Loving Chloe

by Jo-Ann Mapson

  He watched the little rockets of energy, brown eyes wide with possibility, their small hands clutching toy planes as busy mouths generated sound effects. The dreams they fashioned as they ran along the rows of seats spilled into his own sorrowful lot, perking him up momentarily. He wondered how and why it was adult imagination got tired. You were born with such abundance. If you didn’t get it beat out of you by a drunk father, if some bilagáana teacher took an interest in you instead of cuffing your ears for speaking the wrong language, a tended imagination was capable of producing magic. But that was no guarantee the gift would stay faithful. One day you could look up from the silver and find it gone, your special talent rendered ordinary. Oh, maybe not so anybody really noticed except yourself. There just wasn’t anything fresh to say, no news for the waiting metal in your hands. It became as much a job as selling shoes.

  His eyes grew weary, unfocused and in the translucent airport glass he could see his own face staring back at him. Was he jaded from too much praise? The brown eyes looked permanently startled, as if flash cameras illuminated his universe. Maybe he was like Jimmy after all, drunk on all that attention. But no one could claim his was a happy face. The high cheekbones and dark skin sought something or someone—to Junior that much was clear—that it hadn’t been able to find out there. Yes, he wore a hopeful mask sewn onto a thirty-eight-year-old body, and he was stuck with all of it.

  Unlike the Skywest shuttle for Delta—his other option—the turboprop whose every seat was both a window and an aisle—the America West Dash-8 was pressurized, seated thirty and came with a pretty stewardess bearing a fruit basket and canned alcoholic drinks for sale. When they were all buckled in, she made her speech. “Welcome to America West’s shuttle service from Phoenix to Flagstaff, Arizona, gateway to the Grand Canyon. Normally this is a thirty-minute flight; however, this afternoon we’re anticipating some minor delays due to the weather in the area. Flagstaff ground control reports two feet of snow on the ground and expects twice that by midnight. Because passenger safety is foremost with America West, we’ll be taking the best route we can and hope to sidestep the nasty stuff.”

  “Which means another damned delay,” said a tired young woman in a business skirt and blazer with the W. L. Gore emblem on her briefcase. From surgical heart patches to dental floss, Gore was Flagstaff’s most prestigious company store. Around it in Flag stood the university, Purina, and a slew of cut-rate motels. The abundance of leftover hippies and beer-swilling rednecks about filled things up. Junior watched the businesswoman reluctantly stow her laptop computer. No solace in the keyboard until after takeoff. They taxied down the runway, gained speed, and he felt the familiar jolt of liftoff, always a hopeful if slightly terrifying feeling.

  Once they were airborne, the stewardess served canned Bloody Marys to three old white ladies looking desperate for anesthesia. Tomato juice and vodka coupled with a rough flight was not the best idea, in his estimation. Every passenger’s thirst slaked, the stewardess strapped herself into her seat and opened a paperback Tony Hillerman. The passengers sat quiet, those of them lucky enough to have window seats anxiously glancing out the portholes into the late afternoon air.

  “Ya hey,” Junior said to the guy sitting next to him. “Any chance you heading up to Tuba City?”

  “Nah, I live in Flag,” the man answered. “Only need to keep my government house six months longer, then I can sell her. Heading down Nogales way. Better weather, for sure. Got me a cousin working those new minicattles in Patagonia.”

  “Miniature cows?”

  “Enit, brother, it’s the latest thing. Take up less open range. Like them yuppie vegetables you see in the market. Baby squash, potatoes no bigger than your thumb, all costing double and people can’t wait to buy it.”

  Tiny cattle foraging in the desert—Junior couldn’t make it come together in his mind.

  “So,” the cattle enthusiast went on, “Tuba City. You must be coming for the Solstice dances. Hate to say it, but you’re gonna be late.”

  “Oh yeah, the dances. Actually, I have a little business back home. A long time ago I lived here. I’m coming back.”

  The man looked down at the floor of the plane. “Awful damn nice boots for winter on the res. Guess your people don’t keep sheep.”

