by Susan Slater
Ben checked the postmark. She’d be arriving tomorrow, a week after she’d written the note. He pulled up a wicker arm chair and sat facing the panoramic view of the woods but couldn’t keep Julie’s face from floating across his vision—red hair, freckles, dark brown eyes that crinkled at the corners when she concentrated.
Did he still care? Yes. Had he had a serious relationship since she left four years ago? No. But then school saw to that. So what were his feelings? Wasn’t he sitting here trying to ignore the excitement that had leaped up unexpectedly when he saw her handwriting? An excitement he didn’t trust, maybe was afraid to? Would he call? And if he did, what did he expect would happen?
“Join us for dinner?” Hannah’s paleness grayed through the screen as she peered up at him, her face dwarfed by a floppy, wide-brimmed, cloth hat. He hadn’t noticed before, but she appeared to be standing in a garden just beyond the porch.
“Yes. Thanks.”
“Six-thirty, then.”
He watched her go back to picking leaves of lettuce and placing them in a colander. All of a sudden, company sounded great. He folded the note and put it in his pocket.
He shouldn’t have worried about missing dinner because someone, probably Harold, struck a gong with enough vigor to wake the dead. Ben had finished moving in, unloaded the boxes of books from the truck, left the hotplate boxed after reading the list of “don’ts” posted on the bathroom door, hung his clothes in the closet, and placed the storyteller on the faux mantle. Home. His life had a “just add water and stir” quality. And he was still a long way from anything permanent.
With a prick of conscience, he thought that that was why Julie wasn’t with him or he with her. They were two strong-willed individuals who had put careers first. But he was going to be thirty-one in August. Did that make a difference? Was it time to think differently?
He followed the sound of talking and found the dining room. No one among the twenty-odd people was seated yet. Harold towered behind what was evidently “his place” folding and unfolding his arms, his gangly body almost too much for him to control. Probably had just gone through a growth-spurt and was relearning control, Ben thought.
Harold was the bumbling, beefy sort. An oversized T-shirt, the football insignia now unreadable from many washings, covered but didn’t disguise a massive set of shoulders—even rounded as they were and sloped forward. His head and neck pushed away and out and gave him a stooped look—a turtle poking out from its shell, frozen in bland inquisitiveness, red-rimmed eyes blinking repeatedly.
The shaved head added to the turtle image, but Ben supposed exposed skin was easier to take care of. Tufts of straw-colored stubble popped up between scabby sores only to be glued flat by a yellow, probably medicating, salve. There was every possibility that a recent infection caused the broken skin. He should wear a stocking cap, Ben thought, at least at the table. As if he knew Ben was thinking about him, Harold made some attempt to wave, but then Ben guessed he had been wrong when Harold’s other arm shot out from his body before falling back to dangle by his side.
Two plank picnic tables had been pushed together end-to-end, their knotty pine roughness sanded and varnished to a mirror slickness. No tablecloth or place mats diminished the shine. A large vase of orange and pink zinnias sat on a doily in the middle of each table. Cutlery was wrapped in a napkin and bundled on a tray at the end of the second table next to a stack of plates. Only Harold had dinnerware in place. His was enamel on tin, a speckled white on blue, deep dish plate and squat cup that made one think of going camping.
Hannah, looking flushed from the heat of the kitchen, motioned everyone to sit. At a distance, she looked like a teenager, Ben thought, decidedly pretty, with the hint of rosy cheeks and damp hair curling around her face.
“I’ll hand off things from this corner. Help yourselves across the table.” Hannah left a pitcher of ice water and returned to the kitchen.
Ben copied the line in front of him, picking up a place service before he sat down. Ben was beginning to see why Harold was seated at what would be the end of the food line. Long before the heaping dishes and platters reached him, he was banging his cup on the table and no matter what was left, he dumped it all on his plate and mashed and stirred until potatoes and roast and gravy and lime Jell-O salad melded into one mass. Ben felt a little guilty that he was glad to be sitting at the first table.
