"Money from the casino," Taylor says.
"Yeah. From the silver-dollar machine. Stupid Wallace kept the key in the cash register. At the better establishments they keep all the machine keys in a safe."
Taylor is startled that Barbie makes no effort to lie. "Well, that's between you and Wallace," she says. "I personally don't care that you ripped him off, but I'm not interested in being chased by the police."
"Wally would never call the cops." Barbie narrows her eyes at the highway. "They'd check his gaming odds and send him directly do not pass go to San Quentin."
Taylor understands that where Barbie is concerned she has no idea what she's dealing with. But she finds she prefers this to her previous assumption, which was that Barbie had cotton candy for brains. "Well, here's my true confession," Taylor says. "I don't want the police around because Turtle and I are hiding from somebody. Not the police exactly. Somebody that might get custody of Turtle."
"Oh, your ex-husband? I've seen that on America's Most Wanted."
"No. It's complicated." Taylor wonders if child-custody disputes really do make it onto America's Most Wanted.
"Well, whatever," Barbie says. "Ask me no questions I'll tell you no lies."
Alice has come out of the phone booth. Taylor looks up and sees her standing by the road with her hands dangling at her sides and tears streaming down her face. She looks like she's been hit by something. Two cars in succession slow down to look.
"Could you stay here a minute and keep an eye on Turtle?" Taylor asks, setting off at a jog. By the time she's crossed the highway, Alice is in the car. Taylor gets in on the driver's side.
"I could take the bus from Reno," Alice says, staring forward, though her line of sight seems unable to pass through the windshield.
"Take the bus to where? We have the car."
"I can stay with my cousin Sugar. Somebody ought to go talk to them, Taylor. I understand why you ran when they yelled fire, but I think there's another way to handle this."
"Mama, I'm not giving up Turtle."
"I think all they're saying is they need to talk to you, to tell you there's another side to it." Alice speaks low, and Taylor feels shut out.
"I already talked to her. She wants to take Turtle."
"Maybe not. She's just touchy on the subject, on account of her brother." Alice looks out at the sky. "That poor little boy," she croons, hugging herself, as if she's had a dream.
"What little boy?"
"The one they took away."
"Jesus, Mama, whose side are you on here?"
Alice turns to Taylor and hugs her. "Yours. I'm with you and Turtle to the crack of doom, hon. You know that."
They sit rocking back and forth by the highway while Taylor holds on to Alice, trying to understand the bad news. Through the car window she can plainly see the man leaning on the red car, who suddenly brightens at the sight of a woman who must be his wife, coming from the service station. They hail each other with words in a strange language. Taylor is startled. This ordinary man in jeans, whose thoughts she believed she knew, opens his mouth and becomes a foreigner. It occurs to her that this one thing about people you can never understand well enough: how entirely inside themselves they are.
18
Natural Systems
ALONG THE HIGHWAY THE CORNFIELDS lie newly flayed, mile after mile, their green skin pulled back to reveal Oklahoma's flesh of orange velvet dirt. The uncultivated hills nearby show off a new summer wardrobe of wildflowers. The massed reds flecked with gold are Indian blanket; Cash recalls this name with pleasure, like a precious possession lost and retrieved. He fixes the radio on the sweet, torn voice of George Jones and breathes deeply of the air near home.
A woman in the Oklahoma Welcome Station told him that schoolkids take up collections of pennies to buy the wildflower seeds. Cash had thought wildflowers just grew. He considers this now as he drives, and decides maybe they just tell the kids they use their money for wildflowers. So the little ones can look out the car window and think they did all that with their pennies.
Cash hums along with George, who is gloating about putting a gold ring on the right left hand this time. He thinks briefly of Rose, back in Jackson Hole, admiring the rear ends of boys in McDonald's; he wonders how quickly she'll forget about his tired, flat hind end altogether. He doesn't much care. He is headed back to the home he never should have left, and right now he feels the possibility of fresh love for his own life. When he stopped for the restroom at the welcome station, he gazed at the educational display of the seven different types of barbed-wire and felt he could leap over all seven in one bound.
