Pigs in Heaven (10 page)

Jax stands up and goes inside and stays for quite a while. She’s uncertain whether this signifies the end of the interview. She hears a few dramatic nose blows, and then she can hear him singing quietly: “Be careful what you take, Anna Wake, be careful what you break.” She decides that if he starts playing the piano she will leave, but he comes back out with his fingers hooked into the mouths of two slim brown bottles of beer.

“Here,” he says. “Let’s have a party. Kennedy and Khrushchev drink to a better world.” He sits beside her, very close, and she can feel his body heat through her jeans. Strangely, she feels comforted rather than threatened, as if Jax were one of her brothers. Possibly it’s because she has only heard her brothers, and no other man before now, confess to her his absolute love for some other woman.

Jax leans back on one elbow and begins pointing out constellations: Ursa Major, which Annawake has known since she could walk, and the Pleiades.

“The what?”

“Pleiades. Seven sisters.”

She takes a long pull on her beer and squints at the sky. “You people must have better eyes than we do. In Cherokee there are only six. The Six Bad Boys.
Anitsutsa
.”

“
Anitsutsa?
”

“Yeah. Or
disihgwa
, the pigs. The Six Pigs in Heaven.”

“Excuse me but you’re making this up.”

“No. There’s a story about these six boys that wouldn’t do their work. Wouldn’t work in the corn, wouldn’t fix their mothers’ roofs, wouldn’t do the ceremony chores—there’s always stuff to be done at the ceremonial grounds, getting firewood and repairing shelters and things like that. They weren’t what you’d call civic-minded.”

“And they got turned into pigs.”

“Now wait, don’t jump ahead. It’s their fault, they turned themselves into pigs. See, all they wanted to do, ever, was play ball and have fun. All day long. So their mothers got fed up. They got together
one day and gathered up all the boys’
sgwalesdi
balls. It’s a little leather ball about like this.” Annawake holds up a green apricot. “With hair inside. Animal hair, human, whatever. And they put all the balls in the stewpot. They cooked them.”

“Yum, yum,” says Jax.

She throws the apricot, carefully aiming at nothing. “Okay. So the boys come home for lunch after playing around all morning, and their mothers say, ‘Here’s your soup!’ They plop those soggy old cooked balls down on their plates. So the boys get mad. They say, ‘Forget it, only a pig would eat this,’ and they rush down to the ceremonial grounds and start running around and around the ball court, asking the spirits to listen, yelling that their mothers are treating them like pigs. And the spirits listened, I guess. They figured, ‘Well, a mother knows best,’ and they turned the boys into pigs. They ran faster and faster till they were just a blur. Their little hooves left the ground and they rose up into the sky, and there they are.”

“Holy crow,” Jax says. “Your mom tell you that, when you wouldn’t make your bed?”

“My Uncle Ledger,” she says. “There’s a lot of different versions of all the stories, according to what mood you’re in. But you’re right, that’s the general idea. The Pigs, and also Uktena, this big snake with horns—those are the Cherokee boogeymen. I was always very civic-minded when I lived with my uncle.”

“So that’s your guiding myth. Do right by your people or you’ll be a pig in heaven.”

Annawake thinks this over. “Yes. I had a hundred and one childhood myths, and they all added up more or less to ‘Do right by your people.’ Is that so bad?”

“Myths are myths. They’re good if they work for you, and bad if they don’t.”

“What are yours?”

“Oh, you know, I heard the usual American thing. If you’re industrious and have clean thoughts you will grow up to be vice president of Motorola.”

“Do right by yourself.”

Jax finishes the last half of his beer in one swallow. She watches his Adam’s apple with amazement. “You think Taylor’s being selfish,” he states.

Annawake hesitates. There are so many answers to that question. “Selfish is a loaded word,” she says. “I’ve been off the reservation, I know the story. There’s this kind of moral argument for doing what’s best for yourself.”

Jax puts his hands together under his chin and rolls his eyes toward heaven. “Honor the temple, for the Lord hast housed thy soul within. Buy that temple a foot massage and a Rolex watch.”

“I think it would be hard to do anything else. Your culture is one long advertisement for how to treat yourself to the life you really deserve. Whether you actually deserve it or not.”

“True,” he says. “We all ought to be turned into pigs.”

Annawake’s mouth forms a tight, upside-down smile. “Some of my best friends are white people.”

Jax goes limp, as if he’s been shot.

“We just have different values,” she says. “Some people say religion is finding yourself, and some people say it’s losing yourself in a crowd.”

Jax revives. “You can do that? Lose yourself?”

“Oh, sure. At the dances.”

“Dancing?”

“Not like
American Bandstand
, not recreational dancing, it’s ceremonial. A group thing. It’s church, for us.”

