“But it’s disgusting.”
“Not when you get used to it,” she says. She stretches her bubbly skillet-shaped piece of bread until a piece rips off and she folds it into her mouth.
“Hey, Rosemarie. My friend and I were discussing something. Do you know what you want?”
“Fry bread,” she says, licking some grease off her fingers.
“No. Do you know what you want out of life? Is it well defined?”
“I used to want a man.”
“A specific man?”
“Yes.”
“What happened?”
“I got him.”
“Oh,” Zoe says.
“Yeah. Oh. You need to be careful when you get what you want. My advice is to lower your expectations.”
“See,” I tell Zoe.
“See, nothing. The trick is to want more than just a man, right, Rosemarie?”
“I don’t know. Maybe the trick is not to want.”
But that doesn’t seem right even to me. It will give me something to think about, though, as we finish driving across this enormous state just to get to a buffalo.
SAYING YES
Rosemarie gives Zoe a couple of ancient buffalo-bone needles, some leather, and some beads to take with her and practice her own designs. She shows her how to pop the needle only halfway through the leather so that the stitches remain invisible. They hug, and I think about what we can give her in return. All we have are rolls of coins, a weather radio, a red slouchy hat, my copy of The Brothers Lionheart.
I place the slouch hat on the back of her head, and with her long braids, it looks really good. Zoe snaps a picture of her, and we’re about to get back on the road.
Rosemarie looks at me then. She stares me in the eye. The greenish edge of her iris has weakened and slackened with age, and it seems to leak into the white of her eye. Still, she looks at me intensely until I have to look away.
“What is it?” I ask.
“Nothing,” she says, shaking her head. “I just thought maybe you knew something. But that’s impossible.”
“Knew what?”
“Never mind.”
“What?”
“I just had a flash about the white buffalo when I looked in your eyes.”
“What is the significance of a white buffalo? Hypothetically, if I had seen one or something.”
“The white buffalo is our Jesus. The hope of all nations. White Buffalo came to us in the form of a woman and taught us to pray, and then she turned back into a calf, left, and promised to come again to unite all the people of the Earth. The black, the red, the yellow, and the white,” she says as she points to the four colors of a cheap feathered Indian headdress stapled to the wall. “All the races of man.”
“I may have seen one. Randomly. In, like, a vision as I was staring at the highway.”
Rosemarie looks at me again. “You a white girl?”
“Mostly,” I say.
“What’s the other part?”
“Maybe Delaware, but from a long time ago when they were, like, still in New Jersey.”
“The white buffalo came to you. You should smoke a peace pipe.”
“No. I don’t smoke,” I say.
“Dude. A Lakota woman asks you to smoke a pipe to honor the white buffalo and save the planet, you do not decline,” Zoe says without looking up from the toy tom-tom she’s been beating in an annoying way for the past ten minutes. She’s jittery again and rifling distractedly through the bins of Indian City schlock.
“It’s okay,” Rosemarie says, putting up her hands like a Jewish grandmother. “The girl doesn’t want to smoke, she doesn’t have to smoke.”
“I know about reverse psychology.”
“Hannah. It’s a peace pipe. It’s not heroin.”
“I know about peer pressure.”
“It’s okay,” Rosemarie says again.
“No. It’s not okay,” Zoe says. “Hannah, you need to say yes . . . If you say yes to life, you can find exhilaration and ecstasy.”
“You can also find devastation and disappointment,” I say. “And lung cancer.”
“You’re going to find those anyway,” Zoe says. “But you can’t get to ecstasy without saying yes.”
“She’s right about that,” Rosemarie says, coughing, practically hacking up a lung.
“Oh my god. Fine.”
It was hanging by a leather strap on the back of the dirty rusty unisex bathroom door in Indian City. It looked like a hollow stick adorned in the middle with a short sleeve of beads. At the end was affixed a bone of some sort. Or an antler that was hollowed out into a cylinder. Two white feathers hung off the side, along with some ratty leather fringe.
