A Man Without a Wife

by Beverly Bird

“Consummated. Ricky, for God’s sake!”

  “Well, I just wondered. Did you kiss her and stuff?”

  Dallas took a deep breath. “Yeah. Is that okay with you?”

  Ricky thought about it. “I guess so. At least you got started. I was worried about you, Dad. But you’re not going to marry her, are you? Benny says his mom is going to marry some other guy who’s not really his dad.”

  “I’m not going to marry her.”

  “Okay.” Ricky thought about it. “Why not?”

  “Would you please decide which side of the fence you’re on?” Dallas demanded.

  “Well, I just want to know.”

  “I’m not going to marry her because I was already married to your mom. Once is enough.”

  “Was it bad to be married?”

  “No!”

  “Then how come you don’t want to do it again?”

  “I didn’t say I didn’t want to. What I meant was—” He broke off. What was he saying? “I figure if a man’s really lucky, he gets one perfect woman in his lifetime. Some don’t even get that much. And you’ve got to love somebody to marry them, Ricky.”

  “Oh. You don’t love Ellen then, right?”

  “Of course not.”

  Of course not. Of course not. The words went over and over in his head, matching the tempo of his tires hitting the little ridges in the highway. She was difficult, so prickly. And stubborn—God, was she stubborn. She’d get that look on her face, that set to her jaw, and you knew neither heaven nor hell was going to budge her. He didn’t love her. She just...fascinated him.

  “There’s a certain attraction there,” he admitted, then his jaw tightened when he realized he’d spoken aloud.

  “Like what?” Ricky asked.

  Like the way she got so hot for him almost before he touched her. He had to admit that he’d never known a woman like that. And the way she seemed to feel everything so intensely that it showed hauntingly clear on her face, in her eyes. He thought of her righteous indignation for her people, the way she was so patient with Ricky and equally impatient with him—with no apology for it. No games, he thought again. He’d never known a woman like her.

  But all in all, he thought it was probably best if he didn’t try to explain that to Ricky. He wasn’t sure he could answer the questions that would undoubtedly come next. And at the moment, she had his stomach tied up in knots anyway.

  By the time they got home, his neck was stiff from the rigid way he was holding his shoulders. He made a pot of coffee and decided he wasn’t going to wait until Ricky went to bed tonight to put his feet up on the coffee table and think this through. He sat, stretched his legs out...and groaned.

  The red light was blinking on the answering machine that sat on the little table by the door. He got up dutifully and hit the button as Ricky settled down with his Atomic Chicken game.

  There was one message, a male voice, deep and robust and not entirely happy. “This is Detective Stan West, Flagstaff PD. Please call me when you get in.”

  “Thanks for leaving the number,” Dallas muttered. He went into the kitchen, called information, got the number, and punched it in.

  Stan West got right to the point. “We’ve identified that manure in your hallway. I guess you know it’s illegal to keep certain species of animals in the city, even out here in the good ol’ wild west. So what I’ve got to ask you is have you been completely honest with us, Mr. Lazo? Have you told us everything you want to tell us about that little scene in your apartment last week?”

  Dallas ground his teeth together. Of all the things he might be in the mood for today, a suspicious, smartass detective wasn’t one of them. “We don’t even have a hamster,” he snapped.

  “No? How about a badger?”

  “A what?” Instantaneously, he saw the small, furry animal he had whaled the hell out of with Ellen’s purse.

  “What you had in your hallway, Mr. Lazo, was a nice pile of badger crap.”

  “A badger,” he repeated. “In my apartment.”

  “And I imagine you have no idea how it got there.”

  “No, I don’t.” But he was going to find out.

  He slammed down the phone and picked it up again immediately. He was dying to hear how Ellen would explain this. But then he only replaced the receiver again very, very slowly.

  It occurred to him that he didn’t entirely trust her any more.

  It hurt more than he would ever have imagined possible.

  Chapter 14

  On Friday Dallas decided the best thing he could do was talk to this Uncle Ernie character himself.

