Gardens in the Dunes (10 page)

Sister Salt listened intently for a long time for any sounds that might come from the direction of Mrs. Van Wagnen's house—didn't Grandma Fleet mention that her Mormon friend had a dog? Mormons ate cooked food every night—Sister Salt tried to catch a whiff of wood smoke from Mrs. Van Wagnen's stove, but the breeze smelled only of the river mud and the willow leaves.

The cold woke Indigo from her dream just as the sky to the east began to
lighten; in the dream, she was at the train depot in Needles. She helped Sister Salt arrange the baskets for sale before the passengers got off the train that approached from the east.

Her breath made steam in the air in front of her so Indigo scooted down under the blanket and cuddled up to Sister Salt. It was too cold to get up without a campfire; she'd wait for the sun. The sky above the cottonwoods was pale yellow; the puffy clouds on the horizon were edged in red, pink, and gold. Although neither she nor Sister Salt had ever been to Mrs. Van Wagnen's house, still Indigo imagined how it looked when Grandma Fleet described her visits there: surrounded by towering cottonwood trees that shaded and protected it from view, Indigo imagined; a big house like the ones she'd seen in Needles with flower gardens and rosebushes in the front yard, and corn, tomatoes, and squash in the backyard.

As they moved through the willow and cottonwood forest, the light of the sunrise was filtered through the flickering cottonwood leaves. Sister Salt listened: long-tail grackles chattered at two crows who scolded them from the next tree, a mourning dove called her mate to the river, and a fly buzzed near her hand. But she didn't hear Mrs. Van Wagnen chop wood or the dog bark, and she signaled Indigo to continue but to move as quietly as possible. From time to time Sister Salt sniffed the air for the odor of wood smoke or the odor of cooked food, but she smelled only the willows' sweet scent and the mossy dampness of the river.

Sister Salt let out a gasp when she saw the burned ruins of the house and the barn; the hairs on the back of her neck stood up. She felt a wave of icy sweat break out on her forehead. Purple daisylike flowers with bright yellow eyes had grown up through the charred debris. The fire must have come in the spring or even last winter. The door to the root cellar had been splintered with an axe, and shards of shattered canning jars littered the ground around the cellar entrance; someone had dumped all that good food in the sand. Who had hated Mrs. Van Wagnen so much? Even the fence wire was torn away from the fence posts around the chicken yard and the backyard garden; here and there among the wild amaranth, wild asters, and mustard weeds were also a few bean and pea plants and a squash vine.

The girls ate the beans and peas right from the pods. Sister Salt found a patch of coriander and they ate it by the handful, though Indigo preferred it with rock salt. Sister showed Indigo the front yard with Mrs. Van Wagnen's “garden ladies” dressed in pink, yellow, white, and red. The hollyhocks stood taller than the fence posts, and the blossoms resembled the sunbonnets Mormon women wore; the round corollas resembled tiny faces.
Indigo pushed her way past the crowd of hollyhock ladies only to discover, wherever their wide skirts of leaves brushed her legs or arms, she itched.

The small garden gate was left untouched, and the climbing red roses grew around the gate so thickly that it no longer closed; long, leafy branches thick with roses reached out in all directions. Sister Salt picked a rose, sniffed it, and handed it to Indigo, who couldn't help herself: the rose smelled so delicious Indigo nibbled the petals and swallowed them.

Beyond the garden gate where the orchard had been, the grass and wild aster grew taller than the girls; but all of the wonderful peach and apricot trees had been chopped down, their dry remains overgrown with weeds. Sister Salt knelt down to examine a dry branch, and among the dead twigs and leaves she found a tiny shriveled apricot. She felt herself give way inside; something broke, and she was overwhelmed by the loss of something that fed so many hungry beings as the orchard had—at the destruction of something as beautiful as the peach and apricot blossoms in the spring. If this was what the white people did to one another, then truly she and the Sand Lizard people and all other Indians were lucky to survive at all. These destroyers were out to kill every living being, even the Messiah and his dancers.

Indigo came running with a skirtful of marigolds and found Sister Salt crying. Indigo patted her on the back and tried to console her but Sister Salt angrily pulled away from her. If that was how her sister wanted to behave, then Indigo would go explore by herself. She avoided the ruins of the house and the barn because she detected a faint but terrible odor still there. She stayed on the ground in the garden, hidden among the hollyhock plants so dark red they were almost black as dried blood.

Later Sister Salt joined Indigo among the hollyhocks and the bees; they sat in silence on their bedrolls, shaded by long snaking branches of fragrant red roses Indigo liked to nibble. Sister still didn't speak; Indigo thought she must be sick because she did not eat when Indigo took out the parched corn and the dried dates. She even refused the gourd canteen when Indigo passed it. All afternoon Indigo watched anxiously as Sister alternately dozed or wept softly.

As the sun made its descent, the great canopy of cottonwood leaves left them in deep shade; the burnt ruins of the house and barn seemed to loom larger in the shadows. The horrible scorched odor from the debris seemed to increase until Indigo could not stop it even with a handful of roses pressed to her mouth and nose. Suddenly Indigo knew they had to get away from this place right away.

