When the wagons were unloaded, the girls politely excused themselves, but their neighbors ignored them. The twins walked in front and Sister and Indigo with the baby on her back followed. No one spoke. Just then they heard a man’s voice call out behind them: the wantonness and drunkenness of them and others had angered God so much he sent this flood!
They turned and suddenly were face-to-face with a short fat Chemehuevi gentleman in a black preacher’s suit and white shirt. The exertion of hurrying after them left him breathless and sweaty across his brow. While he mopped at his forehead and caught his breath he glared at them; they were not really Chemehuevis but Lagunas and didn’t belong there. They were damned, contaminated — a risk to all others.
The twins took off running and the girls followed; even with the baby on her back Sister was a strong runner; Indigo ran beside her. The preacher got winded and when he stopped, so did his congregation.
When they got back to the house, they were cheered to find the yard full of visitors camped for the night. The guests kept their word and spread news of the beer makers up and down the river. The new batch of beer was barely old enough to drink but they filled the gourds for the guests to sample. The guests shared the venison jerky and parched corn they’d brought along.
After the baby and the pets were put to bed, Indigo sat outside with the girls to listen around the campfire to the news the visitors brought. The backwaters from the dam were going to make a giant lake and everything, even this land here, would be flooded. No! other guests disagreed; the water would not come this far, but the Chemehuevi reservation superintendent was going to send the flooded-out families to live on the reservation at Parker. The night was clear and still but cool enough that everyone wrapped themselves in blankets and shawls around the fire.
Indigo didn’t like the smell or taste of the new beer, but Sister and the twins drank along with their guests wholeheartedly; Indigo liked to listen. As the midnight stars rose and fell, they talked and laughed about the old days before the aliens came with the fevers and killed so many. Some who drank too much beer started to cry for loved ones lost.
Indigo didn’t like to hear the crying and arguing that seemed to follow the beer; she was tired and about to excuse herself to go to bed because she knew the monkey and parrot woke early and wanted to go browsing for breakfast. But Vedna brought out her Bible, so Indigo stayed up.
Vedna closed her eyes and turned the Bible around and around in her hands, then opened it with one finger and looked to see what passage her finger touched.
“And this house which Solomon built for the Lord was in length sixty cubits and in width twenty cubits and in height thirty cubits,” she read, then laughed out loud, and Maytha joined her. Soon the visitors joined, and they laughed because the twins barely kept a roof over their own heads, and the Bible asked them to build the Lord a big house. One of the visitors pointed out the last house built for the Lord there was up to its steeple in water, and they laughed some more.
Sister Salt waited for the laughter to pass, then she told them “a house” means a circle of stones, because spirits don’t need solid walls or roofs; but it must have two hearths, not one, to be the Lord’s house. The visitors all looked at her, but no one joked because Sister was serious. The circle of stones must be made at the same place as before on the riverbank below the big sandhill near Needles.
“Too bad for the Lord,” Maytha said. “We can’t go to Needles now. If we leave for even one night, the flooded people will call our place abandoned and move in.”
The conductor commented it was early for so much snow in Flagstaff. The tall pines were blanketed and Hattie shivered though the train compartment was warm. How pure and quiet the snow was, how inviting the forests and the great mountain peaks above the town. The conductor asked if Flagstaff was her stop, and seemed surprised to learn her stop was Needles.
Outside the station at Needles, Hattie saw the buggy and sullen young driver but ignored him and hired a porter with a handcart. The townspeople of Needles took notice of her return; though she’d been in Albuquerque more than six weeks, the stationmaster remembered her, and the hotel desk clerk recognized her and even asked if Mr. Palmer was going to join her later. She sensed at once the clerk was prying, and imagined them all — the stationmaster, the clerk, their wives — exchanging rumors and observations of a white woman traveling alone.
