Ceremony

  “So that old horse won, huh?” he said, almost laughing. “Even got you throwing rocks and yelling at him.”

  He reined the mare in tight and kept his heels hard against her sides to let her know he meant business. Josiah had always shown them how ridiculous violence and anger were; beating the mare would not make the spotted cattle appear.

  He stopped at a wide shallow stream and dismounted while the mare drank. She had traveled for hours without water; now she swelled out her sides drinking. She let out a deep sigh when she was finished and shook herself; she was tired. As he led her away from the stream, he felt the muscles in his thighs get shivery, and his knees were tight and sore from hours in the saddle and from kneeling on the rocks to cut the wire. His hands hurt, and his fingers were still swollen with blisters from the pliers. He knew what was happening. In the sky above the clearing, Orion had fallen over the south edge; he was running out of night. His stomach tensed up again. Whatever night this was, he still had a big hole cut in their fence, and he had to find the cattle and get them out before the fence riders found the break. They would be after him then, tracking him, hunting him down as they had hunted the last few bears on the mountain. His chest was aching with anger. What ever made him think he could do this? The woman under the apricot tree meant nothing at all; it was all in his own head. When they caught him, they’d send him back to the crazy house for sure. He was trapped now, tricked into trying something that could never work.

  He still had time to get back. He could pull the sections of wire together and twist the strands into place, and then ride like hell off the mountain. They’d never know who did it; they’d blame Mexicans from Marquez. It would be the smartest thing he could do. All the rest—old Betonie and his stargazing, the woman in her storm-pattern blanket—all that was crazy, the kind of old-time superstition the teachers at Indian school used to warn him and Rocky about. Like the first time in science class, when the teacher brought in a tubful of dead frogs, bloated with formaldehyde, and the Navajos all left the room; the teacher said those old beliefs were stupid. The Jemez girl raised her hand and said the people always told the kids not to kill frogs, because the frogs would get angry and send so much rain there would be floods. The science teacher laughed loudly, for a long time; he even had to wipe tears from his eyes. “Look at these frogs,” he said, pointing at the disclored rubbery bodies and clouded eyes. “Do you think they could do anything? Where are all the floods? We dissect them in this class every year.” As the Army doctors had told him: it was all superstition, seeing Josiah when they shot those goddamn Japs; it was all superstition, believing that the rain had stopped coming because he had cursed it.

  A strange paralysis accompanied his thoughts; a sudden overwhelming fatigue took hold, and his heart pounded furiously, and he panted trying to walk only a few feet from the place he had tied the mare. His knees buckled, and he fell into the old pine needles and cones under a tree. This was the end. He wouldn’t even be able to try to escape; they would find him collapsed under the tree.

  His face was in the pine needles where he could smell all the tree, from roots deep in the damp earth to the moonlight blue branches, the highest tips swaying in the wind. The odors wrapped around him in a thin clear layer that sucked away the substance of his muscle and bone; his body became insubstantial, so that even if the fence riders came looking for him with their .30-30s loaded and cocked, they would see him only as a shadow under the tree.

  The mountain lion came out from a grove of oak trees in the middle of the clearing. He did not walk or leap or run; his motions were like the shimmering of tall grass in the wind. He came across the meadow, moving into the wind. Tayo watched it with his head against the ground, conscious of pine needles tangled in his hair. He waited for the mare to shy away from the yellow form that moved toward them; but the horse was upwind and did not stir. The eyes caught twin reflections of the moon; the glittering yellow light penetrated his chest and he inhaled suddenly. Relentless motion was the lion’s greatest beauty, moving like mountain clouds with the wind, changing substance and color in rhythm with the contours of the mountain peaks: dark as lava rock, and suddenly as bright as a field of snow. When the mountain lion stopped in front of him, it was not hesitation, but a chance for the moonlight to catch up with him. Tayo got to his knees slowly and held out his hand.

  “Mountain lion,” he whispered, “mountain lion, becoming what you are with each breath, your substance changing with the earth and the sky.” The mountain lion blinked his eyes; there was no fear. He gazed at him for another instant and then sniffed the southeast wind before he crossed the stream and disappeared into the trees, his outline lingering like yellow smoke, then suddenly gone.

  The horse was stamping her front feet and blowing her nostrils open wide to catch the mountain-lion smell that was on the wind now. Tayo stroked her neck and made sure the rope was tied securely to the tree. He went into the clearing where the mountain lion had stood; he knelt and touched the footprints, tracing his finger around the delicate edges of dust the paw prints had made, deep round imprints, each toe a distinctive swirl. He kept his back to the wind and poured yellow pollen from Josiah’s tobacco sack into the cup of his hand. He leaned close to the earth and sprinkled pinches of yellow pollen into the four footprints. Mountain lion, the hunter. Mountain lion, the hunter’s helper.

  He rode the mare west again, in the direction the mountain lion had come from. The sound of the wind in the pine branches and the smell of snow from the mountain made him alert.

