Blue Rodeo

by Jo-Ann Mapson

  “Never thought he’d go past two-fifty,” the weaver said to Owen under her breath before wrapping him in a hug. “Hey, sheepman, king of Rabbott’s Hardware, how come you never come out see Verbena anymore? I have to depend on daughter for news. That Minnie, she’s a dreamer, would just as soon tell me something made up about Tommy Cruise in Hollyweird as let on what you up to.”

  “Been busy, that’s all. I’m working on raising rams these days, trying to turn a few dimes.”

  “You still saving me wool off that old ewe?”

  “Absolutely. Ruby’s got your name on every inch of her fleece. I’d like you to meet my neighbor, Verbena. Maggie Yearwood. She’s rented the Starr place. Out there painting some awful darn pretty pictures.”

  The Navajo woman looked Maggie up and down hard. “Well. No wonder you never call this old woman.” She turned her head back toward the dealer’s office. “Benny, don’t think you can give me coffee and forget about check.”

  “Allow a minute for the ink to dry, woman!”

  Owen stepped closer. “Come on over here and hug me again. I need some warmth today. It’s getting cold out there. Can’t say for certain, but I think summer might be just about over.”

  Before he handed Verbena the check, the dealer stopped at the register. In black marker, he penned a price tag for his newly acquired merchandise: eight hundred dollars.

  Maggie watched Lulu Mantooth turn away and begin to dust already spotless pottery. Verbena said, “Seem like winter year-round in some folks’ hearts.”

  “Come with us to breakfast,” Maggie said impulsively, and the woman gave her a blank look.

  “Where you going?”

  “Why, your place, of course,” Owen answered, and Lulu and Verbena both began to laugh.

  Inside Verbena Youngcloud’s government-issue two-bedroom house, there were few pieces of furniture: a fat woodstove, a nineteen-inch Sony color television, and a shiny new black Kenmore washer-and-dryer set, displayed almost as proudly as the Two Gray Hills rug at the trading post. No couches, no chairs except for a cedar rocker with a broken arm. The once-beige walls were smudged from cooking and the hands of many children. Verbena went to the kitchen and started reheating a pan of grease among the pots on the stove.

  Turned loose, the dogs wove themselves in and out of her legs, accepting pats from assorted grandchildren drifting in from the huddle near the television. Now and then she stopped stirring and measuring to stroke a small head and exclaim over childish scrapes, then turned back to knead her dough on a wooden board.

  Frybread—she was making triangles of dough to drop into the crackling fat. Any minute now Maggie expected to hear herself start whining like one of the dogs for the first piece, cool enough to eat or not. She watched as Verbena ladled honey onto the first round of dough, still so hot the honey smoked and sizzled. The children waved their hands over it, trying to hurry the cooling process.

  Outside a window with a frayed gray-white curtain, Maggie saw Verbena’s late-model pickup, gathering snow on its shiny blue paint job.

  Owen caught her looking. “The Two Gray Hills on the wall at Benny’s? With her check from that one, Verbena bought the truck you’re looking at. Don’t worry about her, Maggie. She’s an old hand when it comes to trading. If anybody tried to screw her on a deal, she’d only have to let word out she was looking for another dealer. They’d be on her like horseflies on the thoroughbreds at San Juan Downs.”

  Owen settled down on the floor with the children and watched cartoons, tearing off chunks of his frybread to soothe whoever was feeling left out, hugging assorted dark, wide-eyed faces to his, finding pennies in his pockets for every hand.

