The Night the White Deer Died

by Gary Paulsen

  She’d worried right after the divorce. Her mother had become involved more with the phony side of living than the real; the “artists” she’d had to the house were talkers and not doers, and Janet had worried that her mother would get caught in the trap, just being social and not doing anything with her talent, not doing what she really wanted to do.

  God, she thought, remembering when they’d first moved to the small mountain desert town, and all the so-called artists had started showing up for free meals and drinks—always drinks. Always. They were so … just so.

  Like parasites of some kind they were, talking heavy art and getting drunk, and nobody was working or doing anything but eating and drinking and playing around. It was sickening to Janet, sickening and like a stupid game of some sort, with idiotic rules that only worked in the art colony and didn’t matter to the outside world.

  And for a time, perhaps because she was reacting to the divorce, Janet’s mother had seemed to be falling into the trap like the rest of them. She seemed to be talking “artsy” in gushes and staying drunk and playing around and going to parties, to which she dragged Janet along and where Janet would have to stand and listen to half-sloshed artsy painters talk about her innocent beauty and charm.…

  It could gag flies, she thought, turning once more to see if the dog would come to be petted. It came closer, but still maintained a safe distance, and Janet continued on into town.

  But her mother had snapped out of it, had stayed out of the trap. One day she’d started sculpting, and when the phonies had come around, she’d just told them she was working and would call them when she was finished, and that naturally angered them so much they quit coming around.

  Since then everything had been fine, at least between Janet and her mother.

  She stopped again. She was at the edge of the downtown section of Tres Pinos and wasn’t sure where to look for Billy.

  Either in the plaza or at the back door of Corky’s liquor store, she thought, and then felt bad because it was an unkind thing to think. It was only midmorning and still too early for Billy to be drunk. But even so, knowing that, she moved in the direction of Corky’s liquor store, and when she got there and nobody was at the front, she went to the back, and there was Billy, sitting on the ground by the back door with a bottle in a paper sack. And knowing it was wrong, knowing with every fiber in her body that it was wrong, she went over and sat down beside him in the dirt and leaned against the wall.

  7

  Billy said nothing. Indeed for the longest time she wasn’t sure he even knew she was there. The two of them sat in the sun leaning against the warm adobe, and a fly moved around them, with a light buzzing as it moved to the back door of the liquor store and returned over them, and the dog that had been following Janet now came up and nuzzled her fingers, which she had draped over one of her knees.

  “You have a dog.” Billy’s voice was only slightly slurred. “I didn’t know you had a dog.”

  “No. It just followed me.” Janet petted the dog on the side of its muzzle; it was soft and damp. Pleasant. “It’s just an old dog.…”

  “Why are you here?” The sack rose, and she heard the gurgle of wine; one, two, and then three swallows. Then the sack lowered. “Why did you come and find me and sit next to me here in the back of Corky’s? You better leave. Maybe you better leave now before the others come to sit and drink in the sun.”

  He stopped, and Janet shrugged. “I came to thank you for the kachina. I found … I mean my mother found it this morning by the gate when she went out for milk. I just wanted to thank you for leaving it.”

  “How do you know it was me?” He snorted. “It could have been anybody.…”

  “But it was you, wasn’t it?”

  He nodded. “Yes. But you could not know that—it was a lucky guess.”

  “And you left it because you felt sorry about leaving me at the gate of the pueblo yesterday.”

  She knew she shouldn’t have said it the moment it slipped out; she could feel him tighten against the wall.

  He fell back into silence, took another swallow of wine, and she sensed that she’d hit his pride somehow. She relaxed back against the wall, put her hand on the dog’s head, closed her eyes, and copied his silence for three or four minutes. Then she coughed lightly. “It was a good present, a good kachina.”

  For a time he said nothing, then he let out a bitter little laugh that seemed to cut through the heat. “It was nothing—just a toy. I won it in a poker game from a Hopi when we were both drunk, and it’s only a doll for tourists.”

  “Still.” She made a vow not to let him anger her. “Still, it is a nice thing to give me, and I thank you for it.”

  “Someday I will take it back, and then I will be an Indi’n giver.” He laughed, and this time there was scorn in it, scorn, and more of the wine was beginning to show through.

  “Don’t—don’t do that.” She reached out but stopped before her hand touched him; looked over at him, saw that his eyes were closed and that his head was starting to lean forward. “Don’t make stupid jokes like that or put yourself down.”

  “Ahh, what do you know?” He coughed, took another swallow of wine, and now the bottle was empty, and he threw it into some low bushes off to the side of the liquor store. It landed with a crash of broken glass on all the other broken bottles in the bush, and he opened one eye to stare at her. “You got a dollar? I’m really hurtin’ for some wine.”

  She shook her head. “Why don’t you come home with me, and I’ll cook something and you can drink some coffee?”

  “Tscha! Why don’t you come home with me, and we’ll drink some wine, and I’ll tell you all about what it’s like … what it’s like … what it’s like.…”

  He wound down like a tired phonograph, wound down and sat staring at the dirt between his legs. She noticed for the first time that his blanket was clean and new and that his braids were freshly done where they hung down the sides of his face and that he was wearing clean jeans and a new shirt. He was all fresh and new, and it hurt her to realize that he’d dressed new and cleaned up to see her that morning when he came with the kachina and then changed his mind and not waited but left the doll.

