Laughing Boy (10 page)

'We went a little way into the cañon and made camp. The chief American lent me a pair of magic tubes that he had, that you put to your eyes, and they made everything far away look near. I watched with them until I saw The Doer's smoke signals. He signalled that they had had a fight, and the enemy were coming towards us. So we watched, but we saw no sign of them. It was dark soon after. We watched all night.

'When it was getting near dawn, but no light as yet, we started on foot. As soon as there was a little light, they sent me along the top of the talus along one wall, to look out for ambushes. The cañon was about five hundred paces wide; the walls were at least that high. The chief American watched me with those tubes. I would wave my hand, as a sign that I saw no one, and they would come forward, strung out across the cañon.

'It was full light when we got near where the cañon turned the corner. I went on ahead again, very slowly. I could look down into the sand and see the tracks that we had been following so long. I felt very much alone. I knew that man was watching me as I crept; that made me feel a little better. My father told me that the war-path was like stalking mountain sheep, only more exciting. I thought that there was more to it than that. Mountain sheep do
not shoot back at you: mountain sheep are not people who are thinking about you just as hard as you are thinking about them.

'Then I saw them. They must have made camp up in the middle of Yotatséyi; now they were coming to try to get out this way. There were nine of them, in single file, riding carefully and watching. So I signalled to the Americans, and saw them take cover. I made myself as hard to see as I could. Suddenly I thought that I was enjoying myself a great deal.

'They came around the corner; now I looked right down on them, from behind a bush. One of them, looking around, looked straight at my bush. He was searching for people hiding. I thought that that bush was not nearly thick enough. His eyes passed on, and for just a moment I felt weak.

'Then the Americans started shooting. So I stood up and gave the war-cry and started. As I was shouting, I thought, they will hear the Coyote howl and know he's a Wolf. There was a brave just below me in a buckskin shirt with beadwork on it, and a hat with a silver hatband. I noticed all about him while I shot at him. I wanted to kill him; I wanted it to be known that I had killed one. I saw my arrow in the air a long time; I saw it strike. He fell off his horse. Then I saw that he was not dead, and I was glad. I do not know why.

'There were five of them down now, and the others put up their hands, so the Americans took them prisoners. One had been killed over in the other end of the cañon,.

'We went back to Oljeto, and they paid us as they said. Then we had ourselves purified from the blood, and we spent several dollars on canned food. I bought a big paper bag, as big as a hat, full of all different kinds of candy, and went home, and we all ate it.

'When I was telling about what happened, I got to the part about thinking I was shot, and I started to laugh. I could not stop, I just laughed. So they started calling me by that name. That is all.'

Slim Girl said, 'I am glad you are a man like that.' She thought to herself, he is a warrior. That was worth ten thousand schools.
He must have been about eighteen. Where is basketball against that?

 

III

 

Before supper there was the well-mixed drink again, with its attendant elation and the curious feeling at the back of his teeth. He finished the brew.

'I should like to take some more of that.'

'That is not a good thing to do.'

'Why not?'

'If you take too much you become foolish. You grow old before your time.'

'That would not be good. Perhaps it would be better not to take any. You do not take it.'

'It is not every one who is able to drink it. It is not meant for women, that drink, it is for men. If I take it, it makes me sick quickly. It is all right for you, you are strong. It just makes you feel well, doesn't it? You like it, I think?'

'Yes, I like it. I think it is good for me.'

'It is good for you.' And she told herself, 'I shall tie you with it. It is another hobble around your feet, so that you will not go away from me.'

I

 

Time passing and corn growing cannot be seen; one can notice only that the moon has become so much older, the corn so much higher. With a new life almost more regular than the old, yet far more thrilling, with a rich supply of silver and choice turquoise, with horses to trade and a cornfield to care for, and all the world made over new, time for Laughing Boy went like a swift, quiet river under Cottonwood trees. For him, life—which had never been a problem—was solved and perfected, with none of Slim Girl's complication of feeling that such happiness was too good to last. Had he sat down at T'o Tlakai to compose a song of perfection, he could not have imagined anything approaching this.

