Yellowcake

by Ann Cummins

  "What's she saying?" she asks Arnold.

  "She's saying she doesn't need our help."

  He looks over her grandmother's head at her. In the moonlight, she can see one eyebrow raised. Becky glares at him.

  They trudge along, Becky and Arnold silent, her grandmother talking to the air. They're a good quarter-mile from the house, which is just a dark smudge against the navy sky. The sand is crusted and packed but softens a little as they get closer to the river. Here wild grass grows in patches. The sheep will crop it close when they come back, but now it reaches Becky's knees, and she keeps stumbling into it. It's stupid to walk through the desert at night in the summer, especially this close to the river, because on cool nights like this, when there's been no rain, rattlesnakes will make their way to the river. At the full moon she and her father used to go for a run but they always stuck to the road and never went near the river.

  "Where's Luckyboy, Grandma?" Four of the horses are accounted for, Alice's two wayward roans and these two palominos, but where is Delmar's horse? Her grandmother stabs the ground.

  The Biggses's dogs seem to have gone home to bed, and Denver has disappeared, too, having been relieved of guard duty. Behind them the horses crunch through the grass, breathing evenly again. They're crowding close, hurrying, as if going home were their idea. Ak'ah keeps sticking his head between her and her grandmother. She can feel his breath on her neck, a tickling warmth like the soft brush of horseflies. In summer the horseflies swarm the horses and their human riders, digging under hair and skin, stinging.

  "Deesk 'aaz," Arnold says.

  "What?" Becky says.

  "Just talking about the weather," he says.

  He looks amused, his eyes shining in the moonlight. Her grandmother continues preaching to the ground.

  Arnold says, "Dichin nishli."

  "What'd you say?"

  "That I'm hungry." She sees his purple teeth.

  Her grandmother chants. Arnold continues to talk, sounding very agreeable, very conversational. Her grandmother stops speaking and begins to laugh, a high wheezy cackle. She stops walking, too, causing Ak'ah to try to shoulder ahead.

  Arnold says something else, and her grandmother answers in Navajo. He says, "'Aoo'," and her grandmother hands Arnold 'Abíní's rope.

  They continue walking. And chatting. Becky stares into the leaves of the cottonwood next to the house. If she half closes her eyes, the leaves catching the moonlight look like a hundred little mirrors. They seem to flash but probably do not because there is no breeze. She is the one moving, not they. But she doesn't feel that she moves. These days, even when she runs she feels like she's standing still.

  They stop in front of the house, a wood and adobe flat-roof that her grandfather built. Without a word to her but continuing her conversation with Arnold, her grandmother hands Becky Ak'ah's rope. Arnold, smiling, hands her 'Abini"s. Arnold is having a real good time. Her grandmother picks up a lantern that she had left shuttered next to the door. She has no electricity on the farm. She wants it that way. The Biggses have electricity, but her grandmother likes old-style in everything.

  "Where are you going?" Becky asks as Arnold starts to follow Ariana into the house.

  "Coffee and breakfast," he says in his Eastwood voice.

  Typical. Everybody likes Arnold. Everybody likes him but nobody knows him.

  Becky leads the horses around the side of the house, past the adobe oven where her grandmother makes flatbread, past the wooden lean-to that smells of the plants—sage and aster—that her grandmother dries for medicinal teas, the sweet-smelling hut that always drew Becky and Delmar when they were children on this farm, because it's dark and cool and good for hiding. The corral is behind her grandmother's hogan.

  'Abíní' neighs, and from the corral comes an answering neigh. The horses trot ahead toward the open gate, anxious to be caged again, and Becky lets go of the ropes. She can see the silhouette of a horse, small but broad-bellied, standing in the middle of the corral—Luckyboy.

  The other two run toward the water trough. Becky follows, slipping the ropes from their necks while they're preoccupied. She lets the ropes fall to the ground beside the trough and turns to Luckyboy, who stands stone still. She walks closer to him, close enough to see his eye, open and staring at her. His tail swishes once.

  She says, "Shoo."

  Swishes again.

  She raises her hand and slaps him on the rump as hard as she can, shouting, "Hai! Get out of here. Go find Delmar."

