Gardens in the Dunes

Part Five

SISTER SALT dreamed Indigo was in a beautiful place full of big shady trees and water and green grass. It was such a lovely dream she didn’t cry for her sister when she awoke. She told Maytha and Vedna, two Chemehuevi girls who shared the bunks next to hers.

“Sounds like she died and went to heaven,” Vedna said. “No such place exists here.” Their faces were nearly identical but Maytha wore braids while Vedna twisted her hair into a knot at the back of her neck. Maytha frowned at Vedna and shook her head to silence her, but Sister Salt didn’t care what she said. Indigo was smiling and singing in the dream, so Sister Salt knew she was all right. Maytha and Vedna were Chemehuevis so they didn’t have much in common with the other girls, who complained about their strange ways and odd sense of humor. Vedna said that the Sand Lizard people were even more strange than the Chemehuevis, so maybe that’s why they were friends. The Cocopa, Yuma, and Mojave girls were not unfriendly but they stayed to themselves, and so did the Apache girls.

Vedna claimed she and Maytha only teased her to cheer her because they loved her. That was their private joke, and it was the signal for the teasing to begin.

“Strange way to show your love,” Sister Salt replied, and that set them off. Still laughing, Maytha exclaimed, “We Chemehuevis are strange — it’s a relief to know Sand Lizard people are stranger still!” Of course only they and their dear friends, like Sister Salt, were permitted to tease them or make jokes about the Chemehuevi people; the twins were proud and ready to punch any stranger who dared insult their tribe.

Sister Salt laughed. Stories about the peculiar behavior of the Sand Lizard people were known all along the river. In battle, as soon as the Sand Lizards started to win and get the best of their enemies, they’d stop fighting and go home instead of taking prisoners. No wonder the Sand Lizard people were almost gone. Two Sand Lizards on surveillance duty were eavesdropping on enemies when one of the Sand Lizards rustled the leaves of the tree he was hiding in, and the enemies looked up. Desperately, the Sand Lizard imitated the woodpecker’s squawk again and again until an Apache threw a rock and knocked him out of the tree. His companion, hidden on the ground, started laughing, and the Apaches got him and killed him, but his companion who imitated the woodpecker got away. Here the Chemehuevi twins laughed out loud, and Sister Salt joined them — these were everyone’s favorite Sand Lizard stories. Sister Salt teased them back; she asked where were all the stories about the Sand Lizards’ wild sexual practices?

Sand Lizard mothers gave birth to Sand Lizard babies no matter which man they lay with; the Sand Lizard mother’s body changed everything to Sand Lizard inside her. Little Sand Lizards had different markings, and some were lighter or darker, but they were all Sand Lizards. Sex with strangers was valued for alliances and friendships that might be made. In Needles the people were too kind to mention Sister Salt’s lighter hair and skin to Grandma Fleet or Mama; but down here at Parker, on the Colorado River reservation, Sister Salt found the others looked at her differently. Maytha and Vedna said long time ago some of the other tribes used to smother their half-breed babies because they were afraid of them. This was during the time the white armies came and robbed the people of their fall harvests to starve them, the people killed the half-breed babies. Chemehuevis never did that, the twins assured her. See! Chemehuevis were different too, like the Sand Lizards!

Sister Salt was laughing when suddenly her eyes filled with tears. Yes, her Sand Lizard people were strange, and she felt strange and lost without Mama and Indigo.

For a long time after she and Indigo were parted, Sister Salt dwelled in the numb half world only a step outside the everyday world. She did not remember taking the step outside, only finding herself there after that terrible day she watched the train move away, slowly at first, then faster, until off in the distance it appeared to be the size of a snake, and then it was gone. Her body went numb; her hands and feet felt strange and distant from her; she opened her mouth to yell “Indigo!” but gasped instead. She could not get her breath and sank to the ground, and cried into the hot hard-packed dirt. Though no one could see, a part of herself was torn loose, and the bleeding filled her chest and stomach with a strange weight, so that for days Sister Salt lay motionless on her bunk and managed to swallow only water and a little corn meal soup Maytha and Vedna brought her. All the other girls avoided her; the Mojaves whispered she was suffering from ghost sickness, and the school staff feared typhoid, though she had no fever. The twins brought her the fresh datura root she requested, and she rubbed it against her cheeks and forehead to ask its help.

After the numbness in her body subsided, Sister Salt began to ask about Mama whenever she met Paiute or Mojave people who might know the whereabouts of the people arrested at Needles last winter. Yes, they’d heard about that, but no one seemed to know where the arrested people were taken — maybe to Fort Yuma or even Fort Huachuca. She missed Indigo so much, especially in the night, when she dreamed Indigo was lying beside her talking to her, only to awaken alone in the sweltering dormitory. She cried until her tears dried up and the other girls warned she’d go blind.

Next she sought out the Sand Lizard people Grandma Fleet had talked about, the ones who moved years ago to the Parker reservation on the river. But only a few people she spoke with had even heard of her people. Most thought the Sand Lizards were all gone. An elderly Mojave woman who cleaned houses for the white people took her aside and whispered she should be cautious because the Sand Lizard people were still remembered for their odd ways. The woman smiled and patted Sister on the arm as she said this; the old-time Mojaves had a great deal of respect and affection for the Sand Lizard people, who used to hide the Mojaves whenever the Mexican slave catchers pursued them. The help they gave others was one reason the Sand Lizard people got killed off; Grandma Fleet used to say there never were many Sand Lizards in the first place.

