House Made of Dawn (11 page)

But the shoes were brown and white. They were new, almost, and shiny and beautiful; and they squeaked when he walked. In the only frame of reference he had ever known, they called attention to themselves, simply, honestly. They were brown and white; they were finely crafted and therefore admirable in the way that the work of a good potter or painter or silver
smith is admirable: the object is beautiful in itself, worthy of appreciation as a whole and for its own sake. But now and beyond his former frame of reference, the shoes called attention to Abel. They were brown and white; they were conspicuously new and too large; they shone; they clattered and creaked. And they were nailed to his feet. There were enemies all around, and he knew that he was ridiculous in their eyes.

Milly?

“No test is completely valid,” she said. “Some are more valid than others.”

But Milly believed in tests, questions and answers, words on paper. She was a lot like Ben. She believed in Honor, Industry, the Second Chance, the Brotherhood of Man, the American Dream, and him—Abel; she believed in him. After a while he began to suspect as much, and…

That night—he could not remember how it came about; he had got a little drunk—he made love to her. He had been watching her. She was always coming around when he and Ben were at home. There was no shyness in her. She had looked him squarely
in the eye, had spoken up and laughed—she was always laughing—from the very first. Easy laughter was wrong in a woman, dangerous and wrong. She was plain in the face; her eyes were too small and her mouth too large. But she had yellow hair and her body was supple and ripe. He had watched her, how she walked away, her feet close together and her steps swinging not from the knees but from the hips, slowly, easily; and her hips were full and rolling. She had big breasts.

She was talking to him and laughing, and her laughter was real and ringing. But he was sullen. He was not listening to her but wanting her, thinking of how to have her. And she knew what he was thinking, and her voice and laughter grew sudden and a little too thin and she began to play with her hands. It was a long time since she had given herself to a man. She had nearly forgotten what to think about, worry about, dwell upon. And it was all right: she was big and plain and breathing hard, but she felt small and beautiful and dear among her things. The flat where she lived was dingy and cheaply done, but she said to herself that it was charming and quaint and tastefully arranged. Her bedroom was colorless and cluttered with brassy trinkets and smelled of stale and sour air, but, no, she said, there was a kind of warmth and character to it, milk glass and marble and brownish photographs in antique oval frames; there was a fragrance of clean, fresh linen and lilac water. They were sitting on the side of her bed.

He drew her to him carefully and placed his mouth very lightly on her arm. His hand rose along her arm, and her arm grew taut. She had stopped talking. She was responsive and soft and yielding in his arms. He kissed her and stroked her hair. He unfastened her dress and laid it open and drew it down from her shoulders; her shoulders were round and freckled and smooth. He unhooked her brassiere and it fell away from her breasts, which were white and brown-tipped and good-smelling. He fondled one of her breasts. Her mouth was open and working slowly under his own, like a small animal, and she arched her back and
thrust her breasts out to him. He kissed her mouth and her eyes and her hair and her throat and her shoulders. She closed her eyes and lay back, still and seemingly relaxed, save that her skin sprang to his touch, until he kissed her nipples. He held one of her breasts with the tips of his fingers, so lightly and carefully that it might have been a bead of rain, and sucked it for a long time. She moaned a little, cradling his head, and her legs stirred against him. In another moment she turned on her side and drew her dress and her half slip and her panties down over one hip, and he slid his hand down from her breast and along the slope of her side. She was wide in the hips and the twist of her body so, with her shoulders forward and her breasts outthrust against him, accentuated the curve and width of her hips, and they were smooth and round and white. He moved his hand slowly to the top of the curve of her hip, over, and down to her buttocks. She set her feet on the floor and arched her body so that her buttocks closed together and were tight and he worked her clothing down to her ankles and she got free of it. He kissed her on the mouth again and returned his hand to the full white lumps of her buttocks, which were relaxed and loose and heavy now, and glazed with sweat, to the deep cleavage between the long dark tufts of hair, damp and fine and crinkled. And her own hands were gentle, touched him gently. He waited, keening to her, but her excitement never made her wild. At the height of her desire he held her away for an instant; she was openmouthed and moaning. Her eyes rolled under their lids and her whole body trembled, and her body was full and white and glowing and glistening. His nostrils flared to the odor of her body, and he was brutal with her.

The sea crashed and roared. There was a slow, terrible burning at his eyes, and he could not move his hands. His whole body was breaking open to the roar of the sea.

 

Tosamah, orator, physician, Priest of the Sun, son of Hummingbird, spoke:

“‘Peyote is a small, spineless, carrot-shaped cactus growing
in the Rio Grande Valley and southward. It contains nine narcotic alkaloids of the isoquinoline series, some of them strychnine-like in physiological action, the rest morphine-like. Physiologically, the salient characteristic of peyote is its production of visual hallucinations or color visions, as well as kinesthetic, olfactory, and auditory derangements.' Or, to put it another way, that little old woolly booger turns you on like a light, man. Daddy peyote is the vegetal representation of the sun.”

The Priest of the Sun was going to conduct a prayer meeting, and he had painted himself for it. The part in his hair was a bright yellow line; there were vertical red lines on either side of his face; and there were yellow half moons under his eyes. He was a holy, sinister sight. Everything was ready. He stepped upon the platform with a gourd rattle and staff in one hand and the paraphernalia satchel in the other. One by one the celebrants followed and sat down in a circle. Cristóbal Cruz was the fireman, Napoleon Kills-in-the-Timber the drummer.

