The Bean Trees - Barbara Kingsolver [94]
She shook her head. “He never came over here, because we serve beer. He was some religion, I forget what.”
“Are you telling me he’s dead now too? Give me a break.”
“Nah, he just closed. I think Pop said he was getting a place closer to Okie City.”
“It wasn’t even a year ago that I was here.”
She shrugged. “Nobody ever comes out here anyway. I never could see who would go to that garage in the first place.”
I put the change in my pocket. “Well, thanks anyway,” I told her. “Thanks for trying to help. I hope your family does all right by this place. You’ve fixed it up real nice.”
She made a small gesture with her shoulders. “Thanks.”
“What did you mean when you said you came from tribal land? Isn’t this the Cherokee Nation?”
“This! No, this is nothing. This is kind of the edge of it I guess, they do have that sign up the road that says maintained by the Cherokee tribe. But the main part’s over east, toward the mountains.”
“Oklahoma has mountains?”
She looked at me as though I might be retarded. “Of course. The Ozark Mountains. Come here, look.” She went over to the postcard rack and picked out some of the scenery cards. “See how pretty? That’s Lake o’ the Cherokees; we used to go there every summer. My brothers like to fish, but I hate the worms. And this is another place on the same lake, and this is Oologah Lake.”
“That looks beautiful,” I said. “That’s the Cherokee Nation?”
“Part of it,” she said. “It’s real big. The Cherokee Nation isn’t any one place exactly. It’s people. We have our own government and all.”
“I had no idea,” I said. I bought the postcards. I would send one to Mama, although she was married now of course and didn’t have any use for our old ace in the hole, the head rights. But even so I owed an apology to great grandpa, dead though he was.
As we were leaving I asked her about the TV. “That’s the one thing that’s still the same. What’s with it anyway? Doesn’t anybody ever turn the sound up?”
“The stupid thing is broke. You get the sound on one station and the picture on the other. See?” She flipped to the next channel, which showed blue static but played the sound perfectly. It was a commercial for diet Coke. “My gramma likes to leave it on 9, she’s just about blind anyway, but the rest of us like it on 8.”
“Do you ever get the Oral Roberts shows?”
She shrugged. “I guess. I like Magnum P.I.”
Somehow I had been thinking that once we got back in the car and on the road again, everything would make sense and I would know what to do. I didn’t. This time I didn’t even know which way to head the car. If only Lou Ann were here, I thought. Lou Ann with her passion for playing Mrs. Neighborhood Detective. I knew she would say I was giving up too easily. But what was I supposed to do? Stake out the bar for a week or two and see if the woman ever showed up again? Would I recognize her if she did? Would she be willing to go to Oklahoma City with me to sign papers?
There had never been the remotest possibility of finding any relative of Turtle’s. I had driven across the country on a snipe hunt. A snipe hunt is a joke on somebody, most likely some city cousin. You send him out in the woods with a paper bag and see how long it takes for him to figure out what a fool he is.
But it also occurred to me to wonder why I had come this far. Generally speaking, I am not a fool. I must have wanted something, and wanted it badly, to believe that hard in snipes.
“I can’t give up,” I said as I turned the car around. I smacked my palms on the steering wheel again and again. “I just can’t. I want to go to Lake o’ the Cherokees. Don’t even ask me why.”
They didn’t ask.
“So do you want to come with me, or should we take you to your church now? Really, I can go either way.”
They wanted to come with me. I can see, looking back on it, that we were getting attached.
“We’ll have a picnic by the lake, and stay in a cabin, and maybe find a boat somewhere and go out on the water. We’ll have a vacation,” I told them. “When’s the last time you two had a vacation?”
Estevan thought for a while. “Never.”
“Me too,” I