by Billie Letts
Managing a weak smile, Mark said, “I’ve never tasted anything quite like it.”
“That’s because it’s one of my original recipes.”
“Well, you’re certainly inventive.”
“Like I told you,” Hap said, “Matthew’s cooking is truly an adventure in eating.”
Matthew beamed. “I’ve made spinach salad with yogurt dressing, cold fish mousse and a lima bean soufflé.”
“Sounds wonderful, Matthew,” Hap said, “but I know you need to get down to the station. Those guys will be getting hungry.”
“Right.” Matthew gathered up several grocery bags and headed for the back door. “Oh, I almost forgot. There’s a mayonnaise cheesecake in the fridge.”
“Go on. I’ll take care of it.”
“Okay. Bon appétit, gentlemen.”
Hap went to the kitchen window and watched until Matthew’s pickup pulled away. When he returned to the table, he picked up the soup bowls and emptied the bisque into the garbage disposal.
“Let’s go back to my study, Mark, unless you’ve worked up a hunger for lima bean soufflé.”
“I think I’ll deny myself that pleasure.”
Mark followed Hap to the far end of the house to a small room comfortably cluttered with law books, file folders, magazines and newspapers.
“Have a seat,” Hap said as he removed a stack of legal journals from a worn wingback chair. Then he opened an unlocked wall safe, pulled out a brown paper sack and—beaming like a kid showing off his Halloween loot—dumped the contents on his desk. Candy bars, peanuts, Twinkies, pretzels, cookies, Pop-Tarts and chips.
“Breakfast is served.”
“Thanks, but—”
“Wait!” Hap bent to a minifridge behind his desk, produced two bottles, popped the tops and handed one to Mark.
“What’s this?”
“Don’t tell me you’ve never tasted a Chocolate Soldier.”
“Afraid not.”
“Oh, you are in for a treat.”
Hap opened a package of Twinkies and handed one to Mark, who studied it with the look of a man about to bite into a frosting-filled grub worm.
“And this is . . . ?”
“A Twinkie! You mean to tell me you’re twenty-seven, twenty-eight, and you never—”
“We didn’t have junk food in our house.”
“Junk food?” Hap frowned. “Now you’ve hurt my feelings.”
Mark hesitated.
“Trust me. This will help you get past the taste of pumpkin squid bisque.”
“Okay.” Mark bit into the Twinkie, then took a swig of the chocolate milk.
“So?”
“Delicious.”
“See? Lawyers never lie,” Hap said as he peeled the wrapper from a Hershey bar. “Okay, let’s try to figure out where to start.” He grabbed a legal pad and pen. “You discovered this birth certificate after the death of your father. Right?”
“Yes.”
“And you had no idea until then that you were adopted.”
“None. And the name on the birth certificate didn’t mean anything to me, but the date of birth, the same as mine, had to be more than coincidence. Then, when I saw the decree of adoption, of course I knew.”
“You have the decree?” Hap’s excitement was obvious.
“No. It was clipped to the birth certificate. Whoever took that got them both.”
“Did you make a copy? Before you left California?”
“No, but there was also a statement from the attorney, dated February 2, 1972. It was for the adoption of a baby boy named Nicodemus Jack Harjo. The attorney was J. W. Downing; the charge was twenty thousand dollars.”
Hap whistled through his teeth. “That was a hunk of money back then. Did you try to contact this Downing?”
“He retired in ’83, died in ’85. And his office was in a building that was demolished in ’92. It’s a parking garage now.”
“Well, you’ve done some homework.”
“Didn’t learn much, though.”
“Would you like me to follow up on this? See what I can come up with?”
“Like what?”
“Well, Mark, we’ve got a lot of damn blanks here. Like who transported that baby from Oklahoma to California? A man? A woman? The killer? And the couple who adopted you through this lawyer, Downing? What did they know? Any chance they were—”
“Look, Hap, if you’re suggesting that my mother and father had anything to do with Gaylene Harjo’s murder or—”
“Whoa. I’m not suggesting anything. I’m just asking questions. Same questions, I suspect, you’ve been asking yourself.”