  Junior held out his arms, showing the intricate tooling and inlay detail on his bracelets and watchband. “Béésh ligaiitsidii; I work silver. Right now I’m sort of taking a breather.”

  “Nice if you can afford to,” his seatmate said. “Good-looking bracelet.”

  “Thanks.”

  The plane swooped low, hitting a pocket of troubled air, and conversation abruptly ended. The only sound in the cabin was the occasional gasp of the frightened old white women sucking in their Bloody Mary breath, every now and then breaking into Catholic prayers. Hold that plane up, Mary! Junior eyed the stewardess, rapt in her pages. When the help panicked, it was time to worry.

  They circled the Flagstaff airport for a good twenty minutes before the pilot switched on his microphone. “Folks, I’ll be frank. I can’t see a damn thing out there, and since this is a VFR outfit, we’re going to head north and see if the Grand Canyon airport looks any better.”

  Grumblings broke out in the tiny plane, most notably from the businesswoman. Hot-tempered little firecracker like that Junior wouldn’t have minded spending a night with, but all she saw was the numbers on her spreadsheet and the next bonus check headed her way.

  The pilot broke in again after a few minutes. “Looks good down there. We’ll be on the ground shortly. Our cabin attendant will provide you with information on bus service back to Flagstaff.”

  Landing at the Grand Canyon. The Quonset-hut airport with its cement floors was definitely nothing special. Outside of the massive stone fireplace, it served mostly as one giant poster board for sightseeing planes, helicopters, and blister-raising mule rides. A stroke of luck for me, putting me closer to Tuba City, Junior thought. The old man could wait until morning to be picked up. He wondered who he could call for a ride into town. Did Oscar Johnson still live there? Would he speak to Junior, considering the circumstances of his leaving? Junior thought of Corrine’s angry face and decided, well, taking the bus as far as the highway he’d be almost close enough to walk home, though first he’d have to get out of these showy boots and into his hiking shoes.

  He rode the bus as far as the Cameron turnoff. At the confluence of the highways the driver graciously agreed to open the door. Chill wind blew in and Junior stepped out. The bus continued south, and he began walking north. It was only a quarter mile.

  The Trading Post exterior had been remodeled, but under its new fittings he recognized the skeleton. He took a deep drink of the dry winter air and made his way across the parking lot. A bank of pay phones lined the outside wall. Inside, aisles of jewelry, the stone fireplace roaring with warmth, real restaurant coffee, none of the fancy flavors or prices. He let himself in.

  The glass countertop was scratched. Countless trays and coins had slid across the display case’s surface. Junior Whitebear stood, hands in the pockets of his leather jacket, peering in at a presentation of his own bracelets and the catalog for his work open to his full-page studio portrait. Jesus, I’m wearing more makeup than Tammy Faye Bakker, he thought. A bony, determined-looking woman came to stand on the business side of the counter and he looked up, surprised to see it was Corrine Johnson, his old Corrie, twice as pissed off as the last time he’d seen her. “Hey, Corrine,” he said, smiling. “It’s been a long time. How are you doing? How’s your brother?”

  Corrine looked stricken and said nothing. She never was in any particular hurry to make him happy. She swished her tiny butt off in another direction to wait on a few tourists checking out storyteller dolls before she acknowledged his presence. Junior wondered where the hell Shane Myers was. Cameron was Shane’s place, had been for twenty years. Was he in rehab, dead, or what? Corrine standing there acting like she ran the place.

 
“Let me just wrap this fellow up for you in tissue paper,” she said to the tourists who had bought a mudhead storyteller and a graduated set of pale green Papago baskets. “Then he’ll be nice and safe on the plane. Where do you live? Iowa? Now, that’s a real nice state. Good for growing corn.”

