Catching Heaven

by Sands Hall

  She began to climb again.

  “You ask me about the sipapu. You ask me about blood.” His voice, low and desperate, stopped her. “I can tell you what I think, what others think. But how can I know what flowed through the veins and brains and minds of the Ancient Ones? How can I ever know?” He lowered his head. His bare back rounded beautifully out of the brown cornucopia of blanket, until his forehead touched the floor of the kiva.

  Maud was tempted to go back, kneel beside him, put a hand on that lovely, smooth back folded between the peaks of his knees, offer comfort. Kiss his scarred cheek. But before she could think too much about why and how she’d come to be there, or why and how she was leaving, she moved swiftly up the ladder. She clambered through the tumbled boulders to the canyon floor, found the path and, almost running, zigzagged her way back to the top.

  Smoke rose from the hogan. In the Airstream she rolled Miles’ T-shirt around her toothbrush, pulled on her tank top, sweater, watch. She tore a piece of paper from her notebook in the car and wrote a note to Maggie, thanking her. She left this, weighted with a rock, on the top step of the trailer.

  “If it were done when ’tis done, then ’twere well it were done quickly,” she told the raw sun that blared through her windshield. “In these cases we still have judgment here.” Her laugh was harsh, almost a croak.

  T H E

  F A L L

  CHAPTER 13

  JAKE

  leaning into loneliness

  elbows on the bar

  staring at my empty glass

  wondering where you are

  Jake avoided Sue’s invitation to dinner as long as he could. With Willy, things were always tense. And walking into his sister’s house was eerily similar to coming home after school to their parents’ house. Same smells. Same moods. He’d moved away from the shag carpeting, the ranch-burger layout, vowing never to have a life that remotely resembled theirs. Although the glossy Sears furniture, nutty aroma of baking potatoes, nonstop gossip of the television, even the knowledge that an army of cans and slope-shouldered bottles of beer lined the lower shelf of the refrigerator, still held a nostalgic and peculiar appeal.

  Sue, talking on about some project of Johnny’s at school, gave him a beer, checked the roast, handed him flatware, napkins. Put her head around the door to the living room. “Willy. Would you let Jello know it’s time to wash his hands?”

  Jake heard the rustle of newspaper, the squeak of the recliner. “Jellybean!” Willy shouted. “Hands!”

  Sue and Jake raised their voices to a high whine. “If I’d wanted to yell, I could have done that myself!”

  “All Mom’s stuff that I swore I’d never say or do.” Sue handed him two long forks, held the platter while he hoisted the sputtering wad of beef onto it. Willy, rubbing at his eyes, got himself another beer. Johnny hefted himself up into the chair opposite Jake.

  “I like it when you’re here,” Johnny said. Sue inspected his fingernails.

  Jake eyed Willy. “Thanks.”

  Willy blessed the table, began to carve. Ominously silent, he wrestled with knife and roast beef. Belly protruding like a pregnant woman’s. Thighs bulging the seams of new jean overalls. He caught Jake staring, passed him a filled plate. “Your grits.”

  “Thanks.”

  Willy used the serving fork to lift a scrap of meat to his mouth. Chewed, bland eyes carefully avoiding contact. Air humid with all that was not being said. Their father all over again.

  “Tell us about Santiago,” Sue urged.

  Tension gathered at Willy’s end of the table. Tornado brewing, the air as thick, as yellow. The meat, perfectly cooked, stayed in Jake’s mouth like a cud of chewed gum. He swallowed. “He wanted to leave Nashville for the same reasons I did the first time. The emphasis is all wrong. You start to question why you’re playing music at all. All tack and trash and flash. The worst aspects of moneymaking, not to mention music making. He starts asking what Marengo’s like. I get homesick telling him. Two days later he’s talked to his wife and kids, we’re all packing up. It’s like he’s always been part of the band. Took a while for Randy to warm up to him, but now he’s her best pal. Funny how things work out.”

  “If we just let them,” Sue said.

  Willy said, “New Age horseshit.” Nudged Johnny’s arm. “Don’t sit there with your mouth open. Eat.”

  She put her fork down. “Lizzie’s sister’s in town.”

  Jake held his knife and fork poised above his meat.

