Power in the Blood

by Greg Matthews

  “Can we go to New York, Mama?”

  “Perhaps. I must think about so many things.”

  Omie looked into her mother’s mind and saw there a swirling cloud of grayish purple, its folding surfaces forming faces upon faces: her old papa, Bryce; her new papa who was no longer her papa; a very beautiful lady Omie had never seen before, with lovely arms that seemed to multiply as she watched, like the statue of an ancient Hindu goddess Omie had seen in a museum in New York before they boarded the ship; and there were two other faces present also, although these were indistinct: Omie could barely tell they were boys, so vague were their outlines, but their voices were sharp enough; they called each other Mr. Duckfeet and Mr. Pigeontoes, and laughed, then were driven away by the three grown-up faces again. Omie noticed that Papa Leo’s face was uglier than she remembered it, with a mean expression and thunderous words rolling backward from his mouth. She extracted her eye from Zoe’s thoughts and resumed her dreams of seeing New York again.

  The house Zoe rented on the edge of Durango was small and neat, with just enough room for herself and Omie. Omie called it Elk Baby House, but Zoe didn’t like that, so Omie learned simply to call it home-for-now. She did not attend school, but went for long walks with Zoe in the hills around the town. Mother and daughter talked little on these lengthy rambles, and once, when Omie sneaked inside Zoe’s skull for just a moment, she saw there a more temperate arrangement of form and color than before. The cloudy faces were gone, replaced by an interior landscape best described as featureless. Zoe looked hard at her when she did this, and Omie retreated quickly. “Leave me alone,” Zoe said, and Omie blushed.

  They had followed this casual regimen for less than three weeks, when a caller knocked oh their door. Zoe found herself facing a man who introduced himself as the local postmaster, who then asked, “Your name Dugan, by any chance, missus?”

  “Yes.”

  “Letter here for you,” he said, producing it from his coat. “Come by way of general delivery a couple weeks ago, but there’s no one in this town I know of has got that name, then my sister’s husband says her cousin rented this place out just recent to a party called Dugan, and I figured maybe you’re the one.”

  Zoe knew the name had been fixed in the renter’s mind because of her missing arm and Omie’s blue birthmark.

  “First name, ma’am, if you please? Got to be sure now.”

  “Zoe.”

  “Strange how things work out sometimes, don’t you think?” he said, handing her the letter.

  “Yes, very strange. Thank you.”

  “Might be best to check at the post office every now and then, ma’am, in case there’s more.”

  “I will. Thank you again.”

  Zoe recognized the handwriting, although she did not know the writer; it was the same hand that had penned the letter informing her of the existence of Imogen Starr. How had her mysterious informant known she was in Durango? Zoe opened the envelope and read, in the same awkward scrawl: You have been cheated. Go back and get a lawyer, a smart one, then have him get you the green book from your husband the cheat. You went away too soon and too easy. He is laughing at you now you are gone. A friend.

  Zoe read the letter over again, trying to understand. How could Leo have cheated her, and what on earth was the green book? The envelope was postmarked Glory Hole. She felt faint. Her anonymous friend had been right the first time; could he be right again? She had felt shame (for having deceived Leo, and even more for having been found out) and humiliation (for having meekly signed away her marriage without protest) and the all-encompassing wave of despair that comes with having lost everything, and being responsible for the loss. Now these emotions of failure were supplanted, as she leaned against the doorway, by another; Zoe felt the cold hand of suspicion clutch at her, and close behind came anger, and hard on its jagged heels came the need for unspecified vengeance, all from the reading of a few lines inked on cheap paper. Someone was watching over her, some faceless earthbound angel, wingless, but with eyes and ears close to Leo.

  “Who was at the door, Mama?”

  “A post office man.”

  “With a letter? Who sent it?”

  “I … don’t know. Please don’t ask me questions just now. Why not go outside and play.”

