Judas Horse ag-3

by April Smith

  Koresh, who believed he was the incarnation of Jesus Christ, was the leader of the Branch Davidians, a religious group that went down in flames during a suicidal standoff in Waco, Texas. It was another government debacle, as tragic and deluded as the FBI’s confrontation with Native Americans at Pine Ridge, South Dakota, where Jack Coler and Ron Williams were killed. In Waco, seven hundred agents and law-enforcement personnel, including Delta Force, attacked with Bradley fighting vehicles and tanks, recklessly shooting tear gas into the compound and causing an inferno. Koresh and some eighty of his followers killed themselves or were burned to death, including children.

  Here on the lost farm, birds are singing their hearts out and wind ruffles the big-leaf maples. In the distance, cars begin their noisy claim to the country roads, and deep in the valley, a chain saw. Closer, there is the scrape of hooves on the old planks, and the faint ringing of chains in the cross ties. As I gaze through the wide doorway of the barn at the placid Victorian farmhouse, half-sunk in coronas of lavender, my stomach churns. The Branch Davidians believed their spread was a sanctuary, too.

  “What’s the mood?”

  “Megan is depressed, Stone is high. The kids are staying out of the line of fire.” “What’s going on with Megan and Stone?”

  “She wanted to return these beautiful horses to freedom, and it all turned to shit.” “Sounds like an opening.”

  “She’s a lot more practical. He’s all Action Jackson, flies off the handle.” “If there’s a wedge between them, drive it.” “Roger that.”

  “Hold on a minute—”

  I overhear Donnato speaking sharply to his wife, Rochelle, and wish I hadn’t. It’s the kind of talk that other people shouldn’t hear — the phone tap that blows the cover. If I were married to him, we would sound like that sometimes, too, which kind of kills the fantasy. On the other hand, would I rather be in an air-conditioned bedroom, arguing with a good-looking man in his underwear, or standing in a pile of horse manure?

  I turn for solace to Sirocco, a pretty mustang mare with buckskin coloring and a white blanket with black spots on her rear. Three months ago Megan rescued her from a racetrack where she had been a companion horse to Thoroughbreds. She had fallen on the track and broken her hip. She was pregnant at the time and lost the baby. Now she is unrideable, suited only for a pet or the slaughterhouse.

  Sirocco is patient with amateurs like me and doesn’t kick while I hide out in her stall. From here, I have good sight lines through the barn doors. Across the road, the tops of the hazelnut trees are still in darkness, but as the sun rises, golden light begins to play across the orchard floor, each rut and groove struck visible, as if a ghostly herd had left a thousand hoofprints filled with shadow. The crows are making a racket, pierced by the engine of Stone’s tractor starting up with an aggressive whine.

  “Now is not the time,” Donnato tells his wife. “Can’t you take the kids to school?” Then to me: “Hi, I’m back.” “What’s the matter, pal?”

  “Pressure.”

  “How’s her dad?”

  “Not good.”

  I can hear his tension, but it is nothing compared to the sound of the tractor, like a raging alarm through my nervous system. I am pacing, keeping a lookout through the open doors in both directions. Stone, wearing the battered straw hat, keeps on going back and forth.

  I don’t like it. I don’t believe it. Why would Stone give it all up to plod the same rectangle day after day? Why, after those mint-issue Los Angeles mornings, when everything is possible, would you cut yourself off from success? Twenty-five years old, freshly shaven, wearing a starched white shirt and tie, he had to have felt like a hero about to be made — the Smith & Wesson in the shoulder holster, draping his coat on the seat back, Mr. Cool, hanging the handcuffs over the brake pedal in case he had to make a quick move out of the Bu-car.

  Why did Dick Stone, “eager to be led in the right direction,” renounce it all and quit, so bitter he went over to the other side? Catching sight of the rig, precisely arcing in the turning space beyond the trees, I am certain of one thing: A cop does not surrender his weapon. Not ever.

  “Mike? Are you there?”

  Donnato and Rochelle are still squabbling. “All right, I’ll take them. Do they have their lunches?” Sirocco’s head is hanging lax, eyes shut. I brush her back. Dust rises. My eyes are on the furrows made by the bristles, the way the buckskin hairs line up glossy and flat; I’m concentrating my impatience on this small but solvable task. Faintly, a screen door slams. Inside the house, they are awake and moving.

