The Tongues of Angels

by Reynolds Price

  But by then more boys had gathered round him, and I’d almost swear that one of them asked for his autograph. Anyhow Rafe wrote something brief on a napkin and handed it over, whatever it said. And the boy who got it ran out the screen door and on up the hill, abandoning lunch. Triumphant return from the jaws of death had only increased Rafe’s power over other boys, and he didn’t mind showing the site of his wound.

  He did seem to avoid my eyes. I thought he was up to one of his jokes, so I didn’t go over and inquire. I hung around a few minutes, talking to Mike Dorfman. I wanted to ask him confidentially about the silence Bright Day had mentioned.

  Mike said “Nonsense”—a healthy lot of the world was nonsensical to Mike—and then assured me that Day had only meant not telling anybody else before my induction.

  When I finished with that, Rafe still hadn’t walked over. In fact he was gone. So I went on to Cabin 16 and put my boys on their honor to rest quietly. Then I went to the Thunderbird office to cut the last stencils for the final issue.

  By the end of rest time, I was a little edgy about seeing Rafe at Indian lore. I’m a normally productive human guilt factory, and by then my production line was going into overdrive. This strangeness was somehow my fault. Still I went on to Day’s workroom at two o’clock.

  No sign of the boy.

  Day talked about the subtleties of Amerindian sign language. Its hundreds of gestures had provided a rich medium of exchange between tribes who spoke incompatible tongues or dialects. He explained that it was one of the best-preserved of all the Indian achievements. And he suggested that—if only we’d haul it out and begin to teach it in the early grades of school— it would make an excellent medium for international understanding until such time as everyone agreed on Esperanto or whatever. Those to be sure were times when the United Nations was an actual force in the world, not just a dildo for the Third World.

  When Day had finished and the time came to break up into small work groups, I managed to whisper a question to Day. Was there something I needed to make for my induction, like a headband or breechclout?

  In his normal voice he said “Sunday clothes.”

  In that case, I told him, I’d go back to my painting now and finish the bonnet in a few days.

  He nodded and then looked up past me. I noticed that his face had firmed with surprise. He waited a moment and then said “Should you be here?”

  So I looked too.

  Rafe had come in quietly and was sitting in a corner, beading his moccasins. He answered Day in almost a whisper “I can do anything that’s peaceful.”

  I thought I’d walk over and ask for the doctor’s final report.

  Rafe didn’t look up but continued “I’m all right, thank you, sir.”

  “Will you feel like dancing at the council fire?”

  “I felt like dancing yesterday.” He didn’t seem hostile, just mildly drugged and businesslike.

  I thought how often sickness did that, seized you out of your normal circle and skewed your pace. He’d be fine soon. So I told him I was glad and that I’d like to show him something if he’d come out to the terrace now.

  He said “I will, directly.” Back then directly was polite Old Southern for “Whenever I’m damned good and ready and not before.”

  I’d learned enough about the attention span of adolescent boys to hold my own in response to the chill. So I went outside and relaid my palette. In five minutes I was back in the only constantly peaceful world I know the way to. And I painted on through the full length of the afternoon classes. I was waiting for Rafe to see the picture now and stamp it with his good natural taste. Finally I heard the boys running away from Indian lore, howling like the Indian stereotype of white men— undignified yahoos. By then I was uneasy. I’d plainly offended Rafe.

  At that moment I saw him aimed towards Chiefs house, downhill from me. Apparently he meant to check with them, maybe to allay Mrs. Chiefs worries or to collect his lemon pie.

  I couldn’t resist saying his full name in a natural voice.

  He stopped and looked around but didn’t wave or speak.

  I asked if he would stop by on his way back.

  I thought he nodded but again he didn’t speak.

  I went on working and, in maybe twenty minutes, Rafe climbed the hill and stood a good distance off.

  I asked if he’d got a clean bill of health?

  “From them, yeah. They know as much medicine as I know Turkish.”