  “That’s what I heard.” Willy nodded. “The actress. From Hollywood. Got herself a job at the Red Garter. Barney was in the store. Said she’s skinny as a beanpole but pretty.”

  “I just hate how we’ve fallen so out of touch with Lizzie,” Sue said. Jake was grateful when Johnny began to drum his feet against his chair. “She was a lot of fun.”

  His forehead felt like a knot of rope, bunched up, black as tar.

  “Barney said she’s moving into that old miner’s cabin on Emerson,” Willy continued. “Those sack-of-shit hippies that were in there fell behind on the rent. Took Norma six months to evict them. Then along comes Lizzie, says her sister needs a place. Everybody’s happy.”

  “It’s so small,” Sue said.

  “Big enough for one.”

  “Do you know her, Jake?”

  “Met her once or twice. Her name’s Maud.”

  “Yeah, Maud.” Willy nodded. “That’s what Barney said.”

  Jake and Lizzie were still living together when Maud dragged her boyfriend, Miles, on one of her treks to the Southwest. Told them over dinner that Miles was an invented name. Grumpy, animated, Miles admitted he’d been Jon Marcus in what he called “a previous lifetime.” Miles was a songwriter too. A coincidence that Maud found remarkable and Lizzie dismissed. Miles kept Jake up late two nights in a row talking about “The Biz.” Which meant Miles told anecdotes demonstrating the astonishing number of big-time producers and record executives he knew. That Jake recognized few of their names seemed to gratify and disappoint Miles in equal amounts. Against his better judgment, encouraged over breakfast coffee by Maud, Jake played CDs of some of the various artists who had recorded his songs. Miles offered commentary. Urged by Maud, he fetched his own demos. It had been a contest, a duel, seeming to delight Maud in proportion to the degree it irritated Miles. Lizzie, pale and strained-looking, unusually quick to blaze to anger with Jake and the girls, spent her time in her studio. When Miles and Maud began to bicker about renting a car to visit Taos, Jake offered his Volvo, delighted to get them out of his hair.

  Johnny thumped his feet against his chair again. Sue reached to fold one hand over his. “Jello. Be considerate of others at the table, please. Uncle Jake loves drummers, but I’m sure he hears quite enough of them.”

  Johnny looked at Jake from under thick eyelashes, a legacy from his grandfather. Jake had them too. “Mom’s promised me a drum set when I turn ten! To go with my sticks!”

  “What have I started?” Jake bent a look of utter sympathy towards Sue, who raised her eyes heavenward.

  “Ten months! But I have to practice.” Johnny pointed with his fork. “I’m going to be the best drummer in the world. I’m going to be in your band! One of your Blakes!”

  “All riiiight, Johnny!” Jake beat a brief tattoo with his knife and fork on the tablecloth.

  “Yeah.” Johnny did a fair rhythm break of his own.

  “Johnny,” Sue said.

  They all watched Willy. He chewed, swallowed, wiped the back of his hand across his lips. Triangulated his knife and upside-down fork so that their tips met at the edge of the plate. “When’d you decide all this?”

  “Come on,” Sue said. “Ten months is a long way away.”

  “I should be consulted, don’t you think?”

  Sue stared down at her plate. The tip of her nose was red, which meant, Jake knew, that she was dangerously close to tears. “Can we, just once when Jake is here, have a nice dinner?” Her voice quavered.
/>   “Just mentioning how I think I should be kept informed.”

  Sue shook her head imperceptibly. “If you were ever here, Willy, we’d talk to you about it. If you were ever ‘here’ when you are here, you might find some things out. But you’re so much more interested in how your rakes are selling and if the price of nails is going up or down and what that means for your stats. Or if it isn’t that, how the country is going to hell in a handbasket, which seems to be much more important to you than what’s going on in your own home.” Cheeks red. Breath coming fast. Her chest heaved. “When I do ask you to take some time and sit down and talk something over with me, there’s always, always something more important. So one way or another we don’t have a chance to discuss these things, do we?”

  She crumpled her napkin, put it next to her full plate. “You’re missing all his growing up. Do you know that? Every day he’s changing—” She waved a hand at Johnny. “Get down, Jellybean. I’m sorry I’m yelling.”

  Johnny slid out of his chair, out of the room. Silence like glue settled over the table. Willy cleared his throat.

