Barbara Kingsolver - The Bean Trees

“Now, what else can I do for you?”

“I’m not sure. I’m looking for somebody.”

“Oh, who? Were you meeting them here for lunch?”

“No, it’s not like that. It’s kind of complicated. I was in here last December and met some people I have to find again. I think they might live around here. It’s very important.”

She leaned on her elbows on the counter. “What was their names?”

“I don’t know. There was a woman, and two men in cowboy hats. I think one of them might have been her husband, or her boyfriend. I know, this isn’t getting anywhere. Ed knew their names.”

“Ed?”

“Isn’t that who runs this place?”

“No. My parents own it. We bought it in March, I think. Or April.”

“Well, would your parents know Ed? Would he be around here?”

She shrugged. “The place was just up for sale. I think whoever owned it before musta died. It was gross in here.”

“You mean he died in here ?”

She laughed. “No, I just mean all the dirt and stuff. I had to scrub the grease off the back of the stove. It was black . I was thinking about running away and going back home. We’re not from here, we’re from over on tribal land. But I like some kids here now.”

“Do any of the same people come in here that always did? Like men, drinking after work and that kind of thing.”

She shrugged.

“Right. How would you know.”

I stared at my cup of coffee as though I might find the future in it, like the chickenbone lady back home.

“I don’t know what to do,” I finally said.

She nodded out the window. “Maybe you should bring your friends in for lunch.”

I did. We sat at one of the spick-and-span tables with plastic flowers and had grilled-cheese sandwiches. Turtle bounced in her seat and fed tiny pieces of grilled cheese to Shirley Poppy. Estevan and Esperanza were quiet. Of course. You couldn’t speak Spanish in this part of the country-it would be noticed.

After lunch I went up to the register to pay. No other member of the family had materialized from the kitchen, so I asked the girl if there was anyone else around that might help me. “Do you know the guy that runs the garage next door? Bob Two Two?”

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 said.

Esperanza and Estevan were transformed in an unexplainable way over the next two hours. They showed a new side, like the Holy Cards we used to win for attendance in summer Bible school: mainly there was a picture of Jesus on the cross, a blurred, shimmering picture with flecks of pink and blue scattered through it, but tip it just so and you could see a dove flying up out of His chest. That was the Holy Ghost.

We must have been getting closer to the heart of the Cherokee Nation, whatever or wherever it was, because as we drove east we saw fewer and fewer white people. Everybody and his mother-in-law was an Indian. All the children were Indian children, and the dogs looked like Indian dogs. At one point a police car came up behind us and we all got quiet and kept an eye out, as we had grown accustomed to doing, but when he passed us we just had to laugh. The cop was an Indian.

It must have been a very long time since Esperanza and Estevan had been in a place where they looked just like everybody else, including cops. The relief showed in their bodies. I believe they actually grew taller. And Turtle fit right in too; this was her original home. I was the odd woman out.