Calico comes up on my other side and slips her arm around my waist. She grins at me and then at Reuben. “Never underestimate the sweet-talking charm of an old rock star,” she tells him.
* * *
Hours later, we’re sitting in the moonlight with just the coals of the fire glimmering in the pit. Most everybody’s gone. Reuben lies in the sand with his legs crossed, his head resting on a log, eyes closed. I’m sitting beside him with Calico’s head on my lap. Her breathing’s even. I don’t think she’s asleep, but she hasn’t moved in half an hour. Thomas took his family home, leaving only Santana drowsing on the other side of me. When he tried to get her to go with them she shook her head. Thomas would only leave after extracting a promise from Reuben to see her safely home. Aggie’s gone back to the house, but Leah’s still here. Several dogs are sprawled around us, with Ruby lying on top of Leah’s feet. Ever since Ruby’s mad run with the rest of the pack, she’s been sticking close to her.
Morago’s been telling us stories. Some are traditional Kikimi and Jimmy Cholla tales, but he’s also been talking about his various adventures after he left the rez all those years ago and then hooked up with the Rats and came on tour with us. He mixes the stories up and runs them into each other, so that sometimes it’s hard to tell whether he’s talking about himself, or if it’s some old folktale. I’ve heard most of them before, but I never tire of them.
The sky’s big tonight, like it is most nights in the desert. The spread of stars wheeling above us is humbling. I stare up into that forever dark, my fingers playing lightly with Calico’s hair as I listen to the murmur of Morago’s voice. When he finally falls silent, we listen to the stories of the night instead. After a while, Santana gets up and walks toward Aggie’s house.
“Do any of those old trucks you’ve been working on forever actually run?” I ask Reuben when she’s gone.
He opens his eyes to look at me. “Sure. We’ve just finished a rebuild on the engine of a nice old Ford.”
“What kind of shape’s it in?”
Reuben purses his lips. “It just needs bodywork now. Why do you ask?”
“I want to buy it.”
“What the hell do you need a truck for?”
“It’s not for me. It’s for Thomas.”
“Oh.”
“I don’t get it,” Leah says. “Everyone’s been saying that Thomas has so much potential to be a shaman. Why are you making it easy for him to leave?”
It’s Morago who answers. “Because he needs to find himself,” he says.
Leah turns to the shaman. “What does that even mean?”
“Right now,” Morago says, “his spirit is bigger than the rez. He needs to go out and see the world. Maybe he’ll come back. Maybe he’ll like it better out there. Or maybe he’ll do well enough that he’ll find himself wanting to return to help make it better here.”
She studies him for a moment. “Is that what happened with you? Touring with the Diesel Rats made you see the world in a new light?”
Morago shakes his head. “No—being friends with Steve did.”
Leah gives a thoughtful nod.
Suddenly the dogs all lift their heads, but it’s only Santana returning with a small wool blanket under her arm.
“Too bad we don’t have a guitar here,” she says to me as she settles back down, pulling the blanket around herself. “I’d love to hear you play again.”
That raises a murmur of agreement all around, but I just groan.
“You play for her,” Morago says, “when you don’t for us?”
I shrug. What am I supposed to say?
“It’s not like that,” I tell him when I see they’re not going to let it go. “Santana and Thomas showed up with my propane tank while I happened to be running over some tunes.”
“What kind of music do you play now?” Leah asks, unable to hide her interest.
“Nothing serious. It’s not even that good.”
“Are you kidding me?” Santana says. “He was playing all the parts of a round dance on one guitar. It was amazing.” She says it like she doesn’t give a damn that it was based on their tribal music. In fact, she’s grinning ear to ear.
“It wasn’t all that—”
Santana talks over me. “If you play, I’ll dance.”
Calico jumps to her feet. “I’ll dance too,” she says and disappears.
A moment later she reappears with a guitar case in hand. My guitar case. She sets it down in front of me.
“Baby steps,” she says before I can argue with her. “You’re just here with your friends. What’s the worst that can happen? You play a bum note and none of us notice?”
I don’t have a response to that. She’s right. I can’t say why I don’t play for anybody anymore. Except for Calico and the wildlife around my trailer, nobody else has heard me since Possum died—that I know of, anyway. Then Santana and Thomas snuck up on me, but so far as I can tell, no one else has been eavesdropping.
I sit up and crack open my guitar case. There are all kinds of great guitars out there on the market, new luthiers making incredible instruments, but I never felt I needed more than what this old Martin can deliver. I bought it with my first songwriting royalty cheque—yeah, even back then I never gave up my publishing rights and that royalty money is what keeps projects like the one Morago and I have going here afloat.
I pick up my guitar and check the tuning, aware of everyone watching me. I’ve played for thousands and I’ve played for a lot fewer, but the pre-gig jitters are always the same. That moment just before you start in on a song and you don’t know if you’ve won your listeners over or not.
Always open with something you know backwards, sideways and forwards, my cousin Steve once told me when we first started gigging with our high school band, so I start by playing the opening bars of “Stars Are Falling.”
