Authoring Amelia

by Lia Conklin

  “And I’m Paul,” the other grinned with his perfect teeth. She realized they were much quicker to forgive white-speak than she was, and soon they were introduced all around. She couldn’t help but be disappointed by the absence of their last names that surely were as poetic as White Wolf, Smiling Bear, or Dancing Pony. There was that white mind of hers again, she scolded herself. Well, who was to say they weren’t assuming her last name was as boring as Jones or Smith?

  They had a good two hours more to talk about life on the Rez, outings to the city, children that came too soon, girlfriends that came too late—or not at all, they admitted sheepishly. Other than references to the Rez, Amelia recognized these conversations. She had heard them before from the backs of school buses in Minnesota, her first home, and the backs of flatbeds hauling workers to coffee and banana plantations a thousand miles away. It was comforting to know that wherever there were people there were such conversations.

  And silence too. Amelia had shared many silences in the past and had learned enough about silence to hear its story. The silences between the jarred memories and spontaneous thoughts of these young men told Amelia the story of camaraderie, of loyalty and acceptance, and of stilled passions. She was not part of the same silence, but they generously shared with her its intimacy.

  It was during a silent story of these young men’s kinship with the surrounding landscape that Amelia first met the Bighorn Mountains. They barely resembled their distant Honduran cousins. Here, levels of wispy green foliage were intercepted by upsweeping lands of coarse vegetation, crumbling outcroppings of yellow and gray shale, and wall faces of barren red, yellow, and gray stone. Fissures of spindly, green pines and red chert took turns crisscrossing the coarse yet gentle ascending landscape. Amelia could feel Destino, her Honduran burro, move beneath her, negotiating the new and hostile terrain. Destino would acclimate easily, she was sure. She only hoped she could too.

  Destino came to an abrupt halt. The five pickup box occupants jolted forward and fell back against one another.

  “Weiland Ranch is that way,” the driver said craning his head through the back window.

  “You’ll have to go the rest of the way on foot,” Darian explained. “It’s a rough trail, mostly for ATVs and horseback riding.

  “We’d go with you,” grinned Paul, “But I hear they get bored just shooting coyotes.” They all laughed again.

  “How far is it?” Amelia asked, wishing she could decide whether or not to use the cafe’s phone back in Billings based on their answer.

  “I’d say close to five miles,” one of them answered.

  Miles. How far was that anyway? She had gotten so used to distance measured in time that she had no idea what it meant, other than it was “a ways.”

  “How long will it take me, do you think?” she asked.

  “We could use some Indian magic and send you as the hawk flies,” Paul said, wiggling his fingers as he raised his hands upward. The others laughed. At first, Amelia felt it was at her expense. Then Paul placed a hand on her shoulder and as she looked into his eyes, she realized they were laughing at themselves. They had no Indian magic; they had only an ancient past, a confining future, and this dilapidated pickup truck.

  “I’d go with ya,” he said, serious for the first time. “My great-grandfather would love to see the day our family set foot on this land again. But it won’t be today. These guys,” he gestured to his buddies, “got girlfriends at home ready to show them how much they been missed.

  “And Paul’s got his Shepherd mutt in heat!” This time the joke was on him, and Amelia left them as they continued chuckling after goodbyes were said and thanks given. She was alone with the land and the echo of these men’s conversation…and silences.

  Chapter 6

  Amelia soon discovered “How far?” or even “How long?” was not the right question. Time and distance became irrelevant as she topped another brittle crest, or rounded another jagged bend, each revealing an immense panorama of emergent green, stubborn brown, and receding sun-sparkled white. “How much?” was the true question. How much air could she breathe? How much silence could she bear? How much depth could she explore? How much more could she know by the time the first bark of the ranch dogs penetrated her eardrums and the first glimpse of the “Weiland Ranch” sign arched above her trail? She wished she would have known what to ask. Maybe her Crow friends would have prepared her for the answer.

