The Night the White Deer Died Read online

  But he was gone before she’d finished the sentence, vanished in the crowds before anybody saw him talking to her—part of the festival, part of the wild week of the midsummer celebration that had started long ago—nobody knew when and for what reason originally.

  The wild summer festival of Tres Pinos—Janet had heard about it but never seen it before. When it was over, after winding down like a tired maniac, still insane but too exhausted to do anything about it, when it was all finished, there were four days and nights gone out of her life. All her mother’s art was sold and gone, and Janet looked at the empty rubble of the plaza and couldn’t believe that it all had happened. Not really.

  It was the end of the fourth day, just getting dark, soft dusk-dark. Most of the artists were gone, and Janet and her mother stood virtually alone—for the first time in four days—except for a few people moving to parties that always seemed to go hand in hand with the festival.

  “I feel … feel wasted.” Janet flopped her arms and sighed. “Used …”

  “I know what you mean.” Her mother took a deep breath, let it out, brushed some hair out of her eyes, and looked down at her tank top and jeans. A spot had appeared on the right side of the tank top, a dark spot so obscure that at first she didn’t see it, and when she did, she wiped at it gingerly—as though not certain it was really there. “I didn’t know it was going to be this wild—had no idea. Nobody told me.”

  Her voice was half apologetic, and she looked at Janet beseechingly. Janet had never felt so close to her mother; right then, at that instant, she loved her more than anything on earth. But it was more than that. She viewed her as a close friend as well, and without really thinking she went over to her mother and put her arms around her. It was a rare instant of genuine closeness, an almost beautiful moment, and when they parted, it was with reluctance.

  “Well.” Janet’s mother looked around and shrugged. “It’s over, that’s something.”

  “But what a mess.” Janet gestured around them. The plaza was covered with trash, paper, food and drink containers, junk. “Who gets to clean this up?”

  As though on cue, she heard a sound to her rear and turned to see the jailer coming up the stairway from the jail. In back of him were four inmates, all arrested for being drunk.

  “Clean it,” the jailer told them. “When you’re done, you can go, but make sure it’s clean, or I’ll have you back in the hotel.”

  He turned and went back down into the jail, a troll returning to his underworld dwelling, and the four released drunks began picking up papers and putting them in the trash containers at the corners of the plaza.

  One of the four men was Billy, looking dirty but surprisingly spry and alert. Janet started to call to him but then realized that it would only embarrass him. Instead she moved with her mother away from the plaza, across the street to the small cafe where they’d eaten dinner every evening.

  But they got a booth by the window, where LA CANTINA … FINE MEXICAN FOOD was lettered, and after ordering burritos and chili and milk, Janet looked out the window through the lettering and watched Billy picking up trash while they waited for their food, and she thought how degrading it was that a man who used to be governor would have to do that, clean up after other people. When the chili came, she was still thinking about it, wondering if that might be called part of the festival, and she worried over it so much that she had three bites of chili down before she realized it was the hot version and that her mouth was on fire.

  Then of course she gulped her milk, had to drink three glasses before the fire was out and she could breathe again. And when she once more looked out through the lettering, Billy was gone from the plaza.

  5

  In the summer before fall but after the festival the town of Tres Pinos goes into a quiet period, almost like an animal licking its wounds or resting after a long fight, and it was during this time that Janet again saw Billy Honcho.

  Julio had been around some, still not too openly, but he was getting braver. Twice he had walked off to the side of Janet when she went into town, far enough off so anybody seeing them couldn’t be sure they were together but close enough to call to her and tell her that he was a good fighter and that if she ever had any trouble to let him know and he’d fix it.

  Once he’d spent most of the day by the gate on the courtyard of the house, just standing and flipping rocks, and he was so unsubtle that Janet’s mother asked about him.

  “He’s just a friend,” Janet answered. “Well, sort of, I guess.”

  “Classic form—he’d be fun to sculpt. Tall, muscular, willowy. Why not invite him in to model?”

