The Rock Child (18 page)

“Would you give me something in return?”

He nodded.

“Teach me to shoot.” She took out the derringer.

“We’ll use my smaller handgun,” he said. “I have plenty of cartridges for it, and I suspect you’re short.” Burton looked toward the hillock behind the camp. “Asie,” he called, “would you care to join us shooting?”

I was whistling the evening away, and enjoying it. Heckahoy, whistling never felt like
just
whistling, not to me.

I skittered down the hill.

Sir Richard set us up some rocks, which were what the country had most of. He had a high-old-time expression on his face, and I knew he was reveling in teaching a nun to fight. Anything that was mad, it just thrilled him.

He checked her derringer and its loads. He had her shoot them and reload. “Now you have taken the first step,” he says.

He went over the mechanics of his handgun with both of us, and we shot at the rocks, which were fist-sized, tearing up the nearby dirt considerably. He told us we were doing fine, though. You didn’t aim at any exact spot with a handgun, that was his theory. You didn’t aim at all. You drew and pointed and hit a general area.

It felt good. I had never shot a handgun afore.

Then he began his real teaching. “The secret to fighting is that it is not a physical endeavor,” he lectured, “but mental and spiritual. The winner is always he who has the willingness to win, the passion to win. Or she. Violence, you must commit yourself to inflicting violence, to utter destruction.”

He whirled of a sudden and fired. One of the rocks shot into splinters.

“Practice is necessary, physical practice. Your weapon becomes second nature to you.”

He shot without looking, it seemed like, and another rock blew up. “What is more than necessary, however, is preparation of the spirit. Sit quietly. Search within yourself for your fury—all men have it, all! And women! When you find your fury, picture an enemy, any enemy. In your mind heap destruction upon him. Descend upon him like a storm. Commit mayhem upon him. Dismember him. That is the essential preparation of a warrior.”

He leapt his gun at the rocks and fired three times. Three rocks exploded into pebbles and dust.

“You must become Bashi Bazouks!”

He looked at us triumphantly.

OK, I was willing to look ignorant. “What’s a Bashi Bazouk?”

Sir Richard smiled delightedly. “In the Crimean War I was detached to Turkic regiments who fought like true and fine berserkers. They rode gloriously into the jaws of death, they galloped into the mouth of hell as into the bosom of Abraham. Never have I known such true-spirited fighters. Bashi Bazouk! The very words sing the spirit of warriors!”

I was past patience with him. “Sir Richard,” I said, “Sun Moon is no Bashi Bazouk, nor no nun is. It’s ain’t monastery stuff. For that matter, I druther whistle than fight myself.”

Sir Richard pounced and caught me. “I was hoping you would say so.
I’m not sure you’re right. Sun Moon
might
find the martial spirit through sufficient supplication to Kali. You
might
find it if circumstance pressed you sorely.

“But let us assume you cannot, or are not ready.” He hit me a blow with his evil eye. “Then do not have the arrogance to oppose Porter Rockwell, or any other true warrior. You would be no more than a fly to his whisk.”

I gave him some eye back. “I don’t guess we have Porter Rockwell to worry about no more.”

Sudden-like Sun Moon spoke up. “I think we do.”

Sir Richard looked on her curiously. “How so, Sister?”

She cast her eyes down, unable to answer, and spoke softer. “I just think we do.”

Sir Richard took it in, then nodded. “And I am confident we do not. For which I give thanks.”

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

We were camped at Deep Creek, more than halfway from Salt Lake City to where the California Trail split off from the Oregon Road. You wanted to camp by water, not just to let the stock drink but because you’d spent the whole day getting parched. Nothing is as hot or arid as the deserts of western Utah and eastern Nevada in summer. The mountains were hard and dry as cracked walnut shells. The leaves of trees and bushes were brittle as paper left weeks in the sun. The air scorched. All day long the mule skinners drove hard, and the dust sailed straight from the mules’ hoofs into your lungs and parched them. Even the water wasn’t hardly wet.

