Wife of Moon

by Margaret Coel

  “He took everything?” Jesse could barely form the question. The black eye on the photographer’s box had seen what happened. It had captured the truth.

  “Everything he could pile into the wagons. Sumner here helped him.” Scarface nodded at the young man over by the railing. “Ain’t that right?”

  Sumner took a long pull on the cigarette and let his shoulders relax. “Loaded stuff out of the cabin and packed up his tent and loaded it into the wagon with the cartons of bottles and paper, all that would fit. Some of it he left behind.”

  “What about the glass plates?” Jesse felt his jaw muscles tighten.

  “He was sitting in the middle of the floor, packing things up.” The young man shrugged. “I took the cartons he gave me and put ’em in the middle of the wagon and wrapped the tent around ’em. There was some cartons still in the cabin, but when I went to get ’em, the photographer says, ‘Leave ’em.’ Guess he didn’t want ’em any more.”

  The Indian was still talking when Jesse swung over the porch railing. He placed two fingers in his mouth and whistled for the pony, which started trotting up from the water. Jesse ran to meet it, swung up into the saddle, and, leaning along the pony’s neck, galloped north.

  BLACK MOUNTAIN HAD turned gun-metal gray in the afternoon shadows when Jesse turned the pony loose at the stream that ran crooked in the flats below. He made his way through the brush crackling under his boots, trying not to look at the stretch of bare ground where the village had stood. The place of death. He walked on, following the little creek that was no more than a thread of water angling off the stream, until he came to the log cabin with the sloping roof that looked as if it might fall onto the ground and the porch that shifted to one side, broken planks like the teeth of a monster animal jutting out of the wood floor.

  The cabin had stood there since the Old Time, the elders said, when whites came to Indian lands to trap beaver and trade their white goods. “It will work just fine for my lodging,” Curtis had told him that first day they’d ridden out to Black Mountain. “I can set up my tents nearby.”

  The door was open, moving back and forth with the gusts of wind that blew across the porch, hinges squealing like a trapped animal. Jesse stood in the doorway a moment and let his eyes adjust to the dim light glowing in the small window in the opposite wall. The place looked as if a tornado had blown through. Pieces of paper and bundles of cloth scattered over the floor; cardboard cartons that looked as if they had been tossed aside. For a moment, Jesse wondered if a bear had gotten in and rummaged about for food. Then he understood. The photographer had left in a hurry. Sat in the middle of the floor, Sumner said, packing things up, setting other things aside.

  Jesse dug in the pocket of his trousers, past the bag of tobacco and little envelope of cigarette papers, and pulled out a stick match. Then he stepped inside, struck the match against the wall, and lit the wick of the candle on a wooden bench. The light flared blue and danced about over the log wall behind, then settled into a low, steady yellow flame.

  He stepped over the debris, glancing around the cabin. In the far corner, a carton that had once held glass plates, wrapped in foil, tidy, ready for use. The carton was empty. Jesse turned slowly, his eyes scanning the other cartons. Under the bench, he spotted an overturned box—also empty, he saw. But sitting beside the box, almost hidden in shadow, was a stack of three blue and white enameled developing tanks. There was a bulge in the center of the top tank, as if a boot had stomped on it.

  Jesse swung around and, picking up the candle, surveyed the piles of grayish rags. He poked the tip of his boot at one pile, then another, until he uncovered a twisted jumble of red cloth. Something caught his attention—the smallest outline of an object. He stooped down and began patting the cloth until his fingers gripped the smooth edge of wood. He dropped to his knees, pushed the base of the candle into a crack in the plank floor until the candle seemed steady. He tugged at the cloth pulling out three wooden plate holders, with glass plates still secured in place, protected by dark slides. The plates had been exposed, he could tell. After the photographer had snapped each picture, Jesse had been careful to insert the slide with the dark rim visible, so that the photographer would know not to use the plate again and make a double exposure.

