Owen's Daughter

by Jo-Ann Mapson

  Skye frowned at him. “Daddy, there isn’t anybody there.”

  “I swear there was. She was looking right at me.”

  “Really. And what did the Indian lady say to you? ‘A rocky vineyard does not need a prayer but a pickax’? ‘There is nothing so eloquent as a rattlesnake’s tail’?”

  “Where’d you hear all those Navajo sayings?”

  “From Duncan Hanes, drug and alcohol counselor, and reciter of Navajo proverbs. The asshole who broke confidentiality and called you, breaking laws left and right. You’d only see an Indian woman dressed like that if someone was making a movie, in which case the streets would be blocked off.”

  “Call me an old fool, but I saw her.”

  “You’ve had a lot of coffee,” Skye said. “You’re probably ­dehydrated or something. Let’s go back to Mama’s. Your dog needs a nap.”

  “Me too.”

  “Daddy?” Skye said. “Wake up, I made dinner. Go wash your hands.”

  Owen rubbed his eyes. “I can’t believe how long I slept. It’s dark out. What’re we having?”

  “Skirt steak. Or else you can have scrambled eggs. I walked down to Kaune’s and bought us a little food while you were sleeping. But soon, one of us needs to go actual shopping, and you’re the one with the money. And more coming, since you got a dog-walking job. I need to check in with somebody about my community service, but I really thought I’d have found Gracie by now. Hard to commit to a schedule if you might have to break it.”

  “Honey, give me a minute to get my bearings.” He got up, straightened his sleeping bag, and walked toward the bathroom. The dog usually followed him everywhere, but he was fast sleep on the Persian rug.

  Skye fixed their plates and got extra napkins, an old habit from feeding Gracie, who liked to personally “interact” with her food, which meant fingers, not silverware. Owen came back into the room, his hair slicked back and his face washed. He sat on the couch. Skye handed him his plate.

  “This looks good.”

  “Wait until you taste it. There was a bottle of soy sauce, some frozen green chile, and a jar of jam in the fridge, not a lot to work with. I think I should call the cops now. I’ve run out of places to look and people to ask. While you were in dreamland, I looked all the way up to the letter H lawyers’ names in the phone book. Not one of them rings a bell.”

  “Where’s the rodeo this time of year? Texas?”

  “Yeah. Then I think it goes to California.”

  “Hmm,” Owen said. “Tomorrow, after my job interview, let’s head to the library to use one of their computers. Chances are, we can find his name on the roster. Unless he took a season off. But maybe a name will ring a bell, give us someone else to call.”

  “I thought of someone else while you were napping.”

  “Who?”

  Skye blew out a breath. “Well, it depends on the time of year, and how much money Rocky won, but he has this friend, kind of. A dealer.”

  Her father was dipping his skirt steak into green chile. “A dealer in antiques or what?”

  She couldn’t look at him. “Cocaine.”

  “Cocaine? I thought they drug tested at rodeos.”

  “Yeah, they test the horses.”

  Owen set his fork on the edge of the plate. He didn’t say a word.

  “Daddy, say something. You know cowboys—to them it’s nothing more than a way to kill the pain and keep riding.”

  His mouth was set. “Last time I checked, it was codeine you used for pain, not cocaine. Did you use it, too?”

  All Skye could think of was how ridiculous she must have looked when she was high. The higher she was, the surer she’d been that she could hide it. It was also the wrongest idea she’d ever had. “I know you’re disappointed in me. I’m disappointed in me. But I admitted my problem. I dealt with it. I imagine I’ll be dealing with it the rest of my life.”

  He reached over and touched her cheek. “I’m sure you’re disappointed in me, too. Waste of time. I’m no one to judge anybody for anything. So where do we go from here?”

  Skye set down her fork. Her appetite had vanished. “Rocky said when he got too old to rodeo, he wanted to get a little place in Truth or Consequences. Or maybe he went back to Oklahoma. He has a cousin there. Jared or Jerry, something like that.”

  Her dad finished his steak. “You’re a good cook. You took a skirt steak and made it taste like a T-bone. That requires talent.”

  Skye stared at her plate. “A miracle, more like it.” The hunk of cooling meat made her want to eat nothing but vegetables. “If Rocky went someplace like T or C, it could be a good thing. Like maybe he got a job and put Gracie in school.”