How odd it was to think, only weeks before, Edward signed that hotel register, alive and excited by the prospect of seeing the meteor crater. She felt a melancholy creep from her heart over her body. Human life was woefully short and ended so suddenly; she fought back the tears, aware she was the center of attention.
The porter had to make three trips with his handcart from the station to the hotel. The trunks and boxes of supplies with her own luggage filled every corner of the hotel room. As soon as she was alone, she unpacked the carved gemstones Edward gave her from Bath; if she acted at once the gloom might not overtake her. She unwrapped the lemon carnelian carving of the long-neck waterbird with her chick bright with yellow translucence; the birds appeared almost alive. Carefully she set the bright orange carnelian of Minerva and her snake next to the cloudy chalcedony of the three cattle under the tree. One look at the carvings and Hattie felt the immediate joy their beauty and perfection gave off.
Despite the snow on the tips of the distant mountain peaks, the weather in Needles was mild and dry. After dinner in the hotel dining room she slipped on a light coat for a walk around the small commercial district next to the train station and hotel. She hoped to find a different livery service to take her to Road’s End the next day, but she soon realized in a town that small, she would not find another. She resolved to ask the owner to drive her himself even if she had to pay extra.
She had just crossed the street before the train station when she heard loud laughter and voices; at the end of the dark alley she saw a small fire with four or five figures warming themselves. The instant she heard the voices clearly she knew they were Indians, all women, she thought, by the tones of voice. One started singing and the others joined, and Hattie realized the women were drunk. The twilight was fading to darkness, but she lingered to watch them from a safe distance; how terrible it was to see — had Indigo and her sister lived like this with their mother?
The owner of the livery service charged her extra and sent his hired man to drive her; she recalled then the sullen driver was his son. The hired man stole glances at her and she wondered if the sullen driver had talked about her and the visit to the girls. But she was so happy to be on her way to see Indigo, she scarcely noticed the man.
They reached Road’s End well before dark. Hattie did not want to spend another night on the horsehair mattress or see the expression in the trader and his wife’s eyes, so she directed the driver along the river, then up the old floodplain to the twins’ house. As they drew closer, Hattie felt excited but anxious too — what if her nightmare of the empty house came true?
She was never so happy to hear the parrot’s screech as she was at that instant; a moment later out came Indigo with Linnaeus on her hip and the parrot on her shoulder. Hattie began to wave wildly, but the child paused before she waved back. That hesitation made Hattie anxious. She knew she was an intruder here, but she only planned to drop off the blankets and supplies, perhaps spend a night or two, then return to Needles on the mail wagon.
She wasn’t able to give Indigo a proper hug because of the monkey and parrot but she kissed her forehead and smoothed her hair. She was aware she was being watched and looked up to see the sister with the baby. Indigo’s sister didn’t trust her; that was apparent from the expression on her face.
Once they carried indoors all the parcels and bundles from the wagon, the one-room house was crowded; the tubs of new beer needed the warmth of the house now that the nights were cold. Hattie felt a bit more relaxed as the twins joked about having their own trading post now as they stacked the canned goods and sacks of sugar and flour, onions and potatoes along the walls.
Vedna teased Hattie about forgetting the sack of barley they needed for beer, and they all laughed except Sister. Indigo was delighted to find sacks of millet and sunflower seeds for the parrot, and a big bag of special biscuits for Linnaeus. Indigo unpacked the two new lamps, filled them with oil, and lit them before it was even dark.
Sister sat on her bedroll and nursed the baby while Maytha and Vedna fried up the onions and potatoes Hattie brought with the jackrabbit they found snared that morning.
Hattie waited to tell Indigo about Edward until they’d finished eating and the older girls went outside to smoke. Indigo was bedding Linnaeus and didn’t react to the news but continued to arrange the parrot’s cage. Hattie was embarrassed by the sound of her voice in the little room as she repeated the news of Edward’s death. Indigo looked down and shrugged her shoulders before she looked at Hattie.
“Are you sorry?” Indigo asked.
