by Win Blevins
Annabelle, she felt good and not good all at once. She looked scrumptious and smelt grand, just jimmy-joomy. When I looked close, even more when I touched her hand, I felt desire. Up to then I’d hardly even held hands with anybody, and nothing more atall. I was in my twenties and powerful hungry for a woman, as you might guess. Walking along, sitting on a log, talking, and all else I did with Annabelle that day, sure, I felt like slipping her clothes right off her body and slipping myself in. But I couldn’t get started.
For one thing, even while I was flirting with Annabelle, pictures of Sun Moon kept popping into my head, and sounds of her voice. It drove me half-crazy, touching and feeling one woman while seeing and hearing another, like being two men in two places at once. In later years I heard of a split personality. That’s what I was that day.
A lot of times in my life one half of me has blundered into trouble, and later I’ve wondered where was the other half, the wiser, smarter, altogether better half. When we went wading in the creek, it turned into one of those times.
We were looking for minnows. They are favorites of mine. Instead of critters of matter like the rest of us, they look like little flashes of sunlight in the water. So delicate, so fast, so quicksilver.
“Let’s catch some,” said Annabelle. She took hold of her skirt and tucked the bottom up so the cloth ballooned down about halfway.
I’d never actually caught any. In the Pfeffer family we didn’t hold with hunting, fishing, or just roaming around in nature. I felt kinda afraid Annabelle would show me up at this catching ’em.
She did, too. She waded in calf-deep where she saw them, bent low, and put in her hands halfway down in the water. Then she stood still as anything you ever saw. That girl took a crazy-kid grin on her face and turned herself into a rock.
After a long while the minnows would start swimming around just like before—they’d accepted her as a log that fell into the creek or some such. They began to pass right over her hand like it was a stick. She grinned even bigger and waited. Instead of being impatient, she seemed to wait longer than she needed to, just to show.
She moved swift as a hawk. Her hands shot straight on up, the minnow soared into the air above, and sparkling drops of water showered up with it. I could hardly see which gleam was minnow and which was droplet. Then both fell back into the creek, and the air was empty of all but sunlight.
“Crackajack,” says I, and clapped my hands sincerely. It was smart as a circus act.
“Let me show you how,” she says. So we did it together, side by side, touching hips sometimes and smiling like we had a secret. She did it twice more, and I loved seeing the fish fly. But they were quicker than me, and I came up empty.
“Let’s go over t’ere!” says she. We started splashing across the creek. Water might have been cold some times of years, coming out of the mountains to the southwest, but in summer it felt nice. Annabelle trotted ankle-deep to a log half in the water and started scrambling up. “Help me,” she says. I took her hand and supported her while she got onto her feet. “I want to stand all t’e way up,” she says, indicating her waist with her hands. I straddled the log and held her there.
She thrust her arms into the sky and let loose a call, long and lonely and beautiful. A loon call it was, she told me later, but I’d never been to the northern lake country and never heard a loon, before or since. She sounded to me like a mysterious and hauntingly beautiful bird that was looking for company. I wanted to call back, or whistle back, but I hesitated.
She shuffled to her right, got hold of a limb, and says, “Come on!”
I stood up next to her. She took my hand, let go the limb, raised her arms and mine to the sky, and stiff as a plank slowly toppled forward.
It was a hole. I came up flailing, and Annabelle was thrashing around beneath the surface.
I grabbed her under the back and the knees, turned, and hauled her up onto the sandy shore. I knelt and set her down but kept my arms underneath.
My feelings were doing loop-de-loops. What the hell are you doing? Don’t you know …?
Then I saw her thighs shiny wet, gleaming in the sun. Since she wasn’t wearing any bloomers, I saw them right up to where they stopped being thighs and turned into something else. I looked at her eyes, laughing. I looked at her smile, sparkling. I looked at her nipples, poking up against her thin bodice.
I slipped my hands out from underneath and put both my hands on her breasts and caressed them through the cloth. “Not here,” she said, “over t’ere. I saw a place.”