Rosemarie takes it off the hook and puts the seat down on the toilet before sitting down on it. She pulls some plant matter from her beaded pouch and packs the cylinder with it. Then she lights the pipe with a novelty lighter shaped like Sitting Bull that has the $1.99 Indian City price tag still stuck to the bottom of it.
“Isn’t there a ritual or something? This doesn’t feel very spiritual, just smoking in the bathroom like we’re hiding from the principal. Don’t we need to send the smoke to the heavens? This is not how I imagined it.”
Rosemarie inhales and holds her breath. “This will change your thoughts,” she says as she slowly exhales toward the sky. “Positive thoughts bring about positive change on the Earth. Here,” she says, nudging me with the end of the pipe.
“I should tell you I have a fear of addictive substances. Addiction runs in my fam—”
“Just smoke it!” Zoe says, itching to get her turn and leaning her head on top of her forearms at the edge of the bathroom sink.
The smell is rich and fruity and mossy and earthy at the same time. I breathe it into the back of my throat and imagine the smoke swirling through the space between my brain and my skull. I imagine it turning into a wispy white ghost of a hand that coaxes all the negative energy from my cerebellum and blows it out through a hole in the top of my head. A smile instantly comes to my face, and I am lit. All of my synapses firing at once. Like the first time Danny held my hand.
“That’s awesome,” I say as I exhale. The smoke rises up into the dust-covered exhaust fan on the ceiling. I hope White Buffalo Woman can find it there.
Zoe smokes too. And we enjoy a moment of silence until Rosemarie’s boss starts pounding the door down. This is funny to us for some reason, and we stumble out of the bathroom and run toward the car, waving good-bye to Rosemarie.
Even in the midst of our scrambling escape, when we step outside, nature has crystallized itself for me. I notice the sharp bright pins of the stars, the distinct shapes of the constellations, how they pierce the purple blue of the sky. I can smell the smoky piñon pine needles, the soft, flaking decay of the wood. I taste the dust of ancient rock. Feel the circumference of each tire as it spins and hurls us through space on I-90. I am pure sensation, and none of it is pain.
“Can you say ‘peace pipe’ ten times fast?” I ask Zoe as she steers the car with one hand, and we cross the border into Wyoming.
“Peace pipe, peace poyp, pee pah, pe . . .”
We break into hilarious laughter, tears pooling in the corners of our eyes, as Zoe begins to pass a red pickup truck trailing a red pony behind it in a white trailer.
“So much depends upon a red pickup truck trailing a red pony in a white trailer,” she says, trying to parody the William Carlos Williams poem about the wheelbarrow that is senselessly thrown into every high school poetry anthology.
The driver is our age, it looks like, but he’s actually wearing a Stetson hat. Without irony.
“Show him your boobs,” Zoe says.
“What?”
“Well, all he can see is our heads, and they are not looking too good right now. Your boobs are pe
rfect. Go ahead.”
“He’s wholesome.”
“None of them are wholesome. There are straight men, and there are gay men, but there are no wholesome men. Write that down in your little notebook. Now show him your boobs. Say yes! Hurry,” she says. She is approaching someone’s taillights in the left lane and running out of time to keep flanking the pickup.
“Okay,” I say, and Zoe honks the horn as I lift my shirt and press my nipples against the cold pane of the window. I use the bottom of my shirt to cover my face, so I can’t see the wholesome cowboy’s reaction to the Jersey girl’s boobs hurtling next to him at eighty miles an hour.
It’s strangely liberating. It’s liberating, energizing, and thrilling to step outside all of the rules of decorum and exist in a place I’ve never dared to inhabit.
“Pull over,” Zoe mouths to the cowboy, waving frantically at him.
I put my shirt down, bend over, and lay my head into my hands so he can’t see me while the two drivers arrange some kind of rendezvous using only hand signals.
