Vermilion

by Whitney, Phyllis A. ;

  “So he just hurt my stepmother by staying away,” I said bitterly.

  “You can see your stepmother only through your own loving eyes. You see her the way you want to see her. But you can’t possibly see her with Jed’s eyes. I’m not judging. I never knew her well. I did know Silvercloud long ago when I was a small boy. She was beautiful and loving. Alice looks a lot like her. She was a highly intelligent woman with a great deal of courage and generosity. Alice adored her, and it was terrible for her when you were born and her mother died. She was only ten. Terrible for Jed too, when he lost her. There was a Hopi family in Flagstaff who took Alice, but Jed always looked after her, even though she wasn’t his daughter by blood, and he saw that she got a good education. You he brought home to his wife, who must also have had courage and generosity.”

  And very little fight in her, I thought sadly. Though the very fact that she had been submissive had given me a home and a loving mother. I didn’t think I could be as generous in like circumstances.

  “Why was I never told?”

  “Your mother was against telling you when you were small. Jed wanted to bring you out here and tell you himself, have you meet your sister. I’m sorry if I’ve done this badly, but it’s long past time for you to know.”

  I looked across the creek up to more high red cliffs, with blue sky and white clouds above. Arizona! Then I looked down at my own arms browning in the sun. In what way did my mother’s blood show in me? I thought with growing wonderment that my real mother had been half Hopi. On the Indian side she had come from a culture that went back a thousand years and more into the past on this continent, where Jed’s people were newcomers. Some of me belonged to that history. Some of me belonged to the true Americans.

  Whatever I was feeling must have showed in my face and reassured Rick.

  “It’s going to be all right, isn’t it?” he said.

  I could only smile at him, though tears welled up in my eyes. “I can’t take it in all at once. A little while ago, part of me was a blank because I had no way to fill it in. The half of me that came from my real mother I couldn’t know about. Now there’s something where there was nothing before. I know a lot of this will be troubling because it will be strange, and sometimes it may even be shocking, because I’m not used to it. I don’t know anything about my mother’s people on the Hopi side. Now that I know it’s there, I can learn. I can really learn, if Alice will help me.”

  Rick’s arm was about me and I raised my head. I knew that everything I longed for with him would have to wait. What had happened last night was a page out of time and that had somehow slipped in too far ahead. There was still Sybil, and my heart sank a little as I thought of this other sister.

  “We go on from here,” Rick said, and there was a promise in his words.

  On the drive into Sedona I thought for the first time in hours of Vermilion. I’d heard not a word out of her through all this revelation. Had I really subdued her at last? I hoped so, because I would need to be stronger than ever now.

  When we reached town, Rick drove first to the shop at Tlaquepaque.

  “I’ll stop long enough to return Jed’s sculpture to Clara,” he said. “I never got to call her about it.”

  I had forgotten about the Fire People in the trunk of the car, and when he parked and took it out I went with him to the shop. Just before he reached it, I thought of another question that had to be asked.

  “This is what Sybil knows, isn’t it, Rick? I mean, about the relationship between Alice and me?”

  “Yes. This is what she meant to spring on you at her dinner. She could never understand that it might not devastate you—as she would expect it to.”

  I felt a certain relief as I followed Rick into the shop. At least Sybil’s supposed “weapon” had been blunted. Though she would never understand why.

  Clara’s eyes widened at the sight of what Rick carried in his hands. She came with us back to her office. I tried to dismiss any thought about her and Rick. That had no relevance now.

  “Where did you find that?” she demanded, taking the sandstone sculpture from him and examining it carefully for any damage.

  “Whoever took it from the store went directly to leave it on our doorstep,” Rick told her.

  Clara could look rather sly at times. “Did Sybil know it was left there?”

  “She saw it when I carried it into the house, and she was upset.”