“My parents weren’t perfect, but they were decent, honest—”“Just not honest enough to tell you who you are.”
A heavy silence settled between the two men until the phone on Hap’s desk rang.
“Sorry, Mark. That’ll be Martha Bernard. And she’ll let it ring until I answer.”
“No problem.”
“Hello, Mother,” Hap said into the receiver. “No, Jolly Strange didn’t steal your shovel. I used it yesterday when you asked me to transplant . . .”
Mark wandered out of Hap’s office and down the hallway, then stopped before a painting he hadn’t noticed earlier.
The artist had worked in oil—two faces of an Indian woman . . . one young, hair black as ebony, dark, defiant eyes, unsmiling lips set in fierce determination. The second, the same woman grown old, hair gone white, face a geography of wrinkles. But the set of her jaw, the tilt of her unbowed head, and eyes that had refused and resisted revealed a spirit of defiance unaltered by her years.
Mark was so moved by the painting that he hadn’t realized Hap was standing just behind him.
“What do you think?” Hap asked.
“It’s powerful.” Mark looked for the artist’s signature but found instead a tiny spider painted with the face of a woman. “Who’s the artist?”
“Gaylene.”
Mark felt the fine hairs rise on the back of his neck, then rubbed at the goose bumps on his arms. “When did she do this?” he asked, unable to pull his eyes away from the painting.
“In her senior year of high school, I think. Yeah, she gave it to me just before she graduated.”
“You knew her well, then.”
“I watched her grow up. Her mother, Enid, worked for me at the bank for years. The family lived so far out of town, miles from the school bus route, so Gaylene rode in with Enid every morning, then came to the bank after school to wait for her mother to get off.
“So I saw Gaylene five days a week, from the time she started kindergarten until the day she turned sixteen and got her driver’s license.”
“Tell me about her.”
“Oh, she was quiet. Very shy kid. Used to sit on a bench in the lobby, just outside my office.
“One day, I guess she was in the third, maybe fourth grade, I grabbed a book off my desk, an art book I’d ordered, and I took it out to her, asked her if she’d like to look at it. She said yes, not much excited by it. Just being polite, I think.
“But the damnedest thing happened. That book took hold of her. She simply fell in love with it. Every day for weeks, she’d come to my office, stand in the door, waiting for me to offer her that book. And you know what she did for two hours every afternoon? She’d copy from the prints in the book. She had a sketchbook filled with copies of works by Picasso, Cézanne, de Kooning.
“So I started bringing more art books to the bank, let her take them home, bought them for her birthday. When she was in junior high, her art class took a field trip to the Gilcrease Museum in Tulsa, a show of North American Indian art. And that did it for her.
“She was hooked. Determined as hell to become an artist. She would have, too, if . . .”
Hap didn’t finish what he’d started to say. But he didn’t have to. Mark knew the rest of the sentence, knew how it ended.
; “What’s the significance of the spider there in the corner?” Mark asked.
“‘Spider Woman’ was the signature mark on all her work.”
“Do you know why?”
“Something to do with Cherokee lore.”
“And the connection?”
“Oh, I thought you knew. Gaylene was Cherokee.”
September 14, 1967
Dear Diary,
Guess what? I made the basketball team! Coach said if I work hard, I might see some court time. I sure hope so. If I have to sit on the bench all season and watch Danny watching Becky, it’s going to be a long season.
I asked Daddy if I could go to the all-school dance Friday night. I knew he’d say no, but no harm in asking. He says I can’t dance or date until I’m sixteen and he doesn’t want me going out with white boys.
Speaking of that, there’s a new Cherokee boy in my class this year. His name is Oscar Horsechief and he’s already had to fight because of his name. I understand that his family didn’t have a choice about Horsechief, but why would they stick him with a name like Oscar? He’s shy, but he seems nice. He’s not nearly as cute as Danny Pittman though.
