by Gwen Florio
“Unlike the rice,” Pal pointed out.
The rice was a bit crunchy, Lola had to admit. Unlike the previous night, she’d started it in plenty of time, but hadn’t paid attention to the final direction to let it sit and steam after she turned off the heat.
“I’m sorry about the chicken,” she said. “I forgot about stopping by the store when I was in town.” She’d been so rattled by her encounters with Tommy McSpadden and Tyson Graff that she hadn’t given the groceries a second thought until she’d had to confront dinner again.
Pal tapped her knife experimentally against the burger’s crust, whacking it a little harder each time, waiting to see when it would break through. “Didn’t you go to town just to get groceries?” Tap, tap. “You were gone a long time. If you didn’t buy food, what’d you do instead?” Tap.
It was the first time Pal had shown the slightest bit of interest in her. Lola wished she hadn’t.
“We went to the library,” she said. Pal didn’t need to know it was the newspaper’s library, and that they’d actually gone the day before.
Margaret turned to her. “Mommy—” Lola had long given her to understand that lying ranked right up there with cursing and junk food.
Pal’s expression, usually so flat, came alive. Her blue eyes went to slits. Lola wondered if that’s what she’d looked like as a soldier, rifle raised to her shoulder, sighting her target. “Where are your books?”
“We’re not going to be in Wyoming long to make it worthwhile to get a library card and check out books. But it was nice there, in the air conditioning.” Thirty had to have a library. And every library she’d ever been in—with the exception of the one at Kabul’s university—was air-conditioned.
“Where’s your phone?”
“What?” Was Pal going to check out her story? Maybe call the library, see if an out-of-town white woman and her Indian child had been there that day? “Why do you want it?”
“You’ll see.” Pal held out her hand. Her new scars were healing. She saw Lola looking. “Your phone.”
Lola gave it over. “Don’t you have your own? What about a land line?”
Pal punched some numbers. “Who was I going to call in Afghanistan? As to the land line, I canceled that when I went overseas. Hey, Delbert.”
Lola heard Delbert’s voice, his confusion clear, on the other end. Pal cut him off.
“This is Lola’s phone. Listen, we’ve got ourselves a problem.” Lola braced herself. She couldn’t think of a single good explanation of why she’d been in town, not one that wouldn’t tip off Pal, anyway. Pal would probably ask them to leave. This time, they’d have to comply. Lola felt a tug of regret for the story she’d never be able to write. At least she hadn’t tried to sell it to anyone yet.
“Yeah, Delbert. I’m fine with ravioli, but we’ve got a couple of picky eaters up here with us. Lola was going to get some chicken in town today, but she forgot. She forgot a few other things, too. What things? Normal things. Bread, stuff like that. From the supermarket down in town, not the rez store.” She paused. Delbert’s voice remained unintelligible to Lola’s ears. Pal nodded. “Could you? That would be great. Maybe some ice cream for Margaret, too.” She ignored Lola’s vigorous head shake. “Be sure and keep the receipt so she can pay you back. Oh, and Delbert? If it were me, I’d tack on some kind of surcharge, for gas or delivery or whatever. Thanks.”
Lola forced her mouth closed. It was the longest speech she’d ever heard from Pal. The woman looked at Lola with something like triumph in her eyes. Lola nodded acknowledgment. Anything was better, she told herself, than that dead gaze. Besides, the exchange with Delbert had distracted Pal from any further quizzing on the reasons for Lola’s trip to town.
Lola had learned to listen for the rattle and wheeze of Delbert’s fossil of a car, which labored so slowly up the hill to Pal’s house that she had time to throw on a T-shirt and jeans and be in the kitchen with Margaret and Pal by the time he arrived for breakfast each morning. But on this day, she somehow slept through its arrival, padding barefoot and late into the kitchen, only to be greeted by a counter crowded with grocery sacks, along with three pairs of eyes suspiciously full of mischief as they regarded her from their places at the table. Even Bub seemed friskier than usual, dashing from Lola to Margaret and back again, tail a blur.
Lola avoided the groceries and poured herself a cup of coffee.
