News From Native California - Spring 2016 Volume 29 Issue 3 | Page 31

and his granddad. But their talk of leaving the Rez and consequently leaving each other is countered by the warmth and fit of each other’s hands, and with each step, with each word, with each laugh, it gets harder to let go. In Spring, men uncover the backyard barbecues. The more fastidious might even scrape off last year’s greasy grit. The charcoal is lit and carne asada sears on the grill. The picnic table brims with fresh guacamole, beans boiled with ham hocks, salsas both red and green, Indian potato salad made with generous dollops of Best Foods mayonnaise, and a stack of torts. Beers cool in a tub of ice and people laugh and talk between bites. Dwight Yoakam is on the stereo singing about the “Pocket of a Clown,” heads bob as folks chew. After the meal, horseshoes resume, iron shoes clanging against steel pegs. Men hoot and trash talk when a double ringer is thrown, but these days more women throw shoes as well, and maybe she throws the double ringer and trash talk commences in a higher pitch. In Spring, a newlywed bride, taking her new wife role seriously, is every Indian man’s dream. She looks terrific barefoot, in bun-hugging shorts and a tight halter-top. She’s elbow deep in a bowl of dough, her inexperienced fingers trying to hear what her DNA is telling her. Her mother and grandmothers have done this to perfection, she wonders why she didn’t pay more attention when they tried to teach her the right consistency for tortilla dough. But she tries. In her palms, she forms lopsided balls about the size of lemons. She flours the board, pressing out with dough with her rolling pin, flattening them into circles that more closely resemble maps of Texas. She heats the comal, the cast-iron one she got as a wedding present, blisters tortillas on it, and when cooked, sets them on a plate covered with a dish towel. And he comes home from a day of pounding nails to find his wife making tortillas. He smiles. She looks so cute with bits of dough and flour sticking to her cheek because she tried to swipe some hair from her eyes with fingers still sticky with dough. Spring causes men in T-shirts to suck in their guts as they walk into the Rez store—just in case. An Indian marriage without tortillas? Well, let’s just say he doesn’t want that. And she proudly butters one and hands it to him. And if he knows what’s good for him, he won’t say a thing about Texas, or how they are a little salty for his taste. No, he’ll shut up and eat, making only sounds of pleasure, lavishing her with praise, because when an Indian woman’s feelings get hurt there’s hell to pay. She may get mad and never make him another tortilla. An Indian marriage without tortillas? Well, let’s just say he doesn’t want that. In the 1950s and 1960s, reservation house parties were Lucky Lager gatherings, that being the Indian beer back then. Tall cans of Lucky Lager would sit everywhere, and whoever cleaned up in the morning would find many half full, but with a cigarette in them. And people would stack forty-fives on the record changer, and the song would go from a bopping “Rock around the Clock,” to a grinder from the Platters, to the stroll, where people would line up and a couple would stroll down the center. There was something permanent to the stroll, because there are Indian couples who strolled in 1958, that still stroll today. You see them at Indian weddings, these days grayer, slower, a little rounder, but still able to smile at each other as they dance. And when the wedding is over, they walk out arm in arm, still in love after all these years. The couple getting married would do well to watch and learn. Because Indian love has its vicissitudes, its good days and bad, days when she thinks her lover is little better than a Rez dog, but somewhere, deep down, love abides. Indian love is often a diehard love, a love spiced with equal parts laughter and passion, and jealousy and contention. But through it all, love can and does endure. It’s a love often begun in the Spring, when basketballs swish through nets, and the girls, pretty as all get out, throw cat-eyed glances at the guys, who might try, but can’t stop thinking about them. Author’s Note: The clever lede in this essay, of course, is a nod to John Steinbeck’s novel Cannery Row. SPR IN G 2 016 ▼ 29