It’s a song I woke up with one morning just as we were putting the finishing touches on the third album. It came to me complete, all of a piece. I wrote and recorded it on piano, and we added it to the end of the album—just voice and piano with Sully on harmonies, the whole thing sweetened with some tasteful strings. It cracked the top ten at number two—I think it was the Beatles that kept us out of the number one spot. But it’s had a long shelf life. Before I left my old world behind, someone told me that there were almost three hundred covers of it—everybody from Elvis, Sinatra and Streisand, to Joe Cocker and Linda Ronstadt. Who knows how many there are now?
Leah’s head jerks up as soon as she hears me fingerpick the familiar piano riffs on the guitar. When I start the first verse she closes her eyes and begins to sway, a blissful smile on her lips. I take a verse break at the end, gather my courage, and move right into a Kikimi jingle dress dance, the ball of my hand waking the song’s heartbeat rhythm as it bounces on the strings.
Santana throws off the blanket and gets on her feet. She pulls Calico up beside her and the two of them step their way through a silent version of that old traditional dance. I play a few more Kikimi dances, then switch to another Diesel Rats song before finishing off with an instrumental cover of “What a Wonderful World” because it’s pretty much my favourite song ever written.
Santana and Calico clap enthusiastically and sink to the ground as I put my guitar back in its case. The pair lean against each other, grinning.
“That wasn’t so hard now, was it?” Calico says.
I shake my head.
“I can see why you don’t play out anymore,” Leah says. “A couple of bars of you singing and you’d blow your whole cover.”
“Except nobody cares on the rez,” Reuben tells her. “Steve can even go into town and nobody bats an eye.”
“How can nobody have ever noticed?” Leah says. “You’re older than you were in your heyday, but you don’t look that much older. You’d think someone would have twigged. For that matter,” she adds, “I can’t believe some tabloid didn’t get a forensic accountant to look into where the money from your royaltie
s go.”
“Jackson left everything to Steve,” Morago says. “He was the only surviving family member.”
I nod. “That part all worked out okay.”
Reuben comes over and claps a hand on my shoulder. “Great playing, man.”
He looks at Leah, his features serious. “Most of us don’t know who Jackson Cole is,” he says. “We just know Steve, and all of us would like things to stay that way.”
Leah looks at Reuben, then her eyes meet mine. “I respect that and will honour it. The Diesel Rats’ heyday was a long time ago. They still have a devoted fan base, but if I have anything to do with it, our dearly departed Jackson will still rest in peace.”
She smiles at Reuben. “Just make sure that no one ever records Steve’s music. The last thing he needs is to go on YouTube.”
That raises a chuckle all around, but she’s got a point. The world has changed with all the cell phones out there, so I take her warning to heart.
“Can we change the subject?” I ask before anyone can explore the topic further.
“I can do better than that,” Morago says. “I can call it a night—at least for myself. I’ve got a storytelling session with the kids at eight o’clock tomorrow morning…this morning? Doesn’t matter. It’s still going to come too soon.”
He stands up, brushes the dirt from his jeans.
“Ohla, my friends,” he says.
He adds something in Kikimi that I’ve heard before. I don’t know the exact translation, but it runs along the lines of a blessing.
Stay strong. Dream true. Walk tall.
That, I can try to do.
The dogs all get up when he walks off. Except for Ruby. She waits for Leah to say goodnight, then they both follow Morago back to Aggie’s house. I hear the sound of wings in the sky above the desert as the crows leave as well.
“That’s our cue,” Reuben tells Santana. “Time to take you home.”
“You don’t have to do that,” she says. “I’ve walked home from here a thousand times.”
“Maybe so. But I told your brother I’d bring you home, and that’s what I plan to do.”
Finally, it’s just the two of us. I stand up and pull Calico to her feet. Picking up my guitar case with my free hand, I lead the way back up to the ridge. Calico’s noticeably quiet.
“Are we good?” I finally ask. “You’re not mad about me taking the lead on talking with Sammy?”
She squeezes my hand. “Of course we’re good. That could’ve gone a whole other way if you had jumped to conclusions, like I was inclined to do.”
I shrug. “I was going there too, but I wanted to hear him out.”
She smiles. “And that’s why you’re a good arbitrator.”
I shake my head. “I’m not so sure about that, especially since all of this is so new to me.”
“How are you feeling about everything that’s gone down in the past couple of weeks?”
“Confused. A little freaked out,” I admit.
She puts her arm around my waist and we continue to walk toward the ridge trail. “I have just the thing to relax you,” she says, pressing her face into my neck and giving it a little kiss.
The whole way back to the trailer she keeps flirting, and I’m glad of the distraction. Just before we start down from the ridge trail she pulls me to a stop.
“Just remember,” she says, her voice serious. “You don’t have to deal with any of this on your own. You’ve got Morago and the aunties and Reuben. They’ll talk you through any confusion you might have.”
“And I’ve got you.”
She rises on her tiptoes to kiss me.
80
Leah
After seeing Morago, and then Reuben and Santana off, Leah walked around to the front of the house and sat in the chair where, every morning, she watched the sun rise. The dogs had all vanished to wherever they spent their nights. Even Ruby was gone. Or at least Ruby the dog. As Leah leaned back in the chair, staring out at the starry desert night, she heard a creak on the porch. She turned to find Ruby the human being approaching. The red-haired woman settled in the chair beside Leah, drawing her legs up under her.
