Eye of Flame

by Pamela Sargent

  He glanced at me; there was pain in his eyes. I regretted my harsh words. It came to me that out of all the men I had known, only Little Deer had looked into my mind and seen me as I was. At that moment, I knew that I could have been happy with him in a different world.

  We climbed until High Shirt told us to stop. Two of the women built a fire and I sat near it as the others danced around us.

  “Dance with us, Catherine,” said Little Deer. I shook my head and he danced near me, feet pounding the ground, arms churning at his sides. I wondered how long they would dance, waiting for the vision. Little Deer seemed transformed; he was a chief, leading his people. My foot tapped as he danced. He had seen me as I was, but I had not truly seen him; I had looked at him with the eyes of a white woman, and my mind had clothed him in white words—“half-breed,” “illiterate,” “Insane,” “sauvage.”

  I fed some wood to the fire, then looked up at the sky. The forces of magnetism were at work again. A rainbow of lights flickered, while the stars shone on steadily in their places.

  Suddenly the stars shifted.

  I cried out. The stars moved again. New constellations appeared, a cluster of stars above me, a long loop on the horizon. Little Deer danced to me and I heard the voice of High Shirt chanting nearby.

  I huddled closer to the fire. Little Deer pounded the ground, his arms cutting the air like scythes. He spun around and became an eagle, soaring over me, ready to seize me with his talons. The stars began to flash, disappearing and then reappearing. One of the women gave a cry. The dancers seemed to flicker.

  I leaped up, terrified. Little Deer swirled around me, spinning faster and faster. Then he disappeared.

  I spun around. He was on the other side of the fire, still dancing; then he was at my side again. I tried to run toward him; he was behind me. A group of dancers circled me, winking on and off.

  “Catherine!” Little Deer’s voice surrounded me, thundering through the night. His voice blended with the chants of High Shirt until my ears throbbed with pain.

  I fled from the circle of dancers and fell across a snow-covered rock. “Catherine!” the voice cried again. The dark shapes dancing around the fire grew dimmer. A wind swept past me, and the dancers vanished.

  I stood up quickly. And then I saw the vision.

  A golden circle glowed in front of me; I saw green grass and a circle of tepees. Children danced around a fire. Then I saw High Shirt and the others, dancing slowly with another group of Indians, weaving a pattern around a small tree. The circle grew larger; Little Deer stood inside it, holding his arms out to me.

  I had only to step through the circle to be with him. My feet carried me forward; I held out my hand and whispered his name.

  Then I hesitated. My mind chattered to me—I was sharing a delusion. The dancers would dance until they dropped, and then would freeze on the mountain, too exhausted to climb down. Their desperation had made them mad. If I stepped inside the circle, I would be lost to the irrationality that had always been dormant inside me. I had to save myself.

  The circle wavered and dimmed. I saw the other world as if through water, and the circle vanished. I cried out in triumph; my reason had won. But as I looked around at the melted snow, I saw that I was alone.

  I waited on the mountain until it grew too cold for me there, then climbed down to Rattling Hawk’s empty home before going back up the mountain next day. I do not know for how many days I did this. At last I realized that the yellow circle I had seen would not reappear. In my sorrow, I felt that part of me had vanished with the circle, and imagined that my soul had joined Little Deer. I never saw the glowing hoop again.

  I rode back to the mission a few days after Christmas through a blizzard, uncaring about whether I lived or died. There, Father Morel told me that the soldiers had acted at last, killing a band of dancing Indians near Wounded Knee, and I knew that the dancing and any hope these people had were over.

  I was back in the white man’s world, a prisoner of the world to come.

  The Soul’s Shadow

  The man had followed Jacqueline onto the pier. He stepped toward her, smiled, then walked back toward the steps leading down to the beach.

  He had nodded at her when she passed him before; his grayish-green eyes seemed familiar. He might be a former student. Her memory for faces was poor, and often she forgot what even her best students looked like once they graduated. All she noticed about most of them now was their youth; they were currents in an ever-renewed stream while she aged on the shore, eroded by their movement through her life.

