I Cannot Get You Close Enough (11 page)

She picked up the basket and walked on. The sun was out in full force now. The sidewalks were full of people, wearing T-shirts and sandals, wearing headbands, passing out pamphlets against the government, against the war, giving away flowers and joints and poems. It was the New World and she was here to share it.

The money was coming from Daniel's mother. No matter how many times Daniel's father told her not to, she wired Daniel money when he called. She believed him when he said he didn't have a place to sleep or enough to eat. She could not believe he would smoke or swallow or inject drugs because it was impossible for her to imagine anyone doing something she would not do. Finally, her husband found out about the money she was sending Daniel and closed her bank account. When Daniel realized the jig was up where money was concerned, he suggested to Summer Deer that they should go and visit his family in Charlotte.

“I'm really worried about all that acid we've been doing,” he said. “I think we ought to stop dropping acid. People are getting too weird.”

“How can we get to Charlotte? We don't even have a car.”

“They'll send us money to fly. I called my father this morning. He wants to meet you. They all want to meet you. I wish you'd go. My sister Anna's there. You'll really like her. She's a lot like you. She's real liberated.”

“They might not like me. I don't know about going to see a lot of society people. They don't have any society where I come from. In Tahlequah everyone is the same.”

“I thought you said you were a princess or something.”

“I am, because my grandfather was a chief. But I'm just a farm girl really. I grew up in the country.” She stood before him with her chin up. No matter how strange he made her feel she never let it show. Still, she was falling more in love with him all the time. It was making her weak. She was falling in love with the orderly side of his nature. He cleaned up the apartment. He made a budget and stuck to it. He made up the bed and shaved and combed his hair. He brushed his teeth. He was like a movie star. He was so polite to people. People came over all the time to talk to him and tell him things. She was lucky to have him. There wasn't a girl in Berkeley who wasn't waiting to take him away from her.

“We love each other, don't we?” Daniel said. “That's all that matters.” Then he pulled her into his arms and the chemistry took over.

“Okay, I'll go,” she said. “If you really want to go, I'll go with you. How cold is it there?”

“It's cold this time of year but there'll be clothes there you can wear. Or Dad will buy you some. He really wants us to come home. He said not to worry about money. We could have all the money we needed if we'd come on home.”

Then Daniel called his father and his father called a travel agent and the tickets were ordered. Daniel put on his shoes and walked down to the American Airlines ticket office on Telegraph Avenue and picked up the tickets. When he got back to the apartment Summer Deer was waiting for him, sitting on the floor on her prayer rug, dressed in a pair of cutoff blue jeans so old they were as soft as velvet. On top of the jeans she wore a black T-shirt that said
DEATH SUCKS
in drips of white paint. It had been made by the same T-shirt artist who made the shirt she was wearing the day Daniel met her. As long as Daniel lived, whenever he thought of Summer Deer he would think of her breasts moving around beneath the mottoes and innuendos and warnings on those T-shirts.
REGRET NOTHING
in green on green.
LIVE NOW
in orange on pink.
LONG SLOW LOVE
in blue on lavender.

“I got the tickets,” he said. “The plane leaves at twelve tomorrow.”

“Let's smoke a joint,” she said. “Then we'll go eat.”

They went up on the roof and smoked a joint and then wandered down to a coffee shop and had fruit and rolls for lunch. It would be their last lunch as part of the revolution. They sat on a little balcony watching the cloud formations as they ate. Clouds were all over the sky when they ordered their meal. By the time they finished a huge hole had appeared in the center and the sun was breaking through. Lines of blue and pink and mauve and violet and gold appeared along the edges, like ancient paintings of the skies where the gods live. Daniel's mother had a painting like that over the sideboard in the dining room. Daniel was so stoned he decided that he and Summer Deer could just step through the clouds and end up in his mother's dining room. “How wonderful to see you,” Mrs. Hand would say. “Won't you please come in.”

“We're going to North Carolina to see his folks,” Summer Deer told a friend who stopped by the table. “Won't that be a kick?”

