The Darkness Rolling (15 page)

As the two sat on the bed and ate the sandwiches his son had brought from the movie people’s tent, Zopilote began to smell desire, arousal.

He believed this was the daily ritual of the temptress and his son, and he was eager to see every detail of what surely came next. They rolled back on the bed, and the temptress slowly took his son’s uniform off, piece by piece. When he was completely naked, she did something to him for a short while that only a whore would do to any man. Then she jumped on top of him with a fury, still in her slip, and with her hips attacked him—there was no other word for it. After a while he moaned and she cried out. Then she collapsed on his naked body and seemed to doze.

The ripeness of the swirling lust dizzied Zopilote. It made him feel drained dry.

He didn’t yet know what to do about his wife.
But now I know my first revenge upon my son.
It felt good. He would take what he wanted.

He lay very still. He thought he was completely quiet, but in this position he could not be sure.

After a little while the temptress did the whore thing again. And then she rolled him on top of her.

Zopilote squirmed as this Yazzie Goldman mounted her and stifled a gasp as his son thrust into her cave. Soon Yazzie rolled her over, and then they did things Zopilote had never pictured, like they were circus acrobats.

He watched, feeling jolted by every motion, his own body lifting and dropping on the waves of their rutting. The smell made him writhe with lust and envy and fury and in came the Darkness Rolling, filling his bones and his lungs. Becoming him. Yes, the rituals were making him feel more at ease.

*   *   *

My days were routine.

I watched, horsed around with Linda and others, and waited for lunch. She ordered sandwiches brought up, and we ate them naked in bed. After the loving, she sent me outside so she could take a nap. If she didn’t have a shoot to do that afternoon, she wanted a repeat of our noon recreation. She had a libido that wouldn’t quit, hinted at in public, and in private displayed in big headlines.

Cathy Downs acted sheepish about spending the nights with Linda. I personally didn’t take to Cathy, an upbeat, outdoorsy, cheery creature who was exactly what she seemed to be, pretty and boring, like the sweatered girl with the sweatered guy on a package of stale breakfast cereal.

Iris came down several times and drew people, anyone but the stars. She hung around with Colin a lot and gave the chunky Irishman some sketches of himself to send to his parents. I wondered if something was developing there. Whatever, it was fine by me.

Bottom line: Linda and I were limited to afternoon trysts, but what afternoons. What a job.

Until it wasn’t. (And I didn’t receive my send-off on a fancy piece of stationery.)

Nine

Linda’s big scenes in the movie were a series of shots where she butted heads with the white hats, Wyatt Earp and Cathy Downs’s schoolmarm. Earp tried to push Doc toward the marm, who wanted marriage. Chihuahua schemed to get both of them to back off—
she
was Doc’s girl and he was marrying her. Trapped, Doc ignored his teasing promise to Chihuahua and skipped town to escape both women.

In the course of making a living, Chihuahua dallied with Billy Clanton. Doc came back and caught them together in her room. Clanton shot at Doc and accidentally hit Chihuahua.

So here came the crux for Doc Holliday. Chihuahua bleeding, needing surgery, and him the only physician in miles and miles. Fear and self-disgust.

He gave it a go with the scalpel, thought he’d succeeded, and felt good about himself for a change. A glimmer of triumph in view.

Then Chihuahua died.

But that was still to come. Linda was nervous about her scenes with Henry Fonda, I could see that. She was comfortable with everyone in the cast but him. In front of the camera, she had fun teasing out the wild man in the Victor Mature character and pushing away the Fonda character, who tried to turn Doc righteous. Off camera, Fonda’s flinty reserve made her edgy.

It turned out that I underestimated her, and maybe she underestimated herself. She bristled at the marm just right, and Mr. John printed the third take. She was just huffy enough when she stood up to Fonda’s character. Take after take, I admired her more.

And noon hour after noon hour I liked her more.

The dying was Linda’s big moment, and my sad one. It would be the end of her work on the picture. When she left, my job disappeared with her. Probably our friendship—and all else we had together—too.

On the morning of her last day of shooting, when I picked her up, she squeezed my hand once at the cabin door. Then I walked her down the hill, Colin trailing. She didn’t look at me, and I couldn’t sense what was going on inside her mind.

