Yellowcake

by Ann Cummins

  "What does that mean?"

  "Good question. Yeah, he comes to my office a couple of days ago. He wants to learn hello, goodbye, how's the weather. Like that."

  A truck engine starts, and the Dakota pulls out, rolling toward them. Terry Conrad salutes with two fingers as he passes.

  Harrison nods. He doesn't seem to care much for Conrad. Becky wonders if that goes for all white people or just him. "So are you going to sign up for my class?"

  "Maybe."

  "Maybe? I'm telling you, you'd like it." He grins. "Five o'clock. Monday through Thursday this fall. There are only two spaces left. You better sign up now if you want to get in."

  "I guess you're popular."

  "'Aoo'." He steps aside so she can open her truck door, saying, "Hágoónee', Becky Atcitty," as she slides in. "See you in class."

  At work she tells Arnold about Harrison. "You guys with the language. You're so full of yourselves. You act like you're more Indian than the rest of us."

  "Aren't we? Just kidding, just kidding. But really. You should. Go to school. You'd see him all the time. You could visit him during office hours." Arnold laughs, low and dirty.

  "Like I'm going to put myself in the position of being graded by him."

  "Girl, you are so chicken shit."

  "He wears a wedding ring, but he said he's not married."

  "And you believed him? You are a child."

  She sort of feels like one. She feels almost chipper. "Chipper" is one of her dad's words, something he picked up years ago from the mill workers. "You're chipper today," he would say when she was little, and Becky would howl, "Chipper, chipper, chipper like a bird." For a while everything was chipper. Hamburgers were chipper. The moon was chipper. She's thinking of this as she drives the ten miles from the bank to her folks' house late that afternoon. She notes chipper things along the highway, the wrecking yard that goes on for miles and miles, growing a little more every year, a metal monstrosity, today a chipper one, and she doesn't even notice the absence of worry, which usually starts the minute she leaves work and grows into full-blown dread by the time she gets home, until she makes the turn into her parents' lot and sees her father dozing on the porch swing, wrapped up in his Pendleton blanket, even though it must be ninety degrees out. A lump instantly clots her throat.

  "Hey, Dad," she calls, getting out of the truck and walking over to him. He opens his eyes. Face the color of ash, lips tinged purple, oxygen tank at his feet. "What are you doing out here?" she says.

  "Waiting for the army." His lips peel back to expose colorless gums. It's Monday, and Becky's aunts Katie and Pip will be on their way. Soldiers in the Army of the Lord. Her mother's unmarried sisters have been coming three or four evenings a week since her father relapsed, helping with housekeeping and dinner, sometimes staying after the dishes are cleared to do their crafts. Becky's mother is a beader. Katie knits, and Pip does needlepoint. Her father will wait to say hello, then will disappear out back when the prayer circle forms. Since the relapse, he's been first and last on the prayer list. Becky thinks it creeps him out. Though she'll join the circle—her aunts insist—it creeps her out, too, and has since she began cutting Bible study when she was nine. Over the years her aunts have gotten more and more zealous about their faith. They tell Becky she's walking on Perdition Road because of the movies she watches (so violent) and the company she keeps (Arnold). Her mother has toured Perdition Road, too, from the aunts' point of view. Delia is the youngest of six, three brothers, two sisters. She is not related to them by blood. Their parents, Swedish missionaries, adopted Delia at birth. She is the only Navajo.

  It was dancing that got Delia started down Perdition Road. Becky's mother loves to dance—she taught Becky how to country-swing to old Merle Haggard records when Becky was very young. "It's not the dancing that's sinful," her aunts chided. "It's what it leads to." In her mother's case, it led to marriage to a pagan.

  "Something smells good," Becky says.

  "Can't smell," her father says.

  "Smells like cinnamon."

  "Yeah, she's baking something." He nods toward the house. "You running today?"

  "Soon as it gets cooler." She and her father, both long-distance runners, have run two marathons together. Before he got sick, her father could run a marathon in under four hours, usually finishing at the top of his age group. He's forty-six.

