Yellowcake (22 page)

There's an old Stooges movie on TV. He watches Mo bonk Curly and Larry. He listens to Ryland cough. He puts the channel changer down and reaches for his flask on the floor beside him. The only light in the room is the blue light of the television, not bright enough to work by, but when he turns on the lamp beside him, the room seems to shrink, the pictures on the wall, collages of Ryland's children and grandchildren, leaning in toward him. He turns the lamp off.

He has always lived in small, boxlike rooms, but this one makes him antsy. It's probably because of Ryland's coughing, that and the cloying stench of fabric softener.

His old friend is bad off. When Ryland isn't coughing, Sam finds he's waiting for him to cough.

The boat is a box, the neighborhood noisy, but he doesn't know any of them, they leave him alone—and at his back is the ocean. It's different, not so closed in. As a boy, after his father died, he and his mother lived in a boxcar up on Red Mountain, the high Rockies. In winter the snowdrifts were taller than he, a world of white as far as Sam could see, not unlike the ocean except in color, smell, and temperature—a vast, formless world outside the door.

Once he and Alice were surprised by a snowstorm. They took off for a drive in the afternoon, and the storm swooped down from the La Platas, a blinding white sky that didn't clear. They lost the highway. Suddenly she said, "I think we're in a ditch." He kept a sleeping bag in back under his toolbox, and he kept a coffee can and candles, too, for a heater, a trick his mother had taught him. His mother had used candles in tins to heat the boxcar. He and Alice wrapped themselves in the sleeping bag, stretching the length of the seat, and made love by the light of the coffee-tinned candles, again and again and again.

Crawled into the sleeping bag together, and first they did it with clothes on, and then it got hot, and they took their clothes off, and the windows steamed up. The sleeping bag got too hot, and he held her ankles, put her feet to the ceiling, and fucked her again and again and again, and she came good, the only time he ever heard her scream during sex, and her nipples got so hard and swollen and every time he sucked them she got wet all over again.

From the other side of the house, the coughing begins. He sips from the flask. He watches Mo sneaking up a stairway, stopping. Curly and Larry plunge into him.

The last time Sam slept was at a truck stop outside Winnie, Texas, over a thousand miles from here. Slept locked in the cabin of his truck, the windows closed against palmetto bugs, bugs everywhere, under the windshield wipers and in his truck bed, bugs wiggling into the door cracks, and some dead, the ones he collided with on the road, smashed and baked into the grate.

His eyes ache. He sips, waits for the next cough.

 

He wakes to the soft click of the door opening. He half opens his eyes and watches Rosy tiptoe in. The room is bright with sunlight. She tiptoes to the sewing table and inches the drawer open, looking in his direction each time it makes a noise. She seems to find what she's looking for, but she doesn't leave the drawer open. Instead, she inches it closed again, freezing each time it squeaks. He had been dreaming of Stooges.

She tiptoes out, and he listens to the sounds on the other side of the door. There seem to be a lot of people in the kitchen. Rosy keeps shushing them. He can smell coffee and toast. It's ten
A.M.
He finally got to sleep at dawn.

Even though it's hot, he pulls a blanket over his head, trying to block the sunlight out. He wakes when the door opens again. He lies waiting but hears nothing. He looks out from under the blanket. A small child in a white veil stands near his face, her eyes a pretty cornflower blue.

"Are you an angel?" he says.

She squeezes her eyes shut, wrinkles her nose, throws her arms up, and runs out of the room.

"Teri!" Rosy says. And there she is in the doorway. "Sam, I'm sorry. Go back to sleep."

He says, "I'm up."

In the kitchen he finds Ryland, three children, Maggie, and a woman they introduce as Sue, Eddy's wife, a thin, hard-featured, stylish woman in a suit. The angel nestles against Ryland's leg.

"You didn't know you were sleeping in Grand Central Station, did you?" Ryland says.

"Uncle Sam, I can't believe you came for my wedding," Maggie says.

"Maggie, I can't believe how pretty you got to be. You used to be such a chipmunk." She laughs, her eyes sparkling. She's a mix of Rosy and Lily when they were young, the best of both of them—the dimpled Irish cheeks, the thick dark hair—but she's got Ryland's high color. She's fleshier than Rosy and Lily were at her age, and she wears it well. She is the picture of a happy bride.

Rosy wants to feed him. He tells her it's too early to eat, but she already has eggs frying. The smell turns his stomach.

