To a God Unknown

  "Yes."

  "Do you want me to stay away?" When she made no reply, he turned the horses sharply and started them back. "Do you want me to stay away from you?" he demanded.

  "No," she said, "I'm being silly. I want to go home and go to bed. I want to try to know what it is I'm feeling. That is an honesty."

  Joseph felt an exultance rising again in his throat. He leaned toward her and kissed her on the cheek and then touched up the horses again. At the gate he helped her down and walked to the door with her.

  "I will go now to try to find my brother. In a few days I will come back. Good-night."

  Elizabeth didn't wait to see him go. She was in bed almost before the sound of the wheels died out. Her heart pounded so that it shook her head against the pillow. It was hard to listen over the pounding of her heart, but at last she made out the sound she was waiting for. It came slowly toward her house, the drunken beautiful voice. Elizabeth gathered her spirit to resist the flaming pain that was coming with the voice.

  She whispered to herself, "He is useless, I know! A drunken, useless fool. I have something to do, almost a magic thing." She waited until the voice came in front of the house. "Now I must do this. It is the only chance." She put her head under her pillow and whispered, "I love this singing man, useless as he is, I love him. I have never seen his face and I love him more than anything. Lord Jesus help me to my desire. Help me to have this man."

  Then she lay quietly, listening for the response, for the answer to her magic. It came after a last splash of pain. A hatred for Benjy drove out the pain, a hatred so powerful that her jaws tightened and her lips drew snarlingly back from her teeth. She could feel how her skin tingled with the hatred and how her nails ached to attack him. And then the hatred floated off and away. She heard without interest the voice of Benjy growing fainter in the distance. Elizabeth lay on her back and rested her head on crossed wrists.

  "Now I will be married soon," she said quietly.

  9

  THE year had darkened to winter and the spring had come, and another fall, before the marriage took place. There was term-end to think of, and after that, in the heat of the summer, when the white oaks sagged under the sun and the river shrank to a stream, Elizabeth had dealings with dressmakers. The hills were rich with heavy-seeded grain; the cattle came out of the brush at night to eat, and when the sun was up, retired into the sage-scented shade to chew sleepily through the day. In the barn the men were piling the sweet wild hay higher than the rafters.

  Once a week during the year Joseph went in to Nuestra Senora and sat in the parlor with Elizabeth or took her driving in the buckboard. And he asked, "When will we be married, Elizabeth?"

  "Why, I must serve out my year," she said; "there are a thousand things that must be done. I should go home to Monterey for a little. Of course my father will want to see me once before I am married."

  "That is true," said Joseph soberly. "You might be changed afterwards."

  "I know." She clasped her hands around his wrist and regarded her clasped fingers. "Look, Joseph, how hard it is to move the finger you want to move. You lose track of which is which." He smiled at the way her mind caught at things to escape thinking. "I am afraid to change," she said. "I want to, and I am afraid. Will I get stout, do you think? All in a moment will I be another person, remembering Elizabeth as an acquaintance who's dead?"

  "I don't know," he said, edging his finger into a pleat at the shoulder of her shirtwaist. "Perhaps there isn't any change, ever, in anything. Perhaps unchangeable things only pass."

  One day she went to the ranch and he led her about, boasting a little by implication. "Here is the house. I built it first. And at first there wasn't a building within miles, just the house under the oak tree."

  Elizabeth leaned against the tree and stroked its trunk. "There could be a seat up in the tree, you see, Joseph, where those limbs start out from the trunk. Will you mind if I climb the tree, Joseph?" She looked up into his face and found that he was staring at her with a strange intensity. His hair had blown forward over his eyes. Elizabeth thought suddenly, "If only he had the body of a horse I might love him more."

  Joseph moved quickly toward her and held out his hand. "You must climb the tree, Elizabeth. I want you to. Here, I'll help you." He cupped his hands for her foot and steadied her until she sat in the crotch from which the great limbs grew. And when he saw how she fitted in the hollow and how the grey arms guarded her, "I'm glad, Elizabeth," he cried.

  "Glad, Joseph? You look glad! Your eyes are shining. Why are you so glad?"

