by Win Blevins
“I’ll have to let the studio know.”
“Do that and I’ll get you fired,” she said.
“You need the hospital’s permission.”
“Permission,” she said with a curl of disgust. “Just walk me to the nurses’ station, I’ll sign their goddamned paperwork, and we’re out of here.”
He accepted the words as immovable.
I pointed to my empty holster, on the cross-draw side.
He pulled out my automatic and raised an eyebrow at Linda.
“Of course,” she said. “Give it to him. You think this is a game of charades?”
He handed it to me. “Goldman, this is one hell of a mess.”
“Believe me, I understand that.”
“I hope you do. She said it was you.”
Linda said, “I’m not saying that!”
“You did,” he said to her, “and now you say he didn’t. Leaving us with several possibilities. You have either gone completely nuts and can’t be trusted to know what’s real and what’s not, or you’ve pissed off someone so dangerous they can practically make themselves invisible. I don’t like either scenario.”
She pointed to her face. “I’m not wild about it, either. Look at me!”
Julius stood there, looking. “I’m going with not crazy. Your attitude is still in place.”
“I damn well need attitude right now, don’t you think?” she said. “Julius, walk me down there.”
She held me back with a palm. “I don’t want you to get close enough for the nurse to make an ID.”
She led Julius down the hall, her head held high.
I couldn’t hear anything, but what I saw was that the nurse had a dilemma. She worked in a hierarchy and was used to following orders. “Doctor’s orders,” in fact, was a phrase regularly chirped on the radio in a way that sounded like pronouncements from Mount Sinai.
On the other hand, the nurse had a movie star standing in front of her. If you think a doctor can carry on like a five-star general, you should have watched Linda Darnell. The nurse’s posture went from assured to subdued to meek. Papers were put on the counter. Linda flourished some writing on them, presumably a signature, and off she marched. The only words I heard were the nurse’s last ones, to Linda’s back. “This is AMA.”
I asked Linda what it meant.
“‘Against medical advice,’” she said. “They mistake advice for leg irons. Julius, bring my suitcase.”
When he came out of the room with it, he made a face, miffed that I shepherded the woman while he was playing porter, once again. We would have to come to some kind of truce.
Jake Charlie was outside the pickup, leaning against the front door. Linda said, “Julius, bring the car around.”
When the Cadillac town car nosed up, she spoke her will hard and fast.
“Julius, put my suitcase in the trunk. You will ride in the pickup with Jake Charlie.”
“At that I draw the line, Miss Darnell. I’d lose my job.”
“You’ll lose it if you don’t,” she said. “I swear on my mother’s grave.”
Julius hesitated.
“Seaman Goldman will drive me in the Cadillac.”
“Miss Darnell.”
“You will go to the police station and tell them Seaman Goldman is escorting me back to the location.”
“What?”
“I’m not breaking any law. You will tell the police to radio Mr. Ford that we’re on the way.”
“I…”
She thrust her hand out. “Give me the car keys.”
Julius did.
She handed them to me, strutted toward the passenger door of the Caddy, and waited for me to open it for her.
I handed Jake Charlie the shopping list Mom had tucked into my pocket and a wad of bills and whispered into his ear.
When I got in, she scooted all the way across the big front seat and sat real close to me. I couldn’t imagine how her face felt. An atrocity.
“The last two days I wanted so much for you to be next to me.”
“I was arrested.”
“I know. Nothing to worry about now. I told them it wasn’t you. Definitely not you.”
I started the Caddy. There was plenty for Linda to worry about, but it seems like it had escaped her.
“What did you give Jake Charlie?” She missed nothing.
“Cash and a shopping list.”
She looked at me with questions in her eyes.
“Mom’s spending my pay on supplies for the trading post. They’re cheaper here than from the truck company that delivers to the posts. Jake Charlie will do the shopping.” And Julius would have to spend the whole day in Flagstaff, traipsing around from store to store behind Jake Charlie. Tonight he’d probably sleep in the seat of the truck. Not a plum assignment, and it wasn’t going to make coming up with a way to work together any easier.
