father information. What she told him would cause him to accompany my mother to her office and back home for the next two days. On the third day my father asked her to write him out a list for the grocery.
He insisted that we go instead of her and that she lock the door behind us and keep Pearl in the house. From all of this I gathered that Linden Lark was back in the area. My mind wouldn’t go any farther. I wasn’t thinking about it—I couldn’t stand thinking about it. It was out of my mind entirely when my father asked me to go to the grocery store with him. I had been on my way to meet up with Cappy and carve out a newer and faster series of jumps in the dirt. I resented going with my father to the grocery, but he said it would take two of us to decipher and find all of the exact things my mother wanted—which, when I saw her slanted script with even the brand names listed and tiny bits of advice in choosing properly, looked like the truth.
That we have a real grocery store on our reservation is no small thing. It used to be that, besides the commodity warehouse, food came from the tiny precursor store—Puffy’s Place. The old store sold mainly nonperishable items—tea, flour, salt, peanut butter—plus surplus garden vegetables or game meat. It sold beadwork, moccasins, tobacco, and gum. For real food our people had traveled off reservation twenty miles or more to put our money in the pockets of store clerks who watched us with suspicion and took our money with contempt. But with our own grocery now, run by our own tribal members and hiring our own people to bag and stock, we had something special. Even though the pop machine out front was banged in, the magic doors swished shut on slow grandmas, and children smudged the gumball machine until you couldn’t see the colors of the candy, it was our very own grocery. Trucks came to it, like a regular store, stocked it, and then drove away.
My father and I walked in past the wall of tattered powwow posters and ads for cars to sell. We got a grocery cart. Dad unfolded the list.
Dried pinto beans.
I pointed out that Mom had instructed us to shake and examine the plastic bag of beans and make sure it contained no small rocks. We located the beans in the pasta aisle.
A spotted pebble is going to look just like a bean, I said to my father, turning the rectangular package this way and that.
We should stock up, said my father, throwing six or seven bags into the cart. These are cheap. We can spread the beans in a pan and check for rocks when we get home.
Tomato paste, canned tomatoes—Rotel, the kind with chilies—4 cans each. Five pounds of hamburger meat. Lean if you can get it, the list said.
Lean? Why would she want lean?
Less grease, said my father.
I like grease.
Me too.
He threw some packages into the cart.
Cumin, I read. In the spice aisle we found cumin.
She was making extra food to bring to Clemence, to pay her back for all the dinners.
I read. Lettuce, carrots, then onions and we’re supposed to smell the onions first to make sure they aren’t rotten inside.
Fruit. Whatever fruit is good, said my father, peering over my shoulder at the list. I guess we are able to make that decision, anyway, regarding the fruit. What do you think?
We looked at a pile of muskmelons. Some had spots. There were grapes. All had spots. There was a bucket of local berries and some plums. Dad chose a melon and filled paper bags with plums and a plastic mesh bucket with the berries.
We bought chicken, an anemic-looking fryer, cut up, and we counted all the packaged pieces like she said. We bought another package that contained only thighs. We bought barbecue sauce and Old Dutch potato chips, for me. A couple of cans of mushroom soup went into the cart. At the bottom of the list was milk and butter, a 1-pound box of wrapped sticks, salted, and 1 pound wrapped whole, sweet. Cream.
What does she mean wrapped whole? My father stopped beside me, frowning at the paper. He held a carton of cream in one hand. Why sweet? Why salted?
I was pushing the cart in front of my dad, and so I saw Linden Lark first. He was leaning