Lucky Turtle, page 18
“We’ll work everything out,” I said.
“The answer is no,” he said. And climbed in the Prius and whispered out of there angrily.
But Ricky planned away, route, meals, stops, cheap stays, the works. I got excited despite myself, his adolescent energy. I wished we could call Maria, plan a visit, but Maria was off the grid, way off. If she was even alive. Ninety years old at least. Clay had had a business, but I wasn’t even sure what it was, beyond horses. Anyway, searching the internet yielded nothing. And nothing about Camp Challenge, just a survivors’ group, tantalizing but defunct. I put away grocery money. I bought camping equipment. I packed closely. I didn’t lie.
At last the day came. Ricky and I drove Walter to Logan Airport in his Prius, dawn flight, then rushed home, loaded up quickly, and off we drove, as many miles as possible day one, Ricky using his lettering skills to alter Walter’s mileage notebook despite his mother’s not-at-all theatrical disapproval, midnight nap in a Walmart lot somewhere east of Chicago, predawn start and onward, increasing excitement, aching bones, great efficiency, windblown night and hot shower at the Peeling Paint Motel somewhere in South Dakota, tumbleweeds knocking at the door.
In the morning, Mountain Turtle dressed carefully in Wranglers and pocket T-shirt, braided his hair, fastened leather bands around his biceps. He did not look much like Lucky, nor much like anyone else, a big person, solemn in his devotion. I dressed, too, as if for a reunion, Mystique blouse half-open, my old Wranglers tight to my hips, the vurry Wranglers, cuffs frayed, only a little too tight, zipper stuck half-mast, pockets worn soft, corrective hiking boots pink as peonies.
Not even noon and there it was, rising unchanged from the greater shapes around it: Turtle Butte, center of our vision for a hundred miles, perceptibly growing. Ricky, driving, clicked the music off, took my hand, squeezed hard, drove.
Camp Challenge was abandoned, the structures vandalized, picked over, building materials scavenged, windows smashed, satanic symbols, firepits and condom wrappers. We parked at the Admin building and walked uphill. The Cats cabin had been wrecked, door swung open, the bunks atumble, mouse-eaten mattresses strewn, only my triple bunk still standing, bolted to the wall for safety. I climbed the plain ladder and fell onto that familiar mattress, lay on my back. My tiny window was still there, maybe the only glass left in the place. I cranked it open, waft of sage.
“Mom, I’m sad,” Ricky said.
“It’s okay to be sad,” I said. “I’m sad, too.”
We hiked up to chapel, which he’d drawn, too, so much I’d told him, so much I’d not, nothing changed there, the hopeful amphitheater of pine benches, the tall pine cross, the forever view back across the plains we’d only just traversed. We took out our lunch, sat on the exact pew where Francie and I had met. I told him more about her, that I’d loved her.
“Let’s find her,” he said.
“Honey.”
“I mean, why not?”
“I don’t know where to look.”
“It’s weird,” he said. “I sort of thought we’d find all of them here.”
“We sort of did.”
“It’s beautiful, though. Mom, this chapel, so high up.”
“It was important to the Crow, too,” I said. “A holy place.”
“Still and always,” Ricky said.
We walked back down to the car, took our time. Each building had a little funny story. I didn’t tell him about Doctor Nice and Pink. But I told him about laundry. I told him about Vault. We got in the car at Admin and drove down to see it, Ricky fascinated. The steel building was still there, locked up tight, maybe the only intact building in the whole place. Despite some years of graffiti, it had that inviolable look.
“Mom, what did you do wrong? Solitary confinement!”
“Hey. Your mom did nothing. They were just bad people.”
“Don’t be cross.”
“Let’s go find Maria,” I said. “I mean if we can. I’m getting the creeps here.”
“You miss Lucky Turtle.”
“Sweetie, yes. I miss Lucky. And you know. I need coffee.”
“Coffee makes you anxious.”
That building, Vault. It had been a crossroads, the bridge between this life and that. The long hell of solitary, then paradise so brief. All that incomprehensible graffiti, symbols and tags and just plain splashes, bullet holes, too, once you looked. Someone had written a name in pink paint: becky. Someone else had written a slogan in black: i died here.