  “I’m not surprised,” Clara said. “You may not know it, but Jed put a sort of voodoo on that piece as far as she was concerned. I think you were away, Rick, the time when Marilla persuaded her mother to come with her to see the ‘real’ Fire People. We all went out there on a picnic. Brian took us in a jeep and brought his mother along. This was before I’d met Parker. Jed was at his best that day, and he had fantastic stories to tell about some of those rocks. Things he made up as he went along, of course.” Clara reached out to touch the central figure in the carving. “He had a name for this fellow, you know. He called him the Shining One, and he told Sybil that he was watching her and she’d better be careful or he might freeze her into the rock too.”

  “That doesn’t sound like anything that would throw Sybil,” I said.

  “I’d have agreed,” Clara went on. “But Jed had a way of getting under her skin. He never really liked her, you know, even if she was his daughter. He gave her the carving because he wanted to frighten her.”

  This was still another count against Jed, I thought. He had been capable of deliberate cruelty.

  Rick was shaking his head. “I’ve never known Sybil to be superstitious.”

  Clara agreed. “You’re right. It takes imagination to be superstitious. But Jed kept insisting that the Fire People would always search her out and watch her. Couldn’t she feel them watching? He got through even her thick skin. So she put the thing out of her sight as fast as she could by giving it back to Jed, who gave it to me. What Sybil doesn’t understand makes her uncomfortable. So I expect her old feeling about it came back when it was left on your doorstep. Retribution, and all that kind of thing.”

  “I don’t know,” Rick said. “More likely, it was the idea that someone wanted to get at her through the carving that upset her. I wonder if she knows who it might be?”

  I had gone to stand closer to Jed’s carving, and I could see that he really had given the face of that awesome central figure a special shining look as it gazed at the sky. There was an eeriness about it that disturbed me—because when he chose, Jed could be as cruel as he could be generous and kind. And he had meant this as something that would haunt Sybil.

  When we left the store and drove back to Rick’s, I was relieved to find that she was out. A showdown of some sort was certainly coming, and I needed to be ready for it. Nevertheless, I was glad for the postponement. There was too much that I needed to explore and understand before I could be ready to face my other sister.

  Marilla was still at school, and Rick had made an appointment in the afternoon, so he drove away as soon as he’d left me at the house.

  For once, I was glad to be alone. In my bedroom I stood for a few moments looking at myself in the mirror—searching as I’d done when I stared at my arms after Rick had told me. Her Indian heritage showed in Alice’s beautiful face—in the very modeling and breadth of her cheekbones. It didn’t show in mine. My hair was black, my eyes were greenish like Jed’s and the shape of my face was like his, to the very cleft in the chin. What traces did blood heritage leave in the flesh, the spirit, the genes? A quarter part of me was Hopi. Yet only my familiar self looked back from the glass—that self which had grown up in New York and knew nothing at all of the great red rocks outside my Sedona windows. Or of a pueblo called Oraibi.

  Yet something seemed changed. At this moment something about me seemed softer, gentler, more ready to be loving—and I knew why. “Oh, Rick,” I said, and turned away from the mirror.

  When I’d found another book about the Pueblos, I sat down and began to read
with new involvement. I wanted to learn about a people whom I’d scarcely known existed, whose problems I’d never considered—who were now my people.

  As I read, Rick’s face sometimes came between my eyes and the page, and I wanted to fall into a reverie about last night. I dared not. Rick had not been entirely unloving today, but he had held me away.

  An hour or two later, I put my book aside, knowing that I’d barely touched the surface. It was time now for me to go over to the house and see if Sybil had returned. I wanted to confront her as soon as I could. Since she no longer had anything to hold over me, I must make her tell me about that night in Las Vegas.

  As I went outside I saw movement on the deck, and Brian came around to meet me.

  “I just wanted to check about our jeep trip tomorrow,” he said. “Is it still on?”

  I’d forgotten about it. “As far as I know,” I told him, and wondered if this was his real purpose for being here.

  “What’s up with Sybil?” he went on. “Do you know?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “She came over to see Ma this morning. I was out, so I didn’t talk to her. Ma seemed upset afterwards and wouldn’t tell me what it was all about.”

