Blue Rodeo

by Jo-Ann Mapson

  He guessed it was church, but there was no bloody Jesus stapled to a life-size cross. Instead a multicolored weaving hung in its place, high above a plywood altar with only blazing votive candles to assure Peter this was a somewhat Catholic assembly. None of the attendees felt committed to staying in the few ramshackle pews. People were here to dance, if you could call that foot-shuffling they were doing in the aisle dancing. The younger men were braver. They employed trickier moves and some were waving their arms in arcs, their brightly colored cowboy shirts as flashy as peacocks’ feathers. Up on the altar, where the sacraments were pushed to the side, Bonnie’s brothers played their guitars. After the first song Peter could feel the music in his feet against the floor, and sometimes in the tiny hairs that lifted on the back of his neck. Then Bonnie left her parents in the pew and joined her brothers onstage. One of her brothers came to her side and lowered the mike to her face. She looked a little nervous. At her side he sang with her, like a guide.

  Peter would have cut off an arm to hear her voice. Everyone else here could. That he never would didn’t seem fair. He yanked Nori’s sleeve, demanding translation.

  Nori’s expression was soft, the closest he’d ever seen her to tears since that time in his hospital room, when she thought he wasn’t looking. She finger-spelled “Bonnie,” then made the signs for write song. Aloud she said, “I’m glad you can’t hear it. This would break your heart,” and she made the “breaking” motion, her fists snapping apart.

  “Tell me the words.”

  She shook her head no, pulled a tissue from her purse. “It’s about saying goodbye. Excuse me. I need to get out of here.”

  Catching most of what she’d said, he watched her retreat to the rear of the church, clutching her wad of Kleenex.

  When the singing was over, Bonnie waved to him. She signed low on her right side, as if she didn’t want to call attention to what she was saying. “You-me, talk Youngcloud’s, yes?”

  All right. She hadn’t forgotten him.

  In the rear of the church, Joe joined Nori. He sat down next to her, saying nothing for a long while, just watching the dancers.

  Nori said, “God, I hate church. It always makes me feel so guilty. One of the little perks of growing up Catholic.”

  “Half our people worship Catholic religion,” he said. “But they keep the Navajo custom, too. Double-strength prayers or whole lot of hokey, who can say? Myself, I like to watch, but I’d rather be scared into being good by Monster Slayer kachina than burn in hell with your nasty old Satan.”

  Nori said, “He’s not my Satan. I left that shit in the dust decades ago.”

  Joe nodded. “Good trick. Tell me how to leave behind your creed.”

  She snuffled into her tissue, then balled it up and hid it in her purse among loose change, stray pieces of gum, credit card receipts she needed to list on her December expense report. “One day it all sticks in your throat. So you just say adios. You walk out of church and you don’t go back.”

  Joe nodded. “Sure, that’s a good way. So how come you’re crying about it?”

  “Damn, you’re nosey!”

  He smiled and handed her his handkerchief. “Maybe nosey. Maybe interested.”

  She looked down at his bandanna in her hands, a faded gray with the barely discernible words “Red Power” stenciled on it, a few grains of sugar still stuck to the fabric. Its smoothness between her winter-rough fingers felt as comforting as her own bedsheets, not that she ever spent enough time in them to remember. Up on the altar/stage, Bonnie’s family was singing something foreign, Navajo, she guessed. Not understanding didn’t matter one nit—she could tell this was holy music. Touching Joe’s bandanna to her ruined mascara, she said, “Now I suppose I have to wash this.”

  “That’s okay. Let me keep some of your tears. I don’t mind.”

  “Well, maybe I do.” This was certainly turning out to be among the weirder Christmases she’d experienced.

