Stay Vertical

by Layla Wolfe

  “Well. What did she expect? Even people from her generation need to save for a rainy day. It’s not just us young ‘uns who need to scrimp and save.”

  “I know. I couldn’t agree more. She lived from day to day, and everyone knew the time would come when she’d have nothing to fall back on.”

  “Yes. What do you want me to do about it?”

  “Well. She obviously needs to be in some kind of facility.”

  “How much longer do they estimate she has? If it’s that aggressive—”

  “That’s the thing. There’s only a three percent chance she’ll survive five years. So we’re not looking at long-term care.”

  I told Madison some of the options available with Medicaid’s help, but I could see her eyes were glazing over. I couldn’t believe that even the most neglected and abused child would not step up to the plate when it came to a parent’s death. I just couldn’t. She called me the chosen one, but I only had a marginally better lifestyle than her because I had more upscale friends. If Madison’s friends had been nerds and bookworms, she might’ve had better dining tables to sit at, too. As it was, she hung with the thugs-n-drugs crowd, so her nightly meal was a bag of Doritos around her campfire.

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah.” Standing, Maddy took her glass to the window and gazed out at the red rocks. I came up behind her, because I liked to look at those spires, too. “I hear you, June, I really do. See, the thing is. That old witch never did one tiny thing to help me.” She turned to face me, and her features were hard, determined. “Not the tiniest. She’d scream if I took the last banana. I only owned two pairs of pants, and I’m sure you remember how embarrassing that is to a teenager. Then she says we can’t even wash our pants because we can’t waste water? I was starving through my entire teen years, June. Whenever I couldn’t stay at Sabrina’s, I stole food from the market. Once, I even had a fight with Sabrina so I hitch-hiked down to Mexico. Alone, June, alone! I remember when it was, too, because it was that month that fucking serial killer was cruising up and down highway seventeen, and I was hitch-hiking in the same place on the same day as that chick whose arms he later cut off. When I got home, what did Ingrid say? ‘Oh, hi, Madison. Gone with the Wind is on TV now.’ She didn’t even notice I was gone. I was fourteen, June.”

  “I know. I know. I know.” I didn’t know what else to say, really. I knew this was going to be a hard sell, but the more I listened to Madison, the more futile it felt. “We don’t owe her a thing. I couldn’t agree more. You’re preaching to the choir here, Maddy. The thing is…Could you really live with yourself if you didn’t help a little bit? It’s only for another year or so, and it’s only a couple thousand a month. I know nurses don’t make a lot, but it seems like Ford’s doing all right. He used to know Ingrid. He seems like he has a heart. Could you agree to help out for, say, maybe one year, tops?”

  “No.” Just that one word, short and clipped. “No.”

  “No? Because without it, Maddy, the only place we can afford to put her is one of those horrible, real low-budget joints where they put all of the drug addicts with no other resources. She’d be shoved into a ward with about thirty other dying meth heads who look like Auschwitz survivors and—”

  “Well. What’s good for the goose is good for the gander, right? Now.” Madison strode back to the credenza where she banged her empty glass down. Heavy male boots were heading down the interior hallway that bisected all the hangar offices of various estimators, accounting types, and foremen. Lots of teamsters and truck drivers had been coming and going, but the hollow sound of these boots stood out with authority.

  Even Madison turned around to face the closed door. Alert, obeying. I could easily read the excitement in her face before Ford even entered the room. Jesus, what a man. I had heard he’d been hit by some IED in Afghanistan or wherever he’d been patrolling as a SEAL. The ropey, thick scarring of his jaw didn’t even begin to detract from his innate beauty. His father had been Italian, and I guess Speed had told me he’d recently found out his mother was Apache, right before she died. Knowing that now, I could see it in the profile of his hooked nose as he gathered Maddy in his arms and bent a bit at the knees to kiss her on the mouth.

  He crushed her lovingly, his lips lingering on hers. Jealousy burned in the pit of my stomach and I wanted to slap myself. This was my sister here! She deserved Ford, and everything that came with Ford, and then some. It was just a childish crush of mine, and an absurd one too, thinking Ford would ever be mine. Still, I had to turn away, and I even wished I could drink some of the Jack Daniels.

