“Remember me?” I said.
She nodded—no more giggling—as though she remembered more than she’d seen. My role in last night’s loving.
“Then come in. It’s dry at least.”
She came and walked past me through the room now miraculously clean since morning and took a place, standing, at the far wall near the window. If she’d noticed the cleaning, she gave no sign.
I asked her to sit in the chair I’d just warmed, but she shook her head No. I thought we might be up against a taboo on women sitting while men still stood, so I sat in the broken chair and again said “Sit down.” She refused again but this time she giggled and I felt we could talk. She had shown no curiosity whatever about Blix’s whereabouts, had not glanced to right or left—maybe she could smell his absence—so I started with that. “Blix has gone to Window Rock to get a nurse for a man that’s sick—Atso.”
She said “I know that.”
“Did you see him on the way?”—in which case, I wondered, why are you here with me?
“No. Atso’s been sick.”
“What’s his trouble?” I said.
“Tokay wine,” she said, serious again. Then she said—she was facing me—“I got trouble too.”
I was trapped (by the word) into thinking she meant herself, her multiple sclerosis; and in a quick hail of amazement (that she, the Silent American, was telling it to me—after all though, we’d spent a fairly close night together)—and gratitude and because my own heart was so compressed inside me, I said “So do I.”
She took a step forward—necessarily toward me—7nd said “You hungry?”
Every exit from my body was instantly clogged, not with tears this time but with more gratitude—a great rush of gratitude, like birds from a cave, toward this small girl who, dying, thought trouble was hunger. I stood and took a quick step toward her.
She held ground, neither inviting me onward nor repelling me. She seemed to have decided from the moment she entered that she was mine to use, whoever I was, whatever I might choose. Her face had the patience of landscape—rocks, trees. This landscape, of course.
Pausing, I knew she was right. It was well past noon. I was very hungry. Hunger was sculpting my face from inside; I felt dangerously lean. So I said “Yes, hungry.”
“You like Vienna sausage?”
“Yes.”
“He always eat sausage.”
I thought she would move to fix me a meal but she stayed in place. She had made the diagnosis, suggested the cure. Now over to me. I found a small can of sausages—food-corner—opened them and extended the can to her, across the whole room.
She smiled, shook her head and went back to the window, to watch the road.
I sat and ate the sausages, then stood to get the cherry pie. She stood so still and expectantly—but for Blix, I thought—that I’d watched her whole minutes before recognizing a “situation,” this hour’s dilemma. Blix had said not to mention her “in Washington”; should I tell her now that the spy was expected and let her flee (leaving me alone again) to return at all-clear (tonight, for another jamboree) or should I let her stand on there to greet the spy and earn Blix his reprimand, maybe his walking papers? The abandonment of her.
I sat, with the pie, and said to myself, “If she gives some sign before I finish the pie, I’ll help her—or warn her, whether that’s help or not.” I had no idea what a sign would be, and I’d got almost to the deadline—silence.
Then—not turning, still her back, still waiting for something—she said, “That’s all you meant?—you hungry?”
I had meant a good deal more—ten minutes before, in mentioning trouble; but her very presence with me had dispersed that jam. My needs now were toward her. But the only help seemed warning, not a heart-to-heart cry. I said, “Dora, Blix asked me to wait here while he’s gone. He’s expecting a visit from a VISTA man. Any minute now.”
She waited, not turning, but all her force seemed flowing toward the door, to leave, take cover. “I know that,” she said—her I the first word she’d accented since I’d known her.
“Blix told you?” I asked.
She nodded Yes but kept her place.
So tables were turned. I was no longer driving, if I ever had—no longer sparing lovers. That she knew and was staying, was the new dilemma. Right. I’d also stay and watch—an independent citizen, let Washington beware.
And I’d no more than eaten the last of the pie when Dora turned to face me and said “He’s coming.”
“Blix?”
“The other man.”
