House Made of Dawn (16 page)

 

It was kind of hard for him, you know, getting used to everything. We had to get down there pretty early and put in a day's work. And then at night we would go down to Henry's place and fool around. We would get drunk and have a good time. There were always some girls down there, and on paydays we acted pretty big.

But he was unlucky. Everything went along all right for about two months, I guess. And it would have gone all right after that, too, if they had just let him alone. Maybe…you never know about a guy like that; but they wouldn't let him alone. The parole officer, and welfare, and the Relocation people kept coming around, you know, and they were always after him about something. They wanted to know how he was doing, had he been staying out of trouble and all. I guess that got on his nerves after a while, especially the business about drinking and running around. They were always
warning
him, you know? Telling him how he had to stay out of trouble, or else he was going to wind up in prison again. I guess he had to think about that all the time, because they wouldn't let him forget it. Sometimes they talked to me about him, too, and I said he was getting along all right. But he wasn't. And I could see why, but I didn't know how to tell them about it. They wouldn't have understood anyway. You have to get
used
to everything, you know; it's like starting out someplace where you've never been before, and you don't know where you're going or why or when you have to get there, and everybody's looking at you, waiting for you, wondering why you don't hurry up. And they can't help you because you don't know how to talk to them. They have a lot of
words
, and you know they mean something, but you don't know what, and your own words are no good because they're not the same; they're different, and they're the only words you've got. Everything is different, and you don't know how to get used to it. You see the way it is, how everything is going on without you, and you start to worry about it. You wonder how you can get yourself into the swing of it, you know? And you don't know how, but you've got to do it because there's nothing else. And you
want
to do it, because you can see how good it is. It's better than anything you've ever had; it's money and clothes and having plans and going someplace fast. You can
see
what it's like, but you don't know how to get into it; there's too much of it and it's all around you and you can't get hold of it because it's going on too fast. You have to get used to
it first, and it's hard. You've got to be left alone. You've got to put a lot of things out of your mind, or you're going to get all mixed up. You've got to take it easy and get drunk once in a while and just forget about who you are. It's hard, and you want to give up. You think about getting out and going home. You want to think that you belong someplace, I guess. You go up there on the hill and you hear the singing and the talk and you think about going home. But the next day you know it's no use; you know that if you went home there would be nothing there, just the empty land and a lot of old people, going noplace and dying off. And you've got to forget about that, too. Well, they were always coming around and warning him. They wouldn't let him alone, and pretty soon I could see that he was getting all mixed up.

There was some trouble down at the plant. We were shorthanded for a while, and we had to put in a lot of overtime. Daniels—he's the foreman—was getting pretty nervous, I guess, because a lot of orders were coming in, and we were running pretty far behind. He's a hard man to work for anyway—he's all business, you know, and he won't stand for any fooling around on the job—but he was
really
worried about that time, and he was watching us pretty close and getting on us pretty bad.

One night after we had worked a twelve-hour day, we went over to Tosamah's place and got up a poker game. There were five or six of us, I guess, and we were all drinking a lot and having fun. We had to get up early the next day, and after a while I started to worry about the time. It was getting late, and I was dead tired. He was tired, too, and the liquor was getting to him. He didn't know Tosamah very well, and Tosamah was feeling pretty good, going on about everything, you know, and talking big. Well, I could tell that he didn't like it much; it was getting on his nerves. I kept telling him that we ought to go on back home and get some sleep, but he wouldn't listen to me. He just kept on sitting there, listening to Tosamah go on about everything and getting more and more drunk. I guess Tosamah knew what he was thinking, too, because pretty soon he started in on
him; not directly, you know, but he started talking about
long-hairs
and the reservation and all. I kept wishing he would shut up, and I guess the others did, too—all except Cruz; he was just grinning like a fool—because right away they got quiet and just started looking down at their hands, you know, like they were trying to decide what to do. I knew that something bad was going to happen.

