Sons of the Mesa.

[Soapy]

Season 1, Episode 3
Ms. Cordova leaned against the edge of her desk, one foot crossed over the other. The room had settled into a quietness after its usual rambunctious energy at the start of class. Fifteen desks. Twelve of them occupied. Micah sat in the back row. Not that it mattered. The class was so small that every row felt like sitting in the front row, like if you reached out you could reach Ms. Cordova’s desk. Except Micah probably could.

“Any place,” she said. “No parameters. No minimum length. No format. Just a place that matters to you, and whatever you want to say about it.”

Somebody in the back row clicked a pen open. Somebody else, near the window, already had their notebook flipped to a fresh page. Micah looked down at his own paper. Blank. The margins were already printed on it, faint blue lines, and his name was written in the top left corner because Ms. Cordova made them do that at the start of every class.

Polaqa

He wrote it in the center of the page, the third line from the top. The pencil made a soft sound against the paper. He looked at the word.

Around him, the room filled with the sounds of writing. Pens moving. Pencils scratching. The girl next to him, Marisol, had already filled half a page and showed no signs of slowing. Her hand moved in quick, tight loops. Somebody behind him was erasing something, the rubber dragging across the paper in short bursts.

Ms. Cordova moved through the rows. He could hear her footsteps on the tile, the soft sound of her shoes, and then she was passing his desk. She didn’t stop. But he felt the pause, the half-second where her eyes dropped to his paper and registered the single word sitting there in the middle of the page, and then she kept walking.

She didn’t say anything.

He sat there. The clock above the whiteboard ticked. Twenty minutes left. He picked the pencil up again, turned it between his fingers, set it back down. The word sat on the page.

Polaqa

The pencil stayed on the desk.

Ms. Cordova made her way back to the front of the room and sat down at her desk. She picked up a book and opened it, but he could see she wasn’t reading it. Her eyes moved across the room in slow passes.

Ten minutes left.

Marisol flipped to a second page.

The boy behind him had stopped writing and was staring out the window. The girl in front of him was still going.

Five minutes.

Ms. Cordova closed her book. “Alright. Whatever you’ve got, that’s fine for today. We’ll come back to these later.”

Chairs scraped. Notebooks closed. Backpacks unzipped. Micah folded his paper in half and slid it into his folder without looking at it again.

“Micah,” Ms. Cordova said. “Can you hang back a second?”

He stopped at the door. The rest of the class filed past him, Marisol giving him a quick look on her way out, and then the room was just him and Ms. Cordova and the sound of the hallway filling up outside.

She stayed at her desk.

“What did you want to write about?” she said.

He looked at her. "Polaqa. I guess."

“I saw what you wrote,” she said. “I’m asking what you wanted to write about.”

He shrugged.

She just sat there, her hands folded on the desk in front of her, and let the quiet sit between them.

“If you ever need help, Micah,” she said finally, "I’m here to help. That’s my job, you know?"

"Yeah, I know," he quickly nodded, beginning to turn toward the door, "Thanks, Miss."

“Micah.”

He stopped.

“You don’t have to write the whole thing,” she said. “Just start writing."

He didn’t answer that. He pushed through the door and into the hallway, where the noise of lockers slamming, voices bouncing off the tile, somebody’s laughter cutting through the rest of it greeted him and he walked through it without slowing down.

Delvin wiped his face with the bandana and folded it into his back pocket. The clipboard was already on the hook by the time DeLuca came around the corner of the trailer.

“Hey. Hold up a second.”

Delvin stopped. DeLuca had a folder in his hand, the kind with the metal clips on the side, and he was tapping it against his leg.

“Section three’s coming in under,” DeLuca said. “Way under. They’re talking about wrapping it by August. Maybe sooner.”

Delvin tilted his head.

“Not my call,” DeLuca said. “I’m just telling you what they told me.”

“August.”

“Could be September. But August’s what they’re saying.”

