THEO
“THEY SAID they had to go to California,” Tula May explained. “They gived me cookies and said they’d be back in a couple days. Mark—that’s mommy’s new boyfriend—says I was too ugly to go outside, said animals would eat me. ‘Stay put in the house,’ he said.” Her shoulders hunched. She stared into her milk glass, then back at that basket of socks in my hutch. “They were gonna leave in the mornin’, but then that big man came. I hided outside in Granny’s hidin’ place.” Her brown eyes were dull, not playful.
“Tula, I—”
“Oh,” she said, sitting up straight, “it’s okay.” She then tapped the top of her spirit guide. “Solomon said it was a lie. He said I’m beautiful, and nobody can change what Great South Wind has maked,” she proudly announced. “Mrs. B heard him, and she agreed. And you know that don’t happen much. So I figure, must be true.” She somberly looked down to her glass.
“Well, sweetie . . . Solomon never lies.” I reached down and gently touched her chin, tipping her face up. “And yes, he was right. Look at you! You’re a very pretty girl.”
A smile tickled the edges of her lips but, like the morning sun, was too weak to fight through the clouds and make an appearance. “I’ll bet the day you were born your mother said you were as beautiful as the tulips in May, and then decided that must be your name.”
Her eyes glistened. “Ya think?”
“Of course she did. How else could you have the name of God’s favorite flowers? I’m sure you were named for the red and pink tulips of May.”
Her face flushed. She sat quietly, taking in my words, then said, “I know you call South Wind ‘God.’ Solomon told me. It means the same. It’s jus’ God’s so big he needs lots a names.” She carefully set her empty glass on the table and wiped her mouth with her arm. “Mommy said there’s no God. She jus’ don’t know yet. And Mark said God didn’t care ’bout ugly kids.”
“Seems Mark says a lot,” I said, tightening my grip on the tin soldier in my pocket.
“Yep. Mark said Mommy should jus’ leave me with Granny and go to Frisco so she can sing in nightclubs. He said I jus’ got in the way.”
I ran my hand across the stubbles on my chin, gripping my mouth shut, stifling anger. “Sweetheart,” I said, “you’re not in anybody’s way, not ever.” I handed her another cookie and asked, “Now, can you tell me what the big man looked like?”
“No, I hided my eyes and crawled outside. I didn’t like his voice. He was loud and mean. He scared me. Then they all started yellin’ so I covered my ears like Granny taught me to do when they’s fightin’. Mommy fights with people a lot.”
“That’s okay,” I said. “You’re safe now.”
Despite it all, Tula May was curious about her surroundings, playful with her new bucket companions, and she listened to anyone who spoke to her with a keen interest. She had been left alone so much in the small house on Neahkahnie that I supposed the sound of someone talking would fascinate her the rest of her life.
“Solomon came at night,” she said, “and sleeped on the front porch so I wouldn’t be a-scared. Then when they didn’t come home,” she let out a labored breath, “he said I needed to come to his house cause his old bones can’t sleep on that hard porch no more.” She reached over, pointed at my white collar and asked, “Why you wear that?”
“Well . . . it’s a . . . it’s my uniform, like Sheriff Bud wears a badge, I wear a white collar.”
“So you can talk to people about your God, right?”
“Yes, but he’s everybody’s God, not just mine. He’s yours, too.”
“Nope,” she said. “I don’t know God, but I’m close to havin’ a real spirit guide.” She scooted out of the chair and grabbed her White Sea Otter, securing it in her pouch. She then straightened the strap across her chest so it settled at her belted waist, glanced at her notepad, nodded to herself as if to approve of her notes, and slid it back into her bag.
She was smart, loving, and intensely observant; a sponge absorbing Solomon’s world, like I had. A carved spirit guide, two creatures to love unconditionally, and schooling: Solomon spinning a restorative web. He more than anyone could eradicate the venom that had sunk into her spirit. I’d learned the hard way that there were times to battle the darkness and other times to surrender and just let in the light. Perhaps in God’s divine wisdom, He knew this village needed a child. In that instant I knew Tula May, like Solomon, must remain in Manzanita. Needed to spin a web of my own.
