Komatke Gold

grandmother.

Chapter 1.

It seemed like a lifetime of years since I laid my father to rest, but the little bird who told her grandmother about my father’s eagle feather request still looked the same in my mind. Her name was Myra. She had large, almost copper-colored eyes, the high cheek bones of a princess, brown skin as translucent as china and she forever took my breath away. She maintained her jet-black hair in the proper tight bun at the very back of her head, but it always gave several beautiful loose strands permission to taunt me. Myra Page was a preceptor nurse on my father’s ward. Much younger than me, she’d graduated from Northern Arizona University, but was doing her on-the-job training in the County’s hospital. She said she was a Chemehuevi and Hopi Indian hybrid, and laughed her sparkling, beautiful musical laugh.

I can always close my eyes to see the brilliant teeth and dimples belonging to her quick, open smile. She said her father was Hopi from the only credible Hopi reservation in Northern Arizona and he and her mother met at the Phoenix Indian School, had fallen in love and been properly married on the Colorado River Reservation where she was born. She said she had hybrid vigor. I took her word for it back then, in a misty and bemused way, but know it for certain now!

She was responsible for the dirty work in my fathers’ quarantined room. She lived in the Parker area, but traveled to Yuma two or three times weekly for her many shifts, and stayed in a nurses’ billet while in Yuma.

I went to see my father every day and stayed with him awhile when he was up to it. I believe they changed his bandages twice a day and I did not want to be present for that. I revered nurses like Myra who could take that sickeningly sweet smell without retching. I’ve seen people in parts, and smelled ten-day old bodies, but that smell ... . There were plenty of good nurses around Parker back then, the majority in Yuma being Hispanic or Indian. One night I went by the hospital, on my way back to base. My father was asleep so I just sat with him awhile, watched his fragile chest rise and fall and did some deep thinking. Right in the middle of my distant, deep and serious thought, I was suddenly aware of this brown angel in a crisp white uniform. I vaguely realized she must be part of the 11:00 p.m. shift, and I figured it was high time I hit the road to the Marine base. However, after getting my few things together I just sat with them on my lap, as if paralyzed. I’ve never quite understood why.

I must have been mesmerized by her presence or maybe just bone tired. Perhaps it was my whole physiologic state of being at the time. I’ll never know. I was loyally married, and fairly happy I thought, but her simple and polite conversation carried me away, gently. Perhaps being as tired as I was, her Native American accent was a siren’s song, How are you Mr. Wayne? she said. I’m really sad to hear about your father’s disease. Are you O.K.? Are you staying here? Do you have many relatives in Yuma or in Parker? Are you still in the military? I finally realized I wasn’t answering her and felt my face flush. She took pity on me, politely turned her gaze away and ever so slightly … blessed me with a dimpled smile.

I can still remember my ears ringing, my throat tightening and the sense of drowning in those beautiful eyes and cheekbones. I finally got a few wits about me and probably said some unintelligible things, not unlike an embarrassed schoolboy. I certainly wasn’t a school boy though, nor did I have a similar mentality ... normally.

I was six feet tall, about a hundred and seventy pounds, in the best shape of my life, had a full head of auburn hair and wasn’t that bad for a guy. I guess some ladies liked me because I listened … and remembered … and cared. Anyway, after I got my head together, she didn’t seem to mind the bumpkin from Virginia and we chatted often after that; ephemerally at first, then often, and later … silently. It was mostly my fault. It happened because I made sure I was there after 10:45 p.m. every possible evening.

During those wonderful days I learned volumes about Myra and her lineage, and I learned more about the Indian School in Phoenix than I ever wanted to know (and I was born and raised in South Phoenix). I learned about Indian history on the Colorado River Reservation, about the Central Arizona Project taking water belonging to the Tribe, about the propensity of some instructors in Nursing School to think that Indian squaws were slow and un-teachable and much, much more about her horizons, and of her aspirations … and passions. All the while, she was taking care of other patients as dutifully as she was my father. What was so exasperating was that she could pick up our conversation exactly where we left off ten minutes ago, or twenty hours ago. I never tired of listening, but got seriously sidetracked late one night when my father finally went into a coma from which he would never wake.

The doctor estimated his death, almost to the hour. His came as most deaths do from the insidious disease we call cancer. He sank into a coma about six in the evening and gradually faded away with a few agonizing breaths about 10:00 a.m. the next morning. Although Myra knew he went into a coma she didn’t reveal if she knew he had less than twelve hours to live. She said goodbye with sad eyes and left about an hour late at 8:00 a.m.

Many things happened before the 10:00 p.m. shift-change that evening. My father’s body was removed to the mortuary in Parker and I left for Parker before Myra came to work. There was much to do at the mortuary and at the La Paz County Office of vital statistics. I was also distraught about my father; much more than I thought possible just days earlier. I missed Myra terribly, couldn’t fully understand why, but had my own healing to do and I didn’t want to impose on her. I thought I knew how uncomfortable Indians were with death, but then again I was wrong!

Chapter 2.

After four days in Parker feverishly arranging to burying my father, applying for death certificates, completing other paperwork and travel preparations one accomplishes after a death in Arizona, I dropped by the hospital to see Myra, ostensibly to thank her and say goodbye … I thought. I was completely unprepared for what happened next.