The trailer behind them hummed with the generator still running. Somebody inside was talking on the radio, the voice muffled through the thin walls. Delvin could feel the heat of the day still sitting on his skin, the grit in the creases of his knuckles.

“There’s another section opening up after,” DeLuca said. “North side. We ain’t won the bid yet. Shit, they ain’t even put in the bid yet. But."

“Same crew?”

"It probably ain’t gonna be," DeLuca tapped the folder against his leg again, "You know how people get prickly about the same crew getting jobs. I can get you on there. Probably your boy too if the right people in the right room in the right mood when I ask. It just ain’t gonna be what this one pays. Not even close."

Delvin nodded before continuing the walk to his truck. The gravel crunched under his boots. He opened the door, climbed in, and sat there for a minute with the keys in his hand. Through the windshield he could see the crew loading up, the last of the machines being chained down on the flatbed, the dust still hanging in the air where they’d been working.

He started the engine.

The gas station was three miles down 160. He pulled into the lot and parked at the far end, away from the pumps. The truck ticked under him as the engine cooled.

Inside, the cooler waited for him. He grabbed a six-pack, Coors Banquet, and set it on the counter. The kid behind the register rang him up, barely looking up from his phone. Delvin paid in cash and walked back out.

He sat in the truck with the door open, one foot on the ground. The parking lot asphalt radiated heat up through the door frame. He cracked the first can and took a long drink. The beer wasn’t that cold but cold enough to be easy going down.

A semi pulled off the highway and rolled past him toward the diesel pumps. The air brakes hissed.

He took another drink.

Tony grabbed a bottle from the bucket and slid it across the counter, reaching Jace’s hand.

"Ain’t no way," Tony took a sip from his own bottle, "Ain’t they been going steady for like five years now?"

"Clearly ain’t steady enough," Jace grinned as he popped the top off the Modelo with the bottle opener in his keychain, letting it rest on the counter he took a drink. "I ain’t telling if she ain’t."

The television above the bar was on a Suns game, the volume low enough that you could only catch the commentary in pieces, the announcer’s voice rising and falling under the noise of the bar.

At the end of the bar, Reuben was telling a story about something that happened on site that afternoon, even though they were all there to witness it the first time around. Dawayne was watching the game, half listening.

The door to the bar opened and a figure came through it and Jace didn’t recognize him at first because of the way the light hit, and then he did.

“Well, look at this,” Jace said.

Cameron was already grinning. He crossed the bar in a few strides and pulled up a chair from the high top over, scraping it across the floor, and dropped into it.

“Look who came back to the rez,” Reuben said.

"I can’t forget about my people!"

Cameron looked about the same. Truthfully, it hadn’t been that long. It just felt like it.

Dawayne lifted his chin without taking his eyes off the television.

Cameron flagged down the bartender and ordered a beer, the bucket in front of them down to the last two and Cameron knew better than to stick his hand in. The bartender brought it over without a word and set it down in front of him.

“So,” Jace said, leaning forward on his elbows. “White girl let you come back to the reservation?”

"Fuck you," Cameron tried to stifle his smile to no avail.

“I’m just saying. I figured she’d have you locked up in some dorm room somewhere. Eating quiche or whatever the fuck it is they do up there."

"Fool, it’s an hour away. Besides, this ain’t the rez either and I’ve watched you chow down an entire bucket of chicken from this place."

"It don’t make my point any less valid," Jace shrugged.

"You’re an idiot," Cameron laughed to himself, "Her name’s Jess by the way."

"If you like it, I love it, brother."

Tony was watching this exchange with his chin in his hand, grinning. Reuben had gone back to his phone. Dawayne was still on the game.

“So what’s it like up there?” Tony said.

“It’s going.” Cameron shrugged. He took another drink. “It’s fine. I mean, it’s school. You go to class. You run. You eat. You sleep. It’s not—” He made a vague gesture with his hand. “It’s not anything crazy.”