Most of the people in the room seemed to be part of Hannah’s bed-and-breakfast trade, travelers passing through after a day or two on the reservation, taking advantage of what was supposed to be the best home-cooked meal within miles. He’d seen a bus parked alongside the trading post. But some of the people probably boarded there, too. It was hard to tell. They all had that madras-bright, too-new jeans look of well heeled transients. Some of the group exposed knobby bent knees and the bluing of varicose veins with Bermuda shorts. But it was the men’s argyles, socks with cuffs pulled straight up and worn with sandals, which gave the group “tourist” flavor.
“So, you’re a psychologist?” The questioner was a seventyish woman who sat next to him.
“Yes.” Ben handed off the plate of rolls covered with a red checkered cloth.
“It seems so strange to me, I mean, that you would even need to be out here. I can’t think that Indians would have the same problems that the rest of us have. And wouldn’t they prefer to have their own people cast spells, exorcise their demons—or whatever they do?” Reaching for the salt, the elderly woman leaned across Ben. “A handsome, young man like you should work where there’s some wife material—not hide away out here in nowhere land among strangers.”
“Ben is Indian.” This from Hannah as she began filling glasses with iced tea. “His people live east of here.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean ... it’s just that you don’t look very ... your skin isn’t as dark as mine.” The elderly woman seemed truly flustered as she put a tanned arm next to his.
“My father was Anglo.” Ben left out the ‘probably’ that would only compound the confusion. Instead, he gave her an all-is-forgiven smile and geared up to discuss problems shared by both populations. Public relations. Isn’t that what his advisor would call it, a little PR to inform the masses?
Dinner was pleasant enough. He’d been popular. There were curious questions, not malicious, just an honest quest for knowledge. Hannah announced a break of forty-five minutes before dessert and coffee. Some left the table to smoke, dragging chairs into a semicircle on the screened-in porch. But all promised to return for freshly baked cherry cobbler.
Ben watched as Harold carried his plate to the kitchen, then didn’t return. The boy was a puzzle. Or should he say man? Ben thought he’d be over six foot if he stood straight. That was a pretty big “boy”—only an inch or two shorter than Ben. Clinical curiosity on his part, Ben thought, but he might question Hannah sometime, get a little background when the time seemed right. Ben picked up his own plate and pushed through the double doors that opened off the dining area.
The kitchen was one of those farm-big rooms with a commercial stove and oven in one corner next to an industrial-sized refrigerator. There was an oak island in the center with four high-backed stools and an old fashioned round table in an alcove or breakfast nook surrounded by windows that faced the forest from the back of the room. The Indian man eating at the table was someone Ben hadn’t seen before. In his forties somewhere, maybe fifties—it was hard to tell. He was handsome with high cheekbones and angular nose. One of those who would take on the look of a venerable elder early in life.
Hannah was busy spooning cobbler into rainbow-hued dishes on the counter next to the sink.
“Salvador. I want you to meet someone. This is Ben Pecos. He’s going to be working at the clinic. He works with crazy people. Has he come to the right place, or what?” Hannah gave a short laugh, almost sounded exasperated, Ben thought. Should he say something, soften her description of his work? He looked toward the table. The man didn’t actually lo
ok up, just bobbed his head and reached for a bowl of mashed potatoes. Because of her slightly raised voice, Ben thought the man might be deaf.
“Shy.” Hannah gestured toward the man. “Won’t talk unless he absolutely has to. And he hates it when I won’t call him Sal. But he knows I abhor nicknames.” Hannah took a swipe at a strand of hair that had escaped the rubber band at the nape of her neck and continued to talk like Sal wasn’t there but loud enough so that he couldn’t miss a word. “He embarrassed me this morning, ran out of the trading post like something bit him. And what was I to do? Try to explain some crotchety old Indian to a busload of tourists?”
