Possession (33 page)

He had planned to tell her where they were going when they actually crossed over into the Pasayten, and he was annoyed that she broke his concentration with questions as he focused on leading them down the mountain. It was neither cold—they had left the thin snow layer behind them—nor was it dark; the moon had swollen now to three-quarters of its face. Once their eyes adjusted to the dim light, they could maneuver the trail. But what would have taken them four hours in daylight required double that at night. Even draining of its poison, his arm still ached and the aching distracted too. Her hand hooked in his belt did not seem enough to assure her that he would not leave her behind. She talked to him continually.

"Are you there?"

"You're touching me. You know I'm here."

"Talk to me."

"I'm trying to find the way."

"Then tell me what you're thinking. Think out loud so I can hear your voice."

"I can't think out loud."

"Then sing."

"If we sing, we can't hear . . . things."

That frightened her. "Then talk to me."

He made no reply.

They reached Bridge Creek at dawn, but he allowed them to rest for only a few minutes. They were an hour's walk from the highway, too exposed to other hikers. She started

244

to protest when he ordered her to follow him again, but she obeyed. An hour later, he missed the turn-off at Fireweed Camp. They had gone on for almost two hours before he felt the first niggling of doubt, so involved in hiding them that he had misjudged the simplest turn they came upon. When he put his finger on the pleated map, he saw the problem at once—but it was not easily corrected. He had gone east at Fireweed instead of obliquely north. If he backtracked, she would know that they were lost. It was a matter of pride and he continued, thinking that they could rest in the meadow he saw ahead and then go back on a circuitous route she would not detect.

One fly and then a dozen of them landed on his seeping hand and he batted them away, hurrying further along to a place where he could rethink their route.

He was very tired now, and the flies that buzzed and stung at him aggravated the pain in his arm until he found it almost too heavy to carry. When he held it over his chest, it threw his balance askew; when he let it hang down, the blood fell into it and pressed his nerves. They climbed north along rock cairns to a ridge, and then the trail was clearer. There had been a look-out site, but he relaxed when he saw that it seemed long deserted—only weather-scored, broken timbers remained of whatever building men had tried to place here. No one had come here recently.

He led her along a scrabble trail that seemed to be easterly and was rewarded. A splendid, tiny plateau of meadow lay below and beyond that he could see a lake and a few narrow streams—a place meant for them, surrounded by flaming larches, protected by rocky peaks. She was enthralled. He pretended that he had meant to bring her here all along. When he was really well, he would find their way into the Pasayten, but until then, he was quite content to stay where they were. He was sure that they had been led here by some design. "Where are we?" She lay on her back in the grass and

245

spread her arms, tumbling in the greenness of it. "It's wonderful. How did you find it?"

He looked at his map. "Stiletto Meadows. I chose it for • you."

"I never want to leave. Can we stay here forever?"

"Forever," he lied.

25

Sam let the dusty truck decide, allowed the steering wheel to whirl lightly in his open hands, and it headed for the barn: Natchitat. There was no reason to go back, but there was nowhere else to go. He was not welcome in Wenatchee. Alone, he was of no earthly use in Stehekin. He still coaxed the delusion that Danny and Joanne somehow lived in Natchitat, a crazy hope that he had endured a terrible alcoholic nightmare that would dissipate in daylight. It allowed him to maneuver his vehicle through the traffic on this bright blue and yellow Wenatchee noon, despite the steady thumping in his head. He would have preferred to simply cut and run to a place where memory could not follow him, but he'd already exercised that option when he bolted from Seattle. A man could do that only once in his lifetime. A second blind flight would stamp him a bum for whom there could be no redemption. He had no plan, but he trusted that one would take form as his head cleared because there was a powerful urgency in him. Wherever she was, Joanne waited for rescue.

He drove faster, although he had no good reason for going home. Home. Home meant dealing with Fewell, explaining what could not be explained to Elizabeth Crowder, and a starving cat. He passed his hand across his forehead and felt cold sweat.

