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.