Radio music is blaring inside. I open the door and squeeze in, barring the way for El Guapo, who will only harass the kittens.
Siouxsie’s sitting on the alfalfa. Four bales high, an easy climb because the bales are stacked like bleacher seats. She used to do standing flips off the bales. Now, just getting up on the stack is a major achievement. The black kitten in her lap stares at me with yellow eyes.
“Sioux-Sioux-how-do-you-do?” I say.
She snaps off the radio, reaches into her pocket for the fortune-cookie-shaped hearing aids, tilts her head like she’s hooking earrings, and pops them in.
“All done,” she says, nodding toward the ladies. The mares snort and stare at me, luminously, from their stalls. “Fed ’em one and a half quarts, just like you said.”
I go over and check the stalls. The oat and alfalfa levels are about right. The water buckets are wet. Manure’s even shoveled. That couldn’t have been easy.
The mares seem content. Blue Dancer flares her nostrils. Queen Zenobia—“Big Z,” sixteen hands tall—leans over the rail and nudges me. Cornflakes snuffles my hand, searching for a treat. They’re good ladies, doing the quiet, important work of the belly, growing new life. I’ll miss them, when their time comes.
“Who were those men, Texas Slim?”
I climb onto the alfalfa stack and roost my ass beside her.
“Nobody,” I say. “Just a couple of military dudes.”
She twists a few strands of her hair, licks the ends, and flicks the point at the kitten, like a sword. The kitten parries.
“They want you to join up?” she asks.
“Nah. Just play some video games down at White Sands.”
“Video games! How come?”
I pull a stalk of alfalfa out of the bale under me and join the sword fight. The kitten pivots and swipes a paw at me. He and I go at it like musketeers.
“’Cuz I’m good,” I say. “That’s how come.”
I baffle the kitten with a flurry of thrusts.
“Wanna know how good?”
“Uh-uh,” Siouxsie says. “Not if you’re gonna brag about it.”
“Best in the world,” I say, and jab the kitten in the belly.
Now I’ve done it—committed the sin of arrogance. Mr. Martinez likes to quote Herodotus: “All arrogance will reap a harvest rich in tears.”
He may be right. Arrogance has been stalking me for months. It’s probably why the sky is scowling right now.
Siouxsie hacks up and spits. “Biggest head in the world, you mean.”
“Hey, I’m the best frickin’ drone pilot you’ll ever see. And it’s your lucky day to be talking to me. Want my autograph?”
“Yuck-o,” Siouxsie says. “You think ugly.”
She’s right, I do think ugly. As soon as you let arrogance in the door, you’re dead. Arrogance lowers your guard, pierces your shield. Humility, on the other hand, is your friend. Don’t brag, don’t think about your skills, don’t even talk about them, and they will grow. Like a beanstalk. Brag, and that beanstalk will topple. Any movie I’ve ever seen, when a guy starts bragging, he gets it—a bullet, a knife, a shove down the elevator shaft.
This time when I poke the kitten, he hooks a claw into my finger. A drop of blood appears. “Damn!”
I grab his scruff and fling him in the general direction of the chopped hay.
“Don’t do that!” Siouxsie says. “You got a problem, kick a stump.”
“What’re you talkin’ about?” I say. “That was the high point of that little Jedi’s day.”
A terrified mew comes from inside the hay.
“Go get him,” Siouxsie says.
I jump off the bales, go over and dig the kitten out, dust him off, carry him back, and perch myself beside Siouxsie again, kitten in lap. He’s just a scrawny thing, a fur-covered skeleton, totally barn born and bred. I stroke him, and he starts to purr.
“See what I mean? One happy kitten.”
Siouxsie scoops him back.
I notice that she’s wearing the headband Mom made for her—the one decorated with tie-dyed ripples of blue.
“Hey, mind if I see this?”
Before she can answer, I’ve slipped it off.
“Stop being a jerk, Arlo.”
I am being a jerk. Why, I don’t know.
Of the three of us, Siouxsie’s been hit hardest by Mom’s death. Dad and I can function okay, like with one kidney or half your liver, but for Siouxsie, Mom was both kidneys and the whole liver.
