Walk Me Home

by Hyde, Catherine Ryan

  He tips his hat to her. Which means he’s leaving.

  She rushes in and throws her arms around him, knocking her new hat into the dirt. Holds him tight, the way she grabbed Teddy in the Whale Tail Lounge. But Alvin doesn’t make a wheezing noise. He doesn’t make any noise at all. He seems to be able to take it. He hugs her in return. Which, if she’s remembering right, Teddy never did.

  Then she steps back, embarrassed. Picks up her hat and brushes red dirt off its crown.

  Alvin tips his hat again. Climbs into Pam’s car and backs all the way down the driveway. Carly stands in front of the house and watches him go. She raises her hand in a wave, but Alvin never looks back.

  Carly stands and looks around. Breathes deeply, as if smelling the Wakapi landscape. As if allowing the dry air to fill more than just her lungs. Just for a moment, she notices the way the sun lights up the big mesa behind the house.

  Something is different in just these few days. Delores’s old truck is parked out behind the henhouse, covered with a giant blue tarp. It’s not in its usual spot under the carport. And there’s some new fencing, a semicircle at the open end of the carport. Thin metal posts with three strands of plain wire strung between. And there are three strands of wire stapled to the posts of the carport, too, so the whole thing is like a partly covered paddock. So now you couldn’t drive the truck in there if you wanted to. Carly notes this but doesn’t understand it. In fact, she doesn’t try.

  Instead, she joins Delores inside the house. It’s nice in there. Cooler. Not cold, like air-conditioning. But a lot nicer than outside. The old woman is standing in the kitchen, pouring a glass of cold water from the fridge. It doesn’t occur to Carly that Delores might be pouring it for Carly, not for herself.

  Carly takes off her hat and holds it in her hand.

  Roscoe thumps his tail against the rug but doesn’t get up.

  “Have a sit,” Delores says and sets the glass of cold water on the table. In front of the chair Carly always used at mealtimes. Back when she ate her meals here. Seems like a long time ago now.

  “Thanks,” she says. She sits. And sips. Hat on her lap. “It’s nice in here. Cool.”

  “Got the swamp cooler goin’.”

  So that’s what that noise is, she thinks.

  “Where’s Jen?”

  “Still at school.”

  “School?”

  “Don’t tell me you forgot what that is.”

  “I didn’t think Jen would be going, though. I mean…this soon. I just can’t believe you even got her signed up for school so fast.”

  “Signed up…well, maybe not exactly. But she’s goin’. And the teacher don’t mind if she sits in for now. We all tried to tell ’er wait for next year. This year’s good as gone. But she wanted to go. No talkin’ ’er out of it. Said she wanted to catch up what she missed. Really I think she’s wantin’ to make some friends ’er own age. Tide ’er over the summer, you know?”

  “Oh. Yeah. That’s good. That’s nice, if she can make some friends.”

  Delores says nothing. She’s still at the kitchen counter, but she’s not doing anything special there. Just leaning. As though thinking. As though she’s putting Carly’s words on a scale to see how much they weigh.

  When Carly gets tired of waiting for the old woman to speak, she says, “Were you really worried about me?”

  “You could of got yourself dead a dozen diff’rent ways, you know.”

  “I know. I almost did.”

  “Well, you’re OK now. Guess that’s what matters.”

  Delores waddles off into the living room and sits down on the couch, emitting a noise that’s a cross between a grunt and a sigh. Roscoe lifts his head briefly, looks over his shoulder at Delores, then sets his chin down on the rug again.

  “Mind if I take my water into the trailer? I’ll bring the glass back. It was such a long drive and I’m tired, and it would be nice to lie down.”

  “Swamp cooler’s fixed in there now. Chester came over ’n fixed it. Got a chain hangs down in the middle of the room. Just give that chain a good hard pull. Noisy, but it should cool off in there right quick.”

  She wants to question the idea that Chester would do such a thing. But it seems pointless. Since he already did.

  Carly wakes from a long nap to find that the trailer is cool. Cooler than the house. Maybe because it’s so much smaller.

  She sits up.

