Oscar yanked at his shirt collar. “You two.”
“What about us?”
“You’re sure different than Navajo girls. All this talking about bosoms, what’s inside ’em, sleeping late as dogs, snapping at each other. Where’s the respect?”
“We love each other, Oscar. We don’t have to bother with respect.”
“You’re both so—what’s the English for it?”
“I don’t know. Gorgeous? Sexy?”
“Cagey. Hard to outwit, harder to keep up with.”
“And that just intrigues you to pieces, doesn’t it?”
Oscar grinned. “Well, every man either of you comes into contact with ends up dancing. Junior Whitebear’ll never be the same.”
“Oh, stop it. A month goes by, some new girl discovers him, Junior will forget he ever laid his hand on my crotch.”
“I kind of doubt that.”
They could hear the shower running. “If Kit starts in washing her hair, you’ll be here until dinnertime.”
“Man, I got to get back to the Trading Post or Corrine’ll kill me. Can’t we do something to hurry her up?”
Chloe pointed to the kitchen tap. Oscar turned it on hot, full force, and a wail emanated from the bathroom. A few minutes later, Kit stomped out, fully dressed, her wet red hair tied back with a purple ribbon that caused Chloe’s heart to spasm. She was such a baby. This trip to Arizona was supposed to be fun, but turned out to be baby-sitting infirm, cranky adults. “Now she deserves some coffee,” Chloe said, and winked at Oscar as he poured out a second cup.
“Corrine’ll be by in an hour or two. Maybe you can get some Coke down in Flag so this child will have something to drink.”
“You know, Oscar,” Kit said, icily. “In some countries girls are married and mothers by my age.”
“Sounds like a blast,” Chloe said, reaching for her wallet. “Here. Pick out something for yourself at the Trading Post. My treat, so long as it’s under twenty-five dollars.”
“I think we can make a pretty fair deal with that. See you around supper time,” Oscar promised. “Kiss the little awéé’ for me. Buy those groceries. Hey, make me a real supper.”
“I might just get ambitious and do that.”
“And then you’ll be sorry,” Kit said. “Lay on the couch all day or Hank will kill me.”
They left. In the silence of the cabin, Chloe dressed herself, resting her sore body between tugging on layers of clothing. She slid her hiking boots on, became frustrated that she couldn’t come up with some way to bend low enough to tie them, then sat waiting in the rocking chair for Corrine to arrive. Outside the colt stared back at her from the corral, snow piled up on the ridge of his spine. Each time he exhaled, small plumes of warm breath rose from his nostrils. He studied her, as fed up with winter as was Hannah. Hannah nested herself atop Kit’s sleeping bag. No reason for a dog to get ambitious with snow on the ground. The rain was back, big, wet spatters hitting the windows. Chloe wondered what the weather was like in Patagonia. Winter, certainly, but a much warmer version. Was her mother staring at glittery Christmas ornaments, sorry another holiday had gone by, or was she glancing out at the mountains, thinking about the letter she’d written? The whole thing was a rat’s nest, plain and simple.
An hour later a horn honked, and Chloe startled awake. Hannah investigated, barking as she nosed her way out the dog door. Usually Oscar parked around back, between the house and the barn. It was easier for Chloe to get to the car with less snow pack to wade through. Maybe Corrine thought parking behind someone’s house was impolite. Pushing up off the arms of the rocker, Chloe got to her feet and started toward the front door they hardly ever used. Corrine’s truck wasn’t there, but a late-model red Jeep Cherokee was. No dog, however, and no driver.
“Hannah?” she called. Chloe turned and walked to the rear of the house. Someone stood at the corral fence, stroking her colt. She opened the back door and chill air blasted her face.
“Checking out your horse,” Junior Whitebear announced. He scratched the colt’s neck, swiped the snow from his back, and walked toward her. “Looks pretty decent. I was thinking maybe I might sneak him out and ride him all over hell and back without asking your permission.”
“Go right ahead. He’s not saddle-broke.”
“That’s not a very nice thing to say to someone first thing in the morning.”
“Have me arrested.”