  “He won’t come.”

  “Try.”

  So Janet had gone out to ask Julio if he wanted to model for her mother while she sculpted, and he’d made a sound of scorn. “I should allow myself to be used in this way?”

  “Sure.” Janet had shrugged. “It isn’t bad or anything—just art. Because you’ve got a classic form.”

  That caught him, and she could tell he felt flattered, but he was still too shy and thought it was too degrading—perhaps—for him to do. Yet. So he moved off down the dusty street, and it was while watching him go that time, watching his arrogance as he walked, that Janet saw Billy.

  He was farther down the street, walking bent over with a tight little shuffle, and when she saw him, he happened to be looking in her direction, and she waved. It was natural, a quick wave, and she was surprised when he came toward her.

  She waited, squinting in the sun, leaning against the gate, and when he got close, she could tell that he was sober—dirty, but sober.

  “Hi.” Janet kept her voice even, but she found with a shock that her heartbeat was speeding up and that she had a strange shy feeling.

  “The girl with the dollar,” Billy said when he stopped at the gate. “The girl with the dollar for the wine.”

  Janet nodded but said nothing; she was still trying to analyze the feelings she had. The sun was hot, but not hot enough for the perspiration that suddenly came onto her forehead.

  It was his eyes; she was certain of it. They weren’t red, didn’t look yellow or drunk or stupid. Instead they were steady and looked inside her and saw things that she wasn’t sure she wanted him to see. Or at least that’s how she felt, standing in the sun, sweating as he gazed at her.

  “I saw you in the park.” He had a way of talking in clipped words so that there could never be an argument about anything he said, and he gestured the way many Indians did when they talked, his arms and hands flowing with the words, making things almost visible so that the words seemed to come to life. “I saw you in the plaza when you saw me but didn’t call and went into the eating place. You watched me through the window while you ate.”

  She started. “I didn’t think you saw me. I mean …”

  “That night I got some wine from Corky, and me and two other fellas we sat down by a little water, and we got drunk and sang, all down by the creek between town and the pueblo.” His eyes perked, took on a half-sideways, wizened look. “Maybe so if you’d talked to me in the park, I wouldn’t have gone down by the creek and gotten drunk on the cheap wine with the fellas.”

  “Oh, no.” Janet shook her head. “I’m not going for that. It’s not my fault you got wine and got drunk—not at all.”

  He smiled. Suddenly a quick jerk of his lips—out and back. “Come. Let’s walk.”

  Before she could answer, he started off down the road, not toward town but away, and without knowing for certain why she was doing it, Janet opened the gate on the courtyard and followed him. It was hot now, very hot, and his step-shuffle kicked up small puffs of dust with each step, and she caught herself staring down at them as she followed him.

  He walked that way for nearly a quarter of a mile without speaking to her, and Janet was on the edge of getting angry when he stopped and turned so fast she nearly bumped into him.

  “You ever been to the pueblo?” He pointed with a graceful wave on
down the road where the pueblo lay, about two miles out of town. “You ever see where Indi’n live?”

  She shook her head. “Well, once. I almost forgot. When we first came to Tres Pinos, Mother and I drove out there to take some pictures, but there was some kind of dance or celebration going on and we couldn’t get in because … because we’re white. Anglo.”

  “No.” He shook his head. “Not because you’re Anglo.”

  “Yes …”

  “No! It was because you’re not Indi’n that you couldn’t come in. There’s a big difference.”

  He turned and shuffled off again in the direction of the Indian town, and Janet followed, exasperated. He had the most maddening way of stopping in what seemed like the middle of a discussion, stopping when he’d finished talking and not waiting to see what she had to say about it.

  “You’re pretty,” he said suddenly over his shoulder without stopping or turning. “You know that?”

  “I … I never really thought about it before.”

  “That’s a lie.”

  “Well—what did you expect me to say? That’s kind of a strange thing to say, isn’t it? Right out of the blue like that.”

