The Night the White Deer Died Read Online Free PDF Page B

probably horsehair. It was a figure of an Indian dancing, crude but powerfully done, dressed in small bits of cloth and wearing real tiny leather moccasins. “A kachina?”
    Her mother nodded. “A doll used in instructing Indian children in the ways of the god messengers. I read up on them before we moved to Tres Pinos. This is a rain messenger, or a doll showing how a man would costume himself to dance as a rain messenger to the gods asking for water for the corn crop.”
    “But …”
    “People used to think the dolls were the god messengers, but they’re just tiny figures to teach the Indian children.” Her mother recited as though out of a textbook. “At last count there were over three hundreddifferent kachinas, with a doll for each one, each carrying a different message to the gods.”
    “But why is there one on
our
gate?” Janet finally got through.
    “Exactly. I was going to ask you that question.”
    “Me? But I can’t think of anybody who would …” She let it fall off when she remembered Billy’s leaving her at the gate of the pueblo. “Unless it’s Billy—maybe he left it.”
    “Billy? Who’s Billy—oh, that old drunken Indian?”
    “Mother.”
    “Well. How about old alcoholic Indian—do you like that better?” Her eyebrows lifted. “And while we’re discussing it, you might tell me how it is that you’ve gotten involved with him?”
    “It’s nothing. There’s just something about him, something about his shoulders or eyes or something. I don’t really know.” Janet studied the kachina, turned it over in her hands. The carving had been colored with earthen dyes and had the same naturally rich look with which the pueblo had shone when she’d seen it in the hot light with Billy before he’d left her at the gate.
    On the leather breechclout there were painted a series of blue and white fluffy things she took to be clouds, and lightning bolts cut through the clouds.
    “Well, it’s a nice gift, to be sure.” Her mother held her hand out and took it and restudied it. “It really is.” She left Janet’s room and put the small figure onthe dresser on the way out. “Odd thing to find on the gate when you go out for goat milk.…”
    Janet hurried to finish dressing. When she’d climbed into jeans and a tank top and tennis shoes, she stopped for a quick glass of juice and a piece of toast and then went outside, where the sun was already heating the dust in the road. But look as she might, she couldn’t see Billy anywhere in the vicinity.
    She hadn’t really expected to find him, wasn’t truly sure Billy had left the kachina—it might even have been Julio. He’d come to the gate, was hanging around more; maybe he’d left the doll for her. It would be strange, but not impossible.
    Still, there was something about it all that made her think of Billy, and when she heard the
chink-chink
of her mother starting to sculpt stone, she decided to find Billy and tell him thanks for the doll. Her mother would be at it all day anyway—she was getting more and more into her work and away from everything else. Not that it was wrong, Janet thought, going through the gate and into the street, but it was oddly like living alone when you were with somebody like that. Twice she’d gone into the low room her mother used for a studio and talked to her while she was sculpting and was fairly certain her mother hadn’t heard a word—she’d just nodded, worked and nodded and ignored her. But in a nice way. And she wasn’t drinking or going to parties so much anymore either; nor was she having parties at home or entertaining thephony artists and writers as much as she did when they first came to Tres Pinos. For that Janet was thankful.
    She moved in the direction of town, not sure where to look but feeling it was the right way to go, and thought of her mother while she walked. A dog followed her, circled shyly when she turned and called to it, stayed an acceptable street distance from her but