Joan had mentioned that she needed to pick up some items, clothing and the like. She had planned on hitching a ride with some friends, but when she could do that, she wasn’t sure. Riva, being the considerate person that she is, was doing the girl a favor, in her mind. And we wanted to get out of Blue River and see other parts of Muir County.
“Okay,” Joan had reluctantly acquiesced, not wanting to offend her new employer. “But you’re wasting your time. You’ll see.”
We drove out of town, Riva and I in the front seat, Joan and Bucky in the back. An hour’s easy driving brought us to the White Horse Reservation entrance, a narrow scar that angled off the highway.
“Here it is.” Joan pointed as we approached the turnoff. Her voice was flat, her eyes averted, as if this was the last thing in the world she wanted to see. Or wanted us to see.
No signs indicated this was anything other than a road to nowhere—if Joan hadn’t been with us, I would have driven right by. I turned in, and we raised a big cloud of dust as we bounced down the rutted roadway.
We passed by cinder-block houses standing in isolation, decrepit house trailers, other remote, battered dwellings. They did have electricity—the proliferation of pizza-sized television satellite dishes on the roofs testified to that—and I didn’t see too many outhouses, but this was bad poverty.
Now I knew why Joan had been reluctant to bring us here.
I glanced over at Riva as we bounced along the rough, pot-holed road. She was feeling the same thing I was: embarrassment for Joan. Not that we cared where or how she lived, but that she would think that we did. That we’d judge her.
Too late to do anything about that now. We were here. To try to ameliorate the situation, bring it out in the open, would make her discomfort more acute. We’d stop at her house long enough for her to get what she needed, then leave.
The reservation center, such as it was, consisted of a cluster of low buildings on either side of the road about a mile in from the highway: a small elementary school, a firehouse, a few stores, a church. A handful of older people were clustered about, conversing with each other, going in and out of the stores. We didn’t see any kids. They glanced at our car with curiosity as we drove by.
“My house is about a mile further,” Joan instructed us. She was scrunched down in her seat, her head barely above the bottom of the window.
“Will your parents be home?” Riva asked solicitously.
“I guess.” From the tone of Joan’s voice she was hoping the place would be empty, she could run in, get her stuff, and get away without having to introduce us. “My father’s gone. Maybe my mom.”
“What about your brothers and sisters?”
She shrugged. We knew that Joan had two older sisters and a younger brother, she’d told us about them. I wasn’t clear how many were living at home, or on the reservation. She didn’t talk much about her family; her conversation with us, when it was about her, was her future, her dreams. She wanted to go to four-year college, become a teacher, a nurse, a dental hygienist. A professional. Her plans didn’t include living on the reservation as an adult.
Her house was wood-frame, in need of paint. Small, not much space for two adults and four kids. We parked in front and got out to stretch.
“I’ll just be a minute.” Joan didn’t want us to come in, that was clear.
“Potty.”
We looked down.
Bucky held his arms up to Joan. “Potty, Joan.”
He’s only been toilet-trained a few months—Riva isn’t pushy about that stuff. He won’t wear diapers during the day and prides himself on being able to hold it in. Now he was squirming.
“Okay, Bucky,” Joan sighed. “Come on.” She scooped him up, turned to us, and said, “You can come in, too, if you want to.”
A woman opened the door as we approached. Joan’s mother—she looked like her daughter, except she was shorter and squatter. A tentative smile creased her face, which was deeply etched with sun lines. She was Riva’s age or younger, I assumed, but she looked at least a decade older.
“Hello, honey,” she said warmly, giving Joan a bear hug.
“Hi, Mama,” Joan replied, hugging her back in the perfunctory way teenagers do when others are around.
“Are you Mr. and Mrs. Garrison?” the woman asked us.
“Yes,” Riva answered. “And you’re Mrs. Canyada. It’s a pleasure to meet you. You have a lovely daughter. She’s been a lifesaver.”
Hyperbole, but it did the job—the woman’s smile expanded all the way across her face.
“And this is your little boy,” Joan’s mother said, cooing at Buck. “Isn’t he so cute!”
“Potty,” Buck said.
She laughed. “Right inside. Come in, all of you.”
The interior was tiny, but neat. One room for living, eating, cooking. A few doors led off to the back.
