The Lovebird (36 page)

her habit of staring, sans spectacles, into the mirror above her dresser to assess what she looked like without her cat-eyes, and her subsequent sighs and shoulder slumps because her nearsightedness rendered her unable to make out her own reflection;

and, most of all, her aura of something fledgling, for in spite of her stuffed fawn and ballerina jewelry box, she was hovering for the briefest of intervals on the threshold between girlhood and adolescence, and being so positioned, she was both fragile and fearsomely full of potential and power.

I had an urge to hold Cora in my hand and to close it tight around her, to allow nothing to hurt her. But of course, I was too late. The wounds of her life were evident in the hang of her arms, and especially in the way the insides of her elbows faced forward, exposed for all to see, rather than inward—as if she had already grown resigned to the inevitable injuriousness of the world.

Pondering all these things, and tucking them away into my heart, I walked on, away from Ruby. Stepping through the crowd, negotiating my way past chairs and feet and roaming toddlers, I bumped right into the front of him.

“Margie, are you all right?”

“Hi.” We stood so close I had to tilt my head back to see his face. “I thought we’d figured out how to stop bumping into each other,” I said.

“In the kitchen, we have. Out here … maybe not. You were looking kinda lost.”

“I’m not,” I said. “Just thinking. Cora’s really something. I like her so much.”

“I do, too.” Jim wanted to take me for a walk. “Let’s go see what else is going on,” he said.

He took big greedy bites of his snow cone and tipped the cup against his lips to sip the juice. It stained his lips violet, which only heightened the strength of his features. It seemed, I thought once again, that Jim must always be embellished, marked, as if the universe conspired to draw attention to his bold beauty through the accidental application of colors.

We came to some horses near the camp. They were tethered and stood in the shade, snuffling and scraping the dirt with
pleasure. Jim rubbed the white lightning bolt dividing the face of one. I saw a faint and flickering image of a divided face, one that filled me with a vague sadness, but in the heat of the afternoon and the noise of the fair, with pastel clouds of cotton candy all around and Jim beside me, the image faded as quickly as it had come. Jim stroked the length of the bolt, petting from the top of the horse’s head down to the velvet of her nose. He took unself-conscious delight in it, the way he did in petting Cora’s long locks.

“I’d like to have a few someday,” he said.

“Hmm?”

“Horses.”

“Oh, yes.”

“Do you like them?”

“Yes, of course I do. I love them. I think Cora would love one.”

“She’d disappear on it, though. I’d have to go out looking for her.”

“It would be better than her driving a car.”

“Ugh.” He looked pained. “I know, but that’s unavoidable. And here I am rebuilding that Cutlass for her—and I named it after one of the fastest animals in the world! But I hate to think of it. I dread it.”

“You really love her so much,” I said.

“I do.”

“She’s lucky.”

“That’s what it’s like when you’re a dad. You feel so much love it hurts. A man’s lucky if he can find a woman he feels that much love for.”

“Have you ever?”

In silence, we walked through the camp and came to a tall wall of stacked hay bales. On the other side of it, we discovered a boy of ten and a girl a bit younger, whispering and holding hands. When they saw us they shrieked with exaggerated alarm.
Laughing at us and then at each other, they ran away, the boy pulling the girl behind him.

Jim took my hand and guided me so that my back was pressed against that wall of hay. It smelled very golden in the heat, like it contained half earth and half sun in equal measures. I closed my eyes and inhaled.

“Open your eyes,” Jim said. But I could not.

Then two explosive little laughs rang out. I opened my eyes and saw the boy and girl, the kid sweethearts of Crow Fair, peeping at us from around the corner of the haystack. “Time for Grand Entry!” they yelled, and Jim tugged me along toward the dance arbor.

We heard the amplified voice of the Master of Ceremonies (a tribal elder with a smooth, sultry cadence fit for a late-night radio show specializing in songs for the lovelorn) beckoning all the Crow Fair dancers into the arbor. He called them in groups, and they slowly covered the grass with color and movement. And there was music, too, because several groups (including the Hawk Heart Singers) sat around the arbor beating drums and singing in vibrating voices that sometimes exploded into shouts or stretched into falsettos, shaping a sound so rich it gave me goosebumps.