  She had not traveled terrain like this before. Yet the crunch of her feet on the loose shale was as familiar to her as her heavy breathing and the lean bulges of her thighs. How often she had climbed from the village road to her mud home. How often she had felt her heart growing heavier with her breath as she climbed, each bringing her one step closer to a home that held no comfort, a father with no warmth, and a mother and brother who were not her own.

  Each day that she opened the door to step onto the earthen floor of her mountaintop home, she stepped into servitude. The few schoolbooks she had were placed upon a banana crate by the bed she shared with her younger stepbrother to be opened by candlelight while the others drifted off to sleep. Homework was a luxury. Her new life meant fetching two five-gallon pails of water each morning and evening from the spring downhill, combing their deforested mountainside land for the day’s firewood, grinding the maize and preparing the dough for the evening tortillas, gathering vegetables from the garden, and tethering the goats to graze on overgrown pasture.

  There were also chickens to tend, to rear from squawking chicks to scrawny molting hens whose necks would be wrung with a quick crack of the wrist and skinny bodies plucked and cleaned to become boiled chicken bits floating in sopa de pollo, chicken soup. And there were clothes to wash with cold spring water against a granite slab, faded fabrics slid back and forth to reveal a sudsy façade, then rinsed, wrung, and haphazardly hung, ready for the sun to take its turn in preparing them for their next day’s toil. Each shirt, each skirt, each sock and slip went up and down, up and down, up and down, until Amelia’s brain rode the monotony of her hands like an abandoned swing in a colorless breeze.

  Each time she reached her mountaintop home, the extravagant blanket of descending mountain foliage with its patches of hand-sewn plots at her back, her soul yearned to breathe. The beauty around her offered her no inspiration…no respiration. For how could her soul breathe if it had already died? Been burned and buried with all that she loved?

  Her heavy breathing and the pumping of her legs as she climbed may have dragged her into the caverns of her past, but as she crested the ridge of this new mountain, no door to exile appeared. Rather, the sweeping view of the tumbling mellow to piercing green slopes lay opened at her feet. This time her soul breathed in and refused to exhale.

  Chapter 7

  About the same time that Amelia saw the ranch buildings below, she heard the first excited yet wary bark of the ranch dogs. She remembered a dog once that had barked like that. She remembered all his different barks—wariness, warning, excitement, and welcome—as she jumped off the school bus to embrace his furry torso in her book-laden arms. Then she suddenly wondered what his last bark sounded like, before everything turned inside out and upside down.

  The dogs below continued to bark as she made her way down the trail. In Honduras, there had been no jovial border collie to welcome her home, only a scrawny mutt with oversized ears that yipped and whined at her heals and rubbed his scaly skin against her calves. He offered no comfort from her torment at school or concern for her sadness or shame. His was not a cry for affection but rather a desperate plea for reprieve from his hunger and the singe of his parasitic bowels and skin. How funny that everything about her life in Honduras was a cruel parody of her life before, including that diseased mutt.

  The only constant in her life, she realized, had been her father. She realized how little she missed him; how thankful she was to have her lungs filled with this fresh, Montana air untainted by his insistence that she breathe more from her diaphragm or
equally from her chest, or hold it longer than she had or maybe somewhat less. She caught a whiff of sweet vindication as she entertained the idea of his being detained, while today she was breathing free.

  Once through the gate, the dogs waited no longer to investigate her approach and came barking towards her. They were not menacing and quickly took to sniffing her jeans and outstretched palms. A man stepped out onto the ranch house porch. Even from a distance his legs appeared uncertain whether to descend from the porch or wait where they stood. They did finally make their willowy way down the steps towards her, knees bowed outwards as if preferring to turn back.

  Amelia waved, extracting a hand from the tangle of fur she was caressing and cajoling forward. This time the man’s arms seemed uncertain what to do. They decided to move slightly upwards from the body and hang there just above his hips. Amelia lowered her hand and continued slowly forward. She was wary of the sun that would surely catch the polished sheen of his badge and blind her aim when the time came to draw. Her periphery vision offered no assistance, yet she was sure her Crow friends were crouching just behind the rocky ridge, in black and white film, ready to come to her aid. A blue heeler snout to the crotch later, “Take one” of her Wild West debut snapped to a close, leaving Amelia just time enough to stifle a nervous giggle before offering her hand to the pistol-ready one that now hung before her.

