Green Grass, Running Water Read online

  Helen Mooney had her hand in the air. The rest of the class was in flight toward the doors. “Professor Frank,” Helen said, “the seventy-one Indians. The ones at Fort Marion. I was wondering.”

  “About what?”

  “Well, for one thing, what happened to them?”

  “What happened to the trees? said Hawkeye.

  “Well, this isn’t exactly what I had in mind,” said the Lone Ranger.

  “But there are no trees,” said Hawkeye.

  “It was my turn.”

  “Could we get on with this?” said Ishmael.

  “I’m really going to miss the trees,” said Hawkeye.

  “It is a beautiful sky, however,” said Robinson Crusoe.

  “Yes, it is a beautiful sky,” said Ishmael.

  “Are we in Mexico?” said Hawkeye.

  “No,” said the Lone Ranger. “I believe we are in Canada.”

  “Canada,” said Ishmael. “What a good idea.”

  “Yes,” said Robinson Crusoe. “We certainly enjoyed ourselves the last time we were here.”

  Babo Jones sat in the staff room and looked out the window. She could see the green Dumpster at the back of the west wing of the hospital and the string of smaller, green plastic garbage cans lined up near the staff door, looking as though they were waiting to get in. Babo could see her car too, the red Pinto she had bought from her brother-in-law. She could see the muffler drooping down like a ripe brown fruit. A yellow dog was sniffing at the rear tire. Go ahead, Babo thought, pee on it. Won’t hurt a thing.

  “Jimmy.” Sergeant Cereno gestured to the uniformed policeman standing at the door. “Find an outlet for the extension.”

  Babo licked at her cup of coffee. Sergeant Cereno pushed the buttons on the tape recorder. “Okay, Jimmy, it’s working now.” Cereno folded his hands and leaned forward in the chair. “Well, Mrs. Jones. Pretty busy morning. You been working here long?”

  “Ms.”

  “What?”

  “Ms. Jones. I’m not married.”

  Sergeant Cereno smiled and tapped the tips of his fingers together. “Right. How long have you been working here, Miss Jones?”

  “Ms. I’ve got four kids.”

  “Right. How long have you been working here?”

  “Sixteen years.”

  “Sergeant Cereno.”

  “What?”

  “Sixteen years, Sergeant Cereno.”

  “ You’re kidding.”

  “This is a serious matter, Ms. Jones.”

  “You can call me Babo.”

  Sergeant Cereno leaned back in the chair, pressed his hands together under his nose as if he were smelling the tips of his fingers. “So, you’ve been working here sixteen years.”

  “Some people think that Babo is a man’s name.”

  “Working here must get dull sometimes.”

  “But it’s not. It’s tradition.”

  “I mean, getting up every morning, eating breakfast, driving across town, punching in.”

  “Firstborn gets named Babo.”

  “But you must have ways to liven up the day.”

  “Are you recording this?”

  “Yes, I am, Ms. Jones.”

  “You watch a lot of television?”

  “Why don’t we let me ask the questions.”

  Babo picked up her coffee cup and looked out the window. The Pinto was sitting in a puddle of water. The rear tire was half submerged. The yellow dog was gone.

  “Sure. I’ll tell you just what I told Scotty. He’s the guy who called you. Maybe you should talk to him. He watches a lot of television, and he’s got a tape recorder just like yours.”

  “We’d rather talk with you right now, Ms. Jones.”

  “Suits me. What do you want to know?”

  “Everything,” said Sergeant Cereno.

  Babo wondered where the water had come from. She hadn’t remembered parking in a puddle. Babo smiled at Sergeant Cereno and Sergeant Cereno smiled back. No teeth. Just a shallow bowl of lips.

  “It was six o’clock,” Babo began. “Like it always is on the days I work, which is six out of seven. I’d work seven if they let me. Kids give you lots of energy. You got kids?”

  Babo paused for a moment and watched Sergeant Cereno slide his index fingers into his nose. “I’ll bet you guys only work five days a week. Am I right?”

  “So you got to work at six, Ms. Jones.”

