The Truck Comes on Thursday

by Sue Hardesty

  "Wow! That's some kind of mad." Bobby shook his head.

  "Crazy jealous, I figure. She saw both Rene and me as competition."

  Tully wandered in. "O'Neal wants a priest."

  "I don't think we have one around here right now, Tully," Lola told him. "I think he moved back to Phoenix."

  "I know they haven't finished fixing the church. Wouldn't they keep a priest around here anyway?"

  "The rectory's got too much damage to live in."

  "What happened to that Catholic priest that lived in a trailer house on Rankin's ranch near the Indian village? " Bobby asked.

  Lola glanced up from her typing. "Jimmy Rankin ran him off."

  "Why?"

  "Well, Jimmy said he asked the priest to help with the lice and fleas in the village and he said it wasn't any of his business. Said he was there to teach about God. He went to the village and asked red Feather what they learned from the priest. Jimmy said red-Feather told him, 'He just talka bout God and hell. Then he passa da pot.'"

  "Well, hell!" Tully shook his head.

  Lola answered the phone. Hanging it up, she told the group, "Carl cancelled the meeting."

  "Bless him." Loni stood up. "I gotta get home before I fall down."

  * * *

  Loni propped herself against a pillow on the bed and opened another notebook, hoping a story from her grandmother would cheer her. The story was called "Headlight." Loni smiled. Sounded like a bright story to her.

  Headlight was a blazed face desert colt, bright sorrel and stocking legged. I always believed no horse was naturally mean; the same with boys, but mishandling or environment made them so. I don't know what happened to Headlight. The five years on the desert developed him physically into a beautiful animal. Maybe someone caught him and abused him, maybe he got enough loco weed somewhere to damage his brain. No amount of kindness or food seemed to change him. If you tied him up he'd fight the rope until he fell exhausted. If you came in the corral, he'd charge you biting and striking.

  We decided to geld him and maybe he'd change. That operation in itself was a story. Tied down he beat his head on the ground so I tried to sit on his head to hold him still. He threw me off like a wet sock, so Ben said, "You finish the cut and I'll hold him." So I castrated my first colt, got the bleeding stopped and smeared on his bruises and Ben let him up. We just made it to the top rail, and here he came, squealing and striking. He was crazy mad. We put feed and water in the corral and left him to quiet down. He never did, just the sight of a man would make him charge at you.

  Ben said, "That's enough. He'll kill someone." So he took him back to the desert and shot him. I didn't protest, because he was so mean he'd never change. We tried for over three months. Most of the colts were working good by then, but he only had two saddlings. He didn't buck so hard he couldn't be rode. It was when he was loose that he went haywire. Maybe a "head shrinker" could explain that.

  Maybe horses have insanity, but I'll always think it was loco weed and that if it doesn't kill them outright, it affects their nervous system. So they are ruined, unpredictable, and a danger to themselves and others. Poor old Headlight, another tragedy of the desert.

  Closing the notebook, she kept hearing Bahb's voice. Do no harm. But Jenny could not live by that. She was too badly damaged.

  FROM: Loni Wagner

  TO: Sandi@gmailyahoo.com

  DATE: July 23

  SUBJECT: Still here

  Lots happened, but I'll make it short.

  Jenny is a lost soul. She murdered the man who raped her as a child. The rapist pinned the blame on her father, who served ten years for it. Mother killed herself. Jenny and her brother tracked him until her dad got out. They went to his house tonight. Tortured and murdered him.

  Lola's having a hard time dealing with Chief's death. Even though she didn't really like him or respect him, he was her boss and that makes it close to home. She's trying to cover with teasing, but I can see the pain in her eyes.

  James just called me. He got a confession out of Rebecca, Jenny's lover. Seems Jenny has a bad habit of looking for people to use, including Rene. Rebecca was so jealous, she couldn't deal with it. She saw Jenny kissing Rene and killed him. When Jenny showed some interest in me, Rebecca tried to kill me. None of us realized that Jenny was after Chief.

  Times like this I wish I didn't hate drugs so much. I could use a knockout pill. But I survived losing Maria, and I can survive this.

  Take care of you and yours. It's dangerous out there.

  Loni

  CHAPTER 24

  July 24, 1:15 a.m.

  LONI BEGAN HER PATROL determined to find Willie. She stopped at all the bars in her area, but no one had seen him. Finally, she parked in her usual speed trap location down from the Oasis Bar and opened her phone book to bars within a fifty-mile radius. She started calling, describing Willie to deaf ears that hadn't seen anything for years. Bartender's curse.

  Waiting for dawn, she picked up three speeders headed for California, but let them off with warnings. She was tired of anger, tired of boredom, tired of hurting for Jenny, and lonely for Lola. Wow! Where did that come from? Time became the enemy as the waxing moon followed her, accusing her of failing Willie. Desperate to find Willie, the night never seemed to end. Coco stayed close, leaning against Loni the whole night.

  * * *

  Loni skipped the task force meeting and went home. She set her alarm for eleven o'clock. Most bars started to open up then.

