To a God Unknown Page 9

  "Do what, Juanito? What do you want me to do?"

  "What you must, senor. Did you bring a knife?"

  "No," Joseph said wonderingly. "I have no knife."

  "Then I will give you my pocket knife. It is the one I used on the calves. The blade is short, but in the right place it will do. I will show you where."

  "What are you talking about, Juanito?"

  "Strike with the blade flat, my friend. Then it will go between the ribs, and I will show you where, so the blade will reach."

  Joseph stood up. "You mean I am to stab you, Juanito."

  "You must, my friend."

  Joseph moved closer to him and tried to see his face, and could not. "Why should I kill you, Juanito?" he asked.

  "I killed your brother, senor. And you are my friend. Now you must be my enemy."

  "No," Joseph said. "There's something wrong here." He paused uneasily, for the wind had died out of the trees, and silence, like a thick fog, had settled into the glade so that his voice seemed to fill up the air with unwanted sound. He was uncertain. His voice went on so softly that part of the words were whispered, and even then the glade was disturbed by his speaking. "There's something wrong.

  "You did not know it was my brother."

  "I should have looked, senor."

  "No, even if you had known, it would make no difference. This thing was natural. You did what your nature demanded. It is natural and--it is finished" Still he could not see Juanito's face, although a little grey of dawn was dropping into the glade.

  "I do not understand this, senor," Juanito said brokenly. "It is worse than the knife. There would be a pain like fire for a moment, and then it would be gone. I would be right, and you would be right, too. I do not understand this way. It is like prison all my life." The trees stood out now with a little light between them, and they were like black witnesses.

  Joseph looked to the rock for strength and understanding. He could see the roughness of it now, and he could see the straight line of silver light where the little stream cut across the glade.

  "It is not punishment," he said at last. "I have no power to punish. Perhaps you must punish yourself if you find that among your instincts. You will act the course of your breed, as a young bird dog does when it comes to point where the birds are hidden, because that is in its breed. I have no punishment for you."

  Juanito ran to the rock, then, and scooped up water and drank it from his hands. And he walked quickly back. "This water is good, senor The Indians take it away with them, to drink when they are sick. They say it comes out of the center of the world." He wiped his mouth on his sleeve. Joseph could see the outline of his face, and the little caves where his eyes were.

  "What will you do now?" Joseph asked.

  "I will do what you say, senor."

  Joseph cried angrily, "You put too much on me. Do what you wish!"

  "But I wished you to kill me, my friend."

  "Will you come back to work?"

  "No," Juanito answered slowly, "It is too near the grave of an unrevenged man. I can't do that until the bones are clean. I will go away for a while, senor. And when the bones are clean I will come back. Memory of the knife will be gone when the flesh is gone."

  Joseph was suddenly so filled with sorrow that it hurt his chest to contain it. "Where will you go, Juanito?"

  "I know. I will take Willie. We will go together. Where there are horses we will be all right. If I am with Willie, helping him to fight off the dreams of the lonely place and the men who came out of the holes to tear him, then the punishment will not be so hard." He turned suddenly in among the pines and disappeared, and his voice came back from behind the wall of trees, "My horse is here, senor. I will come back when the bones are clean." A moment later Joseph heard the complaint of stirrup leather, and then the pounding of hoofs on pine needles.

  The sky was bright now, and high over the center of the glade one little fragment of fiery cloud hung, but the glade was dark and grey yet, and the great rock brooded in its center.

  Joseph walked to the rock and drew his hand over the heavy fur of moss. "Out of the center of the world," he thought, and he remembered the poles of a battery. "Out of the heart of the world." He walked away slowly, hating to turn his back on the rock, and as he rode down the slope the sun arose behind him and he could see it flashing on the windows of the farm houses below. The yellow grass glittered with dew. But now the hillsides were getting thin and worn and ready for the winter. A little band of steers watched him go by, turning slowly to keep their heads toward him.