  He was no Clint Eastwood, not even the over-aged one. In fact, there was little to redeem his cavernous, jowly face. Not even a smile. Amelia had enough smile for the two of them, and though contagious, this anti-Eastwood had a hearty immune system.

  “Hello. I’m Amelia Kingston,” she offered, undaunted. “I’ve come to apply for the ranch-hand position. I’ve had a lot of experience with animals,” she said, hoping she had not emphasized the word animals too much and given away the fact that they may as well have been hippos or kangaroos for all the good it would do on this ranch. “And I’m very strong and not afraid to work hard and long hours. I think you’ll be very pleased with my performance if you give me a chance.”

  She felt once again embedded in a Western film, this time playing some young tomboy dying to prove herself equal to a man—not to just any man—but to this man that stood before her, bronco-beaten and nature-worn, his humor scraped away by wind and rain, like the earth of his surrounding landscape. She became aware that her outstretched hand no longer showed evidence of Honduran labor and hoped he would not notice.

  She realized she had nothing to worry about as he dismissed her hand entirely and instead nodded at the guitar slung over her shoulder.

  “Do ya play that thing?” he asked.

  “Ah, yes, I do,” she replied, wondering who would carry it upon their back for five miles if they didn’t. “I sing too. It’s a nice interruption to a hard day’s work to sit back and listen to some music. I’d be happy to play for you anytime you’d like.”

  “Do ya know any Marty Robbins?” he asked.

  “Uh, no, not really…though I could learn it quick enough.”

  “Come back when you do then, and I’ll think about taking ya on.” With that he gave in to his knees and turned back towards the ranch house, leaving Amelia to contemplate her return to Billings.

  “Take Two” was over, and Amelia’s good first impression was lost to the wind.

  Chapter 8

  The five-mile hike gave Amelia time enough to contemplate who the hell Marty Robbins was and to go through a list of other singers that may or may not have been Country icons. She was less interested this time in the lay of the land than in the waning sun and her equally waning energy. The greasy breakfast and two granola bars she had eaten on her way to the ranch were now joined by another granola bar and washed down by the last of her water. Her dinner did little to raise her spirits and even less the sun. She worried that she would not make it to the highway before dark.

  When she finally saw the highway, her legs shakily bore her weight upon the loose shale of the final descent. She laughed to see four hawks sitting upon the barbed-wire fence. They had waited for her after all! And now they would return her to Billings upon their magic wings. A few trickling streams of shale later, they flew off. How fickle her new friends were.

  It was night, but darkness never came. The dark mountain to her side rose up to send sparks from its summit campfire into the heavens. This was not new to Amelia, who often in the past, upon tethering the last goat or making her final trip of the day to the outhouse, was serenaded by this heavenly mariachi of glimmering brass. Here, however, the sky seemed turned around, or maybe she was walking upside down. The Big Dipper ascended to rule the sky with Polaris, her dear old friend, offering her guidance once again like so many years ago. Looking up at him on his heavenly throne, for the first time since his descent to the milky Honduran horizon over a decade ago, Amelia thought suddenly that maybe they had risen with him. Maybe she would round the next bend to see her mother, silver in starlight, and her brother, swathed in the same blue filter of heavenly light, nestled in her arms. Their faces would be upturned, following her mother’s dazzlingly blue finger in a path to Polaris. But the only blue finger Amelia was to see that night was her own as it wiped silver tears from her face. Polaris had risen alone.

  Chapter 9

  She was rescued from her lonely journey on foot by a middle-aged truck driver. But it didn’t take Amelia long to realize that “rescued” was a rather loose interpretation. As it was, the truck driver was not driving his Peterbilt truck, but rather his Ford Ranger SL pickup, he offered up as a way of apology.

