by Ann Cummins
First garbage, then breakfast, and then the murder of crickets. He drives up and down the lanes, watching the land become visible, stopping at the inhabited houses to collect garbage, lingering at the Dildos' house because sometimes, early, he'll see that young wife standing in the open door wearing her workout clothes, eating something from a bowl.
Just a short jog past the Dildos' house he stops the flatbed at the center of the mesa, the old battleground, where something has just crept across the road. Blue lights are embedded in the ground along the road so the rich people can always find their way home. They can see the road, but do they see the dead guys looking for the party? He enjoys their company, especially the whites, ghosts of guys who never expected to die. White people don't expect to. Die surprised. Stupids. Now the Indians, the ones who die young, they always expect it, you can see it in their eyes. Fear. Maybe not of dying, but of lingering—of becoming ghosts. That bothers him a little, those guys he knew in the warrior days, who seemed to see their deaths before they happened. He is not like them. He tested death up here once. Got chased to the edge, floored it, and went over—kamikaze! But somehow death passed through him. He flew that night and came out of it without a scratch, he doesn't know how.
Cobain is singing about friends and old enemies. Farther down the lane, the something that slunk across is long gone.
Friday the thirteenth. Coyote on the path. Happy morning music. He takes a drink of coffee. The morning is good. The afternoon will be bad. He's got twenty-one Fridays left of pissing in Officer Happy's cup. Then he's a free man.
24
RYLAND FEELS LIKE an idiot, and what's worse, he looks like one. He stepped outside for the paper yesterday morning, and somehow his feet got tangled in his cart. The next thing he knew, he had blood running down his head and from both elbows. "Your dad took a little tumble," Rosy is saying to Eddy on the phone. Ryland has been sitting in the living room listening to her tell the story over and over to everybody who calls. "Got a pretty good conk on the head and skinned his arms. His poor battle-scarred arms. Fifteen stitches. They should be out by the wedding. I told Maggie not to worry. Scared us, though. Do you know what that pill did? No, not Maggie, your father."
She starts telling him about the contaminated lung tissue samples. When they went in to get him stitched up, Rae Freitag told her about the messages Dr. Callahan had left before he went on vacation. "Made me so mad," Rosy says. "We could've had this all over with before the wedding, but now we can't get another appointment until November. He fights me every step of the way."
He touches the gauze taped over his right temple, a thick bandage. He can feel the lump—can feel it from the inside because it throbs. He has a black eye, too.
"Oh, my Lord," Rosy says. "Oh, my Lord!" in a tone that chills him and makes him start from his chair—a tone that throws him back twenty-five years to when the kids were little and anything could go wrong. He stands, blinking out the front window at what looks like a truck parked just beyond the hedge. He grips the handle on his oxygen cart. Looks like Sam's old Chevy pickup.
Looks like Sam standing on the street looking in.
"You told me to come," Sam says, grinning. They sit at the kitchen table, cups of coffee in front of them. He looks exactly the same, a boy with blue-white irises, sheer white hair and eyebrows, but his skin is dry and papery, grayish, and the whites of his eyes are muddy.
"You drove all this way?" Rosy says. "Sam, why didn't you fly? You want sugar for your coffee?" She pushes her chair back.
"No thanks. Don't like planes." He cocks his head, gazing at Ryland.
"I'll be damned," Ryland keeps saying.
"You been brawling, Ry?"
Ryland just shakes his head and says, "Ssss."
"But Sam," Rosy says, her voice high and loud, the wedding's not for two weeks. You're early."
"Well, I needed a vacation."
"My goodness." She stands up. "We have cookies. Would you like a cookie?"
"Sit down, Rosy. I'm fine." She doesn't sit down. She crosses the kitchen, takes a plate from the cupboard, and starts piling on cookies from the cookie jar.
"Can't believe that old truck's still running," Ryland says. "How old is it? I remember when you bought it new."
"Thirty-one years old."
Ryland shakes his head.
"Paint's all rotten from salt in the air, and I had to convert it—you can't get leaded gas anymore."
"How's Florida? You ready to move back?"
