The beast v1 0, p.2
The Beast (v1.0), page 2
At the counter in the kitchen Mina ate cornflakes and added columns of figures on a paper beside her plate. Barry cleaned up some scrambled eggs and Renee sat comfortably in the sling chair she had pulled into the kitchen and fed Martin, her dress opened on one side. Barry looked at his lovely, dark-haired wife and grinned.
“I’m jealous,” he said softly.
“Isn’t he a darling,” Renee said. “Sleeps all night already.”
“I heard you come in last night,” Mina said, still adding figures. “You were growling.”
Barry looked at his stepdaughter. “That wasn’t me, sweetie,” he said patiently. It was an old joke. He got up, wiped his mouth on a napkin and kissed Renee on the cheek.
“You know how much I love you?” he said.
“Harder than thunder can bump a stump up a hill backwards,” she said, reaching up to pull his head back down and kissing him on the mouth. “Be smart and wonderful today.”
“My dear wife, I am never any other way,” he said.
“Tell, Daddy,” Mina said, still adding figures. ‘Tell Benny I’ll be out in two shakes.”
He kissed Mina and walked out the back door into the cool New Mexico morning. It would be nice and hot today, he thought, getting into the Model A sedan. He called to the little Spanish boy who was swinging on the tire that hung from the cottonwood. “Hey, Benny, shell venira muy pronto”
Downtown in the Liberty Bar, Barry sat in a front booth where there was some light and the noise of the swamp cooler back of the bar was not so deafening. He watched a stooped old Indian, his paunch hanging over his belt, come rocking along the bar, holding out his jewelry to the men seated there. He wore a maroon velvet blouse and the colorless Levi’s of the town Indian, and had silver and turquoise bracelets up both arms and a big concho belt under his belly. The Indian rolled like an old sailor, as if his feet were rounded on the bottom and his knees would not bend.
Barry was startled by the young man who appeared from back along the row of booths and slid in opposite him.
“Old Jimmie’s an interesting story, if you like hard-luck tales,” the young, black-haired Indian said.
Barry reached across and shook the young man*s hand briefly. The Indian’s touch was cool and firm, the skin smooth. “How are you, John?”
“Good. Your family?”
“Everybody’s well,” Barry said, grinning. “How you fixed for big stories? I need a Pulitzer to convince my editor I’m worth my keep.”
The young Indian was watching his elder counterpart approach along the line of booths, holding up his arms to show the bracelets, mumbling to the people having their lunch. He was not selling anything. Barry was about to speak again when he smelled the old man’s breath and felt a touch on his arm.
“Gen’win Navajo rings?”
“No, thanks,” Barry said, somewhat embarrassed.
The old man threw a look at Johnny as he passed by, saying something in Navajo. The young Indian answered in a low tone with a single word.
“I wish I could understand that,” Barry said, for something to say.
“Old Jimmie just wished my asshole would come out on my forehead,” Johnny said, grinning.
“What’d you tell him?”
“Oh, that he was an impotent chicken.”
Barry laughed. “I thought you were all brothers in the tribe.”
“That old fart’s no brother of mine. No, he’s a halfwit,” Johnny said. “Everybody knows he’s not right up here,” and he tapped his forehead.
“Hey, John, how about some firewater?”
After they had sipped their bourbon for a time, Barry 16
thought he could get back to the subject. “So what’s happening over at Yellow Mesa?”
“You want something to write about?” Johnny was looking down into his drink.
“That’s my job.”
“You do that illegitimate children thing at Isleta last summer?”
“You know I did Had my name on it.” Barry felt a flush over his pride in that series. It had been syndicated all across the country.
“Yeah. I liked that. You know the Commissioner came up with some new money after that?”
“I heard.” This is like the trading post, Barry thought. They walk in and stand all day before they’ll say they want something. I just have to wait him out. The talk went on through that drink and halfway into the next. Barry was getting impatient in spite of himself. It was almost two o’clock.
“Here’s your story,” Johnny said suddenly.
“I’m listening.”
“You’ve heard of the Native American Church?”
“Yeah, I think so. It’s a sort of tent revival—hogan revival, I guess, isn’t it?” Barry felt a letdown. If this was the story, it had been done.
“And you know about peyote?”
Barry’s irritation almost burst from him. This was adding up to nothing. “The drug, yeah.” He tossed off the rest of the drink, prepared to leave. Well, it had only cost two drinks.
“You haven’t heard of Navajos eating peyote, though.”
Barry’s interest flickered. “Go on.”
“The Church is having a revival up in northeastern Arizona. The People are getting saved again, this time by the little brown buttons.” Johnny said the words in a monotone, almost in a whisper.
“That’s illegal, of course,” Barry said, signaling the bartender. “Have another?”
“No, thanks. This’s not my poison. Anyway, if you want to see something happening to the Navajo that’s never happened before, come along with me when I go home tomorrow.”
Barry was still disappointed, but it might be something. “You’re going tomorrow. We got a fresh baby at home,
I don’t know if—”
Johnny shrugged. ‘It’s a good story.”
