Red Rock

by Terri Windling

“This is a hard land. Breeds hard women,” Creek tells me. He likes pronouncements like this, eyes narrowed Clint Eastwood style, a cigarette dangling from the side of his mouth. His angelic face betrays his youth, so he hides it behind long red dreadlocks. He blows out smoke and floors the truck through the hairpin turns of a mountain road. He steers with one hand, casually, as though it’s all under control.

The land around us is hard and dry. A forest has grown from this unlikely soil. Live oak.

Sycamore. Cottonwood. Pine. He names them all as we fly past and I think: So it’s true then. He comes from this place. It’s not just another bullshit story.

“My mother,” Creek says, “she’s tough as old leather. I like my women soft, myself.”

As if he’s had so many of them. I’d bet good money that I am his first. And me, I’m fifteen, so I’m not quite sure if I count as a woman or a girl.

He glances over. “You tired, gal?” That gal. That’s another thing come between us. Gal and Howdy and the drawl that crept into his voice as we travelled here.

I shake my head no, but I’m tired to the bone. The truck has no shocks, and no heater besides.

We stole this scrapheap from a Stuckeys rest stop. Got fed up with hitchin’ the highway, that’s all.

Creek and me, we’re not criminals exactly; we’re just impatient. Maybe it’s the same thing.

Photo by Richard Kunz © 1992

“Yo!” he says, and he downshifts, turning sharply onto a rutted dirt road. The track leads through sparse groves of pine, backed by a wall of red rock cliffs. The road bumps and grinds and stops abruptly at the edge of a shallow river.

A rusted house trailer sits under the trees, surrounded by old wooden sheds, a horse corral, many cars and trucks. Dogs are barking. All of them look part coyote, except for one small, yappy mutt. They follow along as Creek parks the truck, scatter as he opens the door. A naked brown toddler appears through the trees, and a thin dark girl in a torn gypsy skirt. The skirt and her bare feet are covered with mud. Her wrists are weighted with turquoise and silver. She scoops up the child, ignoring us, and stalks down the road to the house.

“My sister,” Creek drawls. Clint Eastwood again. He means the toddler and not the girl. He stubs out the cigarette butt with his heel and sucks in the pine scented air.

We follow the girl and the dogs follow us. The house trailer squats at the end of the trail. Its wooden porch steps are half rotted through. Creek jumps them. I climb up warily. Inside, I smell meat roasting and coffee and smoke; and my stomach growls.

The big trailer is crowded with stuff. Old hippie stuff; it’s that kind of place. Creek was born in a commune nearby, tucked further back in these red rock hills. His father was some Indian — not the one that his mom lives with now, but some red-skinned cowboy who Creek never knew.

When Creek grew up, he split for L.A. Now he’s back, the prodigal son returned. His mother greets him with a wide, sweet smile. She doesn’t look like a hard woman — she’s young, almost pretty, her long red hair in a braid, her hippie skirt covered with stars. Her baby sleeps on her shoulder, and suddenly I don’t feel so good about this.

The room is filled with Indians. Some Mexicans. Many dark haired kids. A woman with a broad copper face puts a head of lettuce into my hands.

“I’m, umm, just here with Creek,” I tell her.

“I know. Here’s a knife. Chop it up,” she says.

Everyone in this place is working — peeling, grating, chopping, stirring. Washing pots and pans, diapers and towels, red mud off of children’s knees. I am circled now by laughter and talk. Knives clicking on chopping blocks. I am grafted onto this community which knows nothing of me beyond my name. And not even my real name at that — just Pippa, the one Creek gave me.

I look at Creek. He moves among them like a son, a brother, and not a thief. At this moment, there is no betrayal in his heart; there is nothing but pleasure on his angelic face. It is at this moment that I understand there are two boys living inside his skin: the Creek who belongs to me in L.A.

and the Creek who belongs to these people.

The lettuce is chopped. Two dozen tomatoes. The knife is taken from my hand. “Sit here,” says another woman, offering more work like it is a gift.

On the table before me is a wooden bowl of cactus like small green pincushions. “We’re washing these,” the woman says. She demonstrates how to clean the dirt from the roots and remove all the little white hairs. An old man lights the end of a dried green branch, waving smoke over us.

