Another Like Me

by Albert Norton, Jr.

  “There,” Robin said. They had halted at the edge of the woods and were looking out over another open pasture. She pointed to darker scuffs about twenty yards away at the edge of a little drain that bordered the pasture. The pasture here was about a hundred yards across, ending where the slope began to increase more significantly. To their left, the treeline proceeded to the northwest, and they all turned and followed it without further consultation.

  They were moving fast. It seemed unlikely that they’d come suddenly upon their prey now. They hoped to see the intruders at a distance, but for now they relied on the woods for cover. Staying inside the treeline, the terrain rose, and then dipped again, and now they were at the same drain, downstream, only now it ran through rocky and conifered land. Pausing briefly at the little stream and discerning no tracks, they gave the horses their heads and trotted up the hill through the ponderosas and around little clumps of canyon oak that began to pop up where the ponderosas thinned or a rocky fold of the earth presented itself.

  Before topping the next ridge, Peter and Jack and Robin paused to get their bearings and to devise a plan for catching up to the intruders. They sat their horses, straining for a view through the foliage and listening. As they sat in stillness, they could just make out a soft clump, quiet but quickly getting louder, and just as they were able to discern that it was the beat of several hooves upon the ground, they were almost immediately encircled by riders—two from over the ridge ahead of them and others from each side, one emerging from a thicket of oaks to the left and another materializing from behind boulders to the right.

  Chapter 10

  “New York. So nice to see you again.” Bonzo doffed his imaginary hat and made a slight bow from his saddle.

  “Likewise, I’m sure,” Jack returned. He was conscious of the fact that to Bonzo and his cronies, all the world was an entertainment, whether because of what was going on outside or what they had chemically induced inside. Made no difference. The skullduggery of seeking out Peter’s and Robin’s place was a little rich for zombies, though—not to mention their drift from Eagar down to Alpine. Jack projected calm until he could better understand his surroundings. He worried not at all about Peter or Robin being jumpy. They both revealed just as much emotion as they desired to reveal, no more. Real Indians to the core.

  “I see you continue to take good care of my bolt-action. Thank you.” It was sarcasm, but whether of the good-natured kind or the sadistic kind, Jack could not yet discern. He had to remind himself that cannabis had turned Bonzo’s brain into putty. A good quality bolt-action like Jack’s Weatherby was available anywhere, for the little bit of effort it might take to break out a window and pick one up.

  “I took it that you were just holding it for me, last time.”

  Bonzo ignored this. He said, “And my car, too. I was hoping you’d bring that to me, as well. That was a fine automobile. Entirely up to my standards.”

  Jack started to respond in a similarly roundabout way to this jibe, too, but at that point, the man next to Bonzo broke in.

  “Enough with the reminiscences. Let’s get on with it.” He was a craggy-faced man with bushy eyebrows and an intensity that didn’t square with the zombie outlook on life.

  At this moment, the rider next to him, a youthful version of the craggy-faced man, dismounted and relieved Jack, Peter, and Robin of their weapons. He tried first to park them at various points on his person, but they were too numerous, so he gave up the swagger and stowed the handguns as best he could in a saddlebag. He seemed still not to know what to do with all the rifles, so he mounted again and put them across his lap at an angle. Jack could see he was thinking how he would navigate through the trees with these long pieces.

  During this little operation, Jack sized up the party that now received them. The craggy-faced man was perhaps fifty, but well-weathered. Jack surmised that the younger man who had relieved him of his weapons was the craggy-faced man’s son. He had that leanness of youth still, but was a little more hardened than Peter. The man to Bonzo’s other side Jack now recognized as Paco, one of the little group that Jack had pretended to join in festive camaraderie back in Eagar. Jack remembered him alone as being partial to hashish. He had been garrulous, drinking only beer, until the moment he took his first hit from an elaborate hookah, and then he had gone stone quiet, looking about him for the rest of the night with watery eyes.

  “We desire a parlay with you,” Bonzo began.

