Gardens in the Dunes

by Leslie Marmon Silko

  She crept up behind the large figure squatting in the rice grass and was about to spring on him and stab him in the throat when she recognized the muscular back and huge forearms and hands.

  “Hey!” she yelled and the big man startled and never looked back; he tumbled forward on his hands and knees and crawled madly into the tamarisk seedlings in fright. He looked so frightened, despite his size, Sister Salt started laughing. The sound of her laughter made him stop and turn his head with a sheepish grin.

  “You almost gave me a heart attack,” Big Candy said, pretending to feel his chest over his heart. Sister Salt laughed harder. He was their favorite laundry customer because he was so jolly, always teasing and making jokes about himself and his huge overalls he claimed he ordered from a tent manufacturer in St. Louis. She told him he ought to be more careful or he might get hurt. He’d learned his lesson, he said, with a make-believe shudder and big grin as he looked at the flint knife in her hand. He nodded his head dramatically; all the while Sister Salt watched his eyes—they were even blacker than his face. What beautiful teeth he had; she noticed them the first time he brought his laundry to them. Big Candy was the cook and right-hand man for the construction site superintendent, Mr. Wylie.

  “You can see what a good cook I am,” he told them the first time they met him, as he showed off his big stomach. After that, even when he was too busy to come himself, he sent his bundle of dirty laundry along with little gifts—leftover cake or pie saved from Mr. Wylie’s table. The black and Mexican construction workers were the only ones who acted friendly or tried to talk to the Indian girls. The churchgoing Indian girls ignored them and refused to look them in the eyes because the minister warned them every Sunday about the dangers of Negroes and Mexicans.

  In the beginning Sister Salt talked to Big Candy only to practice her English, but he made such funny jokes about himself she found herself laughing as she had with Indigo and Grandma Fleet. Still, Sister was surprised Candy tried to follow her along the river, where his bulk and the tangle of tamarisk and willow made tough going.

  “The churchgoers say all you want from us is adultery,” Sister Salt said, idly swinging her club by its handle, still gripping the stone blade. Candy brushed the dry leaves off his overalls and pulled twigs from his hair. He smiled and shook his head slowly.

  “That’s all those churchgoers think about.” He looked Sister Salt in the eyes. He seemed relaxed as he sat there on the ground looking up at her. Sister Salt threw down the club and sat on the ground not far from him. She rubbed the stone blade carefully between two fingers to test its edge and waited for him to say something; she and the Chemehuevi girls always laughed at him because he liked to talk so much. She cleaned the dirt from under her fingernails with the tip of the blade, stealing sidelong glances at him. The churchgoers said don’t get near the black men or your babies will be born with monkey tails, but Sister didn’t believe anything the churchgoers said because they were wrong about Jesus Christ. They claimed he died on a cross long ago, but Sister saw him with her own eyes last winter.

  Candy stretched out on his back and looked up through the willow and cottonwood leaves at the sky. He was so big he looked like a hill lying there. The man who liked to talk so much didn’t have anything to say. Good, she thought, I have nothing to say either. She began to play with strips of willow bark, weaving it into little rings; when she looked over at him, his eyes were closed and his mouth half open; he was asleep, so she left him. The following day when Sister Salt went to the cottonwood tree along the river she found a paper sack with four hard licorice drops. She shared the candy with Maytha and Vedna and they laughed at one another’s teeth stained blackish brown with licorice juice.

  Even when he could not meet her, Sister Salt found his little gifts to her under the cottonwood tree—gumdrops, a candy cane, or licorice. His given name was Gabriel—but he told everyone to call him Candy because he always had a little sack of penny candies. Sometimes he brought her a piece of red ribbon or an agate marble after a trip to Needles or Yuma, where he went to buy delicacies, fresh eggs, and butter for Mr. Wylie’s table. Maytha and Vedna agreed Candy seemed like a nice man, but they didn’t think Sister Salt should risk having babies with monkey tails. The first time Candy touched her breast, they were lying on the river sand in the cottonwood’s shade; Sister Salt pulled away and sat up. She asked him if it was true what the preacher said, that their babies would have monkey tails. She thought he might laugh at her, but he didn’t. His expression became thoughtful, even a little sad, and he shook his head slowly. Sister Salt regretted her question and scooted closer to him on the sand. She didn’t really believe it; anyway, people said much worse things about Sand Lizards.

  “No, don’t waste your time with talk like that,” Candy said, stroking her hair away from her face. “The army used to warn us about disease and Indians,” he said with a smile, “but my grandma was a Baton Rouge Indian.” He laughed. “Don’t trust the things the churchgoers say.”

  Sister Salt was suspicious at first, but for weeks Candy was content just to hug her close and kiss her and touch her breasts without intercourse. What was he waiting for? Later Maytha and Vedna asked what it was like to lie down with such a big, such a black, man.

