CHAPTER TEN
Mac drove away and the store was open for business, with the boys hanging about curiously, fingering the stock and getting into Bush’s way as he waited on customers. The big cool room was lined with shelves full of folded overalls and canned goods and coloured handkerchiefs and sheepskins and harness and cooking pots and candy. Three or four Navajos, who had been lounging on the doorstep when the store was first opened, now lounged on the hay-box and showed no signs either of buying or of going away. When other Indians came in they greeted them, then went on with the business of staring at the stock, or whittling little pieces of wood.
A short fat woman came in with a sack under her arm and two children dragging at her skirt. She plumped the burlap down on the counter and tugged at it until she had uncovered a blanket of a rough weave, which she displayed to Bush’s apathetic gaze. He picked up the blanket and looked at it, then put it on the scales and weighed it. After a moment’s figuring he named a price, and by her silence she seemed to assent. Blake, chewing cookies, watched her in fascination.
Bush wrote down on a small paper bag, $6.20. Blake read it upside down. The woman looked thoughtfully at the shelves and directed Bush, who put down on the counter a small bag of flour and wrote the price on the bag. After that she went into a deep silence, while the bystanders blinked at the flies and Bush contemplated his toes, chewing gum. She ordered a can of baking-powder and asked how much of the money was left. At the answer she pondered suspiciously, but did not argue. Then she bought ten cents’ worth of candy, asked the reckoning again, and left the store with her sack full of supplies, the children trotting at her heels. Bush wrote the transaction down in a big black book and started to rearrange the stock.
Another Navajo rode up on a horse, driving two other horses ahead of him. All three he tied to a post, where they shied at every wandering breeze and kept their noses raised, straining at the ropes. Dusty and cheerful, he strode in and ordered soda-pop and a box of crackers, slamming his money down proudly. He swallowed half the soda at one pull, with his eyes fixed on Blake. “Where you from?” he said.
“Santa Fé,” said Blake.
“Yo-to. Good roads?”
“Awful,” said Blake. “Terrible from here to Shiprock.”
The Indian shook his head. “No, good roads. I came over them yesterday.”
“Sure they’re good,” said Bush. “They’re all right, kid. You don’t know this country or you wouldn’t be complaining about those roads.”
“They have fine roads at Yo-to,” said the Indian. “I was at Yo-to. I was there seven years.”
“Where?” Teddy leaned across the counter.
“Yo-to. Santa Fé, that is. I was in the penitentiary for seven years.” He seemed very cheerful about it.
“What?” Blake said, in a gasp.
“Yes. I was pretty mad then, but not any more. It is all right now.”
He put down the empty soda bottle and bit into a cracker, chatting with his friends in Navajo.
“Why did he go to jail?” Teddy asked Bush.
“I dunno. It was before my time. Probably he helped burn a witch; they always get seven years for that. One of you boys can ride over with me to the well, if you want.”
Madden went, and Blake wandered around the house to the back porch, where he was unwillingly drawn into conversation with Mrs. Bush. He had felt awkward with her; she was so silent. But this morning she seemed more talkative. He sat down on the step and listened vaguely, feeling drowsy in the heat. He felt like brooding over the decoration he had found on the wall of his room; a piece of burnt-leather with a picture enameled on it of a ruddy desert mathematically arrayed beneath a setting sun, rays outstretched in all directions. Underneath was a verse burnt in big dancing letters, and he had memorized it:
Welcome to Arizona
Where the beauteous cactus grows
And what was once the desert
Now is blooming like the rose.
Teddy had been disgusted, horrified, and humourless about it, but there was something——
“There’s a lot of things we don’t understand in this world,” said Mrs. Bush, and moved the pan in her lap to a more level position to catch the potato-peelings. “I ain’t saying that the Mormons are always right, though. I’m not Mormon myself: Mr. Bush is. Anyway, I always think there must be some reason for it all.”
“I guess so,” said Blake.
“When I was young,” she continued, “I laughed at all that, myself. Junior’ll go through the same stage, most likely. But I’ve seen things.” She paused and selected another potato. “Mind you, it don’t prove anything. But it was queer. It was when I was a girl at home. Mamma and Dad and me had gone to a camp-meeting.”
“Camp-meeting?”
“Yes. Not here; I’m from the South originally. Arkansas. We drove over to the meeting-grounds in a wagon and afterwards, coming back, we slept out. It was my idea: I blame myself. It was low country and I should of known better. Mom and Dad were getting along: they were too old to act like that.
“Well, we got back home all right and then we was all sick. Malaria, I guess it was, or typhoid. I’ve always been as strong as a horse and in a little while I was up and around. But Dad didn’t pick up the way he ought to and they took him to hospital. We thought Mom was all right. She just slept all the time.” She shook her head and remained silent a moment.
“I didn’t worry about Mamma. I ought to of. But I didn’t know any better. We were all busy fretting over Dad. Then one night they said he was better and I gave Mom her medicine and went to bed. She told me she felt better too, on account of Dad. I went to bed. I don’t excuse myself. There must have been something I could of done.
“Anyway when I woke up it was early morning and Mom was breathing real loud. I called the doctor in a hurry and he came running and took one look and sent her to hospital. He told me not to worry. He said it was a little relapse. I said, ‘Yes, but what makes Mamma look so queer?’ What it was, she was dying, and I didn’t know.”
She looked at Blake with wet, horrified eyes, and he waited.
“I went back to bed—I’ll never forgive myself, but I wasn’t in my right senses yet. The fever kept coming back. I didn’t sleep very well, I -will say that for myself. Even when I didn’t know how bad it was I was worried. I dreamed I was running up the steps of a big building, a funny sort of building I hadn’t ever noticed before, and it had big pillars along the front. All the time I was running—I remember it as plain as you are sitting here now——”
And a lot plainer, Blake thought.
“I kept thinking I must hold on to myself and try to expect something nice that was waiting for me in the building. I can’t quite say what it was like. As if I was fooling myself in my dream and knew it. I kept running and running and feeling worse.”
She picked up another potato, but held it in her hand without beginning to peel it.
“Then they woke me up and said it was morning and time to go to hospital. I went over and hurried right up to her room. And there——” she paused and stared at the henhouse. Then she started again. “There was her bed and the mark of somebody, but she wasn’t there. My legs just gave out. I yelled, I guess, and a nurse came and I said ‘Where is Mamma?’ and the nurse said, ‘Well, miss, we’re crowded so we sent her away.’ I said, ‘Where to?’ Even then I didn’t understand. She looked at me queer and said, ‘To the morgue.’
“That’s how I was told.... Well, I started out and I met my brother Tom, and he said, 'Are you all right, Silvy?’
“I said, ‘Yes, I’m all right.’
“He said—he’s the sweetest thing in the world, Tom is, if he is my brother and I oughtn’t to say it—‘You sure you can walk?’
“I said, ‘Yes, I can walk. Where’s the morgue?’
“So we went over there together, and when I saw it——”
“It was that building with the pillars?” asked Blake.
“The very one,” said Mrs. Bush. “And then Dad died too.”
She put her hands down among the potato peelings and thought about it for a minute.
“But it worries me, what she must think of me,” she said. “If I had only known she was dying. Dying, in front of my eyes, and me not doing anything about it. I wish she’d let me tell her. Lots of times I feel people I used to know around me, listening to me when I’m talking to them. The way you do in your head. But I never have that feeling about her. If she’d only let me tell her.”
Blake said, “Oh, she knows.”
“How do you know?” cried Mrs. Bush, savagely.