“Maybe.”
“Like, look at Mr. Stillwater. Cash. He’s still just aching for Turtle after all this time. I hate to admit it, and I’m not going to say I think he should have her. Turtle is mine now.
But he doesn’t accept that she’s gone. You can see it.”
“Alice has seen it in Cash. She saw it long before she knew what it was. A man who would go out of his way.
Taylor has woven her flowers into a circle, and she crowns her mother with it. Alice reaches deep into herself and evinces a dramatic sigh. “Always the bridesmaid, never the bride.”
“A string of cars crackles by on the gravel, all following an old truck that is fairly crawling. The drivers stare, each one in turn, as they pass.
“Where’s that sign?” Taylor asks.
“What sign?”
“The one that was in that magazine ad, remember? With Sugar, when she was young? You’ve showed me that fifty times.”
“That sign that says WELCOME TO HEAVEN.” Alice looks thoughtful. “You know, I haven’t seen it.”
“Maybe this isn’t really Heaven!” Taylor says. “Maybe we’re in the wrong place, and none of this is really happening.”
“No, it’s Heaven all right. It says so on the phone book.”
“Shoot, then they ought to have that sign up. I wish we could go pose in front of it. Maybe somebody’d come along and take our picture.”
“I wonder if they tore that down. I’ll have to ask Sugar. I bet anything they did.”
“Does that mean we’re not welcome anymore?” Taylor asks.
Two more cars pass by, and this time Alice and Taylor smile and wave like Miss America contestants.
Alice says, “I reckon we’ll stay till they run us out of town.”
Some kind of fish jumps in the river. Annawake stares at the ring of disturbed water it left behind. “Uncle Ledger, just tell me what to do,” she says.
Ledger is in his overstuffed chair on the porch of the houseboat, smoking his pipe. Annawake paces the planks silently in her moccasins.
“You never would let me tell you what to do before,” he says through pursed lips, sucking his pipe stem. “Why would you start now?”
“I always knew what I was doing before.”
“If you knew what you was doing before, you wouldn’t be stumped now.”
She sits down on the deck, then lies down, looking up at the sky.
“Did I ever tell you you looked like a plucked chicken, when you cut all your hair off?”
“I was mourning Gabriel. I thought somebody ought to.”
“If you want to do something for Gabe, talk to Gabe.”
“Gabe’s in Leavenworth.”
“What, they don’t allow phone calls?”
Annawake looks up, startled. He means it. “I don’t know.
Yeah, I guess they do.”
“Well, then, call him. Or go visit. Tell him you miss him.
Organize a damn bust-out and bring him on back here.”
Annawake feels something like round stones shifting inside her, settling into a new, more solid position. “I guess I could.”
“Sure you could. If you got something to work out, then work it out. Don’t take it out on the rest of the world by looking like a chicken.”
“Thanks. Everybody always said I had your looks.”
“Annawake, you’re not as respectful as you used to be.”
She sits up, but sees the light in his eye, so she can lie back down.
“Tell me a story,” she says. “About a little lost girl whose mother is prepared to give her away, rather than go through any more hassle with Annawake Fourkiller.”
“I’ll tell you.” He leans back in his chair, which once in its life was green brocade, before twenty summers of sun and rain. “Speak of lost children in low voices,” he says. Annawake pulls herself up. He has slid over into Cherokee, and she has to sit up straight to follow him. “They say long ago there was a child claimed by two clan mothers. They carried the child to the Above Ones. They came with long cries and moans, both of them saying the child belonged to their own people. The mother from the plains brought corn, and the mother from the hills brought tobacco, both of them hoping to sweeten the thoughts of the Above Ones when they made their decision.”
Ledger stops talking and merely stares at the sky for a time.
His legs are splayed in front of him, forgotten, and his pipe dangles in his hand, still sending up a thread of smoke as friendly reminder.