Two-Spirit

heriff Sweet hasn't used her siren since the Garrett girl had her

baby at Mother Hubbard's restaurant," Donny said, watching with some alarm as the police car zoomed north on Stage Street. Her scanner was silent.

Abraham stepped back out of the bus shelter where he'd either read every word of the Greyhound schedule or was avoiding talking to Donny. "As long as R didn't send her after me."

Donny surprised herself by feeling only mildly annoyed at him. "I don't know why R wanted you back in the first place, as messed up as you are."

"I am messed up."

"First you're a flaming South Side queen, then you claim to have your amputation and come here to be a lesbian, next thing I know you're all boy again with Harold and Joe. You never even told me you'd gone back to R, and now you can't wait to get away from her again?"

Abraham's whine hadn't changed since he was six. "I was set to tell you at the potluck that I'd moved back to Spirit Ridge, but you never showed up and you know R doesn't have a phone."

"I was too sick to lift my head and you want me to go chasing after you?"

"What did you have, some kind of spring flu? You look like you lost weight. You're too skinny to start with."

"No more than I've lost worrying over you all these years. It was a summer cold. Knocked me on my ass."

"I would have helped out at the store if you'd gotten word to me."

"Jeep came in every chance she could."

"Now there's a messed-up woman. What is she thinking of, taking on that little boy? No lesbian in your community will get in five feet of her except Cat. She'll be single forever."

"Maybe single suits her."

"Maybe, but you know how she strikes me? She feels like a woman already claimed. Like she's given her heart away, wanted or not. I hope it wasn't to Katie. Her passion is her camera."

"Abe, how come you know so much about how Jeep should live her life and not a damn thing about how to live your own?"

"Ain't that a bitch? I'm thinking I'll go back to college and get my counseling degree."

"I've heard that one before. Tell me what I should be doing."

"Oh, you're doing it, Donalds. I don't know why a tiny burg without a gay bar to its name suits you, but this is the Don's town now. You've got your fingers in every pie-the small businesses, the Sheriff's Department, the gay people, the old ladies' sewing circle, and the politickers. You've got the nicest woman you've ever been with, and she even knows she's lucky to have you. You've got land women friends and faggot friends and straight friends. You can fish your heart out here like you always wanted to. You're home, Donny."

Donny looked away, eyes wet. She didn't trust her voice. It was all true, and she hadn't thought about it all at once like that. Her Chick was the greatest treasure on earth, plus she had so much else! Gram and Grampop were surely looking out for her up there.

"The only thing that worries me about you, Donalds, is your temper. You're getting too old to let every little thing spike your blood pressure."

Abe was all in black tonight, with purple flecking on his tissue-thin scarf. Behind him was a signpost the Chamber of Commerce had donated to the town. Surrounded by a disk of earth thick with dahlias, wooden arrows sprouted in every direction listing far-off cities and their distances from Waterfall Falls. Istanbul, one of them read, 6,400 miles. Why would anyone want to know how far she was from Istanbul unless she wanted to send a fool like Abe there?

Donny said, "That Greyhound is late."

There was the sound of another siren, this one approaching from Greenhill. She glanced at Abraham. He had that coy, weasely look she found so annoying. She hoped he wasn't running from the law. At least tonight that look didn't throw her into a rage the way it used to the first fifty years she'd known him, but it still pissed her off. Abe's call had come at 10:00, when she and Chick had cut the light.

"You have to come get me out of here!" Abe had whispered into the phone.

"Where're you at? What kind of trouble did you get yourself into now?" Donny had asked.

"I'm at the pay phone outside the Mule Butte General Store on the way to town. I walked down here and I'm ready to collapse. Come get me, Donny! I have to catch that 12:40 bus!"

"Abe, I'm tired. Chick's tired. Why have you stranded yourself this time?"

"R just told me she's got the big C."

"Say what?"

"I can't take care of another terminal! They were reason numero forty-five why I tried women. I loved my boys, but they died on me, one by one. Come and get me out of here, and I'll never ask another thing, I swear!"

Donny knew she wasn't getting the whole story. R announces she's dying and Abraham runs out on her? Not likely. She covered the mouthpiece and turned to Chick next to her in bed. "Why didn't you tell me R's cancer metastasized to her bones? How long did the doc give her?"

