Owen's Daughter

by Jo-Ann Mapson

  Unless the hugger was Gracie. Her throat went thick.

  The moon was a crescent in the heavens, and every couple of seconds, it seemed, there went the silver streak of a shooting star. On one of her last nights at Cottonwoods, she’d sat on the portal watching the night sky. Nola came out to sit with her. “Stars are angels rebelling against God,” she said.

  “If you truly believe that shit,” Skye told her, “you will be stuck on Planet Crazy for the rest of your life.”

  “Has anyone ever told you that you’re very intolerant of others’ belief systems?” Nola said.

  “Nola, I’m telling you this for your own good,” Skye said. “I’ve spent almost a year living with your wackadoo worldview. How many years have you been here? And yet I am rejoining the world and you’re not. Why is that?”

  “Duncan says it’s because I can’t accept my program.”

  “Sometimes Duncan is full of shit. Stars are made of hydrogen and helium. They explode like a nuclear bomb. Fortunately for us, this takes billions of years, otherwise we’d all be dead of electromagnetic radiation. By the time they hit our atmosphere, they’ve turned to dust. There are no angels out there. They are made-up shit to keep you from taking responsibility for your life. That is all I have to say on the subject, and I hope you listened, because apparently nobody here has the cojones to tell you what your problem is. Stop believing in all that mystical crap, Nola! Crystals are rocks. They don’t have souls. They are just rocks. Like everything else in this world, they come from dust or turn to dust. The End.”

  She hadn’t taken it back that night, and only now did it seem a little mean. Just a few hours with her dad and all the anger she felt toward him seemed stupid, too. Her father had been locked up and she hadn’t even known. “What did you go to prison for?”

  “Assault.”

  “What kind?”

  “The kind where two drunk people start throwing punches, and one of them thinks it’s a good idea to bring a pool cue into the mix.”

  “Whoa,” she said, thinking, That’s hard-core. They rode on for a few more minutes. Then she said, “It’s been a rough day. I’m tired. How long is it until we get exactly where we’re headed?”

  “A ways. My plan was to come and get you in the pickup hours ago, but turns out my tires weren’t on board with the idea. That’s what happens when you garage a car for a couple of years. When I got the flat, I realized I didn’t have a spare. I couldn’t leave the horses long enough to get some help at a gas station, so I saddled up and ponied yours alongside. We got our tire and then we rode parallel to the highway. I’m sorry it took me so long. Sometimes things just happen.”

  “What I meant was, now what are we going to do? Where are we going?”

  He stopped his horse. “We can throw down our bedrolls here and call it a night,” he said. “Or we can ride all night to my friend Joe’s house, then throw our bedrolls down on his floor, and sleep all day tomorrow. Might have to sweep his floor first. He’s not the tidiest creature.”

  “Do you even know where we are?”

  “’Course I do,” he said. “I’ve ridden this part of New Mexico more times than I can count. It’s up to you when we stop. Let me know your druthers.”

  Druthers? Who used that kind of language in the twenty-first century? Underneath her, she felt Lightning shiver, wondering what was happening. Skye shivered, too, and pulled the string on her hoodie tighter. All day the heat had about killed her, and now it couldn’t be more than 35 out. Maybe all this was a dream. Maybe they’d just ride until the end of the earth, she and her ex-convict father, until they fell off along with the meteoroids and burned into dust. All she had left was frayed nerves. “Old man, you got a smoke on you?”

  “Quit that a long time ago. You should, too.”

  Skye nodded, though it was too dark for him to see her. Actually, she’d quit smoking when she got pregnant, and she didn’t really want one now. Smoking was just something to pass the endless time without having to talk, or worse, feel, and it was dangerously close to a drug, if a legal one. They moved on.

  Ten minutes later, her father stopped his horse. “Sugar, we aren’t making as good time as I’d hoped. I recommend we throw down the bedroll and call it a night. It’s another five miles to Joe’s house, and the horses are tired.”

  She thought of Gracie, waiting for her, crying herself to sleep. “But you have the tire. I’d rather keep going.”

  “It’s hard to change a tire in the dark.”

  “You have a bedroll. I don’t.”

