The Rock Child (38 page)

A figure came out from behind the horses. “Tommy Kirk say Sir Richard no good. Sleep to tomorrow. Opium.”

First I recognized the voice, then I recognized his sweet face. The head was tilted sideways onto folded hands to imitate sleep. An angelic smile lit the face. Paiute Joe.

He came to me and stuck out his hand. “I am your guide,” he said.

I shook it.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

“You wanna go back to town?” I was sick of gallivanting all over the country. And under it.

“No,” she said quickly.

“I believe Rockwell’s out of the picture,” I said.

Paiute Joe put in, “What?”

“We blew up the mountain on Rockwell,” said Daniel. “If we didn’t kill him, he’ll have to be dug out.” He addressed Sun Moon. “Since it’s my mine, that won’t happen.”

“No,” she said, “we must go San Francisco.” I knew better than to try to charm her out of that.

She looked around at our escort. I noticed with satisfaction that every man had at least two guns, rifle and pistol.

“No need run now,” said Paiute Joe.

“Where were you planning to take us?” I asked Daniel.

“Truckee River.”

“Truckee River?”

“Near Lake Tahoe,” he said, shrugging. “Good place.” A half smile said something was on his mind, but doodle if I could see what.

“We don’ gotta,” I told Sun Moon again. “Let’s take the stage from Virginia City.”

“No,” she said. “Rockwell come for me.”

Daniel told Sun Moon gently, “You can catch the stage from Tahoe.”

My heart stirred. “How long do you think this will go on?”

“I must put ocean between him.” I saw her face change. “Unless I confront him.”

Now my heart sank.

“You need to go to Truckee River,” said Daniel. Funny thing was, I got the idea he meant me, not us.

“How make safe?”

“First,” said Daniel, “let’s send someone back to find out if Rockwell’s dead.”

“He not,” said Sun Moon.

Daniel fixed us with his hawk eyes. “Let’s send someone back.”

She nodded. “Yes. But we go away now.”

Daniel agreed. He and Paiute Joe talked low with Q Mark. “Tell Tommy Kirk we need to know whether Rockwell is alive or dead. Meet us at Truckee Outlet.”

Q Mark nodded at Daniel, saddled his horse, and rode off without a word toward Virginia City.

“Tommy Kirk?” I says.

“He is our savior,” says Daniel with a grin. “For a price.”

“We must go now,” urged Sun Moon.

So we did. I didn’t know where, except it was down. We weren’t on the Gold Canyon road, weren’t on the Six-Mile Canyon road, weren’t on any road nor way nor trail nor even animal track I could see in the pitch-dark, just down Sun Mountain behind Paiute Joe.

I didn’t like going without Sir Richard. Had a funny feeling we weren’t doing right by him. Yet, when you think of it, it was him let us down, not the other way round.

Peculiar thing. Since I set out to explore the wide world and find myself a place in it that seemed right, I’d been running and hiding and playing nip and tuck with death. Near drowned in the river. Near got shot a couple of times by Porter Rockwell. Hid in Brigham Young’s bedrooms. Near got blown to smithereens in a mine shaft. Now I was hightailing it down a desert mountain in the middle of night, trying to escape.

I was rightly sick of it. I wanted to stop running, whatever came, pick a spot or a person or a job, and imitate Brigham Young by saying, “This is the place.” Then sit and stay put.

Didn’t seem like that was in Sun Moon’s plans.

We ran all night, forever it seemed like. Down, down, down the steep
slopes. I saw by the stars that we were also circling around to the west side of Sun Mountain. Down, down, down. When it was still full dark, we dashed across a sandy plain to where a creek flowed into a desert lake.

“Washo Lake,” says Daniel. We were too tired to answer.

The Chinamen took turns on watch. Sun Moon and I wrapped up in blankets and laid next to each other, like we did in the mine. We were becoming partners, in an innocent way, more innocent than I liked. But her face said it was what she wanted, and that was enough for me.

At midday I woke up and ate. Paiute Joe came and squatted on a rock above me, feet flat, bottom dropped between them, rifle across lap, eyes roaming the desert watchful-like. One of the Chinamen was on guard, too. After a while Joe volunteered, “Travel in dark.”