  To Peter the night at Verbena Youngcloud’s was measurable by neither time nor clock. If anybody left they came back later with a friend or two, more food, or contributed to the music by taking a turn at the drum or singing. The snow mounded up in small white cones on the horses’ backs outside, but the horses were way too interested in the commotion behind the windows a few feet away to go into the warm barn. Joe went outside to feed his mule, and when he returned, he was dusted with snow, looking like a gingerbread cookie man, powdered with confectioner’s sugar. Peter remembered how his mother used to make those, with honey and wheat flour, back in the days when she thought keeping him away from refined sugar would stave off all of life’s most dire circumstances. He didn’t like sugar that much, so he guessed her efforts had some positive effect. But she couldn’t keep him from having to go through the divorce, could she? Or losing his hearing. Well, why wreck Christmas opening that can of worms? He stretched out near the woodstove, where, one by one, the kerosene lamps were extinguished so tired children could flop, piled together like puppies, share a blanket, and go to sleep while the adults partied on. This was the first adult party he’d been to where the kids weren’t sequestered in another room and shushed. Here they seemed to be the heart of the celebration, and every adult stopped and took time to see what one needed, to cheer a sad face with a hug or a bite of food.

  When most of the kids had found sleeping places, Bonnie sneaked over and curled up only a few feet away from where he lay. Joe and Nori looked as if they might stay up the entire night, Nori talking, Joe eating. Eventually Bonnie’s body inched its way closer, until she was curled in front of him like a warm spoon under the blanket. He couldn’t believe it. All his dreams and fantasies were nothing compared to this. He felt his erection pressing into her side, and wished he could will it back into softness before she noticed. How soft, warm, and curved every part of her was! He was afraid if he touched her, she would pull back. Gathering all his nerve, he signed into her hand, Nice Christmas?

  Nice. You’re here.

  Didn’t know you wrote songs. Sang.

  Family thing.

  That song tonight. Tell me name.

  She nestled against him, spelling out her name with exaggerated slowness, B-o-n-n-i-e.

  He teased her back. Ha ha. Song in church.

  Later.

  Please. Tell me name.

  “Blue Rodeo.” Quiet.

  You wrote? What about?

  Go to sleep. They’ll move us apart.

  Song about saying goodbye?

  In answer she leaned back to kiss him, a hello kiss, definitely nothing in her mouth saying goodbye. He hadn’t known it could be like that—so easy—a girl just up and pressing her mouth to yours. Trying hard not to think how to do it properly, he kissed her back. Touching her hands, feeling her fingers move, was awesome. She was right, they had to be very still. This took more strength than any idiotic sport he’d been challenged to in school, and it was definitely harder than algebra, or anything he’d ever experienced, including all those years of hearing his parents argue. She finished the kiss with a soft giggle he felt against his neck, her breath hot and sweet. Hidden behind the bodies of sleeping children, they kissed some more, until Peter’s mouth felt worn raw and his heart stretched as thin as drumskin from all that pounding. He was sure people could hear them breathing this hard into each other, trying not to move beyond kissing, and he figured in the morning, there would be some kind of unpleasant consequences, but right now it was worth it.

  Nori, feeling about as crabby as her morning face looked in the Youngcloud’s bathroom mirror, gave up on repairing it and shut her compact. Other people were waiting to use the bathroom, so she had to go back out there eventually. All night they’d stayed up talking, Joe telling her stories, defining his dreams so clearly she could see every acre of the ranch he wanted, the sturdy barn, the decent stock, the houseful of laughing children. All the men she dated wanted basically the same thing—an indecent amount of money, the latest model of Porsche, Mercedes, or Lex
us, and her panties off before the end of the evening. She’d run her own life similarly, working three times as hard as she needed to, knowing she’d retire at forty, thinking how great it was that when she settled down she’d never crave travel, since she’d amassed more frequent flyer miles than she could ever use. Listening to Joe had made her look back, inventory her plan. She discovered she was in roughly the same place as five years ago, when the plan seemed brilliant. Someone knocked at the door and she called out, “Sorry,” opened it, and planted herself in the corner next to Verbena’s loom, woven one-quarter of the way up with a streak of mocha lightning against a black background.

  Joe brought her black coffee in a chipped cup.

  “Uh-oh. You’re wearing that pissed-off look again, wrecking your pretty face.”

  “I’m just trying to figure out how to tell Peter to knock that shit off.”