“Delbert got eggs,” Pal offered.
Lola gulped coffee. Pal sounded less surly than usual. Whatever these three were up to, she wanted none of it.
“You could cook them,” Pal added.
As though you’d eat any, Lola thought.
“Eggs, Mommy. Eggs, eggs,” Margaret chanted.
“And bread, too,” Delbert chimed in. “For toast.”
Lola drained her coffee cup, silently apologized to her scalded throat, and poured another. They’d trapped her. She didn’t trust Pal to make breakfast—the woman would probably poison them—and of course Margaret was too little. As for Delbert, custom demanded both that she cook for an elder and serve him first.
“Fine,” she said. She tried to remember if she’d ever cooked an egg. When she’d lived alone, if she’d eaten breakfast at all, she’d simply poured herself a bowl of cereal, which she consumed standing at the kitchen counter. But Charlie cooked eggs all the time. She was pretty sure she’d watched him at least once or twice.
“Frying pan?” she said.
Pal pointed to a low cupboard. Lola retrieved a cast-iron pan, set it upon the stove, and twisted the knob until the gas caught. She went through the bags and found the eggs and the bread, along with a wealth of vegetables and condiments and even more soy milk for Margaret. She calculated—no use wasting more than a single egg on Pal, who probably wouldn’t eat it anyway—and broke a half-dozen eggs into the pan, recoiling as the white dripped from her fingers.
“Maybe you want a spatula,” Pal observed. “There’s one in the drawer.”
Maybe you want to come over here and cook these damn eggs yourself, Lola thought. She found the spatula and prodded the eggs. The yolks broke and immediately adhered to the bottom of the pan in an immovable mass.
“There’s butter in one of them bags,” Delbert offered, a little late. That would have kept the eggs from sticking, Lola realized. At least she could butter the toast. She found the bread and popped a couple of pieces in the toaster. By the time she turned back to the eggs, they’d begun to burn about the edges.
“Something stinks, Mommy.”
“I’m well aware of that.” Lola scraped the mess of eggs onto four plates, tiny amounts for Margaret and Pal, somewhat larger ones for Delbert and herself. A good portion of the eggs remained stuck to the bottom of the pan. The smell of burning bread warred with the eggs’ sulfurous reek. Lola whacked the toaster and two carbonized pieces of bread popped up. She ran a knife across the surface, scattering black crumbs into the sink. “I’ll take these pieces, if you don’t mind, Delbert,” she said. She strove to keep her voice even. She wanted to scream. She managed a tight smile. “Let’s see if I can do better with the next batch.”
“There’s some Tabasco and ketchup in those bags,” Delbert said. “Might help with the eggs.”
It did. By the time Lola was done doctoring her own eggs into edibility, they were more sauce than egg. She gnawed at her pieces of toast, which had lost all resemblance to bread, tasting instead like wooden shingles. Not that she’d ever tasted shingles. The room had gone ominously silent. Even Bub sat frozen in some sort of expectation. Lola tried to come up with an adequate apology, one that would mask her own resentment at being forced into a role for which she was so obviously unsuited. She raised her eyes and opened her mouth to begin.
No one was looking at her. Instead, Margaret, Delbert and Pal all exchanged glances, obviously in some sort of cahoots. Margaret and Delbert shook with si
lent laughter, and even Pal’s typically frosty mien had thawed a degree or two. Lola wondered what else they had planned.
“Jesus H. Christ on a crutch,” Lola said. “Whatever the hell you three are up to, out with it.” How much worse could this morning get?
“Quarter, Mommy,” Margaret said. “Two quarters.” She burst into giggles.
“Just for the record, I don’t think hell is a particularly bad word.”
“Three quarters now, Mommy.” Lola told herself that Margaret’s superior counting skills indicated her daughter was a math genius, and not just a mercenary little soul.
Pal put a single bite of eggs into her mouth and choked them down, making sure Delbert saw her. The minute he looked away, she put her plate on the floor. Bub heaved a martyred sigh and trudged to do his duty. “You might want to put the chicken away,” Pal said. “It could go bad fast in this heat.”