  An old black and white Datsun pulls into the dirt yard, Aunt Pip honking as she comes. She swings the car in a wide arc to park under the willow tree, the only tree in the yard. The car's bumper is plastered with stickers. Today there's a new one: AS SURE AS GOD PUTS HIS CHILDREN IN THE FURNACE, HE WILL BE IN THE FURNACE WITH THEM.

  "Hello, hello, hello," the aunts call. They open the back doors, and pull out baskets of craftwork.

  Pip and Katie look so much alike they could be twins; they're treelike women, solid and shapeless, strong-limbed, long-fingered, long-necked. Their chins are broad and square and always tilted slightly skyward, as if in prayer. Their cheekbones are high, and their eyes are silver dashes. Their hair, once sunflower yellow, has darkened over the years and now is the color of autumn wheat. They usually wear it braided and wrapped around their heads. When she was little and stayed with them in the house they share in Farmington, Becky would sit quietly and watch the long unwinding and brushing of the hair at night, and she thought they were as beautiful as angels. She loves them to death. They would do anything for her, she knows. In her moments of doubt, when she worries that the fiery hell they so fervently believe in might really exist, she holds on to the hope that they'll sweet-talk whoever's in charge and get her into heaven.

  Delmar's old dog, C3PO, has come out from under the porch and begun to bark. "Oh, hush," Katie says, stepping up on the porch. "How's everything? We brought peaches."

  "Where'd you get them?" Becky says.

  "At the fruit stand. Hush, smelly dog."

  "Don't let him in," Pip says.

  C3PO scoots between Katie's legs and into the house. Pip follows, crossing her eyes at them.

  Becky's father begins struggling up from the swing, and Becky helps him. "Tell Shízhánee' I'm out back," he says.

  She replies, "I'll come, too."

  But Aunt Pip calls, "Becky, do you want to join the circle?"

  She meets her father's eyes. "Too late," he says, smiling. She watches him totter down the steps and around the house.

  They don't care if she doesn't contribute to the petitions, as long as she's holding their hands, a part of them. They pray in the large living room, with its cedar walls, which her father built. These days it smells as much of sickness as of cedar, and the smell irritates the lump in her throat, though today the sick smell is almost hidden by whatever's baking, and by C3PO, smelling way too doggy in the hot weather. Eyes half closed, Becky watches her mother, whose face has started to take on the gray hue of her father's. In the last six months, spidery lines have appeared at the edges of her mother's mouth, which always seems downturned, so unlike her. Her mother rarely gives in to moods—she thinks that's sinful—but depression has been pulling at her. Her father's luck— Shízhánee'— doesn't look so lucky these days.

  They have always seemed to be in love, her parents, unlike her friends' parents, many of whom are divorced or who seem to live to quarrel. Her father says it was love at first sight. He first saw Delia at a community basketball game. He was playing for Shiprock, she was rooting for Fruitland. With seconds left in the fourth quarter, he had the ball when he saw her, a delicate, doll-like Indian sitting calmly in the middle of a pink crowd. He threw wildly, and swoosh—the rez team won by three points. He had given Delia her name: Shízhánee', Lucky.

  When they're through praying, Becky says, "I'm going to go run," but Aunt Katie clutches her hand, tugging her toward the table, while Aunt Pip steers her mother toward the kitchen. "Your grandparents sent something for your dad," Aunt Katie says. Becky's maternal grandparents have been running a mission in Argentina for th
e past ten years. Katie takes an envelope from her craft basket and hands it to Becky. There's a check inside for three thousand dollars. "It's for a casket."

  "Wow," Becky says. "How'd they come up with so much?"

  "They prayed for it," Aunt Katie says, her eyes full of the unsaid lesson—that Becky could get on that money train, too, if she only would.

  "Caskets cost that much?"

  "More. But this will buy a cherry-wood one. Isn't cherry his favorite?"

  Her aunts have been having these hushed conversations with Becky about the funeral costs for a while, trying to save her mother the pain of making arrangements. They mean well, she knows. In the prayer circle they always pray for the miracle of health, but they are practical women, ready to do what needs to be done.

  Her father has been worrying about money, too. Since the mill closed, he's been making a meager living farming, and her mother makes a little with her beadwork. They have huge medical bills, and there won't be any farm income this year. Though the house is paid off, property taxes keep rising, and he's been worrying about how Delia will pay them on her own.