  “I got three girls and a boy.”

  “What happened when you got to work at six?”

  “Allison is the oldest. She looks like me. I’ve got some pictures.”

  “So you drove to work.”

  “That’s right. I drove to work. I pulled into my parking space, looked at the back side of old ‘Rancho Deluxe’ here, and decided that today was the day I stopped smoking.”

  “So you pulled into your parking space.”

  “That’s right. Threw my smokes on the dash. They’re still there. You can almost see them. You guys came in through the front gates. Am I right? Nice and white out front. Well, the back side is pretty grimy. I see it every morning. Looks like those pictures Dr. Eliot has stuck up in his office. Smoking does that. To lungs, I mean. Gets them all grimy and shriveled up like raisins and prunes.”

  “So you pulled into your parking space.”

  “I don’t know what gets the back of the hospital looking like that. You smoke, Mr. Cereno?”

  “Sergeant Cereno.”

  “Is that Italian or Spanish or what?”

  “What happened then?”

  The tire of the Pinto wasn’t sunk into the puddle. Babo could see that now. She had been deceived by the reflection off the water. The tire was flat.

  “So today was going to be the day. Would have been, too. I was feeling strong. Real strong. Had four rolls of Life Savers with me. Got to have them when you try to stop. Cold turkey is okay. My brother-in-law tried it. Real tough, that. You got to have something to take up the slack.”

  “This is very interesting, Ms. Jones.”

  “Would you believe that I’ve smoked for over thirty years? I still feel good, too. Don’t cough much. It was my kids got me to stop.”

  “That’s very interesting.”

  “The other cop smoke?”

  “No.”

  “Damn.”

  Where was the water coming from? The radiator was new—at least that’s what Martin had told her. The muffler was under water now.

  “Well, it was early.” Babo began again. “I always get here early. Grab that parking space right there. You get here half an hour later and you got to walk in from the other lot. I should stop smoking tomorrow, you know. This thing has me upset. Maybe I should get a pack.”

  “Perhaps you could do that later, Ms. Jones.”

  “I’m not going to smoke them. They’re for temptation. Martin says you carry them around with you, but you don’t smoke them. That sort of thing is what makes you strong.”

  “I’m sure you’re a very strong woman, Ms. Jones.”

  “Raised four kids all by myself. What’s your first name? Let me guess. Is it Ben? That’s my boy’s name.”

  “Ms. Jones . . . The hospital?”

  “He didn’t make it.”

  “What?”

  “Not your fault. Martin’s just weak. I told Zolla when she married him. ‘He won’t stop smoking,’ I said. I’m always trying to help.”

  “Ms. Jones—”

  “Bought that car off him. Always trying to help.”

  “The hospital?”

  The puddle had spread, grown wider and deeper. From a distance, the Pinto looked a little like a ship. Babo squeezed her eyes and looked again. “So, the back door is locked, just like it always is, and I unlock it. Like I always do.”

  “When was that?”

  “Six o’clock.”

  “Exactly six o’clock?”

  “Maybe a couple of m
inutes before.”

  “You unlocked the door at six o’clock?”

  “Maybe a few minutes after.”

  “And?”

  “The place was dead. You ever been in a hospital in the morning? Not like those regular hospitals. I used to work at General. Busy, busy, busy. Emergency ward was always stacked with bleeders and screamers. A crazy hospital is the place to work. Crazy people don’t get many visitors, and they don’t wander around much after nine. Pills. That’s what does it.

  “So I unlock the back door and go to my room to hang up my coat and see if Dominic has left me a wet mop in the bucket again. Everything is okay, so I go down to the coffee machine. I don’t start getting paid until six-thirty, so I have some coffee and look around.”

  “For what?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “What do you look for?”

  “Nothing. I walk around. Sometimes I read the magazines. Then I check out the messes I got to clean up. You know, look the area over. See where I’m going to start.”

  No, thought Babo, not exactly a ship. The red paint on the door was beginning to bubble. There were brown spots all along the wheel wells. The antenna was bent over on its side. Not a ship at all.