The superintendent of the Colorado River Indian agency referred to the old army barracks as “the school,” but there were no teachers or books; the school taught them how to boil the dirty laundry of the superintendent and his wife and the other government employees in big steel tubs of soapy water over hot coals. Sister Salt knew all about laundry because Mama did the hotel’s laundry in Needles. But the other young women — Cocopa, Yuma, and Mojave — were used to washing their clothes in the muddy water of the river, or not at all.

Each week Sister Salt made an escape plan, then changed her mind; which direction should she go to find Mama? She did not want to return to the old gardens without Indigo. The boarding students were allowed to come home once a year in the summer; so she decided to wait. The soldiers and Indian police brought ragged hungry people out of the canyons to the reservation at Parker every week, and she hoped to find someone with news of Mama.

Years before, the Mojaves and Chemehuevis were given tiny reservations along the river near Needles. The reservation at Parker held all the other Indians who used to live along the Colorado River before the white people came; so it was the most populous reservation on the river, and the largest too. Unfortunately, most of the land was above the fertile river bottom, on old floodplains impossible to irrigate.

Sister Salt had never seen such an ugly place — no wonder Grandma Fleet and the others refused to come in from the hills. White farmers claimed the best river bottom land. Along this stretch of the river not even the cottonwood trees or willows wanted to grow; the ground was hard-packed clay and old floodplain gravel. Only a small portion of the reservation land was fertile river bottom land, already allotted to regular churchgoers; all the others were left to grow what they could, on land that was too far from the river to irrigate and too parched by the sun to grow much.

The Parker Indian school superintendent called it a school, but he ran the place as a moneymaker for himself; he charged the soldiers and survey crews twenty-five cents per bundle for the dirty laundry that Sister Salt and the other young women washed in the school laundry. After the first week, Sister Salt began to mutter under her breath; this was no school, this was a prison. Maytha and Vedna said that all they had to do was get pregnant and the school superintendent would tell them to go as soon as their bellies got big. Sister Salt told them she did not plan to wait that long.

Sister Salt took every opportunity to get away from the school dormitory and laundry tubs to explore. The people were not permitted to farm their traditional fields any longer, and without water nothing grew in the old floodplain gravel. A few old people tried in the beginning by carrying water on their backs uphill to their fields of corn and beans, until they were defeated by the evaporation and the heat. The alluvial plains above the river were good only for sagebrush and rabbits.

The tin shacks built by government contractors were no better than the lean-to they had in Needles. Sister Salt was saddened by the quarreling that went on between the different tribes all crowded together there. The Chemehuevis and Mojaves were lucky to have their own reservations even if they were small, and many of the people at Parker envied the Mojaves and Chemehuevis, although they didn’t have enough farmland to go around either.

At Parker, if some poor person had even one parent who was Chemehuevi or Mojave, the others might jeer and tell them to go back to their own reservation. Sister Salt waited for someone to tell her to go home, but no one ever did. The few Sand Lizard people who remained were married to people of other tribes; they went to church every Sunday and spoke English. They did not turn Sister Salt away, but they shook their heads and whispered behind their hands about the fierce young Sand Lizard woman. Poor thing! She lived out in the hills too long!

Sister Salt watched the women who sat outdoors under ramadas made of tamarisk and willow branches to escape the oven heat of the tin shacks. Here they threw the old gambling sticks and drank cactus wine to pass the day. Lard, cornmeal, salt, and a little sugar were issued once a week. She saw women quarrel over cards, scream, and pull one another’s hair until Mr. Syrup, the Parker reservation policeman, was called to take them to jail.

The men were required to show up every morning to be assigned their work for the day by the superintendent; those who hunted rabbits in the sandhills outside reservation boundaries did so at the risk of jail. The people shuffled along with eyes dulled by the heat, and the tin shacks were to blame; if the people had been allowed to dig old-style houses partially underground they could keep cool until sundown, when traditionally work began in the hot months. But the authorities feared the Indians would take the opportunity to run away, and forbade work at night, when it was coolest.

The superintendent said the Indians must learn to stay put on the new reservation because a great many changes were on the way. Utah won statehood a few years before, so Arizona couldn’t be far behind. The surveys were completed for construction of the dam, and the digging for the canal to Los Angeles was under way. No one seemed happier about the construction activity at nearby Parker Canyon than the reservation superintendent. All winter he had important visitors in suits who patted him on the back and shook his hand.

The construction crews began to arrive in big freight wagons. Sister Salt counted the workers, then told Maytha and Vedna she had a plan: they would go into the laundry business for themselves. They hid when the others left for school, and met upriver where the clear side pools stood amid the willows and cattails. They dug soapweed yucca roots and hung them in the willows to dry first before they used them. They had no tin laundry tubs, so one night they borrowed an old oak barrel used to collect garbage from the rear of the dormitory. At first Maytha and Vedna were hesitant, but Sister Salt dumped the contents from the barrel; the stray dogs will take the blame, she told them. They rolled the barrel for what seemed like hours; the hollow noise of the barrel rolling along striking rocks set off the barking dogs, and they feared someone would alert the agency policeman, Mr. Syrup.

