Hard Twisted (22 page)

The good Lord, Palmer said. There ain't no escape from it.

The old man tasted his coffee.

You just said a mouthful, son, whether you know it or not.
You'd be well counseled to put more faith in the Lord than you do in that hogleg you been carrying.

You seen that, have you?

I'll tell you what I seen. I seen a dozen of your kind come through here over the years, all mouth and no trousers, mistaking a gun barrel for a backbone. If you think I'm the kind that bluffs easy, you got a lot to learn about people.

Palmer's smile was reptilian. You think I'm bluffin, you go right ahead and call me.

The old sheriff shook his head, returning his eyes to the girl.

What I come to say tonight is this. Me and Jake—that's my Alice's boy—we can make camp at the Seeps. That old oil shack ain't much, but it's got a woodstove and a floor and two beds off the ground. He turned again to Palmer. That's one for each of you.

Palmer stood, his face dark above the firelight. We can shift for ourselves, thank you. We don't need your Christian charity.

Oliver nodded. He swirled his dregs and pitched them into the darkness. He placed a hand on his knee to rise.

I'm obliged for the coffee, ma'am. He stood and bent and set down the cup. We'll be out of that shack come morning. Be a shame if it went to waste.

He turned and brushed past Palmer, his huge shape receding into darkness, his crown dimming to nothing.

You and your man are welcome! his voice rang as he mounted and turned the horse. Afraid them sheep are not!

The snow when it came was wet and heavy. It slanted off the mesa, muffling the frantic bleating of the sheep as they turned
from it en masse, surging southward toward the roadway and the river gorge beyond. By the time Palmer had saddled Henry and reached the first of the stragglers, he could see pockets of fleece like drifted snow packed into the draws and arroyos where the sheep had wedged in their panic, and where the living were bleating and scrambling for purchase on the muddy backs of the dead.

God damn it to hell!

His hands were nearly frozen. He slid from his saddle and waded, arms paddling, into the wet and roiling scrum. He slipped in the mud and fell. He tugged at the screaming sheep and wrestled their heads and was kicked to the ground in return. He sat on the muddy embankment, soaked and filthy and numb with cold, and he covered his ears with his hands.

Lottie found him thus when she arrived in the buckboard, and her screams were lost in the swirling snowfall as she climbed down over the wheel. She scrambled into the wash, and fell, and rose again before Palmer caught her and pulled her to him, holding her though she struggled against him, the wind howling and lashing their union.

Just let it go, he told her quietly. There ain't nothin to be done.

By dawn the skies had cleared, and the red mud in the arroyos had congealed into a thick and viscid clay, and they walked out together to tally their losses. Fifty-three sheep were dead in the snowstorm, plus four who'd been wounded beyond doctoring, and those Palmer had shot. The rest they herded back toward the mesa, where they built a bonfire by which to warm the living and in which to incinerate the dead.

I seen horses last night, Lottie told him, still shivering in her blanket.

Where?

Comin out the canyon.

How many?

Two.

Palmer stood from the fire. The view, both south and east, was to the ocher buttes of the Garden, their shoulders mantled in the newly fallen snow. Palmer cupped his hands and blew. He hadn't shaved for a week, and neither man nor girl had bathed in over a month.

The hell with this, he told her. The ones that ain't froze are gonna starve soon anyways.

He crossed to their sagging tent, and when he emerged again, it was with Goulding's coyote rifle.

What if they come right back?

Palmer slid the rifle into the scabbard. He led Henry, dark and winter-shaggy, through the throng of muddy sheep.

They'll come back all right. But if these ones don't get some grass and water soon, we'll need us a bigger fire than this.

Lottie woke to the sound of a motorcar. She thought at first it was a fever dream, but the sound persisted as she rose from bed and crossed on swollen ankles to the frosted windowpanes.

The stovemouth was ash; the shack still dim and bitter cold. Palmer lay snoring in his single bed. Outside, sheep and cattle grazed together in the new sunshine, the ground fog of their mingled breaths melting the frosted grass tips.

The engine sound faded.

Clint, she whispered. Wake up.

