To a God Unknown by John Steinbeck

“I know, señor. It is so quiet. It is always quiet here. You can hear noises, but they’re always on the outside, shut out and trying to get in.”

They were silent for a moment. Joseph could only see a blacker shadow against the black before him. “You asked me to come,” he said.

“Yes, señor, my friend, I would have no one do it but you.”

“Do what, Juanito? What do you want me to do?”

“What you must, señor. Did you bring a knife?”

“No,” Joseph said wonderingly. “I have no knife.”

“Then I will give you my pocket knife. It is the one I used on the calves. The blade is short, but in the right place it will do. I will show you where.”

“What are you talking about, Juanito?”

“Strike with the blade flat, my friend. Then it will go between the ribs, and I will show you where, so the blade will reach.”

Joseph stood up. “You mean I am to stab you, Juanito.”

“You must, my friend.”

Joseph moved closer to him and tried to see his face, and could not. “Why should I kill you, Juanito?” he asked.

“I killed your brother, señor. And you are my friend. Now you must be my enemy.”

“No,” Joseph said. “There’s something wrong here.” He paused uneasily, for the wind had died out of the trees, and silence, like a thick fog, had settled into the glade so that his voice seemed to fill up the air with unwanted sound. He was uncertain. His voice went on so softly that part of the words were whispered, and even then the glade was disturbed by his speaking. “There’s something wrong.

“You did not know it was my brother.”

“I should have looked, señor.”

“No, even if you had known, it would make no differ­ence. This thing was natural. You did what your nature demanded. It is natural and—it is finished” Still he could not see Juanito’s face, although a little grey of dawn was dropping into the glade.

“I do not understand this, señor,” Juanito said broken­ly. “It is worse than the knife. There would be a pain like fire for a moment, and then it would be gone. I would be right, and you would be right, too. I do not understand this way. It is like prison all my life.” The trees stood out now with a little light between them, and they were like black witnesses.

Joseph looked to the rock for strength and understand­ing. He could see the roughness of it now, and he could see the straight line of silver light where the little stream cut across the glade.

“It is not punishment,” he said at last. “I have no power to punish. Perhaps you must punish yourself if you find that among your instincts. You will act the course of your breed, as a young bird dog does when it comes to point where the birds are hidden, because that is in its breed. I have no punishment for you.”

Juanito ran to the rock, then, and scooped up water and drank it from his hands. And he walked quickly back. “This water is good, señor The Indians take it away with them, to drink when they are sick. They say it comes out of the center of the world.” He wiped his mouth on his sleeve. Joseph could see the outline of his face, and the little caves where his eyes were.

“What will you do now?” Joseph asked.

“I will do what you say, señor.”

Joseph cried angrily, “You put too much on me. Do what you wish!”

“But I wished you to kill me, my friend.”

“Will you come back to work?”

“No,” Juanito answered slowly, “It is too near the grave of an unrevenged man. I can’t do that until the bones are clean. I will go away for a while, señor. And when the bones are clean I will come back. Memory of the knife will be gone when the flesh is gone.”

Joseph was suddenly so filled with sorrow that it hurt his chest to contain it. “Where will you go, Juanito?”

“I know. I will take Willie. We will go together. Where there are horses we will be all right. If I am with Willie, helping him to fight off the dreams of the lonely place and the men who came out of the holes to tear him, then the punishment will not be so hard.” He turned suddenly in among the pines and disappeared, and his voice came back from behind the wall of trees, “My horse is here, señor. I will come back when the bones are clean.” A moment later Joseph heard the complaint of stirrup leather, and then the pounding of hoofs on pine needles.

The sky was bright now, and high over the center of the glade one little fragment of fiery cloud hung, but the glade was dark and grey yet, and the great rock brooded in its center.

Joseph walked to the rock and drew his hand over the heavy fur of moss. “Out of the center of the world,” he thought, and he remembered the poles of a battery. “Out of the heart of the world.” He walked away slowly, hating to turn his back on the rock, and as he rode down the slope the sun arose behind him and he could see it flashing on the windows of the farm houses below. The yellow grass glittered with dew. But now the hillsides were get­ting thin and worn and ready for the winter. A little band of steers watched him go by, turning slowly to keep their heads toward him.

Joseph felt very glad now, for within him there was arising the knowledge that his nature and the nature of the land were the same. He lifted his horse to a trot, for he remembered suddenly that Thomas was gone to Nues­tra Señora and there was no one but himself to build a coffin for his brother. For a moment, while the horse hur­ried on, Joseph tried to think what Benjy had been like, but soon he gave it up, for he couldn’t remember very well.

A column of smoke was drifting out of the chimney of Thomas’ house as he rode into the corral. He turned Patch loose and hung up the saddle. “Elizabeth will be with Rama,” he thought. And he walked eagerly into see his new wife.

14

THE winter came in early that year. Three weeks before Thanksgiving the evenings were red on the mountain tops toward the sea, and the bristling, officious wind raked the valley and sang around the house corners at night and flapped the window shades, and the little whirlwinds took columns of dust and leaves down the road like reeling sol­diers. The blackbirds swarmed and flew away in twinkling clouds and doves sat mourning on the fences for a while and then disappeared during a night. All day the flocks of ducks and geese were in the sky, aiming their arrows unerringly at the south, and in the dusk they cried tired­ly, and looked for the shine of water where they could rest the night. The frost came into the valley of Our Lady one night and burned the willows yellow and the dog­ wood red.

There was a scurrying preparation in the sky and on the ground. The squirrels worked frantically in the fields, storing ten times the food they needed in the community rooms under the ground, while in the hole-mouths the grey grandfathers squeaked shrilly and directed the harvest. The horses and cows lost their shiny coats and grew rough with new winter hair, and the dogs dug shallow holes to sleep in against the ground winds. And in spite of the activity, throughout the whole valley sadness hung like the blue smoky mist on the hills. The sage was purple­-black. The live oaks dropped leaves like rain and still were clad with leaves. Every night the sky burned over the sea and the clouds massed and deployed, charged and retreated in practice for the winter.

On the Wayne ranch there was preparation, too. The grass was in and the barns piled high with hay. The cross­cut saws were working on oak wood and the splitting mauls were breaking up the sticks. Joseph supervised the work, and his brothers labored under him. Thomas built a shed for the tools and oiled the plow shares and the har­row points. And Burton saw to the roofs and cleaned all the harness and saddles. The community woodpile rose up as high as a house.

Jennie saw her husband buried on a side-hill a quarter-mile away. Burton made a cross and Thomas built a little white paling fence around the grave, with a gate on iron hinges.

Every day for a while Jennie took some green thing to put on the grave, but in a short time even she could not remember Benjy very well, and she grew homesick for her own people. She thought of the dances and the rides in the snow, and she thought how her parents were getting old. The more she thought about them, the greater their need seemed. And besides, she was afraid of this new country now that she had no husband. And so one day Joseph drove away with her, and the other Waynes watched them go. All her possessions were in a traveling-basket along with Benjy’s watch and chain and the wed­ding pictures.