The Rock Child

by Win Blevins

  Neither of us said a word. I looked into the desert at all the shadows the moon made.

  “That’s it. That’s the whole dream. It can’t be my people. Indians out here don’t live in tepees. That comes from pictures in kids’ books, pro’ly. And I don’ believe there’s no alpine country with good water, grass, and trees in Washo, not anywhere.” I indicated the barren desert with one hand. “That’s it,” I repeated. “Except that sometimes I see a blue, hazy shimmer upriver, like a lake there.”

  After a while, Richard said, “Does it seem like she’s speaking English?”

  “I only speak English,” I said, a little sharply.

  Sir Richard nodded. “Sometimes in dreams people know they’re hearing a different language and can understand it.”

  “I don’t speak any Indian,” I said. “Old Taylor wanted me to be a white man, way it looks. Pfeffers sure did. I’ve learned to sign, that’s it.”

  “You don’t remember any at all? A four-year-old, the devil, a two-year-old would have been talking. Have you heard Snake, Ute, and Pah-Ute?”

  I shook my head no. “Indians, breeds, interpreters, when they came into the store, I used to ask ’em to say a few words in Indian for me. But I never recognized nothing. Even the sounds, they was … just sounded foreign.”

  I looked at Sir Richard, thinking of the twenty-nine languages he spoke, or some such number. I wondered how that felt. I wondered what tongue I ought to be speaking. I tried to remember the words I heard at the bottom of the river.

  “Do you think you may be remembering the valley in the dream?”

  I pondered it. “Don’ know,” I said.

  “Sun Moon’s people believe you’ve lived many lives. You might recognize a place from a previous life. Though you didn’t know what it was, you might have a strong feeling about it.”

  I shrugged. This was too far into guessing for me.

  “Old Taylor gave no hint of your origin?”

  “Others told my names, either Sima Untuasie or Rock Child.” I shrugged.

  “You must have wondered what Rock Child means.”

  I looked into his eyes, then back down at the ground, and shrugged. “Yeah. I asked a lot of Indians and breeds and interpreters. Nobody knows anything about it.”

  We sat in the dark for a while, sort of companions.

  “Journeys,” murmured Sir Richard.

  At the City of Rocks, after we split off toward California, three Indians came into camp. In the evening, after supper, they just appeared. Felt spooky. One minute they were not there and the next they were, like now there’s mist, now the air is clear. They didn’t make a sound, much less say a word.

  Harold invited them on in, an older man and two less than my age. He poured coffee, stirred lots of sugar in it, and handed them our big tin cups full. They stood, didn’t sit, and I could see they were uncomfortable.

  Heckahoy, no wonder, look how we acted toward them. Muley and Carlson moved back and leaned against the wagons like guards. Harold played the smiley host, but the cat took hold of his tongue. Me and Sun Moon and Sir Richard just kind of gawked.

  Sir Richard broke the silence, addressing the oldest, the one about his age. “Good evening,” he said, “what tribe do you belong to?”

  When he got no answer, he repeated, “Tribe?”

  “Shoshone,” said the man.

  I saw my chance. I signed to him, “Root Eater?”

  He nodded yes.

  The Shoshones were divided into different outfits according to where they lived and what they ate, which was more or less the same thing—Root Eaters, Buffalo Eaters, Salmon Eaters, like that. They were way, way different, and these were the first Root Eaters I’d met.

  So I tried to start a conversation. “Where do your people live?”

  He looked at me funny, and I later thought maybe he understood me to be asking where their camp was, which he wouldn’t want to tell. So he signed, “The Goose Creek Road is good,” meaning that part of the California Trail.

  “Many whites on the Trail?” I asked him.

  “No. Two years almost no one on this road.” That was since the Pony Express set a new route across Nevada to the south and the stages had followed.

  “Tell him the Saints offer him respect,” said Harold. “Brigham Young is his great white father, and we would be glad to trade with him.”

  I did it, feeling bad.

  The man just nodded.

  I hesitated, not knowing what to say, and he didn’t seem to want to say anything.

  “Ask him if he know what Rock Child means,” put in Sir Richard.

  I pondered. Couldn’t hurt. The Shoshones back in Deseret didn’t know those words, but they were Buffalo Eaters, different. Still, I hesitated. I felt kind of twisty inside about it. Finally, I signed, “What is” and spoke the strange term “Rock Child?”

