Chapter 26. To Hopiland II
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Jerry got up for the day, came into the living room and built a fire, and went to his desk in the corner. Arthur was soon warm; then the first burst of heat was gone and he was cold again. He dozed, listening to the sound of pen on paper as Gerry wrote. He said nothing, shy about asking for help, but when the guest he didn't know offered to lift him he accepted gratefully.
"You're up," said Lucia when she came in. "I was going to wash you. And what about shit chores?"
"We can wait till tonight and get away with it," Arthur said.
"You mean wait till we're back from Second Mesa?"
"Sure; this evening we can do it at the motel, at our leisure. Otherwise we won't be out of here before two." It was almost eleven and Arthur was pleased he had not sounded sarcastic. "You can check me for pressure marks then, too." He knew he should have been checked before he got up so that if trouble spots were developing they could be considered when he was positioned in the truck, but he didn’t want to be lifted back to bed now. "Well, wait, my feet are most at risk," he said; "go ahead and pull my socks off and check them."
She did and discovered his skin had indeed broken down on the outside of his left foot, but he was not unduly alarmed; he hoped the minor breakdown would be a reminder of the need for vigilance.
"Ready for a joint?" said Greg as they drank herbal tea. Their fellow-guest had left, Jerry was in town, and Alberta was showing Arthur her drawings. Arthur craved coffee but had been unsurprised there was none in the house.
"I'm ready," said Arthur.
"Colombian or Thai?"
"Colombian." The Thai for later, he thought.
Greg rolled; Jerry returned and chose not to toke; Arthur inhaled. With his first hit he hurt more than he had, but he felt better too.
It was a chilly morning with two small fair-weather clouds in a bright blue sky, and Arthur shivered as they packed him into the truck. Snow that had fallen overnight was melting fast and sounds of dripping came from all around them. He leaned forward onto the dash; Lucia climbed in the driver’s door and slid over next to him as Greg and Jerry lifted his chair into the back. Alberta, her gray hair shining in the sun, gave Lucia a bag of oranges, and at noon they were on their way.
"What does Jerry call himself?" Arthur asked.
"A geomancer," Lucia said.
Arthur felt the truck's jouncing through his whole body. The base of his spine, where he supposedly lacked sensation, ached as much as his shoulders. He grimaced as the truck hit another bump.
"Wait'll we hit the Navajo road," said Greg. He laughed. "We'll be airborne."
Arthur hoped not and, still leaning on the dashboard, promised himself to speak up if the jouncing was too much too much.
"Watch for ads for rooms with waterbeds, okay?" he said. "It'll be easier tonight if we can find one."
"I don't think we're going to," Lucia said. "A few years ago they were everywhere."
"If the joint's seedy enough it may still have a few. The No-Tell still has them in Tucson."
"The No-Tell Motel?"
"Lee and I used it the night I got to town this time because my bed wasn't ready. The room was not elegant."
"And the clientele?"
"We were there."
Passing through Holbrook, the biggest town on today’s route, they stopped for gas and Lucia reminded Greg to ask inside about waterbeds. He looked unhappy but agreed.
"There were a few smirks," he reported when he climbed back in the truck; "but no leads."
"Oh well, we'll just have to be careful," Arthur said. "Water's so reassuringly safe."
As they pulled out of town they smoked more Colombian. Greg pointed to the right, the east. “Over that way is the petrified forest,” he said, then, pointing west, “and those snow-covered mountaintops are the San Francisco Peaks."
The pavement changed from light to dark as they entered the Navajo reservation and Greg accelerated to 75 mph. The road, which indeed was worse than it had been, stretched straight before them; Arthur tried with some success to tear his eyes from its next 100 feet and look at the exotic landscape surrounding them. A pair of hawks circled above and, as the truck passed beneath them, Arthur leaned farther forward and tried to get a clear enough look to identify them later. All he could see to remember were their dark wingtips, which in themselves were unlikely to be definitive. He saw several black hawk-sized birds that in the northeast he would have assumed were crows; here he thought them ravens. A particularly violent bump caught him unawares and he felt a sharp twinge in his neck. Better. So this was the land of the Navajo. His sore neck added a new dimension to his pain.