  “I haven’t seen Sybil. I drove to Flagstaff with Rick this morning.”

  Brian didn’t seem interested in our trip. “Sybil’s not around, though I had a sort of appointment with her this afternoon.”

  “I’m afraid I can’t help you.” I wanted to end this and be alone.

  He saluted me ruefully and went away over the bridge. I crossed to the main house and questioned Consuela. Neither Rick nor my sister had come home as yet, and there were no messages.

  Sybil was gone all afternoon, but no one became concerned about her absence until dinnertime, when she had neither appeared nor phoned. Calls to friends gave no clues, and around ten o’clock that night Rick reported to the sheriff’s office that his wife was missing.

  9

  I slept badly that night, missing Rick and haunted by thoughts of Sybil. Unhappy, tormenting thoughts. Knowing her as well as I did, I suspected that this “disappearance” meant only that she was up to something new in her war against Rick. And against me. My sister had always been capable of shrewdness and cunning that could wound and damage. I knew very well that more trouble was coming.

  Last evening Rick hadn’t seemed especially worried about Sybil’s absence—as least not outwardly. Perhaps he too was suspicious of this sudden vanishing. Or perhaps he simply didn’t want to alarm Marilla, because he didn’t phone the sheriff’s office until after she had gone to bed. On the phone he admitted frankly that his wife might have gone away on her own and would probably be heard from the next day. Though strangely enough, her red Spitfire was in the garage, so someone else must have driven her. Disappearing without leaving word was unlike her, so he wanted to report it.

  I got up early remembering that this was the morning we’d planned to drive into the back country so Marilla could show me the Fire People. Undoubtedly, this would be called off now. As soon as I finished a quick breakfast, I went over to the house.

  Rick and Marilla were breakfasting on the terrace, since the morning was already warming. Marilla had left most of the food on her plate. This being Saturday, there was no school, and she was still in pajamas and a a short terry robe.

  When I said, “Good morning,” she didn’t look up. Rick pulled another chair to the table and poured me a cup of coffee. Suddenly, intensely, I felt that Vermilion was there, watching, listening.

  She’d left me alone for some time, strangely subdued. This disappearance of Sybil’s would appeal to her, and I heard the faint whisper: Maybe she’s gone for good.

  I rejected both the idea and Vermilion herself, and spoke to Rick. “Have you heard anything?” I asked.

  He shook his head, his eyes on his daughter, who obviously knew by this time that her mother had gone off without leaving any word.

  “I don’t want to go on the jeep trip,” Marilla said, clearly continuing an argument. “Not now. I don’t feel like it.”

  “Look,” Rick said patiently, “there’s nothing you can do around here. I’ll stay by the phone, in case there’s any word. I don’t think there’s anything to worry about. You and Lindsay need to get your minds off this until your mother shows up.”

  “I don’t want to go,” Marilla repeated. “I’m scared of that place.”

  Rick showed his surprise. “You’re always begging Brian to take you out there.”

  “That was when Grandpa Jed used to tell me stories about the Fire People. Mom says it’s a bad place, and I shouldn’t go there.”

  I tried to help Rick, knowing how important doing something could be at a time like this. “Ever since I heard from you about the Fire People, I’ve wanted to make the trip to see those cliffs.” This wasn’t exactly true, but perhaps it would serve. “I can’t go if you won’t be my guide,” I added.

  Marilla looked uncertainly at her father.

  “It’s okay to go,” he told her. “When your mother comes home I’ll explain to her.”

  She gave in and got up from the table. “All right. I’ll go put on some jeans.”

  She ran off and Rick looked at me with a question in his eyes. “You’re still all right?”

  “Of course.” That wasn’t true either, since I wasn’t sure anything would ever be “all right” again.

  Consuela came out to the terrace, and Rick signaled that we were through. “Bring your coffee,” he said to me. “I want to show you something.”

