“Oh, nothing. He just gave me that look.”
“What look?”
“You know. That look. One beat on your face, two beats on your boobs, a glance at your crotch, then back to your boobs again.”
“He did that?”
Clarinda shrugged. “Maybe I got it wrong. Maybe it was just a North Carolina mountain howdy.”
“What did he do after that?”
“He went over and got some of those stupid Ding-Dongs. Then Lily woke up.” She fumbled in her purse for her cigarettes, taking a curious pleasure at the way Ruth’s chin was wobbling.
“Look, it was nothing. I shouldn’t have even mentioned it.”
“No. It doesn’t matter,” Ruth said, but Clarinda knew she lied.
They drove west, a dazzling blue sky piercing through the golden lacework of leaves overhead. Crossing into Tennessee, they entered the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, with its tidy brown signs pointing out trails and picnic areas and quiet walks along the way. Clarinda had high hopes that Tennessee might prove less oppressive than North Carolina, but the terrain seemed identical—tall mountains covered in trees, the air thick with the smell of cedar and pine. Once again she felt a curious longing for the dusty, dry plains of Oklahoma.
“You ever think about coming home?” she asked, noticing how the ends of Ruth’s mouth had begun to pull down in an inverted U.
“You mean move Jonathan and Lily out to Oklahoma?”
Clarinda nodded. “Your mom would think she’d died and gone to heaven.”
“And Jonathan would think he’d died and gone to hell,” Ruth said bitterly. “He’d never move to Oklahoma. These trees, this forest, are too much a part of him.” She sighed. “I’m afraid I’m a North Carolina Cherokee now.”
They drove out of the park. As they approached a small outpost of civilization, Lily began to whimper. Quickly Ruth made a hard right turn into a McDonald’s parking lot.
“Feeding time at the zoo,” she explained, parking the camper under a big mottled-bark tree at the far end of the lot. She unbuckled Lily from the car seat, then Clarinda watched as she pulled up her shirt and put the baby to her nipple, smiling as Lily began her earnest sucking.
“What does that feel like?” Clarinda wanted to go out and smoke a cigarette, but the whole breast-feeding process fascinated her. Who’d have thought old bookworm Ruth would ever marry and start whipping out her tits to feed a baby?
“Terrific, when you haven’t done it for a while.” Ruth brushed back the damp curls around Lily’s forehead. “Your breasts get heavy when they get full.”
“But does it feel like, you know, good? Like when a man does it?”
Ruth smiled. “It feels good, but in a different way.”
Clarinda shook her head and went into McDonald’s, leaving Ruth to change Lily’s diaper. She returned with Big Macs and Cokes for the both of them, and they pulled back on the highway. Though traffic grew a little heavier, it was nowhere near the October gridlock that Jonathan had so direly predicted. Too bad, thought Clarinda, her last hopes for a hot weekend fading. All the cool people must be going somewhere else.
Ruth echoed her thoughts as they sped toward Tremont. “Wonder where all the tourists are?
“On the beach in Florida, if they’re smart,” said Clarinda, thinking maybe she would go there too when this was over. Florida. Or maybe New York. Tall buildings instead of all these stupid trees.
They twisted along a series of turns, then the road straightened and crossed land that was as flat as any she’d known in Oklahoma. The cars ahead of her slowed to a stop, and she felt better. The sun was brighter here, hotter. She could actually see a horizon in the distance, something beyond just trees. Then she jumped as her cousin yelled.
“Look!” Ruth cried. “There it is!”
“What?”
“The dig. That’s where our ancestors are buried, Clarinda.”
Clarinda looked out Ruth’s window. Right by the side of the road spread a huge flat field covered in black plastic tarps. Bulldozers from the Summerfield Development Company sat at one end, held at bay by a gridwork of small stakes that divided the whole thing up like a giant checkerboard. Short, Hispanic-looking guys in hard hats waved protest signs at one end of the field, while clusters of sunburned blond girls worked hunched over the sun-heated tarps, digging up, Clarinda supposed, little chips of dead Cherokees. She sat back in her seat and sighed.
Ruth had told her they were going to another Woodstock. This was looking more like a field trip for science club nerds.
They inched onward, passing a sign nailed to a tree that read “SOB One Mile Ahead.”