  She leaned against the railing. He was below her on the sand, gazing out at the ocean; he glanced up as the wind ruffled his blond hair. She looked away. He couldn’t have been a student; even with her poor memory, Jacqueline was sure she would have remembered him. He had the tanned, handsome face of a television actor and the body of a man who frequented gyms; he was exactly the kind of man she would expect to see here on a California beach. He would not have been in her classes, which drew intense or slightly neurotic humanities majors; aggressive and grade-conscious pre-law students; or studious, asexual, aspiring scientists trying to fulfill a philosophy requirement. She would have noticed anyone so atypical.

  She turned her head slightly and caught a glimpse of his light brown windbreaker. As she felt his eyes on her, she looked away again. Was he trying to pick her up? She was flattering herself by assuming that. She supposed that he was either wealthy or out of work; vacationers were not likely to come here in February. He might be one of those Californian psychopaths who her friends back East assumed haunted these shores.

  From the pier, it seemed that a structure had been built on every available piece of land; houses, condominiums, and other buildings covered the hills overlooking the wide bay. The Strand was a wide sidewalk and bicycle path running north and south; beneath the low wall separating the Strand from the beach, the sand was white and clean. Everything seemed cleaner here; the beach was tended, the houses kept up, the cars unmarked by rust or mud. Jacqueline could not smell the sea; the odors of fish and salt water were absent. The past did not exist, only a continuous, ever-changing present.

  She gazed south toward another, larger pier that held shops and restaurants; beyond, a green peninsula marked by sheer, precipitous cliffs jutted into the sea. She propped an elbow against the rail, then noticed that the blond man was gone. He had been there only a moment before; she turned toward the row of houses overlooking the beach. Two skaters, legs pumping, rolled along the Strand; three joggers were trotting south. The man had vanished.

  Jacqueline opened the refrigerator door, took out a jug of wine, then leaned against the counter as her cousin and her old friend gossiped in the living room.

  “You’ve got to come,” her cousin Patti had told her over the phone a month before. It had seemed a good idea then. Jacqueline was on sabbatical, while Patti and her husband were moving out of their condominium to a house nearby. The condo would be vacant for a couple of months until the new tenants moved in; she could stay there and have the place to herself. Jacqueline had been unable to refuse; the monograph she was working on was finished and needed only retyping. Patti had mentioned getting together with their old friends Dena and Louise only after Jacqueline already had her plane ticket.

  She folded her arms, thinking of other times, twenty years before, when she had gone into her mother’s kitchen to fetch Cokes and potato chips while Patti, Louise, and Dena had gossiped about parties and boys. She had gradually become part of their group, hoping that some of their lofty social status in high school would rub off on her. By associating with them, she did not have to endure the slights and cruel comments many of the more studious students suffered.

  She had escaped them with a scholarship to an eastern women’s college. She had found new friends among young women she would have avoided in high school, people with whom she could share her intellectual interests. She had occasionally reflected on the time she had wasted in her
struggle to be liked and accepted by Patti’s circle, but she did not have the courage to group herself with the outcasts then, had preferred her place, however tenuous, with the clique of cheerleaders, jocks, and partygoers.

  Jacqueline had nearly forgotten this aspect of the youthfulness she sometimes longed for—the fear of rejection, of being different, awkward, unliked. Her doctorate, the fellowship, the published papers and books would mean little to the other women, who led the kind of life others envied.

  “There you are!” Dena was standing in the entrance to the kitchen; somehow Jacqueline had missed hearing her enter.

  “Dena,” she said, trying to sound pleased. Dena’s body, like Patti’s and Louise’s, seemed shaped by aerobics and starvation.

  “Funny, isn’t it? We kept saying we had to get together sometime, but you had to come three thousand miles just to get us all into the same room.” Dena shook back her long black hair. “Well, you finally got here.” Patti and Louise had said exactly the same thing. “It’ll be just like old times.”

