by Brady Udall
We stuff ourselves back into the car and coast down through the tight looping curves, the pine-scented air swirling in our heads. We are dirty and exhilarated and when we have to get out to lift the car over the downed trees, even with the extra four hundred pounds on top, it’s like we’re lifting a baby carriage—we’re that happy. Blood is running steadily down all the windows and dripping through the rust holes in the roof and we’re belting out Jimmy Buffet’s “I Wish I Had a Pencil-Thin Mustache.” This is our favorite song and we reserve it for special occasions like this one. We put our souls into it. Waylon appears to have forgotten all about the moose and Louis has the wipers going and he’s hunched over the steering wheel, squinting to see through the streaked glass and yodeling his heart out. With the glow from our headlights coming through the blood-washed windshield everything inside the car has turned a fresh-meat pink. We are crammed together, almost on top of each other, covered with mud and sweat and blood—we are a singing pile of carnage. Our vocal chords are gritty and raw, our lungs nearly given out, but we keep it going, hoarse and loud as we ease down the last slope out of the darkness and trees, toward the few, scattered lights of home.
Snake
It’s the biggest snake I ever seen without the aid of liquor. Sitting there in the kitchen watching water drip in the sink, resting up after a long fight on the toilet with my constipation, when I seen it go racing down the hall to the bedrooms, probably after a mouse. My eyes are no damn good anymore, but it was a big bull snake, I guess, fat as my leg and six feet long.
Somebody’s always leaving that damn screen door open. Got to pull it shut tight! I’m forever yelling at the girls. You don’t keep that door shut, you got snakes racing through here, sometimes these rattlers, big ones, just looking for a shady place to choke down a mouse. Wait till somebody gets bit and the screen door’s going to get shut tight every time.
“Hey-yah! Close the screen door!” Hurts my head yelling that loud but nobody listens otherwise. Probably more snakes on their way in right now. Come right on in, snakes! I say. What’s the difference between one snake in the house and three or eight snakes? At least they get the mice.
Pretty soon I get up to shut the screen door. I got some of that damn arthritis, walking from the kitchen to the porch is just about enough to kill me. It hurts so much, my knees are so bad, I have to say shit every time I put my foot down. Walking around and it’s shit, shit, shit, shit, shit. Since I got the arthritis I probably said shit six hundred thousand times. Door’s wide open and I guess since I’m already here it’s just as good if I sit on the porch for awhile. Nobody wants to sit in a house that’s got a big snake in it.
My boy Cornelius, he’s out front working on his car. He probably just got back from work, usually he comes in to have something to drink after work, but he’s set on getting that car fixed. The girls, they’re out back, maybe, messing around like usual. Cornelius’ wife, her name was Ada, lived with us until a year and a half ago when she was walking into town, it was early morning and dark, and somebody ran off the road and hit her. Killed her just like that. Christmas day and we’re all sitting around wondering what’s taking her so long to bring the food home. Every day Cornelius has to walk two miles into town, right past the spot Ada died (me and the girls made a little pile of rocks there to remember it) for his job working on the new tribal building. Every afternoon he walks two miles back unless there’s somebody nice enough to give him a ride. Usually there’s not.
Cornelius is still tore up over it. He walks right on the white line, sometimes out in the road, hoping maybe a car will come along and hit him too, take him away so he can be with Ada again. I try telling him he needs to go into town some nights and find himself a new mother for the girls but he don’t like to listen to much I say. I feel bad for the girls, with only me and Cornelius to look after them.
We live down here at the south edge of the reservation, right on the highway that comes down out of Globe. We got a pretty good HUD house, better than most, with a extra room Cornelius put on last summer, and a pen with some goats and chickens. We got it all to ourselves, the sagebrush, creosote, juniper, coyotes, jackrabbits, lizards and a wild horse named Tom (the girls named him that after somebody on the TV) who comes up to the kitchen window some nights, sticks his head right in the house and makes a lot of godawful noise. I always get up, sometimes the girls too, and we give Tom a potato or some licorice or whatever we got in the house. He stands there munching whatever it is like he’s thinking about something important. We had dogs too, probably a dozen of them, one time or another, but every one ran out on the highway and got wiped out by a truck or a station wagon or some old white people in a motor home. Finally we stopped getting dogs. Burying those poor dead dogs, the girls crying and carrying on, only so much of that you can take.