  Cup in hand, I followed him into the house and down the length of the living room to where the painting of The Blue Corn Maiden hung.

  “Alice Spencer painted this,” he said. “She did several from snapshots, from memory, and out of her imagination. It’s a picture of Mary Silvercloud that she gave Jed, who kept it here. Her mother—and yours.”

  I looked again at the figure in the blue dress and long white leggings. The young woman’s face had drawn my interest when I’d first seen those great dark eyes, the slash of black brows, the lips parted breathlessly. Now I knew why I’d had a sense of recognition when I first met Alice. The resemblance was there. I’d thought of ceremonial drums when I’d seen the picture, and now that seemed all the more likely. By this time I knew something of the spell of a drum, and Alice’s brush had given the face, framed by the square-cut black hair, just such a listening look. To believe that the young girl in the painting had become my mother seemed a remote and unlikely thought. To me, she was a costumed stranger, and I didn’t know how to bridge the gap emotionally.

  “I ought to feel something,” I said sadly, “but I don’t. I want to reach her, to know about her. I want her to become real for me. How do I manage that?”

  “It will happen,” Rick said. “Give yourself time. Alice is part of the answer.”

  Perhaps for me she was the whole answer, yet I had sensed her coolness toward me, and the way she had held back—perhaps protecting her own pride, her own private feelings about her mother. Feelings she might not want to share with me.

  Rick drew me away from the portrait to where I could look up at the frieze of carved heads that had been placed along a high shelf. I remembered that Marilla had told me they’d come from Oraibi—a name that had meant nothing to me then. I sipped coffee and studied them.

  “Your great-grandfather carved those heads.” Rick’s tone was gentle, careful.

  I stared at the brightly painted carvings, and their black eyes seemed to look back at me, their multiple red mouths sneering a little. My great-grandfather on Mary Silvercloud’s side had been a full-blooded Hopi Indian and his hands had carved these strange heads.

  “It’s not in the nature of the Pueblos to do unusual things,” Rick said. “The old way is to feel that the family, the clan, is everything. Whether it’s pottery, or basket-making, or weaving, the old patterns are used in the same way down the years over and over. One doesn’t look for indivi
duality, though that old man did. He wanted to carve heads that were of absolutely no use to anyone, and that no one had ever done before. What’s more, he wanted to do them over and over.”

  “How old was he when he carved these?”

  “In his eighties. This—drive—came on him late in life. He’s ninety-six now, and his hands hurt him, but he still carves a little.”

  “He’s still alive?”

  “Yes, indeed. I’ve met and talked to him, and so did Jed. No one talks about senility in the pueblo. He is allowed to do what makes him happy. Unlike some of our own old people.”

  Before I could find anything more to say, chimes rang, and Rick went to open the door to Orva Montgomery.

  She came in with her usual long-legged, slightly uncoordinated stride and barely paused to greet us before she flung herself into a chair. Today she wore corduroy pants and a man’s shirt with the sleeves rolled up. Sloppy, but comfortable.

  “Brian’s gone to get a jeep ready,” she said. “I couldn’t come as long as he was watching me, and I didn’t want to talk about it on the phone when he was listening. He knows that Sybil came to see me yesterday morning. I didn’t tell him everything. She was mad and looking for a fight, though I didn’t give it to her. She rather frightened me.”

  “What did she come for?” Rick asked.

  “To tell me her plans for the dinner she wants to give tonight.”

  “What’s dinner got to do with anything?”

  “Exactly what I’d like to know. She’s been so bent on having us here together. Do you realize that she’s inviting only those who were in Las Vegas the night Jed died? Except, of course, for Parker, who’s cooking the dinner. And you, Lindsay. I told her straight out that I’d seen her coming from Jed’s room that night. She didn’t seem to care. She just wanted to make sure I’d be here tonight and bring Brian. She said she was going to lay everything right out, and that maybe this would shut me up and make me stop writing idiotic notes. She said one of us already knew what happened that night—and we might get a new version.”