Until sundown. At sundown everything changed. The desert colors turned from dust and dirt to purple and pink. Around the creeks and water holes the air sweetened. A few animals came to water, coyotes, foxes, sometimes deer and antelope. The birds eased my spirit with their abundance. Swallows afloat in the evening. Nighthawks, owls, seagulls, sage hens, sandpipers, sometimes herons and egrets.

I sat out away from camp that evening and called to them. They weren’t the birds I was used to. That night we couldn’t get any music going, for they didn’t know I wanted to be part of their song.

All of a sudden Sun Moon appeared there next to me. In her direct
way she says, “We build your drum.” Muley’d shot a mule deer, and she’d got the hide off him and soaked it for the purpose. She’d borrowed a crosscut saw from Harold. She took me in tow and showed me a hollow log of cottonwood. She had it all worked out.

I cut off a round like she wanted. Those days, though, I knew nothing about working with hide. We had to get Carlson to show us how to stretch it over the open ends of the log, poke holes in the hide, and lace it and pull it tight. He did it in silence, like everything he did.

Meanwhile, she cut off a couple of pieces of hide, I didn’t know how come.

Carlson was the other skinner, the one we never rode with, a young fella maybe my age. He was a stalwart-built young man, had a red beard and a good-looking face, but he set his features stubborn all the time. Plus he never said anything. Heckahoy, I mean
nothing
. The only thing came out of his mouth was tobacco juice. Nor did he meet anyone’s eyes. Just went about his business like jobs of work was all there was in the world, or anyways there weren’t any people. He didn’t actually show us how to stretch the drum but just done it for us and walked away without a word.

“You play,” she said. Then I saw what she was holding out to me, a stick to beat with. Wooden handle, deerhide cover… What was it stuffed with?

Then I saw. She’d cut off part of her braids to stuff the head of my drumstick.

“Gift,” she said. “Gift say thank you. You do much for me. I want help you music.”

If she hadn’t been so standoffish, I’d have hugged her. “Thank you, Sun Moon. You honor me.”

“You play after some days.” Yeah, it had to dry before it could get thumped on. “Thank you,” I said again.

I was grateful, but also uncomfortable. Seemed like she wanted me to beat a drum, to be an Indian. I was an Indian, sort of, and maybe wanted to be. But the notion of beating a drum made me feel like a fool.

“You make sacred music. You maybe a
pawo.
”

“What the beJesus is a pah woh?”

Her face set stubborn then. She looked all around like the answer was somewhere out there in the desert.

I just waited. I’d found out that was the way with Sun Moon.

“
Pawo
man cross over, come back. Bön-po way in Tibet. Cross over, come back.”

The cat took my tongue. A
what?
Me?

“You fall in river,” she said. “You fall in, see and hear other side.”

I got it then. It had been prowling around in my head since it happened. The waves came for me that day and swept me away somewhere else and I heard things you don’t hear in this world. Every day since, truth to tell, had been peculiar, trying not to think about it, like sitting in a room with a griz and telling jokes and carrying on and pretending lah-dee-dah there isn’t no silvertip here. When the bear is all you can think about.

“Yeah,” I said. “Yeah, I did.”

“I know some about people cross to other side and come back. They bring wisdom. I learn in books. Book know only. You have gift maybe. Your people maybe know how cross over.”

I just looked at her. Half of me was mad. If I was going to be an Indian, and maybe my people were out there ahead somewhere, I didn’t mean to be one that crossed from one side to the other and back. Other side of
what?
Common sense said there wasn’t any such thing.

Yet I had been there. I had heard the music. Music more beautiful far than any I’d ever heard or would hear on this earth, with these mortal ears. I knew the music over there was way, way more real than any music here. I just didn’t have any explanation for it.

A thump on the head, you say? You think I knocked my head on a rock in the bottom of that river and heard music like people get thunked and see stars? Well, I can just picture Handel and Beethoven beating their heads on rocks to get the music to come. Besides, I started hearing the music minutes before I went into the water. And those waves, they
came
for me.