“Old Syrup sleeps like a rock,” Sister Salt said. “Don’t even worry about him. If he comes along right now I know where to touch him so he won’t tell anyone.” Maytha and Vedna giggled at Sister Salt’s remark; she was like the old-time people their mother talked about — before the missionaries came. In those days, the Chemehuevis really knew how to enjoy one another; only Sand Lizards knew how to enjoy sex more, Maytha joked, and Sister Salt nodded proudly. It was true: Sand Lizards practiced sex the way they all used to, before the missionaries came.

Maytha and Vedna complained the site of their laundry camp was too far to walk, but Sister Salt pointed out Mr. Syrup wouldn’t walk that far, so they’d be safe. They swore the other girls in the school laundry to secrecy and promised them a share of the money if they didn’t tell anyone. The dormitory attendants took roll only in the morning, so afterward they left the other girls in the school laundry while they hurried to the makeshift laundry along the river.

The first Saturday they walked upriver to the edge of the construction camp, only a few of the workers gave them bundles of laundry to wash. But in the following weeks the word got around: clean laundry for half the price the school superintendent charged.

Distinguished visitors from Washington, D.C., and excitement over the beginning of the aqueduct from the river to southern California kept the reservation superintendent occupied for weeks, and he did not immediately notice the decrease in receipts because more workers arrived every day. As their business grew, Sister Salt and the Chemehuevi sisters shared their laundry customers with the others girls, who used the school’s laundry facilities to make a little money.

Down along the river Sister Salt sometimes forgot everything but the sound of the water and its coolness over her legs; later when she lay in the shade on the river sand, surrounded with the perfume of the willows, she imagined she was back in the previous year when she and Indigo were still together safely at the old gardens. She knew she must not permit herself to dwell on their separation for fear she might become too sad to move, too sad for her stomach to digest food. Instead, she kept busy; she scrubbed the dungarees and overalls on the flat sandstone. She began to wonder: if Jesus really was such a loving being, why did he disappear with their mother but leave her and Indigo behind?

She saved the coins from her share of the profits each week in a jar buried under a cottonwood tree by the river. The tree was old and so big that Sister Salt could not come close to reaching her arms around its trunk when she closed her eyes to embrace it and lay her cheek on its nubbly bark because she was so lonely for the touch of someone who loved her. With her arms around the tree, she thought of Grandma Fleet and Mama then, and Indigo, and she cried until her eyes felt tiny and hot. She did not know what to do next. Where was Mama? How would she get Indigo home? She saved up money, but what good was it to her? She let go of the tree and let her arms drop down to her sides as she sank down on the river sand.

Suddenly she sensed she was being watched. She jumped up and without taking her eyes off the thicket of willow and tamarisk, Sister Salt reached down and picked up a fallen branch. She carried it raised like a club in both hands as she began to make her way back to the school dormitory. They all knew stories about women and even little girls attacked by whites or black men or Mexicans who worked for them.

She was breathing hard and her heart was pounding so loudly she couldn’t tell if the rustle in the bushes was quail or an enemy. The memory of a Cocopa girl beaten and bloodied after an attack filled her with anger. She gripped the stick tighter and felt the anger lift her; her legs felt stronger and lighter; the club seemed light in her hands. Suddenly she wanted very much to find her stalker. She crept along the path next to the river silently as she did rabbit hunting, stopping frequently to listen as she held her breath. She made a circle, crawling under the tamarisks and willows on her hands and knees, dragging the club in one hand. Up ahead she heard the crackle of twigs underfoot — it was a big foot in heavy boots. From around her neck she brought out the rawhide pouch with the flint blade Grandma Fleet gave her.

She crept up behind the large figure squatting in the rice grass and was about to spring on him and stab him in the throat when she recognized the muscular back and huge forearms and hands.

“Hey!” she yelled and the big man startled and never looked back; he tumbled forward on his hands and knees and crawled madly into the tamarisk seedlings in fright. He looked so frightened, despite his size, Sister Salt started laughing. The sound of her laughter made him stop and turn his head with a sheepish grin.

“You almost gave me a heart attack,” Big Candy said, pretending to feel his chest over his heart. Sister Salt laughed harder. He was their favorite laundry customer because he was so jolly, always teasing and making jokes about himself and his huge overalls he claimed he ordered from a tent manufacturer in St. Louis. She told him he ought to be more careful or he might get hurt. He’d learned his lesson, he said, with a make-believe shudder and big grin as he looked at the flint knife in her hand. He nodded his head dramatically; all the while Sister Salt watched his eyes — they were even blacker than his face. What beautiful teeth he had; she noticed them the first time he brought his laundry to them. Big Candy was the cook and right-hand man for the construction site superintendent, Mr. Wylie.

“You can see what a good cook I am,” he told them the first time they met him, as he showed off his big stomach. After that, even when he was too busy to come himself, he sent his bundle of dirty laundry along with little gifts — leftover cake or pie saved from Mr. Wylie’s table. The black and Mexican construction workers were the only ones who acted friendly or tried to talk to the Indian girls. The churchgoing Indian girls ignored them and refused to look them in the eyes because the minister warned them every Sunday about the dangers of Negroes and Mexicans.

In the beginning Sister Salt talked to Big Candy only to practice her English, but he made such funny jokes about himself she found herself laughing as she had with Indigo and Grandma Fleet. Still, Sister was surprised Candy tried to follow her along the river, where his bulk and the tangle of tamarisk and willow made tough going.

