Anywhere (Sawtooth Mountains Stories, #3)

by Susan Fanetti

  The reservation was a tiny place, a few square miles, a few thousand acres, fewer than a thousand residents. Tucked up tight against the Sawtooth Range, wedged between Jasper Ridge and the Sawtooth National Forest. The tribe’s hunter-gatherer heritage had evolved here into small ranches and farms—for those families who’d been able to sustain them. Families like Gigi’s lived on assistance and the goodwill of their tribe, or they found darker ways to earn a living.

  Before the settlers, the tribe had wandered far, following the herds of buffalo: piakuittsun. What was now Jasper Ridge, and the Sawtooth National Forest, and well south, had been the land under their feet.

  When the settlers came, the peaceful Shoshone had attempted to coexist. They were, after all, the people of Sacagawea, who had guided Lewis and Clark on their journey of discovery, and they felt no ownership of the land. All were one—earth and sky, tree and buffalo, Shoshone and white man—and all could share what their brethren offered.

  But the whites didn’t coexist with the land. They tore down trees and dug up the earth. They dammed up rivers. All with no regard for the lives they took, and the lives they changed. They killed buffalo for their skins and left the flayed bodies to rot in the sun. They shot noisy guns and built ugly buildings meant to stay, like warts on the earth.

  Even worse, they’d crossed thousands of miles in the firm conviction that their God meant them to have all the land they could reach, and to do with it what they would. Manifest Destiny. They believed they owned the land, and they saw the people who’d already lived on their God-given right as pests to be eradicated. Like fleas on their dogs. And they’d treated them as such.

  All through the Great Basin, Shoshone hunters became warriors, fighting for their lives, and for their way of life. They’d been bitterly, brutally defeated and forced into reservations like pens. The settlers had introduced whiskey like a great gift, and drowned the fight out of these brown fleas in their way.

  That was the history told by the elders. When Gigi had gone to Jasper Ridge High School, off the reservation, she’d learned a whiter history and saw how the cruelty and devastation of manifest destiny was celebrated as the ‘pioneer spirit.’ Two wildly different perspectives of the same thing. History goes to the victor.

  But in both places, the story of the Cahill family got celebrated. Matthew Cahill had come over during that race toward manifest destiny, but he’d been different. He’d been respectful of the land and the people already on it. He’d staked his claim and built his big house, but he’d planted new trees when he was finished, to replenish what he’d taken, and he’d treated the Shoshone like neighbors. He’d listened to the elders and learned to use the land as it was, without trying to force it to be what he wanted. He’d been a strong and persuasive presence among the other whites staking claims in the area, and they’d found a way to coexist with the tribe.

  When the government tried to force what was by then known as the Sawtooth Jasper band to move to the southeast, to a reservation where they’d already pushed the Shoshone-Bannock tribe, Matthew Cahill was dead, but his son, Douglas, stood with his Shoshone neighbors and convinced other landholders in the area to do the same. In that single generation, the Cahills had become very rich and powerful, and Douglas had strong-armed the government to create a reservation on the small territory where Gigi’s people had already settled. Sovereign land.

  It was a white savior story if ever there was one, but just then, the tribe had been in need of some saving, and only white men had power with the white government.

  Heath and Logan’s father, Matthew Cahill’s great, or maybe great-great, grandson, had married a Shoshone woman, and in that family, the whole history of the Sawtooth Jasper area was now blended. They weren’t the only family that had blended; the relationship between Indigenous folks and settler descendants had been strong since those early days, and a lot of people on the reservation worked and learned and played in town, fell and love and made families. But the Cahills had always been regarded as town leaders, and the strongest conduit between the town and the tribe.

  Gigi’s family didn’t have a ranch or a farm. She was from the part of the reservation where life wasn’t so easy as that. Alcoholism ran like a river through her family, on both sides, and it had kept the Mackenzies living bare bones for as many generations as Gigi could trace. She and her sister were the first people in her family—ever—to hold down steady work.