“Cedar,” the woman says to me. For a moment the air is spicy with its scent. “Cedar, for purification. Now you can touch the Medicine.”

This is it then. Medicine. Peyote. I stare at big bowls full of it. The women handle the cactus carefully; to them it’s a sacrament. To Creek, it’s just money for us on the streets of L.A. He looks and he smiles.

I rinse the little cactus in water. I like the feel of its tough green skin. The skin of my hand looks ghostly white in a circle of quick hands, all copper brown. I lift the little cactus and smell it. The smell is bitter. I put it down. I pick up another one from the pile. The woman stands and she watches me. Her black hair is bound into long, smooth braids. Turquoise and coral hand at her neck. I am not pure; no cedar can change that. She watches me as if she knows.

One wooden bowl holds these fresh green buttons. One holds pieces of root to make tea. A jar is filled with dried peyote, a Tupperware bowl holds peyote paste. They’ll all be eaten during the ceremony for which these people have gathered here. Creek told me all about it last week, back before we left L.A. We were broke, hungry, sitting on the sidewalk hustling tourists for change.

We’ll go to Red Rock, Pippa, he said. Listen. I got a plan.

When the task of preparation is finished, I follow Creek to the low riverbank. Evening is falling; the air grows cold. The water flows silently past our feet. Dark men in jeans, cowboy hats and silver gather together beneath the pines. Smoking, laughing. I hear a drum. A bonfire sends flashing sparks to the sky. A tipi stands nested among the dark trees, glimmering white in the thickening dusk. A hard land, Creek says, but it looks soft to me; you can sleep on pine needles instead of concrete. This is the difference between Creek and me: a place to come back to when you’re hungry enough. I’m angry then; I thought he had no place, like me — just the streets. Just us. The wind picks up, and my anger falls, slips into the water and drowns.

Creek’s mother has given us blankets and we carry them to the bed of the truck. This is where we will sleep tonight, although many here will not sleep at all. They’ll enter the tall white tipi soon.

They’ll pray until the sun comes up. Creek told me that no one will miss the stash of peyote we’ll steal during the night — and I believed him, back in L.A. Like taking candy from a baby, Creek said. But here, among these laughing and sharp eyed people, I am not so sure.

Our truck is pulled away from the others. We spread the blankets and crawl beneath. I need to close my eyes; we never slept all through the long journey here. I’m half asleep as I close my eyes, but Creek is wired. He has other ideas. I turn away from him and feel him stretched against me, long and lean. He pulls my Pearl Jam t-shirt up. I feel the skin of my back touch skin. A hand comes around to cup my breast. The heat is good, and the smell of him. I wish we could just lie still like this. This warmth is the thing I need from him. It is why I do not pull away when he puts his cock between my legs, pushing them open, pushing into the empty place where it wants to be. I bite my lip against the dry, dull pain. It will be over soon.

It is, and then at last Creek sleeps. Now I’m the one who lies awake, looking up into the trees.

Wondering if some day I’ll be the way he says a woman should be. Like women in movies that Creek calls hot. Me, I’m cold. And a coward too. I don’t want Creek to know that I don’t like some of these things we do. “You worry too much,” he’ll just complain. “Chill out. Forget the past.

Move on.” I don’t want to be a thing Creek moves on from, so there’s a lot I don’t say. The words sit inside me, heavy and cold. But Creek’s arms are warm around me now. I kiss his hand; I place it on my belly, and close my eyes.

When I open them, the sky is dark and bright stars hang low overhead. Creek is sitting up beside me, wrapped in a blanket his grandmother made. Staring at him I can see his cowboy father in his copper cheeks, his flattened nose and slanted eyes half hidden by the ropes of red hair that he gets from his Irish side.

“Listen,” he says.

I hear a drum beat, low, fast, insistent now. And a rattling sound. And a chanted song in a language both smooth and rough at once.

“Listen. They’re praying.” Creek strokes my scalp beneath the shorn fuzz of my hair. “They’ll sing like that the whole night long. And talk. And eat the Medicine.” He grins. “We’ve plenty of time to take what we need, and get the hell out.”

I ask Creek if his mother is there — in that tipi, sitting the whole night through. Sitting without sleep, hour after hour, until the sun comes up.

