"Avram Davidson - Or The Grasses Grow - v1.0" - читать интересную книгу автора (Davidson Avram)

Or the Grasses
Grow

AVRAM DAVIDSON

About halfway along the narrow and ill-paved county road between Crosby and Spanish Flats (all dips and hollows shimmering falsely like water in the heat till you get right up close to them), the road to Tickisall Agency branches off. No pretense of concrete or macadam-or even grading-deceives the chance or rarely purposeful traveler. Federal, state, and county governments have better things to do with their money: Tickisall pays no taxes, its handful of residents have only recently been accorded the vote, and that grudgingly: an out-of-state judge unexpectedly on the circuit. Man had no idea of the problem involved. Courts going to hell anyway.
The sun-baked earth is cracked and riven. A few dirty sheep and a handful of scrub cows share its scanty herbage with an occasional sway-backed horse or stunted burro.

Here and there a gaunt automobile rests in the thin shadow of a board shack and a child, startled doubtless by the smooth sound of a strange motor, runs like a lizard through the dusty wastes to hide, and then to peer. Melon vines dried past all hope of fruit lie in patches next to whispery, tindery cornstalks.
And in the midst of all this, next to the only spring which never goes dry, are the only painted buildings, the only decent buildings, in the area. In the middle of the green lawn is a pole with the flag, and right behind the pole, over the front door, the sign: U. S. BUREAU OF INDIAN AFFAIRS. TICKISALL AGENCY. OFFICE OF THE SUPERINTENDENT.

Before Uncle Fox-Head sat a basket with four different kinds of clay, and next to the basket was a medicine gourd full of water. The old man rolled the clay between his moistened palms, singing in a low voice. Then he washed his hands and sprinkled them with pollen. Then he took up the prayer sticks, made of juniper (once there had been juniper trees on the Reservation, once there had been many trees) and painted with the signs of Thunder, Sun, Moon, Rain, Lightning; with the feathers tied to them-once there bad been birds, too . . .

Oh, people-of-the-Hidden-Places,
Oh, take our message to the Hidden Places,
Swiftly, swiftly, now,

the old man chanted, shaking the medicine sticks.

Oh, you Swift Ones, People-with-no-legs,
Take our message to the People-with-no-bodies,
Swiftly, swiftly, now . . .

The old man's skin was like a cracked, worn moccasin. With his turkey-claw hand he took up the gourd rattle, shook it: west~ south, up, down, east north.

Oh, people-of-the-hollow-Earth,
Take our message to the hollow Earth,
Take our song to our Fathers and Mothers,
Take our cry to the Spirit People,
Take and go, take and go,
Swiftly, swiftly, now . . .

The snakes rippled across the ground and were gone, one by one. The old man's sister's son helped him back to his sheepskin, spread in the shade, where he half sat, half lay, panting.

His great-nephews, Billy Cottonwood and Sam Quarter-horse, were talking together in English. "There was a fellow in my outfit," Cottonwood said; "a fellow from West Virginia, name of Corrothers. Said his grandmother claimed she could charm away warts. So I said my great-uncle claimed be could make snakes. And they all laughed fit to kill and said, 'Chief, when you try a snow job, it turns into a blizzard!' . . . Old Corrothers," be reflected. "We were pretty good buddies. Maybe I'll go to West Virginia and look him up. I could bitch, maybe."
Quarter-horse said, "Yeah, you can go to West Virginia, and I can go to L.A.-but what about the others? Where they going to go, if Washington refuses to act?"
The fond smile of recollection left his cousin's lean, brown face. "I don't know," be said. "I be damned and go hell if I know." And then the old pickup came rattling and coughing up to the house, and Sam said, "Here's Newton."
Newton Quarter-horse, his brother Sam, and Billy Cotton-

wood were the only three Tickisalls who bad passed the physical and gone into the Army. There weren't a lot of others who were of conscripting age (or any other age, for that matter), and whom TB didn't keep out, other ailments active or passive did. Once there had been trees on the Reservation, and birds, and deer, and healthy men.
The wash-faded Army sun tans bad been clean and fresh as always when Newt set out for Crosby, but they were dusty and sweaty now. He took a piece of wet burlap out and removed a few bottles from it. "Open these, Sam, will you, while I wash," be said. "Cokes for us, strawberry pop for the old people . . . How's Uncle Fox-Head?"
Billy grunted. "Playing at making medicine snakes again . Do you suppose, if we believed him-that he could?"
Newt shrugged. "Well, maybe if the telegram don't do any good, the snakes will. And I'm damned sure they won't do no worse. That son of a bitch Easly," he said, looking out over the drought-bitten land. " 'Sending a smoke signal to the Great White Father again, Sitting Bull?' he says, smirking and sneering. 'You just take the money and send the wire,' I told him . . . They looked at me like coyotes looking at a sick calf." Abruptly, he turned away and went to dip his handkerchief in the bucket. Water was hard come by.
The lip of the bottle clicked against one of Uncle FoxHead's few teeth. He drank noisily, then licked his lips. "Today we drink the white men's sweet water," he said. "What will we drink tomorrow?" No one said anything. "I will tell you, then," he continued. "Unless the white men relent, we will drink the bitter water of the Hollow Places. They are bitter, but they are strong and good." He waved his withered hand in a semicircle. "All this will go," he said, "and the Fathers and Mothers of the People will return and lead us

to our old home inside the Earth." His sister's son, who had never learned English nor gone to school, moaned. "Unless the white men relent," said the old man.
"They never have," said Cottonwood, in Tickisall. In English, he said, "What will he do when he sees that nothing happens tomorrow except that we get kicked the hell out of here?"
Newt said, "Die, I suppose . . . which might not be a bad idea. For all of us."
His brother turned and looked at him. "If you're planning Quarter-horse's Last Stand, forget about it. There aren't twenty rounds of ammunition on the whole Reservation."
Billy Cottonwood raised his head. "We could maybe move in with the Apahoya," be suggested. "They're just as dirt-poor as we are, but there's more of them, and I guess they'll hold on to their land awhile yet." His cousins shook their heads. "Well, not for us. But the others . . . Look, I spoke to Joe Feather Cloud that last time I was at Apahoya Agency. If we give him the truck and the sheep, he'll take care of Uncle Fox-Head."