  He shrugged his shoulders.

  “Where is Rock Child?”

  A shrug.

  “Who is Rock Child?”

  He set his coffee cup down and looked at Harold. “Food?” he said in English.

  Harold gave him a hundred-pound sack of flour. One of the young men took it in his arms, and I guess they traded off, because these weren’t horse Indians. They didn’t look happy. Later we found out it wasn’t because of the weight. When folks gave Diggers flour, they dumped it on the sand and used the sacks for dresses.

  At Goose Creek we came on the first company we’d seen in the week since we’d left Salt Lake, hustling like leaves on a big wind. The wind was our uneasiness about Porter Rockwell, and Salt Lake City was over two hundred miles behind us.

  The company was three wagons of the prairie schooner sort. Families were set up washing clothes, making dinner, and putting the camp right. I thought maybe we’d have company regularly from here on out. Hoped so.

  “I’m gonna take a day to rest the team,” Muley said when he’d whoaed the mules.

  “We have a schedule,” Harold put up.

  Muley didn’t pay him no mind, just got down and began to unharness them, and Carlson done the same.

  “We have a schedule,” repeated Harold. He was trying to sound like one of those that just say something and folks snap to. Maybe that worked if you were Brigham Young.

  Muley turned his back eloquent-like. He could actually do that—turn his back in a way that said, Go to hell with all your ancestors and descendants in a thimble.

  “Muley!” said Harold.

  Without even looking around, Muley said, “These mules is this child’s nest egg.” Meaning they were his stake for however he was going to get rich in Virginia City, and he didn’t mean to get them there slat-ribbed. The grass in the bluff-lined valley of this creek was good. He went on with his unhitching.

  “Well, too-ra-loo-ra-loo,” said Harold Jackson, and waggled his ass at Muley.

  After dinner we were invited over to the other camp for coffee, and all of us went, us three mismatched pilgrims, Harold, and the two skinners.

  The people in the wagons were all related, DeSelie by name. M. DeSelie and his wife, handsome French-Canadian folks in middle years, took on like they were in charge. Reeshaw and Root, they told us to call them, which I later found out was a Frenchy way of saying Richard and Ruth. Two grown sons of theirs with wives and little ones, all name of DeSelie. Plus Root’s nephew and his wife, probably in their thirties, and their kids. Frenchy is what they were, Métis, they called it, half-bloods from Canada. You could see it easy in the way they were decked out, red sashes, embroidered coats, and other fancy stuff, even on the trail.

  What got quick on my mind was the DeSelie daughter, Annabelle. She was the tiniest creature, a willow branch of a girl, maybe seventeen or eighteen. She wore a black dress with a scarlet sash, her hair was the color of onyx, her skin the color of wet sand. What stood out about her was none of that, not hair nor face nor figure, only one feature. She had eyes that glowed like she had a bonfire of spirit inside. I couldn’t keep my eyes off her,
which Sun Moon noticed. I couldn’t tell whether the nun gave a damn or not.

  Reeshaw was full curious about the road ahead and Californy. I thought maybe they were headed to the Golden Shore to make their fortunes as farmers—you could grow crops all year long, the way folks told it. But when I said this to Reeshaw, he just chuckled at me. “I go to Californy ’cause I go to Californy. Métis, me.”

  Muley spat. Carlson spat, too.

  Root and Reeshaw was worried about getting over Donner Pass before the snows. What happened to the Donners some years back still preyed on everyone’s minds. “Tell us about t’e road ahead,” Reeshaw urged, looking hard at our drivers.

  Muley grinned and waggled his head. “Ain’t hard, that’s the thing. Easy. But all the same, day after day. Grass hard by the river only. Them hillsides is desert like a good God ud never made, my pa woulda said. Dry stuff, stony, and hoodoo shapes. Hoo-oo-oo-doo-oo. You walk and you walk and you walk and then you walk and last you walk some more. Nothing but mirages and shapes of hoo-oo-oo-doo-oo. To the sink.”

  “How long?” queried Reeshaw. He was holding forth for good sense.

  “For you? A month. For us? Ten days.” Though I could tell Muley was bragging, it made me count. Porter Rockwell would not be out of a jail before we reached the sink.