Chick stared at her, lurched out of bed, and grabbed the clothes she'd only a few minutes ago taken off. Wrong way to break that news to Chick, Donalds, she chided herself. She could see Chick getting whiter in the face.

Abe's voice grew shrill. "It's in more lymph nodes than I thought you could have. I can't stay here, Donalds. She's got all of you to take care of her. I need to go find a family that will take care of me. I'm not doing this again."

She repeated the details to Chick.

"And Abe left her?" Chick asked while she struggled with her socks.

"And you left her?"

"Don't be saying it like that. She had a meeting of the women up there to announce it. They're all bawling and hugging on R and each other. It's a mess. I said I was going outside to pee. That was a long time ago. I'm standing out here in the rain in nothing but somebody's rubber boots, pajamas, and R's rain jacket. You need to grab the clothes I left downstairs so I can change in your car. You can have whatever money I left at Spirit Ridge, and I'll send the rest of what I owe you for the ticket."

"Easy, Abe, easy. I'll be right there." It was either that or answer a frantic knock on the door after he hitched a ride-or got arrested.

Chick, pulling on socks, asked, "Where's R? Why didn't she tell me the results?"

"From what Abe said, R's at Spirit Ridge." Donny held her arms open. "I'm sorry, babe. She threw me. I thought you knew about R and hadn't told me."

Chick hesitated. "No. I have to keep going. If I feel your arms around me I'll cry. I don't want to cry. R doesn't need me crying all over her."

"Come here." Chick laid her head on Donny's shoulder. "I'm so sorry about your friend. I thought you went to the clinic with her."

"I did. She must have gone alone for the results. I kept asking if they were in and telling her I'd drive her up there. Poor, stupid R, the hardest part. Poor, stupid, proud R probably didn't want anyone to see her freak out. I'll bet she never did go. I should have known. She probably fought with them to find out over the phone since she'd already decided she was going the natural way."

Donny held her tighter.

"First we become grandparents, now we've got someone dying. What's going on, Donny?"

"We're grownups, babe."

"That's all? This is what it's going to be like from here on?"

Donny thought for a moment, remembering Abraham in short pants, herself in a white dress at some do. Remembering her first girlfriend, plump little Angel, and kissing for hours behind the high school, listening to the Chiffons, the Ronettes. Remembering the long evenings patrolling the museum, the long dawns disco dancing, her brother coming out of jail that first time when she felt so hopeful about him, Martin Luther King's speech, the Panthers, riots and fires, drugs all around her, and drive-by shootings and hot summer picnics on the lakefront playing Frisbee and pickup basketball and the Cubs losing every time she went to see them play and her first gay pride march and driving west with Chick.

"What is it going to be like, babe? It's going to be me holding you. You holding me. That's how it's going to be."

Chick leaned back and smiled. Her eyes were like blue water in the sunshine, like the blue of the pool under the falls. They'd finally gotten back to the falls again last Sunday. The sun had burned and burned till it got so hot in town they were desperate for relief. They'd driven up quickly, and had not dallied on the trail. It was dinnertime and they were alone. They'd walked the curving path, climbed over fallen trees, and crept around boulders to stand behind the falls and watch the water's unending dive into the blue pond. She'd intended to picture herself tossing all her anger in, watching it whirl and sink and flow downstream forever, but she'd forgotten to do that in the relief of the moment.

That feeling of peace came back to her now as Chick said, "For the rest of our lives, honeypot. And don't you forget it." She gave Donny's cheek a quick moist kiss, then dashed to the bathroom.

So Chick had gone up to Spirit Ridge while Donny followed along the dark wet roads behind her to the closed general store where Abraham skulked to the truck.

Now in front of the sign to Istanbul, Abe looked up from under her eyebrows at Donny, all coy. He seemed to have forgotten R as soon as Donny showed up to whisk him away.

The glow from that hugging time with Chick had faded by then. She asked, "What the hell were you doing back with R? I thought I already rescued your ass when I took you to Joe and Harold's?"

"R said she missed me. She was so down I couldn't say no, but she didn't tell me about the cancer. I think she wanted me around because I told her about nursing my boys. I think she wanted her own personal hospice nurse." Abraham hugged himself. "I can't do this again."

"Don't start crying now. The last thing I need is a hysterical queen on my hands."

