Walk Me Home (41 page)

“’N what do
you
want to do?” Delores asks, finally.

“I’d like to stay. If you’ll have me. God’s honest truth, I need to stay. I don’t have any place else to go.”

“Surprised,” Delores says. Her hands still moving. Still building that hat. “We thought you’d pick the live-on-your-own plan.”

“Scary being on your own,” Carly says. Seems like once she opens up that faucet of honesty, it flows without much effort. “Turns out I’m not so big and strong as I thought. Maybe I really am too young.”

“Got news for you,” Delores says. “I’m ninety-two, and I’m not so big ’n strong as
I
thought, neither.”

A long silence. Carly’s gut can’t quite relax. Because Delores hasn’t exactly said yes.

When she can’t stand it anymore, Carly says, “So…”

“I can always use another hand around the place.”

Carly empties her lungs of breath she didn’t even know she was holding. “I’ll help. I will. I’ll work hard. And I’ll be nicer and more cooperative.”

“Nah, you’ll still be what you are,” Delores says. “But it’s OK. I won’t be nicer ’n more cooperative, neither. Just got to put up with each other. Somethin’ you could do would be a real big help. You could learn to drive stick. If you could drive my old truck, wouldn’t always be at the mercy of people bringin’ stuff out here to me. We need somethin’, you could just drive out ’n get it.”

“I could do that. I’ll go easy on your clutch, too.”

“Was gonna try to talk Alvin into teachin’ you on his truck.” She pauses, but before Carly can open her mouth to answer, Delores says, “No, scratch that. Learn on my old truck. Ain’t no earthly good to me unless you can drive it. I got no business gettin’ behind that wheel ever again, and we both know it.”

Carly rises to her feet. With effort. Her body still feels pounded and overused.

“Thank you,” she says.

Delores only nods.

But anyway, Carly said it. And it went down a little easier the second time. Just like Alvin said it would.

After dinner, Carly sits on the bed in the cool trailer, looking out the window. Watching the light change on the mesa. Lighting it up redder as the sun slants.

She tries on the idea of this place as home, and it still doesn’t fit. But it makes her remember sitting in that tourist restaurant in Trinidad, drinking iced tea and wondering how it would feel to never get in out of the elements. No matter how bad those elements got. Now she’s indoors, and it’s cool. And there’s electricity. And water, even if you do have to walk out to the well and fetch it. And a bed. And a place to store what few belongings she owns. That strikes her as the most fundamental elements of a home. Maybe, she thinks, you have to do the rest on your own.

She sits another hour or more, wondering when Jen will come in, so they can go to bed. Jen is in the house with Delores. It makes Carly feel a little left out. Though she knows she could be in the house, too, if she wanted. All she’d have to do is walk in and join them.

She makes up her mind to try that tomorrow.

It’s after dark when Jen bounces in.

“Just wanted to come say good night,” she says.

“You’re not sleeping here?”

“No, I sleep on the couch in the house. That way I’m there if Delores needs anything in the night.”

“Oh. OK.”

“Well…good night.”

“Good night,” Carly says.

But Jen doesn’t leave straightaway. Carly feels like not enough has been said. She wonders if Jen feels the same.

Carly decides it’s her turn. That she’s the one who never says enough.

“I’m sorry I didn’t believe you.”

“Oh. That. Did you really, like…not
ever
think maybe it happened?”

“Not even once. Not even a little bit. It’s kind of hard to explain.”

“Oh,” Jen says. “That’s OK. You don’t have to explain. I mean, not OK. It hurt me. But it’s OK because…I sort of knew why. And I know it wasn’t really about me. I could tell. I know how much you loved him.”

“Thanks,” Carly says. Thinking she’s gotten good at that word in a short time. “Here’s the thing, though. I’m sorry I didn’t believe Mom, too. And it’s a little too late to make it up to Mom.”

A long silence. Carly realizes she’s been hoping Jen had some kind of answer for that. It feels funny, to look up to your kid sister like she has the missing piece to something you can’t make fit together yourself.

“Maybe she sort of knew why, too.”

“Hope so,” Carly says.

“It was partly my fault. You thought she was lying because I was afraid to say she wasn’t. It’s my fault, too. I feel bad, too.”

“I can forgive you easier than me.”

“Same here.”

Carly doesn’t know what to say. So she says nothing at all.

“See you in the morning. Unless you sleep in. In which case I’ll be at school.”

“You makin’ friends?” Carly doesn’t realize until it’s out of her mouth that she just dropped a
g
. Like Delores. It’s almost funny, after the fact.

“Tons,” Jen says.

“Good. That’s good.” She reaches under the collar of her shirt. Pulls out the feather pendant. “Here, I should give this back to you now. It did its job, you know?”

“No, it’s OK,” Jen says. “You keep it. I’m doing fine.”

Then she slips out the noisy door again.

And Carly is left alone with just this. Just a little pink metal trailer with bare utilities and a view of the moon rising, more of a crescent now, over a long mesa.

It’s not much. But it’s more than she’s had for a long time.

She sleeps long and well.

WAKAPI LAND

May 25

“Can I use that fence post pounder thingy?” Carly asks Alvin.

“Be my guest.”

She nearly falls over when she takes it from him. It’s heavy.

She’s at Alvin’s place, where she’s never been before. It’s about two miles farther down the same road as Chester’s. In fact, Chester’s dogs barked at them as Carly drove by.

