“Five thousand,” said the driver.
He stepped away to confer with a few men as dusk moved down the slopes. Cigarettes glowed among the men. Owen returned to the group.
“They’re just messing with us,” he said. “I want everybody to bring some money to Coop’s tonight. Don’t worry, you’ll get it back. Lucy won’t turn outlaw on us.”
Families hurried to cars and trucks, speaking in low tones. Joe found Botree with the kids in her pickup.
“just drive around,” she said, “until the boys go to sleep.”
“I’m not sleepy,” Dallas said.
Joe headed toward the ranch. Night flowed down the valley. Abilene slept, sucking on a finger, his head in his mother’s lap. Soon, Dallas was asleep.
“What about this Lucy business?” Joe said.
“I’ve known her all my life. Everybody has. She’s a good woman. Her husband died and she lost her spread. Taxes just ate her up. She doesn’t belong in jail.”
Joe thought of his mother and wondered if the people of Blizzard would band together on her behalf. Five thousand dollars was a lot of money in the hills. Entire families lived on less per year.
“What are mud people?” he said.
“Anybody who’s not white.”
“Frank sounds like he doesn’t like them much.”
“What’s to like?” Botree said.
“People are people, aren’t they?”
“As long as they stay with their own.”
He’d never heard talk such as Botree’s before. The closest was gossip against certain families at home, usually the ones in the deepest hollows or out the farthest ridges, families such as his.
“That’s prejudice, Botree.”
“No, it’s not. Frank might be that way, but I’m not. There was plenty of Mexicans down in Texas.”
“You get to know any?”
“You sound just like Coop. That’s the first thing he wanted to know when I came back. If you’re worried about my kids, I can swear that their fathers are a hundred percent white.”
“That’s not what I mean. How can you talk that way and say you’re not prejudiced.”
“I’m not.”
“What about Indians?”
“I grew up around them. I know what they’re like.”
“What are they like?”
“They just want to take. They can’t help it because that’s all they know. They’ve had everything in the world given to them, free land on the Rez, free food, even free houses. They won’t work. All they do is drink.”
“All of them?”
“Not every single one, no. But they’re the exception. The rest just want to live off the white man.”
“So you don’t like Indians.”
“I didn’t say that. I like Indians fine. I like them best when they stay on the Rez.”
Joe accelerated and the truck weaved. He realized he was too angry to drive. He parked under a cottonwood and stepped to the road. A shooting star cut briefly through the sky and was gone before he could focus on its passage. Botree left the cab, her face pale in the moonlight.
“Where I grew up,” Joe said, “there wasn’t nothing but poor white people out in the county. We had the bootlegger, poker games, and shootings. When we went to town, people didn’t like us because of that, and they treated us bad. I knew it when I was a kid. It was little stuff, but it was there. Like at the grocery store, the bag-up boy helped everybody get groceries in the car but my mother. Later I got a job on a trash truck. People in town looked down on me because of it.”
“That would never happen here,” Botree said.
“No? What about a dishwasher or a poker dealer? What about a stripper?”
She turned away to stare toward the mountains, where sky and earth blended in the night. She leaned against the bumper, her arms folded across her chest.
“I know a little something about that,” she said, “A long time ago I used to dance at the Wolf. I saved some money but afterwards I couldn’t get work anywhere in town.”
“That’s what I mean.”
“Then I went down to Texas and got pregnant. People treated me like I had a disease. Like I was nothing, because I wasn’t married.”
Ursa Major sprawled in the night sky. The air chilled Joe’s arms.
“Johnny has a girlfriend,” Joe said. “She’s a dancer at the Wolf.”
Botree stood without moving, a shadow in the moonlight.
“They have a ten-month-old girl.”
“Oh, Johnny,” she said. “Oh, no.”
“There’s another thing,” he said. “The reason he never said nothing about it.”
She cocked her head, waiting.
“She’s an Indian.”
Botree was quiet for a long time. Stars shimmered in the sky like water on paint. Wind rustled the tree boughs. Botree lifted her hair free of the jacket collar.
“What a damn shame,” she said. “A half-breed’ll have it tough.”
“She’s half your family, too.”
“I don’t know how much help that is. Look at how the rest of us turned out.”
Joe touched her hand. She trembled and was still.
A dull thump came from inside the truck and Dallas peered through the windshield. Botree and Joe climbed in the cab. A quarter moon lay above the silhouetted mountain peaks.
“The moon’s broke,” Dallas said.
Joe and Botree laughed. As Joe drove, he explained the lunar cycle.
“The moon gets cut in half every month?” Dallas said.
“Sort of, yes.”
“And that gets cut in half.”
“Right.”
“So a fall moon is when it gets all its pieces back.”
Within a few minutes, Dallas was asleep again. Joe turned onto the ranch road and slowed the truck as he spoke.
“I had a little talk with Coop and Owen. They offered to move into the old bunkhouse. You know anything about that?”
“Yes.”
“I told them I had to talk to you first.”
“I appreciate that. They don’t want to be in the way.”
“Are they?”
“Not to me,” Botree said. “But they’re my family. They’re trying to help how they can.”
“Help what?”
“If you want to leave, say so. Your leg is fine. There’s no need in you staying anymore unless it’s something you want to do.”
“Do you want me to?”
“Yes,” she said, “that’s what I’d like.”
Joe reached across the children and covered her hand with his. He wanted to remain in the cab of the truck forever, driving dirt roads in the night. The dog star glowed. The Milky Way lay like a sleeve of lace among the stars.
21
Botree carried Abilene through the mud room and down the long hall, while Joe followed with Dallas. They placed the boys in bed and watched as they rolled toward the middle of the mattress, their heads bowed to each other. Abilene placed a hand on his brother’s arm.
“They’re good little boys,” Joe whispered.
“They fight some.”
“But they stick up for each other.”
“Like dogs in a pack.”
Botree left, but Joe stayed for a long time, thinking of the room he’d shared with his brother, its slant ceiling and cold corners. The attic had offered them a privacy denied the rest of the family. During summer the room was very hot. Dallas rolled over and his arm brushed Abilene, who stirred before sucking his finger.
In the living room, men and women from the picnic stood about, holding automatic rifles as casually as garden tools. Several had bolstered pistols on their hips. A few wore fatigues and combat boots, while others wore Bills hats. They reminded Joe of a Wednesday night prayer meeting except for the guns.
Coop huddled at the dining room table with three men. Beside a CB radio were stacks of money and gold coins.