by Lon Frank
Agnes was struggling to kneel on one knee, then the other without success, when Robert plopped down beside the wounded man. Nodding toward his leggy partner, Agent Redford showed his own ID card.
“Agents Redford and Maggart, F-A-C-T. Are ...are you Judge Williams?”
The bleeding man managed a surprisingly brilliant smile. “Folks around here call me Wingnut Williams.”
“Yeah, figgers. Well, Judge Wingnut, what happened, exactly?”
“I don’t rightly know. I was on my way over to talk to the clown who always comes to the festival every year, when this old, and I mean old, woman steps out in front of me. She yells something at the clown that sounded like, I don’t know, like ‘Painted Man!’ Well, they must have known each other, because the old guy was doing some juggling, and takes one look at her and drops his balls on the spot.”
Redford turned pointedly and looked up at his partner.
“Yeah, well, I know just how he felt.”
Agnes shot him a look back that any kid with an older sister could interpret as ‘I’ll get you later, you little creep’. Then she pushed him aside and just squatted in front of the magistrate, her knees out at 45-degree angles and her hands demurely holding the hem of her dress.
“Judge Wingn ...uh,”
“Williams.”
“Judge Williams, this woman, the old one, was she by chance an Indian?”
“Well, she might have been. Yes. She was dressed funny-like, with a shawl and head scarf and all. Anyway, she says to the clown, ‘Still Water Woman knows who you are. Still Water Woman has come for you.’ Then, she holds out this black knife, chipped like an arrowhead, you know, only longer. It was about then that I put my hand on her shoulder and got this to show for it. Man, but she was fast, like a cat, but her face was as wrinkled as a wadded up newspaper.”
Agent Redford somehow procured a bright red candy apple while the Judge was talking, and now spewed little bits of gooey pink on the wounded man’s otherwise-bloodstained shirt.
“I knew it! It was that pot smokin’ old broad from the desert.”
For once, Agnes didn’t tell him to shut up. Her face was beginning to get a worried look of comprehension and as she asked the next question, she already knew the answer.
“What else, Judge, what else did she say?’
“Well, by that time, I was pretty busy bleeding, but she said he had to come with her now and she grabbed him by the arm, with the knife by his throat. He said, “Where?” and, I don’t know exactly, you know the kids were goin’ ape-shit by then and squealin’ like stuck pigs, and I’m sittin’ in the dirt, bleeding like one, but it sounded like...like ‘white shampoo’.”
As the paramedics wheeled the wounded judge, still waving to the crowd, into the ambulance, Robert shook his head sadly.
“Well, I guess that’s that. We might as well go home and call old Iron Knickers and tell her we lost him. I’ll let you tell her that the old Indian broad beat us here and now has taken the clown for a wash-and-a-cut. And what the hell is white shampoo, anyway?”
Agent Agnes Maggart was already walking for the car.
“I swear, if brains were dynamite, you couldn’t blow your nose. It’s not ‘shampoo’, nimrod, it was ‘shaman’. She’s taking him to the White Shaman.”
Robert grabbed her arm, spun her around and stopped among the still-swirling crowd.
“But the White Shaman ...isn’t that ...isn’t that what she called...”
Agnes finished the thought for him.
“Arthur LeMaire.”
* * *
It was her usual: thick crust, extra cheese, green olives. No sausage, no pepperoni, no other topping but green olives. As she lifted a cold, half-eaten slice from the delivery box, she took a moment to reflect on the choices she had made in life.
She was the valedictorian of a prestigious prep school, a Rhodes Scholar with numerous scholastic awards, published while she was still in Harvard Law School, and at 36, an accomplished insider within the D.C. Loop. Now at 40-something, she was the head of one of the most quietly powerful agencies on earth, but at what cost? Cold pizza instead of a romantic candlelight dinner, stacks of research data rather than photos of grandchildren, pacing the floor of a dimly lit office rather than a moonrise stroll on the beach.