Yesterday’s hostile-machine fantasy continued and evolved as cars and trucks came at them but, still, their wheels didn't fly off and their nuts and bolts, axles and rods stayed together; might the machines, dog-like, sense his fear and attack? Shifting to a more comfortable conceit he wondered if his tiredness might help weaken his magnetic field. He prayed in his fashion to the powers of the land through which they passed. He saw, far off the road to the left, a flock of sheep watched over by two shepherds on horseback. Two hundred years ago a man could ride a horse all day and all night and see only the sky and the mountains and the desert, never a human or anything made by humans; he probably still could. Great red mounds and green mounds rose from the desert floor and the landscape looked and felt magical. He saw more ravens and another pair of hawks.
Lucia had her right arm around his shoulders. He leaned against her for support and was pleasantly distracted by the swell of her breast against his left arm. He balanced himself with his hand on the inside of her thigh. Greg moved across the center line of the 2-lane highway into the empty oncoming lane; it was less pitted and he blasted on.
Lucia took her arm from around Arthur's shoulders as they turned off the blacktop onto a smoother surface and entered the town of Polacca in Hopiland. Here, as in Fort Apache, there were clusters of trailers and wooden houses. After Polacca they saw a single hawk that, as they approached, came toward the road at right angles and then, before they reached it, turned and preceded them for a few hundred feet as they climbed toward Second Mesa. It felt to Arthur as though Charles, aware of their arrival, were greeting them.
On their right they were approaching an ivory-tipped chartreuse cone hundreds of feet high. If the bomb dropped, how would these Hopi lives change, unless, of course, they ended? Where would the people live if the world were theirs to roam and choose? Still here? The cone felt built and it felt sacred. All the land felt sacred and strange and strong. Ravens flew over the truck. Greg pointed ahead and said, "There's Second Mesa." The road steepened and narrowed and they were soon high above the desert through which they had come; if the truck swerved a yard it would fall hundreds of feet.
Then they were on the mesa. They saw a few houses, then more and more, two or three hundred. Some were built of stones, some of mud and twigs; some were half dug into the ground; there were no trailers. On promontories commanding views of a hundred miles in three directions crouched Hopi homes. Long ago the Christians had come.
It was about three in the afternoon. Arthur glanced at the speedometer and saw that Greg was doing 10 mph. He slowed. There were puddles in the road and it was impossible to guess how deep each was until they entered it. They hit a deep one that made the truck lurch left and a sharp pain run through Arthur's left bicep. He was exhausted and far from any place where he could rest.
"There's Charles Hawk's," said Greg, pointing at a long low dug-in stone house with several entrances. The alley-way and long low house seemed, because it was, from another country than the one from which the visitors had come. "And here's the kiva." Smoke came from the kiva's chimney and Arthur wondered where the wood had grown. He'd seen only a few small trees on the mesa. The kiva was a new building, dug in, well-built, and strong. A man about forty watched Greg park and went down the kiva steps and into the building as though to report.
As Greg got out he stepped across the deep puddle in which he’d parked. He went to the house he'd identified as Charles Hawk's, knocked at one of the doors, and was admitted. Arthur and Lucia waited in the truck. A girl came out the door Greg had entered, a man left from another and went in a second direction, and a boy left running in a third. Were they spreading out over the mesa to find Charles Hawk? Arthur wondered how many souls lived in this long low building. Two men came around a corner and went inside.
"I hope he's here," said Lucia.
"I hope so too," said Arthur. He tried to hope so. He did not feel Charles' power but was glad that he had come, had not surrendered to his indifference. He imagined standing on the mesa's eastern edge, feeling a predawn wind stir and seeing the eastern horizon gradually grow light; he imagined every morning bringing the sun into the world and every evening standing on the mesa's western edge bidding it good night, safe journey; imagined promising: "In the morning we will be there, on the other side of the mesa, and we will sing to you; we will be singing and we will play music until you are safely in the sky."
A man appeared around the corner of the kiva to their right.
"Charles," Lucia said to Arthur, and waved to him.