  He lowered his eyes and laughed to himself. "Strange things one is glad of. I am glad that you are sitting in my tree. A moment back I thought I saw that my tree loved you.'

  "Stand away a little," she called. "I'm going up to the next limb so I can see beyond the barn." He moved aside because her skirts were full. "Joseph, I wonder why I hadn't noticed the pines on the ridge. Now I can feel at home. I was born among the pines in Monterey. You'll see them, Joseph, when we go there to be married."

  "They are strange pines; I'll take you there some time after we are married."

  Elizabeth climbed carefully down from the tree and stood beside him again. She pinned her hair and patted it with dexterous fingers that went inquisitively about searching for loose strands and shaping them to their old course. "When I am homesick, Joseph, I can go up to those pines and it will be like going home."

  10

  THE wedding was in Monterey, a somber boding ceremony in a little Protestant chapel. The church had so often seen two ripe bodies die by the process of marriage that it seemed to celebrate a mystic double death with its ritual. Both Joseph and Elizabeth felt the sullenness of the sentence. "You must endure," said the church; and its music was a sunless prophecy.

  Elizabeth looked at her bent father, where he glared at the furniture of Christianity because it insulted what he was calling his intelligence. There was no blessing in the leather fingers of her father. She glanced quickly at the man beside her who was becoming her husband second by second. Joseph's face was set and hard. She could see how his jaw muscles quivered tensely. And suddenly Elizabeth was sorry for Joseph. She thought with a little frantic sadness, "If my mother were here, she could say to him, 'Here is Elizabeth and she is a good girl because I love her, Joseph. And she will be a good wife when she learns how to be. I hope you will get outside the hard husk you're wearing, Joseph, so you may feel tenderly for Elizabeth. That's all she wants and it's not an impossible thing.'"

  Elizabeth's eyes glittered suddenly with bright tears. "I will," she said aloud, and, silently, "I must pray a little. Lord Jesus, make things easy for me because I am afraid. In all the time I've had to learn about myself, I have learned nothing. Be kind to me, Lord Jesus, at least until I learn what kind of thing I am." She wished there were a crucifix some place in the church, but it was a Protestant church, and when she drew a picture of the Christ in her mind, He had the face, the youthful beard, the piercing puzzled eyes of Joseph, who stood beside her.

  Joseph's brain was tight with a curious fear. "There's a foulness here," he thought. "Why must we go through this to find our marriage? Here in the church I've thought there lay a beauty if a man could find it, but this is only a doddering kind of devil worship." He was disappointed for himself and for Elizabeth. He was embarrassed that Elizabeth must witness the maculate entrance to the marriage.

  Elizabeth tugged at his arm and whispered, "It's over now. We must walk out. Turn toward me slowly." She helped him to turn, and as they took the first step down the aisle, the bells broke forth in the belfry above them. Joseph sighed shudderingly. "Here's God come late to the wedding. Here's the iron god at last." He felt that he would pray if he knew some powerful way to do it. "This ties in. This is the marriage--the good iron voice!" And he thought, "This is my own thing and I know it. Beloved bells, pounding your bodies with your frantic hearts! It is the sun sticks, striking the bell of the sky in the morning; and it's the hollo
w beating of rain on the earth's full belly--of course, I know--the thing that whips the tortured air with lightning. And sometimes the hot sweet wind plucks at the treetops in a yellow afternoon."

  He looked sidewise and down and whispered, "The bells are good, Elizabeth. The bells are holy."

  She started and peered up at him in wonder, for her vision had not changed; the Christ's face was still the face of Joseph. She laughed uneasily and confessed to herself, "I'm praying to my own husband."

  McGreggor, the saddler, was wistful when they went away. He kissed Elizabeth clumsily on the forehead.

  "Don't forget your father," he said. "But it wouldn't be an unusual thing if you did. It's almost a custom in these days."

  "You'll come to the ranch to see us, won't you, father?"

  "I visit no one," he replied angrily. "A man takes only weakness and a little pleasure from an obligation."