“Why are we going to the Truckee River?”

He shrugged.

It was Daniel who answered, a gleam in his eyes. “You must see for yourself.”

“You keeping secrets?”

“You’ll see.”

“And after?”

“When it’s safe, you can go on. Whichever of you goes wherever.”

I shrugged and gave up. Whatever it was, Daniel was mightily pleased himself, and I wasn’t supposed to ask. My friend delighted in secrets and surprises. He was a sleight-of-hand man with hidden parts of himself.

I drifted over to Sun Moon, gave her some dried fruit, and asked what she was thinking.

“Some way Rockwell come. No way out.”

I could see thinking on it had her buffaloed, and I didn’t want to hear any more of that kind of talk. I felt buffaloed, too. Even if Rockwell was dead, we were running. And I had come to the end of my time with running. I felt ready to be done with skee-e-e-daddling, whatever devil was trying for my hindmost.

Other things were niggling at me too. Going to Tibet, for instance. Traveling halfway around the world. Wasn’t that running? And other things yet were bothering me, maybe, but I couldn’t tell what they were. I sat down and began to peel threads off a yucca. Before long I was tying them into odd shapes. At the same time I was tying my mind up in knots, and soon was completely frustrated.

Sun Moon meditated until she saw the sun was halfway down to the peaks of the Sierra Nevada Mountains to the west. Gently, she brought herself back to the ordinary world and looked around. Paiute Joe was distributing food. She walked back to the group and sat on a rock next to Asie. He looked at her and she saw thoughts in his head, unspoken thoughts.

Instead of saying what was on his mind, he handed her some jerked beef and dried apricots. “Pretty good dinner for people on the run,” he said to Daniel.

“I paid Tommy Kirk well to take care of us,” Daniel answered, and lowered his eyes. Sun Moon registered that Daniel never revealed more than he had to, and whatever Tommy Kirk did was for money.

“Thank you,” she said. Daniel nodded but said nothing. She knew he was still blaming himself for leading Rockwell right to them.

After a little chewing, she swallowed the beef whole. She never liked dried meat. What she longed for was the
tsampa
of her homeland, roasted barley flour mixed into tea. Or
paak,
barley flour made into dough. The thought gave her a pang, and for an instant she could smell Tibetan tea, rich and buttery. With this memory she could wait for Asie to speak.

She put a dried apricot into her mouth and squeezed it gently between her back teeth. She turned her face into the cool westerly breeze. Nun or not, she loved touch and smell.

Asie said somberly, “I’ve decided about Rockwell. If he’s alive, I’ll get Sir Richard, and maybe Q Mark, and we’ll kill him.”

“No!” The word burst out. She pinched her lips together to keep more from coming out uncontrolled.

“No,” she said more gently. If Asie took a human life, the karma would be with him for countless incarnations. “You not even think kill, please.”

“I don’t want to run the rest of my life,” said Asie.

“Not run,” she said. “Not kill. Face.”

Asie spoke angrily. “How you gonna do that? Face and not kill? He’ll kill you.”

She shrugged. She looked at him and held his eyes.

“You mean to die?” he asked.

“No,” she said. “This human incarnation is precious.”

“How you gonna face down Rockwell?”

She looked at him. “Don’t know.” She could see the burn in his eyes.

“Let’s wait for Q Mark,” he said. “Maybe Rockwell’s dead.”

She shook her head. She rocked forward onto the balls of her feet, reached to him with both hands, and took hold of the cloth of the shoulders of his shirt. “We do right,” she said. “All we can do.”

Suddenly it hit her, the pain. It clubbed her. She rolled onto her back, clutching her belly.

I reached for her, but she rolled away from me and put her back to me, wailing, “No! No!”

She squeezed herself together like a fist, and pain twisted her face something awful. She rolled along the ground, gasping. When I touched her, she shoved my hand away and yelled, “No, no, I am OK.”

Loss welled up in me, a sense of something torn away, gone forever.

