by Ann Cummins
Teri frowns while she reads, her voice quarrelsome, high-pitched, a little screechy, the way she gets when she's tired. She didn't have a nap. He puts his hand on her head. She looks mournfully at him, letting the book sag, scooting and leaning against his calf, her head against his knee.
Has always been an irritation, that dog's barking.
Outside the front window, the wind is undressing the ash tree. Ryland closes his eyes, resting his head on the wing of his chair. Rains says, "Would you mind getting the car? It's a bit cold outside when you have to go about naked."
He can make the barking stop. Lady Finger and he have an understanding. When she sees him, she shuts up. Over that dog, he has some sway.
He begins to drift, walking in his mind, pulling the cart. His nose itches. The wind will be blowing smoke in from the Four Corners Power Plant. His nose would like to register a complaint. Why not?
In the south, smoke always fills the sky. Smoke from Four Corners, from Navajo Mines, and, an eon ago, from his own place, the mill on the reservation, where he used to walk along the garden path between the acid leach and the clear, cool water. It makes him dizzy even to think about trying to stay balanced on the narrow strip of land.
In dream he turns north, away from the smoke and toward an irritation.
He can't see her yet. Can't see the gleam in her eye, but he knows it very well. From the dog's point of view, anything can happen. Possibility abounds. This is what he does for the little Lady Finger. Big dog on path opens up a world of possibility for the cemetery dog. His cart wheels keep a rhythm: pow pow pow. Slo-mo machine gun, rat-a-tat. There's a throbbing at the back of his ears and in his neck. He looks straight ahead toward the things he can't see.
The barking stops. Has she seen him? She must have. He can't see her. He savors the sudden quiet. Does she fly in a tizzy up and down behind her fence? Is she furious? He pulls air as hard as he can.
Behind him a car is slowly approaching. He can hear the hush of tires sneaking down the hot pavement, and he can hear the engine. In his throat a tickle. He swallows, licks his lips, lips cracked and swollen because he breathes through his mouth. He swallows again, but the tickle bucks in his throat. Don't cough.
The cemetery dog has backed away. Big dog coming, big dog coming. The car flanks him. He burns with the effort not to cough. "Ryland," somebody whispers, and the ocean heaves, the cart skitters away, and he is falling, a torrent of hard nothing rising in him, behind it the thing that never comes, and just before he wakes up, he catches a glimpse of his own face on a rectangular card staring up at him from the grass, his ten-years-younger face without the bruised skin and blue lips, the man with a license to drive.
"Ryland!" Rosy is saying. "You missed it!"
"Missed what?" He opens his eyes.
"Say it again, honey."
Teri leans against his leg looking at him, eyes milky, cheeks flushed, as if she's about to cry. "What are you watching?" Rosy says.
Just now a pair of pants without a body is spooking the village people.
"Ah, honey," Rosy says, picking up the remote and flipping to the cartoon channel. "Is that a scary movie? Ryland, I'm not leaving you to babysit anymore if you're going to fall asleep."
"Teri talked!" Pooh yells.
"I wasn't asleep."
"Then what'd she say?"
"She said..."
"Shh." Rosy says to Pooh. "Don't tell him. He doesn't deserve to know if he's going to sleep through it."
Teri leans against him, both arms pressing into his thigh, the tears retreating, that cunning spark he loves moving in. "What'd you say? What'd she say?"
"I'm not gone thirty minutes, and you fall asleep."
"I wasn't asleep."
Rosy tosses her head, turns, and walks into the kitchen, the older girls following.
"What'd you say?" he whispers.
Teri laughs, rocking back and forth, his chair swaying with her. The back door slams. "Guess what, Daddy," Sandi says.
"What?" Eddy says.
"Your daughter just said her first words, but your dad missed it," Rosy says. "She was trying to have a conversation and he was asleep in his chair."
"She said—" Pooh says.
"Shh," Rosy says.
Then, after a beat, Eddy says, "She did? Hey Ter, come here."
"If I hadn't come back, we would've all missed it," Rosy says.
"Say it again," Ryland whispers.
But she's absorbed in the cartoon now. They watch a big grinning cat pussyfoot toward a yellow bird. Teri grips his trousers.
In the middle of the night, he wakes thinking he is sleeping next to water. The wind has picked up. Eyes closed, he listens to dried leaves scoot along the pavement, sounding like a babbling brook. There's another sound, closer. He tries to place it. He opens his eyes, staring through the murk of sleep. Somebody is in the room. He can barely make out the shape of a figure sitting in his chair. "Sam?" he whispers hoarsely. The figure sobs. "Rosy?"
He swings his legs to the floor, blinking, heart thudding. "Rose, what's the matter?"
She's crying. Is she crying? He can just see her in a shaft of light, the streetlight shining through a narrow strip where the curtain isn't quite closed. She brushes both hands under her eyes. "What's the matter, Rosy?"
"Nothing," she says. "Just blue." She blows her nose. "I'm sorry I woke you."
"Couldn't sleep?"
He thinks he sees her face spasm, teeth bared in a crying jag, her upper body jerking with it. Did he see that? Rosy? He waits, and he listens to her strange shuddering moan, which gradually dies away. They sit in silence. She sniffles occasionally, and he hears her tugging Kleenex tissues from the box.
"You know what I was thinking of?" she says after a while.
