Chloe picked up the facecloth and waved it like a flag of surrender. “What the hell can I do?”
“At this point, put your faith in the tribal police.”
“You know how I feel about cops! And that asshole wasn’t about to fart until you bribed him with our grain.”
“Things are done differently here. It’s not California—”
“California my ass! You opened the barn door and basically asked him to rob from you. Maybe Junior’ll get lucky. He knows this place inside and out.”
“Yeah, Junior’s a lucky guy, isn’t he?”
Chloe looked up at him, desperately wanting his words of reassurance. “That’s not what I meant. It’s just that if he doesn’t—”
Hank turned his face away, biting back the words he wanted to speak.
Like a miniature queen, Reed lay tucked in a nest of blankets inside a secondhand playpen near the woodstove. Her father reached inside and carefully picked her up. Her brown eyes were open, taking in however much of this world a new baby could. He swore her dark hair had grown an inch in the few days he was away. She was wrapped up tight in layers, the intricate, swaddling way the Navajo mothers bundled their babies. Probably Junior’s handiwork. Other than her decidedly more Anglo features, Reed could have passed for one of their tribe. Hank supposed that when Chloe had checked her out of the hospital, people would have mistaken Junior for Reed’s father. He forced those thoughts from his mind and settled in the rocker, holding onto the slight weight of his daughter, basking in her radiance, trying to latch on to her calmness.
Chloe folded the washcloth and set it on the arm of the couch. “We’re hip-deep in homemade bread. I think there’s eggs. You want an apple, some of that herb tea?”
“Nothing. I ate on the plane.”
The baby cried most of the night, and Hank stayed up with her, jiggling her gently in his lap, rubbing his hand over her tiny belly as it heaved with sobs. She didn’t want to nurse, didn’t want water. Her diapers were fresh, her bottom adequately powdered. He stoked the stove so she wouldn’t be cold. After two hours of Reed’s crying, Chloe flopped down on the floor, resting her head on Kit’s sleeping bag. Nervously Hannah sidled in next to her, shying whenever Reed’s cries reached the higher pitches. Chloe’s voice was ragged, echoing her daughter’s. “Christ in heaven, what does she want? A pound of flesh?”
“Shh,” Hank said. “She’s used to the hospital, that’s all. Noise, lights, nurses coming and going. It’s going to take her a while to understand this house and us.”
“Another night like this? No way I can take that.”
“She’s a tiny baby, Chloe. Cut her some slack.”
“I’m trying. Really I am.”
Reed wailed again, and Hank had to admit, the sound was piercing. Hannah funneled her mouth into an O and howled along with the baby.
Chloe sighed. “Well, that’s that. I’m tapped clean, Hank. I have to sleep.”
Hank heard the defeat in her admission. “Sleep, then. I’m not stopping you.”
She stood up and wrung her hands, glaring at him. “I don’t know how to do this!”
“You think I’m an expert? It’s our shitty luck that between us we don’t have one decent mother we can call on for advice.”
Chloe bit her lip and stared at him. “Why don’t you ask one of those goddamn bread ladies to help out. They all think you hung the freaking moon.”
“That’s the first good idea to come out of your mouth. Maybe I will.”
“Give her to me.”
Hank handed the baby over. Reed’s screaming hit an all-time high, and Chloe visibly winced. She yanked her shirt open and offered her breast, already leaking milk, which seemed to incite even angrier shrieks. Chloe handed the baby back to Hank and stood there looking for all the world like the Lady of Wild Creatures at Ephesus, contemplating slicing off the useless piece of flesh in order to improve her archery aim. “Fine, then.” She pointed a finger at the screaming baby. “I’m going to the bedroom. Wake me up when she can talk and manage the goddamn toilet.”
Hank sighed. The power of reason insisted that eventually, sometime, Reed had to tire of her efforts, and that once exhausted, she would sleep. In his heart he believed all that was about as possible as the tribal cop’s horses coming through the winter fat, sassy and sprouting wings. He paced the floor while Chloe slept, Reed propped on his shoulder, making her discomfort known. Each time he tried the rocking chair, Hannah came to sit on his feet, her normally upright ears flattened in fear. He reached down and stroked her fur. “I can’t rock if you keep on doing that,” he cautioned the shepherd. She pinned her ears at the thin wailing and crept across the room to sleep up against Chloe, who had returned from the bedroom and sprawled on the floor.