  "We'll be glad to see you if you come," said Joseph. 'Well, you'll wait a long time, you and your thousand acre ranches. I'll see you both in Hell before I'd visit you."

  After a time he drew Joseph aside, out of hearing of Elizabeth, and he said plaintively, "It's because you're stronger than I am that I hate you. Here I'm wanting to like you, and I can't because I'm a weak man. And it's the same about Elizabeth and about her crazy mother. Both of them knew I was a weak man, and I hated both of them."

  Joseph smiled on the saddler and felt pity and love for him. "It's not a weak thing you're doing now," he observed.

  "No," McGreggor cried, "it's a good strong thing. Oh, I know in my head how to be strong, but I can't learn to do it.

  Joseph patted him roughly on the arm. "We'll be glad to see you when you come to visit." And instantly McGreggor's lip stiffened in anger.

  They went by train from Monterey and down the long Salinas Valley, a grey-and-gold lane between two muscular mountain lines. From the train they could see how the wind blew down the valley, toward the sea, how its dry force bent the grain against the ground until it lay like the coat of a sleek-haired dog, how it drove the herds of rolling tumbleweeds toward the valley mouth and how it blew the trees lopsided and streaming until they grew that way. At the little stations, Chualar, Gonzales and Greenfield, they saw the grain teams standing in the road, waiting to store their fat sacks in the warehouses. The train moved beside the dry Salinas river with its broad yellow bed where blue herons stalked disconsolately over the hot sand, searching for water to fish in, and where now and then a grey coyote trotted nervously away, looking back apprehensively at the train; and the mountains continued on with them on either side like huge rough outer tracks for a tremendous juggernaut.

  In King City, a small railroad town, Joseph and Elizabeth left the train and walked to the livery barn where Joseph's horses had been stabled while they were gone. They felt new and shiny and curiously young as they drove out of King City on the road to the valley of Our Lady. New clothes were in the traveling baskets in the wagon box. Over their clothes they wore long linen dusters to protect them from the road dirt, and Elizabeth's face was covered with a dark blue veil, behind which her eyes darted about, collecting data for memory. Joseph and Elizabeth were embarrassed, sitting shoulder to shoulder and looking ahead at the tan road, for it seemed a presumptuous game they were playing. The horses, four days rested and full of fat barley, flung their heads and tried to run, but Joseph tightened the brake a little and held them down, saying, "Steady, Blue. Steady, Pigeon. You'll be tired enough before we get home."

  A few miles ahead they could see the willow boundary of their own home stream where it strode out to meet the broad Salinas river. The willows were yellow in this season, and the poison-oak that climbed into the branches had turned scarlet and menacing. Where the rivers joined, Joseph pulled up to watch how the glittering water from Nuestra Senora sank tiredly and disappeared into the white sand of its new bed. It was said the river ran pure and sweet under the ground, and this could be proved by digging a few feet into the sand. Even within sight of the juncture there were broad holes dug in the river bed so the cattle might drink.

  Joseph unbuttoned his duster, for the afternoon was very hot, and he loosened the neckerchief designed to keep his collar free from dust, and removing his black hat he wiped the leather head-band with a bandana. "Would you like to get down, Elizabeth?" he asked. "You could bathe your wrists in the water and that would make you cool."

  But Elizabeth shook her head. It was strange to see the swathed head shake. "No, I am comfortable, dear. It will be very late when we get home. I am anxious to go on."

  He slapped the flat lines on the horses' buttocks and they moved on beside the river. The tall willows along the road whipped at their heads and sometimes drew a long pliant switch caressingly over their shoulders. The crickets in the hot brush sang their head-piercing notes, and flying grasshoppers leaped up with a flash of white or yellow wings, rattled a moment through the air and dropped to safety in the dry grass. Now and then some little blue brush rabbit skittered in panic off the road, and once safe, perched on his haunches and peeked at the wagon. There was a smell of toasting grass-stems in the air, and the bitter of willow bark, and the perfume of river bay trees.