But tonight she had work to do, so Doris Haggarty took another bite and filed her musings away for other rainy nights. Agent Maggart called in her report earlier that afternoon with the distressing news of their near-miss on Lucky the clown. Who would have guessed that the old Indian woman could have found him ahead of FACT, with its resources?
And who could have known the role Still Water Woman had chosen to play? How did she know the clown as the ‘Painted Man’, and why did she call LeMaire the ‘White Shaman’? And most of all, where was she taking Lucky, and why was she taking him to LeMaire?
As she absentmindedly put the remaining pizza slice back in the box, her hand knocked off a large book with little red and yellow sticky tabs attached to various pages. It was titled ‘Ancient Art of Texas Rock Shelters’, and was one of a half-dozen tomes a research assistant had brought earlier in the day. Perhaps it was her melancholy mood or perhaps it was the frustration at losing the old clown, but instead of picking up the book, Doris Haggarty swore softly and soundly kicked it right on the spine.
As if it were some prop in a magician’s act, the heavy cover of the book popped open to a page in the tenth chapter, previously yellow-tabbed by the young assistant. Shocked at her own display of temper, Doris bent to pick it up and was suddenly startled by the photograph which took up most of the left-hand page. It was a large painting of an abstract male ascending the rock face with wide spread arms. It was white. The caption read:
“Majestic figure, often associated with bird symbols and other flying figures. Pecos River Area, Period 1. Always painted in white with outlines of red or black. Archaically known as the ‘White Shaman’.”
Doris Haggarty grabbed an enlarged photo from another pile on her desk and dropped to her knees on the floor beside the book, without daring to touch it. The picture she held was one from Agnes’s photographic report of the pictographs in the little hidden mesa to which Luca Sanchez had led them. She laid the photos side-by-side and then gave a little whistle.
“So that’s where she’s taking him.”
* * *
Agent Agnes Maggart was still sleeping off the long road trip to Louisiana and back. As in all her dreams, she was only 5’2” tall and very amply endowed. She wore the ruffled costume of a Bavarian beer hall maid and was delighted in serving endless tables of grinning men who shouldered each other aside to peer into the magnificent recesses of her cleavage.
She kicked all the covers off the bed and, as usual, her feet stuck out six inches past the end of the mattress. She twitched her fingers in anticipation of delivery of another armload of tankards while her open mouth emitted a contented snoring rasp.
The phone began to ring.
* * *
“Hey, listen lady, my hands are startin’ to go numb.”
“Still Water Woman is sorry.”
Lucky’s wrists were lashed behind his back with a thin but tough rawhide thong. He was positioned on his knees in the passenger floorboard of the old truck, his red rubber nose resting on the faded Navajo blanket seat cover.
“Yeah, yeah, well ol’ Lucky is sorry too, now why don’t you just drop me somewhere and we’ll call it even?”
“Still Water Woman is chosen.”
This was the same statement she used to answer all of his protests during the long drive westward. The Louisiana police got a late start in their pursuit and by that time the rusty pickup was safely hidden in an abandoned garage outside New Iberia. With the coming of darkness, the old woman tied Lucky in his position on the floor and headed along the southern highway through the little fishing towns of Grand Chenier and Johnson’s Bayou, across the old drawbridge at Sabine Pass and into Texas.
Th
ey traveled all night and were now in the high mesquite country of the Edwards Plateau. They would reach the desert mesa by evening. Lucky tried to remain calm, but by then his patience and the skin of his knees were wearing thin.
“For cryin’ out loud, ya old coot, just what is it that this Still Water Woman’s been chosen for? And what does it have to do with me? “
To her credit, the old Indian did look remorseful, or perhaps just weary of her journey. She placed a hand on her breast and said in a softer voice.
“Still Water Woman.”
She looked at the old clown to make sure he understood before she continued.
“The grandmothers have told the daughters of my family for many, many lives, the old story. Since the first gift of quiet waters to the ancient ones. Since the spirits were painted in the hidden mesa, we have kept the secret and watched for you.”
