Alibi Creek

by Bev Magennis

  She finished mid-afternoon, the yard a disaster, and wiped her blistered, cracked hands on her pants and walked into the field, through dried gaillardia, sunflowers, and mallow, around gopher mounds and prickly pear cacti turned purple from cold nights. Thistle burrs stuck to her pants. Coneflowers and grama grass supported seed heads on long, graceful stems, cottonwood leaves matted between them. The trees from which the leaves had fallen stood tall, their bare branches cracking the sky. Mullein stalks and prickly poppy filled bare patches of ground. Beyond the golden-brown foliage a strand of diamonds shimmered—sunlight reflecting off the creek. The trees, weeds, and wildflowers ended at a two-foot drop where floodwaters had eroded the bank. On the other side the land flattened into a rough, sandy beach with tufts of sedge grass sprouting between sand, rock, and boulders. The creek was shallow, its current barely discernable. A fallen cottonwood trunk spanned the water and she crossed, one foot in front of the other, arms outstretched, and plopped down on sun-warmed sand and rested back on her palms. The air was still, everything so quiet silence was almost a sound.

  To her right, two arm lengths away, a long and lean snake, perhaps seven feet, stretched out in a sloppy S, rubbing its head on a rock. Snake: the lowest of creatures, physically and spiritually the embodiment of Satan. The Bible told us so. And the Lord said unto the serpent, Because thou has done this thou art cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field; upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life. Genesis 3:14.

  Scott would not panic. Don’t move. In autumn, or before shedding, a snake can become cranky and aggressive. Breathe.

  Its tail was ringed and smooth—a bull snake. The chocolate brown, diamond shaped markings were dull, its eyes cloudy and dark. The snake rubbed its head under the rock and against the sand, occasionally tucking its head to work the area on top of its mouth. Semi-opaque skin had already come loose on the underside of its jaw. Its tongue flicked in and out.

  The skin came off the head and collected in a collar below the jaw and the snake opened its mouth wide, as if to yawn. Slowly and effortlessly it crawled out of its skin, leaving it inside out like a dirty sock, and moved off in the direction of the rocks, its new scales vibrant and lubricated.

  She sat for half an hour beside proof of the snake’s transformation. Its body would have been warm to the touch and firm, its line elegant as a master artist’s stroke, its movement fluid as flowing water, a creature that approached quietly, without footsteps, its only sound a hiss to fend off predators.

  From the opposite bank the cottonwoods’ shadows reached across the water onto the sand. The creek ran dark, its jewels invisible. Walking back, her feet crunched branches woven into haphazard, thatched designs along the bank. Swallows swooped as swiftly as darts into the grasses, their wings and forked tails silhouetted against the cloudless sky. In the center of the field she threw open her arms and spread her fingers. Open, open, heart! Attach to every living thing, every color, scent, shape, taste, and sound. Stop believing in the Great Mystery. Become part of it.

  Grace’s car was gone. While Mother dozed in her chair, Lee Ann entered Danielle’s room, stepped over slippers and toppled cowboy boots and opened the bureau drawers. She rifled through underwear and nightgowns, filtered through the closet, turned skirt and pant pockets inside out, opened a jewelry box and dumped the contents. Several handbags hung on a peg and she unhooked them and searched every compartment, pricking her finger on a toothpick at the bottom of a shiny black one with a chain strap. A year-old monthly planner stuck out of a side pocket and she leaned against the wall and scanned it, tossed it aside, got on her hands and knees and ran her hand under the bed. More shoes. Still kneeling, she opened the night table drawer. A key lay on top of a slip of paper with a local telephone number on it. She took the note into the kitchen and dialed.

  A recorded voice answered. “This is Keith. I’m in Phoenix. Anyone needing to reach me knows the number.”

  Mother still slept. Leave her alone, or wait until she wakes? She was done waiting.

  It had been years since she’d been to Ross’s place, the last time to deliver a casserole after his wife died. Less than a month after Charlotte’s passing, he’d suggested Mother might make a good second wife. Lee Ann had never returned.