“The churchgoers say all you want from us is adultery,” Sister Salt said, idly swinging her club by its handle, still gripping the stone blade. Candy brushed the dry leaves off his overalls and pulled twigs from his hair. He smiled and shook his head slowly.

“That’s all those churchgoers think about.” He looked Sister Salt in the eyes. He seemed relaxed as he sat there on the ground looking up at her. Sister Salt threw down the club and sat on the ground not far from him. She rubbed the stone blade carefully between two fingers to test its edge and waited for him to say something; she and the Chemehuevi girls always laughed at him because he liked to talk so much. She cleaned the dirt from under her fingernails with the tip of the blade, stealing sidelong glances at him. The churchgoers said don’t get near the black men or your babies will be born with monkey tails, but Sister didn’t believe anything the churchgoers said because they were wrong about Jesus Christ. They claimed he died on a cross long ago, but Sister saw him with her own eyes last winter.

Candy stretched out on his back and looked up through the willow and cottonwood leaves at the sky. He was so big he looked like a hill lying there. The man who liked to talk so much didn’t have anything to say. Good, she thought, I have nothing to say either. She began to play with strips of willow bark, weaving it into little rings; when she looked over at him, his eyes were closed and his mouth half open; he was asleep, so she left him. The following day when Sister Salt went to the cottonwood tree along the river she found a paper sack with four hard licorice drops. She shared the candy with Maytha and Vedna and they laughed at one another’s teeth stained blackish brown with licorice juice.

Even when he could not meet her, Sister Salt found his little gifts to her under the cottonwood tree — gumdrops, a candy cane, or licorice. His given name was Gabriel — but he told everyone to call him Candy because he always had a little sack of penny candies. Sometimes he brought her a piece of red ribbon or an agate marble after a trip to Needles or Yuma, where he went to buy delicacies, fresh eggs, and butter for Mr. Wylie’s table. Maytha and Vedna agreed Candy seemed like a nice man, but they didn’t think Sister Salt should risk having babies with monkey tails. The first time Candy touched her breast, they were lying on the river sand in the cottonwood’s shade; Sister Salt pulled away and sat up. She asked him if it was true what the preacher said, that their babies would have monkey tails. She thought he might laugh at her, but he didn’t. His expression became thoughtful, even a little sad, and he shook his head slowly. Sister Salt regretted her question and scooted closer to him on the sand. She didn’t really believe it; anyway, people said much worse things about Sand Lizards.

“No, don’t waste your time with talk like that,” Candy said, stroking her hair away from her face. “The army used to warn us about disease and Indians,” he said with a smile, “but my grandma was a Baton Rouge Indian.” He laughed. “Don’t trust the things the churchgoers say.”

Sister Salt was suspicious at first, but for weeks Candy was content just to hug her close and kiss her and touch her breasts without intercourse. What was he waiting for? Later Maytha and Vedna asked what it was like to lie down with such a big, such a black, man.

Ummm! He smelled so good, and his skin was so soft and smooth — more smooth than brown skin and way more smooth than white skin. Dozing on the sand under the cottonwood tree he reminded her of a great black mountain she wanted to climb, so she just jumped on his chest and belly while he was dozing; he didn’t startle so he must have been watching her from under the brim of his hat. She laughed at the sensation of this mountainous man, wide and soft as a bed mattress, then stretched herself out on top of him so her face reached the center of Candy’s chest.

Afterward they dozed side by side on the sand until the mosquitoes came out at sundown. Candy talked about his plans for the future. No more work boots or overalls — he would wear a fine suit, a different color every day with the shoes to match, as he greeted the patrons of his restaurant in downtown Denver. He had lived his whole life in hot climates, first Louisiana, then Texas and southern Arizona. If not Denver, then Oakland or Seattle; the farther north a colored man went, the better off he was.

He was lucky to learn to cook from his mother, in the big house outside Baton Rouge. As an infant, his mother sat the cradle in the corner of the big plantation kitchen. Almost as soon as he could hold a paring knife safely, Candy helped his mother in the kitchen. His mother’s cooking made the dinner parties of the plantation famous throughout Louisiana. Now that his mother had passed on, no one knew how to cook fowl and game birds the way Candy cooked them. Even out here, Candy bragged, he could take quails or doves he shot and bake them into delicious pies. Mr. Wylie wanted Candy to return to Los Angeles to cook for him and his family, but Candy wanted a restaurant of his own. He planned to have the money he needed without the job in Los Angeles. Candy did not want to waste time. A man had to work most of his life if he wanted to have anything to call his own; he wanted his restaurant now, while he was still young enough to enjoy the fine food and pretty women that he’d have there.

Would she be one of the pretty women? Sister didn’t know what to say — she didn’t want to hurt his feelings, so she talked about Mama and the other dancers who followed the Messiah. She dreamed of finding them high in the mountains. Candy shook his head from time to time as she described the four nights of the dancers along the river at Needles.

“I could cook for that many people if I had to,” Candy commented, chewing the end of a piece of rice grass.

“I want to go look for her up north.”

“See, that’s a good sign right there! We both want to go the same direction!”

