Vermilion

by Whitney, Phyllis A. ;

  A flush had come up in Orva’s thin cheeks, and when we remained silent—mostly, I think, because we were shocked—she went on doggedly.

  “I guess I’d put her on the spot with my suspicions. I wrote those two notes, Rick, as maybe you know. I got Lindsay to come out here because I wanted to stir Sybil up, and I think I have. But now I’m not sure of the result. So I thought you ought to be forewarned about what she means to do. It might be a good idea, Rick, if you get her to call this off for tonight. It might even be dangerous to go ahead.”

  “Why do you think that?” Rick asked.

  “I just think you’d better shut her up before she goes through with it. I’m not going to do or say anything else to upset her. Ever since Lindsay came, it’s been out of my hands.”

  “Sybil didn’t come home last night,” Rick told her. “We haven’t heard from her, so I don’t suppose there’ll be any dinner party. Perhaps you’ve hit on a possible answer. It could be that she suddenly realized that she shouldn’t go through with this, and simply went off for a while.”

  “Sybil doesn’t run away from things,” I said.

  Rick nodded. “I was just thinking of possibilities. She’d be more likely to bluff her way through. Anyway, there’s no use in speculating until she shows up and tells us herself.”

  Orva rose, setting thin elbows akimbo. “I’d better be going. I haven’t told Brian all of this because he’s a fool when it comes to Sybil. Anyway, I’ve said my piece here, and I’ve plenty to do.”

  She went off as quickly as she’d burst in, and as the door closed after her Marilla returned carrying two straw hats. She held one out to me. “I borrowed this from my mother’s room. You’d better wear it, Lindsay. The sun gets awfully bright out there and there’s no roof on the jeeps. Brian said he’d pick us up, and I think that’s his car coming now. Are you ready?”

  I thanked her and put on the hat. I’d dressed in slacks, with a short-sleeved blouse, and walking shoes, so I was ready. Marilla ran to fling herself into Rick’s arms, and he held her tenderly for a moment.

  “Don’t worry,” he said. “Just think about Jed’s stories.”

  We reached the door as Brian rang, and went outside to stand for a moment on the walk.

  “There’s been no word?” he asked Rick.

  “Nothing. Have you any ideas?”

  “No, I haven’t. She never said anything to me about going off.”

  In the morning sunlight he looked browner than ever, his hair and beard more sun-bleached. But I never knew exactly what he was thinking.

  Rick watched as we drove away, and I looked back, wishing I could have stayed with him—even though he didn’t especially want me just now. Like everyone else, he too was a stranger. Under the laughter there must always have been a sense of darkness. Now it seemed to have surfaced for good. Only for a little while had I seen him lose it.

  As we drove toward town, with Marilla sitting between us, Brian spoke to her. “Don’t worry, kid. Your mother will show up. If anybody can take care of herself, she can.” There seemed something a little hard in his voice and I glanced at him, thinking again that he wasn’t as wholly devoted to Sybil as his mother thought. If Sybil had been using him, perhaps in his own way he had been using her to accomplish what he couldn’t do alone.

  Marilla said, “I know where she’s gone. That’s why I didn’t want to go there today.”

  I turned to her in surprise. “What do you mean, Marilla?”

  She only squirmed a little, as though sorry she’d spoken.

  “You’d better tell us,” Brian said quietly.

  She hesitated before answering him. “Yesterday, after Lindsay and Dad went to Flagstff, Mom said she guessed she’d have to have a talk with the Fire People. She said she had something to settle. So maybe that’s where she went. But then she never came home, and I’m scared.”

  Brian put an arm around her as he drove. “I expect she only meant that carving of Jed’s somebody left on your doorstep.”

  I was startled. “How did you know about that?”

  He put his hand back on the wheel and stared straight ahead. “Sybil phoned me yesterday before she came to see my mother. She thought I ought to be out of the way when she talked to Ma. She told me what had happened with that carving, and that someone was trying to get at her. She even asked if I knew anything about it.”

  So Sybil had been suspicious of Brian too?

  “And did you?” I said.

