I stop to look at the Curtis photo, Cañón de Chelly, those seven people on horseback, one dog alongside them as they make their way into or out of the canyon, it’s hard to tell. Over the years it’s occurred to me there’s room for everyone in this picture: Mama, Daddy, Junior, Me, Dog, Uncle Oscar and Auntie Kit. Only Corrine is missing; but it’s like she chose to work that day, not like she’s dead. Mama’s old dog Hannah is along for the ride, or it could be Harmony, Junior’s wolf-dog. Whoever those people are, that ride happened once, and to me it’s become a symbol. I lie awake at night and think: If only it could happen that way again.
I aim my car north, toward the higher elevations, toward home. The love songs on the radio start to repeat themselves, so I shut it off. The closer I get to the cabin, the more silence feels mandatory. Here I am, driving the same roads my mother took when she came to my father, pregnant with me. We have more than this route in common: We both love horses more than ourselves, we cuss too much, but thankfully the men in our lives manage to find that charming. We are headstrong and blunt, and our hearts take no prisoners. She’s as fair as I am dark, and in profile we look more like sisters than mother and daughter.
I pull the car around behind the corral my father built and park. There’s the barn where Thunder, my mother’s stud horse, used to live. He’s retired; some of his colts have offspring of their own. This seems like such a small place to me now. I get out of the car and stand facing the winter prairie, and find myself dressed inadequately and shivering. Here I am again, in the first place I ever called home.
There’s no snow yet, but in the wind I can feel it coming. Northern Arizona’s November skies are bright but cold. Soon it will be dusk, my favorite time of day. For years, whenever my father was on summer break from teaching, we came here. I learned to ride along the cinder trails, where if you fell, the ground beneath was forgiving. With my bare hands I caught horned toads and watched the females, wide as dinner plates, give birth to babies no longer than the tip of my little finger. I was five years old when Hannah died, and here is where she’s buried. Aunt Kit dug the hole with that old chipped shovel, and Mama just stood there leaning against the fence, stone-faced and inconsolable. Across this same prairie, I rode piggyback on Dog Johnson’s shoulders while he showed me where to look for pot sherds and arrowheads. From the fence rail I argued with him that I was so old enough to rope cattle while he practiced for team-roping competitions. Then the summer I turned twelve Daddy rented the place to Dog on a permanent basis, and we didn’t come here anymore. I spent summers with Gran.
She taught me to shoe horses, irrigate abscesses, and when the calls came, to pull foals alongside my mother. On her mantel my grandmother has this picture of Mama on an old Shetland pony. It was taken back in the days when photographers shot and developed black-and-white film, then colored in the picture with paints to personalize it. This was so far before computers it’s hard to imagine. It always startles me, since he painted Mama with blue eyes and like mine, hers are brown. Around her neck there’s this ragged red bandanna. She can’t be more than two, but you can tell by the way she holds the reins she knows she’s headed for a rough time. Gran says she keeps it there to remind her of what she lost by not following her own heart. She tells me if I look closely, I can see all the reasons my mother is a difficult person right there in the photograph.
My grandmother gets up before sunrise every day of her life to make bread. She stands at the counter and kneads dough into a grainy, round loaf like it is her holy occupation. Her reputation for raising even-tempered, healthy horses is renowned. Even in her seventies she has these old mooning cowboys sniffing around. They show up, hat in hand, stammering about the weather, complimenting her latest batch of colts. They’re praying she’ll agree to let them buy her supper, but any one of them would give up his teeth if she’d marry him. She told me if I get married she won’t wear a skirt to my wedding, so don’t invite her if there’s a dress code. But if she pulls on her cleanest blue jeans, and ties her long, silver hair back with a blue ribbon, I’ll know that means something. Gran’s no great beauty, but there’s a presence about her that makes even young men trip over their own feet. When I tell her she’s pretty, she laughs. Nieta, she says. Women are supposed to get old; wrinkles are part of the deal. If God wanted us to look like underwear models he’d have outfitted us with permanent tanks of estrogen. Her hands are wider and rougher than either of my fathers’.
Last month, on the sly, I drove down to Three Sisters and told her my problem. She listened as I explained how none of the alternatives I’d come up with were satisfying. I could take the easy way out, and no one but my own sore heart would be the wiser. But I wasn’t sure if I believed in that. Yet if I did what my heart was telling me to do—whew! Gran took me outside under Patagonia’s night sky lit up like one of Junior’s pins and told me:
Chachita, whatever decision you make has to be your own. How else you going to live with it? Make sure you can, Reed, because at crossroads like these, regrets can dog you forever. Believe it or not, your mother understands this. It’s my fault she’s the way she is, you know. She’s only doing what she thinks is best for her heart. Rather than judge her for that, try looking inside your own and listening to what it’s telling you.
Okay. The truth of it is, I have always loved Dog Johnson, in one way or another, and a year ago, we decided to stop pretending that our “brotherly” love hadn’t grown legs, turned romantic. For the last eight months we’ve been racing up and down the interstate on weekends to each other, seeking out secret places to make love without the specter of our parents’ entanglement dismissing our courage. And though we knew better and took steps to prevent it, now I’m going to have his baby, though there are pills just for the asking to make that go away. After the shock of it left me, I thought, Whoa. Gran, Mama, and now me—it’s starting to seem like this kind of thing runs in my family. But the baby’s only a small part of what’s happening, and when I stop and think about it, really, the baby is the easy part. When Dog and I announce we’re getting married, sooner or later Daddy, Mama, and Junior will end up in the same room, and all this thwarted passion and phony denial will be thrust into the fray. Dog says, What the hell, none of ’em’s ever had a moment’s peace over it anyhow, so maybe we’re doing them a favor. Dog’s probably right.
