The Old Gray Wolf

by James D. Doss

  THE SOUTHERN UTE TRIBAL ELDER

  Not unlike her nephew upstairs, Daisy Perika was, typically, unconscious only a few heartbeats after her head had made a comfortable hollow in the pillow. But hers was not to be the well-known blessed rest of the innocent, and anyone who dared disrupt her slumbers would be best advised to let sleeping aunties lie undisturbed—particularly when they are liable to wake up in a bad mood and put the big bite on you.

  We’d like to.

  But, as is so often the case with Charlie Moon’s eccentric relative, Daisy’s midnight experience would prove uncommonly interesting. Phase one of the disturbance began only a labored breath or two after she had switched off the table lamp by her bed and nestled her head into the feather pillow. Was she in the process of drifting off to sleep? Perhaps. But whether Daisy was wide awake or already halfway along the pathway to that eerie shadowland where anything can happen, the tribal elder was convinced that her rest was interrupted by something distinctly unpleasant. More to the point, something stinkingly malodorous.

  * * *

  Her eyes tightly closed, the old woman wrinkled her nose—her sensitive nostrils sniffed. She sighed. What kind of aggravation is this? A polecat under the floor? She did not think so. This smelled more like … a mangy old coyote wearing a dead man’s socks. (Two pairs for the quadruped.)

  Yes, absurdly bizarre, but we must not be overly critical of her dubious metaphor—analyzing peculiar scents can be challenging even when all our faculties are at their peak, and Daisy was weary from the day’s many activities. (Creating continual trouble for others is a tiresome business.) She sniffed again and got a better whiff. Uh-oh. The shaman thought she recognized the characteristic odor. It’s him.

  It is so vexing when she will not be specific. Him who?

  Daisy Perika opened her eyes. It’s the little man.

  Thank you, ma’am. (She refers to the pitukupf, that diminutive thousand-year-old personage who abides in an abandoned badger hole in Cañón del Espíritu. The very same canyon whose gargantuan mouth eternally threatens to swallow the tribal elder’s reservation home whole, which cozy domicile is many miles to the south of Charlie Moon’s Columbine Ranch headquarters, wherein his aunt is presently bedded down.)

  As Daisy reached out to switch the lamp on, she was irked to discover a spindly little (hairy) leg dangling down on right side of her head. Upon further investigation, she discovered a like appendage on the other side. These limbs were not feetless: a pair of tiny moccasins practically brushed her wrinkled cheeks. She deduced (correctly) that the pitukupf was perched brazenly on the headboard of her bed. Like others of his gender, the Little Man had a tendency toward tasteless jests and unseemly appearances. But this intrusion into her boudoir was a prank too far and something had to be said.

  She said it: “Your feet stink like rotten meat!”

  Was her uninvited guest offended by this blunt observation? Not in the least. Evidently pining for a conversation with his old friend, the dwarf made a few introductory remarks toward that end. He began with an insightful commentary on the weather.

  It shall be noted that the pitukupf, though fluent in several languages, prefers to converse in an archaic version of the Ute tongue that even Daisy has difficulty understanding. For that reason (and others unspecified), only the gist of their verbal exchange shall be reported.

  Daisy: “What’re you doing here, you sawed-off little piece of [expletive deleted]?”

  Unruffled, the dwarf informed the agitated shaman that he had traveled all this distance (at no small expense) entirely for her benefit.

  Daisy (rolling her eyes): “That’ll be the day.”

  According to her night visitor, it was indeed. And after he had delivered his information and counsel, he would depart immediately for environs where his charitable intentions were appreciated.

  Daisy snorted. “Have your say and vamoose!”

  The elfin person informed his grumpy friend that she was about to be visited by the spirit of a troubled dead person.