“I say po-tay-toes, and you say po-tah-toes.” Jax lies flat on his back and balances his empty bottle on his stomach. It tilts a little when he breathes or talks. “And never the Twain shall meet, because he’s dead.” He laughs crazily and the bottle rolls off and clinks down the stone steps, but doesn’t break. He sits up. “You’re being kind of
anisnitsa
yourself, you know.”

“Anti-
what?
”

“Anisnitsa. Isn’t that what you said, for pig?”

“
Sihgwa
.”

“Whatever. You’re being one. In your own fashion.”

“I’m trying to see both sides.”

“You can’t,” Jax says. “And Taylor can’t. It’s impossible. Your definitions of ‘good’ are not in the same dictionary. There is no point of intersection in this dialogue.”

“Surely you don’t think it’s
good
for the tribe to lose its children? Or for Turtle to lose us? She’s entitled to her legacy.”

“Her legacy at the moment may be green apricots for dinner.”

“What a thought. Did they have someplace to go?”

Jax doesn’t answer.

“It’s not a trick question.”

“Well, then, yes. The answer is yes. Right now they are someplace.”

“Please tell her I’m sorry if I’m the cause of this.”

“
If
you’re the cause of this?”

“You have to believe this much, the last thing I want is to put Turtle through more dislocation.”

Jax reaches down carefully and sets the beer bottle on its head. “Dislocation,” he says.

“You’re the only connection between Turtle and me at this point, and,” she waits for him to meet her eyes, “and I need that connection.”

“Don’t look at me, Mama Bear,” says Jax. “I’m just picking blueberries.”

“
T
URTLE, DRINK YOUR MILK
.”

Turtle’s plate is a boneyard of grilled-cheese sandwich crusts. She picks up her full glass and drinks, holding a steady sidelong eye on Taylor. As soon as Taylor looks away, she sets down her glass.

Angie Buster’s diner is deserted. At four o’clock Angie declared that not even the starving Armenians would come out for a meal in this weather, and she went home to take a nap. Taylor and Turtle and Pinky the bulldog sit near the front window watching long knives of rain attack the ground at a hard slant. The first storm of the summer has blown in from Mexico, arousing the dust and dampening the Virgin of Guadalupe outside, causing her yellow bows to drop off one by one. Lucky is missing in action again. Angie isn’t worried; it has only been half a day, and she says she can feel in her bones when it’s going to be a long one. Her bones say this one isn’t.

Angie owns not only the diner, it turns out, but also the adjacent Casa Suerte motor inn, which Taylor understood as “Casa Sweater” over the phone. According to Angie,
suerte
means “good luck” she bought it ten years ago when the state finally persuaded Lucky’s father
to catch up on his child support. The idea of this place as someone’s good fortune depresses Taylor. The low brick units of the motor inn surround a doubtful patch of grass, an empty swimming pool, and one palm tree that escaped the short, trashy stage only to find itself leggy and ridiculous above the telephone wires. Each unit has a single metal chair outside its door, suggesting a concept of neighborliness, but the place seems short on neighbors. Taylor has seen only one other person around, an old woman with frightened-looking hair. She is grateful to have somewhere to hide out while she considers their next move, but being here is only slightly better than being nowhere.

“So what do you want to do now?” she asks Turtle.

“Go home.”

“I know. But we can’t. We’re on vacation for a while.”

Turtle bites her lips between her teeth, then releases them. She picks up her fork and idly begins poking things with it: her plate, the tablecloth, her hair. The bulldog watches with mild interest. Taylor frowns unconsciously, fearing slightly for Turtle’s eyes, but she bites down on the impulse to tell her to put the fork down. Turtle will only go so far, she’s found. Not to the point of self-damage.

From their table Taylor can see the glossy slabs of laminated newspaper hanging in the entrance to the diner: articles from the
Phoenix Republic
, the
San Francisco Chronicle
, even the
Washington Post
, all concerning the great adventure of Lucky and Turtle. It’s no comfort to Taylor that people in San Francisco and Washington, D.C., are aware of Angie’s diner.

“Let’s watch TV,” Turtle suggests.

“Sure, we can go watch TV. Pinky will cook and wait tables if the starving Armenians come in. Right, Pink?”

The dog wags its rear end with its ghost of bobbed tail, and Turtle smiles, her first all day. Taylor feels relieved for that, at least, as they shove the door open and run across the wet courtyard.

Sideways rain stings Turtle’s eyes and arms. She tried to see in the pool as they hurried by but there is no blue in there, only a big
mud-color shape of a thumbprint growing on the bottom. Lucky Buster said he could swim, before, and now Lucky Buster is gone. Her mother is trying to fit the key in the door of their room. The scaredy white-hair woman comes toward them holding a little roof of newspaper over her head.

“Have you seen the horses?” she wants to know.

“No,” Taylor says. The key is on a wood card like Popsicle sticks. When it slips out of Taylor’s hand it goes away on the water down the sidewalk.