“What’s SOB?” Clarinda laughed. “Son of a bitch?”
“Save Our Bones,” Ruth snapped, as if she were stupid. “That’s what you’re part of.”
“Speak for yourself,” muttered Clarinda. “I just came to baby-sit.”
The line of traffic crept on, made up mostly of battered campers and vans with out-of-state license plates. She sighed again as she saw dreamcatchers dangling from rearview mirrors, and ragged bumper stickers that wanted Leonard Peltier freed. Same old shit she saw every day in Oklahoma. If she ever got enough money, she was going to Sweden. Not one Indian would be there, and she could meet lots of rich blond guys who might regard a full-blood Cherokee as something exotic.
“Look at all these people!” Ruth exclaimed as they pulled up behind a rusting VW microbus with New Jersey license plates. “This is actually going to happen!”
Clarinda flopped back in the seat and closed her eyes. She couldn’t believe she’d ridden a bus all the way from Oklahoma for this. The next time Ruth called her, she was going to be busy doing something else. She smiled at the idea of telling Ruth Sorry, cuz, but I’m busy. I’m having a root canal. Then she jumped and opened her eyes as something hit the hood of the truck.
She peered out the windshield. Two barechested guys in hard hats grinned from either side of the truck. On the middle of the hood lay what looked like a steaming pile of cow shit.
“Hey, Pocahontas,” called the one standing on Ruth’s side of the truck. His face looked like a boiled shrimp, and the hair on his chest had been bleached white by the sun. “You comin’ to dig for bones?”
“Who the hell are they?” Clarinda cried, twisting around in her seat.
“I don’t know,” whispered Ruth, putting a protective hand on Lily’s car seat.
“I said, are you coming to dig for bones?” the big man repeated. Clarinda saw that the one near Ruth held a shovel; the one moving toward her carried a sledge. Shit, she thought. A ripple of fear threaded through her. These Tennessee guys looked nasty.
“Lookee here,” called the one closer to her. “These two ain’t half-bad.”
Boiled Shrimp leaned down and peered in Ruth’s open window. His eyes were blue and bloodshot, and Clarinda could smell the beer on his breath all the way across the truck. “You two comin’ for that protest rally?”
Clarinda’s stomach clenched as she stared at the bright green wad of chewing gum that bobbed in one corner of his mouth. What if he hit her with that shovel? What if he hit Ruth? She’d dealt with her own father too many nights not to take angry drunks seriously.
“Yes.” Ruth answered him calmly. “We are.”
“Thought so.” The man slid his gaze over to the manure that graced her truck. “Shit likes shit, sister. Welcome to Nikwase County.”
“We’re protesting exploitation,” Ruth explained, as if the two men had just dropped by to say howdy.
“Exploy-what?” jeered the other man.
Clarinda felt his gaze on her chest, eyeing the butterfly tattoo that peeked from the top of her halter.
“Tashun, Smitty,” explained Boiled Shrimp. “These gals are coming to protest ex-ploy-tashun.”
“Shit.” Smitty spat on the groun
d. “I don’t think they’re coming to protest nothin’. I think they’re coming to get laid.” He winked at her. “Look at this, Miss Butterfly Tits. I’ll give you something to protest about!”
Clarinda watched in horror as he straightened, stepped to the front of the truck, and grasped the sledge with both hands. Swinging as if he held a baseball bat, he slammed the hammer into the right headlight. The inside of the cab rocked as a shower of glass tinkled on the pavement.
“Hey!” Ruth cried. “Knock it off!”
“Knock it off?” called Smitty, moving over to the other headlight. “Okay, bitch. Whatever you say!”
“Holy shit, Ruth! Do something,” shrilled Clarinda. “They’re going to tear your truck apart!”
Ruth was fumbling for the lug wrench Jonathan kept under the driver’s seat when Clarinda heard a new voice call from behind the truck.
“Yo! Brother! Hold up!”
Clarinda looked in the side-door mirror. A dark-haired man dressed in jeans and a black T-shirt was hurrying toward the two construction workers.
“Who the fuck are you?” Smitty looked up from the headlight, blinking.
