driver's side door. Through the open window, he hands Sam a wad of bills. He says,"
Diablo.
"
Sam hands him the receipt, stuffs the bills into his pocket, and turns the truck key.
"Don't you want to count it?" Jorge says.
"I trust you," Sam says.
Molina shakes his head. "Don't do this again, Sam. Come in regular. Okay?"
Sam eyeballs him.
"
Ladrón,
" Molina says, and spits on the ground.
Sam says, "I don't know what that means, Moley, but I'm going to take it as a compliment."
11
T UESDAY NIGHT, Rosy called Lily and asked her to drive out to their storage unit to look for old files from the mill. They had rented the unit together in Durango before moving to Shiprock because the company houses were a fraction the size of their mountain homes and they couldn't stand to part with everything. Just before the Shiprock mill closed, Ryland had taken a file cabinet full of his personal files up to the storage unit. He turned everything else over to the company.
The unit is in a city of asphaltârows and rows of padlocked cubes. Lily walks along the cement floor, Tom Jones singing, "It's not unusual to be loved by anyone," through the invisible speakers overhead. She inserts her key into the heavy-duty padlock on 1-12, unlocks it, slides the bolt, opens the door, steps inside, and switches on the light. She pulls the door shut behind her.
Lily got rid of all the furniture she had shared with Sam. There are still a few pieces from her and Rosy's childhoodâan old birch coffee table that they'd secretly inscribed as kids, crawling underneath to crayon their names and, as teenagers, boys' names; the chrome dinette table that had been the family's kitchen table; a clawfoot bathtub that had been in their grandparents' home. There's a mountain of boxes full of junk. Lily has always been a collector. As a girl and after she married, she kept scrapbooks with relics from every important eventâpictures of her and Rosy dancing with Sam and Ryland at Grange Hall dances, pressed leaves, the first colors of fall each time fall came around, a pressed mumâthe first corsage Sam gave her. She has no pictures of Sam in her house. No pictures, no scrapbooks, just the bills for the storage unit.
Ryland's file cabinet is just inside the door, along with several cardboard boxes full of mill stuff. Lily's own file cabinet, a smaller one, is full of important documents: old tax returns, old bank statements, her birth certificate, her divorce papers. Which Lily never filed and which she will not worry about today. She has wasted enough of her life worrying and feeling guilty. Yesterday Fred talked to her about her useless feelings of guilt. She'd been telling him how she was blindsided by Sam's infidelities. How could she be married to a man for nearly twenty years and never know he had affairs? Was she an idiot? Fred said that some people are just expert liars and it wasn't her fault. She disagreed. She believes in her heart that she knew but just ignored her instincts and that she's guilty of betraying herself. Fred asked her how long she was going to blame herself for her marriage, because, he said, if it was going to go on for much longer, he would probably be spending less time with her, which he didn't want to do. "I like you, Lily." That's what he said. And he is right. She has spent far too much time beating herself up over her divorce.
Except technically she's not divorced. Lily shudders, glancing at her little file cabinet half buried under a pile of boxes.
She opens the top drawer of the large cabinet from the mill. She stares at a row of faded yellow file folders with color-coded tabs. The folders are dated and labeled: Budgets, Contracts, Transportation, Equipment. But they are all empty. She closes the top drawer and opens the second. Personnel files. Her name, Behan, leaps out at her. Sam's file. She flicks the file open with her fingernail, peering in. Empty. Someone has cleared these out. Lily laughs silently.
Diablo.
"
Sam hands him the receipt, stuffs the bills into his pocket, and turns the truck key.
"Don't you want to count it?" Jorge says.
"I trust you," Sam says.
Molina shakes his head. "Don't do this again, Sam. Come in regular. Okay?"
Sam eyeballs him.
"
Ladrón,
" Molina says, and spits on the ground.
Sam says, "I don't know what that means, Moley, but I'm going to take it as a compliment."
11
T UESDAY NIGHT, Rosy called Lily and asked her to drive out to their storage unit to look for old files from the mill. They had rented the unit together in Durango before moving to Shiprock because the company houses were a fraction the size of their mountain homes and they couldn't stand to part with everything. Just before the Shiprock mill closed, Ryland had taken a file cabinet full of his personal files up to the storage unit. He turned everything else over to the company.
The unit is in a city of asphaltârows and rows of padlocked cubes. Lily walks along the cement floor, Tom Jones singing, "It's not unusual to be loved by anyone," through the invisible speakers overhead. She inserts her key into the heavy-duty padlock on 1-12, unlocks it, slides the bolt, opens the door, steps inside, and switches on the light. She pulls the door shut behind her.
Lily got rid of all the furniture she had shared with Sam. There are still a few pieces from her and Rosy's childhoodâan old birch coffee table that they'd secretly inscribed as kids, crawling underneath to crayon their names and, as teenagers, boys' names; the chrome dinette table that had been the family's kitchen table; a clawfoot bathtub that had been in their grandparents' home. There's a mountain of boxes full of junk. Lily has always been a collector. As a girl and after she married, she kept scrapbooks with relics from every important eventâpictures of her and Rosy dancing with Sam and Ryland at Grange Hall dances, pressed leaves, the first colors of fall each time fall came around, a pressed mumâthe first corsage Sam gave her. She has no pictures of Sam in her house. No pictures, no scrapbooks, just the bills for the storage unit.
Ryland's file cabinet is just inside the door, along with several cardboard boxes full of mill stuff. Lily's own file cabinet, a smaller one, is full of important documents: old tax returns, old bank statements, her birth certificate, her divorce papers. Which Lily never filed and which she will not worry about today. She has wasted enough of her life worrying and feeling guilty. Yesterday Fred talked to her about her useless feelings of guilt. She'd been telling him how she was blindsided by Sam's infidelities. How could she be married to a man for nearly twenty years and never know he had affairs? Was she an idiot? Fred said that some people are just expert liars and it wasn't her fault. She disagreed. She believes in her heart that she knew but just ignored her instincts and that she's guilty of betraying herself. Fred asked her how long she was going to blame herself for her marriage, because, he said, if it was going to go on for much longer, he would probably be spending less time with her, which he didn't want to do. "I like you, Lily." That's what he said. And he is right. She has spent far too much time beating herself up over her divorce.
Except technically she's not divorced. Lily shudders, glancing at her little file cabinet half buried under a pile of boxes.
She opens the top drawer of the large cabinet from the mill. She stares at a row of faded yellow file folders with color-coded tabs. The folders are dated and labeled: Budgets, Contracts, Transportation, Equipment. But they are all empty. She closes the top drawer and opens the second. Personnel files. Her name, Behan, leaps out at her. Sam's file. She flicks the file open with her fingernail, peering in. Empty. Someone has cleared these out. Lily laughs silently.
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