“Well, they were here,” the woman says. “Can you give me a present?”

Turtle catches the float-away key and gives it back. “What kind of present?” Taylor asks. She tries to make the lock open, but her hands are shaky like they were the day Turtle and Jax and Dwayne Ray came home from the rhinoceros zoo and they had to put everything in a suitcase.

“The horses! Didn’t you see them?”

“I’m sorry,” Taylor says.

Turtle doesn’t want to see a horse’s clomping feet. Everyone here is afraid. Turtle feels the old place coming, with him and no light and you can’t get air.

“Oh, you’re sorry. I’m sure you are.” The woman runs away with her feet in flip-flops splatting the ground with little steps. The door gives in and they fall inside, where the room smells safe and nose-stinging like clean bathrooms. She finds Taylor’s cold hand and knows they will stay right here.

Turtle clicks on the television and stands a few inches from the screen, punching the channel button, sorting through the brazen images. She settles on a documentary about repairing a cathedral, and climbs onto the bed. Taylor isn’t sure what the appeal is, but she accepts Turtle’s choice. The narrator is describing the chemicals they have to use on the ancient walls; meanwhile, a man in a little wooden swing moves up and down the high steeple in his sys
tem of ropes, like a spider, but not so graceful. A male spider with a bucket seat and chemicals.

“Where do you think Lucky Buster is now?” Turtle asks.

Taylor has stripped down to her bra and begins pulling off Turtle’s wet clothes. “Oh, I think he’s at a friend’s house chewing banana bubble gum and eating all kinds of junk Angie won’t let him have.”

“Like me and Jax do when you’re at work?”

“Ha, ha.” Gently she pushes a dry shirt over Turtle’s damp head, which smells like baby shampoo, and pulls her arms through the holes.

The cooler unit in the window thumps doggedly, overworked but useless in the damp heat. Taylor is suddenly irritated with the prickly weight of her hair; it reminds her of Jax breathing on her neck. She yanks it over her shoulder and begins corralling it into a braid.

“Why do we have to have this vacation?” Turtle asks.

Taylor feels gooseflesh rise on the skin of her bare arms. “Well, because we can’t be hanging around at home right now.”

“Why?”

Taylor examines the end of her rope of hair, trying to look unconcerned. It would be so simple to lie: Jax decided to paint the whole house purple. “Do you remember when I took you to Oklahoma that time to get your adoption papers?”

Turtle nods, and Taylor doesn’t doubt that she remembers. Sometimes she will mention events from years ago. Taylor finds it miraculous and disturbing that Turtle can find words for things she witnessed before she could talk.

“We had to go on that trip because the social workers said we needed those papers so you could stay with me. And this is something like that. We need to go on another trip, to make sure we can stay together.”

“A trip to where?”

“Well, that’s the part I don’t know yet. Someplace lucky. Where do you think we should go?”

“Sesame Street.”

“Good idea,” Taylor says.

Now the television is showing the paintings inside the church. There is a sad, long-faced Jesus made up of small squares and triangles, as if he were glass, and had been smashed and reassembled. Taylor rolls over on her stomach and nuzzles Turtle’s neck. Her spirit is revived by the exact unchanging smell of Turtle: shampoo, sweat, and something nutty and sweet, like peanut butter. She blows against her brown cheek, making a loud noise, then gives her a kiss. “This church is getting depressing,” she says. “Could we watch something with a little more story line?”

Turtle gets up and changes the station to a movie.

“Thanks, pal.”

The movie is about a big, tough, angry wife who is trying to ruin the life of her rabbity husband, who ran off with a rich romance writer. Nothing about the movie seems realistic to Taylor, but Turtle asks her not to talk to the TV, so she tries. They both like the mean wife the best. She does spectacularly horrible things, and they laugh. Taylor also likes the Indian actor who plays the rich lady’s smug, smart-alecky butler. The lady keeps snapping, “Garcia, take care of it this instant!” and Garcia keeps rolling his eyes and walking away.

In the last few days Taylor has been noticing images of Indians everywhere: the Indian-chief profile on a Pontiac. The innocent-looking girl on the corn-oil margarine. The hook-nosed cartoon mascot of the Cleveland Indians, who played in Tucson. Taylor wonders what Annawake meant when she said Turtle should be in touch with her Indian side. Maybe that doesn’t mean feathers, but if not, then what? Taylor is supposedly part Indian herself; Alice used to talk about some Cherokee great-grandmother way in the back of the closet, but everybody and his brother has one of those, even Elvis Presley did. Where do you draw the line? Maybe being an Indian isn’t any one thing, any more than being white is one thing. What mascot would they use for a team called the Cleveland White People?

