“This is clay, son. I’ve been learning the ancient art.”

“You?”

“Don’t be so surprised.”

The closest his parents had come to art were Christmas cards taped to the walls of temporary housing.

“We move around,” his mother had explained. “You put holes in the plaster, you have to patch them up. I may be dumb but I’m not stupid.”

“The process is really something,” his father went on. “Finding the right clay, digging it up, hand-shaping-we don’t use no wheels.”

We?

Darrel kept his mouth shut. They were fifteen miles out of Santa Fe, and the terrain had changed. Higher altitude, pretty mountains all around. Greener, with little pink and tan and gold houses that reflected the light. The sky was huge and blue, bluer than Darrel had ever seen. A billboard advertised duty-free gasoline at the Pojoaque Pueblo. Another one said custom adobe homes were going up in a place called Eldorado.

Not bad, but still not California.

“No wheels,” his father reiterated. “The shaping’s all by hand, which is pretty tough, let me tell you. Then comes the firing and it really gets complicated. Some people use a kiln, but I use an outdoor fire because the spirits are stronger outdoors. You make a wood fire, the heat’s gotta be perfect. If something’s wrong, everything can crack and all your work’s for nothing. You want to get different colors, you use cow dung. Got to snatch it out of the fire at exactly the right time, put it back in-it’s complicated.”

“Sounds like it.”

“Aren’t you going to ask me what I make?”

“What d’you make?”

“Bears,” said his dad. “And they come out pretty good. Look pretty much like bears.”

“Great.” Clay, dung. Outdoor spirits. His dad’s hair- Jesus, it was really long. Was this some kind of dream?

“I live to make bears, Darrel. All those years I didn’t do it was time wasted.”

“You served your country.”

Ed Montez laughed and smoked and pushed his truck to nearly a hundred.

“Dad, are you living in the pueblo?”

“I wish. Whatever land rights we got at Santa Clara are long gone. But I go out there for lessons. It’s not a bad drive. I managed to hook up with Sally Montez. She’s Maria’s great-great-granddaughter. Great potter, won first prize at the Indian Market show two years in a row. She uses dung to get a black and red combo. Last year she got the flu, didn’t have it together, so she only got honorable mention. But still, that’s pretty impressive.”

“Where are you living, Dad?”

“Condo. Army pension pays the rent and then some. Got myself two bedrooms, so there’s plenty of room for you. Got cable ‘cause the dish don’t do well with all the wind.”

Living with his father-his new father-took some getting used to.

Edward Two Moons’s two-bedroom condo on the south side was more honestly described as a “one plus study.” Darrel’s space was an eight-by-nine room walled with bookshelves and filled by a sleeper couch that unfolded to a double bed.

Books on the shelves-that was something new. American history, Indian history. Art. Lots on art.

Incense burner in his dad’s room and for a second Darrel wondered: Dope?

But the old man just liked burning incense when he read.

No ceramic bears in sight. Darrel didn’t ask because he didn’t want to know.

One thing was the same: His dad got up at six a.m. every day, weekends included.

No more one-handed push-ups, though. Former gunnery sergeant Ed Montez greeted each day with an hour of silent meditation. Followed by another hour of bending and stretching to one of a dozen yoga tapes.

Dad taking instructions from women in leotards.

After yoga came a long walk and a half-hour bath, fry bread and black coffee for breakfast, though by then, it was closer to lunchtime.

By two p.m., the old man was ready for his drive out to the Santa Clara Pueblo, where the cheery, corpulent Sally Montez sat in her studio out back of her spacious adobe house and fashioned gorgeous, jewel-inlaid, black-clay masterpieces. The front room of the house was a shop run by Sally’s husband, Bob. He was Sally’s second cousin; Sally hadn’t needed to change her name.

As Sally made pots, Dad hunched at a nearby table, brow furrowed, chewing his cheek as he fashioned his bears.

Families of them, in various poses.

The first time he saw the tiny animals, Darrel thought of Goldilocks. Then he thought: No way. They didn’t even look like bears. More like pigs. Or hedgehogs. Or nothing recognizable.

Dad was no sculptor and Sally Montez knew it. But she smiled and said, “Yes, Ed, you’re coming along.”

She wasn’t doing it for the money; Dad wasn’t paying her a dime. Just because she was nice. So was Bob. And their kids. And most of the people Darrel met on the pueblo.

He started to wonder.

Dad didn’t mention the name-change thing again until six months after Darrel moved in. The two of them were sitting on a bench in the Plaza, eating ice cream on a gorgeous summer day. Darrel had enrolled in UNM as a business major, gotten a 3.6 his first semester, met some girls, had some fun.

“Proud of you, son,” said Ed, handing the transcript back to Darrel. “Did I ever tell you the origin of my name?”

“Your new name?”

“My only name, son. The here and now is all that counts.”

His hair had grown another four inches. The old man still smoked, and his skin looked like ancient leather. But the hair was thick and youthful and glossy, even with the gray streaks. Long enough for a serious braid. Today it was braided.

“The night I decided,” he said, “there were two moons in the sky. Not really, it’s just the way I perceived it. ”Cause of the monsoon. I was in the condo, cooking dinner, and there was one of those monsoons-you haven’t seen one yet, but you will eventually. The sky just opens up and bam. Sheets of rain. It can be a real dry day, bone-dry, then all of a sudden things change.“ He blinked, and for a second his mouth got weak. ”You have arroyos turning into rushing streams. It’s pretty impressive, son.“

Ed licked his butter pecan cone. “Anyway, there I was cooking and the rain started coming down. I finished up, sat there wondering where life was gonna take me.” Another blink. “I started thinking about your mom. I never talked much about how I felt about her, but, trust me, I felt about her.”

He turned away, and Darrel watched some tourists file past the Indian jewelers and potters sitting in the alcove of the Palace of Governors. The Plaza across the street was filled with art kiosks and a bandstand with an open mike for amateur singers. Who said folksinging was a lost art? Or maybe that was good folksinging.

“Thinking about your mom made me low but also a little high. Not like in drunk. Encouraged. All of a sudden I knew I was doing the right thing by coming to this place. I’m looking out the window and the glass is all wet and all you can see of the sky is black and a big, blurry moon. Only this time, it was two moons-the wet glass bent the light in a way that created this image. Am I making myself clear?”

“Refraction,” said Darrel. He’d taken Physical Science for Non-Science Majors, pulled a B.

Ed regarded his son with pride. “Exactly. Refraction. Not two totally separate moons, more like one on top of the other, maybe two-thirds overlapping. It was beautiful. And this strong feeling came over me. Your mom was communicating with me. ”Cause that’s what we were like. Together all the time, but we were separate people, just enough overlap to make it work. We were fifteen when we met, had to wait until we were seventeen to get married ‘cause her dad was an alcoholic hard case and he hated my guts.“

“I thought Grandpa liked you.”

“He came to like me,” said Ed. “By the time you knew him, he liked everyone.”

Darrel’s memories of his grandfather were bland and pleasant. Alcoholic hard case? What other surprises did his father have in store?