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."Paisley," Paisley said."My name is Paisley.""Your mother called you Alma," the drunk lessoned her." 'Soul' in Spanish.""I know what it means.But my father named me Paisley, Paisley Coldpony, and that's the name on mybirth certificate.""You lived with your mother longer than your daddy.Your name is Alma Arriola." He pulled some stringout of the pocket of his dirty suede coat and, with his hands outside the bars, began making cat's cradleswith it.He was remarkably dexterous for so old and alcohol-steeped a brave.Paisley found her irritationwith his comments about her name softened a little by the web-weaving of his stubby fingers."Jackrabbit," he said, rotating the string figure so that she could see this two-dimensional creature lopingacross the blackness of the drunk tank."Arriola's a Spanish name too," he added pedantically, hacking her off again.Then he dismantled the airyjackrabbit and began a second latticework figure."And Barnes is an Anglo name, Whirling Goat."Paisley knew that some of her hostility to the old guy was left over from her dream.She resented whathe'd said to her in it and was sorry to find him -- dare she even think the word? -- polluting the cellblock.(If, given the disinfectant fumes stinging her eyes, further pollution were even possible.)"And this is a goat," he said, holding up the second figure and whirling it for her benefit."When I waseight, I rode a goat for three minutes that none of my friends could even catch.My name -- it comes fromthat.""Which one of your friends had the stopwatch, Herbert?"But neither this sarcasm nor her rude familiarity would provoke him.He ceased to whirl the goat andhandily collapsed it, only to follow with several successive string compositions, all of which he wasmagically weaving for his own amusement.His equanimity put her off.She wanted to puncture it."I'm going to dance in the Sun Dance," Paisley told him."I've been dream-called.""What do you think of this one?" he said, holding up a figure that initially made no sense to her.Standingat the bars of her cell, she peered at the crisscrossing strings with real annoyance.Her world-shakingdeclaration of intent had slipped past him like a coyote squeezing untouched through a hole in ahenhouse."What is it?" she grudgingly asked.He coughed, but his preoccupied hands were unable to cover his mouth."Kar'tajan," he managed."What?" The word summoned no resonances for her."Kar'tajan," he repeated."But only the head, Alma -- only the head and the horn."Now Paisley recognized it.It was the head -- the head and the horn -- of a unicorn.She could notimagine how he had produced it with a single piece of looped string, but he had, and the awkward waythat he held his hands to sustain the figure was justified by its fragile elegance.She'd never known thatBarnes, a.k.a.Whirling Goat, had such a talent -- or any talent, for that matter, beyond making ayear-round nuisance of himself and sourly kibitzing every performer at every important Ute ceremony.But, so soon after the seventh repetition of her dream, the sight of the string figure -- this string figure --gave her a decided pang.For it, too, seemed part and parcel of her summons."Why do you call it a kar'tajan?""Because that's its name.That's the name our Holy He-She gave it -- before history turned the worldinside out.""It's a unicorn, Whirling Goat.There's no such animal.""It's a kar'tajan, Alma.I've seen one."From the office, Seals shouted, "He saw it drinking over by the Pine with this humongous herd of pinkelephants!"The deputy's words, and then his guffaws, dismantled the mood of balanced wonder and unease thatPaisley had been experiencing in much the way that Barnes's hands collapsed the string figure of thekar'tajan or unicorn.He stuffed the looped string back into his coat pocket and slumped more heavilyagainst the bars."Can you do a buffalo?" Paisley felt strangely tender toward him.She hoped he wouldn't relapse into thestupor that had probably occasioned his arrest."Ain't nothing I can't do with string.""Do me a buffalo, then."Barnes coughed, more or less negatively.Damn you, Blake Seals, Paisley thought.And then, as unbidden as lightning from a high azure sky, amemory bolt illuminating the headless corpse of her mother struck her.She was seeing again theclay-colored feet on the lounger's footrest, the dropped.12-gauge, and the Jackson Pollock brainpainting on the walls behind the old chair.She'd just come home from a debate with the kids at Cortez, adebate that her team had won, and there was Mama D'lo, waiting to share the victory with her, messily atease in the lounger, forever free of motherly obligation.Although maybe not."I've been dream-called," Paisley said.Defiantly, she looked at Barnes."To dance in the Sun Dance.""Good.Good for you." He hacked into his forearm.Paisley stared at him."Didn't you hear me? I've been granted a vision.I'm to dance with the men.""It's what your mama wants." Barnes shifted against the bars."She told me.That being so, you should doit.""Told you? Why would she tell you, old man? When?""Tonight.A little time past." He indicated the impenetrable blackness behind him."Pretty funny talk wehad."Seals lumbered into the upper end of the cellblock."Every talk you have while you're swackered isfunny, Barnes.Chats with old Chief Ignacio.Arguments with John Wayne.Even a midnight powwowwith Jesus.""Get your butt out of here, Deputy," Paisley said."Who asked you to horn in?"Smirking, Seals raised his big hands as if to ward off physical blows."Simmer down.I'm going.Justforgot for a minute we was running a hotel here." He backed out, closing the cellblock door behind him."You saw her tonight, Mr.Barnes? Tonight?""Yes.In here.I was on that pissy mattress" -- pointing his chin toward it, a shadow in the dark  "andD'lo showed up, maybe from the San Juan Mountains.She stood over me, signing.""Signing?""You know, hand talk.""But why? To keep Seals from hearing?""That didn't matter.He was patrolling." Barnes hunched his shoulders."Alma, that was her only way totalk.You see?"Paisley understood.She had seen her mother's ini'putc' in the Cuthairs' station wagon on the day of herfuneral, and the revenant, like the corpse, had had no head.But then the ghost had vanished, leavingPaisley to doubt what she had witnessed."What did she say? What did her hand talk mean?""Just what you say, Alma.That you must dance this year.That she desires it.That no one should hinderyou, girl or no girl.""It's not 'girl,' Mr.Barnes.It's 'woman.' " She told him as a matter of information, not to scold -- for shewas ready to forgive the old fart for his bad behavior in her dream.A moment later, Paisley said, "But why did she visit you? Why did she come here to give you thatmessage?""I have a reputation," Whirling Goat said proudly.As a sot, Paisley silently chastised him, but she knew that he meant as an expert on certain ceremonialmatters and so refrained from disillusioning him.Let Barnes claim for himself the dubious glory of anini'putc' visitation."Also," he said, "Dolores must have foreknown.""Foreknown what?""That you'd be arrested tonight.That it would be good for me to give you my blessing.""I have your blessing?""Of course.I gave it to you already.How many children do I show my string creatures?" He hackedagain, magpie croaks."Not many," Paisley hazarded."Damned straight.Now, though, you're among them [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]