Blue Rodeo Read online

  Strung like a Halloween decoration, a dusty, tattered spiderweb nearly three feet in across spanned the distance from her mailbox to the rail fence. A medium-size brown spider was in the tedious process of respinning what the wind had undone. Margaret watched the spider work each sticky filament toward the corresponding rib with desultory interest until she knew she was prolonging the inevitable and opened the mailbox. A bill from the electric company for the hookup deposit lay against the ribbed aluminum bottom, and her fifth Blue Dog Days flyer. Shoved alongside lay a brown-paper mailing tube tied with string. There was no writing on it, no address. Maybe there was a card inside. She undid the string and wound it around her hand. Twelve sheets of d’Arches watercolor paper—the expensive stuff—might go for twenty dollars back home. Who knew what it cost here, trucked in from the city? She shook the paper out, looking for a receipt or something to identify the giver. Nothing. As paper went, it was thick and ridged, art by itself without anything painted on it at all. She unwound the string from her hand and studied it—brown twine like the hardware store tied her box of supplies in. Owen Garrett thought she needed good paper on which to draw terrible dogs?

  Life’s little mysteries were everywhere—from the legend of Blue Dog, which no one had explained to her, to a son who preferred a community of strangers to family. Throw in a sister who skulked behind your back, planting the idea in his head to go away to school, to live with foster parents in the first place, and top it off with a cowboy who made a life on the fringe, who could cook up eggs that would shame most restaurants, but thought so well of her dirt drawings he made her a gift of expensive paper.

  She walked back to the farmhouse carrying the paper. Maybe it was a bribe; owing him, she’d have to go to the parade. At her side Echo sniffed the fading sunflowers, squatting by several to bless them. That was male dog behavior; probably it meant she had some kind of hormone imbalance. She should take her in to the veterinary, have that shot, have her spayed. But some other day. It was nearly ninety degrees. There was breeze enough to lift the hair from her hot neck and keep the insects from being bothersome.

  Owen said that when winter came, you spent enough time indoors that you could teach an old dog new tricks. Struggling with the card table through the screen door, she moved her work downstairs and outdoors, took out new tubes of watercolor in sienna, umber, warm gray, white, and black, and set them on the table. The shakes hit her instantly. Why paint anything except your fingernails? The world was full of dilettante artists, women who changed their names from Susan to Siouxie and started wearing caftans and African trade beads in hopes that an exotic exterior would imbue their art with dimension and definition. Anyone could approximate the costume, throw paint at a canvas and sign it, pontificate on style and postmodernism. And there was a surfeit of successful painters dedicated to their craft who had logged in decades of work, work that had evolved and grown way beyond a few hopeful canvases a professor praised in graduate school. She could paint twenty-four hours a day and never catch up. She should get a job checking groceries and live like an ordinary human being; start a library like the childless Mrs. Starr; when the divorce settlement was final, give her money to the Indian Children’s Health Services or, better yet, take a vow of celibacy and meditate for peace. Instead she picked up a sheet of the good paper, traced the sketch of Hopeful’s profile on it lightly in pencil, and pinned it to the easel. Onto the saucer she was using as a palette she squirted a dab of umber paint she would feather over the pencil to define the dog’s blunt forehead.

  I am no damn good at this, she said to herself as she dipped the paintbrush for the first time, watered the paint down to a fluid consistency, and made exploratory strokes at the paper’s edge. I am forty years old, and in fifteen years I haven’t worked on anything more ambitious than Peter’s elementary school Halloween costumes. This will end up in the trash, good paper, wasted. I’m killing time in a town I chose because twenty years ago I had this romantic notion that weavers and red rock could teach me about art. These summer wildflowers I keep arranging into bouquets—they’re weeds, and they won’t last out the month. Was I crazy to think I could live in snow again? My son can’t even hear me tell him how sorry I am for his going deaf or for failing to keep his home life intact.