  “Enough, stoner,” the craggy-faced man said, and then to Jack, “We’d like an explanation, and then we’ll see where we go from there.”

  Jack thought it couldn’t hurt to insert himself into the middle of what might be a wedge amongst this little party. “What say we get these mounts some water?” Jack had no idea whether the horses were in need of water, but why not? It was the most neutral thing he could think of to say. It then occurred to him that this might backfire—that they’d all be required to repair to Peter’s and Robin’s place for that purpose, an unwelcome, further intrusion.

  But not so. Craggy grunted and began to wheel his horse back toward the little rise over which they’d just appeared, saying “this way.” They all followed, single file, after him—Craggy, Jack, Robin, Peter, Bonzo, Paco, and Craggy the younger. The reason for this direction became evident soon enough. About a half-hour later, they fetched up to a ranch house not unlike the one they’d departed, except that the house itself was a little more elaborate and newer, and the pastures about were well-trodden. Jack glimpsed a puff of white along a creek perhaps a mile from the main house and realized it was slowly undulating, like dappled light. Sheep.

  Jack wondered as he approached what he’d find there. A three-generation family with young tots running around innocent and expectant? Or maybe a thrown-together family like what he and Robin and Peter were. Or maybe just the craggy old man plus his adult son. He didn’t have to wonder long, however, because a thin but sturdy woman of about forty stepped out as they approached, waving a wooden spoon in the air and giving directions in that authoritative way that said she was mistress of the house.

  “I’ll send Millie to the barn. Just drop the horses and come on. Dinner’s ready.”

  Now this was curious on several levels. Craggy hadn’t drawn up with a bunch of his buddies. He’d approached with captives. But when hailed, he’d made no effort to countermand the woman’s orders or to enlighten her as to why this was a bad course to take. And on top of that, Jack wondered at the lack of surprise on the part of the woman. It was as if she’d been expecting company. Jack’s instinct was that she was fully aware of the entire mission. For the woman to be so open to their company perhaps suggested that their being in custody was more a precaution than a statement of hostility. But who knew? Evidently they were in for a meal, and maybe they’d learn something there. Breaking bread had ever been the substrate for important human interaction. They were to be in “company,” now—that is, among others “with bread.”

  They continued in single file to the capacious barn to secure the horses, no one speaking except Bonzo, and he satisfied with little side remarks to Paco, which no one else tried to follow. Millie, a teenager only a couple of years older than Robin, entered and started giving orders as to whose horse went in which stalls and where to stow the tack. A bit brash, she seemed, until she looked Peter in the eyes, and then she went momentarily bashful. She stepped over to where Bonzo was having difficulty and made short work of his saddle and cinch.

  “I got the bridle,” Bonzo said, as if he were an expert in bridles, and then Millie stepped lively over to where Jack was by himself in one of the stalls, and in moments had settled the animal in.

  “Not like parking a car and walking away with your keys,” Jack said.

  “No,” she responded with a brisk smile.

  Peter and Robin were already standing in the middle of the barn when Craggy hung his bridle on a hook and turned to face them. Jack thought he was about to witness some more self-important harr
umphing, but he could see that something in Robin’s stance made Craggy reconsider. Jack glanced over at her. She was standing there with arms akimbo, her eyes fairly smoldering with indignation. She caused Craggy to hesitate.

  Then he said, “We ain’t after you, we just need to hold a council.”

  “So we’re not prisoners? We can go,” Robin replied. She made as if to march over and retrieve the saddle and bridle she’d just removed from her horse.

  “Hold on, sister, hold on.”

  “Got a name?” Jack asked.

  “Rupert Willis. We just need to talk.” He said this last across his left shoulder toward Robin, who’d paused with her hand on the bridle near her horse’s stall.

  Pressing him after Robin’s initiative, Jack said, “Being held prisoner makes us disinclined to be talkative.”

  Rupert was trying to soften his gruff exterior, but it seemed a struggle for him.

