Yellowcake (38 page)

R
YLAND, WAKE UP
," Rosy is saying.

He opens his eyes. "I wasn't asleep."

"Yes, you were."

"I was resting my eyes."

"Oh. The girls and I are going to church."

"Today?"

"It's All Souls Day. Did you forget?"

"We're going to get some lucky stiffs out of purgatory," Sandi says. He and Rosy have been watching the girls this afternoon while Eddy helps Sue with an open house.

"You want to come?" Rosy says.

"No." He has a two-ton weight on his chest today.

"What are these?" Pooh calls from the kitchen, a note of hysteria in her voice.

"Get your coats," Rosy says. "It's chilly. Fish sticks. They're defrosting."

"Fish sticks! Do we have to have fish sticks? I'm not eating them," Pooh whines.

"You better change your attitude," Sandi says, her voice trailing off. The back door slams.

The kids had been watching the cartoon channel. Ryland hits the
OFF
button on the remote. Down the street Lady Finger barks angrily. Been barking. All afternoon. The dog is lonely. Used to be she could count on him every day to come down and say hello on his way to visit his pals at the cemetery.

He stares at the plywood children in the ash tree and runs his finger over a mole on his arm that has started to go funny. He's been sleeping here in the living room for the last several nights. For a while after Sam called—that strange, silent phone call—Ryland kept dreaming that he called again. At least that's what Rosy says. That it was a dream. But he's not sure she's right. Rosy has been taking sleeping pills. Neither of them has been sleeping well. It's very possible she sleeps too heavily to know. Several times he struggled out of a dream to what he's certain was the last ring of the phone.

So he's camping out in the living room, closer to the phone, hoping Sam will call again. He's left a few messages at the marina in Florida, but if Sam has gotten them, he's not returning the calls. He wishes the man would check in. He doesn't like the way they parted, especially after that strange phone call.

Ryland figured Sam was on the reservation or wherever Alice is. But then Rosy tried to find out, mostly because Ryland's new bedroom drives her crazy. She wants to get back to normal. It upsets her notions of order, him sleeping in the living room. She says it upsets his sleep cycles. Probably true. Nights on the sofa he mostly just dozes, days in his chair he dozes some more. Just after the phone call she asked around and found out that Sam had left the reservation.

The ocean in his throat heaves. He swallows, and his eyes tear.

He should have gone to church with them, done his part to pray the dead free. He just doesn't want to miss Sam if he calls.

Where is he? It has been almost two weeks since that night. The call left Ryland feeling turned inside out. Not at all like Sam to do a thing like that. They listened to each other's silence for half an hour before the battery on his portable went dead.

The ash leaves have turned. Skinny spears shroud the plywood children, like a yellow feather coat. Soon the leaves will drop, and Rosy will take the wooden children down so they don't dry and crack in the winter air.

He closes his eyes. The pooch barks furiously. One block beyond her, the skeleton crew is waiting. Woody has joined their ranks. He and Rosy sent a check to Woody's wife a month ago. Wanted to help with the funeral expenses. The check came back within a week. Rosy doesn't know this. Ryland got the mail that day. Woody's wife probably doesn't know it either. He doubts she would have returned it. Ryland is pretty sure the girl sent it back. Becky Atcitty, whose birth they toasted twenty-five years ago. Funny how things turn out. She has no use for him, that girl. That's okay. He doesn't have much use for himself.

Ryland tore the check up and put cash in an envelope, addressed it to Woody, and sent it without a return address. The cash didn't come back.

Ryland would like to see that man. Woodrow. He would like to ask if Woody holds him responsible. Didn't seem to that day when Ryland and Sam visited. But maybe he was just being polite. Navajos. Never could read them. If Woody holds him responsible for—everything. For all the mistakes they made every minute of the day on the reservation...
Self-pity, Ryland, is a sin. Go to your room and get rid of it.

Down the block the pooch rat-a-tat-tats.

If Woody holds—held—him responsible, then probably he is. Woody was a pretty straight shooter. Seemed to be, anyway. Except Ryland doesn't really trust "seemed to be." He tries to think of the times in his life when what seemed to be actually was. Never. There are always surprises in the shadows. He plays with the funny mole on his arm.