  Joseph felt very glad now, for within him there was arising the knowledge that his nature and the nature of the land were the same. He lifted his horse to a trot, for he remembered suddenly that Thomas was gone to Nuestra Senora and there was no one but himself to build a coffin for his brother. For a moment, while the horse hurried on, Joseph tried to think what Benjy had been like, but soon he gave it up, for he couldn't remember very well.

  A column of smoke was drifting out of the chimney of Thomas' house as he rode into the corral. He turned Patch loose and hung up the saddle. "Elizabeth will be with Rama," he thought. And he walked eagerly into see his new wife.

  14

  THE winter came in early that year. Three weeks before Thanksgiving the evenings were red on the mountain tops toward the sea, and the bristling, officious wind raked the valley and sang around the house corners at night and flapped the window shades, and the little whirlwinds took columns of dust and leaves down the road like reeling soldiers. The blackbirds swarmed and flew away in twinkling clouds and doves sat mourning on the fences for a while and then disappeared during a night. All day the flocks of ducks and geese were in the sky, aiming their arrows unerringly at the south, and in the dusk they cried tiredly, and looked for the shine of water where they could rest the night. The frost came into the valley of Our Lady one night and burned the willows yellow and the dog wood red.

  There was a scurrying preparation in the sky and on the ground. The squirrels worked frantically in the fields, storing ten times the food they needed in the community rooms under the ground, while in the hole-mouths the grey grandfathers squeaked shrilly and directed the harvest. The horses and cows lost their shiny coats and grew rough with new winter hair, and the dogs dug shallow holes to sleep in against the ground winds. And in spite of the activity, throughout the whole valley sadness hung like the blue smoky mist on the hills. The sage was purple-black. The live oaks dropped leaves like rain and still were clad with leaves. Every night the sky burned over the sea and the clouds massed and deployed, charged and retreated in practice for the winter.

  On the Wayne ranch there was preparation, too. The grass was in and the barns piled high with hay. The crosscut saws were working on oak wood and the splitting mauls were breaking up the sticks. Joseph supervised the work, and his brothers labored under him. Thomas built a shed for the tools and oiled the plow shares and the harrow points. And Burton saw to the roofs and cleaned all the harness and saddles. The community woodpile rose up as high as a house.

  Jennie saw her husband buried on a sidehill a quarter-mile away. Burton made a cross and Thomas built a little white paling fence around the grave, with a gate on iron hinges.

  Every day for a while Jennie took some green thing to put on the grave, but in a short time even she could not remember Benjy very well, and she grew homesick for her own people. She thought of the dances and the rides in the snow, and she thought how her parents were getting old. The more she thought about them, the greater their need seemed. And besides, she was afraid of this new country now that she had no husband. And so one day Joseph drove away with her, and the other Waynes watched them go. All her possessions were in a traveling-basket along with Benjy's watch and chain and the wedding pictures.

  In King City Joseph stood with Jennie at the railway station, and Jennie cried softly, partly because she was leaving, but more because she was frightened at the long train trip. She said, "You'll all come h
ome to visit, won't you."

  And Joseph, anxious to be back on the ranch for fear the rain might come and he not there to see it, answered, "Yes, of course. Some time we'll go back to visit."

  Juanito's wife, Alice, mourned much more deeply than Jennie did. She did not cry at all, but only sat on her doorstep sometimes and rocked her body back and forth. She was carrying a child, and besides, she loved Juanito very much, and pitied him. She sat too many hours there, rocking and humming softly to herself and never crying, and at last Elizabeth brought her to Joseph's house and put her to work in the kitchen. Alice was happier then. She chattered a little sometimes, while she washed the dishes, standing far out from the sink to keep from hurting the baby.

  "He is not dead," she explained very often to Elizabeth. "Some time he will come back, and after a night, it'll be just as it always was. I will forget he ever went away. You know," she said proudly, "My father wants me to go home, but I will not. I will wait here for Juanito. Here is where he will come." And she questioned Joseph over and over about Juanito's plans. "Do you think he will come back? You are sure you think that?"