  “That’s what I’m doing. Drinking my coffee and walking and looking. You know, this is an important job and today I said to myself, Babo, you got no business smoking because no one takes you serious these days if you smoke.”

  Babo finished her coffee. Sergeant Cereno still had that nice smile on his face. He had folded his fingers on top of his lips. The Pinto was moving now, floating toward the far lot.

  “So, it’s just like I told Scotty,” said Babo. “When I got here, they were gone.”

  The Lone Ranger, Ishmael, Robinson Crusoe, and Hawkeye stood by the side of the highway and looked around.

  “So,” said Hawkeye. “Here we are.”

  “Yes,” said the Lone Ranger. “Here we are.”

  The land curved out, full and flat. From where they stood, the old Indians could see the edges of the world in all directions.

  “That is a very nice sun,” said Ishmael.

  “Yes, it is.”

  “And the grass is a beautiful color.”

  “Yes, it is.”

  “And the wind feels good on my face.”

  The old Indians walked around in a circle, looking at the sky and the grass, feeling the wind on their faces.

  “So,” said Ishmael. “Are we lost again? Have we made another mistake?”

  Lionel had made only three mistakes in his entire life, the kinds of mistakes that seem small enough at the time, but somehow get out of hand. The kinds that stay with you for a long time. And he could name each one.

  The first mistake Lionel made was wanting to have his tonsils out. It had happened when he was eight, and in many ways it was more a simple error in judgment. Several of the kids at school developed sore throats, and Lois James wound up having her tonsils out. What Lionel noticed most about Lois’s tonsils was that she got to stay home from school for over two weeks, and you couldn’t even tell she had had an operation. Then, too, the teachers treated her like she was royalty or something. Mrs. Grove brought Lois a sucker, the kind with a hard candy shell and a chewy fudge center. Green, Lionel’s favorite. So when Lionel developed a sore throat, he began thinking about Lois and her tonsils. When his throat didn’t improve, his mother took him to the band office to see Dr. Loomis.

  “You know,” said Norma, “we haven’t had new carpet since the houses were built. I remember ’cause you went to Calgary that winter to have your throat cut.”

  “Tonsils, auntie.”

  “Can’t believe my own sister let them do that to you. Got no more sense than a hubcap.”

  “They didn’t do anything.”

  “Letting them cut you like that.”

  Dr. Loomis was a skinny old man with a huge pile of white hair and eyes that looked as though they would pop out of his head. His tongue was inordinately long, and as he talked, he would run it around his face, catching the sides of his mouth and the bottom of his chin. Once a week, he came out to the reserve to doctor the sick. There was no formal clinic, and he seldom had any patients. Most of the people on the reserve went to see Martha Old Crow or Jesse Many Guns, who were the doctors of choice. Dr. Loomis generally spent his time in the board office cafeteria drinking coffee and talking about the hospital in Toronto where he had trained just after the turn of the century.

  Lionel’s mother had taken Lionel to see Martha first, and after Martha was done feeling his ears and shoulders and looking in his eyes, she said, “Simple thing, this. Maybe take this boy to see the Frog doctor. No one comes to see him last week. Maybe his feelings are hurt, that one.”

  So on Wednesday Lionel’s mother arrived at the band office with Lionel in tow. Dr. Loomis shook Lionel’s mother’s hand and touched his nose with his tongue and told her that her boy was in the best of hands. “I studied in Toronto, you know,” he said.

  Lionel told him that his throat hurt something awful, that it was hard to swallow or move his head, and that he kept making mistakes on his math homework. Dr. Loomis pursed his lips and nodded gravely. He squeezed Lionel’s neck and face and shoulders and had Lionel suck in air in quick, noisy gulps.

  Lilly Morris, who worked behind the snack bar, got on the phone, and by the time Dr. Loomis got around to thumping Lionel on the chest and feeling under his armpits, there were about twenty people in the cafeteria.

  “Does it hurt here?”

  “Something awful.”

  “Does it hurt here?”

