Redeye by Clyde Edgerton Page B

comes back late in the night he will break it down and there will be big trouble with his wife’s mother.
    We go to the rock shelter used by the sheepherders. We go inside and sit at a table and drink from the whiskey. The whiskey gives our spirits the power to leave our bodies sometimes.
    â€œI have not before seen the new whites, have you?” I say.
    â€œNo, but did you see the dog?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œDid you see his eye?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œIt was red, full of blood. He may hold the spirit of the one who slept on watch.”
    â€œHe is just a dog.”
    The one whose spirit roams Orange Canyon slept while on watch when the Mescadey fought the Apache. His eye was taken and a red coal was fitted into his eye hole. He died of pain and now his spirit watches for the enemy on Mesa Largo—even though there is no more enemy except for the white man who brings more and more supplies and guns and people from beyond the Bright Owl, and now from beyond the Maracachee Mesa. At night the red coal can be seen far off among the piñon. It has been seen for many seasons, since the time of our fathers’ fathers.
    â€œIt is too bad that the young one was not the leader,” I said. “Then we would have gotten more whiskey.”
    Our fathers and mothers moved east to this land to be near the Mormons of Beacon City, who are our providers and friends.The Mormons teach us about their Maker and those spirits among them called their Saints. We take the man who was the son of their creator-spirit, the one called Jesus, into our hearts. We take the new Jesus, Joseph Smith, into our hearts, the one who found the golden tablets and made the words on them into the Book of Mormon. We take Moroni, and Brigham Young, and Wilford Woodruff into our hearts. Then we are able to live the afterlife. And if we accept what Bishop Thorpe teaches us, we will be given supplies.
    Bishop Thorpe tells us that his fathers and our fathers of long long ago were in a land which is across the great water and that his fathers and our fathers were brothers and were in tribes that lived side by side until the tribes became lost from each other. With the Mormons, we prepare for the Kingdom of the One Creator. We prepare to live together for one thousand cycles of seasons. Those of us who were of the Ghost Dance must now change to these beliefs or we will be without supplies that our people are no longer powerful enough to provide on the small land we have been given.
    I do not know in my heart if Bishop Thorpe’s belief is the one that is the only one as he says, but we believe so that we do not perish. I do not know what my father, my mother, my brothers would do. My father and brother went with the Ghost Dance.
    If Bishop Thorpe does not see us drink whiskey, then the One Creator does not see us drink either. So we hide here and afterwe drink we tell stories of the days when our fathers could travel over the entire land.
    â€œDo you remember the summer that we came upon the maidens and you did your dance without garments?”
    â€œOh, no, no, no. That was
your
dance. Remember, I was afraid to show the great limb between my legs to the maidens because they would all run away.”
    â€œNo, no, no. I would have been afraid myself to show my great limb—if you had not been so brave to take off your garments and run and dance along the riverbank while they cleaned their grouse by the river. I remember.”
    â€œThey were not cleaning grouse. They were cleaning rabbits.”
    â€œNo, it was grouse, and I was the one with the great limb.”
    â€œNo, that was me.”
    â€œYou are getting too old to remember.”
    â€œNo,
you
are getting too old to remember.”
    â€œHere, have some more. It is mostly gone.”
    â€œPerhaps we should return for more.”
    â€œThey will be asleep and we can get whiskey from the wagon.”
    â€œNo. The horses will make noise and we will be