Beck

by Mal Peet

  When his savior no longer had to hold him upright to pee, he asked Beck where he was headed and when Beck told him, he raised an eyebrow and muttered, “Well, ain’t you in luck.”

  Before dawn the next day, he left him by the side of the road, just two days’ walk from the burned tree where Beck had first met Grace; and when at last he reached it, Beck stood and stared for a long time.

  As he stared, a resolution formed in his head. I will not be consumed. Not with fear or passion or hate. Not with the past or the future. Not with an unwillingness to be loved or a murderous rage, or a sense of his own futility.

  “I will not be consumed,” he said aloud, before turning to walk, on legs that still felt like a newborn foal’s, to the only place he thought of as home.

  To his relief, the house was deserted when he arrived. His heart pounded with uncertainty and fear. If she wants me to go, I will go.

  He went first to the horses. Jim Calf Robe was absent and most of the herd had been turned out to graze in the far meadow. Among them he could see Suki. Only a handful of ponies were left in, including Grace’s own Koko, black as her name, and Nah-ah’s old Aachuk, a big slow paint with white eyelashes. He wondered what they were doing inside on a day like this.

  Beck left them and wandered out behind the barn through the dew-diamonded grass and climbed the low hill. The highest point for miles around, it offered a view out across the wide expanse of Grace’s valley. To one side he could see the herd, wisps of steam coming off their flanks. Distracted from grazing by the scent and sound of unfamiliar horses tethered beyond the encampment, they harrumphed and stamped.

  Below him were tipis, crowds, people arriving along the road. More were making their way across the valley. He felt his stomach lurch at the thought of a funeral. But the atmosphere was more carnival than mourning. A wedding? Jerome Wilder appeared to him like a barrel kick to the solar plexus. An urge to flee made his limbs shake. I have no place here, he thought, fighting the instinct to run. He dreaded seeing her and desired it beyond all else. He dreaded her news and required himself to face it.

  Making his way to the house, which echoed with absence, he entered the larder and ate ravenously, like a criminal, like a man with a gaping void. She must be below, he thought, greeting her guests. Her wedding guests. She would have to tell him herself.

  He went to the door, readying himself for their reunion, but at the last second his courage failed and he allowed his legs to walk him along a bright corridor, his head full of the resounding silence. Cautiously, he opened the door to Grace’s bedroom. The sense of her was overpowering, an opiate, her bed simple and square with a brass frame. He gripped the foot rail, closed his eyes and breathed, dizzy, hungry for detail. He tried to memorize the intricate pattern of the patchwork quilt sewn in overlapping triangles. He went to her dressing table and smelled the pots and bottles assembled on it. Her, her, her. Drugged and drenched and intoxicated with her, he opened her wardrobe and fought an irresistible urge to bury himself in the empty carcasses of her clothes. The intruder in the tall oak-frame mirror made him stop and stare. He was not accustomed to his own image, and the tall, gaunt stranger looked like no one he knew. He raised one arm to be certain, dizzy with vertigo. Who was this person? The reflection was hard and angular, too thin. No longer a boy.

  A burst of drumming and calling came from a distance through the window. He hurried from the room, closed the door behind him silently, crept along the passage and out onto the veranda where the emerging daylight swiped him. Thank God she hadn’t caught him in her bedroom.

  If only she had.

  What on earth would she make of the man in the oak frame? She wouldn’t still claim she loved him. Not on her wedding day. Concealed in the shadows of the house, he surveyed the ground below — tipis, people, color, and noise; she would be there, with Wilder, surrounded by her people.

  I will not be consumed.

  He made his way down the hill like a sleepwalker, veering left toward the lake. He found two strange men sitting on the steps of the sleepout smoking cigarettes. They cut their eyes at each other when they saw him approach but said nothing. The older of the men looked as if he’d been left out to cure in all kinds of weather, a tall folded old bird, everything about him dark and sharp. He wore a Stetson over a bandana. The other was obviously his son, exactly like the old man but with more flesh on him.