  He glanced at me over the top of Marilla’s curly head and spoke quietly. “No, Lindsay, I didn’t.”

  I had no idea whether his seeming sincerity hid anything more ominous.

  Nor could I tell whether Marilla had accepted his explanation. The little girl stared fixedly at the road, and who knew what fantasies she might be concocting in her mind?

  I felt increasingly uneasy. There had always seemed a certain eeriness connected with Jed’s Fire People, and it might be disturbing to see the real rock faces, even though I was curious about them.

  In town we drove to a parking space where three jeeps waited. Two were filling up with passengers, and Brian led us to the third. When he’d seen Marilla and me into the front seat, he went back to his car and opened the trunk. To my surprise, he took out the Indian drum I’d seen at his house and brought it to the jeep, placing it behind us on the floor of the car.

  “We’re in luck, I think,” he said. “I’ve fixed it so the other jeeps will take the tour parties, and we can probably have this one to ourselves.”

  When the two jeeps went off loaded, we got aboard our own.

  “You can hold on to the overhead rail, Lindsay,” Marilla cautioned when we were moving. “You’ll need it when we get off the pavement.”

  I did indeed. Away from Sedona, we left the highway to jounce over a dirt road into the rough growth of the canyon floor. Vegetation grew thick and green, with reddish earth showing underneath, and always the rim of red rocks standing up all around. Some of the growth was scrub oak, Brian said, and a species of manzanita, low and spreading. There was Arizona white pine too, though they didn’t grow tall out here.

  “Some of these trees can live to be a hundred years old,” Brian told us, “and they’ll never grow any taller.”

  I was glad to see that Marilla had cheered up a little since leaving the house. Perhaps she’d forgotten her anxiety about taking this trip.

  Brian was mostly silent unless I asked a question, and I had a feeling that he was still thinking about Sybil.

  With no roof over us, the sun was hot and bright, but it felt good to be warm in this natural heat. There were places in the rough growth where dead trees stood up starkly, their bony arms pointing. Some had been split to the heart, yet sprigs of green showed here and there on branches that seemed otherwise lifeless.

  “Lightning can explode a tree,” Brian said, “but it doesn’t always kill. These pines resist fire to some extent, so even when there’s a storm and lightning strikes, it doesn’t always start a blaze.”

  We jolted along the “road” that wound haphazardly between stunted trees, until the way ended before a high outcropping of rock burning yellow-red in the sun. The rocky horizons had moved farther away as we reached the center of this flat valley. The humped rock looked rather like a beached whale flung onto dry land, with high cliffs cutting into the sky beyond.

  “Now we’re getting near,” Marilla said.

  I heard the rising anxiety in her voice and knew what she meant. Near to the Fire People. Ever since she’d first told me about the cliffs my father had discovered, I’d had a curiously fateful feeling about them, and it had increased after I’d seen his carving. Yet, inexorably, we drew closer, and I could sense Marilla’s growing fear of something that might lie ahead. I wanted to reassure her, in spite of my own misgivings.

  Earlier, I’d managed to hold Vermilion back. Now she was growing strong again, and more insistent. She wanted out. Her excitement was my excitement, though I tried to hold t
hat particular door tightly shut.

  The two jeeps that had gone ahead were on top of the huge rock, their passengers already moving around with their cameras.

  “Hold tight!” Brian warned.

  Our own jeep tilted at an alarming angle and then roared its way up the steep side, big tires gripping the rock. We crossed the broad expanse at the top and came to a halt near the other cars. It was good to get out and stretch, though I was more apprehensive than ever, and Vermilion’s eager muttering didn’t help.

  “Watch yourself near the edge,” Brian said. “Sand makes the stone slippery, and water erosion constantly wears down the surface.”

  I stayed safely on the flat top, while Brian reached into the back of the jeep and brought out the big drum.

  “What’s that for?” I asked, my uneasiness growing.

  He answered casually enough. “Just a little atmosphere. Sometimes I play it out here where it belongs. Usually the Hopi heat the rawhide at a fire before they use a drum, since moisture makes the sound go flat. But the sun’s done that for me.” He heaved the drum under one arm and started toward the far edge of the rock. “Come along, you two. Better hang on to Marilla, Lindsay. She’s part goat, so don’t let her get away.”

