Yellowcake (15 page)

"You're good," Delmar tells her.

"She's had practice," the boyfriend says proudly. They exchange names. Shannon, Noah, Roy, Ashley. The girls hit the johns; he and the other two guys go for candied apples, and the fair is fun again. They go on some rides together, the five of them. It's fun in the Hammer, where the cage is big enough for all of them. Delmar's thigh rides up against Ashley's, and he accidentally brushes her breast with his arm lots of times. It's a pretty big breast for a sixteen-year-old. Roy, Ashley's boyfriend, is a little dense, or maybe stoned, his eyes glazed. In the Tilt-A-Whirl, Ashley seems to be exaggerating each tilt and whirl, turning slightly toward Delmar, until he feels her erect nipple, and he starts thinking about and then can't stop thinking about what she'd look like without the T-shirt. But Noah is not so dense—or blind. When they get off the ride, Delmar sees Noah checking him out, and it's true: in the bright carnival lights the bulge in Delmar's jeans is fairly obvious. Noah says something to Roy, Roy's eyes narrow. They head to the Ferris wheel, where Delmar finds himself sitting alone and looking back at Roy and Ashley in the seat behind him. Roy has a pretty big hand. It completely covers Ashley's left breast. Ashley looks forlorn. She doesn't smile.

Well, he has a choice. Stay and rescue Ashley and get laid or go home. At first he thinks there really isn't a choice, but then he remembers Eduardo Martinez, a twenty-one-year-old he knew in prison, doing time for the statutory rape of his seventeen-year-old girlfriend.

Delmar decides to go home.

He stops for gas and a Coke at a Quik Stop before he gets on the freeway, and that's when he notices he has only three dollars left and less than half a tank of gas. He puts the three dollars' worth in the tank, but the needle still quivers below the half-full mark. This could be a problem. He decides to take the shorter eastern route home, up 550 through Cuba.

He drives with the elephant beside him, thinking about Ashley and what a bummer the straight and narrow is. He thinks of the people he knows who have followed the straight and narrow: Becky, who spends eight hours a day behind a desk and then runs her feet off instead of getting laid; Uncle Woody, who spent eight hours a day in a mill and now has cancer; Stuck, who doesn't really qualify because she isn't straight, but she's on the narrow path, was named employee of the month in July for perfect attendance, and now she manages to show up every day, take care of her two kids every night, and still stay high. He thinks he would have to blow his brains out if he ever qualified for employee of the month at Stuckey's. He's got six months on the straight and narrow to look forward to as groundskeeper and all-around handyman at Whitaker Estates.

According to the clock on the dash, it's just past midnight. It's an uphill drive, the truck climbing steadily through Zia and San Ysidro into the Jemez Mountains toward Cuba, where he slows down because the hills have eyes—always a state patrolman hidden in the shadows around the Apache rez; as he climbs, the needle on the gas gauge drops fast. He rolls his window all the way down, leaning half out, feeling the sting of cool mountain air. Stars paper the sky overhead in this glittering world. He comes up fast on a slow-moving car, its sleepy taillights weaving back and forth from the shoulder to the broken white line, and he lays on the horn as he passes, waking the driver up. "I'm already gone," he says to the answering horn.

He speeds up on the other side of Cuba, where the road flattens out and the mountains drop away, sailing around the cars he meets. Quite a few on the road for this time of night, fairgoers, he assumes, some going real slow, drunks trying to find their way home. Fewer cars are heading south. They turn down their high beams miles before they need to because distances always seem shorter in the flatlands. There's nothing but black space and headlights. He too turns his high beams down well before he needs to, then flashes them just before an oncoming car passes, helping the drivers stay awake with a flash of blindness. He pushes the truck up to eighty, eighty-five, as if by speeding he can outrace the empty tank. He's wishing he had money for gas; if he did, he could turn right and head on down to Florida, hide out on Sam's houseboat. He wonders how Sam would feel about that. He likes Sam and he thinks Sam likes him. If he had money, he might just doit.

The air smells like gasoline. Somewhere to the west, El Paso Natural Gas is pumping black gold, but the night's too dark to see the hammers. They're there, though, like giant cockroaches digging in the earth, right where the Anasazi used to plow and plant their fields. He can feel them, the cockroaches, busy feeding, not giving a damn about him heading toward the straight and narrow. He could use some of that gas. Why is it they get to just dig and dig and he doesn't have a dime?