I hear the back door to the cabin creak open and close, and feel his arms come up over my shoulders, blocking the wind. He presses his face against my neck. I would know these strong hands anywhere. I turn around to face him. Norma gasps whenever she sees him; he looks so much like his father. His sweatshirt is covered with paint. He’s so distracted when he’s at the easel. I touch a stripe of vivid purple. It’s wet, which means the back of my jacket is ruined. He says something to me, but I am so lost in trying to understand the story of my parents, in coming to recognize my part in all of this, in finally hearing Gran’s words, that I don’t catch it. Maybe my mother really had no choice but to love both men the best she could. Maybe I know nothing at all about the subject except that I need this man as much as I need to breathe.
“Nila,” Dog says again.
It’s up to me.
I throw myself into his arms and we kiss, two mixed-blood survivors, the baby I’m growing still a secret between us. Gran knows; she’s probably knitting booties. Eventually she’ll spill to Aunt Kit, who will get all territorial and talk Mama into forgiving me, and Daddy and Junior will both probably stand there and cry, because there are certainly worse things their children could have done than love each other and make a baby.
Dog presses a paint-stained hand against my belly, and there’s enough pigment embedded in his fingers that it leaves a faint, hand-shaped mark. Now at least my blouse matches my jacket. I think, Is it crazy of me to imagine my parents’ story unfolding this way? Isn’t this is how love happens? Stepping blindly into a future woven together of many threads larger than what we feel with our fingers? It’s the one continuous, ever-changi
ng basket nobody owns save those who are holding on to its edges. Maybe love can be thwarted, but it makes its presence known, in other, more telling ways.
Dog takes my chin in his hands, and with his eyes he’s asking me for reassurance. Reed, are you sure can we do this? And I look back into his eyes to answer, Yes, of course, because somewhere, buried deep in my genes and his, there has to be courage enough, just once, to follow along with what life bestows upon you.
Besides, I say to the baby growing inside me, you’re already here, aren’t you? Between us, in the first place you’ll ever call home. And it’s winter, nearly dusk, which will become your favorite time of day, and if you listen closely, you can hear it, the sound of your parents’ hearts beating, so fast, believing all it takes to sustain you is their love….
Acknowledgments
The writing of this book was greatly enriched by the friendship, support, and expertise of Stewart Allison; Jack Mapson Allison; Walter Lee Bennett; Susan Blandlin; Gil Carrillo; Sara Davidson; Earlene Fowler; Cynthia Gregory; Dennis Hallford; Lois Kennedy, M.F.C.C.; C. J. Mapson; John Mapson; Maria Elvira Nava; Martin Nava; Jennifer “Polo” Olds; my “adopted” father, Don K. Pierstorff; Nancy B. Scheetz; Floyd Skloot; Alexis Taylor; and Daisy Tint, M.D. The privilege of working with Sue Llewellyn, my copy editor, and Terry Karten, my editor, is a writer’s dream come true. They are patient and wise women, always cheerful, always available when I need them most, and are cherished beyond words. My theatrical agent, Sam Gelfman, made a simple request that provided the gift of a “map,” allowing me to envision the story’s structure and its inevitable destination—thank you, Sam. Last but hardly least, I am indebted to the animal kingdom, particularly the redwing blackbirds who squabble at the feeder outside my window and the hawk who shakes them up every afternoon. When I look up from these pages and witness that world, I am humbly reminded of the transitory nature of my life. Also to those special creatures who honor me with their unconditional and sustaining love (three of the finest dogs ever to set paw on this planet): Señor Max, Echo Louise Dashwood and Koshare Verbena, and to my horse, Tonto’s Sun Dancer, now enjoying his thirty-third year, much love and gratitude. To everyone mentioned here, and to anyone I may inadvertently have omitted, allow me to heap blessings on you all for enduring me.
About the Author
JO-ANN MAPSON is a writer, teacher, and poet. She is the author of the novels Hank & Chloe, Blue Rodeo, Shadow Ranch, Loving Chloe, and most recently The Wilder Sisters, and of the short story collection Fault Line. She lives in California.
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PRAISE FOR Loving Chloe
“Mapson has drawn compelling characters for her fable of interconnectedness and absolution.”
—People
“Her writing can be as muscular, beautiful, and spirited as a stallion…graceful—and humorous…. This book is fun to read, thought-provoking, and disturbing.”
—Boulder Daily Camera
“One of the finest books this reviewer has read in a while…. northern Arizona is so well drawn that you’ll want to catch the next plane there. Mapson is a wordsmith of the highest caliber.”
—Library Journal (starred review)
“Mapson’s compassionate understanding of human nature distinguishes her narratives…. Snappy, earthy dialogue, smoldering sex scenes and specific details of horse training and Indian culture are unobtrusively integrated into a narrative that has echoes of Hillerman and Kingsolver but is distinctively and memorably Mapson’s own.”
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“Mapson writes with remarkable, unflinching honesty, endowing her characters with realistic qualities and recognizable flaws.”
—The New Mexican (Santa Fe)
“Mapson knows how people behave under the influence of pain, and she captures—evocatively—the unique setting of the Southwest…as lyrical and memorable as any romantic melody.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“Mapson has been described as a writer of ‘cowgirl romances,’ but such a description fails to measure her works’ power.”
—The Tribune (Scottsdale, AZ)
“Mapson’s dialogue, her three-dimensional characters and the Western locales make her story flow…. This writer’s modern-day Westerns put me in the mood for the Stock Show & Rodeo.”
—San Antonio Express-News
Also by Jo-Ann Mapson
Shadow Ranch
Blue Rodeo
Hank & Chloe
Fault Line (stories)
Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
LOVING CHLOE. Copyright © 2007 by Jo-Ann Mapson. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
ePub edition January 2007 ISBN 9780061747106
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