“I reckon,” says Creek. “This is church for her. My mom’s been going to tipi meetings ever since she married my stepfather — Leroy, that big Navajo by the door? That’s him. His uncle’s a

‘Roadman,’ it’s called — leads meetings like this clear across the state. Leroy will be a roadman, too. He’s, like, an apprentice or something.”

I ask Creek then if he’s ever done it: sat up all night eating Medicine.

“Yeah,” he says. That’s all he says. And then he grins, that quicksilver grin. “But hey, I’m not the religious type.” He stands, rubbing his fingers for warmth. “Fuckin’ hell, it’s cold in these friggin’

hills. Let’s go back into the house.”

I zip up my jacket — Creek’s old leather one. I climb from the truck and follow him. The tipi glows from its nest of trees, lit up now by the fire inside. The fire throws shadows on the canvas skin: shadows of people sitting crowded, shoulder to shoulder, feathers in their hands. I like that steady sound of drum and the chanting song — deep, clear and strange. I would like to stay right here and listen to it, but I turn and follow Creek. Inside, the girl in the gypsy skirt is watching TV, with the sound turned low. She seems to be about my age and yet she looks like a child to me. Her long hair is soft, her clothes are soft, and her skin is like a baby’s soft skin. Creek’s wrong; this land doesn’t turn women hard. It’s fear that turns women hard.

The kitchen smells of cedar, stew, and peyote. A kettle holds peyote tea. Creek pours it into chipped coffee mugs and hands one of the mugs to me. I take a sip. It is very bitter, and I don’t want to drink. “Go on, it’s good for you,” Creek says. “It’s holy, Pippa. It’s Medicine.” He’s grinning, quoting Leroy to me; it’s not holy to Creek, just another good kick. He’ll put anything in his mouth or his veins, and he likes to make fun of how wary I am. I force down another small sip.

then Creek decides that it’s cool if I don’t want to drink. He pours my tea into his cup and gulps it down, wincing at the taste.

He takes my hand and we go outside. He says, “It’s a drag Juanita’s awake. That girl. Some stray kid my mom took in. We’ll have to wait till she goes to bed, but when she does, we’ll do what we came to do, then we’re out of here.”

“Should you drive on that stuff?” I ask carefully as Creek drains his cup to the dregs again.

He frowns at me. “Relax,” he says. “Just chill, for fuck’s sale, Pippa, okay?”

He stalks away into the dark. I’m always pissing him off these days. If I run after him it will make it worse. I turn back to the river instead. There’s a fire burning beside its low red bank and I walk toward the heat. A woman sits beside it, feeding yellow flames with scraps of wood — the same woman who’d sat me down in that circle of women cleaning Medicine. She makes room on the low log bench she sits on, so I have to sit. She’s silent, and we sit like that for what must be a long, long time, just staring at the fire, and Creek is gone and I’m alone.

The tipi glows beyond our fire. I hear soft voices talking, then the low beat of those drums again. This woman’s silence makes me nervous. I say, “How come you’re not in there?”

The woman shrugs. “Too crowded tonight. Others need to be inside more than me.” Her voice is softly accented, the words clipped in a sing-song way. That’s all she says. I try again.

“So you come from ‘round here, or what?”

She stirs the fire, not looking at me. “From over there by Redtail Butte. Took all day to drive down here.”

“You drove all day and now you’re not even going in the tipi? Shit.”

She shrugs again. “There’s other Meetings. I came down to bring the Medicine.”

I stare at the flames and not at her. So it’s this woman we’re really stealing from, and not Creek’s family.

“You didn’t go in the tipi,” she says to me, not quite a question.

“Well, yeah, you know. I’m here with Creek. And we’re, like, visiting, I guess.”

“Why did you cut off all your hair?”

“My hair?” The question startles me.

“Your spirit is in your hair. Your strength and self-respect. That’s what we believe.”

I rub the stubble on my scalp. I thought I looked tougher, stronger this way. The woman pushes a jar on the ground toward me with one small slippered foot. She’s wearing beautiful moccassins, stitched with red and yellow beads. “Drink some of this. It will do you good,” she says.

“Is that pey— Medicine?”

The woman nods.

“No thanks. I’m, umm … “

She smiles and her face wrinkles. She’s much older than I thought she was. “Delma. I’m Delma, from Redtail Butte.”

“Alice,” I say. “From Illinois.”