  “I’ve been there. It’s a one-horse kind of town, and I mean that in the best way. Everybody knows everybody, looks out for everybody. Shouldn’t be too hard to find him if he’s there. Especially if he’s as good at bull riding as you say. That’s rodeo culture. People fix on one cowboy and follow him like golf fanatics follow Tiger Woods.”

  Skye snorted. “Rocky had groupies all right. He dressed the part. He’d wear these custom-made American flag chaps, his flashiest spurs, and his hat was always beaver, a high-end quality, marked XXXX. The groupies loved that. You might have liked him, before all the drugs.”

  Owen stood up and put his hands on her shoulders, feeling the knots and massaging them. “Every one of us has made a mistake like that at one time or another.” He walked over to the painting.

  Skye set her plate down for Hope, who got to his feet and stretched out his remaining front leg like a yogi. “You talking about yourself?”

  It was as if he didn’t hear her. That painting had him rapt. She saw in his expression that her dad was lost in memories again. He was thinking about Margaret, apparently his one true love. “Daddy? Did you hear what I said?”

  “Yeah,” he said, and took the dishes into the kitchen. While he stood at the sink and scrubbed the plates, Skye read the want ads again. Slim pickings. Tomorrow she’d pick up the car, and then she could really start looking for her little girl.

  Dolores

  I’m spent as a sheet of wet newspaper from that appearance. I’ll have to rest. For days. Time is running out. I had to make sure Owen saw the house. It was the only way. Men aren’t so . . . easy to reach as women. Women are more willing to see things that don’t make sense because their bodies are used to magic. Men need snakebite to loosen them up before they accept the otherworldly. But this Owen doesn’t drink. Which makes it hard.

  Next, I’ll show him his horse.

  The relationship between a man and a horse is sacred. It’s easier to love an animal than another human. Give-and-take is easy when you don’t speak the same language. And yet there are men—lost, afraid, and unable to allow the emotions of happiness and sorrow to coexist in their souls—who take their rage out on the animals.

  I imagine that every single animal is welcomed into the realm without question. That they go straight to water and will never be thirsty. For some, there are seeds, and for the orangutans and parrots, perfectly ripe fruit. For the horses, beneath their hooves, the timothy grass never stops growing.

  Chapter 7

  At seven a.m. on Sunday, Skye was up, dressed, and finishing her eye makeup, listening to her dad pace across the flagstone floor, champing at the bit to get to his job interview.

  “Jeepers, Daddy, you aren’t meeting him until nine, relax!”

  “I can’t help it. I want to get there early enough to check the place out. Make a good impression.”

  Skye laughed. “It’s not like you’re taking a test, it’s a job interview.”

  “Shows what you know, Sara Kay. I got a mess of handicaps, the first one being my age, the second one being my age, and the third one—”

  “Don’t call me that. Let me guess, the third being your age? Just drop me at the mechanic’s,” she said in her pre-coffee raspy voice. Everyone said cigarettes wrecked your pipes, but apparently so had booze. Soon enough, Sk
ye couldn’t stand her father’s nerves. “Fine. We’ll go early. I hope the mechanic’s open. Where’s the damn dog?”

  The answer was, already in the truck. Hope spooked her a little, seeming to sense whatever was going on, but then that was what had interested her in animals in the first place: their ability to figure shit out before a human did.

  Once they were driving toward St. Francis, her dad seemed calm, but the dog kept licking his chops, so Skye knew otherwise. Lobo and Lalo’s Mechanics was a Quonset hut, but they did great work cheap. The OPEN sign was lit. “Thanks for the lift,” she said as she opened the door to go pick up her mother’s Mercedes. She’d had it since she was seventeen years old, so she guessed her mother didn’t want it back. “Go knock ’em dead at the interview.”

  “I ain’t leaving until that car starts up and I see you drive away,” he said, holding the passenger door open.

  “Then I guess I’d better haul ass. Lobo, where are you?”

  Lalo, Lobo’s five-foot-zero twin brother, walked over. “Buenos dias, Señorita Sara,” he said, handing her the keys.

  “Muchas gracias, Lalo. But call me Skye. I’m not the same woman who dropped off this car. Say hola to Lobo for me. And tell him muchas gracias for letting me store my car here.”

