Yellowcake Page 3

  Any local action, she could say, but doesn't. Arnold's the king of one-night stands "abroad"—abroad being at least two hundred miles in any direction from Farmington and the reservation. He'll come back from Albuquerque or Denver, moody and sullen about barroom trysts. On home ground he might as well be a monk.

  "Why is it my fault?"

  "Because you don't try."

  "Yeah, like you try."

  "I've tried."

  "Sure you have."

  "Anyway, who has time to try?"

  Arnold leans forward, squinting at badly sunburned Ricky Longacre, the quarterback on their high school team seven years ago, whose arms are longer than his legs and whose mouth is foul. "That one," he says.

  "For you."

  "For you."

  She raises her chin, as if considering, then says, "Too red."

  Arnold's dimple—he has only one, and he complains that it makes him look lopsided—creases his broad cheek. "See," he says, "you're prejudiced." He breaks off some squares of Hershey's chocolate from a king-sized bar and hands them to her. "To me color doesn't matter. Me, I'm democratic."

  Becky laughs. "Sure you are."

  "So what'd you find out about Mr. Zahnee?" Arnold says.

  "I could not find any evidence that he's married." A promising specimen, Harrison Zahnee, opened a checking account at the bank a few weeks ago. Becky is a loan officer at the First National, and Arnold's a security guard. She found out that Mr. Zahnee has just taken a job at the college as a Navajo language specialist. "He's got a single-party checking account. He didn't mark anything for marital status, but his beneficiary is somebody named Carlee Zahnee."

  "There you go," Arnold says.

  "Yeah, but he didn't put anything under relationship. She might not be his wife."

  "Oh, please." He peers at her out of the corner of his eye, his lip curled in an Elvis snarl.

  "Don't be mean," she says. He smiles and looks at the lake.

  Despite Becky's claim that she's tired of being terminally single, Arnold says she unconsciously chooses married guys—the last two were married—because she's afraid of real involvement.

  Becky met Arnold her sophomore year in high school, ten years ago. He had just transferred from an all-Indian boarding school in Albuquerque. The first day of class, their homeroom teacher asked the students to introduce themselves and say a little about their hobbies. Half the room listed fellowship in various local churches as an interest. Fruitland is a churchy community. Becky's mother was raised there, the youngest daughter of Baptist missionaries. Becky's father follows the Navajo Way. Delia agreed to marry Woody only on condition that their children be raised Baptist.

  When it was Arnold's turn to introduce himself, he announced that he belonged to the church of Cecil B. De Mille. Becky had no idea who or what that was. When she found out, she began paying attention to the weird new guy who sat in the back of the room and who always said something off the subject. She craved anything Hollywood. The only movies she ever saw were the ones Aunt Alice occasionally took her to— Star Wars, Blade Runner. At school they sometimes showed uplifting old movies like Seven Brides for Seven Brothers and Paint Your Wagon. When she could, Becky bought movie magazines, hiding them in her locker.

  She'd never met anybody like Arnold. He seemed to know so much. He was not her type. He was buttery and soft. She liked athletes and had a crush on a hurdler who was as graceful as a cougar. The cougar she watched, but Arnold she hung out with. Whenever she thought she could get away with it, she'd skip her Wednesday night youth fellowship meetings to go to Arnold's and watch movies. He had a VCR and a good collection. He especially loved Kurosawa and anything Eastwood. He could recite the entire soundtrack from Dirty Harry and A Fistful of Dollars.

  Four windsurfers are dipping in and out of Morgan Lake. Power plant machinery percolates a rhythmic metallic breath. The air smells a little like chlorine—some sort of cleansing chemical coming from the plant.

  Arnold breaks off more chocolate and offers it, but she waves it away. A battered maroon station wagon is speeding along the road toward them. It veers suddenly onto the dirt shoulder, dust rolling behind it. The car slows, pulling off onto the bank about a hundred yards away. The car doors open. "Mmm, mmm," Arnold says. "Aim for the heart, Ramon."

  "Don't even think about it," Becky says. Her cousin Delmar has just gotten out of the passenger's side. He looks in their direction, shading his eyes with both hands. He's with a white girl who looks familiar. The girl pulls a baby from a car seat in the back. Delmar opens the back door on the passenger's side, sticks his head inside, and a minute later a little boy climbs out, immediately running for the water. Delmar runs after and picks him up, swinging him as if to toss him in, and the boy screams.

