Death Chants (12 page)

But the wind blew
cold and from another direction now.

It came not from
the great forest beyond the trees of night but
from the spreading forests of tall buildings that house the white man.

It was a different
wind and it had the smells of another world in it.

The soul of Wind
River's horse grew cold. Its legs stiffened and its mane flattened against its side as the wind
subsided.

Like a leaf, the
soul of the old horse fell out of the wind.

And grew cold, and
ceased to be.

And was seen no
more.

The bus pulled up
to the reservation gate and the passengers disembarked. Only a few people got off.

There was a family
of Japanese tourists, with the inevitable camera strapped around each neck. And there was me, a
vast empty thing heading for a greater emptiness.

There was a hotel
near the trading post where tourists and the professionally curious about Indians stayed. The bus
passengers were bound for the hotel.

I was coming home
to the reservation after two years in prison for stealing a car. Of the two hells, only the
reservation was the one I called home.

On the bus I sat
next to an old man and his daughter. The old man was a retired college professor, fairly old,
nearing seventy summers. The girl herself was deathly pale, much too pale even for a white
girl.

I wasn't much
interested in them, but you can't help overhear­ing things on a long, hot bus ride. A bus is like
a prison on wheels, there is no privacy and it travels, while you can't.

It seems the girl
was going with her father to meet her hus­band-to-be, somebody from our tribe, Jim Longfeather, a
man I never cared much to know.

His father had
married into oil money and sent his son back East to some fancy white man's college.

The Longfeathers
and I don't exactly move in the same path.

I also gathered
that the girl had come out to the desert for her health. She coughed all the time, a dry hacking
cough that sounded like the death rattle of a hand-tamed fawn.

I forgot about the
white people when I got off the bus. My clan mother was there to meet me and my uncles from my
father's side. They greeted me in the traditional way.

I walked home with
them in the too-well-remembered heat
and
dust, glad to shake the walls of prison off me forever. I hoped it was forever but there is no
telling. I had had enough of the white man's prison. I would die first before I would ever go
back there. Knowing my luck, it loomed as a possibility.

After supper, I
went to my uncle Stormbringer's place to look at a new roan he'd bought and of which he was
justly proud.

As I was walking
down the arroyo where the old ones say the spirits dance, I met Jim Longfeather and the white
girl walking toward me.

The girl was
leaning heavily on his arm as they walked, heavily enough for me to see that she was pretty weak
with whatever sickness she was struggling against. They nodded a greeting as I walked past. I
asked Jim Longfeather in our language how his bones were.

"I'm sorry. I'm
afraid I don't speak the language but nice to meet you." He stuck his hand out for a handshake.
It was easy not to take it.

I went on past
them. It figured, him not knowing the lan­guage. Having money can be a language all of its own.
He was dressed like a city Indian too, clothes I don't know how to describe but you see them in
those Sears and Roebuck catalogs, fancy-collared shirts and pants with some white man's name on
the butt end of them.

I had had enough of
white people to last me almost forever. I considered them both white. She was born to it and he
had studied to become it. I did not want to think about them and dismissed them from my mind and
went on about my business.

I forgot about them
until the next morning, when dawn was just coming up and the sun was looking mean like it can
look when you've drank a little too much. I ran into them again.

The night before my
uncle Stormbringer and I had gone into the pueblo, to drink some of the ceremonial six-pack
liquid. About the last thing I remembered was crawling out of Two Racer's back door to find
something breathable. The night danced with fire, a remembered fire that was not my own, fire
(hat came in bottles and made the head burn and ache with forgetting.

The white girl and
Longfeather were sitting there, big as life, wrapped in a heavy Navaho blanket, watching the sun
come up.

Now in the back of
my mind, which had been scorched in a fire, was the idea that I might throw up a hugeness,
something like the last two years of prison food in one big sprawl. Now here these two were
messing up my big moment.

"Hey," I said—not
much of an opening but then I was kind of dizzy.

"Oh, didn't know
you were there," said Longfeather. "Hey, you speak English!"

"Grunt it is more
like it," I said sourly. "What are you two doing out here anyway?"

"Waiting for Death
Catcher to come. Do you know him?"

I did but I didn't
talk about it. He was a brujo and a bad one or so the old people said. He had black gifts and saw
things in the wind best left unseen, so it was said.

"What do you expect
from him?"

"He promised to do
a sand painting for her, something spe­cial for her, something he only does for a few people.
Quite an honor, don't you think?"

I didn't say
anything about the suspicion that grew suddenly in me but he had made me curious. "Why did he
choose to do that?"

"Possibly out of
respect for my late father. They were clans­men and related, by marriage if not by blood," said
Longfeather. He even talked like a white man.

I stared out across
the desert and the feeling of sickness began to pass. I thought, as the cool morning air passed
in and out of my body, that I might yet live to see the day. I reserved that judgment about
everyone else.

"You know much
about Death Catcher? What they say he does?"

"Just that it's
supposed to be special."

"Yeah, I've heard
that too," I said but didn't speak of the other things I had been told, the dark
things.

I heard something
and turned to look over my shoulder. The air was clear as a diamond, and my Indian heart seemed
to soar on the wind as I looked on the desert again.