Maybe you don’t know. But I do. I know where my ass is planted on the Earth, and I know whether I’m warm or cold, and I know what I heard in the river. Knew it even that day at Deep Creek. So I couldn’t nay-say Sun Moon.

“What do people see on the other side?” I didn’t even have the guts to say
hear
.

She shrugged.

“What do they bring back?”

She shrugged. Finally, she said, “Do not matter what they see, hear, do, bring back. Matter what
you
see, hear, bring back.”

So Sun Moon thinks I’m a pah woh,
I says to myself.
I talk to birds, and once I heard song lyrics in a language I don’t know. That crazy I am. But Bon Poh pah woh? Loony. Even the sounds is loony—Bon Poh pah woh
.

It bothered me. Ever since that day, I’d been half-afraid I was crazy. Which was worse? To be crazy? Or to be a cross-over-and-backer?

The good part was, I didn’t feel so desirous of Sun Moon now. Who wants to romance with someone thinks you’re a Bon Poh Pah Woh?

We were worried about Digger Indians, so Muley said. We took turns at night guard. Their main practice, so Muley told me, was running off with the horses. As second choice they would stick the critters so full of arrows you had to leave ’em behind.

Muley told us all this the first time he asked for night guard. He did it without a blink, a wiggling eyebrow, or any other sign that one of the folks he was telling about “those rotten Indians” was an Indian. I didn’t know whether to be insulted or flattered by his attitude. Insulted at what he said, flattered that he didn’t seem to include me. Or insulted that he didn’t include me. One night I gave thought to running off with the horses myself and joining up with the Digger Indians. Been just Muley and Carlson, I would have done it.

“Why are they called Diggers?” says Sir Richard.

Muley just gave a disgusted look. “They eat roots. And bugs.”

Carlson snickered.

“What tribes inhabit this country?” he pushed on, ever the scientist.

Muley shrugged. Carlson’s mouth worked, and for a moment I thought he was going to break his record by saying something. After a big show of lips flagging up and down, jaw working from side to side, and chin wagging, he only spat. “Tribes,” says Muley. “I guess that’s like herds or flocks. You best learn their ways afore you hunt ’em.”

He and Carlson both gave ugly chuckles. “Skinny bastards. Waste a’ bullets, not enough meat.” More chuckles, louder this time. Then Muley gave Sir Richard what passed as a serious look with him. “These critters is really the A-rabs of America. They is thieves, nothing satisfies ’em,
and no amount short of
all
will do. Their hand is agin every man, and every man’s hand is agin them.”

Sir Richard gave him the evil eye, and I pondered that Sir Richard was half A-rab hisself, or more. Muley and Carlson got up and moved off, so they could share each other’s ugly company. I smirked at Sir Richard. “You don’t look for nuggets in a chamber pot,” he said.

I took my turn on guard like everybody else. Against Indians. I told myself that if I was from one tribe, I’d be willing to stand guard against another tribe.

One night Sir Richard sat up with me. Among his madnesses sometimes, seemed like, was not being able to sleep.

He just sat by me companion-like. He was a good companion, Sir Richard. He had his faults. For one, sometimes I could tell he was drunk, visiting never-never land with some drug, or by other means not in proper occupation of his mind. For another fault, he was sneaky. I’d seen him once, on his knees, bowing all the way down. I suspect he did that every day and kept it from us. His secret was safe with me. The man’s big fault, and virtue, was that he surely did believe in books. He was always diving into some notebook and writing every fact down, or getting lost in reading some tome he’d brought. He was the damnedest man for writing and the written. It was like all of God’s creation was only a preliminary sketch. The final draft was the published version, especially when penned by Sir Richard.

We had none of us seen hide nor hair of any horse thieves. Muley said that was because we fired two or three times into the air fast when we changed guard, let ’em know we were awake and watching and had repeating weapons. I didn’t say it, but the air was the only thing I was going to shoot at. For sure not any Indian. Shooting your relatives isn’t right.

