“I’ll like it,” said Darrel. Thinking: What the hell have I done?
“We’ll see. Make sure you learn something from them besides killing.”
“Like what?” Darrel rubbed his newly shaved head. The loss of his shoulder-length hair in ten seconds and the way it lay on the floor of a barbershop in Old Town still freaked him out.
“Like something useful,” said his dad. “A trade. Unless you’re planning to spend the rest of your life jumping to attention.”
Midway through his hitch, his mother died. Mabel and Ed Montez were both chain-smokers, and Darrel had always worried about lung cancer. It was a heart attack that got Mom. Only forty-four, she’d been sitting in the front room of a noncom housing unit outside of Hamburg, watching Wheel of Fortune on U.S. Army cable, when her head pitched forward and she never moved again. Her last words: “Buy a vowel, stupid.”
The Marines gave Darrel compassionate leave for a week, then he returned to the base in Oceanside. He was a lance corporal by now, training grunts, earning a rep as a tough DI. The little crying he did, he did in private.
His father quit the army and settled in Tampa, Florida, where he lived off his pension and got depressed. Half a year later, he called Darrel and announced he was moving to Santa Fe.
“Why there?”
“We’re Santa Clara Indian.”
“So?” Darrel had been made casually aware of his heritage. As an abstraction, something historical. The few times he’d asked his parents about it, they’d inhaled their unfiltered Camels and said, “Be proud of it, but don’t let it get in the way.”
Now his dad was moving because of it? To New Mexico? Dad had always hated the desert; when they lived in California, you couldn’t get him to Palm Springs.
“Anyway,” said Ed Montez, “it’s time.”
“For what?”
“To learn, Darrel. If I don’t start learning something, I’m gonna shrivel up and die like a moth.”
The next time Darrel saw his father was when he finished his Marine hitch, decided he wanted more hair on his head, and didn’t re-up.
“Come out here, Darrel.”
“I was thinking L.A. ”
“Why there?”
“Maybe go to school.”
“College?” said his dad, surprised.
“Yeah.”
“What you want to study?”
“Maybe computers,” Darrel had lied. He hadn’t a clue, knowing only that he wanted the freedom of sleeping late, meeting girls who weren’t hookers or Marine groupies. He wanted to have some fun.
“Computers are good,” said his dad. “The talismans of our age.”
“What?”
“Talismans,” said Ed Montez. “Symbols-totems.”
Darrel didn’t answer.
“It’s complicated, Darrel. Come on out, you can go to school here. UNM’s a good place, got a nice campus, and there’s all sorts of scholarships for Indians.”
“I like California.”
“I got no one,” said his dad.
When Darrel got off the plane in Albuquerque and saw the old man, he nearly fell over. Ed Montez had gone from Crew-Cut Noncom to Big Chief Whatever. His gray-streaked hair was center-parted and hung down past his shoulder blades, held in place by a beaded band.
His mop was a lot longer than Darrel’s own tresses had been when his dad had ridden him about looking like “a hippie bum.”
Dad’s civvy clothes had changed just as radically. No more golf shirt, pressed slacks, and spit-polished oxfords. Ed Montez wore a loose-fitting linen shirt over blue jeans and moccasins.
Wore a wispy chin beard.
He hugged Darrel-another change-took Darrel’s carry-on, and said, “I changed my name. I’m Edward Two Moons. Maybe you should think about a change.”
“Genealogy,” the old man explained as they made the one-hour drive to Santa Fe. So far the terrain was flat and dry, lots of empty stretches paralleling the highway, the occasional Indian casino.
Just like Palm Springs.
Seventy-five-mile-per-hour speed limit. Darrel had no problem with that. His father was doing ninety and so was everyone else.
Dad lit up and blew smoke around the cabin of the Toyota pickup. “Aren’t you curious?”
“About what?”
“Genealogy.”
“I know what it means. You’ve been looking into your roots.”
“Our roots, son. On the drive over from Florida, I stopped in Salt Lake City, went over to the Mormon place, and did some serious studying. Found out some interesting things. Then when I got here, I did some more and it got even more interesting.”
“Like what?” said Darrel, even though he wasn’t sure he cared. Mostly, he was sneaking sidelong glances at the old man. Edward Two Moons? When he talked, the chin beard vibrated.
“Like our lineage goes straight back to the Santa Clara Pueblo. That’s on my side. Your mom was Apache and Mohawk, but that’s another story. I still got to look into that.”
“Okay,” said Darrel.
“Okay?”
“What do you want me to say?”
“I thought,” said Ed, “that you’d be curious.”
“You always said it was in the past.”
“I’ve come to appreciate the past.” His father jammed his cigarette into his mouth, reached over with his right hand, and grasped Darrel’s wrist. Held on. Weird. The old man had never been one for touch.
“We’re related to Maria Montez, son. Straight line all the way back to her, not a doubt.”
“Who’s that?”
“Maybe the greatest Indian potter ever.” Ed let go, flipped his hand over. The palm was gray, coated with some kind of dust.
“This is clay, son. I’ve been learning the ancient art.”
“You?”
“Don’t be so surprised.”
The closest his parents had come to art were Christmas cards taped to the walls of temporary housing.
“We move around,” his mother had explained. “You put holes in the plaster, you have to patch them up. I may be dumb but I’m not stupid.”
“The process is really something,” his father went on. “Finding the right clay, digging it up, hand-shaping-we don’t use no wheels.”
We?
Darrel kept his mouth shut. They were fifteen miles out of Santa Fe, and the terrain had changed. Higher altitude, pretty mountains all around. Greener, with little pink and tan and gold houses that reflected the light. The sky was huge and blue, bluer than Darrel had ever seen. A billboard advertised duty-free gasoline at the Pojoaque Pueblo. Another one said custom adobe homes were going up in a place called Eldorado.
Not bad, but still not California.
“No wheels,” his father reiterated. “The shaping’s all by hand, which is pretty tough, let me tell you. Then comes the firing and it really gets complicated. Some people use a kiln, but I use an outdoor fire because the spirits are stronger outdoors. You make a wood fire, the heat’s gotta be perfect. If something’s wrong, everything can crack and all your work’s for nothing. You want to get different colors, you use cow dung. Got to snatch it out of the fire at exactly the right time, put it back in-it’s complicated.”
“Sounds like it.”
“Aren’t you going to ask me what I make?”
“What d’you make?”
“Bears,” said his dad. “And they come out pretty good. Look pretty much like bears.”
“Great.” Clay, dung. Outdoor spirits. His dad’s hair- Jesus, it was really long. Was this some kind of dream?
“I live to make bears, Darrel. All those years I didn’t do it was time wasted.”
“You served your country.”
Ed Montez laughed and smoked and pushed his truck to nearly a hundred.
“Dad, are you living in the pueblo?”
“I wish. Whatever land rights we got at Santa Clara are long gone. But I go out there for lessons. It’s not a bad drive. I managed to hook up with Sally Montez. She’s Maria’s great-great-granddaughter. Great potter, won first prize at the Indian Market show two years in a row. She uses dung to get a black and red combo. Last year she got the flu, didn’t have it together, so she only got honorable mention. But still, that’s pretty impressive.”