He just wishes somebody would tell him if he is or if he isn't. Responsible. He can't seem to figure it out on his own. On this, the day of atonement, it would be a good thing to know.

He closes his eyes, sleepiness tugging. Little flea-head. Little barker. In his mind's eye he can see his driver's license on her side of the fence.

Poor little thing can't help but bark. She has no brain.

He should go see his pals.

He begins to drift into that half-dream state he knows too well, thinking it would be nice to get up and take a walk, then doing it in his mind, pulling his cart behind him, thinking as he does that if it were true sleep, he could leave the cart behind, as he sometimes does in those rare liberating but disorienting dreams when he steps back in time and has self-sufficient lungs. But in the half-dream the cart goes with him everywhere. It's autumn, the tail end. The sidewalk will be messy with drying apples. The cart will catch in goo. Almost, he can smell it. Almost, it smells like applesauce. Crabapples rotting under foot.

Bury me in applesauce. Bury me in butter.

They buried you in Grace Cemetery, Mama. I couldn't go.

He jerks, waking, tears stinging his eyes.

He wipes them away.

He takes a drink of water from the glass on the TV tray next to him, then switches on the tube, tuning it to the black-and-white channel, muting the sound. It's almost five o'clock. He can tell by the noise of traffic on Cactus. Every day the traffic revs up at this time, and every year the revving gets louder—louder cars and more, so many more. The house fills with the smell of exhaust this time of day, and in the living room, which is closest to the street, it never goes away completely.

The mole. Rosy wants him to have it burned off, but he's decided to keep it. See what happens. He's had moles go funny for years. He's betting nothing will happen. He seems to live in a strange vacuum where things go wrong but never wrong enough.

Sam has the skin of a Norseman, thin and white, but he never had trouble with moles, though he was in the sun just as much as Ryland. There, too, Sam beat the odds.

Rosy'll give him trouble about this mole.
I warned you, Ryland. How many times did I warn you not to take your shirt off and get burned to a crisp?

Guilty. Guilty as charged.

The cemetery dog is singing. Exhaust coats his tongue.

Apple guts squish under his shoes. He doesn't have the energy to change direction. Pick up your feet, soldier.

The back door slams. He hears one of the kids say, "He's asleep." He opens his eyes.

"He's not asleep," Rosy calls from the kitchen. "He's just resting his eyes."

He closes his mouth, licks his dry lips, pushing the oxygen tube against his nose. Pooh perches on the couch opposite him.

"Guess what, Grandpa." He straightens up. A lace beanie is bobby-pinned to the top of her hair. "I got two out."

He clears his throat. "Two what?"

"Two souls. Out of purgatory."

"Two. That's good."

"What you have to do is go in and out of church six times and say six Our Fathers, six Hail Marys, and six Glory Bes each time."

"Well, that sounds easy," he says.

"It's not so easy. It takes a long time. You have to do that for each soul. Next year I'm getting three out. Guess what else?"

"What?"

"We get pizza for dinner because we were good at church."

"Oh, happy day."

"That dog," Rosy says, coming into the room, still in her car coat and holding Teri. "You'd think it was Friday."

"TGIF," Ryland says.

"What does that mean?" Sandi says from the doorway.

"That means," Rosy says, "that every Friday the dog's owners celebrate the end of the week and don't do what they should do, which is take care of their dog. I wonder if something's wrong over there."

"Eh, the dog barks at the wind," Ryland says.

"The wind is picking up. I think it might storm," Rosy says. "Ry, I don't have enough hands, so I'm going to take the girls with me to pick up pizza. Can you watch Teri for half an hour?" She puts the child down. "Come on, honey, let's take your coat and hat off." But Teri runs to him laughing, out of Rosy's reach. "Ry, take her coat and hat off," she says, heading for the back door. "Let's go, you two."

Teri slouches against Ryland's leg, watching the silent TV. He unfastens the strap under her chin—her cap, a woolly blue helmet. He unbuttons her coat. "Want some juice? Let's get you some juice."

They go for juice and look for one of her books, then settle in, he in his chair, she on her footstool reading to him. The dog's yapping syncopates the rattle of Teri's nonsense. Yes, it's irritating, the yapping. On the TV Claude Rains, all bandaged up, is terrorizing his partner. Ryland turns the mute off and the sound up, trying to drown out Lady Finger. Rains says, "If you try and escape by the window, I shall follow you, and no one in the world can save you."

