To a God Unknown Page 8

  12

  RAMA took Elizabeth by the hand and led her across the farm yard. "No crying, now," she said. "There's no call for it. You didn't know the man that's dead, so you can't miss him. And I'll promise you won't ever see him, so there's no call for fear." She led the way up the steps and into her comfortable sitting-room where rocking-chairs were fitted with quilted pads and where the Rochester lamps wore china shades with roses painted on them. Even the braided rag rugs on the floor were made of the brightest underskirts.

  "You have a comfortable place," Elizabeth said, and she looked up at the wide face of Rama, a full span between the cheekbones; the black brows nearly met over the nose, the heavy hair grew far down on her forehead in a widow's peak.

  "I make it comfortable," Rama said. "I hope you can do as well.

  Rama had dressed for the occasion in a tight-bodiced, full-skirted black taffeta which whispered sharply when she moved. Around her neck, upon a silver chain, she wore an amulet of ivory brought by some sailor ancestor from an island in the Indian Ocean. She seated herself in a rocking chair of which the seat and back were covered with little flowers in petit point. Rama stretched her white strong fingers on her knees like a pianist sounding a practice chord. "Sit down," she said. "You'll have a time to wait."

  Elizabeth felt the strength of Rama and knew she should resent it, but it was a safe pleasant thing to have this sure woman by her side. She seated herself daintily and crossed her hands in her lap. "You haven't told me yet what has happened."

  Rama smiled grimly. "Poor child, you are come at a bad time. Any time would have been bad, but this is a shameful time." She stiffened her fingers on her lap again. "Benjamin Wayne was stabbed in the back tonight," she said. "He died in ten minutes. In two days he'll be buried." She looked up at Elizabeth and smiled mirthlessly, as though she had known all this would happen, even to the smallest detail. "Now you know," she continued. "Ask anything you want tonight. There's a strain on us and we are not ourselves. A thing like this breaks down our natures for a time. Ask anything you wish tonight. Tomorrow we may be ashamed. When we have buried him, we'll never mention Benjy any more. In a year we will forget he ever lived."

  Elizabeth sat forward in her chair. This was so different from her picture of homecoming, in which she received the homage of the clan and made herself gracious to them. The room was swimming in a power beyond her control. She sat on the edge of a deep black pool and saw huge pale fishes moving mysteriously in its depth.

  "Why was he stabbed?" she asked. "I heard Juanito did it."

  A little smile of affection grew on Rama's lips. "Why Benjy was a thief," she said. "He didn't want the things he stole very much. He stole the precious little decency of girls. Why, he drank to steal a particle of death--and now he has it all. This had to happen, Elizabeth. If you throw a great handful of beans at an upturned thimble, one is pretty sure to go in. Now do you see?

  "Juanito came home and found the little thief at work. "We all loved Benjy," Rama said. "There's not a frightful span between contempt and love."

  Elizabeth felt lonely and shut out and very weak before Rama's strength "I've come such a long way," she explained. "And I've had no dinner. I haven't even washed my face." Her lips began to tremble as she remembered, one by one, the things she was suffering. Rama's eyes softened and looked at her, seeing the bride Elizabeth now. "And where's Joseph?" Elizabeth complained. "It's our first night at home and he's gone. I haven't even had a drink of water."

  Rama stood up then, and smoothed down her whispering skirt. "Poor child, I'm sorry; I didn't think. Come into the kitchen and wash yourself. I'll make some tea and slice some bread and meat for you."

  The teakettle breathed huskily in the kitchen. Rama cut pieces of roast beef and bread and poured a cup of scalding yellow tea.

  "Now come back to the sitting-room, Elizabeth. You can have your supper there where it's more comfortable."

  Elizabeth made thick sandwiches and ate them hungrily, but it was the hot tea, strong and bitter, that rested her and removed her complaints. Rama had gone back to her chair again. She sat stiffly upright, watching Elizabeth fill her cheeks too full of bread and meat.