I sat down in the dust to look at this woman I loved and all of a sudden, straight through what I saw, I got a strange, strange picture. As in a dream I saw me and the four or five people in the world I cared about. We were in the ocean, holding on to big pieces of splintered wood, like our boat had just been smashed to smithereens. I don’t even know who the others were, or what they were to me, but they were the ones I cared about. We were split apart and floating away from each other. I could see we were just going to float away from each other, carried by the currents against our wills, float, every which direction, alone and alone and alone, to the uttermost ends of the earth.

I looked at Sun Moon’s back and felt a slow, steady, strong wind of loneliness. It was chill and rolled over me from all directions at once, even from up and down. It was around me and it was within me and it was me. I knew with a terrible certainty that loneliness had always been the air I breathed, it was my soul, it was me.

I thought the words,
This is the worst feeling the world brings
.

I felt my soul shrivel.

My fingers ached for my banjo, back in a hotel in Virginia City.

Sun Moon thrashed on the ground right in front of me.

I shook my hands and forced myself to come back and get to helping Sun Moon.

I don’t want to picture the whole thing for you, because it was ugly and I don’t want to make myself see it again. First she panted and gasped and cried out and wailed for a long while, clutching herself double. Then
she convulsed over and over. She shook, she flailed, and she screamed, the worse scream I’ll ever have call to hear. Finally she curled into an even tighter ball and blood seeped into the seat of her pants.

She lay still for a while, gasping for breath. When her breathing got easier, she began to cry, soft but not easy. Her whole body shuddered.

All us men just stared, ignorant or stupefied.

Finally, she sat up in the dust and looked at us. I couldn’t tell you whether she was seeing us, or her eyes were just pointed our direction, and I couldn’t begin to describe that look. “Leave me alone,” she said softly. No one moved. She said more firmly, “Please, I need be alone.”

We got.

A long while passed. The sun eased behind the mountains. Finally she called my name and I went to her. She was in clean clothes, and her pants were spread out on a rock next to the spring, drying.

She came to me and took both my hands in hers. In the last of the light she looked for a long time into my eyes. Finally, she says, “I have lost our child.”

She kept eyeballing me hard. What feelings she saw in me I cannot report, nor what feelings I remember. Shock, agony, grief, words aren’t enough for feelings like that. Even music won’t say ’em, not all the way.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

My tongue was struck dumb.

“I wanted the child, I wanted …” She lost her voice in tears.

I was mute.

“I love you. I wanted our child.”

She turned and walked off into the desert.

I was helpless. I couldn’t do anything for Sun Moon, I couldn’t do anything for me. I just sat there. I started to figure what did it, most likely getting blasted by that black powder, but then I figured it didn’t matter, it was done.

After a while I wished I had my drum and banjo. When Daniel picked up my belongings, he didn’t bring them, as they wouldn’t fit in the knapsack. So there I sat, feelings turning topsy-turvy inside and no way to get them out. Odd, I was hearing music, bits of it, my music, the songs my heart was making. Yet I had no way to play it, and no heart to sing or whistle it. Felt like wanting to weep and being too dry.

A good while after full dark Paiute Joe says quiet-like, “Time saddle up.” We set to it. Joe disappears into the sagebrush and comes back with Sun Moon in tow.

Just then we heard hoofbeats, someone coming hard from the direction of Sun Mountain.

We looked around and saw the sentries were both getting their saddles on—no one was on watch!

I scrambled up the biggest boulder I could find and looked east. Paiute Joe was there ahead of me. Though his eyes were over fifty years old, he figured it out first. “Q Mark,” he said.

In a couple of minutes the big Celestial came banging into camp, his mount lathered.

We all stood froze, waiting.

He swung down. He walked right up to Sun Moon. I looked into his eyes for feeling—gladness, alarm, compassion, or whatever. I saw only indifference.

“Porter Rockwell,” he says to Sun Moon, “he dead.”

Q Mark turned his back and strode off to take care of his horse.

She turned to me, her hands on her belly. “Yet he kills,” she said. “Yet he kills.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

So we rode toward Truckee River through a moonless night, and the death between us made our minds blacker than the sky.

