A Few Simple Things (1st Draft)

A Few Simple Things

Noah had finally realized their days of running the hotel together were finished. Things hadn’t been right for a long time, years maybe. That much he knew. But the nerve to call Dawn had only come to him a few mornings earlier. He’d sat in his bathrobe drinking a can of Schlitz and staring out his trailer’s window at the red mass of Rain God Mesa. He watched it for long time and saw the summer monsoon clouds develop and cast shadows over the valley, over the snaking line of the highway, over the small clumps of sheep and the horses and the people on them. He dialed his wife’s mother’s house and was surprised to find out Dawn was still staying there. He asked her to meet him at the hotel. She’d sounded sober, but he could never tell anymore. In any case, she said she’d be there. He called the lawyer next and asked him to mail the papers.

After that, there was little else to do. He’d brewed a pot of coffee and then traded his bathrobe for sweats and went outside. He picked up a basketball on Gabby’s porch and started shooting buckets on Lelen’s hoop. He thought about his wife. He’d told her he missed her. He wished he hadn’t, but it was true. Maybe they’d just talk, he thought. Maybe another shot in rehab was still in the cards. Why else had he kept the bar open? Why else was he continuing to meet the Yazzie brothers? For a long time, these thoughts repeated as he rained in shots from all over the uneven slab of concrete he’d poured between their trailers. He’d gotten to know them well these last few months. They were propping him up in a way like s sort of surrogate family, though neither of them needed him. They were both tough and used to making it on their own, but pouring the makeshift court had made him feel useful. Noah spun on the concrete, bounced the ball and drained another shot. He envisioned finally beating Lelen in a game of one on one that afternoon. The kid was talented and tall and lanky for his age. Leading scorer on his middle school team. Noah smiled. It was a good, simple thing to think about something other than Dawn.

Noah drove in to Mexican Hat two days later. There were weeds in the courtyard of the San Juan Inn and it sat empty, languishing in what should have been the prime summer months of tourist season. The bar he owned was across the parking lot from the hotel. The bartender, Jim, had run the place for him since he’d moved, and he was thinking about selling it to him once he got his debts paid off.

Dawn was nowhere to be found, and Noah busied himself with chores while he waited. He pulled the weeds and checked the mail. There was an envelope with a note from Jim and a few hundred dollars. The package from the lawyer was there too, but he was still unsure what he’d do with it.

Noah set about hammering a “For Sale” sign into the hotel’s courtyard. It had been closed since he moved to the reservation six months ago, but the sign would make it official. He didn’t expect anyone to buy it. In fact, he didn’t care if anyone did. It was just a thing he’d decided needed to be done.

With each blow of the hammer, Noah could feel the ring in his pocket rubbing against his thigh. The damn ring. Another decision that had to be made. Noah finished pounding the sign into the clay and walked to his truck where he placed the hammer on the passenger’s seat. He closed the door and stared at the Chevy. The paint job looked like a relief map, and part of the frame near the front, passenger’s side wheel well was being eaten away like some feral desert creature had been gnawing at it. It resembled the valley itself, a by-product of weather and age and all brown and red and orange.

He’d been upset when he sold the F-150, but now he preferred the anonymity of a junkyard truck. And anyway, it suited his new career well. It made more sense to drive a beater to meet-ups on back county roads, and the bigger bed made for big deliveries to his runners. Thanks to the Chevy the Yazzie brothers were counting hundred dollar bills as they flew like a murder of crows from Apache County all the way to Coconino.

Bootlegger. Bootlegger, that was it. That was what he’d become. He was a bootlegger who lived alone in a reservation trailer. It was a hell of realization to make, but it was true. Yeah, the Chevy was a fine truck he thought, and there was no point in trying to lie about what had happened to him, to try keeping up appearances.