  She rode down the main reservation road, past the quaint little farms and tiny herds of sheep and cattle, toward the mountains. Those farms and ranches became weary little prefab houses, and she rolled on. Not until old trailers and corrugated steel shacks dotted the landscape like bits of litter did she slow down and turn off onto a deeply rutted road of dusty gravel.

  The view here was like nothing she’d seen in a decade of traveling around the globe. All the wonders she’d visited, all the sights she’d taken in, none of them surpassed the view right here, with the Sawtooth rising high above her and the lush fields and bright sky stretching out as far as her eyes could travel. Right up close was crushing poverty and deep need, but just beyond it was glorious natural beauty.

  That had been her life. Her mom and dad, her grandma, her and her sister, all packed into a two-bedroom trailer, a battered, primer-grey pickup parked on the yard and an old AMC Matador on blocks along the side. A motorcycle or two in some stage of repair or disrepair. A couple of dinged-up hand-me-down bicycles for the kids to get around on. Rusty barrels for burning trash, and another half-barrel with a grate on it that served as a barbecue. A scruffy cur or two, or three, tied up outside—her dad had brought strays home on the regular, and her mother had always refused to have them inside. A tiny herb and vegetable garden in an old water tank. Her family was like the modern Native version of a Dorothea Lange photograph.

  But out the window, out the door, just beyond that sad shabbiness was literal purple mountains’ majesty. Like the very earth had offered what comfort it could to ease the suffering of the people who’d lived so peacefully with it for so long.

  Gigi pulled into the yard and parked the bike. Like the road signs, the place looked pretty much the same, with an extra patina of age and overuse. The beige metal siding had faded to a mottled, pearly color, and the rough edges had taken on a rime of rust. But the old barrels were where they’d always been, and the rickety metal lawn chairs, and the rotting rabbit hutch her father had once built in a flurry of sudden inspiration during one of his attempts to dry out. He’d decided he could breed them and sell the bunnies in town as pets—and then he’d been too drunk to take care of the breeding pair he’d bought.

  But no mutts lunging and barking from ropes around trees—without her dad, there was no one to bring strays home. No battered pickup or Matador taking up space—those had been hauled off by friends after her dad’s death, bought with all they could scrape together, to try to help out the grieving family.

  The bikes, too, were gone. Including the one he’d ridden to his death. That one had never come home.

  No vehicle at all—her mom didn’t drive, and no doubt Frannie was at work. Her sister had married a man from the tribe, and in the Shoshone way, he’d moved in with her family, but he’d left them and the reservation. Left Frannie with a baby boy.

  Gigi saw the bright plastic evidence of her nephew’s childhood scattered amongst the dust and dried leaves that made up the front yard. She’d never met him, but she supposed she would now. Her mom watched him while Frannie worked at the Lunch Box in town.

  She took her helmet off, dismounted, and unfastened her bag from behind the seat. As she fussed with the webbing, she heard the heartbreaking, familiar creak of the door opening.

  “Georgia? Baby?”

  A lump surged up and filled Gigi’s throat like a jagged stone. She turned around, and there was her mom, standing at the top of the pre-poured concrete steps that served as a front stoop, holding the door open. Dressed in baggy jeans and a stripped t-shirt, she was
thin as ever, wearing round wire-rimmed glasses that looked just the same as Gigi remembered. Her hair was in the same two braids she’d always worn. But that hair had gone iron grey.

  And that, her mom’s grey hair, was when Gigi truly realized how very long she’d been gone, how very much had changed, and how very much she’d lost.

  She swallowed down that painful rock and took a deep breath.

  “Hi, Mama.”

  Chapter Three

  “Oh my baby! Oh my baby!”

  Gigi’s mom stumbled down the short steps and ran across the yard. Gigi ran to meet her, and they met in the middle, by the barbecue, crashing together in a tangle of arms. Gigi let her bags drop to the ground as her mother sobbed against her shoulder.

  “I’m so sorry, Mama. I’m so sorry.” She didn’t know if she was staying, she couldn’t imagine staying, but right now, all she could feel was guilt, a huge, leaden weight of it—for not being here to bury Maw, for being away so long, for leaving in the first place. “I’m so sorry.”