DESTINY
When I finally have the courage to sit up, Zoe is pulling up next to him in a parking spot behind a well-lit gas station.
“I can’t believe you did it!” Zoe says as she parks the car.
“Why? Maybe I shouldn’t have? Oh my god, what did I do?”
“No, it was perfect! Are you kidding me? Look at that guy. And his friend? They are actual cowboys.”
Cowboys really do wear chaps, it seems. And soft suede gloves. And ropes wrapped diagonally across their chests. And they wear boots with spurs. They wear them right into the convenient parking lot of the gas station off I-90.
One gorgeous cowboy heads to each side of our car, and I wonder if they had a little powwow about which guy would get which of us. The driver of the pickup heads to Zoe’s side, and I feel ashamed and rejected—he saw the boobs, after all—until I see the friend. Who is tall and shy and broad shouldered and blushing a little as he moseys on over to my side of the car.
“Evenin’,” he says as he actually tips his hat back with the tip of his index finger and kind of shyly stares at me as he puts his hands on his hips. He looks like he’s about to draw.
I can’t stop nervous-laughing. “Where we come from,” I say, “we dress like you for Halloween.”
“And wherzat?”
I just look into his beautiful hazel eyes for a second. I don’t understand what he is asking me.
“Wherzat where you are from?” he asks. He takes off his hat and holds it in front of his flat stomach, right above an enormous belt buckle shaped like a bucking bronco. It is a show of respect, which really isn’t necessary since I’ve already flashed him my boobs, but I appreciate how polite he is. He says his name: “Dillon.”
“Hannah,” I say. “And I’m from New Jersey.”
“City slicker, then.”
“Not really, actually . . .” I am about to tell him what it’s like where I’m from: the water-skiing, the autumn foliage, the blue jays, the spiky-finned sunfish, and the soft spongy green silt at the bottom of the lake, but I realize it would take too long.
It’s chilly in the Wyoming night. His cheeks are getting rosy, and his breath issues forth in visible puffs when he talks. He has hair the color of a caramel apple and soft, thick eyelashes to match. If he were a girl, he could never find the right color mascara.
You would think his dense populace of freckles would be off-putting, but they have the opposite effect. They draw you in. They invite you to know him, because without them he would be inhumanly handsome.
“So do you guys actually wear this on a regular Saturday? Are those . . . Wait, turn around. Are those . . . Wranglers?” Zoe’s beau, named Colby, backs up as she climbs out of the car to get a good look at him.
“I could ask you the same thing,” he says, looking at Zoe’s ridiculous-in-these-parts skimmer ballet flats. She is practically barefoot in the middle of frigid, muddy, dusty, manure-y Wyoming. They are pretty ballet flats, though, that she painted herself with a pattern of tiny polka dots. She’s also wearing a beaded Native American pouch slung around her sideways and the big sleeping-bag coat from the nice ladies from Long Island.
Zoe looks down at her shoes and says, “‘They are plantlike sieves not fit for the rainy night of America and the raw road night.’”
“She memorized On the Road,” I tell Dillon.
“I see,” he says.
“Is that for your gunpowder?” Colby asks about the pouch.
“Corn pollen, actually. It has magical powers.”
“Where you ladies headed?”
“Yellowstone. We have to see a man about a buffalo.”
“You came all the way from New York to see a buffalo?”
“Why not? We want to see one roaming. Outside of captivity. It needs to be a free buffalo and not one being led to slaughter to make hot dogs for some rich investment bankers suffering from ennui. Do you understand the word ‘ennui’?” Zoe asks.
“Yes, ma’am. We take the SATs just like you.”
“Do you vote for the Republicans and overuse fossil fuels and paper products?”
“I haven’t yet had the privilege of voting, since I’m seventeen. But when it comes time to do it, I will study the candidates and make an informed choice.”
