Animal Dreams

He nodded.

I wanted him to know more than this about Hallie. That she was also a human being who did normal things. That she'd tried once, just as an example, to teach Carlo and me to break-dance. She'd thrown her hair around like a prissy rock star and we died laughing. In wool socks on the hardwood floor she could moonwalk like Michael Jackson.

I kept folding and unfolding the letter. "She has to ride a horse, because there's land mines in the roads."

The cab of the truck shuddered every time we hit a pothole, but Loyd drove calmly, his mind far away, the way I imagined he might look riding a horse. I'd never seen him so relaxed. I looked back a few times to check on Jack, who seemed equally content. I presumed he'd walked around in circles a few times back there before curling up in his nest of imaginary tall grass.

"Is there anything you know of that you'd die for?" I asked Loyd.

He nodded without hesitation.

"What?"

He didn't answer right away. Then he said, "The land."

"What land?"

"Never mind. I can't explain it."

"The reservation? Like, defending your country?"

"No." He sounded disgusted. "Not property. I didn't say property."

"Oh."

We passed by another of Black Mountain's mines, abandoned for years, the buildings standing quiet as a shipwreck. The huge windows of the smelter were made of chicken-wire glass, but a lot of them were broken out anyway; inside loomed the dinosaur skeletons of old machinery. Next to the smelter were the concentrator and a hovel of shacks under rusting tin roofs. Beyond them lay more fallow alfalfa fields, their soil crusted white from all the years of slightly salty irrigation water. Hallie could have stayed right in Grace and done some good, but of course there was the question of relative desperation of need. Nobody was dying for lack of this alfalfa.

The edge of these fields was the southern border of the Apache reservation, just fifteen minutes north of Grace. I hadn't been there before, and was surprised it was that close.

"Are you kidding?" he asked. "Gracela Canyon used to be in the reservation. The whites took that little section back after some guys hit gold down there."

"Is that true?"

"Look it up, Einstein. It's in the town records. They only gave the Apache this land in the first place because it looked like a piece of shit."

To some extent that must have been true: it was dead-looking country, though not as dead as the used-up cropland. It didn't look murdered. Here the gentle hills were pale brown grading to pink, sparsely covered with sage and fall-blooming wildflowers. Along the creekbeds were tall stands of cottonwoods. Their yellow leaves rained down. Every now and then we'd pass through clusters of homes that you couldn't exactly call towns, with long horse corrals strung between the houses. Red horses raised their heads and galloped along beside us for the short distance they'd been allotted, expertly turning aside just before they reached the ends of their corrals. Loyd waved at the people we passed, and they waved back.

"Do all those people know you?" I asked, incredulous.

"Nah. Just my truck."

Eventually we stopped in one of the settlements that was distinguished from the others by its size and the presence of a store. Rusting soft-drink signs nailed across the front porch marked it as a commercial establishment. Through the screen door I could see shadows of men in cowboy hats. Loyd pulled his parking brake, squeezed my hand, and held on to it for a second. "You want to come in?" he asked doubtfully. "It's only going to take me ten minutes."

"I know what this is about," I said. "J.T. told me you're into fighting cocks."

He nodded slightly.

"Well, is it okay for me to go in with you? Are women allowed?"

He laughed, then dropped my hand and flipped his index finger against my cheek. "Big old roosterfighting Indian boogeyman might get you."

"I'm a big girl," I said. I got out and followed him up the wooden steps, but regretted it once we were inside. A short man leaning on the counter looked at Loyd and resettled his hat on his head, ignoring me completely. This wasn't going to be any of my business. I bought a lukewarm soft drink from the old guy behind the counter. He grasped it through his apron and screwed off the cap, leaving a broad asterisk of dust on the white cloth. The other men watched this gesture in silence.

"I'll be outside," I told Loyd.

I sat in a wooden rocker on the porch. Jack had lifted his head and cocked his ears but hadn't moved from the truckbed.