Zia (11 page)

"Señora Gaviln," he said, "who is, as you know, your overseer, made a search of the quarters at my request. In your bed..."He paused and glanced up at me. "In your bed, underneath the blankets, she found this key. It is the key that fits the lock in the men's door and that of the women. It is this that opened the doors and permitted Stone Hands and the others to flee."

"I have seen this before," I said. "I used it to open the doors." They had searched my bed before I had had a chance to throw it into the sea, as I had planned to do.

Capitán Cordova put the key in his desk. He then shouted for Señora Gomez, who came wandering in and sleepily took me to my cell. She closed the door and barred it tight.

Chapter 21

S
EÑORA
G
OMEZ
brought my clothes back and a blanket, as Captain Cordova had told her to do, so I slept warm that night.

In mid-morning when Captain Nidever sailed into the harbor I was standing in my cotton shift.

I saw the boat far out beyond where the Yankee whaler had been anchored—when they were only a spot on the bright sea. There was a fresh wind behind them and they were moving fast. First I could see that there were four people in the boat. I saw Father Vicente and his red tassel flying. Then I could see that one of the four was a woman.

I stood there at the window holding on to the iron bars. For the first time in many days I felt warm. I forgot that I was in a cell, in a cotton shift, with my long hair uncombed.

The boat came up to the edge of the surf, where the swells were getting ready to break. The sun sparkled on the water and in the glare I could make out the figure of Karana. She was crouched on the little platform Captain Nidever had made and I had woven the sail for.

The surf was not heavy that morning, but Captain Nidever waited for the break between waves that comes every few minutes. He waited too long and missed a time of calm. At that moment Karana rose and leaped from the boat and began to swim toward shore. A dog leaped in after her.

At first I thought that she had jumped to lighten the boat so it could be handled easier in the surf. But I am sure that it was not for that reason. She had jumped out of excitement.

The place she must have dreamed about many times was near at last. She swam strong, her brown arms reaching out. Then she was past the surf and was walking toward the shore, her arms outstretched as if to embrace everything that she saw. The dog followed along behind her.

She came out of the water and stood on the hard sand, her grass dress clinging to her. She seemed to be trying to look everywhere at once, at the low bluffs, the long curving beach, the green hills that were now red with poppies, the church. Its bells were ringing and she held herself still to listen.

The boat was coming in now between two breakers. She turned back to meet it, but it passed her in a last rush and slid onto the beach.

I could barely get my hand between the bars, but I waved to her. She did not see me. I called her name so loudly that Señora Gomez came waddling out of her room and told me to cease.

There was a path that led up the bluff a short way from where I was locked. Father Vicente, walking unsteadily as if he were still at sea, saw my hand thrust through the bars. He stopped as I called out his name. He said nothing to Karana but then they both came toward me. They came to the barred slit in the wall and halted.

"What has happened to you?" he said, looking in at me as if he did not believe his eyes.

I told him in as few words as I could. At once he left and went into Capitán Cordova's office. I could hear them begin to shout at each other even before the door closed.

Karana stood looking at me through the iron bars. She must have known me at once because I looked like her sister. She touched my hand and held it for a moment. It was hard and rough and her nails were broken. I pressed my face against the bars and she did the same and our lips met there between them.

I spoke to her in Spanish, but she shook her head to let me know that she did not understand. Then I spoke, using the few words I remembered from a song my mother had once sung to me. Those words she might understand, but they meant nothing to her. She spoke back and her words were strange to my ears. We stood helplessly, our hands touching, gazing at each other. She looked like my own mother, as I remembered her, only younger.

I heard Captain Cordova shouting, using a different voice than he had used with me. Between times I could hear the voice of Father Vicente. This talking seemed to last for a long time. Then Father Vicente came out with Señora Gomez and she opened my cell and dropped my clothes on the floor in the doorway.

I put them on and the three of us walked up the trail to the Mission, with the dog at our heels. He was big and shaggy and looked like a wolf. When I tried to pet him he backed away from my hand.

There were many wild flowers beside the trail, but mostly a blue flower like a spike with blooms. Karana picked two of them and gave one to Father Vicente and one to me.

Chapter 22

T
HEY GAVE
Karana a bed beside mine in the big room where all the girls slept. She was not used to sleeping in a bed and sometime that night she got up and lay down on the floor. Her dog, which she called Rontu-Aru, lay down beside her.

Señora Gallegos did not like this sleeping on the floor. Nor did she like the dog sleeping in the room. This most of all.

"Dogs should sleep outside where they belong," she said. "They have fleas and soon we will all have fleas."

She talked to Father Vicente about the dog Rontu-Aru. But he must have differed with her, for the next night Karana again slept on the floor and the dog slept beside her.

Then Señora Gallegos went to talk to Father Merced, who was Father Vicente's superior. Since the day of the fight with Capitán Cordova he had been ill in bed and we all prayed for him to get well. He disagreed with Father Vicente and the Señora told Karana that she could sleep on the hard floor, but that the dog would have to sleep outside in the courtyard with the other dogs.

The Señora told Karana what the Father had said, but Karana did not understand and I was of little help. She did the same thing she had done the nights before and when Señora Gallegos tried to move Rontu-Aru he growled at her and bared his teeth. Then the Señora called the
mayordomo
and he got some boys and all together they managed to tie the dog up and take him outside.

Karana said nothing while this was going on, but when they took Rontu-Aru she picked up her blanket and followed them. That night she slept in the courtyard and all the nights for a long time, her dog at her side.

Karana and I had a difficult time talking to each other. At first what simple things we said were said with gestures and sounds that had no meaning except to us.

