If All Else Fails (11 page)

It flew like a bird
and it went whipping along like a black snake and it did not move at all and it got closer and
stayed where it lay, a demon trapped in the rocks.

Suddenly it became
a rabbit and it hopped across Blue Snow's feet, dragging a lame leg.

"Catch it and kill
it," suddenly cried the old one, with a strange, terrible voice that commanded.

And forgetting
everything, Blue Snow chased the crippled one across the ground. He forgot who he was. His fears
were forgotten in the run of the chase as he smashed at the rabbit with a rock. His face was hot
with a fever and a wildness. And he struck again and again and his muscles raced with the good
feelings that swam in his blood.

The rabbit, its
head smashed into jelly, boiled over and became a small bird fluttering across the ground with a
bro­ken wing.

"Kill it!"
commanded the old one.

Again Blue Snow
gave chase, battering the bird down, crushing its frail body in his hands. The bird poured out of
his hands and became a fawn without eyes and Blue Snow
sank his teeth into the fawn's neck, seeking the jugular, lov­ing the blood
taste and the animal heat. And die old man stood and watched and Aomi died many times.

And the valley of
Aomi filled with the excited hunger of the chase and the quick snap of torment and death.
Finally, exhausted with blood and hate, Blue Snow lay on his back.

The old one stood
above him, not smiling. His face was grim and filled with the wisdom of one who asks questions
that are not mysteries.

"You cannot leave
here now. You must stay."

Blue Snow sat up,
his breath coming in gasps. "I will leave anytime I like."

The old one shook
his head. "There is no way out for you until there is no hate left in you."

"I do not
understand. I want to go home," said Blue Snow.

"You use empty
words. You are home. Aomi, the demon, is your home."

"Why me?" cried
Blue Snow. "Why was I chosen for the demon?"

"Because you
chose," said the old one. "I watched you. I watched the children play cruel games upon each other
as children do. But you were different. You are the kind that goes deeper than the cruelty of
small ones. You are a killer whose inside is rotten with hate like a dead tree. And be­cause your
kind never tires of hating and hurting, you are here."

"I want to leave! I
am frightened! I don't want to stay with the demon."

"Aomi eats
kindness. He cannot harm you. There is not a kind bone in your body. The beast demon will give
you all you need. Eat of Aomi's flesh for hunger, drink his blood for thirst. All that you love
is here. For Aomi can be tormented a thousand ways and never die. Go. Aomi awaits the chase, the
feel of death snapping its jaws. Use your hate. Go. Aomi
grows restless. Give Aomi the pain it hates and loves. Hate is the love that
is not a weak pain. Only the strong fight de­mons." And the old one pointed to the flowing
strength of Aomi gathering upon the ground.

"How long will I
stay? How long will I do this, old one?" asked Blue Snow, feeling the fever rising in him again,
tear­ing him away from the questions that tumbled in his brain.

"Until you become
gray like me and dried out with the fever and the hating. Who can say how long that will
be?"

"How will I know
when it is time to stop?" said Blue Snow, his body alive and trembling with the fever and the
wildness.

"You will know
neither a hunger nor a thirst that Aomi will not fill. You will live a long time but when the
hating stops you will stop. You will know when the hating stops, just as I knew when my time to
stop had come. For you see, I was once the Aomi's keeper."

"Because you
hated?" asked Blue Snow and then he was gone, forgetting the question, no longer seeing the old
one or living in the outside world. Blue Snow only saw the quick coming and flowing of the demon
Aomi. And he killed and killed and the old one was forgotten.

"No," said the old
one, talking to himself as he watched with sad, knowing eyes. "No," said the old one, the
rustling leaf that blows gently and crumbles. "Because I could not love."

Horseboy digging in
the yard, digging in the dust. No grass in the yard, lot of dust there.

"What you doing?"
yells his old lady grandmother. "You like dog buried a bone?"

"Digging," says
Horseboy, "just digging."

"What for digging?"
ask Grandmother.

"Just," he says,
"just digging."

"Crazy you," she
say. "You all the time dig for the hell of it?"

Horseboy dump out
one last coffee can of dirt and climb out of hole. Hole maybe two feet deep. Hole not going
any­where, just hole.

"You want eat fore
you go?" she say and she rub her arms with her hands like they ache. She got that crying look in
her face.

"I ain't hungry."
He is not looking at her face. Like maybe the sun on her white hair so bright it hurts his
eyes.

"You hungry," she
say, "but it not food you hungry for."

He look up at her,
ashamed, but his back stiffen up and there is more pride there in that back of his than is shame.
And she know that. She know that boy is got pride.

"Come into the
house and I fix you some deer meat. Some stew. Come in now, mind, I fix for you one time
more."

"You know I ain't
hungry," he says and he scruffs his old boots along edge of hole. He is hate this
good-bye.

"Just think,
Horseboy, just think, think this, come same time next day you be miles gone. Gone be all them
miles away and nobody fix you stew. Nobody fix for you."

She bend over with
stiff, hurting old back and brush hair off of his face. He lets her do it but he feel too
grown-up for her doing that.

"Maybe I eat just a
little," says Horseboy, knowing it make her happy if he do it.

So the old lady
smile, crooked teeth and all, and put her arm around him and they walk back inside and that hole
in the ground, ain't nothing, just a hole back there.

He's sitting down
in front of that beat-up old table his uncle found at the dump. He's sitting there and she fixing
for him and she talk. "You ain't bother to go leave us? Leave your grandmother and where your
father and mother buried, buried right here behind the house and you ain't bother going? Where
you be not having your peoples?" say the old woman, waving her finger at him. "This reservation
here, maybe you don't care about your peoples no more?"

