The Pot Thief Who Studied Billy the Kid (14 page)

The way she laughed told me
m
y little joke hadn’t offended her.

“You’r
e witty, Hubie.”

“Shoot. I was trying for sexy.”

Her demure look
told me the
re was no prospect
of us making love that evening.

Which was fine with me. Call me old-fashioned, but I like to get to know a woman before I jump in bed with her. Of course I couldn’t have jumped in bed given my cast. And I have been known to break my get-to-know-them rule.
Once, gloriously, with Stella.

That was the second time I’d thought of her that day, and she and Sharice are nothing alike. But when a man has sex on his mind, h
e’s mentally
impaired, so it’s a wonder I managed
even
to prepare the food.

“What I wanted to ask is how can you give pot
s
back to the Ma because they are sacred and yet dig up and sell other pots?”

I hesitated because it’s a complicated issue.

“Am I out of line?”
She asked.

“Not at all. It’s just that it’
s a
long boring philosophical answer.”

“
’
L
ong boring philo
sophical’ is a triple oxymoron,
Hubie.
”

Beautiful, intelligent
and funny. Good teeth, too. I think I was falling in love.

“There was no doubt
the pots
you
x-rayed belonged to the Ma. But when I dig up an ancient pot from a site abandon
ed
a thousand years ago, there are no modern day people who can claim ownership. I already told you how I feel about the ancient potters. I think they want their work to be appreciated.
”

“Some people
s
ay those pots belong to today’s First Nations even if they can’t be traced to a specific tribe.”

“First Nations, eh?”

She giggled. Her giggle was just as intoxicating as her laugh. “O
kay,
I’m Canadian.
We call the
m
First Nations. You yanks call them Native Americans.
”

“
And all the ones I know call themselves Indians. But t
hat sort of makes my point
about labels and ethnicity.
You’re Canadian, but your parents were from Jamaica. Your distant ancestor
s
were from Africa.
So do you have a tie to the artwork of Africa, Jamaica or Canada?”

“I’
ve never thought about it
.”

“My answer would be all three. And all other artwork everywhere. Artifacts are human before they a
re Native American, Chinese,
European
or whatever
.”

I resisted the temptation to d {mpto Lrag out one of my S
c
huze’ Anthropological Premises. The evening was progressing too well to be spoiled.

The conversation returned to small talk over dessert
which was New
Mexican green chile caramel truffles from Cocopotamus, an artisanal chocolate maker here in Albuquerque.

Between her second and third pieces of the chocolate,
Sharice said candy is not recommended by those in the dental profession.

I offered to walk her to her car, but she said to the door would be fine. And it did turn
out to be a fine place indeed.

She turned in the doorway and asked, “How is the chipped tooth
?”

“Fine.”

Moonlight glinted off
her green eyes. “I think I need to check it.
”

She stepped against me. “
Closely.”

When the passionate kiss ended, I said, “I could take off the cast.”

She laughed and departed.

14

I was so smitten by Sharice that I forgot all about the rosé in the
freezer
.

Luckily,
I saw the magnet on the door before turning out the lights. I removed the bottle
and was happy to see
it had not yet frozen. I was tempted to open it and have a few more pieces of chocolate. Then I remembered my desi
re to
drink less and lose a few pounds. I stuck the
rosé
in the fridge and tried to forget it
w
as there.

Which was easy to do because thou
ghts of Sharice filled my head.

The dreams
that followed
were even better than the thoughts because my censor was off duty.

On Sunday mornings, I normally eat a breakfast so large that it tides me over for the rest of the day.
But I was trying to diet. So while I was at the co-op,
I
’d
bought a bottle
of
Hollywood Diet Juice
made from
fruit juices,
extracts
of green tea,
biloba
and the mandatory p
reservatives and stabilizers.

I can understand the last two ingredients. Who wants to drink something that
’
s unpreserved and unstable?

All I know about biloba
i
s it sounds like the guy wh
o discovered the Pacific Ocean.

Which
must have come
as a surprise to the millions of native people who were already living on its shores.

I’m usually suspicious of anything from Hollywood, but I know this stuff has to work. You drink it instea
d of meals and you lose weight.
Duh.

Martin Seepu showed up around
three
with one of his uncle’s pots. My relationship with Martin began when I volunteered for a program run by the University that matched college students with adolescents on the reservations. Sort of a big-b
rother program for Indian kids.

Our initial meeting was awkward. I suggested things we could do together. He was so unresponsive, I thought maybe he was deaf. Finally, I asked him what he wanted me to do.

He shrugged. Looking down at the ground, he said,
“
Teach me something.
”

“What would you like
me to teach you?”

“What you know best.”

“What I know best is math.” I was majoring in it as an undergraduate. I expected that
would
curtail his desire for me to teach him something, but he just said, “Okay.”

So I taught him math. He said very little but learned quickly. I felt awkward because I did all the talking. Eventually, I asked him to teach me something. It was the only way I could think of to make our relationship more balanced. I was too naïve to realize the cultural gulf between us.

I asked him what he knew best, and he said it was how to draw horses. I knew less about drawing than he had known about math. But I started learning and liked it. It was the first time I’d ever attempted anything artistic. And it
was good
for him because he had to talk to teach. Not much in the beginning, but he eventually came out of his shell.

One reason why so many students dislike abstract math is they don’t see any purpose for it. Arithmetic is all you need in life. Why waste time on algebra? But
most Indians
don’t think that way. Because they are marginalized in our economic system, the question of the utility of knowledge is not so important for them.

It is a morally satisfying irony that Martin, who dropped out of school at fourteen, is mo
re
intellectual than
college student
s
studying to become engineers or doctors. They learn to
p
ractice a profes
s
ion
. H
e learn
s
because he believ
e
s it is better to know than no
t
to know.

“I’ll chance
some of your coffee,
”
he said.

“I’ve got some Gruet
rosé
in the fridge
.”

“Just coffee.”

“If you don’
t drink
the Gruet, I’m afraid I will.”

“Even if I drink it, you just open another one.”

He knows me well.

I poured us both a cup of coffee. He took a sip and asked what happened to my ankle.
I gave him an abbreviated version of my cliff dwelling adventure.

When I finished,
he said
, deadpan
, “So you’ve become a grave robber.”

“It wasn’t a grave.” I had summarized for Martin all the options Susannah and I had kicked around on that topic.

He nodded. “I agree a murderer wouldn’t haul his
vic
tim d
o
wn there to bury hi
m, but there’s another option.”

I thought about it for about the hundredth time, but no new explanations came to me.

“So what is this other possibility?”

“You taught me math isn’t about numbers. It’
s about reasoning. Take your one fact and combine it with two assumptions. The fact is there’s a guy buried there. The first assumption is he was murdered. The—“

“That’s a stretch.”

“That’s why it’s an assumption. The second assumption is that a murdere
r
wouldn’t haul a body down there. So what fere/font>

I did abandon math for accounting, but I didn’t forget simple reasoning.
“The murderer was already down there.”

He nodded.

“Okay,” I admitted, “the logic is flawless. But it depends on
two premises. The first is that two people were down there together. The second is that one them decided to kill the other one. T
hose both seem highly improbable
.”