  I told him, from the looks of things, he’d better take life easy for the rest of the week.

  He said “If I take it any easier, my heart’ll stop, doctor.”

  Now that I’d noted his contempt for M.Ds., I began to wonder what irony was concealed in this new nickname he’d laid on me as I was applying the tourniquet. But I said “Please cast an eye on this.”

  He hesitated, then walked around behind me and studied the canvas. He looked a good while and compared it time and again with the view. Finally and without looking up at me, he said “Raphael Noren thinks it’s pretty damned splendid. That may not be what you need to hear.”

  I was genuinely pleased. I knew he could lie about daily facts. But when called on to express an opinion or a judgment, he told the plain truth as he saw it. What was this new truculence towards me though? For two days now I’d debated whether to give the picture to Mother or Viemme, but now I said “Would you like to take it home week after next?”

  Rafe said “The whole picture?”

  “With my thanks, yes sir.”

  He waited again. “Thanks for what? It’s honor enough, just knowing you offered it. But Bridge, my life’ll be so gypsy, I doubt I need to own big objects.”

  I laughed. “With that accent you’ll stay in Georgia or never be able to order a meal in any other language or dialect of English.”

  Rafe had told me the true story of an old backwoods Georgia legislator who, in a debate on the compulsory requirement of a foreign language in state high schools, rose proudly and in a voice heavy with passion said “If the English language was good enough for my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, it’s good enough for me!” Rafe grinned at my joke and then made a series of gestures in the air, using both his hands.

  It looked like a snatch of dance practice, so I said “What’s that?”

  “Amerindian sign language, doctor.” He repeated the signs, with a running translation, “Dried venison—cherries—corn-meal mush.”

  I laughed. “You made it all up.”

  “Swear to God,” he said and raised his right hand. “You go ask Day. You said I couldn’t order a meal, outside of Georgia, but I just did.” He rubbed his stomach and smiled again. “Anyhow you don’t need to talk to be able to run.”

  I understood a new fact and offered it to him. “You’re no runner, Rafe—I see that now. You’re a stander, the man who stands and takes it.”

  He said “When I’m tied down, sure.”

  I’m glad to say I didn’t have a quick reply. I painted a few more small strokes.

  Then he said “Look, sir, I better get indoors. This sun is heavy and I’m getting woozy.”

  I reminded him there was a cot in the Indian lore room.

  But he said no, he’d head for his bunk.

  At that point in my life, I still possessed the normal human appetite for rejection. I said “Last week you were pressing me hard for this picture. So I want you to have it.”

  Rafe was walking away. He barely slowed down but in his lowest voice he said back towards me “Wantin’ ain’t gittin’—.”

  That struck me wrong. I said “Stop right there. How have I hurt you? All I did was neglect my own seven boys to watch over you. Remember why?—you asked me. When I left the hospital, both of us know you were already well. And remember too, you told me to leave. I had another job.”

  He smiled again. “Of course you did. Everybody that’s ever left me had a real good reason. My mother had as good a reason as any dead human—a man cut her throat. I’m ai
ming at a life now with nobody in it.”

  I said “That’s the saddest thing I’ve heard.”

  “When? Today? This year? Since your father’s last words?”

  I said “That’s it. Rafe, I’m mad. And now I know what a damned baby is. Go on. You need sleep.”

  He made a slow bow, said “Amen, Lord” and walked away.

  And in leaving our mutual anger suspended, he reminded me of one more useful home truth. You work your way through private trouble. To echo one of the many sports philosophers of the time—you tuck your chin, hug the ball and step high right on down to the goal. Or you’d damned well better learn how to try. That afternoon I worked right up till time to be sure the boys were combed for supper. The canvas was now half covered, half done. And though it had a new forlorn air, I trusted its own inner weather would clear when mine did. For now I’d had a bellyful of the ingrateful rich.

