The Best Bad Dream

The Best

Bad Dream

Also by Robert Ward

Total Immunity

Four Kinds of Rain

Grace

The Cactus Garden

The King of Cards

Red Baker

The Sandman

Cattle Annie and Little Britches

Shedding Skin

The Best

Bad Dream

Robert Ward

The Mysterious Press

an imprint of Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

New York

Copyright © 2011 by Robert Ward

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. Scanning, uploading, and electronic distribution of this book or the facilitation of such without the permission of the publisher is prohibited. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author's rights is appreciated. Any member of educational institutions wishing to photocopy part or all of the work for classroom use, or anthology, should send inquiries to Grove/Atlantic, Inc., 841 Broadway, New York, NY 10003 or
[email protected]
.

Published simultaneously in Canada

Printed in the United States of America

FIRST EDITION

ISBN-13: 9780802194770

Mysterious Press

an imprint of Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

841 Broadway

New York, NY 10003

Distributed by Publishers Group West

www.groveatlantic.com

11 12 13 14
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

For

Celeste Wesson

and

Robbie Ward

Chapter One

They drove up Route 285 from Santa Fe as the sun went down, Michelle Wu and her younger sister Jennifer riding their matching metallic gray Suzuki B-King cycles over one hundred miles per hour.

“C'mon,” sis, Michelle yelled as she cruised past her sister. “You're standing still out here.”

Competitive since they were kids, Michelle expected Jennifer to shout back and speed by her. Instead, she just turned her head in a moody way and looked straight ahead at the dark road.

Michelle groaned. She'd thought getting out the bikes would cheer her sister up but it was obvious Jen was still furious with her. So maybe she could make it up to her by taking her to the Tewa Pueblo at Taos. At least Michelle prayed it would. Because when Jen got into a serious sulk it could last for days.

Michelle geared down and waited for her sister to catch up.

“Follow me. The next left. I'll race you there.”

She shot ahead, hoping Jennifer would rise to the challenge, but it was no use. Her sister moped behind. What a waste of horsepower.

That it was her own fault made the whole thing even more annoying.

Ahead of her, Michelle saw the turnoff to the ancient pueblo. In the fading afternoon light it seemed an ancient magical place. Built a thousand years ago, the village glowed with a golden light.

But as they got closer, Michelle could see how barren and poor the pueblo really was. It was muddy outside the adobe walled buildings, and the Tewa people had to climb rickety ladders to go from the first to the second story, and from the second to the third.

Now Michelle worried that Jennifer, too, would find the whole trip a drag, and she'd be even more disgruntled than before.

There was a big Indian man standing at the base of the bleak dirt parking lot, selling tickets. He wore a cheap, torn, plaid cloth coat, and his pockmarked skin and big belly weren't exactly the romance novel idea of a native warrior. He looked exactly like what he was: a guy hustling his way through a tough, unforgiving life.

After they parked their bikes on a small side street, he sold them their entrance tickets and stamped their hands as though they were teenagers going to Disneyland.

Still, Michelle didn't want to be cynical. Two thousand people lived on this reservation in three-story adobe buildings. They warmed these rooms with fire, the old way, and raised their children with their grandparents close at hand. They made their own cornmeal, and sang the songs of their ancestors.

In a faked-up, bullshit world of fast food, McMansions, and jive there was something authentic and appealing about the pueblo, something even holy.

Jennifer walked slightly ahead of her, not yet finished being furious. Michelle wanted to poke her and say, “Snap out of it,” but she knew her sister better than that. Better to wait until the rage wore off.

Then she could talk to Jen, explain what went wrong. It wasn't really her fault anyway. It was just the way things fell. You tried to
do the right thing but sometimes—too many times—you ran into
ming,
or what Westerners called fate.

She had learned as a girl that
ming
often ran counter to puny human wishes and the way to deal with it was to forget it, and to act nobly anyway.

But Michelle wasn't really that much like her Chinese ancestors. She was American Chinese and wanted very badly to control
ming,
to make things work out. She could hear her dead grandmother laugh at such a thought.

“
Ming
is as controllable as the wind or the rain. How do you control either of them?”

She believed in
ming,
yes, but she also believed in happy endings. Happy endings achieved by any means necessary. Michelle had learned a long time ago that you had to cut corners to make things work. And when opportunities presented themselves you should strike and strike hard.

Surely Jen would understand all this. Though the sisters were different, they weren't
that
different. She'd understand it, and then they could get back on the right track.