  He leaned back in his chair at his desk, reaching to slide a scrap of paper out from beneath the blotter. The telephone message was from Ellen. She had called his condo about their weekend itinerary on Wednesday afternoon. Dallas had been in Phoenix—a quick day trip because even now, even with all these strange goings-on, he couldn’t stop traveling completely. Mrs. DiNardo had stayed with Ricky after school and she had taken the message. Her handwriting was spidery and atrocious.

  He read it again, though he had it memorized. Blessing Way Fri-Sat-Sun. If acceptable meet at tribal-council chapter house, Shiprock, noon Sat. If not, please call.

  The message had pissed him off—unaccountably, he admitted now. What had he expected her to say? I know who’s tormenting Ricky and why? She hadn’t said that what she was holding back wouldn’t hurt the boy, he remembered—only that she wouldn’t let it. He thought it might be nice if she’d let him in on it, so he could protect Ricky as well.

  He swore and crumpled the paper in his hand, finally hurling it into the wastebasket. He thought about not meeting her tomorrow, about canceling the final visitation, but that would be for his own self-preservation and it would mean depriving Ricky of something he really wanted to do. He thought of going to the Blessing Way, then trying to keep his distance from her. Ever since he’d left her on Sunday, he’d had a fairly strong feeling that she was going to turn his world upside down—if she hadn’t done it already. Or maybe he just had a case of nice, cold feet.

  He was falling for her, falling fast and hard, was getting in over his head and damned used to having her around. And every time he thought of the natural progression of things from here on in, his stomach cramped painfully.

  But the fact remained that if he didn’t see her, didn’t talk to her, he might never get to the bottom of what was happening to Ricky. Unless he asked someone else about it, he realized again. He decided he was going to drive out to the Res this afternoon and find that old guy. He grabbed the phone and called Ashford Academy first, waiting an interminably long time while a secretary went to get Ricky out of class.

  The boy’s voice came back a little wary, a lot curious. “Hey, Dad, what’s going on? How come you called me at school?”

  “Would you mind if Mrs. DiNardo kept you company again for a little while this afternoon?”

  Ricky groaned. “Dad, she smells.”

  Dallas would have chuckled if he hadn’t been so preoccupied. “She thinks she smells wonderful. It’s some cheap perfume.”

  “It’s like fruit when we leave it in the fridge too long,” he complained. “How come? Do you have to go to Phoenix?”

  Dallas hesitated. “I just have some business to take care of, something that’ll keep me from picking you up at three-thirty.”

  “So you want me to walk home?”

  “Do you mind?”

  “Nah. Benny rides his bike. I’ll just run along beside him. Maybe he’ll give me a ride.”

  “Okay. Hey, Sport, be careful, all right?”

  “Of what?”

  I don’t know. God help him, he just didn’t know, couldn’t even imagine any more.

  “Bogeymen on street corners,” he said finally. Did wolfmen wear signs around their necks? Something that said BEWARE: EVIL AT WORK?

  Ricky laughed. “Okay.”

  “Mrs. DiNardo will be waiting for you. I might be a little bit later than usual, thoug
h.”

  “How late?”

  “I don’t know. Nine, ten...maybe even eleven.” He figured it was a good three-hour drive into New Mexico.

  “Can I wait up?”

  “Sure.”

  He hung up and called Mrs. DiNardo. She was more than glad to stay with the boy. He had known she would be. The money, Dallas thought, would buy more cheap perfume.

  He grabbed his suit jacket off a coat tree behind the door and was halfway across the office lobby before his secretary stopped him. She put a hand over the phone receiver she was speaking into and hissed at him.

  “Dallas! You’re not leaving, are you?”

  “Looks that way.”

  “For how long?”

  “See you Monday.”

  “Monday?” she squeaked, horrified. “It’s only ten-thirty in the morning.”

  Dallas glanced at his watch. Plenty of time, he thought, to get to New Mexico and back at a respectable hour, assuming he could track down this Ernie character without too much fuss.

  “I’ve got John Chisholm on the phone,” his secretary went on. “He wants those plans, Dallas, like yesterday.”

  Dallas scowled. Half of him considered that Chisholm was a big account. The other half wondered why, if he’d had to suddenly wake up like some kind of macho Sleeping Beauty, he couldn’t have fallen for this woman...blond and soft, bright and efficient, easy. And she had been sitting here under his nose for the better part of two years.

