FREDDY'S FATHER
                            by jordan

    Footsteps echo across the front porch, boots
making a hollow sound on the wood.  The screen
door opens, letting in a rusty screech of sunlight,
and he steps across the threshold, ducking his
head under the crossbeams, and says in a voice
like a country western singer:  "Laney?"
    No one calls me Laney anymore.  The sun is
still in my eyes even after the door bangs shut.  I
blink away the sparks as he scuffs his feet on the
mat before coming all the way into the office.
    "It's good to see you, Laney.  You're lookin'
mighty good."
    The voice has a haunting familiarity, and I
know that smile from old dreams.  But the thick
middleaged man with the heavily muscled
forearms who stands in front of my desk is a
total stranger.
    "Well, hi,"  I say, in a friendly,
long-time-no-see tone. "How have you been?"
    "Can't complain.  I heard you were back."
    Back?  I've been on the reservation for six
weeks, ever since the funeral. One thing and
another keeps me here;  I can't seem to work up
the energy to go back to the city. 
    The eyes, set deep in the fleshy face, slant
with sympathy. "Sorry to hear about your daddy.  I
was up in the hill country and couldn't make it
back for the funeral.  I heard all three tribes
showed up."
    "A lot of people were there."
    Our eyes meet and hold.  I feel a muscle in
my right lid start to tic.  He says, "So you're takin'
over now?"
    "No, not really.  They're sending a new agent
down at the end of the month. I'm just filling in
the gap until the Bureau can assign someone."
    His gaze travels around the room when I'm
talking, and for the first time it occurs to me
that this isn't a social call.
    "But you are the truant officer, aren't you?"
    I remember my father going over the hill one
time, coming back with half a dozen sullen
dark-haired children from the village,
their parents swarming behind them, rigid with
frustration and rage.  If nothing else, Dad was
diplomatic, and somehow he managed to turn the
whole thing into a big joke.  But he never
exercised that particular function of power again.
He had more truant than officer in him.
     "I guess I am," I grudgingly admit.
    He nods. "So I guess you got a call this
morning about my boy Freddy." 
    I move some papers around, trying to look
official, which is pretty much all I've been doing
since Bob Thompson talked me into warming this
chair.  Actually, there is a list here of children
who didn't show up for school this morning.  The
only Freddy on it is a Freddy Wolf.
     Fred Wolf, an Anglo adaptation of Redwolf.
    Then it comes to me who this man is.  I look
up sharply, astonished.  "You're Freddy's father?"
    His smile is shocking because it's the only
thing I recognize from the past, when this man
was a boy I went to school with.
    "Don't hardly seem possible, does it?"
    "Freddy's father."  It's been eighteen years
since I last saw the boy we called "The Lone Wolf"
in high school.  The light must have blinded me,
because now it's obvious: those yellow gold eyes,
the way his ears lie flat against the sides of his
head.  
    "He's not half the hellraiser I was at his age," 
he's saying, "And his grades aren't half bad,
either."
    All those years I thought about him, he was
never a day over eighteen.  Now here he is, fifty
pounds heavier, his face round instead of long
and narrow, and grey streaks in his buzz cut hair.
    "Well, Freddy's fourteen,"  he says, as if that's
an explanation, and I've spent enough time with
fourteen-year-olds to know that's almost all the
explanation you need.  "We've been having our
problems lately, nothing too bad.  Mostly his
smart mouth.  He's started running with these
damn Hopi boys, and I think they're all starting to
fool around with drugs.  So the other day I found
this joint in his room, and I guess I lost my temper
and did something pretty stupid."
    "Stupid?"  I echo.  I hope I look like I'm
listening to all this.  Actually I'm trying to count
backwards, calculating the year Freddy was born. 
The first child must have died;  I vaguely
remember rumors from somewhere.  Freddy would
be Melanie's second son, then.  She had been
pregnant with the first child our senior year in
school.  They must have been married four years. 
Those four years I spent at Columbia.
    Time begins to compress, the distance between
us lessening.
    The Lone Wolf had prowled the corridors of
my youth like some exotic, nocturnal animal, those
slanted, sleepy gold eyes almost unbearably
romantic and mysterious.  He was quiet and shy,
but so good-looking that we fit those things into
our mythology and called them "cool."  He always
wore leather vests, and he smelled like the
interior of a new car.  I remember his arms,
bared even in winter, the smooth sculpture of
muscle and vein.  He was a halfbreed, with dusky
olive skin that flushed above those high sharp
cheekbones, and long black hair that hung down
over his shoulders.  "That crazy Indian,"  our white
teachers muttered, watchful as he slouched,
half-dreaming, in some back row desk.  He looked
dangerous and wild, his mere existence a threat
to authority.
