“Koga,” he whispered. Crow. Though the sleek black birds did not usually remind him of Mary, today he thought of her. What would she be like as a mother? Would Lily’s fragility and utter dependence terrify her as much as it did him? Or would Mary have Ruth’s blind faith that nature and fate would sort things out? She would be vigilant, he decided. Like him. Life had taught both of them both a lot about taking precautions.
He rolled out from under the blanket. Grabbing his jeans and a T-shirt, he tiptoed to the bathroom and closed the door, wanting to dress without waking anyone up. When he cracked the door back open, neither his wife nor daughter had moved.
He crept over to check on Lily. She slept on her stomach, her head turned toward her mother. Soft, dark hair curled around her shell-like ears, and she was making a sucking motion with her jaws, as if even in sleep she dreamed of eating. He stopped and kissed the soft spot on the top of her head, feeling her pulse throb against his lips. How amazing Lily was! She’d be come a fundamental part of him the instant she’d entered the world—no less essential than his heart or his brain. Ruth could leave him, Little Jump Off could fall down around his ears—as long as Lily was safe, everything would be okay.
Smiling, he turned and padded downstairs. The cot in front of the fireplace lay empty, and the scent of brewing coffee wafted through the store. Damn, he thought wearily as he walked toward the coffeepot. Clarinda must be up.
“Hi, Jonathan.” Ruth’s cousin appeared at his elbow so suddenly, he jumped. “How’d you sleep?”
“Fine,” he replied tersely. She must have been in the bathroom, behind the bait cooler. A pretty enough girl with firm breasts and a tight rear end, he’d known a number of Clarindas when he was in the Army. All were like those multi-colored drinks you got in fancy bars. You had a hell of a good time while you were drinking them, but the next morning you were hanging your head over the toilet, wishing someone would just come along and put you out of your misery.
Clarinda pressed her hand against the small of his back. “You and Ruth make everything better after you went to bed last night?”
Pouring his coffee, he considered his response.
He could lie and say Yes, we went to bed and fucked like monkeys and now everything’s just fine; or he could tell the truth and say No, the coldest spot in the nation today continues to be the bedroom of Jonathan and Ruth Walkingstick, of Little Jump Off, North Carolina. That was what irritated him about Clarinda—every question she asked worked on about three different levels, each deeper and more dangerous than the last.
“We slept alright,” he finally answered, deciding that he was too tired to play her games. “How about you?”
“Okay.” She sighed, massaging a little circle on his back. “But it got pretty cold down here in the middle of the night.”
“Sorry,” he said, moving away from her hand. “You should have asked for an extra blanket.” He took his coffee over to the front window and stared out into the parking lot. Yesterday a man named Duncan had called, wanting to hire him for the weekend as a boar guide. Jonathan had never taken this Duncan out before, but the man spoke as if he knew the area well, and he was willing to pay top dollar. Though he told Ruth it would mean five hundred extra dollars, she would not hear of him going. You said you’d go with us to Tennessee, she cried last night. You promised.
Suddenly he heard a piercing wail from upstairs. Miss Lily Bird Walkingstick was greeting the day.
Clarinda heard her, too. “Why don’t you take Ruth some coffee?” she suggested, pouring milk and sugar into a cup and topping it off with coffee. “Here. She used to drink it like this in Oklahoma.”
He took the cup Clarinda offered and walked upstairs. Ruth was sitting up in bed, Lily plugged into one breast.
“Café Tahlequah.” Jonathan handed her the mug. “Compliments of your cousin.”
“Thanks,” she said, her voice cold.
“Lily okay?” He watched the frowning child pulling at Ruth’s breast, her gaze serious and intense upon her mother’s face.
“Her appetite is.”
“How about you?”
“I’m fine.”
“Then I guess you haven’t changed your mind about the rally.” Jonathan wondered if she’d ever once heard, in the past month, any of his concerns about their shrinking bank account.
Ruth’s face immediately locked down into the hard, angry lines of the night before. “No, Jonathan, I haven’t changed my mind. I’m going. Lily’s going. At last count, you were going, too.”