All of the five fathers at the Mission were skilled at Indian dialects. They were people from many tribes at the Mission. And yet none of them could understand the language she spoke. I no more than any, although I was a member of the same tribe that Karana belonged to. As a child when my mother died, I knew a few words of our dialect, but when I lived at Pala with the Cupeños and at the Mission with the Spanish fathers I forgot the few words I had known.

What happened was, we lived without words, with only the touch of hands and tones of voice and a glance. We tried giving names to things.

I would pick up a shell on the beach and give it a name. In the beginning Karana tried to repeat what I had said, but after a while she gave this up.

She was amazed at the many shells we had on our beach—I felt that we had many more than she had seen on the Island of the Blue Dolphins. But she was very satisfied to hold them in her hands. The big ones, the conches, Karana would peer inside and put them to her ear. She might make a sound but it meant nothing to me, as I watched her, except surprise or delight.

She kept the shells we found, but it was the wild horses she loved.

They would come down from the mountains at dawn and sometimes at dusk, horses and their colts, wild as the day they were born, and race along the sand and through the waves, making noises that she seemed to understand. She never grew tired of watching them. Nor did Rontu-Aru. The one word she learned from me—of less than a dozen words—was the word for horse.

And yet when Father Vicente offered to put her on one of the Mission's geldings Karana backed away and shook her head. I got on the horse and walked it around to show her how easy it was, but she still shook her head.

The melon patch over the hill was another place of delight. The vines were a vivid green and had begun to send out their delicate little feelers. We went there every day.

I tried to explain how big the melons grew, pointing to my head and trying to make her see that they would also be round like my head. She understood all of this but when I tried to describe how a melon looked inside I had little success. If it was evening or early morning and the sky was pink I would point to it and try to make her understand that a melon looked like that inside.

We gave her the first melon that ripened. It was a big melon and she ate it all. She liked them more than any food we had. She would eat a whole one for supper and sometimes two.

Karana also liked to work at the looms. She had never seen one before, but in a week's time she wove as fast as any of us. The first thing she made was a cloak for me with the design of a dolphin across the back. She was proud of the cloak, so before I wore it out I put it on every day, even when the weather was hot.

I did everything I could to make her happy. Still, she did not like the food very much and sometimes, after the first melons had gone, she would go to the beach after our noon meal and dig the big clams and scoop out a pit and roast them in a fire of dry kelp.

And though she liked the horses and the shells and the melons and the looms, she seemed to enjoy just walking along the beach with her dog the most of all.

I wanted to know about the Island of the Blue Dolphins and how she had lived there and what she had thought, but this I never learned.

Chapter 23

F
ATHER
M
ERCED
suddenly grew very sick. When he died there was much mourning because he had lived at the Mission for thirty-one years and knew everyone for leagues around.

In his place those in Mexico City who ruled such things put Father Vicente in charge of the Mission. But only for a short time, only until they could send someone else. Father Vicente, they said, was too young to be the head of a Mission as big as Santa Barbara.

While Father Vicente looked after the Mission and before Father Torres came to take his place two things happened.

The first thing that happened was that a bracelet of mine that Señora Gomez had taken was returned to me.

The next thing Father Vicente did was to make a shelter for Karana and her dog. He understood that she was not used to being with many people who snored and uttered strange noises at night. So he made a good place for her in the courtyard with woven mats to cover the hard stones.

In the morning, before any of the rest of us were up, before the first bell rang, she folded her blanket and put it away and was down on the beach, to pick up shells or to look for clams, to watch the wild horses, or just to romp up and down the wet sand.

Everyone liked her, but they thought she was somewhat crazy. They had never heard of anyone who rose before the first bell and went out picking flowers or just ran up and down the beach. Only Father Vicente understood and let her do what she wished. He gave orders that she was to work only when she wanted to.

The next thing of the many things that happened during the few weeks when Father Vicente was our Superior was very important.

Stone Hands and his band were still in the box canyon on the ranch of Don Blas Corrientes. Five of his band had deserted Stone Hands and had gone to Don Blas and given themselves up. They said that Stone Hands acted like he was the chief of a tribe and ordered them around as though they were his slaves. Also they were hungry.

The five boys came back to the Mission and told Father Vicente what they had told Don Blas and said that Stone Hands would never return to the Mission.

One of them, whose name I do not remember, said, "He has muskets and powder, many swords and lances. He has twenty of Don Blas's horses. He says he is going to attack the garrison and steal all their weapons. Then he is going to attack the Mission and take its silver and money. Anyone who gets in his way, he will kill. That is what he says and we believe him."

"How many boys and men does he have?" Father Vicente asked.

"More than eighty."

"And twenty horses. Ridable?"

"Yes."

The boys went to Capitán Cordova and told him the same story. What they said I do not know. What I do know is that the capitán did not like the idea of riding into a box canyon with the fifteen men at his command. He sent for Don Blas and they both came to talk to Father Vicente.

"I have thirty vaqueros." Don Blas said. "They have lances and riatas. They are a tough bunch of men."

"And I have fifteen, equally tough," the capitán said, "that makes almost the same number that Stone Hands has."

"You are equal in numbers," Father Vicente said. "That is important."

"But they are boys and I command men," the capitán said.

"If it is the box canyon I know," said Father Vicente, "the one at the head of the Montoya stream, they will see you coming long before you arrive."

"It is that place." Don Blas said.

"Then many men will die," Father Vicente said.

The three men were talking in the courtyard and everyone could hear them. Don Blas and the capitán strode back and forth. Father Vicente stood off to one side out of their paths. He was still wearing the tassel cap I had made for him.

"You are right," the capitán was saying, "we will lose men, but we will put an end to the thieves and their thievery."

"If you put an end to them," Father Vicente said, "you will put an end to the Mission. We will have no one left but a few old men and women."