I try to imagine being held by you, feeling that feeling of instantly belonging. My whole childhood, and even now, I guess I never stopped wishing something like this would happen. But then I think of Hank having to deal with his mother and how you might turn out to be ten times worse than Iris and I want to run screaming across the prairie. Just stand there and scream. You have no idea how bad I wish I could forget the nights I laid in one strange bed or another praying you’d come back, the next morning or the next or the one after that. Idiot social workers with real homes and families would say Now Chloe, the good Lord never gives you more than you can handle and up I’d rear, spit in their faces, get sent someplace new and worse.
Whatever your name is, listen. The past truly dogs me. It’s my biggest flaw, and it has plenty of company. On days like today, thanks to my friend, now so does your letter, and I haven’t even read it! Maybe some rocks are just better off left unturned.
Jesus, what I wouldn’t give for three solid hours of sunshine and no goddamn wind blowing down my neck. Guess my blood isn’t thick enough for this kind of winter. Maybe I’m catching that SAD disease after all.
If you’re my mother, fine, start acting like one. Tell me how to make a screaming baby settle down and take the goddamn nap she needs when she’s bound and determined to stay awake and miserable. With horses you wean them and farm them out until they’re a little more grown up. I’d go to jail if I said that out loud. I graduated high school with a C average. I live with a smart guy, but so far none of it’s rubbed off on me. That is about the extent of my education.
Sincerely,
Chloe Morgan
Chloe read over the pages, then tore them up and threw the pieces in the trash can.
Part 3
Canyon de Chelly
19
“This is not about anything other than me needing to get some sun,” Chloe explained. “Otherwise I’m going to lose my mind.”
“Where were you planning to go?”
She bit her thumbnail. “I was sort of thinking California. I’d like to see Hugh Nichols. According to Kit he hasn’t gotten any better. And to save money, I thought maybe I could stay with Kit. I’d sure like to take Reed to meet everybody.”
Hank thought long and hard before answering. “That’s too long a trip for Reed. She’s still too tiny. What if she got sick?”
“I’d take her to the doctor.”
He shook his head no. “I’ll pick up one of those sun lamps next time I’m in Flagstaff. All you really need is more light. Spring will be here before you know it.”
“Maybe it was a stupid idea.” She wandered outside and down to the horse.
Hank hadn’t missed the slump in Chloe’s shoulders. Logically he understood what she was proposing was no different than anyone else in town. The season had stretched on long past its turn, and cabin fever was epidemic. Reed wouldn’t perish seven hours in the car; she’d probably sleep through most of the drive. But California? All that sun and familiarity was almost more dangerous than Junior Whitebear. He could no more let them go than he could explain the real reasons behind his decision.
He held on to his daughter and watched as Chloe stood at the edge of the corral he’d built, one gloved hand on the horse’s neck, the other on the fence, holding on for dear life.
Back in September it had hardly mattered that his classroom’s shoestring budget was knotted and fraying; Hank felt sure he could work with it. He went home each evening a happy man, slept well, and looked forward to the discoveries of the following day. Now, seven months later, he was grateful to lock the door behind him. Reed got him through the day. His daughter’s growing awareness of the world was what mattered, not fighting for reams of paper or participating in those bitter lunchtime debates with Walker and MacNeal about “the Indian problem.” Home: On a good night he made love to Chloe, fell asleep in her arms with only an hour of silent fretting. What he and Chloe had was a paper-thin promise, capable of blowing away in a strong wind. His mother’s illness worsened, and he knew she wouldn’t make it to summer. Every couple of weekends he forked over $150 he couldn’t afford and flew home so he could hold her hand, witness her dwindling, and try to motivate his father into behaving like an adult. Steadfast and dependable, Hank put himself through the paces like one of Chloe’s old lesson horses. Was there another, more appropriate route? Today, at the tail end of March, it seemed that even his hindsight was jeering him.
