"Hope you're back in the pink soon, honey," Alice says, getting the giggles.
"We're bad."
"We are," Alice says. "What would our kids think of us?"
The lines around Cash's eyes go soft, and he seems to drift for a moment. She traces the honed ridge of his breastbone with her finger, feeling deeply sad for whatever it is that takes him away, sometimes, at the mention of his family. She would do anything to ease that burden. She finds his hand, which was resting on her waist, and holds it against her lips. "I'm sorry," she says. "For whatever it is."
Cash moves forward to kiss her. He tastes like woodsmoke and the color of leaves. When he touches her breast, she feels the skin of her nipples gather itself in. She is pierced with a sharp, sweet memory of nursing Taylor, and when he puts his mouth there she feels once again that longing to be drained, to give herself away entirely. Slowly Cash moves himself against her, and then very gently into her, and she feels the same longing coming through his body to hers. They rock against each other, holding on, and the birds in the forest raise their voices to drown out the secret of creation.
30
Six Pigs and One Mother
ALICE WAKES TO THE SOUND of voices inside, in the kitchen. Half of Cash appears in the doorway to the porch, his shirttail out, a smile on his face. He holds a spatula in his left hand, poised like a flyswatter. "How do you like your eggs?" he asks.
Alice, feeling confused, looks around as if she might have laid some eggs she's not aware of. "Who's that in your kitchen?"
"Kitty Carlisle."
"Kitty Carlisle lives in Oklahoma?"
"Naw. She's on 'Good Morning America.' "
Alice runs a hand through her hair, trying to get her bearings. She was in some dream with water and furry animals. "What do you need the TV on for?"
Cash shrugs. "No reason. Just for the company, I reckon."
"Well, I'll get up and keep you company." She begins to gather up her limbs, testing to make sure of their four separate locations.
"No, you just set there another minute. I'm going to bring you breakfast in bed. I'll bring your coffee on out, as soon as you tell me 'sunny side up' or 'over easy.' "
She thinks. "Over hard, with the yolk broke, if you really want to know. Lord, breakfast in bed? I reckon if 1 was Kitty Carlisle I'd have me a frilly housecoat to put on."
"I'll bring you my bathrobe," he says, disappearing. Alice licks the roof of her mouth, looking at the leaves all pressed like happy spying faces against the screen. She feels she has died and gone to the Planet of Men Who Cook. Cash returns with an old flannel bathrobe, blue plaid, and settles it on her shoulders. She hugs it around her like a lady in church with a fur stole, and with her free hand accepts a cup of coffee. The first black sip arouses her throat and lungs.
Cash is busy moving things around. He sets a coffee table carefully beside the bed and covers it with plates of eggs, ham, toast, butter, and huckleberry jam. He pulls up a stool on the other side. Alice puts her arms through the sleeves of the bathrobe and sits up on the edge of the bed, facing him, so she won't feel like an invalid.
"I'm not used to being catered to," she says, smiling at her plate. "I'll try to tolerate it, though."
For a while they are quiet, making small clinking sounds with their forks. Cash blows on his coffee. A bird somewhere in the leaves asks, "Chit? Chit? Chit?"
"I been wondering how long a visit you're here for," he says finally.
"Oh, at Sugar's? I don't know. I guess till I wear out my welcome. I didn't really come just to visit Sugar, to tell you the truth. I had some business."
"With family?"
"No, with the Cherokee Nation. I don't know if it's with the Nation, exactly." She cuts into her eggs, which are perfect. Most people don't believe you really want broken yolks, and they won't go through with it; they'll keep it whole and runny for your own good. "I had some dealings to do with Annawake Fourkiller. It's something we have to settle about my daughter and granddaughter." Her heart pounds. She didn't decide to tell Cash, she only knows that she's going to. "I have a little granddaughter that she saw on TV. You know Annawake?"
"Oh, sure. Her Uncle Ledger is the medicine man. You seen him at the stomp dance, didn't you?"
"Sure."
"That little Annawake used to follow him around like a calf." Cash chews his toast. "At the dance, when Ledger would get up to speak, she'd stand right up in front of him and holler out sermons."
