Welding with Children (25 page)

“What do you mean?”

“I met this one-armed gal and she hates it out here.”

“Oh, Lord.”

“It ain't like that.” He looked across toward a bloodred mountain. “It's pretty out here, and she don't want nothing to do with it.”

“Where's she want to be, then?”

He made a face. “New Orleans.”

Babette snorted. “Baby, you're liable to stop at a rest area out there and find somebody from Death Valley traveling to Louisiana to see stuff. Even around here you can't swing a dead nutria by the tail without hitting a tourist.”

An Indian wearing a baseball cap rode up bareback on an Appaloosa and waited to use the phone, staring just to the left of Iry. After a minute, he told Babette good-bye and hung up. The Indian nodded and got down in a puff of red dust. Iry eavesdropped, pretending to count a handful of change. He didn't know what the Indian would say, if he would speak in Navaho or inquire about his sheep herd in guttural tones. After a while, someone on the other end of the line answered, and the Indian said, “Gwen? Did you want two percent or skim milk?”

*   *   *

That afternoon at sundown, he was standing on a marker that covered the exact spot in the desert where four states met. Behind him were booths where Indian women sold jewelry made of aqua rocks and silver. In one booth, he asked a little copper-skinned girl if the items were really made by Indians, and she nodded quickly but did not smile at him. He chose a large necklace for Babette and went back to his Jeep, starting up and driving to the parking lot's exit, trying to decide whether to turn right or left. No one was behind him, so he reached over for the road map, and when he did, he noticed a paper label flying from the necklace like a tiny flag. “Made in India,” it said.

He looked around at the waterless land and licked his lips, thinking of Babette, and the Indians, and the one-armed gal. The West wasn't what he'd thought, and he wanted to go home. He glanced down at the necklace and picked it up. Holding it made him feel like his old self again, authentic beyond belief.

ALSO BY TIM GAUTREAUX

The Next Step in the Dance

Same Place, Same Things

WELDING WITH CHILDREN.
Copyright © 1999 by Tim Gautreaux. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, address Picador USA, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

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Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following publications in which these stories first appeared:
The Atlantic Monthly:
“Welding with Children”;
New York Stories:
“Misuse of Light”;
Story:
“Good for the Soul”;
GQ:
“Easy Pickings”;
Harper's:
“The Piano Tuner”;
Image Magazine:
“The Pine Oil Writers' Conference”;
Ploughshares:
“Resistance”;
Fiction:
“Sorry Blood”;
Epoch:
“Sunset in Heaven”;
Georgia Review:
“Rodeo Parole”;
Zoetrope:
“Dancing with the One-Armed Gal.”

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Gautreaux, Tim.

   Welding with children / Tim Gautreaux.

      p.  cm.

   ISBN 0-312-20308-X (hc)

   ISBN 0-312-26792-4 (pbk)

   1.   Louisiana—Social life and customs—Fiction.  I.   Title.

PS3557.A954W45 1999

813'.54—dc21

99-36020

CIP

eISBN 9781466833937

First eBook edition: November 2012