In the City of Shy Hunters (7 page)

My father's Dodge pickup the color of swimming pools turned off Highway 30, went over the railroad tracks, and crossed over the cattle guard; then, just like that, hanging over us like guardian angels were
the chandelabra branching arms and silver leaves. It was like diving shallow into Spring Creek, the shadows and light and the coolness all around you.

Bobbie and I lay on the blue mattress, hand in hand, me with Bobbie, Bobbie with her secrets, one full half mile of cottonwoods on both sides of us going by going by.

The branching arms of the trees and the sunlight through the leaves was the most beauty and wonder I had known so far.

MOTHER
'
S ROOM WAS
on the same side of the house as Bobbie's, but on the main floor, just off the big green dining hall, the same green as the whole inside of the house, no light at all coming in her windows, the green shades pulled down. We set the bed down and Father put it together, set the vanity next to the bed in the middle of the room. The dresser, night table, and lamp—set them down every which way, not up against the walls, more like five pieces tossed into the room. That bedroom set never moved the whole time we lived there.

Mother didn't even unpack the picture of Saint Cecilia, or the Sacred Heart of Jesus, or the Immaculate Heart of Mary, or the framed holy card of the Baby Jesus. No more rosaries hanging on the bedpost either. No more giving up things for Lent. No more Easter Sunday outfits. No more Midnight Mass. No cocoa and cinnamon toast in the afternoons, no Lunch at the Waldorf. Just green dark in Mother's room with the green shades pulled down, the same green dark in Spring Creek when you dived deep and opened your eyes underwater.

When Mother lost her baby girl, we all lost Mother.

BIG ENOUGH TO
feed an army, Father said, when he and Mother walked through the dark wood swinging doors into the dining hall. Father said it too loud, the way he said things when they were his, too loud in the place where everything was too loud, too bright, too big, too green, in the summer too hot—relieved only by the fan Mother bought when she was carrying the baby girl—and in the winter too cold. Never been so cold.

Mother smiled a little, the way she smiled at him, not a real smile. She wore her red housedress that day, and white ankle socks, and her Keds. I remember I told her she looked nice, and she said, I'm doing the best I can.

Bobbie got to choose her room before me because she was older and got things first. Bobbie chose the second floor for her room—even though she liked the sloping ceiling of the attic—because a bathroom was next to her room, and because she said she was tired of being always cheek to jowl with me, and also Bobbie wanted that side of the Residency because there was no Highway 30 on that side, no railroad tracks, only the red-brick barn, the arch of cottonwoods, and the foothills sloping up to hills and then to blue mountains and trees and snow in winter.

Bobbie's room was on the other side of the hallway and one floor down from me. Around the bottom of the room and around the doors, and the doors too, the same dark wood like in my room, like in the whole house. Bobbie's room was green and completely square, Bobbie said, and she knew because she measured it.

First thing Bobbie did after she chose which one was her room was get out her tape measure.

Bobbie tied the carpenter's apron around her waist, unscrewed the cap on the plastic bottle where she kept her finish nails, stuck her hammer in the hammer loop. The gold flecks in Bobbie's eyes shined, and her cropped hair was sticking up all over. Bobbie was wearing her red plaid shirt cut cowboy style with pearl buttons on the pockets. She'd cut the sleeves off and rolled them up so you could see her muscles. Then there was her Levi's and her Red Wing boots.

On the east wall of her room—I held the end of the tape—Bobbie made a mark with her carpenter's pencil and put the head of the dark wood single bed exactly half and half on each side of the pencil mark. Then the green rug exactly in the middle, same distance front and back from the ends of the bed.

The last thing we had to do—and this took damn near the whole day—was find the exact middle point side to side and up and down of the west wall of her room so Bobbie could thumbtack her map of the Known Universe with four red thumbtacks exactly in the middle of the wall.

When we finally got the map of the Known Universe exactly right, Bobbie and
I
made up her bed with the sheets and the two brown army blankets folded down like in the army the way she liked. Bobbie took her leather apron off, put the apron in her tool box, and lay down on the bed exactly straight, her arms along her sides and her legs out straight and Red Wing boots together and Bobbie looked down her body to the map of the Known Universe.

Perfect, Bobbie said.

