The Rock Child

by Win Blevins

  I sat up. The world swirled right. I propped an arm out. The world swirled left. I laid back on the sand.

  “I love you,” I said. I thought that over and repeated it. “I love you.”

  “Are you all right?”

  “Never felt better in my life.”

  “OK,” she said in English.

  I wished she would hold me again. I couldn’t remember the last time a woman held me. Sure, I knew what that feeling was now. I loved her. Oh my but didn’t I love her.

  Sun Moon looked into his face, transported.

  “What’s your name?” the red man asked.

  Sun Moon hesitated, wild with strangeness. “Are you all right?” she repeated. The man was strange, and she was strange to herself. I embraced him. Only to warm him, to be sure. I put my chest against his and wrapped our legs together. And I felt like our bodies left the ground and hovered in the air together.

  “Are you all right?” Sun Moon didn’t know that she was all right.

  “Sure,” he said, lolling his head back. “Never felt better in my life.”

  Sun Moon regarded him and called upon herself to live in the ordinary world. Who are you? A red man, they would call him in America. Yet his skin, his hair, his face reminded her of…

  Who am I? Her body felt strange to her, changed. She required herself to be normal.

  “Where do you come from?”

  “I come from the other world, where I saw the spirits.”

  Sun Moon shuddered.

  “Just now,” he assured her. “I heard their song. It is the music of the universe. The stars.” He spoke casually, with a smile, as of matters serious but also light.

  You came from the river, half-drowned, I can see that. Deliberately, she brought her mind and body under control. She saw truth in his face. Now was the time to …

  “What’s funny is, I didn’t know the words. I mean, the language. I didn’t know what language …” He fell silent and smiled, smiled like a Buddha, like he was receiving a great blessing. She watched his face in amazement.

  “What race are you?”

  He only smiled his Buddha smile.

  Yes, an Indian, you will say. But the dress of a white man. And the features of one of my people. You are returning from …

  “Are you an oracle?” She trembled. It was a reckless question. Yet the look on his face … He said he was returning from the land of the spirits. She had seen that look before, on the face of the Oracle in a prophetic trance. Also on the face of an uneducated monk, a primitive lama more Bön-po than Buddhist, in a tiny village. If this red man was an oracle, that might explain why her body felt strange.

  “Are you a pawo?” A medium of the old religion Bön-po.

  Suddenly he began to shake, violently. He turned over onto his belly, pulled himself onto his elbows, then collapsed onto the sand. He shook, shook like a prayer flag in a gale. He moaned.

  Are you going to die?

  She reached for him, rolled him over. He had no consciousness of her. She checked to see that he had not swallowed his tongue and was not choking on it. She hesitated. She looked at his face. His body had gone limp, and he seemed to be sleeping.

  Something precious here. She felt an idea in her body. Then she sat close, stretched out next to him, and wrapped the stranger in the warmth of her arms and legs. Which felt wonderful to her. She had never touched a man so intimately, or held anyone so close, at least not since she was a child.

  She felt the rhythmic breathing of his sleep. She felt her own breathing fall into the rhythm of his, and felt her body relax deeply. She almost felt like saying, “I love you.”

  3

  I spat it out. Tea, I supposed, but it tasted strange. I stared at the stain in the dust. Very spicy, very weird.

  The woman sat staring at me. “Ginger,” she said. “It restores vigor. I have no yersa gungbu.”

  I rolled over, crawled a couple of steps to the river, sucked water in, and spat it out, like I wanted to do her funny words.

  I looked up and down the Bear River. Yes, I was still on Bear River, even if a China Polly was next to me. I drank from the river, took its sweetness into my belly.

  I looked up and down Bear River with different eyes. It would never seem the same. This river took me to the edge of the world of death and brought me back. I was still on its banks, but it was not the same place. I was not the same man. I sat up.

  The edge of the world of death.

  Life looked different to me now.

  Death did not seem frightening.

  China Polly held a ball of dough toward me. I took it in both hands, felt of it, and held it to my nose. I always loved it when Mrs. Pfeffer baked and I got to eat the dough.