  “There too.”

  “Does it hurt here?”

  “Ohhhhh . . .”

  Charlie Looking Bear, who was two years older than Lionel and related through a second marriage, grabbed his crotch and asked in a high voice, “Does it hurt here?” But Dr. Loomis ignored Charlie and continued to prod Lionel with his bony fingers. Finally, he took a flat stick out of his jacket pocket and stuck it down Lionel’s throat. “Say ‘Ahhhhhh.’”

  Lionel almost choked.

  “Well,” said Dr. Loomis, “the boy has a sore throat. Pretty bad one, too. Can’t do much about it. Best thing is a little crushed aspirin mixed up with some honey and lemon. Give him lots of fluids. Maybe keep him in bed for a couple of days.”

  “It hurts real bad!” said Lionel.

  “Course, the tonsils are inflamed and they don’t look all that healthy. Wouldn’t hurt to get them out sometime. They can just keep getting inflamed. Always better to get them out when the child is young.”

  Lionel could see the distress in his mother’s face. “Don’t think we need a hospital,” she said. “We should wait and see.”

  “I can’t even eat!” said Lionel.

  “It’s an easy operation,” said Dr. Loomis.

  “See!”

  Lionel’s mother shook her head. “He’s not doing too well in school right now. If he had that operation, how much school would he miss?”

  This was where, as Lionel remembered, the idea began to fall apart.

  “Actually,” said Dr. Loomis, “there’s no need to miss any school at all. We could do it this summer.”

  “Summer?” said Lionel. “I don’t want no operation during the summer.”

  Charlie was grinning. “What would John Wayne do?” he whispered, and he grabbed his hair and pulled his head off to one side and made cutting motions across his throat.

  “We don’t want you missing any more school, honey.”

  “I don’t mind missing school. Lois had her tonsils out, and she missed school, and she still gets good grades.”

  Dr. Loomis laughed, and his eyes bugged out of his head even more, and his tongue went looking for his chin. “Why don’t you think about it and let me know. See how the throat does. He’d have to go to Calgary to have it done.”

  In the car, on the way home, Lionel sulked in the front
seat and stared out the window. “I know I can’t do any homework with my throat like this.”

  For the rest of the week and the next, Lionel shuffled around the house, coughing and complaining, until finally his mother called Dr. Loomis and asked him to arrange for an operation as soon as possible.

  Norma held the piece of green carpet up to the light. “Martha told your mother to leave them tonsils alone. But oh, no, Camelot’s progressive, you know. Indian doctors weren’t good enough.”

  “Long time ago, auntie.”

  “Latisha goes to see Martha. Ought to pay attention to your sister.”

  “You can’t change the past.”

  “Your sister is the smart one in the family, that’s for sure.”

  “What about George Morningstar? Real smart choice, that one.”

  “Thought you were dead for sure.”

  “What about George Morningstar?”

  “Letting them cut on you like that.”

  And so, in early February, Lionel and his mother drove the two hundred and ten kilometers to Calgary. One of Lionel’s aunts lived in Calgary. “I’m going to stay with Jean,” his mother told him, “so I can come and see you every day.”

  There were no beds available in the children’s ward, and Lionel was given a bed in another wing. “It’s just for the night,” the nurse said. “After the operation, we’ll move you in with the other children.”

  To his delight, Lionel discovered that the nurses were much too busy to bother with him, and he was free to roam the hospital. The cafeteria was his favorite stop. His mother had given him three dollars in case of an emergency, which Lionel decided, after thinking about it, included the purchase of doughnuts. Later in the evening, a tall, blond woman came into the room.

  “Hi,” she said. “You must be the lucky young man who won the free plane ride.”

  Lionel liked playing these kinds of games. “That’s me,” he said. “When do we go?”

  “Well,” said the blond woman, “we’re almost ready. Have you ever been on a plane?”

  “No!”

  “Well, you certainly are lucky.”

  An hour later, a nurse came in with a wheelchair, and Lionel was put into a red and white ambulance, driven to the airport, and placed on a plane.