Redeye (20 page)

I tried to help with cleanup, but Libby sent me back to the fence. “Enjoy Andrew for a little while,” she said. “He's a very handsome young man.”

Andrew and I talked about our families. I told him about Mother and Father and Aunt Sallie, and the troubles we had in Raleigh, and how Aunt Sallie married a legislator and has provided us with guidance and financial support. It struck me that this was discomforting for him—anything about money or North Carolina, I couldn't tell which—so I determined not to mention anything financial again. I imagined it had something to do with social class, but I dared not guess, especially aloud.

“Tell me about your family,” I said.

“Oh, my father is an explorer, and, I suppose, an anthropologist of sorts.”

“We studied anthropology at college.”

“Oh, really? What college was that?”

“Berryhill Woman's College. My Aunt Sallie sent me and two of my cousins, and she's planning to send my little sister when she's old enough.”

“And this was in North Carolina?”

“Oh, yes. We have colleges there.”

He laughed. A big laugh. “Oh, I didn't mean that.”

“Where has your father explored?” I asked him.

“The Amazon for the most part. He's now writing a book about riverbank civilization, and I'm hoping he will agree to my staying here for a while so that I might write about Mesa Largo and her holdings.” He looked out across the river to the mesa. “It's a truly magnificent place.”

“How long might you stay if he grants permission?” I didn't want to be too forward, but I also knew I should not be . . . reticent.

“I suppose six months or more, but I'm afraid this is perhaps not his idea of how I am to spend my time abroad.”

“I'd like to go up into the mesa myself sometime,” I said.

His tenor and manner began to change. He became very excited and told me things, enthralling little details about how the bottoms of the bowls are round, so that for them to be carried on the heads of the women a ring of yucca leaves had to be bound together and placed on the head and then the bowl sat on that so it wouldn't slide off. What excited Andrew so much is that you can still see perspiration stains on those rings of yucca leaves, as if they were worn only a few days ago. And
soot
on the bottom of several bowls he found. You can scrape it off just like it had been burned on there
yesterday
, leaving you with this feeling of immediacy,
of almost being there, he said. As if you could be one of them for a while.

I noticed that supper was long over and that people were going home. I was embarrassed that I had sat so long in the same place, but I was far less embarrassed than I was gratified by the conversation, and before we parted, he asked me if he might call upon Uncle P.J. to ask for permission to
visit
me.

“Stop by anytime,” I said, and he said oh, no, he must have a specific time. But I hesitated to establish a specific time and he hesitated to pressure me, so for the time being there is indefinity. His propriety is an English custom. They are so proper, but Andrew Collier's propriety grants him such a romantic air!

Late that night, I finally went to sleep with visions of the reddening sky behind Mesa Largo and Andrew Collier's blue eyes, proper posture, and charming smile.

After supper we all started in unloading the wagons into the museum. Mr. Merriwether had cleaned up the pottery before loading it and it looked good—to be so old. Besides pottery there was stone axeheads, arrowheads, spearheads, different kinds of scrapers, awls, beads strung together, some falling apart when you picked them up, arrows, yucca sandals, bundles and strips of yucca leaves, two snowshoes, pieces of cloth, feathers, and some
very nice feather cloth, which Andrew, the English fellow, got real excited about. He knew things about some of this stuff that even Mr. Merriwether didn't know—what it might be used for and all that. He also got Mr. Merriwether to use a trowel instead of a shovel—once they find something and need to dig around it, careful. He's real interested in it all. Looks to me like he's also real interested in Star. While him and her was helping us unload, they kept making sugar eyes at each other.

Mr. Merriwether had built a box for the mummy and she was on the bottom of one of the wagons. Everybody crowded around to look at her.

“Looks like a man,” said Star.

“
Sí
,” said Juanita, “because . . . es bery ugly.”

“What's her name?” somebody asked.

“Rusty,” said Zack.

“I think perhaps not,” said Andrew. “She needs something more . . . more civil, more civilized.”

“Cleopatra,” said Mr. Blankenship. “Cleopatra.”

So we got Cleopatra out and into the museum and up onto a table that was against the back wall. It was me, and Mr. Blankenship, Mr. Copeland, and one of the Mexicans took her in.

When we got her settled in up on the table Mr. Blankenship says, “P.J., you thinking what I'm thinking?”

“I don't know, Billy.”

“We don't need to display any relics. But we definitely do need to display Cleopatra.”

“For what?”

“Tourists. To get the tourists in.”

“You'd better talk to Merriwether about this tourist thing.”

Zack came in, stood there a minute, looking at Cleopatra.

“What do you think, Zack?” said Mr. Blankenship. “You think she's a Mormon?”

“Not now she ain't.”

“It's too bad she can't talk,” said Mr. Copeland.

It was quiet like they was thinking.

“The Mescadey think if you get struck by lightning after you're dead it'll bring you back to life,” said Zack. “I got a idea. I'm surprised you ain't thought of it, Billy. You got so many ideas.”

. . . and throughout the latter part of the century, there existed in the expanding, progressive little town of Mumford Rock, Colorado, that spirit of experimentation that would characterize all of America in those years. The steam engine, the cotton gin, the telephone, and other advancements representing a true philanthropic spirit, came at such a pace that the American mind could scarcely . . .

“What kind of idea?”

“Well, the Cheekwood brothers has got that electricity generator across town and they've been doing some experiments. Let's get a electric wire and hook her up and shock her,” said Zack.
“See if she comes back to life. I bet something like that ain't ever been tried. Ask her anything you want to.”

“That's ridiculous,” said Mr. Copeland.

“No, it's not,” said Mr. Blankenship. “You could use sign language.”

“Not ridiculous
that
way. I mean ridiculous to think you can bring her back to life.”

“I bet it
ain't
been tried,” said Mr. Blankenship. “Lightning kills you if you're alive. Maybe it works the opposite, too. Can you arrange it?” he asked Zack.

“Well, they got that generator,” said Zack. “All we need do is take her in there and get them to hook her up.”

“That's crazy,” said Mr. Copeland.

“They said Newton was crazy,” said Mr. Blankenship.

“Newton who?” said Mr. Copeland.

“Newton. Sir
Isaac
Newton.”

“Oh yeah, the one discovered electricity.”

“That ain't . . . Newton didn't discover electricity.”

“What'd he discover then?”

“He discovered
gravity
.”

“You planning to drop her off a building or something?”

“No. No. I said, ‘They said Newton was crazy.' That's all I said.”

“I'm saying ‘Stay on the subject.'”

“You're saying you didn't know who the hell Sir Isaac Newton was,” said Mr. Blankenship, “and I'm saying you ought to know
your American history.”

“I think we ought to ask Merriwether,” said Mr. Copeland.

———

“Where do you think we ought to put the wire?” asked Mr. Blankenship. We was all crowded around the mummy in the Cheekwood brothers' shop, next morning. The electricity engine was running in a little built-on room to the shop and making a lot of noise so that we all had to talk real loud. The Cheekwood brothers are named Lucius and Septer and they was standing more or less behind Mr. Blankenship, Mr. Copeland, Zack, and me. They work for the Bland Botsford Mines and that's who got the electricity into Mumford Rock. They're rich because they found silver in the Dear Vein after everybody thought it was finished.

“What?” said Zack to Mr. Blankenship. The noise was pretty loud.

“I said where do you think we ought to put the
wire
?”

. . . for when man is called to his ultimate destiny, the bells of time beckon him . . .