Heartbeat Braves

by Pamela Sanderson

  Henry laughed. “Barely. I’ve spent more time with my arm inside its foul-smelling innards than I care to remember.”

  “You’re like a poet,” Tommy said.

  “That’s what I’m known for. What’s going on with the bus?”

  Tommy growled unhappily.

  “Still not running?”

  “Between us,” Tommy said, “not really. Don’t let the ladies find out.”

  “I got a buddy who’s a mechanic. I could connect you two. He’s from up Colville.”

  “Really? One of them Colville mechanical Indians?”

  “Normally that’s a well-kept secret.”

  Tommy smiled. “I could use the help. The boss is coming this way. Time to look busy.” He motioned for Henry to hand him the water scraper, and then disappeared into one of the offices, dragging it behind him. The person Tommy referred to as boss, was Rayanne.

  “Let me guess. He wants your van. He saw me with the keys and he figures it’s a free-for-all.” Rayanne had an old beach towel in one hand and a mop in the other. She offered him a choice.

  Henry took the towel. “Something like that.” They worked side by side mopping up the last traces of water.

  “I complained about not having carpeting under my desk, but now it turns out to be a good thing.” She went outside to squeeze out the mop. “Sorry about earlier,” she said when she returned. “You don’t know what all we’ve done to get that place. Reports and assessments. Standing in front of groups begging for money. We’re so close and we’ve waited so long. That guy’s smug face was so infuriating. The thought of disappointing everyone causes me physical pain. I was not thinking clearly.”

  “So, we’re even now?”

  She laughed. “Not even close. One stolen arts festival for one stolen, but quickly recovered, van. Who do you think won that deal?”

  “I didn’t steal it, Arnie did. And I’m telling you, be the boss. Besides, that van isn’t worth its value as scrap and I’m still driving it. I’m giving the edge to you.”

  Rayanne nodded. “A fragile truce.”

  “Not fragile,” Henry said. “A truce.”

  Rayanne let him shake her hand. He tried to squeeze in a way to convey the depths of his crush on her.

  “What did Linda say about mean old Mr. Suit?” he asked.

  “I didn’t tell her. I hate holding back, but now we’re in the middle of this giant disaster. She can’t take any more bad news or her head will pop off and roll away. We can’t have that. Besides, it’s got to be a mistake. Maybe that guy is new and so accustomed to intimidating people, he didn’t pay attention to what we said.”

  “Arnie knows lots of government people. He can find out what’s going on.” Henry tried to sound reassuring.

  “Maybe,” Rayanne said. She took out a bright green sticky note and scribbled on it. “If we ever get power again, we’ll research the property and look for something in the public records. Maybe we can get an answer that way.” She stuck the note on her computer screen.

  “We’ve mopped up. Now what? What do you do at work when there’s no power?” Henry threw the wet towel into a bucket. Rayanne added the mop and leaned it against a wall.

  “Good question,” she said. “Kill time? You said bad luck runs in streaks. What’s your bad luck?”

  Henry took a deep breath, not sure about revealing the most incompetent parts of himself to a person who redeemed herself every fifteen minutes with an act of miraculous competency.

  “I lost my apartment,” he said.

  “Kicked out? Bummer,” Rayanne said. “You’re moving. We’re moving. I sense a theme here.”

  “Relocation is in our DNA,” Henry said.

  “Some relocations are better than others. What part of town do you want? Rents are nuts all over. Well, unless you don’t mind a commute. I heard there are good places on the east side.”

  She even had more information about moving than he did. He could learn a thing or two from this woman.

  “I’m keeping my options open.”

  “When do you have to be out?”

  “End of the month.” Maybe it was fortunate his mom told him no. How humiliating would it be to tell her he was living with his mom and sleeping in his old bedroom?

  Rayanne didn’t hide her pity. “What a pain. Are you using one of those apartment finder apps? I helped one of Linda’s friends find an apartment that way.”

  “What’s it called?”

