The Fence My Father Built (3 page)

I couldn’t find an answer to that one. Nova and Tru kept giving me anxious looks. “We’ll talk soon, Mr. Jackson,” I said finally. “I’m sure we can work something out.”

“Yeah.” Linc threw another bill on the stack. “Here's a little something extra, Dove.” He tossed the toothpick into the trash can and picked up his western hat.

Nova muttered, “Hick.” I elbowed her in the back.

“I’ll look for the sign then,” I said as cheerfully as I could. Linc Jackson yanked open the door of the café, and the cluster of little brass bells jingled frantically on the doorknob.

He threw his next remark over one shoulder. “Have a nice day.” The door whooshed shut, and a pungent sorrow swept me along with the aroma of lilacs and french fries.

On our way out the bells sounded again, whispering something I couldn’t quite hear.

M
y father's place was right off the road near the gas company's warning sign, just like Dove had promised. What she hadn’t told me was that the fence had been built from old oven doors. The pink- and aqua-enameled ones, their windows glazed over and dark, probably dated from the fifties. Here and there a white one interrupted the rainbow of color, with a gray-speckled door thrown in for good measure. The oven-door fence stood like a row of teeth, a big smile either welcoming or warning away intruders, standing guard over a creek that was at least six feet across. Hanging from one of the oven doors, a Native American dream catcher, complete with feathers and beads, winked in the sun.

Nova immediately pronounced the yard a junk heap; it was piled six feet high in places and flanked by the remains of at least two old cars. The broken-down, green and white single-wide mobile home, with room additions sticking out in all directions, looked more like a child's homemade fort than a place to live.

Some of the additions were taller than others; made of thin sheet metal, they leaned at dangerous angles. Others were
built from ugly grooved paneling, the dark kind you might see in a man's den. A couple of tires were full of dirt and dead petunias, and an empty green bathtub sat near a wooden shed. Several wind chimes, with cherubs and angels blowing heavenly trumpets, tinkled near the trailer door.

Truman's eyes got big, perhaps with the possibilities of dismantling old bicycles and lawn mowers that lay before us. I clutched the steering wheel, wondering why I’d ever thought coming here was a good idea. Two figures from the house approached us.

I pried my skin from the vinyl seat of the van, and the three of us climbed out into the open yard. This was it, I thought. Murkee wasn’t going to be bursting with cowboys like Linc Jackson. It was going to be about middle-aged ranchers with oversized silver belt buckles and dirty fingernails, whose wives, with names like Peg and Dotty, would know the names of all the wildflowers and can fruit preserves in one-hundred-degree weather.

The man whom I guessed was my Uncle Tiny stopped a few feet from us, waved, and grinned. He was at least six foot four, dressed in an undershirt and baggy jeans that looked as if they might fall to the ground at any time. No silver belt buckle though. Everything about him was round and smooth: shoulders, multiple chins, and a waistline that explained the need for his red suspenders. A shock of black hair hung in one eye. The gray-haired woman, clothesline thin, wasn’t as shy. She walked right up to the van and slapped the sliding door.

“Will you look at this?” she said, wiping her palms across the thighs of her faded jeans. “Will you look … at … this?” I guessed she was speaking to the air, asking for unseen approval. She turned her head, stared at me, and repeated herself.

I looked back toward the engine compartment of the VW, half expecting it to be on fire. “I’m Muri,” I began in a higher voice than I would have liked, “and these are my children, Nova and Truman. You must be my Aunt Lutie.”

I waited for her to speak. My first thought was “bag lady.” Aunt Lutie looked about sixty, stringy and tough. Her arms stuck out of her blouse at odd angles, skewed like rabbit ears atop a console TV. I decided she must have cataracts.

“So.” Aunt Lutie said this as if she were pronouncing someone dead. I caught Nova pursing her lips and rolling her eyes, which told me volumes. She wanted her tongue pierced, and she thought my aunt was strange? I felt like saying, “Sorry ma’am, there's been some mistake.”

“You’re Joseph's girl, Muri?”

Before I could answer Lutie laughed with a wide-open throaty sound.

Nova looked even more horrified. Tru was too busy checking out the pile of junk to notice. Suddenly, I wished I’d had the foresight to come out here alone first, before dragging my family and my entire life out of civilization.

