Yellowcake (3 page)

It's a little after nine o'clock. He makes coffee, then takes the carton of eggs from the refrigerator and breaks three into a bowl, whisks them with a fork. From the dish drainer he takes the frying pan, puts it on the burner, and starts the heat. It's one of those no-stick fancy pans Alice left here. While it's heating, he switches on the little battery-operated radio. Radio Marti. Cuban jazz. He's been lucky on these clear nights. The station comes in good. He opens the cupboard over the stove and takes down his gray tackle box, puts it on the table, opens the lid. He also takes down packets of feathers and synthetic foams.

When the eggs are ready, he stands over them, eating from the pan and looking over the tackle box on the table. It's a tiered box with hooks, eyes, and colorful threads—shimmering greens, corals, and silvers—in the top tier. His tools are in the tier below, vises, pliers, bobbins, threaders, and bone—actually plastic sticks that look like bone. Fish bone.

Finished with the eggs, he pours himself a cup of coffee and sits down, taking ten sticks from the box and arranging them lengthwise in front of him. Twelve inches long, they will make spines for tempting lures to attract big fish that are easily tricked by flash and color. A flash of silver, a streak of coral—it isn't necessary, Sam knows, to make a pretty fly. The right presentation of color, a fly well tied, light and sturdy. A fat marlin will blush when teased with the right fly.

He takes out vise, wire, and epoxy. It's big-fish season. For little fish he'll use single hooks and tie on feathers from guinea hens, mallards, ostrich, hair from elk, deer, rabbit. But he needs bulk for big flies, so he uses synthetic foams with names like secret streamer hair, crystal flash, and ice chenille. Mostly Sam ties flies by touch. His eyes can't focus on the fine close-up work anymore, but he has always been able to trust his hands. At the uranium mill he kept the machinery in repair, working blind when an ore roaster blew, feeling into the parts of the machinery for fissures and flaws. It was what he was good at, and now he's good at this, fly-tying. Jorge Molina will give him a dollar a fly for little flies and two-fifty for the big ones. People want Sam's flies, according to Molina. Jorge says Sam has built himself a little reputation.

From another compartment, he takes ten more sticks, these four inches long. He dabs epoxy near the top of the long sticks, lays the smaller sticks across them, pressing down, then gets up, finishes his coffee, and pours more from the pot. He opens the freezer. The top shelf is still full of yellowfin, finless now, gutted and cleaned, chopped into steaks, each in its own baggie, the baggies crusty with freezer burn. He and Alice brought in the big fish together two seasons ago. He's saving the steaks for her.

From the bottom shelf, he takes out a bottle of Stoli. He prefers gin, but he ran out today ... Yesterday. One of the days. This bottle was a gift from Tom Leroi, who has a little yacht three docks over. Last weekend Leroi caught a one-hundred-and-fifty-pound marlin with one of Sam's fancy hand-tied flies and showed his gratitude with the Stoli. Sam pours a couple inches of vodka into his coffee, leaves the bottle on the counter.

He's been thinking it might be time to take a trip out west. He hasn't been back since the divorce from Lily. He has an excuse to go. Yesterday he got an invitation to Maggie Mahoney's wedding in the mail. On the bottom of it, Ryland had penned a message that made Sam smile:
GET ON THE DAMN PLANE AND COME TO THE DAMN WEDDING.

Rosy sent a photo at Christmas. Ryland's eyes were sunken and tired, his lips blue-rimmed. Sam should go see Ryland.

Money is an obstacle. Sam doesn't have much on hand. He hasn't been keeping up, hasn't been to Molina's to sell flies in six, seven weeks. He keeps his cash under the mattress, but the stash has been dwindling. He sends money to Alice. Last month he sent an envelope full of twenties. He sends the money for the kid, their kid, Delmar, though the kid's hardly a kid anymore. Last Sam heard, his son was in jail.

To get money, he needs to sell a shitload of flies. He's been making them steadily. He has grocery bags stuffed full of flies just getting moldy in the boat. He could go to Molina, sell his inventory, and get cash, but Moley might give him trouble. He doesn't like to keep stock in the storeroom. Molina's motto: "Keep people wanting 'em, they'll keep paying."