Technically the season was spring. Which probably explained last night’s ice storm, and the latest pileup on the highway near the Trading Post. Three cars. Hank had heard the awful noise, come outdoors, and seen the flames from the cabin, known that people had died. All it took was a little patch of ice, a moment of inattention and in the time it took to snap your fingers, families were dismissed. Now he stood in the back of his schoolroom, watching his students bent over their desks. With straightened-out paper clips and dulled safety pins, they were scratching out designs on the rocks they’d collected in and around the schoolyard. Thanks to Junior Whitebear’s generosity, there was more than enough paint and brushes, but very little paper, and Hank wasn’t about to call the man up and ask for anything more. He didn’t possess enough voice to read the children another story. They needed math, spelling, and recess, and he could deliver those subjects with chalk and blackboard, but they also needed art, so they were making do with the rocks, and the story was spreading. Ken Walker found this project to be the apex of amusement. Hank was fairly certain it was Walker who’d left the hardened cow chip atop his mail in the teachers’ lounge along with a taped note reading: “Scratch something pretty on this.” Hank opted to leave the cow excrement right where it was. If any of the teachers had a problem with the ensuing odor, let them deal with it.
When he went home to the empty cabin this evening, his voice would be thready, a whisper. It happened every night Chloe was gone. The bizarre, probably hysterical laryngitis healed itself when she returned to the cabin. Hank was furious she’d left and terrified she wouldn’t return. If the phone rang, he let it ring, then wondered if some emergency-room doctor had been trying to get hold of him, needed his permission to save Reed’s life. Crazy thinking, but he couldn’t talk himself calm. The first time she had simply left a note, effectively dismissing his protests against their leaving, hers and the baby’s.
You’re suffocating me. I have to go sit in the sun.
And she’d left the telephone number of a motel in Phoenix, which he called at once, chagrined at hearing her voice, and handled badly. Three weeks later she made noises about going back, claiming the sun and warmth were better than any doctor’s prescription. If that was so, why did it seem like Junior’s Cherokee always disappeared around the same time as her truck? You’re not taking Reed, he’d countered. She’s my baby, too. She deserves stability, even if no one else around here is getting any.
And the look Chloe gave him cut to his marrow. She handed the baby over and said, I was planning on nursing her for a year like you wanted me to, but if it means that much to you, I’ll start weaning her right this second.
“Haven’t seen your dad come by to pick you up lately,” Hank rasped in his scratchy voice to Dog Johnson, who was bending over his creation, shielding it from view. The other children often copied his ideas, and this bewildering flattery caused Dog to behave protectively.
“Had to go to Phoenix,” Dog offered. “Mom got sick, or I would’ve got to go with him.”
“Tell your mom to call if she needs anything, and to get well soon, okay?” In a whisper Hank complimented the boy on his artwork and moved along. Here was math at your most basic level. Chloe plus Junior equals trouble. He’d practically driven her to the man with his need to control her every move. You really think it’s a good idea to start training that horse while there’s ice on the ground? Doesn’t drinking caffeinated coffee affect your milk? Should the baby still be taking two naps during the day? Jesus, who did he think he was, the universal authority on her li
fe?
“Look here, Mr. Hank,” Jolene Kee said, waving him over to her desk. “See how I make a scene on my rock like you ask me to. Couple of Kokopelli guys. Nice, huh?”
She held up her flat piece of sandstone and grinned. Two flute players and what was either a dog or a horse standing between them were incised into the rock’s surface. Overhead three clouds rained down, the clouds and rain as stylized as sandpainting, yet the stroke trembled, its childlike rendering alluring.
“That’s beautiful, Jolene. Be sure you use the marking pen to put your name on the back. If you want to do another, there’s time before the bell.”
The little girl nodded, reaching for a new piece of stone. Last September she wouldn’t even make eye contact with him. In a few months she’d graduate to fourth grade, into the jaws of those dinosaur upper-grade instructors. Mrs. MacNeal would remind Jolene that her world had edges, that her skin color and tribal affiliation rendered the surface Hank had tried to round out to stretch beyond northern Arizona flat and unwelcoming. Jolene would learn to be shy all over again. She’d tune out and mark time. Could he fail the girl just to throw a wrench in what seemed inevitable?