  Luckyboy jumps and runs forward, stopping just short of the open gate. He looks back at her, turns, and trots to the corral railing, keeping his eye on her, giving her a wide berth, and veering toward the trough, where 'Abini' raises his head and gives him a sniff.

  16

  DELMAR IS TO START his new job as the groundskeeper at Whitaker Estates on Monday, though they told him he could move up to his groundskeeper's cottage immediately. He doesn't need much. The cottage has furniture, linen, and dishes. The property manager told him that all he needs are some canvas gloves, a sturdy pair of work boots, and a good attitude.

  He spends Friday afternoon after the interview taking care of business. At three he goes to see his parole officer, Mr. Xavier Happe. Officer Happy. Delmar has an appointment every Friday with Officer Happy. The man never looks up and never speaks when he comes in. There's always a plastic cup with a paper lid on the edge of the officer's desk, the name ATCITTY penned on the label. First thing, Delmar takes the cup down the hall to the bathroom and pisses in it.

  Mr. Happe is a medium-built bald man with a high forehead, nicely spaced eyes, a bumpless nose, and thick, shapely lips. His chin is covered with peach fuzz. A handsome Christian, he says he prays for all of his clients because it doesn't hurt to enlist the Lord in a losing cause. Officer Happy knows the rate of recidivism for all kinds of criminals: city criminals versus rural criminals, blacks versus whites, girls versus boys, half-breeds versus full-bloods. "Do you know, Delmar," he frequently says, "that the recidivism rate for half-breeds"—when he asked once what Delmar preferred, half-breed or mixed-blood, Delmar told him he had no preference—"is higher than for full-blooded Indians?" It was news to him.

  "What about your grandmother?" the man says when Delmar tells him about the job. "As per your conditions of parole..."

  "My mom's helping with the farm."

  Officer Happy opens a file on his desk and begins looking through the papers. He pulls out something Delmar recognizes, his mother's calendar. Alice signed off as his in-home supervisor at his parole hearing. When rodeo season started, she had to give Officer Happy a calendar showing the dates she'd be away. "It's good," Delmar says. "She's home."

  He picks up the phone and starts dialing.

  "I mean she's not home now. She took my grandma to Durango to the eye doctor. She'll call you when she gets back. She thinks I need my own money." Officer Happy stares at him. Delmar holds his gaze.

  "Is she going to stay?" the man says. "Because you can't take a job one week and leave it the next."

  "She's staying."

  "Well. How are you going to get there? Pretty isolated up there on the mesa. You got your transportation figured out?"

  "Going to get a bike."

  "Bike's a good idea, though it won't work in rain or snow. What about in rain or snow?"

  "I'll catch a ride. It'll be no problem."

  "Because when do you turn into a pumpkin?"

  "Three o'clock Friday afternoons." Officer Happy is a tough-love parole officer. He has told Delmar repeatedly that if he is even a minute late for his weekly appointment he'll have him arrested.

  "All right," the officer says finally, tilting back in his chair and lacing his hands behind his head. He smiles. "I'm proud of you, kid. Step in the right direction."

  Delmar drives out to his grandmother's farm. His grandma and his mom aren't back yet. He packs some clothes and a few other things, helps himself to some twenties from the stack in Ariana's cupboa
rd—he needs some cash to see him through—and goes out to say hello to Luckyboy, who used to be skinny but now is very fat. The first time he ever saw Luckyboy, he thought he was a big dog covered in horseflies, with bulging eyes, visible ribs, and bowed legs, a walking skeleton of what turned out to be a little pony. The horse was a present from his father.

  From the time Delmar was a baby until he was eight years old, he saw his father about once a week. Saturday mornings, after Sam worked the graveyard shift at the uranium mill, Delmar would wake to the sound of the dogs barking, a horn blaring, and Sam hollering, "Who wants breakfast?" They would drive the thirty miles into Farmington for pancakes at Pancake Alley. On Delmar's birthdays, Sam always gave him good presents: a ten-speed bike, a fishing pole, an underwater watch. Delmar doesn't have most of the presents anymore. He lost them along the way. Only Luckyboy.