Junior looked down at the ground. When he looked up again, he said, “I’ve got your number, you know. The only reason you talk so nasty to me is you can’t stand how much you like me.”
She laughed. “Weak line, chum, and I’ve heard them all. I’m disappointed.”
Junior made his way through the snow toward the back door, Hannah at his side. Her dog had decided he was one of the good guys.
“I miss not having a dog.”
“So why don’t you get one?”
He shook his head. “I travel too much. Wouldn’t be fair to the dog.”
“Yeah, dogs have a way of making you put down roots.”
He walked into the house. “So do babies.”
Chloe held on to the arm of the rocker, supporting herself. “Where’s Corrine?”
Junior smiled, showing a momentary flash of white, even teeth. “Pipe burst in the Trading Post john. She’s waiting on the plumber who supposedly fixed it last month so she can chew him out. Opportunities like that don’t come along often enough for Corrine. By the time he gets it fixed, poor guy’ll be wishing he’d gone into brain surgery instead. I offered to drive you to Flagstaff and pick up those dolls at the art center.”
“That was big of you.”
“Big?” Junior let himself in the door, shut it behind him, and squatted down to tie her shoes. “Let me guess. It’s okay to deliver your baby, but I can’t be your taxi. Here I thought maybe you’d ask me to be Reed’s godfather. Not to mention I was planning to let you be the first woman who gets a ride in my fine new set of wheels.” He ruffled Hannah’s fur and spoke into the dog’s face. “Tell you what, dog. You can be first. Forget this other woman. She’s too mean.”
“That’s your Jeep?”
Finished with her shoes, he stood up. “Bought it Christmas morning off the Chevy dealer’s lot.”
“It’s not a Chevy.”
“They’re what you might call a multicultural dealer. It’s got four-wheel drive and a heavy-duty heater. I don’t need rhino bars and so forth. Army engineering will do me.”
From the front-door vantage point, Chloe studied the car’s aluminum rims. “Nice, if you’re into that yuppie shit.”
Junior laughed loudly. “Yuppie? Wow, I’ve been cussed before, but you really know how to wound a guy.” He waved in the general direction of her truck, which she had about given up driving on the slick, snowy roads and parked alongside the barn. “Now that particular Chevy’s what you might call a classic.”
“Might, nothing. You’re looking at the best truck America ever built.”
“Classic doesn’t count for much when you hit ice.”
“Haven’t hit ice I couldn’t handle yet.”
Junior folded his arms across his chest. The fringe on his jacket waved like strands of his hair might if it was ever set free from the tightly bound braids. She wondered if he did the braids himself, or if there was always a willing woman around in the mornings.
“You are one tough little mama, I grant you that. But one of these days you will hit ice, I guarantee it. Let’s get you down to see the wee one. I’ll go warm up the car.”
Outside in the front yard, she stood watching while Junior got out of his car, returned her gaze, and never even once broke eye contact. His self-assuredness royally pissed her off. “What’re we waiting for?”
“You to decide you can trust me before we get in the car, I think.”
“Oh, for Christ’s sake. What’s not to trust? You already told me you have fucking four-wheel drive and you can see into the future. It’s free
zing. Move your ass so I can get in the car.”
He cocked his head. “You’re a different kind of new mother, you know that?”
“Well, if there’s a mother mold, I’m sure I won’t fit it. Can I bring my dog?”
“Sure, if she wants to go.” He opened the driver’s door and pointed. Hannah sniffed cautiously, then sat back down in the snow.
“It’s okay, Hannah,” Chloe said. “Load up.”
The white shepherd trotted off to the corral and began playing tag with the colt.
“Just you and me, I guess,” Junior said, loud enough for his voice to carry across the yard. “You want the dog on the lead?”
“If you wouldn’t mind.”
The drizzling rain began to turn to snow. Flakes hit Chloe’s face, stinging where they landed. “Damn this endless winter,” she muttered under her breath. Junior finished securing Hannah and returned, offering his arm for support while snow crunched companionably beneath their boots. Chloe studied the distance from the ground into the passenger seat. “I don’t think I can manage that with stitches in my gut.”