  Both Hemingway and Fitzgerald were wrong in their notorious exchange on the subject. The really rich are different from you and me—they’re starved. And what they crave of course is what we never give them. The way other people want peace and quiet, the rich want absolute love and loyalty in spite of their money. If you don’t believe me, then don’t ever try to feed one. You’ll be chewed up, swallowed, digested and flushed before you can cry “Help!”

  That night’s event in the lodge did manage to raise the mood a notch. It was one more Juniper tradition that, late in each session, the boys produced a stunt night. In an odd loosing of the reins, Chief instructed us not to help or curb them. This was their free night and anything went, except blasphemy. So as always apparently, the boys planned and rehearsed in gigglesome secrecy for days. The staff of course expected to be roasted, to a turn. Rumors of years past suggested that the unleashed boys would leave no one, even the Chiefs, unsinged.

  And they more than delivered on expectations. A description of each cabin’s skit would soon be cold oatmeal. It’s enough to say that my boys put together an unnervingly accurate parody of me, from accent and gait to gestures and subject matter. I had to laugh good-naturedly, to be sure, since every eye in the lodge was racing from stage to me and back. But like all the lampooned always, I strained to hide my initial shock. My boys had watched me a lot more closely than I knew.

  I was, one more time, the homely turtle torn from its shell and exposed to the light. But I labored to seem both flattered and amused. Once the Cabin 16 boys finished though, I soon felt I could count my blessings. The boys after all had homed in on my absorption in painting, nothing worse. They’d even gone so far as to locate a genuine Parisian beret which “I” alternated with a full war bonnet as I slashed away at my easel. Otherwise there were no big revelations, except a glance at my awkward triumph in saving Rafe. At the end of the skit, their “Mr. Covered Bridge” loped offstage in the best Groucho manner with one of his “disciples” riding piggyback.

  After several more kindly ribs—including a genuinely funny look at the Chiefs’ square dancing—the night ended with Kevin’s older boys, our hormone cases. They dramatized in a generally obscure way the teenaged sensation of the summer. Nobody but the perpetrators and Kev and I knew for sure that, the previous week, Kev had gone looking for three of his boys who didn’t turn up for rest time. Just as he was about to give up the search, he glanced into the stable. All three boys were standing intent on the rails of a horse-stall door, engaging in successive congress with the camp’s oldest and gentlest mare.

  I’d have guessed that Rafe’s three-day absence had removed him from action. But no, he took the part of “Blevin”—angrily hunting the truant boys, then finding them with wild aghastment. His gestures and voice again were prematurely expert. But his cabin mates had proceeded so gingerly, for fear of shocking the Chiefs, that they ended with a mystifying dud. It was funny to the few in the know but pointless to the rest.

  My boys looked at me and made the current sign for dumb, a forefinger circling the air at ear level. And at the close there were even scattered boos.

  As the older boys took their bow, I saw Rafe’s face in genuine embarrassment—his first stage failure and in a hard week. I remember only a touch of surprise that he’d risked exposing Mrs. Chief to the secret.

  Otherwise the dog days bored in. Even in the mountains, noonday heat was a punishment. And an expectable monotony and exhaustion had begun to sap the boys. But the next evening after what seemed like a normal supper, the lights dimmed overhead. And the waiters brought in a tall white cake with a forest of candles. It turned out to be Chiefs birthday; nobody said which. Even his pink lungs couldn’t manage that many flames on a single breath, but he made it on three. Then to cheers from all, the waiters returned with smaller cakes for every table and bowls of strawberry ice cream.

  Toward the end of eating, a few old campers began to chant “Dive, Chief! Dive!”

  I looked to Kevin two tables away. He was as puzzled as I.

  But Rafe turned to Kev and mouthed some message.

  Kev passed it to me. “Chief always dives in the lake on his birthday, believe it or not!”

  I couldn’t, not at first.

  But in ten more seconds, the chant had mounted to a genuine roar—even Rafe joined in.

