Leslie Silko - Gardens in the Dunes

Candy came home unexpectedly a few times on those hot afternoons and found Sister Salt without clothes, resting in the tent by a bucket of water with a gourd dipper to sprinkle herself. The sight of her enflamed Candy’s passion, and after the sweet young woman climbed all over and tasted him like gravy, he didn’t have the heart to scold her for going naked while he was away. It was so damn hot here! Thermometers lost their accuracy in no time — the mercury simply cooked away in the relentless heat.

Nevertheless, Candy had warnings from the boss about keeping an Indian woman there. Mr. Wylie heard rumors — untrue, of course — Candy planned to start a whorehouse. Sister Salt listened to Candy and agreed it would be better to move to her own place down along the river where she would be free of prying eyes and of clothing if she chose; she could use red clay on her face and body against the mosquitoes, and no white men would become alarmed. So Candy drove her and her possessions a quarter mile downriver from the construction camp to a grove of cottonwood trees and willows spared by the machinery.

She had her own tent, a kerosene lantern, and a little fold-up bed she used for a table or chair because she preferred to sleep on the ground, where it was cooler. All day long explosions sent the rocks and sand of the old floodplain sky high in plumes of smoke and dust. Sister Salt was happy to be close to the river, away from the dust and noise of the camp.

After the river’s course was diverted, she was saddened to find silver-green carp belly-up, trapped in water holes in the empty riverbed. She tried to care for the datura plants and wild purple asters on the riverbank suddenly left high and dry. She called them her flower garden, but the asters died and the datura wilted if she did not carry them buckets of water every day. She felt sad but resentful too, at the workers who channeled the river away from its bed. In jail she and the twins heard the Mojave people were terribly upset because their beloved ancestors and dead relatives dwelled down there under the river; witchcraft activity was bound to increase because of the damage done to the river.

She didn’t know about witchcraft, but Sister did know about gardens: if the river got moved, there was no way to keep a garden. Angry tears filled her eyes; this place was almost as bad as the reservation at Parker.

She watched the river’s angry churning in the bypass channel; torrents suddenly rippled into stiff reddish ridges topped with white foam as the currents surged back and forth seeking a way back to the old riverbed. She sensed the ferocious power of the river and she began to imagine a flash flood that silently enveloped her tent and floated it away so gently the lantern remained secure on its hook. She imagined the river carried her inside the illuminated tent far, far to the ocean lagoon south of Yuma, where she floated out to sea.

Those first weeks alone on the river, in the coolness before dawn she dreamed of Grandma Fleet, Mama, and Indigo at the old gardens; for an instant after she woke, she felt as if they were there with her before she remembered where she was. She walked away from the river up the sandy slopes of the high ridge above the river, where she could see for great distances in all directions. She followed the ridge to its intersection with a big wash and made her way down the steep game trail to the bottom of the wash. As the sun rose, she began to notice a great many colorful pebbles and stones in the old river gravel, reds, yellows, oranges, whites — the pebbles were polished by water — and she was surprised to find rough granular stones of light greens and darker greens just the color of leaves. Sister Salt was delighted. Each visit to the big wash, she carried back as many of the colorful pebbles and stones as she could. The colored rocks and pebbles took a great deal of time to arrange but finally she completed the stone garden on the sand outside her tent — a garden that needed no water.

One morning she returned to find a big load of firewood neatly stacked next to four cast iron tubs; a big slab of brown soap glistened in a tin pail. No one wanted to go all the way to Parker to get his clothes washed when Candy’s laundry was right there and far cheaper to boot. Candy brought the bundles of dirty laundry before dawn and drank a cup of coffee with her or asked her to come lie on her bedroll with him before he went back to cook Mr. Wylie’s lunch. When she wasn’t scrubbing the overalls on the rock, she was folding clean clothes in separate bundles. The first week Sister Salt washed clothes all day and all night in order to finish. When Candy saw she was behind, he tied up the wagon horses and worked side by side with her to rinse the overalls in boiling water, then hang them over bushes to dry.

Sister Salt felt her heart beat faster whenever Candy was nearby. She worked as hard as she could to finish drying and folding the laundry just to see Candy’s surprise and pleasure as he realized Sister Salt managed to finish all the laundry by herself. If her hands felt raw or swollen from the hot water and lye soap, Sister Salt only had to remember Candy’s warm smile and how good his arms felt around her.

Not long after, Candy told her he had a surprise; first a tent identical to hers went up nearby; then Candy brought four more cast iron tubs. On his third trip he brought back Maytha and Vedna. Sister Salt was delighted to have her friends join her. Candy showed the three of them their accounts in his book; after they repaid him for paying off their jail fines, he would begin to pay them wages each week — four times the wage the school superintendent used to pay them. The laundry work went so much faster with three people to share it and to keep one another laughing with stories and jokes.

Candy was a busy man. Now Sister Salt saw him only when he brought the bundles of dirty laundry or when he loaded the wagon with the clean clothes. Often Candy was so tired when he visited, he fell asleep before he got his boots off, and she didn’t get to romp around on his big soft chest and belly as frequently as before. But Candy never failed to take out the rawhide pouch from inside his shirt to show off the $20 gold pieces and stacks of silver dollars, the profits for that week.

While they scrubbed overalls and boiled water, they planned what they’d do with the silver dollars they earned. Buy farmland right on the river! Maytha shouted. With the money they saved, they’d be able to buy some goats and maybe a few sheep, though summers might be too hot for sheep. Chickens? In the winter they might keep them, but when the hottest days of summer came, the hens stopped laying eggs, and they’d have to cook them.

When it was her turn to tell about her plans for her money, Sister Salt hesitated before she spoke. She had so much she wanted to do, she wasn’t sure how much money she would need. First she had to get Indigo home, and Big Candy promised to help her. Then she and Indigo had to find Mama before they returned to the old gardens.

“Good luck,” the twins said in unison, but they sounded uncertain. The soldiers and the Indian police were under orders to keep the people on the reservations. Besides, good farmland along the river was leased to white people friendly with the superintendent.

On the streets of Needles and Kingman there were so many hungry Indian women and children, Candy brought scraps and leftovers to them when he went to those towns. The women begged him for work, any kind of work, as he handed out bones and skin from the roasted chickens and turkeys; he smiled and nodded and promised them all jobs when he opened his hotel and restaurant in Denver.

Big Candy saw the newspapers every week after Wylie finished with them. The heat that summer exceeded all recorded temperatures in Phoenix and Los Angeles; rainfall the previous spring was far below normal. Wells in Los Angeles and surrounding communities ran dry, and drinking water was brought in by railroad tank cars. A week did not pass without some government official or other paying a visit to the construction site to monitor the progress on the aqueduct and the dam. More workers were hired to keep the project on schedule, and the construction site village of flapping canvas over wood crates and tin expanded toward the river. Big Candy was pleased they were closer to his brewery and gambling tents and the laundry.