I was worried about Sun Moon, riding long after what happened to her. Daniel and I told her we could rest a day. She said, “I want get away from this place.”

Besides, Sir Richard was to join us at Truckee River. That was Q Mark’s other news.

We rode.

You may not think it matters, losing a child who hasn’t come into life yet. A
mis
-carriage, we call it, meaning things just went wrong. We don’t say tragedy. We don’t even say dead.

It mattered to Sun Moon. Regardless, it just did. She explained it to me later this way: In the Buddhist way of seeing things, our child was a soul coming once more into the cycle of life and death, for one of the incarnations that go on until the soul is no longer so attached to human life. Not being attached, that’s good, it’s enlightenment. If our child didn’t come in, maybe it wasn’t so attached.

But Sun Moon thought maybe our child was attached, was seeking a human life, a higher incarnation. And it was murdered by Porter Rockwell. A human incarnation ended by violence, that is a terrible thing.

Later I knew for sure what she didn’t tell me. How ever her theory
went, she was a mother. She loved our child, and wanted it, wanted
our
child. She wanted to raise our child in the way of her truth. And she wanted to be part of what she called the cycle of life and death, part of life. But I didn’t know all that for a while yet.

The blackness for me was sadness, bewilderment, and confusion. Sun Moon had carried our progeny. We had got the child that night on the bank of the Humboldt River, the one time in our lives either of us had made love. It had grown inside her, crossed the last of the desert in her, and suffered through her long fever time. It had danced with us that night in Virginia City, it had been shot at, it had run through the night, and then it had skittered every which way through that mine. It had survived the grand explosion. It had climbed with us through the fire-glowing snow into the open air again. Then, for whatever reason, it had died.

Until right then I never knew how much I wanted to take care of some living creature, to make it warm, get its belly full, keep it safe.

I felt like I had a hole in my heart.

Sun Moon and I won’t be able to fill the hole together,
that was the rest of the meaning.

She hadn’t told me about our child. She was intending to get on a boat and go halfway around the world and hide in a convent where I never would be able to find her. She meant for me never to know, or to know only by a letter that would do me no good. Our child was to be her child. Our child was to be her secret.

For the first time I understood that we were going to spend the rest of our lives on opposite sides of the globe.

Like a thin gourd tromped by a horse, my heart broke into little pieces.

During that long ride I put it back together in the shape of anger.
Why didn’t you tell me?

In my mind I stuck out my hands in a kind of strangling motion, and worked the fingers. My heart fractured in those hands. I put it back together as anger. It came fractured in my hands again, and this time turned to wet pulp.

Sorrow, anger, grief. Anger.

As we rode through the night, circling a lake we had never seen and still couldn’t, it began to drizzle. Later it turned to light snow which didn’t stick nor do anything except make my feelings cold.

Cold we came at first light to the ridge looking down on the valley of
the Truckee River, where it comes out of the lake. Daniel says, “Let’s take a breather.”

We swung down from the horses and sat. For a couple of minutes I kept my eyes as down as my spirits were. Then Daniel says softly, “Look.”

I raised my eyes from the ruins within and beheld. Don’t know I can describe to you, nor anybody, the sight before my eyes. Lake Tahoe stretched away to the east, north, and south, still, like a mirror shining the blue-gray sky at us. All around, four ways, were evergreen-timbered hills. To our backs, away from the lake, jumped up the crests of the Sierra Nevada, steep, icy, awesome. Below us lay little meadows. Through these inviting patches ran a small river, the Truckee, bordered by gold grasses and wine-colored bushes.

In the southeast the sky begins to color, and I hunker down to watch. Sky and lake shift slow from blue-gray to white, salmon, rose. The sun collects itself from a line to a ball the color of white-hot fire. Somehow the lake seems to take the colors more lively than the sky.

Then I notice further. This is the valley of my dream, where I see the tepee and meet my relatives. It is, yet it isn’t. The valley of my dream was wide and majestic, this one is narrow and delicate. That was mostly grassy meadows and aspens and expanse, this is river and willows in a narrow crook.
It isn’t the valley of my dream except in how it feels to me
.

