All the Water Yet to Come
Page Lambert| Fiction Award Winner
The Basque Grandmother, Mexican Village, December 16, 1811
In a small town stranded between the flat basins of the Chihuahua Desert and the mountainous broadleaf woodlands that flanked the desert, a strong-limbed woman who would someday be known as Amatxi, the Grandmother, lit the morning fire to roast the day’s coffee beans. The monsoons had not come that summer and winter had arrived on the dusty throat of a parched fall. Even the howls of the wolves, with their great tufted cheeks, had grown hoarse as they prowled the edges of the village. But this day, heavy storm clouds hid the mountains and the chickens puffed their feathers for warmth.
After six years in the village, the other women still teased Anna when she came to the well to draw her day’s ration of sandy water. “La Lobo,” they sniggered, “why do you have such a long nose?” They did not know that tucked in her bodice was a faded photo of a long-nosed mother, and that in her country such a nose was a sign of beauty—of Basque blood and strong will. But her mother’s bones were buried across the ocean. Her father’s too. She no longer dwelled in their Vasco homeland. She missed the solid planks of her grandmother’s kitchen table and the salty taste of her marmitako stew. Now she had only thin broth and three-legged chairs that wobbled, a husband with a nose always in the clouds, and a nearly grown son who dreamed of crossing the mountains to find his destiny.
This day, she decided, it was her destiny to plod barefoot across the earthen floor of their small adobe, a floor which she herself had formed of mud and straw and manure, then tamped and hardened with the red blood of an old hollow-backed ewe that met the knife their first day in this desert village, then fed them until the Feast of the Assumption. Once, Marton talked of moving them to the cooler, higher mountains, but still they lived in the hot basin with the yucca and the agave and the wolves. “When we move,” he would say over and over, but it was only talk.
Today, it appeared their son’s destiny was to sleep away the morning on the pallet next to the wall where his father’s saber and chahakua hung. Empty chahakua, for the man and nearly grown boy had drained every last drop of wine from the goatskin. A slight smile curled Santiago’s lips as he slept. Every once in a while she heard a little sound of pleasure rise from between the hairs of his baby-fine mustachios. She walked past him and picked up three stale tortillas, then went to the doorway and stood for a moment. She looked to the east but the sun was hidden, and the western hills had lost their ridges in a thick horizon. A storm was coming—a blessing from the desert
Marton had already risen. He sat on an upturned stump with his sticking knife in one hand and a sharpening stone in the other. A fire burned under a large vat of water. It was a good day to butcher. A quartered hog would cool quickly. She went outside and scattered the tortillas to the chickens roosting in the yard. Gathering an armful of husks and corn cobs, she tossed them to a burro resting in the stingy protection of an ocotillo—all but one cob. From around the corner of the adobe came the scavenging hog, hungry from a diet of meager scraps, but fat enough to butcher. The pig stopped by her husband for a minute, his ears pricked lazily at the click and scrape of the knife blade as Marton honed it on the sharpening stone.
“Soon, the wolves will be fighting over your ears,” he said to the pig, his voice soft, as if to soothe. “And the earth will be red with your blood.” He spit on the stone and his hand moved in a slow circle and the stone caressed the knife blade and she remembered the feel of her husband’s hands on her haunches the night before. Love and dying, she thought, were two very similar things.
The animal rooted at her feet, his gristly snout snorting and sniffing. He raised his bristly head and his small smart eyes found her hand. “Today,” she said to the animal, letting him take the corn, “you, too, will meet your destiny.” Then she scolded the low-slung dog who had roused himself from where he slept near the corn crib to nip at the hog’s cloven heels. “Leave him alone. Even a skinny pig should have peace on his last day.”
Turning back into the one-room adobe, she whispered loudly “Wake up!” to Santiago, but he only rolled over, flinging an arm across his eyes.