“Because there are two very different visions of America right now, and you have to know which side you’re on. It’s like cowboys and Indians, and I’m afraid you’ll be on the side of the cowboys. Since you, like, are one,” says Zoe, lifting up and inspecting the hunk of turquoise holding together Colby’s bolero.
“Don’t judge a book by its cover, young lady,” Colby tells her, pushing her hand away from the string around his neck.
“You mean there’s such thing as a compassionate, intellectual cowboy?”
“Why don’t you stick around and find out?”
Colby has his arm around her, and she’s snuggled up into the crook of it. The girl acts fast. “So what can you show us? What do people do for fun in . . . where are we?”
“Outside Gillette.”
“What do people do for fun in outside Gillette?”
“Line dancing. At the Wild Buffalo. And a little two-stepping.”
“Take us there. We’ll follow you.”
“It would be our pleasure,” Colby says, bowing and sweeping the hat.
“Look at that. Seldom a discouraging word,” I say to Zoe.
“This one was a little discouraging about my corn-pollen pouch,” she says, looking up at Colby and poking him in the ribs. By the look on the boy’s face, he cannot believe his luck.
We follow them down the road a piece, horse trailer and all, to a huge barn-like establishment that vibrates with the tone of the bass and the treble of the caterwauling.
“You will like line dancing,” Zoe says to me. “It’s just following a lot of rules. And you keep your hands in your pockets. You don’t have to worry about what to do with your hands. I know you worry about that.”
“Is it that obvious?”
“Um . . . yeah.”
“Doesn’t sound like your thing, though. You don’t like lines.”
“I will be interpretive line dancing.”
“Oh no.”
“Fuck yeah.”
“Oh god.”
The cowboys come and open the doors for us and escort us, greasy hair and all, into the dance hall. It smells like buttered corn and barbecue sauce and the hay that is stuck to the bottom of people’s boots.
“We need those,” Zoe says, when she sees some hats for sale at the entrance, and she starts frantically pulling heavy rolls of coins from her corn-pollen pouch.
“Easy there,” says Dillon. “We got it covered.” They buy us some hats, so we look a little less grimy and we fit right in. And then: We dance.<
br />
It is a riot! Old ladies can do it, young men can do it. Everyone is out there doing it without shame or irony. I am doing it too! Stomping my heels and kicking my feet and maneuvering some intricate turns, all thankfully with my hands in the front pockets of my jeans.
Zoe’s hands, on the other hand, are everywhere. She refuses to stay in line and instead spins and tiptoes and leaps between them. She doesn’t disturb anyone, or interrupt their concentration; she simply does her own thing between the lines. Her arms are flailing and sweeping in big butterfly shapes, and her legs fan-kick in all directions. At one point I even see her rolling around on the floor with a dramatic Martha Graham look on her face. Poor Colby follows her around at first and then gives up and starts stomp-turning in line between me and Dillon.
A new song, a crowd favorite, comes on, and Dillon and Colby are immersed in the lyrics and the steps. They forget about us for a second, and I hear Zoe psssting me near a big barn door at the side of the restaurant.
“Psst.”
What? I mouth, and I throw up my hands. I am having a good time. I feel like I deserve a good time, and I am having a good time, and she starts pssting me.
She waves me over, so I reluctantly leave my line and sneak over to the door.
“Come on,” she says, pushing it open just enough for us to squeeze out into the cold dark night.
“What?” I ask her.
“You want to see a buffalo, right?”
“I guess, but I was having fun,” I say.
She tiptoes up to the horse trailer, opens it, and starts backing the horse out.
“Tonight we ride,” she says.
“Are you kidding me, Zoe?”
“What? You don’t just want to drive up to a buffalo in a car. We will go rustle one up. We need an authentic buffalo encounter.”
“Zoe.”
“Hannah, trust me,” she says, and I realize she is like ten steps ahead of me. We didn’t pull the cowboys over to hang out with cowboys. We pulled them over to steal their horse and ride it into the Wild West.