  The window that used to have no glass has been mended with what looks like a scrap of Plexiglas, cut to fit just right and sealed with duct tape around the edges. So you can still see through it. But the cold can’t get in. Or out.

  Just for a minute, Carly thinks she hears a distant sound like the slow, gentle clopping of hooves. Then she decides it was only in her head.

  She gets up and washes her face in a bucket of water that’s sitting near the sink. Behind the partition in the back of the trailer. When she comes back out, the sound is louder now. And definitely real.

  She looks out the window to see Jen riding up the road on Virginia’s old mostly brown paint horse. Carly sinks into a sit on the bed and watches. Jen is riding bareback. Nothing but a woven blanket between her and the horse. Her reins are a loop of rope tied to a rope halter. Her legs swing free. She’s still wearing that straw cowboy hat Delores gave her. It still suits her. Carly always knew it did. She just wouldn’t admit that at the time.

  It’s a sight. Really. A sight.

  Carly grabs her hat up off the counter and steps out into the heat. The big creak of the door doesn’t surprise her, nor does it feel like a problem. It’s just something she remembers.

  She stands at the top of the driveway.

  At first Jen is looking off in the direction of the mesa. But then she turns her head to the house. Carly can spot the moment when Jen sees her. Even though they’re too far apart to see each other’s face. But she can still tell.

  Jen drums her heels lightly on the paint’s sides. She’s still wearing those cross-trainers Carly took—borrowed—for her in New Mexico. The paint breaks into a rough trot, and Jen holds on with one hand woven into his mane.

  Then she pulls back on the rope reins and just sits her horse for a second or two, maybe twenty feet from where Carly is standing. All in one motion, she throws a leg back over the paint’s butt and drops to the ground. Runs up to Carly. And she doesn’t stop when she gets there. She hits Carly like a moving train, nearly bowling her right over into the dirt. Her arms wrap around Carly’s ribs. Squeeze tight.

  Jen knows how to turn her head just right so that her hat, which curls up tight at the sides, doesn’t get knocked off. Carly wonders if that means she’s been giving a lot of hugs since she started wearing it.

  Carly wraps her arms around Jen in return, the stiff straw of the roper’s hat rough against her scarred chin. After a while she thinks it might be time to let go. But Jen doesn’t. So neither does Carly.

  After a few more seconds of this, Carly says, “Shouldn’t you tie up that horse?”

  “Anoaki won’t go anywhere. He’s real good.” But she straightens up and lets Carly go. “Nice hat!”

  “Thanks. Alvin gave it to me.”

  “Looks good! You look like you belong here.”

  Jen waits to see if Carly has anything to say about that. But Carly chooses to let it go by. Well, not chooses so much. It just goes by. And she doesn’t know what to do with it. So that’s the way things stay.

  Jen walks back to her horse, who hasn’t moved. Takes him by the reins and leads him to the new fence built onto the carport. Peels back a section of wire that Carly didn’t even notice has been set up as a gate. Then Jen slides the blanket off his back and drapes it over the fence. Unties the rope halter and lets it fall. It swings from the reins still clutched in her hand. Jen steps back, and Anoaki walks through the gate and into the shade of the carport. Jen hangs the halter on a fence post and hooks the gate closed. Walks around behind the carport, emerging a moment later with a flake of h
ay. She throws it over the fence to the horse, then walks back to where Carly is standing in the afternoon sun.

  “So Virginia gave you that horse?”

  “Not exactly. She called it a loan. But I don’t really think she’s gonna ask for him back. ’Cause he’s retired. She doesn’t use him much anymore. But he can take me to school and back. That’s not too much for hardly any horse. I’m so glad you got back, Carly. I was scared to death. I thought you might die.”

  “Well, I didn’t,” she says.

  She decides she can—and should—keep her close calls to herself.

  “Stay, Carly. Please. Just for a couple of months. Do it for me. So I can show you how good it is here. Then if you still want to go, you can. Please?”

  “I don’t know if Delores will let me stay.”

  “Will you ask her?”

  “Yeah,” Carly says. “I’ll ask her.”

  Carly ducks her head down going through the door into the house. And she still doesn’t know why.

