by Pete Hautman
And then one morning I tried to wake him, but he was cold. He had died and left me, like all the rest of them. Grandfather was the only person I ever knew who died from something besides the Flu.
As we near the great limestone cliff called the Redwall, Ceej suddenly collapses, unconscious. I think that the pain has been worse than we knew. Tim and I make him as comfortable as we can, and I unwrap his poultice, expecting the worst.
The foot is ugly, but there is no infection, and when I pinch his little toe he groans and pulls his foot away.
“He will be fine,” I tell Tim.
“What do you mean? Look at him!” Tim is angry. In that moment, he thinks that he is mad at me. I accept his anger without striking back. He has to put it someplace.
Ceej comes around in a few minutes and demands to know what happened.
“You passed out,” Tim tells him.
Ceej tries to stand up, but I won’t let him.
“You must let me wrap your ankle,” I say. “And we must rest a while.”
Ceej is furious and embarrassed, but he lets me minister to him. I make a fresh poultice using redbud leaves, and a paste of pounded juniper berries and yellow earth. My small pouch of the powdered yellow-orange clay is almost gone.
“What is that stuff?” Ceej asks.
“It is a special clay gathered by my grandfather at the Sipapuni. It will help draw the poison from your wound” I wrap the poultice with fibrous strips from a nearby yucca plant. “Grandfather used it for bee stings. It has great power.”
Tim makes a snorting sound. He shoulders his pack. “I’m gonna take a look up ahead,” he says, and moves up the trail.
I stretch Ceej’s sock back over his foot to hold the poultice together. When I look up, he is staring at me. His eyes are the color of mesquite heartwood: a brown that is almost black, but with a hint of fire.
“Thank you,” he says.
I look away. I am embarrassed, but I do not know why. I feel his hand touch my knee. I don’t move; I don’t breathe.
He says, “What did your parents call you?”
“My name is Isabella.”
“I mean at home. Like, my real name is Charles Jacob Kane, but everybody calls me Ceej. For C. J. Did your folks call you Isabella?”
“My mother did.” I feel something inside crumbling. “But Daddy called me Bella.”
I see Ceej’s hand coming to my face, and he touches the corner of my eyes, and his fingers are wet with tears.
“Bella,” he says, touching my tears to his cheek. Our eyes meet and the crumbling inside me becomes something else. I want to fall into him, but I turn away, suddenly afraid, and we sit in silence.
A few minutes later, Tim returns.
“There’s a spring up ahead,” he says. “Fresh water.”
The spring is a small, algae-lined pool tucked into the base of the Redwall. The area is shaded by junipers, and a single tamarisk looking uneasy and alone so high up in the canyon. I make a thin porridge of cornmeal, sugar, and water, and we all drink a cup for strength. As my body takes in the sugar and corn, my eyes open to the perfect beauty of this place. Grandfather, as a young man, rested in this same shady spot, perhaps drinking a fortifying cornmeal gruel. The river below forms a turquoise vein. I think about what Tim and Ceej have told me about the dam. If it should fail, the flood would destroy much. But as Grandfather often said, “What will happen will happen, and it will be right.” For years, I resisted this truth, but my months in Öngtupqa have shown me that Grandfather was correct. Somehow, although I do not understand how or why, even the Flu must be right—terribly right.
Ceej insists that he can continue, and so we do. As we trudge slowly upward, Tim in the lead, I tell Ceej the story of how Mockingbird gave the tribes different languages.
“After the people emerged from the Sipapuni, there remained many disagreements, for even good people have differences. The chiefs and the medicine men called upon Spider Grandmother, who saw that the people were unhappy with themselves.
“‘You must leave this place,’ she said. ‘Each tribe must have its own food, its own language, its own land’
“‘But how can we do this?’ asked the chiefs.
