Of course, last time she was nervous. And watching a woman up a tree. Now there is only a skinny man in black jeans sitting on the porch steps. He’s staring at his hands, which seem to be dozing on his knees, a pair of colossal, torpid spiders.
“Hi,” Annawake tries. She stands with her own hands in her pockets, waiting for some kind of offer. “I’m Annawake,” she adds.
“Oh, believe me, I know that.” He seems to be rousing himself from his thoughts, very slowly, with a lot of effort, as if coming out of hibernation. “Where are my manners?” he says finally in a voice deep with despair, or the South.
“Sit down here on this dirty old porch.”
The stone step is broad and slumped like the gateway to some ancient wonder of the world. When she sits, it bleeds coolness into her thighs, a feeling of dampness. “Are you the musician?”
“Jax,” he says, nodding a couple of times, as if barely convinced that this is his actual name.
“I heard your work yesterday. From that tree.”
“It terrified the birds, I hear. I think I’ve found my market.”
Jax picks up a green apricot the size of a golf ball and flings it toward the cardboard owl in the treetops. It misses by a generous margin.
“Maybe. I liked your music all right,” she says. She throws an apricot and hits the owl with a loud pop, causing it to shudder and list on its branch.
‘Jesus,” he says. Jax throws again, this time aiming for the trunk, and nicks the side. Annawake follows quickly, hitting the spot where his shot bounced off.
He looks at her sideways. With his dark brows and glint of gold earring, he resembles a pirate. “Is this one of those visitations? Are you about to reveal the meaning of my life?”
Annawake doesn’t feel she ought to laugh. “I used to be kind of good at this throwing game we have, sgwalesdi. It’s just a coincidence, I’m not that good at everything.”
“If you are, I don’t want to hear about it.”
“I don’t know the meaning of your life.”
“Good. Because I’m not ready to hear it. Takes the fun away, you know? Like when you’re reading a good book and somebody says, ‘Oh, that’s a great one, did he get hit by the train yet?’ ”
Annawake smiles. She’s noticed that the house is truly rundown by social-service standards, worse than some things she’s seen in the Cherokee Nation, and accepts that this could be used to her advantage. Toward the west, the desert rises up to meet the splintered rock peaks of the Tucson Mountains. Annawake shades her eyes to look at the descending sun. It’s an effort for her not to shove the conversation forward. “I can see why you’d want to live out here,” she says.
“Out of the city.”
“Oh, well, that’s a very sad story. I got kicked out of the city of Tucson. They have an ordinance against Irascible Babies.”
“Who?”
“My band. We all used to live together in a chicken house, downtown. But by some estimates we were too loud.”
“Why would they have a chicken house downtown?” “It wasn’t, anymore. They’d closed it down because of the smell.
I’m telling you, it’s a very intolerant town.”
This boyfriend is nothing that Annawake planned on. She’s surprised to find him so serene and obliging, though she knows she may be mistaken. He may simply be in a coma.
“Jacks is short for Jackson?”
“No, with an X.” He makes a cross with his marvelously long index fingers. “Short for nothing. My mother was one of the best-known alcoholics in the French Quarter of New Orleans. I was named after a venerated brand of beer.”
“You’re named after Jax Beer?”
He nods morosely. “Somewhere in this world I have a sister named Hurricane. I’m telling you the God’s honest truth.”
“You don’t know where she is?”
“Mother nor sister. If they are even on this earth.”
“Damn. I used to think all you needed was white skin to have an easy life,” Annawake says.
“I used to wish I was an Indian. I shaved my head one time and wore beads and made everybody call me Soaring Elk”
Annawake looks at him, and this time she does laugh.
“You’re not a Soaring Elk.”
Jax studies his sneakers. “I could use a more meaningful name, though, don’t you think? Something athletic. Maybe Red Ball Jets.”
For a minute they regard their four shoes lined up on the step. Jax’s trashed-out hightops look oversized and tragic, whereas Annawake’s moccasins are perfect: stitched suede, the burnished red of iron-oxide soils in Oklahoma.