COSIMA
11 A River on the Moon
Loyd and I didn’t go to Whiteriver. He was called out on Friday for a seven-day stand on a switch engine in Lordsburg. He seemed disappointed and promised we’d go another time. Loyd didn’t have much seniority on the railroad; he’d only moved back to Grace a few years earlier, and at Southern Pacific he was still getting what he called “bumped” a lot. It was hard to plan his time off.
I was somewhat relieved. I’d been unsure of what I was getting into, and had my doubts. Once I found out, I had more.
I’d asked J.T. what “game birds” were. He and I were out working in the old plum orchard one evening, pruning dead branches out of the trees. My job was mainly to stay out of the way of falling timber. It was a fair distance from the house, and Emelina had asked if I could go along to keep an eye on him. She wasn’t the type to worry, but a man hanging from the treetops wielding a chainsaw is a nerve-racking sight, believe me. Even if he isn’t your husband.
J.T. informed me that game birds were fighting cocks. He was taking a break just then, leaning on one hand against a tree trunk and drinking what seemed like gallons of water.
I was stunned. “You mean like cockfights.”
J.T. smiled. “You been talking to Loyd?”
“He invited me to go with him up to Whiteriver. He said something about game birds, and…” I laughed at myself. “I don’t know, I was thinking of something you’d eat. Cornish hens.”
He laughed too. He offered me the jar of water and I drank from it before handing it back. I was surprised at the easy intimacy I felt with J.T. We hadn’t been friends in high school-he was, after all, captain of the football team. Through no meanness on his part, but simply because of the natural laws of adolescent segregation, we might as well have gone to high school on different planets. Being neighbors again now brought back what we’d forgotten then: we had a relationship that dated back even before Emelina. We were next-door neighbors in toddlerhood. We’d played together before male and female had meaning.
He turned up the glass jar and drank it to the bottom, tensing the muscles in his jaw when he swallowed. J.T.’s whole body shone with sweat. I briefly imagined him naked, which disturbed me. I’d slept with someone’s husband before-an Asian history professor in college-mistaking his marital status for something comforting and fatherly. But I was devoted to Emelina. No, that wouldn’t happen.
It was early October, and still hot. Grace was supposed to have the perfect climate, like Camelot or Hawaii, and it’s true that growing up here I could hardly remember an uncomfortable day, temperature-wise. Most of the homes had neither air-conditioning nor central heating, and didn’t need them, but this fall had turned into hell warmed over. Down in the desert, in Tucson, every day was in the hundred-and-teens and the TV weathermen were reporting the string of broken records almost proudly, like scores in a new sport. In Grace no one kept track especially, but we suffered just the same.
J.T. knelt down to start the chainsaw again, but I spoke up before he could yank the cord. “I thought cockfighting was illegal.”
“Most everywhere it is, but not in the state of Arizona. And up on the reservation they’ve got their own laws. Loyd’s not a criminal, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“I guess I don’t know what I’m asking. I just can’t see Loyd and cockfighting.”
“His daddy was real big in the sport. He was kind of a legend up there in Apache country.”
“So Loyd’s got to keep up the tradition,” I said, without sympathy. I knew Loyd’s father was also a renowned drunk.
J.T. asked, “You an animal lover?”
“Not to extremes,” I said. “I eat them.” I thought of how unmoved I’d been watching Emelina chop off heads for our Sunday dinner, that first day in Grace. “But watching animals kill each other for sport,” I said tentatively, “that’s kind of an unsavory business, isn’t it?” I looked toward the edge of the orchard. It was getting dark fast. Already I could see moonlight reflected in the irrigation ditches.
J.T. sat on his heels and looked straight up into the branches over our heads. “I don’t know why I mess with these trees,” he said. “They’re sixty years old. They don’t produce worth a damn anymore. I could cut them down and get a lot better out of this ground, not to mention the firewood. But my daddy gave me this orchard.” He picked up the stone of a plum, weathered shiny white like a tooth, and rubbed it with his thumb. After a minute he raised his arm with a quick overhand snap and threw it toward the river. “Loyd’s old man didn’t have one damn thing to give him but cockfighting.” J.T. looked at me. “I’m not crazy about it either. Codi. But you’ve got to know Loyd before you decide.”
I dropped the subject of cockfighting. Loyd had begun to come by fairly regularly in the evenings, which is to say regular for a railroad man: I’d see him three days in a row, and then not at all for a week. It reinforced the feeling that we were only casual acquaintances, meeting nearly by accident, and I tried to limit my expectations to the point where I paid no attention to how I looked in the evenings. Sometimes as I walked around the brick floors of my living room and bedroom I’d realize I was listening for the jingle of Jack’s tags, and then I’d click on the radio.
When Loyd did show up we would drag our lawn chairs out for a view of the sun’s parting shot at the canyon wall, and we’d talk about nothing in particular. For instance, he told me the story of Jack’s life. Jack’s mother was a coyote that Loyd took in when he was living up on the Apache reservation. She’d been crippled with buckshot in her shoulder, and had gone into heat. Loyd saw her one night skirting the arroyo behind his house, trying to get away from a pack of males. He got her attention with a low whistle, and then he left his front door open and went to bed; next morning, she was curled up under his cot.
I didn’t question this. For one thing, he seemed to hold a power over females of all types. But truly Loyd had the most unself-conscious way of telling a story I’d ever heard, as if it didn’t matter whether I was impressed or not, he was just going to give me the facts. It seemed as if he didn’t care enough, one way or the other, to lie.
“I kept her shut up in the house for a week with my dad’s old dog, Gunner. Gunner lost one of his back legs when he was a pup and he could get around real good, but he’d never in his life mounted a female. I thought she’d be safe with him.”
This matter-of-fact talk about heat and mounting made me slightly edgy, or rather, edgy once-removed. I felt like I ought to be uneasy with Loyd, but I wasn’t. To him it was life and death and dogs. Sometimes Loyd seemed about twelve.
“Well, Jack is here to tell the tale,” I said. “So I guess she wasn’t safe.”
Loyd smiled. “Nope. Old Gunner had his one chance at love. He got into some poisoned coyote bait right after that. He died before the pups were born.”
“How do you know they were his? She could have been pregnant already.”
Loyd asked Jack, as politely as you’d ask a favor from a friend, to roll over. “See that?” Over Jack’s heart was a white patch with a black crescent moon in its center. “That’s Gunner’s. There were seven pups, two black and five brown, and every one of them had that badge.”