“For me? Why me?”
“The story tells of a shaman that came from the sky with skin of white and eyes the color of summer grass. He brought death and hunger to the people when they fed him. The waters tell the prophecy of the Painted Man who will come to bring back the evil of the White Shaman. You are the Painted Man and you must not be allowed to do this. Still Water Woman is chosen.”
“Wait ... just wait a minute here. You think I’m gonna bring back this guy? I don’t even know no shaman. And just where am I s’posed to bring him back FROM?”
Still Water Woman looked for a long moment at the grease paint smile and shaggy orange hair framing old eyes that seemed even yet to sparkle like the wind in winter skies.
“Time, Painted Man. From time.”
Lucky stared into the face of the faded Yei dancer that stretched across the back of the seat, as if he suddenly recognized an old friend—or an old adversary.
“From time. Holy Mother’s bunions; Tsarthor, it’s got to be Tsarthor. Man, I wish I’d never seen him in the first place, or traveled on that consarned machine.”
* * *
The sun lingered in the west over the dry outcrops known as Antelope Ridge, as though it would finally defy time and order and permanently reside in the desert sky.
The tan sedan sped west from San Antonio for most of the day, its occupants unknowing that the old truck with green fenders and the captive clown was now only an hour directly ahead of them. Both vehicles were heading for the same lonely spot of desert in the same moment in the wavering river of time.
Agent Redford was driving, and even though he wore cheap, dark Italian sunglasses, he held up his hand to shade his eyes from the ferocious slant of the sun.
“Geeze, Agnes, don’t it never get dark out here? That sun has been in my eyes for two hours.”
Agent Agnes Maggart, for once, wore a pair of crisply starched khaki shorts, her magnificent legs drawn up in front of her face, her posture dictated by the tiny amount of legroom left to her when Robert drove. Her cheeks were pink from the glare through the windshield and she wearily leaned forward to rest her forehead on bare knees. Her unbound dark hair spilled down over incredibly long thighs. Robert put a stubby-fingered hand on her shoulder then pushed a plastic bottle of water on the seat towards her.
She took a sip, but her voice was still softly dry.
“Yeah, partner. It’s just our luck, I guess. Today’s the longest day of the year; the summer solstice.”
* * *
The point of the obsidian blade was incredibly sharp and Lucky’s back was already oozing blood from several small pin pricks. His size 47, lime-green clown shoes were not exactly the ideal footwear for hiking through the desert, and Lucky stumbled and fell often in the growing darkness. Prickly pear and ocotillo spines were lodged in his hands and forearms, but the old woman only urged him on with the point of the black knife.
“Cryin’ crawfish, lady! I’m turnin’ into a pin cushion here, and all you can say is, “Hurry hurry, get up!” Just what’s the rush, anyway? Do they roll up the snakes around here at midnight?”
Still Water Woman looked at the darkening sky.
“It is the night. The chosen night. You must come now. Come fast.”
“Oh great, I shoulda known. The chosen night. And the chosen ol’ biddy with the chosen knife pokin’ me in my chosen butt. Ain’t I the lucky one, now? Let me tell you again, I ain’t got no intention of bringing back Tsarthor no how, so what’s so special about this particular night, and where are we goin’ anyway?”
The seeress pointed to a sheer rock face rising before them, illuminated in shades of blue by the already-risen desert moon.
“It is the long-day. Here the people brought the White Shaman. This night he rose to the sky. This night the light brought hunger and sickness to the people. Come now, fast.”
She pushed him towards the small opening at the base of the cliff face, and motioned for him to wiggle through. One lime-green shoe became irretrievably wedged, and when Lucky pulled his foot free, he felt the point of the black knife on his threadbare sole.
“All right, all right, I’m out. Stop jabbin’ me, will ya’? What now, you gonna watch me all night to make sure I don’t do no hokie-pokie magic or somethin’?”