The dream was a pleasurable one—he had crossed the mountains to the land of the faraway north and now he rested. A young woman lay beside him who would bear his children and tend their flock of fine-wooled ovejas. Her cheeks were flushed and damp with perspiration, as if splashed with red wine. The entire length of her naked body seemed drenched with wine. A warm breeze fluttered her hair. Then the breeze cooled and the red wine grew murky, spreading from her skin to his, washing over their bare feet and down onto the floor, filling the room like a river of red silt suddenly alive in the desert. A shadow fell across his body. He was alone now in the dream, watching the river as it flowed out the door into the yard, deepening and widening until it became a torrent, pushing everything in its path. A giant wave crashed into the corn crib, lifting the hungry hog and the frightened burro as if they were mere toys carved by a careless god.
Anna watched the smile slide from her son’s lips. The arm that was cast over his eyes fell to his side. She studied Santiago’s manly form—the sinewy muscles, the strong ropy limbs. He would leave soon. She felt it in her bones. And that made her wonder about the fleeting nature of life, and love, and the wanderlust that lurked in every man’s loins. But what of a woman’s dreams? What of her destiny?
Foolishness. Leaving. Staying. All of it. She stared at the dog. It had followed her into the adobe and was now sniffing in the corner for mice. “Out,” she said, “or this will be your last day.” Tail tucked, the dog was quick to leave. She turned, pulled the cast iron skillet from the nail where it hung, placed it on the fire to warm, and reached for the burlap sack that held the coffee beans. She withdrew two fistfuls of beans and scattered them in the skillet. Then she turned on her heels and went back outside, scattering the chickens in her path. Marton was adding a split log to the fire burning beneath the vat of steaming water.
Her husband pushed the log under the vat and hollered to her. “When we leave,” he said, “we will go north. Where there are sheep and grasslands and rivers and mountains.”
“And when will that be?” she taunted.
“How far can a skinny pig walk?”
“Him?” She cast a skeptical look at the pig, already lying in the shade of the corn crib. “A long ways. He eats anything, even scorpions.”
“And our son?” he asked. “How far can he walk?”
“Sebastian? He thinks he is destined for great things.”
“For now,” the man laughed, “he will be content to herd the pig. And carry the empty goatskin.”
Anna could smell the roasting coffee beans. “Maybe he will find a woman along the way to fill it.”
He looked up at her, a hand lifted, a dark eyebrow arched, flames rising beneath the vat. “We have not danced in a very long time.”
She laughed. “And do they dance in the high country?”
“Before a new moon has risen, you will know.”
“Ha!” Could it be, for once, that her husband’s empty words had flesh on them? She turned toward the door. “Then I will pack my red skirt and you will wear your beret, and we will leave today.”
“Bizi gara!” he said, rising from the stump. “We are alive!”
Chapter One
Two Hundred Years Later, the Highlands of Denver
Selu awoke that day as any other day, lifting her old bones from the soft bed as an old mare might rise from a pile of straw. For two days, spring rains inundated the mountains near Denver, filling the swollen creeks that drained into the city’s river with snowmelt. But her old adobe was in the highlands, above the river. “What’s to worry about?” she asked, craning her neck to look out the front window at the clay gargoyle perched on the roof.
Ama Edohi is what her mother used to call her. In Tsalagi, it meant Carrier of Water. Anna meant grace. An old Slavic word—it was her father’s mother’s name. Why would a Basque woman named Marton have a Slavic name, you might ask? She did not know. Naciente was her husband’s name. It meant ‘rising,’ like the sun.
That morning, like every other morning for the last fifty years, she walked barefoot across the earthen floor to the wood-burning cook stove, added kindling to the fire box, then filled the coffee pot with fresh water and stale Folgers. She freshened the seed dish in the pajaros’ cage, leaving the door open so that the mourning doves could climb to top of the cage and perch there to watch her comings and goings. She scolded the old goats outside the back door for pawing at the rain puddles and caking their legs with mud. She sat at the old table and sipped her coffee, staring at the steaming blackness and thinking of how Carlos and her father once sweetened theirs with thick cream and sweet honey. She watched last night’s rainwater drip from the gargoyle’s mouth and thought of the ewes on the ranch in Wyoming, how they lifted their muzzles from the creek, chins dripping with wetness, eyes alert to fastmoving shadows stalking the ridges.