As he nears the Arkansas River and Cherokee country, the fields give way to trees and there are more varieties of living things, it seems: scissortail birds snipping over the meadows catching bugs, and big-headed kingfishers sitting on high lines overlooking the river. He drives into the outskirts of Tahlequah, through the motel strip along the Muskogee Highway and then into the older, pretty part of town. The old brick courthouse and the seminary building and all the old oaks haven't changed. The main road leads him out again, into the woods.
At a bend in the road outside Locust Grove, Cash is moved by the sight of a little field with a heartbreaking hedgerow of wild pink roses and one small, sweet hickory in the center, left standing because the Cherokee man or woman who plowed that field wouldn't cut down a hickory. He keeps an eye out, afraid to miss one single sight as he makes his way. Crowds of black-eyed susans stand up to be counted, and five beagles sit side by side in someone's yard, reverent as a choir, blessing his overdue return.
Annawake is first aware of a rectangle of brightness framing the window shade, then the pile of quilts arguing on her bed: wild geese, double wedding ring, trip around the world, stitched by three different aunts who quarreled, when they were alive, about which pattern was best. And there is something under the quilts, a lump, stealing along like a mole beneath the garden. Annawake reaches behind her head, pulls herself to a half situp, and conks the lump with a pillow. It flattens and giggles. She pulls out a naked Annie.
"I found a rat in my bed. What am I going to do with this rat?" She covers Annie's face with kisses. When she exhausts her affectionate assault, Annie lies on her back next to Annawake and sucks her thumb with a contented, arrogant air.
"You got kicked out of Millie's bed, didn't you."
Annie nods.
"That's because there's another baby now. You've moved up in the world. Now you get to be a big sister. Doesn't that sound fun?"
Annie shakes her head.
"I don't blame you. Who needs it?" Annawake lies on her back too. They both look for a while at the ceiling, which is decorated with a few unwelcome suggestions of mildew. Before Annawake finished law school and moved back to Tahlequah, Millie doubled up the kids into the front room, mounted a convulsing stepladder and scrubbed this room to within an inch of its life. But there has been rain since then, and the roof is older than anyone living under it.
Dellon pokes his head in the door. "There she is. The escaped prisoner." He comes in with Annie's clothes, and Annie uses her sturdy legs to scoot herself under the quilts again.
"Hey, Dell," Annawake says. She sits up, clasping her arms around her blanketed knees. "Watch out, the prisoner's lawyer is present."
Dellon sits on the foot of the bed holding Annie's small red sneakers like baby birds in his large hands. Dellon's long hair is loose, his T-shirt looks like what grasshoppers do to crops, and his beefy shoulders seem slumped this morning with the weight of fatherhood. He narrows his eyes at Annawake. "Hey, that's my shirt. I've been looking for that one."
Annawake looks down innocently at the maroon flannel she's been sleeping in. "The color's good on me, don't you think?" She cocks her profile.
"Why don't you get a boyfriend, so you can steal his clothes?"
"Good idea. I knew there was some reason women sought out the company of men."
"Listen, I was supposed to have the
kids out of here by ten o'clock. Millie has to take the baby over to Claremore for his shots or something."
"Christ, what time is it? Are you telling me I slept past ten o'clock?"
"Yeah, I think they're going to make it a national holiday. National Annawake Slept Past Ten O'clock Day."
"Look, I'll stay here with the kids. It's not even worth going into the office now."
"You're not going into the office? On a Saturday morning? Definitely a national holiday." He half stands and reaches behind the aged lace curtain to snap up the shade.
Annawake shades her eyes from the light. "Get out of here," she tells him affectionately. "Annie and I need our beauty sleep." She flips the pillow behind her head and lies back down. The lump of Annie wildly animates the double wedding rings in the region of Annawake's knees.
"Okay," Dellon says. "I'm taking Baby Dellon and Raymond over to my house. You've got this one." He stands up and gently swats Annie through the quilts with her red shoes. "The naked savage. Teach her some girl stuff, will you, like how to wear clothes?"
"See you later, Dell."
"Oh, listen. Did Millie tell you about the hog fry?"
Annawake sits up. "Another one? I'm going to get fat this summer. Who's this one for?"