  Joseph and Elizabeth leaned loosely back against the leather seat, caught in the rhythm of the day and drowsed by the pounding hoofs. Their backs and shoulders supplely absorbed the vibrations of the buckboard. Theirs was a state close to sleep but more withdrawn to thoughtlessness, more profound than sleep. The road and the river pointed straight at the mountains now. The dark sage covered the higher ridges like a coarse fur, except in the water scars, which were grey and bare like healed saddle sores on a horse's back. The sun was quartering to the westward and the road and the river pointed the place of its setting. For the two riding behind the plodding horses, clock time dissolved into the inconstant interval between thought and thought. The hills and the river pass swept toward them grandly, and then the road began to ascend and the horses hunched along stiffly, pounding the air with heads that swung up and down like hammers. Up a long slope they went. The wheels grated on shattered flakes of limestone, of which the hills were made. The iron tires ground harshly on the rock.

  Joseph leaned forward and shook his head to be rid of the spell, as a dog shakes water from its ears. "Elizabeth," he said, "We're coming to the pass."

  She untied her veil and laid it back over her hat. Her eyes came slowly to life. "I must have been asleep," she said.

  "I too. My eyes were open and I was asleep. But here is the pass."

  The mountain was split. Two naked shoulders of smooth limestone dropped cleanly down, verging a little together, and at the bottom there was only room for the river bed. The road itself was blasted out of the cliffside, ten feet above the surface of the water. Midway in the pass where the constrained river flowed swift and deep and silently, a rough monolith rose out of the water, cutting and mangling the current like a boat prow driving speedily upstream, making an angry swirling whisper. The sun was behind the mountain now, but through the pass they could see the trembling light of it falling on the valley of Our Lady. The wagon had driven into the chill blue shade of the white cliffs. The horses, having reached the top of the long foothill slope, walked easily enough, but they stretched their necks and snorted at the river far below them, under the road.

  Joseph took a shorter grip on the lines and his right foot moved out and rested lightly on the brake He looked down on the serene water and he felt a gush of pure warm pleasure in anticipation of the valley he would see in a moment. He turned to look at Elizabeth, for he wanted to tell her of the pleasure. He saw that her face had gone haggard and that her eyes were horrified.

  She cried, "I want to stop, dear. I'm afraid" She was staring through the cleft into the sunlit valley.

  Joseph pulled up the horses and set the brake. He looked at her questioningly. "I didn't know. Is it the narrow road and the stream below?"

  "No, it is not."

  He stepped to the groun
d, then, and held out a hand to her; but when he tried to lead her toward the pass she pulled her hand away from him and stood shivering in the shade. And he thought, "I must try to tell her. I've never tried to tell her things like this. It's seemed too difficult a thing, but now I'll have to try to tell her," and he practiced in his mind the thing he must try to say. "Elizabeth," he cried in his mind, "can you hear me? I am cold with a thing to say, and prayerful for a way to say it." His eyes widened and he was entranced. "I have thought without words," he said in his mind. "A man told me once that was not possible, but I have thought--Elizabeth, listen to me. Christ nailed up might be more than a symbol of all pain. He might in very truth contain all pain. And a man standing on a hilltop with his arms outstretched, a symbol of the symbol, he too might be a reservoir of all the pain that ever was."

  For a moment she broke into his thinking, crying, "Joseph, I'm afraid."

  And then his thought went on, "Listen, Elizabeth. Do not be afraid. I tell you I have thought without words. Now let me grope a moment among the words, tasting them, trying them. This is a space between the real and the clean, unwavering real, undistorted by the senses. Here is a boundary. Yesterday we were married and it was no marriage. This is our marriage--through the pass--entering the passage like sperm and egg that have become a single unit of pregnancy. This is a symbol of the undistorted real. I have a moment in my heart, different in shape, in texture, in duration from any other moment. Why, Elizabeth, this is all marriage that has ever been, contained in our moment." And he said in his mind, "Christ in His little time on the nails carried within His body all the suffering that ever was, and in Him it was undistorted."

  He had been upon a star, and now the hills rushed back and robbed him of his aloneness and of his naked thinking. His arms and hands felt heavy and dead, hanging like weights on thick cords from the shoulders that were tired of supporting them.