  “Don’t lie. You know you’re pretty, say it. You never have to lie.”

  “All right! I’m pretty—I guess. There, are you satisfied?”

  “Not for me,” he said, still over his shoulder while he walked. “For you. You got pretty hair. Long, straight.”

  When he didn’t say anything further, Janet thought he expected an answer, and she fairly yelled at him.

  “I know I’ve got pretty hair. I comb it every morning. Yes, it’s pretty hair.”

  “Pretty chin, too.”

  “I know I’ve got a pretty chin.…”

  “No. Too square. Don’t lie. Think. Your chin isn’t pretty, just your hair.”

  She wasn’t sure, but she thought she might have heard a faint chuckle before he resumed silence and the quick little steps that took them on out of Tres Pinos on a narrow road lined with tall cottonwoods dropping fluff and coolness on them as they moved. When it seemed to Janet that she couldn’t go much farther, he stopped.

  “See? Indi’n house, where I live.”

  Janet pulled up and looked, and sure enough, they were at the entrance of the pueblo. The two miles had taken practically no time to cover, and she wasn’t even breathing hard—though she was perspiring heavily.

  The pueblo was beautiful, ancient and beautiful sitting in the hot sun. It was made all of adobe construction, and the color was a subtle beige-red earth tone that was so natural and fine that it nearly took Janet’s breath away to see it. It was a series of small apartments, stacked three high, arranged in a U-shape with a wall across the open end of the U, all of adobe bricks and hand-plastered with adobe mud so that it almost looked sculpted, with no straight lines but gentle curves on every corner and around every door and window. In the courtyard formed by the closed-in U there were several large domed objects made of adobe with small openings in the side. These, she knew, were earthen ovens for baking bread—once she’d eaten some of the bread with her mother at a sale the Indian women had in town—but they looked more like giant beehives made of rich earth.

  “It’s a good place.” Billy’s voice was straight and level, smooth and low, and she turned and saw that he was smiling as he looked at the pueblo. “It’s a good place.”

  She nodded. “It’s beautiful—old and beautiful.” She had read once that pueblos were the oldest continually lived-in structures in North America; some of them had been inhabited for thirteen hundred consecutive years—Indians living all those years in the same buildings, adding apartments as needed wherever the population expanded past the normal number of a thousand or so.

  “It’s a fine place to live,” she agreed. “A great place …”

  He shrugged suddenly, and she could sense the mood change in him, as though he’d been caught doing something private and didn’t want her to see it.

  “You got a dollar?” He looked at her. “I’m hurtin’ for some wine.”

  This time she shook her head. “No. No dollar. Not even at home.”

  “So. Maybe so you go home to your home, and I’ll go into Indi’n home if you don’t got a dollar.” His voice had reverted to the chopped sound. “Maybe so you better leave now.”

  And he turned and went into the pueblo and left her standing, not really believing that he’d done it to her, not wanting to believe it, until it was obvious that he wasn’t coming back out of the beautiful earthen structure and that he’d really just left her standing alone two miles out of Tres Pinos on a dirt road and wasn’t going to invite her into the pueblo.

  Then she swore once, viciously, using a word she’d heard Julio use one night when he’d screamed at the police as they drove by, and then she began the long walk back to her house and a cool bath to slow her anger.

  6

  It was the next morning, early, and Janet was just coming out of sleep with that warm, loose feeling. She hadn’t had the dream and was lazily wondering how to spend the day, because it was only one more week until school started and she didn’t want to waste the week.

  There was sun outside, and warm morning smells in the house, and she was wrapping her mind around the idea of breakfast when her mother knocked gently and came into her room.

  She was wearing her old tie-around housecoat and had one hand behind her back. She sat on the foot of the bed and looked at Janet.

  “Is there some part of your life you’d like to tell me about, Janet?” Her voice was light, but her eyes were serious. “Something you think I might want to know?”

  Janet sat up, stretched, yawned. “No. I can’t think of anything. Why?”

