The Shaman Laughs (13 page)

She nodded; her scowl said that of course Moon would keep such shameful activities concealed. Daisy dried the last cup; she pulled her shawl around her shoulders and closed her eyes. "I had a bad dream about Charlie last Friday, woke me up in the middle of the night. Couldn't get back to sleep for worry."

This at least, Parris understood. Those who were close to policemen often dreamed of gruesome deaths at the hands of ruthless criminals. "Something bad happen to Charlie?"

"It was awful." Daisy shuddered at the distasteful memory. "Dreamed he'd taken up golf."

The morning sun illuminated the crumbling wall of Three Sisters Mesa; the air was heavy with a damp, gray mist. Gorman Sweetwater rolled the truck window down and sniffed at the sweetness of the crisp morning air. He lifted his boot off the accelerator pedal and glanced toward Daisy's trailer to see if her kitchen light was on. It was. He watched the trailer door open, framing the old woman's stooped form. She moved carefully down the porch steps and waved. Gorman shifted down to low gear and turned into her lane. By the time he switched off the ignition, she was leaning on the truck door.

"Good morning, cousin. Come to check on my cattle." The ones, he reminded himself bitterly, that remained.

"Stop for a few minutes. I got a skillet full of scrambled eggs and pork sausage and Hatch chili."

"I'm not all that hungry," Gorman lied. Benita kept nagging at him about how eating rich food would cause something to clog up his arteries… but what was it? Since she'd been to college, Benita had so much to say it was hard to keep track of it all. But suddenly it came back to him; Gorman was certain that he remembered his daughter's exact words. "Anyhow," he said, "them eggs and sausage would be bad for my castor oil level."

Drained of patience, Daisy turned away and waved a hand to dismiss this nonsense. This old man got sillier with every year.

He sniffed at the rich aroma drifting from her kitchen window. "But," he said with a pious tone, "I'll come in and have some eats if it'll make you feel better."

"Check the railing on my porch. It moves when I lean on it." Those who eat should also work.

"Got a hammer and crowbar in the truck, maybe some nails. I'll see what I can do." He knew that her last husband had been a pitiful excuse for a carpenter and Daisy never missed a chance to maneuver her cousin into the odd job.

"Charlie was here yesterday. He went up the canyon to look at your dead animal."

"Figured he would," the rancher muttered. With the report he expected from Doc Schaid, the insurance payment was practically a done deal. Why couldn't Moon leave it alone?

"Scott Parris, that policeman from up at Granite Creek, he was here too."

Gorman grunted. He had no interest in this
matukach
cop. He gave the porch railing an expert once-over. "You hear about the tribal council meeting last night?"

"How would I hear? I got no phone and don't get a newspaper but once every two weeks."

Gorman shook the railing. A couple dozen number ten nails should do it. Maybe an extra cross brace. Or maybe two. This called for a smoke. He fumbled in his shirt pocket for the fixings. Daisy waited patiently while he poured tobacco from a worn leather pouch into a cigarette paper that was thin enough to read through. "The council decided to let Arlo Nightbird send them dockamints in to the government in Washington." Gorman licked the paper and sealed the assembly into a misshapen cigarette.

"What'd you say?" Daisy knew what he meant, but she wished to delay the full realization of this news.

"Dockamints… papers to get a study done on putting that nukuler power plant garbage here in
Canon del Espir-itu
," Gorman said sourly. He thumbed the wheel on his butane lighter and touched the dancing yellow flame to the twisted tip of the homemade smoke. "I expect Arlo Night-bird is happy as a maggot in road kill."

"I expect he is," Daisy agreed. "What about your cattle?"

Gorman turned and gazed at the first light of dawn filtering into the canyon; the sacred refuge where his cattle were just waking. "Most likely, I'll have to move 'em out. Over to the winter range at Bondad." He cleared his throat and wiped a moist eye. "Jimson weed, blood-sucking ticks big as a dime, and mostly alkaline water, but," he added bitterly, "they say I can't stand in the way of progress."