Bobbie had such a good look on her face that I wanted to do it too—lie down exactly straight—and so she let me.

Perfect, I said.

The map of the Known Universe was the most beautiful thing Bobbie or I had. The map was the only thing allowed on the walls that wasn't Catholic.

Mostly I loved the map of the Known Universe because of the colors—deep blue background—and then red Mars and orange and red Jupiter and the white white moon and Earth's brown and green and blue, and purple Pluto and swimming-pool-blue Neptune, rose-colored Venus, red-and-yellow Saturn with orange around, and all the rest of them, planets and stars and moons, all in all colors.

The sun a still point in the turning universe.

The problem in both our bedrooms, the biggest problem with the whole house, Bobbie said, was the lights were bright fluorescent tubes from above, unrelenting, and while Bobbie liked how they were exactly in the center of the ceiling, Bobbie never turned those lights on, never.

Unrelenting, Bobbie said, Light from above, Bobbie said, Suicide light.

Good thing she had saved up her S&H Green Stamps for her white glass lamp, set on a wood fruit box spray-painted red.

The stereo hi-fi—which came on a chrome stand with rollers and a place for albums—Bobbie set exactly in the northeast corner at a forty-five-degree angle. In the chrome stand, placed so you could see both album covers, Bobbie's two albums,
Hits from the Movies
and Johnny Mathis,
Heavenly.

Father bought Bobbie her stereo hi-fi. One day Father just rolled in the yard, after he'd been gone for God knows how long, with a stereo hi-fi for Bobbie but nothing for Mother or me.

The final touch was Bobbie tied one of Mother's scarves around her lamp. The scarf was the color of Marilyn Monroe's fuchsia dress when Marilyn sang “Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend” in
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes
, and it was a secret because Bobbie didn't tell Mother she pulled the scarf out of the trash the day Mother threw all her scarves away.

That night—after Father said, too loud, Make us some dinner, Ma!—Mother fixed us Swanson's Fish Sticks and canned peas and mixed ketchup and mayonnaise together for the sauce.

We ate dinner in the dining hall, our forks hard sounds onto the green walls when the forks hit the plates.

After Father excused us, Bobbie and I ran up to her room and turned on the lamp. Bobbie lay down on the bed exactly straight, her arms along her sides and her legs straight out and feet together.

The Marilyn Monroe scarf made a beautiful light in the room that made the planets of the map of the Known Universe glow.

Perfect, Bobbie, said, Just perfect.

Just perfect, I said.

MY ROOM WAS
big with a shiny hardwood floor and around the bottom of the walls and around the door and the closet door was the dark brown wood. The walls were sloping green. Outside my window, thick branches, the sigh and scratch of cottonwood leaves. Past the cottonwood south to the railroad tracks and Highway 30 and, across the highway, was Viv's Double Wide House of Beauty.

Nothing else in the room, just the bed and the window. A green rug right along the side of the bed on the hardwood floor to put your feet on when you got up. No pictures on the walls, nothing Catholic.

In the room with the fireplace, we put the couch and the chair and the three-way floor lamp and the end table with the doily, and in front of the fireplace on the hardwood floor the flowered carpet, and the wagon-wheel coffee table on the carpet. We called the room the living room and it looked like dollhouse furniture in there, the green walls way far, the green ceiling way high.

The first winter, above the fireplace, fingers of black reached out of the fireplace and up the green wall, spreading soot like some hand from inside grasping onto the wall.

Chimney needs work! Father said, too loud, I'll take care of it! he said. But Father never took care.

The best place was the kitchen. Not the whole kitchen, because the whole kitchen was big enough to cook for an army, just the alcove part where the table was by the window. The big stove was right there, and we opened the oven door and turned the oven on full blast, and all the burners, and in the mornings before school we sat—Bobbie with Rice Krispies, me with Cheerios, Charlie 2Moons a disgusting mix of Cheerios and Rice Krispies, each of us with our cups of Nestlé Quik hot chocolate—on dark wood chairs in front of the stove with our feet up toasty on the open oven door, with all our clothes on, even our winter coats, and the army blanket over us.

I liked to be the one who got up first, so I could turn the oven on and all the burners and have the milk hot, not scalded—when we had milk; just hot water if we didn't—for the hot chocolate, and have the cereal out and the army blanket ready.