  They caught up with one another as they sat on the floor around a glass-topped coffee table. Louise had moved from Palos Verdes to a house a few miles away and was living on a generous divorce settlement, while Dena, who had recently bought a place in Manhattan Beach, sold real estate.

  “I was out here for a year before I bought my old place,” Dena murmured in her husky voice as she poured more wine. “That was a mistake. I should have bought something—anything—the minute I stepped off the plane. Things are slower now.”

  “Joe really lucked out on that piece of land he bought,” Patti said. “He wants me to stay home when we have our kid, and I guess we can afford it.”

  Dena lifted a brow. “A kid, huh?”

  “We’re trying. Deadline decade, you know.”

  Louise shook her blonde head. “Stop with one. One’s enough, believe me.”

  Dena turned toward Jacqueline. “Didn’t you say you were living with a guy?”

  “Another professor,” Jacqueline replied. “He’s in the English department. We’ve been together for almost ten years.”

  Dena sighed. “Long time. Is he cute?”

  Jacqueline thought of Jerome’s long face, graying beard, and thinning hair. “He’s tall. He’s in pretty good shape. I don’t know if I’d call him cute.”

  “Well, now that you’re here,” Louise said, “when are you going to move?” Jacqueline was silent. “Don’t tell me you want to stay back East now. You could teach out here, couldn’t you?”

  “It’s not that easy. I’m lucky to have the position I’ve got. The world isn’t exactly short of Ph.D.’s in philosophy.”

  Louise tapped one manicured finger against her cheek; she had a faint, golden tan, just enough to make her glow without turning her skin leathery. “Patti said you were writing a book.”

  “A monograph on Plato’s Philebus. I figured I’d pick a dialogue people hadn’t written that much about. That’s hard to find when scholars have had over two thousand years to mess around with Plato.”

  Louise stared at her blankly. “I saw Clint Eastwood in the airport last month,” Patti said, “just from a distance. He looked emaciated.”

  “If they look thin on the screen,” Dena said, “they look absolutely anorexic in person.” She nibbled at a shrimp. “Didn’t David Lee Roth make a video around here?”

  Jacqueline stood up. “I think we need some air.” The others didn’t seem to hear her. The topics of real estate and celebrity-spotting could probably keep them occupied for hours, and Louise had been married to a celebrity of sorts herself.

  She crossed the room, opened the sliding glass door, and stepped out onto the terrace. The condo was on the second floor; the Strand and the beach beyond it were less than a block away. The wind had grown warmer. The sun was a bright red disk just above the gray water; she had watched it set last evening, surprised at how suddenly it dropped below the horizon. To the south, Catalina was a misty gray form, barely a suggestion of an island. Cyclers and runners moved along the Strand; other people were entering a restaurant across the street.

  She reached into her shirt pocket for her cigarettes and lit one. She would call Jerome later; he had told her not to waste the money, but she needed to hear his voice. Her eyes narrowed. The blond man she had seen by the pier was sitting on the low wall between the Strand and the beach; he stood up and began to walk toward her.

  “—very eastern habit,” Louise said behind Jacqueline.

  “What?”

  “Smoking. The only time anyone smoked in my house was when somebody from back East was visiting.” Louise moved toward the railing as the other two women came outside, then lifted a hand to the collar of her blue silk shirt. “Will you look at that.” She lowered her gaze to the blond man.

  Dena moved closer to Louise. “Do you know him?”

  Louise shook her head. “But I saw him just this morning, near my driveway. He was definitely flirting.”

  “That’s funny,” Dena said, sounding annoyed. “I saw him last night at Orville and Wilbur’s, at the bar. He smiled at me, but when I looked back, he was gone.”

  “Sure it was the same guy?”

  “I don’t forget men who look like that.”

  “He gets around, then.” Patti’s thick, pale hair swayed as she leaned over the railing. “He was outside my house when I left for work. I thought he was casing the place.”

  “Hello,” the man said then. The sound of a passing car and the music coming from the nearby restaurant seemed to fade as he spoke. The sun disappeared; he moved closer to the light over the sidewalk below. “So you’re all together again.”