“Okay,” Barry said. “I can make it for a couple of days, if I can get Frank and Judy to look after my family.”
“Ill get you into the Church,” Johnny said, “and you can be as snoopy as you want.** He smiled. “We welcome converts.”
“I’ll have to get a new angle,” Barry said. “Peyote’s been around for a while, I think.” He didn’t know, actually, much about it, but it seemed he had read something not so long ago.
“Sure, the plains Indians, the Paiute, the Cheyenne, the Mexican tribes, but never the good old middle-class Navajo. We’re getting it now”—he leaned forward, his dark eyes looking intently into Barry’s—“and I’m in it. But I’m afraid of it, too.”
“Breaking up the clans and such?”
“You know about the big livestock massacre a couple years ago?”
“I don’t recall it,” Barry said. Not surprising, considering he had only been in this world, as far as he could remember, for less than two years.
“Thousands of sheep and goats,” Johnny said, his face becoming hard. “My uncle was there, up north. He and some others wanted to get painted up, kill some white men.”
“And that wouldn’t work,” Barry said. “So they’re getting back to the spiritual thing.”
“Right. And let me tell you something else. It works.”
“Yeah, I imagine it does. Get yourself full of dope and you don’t worry about a bunch of dead goats or an ineffective Tribal Council.”
“More than that,” Johnny said mysteriously. ” But you come along. I’ll show you. Or, rather, Little Brown Father will show you.” He reached in the pocket of his Levi’s jacket, pulling out a round, wrinkled cactus button. He grinned. “Have a bite?”
Later, on his way up the hill to the University of New Mexico library, Barry sorted out the possibilities: one, the Indians getting pushed around again; two, the Church filling the power vacuum; three, the shame of the good Indians being seduced by peyote. But first he would have to find out about that cactus. On his way into the library he paused to look across campus at the almost completed new library with its nine-story tower done in pueblo style. Now there was going to be some stack of books, he thought. It looked somewhat like pictures he had seen of Devil’s Tower, a mountain somewhere in the Northwest In the old Reference room with its few students hiding in their books at the long oak tables, he found several earlier references to the drug peyote. There were the usual hysterical missionaries afraid for the souls of the Indians who were scandalously enjoying themselves; then he found an article by Huntington Cairns in the November Atlantic Monthly for 1929, over eight years ago.
As far as Barry could find out, it was the only article of any worth on the drug in the last ten years. And there were none referring to the Navajo. The article was titled, “A Divine Intoxicant” and quoted some diary passages from a Padre Bernardino in the year 1529:
Some danced, some sang; others wept … and some did not wish to sing, but seated themselves in their rooms and remained there as though meditating. Some had visions that they were dying and shed tears; others imagined that some wild beast was devouring them; others that they were capturing prisoners in warfare; others that they were rich; others that they had many slaves; others that they had committed adultery and were to have their heads broken as a penalty; others that they had been guilty of a theft, for which they were to be executed; and many other visions were seen by them.
He found that it was called peyotl from a word in the Nahuatl language, and sometimes it was called mescal, though it should not be confused with the Mexican drink of that name, that its use had extended at one time as far north as the Canadian border, and that the missionaries had fought it with no less than their usual zeal. And then he read some rather surprising accounts of peyote use by several famous men in America, including William James, Havelock Ellis and the author of the article. The accounts, except for that of James, who had got nothing but a bad stomachache for his scientific ardor, were fantastic. No drug that Barry had ever heard about produced that kind of response. The experimenters were scientists and seemed to be in their right minds. He read the accounts avidly, realizing there was little or nothing in the popular press about the effects of the drug. The U.S. Government had recently been complaining about hemp-marijuana—smoking, but that seemed such an oriental pastime. An account by an experimenter named Weir Mitchell drew his attention:
Gorgeous colors and wonderful shapes floated before his eyes. One vision impressed him deeply: “An edge of a huge cliff seemed to project over a gulf of unseen depth. My viewless enchanter set on the brink a huge bird claw of stone. Above, from the stem or leg, hung a fragment of the same stuff. This began to unroll and float out to a distance which seemed to me to represent Time as well as immensity of Space. Here were miles of rippled purples, half transparent, and of ineffable beauty. Now and then soft golden clouds floated from these folds, or a great shimmer went over the whole of the rolling purples, and things like green birds fell from it, fluttering down into the gulf below.”
The other two accounts vied with this one for variety and sumptuousness of visual images. Barry smiled and leaned back as he finished the article, noting its typical nineteenth-century tone:
Even where robustness of health is present, the subsequent physiological effects are too costly to admit for the civilized man, if not for the savage, more than one or two experiences with the drug. But to experience its intoxicating qualities even once is to look ever afterward upon the external world with at least a keener appreciation of color.
So, the savages could put up with stomachache and nausea, but the civilized man would, of course, back down if it came to Alka-Seltzer and aspirin.
There could be more than one article on the use of stuff like that, Barry thought, getting up to leave the library. White civilization dispossesses the Indian of his property again, forces him to turn to euphoric drugs; retreat from reality for the red man. As he rode back down into the valley in the warm afternoon, he could feel that power inside becoming aware. The Beast, too, looked forward to the trip into Navajo land and perhaps even a more subjective journey with Little Brown Father. At that thought, Barry felt the power move and rise in him. Yes, it was interested.
