Graphic the Valley (10 page)

“How long have you been here?” I said.

He picked at a chink. He said, “Let’s walk.”

We walked down to the big grove of trees. He said, “Do you remember everything I told you?”

“Yes,” I said.

He held up his hand. His missing finger.

I said, “Trust me. I did. I listened.”

“No,” he said. “Sometimes you didn’t listen. I know that. But that’s okay. You were little. But we’re here now, and it matters that you’re a man.”

The bark on the tree nearest to us was patterned like a rattlesnake, a diamondback to the sky. I said, “Do you know what Lucy is to me?”

My father said, “If you’d listened…”

“I did listen,” I said, “but this is something else. Some things change people. I’m not who I was always.”

I stood next to the trunk of the tree, to the scales of snakeskin. I reached out and felt the bark, the slight stick of sap in the seams between dry fibers.

“Tenaya,” he said. “Everything is everything. And the Valley is yours. Did you think of something?”

I looked at my father’s eyes and the wrinkles underneath. Semicircles of dark blue like bruises. I said, “I’ve got something I can do, and it should make you happy.”

“Good,” he said. “I appreciate that.”

• • •

Lucy and I got married two days later. Lucy’s father performed the ceremony. Lucy was in her mother’s cotton wedding dress. I wore a borrowed pair of pants and dress shirt.

After the reception, there was the first feast. At the table, all of Lucy’s relatives, aunts and uncles and cousins. My father sat to my right. He’d been quiet the last two days.

I stood up and tapped my glass. I said, “I have something for all of you. A riddle. For fun.”

Lucy’s father smiled. He was heavyset and his smile crowded his eyes.

I spoke the riddle as the table listened.

People began to guess at the answer. Yelling out. Everyone smiling.

When no one guessed the answer, I said, “We’ll try again later. Don’t worry.”

Someone yelled, “No, tell us now.”

Someone else said, “Yes, you have to.”

I looked at my father. His coyote smile.

• • •

“Come,” my father says. I am nine years old. It is earlier than he normally wakes me. No fire yet. The first snow a week old, and the ground creaking white.

I say, “I’m tired.”

“Shhh,” he says. He holds his fist to his lips, the ghost finger extended. He tosses my coat to me and leaves the tent.

I follow him downhill, watch the way his shoulders hitch with his short right step to a longer left, right to left, right to left, always the same short-to-long foot pattern when he walks downhill.

He stops and points. A coyote lying down. My father approaches it, then kneels. The coyote is dead.

My father lifts the tail. I see strands of something there.

I say, “What is that?”

My father says, “A plastic bag.”

“What?”

“They eat the bags too,” my father says. “When they find food in them, they eat so fast that they eat the bags along with whatever’s inside.”

“And it kills them?”

He nods. “The bags obstruct them. Animals can’t get a bag all the way through.” He points to a dark patch under the tail. “You can see where he chewed at himself, trying to get it free.”

• • •

In our room, Lucy said. “Don’t do that again. That was weird.”

I said, “What?”

“You know what,” she said.

I said, “It was just a riddle.”

“It was more than that,” she said. “I know.”

I tried to laugh but it came out like a swallowing sound. I said, “It was just a riddle.”

“Okay,” she said, and kissed me. “If it’s just a riddle, then tell me the answer.” She kissed my neck, my shoulder, my chest.

But I didn’t tell.

• • •

At the next night’s feast, I stated my riddle again. I was making this a tradition after the main course. I stood up, tapped my glass, spoke the riddle and waited for people to guess.

Carlos was there. Lucy’s cousin. His hair cropped with a black cowlick, reminding me of pictures I’d seen of matadors in Mexico. He stared at me from the other end of the table, face like a sheared rock.

I drank too much wine. My father was not drinking, and he watched each time I refilled my glass. My father raised his eyebrows.

My mother was drinking more than me. I saw her humming to herself. She looked tall even when she was seated. Thin and tall. Fragile. Earlier, she’d looked at me like she was standing at the edge of a cliff.

I’d said, “I’m okay,” and she laughed. Swigged her wine.

My drink washed over me. I stood up and retold the riddle for a second time that night. My father nodded and smiled.

Lucy’s father was not smiling.