  “From the sink we go south to Virginia City. You gonna go the way of them crazy Donners?” He spat. Carlson spat amen.

  Reeshaw looked long at his wife and daughter, one to t’other. Root looked back. She had gray hair still flecked with rust, like some mixed-blood people do. It hung in long braids. Her carriage was like a queen’s. Never saw a woman as good-looking at mebbe fifty. He had thick, luxuriant black hair, made him look younger than his years. “What you t’inking, Reeshaw?”

  He shrugged his shoulders in that Frenchy way. “Well, Root,” says he, “I’m looking to get out my fiddle, me. I see a lot of dancing partners hardly been used.”

  “Formidable!” said Annabelle in Frenchy talk, the first words I’d heard from her. She had high voice, sweet as a fife.

  That fiddle just jumped into Reeshaw’s hands. He ran his bow on the rosin next to the bridge and set horsehair to catgut. A tune popped out like a jack-in-the-box and began to dance.

  So did everyone else. You never saw feet start hopping and jumping and kicking front and back like then. Root and Reeshaw’s sons and their wives together, Muley and Carlson with the little daughters, Root with Sir Richard, and … I took the hands of Annabelle and gave my legs, body, and soul to the music.

  Sir Richard cut in after the first dance. Which was just as well. In the first place, I was bamboozled as a baby by Annabelle, her flashing smile, her luminous eyes, and her dancing feet. In the second, I could see Sun Moon staring at me. She was the only female in the place not dancing. She wouldn’t know how, of course. Plus none of the men would ask a heathen Chinee. I wondered if she would want to, being a nun and all.

  I watched Annabelle turn and twirl guided by Sir Richard’s hands, her full skirts flaring. I felt envy, I did, and something else stronger. I was jealous, jealous of Reeshaw and that fiddle.

  What happened next made me think Root was a mind reader, and maybe she was. She stuck her head in one of the wagons and came out with a banjo in her hands. She held it out to me. “By t’e Virgin I know you play music, me. I see it in your eyes.”

  In his mind Richard Burton danced with his wife Isabel. Ah, the young Annabelle touching his hands, allemanding, promenading, do-si-doing, turning at his touch—she was lovely, winning enough for a night’s pleasure, or a week’s, but she was not Isabel Arundell Burton, his Isabel, his wife. From his own Isabel he still wanted everything a man can imagine. He dreamed of pleasures of the body, the heart, and of the spirit that were rare, very rare, evanescent, perhaps illusion. Now she knows me, she will reject me.

  Pain from an old wound stiffened his back. Pain of a thousand slights made his arms rigid, and his attractive partner hesitated, frowned. Burton forced his attention to his dancing. He made his body spin gracefully, supple and strong at once. He held the lady’s hands with his own. He dived into the dance. He ached for his Isabel.

  Tonight after prayers. Yes, tonight I will transport myself. Sweet opium!

  I can pick. Always could. Got a used banjo with the first dollars I ever earned. Worked it out by myself right quick. If the Pfeffers hadn’t thought I was loco for playing the banjo and whistling at the same time, I might be a Saint yet.

  I didn’t know Reeshaw’s Frenchy canoe songs, but my gift is for picking music up quick. After one verse I was strumming out those thwanging paddle rhythms strong as him. We mounted up high and flew into the chorus. We came around about another way through one more verse. When we hit the chorus this time, we were sailing, riding the big wave of sound. We stroked through the rapids and rode the current home.

  The dancers were right pleased. Reeshaw gave me a gleam—he could feel the music too. He jumped right then into another slappety-go paddling song, and we brought her home hot and hard.

  That was when I decided to go for a change. A slow song, sad, “The Dying Californian.” True, the banjo is picked, but you can flow better than a fiddle, with a feathery touch and sliding your fingers. And I had another tactic that was flow as all get out—whistling along with picking.

  I am no musician,

  Sir Richard wrote in his journal later that night,

  but immediately I and everyone present felt ourselves in the presence of the muses. Richard DeSelie harmonized and gave Asie a pulse in rhythm. The lad strummed a melody on that banjo so dulcet, so poignant… All was heart-stirring. What was extraordinary was a high, floating harmony he whistled above all the other notes. It reached in, stroked the soul, and made it purr.