  “Damn it, Mike! I am in a covert situation here.” Sirocco wakes up and shimmies her neck like a dog with fleas. She stamps and backs up quickly, squashing me against the corner of the stall. Over her spotted rump, the shape of Dick Stone is looming against the light.

  “Who are you talking to?”

  I flip the Oreo phone shut and enclose it in the palm of my hand.

  “Sirocco,” I say, petting her. “Right, girl?” Dick Stone’s face is sweaty and his breath comes hard. Pieces of straw and a fine spray of dirt he must have kicked up marching through the barn at the sound of my voice are floating in the backlight. I can’t believe I was not alert to the fact that the drone of the tractor had cut off. It is quiet now all right.

  “You scared her,” I say.

  Drawing the brush along Sirocco’s spine the way Megan showed me, maintaining contact with my hands on her coat, I slip around to the other side, keeping her body between us, and slide the phone into my underpants and, with one quick thrust, up into that place where the sun don’t shine — well, not usually.

  Stone, mocking: “I scared her?” “Coming up suddenly like that.”

  Sirocco’s ears flick and she swings her hindquarters.

  Dick Stone levels a dead-on stare into my eyes. Alone and close, his male scent is strong, like my grandfather’s, like the old-fashioned Vitalis that Poppy used to put in his hair.

  “Where’d you grow up, Darcy?”

  I squeeze my thighs in order not to drop the phone.

  “Southern California.”

  “Where?”

  “The Valley.”

  “Are you with someone?”

  “I wouldn’t be here if I was.”

  “Ever been married?”

  “Nope.”

  “No exes? No boyfriends?” He appraises me. “I can’t believe that.” My mouth is dry as the straw dust suspended in the air. “Yes, boyfriends. But I left them in L.A.” “Don’t you have anyone in the world?” he presses. “Besides your dad, who lives in Florida?” I pay attention to the distrust spreading through my body, core to fingertips.

  Go on the attack. Get right back in their face.

  “Why are you so interested in my dad? You want to send him a Father’s Day gift?” “Up to you.”

  What does that mean, Up to you?

  “Where is your father living?” I counter. “I’d like to send him a card.” Dick Stone’s left eyelid twitches. “I haven’t thought about my father in forty years. I can’t remember the sound of his voice.” “Tell me.”

  He snorts derisively. “About my father?” You are pushing it. Get him out of here.

  “You know what I did with all that?” Stone continues bitterly. “Wrapped it up in plastic, looped it around with tape, tied it up with rope real good, and shipped it the hell out of here.” He turns, expecting me to follow, but I have picked up a broom.

  “I’ve got to finish.”

  If I move, I’ll give birth to a communications device.

  Dick Stone walks out of the barn. But then, in the wide square of daylight, he turns.

  “Why’d you come here, Darcy?”

  “To kick the government’s ass,” I say while holding my breath. “I came for action, not sweeping up horse shit.” “Uh-huh. Well you just muck out the stalls and feed the rabbits, and we’ll see about action.” “We lost another rabbit—”

  Shut up and let him go.

  �
��I saw this morning,” I continue perversely. “I can’t figure how they’re getting out.” “Nobody locks the cage,” says Stone.

  Twenty

  I am awakened by gunfire. Crossing the rough floorboards of the attic room I share with Sara, I snap the roller shade. The tattered paper rises lazily, enough to let in a warm current of air perfumed with blackberries that hits me like the delighted slap of a baby on both of Mommy’s cheeks. My brain lights up like a scoreboard. The sharp cracks coming from a distance are definitively shots. Who is killing whom in this pastoral psycho ward?

  After feeding the animals that morning, I lay down again and fell into a doze. Now everyone is gone, I discover on this gorgeous summer morning as I hop around the house, pulling on shorts and sandals. Stone and Megan may have gone over to the grange, I remember; if so, they’ve taken Slammer to help load the hay. Sara’s bed is empty.

  Dick Stone has bad habits. If he’s not out on the tractor, he’s generally asleep. He has a lot of ailments. Megan keeps a slew of Chinese herbal remedies for his back, knees, and spleen. In the murky hours of the afternoon, after his morning nap, he will hobble downstairs and someone will be waiting to try to talk him out of his usual lunch of sweet rolls and cheap champagne.