  "I want hair that color," Arnold says. Delmar's hair, the color of a shiny penny, gleams in the sun. "Those kids his?"

  "Not that I know of. Let's go."

  "Go? It just got interesting." Becky glares at him. Delmar has been nothing but trouble the last six months. A couple of years ago he was busted for stealing cars, dismantling them, and selling the parts. He was given a three-year sentence, but he got an early parole. He's been out since February. The board put conditions on him, though. He can't have a car or get a license until he's kept his nose clean for a year. So Becky is Delmar's ride. All spring and summer he has badgered her to drive him places. He calls her at the bank: pick me up, take me here, take me there, come get me—ordering her around as if she were his slave. They are practically brother and sister. When they were growing up, Delmar was at her house as much as at his own. His mother, Becky's aunt Alice, would drop him off for months at a time.

  "Oh look, they're coming over," Arnold says.

  Delmar carries the little boy under his arm like a sack of flour, the boy smiling serenely. The boy has his mother's dirty blond hair and green eyes. Becky recognizes her now. Crystal Rebeneck. She and Delmar were always getting in trouble when they were teenagers. Becky doesn't really know her, just knows of her and has seen her around, though not for a while. She looks a lot older, her long face gaunt and her hair, in two waist-length braids, dull. She carries the big, sleeping baby in a tummy harness, his fat pink legs and feet bouncing off Crystal's bony hips.

  "This guy's a flying fish," Delmar says, tossing the little boy up as he screams, then catching him, twirling him around, the boy trying to speak: "I'm—a—flying—fish."

  "Stop it," Crystal says. "He'll wet his pants."

  "Don't wet your pants, and don't go in the lake. There are sharks," Delmar says. He puts the boy down. The boy wobbles, trying to walk, then falls, bursting into tears.

  "You made him dizzy," Crystal says.

  "Tofu. Are you dizzy?"

  "His name's Torry," Crystal says.

  "He likes Tofu," Delmar says. The boy cries. "Hey, look what that guy has." Through teary eyes, the boy looks at the chocolate bar in Arnold's hand.

  "You want some?" Arnold asks the little boy. "Can he have some?" he asks Crystal. "Hi, Del." He glances at Becky, his dimple dimpling.

  "Yá'át'éhéii. Sure, he can have some," Delmar says, taking the bar from Arnold, unwrapping it, and letting the little boy scoop melting chocolate with his finger. "This is Stuck," Delmar says, jerking his head toward Crystal, "and sleepy Kylie."

  "Crystal," the girl says, lowering herself onto a boulder. The baby kicks, fussing but not waking.

  "Stuck," Delmar says. He hands the bar, unwrapped but on its wrapper, to the little boy, who sits on the ground, legs stretched out, the candy before him.

  Crystal rolls her eyes, smiling. "That's his name for me."

  "Stuck at Stuckey's," Delmar says. He grins, sliding his hands into his back pockets—he wears black jeans that look hot and a faded red T-shirt, not really tight but threadbare, and when he moves, his pecs and abs show clearly. Delmar has been living and working at their grandmother's farm on the reservation near Shiprock since he got out of jail, and he's in good sha
pe. Becky watches Arnold's little smile as he eyes Delmar, and when Delmar's not looking, she kicks him. Arnold ignores her.

  Delmar walks back toward the Saab, the Wailers singing, "Chant down Babylon one more time."

  "Stuck's the employee of the month at Stuckey's Pecan Shoppe," he says. "Nice car."

  "Which Stuckey's?" Becky says.

  "In Grants," Crystal says. Grants is a hundred and eighty miles south. "We just came up to see Del for the weekend."

  Becky looks over her shoulder, watching Delmar stoop to look at the Saab's dash. She nudges Arnold, who twists around, then looks at Becky in alarm as Delmar slides in behind the wheel. Arnold doesn't let anybody behind the wheel of his car. "Hey, Arnie. Nice stereo," Delmar calls, and Arnold's eyes widen.

  Becky smiles. She whispers, "That one?" She ignores Arnold's fingers scratching her arm. "How old's your baby?" she asks Crystal.

  "Kylie's one and a half. Torry's four." Little Torry's face has a chocolate smile from cheek to cheek.

  "These speakers come with this?" Delmar says. "You ought to upgrade."

