“Isn’t it?” George wondered. “We’re a mighty small group here. What one does could affect all. Stay with me, Kate. Let people see us together.”
With a smile in her voice, she asked, “You want to boast?”
“Maybe,” he admitted.
She snuggled against him.
They did not leave the shack until the red sun had begun to peep over the horizon. The sun was always red now, night and morning. It glared at the earth through an omnipresent dust haze. There seemed no moisture left in the world except the blood in their bodies. And that, too, would overheat, boil away, evaporate as the planet roasted and shriveled.
But there was a little life left. George resolved to enjoy what they had. He took Kate’s hand in his own and gave it an encouraging squeeze.
“I don’t suppose old Cloud-Being-Born is empowered to marry people,” he said.
Kate glanced at him. “What?”
“Marry. You remember. Join for life, et cetera. I don’t have that much to offer, I know. Slim prospects, you might say. But …”
She turned to face him. Her eyes were large and very solemn in the lurid dawn light. “I marry you,” she said. “Here. Now. I, Kate, take thee, George.”
“I, George, take thee, Kate,” he responded, equally solemn.
The great hush of dawn lay around them. The dying land was witness.
The old man standing just inside the door of the general store, gazing out, was witness too. He said over his shoulder to Harry Delahunt, “Gather everyone. Here. Now.”
The rising sun was a red and baleful eye.
Harry went first to the barracks, then to the individual shacks. Some people had opted for communal life in the barracks but others had preferred to be alone, at least for part of the time. The community accommodated both.
Everyone was awake. Mary Ox-and-a-Burro’s little girl was playing happily, the picture of health. Mary picked her up, gave her a loving hug, and followed Harry Delahunt outside.
The atmosphere was sultry and oppressive. Walking from their sleeping quarters to the store was enough to set people’s lungs to laboring and their hearts to pounding. The little girl’s good humor evaporated. She clung tightly to her mother’s hand, with the thumb of her other hand firmly fixed in her mouth.
Harry did not need to summon George and Kate. To George it seemed somehow appropriate that they go to the hub of the reservation, following their exchange of vows. He felt a need to be at the center of the community; at the center of what life remained.
When they entered the store they found Cloud-Being-Born on his feet. The old man stood facing the door. He peered intently at the face of each person who entered, then gave a nod as if checking them off against a mental list.
George went up to him. The occasion required a formal announcement. “Kate and I … we’ve decided to marry,” he said, feeling suddenly shy.
But Cloud-Being-Born hardly seemed to notice. He gave one of his brief nods, grunted, and looked past George to see who was entering the store next.
George went over to Kate, who was standing by the counter. “Bit of an anticlimax,” he reported. “The old chief doesn’t seem impressed by our marriage.”
“Did you think he would be?”
“I thought he’d do something. Say something. Disapprove, maybe, I don’t know. But I expected a reaction.”
Kate patted his arm consolingly. “It doesn’t matter. This only concerns us, really.”
To her surprise, Cloud-Being-Born turned and looked straight at her, as if he had heard her words, though she had spoken very softly. Even more surprisingly, he smiled.
Then he raised his arms. “Strength of man, strength of woman, are joined!” he announced in a clear voice that belied his years. “It is a sign!”
The assembling group looked at him blankly.
“When everyone is here, we go outside,” Cloud-Being-Born said. “Harry. You go, look. Be certain no one is left out.” With an imperious gesture, he sent Harry out the door for one final head check. Then he just stood quietly, waiting.
“What’s this all about?” George said out of the corner of his mouth to Will Westervelt.
“Beats me. Prayer meeting before breakfast?”
“I don’t think so. You see anybody preparing food?”
Will glanced around. “I don’t see anybody doing anything. Think I’ll sit down.” He started toward the nearest chair.
“Stay where you are.” Cloud-Being-Born’s voice cut the already overheated air like a stab of lightning.
Harry returned. “Got’em all,” he announced, shepherding the last of the group, a yawning Sandy Parkins, ahead of him.
“Good. We go now.” Cloud-Being-Born headed for the door, obviously expecting everyone to follow him.
“Hey!” Anne Swimming Ducks protested. “No cup of coffee?”
“No time,” said the old man.
Harry Delahunt advised, “We better go with him. That’s what he wants.”
“But the sun’s up and it’s already very hot outside,” said Mary. “I don’t want to take my child out again if I don’t have to.”
Harry shook his head. “You have to.”
“Is that an order?”
“I guess so, yeah.”
“By whose authority?” Will Westervelt wanted to know.
“His, of course.” Harry pointed a thumb toward the old Indian, who by this time was out on the porch and on his slow, methodical way down the steps. “Someone go catch him and give him an arm to lean on,” Harry added. He did not do it himself, however. He stayed in the store, bullying and cajoling to get the others out.
The teenaged boy caught up with Cloud-Being-Born and walked beside him, but the old man did not lean on the young one. He marched straight and sure across the dying earth with his head up.
The others, mystified, followed.
They were all too aware of the gathering heat; the baleful sun.