There seemed a quick note of alarm in her voice and, rising, I thought, “What other man?—her father? husband? lover?” Was I lured to the brink of my debut (or Act II?) in melodrama?—shot or stabbed as a rival for the love of a girl with bad teeth and multiple sclerosis? So what? Who would mind? A knock at the door. I looked back to Dora— inscrutable—then advanced, really half expecting Fate.
A white man in an army surplus jacket, thirty-two maybe, already balding. He was straining—in the face of a stranger: me—not to smile; but with his face, as full, fed and deeply incurious as a baby’s bottom, formality was hopeless. I knew at once he’d go no farther than hurt feelings, bafflement.
He said, “My name’s Tim Neely. Is Blixford Cunningham still registered here?” He surrendered then, tried to smile but laughed.
So I laughed along and said, “He’s gone to Window Rock—an emergency—to get a tribal nurse for a sick man here. He asked me to stay here and meet you if you came.”
“Good,” he said. “Good.”
I asked him in, not knowing whether Dora would have fled through a window or be hiding under the bed.
She was where I had left her—where she’d been last night, when I arrived; her receiving-post.
And like me last night, Neely didn’t seem to see her though the lines of vision were uncluttered now. Before I could try to introduce her, he saw the finished pie plate—“Blix has gone in for baking, eh?”
I said, “Yeah, that’s been our Christmas”; then I offered him instant coffee.
He accepted and while I was warming the hot plate, I saw him see her. I could make a lot of cheap jokes at his expense—I’ve tried a few already, the itinerant do-gooder working through Christmas, breathless with hope—but now I was with him. Suddenly he was “on,” all his resources summoned, every course he’d ever taken. I could see tact and patience, sweet deference, bubbling up in him like spring water through sand—had he met her before? did he know the whole story or any part? Was that why he was here today—boom-lowering?
There was no way to guess from Dora’s face—she was doing her piece-of-nature stunt again. Or was her face already slightly sclerotic?
Neely turned back to me—the kettle knocked with heat—“It’s sure been a cleanup campaign in here. Who do we have to thank?”
I took that as a straw flung kindly to the drowning. I nodded toward Dora—“Her. Thank her. That’s Dora Badonie.”
He exhaled visible relief—I was playing—up grand; why were fellows like me not Volunteers? He could now speak to Dora—“Well, thank you a lot. You been helping Blix out?”
No giggle. “I live here.”
The rooms seemed instantly vacuumed, utterly empty. We all seemed about to be sucked against the walls at ferocious comic speeds.
Neely broke the lock—a little puff through his nose, his try at a chuckle. “Which Badonie are you? Who’s your father round here?”
She was merciless. “No. Here.” Then she smiled not giggled.
I wanted to harm her, lunge against her, strike her—above all, to stop her. Whatever she was launched on was harmful itself—at the worst, shipping Blix out of here in disgrace (worse still, her with him, paralyzing daily); at the least, embarrassing this well-intentioned man. It was in my mouth to say “She’s lying.”
But Neely spoke first, to Dora not me—“I know. I know a lot.” Then he turned to me. “What are you in all this?”
His sudden attempt to switch the controls—from Friendly Equal to Steely Superior—drew it from me. “I’m a poor unfortunate cripple seeking help.”
I’d kept a straight face so he had to pursue; I was in his field now. He looked me over for a gimp-leg or arm, then said “What help?”
“Are you married?” I said.
“Yes.”
“Your wife nearby?”
“Back in Gallup with the kids.” He actually pointed east.
“Then tell me please—you’re older than me—what kind of help would you plan to need if you got home tonight—what time will that be?”
“Soon as I see Blix.”
“—Well, five o’clock, say; it’ll still be light. What help will you need at five o’clock today when you get home and find little what’s-her-name stretched dead on the floor, drained dry as a kosher chicken?”
Neely licked his lips; I was baking him out! Then, helpless, he smiled—reflexes dying hard. “Hold on a minute, friend. There are laws against you; threats are frowned on by the law”—still smiling, a struggle to josh his way clear. “Anyhow, we’re not Jewish.”
“Sorry,” I said. “You asked who I was.”]
