Walk Me Home (retail) Read online

She waits. No reply.

  She lifts the shirt off Jen’s face to see that her little sister has already fallen asleep. Sitting up. Head back against the rocks. Dry mouth open, as if hoping.

  Just before sundown, an old Native American woman wanders out of the tiny house. She’s tiny, too. Short and round. She waddles slowly around the yard with a bucket, strewing something for the chickens. Some kind of feed.

  Carly knows the woman will spot them sitting across the road. But there’s nothing she can think to do about that. So she just holds still.

  There’s a pattern to the old woman’s strewing, she realizes. She’s leading the chickens along. Dropping a few bits of something good, waiting for them to come get it, then dropping more further on. Moving toward an outbuilding.

  A henhouse, she realizes.

  With a sinking in her belly, Carly gets the picture. The chickens are being put away for the night. But maybe that’s better, she thinks. Because where will she find their eggs outside in the dark? No, this is OK. This is good. They’ll be on their nests all night, with the eggs underneath them.

  This will be easy.

  Come nightfall, she’ll simply break into the henhouse.

  The woman turns her head in all directions before locking up the hens. Carly goes cold, waiting for the woman’s eyes to stop on them. Waiting to be spotted. It never happens. The woman looks right past them. As if they’re not here. Which seems odd.

  Then she waddles back into the house.

  Just for a moment, Carly plays with the idea that maybe they’re not here.

  A nearly full moon rises, just one angled edge off round, yellow and breathtakingly huge at the top of the mesa. Carly can’t decide if all that moonlight will be a good thing or not. Makes it easier to see. But also makes it easier to be seen. But it seems she’s invisible now. Anyway. So maybe it doesn’t even matter.

  She’s halfway across the woman’s yard when something grabs at her shirt. She jumps, and lets out a near-silent scream. A mere puff of air when all is said and done.

  She whirls around to see Jen at her heels.

  ‘I told you I’m coming with you,’ Jen whispers.

  ‘Why did you even wake up?’

  ‘’Cause you weren’t there. You’re always there. Even in my sleep I knew you weren’t there.’

  Carly puts a finger to her lips.

  They creep around to the henhouse door, but it’s pad-locked.

  ‘Shit,’ Jen hisses.

  ‘We’ll find a way.’

  Bent over and scuffling, they move around the side of the building. Carly examines the windows to see if they can be opened. But they don’t even appear to be built that way.

  ‘Look at this,’ Jen whispers.

  She motions Carly to a corner of the henhouse where the wood has rotted away near the dirt line, leaving a space maybe two feet high and a foot and a half wide at the bottom. A triangle of rot. The gap has been patched with chicken wire.

  Carly crouches down and examines the wire patch closely. It’s attached with those big staples you shoot from a staple gun. She grabs one edge and pulls hard. Three or four staples pop free, and the wire breaks at those that hold firm. She pulls again, and then the wire is attached at one side only. She can peel it back like a door.

  ‘Can you fit through there?’ she whispers to Jen.

  ‘Sure. Easy. You can, too. There’s lots of room.’

  Jen sinks to her belly and shimmies through, leaving her backpack outside in the dirt. Then she reaches a hand out to Carly.

  Carly strips off her pack and falls to her belly, shivering at the thought of snakes. She inches through the space, but, halfway in, her jeans get hung up on the wire. She has to shift into reverse and move completely out again, then bend the wire much farther back, out of her way.

  Her hips just barely make it through the rot triangle. Jen has to grab hold of her hands and pull while she turns mostly sideways.

  Now they’re both inside, but Carly doesn’t like the feeling one bit, because there’s no fast escape.

  She looks around.

  The hens are dozing in straw nests in two layers, the lower layer on the hard-packed dirt floor, the second on a shelf at waist level. Their eyes are closed, heads drooped downward. They either don’t know they’re being invaded or they don’t care.

  The big yellow moon shines strong through the windows, bathing the room in light. Nearly as strong as daylight, but seemingly in black and white, like the negative of an old photo. All this light’s not good, she thinks. She motions to Jen to get down, where they can’t be seen through the windows.

  She crawls on her hands and knees to the first nest and reaches under the bird’s warm, feathery belly. The hen squawks a sharp complaint.