  Omie pursed her lips sulkily, then went out to the backyard, where there was a rope swing suspended from a large cottonwood tree. Omie soon had its wooden seat swinging back and forth in dangerously high arcs, although she herself did not set foot off the porch.

  Zoe forced herself to be calm. If Leo had cheated her, she could not think of what, apart from a lifelong commitment to her. Should he have given her more than a million dollars? Did it matter that he did not? Who could possibly need more than that huge amount? It lay in a Denver bank, transferred from Leo’s account, and she could take all of it at any time and do with it as she wished. How could she have been cheated? Why had the writer taken the trouble to upset her this way? She found she could not dismiss the message as some kind of troublemaking; the first letter had helped her see what had been hidden from her, and it was unlikely the same individual would now attempt to steer her astray. Should she do something, hire a lawyer as suggested? Or should she take what she had and sever herself completely from any further connection to Leo and Glory Hole?

  She went to the back window and watched the swing heaving itself to and fro, unoccupied, while Omie scowled at it from the porch. There were no other houses nearby, no neighbors to witness the scene and carry word of it to the population of Durango, but how long would their isolation last? Sooner or later Omie would commit an outrageous act of some kind in public view; and even if she did not, the news that the house had been rented by the ex-wife and daughter of Leo Brannan must eventually catch up with them. There would be no peace for Zoe and Omie in Colorado, possibly no peace anywhere, unless they went abroad. Perhaps she should ask Omie if she would like to live in Australia, which Zoe had heard was warm and dry. But that would involve a lengthy sea voyage, and the short trip to Bermuda had soured Zoe on that mode of transportation. Perhaps they should move to Canada, even if the winters there were longer and harsher. Or even Mexico, despite its lack of civilized comforts. She really could not make up her mind, the letter had upset her so. The swing was slowing as Omie became bored with it.

  And then it came to Zoe, the certainty that Leo was indeed stealing what was hers. Before she even met the man, on her first evening in Leadville, Zoe had been told by Omie that a man with one blue eye and one brown eye was stealing from them. The money they had hidden in their hotel room was gone, but Leo Brannan had not taken it; Omie’s vision and the theft of that money were coincidental but unrelated; Omie had seen further into the future than she herself had realized, and been a witness to events only now unfolding. Zoe should have guessed the truth much earlier, when evidence for the fickle nature of Omie’s prognostications began revealing itself, but that would have tainted her relations with Leo long before these were soured of their own volition, in accordance with whatever forces shaped the affairs of men. Omie tapped into these forces rarely, often without true understanding of their capriciousness, the way in which they let slip their natural veils for a hasty glimpse of incidents out of time, out of context. Omie had unwittingly seen the Leo who one distant day would become what he was in her fleeting impression of him—a thief.

  The swing had stopped. Zoe knew what she must do.

  The afternoon was warm, so while they waited for the train, Drew lay down and tipped his hat over his face to doze. The rest of the gang were some distance from him, talking among themselves, and he found it easy to ignore anything but the dark interior of his Stetson. The train was still forty minutes away, carrying in its express car a fortune in wages for the miners of Glory Hole.

  No one had ever robbed a Brannan payroll before, and that was enough for Lodi; this was the robbery that would put his name on the front pages of newspapers nationwide; “history-making” was his
term for the job, and he was made confident by its very dangers. Drew had often heard Lodi say he had a “nose” for the success or failure of a plan, and Lodi made a point of telling Nate and Levon and himself that his nose had declared the Brannan robbery a winner in advance, with plenty of cash for everyone, more cash than they would ever see again if they robbed trains till they were ninety.

  While he dozed, Drew became aware of a faint humming. Something was close to his face, producing the sound. When he looked, he saw it was a hummingbird, tiny and beautiful, its body a blaze of pink and blue, the wings mere blurrings alongside. Its beak was aimed directly between Drew’s eyes as it hovered there, the fantastic beating of its invisible wings cooling his brow with the small wind they created. It was the loveliest thing Drew could recall ever having seen, and he was amazed at its tameness; the hummingbird was less than four inches from him, the tiny thunder of its wings louder than the droning of a bumblebee.

