Though their Nalí man recently moved to an old folk’s home in Farmington, Tashina and Krishauna rummaged through their grandfather’s bedroom closet for mementos to decorate his new space, as commanded by their eldest sister, Bryanna.  

Their Nalí man had eclectic taste, collecting river smoothed rocks, and fallen bird feathers he’d tuck into Burger King cups on his dresser top alongside his turquoise necklaces, bracelets, and rings, which he kept neatly stacked in an abalone shell. His mirror was vignetted with photos of his three granddaughters. Some, just pictures of Bryanna holding a NAC feather fan against an indigo backdrop. But most of the pictures were of the twins — pictures of them taken by family members at birthday parties or NAC meetings, or at Sears. They were in their family’s eyes a matched pair. 

As Krishauna pulled drawers open and emptied out a drawer’s worth of socks into a black trash bag, Tashina wrestled with her grandfather’s tightly packed closet, his clothes hangers, as multicolored as Good & Plenty candied licorice. They continued their chores in quiet reverence with only the sound of the hangers clattering together, as Tashina removed clothing from the closet in bundles.

Tashina reached the far end of the closet, where on a fine velvet hanger hung a black garment bag so speckled in dust it looked like a sparrow’s egg. Disturbing the garment bag sent up a flurry of dust, throwing Tashina into a fit of sneezes, but once she’d removed, or rather inhaled much of the dust, she unzipped the bag. It was the exact thing their grandfather had asked them to find. 

Strips of fringe escaped the garment bag. Tashina held back a gasp as she uncovered the rest of the garment. It was a nice jacket — perhaps the nicest she’d ever seen. She ran her fingertips along the fringe; it tickled her fingers. Then she released that gasp when she checked the clothes tag. 

“Shauna, come look at this. Says John Wayne’s name on it,” Tashina said, as she tucked the corner of the collar into her hand, popping the tag out, so it rested flush with her palm. 

Krishauna dropped her garbage bag, stepping over it to lean over Tashina’s shoulder. The clothes tag read WESTERN COSTUME CO. HOLLYWOOD, embroidered in gold thread. Below that line, written in faded permanent marker, were more lines that read:

Prop Number Name Chest Sleeve Waist Inseam

The final line was inked with John Wayne’s name in faded purple. 

“You think this thing is like legit?” Krishauna side stepped Tashina and reached for the sleeve of the jacket. 

“Has to be!” Tashina said, stepping backwards out of Krishauna’s grip.

“Dang, I didn’t know Nalí man was Hollywood!” Krishauna chuckled, before her expression bloomed with excitement. “Let me try it on.” 

Tashina considered something for a moment before sighing resignedly and handing the jacket over to her sister. Krishauna pulled the sleeves over her red Monument Valley Mustang’s t-shirt. 

Screwing up her nose, she put on a smokey accent and said, “Call me the Duke.” 

“Eww, just all creepy!” Tashina squealed, before it turned into a volley of laughter. “Here let me try it on.”

Krishauna obliged and pulled the jacket off before helping her sister into the same sleeves. As the jacket came up over Tashina’s shoulders, she smiled, turning with her sister to face their grandfather’s dresser mirror. Outside the light shifted golden, setting the mirror aglow, drenching Tashina in a honeyed light. In the sun’s beams, her blue-black hair shone auburn. As she swayed to and fro, the jacket’s suede fringed sleeves glittered as they cascaded around her body. She’d never seen herself like this, beautiful, unique, and alone.

Krishauna stood entranced as well, staring at the sight of her sister, haloed by a mosaic of childhood pictures, fractals of their shared life, fragments of their fifteen years spent inseparable, with the exception of the nine minutes Krishauna spent alone, before her sister was engulfed by the overhead lamplight of the doctor. 

*

In the weeks following the discovery of John Wayne’s jacket, Tashina was strangely private, avoiding Krishauna at school, and not sitting by her on the school bus. Krishauna tried not to take it personally, but it was difficult when it was her twin. She was used to being seen when she looked at Tashina with their waist length blue-black hair and matching tomboy style. But then, one day, things changed. Tashina dyed blonde streaks into her hair and started sitting at the lunch tables with the boys who wore the black hoodies. Krishauna didn’t recognize this twin stranger anymore. 

One night, after their eldest sister had fallen asleep, Tashina nudged Krishauna awake. 