  Delores is sitting on the couch, weaving strong, stiff tan grasses around a frame of thicker straw. She’s not looking at her work. Her eyes are trained off in the distance. As if looking out the window. But Carly doesn’t think that’s the case. The old woman probably can’t see that far. She’s probably staring into space.

  Carly sits in the only chair, across from her. Roscoe thumps his tail.

  “Making a basket?”

  “Makin’ myself a new hat.”

  Then neither says anything for a time. This is that moment Alvin told Carly to practice. Admitting she needs something. And would appreciate getting it.

  So she pushes harder. Puts a figurative shoulder behind the words.

  “Jen wants me to stay a couple months. She thinks I’ll get to like it here. She thinks if I give her a month or two, she can show me why she loves this place so much.”

  Nothing happens at first. The silence makes Carly’s heart fall. Her poor heart, she thinks. Not really in a self-pitying way. More like she finally has some empathy for the poor abused organ. How many more falls can it take?

  “’N what do you want to do?” Delores asks, finally.

  “I’d like to stay. If you’ll have me. God’s honest truth, I need to stay. I don’t have any place else to go.”

  “Surprised,” Delores says. Her hands still moving. Still building that hat. “We thought you’d pick the live-on-your-own plan.”

  “Scary being on your own,” Carly says. Seems like once she opens up that faucet of honesty, it flows without much effort. “Turns out I’m not so big and strong as I thought. Maybe I really am too young.”

  “Got news for you,” Delores says. “I’m ninety-two, and I’m not so big ’n strong as I thought, neither.”

  A long silence. Carly’s gut can’t quite relax. Because Delores hasn’t exactly said yes.

  When she can’t stand it anymore, Carly says, “So…”

  “I can always use another hand around the place.”

  Carly empties her lungs of breath she didn’t even know she was holding. “I’ll help. I will. I’ll work hard. And I’ll be nicer and more cooperative.”

  “Nah, you’ll still be what you are,” Delores says. “But it’s OK. I won’t be nicer ’n more cooperative, neither. Just got to put up with each other. Somethin’ you could do would be a real big help. You could learn to drive stick. If you could drive my old truck, wouldn’t always be at the mercy of people bringin’ stuff out here to me. We need somethin’, you could just drive out ’n get it.”

  “I could do that. I’ll go easy on your clutch, too.”

  “Was gonna try to talk Alvin into teachin’ you on his truck.” She pauses, but before Carly can open her mouth to answer, Delores says, “No, scratch that. Learn on my old truck. Ain’t no earthly good to me unless you can drive it. I got no business gettin’ behind that wheel ever again, and we both know it.”

  Carly rises to her feet. With effort. Her body still feels pounded and overused.

  “Thank you,” she says.

  Delores only nods.

  But anyway, Carly said it. And it went down a little easier the second time. Just like Alvin said it would.

  After dinner, Carly sits on the bed in the cool trailer, looking out the window. Watching the light change on the mesa. Lighting it up redder as the sun slants.

  She tries on the idea of this place as home, and it still doesn’t fit. But it makes her remember sitting in that tourist restaurant in Trinidad, drinking iced tea and wondering how it would feel to never get in out of the elements. No matter how bad those elements got. Now she’s indoors, and it’s cool. And there’s electricity. And water, even if you do have to walk out to the well and fetch it. And a bed. And a place to store what few belongings she owns. That strikes her as the most fundamental elements of a home. Maybe, she thinks, you have to do the rest on your own.

  She sits another hour or more, wondering when Jen will come in, so they can go to bed. Jen is in the house with Delores. It makes Carly feel a little left out. Though she knows she could be in the house, too, if she wanted. All she’d have to do is walk in and join them.

  She makes up her mind to try that tomorrow.

  It’s after dark when Jen bounces in.

  “Just wanted to come say good night,” she says.

  “You’re not sleeping here?”

  “No, I sleep on the couch in the house. That way I’m there if Delores needs anything in the night.”

  “Oh. OK.”

  “Well…good night.”

  “Good night,” Carly says.

