Finding Casey

by Jo-Ann Mapson

  Louella took a drink of her coffee, and then looked inside as she swished the remaining liquid around before drinking it. “Maybe she was lonely because my mom was an alcoholic who’d go off on a tear and forget about me for weeks at a time. Maybe Grandma wasn’t sure how to fill that hole in my heart, so she handed me clay.”

  “I’m sorry,” Juniper said. “That sounds difficult.”

  “Hell, yeah, it was difficult. She thought she was done raising daughters, and she knew she couldn’t do nothing for my mom. Lost cause, she used to say.”

  “Did your mom ever get sober?”

  “A week before she died in the hospital down the road there. Indian Health Services contracts with Presbyterian hospital. She died in a clean room, but nobody was with her. Grandma didn’t think I was old enough to see something like that, but I was. If you don’t get to say good-bye, it haunts you.”

  Juniper didn’t know what to say. All quarter they’d talked about interview methodology, anthropological approaches, the use of proper terminology; they’d even had a journalism professor come and speak to the class. All that studying, and everything came down to Casey and the good-bye she hadn’t gotten to say. She was on the verge of tears and couldn’t speak a word. She heard Chico scoot his chair closer.

  “Thank you for sharing that, Louella,” he said. “Maybe we should take a break and check on those horses. What do you think?”

  “Good idea,” Louella said. She’d left the kettle simmering on the stove, and got a hot pad to carry it out to the barn. “Gonna make them a bran mash,” she said, “it being so cold.”

  “I know how to make that,” Juniper said, thrilled to have a task to do. “I can do it if you like.”

  Louella pointed with her chin to the cupboard. Juniper opened it and took out a big yellow bowl. “The bran’s in the fridge,” Louella said. “Otherwise mice get into it.”

  “We had that problem in California. Mostly in the barn.”

  “Yeah, well, I bet you didn’t have packrats. Big-eyed mothers, babies clinging to their back like possums. I left my rubber boots in the barn all summer, and the first time I went to use them, them rats had made a nest in my boot. They find a waterproof house, they’re gonna move in.”

  They worked together until they’d made a steamy porridge for the horses, and then Chico opened the door so they could all go out to the barn. The curly-tailed dog came along. Chico opened the barn door, and they could hear the horses “whickering,” a sound Juniper used to hear in California when she and Glory fed them a mash, or a handful of sweet feed. The smell and quiet of the barn brought it all back to her, like a fist clasping around her heart. She wondered if that particular noise was part of a horse’s language, and wished she could translate it. Louella poured half the mixture into a green bucket and handed the bowl to Juniper. “You feed Brown Horse. She’s Laurel’s horse. I’ll do Lil Sweetheart. That’s my horse, and yes, I named her when I was twelve years old.”

  Juniper felt the heaviness of the mare’s head as she dove into the mash, all the while making that happy noise. The horse reminded her of Dodge, who would lick his dinner bowl clean, then flip it over and lick the underside as if he expected there might be another dinner waiting for him. Behind her, she heard the sound of Chico taking pictures with her camera, and she didn’t even mind.

  After they were done, Louella let the horses wander out into the corral. She led Chico and Juniper to a stall with the door shut and pointed over the gate. “I put the hens in here,” she said, and scraped the last of the bran mash into their feed. The hens went berserk, and Juniper noticed they were the same kind that Glory had, that wyandotte breed her dad had driven all the way up to buy—then it hit her—here. He’d bought Glory’s hen from this place she’d found abandoned, the Farm. New Mexico was a small-town kind of state. Daddy Joe always said, “Six degrees of separation was invented here in New Mexico.”

  On their walk back to the trailer, it occurred to her that Louella was showing her the way with the interview. This was the paradigm for the “open-ended interview,” where you let the answer determine what to say or ask next. All she needed to do was establish a context, and they could pick up right where they’d left off. Once they were seated, this time in the living-room furniture, she cleared her throat and went for it. “My mom died when I was twelve. She wasn’t an alcoholic, but she abused prescription drugs. Actually, she overdosed on purpose, so I guess you’d say she committed suicide. I didn’t get to say good-bye either.”

