Yellowcake

by Ann Cummins

  He sits in a straight-backed chair against a wall in a room tight with people. A long table nearly fills the room, his family and George's crowding around it—the table a shiny Christmas red. A thick-lipped, eyeless salmon has been laid out on a bed of greens. Goopy swarms of red and black fish eggs nestle in the greens. Edna, loading her plate, says, "You sure you want to go through with this?" and George says, "Kill us now." Rosy says, "There'll be no killing on my watch."

  There are cheeses on the table, and fruit, and some potato-looking thing, and a turkey, its inside stuffed with something orange.

  Maggie stands in front of him. She's saying something he can't quite understand and handing him a box wrapped in silver. "Hey, everybody," she says. She picks up her champagne glass and clinks it with a fork. "Daddy has something he wants to say." They all wait. He looks at the box, then at Maggie, her eyes bright and eager. She says, "Mom, Daddy got you a wedding present."

  "Isn't that nice," the priest says.

  Ryland stares at the silver box. He hands it back to Maggie, who hands it to Rosy, who at first doesn't look like she wants to take it. "Honey," she says. "How nice. Whatever it is, you spent too much."

  They all watch her open it, and they ooh and pass it around. Maggie holds it under Ryland's nose. She's joking about how it's a surprise to him, too, but his checkbook has a bigger surprise in store. He stares at a clear blue stone in a silver setting on a silver chain, a tiny four-point star shining like the star of Bethlehem in the middle of the stone. Rosy comes over and kisses him on the cheek.

  "It's a smaller version of the one Sue gave me, Mom."

  A child stands next to him, her hand on his knee, looking into the box. For the life of him, he can't remember her name. He knows he loves this child, but just now her name has flown from his head.

  31

  IT WAS STILL LIGHT Thursday evening when Becky came in from her run, and her mother asked her to go check on her father, who was in the hogan. She stopped to change out of her running shoes. She believes that was the minute he died, because he was still quite warm.

  She found him lying next to the wood stove in the middle of the round room, stretched out on his back, eyes closed, hands fisted at his sides, feet pointing west. She was not afraid to touch him. She had been anticipating this moment for so long. Among the mix of emotions that swept through her, she felt relief that the struggle was over. She knelt next to him, uncurling his still warm fingers one by one, the only part of his body that betrayed any struggle at the end. She was not sorry that he had faced death alone because she knew that was what he had wanted, but she was sorry for herself and, oddly, mad at him, not at him but at the clenched hands, a gesture that left her out so completely. For a while she held his hand, just as he had held hers when she was a little girl. She tried to pray but had no words, only relief and, behind it, the urge to blow something up. She felt the heat of him leaving. Before he was completely cold, she straightened his arms by his sides and covered him head to ankles with his Pendleton blanket, which was not long enough to cover all of him. Then she went into the house and told her mother.

  The struggle, though, is not over. Becky's mother began making calls right away, first to the undertaker and doctor, then to Aunt Pip and Katie, and then she handed the phone wordlessly to Becky, who called her father's relatives. But it was her grandmother who arrived first. It was odd. Ariana had the farthest to come, and she has no phone. It was as if she'd been hovering just around the corner. Delmar's father brought her and Delmar, too.

  They wouldn't come inside, so Becky went out to them, and that's when she saw the casket in the back of the truck. A simple pine box.

  "Mom has a coffin," she told them.

  Ariana didn't speak. Delmar did the talking. He said that their grandmother wanted her father buried at their sheep camp on the hidden mesa, where his ancestors were. Becky told them her mother had a plot at Desert View Cemetery in town. Her grandmother wanted him laid to rest in the Navajo Way, lodged in a shallow grave, from which the spirit can easily get out and find its way west. Her grandmother believes that's what her father wanted.

  Becky went back in and told her mother. When Aunt Pip and Katie arrived, they decided to call the undertaker back and tell him to wait until morning while they resolved the problem. Nobody wants a fight.

  But the problem has not been resolved. Instead, they've settled into stalemate. Becky's mother tried to explain to Ariana that she wants her husband close, in the cemetery, where she can visit him. The hidden mesa is fifty miles from here, twenty of them a steep, rutted wagon trail. And if they take him there, the men will cart the body off and not tell anybody where it is. But Becky's grandmother sat stonily through the explanation, acting as if she didn't understand English.