  “What shit? Him and Bonnie Tsosie helping clean up the mess?”

  “That’s not what I mean. You saw him last night, kissing her.”

  Joe blew on the surface of his coffee. “So?”

  The hot coffee tasted surprisingly bitter to her seasoned lips. “He’s too damn young to be doing this.”

  “How old are you supposed to be? Thirty-two?”

  She made a face at Joe’s mention of her age. “Look, he’s fifteen. If he starts screwing now, he’ll wreck his life getting into trouble with a girl he hardly knows.”

  “Last time I checked, screwing was a long ways off from kissing. Besides, you said his life’s already wrecked on account of going deaf.”

  Joe’s dart hit its target, momentarily leveling her fierce logic. “Look, maybe I went overboard last night in the truck, but this is not a deaf thing, it’s a sex thing.”

  Joe laughed. “Bull. Get off his back. You ain’t his mother. Maggie is. You want some kids to boss around, make your own.”

  Nori felt her stomach start to crumple. Asshole—how dare he tell her a thing like that? She considered throwing the bitter coffee in his pretty face, decided she hated all Indians, and finished off her careening train of thought with a wish she often dredged up late at night, in hotels, when she had trouble sleeping. If only there was some rental service where you could pay fifty bucks and, in return, get some anonymous, sexually tireless man to screw away your panic, ask no questions, and keep his well-meaning advice to himself. She set down her coffee and stared at the weaving, waiting for her emotions to collect themselves, the same way she handled belligerent clients and all-male board meetings.

  Softly, Joe said, “Hey, medicine girl. Look here.” He pulled up his shirt, revealing his scars, the long lines of surgical tracks where the doctors had jerry-rigged bones and organs, then set to with staples and catgut to hold him together. “See this? Everything happens for a reason. It was my time to serve my country, my time to check out death, then my time to come back and do some more work here. Can your doctors fix this? No. I got to learn to live with it. It ain’t easy, but remember, we all grow into each other like these here yarns in Verbena’s loom.”

  She started to put her fingers to the longest scar, the one that snaked across his chest like the ammunition straps he’d worn in Vietnam. It was the stitchery of a child, a blind surgeon, shoddy was too nice a word for Joe’s chest.

  He grabbed her fingers in his and kissed them.

  Sharply she pulled them back, afraid at what his touch had called forth in her, angry that her coping skills were flopping around like dying fish. “Don’t,” she whispered.

  “Sorry.” Joe took his coffee cup and drank it slowly, looking away from her. He was pulling back, thank God. She needed to be alone, that’s what, to cry herself to sleep in her hotel room, the DO NOT DISTURB sign on her doorknob, the television on in the background for white noise.

  17

  USUALLY OWEN LIKED NOTHING BETTER AFTER MAKING LOVE than Maggie’s predatory light massage, as she ran her hands over his face in silence. Her movements were gentle and knowing and had the power to settle him into sleep even better than the sore muscles that accompanied hard work. But tonight, when her fingers stopped abruptly at the scar over his eye and didn’t move on, he got a bad feeling.

  “Okay,” she said. “Time’s up. I want you to tell me how this happened.”

  In the dark he brought her fingers to his mouth and kissed her winter-roughened skin. Lately, her businesslike nails were stained with oil paint. Her palms sometimes smelled of the garlic she used in cooking. He doubted that, even in her former life, she’d taken the idea of a manicure seriously. Hands were instruments, tools—hers were capable of work as well as this other touching. He drew her to him and with two deep kisses, tried to interest her in a different activity, but he might as well have been barking at a knothole for all the good it did. She pulled away from him and sat up in her bed, waiting. “Maggie,” he said. “Trust me. Better off you don’t know.”

  “Granted, I was slow in starting, but over the past two months you’ve listened to me pour out my troubles, Owen. You’ve heard me confess more about screwing up Peter’s life than I ever intended to let you know. Now it’s your turn.”

  “Wasn’t that sister of yours showing up a surprise?”

  “Nori’s like fog. Hell to drive through and gone by afternoon.”