  As if to break her trance of self-recrimination, overhead a magpie burst into song. Its teal-blue plumage was a blur in the cottonwood tree. In New Mexico the bird was as ordinary as a California blue jay, but to Margaret, every time she saw one, it was startling.

  She managed a fair rendering of the slope of Hopeful’s muzzle. One line in there somehow mysteriously worked. She traced over the paint with her pencil tip, trying to feel how she’d maneuvered it. Knew at once, instinctively, that she’d gotten the ruff hair wrong, and that what she needed was to add warm gray to correct the tone.

  If you paint one good thing, make yourself attempt another at once. Professor Brownwyn again. She taped the sketch of Echo in the laundry to the easel and painted her, dark nose buried in a nest of purple towels. This one took the flowing drapery award—the towels were overdone to the point of cartoonery—but the curve of the dog’s head—that wasn’t bad. When the paint dried, she would send it off to Peter. No more letters begging him for responses, just a reminder that his dog was fine, here upstate, in case he wondered.

  The light was gone now. Dusk hung in the cottonwood trees and the birds had gone silent. Echo lay curled up in Margaret’s denim jacket. Margaret hugged herself against the drop in temperature and cataloged the sounds around her. The bawling of hungry cattle across the way, the wind rustling the leaves. No cars racing up and down the street, no loud music, no boats or smell of bay water—just clean dry air and the sound of her own breathing. She was on dry land, a stranger on the corner of a street in a foreign country. With the light falling all around her, it occurred to her she never wanted to leave.

  She took her things inside, shivered, and turned on the teakettle. She’d lied to Owen Garrett—she’d brought one dress with her. It was peach-colored watered silk, a short-sleeved summer dress that hit her three inches below the knees. Maybe she would wear it, and then again, if she went at all, maybe she would just go in her jeans.

  5

  STORM CLOUDS,” MARGARET SAID AT THE FRONT DOOR WHEN Owen came to pick her up for Blue Dog Days.

  He craned his neck to check out the sky. “Maybe. Then again, maybe not.”

  “Yes, they are. Cumulosomething. The kind that bring rain. Shouldn’t we call off this outing?”

  “How about that—didn’t know I had me a weatherwoman for a neighbor.”

  “Weather weary is more like it. I remember the kinds of clouds only because my son went though this cloud phase when he was five, that’s all. Had to know all the clouds, all their names. Forget dinosaurs, it drove him berserk there wasn’t some kind of cloud museum we could visit. The weather’s too predictably balmy in Southern California for anything but a few wispy stratus. Storm clouds were his favorite. You never saw a kid who liked rain as much as Peter.”

  “A little rain can’t stop a New Mexico powwow,” Owen assured her. “As Joe might say, that’s just Father Sky’s way of blessing the event. Holy water from above, and the rainbow gift that comes after.”

  Margaret sighed. “Well, it was worth a shot.”

  “I like the color of your dress. Did you go out shopping?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “You told me you gave all your dresses away.”

  She smiled flatly at him. “Well, it’s the only one I didn’t throw out and older than I care to admit. You can check my closet if you don’t believe me.”

  “Oh no, ma’am. I believe you.” Owen smiled back. He opened the pickup door for her. The truck interior was swept clean from the tattered upholstery down to the metal flooring, and he had splurged and bought one of those scented pine-tree mirror kebabs that made the interior smell like Pine-Sol perfumed alfalfa and evergreen sheep wool. He turned the ignition key, and the
motor obediently kicked over. “Tell me what you have against social events.”

  “Let’s just say I put in my time with social obligations.”

  “Tough marriage?”

  “Put my time in one of those, too.”

  “Well, you’re in a world of company. At least you got your boy out of it.”

  Which was only true in a manner of speaking. Technical custody, but Peter chose to live with the Hidalgos. “How about you? Do you have children?”

  “A daughter. College girl. Knows it all, does my Sara Kay. I don’t begrudge her an education. I miss her, though. Once upon a time I could do no wrong.”

