The Moon by Night

by Madeleine L'engle

  “I was talking to a friend of mine who’s an Indian last night,” Zachary said, “and he’s afraid that a new drought, as bad as the one that drove the Pueblos from their homes, might be starting now. All the omens point to it. The funny thing, no, it really isn’t funny, is that some of the meteorologists are afraid so, too. You want to go join those other dopes now?”

  “We’d better.”

  When we got to the others they were looking down into a sort of circular room. The ranger was saying that they knew that only men were allowed in the round rooms, but I didn’t hear how they knew it because I missed the beginning of the lecture.

  “What’d they do in the round rooms?” I whispered to Zachary.

  “It was something to do with their religion; they even had religion and all, the goons. That ranger’s a pretty good guy. He teaches trig or something at some university in the winter.”

  One man, standing near our family, asked the ranger, “You say this was all around 600 A.D.?”

  “That’s right,” the ranger said.

  “How come you know so little about them, then?”

  The ranger turned to John. “What was happening in Europe about six hundred A.D. fella?”

  “Well, it was the Dark Ages, sir,” John answered. “It was monks, wasn’t it, who were keeping civilization alive?”

  “Tell me, don’t ask me,” the ranger said.

  “It was the monks, then,” John said. “And feudalism was beginning. Let’s see, the Visigoths and the Vandals were the four hundreds, Theodoric of the Ostrogoths was five hundreds, and, oh, yes, it was Frankish kings of Gaul in the six hundreds, but there wasn’t any strong central government. And wasn’t it in the six hundreds that Jerusalem was taken over by the Mohammedans?”

  “Right you are. The point is, that we know more about the monks in their cells in Europe than we do about the Indians right here in our own country. Why?”

  A woman who turned out to be a first grade teacher called out, “Because of the way we treated them.”

  The ranger nodded. “Nevertheless we do know that the Pueblo were advanced enough in their civilization to paint the insides of their windows white. Why?” He looked at John again.

  “To reflect light,” John answered. I had a feeling that it annoyed Zachary like anything to have John know the answers to the ranger’s questions.

  “Right you are,” the ranger said again. “We know a few material things about them, but very little else. We don’t know anything about the religious rites that must have gone on in these round rooms, or what kind of a God they worshipped. They built elaborate storage rooms and ventilating systems, and yet they left no written language, and they dumped both their garbage and their dead over the edge of the cliff. Thank you, people. You’ve been very patient. We’d better get moving now because I can see that the next group is close on our heels.”

  Rob was standing right in front of the ranger, and he asked, very earnestly, “They’re all gone? Nobody lives here any more?”

  “No, son. Not for hundreds and hundreds of years.”

  “They’re all dead?”

  “Long, long ago.”

  Rob looked very seriously at the ranger, as though the two of them were there all alone in the Pueblo remains, as though there weren’t anybody else standing around to listen. “I don’t want to die.”

  “Nobody does, son.”

  “Do you?”

  “No.”

  “But people get old, and then they get wore out because they’re so old, and then they have to die.”

  “That’s about the long and short of it, son. Come along, let’s us lead the way.”

  That’s one reason I love Rob so much. The same kind of things bother him that do me, and he’s really only a baby.

  We started the long climb up the cliff, Zachary and I right behind Daddy, the rest of the family ahead. We went up steep stone steps, up stony paths, up ladders, and Zachary’s steps got slower and slower and he looked very white. I slowed down, too, and let a group of people go past us, and then I saw that Daddy had stopped and was looking at Zachary.

  “You’d better stop, Zach.”

  “It’s all right, sir. I can make it.”

  “Not without a rest,” Daddy said.

  “No, sir. I want to go on. Please.” That please sounded funny, coming from Zachary, and all of a sudden it made me want to cry.

  “Sorry,” Daddy said. “When you elected to come with us this afternoon you put yourself under my supervision, and I tell you to stop and rest. Then we’ll take the rest of the climb in easy stages. What’s your problem? Rheumatic fever a few years ago?”