  Beck nodded at them and they nodded back, shunting apart to let him pass; they were anxious not to touch him.

  His room no longer belonged to him. A leather sack occupied the spare bunk. Below the window, a knocked-about hamper or suitcase, wickerwork with a leather handle. From the curtain rod above the window dangled a threaded collection of feathers and bones including the bleached skulls of small birds. On the chest of drawers, a circular headdress of black and white eagle feathers set into a beaded band. Voices, Siksika, through the thin wall.

  He walked down to the lake, taking the long way through the trees. Close to the water, a thing like a tent, like a slumped animal, had been created. Skins, hides, stretched over bent branches of willow. The dark gray ashes of a fire and a metal bucket near its entrance. Something rose to the surface of the lake and twitched back down, sending ripples in lazily expanding circles. He stripped off his ragged clothes where no one would see and submerged himself in the pure cold baptismal waters of the lake. The wedding guest would at least be clean.

  BECK WASHED HIMSELF and his clothes, both so filthy they left an opaque ring in the clear water. Lake water, he thought, could cleanse a man’s soul. He hung his wet things in the sun and while they dried lay hidden, remembering, in the tall grass.

  When at last he dressed, he felt lighter. How undervalued was the pleasure of cleanliness. She would notice, of course. He submerged his belt in the lake, watching mud float out of a thousand tiny grooves to reveal the soft bright pattern of blue and green beads. It caught in his belt loops, a cool band around his hips.

  Beyond, at the campground, he heard trucks and wagons approach the house. As people arrived, the encampment grew and with it the circle of tents. Cook fires were lit; smoke rose into the sky to the accompaniment of shouts and chanting, children calling, laughing, and arguing; the whickering of tethered horses.

  He could not see Grace. He felt his otherness like a shard of ice in his chest.

  Beck passed through the crowd like a ghost. They studied him, their faces expressionless. She was not here. He did not ask for her in case they would not answer him.

  He went back up to the house, removed his boots on the veranda, and eased open the door. Dimness and silence. He peered down the hallway toward her room, skin prickling, returned to the kitchen, and raised the blinds. The stove was still slightly warm. He fed it kindling and two split logs and opened the damper wide, set the coffee pot on the hot plate. He sensed her presence before he heard her speak.

  “How do I look?” The voice was calm, even.

  He turned and his heart collapsed.

  She was standing just outside the kitchen door with her arms slightly away from her sides, her open hands toward him, her hair in two long braids resting on the front of her shoulders. Long earrings, three tiers of narrow white seashells. The necklace, three loops of carved bone and turquoise. The soft deerskin dress was fringed at the sleeves, waist, and hem. Bands of elaborate beadwork, white, blue, and red, spanned her bosom. The pattern on her headband was similar, with a tiny beaded animal at the center of her forehead. She glowed in the half dark. Three long red black-tipped feathers rose from the back of her head like flames.

  He didn’t know her. She’d become someone, something, else. Behind him the wood in the stove’s firebox caught with a whoosh that might have been his heart bursting into flame.

  “Congratulations,” he said.

  She frowned.

  “I hope you will both be happy.”

  She shook her head slightly. “You came back.”

  “Yes.” He could not take his eyes off her.
I will not be consumed. “For your wedding to that man.”

  “My wedding?” She took half a step toward him. “This is for Okan, the sun dance ceremony. Didn’t you know?”

  He shook his head, mute, flooded with relief and shame. His knees buckled and he crouched before her, head lowered, eyes swimming.

  She gazed at him soberly, her eyes deep and dark. “I dreamed of burning,” she said. “At first I was frightened. But it gave me hope. It was like finding you at the tree once more.” He looked up at last and her eyes held his. “A sign.”

  The pain of speaking stripped him naked, made him formal. “You are the only home I have ever wanted.”

  She stepped closer and cupped his head in both her hands. He leaned into her hips and slowly stood, daring and not daring to embrace her. But her face shone and the brilliance of her eyes allowed him to forget what he feared, to forget everything but her. Once his arms enclosed her, he wanted to laugh, to shout, to dance. She pressed him close, her face against his neck, her breasts and body and arms and legs against his. Each felt how the other had suffered. Beck’s eyes, impassive during his blackest hours, streamed tears.

