by Win Blevins
He looked back and forth from side to side and spread his stance. That left leg looked a little uncomfortable. “No need for more’n one person to die here. Unless I start recollecting what nuisances some of you has been. Which I likely will.”
His eyes licked at us like a snake’s tongue.
Rockwell surveyed them. He had caught them with nothing in their hands but their peckers, and them shriveled, all the way shriveled.
“We thought you were dead,” said the man known as Gentleman Dan. The sucker Gentleman Dan, the blaster Gentleman Dan.
Rockwell nodded to himself. It felt satisfying, very satisfying. “I meant you to.”
“You found us through Kirk?” Gentleman Dan demanded.
Rockwell grinned and nodded. “A man that’s for sale is for sale to all.”
Rockwell could near see the Gentleman and the John Bull settling in their mind to get square with Tommy Kirk. Good! You buggers think on that. As long as I let you think at all.
Asie got up. Rockwell tracked him with the scattergun as he backed off and eased sideways toward the log-pile divider. The gun followed the breed, but the gunman’s eyes clicked back and forth from him to the others. You ain’t coming closer. He knew that would get him killed in a jiffy. What do you want? Barefooted, the breed struggled to the top and tenderfooted on toward the woman. The bitch.
Rockwell smiled. “You think that’ll be more comfortable for her, dying with a naked man close by?” He chuckled. “You think them buckshot will feel any different tearing through the skin and ribs and lungs and heart if you’re near? Or the blood will spill out slower?”
Sun Moon got to her feet. Rockwell pointed the shotgun at her, and said, “That’s far enough.”
The breed kept moving toward her. Now Rockwell understood. “You wanna stand in front of her? You wanna die with her? You wanna hold her and both of you die?”
Rockwell uttered a laugh so low and growly he thrilled at the menace of it. “Wha’ for? You ain’t even humped her. She don’t let nobody have that precious pussy. That pussy is give up to Buddha or whoever. Ain’t none other gonna have none of it.”
He watched them, but their faces stayed blank. The little bastard better not have had her. The beast rage rose up, turned once in his belly, and settled back down, watching.
Sun Moon held up a hand toward the breed, gentle-like. He stepped back onto the pile.
Rockwell cackled. “You wanna fight me alone, little lady? You gonna keep big bad Porter from hurting you?”
He flung the shotgun to his shoulder and KA-BOOMED!
She flinched at the sound. Dirt and rock flew up at her feet, and stung her shins. She looked down and saw her loose cotton pants were torn. She knew thin streaks of blood ran down her shins. She was struggling to regain the balance in her mind, after the explosion.
I know the way. It may be my death, I can’t know that, but I know the way. And it is the truth. She looked inside herself and considered Porter Rockwell, a man. She told herself, This is what it means, compassion for all sentient beings.
Knowing, she began. “No,” she said, “I am not going to fight you. And I am not going to run. I am not going to resist in any way. Perhaps you will kill me.”
“Perha-a-ps!” he drawled mockingly.
He switched the scattergun to his left hand, drew the revolver in his belt, and fired—WHAM!
She heard the death metal whip past her ear.
The noise jangles me. If I fail, if I lose my truth, it will be the noise.
She took a moment to focus. I am filled with compassion for all sentient beings. That includes Asie, our friends, myself and Porter Rockwell.
“I going tell you the truth,” she said.
Now Rockwell howls with laughter. “The TROO-OO-OOT?” In a flash he rearranged his face into a sinister scowl. “‘Pilate said unto him, “What is truth?” ’”
She looked at him neutrally, not knowing that name.
“I going tell you the naked truth,” she said, and started lifting her blouse. This is what I must do, show the truth, tell the truth. I accept death, and I live the truth.
Porter Rockwell was eating her with his eyes now. Strange feelings raged in him. And not lust, he noted, teasing himself.
She pulled her blouse off. Her breasts were small, and the rosy nipples looked terribly vulnerable. She shivered.
