"For my people and others like me," Little Blue Hawk said, "people whose flesh comes from this land and rose out of this dust from the beginning, names have a real meaning. A name can change if a person grows out of one and into another."
"How can you grow out of your name?" I asked.
Little Blue Hawk grimaced and looked sideways at me without turning her head. "You become someone new," she said. "Twisted Spear, my mother's brother, grew out of that name one summer. He went out with his brothers and a few others. They made camp by the river. On the fourth night a storm blew in. The storm swelled the river in the dark and the water swallowed the camp before they could climb high enough. They all drowned. All except Twisted Spear who awoke on a far bank the next morning. He returned home alone and after the mourning was over, began to be called Spared by the River. You see? Twisted Spear drowned along with his brothers and Spared by the River was born."
Little Blue Hawk smiled and reached her hand over to me and pushed and clump of hair away from my face.
"You look too sad, Judah. Why?"
I shook my head and swallowed the lump in my throat.
"It's almost like one of Early's stories."
"I haven't heard them."
"If you stay with us long enough, I guarantee you, you will."
Little Blue Hawk nodded.
"What name were you born with?" I asked.
"The one you call me by. I was born into it, though. Not with it."
"How come?"
"The day I was born, a hawk from the East, where the trouble came from, flew into the reservation. It landed on my parents' roof the moment my mother felt the first pains of labor. Eventually it settled on the windowsill outside the birthing room. It stayed all day and night. At the dawn of the second day, I was born and with my first cry, the hawk cried, too. When the people looked, the first light of morning slanted down from the sky and shone upon the hawk and upon me. Over the course of the night, the hawk had changed colors, from gray to blue. When the sun was completely above the horizon, the bird flew away. I was left in its place but the Old Ones say it was a guardian and so I would hold it in me. Little Blue Hawk is my namesake. I go where my wings carry me and I watch over. I have not outgrown my name."
"You're watching over us."
"For the time I'm here."
She blew out a breath and gathered dust from the ground in her fingers, then let it fall. "There's an eastern wind blowing," she said, looking up. "But you give the White Man a better face."

"Val?"
"Judah?"
"Hi."

Valentine looked me over as if to make sure I was real as opposed to an apparition. He'd done his time searching on foot for us in the desert and a fair share of it trapped inside a mirage. "Spent my life since then wondering if it weren't a mirage that just kept on going. After all, they say the last moment of your life and every dream you ever dreamed or ever would dream flash in front of your eyes so that it's like living it all over again or for the first time," he'd told me and Phin once.
But we were in the present moment and I'd gone lone on an exit local road.

Val looked up from his newspaper from the other side of the counter and gave me his full attention.
"What are you doing here?"
I looked right back and shrugged.
"I got lost."
Valentine laughed and shook his head.
"Lost! It's impossible for you to get lost, Judah." Right. I have no base. How can I get myself lost when I've never had a place to be found? "Where's your mother? Your brother?"
"I'm alone," I said.
Valentine drew his brow into a furrow and looked me over good.
"She really did you in good, didn't she? I told her it would catch up with her one day."
I laughed.
"Well...we all grow up sometimes," I said. "Maybe Early's is still happening. Her growing up, that is. Has to have the road."
"Or maybe she's just running."
"Maybe mine is standing still. Or learning how to. But I don't feel grown up."

As we stood there talking to each other over the counter in Val's hard-earned/hard-worked convenience store, I noticed that his eyes had begun to wrinkle, little cracks, creases, around the edges that hadn't been there before. Maybe some people never grow up--like Early--and maybe others stay young on the inside but grow old on the outside. I wondered which I would do. A mix of dirt and sky and water.

"Well, come on," Val said and folded up the paper before putting it down in a shelf under the counter.
I smiled and followed him through the doorway. Half-way down the hall, Val stopped and half-turned to look at me.
"You got lost, huh?" he chuckled as if to himself. "You fell in love, didn't you? Or was it really only your mother's craziness?"
I couldn't help but let a smile crack out the corner of my mouth.
"I got lost. Lots of ways."
"Was she on the road, too?"
"Yeah. No Wheels. And not like us. But she was wandering, too."
"What's her name?"
"Little Blue Hawk."
Valentine raised an eyebrow.
I nodded.
"It's a long story," I said.
Like the road. But maybe longer, 'cause Little Blue Hawk got me to sleep atn ight and shut the nightmare out.