Restless, she rose from the table as if with great intention, but wandered only as far as the front porch, straightening her wedding portrait as she walked past the oak sideboard. On the porch, she stood and gazed down at the city—at the glaring windows of the high rise buildings, at the fancy sports arena and the slick oval football stadium, at the huge coiled rings of the roller coaster, and at the stream of traffic on the highway that ran above the old river. And then, at the old river herself. She lifted her eyes to take in the clouds gathering over the mountains and let her gaze fall back to the confluence, where the creek flowed into the river. Once, after the city had built a dam upstream, she and Carlos spent a day picnicking on the shore of the new reservoir. But that was many years ago, too many years for an old half Basque, half Indian woman to measure.
She turned and walked inside, the screen door slamming behind her. The mourning doves flapped their wings in protest from the top of the cage. She poured more coffee and was just lowering herself into the chair when there was a knock at the door. She jumped, almost tipping over the mug. The doves flew from the cage, wings fanning the air, beaks whistling.
No one ever knocked at her door, except perhaps the Girl Scouts once a year.
She walked past the oak sideboard into the hallway. She had forgotten to close the front door. A man in a uniform stood on the porch, peering in through the screen. He held something, maybe a clipboard.
“I have a Special Delivery letter,” he said, his voice impatient.
She did not want to go to the door. She did not want any letter that came this way, with special delivery brought by a uniform.
“You need to sign for it,” the man said, thrusting the clipboard at the screen, spitting the words at her. He was not at all like her Carlos.
“It’s from Wyoming,” he said.
Her heart stopped. She was sure of it. For a moment, at least, it stopped. She lifted a hand to her chest and pressed it against her sagging breast and waited a minute … thump-thump … so faint, but at least she wasn’t dead.
“It’s from Wyoming,” the man shouted, “Special delivery.”
She forced herself to move, slowly, one scuffled step at a time. Her mind raced backward, the past like a deck of shuffling cards flashing before her. Leaning against the wall, she stopped to catch her breath. But she could not stop the memories.
She had been working at the munitions plant at 7th and Wazee for less than a month, tightening bolts on the hulls of ships which would be taken by train from Union Station to the Mar Island Navy Yard, when the plant supervisor asked her to follow him into his office. She said a silent prayer to Nuwati, to all the powers that be, for during the War only bad news ever came from the supervisor’s office. There, a dark-haired deliveryman had waited. She did not know this man. She knew only that his brown eyes were kind, and that because of the yellow telegraph in his hand, she wished to look no further than his eyes. She busied her mind instead with thoughts of how his eyes reminded her of her father’s when he was not angry, and of her brother’s when he was young and they played together in the lambing pasture. She did not wish to think about the yellow paper in the man’s hand, so she looked instead at his black shoes, which were old and worn, and at the sleeve of his navy blue jacket, which was not.
It was the man’s job to deliver bad news to the loved ones of those who fought in the great war across the ocean. This, Selu knew. This, everyone knew. She turned her head away.
Her supervisor gestured toward a chair. She did not want to sit down. The man held out the telegram to her. She would rather have reached for a rattlesnake. Her hands trembled when she opened it. March 20, 1944. Sent by the Grandfather.
Your father killed on Red Beach—stop
Near Anzio, Italy—stop
Your mother took own life—stop
On Crazy Woman Creek—stop
Domingo will live with me—stop
Not necessary to come home—stop
She had walked from the office, across the floor where the huge hulls were assembled, past the other women who knew better than to raise their eyes to hers. She walked out into the brightness of the day. She walked until she heard the sound of water. She followed the flow of the creek to where it joined the river. At the Confluence, her legs gave way, the weight of the grandfather’s words more than she could bear. She fell to her knees at the water’s edge. She felt the rise and fall of the earth and wondered if it was the breath of the Uktena, weary of war. The sadness filled her, emptying her.
