Excerpt: Little Big Song

Joseph Angel Riversmith was born in Bright Angel, Arizona. In itself there was nothing remarkable about this. Of the three hundred, fifty eight thousand, one hundred and ninety two people that are born each day, ninety-four thousand and two hundred of them are born in America. One hundred, two thousand and forty two of them opened their wide blue eyes for the first time in the Canyon State.
His grandmother Nathalie was one eighth Navajo, diluted with European blood but still looking as grand and dark as a daughter of the chiefs she claimed as her ancestors. All her heritage had lent to Joseph was a proud and stately nose and skin more inclined to tan than burn. His mother Naomi, who looked even less like a native American than he did, was but one sixth Navajo, and therefore the last in the family entitled to the rights of the reservation. His father? Well. He knew his name was Simon. He had never met the man, nor had he heard a good word spoken about him.
While he was growing up his mother played Enya as she sat and meditated on the portico. Her tie-dye shirts and flowing skirts were so pretty, fluttering in the sandy breezes. When her period of deep spiritual inflection was finished she would dance with Joseph and whirl him around in the air, exchanging the Enya C.Ds for the Beach Boys or for the Bare Naked Ladies.
She grew prickly pears in the closest thing to a garden they had, but she never let Joseph pick them himself. It was dangerous, she said. He didn’t mind, he always found it funny watching her try and pick the elusive fruit. She’d come wading out of the house in her boots, sunhat and thick gardening gloves. Wielding a huge pair of metal tongs she’d pluck the fruits from a cactus and throw them into a pail. So dangerous were these fruits, they had to avoid them on windy days should the spines take flight and land in their skin. Carefully she’d swill the pail with water to wash away any dirt and disease, then she had to boil them until the spines fell loose and out. Still wearing gloves – always wearing the gloves – she sliced off the ends, sliced the pears down the middle, and discarded the outer flesh. Then, and only then, could Joseph eat the fruit. It was smooth and tropical, and felt like a pudding.
When he was only seven he decided to pick one for himself and thrust his hand straight into the heart of the cactus. He had screamed and cried for three days afterwards. Naomi had to sit with him the sauna until the pores in his hands opened wide enough with sweat to let the poison seep out, and scrubbed his hand to release it from the infection forever. Still he had cried and hugged into her as she was his own personal goddess. He had never eaten a prickly pear again after that, although his mother still plucked them and Nathalie still processed them into tempting candies.
A few months after his ninth birthday he started spending more and more time at his Grandmother’s house on the reservation. Money was tight, Naomi need a proper job, and that was that. When Joseph was only fourteen he realised his mother’s actual age was thirty three. She had always claimed to be thirty nine. It didn’t take the young boy long to calculate that his mother had met his father at the age of eighteen, and he himself had been born one year later. He knew all about this long before he realised the implications and why she was so ashamed of it. So ashamed that she did what no woman ever did and pretended her true age was much greater than her age in reality. Nathalie did not love what Naomi had done but found it impossible not to love her blonde haired, blue eyed grandson. He had been too big to sit on her knees ever since he was ten, and had had to content himself with crouching by the fireside and leaning intently towards her as she spoke. Although she was more than happy to look after Joseph, Nathalie was less inclined to support her daughter financially. Naomi’s youth had been spent - wasted; in her mother’s opinion - touring with a band for which she was the lead vocalist. And so she found work as a secretary and receptionist at the local police station, selling crystals and reading palms for spare change in the time she had left over. On the rare nights she came home from work and her son was still awake, she told him stories of her life on tour with her band. But there was one story she never quite worked up the courage to tell him. The story of his father.