The desert was as
white as an owl's belly. Off in the distance, at the bottom of Black Mesa, I saw the lonely
figure of Death Catcher, with a woven sack of clay jars on his back. He was a long
way off, almost an hour's walk from us. The old
ones say he casts a vulture's shadow as he walks. Maybe they are right.

The three of us sat
there in silence, staring at the rising of the sun on the desert.

It was peaceful,
calm like the dark eye of a storm.

The only sound was
an occasional rasping cough from the girl.

The desert has a
kind of beauty that is not always there for one to see. It is like a mirage that vanishes without
warning, becomes a dull, flat deadly hell with no place for man. There was no sense of that now
on this morning. Today there was only great beauty, rare and fine.

I don't know what
Longfeather and his white girlfriend saw on that morning when they looked at the desert or if
they looked at anything else but themselves, which is a way white people have of seeing the
world.

But when I looked
at the desert, I saw the old dead sea shining like a glowing pool of turquoise. I saw the bones
of long-dead beasts rise on dusty wings and bone-white legs and fly and race across the face of
the desert's ancient heart. Dead snakes coiled in trees a thousand years dead, waiting for birds
with wings of dust. And the living, those I saw too. Lizards stalked and stabbed their tiny prey,
bloodless dusty insects with the taste of forever in them. Eagles mated in the air in graceful
golden arcs, and the sand stirred gently in the wind that was the very wind of freedom and life.
There was no prison here, just the aching beauty of far far away.

I turned to look at
the white girl to see how she was taking the desert at dawn. How white people will react to
things is not always easy to figure.

She was leaning
heavily against Longfeather under the blan­ket. I sensed that she might fall over if he wasn't
holding her up.

She was crying.
Softly, but crying all the same. Her pale oval-shaped face looked pinched and she seemed sicker
than she had been the day before.

"How do you feel?"
he asked her, worry plain in his voice and face.

"Better," she said
and I thought she was lying, probably more for his sake than her own.

"The air here, the
doctor said it would help. It just has to, Amanda. You just have to get well," said Longfeather.
"You'll see, a week will make a real difference!"

We sat in silence
for a time. I was over being sick. Even think­ing about dragging myself up and getting out of
there. I was beginning to feel quite another call of nature besides tossing my pinon
nuts.

But by then, Death
Catcher was almost upon us, and my curiosity was aroused. I hoped his being there had some other
meaning than some of the things I had heard about him.

Longfeather started
to get up to greet him, even offering to shake hands. The old man ignored him
completely.

Death Catcher
unpacked his clay pots and began drawing a rectangle in the sand with a specially carved
stick.

Longfeather tried
speaking to him, but the old man still ig­nored him. Longfeather turned to me. "Does he speak
En­glish?"

I shook my head no.
"I've never heard he could. What do you want me to tell him?"

"Just that I am
honored by what he is about to do. And I very much want to thank him."

I told the old man
in our language what Longfeather said. The old man stared at me with an irritated expression on
his face. He spoke slowly. "Tell him to step away. His presence is not needed."

I translated his
speech for Longfeather. Death Catcher had also said some fairly nasty things about Longfeather's
ancestry which I didn't dare repeat.

When I was
translating it for Longfeather, I think the old man knew I left it out. I wouldn't have been
surprised if he spoke English better than me.

Longfeather looked
to me for an explanation for why he had to move away while the old man worked. I just shrugged.
"Who can say why?" I said. "He doesn't do things for reasons that can be easily explained. Best
to humor him and move back until he finishes."

He nodded, and
somewhat begrudgingly moved off about a hundred feet and sat down again. A lizard jumped out of a
bush in front of him and I heard him yelp in surprise. It made me
smile. I kind of regretted I hadn't told him the old man wanted him
to sit naked on a cactus to complete the ritual, just to see if he was city-dumb enough to do
it.

Death Catcher was
old, how old nobody quite knew. His white hair was thick like a pony mane and his hands were
rough and scarred and slightly crooked with his great age.

Still his hands
moved with grace and ease as he patiently began the sand painting. He carefully measured out the
first sand, red, and sprinkled it on the ground. Then black. I watched the pattern being
drawn.

The first thing I
noticed was that the colors were all being reversed and that he intended to leave out some of the
symbols. That was proper for a sand painting that was being done for public exhibition, for white
people.

Death Catcher was
not working in the sacred forms. Also the old man followed a dark and very old style, said to be
a long-ago gift of the nightlands.

He used colored
sand, cornmeal, flower pollen and several mixtures of powdered roots and bark.

He held out his
hand and talked to the girl.

She stared at him
blankly. Her head had sunk back until she was almost lying flat on the ground. She turned her
head slightly until she could see me.

"Excuse me, I don't
know your name but could you tell me what he said?"

"He wants you to
give him something."

"What?"

"I don't know.
Something that ..." I asked the old man a question, making sure I understood exactly what it was
he wanted. "Oh." I nodded at the old man. "He says he wants a piece of white writing. He wants
something with your name written on it."

The girl thrust her
arm out from under the blanket, pushing her purse into view.

"Could you look in
there for me? I feel real tired. There must be something in there with my name on it."

I didn't much want
to do it, but I did. I rummaged around in her purse. I got her wallet out and found her driver's
license. "Mind if I use this?"

"No," she said.
"And thank you."