That name slips out. I don’t know why I use that name after all these months. Delma turns back to the fire, silent once more, and so am I. I’m thinking about Illinois, can’t help it now. I light a cigarette. I take a long drag. The fire is hot on my face, but I’m shivering.

Eventually Creek comes looking for me, and he’s not angry now. “Come on,” he says, pulling me up, away from Delma and the fire. He’s smiling behind that red rasta hair, all foxy and whispering, “I’ve got it, Pip! A sack fuckin’ full of those big buttons and some dried stuff, too. I stashed it all in the back of the truck.”

“So then we can go,” I say.

I want to go, get away from here, the fire, the drums, all these sharp black eyes. I don’t much like what we’re doing to these people. Creek shakes his head.

“What’s your hurry? I’m telling you, they’ll never even miss the stuff — Leroy’s got like a ton of it in there. Or if they do, they won’t say nothin’ to us.” He grins and winks at me. “They’ll pray for us instead.”

And now I’m feeling even worse. I wait out on the splintered steps while Creek goes back into the house, fills up his cup with tea again. He’s giggling now, he’s flying, from the theft or the tea or maybe both. He takes my arm when he comes back out. “We’ll grow our own peyote,” he says, making plans. “They’re just fuckin’ cactus, yeah? Put the friggin’ things in dirt, I bet they’ll start to grow again. Stay fresh. Multiply. And then we’re in business, gal!” He lets out a wild whoop, Injun style. “Oh come on, Pippa,” he says, “come on, relax. It’s like a great night, yeah? Come on, I’ll show you my secret place. I built a fort back in those trees. Let’s go see if the thing’s still standing.”

A fort? I want to get out of here but he’s heading off into the trees. I must have been a jerk to think that Creek and I were just the same. I thought he had to be like me — why else would he be on the street? A fort, I’m thinking now, a fucking fort. Just like some normal kid. A family and a goddamn fort. He’s not like me at all.

I follow him and I’m following a stranger through the scrub and pine. The night is dark, and so is the narrow, twisted trail we’re following. I hear water somewhere nearby, and singing, and that low drum beat. Ahead, I hear the noise of someone else coming down the path. “Shit,” says Creek. He stops, his hand clenched tight around my scar-crossed wrist. I stop beside him, looking where he looks. “Oh shit,” he says.

Ahead of us are two people — and they’re staring at us, too. One has long red rasta hair, a flattened nose and slanted eyes. The other one is smaller, paler; ripped leather jacket; hair shaved off. Creek makes a strange sound in his throat — a whimpering sound, like a child would make.

And then he jerks me hard around, walking fast, back the way we’d come. I look behind me.

There is no one following us; there is no one there at all. But I know what I saw, and I know that Creek saw it too and he’s flipping out.

“Creek, slow down, you’re hurting me.”

He stops. “Goddamn fuckin’ hell,” he swears. And then he gives a shakey grin. “It’s just the peyote, right, Pippa? Shit, this stuff is strong after all. You’d never believe what I thought I just saw.”

“What did you see?” I ask him even though I already know what it was.

He pushes the hair back from his face. “Shit, that was weird. Really fuckin’ weird. It was us coming down the path. Just like those stories my Gramma used to tell — the Irish one, from the Old Country. She said if you went out walking at night and you met yourself coming down the path that it meant that you were going to die soon. Shit, I nearly pissed my pants! Just a story though. Just some old wives’ tale. And peyote, making me see things out there. You’re right, Pip, let’s get out of here. But I’ve got to drink some coffee first, eat something, get grounded out. You coming?” And he starts walking fast, and I hustle to keep up with him.

“I’ll wait down by the fire, alright? I’m cold. I’ll meet you back at the truck.”

“Suit yourself, I don’t give a shit.” Yeah, he’s playing Clint Eastwood again. It doesn’t matter, I know what I know. I know that he’s scared — it’s there in his eyes, on his face, in the bruise from his hand on my wrist. Although he will never admit it, at least not to me. Maybe not to himself.

But me, I saw it too and I’m not scared. That’s what I’m thinking about as I leave him and walk to the warmth of the fire. I’m feeling something, but it’s not fear. I don’t have a name for this feeling inside. I sit close to the yellow flames, my heart beating fast like the beat of those drums. Beside me, Delma sits silent and self-contained — at peace with the night, at peace with herself and with the whole wide world. I can see it as I look at her — as though she is clear river water and I’m looking straight to the bottom.

