Vermilion

by Whitney, Phyllis A. ;

  “You might as well know, though I haven’t said anything about this to anyone else. Sybil came to see me mainly to talk about Brian. She claimed that he was making her very uncomfortable. I think she had a feeling that he was pushing her in some way, and she didn’t like it.”

  “I should think she’d have been the first to deal with him herself, if she didn’t like something he was doing. What does Brian say about this?”

  “I haven’t mentioned it to him. Finding Sybil dead has shaken him badly. He hasn’t talked to me much lately, and I’m getting worried. Sometimes I think Jed inoculated him with some of that anthropomorphism he went in for. Stone faces that could be human—or maybe inhuman. I don’t like it a bit. I never wanted him to get mixed up with Sybil. She always spelled Trouble with a capital “T”. I liked Jed some of the time, but toward the end he was off in another country.”

  Orva stood up, elbows thrust out aggressively, as though she wanted to hear no more questions.

  “I mustn’t tire you, Lindsay. Just be careful. You’re here because you talked too much at dinner last night. That’s obvious, isn’t it? I’m glad Rick’s trying to counteract that, though it may already be too late. He says you were bluffing. Were you bluffing, Lindsay?”

  “I’m afraid I was,” I said feebly. “It wasn’t very smart of me.”

  “Just hold to that,” she said, gave us both a sober wave of her hand, and went away.

  Alice took an apple from the basket Orva had left and cut a slice for me. Its juicy sweetness was refreshing. The scent of apples was more pleasant than hospital odors.

  “Why did you say what you did last night?” Alice asked.

  “I’m not sure.” Just the same, I was sure. When an impulse as strong as that came, I obeyed it. I’d never been able to resist.

  “It was Vermilion again?” Alice’s tone was matter-of-fact.

  “I don’t like to think that,” I said. “I hate to go around hearing voices in my head. Sometimes it happens. It happens as sharply as though someone very powerful has come to life inside me and has to be obeyed.”

  “She isn’t always right, is she?”

  “I don’t know. She was certainly wrong if she prompted me to say what I did.”

  “Perhaps you need to resist a little more. After all, you’re the one in control.”

  She sounded as sure about that as I wanted to be.

  “Just the same,” I told her, “I think Vermilion kept me alive last night.”

  “We all have inner ‘voices.’ Sometimes an instinct that cautions us, even though it doesn’t become as tangible as those you’ve experienced.”

  “Her name was written in dust on the coffee table,” I reminded Alice.

  “A voice didn’t do that. She’s part of you, Lindsay. You’ve just made more of a separation than most of us do.”

  That was true enough, but how was I to absorb Vermilion so that she’d never separate from me again?

  Clara Hale spoke from the doorway. “Is it okay if I come in?” Then, without waiting for an invitation, she walked into the room and sat down by my bed. Clearly, she was in a glowering mood.

  “How are you feeling, Lindsay?”

  The question sounded grudging, and I had felt better.

  “I’m all right,” I said. “I mean to get up soon and walk around.”

  “One thing ought to be clear to you by now,” Clara went on. “You’d better go back to New York as soon as you can. There’s been nothing but trouble here ever since you arrived. I’m beginning to think you brought a lot of it with you.”

  “Clara,” Alice said, and I heard an edge of warning in her voice.

  Clara paid no attention. Anger and indignation were driving her, and she began to spit them out at me. “They’ve taken Rick to Flagstaff for questioning. His pickup truck is the one that took Sybil out to that place. There’s not much doubt about it. And someone has hinted at his problems with Sybil. His motive is getting stronger all the time. We know he didn’t do it, but the police are closing in.”

  I shut my eyes and wished that I could close my ears as well against her words. Because all she was saying was true. I’d had nothing to do with the breakup between Rick and Sybil, though my coming appeared to have brought everything to an explosion. Sybil had been marching down an arrogant road of her own, and somehow she’d stepped into dangerous territory that had nothing to do with Rick.

