The Angels' Share

by R. R. Irvine

  “Let me see that.” Emma took the bottle away from Martin and held it under her nose.

  Maybe witch was the right name for her, no matter what the century. Judging by the numb feeling in Traveler’s nose, it would take black magic to sort one smell from another in such a sated atmosphere.

  “Doctors tried to kill me off ninety years ago,”

  Emma said. “That’s when my mother started teaching me how to cure. She lived to be nearly a hundred herself. By then I was ministering to her. She never suffered, I can tell you that.”

  With a look of disgust she handed the bottle back to Martin. “You keep drinking this and the doctors will do you in too. Look at you, fer chrissake. You look like an old man. A man your age should still be voting for polygamy.”

  Martin rubbed his throat. “The doctors say I have a tumor.”

  “They can say whatever they want. Emma believes only her eyes.”

  She led Martin to the picnic table, cleared enough bench space for him to sit, and then fetched the lamp from the stand next to her bed. As soon as she turned up the wick, she reached into an overall pocket and extracted wire-rimmed spectacles, which she adjusted halfway down her nose.

  “Open wide,” she said, “and say ah.”

  Her hands and nails, Traveler noticed, looked freshly scrubbed. Watching her peer and probe made him nervous, so he moved cautiously around the table, checking the pots and pans as he went. The mixtures they contained varied from liquids, both thick and thin, to dried grasses. His nose still had enough life to catch a few variations in smell, though the overall impact was something approaching menthol.

  One container held a syrup so thick a ladle had been trapped standing straight up. He pulled it free of the mess and brought it within range of his nose. His throat spasmed, causing him to gag.

  “Don’t go mocking things you don’t understand,” the old woman said.

  By the time he’d replaced the ladle, she was unbuttoning Martin’s shirt and pressing her ear against his chest.

  “Breathe deeply, old man.”

  “Damn it,” Martin said. “I’m a hell of a lot younger than you are.”

  Emma cackled. “My last husband had ten years on you and he could do it every night.”

  “What happened to him?”

  She nudged Martin suggestively. “I wore him out.”

  Martin nudged back. “I thought you could heal anything.”

  “You youngsters. He was just like you. Thought he knew everything. Shoot. If he’d listened to me he’d still be warming my bed.”

  She fingered a small cloth bag that was hanging around her neck. “You see this? I’ve worn one every day of my life since I was sick as a girl. Lew, that’s my husband, wouldn’t wear his to bed. Said he didn’t like the smell. You can’t tell some people what’s good for them. They’re the same kind who say there’s no cure for the common cold, but don’t you believe it. Why, right now there’s a summer virus going around down in Kamas.”

  She squeezed the bag gently. “Many a person’s been carried away by a summer cold, Lew included. That’s why you won’t see me taking any chances. An asafetida bag is the only sure way. My mother knew that and she came across with Brigham Young back in forty-seven. It cured then, it cures now.”

  She left Martin’s side to rummage in one of the nightstand’s drawers. After a moment she came up with another small cloth bag attached to a rawhide loop, a twin of the one around her own neck. With the bag in hand she moved back to the picnic table and scooped a handful of dark material from one of the bowls.

  “Asafetida.” She held out her packed fist. “Take a whiff of that. It sure beats store- bought.”

  Both father and son obliged. It reminded Traveler of garlic, though he couldn’t be sure because of the condition of his nose.

  Emma made a clucking noise as she stuffed the bag, cinching its drawstring and knotting it tightly around the rawhide. That done, she spread the leather loop and signaled Martin to bow his head. Once the bag was around his neck, she stepped back and nodded with satisfaction.

  “As long as I’ve been curing sore throats, asafetida’s never failed me yet.”

  “And tumors?” Traveler asked.

  She sighed. “I don’t know.”

  “I’d hate to have to go through life smelling like this for nothing,” Martin said.

  “You come back one of these days and maybe I’ll let you into my bed after all.”

  Traveler took hold of his father. “Come on. We’ve got a long drive in the dark.”

  Emma wrapped a shawl around her shoulders and followed them to the door. “If it gets worse you can always try tying a dirty sock around your neck. An onion on a string’s good, too, or a piece of unwashed lamb’s hair that’s been soaked in brandy.”

  The night air started Martin coughing.

  “Hold the bag to your nose and breathe deeply,” Emma advised.

  As soon as Martin did, the coughing subsided.

  “Thank you,” Traveler said as he helped his father into the Jeep.

  “I’ve tried all the cures,” she called after them. “I still say asafetida’s the best.”

  22

  MARTIN DIDN’T want to spend the night in a Kamas motel, so Traveler drove straight through to Salt Lake, fighting mountain roads and exhaustion until he reached home at two in the morning. Even at that hour the temperature, according to the car radio, was seventy-seven degrees.

  Traveler recognized Claire’s perfume as soon as he stepped into the living room. When he switched on the light she sprang from the nearest recliner, her urchin’s face stretched in a wide grin. “Surprise.”

  At her sudden appearance, Martin caught his breath and Traveler’s arm at the same time. “Good God. For a minute there I thought it was Kary.”

  “How did you get in?” Traveler asked.