  "How come is it only the women in your family have horses?" his father wanted to know, and then, "I think we better get you one." It was his seventh birthday. They drove north toward the Colorado border, on dirt roads and wagon trails. For many years there had been herds of wild horses in the area; they caused trouble, eating crops, turning over garbage bins on the ranches below Mesa Verde. They didn't find the herds that day, but just as they were getting ready to head home Delmar saw Luckyboy. Sam said, "That is the worst-looking animal I've ever seen. You want him?"

  The pony turned out to be a good runner. When they stopped the truck, Sam gave him a lariat, saying, "Go get him." The pony took off, tail straight up, and didn't look back, so they got back in the truck and followed him. When they caught up with him, Sam yelling, "Rope him, boy," Delmar rolled the window down and tried to rope him out the window. But the pony was a real good ducker, so Delmar climbed up to sit on the windowsill, while his father steered with one hand, the truck bucking all over the rough desert, and held onto his son's ankle with his other hand. Delmar tossed the lariat a couple of times, Sam laughing, yelling, "You'll never make a cowboy, kid," and driving so close to the doggy-horse that Delmar could see the pupils in his wild, frightened eyes. Finally, Delmar slipped the lariat over his neck like a noose. Later, during his bandit days, Delmar would remember that exhilarating moment when he saw the horse's wild eyes go blank with surrender and think that even though he'd probably make a lousy cowboy, he could make a very good hangman.

  He puts out some hay and shovels some manure. Luckyboy is responsible for the ugliest manure. Alice's horses and his grandmother's produce nice, healthy clumps on a regular basis—what goes in comes out good—but Luckyboy has never been that healthy. What goes in sometimes takes a long time to come out, and sometimes it's a green stream.

  Finished with his shoveling, Delmar says goodbye to the horses and starts back toward town, but then he remembers that this is the last weekend for the state fair in Albuquerque. It's been three years since he went; last year at this time he was in jail. He likes the fair.

  He takes the western route, driving one hundred miles south to Gallup and then on to Grants, where he wants to stop at Stuckey's Pecan Shoppe and pick up Stuck. She's pretty much the only one from his bandit days he still likes to see. He met her at the halfway house in Farmington the first time he was busted for bootlegging car parts. He'd been trying to sell car radios at the Farmington flea market, but one of the original owners showed up and found his serial number on a radio. The man literally dragged Delmar by his ear to a security guard at the market, and the security guard made him sit on his hands and wait for the cops. It was a day Delmar doesn't like to think about. As for Stuck, she was at the halfway house for dropping yellow sunshine during gym at Farmington High. Delmar and Stuck spent a fun month in group therapy, then went their separate ways, she back to gym classes, he to skulking around the halls of Shiprock High, and for a while he tried really hard not to put himself in the position of getting dragged anywhere by his ear again. He hit the books and graduated six months early—he couldn't stand school. Stuck took two more vacations at the halfway house and didn't ever graduate. She moved to Grants, following a speed freak named Jeremy, and got the job at Stuckey's Pecan Shoppe, where she's cashiered ever since.

  It's just after six when he pulls into the nearly empty parking lot. Stuck's behind the cash register.

  Inside and up close, he sees that she's looking not so good—like a zombie, with dark circles under her eyes and bluish lips and spider-web hair. She's wearing the tiniest of tank tops, and it looks baggy on her. Her jeans are belted around her hips, showing her stomach, which is concave. It is hard to believe that two babies have come out of that stomach, except for the scar that stretches from her blip of a navel on down. It looks like a bolt of lightning.

  He tells her he's come to take her to the fair, and she tells him she's got to work.

  "Get that other guy to work." He helps himself to a famous pecan log.

  "He pisses me off so bad."

  Two customers and their child are browsing among the hatpins, though they're not wearing hats. The hatpins are shaped like states. "You got Virginia?" the lady says.

  "We got what's there," Delmar says, helping Stuck out.

  "I was supposed to get last weekend off, but Stupid has to go to Phoenix to sell some of his stupid paintings, so I traded with him but nobody changed it on the schedule, and this morning—"

  "How 'bout West Virginia?" the customer says. Stuck glares at her.