I think my bust cream is working. I don’t jiggle yet, but my bra feels tighter. A little bit. I forgot to put the jar away night before last, but I don’t think Mom saw it. If she had, she would have said something. I hate it when we have one of our “talks” because she does all the talking.
Spider Woman
November 17, 1967
Dear Diary,
Becky Allan fouled out of the game with Spiro tonight and Coach Dougless put me in while we were down nine points in the fourth quarter. I was real nervous at first, especially when I saw Danny watching me, but I settled down and focused on my game. I made four baskets. Three lay-ups and a free throw.
We won 59 to 52, but it was ruined for me because right at the end of the game, right after my three-point shot, some guy in the bleachers yelled, “Way to go, Squaw.”
I wouldn’t let myself cry, not out there in front of everybody, but I cried in the locker room after the game. The girls on the team all hugged me, but it didn’t make me feel any better.
When I got home tonight, Oscar Horsechief called. He didn’t say anything about what had happened, but I know he called to try to make me feel better. He’s a good friend.
Spider Woman
Chapter Fourteen
Mark was surprised when he found himself parking the Mitsubishi in front of the pool hall. He’d just driven back from Hap’s place, almost twenty miles from town, but as he turned off the ignition, he realized he couldn’t recall the drive at all.
His mind was on the painting he’d seen and the girl who painted it—the girl who wanted to be an artist.
He tried to imagine what she would have looked like when she worked. Did she stand at the easel or sit? Was she right-handed or left-? Did she have small hands? Delicate fingers? Had she talked to herself as her paintings came to life? Or did she like silence broken only by the sounds of her brush strokes on canvas?
And Hap had said her artist’s mark was always Spider Woman. “Always” meant there’d been other paintings. How many? Mark wondered. A few? Dozens? Did any still exist? If so, where would they be?
Questions. So many questions. But most of all, he wanted to know who she was, this girl who had been his mother.
When he finally got out of his car, Mark saw the domino players at their table, watching him through the window. But when he stepped inside, they went on with their game, acting as if they hadn’t noticed him.
A lone teenager was muttering to an image on one of the videoscreens and the pool tables were empty, but the lunchroom wasn’t. Mark guessed from the way they were dressed that the diners, mostly elderly women, had just come from church.
Ivy, carrying a pitcher of tea, waved when she saw him. “Don’t run off,” she called. “I need to talk to you.”
While he was waiting, Mark pulled a chair up to the domino table in one corner.
“Mind if I watch?” he asked.
“Okay by me,” said Ron John O’Reily.
“How you feeling today?” Lonnie Cruddup asked, surprised to see a man with rabies up and walking around.
“Fine,” Mark said.
Lonnie began to shuffle the dominoes. “You ever played moon?”
“Hell, Lonnie. He’s from California,” Ron John said, still believing their visitor was Nick Nolte.
“Well, that explains it, then,” Lonnie said. “So what is it you all play out there?”
“They play polo,” Ron John said. Then, to Mark, “Ain’t that right?”
“Some do.”
“Now that’s something I’d like to try,” Ron John said. “Go to one of them casinos and play polo.”
“Do you mean keno?” Mark asked.
“Aw, hell.” Jackson Standingdeer shook his head. “He means bingo.”
“I saw James Bond do it in a movie,” Ron John said. “He was in a casino, real fancy place, wearing a tuxedo, and he was sure as hell playing polo.”
“You don’t know a damn thing, do you,” Jackson said. “You play polo on a horse.”
“We gonna get on with this game or not?” Ron John yelled.
“Fine. But I know what I know and that’s the end of it.” Lonnie gave the dominoes one last rough shuffle, then each player drew.
“Bid four,” Jackson said.
“Four?” Lonnie sneered. “You think you’re playing with a bunch of little kinnygardeners? Hell, a blind man could make five with my hand.”
“So, you bidding five? Or just saying you could make five if you was blind?”
“Five’s my bid.”