  Arnold digs in. Becky puts her hand over his and removes it from her arm. But she gets up. "We should go," she says. Arnold scurries up, grabs the pack, and hurries toward the car. He stands by the driver's door, waiting for Delmar to get out, which Delmar slowly does, though he doesn't move out of the way so Arnold can get in.

  "They've got good upgrades at Radio Shack. You can get surround-sound. Reeally nice car," he says again.

  Arnold smiles thinly.

  "How's Shidá'í?" Delmar says, leaning against the door frame, looking over the car top at Becky.

  "I don't know. Worse." Her father has started having burping fits, awful to listen to, a metronomic gasping or croaking that can go on for hours.

  "Shimá sani wants to come see him."

  "Shall I come pick her up?" Becky says.

  "Nah. Shimá will bring us." Delmar is saying that their grandmother is still mad at Becky for taking her father to the bilagáana doctors, who she believes have made her son sick. If her grandmother had had her way, Becky's father would have stayed far away from the hospital. The last time Becky saw her grandmother, the old woman gave her the silent treatment.

  Delmar looks over the door toward the lake. He says, "Hey, Stuck. Your kid's going to drown." Torry is standing at the water's edge, and now he's walking in, leaving his tennis shoes on the bank. Delmar steps out of the doorway, brushes by Arnold, who slips quickly into the driver's seat, slamming the door and starting the engine. Delmar runs toward the water's edge, chasing and grabbing the little boy.

  6

  EVERY MORNING RYLAND'S breakfast comes with a pink pillbox. The pillbox has seven compartments. Each compartment has six pills. He empties a compartment a day, and on Sunday he empties the last. Monday morning the boxes are magically full again. He never sees Rosy refill them. Rosy keeps track of the pills and their aftereffects. She has a little notebook. Sometimes he peeks in the notebook to see how he's doing.

  The book is full of important words: Cipro, Prilosec, Vicodin, Percocet, Reglan, Furosemide. Pills that keep him running. He forgets on purpose exactly what each one does, but he knows that something in him will stop working if he skips a pill.

  He has lots of good days. It says so in his wife's scrawl, right there in black and white. Some days aren't so good. Some days, without warning, he'll react to one of the pills, or at least that's what Rosy says: Got nauseous today, maybe the Cipro? Very hyper today, must be the Reglan. Check for allergies? She's almost always right. He'll think back to one moment in the day when he got himself into a little temper, one moment when he thought he'd explode if he had to stay in the house any longer, and know it wasn't like him at all, and that it had to be the Reglan or some such.

  He has his favorites among the pills. Prilosec, that's a good one, though not as good as Xanax. Happy pills. The Xanax doesn't get a little pink compartment. The Prilosec does. Prilosec is for everyday, the Xanax for special occasions. Rosy keeps the bottle of Xanax on the top shelf above the stove, where the grandkids can't get it. He can help himself if he thinks he really needs one, though she advises half a pill, not the whole, and he ought to forgo it if he can, because Xanax can be a little meanie. Sometimes it calls to him like a siren, usually thirty minutes after he's eaten half of one. The other half, the amputated half, begins to whine, and if he were a stone, he could ignore it, but he is flesh and blood, contrary to what anybody thinks.

  On Sundays he takes half a Xanax before church. This is routine because Mass is more an ordeal than a pleasure. Too many people. He wouldn't mind if the church were empty. Sometimes he takes the other half when he gets home, because most Sundays the family comes to dinner. He likes the family dinners better after he takes that little pill.

  Standard Sunday fare: Rosy roasts beef and potatoes, with that good brown gravy and homemade bread. On Sundays, Ryland gets to choose between regurgitated bird food—a little can of something called Ensure that won't upset his stomach—or Rosy's roast beef. He has been known to choose the bird food, though not very often.

  This Sunday, the third Sunday in August, the NFL season begins, so Ryland has the game on, the volume muted. He doesn't want to contribute to the noise. His son Eddy's kids are running around screaming, and everybody else is in the kitchen—Maggie and her fiancé, George, Eddy and his wife, Sue. Teri, Ed's youngest, has just come into the living room and is staring at Ryland's feet. His feet are on Teri's chair, his footstool.

  Though Teri can't talk yet, she has a book under her arm that he knows she wants to read to him. Two years old, but she still talks a line of gibberish. He pulls his feet from the stool and says, "Have a sit-down." He doesn't like to play favorites, but she is his favorite by far and has been from the day she was born. She looked him in the eye from the incubator, stuck out her lower lip, and he fell in love. In her own little way, she seems to prefer his company, too. Now she sits, opens the book, holds it in two hands, and begins reciting like a schoolmarm. The sounds make good enough sense.