Charles nodded in response but Arthur thought he hadn't recognized her. He was six inches taller and thirty years younger than Nine Wells and seemed tired as he crossed in front of the truck. He went inside his house and soon emerged with Greg; they crossed to the truck.
"Charles," said Greg, "this is our friend Arthur."
Lucia and Charles exchanged greetings and she told him that Nine Wells had seen Arthur and told them to bring him here to see him.
"How long has it been since you were injured?" Charles Hawk asked.
"Fifteen years," said Arthur.
"That is a long time," said Charles. Arthur thought he implied it was too long. "What do you want from me? I am not a doctor, you know. I try, but--. . ."
"Charles can't work on you now," Greg said.
"I'm sorry," said Charles. "The Ceremony is this weekend. I am fasting and may not touch you with my hands."
"How have you been Charles?" asked Lucia, concealing her disappointment and frustration.
"I've been sick," said Charles; "I am so busy. People want to see me from all over. I was in Phoenix after I wrote you; I called you but there was no answer. I meant to write as soon as I got back here, but then I got sick. I meant to write." Arthur felt they had embarrassed him. "After this weekend," said Charles, "I could work on you, if you could stay that long. Or, if that is impossible, I would come to see you in Tucson. I must be in Phoenix Tuesday. A man was in an accident there two weeks ago and cannot walk. He needs me."
Arthur thought of staying. "If you don't feel stronger," he said, "you should rest. You shouldn't push yourself too hard."
They talked for about fifteen minutes. Lucia told Charles that Desert Light was planning a second holistic conference and invited him. Greg said he could stay at Greg's home in Tucson and Charles said he would. A dog lying on top of the kiva stretched in the sun, scratched, rolled, yawned, stretched, scratched. In the summer the hot winds blew across the mesa; in the winter they were cold. There were no trees. People yes. Dwellings yes. There seemed to be no crops, no flocks. There were no jobs. It was a long way to a city, and what was there? Wires sea to sea. Creating the sun anew each day paid nothing and anyway, was time not done? All was over but the ending, the white race doomed to destroy itself, turn upon itself like a dragon and consume itself, its flailing threatening the whole earth.
A girl about four passed behind Charles Hawk and Greg. She wore a blue winter jacket made of some synthetic material. She trudged past them and out of sight, trailing the coat half on, half off. What ambitions were in her breast, as yet unknown? Needs? Strengths? Second Mesa was so far from everywhere else. Dogs, people, houses, dirt, sun, wind; desolate grandeur. Charles was tired, as though the winter had been too hard when the people was so lost. Why were these white ones here? The elders had met in council the week before and over his objections banned non-Indians from the upcoming Bean Ceremony. And now, as though to mock him, came these seekers. Why had he to fail them too? He tried to deny that he could feel the magic dying, because to feel it die was to kill it, but he had watched it weaken in his lifetime. It made him sometimes sad, sometimes angry, and too often very very tired.
_____
They smoked another joint of gold as Greg negotiated the descent from the 1000-foot-high mesa. "I guess the time and place weren't right," he said. He shook his head and grinned, still upbeat. Arthur was upbeat too. It had proved to be his kind of pilgrimage. He never had been attached to its fruits. They were turned toward home and every minute brought him closer to a comfortable bed, if not tonight in the motel then tomorrow night on Adams Street. His neck and shoulders screamed. The serpent coiled at the base of his spine struck again and again and again.
"Will you awaken?" Arthur asked it silently.
"I am awake," it answered.
He knew that if he could write down even one day of outer dialogue, one of inner, it would be everything that he desired. Time and again he had thought, if I could but describe this, this row of houses, this group of persons, this conversation, this ride from Tucson to Hopiland to Tucson, it would be what I wish and would sustain me. Contentment and discontentedness succeeded one another. Viewed from a higher level or a greater distance they were seen as complementary. Change change change. Little deaths. He survived. Bad times succeeded good as Fate allowed, Fate what one got. One could create reality. Control it? No. Grasp it? No. Those capabilities were an illusion. But create it? One had no choice but to create. Arthur prayed for the land they were leaving. He prayed for Charles Hawk and for the people. He leaned on the dash. In the distance to their left was the chartreuse breast, ivory-nippled and surreal. Hopiland. He thanked the land for allowing him to leave it; thanked it ironically but respectfully for its gentleness to him.