  Ummm! He smelled so good, and his skin was so soft and smooth—more smooth than brown skin and way more smooth than white skin. Dozing on the sand under the cottonwood tree he reminded her of a great black mountain she wanted to climb, so she just jumped on his chest and belly while he was dozing; he didn’t startle so he must have been watching her from under the brim of his hat. She laughed at the sensation of this mountainous man, wide and soft as a bed mattress, then stretched herself out on top of him so her face reached the center of Candy’s chest.

  Afterward they dozed side by side on the sand until the mosquitoes came out at sundown. Candy talked about his plans for the future. No more work boots or overalls—he would wear a fine suit, a different color every day with the shoes to match, as he greeted the patrons of his restaurant in downtown Denver. He had lived his whole life in hot climates, first Louisiana, then Texas and southern Arizona. If not Denver, then Oakland or Seattle; the farther north a colored man went, the better off he was.

  He was lucky to learn to cook from his mother, in the big house outside Baton Rouge. As an infant, his mother sat the cradle in the corner of the big plantation kitchen. Almost as soon as he could hold a paring knife safely, Candy helped his mother in the kitchen. His mother’s cooking made the dinner parties of the plantation famous throughout Louisiana. Now that his mother had passed on, no one knew how to cook fowl and game birds the way Candy cooked them. Even out here, Candy bragged, he could take quails or doves he shot and bake them into delicious pies. Mr. Wylie wanted Candy to return to Los Angeles to cook for him and his family, but Candy wanted a restaurant of his own. He planned to have the money he needed without the job in Los Angeles. Candy did not want to waste time. A man had to work most of his life if he wanted to have anything to call his own; he wanted his restaurant now, while he was still young enough to enjoy the fine food and pretty women that he’d have there.

  Would she be one of the pretty women? Sister didn’t know what to say—she didn’t want to hurt his feelings, so she talked about Mama and the other dancers who followed the Messiah. She dreamed of finding them high in the mountains. Candy shook his head from time to time as she described the four nights of the dancers along the river at Needles.

  “I could cook for that many people if I had to,” Candy commented, chewing the end of a piece of rice grass.

  “I want to go look for her up north.”

  “See, that’s a good sign right there! We both want to go the same direction!”

  Before long, the Indian school superintendent received complaints he overcharged for his laundry service and learned of his competitors right under his nose. He was outraged at the cheek of these young “squaws” and ordered a review of purchase orders for soap at the school
laundry. Furious at their treachery, the superintendent ordered Sister Salt and her accomplices arrested for petty theft; the federal magistrate in Yuma sentenced them all to three months in jail.

  During the months Sister Salt and the Chemehuevi sisters were jailed in Yuma, Candy drove the company wagon down to Yuma for supplies twice each month. He pulled the wagon around back of the old jail’s thick adobe walls and parked right next to the narrow barred window of the women’s cell, where he could sit on the back end of the wagon and be at eye level with Sister Salt. He pushed licorice drops between the bars and cheered them with reports on the sales and profits from the home brew he sold, and the dice and card games he ran. Mr. Wylie took his cut, of course; that was the cost of doing business.

  Candy told Sister Salt to put her ear close to the window bars and he whispered the news: he’d paid off the rest of her fine and now they’d let her out of jail. Tomorrow he was coming to take her to live with him at the dam site. To hell with the reservation and the school! Business was growing faster and faster as more workers arrived to dig the big ditch to Los Angeles; Candy was falling behind with all the work. As Sister Salt was led from the women’s cell, Candy called to Maytha and Vedna; he said he would pay their fines too if they wanted to come along, but they were too shy to answer him.

  As they rode along in the wagon, Candy told Sister Salt all about his plans for expansion as more workers arrived. Besides the laundry and beer, Candy planned more cards and dice.

  Candy stopped the wagon on the sandy ridge high above the construction site. Sister was shocked at the destruction she saw below: the earth was blasted open, the soil moist and red as flesh. The construction workers appeared the size of flies crawling over the hills of clayish dirt. The river had been forced from her bed into deep diversion ditches, where her water ran angry red. Big earth-moving machines pulled by teams of mules uprooted groves of ancient cottonwood trees. Off to the west, the workers were digging a huge ditch to carry river water all the way to Los Angeles.

  For the first few weeks, Sister Salt slept with Candy in his tent, big enough for a brass bed and a green velvet love seat, recently shipped from San Diego. When Candy was away on business, Sister Salt woke at first light to bathe in the shallows downriver. In jail she abandoned the stiff tight shoes that hurt her toes; now, free of the agency rules, she used her sharp flint blade to cut away the high buttoned neck on the school blouse, then severed one long sleeve after the other. She left the waistband intact but tore the school skirt into strips to let the cool breeze pass through to cool her belly and bottom. On the hottest days when Candy was away, Sister Salt wore no blouse or skirt at all.

  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 i
t 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.