"That's bad," Daisy said simply. The shaman was shivering from the cold, and also from a sense that when the sun was high, darkness would remain. As the old woman turned to retreat to the warmth of her kitchen, she spoke over her shoulder. "I made biscuits too."

Gorman sniffed at the kitchen aromas. Daisy's lard biscuits sure beat those that came in a can. "Don't feel hungry, but I guess I could eat a little bit if you want some company." Hog lard, he knew, could stop up a man's veins just like a wad of coffee grounds could block the drain pipe under a sink. And that would bring on the dreaded heart attack. But the old man pushed the image of the dreaded
corollaries
from his mind.

Nancy Beyal greeted her favorite policemen with characteristic cheerfulness. "Good morning, fellas."

Moon glanced toward a spare office, informally reserved for the FBI. "Where is he?"

"Mr. Hoover? Haven't seen him since late yesterday." Nancy thought she saw something odd in Moon's expression. "He came in, picked up his stuff, and cut out. I suppose he's off to Durango, or," she added hopefully, "maybe Denver." Timbuktu wouldn't be far enough.

"Can't imagine why he left so soon." Parris winked slyly at Nancy, "we were having us a fine old time."

"Did you hear," Nancy whispered, "about Gorman Sweetwater's threat to… to castrate Arlo Nightbird? Louise Marie LaForte heard the whole thing; it's all over town." Such stories were a sweet tonic that eased the tedium of her job at the tribal police station.

"Gorman gets hot under the collar," Moon said, "but he cools off pretty fast."

The telephone rang; Nancy answered it, then gestured to Parris. He pressed the receiver to his ear, and heard Sam Parker's voice. "Hello, Scott. How are you doing?"

"Fine, Sam. How are you this morning?" Had Hoover already complained about Moon's prank?

"Still hittin' on eight cylinders. You taking good care of… Hoover?"

"Sure." Parris dismissed a twinge of guilt. "He's getting special treatment."

"Anything happening down there… law and order related?"

"Nothing much," Parris said cautiously, "we had a cattle mutilation."

Parker, who specialized in kidnapping and armed robbery of banks, snickered. "Wow. Wish I'd been there."

"It was a valuable animal," Parris said defensively. "Worth over ten grand. Somebody cut off the ears. And testicles."

"Did it happen on reservation land?" Sam Parker was familiar with the crazy-quilt layout of the Southern Ute Reservation.

"Yeah. Moon's investigating."

"Well, you have a good time. Anything I can do to help, you let me know."

Parris watched Moon; the Ute was at the coffeepot, well out of earshot. "There is something, Sam. It's about this fellow you sent to help us. James E. Hoover."

"What about him?" Parker's tone was wary.

"Everybody here loves him and he's one helluva cop.

Matter of fact, local opinion is that J. E. could do your job. After he had a frontal lobotomy."

"Watch out what you say, you smart-mouthed bottom-fisher," Sam Parker said over a chuckle. "Mess with me and I'll assign Hoover to cover Granite Creek until he retires."

Parris was hanging up when Charlie Moon, at a cue from Nancy Beyal, picked up a telephone and was patched through to the emergency line. "What is it?" he grunted. The Ute listened quietly for some moments before he interrupted. "Louise Marie, how many times have I told you? Don't call me…" He waited again. "Yeah. I'll come out. But this is absolutely the last time." He hung up nodded at Parris. "Let's go, Acting Chief. It's time you met some of the local citizens."

They found the old woman sitting on her front porch swing, busily shelling dried peas. The yellowed husks matched the hue of the skin stretched over the purple veins crisscrossing her plump hands.

Moon touched his hat brim. "What's cookin', Louise Marie?"

The elderly woman looked up, smiling benignly at the big Ute.

"Louise Marie, this fellow is Scott Parris. He's standing in for Chief Severo for a few weeks." Moon nodded toward the placid figure in the swing as he spoke to Parris. "This little dumpling is Louise Marie LaForte. She's not a Ute, not even an Indian. In fact," Moon pretended disdain, "we're not sure she's even a United States citizen. Louise Marie came from up in Quebec. One of them Frenchies." Louise Marie allowed herself a coy smile as Moon continued. "Doesn't matter to Louise Marie that I'm only supposed to answer calls on reservation property. She gets me out here every week or so, just to waste my time."

