Ghost Sickness

by Amber Foxx

Jamie realized it must have shown on his face, and he snort-laughed. “Nah. Like fucking ant piss.”

  Lonnie walked with Jamie to the door and clapped him on the back. “Yours is too strong. You and your mother, you make coffee that could turn me as black as you are. I like ant piss.”

  On his way back through the campground, Jamie pulled out his phone and looked at a picture he’d taken of Placido, the Eclectus. The bird would cost eighteen hundred dollars. Worth every penny, though. His breed lived to fifty or older, so Mae would have him for the rest of her life. Why wouldn’t she like him? Mae loved strange animals. He’d seen her watch insects and reptiles as if they were the most wonderful things in the world. She’d probably think Placido’s leathery gray feet were cute.

  Lonnie didn’t understand about surprises. Jamie knew Mae and how to make her light up. Or he thought he did. His confidence undermined by Lonnie’s advice, he felt a need to reassure himself now.

  He found his parents’ tent empty and Mae inside his, putting on sunscreen. She’d changed her clothes and wore her visor hat with sunglasses propped up on it. Watching her hands rub the lotion onto her leg, he scooted over and ran a finger along her thigh. “Want me to do that for you?”

  “You missed your chance, sugar. I’m done. You have a good talk with Lonnie?”

  “Mm. Not really.” Jamie rubbed a spot of excess sunscreen on her knee.

  Mae waited, looking expectant.

  “Talked a little about healing.”

  “Oh.” A puzzled frown drew her eyebrows together. “Was that everything?”

  “Mm. Yeah. Mostly.” He didn’t feel like sharing the rest. It would undermine him even more. “Wants me to do more healing music.”

  She looked relieved and then smiled. “You should. That was good advice. Ready to hit the rodeo?”

  “Rodeo?” Jamie winced.

  “What’s wrong with that? I never saw one before. It sounds fun. And it starts at ten.”

  Jamie wound the end of her shoelace around his finger. There had to be an alternative to the bloody rodeo. “Where’d the oldies go?”

  “To Orville’s for a shower. Then your daddy’s gonna see people for his research, and your mama’s going shopping in Ruidoso.”

  “You didn’t go to Zak and Mel’s. Why not?”

  “I’d feel weird going to their house to shower without you.”

  “They wouldn’t mind.”

  “We can clean up together after we see some of the rodeo. I don’t want to miss the beginning. Anything you need to do before we go?”

  “Yeah. Tell you I hate fucking rodeos.”

  “You hate them?” She crawled past him to exit the tent, collecting her water bottle and her purse on her way. “I’ve been looking forward to it. Can’t you just go with me for an hour or two?”

  Jamie scrambled out after her. “You want me to watch people roping little calves by the legs and dragging ’em on the ground? And riding bulls? Jeezus. Saw that once and the bulls—they’re so angry. They have to hate it. Zak and Mel took me my first year here—” He shuddered. “Never again.”

  Mae put her sunglasses on and started walking uphill toward the rodeo grounds. “I thought it sounded like fun. I like sports.”

  “That’s not a sport. Sports are people throwing balls around.”

  “And you hate that, too.” She sighed. “What would we do this morning instead? The powwow doesn’t start ’til noon.”

  “Dunno. Not usually up this early.” Between his sleeping difficulties and the nature of his work, Jamie normally got up between ten and noon. “Just be with you, I guess. Take a shower, get groceries, cook a nice lunch, the sort of thing Mel doesn’t have time to make.”

  “They’re at the rodeo, remember? Zak said that was where he was going. They won’t be there for lunch. We’re somewhere new and special to me. We should be together doing something.”

  Jamie took Mae’s hand. He wished he could see her eyes. “You’re getting grumpy, love. You pissed about me going with Mel last night?”

  “No. That’s not it. I’m ... I’m tired and ... I don’t think I’m cut out for camping.”

  “But—you’re a country girl. You never camped?”

  “I didn’t need to. I lived near woods and everything. I hunted and fished, but I didn’t camp but once, and I didn’t like it any better than you like rodeos. I need my own shower and a clean, decent bathroom.”

