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WHEREIN HANK AND JANET TALK OVER DRINKS |
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iv.
OUR DRINKS ARRIVED at the bar of the Rusty Pelican. One of the perks of being with Janet was that bar seats and restaurant tables suddenly became available whenever she showed up.
I had my usual cold, Negro Modelo, in a glass, and a snifter of Cazadores. Janet had her demented White Zin, sparkling like pink punch in a heavy stemmed glass. A warm wind of roasted tri-tip feathered in the door. I could see Heaney and his pelican costume entertaining a group of Germans on the far side of the big room, having no idea how much Sean was making fun of them—complete revenge for the Ardennes Forest. Some Fornay were watching him as well, red faced and drinking, laughing along with the Pelican. The Fornay bowed their heads to Janet and greeted her, slightly embarrassed that they had been found out. Janet returned their greetings and chatted with them. When she turned to come back to the bar, they shuffled quickly out of sight with their beers and tequilas in hand.
“I know two of those guys aren’t supposed to be here,” Janet, sitting up on the bar stool in her gray slacks, matching blazer and white shirt. “Their wives are going to be pissed.”
“I recognize the one guy,” I said. “I’ve seen him face down around town.”
“I made his buddies promise to get him home.”
“Drunken Indians.”
Janet took a look around the place, adjusted her shirt, smiled,and lifted her glass to toast. “To Old Spanish Days.”
“To measles, fire water and glass beads.”
She toasted and I put my glass on the bar.
“Drink!” she chided me. “You always do that”
And I did. I had a strange habit of toasting and not drinking, like I really didn’t believe in what I was doing. I toasted back.“To the rest of our lives, sis,”
We both drank. The tequila was like firey sunshine. I became warm. Firecrackers and Germans punctuated the sounds of hilarity and libational positivism at the Rusty Pelican. Heaney and his pelican act were on in a way I hadn’t seen in a while. Since the Fornay had a Pelican cult tradition within their own culture, the three Indians enjoyed seeing Sean mess with the Germans. But the Germans—after eight or nine beers each—seemed happy to be messed with.
Janet filled me in on her lawsuit against the Fornay, where she essentially was suing the tribe, her own people, to comply with the Clean Water Act.
The town of El Fornio, California versus the Fornay Indian Tribe was all about two or so thousand years of shits being taken up in the Pass and now the effluent was making its way through three thousand feet of sandstone into the wells and cisterns of city and local wells.
“Human shit, and I don’t care if it is Native American shit,” said local tomatillo farmer, Ned Mason. “Ain’t fertilizer. It’s shit.”
And I knew a lot about that shit—as did anyone who kept up their reading in the local paper.
I had been on retainer the last four years to identify and DNA a well defined stash of Fornay turds and compare them with the colo-fecal DNA found in the water coming off of the mountain. You can imagine how fun that was. As for Janet, not only was she in a quandary having to sue the tribe, the Fornay themselves were up against their own kind of legal and cultural irony: Being a water cult, they believed that water was the presence of real magic and religion in the world, an ever-present transcendence, both practical and unique, that didn’t depend on faith and waiting around for a savior. It was already here. You had to thank every asteroid that ever smashed into the planet for bringing lush water to the world. Unfortunately, it wasn’t until about 1980 that the Fornay realized they had been shitting on it for two thousand-odd years.
I looked out one of the big bay windows of the resaturant, hand- and fingerprint-smudged as it was, and saw the sun falling, the shadows beginning to move amongst candlepower and lanterns. Depending upon age and ethnicity, everyone downtown was high on some kind of sugar, protein, alcohol, or datura. The sound of Fornay elders, other run-of the-mill Indians, Mariachis, tourists, and the El Fornio High School Moor marching band and their costumed horses, rose into a dusty midden above the city. Our little crazed town at that instant was a clinkety-clack of party favors, both ancient and new. Just to the south, the contrail crystals of a Minuteman rocket launch out of Vandenberg Air Force base began to show themselves through the sunlight with the pastel colors of Lucky Charms marshmallows. Festival goers in the street turned to look up at the hot flare of the rocket and its trail before it disappeared into the upper atmosphere, heading for the South Pacific.
I turned to Janet, whose face was going pink. “Let’s head back to my place.”
She looked me over.
“I mean the historical society when I say my place,” I said. “I’ve got something to show you.”
“Alright,” she nodded. “It is Friday.”
“Yeah," I assured her. "You're going to win, Janet. Just not in the next three hours. So relax.”
We split the tab, waved to Sean and his pelican act, and headed out of the Rusty and back into the crowd.
As we hit the din, there was the jing-jing-jing of an ice cream peddler hitting his bell. Heads in the crowd cocked and gleaned towards the colors of the Minuteman launch.
Janet and I took a side street. At times like this, we did end up like brother and sister. I would never try to hold her hand and she would just keep up with me, like a buddy on a hike. Sometimes she would get ahead and I would have to keep up with her.
As we passed the front of the historical society, I was still trying to figure out what it was that I had to show her. While I really hadn’t lied, I just hadn’t figured out what it was.
“Here, let’s go around back. When was the last time you were here?” I wondered.
“A couple of months of ago. Remember? I brought some Fornay kids down to look at the padre’s heart.”
“Oh, yeah. One of your tribal history lessons.”
“As I remember,” Janet became factual. “They spent more time looking at your mahogoney cases of dried turds than paying attention to the heart.”
“Oohing and awing, I would call it,” I smiled. “The kids knew that they could be related to the carpolites. But the heart? How are you going to get that across to them.”
As we approached the backside of the building, I saw the rear entrance was open, the breeze floating the pine door back and forth on its hinges. I paused for a moment and reflected—did I leave that open?
We wandered into the building. Up to the point of finding the door open, I was still wondering what I was going to show Janet. We looked around, gauging the room and hallways.
“Hello?” I hollered. Only the sound of the festival outside.
The cash register seemed fine. The books were all in place. The mahagony cases shining to the side casting sharp yellow light. But something was different. It was Janet who noticed first.
“It’s gone,” she let.
“What’s gone?” I looked, following her eyes.
“The heart. The heart is gone,” she said calmly.
And sure enough it was. A round area of clear table top sat in the middle of the dust where the heart had been. Whomever had grabbed it was sure to lift the jar straight up and not leave a mark.
“Who would steal Junipero Serra’s heart?” I asked, perplexed, holding back a laugh.
Janet looked at me. “You never really paid much attention to this part, Hank.”
“What part?”
“The heart part,” she said.
“I guess not,” I nodded, starting another laugh. “But I don’t get it. Who would take the heart?
Janet looked me over, not as a sister or even a friend. Her eyes narrowed and she turned slightly askance. I saw that she was completely separate from me as her thoughts focused on a blank part of the room, on an empty spot on the wall.
“Only about a two or three dozen people,” she replied. “Most of whom we know.”
"Sheesh," I thought, and laughed one more time.
