The Night the White Deer Died by Gary Paulsen Read Free Book Online

hours. You were … asleep for two hours. Maybe a little more.”
    Then he’d suddenly burst into song, or rambling poetry, or whatever it was—it was somehow more than music, all about the clouds and black skirts and soaring. And he’d done it in English so that she could understand, and when he’d finished singing and put the empty cup down, she refilled it and put the pot back on the stove and sat down at the table.
    “That was beautiful—a beautiful song. What is it all about?”
    “Rain.” He said it short, nearly gruff. “It’s about rain—an old Navajo chant for rain to make the corn grow so they don’t have to use irrigation. It’s all about rain, water. Maybe so you got some sugar? This coffee would be better with sugar.”
    She went to the cupboard and got sugar and made a face when he put four spoonfuls in the small cup and drank it hot and sticky-sweet, smacking his lips.
    “I sing the song because it has much beauty in itand makes me feel better when I don’t feel so good. Like now.” He looked at her out of the corner of his eye. “You got a dollar for Corky? I’m really hurtin’ for some wine.”
    She shook her head. “No. No more dollars for wine.”
    “What was all that singing?” Janet’s mother suddenly appeared at the kitchen doorway. “Oh, it was you. You’re up.”
    Strangely Billy stood up when he saw her. “Yes. I’ll be out of here in a minute.…”
    “You don’t have to do that.” She tossed a look to Janet. “Not really—I’d have kicked you out before if I objected to having you around.”
    “Well, I don’t want to be in the way. Maybe so you got a dollar for some wine, and I’ll be getting out of your way.”
    “No.”
    “Billy!” Janet cut in. “I said no more money for wine.…”
    “I’m going back to work. Remember our agreement, Janet.” Her mother left the room, and Billy sat once more at the table and finished the coffee and then he stood, abruptly, and started for the door.
    “Where are you going?” Janet followed him.
    “Out.”
    “Yes, but out where? I mean why are you leaving so fast?” They were outside now, and he went through the gate without looking back, and she followed still, not sure why, until they got into the middle of thestreet, and there he stopped and turned on her so that she practically stumbled into him.
    “Why do you do this?”
    His voice remained level, but she could detect a slight plaintive note in it, and it threw her so that for a moment she couldn’t answer, and when she did come up with something, it wasn’t much.
    “I don’t know,” she said, and it was only half truth, but it was all she wanted to tell him.
    “You follow me, and I am an old man, and you won’t give me money for wine, and you keep trying to make me eat and drink coffee and be good when I don’t want those things. Why do you do this?”
    “I …” She shrugged. “It just happened, that’s all.”
    “You came this morning and sat beside me at the back door of Corky’s liquor store and wouldn’t let me get happy drunk. You want me sober. Why is this? What does it mean to you if I am drunk or I am sober?”
    There was nothing of anger in his voice, only the question, and she wondered if she should tell him about the dream, about all of it, but knew that she couldn’t. Not now, anyway.
    “Once I had a wife named Easter,” he said, quickly smiling. “She was not too much but all right, all right, and stayed with me until she died of the disease that eats, and she was this way, always this way. Maybe so you’re doing the same thing as my wife Easter, and that’s not so good because you aren’t my wife.”
    “No.” She shook her head. “No, it’s not like that.…”
    “Maybe so you’re just one of those little white girls that likes to meddle with Indians and make them do things or not do things because it makes you feel big?”
    “No, Billy …”
    “Then why do you do this?”
    “It’s … oh,
I
don’t know. I