  ‘Shhhh,’ Carly says.

  There’s no egg.

  She crawls to four more nests. The hens only scold in quiet clucks. Then she finds one. An egg! She wraps her hand around it and pulls it free. Looks at it in the moonlight. It’s brown, and medium size. It’s the most beautiful thing she can remember seeing. It looks like salvation.

  ‘I got one,’ she hisses to Jen.

  ‘I got one, too,’ Jen whispers back. ‘But it’s really little.’ Jen examines the little egg in her palm. ‘It’s sort of light green. Is that normal? Or does that mean it’s bad?’

  ‘Just the color of the shell I think. Hurry up. Two more and then let’s get out of here.’

  She wonders briefly how they’ll shimmy through the rotten triangle without breaking the eggs. Maybe they should eat them before they go.

  A loud, metallic click nearly stops her heart.

  The henhouse door swings open with a spooky creak. Carly jumps up and spins around and then she’s staring down the muzzle of a shotgun. On the other side of the weapon is the old native woman.

  The old woman’s spotted brown hand is so clear in a beam of moonlight, strong and unbent as she chambers a round with a grave, deadly ‘shuck-shuck’ sound. It sounds like death. Like the last sound you hear before dying.

  Jen lets out a sound, halfway between sucking in her breath and screaming, and the woman spins and turns the gun on Jen. As if she hadn’t known Jen was there until Jen gasped.

  ‘Who goes there?’ she asks. Her voice is accented. Strong for a woman her age. ‘Name yourself! Stand closer together!’

  Jen runs to Carly so fast that she slams into her, nearly knocking her down.

  ‘That Fred Na’akabayo’s boys?’

  Carly’s heart is pounding so hard she thinks it might kill her. Literally. Maybe it’ll just break, and stop. She opens her mouth, but she’s too scared to speak. The first sound just cracks, and comes out a cross between a little squeak and nothing at all.

  ‘Speak up for yourself!’ the old woman barks.

  She looks like one of her eggs, the brown one. Both in shape and color. Her skin is the exact same color of brown as the egg in Carly’s trembling hand. Her fluffy white hair is pulled straight back. Her cheeks are fat and drooping, deep diagonal caverns on either side of her mouth casting shadows in the moonlight. Her eye-lids droop down on the outside, so far they must make it hard to see.

  ‘No, ma’am. We’re … just … two girls. Just passing through.’

  ‘Should of known,’ the old woman says. ‘Even Fred’s rotten boys ain’t rotten enough for this. They got more respect than to come in my henhouse at night. You’re Anglo, ain’t you? Sound Anglo.’

  ‘Anglo?’

  ‘White.’

  ‘Yes, ma’am. We’re white.’

  ‘Well, don’t that just figure. Got some neighbors think there ain’t no such thing as a good Anglo, and here I always argue for judgin’ ’em one Anglo at a time. That’s what I get for bein’ such a lib’ral thinker. One thing I can say for every Anglo I ever met – they got no respect. Don’t respect their world. Don’t respect each other. And they sure as hell don’t respect no Wakapi.’

  Carly breathes, disjointed, yet sure now that she and Jen
are not about to die. She knows it’s bad. But not how bad. But she knows it’s not death. Meanwhile she wonders why she had to tell the woman, in all this moonlight, that they are white. And not boys.

  ‘Wakapi,’ Carly says. ‘I thought this was Navajo reservation.’

  ‘It was, but now it ain’t. Navajo Nation goes all around Hopi and Wakapi like a donut, but with two donut holes. So whatever direction you come from, you was on Navajo land. But now you ain’t. Now you’re on my land. Now you’re in the private henhouse of Delores Watakobie, where you got no earthly right to be. I don’t take no truck with Anglos, but I don’t need ’em, neither. I sure’s hell don’t need no trouble from ’em. I don’t come to your house and take what’s yours. I never done nothin’ to you or your people. And this’s how you pay me back for that respect.’

  ‘I’m sorry, ma’am,’ Carly says. And she means it sincerely.

  But Delores Watakobie huffs. ‘That ain’t hard, to be sorry. That don’t amount to much.’

