Blue Rodeo

by Jo-Ann Mapson

  “Later,” Owen said as he handed her a mug of coffee. “Drink up,” he said. “And you might as well turn loose of this day. From bacon to bird, we’re handling it.”

  “Nice robe,” Peter signed. “Big improvement.”

  She knew he was referring to her last year’s Mother’s Day gift—a silk robe covered with bowling-ball-size tulips—something Ray had undoubtedly had one of his secretaries pick up on Melrose during her lunch hour. Last thing she’d used it for before throwing it in the trash was waxing the car. “At least I don’t have to fight Liberace for this one.”

  Owen looked at her, puzzled. “Excuse me?”

  How could you explain private jokes from a life that happened an ice age ago? “Nothing. Well, if I can’t do anything here, I guess I’ll go take a long soak in the tub.”

  Owen was busy lifting bacon with his spatula from the pan to the waiting plate. When she left the room, no one seemed to notice.

  Breakfast finished, Joe and Owen ducked out, leaving mother and son alone to the business of exchanging gifts. Maggie watched as Peter began to work the tape free from the corners of his first Christmas present. His father had sent it FedEx, in care of the trading post, and Big Lulu had set it aside for Maggie with a loaf of homemade banana bread. “Take this, too, for your skinny son,” Lulu said as she handed Maggie the bread. “Don’t worry. Keep feeding them and eventually they grow up.”

  It was not the Ralph Lauren shirt she figured his new love would send—a nice, neutral, stepmotherish gift. It was too heavy for that. Sadly she saw it was as she expected, the script to the film he was shooting. Peter’s face said it all as he turned over the cardstock cover.

  Maggie leaned over and looked at the note Ray’d written on the first page: “Pete, this is what kept me preoccupied the last three years—hope you like it. Hang on to it—might be a collector’s item someday.”

  She had decided at the last minute to give him the first painting she’d done, the one of Shiprock. No, it wasn’t her best work, in fact, the dimensions were slightly goofy from the tension of her early efforts. But standing in the room surveying her choices, somehow this initial, risky painting, with all its flaws, seemed the right choice. Now, with Raymond’s script in his hands, she felt her self-absorbed idea of what a fifteen-year-old might treasure was equally as large a blunder as her ex-husband’s. Maybe Peter wasn’t interested in what it had taken for her to pick up the brush and didn’t give a damn what trying had done for her. Why should he be? He would never hear the whistling of wind against his ears the way she had, feel the sleepy hum as it curved around Shiprock, luring her into staying until it was dark, and she was painting on blind instinct, unable to stop her hand. Given her many disappointing features as a mother, he might turn both his parents’ presents to the wall or give them away.

  He said one word about his father’s manuscript, “Cool.”

  She didn’t think his heart was entirely in it. The script set aside, he now tore away the tissue paper covering the painting and she watched his face grow fierce, deliberately unemotional. He studied every corner, looked away, then signed, “This is good. Thanks,” with a rough wave of his right hand.

  She signed back, “You’re welcome,” and heard a car door slam shut outside. Had Owen and Joe driven the truck around, rather than walk? It was cold out there. She didn’t blame them if they had, but was surprised to hear them this early. She waited for the knock at the door; Owen always knocked. But the door opened with no announcement, and she followed the barking Echo toward it.

  Nori wore a duster-length olive green silk coat. Her red boots were mottled with snow and grime. She balanced several packages in her arms. Her smile wobbled back and forth from the usual sizing up of the situation to what-in-holy-hell-am-I-doing-here? “Don’t worry,” she said. “I’m not going to stay and wreck your Christmas. I just came to drop these off.”

  But Maggie could see she was hoping to be asked, hoping for forgiveness on this day hard to live through alone. “Merry Christmas, Nori,” she said evenly.

  “Same to you.”

  “Did you have a long drive?”

  “Not really. Flew into Albuquerque. I’ve been staying at the Holiday Inn a couple of days, over in Farmington. Trying to gather my courage.”

  Maggie smiled. She looked beyond her sister to see a white Taurus parked in the drive. “That’s a different car for you. Scaling down?”

  “I was afraid if I rented the usual, you’d see me coming, move again or something.”