  He turned to me. “I heard you were here.” He came for me with wide open arms. I wanted to scream and run away when he wrapped them around me, but instead I stood frozen like a statue, barely daring to breathe in his scent of sweat and exhaust fumes.

  “Little June,” he murmured in my ear. “I haven’t seen you since, well, since you went away to college.” Thank God he drew back and held me at arm’s length to look at me.

  “Well,” I breathed. “I’m not here for a good reason.”

  He made a serious face out of respect. “I know. I heard. Are you doing all right behind that diagnosis? I mean, she’s your mother and all.”

  That was Ford’s way of saying that Ingrid was knitting with only one needle. I briefly wondered if Ford was at all concerned that it ran in the family. He did just have a daughter with Maddy. “Oh, you know. We were never that close. Thank God I never relied on her for much. Her death won’t deprive me of anything. It’s just the…getting there that’ll be the hard part.”

  Ford had wandered behind his desk and was fingering some papers, already tuning out my talk about Ingrid. He probably knew it was a sore spot with Madison, and I doubt they ever brought up Ingrid’s name at all. I didn’t want to babble on, so I started stammering some crap congratulating them on their wedding. I was hugely relieved when a big clattering in the inner hallway took the attention off of me.

  Big men’s voices boomed out. All three of us stiffened, then quick as a whip, Ford snatched a pistol from where it had been secreted in his jeans waistband, underneath his leather cut. It sounded as though one man had busted through the heavy metal door at the end of the wing that led to the parking lot, and a few men were arguing with him, trying to get him to leave. Lots of hoarse, passionate yelling ensued—lots of “fuckers!” and “motherfuckers!”

  Holding out his hand in the “stay” position toward me and Maddy, Ford took three long strides to the open door and braced himself against it, just popping his head out briefly to see what the tussle was. By the confused look on his face, I surmised he didn’t know the intruder.

  Ford gazed down at his office floor, then back into the hallway. Then back at his office floor, his brows knitted. It was clear he was undecided what to do about the intruder. Maddy and I exchanged shrugs, and one voice rose above the others.

  “Listen, motherfuckers! My name is Lytton and I’m here to see my fucking brother!”

  “Ford doesn’t have a brother, motherfucker!” the tough construction or biker guy yelled back.

  “Who is that?” Maddy finally asked.

  Apparently the guy—Lytton—was no threat, for Ford was sticking his pistol back into his jeans by the time Lytton busted through the knot of men and gained entrance to Ford’s office.

  I was frankly surprised how mildly Ford reacted to a presumed stranger busting into his inner sanctum. He allowed this pissed-off, fuming giant of a man to back him up against the door. Ford looked more mystified than angry when the guy poked him in the chest with a forefinger. A guy with waist-length hair who looked like his craggy face should be on an Aztec pyramid—I remembered him as Tuzigoot—grabbed the stranger’s shoulder, yelling,

  “Boss! I told this fucker you didn’t have any fucking brother. You want us to take him out?”

  “No, hold it,” Ford said. Ford did wrench Lytton’s finger away from his chest, tossing it aside like a grenade, and he got himself away from the irate guy
, walking farther into his office. But he didn’t tell Lytton to get lost, or to fuck off, or anything like that.

  Lytton poked the air. “I’ve got a bone to pick with you, asshole,” he roared.

  It was then that I noticed—Ford and Lytton did bear more than a slight resemblance to each other. Lytton’s shoulder tattoo of a stylized eagle even resembled Ford’s shoulder ink of his club’s skull and bones. Of course Lytton didn’t wear a cut, but his figure was the same fine, muscular, long-limbed beauty of Ford.

  Lytton had the same aquiline Roman nose with the same bump in the middle. The same full, lush lips, bowed as though an angel had pressed her finger beneath his nose. The same satiny black brows. You almost had to blink twice to make sure you weren’t looking into a mirror.

  Lytton wore the plaid shirt with the rolled-up sleeves that could be the mark of any engineer or worker. His Nikes told that he could have even been a computer nerd, like so many of the boys I had grown up with. But the way he yelled was anything but nerdly. He had power and passion and enormous conviction of his words when he bellowed,

  “You lying, sleazy motherfucker! You knew I was your brother this entire fucking time and you couldn’t be bothered to slink on down to the res and mingle with the rest of us dirt worshippers and tomahawk chuckers!”

