26
I FALL ASLEEP BY WEST’S SIDE BUT WAKE WHENEVER he moans. Finally, when the sun travels over my face, I rise. The prairie is a shadowed landscape clotted with shrubs like giant mushrooms. With the trail out of view and no one around, the world seems foreign, as if we’ve arrived at a country where we are the only inhabitants. It relieves me to be out of the scope of lawmen, but it is a fleeting comfort. We cannot hide out here forever.
Peety takes West’s rifle to go hunting, and Andy accompanies him. Before they leave, I ask them to look out for wild yarrow. Father always applied the cooling yarrow to my bumps and scrapes. Maybe it will bring West some relief.
When I start to change his dressings, he winces. I show him the whiskey but he presses his mouth into a line and turns away.
“Okay. What about a story while I clean your scratch?” He does not protest so I press on.
“Father and I were about the only Chinese people in the state of New York when I was growing up. Mr. Wong owned a bakery down the street from us, but he did not have family. So whenever we went out, people paid attention.
“When I was six, someone brought a menagerie to town.” I pause as I realize that was almost ten years ago to the day. I turn sixteen next week. “I begged Father to go, but he didn’t want to take me, probably fearing we would become another exhibit for people to point and stare at. I was born in the Year of the Snake—”
I pause when the ghost of a frown flits over his face. “It’s not a bad thing,” I add. “A Snake brings good luck.” I don’t mention that I’m the exception. “Anyway, I wouldn’t be so quick to judge, you were born in the Year of the Rabbit.”
He chokes on his disbelief, I suspect most men prefer to think of themselves as something more ferocious than a rabbit, and I let him finish his coughing before continuing. I muse that, despite their lovable appearances, Rabbits are uncomfortable talking about feelings, and if matters turn personal, tend to hop away. Of course, West can hop all he wants, but he won’t be getting too far in his condition.
“Snakes don’t like to be told no.”
More throat clearing ensues, which I ignore.
“So Father gave in and took me. While I was counting zebra stripes, a crowd of children gathered, but they didn’t care about the zebras. They were staring at me.
“‘I bet it feels like rope,’ said one little girl. She was talking about my hair, which had grown so long I could sit on it. Father always combed it so gently before braiding it, like Peety does the horses’ tails.”
West lifts an eyebrow and a zing of panic shoots through me. I sweep my hand through the air in what I hope is a gesture of indifference. “All Chinese boys wear long braids, you know. It’s just the style.”
His eyebrow settles back down and I hurry on with my narrative. “The girl’s father told her, ‘Nope, it ain’t like rope, it’s like a snake, and it will bite you, so leave it alone.’
“She could not resist. She edged toward me, but I didn’t turn around. And then, when I could almost feel her hand reaching for my hair, I spun around real fast, and yelled, ‘Boo!’
“She screamed and ran away. Everyone laughed at her, instead of me, especially Father.”
West starts to chuckle, but the movement triggers a spasm of pain. His face screws up, and I put a cool towel on his head until he relaxes again and closes his eyes. I wish for him the kind of sleep that Homer called a ‘counterfeit death,’ delicious and profound.
? ? ?
A while later, Peety and Andy bring back a prairie chicken. Peety and I follow Andy to the stream after watching her plunge the bird in boiling water.
She hands the chicken to Peety. “Go.”
“Ay, too hot, Andito,” says Peety, bouncing the bird in his hands.
“Don’t juggle it, just pluck it. A deal’s a deal,” says Andy. She winks at me. “I caught it, so he’s doing the cooking today.”
Then she pulls out a bouquet of feathery gray leaves from in the back of Peety’s belt. “Here’s your weeds.”
I thank them and rinse the bunch in the stream. “He’s hurting,” I say as I pound the yarrow into a poultice with a rock. “What do you think about slipping him some of your whiskey, Peety? I know he does not want to drink it, but this is an emergency.”
“No, chico. You cannot do that,” he says, ripping out feathers.
“Careful! You’s gonna take off the wings,” protests Andy.
“Ees okay, chicken no using them no more. West had uno problemo with the spirits, the whiskey.”
“West?” I repeat, as if we could be talking about someone else.
“He was only ten, maybe. His papa don’t like nobody, blacks, reds, yellows, not even his own son. Even after Cay’s family took him, papa still hurting him in here.” He taps his heart with his fist. “Maybe he don’t want to live no more. Maybe there’s too much hurting inside and can’t be fixed.” He stops plucking. “So, he runs away many times. Cay always find him, passed out somewhere with a bottle. Not always good stuff either, you know. Sometimes, very bad stuff. Puts demons in your mind. Maybe those demons easier than ones papa put there.”
My chest burns, like someone poured in poison. Andy takes the chicken and finishes plucking it.
Peety wipes his hands on a rag. “This happens until he’s fourteen and old enough to work at El Rancho. West finds peace with animals. But those demons are always there in the bottle. So he don’t go near it. You understand now?”
I nod, then return to West’s side with the poultice. He seems to be stable for now, no fever that I can tell, though his face is pale as death. I watch his eyelashes flicker in deepest slumber, and wonder at the wounds that tear at him from the inside.
? ? ?
Peety doesn’t want an audience when he makes dinner so Andy and I sit by the river. The water tumbles by, blissfully unaware of the suffering upon its shores. Yellow grass and tangled reeds gain footholds on the opposite bank where the ground is less rocky.
“You’s gonna freeze like a gryphon statue hanging over West.” Andy cuts her eyes to me. “Don’t look at me like that, I know what a gryphon is. Lion body with an eagle head that’s always stuck out like it’s gonna pounce. Ungodly things. Miss Betsy had a statue of one she made me clean every day. It got real dirty between the claws, even though it never caught anything.”
We dip our toes in the water. “What kind of demons do you think West’s father put in him?”
“The worst kind, is my guess. Child’s supposed to depend on his parents. Better to have no daddy at all than one that hurts you.”
“But his daddy’s been gone for years.”
She kicks up her foot throwing water across the stream. “Your head’s like a room and when you’s forced to stay in it, you gotta deal with all the trash that’s left in there.”
Andy reminds me of you, Father, and your infinite wisdom. “You think everyone has trash?”
“Yep, I do. Even the ones whose head you think is empty, like Cay. Bet he’s full of it.” She grins, and I feel my cheeks lifting, too.
Peety calls us back to the fire, where the horse blankets have been folded in three neat squares for sitting. Between two of the squares, a bouquet of purple blazing stars blooms from one of West’s empty boots.
Andy eyes the floral arrangement with a bemused expression. “You got a lady friend in town?” She makes a show of looking behind herself at the miles and miles of empty prairie land.
Peety chuckles. “I got no lady friend.” With his handkerchief, he whacks at the folded horse blankets, then gestures toward them. “Please sit in my best chairs.”
Andy and I plunk down, and he proudly hands us steaming mugs of soup. “I put in a surprise for you.”
“What do you mean by that?” asks Andy.
Peety grins. “If I told you, it’s no surprise.” He kneels beside us and digs into his soup, even though it’s still steaming.