You know, some people smile when they get mad, and the madder they get the more they smile. He was like that. He just sat there and smiled, and that was a bad sign, but I guess nobody knew it but me. I knew there was going to be some trouble, and I was getting scared. And, sure enough, pretty soon he just flew off the handle. It was like everything just exploded inside of him, and he jumped up from the table and started for Tosamah. But he was crazy drunk, and he couldn't stay on his feet. He stumbled backward and fell against the sink. He was looking for Tosamah, and it was a bad, scary look, but he couldn't get his eyes to hold still, you know, and he couldn't move. He just leaned there, trying to get hold of himself, and shaking all over like he was having a kind of coughing fit or something. It all happened real quick, and Cruz started to laugh, and then the others did, too; and that seemed to take all the fight out of him. It was like he had to give up when they laughed; it was like all of a sudden he didn't care about anything anymore. You know, at the time I was glad it ended up like that, because if there had been a fight they would have blamed it on him. But I got to thinking afterward that he was hurt by what had happened; he was hurt inside somehow, and pretty bad.

He didn't go to work the next day, or the next. I couldn't get him to go, and he wouldn't even talk to me. He was ashamed, I guess, or maybe he thought I was mad at him. Right away Daniels wanted to know where he was, and I said he was sick. He didn't say anything, Daniels, but just swore a couple of times and left me alone. I'm pretty sure he didn't believe me. The orders kept coming in and we weren't catching up at all.

He was passed out when I got home. He stayed drunk for two days. He didn't go anywhere; he just stayed up here in the room, I guess, and drank himself sick. I guess I knew then that he was going to lose that job, and I felt pretty bad, because he needed it. It was a good job, and he could handle it all right. But, sure enough, when he went back Daniels was looking out for him. He came over to the line and just stood there, looking over his shoulder, you know, inspecting everything he did. Now you know it's hard to work like that, with somebody important watching you all the time, and I could see that he was starting to sweat. He made a couple of mistakes, and Daniels got on him right away. They weren't anything to get excited about, just some loose or crooked staples, but Daniels acted like it was a big thing, and he was talking loud and calling attention to it. Well, that was more than he could take, I guess; Daniels had been riding him all morning, and pretty soon he just got enough of it. Finally he just dropped everything and looked at Daniels hard, like maybe he was going to hit him or something, and walked out. I guess that took Daniels by surprise, because he just stood there for a minute with his mouth open. And then he was really burned up, you know, and he went running all around like he didn't know what to do and yelling about “these damned no-good greasers” and all. But I think he felt kind of foolish, too. We were shorthanded, and it takes time to find and train a good man like that. Well, he had no right to stand over him that way and call attention to his mistakes. We were doing all right; we were getting the job done.

He went downhill pretty fast after that. Sometimes he was here when I came in from work, and sometimes he wasn't. He was drunk about half the time, and I couldn't keep up with him. I tried to get him to slow down, you know, but he just got mad whenever I said anything about it, and it made him worse. Right away his money ran out, and he started hitting me up for a loan every night, almost. Pretty soon I wouldn't give him any more, but you know what he did? He started asking Milly for money. He would tell her he needed some new clothes, or bus fare to
look for a job or something, and she would give him two or three dollars, sometimes five, every time. And he would just blow it in on liquor right away. I told her what he was doing, but she said she knew it; she just felt sorry for him. The Relocation people got him a job with the schools, taking care of the grounds and all, but he showed up drunk a couple of times and they fired him after the first week and a half. Milly got him a job, too; it was a night job at some bakery, and she said the pay was pretty good. But he didn't even bother to show up for it. You know, if he could just have held on the first time, to that first job down there on my line, he might have been all right. We liked each other, and we worked pretty well together. I could kind of keep an eye on him down there, you know, look out for him, and that was good. I guess he needed somebody to look out for him. Nobody but Milly and me gave a damn what happened to him.