The taverns beside the road, their windows shuttered but their blue neon "Open" signs beckoning, called to him seductively. He longed to let the truck turn in, to find shelter

246

himself inside one of the bars where the air was icy and the sunshine was lost behind thick walls and translucent colored glass. He could not run. He could not hide. He apparently was not going to die; his heart had got him up the mountain and down and up again, and he could not depend on a medium-grade hangover to kill him. He crossed the Natchitat County line, still forty miles from town, the highway skirting the reservation, and rounded the long curve past the quarry. Two lean hogs dashed across the center line, stopped and gazed placidly at his approaching truck. He hit the brake and slid onto the shoulder, swearing.

He had seen the signs a thousand times: Max Ling's faded totem pole beside a tree studded with advertisements for himself. It drove Walker Fewell into quiet rage because he had no dominion over Max's enterprises, protected as he was by treaties drawn in another era. In descending order, the signs read:

Puppies: Bird dogs. Watch dogs. Pets.

Cigarettes: No tax—all brands.

Dahlias—Cut Flowers for Weddings, Funerals. Tubers.

Honey.

Used Cars: Classics

Antique Bottles

and a new sign, bigger than all the rest, its paint so fresh that it appeared still wet: DMSO HERE NOW!

Sam and Danny had been at Max's place a time or two, sent out by Fewell to confiscate cigarettes, and to sniff for untaxed liquor. They'd always had to return the cigarettes because Max had an attorney who knew tribal law and federal treaties a hell of a lot better than Walker Fewell did—and Sam had been delighted to bring back the evidence. He liked Ling, although he had always found it a little hard to believe in a blue-eyed Indian.

His eyes ran down the signs again, and stopped at

247

"SEARCH," and he could hear Danny's voice laughing, "That little blue-eyed chief can track anything—if it interests him. Runs circles around dogs and white men and any goddamned scientific gear you can name."

At this moment Sam could not remember anything that Max had found, could not be sure that Danny hadn't been pulling his leg, teasing the old flatlander cop. One thing was clear; almost anybody could track better than Sam himself could.

He wheeled his rig through the opening in the poplar trees that cut Ling's operation off from the highway, into a jungle of Max's peculiar collectibles.

The field on the right side of the dirt lane was full of vehicles, heat devils shimmering from their baked metal. Packards, Terraplanes, an Edsel, a half-dozen Hudson Hornets, and the overturned-bathtub Nashes of the early fifties. What Ling considered "classic" had always amused Sam. Max never seemed to sell any of the rusting hulks, only added to his graveyard of Detroit's embarrassments.

Dahlias dominated the left side of the property, in full bloom now, their red, yellow, white, maroon, and salmon flowers so brilliant that they hurt Sam's eyes. Between the dahlia patch and the three-storied, asbestos-shingled house, bees hovered and soared over their white hives, fifty, sixty of the square bee-homes, lined up with precision.

The dogs, the ugliest dogs Sam had ever seen—liver-colored dogs of no particular lineage—ran beside his truck and barked in hoarse whoops. There were a dozen of them. He could not imagine that anyone ever bought

"Puppies," and assumed that Max must breed them only to add to the guard that protected his empire from unfriendly visitors. He braked the truck and they sat back on their haunches, waiting for him to make a move.

He waited for someone to emerge from the house, although it was impossible to tell if anyone was inside, the front of the residence was so camouflaged with trellises, awnings, honeysuckle, wisteria, and the odd piece of auto body left there when its intended purpose was forgotten. The dogs had always liked Danny—but Danny had liked

248

and trusted dogs. Sam was a cat man and he wondered if they knew that. He hit the horn and listened; the house remained silent while the dogs smiled at him with their teeth bared and their tongues lolling. A bee flew in his side window and danced over his nose. Something was going to bite him or sting him no matter what he did.

He slid out of the cab and headed for the door that looked most likely of the four fronting on the long porch, the killer dogs jostling each other for a chance to lick his hand. They waited with him as he rang a bell that didn't ring and then knocked. When there was no response, he sheltered his eyes with his hand and peered through the screen. He could see a woman inside the living room, a space so aqua from its shades that it appeared to be under water. She sat with her back to him, watching a huge, tavern-sized television screen.