  “Hush now.” As always, her mother’s tears were a cloudburst, spent quickly and gone, leaving fresh air behind. “Let me get a look at you.” She stepped back and smiled up at Gigi.

  Mom was a tiny thing of barely five feet and not quite a hundred pounds. Maw had been even smaller, though she’d also been soft and round. Frannie was short, too. But Gigi had gotten their father’s height. Among her people, tall was relative, but her father had been nearly six feet, one of the tallest men on the reservation. She was five-five, average in most of the world but a skyscraper in her family.

  “You’re so skinny!” Mom grabbed her arms and squeezed. “And oh no, you cut your hair!” She plucked at the ends, which just brushed Gigi’s shoulders.

  Gigi laughed and pulled her mother’s hands away, keeping hold of them. “I cut my hair a long time ago. It’s easier to deal with when it’s not so long. And I weigh five pounds more than I did when I left, Mom.”

  “Well, you look skinny. But beautiful. You are beautiful as ever. Are you hungry? Tyson’s down for his nap, but if we’re quiet I can heat up some leftovers. There’s chicken I can cut up for fried chicken salad, if you like. Come on in! Let’s get you comfortable!”

  She turned and began to pull Gigi toward the trailer. Gigi pulled gently back. “Mama, wait.” When her mom faced her again she said, “I’m so sorry I wasn’t here for Maw. I didn’t get your email until it was too late.”

  The happy light of reunion faded from her mother’s eyes, but she didn’t lose her smile. “I know, baby. You told me in your message. It’s okay. Maw understands. She always did.”

  “Do you understand?”

  Mom sighed and let go of her hand. “There’s a lot to talk about, Georgia. Right now, I just want to be happy to have my baby girl home. Can we go a little slower with the hard stuff? Are you staying long enough for that?”

  Those questions made up the answer, didn’t they? “Yeah, okay.” Gigi followed her mother into the ancient trailer.

  Inside, even more than outside, nothing had changed. Same plaid sofa, same tables, same lamps. Same rocker recliner that had been Maw’s throne most of Gigi’s life, with the same granny-square afghan hanging over the back. Same faded prints and framed school photos on the walls. Even the television was the same, a big black tube model her mom had won at a Christmas raffle the December before Gigi left.

  She set her bags on the sofa and looked out the window at the back yard. Mrs. Largo stood at her living room window, holding the curtain back. Gigi waved, and the curtain dropped suddenly.

  She’d made it all the way home without being recognized, or at least without noticing she’d been. It wouldn’t be the first time Connie Largo was Patient Zero for the gossip virus.

  “Do you want a beer?” her mom called softly from the kitchen.

  Gigi turned and saw her peering between the cupboards and the countertop. “No, Mama. I don’t drink, remember?”

  “Still?” Mom twisted the top off a bottle of Coors Light.

  “Yeah, still.” And always. As far as she’d been able to tell, there were two things that happened when you grew up in a family of drunks. You either became one yourself, or you stayed dry as a desert. There was no middle ground, though she knew some who tried to pretend there was.

  “Well, there’s cherry Kool-Aid, or I could mix up some milk.”

  Though they were surrounded by cows, she’d grown up on powdered milk. Cattle around here were beef cattle, generally, and milk was just as expensive and short-lived here as anywhere. “I’ll just have water, thanks. I can get it.”

  Her mom waved that off and took a familiar gold glass tumbler down from the cupboard. She broke ice from a tray and filled the glass half full, then took it to the tap.

  Gigi sat on a stool on the ‘dining room’ side of the counter and sipped at her water—fresh well water, a crisply sweet taste she hadn’t had in a long time—while her mother pulled fried chicken off the bone for chicken salad. She didn’t offer to help because that wasn’t how things worked here. The tiny kitchen had room for only one cook.

  “So tell me how you’ve been,” Mom said, plucking tender meat from the bones, getting every bit. “Where were you?”

  “Still in Brooklyn.”

  She looked up. The glasses made her eyes look even wider than her surprise made them. “Really! That’s a while you were there, then.”