  Love. Yes, love, that’s what this China Polly and the whole world were reminding me of right now. But I had no idea what sort of love. Might be the usual sort a man feels for a woman. (Those days I’d had no physical experience of that.) Might be the sort you feel for a sister or mother. Might be the spiritual sort the bishops talk about. I couldn’t tell. But love was what it was, all right.

  She smiled at me and pantomimed eating. I tried the dough, and it was buttery and good.

  Deliberately, I didn’t look at China Polly. I kept my gaze on the dough and on my own insides. I had a lot to think on. Not just the love but what happened in the river.

  The spirits of the water came to get me. They rose like white horses tossing their heads and stampeded over me.

  They took me to the bottom of the waters. There all was surpassing strange. I was in no danger. It was a place to …

  I didn’t have the words. The death of the river had felt… jimmy-joomy, which is to say wonderful and more than wonderful.

  I recognized in myself the urge to name my experience in the fancy words the Mormons used to describe the revelations of Joseph Smith, or their own ecstasies. The words I heard—were the voices speaking in tongues?

  Now, I had never taken seriously the Mormons speaking in tongues. Still, I couldn’t help wondering. Maybe there was some other world, one seen only with an enchanted eye.

  I swam in the river like a creature of the waters. I swam through huge times and huge spaces, ages and worlds.

  I sipped the tea again. I had a sense that I’d seen and heard magical places and doings I could no longer remember. I looked at the river. The ages and worlds weren’t there. I knew I couldn’t recapture those sights and sounds by jumping back into the water. But maybe, maybe …

  This world seemed dull. Next to the river world, very dull.

  The tea didn’t taste so bad now. I held the warm liquid on my tongue and savored it. China Polly isn’t dull.

  I had heard a new music. I pondered that, a new music. I could whistle any music I heard, but not that stuff.

  I swallowed all the tea.

  When I fetched up on this bank, I was still hearing the music.

  I thought on that.

  Where is it now?

  Easy-like, I searched my mind for some sounds. I had them, I did remember, sort of. They were far from the same, though. I wondered whether my memory was a little off, or this world was off. The music sounded truly glorious only in the other world.

  If I whistle the music aloud, it will come out… different. But I didn’t want to make the music out loud, not again. China Polly would think I was for the loony bin. I swallowed. I pondered.

  “Thank you, China Polly. Thank you very much for helping me.”

  “Not Polly,” she said. “Sun Moon.”

  “Sun Moon,” he repeated absently. Odd, how gentle and sweet this red man’s spirit felt, almost like … Are you a pawo? Surely a red man in this unenlightened land … A pawo of the primitive Bön-po, not an oracle of the Mahayana.

  Sun Moon felt wildly confused. Was it right to tell him my name? One part of her mind screamed, HE MAY BE ONE OF THE HUNTERS. Sun Moon had no illusions about what the hunters on her back trail would do.

  She took a deep breath, mind
fully, and let it out.

  Another part of her mind was thrilled. The world was spirit, and spirit was everywhere, but… My gods have abandoned me. Except for Mahakala. And this young man comes bearing spirit, so …

  Protect him. Nurture him. Stay with him. Let him nurture me.

  “Sun Moon.” I chuckled. “What a funny name.” I looked at my companion. A youthful face, a beautiful face. Then, somehow for the first time, I noticed the great scar. I looked at her face again, carefully. Pure. Simple. Pretty. And a big scar, above and below the eye, like two big dashes.

  I looked into the western sky. Now the moon had set, and only the day star held forth in the sky. I thought, The time is in joint.

  I brought my mind back and regarded Sun Moon. The eye split by the scar looked bright and alert, somehow even brighter than the other eye. I thought, Sun, moon. Like the two stars in the daylight sky this morning, two stars that do not belong together, things in conflict yoked together.

  I smiled to myself. I’d never seen a Chinawoman close, and sure never imagined looking at one like this.

  Something in my heart moved. Opened.

  “Sir,” said Sun Moon in a soft, high, melodic voice. “You must eat more. Danger. Cold.” Sun Moon clasped her elbows with her hands and mimed shivering.