  Zachary’s eyes seemed enormous in his white face. “How did you know? I didn’t tell Vicky—”

  “I’m a doctor. Rheumatic fever’s my specialty, so I made a guess. Sit down and get your breath.”

  “I’m all right now,” Zachary said. “I’d rather go on.”

  Everybody had pushed on past us, now, some looking curiously at us standing there at the edge of the path, just barely able to make room for them to get by.

  Daddy looked at Zachary. “Do you make a habit of doing things you know you oughtn’t to do?”

  “Why not?” Zachary stood up as though to start climbing again.

  “If you want to kill yourself on your own time there’s not much I can do to stop you,” Daddy said. “When you’re with me you’ll do as I say. Sit down.”

  Zachary swallowed. I could see his Adam’s apple move. “Yes, sir.”

  “Vicky, go on and catch up with the others. Zachary and I’ll be along in a few minutes.”

  “I’ll wait with you,” I said.

  “Vicky, I asked you to go.”

  “But—”

  “Nobody’s going to wait for anyone, for crying out loud!” Zachary said. I thought he was going to burst into tears. He got up and started to scramble up the stone steps cut in the side of the cliff. Daddy reached out and caught his wrist.

  “Zach.”

  Zachary tried to pull away. “You don’t really think you can stop me, do you?” He gave a nasty grin.

  Daddy’s a lot stronger than Zachary. He didn’t need to do any judo on him. “Is this the way you behave with your parents?”

  “My parents know better than to order me about. When I don’t get what I want I have hysterics. They’re very effective.”

  Daddy sat down on the stone steps just above Zachary, blocking the path completely. Our group was out of sight above. The next group was clustered down below us. Daddy said, “The acoustics ought to be excellent here.” Then he noticed that I was still standing just above him. “Go on, Vicky.”

  If I had hysterics instead of obeying Daddy when he uses that tone of voice I don’t think it would work very well. I went on up. The family was waiting at the top of the path. The ranger and the rest of the group had gone on.

  “Where’s Daddy?” Mother asked.

  “With Zach.” I didn’t want her to ask any more questions. I didn’t want to have to tell about Zachary in front of John and Suzy. But Mother is often very good about knowing when not to ask questions, and she didn’t say anything more, and we went to look at a place where Indians had lived more recently, though still hundreds of years ago, just above the path. There were signs and all telling us about it, which John had to read word for word. Somehow I wasn’t very interested any more.

  It seemed a long time before Zachary and Daddy came up the last steps of the ascent. Zachary still looked very white, but he wasn’t panting the way he had been. Daddy must have made him take it very, very slowly.

  He asked Daddy if I could go off to the commissary and have a soda with him, and Daddy said yes.

  We walked, side by side, along the dusty path, and Zachary asked, “Are you leaving tomorrow?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where’re you going?”

  “I don’t know where we’ll be tomorrow night, but we’re heading for Grand Canyon.”

  “It�
��s kind of spectacular in its own way,” Zachary said. “Spaniards from Coronado’s expedition discovered it in 1540.”

  He sounded as though he were trying to get back at John for having known so much. “Yes, I know. Daddy told us.”

  “Daddy knows everything, doesn’t he?” Zachary sneered as we went into the cool darkness of the commissary.

  “He knows a lot.”

  “So do I. Grand Canyon is twenty one and a half miles long, from four to eighteen miles wide, and over a mile deep.”

  “It’s in our camping book, too,” I said tactlessly, climbing up on the high stool next to Zachary. “Are you going?”

  “Again? Not even for you, Vicky-O. I think we’ll head for home. I suppose you heard your father say I’d had rheumatic fever?”

  “Yes. I don’t know much about it, though.”

  “What’ll you have, Vicky? Two lemon Cokes, please. Sometimes it leaves you with a heart condition.”

  “Oh.”

  “It did me. I might drop dead at any time. It’s a very useful weapon. If people don’t do just as I like I might have a heart attack.”

  I didn’t say anything. Because Daddy had made Zachary stop on the climb up to the top of the cliff I knew that it was probably true, what Zachary had just said. But the way he was speaking, it didn’t seem as though it ought to be true. It seemed as made up as the plays we put on up in the attic at home, with costumes out of Mother’s costume trunk.