  Watching its stationary flight, Drew became aware of another strange thing—his hat was still over his face. How was it possible that the bird was so close to him? How could he see it at all, since it could not have flown inside his hat, the band of which fitted snugly along his jaw and across his brow. Yet it was there, fanning him like a diminutive slave, peering into his eyes with its own, and Drew suddenly was afraid. Something that could not happen was happening, and that contradicted Drew’s notion of an ordered world. The hummingbird inside his hat was alarming, a delicate intruder that should not have been there. Drew sought understanding of the event by assuming it was a dream, yet he was conscious in a very physical way of the warm earth beneath him and the sun on his hands; he felt the hole in the heel of his left sock and the mild discomfort of his gun belt pressing into the small of his back; he could hear the rest of the gang murmuring nearby, and still the hummingbird thrummed its impossible monotone inches from his nose. Drew tried to move, to stir his body and throw off the hat covering his face, but found he could not. The hummingbird had paralyzed him somehow with its siren song, made him helpless, a giant held down by wires of wind. Now the vibration of its wings seemed to resonate inside his skull, causing the very bone to quiver, and Drew was close to panicking, when his body suddenly lurched upward from the ground in a single convulsive paroxysm, a spasm that carried him several inches into the air and let him down hard on the bullets girdling his hips.

  Hands now freed by his galvanic release snatched the hat from his face, and there was no hummingbird there at all. He looked and looked inside it, convinced so real an object must have been present to affect him as it had, but there was no hummingbird. He heard the sound of laughter, and saw the gang watching him.

  “Get yourself stung there, Bones?” asked Levon.

  “There was a hummingbird …,” Drew said.

  “A what?”

  “A hummingbird … inside my hat.”

  “Oh, a hummingbird. I hate to get hummingbirds inside my hat, I really do. They shit in your hair, the little bastards.”

  Nate cackled softly. Even Lodi was smiling. Drew felt like a fool. He jammed the hat onto his head, embarrassed to have told them about the hummingbird. It had been a dream after all, the most realistic he had ever experienced.

  “When’s that goddamn train coming?” he said.

  “Be along in ten minutes or so,” Lodi told him. “Plenty of time yet for you to catch that hummingbird, Bones.”

  Drew turned from them and checked the load in his Colt, his face burning.

  “Here she comes,” drawled Levon.

  A smudge of whitish smoke rose into the air like distant dragon’s breath.

  Leo’s reluctance to marry again so soon after the annulment was reason enough for Rowland Price to be grateful. He still had not found out a single verifiable fact concerning the lovely Imogen Starr, and was convinced by then the woman had invented the name. It was too charming, too appropriate for someone such as herself, to be true. But short of his arranging to have the truth beaten from her, Rowland’s hands were tied. Leo was still infatuated, and would allow no discussion whatsoever of his personal life. The departure of Zoe and Omie had been accomplished with a minimum of fuss, the false wife completely cowed by the confrontation with her mendacity, and Leo was disinclined to tempt fate by allowing any further delving into the private past of the woman he currently slept beside. What had worked in exposing Zoe might work equally well in disclosing a side to Imogen that Leo preferred not to know of; that was how Rowland saw the situation. Leo Brannan had revealed himself, during the course of the marital crisis, to be a man much like any other, but Rowland’s commitment to the agenda of the Praetorians was unswerving; Leo Brannan was the man of the future hour, and his reputation was Rowland’s responsibility, however onerous or disappointing on a personal level that task might prove to be. He still did not trust Imogen, and would not allow himself to do so until a small white-haired woman should come to him, declare herself Imogen’s grandmother, and quote chapter and verse to Rowland concerning her granddaughter’s many virtues and complete absence of vice. Even then he would be wary.