  For the briefest moment, Jesse had the sense that the photographer had meant for him to find the three plates. And yet—his heart was hammering now—the plates were no good without chemicals to develop them and paper on which to print the images.

  Jesse picked up the candle and got to his feet, squinting into the flickering light. Some of the cartons left behind had remnants of cloth and paper inside. In the corner next to the stone fireplace was a wood box with the tops of glass jugs poking over the edges. He walked over and pulled out a clear glass jug, half-full of yellowish-brown liquid developer, sparkling in the candlelight. In another jug, he realized, were the white crystals of sodium thiosulfate. He lifted out two small bottles wedged among the jugs, next to a box of thumb tacks and a glass ramekin holding a thin, glass rod. Still squinting, he read the tiny print on the labels pasted to the bottles: FERRIC AMMONIUM CITRATE and POTASSIUM BICHROMATE.

  He set the bottles back into the carton, his heart crashing against his ribs. The photographer had also left him the chemicals, and enough paper in the cartons—it was possible—to print the images. He would make the blue pictures first, he decided. The cyanotypes, Curtis called them. Working pictures that showed blue-gray images on paper and were quick to make. If the cyanotypes showed what he expected, then Jesse could make the black-and-white prints. He had one more day before Thunder and the others would die.

  Jesse pushed the base of the candle hard into the plank floor again, then he gathered up the red cloth and began tucking it around the edges of the window. Now the light coming through the window glowed a dim red—a safe light for developing the exposed plates, the photographer had said. Jesse lifted the enameled tank with the bulge in the middle, went outside and, after pounding out the bulge with his fist, filled the tank with creek water. He would have to hurry. The day was wearing on; the sun already fading into a pale white glow.

  Back in the cabin, he set the tank on the bench and arranged the other tanks on either side. After shutting the door, he ripped up pieces of paper and cardboard and stuffed them into the cracks until the rim of light around the edges had disappeared. Then he blew out the candle, allowing the dull red light from the window to float around him. He was ready.

  In one of the cartons, he found three pieces of smooth paper, which he laid out on the end of the bench. Then he took out the two small bottles and poured the chemicals into the ramekin. Using the glass rod, he spread the mixture over the sheets of paper and thumbtacked them to the log wall to dry.

  Working as fast as he could, he lifted out the jug with the yellowish-brown developer and poured the chemical into the tank to the left of the tank of water. He poured the white crystals into the tank on the right. Carefully, the way the photographer had shown him, he removed one of the glass plates from the holder and slipped the plate into the developing tank. The image began to take shape before his eyes: the village spread at the base of Black Mountain, the warriors galloping around the tipis. When the image was clear, Jesse moved the plate into the water tank to stop the developing, then into the tank of crystals to fix the image. He rinsed the plate in water again and propped it upright against a carton so that the water could drip free.

  He went through the same motions with the second glass plate, then the third. Finally he opened the door, dislodging the wads of papers and cardboard that fluttered over his trousers and boots. Outside on the porch, he lit a cigarette, the match shaking between his fingers, the flame closing down, then flaring again. He had seen the images. They were what he had expected.

  After a few moments, Jesse ground out the cigarette butt under his boot and went back inside. He rummaged through the piles of rags until he’d found three wooden printing frames, never doubting that Curti
s had left them behind with the rest of materials and that he had only to find them. He fitted one of the coated sheets of paper—which had turned yellowish—against each of the glass plates, then fastened them into the frames, took them outside, and set them upright in the thin column of sunshine still falling over the porch. It took several moments before the shadows of the images printed themselves onto the sheets of paper in bluish-gray tones.

  Back in the cabin, he rinsed the cyanotypes in the tray of water to remove the last of the yellow tinges. Now the images were a deep blue color, highlighted in white. No one would believe blue images. What are these strange images? He could hear the agent’s voice in his head. He would have to turn the images into black-and-white photographs.

