by Laura Drake
My head tells me they won’t care. People are far more worried about their own lives than mine.
No, all that matters is what I think. And that’s the pinch point, right there.
I look out at the stark landscape I was born to. I am Diné in much more than genetics. Our ways, our language, our beliefs are so much a part of me, I could no more rip them out than I could my DNA. Our ancestral home may be smaller now, but this land was ours long before Unforgiven, or New Mexico, for that matter.
I tried to fit in where I didn’t, first in the rodeo, then in the Army. This is where I fit.
Chapter 13
Houston, Texas
Cisco sits in his restaurant, red-faced, listening on the phone.
“I have feelers out everywhere, Cisco. Airports, train, and bus stations. I’ve circulated the photo you sent to all my people. It’s only a matter of time—”
“Time? We got no time. I want this girl gone. She should’a been gone three months ago.”
“Believe me, I’m motivated.”
“Then why, with all this ‘motivation,’ have you still not found her?”
Jovie flinches at the volume and glances around the restaurant.
But Cisco has nothing to worry about. This is his place. A guy owns it, but Cisco owns him.
“She’s gone to ground, jefe. I’ll dig her up, don’t worry. I’ll—”
He clicks End. “Useless. Well, you want something done, you gotta do it yourself. I don’t know why I’ve wasted so much time with idiotas.”
Jovie’s trying to be cool, but his eyes are worried “Do you want me to—”
“Get me a cerveza. It’s all you’re good for.”
When he’s gone, Cisco pulls up the Internet on his phone. He checks every couple of days, but so far, nothing. “Wherever she’s holed up, it’s—wait. What?” A blog. Some broad, running her mouth about some small-town garbage, but halfway down:
Oh, and I have some good news to report. I’m sure you read my article in the Patriot about Nevada Sweet, the new busboy down at the Chestnut Creek Café. As you know, I’m a fair-minded person, so I did some research. My facts were correct; she was in prison, but upon further study, it appears we have our own female Robin Hood, right here in Unforgiven!
“Here you go, boss.” Jovie sets a Dos Equis in front of Cisco.
“Shut up.” He scans the rest. How many Nevada Sweets can there be? He’s got a thing or two to take care of here, but he should be able to take a road trip in a couple days. She thinks she’s safe, so she’s not going anywhere.
This time, he’d be taking care of business. He chuckles, “That chick is as good as gone.”
* * *
Joseph
When I pull up and climb out of the truck, Ben Tsosie is sitting in a chair under a mesquite bush. “Well, Fishing Eagle. I expected to see you someday, but I didn’t expect it to be today.” He slowly pushes himself out of his chair onto his bowed legs and offers me his hand.
By reflex, I shake it. “I’d like to talk to you, if you have a minute.”
“I have nothing but minutes these days, and most of them pass too slow.” He points to another webbed lawn chair against the trailer. “Pull that in the shade, and we’ll catch up.”
I drag the chair across from him and force my knees to unlock. I’m caught between wanting to know and not. Between wanting to sit and wanting to run. Between the two forks in the road before me, and what I sense is going to be the push in the back that decides me.
His face is round and wrinkled as a dried apple. His eyes glitter from beneath fallen brows. Gray laces his long braids. “What do you want to know?”
“About my grandmother.”
“One of my best friends, growing up. A wonderful woman.”
“She was. My mother hinted at…something in her past. She said that you could give me details.”
“Ah, you come right to the point. I remember that about you from when you were a boy.”
Past history is the last thing I want to talk about. I swallow and keep my eyes trained on him, hoping he’ll pick up the hint.
“Excuse an old man for wanting to keep you longer. I’ve found that when you get older, you drop to the edges of the community. You swirl in the eddies and watch the younger ones in the river, rushing by. They respect you but have no time for you.”
I have empathy for him. Of course I do. But old wounds leave scars. And scars don’t bend much.
“You wanted the story. Will you hear it?” Ben’s gaze holds censure, and I feel like I’m back in school, twitching under the teacher’s withering stare.
“Sorry.”
He sighs. “Doli has gone on before me, so I suppose there is no reason to hold her confidences any longer.” He squints up at me. “Besides, if you’ve been sent to me, you must need the story.”
I see my grandmother’s nod in my mind. “I think I do.”
He puts his elbows on the arms of the chair and tents his fingers in front of his mouth. Filtering words, maybe?
“Part of this I know because she told me, parts I witnessed myself. Doli married young, and after your grandfather died in the war, she had a long, lean time. Your mother was just a baby, and Doli had no family left. She’d been a basket weaver since high school, and she sold her baskets at any store that would take them. She lived, as many did then, on the edge of starvation.”
I wince. I’d known about those times, but as a black-and-white history lesson. History becomes Technicolor when you realize someone dear to you suffered. She never even hinted at those times with me.
“Well, one day, a big black Crown Imperial drove onto the reservation. A white man rolled down the window and asked directions to Doli’s. He was a New York art dealer on vacation and had seen her baskets. I’m sure he was shocked to see how she lived, but to his credit, he didn’t show it. He asked if he could show her work in his gallery in New York. She was thrilled, of course.”