  I smiled big. How did you get here? I went to another world and brought back a Chinawoman. I chuckled. “Hey, you didn’t tell me your name, Mrs….”

  Mrs.! He’s seen through my disguise. He knows! Sun Moon took off her felt hat, but she resisted throwing it down disgustedly.

  She studied the red man. He knows. But he can’t be one of the hunters.

  Sun Moon called on the iron band to hold down the emotion. She wanted to stay near this man. She was a scholar-nun, hoping to become a teacher of Mahayana philosophy at the great lamasery at Zorgai, celebrated for scholarship. Her special interest was the history and development of Mahayana, including its roots in primitive religious thought, such as the Bön religion of her country. Though as a woman she would never have the degree geshe, she hoped to make a reputation as a scholar. And before me is a red man with a gift of spirit! What a discovery! The student in her trembled. What is his gift? Prophecy? Healing? The hairs of her head itched.

  Hairs of my head! Her chest clutched. My hair should be cut short. I am no longer a nun. I am… She didn’t know what. No longer a nun.

  CHAPTER SIX

  1

  “We cannot go, Sir, must rest.”

  I looked into Sun Moon’s extra-bright eye. “OK,” I said.

  If I asked just my body, in fact, I felt OK to travel. But I didn’t want to. I wanted to talk to this rare bird of Asia. Or lie back and hear the new music, the songs of the river. Anyway, where would I go? My job was gone, my connection to the Saints was gone, and the wide world stretched before me.

  “OK,” I repeated.

  Sun Moon tugged at my sleeve and motioned with her head. I followed easy. She led me a few yards to a spot in the willows where brown fabric was spread, peculiar cloth. A low fire was burning, a camp made. I looked at Sun Moon hard. You’re hiding and sleeping during the day, I realized. Who you running from?

  “Get off wet clothes,” said Sun Moon. “Wrap up. Rest.”

  I waited for Sun Moon to turn her back, then stripped. “How you tell I be woman?” she asked.

  I chuckled. That getup was supposed to make me think she was a man? “Everything about you is woman.”

  I rolled up in her brown cloths. Sun Moon looked at me kinda queer when I did that. Then she turned back and sat leaning against a rock. “I dress like man,” she said, “fool many. Even queue hair.” She pointed to her pigtail.

  If she wanted to know how I knew, I couldn’t help her. “You look like all woman to me.”

  She’s also just plain afraid, I said to myself. Once in a while, maybe without her knowing, her left hand touched her scarred eye. Other times it touched her shirt at the waist. I was tempted to say, “Never mind the knife—you won’t need it against me.”

  Bear’s ass! All of a sudden I knew something else I’d brought back from the other side. I wasn’t afraid. Didn’t know if I’d ever be afraid of nothing again. So her knife just made me smile.

  Also, I knew things, and I sure knew Sun Moon meant me no harm.

  I smiled big to myself. I rolled up in her brown robes and laid back on the sand. But I had no intention of sleeping. I felt alert. I felt like my senses and mind and heart and whatever other organs we use for knowing was wide-open. I needed to ponder. My old life was done for. I had seen something. I’d felt something with my whole being. I had heard music, sacred music. Who had borne it to my ears? The river and the birds. Especially, now I thought about it, the birds that live on the river or by the river, specially the eagle and my friend the fish hawk.

  “We cannot go,” she had said. I grinned wide as the prairie. Where would I want to go? Working as a clerk in the mere—what could be more far-fetched than that? Preposterous, that’d be the bishop’s fancy word for it. I rolled my shoulders and scrunched my back against the sand.

  What would I do?

  I had no idea. Somehow that tickled me. I smiled at the sky. Wasn’t the sky where my music came from?

  Then I shivered. I felt tingles of delight and fear at the same time. For the first time in my life I felt free.

  Heckahoy, I’d heard about freedom all my days. I’d been taught the American people fought a revolution to break free of the British. I’d been taught the Saints came clear to Deseret to break free of the prejudice and violence of the gentiles. I’d been raised by Mormons to be free of the superstitions of my own people, whoever they were. I’d gotten an education so I could be free of the shackles of old ways of thinking.