    A pause has gone by since I last heard the
drone of his voice.
     He says suddenly, "So I sold his horse."
    Trying to shift back in present tense, I say,
"You sold his horse?"
    "He had this mare.  Little quarter horse we
kept around the place.  I got mad about the joint
and sold her to the Bar Q.  You know, that dude
ranch down by the Chato?  Anyway, he got sore
and then this morning I saw a lot of his clothes
and stuff were gone. I think he went over to the
Hopi village, to his mother's people. Her side is
Hopi, remember?"
    I can't remember anything about Melanie. I
only remember Freddy's father, this man, as an
Indian boy leaning against a row of lockers,
staring down at his fringed leather boots, long
lashes downcast on flushed cheeks smooth as a
child's, and the resolute set of his mouth and jaw
that I loved even while he was telling me what
had happened between him and Melanie.
    Then a numb graduation day, and I was off to
college with my father smirking and waving at the
airport.  When he kissed me goodbye he said in a
low voice, "It could have been you."
    But it couldn't have been me.  My father, who
wouldn't protect his own life by laying down a
cigarette or a forkful of chicken fried steak,
made sure there were always Trojans or Ramses in
the house, wordless advice to a motherless girl. 
"Make me proud, kid,"  he used to say, which
translated to, "Don't shame me."  It was to my own
shame that I left high school a virgin, but I had to
defy him somehow, so I was a GOOD girl.
    Not like slutty Melanie, who ended up with a
gorgeous husband and a little boy while I was in
law school memorizing city zoning ordinances.
    The mystery had gained romance with time and
distance.  In a letter from my aunt I learned that
Melanie had disappeared when Freddy was only a
year old, just vanished into thin air.  "Around
here there are those who say she'll never be
found, if you know what I mean," she wrote.
    Another silence has passed;  he has an
expectant look on his face. 
    "So what can I do to help?"
    "I thought you could go up there with me and
help me bring him home."
    "Help you bring him home?"
    "The truant officer has jurisdiction over any
school-age kid on the reservation.  Melanie's
people would have to turn him over if you were
with me.  There's a fifty dollar fine for any
household harboring a truant.  They voted it in a
couple of years ago."
    The gears in my head finally stop whining and
shift into first.  "You mean the Hopi village across
the river, under Second Mesa?"
    "Yeah, that's the one."
    "That's twenty miles from here."
    He nods. "Yeah, that's right. We used to ride up
there when we were kids, remember?"
    I remember.  Rather, I've never forgotten.
    "We can get up there in a couple of hours." 
He thumbs over his shoulder at the door.  "I've got
my truck outside."
    "Oh, did they put a road into that village?"
    "No, but I've got that covered."  He goes to the
door and opens it wide.  The angle of the sun has
changed so the glare isn't coming straight at me,
and I can see the red fender of a pickup truck.  I
get up and follow him outside.  His Ford is parked
at the curb and hitched to it is a battered 
livestock trailer.  A blue roan rolls its eye at us
through the grating. The shadow of another horse
moves beside it and makes a little whickering
noise.
    "Oh!  You got his horse back."
    "I'm going to give the roan to his uncle To'Chi."
    "To'chi White Duck?"
    "Melanie's brother.  Used to run the old
whorehouse north of Gallup before your daddy
shut it down."
    I remember him, too.  Definitely the kind of
man who'd sell his nephew for a good saddle
horse.
    We step out onto the walk.  I feel that sleepy,
stunned feeling you get when you're just a little
drunk.  A woman in a long skirt and a red sweater
hurries by, carrying a sheep.  
    Freddy's father scans the horizon.  The blue
sky smells like water, far, far away.  He says, "It
will rain before the end of the day."
    I believe him.  He knows these things because
he's an Indian, and on the reservation they get the
Weather Channel by satellite cable.
    "You know, I've never imposed that fine on
anyone, " I say.
    "Yeah, well, they won't know that."
    "I wouldn't want to get caught out in a storm."
    "We'll be in and out before it even starts to
cloud up.  You got some boots?"
    "In the closet."
    "Better get 'em."  He holds his hand out to me,
smiling, and there's another sting of memory. 
That last week of school I had made up my mind
to become this man's lover.  Everything that was
then feels like now, and I am filled with the
stirring of unfinished business.