“You need anything at all, or anything goes wrong, just call Frank,” Barry said for the fourth or fifth time as they put his suitcase and a hamper of food into the Model A sedan.
“Have you got the water bags tied on tight?” Renee asked. She was holding little Marty on her hip in a comfortable, motherly way. Barry stopped to look at her, amazed at how she had encompassed the pregnancy and birth and care of their son. He filled up with admiration and love for his woman at that moment and walked over to put his arms around her.
“Sweetheart, it*s going to be a big break for us,” he said, holding her tight while the little round face of Marty slept in its blankets. “It*s a good story, and it’ll go even better than the one last year.”
“You just take care of yourself and don’t get scalped,9* Renee said, kissing him all over the face.
Mina was trying to get in between them, and they both hugged the little girl at the same time.
“I’ve got to go now, Daddy. It’s the last day of school,99 she said. “You and the Big Pussycat can always call me if anything’s wrong, you know.”
Barry looked at the little girl, with her wide, serious eyes, knowing what she meant, although he had not participated in that sharing of minds that she could somehow do with the Beast. Not wanting to think now about the complexities of his double life, he picked her up and swung her in the air once before hugging and kissing her on the lips as she wanted. He kissed Marty on his bald head, nibbed his cheek against Renee’s once more and got into the car. The soft, popping exhaust made him think of that other Model A whose destruction had lighted a whole mountain afire last summer.
He pulled the gearshift into first and looked at his family standing under the big cottonwood in the bright morning air, behind them the adobe house, solid and lovely under the trees, like part of the earth itself.
“I’m a lucky guy,” he said, so that Renee could hear him.
“Goodbye, dearest Barry,” she said.
Chapter Two
November, 1937
The last desperate people have visited the miraculous grave and gone away, most of them the same as when they came. This one sleeps on a doorstep like a homeless child. I watch him from a stairwell across the street and think whether I should help him. He is very sick, and even at this distance I sense that he will soon die. Lilly urges me, but then she is always eager to save people and would have me working in a clinic if she could. The man is huddled in his overcoat and leaning against the iron railing of someone’s front stoop. He is a large man in middle life, thick hair under his hat, a tired face, strong, graceful hands that are now relaxed on his lap. Dried mud crusts one arm and the bottom of his coat.
Will you help him?
Why this one from so many?
He is here.
All right, Lilly, we will help.
Let me take him home.
No. He would not understand.
You will frighten him.
He must change. This begins it.
I do not allow the shift my Person wishes. If we are to help this man, he must reverse his own descent toward death, and my appearance on this misty night will give him a shock. I will make it seem an accident.
In his dreams, George Beaumont found himself again in the line of people. The cold November afternoon stretched away into infinity, and they marched somewhere in the mud, like soldiers going to their deaths. They kept their heads down. The destination was known.
His eyes snapped open, his whole body bristling with fear, breath suspended. What sound had wakened him? Huddled against the iron railing that was now warm with his own warmth, he felt like a part of the building suddenly come aware. There. Something moved in the shadows across the narrow street, a form so sinuous it could only be an animal, a huge animal slipping from doorway to cellarway to stairs. George felt the hair on his neck standing up, his stomach tight with fear. That was the sound that had pulled him from sleep: a low moaning. The shadow suddenly moved so fast that George thought it had disappeared and reappeared farther on. There came a sharp squeal and then silence.
George leaped to his feet, the unwary and innocent bystander who has blundered into the murder scene and is now seen by the killer. The shadowy form across the street emerged into the lesser darkness of the pavement and reared up on its hind legs, looking at George. From its bloody jaws hung the body of a common house cat.
The man felt faint as his own sudden standing up drained the blood from his brain. Was it a bear? Taller than he was when it stood, it had a rounded head and long muzzle and small ears set close to the head. The eyes were large and luminous, a night creature’s eyes. George Beaumont, called Bo by his friends back home, alone in a strange town in the dead of night, felt that a dream had somehow extended into his waking life, that, dreaming and waking too soon, he had pulled this apparition into his world by mistake. He wanted it not to be there. The creature dropped the dead cat into the gutter and stalked toward him on its hind legs, fixing him with its eyes.
Bo could not move from the spot
I will not harm you.
The man staggered as if he had been struck in the face, the words like a physical touch inside his mind. But he felt the agony in his side moving again and knew he was not dreaming. As if from a distance, his mind noted the details of the scene: the Beast with its gleaming teeth and blue-gray fur walking toward him, a vision not to be credited by the waking mind, and the man in his dark overcoat and hat standing with his arms hanging down. The Beast was like a huge cat but tailless, with almost human forepaws and blunt fingers where he could imagine retracted talons.
You are sick.
The voice felt feminine to Bo’s mind, as if a woman were speaking, trying to keep him from being afraid. The fearful muzzle came close to his face. Huge, luminous eyes peered into his own.
