Loving Chloe

by Jo-Ann Mapson

  He was eyeing a brand-new four-wheel-drive Jeep Cherokee some tourist had pulled into the service bay. Chrome accents and tall ribbed tires, stereo blasting—men drooled over that crap. Hank had never seemed the type, but Chloe sensed his palpable envy at the go-anywhere transmission, the lure of a new car that didn’t require babying. Ever practical, he coveted it about as long as it took to fill the tank and check the oil.

  He got in the driver’s side and turned the key in the ignition. “You mind going in the Trading Post so I can talk to Dog Johnson’s mother for a moment?”

  “Might as well. My big ass’ll fall asleep sitting out here in the truck.”

  He gave her that look that meant, Say “butt.” “Butt” is such a cute word; “ass” is bowling alley talk.

  She grinned. Pregnancy hadn’t crippled her ability to needle his upper-class upbringing out here in the bush. They drove fifty feet and parked, zipped up jackets, and got out. Around them the winter winds keened eerily. They were near the lip of the Little Colorado River Canyon, where the wind gusted constantly over the red rock formations sounding for all the world like the faint whistle of an ancient somebody looking for his lost dog. Hannah was locked up safe at home. Snow seemed to relieve the animal of what little brains she had left. On her fifty-foot tether, she raced the fenceline, deviling Thunder. Maybe, Chloe thought, winter had caused the white shepherd to enter a canine second childhood.

  Hank held the Trading Post door open for her. Wonderful, woodsmoke-smelling heat blasted Chloe in the face. Just inside the door she asked, “Hank, ever wish you’d knocked up some girl who at least had a college education?”

  A pair of elderly tourists shot her disparaging looks.

  He squeezed her hand and whispered, “There’s book-smart and there’s heart-smart. Given the opportunity, I’ll knock you up again.”

  The shocked tourists paid for their gewgaws and left in a huff. Maybe they didn’t have sex anymore. All that belly-slapping, sweaty play was part of their history, like Ralph Cameron and Arizona’s territorial status, so they bought expensive statues and tooled silver, desperate to fill up the empty places. She thought of Kit’s letter in her pocket and prayed Rich would let her come for spring break. Chloe could last until spring if she knew Kit was coming. Kit Wedler—a high school freshman—aside from a dead horse she couldn’t revive and a man she’d once loved who drank himself to death, there wasn’t anybody else alive Chloe wanted to see.

  Hank went to speak with Corrine Johnson. Corrine ran the shop in the owner’s absence. At ninety pounds, the last five made up of squash-blossom necklace, her appearance could deceive, but only once. Her son Dog had a gift with paints and colored pencils. Hank spent extra time with the boy all the other children lived to bully, and urged Corrine to encourage him in the arts, hoping to boost the boy’s self-esteem. Corrine’s response was consistent: Whatever gifts Dog’s got will last past childhood. They’ll keep while he learns his numbers and letters same as anybody else.

  While the two of them butted heads over educational approach, Chloe wandered the store aisles, admiring the riches, saving the pawn jewelry she adored for last. On the right side of the showroom, mass-produced tourist items like mold-cast storyteller dolls and imitation San Ildefonso pottery bowls hardly stayed on the shelves a week. Icky dyed turquoise adjustable rings hung from a turning tabletop rack on one side. From the other flashed copper bracelets that might not do much for arthritis but would for sure relieve you of five bucks. The tourists ate it up. There were color posters of the Grand Canyon, all purples and peaches that made the natural wonder look like an airbrushed Disneyland sunset. All Chloe’d done so far was peer over the south rim while Hank explained that it wasn’t merely a canyon, it was a “geological clock,” and that every color variation in the rock represented a different era, replete with different inhabitants. All that history! If the span and depth of the canyon alone hadn’t made her dizzy, his words drilled the point into her marrow. She tried to imagine what it looked like from the inside looking up. Arizona, with its big sky and rocky monuments, its wide-open reservations and crazy cow-town redneck inhabitants, made her feel as tiny as the egg that had tumbled down her fallopian tube and turned into their baby.