Hank, we’ve got to do something with the finished pieces, Louise Begay, the classroom aide, kept saying. They had more than a hundred rocks now, collecting dust on the back counter. Patiently Louise took a dustcloth to each one. He wished he had an answer for her, but all he could do was keep handing them out and trying to wrap his mind around the empty crib, the empty side of the bed, the utter silence that was transforming his heart into a stone.
At his desk Hank halfheartedly began filling out roll sheets. He looked up. Dog Johnson had been standing there, waiting for him to notice. Setting down his pen, he looked into the face of the son of the man who was slowly stealing the woman he loved. “Walter, you look like you have something on your mind.”
“Mr. Hank, I ask Uncle Oscar could we maybe sell them rocks in the Trading Post, and he say why not put a tag on all them, maybe a tourist like one for paperweight or something.”
The boy delivered his words in such a rush that Hank knew he’d been rehearsing the speech for quite some time. He smiled. “Sell them? I never thought of that.”
The boy’s relief was palpable. “Sure! Dollar a rock, why not sell all them hundred rocks? We could be richest third grade of all Arizona.”
“What would we do with the money?”
“Buy paper like we need. Big box of sixty-four colored Crayolas. Or the library, some new books like from that store in Flagstaff where my dad took me. Maybe, if it don’t cost too much, we could get a couple of beanbag chairs to read in at that library.” He blushed. “Maybe.”
“Those are pretty big ideas.” Hank reached over and tousled his hair. Dog was a great kid, and someday he’d be a truly decent man. Since his father had entered the picture, he’d quit caring about the other children’s teasing, so they began to admire him, which he seemed to tolerate with a modicum of suspicion, which in turn magically allowed him entrance into their circle. “Let’s talk this over with the class, Walter. Whatever we do, we have to agree as a group.” He stood up and, lacking the authority of voice, clapped his hands. When everyone looked his way, he whispered, “Will everyone please give Walter their attention? He has something important he wants to share.”
The Chevy truck was once again parked out by the barn when he came home that Friday. The old battered emblem of Chloe’s independence looked as if it had spent a lifetime of eccentricity only to discover this small town was its homeland. Hank parked the Honda alongside it. His heart raced, and he did his best to walk at a normal pace up the steps and into the cabin. She sat in the rocker, a sullen Madonna, nursing Reed.
She looked up, neither smiling nor frowning, which he assumed meant he was still numero uno on her shit list. “Hank.”
He managed to rasp out, “Chloe.”
“If you’re sick, you probably shouldn’t kiss the baby.”
“I’m not sick.”
“Well, you sound like hell.”
In a whisper he pleaded his case. “It’s stress. That’s all. I bought some throat spray. I don’t have a fever. It doesn’t even hurt.” Which was a lie. Every word he uttered, not to mention the act of swallowing, made him feel as if he was choking. “Did you have a nice time away?”
Tight-lipped, she answered, “Okay.”
“Was it warm in Prescott?”
She sighed. “Yes, Hank. I walked in all the antique stores. I sat in the goddamn sun in the town square and got a little sunburn. I saw one movie, Tombstone, which started out pretty good, but I don’t know how it ended since Reed started screaming and I had to leave the theater. Want to see my ticket stub?”
“No.” In the kitchen, he started clearing away the dirty dishes.
“Hank, that’s my mess. I’ll clean it up when I finish with the baby.”
“If that’s the way you want to play it.” He let the silverware clatter in the sink and dried his hands on a paper towel, grabbed his Pendleton, and went out the back door. Thanks to the recent storm, the newly exposed prairie grass was yellow and brittle. Evidence of the colt’s shedding was everywhere; fist-size puffs of brown hair littered the corral. Apparently Thunder had spent his day rubbing his ass up against the barn. Now he had hairy sides and a back end like a chimp. Hank wondered how it was Chloe could insist she was ready to begin training while so ardently ignoring issues such as basic grooming. He took down a shedding blade, halter, and hoof pick, then went to work.