  “Then I guess it’s a good thing I brought two bedrolls.” Her father dismounted and waited for her to climb down. She stared back at him, her hands on Lightning’s reins.

  “I ain’t Charlie Manson,” he said. “I’m your father. I was an idiot when I drank, getting into fights with anyone that looked at me sideways. Which is one of the reasons I don’t drink anymore.”

  “Not even champagne on New Year’s?”

  “Not even.”

  Skye swung her leg over Lightning’s right side and slid down. “That person you busted up, was he okay?”

  “After he got patched up, thank goodness. I got enough bad stuff on my conscience without adding the burden of taking a life. He was hurt pretty bad, though. For a year I tried to live with it, keeping a low profile. Then I turned myself in, pled guilty to assault, and was I ever lucky. The guy I hit came to court and asked the judge to be lenient.”

  She patted Lightning’s neck to say thank you for the ride. “Why would he do that?”

  “I can’t say. I suspect he had a lot of time to think while he was healing. Maybe he realized the fight started because back then, every time he opened his mouth he felt compelled to insult whoever was nearby. Maybe he found Jesus. Who knows? All I can say is I’m grateful. Instead of sitting in the cell for the remainder of my days, I have the opportunity to reunite my beautiful daughter with her daughter.”

  At the mention of Gracie, Skye felt that lump back in her throat. She turned away, unbuckled Lightning’s cinch, and lifted off the saddle and blankets. They hit the ground with a thud, despite her efforts to lay the whole business down easy, to avoid spooking the horses. Her dad was much better at it. She watched him take off their bridles and replace them with halters, and then ground-tie them so they wouldn’t wander. He fetched them both feedbags, and while the horses ate, he checked their feet with a penlight, making sure nobody had thrown a shoe or picked up a stone. Then he brushed them both with a rubber currycomb and wiped it against his jeans to get the hair off.

  “Why’d you get in the fight in the first place? I thought the furthest you went with stuff like that was yelling.”

  He looked up. “Alcohol. I stopped drinking right after the fight. Fell off the wagon once or twice, but since I went to prison, not a drop. I go to meetings whenever I can. As you know, it’s not easy. And unfortunately, nobody wants to hire an ex-con. I’m getting a little long in the tooth for roadwork and construction, but I’ll take any work that comes my way.”

  “What about shoeing horses?”

  “When someone wants me to, I do it. A lot of younger shoers out now. They do the job faster than I care to, charge less.”

  “All right, Daddy,” she said. “We don’t have to talk about it anymore. Thank you for being honest with me.”

  He unrolled the sleeping bags and she unzipped one and sat down. She yanked off her boots, shook the dirt off them, and tucked them in the foot of her bag out of the reach of scorpions. She hated scorpions. Getting stung once, on her butt no less, was enough for a lifetime. “This reminds me of camping when I was a kid,” she said, though back then she’d never experienced this jittery, lost feeling that made it impossible to relax. She wanted an OxyContin tablet more than a glass of vodka, but either would do. Both would be better.

  Skye had loved camping and fishing with her dad, even if she never caught anything. She felt sorry for the worms, so he ended up having to bait the hooks. He pan-
fried the fish they caught in bread crumbs and bacon grease. They tasted better than any restaurant food she ever had. Her daddy had come for her, even after his truck threw a tire. He had come on horseback, and he had cared enough to fetch and bring her horse, so that when she settled down in Santa Fe and her sobriety was wobbling, Lightning would be there for her.

  “You hungry?” her dad asked.

  “Not really.”

  “Too bad, because I have some beef jerky and chocolate. Plain M&M’s. I remember those being your favorite. Probably you outgrew them.”

  “Hand them over. Otherwise I’m going to have to commit larceny, and then where will we be? Two unemployed ex-cons.”

  He laughed. “Now that’s the girl I remember. You know, once we get to the truck, I’ll drive you wherever you need to go, Skye. I have a little money saved, and it’ll get you started. I want you to be happy. I want you to stay sober, but that’s up to you. Other than that, whatever you need, if I can help make it happen, I’ll try.”

  She could hear the snuffling of the horses, some night bird complaining, and the faint whoosh of cars in the distance. Any of that was preferable to listening to Nola pray her New Age prayers and waking up to her stupid chanting, I name it, I claim it, and so shall it be. “What I want . . .” She paused to take hold of herself, willing the telltale break in her voice to go away. “Is my little girl back. I don’t care about anything but being a good mom.”