“Classes hard?”

“Some of them. The running stuff is easy. The other stuff, I don’t know. I’m passing.”

“No one ever mistook you for Einstein," Tony teased, "So that shouldn’t surprise anybody up there."

Jace let out a small laugh. On the television, somebody drove to the basket and missed the layup.

“The team’s good,” Cameron said. “We got a new coach, but he’s been in the program for a while already, damn near recruited all of us so just the same shit really."

They sat for a minute. Tony had drifted into a conversation with Reuben about something Jace couldn’t catch. Dawayne hadn’t moved.

“So what about you?” Cameron said. “Still at the site?”

“Still at the site.”

“How’s that?”

“It’s work.”

“Yeah.”

“It’s work.”

Cameron nodded. He looked like he was going to say something else, and then he didn’t. He took a drink instead.

“The food up there is trash,” Cameron said after a second. “The dining hall, man. I don’t know what they’re doing. Whatever they fed us during that visit ain’t what they're feeding us now. I’ve been eating Subway for like three months.”

Jace scoffed, "I could have told you that."

On the television, the Suns were down by four with three minutes left. Jace could see the clock in the corner of the screen, the numbers ticking down. Somebody on the other team hit a three and the lead went to seven, and the bar made a collective sound from the handful of people who were actually watching.

Cameron was talking about something. A class, maybe. Or a meet. Jace only caught the shape of it, the words were coming in and going out without landing anywhere. He nodded at what felt like the right times. Cameron kept going. The beer was getting warm in his hand.

Jace turned his chair a quarter inch toward the television. The Suns had the ball. Somebody drove, got fouled, went to the line. The free throw went in. The second one went in. Five-point game.

Cameron was still talking. The bar noise filled in around it.

The Suns got a stop. Came back down. Hit a jumper. Three-point game.

Jace set his beer down on the table. The condensation had made a ring on the wood. He watched the screen. The clock read 1:47. The other team brought the ball up, ran a play, missed. Rebound. Fast break. Layup. One-point game.

Cameron’s voice was still going, but it had moved to something else now.

Jace’s eyes stayed on the screen.

The dishes sat in the drying rack, the last plate still dripping onto the towel underneath. Micah wiped down the counter one more time, the rag moving in slow circles, catching the crumbs he’d missed the first pass. The faucet dripped. He turned it tighter and it stopped.

The house was quiet.

He hung the rag on the handle of the oven and turned off the kitchen light. The living room was dark except for the blue glow of the television. Delvin was on the couch, one arm hanging off the side, his work boots still on, the laces untied. His chest rose and fell in the slow rhythm of somebody who’d been out for a while. The fifth can sat on the floor by the couch leg.

Micah stepped past him. The floorboard by the hallway creaked and Delvin didn’t stir.

He pushed the door to his room open. The bed on the far side was empty. The sheets were still made from this morning. Jace’s work boots weren’t by the closet. His keys weren’t on the dresser. The room smelled like nothing, like the room had been sitting empty all day, which it had.

Micah stood there for a second.

Then he went to the dresser and pulled the bottom drawer open. Sweats. A t-shirt. He changed standing up, the shirt coming off over his head, the sweats pulled on over his shorts. He found his sneakers under the bed, laced them sitting on the edge of the mattress, and stood up.

He checked the living room again on the way past. Delvin hadn’t moved. The sixth can sat in its sleeve.

Micah opened the front door slow, held it so the latch wouldn’t click, and stepped out onto the porch.

The wind hit him first. Cold, dry, carrying the smell of dust. He pulled the door shut behind him and stood there for a second, letting it settle against him.

The moon was out. Full, or close to it, hanging low over the houses across the street. The road in front of the house was pale where the light hit it, the asphalt gone silver, the cracks and potholes filled with shadow. The streetlights on this block had been out for months. Nobody had come to fix them. The moon did the work instead.