  Teri isn't afraid of him. The two older girls, Pooh and Sandi, are afraid of the tube in his nose and the cup, his spitting cup. Look in it. I dare you. I'm not going to look in it. You look in it. Ask him. You ask him. But Teri seems to take the tubes and dials and pills in stride.

  Eddy comes in from the kitchen with George behind him, both holding Coors cans. Ryland likes Maggie's fiancé. George has big, goofy feet that come flopping into a room, and he always seems to be blushing. Tall and awkward. He's twenty-eight years old, same as Maggie, but George looks like he is still growing into his body, his arms almost as long as his legs. He doesn't say much, not with his mouth. Ryland can tell why Maggie fell for him, though. Can see in his eyes that the kid's no fool.

  "How you doing, Mr. Mahoney?" he says.

  "Okay."

  Eddy sits down on the couch opposite Ryland, and George sits in the overstuffed chair. "She bothering you, Dad? Come here, Ter."

  "She's not bothering me. Are you? She's my pal. Aren't you?"

  Teri frowns and scolds a line of gibberish. She's teaching. He should shut up and listen.

  "Who's winning?" Eddy says.

  "Dallas," Ryland says.

  Eddy shakes his head. On this they agree: they have no use for Dallas.

  "I always thought I'd have roses at my wedding," Maggie is saying in the kitchen.

  "Have what you want," Sue says.

  "Do you know how much roses cost?" Rosy says.

  "Look at that!" Eddy jumps, and beer sloshes onto his knee. Ryland watches Troy Aikman sprint from the thirty-yard line, holding the football out in front of himself. "Showboat," Eddy says. Aikman sashays over the line, hoisting the ball over his head.

  "Teri, take your thumb out of your mouth," Eddy says. Teri is twirling her hair with one hand, sucking her thumb with the other, completely absorbed in the book. "Dad, take her thumb out of her mouth, will you?" Ryland leans over, wiggling his big finger li
ke a worm in front of her. Teri scowls at the finger, then grabs it with the hair-twirling hand, grins, and continues to suck, so Ryland wiggles the fingers on his other hand. She laughs, dropping the book on his lap, grabbing a finger with her wet hand. Their hands dance together until a wave catches in Ryland's throat and he has to shake loose to cough. And cough. His first good cough of the day, the ball of it rising from his stomach, hurtling through the rusted pipes, whipping metal bits against his throat; he doubles over, groping his stomach. Dear God, he prays, a torrent of hard nothing whiplashing through, and behind it the something that never comes—oh, he wants it out, the thing that never comes. He watches Teri through his watering eyes, sees her freeze like they all do. Freeze and listen. But he's coughing now, his stomach in his throat.

  They told him the breathing problem was in his head. Six years ago, when he first woke gagging and gasping, out of air, and Rosy rushed him to the emergency room, they told him it was psychosomatic, said he was suffering panic attacks. So he started exercising more, wore himself out walking miles each day, but still he woke gasping in the middle of the night, and when they finally took him to the specialist, the man said his lungs were working at about half capacity. No cancer. Just shrunken sacks, all worn out.

  When he comes out of the fit, Teri is the only one still watching and listening, her eyes saucers, though not fearful, watching the way she always does when some part of his galumphing body spills into the world. He is her favorite thing in the zoo. He shakes his head at her. She shakes hers back.

  Something in the kitchen begins to sizzle. Maggie's saying she'll settle for lots and lots of gaudy autumn arrangements for the wedding. "There are sunflowers growing all along the irrigation ditch in Shiprock."

  "What irrigation ditch?" Rosy says.

  "In Camp."

  "What were you doing in there, for goodness sake?"

  "Just looking around."

  "Maggie, I don't like you going there. Those houses are dangerous."

  "Mom, it's part of my job." Maggie has been working as a go-fer for some environmental research group that investigates the deaths and disappearances of desert plants around old tailings sites. She got the job two years ago, and now she thinks she's some kind of an authority. She'll huddle up with Rosy, giving her all kinds of things to read about radiation poisoning and whatnot. Ryland tells her she ought to thank the nuclear industry. His generation got paid to make a mess, hers gets paid to clean it up. Everybody wins.