“So this isn’t weird,” Leah said.
Ruby looked at her. “What isn’t?”
“I’m sitting with the same…being that I was patting on the head earlier.”
“I liked it,” Ruby said. “It was comforting.”
“Still weird.”
Ruby shrugged.
“I know,” Leah said. “I’ll get over it.” She glanced at her companion. “Reuben’s nephew said that a witch had eaten you, but you seem okay.”
“It was true in its way. She was stealing my medicine, little by little every day. More quickly than it could be replenished.”
“That’s awful.”
Ruby nodded. “Except the witch, Abuela, doesn’t seem to be evil.”
“How can you say that?”
“She steals medicine from the land, and she stole it from me while I was with her, but she used it for the betterment of her people.”
“Her people? What people?”
“The people that live in her barrio.”
“But she kept you prisoner,” Leah said. “How did you manage to escape? Did she keep you in a cage, or were you chained up?”
Ruby shook her head. “It wasn’t like that. I was free to wander around within earshot. I just had to be ready to come back to her house whenever she needed my medicine for one of her spells or charms.”
“I would have just run away and not looked back.”
“That’s not something I could do. I gave Abuela my word that I would stay.”
“But now you’re here. What changed?”
“Steve sent Si’tala,” Ruby said, “and she convinced Abuela to let me go.” She paused before adding, “I’m still not really comfortable with how she did it.”
Leah waited. Ruby was looking out into the darkness, her gaze thoughtful.
“What did she do?” Leah finally asked.
Ruby sighed. “Si’tala explained to Abuela that if I died, the bargain we had would no longer exist. That’s true, but she also said she’d set her sister upon the witch, and not only would Abuela die, but her sister would probably burn the barrio to the ground while she was at it.”
Leah grimaced. “Would her sister actually do that?”
Ruby nodded. “Given her reputation, I think she would.”
“Seems unnecessarily harsh.”
Ruby didn’t say anything, but Leah could tell she agreed. Leah shifted in her seat and watched as a pale light started to creep across the desert in front of them, shadows resolving into various cacti and shrubs.
“I’d like to know more about the barrio,” Leah said after a bit. “I’m guessing that’s where a lot of the migrants end up, if they don’t move on.
“Don’t even think of going to the witch. I can find someone safer for you to talk to. I have friends in the packs that live there.”
“Thanks. My friend Ernie’s been trying to find somebody, but nobody wants to talk to the gringa.”
“Why are you so interested in the migrants?”
“I’m not sure. It’s weird. I’ve been sitting on the story of the century. I could name my own price if I were to let the world know that Jackson Cole is still alive. But even though I’ve spent the better part of my life writing about him and the band, I now realize that it’s his story to tell, not mine. And however he wants to live, I respect that.”
“I’m glad to hear you say that,” Ruby told her. “Steve does a lot of good around here. People understand that many of the dogs on the rez are ma’inawo, but they forget that we understand everything they’re saying. I know from listening to Morago and Steve that the whole turnaround we’re starting to get on the rez is partly because of him, though of course the casino payments help a lot too. But Steve doesn’t just provide money to help keep the school and community center running. There’s a trust that he’s set up to make sur
e that any kid who wants a decent education can get a scholarship.”
Leah nodded slowly. “And that might fall apart,” she said, “if people knew where the money was coming from—who it’s been coming from. The rez would be flooded with reporters and people trying to get a piece of the action.”
“Probably. But what I like about Steve is that he doesn’t just give money. He loves this land and the people, and he’s always lending a helping hand to whoever needs it. But at the same time, he keeps a respectful distance. He doesn’t want things done his way. He just wants to quietly help preserve the Kikimi culture.” She smiled. “He’d make a good dog.”
Leah laughed. “And a talented one,” she said.
The morning bird chorus started up around them. Leah loved this sound.
“Anyway,” she said, “the reason I want to write about migrant people is that their story interests me.” She paused, then shook her head. “No, that sounds too clinical. Their story moves me. I want to know more and to share what I learn, so that when some ugly reporter or politican accuses them of stealing jobs or ruining the country, I can help show that they’re not scary aliens. They’re people, just like us, who don’t deserve to be hunted down or dying in the desert.”
She turned to Ruby, her gaze earnest. “I love stories, both reading and writing them. But they have to be true. Fiction doesn’t interest me. It never has. Why would I want to read some made-up story when the world is full of real people with genuine riveting stories? So many, that no one could ever have the time to absorb them all. It’s not that I don’t love language, but for the play of words, I read poetry.”
“But don’t people’s stories become…repetitive after a while? Not everybody lives a full life.”
Leah nodded. “I suppose. But those people don’t tend to tell their story. It’s the people with tremendous passion, or those who find impossible strength in extraordinary circumstances. Or endure and rise above great hardships. You can often tell, just looking at them. They have a glow.”
“Like you.”
Leah laughed. “I doubt that.”
The Wind in His Heart Page 51