He stepped off the porch and onto the dirt of the front yard. The gravel at the edge of the driveway crunched under his sneakers. He crossed to the road and turned left, away from the highway, toward the empty stretch where the houses thinned out and the road kept going past the last streetlight and into the dark.

He started running.

[Caesar]

Micah ain't got no bitches? So he slow and ain't got no game? Ain't got no lil' mantuwa?

Looks like Jace is the never was brother. We'll see how that plays out.

[Soapy]

Micah ain't got no bitches? So he slow and ain't got no game? Ain't got no lil' mantuwa?

Looks like Jace is the never was brother. We'll see how that plays out.

The Caesar Special

[Soapy]

Season 1, Episode 4
The weight room smelled the way it always smelled, like rubber mats and metal and the particular kind of sweat that had been ground into the floor over years.

Micah leaned against the back wall with his arms crossed, Kele next to him, Ahote on the other side. The room was full, fuller than he’d seen it since last season, the freshmen and sophomores clustered near the door like they weren’t sure they were allowed to come all the way in. The returning guys had taken the back half of the room.

“Look at that one,” Kele said, nodding toward a kid near the squat rack. “That’s a freshman?”

“Sophomore. I think he played on JV.”

“Sophomore looking like that?”

“Some people just don’t grow, bro.”

“i’nwu must not be feeding these fools," Kele shook his head and looked towards Micah, "Man, you might be back on the line this year."

Micah shrugged. “Shit, I might as well. All I did last year was block.”

“You’ll always be one of us," Kele cackled.

“That’s because nobody throws me the ball,” the accusation landed on Dustin, standing a few feet away from the water fountain, talking to one of the sophomores.

"That’s on the coaches, iikwatsi," Dustin held his hands up, "We run power fifty times a game. My arm ain’t loose enough for the one throw a game."

"I was wide open again Pinon," Micah shook his head, "Ain’t no excuse for that."

"Tell your boy to block better," Dustin quickly responded, "I didn’t have time to throw that one."

"Man, you had plenty of time," Micah scoffed, "You just pissed down your leg. Not an athlete."

Kele laughed. Ahote laughed. A couple of the other rising seniors near them laughed. Dustin shook his head and went back to his conversation with the nearby sophomore.

“Bro, you’re never gonna let that go,” Kele said.

“Not until he throws me a touchdown.”

The room kept its energy. The freshmen near the door were getting bolder, moving further in, one of them sitting on the bench press like they belonged there. The sophomore receivers had formed their own cluster by the dumbbell rack.

Then the door at the front of the room opened.

The talking didn’t stop all at once. It dropped by degrees, like somebody was turning a dial. First the freshmen near the door went quiet, then the sophomores by the dumbbells, then the noise from the middle of the room thinned out. Coach Sau came through first, clipboard under his arm, and behind him Coach Haines and Coach Tso, both of them in their usual gear, Haines in the faded Hopi Football polo and Tso in a plain black shirt with a whistle around his neck.

Kele straightened up off the wall. “Yo. Shut up.”

The room went silent.

Coach Sau stood at the front of the room with his clipboard. He looked the way he always looked. Same haircut. Same way of standing with his weight on one foot. He let the silence sit for a beat, then two, then he started talking.

“Alright. First off, good to see everybody. For those of you who don’t know me, I’m Coach Sau. Head coach. Been here eight years now.” He gestured behind him. “Coach Haines, offensive coordinator. Coach Tso, defensive coordinator. If you don’t know them by now, you will.”

Haines nodded. Tso didn’t move.

"This is the first time I’m seeing most of you since the season ended. So I want to lay out what the summer looks like.”

He flipped a page on the clipboard.

“Workouts start June third. Monday, Wednesday, Friday. Six a.m. to eight. If you can’t make it at six, don’t come at all. We’ll be in here, on the field, and in the gym. If you have any vacation planned with your family, this would be a good time to let them know that you’re not coming or to let me know that you’re not part of the team. That includes the fourth in case any of you were wondering."