  Then, all educated up, what did I do with my life? After I was given to the Saints, I went faithfully to the meeting house with the family twice a week, did chores, went to school when I got enough English, worked toward my endowments, and labored in the mere. I was white as could be. Except that the Saints did not treat me as white and delightsome but as a Lamanite, a person whose dark skin showed I’d been cursed. I myself had no memory of being anything but white.

  What kind of half-Injun could I be? The ones the Saints knew out in Washo were Shoshones and Diggers. When I first talked to Shoshones, I didn’t recognize their language, so that didn’t seem right. And Diggers, I found out all sorts of tribes lived out in Washo, and the whites called them all Diggers, no matter who they were related to or what language they talked. So I’d come to a blind alley on that search.

  Ever since the Pfeffers told me I was adopted, which sure made me mad at the time, I had not a notion who I was.

  The next thought jolted me. I looked soberly at Sun Moon sitting against the rock. In the whole wide world I penned up my mind in this place with these Mormon folks and in their one language, their one way of understanding. Not a whit of it was my own, not by birth, not by belief.

  A whirligig feeling dizzied me. I felt lost. I had let go of everything that gave my life shape, so was utterly lost.

  I shivered. I thought, I’m free. For the first time in my life I’m free.

  I chuckled. Or am I lost?

  I grinned at Sun Moon. The Chinawoman appeared to be far, far away in her mind. Maybe in China. Maybe I will go to China.

  I felt silent laughter coming up in me like bubbles. I stretched. I was tickled. I felt like whistling. Free. Lost. Free-lost!

  2

  The music rang. It rang from everywhere in the world to everywhere in my mind, which was the world. It was birds and bells, accompanying a single voice. The voice was the purest I’d ever heard, neither male nor female but somehow both at once. It reverberated like a bell in a tower. I heard it less with my ears than with my bones, my body, my entire consciousness. It was exquisite, soul-satisfying, a fountain of sound would go on forever, easy, bubbling over and over, tumbling on itself, forever creating beauty, forever healing.

 
I started awake. I’d heard myself singing. I had no idea of the words—or even whether the meaning was borne in words—but I’d felt the music ringing out of me.

  Sun Moon was watching me. She had the extra alertness of the hunter, or the hunted, I couldn’t say which.

  So. I’d cut loose with the music. I brought it into this everyday place. I didn’t know whether that was good or bad, dangerous or safe, healing or destroying.

  I ought not to do it. I want to do it.

  I squirmed. I didn’t know … I didn’t know anything yet. I needed to wait. But wait for what? Just wait.

  I looked into Sun Moon’s extra-bright eye. That eye felt like a dagger now. “You think I’m crazy, don’t you?”

  “No,” she said, “not crazy.” Sun Moon considered. Her scar was hurting. That meant, she’d learned over the months, she was in danger. Or at a crossroads, danger one way, opportunity the other.

  What should she tell this strange man, this piece of flotsam washed up, about what she thought? Crazy, no, except that divine madness was still madness. As for particulars, he would not know what a pawo was. Or a dervish—she had seen wandering dervishes in her country, Moslem initiates of ecstasy. This stranger had their look, something in the eyes far, far away, a light no one else could see. Such people could cross to the other side and come back. Some said they escorted souls to the place of the dead. The young man would know nothing of this. He had a gift, and had not begun to plumb it. She knew more about his spirit in some ways than he did.

  Of course, she had only book knowledge. Like many scholars, she did not have a gift, she had merely studied it. Nor had she felt the need of it. She liked the simplicity and clarity found in meditation. No mysteries of ecstasy for her. They felt… hard, inimical.

  “No,” she repeated, “you are not mad.” She studied him. What to say? She was fascinated.

  The pain in my scar. With a lurch she corrected herself. I must think practically. I am not a scholar, not even a nun. I need help.

  She touched her scar where it came out of her eyebrow, where it sometimes hurt. That was comforting somehow. Then she saw. Yes. Wonderful. Yes. She ventured tentatively, “We could help each other.”