We had some good times—a few, even after that. Sometimes Milly would come around in the morning on Sundays, and she would bring a basket with maybe some sandwiches and Kool-Aid and apples and cookies inside. And we would get on the bus, the three of us, and go all the way out to Santa Monica. We would find us some place out there on the beach where there weren't too many people, you know, and we would just sit around down there in the sun and talk and kid each other and look at the swimmers and the birds and the ocean. Milly had a little white swim-suit, and she always brought it along, and sometimes she would go out in the water and we would watch her. I felt kind of funny when she was dressed like that, and, you know, he would make jokes and say things about her sometimes, and I laughed all right, but I didn't like it much, because I thought a lot of her and she was good to us. I never said anything when he talked like that. It would have been worse if I had, because he would have made fun of me, you know, and said I had some plans with her and all. It wasn't like that. She liked him better than me, I think, and I was always afraid that he might hurt her somehow. She was easygoing and friendly to everybody. She
trusted
everybody, I guess; some
people are just like that. And she had had a hard time all her life. It would have been pretty easy to hurt her.

Sometimes when we went out like that, the three of us, she would tell us about her family and all, how it was when she was little. She was raised on a farm someplace, and I guess her people had it pretty hard. She talked about her dad a lot. He had worked himself to death on that farm, she said, trying to get things to grow. The ground was no good, and nothing much ever came out of it. He had to work a long time just to get enough money so she could go to school. She said she always meant to pay him back, but he died before she could do it.

She fell in love with some guy and they were married for a while. She only talked about that once, and all she said was that everything was all right for a little while, better than it had ever been. Then right away she started talking about something else. It was like she was going to cry, you know; you could tell that something bad had happened. But she talked about good things, too. She was always remembering something funny, and she laughed a lot. I never knew anybody who was always ready to laugh like that. And she was always getting us to laugh, too. You could see how easy it would be to hurt her.

 

No, wait a minute. There was someone who laughed, who was ready to laugh, whose eyes were laughing. Yes, one summer there was a girl at Cornfields, yes
.

 

And pretty soon she would get us talking, too. We felt kind of free and easy with her, you know, and we told her things we wouldn't tell to just anybody. We didn't mean to, exactly; it just happened that way, because she was always laughing and kind of open, you know, and you could see that she wasn't making fun of you. We used to tell her about the reservation, and it was all right, you know, because we made a kind of joke out of it; we talked about the funny things that had happened to us. One day it was like that, and we were just sitting around down there in the
sand and looking out at the water. It had been kind of cold and foggy all that week, but that day it was clear and warm, and we were feeling good and kind of lazy out there. Milly had been in the water, and she came over and sat down between us. Her hair was wet and she was laughing and there were beads of water all over her face and arms and legs. She looked real pretty that way, you know, all clean and cool and fresh-looking. Her skin was white and clean, and she put her feet down under the sand and wiggled her toes. He had been trying for a couple of days to straighten himself out, talking about getting a job and all. Milly believed him, and I guess I did, too. Anyway, we were having a good time, the three of us, laughing and kidding around and talking about all kinds of things.

Somehow we got to talking about horses. He was telling us about a horse he used to have. It was a good one, small and fast, you know, but it hadn't been broken all the way. It acted kind of wild sometimes, and it had a mean streak in it, like a mule. That horse liked the water, he said. It always wanted to go, to take out for the river. It would get away sometimes, and he would have to go looking for it. And he always found it in the same place, just standing there in the river, looking around like everything was just the way it ought to be. Well, one day he was riding that horse back from the fields, and he came across some old man. That old man was important, somehow; he was a governor or a medicine man or something. He was real
dignified
, you know, and he never smiled. Well, he wanted a ride. He said O.K., and he took that old man up on the horse behind him. They started out all right, but they had to cross the river. And when they got right in the middle of the river, that crazy horse just decided to lie down and that old man fell off in the river. He was old, and I guess he thought that was the damnedest horse he had ever seen. He got up, you know, and he was looking kind of bad, like a wet hen. He didn't say a word; he just shook his head and walked off. And his shoes were all full of water, and you could hear him squeak along for quite a while.