“Hey Shauna, wanna go to Collin’s party with me?”  

Collin, one of the black hoodie boys, was Tashina’s latest fixation. She’d been scheming to get his attention and believed that tonight would be the culminating moment, when he’d realize that she, with her blond-streaked hair and Sol de Janeiro body spray, would be the only one for him. Krishauna wasn’t too keen on the idea, but she missed her sister and thought that going to Collin’s party might help get things back to normal between them. 

The truck that picked them up drove up the dirt road to their house with its headlights off. Krishauna didn’t recognize the hunched driver, despite the green dashboard lights illuminating his profile, but she assumed that he was another one of those black hoodie boys. He drove a scratched long bed Dodge Hemi truck with suicide doors. 

Tashina giggled as she crawled up into the cab of the truck, which left Krishauna in the back seat. 

Before he could even put the car into drive, Tashina cried out, “Wait! Oh shit, I forgot something! Can you wait just like one more minute please, Ky?” 

Krishauna grimaced at the nickname.

“Whatever,” Kyle responded. 

Before Krishauna had even touched the door handle, Tashina had already slammed the door behind her, effectively locking her in the car, with its suicide doors. Krishauna’s hands went clammy. 

“You guys twins?” Kyle asked in a deep voice that she believed he practiced at home in his bathroom mirror.

“Yup, I’m older by nine minutes,” Krishauna said, relieved by the conversational novelty of her twin status. 

“Huh, I wouldn’t have guessed,” he said, glancing back. 

“We’re identical—we looked more identical—you know, before she dyed her hair.”

Kyle chuckled at her comment, flashing her a green tinted smile. 

“But what’s your clans?” 

She felt the subtext of his question deep within her bones. Clans before hook-up plans. 

Krishauna frowned, “Bit’ahnii?” 

At that moment, Tashina emerged out of the house, the John Wayne jacket casually slung over her shoulders in the way famous NTVS did on the red carpet—just over the shoulders so it showed off the outfit beneath. In the green tinted light, Krishauna swore she heard Kyle whisper damn under his breath. Damn was right.

The party was up on the mesa, the drive up was bumpy, and Krishauna was starting to feel motion sick. 

“Are we close?” Krishauna asked after nearly thirty minutes of driving. “I think I’m going to barf.”

“We’re almost there, you baby cry,” Tashina snapped. 

Kyle’s headlights pooled into a clearing where several other trucks sat in a circle, their beds facing a huge bonfire. Nearby, tumbleweeds flickered with firelight, casting long crisscrossed shadows onto the desert brush. Patches of dark pooled behind uneven lumps of grass and green thread. Krishauna recognized some of the black hoodie boys, most importantly Collin, who sat on the roof of his truck, his legs hanging over his rear windshield, a beer bottle winking in his hands.

Everyone stared at Tashina when she stepped out of the truck wearing the jacket and Krishauna didn’t blame them. Who was she to tell her sister what to do when she herself was sporting knee length basketball shorts and a sleeping shirt? Tashina, however, was glowing bright as a new ember in her white tube top, denim mini skirt, and leather cowboy boots. But Krishauna knew that a spark that bright could also be all consuming. 

Tashina was euphoric as she approached Collin, who quickly shooed his friends out of the bed of his truck. Like a gentleman, he helped Tashina onto the tailgate by pulling her up by her armpits. 

“You came,” he said, glancing down at his feet when he noticed Krishauna.  

“Of course I did,” Tashina chuckled. “I wouldn’t miss this.” 

Collin then tipped an unopened beer toward her, and she accepted, but he wasn’t looking at Tashina when he offered it, and Krishauna knew this because he was directly looking at her, his eyes aglow, gleaming with the orange reflection of the fire. 

“You brought Krishauna?” He chuckled. “Is she wearing basketball shorts?”

Tashina rolled her eyes, “I had to! And you know she can’t dress herself,” she said, tossing her hand flagrantly.

Krishauna overheard this and stopped short of Collin’s ride. 

“I’m going back to the truck,” she said to Kyle. 

“I’ll come with you,” Kyle responded, sighing as he glanced back over his shoulder at Tashina, who was standing so close to Collin, their outer thighs touched. Krishauna didn’t understand what her sister saw in Collin. He had long shaggy hair, like every other Navajo boy. He was just some Jawn. But at least he was nice to her. 