  Joseph always seriously answered, "He said he would."

  "But when, when do you think it will be?"

  "In a year, perhaps, or maybe two years. He has to wait."

  And she went back to Elizabeth, "The baby can walk, perhaps, when he comes back."

  Elizabeth took on the new life and changed to meet it. For two weeks she went about her new house frowning, peering into everything, and making a list of furniture and utensils to be ordered from Monterey. The work of the house quickly drove away the memory of the evening with Rama. Only at night, sometimes, she awakened cold and fearful, feeling that a marble image lay in bed with her, and she touched Joseph's arm to be sure that it was warm. Rama had been right. A door was open on that night, and now it was closed. Rama never spoke in such a mood again. She was a teacher, Rama, and a tactful woman, for she could show Elizabeth methods of doing things about the house without seeming to criticize Elizabeth's method.

  When the walnut furniture arrived, and all the granite-ware kettles, and when everything had been arranged or hung up--the hatrack with diamond mirrors, and the little rocking-chairs; the broad maple bed, and the high bureau, then the shining airtight stove was set up in the living room, with a coat of stove black on its sides and nickel polish on the silver parts. When it was all done, the worried look went out of Elizabeth's eyes, and the frown left her brows. She sang, then, Spanish songs she had learned in Monterey. When Alice came to work with her they sang the songs together.

  Every morning Rama came to talk, always in secrets, for Rama was full of secrets. She explained things about marriage that Elizabeth, having no mother, had not learned. She told how to have boy children and how to have girl children--not sure methods, true enough; sometimes they failed, but it did no harm to try them; Rama knew a hundred cases where they had succeeded. Alice listened too, and sometimes she said, "That is not right. In this country we do it another way." And Alice told how to keep a chicken from flopping when its head is cut off.

  "Draw a cross on the ground first," Alice explained. "And when the head is off, lay the chicken gently on the cross, and it will never flop, because the sign is holy." Rama tried it later and found it true, and ever after that she had more tolerance for Catholics than she had before.

  These were good times, filled with mystery and with ritual. Elizabeth watched Rama seasoning a stew. She tasted, smacking her lips and with a stern question in her eyes, "Is this just right? No, not quite." Nothing Rama ever cooked was as good as it should have been.

  On Wednesdays, Rama came with a big mending basket on her arm, and behind her trooped those children who had been good. Alice and Rama and Elizabeth sat at three corners of a triangle, and the darning-eggs went searching in and out of socks.

  In the center of the triangle the good children sat. (The bad ones were at home doing nothing, for Rama knew how idleness is a punishment to a child.) Rama told stories then, and after a while Alice grew brave and explained a good many miraculous things. Her father had seen a fiery goat crossing the Carmel Valley one night at dusk. Alice knew at least fifty ghost-stories, too; things not far away, but here in Nuestra Senora. She told how the Valdez family was visited All Souls' Eve by a great-great grandmother with a cough in her chest, and how Lieutenant-Colonel Murphy, killed by a troop of sad Yaquis on their way home to Mexico, rode through the valley holding his breast open to show he had no heart. The Yaquis had eaten it, Alice thought. These things were true and could be proved. Her eyes grew wide and frightened when she told the things. And at night the children had only to say, "He had no heart," or "The old lady coughed" to set themselves squealing with fear

  Elizabeth told some stories she had from her mother, tales of the Scotch fairies with their everlasting preoccupation with gold or at least some useful handicraft. They were good stones, but they hadn't the effect of Rama's stories, or Alice's, for they had happened long ago and in a far country which itself had little more reality than the fairies. You could go down the road and see the very place where Lieutenant-Colonel Murphy rode every three months, and Alice could promise to take you to a canyon where every night swinging lanterns plodded along with no one carrying them.

  These were good times, and Elizabeth was very happy. Joseph didn't talk much, but she never passed him that his hand wasn't outstretched to caress her, and she never looked at him and failed to receive a slow calm smile that made her warm and happy. He seemed never to sleep completely, for no matter what time she awakened in the night and stretched an exploring hand toward him, he took her immediately in his arms. Her breasts filled out in these few months, and her eyes grew deep with mystery. It was an exciting time, for Alice was going to have a baby, and the winter was coming.