  Maggie stood, taking in the easy family scene before her. Verbena’s house reminded her of those friends’ homes all the kids gathered at after school—a kindly mom, good snacks, nobody worried about crumbs getting in the couches. Where were their parents? Working, or out grocery shopping for the upcoming holiday? It would be Thanksgiving soon. She’d always tried to make the holidays a special time, cooking a goose ordered special from Pavilions, trying different recipes out of Gourmet, or making reservations at some trendy new restaurant where Ray wanted to go. Ray reveled in the idea of rituals, but Peter made it known he despised every enforced minute of such holidays, refusing to eat anything but potatoes and salad or going on some fruit juice fast, mocking the paper cuffs the chef placed on the turkey’s legs: That’s right, dress a dead bird in stockings so we can forget the terror it went through before it made it to our table. Want me to tell you about factory farming? Did you know they cut off the beaks and the feet so the birds can’t clean themselves, or even fight when they get cornered? So often what started out as celebration ended with harsh words, a gesture that went a little too far, resulting in something accidentally getting broken. Then Ray would leave the table, his son brooding sullenly, his wife sweeping crystal shards into a good linen napkin. His implication was clear—break things—you can always afford to replace things. But what you really wanted to break was the mouth of the child she brought up to turn out this way. Maggie set down her bread and hugged her arms to herself, her mind focused on a series of such scenes that added up to their holiday traditions. Verbena squeezed her shoulder.

  “Come outside a minute. Help me grain this mare. Go on, get jacket.”

  The Youngcloud barn was elderly corrugated aluminum, a tissue-thin skin against the winds northern New Mexico winters engendered. In an arena constructed of fallen tree limbs and old baling wire, a sorrel mare stood alone, snow gathering on the plain of her furry back. Verbena Youngcloud made a low noise in her throat and the horse lifted her head, moving toward the sound. Maggie noticed her eyes then, milky blue orbs, out of place in the otherwise hale animal.

  “Is your horse blind?”

  Verbena nodded, shaking the oats in the Folger’s can so the horse could locate her. “Everyone tell me, ‘Verbena, shoot that old blind nag. She no good to you.’ But old Lady Rainy Mountain throw such pretty babies. If you pony her along, you can use her for light work. Her and me, two old ladies nobody else want. So I keep her.” She cupped her hand and shook grain into it. The horse moved her lips over the hand, whiskers sensing each crimped oat, taking it all, nickering in delight at this body-warming treat on such a snowy day.

  “Just because she’s blind doesn’t make her worthless,” Maggie said. “My son is deaf.”

  Verbena waited until the mare was finished, crinkling her forehead thoughtfully. Then she wiped her hand on her pants. “My sister Geanita’s boy William in prison for stealing Chevrolets. Such a thing for those cars! Just that one brand, no other. With boys, you struggle all the time. If not tribal police on your doorstep, it hearing them out there shooting prairie dogs. Bang, bang. Don’t use skins or meat, just leave bodies to rot on prairie. Coyote, too. Always have to make sure gun still works, don’t they? Such big problems men have. I notice this. They aim anger on car, gun, always a big motor making loud noise. But with daughters, it silence you need to listen for. Now they’re hard ones to raise. Right?”

  “I suppose you’re right.”

  “You got no daughters?”

  “Only the one who never opened her eyes.” Maggie remembered her only pregnancy to go full term, the short, too-easy labor, and the stillness in the delivery room when everyone could see this was not going to end up a day for birth announcements and celebration cigars. “She was stillborn.”

  “I lose two that way. Probably easier. Spirit at rest before got chance to get hurt.” Verbena nudged her glasses up her nose and stared at Maggie. “My Minnie wears the hearing aid. She get along, work with Owen over to Rabbott’s, the cash register, good job, regular money.”

  “That’s great.”

  “Wants to move to California. Imagine! What kind of life for her there? Better to stay home, learn weaving.”

  Maggie smiled, agreeing. “Your rugs are lovely.”

  Verbena stroked the mare’s fuzzy winter coat. “We
both buried daughters and been deviled by men, huh? I like you, Maggie Yearwood. Just what kind pictures you paint? Stuff I know? You one of them what-you-call painters who do the crazy mess stuff?”

  “Abstract? No, I’m not like that.”

  “A good word for it, abstract. Big word meaning confused in the head.” Verbena laughed hard at her own joke.

  “I noticed you weave both Storm Patterns and Two Gray Hills. I thought weavers in the Shiprock area concentrated on Yeis and Sand Paintings.”

  “You read in some sevaho book! I work design the way it come to me. Storm Pattern clear way for whatever coming next. Yeis and Sand Paintings, they take long time up here.” She pointed to her head. “You can’t rush what dream send you. You wait, listen. Then, hardest work in here.” She placed Maggie’s hand over her heart, where through the jacket she could feel the woman’s full breast. “But you already know that, painter.”