It had always been a pleasure to him to work in the corn, to help make the green shafts shoot up, to watch them dance, and contrast their deep, full green with the harsh, faded desert. Among his people corn was a living thing; to make a field beautiful was not so far from making a fine bracelet, and far more useful. He drew the precious water into his field thriftily. At its corners he planted the four sacred plants.

Slim Girl did not understand it at first; she had rather wanted to bar it as entailing unnecessary labour, but decided not to say anything. He saw that she thought it dull, drudging work. He did not try to explain it to her directly, but told her the story of Natinesthani and the origin of corn, and taught her the songs about the tall plant growing. When the stalks were past waist-high, he took her to the field at evening, while sunset brought the drab clay bluffs to life with red, and a soft breeze made the leaves swing and whisper. He made her see the whole field in contrast,
and the individual hills, the slender plants and their promise, talking to her of Corn Maiden and Pollen Boy, and of how First Man and First Woman were made from corn. Her eyes were opened to it then, as much through understanding how he felt as through what she objectively beheld. After that she worked with him a little, to please him, although she never cared for the backbreaking toil in itself.

His silver sold well. His craftsmanship was fine, his invention lively, and his taste in turquoise most exacting. It was strong, pure stuff, real Northern Navajo work, untouched by European influence. Other Indians would buy it in the store, and its barbaric quality caught the tourist's eye. Slim Girl got in touch with the Harvey agent, finding him a ready buyer at good prices. She liked to think, then, of the many places along the railroad in which strangers were paying for her husband's work.

She had learned not to care much for general opinion of herself, and was surprised to find that this tangible evidence of her mythical husband's existence, this visible means of support, made a pleasant difference in the trader's attitude towards her, and eventually in the looks she received from men throughout the town. There was a surprised feeling that she must have been telling the truth about herself, and a grateful decrease in attempts to scrape unwelcome acquaintance with her. As for George Hartshorn, her American, he developed an increased jealousy that she knew how to use.

To complete her idyll, she wanted to weave, and she found it harder than she had expected. She had been taken to school young, before she had become skilled, and now it was almost all forgotten. Laughing Boy even had to teach her the names of her tools. She wondered, as he watched her struggling with the stubborn warp, if he were laughing at her inside himself, if she seemed ridiculous to him. Many times she would have given up had it not been for her natural determination of character, and for knowing how anomalous and incomplete to him was the house in which the woman could not make a blanket. She dearly longed to reconstruct that scene, but after just a little her back would ache, her
forearms grow heavy, and in the backs of her hands would be sharp pains, while the threads were like demons to outwit her. The patient, monotonous spinning was pure torture, and she knew little or nothing of dyes.

Of course, her first blanket was an ambitious one, elaborately designed. The conception was simplified in the making, and the finished product was a quarter of the originally intended size. When she cut the sorry object from the loom, and looked at it, all crooked, irregular, and full of holes, she could have cried. She hid it from him. Many of her later attempts, not fit to go under a saddle or be sold, she destroyed, but this was the first thing she had made. It was a sad failure, but she could see what it was meant to be, and she kept it.

She wove perfectly plain strips that might serve to be sat on, and even many of these were hopeless. At times, despite her husband's encouragement, in his absence she would curse fluently in English and yank at the strings. Few things could make her lose control of herself thus; she wondered at herself for continuing. It was an offering to her beloved and, unconsciously, an expiation for a guilt she had not admitted.

 

II

 

On a day when the corn was nearly ripe, she went to work in the field. Tiring, she sat down to rest where she could watch two stalks, with their silk just showing against the sky. Low on the horizon the beginnings of a storm darkened the blue. She called Laughing Boy.

'Show me how they draw the corn in the sand-pictures.'

'I do not think I should show you that. You are a woman, and you have never seen the true gods in the Night Chant.'