  “No,” Sue said. “Let me finish.”

  From the den came the music of Jeopardy. The last phrase made Jake want to sing, Just tip me over and pour me out.

  “You missed his ones and his twos—you were getting the business off the ground. And then you had to expand. So you missed him being three and four. Then employees had to be trained. Always, always something else more important—” She pressed fingertips against her lips. “So now you don’t know your son. You don’t know he wants to play drums, that it’s his dream. He’s been talking about the Blakes for years. Even Jake, who’s been gone, knows more about this than you do.”

  Jake executed a complicated maneuver with his shoulders—to convey to Sue that yes, he did know about Johnny’s dream, to let Willy know he was sorry he had to hear this.

  “Of course I know about his goddamned attraction to percussion,” Willy said. “I also happen to know it’s just misplaced adolescent sex drive.” Leaned back, poured what was left of his beer down his throat.

  “We’ll talk about it later,” Sue said, in a faint voice.

  “You’re right. We will talk about this later.” Willy stood, crumpling his beer can in a large fist.

  He left the kitchen. Moments later a door slammed, an engine started up. Sue sighed. “He’ll go drink boilermakers for hours down at Old Joe’s, that awful awful place, and come in at two A.M., crying and apologizing.” She stood, began piling plates, sat again. “You’re not finished.”

  She used her shirt to dab at her face. Jake saw brown skin where she hiked the shirt up, white fabric of a bra. Glanced away—responding to the ancient insistence he “not look” when they had to share the tent on camping trips, change clothes in the back seat on a long-distance car ride. “He’s bad enough as it is, but every time you’re over—‘Adolescent sex drive.’ For pity’s sake.” She shook her head.

  “Forget it.”

  “Mom.” Johnny stood in the doorway.

  “Hello, Jello.” Sue moved to squat beside him. “I’m sorry I yelled.”

  “Can I have some ice cream?”

  “You bet. Want some, Jake?” She opened the upper half of the refrigerator. “The nominees are—Rocky Road! Peach Yogurt! Chocolate Chip! And the winner is?”

  “Rocky Road,” Jake said.

  “Me too.” Johnny clambered up on a bar stool next to the counter. “And chocolate chip too.”

  Jake perched on a stool next to him. Sue placed bowls in front of them, licked the serving spoon.

  “Aren’t you having some?”

  “Mom never eats ice cream.” Johnny waved his spoon. “She eats that yogurt stuff, though. Have some yogurt, Mom.”

  “No, thanks.”

  Jake worked at his ice cream, loosening chunks of marshmallow and walnut. Thought of Willy, sitting at a different kind of bar.

  Johnny kicked at the board beneath the counter. Jake joined him, creating a counterrhythm. They ate their ice cream, feet swinging in and out. “Will we leave scuff marks?”

  Sue shrugged. “Go ahead. I’ll have them framed.”

  Johnny began to syncopate the steady two-four beat.

  “All right, Johnny.” Jake tapped spoon against bowl. “And. One two and three—And one two and three—”

  “Whoa!” Johnny used his spoon against the countertop to tap the missing “FOUR!”

  “Good. And one two and three—”

  “FOUR!”

  Jake leaned over to grab a wooden fork out of the dish drainer, grinned at Sue. She smiled back, though her eyes stayed sad. He used the fork to add yet another counterrhythm. Whooped. Johnny tried the sound, coming up with a feeble “Wuu!” Across the kitchen Sue whooped too. Took a spatula from the canister beside the stove, joined the steady one-two beat Jake was keeping with his feet.

  “All right, Mom,” Johnny said. “FOUR!”

  Sue got Jake to read a story to Johnny, then walked him to the door. “You know what you ought to do?”

  Jake groaned. “Call Lizzie. It’s not that easy, Sue.”

  “Well, I wish you would. Convince me that men aren’t all either assholes or scaredy cats. But I was going to tell you to go climb Fable Mountain. You haven’t done that in a long time, and you always come back feeling all cleaned out.”

  “I don’t have time. I have a real job now, you know.”

  “There’s always the weekend. Like normal goddamn people.”

  He smiled, loving her for that. “Weekends I gig.”

  “Figure it out. It’ll be good for you.”