  “Bloody hell, you can shoot a deer or gut a fish and you’re squeamish about using a porta potty?”

  “Yes.”

  “But at least it’s nice in the tent, isn’t it?

  “Not really. I know you tried to make it nice, but we’re in that little bitty space and you’re awful busy while you sleep. Like it’s work or something.”

  “You don’t like my tent?”

  “I don’t like sleeping in it. And don’t give me that look.”

  “What look?”

  She stopped walking and softly touched his cheek. “Please. What’s so important about your tent?”

  “Meant a lot to have you in it.” Jamie took her hand and kissed it. “Slept in it when I used to go climbing and then, y’know—it’s been with me through the big stuff. The hard times. It’s part of me. Like it knows me. I mean, I know I sleep funny and I’ll try to be quiet about it, but ... I like my tent. A lot.”

  Mae rubbed his back. “Thanks for explaining, sugar. Maybe I’ll get the hang of camping. Maybe. Just don’t surprise me again, okay?”

  “At all?” She couldn’t mean that. “What about presents? Or breakfast in bed?”

  She kissed him. “I would love breakfast in bed. But you’d have to get up at sunrise.”

  “Nah. Easier to stay up ’til sunrise. Cook for you and then go to sleep.”

  They resumed walking hand in hand on the road to the rodeo. Jamie wasn’t going in, but he wanted to go with her as far as the gate. She hadn’t said surprise presents were okay. “You ever think about having a pet?”

  “No. Why?”

  “Dunno. Just ... you live alone, and I’ll be on tour for three months. Thought you’d get lonely.”

  “I don’t, though. I’m good alone. And anyway, I’ll have my young’uns for most of August, and I’ve got Frank and Kenny next door, and Misty’s nearby, and Niall and Daddy are just a few blocks away. I’ll miss you, but I won’t be lonely.”

  “Ever?” Jamie couldn’t bear a night without a person or a cat, and he’d rather have both.

  “Not really, no. When Hubert and I first separated I used to feel bad, but that was ...” She paused. “Not exactly loneliness. More like a hole in me where he oughtta be. You remember what I was like.”

  “Yeah. That was hard on you.” She’d only been separated a few months when Jamie first met her. He slipped his arm around her waist. “But you’ll never have to go through that again.”

  “I sure won’t. Two divorces are enough.”

  He’d meant that she would marry him and it would last. Mae didn’t seem to have heard that. She sounded confident and assertive, affirming that she’d seen the last of something disagreeable. Jamie felt a pinch of dread, a shadow squeezing him inside. “You ever think about ...” No, he couldn’t ask her that. What if she said no?

  “Think about what, sugar?”

  He let go of her and yanked the top off a tall roadside weed in passing. It squeaked in his hands. Why had he done that? The plant might as well have said ouch. “Nothing. Just ...” He looked for a quick stopper to plug the gap in his broken sentence. “Thought you might like a pet.”

  They’d reached the top of the hill. Women in cowgirl outfits sat astride strong, gleaming horses milling about near the gate. Mae watched for a while, and then faced Jamie, her hands on his shoulders.

  “Sugar, animals take time and money, and I’m in school. We’ve only been in this relationship since after exams. You don’t know what my life is like during the school year. I’m in classes and labs and study groups, and I stay on campus
to work in the fitness center. I couldn’t have a pet. That poor thing is the one who’d get lonely, not me.”

  Jamie nodded, embarrassed and hurt by her rejection of his gift—when he hadn’t even given it to her.

  The announcer on the rodeo loudspeaker said, “Barrel racers, get ready.”

  Mae nodded toward the ticket booth. “You sure you don’t want to come in? It’s gonna be ladies riding horses, no animals getting hurt.”

  “Nah. Only event like that. Not worth the ticket.”

  Her eyes met his. “You didn’t get me an animal, did you?”

  “Nah. Thought about a parrot—” He cut himself off at her startled look. “No worries. It was just an idea.”

  Mae’s face softened into a relieved smile.

  The announcer called the name of the first woman to compete. Mae glanced toward the ring, and Jamie could feel her being pulled toward it. “Go on. Have fun.” He kissed her. “Catcha.”

  “What will you do?”