He said, “OK, you told me.” Then he walked toward the door, had his hand on the latch before stopping again. “I’m not waiting here. Tell Blix Cunningham to phone me collect, by noon tomorrow.”
“Does he know your number?”
He had shed all his roles, was down to a core, could stand on its firmness. “He knows everything he needs to know. Even knows what’s coming.” He opened the door.
“Wait,” I said. “Mr. Neely, I’m sorry if I’ve acted rudely. I am in trouble—”
He waited long enough for me to feel the second law of thermodynamics stage a demonstration round us—my scarce, nurtured heat rushing headlong through the door. Then he said, “You’re one of millions, son” and obeyed the law himself.
His car had cranked and gone before I turned to Dora. She was pressed against the window to watch him go; but when my staring turned her, I said “What was that for?”
“What?”
“Your lie.”
“No lie,” she said. She walked to the open door of Blix’s bedroom. “I sleep here every night before you came.” Her voice had hardly altered—soft, uninflected—but a new hard vehemence thrust up in her stance, the words themselves. She paused for air and when I had not answered—assent or challenge—she half-turned and pointed to the bed behind her. “Come here. I’ll show you.”
I was locked down suddenly in the sense of enacting my old ended life, of facing a ghost—“the malignant part of a dead person.”
So—whoever she was—she said again “Here.”
I’m a human at least, not a Skinnerized dog. I said, “No, I made that bed; I’ve seen all you can show.”
“Please come,” she said—a change of words not tone.
I said, “I’ll give evidence—eyewitness evidence—in any court you name that you’ve spent any number of hours right there, stretched flat of your back, hauling Blix’s ashes.”
She didn’t understand; I was glad of that much. In a moment she could smile. “You’re funny.” Then a wait—“You’re in trouble too, you tell him?”—she pointed after Neely.
“My wife—you know.”
“You married?” she said.
“Well, no more,” I said. I thought she was probing—not for news but to punish me.
“Where’s your wife now?”
“In the Navajo afterworld—off to one side.”
“I don’t understand.”
I saw that she didn’t. “Blix hasn’t told you?”
“He don’t tell me nothing.”
I said “My wife is dead,” half hoping to leave it there.
“Oh,” she said; her hands did one silent flap at her sides, as though they were vestigial wings that had tried once more to fly. Then—“Having a baby?”
I knew I was glad. I would get to tell her—some human at least (Blix had yet to mention it). That would be for me—pressure released—but what could and would it be for Dora?—terror? compulsion to shelter me, love me? or a crushing memento of her own creeping death? I said, “No. No babies; we never had babies. She didn’t want babies. No, she killed herself.”
It pulled her one step forward toward me—three steps between us now—and her small dark head made a twisting thrust, as though to bring nearer still her eyes, ears (lips? do they kiss? it’s not in the book). Her face gave no signal of feeling or intention—I was nodding, helpless—then something deflected her. Something from me, or her, or elsewhere. She turned, as though I were The Road Not Taken, and went back to her window and looked out awhile.
Nothing passed, we were freezing, I must feed the stove.
Then she faced me again and asked—really asked, with misplaced inflection, but pressed by need—“When she killed herself?”
I’d planned to say how, but I gave what she wanted. “Two weeks ago. It’s why I’m here with Blix”—here with frigid empty air!—“I thought he would’ve told you.”
She was off Blix for now. “She was real old, your wife?”
“Twenty-six.”
“Oh,” she said. “She was real sick?”
“Yes.”
“What kind?”
“Well, her head.”
“What you mean?” Again she was pressed.
I couldn’t think what phrase she’d know or, then, what would say at least part of what I meant without baffling or blinding her. So I said “Mentally ill.”
“She don’t know what she was doing to herself?”
Was that part, at all, of what I’d meant?—or felt or believed? I said, “Maybe not. Maybe she thought it wouldn’t work—not completely, not death; just enough to hurt and warn me. A pistol in the mouth.”
Dora didn’t understand, not even the words. Her face had made again that half-screw forward.
