The Spirit

After the Rockies, the Indian entered a horizonless plain of grass slashed with wildflowers in profuse rich colors. Days were long, nights were short. Many times their passage stirred a watchdog in some farmhouse to lonely whines. Then the Indian could imagine the people within stirring in their sleep.

The Indian was skin and bones, an engine whose entire purpose was placing one foot before the other and propelling himself forward. A long ash bow was slung lengthwise across his chest and back. From a deerskin he had made a quiver, in which he placed six arrows, also made from ash, their ends furred with feathers. He was so adept with this weapon now that he could bring down a quail at twenty yards.

The dog rested with the spirit during the day and led the Indian at night. Sometimes the Indian complained to the dog. “Where’s he taking me? It don’t make sense how he walks, he goes in circles! He drags me up some goddamned mountain and down again. Spirits are supposed to know everything, but I swear he’s acting like he don’t know where he is.”

The dog agreed. The dog always agreed. The dog was a whore.

In the southwest a ragged line of mountains appeared. He watched them running southward. Some of them were strange mountains, with dry east slopes sliding down to wheat fields, and west slopes thickly jungled with vine maples and spruces of such density that sunlight barely penetrated their depths. Where the Rockies were sharp, these escarpments were smooth and slightly conical. Their heights were slit by fog layers and snow, which streamed into the wind like pennants.

Summer drained into fall. The wildflowers withered as the nights became cooler. Hot sun, cold air. The horizon climbed to the sky and fitted tightly under the curved bowl of the heavens. The spirit became bolder. He walked close to roads where campers scurried on their way to get berries, while the Indian and the dog hid in ditches. He paused at farms for dangerously long periods to steal fruit and potatoes.

The Indian was of two minds about this phantom who never ventured more than a mile from him yet whom he never saw. The rational half recognized him as a forager and hunter so shy of humans that he was apt to take the most tortuous route to avoid settlements. Before this thought could go on to a conclusion, the irrational half of his mind stopped it. The spirit was divine. The journey was a ceremony that he must complete. His name was locked in that great shaggy soul somewhere. The universe was a cipher which the Indian could never hope to fathom, but at least a name would place him firmly in his allotted place in that cipher.

But even the strongest faith requires encouragement. The Indian was all too human, and he knew he was losing ground. His sleeps became deeper and his body shrank. He expended more energy than he replaced with food. In the midst of farmlands and game he was in real danger of starving to death. Something had to happen soon. Winter would be on them. If the Indian did not receive his name before long, he would have to give up.

The gorge was filled with swarming mosquitoes. It was dim and greened by the sunlight passing through the trees on the top. Halfway up the cliff was a cave. The Indian knew his spirit slept within. It was hard to avoid climbing up and looking at the spirit as he slept.

The gorge was in the midst of thick cottonwoods just off a minor highway. The Indian followed the bottom of it into the trees again, with growing worry. He did not like where they were heading. Too many people were around.

At the other end of the gorge were more trees, and after that a gradual cleared slope leading downward and cupping a trailer park on three sides. The highway ran along the fourth side. Because of the electrical wiring and cinder-­block mountings, the Indian knew this was a permanent establishment. The trailers huddled together like a nest of bugs, with propane tanks fixed to their sides. Brightly colored laundry flapped on ropes. The trailers were in two rows, separated by an alley of vegetable gardens.

To the dog, the Indian said, “Unless he backtracks, he’s going to have to go right through them. He’s taking a hell of a chance. Near as I can figure, he’s going to make a dash through tonight.”

The Indian squatted on his heels and sniffed the air There was an autumn tang to it. He was homesick. Back home the leaves had long since turned gold and fallen to the ground. Wind would sweep them around the meadows. Spring had been underway only a couple of weeks when he left. The mountain sharpness of the air cleared his head and lungs.

That night he lay on his back, waiting for the dog to summon him. He sat up as the animal padded through the leaves. The dog yawned and lay down.

“He’s still sleeping?” the Indian asked.

That was a stupid question, the dog replied with a sardonic look.

The spirit slept all the following morning, as though storing up energy for some tremendous, exhausting undertaking.