Linda put her head back on the seat, and she smiled a little. “Free. I hate hospitals.”
“Linda, everyone does.”
We rolled. And then she started to talk.
Twelve
“He raped me.”
She barely gave it time to soak in. “I’d just had sex that was as good as it gets, and then the bastard violated me.”
The storm clouds of those words hung between us. She stared out the V-shaped windshield, eyes dull and blank. I kept my eyes forward, which felt like respect.
“I didn’t tell the cops, I didn’t tell the FBI. I won’t tell anyone but you.” She fixed me with her eyes to make sure I understood. “If I act like a victim, the public will feel sorry for me. And when they feel sorry for me, I’m not a movie star anymore.”
I thought and then nodded.
“I was asleep, and heavy steps woke me up. He jumped me before I could get out a squeal. Right off, he stuffed a gag down my throat. Then …
Her eyes sketched the outline of bluffs and buttes.
“When he finished, I didn’t act beaten down. That was what he wanted. I was mad. I grabbed for his balls, but he was too quick for me. I kicked and hit, which only egged him on.” She peeked into the shadows of her memory.
“That’s when he hit me with his fist. And hit me and hit me. The son of a bitch meant to pound me into submission.”
Pause.
“I didn’t give him an inch. I fought all the way.”
Pause.
“The more I fought, the harder he hit.”
Pause.
“Until I passed out. The bastard beat me unconscious.”
She swam around in her darkness for a moment.
“I remember screaming, I didn’t know where you were, and then Janey gave me some kind of shot. I didn’t come to until I was bumping along the road—Jack made them take me to that shithole of a hospital back there. I didn’t need it. But his mind wasn’t on what I needed. It was on protecting the studio’s investment. And keeping me from suing their ass off.”
I didn’t blame her, but I thought that was a little harsh. I was sure Mr. John was plenty worried about her. We turned off the pavement and onto the dirt that stretched 160 more miles to Monument Valley. On any other morning I would have enjoyed the comfort of driving the luxury car, but I didn’t notice much except our words hanging in the air like bruised fruit on a tree.
“If my face was messed up permanently, if my looks were gone, I damn well would sue them, and for millions. But I’m not suing anybody. Who would hire me then?”
Suddenly she grabbed me by both shoulders and put her face where it half blocked my view of the road. I stopped the car.
“I want you to find that guy and stomp his ass into the ground. I don’t want him to fuck anybody again, ever, not even a sheep. I want you to make him look like a rattlesnake your truck flattened in a rut.”
I didn’t say anything for a while. My throat was jammed up. I lifted her hand off my shoulders and brought it toward my lips.
She pulled it away. “Sorry,” she said softly, “I told you, I’m not ready. N
ot ready for you to start touching me. And I don’t want to hear you say you’re sorry about anything, not again, Yazzie. This was not your fault.”
After a moment I used the only way I could bring myself to speak to her, cop mode. Direct. “Describe him.”
“I never saw his face. He wore a black cloth mask with holes cut in it. Tall and skinny the way Navajos are. Not as tall as you, not by about half of a foot, and not hunky, but real wiry. Real strong. I thought he was going to rip my arm right out of its socket.”
“Anything distinctive? ‘Tall, skinny, and strong’ describes a lot of men.”
She thought. “That’s all I remember.”
“Describe the backs of his hands.”
“Oh. Wrinkled. Brown. The skin of an old guy, fiftyish.”
“Did he say anything?”
“Right when he jumped me.” She shrugged. “But I didn’t understand what he said.”
“Do you remember what it sounded like?”
“What what sounded like?”
“What he said.”
“Oh. ‘Gesso,’ like the stuff you put on a canvas before you paint. And it was a kind of war cry, like some Japanese soldier yelling ‘Banzai!’”
“‘Jaysho?’”
“Yeah, I guess. Maybe.”