The fire blazed in a pan at the center of the circle. The Priest of the Sun sat west of the fire, between the fireman and the drummer. Before him was the low earthen altar in the shape of a crescent, horns to the east. It rose from either end to the center, where there was a small flat space, a kind of cradle for the father peyote. There was a fine groove which ran the length of the altar; the groove symbolized the life of man from birth, ascending from the southern tip to the crest of power and wisdom at the center, and thence in descent through old age to death at the northern tip. When everyone was seated in place, the Priest of the Sun laid a bunch of sage sprigs on the altar, and there he placed the fetish.

The drum was a potbellied, cast-iron, three-legged No. 6 trade kettle with the bail ears filed off, half filled with water in which live coals and herbs were dropped. The buckskin head was made taut, and the sound of the drum was mellow and low like distant thunder. The Priest of the Sun spread a clean white cloth before him on the floor, and on this he placed the things which he removed from the paraphernalia satchel:

1. A fine fan of fancy pheasant feathers.
   
2. A slender beaded drumstick.
   
3. A packet of brown cigarette papers.
   
4. A bundle of sage sprigs.
   
5. A smokestick bearing the sacred water-bird symbol.
   
6. A pouch of powdered cedar incense.
   
7. An eagle-bone whistle.
   
8. A paper bag containing forty-four peyote buttons.
   

The first ceremony was begun. The Priest of the Sun made a cigarette out of Bull Durham and brown paper, then passed the makings to his left. When everyone had made a cigarette, Cruz took up a burning stick and handed it to Tosamah. The Priest of the Sun lit his cigarette and passed the stick to his left. When all were smoking, he prayed, saying, “Be with us tonight.” Then he held his cigarette out to the fetish, that it also might smoke. Others prayed.

The incense-blessing ceremony followed. The Priest of the Sun sprinkled dry rubbed cedar on the fire, then made four circular motions toward the flames, holding in his hand the bag of peyote buttons. Having done this, he removed four of the buttons and passed the remainder to his left. Kneeling, he bruised a tuft of sage between his palms, inhaling deeply of the scent, and rubbed his hands on his head and chest, shoulders and arms and thighs. The others imitated him, first holding out their hands to receive the blessing of the incense, then rubbing themselves.

Then all the celebrants ate of the peyote buttons, spitting out the woolly centers. From then on until dawn there were songs, prayers, the sound of the rattle and the drum. The fire leaped upward from the pan in a single flame, and the flame wavered and danced. Everyone was looking at it, and after a while there was a terrible restlessness, a sheer wave of exhilaration in the room. There was no center to it; it was everywhere at once. Everyone felt himself young and whole and powerful. No one was sick or weary. Everyone wanted to run and jump and laugh
and breathe deeply of the air. Everyone wanted to shout that he was hale and playful and everlastingly alive, but no one said anything; they waited. And directly the fire stood still, and everyone grew sad. There was a great falling down of the spirit, and everyone rocked back and forth in misery and despair. The flames gave off wisps of black smoke, and an awful sense of grief rose up in the room. Everyone thought of death, and the thought was overwhelming in itself. Everyone was caught up in the throes of a deadly depression. There was general nausea, and the dullest pain of the mind. And slowly, slowly the flame hardened and grew bright. It receded to a point at the depth of vision; there was a pale aura all about it, and in this there began to radiate splinters of light, white and red and yellow. And the process of radiation quickened and grew. At last there was nothing in the world but a single point of light, brilliant, radiant to infinity; and from it there arose in the radiance wave upon wave of purest color, rose and red and scarlet and carmine and wine. And to these was added a sudden burst of yellow: butter and rust and gold and saffron. And final fire—the one essence of all fires from the beginning of time, there in the most beautiful brilliant bead of light. And flares of blue and green emerged from the bead and burst, and it was not the blue and green of turquoise and emeralds, or of water and grass, but far more intensely beautiful than these, crystalline and infused with the glare and glitter of the sun. And there was sound. The gourd danced in Tosamah's hand, and there was a rushing and rolling of rain on the roof, a rockslide rumbling, roaring. And beneath and beyond, transcendent, was the drum. The drumbeats gathered in the room and the flame quivered to the beat of the drum and thunder rolled in the somewhere hills. The sound was building, building. The first and last beats of the drum were together in the room and the gulf between was growing tight with sound and the sound was terrible and deep, shivering like the pale, essential flame. And then the sound did not diminish but backed away to the walls, and everyone
waited. And at the center of the circle, rising and holding over the fetish and the flame, there were voices, one after another:

 

Henry Yellowbull:

Cristóbal Cruz:

Napoleon Kills-in-the-Timber:

Ben Benally:

At midnight there was a lull in the sound and motion of the world. The fire was going out, and the circle of men swayed in and out very slowly to the small, pulsating flame. And from every angle of vision, there at the point of the flame was the fetish; it seemed to swell and contract in the silence, and the odor of sage became so heavy in the room that it burned in the nostrils. The Priest of the Sun arose and went out. Far off a juke box began to fill one corner of the night with brassy music, and there were occasional sounds of traffic in the streets. Then in the agony of stasis they heard it, one shrill, piercing note and then another, and another, and another: four blasts of the eagle-bone whistle. In the four directions did the Priest of the Sun, standing painted in the street, serve notice that something holy was going on in the universe.