Blue Rodeo

by Jo-Ann Mapson

  There were wild roses weaving in and out of the chain-link, obscuring traffic. A creamy white-and-red-violet color, the petals fragile on stems. Pretty to look at, but if you so much as touched them, wild roses dismantled.

  Come on, Maggie. What’s tying you here? her friend Deeter had said to her when Ray left. Get Pete through school and then take off. Travel. Move somewhere pretty. Do whatever it was you were going to do before Ray stepped in and rewrote your life. Deeter made sense when they sat on the deck, drinking themselves jittery on coffee, the bay water lapping sleepily at their feet. At forty Deeter had retired from working, sold his house, bought the sailboat Ray had been foolish enough to register in Margaret’s name. When he talked about sailing to Hawaii or Mexico, changing lives seemed viable. Deeter had time to be there for her when Pete was in the hospital. He walked Echo, attended the mail, trimmed back the bushes, and refinished the dock he moored the boat to.

  When she came home leaden from sitting outside the ICU, certain Peter would never wake up, it was Deet who rubbed her shoulders and made her tea with a shot of Johnnie Walker so she could fall asleep. On that grim day when Peter’s doctor called in the specialist, he’d held her in the hospital corridor, brushed his lips across her cheek, cried with her, kissed her mouth. Before she could fully comprehend what it meant, Nori arrived, Peter came out of the coma, and they discovered his deafness, diminishing all else to low-priority concerns. But along the periphery of her conscious mind, Deeter’s kiss and his kindness grew layers, until Margaret thought it might be a good idea to try it again, to see what happened.

  Whether it was a fringed suede jacket back in high school or cutting her long hair short in one of those spiky styles, Nori was the first to try it. Her height and jutting hipbones made her look glamorous in a way her sister could admire only from a distance. It seemed like Nori always grabbed the things Margaret wanted, even before she realized she wanted them. Let her sister fall into bed with whomever she pleased, no matter if Margaret’s friendship with Deeter crumbled as a result. She didn’t need a sister or a husband, and friends like Deeter—well, maybe they were only a check in the mail every month after all.

  She had followed the lines on the map, every inch equal to ten miles, and at the end of all those ten-mile increments was Blue Dog, the trading post, that two-inch advertisement on the bulletin board for the Starr farmhouse, now hers by lease, a field of yellow summer flowers—some distant relation to peace from which she thought she could resurrect a self.

  At the horizon she could make out the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, fog shrouding the peaks even this late in summer. As she left the cemetery behind to complete her walking tour, staying to the outside of the school’s perimeter, she stopped at a long curving wall decorated with handmade earth-colored tiles. Running the length of the top edge of the wall, a V-shaped piece of copper directed a stream of water down toward a reflecting pool, where it fell in droplets. Fountain of Thanks: made by the maintenance crew and the students, 4/3/92, Riverwall, New Mexico, read the incised words in the right-hand corner of the wall. Each tile held a stamped word, and each word contributed to the whole of the poem:

  I am making the sacred smoke

  that all the people may behold it

  We are passing with great power over the prairie

  the light is upon our people making the earth bright

  feathers of sage and cedar upon our breasts

  shaking on wrists, ankles,

  the tail of the red fox lighting us

  We are crying for a vision

  behold one that my people may live

  Our people are generous

  this is our day

  your ancestors have all arrived

  the past has arrived, behold!

  Behold, listen, all is established here

  We are relatives this planet earth is in our hands,

  let it fly bird of earth and light

  all that moves well, rejoice, hey a hey a hey!

  Approach in a beautiful manner

  Approach in your best buckskin

  Thanks, all the people are crying

  grandmother of the earth,

  Thanks

  Each drop of falling water sounded a lutelike plunk as it hit the surface, beneath which carp swam through murky shallows. This was Peter’s world now, composed of people she didn’t know involved in learning things she could never completely understand.

  Back in Santa Fe, before she tackled the freeway, she spent an hour in the Red Cloud Café, drinking diner coffee, feeling the odd and sudden absence of tears, ignoring the sweet roll she’d ordered so she wouldn’t feel guilty taking up a table. On her third pass, the waitress patted her arm and said, “Sugar, you don’t have to say one word. Just sit there and drink your coffee, and I’ll keep out of your way.”

