In the morning Beth woke up to Jo sleeping beside her, dressed in an old shirt. Jo had thrown the blankets off herself and her legs were bare. Beth was glad Charlie wasn’t here to see, but who knew how long she had been sprawled like that.
The sun beat on the tent. The brown canvas was yellowish in some spots but black and opaque in others. It was already very hot and Beth could feel drops of sweat on her neck, yet when she touched her face the skin was dry. She wiped her face anyway and licked her fingers. She’d had a sweat test in the hospital and everything came out fine, but now she worried about giving off too much salt. Too much salt meant the visitor was coming. It sounded like a scary movie—the visitor is coming, the visitor is coming. Her mother was crazy to think her motherly way of putting it turned it into harmless fun.
She looked at her hand, glowing from the sun’s presence inside the tent, and it was shaking. She tested her skin one more time to make sure. A wet spot splatted her forehead and she looked up at the tent’s ceiling and the opaque black designs streaked over it. Then a drop fell on Jo.
Outside her mother was pulling stuff from the Rambler. She was taking everything out and arranging the items small to big on the flat rocks. “Good morning,” she said to Beth. “All this dust. It gets in everything.” Over the tent was laid a variety of wet underwear, her mother’s dress, a towel. Her mother looked clean and fresh, and her hair was damp and hanging loose, and she was in a chipper mood.
“Good morning,” Beth said. She blocked her eyes and stared at the ground until she got used to the light.
“Is she still asleep? You’d better wake her before he gets up.” She nodded toward the silver trailer.
“Where’s Charlie?”
“He’s taking a walk.”
“What?”
Her mother shrugged.
“Why is he taking a walk?”
“He’s . . . That’s what he wants to do.”
Her mother was giving nonanswers again, which meant there was a secret involved. Beth hurried out of the campsite to the road, preparing herself to be outraged for missing out on something, but there was nothing there and no Charlie. She rubbed her eyes, then went back and sat on the rocks.
“Would you wake her up, please?” her mother asked.
“Okay,” she said, still sitting.
The trailer door slammed open—detonating the silence—and the specter of Leonard Dawson filled the doorway. His shoulders were bunched up. Twigs and leaves seemed to be growing from his head, but it was just his muddy hair standing on end.
Her mother didn’t turn around at the sound of the slammed door although her shoulders sagged and Beth heard her sigh. She continued pulling stuff from the Rambler.
Her mother kept on working, but next time she got yelled at she yanked around with a pickax in her hand. “I don’t keep track of her,” she told Leonard Dawson.
“I asked you a simple question. No reason to go off.”
“And I answered you.”
“Where is she then?”
“You know, sometimes women have hygienic issues they would like to keep private.”
“I knew that excuse was coming up.”
“Maybe she went to the movies then.”
“That’s very funny,” he told her. He stomped off and disappeared behind the overhang.
“He doesn’t mess with you,” Beth said proudly.
“Oh no, he doesn’t mess with me,” her mother scoffed, flapping open the tent just as Jo’s head peeked out.
“Quick!”
Jo emerged fully dressed and ran barefoot to the trailer. She stood there. Her arms flew out helplessly. “He’ll never believe me!” she whispered.
Her mother pulled off the damp towel from the tent. “Use this for evidence.”
Jo dashed back, tiptoeing over some prickles, and took the towel. Then, seeing Beth’s mother’s wet hair, she grabbed one of the bottles of water, leaned over, and poured it over her head.
“You’re using up all my good water,” Beth’s mother said.
“You used it.”
“It’s my water.”
“I’m sorry. It’s an emergency.”
“Calm down,” Beth’s mother said. “You’re heaving like you’re up on a trapeze.”
Beth pushed sandals into Jo’s hands, and Jo hopped into them as she staggered toward the trailer, too afraid to stop. She was stretching the clothesline when Leonard Dawson walked back into camp. “There you are,” Jo said cheerily in one of the worst examples of acting Beth had ever witnessed. “I wondered where you went.” She flamboyantly toweled at her hair before throwing the towel over the line. “. . . let this towel dry off,” she mumbled helpfully. “Thanks for the shampoo!” she shouted over.
Her mother didn’t react, which was actually the best acting so far. Leonard Dawson said, “Where’d you get the water?” and Beth expected the worse.
Jo said, “Sometimes if you’re nice to people, Lenny . . .” and she sounded pretty convincing, like all of a sudden she’d gotten into her role.
“So you had a good shower.”
“I can’t write home about it, Lenny.”