“He took her for a good meal, then bought her groceries, and paid her an ‘advance’ on her sales. She came to tell me after, glowing with the attention, the food, and the good fortune. I assumed he was offering charity, but I was wrong. Her baskets did sell, and for good money. It seems that city people were interested in ‘Primitive’ Art.
“The man returned, many more times than needed, and for longer stays. Days. People began to talk. He was young and blond and rich, and infatuated with Doli.” He looks over at me. “You may not know it, but your grandmother was a very handsome woman.”
“I’ve seen photos. She was beautiful.” My heart kicks. It’s a revelation, seeing your grandmother as a person your age; facing much worse things than you. I wish I could talk to my shí másání.
“It was a different world back then. A white man and a Navajo woman? They would be swimming upstream into a waterfall of abuse. And it would be much worse, off the rez.” He shakes his head. “He asked her to come with him to New York. For a showing, supposedly, but she knew he meant for much more.”
“She came to me for advice.” For the first time, he pauses. His hands drop to his lap and he studies them. They’re gnarled, scarred, traversed by twisting blue veins, and I’m not sure he sees them. “He loved her. She loved him. It shone from her eyes, leaving me no doubt. I killed that light by telling her everything she already knew. She was being ostracized on the rez, by friends and neighbors. How much worse would it be in New York? She’d be an oddity; a relic of a Wild West Show. What chance did their love have in the face of that?” He looks up at me. “It was all true. Every bit of what I told her.”
His tone is more defensive than his words warrant. There’s a “but” in there somewhere. He turns his unfocused gaze to the dry landscape over my shoulder.
“I’ve thought about that conversation more times than there have been years since, but still, I’m not sure of my motives. See, I was half in love with her myself, even knowing she’d never think of me as more than a friend. She took my advice. The white man
only came back once, to give her a present; a gold filigree hair comb with—”
“With mother-of-pearl insets.” My blood is whooshing in my ears. She wore that hair comb every day of her life. It was as much a part of her as her smile. The last time I saw her, she was beyond speaking; but she took the comb from her hair and pressed it into my hand. I knew then, I would soon lose her. “I have it.” I clear my throat, to try to ease the tightness. That comb is all the more precious, knowing what it represents. My heart hurts for that young woman.
“That is as it should be.” He nods. “She turned him away. He continued selling her baskets, but she never spoke with him again; communication was through an employee. But the price she paid. She never remarried. Never had another man. I know she took the pain of missing him with her to the next world.
“Where would the other path have taken her? Heartbreak? Happiness? Both? I’ll never know.”
His gaze returns to me. “But I do know one thing. If I could go back, I’d tell her to reach out and hold on to him and never let go. Because none of the reasons I gave her really matter. If it didn’t work out, her heart would have been broken. But she ended up brokenhearted in the end anyway, and she missed out on all the love she could have had in the meantime.
“I am too soon old, and too late wise. But that time taught me something important. There is enough pain and sadness in life, so if you have a choice, always choose the side with love.”
My heart aches for the young woman who was my grandmother. At the same time, the knots in me ease with their unraveling. Ben is right. Love is hard to find in this life. When it finds you, who are you to turn it away?
It’s true, I worried what my people would say about Nevada. But if I’m honest, it’s worse than that. I was afraid of letting myself down. Of being untrue to my own vision of who I am. What arrogance. I’d forgotten that I’d made up that shiny perfect image of a modern-day Navajo warrior. I was ready to walk away from what could make me happy for a child’s dream.
My grandmother faced true prejudice; the only thing holding me back is my own.
* * *
Ma,
I’ve got all the chores done, and I’m alone here, so I figured I’d write.
I wish I’da talked to you more. Asked you about stuff that I’m only now finding out I need to know. ’Course, if you’d had the answers, you probably wouldn’t have been an addict, but it would have been nice to have your opinion anyway. When you can’t talk to anyone, you have to learn the hard way, by making all the mistakes until you figure it out. It works, but it leaves dents. I’m tired of the time it takes. And the bruises.
For the first time, I have a couple people who would listen, but I can’t tell them what happened that day in Houston. Because they’d try to help. You know the cartel; you get it.
But how cool is it that they want to? That’s a pretty amazing thing, when you think about it.
And, there’s a guy. Joseph “Fishing Eagle” King. He’s Navajo, good and kind, and he knows me, even though I haven’t told him hardly anything. Oh, and he’s brave. He manages to stay open to people and not hate, even when they’ve hurt him. I can’t imagine that kind of courage. Just by being himself, he’s showing me the kind of person I want to be. Even though I’ll end up being it somewhere else.
I should have left already. I know that. But how do you walk away from something—someone that rare?
I guess what I’m trying to say is that he matters. He makes me happy. He makes me feel like I’m enough. He makes me feel clean.
I thought you’d want to know that.
I’ll try to write more later, but I’ll be on the road, trying to stay ahead of Cisco, so it might be a while.
Nevada
* * *
Joseph
“Thank you, Ben, for my grandmother’s story, your time, and your wisdom.” I lean forward to push myself out of the chair.
“Fishing Eagle.”
My stomach tightens at the command in his voice. The chair’s webbing creaks when I lean back into it.