  He didn’t head home. Found himself making the turns that would take him to Main Street. Neon bar signs flickered, store windows glowed cool blue over moccasins, cowboy hats, jewelry, Southwestern clothes, pseudo–American Indian junk. For Halloween, the ubiquitous red-pepper lights had been temporarily replaced with strings of small plastic skeletons, lit from within.

  “No more of these withheld hearts,” Jake sang, revving his engine at a red light. To a different but related tune he sang the bridge to the song: “Hope against hope that love comes back.” Santiago had created a great running counterpoint, all on keys in the upper register of the piano. It had turned into a good song.

  He looked around for the lit cubicle of a phone booth. But he couldn’t call Lizzie. Not tonight. Maybe not ever. Easier to climb Fable Mountain.

  Across the street a couple emerged from Farquaarts. Arms looped around each other’s waist, heads angled together. The light turned green. Jake released the clutch too fast. Tires squealed. He lifted a hand in apology, though he knew they couldn’t see it. Ahead of him, the sign for the Red Garter glitzed its way over the edge of a rooftop. Neon garter, including rosette, stretching and then snapping back to a brilliant red circle. The hotel/saloon existed just outside the historic district and in spite of a great deal of community uproar had gotten away with the flashy neon sign.

  He parked, pushed through the swinging saloon-style doors. Stood just inside. Squinted against darkness and cigarette smoke. Never been in before. Not his kind of place. Cow-horn hat racks. Brass foot rail beneath the bar. Shiny spittoons-cum-ashtrays, also brass, well polished.

  Waitresses strutted and hovered, uniforms some absurd cross between historical sexy and Playboy bunny naughty. Black fishnet tights socketing into high-cut satin legholes. Fringe shivering over round rear ends. Necklines plunging, breasts bulging. Jake found himself mesmerized, repulsed, aroused with the kind of desire he knew left you wondering, even when spent, if there wasn’t something more exciting, somewhere else, with someone else. He’d lived with it in Nashville, in the heyday of his successes. It had wasted his marriage.

  It had?

  “Can I help you?” A waitress in green, full-busted, wide-hipped, stood in front of him, tray proffered. A mass of carrot-colored hair exploded around her face.

  “I’ll sit at the bar, thanks.” He watched the flip of black fringe
across her rear end, the rear end itself, as she sashayed away. That would not be Maud, unless she’d gained a lot of weight and dyed her hair a carroty parody of Lizzie’s.

  Rich Pack sat at the bar. As Jake walked towards him he tilted his cowboy hat up, let it drift low over his forehead again.

  “Rich.”

  “Jake.”

  Rich stretched his long legs out. He rented the trailer and half acre Jake owned out on Dead Horse Hill. Buying it had seemed a good investment at the time. Now the rent barely paid the mortgage and taxes. Rich was two weeks late with it. As usual. Not that he couldn’t afford it. Every summer he made three thousand a week, easy, working as a guide—read gigolo—for a dude ranch outside town. Rich had told Jake about his “rides.” Flush and horny divorcées he had to “manage.” Rich’s girlfriend, Jeep, who used to baby-sit Lizzie’s girls, put up with his philandering. Perhaps because he made enough money to allow both of them to glide through the winter skiing, drinking, and taking recreational drugs.

  Jake ordered a draw. Slouched with his back against the bar. “Still got that job?”

  A nod. “Packed ’em in again this year.”

  “How’s Jeep?”

  Rich shrugged. A salmon-colored beam spilled onto a woman playing the piano. No one appeared to be listening.

  “Omigod, Jake!” A blonde waitress, dressed in shiny pink, stopped dead in her tracks, almost upsetting the drinks she had perched on her tray. “What are you doing here? I heard you were back.”

  “Jeep!” Jake slid off the bar stool to give her a hug. “I was just asking about you.”

  Jeep moved backwards, shaking her head. A beaded headdress spangled in the dim light. “No fraternizing,” she whispered. “Barney’ll kill me. I’ll just drop these drinks.”

  “Fraternizing?” Jake said, but Rich had turned away. Jake was accustomed to seeing Jeep in shorts, jeans. The high-cut legs of the leotard and the high-heeled boots made her athletic, even chubby thighs look almost lean.