  Lalo opened the door of her mother’s Mercedes, and Skye smelled the misery she’d left behind locked up in there. Empty bottles, fast-food wrappers, and some clothes she’d planned to take to the dry cleaner ten months ago. Guess she could throw them away now. She put the key into the ignition, turned it, and waited for the rumble of the motor, but there was nothing, not even a click. Skye’s dad sighed, and he waited some more. She turned the key three more times and then gave up. Her Spanish was not the best, but she managed, “Qué hace el motor every day?”

  “Sí, sí,” Lalo said. “¡Qué hacer arrancar el motor cada día!”

  “Well, then why the hell won’t it start now?”

  Lalo’s face reddened as he popped the hood, exposing the massive German motor inside. “¿Podría ser muchas cosas, bateria esta muerto?” He looked at various wires and held up one cable with a frayed end. “¡Esos malditos ratones que mastican en el cableado!”

  “Lalo,” Skye said, “I have only poco español. Lo siento. Despacio.”

  By now, her dad had shut off his truck and come to take a look. “He says the effing ratas chewed up the wiring.”

  “What am I supposed to do about that? Set a mousetrap on my carburetor?”

  “Hola, Lalo,” her father said, and shook the man’s hand. “¿Por favor, reparar el cableado?”

  Lalo nodded. “Si, no hoy. ¿Tal vez mañana?”

  “Bueno.” Owen took the keys from Skye and handed them to Lalo. “Just get in the truck, Skye. The car will be ready tomorrow.”

  “What’d you tell him?” Skye asked once they were on the road.

  “To please fix the wires the mice chewed.”

  “Mice? I thought you said rats?”

  “Rats, mice, what’s the difference?”

  “You should slow down, Daddy. There’s bound to be a speed trap nearby. I ought to know, I got enough tickets in this town.”

  “Skye, you’re giving me a headache. Please, can you just be quiet for ten minutes?”

  “Well, pardon me,” she said, leaning as close as she could to the passenger window. On her lap she held the bag of apples her dad had insisted on taking to the job interview. “Like bringing flowers, or a bottle of wine to a dinner,” he’d said.

  It was raining lightly—always something to cheer for in New Mexico—but soon it turned to wet splatters of snow, hitting the windshield like the spit wads kids used to throw in elementary school. Her stomach growled because they hadn’t taken time for breakfast.

  “Can I have one of these apples?”

  “No,” her dad said.

  “You really think he’d notice one apple was missing?”

  “No, I think you ought to wash the apple off before you eat it. Chemicals in everything these days.”

  “All right. Soon as we get there, I’m taking one because I’m hungry.” And angry, lonely, and tired? she heard Duncan say. H.A.L.T.

  Oh, shut up, Duncan.

  Skye wondered if Gracie was awake, having her Cheerios and drinking from the little sippy cup she refused to give up. And who was feeding her breakfast? Rocky? Rita, while smoking a cigarette at the kitchen table? As they drove down Rodeo Road, heading toward 599, she noticed a few changes in the city’s business end. In the mall, Mervyn’s, where she could find the best panties, had gone out of business. Just down the road, there were another couple of car dealerships, a Kohl’s, and a Walmart.

  They headed across the intersection to Airport Road, toward the more rural community of La Cienega. There adobes dating back to 1700 stood in the shade of ancient cottonwood trees that turned to gold every autumn. But fall was a long way off, and while summer had seemed just around the corner, today it was raining, then snowing, and now it was dry again. Make up your mind, Skye thought. Overhead, the skies were ridiculously blue, as if the snow and rain were all in her mind.

  They passed by the Santa Fe Trailer Ranch, cousin to the one Rita had lived in while in Albuquerque. It was a little village of singlewides set in the dirt, followed by a large lot filled with old RVs, a few “canned ham” aluminum trailers, and, scattered like precious gems among the rock, those silver bullets, the Airstream trailers she loved. The hills behind La Cienega were the site of many petroglyphs, dating back to the 1300s. Skye had hiked there herself, years ago, but Gracie had never seen them. She couldn’t wait to show her daughter the petroglyphs and tell her stories about them. And everything else she’d missed doing with Little Gee. As the road curved, they passed a sewage treatment plant that hopefully was upwind of this yet-to-materialize stable/riding school. The arroyo on the other side of the road was dry, choked with salt cedar. They were less than a mile outside of La Cienega when she spotted the sign for the stable: Reach for the Sky! A horse-centered therapeutic facility. “Daddy,” she said.

