Authors: Jack Baran
Annabeth is incredulous. “You and my father are writing the new TV series?” The oatmeal starts to boil over. “Let me do that.” She covers her agitation with oatmeal preparation.
Cleo, happy to give up the wooden spoon, sits at the table and studies Pete’s daughter, the dog flops down at her feet. “My name is Cleo.”
“I’m Annabeth. Nice puppy.”
“She was abandoned. What kind of person would do that?” Cleo scratches the dog behind the ear. “We call her Dicey.”
That’s the name of the main character in Annabeth’s favorite book. She can’t believe her father has a dog with this woman. “The trick with oatmeal is not to cook it too long or it becomes sludge.” She manages to sound casual. “My dad likes raisins and bananas in his oatmeal.” Sure enough a half filled jar of raisins and a very ripe banana stand at the ready. “Put them in after the oatmeal is cooked.”
“That banana is rotten.”
“Not to Dad.” There’s a competitive edge to her voice as she turns off the burner, adds raisins, sprinkles in some salt and stirs the pot.
The scream of the coffee grinder wakes Pete upstairs. Could that be oatmeal he smells?
Cleo sits at the table reading yesterday’s
New York Times
while Annabeth slices banana into the oatmeal. Coffee brews on the sideboard. Dicey barks and wags her tail when she sees Pete come down the stairs.
“Bethy?”
Annabeth has her back to him. “I wanted to wish you happy Father’s Day.”
“That was in June, this is October.” She turns. His beautiful daughter is thinner than he remembers.
“Is it too late?” She stares at her father: his gray hair, what he calls salt and pepper, is longer then she’s ever seen and he hasn’t shaved in days. In LA, this seedy guise would mark him as unemployable, possibly indigent.
“No honey, it’s never too late to say happy Father’s Day.” They hug awkwardly.
“I made you oatmeal.”
“Can’t wait to try it,” Cleo says brightly.
“Met the new writing partner,” Annabeth cracks as she serves three steaming bowls.
“Cleo is working on a novel.”
“Your father is helping me. This is delicious.”
Annabeth stares daggers at her. “Mom’s recipe, she puts brown sugar on top, but I make it my own way.” She lights a cigarette.
“Bethy!”
“No smoking in the house, like back home? Grass excluded of course.” She goes outside to finish her cigarette.
“Your oatmeal will…. “ He doesn’t finish the sentence, eats in silence. Cleo pours coffee, resists commenting.
Outside, Jackson watches California girl cross the parking area and stop on Sully’s Bridge. She looks upset.
Annabeth stares down at the stream unable to hold back angry tears. She can’t believe her father has a live-in girlfriend who could be her older sister. He told mom he was celibate.
Jackson’s van rolls out of the motel and pulls alongside. “You okay?” She ignores him. “Want to take a ride to the recycling center, chill?”
Her eyes follow Cleo in the Hopi T back to Unit 15.
“Got some great weed.”
Annabeth hops in the van.
Pete sits at the table enjoying the oatmeal. The recipe was originally Samantha’s. He had made it for Heidi, but Barbara altered it, so did Bethy. Hers is best. His daughter deliberately provoked him and he overreacted. Smoking was prohibited in the Pali house, but that didn’t stop Pete from lighting up in his office. “Why is it so hard not to be a hypocrite?” he asks Dicey. The dog wags her tail and goes to stand by the front door.
Walking the dog is Pete’s new favorite thing and Dicey is an eager explorer. He keeps her on a short leash while she sniffs her way through town. When he reaches the Comeau trail he sets her free, breaking a recently passed leash ordinance. First thing Dicey likes to do is roll in deer shit.
Autumn is the season Pete loves best, leaves on fire raining down from the trees. He and Annabeth used to enjoy nature together, hiking the Backbone Trail out of Will Rogers State Park, turning over rocks and logs to find creatures underneath. The cell phone rings. Kurt Van Dusan.
Pete feels disrespectful using the cell on the trail, but this is very important. “Good morning counselor.”
“I love the speech, love it. Maybe you went too far with some of the wisecracks, for instance that joke about hands in the till. The guests could misconstrue allusions of that sort, but overall it’s very funny. I’m working on my delivery, making the words my own.”
The old Pete would have overreacted to “went too far” and popped off. The new Pete swallows the impulse. “I’ll clean up some of the jokes, no problem. How is the other matter shaping up?”