We went back to our room. I was drunk. The floor settled under my feet at different angles. The wall flexed.

Lucy said, “I’m your
wife
, Tenaya.
Your wife
. You have to tell me.”

I lay back on the bed. Into the night’s spin. A bed of wine. “It’s only a riddle,” I said.

“Don’t lie to me,” she was taking off her clothes, her long braids undone over her shoulders. “Who asks the same riddle every night at a wedding feast? Who does that?”

“It’s…”

“It’s wrecking things,” she said. “And it’s weird.”

The room turned once, and I steadied myself. I thought of all the faces at the dinner table.

Lucy said, “I’m not sleeping with you tonight.” She slipped on a big T-shirt and went out.

The two-by-six floorboards for the upstairs made ceiling beams for this room. I looked at them and breathed. Wondered about my father staring at other floorboards.

I got up and walked to the door. Cracked it and looked to see if Lucy had really gone. I closed one eye to see out into the hallway, to see if she was standing there mad, ready to come back in.

Two people were at the other end of the hall. My eyes swam, but it looked like their heads were together. One was Lucy. I waited and listened but I couldn’t hear what they were saying. I shut the door and got back into bed.

The ceiling boards warped. Lucy came back.

I said, “Who were you talking to out there?”

“Who?” she said.

“At the end of the hallway,” I said. I pointed toward the door.

“Carlos,” she said. “My cousin.”

“Your cousin?”

“Yes,” she said.

“What did he say?”

“Nothing really.”

The room spun around me once. Then back again. I felt sick. “Nothing?”

“Well, he said everyone was mad about the riddle.”

“Oh,” I said. I laughed. Tasted bile in the back of my throat. Sat up.

“But he also said he didn’t mind. He said he ‘liked the battle.’”

“What does that mean?”

“I don’t know,” she said.

The riddle didn’t seem to matter. I said, “It’s a stupid riddle anyway. It’s honey out of a lion.”

Lucy was changing, her back to me. She said, “What?”

“Honey out of a lion,” I said. “That’s the answer to the riddle.”

“Honey out of a lion?”

I said, “The bees built their combs inside the carcass of a mountain lion. I found it in a meadow and pulled out the honey.”

My stomach tightened and my mouth filled with saliva. I stood up and lurched into the bathroom. I knelt down in front of the toilet.

Lucy said, “That’s the answer?”

I vomited. Retched, and vomited again. Breathed and wiped at my mouth.

“The answer is honey from a lion?” she said.

I said. “That’s it. But don’t tell them.” I was still kneeling in front of the toilet.

Lucy came into the bathroom. I was resting my head on the toilet seat and I looked up at her. She was smiling, her dogtooth glinting. I turned and vomited again, as she walked out.

• • •

The next night, I tapped my glass and told the riddle again. I stood at the head of the table. I didn’t want to tell it, not anymore, but my father gave me the cue. He held up his glass and caught my attention. His lips were curled back from his yellow teeth. He licked them in the front. Said, “Please?” I was unsteady once more from wine. Never drunk like this before, days and days now.

After I told the riddle, Lucy’s father smiled at me.

Someone else said, “Is it sweet meat? Have we guessed that?”

“No,” I said, “but good guess.” I took a sip from my glass. Red stain.

My mother got up and stumbled over her chair. Righted herself, then left the room. My father didn’t follow her. He was looking at me. Waiting and smiling.

Someone said, “Is it ‘man’? Like that old Sphinx riddle?”

“No. Good guess,” I said. I finished the wine in my glass. Looked for an open bottle. Lucy sat next to me.

Lucy’s cousin stood up. Carlos with his cowlick. He was at the other end of the table. I blinked and pictured him as a marmot looking for salt. He was wearing a Park Service shirt. He sipped at a wineglass. He cleared his throat and said something.

I said, “What?” I was still holding my empty glass. Still standing.

Carlos took a bite of bread. Chewed and swallowed, not in a hurry. Everyone stopped talking and looked at him.

We were the only two people standing.

Carlos said, “Honey?”

I looked right at him.

Someone said, “What did he say?”

Carlos took another sip of wine, tilted his head back, and looked up at the ceiling. Then he swallowed and looked directly at me. “Is it honey from the inside of a lion?” he said.

