let her go to the counter first. She asked for vodka and poured her pile of coins onto the counter.
“It’s all there,” she said.
He smiled, “Count it for me.”
“Come on. Shit,” the boy said as she counted out the coins with violently shaking hands. She put the bottle into her purse, stumbled toward the door. Outside she held on to a telephone pole, afraid to cross the street.
Champ was drinking from his bottle of Night Train.
“You too much a lady to drink on the street?” She shook her head. “I’m afraid I’ll drop the bottle.”
“Here,” he said. “Open your mouth. You need something or you’ll never get home.” He poured wine into her mouth. It coursed through her, warm. “Thank you,” she said.
She quickly crossed the street, jogged clumsily down the streets toward her house, ninety, ninety-one, counting the cracks. It was still pitch dark when she got to her door.
Gasping for air. Without turning on the light she poured some cranberry juice into a glass, a third of the bottle. She sat down at the table and sipped the drink slowly, the relief of the alcohol seeping throughout her body. She was crying, with relief that she had not died. She poured another third from the bottle and some juice, rested her head on the table between sips.
When she had finished that drink she felt better, and she went into the laundry room and started a load of wash. Taking the bottle with her she went to the bathroom then. She showered and combed her hair, put on clean clothes. Ten more minutes. She checked to see if the door was locked, sat on the toilet and finished the bottle of vodka. This last drink didn’t just get her well but got her slightly drunk.
She moved the laundry from the washer to the dryer. She was mixing orange juice from frozen concentrate when Joel came into the kitchen, rubbing his eyes. “No socks, no shirt.”
“Hi, honey. Have some cereal. Your clothes will be dry by the time you finish breakfast and shower.” She poured him some juice, another glass for Nicholas who stood silent in the doorway.
“How in the hell did you get a drink?” He pushed past her and poured himself some cereal. Thirteen. He was taller than she.
“Could I have my wallet and keys?” she asked.
“You can have your wallet. I’ll give you the keys when I know you’re ok.”
“I’m ok. I’ll be back at work tomorrow.”
“You can’t stop anymore without a hospital, Ma.”
“I’ll be fine. Please don’t worry. I’ll have all day to get well.” She went to check the clothes in the dryer.
“The shirts are dry,” she told Joel. “The socks need about ten more minutes.”
“Can’t wait. I’ll wear them wet.”
Her sons got their books and back packs, kissed her goodbye and went out the door. She stood in the window and watched them go down the street to the bus stop. She waited until the bus picked them up and headed up Telegraph Avenue. She left then, for the liquor store on the corner. It was open now.
Teen-Age Punk
In the sixties, Jesse used to come over to see Ben. They were young kids then, long hair, strobe lights, weed and acid. Jesse had already dropped out of school, already had a probation officer. The Rolling Stones came to New Mexico. The Doors. Ben and Jesse had wept when Jimi Hendrix died, when Janis Joplin died. That was another year for weather. Snow. Frozen pipes. Everybody cried that year.
We lived in an old farmhouse, down by the river. Marty and I had just divorced, I was in my first year of teaching, my first job. The house was hard to take care of alone. Leaky roof, burnt-out pump, but it was big, a beautiful house.
Ben and Jesse played music loud, burned violet incense that smelled of cat pee. My other sons Keith and Nathan couldn’t stand Jesse—hippie burnout—but Joel, the baby, adored him, his boots, his guitar, his pellet gun. Beer-can practice in the back yard. Ping.
It was March and cold for sure. The next morning the cranes would be at the clear ditch at dawn. I had learned about them from the new pediatrician. He’s a good doctor, and single, but I still miss old Dr. Bass. When Ben was a baby I called him to ask how many diapers I should wash at a time. One, he told me.
None of the kids had wanted to go. I dressed, shivering. Built a piñon fire, poured coffee into a thermos. Fixed batter for pancakes, fed the dogs and cats and Rosie the goat. Did we have a horse then? If so, I forgot to feed him. Jesse came up behind me in the dark, at the barbed wire by the frost-white road.
“I want to see the cranes.”
I gave him the flashlight, think I gave him the thermos too. He shined the light everywhere but the road and I kept bugging him about it. Come on. Cut it out.
“You can see. You’re walking along. You obviously know the road.”
True. The dizzy arcs of light swept into birds’ nests in pale winter cottonwoods, pumpkins in Gus’s field, prehistoric silhouettes of his Brahmin bulls. Their agate eyes opened to reflect a pinpoint of dazzle, closed again.
We crossed the log above the slow dark irrigation ditch, over to the clear ditch where we lay on our stomachs, silent as guerrillas. I know, I romanticize everything. It is true though that we lay there freezing for a long time in the fog. It was fog. Must have been mist from the ditch or maybe just the steam from our mouths.
After a long time the cranes did come. Hundreds, just as the sky turned blue gray. They landed in slow motion on brittle legs. Washing, preening on the bank. Everything was suddenly black and white and gray, a movie after the credits, churning.
As the cranes drank upstream the silver water beneath them was shot into dozens of thin streamers. Then very quickly the birds left, in whiteness, with the sound of shuffling cards.
We lay there, drinking coffee, until it was light and the crows came. Gawky raucous crows, defying the cranes’ grace. Their blackness zigzagged in the water, cottonwood branches bounced like trampolines. You could feel the sun.
It was light on the road back but he left the flashlight on. Turn it off, will you? He ignored me so I took it from him. We walked in his long strides in the tractor tracks.
“Fuck,” he said. “That was scary.”
“Really. As terrible as an army with banners. That’s from the Bible.”
“Oh yeah, teacher?” He already had an attitude, then.
Good and Bad
Nuns tried hard to teach me to be good. In high school it was Miss Dawson. Santiago College, 1952. Six of us in the school were going on to American colleges; we had to take American History and Civics from the new teacher, Ethel Dawson. She was the only American teacher, the others were Chilean or European.
We were all bad to her. I was the worst. If there was to be a test and none of us had studied I could distract her with questions about the Gadsden Purchase
