“I don’t think that’s what you were aiming for.”
“Can we sit down and talk it over”
Alice hovers for a moment the way a female dragonfly will, before committing her future, laying her eggs on the water. Finally she plunges. Sits and takes off her shoes.
Annawake paddles her legs slowly back and forth. “To tell you the truth, Alice, I couldn’t tell you what I was thinking.
I don’t think I was thinking, for once. I just followed my gut.
I thought my Indian-white relations project needed a human touch.”
“And me and Cash went like lambs to the slaughter.”
“I didn’t think it would take you so long to find out what you two have in common. I figured you’d tell him right away.”
“Well, maybe us old folks don’t just jump into things the way you kids do.”
“Sounds to me like just the opposite. You were so busy jumping into things you forgot to state your business.”
Unbelievably, Annawake hears Alice swallow a giggle.
“I guess I overstepped,” she tells Alice. “I’m sorry.”
In the very long silence, an owl calls from upriver. Annawake can picture its wide-open eyes, hunting. Stealing scraps of sight from the darkness.
“You probably didn’t mean no harm.”
“Believe me, I had a lot of help from Letty.”
“That Letty,” Alice agrees, with grudging humor. “She’d stick her nose in a grave if she thought there was still hope of warm gossip.”
The adrenaline that rushed Annawake’s limbs when she first saw anger in the dark is receding now, leaving her body with a longing to stretch. She arches her back. “Every town probably needs a Letty,” she says. “Somebody to lubricate things, and then count backwards from nine every time a couple of newlyweds have a baby.”
“Margie Spragg. That’s who it was in Pittman. She was the phone operator for the longest time. It about killed her when they put in the dial tone.”
“It’s a public service, what those women do. Sometimes people have communication problems with their own hearts.”
“Well,” Alice says. “Nothing’s settled, still.”
“I know”
“Taylor’s on her way. She called me from a truck stop in Denver.”
“Is she?” Annawake feels curiously apprehensive. For months she hasn’t been able to recall Taylor’s appearance, having met her so briefly, but now, suddenly, she does. The fine-featured, trusting face, the long dark hair, the way she held perfectly still while listening. She remembers Taylor standing at the window curled forward with animal fear, and she imagines her in a telephone booth in Denver, curled forward with the receiver under a sheet of dark hair.
“I figured you’d be jumping for joy,” Alice says.
“Oh, I’m not much of a jumper. I oftentimes have communication problems with my heart.”
“Letty ever try to help you out on that?”
Annawake holds her hand in the air. “Don’t even ask Letty Hornbuckle has tried to fix me up with everything in this county that stands on two legs to pee. Unfortunately, that’s not my problem.”
“Oh.”
Alice is now swirling her own legs through the water, creating crosscurrents that jostle the stars together in the water until Annawake can fairly hear them ringing.
“Look There’s the Little Dipper out there in the middle of the river, upside-down. See her?”
“I can’t see good at night.”
“You can see it in the sky, though. Straight up from that one dead oak that looks white, over there on the bank”
“I think I do see it,” Alice says, in a voice thinned out from looking up.
“Don’t look it straight head-on. Look a little off to one side, and it will be brighter. Uncle Ledger showed me that.”
“Sure enough,” Alice says in a minute. And then, “I’ll swan.
I can see all seven of the Seven Sisters, when I do that.”
“You people! That must be why whites took over the world. You can see all seven of the Seven Sisters.”
“What, you can’t?”
“We call them the Six Pigs in Heaven.”
“The what? The pigs?”
“It’s a story. About six bad boys that got turned into pigs.”
“Well, that must have made them think twice. What did they do to get turned into pigs?”
“Oh, you know. They didn’t listen to their mothers, didn’t do chores. Just played ball all the time. So their mothers cooked up something really nasty for them to eat, to try to teach them a lesson. Have you seen those little leather balls we use for playing stickball?”