He looked up from the clipboard.

“For the freshmen and sophomores who haven’t been through this before, this is your tryout. There’s no skipping this and coming in the fall trying to act like you want to be part of the team. No summer, not on the team. No exceptions so get the word out to your friends that are thinking about joining. This is a volunteer army, gentleman, and the first part of that is showing up and putting in the work."

A freshman near the front shifted his weight. Micah could see the kid’s shoulders tighten under his shirt.

“For the returning guys, you’re not guaranteed a spot either. Don’t think because you played last year that you can coast. Last year, simply put, was not good enough. We’ve got guys coming up who want your spot. So show up ready to work. All of you.”

He flipped the clipboard closed.

“Any questions?”

Nobody said anything.

“Alright. Micah.”

Micah looked up.

“Break us down.”

He stepped forward from the wall. The room turned toward him. He put his hand out and the team gathered in, arms over shoulders, the circle closing tight. He could feel Kele’s arm across his back, Ahote on the other side, Dustin somewhere in the mix. The freshmen were in there too, their arms reaching up to reach the shoulders of the guys in front of them.

Micah looked around the circle once.

“Bruin on three, Bruins on me. One, two, three—”

“Bruins!”

Jace had his boots off by the door and he was on the couch with his feet up on the coffee table, the television on but the volume low enough that he couldn’t hear what anybody was saying on it.

“You seen Cameron?” Shania called from the kitchen.

“At the bar the other night.”

“He text me he was gonna come by. Said we was gonna get food or something.”

“Did he?”

"Nope."

Jace grunted. He could hear her moving around in the kitchen, the sound of a pan hitting the stove, the click of the burner catching.

“You know how Cam is,” she said.

He pushed himself off the couch and crossed the small living room. The kitchen was a galley, narrow enough that two people couldn’t stand side by side without touching. Shania had her back to him, stirring something in the pan. She had her hair up, a few pieces falling down around her neck, and she was wearing a t-shirt that was too big for her, the hem hanging past her hips.

“How long?” he said.

“Few minutes."

“You’ve been saying that for the last few minutes. I’m fucking starving.”

She turned her head to look at him over her shoulder. “You could help.”

“I am helping. I’m supervising. Making sure everything is on schedule. Shit, you ask them, that’s the most important person on the site.”

She laughed and turned back to the pan. He stepped in behind her, close enough that his chest was almost against her back, and reached past her for the cabinet above the stove. She leaned into him, just slightly, and he could feel the warmth coming off her through the shirt.

“Plates are in the other cabinet,” she said.

“I know where the plates are.”

He pulled two plates down and set them on the counter. She scooped the rice out of the pot and he held the first plate steady while she piled it on. She bumped her hip against his and he bumped back, and she laughed and almost dropped the spoon.

“Watch it.”

“You watch it.”

She handed him the pan and he scraped the last of the rice onto the second plate while she pulled the chicken out of the oven. The steam hit his face and he turned his head.

“Smells good,” he said.

“Don’t act surprise."

He carried the plates to the table. She brought the chicken over on a cutting board and sat down across from him. He was already eating before she’d pulled her chair in.

“Slow down,” she said.

“Told you I was hungry.”

She shook her head and started cutting into her own chicken. They ate for a minute without talking. The television was still going in the other room, the sound of a laugh track cycling every few seconds.

“You talk to Edison yet?” she said.

Jace kept chewing.

“He’s expecting a call," she said, "Or at least a text."

He shrugged. Took another bite.

“Jace.”

“I heard you.”

“I don’t need you to hear me. I need you to do it."

“I know.”

“You always talking about needing your own place."

“I know, I know.”

She set her fork down and looked at him. He kept his eyes on his plate.

“Jace.”

“What?”

