“He wanted you to come,” she said. “Let me give you a hand with your things.” She reached past me into the van and grabbed a grocery sack full of candy wrappers and packages of the mustard pretzels Truman likes. She then draped a stack of dresses on hangers over her shoulder. “Let's get you unpacked.”
I nodded, loaded my arms with duffel bags and pillows, and followed her to the door. I tried to picture my father living inside that trailer, doing whatever he did every afternoon.
Linc Jackson had called my dad Chief Joseph, and he got a look on his face, as if they’d been mortal enemies: cowboys against Indians. Their relationship couldn’t have been that much of a stereotype, I told myself. At least I hoped not.
A child builds a world to keep the truth in or out, but I’d never bothered to change my perception of who Daddy might have been. Now I was afraid of what lay beyond the oven-door fence I’d just walked through.
3
Aunt Lutie clutched at my arm to lure me inside the house, which looked like a firetrap. The screen door creaked open; it needed a shot of WD-40. I stepped inside, and even though the living room was jammed with stuff, it felt cozy. Lutie hung the dresses on a doorknob and right away asked, “Have trouble finding us? Here, sit down.” She motioned to a worn sofa.
I sat down on its edge and expected her to add, “Take your shoes off,” like the character Jethro did on that infernal Beverly Hillbillies sitcom, which was now stuck in my mind.
“No,” I answered. “We stopped back in Murkee at the little café, and I got directions.” I didn’t mention I’d already met Linc Jackson.
“Oh, you mean the Mucky-Muck. That Dove will help you to death, but she's a hard worker.” Lutie perched on the other end of the couch and wove her fingers together as if she were praying.
My aunt was still a stranger, but it made sense to dive right in. I suspected the whole flap was some giant miscommunication or maybe one of those crazy country feuds you read about. I’d had plenty of training in mediation through my work with the teachers union. It wouldn’t be difficult to get Linc to drop the lawsuit once I figured out the problem.
“She introduced us to the town's owner too,” I said. “Then it came out that he's the neighbor you wrote about. Aunt Lutie, what could possibly make him want to sue?”
Lutie's expression turned to sadness. “I’ve asked myself that same thing for months now. Linc says he needs the creek for his cattle, but Joe didn’t buy it. My brother always said Linc was up to no good.” She looked down at her hands. “You might as well know—Joe and Linc couldn’t stand each other.”
“That much I gathered.”
“And Joe always said Linc would do anything to get hold of our place, mostly for the water rights.”
“What's so important about water?” I was genuinely puzzled by now.
Lutie's eyes widened in reverence. “It's only just the one thing we haven’t got much of out here,” she said. “Disputes over the rights have killed folks. They even got a special judge who sorts things out. Water judges, they call ‘em.”
I’d never heard of such a thing, and I still didn’t quite grasp what any of it had to do with me. I decided on a different approach. “What's the lawsuit about?”
Lutie thought for a moment, as if she couldn’t locate the right words. Then she took a breath and started in. “First off, you got the right idea about Linc owning nearly everything in this area. A little more than five years ago he up and moved away, left old Ed Johnson to run things. That Ed, he's a piece of work, I tell you.”
I tried to coax my aunt back to the subject. “So tell me about why Linc left,” I said.
Lutie smiled. “Lord, yes, I sure can get off on a wild goose chase, can’t I? Anyway, the creek runs through our land year-round, you know. The water judge said there's a law about water rights so that they always follow the land, not the person. Five years.”
“Five years what?”
Again, Lutie snapped to. “If you’re gone five years, your rights to the water go away. That's the law. I don’t why Linc left. I only know he did.”
I scanned the room. “So that means his water rights are—”
Lutie nodded. “Yep, deader than a doornail. Joe and Doc Rubin divided the rights up, so nobody downstream would get shorted. And now Linc's back, saying he wasn’t gone but four years and eleven months. He says all the water ought to be his because of some document he filed saying he was back before the five-year deadline. Humph. I remember the day old Linc showed up, and it was well past five years.” She sighed.
