Leslie Silko - Ceremony

both of those girls were watching us then.

I smiled at

both of them, see, so they’d

both think I was friendly.

But I gave my “special look”

to the blonde. So she’d know, see.

That’s how I’d do it.

Then I went up to the bar and

I told the bartender I wanted

two more of whatever the ladies over there was

drinking, and I went over.

They took the

drinks and the fat one asked me

to sit down.

I sat down close to the blonde

and told them my name.

I used Mattuci’s name that night — this Wop

in our unit.

The fat girl had a car. I sat in the middle, grabbing titties with both hands all the way to Long Beach. Next day my buddy was dying to know. He kept asking all morning “Well? Well?” I told him “Well, I scored all right.” “Which one, which one?” “Not one,” I said “Both of them!” “Well, I’ll be goddamned!” he said “all in the same bed?” “Yes, sir, this In’di’n was grabbin’ white pussy all night!” “Shit, Chief, that’s some reputation you’re making for Mattuci!” “Goddamn,” I said “Maybe next time I’ll send him a bill!”

Pinkie was holding his belly, laughing so hard. Leroy and Harley were slapping each other on the backs, laughing real loud.

“Hey, Emo, that’s a good one!”

“Hey, tell the one about the time that guy told on you.”

“Which guy?”

“When you were balling that little redhead and what’s his name — the Irishman?. .”

“Yeah, he knocked on the door. You know, the Irishman knocked on the door and yelled, ‘Hey, Geronimo!’”

“Oh. Yeah. That time.” Emo’s forehead was covered with little balls of sweat. He wiped them off with the back of his hand. He was looking at Tayo.

“Come on, Emo, tell it.”

“I don’t feel like it.” The corners of his mouth looked sullen.

“It’s so damn funny! That white guy yells, ‘Hey, Geronimo!’ and the white woman hears him and says, ‘Who’s that?’ He says, ‘A drunk Irishman.’ She says, ‘No, who’s that Geronimo?’ You have a titty in your mouth so you don’t answer. She says, ‘That’s an Indian, isn’t it?’ She yells back at him, ‘This guy’s an Indian?’ He says, ‘Yeah — his name is Geronimo.’ She starts screaming and faints.”

“Passed out.”

“Well, anyway, she fainted or passed out.” Leroy and Pinkie finished the story and went for more beer. There was something about the story Emo didn’t like. Tayo was watching him; he didn’t turn his eyes away when Emo looked back at him. They sat staring at each other across the big round table. Tayo remembered fighting tomcats then, the frozen pose, arched bodies coiled, only the tails twitching with their anger, until one or the other made a move and they went rolling around in the dirt.

“You don’t like my stories, do you? Not good enough for you, huh? You think you’re hot shit, like your cousin. Big football star. Big hero.” Emo pointed a finger at the empties in front of Tayo. “One thing you can do is drink like an Indian, can’t you? Maybe you aren’t no better than the rest of us, huh?”

Tayo thought of Rocky then, and he was proud that Emo was so envious. The beer kept him loose inside. Emo’s words never touched him. The beer stroked a place deep under his heart and put all the feeling to sleep.

Then Emo took out the little bag again. He fumbled with the yellow pull-strings and opened it. He poured the human teeth out on the table. He looked over at Tayo and laughed out loud. He pushed them into circles and rows like unstrung beads; he scooped them into his hand and shook them like dice. They were his war souvenirs, the teeth he had knocked out of the corpse of a Japanese soldier. The night progressed according to that ritual: from cursing the barren dry land the white man had left them, to talking about San Diego and the cities where the white women were still waiting for them to come back to give them another taste of what white women never got enough of. But in the end, they always came around to it.

“We were the best. U.S. Army. We butchered every Jap we found. No Jap bastard was fit to take prisoner. We had all kinds of ways to get information out of them before they died. Cut off this, cut off these.” Emo was grinning and hunched over, staring at the teeth.

“Make them talk fast, die slow.” He laughed. Pinkie and Harley laughed with him, at his joke. Leroy came over for more money; Tayo threw him a twenty dollar bill. He was getting tense. He needed more beer to keep him loose inside and to make his stomach feel better. He swallowed some more. Every word Emo said pulled the knot in his belly tighter.

“I only went after the officers. These teeth, they were from a Jap colonel. Yeah.”

Tayo could hear it in his voice when he talked about the killing — how Emo grew from each killing. Emo fed off each man he killed, and the higher the rank of the dead man, the higher it made Emo.

“We blew them all to hell. We should’ve dropped bombs on all the rest and blown them off the face of the earth.”

He went into the old man’s field to look at the melons, all round and full of slippery sinews of wet seeds. He raised his foot carefully and brought his boot down hard on the center of the melon. It made a popping sound. Seeds and wet pulp squirted out from the broken rind; they glistened with juice. He kicked the pieces and scattered them around the corn plants. He pulled one from its stem and held it in his hands. The skin was shiny and smooth, veined and mottled like green turquoise; he felt the shape. The symmetry of the oval pleased him; he raised it high over his head and smashed it against the ground. He made certain they were all gone. He looked back, down the long row. Tiny black ants were scurrying over the shattered melons; the flies were rubbing their feet on fragments of pulp and rind. He trampled the ants with his boots, and he kicked dirt over the seeds and pulp. He watched flies buzz in circles above the burial places.

Emo had liked what they showed him: big mortar shells that blew tanks and big trucks to pieces; jagged steel flakes that exploded from the grenades; the way the flame thrower melted a rifle into a shapeless lump. He understood them right away; he knew what they wanted. He was the best, they told him; some men didn’t like to feel the quiver of the man they were killing; some men got sick when they smelled the blood. But he was the best; he was one of them. The best. United States Army.

Something was different about the beer this time; it swelled through his blood and made all the muscles loose and warm, but it was also loosening something deeper inside which clenched the anger and held it in place. He could feel it happening. Like two days of snow piled deep on the branches of a big pine tree the morning of the second day, when the sun came out and crystal by crystal penetrated the snow, melting it away from the pine needles until a single gust of mountain wind and suddenly all the snow came tumbling down.

Emo played with the teeth; he pretended to put them in his own mouth at funny angles. Everyone was laughing. The teeth sucked up the light, and darkness closed around Tayo with an ambush of voices in English and Japanese. He clenched his hands around the bottle until he felt a sharp snap. It was too late then. It tore loose. The little Japanese boy was smiling in the L.A. depot; darkness came like night fog and someone was bending over a small body.

Tayo jumped up from the table, panting; the sweat ran down his face like tears.

“Killer!” he screamed. “Killer!”

The others were quiet, but Emo started laughing. His voice echoed around the room.

“You drink like an Indian, and you’re crazy like one too — but you aren’t shit, white trash. You love Japs the way your mother loved to screw white men.”