  That was when I began to understand. All along the lad had borne himself like a man with a secret, not a secret of fact, which is known thoroughly, but a secret sense, an inner feeling which imbues his whole being. Yet he does not know how to express this feeling to another, does not even understand it himself, but merely bears it, delicately, like a golden bowl of precious liquid that must not be spilled.

  Here surely was Asie’s secret, or a large part thereof: His native language was music. To my inquiries later he offered confirmation: He hears music in his mind every day of his life, when awakening, or alone, or traveling through the countryside. Birdsong is particularly inspiring to him, and he cannot hear it without harmonizing, elaborating, imagining more birds and a symphony of calls. His whistling had its origin here, in imitating birdsong or harmonizing with it.

  He is a virtuoso whistler, capable of rapid scales, trills, turns, volumes loud and soft, tones piercingly brilliant, gently soothing. Perhaps the ladies who thought Niccolò Paganini the devil for his fiendish skill on the strings of the violin would be as much astounded by my young half-blood friend. His effects are no less impressive when the natural limitations of his instrument, two lips, are considered. Less dazzling, they are more soulful.

  After two verses and choruses, Annabelle DeSelie sang the words of the song, and showed how earthbound and crude are words in expressing the nuances of the heart, compared to music alone. The story of the song is simple, even primitive: A man bound for California but dying of fever asks his brother to hold him, then says final words by turns to his wife and children, and expresses deep faith at finding a home in the arms of God. The words are merely sentimental, dipped deep in pathos. Yet the eloquence of the fiddle, banjo, and especially the whistling made all poignant, heart-rending, beautiful beyond description.

  I ask myself, To what end? A mixed-blood lad living in the wasteland of the American interior, enfranchised neither among white or red, quite homeless, far, far from the great cities where music is loved—where can such a young man give expression to his genius? This circumstance alone might undo the complacent English notion that the Divinity sets us providentially upon the Earth and thenceforth takes care of us. True, I have seen a few employments for
musicians in the West: They may act as pianists or organists in church, fiddlers in camp, or performers on the piano or hurdy-gurdy in whorehouses. Which end for Asie, I ask, would be more ghastly? Oh, one more employment: He might beat the drum and give voice to bizarre caterwauling at the dances of the native peoples. It is an appalling dilemma.

  We were lucky—the DeSelies also intended to stay over a day and rest their animals. We all looked forward to a second night of dancing and singing and general music-making, too.

  After breakfast Sir Richard, he did me a great service. “You’re grand on that banjo. Would you like to have it?”

  “Do one-legged ducks swim in circles?”

  “Perhaps Reeshaw would take the Hawkin in exchange for it. If so, I’ll make you a gift of the muzzleloader. The music in camp will be worth it.”

  Reeshaw was a woodsman, knew the rifle would feed his family, and traded me the banjo gladly.

  Sir Richard’s gift made me feel tremendous. Sometimes I’d felt like Sir Richard was Sun Moon’s protection on this journey, and I didn’t have anything to do. Of course, music is not as practical as a good gun, as Reeshaw could tell you.

  3

  That afternoon Annabelle and me walked out along the creek together and talked. Truth to tell, we even held hands. In this small courting I felt the approval of Root and Reeshaw, or at least their tolerance. Maybe it was only because we would hitch up and head out tomorrow morning and never see the DeSelies again. But I thought there was more than that to it. The Saints kept their girls away from me because I am not white and delightsome. When I went to make a match, my choices would probably have been among half-breed women, or other Lamanites getting the benefit of Saintly rearing. If I’d been really good, I might eventually have had a chance at a white girl, but only from the poorer families.

  Root and Reeshaw, though, were mixed-bloods themselves. Those Métis went way back, the way they told it. Reeshaw’s words were, Before the memories of the oldest grandfathers. Root said, Since the first Frenchmen came into the country hunting furs. A long time anyhow. And all that time the white and red blood had been mixed, till no one knew or cared who had how much of what color. The Métis even made their own way of talking, their own way of being Catholic, their own way of hunting, their own way of dividing up land, according to Root and Reeshaw. Whether you courted full red, full white, or mixed didn’t mean a damn. (Except to some white women that came into the country later, said Root.) So Root and Reeshaw, I think, just looked at me as a man, not an Indian. It felt good.