Long Snows Moon (13 page)

She called down to her mother, “Don’t be sad,
I will be okay alone, Mom.”

* * * *

Jameson refilled their glasses of wine. “As
you can see, you made an impression on me.”

“I was right about you,” Devon smirked. “You
are a mind reader as was your mother.”

“We are seers, or intuitives. It is ironic
that I can’t see what is close to me.”

“What couldn’t you see?”

“That my mother had suffered with cancer for
years.”

* * * *

“I can’t believe nothing can be done,”
Jameson stated. “And I can’t believe you didn’t tell me before now.
I wasted a year away at school that I could have been here taking
care of you.”

“I don’t need taking care of,” her mother
shrugged. “And don’t tell me you’re quitting college. No, Ma’am, I
won’t hear that.”

“I’m not going back. I’m not leaving you.”
Jameson sobbed. “Why you? You’re so good.”

“Death is a fickle fate. You can’t wager on
it, you will always lose. You know no one gets out alive. Life
comes with a death sentence.”

“Mom, stop it. No Doc Jo Jo wisdomism is
going to work this time, so forget it. Don’t even try to make this
okay.”

Joann Jordan scooped up her daughter. “I
wanted to tell you, but I knew the truth would be revealed when the
time was right,” her mother soothed. “I knew you’d see.”

Jameson had seen when they closed up shop for
the night. She watched Doc Jo Jo work on the nightly receipts.
Jameson had an uneasy feeling. The shadows from her mother’s desk
lamp were long and menacing. The air in the store was heavy and too
sweet from incense and oils. She left the store by way of the
kitchen, grabbed her cigarettes, and stepped out into the
night.

That was when she noticed the owl perched on
the greenhouse roof. It stared at her with its bored, hooded eyes.
The owl with its power to extract secrets, the bringer of
prophesies. Jameson had seen the owl a few times over the course of
the years as it was her mother’s totem, but it had been years since
it was so close to the house and longer since it returned Jameson’s
curious gaze.

It glowered at Jameson with its cynical eyes,
watching her. Even inside, Jameson tried to shake the owl’s
deliberate, judicious look. She peered out the kitchen window and
saw the owl still watching.

Jameson decided she would ask her mother what
it meant. She found her in the store, still seated at her small and
cluttered desk. Approaching her Jameson observed the way her
mother’s face looked by the light of the desk lamp. Newly infused
with owl energy Jameson was able to see. The mirth left her
mother’s eyes and worry turned her happy mouth downward. The
‘intellect’ furrow between her brows deepened and the light in her
eyes was not as bright.

The cancer was terminal as was Jameson’s
sorrow.

“I can’t lose you,” Jameson sobbed.

“Dry your eyes, my dear. Let us celebrate
life today. You get us a bottle of wine. I have a nice Chardonnay
in the fridge.”

“What’s going to happen?” Jameson asked.

“You’ll finish college, of course, and I’ve
put some money aside for you.”

“That’s not what I mean,” Jameson
blurted.

“I’m not doing any radiation treatments, if
that’s what you mean.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t believe in it, you know that.”

“What do you believe in,” Jameson screamed,
“this bullshit?” She grabbed a package of dried herbs and tore it
open, littering the floor. “How about this, maybe this can cure
you.” Jameson crashed a bottle of Doc Jo Jo’s hand bottled ointment
on the ground.

Berry began to bark, agitated by Jameson’s
rare temper.

Jameson dropped to her knees and hugged her
dog. “Sorry, Berry, sshh, it’s all right. Nobody is upset. Where
are your beautiful babies?”

Berry yowled and the two remaining pups
crawled out from under the shelf where Doc Jo Jo displayed her
homemade beef jerky.

“That reminds me, I have some people coming
tonight for one of the pups,” Doc Jo Jo said. She tore off three
pieces of jerky and fed one to each of the puppies and the big
piece to Berry.

Two puppies remained the first-born, and the
runt.

Jameson cuddled the puppies. “I wonder who is
leaving tonight. I’ll bet it’s you,” she cooed to Long Snows Moon.
“If you’re not sold tonight I’m keeping you for myself.”

Her mother gave her a chiding look. “You
can’t even keep Berry at the dorm, let alone another.”

“I’m not going back,” Jameson stated. “I’m
staying here with you.”