  “May I?” Rayanne nodded at his phone.

  He hesitated before he handed it to her. “Can I trust you not to run off with it?”

  “You can.” Her dark hair swung forward as she bent over the device, her fingers moving swiftly across the screen. She tossed her head and her hair tumbled back over her shoulder. She smiled when she caught him staring.

  “Sorted by proximity to the office,” she said, handing him back the phone.

  He scrolled through the results. “Do you want to check out apartments with me?” It was an accident that he said it out loud.

  “Not even a tiny bit,” Rayanne said. “Besides, I have big plans tonight.”

  “Oh,” Henry said. “You, uh, seeing someone?”

  “I am,” Rayanne said. “It’s not what you think.”

  “What do I think?”

  “Guys?” Linda came out of her office. She made a noise that was a cross between a sigh and a groan. “Plumber says it’s medium serious, but will cost some money. He can’t do anything until he gets an okay from the landlord. Landlord is MIA. Insurance is sending someone over. I don’t know what good that will do. The damage is limited to our old moldy files and the bottom of our furniture. What happened out at the Chief?”

  He expected Rayanne to break it to her slowly. Instead, she said, “Gruesome. Some guy with a mopey face said that there was no sale, no one is moving and it was a big mistake. Then he told us to leave.” Rayanne’s voice cracked on the last bit. He had underestimated how upset she was.

  Linda stared up at the ceiling, her lips moving silently as if in prayer. Then he heard a whispered, “Eight...nine...ten.”

  “Mopey didn’t give you his name?” she asked.

  “I stole Henry’s van and drove off before he had a chance.” Rayanne glanced at Henry.

  “He nonverbally indicated I should get the hell out of there,” Henry explained. “Given my limited options, I did.”

  “Okay,” Linda said with false brightness. “I’ll put this on my list of giant problems that can’t possibly be worse than getting knocked up at seventeen and living in a trailer. I’ll get to it as soon as I can.”

  “Sorry,” Rayanne said.

  “Don’t be sorry. It’s probably a misunderstanding. I’ll handle it.”

  Linda returned to her office and closed the door.

  Arnie handled problems like this all the time. Out on the rez they had fires and traffic pileups in icy winter weather. Why wouldn’t they just phone him?

  Henry nodded back at Linda’s door. “Did she get knocked up at seventeen? Not judging. My mom did something like that.”

  “No, that’s the path she thinks she avoided by busting her ass in high school and going to college a year early. But when things are grim here she weighs it against the road not taken. It’s supposed to be funny. She knows this is the much better choice.”

  “I get it,” Henry said.

  “You could use a better understanding of what’s going on here,” Rayanne said.

  Henry stared at the chaos the flood had caused. “You think I don’t understand?”

  “I’m speaking of another level.”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “You curious what I’m doing tonight?” Rayanne asked.

  “I am,” Henry said. What was she up to? Creating a study scheme for her native language? Spending hours in the rock-climbing gym? He couldn’t imagine what it might be.

  Rayanne hesitated before giving him her address. “Don’t be late. We
gotta schedule to keep.”

  “What schedule?” he asked.

  “Wait and be surprised.” She smiled at him, a welcoming smile. After all this time fighting him, maybe she was warming up. A trend he wanted to continue.

  “Is it illegal?”

  “Not even close,” she said.

  15

  Ten measly minutes without any new disasters and Linda could figure it all out. It was a matter of prioritization, and determining who to contact, and figuring what questions to ask. Normally the familiar chaos of her office offered comfort but now the floor was wet, and her desk was covered with boxes and stacks of paper that needed to stay dry. The room was dark and she flicked the light switch several times before she remembered the power was off.

  She sat down in the dark and immediately stood again. Coffee and something sweet would save her. There was always a cookie or a half of one of those red velvet donuts that no one would ever finish in the break room. She picked up her coffee mug and was halfway out her office door before it occurred to her that, without power, there was no coffee either.