He rolled and laid an arm across his forehead. What's the matter? What time is it?

I heard a car.

What?

A car.

It's just a dream. Go back to sleep.

It come from up the canyon, I swear it.

Palmer sat upright in his blankets. You see anything?

She shook her head. Just the stock.

He was wild-haired and blinking when he joined her at the window. Rank in his woolen union suit.

You wait here.

She dressed when he'd departed, pulling on the jumper that was Mike's and the sweater that was hers and that covered the swell of her belly. The long johns she wore were Palmer's, old and torn and baggy-waisted. She sat on the bed light-headed, waiting for the room to still.

She was donning her cowboy hat when the door opened and Palmer high-stepped into the room on a blast of frigid air.

It's them all right. They're dressed like for a funeral and headin this way.

He shed his blanket and hopped into his trousers. He crossed to the doorway and lifted his rifle from the gun rack, then put it back again.

He's like to pitch a fit, she said.

Palmer was pacing now, raking his hair with his fingers. Okay, here's the deal. The spring was froze and we had no water. Then you took sick. Then we had some sick lambs, and—

There was a knock, but before they could answer, the door opened with a bang, dust sifting from the rafters as the old sheriff ducked through the doorway. He wore a dark hat with a suit of
darker wool under his long and tawny duster. A string tie under a starched collar. He was freshly shaved, and the white of his mustache glowed against the red rage of his face.

By God, he seethed at Palmer. You ungrateful little whelp.

Hello, Mr. Oliver.

His flint eyes softened when they shifted to the girl.

Good Lord, child, you're pale as a ghost. He removed his hat and set it on the table. Fever?

She nodded. Yes, sir. I think so.

He placed an icy hand on her forehead. How long?

About a week.

A week? He turned and glared at Palmer. And I suppose you've been cooking and cleaning for this one the whole time? Of course you have. Sit over there.

The old man turned to the doorway. Jake!

The boy who entered was older than Lottie but younger than Palmer and bigger than both of them combined. His face was freshly shaved. He too wore a necktie, and a vested suit, and a starched and strangling collar. He carried with him a fatted pullet, plucked and pink in a tin roasting pan.

What the hell's that?

The boy hefted the pan. Don't you know what day today is?

From the look of things, I'd say it was Sunday.

No, sir, the boy said as he set the pan on the table. Today is Thanksgiving Day.

Jimmie Rodgers played softly on the phonograph, and Lottie listened through “The Brakeman's Blues” and “In the Jailhouse Now” and “Blue Yodel No. 3.”

When the music finally stopped, she heard voices outside, and she slipped from her bed and crossed into the front room, to the window that overlooked the corrals. Paul and Morris were there, wiring crossrails to a fencepost, and Morris stopped and lifted his head in the manner of a dog hearing a silent whistle. He looked to the trading post and saw the girl there framed in the upstairs window.

Mike! he called to his sister. She's up again!

Lottie was settling into bed when Mike appeared in the doorway, wiping her hands on her apron. Her hair was up, and she blew a wayward strand from her face.

You're fixing to wear one of us out. Are you warm enough?

Yes, ma'am.

Would you like a glass of water?

No, thank you.

Mike crossed to the bed and sat and placed a hand on the girl's forehead.

I know it's hard, honey, but the doctor says you've got to stay put. It's for the baby's sake.

I know it. I just get fidgety is all.

Are you sure you don't want some water?

I'm sure.

Mike rose again and smiled at the girl, who smiled warmly in reply. Each of them was the object of the other's longing: Mike the mother of Lottie's shadow memory, and Lottie the daughter Mike would never have, and whose own unborn daughter, or son, was to both of them a shared adventure.

I'll bring you up a magazine. And some tea.

She got as far as the doorway before the daily question came.

Did Harry go for the mail today?

Yes, honey, the woman answered without turning. But nothing came for you.

The arrival of December marked the seventh month of Lottie's pregnancy and the second week of her forced quiescence in the little guest bedroom of the little stone trading post where she lay pale and hidden like some bone-shard relic, consecrated and fragile, in the vast and red cathedral of Monument Valley.

