At last they find Child Welfare. Inside, the building is carpeted and seems more friendly. Receptionists sit at circular desks in the wide corridors, and pictures on the wall show the Tribal Council members, some in cowboy hats. When Taylor asks for directions to Andy Rainbelt's office, the receptionist gets up and leads the way. She wears low heels and has the disposition of a friendly housewife.
"This is his office here. If he was expecting you then I imagine he'll be on in here in a minute. He might be hung up with another appointment."
"Okay, thanks. We'll just wait."
But before they've sat down, they hear the receptionist greet Andy in the hall. He ducks in the doorway, smiling, huge, pony-tailed, dressed like a cleaned-up rodeo man in jeans and boots. Which is fine with Taylor. She prefers bull riding to social-worker interviews any day of the week.
"I'm Andy. Glad to meet you, Miz Greer. Turtle." His handshake is punctuated by a large turquoise ring on his index finger. When they sit, Turtle finds her way into Taylor's lap. Taylor hugs Turtle to her, trying not to look as off-center as she feels.
He leans forward on his elbows and just looks at Turtle for quite a while, smiling, until she has finished examining the floor, the doorknob, and the ceiling, and looks at Andy Rainbelt. He has kind, deep-set eyes under arched eyebrows. "So tell me about your family, Turtle."
"I don't have one."
Taylor earnestly wishes she were not alive.
"Well, who do you live with, then?"
"I live with my mom. And I have a grandma. I used to have Jax, too, hack when we lived in a good house."
"Sounds like a family to me."
"And Barbie. She used to live with us. Barbie and all her clothes."
"Now, is she a real person or a doll?"
Turtle glances up at Taylor, who nearly laughs in spite of the dire circumstances. "She's both," Taylor answers for her. "She was a friend. Kind of clothes-oriented."
"What kind of things do you do for fun at your house?" he asks.
"Barbie played with me sometimes when Mom was at work," Turtle explains. "We made stuff. And clothes. She always ate Cheese Doritos and then went and throwed up in the bathroom."
"What? She did that?" Taylor feels ambushed. "I never knew that. Every time she ate?"
"I think every time."
"So that was her secret!" Taylor looks at Andy Rainbelt, feeling as if she might as well throw up too. "I guess we must sound like a pretty weird family."
"All families are weird," he says. "My job is to see which ones are good places for kids."
"Barbie is out of our lives, completely. I know it sounds bad that Turtle was exposed to that. I don't know what to tell you. She baby-sat for a while, while I was trying to get started in a new job. But she's gone."
"She took all our money," Turtle adds helpfully. "The guy that catches gooses had to take our electricity because we didn't pay."
Taylor knows her face must look like the cow in the corral who finally comprehends the slaughterhouse concept. "I was working full-time," she explains. "But somehow there just still wasn't enough money. It's probably hard for her to remember, but we had a pretty good life before all this happened."
Andy looks patient. "Listen. I hear everything in this office. I'm not grading you on what you say. I'm watching, more than listening, to tell you the truth. What I see is this little girl in your lap, looking pretty content there."
Taylor holds her so close she feels her own heart pounding against Turtle's slender, knobbed spine. "It's real hard on her to have to be separated from me. I just want to tell you that, for your records."
"I understand," he says.
"No, I mean it's terrible. Not like other kids. Sometimes Turtle lies in the bathtub with a blanket over her head for hours and hours, if she thinks I'm mad at her." She squeezes Turtle harder into her arms. "She went through some bad stuff when she was a baby, before I got her, and we're still kind of making up for lost time."
"Is that right, Turtle?"
Turtle is silent. Taylor waits for some awful new revelation, until it dawns on her that her daughter may be suffocating. She relaxes her hold, and Turtle breathes.
"Yeah," she says. "The bad one wasn't Pop-pop."
"She just met Mr. Stillwater. I mean, met him again. Her grandfather. I guess she's started remembering stuff from when she was little."