“Right.” Lola was grateful for any excuse to leave that dreadful table. She searched the bags on the counter. “I don’t see any chicken. Did I miss it?”
Margaret had the whooping belly laugh of an adult, so forceful she slid from her chair and rolled onto the floor.
“Delbert,” Pal said, raising her voice above Margaret’s laughter, “did you forget the chicken?”
“It’s not in them sacks?” All three of his teeth showed.
Lola went through the groceries again. “I don’t see it,” she said. Just as well, she thought. One less thing for her to ruin.
Delbert slapped his leg. “Must be in that bag out on the porch.” He left the room. Margaret climbed to her feet and jumped up and down. “He’s going to get the chicken, Mommy.”
Damn the whole lot of you, Lola thought. This time, she vowed, she’d go to her phone for recipes for chicken. She’d follow directions. She’d make an edible, nay, a delicious dinner, and shut them all the hell up. For just a moment, she thought of Charlie’s ultimatum, and of the fact that, if she didn’t accept his proposal, she’d be forced to learn to cook. A point in the “yes” column, for sure. The door opened and all thoughts of Charlie and his offer of marriage vanished.
Swinging upside-down from Delbert’s hand, its legs bound with twine and its baleful yellow eyes fixed firmly upon her, was a very large, very angry, and very live chicken.
TWELVE
Lola’s reaction to the chicken assured Margaret of a lavish book fund for months to come. Whenever Lola stopped for air, the chicken squawked, inspiring her to new levels of creativity.
Margaret finally intervened, taking the chicken from Delbert and cradling it in her arms. Once right-side up, it quieted, closing its eyes in bliss as Margaret stroked the top of its head. Its feathers, save for a glossy black band around its neck and chest, were a burnished gold and extended even over its feet, creating an illusion of fluffy boots. “Is it a boy chicken or a girl chicken?”
“This here’s a hen,” Delbert said. “That’s a girl,” he added. Just in case.
“Then her name is Jemalina,” Margaret pronounced. “Untie her.” She cast a glance toward her mother. “Please.”
Delbert fiddled with the twine binding the chicken’s feet. Margaret put Jemalina down. The chicken fixed eyes like agates upon Lola. It bobbed its head twice, then dashed to her and jabbed its beak into her bare feet, first one, then the other. Once again, the air around Lola purpled as she danced away from Jemalina’s unerring aim. Bub dashed to Lola’s defense, only to receive a sharp peck on the snoot. He yelped and tumbled backward. Margaret laughed so hard she ended up on the floor again. She held out her arms to the chicken, who scooted back to stand beside her protector. It did not, Lola noted as she rubbed her own reddened toes, seem to have anything against Margaret’s feet.
“What am I supposed to do with that thing?” Lola asked. Bub pasted himself against her legs and flashed his incisors at Jemalina. She fluffed her feathers and turned her back on him.
“You said you wanted chicken,” Pal reminded her.
“And this here is a chicken,” Delbert said.
“No way am I going to cook that.”
“You think all meat comes shrink-wrapped on Styrofoam trays?” Pal, always ready with a challenge.
Help came from an unexpected quarter. “We can’t eat Jemalina!” Margaret was on her feet, Jemalina back in her arms.
“You might change your mind after a couple of days,” Delbert said.
“I won’t. Where did she come from?”
“I ran into Dolores Wadda down at the store. When I told her I was after chicken, she said she had some for me.”
“Chicken,” Pal murmured. “Is that what they’re calling it these days?”
“Mind your manners,” Delbert said. “Dolores said this one is a good layer, but she’s always pecking at people. Dolores was about ready to put her in the soup pot herself. Oh, I almost forgot. I left something else out on the porch, too.” He left and came back with a package of supermarket chicken. It went into the refrigerator.
“Jemalina! You’re saved,” Margaret cooed. Jemalina made a chortling noise and nestled deeper into her arms.
Lola looked at Bub. “Looks like you and I are outnumbered. Here’s the deal,” she told Margaret. “The chicken is your responsibility. She lives outside. You feed her, you collect her eggs. And you keep her away from people’s feet. Sorry, Bub.”