  The Trading Post bookshelves were thick with hiking guides and fly-fishing advice. Below that umbrella stands held those corny bow-and-arrow sets made of rubber and plastic. Corrine kept a steady stream of R. Carlos Nakai flute music going in the background. Sometimes she lit incense, and the place went otherworldly and dreamy. There were ample kid diversion kits, ranging from coloring books Dog Johnson would turn up his nose at to Travel Yahtzee. Chloe studied it all, trying to imagine a life with children. Every weekend she told Hank she’d check out the Thrift Shop with him, take a look at those cribs and baby strollers, but nearly always found some excuse not to go. She was afraid to tell him that she felt superstitious, that if they got too “ready,” something was certain to go wrong. Besides, babies could sleep anywhere, in a pinch, inside a dresser drawer or a laundry basket. All they really needed was diapers. Right next door they sold diapers. Under the long skeins of dyed wool hanging from the ceiling just above the customers’ heads, materials the weavers sometimes took in trade for their wares, which sold in the blanket room, diapers, lotions, and cans of baby formula abounded.

  She passed by the designer concho belts with their three-thousand-dollar price tags and the special displays of featured artists in the center of the store. Polaroids of Hollywood stars were thumbtacked to the walls. Ann-Margret and Morgan Fairchild decked out in southwestern jewelry. Once Corrine made a special point of showing them a belt and earrings of spiny oyster and coral pieces custom-designed for Elizabeth Taylor. Tiny Corrine pinned the heavy earrings to her lobes and modeled. Her brother, Oscar, took one look and said, “Now all you need is a construction worker and a prenuptial.”

  That new jewelry was too much like a modern-art-museum exhibit, some of it so outlandish it seemed like a waste of precious metal. At the pawn case Chloe’s heart beat a little more in tune with the silver. The old pieces spoke her language. Worn thin and dull, little nicks and scratches reminding her of old school-horse tack, the silver was lovingly buffed from its original shine to absolute ownership. She understood the desire to wear the ungodly huge stones set into buckles and cuff bracelets. It made sense, if you only got to own one beautiful thing in your life, if the rest of your life was about scraping the barrel. She appreciated the painstaking labor involved, but more than that, how it must have felt to give it up when times got hard.

  Some of more simply crafted items were marked as low as twenty dollars. Oscar might be able to cut her a deal on one of those bracelets. Come April, Rich willing, she’d haul Kit up here and let her pick out something for a belated Christmas present. Kit would adore one of those stamped bangles. Polish it up like Oscar said, with Ivory dish detergent, the original shine would come back. Through the glass Chloe mentally inventoried all the ticketed items and let her gaze come to rest on her favorite piece, an oblong, odd blue stone set in an unremarkable silver band.

  The egg-size stone was the blue of jay’s wings. Unique in the sea of vivid turquoise, it was a brighter blue than slate, but deeply flecked with gray, as if far down in the heart of the rock there lay another, more complicated history. Whoever set it into the band had chattered the silver’s edge to mirror those serrated gray flecks. A stone to dream on, make wishes on, she thought to herself, knowing if she said so aloud, Hank would probably tell her to lie down and make her drink something green.

  Corrine’s brother, Oscar, came over and opened the locked case with his heavy ring of keys.

  “That’s okay, Oscar. I’m just looking.”

  “You come visit this ring a lot, Chloe,” he said, lifting it from the case and setting it atop the counter on a square of presentation velvet. “Maybe this here stone’s talking to you, you know, telling you something important.”

  Unable to resist, she picked the ring u
p and slid it to the knuckle of her left ring finger. It would have easily gone further, but she didn’t want to find out it fit and then have to give it back. She squinted up at the Indian man who was slowly becoming her friend. “Oscar, you’re not talking to a tourist, so stop yanking my chain. Or are you trying out some kind of new-age sales technique?”

  He laughed, exposing the whitest teeth against his dark skin. “Hell, no. That’s Lander blue. From Battle Mountain, Nevada. Vein’s been mined dry. In this whole store we got only maybe two, three chunks of actual Lander. You must love it a lot to come visit it all the time.”

  “Yeah, I guess I do.”