  All night her father's relatives drove in. This morning they sit parked in the yard, waiting in their cars; some of her clan cousins lounge around the stone fireplace at the edge of the yard. Her grandmother and Delmar moved to the porch, and Delmar's father stayed in his truck.

  All night her grandmother talked to herself in Navajo, telling and retelling the story about their ancestors, and Becky sat on the swing listening. Delmar translated. Becky has heard the story her whole life, of the lucky band of boys who became known as the lost boys, except they weren't lost, they were hiding in the hills when Kit Carson enslaved the Navajo and forced them to walk to Fort Sumner. The band, her great-grandfather and great-uncles, lived quietly, hunting in the hills around Mesa Verde while so many of her people starved or froze to death on the Long Walk. Her grandmother says that the Dine spirit runs strong in their family; when relatives pass, their spirits can best find their way west from the hidden camp.

  Now Delmar sits under the willow playing with C3PO. The minister from the Baptist church and his wife are in the house. Occasionally Becky can hear them praying with her mom and the others inside. They have called her in a few times, but she doesn't want to join the circle. She feels leaden, rooted to the swing.

  She has been reading and rereading the bumper stickers on Aunt Pip's car. The new one seems especially appropriate: AS SURE AS GOD PUTS HIS CHILDREN IN THE FURNACE, HE WILL BE IN THE FURNACE WITH THEM. Becky hopes this is true, because the day is going to be hot as hell, and though the hogan stays cooler than the house, it gets stuffy, too, by the middle of the afternoon.

  The sweet smell of baking pastries comes from the house—the aunts are baking again. It's just after ten. She's thinking of changing into her running clothes, going for a quick run while it's still cool and before anything happens. She watches Delmar's father get out of his truck and let down the tailgate. He says, "Del, help me," and begins to pull out the pine box. Almost simultaneously, the screen door bangs open, startling Becky. Her mother yells, "We have a casket at the mortuary!" She has probably been waiting for this.

  Sam stops what he's doing.

  "We don't need that!" Delia screams. She holds her stomach. Her body is shuddering, almost convulsing. Becky lurches from the swing, puts her arms around her mother. Tear streaks have dried on her face, looking a bit like war paint. Delia says, "I'm through with this." The door slams behind her. A minute later, Becky hears her mother on the telephone with the mortuary.

  She feels as if she's been filled with sand, dry and heavy. Becky gazes at her grandmother's feet, stretched out in front of her in the dirt, looking like a child's in holey tennis shoes. Her grandmother would not want the heavy cherry wood box they bought, which could trap the spirit inside.

  C3PO walks slowly out into the sun to get the stick Delmar has just thrown. The dog looks sad. And hot. He knows about death, animals know.

  Delmar's father leans against his truck, smoking. His hair looks like it's been recently cut. Short, even fringe lies flat on the top of his head and high over his ears, like a boy-god, a Greek statue. The cut emphasizes his long forehead, making it seem bulbous. He tosses his cigarette and walks heel to toe across the yard, as if he has to think about it. He leans up against
the porch railing. "Just tell me what you want me to do and I'll do it, Ariana," he says. He seems very chummy with her. When she was little, Becky remembers seeing him a couple of times at barbecues on her grandmother's farm. She didn't understand how he could be Delmar's father, since her grandmother didn't treat him like a son-in-law. Becky knew it was considered taboo for a man to look his mother-in-law in the eye, but with Sam the taboos didn't apply. Her father said it was because he never married Alice, that Sam was, in fact, married to somebody else. On the farm nobody acknowledged him as a relative. He was Delmar's father, that's all.

  Now another vehicle is pulling in at the gate. Becky's fingers hurt. She's been clenching her hands as if fighting the battle before it happens. She thinks of her father's body, of his fists, and feels suddenly dizzy, her knees turning watery.

  The new truck is blue. A Ford.

  Harrison.

  He's wearing a green shirt, hair loose. He parks near the opening in the hedge, gets out, and stands, hands in his pockets. There's a dog on the passenger's side. A brown lab.