“Just then, Mockingbird, who had been listening, brought several ears of corn and laid them upon the earth. One ear was the color of flint, one was the red of these cliffs, one was bright yellow, and one was deep blue, like the sky in the instant before the stars appear in the night. Some ears were speckled, some were long, some were short. ‘We begin with the selection of the corn,’ said Mockingbird. ‘Each color will bring its own future, its own rewards, its own price.’
“The Navajo leader quickly grasped the bright yellow ear. ’You have chosen happiness and prosperity,’ Mockingbird told him, ’but the lives of your people will be short.’
“The Utes chose the flint corn, the Comanches the red, and so on. Mockingbird told each of them the paths they had chosen. Finally there was only one left—a small, stubby, misshapen ear of blue that all the other tribes had ignored. The Hopi chief, who had not yet chosen, stepped forward and claimed it. Mockingbird said, ’You have chosen the hardest path, and the longest. Your people will struggle and endure many hardships, but you shall outlive all the rest’
“And so the Hopi became the people of the short blue corn.
“The next morning, the people awakened and discovered that their mouths and ears had changed. They could talk, but only the people of their own tribe could understand them. They could hear, but could only understand the words of their own tribe. There was great confusion, and the people gathered around the Sipapuni and called for Mockingbird, who could speak many languages.
“Mockingbird settled upon the rim of the Sipapuni and began to speak, and his words were understood by all. ‘Now you each have your own corn and your own language. It is time for you to spread out upon this new land. You, the Apache, must travel south to a place beyond the mountains. The Comanche must seek the rising sun. The Navajo must follow the river until the river is no more,’ Mockingbird sent each of the tribes in a different direction, until only the Hopi remained. ‘You who have chosen the path of hardship face the longest journey. You will build again and again, and each time you will plant your blue corn and you will leave your marks upon the rocks and the earth, and you will travel yet again, and one day you will find your homeland in a place not far from here. Your home will be a land of harsh beauty, and it will be preserved for you’”
I am not sure Ceej is listening. His footsteps have grown shorter and less certain, and I fear he is going to fall down again. But then he says, “Why did the Hopi wait to choose?”
“According to my grandfather, it was because they knew their destiny from the beginning. ‘What happened was what must have happened,’ he liked to say.”
For a time, we walk without speaking, listening only to the sound of wind on stone.
We camp above the Redwall, beneath a rogue ponderosa pine. The rim is less than a thousand feet above us. We do not make a fire because the boys are afraid that it might be seen by the Kinka. The moon has yet to rise, and it is very dark. Ceej asks me to tell him more about the Sipapuni. He wants to know if it is a real place or just an idea.
“My grandfather was there,” I tell him. “It is real.”
Tim says, “Yeah, like the Fountain of Youth.”
“That may also be real,” I say. “You do not know.”
He makes a sputtering sound with his lips and turns away.
Ceej says, “What is it, like a big hole in the ground?”
“No. The Sipapuni looks like a beautiful rock, as big as a house, and it contains all the colors of the world. It rests beside the Little Colorado River, one day’s walk from where the Little Colorado meets the Colorado.”
“I don’t get it. I thought you said it was some kind of hole.”
“At the top of the Sipapuni is a hole, a sipapu, the point of emergence. My grandfather looked within.”
> “What did he see?”
“Boiling water, cold to the touch. He believed that when the last of the people emerged from the sipapu they covered it with water so that anyone looking inside would see only a spring.”
Ceej thought about that for a moment, then asked, “How do you know it’s really real, and not just a story?”
“After Grandfather looked into the Sipapuni, he camped beside it for four days and four nights. At the end of the fourth night, as the sky brightened and the birds began to fill the air with song, he climbed again to the top of the Sipapuni. He lowered his hand into the cold, boiling water. He felt wetness. He pushed his arm deeper and suddenly felt the heat of the sun on his hand. Frightened, he jerked his hand free and for a moment, where his arm had been, there was a hole in the water. He saw another gorge, a river, grasses, trees, and the shadows of clouds.”