“Second-shift framer, brother. The sheriff’s about fifty feet behind me, pulling the paddy wagon after him. They’re hauling us in on every charge they can think of.”
“Are you kidding?” Boiled Shrimp went pale. “They just put the cuffs on my brother-in-law.”
Smitty peered back down the line of traffic. “I don’t see nothin’ down there.”
“Couple of deputies are riding horses. Summerfield says he ain’t bailing anybody of out jail, and any man of his who gets arrested can just kiss his job goodbye.”
Boiled Shrimp stepped back. “Hold on, Smitty. I can’t go to jail. They’ll find all them warrants my ex-wife put out on me.”
Smitty lifted the sledge. “Aw, come on. This is fun. Your ex-wife served you up in Virginia. This here’s Tennessee.”
“It don’t matter. I’m outta here. These two ain’t worth it.” Boiled Shrimp nodded toward Ruth and Clarinda.
“Don’t say I didn’t warn you.” The dark-haired man hurried on down the line of traffic. Boiled Shrimp hastily followed. Smitty looked longingly at the other headlight, then he, too, turned away from the truck and ran to catch up with his buddy.
Clarinda sat frozen, her heart beating a thousand miles an hour. Ruth looked down at Lily, who, amazingly, had slept through the whole thing.
“Holy shit,” Clarinda cried. “These people are fucking crazy!”
“I know,” said Ruth, leaving the lug wrench under the seat. “I wish Jonathan had come.”
Just as the words left Ruth’s mouth, the dark-haired man in the black T-shirt reappeared, sauntering up from the other side of the truck in front of them.
“Hi, ladies,” he said, grinning. “Sorry you had to meet up with one of Nikwase County’s unofficial welcoming committees.”
“You aren’t one of them?” Ruth stopped, confused, her window half rolled up.
“No. I’m with the rally. We’ve gotten so many complaints about people being hassled by the construction guys, we decided to keep an eye on the traffic ourselves. Let me see what I can do about that.” He gestured at the manure steaming on the car hood.
He walked back down the line of traffic, returning moments later with a small camp shovel. Working gently to avoid scarring the truck’s weathered paint job, he scraped the mess off and dumped it on the roadside.
“Thanks,” Ruth told him when he came back to her window. “I really didn’t want to show up here with cow dung all over my car.”
“You shouldn’t have anything else to worry about. The gate’s about fifty yards ahead and our security’s tight from here on in.”
“Ask him his name.” Clarinda poked Ruth in the ribs. “He’s kind of hot.”
“Hey, what’s your name?” blurted her cousin awkwardly. “So I can thank you officially.”
“Gabe Benge,” he replied cheerfully. “Coordinator of all this with a lady named Ruth Walkingstick, who I’m hoping will show up pretty soon.”
Ruth began to laugh, and rolled her window all the way down. “I’m right here, Gabe,” she said, extending her hand. “You just shoveled cow manure off my car.”
Nine
PAZ SAT IN the front seat of the van, the sun hot on his face, Ruperta’s gaze hot on the back of his head. “It’s a trap, Paz,” she’d cried when he told her what they were going to do. “We don’t get sent out for babies. Señora must have found out we’re ilegalidads. She’s sending us to the police!”
“No, no.” Paz had taken Ruperta in his arms, wishing he could tell her about the Scorpions; yet knowing if he did, she would probably fall to the floor, paralyzed with fear. “Señora just wants us to help Gordo. If she wanted to turn us in, she would not waste her gas taking us to the police. She would just call them to come here.”
To his great relief, Ruperta saw the logic of his words. As she resumed folding their clothes into their battered suitcase, he stuffed the money from their mayonnaise jar into his pocket and put his cuchillo back down in his sock. Ruperta did not know it yet, but neither of them would ever see this room again.
Now he sat up straight in the van, twisting around every five minutes or so, giving Ruperta a reassuring wink, but also looking to see if anyone followed them. He’d spotted the Scorpion just as they left, leaning against the scraggly tree that grew at the end of the drive. He was tall and wiry, with a thin black mustache that bracketed the corners of his mouth. For an instant their eyes met, then Gordo pulled onto the road, the van’s tires throwing up little pebbles that no doubt peppered the man’s face. Please God, prayed Paz, the sweat breaking out on his forehead. Today let him be the one blinded.