He knocked again and she didn't move. He pounded on the wall beside the door and she flinched, looked around, and strode like a graceful dancer toward him. She held open the screen door and smiled at him; he found her one of the most beautiful women he had ever seen in his life. An Indian, surely, but not a Northwest Indian, her features delicate and Caucasian, her skin the color of almonds. She was at least six feet tall, full breasts suspended in a white lace halter, long brown legs emerging from denim cut-offs. She turned away from him and looked back toward a darkened area beyond the living room and her straight black hair, which reached to the top of her thighs, brushed his hand. He felt the slightest surge of masculine appreciation for her excellence. A small thing but wondrous in its displacement of nothingness. He spoke to her as she was looking away from him.

"Max here?"

She didn't answer.

"I said, is Max at home?"

She turned back toward him and stared at his mouth, waiting. And then her hands moved across each other like brown birds. He saw instantly that she could not speak or hear.

249

He enunciated slowly and she read his lips, nodding and smiling. She moved her hands again, her fingers so rapid that they blurred.

He shook his head and touched her shoulder lightly, then pointed at his own lips: "I don't understand. I cannot speak the language."

She took his hand lightly and led him through the shadowed room. Ling's house was a series of additions, each one built either a little higher than the next, or sunken—so that no threshold matched another. Sam stepped carefully, his pupils still contracted from his long drive in the sun. One room was lined with narrow shelves full of bottles— blue, aqua, amethyst, white—their glass flawed and thickened, lips applied awkwardly, bases marked with pottles where some glass blower had sealed off their melted substance before the century turned. All of them valuable now, when they had once been somebody's garbage.

The next room was clearly the woman's studio. Canvasses with paintings of wild flowers and studies of hands. Hands folded; hands held out in supplication; some graceful; some gnarled. Hands would be important to her. He touched her elbow and inclined his head toward the paintings and smiled. She nodded.

They moved into the last room, the kitchen. Max Ling, bare to the waist above painters' pants, siphoned clear liquid from a gallon container into what looked like mayonnaise jars. He recognized Sam and grimaced, but his hands were steady at his task. He spoke not to Sam, but to the woman—in her tongue—when he had finished pouring. His hands moved and she answered, their eyes catching one another's. Max pointed to Sam and said something in finger talk. Her face grew solemn and she looked at Sam, alarmed.

"Tell her I come in peace."

Max laughed. "You don't have to talk Indian. She can't hear you."

"I know. Tell her I'm not here officially."

Max put his arm on Sam's shoulder in a gesture of friendship and the tall woman relaxed. "Sam, this is Marcella, my wife. Marcella (he spoke directly to her and

250

she studied his lips gravely), this is Sam Clinton, a good friend of mine. He says he didn't come from the Sheriff. Not today. It's O.K."

She smiled again, her face magical, forgiving him for whatever she had assumed, and walked away, leaving them alone.

"Damn it, Sam. I've got a right to sell this stuff. They've been selling it for months down on the Nisqually Reservation. I just put that sign up yesterday. Your undersheriff must have smelled it."

The jars had plain black and white labels: "DMSO, Solvent" and Sam was confused; he had no idea what Max was talking about.

"You've lost me. What is it?"

"What is it? This is an elixir to cure all the ills of mankind. Bruises, cuts, sprains, arthritis, rheumatism, sore throat, burns—probably even herpes. Some M.D. down in Portland was on 'Sixty Minutes' talking about it, and he's got patients lined up all the way across the Columbia River Bridge, fighting to get some. And here it is, $11.95 a pint. Cheaper than aspirin."

"Solvent?"

"To appease the law, my friend. What my customers do with it is not my concern. They buy it as solvent. That's O.K. with me, and it should be enough to placate your Mr. Fewell. It comes from the trees, all those trees that belonged to my blood brothers and stolen by yours. A heretofore useless by-product. A natural remedy." Max looked sharply at Sam. "Which it would appear you are in need of. You look like something no tomcat would piss on."

"Thanks."

"Seriously. Let me give you a sample. You have any spots that hurt, any arthritis due to your advanced age and life of excess?"