Before long, the Indian school superintendent received complaints he overcharged for his laundry service and learned of his competitors right under his nose. He was outraged at the cheek of these young “squaws” and ordered a review of purchase orders for soap at the school laundry. Furious at their treachery, the superintendent ordered Sister Salt and her accomplices arrested for petty theft; the federal magistrate in Yuma sentenced them all to three months in jail.

During the months Sister Salt and the Chemehuevi sisters were jailed in Yuma, Candy drove the company wagon down to Yuma for supplies twice each month. He pulled the wagon around back of the old jail’s thick adobe walls and parked right next to the narrow barred window of the women’s cell, where he could sit on the back end of the wagon and be at eye level with Sister Salt. He pushed licorice drops between the bars and cheered them with reports on the sales and profits from the home brew he sold, and the dice and card games he ran. Mr. Wylie took his cut, of course; that was the cost of doing business.

Candy told Sister Salt to put her ear close to the window bars and he whispered the news: he’d paid off the rest of her fine and now they’d let her out of jail. Tomorrow he was coming to take her to live with him at the dam site. To hell with the reservation and the school! Business was growing faster and faster as more workers arrived to dig the big ditch to Los Angeles; Candy was falling behind with all the work. As Sister Salt was led from the women’s cell, Candy called to Maytha and Vedna; he said he would pay their fines too if they wanted to come along, but they were too shy to answer him.

As they rode along in the wagon, Candy told Sister Salt all about his plans for expansion as more workers arrived. Besides the laundry and beer, Candy planned more cards and dice.

Candy stopped the wagon on the sandy ridge high above the construction site. Sister was shocked at the destruction she saw below: the earth was blasted open, the soil moist and red as flesh. The construction workers appeared the size of flies crawling over the hills of clayish dirt. The river had been forced from her bed into deep diversion ditches, where her water ran angry red. Big earth-moving machines pulled by teams of mules uprooted groves of ancient cottonwood trees. Off to the west, the workers were digging a huge ditch to carry river water all the way to Los Angeles.

For the first few weeks, Sister Salt slept with Candy in his tent, big enough for a brass bed and a green velvet love seat, recently shipped from San Diego. When Candy was away on business, Sister Salt woke at first light to bathe in the shallows downriver. In jail she abandoned the stiff tight shoes that hurt her toes; now, free of the agency rules, she used her sharp flint blade to cut away the high buttoned neck on the school blouse, then severed one long sleeve after the other. She left the waistband intact but tore the school skirt into strips to let the cool breeze pass through to cool her belly and bottom. On the hottest days when Candy was away, Sister Salt wore no blouse or skirt at all.

Candy came home unexpectedly a few times on those hot afternoons and found Sister Salt without clothes, resting in the tent by a bucket of water with a gourd dipper to sprinkle herself. The sight of her enflamed Candy’s passion, and after the sweet young woman climbed all over and tasted him like gravy, he didn’t have the heart to scold her for going naked while he was away. It was so damn hot here! Thermometers lost their accuracy in no time — the mercury simply cooked away in the relentless heat.

Nevertheless, Candy had warnings from the boss about keeping an Indian woman there. Mr. Wylie heard rumors — untrue, of course — Candy planned to start a whorehouse. Sister Salt listened to Candy and agreed it would be better to move to her own place down along the river where she would be free of prying eyes and of clothing if she chose; she could use red clay on her face and body against the mosquitoes, and no white men would become alarmed. So Candy drove her and her possessions a quarter mile downriver from the construction camp to a grove of cottonwood trees and willows spared by the machinery.

She had her own tent, a kerosene lantern, and a little fold-up bed she used for a table or chair because she preferred to sleep on the ground, where it was cooler. All day long explosions sent the rocks and sand of the old floodplain sky high in plumes of smoke and dust. Sister Salt was happy to be close to the river, away from the dust and noise of the camp.

After the river’s course was diverted, she was saddened to find silver-green carp belly-up, trapped in water holes in the empty riverbed. She tried to care for the datura plants and wild purple asters on the riverbank suddenly left high and dry. She called them her flower garden, but the asters died and the datura wilted if she did not carry them buckets of water every day. She felt sad but resentful too, at the workers who channeled the river away from its bed. In jail she and the twins heard the Mojave people were terribly upset because their beloved ancestors and dead relatives dwelled down there under the river; witchcraft activity was bound to increase because of the damage done to the river.

She didn’t know about witchcraft, but Sister did know about gardens: if the river got moved, there was no way to keep a garden. Angry tears filled her eyes; this place was almost as bad as the reservation at Parker.

She watched the river’s angry churning in the bypass channel; torrents suddenly rippled into stiff reddish ridges topped with white foam as the currents surged back and forth seeking a way back to the old riverbed. She sensed the ferocious power of the river and she began to imagine a flash flood that silently enveloped her tent and floated it away so gently the lantern remained secure on its hook. She imagined the river carried her inside the illuminated tent far, far to the ocean lagoon south of Yuma, where she floated out to sea.

Those first weeks alone on the river, in the coolness before dawn she dreamed of Grandma Fleet, Mama, and Indigo at the old gardens; for an instant after she woke, she felt as if they were there with her before she remembered where she was. She walked away from the river up the sandy slopes of the high ridge above the river, where she could see for great distances in all directions. She followed the ridge to its intersection with a big wash and made her way down the steep game trail to the bottom of the wash. As the sun rose, she began to notice a great many colorful pebbles and stones in the old river gravel, reds, yellows, oranges, whites — the pebbles were polished by water — and she was surprised to find rough granular stones of light greens and darker greens just the color of leaves. Sister Salt was delighted. Each visit to the big wash, she carried back as many of the colorful pebbles and stones as she could. The colored rocks and pebbles took a great deal of time to arrange but finally she completed the stone garden on the sand outside her tent — a garden that needed no water.

