The Ways We Converge (The Wayfinding #1)

Chapter 1

“Junie, we need three Indian tacos, two bowls of chili, one frybread with honey, and four strawberry drinks,” Anita called out to Juniper from her seat perched at the open back of their food truck, Banks Bites, where she took orders.

“Heard,” Juniper responded with a hoarse voice, accepting the scribbled down note passed from her mom. She slid it into a clothespin hanging from a fishing line strung across the top of her work station, slipping behind the other two orders she was still working on.

Fuck, it’s hot.

She wiped the sweat from her brow with the edge of her very damp t-shirt. It didn’t matter that it was early March; the multiple fryers, cooktops, and general heat from the rest of the appliances made a concerted and valiant effort to totally smother her.

“I been asking when your brother is gonna come help us out. He keeps saying he’s on the powwow trail winning contest money to bring home.”

While that was probably true – the winning money dancing in powwow dance competitions part, not the actually bringing it home to the family part – he was likely more concerned with snagging a new woman in each Tribal community he passed through on that powwow trail.

Juniper wanted to be more like her younger brother Sam; she’d like to at least have the chance to snag some woman.

Instead she was sweating her ass off in the family food truck for the millionth weekend in a row.

In the off chance she had caught a woman’s eye in the morning before starting work, her grease-splotched clothes, frazzled hair that smelled like she’d washed it in the deep fryer, and makeup that had met its inevitable sweaty demise were certain to turn heads in the complete opposite direction once she finished for the day.

“You keep that hope alive,” Juniper muttered under her breath.

“Junie, what? You know my hearing’s bad. I can’t hear anything over that fan blasting.”

Juniper didn’t repeat herself, and she certainly wasn’t going to turn that fan down. She attempted to blow a sweaty stray lock of hair from her eyes. The edges barely lifted, then shellacked themselves back to her forehead like they hadn’t even moved.

Just end me already.

She turned back to the fryers, grabbed metal tongs, and produced four pieces of frybread with crispy, golden edges and perfectly fluffy insides.

This was the secret recipe frybread that kept people coming back, and back, and back.

That kept her stuck there for hours on end, weekend after weekend.

She glared at the last piece while she squeezed it a little too hard with the tongs.

It had become a symbol of the four walls of this prison she considered herself to be standing in.

Where she really wanted to be was outside in the Tribal gardens she had built to provide access to fresh produce for her community.

She wanted to have her hands in the dirt, cultivating new life.

Hopefully a new life, for her. Living at home at thirty-three and running her family’s food truck was not her dream.

Running her community’s traditional foods program that she had built over the last seven years from the ground up was.

Refocusing, again, on the monotonous task at hand, she plated the next order and called out the service window, “Gloria!” She paused. “Is that Gloria Bearskin?”

Gloria, an older woman who had been a long-time advocate in the Tribe for LGBTQ2S+ causes and Juniper’s work with traditional foods, sauntered up to the window with her soda-can formed white curls bouncing in the breeze.

Juniper was jealous of those curls. She wanted to curl up in that cool air right along with them.

She also loved the shit out of Gloria and how inappropriate she was, for a woman of her age, as they often joked together.

Like how society thinks after a woman turns forty, she should hide herself away from the world to go die in dignity.

Gloria had laughed in the face of that expectation multiple times a day for the last twenty years at least.

“Hey honey, thank you.” Gloria took the plates and passed them back to a man about 15 years her junior that Juniper had never seen before.

Juniper curled her fingers on the ledge of the service window and leaned conspiratorially over it. “Speaking of honey, who is that man half your age behind you taking your plates for you to the picnic table? And don’t lie again and tell me it’s your nephew.”

Gloria swatted her with the stack of napkins she had just pulled out of the napkin holder by the condiments.

“Oh, hush. Half my age? Really, Juniper? That man is 43. What I do with my personal time is personal. Didn’t I teach you that even Aunties who snag eligible younger men are sacred too?”

Juniper could see the twinkle in her eye.