Rising above the sound of the creek, she had heard a man’s voice and felt a gentle touch on her shoulder. The man knelt beside her and when she looked up she saw that it was the dark-haired deliveryman with the kind eyes and the worn shoes and the new blue jacket.
“I do not mean to intrude, Señorita. I only wish to know if you will be all right.”
No, she would never again be all right. But she did not say this, for she could not find her voice.
“May I sit with you?” he asked. “If you do not mind?”
She didn't mind.
He sat beside her for a long time. When the sun sank behind the snow-covered mountains to the west, he put his blue jacket over her shoulders, lifting her braid, which had grown long since the spring eight years ago when she had stood on the high meadow with the dying ewe. He sat beside her, until the orange glow faded from the sky and the mountains became black silhouettes, he sat beside her. When her eyes filled with tears that spilled and ran down the slope of her cheeks to the curve of her breasts, he sat beside her.
It was the scent of his handkerchief that had finally roused her, for it smelled like cornbread baking, or tortillas, or the breath of the ewes as their teeth ground the hard yellow kernels from last summer’s garden. He took her hand, helped her rise to her feet, walked with a limp as he led her to a bench. Perhaps that is why he delivered telegrams and did not fight in the war, she thought.
“Por favor, Señorita, let me escort you home,” he asked.
She nodded. She lived in a small rented room on Larimer Street.
“My name is Carlos,” he said, “Carlos Naciente. It means ‘rising,’ like the sun.”
“It is a nice name,” she said. And then she had let him walk her home.
No, this man standing at her screen door was not like her Carlos at all.
“I don’t have all day,” he said, opening the screen door. He thrust the clipboard at her. “Sign here,” he said, pointing with a pen, then waving it like a sword. “Here.”
Her hand shook and it took a long time to write Selu Ama-edohi Anna Marton Naciente. When she was done, she handed the man his clipboard and his pen. He handed her the letter. She dropped it. He picked it up and handed it back to her. She dropped it again.
“Crazy old woman,” he said, folding her hand around the letter. “Hold onto it.” Then he turned and walked away, down the sidewalk flanked with yucca plants and old corn stalks. He did not notice the gargoyle watching from the roof, nor the goats poking their noses through the slats in the fence.
Selu had no choice but to take the dreaded thing inside. She fell into her rocking chair, exhausted, trying not to let her mind wander back to the War, but like an arrow it darted into the past. She had seen her brother only two times in fifty years—once after their mother had died, and once when Domingo’s grandchild Oakley was born. And Domingo? An old man, if he were still alive. She thought he must be dead. Why else would a brother not come to his own brother-in-law’s funeral? To Carlos, nothing had been more important than family.
The coffee pot was rumbling. She rose. The letter, still unopened, fell from her lap. She walked to the stove, stirred the ashes to cool them, and moved the coffee pot to the back of the stove. Still, the pot rumbled. The lid vibrated and fell to the floor. The floor vibrated. She steadied herself, gripping the handle of the oven, but it too vibrated. The bird cage shimmied across the countertop. Flapping their ruffled wings, the birds flew to the top of the cupboard. Inside the cage, water sloshed onto the newspaper lining and seed spilled from the dish.
As quickly as the shaking began, it stopped. Selu planted her feet firmly on the dirt floor, testing it. Nothing. She let go of the oven handle and stood. All was quiet. She retrieved the lid, poured a cup of lukewarm coffee, and set the mug on the table. Maybe Uktena walked the earth again and his footsteps could be heard all the way from the Smoky Mountains. She walked to the rocking chair and stared at the letter on the floor. She bent over and grasped the corner of it between her finger and thumb, carrying it to the table like a mouse by the tail. Sitting down, she was not so brave. Her hand shook and coffee spilled from her mug onto the envelope. She wiped it on her skirt, thrust a butter knife under the flap, and opened the letter. Unnerved by the trembling, her vision blurred. She squinted until the print came into focus. The letter was not from the War department. Dated two days ago—April 21—it was from an oil and gas company in Wyoming.
