Judas Horse ag-3

by April Smith

  That is the nasty irony: By placing an undercover in Dick Stone’s orbit, not only did we wake the beast but we armed him with righteous fury, too.

  “I have to tell you, as your contact agent, that it’s your choice as the undercover to decide whether or not you feel comfortable with the level of safety we can provide.” Donnato’s look is deeply still and troubling. Feeling seems to overflow his eyes.

  My head clears. Despite the fatigue, I find myself in a manic state of bungee-jump excitement. I want to get back — to the suspects, the drama, my role in it — to the roller-coaster ride. This is rapture, and there is no way back.

  “It’s a go.”

  “Then nail it,” Donnato says. “The prisoners are being released. Make sure you go home with Dick Stone.” It is 112 degrees in the tiny interrogation room. As we haul to our feet, Donnato surprises me with a daringly swift kiss on the mouth, leaving the sweet salt taste of apprehension and longing.

  The ragged activists are standing in the blustery sunlight outside the facility that houses the county sheriff’s department and jail. All the prisoners have been released on bail except for Bill Fontana, who is still being held for questioning. We gather in groups, our hair matted and our clothes mud-stained, survivors trading stories.

  Megan hugs me good-bye.

  “This is not the end of it,” she vows. “We’ll be back.” “You will,” I say forlornly. “I have no idea what I’ll be doing. Maybe living in a crapped-up town like this.” The sandstone building that houses the jail blends into a residential area, the single part of town that does not appear to have been completely desolated by the closing of the mill. There is a brick library and a new high school, where male youth wearing baggy pants and sporting goatees linger along the fence, glued to their cell phones, like everywhere else.

  “What do you mean?” Megan asks.

  She doesn’t have to turn around to sense that Dick Stone is standing now beside her, backlit, every thread on the shoulder of his white Navajo jacket magnified by the cold light. She reaches for his hand and their fingers entwine.

  “Ready to get out of here?” he asks.

  “Just a sec. What are you going to do, Darcy?”

  “I don’t know, Megan. I’m totally screwed. My landlord’s kicking me out. The cops impounded my car because it was parked overnight at the rest stop. It’ll cost a hundred and twenty-five bucks to get it back, and I don’t have a job right now; plus, I’ve been arrested again, so that’s on my record. And guys like Laumann get off scot-free.” “Be at peace and know that things are unfolding exactly as they should,” Dick Stone says enigmatically. He ties a bandanna around his big head. His tanned skin looks vibrant, as if it belongs in the daylight of the high desert; like he’s going out for pancakes, not as if he might have killed a man last night.

  Wind slices our faces, bringing genuine tears.

  “Really? The cops pulled my records. They saw I was arrested once before, for hacking a computer system down in L.A. They took me in for questioning and it got scary. They said if I didn’t want a felony charge, I’d have to give up names.” The wind cuts like diamonds.

  “Names?”

  “In the movement. Don’t worry. I didn’t.”

  A pause. They believe me.

  “You should have seen her last night, Julius, when she jumped into the middle of the horses to save poor Lillian. You were so determined, Darcy. I was so proud of you! You were utterly selfless,” Megan says. “You have a calling for this work.” We stand in silence in the shifting air. A big, fat, hairy tumbleweed gets stuck against the fence of the high school, where two kids are lighting cigarettes.

  I hope they don’t set that thing on fire.

  Dick Stone is watching me. I squint at his face in the billowy light but catch only the tail end of the look in his eyes, like the whisper of a closing door.

  He knows.

  “Could I crash with you guys? Just for a couple of days?” “Stay as long as you like,” Megan says.

  “I hate to ask. This wasn’t the game plan.” My eyes are watering from the wind and an insane euphoria.

  “She can share a room with Sara,” Megan’s telling Stone.

  “I have skills,” I offer, although not too fast. “This thing isn’t over. Not until we free the horses for good.” “See?” says Megan.