  “I can’t go away until it’s over,” I said doggedly. “Have they arrested Rick?”

  “Not yet. I don’t think it will be long, unless something can be done.”

  Anger against injustice was beginning to strengthen me. “We have to do something to help him. I need to do something—not just lie here!”

  “Could be you’re a likely suspect too.” Clara was exploring now, maliciously.

  Alice had heard enough. “Lindsay isn’t feeling well, and you’re not helping, Clara. I think you’d better go now.”

  Clara had the sense to know that Alice could be her match if she chose. “All right then. I’ll get back to the store. Parker’s helping out, though even with Connie there, I can never be sure he won’t give away something he ought to be selling.”

  “Tell him I enjoyed his eggnog.” I could offer that, at least.

  “Hah!” Clara headed for the door, where she paused. “Good-bye, you two,” she said more mildly. “I’ll keep you posted on what happens.”

  When she’d gone, Alice closed the door. “You’ve had enough visitors for a while. See if you can sleep again.”

  Instead, I sat up on the edge of the bed and put my feet on the floor. “I’ve had too much sleep. Lying here doing nothing is making me feel worse than I need to. Do you think they can really arrest Rick?”

  “I don’t know. In the end it will come out that he’s innocent, but it can be unpleasant until then.”

  “That’s why we have to do something,” I said. “Alice, will you take me to Jerome?”

  “Right now I’ll take you to the end of the corridor and back.” She pushed my slippers near my feet and brought my robe. “We’ll talk about Jerome another time.”

  “But you know the house Sybil went to. You could take me there.”

  She was already shaking her head. “I’ll take you to Jerome, though I don’t see what good it will do. I won’t take you to that house. I know Mrs. Jessup and I’m fond of her. She’s old and not well. All she asks is to be left alone. Besides, I don’t see what possible answers she could give you.”

  “Sybil went there. Sybil got an answer—so she was killed. I think she meant to tell everything at dinner last night. And she would have, if she hadn’t been stopped.”

  “So now you’re going to ask for the same sort of trouble?”

  “This has to end.”

  “Of course. But not by getting yourself hurt.”

  “So what do you propose?”

  “I’d like to know why Brian is behaving peculiarly, and why Orva’s so worried about him. This could be a first step, but it can’t be hurried, either. Now I want to get something from my car. You’ll be all right for a while?”

  I wasn’t sure I’d ever be all right again. Whether I liked lying here or not, I had to rest until my head felt better and my energy returned.

  Out the window, white clouds drifted across deep turquoise. I watched them for a time, finding the slow, windless movement soothing. The land baked in the sun and I knew it would be warmer than in high Sedona. In spite of Alice’s words, there was one thing more I could try. I was not, after all, ready to let Vermilion go.

  When I closed my eyes, I was ready—quiet and waiting. I knew she would come. I had always depended upon her, and she had never really failed me.

  Almost at once, she was there against the darkness of my eyelids, her hair aglow, her lips parted with that familiar laughter that could ring through my mind.

  Help me, I said, though I knew the words had no sound. Help me to help Rick. Help me to find the answers.

&n
bsp; She flipped around in one of her graceful little dances, her bright hair flying. Think, she commanded. Concentrate.

  Stillness was all around me and I emptied my mind of all but Vermilion’s bright figure. I could see her shimmering in every detail, even while one part of me knew that if I opened my eyes she would be gone.

  Suddenly the word was there in my mind. Eggnog. Eggnog?

  I don’t know what you’re talking about, I told her. The eggnog was delicious. It made me feel better. Parker was hardly trying to poison me.

  Of course he wasn’t. She sounded impatient. You can be so slow. You really aren’t intuitive at all.

  She had only taken to picking on me lately, and it worried me.

  You’ll have to do better than eggnog, I said. What else?

  All right then, slowpoke! Why don’t you ask Brian about his lost love?