Just at the top of Bloomfield Hill, the gas pump symbol on the dash flickers, a faint yellow, then black, yellow, black. He can see the tiny lights of Bloomfield and the glow of Farmington just to the west. Twenty miles to Farmington, thirty-five to Fruitland, where Becky is sleeping, and only fifteen or so miles to Whitaker Mesa, where he has his own cottage. How many miles does he get once the warning light comes on? Five? Fifty? He comes up fast on a slow-moving car, then downshifts, watching the speedometer drop to seventy, getting right up on the car, sixty-eight, shifting into neutral, coasting a bit to save gas. He's close enough to read the license plate. It's a nice car, a Mazda with a vanity plate.
NM HUGH
. Delmar turns his lights off. He's coasting. He's invisible. He glides behind NM Hugh in his cloaking device. Speedometer stays steady at sixty-eight. He turns his lights on, shifts back into gear. Turns his lights off. Presses the gas pedal and closes the gap between him and Baby Huey, leaving a three-car length.
Are you awake up there?
he wonders. Time to wake up. He watches the speedometer, which starts to climb. Seventy. He closes to a two-car length, the lights from the car ahead animal eyes, twenty-twenty, lighting his way. Oh, now he's awake. The Mazda pulls ahead. "Steady as she goes, sir." He wonders how fast a Mazda can go. Faster than this Nissan? Delmar watches his speedometer climb to seventy-five. Eighty. He closes in, breathing down the Mazda's neck, a one-car length. "Go, baby go." And the yellow gas light stops blinking, starts shining. Ninety. Fast little Mazda. Rocketing along the straight and narrow.

"Call you Zoom," he says, taking his foot off the pedal, shifting to neutral, and dropping back just before they enter Bloomfield's speed-trap zone, while the Mazda jets ahead, a decoy, should anybody be out there watching. Delmar knows this country. He's been busted here. This country he knows well.

T
HE SUNDAY AFTERNOON
after her adventure with the horses, Becky is sitting with her mother on the front porch when Aunt Alice's white Chevy half-ton pulls into the yard. Her mother says, "It's the Pied Piper of Sin." Becky doesn't laugh.

Alice toots the horn, sticks her hand out the window, and waves. The truck, pulling a horse trailer, circles the willow tree where Arnold's old VW is parked, an orange boil on the dirt. Becky and Arnold went to his place just as the sun was coming up, and she drove the VW back. Two red horse rumps fill the trailer's rear window, two long tails hang out.

The wayward roans. Figures. Becky has had about three hours of very shallow sleep. She's been both dreading and anticipating a face-off with Alice about the lost roans, which, of course, are not lost. What a surprise. Things always seem to work out for Alice.

When Becky was younger, she secretly wanted to be Alice, who is everything a woman should not be. Her other aunts used to talk ceaselessly about a woman's place, which was in the home where she should rear children and abide by the righteous counsel of her husband. Or, if unmarried like them, she should serve the Lord.

As Becky grew up, people began to tell her that she looked like Alice, which delighted her, but when she examined herself in the mirror, she saw the resemblance but not Alice's beauty. Becky, her father, and Alice all have the same rectangular faces tapering just slightly into a squared chin, though Alice and her father have high, defined cheekbones and indented cheeks, which Becky, with her uninteresting slabs, has always envied. She thinks the hollows make her father and Alice look rugged and mysterious. Becky's nose is just a little wider than her aunt's, her lips a little thinner, and where Alice's hair is long, ropy, and very braidable—it's the color of sable but sun-threaded with copper — Becky's charcoal hair is coarse, electric, and copious, growing down her neck and in front of her ears like sideburns. Though her father and Alice both have thick brows, neither is nearly uni-browed, as she is. Arnold says he prefers Becky's Frieda Kahlo brow, her screwball face with its monstrous beauty. He thinks Alice's beauty is classic and forgettable, but he's the only one she knows who says that.

"
Yá'át'éhéii,
Delia," her aunt calls, walking toward them. "
Yá'át'éhéii,
Becky."

"Hello," her mother says.

Becky says nothing. A man gets out of the passenger's side of the truck. He wears a straw cowboy hat, plaid shirt, and tight jeans. Alice climbs the porch, smiling at Becky, stretching her hand out. Becky barely touches her fingers and can't bring herself to look in Alice's face.