  “Are you sorry for me?” he asked.

  I think there must be something terribly wrong with me. I ought to have been all flooding with pity for Zachary and I wasn’t. Just the way I wasn’t properly sorry for Maggy when she first came to stay with us. Is it that I’m frozen-hearted, like the boy with the splinter of ice in his heart in Andersen’s story? I don’t think so. If we see a squirrel or even a skunk that’s been killed by a car and is lying flung by the side of the road I feel horrible. I can’t bear it that its little life has been cut off. So why wasn’t I sorry for Zachary?

  “Are you sorry for me?” he asked again.

  I wasn’t sorry for him, and somehow I didn’t want to lie to him, so I just said bluntly, “No.”

  “Anh-hanh!” he said. “I knew I was right when I saw you and decided you were a girl I wanted to know. I knew there was something about you. Why aren’t you sorry for me?”

  “Well—that song the other night in Tennessee.”

  “What about it?”

  “About blowing ourselves to bits and stuff. I mean, when our parents were growing up, they could count on a future. Now nobody can. Not just you. Nobody.” As I said these words I faced them for the first time, and I began to shiver.

  “Do you believe that?” Zachary asked. “Do you really believe it?”

  “No, of course I don’t believe it!” I cried, so loudly that other people sitting at the counter turned to look at me. I lowered my voice. “But it’s there. It’s a possibility.”

  “Only a possibility,” Zachary said. “It probably won’t happen for a long time and it may never happen. But my heart condition is more than a possibility. It’s there.”

  “Then why do you keep doing things you shouldn’t do?”

  “Oh, what’s the use, Vicky?” He sounded very tired, sitting there with his hands around the coolness of his Coke. “What’s there worth living for?”

  I felt as though I were being drawn down into a dark, deep hole. The sunlight was outside. It was shadowy at the counter, and the blades of the fans whirring around seemed to suck me deeper and deeper into the hole. I wanted to leave Zachary and run out into the blazing sunlight, run pelting down the dusty path to our campsite, to get hot and sweaty from the bright heat of the day, to be part of light and joy again. I said, too loudly, “Life’s worth living for! Just being alive! I love it! I love every minute of it!”

  Zachary could change without batting an eyelash. He turned on me fiercely. “You think I don’t, too?”

  We finished our Cokes and he walked me back to the tent and then turned on his heel and left without saying a word about ever seeing me again.

  I hoped he never did.

  Eleven

  That night at dinner I was sort of quiet, and John said, very kindly for John, “Don’t let it get you down, Vicky.”

  “What?”

  “That boy. He’s just an oddball.”

  Mother gave John another helping of hash. “It ought to teach us not to make snap judgments. They really annoyed me with their fancy equipment. But that poor, silly boy. With parents who don’t have the faintest idea how to handle him.”

  “More hash, too, please, Mother,” Suzy said.

  Mother heaped her plate. “I wish we had this lovely firewood at every campsite. Dinner was a joy to cook tonight. Come on, kids, eat up. We don’t want to be late for the campfire program.”

  This was the first campgrounds we’d been to that had evening programs, but all the National Parks we went to later had them, and quite a lot of the state parks, too. But the setting at Mesa Verde was the most gorgeous of them all. It was a natural amphitheater cut out of rock, a half circle of stone benches looking way across the canyon. I don’t suppose you’d have this feeling of great space in ancient Rome but that’s where it made me think of. The moon was rising, seeming almost to leap up out of the canyon. I was sitting there, half dozing, not really thinking about anything, just being contented, when suddenly somebody plunked down beside me.

  Who but Zachary?

  I was glad when he left me that afternoon. I couldn’t wait to get back to our campsite. But now I was just as glad to see him. I didn’t understand my own feelings at all, but that’s been nothing new for about a year now.

  “Hi, everybody,” he said. “Destry rides again.” He turned and murmured in my ear, as though it were something very important and for me alone, “The old man and woman hate these lectures. They wanted me to go for a walk with them and then have a game of bridge, but I told them I had a pain in my chest and had better just sit this evening.”