After he sat awhile, Sir Richard got started talking. “I understand Digger is not a tribal designation.” He was sure telling this from some of his researches. “The tribes are Pah-Ute, Shoshone, and perhaps others.” He hesitated like he sometimes did, thinking. I could feel his mind circling something, restless, questing. “Each valley, each basin, each desert may have its own tribe. Perhaps each tribe has its own, separate language. I’m told this is so in California.”

That wasn’t what he was circling toward.

Finally he came out with it. “Do you ever think that the Diggers are perhaps your people?”

I looked at him sideways.
Well, I don’t know whether I want to talk about it
.

“The bond of blood is powerful,” said Sir Richard. He was one smart man. Right now I couldn’t read his face—too dark. With that big old stare and the piratical scar on his cheek, his face never told much about his insides anyway.

We just sat there. The wind ran gently by, maybe bearing music we couldn’t hear. The stars moved a smidgeon. I wondered if there was such a thing as the music of the spheres. “I don’t know nothing about ’em,” I said.

“You must have tried to find out. What do you think?”

He already knew the story of how old Taylor picked me up somewhere on the trail. I pondered a moment. “Don’ know.”

More sitting, more wind-listening, more stargazing. Sir Richard knew when to just let things be.

“I’ve wondered everything you can imagine,” I said.

“Why did you start this journey?” asked Sir Richard. “What do you hope to find?”

I listened for the music of the spheres and heard silence. Or maybe I was just stalling. “Main thing was, I was just done with the old life,” I said.

I let that sit, but it didn’t do me any good. “There’s something else,” I said. “Something the Mormons don’t know about, maybe something white people don’t know about.” Then I took thought of who I was talking to. “Most white people,” I amended. “That’s what happened the day I fell in the river.” I hesitated. “I heard things.” I looked sideways at him. He knew the story, the outside of the story.

“Words?” he prompted.

“Words, yeah, but more music. Song. Most glorious singing you ever heard, what the heavenly choirs must sound like.”

After a bit, he says, “The words didn’t matter?”

“I didn’t know what they was. I can’t tell if I didn’t honest hear ’em or whether they was in a language strange to me.” I stared at my fingers. “I knew what they was saying, praises to God, such as that. Just couldn’t get the actual words.”

“Did you have the thought that the words might be in your native tongue?”

I worked my fingers. “Yeah, I did. But they might have been anything. Saints speak in tongues, you know.”

All of a sudden I felt like a fool. “Or maybe I just hit my head on a rock.”

“I don’t think so,” said Sir Richard, “and neither do you.” I couldn’t help smiling in the dark. “I could teach you about mysticism,” he said. “Even about speaking in tongues, which I assure you is authentic. We could talk now. Or I could send you books from England.”

I shook my head. “Not my way to learn things out of books.”

He nodded, because he knew that.

“Maybe I’ll go to Tibet with Sun Moon. They know about mysticism.”

He nodded yes. “Is that what you want?” he murmured, more to himself than me. We sat quiet for a while.

“Sometimes,” I started, “I have a kind of dream. It’s an awake dream, really, but I have to be half-asleep, or feeling toward that, to have it. In the dream I came into a narrow valley, good grass along a creek, lots of evergreen trees on the slopes, high mountains above. Very beautiful and somehow very familiar. I walk slowly into the valley, fascinated.

“In the middle of the valley is a tepee, smoke easing out the top. Feeling strange—eager but nervous—I walk toward the tepee. When I get close, a young woman comes out to tend to a cook fire in front. She sees me and smiles, easy, like it’s natural I should be here, and welcomes me by the name Sima Untuasie. Her man comes out and says hello like I was there only yesterday. They ask me to eat with them. I sit down, some kids sit next to me, and I stay.”

Neither of us said a word. I looked into the desert at all the shadows the moon made.

“That’s it. That’s the whole dream. It can’t be my people. Indians out here don’t live in tepees. That comes from pictures in kids’ books, pro’ly. And I don’ believe there’s no alpine country with good water, grass, and trees in Washo, not anywhere.” I indicated the barren desert with one hand. “That’s it,” I repeated. “Except that sometimes I see a blue, hazy shimmer upriver, like a lake there.”