There was just a flicker of vibrant yellow light behind a blue, rounded peak. A golden spot in the cold, dark blue fresco that was on everything. He went out to the front lawn and crossed his legs under him as he sat down on the thick, comfortable grass. He rocked back and forth a little, shifting and pulling his legs under him with his hands. When he was finally still he looked down, letting the sun rise in the upper periphery of his vision. The sun was a splayed issue of light in the quiet, vibrating place that was at once in here and out there. The sun rose high, the sky became a light blue, and Mrs. Gregorson's bacon and eggs were cooking on the old chipped stove. Caulden, of course, was rapt in meditation, oblivious to all these things, sitting detached on the front lawn. Duane watched Caulden through the big front window. There was a frown on his forehead, and his hands were stuffed into the back pockets of his slim charcoal slacks. Mrs. Gregorson came and glared out the window like an old pointing dog. "My word, what is he doing out there? Dreaming? He hasn't joined those hippies has he?" Duane was thinking with his hand under his chin. "It's hard to say, Mrs. Gregorson," he said seriously. "Well, doesn't he want any breakfast?" said Mrs. Gregorson, as if she couldn't believe it. "No, I don't think he wants any breakfast today," replied Duane, his forehead still wrinkled. Giraurd had come to look and now he was sitting and reading the paper in one of the sagging old chairs with the flowery cushions. "Boy, that guy's really flippin' out isn't ee," said Giraurd with his slurred stutter. "Boy ah don't know about that guy." Giraurd wavered back and forth as he talked. He sat holding the paper in front of his face, shifting positions frequently and moving his head. Duane had turned to look at Giraurd, and when he looked back Caulden was walking across the lawn to the sidewalk that he took to school every morning. Oh my God, thought Duane, Caulden was going to school in his flowery robe and his topless sandals. Duane ran down stairs and came back up carrying his books, pulling on his sweater. "I'm sorry Mrs. Gregorson. Guess I won't be eating either," he said as he hurried through the kitchen. Mrs. Gregorson, standing with a brand new egg turner in her hand, was utterly taken back. "What, you're not eating breakfast either?" "I'm afraid I have to hurry this morning Mrs. Gregorson." Mrs. Gregorson started turning over the eggs furiously. "Well, I just can't understand what's going on around here all of a sudden. It just gets on my nerves." "You'd better watch out fer that guy. He's actin' awful strange," said Giraurd as Duane yanked open the door. Duane was out of the door, across the lawn and down to the sidewalk just in time to see Caulden disappear behind the trees at the first intersection where they turned right on their way to school. Yes, he was going to school all right. Needless to say, Caulden looked rather odd in his Oriental robe, walking through this immaculately kept up, venerable old neighborhood. He walked carefully, like a Catholic priest on his way to mass. Occasionally a car came by and people would gawk at him, but Caulden was oblivious to everything behind the dark sunglasses. He came to University Boulevard and took the sidewalk to the right as he always did. He walked obliviously alongside the noisy, chaotic, metallic caravan that was hustling to the campus at this awakening time of morning. People shouted and cursed and jeered at him like camel drivers at a frenzied auction, but Caulden was rapt in the contemplation of inner being. These jeers and curses were like faint gurgly sounds heard underwater; he hardly noticed them. Caulden waited at the intersection for the light to turn red; then he walked across the street, unaware that someone was bursting into hilarious laughter. Caulden strutted down the grass covered hill above campus. There was a milieu of neatly dressed students sprawling over the hill, there was giggling and sporadic laughter, but Caulden didn't notice. He kept walking past the old moldy buildings on the outskirts of campus, he waited in line for a minute to cross the street in front of the bookstore, the people he was with looked into the air and down at him. The sun heliographed his sunglasses. He walked unceremoniously across the big lawn that was the populated center of campus, he sat down in a yoga position on the thin, downtrodden grass in front of the main entrance to the Union Building. And there he sat in his now customary position, facing the old clock tower that dominated the upper campus hill like a gray, gaunt medieval citadel. His mysterious translucent sunglasses mirrored the vague, undulating forms of chattering people passing by, most of them merely looking at him and walking on. Duane had been following Caulden all the way from Mrs. Gregorson's house, with a distracted frown on his face, and now he stood on the sidewalk not very far from Caulden, contemplating him with his hands stuffed into his back pockets as people jostled by. The gong in the clock tower rang out its distant underground sound. To Caulden it was