“No problem.” Junior scooped her up into his arms and set her down on the passenger seat. Without breaking stride, he reached across her and snapped the shoulder harness around her belly, adjusting the strap so it wouldn’t cut into her breasts. His breath was warm and sweet on her face, smelling of coffee and sage, like early summer mornings had, five months ago, when she had basked in the sunshine and felt peaceful. “Shoulder harnesses and air bags,” he said. “This here is one safe harbor of a car, asdzání.”
He was only calling her a woman; there wasn’t anything personal in stating biological facts, but the way he said it, his voice lowering, the intimacy of another language, was disturbing. He shut her door and crossed to the driver’s side. Chloe watched his braids lift slightly in the bitter wind, snow flecking his dark hair. His skin was the color of that expensive coffee drink, latte, which she tried once and liked in spite of its absurd price. Her full breasts throbbed. Safe harbor, my ass. I am in deep here, she thought. All the way to Flagstaff I’ll pretend to take a nap.
Junior didn’t say much on the way to the hospital. They drove down the highway at a moderate speed, passing farms gone soft and pretty as Christmas cards, past miles of green pines, branches drooping low and tipped with glittering ice. The normally wide-open sky felt pinned down to the earth, dense and gray, and Chloe wondered if Hank was flying home today, if planes would even take off in this kind of nonsense. The closed-up bait shops by the roadside looked as if they might crumble under the elements before the next fishing season came around. Every bar’s parking lot was full. Before she’d left the hospital, Dr. Carrywater told her there was a medical term for this hopeless feeling, Seasonal Affective Disorder, or SAD, an apt acronym if ever there was one. She pretended to be even more tired than she felt.
At Horsemen’s Lodge, one of Flagstaff’s finer dining establishments, Junior slowed slightly and pointed. “I worked there two summers.”
“Is that right? I used to be a waitress.”
“So Oscar has informed me.”
“Arizonans tip well?”
“Around here they don’t much care for dark skin on the inside of restaurants. Waiter jobs go to pale-faced college boys. I took care of the horses, bucked hay, organized rentals for hunters.”
“And then?”
He looked over at her, his proud face amused. “Got myself fired.”
“What did you do? Bang the owner’s daughter?”
“Worse. I refused to let this drunk hunter take out one of the few decent horses. She’d pulled up lame, really sore. This nitłàà wanted to be riding a pinto when he killed his elk. Probably thought it would make for a better photograph or something. Wouldn’t take no for an answer.”
“Did you deck him?”
“Nope. I liberated the horse. Told the owner she must have run off. Lost my job over it.”
“That’s pretty shitty.”
“Seemed like a fair trade at the time. The horse stayed safe. As a matter of fact, she was Sally’s dam.” He waved his hand. “Happened years ago. Not even sure why I thought of it. I’ve had a lot of jobs since then. Much higher shittiness index on a lot of them.”
Chloe played with the shoulder harness, slipping her bare hand around the cold buckle. “You continually surprise me, Mr. Whitebear.”
Junior was quiet for a long time, long enough to pass the gas station, Mary’s Café, and most of downtown and to head up the road toward the hospital. At the sight of the building, Chloe’s breasts began to tingle, and she pulled her jacket close, afraid they would leak before she could get to the baby.
He pulled into a parking space, cut the engine, and looked at her. “Is that a good thing, you suppose, to constantly surprise another human being?”
She thought it over. Her mother’s letter was so fresh in her mind she was having trouble concentrating and keeping her guard up. “Sometimes surprises can be the only thing keeping us going.”
“Until they turn to ice.”
“There you go again, trying to freak me out.”
“Just want to keep you on your toes.” At the maternity ward floor, he checked his watch. “I’ll come back in an hour. We’ll get under way before the snow gets too heavy.”
“In the safe mobile with the yuppie wheels.”
He smiled. “You bet.”
The nurses all watched him go. Chloe saw a candy-striper flash all ten fingers across the counter to her onlooking partner. The two young women laughed, then reluctantly resumed shuffling papers. The elevator doors shut, and the Indian man disappeared from view. So what if he was good-looking? Beauty was the thinnest layer of a person, light years away from the soul. She opened the door into the nursery, washed her hands with the antibacterial soap, and got ready to feed her daughter.