"Rosy, I'm sorry to dump the kids on you like this," Sue says. "I completely forgot about this appointment today."

"It's fine," Rosy says. "We'll keep 'em busy."

"You girls be good," she says. She tells Sam it was nice to meet him and is off.

"I've got to go, too," Maggie says. She kisses him on the cheek, throwing her arms around his shoulders and hugging him tight. "I am so glad you came."

"Me too," Rosy says when Maggie leaves. "You know, Sam, it's really a blessing you came."

"Watch out," Ryland says.

"We could use your truck. Actually, we have a million errands that need a good hauling vehicle. Do you mind?"

"Say no now or forever regret," Ryland says.

Sam smiles. Rosy always was the General, everybody a member of her army. Through the kitchen window, he looks out over the town, across the river to the white bluffs and the reservation beyond. He will go there soon, no hurry. The prospect of finding Alice neither excites him nor raises any dread. Maybe this afternoon he'll drive to Shiprock and see what the situation is, and then he'll know what to do. Now he says, "Happy to help, Rosy."

She gives him a list of items she needs picked up and draws a map. The two older girls, Pooh and Sandi, want to ride in the truck with him—the/re thrilled by the old truck, as if it's some sort of carnival ride—but Rosy says, "Absolutely not." He doesn't particularly want their company, but Rosy's "absolutely" surprises him.

"Let 'em come," he says.

She looks at Ryland, her brow furrowed. Alice never liked him to take Delmar alone in the truck either. The fact is, he's got a good driving record. Perfect. "They'll be fine," he says.

"I've got plans for them," she says.

"I imagine they'll be okay if Sam doesn't mind," Ryland says.

"Yay!" the girls screech.

Rosy shoots Ryland a murderous look, as if he's just invited them all to jump off a cliff. Sam smiles. Drinks his coffee.

They head out to the truck. Sam breathes in the smell of the crisp, dusty, thin air, the high desert, and experiences a dizzying sensation of stepping back in time. This air is as familiar as his own breath.

The girls dig out the seat belts from behind the seat, and he helps them strap in. "I'm the navigator," the older girl, Sandi, says. "Daddy always lets me."

"Okay then." He gives her Rosy's map. The girls' breath smells like strawberry.

This town that Sandi navigates for him, the hills full of neighborhoods and parks, the busy streets with carwashes and chain restaurants and Western clothing stores, this place he doesn't know—Farmington. He knows Main Street, which is also Highway 550—an ugly stretch of roadside businesses, the main artery connecting two eras of his life: his childhood in Colorado and marriage to Lily, the mill and Alice in Shiprock. He used to come here with her for a night on the town occasionally, and he'd bring her and Delmar in for breakfast sometimes on Saturday mornings. He has only hazy memories of life with Lily in Shiprock, she always unhappy.

"Can we turn the radio on?" Sandi asks.

"Doesn't work."

"Ahh."

"What's wrong with it?" Pooh says, turning the dial. Static cackles through the speaker.

"It's old," he says, turning it off.

"What happens if I pull this?" Pooh says, putting her hand on the gearshift. "We don't have one of these in our car."

"You'll break the truck. Don't pull it. Here, I'll show you." He puts his hand over hers and shifts into third. She grins up at him, her gums and teeth red with the candy they've both been eating. The air in the cab has turned sugary.

"I like Madonna. I watch her on MTV. Like a vir-gin," Sandi sings, looking at him coyly over her sister's head. "Do you like Madonna?"

He and Pooh shift into fourth. "How old are you?" he asks Sandi.

"Eight."

"I'm six," Pooh says.

"Who do you like?" Sandi says.

"Captain Kangaroo."

"Who's that?"

"That's what kids like you used to watch before they started growing up too fast."

"Ahh."

"I know a kangaroo song," Pooh says. "Tie me wallaby bean, bean," she sings.

"That's not how it goes," Sandi says. "Our mom and dad taught us. 'Tie me kangaroo down, sport,'" she sings.

"You know that one?" Pooh says.

"I think I do."

"Tan me hide when I'm dead, Fred, tan me hide when I'm dead," Sandi sings.

"So they tanned his hide when he died, Clyde, and that's it a-hanging on the shed," they shout in unison, both of them tilting their chins up to him, as if expecting applause.

He says, "You're good."