She didn’t tell Tashina that the previous semester, she shared an art class with Collin. It was her favorite class. Most of their art supplies were busted by her careless classmates, but not hers, her pastels, shading pencils, and eraser putty were nearly as pristine as when she first got them, albeit shrunken by use. Another thing she liked about art was that she wasn’t just good at it — she was really good at it. Someone could bring in a photograph to her and she would hand them back a hyper-realistic drawing, with shading so perfect you couldn’t even see the streaks. And since she was so good, most people didn’t talk to her — they’d just leave her alone and let her draw. Except for Collin. Sometimes, she’d be so in the zone while shading a flower-like pattern to avoid pencil streaks that when Collin tapped her on the shoulder, she’d flinch. 

He’d always ask her about her project, flashing a boyish grin and asking, “What’s the story about this one?” 

That semester she was working on a pastel portrait of her Nalí lady for her Nalí man’s birthday. In the portrait, her Nalí lady wore thick bifocal lenses and a floral scarf wrapped around her silvery hair. She’d drawn it out carefully, but she had trouble capturing the threaded strands of tinsel woven through the headscarf. Normally, she’d leave white space for highlights, because you can’t get crisp whites after putting down a cobalt layer. 

“Yeah, I fucked up on the scarf. I just can’t get this part to look shiny like it does in the picture.” She tapped on the photo reference with her fingernail. 

Collin’s lip twitched with a smile. “Let me give it a try?” 

“Sure, why not,” Krishauna said. She was fed up with the white pastel blending into the blue and her hand was starting to cramp. “If you mess up, I’ll just cover it in more blue.”  

“I won’t mess it up, I do this all the time when I detail cars.” 

Krishauna scrunched her face at him. 

He stepped away from his desk to rummage through the paint drawer that their teacher had filled with different varieties of acrylic paints, purchased with a rural art grant. 

On a Styrofoam plate, he squeezed out a pea sized dollop of paint, then he pulled out an impossibly skinny paint brush with whisker long bristles. Swishing around the brush in a cup of water, he thinned the paint to his desired consistency. Carefully, he pulled a fine white line across the scarf, then a series of dashes so that the highlight disappeared into the rest of the fabric of the scarf. 

Krishauna’s eyes widened, “Whoa! That worked and it looks good! Thank you! Oh my god, why didn’t I think of using acrylics for the highlights, duh!” And when Krishauna said this, she was pretty sure Collin, king of the hoodie boys, blushed.

Krishauna sat with Kyle in the bed of the truck. He’d sigh intermittently, between sips of beer, saying nothing. He only perked up when Tashina waved them over.

“Shauna, come here! Hurry!” 

Tashina had had one too many beers. She was too giggly and slurring her words. When she leaned down from the bed to whisper in Krishauna’s ear she could smell the beer on her breath. 

“I have to piss,” she slurred. “Collin says there’s a ditch over there.” Tashina pointed to a dry creek bed surrounded by trees. “But you need to come with me,” her shit-eating grin turning into giggles.

“Okay,” Krishauna sighed, helping her sister down from the truck bed. 

As they walked over to the dry ravine, Tashina kept laughing and swaying, nearly tripping over her boots several times in the process. 

“I think that tonight is when I’m going to seal the deal with Collin,” she squeaked, the moonlight illuminating the highpoints of her face. Even in the dark Krishauna could almost see the red ocher flush coloring her sister’s face. 

“Okay, cool, now hurry up and go piss,” Krishauna said, gently shoving her sister forward. 

“Yeah,” Tashina replied, before she lurched forward and landed on her hands and knees. 

After helping her sister to her feet, Krishauna took the jacket from her. Krishauna kept watch as her sister hobbled down into the dry ravine and disappeared behind the mesh of juniper branches. Donning the jacket, she waited for her sister to return. 

When she turned around, she was surprised to see Collin behind her. 

“You should probably get her home. She’s getting kind of rowdy,” he said, scratching his neck. “I wasn’t planning on having that kind of party. But I’m glad she brought you.” 

Krishauna felt her cheeks warm. 

“Er — yeah. I actually didn’t want to come, but she just woke me up and dragged me here.” 

Collin stepped closer to Krishauna, his head towering above her own. She admired how the moon reflected the cobalt off his shaggy black hair, and how sharp his jawline appeared with the exaggerated shadows. His skin had a smooth blue porcelain finish. Before she knew it, Collin gripped the fringe at Krishauna’s elbows, leaned down, and kissed her. 