  “Hah! This sounds like that holiday ghost story—the one that European quill-pen pusher wrote down a long time ago.” What was the name of that tale? With the benefit of a thoughtful frown, she recollected. Oh, right. “A Christmas Song.” Who was that matukach fella who wrote all those tales about ghosts and pitiful little crippled orphans and seven-year-old-pickpockets and big white whales and whatnot? It was so vexing to disremember a famous person’s name. Ol’ Herman Mole-hill? Close (she thought), but no cigar. David Copperfoil? Daisy shook her head. He was the boy that got kidnapped by those pirates. From somewhere in the fuzzy underbrush of her memory, a raspy voice said, You can call me Ishmael. Maybe so, but the suspicious old soul did not much care for aliases—in her book, a character who concealed his true identity was automatically suspect. After a string of faltering heartbeats (during which interval she firmly rejected Scrooge McDuck and Ahab the Arab), her stubborn perseverance was finally rewarded. In hallowed comic-strip fashion, a yellow lightbulb popped on above the thinker’s head—and the tribal elder found the eminent author’s name right on the tip of her tongue. After savoring the flavor, Daisy Perika spat it out: “Mr. Moby Dickens—that’s who he was.”

  Close enough. After all, nineteenth-century American and English literature was not her long suit.

  Exasperated by Daisy’s discourteous inattention to the urgent matter at hand, the dwarf rebuked the flippant tribal elder. She would (he suggested) be well advised to pay close attention to what the forthcoming apparition had to say—and to act upon it without delay. To do otherwise would be a great folly—and invite unmitigated disaster.

  Despite her annoyance at being upbraided by this arrogant little scamp, the shaman realized that it might be unwise to ignore the pitukupf’s warning. “So who is this haunt?”

  No response.

  Moreover, the stink of the little man’s feet was noticeably absent. As were the long-toed appendages themselves—not to mention the remainder of his miniature anatomy.

  His hasty departure served to increase her suspicions. The nasty little rascal came here just to annoy me—and to ruin my night’s sleep. Daisy Perika gritted her remaining teeth. Well, it won’t work. The resolute old soul switched off the bedside lamp, nestled her head into the pillow again, closed her eyes, yawned enormously, and …

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  YES. PHASE TWO

  As it happened (or so it seemed to the aged woman), her pleasant drifting toward sleep was interrupted by still another something or other—with a heavy emphasis on other. A nighttime encounter with this particular whatever would’ve made a strong man’s skin crawl, his eyeballs pop halfway out of their sockets, his brave heart stop like a goose egg slamming into a brick wall at ninety miles an hour. No, please do not complicate an already ambiguous issue by asking by what means a goose egg could travel considerably faster than geese can fly. The more pertinent question is: what or whom was this jarring other?

  We have our suspicions, but don’t know for sure. Let us examine the evidence.

  Exhibit one is: a low, mournful wail, not an arm’s length from the pillow where Daisy’s head rested so comfortably. So, did her skin crawl, her eyes pop, her heart stop? If you had such expectations, you are not acquainted with Charlie Moon’s cantankerous relative. Without so much as cracking an eyelid, the aggravated sleeper groaned and said, “Oooh … what now?”

  Do not misinterpret this query as a literal one. Right off the bat, the shaman knew what was in the bedroom with her. Well, more or less. Any wee-hours visitor who was so rude as to awaken a bone-tired old lady with a low, mournful wail was—without a doubt—an inconsiderate spirit who had barged in to deliberately disturb her rest. Had Mrs. Perika expressed her query more explicitly, she would have said, “Oooh … who now?”

  Another pitiful, keening moan.

  Recalling the pitukupf’s prediction, Daisy reached a reasonable conclusion: This must be the dead person he told me about. Which re
alization raised a regret: If I’d kept my mouth shut, the haunt might’ve thought I was sound asleep and deaf as a brick and gone away to pester some other poor soul. That ploy had worked before, but it was too late now. Giving up the blatant fakery, the sly tribal elder cracked one eyelid. What did she see? A filmy, amorphous haze hovering at her bedside. I might as well get this over with. “Okay, Casper—who’re you and why’re you aggravating a tired old lady who never did you any harm?”

  The response was somewhat garbled, but Daisy managed to pick up the gist of what was being said. “You don’t know who you are?”

  The apparition popped up a knoblike head, and nodded it.

  The shaman was not surprised, either by the instantly produced noggin or the spirit’s identity issues As often as not, the recently dead drifted about in a state of total confusion. Poor things didn’t know who they were, where they were, who they had awakened in the middle of the night—or even the fact that they were deceased. The detached souls merely wanted a warm somebody to talk to, and had probably already visited dozens of unresponsive folk until they happened upon a person who was cursed with the “gift” of seeing dead people and hearing their oftentimes-indistinct speech. Which, like it or not, did place a certain civic responsibility on those so talented. Which was one reason why Daisy pushed herself up on an elbow and launched into a explanation of the hard facts of life: “The first thing you got to get through your toadstool head is that you’re dead!” She was about to enlarge upon this educational theme when her artful descriptor (“toadstool”) reminded Daisy Perika of the threat made by one Hester “Toadie” Tillman. I ought to have guessed right off. “Do you remember how you died?”