“It’ll cost us a almost a thousand dollars.”
“How so?”
“It’s the peak weekend for tourists. If you stayed here and kept the store open, we might clear three hundred bucks.”
Ruth set her coffee cup on the bedside table and lifted Lily to her shoulder. “That’s not a thousand by my arithmetic book.”
“That guy Duncan. He’ll pay me five hundred to take him boar hunting for three days. I’m supposed to meet him in Murphy tomorrow morning.”
“Now I get it,” Ruth said sarcastically, as Lily started on her other breast. “This is really about you going boar hunting.”
He rubbed his forehead in frustration, hating the way she could always box him in with her words. “No, Ruth, it’s about making ends meet. We’re almost broke.”
“Broke? We weren’t broke last week when you bought that new fishing reel. Or that chain saw.”
Involuntarily his hands curled into fists. “Damn it, Ruth, I spend one dollar to your ten. Fish is what we eat! Wood is how we heat this place! Right now it’s mid-October. We have a cold, damp winter coming. If you take Lily to that rally and she gets sick, how are we going to pay for it?”
“Breast-fed babies have immunities, Jonathan,” Ruth replied smugly. “They don’t get sick like other babies. I’m taking my medicine bag, and anyway, we’re only going to Tennessee. It’s not like she’s going to catch bubonic plague there.”
“You don’t know what could happen, with Clarinda watching her.”
“Jonathan, you have fought me about this rally since day one. Go ahead and go boar hunting if you want. I don’t care. Just don’t make rude remarks about my cousin and stupid excuses about not having enough money to get poor little Lily through the winter!”
He was so angry, he couldn’t focus his eyes. Since Lily had been born, it had been like this every time they argued. He’d say one thing and she’d twist it into something entirely different. For the first time in his life, he wanted to hit a woman. Instead, he turned away and stormed down the stairs, where he found Clarinda perched behind the cash register, eating a carton of strawberry yogurt.
“Is all your stuff packed up?” he asked gruffly, at that moment hating her as much as he did Ruth.
“Right there with yours.” With her spoon, Clarinda pointed to the front door. If she heard the fury in his voice, she didn’t show it.
Ruth had stacked all the gear she’d packed for the trip—their clothes, Lily’s clothes, food, diapers, toys, and a portable playpen—in a pile by the entrance to the store.
Without bothering to put his shoes on, he flung the door open and started hauling everything out. Ruth had already worn out one clutch on her truck in the eighteen months she’d lived in the mountains, and she was fast working on wearing out another. Not wanting to take the chance of the thing going bad on her and Lily, he loaded their gear into the back of his old Chevy. By the time the morning fog lifted, he’d attached the camper to the trailer hitch and filled up the tank. Wiping the sweat from his forehead, he looked at his work. Though the makeshift rig looked like something the Beverly Hillbillies might drive; the brakes worked and the clutch was good. It should make the trip over the mountains to Tennessee without any problems.
He strode back inside to find Ruth settling Lily into her car seat. Lily grinned at him. Ruth looked as
if she might spit in his eye.
“All packed?” she asked, her voice like glass.
“You and Lily and Clarinda are.”
“What about you?”
He did not take his eyes from her face. “I’m going to earn some money this weekend,” he said evenly, knowing that Clarinda was watching from behind the cash register.
Ruth studied him for a moment, her eyes rekindling their vicious blaze. Then she said, “You really are one selfish bastard.”
Once again, rage boiled through him. “Well, Ruth, this selfish bastard has just loaded your car, checked your tires, and made sure you had enough Pampers to get to Tennessee. Here.” He jerked the car keys from his pocket and tossed them to her. She made no move to catch them, and they clattered to the floor. “And this selfish bastard is giving you his truck. Don’t ride the clutch on mine like you do on yours.”
“Fine,” she said as she stooped over and picked up the keys. “You know where I’ll be.”
“Have a good time. Make the world safe for the Cherokees.”
