Mary and the camp-chair sank down together for two inches. Then the
chair squeaked and stopped giving in: it stayed where it was in space,
poised above the throng of Santo Domingo Indians and dusty crabby
tourists like a throne, disregarded on the pueblo roof.
“Well,” she continued, when she was sure the chair had come to rest, “I
do know that I’m at my wits’ ends. I’m desperate.” Casually, she drew a
handkerchief out of her raffia bag and folded it over her nose, against
the dust.
Bob answered, “You wait until you’ve talked to Lucy Parker. Don’t give
up hope at this stage. There’s such good material in the boy; you
mustn’t give up hope.” He felt that he hadn’t said quite enough, but he
was tired. Mary was exactly like a sack when she was in a crowd, he
thought a little furtively: limp and useless. Dragging Mary and a
camp-chair was very fatiguing. His eyes hurt in the sun but he fought
against the impulse to put on the sun-glasses in his vest pocket. Mary
looked so odd in hers.
From the plaza beneath there came a confused roaring: a mixture of
singing and soft-beating drums where the Indians were dancing to the
music of the chorus, heavily overlaid and swamped by a loud conversation
going on between people squatting before the house. Bob craned his neck
to see over the heads of the Indians who blocked the view. He was trying
to find Teddy.
“It’s Blake’s fault,” said Mary, understanding him. “He’s always running
off like that: this time he’s taken Teddy with him. It’s very rude of
him. I must speak to him again.” She readjusted the handkerchief and
settled the glasses on her nose. “This dust. I think he’s a schizoid
personality, don’t you? I spoke to Brill about him. If I sell that
Patterson property perhaps I might have him analyzed. But he seems so
prejudiced against it, and I don’t want to force the child. What do you
think?”
“Brill? Analysis is a wonderful thing. Yes, that might help.” He broke
off and waved violently. “There’s Lucy now. Lucy! Confound these drums.
There, she’s coming over.” He settled back in relief. He was never at
his best with a surrounding audience of less than three or four. He
loved people and more people; the more the better. There was no limit to
his capacity for company; if he should ever have to live completely
alone he would go mad. The frantic boredom that had possessed him with
Mary grew more peaceful; slowly and completely died as he watched Lucy
pushing a way toward the ladder that leant against their roof. She was
followed by her daughter Phyllis and her daughter Phyllis’ friend Janie
Peabody. Good! Soon there would be activity and noise on the roof around
him, and other people would look up to the chattering crowd and say to
each other, “That’s Bob Stuart.”
The three women climbed the ladder carefully, with upheld skirts and
cautious feeling of the toes.
“Ah-h-h, Lucy,” said Bob lovingly, lending a hand at the last rung.
“Phyllis. Miss Peabody. Lucy darling, we were just talking about you.
You are to tell Mrs. Lennard everything you know about the California
school. She wants to find a school for Blake—you know, Blake.”
“My school?” Lucy sat down cross-legged on the roof and lit a cigarette.
“Certainly. Tell me if you want it and I’ll write you a letter tonight.
I should think it would be just the thing for you. Phyllis was such a
problem before I sent her there. They always are difficult at a certain
age, don’t you think?” She turned and flicked an ash at Phyllis, who
ignored her by chatting with Janie.
The singing fell to an abrupt end and in the silence shuffling feet were
heard. Over an array of backs, fidgeting sweaty backs, they saw green
branches jogging, being carried out of the plaza. A fluttering wisp of
red shirt moved in the same direction, seen in little jerks as it passed
between two fat ladies in khaki hats.
“Oh,” cried Mary, “it’s over, isn’t it? I haven’t really seen anything
of it.”
“No, no,” Bob said soothingly. “They start again in a minute. What was
all that at your school about psychoanalysis, Lucy? Tell her about it.”
“Won’t she be bored? I always forget the other people may want to watch
the dance. It seems impossible that anyone here could be seeing it for
the first time. How many times have we seen it, Bob?”
“Oh, I couldn’t say. It’s nothing to what it used to be. I remember a
dance at Jemez that I stumbled on by sheer accident. It was in the old
days when I was collecting. I was taking a trip to San Ysidro to get a
blanket—you could still pick up good things in those days. I was
driving with poor old Gertrude and we suddenly turned into the village
and there it was. Very shocking.”
Lucy leaned forward and ground out her cigarette against a stone. The
sun was paling as if the air had grown suddenly thick. Behind a high
yellow sandy cone back of the town, a black cloud peeped.
“Tell us about it,” said Lucy. Down in the plaza the singing swelled
triumphantly.