  “Hey-uh, hi-uh, hopa-hi, hey-uh.” He sang under his breath, an almost guttural chant. She couldn’t understand the words but the sound was of the earth and pretty in a blunt way, and she made up her mind that she was going to get him home and fed and sobered whether he wanted to or not and whether he liked her or not.

  “Come on.” She stood up and reached down for his hand and pulled him—she was shocked to feel how light he really was—to his feet. “Come on, let’s walk.”

  By this time the wine had genuinely come to the bottom, and he was thoroughly, almost professionally drunk; he could walk, but only just, and he made no objection at all to any of her demands. He stood when she pulled, walked in the direction she tugged—though stumbled might be a better word than walked—and indeed it seemed to Janet that he didn’t really know he was up and moving, or that she was there beside him.

  “Hey-uh, hi-uh …” As they moved away from the liquor store—Billy, Janet, and the dog—he burst once more into singing, and after they’d gone a hundred yards down the dusty street, he stopped and shook her hand away and sang a complete song with his hands raised to the heavens while she stood off to the side looking at him, thinking he looked like some picture she might have seen of an Indian singing to his gods before a hunt. And when he was done singing, she took his arm once again and led him down the street.

  “What was that song?” she asked, after they’d gone another hundred yards. And when he didn’t answer, she repeated the question, but he wouldn’t, or couldn’t, answer and chose instead to reach with his free hand up and touch her hair.

  “Pretty hair.” His voice was a slur. “You have pretty hair—wrong color, but pretty.”

  “Thank you.” She pulled his hand down and led him once more down the street, and in this manner she fin
ally got him to her house, where he came inside easily enough. She put him in a kitchen chair while she took a bowl of leftovers back out to the dog, which had not wanted to come into the house.

  When Janet returned, she found her mother standing in the entryway of the kitchen. She’d been in the studio when Billy and Janet came in, and she now turned to Janet.

  “Out.” Her voice was brittle. “I mean out. Period.”

  “Mother.”

  “No.”

  “Mother. He brought the kachina this morning, and he needs help. Please.”

  Janet’s mother studied the figure of Billy slumped on the kitchen table. “He needs help, I’ll give you that.”

  “Well.”

  “I’d rather not, Janet.”

  “Just some food and coffee.”

  “Well—all right. Just a meal. Then out, period.”

  “Also, Mother …” Janet tried to make her voice soft.

  “What?”

  “Outside, in the courtyard. There’s a dog, just a small dog, and it followed me uptown to get Billy and back, and I fed it.”

  “And to think it was luck that brought me a daughter. I could have had a son.” But she smiled, if tightly, and Janet knew she’d won and turned to the task of cooking a meal for Billy. She was well into scrambling eggs and brewing fresh coffee when Billy sat up suddenly and began singing again, the same song he’d stopped to sing in the road with his arms raised. And when he finished this time, he flopped his head on his arms on the kitchen table and was out, gone and under, and Janet was faced with the unpleasant prospect of either force-feeding an unconscious man or eating half a dozen scrambled eggs herself.

  Then she remembered the new dog, which she still hadn’t named, and carried the eggs and bacon outside, and the dog ate them ravenously.

  After that Janet went back into the kitchen, where Billy was still passed out, and sat across the table and waited, with the coffee on the stove and hot, waited for Billy to sleep it off so that she could feed him and talk to him some more. And it was while she was waiting that she began to wonder if Billy had ever shot a deer by a pond with a bow and arrow, and it wasn’t too long after that, with Billy mushed head-down on the table, that she caught herself wondering what Billy had looked like when he was a young brave.

  And that seemed harmless enough, that thinking, but it quickened her, and that she couldn’t understand and wasn’t sure she wanted to understand, sitting in her kitchen with an old drunk who had passed out on her kitchen table.

  8

  Come to us,

  With your black skirts.

  Come to us,

  Soaring.

  Come to us with your black skirts soaring.

  Billy sang the words in English, though his voice still had the wild singsong lilt that made it sound as if coming from the earth, from all the earth places.

  When he’d finished the song, he took another drink of coffee and sat straight in the chair, looking dead ahead as the coffee went down and did its magic work.

  He’d been passed out for nearly two hours—two hours while Janet sat and read and the sound of her mother sculpting rock hovered continually in the background; and it did not seem strange to Janet to be sitting reading a book waiting for an Indian to regain consciousness on her kitchen table.

  She’d been in the kitchen when he came out of it. And it had happened just that fast; suddenly he raised his head, straight and level, and coughed a bit and blinked.

  “How long was I out?” He’d asked the question without looking at her, without acknowledging her presence really.

  “Two hours. You were … asleep for two hours. Maybe a little more.”

  Then he’d suddenly burst into song, or rambling poetry, or whatever it was—it was somehow more than music, all about the clouds and black skirts and soaring. And he’d done it in English so that she could understand, and when he’d finished singing and put the empty cup down, she refilled it and put the pot back on the stove and sat down at the table.