It told her everything she wanted to know about Gloria’s intentions with that man who was busying himself with arranging and rearranging the plates on the table.

He looked nervous. Juniper wondered what specifications she had this poor guy living up to.

Good for her though – Gloria knew exactly what she wanted, and she got it.

“I see that, ma’am. Very sacred. No more questions from me, then.” Juniper smirked and winked at her.

“My question for you is, when are you going to find a woman to take up some of your personal time?”

“What personal time?” Juniper quipped. She looked back at the remaining order tickets hanging up and the new one her mom was waving in her direction.

“Don’t give me that. Every time we’re out in the Tribal gardens together you either tell me about lost love or bad love… what about new love?”

“Well let’s see, Gloria, before you get me in trouble with my boss,” Juniper glanced back at her mom waving a second new order ticket in her direction.

“I had my whole heart absolutely ripped out of my chest once by the person I trusted most in this world. Eviscerated, really. Then I dated unsuccessfully for several years. Then I dated a narcissist. I don’t really trust my judgment. ”

Juniper caught Gloria’s eyes glossing over with sadness for a moment. Juniper had meant it to be funny. She was questioning if maybe the state of her love life was actually just sad. Gloria patted Juniper’s hand she was still using to propel herself through the window.

“Have some fun at least. You work too hard. You’ll learn to trust yourself along the way. You can always count on me to listen.”

Juniper quickly flipped her hand over to squeeze Gloria’s hand into hers.

“I love you, Auntie. See you Monday.”

“Monday, yes!” Gloria’s once glossy eyes now gleamed. “Your first day at your new job. I hear there’s a very nice administrative assistant who will be waiting for you at the front desk, maybe even with a little gift to show you how proud I am of you.”

Gloria winked and Juniper’s heart swelled. On Monday morning, she would start her first day as the Tribal food sovereignty coordinator, where she would bring her traditional foods program under the Tribe’s official purview… and budget.

“I’ll be the one handing you a cup of coffee to share with me.”

“Can’t wait. Well, my personal time fun awaits…”

Gloria gave her one last wicked smile over her shoulder before turning back to her mystery honey, her thick hips swishing back and forth as she went.

Juniper’s idea of having personal time fun fell more along the lines of soaking her feet in warm water while blasting her face with AC and eating her weight in ice cream after a day like the one she was having.

After not graduating from college, and having to leave the agriculture program she loved while there, she had managed her family’s food truck operations ever since.

As the oldest daughter, it was her responsibility to bring money into their household where Anita was no longer able due to her health, which is why her studies were cut short.

And why she still had to pay for student loans while not having a degree to show for it.

Running her mom’s food truck wasn’t her dream, by a long shot, but she knew this was her mom’s livelihood.

The Banks family didn’t come from much of anything at all financially, and her mom didn’t have any sort of retirement planned out.

Anita always joked that she would die and be buried with her food truck.

As with most Native people, they shared a devious sense of humor.

What Juniper didn’t share was that there was no way in hell she was going to run that food truck for the rest of her life.

She had something different up her sleeve.

She was in control of her redemption arc – one that was going to start bright and early Monday morning.

Juniper turned back to witness her mom struggling to use two hands to push herself up against her knees.

“Mama, stop. I got it. I got it.”

Juniper rushed over to grab the tickets from her hand.

“We’re getting backed up, Junie.”

“I know.” She sighed and turned back to add the order tickets to the fishing line, now having to double the new tickets up on the last remaining clothespins.

After three more grueling hours of food preparation, Juniper cleaned and sanitized every surface, and even though she would regret having to do it in the morning, she locked up without prepping for the next day. That was a problem for tomorrow’s Juniper. Today’s Juniper was worn out.

She lightly, surreptitiously kicked the side of the food truck as she walked past it to her car where her mom was already waiting for her.

That was petty.

She doubled back and ran her hand over where she kicked it.

Now I know you’re tired. You’re petting a literal food truck, Banks.

She didn’t totally hate the food truck; she just had other plans for it.