“Someday you’ll be able to. I’ll get you everything you want. I’m going to make it big. That’s a promise.” Then again, Leonard Dawson was so bad at his own performances it was no surprise he couldn’t detect a tin delivery in others. Though his anger the night before had been real, it had sounded exaggerated and false, and now this, his morning smooth talk, was just as bad. He strutted about his props, his truck and his trailer and his big heavy tools, like an actor auditioning to play his own life.
Sometimes Beth’s teachers were like that. Now and then duty called upon them to impersonate people of wisdom and give lectures about life and the detonations of behaving badly, and it was so obvious they were acting. The one exception was Mr. Jackson. Beth hadn’t had him yet, but Charlie said his lectures about life and the dangerous ripples of cheating always involved his own experiences and sometimes took place in fighter planes where cheaters nearly cost people their lives, and they were good stories, every single one. Mr. Jackson was the fifth grade teacher, and he had continued to look out for Charlie through sixth grade. Whenever Mr. Jackson played basketball with the seventh and eighth grade boys, he made sure to install Charlie as the scorekeeper. Beth ate her lunch in the gym so she could watch. Mr. Jackson liked to take long shots from so far away no one would think to guard him. None of the boys could even throw the ball that far, much less get it in the basket. Right before sending up a set shot, one of Mr. Jackson’s hands would break free and push up his eyeglasses and then he would finish aiming and shoot. By then everyone was already yelling, Shoot! Shoot! When the balls went in, which they did almost half the time, there came wild cheers and stomping on the bleachers.
Though his name was Mr. Jackson, one day when he phoned their house he identified himself as Kenny, as if he were a boy, and that was when Beth understood. The only problem with Mr. Jackson was that Beth thought he was a little old for her mother. Somebody said he was thirty-eight. Somebody else said he was forty.
Leonard Dawson announced for all to hear that he was packed up and ready to go off and guarantee their future. Jo didn’t say anything and only limply complied with his kiss and the dramatic sweep of his hug. He bad-acted getting into the pickup and he bad-acted starting it up. The pickup bumped through the campsite with more bad-acting roars, and when two men appeared out of nowhere carrying a large keg, Leonard Dawson didn’t stop. The pickup barreled through faster, the engine revving. The men tried to dodge and were thrown off balance, enough that the keg dropped from their hands and rolled in front of the pickup. The pickup kept going. The keg was knocked down the small rise to the road and out of sight.
Beth ran with the two men to the road. The keg had rolled beyond the road and over the rocky drop-off. It rolled slowly, jolted from one boulder to another, almost stopping until another jolt got it going again. Finally the wedge between two boulders caught it. The two men were already right behind it, lightly scampering down the rocks. They checked out the keg, pushed it from the wedge, then heaved it up. They climbed half a step before setting it down with a shake of their heads. Beth looked beside her and there was Navajo Joe, his unseen arrival another magic-curtain trick. Beside him stood Charlie. And now Jo and her mother arrived and looked down.
“Is everyone all right? Are you all right, Charlie?” her mother asked.
“There goes our water,” Charlie said.
“That was our water?” Beth asked. “Now what are we going to do?”
Navajo Joe went to his truck and unloaded two sawhorses. He was wearing Beth’s favorite shirt, his red shirt that wasn’t red. The two men climbed back to the road. Each went to Joe and received a sawhorse. Beth saw that they were Navajos, too, and they wore mismatched white men’s clothes just like the ones at Jimmy Splendid’s camp. The men walked the sawhorses into camp.
“Where do you want these?” Navajo Joe asked.
“Where do I want what?” her mother asked.
Navajo Joe didn’t answer.
“What are they?” her mother asked.
“For your water buffalo.” He nodded toward the keg down below.
“It’s down there,” her mother said.
“I’ll be back with another one,” he said. He climbed into his truck.
“No, no, that’s too much,” her mother said. “Let’s forget about it.”
“Just down the road,” Navajo Joe said. “A short trip.” He backed into the clearing and got his truck turned around. The two men returned and jumped in, and Joe started off. The truck moved slowly enough that Beth’s mother could walk beside it.
“Wait,” she said. “Just wait a minute. I don’t need it.”
“The little girl wants it,” Navajo Joe said.
Beth watched her mother and the truck moving together at the same speed. It formed a nice picture with a John Henry feel to it, the human being just as good as the machine. Gradually the picture broke apart and her mother was more at the front of the picture with the truck in the background. And then her mother got bigger as she returned to them and the truck dwindled away.
The little girl wants it. So, Beth thought, Navajo Joe liked her. At least that much was clear.