  "You're pretty," Rama said critically. "I wouldn't have thought Joseph could pick a pretty wife."

  Elizabeth blushed. "What do you mean?" she asked. There were streams of feeling here she couldn't identify, methods of thinking that wouldn't enter the categories of her experience or learning. It frightened her and so she smiled amusedly. "Of course he knows that. Why he told me."

  Rama laughed quietly. "I didn't know him as well as I thought I did. I thought he'd pick a wife as he'd pick a cow--to be a good cow, perfect in the activity of cows--to be a good wife and very like a cow. Perhaps he is more human than I thought." There was a little bitterness in her voice. Her strong white fingers brushed her hair down on each side of the sharp part. "I think I'll have a cup of tea. I'll put more water in. It must be poisonously strong."

  "Of course he's human," Elizabeth said. "I don't see why you seem to say he isn't. He is self-conscious. He's embarrassed, that is all." And her mind reverted suddenly to the pass in the hills and the swirling river. She was frightened and put the thought away from her.

  Rama smiled pityingly. "No, he isn't self-conscious," she explained. "In all the world I think there isn't a man less self-conscious, Elizabeth." And then she said compassionately, "You don't know this man. I'll tell you about him, not to frighten you, but so you won't be frightened when you come to know him."

  Her eyes filled with thoughts and her mind ranged for a way to say them. "I can see," she said, "that you are making excuses already--why--excuses like bushes to hide behind, so you need not face the thoughts you have." Her hands had lost their sureness; they crawled about like the searching tentacles of a hungry sea creature. "'He is a child,' you say to yourself. 'He dreams.'" Her voice turned sharp and cruel. "He is no child," she said, "and if he dreams, you will never know his dreams."

  Elizabeth flared angrily. "What are you telling me? He married me. You are trying to make a stranger of him." Her voice faltered uncertainly. "Why of course I know him. Do you think I would marry a man I didn't know?"

  But Rama only smiled at her. "Don't be afraid, Elizabeth. You've seen things already. There's no cruelty in him, Elizabeth, I think. You can worship him without fear of being sacrificed."

  The picture of her marriage flashed into Elizabeth's mind, when, as the service was going on, and the air was filled with its monotone, she had confused her husband with the Christ. "I don't know what you mean," she cried. "Why do you say 'worship'? I'm tired, you know; I've been riding all day. Words have meanings that change as I change. What do you mean by 'worship'?"

  Rama drew her chair forward so that she could put her bands on Elizabeth's knee. "This is a strange time," she said softly. "I told you at the beginning that a door is open tonight. It's like an All Souls' Eve, when the ghosts are loose. Tonight, because our brother has died, a door is open in me, and partly open in you. Thoughts that hide deep in the brain, in the dark, underneath the bone can come out tonight. I will tell you what I've thought and held secret. Sometimes in the eyes of other people I've seen the same thought, like a shadow in the water." She patted softly on Elizabeth's knee as she spoke, patted out a rhythm to her words, and her eyes shone with intensity until there were red lights in them. "I know men," she continued. "Thomas I know so well that I feel his thought as it is born. And I know his impulse before it is strong enough to set his limbs in motion. Burton I know to the bottom of his meager soul, and Benjy--I knew the sweetness and the laziness of Benjy. I knew how sorry he was to be Benjy, and how he couldn't help it." She smiled in reminiscence. "Benjy came in one night when Thomas was not here. He was so lost and sad. I held him in my arms until nearly morning." Her fingers doubled under, making a loose fist. "I knew them all," she said hoarsely. "My instinct was never wrong. But Joseph I do not know. I did not know his father."

  Elizabeth was
nodding slowly, caught in the rhythm.

