Pie Town - Lynne Hinton [15]
“He ask you about the music?” Malene spoke before he got too far down the hall.
Roger turned around and nodded with a smile. “There will be music,” he replied and turned around again.
“See you tomorrow, Roger,” Malene called out.
He nodded and kept walking, while Malene opened a folder and picked up a pen.
“He still looking for Angel, trying to bring her home?” Christine was back from giving meds to her patient.
“He’ll never stop,” Malene replied. She jotted down a few notes and picked up another folder.
“Is that why you broke up?” Christine asked. She sat down in the chair next to Malene.
Malene turned to the younger woman. She shook her head. “No,” she answered. “That wasn’t why we broke up.”
Christine waited for more from Malene, but her colleague kept working on her files. Christine sat down and pulled out the schedule for the following week. She hadn’t noticed before that it had been completed. “I got six shifts,” she said, going over the next week’s assignments and sounding perturbed. “I told Shirley I only wanted five.”
“We’re short-staffed again,” Malene noted. “I’m working six too. They’re trying to hire somebody.”
“Hiring somebody and keeping somebody are two different things,” Christine said. She put the schedule back in its place beside the phone. “Well, I guess I can use the money, right? So why did you break up then?” she asked, returning to the earlier topic of conversation.
Malene finished her charts and placed them back on the chart rack. “I got a lot of work to do, Christine,” she replied.
The younger woman could see that she was being dismissed and that Malene wasn’t going to answer any more of her questions about her former marriage. She had never really given a reason for the divorce, and Christine was always curious. She watched as Malene hunted for her supplies to give baths. “Doesn’t matter anyway,” she said. “You might as well not be divorced. Y’all act like every married couple I know. You’re worse than that couple on Mrs. Henderson’s soap opera.” She found a bath cloth on the counter, picked it up, and threw it at Malene. “I say, you should just get back together. Then maybe he wouldn’t come around here so much and you’ll quit being so bossy.”
Malene took the cloth and folded it, adding it to the supplies she had gathered. “Thank you, Christine. I’ll keep your advice in mind the next time I have a minute to think about Roger and me.” And she headed out of the nurses’ station and down the hall to finish her work.
Chapter Seven
It makes a little rattle when I rev up the engine.” Oris was talking to Frank, the town mechanic. Frank had his head under the hood, listening for the noise Oris had called about earlier that morning when he made an appointment for an oil change.
“Hit the gas again,” Frank called out, and Oris bore down on the pedal.
Frank waited a second and then finally pulled his head out and closed the hood. “I don’t hear it, Oris. It sounds fine.” He wiped his hands on the rag he had hanging from his back pocket, then held the rag and waited. He was tall, and he wore his black hair in a long ponytail that hung down his back.
“Listen again. I swear there’s a rattle.” Oris was seated behind the wheel of his new Buick. He revved up the engine again and waited.
Frank shook his head, confirming what he had just said—he couldn’t hear anything.
“I thought you Indians could hear things the rest of us couldn’t.” Oris turned off the engine and swung his legs around, placing his feet on the ground. It was hot and he was sweating.
Frank walked over to Oris. “That’s your wife’s people, Zuni, they’re the trackers, the ones with good ears. For us, it’s just another myth, Oris, just like the one that claims we aren’t good at business. You owe me twenty dollars for the oil change.” He stood next to the open door. Frank was Navajo, and his family had been in Catron County for generations.
“I was told that my oil changes were free for the first year of ownership,” Oris responded. He stepped out of the car. “You see the size of the trunk?” he asked.