Noah walked back up toward the hotel and entered the lobby through the double, oaken doors. He passed behind the front desk and entered a small office. He flicked on the light and then read the note from the bartender: We need two kegs of Bud and napkins. The delivery went fine last night. They want you to drive the next one out to them on Tuesday. There were a dozen cases of Mickey’s handgrendaes stacked next to the door topped by a case of Old Crow bourbon. The tower rose well over his head, and there was a deep, rectangular indentation in the carpet next to it where a similar stack had been. The walls were bare except for a calendar and a liquor license, the latter of which he took down from the wall to reveal the safe behind it. Noah entered the sequence on the combination lock, and then pulled the small fold of bills from his pocket. They were crisp, as if never handled, and he unfolded the money and peeled away a handful of twenties. He placed the rest of the bills back in the envelope and put it on top of the packaged from the lawyer and put both in the safe.

Noah reached in his front pocket and pulled out the ring. He was ready to place it in the safe when he stopped to inspect it further. This time he’d found it in a pawnshop in Monticello. It was between a boning knife and a crossbow, as if that was a perfectly natural place to find a Tiffany’s engagement ring. There was a tag with a handwritten price on it: $300. He swore this would be the last time and then pulled his wallet from his pocket and put $300 on the counter. It was the cheapest price he’d paid for the ring yet.

In the office, the thought caused a great emptiness to seize him. Was this the third or fourth time he’d bought back the ring? He held it up to the fluorescent lighting in the office and studied the mount and cut of the diamond. His mother helped him pick it out when she was still alive. They drove all the way to Phoenix and visited half the metro area before finding the right one. Noah pulled the ring back from the light and put it in his pocket. He was angry. She wasn’t even going to show up anyway. What was the point of any of it? He knew if he kept it the only thing to do would be to give it back again, and the thought made him feel pathetic. Worse than pathetic, he felt invisible and stung all over like he was naked inside a giant dust devil. All he wanted was to make it disappear. He shut the safe and turned off the lights.

A signature on some papers and 30 miles of highway. Was that all that could separate one life from another? It didn’t seem right after ten years of marriage. How could that much time just come to nothing? But he felt now that Dawn wasn’t coming. And maybe this meant it was truly over.

Noah crossed the parking lot and picked his way down a gentle, rocky incline until he was on the flat sandstone near the river. The San Juan flowed by quietly, brown and murky with the color of the earth through which it cut. He took a pack of cigarettes from his shirt pocket and lit one. Puffing slowly, he gazed into the southwest where the sun looked like a huge fireball incinerating the stratified buttes in the distance. The high banks of monsoonal clouds were still gathering in the east and he could smell the rain somewhere far off. It reminded him of the day he was married by the river, but when he tried to remember how Dawn looked that day, all he could see was the woman from the Montezuma Motel 6: oozing scabs on her arms and dried, brown blood on her upper lip like some sort of grotesque mustache.

Noah finished the cigarette and walked alongside the San Juan until he was almost under the bridge that spanned the river and connected Mexican Hat with the highway. A truck went by overhead and made a loud clunking noise about halfway across the bridge as if a child or dog had fallen out of the bed. A second truck followed and made the same noise at the same point, and Noah realized that an expansion joint was merely worn out. He felt drawn, purposeless- lonely to the point he would have preferred something fell from the trucks so he could chase down the owners and talk to them. Only the promise of seeing Lelen and Gabby gave any form to the time ahead. He and Lelen would install the radio he bought. Maybe they’d play basketball. They’d drive to Kayenta and drop Lelen off at Gabby’s mom’s house. And then they’d get good and drunk in Flagstaff and he’d forget about things for a time.

Noah climbed up a little to where the underside of the bridge met the upper edge of the bank and studied the array of garbage piled there. A dusty spectrum of beer cans interspersed with a few bits of clothing, condom wrappers and the fire eaten corpses of mesquite tree branches. Many of the cans had no doubt come from his bar, the cycle of waste partially his own. He bent down and picked up one of the beer cans. The dirt was stained underneath as if a man had recently emptied the rest of the can or his bladder on that spot. He took the ring from his pocket and placed it inside the can, shaking it gently and listening for the rattle like a can of spray paint as he walked back towards the river. He negotiated the last two terraces of sandstone near the bank and then slowly bent down onto one knee and placed the can in the river. For a few moments he let the cool water wash over the crevices in his knuckles, and then he let go. The can floated off with the current of the water, and he watched until it went around a bend and into the oblivion of the great ribbon waterway.