She snapped Lily into her car seat, then picked it up in her arms and walked past him. Clarinda followed. He watched as they got into his old camper, then he turned back inside the store. Something on the counter caught his eye—the black woolen bag Granny Broom had woven for Ruth. Her medicines! He leaped over and grabbed it, then ran out the door. Ruth had driven to the edge of the parking lot and was about to roll onto the highway.
“Wait!” he called, running toward her. “You forgot this!”
Ruth’s brake lights came on as she stopped the truck and rolled down her window.
“Here,” he said, loping up. “You might need this.”
“Thanks.” She took the bag and for once, looked at him with soft, pre-Lily eyes. “Sure you won’t come with us?”
He considered it: closing the store, losing even more money, then having to bunk in with Clarinda. “No, thanks,” he replied.
“Fine.” said Ruth, her mouth pinching downward. “Have it your way.” She shoved the truck into gear, then pulled onto the road that ran along the river, heading west. He watched until they disappeared around a curve, then he fumbled in his pocket for a slip of paper. Clootie Duncan, he’d scrawled on a gum wrapper, along with the time and meeting place. 828-555-9572. “Wax up your bowstring, Clootie,” he said savagely, turning back toward the store. “I’m taking you out for boar.”
six
PAZ LET THE cows into the pasture late. Pushing open the rusty gate at the far end of the paddock, he hopped on the bottom rung and swung forward, over the muddy low place the cows wore a little deeper every afternoon as they waited to be fed.
“Vamos!” he said to the spotted brown heifer that was the self-appointed leader of the herd. “I have better things to do than watch you!”
As the beasts ambled into the pasture beyond, he hurried along the fence, back to the barn. When he reached the dim structure, he with drew the small cuchillo he kept in his sock, then slipped inside. Working his way slowly down the center passage, he peered into each of the stalls, paying particular attention to the shadowy places underneath the feed troughs. As he reached the last stall, he let go the breath he’d been holding. This morning, praise the Blessed Virgin, the stalls stood empty. Yesterday they hadn’t been.
He’d been standing at the gate, watching the stupid cows, hungrily anticipating the sausages Ruperta would fry for his breakfast, when he felt something whip around his neck. He tried to grab at his throat, but someone jerked him backward as he felt something else snake between his legs. Struggling like a wild horse, he twisted for ward, but whoever was behind him pulled both ends of the rope tight, cutting off his air and cutting into his balls.
“Madre!” he choked out, the hot, sick pain in his scrotum making his knees buckle. He knew exactly who and what had him—a Scorpion, making full and abundant use of his trademark weapon, the riata, a thin, double-noosed leather rope greatly feared in certain circles south of the Rio Grande. Innocuous-looking to gringo cops, with his riata a Scorpion could pinch off a man’s huevos like those of a bull calf. Paz sucked air into his mouth through gritted teeth, sweat already pouring into his eyes. The Scorpion had him quite literally by the balls, and there wasn’t a thing he could do about it.
“Buenos dias, carnal.’’ He felt as much as heard a voice at his right ear; the breath warm and moist, the words enunciated with the Vera Cruz accent Paz had grown up with. He hadn’t heard it in so long, it sounded strange. Here, in Tennessee, they spoke the flatter dialects of Chihuahua and Sonora. “It took us a long time to find you.”
“What do you want?” Paz wheezed, although he already knew what the man wanted, knew all too well what he would never leave without.
“The money you stole.”
“I told you before, I do not have it. Jorge took it.” Sweat began to trickle into Paz’s eyes.
“That is not what Jorge told us. Jorge swore upon his mother’s soul that you had the money.”
“He lied.”
The Scorpion gave the rope a savage tug. “My friend, I was there when they questioned Jorge. For three days, they kept at him. Believe me, Jorge died a truthful and repentant man.”
“Except for one lie.” Paz gasped, fearing that he might vomit. “I do not have your money. I never have. Jorge is a liar and a coward.”
“So you say.”