  “I live out here near the Bighorns,” he announced. “I’m on the last of my five days off and about to start my ten days on. But don’t you worry none,” he said planting a beefy hand on her thigh, “My little wife gives me enough lovin’ those five days to last me twenty!” He gave a hearty laugh and a wink at Amelia who took the opportunity to adjust her seatbelt and dislodge the large hand that showed no signs of leaving her thigh. Unperturbed, he continued, “And now a pretty young gal such as yourself, ridin’ shotgun, I could probably go thirty!” He winked again, his sweaty hand rediscovering her thigh, this time just a bit further up. Amelia winced at the contact and wondered what had ever possessed her to think hitchhiking was at all an option, even “in these parts.” By the time she saw the truck stop lighting up the outskirts of Billings, she had lost count of how many times her seatbelt needed adjusting.

  “I’ll get out here,” she announced, with no attempt to hide her relief.

  “I’ll join ya for coffee,” he declared, announcing no attempt was necessary.

  “I can’t drink coffee this late,” Amelia responded, and upon remembering the existence of decaf added, “and anyway, my boyfriend will be showing up any minute to pick me up.” It was an easy lie since he had not asked her anything about herself during the entire trip.

  “Lucky guy,” he said. “Though my Cynthia’s a hot one, I’d imagine even a bucket of cold water wouldn’t put out your fire!” She had already jumped down from the pickup but wished she had slammed the door a few seconds earlier to avoid the crawlies that now crept up her spine. She slammed it now, not an ounce of remorse that she hadn’t offered him money. She walked to the gas station without a look back, her butt conspicuously naked in the fluorescent beams of the Exxon station.

  Around 11:00 after eating an egg salad sandwich and drinking a Coke, Amelia caught the ladies’ restroom door as the woman inside exited. She gestured the key away and slipped inside. Wrapped in her coat she fell asleep on the cold tile floor. As it was, her slumber was interrupted only three times during the night. Each time the key turned in the lock, she jumped up, startling the woman who entered, but in time to hide the fact she had been sleeping there.

  She woke up to the turn of the key in the morning. This time her rebellious legs, angry from their ten-mile hike and tile bed, barely allowed her to stand before the door opened. She hobbled past the startled, elderly woman and stretched her cramped legs as s
he walked into the truck stop for some breakfast. She returned to her suite later, this time key in hand, to wash away some of the dust and sweat from the day before. She was ready for her next challenge.

  Chapter 10

  “Marty Robbins?” the librarian repeated. “I’m pretty sure we don’t have any sheet music, but I can set you up with some of his recordings and some headphones.”

  The library was a hobo’s haven as Amelia came to find out. She spent the next few days hunkered over a CD player listening to Marty Robbins, Johnny Cash, Dolly Parton, and some Garth Brooks and Faith Hill who the librarian assured her were favorites around here for the older folks. Amelia left the library each afternoon nauseous from Country overload but came back the next day to listen again.

  In the evenings, she sat outside the tent she bought at the Salvation Army for twenty dollars (even a charity in America wouldn’t go down to fifteen), and with the help of the lyrics and musical notations she had scratched on paper, she hammered out the songs on her guitar. The young caretaker of the campground often came around to listen. Kevin was a nice enough kid and sang a decent rendition of “American Bar Association,” making Amelia’s least favorite Garth Brook’s song somehow palatable. It was nice to have his company, even if he mostly sat and listened. Somehow, it made Polaris, who still beckoned from the sky, easier to ignore. Within a week, she had some thirty songs within her grasp, ten of which, the most she could stomach, were strictly Marty Robbins. She was ready to go back to Weiland.

  The night before she left, Kevin showed her the guitar he bought earlier that day.

  “You’ve inspired me,” he said, “Every night I come over here and listen to you work out a song. At first, I don’t recognize it, and then you gradually make it into something beautiful and all your own. I think I could do that.”