“The truth,” she said, “is that your spirit is alive. The truth is that you are in agony. And the truth is, I can feel your pain.”
She threw the blouse on the ground.
“Su-u-u-ure you can,” he mocked. He didn’t sound quite convincing to himself. To buck up, he lifted the revolver and—SCHLAM!
She quivered, and slipped out of her shoes.
“The truth is, you didn’t save the man you loved. The truth is, it wasn’t your fault, and it didn’t kill you.”
She bent and pushed her trousers to her knees. There was nothing under them. Look at her perky little bush, he told himself, but it didn’t feel convincing.
“The truth is, you killed when they told you to. The truth is, every person you killed was you.”
She stepped out of her trousers and stood in the sunlight, stark naked, facing Porter Rockwell.
“The truth is, you hate yourself. And that is killing you.”
Now she started padding toward him. A step. Three beats of stillness. A step. Two beats of stillness.
“The truth is, what you shoot out of your gun barrels is your hatred of yourself.”
Three steps. Four.
“The truth is, when you shoot, the person you shoot is you. Every time.”
Seven steps. Eight.
Rockwell slipped the revolver into his belt. He raised the shotgun.
Ten steps. Halfway.
“The truth is, the Church didn’t care about you. They told you to kill. They asked you to become a murderer.”
Rockwell snugged his eye tight on his shoulder, looking down the barrel. She was still walking.
“So every day, in your anger, you despise yourself.”
Sun Moon’s bare flesh filled his vision. Sun Moon’s words filled his mind. His finger stroked the trigger up and down.
“Every day you hate me, every day you hate the people you killed, every day you hate the Church, every day you hate yourself.”
Sun Moon started up the logs, and her chest filled his eyes. His caressing finger stilled on the trigger, and tightened. “Porter Rockwell, you are drowning in hatred. You can stop. You can save yourself. Only you can save yourself.”
He raised the barrels until they trained on her neck.
She stepped forward, and he felt the nudge through the shotgun. The flesh of her neck was actually touching the muzzle. How cold does it feel, the metal of your death?
“Porter Rockwell,” she said evenly, “I feel compassion for all sentient beings. I love every creature that lives. I love myself. I love you.”
He looked up into her eyes. He wondered what those words had cost her. He imagined exactly how her head would look, flying backward off her body, spurting blood.
“In the name of your love for yourself I ask you. Save yourself.”
He straightened up. He held her eyes with his.
He pulled the trigger.
KA-BLOOM!
For an instant I saw what I feared to see, blood and gore.
Then I saw that they were still gazing at each other, the man in black, huge, and the small, naked woman.
Rockwell had shifted the barrel off to the side.
The gun was empty!
I took one running step. Sun Moon held up both hands—STOP!
I saw Sir Richard had sprinted a couple of steps, too, but he stopped.
Within reach those two, nun and killer, gazed at each other.
Porter Rockwell put the muzzle back in her face. He shaped the words clearly in his mind, saw them clear as on a sign. You’re crazy beyond crazy with your talk of love. But all the armies of the world ain’t g
ot as much guts as you.
He smiled lightly, thinking he could still kill her anyway. Courage is a rare thing.
He dropped the shotgun. It clattered idly on the rocks.
He looked at her a little more. Without any gesture, even a nod, he stalked off. He walked down the log pile and into the trees.
I ran up to the logs to Sun Moon. We watched Porter Rockwell walk away. Somewhere in the watching she took my hand. It never struck me until later that we were perfectly naked, all of us. The last we ever saw of Porter Rockwell was the black of his duster fading into the shadows.
Porter, if you’re still out there, I wish you well.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Sun Moon walked slowly toward her clothes. Every man of us done likewise. We dressed in no hurry but silent. Before long we climbed up the log pile and looked at each other. We looked deep into Sun Moon’s eyes, and she into ours. Then, still silent, we walked toward the lodge.
We left the shotgun laying where it was. I don’t know who ever did pick it up.