  “’Course you do. You don’t have to tell her who I am, but I’d sure like to meet her.”

  “Why wouldn’t I tell her who you are?”

  “My record isn’t all that good.”

  “Oh, Daddy. Just stop.” Emotions were exhausting. Any second her eyes would close and she would be dreaming. It had been a shit day. But on the plus side, she wasn’t at Cottonwoods or anywhere near Nola. In group, Duncan had let people get angry and vent, but by the end of the day, he asked everyone to forgive one another and mean it. His favorite quote about this wasn’t Navajo at all: “The first to apologize is the bravest. The first to forgive is the strongest. The first person to learn from it becomes the happiest.” Smart-mouthed, Skye asked, “What brilliant Navajo said that?” And he surprised her by disclosing that the quote came from Nishan Panwar, an India Indian kid on Facebook.

  Skye thought she said, Don’t be ridiculous. Gracie needs a grandpa as much as she needs her mama. It takes a village, remember? And that he replied, Thank you. But she might have dreamed it.

  The ground was hard and cold when the sun came up. Skye’s back hurt, and as she rolled up the sleeping bag, she noticed a rock directly under where her shoulder had been. Funny, but she swore she could smell the sunshine, heating up the rabbit brush and piñon trees. She didn’t know the proper terminology for the phenomenon but felt sure there was one. Lightning was there, but her dad and his horse weren’t. She didn’t have time to wonder about that because she heard the sound of her dad’s truck. “Camping in April is for Boy Scouts,” she said, first thing, more to herself than to him.

  Her father had ridden his horse back to his truck, changed the tire, put the horse in the trailer, and driven back before she woke all the way up. He gave the horses some hay, poured a gallon jug each of water into a bucket, and let them drink. “We’ve got to get to a feed store soon. I didn’t plan on this taking more than a day.”

  She stretched her arms and rubbed at a kink in the small of her back. “First Starbucks we see, I’m ordering a triple shot with whipped cream on the top.”

  “Joe makes coffee so strong you can stand a spoon up in it. Get those fancy boots of yours on and let’s hit the road. Looks like today will be another scorcher.”

  Skye rolled up the sleeping bags. “All I care about is picking up Gracie.”

  “Well, so far there’s nothing to get in our way,” her dad said.

  The five miles went quickly in the truck. Soon they turned on a dirt road that was bumpy enough to make Skye hang on to the seat. They were on reservation land, where a few of the houses were halfway decent and others not so much, with old tires strewn about and broken-down cars with weeds growing through the engine compartment. Skye counted reservation dogs—called “brown dogs” by the residents—wandering around and thought of spanking the shit out of the kids who were throwing rocks at them. Skye almost asked her dad to stop the truck but didn’t want to waste a minute getting to Gracie. One rangy female followed alongside the truck for the longest time, barking, then turned away. They came upon a weather-beaten mobile home set up on cinder blocks. Next to it was the skeleton of a decomposing five-sided hogan, quite a bit of twisted chicken wire, tumbleweeds, warped plywood, and enough broken glass that it reflected like glitter in the sun.

  “We’re here,” her dad said, and opened the truck’s door.

  “Why?” Skye asked. What could possibly be the reason for stopping at a place this wrecked? “Can’t we just book it to Burque?”

  “Got a few things to pick up,” her dad said. Before he did anything else, he unloaded the horses. He led them into a corral that had seen better days. Inside was a swaybacked white mule that looked older than time itself.

  “Think the horses will be okay with that animal?” Skye asked.

  “’Course they will. Joe’s had that mule since before sliced bread got invented,” he said. “And he loves it, so don’t make any nasty comments. By the way, the mule’s name is Lightning, just like your horse.”

  Skye just stared.

  “That was intended to be facetious.”

  “How? Funny or ironic?”

  “Your choice. Check the water trough, will you?”

  “There’s water in it,” she said. “It’s mossy green in places. I think I see a fish.”

  After he unsnapped each lead rope from the horses, he walked over to look at the trough for himself. “What do you know? Filled for once. Joe must be on the wagon.”

