I had the sleeping bag pulled over my head. It smelled like dust. My wife was lying five miles away, her breasts already dense as leather in death, her eyelashes intertwined, the perfect brown tunnels of her eyes sealed, the path within already forgotten. “Joni,” I said. “Joni. Joni.”
* * *
I met her at night. Off the reservation, there are small joints scattered all along the roads. You can go in there for ice cream or burgers or beer. Lots of them sell Indian art and beads to the tourists, and a bunch of them still won’t let an Indian in the door. The reservation folks knew which stores wanted them and which didn’t.
We were in one that didn’t. Six of the footballers from our school were in there with me. It was one of those dull nights. Red Cloud School had won the football game. They’d all been going down to see that Little Big Man movie, and they were all turned on. They were crazy-wild. Nobody could catch them.
Franklin Standing Bear’s car broke down. He came walking up to the place from the road to Hot Springs. I watched him through the window, materializing out of the blackness. He paused in the parking lot, looking at us. His glasses glittered in the lights. I nudged one of the boys and pointed with my chin.
“Gaw-damn,” he said.
We left our spoons sinking into our sundaes and gawked.
Franklin came in the door and ducked his head.
“More balls ’n brains,” one of the football boys said.
Franklin went to the register and asked to use the phone. Sonny, the owner, had served in Korea with Franklin’s dad, so he let him on the phone. But he told him he’d best get moving as soon as he was through.
We hustled out to the lot and waited for him, all jittery with crazy heat.
Franklin came out and our quarterback called, “Hey, boy!”
He put his hands up in front of him and said, “Not looking for trouble.”
“You calling me a troublemaker?” the footballer asked.
“Look,” Franklin said, “My car’s busted down. That’s all.”
“You Indian boys did pretty good tonight,” said the tight end. He looked like a chimp in the half light. All beady glittery eyes, stupid with lust. Jeez, this is how it begins, I thought.
“I don’t know nothing about it,” said Franklin, “I was over to Rosebud.” He was drifting away.
“Rosebud,” the first footballer said. “What kind of a faggot name is that, Standing Bear? You Indians all faggots or what? That why you got them ponytails?”
Franklin had a frozen smile on his face. He could see a freight train coming and he couldn’t get out of its way.
“Let’s go inside,” I said. I tugged on the tight end’s sleeve. “C’mon,” I said.
Franklin Standing Bear spit on the ground.
“You know what?” he said. “You’re just a bunch of lowlife shit-lipped pud-pulling cow fuckers. I’m about fed up with your bullshit, so come on cowboys! Fuck it! Hoka hey!”
Oh man, I thought, he’s doing his war cry. It was a good day to die. Franklin was in full-on warrior mode now.
The footballer grunted and charged at him. Franklin leaped about three feet high and kicked him precisely in the mouth. Franklin’s glasses flew one way; blood and teeth flew the other. The footballer fell back, squealing, rolling on the blacktop with his fingers in his mouth. They closed in on Franklin, but he broke for the road. All our boot heels sounded like three horses crossing a highway. I didn’t know what the hell I was doing. I was just running.
Two sets of headlights rounded the curve, and Franklin dodged between them. Indians poured out at us, like they were flying out of the light. One of them was Joni. She cornered me, waving a tire iron in my face. God, she was beautiful. She looked like a wolf—her small perfect teeth were bared, the muscles in her arms tight with rage. She was wearing a small choker. The cold had made her nipples stand up. She hissed and cussed at me. In her cowboy boots, she was taller than I was. I was sure she was going to knock my head loose. The sound of massacre was all around us. Don appeared beside Joni, grinning. He was panting from the fighting, flushed and sweaty.
“Well, well,” he said. “It’s the Indian lover.” He turned to Joni. “This here is a big Indian lover. Isn’t that right, Bobby?”
Joni stopped waving the iron at me.
“Hey,” said Don. “You come out here to apologize?”
There was a scattered rubble of white boys all over the road.
“I don’t know,” I said.
“You don’t know,” Joni taunted.
“I don’t know.” I was looking around.
“Looks like you picked the wrong place to be,” she said. “That’s for damn sure.”
But they didn’t do anything about it. We walked over to Don’s car—a ferocious orange Chevy Impala—and Don drove us back to the side of the lot and put me out. “Forgive us,” he said in the phoniest arch-sounding accent, “if we shan’t stop in for tea.” They burned rubber. They were doing those manic yip-yip war cries as they sped away. I thought Joni waved good-bye, but I couldn’t be sure.
We met again at a movie theater, by accident. I finally got down to see Little Big Man, and damned if I didn’t wish I was a Sioux warrior. Somebody in the balcony kept pelting me with popcorn, though, but every time I turned around, there was nobody there. I finally jumped out of my seat and glared up there. Joni was laughing down at me. I blushed. After that, I kept thinking of that massacre at the Indian village—I kept thinking of a soldier shooting Joni in the back as she ran. It made me sick inside. I couldn’t get the picture out of my mind. I was Dustin Hoffman, and I watched Joni run and die, run and die, in slow motion, extreme close-up. The next time we saw each other, we were on.