The first time we noticed a change in her—started thinking that she wasn’t just accident prone—was about eighteen months ago, when she fell on the basketball court during a game against Springer. She was rushing down court and—bang!—she was flat on her ass.
Mom was everywhere for her. Took her to doctors in Denver and Albuquerque. Got her into an occupational therapy program in Raton. Started homeschooling her.
She also sat me down and explained about Huntington’s disease. How it’s caused by nerve cells dying in the brain. They waste away slower than autumn leaves. Huntington’s can get you in many ways—hearing that fades, muscles that jumble, moods that darken. On and on. It’s a long list. There can be progress, but no cure.
The other thing is, Huntington’s is hereditary. After Siouxsie was diagnosed, Mom had me tested up in Denver. Not only is my chromosome 4 normal—every corkscrew of my DNA is in shiny, mint condition.
Mom made the house “Siouxsie friendly.” Got her on an extra-nutritious diet. Walked with her every day—laps around the barn and house. Most days, you barely noticed anything was wrong. But some days, Siouxsie tripped over her own shadow.
Mom was just starting to convert the downstairs den into a bedroom when she died. The hooks for hanging Siouxsie’s posters are still where she left them on the windowsill. The new lamp is still in its box.
“How come you never talk about her?” Siouxsie asks.
“Hey, I talk about her.”
“No, you don’t.”
“What do you mean? Just yesterday I needed her socket wrench for my 250. I asked Dad where it was.”
“That’s stupid,” Siouxsie says.
She runs a finger along the arc of the headband, and we hold it, like a wishbone. The dyed ripples range from sky to turquoise to midnight.
“She’s on my mind all the time,” Siouxsie says. “Mostly, I think about that day.”
“Big mistake,” I say. “Delete ‘that day’ from your memory. All it does is cut things open. Why bleed if you don’t have to?”
“I can’t delete it,” Siouxsie says. “I’m the one who made her go to the EZ Stop. If it wasn’t for me . . . I saw her lying there, Arlo.”
“Yeah, well, maybe I saw her lying there too.”
I didn’t, of course. But in my mind, I’ve seen her lying in that pool many times. And every time, I hit Delete.
How long did it take—one hundredth of a second? Five seconds? And look what happened—not just to her, but to all of us. To Siouxsie, Dad, and me.
Day to night.
No sunset or twilight in between.
Just—whomp!—night.
“I hate violence,” Siouxsie says.
“Me, too,” I say.
“Liar,” Siouxsie says. “If you hated violence, you wouldn’t play Drone Pilot all the time.”
“Nah, don’t confuse it,” I say. “That’s just a game. Just make-believe.”
In fact, Drone Pilot is pretty violent. But that has nothing to do with why I play it. For me, it isn’t about violence and darkness. It’s about getting through violence and darkness.
I stare out the window. The sky swirls gray, black, and yellow. I wait for it to break open. But nothing.
“Here’s what I do,” I say, snapping back. “Just get on my 250 and bomb the mesas, blast the bumps. That’s how I deal with it. It’s a lot better than that grief counselor. A lot better than talking.”
“For you, maybe,” Siouxsie says.
“D
efinitely for me,” I say.
I pop the headband back on her head. “It’s cool that you wear this,” I say. “Kind of a memory thing.”
“Not just that,” Siouxsie says. “I can’t do braids anymore.”
Tears brim in her eyes.
I give her a nudge. “Hey, I’ll do your braids for you.”
“You don’t get it, Arlo.”
“Get what?”
She shakes her head.
“Get what?” I ask again.
Siouxsie pulls the buds out of her ears and clenches them in her fist.
I raise my voice. “Hey, we’re headed down to White Sands on Saturday. Bet we can get Dad to stop at the Tularosa Café for some chocolate churros. Best in the West, and you know it.”
The old Siouxsie did know it. The new Siouxsie can’t even hear me—or refuses to. I’m never sure.
She stares at some invisible point above the barn door, about twelve feet up, some mystical portal through which, maybe, spirits come and go between worlds.
Tin-poom-pah!
Now it begins. Little fingers tap the roof, roll into drums. Out the window, the sky flashes. Hail bounces under the barn door. The mares twitch, stomp, and bang their asses against the stalls.