  “Are you outsiders?” Millie asked.

  Jack gave an audible sigh to signify exasperation with this question. He’d noted a bit of deflation in Rupert when confronted about being held against their will. The sigh was for Rupert’s benefit.

  “Outside of what?” Peter asked.

  Rupert looked at Peter as if seeing him for the first time. Millie looked to Rupert for a response, and Rupert took a long time, first just rubbing his jaw and looking at the ground. “It’s a dangerous world,” he said finally.

  “Tell me about it,” Peter said. “People hiding out, spying on your house when you’re minding your own business. Taking you hostage. Kidnapping you. Are you going to shoot us next?”

  “No, son, no. Are you steady partakers, like them two?” Rupert pointed to Bonzo and Paco, who were standing just outside the barn door, huffing on fat joints.

  Peter just looked at him and then over at Robin. Rupert answered himself, just saying, “Naw.” Then, looking at Jack, he said, “What about you? You from the canyon?”

  “Canyon? Yeah, I’m from the canyon,” Jack said. “I used to walk the canyons to work every day—the canyons between buildings. But that was when there were people in the world. Some of them weren’t criminals.” He infused some indignation to the beginning of this speech, but then as he said it became chagrined, thinking of how he’d stalked Robin. “Now I’m just trying to live each day and hang on to what friends I have.”

  This last comment seemed to knock Rupert back an inch or two. Turning to the front of the barn, he said to the younger man standing by some cabinets there, “Scott, give ’em their weapons.”

  “Sir?”

  “Go ahead, son.”

  About now, Jack realized that this little win might turn out not to be a win, after all. They were here now. Might as well find out something. “We can talk,” he said.

  “Thank you,” Rupert said with a little bow. “Can I feed you first?”

  They all trundled over to the front door of the house. As they approached, Jack saw the wooden-spoon lady’s face appear briefly at the glass exterior door and then vanish again inside.

  They were shown in to a long farmhouse table and were urged to take a seat by Penny Willis, Craggy Rupert’s wife, who had laid the spoon aside. All seated, they were at first somewhat quiet. Rupert pretended to fuss with a napkin, thinking it not quite time to get down to business. He was unskilled with small talk, which the situation called for, but it was made all the more difficult by the strange circumstances under which this decidedly eclectic group had assembled. Penny tried to make up for it, instinctively feeling the need to welcome them, but she was in and out of the kitchen, hauling in plates of vegetables and finally a huge platter of beef steaks which had been cooked outside on a grill top over a fire pit. Some oohing and aahing commenced, and that broke some of the awkwardness. What this variety of food said to them, here in high-elevation Alpine in late October, was that these folks were well-established. Appearances were that they had generated most of this food on their own and knew how to keep it preserved.

  “Dig in,” Rupert said and forked a large steak by way of example.

  During all of this, Jack had been quiet, not because he desired awkwardness with Rupert, but because he was contemplating the curious turn his life had taken, from being so utterly alone for so long, and then here just a month later, sitting at an oversized table and eating a civilized meal with eight other people, some of whom were his friends. It occurred to him to take a little human inventory. “It sure looks good, Penny. It looks like it was a lot of work.”

  “No trouble at all. We’ve got some pretty good eaters here anyway,” she said, motioning toward Scott. Scott acknowledged the jibe, his mouth full.

  “So Scott and Millie are yours and Rupert’s? I don’t assume anything anymore.”

  “Yes, we all made it through, just our youngest didn’t.” A hint of wistfulness in her eyes.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Oh, listen,” Penny said, waving it off. “I’m sure the story of everyone here is worse than mine.” There was quiet again, just some general head-nodding, all attention on the food.

  “Well, I have to assume you know more about what’s left of the world than we do. Is there anyone else who stays with you?” Jack asked.

  “No,” Rupert responded for Penny, brusquely.

  “Well, you probably know that Bonzo and I have met. And Paco,” Jack said.