She hopped up and ran off. With no idea where we were going, I panted along behind.
You know what my fantasies were. They went beyond the most direct thing you think of. Lying around in the raw, too, letting the sun warm our bodies. Making love again. Walking our fingers everywhere, stroking our palms everywhere. Making love again.
Still at a trot, she headed up a little hill. I followed, clutching at her. Just before we got to the bushes at the top, I caught her. I pulled her to me and kissed her hard, with all the twisties you can put in a kiss.
She grabbed my hand and pulled me on. It was a cave she was aiming at, a long, low slit in the bluff.
I stopped cold, and resisted her tug. Cold wriggled in my belly. My mind churned with premonition. My eyes worked the darkness of the cave. They said, “No, Porter Rockwell isn’t in there.” My throat squeezed and said, “Yes he is.”
Annabelle looked questioningly into my eyes. The warmth of her hand melted my fear, and desire defeated the fear of death. I laughed aloud.
We dived in, wrapped our arms around each other, giggling, and rolled until I ended up on top. I looked into her eyes. The moment had arrived.
A voice said gently, “Annabelle.”
Root’s voice.
We looked deeper into the cave and saw Root and Reeshaw. They were in about the same position as us. Only Reeshaw’s trousers was already down, and Root’s legs were showing up to you know where.
Never did I lose my enthusiasm for anything in such a hurry. I sat back, stood up, and clunked my head. Annabelle looked at me queer-like, stood up, and clunked her head. We took each other’s hands and pulled each other down, sitting, to keep it from happening again.
Reeshaw began to chuckle.
“Would you two wait for us outside?” asked Root.
Reeshaw was laughing but trying to keep it quiet.
We scurried like crabs to the entrance and halfway down the slope. Pretty quick they came out.
“You see cave,” he said, “t’ink maybe good place to …” He gave a Frenchy shrug. “Make love.” They looked at us, they looked at each other, and they plumb lost control laughing.
“Too late!” says Reeshaw between guffaws. He slapped his knees. Root did the same. They shook. They laughed. “Too late!” Reeshaw roared. “We walk, we see same, we t’ink same. Cave in use!”
“Sandy bottom of a cave,” Root said. She looked into Isabelle’s eyes. “Good idea, daughter.” They whooped again.
I blurted it out. “Sir, I’ll marry her. I will, I swear.” Wonderful what a fella will say when his legs are jumping to run, isn’t it?
Reeshaw gaped at me. Then at Annabelle. Then he shook his head at Root, eyes laughing. Then his hands were laughing, too, and chest, and belly. “Marry!” he exclaimed. “A dalliance in a cave, incomplete, and marry!” He pronounced it dah-lee-awnse. “Hoo-hoo-hah!”
Not only were they were both laughing, Annabelle was grinning at me. She slipped her arm through mine and gripped my hand warmly again.
“Me when young like you,” said Root, “I do my dalliances. If marry all, make husbands like army.”
They got lost in whooping again.
Sweet gizzards.
Sun Moon didn’t think it was so funny.
Nobody told her, of course, or told anyone, but she had eyes. The young DeSelie girl took Asie’s hand when she felt like it, smiled at him possessively, put her arm around his waist. He obviously liked it. Loved
it. Worst of all, they had that moony look new lovers get.
New travelers had rolled into camp, and the people treated Asie and Annabelle as a couple. All the Americans were excited. Tonight the desert air would burst with music. Everyone would dance. Asie and Annabelle would dance together, their eyes so locked on one another that their gazes would be like ropes intertwining.
Sun Moon was disgusted. With him, with herself, with everyone. Lingam and yoni might be drawn to each other, but they were base energies, mere appetites. Asie ought to be pouring his energy into something more important, like his drumming.
When Asie walked toward the creek with a bucket, Sun Moon followed him. She spoke to his back as he dipped the bucket for water. “You go with them? Stay with DeSelie woman?”
Asie straightened up and looked at her. “What are you talking about?”