One morning she returned to find a big load of firewood neatly stacked next to four cast iron tubs; a big slab of brown soap glistened in a tin pail. No one wanted to go all the way to Parker to get his clothes washed when Candy’s laundry was right there and far cheaper to boot. Candy brought the bundles of dirty laundry before dawn and drank a cup of coffee with her or asked her to come lie on her bedroll with him before he went back to cook Mr. Wylie’s lunch. When she wasn’t scrubbing the overalls on the rock, she was folding clean clothes in separate bundles. The first week Sister Salt washed clothes all day and all night in order to finish. When Candy saw she was behind, he tied up the wagon horses and worked side by side with her to rinse the overalls in boiling water, then hang them over bushes to dry.

Sister Salt felt her heart beat faster whenever Candy was nearby. She worked as hard as she could to finish drying and folding the laundry just to see Candy’s surprise and pleasure as he realized Sister Salt managed to finish all the laundry by herself. If her hands felt raw or swollen from the hot water and lye soap, Sister Salt only had to remember Candy’s warm smile and how good his arms felt around her.

Not long after, Candy told her he had a surprise; first a tent identical to hers went up nearby; then Candy brought four more cast iron tubs. On his third trip he brought back Maytha and Vedna. Sister Salt was delighted to have her friends join her. Candy showed the three of them their accounts in his book; after they repaid him for paying off their jail fines, he would begin to pay them wages each week — four times the wage the school superintendent used to pay them. The laundry work went so much faster with three people to share it and to keep one another laughing with stories and jokes.

Candy was a busy man. Now Sister Salt saw him only when he brought the bundles of dirty laundry or when he loaded the wagon with the clean clothes. Often Candy was so tired when he visited, he fell asleep before he got his boots off, and she didn’t get to romp around on his big soft chest and belly as frequently as before. But Candy never failed to take out the rawhide pouch from inside his shirt to show off the $20 gold pieces and stacks of silver dollars, the profits for that week.

While they scrubbed overalls and boiled water, they planned what they’d do with the silver dollars they earned. Buy farmland right on the river! Maytha shouted. With the money they saved, they’d be able to buy some goats and maybe a few sheep, though summers might be too hot for sheep. Chickens? In the winter they might keep them, but when the hottest days of summer came, the hens stopped laying eggs, and they’d have to cook them.

When it was her turn to tell about her plans for her money, Sister Salt hesitated before she spoke. She had so much she wanted to do, she wasn’t sure how much money she would need. First she had to get Indigo home, and Big Candy promised to help her. Then she and Indigo had to find Mama before they returned to the old gardens.

“Good luck,” the twins said in unison, but they sounded uncertain. The soldiers and the Indian police were under orders to keep the people on the reservations. Besides, good farmland along the river was leased to white people friendly with the superintendent.

On the streets of Needles and Kingman there were so many hungry Indian women and children, Candy brought scraps and leftovers to them when he went to those towns. The women begged him for work, any kind of work, as he handed out bones and skin from the roasted chickens and turkeys; he smiled and nodded and promised them all jobs when he opened his hotel and restaurant in Denver.

Big Candy saw the newspapers every week after Wylie finished with them. The heat that summer exceeded all recorded temperatures in Phoenix and Los Angeles; rainfall the previous spring was far below normal. Wells in Los Angeles and surrounding communities ran dry, and drinking water was brought in by railroad tank cars. A week did not pass without some government official or other paying a visit to the construction site to monitor the progress on the aqueduct and the dam. More workers were hired to keep the project on schedule, and the construction site village of flapping canvas over wood crates and tin expanded toward the river. Big Candy was pleased they were closer to his brewery and gambling tents and the laundry.

The heat made the workers more thirsty than ever — the beer business boomed. Candy’s silent partner was his boss, Mr. Wylie; they’d worked together for a number of years from project to project. Wylie came down every evening around sundown to count the empty beer bottles; he liked to have an idea of how much money was taken in each day. After the count, Sister Salt and the Chemehuevi twins washed the bottles and boiled them before they were refilled with fresh brew.

Candy did not allow anyone else to lift the lids on the brewing barrels, and he checked them every day, sniffing at them and tasting them to decide which batches were ready to bottle. The workers joked Candy used river water to make his beer, but he took great care to haul fresh well water from Parker for his beer. He went all the way to Needles to the railroad freight office to pick up the special yeast and hops shipped from Albuquerque. Candy watched the brewing closely because beer was the staple of his business; without beer, the gamblers couldn’t hear those voices that urged them to roll the dice again to see how lucky they were. Those voices they heard were the spirits of the alcohol, and Candy tended those spirits very carefully so none were offended. If the brew was bottled too late, it was flat and yeasty; but if it was bottled too soon, too much pressure built up and the glass bottles exploded. Candy left the wine and moonshine to the bootleggers who drove in from Needles or Prescott; wine and distilled spirits took too much time to make.