"Moley," Sam says, shaking his head. He picks up one of the skeletons, testing the epoxy's hold, which is strong. Outside, the cocktail hour is getting louder. Somewhere a motorboat buzzes, and the floor under him begins to buck gently with the churning waves. On the dock very close to his window, a girl says, "Shut up," then says it again, "Shu-ut up." She is laughing, and a male voice is talking low, teasing.

Alice is in her midforties. Forty-four? Forty-five? He can't remember. Women at that age frequently start needing a little excitement. Last time he saw her, she'd added a layer to her hipless hips, and her hair had long strands of gray here and there.

He winds the thread tightly where the bones cross, pinching down, leaving a thread loose on one side, catching its mate, looping in a spiral across the T-bone to the end, affixing a hook, front hook down, tying off, catching the loose thread and spiraling, a tight wind, across the other side of the T, affixing the other hook, tying off, sipping the coffee, cool now from the frigid vodka. He works in a line, ten Ts, ten flies, he is a human factory, and the tide is coming in, his house shivering. In Cuba tonight the jazz is live, piano and horn. Static. Then music.

Fifty-six minutes into it, he has ten synthetic mackerel that will hold their own against any live bait. He stretches his arms, ripping through the stale cabin air that always seems to cocoon around him when he concentrates. He just made twenty-five dollars, double his hourly wage at the uranium mill.

He made it if Molina will pay it.

S
UMMER WEEKENDS
when there's a little wind, Becky Atcitty and her friend Arnold Gardner go to Morgan Lake to watch the windsurfers. The Saturday after her visit with the Mahoneys, Arnold picks Becky up in his new Saab, and they cross the San Juan River, heading up Power Plant Road, windows open. Becky breathes deeply, hungry for air that isn't contaminated by the stench of illness. Six months ago, when her father relapsed, she gave up her apartment in Farmington and moved back to her parents' house in the valley just outside of town to help her mother. Becky's mother doesn't drive, and now her father is too weak, so Becky spends much of her free time chauffeuring her father to doctor appointments and running errands.

Morgan Lake is an artificial lake at the base of Four Corners Power Plant. The water supplies coolant for the plant, which creates a wonderland of artificial weather on the mesa. Cottony white smoke blooms from the stacks, painting the sky with clouds on a cloudless day, and even when there isn't a hint of breeze anywhere else, something magical and warm stirs the water, which in turn massages the air over the lake, making windsurfers happy. It wasn't always so. Becky is twenty-five. When she was a little girl in the early seventies, the clouds coming from the power plant were black, filled with toxic particles that made her cough, and nobody went to the lake. Now the stacks are filtered, the fish thrive, and the scenery is easy on the eyes.

Arnold pulls off the road and onto the lake's bank, which is baked clay in the dry season but turns the texture of wet cement when it rains. A mud-plastered pickup is embedded in the bank near the water, buried to its hubcaps. It's been there since last August. Today a group of surfers are milling around the truck, which holds their gear and coolers of beer.

There's no shade on this side of the lake, just gray reeds and scrubby trees at the water's edge. Arnold parks near some boulders, and they get out, leaving the Saab doors open. Bob Marley and the Wailers blare from the tape player. As a tribute to the tenth anniversary of Marley's death in May 1981, Arnold has been listening to nothing but the Wailers all summer. Becky has now memorized everything Bob Marley ever wrote.

They sit on the ground, propped against the boulders. Surfers are tossing around bottles of sunscreen, rubbing lotion on themselves and on each other's backs. "That one," Arnold says, watching a longhaired guy in baggy white trunks head into the water with his board, his back a perfect, muscled V, the trunks roped low on his thin hips. As he gets far enough into the water for the wind to catch the sail and for him to climb on the board, the trunks turn sort of transparent, so that even from a distance Becky and Arnold can see sculpted butt and chiseled thighs.

"That one?" Becky says. "That guy's why you should join the gym. He works there. He's really funny. Even when he's training people he watches himself in the mirror. I mean constantly. Actually, he's just your type."

"Do I have a type?"

"You definitely have a type. You just don't get any action." Arnold sighs audibly. "Which is completely your fault," she adds.

"Grr."

Any local action, she could say, but doesn't. Arnold's the king of one-night stands "abroad"—abroad being at least two hundred miles in any direction from Farmington and the reservation. He'll come back from Albuquerque or Denver, moody and sullen about barroom trysts. On home ground he might as well be a monk.