“Hurry!” she said, tugging Sister Salt's arm, “get up! I think someone is coming!” Sister Salt jumped up with a wild, confused expression on her face; Indigo grabbed her bedroll and canteen and ran for the river. Once they were deep in the willow thicket on the sandy bank just above the water's surface, Sister motioned for Indigo to stop; the moist air along the river carried sounds a great distance. Now they could hear voices and the creak and low rumble of wagon wheels; they flattened themselves on their bellies in the sand and pulled their blankets over their heads. They held their breaths and listened. The river bottom was slipping into darkness though the sky to the west was still bright gold with the sunset. The wagon sound stopped and more voices could be heard, then the sound of an axe; not long afterward, woodsmoke wafted in the air.

A dog barked. They lay motionless for so long Indigo's legs felt numb. She smelled meat cooking. The voices were no longer as loud and she imagined they were eating. She uncurled her legs from her belly and stretched; she slowly moved each limb one at a time, careful not to rustle even one dry willow leaf.

Sister Salt listened as closely as she could to the voices. They were white people, no question about that; no Indian, not even the Indian police, talked that loud unless they were drunk. If they were only white people, then she and Indigo had a good chance of escaping in the middle of the night; but if this was an army patrol, there would be Indian policemen. Maybe this was how it was meant to be, Sister thought; this is how we will find Mama.

Suddenly Indigo felt something heavy—a pressure on her back that pinned her to the ground; for an instant she thought it might be Sister Salt playing a joke. When she raised up it was too dark to see clearly, but she felt someone grab her by the shoulders and lift her off the ground. She twisted away and fought with all her strength to break free of the hands, but it was no use.

The small white dog the Indian police brought along loved to play with children, so they used the dog to locate them. The dog barked and wagged its tail excitedly whenever children were nearby. Now the white dog anxiously licked the girls' legs and sniffed their hands, tied to the rope knotted above their ankles. The mules, staked out in tall grass near the wagon, were hobbled and tied in the same manner. The policemen knew from experience how fast these wild Indians could escape.

The big policeman lifted them one by one into the back of the wagon with a canvas cover; with their hands and feet tied they landed hard on the
rough floorboards of the wagon. The girls wiggled close to each other and managed to sit up; they tried to brace their feet because the wagon was loaded with crates and heavy parcels that shifted dangerously as the wagon bumped along.

The big policeman who drove the wagon was kind enough to lift them out and loosen their ropes so they could step behind a sage bush to urinate. He had younger sisters himself, he said, at White River; he spoke a few words of their language but preferred to talk to them in English to show off. Neither sister would reply to him, but the big Apache did not seem offended or angered; he liked to talk. From time to time one of the other Indian policemen, on horseback, would ride alongside the wagon and converse in Apache; but the six white soldiers rode ahead separately. The soldiers were along only to protect the Indian policemen from angry parents who refused to surrender their children for school.

The first night he untied their hands and fed them the same army rations he and the others ate. He apologized for leaving their ankles tied together and told them about the Mojave and Chemehuevi children who ran away the instant he untied them. He warned them not to throw themselves from the wagon either, because last year a Walapai boy was killed that way.

“He was all tied up so I don't know why he rolled himself out the back,” the policeman said, shaking his head slowly as he opened a little can of beans with his knife.

He knows the boy preferred death, but he won't say that to us. What a coward this big Apache is! Sister Salt thought as she moistened the edge of the hard biscuit between her lips. All the way to Parker, the big Apache talked; he talked about his family back at Turkey Creek. He talked about his years at the Indian School in Phoenix, where he played catcher on the school baseball team.

The only time the policeman was quiet was while he ate. He tossed the empty bean can on the ground and pointed off in the distance toward the south.

“Yuma is right over there,” he said. “Don't look so worried, girls. You'll be surprised at how fast the train goes.”

Tears began to roll down Indigo's cheeks the longer he talked. If Mama was in prison in Yuma, how could they ever find Mama before the train took them away? Sister Salt whispered her escape plan to Indigo: wait until the policeman lifted them out of the back of the wagon and untied their legs, then dash off as fast as they could for the hills.

“I can't run as fast as you!” Indigo sobbed. “Please don't go without me!”
Sister Salt put her head close to Indigo's and whispered in a soothing tone: “Don't cry, little sister, don't cry. Grandma Fleet got away. We'll get away too.

“We won't get in a hurry. We'll save a little food from each meal, hide it so we can carry a little food with us. Cool weather is the best time to travel.”

They whispered strategies and plans to each other all the way to Yuma. They tried to say everything they needed to tell each other because it might be a long time before they were together again.

“F
IRST CHANCE
you get, run!” Sister Salt had whispered to her before they dragged Indigo toward the train, where the other children were cowering or sobbing, crowded four to a seat. Indigo was shocked to learn she and her sister were about to be separated. The authorities judged Sister Salt to be too much older than the others to send away to Indian boarding school. There was hope the little ones might be educated away from their blankets. But this one? Chances were she'd be a troublemaker and might urge the younger students to attempt escape. Orders were for Sister Salt to remain in the custody of the Indian agency at Parker while Indigo was sent to the Sherman Institute in Riverside, California.

Indigo wasn't afraid. Her eyes were dry. She was one of the older children in the group. Cocopa and Chemehuevi girls her own age who had already lived at the boarding school for three years were in charge of new students; only their skin looked Indian. Their eyes, their hair, and, of course, the shoes, stockings, and long dresses were no different from the matron's. The matron gave the older girls orders to seize a little boy who had slipped from the train seat to the floor; she did not want to touch the little wild ones herself. Indigo tried to get one of the older girls to look her in the eyes, but the Cocopa and Chemehuevi girls were obedient; no talking to the new students.