Candy worried if the heat got any worse, the yeast in the brewing barrels would die; so he instructed Sister Salt and the Chemehuevi sisters to wrap the oak barrels in layers of burlap sacks soaked in the river. Sister Salt loved the excuse to splash around in the warm water, which was still cooler than the air. The moisture evaporated so fast that for a little while her skin felt cool and delightful.

Big Candy kept his word. On one of his weekly trips to Parker he went to the office of the reservation superintendent and made a written inquiry about Indigo. He was told the inquiry must be sent to the Indian Bureau of the War Department, in Washington, D.C.; that would take months. When Candy told Sister, she began to cry from anger and frustration — they’d never find Indigo if they had to ask Washington! But Candy told her to be patient, and he worked on composing a letter, night after night, even when he was so tired he fell asleep at the table. Sister Salt loved him most then, when he tried so hard to help her find Indigo. He was saving money for the train tickets; they’d go to Riverside if necessary. They’d find that girl!

Now the river was unrecognizable — rechanneled and trapped into narrow muddy chambers outside its old bed. The poor cottonwood trees and willows were ripped out and plowed into mounds of debris, where their roots reached out plaintively like giant skeleton hands. Oh poor trees! I’m sad for you. Poor river! What have they done to you? Sister whispered softly.

Two shifts of men worked day and night to complete the dam and canal on schedule. Layers of fine dust settled over everything, even the food and the bedding, and there was always the noise — the scrape and clank of the earth-moving machines, the whinnies of the mules, and the shouts of the workmen. By night the construction site was lit by big coal oil torches that trailed ribbons of flame whenever the wind caught them.

Down at the casino and bar, Big Candy hung dozens of lanterns from the cottonwood trees and from the corners of the tent frames; every afternoon Sister Salt and Maytha and Vedna refilled the lanterns with coal oil; besides providing light, the lantern fumes kept away the mosquitoes. The lamps were their last task before they got off work, and they discussed what they would do that night. After baths they sometimes went to have a beer and see who was winning at dice or blackjack.

A distance away, up on the gravel terrace of the old floodplain, next to the construction camp and the site superintendent’s big tent, businessmen from as far away as Prescott and Yuma parked canvas-covered wagons filled with mattresses, and with white and black women who charged construction workers ten cents for fifteen minutes. Mr. Wiley required the wagons with the mattresses to be parked within sight of his tent so that he could keep count of the customers to be sure the businessmen didn’t cheat him out of his share. That arrangement was fine with Sister Salt and the twins — they still got more offers than they wanted to have sex for money. Big Candy warned them not to undercut the prices of the wagon women too much, or their managers, the businessmen from Prescott and Yuma, would complain to the authorities and get Mr. Wiley in trouble. Sister Salt and the others took the men into the tamarisks and willows on the smooth clean river sand, so they charged less. Their customers said they much preferred the sand to those smelly mattresses in the wagons. As long as Sister Salt and the twins worked hard at the laundry and brewery, how they earned money in their free time was their business; Candy didn’t interfere.

Big Candy loved women, and he said all a man had to do was to let a woman be and she’d love him all the more. Candy’s mother had been born into slavery, and after the emancipation she continued to reflect on her position as a slave and then as a free woman. Dahlia was six feet tall and weighed three hundred pounds, so when she talked, people listened, even her employer and his wife. “Wage slave,” she called herself and the others; no, they couldn’t be bought or sold anymore — now human beings were worthless, and anything worthless was left to starve.

At night in their cabin, Dahlia loved to tell the stories she heard as a girl about the Red Stick people who adopted the escaped African slaves. Even before the Indians ever saw an African, the old Red Stick dreamers described them and said they had powerful medicine that the people here could use. So they welcomed the fugitives when they appeared, and it wasn’t long before the Red Sticks were given some of this medicine, which allowed their warriors to move through the swamps as silently and swiftly as smoke. Heavy casualties were inflicted on the French soldiers by only a handful of warriors, and later they routed the British. Of course, the swamps’ quicksand and fevers were their powerful allies.

In Dahlia’s clan, they knew how to hunt and to cook, especially meat. As Big Candy told Sister Salt more than once, the person who prepares the food has more power than most people think. Candy grew up in the big kitchen where he helped his mother. That was why he preferred to work around women; he explained this to Sister Salt the night he returned from Needles with the Mojave woman. She wasn’t young but she wasn’t too old; she took one look at Sister Salt and the Mojave woman’s eyes clouded with hatred toward Sister. Big Candy only laughed when Sister complained to him later; he reminded her she didn’t work near the Mojave woman. He couldn’t let the Mojave woman go; she was a good worker. Business was booming and he needed every worker he had.

Money, money! Some nights the sound of coins seemed louder than the sounds of the earthmoving machines and woke Sister Salt two or three times during the night. She felt something or someone was about to come — maybe the letters Candy sent off would bring Indigo home — but she had not dreamed about Indigo or their mother for some time.

Right before dawn it got quiet for a while, and that’s when she got up to watch the earth. She walked to the high sandy hill above the river and looked all around: she could see how the vegetation would grow back someday, and no trace of the construction camp would remain. Even their dam would fill up with sand someday; then the river would spill over it, free again.

She gazed off to the southwest in the direction of the old gardens. She was homesick for the dunes, for the peacefulness and quiet; for the good sleep she had in Grandma Fleet’s dugout house, which was much cooler than a tent. She missed the cold clear water from the crack in the sandstone of the shallow cave above the dunes.