  “Now I’m the one who’s sorry,” Louella said. “Maybe I was giving you a hard time there. So can I ask you something?”

  “Sure.”

  “What did you fill the hole in your heart with?”

  Juniper turned to Chico. He had his professor face on, the slight frown, his lips pursed. But in his eyes she saw kindness, so she forged ahead. “Drugs, boys, getting a tattoo, whatever made the hurt stop. I guess what finally filled it for me was my parents who adopted me. My adopted mom taught me to ride a horse. My adopted dad taught me how to make Indian spaghetti sauce. He also home-schooled me until I learned that the beauty of education is that you can never learn enough.” She swallowed hard. “I’ve lost a lot in my life, my sister and my real parents, but it’s pretty full right now. And I love pottery. When my parents were redoing the plumbing in their Santa Fe house, we found so many pot sherds under the foundation I couldn’t believe it. It felt to me like holding the past in my hand. That probably sounds silly.”

  “What part of Santa Fe?”

  “On the edge of the historic district. Colibri Road.”

  “I know that road,” Louella said. “My great-grandma worked for a rich family near there. Housekeeper.”

  “We don’t have a housekeeper,” Juniper said. “My parents both work, but my mom’s about to have a baby.”

  Louella smiled. “Girl, you don’t need to feel guilty for having an easier life. Have you ever made a pot?”

  Juniper shook her head no.

  Louella stood up. “Come on. Let’s go make a pot. You, too, Mr. Silent over there in the corner.” She walked across the room into the other half of her spare home, a place where art was born. Juniper watched Louella reach for the clay wrapped in plastic and get out her tools. She could imagine Louella’s grandmother, trying to keep a motherless child busy while living her life around the grief of losing her own daughter by degrees. Juniper felt like she had learned more in the last hour than she had in all her college classes. She could not wait to see what happened next.

  Chapter 17

  Glory woke up to Halle calling her name and the dogs’ barking. From the bedroom doorway, her sister looked as if she’d stepped out of one of the seven circles of hell, the one with free drinks, hours at the slots, and very little sleep. “You can’t even sit up to say hello to me? You leave your front door unlocked? Some crazed art collector could have strayed off Canyon Road and come into your house by mistake and—”

  “And what?” Glory asked, yawning. “Steal the one decent painting we have on our mantel? I’d call Aaron up and ask for a new one. For your information, I’m stuck in bed here due to my blood pressure, so don’t pick a fight with me.” She sniffed and waved her hand. “How was Vegas other than cigarette-smoky?”

  “I swear that town runs on Adderall,” Halle said, sitting down on the edge of the bed. “I probably slept a total of two hours. I did see that Cirque du whatever thing on the Beatles’ music. It made me cry like a baby.”

  “Why?”

  “Glory! Because it was the Beatles. Because they wrote the best love songs ever but never will again. Sitting there by myself all I could think about was John murdered by that crazed fan and George dead from brain cancer—what kind of god gives a man with that much genius cancer? I ask you.”

  “At least their music is forever,” Glory said. “I feel sad about it, too, but you should take the theological questions up with Mom.”

  “I’d rather not hear another lecture from
her. She already thinks I’m headed for hell. Where’s Joseph?”

  “Out buying food because I have to lie here forever.”

  Halle sat down on the bed and opened her purse. “Stop whining. I brought you a present.”

  “I’m not whining,” Glory said. “What did you get me?”

  “Open it and find out.”

  Glory tore away the tissue paper and there was a baby onesie with FUTURE SHOWGIRL silk-screened on the front in glittering red letters. “This is the tackiest thing I’ve ever seen,” Glory said. “I love it.”

  “Actually, I have something even tackier,” Halle said. “Doggie nephews,” she said in a high voice that got all their tails wagging, “Auntie Halle couldn’t leave Las Vegas without bringing you presents. Behold.” Out of her silver oversized purse she took a rubber pork chop with LAS VEGAS stenciled on it, a set of squeaky red dice, and for Eddie, an Elvis jacket made of ivory-and-gold pleather. “Take note this is the skinny Elvis model,” Halle said. “They have a fat one, too.”