“Best not to call attention to a case that’s going to be dismissed for lack of evidence.”
“Try this for a closer. From now on, I’ll try to see issues Congressman Denby’s way, what I don’t know is, can I get my head that far up his ass?”
“So there’s no misunderstanding, Pete, end the speech on a more praiseworthy note.”
“Just kidding, Kurt.” Pete finds Dicey waiting for him at his regular spot by the stream. He settles in to half lotus, concentrating on his breathing, slowly bringing his focus to the first chakra centered at his perineum. As usual his mind rambles.
In the ’70s,
Black Elk Speaks
inspired Pete to take a spiritual journey out west. Samantha wanted to go to Sag Harbor but he convinced her that they needed to get away from the comforts of city life.
They flew to Great Falls, Montana and bought a used International Travel All, planning to drive north and camp along the Two Medicine River on the eastern shelf of the Rockies. The landscape was spectacular, high plains stretching to the horizon, jagged mountains piercing the western sky, easy to imagine a sea of buffalo grazing on sweet prairie grass.
Pete had no outdoor skills but figured he was handy and could learn. First night, he had trouble setting up the tent and was prohibited from building a campfire because it was too dry that year. So they ate trail mix and slept under the stars - pretty amazing. In the morning, Samantha didn’t like squatting in the woods and needed to take a shower. They packed up and moved on, intending to find a motel, but Pete, determined to prove that he could get it right, insisted they camp again.
This time he successfully set up the tent. After a baloney sandwich on enriched white bread, Samantha wasn’t in the mood when Pete became amorous. They hadn’t spoken all day and making love was his way to solve a problem without dealing with it. Persistence in sexual matters was a technique Pete had mastered in his youth when no often meant maybe. Samantha, defeated by her own horniness, threw her long legs over his shoulders and they went at it hard. Finally, she rolled on top and really let loose. That’s when the storm hit and the poorly secured tent blew apart leaving them pumping away unprotected from the elements. Lightening crackled, thunder crashed and the rain poured down on their naked bodies.
Some might have found the storm exciting, not Samantha. Safe in the Travel All, Pete held her trembling in his arms.
The next day they pulled into the reservation town of Browning looking for a motel. The potholed streets were crowded with Indians gathering for the annual Sioux Nation Powwow; tribes from all over were camped around the Fairgrounds. It was rodeo day and a buzz of excitement was in the air.
The Blackfeet had the Holiday Inn franchise, but motel management was not their forte. Pete and Samantha, wired from lack of sleep, checked in and went to the rodeo. They sat in the grandstand drinking beer, broiling in the sun. Mosquitoes big as crabapples ignored Sam’s bug spray and feasted on her fair English skin while bareback riders fought to stay astride bucking mustangs, ropers wrestled ornery steers and bulls threw Indians all over the arena.
By evening they were back at the motel sweltering because the air conditioning didn’t work, neither did the TV. Samantha was lobster red. Pete gently applied Noxzema to her burning skin wondering if he could pick up where they left off during the thunderstorm.
“Are you crazy?” she shouted. “My skin is raw and you want to fuck me?”
“If you’re not up for it, maybe you could….”
“A blow job? I can’t believe your insensitivity. Satisfy your own needs.”
Jerk off! That hurt. Usually she loved when he came in her mouth. Without another word, Pete left the room.
“Get them to fix the TV,” she yelled which she rarely did, “and the air conditioner.”
The only light at the fairgrounds came from a huge bonfire in the center of the rodeo ring. Old men and young braves beat on a giant drum. Buckskin dancers snaked around the leaping flames. Pete, an unwelcome outsider, was drawn to the blaze. The Indians ignored him as he gave himself up to the drumming. Finally he joined the painted faces dancing.
“Hay, hay, hoka hay, this is my grandfather’s land, the land of my people, hay, hay, hoka hay, this is where we hunt and fish, this is our land, hay, hay, hoka hay.” Burning embers singed his clothes.
Pete awoke next morning on a dung heap behind the stables, his expensive hiking boots gone. A dog bounded up to him as he walked barefoot back to the motel. Pete scratched the pooch’s neck. The street was empty except for an Indian sitting on the hood of a beat up Lincoln Continental smoking a cigarette. “Hoka hay,” Pete said in passing. The Indian laughed and returned the greeting.