"Little Judah boy man, I sees me a fine lookin' hella fire of a whatso beauty up there on that horizon," Phinnaeus declared.
I barely heard him through my sleep, but I turned over and groaned. He punched me.
"Wake up, little brother."
"What is it!"
"We's got us a beauty," he said.
And I got up, right in the middle of the day no less and Phin had the wheel while Early was napping in the back with me. I looked over at my mother and climbed carefully around her and up into the front seat. Up in the middle of the bare rock mountain road with her long hair blowing around her like a protective veil and her thumb held out for a hitch was the most beautiful goodamned thing I ever seen.

Phin, my brother, slowed with his foot on the brake and I looked out the rolled-down window at her. I stared for who-knows-how-long and she smiled with a wall over her eyes like our Early. Like me.

"Gettin' in, yo?" Phin said, leaning over me.
She nodded and Phin punched me in the bicep.
"What!" I hissed and punched him back.
"Open up, little brother! Whatso man you gone stupid?"
"Shut," I said and twisted around to open the slider door.
"Watch out, miss," Phin said to her. "Our momma's dead asleep in the back you be sharin' a lift in now."
The girl nodded and in acknowledgment and climbed in with one, swift motion.

"Valentine?"
Valentine Russel looked up from newspaper he was reading from behind the counter he presided over. I swallowed in my desert-dry throat. He scrunched up his forehead and looked at me. It had been a long time.
"Judah?"
I nodded.
"Judah!" he exclaimed and stood up. "Where's your brother and Early?"
"I'm alone," I said.
"You're alone?"
How could this be. I know. Times had gotten long and short so that I measured time in the thickness of dust on the dashboard. People grew up after all, and now I was doing mine.
"I'm alone. Phin's somewhere on the road. Early is, too."
Valentine looked me over for a minute and tried to read me but I was my mother's son after all. When the door was shut, no one could open it.

Without thinking, I ran. In retrospect, how could I have ever been so stupid? But a child is ignorant, and so was I. I'd put the babies in the barn alone. Seven months old and almost consumed by fire because of my thoughtlessness. But Betty never protested. There had been many nights she'd put me to sleep in the barn on the hay. What are the odds? Thus are the tribulations born of staying in one place.

I ran into the pitch black smoke and followed my instinct through the flickering flames and the acrid air to where I'd put the boys. Betty was near me, but it didn't matter. I hardly felt her. Once I'd been consumed by water, drowned in it, buried. Now, I'd begun to rebuild and fire would destroy me all over again.

"Here, Agnes! The babies are here!" Betty yelled through the din.
A surge of fury swept through me and rushed to them and tore Betty away.
"Don't you touch them! Don't touch them!" I screamed and I yanked her away from my children and scooped them up in their blankets and covered them. I squeezed them into me and ran, navigating through the burning barn blindly. Part of me registered that I was being burned, the flames licking me, grabbing at my arms and legs.

My baby Judah was choking and when I'd gotten far away, onto the road, out of sight of the barn, I put them down. Phin was silent and Judah was choking, but Judah was all right. I turned to Phin and unwrapped him from the blanket, put my hand over his body and felt for breathing. He was alive. Both of them, alive. More than alive, absolutely unharmed.

"Judah boy," I whispered and the baby looked up at me, his choking gradually fading away. I stroked his cheek and he gurgled, a little baby gurgle and I was satisfied.

Then, I turned to Phinnaeus. The baby stared up at me, had been watching me. His gaze was eerily mature, not the gaze of a child, not the gaze of an infant. "Phinny,"I breathed in his ear as I lifted him up to my shoulder. "Phinny," I said again, but the baby didn't make a sound. I held him at arm's length in front of me, and somehow, I could see his eyes clearly in the dark. Fear had made my senses particularly acute tonight. I'd almost lost them and I need every moment. Still, I could lose them. Phinnaeus stared at me accusingly, his expression pointing out all my flaws. His gaze and his silence said one thing: "You left us, Early Silver. You left us to burn."

A firetruck passed us on the road, sirens screaming full ahead. Then another, then another. A violent shudder passed through me and came back. Then didn't stop. Something was missing and it was my fault again. Suddenly, I remembered Betty. I'd pushed her away in the middle of the flames. Where was she? A demon awoke in my stomach and I put Phinnaeus down, got up, clambered a few steps away and vomited.