Dear Mrs. Selu Naciente:
It is our understanding that you and your brother Domingo Marton are legal heirs to surface and mineral rights of the Wyoming ranch once owned by your parents, Catherine and Sebastian Marton. It is also our understanding that your brother’s family has incurred substantial estate tax debt load and that risk of property foreclosure exists.
She set the letter down. She picked the letter up.
We believe an abundance of methane gas lies beneath your land. Even moderate well production could supply the capital necessary to relieve all financial burdens of estate debt. We have been in contact with your brother about the possibility of installing such wells on the property. Your brother, however, seems less than eager to explore this solution…
She dropped the letter to the table. My brother, alive? Still on the ranch. Her heart fluttered. And his family? His son? His wife? The baby Oakley—who must be at least seventeen by now? The questions whirled in Selu’s mind and started her trembling all over again.
What was this talk of oil wells? Fifty years ago, the thought of drilling rigs pumping energy from the ground would have excited Domingo. But now? Now he does not want to explore the solution? Perhaps my brother has grown wiser with age. She stared at her wrinkled hands. She stood, steadied herself, and walked into the living room. She lifted the wedding portrait from the wall where it hung above the sideboard and held it against her breast, then raised it to her mouth. Domingo is alive, Carlos, she whispered. Alive. She hung it carefully back on the nail and walked slowly back into the kitchen, sat down once again at the table and picked up the letter. Foreclosure on the ranch ? Again? Impossible, even, to think about. They had survived the Great Depression. They had survived when Aitaita, the Grandfather, had mortgaged everything to buy more land, and more sheep. They had survived droughts and blizzards. Somehow, she thought the ranch would always be there. Like the past. She took another sip of coffee.
With the letter from the oil and gas company lying in her lap, she leaned back in the willow chair and waited for the earth to shake again. She pressed her toes into the braided rug, closed her eyes, and began to rock gently back and forth. Soon, her head nodded and she began to dream. She could hear the thin, faraway voice of the old cloth-mouthed radio bringing news from Denver. She could see her mother in the kitchen, and Papa in the corral. She could see the Grandfather, standing across the creek by his sheep wagon. She could feel the mustang mare move beneath her as they climbed the ridge. Everything, in her dreams, came alive.
Chapter Two
She was twelve the spring of 1938, when Papa gave her a small band of older ewes.
“Mine?” she had asked. Such a thing was a great responsibility.
“They belong to all of us. But the lambs will be yours. To start your own flock.”
And then, only a week later, she had forgotten to close the gate to the corral. In the morning, the ewes were gone. Domingo could not wait to tell. Last summer, they had lost two hundred ewes to tick fever. They were already behind on their payment, and just yesterday, two men from the bank in Buffalo had appeared, driving up to the house as if they already owned it. Everything depended on the sale of the yearling lambs. The Grandfather would be angry.
“Search along the creek,” Papa said. “And don’t forget to count them. The lambs too.”
“Or the lamb carcasses,” Domingo added.
“If the ovejas are not at the creek,” Papa said, “search the high meadow.”
Mountain lions hunted the high meadow, and eagles nested in a lone pine snag that reached nearly a hundred feet into the sky. Coyotes, too, ran the ridge top. Sometimes, the older ewes would wander to these high places.
“Will you tell Aitaita and Amatxi?” Selu asked.
“Grandfather should be told,” interrupted Domingo. “Grandmother too.”
“Hush,” Papa said. “Selu, take the gun. And the dog.”
Domingo cast a jealous look at her, but Papa did not notice. The collie noticed though, and he was at Selu’s side instantly, his black ears alert, one white paw raised.
The ewes could not be found at the creek, or grazing on the back side of the hill closest to the corrals. With a sigh, she walked toward the alfalfa field, waving her arm and calling out, “Look, boy,” to Zakur, sending the dog out into the forbidden field. In summer, when the alfalfa blossomed, bloat could kill a sheep in a few hours if they crawled the fence to eat the rich legumes. But Zakur came back quickly, for he found nothing to gather. Only the dark clouds seemed to be gathering.