I held my empty glass. Looked at Carlos. His smile.

I said, “How did you…” then I looked at Lucy.

Lucy was sitting with her head down. She was not eating.

Carlos put his wineglass on the table, next to his plate. “What is sweeter than honey?” he said. “And what is stronger than a lion?”

I said, “Lucy,” but she didn’t look at me. She didn’t lift her head.

The candles flicked light off the wineglasses. Coals pressed to both sides of my head. Jose Rey ran doubled over. He straightened and showed the blood smear.

I grabbed a bottle of wine and poured it out onto the tablecloth. Piling red. People screamed and slid back their chairs.

Lucy stood and said, “He said he’d kill me. He said he’d kill me if I didn’t tell him the answer.”

“Who?” I said.

“He wasn’t joking,” she said. “He gets crazy sometimes.”

“Carlos?”

“No,” she said. “Not Carlos.”

“But Carlos knew the riddle.”

“Let that go,” Lucy said. “Carlos said there’s more to this.”

“What?” I said.

Everyone looked back and forth between us. Carlos was still standing at the far end of the table.

I turned the wine bottle around in my hand. Broke it on the edge of the oak leaf.

Someone yelled at me.

Lucy grabbed my shirt, but I stepped away.

I flexed the lion hand on the neck of the broken bottle, long shards extending out of my fist. I stepped around the chairs, walking toward Carlos. He stood there, waiting, not knowing that he should have run.

• • •

I built a lean-to that night, in the small trees opposite the mariposa grove, knowing that no one would look there.

After dark, I dumped five gallons of gasoline over the half-built Miwok village. The government gear, the compressors and backhoe, nail guns, staple guns, a Bobcat, beams and Simpson ties. The burning of the framed-out longhouses was like a kindling fire. Kiln-dried Doug fir, an orange tracing of the old-style dwelling. Strings of pitch shearing, burnt globs.

Everything burned like standing grain, like a field of wheat.

• • •

I didn’t see Lucy for a week. Her family was looking for me, the rangers too, and I snuck back to North Wawona, in through her bedroom window.

I put my hand over her mouth.

Her eyes opened as she screamed into the muffle of my hand.

“It’s me,” I said. “Tenaya.” I leaned in. Took my hand away.

She sat and pulled the sheet up to cover herself. She said, “Why are you here?”

“To see you,” I said.

“You’ve wrecked everything,” she said. “This won’t work now.” She gripped the sheet in her fists. Even in the dark, I could see the bright nail polish she’d painted on for the wedding.

“Lucy,” I said, “we can still work this out.”

“After that?” she said. “After whatever the fuck all of that was?”

I put my hand on one of her fists. I said, “It was stupid. All of it. I can explain it though.”

“No,” she said. “You can’t explain some of those things. And you burned the new village site too.”

“What?” I said.

“Don’t lie to me.” She pulled her knees to her chest. She said, “I know it was you.”

“Someone burned it?”

“Tenaya,” she said, “you’re the only person who would do that.”

“No,” I said. “You don’t know my father. And there are other people who still care about that. About the truth.”

“What truth?” she said.

“The truth about everything. About 1851. The Miwoks. The real history.”

“The real history? Are you serious? That was 150 years ago. That’s over,” she said.

I said, “It’s not. It should be, but it’s not. I should’ve talked to you about it before. I’m sorry about that.” I leaned in and kissed her.

She stopped me. “I know it was you,” she said. “We all know it was you.”

“You don’t know that,” I said, and I tried to kiss her again.

“My family knows,” she said. “My father told the Park Service and the County Sheriff too. They’ll find you.”

I held her face and kissed her hard. She kissed me back for a moment, rain splashing. Then she pushed me away.

She said, “I had to tell him too.”

“Him?” I said. “You mean Carlos?”

“What?” she said. “No, I told my father. I didn’t tell Carlos.”

I stood up. “That doesn’t make any sense. And if that’s true, I would’ve killed your father first.”

“Don’t say that about my father. Don’t ever say that. And you’re…”

“Capable.” I said.

“Fuck you,” Lucy said. “They’re going to catch you. You can’t burn federal property. You can’t hurt people like that.”

I was standing watching her.

Lucy closed her eyes. She said, “Carlos is not…”