a prayer gong calling the peaceful, quiescent mind 26 to enter contemplation. Eight times it rang out, once for each hour that the world had turned since midnight. The world was bright and vibrant, even through Caulden's sunglasses. The new pink bricked buildings, the luminescent blue sky, the blue mountains mimicking the sky. All day long Caulden sat in the same place, his mind transfixed. The people were like shadowy, ephemeral forms in an underwater tank. The gong rang out again, nine times for the turning of the world; Caulden heard one pulsating sound that passed by him as it traveled through the universe. The world faded and shriveled into a colorless husk of ashes and shadows. The colors in his mind dispersed; he could see the motionless, indifferent limbo behind them. The world was like a dusty basement with gray, crumbling concrete, a dumping place for all the burned out, senile elements. The gong sounded again, ten times for the turning of the world. For Caulden the one sound that hovered over the chasm of being. Where time was falling like a rock torn loose. Again the gong, eleven sounds that were one to Caulden. Time had stopped for him. He was steeped in the expansive recesses of his mind where nothing happened, only the unrippled pool of vibrating consciousness. And now the gong sounded twelve times, twelve waves of sound that were one wave, like ripples passing over a still lake. The vibration, the underlying essence of all his thoughts and feelings and memories was there, he saw it in his mind, he felt it in the ebb and flow of his turgid being. The gong sounded once, his mind was suspended in the loft of his body, soaring there, careening through ether and wheeling around and around with the rotating world, flying ahead of the earth like a billowing west wind. Faster and faster, and yet going nowhere. The gong sounded two times and three times. Suddenly the world inside of Caulden's mind came to an abrupt stop. He felt as though he were in a wind rustled meadow. A soft, glowing twilight began to flicker. And then Caulden thought that there was somewhere else he had to go, and he knew that he had something to do there. He stood up and took off his sunglasses. The subtle shadow of late afternoon was like a tinted filter imposing a softened tone upon the pink color of the brick and the green color of the lawn and the trees and the blue color of the sky. The gong in the clock tower rang out four o'clock. There were a few students walking on the sidewalk and sauntering across the lawns. It was the time of day when most of the day classes were over and the night classes hadn't started yet. The rectangular brick buildings, the lawns, the interlacing network of sidewalks, they were all here, vacantly. Caulden put his hands on his hips and pawed the lawn with his foot, and looked sideways as if to see what was in the corner of his eye. Duane was walking towards him on the sidewalk, jouncing and darting his eyes as if there couldn't be a more ordinary occurrence than Caulden standing in this public place in his ornate robe and his topless sandals. "Hello Caulden. Where've ya been taday," he said in an ordinary tone. "You weren't there for breakfast, and Mrs. Gregorson really missed ya. You know how bent she gets when anyone throws a clod in the churn." The two turned and walked down the sidewalk, crossed the street in front of the bookstore, and started up the hill towards Mrs. Gregorson's house. continued from page 13 up! You knew she would come back. You knew you would have to give her up!" We gathered up the clothes and toys and I kept asking myself how a house so crowded with people and things could be so empty. We still saw much of Beverly after her mother came home, but it was not the same. We felt it would be too difficult for her to be torn in two directions, and it was difficult for us to be so near and yet so far removed. The end of the school year was upon us and we were due to go North for the summer so my husband could attend graduate school. Goodbyes were sad but hurried, and we parted with many promises of the fun we would have at the end of the summer when we would be together again. While we were away, Herbert was transferred to another boarding school, and they were gone when we returned. We exchanged letters a few times, but eventually we lost touch almost completely, as happens when people move frequently. The last time we talked to Beverly's father, when we met by chance at a large meeting of Indian Affairs people, he told us how tall she was and how much she weighed, but it was unreal and we didn't remember. Now, twelve years later, we know that she is a lovely young lady of sixteen, but our Beverly is four years old, full of mischief and giggles and love. She is gone from us, but she remains with us always. My hands remember the unfamiliar texture of soft, kinky, brown-black hair; my neck feels the desperate strength of an abandoned child clinging tightly to love and hope. My closed eyes see a flash of dark brown, beautifully formed legs, satiny and smooth against a pink and white checked full skirt. And my heart knows that love is not a color. 27