Maybe the sheep had wandered up to the ridge during the night? Selu walked back to the buildings to get her horse. Domingo followed behind, disgruntled that there was no bad news yet. They rode to the high meadow—Selu on her red roan mare, the rifle held snug under one arm, its stock balanced on her leg, her pocketknife in her jacket. Domingo rode the dark-faced tobiano. Zakur ran up the rocky trail, nose to the ground. “That’ll do,” she yelled into the wind, calling him in to stay close. Lightning flashed from the west, along the rim of mountains that flanked the ranch. To be on the mesa during a storm was not good, but to lose more ovejas to the coyotes was not good either.
Remnants of winter drifts still clung to the north side. As they reached the crest, Selu heard the plaintive cry of a lamb, and a ewe bleating. “Ssshh,” she hushed Domingo as she slid from the horse. Pointing the rifle toward the darkening sky, she watched her brother slide from the back of the tobiano. Her legs trembled as her feet touched the damp earth. She listened, but standing on the hillside she heard only the howling wind, no coyotes yipping their kill song.
Flicking her braid over her shoulder, she crept on her knees up the ridge keeping her head low as she crested the high plateau, keeping Zakur behind her. Her little brother tried to inch his way in front. She grabbed his arm and held him back.
“Let me shoot the gun,” he said. “I have killed more rabbits than you, more squirrels.”
“Shh,” she scolded. “Papa says I am in charge.”
“You are not so big.”
“I am twelve. It is big enough.”
She thrust his arm away and crept forward another few feet, lifting her head as the meadow came into view. Down, Zakur, she whispered. Above the clouds, lightning flashed. The horses snorted and the tobiano bolted down the mountain. The mare kicked up her heels and followed him. Zakur laid his ears back, belly to the ground. He did not like lightning.
As Selu came up on one knee, she scanned the shadowed trees. The flock was huddled under a grouping of pines. The lamb cried out again and her eyes followed the sound to a barren snag that stood a hundred feet into the sky. At its base, a golden eagle balanced on one leg, the lamb clasped in his talons, its wings spread wide. The frantic ewe bleated, lowered her head, and rammed the bird. Selu lifted the rifle to her shoulder, and sighted the distance. It was too far. Domingo gritted his teeth, and whispered. Shoot the eagle, Selu.
His words were like the shadow of fear in her gut. The blood drained from her face. Her legs trembled. The wooden stock pressed into her cheek. The bleating of the lamb pounded in her ears. Zakur whined. Stay, her eyes commanded.
“Shoot, Selu! What are you waiting for?”
The rifle exploded. Silence followed.
The wings of the eagle beat the air but it was the ewe that fell to the ground, a deep redness seeping into her wool where the bullet had pierced her side. With a flurry of wings, the uninjured eagle took to the sky, the lamb dangling from its talons, the eagle’s tail dark against the coming night.
Domingo stared at her. He puffed out his shoulders. “You should have let me.”
Selu’s knees buckled. She would not cry. She had not cried for the others. She would not cry for this one. She would face the Grandfather. She would face the men from the bank. She would raise the bum lambs to market weight in half the time on half the feed. Somehow, she would make up for this.
“Give me the rifle,” he said.
She backed away. He stepped forward and raised his small fist, shaking it in her face. “I will tell Aitaita and he will make your band of sheep mine. You will see.” And then he turned, and ran toward the flock of huddled sheep, scattering them down the hill. Without a word from Selu, the dog ran, circling around the flock, pushing them toward home.
Selu stared at the place where her brother had been, into the emptiness of what she had done, into the threat of his clinging words. Carrying the heavy rifle, she walked across the high meadow to the barren tree. The ewe, still alive, lay on the ground—a bundle of bloody wool. A gurgling noise came from the ewe’s throat and pain glazed her eyes. Death is one thing, her mother would say. Suffering is another.