In her role as the wounded Chihuahua, she was down and fading out. Her part in the first shot was simple. For some reason, evidently Mature battling himself as he did the cutting, Mr. John asked for another take and another and another. What he was looking for I couldn’t tell, but he got sharp with everyone, and we were going to be late for lunch. Mr. John kept calling Mature over for quiet talks. Linda was tired of playing the suffering and expiring beauty. That wasn’t her. She was vibrant and full of life. Make-believe dying was getting old.

When Mr. John finally called out “Print,” she sat up from her deathbed, looked straight at me, and snapped her head to the side, meaning,
Get your tail up to the cabin.

I did, expecting her to be drained.

What a woman. In the cabin she threw off her clothes and came at me on fire. I’d never experienced anything like it, so wild, so much of herself, but even more so. It was a little odd. She still wore the makeup that made her look like she was taking her last breath. The contrast was macabre. Not that I didn’t get a kick out of everything she did.

And suddenly it was over. She said, “I have to sleep now,” closed her eyes, and turned her death-mask face away from me.

Outside sat Colin, alert as always, and the makeup guy, Raphael, who was folded into what he called “the lotus position” on the ground under the usual cedar. He was an odd duck, about sixty, toilet-seat bald, with long stringy gray hair from the ears down, a monklike appearance. He was what we Navajos call a
nadle,
a guy who likes other guys. To us such men are special. They have the powers of men and women, and are often the creators of beautiful sand paintings, ceremonial baskets, and the like. But white people have names for these men that are nasty.

“She ready yet?” Raphael asked.

Though Mr. John’s shooting with Linda was over, the stills-photo guy wasn’t satisfied with what he had of her, so he wanted to get some more shots, her dancing and swirling her skirts in the tavern and such as that. Some of the pictures would be turned into posters to be plastered in movie theaters around the country. He planned to shoot them this afternoon, while Mr. John was filming elsewhere, and the stills would go out to the press as publicity material. I assumed that tomorrow morning, driven by Julius, Linda and I would head for La Posada.

I plopped down next to Raphael. “She’s taking a nap, and she needs it.” Pause. “And she needs you too.”

He shrugged. “I made her look like death twice-over this morning, and I’ll make her look more gorgeous than ever this afternoon.” He checked his watch, ever dissatisfied with the amount of time Linda and I left him to do his job. He sighed, and said, “
Wait. Wait. Wait.
It certainly makes this part of my job tedious.”

Eyes front, Colin said, “Miss Downs isn’t coming up to the cabin this afternoon.” The Irishman stayed ready, like expecting bad times ahead made up his very core.

Some days Cathy came to the cabin after lunch, whenever she saw I’d left, and got her own nap. While Linda was with Cathy, I usually sat under this cedar, Colin and I covering both actresses.

“Enough. I’m going to meditate,” Raphael said, “while the princess recovers her glow.” He closed his eyes and was gone.

I propped myself against the tree and tried to feel easy. Waiting was tough, no arguments there. I couldn’t stop thinking about the finality of what was coming. Losing Linda and probably never seeing her again, or hearing from her. Being back home at the trading post? Not much consolation in that.

I thought of being daring and asking her to stay a couple of nights with me at La Posada and catch the Super Chief on its run to Los Angeles. I didn’t. She might be wild about the idea, but it would go pretty hard on me if she said no.

Still, I yearned for more time and a romantic good-bye. I dreaded the moment of handing her on board, bound for Los Angeles, her home in Bel-Air, and her husband—a universe beyond my reach, beyond even my imaginings. Yes, I belonged here. I might not be crazy about it, but I knew it. But I could already feel the hole Linda Darnell would leave in my life. Grandpa had lived his dream. Frieda lived hers to the hilt, and Iris was living hers. Mine was to
make a big life.
Like Linda’s. Like the rest of them. Come what may.

Soon Raphael opened his eyes. He claimed he could nail thirty minutes of meditation right on, no need for a watch.

“Oh, please!” he said. “No sign of her yet?”

“None.” Amazing how our conversation didn’t distract Colin one inch.