  Oscar did repair work for the Trading Post customers and when the need arose, reluctantly stepped in as a part-time salesman. He wore thick-lensed black-framed glasses and had skin the rich brown shade of her old Hermès saddle, the one she’d left behind in California for Wes McNelly to sell. In his gray Polartec pullover, Oscar looked gentle and friendly, the antithesis of Corrine. Except for times she saw the whole Johnson family gathered together at Indian functions, it was hard to believe they were brother and sister. “This ring says something to me, all right. It says ‘Hey, guess what? I cost three hundred and seventy-five dollars.’”

  Oscar laughed and she handed it back.

  “Damn, that’s a lot of money. Think anyone will ever buy it?”

  “Somebody should.” He held the ring up in the light a moment before sliding it back on the velvet cone with the others. “I know for a fact this ring used to belong to old Molly Manygoats’ grandfather, Ben. That was way before your time or mine. If some jeweler worth his tools was to come and take a good look, like say Junior Whitebear, he’d be able to tell, you know? Probably buy the ring just to set the stone free.”

  “Are we talking the same Whitebear who owns that mare down at Ganado El?”

  “Yeah. Sally’s his horse.”

  “So what’s the big deal about him anyway? Nobody can mention his name without sounding like he’s a holy man.”

  Oscar looked away and Chloe could tell she’d touched a nerve. “When a Skin makes good, people sit up and take notice. Then they start lookin’ for reasons to resent him. That’s Junior all over the place. But it really is that good of a piece, that ring. Junior’s in New York, I bet, someplace with central heat and Wonderbra models. Probably has better stones than this old ring falling out of his pockets. Probably never even thinks about what he left behind. Tell you what. Get Hank to buy it for you if you love it so much. Corrine likes to give him the business, but she’s fond of Hank, you know? All that being nice to Dog gets to her. Yeah, doing for her kid is the best way to get a favor out of my sister. Corrine’d work out a real good layaway. Why don’t you ask for this ring for Christmas?”

  For a moment Chloe’s heart soared. In their old world, where paychecks came for each of them weekly and Hank had a pension plan he hadn’t borrowed against, such an undertaking might have been possible. Extravagant, but within the realm of possibility. How could she ask for a turquoise ring on the merit of its prettiness alone when the ring Hank wanted to give her was a wedding band? She patted her belly. “Oscar, see this blimp in the hanger? This here’s what Hank and me are giving each other for Christmas.”

  Oscar winked and pulled a tooled silver baby rattle out of the display case. He rolled it across the velvet and inside, small pieces of metal rattled, making a faint baby music. Taking full advantage of the salesman’s opportunity set before him he said, “Then ask for this.”

  A horsetrader’s smile turned up the corners of Chloe’s mouth. “You’re getting good,” she said. “Not quite as cutthroat as Corrine, but you almost had me.”

  “Don’t be so quick to walk away.” He pressed the rattle into her open palm. The silver was warm from his fingers and as light as a bird’s bone. “This here is one of Whitebear’s early pieces. Look at the work, you’ll understand why everyone thinks he’s so hot.”

  How could she not look? Incised into the rattle’s swooping barbell ends were wavy lines for water, miniature segmented horsetails growing at the water’s edge, and a simply rendered but unmistakable fawn, its head bent to take a drink. On the rattle’s handle a small humpbacked bear was stamped alongside the initials JR and the word “Sterling.”

  “How much?”

  Oscar made a grim face. “Well, say Corrine knew this piece had come in and that it was Junior’s, you know? It’d already be on its way to Tucson to this bilagáana collector who’s got a standing purchase order for any of Whitebear’s early stuff. But hell, just because Corrine’s acting like a manager don’t mean she has to know everything goes on around here. Anybody else’s rattle I’d say twenty bucks. Can you go twenty?”

  Chloe shoved her hands into her pockets and curled her fingers around her wallet. She felt the baby inside mapping her abdomen wall from the inside with his little empty hands. Everyone deserved one special treasure from childhood. All she had was that beat-to-shit photo of herself on a photographer’s pony. She unfolded a pair of tens from the wallet and set them on the counter. Her cheeks flushed. “I must be insane. Oscar? Don’t tell Hank.”

  He smiled. “Don’t tell Corrine neither.”

  “Deal.” She tucked the rattle into her pocket and ran her thumb and forefingers over the smooth metal. “Have swell holidays, Oscar.”