  The summons to Leo’s office was delivered by Jenks. When Rowland arrived he found Leo pacing the floor in his customary circles, his lengthening brow creased by concern. Rowland took a chair without waiting for an invitation, so firm was the bond between them now.

  “On my desk,” said Leo, without ceasing to pace. “A letter from her.”

  “Her?”

  “Zoe. Read it aloud, please.”

  Rowland picked up the sheet. “‘Dear Leo, unless you can explain to me by return mail the significance of the green book and your attempt to cheat me of what is rightfully mine, there will be legal repercussions such as you have never known. I mean what I say. Explain yourself with speed and honesty. Regards, Zoe.’”

  Leo flung himself into his overstuffed chair and spun it to the left and right in consternation. “How does she know …?” he asked himself. “How could she possibly be aware …?”

  “Of what? Green book? What might that be?”

  “It isn’t a book, it’s a file, a perfectly ordinary folder, which happens to be green.”

  “And the perfectly ordinary folder contains?”

  “The agreement I made with her. The papers she signed.”

  “Nothing else?”

  “The report prepared by my attorney on the exact nature of Zoe’s legal ownership of Brannan Mining. The file is rather thick, which makes it resemble a book, I suppose, but how in hell’s name can she possibly know about it? Someone is spying for her, Rowland, and I want to find out who it is before she’s given more shells to fire against me, by God!”

  “This is dangerous ground the lady has stepped upon. Her knowledge must be scant, or she would state what she knows, rather than challenging you to provide it. Whatever clues her spy is feeding her, they can only be scraps, Leo, cryptic bits and pieces.”

  “Even so, I want it stopped!”

  “Of course. You regard your attorney as being above suspicion?”

  “Absolutely. He candidly admits that his role in the deception of Zoe is a criminal offense. He’s the last person who would betray me.”

  “And his staff?”

  “My own people, but unknown to me personally.”

  “And there is where you’ll find your spy, I don’t doubt.”

  “Find him for me, Rowland, and when you have him, don’t let the fellow know we’re onto him. I wish to anticipate every move in Zoe’s game.”

  “Leo, the game should never have begun. Zoe should have taken her million and retired to a life of ease. The fact that she has not, and chooses instead to provoke you with threats, suggests to me that the game must be ended immediately. You know the stakes, Leo.”

  “I do, and am determined to win any battle she cares to mount against me.”

  “Leo, there is no time here for open warfare. Zoe has elected to burrow back into your life by subterfuge. You must stop her by different means. I can arrange
it, without further effort on your part. You understand, of course, that we are discussing the endgame.”

  “The endgame.”

  “One move, out of the blue, and it will be over and done with. Finished.”

  “I understand you.”

  “Then shall I proceed?”

  “Immediately. Find the one responsible for telling her about the green file. I won’t have traitors in my business.”

  “And the endgame?”

  Leo spun his chair around to face the window. Rowland studied the back of his head; Leo was becoming very bald there. The silence between them lengthened.

  Eventually Leo said, “I suppose you must proceed.”

  Rowland left the room, quietly closing the door.

  She was proud of herself for demanding an answer from Leo. It would be interesting to see if he responded with protestations of innocence, or threats and bluster. He was a weak man in many ways, and would very likely try the first means before the second. In either case, Zoe would resist his efforts to silence or placate her. It was not so much the money at stake (she assumed that was the only commodity he could cheat her of) as the principle of justice. Zoe did not know yet how strong were her grounds for accusing him, since her correspondent had failed to provide specific information. In the beginning, at least, it would be a game of bluff. She felt confident of out-bluffing Leo, a man with so little strength of character he had allowed his life to be diverted by nothing more than a pretty face and a shapely pair of arms. He was despicable, really, and it would be a fine thing to bring him down several pegs.

  She told Omie nothing of these developments, but of course Omie was aware, in her own sly fashion, of the tension emanating from her mother, and its familiar source.