Cloud-Being-Born led his strange little parade for some hundred yards or so, to a withered clump of mesquite trees that slumped dejectedly at the edge of the rutted road.
The road led east.
Toward the sun.
Cloud-Being-Born stopped walking and drew a deep breath. For a moment he swayed; then he put one hand on the boy’s shoulder and steadied himself.
When he spoke his voice was strong, however. “This place must do,” he said. “We must do. We must hope there are others to do, also. You.” He looked meaningfully at George. “You said there are others? Still alive?”
“Some, yes,” George replied, puzzled.
“Like us?”
“I don’t know what you … yes. Like us. At least there were. Amerindians, Maoris, Inuit, some African tribes …” George felt a growing sense of understanding.
“Ah.” The old man took another deep breath. “Let us hope they know. Know what is needed. Know how to do.” Cloud-Being-Born closed his eyes briefly, communing with himself. Then he opened them and looked toward each of his people in turn.
“You stand there,” he began, beckoning to Harry and pointing to a bit of ground that seemed like any other bit of ground. Harry went over to it. “No,” said Cloud-Being-Born. “One step back. There.
“Now you.” He gestured to Mary Ox-and-a-Burro. “You, there.”
But when Mary started forward holding her child’s hand, the old man ordered, “Leave child! She has her own place.”
Kate swiftly crouched down beside the little girl and comforted her as she watched her mother walk away from her.
Why don’t any of them disobey him? George wondered. Or at least ask more questions?
But when his own turn came and the old man assigned him to a particular spot of earth, George felt his feet carrying him without hesitation.
It took a long time to get everyone arranged to Cloud-Being-Born’s satisfaction. Meanwhile, the sun pounded on their heads. Not everyone was wearing a hat. Most of the women had straw hats, and the little girl was wearing a
strange and faded garment that appeared to have once been a cotton sunbonnet. But the young boy was bareheaded, as was the old Indian’s adult granddaughter.
Nor did Cloud-Being-Born himself have any kind of protection from the sun. It beat down mercilessly on his uncovered grey head.
George curiously studied the arrangement the old man had made using his people. There were thirty of them altogether, including himself and the children. They were spaced at irregular intervals to form a rough star shape with four points. The youngest children were at the outer edges. Cloud-Being-Born was at the center. He had very deliberately placed George and Kate on either side of him, so that they faced one another.
“Now,” the old man said.
“Now we dance the Healing Dance.”
“But there isn’t a medicine wheel,” George said.
Cloud-Being-Born replied, “Medicine wheel is not like medicine doctors give. Means something else. Means the moon. Means the seasons. Today we need to make medicine with the sky. Different.”
He closed his eyes and began to chant.
The others stood, glancing uncertainly at one another. Are we supposed to do something? George wondered. If it’s a dance, shouldn’t we be moving around?
But no one else was moving. They had not been told to move. They stood. And waited.
The old Indian chanted.
Then Harry Delahunt began to move. His feet shuffled; his body began to turn in a series of abrupt, jerky movements. When he faced toward George, George could see that his eyes were open but were not looking at anything in particular. He held out one arm, however, rigid forefinger pointing.
At Two Fingers.
Something seemed to jump between them, like a spark of electricity. Two Fingers’ body responded with the same sort of jerky movement that was animating Harry’s. He began his own chant, almost sotto voce, very different from that of Cloud-Being-Born. As he rotated in place he held his hands palm upward, toward the sky.
Harry pointed at Kate.
Kate began to sing. A soft, wordless, plaintive air, rising and falling, strangely reminiscent of the sound of wind soughing in pines.
Harry continued to single out each member of the group in turn, as if he were turning on the power points of a …
… of a grid.
George felt gooseflesh rising on his shoulders.
Each person, when called upon, responded intuitively with something unique to that person. Their special gift. Their contribution to the dance.
The old man’s granddaughter was a weaver, and when her turn came she began tracing patterns in the air with flying fingers, as if she were drawing invisible threads together.
Slim Sapling had been, in his former life and long ago, a professional boxer. When his time came he doubled his fists and began a simulated attack on the blazing sun, pummeling it furiously, darting and ducking, bobbing and weaving, defending the earth against its unshielded rays.
What will I do when my turn comes? George wondered. How will I know? How do they know?
The faces of the performers were trancelike. Perhaps they did not know what they were doing, or why.
Suddenly George realized that questioning was not relevant. Not appropriate. The thought processes of the human mind were not involved here. Each person in turn was submitting to the control of the old man’s chanting, which in its turn was an intuitive response to something else.
Cloud-Being-Born wore the same trancelike expression as the others. The syllables he was chanting were not coming from him, but through him.
In the moment when George realized this, Harry Delahunt’s finger pointed at him.
He felt a very definite electrical jolt. The sensation was unsettling but not unpleasant; curiously like the jolt of Cloud-Being-Born’s firewater.
A tingling ran through his body. Harry’s pointing finger moved on, seemingly making selections at random. Yet George felt that the connection remained, and as each new person was singled out, he was aware of an added force being joined to his own.