  The knob on the presumably muddleheaded specter nodded.

  “Well don’t just stand there like a big turnip, tell me!” Daisy listened to the speech that was improving with practice. Aha! I thought so. “So, you died inside an automobile, eh?”

  The knobby protuberance nodded again, this time with noticeable fervor. The unseen mouth provided further horrid details, rounding the lurid narrative out by asserting that she was still trapped inside the vehicle, and if Daisy didn’t find a way to get her out, she’d rot there like some dead animal.

  “No, Toadie—you’re all mixed up.” Daisy shook her head. “You’re not still inside that pickup. I know that for a fact, because Danny Bignight was there when you croaked, and he watched some people pull you out of the truck and carry you over to the ambulance.” She scowled at the annoying pestilence that had invaded her bedroom. “No, don’t shake your silly-looking head at me—listen to what I’m telling you! About an hour after you’d passed on, Danny Bignight showed up at my house by the mouth of Cañón del Espíritu and told me all about it.” She paused to suck in a breath. “Danny also told me what you said you’d do if I didn’t show up at your funeral and bawl my eyes out over you being dead.” Daisy shook her finger at the rude intruder. “I didn’t really mean what I said to Danny Bignight about spitting on your grave, but I never liked you very much when you were alive, Toadie—and I’m liking you less with every minute that passes. So you just haul your big butt out of here and—” Pause. “What did you say?”

  The spirit repeated her querulous complaint.

  “You’re cold?” Daisy snorted. “Well so am I, from the neck up.” Pulling the quilt to her chin, she wagged the finger again. “Now listen to me and do as I say or I’ll go get a two-gallon bucket of ice-cold well water and wet you down with it.” The senior citizen chuckled. “Your rotten old teeth’ll chatter so hard they’ll all fall out of your gums and onto the floor.”

  Though it seems doubtful that amorphous apparitions have decayed teeth to worry about, the cold-bath threat did seem to get the uninvited spirit’s undivided attention.

  Sensing that she had the Big Mo (considerable momentum), Daisy did not let up. “Now here’s the deal—first of all, you go back to the Ignacio Cemetery, where your body is buried.” To assist in this journey, she pointed in a southerly direction. “And when you get there, eyeball every grave marker till you spot a cheap slab of limestone that says ‘Toadie Tillman Sleeps Here’ on it. Then, slip back into your nice, comfy coffin and stay there!”

  Was Daisy’s helpful advice received with gratitude? No.

  The dismal spirit let out an awful, high-pitched howl—which spine-jerking shriek was abruptly interrupted in midscreech by a series of gasping-choking-gurgling-gaggings—the macabre effect suggesting a hyperactive banshee being choked to death by an enraged member of the Granite Creek County Noise Abatement League.

  Was Mrs. Perika startled? You bet.

  The tribal elder lurched like an anteater whose yard-long tongue has just licked a tasty six-legged delicacy off a pulsating electric fence. The unnerved old soul was also vexed, provoked, and chagrined at this uncalled-for outburst from the haunt. If you had a neck, I’d grab it and strangle you myself! But even Daisy Perika’s hard heart was touched by the specter’s unfeigned display of abject misery. After a roll of her beady black eyes and a wistful sigh for bygone days when a tired woman could enjoy a good night’s rest without having to wake up and counsel idiot dead people, the tribal elder added this comforting observation: “Now listen to what I say, Toadie—I know what I’m talking about because a journeyman plumber told me this years ago.” When making a pitch, it often helps to quote a licensed expert.) “Colorado gets plenty cold, but it ain’t Alaska.” Daisy pointed at the floor. “Six feet down, our water pipes don’t ever freeze. D’you know why?”

  Judging from its blank expression, the specter did not have the least inkling of a clue.

  About to provide one, Daisy jutted her chin. “Because even in the dead of winter, the ground is toasty warm down there. I guarantee it—you settle down into your pine box, you’ll never shiver again.”

