Again evening had overtaken Santa Fé before anything happened. Every
morning Blake woke with a furious desire to get out of the house and
down to town, so that he would not miss anything. He never knew what it
was that he expected, and day after day developed into the same
uneventful solar round. Nevertheless every morning brought with it a
tense expectation, a silent waiting.
Tonight he wondered fretfully why the fever was not allayed. It had been
a full day, exciting and tiring. The whole town was tired. The drums
were still beating in his ears: when he closed his eyes he tried to see
the rows of stamping people and the waving branches: but instead he kept
thinking of the crowds that filled the village _plaza_; old ladies in
felt hats sitting on the roofs, their fat legs dangling over, their fat
hands waving to other old ladies on the opposite roofs....
“Missing so much and so much,” he murmured, and felt a little revenged.
And the keen young people so greatly to be envied, who knew
everything—hatless, collar-less, sparsely bearded young men with folded
arms and languid looks; wispy, eager young women; officious, anxious,
sweating couriers in jangling silver. And the broad khaki backs of the
motor tourists. Around and between them the frantic, shocking, stunning
leaps of the ghost-men appearing through the gaps. The drumming in his
ears; he was shaken and irritated and cheated: he wanted to cry.
“But our lot crawls between dry ribs to keep its metaphysics warm.” Did
that have anything to do with it? “Always the appropriate thing.” In a
gust of fury he kicked a pebble far up the pavement, spinning and
skipping.
The waiting was not satisfied. Perhaps he was not, after all, the only
one to feel that way. The plaza, dark in the centre but lighted around
the sidewalk, was full of people looking for something. It was a small
plaza, insufficient for so many prowling people, walking round and
round.
In the shadows of the north side he found Madden, lounging on a bench
and more or less waiting for him.
“We’ll have to go to the cafe,” he said, as Blake came up. “Everything
else is jammed. I’m not hungry, are you?”
“No. I ate dust all day. Did you smell that jerked meat?”
“Oh, that. You’ll get used to that.”
They crossed the plot of grass and elbowed through the procession on the
walk. The cafe was crowded too. Only half disappointed, they loitered at
the door, peering in at the restaurant until they drew a hail from
Harvey and Gin, who had a booth.
“Come on over,” Harvey said. “Plenty of room.” Gin gathered her skirts
and edged to the wall invitingly. Blake glowered at her, representative
as she was of the whole jostling day.
“I saw you there,” she told him, “looking very fierce. I’m sorry. You
might have pitied me a little, and you didn’t. I know you didn’t: I see
it in your eye.” She smiled teasingly and he felt a little mollified.
Harvey moved his knife and fork to make room for Blue Plate Number
Three, and said, “What’re you kids doing tonight? We’re looking for
excitement. Come along? I’ve got the car.”
Teddy suggested the movies. Blake demurred; he tried to explain that he
had wasted far too many of his evenings in the movies, but the others
didn’t understand. He couldn’t tell them that the evenings would be rare
and strange and historical if they could only manage them properly.
Defeated, he followed them to the theatre and watched an ancient
railroad cinema.
Oddly enough, it was Harvey who was tainted by his discontent. As they
straggled into the street afterwards he said:
“It’s always the same thing. Let’s get out of the old town. Let’s....”
he paused.
“Let’s go for a ride,” Gin said. “There’s nothing else.”
Certainly there was some surcease in going fast and having nothing to
do. Blake sat on the back of the seat, perched on the rolled-up top; the
wind was strong with a little bite to it, and he closed his ears and
tried to listen without seeing. It was almost perfect. The little lurch
his body gave for no apparent reason—that would be a curve in the road.
The roaring in his ears that came and went and came again—that must be
a canyon. The louder the hum of the car, and a slowing-down of wind that
was a hill, and there was a scent the wind that could not be anything
but pines growing on the mountain side. Now they turned off on a rough
road; he swayed and would have fallen if he had not opened his eyes.
Madden saved him by grabbing his arm; they called to Harvey to go easy.
“We’re trying to find our way,” Gin shouted over her shoulder. “We’re
lost.”
“I know that already. Say, for Christ’s sake....” Madden stopped and
seized the side of the car as a bump almost threw him out. Blake slid
down to the floor with a jerk, and the engine stopped of its own
fatigue.