The dog was incomplete without the woman, the woman limping along in search of the dog when she wasn’t at her side. They catnapped; Reed cried. Hank wondered if Iris would have been able to quiet Reed—that is, had she cared to acknowledge the presence of her only grandchild long enough to soothe her. And the cherry on the top of this day was that Kit was still out there somewhere, having either abandoned the truck or crashed it. Forget questions of liability; who she was with and what she was doing—this teenager whose mother had spent most of her adult life in communes—that had him concerned.
At dawn Hank heard the Jeep pull up. Hannah wagged her tail. I am hereby betrayed on all fronts, Hank mused blearily. Junior knocked softly before letting himself in.
“Figured nobody was sleeping,” he said. “Got a little news. Don’t know if you want to hear it.”
Hank pressed a finger to his lips, nodding toward Chloe, who lay on the floor hugging Kit’s sleeping bag. “She tried to hang in. I’m glad she was able to fall asleep.”
Junior looked at her. “Pretty wrecked. That surgery requires serious rest.”
“Try telling her that.”
“I have. Once.” He took off his jacket and Hank heard the clack of beads, his bracelets striking each other. “Why don’t you let me hold her? Get yourself a cup of Joe and shake out the kinks.”
“Thanks, I was about to go begging.” Reluctantly, Hank handed the baby over.
The minute he settled Reed in his arms, Junior’s face lit up, and the man started singing. The chant was familiar, the repetitive hey-a soporific, relaxing to Hank’s ears. Reed’s staccato cries dwindled to whimpers. She quieted. Whether that particular miracle resulted from the man’s voice or sheer exhaustion was a matter of argument in which Hank didn’t care to engage. “What is that?” Hank asked. “Some kind of lullaby?”
Junior looked embarrassed and set the sleepy baby down in the playpen. “Actually, it’s a sheepshearing song my aunties taught me. I don’t know much else except Top Forty.”
Chloe stirred in her sleep. Hannah, thrilled with the quiet, happily beat her tail against the floor.
“You’re in love with her, aren’t you?” Hank said.
Junior nodded, looking down at the baby. “I delivered her and she’s beautiful. How could I not be?”
Hank set down the coffee cup and rubbed his eyes. “That’s not who I meant.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“So. Don’t you think we should talk about this?”
Junior shook his head no. “I think if we try that, the only talking we’re likely to end up doing’s gonna be with fists.”
“Probably.”
“Besides, I like you too much to break your nose.”
“Well, my nose is grateful. It’s the rest of me I can’t speak for.”
“That’s the devil of things, isn’t it, Hank? Us both fairly decent men, there being only one of her.”
Hank handed Junior the cup of coffee he’d poured for himself and got himself a second mug from the cupboard. “Maybe you’ll get over it.”
“I’m trying.”
“Good. So what’s the story on Kit?”
Junior sipped his coffee. “Spotted the truck about three this morning. Ta
lked to some of his neighbors at first light. She’s with a twenty-year-old kid, I don’t know his family. He rodeos, landed in the ribbons a couple of times. This one other guy who was there said she was hanging around downtown at the pool hall. Went with him willingly. Nobody thought anything of it until I asked. Big old dent in the driver’s-side panel of Chloe’s truck. What do you want to do about it?”
Hank swallowed his mouthful of coffee. He should have stuck to tea, he thought, and poured out half the coffee and refilled it with milk, hoping that might calm his stomach. “I guess wake Chloe up and give her the baby. Then what do you say we pool our efforts and break the son of a bitch’s nose?”
Junior grinned. “Well, among a few other parts I can’t wait to get my hands on, I’d say that pretty much covers my feelings on the subject as well.”
Kit didn’t say a word when they pounded open the door. Her red hair was wet as if she’d taken a shower. She was wearing all her clothes, and they seemed to be on straight. She didn’t smell like wine or recent sex, and she wasn’t hung over so far as Hank could tell. Mouth out to there in a pout, she handed Hank the keys and opened the passenger door herself.