  But Jen doesn’t leave straightaway. Carly feels like not enough has been said. She wonders if Jen feels the same.

  Carly decides it’s her turn. That she’s the one who never says enough.

  “I’m sorry I didn’t believe you.”

  “Oh. That. Did you really, like…not ever think maybe it happened?”

  “Not even once. Not even a little bit. It’s kind of hard to explain.”

  “Oh,” Jen says. “That’s OK. You don’t have to explain. I mean, not OK. It hurt me. But it’s OK because…I sort of knew why. And I know it wasn’t really about me. I could tell. I know how much you loved him.”

  “Thanks,” Carly says. Thinking she’s gotten good at that word in a short time. “Here’s the thing, though. I’m sorry I didn’t believe Mom, too. And it’s a little too late to make it up to Mom.”

  A long silence. Carly realizes she’s been hoping Jen had some kind of answer for that. It feels funny, to look up to your kid sister like she has the missing piece to something you can’t make fit together yourself.

  “Maybe she sort of knew why, too.”

  “Hope so,” Carly says.

  “It was partly my fault. You thought she was lying because I was afraid to say she wasn’t. It’s my fault, too. I feel bad, too.”

  “I can forgive you easier than me.”

  “Same here.”

  Carly doesn’t know what to say. So she says nothing at all.

  “See you in the morning. Unless you sleep in. In which case I’ll be at school.”

  “You makin’ friends?” Carly doesn’t realize until it’s out of her mouth that she just dropped a g. Like Delores. It’s almost funny, after the fact.

  “Tons,” Jen says.

  “Good. That’s good.” She reaches under the collar of her shirt. Pulls out the feather pendant. “Here, I should give this back to you now. It did its job, you know?”

  “No, it’s OK,” Jen says. “You keep it. I’m doing fine.”

  Then she slips out the noisy door again.

  And Carly is left alone with just this. Just a little pink metal trailer with bare utilities and a view of the moon rising, more of a crescent now, over a long mesa.

  It’s not much. But it’s more than she’s had for a long time.

  She sleeps long and well.

  WAKAPI LAND

  May 25

  “Can I use that fence post pound
er thingy?” Carly asks Alvin.

  “Be my guest.”

  She nearly falls over when she takes it from him. It’s heavy.

  She’s at Alvin’s place, where she’s never been before. It’s about two miles farther down the same road as Chester’s. In fact, Chester’s dogs barked at them as Carly drove by.

  Yes, Carly got to drive Alvin’s truck. Once she got it into first and then second gear, with a bit of instruction and a lot of practice, it was pretty easy.

  She lifts the fence tool with great effort and positions it.

  It has a handle on each side. You slip it over the top of the T-post. And then you lift it up and slam it down, and the weight of it drives the post into the ground. A little deeper each time. At least, that’s how it worked when Alvin did it. He made it look easy. He said it has a big spring in it, so it doesn’t jar you right down to your toes on every hit.

  Carly is determined to make it work, though part of her knows she’s clearly in over her head.

  She slams it down a few times, hard. Careful not to cry out each time it hurts her right hand. The T-post doesn’t move much. Despite the fact that Alvin soaked the dirt in this spot for a long time with a hose.

  Then she stops. Because she needs to.

  She’s breathing like she’s just run a marathon. She takes off her hat with one hand and wipes the sweat off her face with her sleeve.

  Alvin sets the hose down and walks over to where Carly is standing. Grabs one handle of the heavy tool.

  “Trade you,” he says.

  “Yeah, OK.”

  “That hurt your hand?”

  “Yeah. Some.”

  “Sure we don’t need to get that looked at?”

  “But the swelling’s going down.”

  “Well, give it a break then. Least you can do for it. I should’ve thought of that. I’m sorry.”

  “It’s not your fault,” she says.

  “I just forgot, is the thing. Or I never would’ve had you try it.”

  She picks up the hose and Alvin’s tape measure. Measures off six feet from the post he’s working on. Soaks the next spot.

  “Hotter than it was when I left,” she says to him.

  “Yup. Summer’s coming on, all right. Nothing you or anybody else can do to change its mind.”