  Rummaging through the cartons, hurrying against the fading sun, Jesse found several sheets of printing-out paper, coated with silver chloride. He could fasten the sheets against the glass plates in the printing frames and let the sun develop the black-and-white prints, but it would take longer than it had taken to develop the cyanotypes. He would have to fix and tone the black-and-white images in the chemicals. It would take time. He stared out the door at the pencil-thin column of sunshine evaporating like water off the plank floor of the porch and the blue shadows moving over the ground. It was too late.

  He would have to sleep here in the cabin with the blue-and-white images, and tomorrow he would make the photographs. If he started early, in the first strength of the sun, he could bring the images to light. Tomorrow he would watch the village take shape. He would see Bashful again.

  30

  “FATHER, YOU’D BETTER get over to the museum right away.” Catherine’s voice stuttered down the line.

  “I’m on my way,” Father John said. He slammed down the receiver and headed out the door, grabbing his jacket as he went, bunching it under his arm. He jogged around Circle Drive and mounted the steps to the porch. The wood creaked beneath his boots. The moment he opened the wood door, the warm air and vacant silence came at him like an invisible force.

  “Catherine,” he called, heading into the office. He tossed the jacket onto a chair. No sign of the woman, apart from the impression she’d left in the worn leather chair behind the desk. He went back into the entry, his eyes searching the gallery ahead and the halls that ran to the left and to the right. No one. Two or three minutes ago, Catherine had been here. She couldn’t have disappeared. And yet . . .

  Christine had been here, standing in the entry, talking to him, and in a few minutes, she’d disappeared.

  Father John started down the hall past the office, opening the doors, looking inside: a lecture room, vacant except for the chairs in haphazard rows in front of a podium; a small gallery with exhibit cases pushed like coffins against the walls. Behind the glass fronts were displays of breastplates and headgear, parfleches, moccasins and leggings beaded and painted by Arapahos in the Old Time, silent images of the past.

  He closed the door and reversed his steps past the main gallery, the Curtis photos mute under the wash of fluorescent light. Across the hallway the bathroom door was shut. He rapped lightly. “Catherine?” he called.

  There was no answer. He tried the knob. It turned in his grip, and he moved the door inward about an inch. “Catherine,” he said again, leaning into the narrow opening. Silence, except for the drip drip of a faucet. He flung the door back. There was no one inside.

  He’d started for the library at the far end of the hall when he heard a scuffing noise, like that of a heavy object being dragged across a rough surface. Through the opaque glass in the door he could see the shadow of someone moving about the room. He flung open the door.

  Catherine was pushing a carton onto a shelf, and for a moment he thought she might drop it. He hurried over, took hold of the box, and shoved it into place.

  “He was here, Father!” The woman exhaled the words.

  “Who?”

  “Christine’s husband.”

  “Eric Loftus was here?”

  “Twenty minutes ago. I thought he was still here looking at maps, but when I came to check . . .”

  “Whoa, Catherine.” Father John held up one hand and walked over to the table. He pushed one of the round-back wood chairs toward the woman. “Sit down and start at the beginning.” He waited until she’d folded herself onto the seat before he dragged another chair over and sat down beside her.

  Little beads of perspiration glistened in the furrows of the woman’s forehead. She pulled a wad of tissue from the pocket of the sweater she wore over a dark dress and began patting at the moisture. Finally she clasped both hands in her lap, the white tissue poking between her fingers. “I’m not good at this job, Father,” she said. “Being in charge of the museum isn’t what I thought I was gonna be doing at the mission.”

  “You’ve been doing a fine job, Catherine.”

  “I don’t want nothing to disappear. I been trying to watch everything.”

  Father John set his hand on top of her clenched hands. They were like chunks of ice. “Tell me about Loftus,” he said.