Johnny, the next bidder, studied his dominoes silently. Unblinking, unmoving.
“Goddammit, Johnny. You playing or having a stroke?”
Johnny hesitated, then said, “I’m gonna shoot the moon.”
Lonnie roared. “He’s had a stroke all right.”
“He’s bluffing,” Ron John said. “Trying to bait me into shooting it over him.”
“Remember what happened last time you shot it?” Lonnie asked. “You was picking up pieces of your own ass for a month.”
Mark edged closer to the table. “What does it mean, ‘shoot the moon’?”
“It means he’s gonna go for all the tricks.”
“The whole kit and kaboodle,” Jackson said.
“Kind of like getting married,” Lonnie explained.
“How’s that?” Mark asked.
“Well, say you find you a woman you just can’t get enough of. You want her so bad you can’t eat, can’t sleep.
“Now you know this is a woman who’s gonna keep your bed warm on cold nights, make you potato soup when you’re sick. She’s gonna believe you even when you’re lying. Hell, she’s the only person in the world who’s gonna know what you wanted that you never got, and what you got that you never wanted.
“But you know for certain there’s gonna be times when this woman’s gonna make you miserable. She’s gonna bitch if you forget your anniversary. She’s gonna want you to watch some crying movie on TV when there’s a ball game you wanna see. She’ll expect you to skip your poker game and keep her company when she’s feeling blue. In other words, she’s gonna be a pain in the ass some of the time.
“So, you gotta make a decision. What are you gonna do? Walk away from her? Or go for it all. Give her up? Or shoot the moon.”
“Well . . .” Mark looked into one face after another while all four of the domino boys waited. They were sizing him up. And he knew that his answer would, for them at least, determine what kind of man he was.
Finally he said, “Well, I guess I’d shoot the moon.”
Lonnie grinned, Jackson and Johnny nodded their approval and Ron John slapped Mark on the back.
“Okay, what are you boys up to in here?” Ivy asked as she came in from the lunchroom.
&
nbsp; “Just talking about the game, Ivy,” Lonnie said. “Believe this boy understands how it’s played now.”
“Mark, you start taking advice from that bunch, you’re in for some hard times.”
“You gonna bid, Ron John?” Jackson asked. “’Cause if you’re not—”
“I’m thinking, Jackson. I’m thinking.”
“Now there’s a first.”
Ivy went behind the counter and waved Mark over.
“Where’ve you been?” she asked.
“Hap’s.”
“Did he have any news?”
“I saw one of her paintings.”
“Aunt Gaylene’s?”
“Ivy, why didn’t you tell me she was Indian?”
“I just assumed you knew.”
Beginning to sound exasperated now, Mark said, “How the hell would I know?”
“You said you saw some pictures of her when you went to the newspaper office.”
“She didn’t look Indian in those,” he said.
“Mark, what does an Indian look like? Huh?”
“Like those two brothers at the domino table,” he said, almost whispering.
“Jackson and Johnny are full-blood Cherokees. Of course they look Indian. What about me? Don’t I look Indian?”
“No.”
“Well, I’m part Cherokee, part Creek. Almost everyone in this town has some Indian blood.” Ivy folded her arms, leaned across the counter. “What’s this about anyway? Does it bother you that you’re Cherokee? Do I detect a bit of racism in all this?”
“No! But it’s quite a shock. I knew even when I was a kid that I didn’t have the look of a golden California boy, but I thought my great-grandparents were Mediterranean. That’s what my mother told me, so—”
“Mark, you’re going to have to rethink most of what you’ve been told.”
“Yeah. I suppose so.”
“Uh-oh. Here comes trouble,” Ivy said when O Boy Daniels walked in.
“Thought I might find you here,” O Boy said to Mark. “Went by the motel, then took a run out to Hap’s place. Guess I just missed you.”
“How did you know I went to Hap’s?”
“Why? Was it a secret?” O Boy grinned with the satisfaction of having delivered the punch line to a good joke.