Out back is a wickiup I built so the girls could see what kind of house their grandfather used to live in. I’m always trying to teach them some Apache words but they don’t want none of that. They just run around like rabbits, never stopping, you know, like girls do. That wickiup is their favorite place to play now. They pretend it’s a castle or a shopping mall or something else like that.
“Snake in the house,” I say to Cornelius and settle down on my lawn chair. “Big snake.”
Cornelius has himself stuck so deep into that car it’s only his ass sticking out of there. The car is some old thing, rusted up pretty bad. Cornelius bought it off Virgil Kitcheyan for fifteen dollars one night when Virgil was drunk as a rat. Looks like maybe Virgil pulled it out of a river.
“Sure hot today,” I say to nobody but myself.
After a while Cornelius pulls himself out of the car, says, “There’s some kind of police with his car broke up the road. He’s doing a lot of cussing at his car.”
“You help him?”
“Not no police I didn’t.”
“You hear what I said about the snake?”
Cornelius keeps his mouth shut. He won’t never admit to it, but he’s afraid of snakes. When there’s a snake to be killed I’m the one that’s got to do it.
The girls come running up from the back of the house. Charlotte, eight, and Peaches, five. Been playing in the sandwash behind the house. Both dirty as hell and screaming like coyotes. We need to find them a mother alright.
Charlotte swats Cornelius right on the ass and Peaches wraps herself around one of his legs. They keep squealing, oh they are so happy, oh they sure do love their daddy, oh, oh, oh. They got so much energy it makes me tired. Cornelius keeps banging around inside the car and the girls sit down in the dirt to watch. Sure pretty with the sun in their hair. I got to remember to keep them away from the boys.
Cornelius jerks up out of the car and holds up a cut thumb. Just a tiny bit of blood on it, looks like. He changes his voice, like a white man’s, and looks over at the girls, “You see what this car did? Damn car cut me! Ow! Oh boy, look what it done. Come on, car, you got to cooperate.” He gives the car a good kick on the bumper. “This ain’t funny. I’m going to light you on fire you piece-of-crap car!”
The girls squeal so hard they fall backward. They love it when their Daddy makes like a white man. Good to see Cornelius messing around like he used to.
Little Peaches starts to yelling, jumping up and down, pointing at the road. She’s got crow’s eyes, can see for miles. Sure enough, here comes somebody walking this way. Whoever he is, he’s still far off and you can barely make him out through the heat coming up off the road.
“It’s that goddamn police,” Cornelius says with his thumb in his mouth. “A fat-ass white guy.”
Cornelius doesn’t like white people, never did, and I guess a fat white police for him would be double bad. I like to sit out front and watch the cars go by and most times it’s white people driving. Sometimes they see the house with the wickiup and they stop to have a look. I guess they think the only reason we’re here is for tourists to look at.
I always liked the hippies best. Them and th
e Jehovah’s Witnesses. Some years back, hippies were all over the reservation, running around in their vans and school buses, all of them wanting to learn how to be Indian. Never made no sense, but they were nice.
I got a favorite hippie, this one showed up a few years ago. I guess he only knew one word: “Wow.” He had curly red hair all over him and he had on a kind of leather loincloth, like a big dirty diaper and his big purple pecker hanging out of it. He didn’t give a shit. He walked around the wickiup, went inside, came back out and he just kept saying it, “Wow.”
We stood there for awhile and he went ahead and said it again, “Wow.”
So I just said it right back, “Wow.”
He liked that. We were best friends after that. Before he left he gave me a little paper sack with some marijuana it. Some pretty good stuff.