The only time she wasn’t homesick was when she was flirting with handsome strangers or lying with one of them on the sandy riverbank in the shade. The old-time Sand Lizard people believed sex with strangers was advantageous because it created a happy atmosphere to benefit commerce and exchange with strangers. Grandma Fleet said it was simply good manners. Any babies born from these unions were named “friend,” “peace,” and “unity”; they loved these babies just as fiercely as they loved all their Sand Lizard babies.

Sister Salt took her choice of the men willing to pay a dime for fun in the tall grass along the river. Maytha and Vedna said Chemehuevi-Laguna women like them knew how to enjoy life, but this Sand Lizard woman was lusty! Candy did not mind — he was making good money and busy himself. Her body belonged to her — it was none of his business.

“You can’t be everywhere all the time,” Dahlia taught him, “so why worry about who or what others do when you aren’t there?” Besides, Candy loved women of all ages and colors; every time Candy drove the supply wagon to Needles, Prescott, or Yuma, he took along bundles of clean rags and stale bread to give to the street corner Indian women and to the children alone in the alleys. Sister Salt thought Candy’s kindness to women was his best quality. Why should she care if Candy had sex with other women — especially the Chemehuevi twins, because they were best friends? She hoped he avoided that Mojave woman only because the woman was her enemy. It wasn’t likely, though, because the poor man seldom had time for sex with any of them; Candy worked all day and half the night seven days a week to earn those silver dollars.

Candy’s gambling and brewery tents were packed with miners and cowboys as well as construction workers most of the day and night. He hired another, older Mojave woman to work with the woman who hated Sister; the Mojave women stirred the coals and watched the roasting meat on payday. Sister watched them from a distance and knew they talked about her. Only white men were hired as card dealers or to run the dice games; when he was not cooking Wylie the elaborate meals the man lived for, Big Candy was the overseer, who stood silently behind the customers to observe the dealers to keep them honest while they dealt cards or rolled dice. A young Mexican called Juanito began to drive the wagonloads of laundry because Candy was so busy. More tents for poker and dice players went up under the cottonwood trees along the riverbank.

“I’m this much closer to Denver,” he’d say, holding his money pouch close, with a blissful expression on his face to let Sister know he was imagining his hotel’s dining room; of course, the main dining table would have to be oversize — he’d have it made in Mexico and shipped to Denver by train. Soon the hard work would pay off. Sister didn’t intend to go to a cold climate like Denver’s, but she didn’t want to discuss it; she hoped maybe he would change his mind and buy a hotel in Prescott or Kingman instead. She didn’t want to leave the area where her sister and mother were last seen.

Gamblers flocked to the tents under the cottonwood trees along the river; after sundown a cool breeze came from the river and many men lounged outside to smoke or to count their winnings. Maytha and Vedna confessed they met two handsome young Mexicans, winners at blackjack, and they went off to the willows along the river; they had the silver dollars to prove it!

Next evening when they went, Sister Salt came along with them to see if the Mexicans were as handsome as the twins claimed. The next thing she knew, she was on the smooth sand under the cover of the willows, in the arms of a handsome Mexican with curly black hair. Charlie was different; she loved his smile and his quick, clever remarks that always made her smile or laugh; she never took money from Charlie. She found herself waiting to see him again, unable to concentrate on anything else as she scrubbed overalls with the Chemehuevi sisters.

For a while Charlie visited her almost every evening after his shift ended; Candy was so busy he hardly noticed. But soon Charlie confided to Sister he felt uncomfortable, and feared somehow Candy would cause him to lose his job. In Tucson Charlie was a married man — what if rumors got back to his wife? Nothing Sister Salt said would reassure him; later she suspected a spell cast by that Mojave woman; or maybe some missionary cautioned him. Charlie kissed her good-bye: he’d miss his Sand Lizard girl, but he couldn’t afford the risk any longer.

Sister Salt never cared much what other people thought; she never minded the taunts of the churchgoers — Indian or white — who pursed their lips anuslike to spit insults at her. She blamed the loss of Charlie on churchgoers who forgot Jesus loved the prostitute Mary Magdalene and called her sister. Jesus knew there could be no peace without love — why didn’t the churchgoers remember that? Wovoka preached the corpse on the cross wasn’t Jesus but some poor white man! She herself had seen Jesus winter before last, and he looked like he might be a Paiute, like Wovoka, with handsome dark skin and black hair and eyes.

After Charlie quit her, Sister began to hate the steaming tubs of smelly overalls — now the smell of soap and dirty clothes made her vomit, and so did the odor of the yeast in the brew. Before long she realized she was pregnant; a little Sand Lizard baby was coming to keep her company.

As the flutter of the baby inside her grew stronger, she dreamed a voice she knew was the baby’s. “Get a move on,” it seemed to say. “We can’t go until we get Indigo back,” she whispered. It must be Charlie’s baby, though she wasn’t certain; it might be Candy’s — both men were always on the go, no wonder the baby was like them. Probably the baby would resemble both men since both had sex with her regularly. But now that Charlie stayed away, the baby would become more and more like Big Candy until it was his child. That was what sex during pregnancy did.

If she stayed through the winter there was a chance the dancers and the Messiah might come down from the north again and she might find Mama. Anytime a letter might arrive with news of Indigo.