Noah walked back to his truck and decided to drive the length of the city before heading back to the reservation. He still had some faint hope of finding Dawn. After running the town’s main strip, he parked at the Shell station just before the bridge that led out of the city and onto Highway 163. There were no other cars in the parking lot except for a semi-truck idled on the east side of the building. Noah entered the store where the owner sat behind the counter. He was a gelatinous, red-faced man who’d had the same buzz cut ever since Noah could remember.

“How are you, Jim?” Noah said.

Jim was reading the newspaper and didn’t look up. The air in the store pulsed with the heat and the hum of the beer cooler’s compresor. Jim shifted in his seat and flipped to the next page of the paper.

“What happened to your other truck?” he said as he continued looking at the paper.

“I sold it,” Noah said.

Jim placed the paper on the counter and stared over Noah’s shoulder at the Chevy. “Yeah…I figured. Some folks said they’d seen you driving around in it. Said they’d seen you lots of places in it.”

“I been doing some fencing out along the county roads. Just helping some new friends.”

“Uh huh.” Jim snorted. “How you like living in the Valley?”

Noah cracked his neck to hide his annoyance and reached for a cigarette from his pocket. What Jim meant was, how do you like living with Indians? “Look,” Noah said, “I was supposed to meet Dawn up at the hotel and she didn’t show. You seen her?”

Jim wiped sweat from his blotchy face and snorted again. “Yeah…a bit ago. She was, uh, you know, acting like Dawn. Speaking a hundred miles an hour and pouring sweat. I could barely stand to look at her. She asked to use the bathroom.”

“What did you do?”

“Well hell, Noah, I gave her the key to get her out of here.”

“She didn’t come back?

Jim raised his hands up to his shoulders and shrugged, and with the gesture Noah could feel his blood spiking.

“You didn’t see her again?” Noah pressed.

The fat man was irritated now. “What the fuck ya think, Noah? Look around. She ain’t in here. And the day’s too god damn hot to go chasing down addicts for bathroom keys.” Noah turned and walked back out the front door. Jim said something else to him, but the engine of the idling semi drowned it out.

Noah walked around the building to the women’s restroom and knocked loudly. No answer. He knocked again, but the bathroom door was locked. He imagined what she might be doing in there. A flood of scenes came before his eyes, and he could feel his heart was racing. Noah thought of breaking down the door, but instead he started taking deep breaths. Whatever she was doing in there, she had to come out eventually.

Noah realized his own bladder was full from a can of Schlitz he had on the drive over from the reservation and so he tried the men’s bathroom. The door was open and he walked over to the urinal farthest from the stall in the corner. After he finished peeing, he shook himself and hustled his balls. He ran his finger along the seam that split them in two and a strange thought came to him. It was like he was sewn together from two different people. Like there was the side of him that felt bad about what he did with the ring, the side that wanted the papers to remain unsigned, and then this other side. The dark part of him that wished Dawn had a different kind of sickness. That wished she had cancer or something. He felt as though he’d lost her to a mental illness, and that this was more cruel than some other kind of disease. His wife was simply not the same person anymore and he didn’t know how to deal with the schizophrenic thing that had taken her place.

Noah walked to the sink and rinsed his hands. He pulled a couple paper towels from the dispenser and read the graffiti that covered it.

CARY BENALLY’S SNATCH IS WIDER

AND DEEPER THAN THE GRAND CANYON

And below:

A MAN COULD GET LOST IN A THING LIKE THAT

Noah laughed and relaxed for the first time since he’d gotten to Mexican Hat. So it was still possible to smile on a day like today. He finished wiping his hands and turned to leave the bathroom when he heard someone snort loudly and at length. He heard another similar snort and then a slight groan came from the stall. Noah turned around and listened. Another louder groan followed.