  Ford held his hands up, palms toward Lytton. “Wait, just wait one fucking second here. I’ve never seen you before in my fucking life.”

  “Of course you haven’t! Because when you found out we had the same father, you refused to fucking acknowledge me so you could get his entire fucking inheritance!”

  There was a brief silence then. You could practically hear everyone in the room—and rubbernecking out in the hallway—gasping in shock.

  Lytton even stood still, panting, his arms hanging at his sides. The vein in his temple throbbed with emotion.

  That was when my heart broke for him. He was tormented, stomped into the mud by shitty parents, too.

  I stepped up to Lytton and laid a calming hand on his upper arm. He looked down at me as though I was a piece of already-chewed gum. I was arrogant enough to think that maybe I could help, having mediated many a tense situation or argument in Africa. Those things usually involved a dead goat or a calabash, but some of those arguments got pretty heated, too. Africans had Uzis.

  I said, “Lytton, why don’t we get to the bottom of this in a calm manner? Ford isn’t someone you want to piss off. Maddy here’s a nurse, but I don’t think she has her doctor bag with her.”

  That did seem to calm Lytton down. At least, instead of whaling on me, his nostrils flared, and he asked, “And who the fuck are you?”

  That was a start.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  LYTTON

  Lytton had gone down to Fort Apache personally to confront Kino Driving Hawk, the guy he’d imagined was his father for the first twenty-five years of his life.

  Kino was manning the cash register at the Apache Office of Tourism inside General Crook’s stupid-ass cabin. It had always irritated Lytton that even an upstanding member of the community like Kino had to hawk dream catchers for a living. There was really nothing else for anyone to do, besides work at the casino. It had never irritated him more than now, as he shoved aside some Birkenstock-wearing hippie to gain access to Kino behind the counter.

  “Listen.” Lytton was on a slow boil now. He had ridden his Harley for almost four hours through Snowflake and Show Low, and never had the scenery seemed more monotonous. “We’re having a talk. Now.”

  Polite and measured as always, Kino had gotten some ranger-type chick to man the counter for him, and they went into his back office. Lytton had had many long hours to plan what he was going to say to Kino. The words came out as though in an Oscar-winning movie when he stated flatly,

  “Why didn’t you tell me Cropper Illuminati was my father?”

  Lytton instantly saw in Kino’s face that it was true. His face fell like a soufflé and he couldn’t meet his stepson’s eyes. He diddled his thumbs that were laced together on top of his belt buckle—sterling silver encrusted with turquoise of course, the badge of the blanket-asses who derided yet made money off whites.

  Now Lytton had to take a chair too, having seen Kino’s confirmation. “So it’s fucking true. Cropper fucking Illuminati fucked my mother. It was no fucking gangbang. Why the fuck did she make that up?” It was easier to ask Kino than it was to get a straight answer out of Sadie. She had been languishing in a rundown alcohol treatment center with degenerative dementia since Lytton had graduated from MIT.

  Kino finally looked at him. “Language, son.”

  Language! Language, my ass! “Why did she lie, Kino? And why did you fucking cover up for her?”

  Kino sighed deeply. Lytton could tell he was getting ready for a long, lecturing harangue. “Son, thirty years ago was a different time. Our tribe has come a long way since the days—”

  Lytton slammed a fist against the metal desktop. “Tell me, Kino! Fucking tell me why my mother lied about some fucking rape that never happened!”

  There was genuine fear in Kino’s face now. Lytton had always been a problem child, though not any worse than any other boy on the res. Yet he probably hadn’t struck any real fear into anyone’s heart until that day five years ago when he’d discovered Kino wasn’t his father. Lytton and Sadie had lived in Kino’s house, for fuck’s sake. Kino had bought him a bicycle, had helped him purchase his first motorcycle, had walked him through all the ins and outs of applying for scholarships. But there had never, ever been fear in Kino’s eyes until Lytton had gone off the rails five years ago.

  And now. Kino rolled his chair closer to the desk, using it as a sort of breastwork in case Lytton should explode. He clutched the edge of the desk. “Son. It was a lot easier to claim it was an entire biker gang than it would be to admit she willingly slept with a hoodlum!”