Andy has a way of looking Turtle in the eye that doesn't frighten her. Taylor is amazed. A giant who can make himself small. "Some tough times back then, huh?" he asks her.
"I don't know."
"It's okay to remember. Scares you though, sometimes, doesn't it?"
Turtle shrugs.
"Nobody's going to hurt you now."
Taylor closes her eyes and sees stars. She wishes on those stars that Andy Rainbelt could keep his promise.
Late that same afternoon, Taylor and Alice walk the dirt shoulder of the road out of Heaven. Turtle came back to Sugar's and fell into a hard sleep, but Taylor wanted to get out of the house for a while.
"I'm sorry you broke up with your new boyfriend," she tells Alice.
"Lord, what a soap opry," Alice declares. "All the fish out there, and I have to go for the one that's related to Turtle."
"Mama, that's not just bad luck. You were set up."
"Well, still, he didn't have to be so handy, did he? And related some way to Sugar?"
"To hear Sugar tell it, she's related some way to everybody from here to the Arkansas border. If they were determined to get you two together, it was bound to happen."
"Well, that's so. But I still have to say I got the worst darn luck in men."
"I'm not about to argue with that." Taylor has begun picking long-stemmed black-eyed Susans from the roadside as they walk along.
"The thing is, it's my own fault. I just can't put up with a person that won't go out of his way for me. And that's what a man is. Somebody that won't go out of his way for you. I bet it says that in the dictionary."
Taylor hands Alice a bouquet of orangey-yellow Susans and begins picking another one.
"It's the family misfortune," Alice says. "I handed it right on down to you."
"I called Jax," Taylor says, feeling faintly guilty.
"Well, honey, that's good. I mean it, I think he's tops. What's he up to?"
"His band is sort of breaking up. Their lead guitar quit, but they're getting an electric fiddle. Kind of going in a new direction, he says. He's trying to think of a new name with a country element. Renaissance Cowboys, something like that."
"Well, it beats the Irritated Babies all to pieces."
"Irascible Babies."
"What's that mean, irascible?"
"Irritated, I think."
"So I had the right idea, anyway."
"Yeah, I'm sure you did."
"And you forgave him for going to bed with that what's her name? That landlady gal?"
"Mama, I'd given him permission to do whatever he pleased. I The Snake told him when I left in June that we weren't, you know, anything long-term. So how could I hold it against him?"
A passing pickup truck, whose paint job looks very much like whitewash, slows down, then speeds on by when the driver doesn't recognize the two women carrying flowers.
"Mama, I've decided something about Jax. I've been missing him all summer long. Whether or not we get to keep Turtle, I've decided I want to start thinking of me and Jax as kind of more permanent."
"Well, that don't sound too definite."
"No, it is. I mean, I want us to be long-term. He's real happy. He wants to get married. I don't know if married is really the point, but you know what I mean."
"Well, Taylor, that's wonderful!" Alice cries, sounding ready enough to be wrong about men this once. She sings "Dum, dum da dum," to the tune of "Here Comes the Bride," and ties knots in the stems of her flowers, pulling each one through the next to make a crown. When it's finished she holds it out in her two hands like the cat's cradle, then places it on Taylor's dark
hair. "There you go, all set."
"Mama, you're embarrassing me," Taylor says, but she leaves the flowers where they are.
"What changed your mind about Jax?"
Taylor uses her long bouquet like a horse's tail, to swish away gnats. "When the social worker asked Turtle about her family today, you know what she said? She said she didn't have one."
"That's not right! She was confused."
"Yeah. She's confused, because I'm confused. I think of Jax and Lou Ann and Dwayne Ray, and of course you, and Mattie, my boss at the tire store, all those people as my family. But when you never put a name on things, you're just accepting that it's okay for people to leave when they feel like it."
"They leave anyway," Alice says. "My husbands went like houses on fire."
"But you don't have to accept it," Taylor insists. "That's what your family is, the people you won't let go of for anything."
"Maybe."