Siouxsie stares at the invisible point.
I jump off the bales, hoist her up—“Hup!”—and swing her onto my back. But her legs barely hold on. I haul her over to the chopped hay and dump her.
She should be laughing. All the thunder-clatter and stomp-shifting, all the sky energy—even the deaf can hear that. We should both be in hysterics. Because you should never waste a storm. But Siouxsie sinks into the hay. Eyes lit and lost.
You don’t get it.
She’s right, I don’t.
Mom, let this storm wake you up. Glue you back together from all the scattered dust up on Burro Mesa. You need to be here NOW! If only to deal with this one thing—this shining, staring lostness.
Chapter 7
“CLASS, WHO CAN DEFINE MATRIARCHY?”
Mr. Martinez tweaks the knot on his necktie. Everybody ducks, shifts, or squirms. It’s not that we can’t define matriarchy, it’s that Mr. Martinez likes to lure you with an easy question, hook you under the gill, reel you in, and make you wriggle in front of everybody.
He waits for hands. Nobody raises one.
“You blocks, you stones, you worse than senseless things,” he says, quoting from Julius Caesar. “Latoya! Speak to me.”
Latoya straightens up. “Matriarchy . . . umm . . . well . . . that’s, like, when women rule and stuff.”
“Correct,” Mr. Martinez says. “A matriarchy is a society in which women play the leading role. Not merely the central role, the leading role. Can you give us an example of a such a society from chapter seventeen?”
“Not really,” Latoya says. “Only . . . only, it’s the way it should be. I mean, women actually should rule.”
The light glints off Mr. Martinez’s glasses. “Because . . . ?”
Latoya shrugs. “Because we’re smarter. Just look around this room.”
“Bull!” Vonz says. “No society in history’s ever been a real matriarchy.”
“Are you sure of that?” Mr. Martinez asks.
“I can prove it,” Vonz says.
He slides up his T-shirt sleeve and flexes his bicep. It bulges into a mound. “Women don’t have this. And you can’t rule without it.”
Michelle shakes her shoulders. “Yeah, but we have our own stuff.”
“Go ahead, Michelle,” Mr. Martinez says. “Speak to us.”
“What about those tall women who carried bows and cut off their breasts, like Xena? Weren’t they stronger than men?”
“Oh, you’re thinking of the Amazons,” Mr. Martinez says. “The mythological tribe of female warriors. But let’s not confuse history with myth.”
Lobo leans over and whispers, “Dude, did Xena cut off her jugs?”
I jerk an elbow at him.
Cam levitates a hand. “Aren’t beehives a matriarchy? I mean, all those male worker drones doing the grunt lifting for the queen?”
“Good example, Camerado,” Mr. Martinez says. “Now who can give us a human example?”
Mr. Martinez scans the room again, and this time his glasses glint at me.
“Arlo, please give us an example of a matriarchy?”
Unfortunately, I didn’t get around to reading chapter seventeen. Still, I try to think of an example. What enters my head is this: matriarchy was when Mom was alive and everything ran smooth in our house, like on my Yam 250 when I wirebrush the sparks. Patriarchy’s like now—Dad’s running things. Everything still works, but it doesn’t fire exactly right, because the sparks are a bit gunked up. So when I need that extra kick, like going over Raton Pass or just before a jump—maybe I get it, maybe I don’t. That’s patriarchy.
I’m so lost in this thought that I don’t notice everybody staring at me. Lobo smacks my arm. “Dude, wake up!”
I shake out of it.
“Class,” Mr. Martinez says, “please open your books and read from chapter seventeen—silently!”
He gestures, and I follow him out of the room. He closes the door. We stand there. Mr. Martinez smells of pipe smoke and tuna fish, his basic lunch for the past forty years.
“How you doin’, son?”
“Me? Fine.”
Sadness pools in his eyes.
“Siouxsie—how’s she doin’?”
“Great.”
“Homeschool workin’ out for her?”
“Seems to be.”
“That Siouxsie—her smile can brighten a room quicker than the General Electric grid. How’s your dad?”
“We’re all doing really well,” I say, hoping this will end it.
But nothing ends until Mr. Martinez wants it to.
