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.