Chapter 28

I turned onto Wisconsin from Prospect Avenue just in time to see, way down there, a red car turning into a driveway. It looked like the right car, and it was about the right time, and it looked like about the right part of the street. I guessed that it was Cecelia getting home. By the time I got down to the house, and pulled into the curb, I saw I was right. Cecelia and Darlia were waiting on the front steps for me, and I knew they'd seen me coming. Of course it's hard to miss that big black Blazer, which I haven't washed once since I bought it.

I climbed out, pulled my gun from under the seat, and locked the door. Darlia met me at the curb, giving me a big hug while I held the gun out of the way – and Cecelia held her school books. When my daughter released me I stood and there was my wife, smiling gently. "Have you arrived in time?" she asked.

"Just in time. Another minute and they'd have locked the door against me."

Her smile broadened. "Then let me hustle you inside, and we'll lock ourselves in together."

Darlia, watching and listening, snatched at her books. Cecelia released them, and Darlia trotted off to the steps, where she stood looking at us impatiently. "I think you'd better hustle your bustle, lady, or that kid's gonna start yappin' at you."

"Hustle my bustle? I do not know, and do not particularly care, where that came from – just so long as you do not make a habit of saying it." And Cecelia smiled again and went to unlock the house.

It was an hour or so later, when Darlia had gone through math homework and English homework, that she called to me where I sat on the sofa reading Judith Van Gieson's Confidence Woman. "Daddy, why do they mess up the names?"

"What names, 'Lia?"

"This history books says the king and queen who helped Columbus were Ferdinand and Isabella."

"Yeah, that's what my history book said." I'd turned on the sofa, my finger marking my place, so I could see her where she sat – in my chair – at the dining room table.

"But I speak Spanish, Daddy! ¡Sus nombres fueron Fernando e Isabel!"

"True, true – and in English that translates to Fernando and Elizabeth. I ain't got a clue why they do it, 'Lia, but it is wrong." I thought for a second. "Since you do speak Spanish ... Say, Weightlifter, are there any other kids in your history class who speak Spanish?"

"Yeah, there's Diego and 'Nita and Juanito." I know Spanish not fluently by any means, but well enough that I knew that the last two were actually Anita, shortened by Darlia's or somebody's customary haste in saying the name, and Juan – for Juanito means something like Johnny, literally "little Juan."

"Okay, 'Lia, here's what you might do. Get together with them, and together go to the teacher, and explain the error. And see if she – she?"

"Yeah, it's Mrs. Wesley."

"Okay, you can see if she can get the word moving up the channels. If I know that school, they'll try to find books, when they replace these, that have the names right. But I don't know if such books exist. That couple's been Ferdinand and Isabella as long as I've known anything about it, and so far no one's gotten the translation right."

"Okay, Daddy." Darlia thought for a minute. "Are 'Mericans stupid?"

I looked at her for a moment, considering how to answer. "Some are and some aren't," I finally said. "Americans are people, just like Mexicans and Koreans and Scots and Romanians and Lakota and Diné and Lahtkwa and all the rest. Now I gotta tell you, 'Lia, that sometimes the country seems to be pretty parochial and ignorant."

"So other countries have mistakes in their history books?"

"That I can't tell you, Weightlifter. I ain't never studied no other country's history books. But I suspect that they've got mistakes in 'em too. It might be interesting to see what an English history book would say about the Revolutionary War, or the War of 1812, or even World War II."

She chewed on her pencil for a moment. "How is 'Merica ignorant?"

"It's America, with an A," I said. "But how is this country ignorant ... Well, that book and that long running error is one example. And you've run into a couple or three people who think we live in Mexico. There are the people who talk about everything between New York City and California as 'flyover country.' We've got people who think the only thing that ever happens in Iraq is bombs. And don't ask me why it's that way or what to do about it, 'cause I ain't got nan clue."

"Do you think Uncle Memphis knows about that stuff?"

I nodded. "He probably does. It's been a long time now, but he spent a couple of years in Korea and he knows about reality and American notions. For that matter, being a traditional Lahtkwa he knows a lot that most Americans don't know about Indians."

"Maybe I'll ask him the next time I'm on the rez."

"Whenever that is."

"Yeah, 'cause we don't go up there all the time like we do with California and Alabama."

I grinned. "No, we don't. But weren't you doing homework?"

The look of startlement on her face was genuine. "I got so busy thinking about Fernando and Isabel that I forgot the homework!" she said, and turned back to her book.

I turned back to mine, and it was quiet in that peaceful house.

For supper that night Cecelia made shrimp fajitas. She grilled the shrimp using Sara's recipe – little ones, just bite sized – and the onions, sliced bell peppers, and I didn't pay much attention to what other kinds of vegetables, in one skillet, using just enough butter, real butter, to keep it all from sticking and burning. To cook in she'd changed to her Kevin Harvick fire suit, the replica she'd bought for my 40^th birthday. She'd got it while Goodwrench was still his sponsor, and now it didn't match the suit he wore each week when he raced, but that was all right. She'd known I'd love seeing her in the fire suit more than I would have loved to wear it myself, and she was dead right. As she stood at the stove, stirring up the fixings, she looked slim and tall and strong and absolutely perfect as far as I was concerned. I was putting plates on the table at her behest, having shooed Darlia off to finish the last bit of her homework in her room, and though a fire suit is baggy and hides contours, male or female, she's female enough that I could tell it. If nothing else, her waist narrows and her hips flare.