Leslie Silko - Gardens in the Dunes

Patiently she taught the monkey and parrot to leave alone the garden plants but to pull the weeds. She always stayed with them to be sure they didn’t get confused. Later when they got tired of weeding, they went to the little lean-to for shade and rest. She drew gladiolus flowers of all colors, and sunflowers, even datura flowers.

The gladiolus corms sent up bright green blades that grew far more quickly than the bean sprouts and peas. When Sister and the twins asked what those rows were, Indigo told them it was a surprise.

The water kept rising, creeping closer and closer to the best fields of tall beans and peas; the people banked the soil higher and higher to protect them. One morning when Indigo started down the trail toward the river, Rainbow began to squawk as if he spotted a hawk or eagle. She looked up at the sky first but saw nothing; but as she gazed all around she was shocked to see a bright sheet of water had flooded the riverside fields during the night. She ran back at once to tell the girls the news.

They left off the beer making to come look from the ridge; down below they watched as a group led by the Chemehuevi preacher approached the flooded fields to pray. “How high would the water rise?” Sister wondered out loud. The twins shook their heads. By the following week, more fields were flooded; all the people could do was pull up the wilted plants and boil them for lunch.

Steadily the water advanced, and began to threaten the church and the small, neat houses and gardens. The twins no longer made jokes about their cheap dry land becoming irrigated bottomland. Now Sister came along with the baby on her back when Indigo went to check on the water’s level. Off in the distance they watched the people help one another move their belongings to higher ground. Wagonloads of church pews and Bibles were unloaded on the old floodplain not far from the twins’ house.

The girls went down and pitched in to help unload the wagons. The people did not smile, but they did not object to the girls’ help. Sister leaned the little grandfather’s bundle against a big rock a safe distance away so he could watch her and the others. His black shining eyes took in everything and one look at him made Sister feel so happy — buoyant with overwhelming love she felt for him and so proud of his special qualities. She had never loved anyone so much before; she always wanted to know her ancestors, and now the little grandfather had come to be with her and to love her.

When the wagons were unloaded, the girls politely excused themselves, but their neighbors ignored them. The twins walked in front and Sister and Indigo with the baby on her back followed. No one spoke. Just then they heard a man’s voice call out behind them: the wantonness and drunkenness of them and others had angered God so much he sent this flood!

They turned and suddenly were face-to-face with a short fat Chemehuevi gentleman in a black preacher’s suit and white shirt. The exertion of hurrying after them left him breathless and sweaty across his brow. While he mopped at his forehead and caught his breath he glared at them; they were not really Chemehuevis but Lagunas and didn’t belong there. They were damned, contaminated — a risk to all others.

The twins took off running and the girls followed; even with the baby on her back Sister was a strong runner; Indigo ran beside her. The preacher got winded and when he stopped, so did his congregation.

When they got back to the house, they were cheered to find the yard full of visitors camped for the night. The guests kept their word and spread news of the beer makers up and down the river. The new batch of beer was barely old enough to drink but they filled the gourds for the guests to sample. The guests shared the venison jerky and parched corn they’d brought along.

After the baby and the pets were put to bed, Indigo sat outside with the girls to listen around the campfire to the news the visitors brought. The backwaters from the dam were going to make a giant lake and everything, even this land here, would be flooded. No! other guests disagreed; the water would not come this far, but the Chemehuevi reservation superintendent was going to send the flooded-out families to live on the reservation at Parker. The night was clear and still but cool enough that everyone wrapped themselves in blankets and shawls around the fire.

Indigo didn’t like the smell or taste of the new beer, but Sister and the twins drank along with their guests wholeheartedly; Indigo liked to listen. As the midnight stars rose and fell, they talked and laughed about the old days before the aliens came with the fevers and killed so many. Some who drank too much beer started to cry for loved ones lost.

Indigo didn’t like to hear the crying and arguing that seemed to follow the beer; she was tired and about to excuse herself to go to bed because she knew the monkey and parrot woke early and wanted to go browsing for breakfast. But Vedna brought out her Bible, so Indigo stayed up.

Vedna closed her eyes and turned the Bible around and around in her hands, then opened it with one finger and looked to see what passage her finger touched.

“And this house which Solomon built for the Lord was in length sixty cubits and in width twenty cubits and in height thirty cubits,” she read, then laughed out loud, and Maytha joined her. Soon the visitors joined, and they laughed because the twins barely kept a roof over their own heads, and the Bible asked them to build the Lord a big house. One of the visitors pointed out the last house built for the Lord there was up to its steeple in water, and they laughed some more.

Sister Salt waited for the laughter to pass, then she told them “a house” means a circle of stones, because spirits don’t need solid walls or roofs; but it must have two hearths, not one, to be the Lord’s house. The visitors all looked at her, but no one joked because Sister was serious. The circle of stones must be made at the same place as before on the riverbank below the big sandhill near Needles.

“Too bad for the Lord,” Maytha said. “We can’t go to Needles now. If we leave for even one night, the flooded people will call our place abandoned and move in.”

The conductor commented it was early for so much snow in Flagstaff. The tall pines were blanketed and Hattie shivered though the train compartment was warm. How pure and quiet the snow was, how inviting the forests and the great mountain peaks above the town. The conductor asked if Flagstaff was her stop, and seemed surprised to learn her stop was Needles.

Outside the station at Needles, Hattie saw the buggy and sullen young driver but ignored him and hired a porter with a handcart. The townspeople of Needles took notice of her return; though she’d been in Albuquerque more than six weeks, the stationmaster remembered her, and the hotel desk clerk recognized her and even asked if Mr. Palmer was going to join her later. She sensed at once the clerk was prying, and imagined them all — the stationmaster, the clerk, their wives — exchanging rumors and observations of a white woman traveling alone.

How odd it was to think, only weeks before, Edward signed that hotel register, alive and excited by the prospect of seeing the meteor crater. She felt a melancholy creep from her heart over her body. Human life was woefully short and ended so suddenly; she fought back the tears, aware she was the center of attention.

The porter had to make three trips with his handcart from the station to the hotel. The trunks and boxes of supplies with her own luggage filled every corner of the hotel room. As soon as she was alone, she unpacked the carved gemstones Edward gave her from Bath; if she acted at once the gloom might not overtake her. She unwrapped the lemon carnelian carving of the long-neck waterbird with her chick bright with yellow translucence; the birds appeared almost alive. Carefully she set the bright orange carnelian of Minerva and her snake next to the cloudy chalcedony of the three cattle under the tree. One look at the carvings and Hattie felt the immediate joy their beauty and perfection gave off.