“The DeSelie woman. You go with her? With them? Or you stay with us?”
Asie stepped around her with difficulty, pulled down on one side by the heavy bucket. “Sun Moon, you and I and Sir Richard are crossing the desert to Californy. That’s that.” He kept walking.
“I think…”
Asie set the bucket down and turned back. “I know what you think. It ain’t so.”
She looked into his face. She couldn’t help wondering, Would it be so if I didn’t speak up? Were you thinking of it? She blinked, and hoped the deep twilight kept him from seeing the hurt on her face. Am I not as pretty? Do you hate my scar? Why would you take great trouble to help a foreigner like me?
Asie turned his back, hoisted the bucket, and lumbered off.
Sun Moon watched. What am I doing? I feel jealous—I can’t deny the feeling—and why? I don’t want Asie for myself. I am desperate, desperate to remain celibate the rest of my life.
She shrugged it off. Sometimes she didn’t understand herself. After meditation she didn’t understand better in her head, but she felt free of the negative feelings that got hold of her, like jealousy.
She walked into some boulders. Here she could be out of sight, private, to do her meditation and do the puja. She set the altar on a rock, put cedar and sage on it, and lit them with a match. She had discovered that cedar and sage made not a bad incense. She smelled the thick, rich odor of the plants and sat in the lotus position.
She spoke in a formal tone:
“O Mahakala! Thou art fond of cremation grounds; so I have turned my heart into one
That Thou, a resident of cremation grounds, may dance there unceasingly.”
Sun Moon did not merely repeat words lazily, but made herself think of their meaning. My very heart is the fire of a funeral pyre, she went on silently, in her mind. It is littered with the ashes of bodies. Trample the conqueror of death, and come dancing into my heart.
Sun Moon breathed in deep, and let all the air out. It was always hard for her to pray for the embrace of death. Yet if she were to pass beyond her fear of death, if she were to attain understanding that death and life are one, that destruction and creation are one, that mother and murderer are one, she must. Every day she prayed with half a heart, hoping that affirmation lay somewhere beyond.
She lowered her eyes to the dust at the foot of the boulder and began to pay attention to her breathing. After a few breaths the words came without her willing them: Om mani padme hung…
As usual, Sun Moon came to the fire for food only at the end of supper. Burton always disliked that, the way she kept herself apart. In his opinion it was both arrogance and self-effacement. Sun Moon put herself last. None of the white people took exception—the natural way of things, the way they saw it. They never realized that Sun Moon was testing, noticing, and judging. He watched her start her pot of tea. Every evening she made tea from a plant called ephedra and known commonly as Mormon tea. Long since she had learned that no one else would drink it. When the pot was on the fire, she helped herself to stew.
The stew was a great relief to Burton. Every night they ate the very salty jerked meat brought from Salt Lake City, which Burton detested. Tonight the DeSelies added prairie turnips (a root vegetable), fresh wild onions, and other vegetables. Harold gave a few pounds of potatoes. The DeSelies professed themselves grateful for the meat, which the captain thought scarcely credible, and Burton found himself cringingly grateful for anything other than briny meat.
Sun Moon sat alone on a low boulder, holding herself apart with the language of body and eyes. How graceful she was! Burton never tired of watching her. Her eyes spoke of serenity, her scar of violence.
“Sister,” he said in the Tibetan language, “may I join you?”
She smiled at him, and Burton sat on her rock.
“Sister,” he began, “I believe we will get to California. Three weeks to Virginia City, a rest, and from there a stagecoach to San Francisco. It doesn’t look difficult.”
“Porter Rockwell,” she said simply, eyeing Burton like a foolish child.
“Yes, I understand. After Brother Young keeps him a month, though, he’ll never catch us. If he even tries.”
She looked off into the twilight, her face unreadable. What has happened to this woman? Burton wondered. It was more than his fertile mind could imagine—the convent as a mere girl, a decade of learning, then the madness. Abduction, definitely. Rape? Probably. Shipment to Canton and across the Pacific. More rape? Perhaps. Escape. And now the journey back? Even a fanciful mind couldn’t wrap itself around all that.