  She crosses the porch and the yard. "What are you doing here?"

  "I went by the bank. Arnold told me about your dad. I'm real sorry, Becky." He touches her arm.

  She swallows, looking quickly at the ground, because if she looks in his face she'll cry.

  "What's going on?" he says quietly.

  The dog crosses to the driver's side, sticks his head out the window, and sniffs her shoulder. She runs her hand down his head, massaging under the collar, and the dog reciprocates, nuzzling her.

  "Looks like a powwow," Harrison says.

  She tells him the problem.

  "Old Indian standoff, huh?"

  "It's about to bust open." She tells him about her mother's fury and the phone call to the undertaker.

  "Want to get out of here for a little while? This is the boss, my dog, Naat'áanii. We could take you for a ride. You look like you could use a break."

  She laughs hoarsely. "I would," she says, "but three's a crowd."

  He bows his head, shaking it a little. She watches a smile flit across his lips. Suddenly he grabs her wrist, saying, "Hágo!" and pulls her toward the road, out beyond the juniper hedge. When they're out of sight of the house, he puts his arms around her, pulling her close, and the move starts her crying. He tightens his grip, and she cries harder. He smells like wood smoke.

  He kisses her. Cars whiz by. She feels very visible. The ground has turned soft, like quicksand. She feels her father's eyes on her, but she kisses him back. She wants to pour herself into him, to obliterate herself.

  He licks the edge of her mouth, smiling at her, his eyes full of light. "Mmm." He licks a tear track. "Salt." She laughs, wrenching away. He links his arm through hers and they walk along the hedge. She feels drunk.

  Harrison drapes his arm over her shoulder, and she lets hers creep around his waist. He's got a little roll. He doesn't work out. Take him to No Fat Mesa, her father seems to whisper. Why is it called No Fat? Because everybody who goes there gets skinny. Look at you.

  At the edge of the property is an open field. He steers her into it, following the hedge away from the road, trailing his hand down her back and into her jeans pocket. They have set the field's cicadas off. Well away from the road, they stop again, shouldering into the bushes out of sight of the road, he kissing her, his tongue swishing around hers. He tastes like maple; the cicadas clickety-clack.

  She turns her head so he's kissing her cheek. She says, "What would your wife say about this?"

  He bites her ear.

  "Ow."

  "You," he says, "are the most suspicious woman I've ever met." He runs his tongue over the top of her ear and says, "I am not now, nor have I ever been, married."

  C3PO starts barking, Naatáanii answers, and she can hear Delmar's father talking.

  They lean against the bristly pine needles that snap like live electric wires and feel like tiny knife pricks against her arm, cheek, hand—which ages ago unfurled her father's cooling fingers. He enfolds her in a bear hug, and she is crying again, burying her face against his chest. She can smell the long night's watch in her salty breath and sweat. His sweat is sharp and dark, musky. The world is made of juniper. He is in it, her father, who planted these bushes. She has smelled the tang of pine most of her life. She's grateful it hasn't died, that at least she has the sting and smell of it, and for now she has this groping, hot-blooded man.

  A horn beeps on the other side of the hedge. She gasps. He pulls back, his dark eyes glossy, forehead glistening with sweat. The horn beeps again. He smiles, putting his forehead to hers. "Gotta face the undertaker," he says. He begins pulling pine needles from her hair, and she from his.

  They walk slowly. Her legs and feet feel liquid. Grasshoppers, full-grown browns and yellows plus new little greens, scoot out from under their feet. She can hear crows calling from the river, where they always go to complain as the day heats up.

  "Your dad never told you what he wanted?" Harrison says.

  Tell her Jesus Christ forgot to learn my name. She watches the ground.

  "What do you think he'd want?" Harrison asks.

  It makes more sense to hide his body away in some shallow place. If the spirit lingers or returns, as she thinks he believed, she supposes it would want to be running and not trapped underground.

  "Why is everything a struggle?" she asks him.

  "Not everything's a struggle." He pinches her side and bumps her hip, smiling at her. "I heard about the renegade Indians. I thought they were a myth. The band that evaded Kit Carson."