“Hope whatever happened in there was worth it, Kit,” he said. “I have to tell you, if you thought Rich ever came down hard on you, when Chloe gets her hands on you you’ll think your dad is a diplomat.”
Kit looked straight ahead through the windshield as if frozen prairie covered with junked-out cars, frozen tires, and scraggly cattle were a fascinating landscape on the Nature channel.
Junior came out of the house a minute later. He leaned in the passenger door, made a big show of wiping his hands on a handkerchief, the little bit of blood on his knuckles leaving a noticeable streak. He balled it up and stuck it in his pocket. “Girl,” he said, “I wouldn’t stand in your boots for any amount of money today. The shit is going to fly when you get home. And that’s probably only the half of it, having to do with swiping the truck and that dent.”
Hank looked at Kit and said, “You put a dent in the truck?”
Junior whistled. “And it’s a good one. Five hundred in bodywork, by my guesstimate.”
Hank suppressed a grin.
“Well, Hank, I got important stuff to do. You give a holler if you need help mopping up when Chloe’s finished with Miss Grand Theft Auto here.”
“Will do.”
They drove home in silence. Why do I have to like this guy? Hank was thinking. All I need is one substantial reason to kick him in the gut, and I’ve got three or four. But he’s decent, and every time I hit somebody over Chloe, I end up making a fool out of myself. He thought about asking for Kit’s perspective, but it was probably better to let Kit stew on what was in store for her. Before he had the transmission in park, she hit the ground running.
Hank walked around back, stood by the fence, and the colt came over to him. He broke the tiny icicles off Thunder’s velvety muzzle. The horse’s sweet breath came at him in rich, warm, aromatic steam. Like the first summer morning Hank had spent here, the horse smelled like a pocket of calm, a time when Hank didn’t know he was about to become the father of the town crier, that his mother was dying, that Junior Whitebear existed. The horse was the only smart one of the bunch, standing here unencumbered. Hank was cold and tired and longed for his bed, but he wanted to give Chloe some privacy to speak her mind to Kit. He didn’t relish being called on to mediate the particulars or hand out punishment. After a while it occurred to him he’d best get back in the truck and drive to the feed store before it closed. He had to; they were completely out of grain. The guy who worked the counter was decent; maybe he’d let him take it on credit.
A week later New Year’s had come and gone. Nobody donned a party hat, nobody mentioned champagne. They started a game of Scrabble but neither Chloe nor Kit could spell worth a damn, and Hank made excuses about needing to do some reading for school. A letter from his mother sat on the dashboard of the Honda, unopened, the envelope rippled from the dry cold, the ink fading from constant exposure to the light. Kit and Chloe stomped around the cabin passing each other in the hallway and sniping: “If it’s not too much to ask, would you please put the cap back on the goddamn shampoo after you’re finished using it?” “Do you really think I’d use shampoo that doesn’t have a pH of at least 4.5? Duh!” Women. What corner of his house was left untouched by them? Everywhere he stepped there were diapers, hair scrunchies, breast cream, magazines with articles on improving one’s orgasm—and if he so much as set down a book, Chloe was at his heels, sighing, snapping it up, and shelving it out of sequence in the bookcase.
Reed delivered a few more nights of first-class inconsolable wailing. They were all so sleep-deprived it took Corrine to suggest that maybe if they took her to the doctor they could put an end to the agony. It turned out she needed more supplemental feedings and different vitamins. The iron in the standard baby issue, Dr. Carrywater suspected, was the root of the trouble. Reed had a sensitive gut, just like her daddy. Nevertheless, once she started crying in earnest, the only sure-fire cure was Junior singing the sheepshearing chant.
I have no fucking pride left, Hank told himself one night when Reed was in full force and he’d driven all over town trying to find the man. Junior, name your price, just teach me the song.