  She climbed the trailer steps, unlocked the door and opened the curtains. Bedroom first. Two shirts, a pair of jeans. A poncho. Empty dresser drawers. In the bathroom, two toothbrushes, a razor, shaving lotion on the sink, an assortment of shampoos and conditioners in the shower. Paper plates and plastic utensils in the kitchen, a small paring knife, a few pots and pans, a spatula and ladle. The phone hung on the kitchen wall above an address book. Her finger trailed the entries, starting with the As. All the listings were in Arizona. Then, under the Ms, a name with a New Mexico address—Pat Merker, Central New Mexico Correctional Facility, Los Lunas.

  36

  SHE MOVED THE BIBLE ASIDE and ran her hands over the nubby surface of the tatted cloth and peered at Jesus. The gilded gold frame isolated Him, boxed in His aura that until now had saturated every atom of her world. Flaxen hair that suggested perfect ears beneath shoulder length locks, sweet, pink lips that never pouted or grimaced, evenly proportioned facial features, and a soft, manicured beard had offered a lifetime of direction and solace. On closer inspection, He never spoke, never blinked or met her gaze directly, never inhaled, was but an image created for the likes of her, a blind believer in a personal God. Since childhood He’d perceived her as weak, a sinner. Alone she would falter, without Him she would fail. She held the frame up close, and at a distance, and turned His picture face-down on the table.

  The bookmark slipped out of 1 Corinthians and she carried the Bible to the living room bookshelves and tucked it between The Red Pony and Lonesome Dove. She folded the tablecloth and put it on the washing machine. The little table was easy to dismantle and she picked it up, along with Jesus’ portrait, and took them out to the shed. The table fit behind the folding step stool, and the portrait found a home in a plastic storage box with the boys’ report cards and old taxes.

  She walked back to the house and stood at the kitchen sink. The red geranium petals on the windowsill looked as vibrant, the silver cottonwoods as stark, the roast in the oven smelled as savory. She found Scott’s journals and sat on his bed leafing through them, while a cottontail he’d adopted hopped around the bedroom. He claimed rabbits could be housebroken, and in the corner, on layers of newspaper, was proof. In this sanctuary, his mini-museum, samples of bark and feathers were pinned to corkboard and birds’ nests were tucked in tree limbs propped against the wall. He’d built shallow boxes divided into compartments for rocks and roots and dead insects, displayed above his desk. On the first page of one of his journals he’d written, “Nature is not bestowed upon us, but is an evolutionary process of which we are a part.”

  “It’s me, Mother. How are you today? I recognize Cary Grant’s accent.”

  Mother’s head tilted back and her eyes stared down as if scrutinizing a newspaper from a distance.

  “Mother? Mother!”

  She bent over Mother’s mouth. No air kissed her cheek. She pressed her ear against Mother’s chest and felt her wrist. No heartbeat, no pulse. Her hands and feet were still warm. Grace must have left less than an hour ago. In a dark suit on a cruise ship, Cary Grant repeated the word “darling.” She reached for the remote and shut him off, sank to the floor and wrapped her arms around Mother’s swollen calves and rested her temple on her knee. The end. Darling.

  She took Mother’s hand and whispered, “Thank you, Lord.” But Jesus had been banished to the shed to live among report cards and taxes. Who would she be without Mother, without Jesus? Mother couldn’t abide in paradise without God having created such a place. If Lee Ann ceased believing, and Mother still believed, did “a place for her” exist?

  Jesus, her Truth, her Savior. Perhaps God had ordered her dwindling faith, so that after straying she wou
ld return to the Lord with greater fervor, for a world unorchestrated by God had always seemed inconceivable. Yet without asking, a snake had triggered an alternate way of viewing life, and death. A wire in her spine had tightened, straightened her up, opened her eyes, and sharpened her senses. An inner voice directed, be alert. You’re on your own. Don’t you see? Abandoning to a higher power and appealing to your higher self amount to the same thing.

  She called the dispatcher and sat with Mother as daylight faded, stroking her ankles. The boys rushed over when the EMTs arrived. Scott made a pot of tea and Dee cleared the furniture out of the way and propped the door. The medics lifted Mother, shoved the gurney into the ambulance, shut the doors, and pulled away.

