Moonlight Water

by Win Blevins

  Red had no idea where civilization was, no idea where water might be, no idea how to find food. He was on a short leash out here, and suspected there would be no manna dropping from heaven. For whatever reason, he wasn’t scared.

  Then he heard the growl. He sorted out the textures of sounds, so he knew what it was before he saw it. In a few seconds a purple and white ATV came into shadowy view, cruising up the road in the half dark.

  Was the ATV really purple and white? Twilight could play tricks with colors. Red wondered if it was really Kravin. And where are you sneaking off to, you stinking bastard? Red grinned. I’ve got your weapon.

  The ATV driver stopped at the Bronco, walked around the car, and seemed to check the license plate. Then he opened the front door and rummaged around, then the back door, then the rear hatch. Thief? Or just nosey? Kravin? If Kravin was looting ruins, he’d damn well want to know who else was around. Red would tell Zahnie all about it.

  Red looked up into the violet sky and saw it—a buzzard circling right over the Bronco and ATV. Hi, Ed!

  Red chuckled at himself.

  Kravin mounted the ATV, started the engine, and buzzed off.

  The vulture left its circle and wing-flapped off to the left of the setting sun, the south, probably toward the river.

  The ATV turned north off the road into a side canyon where Red could see no road.

  Curiouser and curiouser.

  20

  THE RANGER RESCUES TONTO

  Don’t laugh at old people, or make jokes about them. One day you’ll be worse off than they are.

  —Navajo saying

  Honk-Honk!

  Red blinked. Light all around him, full sunlight.

  Honk-Honk-Honk!

  He sat up. The sun was shining directly into this overhang early in the morning.

  Honk-Honk-Honk!

  He shook his head but didn’t get all the cobwebs out.

  Honk-Honk!

  He looked out toward the road. A white van with the Harmony House logo stood bumper to bumper with the Bronco. A head craned out the window. Zahnie, the lonely ranger rescuing the lonely Tonto.

  Red wondered what her mood would be this morning.

  Honk!

  He tiptoed out into the sunlight and waved at her. She was out of the van now, next to the driver’s window, peering around. Honk-Honk-Honk! She didn’t see him. She was going to wake up the whole country. Good joke.

  He yelled and waved.

  She turned around and around.

  He yelled again.

  She kept turning. At least she’d stopped honking. When she spotted him, he grabbed his gear and slipped his way down the damp slope.

  “They held me for hours asking questions,” she said. “Let’s get moving.”

  “You may want to hear something first. Wayne Kravin stopped here last night. Riding his ATV. Got out and checked the Bronco inside and out, like a sniffing dog.”

  Instantly, she was in the driver’s seat of the Bronco and talking into the radio.

  Yazzie was so loud he hurt Red’s ears, and Zahnie was whispering into a cupped hand.

  “No, hell, no,” her boss said.

  She whispered.

  “You will not follow up.”

  Whisper.

  “You were a heroine. Now they’re thinking of filing obstruction charges against you for yesterday’s bullshit.”

  So few Navajos cussed that it was a pleasure to hear.

  “Yes, I said I would lie for you, and I will. You’re covered.”

  Zahnie’s lips moved.

  “If I don’t see you in two hours,” her boss barked, “I will charge you formally with being insubordinate to me. Get your ass back here.”

  Red thought she must have the best boss in the universe.

  * * *

  Red was glad to climb into the Harmony House van and not ride with Zahnie. Not good company right now.

  Finally, his bumper followed hers into the dirt parking area at the rear of Harmony House. It had been a long, hot, and miserable ride but better than being stuck in the outback. No question.

  When they rolled to a stop, she jumped out, slammed her door, and said four of the worst words a man can hear from a woman: “We need to talk.”

  “Can we eat first?”

  She opened her mouth to say no, and grace soared from the windows. Zahnie stopped to listen, and the challenge on her face metamorphosed into pleasure. “It’s Clarita,” she said.

  Red nearly laughed. Incredibly, Franz Liszt’s “Liebestraum” sailed out the windows and through cottonwood leaves gently stirred by a breeze. The granddame was playing a song that Red had loved to play as a kid. Even on an out-of-tune piano it blessed the desert afternoon.