  Marilla, however, showed a reluctance to climb down the rock. She hung back when I started after him down crude steps in the stone, and he stopped at the bottom to look up at her.

  “Coming, kid?” he asked.

  Still hesitant, she descended the steps, and we followed Brian in single file along the valley floor. Ahead of us, the nearest line of cliffs stood up like tall Egyptian statues carved in yellow-red rock. Under the high sun the color wasn’t as fiery as it could be under less brilliant light. These, I knew, were not the Fire People. I had a feeling I would recognize Jed’s rocks at once.

  Very quickly we were out of sight of the jeeps, picking our way on foot over chips of red stone as we approached the base of the cliffs. The sun beat down on us and the smell of juniper and pine was spicy hot, as though the very vegetation burned.

  Blocking our path before we reached the cliffs stood a small forest of blighted trees, grotesque in their deformity, charred where lightning had destroyed them. No sprouting of hopeful green touched these bare limbs. It was as though some unseen hand had set down this barrier of dead trees to give us warning. Come this far, but no farther. Vermilion was like a quivering inside me and I shivered as I followed Brian into the trees. When a reaching gray arm caught my hat and lifted it from my head, I cried out in startled dismay.

  Marilla ran to retrieve it. “The tree did that on purpose,” she said slyly. “It’s worse the closer we get, you know. I mean the rocks and the trees, and even the birds—they don’t want us here. You can hear one of those scrub jays scolding us now. They have to protect the secret place, if they can.”

  “Just the same, I’m going on,” I said, and she came with me, suddenly walking close, as though, for all her teasing, she feared to be left behind alone.

  Brian had reached the base of the cliffs and was scrambling up over loose shale, mounting a slope toward a thin crack in the rocky face.

  “Watch it,” he called back to us. “This stuff’s slippery, but we’re not going very high, so you needn’t worry about falling.” He seemed to disappear into the cliff as I looked up at him.

  My shoes were already smudged with red dust. The soles were sturdy and until now they’d clung securely to rock surfaces. There was no solid footing here, and I stepped with care, sometimes sliding backward, using my hands to pull me up wherever something solid offered.

  When I looked back at Marilla, I saw that her eyes were filled with the excitement of dread.

  “This is the secret way!” she cried. “Grandpa Jed found it and he showed it just to a few of us. He found another way too—a way up over the cliffs, though it’s dangerous, so he told me never to use it. Mom only came here once, because she hates this place.”

  Now that she was close, the urge to go through seemed to possess her and she lost all hesitation. Nimble as some small mountain creature, she scrambled up to the crack ahead of me and turned to wave a triumphant hand before she disappeared, just as Brian had done.

  A feeling that verged on panic seized me. My feet seemed locked to the stony earth. Not for anything would I climb into that black crevice—and vanish like the others. It was almost as though something atavistic stirred in me, warning me away. Vermilion was growing stronger by the moment, beginning to excite me, so that I had to struggle inwardly to resist her.

  Staring up at the cliff, I saw that at some time in the past erosion had opened several fissures in the stone. The one that served as the way in was partly closed at the top, due to a slippage of the worn rock. It looked so narrow that almost any jar might close it completely.

  Then, as I hesitated to trust myself to that slanting crack, a sound reached me, muffled a little by the rampart of the cliffs. A sound I knew all too well—the thudding of a drum. On the back of my neck the hairs rose, and I felt cold in the hot sun. I wanted to cry out, “No, Brian, no!” but I knew I could never be heard beyond the rock barrier and the rising beat of the drum. This was a beat that was different from what I’d heard before. Or from the sounds I’d tried to make with a wooden spoon on steel. It seemed oddly irregular, confusing the senses, promising and refusing, all in the same instant.

  Instinctively I knew that the most comfortable beat would be one that matched the human heart, the pulsing of blood in the veins. This beating of Brian’s drum ignored the natural pulse, yet was wholly insistent, as if calling me back to my own origins. Unsettling, demanding, as though a part of me knew and recognized—responded. The Indian part of me?