  Days later, Margaret stood washing her face at the pedestal basin. Every room in the Starr farmhouse was high ceilinged, spare of windows, plastered by hand. She could see places where the trowel had swooped and circled, leaving uneven surfaces, and imagine the hard work necessary to build up such thicknesses. Underfoot smooth pine floors dipped in areas that had taken the most traffic, cool on her bare feet. The walls were painted a pale yellow—not one of her favorite colors—but when sunlight filled the house, the yellow reflected a warmth that she imagined brightening the snowiest day of a long winter. Twenty-two years ago, B.A. in hand, she’d left winter behind in Massachusetts, forsaking the pleasure of leaves changing color in the fall and flowers blooming in spring for graduate school in California’s single balmy season. She’d left graduate school to marry Ray. In the early years it hadn’t been that bad a partnership. Ray worked hard to finish school. She loved driving into Los Angeles every day, earning her assistant curator’s salary, writing diplomatic letters of rejection to artists who didn’t quite pass the committee’s standards. When Ray got his first job staff writing for a television series, their future looked like it was lit with neon. He was a good writer, a hard worker, and they would have handsome children who would thrive in the year-round sunshine. She never imagined that twenty years later she’d have to start all over again, buying long underwear, finding a heavy coat, ordering lined boots—the East Coast essentials. No matter what happened with Pete, she’d made up her mind to stay through to the following summer, just for a chance to see the wildflowers bloom again by the roadside. A one-year lease, during which time her ex-husband and his new wife would produce their first baby, her son would learn his new language, and everything else would unfold in whatever mysterious plan it chose.

  Between Deeter’s payments on the sailboat and the temporary settlement, she had enough to live on if she lived carefully, without looking for a job just yet. She had no plans beyond staying; day to day was how she intended to proceed. Let everything heal.

  The Starrs were just names on her rental agreement—Phyllis and Tybolt—she’d never met them and she didn’t expect to. Lulu Mantooth, real estate agent/trading-post clerk/town historian, had given her a brief history.

  “That Phyllis Starr is Blue Dog’s own angel. When the city started talking about shutting the library down to save money, she gave the down payment to build our own library downtown, right next door to Rabbott’s Hardware, even come up with the plan to fill it with books by charging folks ten dollar a year to use it. She never could have no children, so her man Ty just babied her something awful. Whatever Phyllis wanted, Ty would hop bob-wire fences to get it. He let her run the show. Now, Mrs. Yearwood, some people will tell you that’s henpecked, but they are the only couple I ever knew who still kissed in public after forty-five years of married life, hungry-for-each-other kisses, you know the kind I mean. A long time ago, I remember that way of wanting a man. I guess that kind of sugar’s only meant for the young and childless. But look at me, a good job, a pickup truck, what do I need a man for? I got me seven babies with babies of their own. Sometimes I think a man is like a pair of beautiful heavy silver earrings, see right here
in the display case? Oh, they look good on you, sure they do, and folks will notice you wearing them, think you’re rich, but the minute you get home you can’t wait to take them off and stick them in a drawer where they won’t bother you no more.”

  Lulu Mantooth, over two hundred pounds in her blue velveteen skirt and matching blouse, a rope of museum-quality tooled silver beads resting on her heavy breasts—but her fingers bore no wedding rings and her earlobes were bare. She was old, Margaret could tell, but how old? All the Navajos seemed to have weathered skin, and Lulu’s long hair done up in a fat bun was still black.

  If it hadn’t been for Owen Garrett yesterday morning, riding over on his red horse to fetch his randy three-legged mutt, she could have answered truthfully that she’d successfully avoided prolonged contact with the male species altogether since the evening of Peter’s birthday fiasco. Now, whether she liked it or not, she had a neighbor, Owen Garrett, and she had to return his thermos or wait for him to come and fetch it.

  A latter-day cowboy was more Nori’s speed than hers, but after her one-night fling with Deet, and her hand in Peter’s leaving—well, Nori was a big part of the reason Margaret didn’t want a telephone. With Lulu Mantooth’s permission, she gave the trading post telephone number to the school via a letter. If there was some massive emergency, let them call Ray. She sighed, rubbed her face dry with a towel, and went downstairs to feed the dog.