  “Well, no real reason. I mean I don’t want you to think I’m prying. But when I went out for the goat milk”—they had fresh goat milk delivered every morning—“I found this next to our gate.” She brought her hand from behind her back and placed an object on the bed next to Janet.

  Out of the corner of her eye Janet caught the movement of hair and grayness, and she yelped and jumped. “What’s that?”

  Her mother laughed. “Don’t worry, it’s not alive. It’s a kachina.…” She picked it off the bed where it had dropped and handed it to her daughter.

  “A kachina?” Janet took the object and found it to be a doll, made of wood and clay with what looked like real black hair but was probably horsehair. It was a figure of an Indian dancing, crude but powerfully done, dressed in small bits of cloth and wearing real tiny leather moccasins. “A kachina?”

  Her mother nodded. “A doll used in instructing Indian children in the ways of the god messengers. I read up on them before we moved to Tres Pinos. This is a rain messenger, or a doll showing how a man would costume himself to dance as a rain messenger to the gods asking for water for the corn crop.”

  “But …”

  “People used to think the dolls were the god messengers, but they’re just tiny figures to teach the Indian children.” Her mother recited as though out of a textbook. “At last count there were over three hundred different kachinas, with a doll for each one, each carrying a different message to the gods.”

  “But why is there one on our gate?” Janet finally got through.

  “Exactly. I was going to ask you that question.”

  “Me? But I can’t think of anybody who would …” She let it fall off when she remembered Billy’s leaving her at the gate of the pueblo. “Unless it’s Billy—maybe he left it.”

  “Billy? Who’s Billy—oh, that old drunken Indian?”

  “Mother.”

  “Well. How about old alcoholic Indian—do you like that better?” Her eyebrows lifted. “And while we’re discussing it, you might tell me how it is that you’ve gotten involved with him?”

  “It’s nothing. There’s just something about him, something about his shoulders or eyes or something. I don’t really know.” Janet studied the kachina, turned it over in her hands
. The carving had been colored with earthen dyes and had the same naturally rich look with which the pueblo had shone when she’d seen it in the hot light with Billy before he’d left her at the gate.

  On the leather breechclout there were painted a series of blue and white fluffy things she took to be clouds, and lightning bolts cut through the clouds.

  “Well, it’s a nice gift, to be sure.” Her mother held her hand out and took it and restudied it. “It really is.” She left Janet’s room and put the small figure on the dresser on the way out. “Odd thing to find on the gate when you go out for goat milk.…”

  Janet hurried to finish dressing. When she’d climbed into jeans and a tank top and tennis shoes, she stopped for a quick glass of juice and a piece of toast and then went outside, where the sun was already heating the dust in the road. But look as she might, she couldn’t see Billy anywhere in the vicinity.

  She hadn’t really expected to find him, wasn’t truly sure Billy had left the kachina—it might even have been Julio. He’d come to the gate, was hanging around more; maybe he’d left the doll for her. It would be strange, but not impossible.

  Still, there was something about it all that made her think of Billy, and when she heard the chink-chink of her mother starting to sculpt stone, she decided to find Billy and tell him thanks for the doll. Her mother would be at it all day anyway—she was getting more and more into her work and away from everything else. Not that it was wrong, Janet thought, going through the gate and into the street, but it was oddly like living alone when you were with somebody like that. Twice she’d gone into the low room her mother used for a studio and talked to her while she was sculpting and was fairly certain her mother hadn’t heard a word—she’d just nodded, worked and nodded and ignored her. But in a nice way. And she wasn’t drinking or going to parties so much anymore either; nor was she having parties at home or entertaining the phony artists and writers as much as she did when they first came to Tres Pinos. For that Janet was thankful.

  She moved in the direction of town, not sure where to look but feeling it was the right way to go, and thought of her mother while she walked. A dog followed her, circled shyly when she turned and called to it, stayed an acceptable street distance from her but kept following, and Janet wondered if it was a stray and if she should keep it.