  With a sheepish grin Chief finally stood and moved towards the door. A crowd of boys rushed to join him; and of course the staff followed, amazed. The thought of Chief diving into Juniper’s lake, which was maybe five degrees above freezing at noon, seemed way past belief.

  When Kevin and I got onto the pier, we were just in time to see Chief climb to the platform of the twelve-foot tower. As if he were shut in his own bedroom, he slowly removed his shirt and trousers, folding each carefully and handing it down to Mrs. Chief. Then he climbed the last steps and turned to face us. Under his clothes he was wearing a 1920s bathing suit, capacious woolen trunks and a moth-eaten tank top.

  If he’d levitated up and away in the lovely evening, on past Camp Tsali and the prayer circle, I couldn’t have been more astounded.

  The same hush had spread to the boys. Their yelling and stamping was now tense awe.

  Chief looked down to us, gave his split-second grin and his puppet wave, then spent a while gazing up. I assumed he was praying. God knows, I’d have prayed. Fit as he was, Chief had to be sixty or sixty-five. Then in four short steps, he was at the brink. To a general gasp he clamped his nose and fell onto space. His long white legs bicycled the air.

  He took about a minute to hit the water, or so we all thought. Then he took another two minutes to surface and start a stiff crawl to the landing stairs.

  My share in the general glee was mixed with a few grades of fear. Had he overreached? Would he climb out and die? Would we come down for breakfast tomorrow and find white lilies on the door of the dining hall? What I showed of course was the same wild praise that rang around us.

  Then with no help at all from the forest of arms that reached out to raise him, Chief pulled himself up the ladder to the pier. He was soaked and pale and not smiling yet, but he seemed to be fine. Even his thin legs were firm as he stood and accepted a towel from Mrs. Chief. When he raised both clasped hands above his head and finally grinned, we all could barely believe our luck. He’d done it and was safe.

  But most of the way uphill to Cabin 16, I was working hard to slow my heart.

  As I turned in there, Kev passed with his boys. They were noisy still with Chief,s new miracle.

  And calm in their midst, Rafe grinned for the first full time in days. My back was turned but I heard his voice. “I’ll love old Chief long after I’m gone.”

  If he hadn’t put that final kink in his declaration, I might have forgot. But there it was.

  * * *

  And then we were down to the last week of camp. Next Saturday the parents would redescend. The counselors would clean the place up and be free to go on Monday. All that of course meant the tribal induction ceremony on the next-to-last night and then a final campfire, with Day’s Ghost Dance. No
one had mentioned it again, but for me it also meant that I still owed myself and the Creator a visit to the prayer circle.

  And that meant making a personal prayer stick to add as my token, a votive offering to what was apparently a small thicket of sticks already there. So I had two secrets to keep, the induction and Bright Day’s laconic mention of spiritual preparations. Plus a bonnet to finish for the powwow, the final issue of The Thunderbird and a writing up of final evaluations to give each boy’s parents as they hauled him away.

  In all the work of that fifth week then, I hardly saw Rafe. Sam gave me a good report after he’d driven the boy in for one more check. But Rafe, he said, was lying low, taking extra rest and seeing the nurse every day after breakfast. I hadn’t expected such self-control from a reckless child’s mind. And it took a good deal of the edge off my push to finish the picture. With Rafe out of harm’s way, my private solution to the meaning of things didn’t seem as white-hot urgent as it had. Still the canvas was well within seeing distance of final completion. The bonnet was finished and hanging on a hook in the Indian lore room, and the prayer stick was underway.

  I’d found an ideal piece of wormy chestnut, thick as my thumb, dry and dense. I studied the knots and grain and worm holes and then sketched a design that involved a timber rattler coiled loosely up the stick towards the simple strong face of a boy at the top. My purpose was to offer thanks for Rafe’s rescue and my part in it. Nobody but me knew how implicated I was in the boy’s latest near-disaster. Even Rafe didn’t know the full extent of my satisfaction in being able to do for him what I’d failed to do for my father.