Samantha was up in bed reading. “You smell like shit.”
He closed the door. “The consequence of where you sleep.”
“I’m on an evening flight from Great Falls to New York. It takes three to four hours to drive down there.”
“And me?”
“You’ll figure it out.”
“Maybe I won’t.”
“Take a shower, you might get lucky.”
Pete didn’t want to wash away the smell of dung mixed with wood smoke. He didn’t want to lose the faces dancing in the firelight, the drums, the chanting. He stripped off his clothes and lay down beside her. She could take it or leave it.
Samantha chewed on her lip, something she did when she was angry. She was naked, her skin warm but no longer on fire. “Be gentle.”
G
uilt motivated Annabeth’s visit to Woodstock. It was the least she could do for an expensive airline ticket and some additional cash. In truth she missed her dad a lot, but pretended she didn’t. Instead of spending the day with him, she hung out with a local boy she just met, making out rather than having sex, until Jackson realized he was late for rehearsal. She should go back to the motel and make it up with her father, but wants to hear Jackson play so bad.
Rattling down Zena Road along the Sawkill, Annabeth looks out the passenger window amazed by the autumn landscape so different from California where the hillsides are dry and ready to ignite. Fire season in LA, apple harvest time in upstate New York.
Late afternoon sun streaks through the trees lighting up the old Downing farmhouse. Annabeth sneezes. “My sinuses aren’t familiar with your environment.”
Jackson smiles at her. “Fresh air takes getting used to.”
“I never saw colors like these. Everything is brown where I come from.”
Sam and Jim, bearded brothers who play banjo and fiddle, mandolin and trombone, live in the old barn and take care of the property. They were a Bluegrass duo until Jackson convinced them to go electric and join the Sidewinders, his band. He introduces Annabeth, but the brothers are uptight because he brought a girl to rehearsal.
Not used to being ignored, she stays outside when they go in and start to play. Her personal taste in music these days trends toward Electronica, another reason she wants to go to Paris and Prague. Banjos and fiddles are below her radar. Sitting on a bench outside, she lights the giant spliff Jackson rolled for her and texts her girls back in the Palisades, poetically describing her feelings about where she is, leaving the cute boy out of the story for the time being. Aiming her phone, Annabeth captures an image of the mysterious farmhouse silhouetted against a purple sky. A resonating guitar breaks her reverie.
Inside, the Sidewinders work on a tune. Jackson plays bottleneck slide, a lick so old it sounds new, alongside Jim wailing on electric fiddle, Sam picking an amplified banjo, Do-Rag playing a popping Fender bass and Quinn accentuating the beat on drums.
The raw energy of the music grabs hold of Annabeth, her superior LA attitude that she wears like a fashionable scarf fades away. Amps humming, speakers hissing, the Sidewinders find a comfortable groove. Jackson sings to her. The song has something to do with being loud and letting your colors show. She can’t decipher all the words but gets the meaning about being proud of your true self. Feeling it, she dances closer, flashing a wide California girl smile at the skinny guitar boy with the long hair and hippie bandana.
Back at the Streamside, Pete prepares dinner, Pollo Especial, his premier dish, simple but delicious. Marinate the breasts, legs and thighs with tamari, garnish with pepper, sage and garlic, broil for eight minutes on each side. Sounds like nothing, but Barbara and Bethy loved his creation, so popular it became the annual Super Bowl plato del dia. He’s trying not to expect his daughter home for dinner because he doesn’t want to be disappointed if she doesn’t show. All he knows is that her rental car is still parked outside. Today was not the first time he watched Annabeth run out of the house. At fifteen, after being warned repeatedly about breaking curfew, they grounded her. When he tried to confiscate her cell phone, she fled. Pete wanted to call the police, but Barbara defended her daughter like she always did, a big bone of contention between them. Less than an hour later her friend’s mother called, she only ran as far as Beverly Hills.
“Smells good,” says Cleo returning from the liquor store, a bottle of wine under her arm and Dicey in tow.
“Pollo Especial. There’s also killer applesauce for desert, a new crop of Honeycrisps. I make it English style with lemon zest, cinnamon and raisins.” He sounds like a househusband.
“I’ll set the table.” Playing the wife home from work, Cleo finds a stack of miss-matched dishes. “How come we haven’t actually written anything yet?”