  He clicked on his blinker. “I see it.”

  She could sense the nerves her dad was feeling. At his age, was he up to this kind of work? Lifting bales, grooming twenty horses a day? Shoot, he’d fallen deeply asleep after that walk up and down Canyon Road. Which kind of broke her heart because then she had to admit he was getting old. By the time they made their way down the winding gravel road, the sun cast a rosy light against an old, corrugated-metal barn undergoing repairs with what looked like a decent-sized crew and lots of pickup trucks. He parked the truck next to a yellow Land Cruiser. Cool old car, Skye thought. A man came out of the barn to meet them, leaning heavily on a four-pronged cane.

  “Wait in the car,” Owen said to the dog.

  “Don’t mind me,” Skye said. “I’m just chopped liver.”

  Her dad waved at the man, and she watched them shake hands.

  Somehow Skye had expected the man interviewing her father would be massive and burly, the type that worked out every day and ate an entire pie for lunch. Instead, he was a slim guy—not bony, but not muscled out, either. He moved as if he were in pain, and as if it were that pain that kept him lean. His blue jeans were too nice to be working clothes and his shirt wasn’t western cut with a yoke, just a plain chambray work shirt. He had short dark hair, a firm jaw. He was part Navajo, she could tell, but something else, too. The guy had a slight military air about him, so maybe he’d gotten injured in the service, hence the cane.

  Owen and his interviewer went inside the barn, which left her with the dog, who was now sitting at attention, looking out the open window to where her dad had disappeared. “Relax, Hope. Chances are he’ll get turned down in five minutes and be right back.”

  While she waited, Skye looked in the glove box and found only the registration, some receipts for gasoline, and a left glove she recognized as the one her father used when shoeing horses. Skye had no watch to see how long he’d been gone. All she had
to go on was the rising sun and her empty stomach, which was now feeling downright hollow. And damn it, she’d forgotten to take an apple like she’d planned to. She dozed off, then jolted awake at Hope’s whining.

  “Need to go tee-tee?” Skye mumbled, and then realized it was how she talked to Gracie, not this three-legged charity case. She sighed and got out of the truck, yawning. “I’m going to see if they have a vending machine somewhere around here. You stay here, Hope. Hear me? Do not go into that barn or I will personally put you on a leash for all time.”

  The dog cocked his head at her. Maybe God knew what he was thinking, but Skye sure didn’t.

  Hammers and saws were at work somewhere inside the barn, and judging by the number of pickup trucks, there were construction workers inside. She couldn’t help but think of Rocky, back when he did that kind of work. He stayed off drugs when he worked construction or on the road crew. One of the workers’ trucks had a set of chrome-plated bull testicles hanging from his trailer hitch. That’d be real funny until a cop pulled him over and gave him a ticket because they were illegal, even in places like Oklahoma and Montana.

  The men were building new stalls for the horses, she guessed. And where were those horses? Walking away from the noise, she checked out two good-sized arenas. There were a couple of Porta Potties and several equipment sheds, those metal prefab things you could buy at Home Depot. At her barn in Aurora, riders rented them to hold saddles and tack. Reach for the Sky had everything but a vending machine. She wandered over past the largest riding arena fenced with white pipe. Next to it was a covered arena, metal roofed like those northern New Mexico houses. Kind of spendy for a stable. She climbed the board walls and peered over. Here were the horses, wearing breakaway halters, milling about. She counted fourteen. Nothing to write home about, but solid candidates for a facility for the handicapped. They were bomb-proof and would never scare, once they got used to the kids.

  Out beyond that was a wide-open space that culminated in the petroglyph-laden hills. She rested her arms on the rail, remembering the hours she put in training Lightning to become the best barrel-racing Appaloosa in the state of Colorado. Such good times. Too bad she hadn’t appreciated them more. Even all this time later, put fifty-gallon drums in an arena, and Lightning would gather his muscles and run the cloverleaf. Thank goodness for horses, because riding had kept her hormones in check for a good five years. Without them, she might have become pregnant at fourteen.