The movie has become a commercial without Taylor’s notice: she realizes now that the dancing women lifting drinks from a tray have nothing to do with Garcia the Indian butler. Taylor doesn’t care for
her own train of thought. She could end up like the woman outside, running around in the rain, asking people, “Have you seen the Indians?”

Just as Angie’s bones predicted, Lucky returned with the end of the rainstorm. He was at his friend Otis’s, working on model trains. “Next time use your brain and call me, will you, Otis?” she scolds when he drops Lucky off at the diner.

“My phone went out,” Otis says.

“My butt,” Angie replies.

Otis is very old and bald, with bad posture and big splay feet in white sneakers. She orders him inside for a piece of pie, and he obeys. Like everyone else around, he seems to turn into a child in the presence of Angie. Taylor marvels at this talent of hers, like one of the superpowers a cartoon character could possess: the hypersonic mother-ray.

Taylor is helping Angie put away the soggy yellow bows from the Virgin of Guadalupe. The storm has left them floating in a puddle around her feet like bedraggled water lilies. “Do you put these up every time he disappears?”

“Well, it’s kind of a signal to the town, to be on the lookout,” Angie says. “So if anybody sees him wandering they’ll send him on home.”

Angie pronounces “wandering” like “wondering,” and before her meaning dawns on Taylor, she is stumped on what it is that Lucky would be wondering about. He seems to have little room for doubt in his life. She can see him inside now, talking excitedly to Turtle. Turtle looks rapt. Taylor envies Lucky’s assurance, and Turtle’s state of grace: to be able to see neither forward nor backward right now, to see Lucky as a friend, just that. Not an instrument of fate.

The phone rings and Angie goes in to get it, but returns immediately. “It’s for you.”

Taylor’s heart thumps hard when she picks up the receiver; she can’t think what news there might be that isn’t bad.

“Are we not the species of critical thinkers?” the telephone inquires.

“Jax!”

“Oh, big surprise. Nobody else on Planet Earth knows where you are.”

“I hope. Have you heard from her? Did she come back?”

“She walks in beauty like the night.” He pauses. “Are you jealous?”

“No. What did she say?”

“That the Seven Sisters are actually the Six Pigs in Heaven.”

“The what?”

“Seven Sisters, the constellation. They’re actually six juvenile males who got turned into pigs because of being selfish and not community-minded.”

“I swear I never can follow you, Jax. What did she say really?”

“That she’s really on your side.”

“Right. What else?”

“She says she’s on the warpath. Can you picture that woman galloping over the hill on an Appaloosa? Too divine.”

Taylor can picture it. She looks out the window and sees Otis filling up his car at the minimart across the street. “Does she know I’ve left town?”

“Yes. And her aim is true. She can hit a cardboard owl between the eyes at fifty paces.”

“Meaning what, Jax?”

“This woman is smarter than your average box of rocks. Before she came here she’d already talked to people down at Mattie’s, and she’d figured out everything about the fake adoption. She might figure out where you are—returned to the scene. First she’ll try Oprah, then Lucky Buster.”

“You really think that? Is she still in Arizona?”

“No. She flew back to Oklahoma this morning.”

“How can you be sure?”

“I can’t, as a matter of fact. She could be over eating kugel with Mr. Gundelsberger at this moment.”

“Shoot, Jax, I’m scared. We’ve got to get out of here. But I don’t
know where. I can’t even go home, Mama’s moving out on Harland. Turtle wants to go to Sesame Street.”

Jax laughs. “Good idea.”

“I think we’ve had enough of TV land.” Taylor rolls her head from side to side, relaxing her neck, trying to stave off panic. Turtle is watching from the corner of the diner. “How’s everything back at the ranch? How’s Lou Ann? And Mr. G.?”

“Lou Ann is Lou Ann. Mr. G. is a troubled individual. He has to leave his shades down at all hours so he won’t see his voluptuous daughter exploring the desert in her natural state.”

“Gundi’s started her nature walks again? She’s amazing. I’d be scared of getting snakebit in a personal area.”

“Gundi has no personal areas. She’s painting a series of nude self-portraits with different cactus configurations.”

“Well, be nice to her anyway. She’s your landlady.”

“Landperson, please. Don’t worry, she’s not going to kick me out. I’m one of her favorite boys this week. This morning she was taking a very special interest in the cactus configurations outside my studio window. Turtle would have gotten an education.”

“Well, pay the rent anyway, it’s due this week, okay? Being handsome will only carry you so far in life.”

“Would you say that I’m actually handsome? I mean, in those words?”

“Listen Jax, do you feed Turtle junk food when I’m at work?”

“We experiment. Peanut butter and green bean sandwiches. Nothing hard core.”

“She misses you.”

“I miss you both. I’m radioactive with despair.”

Taylor knows he wants her to say she loves him, but she can’t. Not under pressure. It feels a little empty and desperate to her, like when husbands send wives into the store to pick out their own birthday gifts.