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A Hopi kachina watches my computer screen from over my right shoulder. He wears a sanded leather loincloth over ochre skin, collar and cuffs of soft maple rabbit. He stands two-feet high, but he feels as tall as a man. His protruding eyes burn my back, transmit an ancient message of sure-footed joy.
You will dance and you will like it, he mutters. You will run and you will jump.
I try to pay him no mind.
"Hey, we're the same age, man. You can't tell me what to do."
Mudhead knows I'm right, knows we're both children of the sixties, his back rigid with curved cottonwood, my mind stiff with routine.
A rancher's wife handed him to me, made me take him in lieu of payment when I handed her a bag of frosted cosmetics and an invoice for eighteen bucks, thirty-one cents. I wanted to sell him on eBay, collect my fee by proxy, but Mudhead wouldn't have it.
You will keep me and you will like it.
He's a difficult Spirit.
The feathers in Mudhead's hands shook as I rustled the pages of my local paper in search of the County Fair schedule.
"Hey, boys! Who wants to help me bake a cake for the fair? I'm thinking I'll do a triple layer lemon supreme, whattaya say?"
My two sons barely removed nose from book. Louis, 12, raised one eyebrow.
"C'mon mom, you always win. Why not let someone else have a chance this year?"
Martin, 10, chimed in.
"Yeah. Besides, we don't get to eat the cake. Those judges are greedy."
I glanced at the two blue ribbons stuck to my wall with thumbtacks. San Miguel County Fair, First Place, Cake Competition, 2006. San Miguel County, First Place, Cake Competition, 2005. Maybe I have gotten complacent, I thought. I handed the paper to Louis.
"Okay, you guys think you're so smart. Find another category for me to enter."
I swear Mudhead giggled. The boys smooshed close on the couch, legs extended against my Spanish pine coffee table.
"Uh, mom? Will you actually enter the contest we choose?"
I shrugged my shoulders. Sure. Sewing, painting, pies, cookies, tortillas, I remembered the list, the old-fashioned pitting of gargantuan zucchini against watermelon, remembered last year's bevy of upstanding ranch women carrying tater-tot casseroles laced with green chile, carrying small town tradition in the crook of their arms.
"Sure. As long as it's something I can actually enter. We don't have a monster melon in the garden."
The boys whispered, laughed. They sounded gently sinister, the laugh of children giddy on newsprint power. Martin stood and handed me the paper, his index finger indicating my fate.
Mud Volleyball. Noon - 1 p.m. Open teams. Coed.
Damn that kachina.
The morning of the competition my boys brushed their rabbits. Martin checked Snowball's toenails, her tail, and packed her and Midnight into a cat carrier. The bunnies didn't care, didn't know they would be judged for size, weight, in the "Meat Pen" division.
"It's okay," Martin whispered. "The rest of those bunnies might get eaten, but you won't. We just have to tell the judge you're for dinner."
Midnight leaned one shoulder against the tight wire bars of the cage and rubbed.
My stomach flip-flopped as the car skidded into the dirt lot framing the fair. I wore shorts and a tank top, Walgreens sunglasses, my hair pulled back in a long ponytail. I never played volleyball of any type in the past, never cared much for organized sports, for the concept of a team, a group that must move as one. I stepped into the sun, into the tiny midway comprised of a few barns and several mobile units. I made the sign of the cross.
I like to do things by myself. I like to run, to move, to dance. I'm not that crazy about flying balls and muddy people. Hell, I'm forty-one years old. I'm not in the best of shape, either, not since the car accident last summer.
I tried to stop my mantra of pain, of worry, of Girl Who Can't Play Ball. My boys hustled their bunnies to the exhibition barn. I walked past the trailer serving up plates of greasy funnel cakes coated in icing sugar, walked to the wide ditch over which hung a drooping net like a useless apron. Several people stood beneath the net, waiting for any other takers, deliberately covered in mud like Dairy Queen chocolate dipped cones.
I chose a side, kicked off