“I sure miss the ol’ Gunslinger,” he says. “Straightest shootin’ newspaper in the Wild West. Times change, but not always for the better.”
“For sure,” I say.
“How’s that family therapy coming along—the grief counselor and all? Did you finish up the sessions?”
“Nah,” I say. “Waste of time.”
Which is true. You don’t get anywhere hugging pillows and screaming at walls. I sure didn’t.
Mr. Martinez takes off his glasses and polishes the lenses with his handerchief.
“Arlo, some things we can never understand. What happened is unfair. It’s unfairest of all to you and Siouxsie. If I were walking around in your boots, I’d probably see the world as a senseless, tormented, even murderous place.”
Something rises in me—something halfway between a fist and a sob. I hold it back.
“Look in there,” he says, peering through the little window into our classroom. “Up on our walls. All those stars. Long-dead, but still shining. I’d like to reach up and pull one down just for you. Who should it be? Who best to speak the words you need to hear? Because I cannot. I don’t know the right words. Sometimes all the wisdom of the ages is not enough. Time is what we need. Time is your friend, Arlo. Time will sort it out. Just go about your days. Follow your norms. And don’t do anything rash. Promise me?”
“Yeah, sure,” I say.
“And for God’s sake stay safe on that motorcycle. Don’t end up like Evel Knievel—all ‘scar tissue and surgical steel.’”
“Hey, I’m actually pretty cautious.”
“I can think of many words to describe you, Arlo, but ‘cautious’ is not one.”
A light sparks in his eye. “Let’s pull down Martin Luther King, Jr. The night before he was killed he told an audience, ‘Longevity has its place. I may not get there with you.’ Wasn’t that prophetic! I’d like you to have longevity, Arlo. I’d like that very much. But here’s the rub: longevity alone isn’t enough.”
“It isn’t?”
“Not half enough,” he says.
He peers again into our classroom. “Let’s pull down William Faulkner. Do you know who he was?”
“Yeah, some writer. Long time ago.”
“That’s right, Arlo. One of our greatest. He said that ‘man will not merely endure, he will prevail.’ I prefer the Spanish: Aguente primero, luego prevalezca. First, endure. Then, prevail.”
“Nice,” I say. “But what’s it really mean?”
“It means this,” Mr. Martinez says. He draws back the string of an imaginary hunter’s bow. “You, Arlo, are one of my most magnificent arrows. I notch you, aim at the horizon, and—fffffffffftt—off you go, to soar long after I’m gone. That’s what it means.”
He sticks out his hand.
“Another reason I miss the old days,” he says, “they let you hug your students.”
We shake.
“Tell your dad I’m still working my way through that manuscript of his. I’ll get back to him with my comments—in a year or two.” He winks. “And tell Siouxsie ‘hi.’”
“Yeah, I will.”
Mr. Martinez could’ve retired long ago. Dad says he’s the only person in all Orphan County whose character and reputation are the same. Everybody else, there’s a difference, like a fat tree throwing off a thin shadow. But Mr. Martinez’s shadow fits exactly who he is.
He opens the door, and as he strides to the front of the room, I slip back into my seat. I can feel the eyes on me, each pair an added weight on the barbell.
“Well, now, where were we?” he says, in his classroom voice.
Lee Fields shoots up a hand.
“Go ahead, Lee.”
“The Berbers of North Africa.”
“Ah-ha!”
“And the Hopi of Arizona,” she says. “Both societies are characterized by rites and rituals that exalt women over men, especially mothers and grandmothers.”
We stare at the torqued golden girl who does not advertise her torsion, and who talks like an anchorwoman.
“At last!” Mr. Martinez says. “A flower blooms in the desert. Thank you, Lee. Class, let us discuss the Berbers of North Africa and our Hopi friends to the west. Hold on to your hats.”
Chapter 8
WHEN THE BELL RINGS, I blast out of the room. Somebody calls after me, but I ain’t stopping. I pound down the hall and bust through the doors. As far as I’m concerned, school is over for the day, even if it’s just second period. I go straight to my bike, unlock the chain, fling it in my backpack, jam on my helmet, pop my shades.
Dirt Bikes, Drones, and Other Ways to Fly Page 5