If her reaction was any indication, Chick was going to be a handful herself. She'd probably want to bring R to their place to die. Donny could hear Chick now: "We're a straight shot to the hospital, honeypot. I can look in on her between customers. " But she'd seen it before, Chick taking in some needy stray who would as likely as not rip them off before leaving Waterfall Falls. This would be an emotional rip-off, with R going off to lesbian separatist heaven, leaving Donny catching up after a hundred extra washes in their little laundry room in back of the store and Chick grieving.

"You can't tell the land women what I told you about me, Donny. They'll turn on her."

"Bullshit. They'll rush to take care of her all the faster."

"No. I've listened to them go on about men. They'll leave her alone to die! You have to swear on your Mama's grave that you won't say anything."

"Your big brother Donny has no need to protect all those bare-ass little gals playing Tarzan. They can take a dose of truth about their guru-ette."

"You swear."

"I don't hold back from Chick."

"Will she go running off at the mouth?"

Yet another siren was arriving. She reached in the truck window and ratcheted up the volume on the scanner, but there was silence. That troubled her all the more. Something was happening the sheriff didn't want broadcast. What a stupid fool thing to ask about Chick, as if she would broadcast someone's secrets.

"Fuck this shit. I need to go find Joan. She may need help." Immediately, she told herself, easy, girl, and breathed deeply.

Abe pushed between her and the truck. With her face close to Donny's, he whispered, "You have to understand, girlfriend. R's got enough without confessing that she's-"

"Straight? Abraham, I do not want to hear any more," she shouted over the sirens. It was two state cops, taking the corner of Stage and Cliff on the edges of their wheels. She noticed that all the sirens cut off as they left town to drive east up the mountain. "What the fuck's going on? It must be a car wreck."

"Lord, don't let it be that bus. I need to-"

"To what, Abraham? To go mess up somebody else's head?"

"She wanted me, Donny. She said she was more a political lesbian than a sexual one. She was studying the two-spirit idea, starting to look at herself that way. Now she'll never have time to find out who she is."

"I'm not talking about R's head. It's mine that's confused."

"Hell, you only have the one spirit, and it's pure diesel dyke."

She almost snapped "I know that" at Abraham, but found herself smiling instead. "Aren't I lucky," she said.

The scanner in her little truck came alive. Nine-eleven dispatch was calling for Sheriff Sweet's deputies. Man, did she hate being a deputy on the same team with Johnny Johnson and his friends, but somebody had to back Joan up when they went overboard.

"I've got to go."

Abe lunged at her and mashed her in a hug.

"Abe! I thought you got rid of your sandpaper chin."

Abe looked panicky. "R says the hormones are bad for me."

"Son of a b. It sounds like the two spirits inside Abraham Clinkscales are getting to know each other pretty well."

"You're not mad at me, are you?"

Abraham was the most infuriating person in her life, but it was true, he'd done more than his share of caretaking. HIV had been his second Vietnam. And gender confusion had turned into a gay national pastime in recent years. That must have been irresistible to his lost soul. She heard herself thinking beyond anger. "Why would I be? Lots of queer folk come up here to find themselves. I'm glad it's working out for you."

"It is. I'll be back for the two-spirit gathering. If they have an opening at the Gay Bay Area Youth Center I'm going to take it too, residential, graveyard, whatever they need, and I'll finish my degree. This time, Don, I'll do it. I think I've got something these kids can use. Thanks for everything, man."

"Be careful who you call a man. It's not safe to take anything for granted these days."

While the scanner tripped over its channels, Abe looked to be studying her face before laughing. "You crack me up, Donny, you really do. You were such a wild young thing and now you're such an old fogey."

Donny let herself laugh too. She'd only looked wild from the outside. It had been home she'd been looking for all her life, and she'd woman-hunted with the wildness of desperation every time she lost one, not realizing that a woman was only part of the foundation. It had taken Chick, the store, the old ladies, and the politicking-and even this crazy-ass, out-of-the-way, mostly white hick burg out of a Western-to make her roots grow.

"The bus will be here any minute. You cool with me taking off?"

"Very cool. I need to go home."

"Let me know." Donny looked at Abe's groin. "About everything."

As she slid her flashing light onto the roof of the truck, she recognized that for all the aggravation of the evening, she still felt good. Wait till she told Chick that she hadn't blown her fuse once.

Дата добавления: 2015-10-21