Chapter Forty-Two
I started a stick calendar on the thick duff under the lodgepole pines, my private place within sight of the lodge. I thought of it as a kind of attic I could slip away to among all the old things, the duff a soft, old carpet on which to work the 1000-piece puzzle of my life, and I visited near every day. With a butter knife Lucky had sharpened for me, I cut sticks a foot long and whittled the bark off, made neat groups of seven to represent weeks, remembering our days as best I could, special rocks and pretty pebbles to mark highlights—like Hot Springs Discovery or First Venison or Francie’s Arrival.
My best guess was that we’d made it almost to August. Neither Lucky nor Francie took the slightest interest. But I couldn’t take their way—just is—because the current moment progressed, the past receded, things were coming at us from the future, clearer and larger as they came closer, like asteroids that would most likely miss us but might also blow us up. Still, my belly was rounder, my heart more content, a feeling of permanence settling in, that this was my place in the world, my calendar growing like a patchwork quilt, our beautiful days.
So, call it the Bad Morning, a rare windless morning, hot, peaceful, chores to attend to. Lucky was off hunting, wapiti his obsession. Full of confidence, he’d taken both horses, one to ride, one to carry the meat he was so sure he’d get.
I visited the calendar, placed a stick for yesterday, a piece of antler to represent whatever it was that had happened the day before, the happening now forgotten but the antler clear as the moon on a cold night. After Calendar I spent a pleasant hour picking berries, tart things Lucky called redbugs, hard not to eat them all. At Family Table I worked a while stripping a big bundle of unusual pine cones Lucky had collected, special whitebark pines he’d spotted somewhere and climbed. Under the interleaved scales were fat pine nuts, hard again not to eat every last one—first I’d ever heard of them. When the sun finally rose over the ridge, I built up the fire, dragged the drying rack out of the lodge, delicious, peppery jerky I wasn’t to eat if we were going to have food for winter. But just a little shred. And just a few berries. And just a spoonful of pine nuts. I boiled water in our one pot and made tea from raspberry leaves—Pregnant Tea, Lucky called it, magic from Maria. And I sat at the table, then climbed up and lay on it with Hawaii, third time through, all indolence: someone had to guard the jerky against bears and jays and not only my appetite, which was prodigious.
I chewed, I read.
Francie returned from the garden under high sun with a nice pile of greens, then went to work on La Gran Vil, as she had started calling our place, singing happily, happily finishing her chinking, happily layering long swaths of cedar bark like palm fronds over her poles, at least something like her earliest memories, her mother’s village in Haiti, the homes of elderly people she’d visited with her sainted mother. Francie had her period, I remember that, likely so long delayed because of her exposure and severe dehydration during her last days at Challenge—we’d discussed what to do.
A fetus was inside me, and growing every day, and though my puking was done, it was replaced by strange pains and sleeplessness, anxious midnight maundering, kicks and punches. The only thing I knew about pregnancy was what had already happened. About childbirth I knew nothing, except that in old novels mothers died, of course they did. The baby was in me and would have to come out. By day I was more sanguine, and more in love than I’d ever thought possible. With Lucky, of course, but also with our world. Our world, including Francie. And with the concept inside me as well: a boy, just as Maria had said, half me and half Lucky.
We’d eaten lunch and were cleaning up when I heard it—something different from the wind, just faintly at first. Then louder. A vehicle. Miles of warning.
“It’s Clay,” Francie said, delighted. We’d begged him for chocolate, for candles, for baseball caps, the sun forever in our eyes, and maybe Maria would have thought of some of the woman things we lacked.
Just listen, that’s what Lucky always said. So I just did, shushing Francie. And okay, this vehicle sounded clunky, whereas Clay’s sounded brighter on its springs, a twittering above all the squeaks, this one making lower tones, a kind of booming on the bumps, someone making slow progress, more careful of the roots and rocks and ruts than Clay had ever been. The wind had picked up, the heat rising up through the afternoon, seemed to carry the unwelcome sounds.