  I had to go on. The Fire People waited beyond the barrier, and that was where some destiny seemed to draw me. I had no will to resist.

  The muffled beating continued to summon, to demand, and I pulled myself up through the shale, clinging to any outcropping of rock, grasping at the juniper’s prickly growth. The crack, as I neared it, seemed wider than I’d thought, but it was still black in its depths, since rock had fallen in upon itself, and no sunlight seeped in from above. When I stepped through onto the narrow, stony floor of the gap, I could see light ahead—deflected light because the passageway turned in a zigzag path. On either hand the sides reached into darkness overhead and seemed to lean inward. I could see now that there must once have been a slit all the way up, where the erosion of great storms had worn it through. I had the horrid feeing that the slightest tremor would pitch those precariously balanced sides together, crushing me in a monster vise.

  The thought made me hurry toward the light. With my hands pushing against rock walls on either side, as though to hold them apart, I felt my way. This wasn’t a cave I had entered, but indeed a passageway that led past two turns into brilliant sunlight at last.

  “Come on!” Marilla called to me impatiently. “How pokey you are, Lindsay! Hurry up!”

  I squirmed through the last narrow gap and stepped into the relief of open air and the blaze of sun that fell into this pocket in the mountain. Marilla smiled and held out her hand, pulling me into the open.

  “It’s okay,” she said. “Mom didn’t come here, after all. There’s nobody but us. Isn’t this a wonderful secret, Lindsay? No—wait! Don’t look up yet. Look all around and get used to it first. And listen to Brian’s drum.”

  She was like her own unicorn, I thought, and tried to smile. Part of the time she was lost in make-believe, reveling in unreality. I couldn’t feel reassured as I looked around slowly, with no wish at all to raise my eyes to what awaited me.

  There was a mysticism in Brian that I’d only glimpsed before. His drum had taken on new and mysterious reverberations, and the echoes of the rock-enclosed space played them back like a hundred drums as the volume rose. The potency of the sound was terrifying. I couldn’t bear it—my head would split.

  “Stop!” I called to him. “Brian, please stop!”

 
; He stopped instantly, the padded beater with its beribboned end quiet on the rawhide, his hand silencing the vibrations. He had found a slab of stone a little way from the entrance crack and was sitting upon it, with the drum upright between his knees.

  “What was that rhythm?” I cried. “What does it mean?” The rock walls took my voice and clapped it back and forth in dying echoes.

  Brian wore the same lost look that I’d seen before, and there was wonderment in his voice as he spoke. “I’m not sure. My hand seems to know exactly the beat that’s wanted. This wasn’t anything I’ve ever tried before. Jed always said this was a haunted place, and I’m beginning to believe it.”

  I turned away, not liking the look in his eyes. A large clearing had been left at the heart of the great rock butte, like an oval jewel of red and green, mounted in stone. Its floor slanted unevenly and was rough with shale, the irregular rock cliffs rising all around.

  “Now you can look,” Marilla said softly.

  I raised my eyes slowly to the heights at which she was staring. There they were—as I had known they would be—but far more awesome and intimidating than I’d dreamed. Not even Jed had been able to capture them in his small sculpture as they’d stood here for—a million years?—staring out at eternity.

  Above me stood five immensely tall figures carved as if in cinnabar and clothed in long robes, the folds of which were lost in shadow-lined stone. The five heads were etched as clearly as though a sculptor’s mallet had been used in gigantic scale. Four of them seemed to me like Indian faces, belonging to the land, to the mountain, and they looked grandly out, far beyond our puny selves. The fifth figure—the central one—the one to which Jed had given the greatest prominence in his carving, was the Shining One.

  Its face glowed with blinding firelight as the sun moved up the heavens, spotlighting stone that was smooth and brilliant. Deep eyes looked only at the vaulted, burning blue, and they knew—everything. The sense of something beyond the human was overwhelming, and I couldn’t move. I could only stare, awed, speechless, not a little frightened.