Krishauna pushed a slender hand into Collin’s chest, pushing herself away from him. 

“You don’t know what you just did,” she said, her voice hitching with panic. 

“I-I-I’m sorry, Krishauna, I thought that you wanted…”

“I did, but you’re not mine to want,” Krishauna said, swallowing against the pit of shame lodged in her throat. 

A new look dawned on Collin’s face. “It’s never been like that with Tashina for me.”

Before she could say another word, Tashina barreled into her sister, knocking them both down into a nearby sage bush. She could feel the air rushing out of her lungs as she fell backward into the sound of snapping branches. Tashina’s hands then curled into fists within the dark sheet of her sister’s hair. All Krishauna could make out was the twangy sound of her hair plucking out of her scalp and the snapping of sage branches that dug deep gouges into the John Wayne jacket.  

“Can’t I have one thing to myself for once?” Tashina shrieked. A sharp crack then burst out of the darkness. 

At first, Krishauna believed that a branch collapsed beneath her, that is until, grainy spots began to fill her vision, and her right cheek flushed with pain. Defensively, she clawed upward, drawing her fingernails down any exposed skin. 

“Don’t dig your nails in me!” Tashina burst out. 

A fist struck Krishauna’s brow bone.

“Guys! Stop it! Stop it!” Collin yelled. “What are you doing? Stop it!” 

Eventually, someone from beyond the bush pulled Tashina off Krishauna. Collin reached down and gathered Krishauna up easily. She didn’t register the jacket slipping off her shoulders. Folding her body into his chest, he held her. 

“You whore!” Tashina spat, her shoulders heaving, as she writhed against Kyle’s arms. 

As he restrained her in a bear hug, Krishauna noticed a trickle of blood wink down Tashina’s face from one of the scratches she gave her. She would have preferred further blows to seeing her twin’s face twisted up in agony like this. A familiar weft of pain shuttled through Krishauna’s chest—pulling—tightening—turning back on itself. Her sister’s hurt. Her own hurt. When they were babies, one twin’s tears would trigger the other’s. When did that stop? Surely, it never stopped for Krishauna. 

*

Tashina considered her sister as she lay in their shared bedroom after the party. The scratches her sister clawed down her face pulsed, matching the beat of her heart. The party scattered quickly after the twins got into a fight and Kyle insisted he take both sisters home to “mellow out.” But her buzz had worn off and her head pulsed, and she glared up at the glow in the dark sticky stars affixed to her ceiling above her bed. She only had five large stars, while Krishauna had six small stars, but nonetheless, the stars came from the same pack. Her family didn’t consider affording her the option of having her own glow in the dark sticky pack. She was yet again expected to share with Krishauna. Hadn’t she shared enough? They shared the same face for Creator’s sake. And for a time, she was okay with their sameness. She never felt lonely. But gradually it changed for Tashina, in such an incremental way she couldn’t tell you the exact day it happened, just that it happened. Like the day you dip your hand into the flour bin to make frybread and feel your hand hit plastic. As a child she enjoyed being a twin; they shared a secret language of baby babbles, until real words developed. They shared a secret game called the slapping game where they’d clasp hands like they were going to arm wrestle, and one sister would slap the other’s hand.  

“We’re telepathic,” Tashina would say, nearly nose to nose with Krishauna, raising her hand to slap. “Am I going to slap you? Yes or no?” 

“No.” Krishauna would reply in that raspy feather-light voice she had yet to outgrow.

Slap.

“We’re telepathic. Am I going to slap you? Yes or no?” Krishauna would say. 

“No.” Tashina would reply. 

Krishauna was always wrong, Tashina would always slap her, but she would never slap her back. Sometimes they’d play the game so long that the blood vessels on the back of Krishauna’s hands would burst, turning her skin purple and green, but she never told their mother. Tashina once asked her, after the slapping game, why she’d never slap her. 

“I don’t want to, if it hurts you,” she said, cradling her hand into her chest. “Why do you always slap me?” 

Tashina paused for a long moment. “I don’t know. I just thought that one day you’d slap me back.” 

The pulsing scratches were now evidence that that day had finally come. 