  There was nothing fun about a burst pipe. The office smelled like wet dog and already a whiff of mildew fogged the air. Too bad a lit match wasn’t an acceptable solution. She’d be sorry to lose all her stuff, but she smiled at the vision of flames roaring through the windows of this terrible building. They could get office chairs with seats that weren’t permanently indented and filing cabinets that closed without a well-placed kick. She could be free of the clutter she wasn’t able to part with voluntarily. Knowing her luck, the center would be the beneficiaries of a new wave of worthless donations and shabby furniture that other organizations wanted to get rid of.

  She propped her office door open as wide as it would go and used the feeble light to attempt to clear a spot on her desk big enough to work. She heaped the folders and books into even higher teetering stacks. She grabbed a couple of binders before they slid from one pile to the floor. A single page came loose and floated to the spot in front of her.

  “Of course,” Linda muttered. Margie had given her a line drawing of Coyote in the Pacific Northwest style of thick, curving lines. She propped the picture up against a box. “Maybe lighten up on me, could you, pal?”

  Ester bopped into her office, not smiling but a bundle of motion and energy. She spotted Coyote. “Oh, that explains a lot.”

  “About today or my entire existence?” Linda said.

  “Get it together, boss, we need you.”

  “I haven’t run screaming from the building. Isn’t that good enough? What news have you got?”

  “As your quasi-IT gal, I need to ask, should I turn the power back on?”

  Linda shrugged. “I don’t know. Is it safe now? Who would know? Rayanne’s been itching for more responsibility. Why don’t you put her in charge?”

  “Because you’re the leader now, and you’re doing great.” Ester came around and gave her a hug. Ester was a slender person but her surprisingly strong arms gave a good squeeze.

  “Thank you,” Linda said.

  “Have you talked to the landlord yet?”

  “No. Do you know that technology trick where it would look like the call came from a prize center? Maybe if he thinks he won a sweepstakes, he’ll answer the phone.”

  “Not like I’m on his side,” Ester said, “but it’s only been a few hours. He may legit be away from his phone.”

  “In my next life, I want to be born as one of those optimistic Indians.”

  “No need to wait that long,” Ester said. “What can we do in the meantime? Can we move into the Chief now?”

  “Ugh.” Linda shook her head. “It’s still full of other people. They told Rayanne they weren’t moving. I don’t think the city could pull the plug on this and not tell us about it. Until I’m in a better position to investigate, I’m assuming it’s a communication misunderstanding that will be cleared up soon. But we’re stuck here for now.”

  “Have you called Arnie?”

  As it turned out, Linda had considered and discarded the idea several times. Arnie had insisted she had his support at the same time he emphasized he answered to the board. The board that had lost confidence in her. Ester didn’t need to know all that.

  “No. We don’t need him to solve our problems for us. But we’re going to have to tell the board about the flood eventually. We’ll wait until we have a more complete picture of what’s going on.”

  Ester eyed her with skepticism. “Don’t call it a flood. Call it a ‘modest liquid disturbance’ and see what he says.”

  Linda shook her head and laughed. “That sounds like we had an incontinent alien in here.”

  “Maybe we did. Tell him we got carried away with a floor rejuvenation project. Refer to it as a fractional spillage event. We barely noticed. We carried on with a little damp on our shoes, but if he has some ideas he could share them.”

  By this time they were both cracking up.

  “The problem was so minor, we flipped off the power and carried our stuff outside and called it a regular Monday,” Linda said.

  “You got it,” Ester said. “I have a fully charged, old laptop you can use to get through the rest of the day.”

  “I’ll come get it,” Linda said.

  Out in the front room, they found the landlord talking to Tommy.

  The landlord was an older man with watery eyes and hunched shoulders like he hadn’t heard good news in decades. Linda could never be certain whether he was a man who lived with terrible sadness, or if it was a natural look he’d been born with.

  “I’ve called insurance. Sometimes these things happen,” he said. He could have been talking about anything.