So now here’s this police with a broke down car. He looks like he’s been walking for a good long way, teetering some, lugging a briefcase like it’s full of rocks. He comes walking up the path and Cornelius keeps his head stuck in the car. The girls stand and stare like they never seen a fat white man before.
He stops in front of the porch, making a sound like, huf huf huf. He’s got on a tan uniform with patches on it and he’s wet all over, looks like he fell in a cow trough. White people don’t have no trouble sweating.
“You have a phone?” he says. Huf huf huf.
“All we got is beer,” I say.
He thinks on it for a minute, his head is so red and swelled up it looks like it might pop. “That would be good, fine. Is it hot? How is it this hot? Oh Lord I’m just about to die.”
I start telling Charlotte to run get a Coors, but I remember the snake. I’m pretty sure it’s not a rattler, but I don’t want anybody getting bit. I go inside to get the beer. Walking to the kitchen, it’s the same old thing, one foot at a time, shit shit shit shit. Cornelius wanted to get me a cane but I told him somebody gives me a stick I’ll just end up hitting people with it.
I give a look in the bedroom and the bathroom, but that snake’s got himself hid up somewhere. I’ll find him later. I get a six-pack and stick my head in the freezer for a minute to cool off some.
Been a few months since I stopped drinking. There’s this lady doctor comes around every once in awhile, works for the BIA, and she told me I keep drinking my liver will go rotten, or something like that. She was a good looker, had some tits on her, and she put her hands under my shirt and down my pants, feeling things. First time in maybe ten years my pecker’s got hard.
Outside Cornelius is whacking on the car extra loud and our friend has pretty much got his breath back. I get another lawn chair for this guy who’s big as an outhouse and smells like flowers. When he settles down it’s a miracle the chair doesn’t fall to pieces. “Car broke down up the road aways,” he says. “Chrysler Cordoba. This car’s not two years old and it looks like the fuel pump’s gone on it. My cousin Cecil sold it to me, that fucking apple. I’ll tell you one thing,” he takes a drink of beer, wipes his mouth. “Don’t ever buy a Chrysler Cordoba.”
He sucks his beer and sticks his hand at me. His fingers are like wet hot dogs. “Bud Anderson.”
“You the police?” I say.
He laughs and I can see all kinds of metal in his teeth. The sweat is just running off him.
“Arizona Fish and Game,” he points to the patch on his shoulder. “I was on my way to Phoenix to get drunk and pick up my retirement plaque. No way I’ll make it now.”
I tell him he might be able to hitch a ride, but he shakes his head. “I’d rather hump a cactus than stay one more minute in that sun.”
I yell at Cornelius to come get a beer. He looks at me, doesn’t say nothing. He’s got a look on his face, angry and ashamed, like he’s got something stuck up his ass but don’t exactly know what to do about it. It’s his I-don’t-care-for-white-people face. Me, I spent some years working at the sawmill up at McNary, had to spend time with white people. Learned what they’re like. But Cornelius has never been off the reservation except to go to Phoenix a few times. The only people he ever got to know was his teachers down at the Indian school.
After standing there for awhile, Cornelius comes and takes a seat on the other side of me, still holding a screwdriver. He pops open a beer with the screwdriver and drinks half of it right off. The girls get in the car and make like they’re driving someplace far away from here.
“No phone, then?” Bud says.
“Just beer,” I say.
Bud nods, says, “I follow you.”
“Bud’s not the police,” I tell Cornelius.
“Happy to hear it,” Cornelius says.
“He’s a forest ranger,” I say.
“I’ll tell you what,” Bud says. “I’ve been in worse situations than this.”
The sun is going down behind us so it’s starting to cool down some. Bud puts down two more beers and Cornelius starts on his second while we watch the shadows of the house stretch out toward the road. Bud’s finally starting to get back some of his original color. I can’t stand it no more, having two people chugging it down on both sides of me. Stop drinking for a few months and all the sudden you find out how good beer smells. I sit there and sniff their beers and it’s like I’m dying of thirst. I guess I’ll have one can, maybe two, not even enough to make my knees stop hurting.