Us men went inside to have coffee. Sun Moon went somewhere to meditate. In a few minutes my nerves began to unwind. A while after that I actually laughed. And a while after that I remembered tonight was when Giver was to give me the big news. I guessed my nerves were loose enough for anything now.
Giver made me wait to hear it. We drank sociable coffee first. Then we ate. Then we drank coffee again. It was all I could do to hold my water.
Will they own me as a Washo or not?
And, “Do I want to be a Washo or not?”
Appeared to me Sun Moon, Sir Richard, and Daniel were nervous as me. Of the supper guests, nobody was relaxed but Paiute Joe, who was sweetly unreadable.
Finally the pot ran dry. Giver shook the last grounds onto the grass and set his cup down. I wished the coffee cup was like the Indian pipe—if you smoked it, you couldn’t tell anything but the truth.
Giver signed to Paiute Joe, and I read the signs themselves, “My friend, we do not think you are a Washo.”
A squish of feelings came over me, no way to describe them.
He regarded me with gentle eyes. “It is not just because you do not speak our language, or recognize it, when any Washo mother would have given her child her tongue from the moment of birth. It is more than that.”
He took thought for a moment. “It is more because no one remembers a woman who went to the whites. We are a small band, a few main families only. I do not know the name of every Washo, but I think I recognize them all. If a woman went to the whites, we would know. Yet my grandsons went to the head of each band, and no one remembers such a thing. No family has lost anyone to the whites, especially not a woman of the age to bear children. We would remember. Our women are precious, and our children are precious.”
Now he turned to Daniel. “My friend, I think there is a mistake here, a mistake not hard to understand. You heard our friend say his mystery words are ‘Rock Child.’ And you recognized them, true, as the Rocking Stone where Donner Creek flows into the Truckee River.
“It is a sacred place, a place where the gods of the winds speak. But you believe it to be a place especially sacred to the Washo, a place we tell a story about.
“This is not so. We know the story, but it is not ours. The stone is a well-known spot on the trail from Truckee Meadows to the other side of the mountains, where all the gold hunters are. We use it, but so do the Miwok, the Maidu, the Patwin, the Shoshone, the Paiute, and others. Maybe the story is theirs. All these peoples know the tale.
“If I guessed, though, I would guess that the story comes from the people who came before us, the ancient ones first here. Maybe, maybe not. I don’t know.”
He looked back at me. “I see that you have a good heart. You are always welcome at my fire. You are always welcome in my camp. But I think you are not a Washo.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
So I set out on an odyssey across the mountains and deserts of the West, searching, seeking, dreaming about the discovery of what I never had, a home. And my imaginary oasis, a family, a people that would show me the way to live, turned out to be … a mirage.
These were my thoughts as we walked silent back to the lodge that night. Nothing needed saying. My one clue was spoiled, pointing even-like at bunches of tribes. I was fresh out of directions for odysseys, and desire.
I felt tired, tired beyond tired. And one truth is, I felt relieved. Maybe if I’d been raised with my mother’s people, I could have gone Indian and been happy. But I wasn’t. Maybe a man who’s taken to sherbets and pianos can’t go back.
Sun Moon and I sat on the front steps of the lodge, silent, and I thought about what I wanted. After a while I said, “Tomorrow I’m gonna go for a walk. I’m gonna look at the lake, and look and look. I need that.” Tomorrow she and Richard were to get the stage, and the next day they would be in San Francisco, so I was abandoning her. “I’m sorry.”
“May I go with you?”
Her words took me aback.
She took my hands lightly and looked up into my face and waited. “Sure,” I said. “Sure you can.”
We went up to bed together. That night we slept spooned, holding each other, each by each.
Indian summer was gone. The early morning was cold when we left the lodge, and the day stayed snappy cool. Felt good.
I didn’t know where I wanted to go or what I wanted to do. Walk. Look. Walk. See. Walk. Sit. Walk.
Funny how all those doings turned into hear, hear, hear.
