Leslie Silko - Ceremony

“And the old men from home?”

“They come very reluctantly, because the Government people ask them to come along. They don’t like white people coming around anyway. The only thing is: they haven’t been able to agree.”

“Agree on what?”

“They are trying to decide who you are.”

She poked the coals with a stick. “If they didn’t find you right away, the white people would get impatient.” He nodded and smiled; the squeezing around his chest faded. He knew the rest of the story.

“They won’t want to climb around these hills. They’re afraid of snakes. Their Government cars will get stuck in sand and muddy places. The old men will get tired of sitting in the hot sun, watching the white men act like fools. They’ll all go home,” Tayo said.

“That leaves Emo and the others,” she said, unrolling their blankets on the sand, “and that part won’t be easy.”

He held her fiercely all night, as if together their sweat and the heat of their breathing could lock out the moaning voices of the dark whirling winds. Together they made a place, remote and calm as the stars that lay across the sky. He woke up in the night and found that place as he moved close to her again. Before dawn he felt her breathing close to his face, and when he opened his eyes, she was smiling at him.

The cattle stood motionless in the thick yellow light from the edge of the sun, visible above the horizon. There was a density to the light which seemed to hold them, as if the sudden warmth had stopped them, and they did not move when she and Tayo walked past. Their eyes shone yellow, and the hairs of their hides caught needles of light. She stopped to examine the cattle. He stood feeling the sun on his face the way the cattle did, until she turned and faced him.

“It’s almost completed,” she said. “We are coming to the end soon.”

The canyon was full of long early shadows where night lingered, a damp smell in the breeze. The fire left a flat circle of white ash on the yellow sand, and Tayo remembered Betonie’s sand painting and the warning that the new ceremonies were not like the old ones; but he had never said they were not complete, only different.

She spread her blue silk shawl open and laid her things in the middle. She had done her washing the day before and had spread the wet clothes over willows to dry. When he went to get them for her, the blouses and skirts were like bright wings of butterflies settled on the branches. He was careful not to snag them as he took them off the willows, and he folded them awkwardly before he took them back. She laughed when she saw the blouses and skirts, and refolded them. She tucked the pouches of seeds and the small smooth stones between the folded clothes, and she rolled bundles of cattail reeds and willow twigs in a skirt. She tied the shawl into a bundle and balanced it on top of her head the way Tayo had seen the old women at Laguna do. She grinned at him.

“See,” she said, parading in front of him, “this is the way I will go. Just like this.”

She looked around to see if she had forgotten anything. The imminence of her leaving made him press his feet hard against the ground.

“I’ll walk you to the road,” he said.

They walked close together, arms around each other’s waist, pulling each other close. A mourning dove called from the tall grass along the wash, and below the cliffs the speckled cattle were grazing. Every step formed another word, thick like yellow pitch oozing from a broken piñon limb, words pressing inside his chest until it hurt: don’t leave me. But he sucked air through clenched teeth and breathed hard, trapping those words inside. She stopped by a juniper tree at the edge of the road and set her bundle on the ground. The road curved through red clay and junipers uphill to the northeast. Behind them the road dropped down the gray shale hill to the clay flats of the valley. A year ago he and Harley had ridden down the road on the burro and mule, but this time the grass along the road was green and thick, and to the east, south, and west, as far as he could see, the land was green again.

“Remember,” she said, “remember everything.” He hugged her close and closed his eyes tight over the tears. She picked up the bundle and balanced it on her head with one hand.

“I’ll see you,” she said, starting down the road. At the top of the hill she turned and waved to him.

He woke up choking on humid jungle air, but when he pushed back the blanket he was in the cave, and it was his own sweat and heavy breathing that made the air seem damp. The dream had been dark wet sand, shifting above water, quicksand with no bottom or top, no edges; it had quivered and heaved in spasms until he choked.

He knew better than to walk the road. He climbed up the big boulders, feeling his way slowly, remembering ledges and cracks in the cliff wide enough for a person to climb to the top of the mesa. He moved each foot carefully because the sound of rocks rolling down and dry branches breaking would echo in the canyon, and if they were close enough, they would know he was getting away. His heart was pounding. They were coming to end it their way.

He lay flat on his belly and looked down a hundred feet into the canyon. His lungs were burning, and his sides ached. He listened for them, but for a long time he heard nothing in the bottom of the narrow canyon but gusts of wind that strayed over the rim of sandrock and blew his hair in his eyes. The moon lacked only a night of being full, and the flat bare sandrock on the mesa top reflected its light like snow, and he could see his way clearly.

He ran north until he hit the wood-hauling road, and he followed it east to the Acoma boundary fence. He trotted along the fence.

He stopped to rest, and swallowed back his own heavy breathing until he thought his chest would burst; but he had to listen for sounds behind him. The wind was blowing from the west, and it was difficult to be certain but he thought he heard the low hum of an engine.

The wind shifted, and it was from the south then, at his back, and it pushed him along. He was running easily and thinking about what he had to do.

On the ridge south of Engine Rock, he stopped to look down at the Acoma valley and the road. Enchanted Mesa was a dark silvered shadow rising up from the valley into the sky. There weren’t any headlights on the road. He listened, but there was only the wind stirring in the juniper branches, rustling the grass around him. It was a restless, dry wind that felt as if it blew out of dusty thin years of the past; it smelled of emptiness and loss.

He had to bring it back on them. There was no other way. He worked his way down the side of the ridge, winding back and forth across the slope, the way horses did to keep their footing.

He eased his feet in, holding the fluted steel edge of the culvert with both hands. He slid his legs and hips inside and ducked his head under. The curved ridges of the culvert pressed against his spine, and he could feel tiny pebbles and fine sand that had been washed inside. He pushed the dry tumbleweeds farther into the pipe with his feet and tried to get comfortable; he would stay there until morning. Then he would wait for someone from Acoma to drive by, someone who didn’t know about him. The Government didn’t go to work until eight o’clock, and by then he would be far away.

He woke up when the sky was dark gray, the transition from night already started. Blackbirds swarmed above the junipers; their noise increased with the dawn light and they fluttered and circled their roosting places restlessly. The moon had gone down, and only a few stars still blinked in the west. He slid out of the culvert slowly; his legs were stiff from being drawn up near his belly for warmth. He pulled the collar of his Levi jacket up around his chin and shoved his hands into his pockets. It was still dark along the ground and among the trees, but the sky was getting lighter, the blue gray streaked with red light, like a belly opening under a knife. A frail luminous glow pushed out between the edges of horizon and clouds.