“If that’s what you heard, it means ‘buzzard’ in Navajo. Why that, I wonder?”
She shrugged. “How would I know?”
That one word led me down a new road. Maybe opened up more possibilities for suspects than we’d been thinking about. Maybe.
We rode in silence. I was careful to avoid ruts and potholes and sandy spots. Sometimes I looked at her face, with the Painted Desert sliding by in the background. It wasn’t half as colorful as her cheeks, which twisted my guts.
She wouldn’t have to urge me to pummel this guy. She wouldn’t have to pay me, either. My mission now, not a studio’s.
After a while she said, “I feel safe with you, and I can sleep.” A beat went by. “I’m going to lay my head on your thigh, okay? But don’t touch me.”
* * *
I wanted to take Linda to my house. I thought Mom would fuss over her and Iris would sit with her and talk. She needed some women around her, that was my opinion. Linda refused. We were headed to the set, and she wouldn’t hear anything else about it. God, she was stubborn.
When we got to the location, the entire cast and crew were in the big tent, eating supper.
She said hard and fast, “Drive right on up to the cabins.”
I swung left uphill, wondering what she had in mind. I parked in front of the place where we’d spent so much time together, the place that now held so much ugliness. We got out and she looked at the door. I checked it first. Locked. She gave me her key and I opened it.
“I can’t go in alone,” she said. “I can’t do it.” She thought. “From now on you’ll be with me every minute, night and day.”
I nodded. My mission. I didn’t think it was going to sit so well with Mr. John.
“Let’s get back in the Cadillac and lock the car doors.”
We did. I was still in the dark about what she was up to, and for a moment I hoped that getting her out of that hospital was the right thing to do. Her head might not have been straight yet. On the other hand, I couldn’t imagine how anyone could keep her in that place, keep her anywhere that she didn’t want to be.
I waited for whatever came next.
“I want you to go to the door of the tent and get Julia. See her?”
I looked a question at Linda.
“Julia Wasserman, the wardrobe woman. Tell her to come here to the car and bring a fright wig and a Gypsy skirt for me. Keep the car locked tight, then get right back here.”
I did it fast, no questions.
When we sat in front of the cabin again, locked inside the car, she said, “I can’t go back in there. Not yet. Give me a few minutes.”
“Take all the time you need,” I said. “I still think that you being here is a bad idea for more reasons than I can name.”
Julia walked up and leaned her face against the car window. “Linda, are you…?” Julia’s face painted a picture of shock. “Oh.”
The word ached with sympathetic pain.
“I’m fine. Put the wig on me.”
Linda got out, tilted her head for the wig, dropped her jeans, and pulled on the Gypsy skirt. She shrugged into a white blouse, tied it in front to show a little midriff, and it was perfect with the full, many-colored skirt.
Linda said to Julia, “Why didn’t Jack come right on your heels?”
“He doesn’t know. He’s eating in his cabin.”
“And the A.D.?” Meaning assistant director.
“He’s batting his eyelashes at the continuity girl again. With his wife on the location, no less.”
“Scurry on down ahead of us. Tell everyone I’m back. Holler it out.” Julia took a step, but Linda grabbed her elbow.
“Get Danny and his accordion out in front. Tell him I want that tarantella, Chopin … can’t remember the title. The one he played for me in that James Whale horror picture. He knows the piece.”
Julia trotted downhill.
Linda said to me, purling, “Will you escort me, sailor?”
I offered her my arm, and down we strode.
Julia had done her job. The entire crew was scrambling out the tent doors.
Closer, closer. They didn’t know quite what to think yet.
“When I start dancing,” she said, “burst out laughing. Make it really loud. Uproarious.”
“Okay.”
“I mean it. All out.”
Danny stood out front on our left. We walked to maybe a dozen steps from the crowd.
She dropped my arm, and I slid behind her.
She strutted back and forth, glaring at them, daring them to really look at her face—one very terrible close-up, literally a horror show. And the fright wig? Half of them started backing away, wanting to run like hell.