“It could still be a story.”
I shake my head. Even Ceej, who wants so to believe, shares some of Tim’s doubts.
“You would not say that if you knew Grandfather.” I hold out my arm and, with my finger, draw a circle around it, just below my elbow. “Here, where his arm passed through the sipapu, he had a scar as white as old bone.”
Granddaughter?
Yes, Grandfather?
You have told my story well.
Thank you, Grandfather.
You must continue your journey.
I am trying, Grandfather.
The next morning Ceej’s foot is much better. After a light breakfast of crackers and dried apples, we head up the final, steep climb. The trail switchbacks up through a forest of pinyon, juniper, and an occasional ponderosa pine. I pick some Mormon Tea growing beside the trail and tell Ceej to chew the stems. Maybe the stimulant in the plant will help him, or maybe just the idea of it will help him. Either way, though his foot is hurting, he keeps up a steady pace.
It takes us less than two hours to reach the rim.
THE RANGER OFFICE
WE ARE WATCHING CHILDREN PLAY. I am sure that the game the three little boys are playing has no name—the rules change from minute to minute. Two of the boys look like twins, blond and blue-eyed. The other boy is darker, his head a mass of shiny curls. Sometimes it looks like they are playing tag, but mostly they are just wrestling and laughing and kicking around a hard white ball.
A yellow bus is parked in the circular driveway in front of the porch. It is as though the children are about to leave for school. They will climb aboard the bus and go to kindergarten. I allow myself to remember what that was like. Sixty chattering, laughing, shrieking kids on the big yellow bus.
But here there are only three children. They are playing the way my cousins used to play, happy and fearless, screaming with excitement as they tumble over each other in the tall grass. Yes, I think they are very much like my cousins—except that these boys are alive, and the ball they are playing with is a human skull.
I am lost here, above the rim, in a world I thought I would never see again.
The childrens’ playground is the overgrown front lawn of the El Tovar Hotel, an enormous three-story building made of timbers and stone. Ceej and I are on our bellies in the brush, watching.
The children are not alone. Two adult Kinkas sit on the front porch of the hotel. One is reading a book, the other is sucking her thumb. There are more inside the hotel.
Tim has circled around the other side of the stone building they call the Hopi House. It is not a real Hopi house. Ceej says it’s a place where they used to sell T-shirts and kachina dolls to tourists. We can see Tim. He moves his hands, and Ceej signals back. I have never seen them doing this hand-talking before, although Ceej has told me about it.
Ceej whispers to me, “He says there are four more on the rim side, and he can see some moving around inside the hotel.” He grabs my arm and points. Two Kinka are coming around the corner of the hotel. One is a young woman wearing blue jeans and a checkered shirt. The other is a dark-skinned woman in a kind of long, glittery golden dress. She has dozens of loops of gold on her wrists and around her neck, and orange lightning bolts painted on her cheeks. The children stop playing as the two women pass through their game. Ceej’s fingers are digging into my forearm. The dark woman is talking, gesturing with bangled arms. The other woman watches her, expressionless. There is something about her face. I think for a moment that I know her, but then I see her eyes and I know what it is.
She looks like Ceej.
The women climb the stone steps and enter the hotel. The children resume their play. One of the twins gives the skull a hard kick. It shatters. They are sad for a moment—another broken toy—then they laugh and are playing again, hair flying in the wind. I wonder why these children—these Kinka—are not bald. The weight of the sky presses down upon me, too close, and I know that I am seeing the future.
“I saw her again,” Tim says. “She was in one of the third story windows, looking out.”
“Did she see you?”
“I don’t think so. I saw Emory, too, walking along the rim. He’s got his head all painted up. His nose is blue and he’s got a yellow lightning bolt on his forehead. And that black woman walking with Harryette? That’s the one they call Mother K.”
Ceej asks, “Any sign of Hap or Uncle?”