Joann Jordan looked at her child, now a
woman, and laughed for the first time in a long time.

“You’re not going back to school? What do you
plan to do with your life?”

“I’ll run the store,” Jameson stated.

“All by yourself?”

“How hard can it be? I have been working here
all my life. Half of the inventory comes from these.” She waved her
hands in front of Doc Jo Jo’s face.

“What about your education?”

“As long as I have my five senses I will
never stop learning.”

“Six,” Joann Jordan corrected her.

“Right,” Jameson nodded.

“You are telling me when I cross over you are
going to stay here in a place that has caused you endless
humiliation?” Doc Jo Jo asked.

“When I was a kid in school I was embarrassed
that I lived in a tepee shaped store, but now I don’t give a damn.
This place is the final detail left of my father, a place he
created with his own hands.”

Doc Jo Jo laughed, reminiscing, “We lived in
an actual tent while we built this place, right out there where the
greenhouse is. You know, you were conceived in that very tent.”

“In that tent, yes, I know that,” Jameson
rolled her eyes. “Spare me the details and don’t try to detour. I
have to run the store. Who better than me to carry on your work?
Who else is going to heal the weak and infirm in four states
simultaneously?”

Doc Jo Jo studied her daughter for a dramatic
moment, searched her eyes for truth and her manner for
sincerity.

“I mean it, Mom I’m not going back to school.
I’m not leaving you,” Jameson declared.

“Very well, you do have a lot to learn and
not a lot of time to do it,” Doc Jo Jo conceded, going to the
kitchen and getting the wine from the fridge. “Would you grab the
wineglasses, please? And a butter knife.”

“How much time do you have?” Jameson asked,
removing the glasses with a shaking hand.

Doc Jo Jo shrugged and sat at the table. “Two
weeks, two months, two years, be quiet now, it is lesson time.”

Jameson was obedient. She slid into the chair
at the wide wooden table in the center of the kitchen. She waited
for her mother’s instructions as she had as a child. She observed
her mother remove the cork using the butter knife.

“That’s cool,” Jameson said. “But, we do have
a corkscrew, you know.”

“I know,” Doc Jo Jo explained. “The medicine
I practice is much like the manner in which I opened this wine. It
may be rustic and elementary, but it works. That is the premise of
the things you call bullshit, my herbs, my teas.”

“I didn’t mean that, I was upset.”

Doc Jo Jo held up her hand. “I know why you
said it, but I know that on some level you also believe it. In
time, your skepticism will fade.” Doc Jo Jo poured them each a
glass of wine. She sipped hers.

“We are from the earth and to the earth we
return,” she toasted, raising her glass. “It’s all the emotional
stuff that binds us to our mortal bodies.”

“I understand your beliefs, and I share them
for the most part, but why won’t you at least try to heal yourself?
It is your life’s work. Use your curing crosses, or whatever you
have in your medicine woman arsenal. I don’t understand why you’re
giving up.”

Jameson slumped in the chair across the table
from her mother and gulped her wine.

“I’m not giving up, that’s the part you don’t
understand.”

“Explain it, please.”

“My spirit is alive and well, but my body is
tired. My case is extreme, and to be honest, I no longer have the
mental fortitude to cure myself even if I did have the time, which
I do not. I have come to terms with the method of my death and in
this knowledge is solace. I am tired. I have done good work here. I
made a wonderful daughter and I’ve helped many people.” She
shrugged. “You can’t live forever.”

The tears rolled down Jameson’s face. “I
can’t take this,” she sobbed.

“You are dreading the loss right now instead
of relishing the moment.”

“Relishing what? The moment my mother tells
me she is dying?”

“The moment we are in right now. It holds the
lucid, prevailing knowledge of us again meeting. I promise you
that. Remember this table, this wine, and these tears. Remember me
when we meet again.” Doc Jo Jo’s eyes filled with tears.

Jameson got up and hugged her mother. “Don’t
fear, my blessed mother, I’ll see you through to the other
side.”

Doc Jo Jo returned the hug. “Now that’s what
I needed to hear, my child.”

The bell above the door jingled and they
released one another.

“I love you, Mom,” Jameson said.

“Me too.”

“I’m taking Berry for a walk. I will be back
when they’re gone. I hope they don’t take Long Snows Moon, I want
her.”

“They have the choice. They drove a long way
for their new pet. Let them at least have an option.”