  “‘Dream of love,’ it means,” he said.

  Zahnie looked at him, puzzled.

  “The German—” He stopped himself. Bad time.

  Tony saved them by opening the kitchen door as wide as his smile. “Want some lunch?”

  “No mobs in my kitchen,” said Jolo, pointing all of them through the wide door to the dining room.

  “Please, go on,” Red said to Clarita at the piano. “It’s lovely.” “Liebestraum” was one of the few classical pieces his grandmother had taught to him. Looking pleased to have the attention, Clarita turned her fingers and her imagination back to the music. It seemed like a message from a more genteel world. Fairly amazing, he told himself, considering where we are.

  “I have stuff for egg salad sandwiches left from lunch,” said Jolo, putting plates on the table.

  Tony told Red with a smile, “Applesauce on the side with the sandwiches. Egg salad and applesauce every day for lunch, sometimes peanut butter and jelly, oatmeal every day for breakfast, mashed potatoes for dinner, and tapioca pudding or chocolate pudding for dessert. Our folks aren’t going to die of old age. The food they’ve got to eat because of their bad teeth, if they have any teeth left, is gonna bore them to death.”

  Clarita sat down at the table. Jolo put a platter of sandwiches and sweet pickles in front of everyone.

  Tony said, “Living with old people, it changes your life. I read a really good story the other day.”

  Zahnie said aside to Red, “That usually means in The National Enquirer.”

  “Of course The Enquirer,” Tony exclaimed. “My favorite. Anyway, the Queen Mum went to visit an old folks’ home. She was nearly a hundred then, but she did those things, royals among the ragamuffins. She’s walking through the ward and stops to talk to a sweet little old lady. ‘How are you? You’re certainly looking well,’ that sort of thing.

  “Well, the old lady gets a blank look on her face. The Queen Mum considers. ‘My dear, do you know who I am?’ she asks nicely.

  “‘If you’ve forgotten that,’ says the old woman, ‘you can go to the nurses’ station and they’ll tell you your name.’”

  Tony gobbled up one of the sweet pickles while everyone hooted.

  “Any news?” Red asked the table at large.

  “The local paper put out a special edition with full info on the warrants, and gave Zahnie credit for Kravin and the Nielsens, the biggest fish. But it wasn’t exactly welcome news. The paper is nine-tenths letters from angry citizens wailing and bellowing. ‘Don’t the police have anything better to do than bother good citizens? With the streets of Salt Lake City full of rioting gangs? With the Mexicans motoring marijuana through our county in the dark of every night?’ Et cetera, et cetera. No citizen opposed to looting has dared open his mouth, not yet, not in print. And that’s the news from Lake Wobegon, where the women are queens, the men are good-looking marshmallows, and only the little kids act all the way alive.”

  “Where’s Gianni?” asked Red, noticing the empty chair.

  “He said to tell you he’s gone to reap the first rewards of your investment.” Tony raised an inquiring eyebrow. Red thought, It sure would be okay for my ship to come in.

  * * *

  “You look like a young man who wo
uld play the piano.” That was Clarita. She had the lid of the piano bench up and was rummaging inside. “I have lovely four-hand arrangements here.”

  “I have a better use for him,” said Jolo from the kitchen. In an instant “The Blue Danube” lilted forth and Jolo was in Red’s arms, waltzing. “Clarita’s divine,” Jolo said.

  At the end of the waltz Clarita said, “Do you like Cole Porter?”

  She launched into a sprightly version of “I’ve Got You Under My Skin.”

  Tony clinked out a beat with his fork on his drinking glass.

  Red felt his hips loosening, and his feet got into the groove. Mmm, it felt so good to move.

  The back door opened and a young man came in carrying an infant. Just as Red recognized him, Eric grinned and slipped into the dance embrace, complete with baby. The four of them boogied, and the baby looked delighted. When the song changed, Eric danced away with the baby and Jolo.

  Red had a yen to be alone. Too many complications in this room. “Tony, is it okay if I lay down upstairs for a while?”