  Margaret drove into downtown Blue Dog to find a pay phone to call a veterinarian. The area’s two vets, she learned, also practiced large-animal medicine. One was out in the field assisting an equine delivery, the other was in surgery on somebody’s prize cow, but she could leave a message and he’d try to get back to her next week. After a few minutes of frustrating chatter, she came to an agreement with the receptionist. She could bring Echo by tomorrow and someone qualified to do so would administer a “morning after” shot. Even this alternative sounded grim. Margaret hung up the phone outside the liquor store and sighed. How long were dogs in gestation? A month? Three? Did they get morning sickness? How did you ascertain a dog’s pregnancy? She tried to imagine asking the pharmacist for a canine home-pregnancy test; further, obtaining a sample of dog pee to perform it. To her right three elderly Navajo men leaned against the building’s sign—NO SALES AFTER 2:00 P.M. SUNDAYS—dressed in baseball caps, flannel shirts, and jeans, despite the high temperatures. They wore sunglasses with mirrored lenses and didn’t answer when she said a tentative hello. She bought some small red apples out of a basket by the register and bottled water from the cooler case, glanced at her Triple A map, and turned the Toyota left onto the highway, in the direction of the Navajo reservation and the town of Shiprock.

  She passed two more trading posts, both featuring hand-painted signs advertising Navajo and Chimayo weavings. Part of her wanted to veer off the highway and touch the genuine articles that had interested her years ago, before Peter, before Ray, when she thought she might actually complete her master’s thesis. She’d been approved by the committee to pursue early American weaving techniques, which had turned out to be as dull as it sounded. Then the library had mistakenly delivered Weavings and Posts, a book on Navajo rugs. Before returning it, she’d glanced through the pages, studied the known designs: Two Gray Hills, Ganado Red, Chief’s Blanket Third Phase, Storm Pattern. These hand-loomed weavings had been the unraveling of her thesis. She read everything the library had on the weavers, bought a tour book on the Southwest, and drove out Easter week to see for herself what this magical Four Corners was all about. There was still snow on the ground, but those red rocks grounded her in a way she’d never felt before. In May she’d met Raymond, and that, coupled with the idea of starting her research all over again, was the end of graduate school. But now she was in Blue Dog, and there was plenty of time for taking up loose threads.

  First she wanted to see nearby Shiprock, to explore the intriguing red blur seen years ago at eighty miles an hour, as she raced her old Ford toward home via Flagstaff’s steam-heat motels and overpriced gas stations. Shiprock lay beyond the town of Farmington, whose center was the Holiday Inn, painted peach stucco, trying its best to blend into the surroundings. A handful of cheap, circa-1950 motels had their vacancy signs lit. Wasn’t it funny how after the war ended, in a time of such economic promise, the buildings they built reflected none of that implied hope? Instead blocky, quickly assembled structures and gaudy neon signs were the rage. YOU’LL REST RIGHT PEACEFUL AT THE REDWOOD LODGE! Architecture ranged from Victorian to utilitarian. “Señor Mouse” offered six tacos for two dollars, or you could dine on burgers at one of several “Chat ‘n Chew’s,” while the inevitable “big” smiling white man in overalls topping the auto parts supply loomed over you, authoritatively grasping a six-foot socket wrench. There were a handful of stores, a tiny movie house, evidence of a past mining industry, the small airport off to her left, and the nearby racetrack. According to her guidebook three rivers flowed here: the Animas, which coursed one farm across from the Starr place, the San Juan, and the La Plata, irrigating farmlands, but none of them were visible from the road. It was the tail end of haying season; she could see fat bales of hay rolled into circles in the field.

  Soon the long stretches of asphalt led onto the reservation land, where dozens of red woodframe houses shouldered together, uncomfortably close to the highway. A yellow shepherd mix trotted along the arroyo, his nose lifting skyward as Margaret’s car passed. He looked underfed to the point of starvation, but wise to the road. Clotheslines with brightly colored laundry wafted in the wind. She saw a horse blanket tacked up in the doorway of one house, and a dark-haired little girl holding onto the edge of it. Forget the cozy hogans and charming pueblos depicted in public television specials, these houses looked desperate and empty.