  ‘We’re starving. Literally. Starving. We’ve been walking fifteen miles or more a day. Sometimes twenty. And we got lost out here, and we didn’t have anything to eat or drink, and we didn’t want to die.’

  Delores Watakobie does not lower the shotgun. She continues to sight down the barrel of it as she speaks.

  Carly can hear Jen quietly crying beside her.

  ‘Had no choice. That what you’re saying?’

  ‘Yes, ma’am. That’s what we’re saying.’

  ‘We? I only hear one of you open your mouth so far.’

  ‘That’s what we’re saying, ma’am,’ Jen squeaks, sobs evident in her voice.

  ‘You didn’t have a choice to knock on my door and say you was hungry and thirsty and near about to die?’

  Carly doesn’t answer. There’s too much to explain in the answer.

  ‘’Cause if you had, here’s what I’d of said. I’d of said, “You girls want two scrambled eggs each with your fry bread? Or can you handle three?” But that ain’t the situation we got ourselves in now, is it? That choice is water over the dam now, ain’t it?’

  ‘We’ll just go now,’ Carly says, backing one step away.

  ‘No you will not,’ Delores Watakobie says, raising the muzzle of the shotgun a little higher.

  Now Carly starts to cry, too.

  Delores says, ‘You could do me a favor and try not to act like it’s so damn mean, me havin’ a problem with this.’

  ‘We didn’t take anything,’ Carly says, half-sobbing. ‘We each have an egg in our hand but we’ll put them back.’

  ‘Yes, you will.’

  Both girls set their egg carefully on the straw.

  ‘So there’s no harm done,’ Carly says. ‘Right?’

  ‘Let’s do us some supposin’. Shall we? Supposin’ I aim this here shotgun at a place right between your eyes and squeeze off a shot. And supposin’ I ain’t so good with this gun, except I am and don’t you doubt it, but we’re just supposin’. And I let the kick raise the shot and all them pieces of buckshot sail clean over your head. No harm done, right? You call the police, but I say I didn’t do a thing wrong. Cause there’s no harm done. Right?’

  Carly only swallows hard. Doesn’t speak.

  ‘Answer!’ Delores barks.

  Jen sobs harder.

  ‘No, ma’am. It’d still be attempted murder. But trying to steal eggs isn’t as bad as trying to murder.’

  ‘Never said it was. But it ain’t as good as respect and honest behavior, neither. And nothin’ to your credit that you didn’t get clean away. That’s my good ears alone. None of your own doin’.’

  Jen pipes up for the first time, at least voluntarily. ‘Carly is real honest,’ she says. ‘She keeps a book with anything we took in it and how much it costs and the address to send the money to as soon as we can.’

  ‘That a fact?’ Delores says. ‘And where was you gonna send my egg money? What’s my address?’

  By the time the old woman finishes these questions, Jen has deflated into a squat. But the old woman keeps speaking to a spot above her head. She never lowers her gaze to where Jen is hovering now.

  Something breaks through in Carly’s mind. Things make sense now. Delores Watakobie can’t see. Or can’t see much.

  Carly raises her arms, slowly, silently, and waves them around in big sweeping arcs above her head.

  ‘Uh huh,’ Delores says. ‘That’s what I thought. Plus, bet you ruined my chicken wire patch. Didn’t you? Bet you bent it or tore it off to get through, cause there ain’t no other place to get through. And now the coyotes’ll come ’n get my hens, at least till I can get Alvin or Virginia to come patch it up for me, and I could lose half my hens before the sunrise. And another thing, little missy. I may not see so good, but I can see good enough to see you wavin’ your arms around like a dang fool.’

  Carly sinks to the hard-packed dirt floor. Thinking, It’s over. She doesn’t know exactly what ‘It’s over’ will look like in this case. But she knows it’s true.

  ‘What’re you gonna do with us?’ she asks the old woman.

  ‘What do you think I should do with you?’

  ‘Let us go?’

  ‘Not on the list.’

  ‘What’s on the list?’

  ‘Keep you here till morning and then turn you over to the tribal police, or keep you here a few days and make you work it off.’

  ‘We’ll work!’ Jen shouts. Hopefully.

  ‘Make that a week.’