“Hey, fella. You okay in there?” Noah said.

There was no response at first, but then he heard another deep, syrupy moan.

Noah knocked at the door. “Hey, man. Whatever the hell you’re doing in there, do it somewhere else.”

The stall was silent and then a loud and baritone voice said “FUCK OFF.”

Normally Noah would have left the situation alone, but then he heard a woman’s voice. Faint, but unmistakable. His legs started shaking with anger as he walked to the urinal beside the stall. He climbed on top of it and looked down: a beefy, bearded man in flannel stood with his pants around his ankles. He was bent over and snorting a white line off the top of the metallic toilet paper holder. A woman knelt at his crouch, and her black hair fell over her face as she worked over his thick, gnarled dick. The man’s pubic bristled like a black patch of steel wool and intertwined with the woman’s greasy mange.

Noah stepped down from the urinal and jogged out of the bathroom and back to his truck with his heart pounding in his ears. He took the hammer off the seat of the Chevy and started back to the bathroom without any kind of plan. Was it even her? Had they noticed him? The thoughts rang in his head as his boots beat on the gravel parking lot.

He reached the bathroom and knocked on the stall door with the hammer. When no one responded he got angrier and knocked harder and harder, and then he was kicking it too with the pointed toe of his boots.

“Get the fuck out of the stall!” Noah heard himself yelling as if he were now outside of his own body.

Finally, the door opened. The bearded man was laughing. He had his pants up and the woman was looking away.

“Relax there, cowboy,” he said. “Me and the lady were just having a little break here.”

Noah raised the hammer and the man took pause.

He looked at Noah and the woman. “Look buddy I can see this is between you and her. Here, you can have her back.” He shoved the dark haired woman at Noah, and as she came rushing into him he could finally see her face, could see if was his wife.

Noah tried to put her in a sort of bear hug, and the man skirted them both and left the bathroom.

“Let go of me,” she yelled, and slipped out of his grasp, so he only held her by one arm. He tried to grab the other arm, but she lunged at him and scratched Noah across his right brow with one of her lengthy fingernails. Finally, he managed to lock her arms behind her and dragged her just outside the bathroom.

Before he could say anything to Dawn, Jim came lumbering around the corner. He was gasping. The man from the bathroom had stepped up in to the semi and the diesel engine roared it headed back out on to the highway.

Jim stared at them for a few moments and collected his breath.

“You both got five minutes to leave. Then I call the cops.”

Noah was silent. There was nothing to say.

Noah walked her back to his truck, and shoved her against the passenger’s side door. Her arms were boney, scabbed over and sweaty. The skin over her cheek bones he looked uncomfortably taut and pale.

“I’m taking to your mother’s,” he said.

“Like hell you are. I’m headed to see my sister in Phoenix.” Her sister was into it too and he was pretty sure that’s how Dawn had started.

“You were supposed to be meeting me. Look, you got two options. I take you back up to your mother’s in Blanding, or you stay here and talk to the cops. No fucking way I’m taking you to your sister’s.”

She said nothing for a while and then got in the truck. He started the Chevy and stared over at her. She was breathing heavily and pouring sweat.

“You need anything?” he asked.

She stared straight ahead at the crack in the windshield. “I need the forty bucks that guy owed me.”

He felt himself go numb and just stared at her for a time. Stared at this person he’d once known and loved and been loved by. He pulled a $100 from his wallet and gave it to her. “Here,” he said, “You can take a taxi to Phoenix for all I care. Now get out.” She took the money and opened the door without protest.

Noah got back on the highway and drove towards his trailer. He started to cry. He hadn’t cried in years. He hadn’t cried through it all. But now he cried loudly. He cried for himself and for Dawn and for everything he’d done or failed to do for her. He’d thought it for a while, but now he knew there was a woman out there who was no longer his wife and that he had no family. He’d go back to the trailers and the concrete court and the long afternoon shadows. He’d play ball with Lelen. He’d install the radio. He’d go to Flagstaff with Gabby and get drunk. A few simple things. That was all he all he could do.