Her peas all shelled, she looked up through the thick lenses of her spectacles at the Ute's towering form. "It was so nice of you to drop by, Charles."

"When," he demanded with feigned gruffness, "are you going to stop calling me? You should be bothering the Ig-nacio police anyway, you're not even in my jurisdiction. If you want to harass me, Louise Marie, you're going to have to join the tribe and move onto the reservation."

"I only call you because I like you, Charles Moon." The town police ignored her many calls. "You're lucky I'm fond of you, I don't generally care all that much for the
gendarme
." She patted the cushion beside her, indicating that he should sit. Parris watched while Moon seated himself, wondering whether the rusty chains that suspended the swing from a pair of crooked eye-bolts in the porch roof would support the big Ute's weight.

Moon folded his arms and closed his eyes, preparing for the inevitable assault on his rationality. "What is it this time—is Taxi bothering you again?"

Louise Marie glanced across the yard at the ruin of a two-story frame house where Taxi had squatted since he arrived in Ignacio from goodness knows where. "No, it's not Taxi. I wish he'd get out of that taxidermist work—I can smell the stink from his place when the wind blows just wrong." She shook her head in despair. "He still peeks at me sometimes, out of that upstairs window. But he mostly keeps to himself since you had your little talk with him." No point in mentioning the stuffed squirrels the lunatic had left on her front porch. Moon would tease her about having a boy friend if he knew about the gift. She carefully placed the aluminum pan of shelled peas on a stool at her knees. "I saw it, just before daylight this morning. Down by the river bank." She nodded toward the general direction of the Los Pinos, waiting for Charlie to ask what
it
was.

The Ute remained silent.

Parris waited as long as he could. He stepped onto the porch and leaned on a supporting column; the powdery paint soiled his jacket sleeve. "What did you see, ma'am?"

Louise Marie looked up as if she was aware of his presence for the first time. "Who are you?"

The acting chief of police nodded toward the Ute and grinned. "I work for Charlie. Sort of help out from time to time. Did a prowler bother you, is that why you called?…"

"I got my dead husband's old pistol to take care of prowlers," she snapped. "Wasn't no prowler. It was the hairy one." Her voice dropped to a whisper. "It was the
loup-garou
.?'

Parris leaned over to hear more clearly. "The what?"

She blinked her eyes, looked up and down the weed-choked gravel lane to make sure no passerby overheard. "That
loup-garou
. All hairy.
Oui
, with a long tail, him. And," she added ominously as she held a gnarled finger beside each temple, "with horns!" She started to tell them about the other strange feature on the monster's face and thought better of it. A
loup-garou
was one matter; they were common enough. But who would believe that she had seen a terrible red eye, an eye like a coal of fire?

Parris looked hopefully at Moon for an explanation. "Loo Guru?"

Moon cleared his throat. "A
loup-garou
," he said with an almost imperceptible touch of sarcasm, "is actually a fellow with a serious problem. He's an ordinary citizen by day, a dangerous animal by night. Usually half wolf and half man. The man half is generally French, so he shows himself to Louise Marie. She's the only Frenchie in the neighborhood."

The elderly woman nodded vigorously. "
Oui, oui
, he was hairy as any ape you ever saw but this one wasn't no wolf! He had horns on his head!" Louise Marie shivered. "A bad one, him!"

Parris realized that Charlie Moon was happy to leave the interrogation to his "pardner." He hesitated to ask, but there was no turning back. "What did this… loo… um… hairy fellow do?"

"Well," she said, "he crawled along the river bank on all fours, sniffing at the ground like a great dog, wagging his big head, dragging his tail on the ground behind him." Her voice rose to a shrill pitch. "Isn't that the sort of thing you police are interested in?"

Parris opened his mouth, but couldn't think of an appropriate response. Moon got up from the swing and patted the old woman on the shoulder. "Sure we are, Louise Marie. Keep your doors and windows locked." He patted his side-arm. "We'll be on the lookout for your
loup
."