"Cash Stillwater, just moved back from somewhere. It's down at Letty Hornbuckle's over in Heaven."
"Miss Letty, the one that used to run everybody's business in the grade-school cafeteria? I haven't seen her since I got breasts."
"You have breasts? Let me see."
Annawake makes a frightening face at her brother.
"So, you coming?"
"Cash Stillwater," she repeats. "I think I went to school with his son, who was it, Jesse Stillwater? Real tall?"
"No, Jesse is Cash and Letty's youngest brother. I think there was eleven or twelve of them. Cash had a daughter--remember that Alma, she drove herself into the river a few years ago?"
"Oh, yeah. Off that bridge."
"They're some kin to Johnetta Hornbuckle that drives the school bus. There's Johnetta and Quatie. She married Earl Mellowbug."
"Quatie." Annawake thinks. "That's right. Her mother was Mama's girlfriend. Remember her, the beauty queen? Mama kept that picture of her that was in a magazine. I still have that thing somewhere."
"I'll be back around six to pick you up. Unless you get a better date."
"We'll be here, Dell. You're the best I'm ever going to do."
Annawake smiles, watching the bear shape of her brother duck out through the doorway. Annie has made no progress with female apparel in the meantime, but has fallen back to sleep. Annawake smooths the layers of covers, remembering from her childhood the noisy aunts who made those three quilts: they lived in one house, and could never agree on anything in this world except that love is eternal.
On the stone floor of Jax's studio Lou Ann sits cross-legged, nervously tapping the toes of her athletic shoes while Jax frowns at his new amplifier rig. He picks up a yellow electrical cord and examines it closely. "Do you think this should be plugged into something?"
"Don't ask me. Do I look like Mozart?"
"No," Jax says. Today he doesn't have the energy even to laugh at Lou Ann.
"Dwayne Ray, honey, don't mess with Jax's stuff."
Dwayne Ray, a resolute child with disorganized mud-colored hair, is pulling an assortment of bamboo flutes out of a milk crate and laying them end to end.
"I'm making a space shovel," he explains.
"No problem," Jax says. "Take them out in the hall. You can line up the whole star fleet out there."
Dwayne Ray happily drags the crate out the door. In the hallway he begins to accompany his industry with Indy 500 sounds. Lou Ann simply stares at Jax. He finds a socket for the yellow plug and then glances up, feeling her eyes.
"Jax, you never let him touch those before. You would have cut his little pecker off if he'd tried to use your music stuff for toys."
Jax returns to his wires. "So, I'm feeling generous. Your male line has escaped dismemberment."
Lou Ann's blue eyes are wide. "Jax, honey, I miss her too, but you have got to get a grip."
He puts down his pliers and really looks at Lou Ann. The sun from the high east window lights her upturned face and her electric blue leggings and the bag of tangerines she brought over, and Jax wishes merely to weep. All this color and worry focused on his welfare, and it's going to waste. He sits down next to her.
"Do you know," he says, curling his long fingers through Lou Ann's, "all her earthly clothing fit into two drawers in the bureau. Can you believe God made a woman like that? And she saw fit to live with me?"
"Gosh, Jax, I could never be your girlfriend," Lou Ann says, sounding hurt. "I'd get disqualified just on the basis of shoes alone."
"I love you anyway. But you've got to let me wallow in my misery. This is not a situation that can be resolved through Welcome Wagon technology." He leans sideways and gives her a kiss of dismissal.
Lou Ann stands up and, with one last worried look, leaves him. She steps over the electrical cords as if they might be napping snakes. In the hall she collects Dwayne Ray and the flutes. Jax hears the sounds of their internal wooden emptiness as she piles them back into their crate. He stands up again, facing the window, realizing how clearly these days he can hear the emptiness inside things. He lets his hands walk around on the keyboard, which is powerless, its internal circles of current still interrupted somewhere by an imperceptible fault line. It makes no sound at all as his fingers modulate their laments in one key after another.
Jax feels entirely separate from his hands as he looks out the window. His eyes follow the golden, drawn-out shape of what he finally understands to be a coyote circling the trunk of a palo verde tree. His hands go still. The coyote's belly hangs low with incipient pups or with milk, it's impossible to tell which, because she keeps herself low in the brush.