“You still carry a heavy heart, from before. That’s why you stay away.” He holds up a hand. “Don’t deny it; you don’t need the weight of a lie, too.”
I sigh. I owe it to him to listen.
“You were young, and fierce and lost. That is what youth is, son. It is a time of learning, and the hardest lessons come with the harshest sentences.” His bright eyes catch mine. “But it wasn’t meant to be a life sentence. No one here holds your past against you. Why do you hold it against yourself?”
“Forgiving others is much easier than forgiving yourself.”
He nods. “You see that time through a haze of old pain. Let it go, and it will fall back to the past. You won’t have to carry it anymore. The choice is yours.”
Ben is right. It’s time to let many things go.
I walk to the truck. I may thank him someday for that advice, but I can’t process it now; my head is too full of his first story. My grandmother had to have a hand in today’s events; the coincidence of our stories are too similar, and me finding my way to hers when I need it is too great.
I look up to the azure New Mexico sky. “Ahéhee’, shí másání.” Thank you.
Chapter 14
Nevada
I’m sitting at the table reading a book about some spoiled Southern chick during the Civil War when a fist hits my door.
I jump to my feet, my heart beating so hard I can’t hear around it. I snatch a knife from the counter and point it at the door. Would Cisco bother to knock? I can’t afford to take chances. Knees shaking, I dart a glance around. Why did it never occur to me that there’s no back entrance? The window in the bedroom is big enough to squeeze out of, but it faces the front, and the windows at the back are too small to crawl through.
Think, Nevada. All I have is the knife, and the chance of surprise. But only if I move fast. I step to the door, then hesitate for a loud heartbeat. If he has a gun, it’s all over. I jerk the door open, already flashing the blade.
Joseph’s expression shoots to shock. His hands go up and he steps back, off the step, stumbles, and falls on his butt.
“Oh crap.” I lower the knife, take a step down, and offer him a jittery hand up. “Why didn’t you say it was you? You about gave me a heart attack.”
“You?” He takes my hand and pulls himself to a stand. “I thought I was dead.”
That makes two of us. “Sorry.”
He slaps dust off his jeans. “We need to talk.”
I’m not sure I want to hear what he has to say, but after that kiss this morning, we do need to clear the air. “I guess you’d better come in.”
I step up into the trailer, and he follows.
“I don’t have anything to drink but tap water—” I turn around and my nose almost brushes his shirt. This place is built for Single Barbie. No room for Ken. His scent fills my nose, bringing warm memories and heat—to my face, and much lower. When I step back, my heel hits the kitchen cabinet. Does he see what he’s doing to me?
His eyes get big.
Oh man, let me die now.
“Um, I’m good, thanks.” He lowers himself to the bench seat and levers his knees under the kitchen table. It’s a tight fit.
I go to the sink and pour myself a glass of water. Not because I’m thirsty, but because it gives me a bit of distance and a second to calm down. “What did you want?” I go for nonchalant, but it comes out defensive.
“I came to tell you something. But why did you come at me with a knife?” He leans back and drapes an arm over the back of the booth like he’s got all night.
Carly’s words come back to me: You’ve gotta share if you want to let people in. But that means they’re inside your armor. I realize I’m wringing my hands and make myself stop. “You tell me yours first.” When he opens his mouth to argue, I add, “Please?” I hate the whine in my voice, but I’m panicking here.
He gives me a small smile and pats the table. “Come, sit
, and I’ll tell you about my amazing day.”
Now that, I can handle. I take the two steps, sit, and when I try to pull my legs in, my knees hit his. “Sorry.” I lift my legs and fold them beneath me on the bench and put my hands on the table. “Carly told me you went to your mom’s. What happened?”
“My grandmother happened.”
“Huh?”
He tells me a story that, if I didn’t know him, would convince me to call in mental health professionals. But his face is all glowy—like he just got saved. And maybe he did. After twenty minutes or so, he winds down. “I know it sounds crazy, but I know shí másání had a hand in this. It’s like she showed me the other side and helped me make a decision.” One side of his mouth lifts, and he puts his hand over mine. His is tanned, long-fingered, and strong. Mine is butt-white, stubby, and nail-bitten. As different as they are, they look kinda right together. But as amazing as this feels, I can’t let this make a difference. I’m leaving, and—
“I should have figured this out way earlier—we’ve shared so much: working together, running together, the coyote…It took you kissing me this morning for me to get out of my own way. It’s like I got this idea in my head, that to be dedicated to my tribe, I had to stay within my tribe. I carried it around for so long, that it became a deep-down fact. I didn’t even think to question it, or test the validity, because, in my head, it’s like the sun coming up tomorrow.”
He’s looking at our hands, too, and I’m wondering how he sees them.
“I don’t care what people will say if we’re together. It only matters how we feel about it. I believe what Ben said. If you have a choice, always choose the side with love.” He looks up, into me. “So that’s what I’m doing. I’m choosing love, I’m choosing you.”
Bubbles of happiness form in my stomach and rise to my brain. I tried some leftover champagne when I was cleaning up a room service tray once; it’s like that—I’m off balance and a little giddy. Me. Giddy.