the treasures he’d found down there. My mom’s long black hair trailed behind us, and we didn’t have any trouble breathing at all. We held on when he leapt for the sun, shimmying high up through the clouds until we splashed back down into the lake.
I woke up just before my alarm went off. Mom was curled around me, sound asleep, so I eased out of her arms and turned off the alarm. She mumbled something and turned over onto her other side. I pulled the covers around her and laid down next to her for a long time, remembering how it felt to be moving through water and clouds, both of us together.
July 23, 1982—I never can forget. I got the news my poor lost grandson John Joseph passed when I was braiding my hair, fixing to walk to Dandy Dalton’s to pay on my grocery bill. I already had my purse under my arm when Thorpe Rogers called on the telephone. I couldn’t put any of the sounds he was making into words, but right off I knew.
Thorpe Rogers preached on faith power in a special service the night before—Saints got to be sanctified, he said, got to live good and right so little lost ones can see light. He said it in his language and then he tried to make it right in Cherokee for me and the other old ones. Thorpe Rogers raised up his arms like a picture of Good Lord’s love—In Heaven, he said, we shall reap our rewards. Then his face kind of broke in two and he said—But we got to get there, Saints.
We had a good, long service, like the ones that used to set my soul to burn. But going home I did not feel good. The Sequoyah Hills, always sweet to me, looked down like cold mountains. Even the moonshine on my arm felt like a stranger. Dear babies Reney and Sheila by me in the back seat did not make me better. Maybe I knew, but only in my heart first. John Joseph was going cold right then.
The boy never could stay out of trouble, even when he was a little one. Cracked his head diving in Bluff Hole, July 3, 1972. He could hear a song one time and play it all the way through, humming it out as he go. Didn’t matter—he sold the electric guitar Thorpe Rogers gave him for five dollars so he could buy up Dandy Dalton’s candy, January 12, 1969.
I used to back then put down things that happen in this nice notebook Lula gave me. Always put my thoughts in there as best I could, just for me. John Joseph passed the day before his own birthday, the day before this country would ever call him a man. After I put that down, I could not write another thing in here for a long time. The nice leather book was just ledger. I added up my charges for the month—
39 cents, shortcakes
89 cents, hairnet
3 lbs. Crisco, 2.10
25 cents, pop
66 cents of Liver loaf
1 dollar cash
I stay on my knees after altar call ends now. But I don’t hardly pray. I look for pictures in the altar wood. Try to make out long-gone faces when I know I should lean hard on myself to get up and go back to my seat. I stay there so long the church goes still. I hear little ones rustling on pallets and sweet sister Saints praying—Thank you, Jesus. Thorpe Rogers and Lula start up again. They weep and moan with Good Lord’s love. My children, so strong in their chests. That muscle can only be from Good Lord. Cannot be me or their cowboy daddy, with his drinking and Good Lord knows what else.
I feel hands on me. Skirts dance by, fan me cool. I know they pray this old Indian is finally meeting Holy Ghost, praying good like I should, with fire. Truth is, all I pray is to be able to pray. Maybe pray to be strong when I need to be.
One night right before he passed, I woke to a broke front door and John Joseph asleep on the living room floor. He had 12 stitches sewed up over his eye. Drunk running around in Sequoyah County and an argument over a girl got him hit with a tire iron. He opened his eyes to me standing over him. He looked scared for minute but not of me. Then he came back to me. He stretched and poked his finger on the end of the thread holding him together. He said—She’s so pretty, Granny. He could not pray either.
I shushed him. Lula was still asleep with one of her spells. She would be in a bad way with John Joseph there smelling like beer joints and the screen door broke. Thorpe Rogers wouldn’t let him come home from drinking no more already.
I should have got on my knees and prayed. Drag him by his hair and tell him—You pray! And tell my own self too that Good Lord was listening and believe it down in my pitiful heart. But I thought to myself—I will fix it. I put bologna on to fry and called my sister Celia in Hominy.
Celia married an Indian like she should. A big Osage who spoke his language and went to college. A man who kept his hands where he should. He would have work for John Joseph.
I blackened the edges like John Joseph liked and handed him the phone. Celia said—Nephew, you come stay with us, but don’t you come home drinking. He hung up and tried to argue, but Lord Lord, that boy listened to somebody finally.
He went to Hominy and didn’t come home to Celia’s one night after he got up there. He took up with some running wild cousins and didn’t come back ever. Demons know fire too. Maybe demons chased him so hard that he could not slow down until he stopped for good on the side of the road where he came to such terrible awful rest after 18 years. Nearly 18 years.
He told me before I sent him up to Hominy to die—Granny, them old boys and their tire iron ain’t got nothing on me. You should have seen them! And then he laughed, squinched up his busted eye, and doubled over. Black hair sticking all everywhere, needing a haircut.
John Joseph tried to fix the broke door with masking tape and a screwdriver before he left. That boy fiddled all morning with the flapping door, singing Elvis Presley songs to me. Never fixed it right. It’s still stuck together with tape. Needs a new screen. I told him so that morning. I told him so and I sent him off to that highway in Hominy. I should have locked the door and never let him leave. Should have tried to scare him with the love of Good Lord. John Joseph probably would know better. That boy has a way right to my insides. He tapped the screen with the screwdriver and winked with his good eye. He grinned, said—I’ll take care of it, Granny.
I give nickels to pay on dollars I charge. I add up, take away. Nothing evens out, and I don’t think it will get fixed ever. I just as soon it stay that way. I see the tape and remember John Joseph holding a screwdriver and eating fried bologna I fed him, grinning up at me, good eye and bad eye trying to hide behind that greasy hair. I remember him like that. Try to. Bent over but looking up. Just a warm boy still, saying he’s sorry for the trouble, but he’ll make it all right. And this old lady don’t say nothing to him. Don’t drag him down to pray, don’t pick up the telephone to conspire him away to death. I take that sweet, running boy in my arms. I press my face in his wild hair and hold on.
Reney’s bones can feel a fight long before the rest of her wakes to the rising voices and clattering bottles. She is eight, almost nine. Granny and Lula live in a new rent house across the tracks and down a long hill, not so very far. Over there—standing on a chair rolling up balls of dough as Granny’s hearing aids whistle or lying curled into Granny’s great body napping—is Reney’s best place. But Reney knows that her place is with her mom.
Tonight, Reney is leaning against
