Pigs in Heaven - Barbara Kingsolver [37]
“Good work, Sherlock, only, A, even if Taylor were a mechanic she’d probably tell me to fix my own car. And B, she’s not one. It used to be mainly a tire store, but Taylor hates tires so when they branched into auto parts Mattie let her take over the muffler and fanbelt side of the enterprise.”
“I guess she had vacation time saved up.”
“Nobody down there exactly punches a clock,” Jax says. “It’s a nice outfit. Kind of sixties Amish. They take in strays.”
“Like Turtle?”
“Like Central American refugees. Could I remind you that you are the engineer of my recent wrecked life? Is this an official interrogation?”
“I’m sorry. No. I can get the information some other way, if you’d like me to go now and leave you alone.”
“Left alone is exactly what I have been,” Jax says. He’s quiet long enough for Annawake to hear air moving around them.
“Mattie loves Taylor like a son,” he says suddenly. “So you’re going to end up talking to the air compressors down there. Don’t waste your time.”
“But you can’t tell me where she’s gone, I don’t suppose.”
“You suppose correctly.”
They both watch as the sun touches the mountains. The horizon is softly indented as if the landscape had been worn down right there, like the low spot in the center of an old marble step, by the repeated tread of sunset. The red ball collapses, then silently hemorrhages into the surrounding clouds.
“I may get phone calls now and again, to let me know they’re all right. But there is no forwarding address.”
“Well, thanks for being honest,” Annawake says.
Jax laces his fingers behind his head and cracks some junction of his bones with a resounding pop. “I do a lot of wicked things to my body, but I never perjure it.”
“Wise choice,” she says. “Only we’re not in court.”
“So are they really in trouble? Is this going to be a James Dean kind of situation where the Cherokee Nation chases them down to the riverbank and shines the lights in their eyes and finally they surrender?”
Annawake says, “No.”
“Could I have that in writing?”
“You haven’t told me anything, but you’ve been very nice about it, so I’ll be honest with you. The Cherokee Nation isn’t pursuing this case, I am. The thing is full of holes. I don’t know how we can prove Turtle is Cherokee, unless some relatives come forward on the Nation. And even if that happens, I’m not positive the tribe’s Child Welfare Department would take her from Taylor. Or even if they should.”
“What does the law say?”
“The law says we can take her. There have been kids who were with adoptive parents five, ten years, that the Indian Child Welfare Act has brought back to their tribe, because the adoptions were illegal.”
“Wow. That’s radioactive.”
“It’s hard for someone outside of our culture to understand, I guess. To see anything more sacred than Mom and Dad and little red baby makes three.”
“What do you see?”
Annawake hesitates. “First choice? I’d rather have seen her go into a Cherokee home, with relatives, that’s always the best thing. But we can’t always get first choice. And now that she’s been taken out, it’s way complicated. My boss thinks I’m on the warpath. Annawake Crazy Horse.”
“Are you?”
“Well, sure. Taylor should have gotten permission from the tribe. And Turtle should have connections with her people. She should know…” Annawake pauses, corrects her aim. “There are ways of letting her know about who she is. My position is essentially neutral. I have information Taylor could use.”
“Neutral snootral. You know that thing they say about getting between a mother bear and her cub? Annie dear, you might think you’re just out picking blueberries, but that’s highly irrelevant to Mama Bear.”
“I accept your point.”
A small breeze seems to come right up out of the ground, stirring the tree branches in every direction. Voices drift down from the large stone house on the hill, fragments of laughter, and a chorus of bird chatter rises from the mesquite thicket. Annawake listens to the bird music, identifying some of its individual parts: the monotonous croon of a dove, a woodpecker