"Maybe we'll see Nine Wells on the way home tomorrow," said Greg.
"We can call him tonight," said Lucia.
"What's the plan for tonight?" said Arthur.
Greg told them where they would stay and eat.
"Will it be all right to eat dinner before chores?" said Lucia.
"It'll be fine," Arthur said.
They turned onto the blacktop. Arthur watched the road alertly and Lucia put her arm around him. He would have liked to lean against her, but leaning in her direction made his neck hurt more. He savored the beating he was taking.
"Thai for sunset?" said Greg, and they all laughed. The sunset was golden and orange. The moon, full and in Virgo, came up round and bright after they reached Lakeside, their destination. Greg turned into a dirt driveway and pulled up before a log cabin that had a sign in front saying it was the manager's. He disappeared inside. Lucia had started bleeding in Hopiland and was tired and ached.
"We'll eat soon, Tony," she said to Arthur.
Greg got back in the truck.
"We have a cabin," he said. "Shall we go to it or eat?"
"Is there soap?" asked Lucia.
She was concerned about Arthur, his delicate skin over-abused and under-tended. They stopped at the cabin briefly. There was soap and their spirits lifted.
They ate at Crozier's, a restaurant with plush red wall-to-wall carpeting. Across Second Mesa blew the winter wind. It had felt magical, the stuff of romance, however impoverished and tubercular its present population. Mrs. Crozier and her son circulated amongst their guests. "So glad to see you again," she said to Greg, pausing by their table. Well-dressed anthropoids, their fellows, brushed by their table. They relaxed. The Croziers had only recently stopped serving their distinctive loaves of bread with dinner and now served common packaged dinner rolls. The apple pie was, of course, heavily laced with white sugar. It was underdone, too. Lucia's salad was inadequate. The pilgrims laughed. At the next table there was a laughing family but soon the daughter was pouting and hurt as her mother talked at her. By pie they were laughing again. The houses on Second Mesa had been funkier than those in Fort Apache and Polacca; Second Mesa was more isolated, colder, poorer. Greg and Arthur had Dutch beer with dinner.
In their motel room, besides soap, were a television and two double beds with electric blankets. Arthur was unsafe using an electric blanket because of his sensationlessness. If his left leg kicked over his right, as it was likelier than not to do in the night, and some part of him ended atop the blanket, his first warning would not be pain but fire, the smell of scorched flesh, or, likeliest, simply the discovery in the morning of a horrendous burn like the one he had gotten when he first lived at Adams and Tyndall with Lee and in his sleep had pushed away a heat lamp with his elbow. That burn, treated with aloe and golden seal, had not become infected and in three months had healed. Arthur snuggled under the forbidden blanket. After he would already have burned, he asked Lucia to check to make sure it was smoothly laid across him. He lay on his side as Lucia did chores. Greg built a fire and flicked on the TV. He rolled a joint in front of the fireplace, which was near the TV and far from Arthur.
"More drugs!" Lucia said mockingly, and punched herself painlessly on the side of the head. Greg came over and shared the joint with them. Arthur usually sweat some during chores but tonight his shoulders and neck and head and arms were drenched, so he checked the sheet under him with his left hand; if he were sweating so much because the catheter were blocked he would also be voiding around the catheter. The sheet was dry. All was well. In the two weeks before the trip three catheters had needed changing because Arthur was pissing around them; normally one lasted three weeks. The touchiness of his bladder had been reason enough to avoid this trip, but it seemed that they were getting away with it.
Lucia brewed red-clover tea. Arthur drank at least three quarts of liquid every day to keep his system flushed; two quarts or more of late were usually red clover. Lucia pulled off his socks. The skin on the left side of his left foot seemed no worse, but he had worn a small hole in his right great toe, the one with which Cricket most often played. He was glad his only new injury was this to his toe. He was gratified and relieved to find he had escaped the previous night's adventure on the floor unmarked. The second night was easier for him than the first had been. He couldn't tell if he slept more, seemed not to, but he was more comfortable.
Chapters: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 front cover