  She took him through the building to show him the damage. The carpet was already drying out and they’d rescued the things that had been on the floor.

  “How soon can you be out of here? I can prorate the rent you paid for this month if you’re out by the weekend.” His calm tone indicated he had no idea what he was asking.

  “Where would we go?” Ester said.

  “Do we have to get out?” Linda asked.

  “You planned to move anyway. Can’t you make arrangements?”

  “Not that quickly, no. In fact, I was going to ask to extend our month-to-month.”

  He offered a noncommittal shrug. “It’s going to be tough for you to do business during the cleanup. We’re going to get dehumidifiers set up around the suite. The machines are the size of a suitcase, meaning the old-style, big suitcases. Not these things on wheels that everyone takes on the plane. The machine will suck the moisture out of everything. Even the socks on your feet. Helps prevent mold. A little noisy but you might get used to it.”

  “Cool,” Ester said. She and Tommy high-fived.

  “And the extension?”

  “I thought we agreed this was the last extension,” he said. “It’s easier if you’re out of here. I’ll get back to you.” The landlord studied the floor. “You did a good job. Probably minimized the damage. Good work.”

  At least one person thought she did something right.

  16

  When Henry arrived at Rayanne’s, she barely opened the door before she turned and hurried back to the kitchen. Her apartment was smaller than he expected, but at least she had one. It was tidy and contained real furniture like a couch and a TV stand. A dining room table big enough for four was half-covered with paperwork. There was a Pendleton blanket thrown over the back of the couch. The kitchen was a nook with room for one and enough counter space for a toaster oven and a cutting board. The room was infused with a delicious meaty smell.

  “What is that? Are we having dinner?”

  “Meal delivery. We’ve got meatloaf, mashed potatoes and gravy, green beans, and cornbread. Come over. I’ll show you how to assemble it. Wash your hands.”

  Henry squeezed in next to her. She had a stack of containers on the counter. She put a generous square of meatloaf into one. “I use bison,” she told him. She
added scoops of vegetables and a drizzle of gravy. “You do the cornbread. Slice each square in half and put a little butter in the middle. Then do the plastic wrap.”

  “How many are we making?”

  “Six tonight but you and I will eat with my grandpa. We need eight, counting the two of us.”

  She was inviting him to meet her grandpa. When he didn’t move, she added, “You don’t have to eat with us if you don’t want.”

  “I do.” Henry got to work, taking his time to cut the pieces the same size. “Who else is this for?”

  “Elders I know. Either from the center, or I know them from my grandpa. I started doing this for him. He’s never been much of a cook, and I saw how he was eating after my grandma died. A cheapo can of soup or a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. I wanted him to have a hot meal when I’m not around. That’s why the portions are so big. Most of them can get two meals out of this.”

  “Do you get donations or do this yourself?”

  “Myself,” Rayanne said. “This is my main project I want for the center when we move. I want to have a senior lunch, at least during the week. Or if we can raise the money, lunch for anyone who could be there. People who don’t have family in town could meet other Indians and have a place like home. When Tommy picks up the bus, we can help out with transportation. Grandpa doesn’t drive anymore. I take him around when I can, and Tommy has taken him to the doctor.”

  Rayanne put the last piece of meatloaf into a container and licked her fingers. She dropped the pan into the sink and ran the hot water.

  “How come it took the center so long to get a bus?”

  “The usual,” Rayanne said. She brought out a padded box and packed the dinners into it. “Time, money, insurance. What the pros refer to as technical assistance. Too many things for too small a staff. We’ll get there.” She gave Henry the box, then went back and loaded plastic bottles of juice into another padded bag.

  “Let’s go.”

  He was prepared for her car to be a junker, but it was an older model with a few dents. The kind of dents anyone with an old car would end up with. Once they got going, she said, “Be prepared for questions. There are very few things elders like more than talking about the love lives of young people. Say we’re friends or colleagues and steer the conversation in another direction. The ladies will love it if you flirt with them.”