  “Now?”

  He pressed his lips together before answering. “Sooner or later they see how human you are, don’t they? Then it takes them twenty or thirty years to forgive you for it.”

  “If ever.” Margaret rested her elbow in the open window, leaned her chin on her fist. In twenty years she would be sixty, grandmother material. By then Peter might have sorted through his own childhood and want children of his own. How did a deaf father teach his child? Would the hearing child of a deaf parent be willing to sign or, just like a second-generation immigrant, would the pull of the spoken word keep him a world apart from his father?

  “Your boy. He’s okay now?”

  “Do you know any fifteen-year-olds who seem okay?”

  “Not really.” Owen slowed the truck and pointed a finger to the roadside where a well-fed coyote trotted toward low hills. “Hello there, Señor Chivito. You’re looking particularly hearty this year,” he said to the retreating animal. “It’s a good idea to keep your dog in at night, Margaret.”

  She had noticed ads on the bulletin board at the supermarket for coyote hunters, men who made a living hunting down and eradicating the animal. You couldn’t pass a produce stand without seeing four or five skulls for sale, bleaching in the sun, recently scraped clean of skin and fur. It sickened her. “Tell me what you’d do if you were alone in this truck, Mr. Garrett. Would you take out your rifle and not even think twice about shooting him, or would you let him go?”

  Owen turned to look at her and smiled. “Never shoot anything from the dog family during Blue Dog Days. It’s like asking for a decade of terrible luck.”

  “And if it wasn’t Blue Dog Days?”

  “Well, the Navs like to say if you kill a brother coyote, you only end up trading places with him. Still, he’d make the start of a nice coat.”

  She shook her head. “Nobody wears fur anymore. In California animal activists throw buckets of pig blood at the movie stars in their minks. Of course, no one asks the pig whether he minds contributing.”

  He reached over and patted her hand. “Good thing you left that state. Sounds like it’s full of a bunch of people weak north of the ears.”

  Main Street was cordoned off with sawhorses. In the cool summer evening, tiny white Christmas lights blinked incongruously around every storefront. Vendors had set up booths to sell food and crafts. Owen kept hold of her arm, guiding Margaret through what she guessed was Blue Dog’s idea of a sidewalk crowd—twenty people here, thirty more across the street—to where Indian women stood cooking up frybread and assembling Navajo tacos. “Name your preference,” he said.

  “The bread looks good.”

  “You want powdered sugar or honey on it?”

  “What do you recommend?”

  “Oh, honey, by far, if you’re after a traditional experience.”

  “Then I’ll have honey.”

  “Smart woman.” He paid for two rounds of the hot bread, then handed one to Margaret.

  The warmth of the bread seeped through the paper plate, comforting against her hands. She pinched off small pieces of dough drizzled with syrup. The butter melted immediately, pooling with the honey. Margaret tried to eat carefully so she wouldn’t make a mess. Owen tore his bread into expert strips, folding them to avoid spilling. Unabashedly he ran his tongue across his thumb to clean the honey from his fingers.

  The high school band played, the horn section louder than it needed to be, most of the time on key. She watched the baton twirlers, those smiling small-town girls with their whole lives ahead of them, all that passion and heartbreak and disappointment and hard work. Their spangled white leotards fit like virgin skin, announcing youth and fertility beneath hard-working muscles. These girls could do it all—smile, march, kick their legs skyward and perform remarkable saves as the baton spiraled through the air. Riders on shining horses in silver show saddles and Spanish costumes waved to the small groups gathered on the sidewalk; a team of draft horses brushed to a glistening shine pulled an old restored dairy wagon painted a bright yellow; a Scout troop marched; and the mayor drove slowly by in a red Ford convertible. Finally the town’s impossibly shiny fire engine passed by, the volunteer brigade marching behind. But because Blue Dog was so small a town, the parade was over in little more than half an hour. She wished they’d turn around and march everyone back the other way, just so she could watch it all over again. When she looked up, her last chunk of frybread in her mouth, her hands as sticky as a child’s, Owen was staring at her soberly.

