Body and Bread (20 page)

“How’d you find out?”

“Who
doesn’t
know?” He laughed, walking back to the door.

Was he leaving already? Why did he always do that? “How come you’re here?”

He looked at his feet, his thumbs in his front pockets. Dad coughed in the next room, waking from his Sunday nap. “You ever seen Caley Creek?”

I shrugged, confused as usual, waiting.

“Can you ride in a car?”

When I reluctantly agreed to go, he drove to the Holiday Inn on the main highway, singing along with Bob Dylan and the Beatles on the radio. “Sam?” I said as he parked next to a pickup at the end of the motel lot. A woman wheeled a cart of supplies to a room, knocked, then disappeared inside.

“Creek’s in back,” he said, helping me out. If we’d stayed at home, we could’ve talked.

Sure enough, the creek meandered across the vacant lot behind the building’s wings of rooms. With three-foot banks and a foot of water, it was more like a ditch. Weeds, Johnson grass, and rogue cedars dotted its edge. Behind the open acreage, a chain-link fence bordered Nugent’s tiny airport. Sam helped me walk to a marble slab near the creek. Attached was a metal plaque that read:

CALEY CREEK BATTLEFIELD

Named in Honor Of

CAPTAIN HOGARTH CALEY

Who Lost His Life Here

May 26, 1839

With Only 34 Texas Rangers

He Met 240 Indians At This Point,

And Routed Them.

“I never knew this was here,” I said. “Not much to look at, is it?”

“A mile up is a cave and 32 Bluffs.”

“What’s that?”

“Jaime, Wade, and me used to climb the bluffs, exactly thirty-two. So that’s what we called it.” He picked up a rock then turned it, chips sparkling. “Once when he was near the top, Wade put his hand out and there was a rattlesnake.” He threw the rock. “When he fell, his ear almost got cut off.”

“Gross,” I said, picturing a hole in the side of Wade’s head. “He doesn’t have an ear?”

“It was hanging. The doctor sewed it back on.” Sam looked up. “But you’ve been to the bluffs before. We caught that crawdad with string and bacon, remember?”

I nodded, feeling its pinchers, the pressure of the jumping after he’d placed it in my hands. “Did you ever go inside the cave?”

“We tried, but somebody would’ve had to dig a bigger tunnel.”

“Did you take a flashlight? Could you see inside?”

“Sure.”

“What?”

“Springs must’ve been in there.” A car started; a plane rumbled overhead. “It was dark, damp. Smelled like mildew.”

How could I not have heard what happened here? “What tribes?”

“You mean in the battle? Caddoes, Kickapoo, Comanche. Their leader, Chief Buffalo Hump, got his head stuck on a pole somewhere out there.”

I reread the plaque. “’Routed them.’ What does that mean?”

“I wonder,” he said, refusing to tell. But I thought I knew.

“I was trying to do what you told me,” I said, not looking at him, but hoping he’d say where he thought I’d made my mistake. If the best night of his life was when he’d gotten beaten up in a freezing Mexican jail, our little ceremony couldn’t be so bad. Then again, Mary Jo and Diane were in the hospital, and I could have gone to jail. “Sam?” He squatted next to the water, rolling a branch down the bank. “Sam?” I called. He turned then walked me back to the car before I could say anything else.

On the drive home, I tried again. “When you told me not to be afraid to look, what was it I was supposed to see?” I refused to give up ‘til I got an answer.

“Did I say that?” He slapped the side of the car in time to the radio’s “I can’t get no, sa-tis-fac-tion.”

“When you gave me the mask.” He’d imitated an animal that, in turn, disguised him. “You told me to be my true self, remember?” As usual, he wasn’t going to make this easy.

“No. But sounds right. Absolutely,” he said, bouncing his head to the music’s rhythms.

“What does it mean?” I said, clutching the armrest. What if I never found out where I belonged? “Are you saying it’s a good thing to get in trouble? Mom said she thought life was hard enough, even if I was careful. Are you saying she’s wrong?”

