After that, Grandma Fleet did not go with the others to meet the trains. Some days she scavenged in the town dump; other days she sat in the lean-to and watched Indigo play while she soaked and peeled the fibrous strands from yucca leaves she and Sister Salt gathered from the dry hills above the river. She taught Sister Salt how to make little baskets in any shape she wanted simply by cutting the yucca strands in different lengths. Grandma showed Sister Salt how to gather devil’s claws and soak them so the jet black fibers would peel away easily. She helped Sister Salt wrap the woven yucca with the fibrous black threads to make eyes for the dog and the frog figures. While Sister Salt made small frog-shaped and dog-shaped baskets to sell to the tourists, Grandma Fleet wove a large storage basket with a lid to keep her treasures from the dump, mostly bits of colored glass and all sorts of seeds, especially the pits of apricots and peaches.
Grandma refused to go to the train depot after the incident, but Sister Salt could not go alone; so as soon as their mother heard the train whistle off in the distance, she left her duties at the washtubs behind the hotel to fetch Sister Salt and the baskets. Sister Salt carried a dog basket in one hand and a frog basket in the other; their mother taught her to smile and say “Hello! Would you like to buy a basket?” Mama stood nearby and watched for trouble, while Sister Salt sold the baskets.
Later on, when Indigo asked Sister Salt to tell her about their mother, Sister Salt recalled how she wanted to go with the other children to get the candy and the pennies the train passengers sometimes tossed to the children from train windows, but Mama made her stay put by the baskets displayed on the depot platform. Mama was strict about that; she was angered by the grinning faces of passengers who delighted at the sight of the children begging, then scrambling for anything tossed out the train windows. Mama learned English from the soldiers’ wives at Fort Yuma, but she preferred not to answer the tourists’ questions about the baskets or herself. Sister Salt had to do all the talking, but Mama always took the money and quickly stuffed it down the front of her dress between her breasts. The dog and frog baskets nearly always sold; summer was always best; winters were the worst, because the passengers were reluctant to stop on the icy depot platform.
Before deep snow came, Grandma Fleet went with the others to the mountains to gather piñons, pine nuts, and acorns, but they often did not have enough to eat in the winter. The hotel did not have as many winter guests to dirty the linens, so there was not as much work for Mama. The white man who managed the hotel allowed her to take home vegetable crates and other wood scraps to burn on cold nights. As sheets or towels became badly frayed or stained, their mother showed the linens to the hotel manager; if he agreed, she was allowed to take the rags home. When someone smoking in bed burned a blanket, Mama brought home the half of the blanket that remained, and with a quilting needle made from a sharpened wire and string Grandma Fleet retrieved from the dump, Mama sewed them a family quilt with the singed blanket and the ragged towels.
On the coldest days, when the winds whipped the snow and sleet into a blizzard, the four of them huddled together under the family quilt in their lean-to. Grandma Fleet and Mama told the girls old stories about the land of perpetual summer, far to the south, where the ground actually smoldered on the hottest days. Mama recalled her captivity at Fort Yuma, where the army tents filled with white heat at midday and sometimes caught fire. Sister Salt and Indigo imagined the summer heat, and the cold winds were not so oppressive. How delicious the warmth of the fire felt, but fire was also dangerous near the dry willows and scrap lumber of the lean-to. At bedtime, the fire was damped with dry river sand, and Grandma Fleet scraped away the sand floor in the middle of their lean-to and buried hot coals under layers of sand to keep them warm as they slept together under the big quilt. The cold winters made Grandma Fleet homesick for the south, for her dugout house at the old gardens. The refugees might have eaten everything in sight at the old gardens, but her dugout house with its fine roof of layered palm fronds was much more weather-tight, much nicer than the empty packing crates they called home in Needles. The hard years passed slowly.
One day a white man and two Indian policemen walked through the lean-tos. The Indian policemen called out; if someone came to the door, the white man wrote in his black book and they moved to the next shack. Mama was still at work, but Grandma Fleet knew immediately why the men were there. She told Sister Salt and Indigo to hide, quickly, under the big quilt. Whatever happens, she told them, don’t make a sound, don’t move. Grandma Fleet watched the government men move from shack to shack; when only two other shacks but theirs remained, Grandma Fleet sat down on top of the quilt. She almost sat on Sister Salt’s head, but she moved, and Indigo moved her foot that Grandma was sitting on. They got themselves arranged, then Grandma spread her basket-making materials and a half-woven basket around her. She pretended to be crippled when the Indian policemen called her outside. She invited them to step inside, knowing they would refuse; the white man was afraid of disease and the Indian policemen feared witchcraft. They asked to see the two children reported to live there. Grandma Fleet pretended to cry; oohhh, she moaned, she was all alone now, an old woman all alone. The Indian police were not satisfied with her answers; they whispered to each other. They wanted to know about the others. They knew the Paiute women lied, because there were complaints about Paiute children begging for money from passengers at the depot. The Paiute children belonged in school. All Indian children must go to school; that was the law. Grandma Fleet pretended she was afraid of the Paiutes and claimed to know nothing about them. The Indian policemen conferred with their boss.
“Old Sand Lizard woman, dirt digger! You’re lying! We’ll drag you off to prison with all the rest of them!” one of the Indian police muttered as they left.
Grandma Fleet did not move for a long time after the police left in case it was a trick and they returned. Indigo squirmed because the circulation to her left foot was cut off by Grandma’s leg; Sister Salt pinched her to make her be still, so Indigo kicked her in the shin. Grandma Fleet finally stood up and walked to the doorway to look both ways before she pulled back the quilt.
“It’s a good thing they were gone when you girls started your commotion!” she said, shaking her head sternly. That evening when their mother came home from work she had news: the government man and Indian police had taken away six Walapai children to school. Grandma Fleet said it was time to go back to the old gardens; Sister Salt was almost a young woman and Indigo was just the age to be sent away to school. Mama agreed but wanted to work at the hotel a little bit longer so they could buy supplies to take back with them; they would have enough money if she worked awhile longer.
Each day while Mama and Sister Salt were at their work in town, Grandma Fleet took Indigo with her. Some days they prowled the arroyos to gather willows for basket making; other days they walked in the sand and sagebrush hills outside town to gather grass seeds to grind into flour. Most days Grandma Fleet and Indigo ended with a walk through the town dump, where they surveyed the refuse and Indigo scrambled down the sides of the garbage pits to retrieve valuables the townspeople carelessly threw away. String, paper, scraps of cloth, glass jars and bottles, tin cans, and bits of wire — they washed their discoveries in the shallows of the river and reused them. Grandma Fleet saved seeds discarded from vegetables and fruits to plant at the old gardens when they returned; she poked her stick through the debris in garbage piles behind the café and hotel. Grandma kept her seeds in the little glass jars with lids they found at the dump; she kept the jars of seeds in her bedding for safekeeping. The apricot pits were her special favorites because she remembered the apricot trees of her childhood at the old gardens. Grandma Fleet held the jar up close to her face and spoke to the seeds;