I turned back to the boys knelt on my knees before them and knew I had to get out of the road. First water, then fire. I couldn't risk more with earth, matter hurling itself full speed at us down the road. At least this one would be painless and instant. "No. Don't think like this," I thought. I gulped down air and steadied myself. "Mind over matter, Early. Mind over matter," I repeated over and over until I had control of my body. When my limbs were steady and my breathing regular, I stood up and stretched. In the distance, I could hear the firemen working and the crackling of the fire being put out. I picked up the boys and held them to me, squeezed them hard for a moment. Judah yelped. Phin groaned.

I looked both way down the road and turned back towards the house and put one foot in front of the other. For better or worse, I had to find Betty.

"Well, the weather's fine tonight, honey."
It was Betty London talking to me, barefoot and in a self-made flower printed dress that went to mid-shin. She was creaking in her rocking chair and I sat on the floor next to her on the front porch. Above us were only stars and behind us, the house. I'd put the babies in the barn for the night.
"I know it's fine," I said.
Betty looked at me with one eye, a talent of hers that tended to scare people off. I pretended not to see and kept my eyes on the horizon. Wheat fields for miles was all I could see, covered up by the dark.
"You'll never guess who I saw the other day," she said. "Just walking around like he owned the place."
"Who's that?"
"Your River."
I should have guessed. I did guess. But the name went through me like a bolt of lightning when she said it. Two more seconds and I recovered.
"Oh?"
"Mmm-hmmm," she drawled. "What's he up to these days anyway, Agnes?"
"I don't know," I said and clenched my mouth shut. First River and now she insists on "Agnes".
"What do you mean you don't know?" she persisted.
"I haven't talked to River in two years, Betty. I'm not about to start now."
Betty clucked her tongue knowingly, a sure sign that the picture was falling into place for her like it always did without anyone trying to explain.
"He doesn't know, does he?"
Of course, her near-mind-reading abilities always meant she knew too much.
"Know what, Betty?"
"I'm not fool, Agnes. Don't try playing me one now."
I turned around and looked at her.
"He knows he's a monster," I said.
"Last I heard he was the best thing the world ever brought you."
I didn't answer for a moment, then: "Things change."
"He's just a man to you, Agnes. But he's more than that to those boys."
"Don't bring them into this. They have nothing to do with River."
Betty cocked one eyebrow up at me and studied me like I was a pane of glass. Maybe I am, still, transparent like a window. But what you can't cure you can learn to live with. And if there isn't a remedy there are other solutions. Opaque curtains have done a good job.
"They may have nothing to do with River, girl, but he's got everything but half to do with them."
"No. Leave River alone. The discussion is over. The boys have nothing to do with River, I told you."
"You don't mean to say they're Valentine's?"
"I don't mean to say they're anyone's but mine. That should suffice, Betty. You'll know what you need to when I want you to know it."
I stood up and slapped my hands against my jeans to rid them of the dirt.
"You're playing yourself like a fool, Agnes Silver! You can run all you want from the truth but in the end you'll see it's just slapped you in the face and you've gone numb. No one gets nowhere while running in place."
I whirled around to her.
"I never run in place, Miss Betty! River does that. I move and that's it. I accomplish distance and destination."
"Mmm, you believe that, do you?"
"I know it."
"What's that smell?" she said suddenly, her neck craning up.
I followed her gaze with my eyes and froze when I took in the sight.
"Oh my God," she said. "Quick!"
And without thinking, I ran.

Phinnaeus:
I say, man, there be moments that affect you for your whole sadsilly life. Early, she says "Phinny boy" to me "what moments are those?" and I just keeps on telling her, man, that I can prove to her I remember the way I was born with that Judah screaming and hanging on to me like it was nothing short of a sin for me to come out first.

"Sin's baggage you don't need, Phinny."
"I know, Early, but you be setting me up and I know where I come out from, man."
"Speak like a person, Phinnaeus."
"I'll be speaking like a person, man, you think when you throw the Misters out of those Wheels and I don't have to be hanging out on the shoulder with Judah blocking out the whoo-whoos yes and aahs," I says to her. But Early turns away leaving me an old cold shoulder Early she does and I go on my way, man, trying to figure out which memory is from the past and which is from the future but I know ZERO is the midway-bidway point so I starts from there, man.