  Rupert nodded his head. Paco was quiet like he had been on the hashish. He was an all-or-nothing character. Bonzo was not quite stoned enough to let loose like he had up in Eagar, and like he’d started to here, and he evidently felt some inhibition about being in respectable company. In fact, Bonzo’s behavior told Jack more about the Willises than had the Willises, so far. But at Jack’s remark, Bonzo stirred. “Jack here joined the party up in, where was it? Show Low?”

  “Eagar,” Jack responded, wondering if Bonzo actually misremembered. It seemed unlikely that he got about much, but then here he was in Alpine.

  “Yeah, Eagar. Some old boys and I happened upon Jack’s very fine vehicle and made a little tour of Eagar.”

  “Very little,” Jack reminded him. “Less than a mile.”

  “Jack was not entirely hospitable with his vehicle on that occasion, I do recall,” was Bonzo’s retort.

  Rupert’s patience with Bonzo was already thin. “Let’s talk about them Navajos,” he said. Then, in deference to Robin and Peter, “People who call themselves Navajo, or Diné, I reckon.” He ground out the word Diné with some distaste.

  Peter discerned that he and Robin were likely the only ones present who had any Indian blood. “We’re not Navajo,” he said. “Apache.”

  Rupert capitalized on the comment. “So you’re with us?”

  “Whoa,” Jack said. “I think he just means he and Robin are Indian. Look at them. If you think the work of these Diné people is a slam on Navajos, you can take some comfort in knowing that Peter and Robin are Apache. I think that’s all he meant. Besides, you keep calling us outsiders.”

  “All right, but they’ll make enemies of you, too. There’s sure not any other reason for the rest of us to be talking.” At this, Rupert cast a skeptical eye toward Bonzo and Paco.

  “We knew lots of Apache around here,” Millie offered. She was speaking to Peter, not generally. “Are you from Fort Apache?” she asked, referring to the Apache reservation not far from Alpine.

  “No, we live just this side.”

  “So you went to Round Valley?” she asked. Round Valley was the name of the high school in Eagar.

  “I was a senior there when everything happened,” he said, “but I started there only in the eleventh grade. We were home-schooled.”

  By this, Millie placed Peter’s age in relation to hers. She gave him a big smile, one that lingered just that nth moment extra. Robin pointedly turned to look at Peter, shifting her whole upper body in her seat, her expression not quite as inscrutable as usual, communicating to him with her wide eyes.

  “Your father Will Foster?” R
upert said, almost accusingly.

  “Yes. But he died when I was young.”

  “I think I knew your father. And that means you were reared by Chatto Alsenay.”

  “Yes.”

  “And your mother. I never met her, I don’t think.”

  “Kashata.”

  “Yes,” Rupert continued. “I’ve heard that name. I never met her in person, but I sure knew Chatto. He was a good man, too.”

  “Yes, he was.”

  “Strong Christian, I recall. Had no truck with Indian spiritual talk, but he was otherwise Apache through-and-through.”

  “We’ve missed him,” Peter said, to include Robin as daughter of Kashata and Chatto.

  “We’re more neighbors than I realized,” Rupert continued. “Safe to say you don’t have no connection to the idiots calling themselves Diné.”

  “No. We haven’t had any connection to anyone, except running into Bonzo’s friends from time to time.”

  “Here, here, here!” Bonzo cried, but immediately went back to his grub. This was as good an acknowledgment as any that Bonzo and Paco knew themselves to be of a marginal tribe, and in that respect distinct from other Apaches like the Willises.

  “And Jack, of course,” Peter followed up.

  “And I guess you’re an outsider for sure,” Rupert said, turning to Jack.

  “I’m from New York like Bonzo keeps reminding me . . .”

  “Hunh hunh hunh,” Bonzo muttered.

  “And I’ve only been around a few weeks, so I guess that makes me an outsider.”

  Seeing the conversation steadily move toward the Diné problem, Scott interjected, “Before we get into the outsider-Apache-Diné thing, what about back east? You never saw anyone, did you?”