  "Does that start with a W?" Delmar says. "I think it's with the Ws."

  "I found Wyoming," the child says.

  "—the phone rings and it's stupid Ginny saying why am I not at work and guess what? Stupid's nowhere and my name's on the schedule."

  Delmar nods. He wants to go behind the counter and put his hands around Stuck's little waist. He wants it something fierce. He stares at the hatpin tree. It needs replenishing. There are a lot of blank spaces. Actually, the whole place is looking not so good. The famous pecan logs need to be stocked, and the petrified wood does, too, and the fudge, and the life-sized porcelain cats. Maybe he should skip the fair, stay right here. Help Stuck do her job and have a sex spree, which is all he really wants, well not all. He'd like but isn't going to have some of the blow Stuck has clearly been dipping into. He wonders where she got it. She came to see him every few weeks this summer at his grandma's place, and every time she was clean. He can tell she's high now by the way her eyes keep drifting toward the top of their sockets.

  "How far is the Petrified Forest from here?" Mr. Customer asks Delmar. The man lays a hatpin shaped like Texas on the counter, plus a miniature stone gargoyle from the gargoyle display. He picks out three famous pecan logs, seriously diminishing the stock, and lays them down, too. Stuck begins to punch keys in the cash register.

  "Close. If you take the shortcut." He glances at Stuck, who smiles at the cash register. Making Stuck smile is something he likes. He's really good at giving tourists directions. He directs this guy to get off the freeway now and head through Zuni. He doesn't tell the guy that the Zunis will abduct his woman and enslave his child, which is something a Zuni guy he knows says about the Navajo. Instead he tells them that the Zuni are as playful as children and to be sure and take their pictures, they love that.

  Stuck, happy now, tells the customer he owes her $24.95.

  Stuck deserves help this weekend, Delmar decides, and she deserves a love spree. Everybody deserves a spree, especially him, since this is his last weekend of freedom before he starts his job. He plans to do good at his job and not leave the mesa until he's off probation, and then he plans to get out of Dodge, maybe go see his dad in Florida, he doesn't know.

  After the customers leave, Delmar slips behind the counter and behind Stuck, puts his hands under her shirt and around her waist, touching the fingers of both hands in front and thumbs in back. He tells her that maybe he won't go to the fair, and he slips his hands down below the belt, under her panties, through the tangle of hair, to where she is already wet.

  "Plus Jeremy's back," she says.
/>   "Ah, dang," Delmar says.

  She's leaning against him, bobbing up and down against his cock like a jumping jack—the coke gets her going. He wants some. He'd like to get going, too.

  "Let Jeremy take care of the kids. Let's go to the fair." He pulls his hands out. "C'mon." He knows this is a reckless idea. He knows Stuck will pay if she takes off with him. But Jeremy, the kids' father, will hit her for nothing, so she might as well give him a reason. He goes around the counter, starting the getaway. She doesn't move. "Come on," he says.

  She stands there, staring out at the highway. Behind her, a little round fan goes click, click, click. "Stuck, he is a fuck. You know he is." She just looks at the highway, her eyes roaming their orbits, hands squeezing the counter, and Delmar knows there will be no sex spree. She is a good person, his good buddy. He tells himself this as he moves quickly toward the door, because he sort of wants to hit her himself.

  "Want to see what he gave me?" she says. Now she moves, all pep, around the counter, brushing by him to the door, locking it, taking his hand, and pulling him toward the stockroom, which is dim and cluttered with cardboard boxes, the cement floor sticky The place smells like sugar. Her purple sweater's on a hook. She takes the sweater everywhere because she's always freezing. From the sweater pocket she takes two small vials and hands them to him, and though it's too dark to see clearly, he knows he's holding some of Jeremy's famous coke.

  "Gee," he says.

  She's rubbing herself against him. "We've got half an hour. He's bringing the kids at seven. Come on." She takes his hand and pulls him through the room toward a desk in back, takes the vials from him, turns the desk light on, and shakes a little of the coke out onto a piece of paper, dividing it in four lines.