“What do
you
think?” he said, drumming the steering wheel. “I try, and I try, and I try,” he sang. He quit drumming, blinked. “Did I ever say you shouldn’t be happy?” He turned down the radio. “I don’t think so.”

“It seems like whenever you see everybody going one way, you notice what’s wrong with that and go the opposite. If you’re always watching for what’s ugly, doesn’t that make you sad? How do you know, when you think something’s ugly, that you’re right?”

Sam snapped off the radio, stared. “I’m listening.” His fist made loops in the air. “Keep going.”

“You said being in that jail after getting beaten up was great, but it sounds awful. Screwing around with my friends in that engine was fun, but it sure got us in trouble. I see ugly stuff: people hurting other people, animals, kids—terrible—but I can’t stop any of it.”

Sam stared at the road and nodded. “’Routed,’” he said. “To defeat, demoralize, conquer. To massacre. Thirty-four against two hundred forty. Impressive, don’t you think?”

In court Monday morning in front of my parents and other waiting defendants, a man announced my name and a case number. My father and Blair helped me hobble on crutches to the front bench, its mahogany bulk an altar. The judge checked his notes; then, in a smoker’s rasp, he rattled off my charges. He asked whether I was guilty, and the rest happened like Blair had said it would. “We’ve entered a plea bargain, your honor,” he said.

“What do you plead then, Miss Pelton?” the judge rumbled. An inky hyphen smudged his cheek.

“No contest, sir,” I said.

Blair explained that the city park manager had estimated the damages at fifteen hundred dollars. Any excess my father would also pay. I’d work eighty hours assisting city staff during children’s park programs. I didn’t add that I’d probably work five times that.

Never again would I see my father’s broken expression. Trouble: a mirage, a curse. Here it was—wavy, soft; there it went—slinking. Gone. Its only remnant, the memory of my one mistake. Like Moses, I was ready to pay for that.

As Blair thanked the judge and I hobbled out of the courtroom with my parents, the fact that my fine was the same amount as the bribe my father had paid to get Sam out of jail seemed more than a coincidence.

C
HAPTER 12

B
Y
C
ORNELIA’S NEXT VISIT,
I’ve quit checking for a scar on her lip or marveling at the mother/daughter resemblance. I try not to notice how pale she’s become or how much slower she moves. She’s been turned down a notch.

“Knock, knock,” she says, walking in. “You’re under arrest. Stop that,” she says pointing to my computer, “and follow me.”

“Excuse me?” I say, trying not to smile.

She grabs my arm, lifting me from my chair. “All work and no play makes the professor cranky.”

I hesitate then realize I have an hour and a half before my next class. “Where are we going?”

“We need some vitamin D. Don’t take this personally, but it wouldn’t hurt if you left this cave once in a while. Even moles pop up for air.”

When we get outside, she winces, holding her side while she sits on a concrete bench facing the grassy mall. “Here you go,” she says, patting the seat. When I join her, she pulls another shoebox from her bag, takes a
kolache
, and hands the box to me.

A couple is lying under a gnarly oak. The boy is propped on an elbow, talking.

“What did Mom used to be like?” Cornelia says, wiping her mouth with a Kleenex.
Albina used to do that
, I think. “I mean, she married your brother so she must’ve been way different.”

I picture Terezie digging with Sam in the midden, then dressed in her
kroj
for their wedding. “She wore men’s shoes,” I say, “and nobody cared, not even in high school.” I laugh. “Her nickname for Sam was Chopin.” I want to add that they almost had a baby.

“Chopin, the composer? Why?”

“I don’t remember,” I lie. “You have a napkin?”

“Did he play the piano? I guess I didn’t picture him like that. What was he like?”

How to capture a life, his life? Impossible. “He was, well…we were…close.”