  Dick Stone doesn’t answer. He doesn’t argue, but he doesn’t agree, either, just squeezes Megan’s shoulder and fishes around in the big square pocket of the woolen Navajo jacket for the keys to the white truck. I pretend not to glimpse the butt of the Colt.

  Patience. It’s important in our line of work.

  PART THREE

  Sixteen

  It is a common American farmhouse, with a wraparound porch supported by spindle posts and decorated with carvings of Victorian lacework — the kind of house a young man rolling off a freight train from Missouri in 1898 would have said looked just like home. For a hundred years, it has survived searing valley summers and the creeping moisture of the winter with the worn-down crankiness of an arthritic farmer’s wife.

  Waiting on the front steps beside Darcy DeGuzman’s knapsack, I am trying to make friends with the house, now that I have come to stay, but it keeps shrugging me off with discomforting distractions: rotted floorboards, sinks rusting in the weeds, a pen with two goats and the three surviving ducks, a lidded cardboard box on the porch with mysterious scratching inside.

  Around the turn of the twentieth century, Megan tells me, lots of faraway places were starting to look like home, because factory-made houses could be sent across the country on the railroads. Megan’s grandfather did not have to crawl very far down the tracks to find a hog operation in the Willamette Valley remarkably like the one he’d just blown off in Jefferson City, Missouri. After a few thousand miles and a broken leg sustained in the decisive leap off the boxcar in which he had stolen a ride, this simple two-story homestead must have seemed like heaven to the boy when the farmer who owned the land pulled him from a ditch, dehydrated, two days later. At age fourteen, Megan’s grandfather apprenticed himself to the farmer on the spot, in the hope — like many of us have — that one day he would get back exactly what he had left behind.

  That is how Megan’s family came to own the place, and why it is a sanctuary to this day. Because of the kindness of that anonymous farmer, Megan believes this land is blessed, and she will not refuse shelter to animals or humans in need. That is the history anyway. The story she tells. Knowing that she and Dick Stone have shared a secret life on this overgrown, isolated property, undisturbed all these years, suggests another reason to hold on to Grandpa’s goods.

  The scratching in the box is making me edgy. Carefully, I open the lid, to discover half a dozen abandoned baby rabbits. I lift one out, holding the warm, soft body in my cupped hands as we share a wordless consolation.

  It’s sad in this world without a mom.

  A white pickup pulls into the driveway and Megan waves. I put the quivering bunny back.

  “Welcome to the lost farm,” she says cheerfully, carrying bags of groceries. “Whatever nobody else wants ends up here. Can you believe someone left these babies at the dump?” “What will happen to them?”

  “They’re ours.”

  “You have a big heart, Megan.”

  “I never had children, so I have animals. My neighbor once asked me to watch her llamas — she left to visit her sister and came back two years later.” Two years? My bullshit detector has started to ping, but Megan is laughing. It’s a joke. Loosen up. Megan is loose, in baggy work pants and an oversized orange linen shirt. Following her through the door, I see that since I last saw her at the BLM corrals, she has put streaks of raspberry and crimson in her ropy gray hair.

  Inside the farmhouse, the hot, dead air smells like the acres of clothes in the old bomb shelter, in the subbasement at Quantico, where we chose our costumes for the Bureau’s tireless mind games.

  “You will be observed for signs of deceit t
hat suggest you’re not who you say you are.” Here, also, time has a smell, and the smell has accumulated in the mismatched cushions and Oriental rugs and curtains of gold lamé, and it is gripping me with vivid awareness.

  I have penetrated someone’s inner world.

  I revel in the treachery, experiencing the same satisfaction Darcy would have felt hacking into the biotech company’s computer system. Fact or fiction, I discover there is a tasty thrill in crossing the line. I am elated not to be who I say I am.

  “Can I make you a cup of tea?”

  “That would be lovely.”

  Megan goes, and I want to twirl around the room, a treasure trove of clues, although you would need a team of investigators to comb the layers of cozy kitsch — ashtrays, lamps, Depression glass, doilies, tin trays, detective magazines — everything carefully arranged and dusted.