I admire you.
“When we get to San Francisco, I will give you money. Passage to China is not an imposing sum. I see it as tribute your spirit commands.”
She looked at him, and he saw her mind move behind her dark eyes. Though she had a few coins, doubtless stolen, the amount was piddling. “Thank you very much, Sir Richard,” she said.
They held each other’s eyes.
At last she went on, “Would passage to India be possible?”
“Whatever you prefer. Where?”
“Calcutta,” she said.
Yes, the mouth of the Ganges. She was thinking of it as a pilgrimage. He wondered how good a conception her scholar’s mind held of the journey done that way. Calcutta, north through mountains to Bhutan, north again across the highest mountains in the world. Then Lhasa. Yes, he understood, she wanted to visit the holy city of her people, perhaps to see the Dalai Lama. But then a long journey eastward to Kham, her home country. More difficult than going through China.
She spoke with an edge he’d never heard. “I will not go near the Chinese.” Hatred. Yes, hatred. Fascinating. Burton gave thanks in his mind to Allah for the endless fascination that is the world. So a longer journey, but safer, and far more consoling to the spirit.
“I will give you funds, Sister.” In the firelight he thought he saw tears shine in eyes long dry. She turned away. So many ways to keep privacy, so many ways to avoid human contact, so many ways to hide the soul…
Burton didn’t know why, but he wondered whether she would go to Calcutta, Lhasa, and her home, the convent at Zorgai. So far, so many occasions for missteps, so many choices—opportunities as wide as the world itself. From Tibet to America, halfway around the globe—that was wildly improbable, more a fantasy even than the tales of Arabian nights he loved. Return trip? That pushed the mind from fascination to skepticism. He could not imagine it.
The fiddle struck the first notes. It called to the legs, “Come dance!”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
I eyed the newcomers. They were all men, a horseback outfit heading back to the States fast, everyone broke and dissatisfied. One of ’em said to me, “If I can ever get back to Missouri, I’ll gladly eat out of the trough with my hogs.”
Folks going West on the trail those years held Californy as a golden land, a place of fulfillment of dreams. You didn’t hear many good words about the place from the folks headed back East. Grumble, grumble, bitch, bitch. Why did the ones headed West keep going? Why didn’t they set themselves down, right there in camp, have a good think, and turn
around? The country between the deserts and Missouri was thick with buffalo—nobody would have starved going back. And plenty of good places between here and there to settle down.
It was partly the War Between the States. The talk of the West in those years was one of two subjects, war in the East, gold and silver in the West.
What I noticed was that people see dreams larger than what’s in front of their faces. Dreams have a powerful hold on us human creatures, for good and for bad. Jesus of Nazareth had a dream, they say. So did Joseph Smith. So did Genghis Khan. The question is, what’s the dream? What human feeling does it come from? I think Jesus’ dream came from love. Old Khan’s came from the lust for power. The California rush for gold and Washo rush for silver came from greed. That made all the difference.
At the time, though, I told myself us mismatched three were different. We were sensible.
Later I laughed at myself. No, the engines of our trip weren’t dreams. Sun Moon was only looking for a way to go home to Tibet. I was only looking to find the people I was born to, or figure where and how I belonged on this Earth. Sir Richard was only trying to get known as a big-time author and explorer. No dreams there!
When Reeshaw struck up the music, I grabbed my new banjo, new to me, and dived in with a frenzy of notes. Come! Get those feet going! Hoof it! Let’s have a big time!
Everybody cut it up handsome. Since the newcomers were all male, there was a right shortage of females. Every woman had a partner waiting for the next dance. Some of the men tied bandannas on their sleeves and danced the female part temporary-like. Annabelle was Jeehosaphat popular, of course, and didn’t she look jimmy-joomy! Second was Root. Instead of slowing her down, her years seemed to give her a kind of dignity and strength. Root had something that her daughter-in-laws hadn’t risen up to yet.