“Something’s wrong,” said Harvey. “Something certainly is wrong.” He got
out and stooped down in front. “High centre. We’ll have to dig out. I’m
glad I brought the shovel. Where are we anyway?”
No one knew. It was late and getting cold: they huddled down in blankets
and decided to wait for the moon before trying to get out.
“This is better than town, anyway,” Gin said.
Madden cried indignantly, “What do you mean, anyway? This is _great_.
Look at the stars.”
It was very quiet. Closing their eyes, they tried to stop shivering.
Harvey searched in the side-pockets and found a half bottle of corn,
which helped a little. In a sentimental voice, Gin began to sing:
Once in the dear dead days beyond recall When on the world a mist began
to fall....
The others joined in, howling away in a canine ecstasy of grief. They
were silent afterwards, revelling in a misty regret. Then Madden began,
Tu eres Lupita divina,
Como los rayos del sol.
Blake hummed along with him, filling in the gaps in his memory with an
ambiguous gibberish. Harvey contributed,
She’d a dark and roving eye,
And her hair hung down in ringlets,
A NICE girl, a DECENT girl (here his voice cracked)
But one of the rakish kind.
Then they had “Lord Geoffrey Amherst,” and in spite of many protests,
Gin sang doggedly to the end of “The Sweetheart of Sigma Chi.”
To the east there was a pale white glow in the sky, outlining the hills.
Blake saw a glimpse of the moon. He cried out his discovery, and the
heavy white ball lifted into the sky to the accompaniment of four fresh
young voices rising out of the valley, chanting,
“God bless the bastard king of dear old England.”
They stirred themselves and began to dig in the sand. After a while they
freed the car and it seemed to work all right. Harvey backed it out and
retraced his wheel-tracks to the edge of the main road.
“Now where?”
“Anywhere,” said Madden, waving grandly. “Out into the world.” He
hoisted himself up to the back again: Gin followed suit in the front
seat, and the three balancing figures jogged and reeled as Harvey drove
on toward Taos. It was almost as light as day. They passed one other
machine: driving on in the path of the headlight glow they waved and
shrieked until a curve cut it off. Blake drummed with his heels on the
leather cushion in a burst of exhilaration.
They left the main road and followed the way to Frijoles Canyon. The car
went slower, going through rivers with a cautious swoop and turning
corners on all four wheels. Long shadows lay across the silver-splashed
fields. It seemed impossible that all the light could be coming from the
moon, that was now only a little ball swimming in clouds up toward the
centre of the sky. Everything but the car was motionless and asleep.
Houses with blank dead eyes crouched by the road. No dogs ran out to
race with the wheels.
Blake sank back into the corner of the seat. His head dropped: the
shadows blurred and the sound of the engine was more stupefying than
silence. He reached with stiff fingers for a blanket, curled up in it
and fell into a sort of sleep, his elbows braced against shock. In his
dream he was still in the car, riding steadily through the river at
school or across baked yellow plains, arguing with Dr. Miller. Sometimes
he jerked and waked up, glanced worriedly at Gin’s head against the
cushion ahead of him, and closed his eyes again. The night was fading.
The car stopped and he woke up completely. He sat up, blinking, and
stared at Madden, who was kneeling by the ditch and fishing in the water
with a hat.
“What is it?”
“We need water,” Gin explained. Her bare knees were propped up over the
door, and she powdered her nose vigorously. “We couldn’t find anything
to use for it. I hope that’s not your hat?”
“No,” he assured her. “It’s been kicking around in this car for a long
time, I think.”
Making no effort to climb out, he watched Harvey pour what water he
still had after crossing the road into the radiator. Sullen and
efficient, the other two climbed back and sat still. They all looked
drowsily at the sky. The moon had faded from silver to white: down on
the earth the glow had disappeared and there was no colour anywhere in
the rocks. Everything was black or white or grey.
“Like a steel engraving,” said Teddy, “but much more so.”
They were in a jumble of rock, chalky-white rock that was broken off in
great chunks and piled up into mountains. The ditch emptied into a river
that crossed the road farther down and crept off into a ravine of
thick-growing juniper, black in the thin light.
