Blue Rodeo

by Jo-Ann Mapson

  Bonnie Tsosie came down from the girls’ dorm carrying an old army duffel bag. She was dressed in a hot-pink down jacket that made her skin glow. Her black hair, set free from the braid, had some kind of kinky waves he’d love to touch his fingers to. She was laughing, shaking her head, her snowy hair wild and free. Her girlfriends boarded the school bus, waving to one another, blowing kisses, signing, “Miss you! Love you! Don’t forget me!” Then she was standing alone, none of the older kids left except the two of them. Peter walked over. “How come you’re not on the bus?” he signed.

  “I always go home to reservation for Thanksgiving,” she signed back. “My Uncle Eddie come get me. We drive together.”

  “Where?”

  “Shiprock,” she finger-spelled. “North, about three hours from here.”

  “Is that anywhere near a town called Blue Dog?” Peter signed, proud that he’d remembered the sign for blue—the shaking b, and dog, a snap of the fingers.

  “Yes,” Bonnie nodded her fist excitedly. “Near. Why?”

  Now he had to sign slower, remembering how to say things. “My mom lives there.”

  “Your mom? I thought she lived in California?” Bonnie smiled and made a sign similar to his “waves,” but more accurate this time.

  “Not anymore.” He made the “waves” back, copying her movements. “She moved. My parents are…” He forgot the sign for divorce, and snapped two fists apart, for broken. As soon as he’d done it he remembered—it was easy—two shoved-together d’s, then separating. Why couldn’t he remember the right signs when he needed them?

  She circled her heart with the letter s, the sign for sorry. “Come see me over the holiday. Let me write down map.”

  He reached out a hand to stop her. “I’m not going home for Thanksgiving.”

  She looked surprised. “Why not, Peter?”

  “Because, like a stupid asshole, I decided to stay here,” he blurted out loud.

  For a moment she was quiet, taken aback by his outburst. Then she started to laugh. Right then he swore he could hear her, the sound of her laughter deep and clean, smelling of the wind in high places, clean, perfect, accepting, surrounding him like smoke from a campfire.

  “You’re not an asshole, Peter,” she said.

  He didn’t argue. The snow was making the tips of his ears ache.

  Then, impossible as it seemed, she leaned over and kissed his cheek. His eyes were starting to water from the cold. Everything was blurry. An old red pickup was at the curb, Bonnie was waving goodbye, scrambling to get her bags into the truck bed. He had to shield his eyes to see the truck disappear into the traffic.

  Leo picked him up ten minutes later. At a red light on the way home, he kidded him, signing, “Where you got that goofy look—what you thinking about, boy? You figure out what you want to be yet?”

  “Smart,” Peter signed back to him, the first time he had an answer for the question. He knocked his forehead, making the sign for stupid, ignorant, dumb, then pointed to himself. “If I can’t hear, I want to learn not to make an ass of myself.”

  Leo kept his hands on the wheel and spoke so Peter could practice reading his lips. “Does this have anything to do with women?”

  Peter made a face. “You read minds, too, or just signs?”

  Leo laughed soundlessly, ruffled Peter’s hair, then took him to a little shop off the Plaza, where they had to buy two pounds of blue masa for Amparo, holiday orders.

  11

  NO!” AMPARO HIDALGO SLAPPED PETER’S RIGHT HAND AWAY from the steaming platter of vegetarian tamales. Then she shot him one of her darkest frowns, the kind that sent her husband scurrying to tend to whatever chore he’d forgotten, and Peter to his room. Only a moment later she was smiling, but Peter kept his distance. When it came to Amparo’s tamales, he had no willpower whatsoever. She made them by hand, stuffed the corn husks with blue cornmeal paste, filled them with roasted sweet peppers, dozens of spices, finely chopped onion, and cheese until they were fat and straining, mouthwateringly irresistible. Where some people might keep a bottle of ketchup on the table at all times, Amparo had a special covered blue ceramic dish of green chile.

  “Please,” he signed, circling his heart, feeling brave enough to venture one more try. “Just one. They’re so good.” Before him, the tray was filled with at least three dozen. “Nobody makes them like you.”