If Father wasn't home, Charlie was always there with us. Mother never said anything about Charlie, one way or the other, except one time when she got drunk. Charlie was like a stick of furniture to Mother. But then, so were Bobbie and I. Mother mostly stayed in her room with the dark green shades pulled down and only came out for coffee and Herbert Tareytons late in the morning and sometimes not at all.

At least she'd stopped running out into the field.

In the summer, you could open the window in the kitchen alcove and right outside was the cottonwood tree, and in the morning the sun came in the window, making a square of gold on the table, and you could sit in the square with the window open and hear the cottonwood and the wind and smell the smells in the wind, of grass—especially after the grass was mowed—and the smell of the cottonwood, and the geraniums Charlie got from Viv.

Viv was Charlie's mother, and Viv's Double Wide House of Beauty always had lots of customers, mostly Indian women. Some white women went to Viv too because Viv was so good with hair, but Mother never did because Mother never left the house. Besides, even if Mother did want her hair done by Viv, Father would never have allowed it.

Father hated Indians.

Ne'er-do-wells.

Especially Charlie.

THAT FIRST NIGHT
in the Residency, Father slept on the screened-in porch. Then, later in the night, I heard him down in Bobbie's room, in Bobbie's Marilyn Monroe light with Bobbie.

Before sunrise, out my window, I watched his matching swimming-pool-blue Dodge pickup and trailer and horse trailer drive down the lane in between the cottonwoods to Highway 30 and turn left toward Pocatello. I watched Father's pickup until I couldn't see it anymore.

The next morning, our second day at the Residency, Charlie 2Moons came riding up on his horse, ayaHuaska.

I was out back behind the barn, when up the lane, the cottonwoods touching chandelabras across, I saw a boy on a horse.

The boy's hair was long and thick and almost to his shoulders; his skin was cinnamon brown. When he got close enough for me to see his eyes, that was it.

I was wounded by a blow of love.

Charlie pulled on the reins and ayaHuaska rared up a little. Charlie was big, an Indian; his long black hair was wavy. He was riding bare-back and on the bridle was beadwork.

Charlie got off his horse.

Step over the fence! Charlie said. Come meet me! he said.

I knew because Bobbie'd told me that the fence was an electric fence, so I didn't step over, didn't say anything.

What's the matter, Charlie said, Cat got your tongue?

Even back then, the cat got my tongue.

So then Charlie 2Moons called me a fucking queer and threw a handful of gravel at me, and a piece of gravel got me hard next to my eye and I ran crying to Bobbie.

By the time Bobbie and I got back to behind the barn, Charlie 2Moons had disappeared. But Bobbie said, Just wait, he'll be back. So Bobbie and I waited and she was right, and pretty soon Charlie came galloping up the lane, and when he got to us, he pulled on the reins and his horse rared up a little.

Step over the fence! Charlie said. Come meet me! he said.

Eat shit and die, Geronimo, Bobbie said, and flipped Charlie the bird.

Charlie got off his horse and started dancing around making war whoops. He called Bobbie and me fucking
tybos
, called us fucking ugly greedy pink pig people, told us to get off Indian land, and then yelled at us that the place was haunted, the whole area was haunted because of all the Indian children who had died there, and we'd better get our old roses out of there quick or
Tsoavich
Big Foot would murder us and eat us alive, starting with the toes and fingers.

Come over here and say that to my face! Bobbie yelled. Come over here and I'll tell you a thing or two! So Charlie came over because Charlie was bigger than both Bobbie and me, and Charlie thought since Bobbie was a girl this would be a piece of cake. Charlie jumped over the electric fence, an antelope leaping, and came right at us.

Bobbie socked Charlie once hard in the face and then kicked him in the balls, and all at once Charlie was kneeling on the ground, holding himself and crying.

Bobbie took Charlie's long wavy black hair in a grip and pulled his head back. Charlie looking up, head twisted that way, made me all of a
sudden sad, his dark eyes rolled back, tears making tracks down his dusty face. Bobbie open-handed Charlie a slap across his face and then again, Bobbie spit in his face—not a lunger, just a spray—and while she held his head back, Bobbie told Charlie 2Moons never to fuck with her or fuck with her little brother ever again and made Charlie promise.