"I care," he say
and his face look hurting. There is a rat, under the floor by the table, making noise and
Horseboy lis­tening to that rat moving down there like it important. He trying not to look at the
old lady and listening, that rat there, yes, rat.

The old lady comes
away from the old woodstove with a pot, walking careful like so she don't step in that hole in
the floor Horseboy never got around fixing. The steam rises up off that stew, smelling good. She
set it down on the table in front of Horseboy and dishes out some in an old cracked bowl for him.
Horseboy is looking away.

"Don't your belly
hurt inside thinking how you going away? What about Nila? What about Nila girl? Don't you hurt in
the belly?" The old lady won't let up on him.

"I get there on a
wage and soonest time I'm sending for
Nila. Send for you Grandmother. This ain't a fit living place," says Horseboy.

"I was here born
and here die," says the old woman. "I don't give damn all time talking about wage."

"Well, not me," say
Horseboy. "Not this one. I want to see places."

"What places?" she
ask.

"I don't know. Just
places."

"You just like that
Brokeshoulder, that Leon Broke-shoulder. Off to fight in that damn Vietnams. What for he doing
that? Who am them Vietnams? I ask you who they am. Ain't they brownskin like us and living on
land like our fathers and we over there killing them short brownskin peo­ples. Why for we do
that?"

"For America," says
Horseboy. "It was done for America."

"Oh, that's lie. A
lie and you knowing it. Them brownskin peoples like us Indians. They never do us harm. What right
that Leon Brokeshoulder got leaving reservation and going over there killing peoples never hurt
him?"

"It's different
when you're in Army," says Horseboy. "You have to do what they tell you."

"If they tell you
jump off mountain, if they tell you swal­low glass, you fool enough and do it? Ain't that the way
of it?"

Horseboy push away
from the table, disgusted, almost knocking wobbly old table over. "Aw, you don't understand
nothing. You just so old, old woman, and things has passed you by. Things is different
now."

The old lady wave
her bony fist in his face. "You respect your elders!"

Horseboy look at
her, sharp, kind of sad, not so angry; then ashamed, he look away. "Sorry," he mutter.

"Ain't you gone
eat?"

"Not hungry now,"
says Horseboy.

The old woman
pushed the steaming bowl of deer stew closer to him on the table. "Where you get food like that?
Only word food you gone hear when you leave here is ham­burger. Crazy white man and his
hamburger, you mind what I say. You eat this once so you remember what eating good
is."

Horseboy pull
himself reluctantly back to the table and stir the stew listlessly with a fork. He less hungry
now than before. He eats a biteful anyway, just 'cause she watching.

There was a knock
on the old screen door and Leon Brokeshoulder was leaning against the screen. Resting.

"Car's ready. Got
the transmission fixed," he says.

Horseboy look up
and wave him in. He come through the door slowly and awkwardly. The artificial leg of his never
seemed to fit him just right.

He come into the
kitchen and pull up a chair beside Horseboy. Leon was painfully thin, his thick black hair cut
close to his scalp, in military fashion. He had a broad scar across his forehead as wide as a
zipper. Stepping on a land mine in Nam had really mess him up.

"How you feeling
boy? You look death," says the old woman and she came around behind him and felt his ribs through
his shirt. "Hungry? I got deer stew."

1 just ate," says
Leon, dragging a crumpled pack of ciga­rettes out of his shirt pocket.

She put a bowl of
deer stew in front of him anyway. "Well eat again skeleton or wind gone think you tumble-weed and
blowing you away."

Leon, being polite,
eat a little, but he isn't hungry much.

"They was a wreck
down along Pine Canyon. Remember Joseph Eagle from over to Schoonerton?"

Horseboy
grunt.

"Well they say his
pickup truck went off crazy like at the
top of the turn and went down the cliff with him. Pieces of him scattered all over Pine
Canyon."

"Drunk?" asks
Horseboy, knowing Joseph Eagle.

"Stinking with it,"
says Leon. "You ever know him not to be stinking with, it. All the time drunk, that
one."

"Yeah," says
Horseboy, who had gotten drunk with Jo­seph Eagle a couple times himself.

"You ready to
leave?" asks Leon and then Nila comes into the room through the back door. Nila with the shoes
that hurts her in that restaurant down the way she works at.

"Why he going?"
says the old lady. "You tell me, Leon Brokeshoulder, why this boy gots to go so far and away.
Tell me why this boy going away?"

Nila open her eyes
wide at that and lean wearylike in that doorway. There is sweat in her face from the long walk,
but the way her face is made up, she stop at home before she wander along down here to see
Horseboy.

"Where you going
away, Horseboy? Where are you going?" ask Nila, rubbing her hands nervously on her wait­ress
dress.

"Away," says
Horseboy, not looking at her. "To a city, I guess, maybe Austin or maybe up to Denver,
Colorado."

"No good. No good,"
says the old lady. "You don't know your heart, you don't . . ."

"You leave me be,"
says Horseboy. "I ain't go there for fun. I ain't go there for a good time and that's all. I
looking for a job there . . . steady work ... a good wage. I can't stay here no more. I don't
want end like Joseph Eagle, drunk all the time and so stinking not knowing you killed
yourself."

"You gone leave
being Indian then," says his old lady grandmother. "What you are wanting is not Indian, not
In­dian."

"I can't help it.
If it takes that, that is what is," say Horse­boy.
Leon has turned his back to the table, looking out the screen door past Nila's head.
He is embarrass to hear this that goes on.

Nila comes in and
sets at the table across from Horseboy. She sits in the chair, uncomfortable, that waitress dress
too tight on her, other things too.

The old lady comes
around the table to offer her some­thing to eat.