  But Stone is not in the disheveled bedroom, or the orchard, and the crackling shots have started up again.

  I follow the sound, going out the kitchen door, past the rank old goats, the rabbits and ducks, into the barn to retrieve the Oreo phone, then out the back, running through high grass bordered by rampant blackberries. There is a vineyard of dead vines with unkempt half-assed spurs, and stakes in the ground that mark an abandoned garden. Watch out for the hose and rusty wires. Dick Stone keeps his orchard groomed; but behind the house, where nobody can see, everything runs wild.

  Breaking into open field, I sprint past a marsh with a silver oval of groundwater in which you can just make out the vertical stance of a great white heron. Megan says that in her grandfather’s day the acreage was used for wheat. She has given it back to migrating birds. I’ve found a trail through the cottonwoods and speed-dial Donnato in Los Angeles, wanting him to know I am heading into an uncertain situation. The sky is clear and the clouds are white and racing — there should be good reception, but the screen says, No Service. Even Rooney Berwick isn’t perfect.

  There’s a streambed and I stumble through it, thrashing up the other side. I cannot say I am a woods person; always seem to pick the route with the most thorns. But now I’ve hit a maze of dirt roads and the going is easier and the shots are nearer. Tall cottonwoods have given way to a wasteland of scrub manzanita, crossed by an overhead grid of high electric wires. I’m in some kind of power station. The air changes. Fetid. Septic. Flies are buzzing an overflowing garbage can of trash — beer bottles and a recently disposed-of diaper.

  Coming around a curve, I see a new half-ton Silverado, obsidian black, parked at the edge of the clearing. Beside it are a beach chair and a picnic cooler, and an old-fashioned portable radio playing country music, which you can’t really hear over the exploding rounds. Straight ahead, his back to me, a white man of medium build is firing at silhouette targets on wire pulleys a hundred yards away.

  The sleeves of his T-shirt are rolled up, James Dean — style, exposing gleaming muscles, and damn if he doesn’t have a pack of cigarettes tucked in the fold. Out near the tree line, below the targets, are some sorry shot-up benches and piles of broken glass and rusted debris accumulated over the years, where the locals have been having a grand time blasting the hell out of innocent objects, like a refrigerator. Amazingly, a posted sign declares we’re in a bird sanctuary.

  I’m starting to get mad. Maybe it’s the diaper.

  “Hold your fire, please. Would you mind holding fire? Do you know this is a wildlife sanctuary?” The man lowers the weapon and turns, squinting into the blinding sun.

  “I ain’t botherin’ the birds.”

  “You could, though,” I shout. “You could shoot one by accident. I just saw a bald eagle.” Okay, a heron. “You realize you can go to jail for killing an American bald eagle?” The rifleman says, “I think I know a target from a bird.” One hand shading his eyes, the man is peering at me with slow astonishment, as if I’d landed on his picnic table and swooped the hot dog off his plate.

  “This land is protected! There are all kinds of life-forms here that shouldn’t be destroyed. That’s why we have laws, and why the signs are posted!” I am delivering the rap with a passion that does not come from playing the undercover role, but from a deeper shift in my awareness. Remembering how it feels to run my fingers over the sore spots on Sirocco’s back, I think maybe caring for another species is the most important thing that we can do. This is a new idea. Is it dangerous? Enlightened? Does it mean I am slipping over to the other side?

  The Oreo phone is vibrating — Donnato returning the call. I guess there is intermittent service here, but suddenly I don’t need it.

  The man cradles the rifle so the barrel points up. It is a.308, common to every weekend shooter. He comes closer, until I notice the pointy toes of the worn cowboy boots in a peculiar shade of red, crunching over a carpet of spent casings, and the bandy legs in jeans.

  His sunburned face has broken into a wide, sassy grin. “I sure hope you’re not gonna call the police.” “I’m thinking about it.”

  “Truly. I would never shoot a protected animal.”

  “I already know how you feel about wild horses.”

  It is the wrangler from the BLM corrals.