  “Take a nap. It’s not noon. Shouldn’t even be up yet.”

  Jamie returned to the campground. He needed music before he could nap. Something to put his heart back in place. To silence the voices that hammered his mind the way walking on pavement hammered his bad hip. Stupid. Fuck-up.

  The day was growing hot, so he set a camp chair in the shady spot outside of his parents’ tent and played his flutes, switching back and forth between the cedar flute and the shakuhachi. People paused in passing. Some stayed and listened for a while. An Apache man came over with a cedar flute and without talking sat in the grass and played a tune with Jamie, improvising around him. As they shared the moment, Jamie’s anxiety softened.

  “Thanks, mate.”

  The man nodded, tugged his Pirates ball cap lower over his eyes, and stood with a grunt, as if it were hard to rise, and said goodbye with his smile.

  Alone, Jamie began exploring melodies that might work for a new healing music album. Lonnie’s advice about giving Mae a parrot had been right. Maybe he was right about this, too. And about accepting the call to be a healer. Not that Jamie was ready. The music was enough, for now.

  Chapter Nine

  Mae took the first seat she found in the front row of the bleachers and tried to clear the Jamie-fog from her head. She hoped he was genuinely okay with her coming to the rodeo on her own. Part of her felt guilty for doing something he didn’t want to do, even though they’d made it through the fight pretty well. The conversation about pets had thrown her off-balance. What had he been thinking? What would she have done if he’d surprised her with a parrot? She couldn’t have accepted it, and yet she might have. Might have tried to be nice, the way she’d been about camping at first.

  Jamie’s passionate objections to rodeos echoed in her mind. He hadn’t tried very hard to be nice about it. But then, he cared so deeply about animals. He’d been shocked that she’d hunted and fished. What would he think if she told him she still liked to fish? Couples didn’t have to share everything, of course. If people were exactly alike and always together, they wouldn’t find each other interesting, but she hoped he didn’t think she was mean or heartless. Misguided surprises and all, she loved Jamie’s kindness and generosity and didn’t want to disappoint him. At the same time, she wanted to be herself. Catch fish. Watch sports. Including this rodeo.

  In front of a backdrop of towering green mountains, the horse and rider raced against the clock, in and out through the row of barrels, finessing the turns with power and grace. The coordination between the woman and the animal was so precise they were like one being. Mae raised her phone to take a video. Jamie would have liked this.

  Shadows passed behind her. Two pairs of blue-jeaned legs stepped over the bleacher. “All by yourself?” Zak teased as he sat beside Mae.

  The East-West cowgirl who had been browsing at the pottery booth took a seat on Zak’s other side. She wore a Western shirt with a bolo tie and a belt with a tarnished silver buckle, the same hat as the day before, and sunglasses. Mae put her phone down and said, “Jamie walked me up here, but he didn’t care to come in.”

  Zak grinned. “Because he’s too sensitive?”

  “You make everything sound like a fault. He’s kindhearted. There’s nothing wrong with that.”

  “Just funning you. Lighten up. Get used to me.”

  I’d rather not. “Are you gonna introduce me to your friend?”

  The woman leaned close to Zak and whispered, then took a camera from a shoulder bag, removed her sunglasses, and began taking pictures. Mae glanced up into the stands behind them, looking for Melody and the children. A few seats back, they sat with Bernadette, her brother, his wife and daughters, and her cousins Elaine and Pearl, all of whom could have seen what looked like an intimacy between Zak and the East-West cowgirl.

  Zak said, “Letitia’s a photographer.” Letitia paused to acknowledge Mae with a brief little smile. Zak added, “And Mae is a psychic.”

  Letitia received this information with a polite nod—a lot less reaction than Mae was accustomed to getting—and returned her attention to the riders.

  “Put this in the record books somewhere,” she said. Her speech was musical, with an accent that sounded like she was from the West Indies. “I’m taking pictures of women.” She bumped her knee against Zak’s.

  Zak and Letitia were making Mae too uncomfortable. She stood and climbed the bleachers to sit with Bernadette and her family. It felt rude to leave without a word, but Letitia didn’t seem interested in company.