She wiped the tears from her eyes and prayed for God to take the ewe. She waited. She knelt beside the ewe and her braid brushed the dark, wet wool. The ewe’s nostrils quivered. Blood seeped into the earth. Selu waited.
Die, oveja. I beg of you, die…
Despite the pain, the ewe clung to life.
Dios, help her to die! I promise, I will never again argue with Domingo.
God ignored her plea.
You think you are so big. Domingo’s words haunted her.
Is that what God thought too?
She lifted the rifle to her shoulder and aimed. She lowered the rifle and waited. The wind blew across the meadow. The ewe’s breath grew shallow, the animal’s eyes sunk deep in their sockets. Selu stepped back. Three times, she stepped back. She held her hand to the ewe’s nostrils and felt the moist breath of death. But still, no death. Only suffering.
Selu stepped back a fourth time and planted her feet squarely beneath her. Once again, she lifted the rifle to her shoulder. This time, she did not allow the recoil to knock her to the ground.
The ewe lay still. Selu put the rifle down and dug in her pocket. Pulling out her knife, she grasped the thick dark braid at the back of her neck, and began sawing. When the braid pulled free, she knelt and placed the strand of woven hair over the ewe’s eyes, ashamed of the tears that would not stop falling from her own. In near darkness, with only a shard of moon lighting the sky, Selu gathered up the rifle and began the long walk home.
Chapter Three
The mourning doves were impatient with Selu’s daydreaming. She could hear the goats kicking at their empty food dish as the morning sun lifted higher in the eastern horizon, beginning its climb above the city. The letter from the oil and gas company lay on the table next to her mug of cold coffee. She wished for Carlos. Together, they would have figured out what to do with estate debts and mineral rights and things she did not understand by herself. They had been a good team, her and Carlos. Two days after he had brought her the telegram telling of her mother’s death on Crazy Woman Creek, and her father’s death at Anzio, she had gone back to Wyoming. “I will help you send your grandfather a telegram,” Carlos had said.
“But he told me not to come,” she had argued, frightened at the thought of seeing the Grandfather.
“She was your mother. You have a right to be there,” he said.
And so she left in the morning.
She did not expect anyone to pick her up, especially not the Grandfather, but Domingo was there in the old truck waiting for her. He was sixteen then, growing into a man. There had been little conversation on the way to the ranch, only meager talk about the neighbors and the condition of the pasture and how the coyotes had grown so bold they attacked the bum lambs near the house.
“Even firecrackers don’t scare them away,” Domingo said, finally allowing himself to look at her.
“Why do you use firecrackers to frighten the coyotes?” she asked. And then, suddenly, she knew.
“The war,” he answered, “has taken all the bullets.”
He did not look at her again, except to tell her as she was getting out of the truck in front of the house that the funeral had been the day before. She would find their mother’s grave at the far edge of the garden, next to their grandmother’s. She was surprised he did not say, Next to where you buried Zakur, but he didn’t.
Instead, he said, “The Army does not know when we will have Father’s remains.”
And then, like when he ran from the mountain and left her standing alone to face the dying ewe, he turned his back on her and walked across the creek to the Grandfather’s sheep wagon. But this time his steps were heavy and slow, like an old man’s. She had wanted to run after him but her pride would not allow it. She feared that if she threw her arms around him, she would never let him go. He seemed so young and yet, suddenly, so old. She could see Grandfather’s dog across the creek. He was old now, and had grown much taller than Zakur had been, with more brown merle in his coat, but less white on his legs and chest. Before she had left for Denver, his muzzle was already flecked with gray. She whistled to him, but he would not come.
She walked into the empty house and stood in the dark kitchen. When she was finally brave enough to turn on the light, everything was as she imagined her mother had left it. Clean dishes left draining in the sink. The bean pot on the stove. She lifted the lid. A web of gray mold had begun to spread. She opened the oven door and found a pan of stale cornbread. She sat at the table, thinking how quickly a home can cease to be a home. The radio was gone, as was the chahakua and the saber. She walked into her parents’ room. Her mother’s nightgown was draped across the bed. Papa’s beret was on the nightstand. She turned and walked into her own room. There she found her mother’s yellow shawl, folded neatly inside the basket of river cane. She bled her life away at the creek, was all Domingo said.