She introduces the man, a wrangler from Sanostee who seems closer to Becky's age than her aunt's. Though it looks as if he's taken a few falls in the rodeo ring—his nose is flat, the bridge probably broken, and his left cheekbone is flatter than the right — he's good-looking in a scarred way. Her aunt's type. Becky has seen a dozen of his kind with Alice over the years.

Becky's mother moves over, making room for Alice next to her on the porch swing. "They were there this morning when I got to the farm," Alice says, nodding toward the trailer. "Sorry about the trouble. They know their way home." Her voice is jolly, as if last night was a fine joke. Her eyes are hidden behind dark glasses. She stretches her arms out on the back of the swing, crosses her ankles, spreading out. She's a little fleshier than usual, bulging around her blue-jeaned thighs, and she looks soft, sort of liquid. Becky gets the feeling she's watching the guy behind her glasses, though she keeps her face turned toward Becky. What it is? It's the languid softness of a good night's sex. Irritating. Next to Alice, Becky's mother seems shrunken and bland, her hair graying fast. Alice and Delia are the same age, forty-four, but her mother is starting to look older. Her hair is badly curled, a dozen hoops all operating independently of each other, the hoops dull, the hair thinning. In spite of her effort to keep on top of her moods, depression has begun to ooze from her.

Becky looks at the horses' rumps. The tails don't swish. They're probably asleep. They had a hard night. Alice says she hasn't heard from Delmar, but it looked as if he'd been by the farm. Some of his stuff was gone. But he didn't leave a note. "Maybe he got the job."

"Where is it?" Becky says.

"I don't know. He just said it was a gardening job."

"So you want to lend me your truck?" Becky says. "Delmar took mine."

Her aunt presses her lips together, looking at the cowboy. Annoying. Becky gets the impression Alice is trying not to laugh. The cowboy smiles.

"Sorry, Becky. You know Delmar."

"I'm not kidding," Becky says. "We've got no transportation here." Alice looks at the VW. "That," Becky says, "is like a tricycle."

Alice puts her index finger over her mouth. Becky wishes she had the guts to slap her. Her aunt thinks Delmar is something. Clearly.

"Sure," Alice says. "Just as soon as we get back."

"Where are you going?" Becky's mother says.

"We have to go down to El Paso.
Yá'át'éhéii ánaaí,
" she says as she gets up. Becky's father is standing behind the screen door. Alice crosses the porch, opens the door, puts out her hand, which Woody takes and holds on to, leaning into her and coming out on the porch. She walks him to the swing. They speak to each other in Navajo. Becky glances at her mother and is glad to see a little fire in her eyes. Delia does not appreciate conversations in Navajo, which exclude her, especially in her own home. Only Alice does this.

"What's in El Paso?" her father says after a while. He's wrapped in his orange Pendleton blanket, which he grips at the chest with fingers that are too bony. His concave cheeks no longer look mysterious and dangerous but simply skeletal.

Alice leans up against the porch railing next to the cowboy. "We're starting some training camps. We've got one in El Paso and one in San Antonio. Good money. We should be back in a couple of weeks. I was wondering, Becky, could you look in on
Shimá
until Delmar gets back?"

"And how am I going to get there!" Becky's mother's head rears back in surprise. Becky didn't intend to shout, but she can't stop. "Give me your truck and I'll look in on Grandma."

Alice stares at her feet. The cowboy looks at her feet. Becky's father smiles at his feet. Heat floods Becky. She bites her tongue.

The wrangler says something softly to Alice in Navajo.

"It's okay," she says. "He says his sister will look in on Grandma."

They sit in silence.

Becky watches cloud shadows drift across the dirt yard and thinks maybe it will finally rain. She decides she's not going to feel the shame she's feeling. How can Alice make her feel this way, as if she is a cute child having a tantrum?

"Don't worry," her aunt says softly. "He'll come back. You know Delmar." She takes her sunglasses off, cleaning them on her shirt. She has bags under her eyes, which make her look her age, but the expression in her eyes makes her look even older. Her teasing fit seems to have passed. She's looking at Becky with a heavy-lidded kindness, as if she understands exactly how Becky feels, as if she feels it, too, and Becky's temples begin to throb, the lack of sleep and the desire to cry swelling her sinuses.

"If he doesn't," she says quietly, "I'm calling the police."