Cora, with a few fine hairs having escaped from her braids and a fan of eagle feathers in her hand, made her entry with a group of other shawl dancers. She gave us a sly sideways smile as she strolled slowly past. It took a long time for all the dancers to enter and parade around the arbor, and all the while I thought of the wall of hay, and wondered what had been about to happen against it.

MANY HOURS LATER
, we made the drive back to the house under the night sky. Granma, thoroughly spent from so much sun and
socializing, slept beside me with her head tilted back and her snoring mouth wide open. Cora, sleepy after several sugary soda pops and snow cones (her craving had eventually overwhelmed her desire to stay spotless), snoozed beside her. “Did you have fun today?” Jim asked me.

“Yes, did you?”

“Yes.”

“You’re probably really used to Crow Fair, since you’ve been going to it your whole life.”

“I am,” he said. “But it’s always good to see old friends. And there’s always a lot of them there—” He suddenly swerved the truck around a black cow who stood on the dark road. “But,” Jim added, “I like new friends the best.”

13
OTTER
(Lontra canadensis)

THE NEXT MORNING, JIM ROSE EXTRA EARLY
and worked on the Pronghorn. At noon, he was still outside, half hidden under her hood and humming, when Cora, fully garbed in her regalia, stepped through the screen door and cleared her throat meaningfully. The ground was wild with wakeful grasshoppers.

Jim clanged and hummed, and did not look up.

Cora stepped closer to him and executed a few hopping shawl dancer steps. Jim was otherwise absorbed.

“Dad!” Cora cried. “Let’s go!”

But Jim, who bonked his head on the Pronghorn’s hood upon hearing Cora’s shrill cry, still had to shower, and to dress, and to join us for a healthy lunch (Cora unable to eat a bite), and to gulp down a second cup of coffee before we could all leave. And then, before Granma, Cora, and I could climb into the truck, he had to clear it of all the scraps and symbols of the previous day’s Crow Fair fun: two snow cone cups, three soda cans, numerous napkins, a stray ribbon from one of Cora’s braids, a schedule of fair events, and an informative pamphlet entitled
The History of the Apsáalooke Nation
, which was intended for tourists but which Cora had read with critical interest (checking it for accuracy) before falling asleep.

“Just let me get this stuff cleared away—hold on—just a second—sorry, ladies, I didn’t sleep well last night, and I’m a little out of sorts—”

“Dad, we’re going to be late!” Cora flickered in her fair finery. Belly, evidently in agreement, barked three times. “Grand Entry starts at one!”

“Don’t fret, Cora,” Jim said. “Crow Fair runs on Indian time. You know that.”

“Indian time?” I said.

“Yep. That means everything happens when it happens, and nobody hurries. Okay,” Jim said. The truck was clean, and he held unruly bouquets of debris in both hands. I waited for Granma to hop in and take the spot that would be nearest to him, but she just stood—waiting, it seemed, for me to do the same.

“After you, Granma,” I said. I couldn’t sit beside him. Too many haystack thoughts had woken me in the night, along with unsettling dreams about black cows and other prairie phantoms, and in the morning Jim had shown the indifference of old, eyeing his invisible angel when he bade me a brief hello. The scale had tipped again, though who had tipped it I couldn’t tell. The mystery exhausted me. The air between us was wound into a tightrope.

“No, honey, after you,” Granma replied.

Cora expelled a big breath in exasperation, moved past Granma and me, and climbed into the truck. “Come
on
,” she said. She was electric, nervous. It was her dancing day. As Jim drove us down the dirt road, and Belly yipped and sprinted after us, Cora lowered her head in prayerful concentration and whispered to herself. “I want to have wings,” she said.