  “Great,” Skye said. “Just what we need, another alcoholic.”

  An ancient blue heeler with three legs came out from under the trailer and started barking. Her dad squatted, and the dog came toward him, spinning in circles with excitement. “Hopeful Jones,” he said. “You old cuss. I didn’t expect you to be waiting for me. You must be twenty years old.”

  “Don’t insult your elders,” came a voice from the trailer’s door.

  The man was possibly the skinniest Indian Skye had ever seen, wearing a faded red AIM T-shirt, surfer board shorts, and cowboy boots. His black hair was braided into a ponytail that reached down to the small of his back. His skin was so pocked and scarred and his face so craggy that all he needed was a head scarf and people would mistake him for Keith Richards. This must be Joe of the strong coffee, she thought. Sure doesn’t look like someone my dad would fraternize with. His grin was pure happiness.

  “Ya hey,” Joe said. “If it ain’t my old biliganna white-man friend, showing up with an asdzaa nizhonion as usual. You’re an old man, Owen. Who’s this pretty young thing hanging around your saggy ass?”

  Owen? Skye’s dad’s name was Bill.

  “She’s my daughter, you old fool. No smart remarks, you hear me?”

  Pretty soon they were both laughing like hyenas and the dog was licking her father’s face. Skye could not imagine what they found so hilarious, but the dog really needed a bath. When Joe motioned for them to come in the trailer, she reluctantly followed. “Welcome to La Farmacia,” Joe said.

  This guy was a druggist? Doubtful. With men, everything was generally in plain sight in the place they lived, and she saw nothing medical here. Rocky’s story, for example, came in the form of an equine syringe he used over and over, as if horses didn’t get sick from dirty needles. Joe Yazzi’s interests were apparently historical protests, like AIM, the political movement that had ended long before Skye was born. As long as presidents needed FBI security, Leonard Peltier would never get pardoned. Among Joe’s protest signs: Payback for Indian Boarding School. Address the Broken Treaties. No Fracking on Res
ervation Land. Skye didn’t know exactly what that last one meant, but she didn’t care to find out. She sat at his rickety kitchen table. Spread over every inch were screwdrivers, a hammer, various pincers, a can of WD-40, and the guts of some mechanism she couldn’t identify. She picked up a metal part that reminded her of a Lego. Nothing about it said druggist.

  Joe said, “I see you’re interested in my time machine. I’m going to patent it and get rich.”

  “I know what you should do with all the money you make,” Skye said.

  “What’s that?”

  “Redecorate.”

  Her dad came into the trailer, the dog by his side. “Joe, stop messing with my daughter and heat up some coffee for your old friend. Also, if you have any hay I could feed my horses, I’d be happy to give you some greenbacks.”

  Joe cackled, his voice and appearance aged by cigarettes and booze. “I’m going to call Lefty right now,” he said. “He’ll bring a bale right over. All my mule can eat is Quaker Oats. Once a month I borrow Lefty’s truck and drive to Costco, buy me a pallet.” In the middle of all that junk, he retrieved what looked like the latest-model iPhone. Skye looked around the place, trying to reconcile the fancy phone with the worn-out furniture and dented metal percolator on the two-burner stove. Where had her dad come across such a person, and furthermore, what made them friends? Maybe he’d been in prison, too. The three-legged dog lay down on an old blanket. Stumpy-tailed heeler, the blue variety. Her dad had a dog with three legs? She would have thought he’d put an animal like that down.

  Clearly there was a lot more to her dad than she had assumed.

  When the men went outside to wait for the hay, Skye found the bathroom, then kind of wished she hadn’t. She shut her eyes while she peed so she didn’t have to look at the filthy towel hanging from a hook on the wall. The bathroom was worse than she’d seen at any bus station she’d ever been stranded in, even outside of Joplin after the tornado. She dug around under the sink for TP, saw a dusty canister of Comet and a sponge, and started scrubbing. When she finished with the sink, a quarter of the cleanser was gone. She opened the gross shower curtain. Men living alone saw nothing but the water coming out of the shower head. Mold was simply not in their visual field. She scrubbed, trying not to see more than one inch at a time. Then she did the toilet.