    "If you're going to give that horse to White
Duck, how will we get back?" 
    "I'm not going to leave him there today. 
Freddy can ride back on the mare and you and I
can double on the roan."
    "Oh."
    "It's only five miles into the village from the
end of the road, anyway.  You can still ride a
horse, can't you?"
    "I'm pretty sure I can."
    He smiles again, that old heartbreaking smile,
and I smile back, roused by the prospect of going
off on an adventure in the hills to save the son
of the Lone Wolf from unsavory characters.
When you're eighteen again, you can do anything.

*************
    Half an hour later the sorrel mare is turning
her head back to look at me as I dig my boot into
the stirrup.  I haven't been on a horse in five
years, and she knows it.  She swings her
hindquarters away from me so I have to hop after
her, then I manage to drag myself up into the
saddle.  Freddy's father comes over to check my
tack;  he holds my stirrup, his other hand around
my ankle, reaches under to jerk the girth.  I
imagine I can feel his fingers through the leather,
and memories of hot moonlight and dark kisses
wash over me.  
    The Hopi village is only a couple of miles
away, across the river, which is shallow and
narrow most of the year, easily crossed by
horseback.  But the shallow part changes; 
sometimes you can cross within a mile of the
village, sometimes you have to go almost eight
miles downriver to cross.  Today we amble along
the banks looking for a likely place, and although
we can see the village to the east, we end up
riding west.  When the bank steepens into a hill,
we follow the path up, out of sight of the
river.
    Even within the sound of running water, this
land is desert.  A lizard pauses with its feet
lifted, one front, one back, and cocks its head at
us.  The horses' hooves clop along the rocks,
the sound echoing for miles.  Two wild dogs slink
from behind the boulders and then slink back,
watching us with sly nervous glances.  Except for
the ache in my thigh muscles, it's much the
same as it used to be.  When I was young this
country was filled with wild horses and wild
Indians, but maybe everyone's youth seems like
that.
    At last we find a clear shallow place to cross,
but the roan decides he wants no part of this.  He
lowers his head to sniff the water suspiciously,
then swerves away, snorting.  Freddy's father
curses, uses the ends of the reins to lash the
horse's flanks.  It's easy to forget those extra
fifty pounds, the weight of those years;  he's still 
a warrior, golden and powerful, fighting the
bucking, dancing horse.  Only his upper body
moves; his legs and hips stay wrapped in place,
squeezing hard, until finally the roan leaps into
the river with a dramatic, suicidal splash, grunting
and hopping like a jackrabbit until he makes it
across.
    The mare wades in placidly, pausing only to
take a drink, but almost unseats me on the other
side when she stops to shake all over like a big
wet dog.
    The village is a collection of clapboard
houses, adobe hogans.  It looks abandoned, except
for a few curious dogs that bark half- heartedly
at the horses and then go away.  Freddy's father
seems to know exactly where he's going, and I
follow him into a fenced yard, where we finally
dismount. The ground trembles under my feet, my
knees sag.  I lean against the horse for a minute
until my head clears.  Meanwhile, Freddy's father
is pounding against the front door of the house
with his fist.
    The door opens and a large, heavy woman
stands framed in the threshold.  She has glossy
black hair, the shoulders of a linebacker, a
massive displeased face.
    "I came for my boy.  I brought the law."
    Nothing moves but her eyes as the woman
surveys me.  I actually look around behind me at
the word "law."  Then she glances over her
shoulder as if listening to someone in the house
and turns back to Freddy's father.
    "He don't want to go with you."
    "You tell him he's coming with me or I'll have
you people fined fifty dollars a day for every
day he's out of school."
    She turns again but this time someone pushes
past her.  A boy who must be Freddy steps
outside, glaring up at his father. He is small, lean,
with dusky skin and light brown eyes.  His hair is
in a ponytail.  He shoots me a look of such pure
and perfect hatred I take a step back.
    "We brought your horse back,"  I tell him.
    I was wrong in thinking he couldn't give me a
more malevolent look.  He says with withering
contempt, "That's not my horse."
    The mare and I look at each other.
    His father says, "Hell, it's a horse. What do you
want?  I paid two hundred dollars for her."
    "I bought Cheetah for two fifty of my own
money.  You had no right to sell her. She was
mine!"
    "I told you what would happen if you brought
that damn dope into the house."
    "And I told you, it was peyote."