  “I don’t know what I know anymore. I just lift the brush and say a prayer.”

  “Good!” Verbena whistled, and Hopeful came loping over to her. Echo stood just outside the back door, sniffing at a pile of refuse she apparently found fascinating. Maggie watched her extricate a C-shaped paring of horse hoof and trot beneath the truck with it. A country dog.

  For the first time since she’d told anyone about Peter’s hearing, she felt the weight of the burden rise from her heart and dissipate into the steamy breath her words and made. Deaf for life or stealing Chevrolets—Verbena Youngcloud placed no value on either crime. She didn’t feel so much as one single thread sorry for Maggie Yearwood—she had a good mare to feed, grandchildren to spoil, daughters she’d buried, her rugs.

  On an icy patch, Maggie took hold of her arm. “Sometime, it doesn’t have to be today, could I watch you work on your rugs?”

  The wrinkly Navajo face frowned and looked up toward the horizon where snow swirled across flat land. “Some of my people might get mad at question like that. Then there others who say okay, fine, you pay me, you can watch a little.”

  “Which category do you fit into?”

  “I’m not resister like Joe Yazzi, Maggie. I took government house. I got grandchildren to raise, and unless I want to watch them die of pneumonia one by one, might as well do work I got to do inside walls as inside hogan. But hear this. No way I want to join white man’s world. Aside from Owen Garrett and Benny over to the trading post, I don’t got good friends out there. So I guess neither one.”

  Maggie faltered. Whatever she chose to say, she was throwing her words as blindly as that mare negotiated the arena. “I’m sorry if my asking put you on the spot.”

  Verbena hooked her arm through Maggie’s, and they started back to the house. “How about you let me see your paintings? Then we talk weaving.”

  She would have to go home and burn them all, start over, or leave town. “Okay,” she said, feeling small and cold beside the strength this woman emanated. “Sounds fair.”

  Verbena grinned, stepped gracefully over a rotting frozen tire, and opened the back door to the house.

  Inside, she took Maggie down the hallway to a room with shelves along one entire wall. From every nook, hanks of colored yarn spilled forth, ranging in shade and hue from a muslin white all the way through the color spectrum to black. On a twin bed made up with a faded orange bedspread, lay an art book on the Impressionists. Verbena opened it, and Maggie could see that several years ago it had belonged to the Blue Dog library. She pointed to a quotation beneath one of Gauguin’s well-known Polynesian women. It read, “Oh, you painters who ask for a technique of color. Study carpets; there you will find everything that is knowledge.”

  Verbena had no way of knowing that that phrase had been the original epigraph to her master’s thesis, the one she never finished. Maggie’s eyes widened in surprise. “Paul Gauguin?”

  “He couldn’t have thought of it unless Spider Woman sent him dream weavings. That Minnie, always trying get me read books for better English. This one interesting. I keep it.”

  Maggie set the book down on the bed. On one of the shelves, she saw a pillow-size weaving, rolled into a cylinder. Verbena took it and pressed it into Maggie’s hands. “False start. You like, you keep.”

  “Verbena,” Owen said as they walked to the Landcruiser. “Once again, you fed me and warmed my insides. How can I thank you?”

  She smiled in delight. “Nizho’ko ani-hiye, tro-tlanastshini-ye be jinichltan laki, Owen Garrett.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” He kissed her cheek.

  Maggie hadn’t dared unfold her weaving until they were on the highway, past all the bumpy roads with their slick ice patches. It was a pictorial, maybe a trial weaving on a smaller scale for something Verbena might try later, perhaps something that had come to her in pieces of dreams and hadn’t panned out for a larger rug. On a background of sandy yarn that was just the color of the reservation earth in summer, a small male figure stood against a turquoise blue sky filled with falling arrows. They were of the traditional design, the type the Yei dancers usually clutched in their lineup. A crooked pine grew to the figure’s right, and in the background an auburn-red horse had one foreleg lifted as if he had been frozen in mid-trot. Two fat sheep grazed at green wool tufts of forage.

  “That horse is about the color of your hair,” Owen said.

  “My hair when I was about fifteen years old,” Maggie answered. “There’s more than a little gray here, in case you haven’t looked closely.”