The question took Hattie by surprise, but she recovered quickly. Yes, she was sorry because Edward once meant a great deal to her. Indigo looked into her eyes as she spoke, and did not blink; she had not thought about Edward since they said good-bye at the train station. The world Edward lived in seemed distant from the world of Road’s End. Indigo recalled the day he gave her Linnaeus and how he showed pictures of parrot jungles and orchid flowers. Except for the big glassy eye of his camera, Indigo thought he wasn’t a bad man.
“Poor thing. I guess he was old,” Indigo said.
Hattie nodded and fought back tears. She was shocked at the awkwardness between them in a matter of only six weeks. What a fool she was! Indigo returned to the life and sister she had before she was taken away to boarding school. Hattie realized, oddly enough, she was the one who no longer had a life to return to. Although they would welcome her, she could not return to her parents’ house.
Hattie looked very tired so Indigo showed her how to make her bed with three of the new blankets — two on the bottom, roll yourself up in the top blanket. When Hattie took her nightgown from the train case, the book of Chinese monkey stories was under it. She held up the book for Indigo to see, and her face lit up with anticipation. She scooted close to Hattie on the blankets and looked down at the page. Now at last she and the child resumed their former ease with each other as she began to read aloud.
Awhile later, Hattie looked over and saw that Indigo was asleep; the girls were sitting near the doorway listening. The twins were curious to know more about the adventures of Monkey and his companions, but Sister Salt said nothing.
The next day Indigo took Hattie along on her morning excursion with the monkey and parrot along the water’s edge. Hattie was saddened at the sight of church steeple rising out of the water. Didn’t anyone ever tell the people here about the lake made by the dam? Indigo shrugged; they told the people the water wouldn’t come that high.
Indigo showed Hattie the sprouts from gladiolus corms; the corms sent up long green blades, but they wouldn’t bloom until after Christmas, when the days got longer.
The beans and black-eyed peas in the girls’ garden looked promising, but even with the amaranth and greens the garden seemed meager. Hattie thought some chickens and goats might be good for the girls, too, or one of those pigs her father raised. She did not want to antagonize Indigo’s sister on her first visit, so she made it short. The following morning Indigo and the twins walked with Hattie to the trading post, where the mail wagon took on passengers or freight for Needles. The mail wagon driver recognized the twins and was friendly enough as he took Hattie’s valise and helped her up into the wagon. The store man and his wife brought out the sacks of mail. They stared past Hattie as if she were invisible, even after she murmured hello to them. The twins whispered to each other and laughed out loud; the storekeeper and his wife stiffened their backs and glared as Indigo started laughing too. The driver clucked to the horses and the wagon creaked, and the harness jingled as they pulled away from Road’s End. Hattie turned on the seat and waved at the girls, who waved back until the wagon went over the hill.
The mail wagon driver was a talkative man who didn’t seem to mind Hattie’s reluctant replies. He asked if she was a missionary of some sort and if she planned to settle around there. He added non-Indians weren’t allowed to reside on the reservations without government permits, and only merchants, missionaries, and schoolteachers could obtain them.
To change the subject Hattie asked about farmland for sale in the area; the driver launched into a long account of locations and prices and availability of irrigation water or wells. If she didn’t mind being around Indians, the cheapest way to go was to lease Indian land from the Indian Bureau. Forty-year leases were cheaper than the ninety-nine-year leases and just as good, with options to renew for another term.
By the next day, the hotel clerk knew about her interest in land, and so did the bank manager when Hattie went to arrange another transfer of funds. The banker had a list of real estate, mostly farmland for sale and for lease, which he would be delighted to show at her convenience. By the end of the week Hattie had received two dinner invitations — from the banker’s wife and the minister’s wife. But before she could respond to the invitations, unsettling news came in a note from the bank. Her bank in New York indicated the amount of the cash transfer she’d requested exceeded the balance in the account.
“But that can’t be!” she said aloud, and began to fumble with the valise that held the account book.