  "My grandma's been telling the story forever."

  "So you're related to the renegades. Cool."

  "There are pictographs on the canyon walls up there. You can see where they made camp."

  "Very cool. Can we go up there sometime?"

  She thinks about that. Probably not after today. It's her grandmother's land.

  "It's complicated," she says. She explains how her grandmother holds grudges and she may not be welcome on her grandmother's land if her mother gets her way.

  "Don't let it happen."

  "My mother's got her rights."

  They're nearly to the road. She can feel the burn of the sun on the back of her neck and in her scalp. It will be over soon, she thinks. She doesn't want to think beyond today, what this walk and this man mean.

  "You side with your mom? You believe what she believes?"

  "No. I don't know. I think a wife has a right to tend her husband's grave."

  He nods, then says quietly, "Christians have been exploiting our people for years."

  "You don't understand," she says, her voice low, shaky. She is furious all of a sudden that he thinks he gets an opinion. Mr. Sovereign Nation. "It's complicated."

  He stops, takes her face, and kisses her lightly. He says, "Bik'i'diishtiih."

  The sound of the language grates. "What?" She stares at his throat. The word came out harsher than she meant it.

  "It means I'm trying to understand," he says softly. He takes her hand. She holds his loosely. They start walking toward the driveway, where a hearse is parked half in and half out of the yard.

  She can hear chanting coming from the other side of the hedge, Navajo voices. Her legs ache terribly.

  At the entrance they see the hearse driver and his helper walking across the yard toward them. "Listen," the driver says, "I can drive back and forth all day. But does your mother understand that it's an expensive ride? And there's no refund on the casket. And you've got the viewing room whether there's a body to be viewed or not. I don't mean to be disrespectful, but somebody ought to make a decision here."

  She glances at Harrison. He watches her. There's warmth in his eyes but also something else. Some distance.

  "Don't leave," she tells the driver and lets go of Harrison's hand.

  32

  BITS OF SUNNY SAND and dust swirl in the yard, drifting up, floating down. C3PO has brought Delmar the wet stic
k. He says "Shht" to the dog, making as if to throw the stick but then not throwing it. C3PO walks out after the invisible stick, stopping in the sun, looking back, and giving Delmar a mean look, then continues walking toward the porch.

  Delmar has been thinking about the times he's partied with his cousins. He wonders if he will party with them today. He doesn't want to, but he might want to later, after Officer Happy. He hopes he doesn't want to, but just thinking about it makes him want to. All night his clan cousins stood around the stone fireplace near the edge of the lot and fed cedar to the fire. Delmar stayed away from the fireplace. They're younger than he. He had taught them the trick of disguising the smell of marijuana with cedar smoke.

  A little while ago, one of them dropped a joint, as fat as a Tootsie Roll, in Delmar's hand. "Mexican stuff. Mostly pesticide," he said. "Works, though." Delmar put the joint in his T-shirt pocket.

  Delmar remembers a funny story he heard about draft dodgers during the Vietnam War. They had to take urine tests to make sure they didn't have hepatitis or something, and one guy told how he snuck in vanilla cream soda and poured it in the pee cup. When the army physician saw it, he said, "That doesn't look right," and the guy said, "No, it doesn't. Better run that through again." And drank it. The guy didn't get drafted because they thought he was crazy. Delmar wonders what Officer Happy would do if he peed cream soda this afternoon, and he wonders, too, how he's going to make his three o'clock appointment if they have to take his uncle's body to the sheep camp.

  Becky has just gone out of the yard with Harrison. Harrison's a good guy. Harrison and Becky. That's a combo Delmar never would have predicted. Good. But surprising.

  His father is leaning over, listening to his grandmother. Now Sam straightens and walks over to him. "C'mon, Del. Let's do this."

  "Now? We should talk to Becky."

  "Your grandmother wants us to do it quickly because if we don't it'll be too late."

  The people in the house have huddled up again. Through the front window, he can see their backs as they stand together in a circle, heads bowed. "Má saní," he calls to his grandmother. He motions with his head toward the back of the house. His grandmother nods at him, then begins struggling to her feet.