“You need to get on that. So you can have your own place instead of showing up at my door every other night like some lost puppy.”

He looked up at her as she was desperately trying to contain the smile on her face and force it into a furrowed brow.

“I ain’t no puppy,” he said.

“You’re something.”

He went back to his food. She picked her fork up again. The television laughed at something neither of them was watching.

“I’ll talk to him,” he said.

“Tomorrow?”

“This week.”

“Tomorrow, Jace.”

He grunted.

She let it sit.

The headlights of the paver cut a white line across the asphalt and Delvin walked behind it, rake in hand, smoothing the edge where the machine left it rough. The asphalt was still hot under his boots, the heat coming up through the soles, and the smell of it filled his nose, that thick chemical burn that sat in the back of his throat and didn’t leave.

He’d been at it three hours.

The crew moved around him in the dark, the floodlights mounted on the trucks throwing long shadows across the road. Somebody’s radio was playing, low and tinny, a country station he recognized from the reclamation site. Another worker was up ahead, working the screed, and another was on the roller behind them, the machine’s weight pressing the fresh asphalt flat with a slow, grinding hum.

Delvin pulled the rake through another section, the teeth catching on the edge of the mat. His shoulders ached. His lower back ached. The ache from the first shift hadn’t gone anywhere, it had just settled deeper, and now the second shift was layering on top of it.

He straightened up and wiped his face with the back of his glove. The bandana was soaked through from the first job and he hadn’t bothered changing it.

The night kept going. The road kept getting longer. Somebody called a break around one and he sat on the tailgate of the water truck with a sandwich he’d packed that morning, before the first shift, and ate it without tasting it.

The break ended. Delvin climbed down off the tailgate and went back to the mat. The paver had moved again and he had to jog to catch up, the rake dragging behind him, the handle warm from his grip.

By three the sky had started to change. Not light, not yet, but the black at the eastern edge had gone soft, the way it did an hour before dawn, and the stars above him were thinning out. The floodlights seemed dimmer than they had at midnight, though he knew they weren’t.

He worked through it. The mat kept coming. The rake kept moving. His arms kept going.

At four-thirty the foreman called it. The paver shut down and the sudden quiet was louder than the noise had been. The roller idled to a stop. Somebody killed the floodlights and the road went dark except for the headlights of the trucks lining up to pull out.

Delvin set his rake against the water truck. He pulled his gloves off and tucked them into his back pocket. His hands were stiff, the fingers slow to straighten, and he flexed them a few times standing there.

Virgil, one of the workers that also worked at the reclamation site, walked past him toward his own truck. “See you later?"

“See you later.”

Delvin crossed the road to where his truck was parked on the shoulder. He opened the door, climbed in, and sat there for a minute with his hands on the steering wheel. The dashboard clock read 4:47. A little over two hours.

He turned the key. The radio came on low, some station he’d been listening to on the drive over. He turned it off.

He leaned the seat back as far as it would go. It wasn’t far. The springs in the old bench seat had gone soft on the driver’s side years ago and the backrest hit the limit with a click.

He closed his eyes.

The seat pressed against his back. The ache in his shoulders had settled into something constant, something he could feel but didn’t have to think about, the way you didn’t think about breathing.

The sky kept getting lighter. He could see it through his eyelids, the gray turning to pale, the pale turning to something warmer. A bird started up somewhere off the road. Then another.

He didn’t open his eyes.

The truck sat on the shoulder. The road stretched out in front of it, empty now, the fresh mat cooling in the dark, the rake marks still visible where he’d left them. The sky kept going. The bird kept going. Somewhere down the road, the last of the crew’s taillights disappeared around a bend and then there was nothing, just the road and the truck and the light coming up over the hills.

His chest rose and fell. The seat creaked under him. The clock ticked over to 4:48.

He didn’t move.

[Captain Canada]

Still trying to figure out the dynamic between these characters, but I like everything so far.