* * *
Morning. Horses. They walked in patient circles around the trailer, snorting as they went past the screened window, trying to get a whiff of me without letting me know they were inspecting. Today was the burial. I got up, dragged on my jeans and a T-shirt, and stepped out. They trotted away with their ears bent back and their tails lifted. I went in the house quietly, but Don was already up, sitting at the table drinking coffee. He gestured to a skillet with three eggs and some bacon fried up. “Toast,” he said, nodding to a stack of bread slices on a saucer before him. Silent, I got my breakfast and sat across from him. We stared at each other as I ate. Don’s boy, Snake, was asleep on the couch, facedown. Elinore Her Many Horses could be heard taking a shower. I was through eating. “Thanks,” I said. “Put them dishes in the sink, hey?” he said. I did it. Then I waited my turn for the shower. Then it was time to go. I drove in my truck alone.
* * *
Between breakfast and packing to leave, I can’t remember the day. As soon as I saw the coffin, it hit me in the ribs, like a shovel swung by a batter. I kept focusing on breathing, dragging in air and letting it out slowly. My memory of everything else is a vague gray hum. I know that one of the Catholic Brothers from Red Cloud School led the service, and somebody played piano. I can’t remember anybody’s face, just the thought: breathe-breathe-breathe. Then we were standing on the steps of the church like a real family, and I shook hands with a faceless crowd. I didn’t cry.
At the graveyard, I stood behind Don, about three paces, and watched the grass waver in the breeze. And afterward, I stopped at Red Cloud’s grave to pay my respects to the old chief. Some Oglalas had left him tobacco ties, little sacred bundles in all the colors of the four directions. I asked him to take care of my woman out there, where she was new and maybe lost. I asked him to take her into his lodge and protect her until I could come for her. That’s all I remember.
* * *
I rolled Don’s sleeping bag carefully, taking pains to leave the little trailer neat. It was already late afternoon. We’d sat around inside, sipping coffee, murmuring. The television was on, turned down low. Snake stared at MTV, never looking up. Elinore sat beside me on the couch, and she periodically got up and fed me cookies or more coffee, though I didn’t ask for any. After t
ending to the sleeping bag, I stuffed my jeans into a small duffel, and stepped outside and headed across Don’s pasture, away from the trailers to the dark hump of the sweat lodge he’d built near a small stand of cottonwoods. I walked down to the stream that cuts through Don’s eighty acres. There was one spot, one small white gravel pool where Joni and I made love.
It was perfectly matched to my memory, like a photo pinned inside my skull. I remembered every detail, even the giggling terror that Don, or their old man, Wilmer, would catch us at it. I stood there watching the wasps sip water at the edge of the pool, where the gravel gave way to mud. I half-expected to see the double-seashell imprint of her bottom on the shore. Dragonflies tapped the water. I’d moved in her, minnows between our legs, tickling us. Bubbles came out of her body and ran over my sides.
There were tiny smears of black hair in her armpits. Her nipples were small and dark as nuts. She hardly had any hair on her body. Afterwards, as we lounged in the water, chewing leaves of spearmint that grew on the banks, she played with the hair on my chest. She scratched it; I could hear her nails scraping. I leaned up on one elbow, watching my seed rise from her and drift. It looked like a pearl column of smoke.
“Bobby.”
I jumped. I looked around, feeling caught.
It was Don. He had a rifle on one shoulder. He was leading Stormy. They were dark against the sky. Huge.
“I …,” I said. “I guess I saw a ghost.”
Don nodded.
Stormy brushed flies away from her sides with lazy smacks of her tail.
“Wanna come?” he said, gesturing to the horse with his head.
I clambered up the bank and followed him. You could hear bees working the alfalfa and the sweetgrass. Stormy’s limping gait played on the ground like a drumbeat. Don stared at the ground as we walked. She wheezed, the sound pitifully hollow and weak.
“Stormy thinks we’re having fun,” he said.
Her ears still turned to each sound. She watched a dove burst out of a small bush and fly away. She dipped her head at tall grasses, though she couldn’t eat anymore. I noticed her legs trembling.
We took her over a small hillock, out of sight of the house and the other horses. “All right now,” Don murmured. He eased the bit out of her mouth and pulled off the bridle. She worked her long yellow-brown teeth. She stared off.
Don cranked a round into the chamber. The lever sounded cool and final as it slid home.
“I tried,” I said. He didn’t look at me. “Whatever I did wrong, I loved your sister.”
Don petted Stormy.
“I know it,” he said. “Shit. I guess we all know it.”
He raised the gun and fired into her head, behind her left ear. It was a sharp little crack, like a dry branch snapping. I jumped. She jerked her head straight up and fell. Her legs just vanished. Don had to dance out of her way when she dropped. The whole thing was unbelievable, some kind of trick. One of her hooves twitched, she groaned; then it was done. The silence was like a curtain in a play. You couldn’t even see any blood. Don was standing there, the smoking rifle loose in his grip. I looked up at him—his eyes were closed, his head went back, and he began to sing.