So, they had these games and their late-night conversations and a secret language apart from their families, and Krishauna and Tashina knew they were different, but everyone else saw them as one unit: the twins. Put the twins in matching dresses. The twins get the same dolls on Christmas. Tashina was never just herself. The matching everything was one thing, but the comparisons were far more degrading: the shy twin and the outgoing twin, the fast twin and the slow twin, the sensitive twin and the happy twin. She understood that when people had two like things, they liked to compare them. I can tell you’re Tashina because your face is narrower. That one is Krishauna because she’s better behaved. While Krishauna attended the honor roll dinner in the cafeteria with their parents, Tashina was stuck in remedial afterschool tutoring. Krishauna could always make their parents proud in a way, Tashina never felt she could. 

After fifteen years of being a pair, Tashina craved to feel different. In her mind, she deserved the John Wayne jacket. For one, she knew more about it. While Krishauna was doing art and reading her anime books in the school library, she was on her school-issued Chromebook looking up John Wayne and discovered how while he was on set of the 1956 film The Searchers, a two-year-old Navajo child came down with pneumonia. Unable to get proper medical attention to her in time, John Wayne lent his plane and private pilot to the little girl and her family so they could get to the hospital. And that’s how he got his name “The Man With The Big Eagle,” from the Monument Valley Navajo extras. 

When Tashina watched The Searchers, John Wayne’s character, Ethan Edwards, was scary to her. His character was a Civil War veteran who spent years searching for his niece, Debbie, after her family was killed and she was kidnapped by the Comanche. It confused Tashina how Edwards spent so much of the film searching for Debbie only to get pissed off when he found her living peacefully among the Comanche. He’d rather kill her than see her assimilated? She couldn’t reconcile the John Wayne who could play a racist veteran who sided with the Confederacy, with the John Wayne who lent his plane to a sick little girl’s family. 

Against the familiar backdrop of Monument Valley and orchestral fanfare, Tashina struggled to reconcile her lived reality with the rough and tumble fantasy of Edwards vying to exact revenge on the Comanche, a southern plains tribe, in Utah’s arid deserts.

 How was it that they had his jacket, when everything surrounding his body of work and his behavior towards Natives, diverged so heavily from the Man With The Big Eagle story? From deep within her another question bubbled forth: who did the Big Eagle story benefit and was it even true? 

The jacket, Tashina thought suddenly, bolting up out of bed. Where the fuck was the jacket? 

***

The following morning, Krishauna awoke to the Navajo Nation’s radio station, KTTN 660, droning into her eldest sister’s bedroom from the kitchen. Her mother liked to listen to the station early in the morning, while brewing her NDN coffee on the kettle of their propane stove. She rolled over in bed, only to be greeted by the two dark eyes of her eldest sister. 

“Why are you in my bedroom?” Bryanna asked. 

Krishauna didn’t know how to explain sneaking out, Collin’s party, or the fight, or how after coming to blows with her twin, she didn’t want her throat slit in her sleep — which was probably overdramatic, but still. 

She settled with: “I got scared?” 

Bryanna’s eyes narrowed. “Bullshit.” 

Krishauna rolled her eyes. “Tashina and I got into a fight last night,” she said. 

“Did you win?” Bryanna asked, rubbing her face. 

“What do you think?” Krishauna said, drawing her hair up over her temple, revealing a bald spot. 

“Shit, she got you good,” Bryanna huffed, as she arranged the pillows better beneath her head, so that her eyes were level with Krishauna’s. 

“She did,” Krishauna said, her voice cracking slightly. 

Bryanna’s eyes widened with horror. “Oh shit, this was like a real fight?” 

Krishauna couldn’t do anything but nod back. 

“What could Tashina be pulling your hair out over for?” 

Krishauna shrunk into the bed and buried her head under her pillow. 

“Collin Rodriguez kissed me.”

“Tʼáásh aaníí? For real?” 

“While I was wearing John Wayne’s jacket.” 

“Fawk,” Bryanna said, shaking her head in disappointment. “All over a Jawn.” 

Krishauna nodded under the pillow. All night she had replayed the kiss, the sweet whisper light brush of Collin’s lips on hers, just as much as she had her sister’s blows. 

“Hold up, John Wayne’s wha—” 

“Jacket,” Krishauna interrupted. “We found it in Nalí man’s closet. The one that Tashina’s been wearing this whole time? The fringe sleeves?” 

