Martin Smith - Stallion Gate

That evening everyone crowded into Theatre 2 to see a film that had just arrived from Washington. Robert P. Patterson, the Undersecretary of War, his desk and his flag filled the screen. He had a pug face, a nap of gray hair and big hands folded between an array of pens and telephones. The film was grainy and the sound uneven, adding to the sense of urgency. "The importance of this project will not pass away with the collapse of Germany." The Undersecretary leaned forward. "You know the kind of war we are up against in the Pacific. We have begun to repay the Japanese for their brutalities and their mass murders of helpless civilians and prisoners of war." Patterson shook his head with resolution. "We will not quit until they are completely crushed." He turned his hands into fists. "You have an important part to play in their defeat. There must be no let-up."

The evening films were Back to Bataan and Bugs Bunny Nips the Nips . By then, Joe and Anna had slipped out.

18

In the glow of the flame the room seemed to vibrate. Anna looked around at the crucifix and saints on the adobe walls, the low ceiling vigas , the striped blanket on the cot, Joe standing pinon logs in an inverted V over the burning kindling in the corner fireplace. Through the shutters came the evening sounds of distant children, a screen door slamming, a dog being chased, " Psoot-bah !"

"I wanted to get away from the Hill," he said. "Didn't you?" As he laid Anna down on the rough blanket, he kissed her open mouth, her neck, the small, dark tips of her breasts. He slid his hand over the pale sheen of her belly to her legs and to the essential mystery, a twist of copper over a soft, white anvil. i

"Welcome to Santiago."

A breast as still as marble. Then a sudden heart-stir.

"It's raining," she said.

Joe watched flashes picking at the door jamb and around the shutters.

"Just thunder. A strange summer. No rain, just lightning."

"I'm afraid of you."

What did she suspect? he wondered.

"Maybe that's just your way of saying you love me."

"Why do you say that?"

"I love you. I love the way you taste like pinon smoke, the way you feel, and I could make love with you until this bed breaks."

"You can't!"

"I can try."

More slowly, he entered her as if he were leading her, lifting her to the very heart of herself. She rode him in the narrow, yellow light of the fireplace. As beads of sweat dampened her, she glowed like a respondent flame, her hair bright as fire.

Sleeping with his arms round Anna, Joe dreamt of Augustino. The captain was following him with a rifle as Joe climbed a steep, snow-covered hill towards Anna. Both Joe and Anna were naked, while Augustino was dressed like an Apache with a corduroy coat and a high-crowned Boss hat. The snow turned to ashes. Anna disappeared and over the crest of the hill came horses, a herd of mustangs shrouded in steam and the radiance of a phosphorus bomb.

Thunder sounded like a far-off cracking of the earth. The fireplace had the dull, subsided glow of embers. Anna wasn't in bed. Her clothes weren't on the chair. The shutters were open to a full moon. It was after midnight and Joe didn't know where Anna could have gone unless she was visiting the outhouse, but her side of the bed was cold and he had the sense that she had been gone for some time. He put on trousers and shirt and went out.

The pueblo was blue. Blue adobe, blue fence, blue trees. He held up his hand. Blue. Lightning played over the Jemez, but the rest of the sky was clear, the stars dim only because of the brightness of the moonlight. The ground felt like ice.

The jeep was still by the pump. Joe ran past the Reyes' house to the outhouses. Anna wasn't there and it was on his way back that he noticed a free-standing shadow in the night, a pillar of smoke braided with embers rising from the Reyes' yard. Sitting on chairs on either side of a fire were Anna and Sophie Reyes, talking in voices too low to carry.

Sophie was so shy as to be practically a family secret. Except for the pots her nieces sold under the portal in Santa Fe, Joe doubted that anyone outside Santiago would ever have known she existed. She had cropped gray hair streaked with black and white, and a soft, hesitant face. She wore a smudged apron outside the traditional one-shoulder dress and cotton shirt. The fire was the smothered variety, cowpats heaped on burning wood to turn the pots in the centre of the fire a carbon-rich black. Joe didn't know what was more unlikely, that Sophie would be firing pots in the middle of the night or that she would speak to Anna. The two women watched Joe let himself in through the gate.

"I couldn't sleep," Anna whispered.

The women each held blackened sticks, as if they'd been tending the fire during their conversation. Pots already fired were stacked on charred racks to one side of the yard. Raw pots of different shapes lined the other side. Ears of corn, strings of chillies and dried camomile hung in the striped moon-shadows of the open porch at the back of the house. By the chairs were tin pails of temper and shards, and fresh clay in twists of newspaper.

"What are you doing?" Joe asked.

"You can see what I'm doing." Sophie leaned back in her chair the better to regard Joe. He didn't remember his aunt's gaze as being quite so direct.

"In the dark?"

"It's light enough. I was lonely. It's good she came by. She talks quietly. That's nice. We don't wake anyone up."

"It's cold."

"Then go back to bed," Sophie said.

Joe ignored the suggestion. Besides, it was warm around the smothered, nearly invisible fire.

"You have a good woman," Sophie said. "She thinks up numbers."

"She's a mathematician."

"That's what I said. Like Thinking Woman."

"Thinking Woman?" Anna asked.

"Thinking Woman thought up the world," Joe said. "Her thoughts became land, water, animals, people. Whatever she thought became real."

"Like you." Sophie tapped Anna's stick with her own. "His other women were all sluts."

"Thanks," Joe said.

"That came from leaving here and going to New York and the Army," Sophie told Anna. She looked up at Joe and demanded, "Why did you go into the Army?"

"Yes, Joe," Anna asked. "Why did you?"

This night-blooming conversation was unreal, Joe thought.

"It's complicated."

"You were in the Army at the beginning of the war," Anna said. "You must have enlisted."

"See how smart she is," Sophie said.

"Not exactly enlisted."

"Then you must have been in trouble," Anna said.

"See?" Sophie said.

"Okay. I was with some friends in New York. We decided to give a free concert to soldiers in New Jersey, at Fort Dix, which was for Negro soldiers. We thought we'd give them some jazz, maybe a parade."

"This was arranged with the officers, Joe?"

"No. Our arrival was not expected."

"What time of day was this, Joe?"

"About three in the morning. About this time. A lot of dumb things are done at this time."

"You mean you were drunk, Joe."

"See?" Sophie said.

"There was some damage, Joe?"

"Some of the musical instruments got pretty banged up when we hit the main gate. I vaguely remember a scuffle on the way to the parade ground and a holding action around the bandstand. Then I mostly recall seventy or eighty MPs sitting on me. Anyway, the Army was after men. They offered us a choice, jail or enlistment. We all chose enlistment. I was the only one who passed the physical."

"That is a crazy way to enlist in the Army."

"I didn't say it was well thought out. Anyway, enlisting cold sober in broad daylight is crazier."

"Men are so dumb," Sophie told Anna. "My husband should be here where there are things for him to do, but he wants to go hide in the canyons, he wants to be a hero. And I'm the one who has to walk all day to take him food and cigarettes."