  “What?” she said. “Do I have food on my face?”

  “No. I wondered if it might embarrass you if I took hold of your hand. Your free one, that is.”

  “Why?”

  “Parades and kids. Call me a fool, but they make me lonesome.”

  He looked old and tired, squinting in the last of the sun. Silver hair mixed with the sandy blond above his ears where the hat didn’t cover it. She didn’t quite know what to say. She looked back at him, trying not to be suspicious. Was there really one man left in the world who still asked, who didn’t just grab at what he wanted as if that was his right? Or was this benignly poetic pass so especially clever that she was missing the point? “If you don’t mind getting honey all over yourself, be my guest. Just return it at the end of the evening.”

  “Margaret, you sure don’t make it easy on a man.”

  She’d already done that, for seventeen years, and it had gotten her nowhere. She felt his fingers close over hers and give a friendly squeeze. Down in front of the Chamber of Commerce, a circle of seated Indian men were beginning to beat in unison on a large drum. From everywhere, it seemed, dancers began to emerge. Indian women in beaded deerskin and moccasins fastened with silver conchos left the street sides and formed a wide circle. Men stripped down to loincloths and feathers, faces painted in primary oxides, wove past her into the street. Small children attempted the same staccato dance steps as the adults, their tiny brown faces masks of seriousness, and were led by the hand into the circle of dancers. She recognized Mr. Yazzi, Owen’s friend from the restaurant, among them. Over his bare chest he wore a necklace of bear claws. His chest and abdomen were criss-crossed with scar tissue and so many stitch marks she couldn’t count them. In spite of the manners her mother had force-fed her since she could toddle upright, she gasped, then, ashamed, touched her fingers to her mouth.

  “Vietnam,” Owen whispered in her ear. “When he got back to Blue Dog he spent about a year in the hospital, trying to remember who he was, while doctors come up from all over and took pictures of him. Half his organs are in the wrong places. Nobody knows why he keeps on breathing. Somehow he does. The government gave him a sackful of medals, and they send him a check every month, but none of it can ever hope to erase what happened.”

  “What happened?”

  “Everything you can imagine, and a lot more that you wouldn’t want to. He’s a good man, Joe is, but part of him runs wilder than the old Blue Dog himself.”

  But Joe danced as if his skin were free of blemishes, and no one in the long line of performers excluded or shied away from him. In college she’d volunteered to train for draft counseling, where scared young men with high draft numbers tried to keep themselves from being turned into reluctant soldiers. Sometimes they found a way, or their parents could afford an influential lawyer. Other times they just went and t
ried to get it over with. She wondered what had happened to those boys, whose faces in her memory now seemed no older than her own son’s. It had been too easy to ignore the Vietnam veterans, but that was what had happened. When Joe’s back was to them, she turned to face Owen.

  “Hey—you were going to tell me the legend of the Blue Dog. How about it?”

  That winking eye winked for real. “Night’s still young. Be patient.”

  They wandered the streets and studied the offerings the vendors displayed. Margaret admired a strand of silver tooled beads. “I make you good price,” the woman urged, but Margaret shook her head no. She didn’t need to buy anything to have a good time, and silver beads didn’t exactly mesh with her current budget. But she picked up a leather wristband with inset buffalo nickels, and said yes to the woman’s request for five dollars. “To send to my son,” she explained to Owen. “He’s still at the age where he likes bracelets.”

  “He back in the great prune state?”

  “Riverwall,” she answered, then realized Owen Garrett was gathering clues here and there, adding them up. “Listen, I’m not telling you one more thing until you explain the blue dog, so you might as well quit asking me questions.”

  He feigned surprise. “How’s the painting going?”

  “How did you know I was painting?”

  “This blue dog told me.”