The two of them climbed the ladders, walked hunched through the cramped adobe rooms, and Michelle wondered how anyone could stand living in so small a place. Smoke from the fireplaces gave all the rooms a deep musty odor that Michelle couldn't decide if she liked or not. Maybe if she got used to it.

As they went into a souvenir shop, she asked Jen how she had liked the tour but her sister rolled her eyes at her.

“In case you hadn't noticed, I'm really pissed at you.”

Michelle took that as an opening and laughed.

“What's the matter, babe, you think I'm not sensitive?”

that got the smallest of smiles.

“I'm going to take a little walk, Michelle. I've got some thinking to do. They say the village's big religious room, the kiva, is down that way. Meet me there in, say, twenty minutes. Okay?”

Okay, Michelle said. She wondered what she would do for the next twenty minutes. She was already getting a little bored. Michelle didn't dig history all that much. She had spent most of her life trying to live in the now. Her own family history was filled with remorse, drunkenness, and violence. She didn't want to remember it. But she knew that turning her back on her history was probably superficial and dumb. So she tried, even though looking at the past, hers or anyone else's, made her jumpy and nervous.

Now she watched as Jennifer left the little pueblo gift shop and headed down to the kiva, a couple of short, muddy blocks away. Michelle looked at a few Indian dolls—strange little things made of wood, feather, and bone—then checked the pocket of her leather cycle jacket.

There it was, a joint. Just what she needed to get through all this native culture.

She walked outside and climbed up to a second-floor balcony. Coming toward her was a tall, thin man with a black coat and . . . what was that... a white collar? A priest? The sight jolted her a bit.

She had suffered at the hands of priests when she was a girl, the beginning of a long series of betrayals.

As the man drew nearer she could see that he had Indian features, high cheekbones and a reddish color to his skin. He looked up at her, stared at her for a second, then walked on. He wasn't a priest at all, just a man wearing a collarless shirt.

After looking around to make sure no one could see her, she lit the J. She inhaled deeply a couple of times, then peered down at
the burnt-orange valley and fell into a fantasy that she was actually an Indian maiden, living a thousand years ago. Hey, maybe she was wrong. When you were high, history became a lot more lifelike. The image was so interesting she felt as though she were a different person. She must have been a warrior woman, she was pretty sure. No sitting home waiting for the braves to come home shot up by the Spanish or, later, the Americans. She would go out with her own band of hand-chosen women and use their sex to ensnare the Spanish commandant. She could feel herself dancing wildly, mesmerizing the older man. Then, while making love to him, she'd stab him in the throat and be a heroine to her people.

The fantasy was so real that she indulged it again, and then a little wind came over the pueblo. She lay back on the cool adobe wall, her feet hanging over the ledge, and in seconds fell fast asleep.

When Michelle woke up, she looked down at the lonely pueblo street and saw only a few orange streetlights down by the big kiva.

God, she had gotten stoned and nodded off. Well, no wonder. The last few days with Lucky Avila had been totally stressful. The lying, cheating bastard.

She climbed back down the ladder and checked her watch. Oh man, she was ten minutes late. Not all that long in reality, but too long when your sister was already pissed off at you.

She walked down the creepy street to the kiva. Only two other tourists were there, a middle-aged man wearing an Ohio State football jacket and sweatpants and, at his side, a young, honey-blonde woman with eyes as blue and vacant as two plastic buttons.

Michelle started to look inside the round mound of adobe, the big kiva, but there was a sign on the wall that said,
NO TRESPASSING.

She gave an irritated sigh, walked a block past the meeting spot, and came back but there was still no sign of her sister.

Finally, starting to worry, Michelle approached the Ohio couple.

“Hi, I'm looking for my sister. You didn't happen to see a Chinese girl around here a few minutes ago, did you?”

The man shook his big head and assumed a worried look.

“Chinese? No, ma'am. Nobody like that.”

The woman made a face like she was sucking on a lemon.

“Naw, there was some Indians here. At least I think they was Indians, but they weren't Chinese, no way.”

“Thanks,” Michelle said, feeling a little uneasy.

She turned away and headed back to the parking lot.

As she left Phil looked at his wife, Dee Dee.

She was a Chinese, the man said,

“So?” Dee Dee responded, fury in her voice.

“Well, it's just that I have some trouble telling the Asian races from one another. Like I was in line at Buckeye Noodles once in Columbus and there were people in the line who were, I am pretty sure, your Koreans and Japanese and maybe even your Chinese and I am somewhat ashamed to admit I could not tell them apart.”