  The woman lifted her head and stared at the shelves, as if the cartons and rows of books might contain the image she was trying to conjure. “I was in the office when he showed up in the doorway. I never heard him come in. It was like he wasn’t a true person. ‘Did I startle you?’ he says, like he was hoping he did. I don’t mind telling you, Father, he almost startled me into my grave. He’s got them blue eyes that shoot into you like bullets. ‘Can I help you?’ I say, and I was wishing there was some visitors in the museum right then. How a smart woman like Christine could’ve ever married . . .”

  Father John gently squeezed the woman’s hands. “What did he want?”

  “He wants his wife back, Father. First thing he asks is have we heard from his wife. No, I tell him, and I’m thinking I hope she got so far away that you can’t ever find her and I hope . . . ” Catherine drew in her lips and lowered her gaze to the table. “Oh, God, Father. I been hoping all along that Christine is still alive. So I told him that.”

  “You told him that you hoped his wife was still alive?” Father John smiled at the woman. She’d had the courage to say what he and Vicky had been thinking. And she’d said it to the man who might know the truth. “What did Loftus say?”

  “Oh, she’s alive all right. We shouldn’t be worrying ourselves, he says. He knows his wife . . .” Catherine shifted sideways and looked at him, her eyes darkening with a new resolve. “He says, soon as things got hot, Christine went into hiding, just like he taught her. I remember him laughing and me thinking, what’s so funny? And he says she was the damned best student he ever had, but she wasn’t as good as her teacher. He’d talked to people on the rez, he said, and I’m wondering how many people was willing to talk to him. He says Christine was looking for old photographs, and the only thing she knew about the rez was the Curtis photographs, she being a stranger here.”

  Catherine pulled her hands free and mopped at her brow again. “I don’t mind telling you, I was getting real jumpy all the time he was talking. Next thing I know, he stomps into the gallery, and I hurried right behind him because, you know, I didn’t know what he might do to the photographs. I mean, he might blame the photographs for making his wife go away, and I was thinking, if he so much as touches the glass on one of the photographs, I was gonna pick up a chair and hit him in the head.”

  Oh, my God, Father John thought. He blinked back the image. Loftus, a killer trained to react out of instinct. The woman could have been dead before the man stopped to think.

  “He marched right over to the photograph of the village,” Catherine went on. “ ‘This is the photograph my wife was trying to identify, right?’ When he looked at me with them blue eyes of his, Father, I started shaking. I told him it wasn’t none of my business what Christine was doing. ‘Oh, I got it right,’ he says. ‘My dear wife starts thinking that if anyone has Curtis photos of their ancestors, she can buy them on the cheap, sell them to a dealer, and get herse
lf a plane ticket far away. Only problem, it could take a lot of photos to get some real money. Then I got to thinking. What if she happened on a few Curtis glass negatives? Well, that’s a different ball game. She would’ve looked everywhere for negatives. Would’ve gone out to the village site. It would’ve been like a treasure hunt. Looking in the brush and caves, hoping Curtis might’ve left something behind that nobody ever found.’ ”

  The woman started laughing, a slow chuckle that gurgled out of her throat. “I don’t mind telling you, Father, I laughed good at that, and he got real mad. ‘You think that can’t happen?’ he says. ‘You think there wasn’t a trash pile at the site where Curtis tossed stuff he didn’t want?’ Then he says that somebody told him the village was out by Black Mountain, and he wants to know where that is.”

  Catherine leaned so far forward that Father John thought she might slip off the chair. “I told him we got hundreds of acres of space here. You think I know every square inch? You think I know where things was a hundred years ago? But I been out there plenty of times, Father. My uncle ranched out there, and I rode all over that scrub brush land. Next thing he wants to know is if we have any old maps.”

  “You did fine to bring him to the library,” Father John said. “You should have called me then.”

  The woman was nodding. “I went back to the office thinking I was gonna call you, ’cause I didn’t want to be alone with that man. That was when the people from Idaho came in and started asking questions, and I had to take them into the gallery and tell them about the photographs. Soon’s they left, I went to check on Loftus, and he was gone. Up and gone, Father! It’s like the man can walk through walls.”