The Sky Fisherman (42 page)

"Well, she deserves it." He lifted his tumbler. "Bully for him."

"If you want to know the truth, she and I talked about a lot of things before he came over."

Jake squinted. "What kind of things?"

"She told me what happened, you know, between you and her."

"Well, bully for her, too." Jake poured a little more of the Seagram's into the tumbler. "She's always had pluck. I'll give her that." He nodded toward the kitchen. "You want a drink?"

"Not exactly." But after a minute, I went into the kitchen and got a tumbler full of ice and a Pepsi, then returned to the front room. "I just want to know why," I said after sitting down. "How could you do such a thing to your own brother?"

Jake frowned at his glass. "That's the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question, isn't it? Answer it right and you come out of the isolation booth. Don't think I haven't asked myself that one a lot over the years. I think I've got it, more or less."

"Shoot. I'm listening."

He leaned forward. "I wanted Juniper in those days, but things couldn't work right between us. Times were different, between whites and Indians, I mean. She decided to head for Albuquerque, get involved in the art game down there. Maybe she wanted some distance, too." He set the glass on the table and clasped his hands. "Things went bust, like I say, and to tell the truth, I guess I got jealous. Dave had your mother. He had you. Still, he went around like a dark cloud spoiling a picnic."

Jake spread his hands. "So after Juniper left, I felt pretty lousy, mean-spirited, got to feeling sorry for myself. One day when Dave was being a real pissant, I saw this look in your mother's eyes. And I took advantage." He paused. "Maybe it went on a couple months. That's the whole sordid story, fella. The rest you know."

"No, I don't. How did he figure it out?"

Jake's voice seemed far away. "I always thought she told him."

I shook my head. "She didn't want to hurt him."

Jake shrugged. "Maybe he guessed."

Taking an ice cube into my mouth, I held it until the numbness spread. I felt as cold as my father lying on the river bottom. "Anyway, Juniper's back now. But my dad's not coming back."

"No, he isn't." Jake spoke quietly. "And she's heading south right after Christmas."

I was surprised but didn't say anything.

"Something about the Havasupais. People of the blue-green water. Petroglyphs, moonflowers. Waterfalls and deep pools. She plans to paint the whole shebang. But painting's not the only reason. There's a division between us again."

"What's that?"

"She's upset about this business with Kalim. Claims I'm holding something back. Billyum, too. She doesn't trust anybody." He laughed and it was bitter. "Hell, I'd do about anything for that woman. But you can't spill out everything that's in your guts. Nobody can take it."

"Do you blame her for not trusting you?" My words struck a blow and it felt good.

He took a drink and I heard his teeth break ice. "No."

"Meeks and Chilcoat aren't coming back either," I said.

He eyed me. "No," he said, "I don't believe they are."

"The way Grady keeps nosing around, I wonder if you know anything about that."

"Not really. I know one advantage of living in a small town is that wise guys have lots of opportunities to kill themselves. Driving drunk. Shooting each other over women. Hunting when they're liquored up. One thing I've got to admit, those boys chose unusual circumstances." He took a picture from the book in front of him. "Strange accidents happen. Come look at this."

I didn't move. I felt as cold as I had during summer in the icehouse, sitting on large blocks of ice until my spine numbed. "I don't feel sorry for you," I said. "All your life, you've done exactly what you wanted." I leaned forward.

"Maybe you're mad, got your dander up," he said. "Think you want to punch somebody?"

I straightened a little. "Last night I did. Today, I don't care. Maybe tomorrow I'll feel like slugging something."

"Hang a punching bag in the back of the store. Work out."

"I'm not going to be around the store much anymore." Flat gray ice was in my voice. "I thought with Christmas coming up, you better schedule Jed for more hours."

"I can do that," Jake said. "Suit yourself."

Leaning back, still holding the picture, he closed his eyes, and his deep breathing indicated he had dozed. I sat, drinking my Pepsi. I couldn't tell why I was hanging around. I knew things would never be
the same between us, but I couldn't bring myself to leave yet. Riley was right, I decided. I was too soft.