  Amparo smiled at the compliment, then shook her red apron at him, shooing him from the tiny kitchen as if he were a spoiled dog, begging at the table for people food.

  “Food’s for the santuario, for the poor. Even a stick of a boy like you can skip a meal. It will help you to understand the nature of hunger.” Her broad hand made the letter c, then dragged it down her spare chest, the fingers coming together at just about the place where Peter’s stomach was tree-trunk hollow and howling, juiced up from smelling the impending feast in Amparo’s kitchen.

  “Go help Leo with the carvings,” she signed and turned back to her stove, where a tall aluminum pot simmered with soup stock.

  He tapped her shoulder. “No dinner?”

  Patiently she explained. “On Thanksgiving we fast until after services, share our food with others, and eat only a little when offered. That’s our way. Now out, hungry boy.”

  More food than he’d ever seen, and 90 percent of it had no meat in it, so he could have sneaked an afternoon snack and there would have been plenty left over. Amparo’s initial reaction to his vegetarianism hadn’t even rated a nod. The poor have been eating that way for generations. Now he was supposed to learn about hunger on Thanksgiving Day. That was never the situation at home, though there were plenty of times he fasted on holidays, just to annoy his parents. They’d make reservations somewhere expensive, his father would order for everyone without asking you what you wanted, then act like a know-it-all sending the wine back, running the waiters ragged, leaving a miserly tip—that was your typical Sweetwater Thanksgiving.

  Weary of smelling the things he wasn’t allowed to eat, he ducked out back to do his laundry. The house rules here at the Hidalgos’ were: If you dirtied it—dish, sock, bathroom sink—you cleaned it up. After one load of boxer shorts turned mottled gray from washing everything with his black sweatshirt in hot water, he started reading detergent labels and following directions. The washer and dryer were outside on the patio under a sloping roof. It was strange to stand at the washer measuring in Tide while a few feet away snow piled up in white mounds along the small courtyard. He looked out at the patch of visible sky, gray and dense with weather. It was the same northern New Mexico sky Bonnie Tsosie was under 150 miles north. It might be a little grayer up there, because it was colder in Shiprock, at least according to Leocadio’s guidebook, which Peter’d borrowed from the living room shelf last night and read in bed, trying to force the small print and black-and-white photos to reveal more of this suddenly important landscape. Arranged by regions, the book gave a description about each town’s founding year, population, industry, any history quirky enough to draw a tourist. Even dinky Blue Dog rated space—one whole half page!

  Blue Dog (pop. 2,500 and “one or two good dogs,” see below) is not really typical of northern New Mexico. Here among the cottonwoods growing alongside the Animas River, folks’ll stop you on the street, just for the opportunity to change a stranger into a friend. Blue Dog, est. 1867, is home of such American staples as Rabbott’s Hardware, “hub of the community,” run under the same family ownership for over one hundred years; some noteworthy examples of Victorian architecture; and one of the few self-supporting libraries in America (patrons pay ten dollars yearly, which supports staff, new acquisitions, and cookies for story hour Saturday mornings). In late fall, the whole town turns out for “Blue Dog Days,” a week-long festival featuring an old-fashioned parade, the coveted Shiprock blanket auction, fine edibles prepared by the Reservation Association and local church groups, culminating in the yearly Blue Dog “best of show” companion dog competition (“turn out one or two go
od dogs a year and make a friend for life”) and a locally sponsored rodeo, wherein some of the local working folk have been known to polish up their spurs and mount a wild horse or bull, “lookin’ for eight” all-important seconds of ride time to place in the money. The nearby Navajo reservations, one of the state’s finest examples of trading posts, hiking, good New Mexican cuisine at affordable prices, and the majesty of Shiprock National Monument within drive-by distance. We recommend the Enchanted Cactus Motel; Holiday Inn; bed & breakfast at Aunt Sally’s Hideaway on Main. Good fly fishing on nearby Navajo Lake, catch-and-release not a law, but standard practice. Permit required.