More differences. There I’m hearing grand organ music, here it’s light women’s voices, a cappella….

I nearly jumped to realize.
I’m hearing music in my head
. It seemed an indescribable gift.
At this dawn, after my night of greatest darkness, I discover a valley like my dream
.

A tear ran, maybe two.

I felt something at my side and looked sideways. Sun Moon was squatted down beside me, looking not at the sunrise but at my face. A couple more tears ran, one at a time.

She took my hand. A thought flicked through my mind.
How could I hurt so much last night and feel so much healing this morning?
I banished the thought, and all thought. For a long time we sat and looked together across Lake Tahoe at the dawn.

I’ve had a few days that were truly unforgettable. Like the day I fell in the river and heard voices, and the night I made love with Sun Moon. That first day at Lake Tahoe stands next to them all.

When we mounted up and started down the trail into the valley,
Daniel walked his horse alongside of me and Sun Moon, her between us. “I have a special reason for bringing you two here,” he said gently. “Partly it’s some people to meet.”

“People?” Funny, from the ridge I’d looked and looked and thought I took in the whole scene, breathed it in precious as air. But I hadn’t seen any people. The way Sun Moon was smiling at me, I figured she had.

Daniel chuckled and pointed into the timber, but now more trees were in the way.

“Washo,” he said.

“Never heard of them.”

“Just one family, maybe twenty people.” He looked at Sun Moon. “If you need to hide, they’ll take care of you.”

He switched his eyes to me. “But I wanted you to come here for a completely different reason.”

I could feel him wanting me to look into his face, so I did.

“Asie, I believe the Washo are the people you were born to.”

I sailed along for a moment like I was riding a star through space. Finally I whispered, “How come you think so?”

Sun Moon gazed at me, back at Daniel, back at me.

“Your one clue, Rock Child. It’s a rock near here. The Washo know about it.”

I rode along with that for maybe one second or one eternity, I couldn’t say which. Waves ran up and down my body, warm and cool. Thoughts whirled in my head, though I knew neither then nor now what they were. A tune of some kind sang in my ears, and the horses’ hoofs beat out a slow, steady rhythm.

“Let’s go see it,” says I.

Daniel smiled. “Let’s ask the Washo.”

Just then we came out of the timber into the clear. To the left the lake shone strong and vibrant, like a great gong of polished brass. I looked across the tawny grasses and the blue-flecting river and into the trees on the far side and saw them. Stick lodges, set back in the shadows of the trees.

The tune in my head came clear, and I now remembered the words:

I’m just a poor, wayfaring stranger,

A-travelin’ through this world of woe.

But there’s no sickness, no toil nor danger,

In that bright world to which I go
.

I look at Daniel, and his eyes are shining, too. I commence to sing, and he joins me in a high, floating harmony.

“
I’m going there to see my father,

I’m going there no more to roam.

I’m just a-going over Jordan,

I’m just a-going over home.
”

We cross the meadow now, splash through the little stream, brush through more red willows and yellow grasses, toward the lodges among the evergreens. Everything has a glow for me, like halos. Maybe it comes from the rim of tears in my eyes.

The four or five homes were built of willows leaned together in the shape of tepees, facing east toward the lake. Somewhat back from them we left our horses with the Celestials and the four of us, Daniel, Sun Moon, Paiute Joe, and me, walked into camp.

I flicked the reins of my mind and started thinking just a little. Since my whole world had long since gone funny and peculiar, and since this place was even more strange than it was beautiful, I decided to act right at home. Then chuckled at myself.
Why not right at home?

A couple of young men met us and exchanged some words with Paiute Joe, too low for me to hear. We followed them through the camp. Women were at work, drying strips of flesh, pounding pine nuts into flour, weaving baskets. They wore rabbit-skin dresses that maybe did better for warmth than decency. Children of all ages played everywhere. One old woman sat idle with her face turned to the morning sun, soaking it up. They were a short people, mostly round of face and body. I couldn’t help thinking that I was, too. If a first impression meant anything, they were a cheerful bunch.