He began to sing, quietly at first, but it grew louder as he went. Long, mysterious Sioux sounds, Indian words that could have been going out to God, or to Stormy, or to Joni, there was no way of knowing. But his voice rose, became a haunted sound, a cry from someplace else. I wanted to join him. I wanted to sing, to cry my pain and loss to Him—to the Grandfather, to the one she’d called Wakan Tanka. But I had no song, I had no prayer. I felt so small beside the voice of Don Her Many Horses.
I closed my eyes and stood with him. The good horse smell still rose from Stormy. And he sang. I started to sob, it just tore out of me. I thought I might fall down, but his hand gripped my upper arm to steady me. The wind sighed around us, and there were crows. Don kept singing, but he had slowed, enunciating carefully, and I realized he wanted me to follow. My voice was weak at first, tentative, but I repeated the sounds. He waited until I grew strong in my song.
We sang for a long time, together. We sang until dark. We sang until I thought we would never find our way home.
Acknowledgments and Credits
My first reader is always my Cinderella. Thank you to Julie Barer, agent extraordinaire. And to Michael Cendejas at the Pleshette Agency, my movie man. And to Trinity and Kevin at The Tuesday Agency—you keep me on the road and before the public.
Some of these works first appeared in Six Kinds of Sky, published by Cinco Puntos Press in El Paso—thanks and love to Bobby and Lee Byrd. “Mr. Mendoza’s Paintbrush” was made into a stunning graphic novel from the same publishers; it was drawn by Christopher Cardinale. A couple of these tales appeared in Orion—thanks, Jennifer Sahn and Chip Blake. And a couple more appeared in the Akashic Noir series. Thanks, Johnny Temple and honorable editors. Somehow, “Amapola” won the Edgar Award. And “Bid Farewell…” was fortunate to have varied incarnations on NPR’s Selected Shorts series.
Thank you to Reagan Arthur and everyone at Little, Brown.
Special thanks to Geoff Shandler.
Publication Credits:
“Amapola” appeared in Phoenix Noir;
“Bid Farewell to Her Many Horses” appeared in Blue Mesa Review (thanks to Rudolfo Anaya);
“Chametla” appeared in Tin House (thanks to Rob Spillman);
“Mr. Mendoza’s Paintbrush” appeared in Six Kinds of Sky;
“Mountains Without Number” appeared in Orion;
“The National City Reparation Society” appeared in San Diego Noir;
“The Sous Chefs of Iogüa” appears here for the first time;
“The Southside Raza Image Federation Corps of Discovery” appeared in Orion;
“Taped to the Sky” appeared in Six Kinds of Sky;
“A Visit to the Water Museum” appears here for the first time;
“The White Girl” appeared in Latinos in Lotusland (thanks to Dan Olivas);
“Young Man’s Blues” appeared in the Esquire anthology You and Me and the Devil Makes Three.
About the Author
A finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, Luis Alberto Urrea is the bestselling author of The Devil’s Highway, The Hummingbird’s Daughter, Into the Beautiful North, and Queen of America, among others. He has won the Lannan Literary Award, the Pacific Rim Kiriyama Prize, an American Book Award, the Christopher Award, and an Edgar Award, among other honors. Born in Tijuana to a Mexican father and an American mother, he lives outside of Chicago and is a distinguished professor of creative writing at the University of Illinois–Chicago.
Also by Luis Alberto Urrea
FICTION
Queen of America
Into the Beautiful North
The Hummingbird’s Daughter
In Search of Snow
Six Kinds of Sky
Mr. Mendoza’s Paintbrush (graphic novel; artwork by Christopher Cardinale)
NONFICTION
The Devil’s Highway: A True Story
Across the Wire: Life and Hard Times on the Mexican Border
By the Lake of Sleeping Children: The Secret Life of the Mexican Border
Nobody’s Son
Wandering Time
POETRY
The Tijuana Book of the Dead
The Fever of Being
Ghost Sickness
Vatos
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Contents
Cover
Welcome
Title Page
Dedication
Epigraph
One: Mountains Without Number
Two: The Southside Raza Image Federation Corps of Discovery
Three: The National City Reparation
Society
Four: Carnations
Five: Taped to the Sky
Six: Amapola
Seven: Mr. Mendoza’s Paintbrush
Eight: The White Girl
Nine: Young Man Blues
Ten: Chametla
Eleven: The Sous Chefs of Iogüa
Twelve: Welcome to the Water Museum
Thirteen: Bid Farewell to Her Many Horses
Acknowledgments and Credits
About the Author
Also by Luis Alberto Urrea
Newsletters
Copyright
The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
Copyright © 2015 by Luis Alberto Urrea
Cover design by Allison J. Warner
Cover photograph of snake © Brad Wilson / Getty Images; background photograph © Lya Cattel / Getty Images
Cover copyright © 2015 by Hachette Book Group
All rights reserved. In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the publisher constitute unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), prior written permission must be obtained by contacting the publisher at [email protected]. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.
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