  With a casual elegance, Nori possessed all the trappings of a successful life—the wardrobe, the undoubtedly costly gifts lurking inside the spangled paper. Yet standing there in the doorway, she looked as starved as a deer forced to peel bark from winter trees. Maggie’s farm, she had once kidded her sister, what seemed like a lifetime ago, when they had sat on the bayside patio confessing their dreams, what they would do if they could start their lives over. I’d go back to school and get my goddamn Ph.D., Nori had said. I’d do research, juggle numbers and chemistry, never put on another goddamn business suit or pair of high heels as long as I drew breath. Maggie said, I’d go live in that town where the weavers are. Rent some big old house, keep horses, try to remember how to paint.

  “Maggie’s farm” indeed. The only horse lived next door and wasn’t for sale. The painting was admittedly weak. Nori was only out of the business suit temporarily, and it had been a time long ago when both set aside their differences to log in interminable hours at Peter’s hospital bed. Between the two of them, it seemed like their collective faith would be enough to bring Peter back whole. But the way it turned out, large pieces had been sacrificed: Peter’s hearing, only the most obvious loss. On the night of his birthday party, when Ray was being such an unreasonable shit about who owned the sailboat, and Peter made his announcement about wanting to go to Riverwall, Maggie had been too shocked to blame anyone except herself. Sleeping with Deeter was an idea she’d come to on her own, some kind of temporary salve to rub over the raw skin. To discover her sister had thought of it first, and gone ahead and acted on her idea with no more thought to it than to which color socks she’d chosen, started a crack between them that widened and had led to this chasm between them now in the foyer. Inside it there was a lifetime’s worth of sisterly resentment, and right now all of it seemed about as petty as arguing over borrowed clothes and hair curlers.

  The dog was leaping in joy. Peter was coming to see what was happening, and this was the present he would like best of all. “Nori,” Maggie said in a hoarse voice. “Come in. Let me take your coat and get you something hot to drink.”

  15

  HEY, PRETTY LADY,” JOE YAZZI CALLED TO MAGGIE AS HE CAME in the back door of the farmhouse, lugging an armload of wood for the stove. Joe set the wood down. “What Christ-man presents you get?”

  Hands deep into the flour bag, she turned and said, “Hey yourself.”

  “Any perfume? Women sure like that good-smelling water. New teapot, maybe? You could use a new one of those. Your old one’s got cracks in it. Do okay for heating water, but try and make good teas in, I tell you, the medicine finds them cracks and hides.”

  “Really?”

  “It’s true. Maybe if you ask nice, Owen will bring you one from the hardware. Rabbott’s got ’em to spare. Blue, yellow, red, black, they got plenty of the teapot, just not enough customers. Everytime I go in, people standing around, talking, talking, never can say enough, just keep on talking.”

  Owen, two steps behind Joe, shook off the snow and unloaded his armload of wood. “The idea is to sell teapots and make a profit, Joe, not give them away.”

  “What’s Dave Rabbott need profit for? He got a nice house and two big smelly cars. He should learn to share if he don’t want to piss off the powers. Get himself thrown from his horse in Blue Dog rodeo. Worse, maybe.”

  Maggie, who was now rolling out dough at the counter, said, “I’ll see what I can do about that new teapot, Joe. How about you? Sant
a find his way to your tree?”

  The Indian pinched off a piece of biscuit dough and rolled it between his fingers before popping it into his mouth. “The People don’t hold with killing a tree in the name of poor dead Jesus, no matter how great whites say he was. We need all the trees we can get in Blue Dog. Come March the wind here’ll show you what I mean.” He held out his left wrist to Maggie. On it was strapped a massive gold watch with a silver-and-gold band. He wiggled it. “What you think?”

  “That’s some timepiece.”

  “Ah, really just an old Foolex I traded some hay for, but come summer, it’ll impress tourist women. My best part of this Christmas thing is supper.” He patted his stomach, muscled and flat. “I been saving up room awhile now.”

  “Well, good. I like watching you eat.”

  “I could come over and enjoy it again tomorrow.”

  She laughed. “Any time, Joe.”

  Owen saw Peter sign for his mother’s attention. “After dinner, Joe’s taking me to Shiprock.”