Tim shakes his head.
“We have to figure out a way to talk to Harryette.”
“And a way to get her away.”
“If she wants to go. She didn’t exactly look like a prisoner.”
We have retreated to the Ranger Office, across the railroad tracks from ElTovar. The first floor is divided into several rooms: a front office area, a conference room, several small offices and two bathrooms. There is no running water, of course, but we found a full water cooler jug in one of the closets.
Ceej said there used to be some guns stored upstairs. He and Tim went up and looked around, but all they found were about a thousand squeaking bats. They’ve taken over the whole second floor, and now we know what that weird smell is. It’s bat dung.
We have only Ceej’s rifle. It doesn’t matter. With only three of us against so many Kinka, if it comes to shooting guns it will not matter if we have one gun, or a hundred.
We are in the conference room sitting around a huge table. Ceej and Tim are talking back and forth about buildings I don’t know, about guns and alarms and ways to get from one place to another, unseen. I listen to them, understanding little. This is their world; I am a stranger here. I long for Öngtupqa’s embrace. Their words blur and become distant. Eventually they wind down as daylight begins to fade. Both boys look older in the half-light. Ceej’s face is slack with fatigue.
“You should lie down,” I tell him. “There’s a sofa in the next room.”
Ceej doesn’t argue. He stands and limps out of the conference room down the hallway. I use the last gray minutes of dusk to examine his foot and ankle. Nearly all of the swelling is gone, and he says it feels better. The long march from the river to the rim has worked out the last of the poison, and all that is left is for his body to repair the damaged tissues. I make the healing paste of juniper berries and a scant handful of yellow earth. Only a tiny amount remains. Grandfather made his pouch of powdered clay last for fifty years, and I am using the last fine grains to heal this pahanna.
The yellow earth is both boon and burden. It has the power to heal, but the clay does not like to be so far from the Sipapuni. One day, Grandfather once told me, he would return the last yellow grains to their source. I hope to carry out his wish.
In the dark, we make a sorry meal of crackers and canned peaches. To pass the time, I ask Ceej to teach me his sign language. Our hands meet in the blackness, and he guides my fingers into the proper shapes. I learn yes and no and come and go. He teaches me to sign his name, and Tim’s name. He says I can make up my own sign for myself. I come up with a two-handed sign, cupping my hands together. It feels right, but Ceej laughs and tells me I have made the sign for hamburger. He shows me how to
finger spell out my name, making a separate sign for each letter. I practice it a few times.
“Where did all the signs come from?” I ask.
“My sister learned most of them from a book, and we made a lot of them up ourselves. Like this—” He makes a V with his hands, pressing the heels of his palms together, his fingers splayed out. “That means Grand Canyon.”
“Öngtupqa.”
“Yeah. And here’s one we made up for the Flu.” He takes my left hand and draws my finger across my throat like he is cutting it.
My lesson continues, but Tim, who has been sitting quietly listening to us, grows restless. Ceej is showing me how to sign Help, I’m being eaten by wolves, when Tim announces that it is dark enough. He is going out.
“Wait,” says Ceej. I’il come with you.”
“Forget it,” Tim says. “You’ll just slow me down.”
I feel that Ceej is hurt by this. Tim did not have to say it that way, even though it is true. Ceej’s leg is much better, but he still moves slowly.
“You should rest tonight,” I tell him. “Tomorrow you may need all your strength.”
Tim goes out alone.
It is very dark inside the Ranger Office. The moon has not yet risen, and only starlight touches the windows. I can see Ceej’s shape, black on black, sitting at the other end of the sofa. I hear mice scurrying along the baseboards, and the squeaking of bats from upstairs.
“Do you ever feel like it’s the end of the world?” Ceej asks.
“I thought so until today,” I say.
“You don’t think so now?”
“Not after seeing those kids.”
“Playing with a skull.”
“They were born into a world filled with skulls. Did you notice their hair?”