet. The shoes are marked up along the sides with this salt line, drying. I get up to look closer and see they are Dad’s shoes for work. And sitting back down on the bed again.
He’s not wearing his shoes, so what’s he wearing? I look around the room again. Window with curtains and bringing in a little light. There are no pictures on the walls. There’s something hanging from a hook like a woven leather belt. There are two nails about six inches apart on one wall. And lines darkening the wall, coming down on either side of the nails. Two lines, about a foot apart and three or four feet long, like something had hung there and had marked up the wall.
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