"Stop!" Jake's body flinched and his eyes flew open. "Thought I smelled smoke!" After a minute he settled down. "Hell, I did smell smoke. Burned goose and Prince Albert."

"Did you start smoking the pipe?" I asked. It lay beside the chair in the ashtray.

"I'll have a pipe or two during the holidays," Jake said. "The old man always smoked Prince Albert. He'd sit in the chair, just like I'm doing, and read the
Gazette,
making sure all his work came out okay.

"After hunting season, Dave and I spread our gear across the living room for cleaning and inspection. The old man didn't inspect too carefully since he didn't want to leave the chair, but he was pretty good at giving orders. 'Clean this. Oil that. Keep your equipment in top shape boys. Take care of it and it'll take care of you.'

"Mom gave us two days to mess up the front room. After that we packed away our gear. Even though it was before Christmas, the old man usually had a present to add to our supplies. Oversized goose decoys one year since we could still hunt geese until late January. Hand warmers. Thermal socks. The front room smelled of banana oil, Huberd's shoe grease, silicone, Gun-Blu for the barrel knicks. And the old man's pipe tobacco. Whenever I smell that tobacco, I still think about those good times."

He flipped through one of the photo albums. "So I lit the pipe to get rid of that awful burned-goose smell. I tried opening the doors for an hour, but it was too damn cold."

I closed my eyes a moment and tried to think of my father, Jake, and the old man checking over the equipment. But all I could see was my uncle and father fighting on the shore, then my father going through the rapids by himself. "I think I better head out," I said.

"Hang on a minute." Jake held up the picture. "You got to see this first. It was taken right after your dad and I finished our volunteer ambulance training."

I moved closer. They were posed beside an ambulance. Both had their right foot on the running board and were grinning eagerly at the camera. They wore white coats with dark medical patches on the sleeves that read "GVFD."

"Didn't we look sharp?" Jake tapped the photo. "See the creases in those trousers?"

"You looked sharp all right." I tried studying my father's face for the
gloom fake and my mother had described, but I didn't see it in this photo.

"On the way to Gab's place you were asking about horses," he said, "why they make me spooky. Not long after we started driving ambulance, your dad and I answered a call about some California tourists who ran into a herd of reservation horses during a big snowstorm. That was a terrible winter."

"Like now?"

"Sure, but this one might get worse. Anyway, whoever called was frantic and garbled her speech. The lines were icing up, and that was the last call from the rez, until the telephone line crew got out there three days later.

"She said the old Mission cutoff road, about a forty-minute run, but it took us twice that long because road conditions were so bad. We chained up, but the roads were still treacherous. Half a foot of new snow on top of several inches of ice. Maybe thirty inches' total accumulation. Deep drifts and high banks where the snowplows had been. And still coming down.

"We got to speculating how tourists wound up on the old Mission road. The reservation signs were never too good, and the wind made wet snow stick to what markers they had, so probably they couldn't read where they were headed. When we saw lights pointed off the road at a cockeyed angle, we slowed way down. Here was their rig, off in the barrow pit, but not flipped or anything. Except for the dead horse in front of the car, things didn't look too bad. The other horses were milling around but none seemed injured. The car's taillights were still on, engine running. And we could hear the radio playing pretty loud. Classic stuff. Who knows where they pulled that station in from?"

"At night you can get some pretty far-off stations," I said. "Riley had one in Texas he listened to. The tower of power."

Jake continued. "When I heard that engine running, it seemed almost cozy. Figured these folks had filled up with gas before hitting the reservation. The sign says sixty-four miles with no services and most people are cautious. Afraid that if they run out of gas and go for help, they'll get scalped. As soon as I stepped out of the ambulance, I checked the tailpipe and was glad to see exhaust. Sometimes that will plug with snow, and people die from carbon monoxide. Just get sleepy and drift off. In fact, I thought they might be asleep, the way they kind of leaned into each other. 'Got tired of waiting, huh?' I called out."

Jake took a drink of the Seagram's and sloshed the liquid around in the tumbler. "The horse they hit was lying just in front of the car. Stone
dead. One headlight was working and we saw the blood steaming in the snow, how the horse had torn the ground up, the sparkling glass fragments. At first we thought they were ice crystals.