  * * *

  She shut off her alarm and closed her eyes, trying to get back to sleep. Failing, she crawled out of bed to make more calls.

  The fifth one gave her hope. The barkeep at Voltap, a podunk spot at a crossroads forty miles from Caliente, said, "Sounds like the drunk in the back."

  Loni got there in thirty-five minutes. She showed the barkeep her badge, and he pointed to the back door.

  It wasn't Willie.

  Leaning down, she tried to wake the man up. His skin was dry and pasty. Not good. Groaning, he pushed Loni's hands away and rubbed his head. "Got a drink?"

  "No. But I'll take you to a doctor."

  "No doctor. Rather stay here." The drunk rolled back over on his filthy blanket and passed out again.

  CHAPTER 25

  July 25, 4:13 a.m.

  THE CALL CAME ON Sunday afternoon. Somebody said they saw him sick behind the Aqua Verde Canteen. She remembered the bar and the old graveyard hidden around the back of a hill. Left over from the Verde Mine in its glory days in the late 1800s, it was a very small graveyard with maybe thirty wooden crosses in unreadable pieces. In one corner, a small headstone, the only one with a visible name, read "Baby Mary" and "May 2, 1877."

  A thunderhead blowing in fast out of the Bradshaws bellowed high overhead as dun gray and cotton white fell over each other in the huge blue sky. Loni watched it while she sped the twenty miles to the tiny settlement. Once a mining town, it survived these days mostly from the big RV campgrounds around it. Every winter the desert filled with every kind of sleeping contraption anyone could dream up. Some days it resembled Quartsite, homeless homes on wheels stretching for miles.

  As the flashing sign of the bar came into view, Loni slowed down and pulled up in front. She walked up to the barkeep and asked for Willie. She knew he had been here because his favorite bolo tie hung on a hook beside the large mirror behind the bar.

  "Who are you?"

  "His sister."

  "Out back," the barkeep said. "Smelled so bad I had to throw him out."

  "Not before you took that off him." Loni pointed to the tie.

  "I gave him a bottle for it," he replied belligerently.

  "How much?"

  "$400."

  "Sorry?" Loni glared at him.

  "Take it or leave it."

  Disgusted, Loni handed him a credit card and stuffed the bolo in her pocket.

  She pushed through the back door, following the smell of vomit around a corner to a shed. The roof was partly covered wit
h a blue tarp, and the missing boards in the flimsy walls left spaces wide enough to walk through. The stuffing of an old couch, faded and rotted from the sun and rain, surrounded Willie.

  Smelling of vomit, he groaned in pain, his breathing irregular, and his lips tinged blue. Loni had seen it plenty of times on the streets of LA. She tried to help, but any time she took them to a clinic, she'd be stepping over them again the next day.

  This was different. This was Willie. She tried to get him to stand, but he was a limp, dead weight. Giving up, she locked her arms around has chest and dragged him to her truck. Just as she got the door open, a car pulled up and a cowboy got out, offering to help. They wrestled him up and seat belted him in.

  "He's pretty much gone," the cowboy said somberly. "Better find a doctor."

  "I'm on my way." She nodded her thanks, starting the truck.

  Loni called her grandparents and told them to hurry to the clinic. "If you get a ticket, Bahb, I'll pay for it."

  * * *

  Chelsa moved him into the area equipped for serious emergencies and called Dr. Benjamin.

  Loni sat between her grandparents to wait. "He has to make it," she said, holding onto the edge of hope.

  Bahb rubbed her back as Shiichoo held her hand. "Can't. Grief too deep. He ride Paint home now. Let him go."

  An hour later, Willie was dead. Dr. Benjamin signed the certificate, calling it death by alcohol poisoning but it was a broken heart that killed him. Loni didn't argue with the doc. Bahb picked Willie up and walked out of the clinic, setting him in his pickup. Shiichoo got in beside Willie and held him to her.

  Time passed in chunks, folding in upon itself, as Loni followed Bahb to the ranch and climbed out of her truck, watching Bahb take Willie into the house. Loni started to follow, but Shiichoo grabbed her arm and pulled her toward Willie's place. "Need to get his clothes," she insisted. "Bahb will clean him up."

  They found clean underwear, socks, his favorite shirt, and new Levis. Shiichoo had carried Willie's boots home in her lap. She handed them to Loni as she gathered the clothes and left her to clean the boots. Loni found the soap for the boots and spent a long time polishing them. On her way out, she picked up his tomahawk from the table.

  Night had fallen by the time she entered the house. Willie was cleaned up, dressed, and laid out on the dining room table. Shiichoo had Willie's two ollo pottery bowls filled with pinole and water beside him. His bolo tie was around his neck, and his hands were on his chest. Loni handed Bahb Willie's boots. She slowly walked up to Willie and gazed down, placing his tomahawk in his hands as she leaned over and kissed his forehead. Then she sat down beside him.

  CHAPTER 26

  July 26, 1:00 p.m.