Alice finds she can picture this. With Cash, it's easy to get derailed from a confession. "I guess she's going to be the next one, then."
"No, it's somebody younger. I don't know who yet, but they's already picked him out. It starts when you're too young to remember. The medicine man puts the medicine on you, and then when you're older you don't remember it, but it kindly influences how you grow. Later on, you get the training."
"Well, that seems dangerous, don't it? What if the kid that was all picked out to be the next preacher turns out to be a motorcycle hood?"
Cash seems very serious. "That wouldn't happen. The medicine man can tell from the child how they'll be. You don't want one that's real loud, a fighter or anything. You want one that's more quiet."
They return to their breakfast. Alice hears Kitty Carlisle, or someone at any rate, muttering to herself in the kitchen.
"How long were you and your wife married?" she asks.
"Oh, since we was too young to know a hawk from a handsaw. I met her at the stomp dance after I left boarding school. She come from over around Kenwood way." His whole body tilts slightly backward with the pleasure of memory. "Law, I'll tell you, I only started going up there to meet girls, and for the food. They cooked good food at the dances back then: bean balls, squirrel dumpling. Eggs. People went over and stayed all day. They'd come in the wagon and on horses. They'd put up a tent, put up long benches and put a quilt on it and sleep on that. I used to always go early, to play ball."
"Play ball?" Alice asks.
"They play a kind of ball game, before the dance. Did you see that big tall pole with a fish on the top, carved out of wood? Down there in the clearing at the stomp grounds, where the dirt's all beat up underneath."
Alice nods, because her mouth is full. The good thing about Cash is, you can eat big bites while you're listening to him.
"It's girls and women against boys and men. That's how they play. You throw the ball or sling it up there with a stick, and try to hit the fish. It's too hard for little kids and old people. It's kindly serious. I don't know how to explain it, quite. Keeping your body in good shape is part of being a good person, you could say. But back then I paid too much attention to trying to be the best one. Ever time you throw the ball and hit the fish, your side gets a point."
"Don't the boys always win out?"
"No, ma'am, they don't. You should see some of them girls. Now Annawake, she's a killer. And my wife was. That's how we met, playing ball. I won a point, and then she did, we went on like that for a whole game, so we figured out we'd have to get married."
Alice laughs. "Seems like a better reason than most kids have."
"I quit going for a while, after she died. I didn't tell you, but the other night, when we went over together, that's the first I been for a while."
"Why's that, Cash?"
"I couldn't tell you. I was gone away, and then after I come back it seemed too hard. It reminded me of the funerals."
"They have funerals at the stomp grounds?"
"Well, sure. They carry the casket around the fire three times, the same direction as you go when you're dancing, and then they carry it walking backwards, three times. I guess you're going back out of life the same door as you come in. And then you go to the cemetery for the burying. There's buckets of tea outside the cemetery, so when you go out you can wash your face and hands in the tea to wash off the grieving, and leave it there."
Cash looks sunk in misery. Alice says gently, "It don't seem like you left it all behind."
/> "Well, maybe they was too much of it come all at once. Four year ago, we had three funerals in the same season: my mama, well of course she was old. Then my wife, of the cancer. And then my oldest girl, Alma. She drove her car off a bridge and landed it upside down in the Arkansas River. She had a little bitty girl, when she done that. She left the baby behind that night with her sister, the one that run off with a no-count boy to Tulsa and don't talk to me no more. I kept on calling her up for a while. She was mean as she could be, but I had to call, because I was worried about Alma's baby. Lacey, her name was. But durn if one day she didn't up and give that baby away. She goes to a bar one night and hands her over to some girl passing through in a car."
Alice feels the breath knocked out of her, exactly as if she had fallen off a roof. She can't pull in air.
"The younger people have got bad problems, I'll be the first one to tell you. Monday mornings the jails are full of 'em. A lot of these kids think liquor is made for one purpose, to get drunk as quick as you can."
"How do you know she gave the baby away?"
"She told me. How do you like that? She tells me, 'Pop, I'm moving to Ponca City, could I use your truck next weekend? I done give Alma's baby away.' I felt so discouraged I just packed up my truck that same weekend and drove out of here. I couldn't stand to look at my own kin."