  "He'd probably prefer a less expensive one. He likes cherry wood, but..." Becky says.

  "He deserves it," her mother says hoarsely. Becky turns and sees her standing in the kitchen doorway. Her chin quivers.

  "Go for your run, sweetheart," Aunt Katie says, hugging her hard.

  9

  CAN YOU JUST put your head down?" Dr. Callahan is saying to Ryland.

  It had been down. Now it's up again. Ryland has turned into a turtle this afternoon; his head, poking up out of his carcass, wants to see what's going on. He forces it back on the little paper pillow. He's lying on an examination table, and he's wearing a paper gown that ties in the back. Socks and underwear. That's it. The nurse, Rae Freitag, a woman he knows from church, has covered him with a thin cotton blanket, so not everything in this room is paper.

  The day has been horrible. They sat in Dr. Callahan's waiting room throughout most of the morning because he had been called to the hospital for an emergency. Finally, the receptionist told them they'd better reschedule, so they went home, but then the office called in the middle of the afternoon, saying the doctor was back and wanted to do the procedure now. Ryland was against it; the man had wasted enough of their time, but the receptionist said they'd better come now because the doctor was going on vacation in a week, and he wanted to do it sooner rather than later. So they went back. Now Rosy is in the waiting room, where Ryland banished her. At the very last minute, as they were walking down the hall toward the examination room, he said, "You don't need to come with me."

  "Are you sure?" she said. She wanted to come.

  "Yes." He was sure.

  The doctor is speaking in a tone that makes Ryland feel as if he's a very young child. "This is the villain," he says, holding up the rubber contraption he'll use to take the tissue sample. He waves it in front of Ryland's face so that he doesn't have to lift his head from the pillow. The first test of the afternoon: Can Ryland control his damn neck muscles and keep his head on the pillow? He feels as if he is drowning, and they haven't even started yet.

  "Now, are you comfortable?" Dr. Callahan says.

  Rae Freitag has put his oxygen tank on a shelf that pulls out from the examination table, and now she hands him the tube. Overhead, the plastic case covering the fluorescent lights is completely clean. Admirable. Very admirable.

  Rae gave him a shot to relax him, and now she is inserting an IV into his arm. Before they started, she asked him if he needed the toilet, and he did, and now he needs it again, but she is holding his arm and telling him to be still. His arm is shaking. He's afraid his bladder is going to burst. He doesn't want to wet himself. Not in front of Rae. She's a nice woman.

  "What we're going to do," she is telling him, "is pass this tube through your nose. This other tube here is oxygen. So you're going to be getting plenty of air. You don't need to worry about that. Okay?

  "Now Ryland, when the tube passes through your vocal cords, you may feel like you can't catch your breath. Don't worry about that. Everybody feels that, and after a minute it'll pass."

  Dr. Callahan stands to his right, wearing a green mask. "If you get at all worried that you can't breathe, Ryland," he says, "you just raise your hand and I'll stop whatever I'm doing and let you catch your breath."

  "What if I need to cough?" Ryland says.

  "That's not going to happen. That's what this IV is all about. It administers medicine that relieves the need to cough. You're getting a good dose of steroid here, buddy." Above the green mask, behind the speckled glasses, the doctor's eyes smile. "Ryland, you're in a doctor's office. If you get into trouble, where better? Now you can help by taking slow, shallow breaths through your mouth. Can you do that?"

  Ryland breathes.

  "You ready?"

  He feels the tube when it enters. The other tube, with oxygen, is cold, this one hot. He feels it scraping into the soft upper part of his palate.

  "Try not to talk while the tube is in your lungs. Talking can make you hoarse or give you a sore throat after the procedure."

  Ryland blinks. He thinks about pissing into his helmet when he was in the service. Crammed in a foxhole with a dozen other men. Nobody wanted to sit in piss. They pissed into their helmets, but he doesn't have a helmet. He can't trust his eyes not to tear.

  "You may feel pressure or tugging when the specimens are taken. How you doing? Remember, raise your hand if you want me to stop."