  His mother, armed with paintbrush, in the middle of that postcard? Right—she’d rent the nicest house in town, one some poor old farmer had scraped to build with his life savings, then lost to the bank when his wife came down with terminal brain fade. She’d tastefully accent all her rooms with floral arrangements that blended with those throat-clearing shades of beige she always went for, then buy seventy-dollar throw pillows, arrange them, and wait for her life to happen.

  But by the time he got to the rinse cycle—Amparo had shown him how he had to stop the old machine, pour in the capful of softener, give the agitator a quick spin to get it rotating again—he couldn’t quit picturing the map of Blue Dog’s nearness to the Shiprock reservation. Shit, you could probably hoof it from Blue Dog to wherever Bonnie lived.

  Leocadio came out of the garage carrying a load of carved wooden animals in one arm. “Help me,” he signed as he jostled to keep them from falling. Peter set aside his washing and took a few.

  “Thanks,” Leo signed, his free hand touching his lips. “Got to get these in the truck and help Amparo with the food. Good clothes tonight—hope you didn’t wash everything you own.”

  Inside Leo’s workroom Peter began wrapping the more fragile carvings in newsprint. Leo favored birds and dogs, and somehow he could make his knives and rasps unearth paws and beaked faces from scrap wood. Peter ran his thumb over the flank of a dog—just a generic pooch, no particular breed. He started as Leo dropped a box on the floor, nudging his foot.

  “You like that one?”

  Peter set the dog into its newsprint nest. “I like everything you make.”

  Leo shrugged.

  “No, really. They’re so real. How do you do it?”

  Leo began arranging the wrapped animals in the cardboard box, the heavier pieces on the bottom. “Focus on what’s in your heart and the wood before you. God grants me the—” he stopped signing to finger-spell ability, then resumed speaking with his hands. “I try to honor my—” he stopped again, spelling out burden.

  “B-u-r-d-e-n?” Peter questioned.

  Leo nodded his fist yes, yes, yes. He pointed to a sign that hung above his worktable, next to well-tended tools and lengths of unused wood. In red marking pen, someone had lettered, !NACES PENDEJO, MUERES PENDEJO!

  Peter’s two years of junior high Spanish had prepared him for albondigas soup, trips to the biblioteca to check out libros, but not for translating aphorisms. He looked to Leo in bewilderment.

  Leo spoke. “It means, if you’re born a dickhead, you will die a dickhead.”

  “Then why bother?”

  Leo’s gentle brown face broke into a wide grin. He pursed his lips and blew on his fingertips, like a small breeze. “Words on a sign aren’t permanent, Peter. Nothing is. You can change just about anything, if you want to and you work hard.”

  Amparo draped her best white wool shawl over her purple down coat; Leocadio’s threadbare brown suit had monstrous lapels and an exaggerated pinstripe. It was so dated it had come back in style. He looked like a pachuco, and Peter complimented him.

  “Cool threads.”

  Leo sucked in his belly and held his arms out to his wife. “Come here, woman,” he signed. “This handsome man wants you.”

  “Stop this foolishness and drive the truck,” Amparo signed back, heading determinedly toward the pickup.

  “In my youth I could charm her,” Leo signed to Peter. “Now I do what she tells me.”

  They drove to the santuario from Española on 64, passing the small farming community with its glut of weavers and artists who helped stock Santa Fe with the art they sold to tourists, but who couldn’t afford to live there. The way to Chimayo was down a winding two-lane road, made narrower by banked snowfall lining its edge. Peter watched three mules look out toward the road from their wintry pasture as the truck passed by. They flicked their tall ears to dislodge snow. He thought of the horses he and his mother visited one time, out in the Southern California canyons when things weren’t going so well at home and a drive seemed like a better idea than listening to his dad yell. He didn’t miss California, not really. It was sunny all the time there. Here he liked how the weather matched his mood. Cold and wet, going nowhere for a few months. He could relate.