Now I comes out into this world, man, covered in a red satin curtain like I mean to be hid away forever in her guts where she stowed away and stuffed us through a chord woved of blood redandblue like a bridge-highway between her being and ours full of marzipan and elbow maccaroni and fruit and birds and leaves all mashed up broken down into fiber and proteins and saturated/trans/unsaturated fats and hydrogenated thisandthat. I remember it like yesterday covered up spat out like goo, man, because that's all we ever be in the end and it's life, so a miracle beautiful like a ribbon highway.

And I remember it like yesterday when she was alone but soon to have us crying around, man, and she felt her guts rejecting us parasites because we grow too big and too much for her take in one sitting. But sit she does all right and the guts contract and she's silent, my Early, because no coward ever dribbled from my mother's mouth or lurked up in her head, man. The body has a mind of its own not Early's not mine not Judah's and it screams but mindovermatter wins over 'cause it's Early here we're talking of and she silences that scream and channels energy God energy towards my head. That's right, man, my head.

Judah boy, he rebels and that twists fate up in confusion inside her. Words-not-words but emotion like a photon stream slice up and into my head and it's war. But the war, man, it don't last like for everybody else because inside her, man, Judah never saw me and once he opened his eyes and did, my first and his second arrival are forgotten.

I've been staring at a blank screen for a while now and still have nothing to say. As a writer, though, I tend to write more when I'm in a block because to get past it, you have to put yourself through torture and torture involves forcing words like these to come out. No, they don't sound so great. No, they're not very enlightening. But what can I say? They get the job done and if a picture is worth a thousand words and I make it my task to take at least one picture a day without a camera because I don't have one, then my job has been clearly laid out before me.

A little bit about today: rain everywhere. Everyone coming in with sopping umbrellas and moping. "What a disgusting day." I grew up in a drought and any day there's even one drop is a day for celebration. The sun isn't always good for everything. Too much of a good thing turns sour. I'll take the rain. It's misty at the moment, falling slowly, like snow in February. It made the spring end when it kicked all the blooms off the stalks and now the spring's rainbow-on-the-ground has transformed into the summer's every-shade-of-green. Green gets old, like white, but the clothing gets better. Maybe we should wear the bright colors in the winter to combat the seasonal distress and the dark ones in the summer because we have enough of everything else. Keep the balance.

Two days ago I was at work and the phone rang at the info desk. Just because I work at a desk labeled "information" does not constitute my (or any of my co-workers') needing to know the answer to the secret of life. But we have our label and that means to the average Joe that we're literally omniscient. Call information and you think it's the equivalent of calling God. Well, maybe it is. I guarantee you'll be disappointed.

I don't know where to get your W-2 forms. Perhaps your place of employment? The IRS? I don't know where a homeless lesbian can find food and shelter other than the Salvation Army or another kind of shelter that I looked up for you and I really don't think you should be picky about where you go considering you're homeless. It's not my fault that the line for the bathroom is over 45 people long. That's what happens when you're a woman. I don't know where your caretaker is because that's your responsibility, not mine, especially since I wasn't here yesterday and I don't live with you, am not related to you, and no one gives me the information I need to know off the top of my head to give to you because people don't believe in communication or efficiency but osmosis. If you don't like the policies of this school, don't apply here. And if you already have and got accepted, go somewhere else. Not my problem. I'm just information. But I usually don't have that because I'm only supposed to know about this building and to tell you the truth, this building is pretty small.

We'll take a break now, go outside and walk through the rain sing in the rain dance through the rain and the green will get greener and the colors will fade because when it rains (generally) the sky fades to gray and white and the blue gets hidden behind it. This is real life these days, whatever that means and I go home to my half-painted half-white half-yellow room and fill it up with the one thing I could ever fill anything up with. I go home to an empty room and blue curtains and yellow sheets and stained wood that I worked hard for and unfulfilled dreams that I'm trying trying trying to make into reality past present and future for me and I talk to no one out loud inside those walls to doors with no knobs and to windows that open down and I imagine a presence a friend a voice someone to lean on and laugh with and cry with but it all comes back to the beginning and my life is a labyrinthine entity. We go one way and it's down with no ladder up but motivation and no matter how much of that I get the Exit is just a dream. When I travel, I travel for a long time and one day, I'll hit the end of the world like a brick wall that stops us all. So I'll stretch it out for as long as possible, stretch it out for the interim.

But the phone rings off the hook with people calling God. I learned the lesson that won't get through their heads a long time ago. All they're doing is calling me and either way, the answer's disappointing.