  This was certainly a fresh thought, though it didn’t seem to take me anywhere. Nevertheless, I knew that she—who was a part of my own mind—had the faculty of taking bits and pieces that were already embedded in my unconscious and adding them up to something new that hadn’t been grasped. This was the creative process at work. I mustn’t doubt it.

  Vermilion, of course, could read my thoughts, and was quickly impatient again, and resentful as well—in a new and disturbing way.

  Why do you have the right to be out there? Why are you the one Rick loves? Why should I be trapped in this little corner of your mind, when I could have such a fine time if you’d let me out?

  This was going too far. I opened my eyes, half-afraid that I might find her there in my hospital room. Thankfully, she was gone with a flick of my eyelids, and I was left with the new thought she had put into my mind. Brian’s lost love? I seemed to remember something someone had said … But this was hardly of any use, since every man probably had a “lost love.” And I didn’t know what Brian’s had to do with anything. Nor did the word “eggnog” make any more sense. In the end, it was I who had thought these things, I reminded myself. Why?

  I sat by the window, still puzzling, when the banging started on the door that Alice had closed behind her. Not a light tapping that someone might use in a hospital, but a peremptory knocking that demanded access at once.

  “Come in,” I called.

  Brian opened the door and walked in explosively. He came straight to where I sat and bent over me angrily. Yet the moment he touched my shoulder, I knew his anger was not for me.

  “I just heard,” he said. “Are you all right, Lindsay? I’ve been away—all night. When I came home Ma told me what had happened. So I came straight over.”

  He’d grasped my hand with an intensity that crushed my bones, and I drew back from him. “You’re hurting me, Brian.”

  “I would never want to hurt you,” he said. “Never, Lindsay. You’ve got to believe that.”

  “All right, I believe it. I’m not feeling very strong right now, and I wish you’d sit down and be quiet.”

  In a moment he had brought a chair from the other side of the bed and placed it near me—independent even about where he sat, his eyes hardly moving from my face.

  “Are you really all right?”

  “No,” I said. “I feel dizzy, and I had a terrible fright. I might have been killed.”

  “Yes, I know. Ma said it was just luck you weren’t killed.”

  “Where did you go last night, Brian, after you left me?”

  For a moment he hesitated, then gave in to my question. “I went out there. I put a sleeping bag in one of the jeeps and drove out to the place of the Fire People. I went through the crack in the rocks and spent the night in there. There was just enough light so I could see the faces looking up at the stars.”

  Though he was trying to contain his excitement, I sensed it surging up in him.

  “Why, Brian? Why did you go there?”

  “Because that’s where the truth is. It’s been marked into the rocks. A bloody happening must leave some sort of psychic stain, and that place, especially, would be sensitive. So I wanted to be close to it, to feel it run through me. I needed to live it, so I could understand—everything.”

  I wished Alice would return. His excitement was disturbing, whatever it was that drove him.

  “What did you learn?” I asked.

  “I’m not sure. I looked up at the Shining One until I couldn’t stay awake any longer. When I slept, I dreamed in strange ways that I’ve never experienced before. I think I lived through it all. I lived through everything that happened there with Sybil. She had a reason for trying to climb that column of rock. She must have have been terrified and trying to get away from whatever threatened her. But in my dream there was more. All the answers were there and perfectly clear. Terrible answers. When I woke up, it was daylight. I was cold, and all my dreams were gone. I found the answers, Lindsay—and then I lost them. So I just stayed for a while, hoping they would come back to me.”

  “You stayed all day?”

  “Sure, I wanted answers about me, too. I’ve done some pretty strange things, and I’d like to know why. I don’t always understand what drives me.”

  “I wonder if any of us do.”

  “Anyway, I’d brought something to eat and a thermos of coffee, so I could be comfortable enough. This morning I heard the police coming back so I crawled into one of those crevices of rock and listened. They were talking about Rick. Has he been arrested?”

  “Clara was here a little while ago, and she said they’d taken him to Flagstaff for questioning. He hasn’t been arrested.”