  TIME FOR ONE MORE chore before they buried Willie.

  "Lola? It's Loni. I need a favor." Even talking hurt.

  "Sure, sweetheart. Whatever I can do."

  "I need you to come and cut my hair," Loni said sadly.

  "Why?"

  "It's tradition. Pimas cut their hair when they bury a loved one. It's something Willie asked me to do."

  "I'll be there in an hour, okay?"

  Loni hadn't moved from the kitchen table when Lola knocked on the door. The cup of coffee in front of her had turned cold. She struggled up to let Lola in. Coco was her usual ecstatic self to see Lola.

  "Pour yourself some coffee," Loni said. "I'll be right back." Giving her hair a good, quick wash, she collected scissors, comb, and towel. Returning, she wrapped the towel around her shoulders and sat down.

  "You're serious." It wasn't a question. "How much do you want me to cut?"

  "It's supposed to be above the shoulders. But I can't braid it that short, so cut it off my neck. It's too hot."

  "I'm not sure about this," Lola said cautiously.

  "Didn't you say you cut everybody's hair in your neighborhood?"

  "Yes, but..."

  "Butts are to sit on. Just do it, please." Shiichoo came in and sat down to watch. They were both near tears.

  "Shiichoo, if you're going to sit there and cry, I'm going to cut it the way I did in high school."

  "No, you won't. Lola won't do that."

  "I got two hands and a mirror," Loni retored.

  Lola stared at Loni. "What'd you do?"

  "Crewcut."

  "You're kidding!"

  Shiichoo added, "She also streaked it with that god awful spray paint. Usually rainbow colors."

  "You were out in high school?"

  Loni shrugged. "Remember? I was a two spirit and proud of it." No one said anything for several minutes, and Loni listened to the snicking of the scissors as the black hair fell in long batches around her feet. Shiichoo gathered it and gently put it in a large plastic Ziploc bag.

  "Make somebody a good wig." She sounded weepy.

  "Sure," answered Lola. "There's a place that makes wigs up for cancer patients. You can send it there."

  Lola snipped around her ears. "Tell me something. Why didn't any of us see how bad Chief really was? I thought he was just a sick old man."

  "Bahb knew," Loni said. "He said Chief had the soft wet eyes of pure evil."

  "I'm sorry?"

  "Soft wet eyes. Did you not notice?"

  "No. Why didn't you tell me?" Lola asked in amazement.

  "Bahb says —"

  "Wait a minute. Is this another one of your grandfather's truisms?"

  "Doesn't make them wrong!" Loni said defensively.

  "I know. Just want to know what I'm hearing here. Go on."

  "He says no matter what evil a person does, the only way to get somebody to believe it is, is to say he killed a cat."

  "Works for me." Lola handed Loni a hand mirror.

  "Wow! I look like kd lang with a crooked nose."

  Lola reached out and lifted Loni's chin with a finger and studied her.

  "Your forehead's broader, your chin is rounder. And she doesn't have dimples." Lola shook her head. "Nah. You look more like Geronimo." She laughed as she ducked away from Loni.

  "Does Geronimo have dimples, Shiichoo?"

  "I don't really know. Never met him since he died a good twenty years before I was born. Don't think I ever saw a picture of him smiling. Maybe."

  "Were you related?"

  "Probably. We were both Chiricahua Apaches from the high country. I was born on the San Carlos Reservation."

  "I remember that, now. Do you know how he died?"

  "Fell off a horse, I think. Got pneumonia. He's buried at Fort Sill, Oklahoma." Shiichoo frowned. "Guess Usen got tired of taking care of him."

  "Usen?"

  "Apache high God of the Bedonkohe religion."

  "I could use Usen right now." Loni fell silent. Torn by her feelings for Lola and her sorrow over Willie's death, Loni couldn't decide whether to laugh or cry.

  Shiichoo took the towel from her shoulders, and Loni heard the screeching of the screen door. She knew Shiichoo was shaking her hair in the yard for the birds to build soft nests. She made herself think of the small brown sparrow's push, pull, and tug as the nest grew in her mind.

  Lola sat down and took Loni's hand. "I'd like to stay for the funeral. Is that okay?"

  Loni leaned over and hugged her. "Thanks."

  "People are coming," Shiichoo said as she came back in. "Time to get food ready."

  "I'd like to help," Lola said.

  "Of course you can," Loni answered. "Why'd you think I asked you over?"

  Lola slapped her across the back of the head as she passed by to help Shiichoo.

  * * *

  It was a motley crew that trickled into the glow of the waxing moon as it hung low in the sky. Flickering candles lit the way to the old ranch graveyard. Four of Willie's friends lowered his sitting body into his final resting place, facing him south. They placed his pottery ollos of pinole and water beside him. Loni and Bahb helped them shovel dirt until Willie was covered for his journey. Silently, she wished Willie and Paint a fast ride to their happy hunting grounds.
<
br />   In minutes, it was over and everyone quietly drifted into the night. It was the way Willie would have wanted it.