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

just have to do it. Ever since that first morning when I was sitting on the park bench in the plaza and you got out of jail and came and sat next to me … and then this morning, when you came by with the kachina.” She was gushing but couldn’t stop, didn’t want to stop. “I just knew it was you, and that you’d be by the gate, and when you weren’t, I had to come looking for you, and if you really want a reason, I suppose it’s because I love you.…”
    It was out before she could stop it, out and across the dirt into the heat of the midday before she could control it.
    “Sort of. You know …” She added it lamely, tacked it on knowing it wouldn’t work, wouldn’t help. “The way people love all people, you know. That way.”
    For a moment they stood in silence, and she looked down at her feet and saw that there was dust on the tops of her shoes, and she thought, how strange that there should be dust on
top
of my shoes. And for a little time that became the most important thing in her life, that dust, and she concentrated on it with allher might but knew she was going to have to look up sooner or later.
    And when she finally did look up, his eyes were on her evenly, with a look she couldn’t comprehend, had never seen before; it was a combination of pain and peace, that look, a kind of mixture of all the good and all the bad in the world, all evening out at the same time.
    She wanted to say more, wanted to make it all right, but knew that anything she said would ruin something that was already damaged, so she kept her mouth shut, and he turned after a minute or a year or a life and walked off in the direction of the pueblo. She knew that she couldn’t follow, not this time, so she just stood and watched him move with that curious step-shuffle that made him look as if he were floating effortlessly over the ground.
    And she wanted to call after him, wanted to say “Billy” because she knew now—knew that he was the brave in the dream because of the look she’d seen in his eyes, but she didn’t call; though her lips formed the word, no sound came, and she just watched until he was out of sight in the dust and heat.

9
    For a week she neither saw nor heard Billy, and when ten days had passed with no contact and school had started in the new building north of town, up against the rugged mountains, there was too much in her life for her to think an awful lot about Billy.
    School was as strange as before, almost bizarre. She was the only Anglo, except for one grade-school child who belonged to one of the teachers, and many of the other kids shunned her for that reason. But about an equal number of them seemed attracted to her for the same reason, and getting settled into classes and school life again amounted to a confused muddle of trying to evaluate whether a new acquaintance was going to be a friend or an enemy.
    And always there was Julio, hovering in the background, walking behind her on the way home, making the little sounds, giving her candy and once some wrist jewelry, which he would hand her and move away before somebody saw them together—always there was Julio.
    In some ways she liked having Julio interested in her. He was a powerful figure in school and kept other boys from hassling her, kept her life relatively smooth when it could have been otherwise. But no other boy would talk to her with Julio in the vicinity, out of fear and respect, and when school had been going for nearly two weeks and she’d begun to feel a bit like a very exclusive leper, Janet had stopped Julio on the way home one afternoon and braced him.
    “Look. You have to give me a break.” She’d caught him completely off guard as he was rounding a corner to follow her.
    “What do you mean?” Immediately he took what Janet called The Stance—tall, half-angled away from her, brooding, arrogant, but poised and ready. “What kind of break?”
    “I’m not your private girl or something,” she’d said, and was surprised