"Like, look at Mr. Stillwater. Cash. He's still just aching for Turtle after all this time. I hate to admit it, and I'm not going to say I think he should have her. Turtle is mine now. But he doesn't accept that she's gone. You can see it."
Alice has seen it in Cash. She saw it long before she knew what it was. A man who would go out of his way.
Taylor has woven her flowers into a circle, and she crowns her mother with it. Alice reaches deep into herself and evinces a dramatic sigh. "Always the bridesmaid, never the bride."
A string of cars crackles by on the gravel, all following an old truck that is fairly crawling. The drivers stare, each one in turn, as they pass.
"Where's that sign?" Taylor asks.
"What sign?"
"The one that was in that magazine ad, remember? With Sugar, when she was young? You've showed me that fifty times."
"That sign that says WELCOME TO HEAVEN." Alice looks thoughtful. "You know, I haven't seen it."
"Maybe this isn't really Heaven!" Taylor says. "Maybe we're in the wrong place, and none of this is really happening."
"No, it's Heaven all right. It says so on the phone book."
"Shoot, then they ought to have that sign up. I wish we could go pose in front of it. Maybe somebody'd come along and take our picture."
"I wonder if they tore that down. I'll have to ask Sugar. I bet anything they did."
"Does that mean we're not welcome anymore?" Taylor asks.
Two more cars pass by, and this time Alice and Taylor smile and wave like Miss America contestants.
Alice says, "I reckon we'll stay till they run us out of town."
Some kind of fish jumps in the river. Annawake stares at the ring of disturbed water it left behind. "Uncle Ledger, just tell me what to do," she says.
Ledger is in his overstuffed chair on the porch of the houseboat, smoking his pipe. Annawake paces the planks silently in her moccasins.
"You never would let me tell you what to do before," he says through pursed lips, sucking his pipe stem. "Why would you start now?"
"I always knew what I was doing before."
"If you knew what you was doing before, you wouldn't be stumped now."
She sits down on the deck, then lies down, looking up at the sky.
"Did I ever tell you you looked like a plucked chicken, when you cut all your hair off?"
"I was mourning Gabriel. I thought somebody ought to."
"If you want to do something for Gabe, talk to Gabe."
"Gabe's in Leavenworth."
"What, they don't allow phone calls?"
Annawake looks up, startled. He means it. "I don't know. Yeah, I guess they do."
"Well, then, call him. Or go visit. Tell him you miss him. Organize a damn bust-out and bring him on back here."
Annawake feels something like round stones shifting inside her, settling into a new, more solid position. "I guess I could."
"Sure you could. If you got something to work out, then work it out. Don't take it out on the rest of the world by looking like a chicken."
"Thanks. Everybody always said I had your looks."
"Annawake, you're not as respectful as you used to be."
She sits up, but sees the light in his eye, so she can lie back down.
"Tell me a story," she says. "About a little lost girl whose mother is prepared to give her away, rather than go through any more hassle with Annawake Fourkiller."
"I'll tell you." He leans back in his chair, which once in its life was green brocade, before twenty summers of sun and rain. "Speak of lost children in low voices," he says. Annawake pulls herself up. He has slid over into Cherokee, and she has to sit up straight to follow him. "They say long ago there was a child claimed by two clan mothers. They carried the child to the Above Ones. They came with long cries and moans, both of them saying the child belonged to their own people. The mother from the plains brought corn, and the mother from the hills brought tobacco, both of them hoping to sweeten the thoughts of the Above Ones when they made their decision."
Ledger stops talking and merely stares at the sky for a time. His legs are splayed in front of him, forgotten, and his pipe dangles in his hand, still sending up a thread of smoke as a friendly reminder.
He goes on suddenly: "When the Above Ones spoke, they said, we will send down the snake Uk'ten."
Annawake leans forward with her arms around her knees, narrowing her eyes to listen. She wishes she had her glasses. She understands Cherokee better with her glasses on.
"We will send the snake Uk'ten to cut the child in half, and each clan can carry home one half of the child."
"Wait a minute," Annawake says.