“I guess,” Jameson said. She whistled and
Berry came tramping into the kitchen. Jameson snatched her leash
from its hook by the back door.

“Jameson,” her mother said. “I have been sick
for a long time. I managed to keep my cancer in remission for ten
years, but my hall pass has expired. I want you to know that Joann
Jordan doesn’t go down without a fight.”

“What are you saying?” Jameson asked in awe.
“You found a cure for cancer?”

Doc Jo Jo’s eyes gleamed with excitement. “A
provisional reprieve,” she smiled and left the kitchen, greeting
her customers.

They burst into Elk’s Pass Sundries like a
couple of schoolgirls ditching class. Claire and Analise entered
the store delirious from their weekend skiing and intoxicated by
one another. Jameson recognized them immediately.

“This place,” Analise exclaimed, “it’s as
charming as I remembered.”

“Welcome to Elk's Pass Sundries,” Doc said as
she and Jameson emerged from the kitchen.

“Hello there, we are here to buy the puppy
for my daughter.”

“I've been expecting you,” Doc said. “Let me
round up the pups.”

Jameson stomped upstairs as she glowered at
the women.

“Look, Claire, this painting is magnificent.
I have to get it for Devon.” She rushed to huge canvas on an easel
by the west windows. “It’s marvelous.”

“Isn’t it?” Doc Jo Jo agreed. “My daughter
painted it. She finished it yesterday.”

“Is it for sale?”

“Everything’s for sale at Elk’s Pass
Sundries.”

“Is it a wolf?” Claire asked, joining Analise
at the easel.

“It is Shawnodese,” Doc Jo Jo said.

“It’s good.” Claire admired it over the rim
of her eyeglasses. “Does she study?”

Doc Jo Jo sighed. “We’ll see.”

“Oh, Claire, there they are,” Analise cried
as she spied the puppies peeking from behind the counter. “Look at
the white one. Is it a girl?”

“They’re both female,” Doc Jo Jo told
her.

“We have to get Devon this one, don’t you
think, Claire?” Analise asked, scooping up Long Snows Moon. “Or
this little black one with the blue eyes. It would match Devon's
eyes and hair.”

“Accessorizing with an animal? Delightful!”
Claire laughed.

Jameson watched them from the loft. “They
aren't accessories.”

Claire wrinkled her nose at Jameson. “You're
right. Get her the white one, Analise. She went off to the nether
of the store and called out, “Bubble gum soda!”

“I want one!” Analise shouted. “We’ll take
this puppy, and the painting please.”

“I’ll get the papers together.” Doc Jo Jo
rummaged through her desk drawer.

“How much is the painting?” Analise
asked.

“What is it worth to you?” Doc Jo Jo
asked.

“Oh, I couldn’t say,” Analise faltered. “It
is so lovely and unusual. Besides, how could I put a price on your
daughter’s work?”

Jameson studied Analise as she descended the
stairs to defend her art, remembering their first meeting. Jameson
knew their lives would connect once more as they passed each other
on the wheel.

The paint was barely dry and wasn't even
framed yet. She'd painted it for Devon and for her it would be
free. Not for them.

“The painting is fifteen hundred dollars,”
she announced.

“What?” Claire asked. “That’s rather steep
for this rudimentary level.”

“Claire!” Analise said.

“Well, it’s true. Look at the color palette.
It’s absurd. Moreover, what is it? A wolf … a dog? What?”

“Art is subjective and opinions are ego
driven vomit,” Jameson said, as she stood beside her painting.

Analise laughed and poked Claire. “Did you
hear that? Oh, that was fabulous. I will have to remember
that.”

A wise grin tugged at Doc Jo Jo’s mouth.
Jameson knew her mother was close to laughing. They both knew that
Claire walked without purpose through her life. She looked but did
not see.

“The painting is fifteen hundred dollars.
Take it or leave it,” Jameson retorted. “I want a few minutes alone
with the puppy before you take her.” She snatched Long Snows Moon
from Analise.

Jameson knew Doc Jo Jo felt no reason to
apologize for her daughter’s rare display of rudeness. She had just
received some terrible news.

Doc Jo Jo shrugged at Analise. “It’s her
painting.”

“That’s fine, it’s worth it.”

“And the dog? How much is the little beast?”
Claire asked.