"Crowded. It's full of jet setters. My old Kayot's the only tub in the marina. Raggediest rig in the water. Now the place is filling up with souped-up Leisurecrafts and Bayliners, and every year the rent goes up for my slip. Pretty soon I'm going to be priced out of the neighborhood."
Rosy brings the cookies over and the coffee pot, filling Ryland's cup, starting to fill Sam's, but stopping halfway when he signals. When her back is turned, Ryland watches Sam slip his old silver flask from his back pocket. He shows it to Ryland, offering. Ryland shakes his head, and Sam doctors his coffee, putting the flask away before Rosy returns to the table.
"How long is the drive?" Ryland says.
"Took me a week. I been taking my time, seeing the country. Down off I-10, near the Louisiana border? I got swarmed by palmetto bugs. Big as hummingbirds. The truck stops were thick with them. And people. There are so many people living along the freeway these days. Living in shacks like gypsies. You can see their campfires from the road. And the Rio Grande? In ten years it'll be a dry bed. Mark my word. I don't know. The country's changing fast."
"Changing here, too," Ryland says. "They're building gated communities outside of town."
"Sam, you wouldn't recognize Durango," Rosy says. "Lily bought the old Warnock house up on Crestview. You remember that place? It used to be the nicest in town."
"Big house," Sam says.
"They've got bigger ones now. They've got million-dollar homes by the river, right where Shantytown used to be."
"How's Lily doing?"
"Fine."
"Married?"
"No. She never remarried. She sees men. She dates."
"Well, I guess she probably doesn't want to see me."
"Probably not. She'll be at the wedding, you know." She grips the back of her chair and looks at Ryland.
"We're all adults," he says. "I think Lily and Sam will behave themselves."
Sam raises his eyebrows. "You think?"
"You better, Samuel Behan. I'll have no trouble from you at Maggie's wedding."
"Rosy, you're just the same," Sam says. "Isn't she?"
"She's a whole lot worse," Ryland says.
"And he's a mule," Rosy says. "I wish you'd talk to him, Sam. We've been organizing, trying to do something for the mill workers. Woody Atcitty. You remember him?"
"Yeah. Sure."
"He's sick. Lung cancer."
Sam glances at Ryland. "I'm sorry to hear that."
"And he's not the only one. That was dangerous business we were all in. It was, Ryland. Don't look at me like that. You would think this one ..."—the back of Ryland's neck starts to burn—"...would want to do something for the old workers and their families, but," and now she looks at Sam, not him, her voice rising, "right now, we're just gathering material."
Sam meets his eyes and holds his gaze for a few seconds. He says, "I think I'll stay out of this one, Rosy."
"Oh, Samuel, they're just troubleshooting meetings to—"
"She makes trouble," Ryland says. "I try not to shoot her."
Sam grins. Rosy pivots, walking to the sink.
"You're staying with us, right, old man?" Ryland says.
Rosy's head jerks around, her eyes hard and bright. Ryland can see worry skitter through her. She doesn't know what to do with Sam. She doesn't know how to be with him since he broke Lily's heart. She thought Ryland should let the friendship go when the marriage busted up. She was mad at him when he wouldn't, but over the years, she's gotten used to their phone c
alls, used to Sam—as long as he stays three thousand miles away.
"If it's no trouble," Sam says.
Rosy smiles, but the worry line between her brows deepens. "No trouble at all," she says—with Rosy manners usually win—but then she says, "That dog!" venom in her voice.
"TGIF," Ryland says, winking at Sam, who is gazing at Rosy, his right eyebrow cocked in amused surprise. "We got us a little dog down by the cemetery who goes wild every Friday at this time."
"It's criminal the way those people let that dog go on and on," Rosy says.
"We suspect they're out getting drunk, celebrating the end of the week."
"Criminy," Sam says.
"Oh, you two," Rosy says, twisting her foot as if grinding out a cigarette.
In the evening, after supper, Sam pulls some of his hand-tied flies from a wrinkled grocery bag and dumps them on the kitchen table while Rosy noisily loads the dishwasher, clanging the dishes together. She's all worked up. Ryland knows she doesn't welcome a houseguest in the middle of the wedding preparations, especially not this one. He knows she's been turning it over and over in her head.