When I walked in, the entire ward went eerily quiet. I saw Myra’s unmistakable little backside at the nurse’s station, and she must have sensed I was there, because she wheeled around abruptly, slammed down her clip board which immediately fell metallically to the floor, and started my way at a fast walk and then almost at a run.

She needed no makeup, but usually wore just a touch of lip-gloss and always, always that perfume. That night she had on no makeup; her eyes were already red and were quickly filling with tears as she sped toward me without decorum. She started to say my name, but nothing more came out, save a stream of some Indian words mixed with sobs. She hit me like a train and clung like a demon.

Of course I started crying too. Everyone in the area politely averted their eyes and left us with a mutual pain which seconds earlier I thought was mine alone. Between sobs and some snotty unintelligible mumbles she said she thought I was gone and she’d never, ever see me again. Also snuffing a bit, I told her it would never have happened that way.

Since I was then staying at a motel in Parker rather than at MCAS, the Indian grapevine didn’t work well and she didn’t know what happened to me. As she settled down some, she told me my father had asked her for a couple of things for his funeral, but she could only find a death blanket. So, I silently established where that blanket on his feet came from. She said she was trying to find the other item for his casket, but couldn’t tell me what it was, for fear of getting me in trouble, and she would not take payment for the blanket.

Luckily, her kind supervisor could do without her for a while so we sat in the coffee shop and I was fully briefed, partially enlightened, wiped her nose for her and fell completely and utterly in love. I quickly realized there were many things she hadn’t told me over the past weeks, thinking she was protecting me somehow. She even knew about my father’s ex-wife and kids. Parker was a smaller town then. I wondered why she didn’t come to the funeral since she obviously knew when it was. I asked her, was told a half-truth, but found out the real reason much later. Myra was the niece of my father’s best friend!

Chapter 3.

As an aside, we all know people make many mistakes in their lives, some big, some small. My biggest was Myra. I should be enjoying our children today, but they were never born. You can’t do it over because you only get one chance … don’t you?

I still hang my father’s death blanket on my wall, when I have a wall to hang it on. I only hope my fathers’ spirit is somehow connected to it, because it wasn’t until the day of his funeral I found out what a good man he really was, and how many genuine friends he had.

During his dying ordeal he’d favored Myra’s attention and asked her for a death blanket and an eagle feather to be buried with. Myra managed to get both, thanks to her grandmother. She got the real deals and not some tourist wool and dyed turkey feather. Her grandmother hid the feather in his casket and said she wished he could have held it. At the time it was illegal and the mortician would surely have objected to anything else Indian. I think it was what the dying man needed though; right or wrong, and he knew Myra and her grandmother would do it correctly. He trusted her more than he trusted me. Now, I understand why. From time to time I think about what a nice funeral it was, despite the barren, dusty graveyard. We can’t all push up pretty daisies I guess! I’ve thought about it almost every day over the years, but I’d never physically gone back to Parker and its small, bleak cemetery.

After the emotional hospital episode, I felt a bit chagrined and guilty, but certainly loved. What was I to do? I was married and had no business being with another woman. Somehow I had to grow up and stop this foolishness. So … within and over the next five emotionally misty days Myra and I made love about ten times in a motel room in Parker, at MCAS, and twice while recklessly negotiating certain sections of U.S. 95. I’d never given myself to a woman so willingly, completely, thoroughly, madly and happily. It wasn’t long before reality began to rear its ugly head though. We hardly ate, but we talked a lot during that quick lover’s eternity spent together. I learned her grandmother was the crying lady at my fathers’ funeral. The little bird was Myra of course and Myra could not go to the funeral for fear of the appearance of being involved with me. However, once she realized she was in love, she threw caution out the panaptsa. We both did … greedily.

I had no real reason to stay in Yuma any longer. Myra had family and career responsibilities; I had family and Army responsibilities. Late one night she was lying entirely on my body, softly rocking with sleep breathing and covering me with fragrant hair and those warm tickle spots, when my wife called my motel room. I have no idea how she got the number, but there weren’t that many motels in Parker at the time and I wasn’t at MCAS, so you figure it out.

Women know! I don’t know how, but they do. It had been several days since my father’s funeral, and I honestly was waiting on death certificates and other final papers. I had three days of leave left and I must have sounded too happy during my previous calls from Yuma, because I thought she knew. Guilt cut in at my dance. Myra would normally have left before sunrise, but she left after the call, with teary eyes. We talked freely and loved each other more intensely, for two more wonderful days, and then I left for MCAS, Yuma and the East Coast, a world away from my spiritual Home.

Chapter 4.

My wife and I never talked about the call, but it came between us in my mind. I guess I let it. When we had sex I found myself trying to visualize Myra and always felt guiltier. It’s hard to take the Southern Baptist out of the boy. I called Myra a few times from the office and always got caught by a secretary or subordinate. Of course I took this as a sign that I was a true sinner, beyond any redemption. Our minds continue to play such dirty tricks when conditioned early! Finally, I stopped calling and my heart hardened and began to corrode.

I found solace in acquaintances with the hardest soldiers, toughened by combat or personal loss or both. I took the most difficult and most distant jobs in Korea, the Philippines, Germany and finally the most distant place on earth, the Pentagon. As I neared retirement, I must have feared it; dreading free time most of my life. I also found myself forever exposed to women who for a kind word or gesture would have given themselves, but I was always true to Myra. Punishment for what I’d done? Who knows? Who cared? After a while I was just a content android, going about my tasks making rank and honors, and no lasting