Redeye (21 page)

“Well,” said Zack, “how about up her amos.”

“That's the wrong word,” said Mr. Blankenship. “Me and P.J. learned all that in Denver.”

“I'd say the place would be close to the heart,” said Lucius. “And it's gone be
three
wires. You need to get it under the skin, close to the heart. The heart is where the life will come from. Here, let me get a awl.”

“What?” Mr. Blankenship turned around.

“Let me get a
awl
.”

“What about her brain?” said Mr. Blankenship.

“What about it?” said Lucius.

“Seems to me that's what you'd want to crank up.”

Then Septer hands over a awl. “You boys get something ‘cranked up,'” he said, “and I'll kiss a mule.”

The generator was shaking the whole building. It was the first engine I'd ever knowed about and I was pretty interested in seeing it, but they all seemed more interested in shocking Cleopatra.

They decided on the heart and made a hole in the leathery skin and stuck the wires through and then kind of stood back for Septer to turn the switch. “Everybody ready?” he said. We were all standing there—hadn't had no breakfast really, just some cold tortillas and coffee from the ranch before we left. We left before light.

“Ready as we'll ever be. Let her rip.”

“What?”

“Let her
rip
.”

Septer turned the handle and we all watched. Nothing happened except after about ten seconds smoke started coming out around the wires.

“Turn it off,” Mr. Blankenship hollered.

Septer turned the switch off. We thought.

“I'd say she didn't come back to life,” said Zack.

“I'd say she's on fire,” said Mr. Copeland.

“You got any water in here?” Mr. Blankenship asked the brothers.

“What?”

“Water.
Water
.”

“Bucket. Outside the door.”

Mr. Blankenship went for the bucket. He came back in and we backed out of his way.

She was burning pretty good, though you couldn't see no flame yet. The smoke was picking right up and the wires was still in there. The skin was very dark and leathery. Her breasts were so flat and wrinkled that you couldn't make out but one of her nipples, just a wide dark spot. Smoke kept coming up out of the hole. Mr. Blankenship poured water in it and
POW, POP, POP
, there was suddenly all these sparks and popping and smoke and then fire and we all jumped back and Zack hollered, “Is that switch off?”

“Supposed to be,” said one of the brothers.

“We had some problems with it,” said the other one.

“Cut off the engine!” somebody said.

One of the brothers opened the little door that led into the side shed holding the generator engine, got in there, and it stopped running. But by this time Cleopatra's chest was sure enough on fire, popping and cracking.

“Now pour it on,” said Mr. Blankenship to Zack, who had ended
up with the bucket.

“That made it worse.”

“That's cause the electricity was in it. Give me the damned bucket.”

“You saw what it done.”

“Give me the goddamned bucket.”

Zack handed him the bucket and Mr. Blankenship poured water on her chest, first a little splash, then the rest of the bucket, making smoke, and a smell that was somewhere between cracklings and burnt rope.

“If she won't dead before, she is now,” I said.

“That's for sure,” said Zack. “Whose idea was this anyway?”

“Your'n,” said Mr. Copeland.

“Good God,” said the Cheekwood coming back out of the little room, “I ain't ever seen nothing like that. Good God, look at that.”

“When we dress her up you won't see no difference at all,” said Mr. Blankenship. “No difference at all. We'll just wrap up her chest good.”

“What about that smell?” I said.

“That there is a fairly lingering smell,” said Zack. “You'd better have some perfume in that grip of your'n, P.J.”

“It's not
my
grip. It's
our
grip.”

“Yeah, I'd like to get that thing on out of here as soon as we can,” said Septer. “That smell gets in the wood . . .”

We got her wrapped, then back in the box and outside into the
early morning sun and in the wagon. She was stiff as a log and didn't seem to weigh more than twenty or thirty pounds.

———

They all had stuff to do in town and so it was my job to ride Cleopatra back out to the Merriwether Ranch and get her back in the museum. I didn't mind. I was driving one of Mr. Copeland's buckboards and had just got started when I met Andrew riding in from the ranch. We pulled up and stopped.

“Surely you people were not attempting what I heard, were you?” he said.

I like old Andrew, but sometimes he seems a little too proper. “What's that?” I said.

“Applying electricity to the mummy.”

“We juiced her up a little. Brought her back to life.”

“You didn't.” He sort of tucked his chin in his neck.

“Yep. She talked some kind of Indian talk and was doing fine till the Cheekwoods burnt a hole in her chest.”

“That's impossible. Let me see,” he said. He got down off his horse, his eyes on the box.

“She sat up, talked, and ate some oatmeal,” I said, “then they burnt the hole in her chest and she died again.” I opened up the box and he saw what we'd done.

“You
did
burn the skin,” he said. “That was not very intelligent, you know.”

“I don't think it was supposed to be intelligent.”

“Why didn't somebody wake me up?”

“Zack said not to, and I figured with Star there and all . . .”

He stared at me a second or two, then said, “Was it that obvious?”

“Well, yeah, it was pretty obvious. Y'all making love on the fence.”

“She's a most delightful person. And she'd like to go with us on an expedition.” He looked back at Cleopatra. “This is a very real shame. Mr. Merriwether wouldn't have allowed it.”

I asked him where he was going. He said he was taking the train to Denver to do some research and to talk to some people about getting money for excavations. Then when he was getting on his horse he said Mr. Merriwether was back from the ruins early. “Go see what he brought,” he said.

———

When I got back to the ranch, Star was out by the irrigation ditch with the girls.

“Mr. Merriwether's back,” she said. “Wait till you see what he found up there. He brought it in a tow sack.”