“If it's so important, why didn’t my father try to settle with Linc? Surely Linc knows everybody out here needs adequate water supplies.”
Lutie stared out the window for a moment. “There's no reasoning with Linc, I’m afraid. The man hates us. That's the real reason.”
I frowned. “But why?”
Lutie sat up tall and drew in a proud deep breath. “Because we’re Native people,” she said. “Linc Jackson didn’t want the likes of us in his town. Pure and simple.”
“Good grief, this is the twenty-first century. How can there still be that kind of thing going on? Sounds like the Hatfields and McCoys.”
“You’re not in the city, anymore, Muri,” she said quietly. “Out here there's a whole different set of rules. Joe claimed the creek because artifacts were found there. To him it was sacred ground.”
I stood up, feeling my blood surge. “If there are Native artifacts or ruins, aren’t they protected?” I glanced at the window to be sure the kids weren’t listening.
Lutie got up from the sofa and patted my arm. “What's written in laws and what really happens isn’t always the same thing, I’m afraid.”
She quickly changed the subject. “Here, you must be tired after your trip. Let's get you settled, and we can talk more later.”
Suddenly, I was tired. And confused. I nodded and followed Aunt Lutie down the hall.
“Well, I hope you’re planning to stay awhile,” she said. Aunt Lutie wanted to give me the grand tour. She led me past the living room down a short hallway to a bedroom. “We got plenty of room if you two girls don’t mind doubling up. The little guy can bed down in my sewing room—that's what I call it. Don’t worry; I already picked up all the straight pins out of the rug. You can have your daddy's spot. I left his favorite bedspread on.” She ran her fingers lightly over a faded chenille coverlet draped across a double bed that took up most of the space. A bureau with a small round mirror above it was the only other piece of furniture in the room. Lutie stood still a moment, as if she were listening for traces of her brother.
I listened, but all I could hear were the pigs outside, still squealing. “It looks very nice,” I said. I laid our belongings on the bed, careful not to disturb the smoothness of the spread, and peered out the dinky room's window. “How long did it take Tiny to build the fence?”
Lutie laughed. “Angels in heaven, child. That fence was your daddy's doing, and I was sure we’d soon be seeing the fire marshal. But he knew how to make things sturdy, and he had a way of finding a use for stuff nobody else wanted. Your father loved to build things, just like my Tiny.”
The dreams I’d kept in the wallet of my thoughts threatened to dissolve. The educated, intelligent man I’d envisioned began to break down, limp as paper money run through the wash. Joseph Pond couldn’t possibly be this ordinary.
“Where’d he get the oven doors?” I asked, although I was almost afraid to hear the answer. What if he was a criminal? Or worse, what if he had been like Mother, compulsive about everything?
Aunt Lutie smiled; the edges of her eyes crinkled in a playful way. “When this appliance store went out of business in Prineville, he snapped up those old doors for next to nothing. By the end of the week we had us a fence. It's pretty crazy-looking, I suppose.”
“Very inventive,” I said, as she motioned me back toward the front end of the trailer. “How many people would think to use an oven door that way?” It was th
e most polite thing I could think of to say.
“Time was we didn’t need a fence,” Lutie said.
“To keep the pigs from escaping?”
“I know what you’re thinking.” Lutie gazed over our heads, as if the colorful barricade was a member of the family. “What kind of nut uses old stoves to make a fence?”
I must have turned white as library paste. “I didn’t mean it that way.”
Lutie waved off my apology. “Of course you didn’t. Even I thought my brother was odd. But Joe didn’t do things for fun. Your daddy put up that fence about five years ago, right after Linc started leaning on us to sell.”
“Did he tell you why?”
My aunt crossed her arms and paused a long moment. “I asked that very question. Everybody did. If I brought it up, Joe either got mad or changed the subject. Drove me batty.”
I stood there, confused. Why would a dying man build a wall across the desert?
Lutie seemed to hear my thoughts. “Joe never explained his reasons.” Her lip quivered. “But just before his passing, he said something I’ll never forget. ‘We can’t let our ancestors down, Lutie,’ he told me. ‘The fence looks silly, but it's for your protection, to ward off ghosts and grave robbers.’” Her eyes glittered with tears.