  But holding Leo’s carving had reminded him how much he missed other things. Echo—how she came along to water polo. About now the team would be going into the Division III finals. Then came playoffs, quarterfinals, semifinals, and the final game, swum on complete adrenaline rush. If your team won the championship, there was a banner, trophies for the school, the patch for your jacket, your name over the loudspeaker at the athletes’ banquet. No way he would have worn that stupid jacket, but still—just to have it. If you were part of a winning team, colleges would come looking for you, might even offer you a free ride, and then you could go where you wanted to, not where your parents said you had to. They’d have a month of preswim before the coach started everyone in on weights and laps in the morning, laps and weights in the afternoon. You swam three thousand yards each time, and the minute you got out of the water, your thighs and biceps took on what felt like a ton of weight. Stadium runs up and down the bleachers—how he hated them. But it was a kind of brotherhood-of-pain thing when you all had to do it. One time, after his second tardy, Carpenter made Travis swim five thousand yards in his street clothes, including his Doc Martens. Sons of bitches are supposed to be waterproof, aren’t they? Get in the pool! Trav wasn’t late again. At Riverwall they didn’t have a pool. It would have frozen in the winter. Besides, if you couldn’t hear your teammates or the referee’s whistle, you couldn’t exactly play polo. There were times, despite what he said to Kennedy, he wondered about having that cochlear implant thing. But the thought of something like that in his head, changing music and people’s voices from the echoes he remembered into a manufactured noise—it made him want to puke.

  He knew he was right to shut the door on his past. Travis and Brain, school, everything—just forget it. Nori hadn’t pushed him into Riverwall, like his mom accused her of doing. She’d just pointed out that there were other avenues open to him besides staying home. And for once, maybe the only time he’d do it in his lifetime, he’d thought his dad might have agreed—taken a hard look at an insurmountable problem and said, Fuck it, cut your losses here and move on.

  So why did the place in his chest that ached with hunger suddenly feel so much emptier? Pendejo, he thought. That’s what I am. Fucking imbecile. I could have gone to my mom’s and put up with her, played with my dog for a few days, eaten a filling dinner, and maybe even seen Bonnie. Remembering his Spanish grammar drills, he conjugated: Pendejismo—that’s what it was he was feeling, a by-product of its more familiar cousin machismo.

  The church at Chimayo was as tiny as the Hidalgos’ house. Mounded adobe walls with ragged wooden doors opened into a small courtyard filled with old, barely readable gravestones. Then you entered the church proper. It was narrow in width but tall ceilinged, decorated with gilt candelabra and twelve of those horrifyingly ornate paintings of the stations of the cross. Some of them would have made amazing T-shirt designs. At least the Hispanics painted the agony like it was—this Jesus stumbled and bled; when he drank the vinegar, his face showed it. Peter was surprised that even without being able to “hear” the mass in Spanish, he remembered when to genuflect and when to knee
l. At home, church got hauled out only when his mother was feeling guilty. Easter Sunday services or a midnight mass on Christmas, she’d drag him along. Come on. It won’t kill you to put on decent shoes and sit with me for one hour. Sure, he’d been baptized, probably more to appease the sainted Yearwood grandparents than for the good of his soul, but that was about as Catholic as Mom got. I won’t have you growing up under that load of guilt. Maybe all it did was repress me, but your Aunt Nori is a perfect case in point why religion backfires. Okay, so Nori went a little too far occasionally, like when she got that tattoo on her ankle, but she did have it removed. And he knew she slept with way too many guys than made sense, but so what, it was her life. Sometimes, like now, with the smells of beeswax and incense in his nose, sitting next to believers in the straight-backed pews, and that old guy up front in the satin and brocade robes messing with the candles and the chalices, he wished they had kept on going to church. It wasn’t so much that he believed if there was a God that he or she gave a crap if you ate meat on a Friday, or swore sixty times a minute, or even if you got raging drunk on mescal once in a while. It was more about the guardian angel thing—that fairy story—believing you were never alone.?

  On the altar the priest was lifting the sacred host skyward, changing the simple gift of bread to symbolic flesh through his blessing. This is my body and this is my blood. Outside, in the bed of the truck, Amparo’s tamales and tortillas were kind of like communion too. The cave in his chest sent out a bellowing echo he couldn’t hear, but felt. When Leo and Amparo got up to take communion, he went with them, knelt at the altar, and took the small host in his hand, then placed it on his tongue, letting its flat taste dissolve into his mouth.