“You better wear a different shirt.” The friend laughed. He was older than Summer Deer and Daniel.

“He thinks they aren't going to notice I'm Indian.” Summer Deer laughed with the friend. “He says they're going to love me.”

“They might,” the friend said. “But you ought to wear a different shirt.” He was a nice man, who had once been a history teacher in a girl's school in Virginia. He only meant to be helpful about the shirt but the damage was done. Now Summer Deer would definitely wear the shirt on the plane.

The Hand family was waiting at the airport. Mr. and Mrs. Hand and Daniel's older siblings, Anna and Helen, and Helen's husband, Spencer Abadie, and James and Niall. Daniel's baby sister, Louise, held her mother's hand. Always on the lookout for a threat to her domain, she was the only one who didn't smile at Summer Deer when Summer Deer moved toward them. Louise had the heart of a sergeant of arms of the Daughters of the American Revolution. She could tell at a glance this wasn't going to work. While the rest of the Hand family cooed and smiled and was gracious, Louise inspected Summer Deer's unshaved legs and T-shirt and leather vest and knew disaster could not be far away.

“Do you have luggage, son?” Mr. Hand said.

“Yeah. We have a lot of bags. We came to stay. I told you that we would.”

“We're so glad,” Mrs. Hand said. “We are so happy to have you here.”

Summer Deer was quiet on the ride into town. Daniel kept his arm around her and the Hand family kept trying to bring her into their conversations but she pulled deeper and deeper into herself. They were in two cars. The car she was in was a Buick. Mr. Hand was driving. They turned off into a neighborhood and began to drive past bigger and bigger houses. Finally, they pulled up a driveway past gardens of wisteria and azaleas. Above the azaleas were tall delicate dogwood trees. In this season they were black leafless sculptures. Behind the gardens was a three-story Victorian house painted gray. There was a tower and porches around three sides. It was a rich house. The richest house that Summer Deer had ever been invited to. The car stopped. Daniel got out and picked up a basketball that was lying beneath an azalea bush and began to shoot the ball through a basketball hoop attached to a garage. “Look at this, Summer,” he said. “My old basketball. I haven't seen it in so long.”

Ten days later Summer Deer was on her way back home, hitchhiking across the country with sixty dollars in her pocket and enough rage to keep her heart from breaking. She thought she was lucky she hadn't killed anyone in Charlotte, North Carolina. The main thing she thought about was how much she had wanted to kill several people.

She caught a ride with a truck as far as Nashville, then took a Greyhound bus to Memphis. In Memphis she stopped for a few days to visit some old friends from the Ozarks. A black musician and two poets from Fayetteville, Arkansas. Summer Deer had not felt well since she left North Carolina. All the way across the country she had been sick at her stomach. She couldn't even light a cigarette without wanting to throw up. She suspected she might be pregnant but she couldn't believe it. How could such a thing happen to her? One of the poets was a scrawny little judge's daughter who had worked at a hospital when she was young. “I think you're knocked up,” the poet said. “You better go and get a test.”

“I'll get one when I get home,” Summer Deer said. “I can get one free at the clinic.” She lay her head back down on the pillow and thought about how terrible she felt. I wish I had killed some of them, she thought. I wish I'd killed his mother and maybe Helen.

That night, in an effort to cheer Summer Deer up, they went to a dilapidated movie house near the Memphis State campus to see some old movies. The first movie came on, a film starring Olivia de Havilland in a story about a woman locked up in an insane asylum. Summer Deer began to cry in the movie. She cried so hard the black musician had to take her out to the lobby and get her a drink of water. He held her in his arms. Behind them the popcorn machine popped happily away. “Go on and cry,” he said. “Shed your tears.”

“I guess I'm pregnant,” she said. “I guess I'm really fucked.”

“We thought you were,” he said. “We thought you must be.”

“I'll name it Olivia de Havilland,” she said. “Since it's driving me crazy.”

“How come you have to have it?”

