poemtry and prose

Kaylee shrugged and turned to look at Michael. That was a particular question she was not yet ready to answer, not yet. Most people thought it very, very cool to have been born with heritage and from a proud nation like hers. Of course when the stories came out and they learned more about what she knew, most people backed off and gave her a wide circle of space. It was always the same and if it was all the same, Kaylee just wanted to avoid the mess altogether. Instead, she just told people that it was "okay" and "very similar to growing up anywhere else, except that everyone else had slighly darker and more tan skin." Her fingers reached for her glass, it was still cool to the touch. The amber froth on her second mug almost reached to the top of the glass and she took a quick swig of the bitter ale. It was not the best tasting but it did help to ease the strain of what she might be saying to Michael. She smiled and clenched her jaw, preparing herself for the response.

She had started to open her mouth when a fight broke out in the farthest corner of the bar. Someone yelped as the high pitched sound of a bottle echoed above the voices and trashy, garage band sounds of the nineteen nineties being pumped through the loud speakers of the bar. Two men stood and struggled against one another, their arms locked around the nearest and thickest body part. They were growling and did not seem to want to let go so easily.

"Oh god, already?" she heard Michael say. "I think it is time we get out of here and get going before it gets a lot worse. The cops will soon arrive anyways and I really do not want to end up giving a statement that keeps me here all night until the moring sun comes up. Keeey-rist, that will make me look more like a vampire than I actually am and would EVER want to be."

Kaylee twirled a strand of her long, raven black hair. She was obviously relieved to not have to answer her companions deep and strangely personal question. "Oh yeah, you bet." She stared at the large Jaegermiester clock hanging above the classic stereotypical mirror that sat precariously behind row after row of hard liquor in a strange attempt to make it look like there were more bottle of partons favorite booze sitting on the long, thin lacquer shelving this bar had put up when it first opened.

They tossed a wad of cash onto the table, hoping it was enough to cover the five drinks drunk between the two in addition to a bit of a tip that they believed would help the waitress who served them the beer in the first place earn a bit more of a wage to maybe be able to save up earnings for a better life. They considered this a common curtesy from one sales personnel to another. A life of blue collardom that every person who deals with another wishes to escape from.

The air grew cooler as they exited the bar, followed by a rather large plume of smoke that wisped away as they waved good bye to one another. She would not be seeing Michael for another two days, as it was his Friday and he was looking foward to a long weekend of weed, games and more booze. She stretched out her arms towards the sky as she made her way to her car. Kaylee was looking forward to getting a little bit of sleep before she got up and went shopping. She was almost out of food and wanted to spend a small portion of her latest paycheck on raman, milk and other cheep foods before the end of the month, big bills arrived.

It was three o'clock by the time Kaylee pulled into the parking lot of her apartment complex. A bad accident on the highway prevented her from getting home sooner and by the time she locked her car, her nerves were shot and all she wanted to do was lounge in the comfort of a nice, hot bath that soothed them and would help her sleep the morning hours away.

Darkness greeted her as she slipped past her front door into the warm embrace her apartment offered her.

"HIH," she said cheerily, half jokingly and somewhat wishing that her landlords would have allowed her to keep a pet cat. Of course, she was afraid that the fur and the stink of an animal in such a tiny place would be bad for her health. But it was not like she went to a doctor to get a check up. It had been years since her last physical and she was in no hurry to give another quack in the medical profession any more money than she already had previously given them.

Her grandmother told her once, "Never trust western science. They may know more about the human body but they apply the wrong medicines to help. They are not in any mood to cure you, with all their overprescribing of those so called miracle drugs." It was good advice and one that Kaylee took to heart after having been seriously ill in her early twenties from a long, grueling road trip home from Seattle. They did not seem to care to help her. Instead they were more interested in giving her medications for all the other aches and pains her body had. None of which helped. Only a week of almost solid sleeping on the sofa at her friend Beth's home did her any good. That and the chicken soup that Beth made her.

Her mind wandered off by itself, thinking about her past in the privacy of her own home. She slipped her shoes off and stretched her toes out from having spent the evening all cramped in her boots. The boots sounded with an unceremonious Thump as they hit the floor. Kicking her feet through the old style shag carpet her apartment offered, she smiled as the bottoms of her feet got tickled.

"Okay, time to get this crappy smelling smoke out of my body," she said, rubbing her hands together and dashing off into the bathroom. It was located kitty corner from her bed.

The water squeezed out from the cold and silver pipe as it began to fill up her smaller sized tub. It was the one and only real annoyance she had living at the cheep apartment complex on the outskirts of her city. It was cheep, small (only five hundred square feet), had really bad seventies style carpet but she could afford it. That and the fact that it was on the outskirts of town were the real reasons she signed the six month lease. It gave her freedom to walk the boundry of being apart of the city and yet, honoring her past, the vast lump of space out at the reservation. She tried living once in the middle of the city but the sounds of the street, the cars, the honking, the noise as people yelled at one another far down below and of the drunken laughter in the wee hours of the morning always kept her up. It was then that she decided she would rather live on the fence between the worlds of quiet plains and the boysterous city whose offering of party and socialness she sometimes thrived on.

Kaylee slipped off her clothes and glided her body deep down into the tub. The water felt warm and hot and prickly against her skin. She tucked her knees up next to her chest and laid her head down on them. She closed her eyes and let the colors form on the backs of her eyelids. She was tired. Drained from keeping up with the Joneses and taking calls from people who rarely learned how to read their electronical gadgerty manuals. And the water, was helping to wash it all away. Kaylee left her head on her knees until the water grew cold. Then she grabbed a well worn, faded green towel and slowly soaked up all the water off her body until it was dry enough to get dressed again. She smoothed her hair out with a brush and wandered into her bedroom.