Teri frowns while she reads, her voice quarrelsome, high-pitched, a little screechy, the way she gets when she's tired. She didn't have a nap. He puts his hand on her head. She looks mournfully at him, letting the book sag, scooting and leaning against his calf, her head against his knee.

Has always been an irritation, that dog's barking.

Outside the front window, the wind is undressing the ash tree. Ryland closes his eyes, resting his head on the wing of his chair. Rains says, "Would you mind getting the car? It's a bit cold outside when you have to go about naked."

He can make the barking stop. Lady Finger and he have an understanding. When she sees him, she shuts up. Over that dog, he has some sway.

He begins to drift, walking in his mind, pulling the cart. His nose itches. The wind will be blowing smoke in from the Four Corners Power Plant. His nose would like to register a complaint. Why not?

In the south, smoke always fills the sky. Smoke from Four Corners, from Navajo Mines, and, an eon ago, from his own place, the mill on the reservation, where he used to walk along the garden path between the acid leach and the clear, cool water. It makes him dizzy even to think about trying to stay balanced on the narrow strip of land.

In dream he turns north, away from the smoke and toward an irritation.

He can't see her yet. Can't see the gleam in her eye, but he knows it very well. From the dog's point of view, anything can happen. Possibility abounds. This is what he does for the little Lady Finger. Big dog on path opens up a world of possibility for the cemetery dog. His cart wheels keep a rhythm: pow pow pow. Slo-mo machine gun, rat-a-tat. There's a throbbing at the back of his ears and in his neck. He looks straight ahead toward the things he can't see.

The barking stops. Has she seen him? She must have. He can't see her. He savors the sudden quiet. Does she fly in a tizzy up and down behind her fence? Is she furious? He pulls air as hard as he can.

Behind him a car is slowly approaching. He can hear the hush of tires sneaking down the hot pavement, and he can hear the engine. In his throat a tickle. He swallows, licks his lips, lips cracked and swollen because he breathes through his mouth. He swallows again, but the tickle bucks in his throat. Don't cough.

The cemetery dog has backed away. Big dog coming, big dog coming. The car flanks him. He burns with the effort not to cough. "Ryland," somebody whispers, and the ocean heaves, the cart skitters away, and he is falling, a torrent of hard nothing rising in him, behind it the thing that never comes, and just before he wakes up, he catches a glimpse of his own face on a rectangular card staring up at him from the grass, his ten-years-younger face without the bruised skin and blue lips, the man with a license to drive.

"Ryland!" Rosy is saying. "You missed it!"

"Missed what?" He opens his eyes.

"Say it again, honey."

Teri leans against his leg looking at him, eyes milky, cheeks flushed, as if she's about to cry. "What are you watching?" Rosy says.

Just now a pair of pants without a body is spooking the village people.

"Ah, honey," Rosy says, picking up the remote and flipping to the cartoon channel. "Is that a scary movie? Ryland, I'm not leaving you to babysit anymore if you're going to fall asleep."

"Teri talked!" Pooh yells.

"I wasn't asleep."

"Then what'd she say?"

"She said..."

"Shh." Rosy says to Pooh. "Don't tell him. He doesn't deserve to know if he's going to sleep through it."

Teri leans against him, both arms pressing into his thigh, the tears retreating, that cunning spark he loves moving in. "What'd you say? What'd she say?"

"I'm not gone thirty minutes, and you fall asleep."

"I wasn't asleep."

Rosy tosses her head, turns, and walks into the kitchen, the older girls following.

"What'd you say?" he whispers.

Teri laughs, rocking back and forth, his chair swaying with her. The back door slams. "Guess what, Daddy," Sandi says.

"What?" Eddy says.

"Your daughter just said her first words, but your dad missed it," Rosy says. "She was trying to have a conversation and he was asleep in his chair."

"She said—" Pooh says.

"Shh," Rosy says.

Then, after a beat, Eddy says, "She did? Hey Ter, come here."

"If I hadn't come back, we would've all missed it," Rosy says.

"Say it again," Ryland whispers.