  Junior supposed in almost nine years a person could change her ways, but this Iowa-tissue-paper talk was way over the top for Corrine Johnson. What Corrine was about was storms and gale winds, animal passion. This kindness to tourists was an act, staged for his benefit. As soon as she felt he’d stood there embarrassed the proper length of time, she’d click out her claws and reduce him to the size of the ribbons decorating her blouse. Hell, he deserved no better. He’d left her the way he had because there was no other way to leave such a woman. Their last encounter had taken place on top a Chief’s North Phase blanket in the bed of Oscar’s old pickup on a dirt road out by the fairgrounds. Underneath a fat yellow moon that was spilling its influence over everybody, Corrine straddled him, her back arched in ecstasy. He knew she believed that giving herself to him connected them for life. He’d always felt kind of bad about leaving her that way. Corrie needed someone dependable, a man who could ride herd on his own wildness. An arrogant silversmith willing to risk failure in order to sell to the larger world hardly fit the bill. If he’d taken a job at the utilities company like she wanted, he knew he would have ended up bitter, leaving her eventually.

  But she had loved making love almost more than he did. She was one of those multiply orgasmic women, completely without inhibitions about showing off her talent. Under her Junior had his bags packed and change of address already filed. He was just waiting for her to finish like any gentleman, then while she slept he would steal away into the night. Oscar knew his plans and didn’t approve. Don’t do it, man. It’s a bad idea. Stay here and we’ll open a shop together. We might not get famous but we’ll have regular work.

  Corrine slammed the register drawer shut and turned to him, her pretty face dwarfed under all that anger, like a separate person still lived inside in a far-off corner. It almost looked as if some drunken sculptor had done a sloppy job on her, leaving her with a sneer instead of a smile. He hoped she hadn’t developed diabetes, like her mother and auntie who’d both died from it. The diabetes that ran in the Johnson family was a one-way ticket.

  “You here looking for a check, Whitebear? I can write you a check. You want to pull all your merchandise so you can put it in some fancy-ass gallery? I’d be more than happy to help you pack it up. Say it’s something like that, Junior. Something we can take care of real quick and tidy up forever because I’m a working mother and it’s closing time.” She folded her arms under her slight breasts, and the flower ends of a tarnished squash-blossom necklace clattered against each other.

  “None of the above, Corrine. I came home to bury the old man.”

  She softened. “Yeah, I heard Jimmy died. I’m sorry. He was a sweet old guy.”

  Sweet as the wine he’d guzzled. “Yeah, well, you know how it was. Jimmy’d been trying to drown himself for as long as anybody knew him. He’s at the mortuary downtown if you and Oscar want to pay your respects. Maybe we could have coffee and catch up. Oscar still around?”

  Corrine seemed to stop and consider the option for a moment. Junior thought playing the sympathy card that way, she might ease up. Jimmy’d loved Corrine. Corrine excused Jimmy all his drunken escapades, even made excuses when the man beat Junior to a pulp. “Yeah, he is. We’ll come by—for Jimmy. When are you leaving?”

  Whoa, that was quick. “I’d planned on tomorrow, but the weather’s for shit and I’m not in any hurry. Maybe I’ll stick around awhile. I don’t know—Christmas.”

  “You’re staying?” She sputtered, then looked quickly away in the direction of her staff, who appeared to be unobtrusively dusting pottery but were listening hard. They moved to the rear of the store where the blanket collection was housed and the acoustics were vastly superior. “Where, Junior? You buying a government house? Planning to set up a tipi on the prairie?”

  “Corrine, it’s snowing out. I just wandered in here looking for a ride to a motel.”

  “Did you hear I’m raising a son now?”

  “No, I didn’t know that. Congratulations. Who’s the lucky guy who captured your heart?”

  She set her hands on the edge of the glass counter and studied its contents. His own bracelets, fine inlay work, storytellers, twisted rope, wristwatches…. Junior looked at objects Corrine was studying, pretty sure they weren’t seeing the same things at all. When she looked up, she was smiling this little smile that made his blood go thin and watery, like any moment what was in him, his essence, might run down his pant leg and puddle inside his boot.

  “Nobody. My heart’s my own. When you left—or likely somewhere in the three months before that when you couldn’t seem to get enough of fucking me every night—you and me made a baby, Junior. You’ve got a son now, Mr. New York Hotel Life, and about eight years of back child support.”

  “We had a kid together?”