  “That bed’s yours as long as you want.”

  * * *

  After supper Red sat outside in the evening light. He had a bench, some pleasant evening air, and a half-moon to indicate that his life could be waxing or waning. He decided to risk playing the harmonica and not fret about Eric.

  Red played old American music, first a Stephen Foster tune called “Hard Times,” then a couple of spirituals. He fooled around with the spirituals. He found a little suck-quick-in-and-out trick at the end of one spiritual that he liked.

  He didn’t care whether they heard him inside. The music could be a gift of the evening breeze, which blew it to them or blew it away. He played “Tain’t What You Do” and thought of getting up and dancing, but he wasn’t good at the steps of the soft-shoe that went with it originally.

  Abruptly an audience of one opened the door. “Right back,” said Zahnie. She disappeared toward the back of the property. When she returned and sat down on a nearby boulder, she had a cheap guitar. “A G and a D, please.” She tuned all six strings. At last she said, “Anything. I’ll follow.”

  Red thought and then dived into one of his favorite oldies, Hank Williams’s “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry.”

  She joined nicely, no big deal in her playing, but she was in the swing of things. Making music together felt good.

  The second time through he sang the words, sweet and piquant and full of longing—the blue whippoorwill, the midnight train, the star falling across a purple sky.

  When they finished, he tried to hear the last chord zephyring out across the red sand all the way to the highway and the town and beyond to the river. Maybe Ed could hear it.

  I need to make music.

  Their eyes met and held. Zahnie said nothing. Red nodded toward the nearby building and said, “Show me your house.”

  She smiled. “That cottage isn’t mine. That’s the Annex. Tony’s fixing it up to move into. He needs his office, and his own space, and eventually he’ll still need the upstairs bedroom he’s using.”

  Red shrugged.

  “But if your clock ticks that tock, Tony’s usually up for it.”

  “Pass.”

  She grinned. “C’mon.” She jumped up and led the way.

  Behind Tony’s cottage was the Granary, a funny little structure two stories high and taller than it was wide, like an over-grown outhouse. It had an enclosed porch full of outdoor gear, one big room with a gas stove, refrigerator, table with two chairs, and woodstove, plus a loft that must hold the bed. Cramped and improvised, a camp as much as a home.

  She didn’t speak but waited while Red looked.

  He reached out and took her by the shoulders. She held back.

  “Red, I said it’s not going to happen. I’m not…”

  He took his hands away, felt a little pang in his heart, and made an effort at a smile. He looked into her eyes. No crack in her shell tonight.

  Bright headlights and a siren invaded the room.

  Zahnie looked out the window and then moved fast. Over her shoulder as she went out, she said, “It’s Charlie Lyman. Give me that gun you’re carrying.”

  Red flinched, but he did it. She opened her freezer and stuck it behind her ice-cube trays.

  “Don’t say one goddamn word.”

  21

  BUSTED

  When you cannot catch your enemies, it’s because you don’t have Coyote’s help. He can jump over four bushes with one jump. Ask for Coyote. He’s a trickster, but he likes to help.

  —Navajo saying

  Zahnie and Red shielded their eyes as they walked toward the cop car. She yelled, “Kill the lights and siren, Charlie!”

  He slammed the door and stuck out a piece of paper. “I have a warrant to search this property!” he shouted over the whine. Charlie could get about any warrant he wanted. The judge was both his bishop and his uncle.

  “Kill the damn lights and siren!” Charlie did. She took the proffered warrant and read it. Oh, shit.

  At that moment Deputy Hicks got out of the county car. At least he had the decency to look sheepish. “Let’s the four of us go inside,” Charlie said, “and have a good visit. You wanna be a cooperating officer and show us where it is?”

  Zahnie’s heart sank, and she didn’t budge.

  Charlie Lyman banged open the door of Harmony House and filled the frame. “Calling all lamebrains,” he yelled, “front and center! Your asses are busted!” He stomped in, and she followed.

  Virgil wiggled in his seat like he might rise from the couch. Jolo came to the kitchen door and gave the intruder The Eye. Tony looked up from the small desk where he was paying bills and rose slowly.