  Whether or not this confident assertion persuaded the spirit to follow Daisy’s advice must—at least for the moment—remain problematic. What can be stated with certainty is this: for whatever reason, the howling-gasping-choking-gurgling-gagging apparition gave up the game—and vanished from the elderly citizen’s bedroom.

  Charlie Moon’s exasperated auntie collapsed onto her pillow. Oh, I’m so glad that’s over.

  Which would be a fitting and proper conclusion to this peculiar little anecdote.

  But it was not. (Over.)

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  THE HUMDRUM BEGINNING OF A PARTICULARLY EVENTFUL DAY

  And perhaps the longest day in the lives of several of the principals, though for others it would be dramatically foreshortened.

  It began innocently enough in the chief of police’s lonely bachelor home, with a gloomy Scott Parris dipping a tablespoon into a cold bowl of skim milk where squares of a high-fiber, factory-compacted cereal-like substance floated like debris left over after the sinking of a Lilliputian barge loaded with thumbnail-size bales of hay. Munching with a scowl, the food critic delivered his verdict on the victuals: If this healthy crap tasted ten times better, it’d be almost as good as soggy cardboard.

  With that pithy observation, we shall leave the sour-faced gourmand to complain about his nutritious breakfast. A downer is no way to begin the day. We shall pay a morning call on a salt-of-the-earth gathering that appreciates the day’s first chow-down.

  But for those dyspeptics who have no appetite for rare-cooked flesh of uncertain origin, thickish spare-parts stew, and black iron pots a-bubble with overdoses of trouble—be ye forewarned that here endeth the humdrum beginning. (What to do? Withdraw to some sunny spot where happy little bluebirds sing, and peruse a delightful chapter or two from The Wind in the Willows.)

  A FEW DOZEN MILES TO THE NORTHWEST

  As might be expected, the day’s first meal was mighty fine in the Columbine kitchen. (The formal dining room was used for lunch, supper, and high-stakes poker games.)

  Charlie Moon was seated at one end of the rectangular table, with Daisy Perika and Sarah positioned at his left and right elbow
s (respectively). Whereabouts the lady who had arrived in the Bronco? The guest whom the hospitable rancher had rescued from the noisy Holiday Inn was seated beside the Ute-Papago orphan.

  Halfway through her breakfast, the woman who preferred to be called Miss Whysper (or Missy Whysper when addressed by Charlie Moon) paused to touch a paper napkin to her lips. (Daintily.) “My, that is very tasty.”

  Moon returned a smile and a nod. “This is what we call a light cowboy breakfast. With a platter of this grub tucked under your belt, you’ll be ready to rope calves, shoe horses, and bale alfalfa till lunchtime—when we turn out a serious meal.”

  Knowing what was expected of her, the lady laughed. “I don’t know that I’ll be up to any roping, shoeing, or baling—but this meal will be sufficient to last me all day.”

  Sarah Frank was trying awfully hard to appear cheerful, but forcing her unhappy face into a smile was an exquisitely painful process. All the poor girl could think about was Charlie Moon’s upcoming wedding to pretty Patsy Poynter—and how disgustingly happy the pair would be together. I hope all her blond hair falls out and she gets fat as a cow and Charlie catches a bad case of— But, angry and vindictive as she was, Sarah was incapable of wishing any harm to the love of her young life. Not yet.

  When Daisy Perika paused in the salting of her eggs to look for the pepper shaker, she happened to glance across the table at the white woman who was enjoying Columbine hospitality. The old woman frowned. Well, what’s this? As the matukach woman chewed or swallowed or spoke, her pallid face (as seen through the shaman’s eyes) looked like cold, dead flesh that was attempting to mimic the real McCoy. As Daisy caught a glimpse of a white skull under the taut gray skin, the tribal elder managed to stifle a shudder, but she could not suppress the macabre image that had triggered it—or the certainty that … This white woman won’t live to see the sun come up again.

  Feeling the aged Indian woman’s odd stare, and spotting the salt shaker Daisy was setting aside, Miss Whysper correctly deduced what the tribal elder was looking for. She picked up the pepper shaker beside her coffee cup and passed it across the table to Charlie Moon’s aunt. “Is this what you’re looking for?”