Call It Horses by Jessie Eerden (the reading list .TXT) 📕

was the first time we’d really driven as though we had only our destination in mind and the blue Olds was nothing but a means to an end. Let’s just get there already, said our slouching bodies, said Mave’s covert surveillance of her tank’s oxygen gauge, said Nan’s periodic sniffing of nail polish remover to drown out the dog stench, said the dog’s low whine.

At one point Mave confirmed the sensibility, said, “I’m ready to see the roofless room and see the rocks immortal, the New Mexico daylight.” She coughed lightly. “Get our turquoise rings in Abiquiú. Did you know about O’Keeffe’s macular degeneration, Nannette? Did you know she went blind holding her palette knives, calling up color from memory in her studio along the Rio Chama where the cotton of the cottonwoods snowed down—like radioactive fallout—upon the adobe ruins?” She coughed again. Nan uncapped the polish remover and sniffed.

“You can quote me on that in the book. That’s quotable.” Mave surreptitiously fished out a codeine from her brown sack in the door pocket. She took it skillfully without a drink, after surveying the empty cups crushed at her feet and in the console holes. She winced. I said I thought it was time we stop for the night.

It was late when we got to Fort Smith, which, Nan reported from her study of the atlas, was all the way on the western edge of the state, “like smack dab on the line of Oklahoma.” I pulled into the Super 8 lot where a street lamp dropped a wall-less wardrobe of blank light upon us.

“I don’t want to sleep,” said Mave.

“You’re tired,” I said. “We’re all tired. We’re sleeping.”

“Can you really ask about a pool this time?” said Nan. “I’m throwing Stinko in.” Stinko stirred to life, aspiring to a long pee or a snack.

“I’m not sleeping. I refuse.” The slur of the pill. “I’m ready for that red Oklahoma dirt.”

“Fine,” I said. “I’m sleeping and I’m taking these keys.”

Mave squinted at me, or at the light too bright. “I don’t want to miss this. Shh. Listen.” She pointed out her still-rolled-down window. The freeway was close, we heard only the revving whomp of semis.

“Your codeine is speaking to you,” I said.

“If we have to stop then fuck the Super 8,” Mave said. “Let’s camp out in the dry scrub. Let’s get a whiff of the Ozarks that lie to the north.”

“Unh-unh, I don’t camp,” said Nan.

“Sleep in the car then, Gypsy. Which are you afraid of? The rattlers and coyotes? Or the women that turned into hairy spiders?”

“I’m afraid of you, wacko.”

Mave cracked up.

“I’ll get us a room.”

I was weary and heavy-footed crossing the lot. I heard Mave say to Nan, “Lay me with the multi-eyed tarantulas. They jump, you know, they jumped when they were women. They’ll take me bite by bite and scurry up my legs, a furry foot where this tube runs right here to my nose holes. Then feed the rest of me to javelinas.” The car door opened. Ellis trailed me, lifted his leg on the lamppost.

“Pool,” yelled Nan.

A hollyhock lived, stick-straight in a half barrel of dark dirt outside the lobby door, surprising in its beauty. Smoking or non-smoking: smoking. The man demanded a pet fee since Ellis followed all the way to the glass door and smooshed his nose on it, waiting to be let in.

I pulled around to Room 131, popped the trunk as if it were routine.

“Seems like we ought to put one foot in Oklahoma, at least.” Mave pointed out my window. “I can see it over there. Traversed by Apache, Kiowa, Comanche, and Cheyenne. We’re close to Comanche territory.”

We loaded into the room. I filled Ellis’s Country Crock water bowl and he was wild with thirst. “Sorry, Flop,” I said. His kibble was dwindling more than it should have been, so I gave him a few of the lingering pork rinds.

Mave started stripping the comforter from one of the beds, tank armpit-tucked. Threw the blanket on the floor and ripped off the top sheet in one impressively forceful motion.

“Mave,” I said.

“Frankie,” she said. Balled up the sheet and carried it, and one of the two table chairs, out to the parking lot, to a far spot where there was little light.

“I would like you to shave my head,” Mave called.

“No,” I said. “Please bring the sheet back.”

“I want Little Gypsy to do it.”

Nan came out of the bathroom. “Do what?”

“She wants you to shave her head.”

Mave sat out in the parking lot facing the small dark hills, barber bed sheet draped around her. Nan and I closed the door. She claimed the Super 8 notepad. I pulled the table up to the bed so I could sit down at a surface, Nan scooted the chair into the other side and drew. She’d noticed the hollyhock too, and in lip liner she sketched a bed of them. She got up after about ten minutes and looked between the slatted blinds.

“She’s still sitting there. What a nut. She’s not coming in.”

“She will when the drugs wear off.”

“You know she has only a dozen of those pills left.”

“You checked?”

“Yeah.” She opened the door, yelled, “Come inside, Crazy.” Silence from Mave. “Why do you want a shaved head?” Silence from the parking lot. “I don’t have any clippers. No scissors, even.”

“Trade your body for some,” Mave said, face to the hills.

“Fuck off.”

But after another few minutes, Nan said to me, “What the hell. I’ll be back.” She’d stripped to her black slip, now pulled on her striped dress and ballet shoes. Ellis whimpered after her at the closed door.

Through the blinds, I watched her walk to a room across the courtyard where a Ford F150 was parked, which I thought was a bad idea. She knocked and the door opened, so I opened our door and stood in it so the shirtless man who opened knew there was a witness. Mave glanced toward Nan, then back to the hills away from me,