“I might not. I might get fixed when I get home. There's a doctor there that will do it.” She leaned into the black man's arms. His name was Willy Bugle. Six years later, when Olivia was five years old, he would make a big splash on Broadway in a musical from New Orleans. For now, though, he was only a trumpet player trying to make a living and he held Summer Deer in his arms and let her cry.

Summer Deer didn't get it fixed. She didn't even go to a doctor until she was five months pregnant. She stayed around Memphis for a few more days and went to hear the poets read their poetry in a bar and went to hear Willy play his trumpet with a band. Then she took the rest of her money and caught a bus to Tahlequah. She was so tired when she got home she slept for several days. By the time she woke up she was feeling better. Spring was coming to the Indian nation. An early spring with cold sharp rains and warm spells in the middle of the days. The rivers were filling up. I can get rid of this baby any time I want to, Summer Deer decided. All I need to do is get on a horse and ride.

“This guy's rich?” her married sister, May, asked. “Really rich?”

“Yeah, he's got all kinds of dough.”

“Go on and have it then,” her sister said. “You're halfway there. When you get it you can sue him for some money. You can make him send you money to take care of it.”

“I might do it,” Summer Deer said. “Or else I might go riding.”

“You can get child care from the government, too,” May said. “You could be rolling in dough.”

Summer Deer thought it over. May was right. She was halfway to having the baby already. Besides, it might be a nice good-looking kid. A big blond boy, or a girl, either one. “I might take the money from the government,” she said. “But I won't tell him about it. I don't want his money enough to have to talk to him.” She held out the letter she had gotten from Daniel the day before. It was a letter that said his father had arranged for him to get an annulment of the marriage. “Since you won't even answer my letters,” the letter said. “And since it doesn't count since we were stoned.”

It was beautiful in Tahlequah that spring. Forsythia bloomed, then redbuds, then mystical white dogwoods, then wildflowers everywhere. Summer Deer went out at night with her friends and drank beer and smoked and talked about her life in California. The baby in her womb wasn't any trouble. She was so young she barely knew it was there. Her breasts grew round and full, her thighs widened, her face became as beautiful as a dogwood blossom. “You look great,” her friends all told her. “You can get money from the government when it comes. You can get enough to stay at home.”

“Yeah. It's okay,” she answered. “It's nothing having a kid. See if Judie has a joint on him. Let's get stoned. You ought to feel it move around when I get stoned. Yeah, I'm happy with it. There's nothing to it. I don't even go to the doctor. You don't need a doctor to have a baby. My sister's going to deliver it. Yeah, it's a piece of cake.”

It was a piece of cake until the end. Then, in September, Summer Deer traded in her life for the baby's. It was true what she had told her friends. She had only gone to the doctor twice. Once to make sure she was pregnant and once for a checkup. The second time the doctor was tired. He'd been up all night with a difficult delivery. He was short with Summer Deer and she decided he was a snob. She was always on the lookout for snobs. She didn't go back after that and she didn't pay the bill. She did remember the date he said the baby was due. Five days before the date she began to get impatient. She had been a good sport about the pregnancy and now she was sick of it. She wanted to get back to real life. She wanted to put on some tight jeans and go dancing. She wanted to find a boyfriend and get laid. So she began to walk. For six days she walked the hills around the house. She walked all morning and half the afternoons, up and down the hills, down to the road and back. On the sixth day her back began to hurt. All day her back drove her crazy. That night she went to bed. Her mother and grandmother and Mary Lily stood by. They called the midwife and the midwife came. The pains would begin, then they would stop. Another day went by. On the second night the midwife called a second midwife. The second midwife was very old. She knew what was wrong. The baby was upside down. She reached up inside of Summer Deer and turned the baby with her hands. Summer Deer began to scream, then she began to bleed. “We should call the doctor,” Mary Lily said. “I'll call him now.”

“No,” the midwife said. “Give her time. It will happen now.”

“Get the doctor,” Summer Deer screamed. “Get some dope. Get him to bring some dope.” Mary Lily went to the phone and called the hospital in Tahlequah. “I called them,” she said, coming back to the bed. “They're on their way.”