  ‘A week!’ Carly says bitterly. ‘That’s too long. We didn’t do enough harm to be here working for a week!’

  ‘Take it or leave it,’ Delores Watakobie says.

  Part Two

  Seems So Long Ago

  Tulare, 17 December

  Jen walked into Carly’s bedroom with a history text-book, pushed a pile of Carly’s clothes off the corner chair and on to the rug, and plunked herself down. It was a thing out of place, and then some.

  Carly glared for a time, thinking that would be enough. But Jen never bothered to look up.

  Carly cleared her throat with exaggerated volume.

  Nothing.

  ‘Excuse me …’

  Jen looked up, but not all the way. Not enough to actually break eye contact with the text of her book and transfer that contact to Carly. ‘Yeah?’

  ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Reading.’

  ‘Why in my room?’

  ‘Teddy’s putting up the Christmas lights.’

  ‘And that’s supposed to explain it how?’

  ‘Right outside my bedroom window.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So … it’s very … distracting.’

  ‘Don’t look.’

  ‘He keeps talking to me.’

  ‘Poor baby.’

  ‘He’s trying to tell me all those same corny jokes again.’

  ‘I like his jokes.’

  ‘Nobody likes his jokes. Besides, I’m trying to study for my history test.’

  ‘It’s Christmas vacation.’

  ‘Not for ever, it isn’t. And not everybody puts everything off to the last minute. Like you do, Carly.’

  ‘Why not study downstairs?’

  ‘This was closer.’

  ‘Right. It’s also mine. That’s why we call it my room.’

  ‘Why does he have to put, like, ninety per cent of the decorations right outside my bedroom window?’

  ‘Um. Maybe because your window faces the street? Where people will actually see them? And my room faces a vacant lot? Where nobody will see them?’

  ‘You want me to go downstairs? Fine. I’ll go.’

  But Jen didn’t move.

  ‘No, never mind. It’s OK. I want to go talk to Teddy anyway.’

  Teddy was on a ladder just outside the window. He didn’t see Carly come in, because he was looking down, his head lowered, untangling a string of colored lights. It seemed to Carly that the untangling would be better done on the grass at the bottom
of the ladder. But that was Teddy. He did things the most direct way. Not always the easiest or safest.

  A half-drunk brown bottle of beer rested on the sill of Jen’s open window.

  Carly walked closer, noticing the beginnings of a small round bald spot near the back of the top of Teddy’s scalp. His hair was always so shaggy and long that the spot had never been noticeable before. Besides, he was tall. How was Carly supposed to see the top of his head?

  ‘You need a haircut,’ she said.

  Teddy jumped a mile and grabbed the ladder with both hands, dropping the tangled mass of lights.

  ‘Geez Louise, kiddo! You trying to kill me?’

  ‘Sorry. Didn’t know you’d be so jumpy.’

  ‘I thought there was nobody in there. Where’s Jen? She was here a minute ago.’

  ‘She bailed. She’s studying her history in my room. She says you were distracting her.’

  ‘I was telling her some jokes.’

  ‘Jen hates jokes.’

  ‘It was my best material.’

  ‘That explains why she left, all right.’

  Teddy looked right into her face. Carly examined the little crinkly laugh lines at the corners of his eyes. The way they deepened when he was amused.

  ‘You’re getting to be more like your mother every day. And I don’t mean that in a good way. Talk about a chip off the old block …’

  ‘And I’m telling her you called her an old block.’

  ‘Only if you want to see me speed-pack my bags.’

  And, on that line, nothing was funny any more. A couple of months ago, it might have been funny. But since Carly’s mom had been working longer hours, staying out late, acting like she had better things to do than Teddy … hanging out with that guy …

  ‘I don’t want you to go, Teddy,’ Carly said, shifting the whole energy of the conversation.

  ‘I was kidding. It was a joke.’ Again with the broad smile, the laugh lines.

  ‘Right. I knew that.’

  ‘I’m going down for my lights.’

  Carly walked to the window and watched him climb down. Watched the way the smile faded from his face the minute he thought no one was watching.

  She waited, expecting him to untangle the lights before climbing the ladder again. He didn’t. He just threw them over his shoulder and marched back up.