  The urchin’s face drew up and smiled seductively. The woman that went with it hung on Traveler’s free arm, tugging steadily as if in competition with Martin. She was dressed in white, a sleeveless blouse, slacks that showed no panty line, and sandals.

  “I climbed through a back window to see you, Moroni.” She rubbed a bony elbow where the skin had been scraped raw.

  “That sounds like something Kary would have done,” Martin grumbled.

  Standing on tiptoe, she kissed Traveler’s cheek. “I didn’t have any choice. Moroni won’t play fair.”

  “What kind of game is it?” Martin asked. Claire opened her mouth to say something but made a face instead. Holding her nose she asked, “What is that God-awful smell?”

  “Faith,” Traveler answered.

  “Don’t pay attention to him,” Martin said, and let go of his son to pull the asafetida bag from inside his shirt. “This is my magic charm.”

  Claire let go of her nose and Traveler backed up a step. “It makes me sick.”

  “I know how you feel. My stomach’s been protesting for the last two hours.” Martin stuffed the medicine pouch back inside his shirt. “Still, there are those who believe that this can cure whatever ails you. That being the case, what’s the harm of a little stink between friends?”

  “You’re both crazy,” she said.

  Martin spread his hands in a gesture of goodwill. “As a father, I’m entitled to know how my son is mistreating you.”

  “He‘s supposed to find me when I’m lost.”

  “I’ve been telling him the same thing for years. Keep looking. Sooner or later you’ll find the answers. Of course, they may not be what you expected.”

  Claire wrinkled her brow as if thinking that over. The wrinkles disappeared when she spoke. “A detective has to have clues, so I decided to bring him some myself since there was no one else to do it for me.”

  “I’ve never had much luck with clues,” Martin said. “Every time I find them they prove something I didn’t want to know.”

  She bit her lip.

  “My advice is hire another detective,” Martin added. “I told my wife th
e same thing once.”

  Traveler stared at his father, wondering what the occasion had been to offer such advice to Kary.

  For a moment Claire didn’t move or respond. Finally she smiled uncertainly and retrieved a small, beaded purse from the recliner where she’d been sitting in the dark. She handed the pocketbook to Traveler. “All the clues you’ll need to find me are inside. Sometimes I think my soul could fit in there, too, along with the bits and pieces of my life, everything that’s left of me after all these years.”

  Martin snorted. “You’re still young. Practically a child.”

  “A woman’s old the moment she has her first man.”

  She looked thinner than ever, Traveler noticed. Blue veins showed in her arms. The skin covering her face was stretched taut enough to reveal the skull underneath. As usual, she needed a man to feed upon. Once it had been he.

  With a grin, Martin took her purse and opened it. It was filled with wads of paper.

  “Those are my secret messages.” Claire took back the purse and shook it, producing a jingling sound. “Bits and pieces, like I said. But you can’t look at any of it until I leave. Those are the rules.”

  When she tried to give the purse to Traveler, he clasped his hands behind his back, an act that prompted one of her knowing smiles. Slowly and deliberately her accomplished tongue probed the red rim of her mouth. He closed his eyes but that only intensified the memories of her sexuality.

  His eyes popped open. He felt short of breath.

  “For Christ’s sake,” Martin said. “This could go on all night.” He took the bag and placed it on the mantel next to a line of photographs that chronicled several generations of the Traveler family.

  “Is that your wife?” Claire asked, touching a picture of Kary and Martin standing side by side in formal dress.

  “That’s what she called herself.”

  Claire smiled at Traveler. “We should have had our photo taken like that.”

  “We weren’t married.”

  “I said the vows inside my head. God heard them even if you didn’t.”

  Martin clapped his son on the back. “She’s right, you know. She belongs up there beside your mother. It’s like I said before, they’re two of a kind. A matched pair.”

  Claire studied the photograph on the mantel more carefully.

  “Women are the curse of us Travelers,” Martin continued. “They’re lost to us right from the start. We search for them constantly and all we ever find is unhappiness.”

  “You see,” she said. “Your father understands the rules.”

  “Of course I do, my dear. You run along now and hide.”

  “And you’ll send Moroni out to find me?”

  “My son could never resist a clue, you should know that. Give him a few hours’ sleep and he’ll be hard at work, I assure you.”

  “What a dear old man you are.” Her meager arms hugged Martin around the neck.

  “You’ll need a head start,” he told her.

  “You’re perfect. Both of you.” She threw herself at Traveler and kissed him on the lips before he had time to object. Her tongue teased once and then she was gone. Part of him, the part he distrusted, wanted to go after her.

  Martin stared at the door long after it had closed behind her. Finally he said, “You need a place of your own if you’re going to invite women over.”

  “I didn’t invite her.”

  “How long have you been living here now? Six months, isn’t it? Ever since you broke up with that woman. A man your age has got to start circulating again.”

  “You just said women were a curse.”

  “I also told Claire you’d come looking. But if you listened carefully I didn’t say just who you’d be looking for.”

  “How can any of us know when to believe you?”

  “The fact is, your being here is putting a crimp in my style, too.” Martin fingered the asafetida bag through the material of his shirt. “If this goddamned stuff works, I just might find myself a rich widow to marry. Naturally I’m going to have a hell of a time doing that with a grown son hanging around kibitzing.”