  Rama continued: "I do not know whether there are men born outside humanity, or whether some men are so human as to make others seem unreal. Perhaps a godling lives on earth now and then. Joseph has strength beyond vision of shattering, he has the calm of mountains, and his emotion is as wild and fierce and sharp as the lightning and just as reasonless as far as I can see or know. When you are away from him, try thinking of him and you'll see what I mean. His figure will grow huge, until it tops the mountains, and his force will be like the irresistible plunging of the wind. Benjy is dead. You cannot think of Joseph dying. He is eternal. His father died, and it was not a death." Her mouth moved helplessly, searching for words. She cried as though in pain, "I tell you this man is not a man, unless he is all men. The strength, the resistance, the long and stumbling thinking of all men, and all the joy and suffering, too, cancelling each other out and yet remaining in the contents. He is all these, a repository for a little piece of each man's soul, and more than that, a symbol of the earth's soul."

  Her eyes dropped and her hand withdrew. "I said a door was open.

  Elizabeth rubbed the place on her knee where the rhythm had been. Her eyes were wet and shining. "I'm so tired," she said. "We drove through the heat, and the grass was brown. I wonder if they took the live chickens and the little lamb and the nanny goat out of the wagon. They should be turned loose, else their legs might swell." She took a handkerchief out of her bosom and blew her nose and wiped it harshly and made it red. She would not look at Rama. "You love my husband," she said in a small, accusing voice. "You love him and you are afraid."

  Rama looked slowly up and her eyes moved over Elizabeth's face and then dropped again. "I do not love him. There is no chance of a return. I worship him, and there's no need of a return in that. And you will worship him, too, with no return. Now you know, and you needn't be afraid."

  For a moment more she stared at her lap, and then her head jerked up and she brushed down the hair on each side of the part. "It's closed now," she said. "It's all over. Only remember it for a time of need. And when that time comes, I'll be here to help you. I'll make some new tea now, and maybe you'll tell me about Monterey."

  13

  JOSEPH went into the dark barn and walked down the long gallery behind the stalls, toward the lantern hanging on its wire. As he passed behind the horses, they stopped their rhythmic chewing and looked over their shoulders at him, and one or two of the more lively ones stamped their feet to draw his attention. Thomas was in the stall opposite the lantern, saddling a mare. He paused in cinching and looked over the saddle at Joseph. "I thought I'd take Ronny," he said. "She's soft. A good fast go will harden her up. She's surest footed in the dark, too."

  "Make up a story," Joseph said. "Say he slipped and fell on a knife. Try to go through with it without having a coroner out. We'll bury Benjy tomorrow if we can." He smiled wearily. "The first grave. Now we're getting someplace. Houses and children and graves, that's home, Tom. Those are the things to hold a man down. What's in the box-stall, Tom?"

  "Only Patch," Thomas said. "I turned the other saddlehorses out yesterday to get some grass and to stretch their legs. They weren't being worked enough. Why, are you riding out tonight?"

  "Yes, I'm riding out."

  "You're riding after Juanito? You'll never catch him in these hills. He knows the roots of every blade of grass and every hole even a snake might hide in."

  Joseph threw back cinch and stirrup over a saddle on the rack, and lifted it down by horn and cantle. "Juanito is waiting for me in the pines," he said.

  "But Joe, don't go tonight. Wait until tomorrow when it's light. And take a gun with you."

  "Why a gun?"

  "Because you don't know what he'll do. These Indians are strange people. There's no telling what he'll do."

  "He won't shoot me," Joseph reassured him. "It would be too easy, and I wouldn't care enough. That's better than a gun."

  Thomas untied his halter rope and backed the sleepy mare out of the stall. "Anyway, wait until tomorrow. Juanito will keep."

  "No, he's waiting for me now. I won't keep him waiting."

  Thomas moved on out of the barn, leading his horse. "I still think you'd better take a gun," he said over his shoulder.

  Joseph heard him mount and trot his horse away, and immediately there was a panting rush. Two young coyotes and a hound dashed out to follow him.

  Joseph saddled big Patch and led him out into the night and mounted. When his eyes cleared from the lantern light he saw that the night was sharper. The mountain flanks, rounded and flesh-like, stood out softly in shallow perspective and a deep purple essence hung on their outlines. All of the night, the hills, the black hummocks of the trees were as soft and friendly as an embrace. But straight ahead, the black arrowheaded pines cut into the sky.