  “I was afraid they’d do that, Lindsay. After the sun came up this morning and I could see, I made a gift for you. Though I didn’t know you’d be in a hospital when I gave it to you.”

  He reached into his jacket pocket and brought out a flat piece of red rock on which primitive symbols had been carved. I examined it, puzzled.

  “It’s the mark of your clan,” he explained. “The Cloud or Water Clan that Silvercloud belonged to, as well as Rainsong.”

  So Brian knew about this, though he’d never mentioned it before. But then, he had been Jed’s protégé long ago.

  He went on. “Among the Hopi, the woman is very important, you know. She’s the heart of the family, the dwelling, the field. The man builds the house and cultivates the field, but it’s the woman who’s the owner, and she repairs the house and keeps it clean, and when the harvest is ready, it’s given into her hands. Everything belongs to her. Even when the man speaks of these things as his, everyone knows they’re not. Even the family name comes down through the woman, and when a man marries he goes to live with his wife’s family. The Cloud Clan symbol is those three clouds, with the concave sides down, and lines below representing falling rain. Rain is more important than anything else in the Southwest.”

  I turned the rock about in my hands, feeling strangely moved that Brian should have done this for me.

  “I was thinking about you when I was out there.” He spoke more quietly now. “About how everything has changed since you came.”

  I winced because these were Clara’s words, though she’d intended them harshly.

  He shook his head despairingly. “I didn’t want to follow Sybil around anymore, no matter what she could do for the things I believe in. Without saying anything, you made me a little ashamed of the way I’d acted—playing up to her.”

  I felt ashamed, because I hadn’t thought of him very much at all—or only in passing because he was a rather strange young man.”

  “Thank you for making this for me,” I said.

  He reached out to touch my hand lightly. “Last night I thought about you almost as much as I did about what had happened there.”

  Whatever Vermilion had meant by Brian’s “lost love,” he was apparently well over her by now, and I must put a stop to this.

  “Don’t think about me, Brian. Not that way.”

  “Oh, I know. You’re already Rick’s girl aren’t you?”

  I said nothing, and sudd
enly he grinned at me. “That’s right—you’re part Hopi, and a Hopi never tells all.”

  We could smile at each other more easily, and for the first time since he’d stormed into my room, I could relax a little. I wouldn’t ask him about his lost love, but I remembered the other strange thing Vermilion had put into my mind.

  “Parker Hale was here a while ago,” I said, “and he brought me a thermos of the most delicious eggnog.”

  “Ah? The famous eggnog!”

  “You know about it?”

  “That eggnog was the cause of a terrible fight between my mother and Sybil a couple of years ago. Or at least I suppose it was an excuse for a fight that Ma had been spoiling for. Silliest thing I ever heard. It was on Christmas when we were having open house, and Sybil said she’d bring eggnog. Only her recipe didn’t suit Ma. So they practically had a shouting match over which recipe to use. It’s a good thing Rick was around to settle it before they got violent. He said to put both recipes together—and that’s what’s been served around here ever since. It was such a success that Sybil gave it to Parker when he came to Sedona. So that’s what you undoubtedly got—the Adams-Montgomery eggnog.”

  I tried to smile at his story, but I wasn’t satisfied. What was it, really, that Vermilion had been trying to tell me? What was buried in my unconscious that I didn’t know how to get at? I shifted gears and made a direct request. If I wanted to do this, I knew I must ask before Alice returned.

  “Brian, can we try to help Rick? Will you drive me to Jerome tomorrow?”

  He was suddenly still. “Why don’t you ask Alice to take you? Since she knows the old woman.”

  “Alice doesn’t want me to bother Mrs. Jessup.”

  He thought about that for a moment, and then agreed reluctantly. “I suppose I can take you, if that’s what you want. But it’s not going to help. You couldn’t possibly talk to her the way she was—if she’s even alive by this time. Anyway, do you think you’ll be up to it?”

  “I’ll be up to it. I have to be. Will you pick me up here, and then perhaps you can drive me back to Rick’s afterward?”