"What's that?"
"Horses." She clears her throat, garbled with phlegm. "Those old hobbled horses that used to come into Camp. Remember them?"
"Yeah. Sure. You cold? It's cold in here."
She gets up and walks to the curtain. He sees her fumbling for the cord, and then the curtains open. "What a wind. Maybe we'll get rain."
"Come sit under the blanket."
She crosses to the couch, sits down next to him, and he pulls the blanket over her legs. He reaches for her hand, which is freezing. He holds it in both of his. They sit listening to the leaves in the street. "You always get blue in the fall," he says.
"That's true. It takes me by surprise every time."
Cloud shadows race across the wall. There won't be rain, and there won't be snow. The clouds are empty. The autumn air carries no moisture, just friction, electricity.
"They scared me to death, those old hobbled horses. In the mornings, when it was still dark, I'd be packing your lunch, and I'd look out the window for the dawn and there would be one of those horses looking in."
"It was the grass. That's what lured them."
"Except they always came in fall. You remember? I got to where I'd listen for the crunching of dead grass so they wouldn't surprise me. And then in winter. I remember once, it was the first winter we were there. The kids were both sick. You'd been called in to work. One of the ore roasters had blown. I had this bad feeling, like something was going to happen that night to the kids or you, and I was standing in front of a window, it was all frosted up. On the other side it seemed so bright, like day in the middle of the night. And while I watched, these two little black holes appeared on the window. And they grew, and they grew. I didn't know what to think. And then I saw I was standing nose to nose with a horse. Scared me so much, because I hadn't heard a sound, and then I realized it was snowing, that was the reason for the quiet.
"Nothing did happen that night. Nothing happened the whole time we were on the reservation, nothing that bad anyway, not until the end, when Sam and Lily broke up. But it seems like it's been happening ever since, doesn't it? Little pockets of trouble. Do you know what I mean, Ryland?"
He doesn't answer.
"I mean Woody
..."
"I know." He squeezes her hand.
"You think Sam's okay? I mean, not that I care."
He laughs a little. "Yeah, I know you don't care."
"You think he's in trouble?"
"I don't know."
"What does your gut tell you?"
"My gut?" He thinks about that day on the mesa, Sam turning his back to him, something he hadn't done since he was a boy. "Yes."
She takes a ragged breath.
"But when has my gut ever been right."
"Well," she says, "I guess he's a big boy. He can take care of himself."
"Been doing it for a lot of years."
"I just hate not knowing."
"I know it."
Except for the wind, it's a quiet night. Not much traffic on Cactus. He can hear the clock on the wall ticking, the oxygen tank in the bedroom gurgling. An efficient metal animal, his roommate, more reliable than he. It will go on to be somebody else's roommate when he's gone. And yet he could live another thirty years. He's not that old. Sixty-five. Rosy read him an article yesterday about some oxygen-dependent sonofagun who outlived his machine, God forbid.
Could be worse. What if she went first?
"Ouch. Loosen up. You're hurting my hand."
He loosens his grip.
"Well, we should try to sleep. It's a big day tomorrow."
"Oh?"
"Don't you remember? You've got a doctor's appointment first thing."
"I do?"
"Ryland. I told you a week ago. I swear I think your memory's going."
"You're my memory."
"Hmph. We're going to get your blood work done. And the bronchoscopy."
Ryland laughs.
"I told you. Don't pretend I didn't."
"No," he says.
She looks at him. "What no?"
"Just no. No more doctors." She tries to pull her hand away. He holds it firmly.
In the dim light he sees her lips part. The canyon between her eyes deepens. She wrenches her hand away. "What do you mean?"
"I mean I'm done with doctors."
"Oh, that's ridiculous." She leans toward him, closing her mouth. Her chin begins to quiver. She starts to get up. He grabs her wrist, pulling her back, hooking her arm, clamping it against his ribs.
"I mean it, Rosy."
Voice shaky, barely audible, she says, "As far as I'm concerned, buddy, you don't have a vote. You might not care what happens to you, but I do."
"Mine is the only vote. It's my body. And Rosy? If I'm not able to speak for myself, I rely on you. Do you understand me?"
"No, I don't understand you."
"I mean it."
She takes a deep breath, starting to argue, but he cuts her off.
"Do you understand me?" he says.
She inhales, holding it. For a long time. Finally exploding, "Yes! But..."
"No buts."
"Let go."
"No."
She pulls. He holds her hand firmly. She pulls hard. He tightens, and she suddenly goes limp, hissing, "I don't care."
He laughs softly. "Of course you don't."
They sit there linked together, she fuming, he wheezing, listening to the wind and to the oxygen tank percolating in the bedroom. After a while she leans her head back on the sofa and closes her eyes. He squeezes her hand. "What did Teri say?"
"I'm not going to tell you."
"Come on. Tell me."
"No."
"Come on," he says.
He thinks he sees a nerve twitch at the edge of her lip.
"You don't deserve to know."
"What'd she say? It was something about the movie, wasn't it." He nudges her. Flicker of a smile at the corner of her mouth. "She didn't like the movie. That's what she said, isn't it?"
Her chin puckers. She's trying not to smile.
"Am I close?"
"You're so far off the mark."
He leans into her. "I'm close, aren't I." She smiles. He says, "There's my pretty girl."