“I’m so sorry.” I touched her sleeve.
She patted my hand and smiled. “Whatever he meant, Joe built a sturdy fence. I’ve come to love those old oven doors, and that's reason enough for me. Every time I see that fence, I see your daddy.”
I nodded, not realizing how true her words would become.
Aunt Lutie stopped at a small bookshelf crowding the narrow hallway and pointed at the dusty books lining its shelves. “When Joseph took sick,” she said softly, “he only wanted to sit and read those history books of his, you know, Civil War and all. At the end I read them out loud to him. He loved history.” She paused, and then added, “Come on, honey, let's get the kettle going.”
I relaxed some. My dreams began to reconstruct themselves then; they spread themselves out to dry. If my father loved books he couldn’t have been ordinary at all. I followed her across the living room to the kitchen area. It was a good five-foot walk.
“Now these are for special occasions,” Aunt Lutie said after we’d gotten settled. She reached up into the highest kitchen cupboard and carefully brought down a pair of teacups and saucers. I was ready to be served in Mason jars or glasses cut from old wine bottles. But these were genuine bone china. I picked one up and recognized the Spode trademark.
My stepfather had given Mother a full set of Spode Christmas dishes just before her death. It seemed frivolous to keep an entire set of china to use once a year, but then she had pumpkin plates for Halloween, a horn of plenty soup tureen, and various other occasional dishes. Mom never got around to using any of them. She just took them in and out of the china closet, washing them when they got dusty.
My aunt must have seen me peeking at the marking on the bottom of the cups. “This is a special occasion,” she said and smiled. A copper-clad teakettle rattled on the burner. The range, which looked to be from the same era as the oven doors outside, was pink with gray trim, like the rest of the kitchen. It was actually more of a kitchenette, the only nook of the place that wasn’t cluttered with knickknacks, piles of magazines, and grocery sacks brimming with aluminum cans.
In fact, it was difficult to tell precisely where the kitchen ended and the living room began, except for a small throw rug, which looked to be woven from women's nylons. I’d always had a problem with claustrophobia and already sensed my chest tightening. It didn’t help that the walls were framed in more of the same dark paneling I’d seen outside, or that sacks of empty soda cans were piled everywhere, like a bunch of cats taking over the furniture.
Chaz would have had a field day with the two paintings that hung slightly askew on the wall. One was a small oil painting of pansies that could have been a paint-by-number. The other was a reproduction of Jesus whose eyes followed me across the room. He watched us from atop the Aztec gold sofa. It was threadbare with a Mexican serape draped across the back.
“Can I help with something?” I asked. Mom taught me a great woman does everything with poise and grace, even when she’d rather not. She only said things like this in her more lucid moments, when she wasn’t polishing silverware for the fourth time in a week or re-waxing the floors.
Lutie laughed, and I marveled at how relaxed I felt. “Just like your daddy,” she said, “forever lending a hand. And you look like him: same black-as-chimney-soot head of hair and lots of it. I’ll bet you got the fire of the Holy Ghost the way he did.”
I sat at the dinette and started folding napkins in neat triangles. The only ghosts I saw came in my nightmares.
She counted out five cups for the saucers and set them on an old metal tray with a hint of rust around the edges. This was more like what I expected. It matched the mound of Oreo cookies and the rest of the decor.
In one corner of the living room sat a green Naugahyde recliner, its footrest stuck out. A wicker basket of yarns, alive with colors from vermilion to a glow-in-the-dark green, rested on the floor next to the chair, as a loyal pet might. Then I noticed the small side table beneath the fluttering lace café curtains in the window.
A gallery of framed photographs crowded the surface. I went closer and peered into faces of strangers that somehow didn’t seem all that strange. Several portraits were in sepia tones that made people look softer than perhaps they really were. Most were modern snapshots of men and women, children, and a dog or two. My eyes kept returning to one picture of a dark-skinned, bowlegged man dressed in western clothes.