  “I’ll call Pastor Fletcher,” Dee said.

  “Pastor Fletcher, yes,” Lee Ann said. “And Grace.”

  She and Scott sat on the sofa with Mother’s polar fleece blanket between them. The house smelled of old person, sick person, furniture polish, and overly scented bathroom. Scott folded the blanket and scooted closer, the agnostic, the curious one, who questioned and probed and wondered.

  “Where’s Dad?” she asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  Dee returned from the kitchen. “Pastor Fletcher is on his way.”

  “Have you seen Dad?”

  Dee shook his head.

  She sent the pastor and the boys home. Mother had said night was special, a time for contemplation, darkness protective as a velvet cloak. Her passing didn’t seem real, then seemed real. It didn’t seem possible, then possible. There would be time to indulge in memories forgotten or minimized by the demands of illness, time to feel the loss and honor her life, but for now, relief. The house would be empty, unless Walker showed up. Walker. He would have no idea. Thank God Mother hadn’t lived to weather the current scandal. Lee Ann clenched her fist. Do not thank God, or any entity. Life begins, irrespective of one’s hopes, and ends independently of one’s wishes.

  She crossed the hall to her old room, still a girl’s room with the white and pink gingham comforter on the white bed and matching night table. She shoved Danielle’s bracelets and necklaces to one end of the bureau and straightened Grandma Edna’s antique hairbrush set and sat on the edge of the unmade bed. Twenty-two years had passed since she’d inhabited this room, eight with Wayne and fourteen with Eugene. Aside from Mother, men had dominated her thoughts—Dad, Walker, Scott, Dee, Edgar, Wayne, Eugene, and the county’s commissioners. Only one man’s name had come up more frequently than any of theirs. Jesus.

  Just after nine o’clock the front door opened. The kitchen faucet ran and a glass knocked against the sink. The bathroom door closed and the toilet flushed. Danielle entered the bedroom and gasped, tripped over a stray boot.

  Lee Ann stood up. “You are to leave these premises within twenty-four hours. Any belongings left after that time will be thrown in the yard and hauled to the dump.”

  She raised a hand, blocking Danielle’s face, and strode out.

  Eugene emptied his pockets and put the contents on his night table. Lee Ann closed the door.

  “It’s time for an explanation,” she said.

  He sighed and unbuttoned his shirt.

  “Is it Walker?” she asked.

  “Partly,” he said, draping the shirt over the back of the chair. “It’s a lot of things.”

  “You’ve fallen in love.”

  He sat on the bed and leaned on his elbows, his head bent toward his knees.

  She held onto the doorknob behind her back.

  “I don’t know if I can rightly explain it,” he said. “This is not my place, never has been, never will be. It’s the Walker Ranch and I’ve been the manager.”

  She let go of the doorknob. “Eugene…”

  “I know you think that’s nonsense. That’s part of the problem—I already know your response to whatever I say. I’ve quit speaking what’s on my mind because things have always been a certain way. You expect them to continue that way. Putting up with Walker is only one example. Your damn job is another. That place eats you up. You accept it. I’ve suggested a dozen times that we send Edgar to his sister’s, but you can’t imagine the place without him. He’ll demand as much attention as your mother before long.”

  “Mother’s dead.”

  “I know. Dee told me.” He lifted his head. “I’m sorry. But I see Edgar taking her place—another soul to care for, wear you out…”

  “Steal attention from you.”

  “I’m not jealous, Lee Ann. You don’t seem to understand the energy you put into people and hopeless situations brings you down and has stalled us.”

  “Walker’s gone, probably for good,” she said.

  “It doesn’t matter. Your attitude is the same whether he’s here or not. I need to feel you’d throw him out if he shows up again. See, I would, but my hands are tied. Like I said, this is not my place. Never has been, never will be.” He hadn’t shaved. His jaw, usually firmly set, hung open, and he said, “You seek God from a book. The worse things get, the more you search the pages. Your lips move in private conversations like a crazy person’s.” He touched his pillow. “More than two people share this bed. You consult your God more than me, take his advice more than mine.”

  “You used to respect my beliefs, even though they weren’t your own.”