An interloper. We’d gone over it a million times. I banked the fire quickly as I could, covered the soup pot, put our message up on the elk-hide door: Bronco would be back soon. I kept Francie’s hand so she wouldn’t get distracted. She insisted on retrieving the old pickle jar we used for water, filled it from the heavy bark vessel Lucky had made.
We clambered up the ridge, I more sluggish than a mere moon cycle before, short of breath, slipping and sweating. Just as we got to our overlook a pickup pulled right up to Lucky’s boulders, parked in plain sight, just where Lucky had said a bad person would not: good.
A man climbed out, stocky, large, open stance, the friendly vibration outdoor people often emanate, cowboy hat cocked back so you could see his face. Lucky and I had talked about this at length, especially long for Lucky: a bad person would hesitate, look all around, hide under the brim of his hat. And Lucky had said wait—wait to see if the caller stepped away from his vehicle and made himself visible, vulnerable, and if so, then carefully observe the way he walked: his intentions would be in his walk. This man proceeded slowly, not strutting or shouting out, stopping well before the dooryard, respectful, not furtive, not official either, something open and friendly about him.
Francie was at my shoulder, put her broad hands on me. “He can help us,” she said.
“Quiet,” I said.
“We need things,” she said.
The interloper lingered some, then seemed to notice the corral, sidled over there, kicked at the fresh hay bales, then seemed suddenly to notice the lodge—it wasn’t easy to spot—walked on up there, stood just off the little porch, hands in pockets, inspecting our note, nodding his head as if Bronco were a friend of his, too.
And that’s when he would have turned around and shambled back down the hill and gotten in his truck and driven off, but Franciella shouted, “Halloo!”
The interloper shielded his eyes, looked the wrong direction, stiffened in his boots.
And Francie took off running down the steep hill, likely feeling the same warm vibe as me but also eager to meet whoever might be met, her usual restraint forgotten.
“Francie!” I shouted, starting after her. But she was already on the brook path, this thundering woman, carrying long strips of new cedar bark for her bedroom project, the long ends trailing behind her—always with the focus.
“Halloo!” she shouted again.
The interloper flinched hard, spun the right direction, spotted her coming, crouched small, put a hand at his belt in back—in case you’d wondered where his gun was hidden. You saw his beat of surprise: She was tall. She was brown. A lot of woman.
“Howdy-ho,” the man called, trying not to sound scared.
She raced right to him as I picked my way more carefully through the rocks. I couldn’t hear, of course, but saw that words were passing between them, friendly enough words, it appeared, their heads nodding. Francie pointed downward, she pointed upward. She walked with the man to our lodge—he a match for her in physique—opened the elk-hide door for him, goddamn her: too friendly, and she shouldn’t forget how exotic she might seem and that a person just like her was missing.
A minute, that’s all, half a minute, and they were back outside where she showed him the outdoor portion of her new room. Well, so that’s what they’d been talking about. He pointed at bindings and measured invisible things with his hands—building advice, okay. And you saw Franciella take exception to something he’d said—that defensive pose, hands up between them. But then they were laughing. I hadn’t often heard Franciella laugh, I realized, not like that, a bark and a chortle and a bubbling cascade, carried like a falcon soaring on a breeze and, to my ears, surprisingly happy, and I knew why: a sudden man in a world with but one.
I made my way down from my aerie and into the yard, greeted them both.
“Well-well,” the interloper said, eyeballing me bodily.
He was the poacher: following his every step in the dust were the exact boot prints Lucky had pointed out.
“Don’t look now, but she’s having a baby,” Franciella said.
“Goes without saying,” the man said, certain chastening tone, patronizing air that he wanted to draw me into, create a team. We were one thing, Francie another. He extended his hand, the gentlest gesture, kept his eyes on mine. But when that attempt failed, so transparent, his brand of seduction, he again took in my belly, my chest.
I stood up straight, titties first for the gold (as my gym coach had liked to say), posture as challenge.