Ben couldn’t tell if this was playful goading by two old friends or something more serious. Was Hannah upset? He wasn’t going to get the chance to find out because the man rose, put two slabs of roast beef between the halves of a hard roll and left by the back door. Ben watched as he disappeared into the dusk.
“You’ll get used to him. Or him to you.” Hannah was setting bowls of cobbler onto two large metal serving trays. “He helps out around here. Harold considers him his best friend.”
Well, that was in the man’s favor. Harold probably didn’t have a lot of friends or male role models. Ben helped Hannah clear the dishes from the dining room table and load the dessert trays. He filled the coffee maker with fresh grounds and added water before he carried cups, saucers and spoons to a sideboard. He didn’t mind helping. And Hannah could use it. She seemed genuinely touched that he’d offer.
Eventually, somewhere from the hall the gong summoned everyone back for the last course. It wasn’t any less loud the second time, Ben noted as the sound hummed in his ears.
Everyone seemed relaxed and continued chatting and milling around the large room with stone fireplace at one end for another ten minutes until Hannah motioned for them to return to the table. Each place now had clean salad forks and spoons.
“Where’s Bernard?” A small elderly woman with blue-white hair seemed reluctant to take her place at the table.
“In the john, probably,” a man offered as he pulled out a chair across the table from her.
The woman sat down next to Ben but seemed reluctant to start without Bernard. “He was out petting that dog. He misses our little Rocky. At home, we have a Yorkshire Terrier, just the cutest bit of a thing. The two of them do everything together. Could you check in the bathroom? He’s probably washing his hands.” She peevishly pleaded with the man. “He’s been gone over fifteen minutes.”
Was this what it was like when you got older? Not letting each other out of your sight? Each worried that something might happen? Ben wondered.
“Aw, Delores, give it a rest. Maybe he’s hiding from you.”
Only the man found this hilariously funny.
“It’s not funny. He’s been diagnosed with ... with ...” She broke down in sobs.
Ben guessed that she was going to say Alzheimer’s.
“I’ll go.” Ben surprised himself. He knew he was reacting to the stress of the elderly woman, but the man across the table struck him as needlessly unkind. He pushed back from the table. The elderly woman whispered “thank you” then placed a saucer over his cobbler to keep it warm. Hopefully, it wouldn’t take long to find the errant Bernard.
The bathrooms were in the hall about halfway between the front door and his rooms. He could see before he got to it that the door of the men’s was standing open. And there was Harold with toilet paper stuck to his hand and his fly open.
“Hello, Harold. Maybe we should wash those hands before you go back for dessert.” Ben turned Harold toward the sink and turned on the tap. “Let’s use some soap on these guys.” Ben lathered up the heart-shaped guest bar and handed it to Harold before he rinsed his own hands. “Better not catch a chill.” Ben pointed to Harold’s fly and noticed the drying spots on the crotch of his chinos. It would be a challenge to have a child like this.
“Keep lizard warm.” Harold zipped up, then patted his crotch before drying his hands so that two new stains stood out sharply—one stretching almost to his knee.
Ben smiled and patted him on the shoulder. “Better hurry. Someone just might eat your cherry cobbler.”
Ben stepped back into the hall. A quick look up, then down confirmed that no one else was there, so he headed for the front door. Should he check the bus? Maybe the man had gone back to get something. The hydraulic door was open, and Ben stepped up into the passenger well beside the driver’s area. He stood a moment checking the seats. Nothing. No one was in the bus, but to make certain, Ben quickly walked the length of the aisle before hopping back down onto the driveway. What next?
Dusk made it difficult to see clearly. With any luck, the old duffer was back by now. He had just turned toward the house when he thought he saw movement by the trailer. He paused. Maybe he was mistaken. He didn’t see anything now. But it wouldn’t hurt to check. Ben waited another moment, then started in that direction breaking into a trot to cover the fifty or so yards quickly.
The trailer was dark and, other than a light breeze and the chirping of what was probably frogs, there was no sound. Then he heard it, a faint cry for help. Ben sprinted around the front of the trailer and almost tripped over the old man sitting on the ground hunched over a body.