  At dawn he stopped on a grassy ridge to watch the sun rise; he let the mare graze, part of the cycle of restoration. Inside him the muddy water turmoil was settling to the bottom, and streaks of clarity were slowly emerging. Gathering the spotted cattle was only one color of sand falling from the fingertips; the design was still growing, but already long ago it had encircled him.

  When he turned away from the sun to mount the mare, he saw the spotted cattle, grazing in a dry lake flat below the ridge. They were facing southeast, grazing in a herd. They had smelled the horse and rider and were looking up at the ridge; his motion sent them running, with grass still hanging from wet lips. They ran as Robert said they did, wilder than antelope, smarter than elk about human beings. Their memory of people endured long after all other traces of domestication were gone; and he was counting on another instinct: the dim memory of direction which lured them always south, to the Mexican desert where they were born.

  They ran southeast, in the direction he wanted them to go, with tails straight out behind their manure-stained haunches, running more like deer than cattle, moving from thicket to thicket for cover, avoiding the clearings. They favored trails too low and brushy for horses and riders. He let the mare run far behind them, confident of their direction. The cold air whipped tears in his eyes, but he felt good; they were gathered before him, headed for home. They took the trail they had worn along the fence and followed it east; he watched to be sure none of them circled back, but the old direction was persistent even in the half-grown calves. He slowed the mare to a lope and let the cattle go. The horse was tiring; she had frothy sweat on her shoulders and neck. If he followed the cattle too closely or pushed them too fast, they might break and scatter; they might miss the opening in the fence. He watched them appear briefly, crossing a ridge about a half mile ahead; they had already slowed from a dead run to a trot.

  The sky was washed pale blue by the glare of the sun; there were no clouds, but he could feel a strong wind from the west at his back, and he knew there would be storm clouds before noon. In the distance up ahead he occasionally caught glimpses of the cattle, trotting steadily; they appeared in clearings and disappeared into oak thickets again, still following the south boundary fence to the east.

  The tension in the muscles of his neck and shoulders unwound with each breath he took. He smiled and patted the mare on the neck; the hair was still damp and stiff with sweat. He slowed her to a walk, confident that the cattle wou
ld veer through the break in the fence and continue south down the trail off the mountain plateau. He kicked his boots loose from the stirrups and stretched his legs; the tendons and muscles unlocked from the flexed position of the saddle. He had proved something to himself; it wasn’t as strong as it had once been. It was changing, unraveling like the yarn of a dark heavy blanket wrapped around a corpse, the dusty rotted strands of darkness unwinding, giving way to the air; its smothering pressure was lifting from the bones of his skull.

  From the corner of his eye he saw them, at first mistaking them for a strand of his own hair caught by the wind. But when he turned there were two riders approaching from the north. He whipped the mare into a dead run, crouching low over her neck, trying to guide her over the rocky, uneven terrain, down the steep slope of a ridge. They were about a mile away when he first saw them, so he would try to find a deep grove of pine where he could stay until they passed. He strained to see if the cattle were still in sight, wondering if the riders had seen them. The bill of sale in his shirt pocket would mean very little to armed patrolmen chasing a trespasser. He pressed his heels into the mare’s sides to make her run faster, but the lava rock was already scattering from under her feet, and she was fighting to keep her balance. He looked over to see if they were on the hilltop behind him yet; they weren’t, so he reined the mare in, to save some of her strength. He wiped the tears that the wind whipped in his eyes onto the sleeve of his jacket and tried to focus on the ridges and flats ahead, searching for the lava-rock knob and the lightning-struck pine that marked the hole in the fence.

  He opened his eyes to a bright blue sky and clouds that were full, but very high: and for an instant he was waking up years before, on a nameless island in the Pacific. He thought he had been hit, and he began to call for Rocky to help. Then he saw the color of his sleeve of his shirt, and felt the dry lava pebbles pressing into his raw hands.

  He could remember seeing the sunny bright day and the faint autumn colors emerging in the scrub oak; he remembered thinking how funny it was to be in such trouble in the middle of the day, when it was nighttime and darkness that were suspected occasions of danger. He remembered seeing the skeleton pine tree in the distance, above a bowl-shaped dry lake bed, and the last cow bolting through the opening in the wire, kicking her heels at the wire as she plunged through, disappearing over the horizon. He remembered all this clearly, even the way the mare fell, her front legs sliding in the rocks, and the slow shivering roll of her body as she fell.

  The smell of mountain sage surrounded him, and he realized he had skidded through a sage bush; twigs of sage and oak leaves were caught in his hair and crumbled down the back of his neck. When he tried to move, the inside of his head pounded; so he lay flat and spat out the gritty mountain clay. His ribs hurt when he breathed, but he could move his fingers and lift both legs. He closed his eyes, telling himself that he could afford to rest a while longer, lying to himself the way he had on cold winter mornings when the room was still dark and there was no fire in the stove.

  “Where were you going so goddamn fast?” The voice was hostile, and it had a drawling Texan sound. He raised himself up on one hand and looked at them. They were both tall and lanky, with light brown hair; and except for their faces they were the same: boots scuffed and dusty, jeans faded to the same shade of blue; even their shirt-sleeves were rolled to the elbow in the same manner. But the one with the narrow face was agitated and angry. He kept demanding to know what Tayo was doing there.