  “Yeah. Almost six months. There’s so much happening in New York I still hadn’t seen it all.”

  Her mom’s hands paused, and she spoke without looking up. “Are you going back, then?”

  “I don’t think so. I quit my job and said my goodbyes. It was time to move on.”

  She’d been getting too settled, but not in the way she wanted. She’d had a job and friends, and she’d even started thinking about taking a real room, with a lease, instead of just squatting in Darwin’s living room. But New York wasn’t what she was looking for. She hadn’t been any happier there than anywhere else. It was just the place she’d been standing when she’d started feeling tired of living the way she’d been, with no more earthly possessions than what fit in a duffel and a backpack.

  “So you’re not home to stay.” Mom spoke to the greasy chicken bones.

  “I don’t know, Mom. Honestly, I just don’t. I just follow my heart and go where it leads.”

  “Maw always said you’re an old one at heart. Our people weren’t meant to keep in one place, she said. We were meant to follow the herd, and most of us have forgotten that, but you feel it deep in your spirit.” She looked up, and there were tears in her eyes, magnified by her glasses. “Is that true?”

  “Maybe. Mom, I don’t know. I don’t have better answers than I ever have.”

  “Even after ten years?”

  “Even after ten years.”

  Mom pushed the mound of chicken into an old Tupperware bowl and started chopping celery. For a while, they didn’t talk. Gigi sat and sipped her water, thinking about all the places she’d been in these last years, all the things she’d seen. She was wiser now, certainly. Her world was much bigger and more clearly defined than it had been when Boise was the most exciting place she could imagine ever seeing. She’d been to Asia and Europe, to Central and South America. She’d been in forty-three of the United States, and four Canadian provinces. She’d traveled by car and motorcycle, truck and bus, train and plane. She’d even worked a crab boat in Alaska.

  In most places, she’d spent a few days or weeks. Others, when she needed to stop for a bit and earn some money, she’d stay a few months. Brooklyn had been the longest in all that time, and the very first time in all those years she’d even considered staying put.

  Her world was vastly bigger than it had been when she’d run from Jasper Ridge and home. Her body of knowledge and experience had exponentially expanded. But she was still searching, still missing something vital, and still didn’t know what.

  Actually, she hadn’t been searching at all, not
for a long time. She’d simply been living. Landing somewhere she was curious about, or wherever the money ran out, and then moving on when she was curious about somewhere else and could afford to get there. Or just pointing in a direction and going until she felt like stopping. For a decade, that had been a pretty good life. She’d met thousands of people, made hundreds of friends. Learned about scores of different ways of being in the world. She’d worked in offices and fields, on land and sea. She’d slept in houses and shacks, apartments and yurts, and more motels and hostels than she could count. She’d slept under the stars. She’d slept in the rain. All of it had made a pretty good life.

  Maybe Maw had been right. Maybe she was just a wanderer, pure and simple.

  When the chicken salad was made, Mom spooned some onto an old Corelle plate. She plucked a piece of fry bread from the basket on the counter and set it on the plate, then went to the fridge and pulled out a Mason jar of applesauce. Gigi grinned as her mom spooned some of that onto the plate as well. She was getting a lunch like she’d had as a kid.

  As her mom pushed the plate and a spoon across the counter, she asked, “You sure you don’t want some Kool-Aid? There’s some Lipton mix, too. I can make a pitcher of tea.”

  “Water’s fine, Mom. Come sit with me.”

  With a smile shadowed in sadness, Mom nodded and turned to the fridge. She brought a fresh bottle of beer over and sat beside Gigi while she ate.

  At the first taste of her mom’s fry bread, Gigi was overcome. She sat for a moment with the bite of bread on her tongue, her eyes closed, and felt the homesickness she’d avoided all those years. She’d called it ‘guilt’ and stayed clear of her email and its connections to her past, but right now, in this time capsule of a home, with her mother’s food in her mouth, with her mother sitting right beside her, she understood that it hadn’t been guilt, not wholly. She’d missed home. Ten years of homesickness landed on her shoulders all at once, and she could hardly swallow her food for the well of loneliness that surged up in her chest.