Suddenly with violent effort she leaps into the tree and falls back, bouncing a little on her forelegs, with a nest of sticks in her mouth. A dove flies off in the same instant, startled as a heartbeat. The coyote crouches at the base of the tree and consumes the eggs in ugly, snapping gulps. She stands a moment licking her mouth, then creeps away.
Jax is crying. He feels deeply confused about whom he should blame for his losses. The predator seems to be doing only what she has to do. In natural systems there is no guilt or virtue, only success or failure, measured by survival and nothing more. Time is the judge. If you manage to pass on what you have to the next generation, then what you did was right.
19
Chewing Bones
ALICE DIALS DIRECTORY ASSISTANCE FROM a motel room in Sacramento, in pursuit of Hornbuckles.
"You can't find a Robert? No, wait," she commands the operator, shifting the receiver to her better ear. "It's Roland, I think. Roland Hornbuckle. Look up that one." She waits, rolling her eyes across the room to Taylor, who returns a less irritated, more troubled version of her own expression. Alice has never gotten over the initial shock of seeing her own facial features plastered across another human being, with plans of their own.
"You worrying about Turtle?"
Taylor nods.
"What's her problem?"
"She found out you were leaving. She hates when anybody leaves her. I just went in there and found all our shoes and Barbie's slippers in the toilet. Now she's lying in the tub."
"I'll talk to her," Alice says. "I'll tell her it's just so I can try and make them let you and her stay together."
"I already told her that. It doesn't matter if you have a logical reason."
"Well, then, try Rocky Hornbuckle," Alice tells the operator. She whispers to Taylor, "Has she got her flashlight in there? I don't mean to worry you, but Harland's sister got killed listening to 'Jesus Loves You This Morning' on the radio in her bathtub."
"Oh, don't worry, there's no water. She just gets in with her clothes on and pulls a blanket over her head and says she's buried."
&n
bsp; Alice says in a louder voice, "No? Okay, listen. Just give me every Hornbuckle you've got in Heaven, Oklahoma."
Taylor gets up to examine Barbie's slippers, which are drying out badly in front of the air-conditioner unit. "Boy, is she going to be pissed off when she sees these. They look like drowned guinea pigs."
"Where'd she go?"
"Who, Barbie? Out to get more Cheese Doritos, I think."
Alice begins writing hurriedly, trying to keep up. She hangs up and waves her list at Taylor. "Eight Hornbuckles with telephones. One of them's got to be Sugar, right? Maybe she remarried."
"Well, then, her name wouldn't be Hornbuckle anymore," Taylor points out.
"Isn't that the dumbest thing, how the wife ends up getting filed under the husband? The husband is not the most reliable thing for your friends to try and keep track of."
"Nobody holds a gun to your head, Mama," Taylor says. "Even if I married Jax, which I'm not going to, but what would I want with his stupid name? Just learning how to spell it is a big commitment."
"I'm going to call this whole list. One of them's got to know her, at least." Alice takes a deep breath and dials.
"I don't think he even ever spells it the same way twice."
Alice holds up her hand. "Ringing," she says. They both wait. After a moment they wait less breathlessly. Alice finally disconnects, then dials the next number on her list. "You've been picking on that boy all day long, Taylor," she says in a quiet voice, as if the ringing phone might otherwise hear her. "Either he's your boyfriend or he isn't, but don't just sit on the fence and run him down."
Taylor slumps in the swivel chair by the window and falls silent, twisting the chair slightly back and forth, while Alice tries two more numbers.
"I think they done dropped the bomb on Heaven, Oklahoma," she announces after getting no answer on number four. She scrutinizes her list, then glances up at Taylor, who is looking out the window with tears in her eyes.
"Hon, what is it? What I said about Jax?"
"I don't know if he is or he isn't. How can I have a boyfriend if I'm sleeping in motels and living in a car? No wonder Turtle wants to have a funeral for herself in the bathtub."
"This is going to pass," Alice says, beginning to dial again. "I know it's hard. But you and Turtle have a home back there waiting for you."