“You doing a fix-it job on that Caddy?” Bud says to Cornelius.
Cornelius watches me popping open my beer, but doesn’t answer Bud.
“Because if you are, I’ve got a guy down in the valley can get you any part you need. Some of those old Caddy parts are hard to come by these days. I think maybe I’ll get myself an old Caddy. They knew how to make a quality car at one time in this country. Now what have we got to show for ourselves? The goddamn Cordoba.” He takes another swallow of beer, his throat working like gears. “Those are some cute little girls, whose are they?”
“Mine,” Cornelius whispers.
I put the can to my mouth and that first sip is like birds singing and naked women dancing and chocolate chip ice cream all at the same time.
Bud puts his briefcase on his knees, opens it up and takes out a little leather book with pictures in it. He starts showing us all kinds of pictures, tells us about his daughter, whose name is Diane and is in college and a son, Terry, who’s going to high school. There’s a lot of pictures and he makes sure we look at every one. There’s barbecues, boat trips, beaches, kids hitting each other with plastic bats. He’s even got pictures of a curly little white dog named Ace. In some of the pictures Ace is wearing a sweater.
Cornelius, even though he’s trying to be Mr. Hardass, starts studying the pictures. Somebody hands over their whole life to you and you got to be a little curious.
Bud keeps on talking, going on so fast I can’t keep up with it, Terry this and Diane that. He tells us about his job and his mother who’s in a place for crazy people. Me and Cornelius are having a pretty good time sipping our beers and looking at the pictures, some of them are funny, seems like every picture somebody’s eating or got food in their mouths. I never seen so much food. Bud shows us a picture of Disneyland and tells us a pretty good one about how his boy threw up Fritos on a movie star’s shoes. He gets Cornelius laughing pretty good and then he just stops talking altogether, sits there staring at the pictures, his eyes not really seeing anything at all. We’re all quiet and the sun is already down and shadows have taken over the ground and pretty soon Bud starts weeping, not loud boo-hooing, just hissing through his teeth, his big body shaking, doing his best to hold it in. He’s got his eyes squeezed shut and he’s shaking so hard it sounds like the chair might come apart. We wait for him to finish and finally he makes a long sigh and tilts his head back and smiles. “Boy, okay, sorry about that,” he says.
He takes a few more breaths and holds out one of the pictures, points to a woman with her hair swirled and piled on top of her head, and says, “My wife, Lou Anne. Been just over four months now. Cancer that
got her. Started in her stomach, you know, pretty much hollowed her out until she didn’t have anything left inside. She kept plugging away a year more than the doctors gave her. She wanted to see one of her grandkids born, bless her heart. Never did make it.”
He opens another pocket in his briefcase and there are more pictures, different shapes and sizes, some black and white, all of his wife. He shuffles through them, like cards, but doesn’t hand them around to us. Bud hiccups a couple times, but doesn’t say nothing else. I look over at Cornelius and his face has gone pale and he’s grabbing his chair, the muscles in his arm standing out. He looks like he just woke up and doesn’t know exactly where he’s at. It’s the way he used to look all the time right after Ada died. He’s been getting better, but around the last new year Cornelius bought a gun off somebody, a little pistol, kept it under his mattress. One night I got up to piss and he was in the front room, holding that gun like it was something special to him, looking it down the barrel, pulling the hammer back, that kind of thing. Cornelius was concentrating so hard he didn’t notice me looking in on him. Next morning while he was at work I found the gun, walked a good mile and half up the sandwash, cussing the whole way, and dropped the gun down an old mine shaft. Didn’t hear it hit the bottom.
Only thing I try telling Cornelius is we got to keep going. Survive, you know. It’s what we been doing for hundreds of years now.
We sit there quiet for a long time, me, Bud and my boy Cornelius. The dark is moving in from the hills, and I think about Opal, my own wife, who died having Cornelius. She put him into the world and was gone just like that, before I knew there was something wrong. And here we are now, three men sitting on a porch, three men with three dead wives.