  Louise’s hands fluttered. “Do we know you?”

  “I know you,” he replied. “Couldn’t forget you, Louise, or Dena there, or Patti, and especially not Jackie.”

  Jacqueline swallowed. “Who are you?” she managed to say.

  “An old classmate.” He thrust his hands into the pockets of his windbreaker. “Maybe you don’t remember me—I wasn’t exactly part of your crowd. I’m Tad Braun.”

  Patti started. “You’re Tad Braun?”

  He nodded. Jacqueline now recalled the last time she had seen those grayish green eyes, but they had looked out at her from the flaccid, pimply face of a fat, awkward boy. Tad Braun had transformed himself. The awkwardness was gone, the oily hair golden, the fat turned into muscle; perhaps a plastic surgeon had chiseled his face and smoothed his skin.

  “You sure have changed,” Dena said.

  Tad shrugged. “So have all of you. You were attractive then, but you look even better now.” That might be true of the others, Jacqueline thought, but it couldn’t be true of her. “Maybe I’ll see you again.” He moved away into the shadows before any of them could speak.

  Patti let out her breath. “Who would have thought Tad Braun would turn into such a hunk? I wonder what he’s doing now.”

  “I barely remember him,” Louise said. “Wasn’t he that awful boy who we—”

  Jacqueline did not want to remember. “We were pretty cruel to him, weren’t we? But we were cruel to a lot of kids when they didn’t meet our standards.”

  Dena’s dark eyes widened. “Oh, come on. That was a long time ago. Nobody remembers things like that.”

  “The victimizers probably don’t,” Jacqueline said. “The victims do.”

  The night air was colder. The four walked back into the empty room and settled around the coffee table. The shrimp and raw vegetables were nearly gone; Jacqueline stubbed out her cigarette as Patti lit a joint.

  “Maybe we should have asked him up,” Louise said. “Of course, I have to be careful about the guys I see.”

  “Herpes,” Patti muttered.

  “No, visitation rights. I wouldn’t put it past my goddamn ex to use any excuse to cut them back. I see Chris little enough as it is.”

  “He has custody?” Jacqueline asked, surprised.

  Louise’s mouth twisted. “I guess
you professors don’t read People regularly. I needed the settlement, and if I’d fought for Chris, I might have gotten much less.”

  Jacqueline said nothing. “Look, I couldn’t have raised him without a good settlement. You need at least thirty thousand a year here just to stay off the streets. And just try to go up against one of the NFL’s former golden boys in court.” Louise poured more wine. “Bob’s been born again, you know. I suppose he’ll marry that Baptist bimbo he’s been going to Bible study with.” The blonde woman glanced at Dena. “Well, there’s nothing to stop you from seeing old Tad.”

  “There’s Sadegh,” Dena replied, “but I don’t know how long that’ll last. I’m too old for him—he’s forty-two and I’m thirty-six. Trouble is, he likes eighteen-year-olds.”

  “And I’m an old married lady trying to get pregnant.” Patti took another toke on her joint. “Guess I should give this up. I don’t even know if I really want a kid, but Joe does. Anyway, what else can I do?”

  “Jackie could ask Tad over for a drink,” Louise said.

  “I’m living with somebody.”

  “Yeah, but he’s three thousand miles away.”

  Patti propped her elbows on the table. “You told me it was no strings with you and Jerome.”

  No strings, Jacqueline thought. She had fashioned the strings and turned them into cords. Except for a brief trip to Chicago for a classics conference, she had not even been on a plane without Jerome until now. She could not even tell if she still loved him or was only afraid of being alone.

  Lately he made her feel old. Neither of them even went through the motions of trying to find positions at a better school. They had their tenure, published enough to keep up the reputation of scholarship, and revised lectures each of them had given several times before. Each year, they were confronted by a sea of ever-younger faces. At night, suspended in the moment between consciousness and sleep, Jacqueline often imagined that she was suddenly an old woman, that the years had flown by and had left her ill and weak with no one to tend her, no one to care what became of her.