  Shiprock monument was miles away from the highway Disappointingly, no signs indicated where to turn. No entrances claimed a fee and a way to view the monument up close. Margaret drove past it, then circled back. Wire fences met her at every bend. She found two fire roads with open gates, and took the first one. The Toyota bumped along the dirt and potholes, past the no trespassing signs and scattering a few hardy rabbits from rarely disturbed hollows. Discarded empty beer cans were faded to a chalky white. She stopped three miles down the road and shut the engine down. Outside her car, the silence was absolute. Grasshoppers leapt from the road along the desert floor. Birds cast larger-than-life shadows on the hard ground. The rocks beneath her feet were as red as brick, some chipped in the vague shape of arrowheads. She bent to pick one up, thought about pocketing it, then set it down. This wasn’t the Petrified National Forest, but the same feel met her fingertips. To disturb anything was to dismantle a part of the natural cathedral. In the distance, Shiprock rose from the earth, a vast boulder with such odd spires and contours she was reminded of Peter’s childhood drip-sand-castles, when on the beachfront he’d dribble wet sand from his hands to fashion a fantasy castle. In her Triple A guide, the Navajo legend alluded to Shiprock as being the great bird on whose back the Diné rode into Four Corners, populating the land. It seemed as likely an explanation as any creation myth, or the mystery of human evolution. To the left of the monument, a long wall of basaltic rock jutted from the earth, forming a twenty-foot-high ridge. Hawks circled and lit on the crags, giving the rock the appearance of a decaying castle wall, a last bastion, decomposing over centuries in the elements. The sun hit the cracks and gaps, exposing great blooms of pure light.

  She opened her passenger-side door for the camera, but her sketch pads, having bounced from the seat to the floor, fell out instead. The paper felt as perfect as baby’s skin. She felt herself begin to tremble ever so slightly, her sure hands suddenly become blocky, useless chunks of wood. Loosen the chalk, Margaret. It isn’t going to give you precision just because you squeeze it to death…. Professor Brownwyn was long retired by now, maybe even dead. She could crumple up anything she drew, burn it in the fireplace, or shred it and leave it for the desert animals to u
se as bedding.

  Her first mark on the paper—brick-colored Conté crayon in a slight arc—wavered. She made a sound of disgust and turned the page. See inside the object; re-create the shape from the inside outward. She remembered Peter, sitting in her lap: Now draw a picture of Spiderman, Mom. Now a hedgehog. Make a fireman rescuing a boy from a burning building….

  The nervous trembling, having no exit, backed up and seemed to charge into her center. Humming began in her brain, a mildly orgasmic buzz she recalled from hours logged in at the easel. One of the small benefits of the work was this pleasant physical sensation. “Work for the work,” was Brownwyn’s credo, borrowed, she’d discovered years later, from the Bhagavad Gita. He had believed in her. What art demanded of you was blind courage, that you “look” with other faculties than just eyes and mere vision. The vision came from shutting your eyes, opening your heart, and lifting the pencil.

  For Brownwyn she would draw Shiprock if it meant she sat here all night. Okay. I’m a failure as a mother, she thought, and I couldn’t keep my husband. I still probably can’t draw a hedgehog to save my life, but I’m here, where I want to be, right now, and I am going to sit here until the sun goes down and draw the best damn rock New Mexico has ever seen.

  3

  DEAR LORD, I’M STANDING HERE WITH AN ARMFUL OF SOPPING WET Wranglers and all five pairs of threadbare briefs, and not fifty feet away in the east pasture is that woman with the longest legs I’ve ever seen, hanging out her wash. Suppose if I had me an Indian name, it’d have to be Likes Tall Women. Go on, look for yourself, she’s your design. Her legs are pale and smooth, like those stripped ironwood Spirit Ladders the Navs use to climb down into the Great Kiva. Now I don’t claim to be any kind of expert, but I’m reasonably certain a man could climb up those legs and find himself a little bit of heaven. She is hanging out her underthings now. All colors, and that unholy white that hurts my eyes even to look. There is only so much a mortal man, even a confessed sinner like myself, can take without breaking down. Think you could send me something to help me get by? This wash sure won’t dry in my hands. And I can’t seem to stop thinking about those legs. As bad an idea as it is, I’m sure you’ll agree a drink is in order.