"Why is it my fault?"

"Because you don't try."

"Yeah, like you try."

"I've tried."

"Sure you have."

"Anyway, who has time to try?"

Arnold leans forward, squinting at badly sunburned Ricky Longacre, the quarterback on their high school team seven years ago, whose arms are longer than his legs and whose mouth is foul. "That one," he says.

"For you."

"For you."

She raises her chin, as if considering, then says, "Too red."

Arnold's dimple—he has only one, and he complains that it makes him look lopsided—creases his broad cheek. "See," he says, "you're prejudiced." He breaks off some squares of Hershey's chocolate from a king-sized bar and hands them to her. "To me color doesn't matter. Me, I'm democratic."

Becky laughs. "Sure you are."

"So what'd you find out about Mr. Zahnee?" Arnold says.

"I could not find any evidence that he's married." A promising specimen, Harrison Zahnee, opened a checking account at the bank a few weeks ago. Becky is a loan officer at the First National, and Arnold's a security guard. She found out that Mr. Zahnee has just taken a job at the college as a Navajo language specialist. "He's got a single-party checking account. He didn't mark anything for marital status, but his beneficiary is somebody named Carlee Zahnee."

"There you go," Arnold says.

"Yeah, but he didn't put anything under relationship. She might not be his wife."

"Oh, please." He peers at her out of the corner of his eye, his lip curled in an Elvis snarl.

"Don't be mean," she says. He smiles and looks at the lake.

Despite Becky's claim that she's tired of being terminally single, Arnold says she unconsciously chooses married guys—the last two were married—because she's afraid of real involvement.

Becky met Arnold her sophomore year in high school, ten years ago. He had just transferred from an all-Indian boarding school in Albuquerque. The first day of class, their homeroom teacher asked the students to introduce themselves and say a little about their hobbies. Half the room listed fellowship in various local churches as an interest. Fruitland is a churchy community. Becky's mother was raised there, the youngest daughter of Baptist missionaries. Becky's father follows the Navajo Way. Delia agreed to marry Woody only on condition that their children be raised Baptist.

When it was Arnold's turn to introduce himself, he announced that he belonged to the church of Cecil B. De Mille. Becky had no idea who or what that was. When she found out, she began paying attention to the weird new guy who sat in the back of the room and who always said something off the subject. She craved anything Hollywood. The only movies she ever saw were the ones Aunt Alice occasionally took her to—
Star Wars, Blade Runner.
At school they sometimes showed uplifting old movies like
Seven Brides for Seven Brothers
and
Paint Your Wagon.
When she could, Becky bought movie magazines, hiding them in her locker.

She'd never met anybody like Arnold. He seemed to know so much. He was not her type. He was buttery and soft. She liked athletes and had a crush on a hurdler who was as graceful as a cougar. The cougar she watched, but Arnold she hung out with. Whenever she thought she could get away with it, she'd skip her Wednesday night youth fellowship meetings to go to Arnold's and watch movies. He had a VCR and a good collection. He especially loved Kurosawa and anything Eastwood. He could recite the entire soundtrack from
Dirty Harry
and
A Fistful of Dollars.

Four windsurfers are dipping in and out of Morgan Lake. Power plant machinery percolates a rhythmic metallic breath. The air smells a little like chlorine—some sort of cleansing chemical coming from the plant.

Arnold breaks off more chocolate and offers it, but she waves it away. A battered maroon station wagon is speeding along the road toward them. It veers suddenly onto the dirt shoulder, dust rolling behind it. The car slows, pulling off onto the bank about a hundred yards away. The car doors open. "Mmm, mmm," Arnold says. "Aim for the heart, Ramon."

"Don't even think about it," Becky says. Her cousin Delmar has just gotten out of the passenger's side. He looks in their direction, shading his eyes with both hands. He's with a white girl who looks familiar. The girl pulls a baby from a car seat in the back. Delmar opens the back door on the passenger's side, sticks his head inside, and a minute later a little boy climbs out, immediately running for the water. Delmar runs after and picks him up, swinging him as if to toss him in, and the boy screams.

"I want hair that color," Arnold says. Delmar's hair, the color of a shiny penny, gleams in the sun. "Those kids his?"

"Not that I know of. Let's go."