“Come on, Buck. Let’s go potty,” Joan said, leading him into the bathroom.
Riva and I stood in the middle of the small room with Joan’s mother. “Can I get you something to drink?” she asked.
“No, thanks,” I started to say, but Riva, right on top of me, jumped in. “I’d love something cold. Wouldn’t you, Luke?”
“Sure,” I regrouped quickly, realizing I’d offend the woman’s offer of hospitality if I didn’t.
Mrs. Canyada got a couple Cokes out of the refrigerator.
“I needed this,” Riva said, taking a swallow. “It’s dry, out in that car.”
I drank from my can. The cold soda felt good, going down.
“Thank you for hiring Joan,” the woman told us gratefully. “She likes working for you.”
“We’re happy to have her,” Riva said, smiling warmly as Mrs. Canyada beamed. She’s great with people, my wife, she can put anyone at ease. Looking around, she walked over to a battered chest of drawers that was pushed up against a corner wall, on which there were some framed family photos.
“Is this Joan?” she asked, picking one up. The picture was of a girl about ten, staring intently into the camera.
Mrs. Canyada nodded. “Her confirmation picture. She wasn’t happy. She didn’t like her dress. It was a hand-me-down, from her sister Betty.”
“Nothing wrong with hand-me-downs,” Riva said. “I wore plenty myself from my older sisters.”
I was about to say,
I didn’t know you had any sisters,
but I caught myself in time.
“Well, tell her that,” Mrs. Canyada said. “If she heard it from you, she’d listen.”
“Isn’t it always like that?” Riva said, mother to mother.
“Ain’t that the truth.”
One minute in each other’s presence, and they were already friends and allies-in-arms.
Joan led Buck out of the bathroom.
“All finished?” Riva asked him.
“He did a real good job,” Joan said. “I’ll get my stuff.” She disappeared into the rear of the house again. A minute later she was back, a duffel bag slung over her shoulder. “Okay, we can go now,” she said, moving toward the door.
“Good-bye, Joan,” Mrs. Canyada called out to her.
Joan turned, came back to her mother with a guilty expression on her face. “Bye, Mama.”
“Don’t be a stranger, honey,” her mother implored, her eyes searching her daughter’s face.
“I’ll call you.”
We said our good-byes outside, by the car. Out back behind the house I noticed clothes hanging on a line, a hand-crank washing machine near it.
“You be good, you hear?” the mother told the daughter.
“Yes, Mama.”
“She’s in good hands,” Mrs. Canyada said to Riva. “I can tell that.”
“Thank you.”
As we were getting into the car, the woman looked around at her bleak surroundings. “This is going to be different soon around here. It’ll be too late for me, but life here’s going to be better for my kids. A lot better.” She looked at her daughter.
“They know about us buying that place. Mama,” Joan said. “I told them. It’s not a secret.”
I remembered Joan telling us about the tribe buying the drug compound and turning it into a casino. “Good luck to you with it,” I said. “I hope you can get people to come up here.” I didn’t need to explain my feelings about gambling. And in this situation, I could be flexible in my attitude. Anything legal that could help them pull themselves out of this kind of poverty couldn’t be all bad.
“Thank you. We’re keeping our fingers crossed.” Then she repeated her daughter’s earlier statement to me: “If you build it, they will come.”
It was their mantra. If they said it enough, and believed it enough, it would come true.
We took a different route back to Blue River. It led us on a loop out the back side of the reservation, skirting the state line, heading down toward the area where the compound was located. It was more scenic—there were scattered trees, a variety of high-country tall pines, firs, and spruces.
“This isn’t bad,” Riva remarked.
“It’s pretty,” I agreed. In a rugged sort of way.
We drove for several miles. Rounding a blind curve, we saw, to our left, a barbwire fence running along the side of the road for several hundred yards—someone’s private property. Signs were posted at intervals:
NO TRESPASSING. NO HUNTING. VIOLATORS WILL BE PROSECUTED TO THE FULL EXTENT OF THE LAW.
“Whoever lives in there likes their privacy,” I commented.