“Bernard?” Ben squatted beside him. There was no indication that he recognized his name. “Let me take a look at your friend.”
Ben eased the body onto its back. At first, Ben thought it was the man in the kitchen, Sal something-or-other. Had Hannah given a last name? The yard light in back of the trading post did little to clearly illuminate the area, but the man was dressed like Sal, white shirt and stiff jeans. They would both be about the same height, dark-skinned—only this man was probably a Middle-Easterner. Yet, it was odd. The corpse was stiff as a board, dead long enough for rigor mortis to have set in.
He squatted to peer at the man’s face. The bruising was apparent even in bad light. Then Ben jerked upright and gasped. He swallowed a couple times before squatting again beside the body and continued to stare at the top of the man’s head. There was no skin across the frontal lobe. A chunk as big as a man’s fist had been ripped away—no, cut away—this was not the work of an animal. The skin had been pulled forward, separated from the bone, then sliced along the hairline. The man had been scalped.
Blood oozed from the wound in a solitary trickle above his ear. The scalping hadn’t killed him. The cut was fresh, probably done within the hour. If Ben’s guess was right, some twenty-four hours after death. A brownish stain down the front of the man’s shirt suggested a stab wound.
“I don’t think he’s moving.” Bernard leaned over Ben’s shoulder. “What should we do?”
Ben rose and guided Bernard away from the body. “We need to get back inside and call the police.”
+ + +
The tribal police were prompt. They were the closest— coming out the five miles from the village. Law enforcement out here was more about helping those who needed help and worrying about jurisdictions later, Ben thought. That could be sorted out when it was determined if there had been a murder and where it might have occurred. Right now, there was just a body with a chunk of scalp missing. And if it could be proved that there had been no foul play, wasn’t it still against some law to deface the dead? Ben wasn’t sure.
Hannah had gathered everyone in what she called “the parlor.” An old-fashioned word but one that suited the big room, which held a grand piano in one corner against a backdrop of oval walnut frames circling photos of stiff, bearded men standing beside women in long black dresses. Two couples stood in front of a one-room building with Trading Post written across a five-foot-high marquis—evidence that the Rawlings had been there for some time.
“I know how upsetting this must be,” a young tribal policeman was saying. “It is very unusual for a crime to happen this close to our reservation, especially a death with such unusual circumstances.”
They had been waiting over an hour in th
e stuffy parlor. Hannah had offered seconds on cobbler but there were no takers. And now the cop was saying that a crime had been committed. Ben didn’t find this very reassuring. The officer was speaking to a roomful of pretty spooked tourists—some of whom probably had preconceived ideas about Indians in the first place and didn’t need a scalping to verify them.
But he made a nice appearance. His thick black hair was trimmed razor-smooth almost to the occipital with only the front long enough to stand upright. The tan uniform was neat, starched and pressed with perfect trouser pleats. But there was the beginning of a slight roll above the belt, that telltale bulge that hints of a too sedentary life of fast foods. The real badge of most law enforcement officers, Ben thought, unless they were careful.
“My partner will take statements from each of you. This is strictly routine. Give your name, address—yes, where you can be reached after the tour—and a brief accounting of where you were during the break between dinner and dessert. I want to know if anyone saw anything—even if you think if can’t be helpful, let us be the judge. I promise this won’t take long. I thank each of you for your cooperation.”
Even amid the obvious distress, the young man was thoughtful and exacting. He was young enough, looked like mid-twenties, to have gone for training off the res. Ben thought he’d probably had a dose of Psych 101.
But he didn’t seem to be as gentle with the morose Sal, who remained in the kitchen and made the young interrogator go to him.
“You the new Doc?” Ben walked beside the officer down the hall.
“News gets around fast.”
“Hey, it’s the res. I’m Tommy Spottedhorse. Sorry this had to be the first impression of your new home.”
“Spottedhorse?” Odd name for this part of the country, Ben thought.