He was not unconscious. He did not even think he was in a trance. He was perfectly aware of who he was and where he was; he was also aware of a most curious phenomenon inside his skull. As if they were ranged around the perimeter of his brain, he could see the glowing computer banks and the charts showing wind currents and barometric readings, the plethora of scientific fact from which a meteorologist made his assessments.
George found himself studying them as if he were sitting in his air-conditioned office, forehead wrinkled in thought, fingers flying over the keyboard of his word processor as he made his notes. This and this and that, yes. Major depression here. Anticyclonic winds accelerating there. Yes. All in his head, clear to his inner eye.
Then something else came into his head. He became aware that he was listening to Cloud-Being-Born chant, but he was no longer hearing meaningless syllables. The old man was speaking directly to him, and the words made sense.
“Show me,” said Cloud-Being-Born. “Show me where we are. Now.”
And George scanned the maps and charts and pinpointed the exact location. “Here,” he said in his head.
“And what is this?”
“That’s an area of high pressure.”
“What does it do?”
George tried to frame a simplistic explanation, but it was not necessary. He had only to open the door to his hard-won knowledge and the old man walked in.
He heard Cloud-Being-Born’s distinctive grunt. “If high pressure moves this way, what happens?”
Again, George thought the answer—and the Indian knew it at once. In his head, standing with him in his head, surveying the technological miracles he could never in a thousand years have understood.
George had no way of measuring the amount of time that passed as Cloud-Being-Born sucked him dry of knowledge. He could feel that knowledge being disseminated through the group; through the network Harry had linked. Each person was receiving as much of it as they needed to incorporate with their own abilities.
Two Fingers ceased making smoothing motions with his palms toward the sky and began making great sweeping gestures with his arms.
Kate’s song became less gentle and more insistent, as if a drum were beating in her, establishing a compelling rhythm.
The weaver bowed and bent and pulled and tugged, seizing invisible strands and crossing them over one another in an intricate pattern.
The boxer redoubled his symbolic attack on the sun.
Sandy Parkins, crouched on his haunches, was drawing designs in the sand.
Mary Ox-and-a-Burro, who could divine water, was rocking back and forth on her heels, turning her head from side to side like a blind person, sniffing the scorching air.
The teenaged boy began pulling hairs from his uncovered head. Wearing the communal entranced expression he began arranging the hairs on his bare chest, attaching each to his skin with a bit of saliva. When his mouth was too dry to furnish spit he paused, worked his lips, gnawed on his tongue, then at last found another drop of moisture and continued.
Everyone had something specific to do.
All the while the old man chanted.
All the while the sun blazed in the cloudless, killing sky.
All the while Cloud-Being-Born continued to demand access to the contents of George’s head.
Through the Dance, George felt the others. He recognized the distinctive flavor of each mind; he observed and understood what they were doing. He knew, without having to think about it, why an awkward thirteen-year-old boy who knew nothing of metaphysics had precisely arranged a pattern of hairs on his skin to correspond to ley lines. He knew why Mary was searching for water. He knew why Bart Brigham was stamping his feet in an irregular rhythm.
A seemingly random assortment of human beings were performing together an incredibly intricate series of apparently unrelated actions that would make no sense at all to anyone else.
But it did make sense.
George felt the exa
ct moment when the first faint sense of control touched the group. They all felt it simultaneously.
Control.
It was like the unforgettable moment when a child trying to learn to ride a bicycle wobbles, upright and unsupported, for a few revolutions of the wheels.
The balance was quickly lost but they tried again, tried harder, concentrated more.
The sense of being able to control returned.
Sweat poured from their bodies.
George was increasingly sensitive, in some new way, to the others. Kate in particular he perceived as he had never perceived a woman before. He felt her weaknesses, aspects of her persona that were incomplete, or misdirected, or in the process of being shed as a snake sheds its skin.
He felt her strengths, and knew what they had cost her.
He found the deep, calm pool at her center, and knew she had gone through an excruciating period of self-questioning and selfblame, to arrive at last at total, clear-eyed honesty.
He saw himself as Kate was seeing him. A man with the child still alive behind his eyes. A man who could cry, who could be romantic about being an Indian, even when he saw the reality of the reservation. A dichotomous human being …
Dichotomous … divided in two … consisting of two parts that need to be joined together again …
Joining.
Healing.
Cloud-Being-Born’s voice rose above the sounds many of the others were making, a clarion command.
“Look!” he cried.
“Look up!”
26
They could not stop the Dance. They would not be allowed to stop the Dance until it succeeded in whatever its purpose might be—or until it killed them.
But they were allowed enough autonomy to look up.
They were exhausted. George could feel it in himself and knew it must be worse for many of the others. Human flesh and blood could not sustain so intense an effort, in such terrible heat, for long. They needed a transfusion of motivation.
They were allowed to look up.
“Oh!” said a voice. The littlest girl, whose task had been to perform a pantomime with her own shadow, continued her pantomime but threw back her head and stared at the sky with huge eyes.
The blazing, brassy sky.
The Elementals Page 29