  Eddie took one look at it and hightailed it under the bed.

  Glory was laughing so hard she got tears. Halle laughed along with her, and the two big dogs jumped and jigged around the bedroom, knocking over Halle’s purse and the stack of books on the floor, whacking their tails into the television screen, certain all this excitement indicated some kind of holiday. Eddie squeezed out from under the bed and ran out to the great room. “He’s looking for his Christmas stocking,” Glory said, and laughed all over again. “How long have you been gone, Hal? Because it feels like a thousand years since Thanksgiving. I am so glad to see you.”

  Halle gave her a kiss on the cheek, hugged her as best she could, and when Joseph walked into the house an hour later, they were still on the bed laughing.

  “What did I miss?” he asked, his hands full of grocery bags.

  Glory held up the onesie.

  “Aieee!” he said. “No way my daughter is wearing that horrible thing.” He stepped forward to grab it.

  Glory tucked it under her belly and Halle held up the Elvis jacket. “How about this?”

  “Just to make sure I’m in the correct universe,” he said, “I’m going to step outside and try coming back in again.”

  “What are you making for dinner?” Halle asked. “Whatever it is, put lots of alcohol in it.”

  If their laughter hadn’t drowned him out, they would have heard him muttering to himself in Spanish about hermanas locas and several other things.

  Juniper carefully unwrapped the micaceous pot layer by layer until it sat on Louella’s table. She was hoping that Louella would remember making it, would be so thrilled that Juniper had bought one of her pots; that the story she’d tell about this particular one would be so meaningful that it would not only impress Chico but make her paper skyrocket into the A-plus category. Louella smiled, picked it up, and turned it over and over in her hands. Juniper watched, jotting in her notebook, can’t stop touching. Does a sold pot still feel like hers? She’s smiling and shaking her head. What’s up—does she see flaws I miss? Chico was across the room, taking photographs of Louella’s other pots, and sneaking in a few of the deer head when Juniper wasn’t looking.

  Finally Louella said, “Girl, I’m sorry to bust your bubble, but this ain’t my pot. But I do know who made it.”

  “What do you mean?” Juniper said. “There was a blue ribbon inside it for the Taos County fair. It had your name on it and everything.”

  “That’s another reason it has to be a mix-up,” Louella said. “I’d never sell one of my prize-winning pots. Those are in the case over there,” she said, pointing to what Juniper had mistaken for a bookshelf. A Storm-pattern red-and-black woven blanket covered most of its contents until she moved it out of the way. “Let me get that pot out and show you.”

  The case was locked, and Louella moved back several other pots to reach the one she was talking about.

  “See the difference?” she said to Juniper. “This pot is handmade. Like I showed you, the clay goes into the puki, coil by coil. I build it up layer by layer, stopping every four coils to scrape it smooth and to add water and so forth. Couldn’t you tell this one here is wheel thrown?”

  “No. I assumed it was handmade.”

  Chico set the camera down on the table to look.

  Juniper was mortified. How could she be in his class and not recognize the difference between a hand-built pot and a wheel-thrown one? The telltale signs now seemed so obvious as Louella pointed them out.

  “You said you knew who made it,” Chico said. “Can you tell us her name?”

  Louella laughed. “Laurel. She made that pot a year ago sitting right there at the potter’s wheel. Wasn’t all that great of a day, as I remember. That freak Seth had given her a black eye and I was trying to talk her into going to the cops, but she wouldn’t go. She said it was her fault for making him angry. I damn near called them cops myself. She wouldn’t hear one bad word about her ‘Elder.’ “

  Juniper listened closely, imagining this Laurel who made pots, who loved horses and dogs but abandoned them to starve with bales of hay just out of reach. Why let any man whale on you? How could it ever be a woman’s fault enough to deserve a black eye? Candela taught her that much.

  Chico said, “Juniper?”

  “What,” she said flatly.

  “If you think about it, this angle doesn’t take away from your project, it adds to it. Plenty of top-rate museums have been duped into buying fakes. Sometimes they’re so well made it’s hard to tell the difference. Especially if you can track this Laurel down and interview her.”