"The mother from the grassland happily agreed. But the mother from the hill clan wept and said no, that she would give her half of the child to the plains clan, to keep the baby whole. And so the Above Ones knew which mother loved the child best."
Annawake pulls off a moccasin and throws it at Ledger, hitting him square in the chest. She pulls off the other and just misses his head, on purpose.
"What, you don't like my story?" He sits up startled, crossing his hands over his chest.
"Some old Cherokee story you've got there. That's King Solomon, from the Bible."
"Oh. Well, I knew I got it from someplace," he says, patting his pockets for matches to relight his pipe.
"It's a yonega story," she says.
"Is that true? Did a yonega write the Bible? I always wondered about that. It doesn't say on there, 'The Bible, by so-and-so.' "
"I don't know. Maybe it wasn't a yonega. I think it was a bunch of people that lived in the desert and fished for a living."
"If they lived in the desert and caught fish both, you better listen to them."
"Give me my shoes back."
He leans back to collect the one that flew over his shoulder, and tosses the pair. Annawake pulls them on over her bare feet and buttons them at the ankles.
"I've got to go down to the Council Chambers and give my recommendation in half an hour. And you haven't told me a thing."
"Not a thing, no."
"Except that maybe I don't want to jump for joy to see a baby cut in half. Which she's going to be, either way."
"Can I tell you something, little hothead?"
"What?"
"There's something else growing back with your hair."
"What's that?"
"Sense. Used to be, you wanted your side to win all the time."
"They taught me that in yonega law school."
"Must be. You never had a bit of it in you before. I never saw you knocking down your own brothers to hit the score in a stickball game."
"Okay, then, if you knew me so well, you never should have let me go to law school. If you knew it would just bring out my worst nature."
"If you have a frisky horse you put him in a race. You don't put him behind a plow."
Annawake gets up, dusts off her knees and her seat. "What do you know from horses, anyway? You're a Cherokee, not some war-whooping featherheaded Sioux."
"I know e
nough about horses. I know you want one that has a good heart."
"I hear Dellon's truck up on the road. He's driving me over to Headquarters. I'd better go."
"Annawake, you've got you a good heart. Run with it. Your whole life, you've been afraid of yourself." He is looking right at her. Not through her, like most people do, to the paper doll that is Annawake Fourkiller, but into her.
She stands with her mouth open, waiting for a word. Nothing comes. Then, "How did you know?"
Ledger seems entirely occupied with his pipe. He waves her off. "Birdy told me."
Dellon is idling with the radio on. He turns it down when she gets in. "So did Ledger blow smoke on you and bless you for the hunt?"
"He blew smoke all right. He aggravates me. Nobody ought to be that smart."
"Yeah, well, Annawake. That's what some people say about you." He rolls his eyes. "I wouldn't know who."
"If I'm so smart, how come I'm miserable?"
On the radio, Randy Travis's croony voice dips low over someone who's been gone for too long.
"You just need you a man, that's all," Dellon says.
Annawake exhales sharply. "I've had enough men in my life to last me about seven lifetimes. Think about it, Dell, growing up with all you guys, and Daddy, and Uncle Ledger. All those penises! You all had me surrounded like a picket fence."
Dellon shifts in his seat uncomfortably. "It wasn't that bad, was it?"
"No, Dellon, it's nothing personal against your body organs. But men are just not necessarily always the solution."
He stares at her until his truck runs into the ditch. He glances up and swerves back. "I'm going to have to put that in my pipe and smoke it awhile," he says.
She gives him the smile that has been knocking boys dead for twenty-seven years, with absence of malice. "You just do that."
33
The Gambling Agenda
THE MEETING THAT TOOK PLACE previously in the Council Chamber room must have been concerned with the Bingo question. On the blackboard at the front of the room someone has written in narrow, forward-slanting letters:
TODAY'S AGENDA--GAMING ON TRIBAL LAND, YAY OR NAY? PRESENTATIONS
Pigs in Heaven Page 33