We walked up to a fire in front of a lodge and an old man who indicated with his arm that we were welcome to sit down. Even in my daze I managed to sit without falling.
Is this man my grandfather? Are any of these people my brothers or sisters? Aunts or uncles?

The old man gave Sun Moon an odd look or two, and I didn’t find out until later that it was against custom to bring a woman to a parley. He decided to make generous allowance for our barbarian ways and said a few words, friendly-like. I strained to hear each one clearly, and repeated those I could in my mind. But to my disappointment I didn’t recognize a single word, nor did the general sound of the language seem familiar.

The old man’s wife had put the coffeepot on the fire, and now she poured it into tin cups for us. I didn’t find out until later that this was a significant gesture of hospitality, with coffee and cups given by Daniel.

When we’d sipped awhile, the old man signed, and Paiute Joe spoke his words to us. “His name is Giver,” said Paiute Joe. “He is the grandfather of this family. He greets me and Daniel as friends, and offers his fire to you two.” Paiute Joe signed and said some words and made a gesture toward Sun Moon and me. The old man regarded us each in turn. “If you need protection, he offers it to you.”

“Thank you,” we said. I added, “I believe we are safe now.” I could hardly shove my mind back to Porter Rockwell, who wouldn’t be doing any more killing from beyond the grave.

Paiute Joe signed to Giver whatever we said.

“Ask him,” prompted Daniel.

Paiute Joe talked with his fingers. I could have done that, but was glad to watch. Giver answered in words and signs. The words still sounded as foreign as Sun Moon’s Tibetan. Maybe I’d never lived with my people enough to learn the talk.

“It’s OK,” Paiute Joe told Daniel.

“Sun Moon, when you want to go to San Francisco,” Daniel said, “Giver’s sons and grandsons will escort you and Sir Richard to the stage on the Placerville Road.”

“Thank you,” said Sun Moon.

“I want to see the Rock Child,” I said.

Paiute Joe answered, “How about after you sleep?”

Daniel was looking at me curiously.

I looked around.
Is this my place?
I couldn’t tell. Maybe.
Did I come from here? Should I come back to here?
I looked into Sun Moon’s face.
Maybe I can stay and she can go and it won’t be heartbreak. Maybe
.

I sat real still and turned my head and looked in every direction, east toward the lake, west up the river valley, north to the timbered ridge, south across the rolling hills. The world shimmered.

This was the most beautiful place in the world. However many wonders there were, this was the most beautiful.

“Time for another surprise,” said Daniel. “Come along?”

I got up, still more or less in a trance.

“You are invited to dinner tonight,” said Daniel to Giver.

Dinner?
We didn’t have decent food, but at least it wouldn’t be boiled garbage.

We rode down the valley and then south along the lakeshore. “What you are about to see is my true ambition,” Daniel told us. “No one else has seen this.”

Oh you friend of many secrets
.

The lake was spanking bright. “It’s a wonderful country,” I says to Sun Moon.

“Like my home,” she said. “Like my home.” I realized all the mountain West she’d seen till now was dry. This country was extravagantly watered, by compare.

We turned right along the shore into a natural clearing, with giant pines set wide apart. There sat a fine two-story log house with a porch running across the whole front, facing the lake. “I have built a lodge,” said Daniel. “Welcome.” For once he sounded happy, and the hawk look of his eyes was softened.

We rode up to the hitching rails in front of the lodge, and I surveyed the spot. It was the handsomest place to live a man could ever lay his eyes on, and a handsome day to come to it, warm and sunny. “What in Gastonia?” I murmured.

Daniel grinned, the merriest expression I’d ever seen on his face. “I’ll explain over breakfast,” he says.

As we dismounted, a white man and a Paiute wearing white-man pants came out of the lodge. Paiute Joe spoke to his tribesman, and the fellow took our horses to some corrals out back. “This is my foreman, Splinter,” said Daniel of the white man. He looked tickled that the world held someone named Splinter. “You’ll meet his brother Andy. Splinter will show you to your rooms.”