  He digs into his ears and removes two soft plugs. “What is that you’re saying, ma’am?” I am staring at him sternly, one hand on a hip. “Why are you following me?” “No problem, ma’am. I’ll go.”

  He may be using an ordinary hunting rifle, but nobody except an FBI agent calls anyone “ma’am.” The bastards have put a tail on me.

  “We’ve met, remember? My name is Darcy.”

  He wears a Nomex flight glove on his left hand and extends the right, the rest of his lean body shyly arching backward in an irritatingly boyish way.

  “Sterling McCord, ma’am. Pleased to meet you again.” “What are you doing out here?”

  “Just gave a shooting lesson. Ever fire a gun?” He smiles wickedly. There’s a gap on the side of his mouth where a tooth is missing. “I bet you’d like it.” “Come on, Sterling, if that’s really your name. I saw you at the BLM corrals, and now you’re here, a mile from where I happen to be living on a hazelnut farm, which is not my usual territory, but you know all that, don’t you?” Sterling shakes his head.

  “Sorry to bust your bubble, Darcy, but I had no idea I would have the pleasure of meeting you again. I’m just following the work, that’s all. Doing some cowboyin’.” “For who?”

  “Oh, a fella named Dave Owens, owns a little ranch just up the road.” “Uh-huh. What kind of work are you doing for Dave?” “All kinds. Just drove a trailer full of cattle down from Idaho. Dave has cutting horses; I work them with the cows. You know cutting horses? Well, they’re big money these days. Big show prizes. Dave’s a good boss, but he’s never there. He’s in the insurance business, down in San Francisco.” “And this is your idea of ‘cowboyin’?”

  McCord cocks his head away. “Truthfully, I don’t want to be a hand anymore. I want to be a horse trainer.” “Sounds like a cover to me.”

  “Cover for what?” Puzzled, he opens the lid of the cooler, offers a Corona. “Refreshment?” “Guns and alcohol don’t mix.”

  “I’m done. Sun’s hot.”

  “All right.”

  “Thank you,” he says mockingly. “Score one for my side.” I accept a cold beer and reject a packet of fried pork rinds. My eye, drawn to the red boots (Are they ostentatious or not?) falls to the gleaming litter of spent casings on the ground. Lying in the carpet of brass, two or three of an unusual caliber stand out. Most commonplace rifles, like McCord’s, use.30-caliber bullets, but the shell I’m looking at is.50-caliber — harder
to find because they are mostly used by Army snipers to knock out tanks.

  And to kill cops.

  Somebody out here has been taking shooting practice with the same unusual-size bullet that killed Sergeant Mackee.

  While Sterling McCord pulls in the targets, I scoop two.50-caliber casings into the pocket of my shorts.

  Silhouette targets are unusual, too, as most marksmen use bull’s-eyes. And this guy is consistently scoring body shots, which shows a fair level of skill.

  “Where’d you learn to shoot like that?”

  “U.S. Army, Delta Force.”

  The openness of the answer is not what I expected.

  “Delta Force? Isn’t that an elite”—I want to say unit—“thing? How do you get to do something like that?” “You have to be invited” is all McCord says.

  You have to have ten years’ service, be smart, have sniper-level skills with a rifle, and endure an eighteen-day selection course of physical deprivation and mental hardship that makes undercover school look like a sunny day in Tahiti.

  “Is being in Delta Force like the movies? Secret missions, all that jive?” “I don’t know about that. Delta Force was good to me, but right now, I’m going back to the only thing that makes sense, which is horses.” I watch him clean the weapon. He is meticulous, patiently running a bore brush and guide rod from the back of the barrel toward the front. That’s how the pros do it.

  “You ask about cowboyin’?” he says, concentrating on the gun. “I’ll tell you what it is. It’s livin’ in some itty-bitty trailer on the back of someone’s property out near the dump, being treated like dirt, getting into a fight with the boss because he’s some rich guy who doesn’t know dog doo about cutting horses, and then moving on after six months. But I figure whatever low-rent job they throw at me, I’ll do it if it makes me a better horseman.” “I’m taking care of a horse.”

  “Is that right?”

  “Just learning how. I live on the hazelnut farm. Do you know Megan Tewksbury and Julius Emerson Phelps?” He loads the cooler into the truck.