Pigs in Heaven - Barbara Kingsolver [149]
“I’ve got to go down to the Council Chambers and give my recommendation in half an hour. And you haven’t told me a thing.”
“Not a thing, no.”
“Except that maybe I don’t want to jump for joy to see a baby cut in half. Which she’s going to be, either way.”
“Can I tell you something, little hothead?”
“What?”
“There’s something else growing back with your hair.”
“What’s that?”
“Sense. Used to be, you wanted your side to win all the time.”
“They taught me that in yonega law school.”
“Must be. You never had a bit of it in you before. I never saw you knocking down your own brothers to hit the score in a stickball game.”
“Okay, then, if you knew me so well, you never should have let me go to law school. If you knew it would just bring out my worst nature.”
“If you have a frisky horse you put him in a race. You don’t put him behind a plow.”
Annawake gets up, dusts off her knees and her seat. “What do you know from horses, anyway? You’re a Cherokee, not some war-whooping featherheaded Sioux.”
“I know enough about horses. I know you want one that has a good heart.”
“I hear Dellon’s truck up on the road. He’s driving me over to Headquarters. I’d better go.”
“Annawake, you’ve got you a good heart. Run with it. Your whole life, you’ve been afraid of yourself.” He is looking right at her. Not through her, like most people do, to the paper doll that is Annawake Fourkiller, but into her.
She stands with her mouth open, waiting for a word. Nothing comes. Then, “How did you know?”
Ledger seems entirely occupied with his pipe. He waves her off. “Birdy told me.”
Dellon is idling with the radio on. He turns it down when she gets in. “So did Ledger blow smoke on you and bless you for the hunt?”
“He blew smoke all right. He aggravates me. Nobody ought to be that smart.”
“Yeah, well, Annawake. That’s what some people say about you.” He rolls his eyes. “I wouldn’t know who.”
“If I’m so smart, how come I’m miserable?”
On the radio, Randy Travis’s croony voice dips low over someone who’s been gone for too long.
“You just need you a man, that’s all,” Dellon says.
Annawake exhales sharply. “I’ve had enough men in my life to last me about seven lifetimes. Think about it, Dell, growing up with all you guys, and Daddy, and Uncle Ledger. All those penises! You all had me surrounded like a picket fence.”
Dellon shifts in his seat uncomfortably. “It wasn’t that bad, was it?”
“No, Dellon, it’s nothing personal against your body organs. But men are just not necessarily always the solution.”
He stares at her until his truck runs into the ditch. He glances up and swerves back. “I’m going to have to put that in my pipe and smoke it awhile,” he says.
She gives him the smile that has been knocking boys dead for twenty-seven years, with absence of malice. “You just do that.”
33
The Gambling Agenda
THE MEETING THAT TOOK PLACE previously in the Council Chamber room must have been concerned with the Bingo question. On the blackboard at the front of the room someone has written in narrow, forward-slanting letters:
TODAY’S AGENDA—GAMING ON TRIBAL LAND, YAY OR NAY? PRESENTATIONS
1. Cyrus Stonecipher. “The pritfalls of gambling, a story too often told”
2. Betty Louise Squirrel. “Bingo, everybody wins!”
Annawake Fourkiller and Andy Rainbelt sit at the long speakers’ table down in front with their backs to the chalkboard, apparently unaware of the gambling agenda. Andy Rainbelt seems festive in a blue calico shirt with satin ribbon trim at the yoke, similar to the one Annawake wore the day she and Taylor met. Taylor can remember exactly how she looked. Today she’s a different person, in black-rimmed glasses and a haircut that seems worrisome to her. She keeps pushing it out of her way.
Turtle, Taylor, and Alice are sitting together in the red movietheater chairs that fill the small auditorium. Turtle swings her legs so the toes of her sneakers drum out a steady tha-bump against the empty seat in front of her. The rows are set in a V-shape facing the speakers’ table, with an aisle down the center. Those in attendance