  “Thank you for coming back,” she murmured. And then she pulled herself away and took his hand, her face girlish, laughing. “Let’s go down and eat with my people. Come.”

  They ate with Joe Iron Pipe’s extended family, innumerable grandchildren and great-grandchildren sleepily milling about with bowls and spoons, gradually growing more voluble. Beck was the center of their attention; now and again a child would be brave enough to approach him, touch the skin of his arm, stare into his face, and run away giggling. Joe himself remained in his tipi; Beck could hear him speaking with his wife. He didn’t emerge until the sun burned the valley rim and wiped the last stars away. When he did, rippled circles of silence greeted him.

  Beck turned and gazed up at him with awe. Joe Iron Pipe’s eagle feather bonnet added two feet to his height. His creased and hawkish face was framed by long lappets of white fur; ermine tassels adorned the sleeves of his richly dyed, embroidered, and beaded tunic; at his breast a sun circle made of bead and bone; in his hand a feathered staff with a buffalo horn handle. He looked like a god.

  From the tipis, other men and women emerged similarly transformed. Ordinary undistinguished men and women became bird men, deer women; they were new and ancient; their colors glowed in the rising light.

  A voice called from somewhere. A drum rattled out a burst of beats. Stools and mats and deck chairs were brought out and arranged around the periphery of the circle. People sat, changed places, settled themselves. Grace led Beck to a short bench and they sat. He wanted very much to touch her.

  A low murmur arose from the gathering. Grace looked away from him. “Here comes Nah-ah.”

  Straight Speaking stepped into the circle, lightly supported by two assistants. Beck would not have known her in the fur-trimmed and hooded elk-skin robe. Grace stood to greet her. Joe Iron Pipe did likewise, taking his position behind the three women with Grace. Straight Speaking pushed her hood back. The robe looked easily big enough to accommodate three of her; her narrow ancient head poked out of it like a tortoise. She spoke in Siksika, part speech, part song, reciting the clans. When she’d finished, one of her helpers spread a mat on the grass and she sat down. At the same moment, the sun lifted itself clear of the earth. The drummers kicked off.

  For the rest of the morning, Beck watched. If he’d been expecting fireworks or a bacchanalian riot, the sun dance would have failed to impress. Two men danced it. One had on a bonnet of soft white feathers with two stiff feathers above his ears and two large jangly disks of shells and bones. He wore a loose red shirt. The other, younger, had a crown of leaves on his head and nothing on his upper body apart from a heavy necklace made of teeth. Both men wore skirts like striped blankets. It took Beck several minutes to recognize them as the men who’d been smoking on the cabin step a few hours earlier.

  Two groups of drummers emerged from a little shelter and began to play. At the center of the circle, six men, among them Jim Calf Robe and Sonny, sat around a big round drum and beat it with sticks that looked heavy enough to knock out a steer. Closer to the dancers’ booth, four other men, all naked to the waist, beat a lighter and faster rhythm on shallow, handheld drums. The two dancers faced east and stared into the sun. The older man wore spectacles with smoked-glass lenses. Their dance consisted mainly of bobbing up and down on the spot, and while they danced they blew high-pitched birdcalls from whistles made of bone. At first all Beck could hear was noise, but as he listened, his breath and blood became part of the rhythm and he fell into a kind of daze in which he felt both lost and found.

  At no signal that he discerned, the music stopped. The dancers retired to their bower. Straight Speaking was helped to her feet and returned with her assistants to the prayer tipi. The drummers relaxed, stretching their backs and flexing their fingers. Joe Iron Pipe approached the drummers and patted Sonny on the shoulder.

  Beck surfaced. He was sitting among, but not with, the spectators at the periphery of the circle. Now a low hum of conversation arose. People regrouped, swapped seats. Children, many of them in traditional dress, performed little shuffling dances. He looked for Grace, saw her on the far side of the circle, working her way in his direction.