“Soon I’ll have a spirit inside me,” she said. “Solomon says yours is that fat raven.”
“Oh,” I said, looking outside where Raven watched from the madrone tree. “Well, yes.”
“Can I clean my friends?” she asked. “Solomon said I could.”
“Of course,” I said and opened the door. The rain had stopped. I ushered her out and turned on the garden hose. The sun splashed and sparkled over the wet yard. “Here’s a bucket and a scrub brush. You warm enough?” I asked. She nodded and fervently got to work scrubbing her loved ones, whispering to them they’d be alright. I didn’t want her to be alone in the yard with the black panel truck lurking, so I stayed outside with her.
“When I don’t wash ’em they stinks to high heaven, Mrs. B says. So it’s my job to keep ’em clean. All Rounders have jobs, ya know.”
Even at her age she knew having a job meant belonging. She never belonged before, never had something of her very own to love and care for—so she washed those creatures as if they were the crown jewels.
“And you’re doing a good job,” I said. “A real good job.”
Certainly nothing could replace the love of a good mother, but that wasn’t what she had. Some parents didn’t deserve children. The women in this town could lavish love on her. Of course if her mother came back, hearts would be broken. But, then, no real love is ever wasted, and rumor had it, sooner or later broken hearts mend.
Tula May was in the right place. If thrown into foster care, she’d be lost. If Bud knew, he’d insist we turn her over to the authorities. But the ironclad laws of Bud’s world could assert themselves over and over and never make things right. Manzanita was a separate, private part of God’s cosmos, where the impossible was still possible and where Solomon always knew best.
Sun quickly gave way to a blanket of clouds. From my porch I heard the waves and foraging seagulls and looked around at the morning—looked also for that truck. Across the street the clatter of Imogene’s sign clanked against the glass window on her door as she flipped to OPEN. The smell of donuts in the deep fryer perfumed the air. My gaze landed, as it always did, on the still-vacant Bouvre house.
Out-of-season rifle shots blasted through the trees somewhere off in the distance, toward Elk Flats. Black silhouettes of birds scattered like ink spots against the sky.
“Tula May, let’s get a fresh donut, shall we?” I said reaching my hand out to hold hers. She didn’t accept but walked close by my side, clutching her suede pouch. Solomon emerged from Imogene’s back door.
“There were three shots on the flats,” I said. “Did you hear them?”
He nodded, leaned down to Tula May, and said, “Clean your friends?”
“Yep,” she said.
“Good. Duh-HOOTS-nuh,” he said patting the top of her head.
She darted a look at me and said, “That’s a dead word, but I like it. Means good girl.”
“It’s a good word, honey,” I said. “I like it, too.”
“You go inside with Imogene,” Solomon said.
“But . . . I been waitin’ for you.”
He leaned down again, knife at his belt, medicine pouch at his side. “You go now.”
“Okaaay,” she whined and stomped into the store.
“I be back soon,” he said, nodding to me to still keep an eye on her. He then hurried down the alleyway and cut through backyards, zigzagging to the trailhead up Neahkahnie. I knew he’d follow those shots to see who was hunting out of season. Not that he cared much for man’s law, but he did care about strangers not respecting Mother Nature.
One year he tied three “early”’ hunters to their rig and left them on the flats for two days before Bud followed up on reports of people screaming and found them there. They had killed two mother deer and their fawns; someone had spread their victims out in front of the men. The “city boy” hunters were lucky someone didn’t cut their throats.
When Bud brought the poachers back into town, the then eighty-two-year-old Solomon sat on his bench in front of Imogene’s and glared at them. Bud asked the city boys if that old Indian there was the one who got the drop on all three of them. None of their egos could reconcile the long, grey hair and wrinkled skin with the “crazed warrior who appeared out of nowhere” who jumped them in the middle of the night. As Bud expected, no one pressed charges.