Sun Moon and I just ambled right along the shore of the lake, heading north. I didn’t have anything to say, I was all thought out and worded out. She was more of a think-it-out person than me. I was letting myself feel it out. She seemed content with silence, and that let me do the hearing.
From somewhere there was music in my head. I’d step onto a big slab of rock and hear something brassy. I’d look from there onto the lake and the evergreens on its shores and the string instruments would slide in soft, gentle, and ethereal. I saw a grouse and tossed a few notes at it out loud, musical croaks and gobbles. To a chipmunk I sang a few off-the-beat plunks. Once I saw a blue-gray rock with stone the red of pipestone inlaid. The red was in whorls, and suggested to my mind winged horses. For them I made up a song and sang it, calling it “Song of the Spirit Horses.”
Except for singing, I was silent. Sun Moon and I communicated by look and gesture, and as the best of friends do, we understood each other perfect. I was filled with my own music, and that made me feel whole. The music wasn’t about Lake Tahoe, it was about me. But Lake Tahoe inspired it, and the walk and the day gave birth to it.
We ate Maggie’s sack lunch in lovely quiet. I thought maybe Sun Moon would get impatient with silence, with not being paid attention to, after a while. But she didn’t. And in an important way I was paying attention to her. We headed back slow.
As the sun was setting, we sat down on a boulder a quarter mile from the lodge. The snow on the summits to the west burned pink and orange. Out to the east the lake lay still as a lake of perfect dream, mirroring the violet eastern sky.
I looked at Sun Moon. “What am I gonna do?” I asked with a foolish grin. “The world is wide open. I can go anywhere.”
“Or stay anywhere,” she said.
“Home’s not out there.”
“No, it’s in here.” She touched her heart.
We looked at each other, and then at the dramatic peaks, and last at the tranquil lake. “May I tell you something about you?” she asked.
I hesitated. Finally I nodded and looked at her, curious.
“You set out to find your tribe, and you think you failed. But you succeeded. It was not Washo, or Paiute, or Shoshone, no. It was musician. Musicians do not have any one place in particular to live. They don’t have a skin color, or only one culture. You do have a language. All musicians speak it, and it was given to you so you can talk to the gods, and listen to what they say back. Sing back.”
She took my
hand. “That’s who you are.”
I felt a wave lift inside me, and let my feelings ride it. I held her hand. We looked and listened and finally it was too dark to see. We stood, still holding hands, and walked toward the lodge.
“Guess I’ll go to the stage with you tomorrow.”
She nodded. Then she added, “Daniel has something to say to you tonight.”
“I want you to be my partner,” said Daniel. We were past dinner and dessert to third cups of coffee.
“You’re a musician. You’ve worked in a business. You love it here. You belong here at Lake Tahoe.”
I thought maybe I did.
“Invest your five hundred dollars in this wood ranch. We’ll go shares. You live here and manage this end. I’ll live in Virginia until the business is going strong. After we make a bundle of money, we’ll do music.”
It’s hard to think with trumpets fanfaring in your head.
“It is very good for you,” put in Sun Moon. Sir Richard just looked on with a grin.
“I’ll let you know tomorrow,” says I.
It was one of those moments, the room had a glow, the people had a glow.
I took Sun Moon outside. The night was sharp cold, and we wrapped our coats around our shoulders and our arms around each other’s waists. We walked down to the lake to get away from the lanterns of the lodge, to make our sounds the soft lapping of the waves and not the bustle of a busy enterprise.
“You think it’s good,” I said.
She squeezed me. “Wonderful,” she said.
“I’m gonna take it,” I said.
“Asie Taylor,” she said, “you threw away your old life and went looking for something new. What was it?”
“Home. Or that’s what I thought it was.”
“And what did you find out?”
“Sometimes a home isn’t given to you. Maybe it should be. Maybe we should get that just by being dropped somewhere on this Earth.”
“But?”
“I didn’t get one. What might have been, I got dislodged from. Can’t go back to being an Indian. Never was a white man.”