Alice puts a hand on her chest and gets her breath back. She has to say it before she thinks twice. "Cash, my daughter has that girl."
Cash puts down his coffee cup and looks at Alice. He doesn't for an instant disbelieve her.
"That's what I come here for," she tells him. "Annawake saw Taylor and the little girl on TV telling the story of how she got adopted. Annawake figured some way she belonged to the Cherokees, and she tracked them down. Taylor run off. They're living on the lam now so she won't have to give her up. She loves her, Cash. My daughter's been as good a mother to that child as ever you're going to find."
"Lord God in Heaven," Cash replies.
"I can't figure out what to think," Alice says.
"No, me neither."
"My brain's gone off somewhere. Are you fixing to be mad? Because I have to tell you where I stand. My daughter hasn't done a thing in the world wrong. She's protecting her child, like any living mother would do, man or beast."
"No," Cash says. "She ain't done wrong. I'm just trying to picture that Lacey's somewhere all in one piece. Walking, I guess. Lord, what am I saying? Walking, talking, picking up sticks. She'd be six and a half."
"She's not a Lacey. Not for love nor money. Her name's Turtle."
"Well, what kind of a name is that?"
"What kind of a name is Able Swimmer?" Alice fires back. "Or Stand Hornbuckle, or, or Flester Dreadfulwater!"
Cash ignores her. "It just don't seem real," he says. "After I come back here from Wyoming a little while ago, I talked to them girls down at Child Welfare about trying to find her. They said they might have a bite on the line, but I didn't hold for much hope. Lord God in Heaven. Us coming together like this, not even knowing."
He stares at Alice while the trees grow outside.
"Letty set this all up," he says. "She must have knowed."
"No, she didn't, Cash. Not a soul knew my side of it but Annawake. I didn't even tell Sugar."
"Well, how in the world?"
"I don't know," Alice says. "I'm suspicious of miracles. There's near about always something behind them."
"Sugar didn't know?"
"No. I swear on the Bible."
"I figured this business with you and me was something Sugar and Letty cooked up. Otherwise, Letty wouldn't have knowed you was fair game."
"Then it was Annawake," Alice says suddenly. "It was. She had to have done this. She said she'd been working on Plan B, I'll swan, I could tan her hide! She's trying to find a way around doing her rightful duty by Turtle."
Cash looks wary. "What is her rightful duty?"
Alice stares back, comprehending his position. "Nothing's settled, is it?"
Cash lays his knife across the edge of his plate. "No. Nothing's settled."
Alice has spent all Sunday afternoon with her teeth clenched and unkind intentions in her heart, hunting down Annawake. She feels like one of those Boston Stranglers you can read about. The first thing she did when she came home to Sugar was spill the whole story, start to finish, leaving out only the details of last night with Cash, which were nobody's business. Sugar agreed she ought to give Annawake a good talking to, for meddling. They enlisted Roscoe to drive over to Annawake's place in Tahlequah. Sugar sat in the cab between Alice and Roscoe, squeezing Alice's hand as if she were having a baby instead of about to lose one.
In Tahlequah, Sugar and Roscoe waited in the cab while Alice knocked on the door and talked to a heavyset girl holding a baby, who said Annawake was down at the Nation offices. They drove down the highway to Nation Headquarters, only to find the place deserted. There was one secretary in the whole place, who pointed them to Annawake's office across the street. It was locked. Alice tried to peer in, but saw only houseplants. She festered in the truck for nearly an hour, waiting, before deciding to drive back to talk again to the heavyset girl, who seemed, in all fairness, just as sweet as she could be. She said Annawake had come and gone again, fishing this time, down at her uncle's houseboat. Alice climbed back in the cab and surprised Sugar and Roscoe by claiming to know the way to Ledger Fourkiller's. When they dropped her off at the path running down to the river, they offered to wait, but Alice waved them on.
"I know my way. If she's not here, I'll just walk on back."
"Well, honey, that's miles and miles," Sugar had protested before they drove off. "And dark. You're liable to run into a skunk."