The two chins, satisfied, turn simultaneously away, and Sam laughs.

"What else do you know?" Pooh says.

"I know that somebody made my gearshift sticky with her candy."

"Not candy. Gummy bears."

"We're addicted," Sandi says.

"Oh, that's bad," Sam says. "Addicts, huh. Can't quit?"

"I will never quit," Pooh says. "I have a whole pool full of them."

"In her head," Sandi says.

"Not just in my head," Pooh says solemnly. "In my dream room."

"That's in your head. She dreamed she was swimming in a pool of gummy bears."

Sam says, "I bet you were sticky."

Pooh's sandaled foot tick-tocks against his calf. "And that's it a-hanging on the shed," she sings softly. "I wish I could stand up. I can't see out the window. I can see out the window in my car."

"You can't stand up," Sandi says. "It's against the law."

Pooh looks at him, sticking her lower lip out.

He winks at her. "We got to obey the law. Where would we be without the law? I bet having a pool full of gummy bears is against the law."

"Not in your dream room," she says.

"Have you checked on that?"

"Sandi, it's not, is it?"

"He's pulling your leg," Sandi says.

"I'll pull yours," Pooh says.

"Try it," he says. "See where it gets you."

She slaps his thigh; he catches and grips her tick-tocking foot, and she shrieks.

"Don't get her started," Sandi says.

He smiles. She's such a little woman, that one. He squeezes Pooh's ankle. She shrieks again. Sandi shakes her head, her lips pursing in a smirk. "Your funeral," she says, and Sam laughs a full-throated laugh. The sound of it is odd in his ears.

They become a team. On the errands the girls are helpful. They know people at all of their stops, and Sandi steps up, his ambassador, introducing him as her "Great-Uncle Sam here all the way from Florida," which makes him feel both ancient and famous.

Now and again the girls put their heads together and whisper behind their hands. "What's the big secret?" he asks them. They don't tell. The little one hides her mouth with her hand, as if the secret might leak out, and the older gazes coolly out the window. He wonders when they get like this—gossipy and conspiratorial. He remembers the teenage Lily and Rosy when he was just back from the service. Lily was seventeen, Rosy a year older. They would cozy up, complicating everything, making a production of everything, and he dimly remembers enjoying that. He has begun enjoying it today. These little girls. His tour guides, planning in secret.

They drive to a Mrs. Gallagher's house to pick up centerpieces she's made for the tables at the wedding reception. Sandi warns him that Mrs. Gallagher is a chatterbox and not to encourage her, and Pooh warns him not to pet her Chihuahuas because they get excited and throw up, and Sandi tells him that the chatterbox really threw a wrench in the works, a phrase she must have gotten from Rosy, by insisting on moving the centerpieces out of her house two weeks before the wedding. "Where will we put them?" Sandi trills.

The woman's house is full of gilded autumn: pinecones, spray-painted leaves, and acorns, all glued to stands. They're big, delicate things that lose parts between the house and the truck, and the girls pick up the pieces for regluing. Mrs. Gallagher does keep up a steady stream of talk, while her three fat, pink-eyed Chihuahuas yap. She carries the smallest in her apron pocket, and because she trails after Sam on each trip to the truck, the yapping follows him. She tells him how to pack the items and how busy she is and what a bargain the centerpieces are, considering the time she put into them. Both girls keep their lips zipped, as does Sam, and they roll their eyes at each other when the woman's back is turned.

"Whew!" he says, when they're on the road again.

"Told you," Sandi says. "You need gas."

"Do I?"

She points to the gas gauge and tells him all about being on empty.

"It's broken," he says.

Her eyes widen. "How do you know when you need gas then?"

"Got a feel for it." But she's probably right. He shouldn't need gas yet, except these are town miles. The old guzzler drinks it up in town. He stops at a Circle K pump and goes inside to pay. He starts to give the clerk a ten, then decides on a twenty. He wants to drive to the reservation this afternoon. He'll need gas. He glimpses the stack of bills in the cash register. His goes on top of an inch-thick pile. In his wallet: three twenties, two tens. That's all he's got left. The clerk says, "You're good to go," and slams the cash drawer shut.

He needs to tie some flies, and then he needs to sell them. When he goes to Shiprock, he'll go to the river and look for material. Before or after he finds Alice? Maybe she'll go with him. The first time he ever got her out of her jeans was on the muddy banks of the San Juan.