But after she finishes with the dishes, she goes into the sewing room, and Ryland can hear her fussing, pulling the sofa bed out, rummaging in the dresser drawers for clean sheets. Sam's flies are intricate, colorful bugs. Ryland plays with a pretty green item that looks like a dragonfly, flicking it back and forth on the table.
"The good thing about single-hook flies," Sam says, "is that I can find everything I need except the hooks right outside my door. I go scavenging along the beach and down at the nature preserve on the island."
"So you make a good living?"
"I do okay. Keep my overhead low. People are moving to artificial bait, especially for the big fish. These I call the Florida Ghost," he says. He pulls some white fluff from his bag. "Couple of months the mackerel will start running along the coast, and these'll bring them in. How're the trout this year?"
"Hell if I know. Lyle Terrano—you remember Lyle? In accounting?"
"Yeah."
"He brought us down some nice browns and a rainbow that he caught up near Creed this past spring, so I guess fishing's probably good in the headwaters, but the rivers have been low this summer."
"For trout flies, for the river trout, I like a blue-jay hackle and some gamecock. Gold pheasant for the tails. Actually, Ry, I thought I might tie a few flies special for the trout fishermen while I'm here, see if I can make a buck. Gas cost more than I ex pected coming up. You think Rosy'll mind if I set up here in the kitchen?"
"No problem," Ryland says. "You need money?"
"Nah." Sam pours from his flask into his coffee cup. They listen to Rosy moving furniture in the sewing room. "What's up with her?" Sam says. "What she was saying about Woody and all."
"Same old rigmarole. Trying to stir things up, like always. She isn't happy unless she's got some kind of a cause. Funny thing how this stuff never goes away. They want to rewrite history in regards to the uranium business. One minute they're telling you the stuff'11 save the country, the next they're saying it'll kill us, and today's good news will be tomorrow's bad news, and then it'll all turn around again. What gets me are these people making a living off lawsuits." He tells Sam about the lawyer running the show. "Not that I'm saying we did everything right. I'm not even saying the business wasn't dangerous. It was. But look at you, buddy. You were up to your neck in the stuff, and you're doing fine, aren't you?"
"I guess."
"They, these lawyers, keep it stirred up. As far as I'm concerned, half the people creating a stir want compensation for getting old. We're not young. Things go wrong."
"Yeah, but Woody..."
"I know, I know. It isn't cut and dried."
"You seen Alice?"
Ryland pushes the plastic tube into his nose. "No. Why? She finally come to her senses and quit you?"
Rosy comes in with a folded towel and washcloth. "You're all set, Sam. I'll put these on your bed, and I cleared a towel rack for you." She picks up the portable phone and goes out to the porch swing, where she'll probably call Maggie to talk about Sam, the new kink in the wedding plans.
Sam flicks a Florida Ghost across to Ryland. "You know, why don't we go see Woody? Where is he? He was building a house in Fruitland when I left. Did he ever finish it?"
"So she finally quit you." Ryland grins. Sam shrugs. "Yeah. Let's go to Fruitland. See if we can find Woody." He shoots the fly back to Sam. "I know that's the Atcitty you'll be looking for."
It only happened once that Ryland rode shotgun while Sam chased a girl, and Alice Atcitty was that girl. They met her at the trading post the day after they drove down from Colorado. He got up to shave that morning and found Rosy hadn't remembered to pack razor blades. Sam's blades wouldn't fit his shaver, so they stopped at the trading post, and the girl at the cash register gave him little dainty blades for a Lady Schick.
"What am I supposed to do with these?" he asked her.
"That's all we've got." She wouldn't look at him. He thought she was lying. She'd dug the blades out from some box under the counter.
He stood there staring at her, and she stared at his chin. She was wearing a plaid cowboy shirt with pearl buttons, he remembers that, her hair one long tight braid. He remembers how her hair pulled her high forehead up into her scalp, the hair braided so tightly it looked like it hurt. He didn't know what to think. He wanted to go back behind the counter and look in the box. There was a line behind him at the counter, and Sam was at his elbow. He didn't want the blades, but he took out his wallet to pay and told her again what he wanted. She told him again that was all they had, but he could buy the shaver, too, if the blades didn't fit his, and she pulled up a dainty little Lady Schick shaver. The line behind him was three deep.