He grew careful, said, “Just come up ta fish. That’s my church, the brook.”
“How do you do,” I said.
“I do just fine,” he said. “I am Mr. Drinkins. Dale Drinkins.”
“This is Mrs. Franciella,” I said.
“How do you do,” Franciella said, mocking me.
“I do just fine,” Mr. Drinkins said again. “Just fine indeed.
“Is it Sunday?” Franciella said.
“It’s Sunday,” said Mr. Drinkins.
“What’s the date?” Franciella said.
“It’s August seventeenth.”
August seventeenth. I’d been off by several weeks, still had us back in July, had just lost time. My heart sank. We all stood an awkward minute.
But then politely our visitor said, “Now, what religion is that there?” And he indicated our bonnets, pairs of XS gray panties we’d taken to wearing on our heads, low-rent wimples, the leg holes like crests—two makes a cult.
Franciella studied the man, clearly liked what she saw, why? He was middle aged, paunchy, unshaven, smelled like deer lure and aftershave, seemed nice for all that. She said, “Where did you come from?”
And the man said, “If I may, I was talking to your missus.”
Francie stood up tall, taller than him. “My missus?” she said. “My missus? So we have your answer: you came from the, like, nineteenth century.”
His faced flushed perceptibly, not embarrassment, exactly, but what?
“You talk to us both,” I said.
He tried to regain ground: “About the headgear,” he said. “What religion?”
“Testamentals,” Francie said, so quick.
He thought a moment, said, “So you ladies homestead up here.”
“It’s the old family place,” I said. “We are here just through summer, as we go back to the . . . the mission . . . in fall.”
Francie had already forgiven him, or pretended: she was crafty, I knew. “Down in Haiti,” she said brightly. “You know our country?”
Lights went on in his eyes, our presence making some kind of sense to him suddenly. He said, “I hear it’s dangerous down there South America way,” he said.
“Not with Bronco along,” I said. “No worse than here.”
Mr. Dale Drinkins said, “I didn’t notice any wedding rings.” He turned his own, a thin band of gold.
“Don’t be coarse,” I said. “We don’t believe in jewelry of any kind.”
“I stand corrected.” He gave Franciella yet another long look up and down, all shrewd. I’d read him wrong—there was nothing nice about him.
“Bronco can be a tad jealous,” I said.
Francie took my cue, bless her: “Yes, he threw someone in the ocean once.”
He thought about that, clearly wasn’t buying it, small smile—an operator, my father would have called him. He said, “I noticed they were off with the horses.”
I said, “Off with the horses, yes.” Good, he thought there were two men. I remembered he’d skirted the horses when Lucky and I were at the hot spring. He had a young son. I breathed a little easier, just remembering that. A man with a kid. A man with a name.
Mr. Drinkins said, “Off poaching, I suppose.”
I said, “Takes one to know one.”
He said, “Man’s got to eat.” He’d walked right by our garden, I realized.
“Well,” I said, brainstorm. “It’s about time for morning devotions. One hour. If you’ll join us.”
One of the hens began squawking in the makeshift coop.
“Someone laid an egg,” Mr. Drinkins said.
Francie grinned at that.
Mr. Drinkins grinned back, said, “No, no devotions for me.”
We all just stood in silence. The wind blew. Our visitor studied Franciella, studied her up and down. Finally he said, “Well, if ya need me, I’m around. This has been my stomping grounds these many years. Did I say my name? Dale. Dale Drinkins.”
I said, “Yes, you said your name.”
“So I did. Did I get your’n?”
“Mrs. Bronco,” I said.
Mr. Drinkins offered his hand, but I didn’t take it, something sour filling the air between us. The hand hovered. Francie turned away, bless her.
I said, “Do you have a child with you?”
“Neither with me nor without,” he said surprised, or acting so.
“You had a child with you the other day. When you were spying.”
He flinched. He flushed once again. And after a long standoff, he turned, sudden emotion—the observer observed—and marched himself down the hill. No look back, he climbed in his truck, started it up with a roar, and drove back down the trail and out of sight, cloud of dust lingering.