  “Poaching deer?” he said, stepping so close to Tayo’s hand that he could feel weeds, crushed by the boot, pressing against his fingers; and for an instant he thought he might step on his hand to make him talk.

  “Maybe you were rustling yourself a little beef, huh?”

  He would let them believe anything they wanted. The other man had a small round face and no chin, but his eyes were calm.

  “Are you hurt?” he said. “Can you stand up?” He put his hand on Tayo’s left arm and squatted down beside him to get a better grip. Tayo kept thinking about the cattle and the gaping hole in the fence; but they didn’t act as if they had noticed anything except him. Behind the drumming pain inside his head, he had one thought: to keep them occupied with him, to keep them away from the next ridge.

  “You better go back for the truck,” the cowboy with the round face said. “I think he might be hurt.”

  “Shit! There’s nothing wrong with the son of a bitch! Let him ride behind the saddle with me.”

  As they pulled him to his feet, his vision spun away, pulling his head into a shower of bright lights. He stumbled against the big palomino; it snorted and shied away.

  “Whoa! You jackass! Whoa!” They boosted him up, behind the creamy-colored tooled leather saddle. His ears buzzed and he had to grip the saddle strings tightly to stay erect. The horse sidestepped nervously, feeling the awkward load shifting from side to side on its back. Just as the Texan swung his long thin leg over the saddle, Tayo leaned over and vomited all over the sagebrush.

  The pain swelled out of his head, pounding through his ears until it hit his belly, and waves of nausea surged up. The sun was going down, and the round-faced man was hunched over on a boulder, with his back to the cold wind. He had his hands in his pockets and was chewing tobacco, working his jaws furiously and spitting savagely, sending the brown juice all over the ground around his feet. He saw that Tayo was awake, but he didn’t speak. The skin on the cowboy’s face was wrinkled; it had been rubbed dry and red by the wind and sun. Under the blue bandanna he wore around his throat, the skin was still milky and tender. He wasn’t much older than Tayo; maybe they both had been in the war together. He acted as if he wanted to forget the whole thing and let the Indian go. But the Texan had gone back for the truck; he wanted to take the Indian back. Maybe because their boss expected them to do something once in a while: shoot a coyote or catch a Mexican. But it was getting late, and the wind was bitter with the snowstorm that had masked the peaks. It would be dark by the time they got him back to the ranch headquarters, and then they would have to drive him all the way to the jail in Grants. It was a lot of trouble just for an Indian; maybe it would be too much trouble, and they would let him go.

  Black pebbles and the ancient gray cinders the mountain had thrown poked into his backbone. He closed his eyes but did not sleep. He felt cold gusts of wind scattering dry oak leaves in the grass. He listened to the cowboy collect tobacco juice in his mouth and the squirting liquid sound when he spat. He was aware of the center beneath him; it soaked into his body from the ground through the torn skin on his hands, covered with powdery black dirt. The magnetism of the center spread over him smoothly like rainwater down his neck and shoulders; the vacant cool sensation glided over the pain like feather-down wings. It was pulling him back, close to the earth, where the core was cool and silent as mountain stone, and even with the noise and pain in his head he knew how it would be: a returning rather than a separation. He was relieved because he feared leaving people he loved. But lying above the center that pulled him down closer felt more familiar to him than any embrace he could remember; and he was sinking into the elemental arms of mountain silence. Only his skull resisted; and the resistance increased the pain to a shrill whine. He visualized each piece of his own skull, fingering each curve, each hollow, testing its thickness for a final thin membrane worn thin by time and the witchery of dead ash and mushroomed bullets. He searched thin walls, weak sutures of spindle bones above the ear for thresholds. He knew if he left his skull unguarded, if he let himself sleep, it would happen: the resistance would leak out and take with it all barriers, all boundaries; he would seep into the earth and rest with the center, where the voice of the silence was familiar and the density of the dark earth loved him. He could secure the thresholds with molten pain and remain; or he could let go and flow back. It was up to him.

  He heard the truck motor stop and doors slam. The voices were muffled by the distance, but the Texan had not come back alone. r />
  “Hey! I found something! Remember those lion tracks we found last spring? Well there’s fresh ones all over the place! Around the number twelve windmill. A big son of a bitch! Tracks the size of my palm!” The new voice was high pitched with excitement.

  The cowboy got up from the boulder stiffly and spat out the last of the tobacco wad.

  “Well, what about this guy?” he said. “I thought you wanted to take him in.”

  The Texan cleared his throat. “Shit,” he said, “greasers and Indians—we can run them down anytime. But it’s been a couple of years since anybody up here got a mountain lion.”

  “Okay, okay. You were the one that wanted to mess with him, not me.”

  “Shit, by the time we got him back, the lion would be long gone.”

  “Just leave him where he is and let’s go get the lion hounds before it gets dark.”