Pigs in Heaven

She thinks. “Over hard, with the yolk broke, if you really want to know. Lord, breakfast in bed? I reckon if I was Kitty Carlisle I’d have me a frilly housecoat to put on.”

“I’ll bring you my bathrobe,” he says, disappearing. Alice licks the roof of her mouth, looking at the leaves all pressed like happy spying faces against the screen. She feels she has died and gone to the Planet of Men Who Cook. Cash returns with an old flannel bathrobe, blue plaid, and settles it on her shoulders. She hugs it around her like a lady in church with a fur stole, and with her free hand accepts a cup of coffee. The first black sip arouses her throat and lungs.

Cash is busy moving things around. He sets a coffee table carefully beside the bed and covers it with plates of eggs, ham, toast, butter, and huckleberry jam. He pulls up a stool on the other side. Alice puts her arms through the sleeves of the bathrobe and sits up on the edge of the bed, facing him, so she won’t feel like an invalid.

“I’m not used to being catered to,” she says, smiling at her plate. “I’ll try to tolerate it, though.”

For a while they are quiet, making small clinking sounds with their forks. Cash blows on his coffee. A bird somewhere in the leaves asks, “Chit? Chit? Chit?”

“I been wondering how long a visit you’re here for,” he says finally.

“Oh, at Sugar’s? I don’t know. I guess till I wear out my welcome. I didn’t really come just to visit Sugar, to tell you the truth. I had some business.”

“With family?”

“No, with the Cherokee Nation. I don’t know if it’s with the Nation, exactly.” She cuts into her eggs, which are perfect. Most people don’t believe you really want broken yolks, and they won’t go through with it; they’ll keep it whole and runny for your own good. “I had some dealings to do with Annawake Fourkiller. It’s something we have to settle about my daughter and granddaughter.” Her heart pounds.

She didn’t decide to tell Cash, she only knows that she’s going to. “I have a little granddaughter that she saw on TV. You know Annawake?”

“Oh, sure. Her Uncle Ledger is the medicine man. You seen him at the stomp dance, didn’t you?”

“Sure.”

“That little Annawake used to follow him around like a calf.” Cash chews his toast. “At the dance, when Ledger would get up to speak, she’d stand right up in front of him and holler out sermons.”

Alice finds she can picture this. With Cash, it’s easy to get derailed from a confession. “I guess she’s going to be the next one, then.”

“No, it’s somebody younger. I don’t know who yet, but they’s already picked him out. It starts when you’re too young to remember. The medicine man puts the medicine on you, and then when you’re older you don’t remember it, but it kindly influences how you grow. Later on, you get the training.”

“Well, that seems dangerous, don’t it? What if the kid that was all picked out to be the next preacher turns out to be a motorcycle hood?”

Cash seems very serious. “That wouldn’t happen. The medicine man can tell from the child how they’ll be. You don’t want one that’s real loud, a fighter or anything. You want one that’s more quiet.”

They return to their breakfast. Alice hears Kitty Carlisle, or someone at any rate, muttering to herself in the kitchen.

“How long were you and your wife married?” she asks.

“Oh, since we was too young to know a hawk from a handsaw. I met her at the stomp dance after I left boarding school. She come from over around Kenwood way.” His whole body tilts slightly backward with the pleasure of memory. “Law, I’ll you, I only started going up there to meet girls, and for the food. They cooked good food at the dances back then: bean balls, squirrel dumpling. Eggs. People went over and stayed all day. They’d come in the wagon and on horses. They’d put up a tent, put up long benches and put a quilt on it and sleep on that. I used to always go early, to play ball.”

“Play ball” Alice asks.

“They playa kind of ball game, before the dance. Did you see that big tall pole with a fish on the top, carved out of wood? Down there in the clearing at the stomp grounds, where the dirt’s all beat up underneath.”

Alice nods, because her mouth is full. The good thing about Cash is, you can eat big bites while you’re listening to him.

“It’s girls and women against boys and men. That’s how they play. You throw the ball or sling it up there with a stick, and try to hit the fish. It’s too hard for little kids and old people. It’s kindly serious. I don’t know how to explain it, quite. Keeping your body in good shape is part of being a good person, you could say. But back then I paid too much attention to trying to be the best one. Ever time you throw the ball and hit the fish, your side gets a point.”