Selu stayed only two days at the ranch, spending most of the first day in the barn with the horses. The pasture was covered with a hard, crusty snow, so she did not ride the mustang mare. Instead, she groomed her until her hair glistened, feeding her handfuls of oats, combing the snarls from her mane and tail, laying her cheek against the mare’s neck, pressing her ear to her ribs, listening to the slow, deep thrum of her heartbeat. She walked across the crusty snow and found where the sheep were grazing. She eased up to the edge of the flock, looking for the ewes with her brand notched into their ears, but she could not find any, and when she drew too close, they bleated and ran away stiff-legged, stopping to stare at her.
On the second day, she walked at dawn along Crazy Woman Creek until she felt in her bones that she had reached the place where her mother had died. She and her mother had stood many times at this place, drawing water at dawn for the ewes in the lambing pens. Now, in her grief, she knelt. Her mother’s voice seemed to travel in the water, over the stones, rising into the Wyoming air, mingling with the smell of the sheep and the sage and the wind. Ama-edohi. Ama-edohi. Ama-edohi.
That afternoon, she worked up the courage to go and see Aitaita. The old dog growled at her as she crossed the bridge. She knelt down and held out her hand, making a kissing sound. Good dog, good dog. It is me, Selu. You remember? She made silly talk, trying to ease her nerves. Has it been so long? Less than a year. That is not so long, that you should not remember me? And then he sniffed her, and licked her finger, and let her rub him behind the ear.
The door opened and Aitaita stepped out. He looked down at her, kneeling there. The dog backed away. She stood. “Grandfather,” she said.
“Selu,” he said.
She tried hard not to see the anger in his face, not to hear the hostility in his voice. But it was there, and she knew it, and the dog knew it and even, she thought, the air knew it, for suddenly a cold wind blew across the creek, blowing her bangs into her eyes, and her braid over her shoulder. She flicked the hair away from her face, tossed the braid back, straightened her shoulders. “I got your telegram,” was all she could think to say.
“It was a foolish thing your mother did.”
All these years, you have hated her. Were you so surprised? But she bit her lip. Instead, she said, “The sheep look good.”
“I suppose you have a boyfriend in Denver, a senargai? Have you met any of your own kind there?”
Did he mean Basque, or Indian? She did not know. “There are many people helping with the war effort,” she said. “I work at a munitions plant, helping to make boats.”
“Do you forget your father? What this family has already sacrificed?”
The smoke spiraling from sheep wagon’s metal chimney blew sideways, swirled by a gust of wind into nothingness. His words sucked away her breath. Her knees trembled.
“I don’t have any money to give you,” he said.
She looked into his hardened eyes. Her gaze drifted away, out across the meadow to the high peak in the distance. She looked back at the Grandfather. “Aitaita, I did not ask for any.”
The door opened. Domingo came out and stood on the steps.
“Will you take me to the bus tomorrow?” she asked him.
He nodded. She turned and began to walk back toward the small bridge.
Domingo’s voice rang out, ordering the dog. “Stay!”
She looked back. The dog’s tail was tucked, his ears down, his steps low to the ground as he returned to the sheep wagon. Tears stung her eyes, but it wasn’t until she got to the barn and felt the mare’s warm breath on her hands, that she cried.
The next day, she packed the yellow shawl in her suitcase, and with the basket of river cane that had been the Cherokee grandmother’s in her hand, Domingo drove her to town. They rode in silence. When he lifted her suitcase from the back of the truck and set it on the sidewalk in front of the bus stop, she thought for a moment that she saw his eyes mist over. He turned his head before she could be sure. He did not look at her as he drove off, but gave her only a simple wave of his hand. She watched him until he was almost out of sight. Then, as she was about to turn away, she saw him pull the truck over to the side of the road. He leaned over the steering wheel and, even from a distance, she could see that he was crying.