“We were afraid you wouldn’t come,” Lutie said softly from behind me. “When Joseph up and died, we didn’t know what to do.” I heard her voice catch.
I picked up the photo of the man in the cowboy outfit and chuckled.
“Yeah,” she said, “Your dad was always horsin’ around. He was a real character.”
I stared into his eyes then, as if by doing so, I could tell for sure whether I was the daughter of Joseph Pond. When had I ever been accused of horsing around? Perhaps this was what was rolling around inside me like a shaken can of soda.
And what about Benjamin, the man Mom married a few years before she died? My stepfather had a nose that turned red whenever he was angry, which was a lot. He had shiny little hamster eyes and a funny chin that blended into his neck. He was mean when he’d had too much gin.
I saw none of those qualities as I gazed at the man in the picture. Joseph Pond's eyes were dark like mine and held plenty of secrets. That made two of us, I thought. Only I would probably never know what his secrets were.
I held my breath then, thinking for one silly moment that I would hear him whispering to me, explaining how he wanted to rescue me all along. But the only sounds came from Aunt Lutie, rattling the dishes. Suddenly, all I knew for sure was that I could use a shower and some sleep.
Tiny and the kids trooped in then. Tru was starved as usual, and Nova kept silent and clung to the fringes of the room. My uncle occupied a good portion of the living space, so I understood. Perhaps big and tall men weren’t meant to fit in subcompact cars or cracker-box trailer homes.
“Oh, my little Pearl, some of that tea would be nice,” Tiny said, smiling that same infectious grin. I hadn’t smiled much lately, but before I knew it the edges of my mouth curled up too. It felt as soothing as the tea. Tiny poured his from the china cup into a tall plastic tumbler and filled it with ice.
“Where's the TV?” Truman said, pushing his wire-rimmed glasses up on the bridge of his nose. The kid had never been inside a home without cable before.
“We can’t get much out here,” Tiny said, jiggling his tea so the ice clinked dully against the plastic tumbler. He sat on the couch, and it sagged nearly to the floor under his weight. “The hill behind the creek blocks most of the reception. After that last time when Jim chewed the cord, well, I just never
got around to fixing it.”
Nova sat in the corner on a kitchen chair with a broken rung. “Couldn’t you just get satellite?” Her voice still had an edge of attitude. She picked at her dark blue fingernails, wisely avoiding my gaze.
“Hallelujah, sure. The Clackmans over at the Lazy P Ranch got one last year,” Lutie responded, eyeing Nova, but not backing down. “They’ve got to be mucho expensive, though. People like us got to save up.”
“Man, I’d sure love one of them dishes,” Tiny said, nudging Tru with his elbow. “Two hundred channels and HBO too.”
“Showtime's better,” Tru said, and they both nodded. “You surf the Net?”
Uncle Tiny looked puzzled. “No,” he said, “we’re on a fixed income.”
Nova smirked. “He means the Internet, not TV.”
“We know all about it,” Lutie broke in. “But I guess we’d need a computer.”
“Truman brought his Mac,” I said, hoping we could get into friendlier conversation soon. “Tru's kind of a computer nut.”
“Don’t you mean computer nerd?” Nova teased. I shot her “The Look.” My hands strangled each other, and my left eye twitched like mad.
“Nova, could you help me bring in some of the stuff from the van?” I said this so sweetly even Lutie raised an eyebrow. My daughter let out one of those loud sighs and flounced through the flimsy aluminum door, slamming it on her way out.
I followed her to the far side of the van. “Is it too much to ask you to be civil? I know you’re unhappy. This isn’t my idea of paradise, either.”
“We have to go back to Portland.”
I tried to make eye contact with my daughter. “Give it a few weeks, will you? I don’t plan to stay. But Lutie is my aunt, after all. I think I should try to get my dad's affairs straightened out.”
“Why do we have to suffer?” Nova's brows scrunched together. “I mean, why can’t Tru and I spend the summer with Dad in Portland? I’m already bored out of my skull.” She fingered the little tufts of hair next to her ear, crouching against the van as if she was ready to crawl beneath it.
The Fence My Father Built Page 3