Reed had that funny, tan cast to her skin, the infant jaundice Dr. Lois had told Chloe to expect. The nurse explained that the baby needed to sleep under the bilirubin lights, and that she wanted Chloe to cut short the cuddling. “Get her fed and back under the lamps. Pump out your breasts afterward,” she said matter-of-factly, as if it were as simple a procedure as wringing out a wet towel.
When she left the room, Chloe gently inspected her daughter. Her face was smooth, her dark hair so fine and soft it felt like rabbit’s fur. The instant Reed’s tiny mouth clamped on her nipple she felt the milk begin to flow. It stung and she tensed, trying to get beyond the pain. Reed fussed, and then somehow they both traveled past the discomfort, and she felt she could endure the process. The nursing always made Chloe want to cry. With every pull of Reed’s mouth, Chloe’s belly ached, experiencing the phantom cramps that were supposed to help the womb that was no longer there return to its normal size. She ran her free hand over Reed’s tiny head. Her daughter’s thick, dark hair grew upward into a whorl at the top of her skull, glinting in the artificial light. She fed her for fifteen minutes on one side, then took a time-out as the nurse lifted her to change her diaper before switching to the other breast.
“I’ve got to go check my patients,” the nurse said. “I’ll be back in just a few minutes. Don’t try to lift her yourself. We don’t need adhesions, do we?”
Chloe gave her a look. The woman could think she was an idiot if she wanted to; there was no reason to encourage her by answering.
When the door next opened, Chloe didn’t look up. She wasn’t ready to let her daughter go back under the lights. She wanted to hold Reed, to bask in the way her tiny nose flared each time she breathed, to wait for her to open her eyes again. She heard the chair scoot out behind her, and felt the baby startle at the sudden noise.
“Sorry,” Junior said softly.
The hair on the back of her neck lifted. Her breast was fully exposed, and he wasn’t even trying to look politely the other way. “I’m not quite finished here.”
“Take your time. The weather’s turned to shit anyhow. We can’t go anywhere until the sno
w lets up a little.” He moved the chair so that he was facing her.
She turned her face to look at him, but he wasn’t staring at her breasts, he was fixed on the baby. One dark hand reached out across the space between them and stroked the baby’s tiny pink cheek. The movement caused a trickle of milk to leak out the side of the tiny rosebud of Reed’s mouth.
“I think that baby’s full.”
“I’m not allowed to lift her up,” Chloe snapped. “I have to wait for the nurse.”
“Let me go wash my hands. I’ll do it.”
Junior placed his palms carefully around Reed’s blanket. Chloe felt cool air hit her breast. She covered herself quickly and buttoned her shirt. Junior held the baby close and jiggled her gently in his arms. Very softly, he started to sing, one of those eerie chants similar to what Corrine played over the sound system at the Trading Post. His eyes were shut and he was elsewhere, unembarrassed. Somewhere in her deepest self, Reed’s brain was recording this memory. She might not ever remember who’d sung to her, but there would come a day she’d hear a similar music and stop whatever she was doing for a moment and feel full and sleepy. Chloe watched, helpless to stop him, nervous at what it could mean. Then the nurse returned, holding her arms out to the baby.
“I think it’s great when Daddy takes time out to be here for the feeding,” she said, tucking Reed into her isolette under the healing lights.
Chloe looked up. Junior was smiling that crooked smile at her. He didn’t bother to correct the nurse. “Mama, let’s get a move on,” he said, and extended his hand to help her to her feet.
14
The windshield of the Jeep grew thick with snow, each individual flake accumulating in a crust against the wipers. Junior peered through the tracks as he pulled to the curb on East Santa Fe. Traffic was chaotic, everyone trying to get home before the roads became impassable. “Let’s kill some time in a restaurant,” he said. “You got anything against Chinese?”
“I won’t eat that raw fish crap.”
He grinned. “Let’s see, that fish crap they call sushi, or is there some other raw fish crap you find offensive?”
Loving Chloe Page 17