But I wouldn’t stop now; this was not for Dora now—“She knew this much—what she was doing to me. “
Dora said “I got to go,” but she stayed in place.
“Don’t,” I said. “Please.”
She nodded fiercely. “Yeah. I got to go.”
I said “Come here. Please.”
She said “I got to get Blix.”
“He’s gone—why?”
“He’ll help me. I got trouble.”
“I know that,” I said. “He told me this morning.”
“He don’t know this morning. I don’t know it then.”
I’d given up understanding—interlingual misfires. I said “Well, wait. Come here.”
She looked to see where I meant—I’d pointed nowhere. The army cot? sleeping bag? the clean-swept floor?
I didn’t know either but I saw her, after what seemed a soundless subaqueous hour, begin oaring to me through the room’s thick air.
Blix of course arrived then—the truck in the yard (by its clashing gears), the actual sound of his boots in the slush (through walls, our bones), his height and face in the doorway beside us.
Dora hadn’t heard him. She was aimed on me—three more steps to take.
But Blix never noticed, locked as he was in the newest defeat—neither Dora nor the clean room nor however she and I stood, drawing one another. Face white, he said (to the room more than us), “Are you ready for this?—I drive to Window Rock and the nurse is at Chinle. She may can come tomorrow, if the roads dry a little—to bathe the corpse! Now I’ll have to go to Atso’s again—take food to those children, tell him to wait. But he’s good at that.” He was turning to leave again—follow if we wished. Had he yet seen Dora? Was she visibly there?
She said“Help me.”
Blix stopped, looked a moment. “Help you do what?”
“I got trouble,” she said.
“I know that,” he said. “I told you No.”
“This is new,” she said and she looked to me.
I’d really never meant to
cause Blix further worry, never needed or intended to slosh my own woe; so I braced for Dora’s latest inscrutable lurch—denunciation? cry-rape? whatever.
She said, “My truck. My grandma took it up the Zuni road last night and my brother come down to tell me this morning—she got it stuck up there.”
“That’s the trouble?” Blix said. “That’s all I’ve got to do?—feed a starving dying family, then drive fifty miles in foot-deep mud and unstick your truck? Two more days of sun, a little wind—you’ll be able to drive it out on your own.” He took another step, to go to Atso.
I moved to follow, having soloed and dueted enough for one day.
But before we could reach the door and pause for Dora, she said loudly “No.”
We both looked—tears. They were pouring through our silence. I wanted to rush past Blix—bail-out.
But he blocked the way. He studied her a moment, then said gravely “No what?”
She said “Help me.”
He broke, for the second time today, into total laughter; and relieved to see him that free (or desperate), I joined, loudly.
Dora stood on in tears, bathing her troubles.
But he helped her. (Why?) Of necessity, we helped her—I being determined not to spend another minute alone in those rooms today. We drove to the trading post (no sign of Dora’s father), bought groceries for Atso (Blix paid) and we left Dora—to look for more men to help us with her truck. Then we wallowed back to Atso’s—the tracks half-again as deep in mud as this morning—and again I waited alone in the truck for the minutes Blix took to leave the food and attempt to explain that a nurse would come tomorrow, wait one more night.
I only had five minutes (Blix was rushing now—toward what? and for whom?); but I worked at questions, nagged at them, dog-like—neither Dora nor I had mentioned Neely’s visit and Blix had not yet asked. Should I wait till he asked or tell him now, in our last few minutes alone today (describing Dora’s gambit); or should I just say “Neely says phone him”?
Not till I saw his face emerging from the hogan—firmed with purpose, locked into senseless duties, happy against his better wishes to have fed a sick drunk for one more day and assured him of help in a foreign tongue—did I know: say nothing. Wait. His life, not mine; he must ask all the questions, invent his own threats, secrete his own solutions, make his own errors freely. I, in any case, am safe—in this one corner of my stunned life. Blix and Dora are separate; they are not me.
Collected Stories of Reynolds Price Page 27