  Melody commented on Jamie’s absence, but didn’t question it, saying she’d have been amazed if Mae could have dragged him to a rodeo. No further conversation followed. Melody stared at the floor.

  Mae started to ask if any of them knew Letitia and then stopped. The awkward silence said all she needed to know. This should have been a family outing and Zak was hanging out with this stranger instead. Could he really be having a fling with her, though? Mack used to sneak when he cheated on Mae, not show off. But then, Zak was so inconsiderate he might not bother to hide.

  Dean and Deanna ran past, jumping over the adults’ feet with squeals of excitement. Melody sipped a soda and munched on curly fries, watching the children. “Don’t go in front of people like that,” she said, but they had already galloped into the next row of seats, barging past people again.

  An amusing image came to Mae. “They should run down and see their daddy.”

  Melody shot her a look.

  “I mean it. It’d do him good.”

  Melody ate another fry. “They’d mess up his game.”

  “I know. That’d do him good.”

  Was that a smile on Melody’s face? Maybe. Almost. Mae felt as if she’d won something, though she didn’t know what.

  The barrel-racing winners were announced and prizes awarded. Calf roping followed. The family watched, but talked through it. Misty arrived, accompanied by a woman halfway between her age and Melody’s, whom she introduced as her sister Montana. She was large-bosomed and slim-legged, built like neither the athletic Misty nor the obese Melody, and looked to be half-Indian, half-Anglo. Did the Chino sisters have three different fathers? Their mama’s been married more than I have.

  Misty squeezed between Bernadette and Mae. “So, did you decide?”

  “I’m still thinking about it. But Jamie might be able to find out just by asking.”

  “You told Jamie?”

  “I’m sorry. You know how it is, talking with your boyfriend. You share stuff.”

  Misty rolled her eyes. “In my dreams.”

  Mae stood and nodded toward the upper bleachers. Misty walked up the steps with her. Mae assured her, “Jamie’s not gonna tell Reno. He’s worried that Zak is into the same—whatever. He’s gonna ask him.”

  “Zak and Reno.” Misty stopped, hands on her hips, frowning. “Zak and Reno?”

  Mae explained why she and Jamie had made the connection. Misty said, “That almost makes sense. But they don’t really hang out
together. When Zak and Mel come to T or C, Zak goes and does his thing, and Reno does his. Reno’s usually either working or painting, and Zak goes off to the river or the lake. Runs. Fishes.”

  Zak does what I do. Mae pushed away the idea of having something in common with him yet again. “He comes all the way there and then doesn’t spend any time with you?”

  “Yeah. I think it’s kind of a break for him. They leave the kids with his mom or Pearl and he gets some downtime.”

  As if he needed it. As far as Mae could tell, Zak was always on a break from his family. “I wonder if Reno really is painting, and if Zak really is doing what he says he does.”

  “I hadn’t thought of that.” Misty turned and looked down at her relatives. “Zak and Mel are coming to visit next weekend. Mom’s band is playing at Art Hop. That’s the only time we’re all four together—for Art Hop. Zak says he has to see me fire dance in case he has to put my hair out. I guess he and Reno could be up to something the rest of the time.”

  They sat and watched the cowboys lasso calves. It looked like getting all four legs in the rope and pulling them together to make the little animal go down was the goal. Sometimes cowboys only caught one to three legs—and once in a while a calf got away completely. Mae imagined Jamie rooting for them as they ran free.

  I sure do love him. The feeling swelled up suddenly, big and warm like the hug she would have given him had he been there. So what if he was supersensitive and hard to sleep with, or had funny ideas about how to make her happy? He cared enough to try. Cared about little calves in the rodeo, too, and even about assholes like Zak. Such a loving heart. She was a lucky woman.

  Misty and Melody, meanwhile, were putting up with unavailable men who were lying to them. Why? Was it something that ran in the family? The question crossed Mae’s mind as a joke, but then she wondered if the middle sister had a bad relationship, too. She asked, “Is Montana married?”

  “No.” Misty turned her diamond ring back and forth. “She’s been engaged forever, but I don’t know if he’ll ever settle down. He’s in town now for the rodeo and she’s all excited, but he’ll be on the road to the next one by Tuesday.”