  The dancers reappeared, the drummers resumed, and the whole strange mesmeric business began again. Grace sat down beside him and leaned close to make herself heard. “The dancers face east to welcome the rising sun. Then they dance to the west. Their whistles are made from the leg bones of an eagle and the sound represents the cry of an eagle. The old man’s name is John Bull Child. He’s seventy-two years old. The younger one is his grandson.”

  Beck nodded.

  “Some of the ceremonial costumes are very old and valuable. The skill of making them is dying out. Joe’s headdress and tunic were made by his great-grandfather’s wives back in the 1830s.” She hesitated, looking over at her grandmother, who raised a hand in her direction. “Nah-ah wants to speak to me.”

  A little twist of fear in his gut.

  “I’ll come and find you after.”

  “Yes.” He met her eyes, anxious.

  He felt her hand grip his shoulder, brief but tight, and watched her walk around to her grandmother, watched her help the old woman up, watched the pair of them enter the prayer tipi. The door flap was pulled shut.

  Nah-ah had not looked at him, spoken to him, in any manner acknowledged his return.

  STRAIGHT SPEAKING AND Grace emerged from the prayer tipi. The crowd parted to admit them to the circle. Children were quieted. Jim and Sonny and their colleagues resumed their seats and took up their heavy drumsticks. Beck gazed across the circle, willing Grace to look at him, and when he found her eyes she smiled. Her face said, I am happy. Be happy too.

  Though unwilling to look away, he was drawn to the figure of the old woman. When she pulled the hood back her face glistened, with heat, he thought, and exertion. Straight Speaking delivered a short speech, at the end of which her expression relaxed and she spread her arms wide and sat. Immediately, the circle filled with people, the melee quickly resolving itself into a long line, two by two, headed by Joe Iron Pipe and his wife. Behind the adults, children tussled for partners. The drummers hit a rhythm more stately than the fierce tempo of the sun dance and the line moved off in a bobbing shuffle. As far as Beck could see, the only nonparticipants were a handful of elderly people with babies or toddlers on their laps, a knot of shy-looking boys pretending that dancing was beneath their dignity. He tracked his gaze along the line of dancers, searching for Grace. There she was, laughing, resisting the attempts by a pair of young girls to pull her into the dance. She made her way over to him and sat down.

  He looked at her, full of questions.

  “This is the social dance,” she said. “For couples. Some married, some thinking about it maybe. See the couple right in front of Otter Moon and Jack? That’s Tom Day Rider and h
is wife. Her folks paired them up for the dance back in ninety-nine and they’ve been together ever since.”

  She broke off, looking past Beck to Florence Bear, one of Nah-ah’s women.

  He was far from able to read the faces of Blackfoot people, but it seemed to Beck that there was something grim behind the woman’s smile. She planted herself in front of them on the bench and spoke to Grace in Siksika.

  When she finished speaking, she held her hand out to Grace. Grace drew in a deep breath. She stood, took Florence’s hand and turned to Beck, who supposed that Florence had been sent to take Grace away from him, that Nah-ah had passed judgment on their sitting together. He was ready to protest, but Florence Bear turned to him with an upward gesture of her free hand. Uncertain, he half stood and she took his hand in hers, pulling him up, leading them together to the line of dancers. A gap opened up and she pushed them firmly into it.

  It seemed to Beck that there occurred a riffle, a tiny breakage, in the rhythm of the drumming; that for a moment time itself had come to a shocked halt. Then he was moving, without volition, like a leaf caught in a stream’s slow swirl. His feet were clumsy; he watched them, trying to match Grace’s. She gripped his hand tightly. “Never mind your feet,” she said. “Look up.”

  He did.

  “Grace?”

  There was no need to frame the question. She laughed like someone gasping for air, someone surfacing from deep water. “We’ve been declared,” she said.

  They came alongside Straight Speaking, her face expressionless. She held Beck’s gaze for what felt like forever. And then, barely perceptibly, she nodded. Nothing more was said, or indicated, or required.