He almost walked out, but he had to shave. So he paid her, his ears and neck burning, seeing all at once that this was how it would be and regretting everything, the new mill that would bring revenue to the reservation and bringing his family here. Wanted to tell her he'd been all over the Pacific, met all kinds of people who were glad he was there and at least smiled when they cheated him. But he didn't say that. He said, "Thank you." She handed him the blades and shaver in a bag.
Sam, beside him, laughing.
They saw her again that weekend. They'd been listening to music wrangling down from the mesa just north of the housing compound, drums and a throbbing bass. They had a little to drink, whiskey before and after dinner, and Sam suggested they go find the music. It came from the Civic Center up on the mesa above Camp. They drove up there and threaded through a parking lot crowded with pickups, went into a dim square building that smelled like clay and sawdust and booze. All around him he heard the soft shushing of a language he didn't understand, and he felt like he was overseas and not in America at all. It was an agreeable feeling. A holiday, like they were on furlough. They stood on the edge of the dance floor, watching Indians dancing to country music, some fancy, fast dancing, different from the formal two-step he'd learned as a boy at Grange Hall dances, where stiff-legged couples would shuffle around the edges of the floor, each following the next like horses yoked to an invisible maypole. The center of the floor was always empty. But these people danced differently, kicking a leg out, dragging one behind, twirling into the center, then out.
She was there. She was not friendly. He saw her see them, and he noted her cool indifference. She was not a woman—a woman? She was a child. Sixteen, and Sam was thirty-eight, and so was he. She was not a girl to smile, not for men. She danced well, with lots of men, with girls and women. With the females she laughed, and they flung themselves wildly around. He couldn't stop watching her. She had that about her.
He remembers sitting in the truck after the dance. They'd been waiting to break into the stream of traffic when a young woman knocked on the truck window: "Hey, give us a ride." She was thin and small, hair tightly curled, her face a mask of makeup, eyes raccooned with smudged eye shadow.
Behind her Alice. And leaning up against the bed of the truck, three other girls.
"Our car broke down," Raccoon said. The girls leaning against the truck were laughing.
They were flirting. All of them. He hadn't seen any harm. The wives would come soon enough.
"These girls need a ride," he told Sam.
"Tell 'em to hop in," Sam had said.
Three of them piled into the bed of the truck, and two sat up front, Raccoon and Alice. Alice next to him, the two girls nudging each other, laughing, talking in Navajo. He with his leg pressed tightly against hers, she staring straight ahead.
The next thing he knew, the sun was coming up and he and Sam were sitting dead center in the middle of nowhere, watching it rise. Later he wondered if the girls had had a strategy, if they'd huddled up and planned how they'd lure the white men into the desert and lose them.
"No, turn here. No, here. You missed it." The curly-headed one giving the directions, the ones in back hollering each time Sam hit a rut on one of those dirt roads.
Sam aimed for the ruts, and he met Sam's eyes over the girls' heads, grinning like a teenager. Both of them like teenagers.
She sat silent and prim, her leg in blue jeans solid against him. His hand on her knee. The urge to let it climb up her thigh.
Which he hadn't done. But Sam had, and not very long after that night. Ryland started seeing her in the parking lot at the mill, usually when Sam was coming off the graveyard shift and Ryland was just showing up for work. Ryland figured she spent more than a few of those shifts at the mill, against regulations. Those early mornings Sam would be slouched against the driver's door talking to her when Ryland drove up, and he'd nod to them, and she'd catch his eye, holding it for a few seconds, and he couldn't tell if it was mockery in her expression—it seemed a mixture of mockery and something else. Loneliness. He felt a little sorry for her—for any woman that would get hooked up with Sam. She stayed in the picture longer than any of the others. It surprised Ryland when Sam told him she wintered with him in Florida and had for all those years. Sam was usually a love-them-and-leave-them type—all but Lily, and he probably wouldn't have left her if she hadn't made so much noise when she found out about Alice. She'd gone door to door in Camp, demanding to know who knew what and when. Rosy went with her. Rosy had been so mad at him when it turned out she was the only wife in Camp who didn't know about Alice.