But Alice feels determined as she sets off down the path, skunk or no skunk. If she ran into one right now, he'd have to take his chances. She doesn't really expect to strangle Annawake once she finds her, but she hasn't ruled out the possibility.
Annawake has given up the pretense of fishing. Nothing down there is hungry, and to be honest, neither is she; it seems reasonable to call a truce. She swirls her legs in the water, watching the reflected stars tremble in each other's company. The water is warmer than the air, and moves against her skin as if it cared for her. She tries not to think how long it has been since she was hugged by someone who wasn't a relative.
She hears steps on the footbridge, or rather, feels their vibrations approaching, the way a spider knows the commerce of her web. "Ledger?" she calls out.
A human silhouette appears in the darkness at the edge of the porch, and it isn't Ledger Fourkiller. Smaller, meaner, not at home. Her heart thumps.
"Well! If it's not Miss Lonelyhearts."
Annawake knows the voice. Thinks hard.
"It was you, wasn't it? You set up me and Cash."
"Alice Greer?"
She approaches as slowly as a dog outside its territory, until she is standing five feet away, hands on her hips, both angry and hesitant.
"You're mad? I saw you two giggling like kids at the Sanitary Market. I thought you'd be sending me a thank-you card."
"That was a sly, sneak-handed business you did. You figured I'd take a shine to Cash and wouldn't want to take his baby away from him."
Annawake feels this woman's anger sharpened like a hunting knife. "Did you ever think it might work out the other way? That he might like you that much?"
"I don't think that's what you were aiming for."
"Can we sit down and talk it over?"
Alice hovers for a moment the way a female dragonfly will, before committing her future, laying her eggs on the water. Finally she plunges. Sits and takes off her shoes.
Annawake paddles her legs slowly back and forth. "To tell you the truth, Alice, I couldn't tell you what I was thinking. I don't think I was thinking, for once. I just followed my gut. I thought my Indian-white relations project needed a human touch."
"And me and Cash went like lambs to the slaughter."
&n
bsp; "I didn't think it would take you so long to find out what you two have in common. I figured you'd tell him right away."
"Well, maybe us old folks don't just jump into things the way you kids do."
"Sounds to me like just the opposite. You were so busy jumping into things you forgot to state your business."
Unbelievably, Annawake hears Alice swallow a giggle.
"I guess I overstepped," she tells Alice. "I'm sorry."
In the very long silence, an owl calls from upriver. Annawake can picture its wide-open eyes, hunting. Stealing scraps of sight from the darkness.
"You probably didn't mean no harm."
"Believe me, I had a lot of help from Letty."
"That Letty," Alice agrees, with grudging humor. "She'd stick her nose in a grave if she thought there was still hope of warm gossip."
The adrenaline that rushed Annawake's limbs when she first saw anger in the dark is receding now, leaving her body with a longing to stretch. She arches her back. "Every town probably needs a Letty," she says. "Somebody to lubricate things, and then count backwards from nine every time a couple of newlyweds have a baby."
"Margie Spragg. That's who it was in Pittman. She was the phone operator for the longest time. It about killed her when they put in the dial tone."
"It's a public service, what those women do. Sometimes people have communication problems with their own hearts."
"Well," Alice says. "Nothing's settled, still."
"I know."
"Taylor's on her way. She called me from a truck stop in Denver."
"Is she?" Annawake feels curiously apprehensive. For months she hasn't been able to recall Taylor's appearance, having met her so briefly, but now, suddenly, she does. The fine-featured, trusting face, the long dark hair, the way she held perfectly still while listening. She remembers Taylor standing at the window curled forward with animal fear, and she imagines her in a telephone booth in Denver, curled forward with the receiver under a sheet of dark hair.
"I figured you'd be jumping for joy," Alice says.
"Oh, I'm not much of a jumper. I oftentimes have communication problems with my heart."
"Letty ever try to help you out on that?"
Annawake holds her hand in the air. "Don't even ask. Letty Hornbuckle has tried to fix me up with everything in this county that stands on two legs to pee. Unfortunately, that's not my problem."