     Freddy's father whirls towards me. "You see
what I'm up against?  They tell him it's okay to
use dope in these goddamn initiation rites."
    People have appeared magically on the street,
around the fence.  The giant woman on the porch
fixes her eyes on me. 
    "Peyote is legal here. It's a part of our
ceremonies.  This boy has the right."
    "I know that,"  I say, but my voice seems to
only carry about six inches in front of my face,
drowned out by Freddy's father.
    "Hell, dope is dope, and I don't want the boy
into it."
    "But it's okay for you to drink yourself stupid
every weekend," Freddy says, his tan eyes
glittering with contempt. 
     "It's okay for you because you're grown up,
right?"
    "We're not talking about me.  We're talking
about you. You're the one missing school and
doing dope."
    The mare jerks her head suddenly and the
reins run through my fingers, though I grab them
in time to hold her.  She and the roan sidestep
nervously at the deafening roar of a motorcycle
rolling up into the front yard.
    It can't be, but it is:  I am looking at the real,
the original Lone Wolf. Incredible.  His shining
black hair lifts slightly from his shoulders in the
wind as he swings his long leg over the saddle. 
The same sleepy gold eyes, the same lean curved
body; he's even wearing a leather vest.  He gives
me a sweet, lazy smile and slouches up to the
porch.
     "Hey," he says.
    Freddy's father says, "This is none of your
concern, Danny."
    "I know, Dad. But Fred called Mom last night
and she told me to come by and see what the
deal was."
    Freddy comes out further on the porch to
stand beside his brother.  Freddy's father says,
"You tell your mother that she can do any damn
thing she wants with you but I got the papers on
Freddy, and he's staying with me."
    "I'm not anybody's property," Freddy says, "And
I'm staying right here." 
    "Oh no you're not." Freddy's father turns to
look at me and so does everyone else in the
crowd.  I can feel the warm breath of the mare
on my back through my shirt.
    He says, "This is Laney Campbell, Chick
Campbell's daughter. She's a lawyer and she's
taken over Chick's place.  She's also the truant
officer, and she can slap a fine on your aunt
faster than you can think about it."
    There's a slight stir in the crowd.  I think it
would be an inappropriate time to mention that
I'm a corporate lawyer, and an unemployed one at
that.  Still, it seems as if I should say something.
So I mutter, "Freddy really should be in school."
    The woman steps out of the doorway and
stands behind Freddy with her hands on his
shoulders.  "This is a good boy," she says.
"He makes all A's in school.  He's not a truant."
    "That's all you know,"  Freddy's father sneers. 
"If he's not in school he's a truant, and he's not in
school now, is he?"  To the boy he says, "Go get
your stuff."
    "No way."
    "I'll show you a way."  Freddy's father makes a
grab for his son, but the boy wiggles eel-like
from the woman and between his father and his
brother and runs straight at me.  He snatches the
reins from my hands and leaps Indian-style into
the saddle without using the stirrups.  He drums
his heels wildly into the mare's flanks, and she
squeals with indignation and bucks a couple of
times across the yard, then takes off at a dead
run down the main street of the town.
    "Nice going, Dad,"  Danny says, in a mildly
thoughtful voice.
    People begin to wander into the yard and up
onto the porch where Freddy's father is shouting
at the Indian woman, and some of them begin
shouting too.
    Easing his way through to me, Danny says, "You
wouldn't really fine our aunt for Freddy taking
the day off school, would you?"
    I shake my head.  "No."
    He kicks the stand out from under his bike and
says, "I'm going back to town.  You want a ride?"
    I look at the huge motorcycle.  "Do you have
an extra helmet?"
    "Extra?  Hell, lady, I don't even have one for
myself."
    The voices on the porch are gaining in volume
and passion.
    "Let's go,"  I say.
    The quiet countryside sweeps past us on our
way out of town, flattened and blurred as we
rocket along the riverbank.  There is nothing to
hold onto except this boy's narrow waist, and as
we cross the river in a shallow place no more
than a quarter of a mile to the west, I have to
hold on tight.  
    His vest smells like the interior of a new car,
and his warrior's hair flies in the wind.  I left
town in the past and I am returning to the
present, where what was so cool half a lifetime
ago--riding without a helmet, smoking dope,
wearing sleeveless vests in the winter--now seems
just plain stupid.
    I reposition my arms, holding him more
tenderly, this thin child on a bike hurrying
towards his own future, and it comes to me with a
sense of wonder that no matter how hard I try, I
can't even remember Freddy's father's real first
name.

************