Finally she nodded at Danny. With a huge grin he plunged in.
It was a wild, devilish piece of music, a dark fantasy of melody leaping and plunging, rhythms going mad. It was probably meant to show off swirling skirts and on-the-edge femininity.
Linda turned the dance on its head. Her feet flew recklessly through the steps, but her fingernails clawed the air and her voice screeched with fury.
Though I was scared of sounding like a fool, I did as I was asked and busted out laughing. It worked. Her audience of colleagues and coworkers saw a lady’s dance of virtuosic grace turned into a parody, a grotesque display starring a spider woman. She pranced straight at them, creepy fingers grasping, her face a Halloween monster.
They backpedaled, tripping over each other and laughing about it.
Diving into the spirit of the moment, Danny added more frenzy to the tempo, and Linda soared right with him, faster and faster, wilder and wilder. The crazier she danced, the crazier they laughed.
Danny spiked the final chord. The spider woman raised her arms slowly and artfully over her head, fingers touching. Utter silence. She lowered her arms gracefully in two arcs, one in front and one in back, and bent into a deep curtsy.
The applause and cheering were probably the most genuine she’d ever gotten.
Ever the star, she fluttered to my arm, used it as support for another low bow, and led me on a statement strut up the hill.
“You think that did it?”
“The queen of all—you pulled it off.”
She nearly stumbled, caught herself on my arm, and grinned up at me. She said, “Let’s just hope I get up the hill before you have to carry me.”
Thirteen
Mr. John glared down at us from the summit near the cabin. He didn’t say a thing about her face, or the dance, but you could see him adding it up in his head.
“You are really something,” he said, making it half praise and half mockery.
She said, “Yippee ki-yay, cowboy.”
“My cabin,” he said, and strode off.
She hesitated, shrugged, and followed the boss.
“I’ll wait in your cabin,” I said.
I started looking around inside. Like the rest of us out on the rez, Harry Goulding improvised everything. Without materials, the basics of living required creativity. We found uses for empty cans and cardboard boxes you wouldn’t believe.
So Harry made these cabins catch-as-catch-can. There was no timber for twenty miles, all the way to San Juan River, so Harry made the cabins from stone, which was free and available underfoot. He traded some Navajos cans of Mr. Coffee, what the Navajos call Hosteen Cofay, and Bluebird flour to mason the walls. They put the buildings up fast and went to a little trouble only for the roofs, like Indians and whites did all over this country. They hauled some thick poles from the river, ran them parallel up to a dense ridgepole, and sealed the whole thing with mud, pretty much like pueblo construction—viga and latilla. The roofs were angled enough to shed snow in the winter and sturdy enough to bear its weight. From inside you could see the light poles and roof beam, making an upside-down V for a ceiling.
But that’s not all I saw, and it gave me an idea. I studied the ceiling light over my head. When the movie people arrived in ’38, their carpenters spent a few studio dollars to make the cabins look less rough and to insulate them against the cool evenings. They studded up walls on the inside with rough lumber and stuffed newspaper down behind it. Then they replaced the oil lantern that hung in the middle of the room with a ceiling light. For power, they ran an electrical wire behind the lumber. Last, they installed a flat ceiling of four-by-eight-foot slabs of one-inch plywood, and supported that with two-by-fours.
Flat ceiling. A crawl space then, for sure, low at the sides but about four feet high at the ridge pole. Room enough.
I knocked on the door at Mr. John’s cabin and told Linda and him I’d be right back. Then I trotted to Goulding’s Trading Post and greeted Harry’s wife, Mike. Perky, smart, altogether one of my favorite people, and she and I hadn’t had a good talk in six years. If I hadn’t been a Navajo—outside the family we don’t do touching—she would have given me a hug, and I half wished she would.
I asked to borrow a flashlight. She was out of batteries—that’s rez life—but she lent me a Coleman lantern.