  On the wall is an authentic DeKalb barn sign — the flying corn with the wings — the same deliberate symbol of the Midwest as on Dick Stone’s cap. Well, folks, we’ve already deciphered that one. On the wooden mantel is a collection of clocks, new and old, all of them accurate. Again, the scent and feel of time, bottled and corked — like their twenty-year outlaw run?

  There is a gentle clicking sound. I look up from the broken-down sofa where I have sunk to my hips, surprised to see a stunning young woman enter through the swaying bones of bamboo.

  She is the same rescuing angel I saw when I first came to the farm, yet the appearance of Sara Campbell from the same curtain through which Megan Tewksbury vanished, bearing the tea that Megan promised, seems a mocking transformation of the older woman; as if Megan, with her boozy sentiment and half-dyed dreadlocks, had been banished to the drudgery of the kitchen so this radiant being could emerge.

  Not that the girl is scornful in any way. She is a barefoot geisha in blue jeans, back straight, kneeling gracefully to set the teacup down.

  “Hi.” She smiles uncertainly.

  “I’m Darcy. We met when I brought the ducks.” “That’s right. The sick one died. It was awful.” She has long, thin arms and legs, and blond hair so fine and cropped so short, it lays like a halo around her head.

  She eases down, sitting cross-legged on the rug.

  “Megan says you’re committed.”

  “I am.”

  “So am I.”

  “That’s good.”

  “We all are.”

  “Who is?”

  “Everyone who lives here.”

  Sara’s face has become serious. Her grave composure clutches at your heart. Barely out of her teens, her impeccable beauty, like that of the wild horses, arises from genuine innocence. Looking up, her eyes are winsome and unself-conscious, and the curve of her temple is enough to make you want to pick up a pen and draw.

  “And that would be?”

  “Well, it’s me, Megan, Slammer, and Julius. And the animals.” Take it slowly.

  “Julius — he mainly takes care of the orchard?” “The trees are his passion. I guess he’s the one who turned this place around.” “You guess?”

  “I’ve only been living here three months.” “And Julius?”

  “He and Megan have been together for a while. I’m not really sure.” “He told me he was a bandit.”

  Sara laughs. “Julius has a wonderful sense of play.” “‘Play’?”

  “He’s just messin’.”

  “How did you all”—I make a motion, like stirring a pot—“meet?” Sara draws her legs up. She turns her head and lays a cheek on her knees. I can see her wistful look reflected in the large round mirror of a dressing table. Throughout the rooms, there are thrift shop Art Deco dressing tables with big round mirrors. You turn a corner and catch a shocking glimpse of yourself in the circular glass, as if the house is watching you with many eyes.

  “It was Julius,” she says, sighing, “who saved us from the streets.” And she’s in love with Daddy?

  “Slammer and I were squatting with a family under a bridge in Portland. Not your normal family — everyone was a runaway. The oldest guy, SB, was in his twenties. There were a lot of drugs, a lot of violence, but what made me want to leave was the way people turned on each other, just because SB told them to.

  “His name was really Satan’s Boy. It was really Duane, or whatever. There was this one girl who was mentally retarded — we used to call her Bubbles — and one day SB accused her of lying to him…. You know what?” She stops. “That’s negative energy, and I’m here now.” “Did something bad happen to Bubbles?”

  Her face closes up and she presses her lips against her knee, then sinks her teeth into her own skin and chews on it in order to keep from seeing it again, the bad thing that happened to Bubbles.

  “You don’t have to do that.” I gently touch her hair. “It’s okay.” She stops and turns her face away. The sun raises a soft orange corona along the ridge of her bare shoulders. She is wearing two fraying tank tops, one over the other, and a heavy silver pendant of three interlocking triangles.

  “Megan has the same necklace,” I observe.

  She sniffles. “It’s a valknot.”

  “Nordic, right?”

  “There was a king in the seventh century.” She turns her head and lifts wet, translucent eyes. “King Odin. It represents his powers — to bind or to open our minds. It means ‘knot of the chosen.’” “Cool. Can I get one?”