Yes, Carly got to drive Alvin’s truck. Once she got it into first and then second gear, with a bit of instruction and a lot of practice, it was pretty easy.

She lifts the fence tool with great effort and positions it.

It has a handle on each side. You slip it over the top of the T-post. And then you lift it up and slam it down, and the weight of it drives the post into the ground. A little deeper each time. At least, that’s how it worked when Alvin did it. He made it look easy. He said it has a big spring in it, so it doesn’t jar you right down to your toes on every hit.

Carly is determined to make it work, though part of her knows she’s clearly in over her head.

She slams it down a few times, hard. Careful not to cry out each time it hurts her right hand. The T-post doesn’t move much. Despite the fact that Alvin soaked the dirt in this spot for a long time with a hose.

Then she stops. Because she needs to.

She’s breathing like she’s just run a marathon. She takes off her hat with one hand and wipes the sweat off her face with her sleeve.

Alvin sets the hose down and walks over to where Carly is standing. Grabs one handle of the heavy tool.

“Trade you,” he says.

“Yeah, OK.”

“That hurt your hand?”

“Yeah. Some.”

“Sure we don’t need to get that looked at?”

“But the swelling’s going down.”

“Well, give it a break then. Least you can do for it. I should’ve thought of that. I’m sorry.”

“It’s not your fault,” she says.

“I just forgot, is the thing. Or I never would’ve had you try it.”

She picks up the hose and Alvin’s tape measure. Measures off six feet from the post he’s working on. Soaks the next spot.

“Hotter than it was when I left,” she says to him.

“Yup. Summer’s coming on, all right. Nothing you or anybody else can do to change its mind.”

“I feel really bad about my mom. I can’t stop thinking about that.”

Alvin stops pounding. Carly just keeps looking at the dirt, refusing to make eye contact. In her peripheral vision, she can feel him watching her.

“Come on,” he says. “Let’s take ourselves a break.”

They sit on the porch together in the shade. In two straight-backed wooden chairs. Carly takes off her hat and sets it on her knee. Where she can look at it.

A Wakapi woman Carly never met goes by on a bicycle down the dirt road, a thin cloud of red dust following. The woman raises one hand in a wave, and Alvin returns the gesture.

“Hey, Alvin,” the woman calls. “Hey, Carly.”

Then she rides on.

“How does she know my name?”

“Oh, you got to be quite the legend around here while you were away. Now what’s this about your mom?”

Carly lets out a long, unhappy sigh.

“I thought she was lying about Teddy. So she could leave him for this guy. Who she was already sleeping with. I wouldn’t speak to her. I said I hated her, and I called her a liar. I told her I’d never forgive her. And then I didn’t speak to her for months. Literally. Like, four or five months. And then she went off with that guy and got herself killed. And now I come to find out she wasn’t lying. She did a lot that was wrong, my mom, but not that. Not that one thing. And I didn’t know that was the last chance I’d ever have to speak to her. And now I feel like I’m going to have to live with that for the rest of my life.”

“You are,” Alvin says.

“Gee, thanks. You were supposed to say something comforting.”

“Want me to lie to you?”

“No.”

They sit quietly for a time. Carly puts one hand on her hat, where it sits on her knee. It looks just right there. When it’s not on her head.

“We took off out of there so fast, I don’t even know where they buried her.”

“Want me to see if I can find out?”

“Yeah. That would be good. Thank you.”

“See? You’re getting good at that. Told you a little practice’s all it takes.”

Alvin gets up and wanders into the house. Comes back out with two pottery cups of ice water about the size of small buckets. Hands one to her.

“Thanks,” she says and takes a long draw.

“OK. I’ll try to say something comforting. We got a different relationship to our ancestors than the people you grew up with. We still get some help and guidance from those who’re gone. Like they’re gone in one way, but not in every way. We’re not taught to be cut off from our ancestors, like they’re just dead, and that’s that.”

“Wish I’d been taught like that.”

“Never too old to learn,” Alvin says. “Question is whether you’ll stay around here with us long enough to pick up something new.”

Carly never answers that question.

She just looks off at the line of low mountains in the distance, liking the way the sun hits them. Liking the way the breeze blows patterns in the dry grasses between here and there. Liking the way the horses graze in a field across the road. And the way the clouds scud across the navy-blue edges of the sky.

It’s a good sky.

The reason she doesn’t answer the question is because she still wants to reserve more time to think. Before she makes any big commitments.

But she’s pretty sure she already knows.

AUTHOR’S NOTE

There is no such thing as a Native American tribe called the Wakapi. They are fictional.

The land on which I have depicted them living is very real. It’s in Arizona, just where it appears in this novel. It contains the Painted Desert and some of the most impressive landscapes I know. It is haunting and simple, pure, and, in my eyes, achingly beautiful. It never ceases to make me feel awed, insignificant, and inspired, usually all at the same time. I have been both through and to this area on a number of occasions.

In the real world, these lands belong to the Navajo, Hopi, and Apache tribes.

My initial vision for this book was to depict a few fictional members of a real tribe, and I set off to research this tribe with much the same zeal as I set off to research transplant surgeries when I wrote Second Hand Heart.

Here’s what I learned:

A surgery is a finite thing. And, when all is said and done, it is only that: a thing. It is not a human being, a rich history, or a culture. It has limits. It follows the same basic guidelines each time it occurs. Its complexity is nothing compared to a people.