  Now Lytton was aghast. Easier? “Easier for fucking who, Kino? Easier for her fucking image, her fucking pristine reputation? Her fucking blackout, apple ass? She’s afraid anyone might know she gave some good loving to a North American?”

  “Not to a North American!” Kino spat. Now fire was in his eyes, and he sat erect. “Not because she slept with a pilgrim! Because she slept with a biker!”

  What the fuck? For the tenth time in an hour, Lytton was completely thrown for a loop. So it wasn’t even shame at having fucked a “non” that made Sadie concoct this elaborate lie—it was the fact that he rode a motorcycle? “What the fuck, Kino? So just to get out of telling me she willingly fucked some motorcycle club guy, she lies that she doesn’t know who my real dad is? This is some seriously fucked-up shit. I can’t believe this. I just can’t believe this.”

  Lurching to his feet, Lytton paced the small office. He was beyond incredulous. He had just discovered that his birth father was much more like him than Kino ever was. Lytton rode a Harley. Lytton acted out. Lytton liked to be top dog. Lytton got into a lot of fights.

  “Son, you have to understand. The times were different. We didn’t want you to start idolizing Cropper Illuminati, to think that his lifestyle was glamorous, to start following that way of life like his other children did. We wanted you to focus on your Apache roots.”

  “Fuck my Apache roots!” There were a hundred times Lytton would live to regret these words, but now he loathed his Apache roots more than anything. Those fucking roots had brought him nothing but poverty, self-hatred, and now shame he hadn’t even known he had. “I’m only a fucking Tomahonky anyway, a fucking half-breed, and you want me to focus on my Apache roots? You know what? You and Sadie can just go fuck off and die.”

  And Lytton had stormed proudly out, knocking aside a dummy wearing a US cavalry uniform. Without thinking, he snatched a bugle off a display stand and angrily blew on it as he stomped to his ride.

  It actually helped him to work off some steam, and he wound up blasting a sort of lopsided, ironic, and supremely pissed-off reveille as he straddled his saddle. All sort
s of nons wearing shorts and Ray-Bans and carrying Whole Foods canvas bags gaped at him as though he were performing some battle reenactment. The ones that wore the tribal design sweaters had figured out they were one-sixty-fourth Apache. They eagerly tried to highlight that by playing lacrosse and talking about “using every part of the animal.”

  Well, fuck that. Lytton thrashed it down the state highway, chucking the bugle with all his might. It clanged with a satisfying crash against a boulder, leaving all the tourists to wonder when General Crook would lead the charge.

  Lytton had ample time to work up a new head of steam as he rode north toward Pure and Easy. He had seen Cropper Illuminati a few times around town while buying groceries and shit like that. He had a tendency to look favorably upon the guy. Once Lytton had established the Leaves of Grass on Kino’s property, he had had nothing but hassles with The Cutlasses. But not once had any member of The Bare Bones tried to trespass on his farm or in any way harass him like The Cutlasses had.

  And of course he’d seen the Illuminati Trucking equipment around town, working on highway jobs, shoring up cave-ins from flash floods, fixing overpasses. He had even paused in front of The Bum Steer Bar and Grill to admire Ford Illuminati’s ’98 Harley Softail. He had respected their tough, supreme, and arrogant lifestyle. The Bare Bones always had much better sweetbutts than The Cutlasses did. The Cutlass sweetbutts all looked strung-out, with scabby faces and pencil-thin eyebrows. The Bare Bones club whores at least looked somewhat fresh, as though they had all of their real teeth. It was as if they’d all banded together and decided to stick with the studs of The Bare Bones because they were treated better over there.

  Or that’s what Lytton had assumed. It had even crossed his mind to patch in to a club like The Bare Bones, but you couldn’t just buy your patch in an outlaw club like that. You had to earn it, which meant “prospecting” for a year at least, doing the grunt work every fully patched member threw at you. No thanks. Lytton considered himself instead a nomad. He wore a leather jacket when it was cold, but of course no cut or rocker. He didn’t even wear boots, preferring the Nikes because he could feel the vibrations of the bike through the soles.