  “That was before I realized how much they undermined my efforts.”

  “I’ve begun to see…”

  “Please.” He held up his hand. “You’re blind as a newborn kitten.”

  She charged across the room and jerked the bureau drawer open, threw his socks and shorts into the air, and slammed it shut with her hip.

  “I’ve ordered Danielle off the property. I’ve not been blind to that. Take your things and join her.”

  She left him to gather his clothes like bits of trash and stumbled to Mother’s, felt her way down the hall and climbed into Mother’s bed, enfolded herself in her blankets, her smell, and smooth sheets. The stars packed a moonless sky, so many she couldn’t pick one. She floated through the window and merged with the unknown, a mere speck connecting to an unimaginable number of other specks, intricately linking her life to the greater whole—apart, yet a part—and wept.

  37

  WEDNESDAY OCTOBER 24, 2007

  IN THE MORNING, THE DIESEL’S tire tracks imprinted an inch of snow out to the highway, clear as two chalk marks on slate. She walked in the tracks for a while and returned to her house and made coffee. Enough hay had been stored for the winter. The boys would drain the water from Mother’s house and help empty it of her belongings. Eventually, Dee might live there when Scott went to college. She turned from the window and paced the floor in Mother’s coat, checking the clock, listening for sounds of the boys. When she heard cupboards opening, she joined them at the table.

  “Dad has left,” she said, rolling the corner of a placemat, fearing she might cry. But she was cried out. “I don’t know if or when he’ll be back.”

  The boys ate with their shoulders hunched, spoons scraping their bowls, as if she’d just reported the weather. She’d fooled no one, blind to what everyone else had seen.

  “Well, that leaves us in a mess,” Scott said. “Walker’s taken off, the Yanmar is leaking fluid and the fence adjoining Herrington’s is torn up. We need hay for the winter.”

  “We’ll manage,” Dee said. “If you keep your mind on the job instead of catching butterflies.”

  “And you quit chasing Ginny all over the county.”

  “Dad’ll be back before you know it,” Dee said, refilling his coffee. “He’ll miss me.”

  “He should be missing Mom.”

  She said, “We’ll have to assign Edgar some chores. He can take care of the chickens and feed the pigs. I won’t plant the garden. We’ll simplify.”

  “I’ll see if Lyle will send Manuel or Rudy over once a week,” Dee said. “My shoulder will be okay in a couple of months.” He socked Scott in the arm. “Until then, you�
��re in charge. I don’t know why that doesn’t give me confidence.”

  Up the canyon, wet snow fattened oak and pine branches into smooth, soft shapes. Hugged by towering walls, she plodded toward “the dribble.” Only a few elk, javelina, and coyote prints marked the snow. The dogs shot off, a whiz of black against white, and when she turned to whistle for them, her foot hit an icy patch and she slipped. As if shaken loose, tears flowed. She searched her empty pockets for a Kleenex and wiped her nose with her coat sleeve, touched her eyes. Puffy. A dull pain throbbed in their sockets.

  Had she abandoned Jesus, or had He abandoned her? Had she forced Eugene out, or had he fled? Did she miss Mother’s companionship, or did she need someone to care for to justify her life?

  When the weather was beautiful, it was foolish to think God made it so, that He created snowflakes and raindrops, that He’d written the past and prescribed the future. Blind belief had deadened her curiosity, robbed her of skepticism. Now, her mind might wander, ponder, and wonder. Intuition might prove to be the only truth. This seemed backwards. When all was lost, that was the point at which people found faith, trusted God, turned to Jesus. She’d done the opposite—stepped out of God’s protective palm, discarded skin that no longer fit.

  She shook her head and said, “Crap.”

  Snowmelt dripped from tree limbs. The dogs poked her sides with their noses, come on, let’s go. They didn’t question whether God put a rabbit behind that bush for them to sniff out, didn’t justify the chase or the kill or near escape. Instinct drove them toward a single goal. Her instinct dictated that she be good. She could work toward that goal without Jesus telling her how. She could flounder, err, and try again without His judgment or His insipid acceptance of her weaknesses and His unrelenting forgiveness of her mistakes.