She watched from her sickbed aerie as parcels began to arrive, hauled up from Kayenta by Paul on horseback, or down from Durango by Morris or Harry in the Chevrolet touring car. Old blankets and jackets, or used shirts and shoes, all of them opened and clucked over and stored in the big guest tent for the coming holiday.

When on the seventh day of December a piñon pine went up in the bullpen, Lottie was allowed downstairs to witness the trimming. Mike and Harry solicited her opinions from the bench where she sat swaddled in her blankets, and Lottie, for her part, directed their ministrations with an odd and poignant gravity. And on the very next morning, amid a cacophony of Navajo chanting and generalized commotion, the parson Sunshine Smith arrived.

His battered Ford truck was a wobbling parade float, a kind of motorized Conestoga that was both marvel of engineering and paean to the nomadic life. Lanterns were clanking and pots banging, and four roped Herefords trudged wearily behind. Rocking chairs rocked and water jugs sloshed, and the scalloped edges of a green canvas awning rilled like piano keys in the cold desert wind.

Lottie watched, transfixed, as the truck and its trailing entourage of Navajos afoot and on horseback snaked into view. First
the Knee brothers appeared below her, followed by their sister. Then Mike retreated inside, her voice ringing in the stairwell.

Harry! Shine's here!

Goulding appeared in the doorway, a towel around his neck.

Ain't you supposed to be in bed?

He moved to stand beside Lottie in the window, and together they watched the spectacle unfold.

He does make an entrance.

Is he really a parson?

Goulding dabbed at his chin. I don't know about parson. Preacher is more like it. Or missionary, I suppose. He was a Presbyterian once, but him and the church, they never got eye to eye on the Navajo question. Or the liquor question, I reckon. Now he's more like what you'd call a hand-trembler. He glanced at the girl. A medicine man.

Do you think he'd ask a blessin? I mean, for my baby?

Well, I reckon he could. Course there's no telling where it might get heard. Christian god or great spirit. Might be like one of them party lines on the telephone that gets all mixed up in transmission. Bound for heaven, and then it hits the wrong relay and winds up on Navajo Mountain. Maybe jumbled up with some other prayers, half English and half Navajo. Ain't no telling what kind of blessing might come back.

Lottie was a remote observer of the Christmas preparations. First the magic truck was off-loaded, its parcels and bundles removed to the tent for storage. Then a huge pit was dug, and a mountain of firewood gathered. Then there rose a makeshift abattoir of poles and canvas sheeting to which each of the tethered steers was led, alone and blindfolded, to be slaughtered.

Lottie watched and slept and rose to watch again. By day the Indians came and went in tidal fashion, sometimes dozens, sometimes only four or five seated in a circle, playing at cards or passing between them a shared can and spoon. By night the abattoir glowed from within, and the smearing of the skinners and the spattering of the skinned read from her high vantage like painted runes on an outsize Japanese lantern.

Day and night there was chanting, and on the third night rhythmic drumbeats and stuttered dances performed by firelight.

Mike would visit her each evening to recount the day's events, only to admonish her for having witnessed firsthand the events that were recounted.

On the eleventh day of December, after her breakfast tray was cleared, Lottie heard voices in the stairwell. They spoke in English, and in Navajo, and were followed by the clatter of footsteps.

Three men entered her bedroom. Two were Navajo elders in velvet shirts, each heavily ornamented in earrings and necklaces of silver and turquoise, their faces blotched and shriveled. Each wore his hair—long and lamp black and shot throughout with gray—in a loose and greasy bun. The senior of the two wore a beaded shoulder bag, and the other a tall black hat that he removed and placed with great ceremony on the chair inside the doorway.

The third visitor, by accident of parentage, was a white man. He wore over his frayed cleric's collar a jacket of fringed buckskin and a large silver crucifix centered with a single blue stone. His face was red and parboiled, and his eyes were hewn of the selfsame veined and sky-blue turquoise.

She guessed that the parson Sunshine Smith was half the age of his companions. It required no guessing to know that he'd been drinking.

Well, he told her, you must be Johnny Rae.