The Water Museum (17 page)

“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 tending 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.

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.

“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.

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.

 

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)

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

The Tijuana Book of the Dead

The Fever of Being

Ghost Sickness

Vatos

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