  “Maybe I didn’t mean the hair on your head.” He smiled and kept his eyes on the bumpy road.

  She looked at him for a moment, stunned. “Well. You don’t miss much, do you?”

  “Not when it’s that fine, and offered up to me.”

  She could come up with no adequate response that wouldn’t lead into more uncomfortable territory, so she quickly changed the subject. “What was it Mrs. Youngcloud said to you just before we drove off?”

  “Just a little Nav to make sure I’m keeping current with my languages.”

  “Tell me, Owen.”

  Now it was his turn to be embarrassed. “Well, she blessed us, and basically let me know I was lucky to be feeding in a field of such delicate flowers.”

  “Delicate flowers?”

  “That’s the gist of it.”

  Maggie covered her mouth to hold in her laughter. “I’ve been called any number of things from the fifty-foot woman to a worthless bitch, but never a flower.”

  All at once Owen pulled the Toyota to the side of the highway, shoved the gears into neutral, put his foot on the brake, and took off his hat. “Don’t you know how decent you are? Hell with your ex-husband, your son blaming you for his hard luck! I’m about down on my knees, today, thankful. Last night I was ready to try old Jim Beam for comfort. Instead I got you. Come over here.”

  He took her in his arms and kissed her, his mouth opening hers roughly. She felt his tongue slide against her teeth seeking passage until she opened herself to him. When she did, he moved inside her mouth in a deliberate echo of the previous evening, that well-oiled rocking rhythm, hauling her to him so needily that she grasped the seat, afraid she was falling. When he let go she gasped, trying to get her breath.

  He adjusted his hat, threw the gears back into drive, silent, the smile gone, and started driving. She had no answer to his question beyond the throbbing in her lips.

  She held the weaving tight in her fists. To her left Shiprock loomed beyond the highway, immovable, beyond grandeur, a holy presence. Inside her skin, Maggie felt her blood running hot and strong through her veins, as thick with need as it was with loss. Peter, you can push me away; I can’t stop you. You can live with other people, celebrate your holidays without me, too. You can even hate me, and sometimes I deserve it, but there’s no way on earth I will ever stop loving you.

  8

  HOLD OFF STARTING THAT FIRE,” OWEN SAID A FEW DAYS LATER in the doorway to the Start farmhouse, where Margaret was fussing with the woodstove. “We’re on a run of goo
d luck here. Why stop? How about you grab your clothes, I throw an extra flake to RedBow, check the ewes, then go after Joe Yazzi to come housesit and feed?”

  “Where are we going?”

  He smiled. “South. Santa Fe’ll be a zoo of rich Texans come the Christmas season, so we’ll beat the rush, take us a little vacation midweek, while things are still quiet.”

  “I don’t know. I’m not in much of a museum-going mood.”

  He could sense her uncertainty and knew it had more to do with Santa Fe’s proximity to Riverwall than museums. “Nobody said nothing about museums. I happen to know this flamenco dancer who always goes home for the holidays, and sometimes she shows up in this little bar off Canyon Road to try out her new routines.” Remembering, he felt his face go as wistful and dreamy as the first time he’d seen her perform. “Wait till you see her dance, Maggie. It’s like nothing else on earth.”

  “If she’s that good, how can I say no?”

  “She won’t disappoint you. Now grab your red panties and sketchbooks, and if you wouldn’t mind feeding the dogs, I know Señor Hopeful’d be as grateful as me. Be back in half an hour.”

  He took his truck and set off toward Joe, wanting to find him huddled up in a blanket keeping warm, not gone from the hogan he called home. He hadn’t the courage to tell Maggie what happened the other times Joe quit taking his pills. She didn’t need to know how he’d been thrown in a jail cell in Albuquerque for “public drunkenness,” left to sit for three days in his own vomit and excrement until Lulu collected enough donations to make his bail. She didn’t need to know the truth about Joe’s dog, either—how in a state of confusion he’d tied the poor thing to a traffic median in a wealthy suburb of Rio Rancho, where it was shot by a concerned citizen who thought prairie niggers should stay out of his neighborhood and get back on the rez where they belonged. At best he hoped he’d find Joe drunk, passed out, a temporary setback. That he could deal with.