  Zahnie wondered how many people in the room felt little water snakes swimming up and down their spines. Herself, for sure. Tony because he ogled men and once touched Charlie Lyman. Probably even Virgil Rats half-remembered an imaginary crime fifty years ago and was on the edge of wetting his pants. Luckily, Eric was gone, and Miss Clarita had finished her evening joint.

  Everybody thinks they’re guilty of something and that one day they’ll be found out.

  Charlie swept his malicious gaze around the room and then fixed it on Tony. “To stay clean with the judge, I have to say this stuff. I have a warrant permitting me to search this property thoroughly for marijuana, which I have probable cause to believe is grown, distributed, and used on these premises. Deputy Hicks, get started while I ask Anthony Begay some questions he won’t want to answer.”

  Zahnie said, “Charlie, this is bullshit. I’ll take you to the pot plants.” Everyone in town knew about it.

  “Take me to whatever you’re willing to show.”

  “The attic,” she said.

  “Deputy Hicks, start searching this floor. Don’t miss an inch.”

  Zahnie could hear the clomp of Charlie’s boots behind her as she climbed a set of steep stairs with a landing and a turn. At the top she opened the door with a skeleton key. “The old polygamist intended to fix up this attic for a third family,” she said, “but he didn’t live long enough to have one.”

  She flipped a light switch. It was one huge room, the floor finished but not the walls. In the gable at the southern end hung a telltale pair of fluorescent lights, right next to a captain’s window that let in the winter sun.

  “There’s your evidence,” she said, extending her arm like a headwaiter saying, “Right this way.”

  Beneath the lights sat two white five-gallon buckets, each with one flourishing marijuana plant.

  Charlie hefted one and said, “Get the other for me.”

  “Go to hell,” said Zahnie.

  The cop lifted them both, labored back to the door and down the stairs. Then he and Hicks spent over an hour turning the house inside out. The Harmony folk huddled in the living room in front of the TV that only old Virgil watched. No one spoke—it felt like a funeral. The cops found not a speck of marijuana elsewhere. They missed Clarita�
�s spice jar full of weed labeled “Oregano.”

  At last Charlie marched into the living room, trailed by Hicks like a whipped dog. “Anthony Begay,” Charlie barked, “stand up!”

  At Charlie’s motion Hicks went to Tony with cuffs out and open like lobster pincers.

  Tony stood.

  “Hands!”

  Tony hesitated.

  Zahnie said, “Tony.” She gave him the most significant look she could and sent him a mental message: Use your get out of jail free card. Let him know you’ll tell all if he busts you.

  Tony stuck out his hands.

  She said sharply, “Tony!”

  He looked at her with hound-sad eyes and gave his head a minuscule shake—no.

  At that moment Zahnie noticed how Tony looked at Charlie, and got a glimpse of his heart. My God, Tony still has a thing for him. After all these years.

  Hicks snapped the jaws of the cuffs shut, and Charlie gave a rooster-crow smile.

  “Young man, what are you charging us with?” This was Clarita at her most imperial.

  Charlie grinned savagely. “Possession and cultivation of illegal substances for purposes of use and distribution.”

  “I remember you perfectly. Aren’t you Roddy Lyman’s youngest? Charles, it would be. Why are you doing this, Charles? Everyone in town knows what we grow here, and why.”

  “Miss Clarita, I haven’t had to answer your questions since fifth grade.” He turned to Tony and started to read him his rights.

  “Charles,” Clarita interrupted, “I have cancer of the colon.”

  Charlie started in on the rights again.

  “The pain is sometimes intolerable. Tony grows it for me. I smoke a marijuana cigarette every day, sometimes two. I’m sure you don’t want my days to be pure pain.”

  “Oh, don’t I?” Charlie snapped. “Why not? Tit for tat.”

  She opened her mouth once more, but Tony said, “Grandmother, enough.”

  She made herself half-visible.

  Charlie finished reading Tony his full list of rights. “Anthony,” he went on sarcastically, “is this property yours?”