Such roads in this country, he told himself as he twisted around again to gaze anxiously out the windshield. No dangerous potholes, no washed-out bridges eternally awaiting repair. Nothing to prevent you from putting hundreds of miles between you and the thing you feared, unless, of course that thing was a Scorpion. He squirmed, remembering the bite of the riata. Señora’s fancy van and this good road would only buy him time. Eventually they would find him. Not once had they failed.
“We’re going to the mountains,” Gordo announced, speaking for the first time since they’d pulled out onto the highway. “We’re going to save a baby from some bad people.”
“What kind of bad people?” Ruperta asked her question with eyes so wide that Paz almost laughed. What kind of bad person could Gordo possibly know who would compare with a Scorpion?
“Gypsies,” Gordo explained. “Gypsies that look like Indians.”
“Gypsies?”
Paz watched Ruperta dig in her purse for their little dictionary. Gypsy must not be used on her American soap operas, where she’d learned much of her English.
“That’s right.” Gordo nodded deeply, looking at her in the rearview mirror. “Gypsies act nice to your face, but alone, they beat their babies when they cry. And if they cry a lot, they just leave them in the forest, for the coyotes to eat.”
Paz frowned. He’d never heard of any Gypsies who did such things, but this was America, where people gunned down total strangers just for cutting them off in traffic. Anyway, what did he care about Gordo and his Gypsy baby? In a few hours, he and Ruperta would be gone.
“How old is the baby?” Ruperta’s voice was soft with concern.
“Three months,” replied Gordo. “They call her Lily.”
Paz looked back at Ruperta, again secretly checking to see if anyone was following them.
Only a Greyhound bus, way in the distance. So far, so good.
“Of course they won’t want to give her up,” Gordo continued. “So we might have to trick them.” His cold gray eyes speared Paz like a fish. He knows, thought Paz, panic once again crawling up his throat. He knows all abou
t the Scorpions. All about before.
“You and Ruperta need to do exactly as I say. Otherwise, there’ll be trouble.”
Paz made his face a mask before Logan’s hard eyes, but reached down and touched the cool ivory handle of the cuchillo in his sock. Oh, yes, my fat friend, he responded silently. Try to keep us from escaping the Scorpions, there will be trouble indeed.
They stopped for gas, then turned south, toward Atlanta. Paz felt cheered, somehow. In the year they’d spent in America, they’d stayed the longest in Atlanta, where they’d lived with his cousin Raoul. He and Ruperta loved the big, flashy city and wanted to stay, but Raoul had advised him to keep moving north. “You won’t be safe here,” he warned Paz. “The Scorpions know Atlanta, and even though the American cops now hunt Arabs, eventually they will catch you, too. Here,” he said, giving him a slip of paper with a name and an address scrawled on it. “Julio Mendez’s cousin has just quit working for this lady in Tennessee. She is very rich, and will now perhaps need someone new. Anyway, it will be safer for you up there.” So they took a bus to Nashville, then walked the thirty miles to Señora’s grand house. She hadn’t wanted to hire them at first, but Ruperta, who didn’t mind making a fool of herself with her bad English, convinced her truthfully that she was an excellent maid, and untruthfully that Paz knew all about cattle and farming. Until now, it had worked out well. The cows were easy enough to figure out, and Ruperta kept Señora’s fancy furniture and crystal chandeliers free of dust. Though Ruperta missed her friends in Atlanta, she liked having a bedroom all to themselves and a bathroom where roaches did not scatter each time the light came on.
They drove through a smaller town, then out into the country beyond. The land here was flat, but surrounded by tall gold mountains. A sharp breeze scuttled leaves along their route, and by the side of the road, men in overalls sold apples and firewood from the backs of their trucks. They passed campsite after campsite—Smoky Hollow, Whispering Pines, Unaka Creek. At one called Hillbilly Heaven, Paz saw a sign in the shape of an arrowhead that read “Save Our Bones.” Three cop cars sat opposite the entrance, holding back a crowd of angry, hard-hatted obreros waving signs. Two long-haired men wearing red T-shirts stood at the entrance of the campground, their arms crossed against their chests, their faces hard and unforgiving.
Call the Devil by His Oldest Name Page 7