  She signed back, “It’s Christmas. I want you here.”

  “But…the reservation…kids don’t get Christmas….”

  Owen was getting better at figuring out signs, but that finger-spelling business had him counting his alphabet in his head. Maggie usually spoke and signed simultaneously, which was both a lesson and an ease. Peter, however, was more selective. If he wanted an audience, he would let rip with that funny fluting voice of his, which grew higher in pitch the angrier he became; anger seemed to be about nine-tenths of this young fellow’s marrow. He knew why the boy wanted out, and it sure wasn’t to take canned goods to any Christmas-poor Indians. He wanted to see that Bonnie Tsosie, with as many miles between himself and his mother as possible, and at age fifteen, why not, more power to him.

  But before Maggie could rebut Peter’s last good reason for bailing out on Christmas, here came sister Nori into the kitchen, trailing store-bought fragrance. She was one surprise Owen hadn’t counted on. He thought he’d seen the last of her Thanksgiving Day, when Maggie all but chased her out with a broom, but apparently she was no more of a quitter than her sister. Thank the Lord, this time she wasn’t toting a state trooper. She wore skintight pants the color of sun-turned hay. If you looked at them quick, it almost seemed like she wasn’t wearing pants at all, just soft gold summer skin up and down those endless legs. Owen hadn’t imagined there could be any more leg to a woman than Maggie Yearwood. But here before him was another one with a thirty-six-inch inseam. Three feet of legs and sister to Maggie, the woman he slept with. Lord God, help me stop thinking with my equipment and use the good brain you gave me for something besides skull insulation.

  When Joe saw Nori, he took off his hat. “Sha! Must be of one them Christmas angels. I shouldn’t of made that remark about your Jesus.”

  “Joe, Nori’s my little sister,” Maggie said.

  “Little?” Joe echoed. “She’s taller by a good six inches.”

  “It only seems that way. Younger sister,” Maggie clarified. “By eight years.”

  Nori smiled, hugging her arm around Peter, who beamed with attention.

  And close up, taking a good long look at her, Owen thought, What sane man wouldn’t beam with serious candlepower? While Joe shook her hand and smiled, Owen forced his deliberations to stay pleasant and polite and tried to banish from his mind the notion of how widely spaced breasts like hers could fill up empty hands. It wasn’t working too good. He blindly chugged after his train of thought, which at any moment seemed likely to derail off the side of the nearest mountain, just like the narrow-gauge Cumbres and Toltec out of Chama always felt like it might. Where Maggie was long-term good to be with, her sense of humor the kind of comfort he looked forward to after a good day or a hard day, either one, this sister of hers offered an entirely different experience. She might have been eight years younger, but he sure couldn’t find proof of that anywhere in the hazel, cat-quick eyes. Maggie’s were blue, quicker to take in the softer side of life. Sister Nori’s had charted harsh sights and recorded every one of them right in her tough little heart.

  Joe smiled broadly, showing off his silver tooth. “Say, Younger Sister, you like my fine new watch?”

  Nori stared back at him, unimpressed by both his words and his dental work. “I think I can tell what time it is.”

  Joe took another tack. “You got one of them inner clocks, do you? Lucky duck. Never have to set an alarm.”

  “Well, I don’t know about that, but I can usually tell when someone’s giving me the time of day.”

  Joe laughed, and Maggie turned away, greasing up her baking pans, putting her elbow muscle into the chore.

  Owen watched her, curious. She was moving about the kitchen in her “efficiency mode,” stacking little rounds of dough for what his own momma used to call Parker House rolls. All this food! She had two pies ready to go into the oven, in addition to the already-baked peach cobbler she knew he favored. When Maggie started in cooking like that, as if she were expecting the governor for supper, it meant she was trying hard to work out in kitchen pots and pans whatever was troubling her in the world outside. This sister of hers looked like she had never owned a fry pan of her own long enough to figure out you were supposed to take it down off the wall now and again to burn dinner. Maybe that was the sore point with her sister, some twenty-year feud over who did the dishes.