She pulled on a warm pair of green sweatpants, cheep ones bought at Wal Mart, and her favorite black t-shirt with a picture of a skull and cross bones on it and snuggled into the bed, carrying the Cookoo book with her. It was all part of her bedtime ritual where she would read until she fell asleep and then woke up to start a new day, feeling more refreshed and less like the runaway that she always ended up becoming.

Except that this time, she only got a few pages into the book before the siren sounds of sleep lulled her off to a dreamdate with the sandman. Soon after the room filled with the soft sound of her snores as the book slid off her chest and onto the soft duvet covering the full sized bed.

Only a few hours passed when her phone started ringing. The noise, which she was normally not used to, startled her, waking her from the deep slumber that the book had probably put her into.

Groggily, she reached for the phone and lifted the receiver. "Um, yeah... hello?" she said, turning over to shield her eyes from the lamp light and sun that were blinding her night vision.

"Er, yes, is this Kaylee Morgan? Grandaughter to Serena Riverwalker and daughter of Milly and Charles Morgan," came the oddly familiar, yet far away and distant voice of a young man.

"Yeah... this is her. Who IS this and how the hell did you get my number." Kaylee said harshly and a bit startled. No one had this number, except for a few close friends and work and of course, those pesky telemarketers.

"That is not important. I have news from your Grandmother. Serena. Let me back up a bit first. My name is Daniel. I am calling from the Ser'laphim reservation. The elders asked me to contact you. You are a very hard woman to track down. I had to use unorthodox methods to get this number. It did cost me a few dollars. But we feel this warrants the expense and the abuse of tribal powers.

You need to come as soon as you can. We think she is sick and dying. And she has asked for your prescience."

"Wha... er. um... my grandma is sick and dying?" Kaylee was shocked. Her greatest fear just rose up to bite her in the butt. She was more curious and afraid of what they had to do to get her number. It was, after all, unlisted and pretty much unknown. But the more pressing matter was her grandma. The one woman in the whole world that Kaylee both loved and dreaded at the same time. And she was not well, for once in her life. This scared her.

Kaylee's parents died when she was young, in a car crash that took place in the main drag of the reservation. Apparently a few young braves had too much to drink that evening and decided that it was more fun to attempt driving home drunk than it was to wait it out at the bar being chastized by the other men who hated how they carried out the whole drunken indian persona literally. It was over in a split second. The impact killed everyone involved. She never got to tell them how much she loved them and was then taken to her grandma to be raised.

Her grandma did her best. Kaylee knew this. It was not easy for an elder to become a mother again, so soon after losing her own daughter. But there was more to just having lived under strict rules. Kaylee felt watched. Her grandma always seemed to know where Kaylee was and what she was up to at any given time. She remembered one time when she and her friends went off into the woods to try and catch frogs. Her gran arrived shortly after and scolded her by lecturing about how dangerous it was to run off and go wading in the pond. After being so embarassed she never went back to that spot, even when it was hot out and the others (now older) went in the cool water to beat the heat.
There was no escape under that watchful eye and the things she tried to teach Kaylee always scared her. It was not the normal fare that young kids learned in elementary school. She knew her gran did her best, but it wasn't easy having the only and last tribe shaman as a caretaker.

When she finally grew old enough to take care of her own, fully recognized as an adult by both the tribal council and the American government, she slipped off the reservation with only a small pack on her back and a thumb pointed upwards at the sky. It was the first time Kaylee did not feel the watchful eyes of her gran on her. She had hoped that this was the last time she would have ever looked over her shoulder at the sprawling landscape filled with trees and gravel that marked most of the territory she used to call home. But like an overdue bill, her life somehow managed to catch up to her.

Kaylee was sure that her gran was the one to figure out where she was. And now, she wanted her to come home.

"You know, this is all really... sudden. I mean, come on... I have not been back to the res in a long time. How do I know this is real. And besides, how do I know that you are for real and that my gran really is dying? Answer me that Daniel," Kaylee said and her voice sounded a bit snarkier than usual. She was afraid and hid behind the snark in an attempt to appear stronger than she actually was.

"That is how these things usally work Kaylee Morgan. Death happens at some of the oddest moments. It takes but one snip of the great web that binds us together to start the process of leaving this world and entering the next. I am but a humble servent of your gran's doing her bidding. She says that she had such hope for you and always felt bad that you turned from her, from all of us and left. She only wanted the best for you, I hope you know that. And she says that you should come home now, because the life you lead out in Port Riverbend is not healthy. It is changing you, pushing you further down away from where you are meant to be."

Now she was truely scared and convinced that it was the tribe asking her back. No one spoke of the life and death cycle as it related to a giant spider and her web. And no one knew that she had run off to live in Port Riverbend. No one.

"I have to call work, and see if I can get the time off. I hope you realize that I will be putting my lively hood in jeopardy by driving back. I have worked hard to get where I am without the handouts of the government."

"Yes, we know. And that is a good thing. All we can do at this point is ask you to come as soon as you can. She wants to speak to you. To set things right. It is her wish. You know you have to honor that."

And deep down in her heart Kaylee did know all this to be true. She felt the pull of her old home and could practially smell it.

"I will see what I can do," she said and then hung up on the caller.