Paz tensed the muscles of his butt and thighs, waiting for the rope to tighten again, but the pressure on his scrotum unexpectedly eased. He felt the Scorpion shift, then the man reached over his shoulder and held something in front of his face. At first Paz could only see his hand dark brown, callused, with a string of death’s head tattoos encircling the wrist. That identified him as a perseguidor, a bounty hunter, one of the Scorpion elite sent out to settle old scores. He had apparently settled a number of them, according to the skulls on his skin.
“Pay attention, carnal!” The Scorpion again pulled the cord tight. “Look at what’s in my hand, not on my wrist.”
Paz felt his heart throbbing in both his neck and his testicles as he tried to focus on what the Scorpion held, a small brown bottle capped with a medicine dropper.
“Remember this?” the Scorpion whispered in his ear.
Paz’s mouth dried up like dust. He’d last seen a bottle like that when the Scorpions caught him on the beach near Vera Cruz. It had taken five of them, but they’d ripped his clothes off, held him down on the sand, and dribbled the contents of that bottle on his stomach. It felt as if they had covered him in glowing coals. When he could stop screaming he’d lifted his head to see the outline of a scorpion sizzling into his puckered flesh.
“Our money in three days, my friend.” The man palmed the little glass bottle, making it disappear like a magician doing tricks with a coin. “Or your wife.” The man licked Paz’s ear with a sloppy, wet tongue. “I hear her almeja’s as tight as a virgin’s. We will stretch it considerably, then we will put out her eyes. Comprende?”
“Clinga tu madre,” Paz snarled, curling his hands into fists.
“Don’t concern yourself with my mother, chilito. Your wife’s the one you need to watch out for.”
The Scorpion gave the riata one final, grand jerk that left him writhing on the ground, then he was gone. When Paz could look up, he saw only the barn behind and the rolling fields of the farm, dotted with grazing cows.
“Paz!” Ruperta’s voice jarred him back into the present. He looked around, dazed. The cows had already wandered halfway across the pasture while he’d been reliving yesterday’s nightmare.
“Señora wants you.”
“Coming!” he called back, pulling the gate shut, closing off the entrance to the barn. Though he had not seen them today, he knew the Scorpions were watching and waiting. Sometime tomorrow they would show themselves. Sometime tomorrow they would want their money.
All night long he’d tried on different plans as Ruperta might try on shoes. He came up with none. They had no car to get away in, no gun to kill the Scorpions with. He could, of course, steal either of those items from Señora, except she watched them like a hawk and seemed to know what they were doing every minute of the day. He dared not even call his cousin Raoul—they were never to talk on Señora’s telephone. Turning themselves in to the police would keep them safe for a little while, but the police would eventually send them back to Mexico, and everything would begin again, only worse. The only thing that held any promise of success was giving them what they wanted. But how could he, Paz Carrera Gonzalez, with no gun, no car, and little English, come up with fifty thousand U.S. dollars by tomorrow afternoon? It was impossible.
You’ve got to think of something, he urged himself as he hurried back to the house. And you’ve got to think of it fast.
“What took you so long?” Ruperta looked up, frowning, from one of her most hated duties—polishing Señora Templeton’s silver with a smelly pink paste. Ruperta found dusting all of Señora’s fancy furniture equally tedious, but she said at least the dust rags didn’t stink and the lemony furniture polish wasn’t so hard on her hands. Polishing silver, she said, was the worst.
“Señora has been calling.”
“Sorry.” Paz looked into her eyes and went cold inside, picturing the Scorpions fondling Ruperta’s breasts, pushing themselves between her thighs, then dropping acid into her eyes. “The cows sometimes do not like to leave the barn.”
“She wants to see you in the study,” Ruperta said, rinsing one of the heavy silver trays with warm water. “She and Gordo.”
“Gordo?” The one named Duncan, whom they called Fatso—“Gordo” in Spanish—behind his back. What could that crippled bully want with him? “Why?”
“I don’t know.” Ruperta glanced at him in concern. “Go see. If you don’t understand all their words, try to remember and we can look them up in the book.”
Call the Devil by His Oldest Name Page 5