“I couldn’t really. They were having something ceremonial and private—I
don’t know just what. There were baskets of fruit and plates of food;
the men made obscene gestures with the bananas. Fertility and all that,
I suppose. Gertrude was as white as a sheet; she screamed and drove away
as fast as she could, but they didn’t pay any attention to us. I was
helpless with laughter. You can imagine Gertrude.”
“It’s a wonderful story,” said Lucy. “I should have heard it before.
Gertrude never mentioned it to me, but naturally she wouldn’t. Well,
Mrs. Lennard....”
The singing stopped again.
“Now is it over?”
“No, that’s just the end of the first clan’s turn. There’ll be a lot
more before they call it a day.... It’s a small school; only a hundred
or so, and they have a staff psychoanalyst and all the masters really
make a specialty of _understanding_ the students. Very modern, of
course—you must see the art work. It’s coeducational but not in any
silly communist way. I mean it’s individual. Do you understand what I’m
trying to say?”
“I think so. It’s very interesting to me, because Blake is such a
special case....”
Lucy nodded deeply. “It’s a school for special cases; that’s the real
idea that’s behind it all. The woman who founded it is wonderful. I’ll
give you a letter for her. Oh, look, there’s Teddy. Teddy!” She
scrambled up and stood on tiptoe, waving. “Of course he’ll never be able
to hear me with all this noise.” The singers were chanting in a high
falsetto.
“He’s too busy with the courier, mother,” said Phyllis. “He can’t hear
you over all those people. Well, my dear, he was quite angry with me.
Have you ever seen him really angry?”
“Never,” said Janie.
“I was almost frightened,” said Phyllis. “Of course I don’t really care
what he thinks of me, but it was unpleasant for a few minutes. Tell me
what you heard about him in New York.”
“Oh, it wasn’t anything definite. They talk so in New York, I think.
They always say the same thing. I just heard that he gives terribly
amusing parties, my dear, with all of that crowd. And no one is quite
sure about him because he’s seen with people like that all the time: of
course no one thinks anything of it any more, and I do think that if a
person is amusing I don’t think a person’s private life ought to have
anything to do with it, but what I heard was.”
“This atmosphere is simply marvelous for young people,” Lucy was telling
Mary. “The combination of healthy outdoor life and the peculiar feeling
one gets out here of history—the Spaniards, and the Western pioneers,
and all that. And the wonderful Indian culture. They imbibe something.
Everybody here is so unusually appreciative, haven’t you found it so?”
“The only flaw is that we’re getting to be so famous,” Bob added. “It’s
ruining the place. I wish the authorities would pass a law prohibiting
all these buses and trippers and outsiders. Nothing kills a place as
much as the outsiders.”
“I feel the same way,” said Lucy. “I’m afraid I’m really snobbish about
all those visitors. What can they get out of it?”
Jane was saying, “But I’m just going to hold out with what I have until
I get back East. You can’t tell what people are going to be wearing this
fall until you look around. It doesn’t matter so much here, but....”
“Do you see Blake anywhere, Bob?” said Mary.
“Don’t worry, he’ll turn up at the car. He doesn’t seem to be with
Madden just now.”
The crowd was growing sparse. Over the hill beyond the houses cars were
leaving in streams, each one silhouetted against the green sky before it
crossed the mound and disappeared. As the day faded the land grew wider,
more desolate. Under the threatening rain-heavy sky it looked parched
and ferocious. Irritated squawks of automobile horns mingled with the
thrumming singing voices in the plaza.
Lucy looked down at the people who were hurrying to the cars. “There’s
Isobel. How very badly she dresses. Have you heard what they’re saying
about her engagement? Gwen was telling me....”
“Mother says I can go in August if I insist,” said Phyllis. “I’m not
sure I want to go at all: it’s a very dull season, I believe.”
“Oh, you _lucky_.”
Now there were such a few people left that Blake was in sight, leaning
against a ladder at the far corner of the plaza and gazing ahead of him
in a bemused way. The dancers were filing out, going in a listless
straggling line to the kiva beyond a row of irregularly outlined houses
on the other side. The sun was setting behind the clouds and in a few
minutes the prayer for rain would be answered. A fresh damp wind was
blowing down upon the village.
Green branches and dry rattles carried by the koshare. They walked
slowly, now that their work was done, towards the kiva. Beyond the
houses they came into sight again, climbing the hard white steps to the
roof, pausing against that green sky as they started down the ladder
into the round little house. Red shirts and blue shirts followed with
the drums, and a low singing went with them.
“But as Gwen says,” Lucy finished, “there are times when Isobel is so
vague that God knows what really did happen. _She’ll_ never tell the
real story.”
Mary stood up and put her glasses back into her bag.
“I’ll never forget it,” she said. “A most beautiful picture. Absolutely
inspiring.”