Gin blurted, “It looks awful. I hate being in canyons.”
They agreed not to drive any more. Blake suggested climbing something.
They aimlessly picked out a hill and began to crawl up the side, leaving
the car somewhat askew in the road. It was easy to get half-way up;
there the climb grew steep and difficult. For a little while no one said
anything; they worked in deep silence, holding out their hands to help
each other whenever they could. When they climbed over the last boulder,
they were puffing. They walked to a ledge that faced the east and sat
down to wait for the sun, shivering in the wind.
Gin sighed ponderously, lay down with her arm under her head, and went
to sleep. Harvey curled up next to her with his arm protectingly over
her head. He snored and rubbed his cheek softly against the rock.
“I wonder what time it is,” Teddy said to Blake. “I’ve never felt more
awake.”
They sat in silence for a time that felt like a century. Their legs hung
over the sharp edge of the flat hilltop. Blake kicked softly against the
rock and a fine powder sifted down.
“This is swell,” he said.
“You bet.”
He looked at the cruel edges of the hills and the shadows between them,
sinking deeper and deeper in the clefts, and he thought,
“I have only two months.” He pushed the shadowy hills out of his mind
and thought of the train-ride East, the smell of rooms that had been
closed all summer with school books locked up inside, the first classes
with roll-calls and reading lists in mimeographed sheets. He felt a
little nauseated.
“Mother says I’ve got to go to some school in September,” he said aloud.
Before him were the hills again, and Teddy sitting next to him.
“Oh, well,” said Teddy, “start worrying in September. This is July.”
“That’s only two months. I won’t go, that’s all. I won’t.”
“Well, don’t. Don’t ever do anything you don’t want to do. Look at me.”
“Yes, but you’re different. No family.”
Teddy was silent a minute and then said, “That’s so. It shouldn’t make
any difference, though, if you really know what you want.”
“But I don’t. Does anybody? Do you? I just know what I don’t want. I’ll
blow up if I go back to school.”
“Sure, I know what I want. I want....” he hesitated, chewing on a
pine-needle. “I want time to work in peace, and a chance to see new
places. I guess I want money. That would fix things. Then I could really
do everything I haven’t time for.”
“What sort of places would you like to see? India?”
“Yes, and some of Europe, and North Africa. I’ve always wanted to paint
in Algeria.”
Feeling guilty, Blake said, “Oh, I’ve been there. It’s not so
wonderful.”
“You’ve been there?” said Teddy angrily. “Why, you lucky little fool.”
“But of course I’ve been there. Mother had to go for her health, and of
course....”
Madden, oddly excited, shook his fist at the air. “Of course, of course,
of course. You people who say ‘of course.’”
Blake stared at him, mystified. For a cold moment he thought that
perhaps Madden hated him. Then everything seemed to calm down: Teddy
laughed and spit the pine-needle down between his dangling feet.
“Come with me when I go away, then,” he said, “and see if you can get a
kick out of that.”
“When?” Blake was eager.
“Oh, I don’t know. September’s a good time. Call it September. We’ll
drive somewhere.” He shook his head and laughed again. “I’m getting
nutty. How can I dig myself out of this hole? Damned cesspool.” He
closed his eyes against the black and white panorama and went to sleep.
The sky was getting red. In a minute there would be a sunrise: Blake
tried to concentrate on it. People never saw the sunrise: people ought
to look oftener at sunrises. Even one a month would be better than none
at all. Some day he would change the system and live at night: he would
finish his day with a sunrise and then go to bed immediately.
Like this. Was it going to be red-orange, or gold? The clouds across the
sky, on the other side, were beginning to flush near the sun. Where was
the sun? Everything was waiting for it. Somewhere a few miles farther
east there must be someone looking at it right now. All day there were
sunrises somewhere in the world. A few hours ago there had been one in
Algeria, and none of the people in the hotel there would have seen it.
There would be a few servants coming to work in white robes growing pink
in the red light. But here on this rock in New Mexico one person would
watch it. Blake Lennard Watches Sunrise. He pulled his feet up and lay
down facing east.
Suddenly the sun was there, but the four huddled bodies on the high rock
did not move.