  Peter was watching the whole scenario closely, maybe hoping his mother might cave in and let him go with Joe just to simplify the equation. But Owen could see that another part of Peter, the cautious side, was worried, like he’d been on Red, afraid that at any moment this quiet holiday might spontaneously combust, like hay could if it got baled up while it was too damp in the middle. And by the look on his face, Owen figured if it wouldn’t come as that big of a surprise to Peter if and when it did.

  But Maggie was all smiles, a fierce grin that had all the men a little cowed and both dogs seeking a quiet corner. “Dinner,” she said, wielding an oversize fork and lengthy knife intended for the turkey, “in case anyone’s interested.”

  No one hesitated; they found places at the table, pulled out chairs, sat ready to eat. Everyone bent their heads while Owen said the blessing, the same one he silently said to himself every time he sat down with people he cared about to share a meal. “Thank you for the opportunity to fill my undeserving belly in the company of these good friends.” And though he and Joe had done the hard work of roasting the turkey, peeling the potatoes, heating up the gravy; at the thought of Maggie’s desserts and the flaky rolls, he felt all raw nerves and the usual dollop of male guilt endured whenever a woman went all out in the holiday cocina. He hoped it was enough of a blessing to cover them all.

  His mind wasn’t on holidays, prayers, or even Nori’s legs any longer, it was on Maggie’s reaction to the present he hadn’t yet gathered his nerve to give her. Verbena had helped him find it, had taken him over to the trading post and forced the backroom keys from Benny’s fist. Together they sneezed through the dust, tried to decipher the yellowed pawn tickets that had faded to scribbles as they bypassed pots and turquoise trade necklaces in search of rugs. Something about the weavings moved Maggie in a way that made them more to her than simply rugs. The first night they went out to Blue Dog Days, he’d seen the way she looked at them, how she knew the patterns and the wool types right off, and concluded that she had studied the books hard because the real thing wasn’t an option. He couldn’t afford much, and wished he’d gotten lucky at the Blue Dog auction, but he had saved seventy dollars out of the money he’d gotten selling lambs. With Benny’s prices, it didn’t look like it would go far. “I want something she won’t get tired of looking at,” he said as they flipped through rugs too worn for Benny to sell up front, yet not old enough to qualify as “museum pieces” and therefore fetch ungodly sums for their charming disrepair.

  “Then you ought to give her something more than rug,” Verbena said. “Like jewelry.”

  He s
ighed. “This ain’t about romance, Verbena. It’s just about one rug. Can’t afford nothing else, not this Christmas.”

  “Not all presents have to cost arm and leg,” Verbena countered.

  “Is that so?”

  “Yes. Some say best things in life are free.”

  “You read that off some cereal box, or is this the wisdom of talk-show radio?”

  “Don’t smart-mouth me, Owen Garrett.”

  “That’s not my aim. It just raises my hackles when people hand you little sayings, like you’re not right in the head.”

  “Don’t take a wise man to know what I know. You should be able to come up with more clever present than shabby rug.”

  “Verbena, honey, she likes rugs. Can’t we just settle on one and be done with it?”

  “For smart white man, sometimes you awful stupid. Your life is work in the hardware store, sell a few head of sheep, rest of the time maybe sit and read book? Hah. You’re as knotted up as any of them others got that nonsense dangling between legs. They lead you in circles, built-in stupid compass.”

  “I give up. You win. Where’s your inkblots, Doc? Let me take a look, try and find my poor old momma in one.”

  She smiled. “Suddenly you roll over like a dog and show me your belly. I wonder why?”

  “Maybe it means I want your help picking a rug before summer.”

  “Well, don’t get nervous.” Verbena’s careworn hand flipped corners back, checking to see which rugs’ patterns were mirrored on the backside. Those that didn’t go to the trouble she tsked at and gave no further inspection. She sat back on her heels in the storeroom and sighed. “Owen Garrett, you already in deep, up to your heart’s bones.”

  For the first time in a long while, he wished he had a cigarette, a drink, something to do with his mouth besides fumble an answer.

  “Trouble is, we’re looking in wrong pile. What we want is something not so much regular pattern,” she went on. “I think only thing your Maggie never grow tired of looking at be your ugly white face. But you say a rug for her, so I say best look for pictorial. Benny Mota!” she called out, and the stocky Texan stuck his head around the corner.