  “Hey, you guys come for dinner on Winter Solstice. I make a killer venison stew.”

  “Sure, we’d love to.”

  “Hahgo lá ne’awéé’ neínílí?” he said as Chloe looked across the room to see where Hank had gone.

  Because they had been having this same back-and-forth conversation since August, she knew the literal translation: When is this baby coming? But like so much of the Navajo culture, there was a second meaning, an inherent humor so embedded and subtle that sometimes even Hank missed it. In this case it was a cautionary. Are you taking care so this baby will be born at the proper time?

  “Inesddin,” Chloe responded. I’m still getting used to things.

  7

  December 9

  Dearest Henry,

  The last time we were apart for the Thanksgiving holiday was when your father and I took that trip to Ireland. I remember the brochure made everything look so quaint and festive and being extremely thankful for my lined raincoat! We decided against getting a whole turkey this year. I bought one of those precooked breasts so we wouldn’t be up to our eyeballs in leftovers. Your father didn’t care much for it, claiming it was overseasoned. He’s probably right, but to tell you the truth, this new medication makes everything taste somewhat bland, and I find I’m rarely hungry enough to finish an entire meal. The Jacksons came by and we played some truly horrific bridge hands. But all that’s beside the point, which is, dearest boy, that I hope you enjoyed a decent holiday so far from home. Did you have a potluck supper with some of your fellow teachers?

  Hmm. No mention of Hank’s “offbeat love affair” and how it was ruining his life. Also pointedly absent was Iris’s persistent bickering about the question of paternity. Nevertheless the undercurrent of guilt was present, and as always, running at high tide. With a glue stick she’d bought expressly for the purpose, Chloe resealed the envelope and jammed it back in the PO box. Why finish reading what could only get worse? Cranky old bitch had way too much time on her hands. Salty turkey tits, for Christ’s sake. You could say grace over hot dogs or caviar; the whole idea was to be grateful you had food on the table to eat. If this is the way they treat you, Chloe decided, I’m lucky not to have a mother.

  While Hank read Merry Keshmish to the third grade, a hundred yards away in the school barn behind the classrooms, Sally’s whiskered muzzle quivered in interest. Other people came into the barn, but they made nasty, quick movements, scaring the small band of horses. Chloe was different. In her pockets she carried bruised apples, molasses-coated oats, carrots she’d snap in half below a horse’s nose so that the scent exploded through the snowy air like a promise of spring. Whil
e the other horses dozed and twitched, the chosen paint mare stood patiently as Chloe cinched a bareback pad over her broad back.

  “Sally,” Chloe told her as she drew the mare closer to the gate. “I dreamed that Junior Whitebear came back and tried to steal you away from me. I’m so nuts about you I tried to give him my baby in trade. It was a girl, and all she did was cry. Of course, I’d never give the baby away, you know that. She’s—he’s—a part of us, me and Hank. Just like you’re a part of me. Let’s go for a short ride through the woods, Sally. Let’s fly. In case by some miracle Mr. Whitebear does come back.”

  The mare nosed the rope loop from the top of the pasture gate and placed her broad body between the fence and the open pasture. Stay back, she was signaling to the other horses. Sally Ride was intelligent. She’d been trained with patience and love, and her first inclination was to trust. A maiden in her ninth year, the cups of her young teeth were beginning to disappear from grinding away at the hay on which she lived. “Dental stars” were visible on the front of her incisors. In a few years, it would be impossible to judge her age without a degree in veterinary science or a horsewoman’s instinctive eye. Sally could have babies or live out the rest of her days bored in this barn, waiting for somebody to ride her again on a regular basis. Today she anticipated trotting along the dirt road down by the fairgrounds where the cottonwoods grew thick and tall by the creekbed.

  Chloe hoisted her heavy body using the fence rails. She gripped her calves around the horse’s barrel and legged her toward the few trees, bare-branched and stark against the blue winter sky. In December the country appeared desolate, the land overworked and untillable. Yet only fifteen miles southeast, in Coal Mine Canyon, there was fuel for the taking, and to the northeast, twenty miles or so, near Red Lake, the distinctive sandstone buttes of Elephant’s Feet stood waiting for someone to appreciate their bizarre natural beauty.