'Perhaps you are right.'

He was making a decision.

'I shall show you.' He drew in the sand. 'We do it like this. Here is blue, here yellow. Here are the tassels, the silk.'

'Why do you show me?'

'You are not like ordinary people, you have a strength of your own. I do not think any harm will come to you.'

She looked from the conventionalization to the growing stalks; she divided the threatening sky into a design. Her first, elaborate blanket had been a built-up, borrowed idea, her later ones were uninteresting accidents. Now she saw her work complete, loving it and the task of making it. Now she really had something to tell her loom.

She was impatiently patient with the dyeing and spinning, needlessly afraid that she would lose her inspiration. When she was ready, she worked so steadily that Laughing Boy warned her of the fate of women who wove too much, and forced her to let a day go by. Her muscles were much tougher now, and her fingers had grown clever and hard among the strands.

She managed for him to be away with his horses during the last two days, when she finished it. He had not yet returned when, a little despondently, she locked in the selvage, unrolled it on the frame, and sat back on her heels to smoke and look. She did not see what she had conceived. She did not see a living design, balanced and simple, with mated colours. She saw thin, messy workmanship, irregular lines, blunders, coarsenesses. At one place she had forgotten to lock the blue into the green weft, sunlight showed through. The counting of stitches was uneven. The blanket was not even a rectangle.

She went quickly away from the house, walking hurriedly and smoking fiercely.

'I am not a Navajo; it is not given to me to do these things. Mother was happy when she wove, she was beautiful then. I cannot make anything, and he is gifted. He will despise me in the end. Being able to make something beautiful is important to him. He will feel his house empty without the sound of weaving. They said I was gifted, that man who came that time. "My child, just stick to the things of your people and you will do something. You have it." "Mr. Waters is a very famous artist, you must pay attention to what he says, my dear. He expressed himself much pleased with your pictures. I am sure the whole class is proud of Lillian to-day."
Those crayons were easy. Perhaps he would like that. But I want to weave. There is nothing the matter with me. No use.
God damn it to hell! God damn me! Chindi, mai, shash, Jee-Cri!
Well, let's go and look at it. There's his pony in front of the house. Come on.'

He had taken down the blanket and was pegging it out carefully. All he said was,

'Where are your wool cards?'

She brought them, two implements like very sharp currycombs, used to prepare the wool for spinning. She sat down to watch him, thinking, 'Perhaps I shall get very drunk. That might help.'

He carded the face of the blanket energetically, so roughly that it seemed a gratuitous insult even to her poor work. The very coarseness of her spinning served his purpose, as the sharp teeth scraped and tore across the design. She wondered if he were trying to efface it. He stood up.

'Now come here and look.' He put his arm over her shoulder. 'You have thought well. The picture is beautiful.'

The scraping had torn loose a long wool nap, almost a fur, fluffy and fine, that covered all the errors of the weaving. The sharp edges were lost, but the lovely combination she had dreamed of was there, soft and blurred, as though one saw it through tears. She could see how good her conception had been, how true and sure. She had made a beautiful thing. She looked and looked.

He loosened the pegs and turned up the untouched side. As he turned it, he jerked at the corners, throwing the uncertain weave out of shape. It looked like a child's work.

'I am not telling you a lot of things. I am just letting you see something. I think you understand it.'

'I understand. You will be able to put my next blanket under your saddle, and be proud of it. Thank you.'

 

III

 

After that there were long, flawless days when they were at home together, he at his forge, she at her loom, time passing with
the thump of the batten, the ring of the hammer or rasp of the file. There were chatter and laughter, songs, and long, rich silences. Work then was all love and inspiration.

She had known a good many different kinds of pleasure, but this was a new richness, something that did not exhaust itself, but grew, a sharing of achievement, designs, colours; fingers, hands, and brain creating, overcoming. There was the talk and hummed songs. There was a great deal to be silent about. It came to her as she was weaving the coloured threads to her intent, Why was this not enough?