The moonlight began to filter into the little enclosure and the Indian woman silently pointed at the walls above their heads. Lucky’s mouth fell open as he slowly turned around and the figures seemed to leap from the rock face with the steady sweep of moonlight. Hunters crouched among crevices, stalking long-legged antelopes that leapt in terror at their shadowy approach. Camps emerged with lodges, children laughing among women laboring over cooking fires and feathered creatures flushed away from the frantic grasp of a red panther.
Finally, a great white figure suddenly seemed to thrust itself into the moon’s glow—a long, pure white body with arms outstretched and reaching for swirling heavens punctuated by lightning and smoke.
Still Water Woman pushed the old clown to his knees in front of the figure and stepped behind him as if he were a docile sheep waiting to be sheared. His red rubber nose was pushed aside to his left cheek and one orange suspender slid off his shoulder, allowing his baggy waistband to expose a flabby crescent of flesh.
“Still Water Woman is sorry. Still Water Woman is chosen. Painted Man is chosen. Here the people tried to stop the evil. Here, Still Water Woman will die. Here. Painted Man will die. The story of the people will remember this night.”
“Now, wait, wait just a minute Miz Still Water. I mean, can’t we talk about this a little? You know I never liked ol’ Whitey either; been darn glad he disappeared in fact. Do you know any other old stories? Maybe one where we live happily ever after. Maybe? Huh? Oh, fer cryin’ out loud.”
She stepped closer to the old clown and placed a firm hand on his forehead, pulling his head back. The finely chipped edge of the ancient blade, darker than the night around them, glittered in the moonlight as she brought it up against the skin of his throat.
* * *
Even in shorts, it was awkward for Agnes to get on her hands and knees, so Robert was the first to enter the little passageway into the hidden mesa. By the time Agnes had likewise wiggled her way through, he was nowhere to be seen.
Agnes thought to herself, ‘Great, just grrrrrreat! Where has that little weasel gotten off to this time?’ As she moved softly along the painted walls, she saw a shadowy figure almost in the center of the opening. She eased closer and realized it was two figures, one kneeling and one standing over it. Then she saw the glitter of the blade as it was lifted to the throat of the kneeling man. She didn’t dare take time to think and strode as rapidly as she could up behind the two people, the dusty sand making her movement totally silent. She was barely six feet away when she pointed her .38 caliber Lady Smith revolver at the old woman.
“Federal agents. Drop the knife and step away from the bozo.”
The old woman turned her head slowly, until her eyes locked with those of the young willowy agent. The two women stared at one another as though across a gulf of time, one of the ancient world
, one of the modern; one withered and bent on death, the other firm and demanding life; each determined in her cause. For a long moment their eyes held, then a cloud covered the face of the moon.
Agnes thought it was the strangest sound. A long, high wail bouncing from one figure to another along the curtains of painted ancient stone. Pitched and tinted with pain and confusion, it echoed and whirled about her head.
She had never before heard herself scream.
* * *
The cloud passed the moon and the sound stopped as Agnes forced her mouth to close. She felt something warm on her left thigh and looked down at the handle of the black knife protruding from the shining expanse of skin. It startled her even more to find that her hands were empty and hanging useless at her sides. Her eyes started to scan the ground for her gun, when she realized the old woman was holding it, leveled at her chest.
“You are too late. Still Water Woman is chosen. The Painted Man will die. Still Water Woman will die. You will die.”
“Yeah? I don’t THINK so!”
Agent Redford stepped from the shadow with his own gun drawn and pointed at the old woman’s head. He positioned himself directly in front of Agnes and in the strange light of the moon, seemed suddenly as tall as his thin partner.
“You see, this lady and me are a team. And I, I care for her. A lot. And if you think I’m gonna let you shoot her just so you can get your voodoo merit badge, you better think again, babe.”
When Agnes screamed, Lucky fainted and fell sideways out of the grasp of Still Water Woman. As she stabbed the agent and jumped back, the old woman unknowingly positioned herself so that her feet straddled the clown’s head, face down in the sand. Her finger tightened on the trigger of the little revolver and things began to happen very quickly.