  Traveler didn’t respond. He knew Martin too well. Every few weeks his father would pretend to fly off the handle to give Traveler an easy way out of their relationship.

  “I’m content living here for the moment.”

  “It ain’t natural,” Martin said, and stomped out of the room in a vain attempt to keep his satisfaction from showing.

  Traveler sat down, avoiding the recliner that Claire had so recently occupied. There were times, he had to admit, when he longed for a place of his own. But now was not one of them. The tumor had seen to that.

  He touched his own throat in sympathy. If only he could share some of Martin’s pain. He‘d do it gladly. It would be little enough payment for gaining a father who’d made childhood bearable by acting as a buffer against Kary’s destructiveness.

  “I’m leaving you,” Kary had said, with five-year-old Moroni right there beside her as a witness. “Every time you look at me, Martin, you make me feel guilty.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “I am guilty. I know that. But I don’t like being constantly reminded of it with those sad looks of yours. Besides, it was your goddamned fault anyway. You should never have gone off and left me.”

  “There was a war.”

  “You were exempt. They weren’t drafting policemen.”

  “They were drafting men ten years older than I was.”

  “You don’t have to tell me what a hero you were. I read the papers.”

  “I did what I had to. That’s all.”

  “That doesn’t make the men who stayed behind cowards.”

  “I never said they were.”

  “I can see it in your eyes.”

  “You see more than I do.”

  “I didn’t spread my legs for every four-effer who came along, you know.”

  “Don’t talk that way in front of the boy.”

  “Why don’t you call him Moroni? He‘s named for you, for God’s sake. Or is that still bothering you? Have I tainted the Traveler bloodline?”

  Martin sighed. “It was your idea to keep our home together when I came back.”

  “What choice did I have? Men walk away from their mistakes. Women get pregnant.”

  “How many mistakes are we talking about?”

  “You agreed never to ask that.”

  “We shouldn’t talk about any of this, Kary, not here and not now.”

  “I’m giving you a chance to say good-bye to Moroni. If you don’t see him as your son, so be it.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “To live with my parents.”

  “They follow the Word of Wisdom. You’ll have to stop smoking and drinking. You’ll have to go to church.”

  “I’ve been there before.”

  “And Moroni? You told me you didn’t want him brought up to be LDS.”

  “I can change my mind.”

  “Have you asked our son what he wants?”

  Kary stood up. “Come on, Moroni. Your grandparents are waiting.”

  “I have a right to visit my son.”

  “Your son.”

  “I’ve made him mine.”

  “Shall we tell him the truth?”

  “You’ve been doing that for years.” Martin knelt in front of Moroni. “It’s not the beginning that counts with people, son. It’s the way a man’s raised that makes the difference.”

  “We’ll see about that.”

  “I won’t lose my son. I’ll go to court if necessary.”

  “Damn you.”

  “I want him weekends.”

  “You’ll have to pay support.”

  “All right.”

  “And money for me.”

  “Alimony?”

  “There’s not going to be any divorce, not to start with. We’ll just call it spending money.”

  “How much?”

  “As much as you can afford. Tha
t, or weekends are out.”

  “Very well.”

  Kary took Moroni’s hand and jerked him toward the door.

  “Take care of your mother,” Martin called after them.

  Traveler lived with his grandparents for two years. When Kary started talking about getting a divorce and remarrying, Traveler told her he wasn’t going to live with a stranger and walked the five miles to the house on First Avenue. Kary moved back a week later.

  23

  TRAVELER WAS awakened the next morning by the distant sound of his father talking on the telephone. He grabbed the bedside extension and listened in.

  “The biopsy report hasn’t come back yet,” Dr. Murphy was saying. “It ought to be here tomorrow or the next day.”

  “The day after tomorrow is the twenty-fourth,” Martin reminded him.

  “That’s right. I forgot about Pioneer Days. No wonder everything’s backed up.”

  “Damned Mormons.”

  “Take it easy, Martin. If I thought this delay was critical, I’d be there supervising the tests myself. You know that. I’ll call you the moment I know anything.”

  “It’s Moroni I’m worried about. He‘s fussing around here like a mother hen.”

  “I heard that,” Traveler said.

  “Detectives.” The doctor snorted and hung up.

  Traveler looked at his watch. It was after nine. “Hang up. I need to make a call.”

  “I already made it.”

  “Are you a mind-reader now?”

  “That depends. My detective’s curiosity started me wondering about Maria Gomez.”

  Traveler groaned. Martin was on the mark.

  “She’s still in jail. No bail. No visitors. Deportation pending.”

  “Any word from your sources on what the hell is going on?” Traveler asked.

  “Someone’s covering someone else’s ass.”

  “But whose?”

  “It won’t make any difference to Maria. She’s had it. I made another call, too. You remember Richard Lee. He runs a Mom-and-Pop in Little Mexico. Lee’s Market. He told me Maria shops there, she and a friend. That would be the woman you told me about, Rosie.”

  “Did you wake up anybody else this morning?”

  “Who’d you have in mind?”