“Did you get my note?” Once again I felt the annoying eye twitch that no one else can detect. Part of me was afraid to be rejected, and the rest of me would rather be abducted by aliens than stay here. The skin on the backs of my hands felt taut and dry. I fidgeted with my fingers, hoping my new relatives wouldn’t swallow us whole. Then Tiny stuck out his hammy hand.

“I guess that makes me your uncle,” he said, grinning wide and easy. “Antonio Ramirez, but everyone calls me Tiny. Glad you made it.” He reached up and tugged briefly on his hat's brim. There was a certain grace to his movement, a smoothness matched only by the sound of his voice that was low and sure but not threatening.

Truman must have noticed this, because he pushed past Nova into the yard. Normally, my son wouldn’t speak to a complete stranger. Not only had I drilled him on “stranger danger,” he was usually shy and took longer than most kids to warm up to people. But he didn’t dye his hair with Kool-Aid or refuse to go to church. The only thing I worried about was that he’d go blind staring at a computer screen, in spite of those new glasses.

“You got a lot of cool junk over there,” he said to Tiny, pointing to a pile of rusty bike wheels and sprockets. “What do you do with it?”

“Sometimes I make new bikes out of the spare parts.”

“What happens to the bikes then?”

“You never know who's going to need a bike.” Tiny looked a little embarrassed, while Aunt Lutie snorted and tossed back her thin hair, which hung loose and reached just below her bony shoulders.

“Blessed fool's given one to just about every kid around,” she said, but I thought I saw her smile at him. “Can’t say no.” She clasped her hands together briefly and said, “Give me strength, Lord.”

From around the corner, squeals and grunts rang out. Several potbellied pigs, the kind people say make good pets and are smarter than dogs, rushed through a small gap beside a shed. They snuffled the ground and jostled each other until they circled Tiny, their snouts turned to the sky.

Tiny spoke to them by name in a high, affected voice. “Now, Jim, you can’t push Gordo out of the way like that,” he said. “Is it dinnertime already? Dave, you wait your turn.”

“Excuse me,” he said to us from the middle of the pig gang. “My pigs can tell time.” He turned, and they followed him noisily around the corner of the fence. This situation was all too weird for a city girl like me.

We must have looked just as weird to my aunt. With her good eye, Lutie stared at Nova and raised her hands in the direction of heaven. “Lord, send us all the angels,” she said and laughed. I felt like crying.

She pointed at Nova's piercing near the upper part of her ear lobe. “That thing hurt you much?” Nova flinched, but Lutie smiled at her anyway.

“Whatever.” My daughter had refined her rudeness to this one word; I wanted to tape her pretty mouth shut. Not long ago she’d been optimistic and obedient and still wore her fine ash-blonde hair in ponytail holders and asked for bedtime stories from the original
Wizard of Oz
books. I’d taken her to church, and it was her idea to be baptized in front of the entire congregation.

Even when she was Tru's age she’d smiled a lot and refused to give up her prized stuffed monkey, which she had kept on her bed since she was three. Back then she didn’t care if her preteen friends knew about the stuffed animal or her faith. She’d proudly worn a What Would Jesus Do? bracelet.

But sometime during the last few years, she’d thrown her bracelet into a drawer, saying Jesus made life too hard. Her pride turned into bitterness, for which I blamed myself. My Nova had become rigid with anger, a cat backed into a corner.

I was about to defend her, brag about her high grade-point average and talent for designing clothing, when my aunt spoke to me. “Don’t worry, honey, she’ll grow up eventually, God love her. She's got real family now.”

By this time Nova's already pale skin had blanched, and I was getting a headache from the smell of swine and gasoline fumes. Once again Truman saved the day.

“Can I go watch Uncle Tiny feed those pigs?” he said.

“I’ll go with you,” Nova volunteered, and they escaped to wherever the grunts came from. I never thought I’d see the Queen of Cool move so fast to keep company with farm animals.

Lutie was looking more like Popeye every moment. A lump formed in my throat. I’d always celebrated diversity along with the rest of my educated friends, but I couldn’t be this woman's niece. It just wasn’t possible.

Lutie smiled and stuck out her scarecrow arms to hug me. “You look so much like Joseph,” she whispered. At first I held my breath, because Mother and my stepfather, Benjamin, were never given to signs of affection. Then I relaxed and was surprised when she smelled soothing and mild, like chamomile tea.