  “That was beautiful—a beautiful song. What is it all about?”

  “Rain.” He said it short, nearly gruff. “It’s about rain—an old Navajo chant for rain to make the corn grow so they don’t have to use irrigation. It’s all about rain, water. Maybe so you got some sugar? This coffee would be better with sugar.”

  She went to the cupboard and got sugar and made a face when he put four spoonfuls in the small cup and drank it hot and sticky-sweet, smacking his lips.

  “I sing the song because it has much beauty in it and makes me feel better when I don’t feel so good. Like now.” He looked at her out of the corner of his eye. “You got a dollar for Corky? I’m really hurtin’ for some wine.”

  She shook her head. “No. No more dollars for wine.”

  “What was all that singing?” Janet’s mother suddenly appeared at the kitchen doorway. “Oh, it was you. You’re up.”

  Strangely Billy stood up when he saw her. “Yes. I’ll be out of here in a minute.…”

  “You don’t have to do that.” She tossed a look to Janet. “Not really—I’d have kicked you out before if I objected to having you around.”

  “Well, I don’t want to be in the way. Maybe so you got a dollar for some wine, and I’ll be getting out of your way.”

  “No.”

  “Billy!” Janet cut in. “I said no more money for wine.…”

  “I’m going back to work. Remember our agreement, Janet.” Her mother left the room, and Billy sat once more at the table and finished the coffee and then he stood, abruptly, and started for the door.

  “Where are you going?” Janet followed him.

  “Out.”

  “Yes, but out where? I mean why are you leaving so fast?” They were outside now, and he went through the gate without looking back, and she followed still, not sure why, until they got into the middle of the street, and there he stopped and turned on her so that she practically stumbled into him.

  “Why do you do this?”

  His voice remained level, but she could detect a slight plaintive note in it, and it threw her so that for a moment she couldn’t answer, and when she did come up with something, it wasn’t much.

  “I don’t know,” she said, and it was only half truth, but it was all she wanted to tell him.

  “You follow me, and I am an old man, and you won’t give me money for wine, and you keep trying to make me eat and drink coffee and be good when I don’t want those things. Why do you do this?”

  “I …” She shrugged. “It just happened, that’s all.”

  “You came this morning and sat beside me at the back door of Corky’s liquor store and wouldn’t let me get happy drunk. You want me sober. Why is this? What does it mean to you if I am drunk or I am sober?”

  There was nothing of anger in his voice, only the question, and she wondered if she should tell him about the dream, about all of it, but knew that she couldn’t. Not now, anyway.

  “Once I had a wife named Easter,” he said, quickly smiling. “She was not too much but all right, all right, and stayed with me until she died of the disease that eats, and she was this way, always this way. Maybe so you’re doing the same thing as my wife Easter, and that’s not so good because you aren’t my wife.”

  “No.” She shook her head. “No, it’s not like that.…”

  “Maybe so you’re just one of those little white girls that likes to meddle with Indians and make them do things or not do things because it makes you feel big?”

  “No, Billy …”

  “Then why do you do this?”

  “It’s … oh, I don’t know. I just have to do it. Ever since that first morning when I was sitting on the park bench in the plaza and you got out of jail and came and sat next to me … and then this morning, when you came by with the kachina.” She was gushing but couldn’t stop, didn’t want to stop. “I just knew it was you, and that you’d be by the gate, and when you weren’t, I had to come looking for you, and if you really want a reas
on, I suppose it’s because I love you.…”

  It was out before she could stop it, out and across the dirt into the heat of the midday before she could control it.

  “Sort of. You know …” She added it lamely, tacked it on knowing it wouldn’t work, wouldn’t help. “The way people love all people, you know. That way.”

  For a moment they stood in silence, and she looked down at her feet and saw that there was dust on the tops of her shoes, and she thought, how strange that there should be dust on top of my shoes. And for a little time that became the most important thing in her life, that dust, and she concentrated on it with all her might but knew she was going to have to look up sooner or later.

  And when she finally did look up, his eyes were on her evenly, with a look she couldn’t comprehend, had never seen before; it was a combination of pain and peace, that look, a kind of mixture of all the good and all the bad in the world, all evening out at the same time.

  She wanted to say more, wanted to make it all right, but knew that anything she said would ruin something that was already damaged, so she kept her mouth shut, and he turned after a minute or a year or a life and walked off in the direction of the pueblo. She knew that she couldn’t follow, not this time, so she just stood and watched him move with that curious step-shuffle that made him look as if he were floating effortlessly over the ground.

  And she wanted to call after him, wanted to say “Billy” because she knew now—knew that he was the brave in the dream because of the look she’d seen in his eyes, but she didn’t call; though her lips formed the word, no sound came, and she just watched until he was out of sight in the dust and heat.

  9

  For a week she neither saw nor heard Billy, and when ten days had passed with no contact and school had started in the new building north of town, up against the rugged mountains, there was too much in her life for her to think an awful lot about Billy.