  “Only if you’ve taken the vows to follow the Allfather,” she says cautiously.

  “Is Julius the Allfather?”

  She nods.

  “And the vows?”

  “I can’t talk about that.”

  I grin. “Well, I guess we’re all chosen. For something. Like you guys winding up here together.” I make the stirring motion again. “Slammer, huh? What’s his story?” “Survival.”

  “Got it. Did you two run away together?” She laughs a little and wipes her eyes. “Are you kidding? We’re from totally different backgrounds. Where my parents live, he couldn’t get past the gate.” “Your parents must be looking for you.”

  She shrugs. “They gave up on me in high school. They are not in my life. In the squat, Slammer and I made a pact to stick together, so when Julius showed up and said he could live on the farm, Slammer said if I couldn’t go, he wouldn’t go, either.” Dick Stone cruises the underbelly of Portland, recruiting street kids — young and vulnerable and not easily traced.

  I sip the tea. It tastes like twigs.

  “I left home, too. Moved to Portland from Los Angeles.” Sara is bemused. “I can’t see you on the street,” she says, which I find vaguely insulting. “Don’t ever go to Pioneer Square at night. You can’t imagine how those kids are living.” Her eyes fill again. “It’s so sad.” I give her a moment and ask, “Where are you from?” “Dirt,” she says, floating to her feet as Megan comes back through the curtain.

  “Let’s get you settled.”

  The three of us climb the dark-wood staircase to the attic room the girl and I will share. The wallpaper is fragile and old-fashioned, sweetheart roses, original to the house. I pick out the daily life of this jerry-rigged clan from the smells that have risen up the staircase on strata of hot air: cat food, musty rugs, herbal shampoo, sage incense, and weed.

  “Where is Julius?”

  “Out on his tractor,” Megan replies. “He’s always on his tractor.” And I hear it through the window on the landing before I can see Dick Stone through the panes of glass, a small figure in a straw hat on a red machine, going up and down the rows with unwavering resolve.

  At the turning of the stair, directly on the wall in front of us, is yet another timepiece, an antique wall clock in a simple wooden case, hands as thin as pencil lines, trembling past the hour. The steady drone of the tractor goes back and forth, a rhythm of comfort and plenty, in harmony with the swaying of the pendulum of the clock and the roses on the wall, and the scent of baking piecrust blooming up the stairs — promising to fill you up, whatever your emptiness may be.

 
Seventeen

  Herbert Laumann’s sick baby is up two or three times in the night, so they take her into their bed. She is finally asleep, a soft, warm weight on her father’s chest, when he is forced by the alarm to face the dawn. From the quality of light peeping underneath the Roman shades, he knows the sky will be clear. No rain.

  Ambition, that indefatigable gear, gets the priority of the day turning in Herbert Laumann’s sleep-deprived brain. The priority is water. As deputy state director, the continuing drought in the eastern part of the state is first thing on his mind these days. It means he’ll keep on hearing complaints — from ranchers as well as his own district managers — because nothing has changed out here in the West in the past two hundred years. It is still the cattlemen versus the farmers in the fight for public lands and water, only now you’ve got the radical element mixed in.

  Guys like Laumann are in the middle, trying to balance the politics of multiple use; doing the eight-to-five civil servant bit because it’s better to be wearing a shirt and tie and commute and have the weekends on the boat with your family than be driving a rig through alfalfa and timothy grass like your father did 24/7, cracked red hands blown up like balloons, the inhaler always in the bib pocket.

  Being allergic to your life’s work is a tragedy.

  Still in bed, he reaches for cigarettes and gets one lit without singeing his baby’s hair or waking up his still-fat and irritable wife. He does not have to worry about waking Alex. On the cusp of being a teenager, the boy could sleep until noon.

  The first nicotine rush of the morning is like God’s own inhale before He blew life into the creatures of the earth. Laumann savors a divine pause. A lot of people would run from this FAN thing, afraid of becoming a target for extremists just for doing the job you were hired to do. There are lunatics everywhere; you have to stand up to them.