  “Why would I do that? She’s not Indian.”

  “Does that matter so much?” Louella said. “I have some white in me. Does that mean my pots aren’t important?”

  Juniper was near tears, she was so embarrassed and angry. “You’re right, Chico. I’d really like to interview Laurel.” What she didn’t say was, And ask for a refund of my three hundred freaking dollars. “But somehow I don’t think she’ll be back to the Farm.”

  “Go by the Urgent Care,” Louella said. “Maybe even the hospital. Can’t hurt to try. Her last name’s Smith and her daughter’s name is Aspen. If she’s not there, maybe they’ll have a forwarding address. And listen, if you find her, ask her what I’m supposed to do with fifteen chickens and her horse. The hay’s not going to last forever.”

  “Thank you so much for your time and for showing us how you create pots,” Chico said. “Juniper will send you a copy of the finished interview. Would you consider allowing it to be published?”

  “Heck, yeah,” Louella said. “Make sure you put my website in there. I love making traditional pots, but damn, I’d like to sell a few, you know? I work nights at the casino and pick up odd jobs when I can.”

  “We’ll make sure your website’s prominently noted,” Chico said. “Thanks for allowing us this time.”

  “It’s me who should be thanking you, for all that food. It’ll keep me going until my next paycheck. My grandmother was right. It’s nice to have company.” She stood up to see them out.

  Juniper slapped her hand against her thigh, the same way she called Caddy. “Come on, Curly,” she said. “I’m taking you home with me.”

  “Hey, that’s nice of you. I’m sure Laurel will be grateful.”

  Laurel. The name kept popping up like a jack-in-the-box, Juniper thought. The mere sound of it annoyed her. The day was wrecked. She wanted to go home to her parents’ house, grab Caddy, and sleep for twelve hours, hoping to wake up and discover that this whole experience had been a dream.

  The brown dog had no qualms about jumping into her car. She hopped over the console to the cargo area as if she did it every day. Juniper had tossed her unzipped sleeping bag there before she and Chico went for their walk. Curly made a nest and put her head on her paws. Instead of groceries, she now had a dog to feed, walk, and water, a definite complication, but the only one that made sense of the day.

  The
y drove back toward the Pueblo in uncomfortable silence. Sooner or later, she was going to have to talk to Chico, but right now there was something more important that she needed to do. When she didn’t stop at the Cultural Center, Chico said, “I thought that was where we were spending the night?”

  “Every third word out of Louella’s mouth was Laurel this and Laurel that,” she said. “I’m going to the hospital to find her lying ass and ask for my money back. I paid three hundred dollars for that pot! That’s like a whole month of work for me. Not to mention giving my parents a fake. My dad is Navajo, Jicarilla, and Spanish. I’ll bet he knew it all along and didn’t say anything because he didn’t want to hurt my feelings.”

  Chico put his hand on her shoulder and she roughly shrugged it off. “Juniper, Louella said her kid was sick. Are you sure you want to get in the middle of something like that? It seems kind of mean to me.”

  Her anger had tempered itself into steel. It was as if she saw this straight-ahead road with a bull’s-eye at the end of it. She was armed, aimed, and not going to miss. “I’m sorry her child is ill. I hope she gets better. But she can spare me fifteen minutes while I explain to her the ramifications of selling a pot under false pretenses. It’s against the freaking law to pawn off something as Native-made when it isn’t. Not to mention really bad karma.”

  Chico sighed. “I think you should cool down first.”

  “I’m cool.”

  “No, you’re not. Louella got you talking about your biological mom,” he said. “Even a doofus like me could see it ripped off a pretty big scab. I think that was probably the bravest thing I’ve ever witnessed. Let’s go get some coffee. You don’t have to talk to me about it, but I think you need a little time.”

  “You want more coffee? Jeepers, could I be any more jacked up than I am already? Louella’s blood must freaking percolate the way she downed the stuff. I have coffee grounds in my molars. You know me better than that. I won’t be mean, I’ll be honest.”