With every pass of the blade, winter hair fell away. Without thinking twice about how he might not tolerate it, Hank picked the horse’s hooves clean. The yearling had come a long way since summer, when Chloe had mentioned dosing him with sedative as insurance to surviving this very process. When Hank had first met Chloe, all this horse business had seemed so mystical. Equine communication sounded like a gift one was born with or else could only admire from a distance. A great deal of horse training, it seemed, involved a calm demeanor, patience, and the passage of time, during which one behaved with consistency or got kicked in the head. Were relationships really all that different? He mucked out the arena, spread a clean bed of shavings in the barn stall, and gathered up scattered wires from hay bales and used them to reinforce weakened areas on the fence. Then, for a long time, he sat on the pile of hay bales holding his hammer, wondering how in Christ his life had gotten to this spot. When the sun had gone down to the point that he could no longer clearly see his hands, he hung up the tool and went back into the cabin.
The smell of simmering onions made his mouth water. There was freshly sliced bread on a plate—the mothers of the students at Ganado Elementary embarrassed him so with this kindness—and an unwrapped stick of butter, soft to the touch. He lifted the pot lid, looked inside and took a deep breath: chili. He gave the beans a quick stir. She couldn’t hate him if she had cooked for him. And chopped fresh peppers, too, taking the trouble to set them into a small, unfamiliar dish. It was cowboy china, glazed tan, patterned with brands and steer heads. Possibly antique; with that thing it was hard to discern. Hank scrubbed his hands and set the table for two. If she’d already eaten, he could just as easily put the clean silverware back in the drawer. Across the room Reed was wide awake, kicking her legs, looking up at the mobile of sheep the nicer of his fellow teachers had bought him as a baby present.
“Hello, Sweetie,” he whispered. “Your old man sure missed you. Your mother forgot to pack your favorite toy.” He picked up the stuffed horse. Reed’s big brown eyes tracked the toy’s movement as he drew it along the crib’s edge. He noticed the silver rattle peeking out from her blanket, and as he rolled it in his fingers he frowned. He’d never understood just how this piece of Junior’s work had come into their lives. When the cup was given, he’d been standing right there, but the rattle seemed to have preceded it, like some kind of omen. During one of Hank’s trips to Iris, perhaps Junior had come visiting, brought the rattle along with whate
ver else was on his agenda. He set it down at the foot of the crib, kissed his thumb, then like he was pasting a gold star there for good behavior, touched it to Reed’s forehead.
Chloe came down the hall, brushing her hair. She stopped mid-stroke as their eyes met. “There’s dinner.”
“I saw. Thanks.”
“Jalapeños—I don’t know. Hot stuff always makes my throat feel better.”
“I’ll give it a try.”
They sat down and cleaned their bowls. Fueling our engines, Hank thought, tearing off a chunk of bread to swipe around his bowl. That’s all we’re doing. The telephone rang. He gestured. “You mind getting that?”
Chloe scraped her chair on the floor. “Hello? Of course, he’s here. Where else would he be? Mr. Oliver, please give my best wishes to your wife, I’m—” Hank saw her wince, then gather her resolve. “I understand. I’ll get him for you now.” She let the receiver drop. It thumped against the wall as she fled down the hallway.
Hank looked after her, then reluctantly picked up the phone. “Dad?”
“Henry, you need to do something about that girl. This is not a viable situation.”
“What would you suggest?”
“For starters, a course in etiquette might help. What in hell’s wrong with your voice?”
“Laryngitis. How’s Mom tonight?”
“Not good. Not good at all. She won’t eat.”
“Did you call the doctor?”
“Of course I called the doctor. He’s no help. He even went so far as to suggest this was normal. Can you imagine? Not eating, he calls—”
“How about the hospice people?”
“You know how I feel about strangers. I want you to come home, Henry. I can’t do this alone.”
Loving Chloe Page 25