“Why don’t you let me get you started meditating?” he said. “God knows that trying to get her moving, when she isn’t in the mood, is impossible.”

“I can’t close my eyes,” I said. “I’m on the job, watching out for Linda.”

“Blah, blah, blah,” he said. “Try twenty minutes. I’ll sit right here and help Colin keep watch.”

Colin looked at Raphael and let out a loud laugh. Then he apologized.

“No problem,” Raphael said. “I wouldn’t want me for a guard dog, either.”

This was the third or fourth time he’d asked to teach me meditation. He must have thought I was a real wreck. Whenever I said I’d pass, I got a lecture about how meditating didn’t belong to one religion but fit with all, and then a rambling talk about metaphysics, and I never figured out what that is.

Sometimes white people are funny. A few, including the Hollywood types, think Indians are noble savages who bear a special spiritual wisdom, but they feel obligated to tell us about their own beliefs. I think our
h
ó
zh
ó
is as fine as anything they know about. So why do they always want to teach us, not learn from us? They don’t see the irony of that.

On the other hand, most white people think we’re dirty, drunken savages.

Noble savages or drunken savages, either way we’re savages. For them, there is no way out of the corral inside their minds. Maybe we all have corrals, and rodeo arenas too, in our minds. Places that we go to rest, places we go all out and test ourselves to the limit. And they are not known to other people.

“Meditating will change your life,” he said. “It—”

I held up a hand. “Okay, okay.” I’d heard his talk until I could have given it. Colin was in charge right now, and this was the last time I’d see Raphael. I figured it couldn’t hurt to give it a try.

“You watch that cabin sharp?” I said to Colin.

“Damn sharp.”

“Now,” Raphael said, “let’s get you in the lotus position.”

“That’s not going to work,” I said. “I’ve tried it. My legs aren’t bread dough.”

“Just find a comfortable position to sit. That will be fine to start with.” He ticked off instructions, most of which I’d already heard. He also gave me a mantra to say over and over, a magic word that is supposed to stay secret.

I sat beneath the sheltering pine, relaxed, and let a good feeling of calm settle inside.

“Now,” he said, “close your eyes, say your mantra in your mind, and feel each breath, the spirit of life, come in and out, in and out.”

I did it. Actually? I think I slept through it. But that was okay.

*   *   *

In twenty minutes, presumably, Raphael tapped me on the knee. “Can’t wait any longer,” he said. “Even a star can only push it so far.”

He padded up to the cabin door and knocked. No answer. Knocked again. Again no answer. A third time.

Finally, he tried the door. It was locked.

He turned toward me and Colin, his shadow filling the doorway. Raphael said, “I’m going to find Cathy Downs and get her key.” He trotted off.

I wondered
What the hell?
but there was no way Linda wasn’t safe. Three of us, and two had their eyes on the front of that cabin every moment. No doors or windows except in front.

Pretty quick Raphael came back with a key, went in, and just as quick came back out, leaving the door open. He gave me a peculiar look. “Back in a minute,” he said.

I hoisted myself up and walked groggy-like to the cabin door to see what was happening. The sight woke me up like being thrown into a fire.

Linda was huddled in the bed on her side, still stark-naked. She was whimpering. Her face was swelling up and going multicolored fast. It would be a patchwork of eggplants and lemons, mixed hideously with her pallid makeup.

I pulled a sheet over her, sat down on the edge of the bed, and took her hand. There were no words I could say that would be a bandage large enough to fix her hurts. “Sweetheart, what happened?” I’d never used such a word with her before.

“Don’t touch me,” she said, pulling her hand away. “Just don’t touch me.” Her bruised eyes were swollen shut, and I couldn’t tell if she knew it was me.

I quieted the hurt and shock I felt and tried to be a center of peace for her. I lowered my voice to a whisper. “What happened, sweetheart?”

“Don’t touch me. Do not touch me.”

I shook her hand a little. “It’s me, Yazzie. Who did this to you?”

I was rocking on a boat that had tilted from despair to anger. I wanted to catch the person who did this and make them pay for it in every possible way. I thought about the note on her door, about the letter she’d received. Mr. John and his anger and his worry. The way she had brushed it off. His fears had been absolutely right.