“Yeah, well, what’s not to love about you, Doc?” She hands me a Kleenex and wraps her
kolache
in another. “Grandma says he spoke Russian.”

“He took some courses, yes, but he wasn’t fluent.” I wipe my mouth, hands. “If you don’t mind, I’d rather not talk about this.” A toad crouches in my throat, ready.

“Mom says I’m a lot like him: rude, pushy. I wonder who else that sounds like. Maybe a fancy smancy professor we both know?”

“I beg your pardon?” I say, my scalp tingling. This interview has ended. I scowl, scoot forward ready to stand.

“Okay,” she says. “I shouldn’t have said that. Sorry.” She barely taps my shoulder then squeezes her hands. “Please don’t leave yet. I have something to show you. It’ll only take a minute.” She arches her brows, pleading. “Will you come?”

She takes me behind the building to an untended area of wild grasses, pecan trees surrounded by rogue sprouts, discarded Styrofoam cups, cigarette butts, and other trash near a locked tool shed. A hydrant with a dripping faucet has left a circle of damp earth, a full bucket of water nearby. A black cat and two red tabbies stroll over, one whining in chirpy Morse code. Then three more appear: a tri-color with an orange nose, two more rubbing heads while they walk. They gather at my feet, squalling.

“Come to mama,” Cornelia says, grinning, holding her side. “They act like they know you.”

“Every campus has strays. They’re a nuisance and a health hazard. Now, thanks to you, I’ll have to report these.”

“Too late,” she says. “You’ve been caught.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” I shove the black one that’s rubbing my ankles. “I’ve got to get back.”

“Everybody knows you feed them. We’ve got bets on whether you take them to be spayed and get their shots. My guess? Heck, yeah. ‘Cause you’ve got a gorilla-sized heart. Secret’s out: You’re nice.”

“If you’re so interested in these cats, why don’t you and your friends take over? Be constructive instead of spying on your teachers.”

“You forget: I’m leaving. But you know what I’ll do?” She walks behind the shed, pulls back grass, twigs. “I’ll show this to some of my friends.” A cross made from scrap lumber is stuck in the ground, a pile of white stones surrounding it. “Somebody’s bound to volunteer.”

“If you think I had anything to do with that, you’re wrong,” I lie. “Now, let’s walk back. We’re both tired.”

“You’re right. My side hurts. Thanks for noticing.”

“Would you like to lie down in my office?”

“Why, Doc, is that a pass?”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” I take her arm while we walk. “You’re not my type.”

C
HAPTER 13

1965-66

I
WAS ALMOST EIGHTEEN,
a senior, when I chose what seemed to be the safer path: religion. Even now, my educated understanding of the natural world has not rendered my sense of the holy obsolete. So attuned am I to this dimension that when I first saw the Lower Pecos cave rock art at the White Shaman site, I witnessed a mystical manifestation. I’d been sketching the headless spirit shaman floating from its shadowed physical self when the amorphous shape materialized briefly at the end of the cave. Although this illustrates my welcome connection to the spiritual, the episode precipitated my uncontrollable hallucinations.

Now they’re escalating, and I can’t stop them. I’m terrified that I’ll drift off while driving, or worse, during a lecture or conversation with a student or colleague. I try to resist them by practicing a tea ritual that involves ceramic dishes and an uninterrupted hour. My backyard rose garden teaches humility and an appreciation for acidic soil. I meditate. I sit, legs crossed, focusing on the Noble Truths, praying to end my need for escape.

The high school assistant coach was talking about the moral dimension of athletics to my Wednesday night First Baptist youth group. I was not, let us say, riveted. When the speech ended, a man whispered, “Are the meetings routinely like this?” The week before, he’d passed out fliers, but I’d left mine on my chair. Except for a few strands sprouting from his receding hairline, he was bushy as Omar Sharif, with a mustache and hair covering his forearms like a veil of thread. He looked wounded at the implication of his question.