THE ACTION AROUND THE DANCE ARBOR
was audible from a great distance. We heard the MC’s deep voice through the
sound system. Grand Entry had begun, and he beckoned all the remaining dancers into the arbor. “If you dancers aren’t out here yet, come join us, come join us, for Gra-a-a-a-nd Entry-y-y-y-y …”

Parking spots were scarce. As soon as Jim shut off the engine, Cora clutched his arm. “We’ve got to find Josie so she can braid me. Granma’s hands are too stiff today.” She dragged him away. Granma looked ruefully at her own bent fingers, and I touched the buffalo on my baseball cap with guilty gratitude.

“We’ll catch up with you later,” Jim called to us over his shoulder, and as they hurried toward the crowd they looked like two figures dissolving into the melty fragments within a slowly turning kaleidoscope.

“There’s so many people here today,” I said. “Way more than yesterday.” Granma slipped her arm through mine as we walked, and I was glad to have her close. I felt uneasy, like the frayed end of the ribbon from Cora’s braid that Jim had scooped from the truck’s seat.

“Because it’s a Saturday, honey,” Granma said. “Yes, people come to Crow Fair from all over. Especially to see the dancing.” The bleachers surrounding the dance arbor were overflowing. “We’ll be sitting down there today.” Granma pointed to a collection of comfy canvas chairs on the grass below the bleachers. “That’s where the dancers and their families sit. Ruby is saving us seats.” We walked, stopping every few moments so Granma could greet endless friends and relatives and cuddle a dozen different babies. An hour passed. I wasn’t sure if I’d quite understood what Jim had meant by “Indian time,” but I felt we must be in it, for that hour had seemed like a mere minute. “Men’s Grass Dance!” the MC called. “It’s time for the handsome Grass Dancers, ladies and gentlemen …”

I squinted into the arbor and saw men fringed in hundreds of ribbons that resembled windblown blades of prairie grass when
they danced. But I didn’t watch for long. Unlike the day before, when I’d been too distracted by other novelties to pay it much attention, the crowd in the bleachers now fascinated me. There were more people than I’d seen in a single place for months. Their accents were varied. They shouted at each other to be heard over the drumming and singing, pointed and marveled at the dancers, fiddled with the video recorders, bit into hamburgers, and spilled relish on their T-shirts. As disquieting as they were, I couldn’t stop looking at them.

“You coming, Margie?” Granma asked. Ruby waved to us from the distant grass. She wore a dress covered in hundreds of elk teeth. “Look at her,” Granma clucked, “all fancy and proud. She’s had that elk tooth dress since she was a newlywed!”

The MC announced the next group of dancers. “Jingle Dancers, come out here. Look at these beautiful ladies! They simply take your breath away … Ladies and gentlemen, the Jingle Dancers are filling the arbor …”

“Ooooh, Josie’s going to dance,” Granma said. “Come on—”

“I’ll catch up.” I wanted to look longer at the crowd, to absorb the sights and sounds. I knew it would be best for me to hide, to lower my cap until it bumped the top of my sunglasses, and to sit safely between two aged Crow sentinels, the sisters Evelyn and Ruby. But I had a feeling something was there for me, in the wheeling kaleidoscope, maybe one of the phantoms from my dreams of the night before, something that might relieve the expectant tension I felt. The little curls at the back of my neck tingled and rose.

“I’m going to go get a drink, I think,” I said.

“Okay, honey.” Granma squeezed my arm. Then she raised one twisted hand and touched my face. “Don’t go too far,” she said.

• • •

I WALKED PAST THE FOOD VENDORS
. Outside Thai Treat, I saw a man wearing a windbreaker that boasted “I’ve Seen Fifty Nifty States From My RV.” He held a camera aloft to capture the dancers walking by in their regalia. His wife noshed on a hot dog and grunted approvingly at the most colorful garments. When the MC intoned, “Fancy Dancers! All Fancy Dancers, you’re up! Friends, you cannot miss these fellows, they are truly a sight to behold,” she tossed the remains of her hot dog on the ground and pulled her husband toward the arbor. A boy banged a toy tomahawk against a stick. A pair of Native teenagers displayed an array of beaded earrings on a card table, all of them in the shape of birds.

“Hey.” I felt a tap on my shoulder. “I’m going over to get some fry bread.” There were dark splotches of sweat on Jim’s shirt, and the line between his eyes was deep. “Bring you back some?”