“He wanted you to come,” she said. “Let me give you a hand with your things.” She reached past me into the van and grabbed a grocery sack full of candy wrappers and packages of the mustard pretzels Truman likes. She then draped a stack of dresses on hangers over her shoulder. “Let's get you unpacked.”

I nodded, loaded my arms with duffel bags and pillows, and followed her to the door. I tried to picture my father living inside that trailer, doing whatever he did every afternoon.

Linc Jackson had called my dad Chief Joseph, and he got a look on his face, as if they’d been mortal enemies: cowboys against Indians. Their relationship couldn’t have been that much of a stereotype, I told myself. At least I hoped not.

A child builds a world to keep the truth in or out, but I’d never bothered to change my perception of who Daddy might have been. Now I was afraid of what lay beyond the oven-door fence I’d just walked through.

A
unt Lutie clutched at my arm to lure me inside the house, which looked like a firetrap. The screen door creaked open; it needed a shot of WD-40. I stepped inside, and even though the living room was jammed with stuff, it felt cozy. Lutie hung the dresses on a doorknob and right away asked, “Have trouble finding us? Here, sit down.” She motioned to a worn sofa.

I sat down on its edge and expected her to add, “Take your shoes off,” like the character Jethro did on that infernal
Beverly Hillbillies
sitcom, which was now stuck in my mind.

“No,” I answered. “We stopped back in Murkee at the little café, and I got directions.” I didn’t mention I’d already met Linc Jackson.

“Oh, you mean the Mucky-Muck. That Dove will help you to death, but she's a hard worker.” Lutie perched on the other end of the couch and wove her fingers together as if she were praying.

My aunt was still a stranger, but it made sense to dive right in. I suspected the whole flap was some giant miscommunication or maybe one of those crazy country feuds you read
about. I’d had plenty of training in mediation through my work with the teachers union. It wouldn’t be difficult to get Linc to drop the lawsuit once I figured out the problem.

“She introduced us to the town's owner too,” I said. “Then it came out that he's the neighbor you wrote about. Aunt Lutie, what could possibly make him want to sue?”

Lutie's expression turned to sadness. “I’ve asked myself that same thing for months now. Linc says he needs the creek for his cattle, but Joe didn’t buy it. My brother always said Linc was up to no good.” She looked down at her hands. “You might as well know—Joe and Linc couldn’t stand each other.”

“That much I gathered.”

“And Joe always said Linc would do anything to get hold of our place, mostly for the water rights.”

“What's so important about water?” I was genuinely puzzled by now.

Lutie's eyes widened in reverence. “It's only just the one thing we haven’t got much of out here,” she said. “Disputes over the rights have killed folks. They even got a special judge who sorts things out. Water judges, they call ‘em.”

I’d never heard of such a thing, and I still didn’t quite grasp what any of it had to do with me. I decided on a different approach. “What's the lawsuit about?”

Lutie thought for a moment, as if she couldn’t locate the right words. Then she took a breath and started in. “First off, you got the right idea about Linc owning nearly everything in this area. A little more than five years ago he up and moved away, left old Ed Johnson to run things. That Ed, he's a piece of work, I tell you.”

I tried to coax my aunt back to the subject. “So tell me about why Linc left,” I said.

Lutie smiled. “Lord, yes, I sure can get off on a wild goose chase, can’t I? Anyway, the creek runs through our land year-round, you know. The water judge said there's a law about water rights so that they always follow the land, not the person. Five years.”

“Five years what?”

Again, Lutie snapped to. “If you’re gone five years, your rights to the water go away. That's the law. I don’t why Linc left. I only know he did.”

I scanned the room. “So that means his water rights are—”

Lutie nodded. “Yep, deader than a doornail. Joe and Doc Rubin divided the rights up, so nobody downstream would get shorted. And now Linc's back, saying he wasn’t gone but four years and eleven months. He says all the water ought to be his because of some document he filed saying he was back before the five-year deadline. Humph. I remember the day old Linc showed up, and it was well past five years.” She sighed.

“If it's so important, why didn’t my father try to settle with Linc? Surely Linc knows everybody out here needs adequate water supplies.”