  The night was aging toward dawn, and all the leaves and grasses whispered and sighed under the fresh morning wind. Whistle of ducks wings sounded overhead, where an invisible squadron started over-early for the south. And the great owls swung restlessly through the air at the last of the night's hunting. The wind brought a pine smell down from the hills, and the penetrating odor of tarweed and the pleasant bouquet of a skunk's anger, smelling, since it was far away, like azaleas. Joseph nearly forgot his mission, for the hills reached out tender arms to him and the mountains were as gentle and insistent as a loving woman who is half asleep. He could feel the ground's warmth as he rode up the slope. Patch flung up his big head and snorted out of stretched nostrils and shook his mane, lifted his tail and danced, kicked a few times and threw his feet high like a racehorse.

  Because the mountains were womanly, Joseph thought of Elizabeth and wondered what she was doing. He had not thought of her since he saw Thomas standing by the lantern, waiting for him, "But Rama will take care of her," he thought.

  The long slope was past now, and a harder, steeper climb began. Patch ceased his foolishness and bent his head over his climbing legs. And as they moved on, the sharp pines lengthened and pierced higher and higher into the sky. Beside the track there was a hissing of a little water, rushing downward toward the valley, and then the pine grove blocked the way. The black bulk of it walled up the path. Joseph turned right and tried to remember how far it was to the broad trail that led to the grove's center. Now Patch nickered shrilly and stamped and shook his head. When Joseph tried to head into the grove path, the horse refused to take it and spurs only made him rear and thresh his front feet, and the quirt sent him whirling down the hill. When Joseph dismounted and tried to lead him into the path, he set his hoofs and refused to stir. Joseph walked to his head and felt the quivering muscles of the neck.

  "All right," he said. "I'll tie you out here. I don't know what you're afraid of, but Thomas fears it too, and Thomas knows you better than I could." He took the tie rope from the horn and threw two half-hitches around a sapling.

  The pathway through the pines was black. Even the sky was lost behind the interlacing boughs, and Joseph, as he walked along, took careful, feeling steps and stretched his arms ahead to keep from striking a tree trunk. There was no sound except the muttering of a tiny stream somewhere beside the track. Then ahead, a little patch of grey appeared. Joseph dropped his arms and walked quickly toward it. The pine limbs whirred under a wind that could not penetrate down into the forest, but with the wind a restlessness came into the grove--not sound exactly, and not vibration, but a curious halfway between these two. Joseph moved more cautiously, for there was a breath of fear in the slumbering grove. His feet made no sound on the needles, and he came at last to the open circle in the forest. It was a grey place, filled with particles of light and roofed with the dull slaty mirror of the sky. Above, the winds had freshened so that the tall pine-tops moved sedately, and their needles hissed. The great rock in the center of the glade was black, blacker even than the tree trunks, and on its side a glow-worm shed its pale blue luminance.

  When Joseph tried to approach the
rock he was filled with foreboding and suspicion, as a little boy is who enters an empty church and cuts a wide path around the altar and keeps his eyes upon it for fear some saint may move his hand or the bloody Christ groan on the cross. So Joseph circled widely, keeping his head turned toward the rock. The glow-worm disappeared behind a corner and was lost.

  The rustling increased. The whole round space became surcharged with life, saturated with furtive movement. Joseph's hair bristled on his head. "There's evil here tonight," he thought. "I know now what the horse feared." He moved back into the shadow of the trees and seated himself and leaned back against a pine trunk. And as he sat, he could feel a dull vibration on the ground. Then a soft voice spoke beside him. "I am here, senor."

  Joseph half leaped to his feet. "You startled me, Juanito."

  "I know, senor. It is so quiet. It is always quiet here. You can hear noises, but they're always on the outside, shut out and trying to get in."

  They were silent for a moment. Joseph could only see a blacker shadow against the black before him. "You asked me to come," he said.

  "Yes, senor, my friend, I would have no one do it but you."