  He chuckled. “Careful, you’re starting to sound like you live here.”

  “Please don’t change the subject. I do live here. And as hard as I tried to resist, I fell in love with you.”

  He turned on his side and tucked a pillow under his chin, whispering. “Thought my loving satisfied you, but you still sound hungry.”

  “This isn’t about sex, Owen. You make my body sing.”

  “Lord God, will you tell me why is it women always end up pestering you for secrets in bed?”

  “Probably for the same reason men won’t tell the truth until someone puts a gun to their heads.”

  “Honey, that’s just small-town attitude.”

  “Right. And it has nothing to do with Thanksgiving, or why you flinch whenever we run into anything remotely connected with the law.”

  He took hold of her hand and traced the long, sturdy bones. A pretty fair painter, more-than-able cook, determined gardener or post-hole digger, he had no doubt his Maggie would be this feisty into her eighties. He tried to picture her in this house forty years down the road, her blouses gone as faded and soft as these old bedsheets. Stubbornly wearing her Levi’s until the seat wore out. Avoiding church, making the ladies in town gabble about her like turkeys. Everything around her would be categorized into a kind of comfortable rubble, canvases stacked against the wall, the dog she never could find the time to spay long gone, but probably some of her great-great-grandpups sleeping in the shade of the porch. She’d keep after her son until they’d squared their differences, like he should have done with Sara Kay. The only puzzle piece missing from the blissful scene was himself. He couldn’t stay in any one place forever. Maggie would eventually replace him. Some other man would see how good a woman she was, court her in ways he couldn’t afford. She pitched no fits when he was gone working. She wasn’t afraid to stay in this big house alone. She liked thunder and shoveled snow alongside him; she made a hand worth hiring. She put him in mind of that O’Keeffe woman New Mexico revered more than its mineral resources Maggie’s paintings, however, while hardly museum quality, were more realistic. She wouldn’t move for a prairie fire if she wanted something, including the truth about his past. And she was still waiting. He cleared his throat. “All right. Remember, I didn’t offer this, you asked. And if I ever disappear, know it’ll have little to do with you. I’d like nothing better than to stay tucked inside you for the rest of my life. Until I stop breathing, maybe.”

  “What did you do, Owen?”

  “What you expect. Killed a man.”

  He heard her immediate sigh. “How?”

  “With bourbon and half a pool cue.”

  He listened to her silence as she took it all in. She wa
s a woman who had heard it all, from her I-don’t-love-you-anymore Hollywood husband, to the team of he’ll-never-hear-again doctors who couldn’t wake her kid up when a dog could, to her nine-dollar sister saying I just spent the night playing slap-and-tickle with your best friend. He felt a momentary lightness, confiding in someone else after all this time, but the heavy bird hovering over them in the dark landed again, square on his chest, and he felt the familiar taloned feet close back over his ribs.

  “Was it somebody you knew?”

  “No. Just a stupid fight that got liquored up and fatal.”

  She turned in bed, moving away from him. “So what did you do?”

  “Hit Colorado breeze for a healthier climate and didn’t stop for kissing. Until I met you.”

  She touched his scar again. “But if it was self defense—”

  He cut her off. “That’s a mighty gray area, Ms. Yearwood.”

  “Why didn’t you go to the sheriff and at least try to explain?”

  She had a right to every question. He only wished he had some different answers to give her. “I was drunk. I hit him with the weighted end of the pool cue. That’s what happened and that’s all they would have heard. If not murder, then voluntary manslaughter at least. We’re talking hard time.”

  “It’s been years. You’re living a decent life. Maybe they’d take that into consideration.”

  “A man looking over his shoulder at every piece of straight road hasn’t exactly lived what others call a straight life.”

  “But you never did anything like that again.”

  “Of course not. But until I got sober, I did jobs that ran a little left of the law. Stupid stuff, like moving unregistered livestock. Selling transport papers. Other stuff I was so drunk I can’t even clearly recall, but it wasn’t legal. Let’s just say it was enough to make Sara Kay want to change her last name, which she did.”