  He remembers what he forgot to ask the doctor. He wanted to ask exactly how long the tube was going to be in his lungs, and how he would know when it got there, and how long it took to get there, and how long he needed to hold his breath, because he could hold it quite a while. It was a trick he used to stay awake in the foxhole, and on the graveyard shift, and when he was a boy and needed to stay awake until everybody else in the house was asleep. He could hold it for four or five minutes in his prime, but he isn't in his prime now, so he needs to know what's expected of him. He tries to raise his hand. He is raising it. He's pretty sure he is raising it. The green mask is in the way. He can't see a thing because the doctor's damn green mask is bearing down.

  Afterward, when Ryland is dressed again, the doctor comes back in and tells him they'll send the samples down to Albuquerque. Might take a week, maybe longer, to get the results. "If there's anything, anything at all, I'll call you. But if you don't hear from us, don't worry. In this case, no news is good news. I'll have the results sent to you. Okay?"

  "Okay."

  "So when's the big day?"

  Ryland stares at him.

  "The wedding."

  "Oh. Soon. Six weeks."

  "Little Maggie. I remember when she was born." Ryland smiles, nods, and swallows, his throat burning where the instrument had scraped.

  10

  SAM STANDS JUST inside the door of Molina's Fish and Tackle holding two large grocery bags and blinking while his eyes adjust to the dim room. He puts the bags down next to five others he's brought in. Molina's wife, Mary, is behind the cash register, and Molina, a trim man with a thin mustache and thick, wavy brown hair, is talking to a customer. He nods at Sam, Sam at him. It's a tiny room, stinky with fish, the floor gummy. Bait bags of ready-to-go live bait cover most of the counter where Molina stands. The customer, a willowy man in a Hawaiian shirt and shorts, rubber thongs on his feet, a Yankees hat on his head, towers over him.

  Sam walks along the edge of the room to the fly bins and sees that the cubby where Molina keeps his fancy flies is empty. Two teenage girls crowd in, looking in the cubbies. He moves on to the frozen cases, reading labels on boxes he can barely see through the frosty glass: Mullet, Squid, Pilchards, Ballyhoo, Spanish Sardines, Cigar Minnows, Chum.

  "My friend Sam might disagree with you, verdad, Sam?" Molina calls. "What'd you bring me?" Sam walks back to the door, picks up two bags, walks over to the counter, and puts them on top of it. "People around here h
ave been having luck with Sam's ties. Buenas dias, señor. Donde estabas?" Molina says, stretching his hand out.

  "Moley," Sam says, shaking it.

  He returns to the door, picks up two more bags. Behind him, Molina clicks his tongue.

  "Hola, Sam," Mary says.

  "Mary." Mary could be her husband's twin, they look so much alike. They're nearly the same height, though Mary is fleshier. Her hair is a longer version of her husband's, thick and wavy, and both have mild brown eyes.

  "What'd you bring me, viejo?" Molina says again. "Pesces largos?" He grins. Sam scoots a bag toward him, and he opens it, pulling out one of the fake mackerels. "We can't keep these in stock," Molina says to his customer. "Not this month, not next. Try one of these, my man. Test your luck."

  "Wouldn't use artificial bait," the man says.

  "Artificial's starting to take off," Molina says. "Works, and it's not so smelly."

  "Live bait and a Carolina rig," the man says. "Can't miss. Did you ever try that?" the man asks Sam. He pulls a snapshot out of his shirt pocket and hands it to Sam. Molina smiles, ducks his head, and occupies himself with Sam's flies. Molina spends his weekends listening to the weekend fishermen tell their stories and show pictures of their catches. "People don't understand the Carolina rig," the man says. "They don't trust it. Pure ignorance."

  Sam stares at a picture of this man standing in a boat, holding what looks like a good-sized bass attached to a hook and line that must be this Carolina rig. The man in the photo stares solemnly at the camera's eye. Sam nods and hands the photo back. He watches Molina count his flies by twos.

  "Carolina rig with live ballyhoo."

  "I count twenty-five, verdad, Sam?" Molina says.

  "Twenty-five," Sam says.

  "Fifty bucks," Molina says.

  "Working's one thing," the man says. "Working better is another."

  "What else you got?" Molina says, nodding at Sam's other bag.

  Sam pushes it across the counter and reaches for two more bags on the floor. Molina opens the first and looks in.