  “Dog!” she hollered, and the eight-year-old came peeking out from the Trading Post restaurant, his dark brown hair cut in an attempt at a popular style, as spiky on top as it would go. He clutched a sketch pad under his arm and pinched a charcoal stub between his thumb and index finger. He hid the charcoal behind his back and studied Junior blankly. “Did I do something bad?”

  Corrine signaled him over, close to her. She placed her hands on his shoulders and gave him a little push forward. “No,” she said. “You been asking me about this since you learned to flap your jaws, so take a good, long look. This man’s your father.”

  “Mom, that’s Junior Whitebear.”

  “So it is. Why don’t you take him in the kitchen until I’m done closing the registers. Find out where the hell he’s been your whole life and after you do, be sure and ask him if it was worth missing you growing up. Then get him to buy you some new shoes.”

  The boy’s face went from confused to sober. “Kitchen’s back here,” he said to Junior, pointing.

  “Yeah, I remember where it is,” Junior told him. “They still make that cherry pie?”

  Dog nodded. “It’s my favorite.”

  Junior smiled. “Mine, too. I like it heated up, with two scoops of ice cream melting all over it. Maybe we could get some, if it won’t spoil your dinner.”

  “I’m pretty much always hungry,” the boy said.

  Junior patted his ribcage. “Looking pretty skinny there for an always-hungry boy. You got a tapeworm for a pet, yeah?”

  Dog giggled, and Corrine dug a pencil out of her skirt pocket and began tallying up numbers on a clipboard. Junior motioned the boy on to the restaurant and reached for Corrine’s arm.

  “Dog? Jesus, Corrine, what’s up with that? Some kind of horrible nickname?”

  “A skinny brown stray dog was the first thing I saw when I woke up from having him. It made me remember how you sneaked off. Since then, everyone calls him Short Dog. He’s in the lower percentile on the growth charts. His real name is Walter, the same as yours.”

  “Listen, Corrine. Think you can ease up on me a little? How was I supposed to know you were pregnant? You think I would have stayed away if I knew we were having a baby?”

  She bit her pencil impassively. “Yep.”

  Junior put his hands in his jacket pocket. “Damn, Corrie, I’d’ve come right back if I had known.”

  She crumpled the paper on her clipboard. “It’s easy to say that now, after you’ve ridden the good, long ride, isn’t it. Maybe it’s better this way.”

  “I miss eight years of his life and you call that better? How do you figure?”

  “I’ve been keeping track, Whitebear. Since I came to work here full time, I’ve learned percentages, commissions, and I understand what goes into profit. You went out there in the white man’s world a broke Skin. Now you come back wearing custom boots, fancy beaded jacket, looking pretty Hollywood. I’m gues
sing your pockets are full enough you can start paying for the privilege of fatherhood. A college fund. Nice clothes, like the other kids wear. Regular doctor visits. I got a list as long as Highway 89.”

  Junior wiped his face with his hand. He had broken out in a cold sweat from the moment she said the words “single mother.” Walter waited for him at the table. His son. Under his hands Corrine had once felt as sleek, hot, and unpredictable as lightning. She had given birth to the boy. “Whatever seems fair,” he said. “I want to do my part.”

  Corrine had tears in her eyes. “Just remember. Your part and mine, Junior. They’re always going to be separate parts.”

  He pressed his lips together and tried to make sense of what Corrine was saying. “I walk in here, feel like I landed on another planet. You think I’m going to try to take him from you? Relax. You’re his mother.”

  “That’s right. And you’re the sperm bank.”

  “Fine, Corrine. Whatever you want to call it.”

  Disgusted, he walked to the rear of the store to sit down at the table Dog—what kind of nickname was that for a child—had chosen for them. The boy was nervously wiping charcoal smudges off his forearms with a napkin. He hunched over the sketch pad, dying to show it off, embarrassed that it might not meet with approval. He laid his napkin across his lap, then jumped up when Junior got to the table, which sent the paper fluttering to the floor and him to the verge of humiliation. Junior reached down and plucked it from the carpet.