Leslie Silko - Gardens in the Dunes

The nuns offered condolences and the priest offered to accompany her to the chapel, but Hattie firmly declined. She shocked them further when she announced Edward’s sister would make the funeral arrangements. She paid the hospital bill and left a bank draft with the hospital accountant to pay the undertaker to keep Edward’s coffin in the icehouse until Susan arrived.

THE LEVEL of the river rose a little higher each morning Indigo took the monkey and the parrot to forage for seeds and roots. The little black grandfather was teething and cried irritably at the least sound, so Indigo kept her pets away for a good part of the morning. At first the tamarisks and willows perked up from the extra water, but as the water began to cover the base of the trees, the leaves yellowed and died.

Once the watercress and other tender plants were submerged, they stayed higher on the sandy bank, where she let Rainbow down to walk with Linnaeus to browse among the sunflowers. She kept a close watch for hungry foxes, who looked for rabbits and water rats displaced by the rising water; a great many tortoises and water snakes hid in the tall grass above the water.

At first the girls all made fun of Indigo for speculating on how high the water would rise; they didn’t see the river every day. But the morning they all took buckets to bring water from the hydrant by the church, the twins and Sister stopped in their tracks when they saw how high the water had risen in such a short time. Even the little grandfather, tied piggyback on Sister’s back, gazed at the high water.

“It’s all going to be flooded,” Vedna said. “I didn’t believe it before.” They stood in silence a moment before Maytha whistled slowly and shook her head. The irrigated river bottom land was the best land, where the winter crops of beans and peas, already knee high, were about to be drowned.

At this rate, all the houses and the little church with the hydrant would be underwater too; then where would they get their drinking water? Maytha joked their land would become prime irrigated farmland soon. The sprouts in their dry garden were tiny compared to those in the river bottom fields. Vedna said this must be what the Bible meant about the least shall be first. Sister Salt looked at the houses, where people watched them but never came outdoors or spoke to them. She shook her head. When the land here was flooded, the people would hate them even more.

They hauled water all morning to fill the iron kettle and the two tin washtubs to boil for beer. After the water cooled to lukewarm, they added the yeast cakes just as Big Candy did. Vedna wondered aloud what became of him, chasing after that Gypsy. Sister Salt shrugged as if she couldn’t care less, but she wondered sometime too; the one she loved to dream about was Charlie, even if he was married in Tucson. Sometimes she caught herself daydreaming his wife got ill or had an accident and died; no, she didn’t want to get him that way. Probably he didn’t even remember her now.

Their house reeked of green beer; every available pot and pan was full of it; Sister and Indigo gathered dried gourds and cleaned them out for beer containers. Candy used glass bottles to get the fizz in the beer, but the glass sometimes exploded. At worst, the gourds only fizzed and foamed.

The twins went to visit their old aunt upriver and took some beer samples with them to give away. They were gone overnight; it was the first time the sisters were alone since Indigo returned. Indigo put the parrot and monkey to bed and joined Sister, who was outside nursing the baby and watching the stars. They shared Sister’s shawl over their legs; later there was a chill in the breeze that made them scoot closer together. Sister couldn’t resist tickling Indigo’s ribs, and she squealed and they both laughed. The little grandfather let go of Sister’s nipple and studied both their faces; he and Indigo were jealous of each other, which made Sister laugh. He was rounder now, with fat little wrists and ankles that would have pleased Big Candy. She still felt sad he didn’t give the little grandfather a chance. The baby was crawling now, and beginning to try to pull himself upright. He was a serious baby who didn’t smile often but who cried only when he was angry; wet or hungry, he remained silent because he was a grandfather and not someone new.

Indigo wanted to make friends with him, and started to help Sister care for him. At first she only watched; each time Sister gently scooped the warm water over his legs and bottom in the shallow basin, he took deep breaths and held them. He screamed if Sister tried to put him in Indigo’s arms, so that day Indigo picked up Linnaeus, then cradled the monkey close to her face. The little grandfather watched, then screwed his face up in fury.

“Did you see that?” He knew Indigo was mocking him. Sister nodded. That was why she called him grandfather; they must not tease or mock him.

The twins returned the following evening with a dozen or more guests, mostly Chemehuevi relations but also Walapai and Havasupai friends. Sister and Indigo heard their laughter a half mile away the evening they showed up. They all sat on their blankets on the smooth-packed ground in front of the house; when it began to get chilly, the twins built a fire. They celebrated the new beer and their new friends. They told stories about the old days when the people drank cactus fruit wine in late July to contact the ancestors to rain down their love on them. They made jokes about the rising river, the government’s plan to drown all the Indians, and they all laughed and laughed until tears filled their eyes. The only good land left to them now was about to be taken away by the backwater of the dam.

The next morning their guests woke up in the front yard with ailments from drinking so much green beer. The girls cooked up the rabbits they’d snared with the last of the beans and used the last of the flour for tortillas to feed the guests breakfast. As they departed, their new friends promised to say good things about the beer to people with money or things to trade.

Later that day as they rinsed clean the beer gourds, Sister asked Indigo if they could sell her big trunk for money to get food and supplies to make more beer. That evening Indigo began to remove the few remaining clothes from the trunk, and her color pencils, notebooks, and gladiolus book. She had room in the two valises to keep what remained. She didn’t need the trunk any longer. It was a fine leather-and-wood brassbound trunk with compartments and many small drawers, which Indigo loved to open and close. She gave it a pat and hoped they could get a lot of food in trade for it.

In a few more weeks they’d have baby peas to eat; Indigo checked their garden every morning to see how many rabbits they’d snared. At the old gardens they used to sleep out with the plants to keep the rabbits away, but here snares seemed to be enough. That morning, though, as Indigo approached she saw at once something had eaten rows and rows of baby pea plants.

Maytha and Vedna shook their heads in unison when Indigo proposed she and her pets sleep down in the garden. This wasn’t the old Sand Lizard gardens, this was Road’s End, where wicked men prowled at night and jumped on sleeping women.

After their morning excursion along the river to look for tidbits, Indigo took the parrot and monkey to the garden. First they checked the rabbit snares; in the beginning they caught two and three rabbits a night, but as the river rose, rabbits were scarce. Birds became the main threat, so Indigo would bundle up her color pencils and notebook, some stale tortillas, and a gourd canteen of water, to guard the plants all day. Old Man Stick, the scarecrow they made out of twigs and horsetail hair, scared the newcomers for a while, but the resident birds perched on Old Man Stick.