The dog slunk to the far side of the kitchen, casting occasional looks of betrayal over his shoulder. The wattage of Margaret’s smile could have powered entire cities. “We’ll bring her back to Montana with us. Right, Mommy?”
Lola tried to imagine the look on Charlie’s face if they showed up with a chicken. If she rejected Charlie’s proposal, she’d be stuck with the thing. “I am not,” she muttered to herself, as she turned her attention to putting away the rest of the groceries, “basing my decision to get married on a damn chicken.”
The good thing about Jemalina was that she occupied Margaret for the rest of the morning, leaving Lola free to tap out elaborate emails on her phone. Charlie had forbidden her to bring her laptop on the trip—“You’ll just end up working,” he’d said—but now she wished she’d sneaked it into the truck after all. She’d brought a flash drive, but it was little use without a computer. She wrote out a query letter longhand and two-thumbed it into her phone, emailing it to various news outlets.
Then she looked up chicken recipes, clicking through them until she found one that looked both easy and required only the ingredients from Delbert’s sacks of groceries. She did a quick tour of the house. No Pal. Nor did she see Pal’s running shoes parked in their usual spot beside the front door. Good. She stepped out onto the porch—and hopped back inside, slamming the door behind her, when Jemalina made a beeline for her feet. Lola opened the door a crack. Her daughter stood beside the blasted bird, stroking its head as it turned a look of beady-eyed avian devotion upon her.
“Say goodbye to Jemalina for a little while,” Lola said. For forever, she wished she could say. “Today, we really are going to the library.”
Thirty’s library indeed was air-conditioned, and clearly had undergone an upgrade, an interior version of the prettifying throughout the town. The library’s improvements were practical as well as attractive. Rows of computers filled one side of the room, books the other. At one end of the stacks, a nook with a sofa and wingback chairs invited a pleasurable few hours of reading. At the other, an oversized stuffed bear and low tables strewn with brightly colored books lured children. Back in Magpie, Lola had often given thanks that the oil boom and its accompanying social and environmental devastation hadn’t reached their part of Montana—yet—but now she took a moment to appreciate the benefits of the tax monies it reaped. She stood just inside the front door, pores contracting in the chill, as Margaret ran past her to the children’s section. Lola resisted the temptation to follow her, to grab a novel from a shelf, to sink into one o
f the inviting armchairs and while away the day in cool delicious escapism.
A woman behind a desk raised her head and looked a question her way. Lola reminded herself that she was here to work. “Do you have high school yearbooks?”
“For every town in the county. They’re in alphabetical order by town. Over there.” She pointed.
Lola found Thirty and pulled the previous four years’ books. Early in her career, she’d discovered the font of information that lay between yearbook covers. Activities, athletics, best friends—all helped flesh out portraits of the people she’d written about, whether hero cop or serial killer. A single scowl in a smiling group photo, a star athlete who was also a member of the chess club, an excess of extracurricular activities or an utter lack of participation in same, all of it the rich fodder of telling detail that lifted a story above the mundane.
She pulled out her notebook and her phone, the latter to reproduce photos. An hour later, she had several pages of notes and a dozen photos. Pal barrel-racing, long ponytail flying behind her. Tyson Graff and Tommy McSpadden, bulky in football shoulder pads—no surprise there, Lola thought. Only a few photos of Cody Dillon, the suicide, a youth with a tendency to look away from the camera in all of his photos. In contrast, Skiff Loughry was all over the yearbooks. Student Council. Boys’ State. Honor Society. Football, of course. Prom King, with Pal as one of the court princesses. Lola’s grimace at the discovery mirrored Pal’s expression in the photograph. Lola wasn’t the only one who didn’t see herself as the poofy-dress type. On the other hand, Pal was clearly no outcast. Lola wondered when the antipathy toward her had begun. In school? Basic training? Or had something happened in Afghanistan? She’d already decided that her next interview would be with Thirty’s high school principal. But she’d learned her lesson. She’d leave it up to him to mention Pal. She started to close the final yearbook. Then checked her list. Someone was missing. She leafed through all the books again, knowing even as she looked that the name wasn’t there.
