Free Moonlight Water by Win Blevins

corn.
    â€œClarita instructs, Jolo cooks,” Tony added. “Especially when Clarita’s having pain, like tonight, until she got that toke. She’s a ninety-year-old miracle.”
    â€œSit down,” rang Clarita’s voice, a soft, clear bell. “We’re about to serve.”
    People flocked toward a huge, circular oak dining table, a handsome antique.
    â€œVirgil, come to dinner!” Tony called toward the living room.
    A wavering shape, made ghost-like by the blue light of the TV, began to rise. Very slowly, as Clarita and Jolo put big bowls and platters on the table, Virgil shuffled forward and materialized from shadow into a bathrobed figure encased in a walker.
    Tony pointed with his lips, Navajo-style. “This is Virgil Rats. He always watches the old programs, especially I Love Lucy, no sound. He is well down the road of Alzheimer’s, but he recognizes Lucy and Ricky. Maybe he thinks they’re his kids.” Tony put a hand on the old man’s shoulder. “Virgil, this is Gianni’s friend, Red.”
    Virgil roared at Red, “Lucy, you got some ’splainin’ to do!”
    Red smiled politely and sat at the table. Winsonfred eased back toward his recliner.
    â€œVirgil eats like an elephant, Winsonfred seldom eats,” Tony said, “and our other permanent guests take their meals in bed, two upstairs, two down.” Jolo was going in and out of bedrooms off the kitchen. “Those ladies back there, every day Virgil plunks his walker up to each of their doors, looks in, and starts cackling, ‘Sex-sex-sex-sex-sex. Sex -sex-sex-sex-sex.’ The ladies are used to it, but we have to move him along.”
    Clarita passed the food. Red discovered that, after four weeks of coffee shop meals, he was starved for real food.
    â€œHarmony House is an unconventional society,” Tony said. “Grandmother Clarita came from Navajo Mountain, over to the west. She was raised traditional and later she added Mormon to her mix. Us kids were raised traditional Navajo and Mormon, going to squaw dances and getting our endowment ceremonies, both.”
    Since he had been a casual agnostic for twenty years, Red shunned all forms of religion. But Navajo combined with Mormon? The thought pained him, and that must have shown on his face.
    â€œA problem in your mind but not in mine, I assure you,” said Clarita. She flashed a radiant smile.
    My grandmother would have looked so beautiful, thought Red, if she’d lived to great age.
    â€œI live in two cultures,” Clarita went on. She held herself like a Navajo Katharine Hepburn with a scepter of cannabis.
    â€œWould you care to hear the story of my family and the Mormons in Moonlight Water?” Clarita asked. She lit her joint again. Apparently it was her custom to toke at the table.
    Red would have listened to any story the queen wanted to tell.
    â€œI am, as Tony said, two creatures in one, a Mormon and a traditional Navajo. The Mormons colonized Moonlight Water in 1900 exactly. Neville the patriarch was the bishop. There’s a big portrait of him hanging above the landing on the stairs. In those days the LDS Church had a policy called placement. It was to help the Indians, they thought, by adopting them right into Mormon families and teaching them white ways. As a matter of fact, the Church still does placement. Tony’s great-grandfather on the other side, Albert Begay, was adopted by Neville. I was adopted by the Allreds, but that’s another story.
    â€œThis house”—she gestured broadly with gracious ninety-year-old energy—“is where I raised my family. I married Brigham Neville Shumway, who inherited the house when the patriarch died. The family attitude was that Brigham was a wild hair—and a wild heir—marrying a Navajo.” She smiled faintly at her own pun. “Our children are gone, so I gave the house to the foundation that Tony created to give