Three or four Mexicans and Juanita was on the porch circling around something. I got up there as fast as I could. It was a baby they'd set up in a chair, a almost perfect mummified baby tied and wrapped onto a big snowshoe-looking baby board that still had straps for the mama's back. Its head was sticking up out of all the wrappings, turned sideways, and its mouth was open more on
one side than the other. It looked like a little girl. She looked almost alive, except she was staring out of little dark holes where her eyes had been—made her head look hollow. Ears and nose was still there. At some time, when she was buried I guess, her neck had been painted red and her face and bald head yellow. Between her eyes up on her forehead was a little red cross, almost disappeared. She was all wrapped in a feather cloth that still had color in it—from bluebirds and yellow birds it had to be, or maybe parrots, but at the same time, you could tell by the faded and rotten parts of the wrapping that she had to be real, real old.

While I was standing looking, Juanita came out and said Mr. Merriwether wanted to see me in his office.

“Sit down,” he said when I got in there. He was on his settee with his feet up and some open letters on the couch beside him and some other things. “Did you see it?”

“Yessir.”

“I can't imagine anything like that more perfect, but I need to talk to you.” It was kind of like I was a grownup. “First look at this.” He pulled a very large jar out of a towsack. “Look at that. Take it. Be careful.”

I took it. It was lighter than it looked. White with black meanderings.

“The form is the best I've seen,” he said. “Very admirable work.”

It was big and almost perfectly round with a little hole on top that had a short neck and little loop handles on each side. “But it
was never baked enough,” he said. “Almost as if the baking were interrupted. Put your finger right there. See? It's soft. And the ornament is sloppy . . . and here, look at this.” He pulled a basket out of the sack. “Look at the tightness of the weave of this. You don't see anything like that done today—anywhere in the Southwest. These things were in the trash pile down the cliff,
hidden
in there—not thrown away, but hidden. The next time we go in, I'm going to have somebody do nothing but the trash piles down below, because . . . but look at this.” He pulled out a black, shiny bird, as big as my hand, a crow it looked like, with turquoise eyes and collar. He handed it to me. My frog was in my pocket. I started to show it to him, and then figured no, I'd better not. I'd been keeping it too long.

“It's made from jet,” he said. “I've never seen another like it. It had to be brought in, traded in from somewhere. I've sent Andrew to the library in Denver to see if he can find out anything about where it might have come from. I think maybe Mexico. But I can't imagine
when
. Did you see the miniature bow and arrow on the porch?” he said.

“No.”

“It was with the little princess.”

“She was in the trash pile, too?”

“No, but I did find two skeletons there—packed into jars, children, with bones broken to get them in there. The little princess was in a very small room up high. One of those we talked about getting into—with the door mortared closed. It took me a day to get in there, and the room had been airtight I'm sure, because
you saw what condition she's in. She had two bowls, a ladle, and a miniature bow and set of arrows in there with her. It was actually more of a hole than a room, but there she was, about perfect, which is why I need to talk to P.J. Because from the time I got her out until nightfall I'm afraid she withered, just the tiniest bit. What we've got to do is get her in an airtight coffin with a glass cover and that's what I want P.J. to do for me. I need you to go tell him, and take her with you. I can show you how to tote her.”

He was kind of getting me in on helping him out and telling me all these things, so I felt like he liked me, and I decided maybe I ought to just say something about what all Mr. Blankenship was planning. “Do you know about Mr. Blankenship's plan?” I said.

“I'm not sure. Which plan?”

“He wants to bring in tourists. He's got some kind of setup with the railroads and he thinks people would come in and pay to be took up to see the cliff dwellings. That's what he's been talking about.”

“I hope it doesn't come to that but, on the other hand . . .” He picked up an open letter on the couch beside him. “The Smithsonian refuses, flat refuses to help with the first nickel for any kind of exploring in the Southwest. But if we can get some photographs of the princess to them, and of this bowl and the bird, and some other relics, then I don't see how they can refuse. I need to hire some people to go back in there. We could use twice as many as we had, and dig in that one ruin for years.”

I wondered again if I should show him my frog, but I decided not to. He showed me how to take Princess, in a canvas bag, on
my back. It was a pretty day and I rode easy so as not to shake her apart or anything. It's not far to Mr. Copeland's, but I stopped where Bobcat Creek crosses the road and took a little rest and ate biscuits and venison that Mrs. Merriwether had give me in a paper sack. I laid back in the grass beside Princess and while Sandy grazed I drifted off to sleep and dreamed about the Mountain Meadows Massacre. There was skeletons all over the ground, painted yellow, and somebody was walking through a field, picking them up with one hand, and holding them up. They looked stiff and held together, the whole skeleton, not falling apart. I woke up and got to worrying a little bit about keeping that frog with me so I put it under this big rock at the base of a big cottonwood right where the creek and road intersected. I was thirsty and so I took a drink from the creek and then we headed on toward Mr. Copeland's.

I had to be careful about the dogs not getting at Princess, so I went ahead and put her down on the table in the corpse—tree—room. I had her propped up so everybody could see her when they come in the kitchen door. Sister was the first one, then Mrs. Copeland came in just before Brother rolled Grandma Copeland up the ramp outside. Brother and Grandma had been playing dog.

After he backed her in there and turned her around, Grandma looked at the baby mummy—then let out this cry like some kind of high-pitched old war whoop, and held her arms out. I'd never heard her make any noise at all, except for this little grunt she did while she was eating. We didn't know what was wrong at first. Mrs. Copeland tried to talk to her, but all she would do is reach
out toward the mummy. Then she let out one of those cries again with Mrs. Copeland down in her face trying to calm her down, and Sister, standing there, says, “Give her the baby doll. She wants the baby doll.”