“That jacket? Nalí man asked me to keep an eye out for that jacket. That’s the whole reason he wanted us to clean out his room.” 

Krishauna winced. “I think Tashina has it—after the fight we got separated, but we had to leave because Tashina was already so drunk—” 

“Drunk? You guys were drinking?!” Bryanna sat up ram rod straight from the bed. 

“Shhh!” Krishauna hushed, clapping her hand over her sister’s mouth. After all, their parents were just down the hall. 

Bryanna’s eyes narrowed, as Krishauna mouthed quiet with her finger in front of her lips.

“So, what happened to the jacket?”

“We may have left it on the mesa,” said Krishauna. 

Bryanna crawled out of the bed and slid open her closet door. Donning her track sweatsuit, she nonchalantly walked out of her bedroom and to the neighboring room.

“TASH, GET UP! We’re going up the mesa!”  

The wood panel walls of their trailer did little to muffle Bryanna’s booming voice, sending tremors through the mirror on her vanity. Her cross-country medals clattered against the mirror as Krishauna stared into her quivering reflection. 

Bryanna insisted on swinging by the Starbucks installed in their local Bashas’ to get her signature venti shaken espresso with brown sugar cold foam. Krishauna unsuccessfully tried to cover Tashina’s drink, but not even a venti pink drink with sweet cream cold foam could mend this hurt. Back in the sisters’ Tacoma, Bryanna swirled her coffee like it were an NAC gourd, the ice hitting the plastic cup in rhythmic circles. The radio droned on playing some twangy country song, one that their Nalí man would probably have turned up. 

In the daylight, the path up to the mesa looked idyllic–sunlit and golden–the washboard road surrounded by scraggly dusty blue-green juniper shrubs, and scattered orange globemallows. They’d been up here with their grandfather back in the day. He’d take the girls on a hike up the mesa, as soon as spring rolled in, and the snow had all melted. They’d wear long basketball shorts and baseball caps, while their grandfather chose to hike the seven miles in his heavily starched Wrangler blue jeans, straw cowboy hat, and his big old cell phone clipped onto his western belt. At least he’d wear his tennis shoes, Krishana thought with a chuckle.

“What are you laughing at?” Tashina snapped, as if Krishauna was trying to be intentionally irritating.  

“Nothing, I was just thinking about how Nalí man used to wear jeans on hikes.” 

Bryanna busted out laughing just as they hit a significant pothole. “He did, huh! Tash, remember when he made us turn over that big sandstone rock? It took all three of us to tip it over.” 

“Whatever,” Tashina said, untucking her blonde streaked hair from behind her neck to shield her face. 

“Eww, just gross with all that attitude,” Bryanna chided. 

Tashina shot a death glare at her sister. 

“Just pay attention to the road, you’re hitting all the bumps.” 

Bryanna eased the Tacoma up a steep hill that lowered into the clearing where they had the fire the night before. As they rolled over the hill, their truck sunk lower into the softened sand before they rolled to a stop near the fire pit. Krishauna hopped out of the car and looked around the site, noting the tire marks Collin’s ride left behind. 

“Okay, where do you remember last having the jacket?” Bryanna asked, giving her iced coffee another swirl. 

“Over there!” Tashina shouted, pointing to the bush that she’d shoved her sister into. Krishauna was surprised her sister could recall the night before, given how drunk off her ass she appeared. 

The girls marched over to the bush, their steps crunching over dry shale. What had once been a bush, now looked more like the nest of a very large animal. An animal that thrashed around a lot, given the tangled branches that caved inward at the center. 

“Here,” Krishauna stated. 

“Shit, I’ll be right back.” Bryanna said abruptly, leaving the twins behind. 

“Where are you going?” Tashina called out. 

“I left my phone in the car. And you two need to talk!” 

Bryanna called back, leaving the twins behind. 

Both Krishauna and Tashina squinted against the noon day sun, their mouths set in the same slight frown. A breeze whistled by, catching on their chapped lips, making words form, those that hadn’t yet been spoken. 

Hair clung to Tashina’s lip gloss as she started, “I really liked Collin.” 

“I know,” Krishauna replied. “I promise, I didn’t know he was going to do that.” 

“Are you sure he didn’t think you were me?” 

Krishauna felt her brow furrow, “I’m sure. He said he was glad to see me.” 