“Delma,” I say, “does the Medicine work if you’ve only had, like, one little sip?”

Her sharp eyes rest on me for just one moment, and then she looks away. “Depends.”

“On what?”

She shrugs. “Maybe,” she says, “on how open you are. Could be you need lots of Medicine, could be just a little bit.” She rises, picks up a long stick and pokes at the burning wood with it. “I grew up with Medicine, so my heart has always been open to it. That’s what it does, we say: it opens the heart — that’s how it lets healing in. When I began to bleed and became a woman, that’s when I first heard it sing.”

“Heard what sing?”

“The Medicine. The cactus, when it grows way out in the desert — I heard it singing to me.

That’s how I came to be a person who finds and gathers Medicine. It’s hard to find, almost impossible, unless you hear it sing. Then it calls to you. It says, ‘Look! I’m over here. I’m a gift from Creator.’”

She looks at me. I hear Creek calling my name.

“I guess we’re going now.”

“And you don’t want to go,” she says, nodding, as if she understands. I must be like clear river water too and she can see deep down. No, I don’t want to go. I want to stay and sleep under the pines; I want to grow soft, open-hearted, like her. But I have never said no to Creek. So many times I have wanted to, but I’ve always been scared of losing the one thing, the only thing I have.

I’ve always been scared. But now, tonight, Creek is the one who’s afraid, not me. Doesn’t matter what those old tales say. That wasn’t us we saw in the woods. Those two, they only looked like us on the outside — not if you looked deep down. That boy, he was his mother’s son, not Creek, the hustler from L.A. That girl, she was a Red Rock woman. Soft as pine needles and strong as the stone. She wouldn’t have left that fire, that drum, that good place and those good people, just because Creek was calling her now. Not like I am doing.

“For fuck’s sake, where were you?” Creek is complaining as I climb into the truck.

“Nevermind, we’re out of here, right now.”

He guns the engine and pops the clutch, tires sliding on needles and dirt. I watch as the glow of the tipi fades through the cottonwoods, and then it is gone. Creek’s cursing as he floors the truck too fast over the dark dirt track; he’s turned his fear to anger now, he’s racing it down this washed-out road. When we reach asphalt he brakes abruptly. “I’m loosing it.” He’s shivering.

“Fuckin’ peyote’s gone bad on me. I think you’d better drive.”

I take the wheel, and soon Creek’s snoring loudly, head pillowed on his arm, rasta hair covering his face. I’m tired myself, and I turn on the radio so I will stay awake. It’s the Navajo station.

They’re playing songs in a language I don’t understand, but I like the sound and I keep it on as I follow winding mountain roads. The hours pass, and my tiredness passes with them. Creek is fast asleep. We’re on a long straight highway now, leaving those Red Rock cliffs behind. The Navajo station breaks up, fades, and I turn the radio off.

Photo by Mardelle Kunz © 1992

The sun is rising over the distant mountains in the rear-view mirror when I pull the truck off the highway, stop, and pull the emergency brake. Creek sleeps. He’s always trusted me. Just you and me, that’s what he says. I climb down from the truck and take the jar and the sack full of Medicine.

Here the land is flat and dry; there’s nothing at all for miles around but cactus and scrub and a dry desert wind. I walk into the distance heading east, facing the rising sun. I stop in a circle of tall green cactus, long green arms raised to the sky. I plant those small green pincushions beneath their tall cousins, in good desert earth. I open the top of the jar and scatter dried peyote across the ground, giving it back to the sun and the soil. Giving it back to Delma.

Back in the truck, Creek is still snoring. He looks very tired, and very young. I take his leather jacket off and tuck it around his own shoulders. Then I walk out to the highway. Cars whip past as I stick out my thumb. The sun is rising, warming me as I stand there in my thin t-shirt.

Behind me, I can hear those cactus singing to the desert sky.

The End

About the Author:

Terri Windling is a writer, artist, editor, and founder of the Endicott Studio.

Copyright © 2000 by Terri Windling. This story first appeared in Century magazine, Spring 2000. It may not be reproduced in any form without the author’s express written permission.

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