Junior taught it to all of them—hey-a, hey-a, and the pitch and lilt of the notes wasn’t so hard to remember. When he sang, Hank visualized fluffy white lambs by the dozen, willing them to soothe his daughter. The rhythm of the song, rising and falling like breath, was as easy as loving Chloe had once been. When Junior sang, Hank could imagine the small flocks being cajoled into pens, receiving a quick but thorough clip, the shearers sharpening their blades against stone, the first shiver of air against newly exposed skin, all the history of the Navajo people, the complex family lineage. They all sang, even Kit, a chorus of determined foot soldiers, but the little demon could tell when it was Junior singing to her and rarely tolerated impersonation. Chloe would look up at Hank with bloodshot eyes, and what else could Hank do but nod, Go ahead, call him, sleep with him, hell, I don’t care. Just find a way to get us some rest.
The cabin walls seemed to close in. All those bodies inside, so few of them actually communicating. When school started, Hank threw himself into the task, thankful he had somewhere else to go.
16
Chloe made the call from the Trading Post pay phone rather than take a chance that from home Kit might overhear her lying to her father. She dropped the coins into the slot and dialed the number, easing her glove back on before her fingers froze. Rich answered, “Wedler Brothers Café. This better not be a salesman,” and they resumed the argument they’d been having all week.
“Look, this surgery took more out of me than my lousy uterus. I need her here a while longer. You know as well as I do missing one week of high school won’t kill anybody.” She crossed her fingers. “Kit says all they do the week after Christmas break is show movies. I guess the transition back to real life’s just as rough on the teachers.”
Her old boss had a built-in bullshit detector. When she’d waitressed for him, he’d rarely fallen for her excuses when she tried to call in sick. The fact was, Rich Wedler knew her as well as a brother might. “I couldn’t care diddly if she misses class, Chloe. I can, however, smell horse manure clear through this phone line. Since I know I’m a halfway decent fry cook, I doubt my end of the spatula is flipping the turds. Start telling the truth.”
“I am—”
“Incapable, how well I know. Put Princess She-Ra on the phone, and let her try to lie to me. Better yet, let me talk to Hank.”
Chloe stared out across the parking lot to the adjacent Chevron station, which appeared to be having a slow day. “Hank’s at work, and Kit’s in the shower.”
Rich laughed. “Guinness Book of World Records showers she takes. However, instinct warns me other reasons than my daughter’s hygiene are to blame for her not being able to come to the phone. Come on, spil
l.”
The only vehicles parked between the painted lines in the Trading Post parking lot were Corrine’s truck, her own Chevy Apache, and in the next row up a fancy rental van that had just finished unloading nine Asian tourists. Out toward the highway she saw the red Jeep Cherokee approaching. Its signal indicator flashed for a left turn. Dammit. Her heart beat a crazy rhythm, and despite all those stitches and missing parts, her groin felt instantly oiled, ready for a coupling she wasn’t supposed to want and wasn’t prepared to explain. “Okay, Rich. Here’s the deal. Things are a little bit shitty right now. Kit’s fine, I promise. It’s Hank’s mom. She’s really sick. He flies to California every other weekend, I swear. I can’t exactly go flying this premature baby all over hell and back. Also the Olivers, and I quote, ‘question Reed’s paternity.’ Believe me, there’s something wicked lonely about this country when it’s just me and Reed by ourselves. I can’t manage it yet. Call me selfish if that makes you feel better.”
“You are selfish.”
The Chevy Apache looked quaint, frost riming its windshield and the driver’s side door slightly concave. One more week, then she was allowed to drive, but when had bullshit warnings like that stopped her from what needed to be done? She’d been motoring along on the sly for days now, and nothing had happened except she’d gotten a few quiet minutes to herself. “I’ll send Kit back as soon as I get the go-ahead to have a real life. Driving, lifting, that sort of thing. You have my word.”
Rich was quiet a minute, and in the background she could hear the familiar restaurant clatter, the tink of the order-up bell he used to hammer when she didn’t move her butt fast enough to deliver the plates. Rich softly called out, “Lita, Sweetmeat, I believe these goddamn pancakes are growing mold.”
Chloe smiled, homesick for her old life, its predictable hardships, which seemed manageable compared to this. Her convincing fibs had gotten her out of many a fix. If she told enough of them and waited him out, eventually Rich would see her side of things, cave in.
Loving Chloe Page 20