 Tashina considered her twin’s words, her expression shifting as her eyes hardened and locked onto her sister’s. She squared her shoulders. “We’re telepathic.”

“We’re telepathic,” Krishauna confirmed.

Tashina closed the distance between them. She reached out her hand. Krishauna accepted. 

“You tried to hurt me on purpose, yes, or no?” Tashina asked, staring at their clasped hands. 

“No—” Krishauna went to slap her sister’s hand, but at the last second grasped it on her own. “—not ever.” 

Tashina’s eyes were glassy, she glanced away. 

“There it is.” 

The jacket appeared where Collin’s truck had been parked, although when Krishauna had looked there, she’d failed to notice the heap of suede. 

*

The old folks home their Nalí was staying in was swanky as hell. They made the place look all rustic, kind of like the Ute Mountain Casino—plush blue carpets, live edge coffee tables, and big fancy light fixtures. It was funny to the twins, because their grandpa’s trailer was a far cry from his luxurious stay in Pine Meadows. As soon as they checked in at the front desk, their Nalí man was already waiting. Krishauna thought it was cute how he starched his shirt and pants for the visit. The twins tittered about the old ladies in the dining hall who gushed over learning their names from their grandfather.

“Oh, you’re Julian’s twins—you girls are so pretty, I can barely tell you apart, except for the hair, of course.” The old women with silvered perms gushed. The twins basked in their compliments. 

The cafeteria staff rolled in with their carts, plating the tables with mashed potatoes and gravy with peas and pork chops. Luckily, their Nalí still had his teeth, so his food didn’t have to be puréed, like that of some residents. 

“Somebody better get Nalí man some roses, Golden Eagle Bachelor over here,” Bryanna teased.

Their Nalí man wiggled his eyebrows at his granddaughters. “Yah, I like it here.” He speared a chunk of porkchop into his mouth. “They’re not stingy with the food!”  

“Grandpa, these girls, they found something of yours in your room,” said their mom, Marie. 

Bryanna then reached into the tote bag slung over her shoulder and pulled out the fringed jacket by the shoulder pad.

“Tʼáásh aaníí? You found shí buddy John Wayne’s jacket.” He picked up the jacket like he was greeting an old friend, setting it across his lap and stroking the sleeve. “Yeah, John Wayne gave me this jacket a long time ago, back in the seventies.” Their Nalí man squinted searching for his memories of the past, as if they were just out over the horizon. “I was an extra on set for Warner Brothers, we were filming way out there in Durango.” He pointed with a calloused knuckle in the general direction of Colorado. “This is right before,” he wet his lips, “he passed on from stomach cancer.” Shaking his head he hissed low and slow. “He gave me this on wrap day, took it right off his back—it was still sweaty, and he said, here, have this, Julian. It wasn’t until I got home, I found a golden dollar in the pocket.”  

“He used to send us a bag of oranges and peanuts every Christmas,” the girls’ father said gruffly. 

Their Nalí man pursed his lips and nodded in agreement. “He did.” 

“I was invited to his funeral in California.” 

“Did you go?” Tashina asked. 

Their Nalí man burst out laughing. “No! I went to that big boarding school out there. No California for me!” 

“But weren’t you friends?” Krishauna inquired. 

As if he sipped the hot coffee, their Nalí man hissed, “He was my buddy, but he was ayóó diigis—he was nice to me but mean to some other Indians. When we’d go to Goulding’s and get some drinks, he’d buy for everybody there, but then he’d run out there to the magazines and newspapers and say diigis things! Somethin’ about Indians being selfish, keeping all the land to ourselves. This guy, he was telling Playboy Magazine that he believes in white supremacy! And I said to him, John, what in the hell are you saying out there? You’re an actor, not the president! And you know what he says to me?”
The table waited in rapture. Krishauna looked to Tashina, Tashina to Bryanna, Bryanna to their mother, and their mother searched her husband’s face for a hint to the end of the story — but he was already shaking his head in discontent, as if he’d heard the final line of this story countless times before.

“Julian, it’s just in the Playboy,” he said in a put-upon deep voice. “Yeah, so that was my buddy, John Wayne.” 

Patting the jacket, he glanced up at Bryanna. “Go put this in my room. I want to wear it to the Spring Dance. Because things always happen when I wear this jacket, must be lucky.”

The twins exchanged a knowing glance.