“That’s Sheriff Miller’s spread,” Joan informed us. “And he does like his privacy, that’s for sure. He runs people off there all the time. The locals all know to stay away, but we get these hunters coming through that think the signs don’t apply to them, you know? Or they’re not going to get caught? They find out fast not to mess with old Sheriff Miller. He’ll take a shotgun to your car, or something more personal if you know what I mean. He’s got motion detectors and video cameras and all kinds of high-tech equipment in there. You sneak in there, you are noticed, I kid you not.” She laughed. “Kids’ll go under the wire on a dare, you know? They come flying out of there like they’ve got an M 80 up their behinds.”
“Were you one of them?” I teased.
“Not on your life,” she swore resolutely. “Sheriff Miller, he means business.”
Riva was checking it out through the windshield. “Have you ever been there?” she asked me.
I shook my head. “We don’t have that kind of relationship. Whatever business I do with Miller is in the office.”
Looking through the fence to the wooded property behind, I wondered how large the place was. It looked big.
“Potty, Mommy.”
Riva swiveled around to him. “Again? You just went.”
“Potty,” Buck said firmly.
When he has to go, he has to go—we’ve learned that lesson. And we hadn’t brought a change of clothes for him with us.
“You’d better pull over,” Riva cautioned. “As soon as you can.”
Up ahead I saw a break in the fence, where a driveway intersected the highway. A gate blocked access into the property.
“Is that the entrance to Sheriff Miller’s place?” Riva asked Joan.
“Uh-huh.”
“I could use a bathroom myself,” Riva said. “Why don’t you pull in? He isn’t going to run you off.”
I felt uneasy about that—not about Miller “running us off,” or anything hostile, but about us encroaching on his evident desire for privacy.
“Let me call first,” I said. “We don’t even know if he’s home.”
I pulled off the highway onto the shoulder, in front of Miller’s entrance, and reached into the glove compartment for my cell phone. I’d called him at home a few times, so I had the number in my notebook.
The phone was picked up oh the second ring.
“Hello?”
It was Miller.
“It’s Luke Garrison, Tom.”
“Oh.” A pause. “How are you, Luke? Are you working today? I was in earlier, I didn’t see your car.”
“No I’m not at the office. Actually, Tom, I’m at the entrance to your property.”
“You are?” He was surprised; I’d caught him off-guard.
“Yes. We’ve been out sight-seeing, Riva and me and our kid and a girl who’s working for us. The ladies and my son need to use a bathroom. We’d only be a minute.”
There was a hesitation. Longer than one would have expected, given who I am and the circumstances I’d described.
“Okay,” he said, although I could hear the hesitation in his voice.
“Thanks, Tom.”
I hung up. “Fine with him,” I said to the others. “He’s happy to see us.” I didn’t know if he would be or not, but I didn’t want them to feel uneasy, particularly Joan.
“Potty, Daddy,” Buck called out again.
“It’s happening, champ. Hold your water, one more minute.”
The gate buzzed open. We drove down a long, blacktop driveway. It had been resurfaced recently. At the end of the driveway, Miller’s house came into view: a low-slung affair, mission-style, similar in look to Nora’s house. It was fairly new; the window frames and other such appointments were modern. Quite an impressive place. Parked in front of the garage, alongside Miller’s old Jeep, which I recognized, was a Dodge minivan and a Muir County sheriffs blue-and-tan Ford Crown Victoria.
A couple of huge rottweilers came bounding out from the side of the house as we pulled up. They approached the car aggressively.
“Those are serious dogs,” Riva said. “Those animals mean business. I’m not getting out of this car.”
At that moment, Miller came out of the front door. He waved to us and whistled to the dogs, who sat down on their haunches, eyeballing our vehicle. “Hang on,” he called out. He walked over to the dogs and put them on sturdy chain-link leashes. “It’s okay now.”
We got out. Riva picked Buck up. He loves animals and has no fear. She didn’t want him running over to these brutes and trying to pet them.
“I’ll put these two around back,” Miller said. “Hang on a minute.”
We waited while he disappeared around the back of the house, reappearing dogless a moment later. “They look meaner than they really are,” he told us. “They’re good security—being sheriff, I have to take extra precautions. You get these crazies out there, they feature taking a potshot at an authority figure is part of the drill.”
We followed him inside. The interior was done in a rustic, masculine fashion. Leather furniture, several California plein-air paintings by well-known artists. There was serious money in this house.
Miller pointed to a doorway off the front foyer. “The guest bathroom’s right there.”