  Benjy's house was vacant now. Two new Mexican riders moved out of the barn and occupied it. Thomas had caught a grizzly-bear cub in the hills and he was trying to tame it with very little success. "It's more like a man than an animal," Thomas said. "It doesn't want to learn." And although it bit him as often as he came near it, he was pleased to have the little bear, because everyone said there were no more grizzlies in the Coast Range mountains.

  Burton was busy with inner preparation, for he was planning to go to the camp-meeting town of Pacific Grove and to spend the following summer. He rejoiced in advance at the good emotions to be found there. And he found within himself an exultation when he thought of the time when he would find Christ again and recite sins before a gathering of people.

  "You can go to the common house in the evening," he told his wife. "Every evening the people will sing in the common house and eat ice-cream. We'll take a tent and stay a month, or maybe two." And he saw in advance how he would praise the preachers for the message.

  15

  IT WAS early in November when the rain came. Every day in the morning Joseph searched the sky, studying the bulky rearing clouds, and again at evening he watched the sinking sun reddening the sky. And he thought of those prophetic nursery rhymes:

  "Red sky at morning,

  "Sailors take warning.

  "Red sky at night,

  "Sailors' delight."

  and the other way around:

  "Red sky at morning,

  "Rain before dawning.

  "Red sky at night,

  "Clear days in sight."

  He looked at the barometer more often than the clock, and when the needle swung down and down he was very happy. He went into the yard and whispered to the tree, "Rain in a few days now. It'll wash the dust off the leaves."

  One day he shot a chicken hawk and hung it head downward high in the branches of the oak tree. And he took to watching the horses and the chickens closely.

  Thomas laughed at him. "You won't bring it any quicker. You're watching the kettle, Joe. You may keep the rain away if you're too anxious." And Thomas said, "I'm going to kill a pig in the morning."

  "I'll hang a cro
ss-bar in the oak tree by my house to hang him on," said Joseph. "Rama will make the sausage, won't she?"

  Elizabeth hid her head under a pillow while the pig was screaming, but Rama stood by and caught the throatblood in a milk bucket. And they weren't too soon, for the sides and hams were hardly in the new little stone smoke house before the rain came. There was no maneuvering this time. The wind blew fiercely for a morning, out of the southwest and the ocean, and the clouds rolled in and spread and dropped low until the mountain tops were hidden, and then the fat drops fell. The children stood in Rama's house and watched from the window. Burton gave thanks and helped his wife to give thanks, too, although she wasn't well. Thomas went to the barn and sat on a manger and listened to the rain on the barn roof. The piled hay was still warm with the sun of the summer slopes. The horses moved their feet restlessly and, twisting their heads against the halter ropes, tried to sniff the outside air through the little manure windows.

  Joseph was standing under the oak tree when the rain started. The pig's blood he had dabbled on the bark was black and shiny. Elizabeth called to him from the porch, "It's coming now. You'll get wet," and he turned a laughing face to her.

  "My skin is dry," he called. "I want to get wet." He saw the first big drops fall, thudding up dust in little spurts, then the ground was peppered with black drops. The rain thickened and a fresh wind slanted it. The sharp smell of dampened dust rose into the air, and then the first winter storm really began, raking through the air and drumming the roofs and knocking the weak leaves from the trees. The ground darkened; little rivulets started to edge out across the yard. Joseph stood with his head uplifted while the rain beat on his cheeks and on his eyelids and the water coursed into his beard and dripped into his open shirt collar, and his clothes hung heavily against him. He stood in the rain a long time to make sure it was not a little piddling shower.

  Elizabeth called again: "Joseph, you'll take cold."

  "No cold in this," he said. "This is healthy."

  "You'll sprout weeds, then, out of your hair. Joseph, come in, there's a good fire going. Come in and change your clothes."