"Then we got right up to the car. Both people were dead. The man and his wife were turned toward each other, like they were talking maybe. But the fronts of their heads were all bashed and their faces just pulp. Dave and I stood stock dazed. When that horse came through the windshield, they froze and it kicked them to death. They never ducked, not that they could have avoided those hooves. Horse goes into a frenzy..."

I nodded, realizing why Jake had been so upset at the horses on the way to Gab's.

"We tried calling the accident in, but the radio wasn't much good way out there. We only heard crackling. I don't think I was ever so glad to have Dave with me. This was far worse than when we tried scaring each other as kids. Telling ghost stories in our dark bedroom. Testing our courage in the old house where a guy committed suicide. The neighborhood kids believed ghosts hung around." He paused. "But this horse deal was flat-out eerie.

"Then we saw lights coming, and Dave struck a couple flares, because we didn't want another car coming along hitting the horses. But it was Billyum, driving slow. The same frantic gal had called the tribal police. We never found out who she was. Billyum took out his flashlight and looked at the dead people. We had left the doors open to check their pulses so he reached in and switched off the radio and the ignition. It seemed even worse then. No noise except for our car engines, and the occasional nicker of the horses.

'"Let's chase these damn horses off the road,' Billyum said.

"Right about then, they turned spooky. Those horses had just been standing around for an hour, but maybe the wind shifted or something and they smelled the dead people. Snorting and whinnying, they took off running. We all piled into Billyum's rig and went after them, hoping to chase them off the road.

"Loggers had been doing some clear cutting in that part of the reservation, and cat roads occasionally cut through the high snowbanks. We figured if we could get them headed up one of those cat roads into the logged-off areas, they'd be okay. Billyum honked his horn and fired his pistol. The damn horses wouldn't leave the road. We chased them three or four miles. Twice they wheeled and tried cutting back, but they spooked and reversed when they faced our headlights.

"Finally, a couple of lead horses left the road, and we felt good as the
others followed. 'Oh shit!' Billyum said suddenly, and when we got closer to the cut I saw why. It wasn't the cat road but the train crossing. Billyum stopped the rig and cursed. We could hear the horses running down the cleared track. The sound carried a long way because it had stopped snowing by then and turned clear and cold.

"He set flares at the crossing, then stared down the track in the direction of the horses. 'If I walk up there and try to set more flares to warn the train, the ornery devils might kill me,' Billyum said.

'"You can't get ahead of them anyway," Dave said. 'If they turn back, you're dead. Maybe this snow has stopped the trains.'

'"You can't tell," Billyum said. 'They're running way off schedule.'

"After we returned to the wreck, Billyum helped us load the two dead people in body bags and put them in the ambulance. I don't care how cold it was, I was sweating like the Fourth of July. Billyum planned to spend the rest of the night at the crossing in case those horses came back to the road. No cars had come along, so it seemed like a quiet watch.

"I had just closed the back doors of the ambulance when we heard the train whistle. No one said a word as we stood there waiting, but when we heard it again, it was much closer.

'"Going pretty fast," Billyum said.

"The whistle shrieked, staying on steady this time, and after a few moments we started hearing the deep crunches as the train hit horse after horse after horse. The whinnying and screaming went on. 'Stop that fucking train," Billyum whispered. He started counting. 'One-two-three-four-flve-six.' Finally, he covered his ears because he didn't want to hear any more, but there were eleven altogether.

"After they got the train stopped, you could hear the horses. 'I sure hope they got a rifle on that train," Billyum said. He was wishing someone would be kind enough to walk the track and shoot the wounded horses. But we didn't hear any shots and then the train started up. We climbed into Billyum's rig again and went to the crossing. He tried to flag the train but it flew by. After it was gone, you could still hear the screaming.

'"Sonofabitching railroad,' Billyum said. 'I got to walk the track, shoot those mangled bastards.'

'"We better go with you,' Dave said. And he was right. Billyum might not see one of the horses in the darkness until he got too close. It could knock him down with its last kick, leaving him to freeze in the night.