  “Do you?” I asked.

  “No, but I might have if I went for a walk. I can always get a pain without too much trouble, but I don’t do it if I can get my own way without.”

  The ranger who was to give the evening talk came out just then and lit the kindling under a big teepee of logs, so Zachary put his arm around my waist and leaned back as though he owned the place. He seemed to be fascinated by the lecture, which was on how ruins and civilizations are dated, but I must admit that most of it was beyond me, and anyhow I didn’t pay as much attention as I should have. I was too aware of Zachary’s arm around me, and then the flickering of the firelight made me sleepy. Rob climbed over John and sat on my other side, and right after the beginning of the lecture he put his head down in my lap and went sound asleep, so all I remember is that you can find out something about when civilizations flourished by tree rings and carbon decay.

  After the ranger had finished his talk he told us that some Navajo Indians who worked in the park were going to come do some dances for us. He warned us that if anybody had a dog they’d better take it back to the car, because if a dog barks during a dance it’s very bad luck, and they’d just quit and refuse to dance. Or if anybody irritated or disturbed them in any way they’d stop and go home.

  I’d never seen an Indian dance before, and I woke Rob up for it, but I must admit that I was very disappointed. It wasn’t at all the wild leaping about the fire that I’d imagined, but just a slow, rhythmic shuffling around in a circle. In one dance they shook gourds, in another they patted a drum, and always they sang a rather sinister, high-pitched melody, each melody starting with a high “hau!”

  I whispered something to Zachary about this, and he whispered back, “It’s a religious dance for Pete’s sake. They take it very seriously. What’d you expect? A fertility orgy?”

  After the Indians had danced for a few minutes one of them came around the stone benches passing a hat, and everybody put some coins
in. Then, without a word, they stalked off into the darkness.

  I heard Daddy whisper to Mother, “I don’t think they were satisfied with the take. Most people didn’t put in very much.”

  With the departure of the Indians the program was over and everybody started straggling back to tents, cabins, or hotel. Zachary took my hand and pulled me back so that we were walking behind everybody else, alone on the path, with only the beams from our flashlights to light our way. The nicest thing we saw was a sleepy little bunny rabbit at the edge of the path, blinking at our flashlights, and I hoped Suzy and Rob had seen him, too. But I couldn’t get those Indians out of my mind, nor their looks as they’d stalked off into the night.

  “Those Indians,” I said to Zachary. “I don’t think they liked us. I think they resented us.”

  “Do you blame them?” Zachary sounded quite violent. “We’ve taken their country, we’ve misused them, and here they are, paid laborers in their own land. Wouldn’t you burn if you were in their place?” We were silent then until he said, “I don’t think your father likes my having followed you.”

  “I don’t think he thought you were following me or anything,” I said awkwardly. “I mean lots of people come to Mesa Verde. It’s kind of a logical place to come to.”

  “Logic doesn’t have anything to do with it,” he said. “And I was following you, Vicky-O. Have no doubt about it.” His voice was low and intimate, though everybody else was so far ahead of us on the path now that nobody could have heard him. “You’ve got something, Vicky. Of course you’re not the beauty of the family. That yellow, curly-haired little sister of yours is going to be miles ahead of you in looks. She’s filled with S.A., as our parents used to say in their youth. Or sex appeal, in case you don’t remember their bygone prattle.”

  “I know what sex appeal is,” I said stiffly.

  “Now you. You’re different.”

  “I know I am. You needn’t rub it in.” There it was again, the old difference between Suzy and me, which I’d been beginning to forget this past year. When we were little, and Mother would take us shopping, people would stop in the street and say what an adorable little girl Suzy was, and they didn’t even seem to see me, and it wasn’t just because I was three years older. Mother used to say that Suzy was pretty and I was distinguished, but nobody ever coos over anybody looking distinguished. And when you get older nobody makes passes over you being distinguished, either. It’s a heck of a lot worse than wearing glasses.