  But nothing about her made him crave and ache, laugh and rage. She was as cool as she was pretty—not in a deliberate, haughty way like Ellen could be, but in an almost...empty respect, as if there was no heat inside her to tap.

  “Set up an appointment for late Monday,” he answered finally. “I’ll have everything ready by then. No, better make it Tuesday.” Surely he could put an end to this business with Ricky by then. But God only knew how he was going to get Ellen Lonetree out of his mind.

  His secretary gave a heartfelt sigh, but Dallas didn’t stay to console her. He slipped out the door and half jogged to his car.

  He was halfway across the reservation before he finally constructed some sort of plan as to how to find the old shaman. The Kinaalda had been near Shiprock. Ellen had asked him to meet her in Shiprock tomorrow. She worked at the Shiprock extension of the health service, and Ernie was related to her in some obscure fashion. Ergo, Shiprock was a good place to start looking.

  He got there by two-thirty, driving admittedly faster than he knew was wise. He spent another twenty minutes cruising around the reservation town, getting his bearings. There were two major thorsoughfares, he noticed this time, one running east-west and the other heading north-south. He started with the east-west one, at a fast-food restaurant.

  He stood in line behind a handful of tourists until he reached the girl at the cash register. She was a young, pretty Navajo wearing too much makeup. Wasn’t that accumulation of some kind? He found himself wondering about her hozro.

  “Can I help you?” she asked.

  “I don’t want a hamburger.” But how was he supposed to ask her for what he did want?

  “Oh. Well, we’ve got chicken, too.”

  “No.” He shook his head, clearing it. “I’m looking for an old man who lives around here. They call him Uncle Ernie.”

  The girl’s expression didn’t change whatsoever, although he got the strong feeling that she knew who he was talking about. He was right.

  “Why?” she asked after a moment. “Are you sick?”

  Dallas thought fast. “My little boy is.”

  “I’m not Ernie’s clan.”

  Dallas nodded, waiting.

  “He’s Towering Rock.” She leaned a little sideways to look around him. “Can I help you?” she asked the woman behind him.

  Dallas stepped away from the counter with a frustrated clenching of his jaw. He went back outside, looking up and down the street in the bright sunlight.

  There was a library next door. He went there and got a similar response from an ageless-looking woman wearing small wire-rim spectacles. He jogged across the street to a tribal-police subagency, but he got even less information there. The desk sergeant stared at him expressionlessly and shrugged.

  Dallas went back to his car. His stomach felt tight, angry. What was with these people? They admitted knowing the old man. They gave his clan. But they seemed to feel that if he wanted to learn anything else about him, he was going to have to ask him himself.

  Which would have been fine by Dallas, except he had to find him first.

  He slid back behind the wheel of his Jaguar, twisting the key hard in the ignition. He would try the north-south route, he decided. Then he glanced absently at the gas gauge and noticed that it was inching toward empty.

  He pulled into the first service station he came to and waited irritably and impatiently while a young man working in one of the garage bays made his way over to the pump on Navajo time. The boy filled his tank, then scowled intently at the credit card Dallas gave him.

  If you’re looking for the meaning of life, you’re not going to find it in that scrap of plastic. He bit down on his temper and managed to keep his voice bland. “Is there a problem?”

  “We don’t take these.”

  Dallas looked up at the sign, wondering if he had misread it. He hadn’t. It said Exxon.

  “This is a national chain.”

  “Yeah,” the young man said, “but our card gadget is broken.” Suddenly he squinted at Dallas. “Hey, don’t I know you?”

  Dallas finally recognized him as well. He felt a jolt of surprise and hope. “I met you at that Kinaalda.”

  “Hey, that’s right. Your kid is Towering Rock.”

  Dallas’s heartbeat picked up a little. “Do you know where I can find Uncle Ernie? People keep giving me a runaround.”

  Eddie Begay grinned. “That’s because they don’t know you. It’s rule number one of being Navajo. Never tell a stranger anything—especially a belagana stranger.”

  “What’s belagana?”

  The kid grinned wider. “An Anglo dude. Like you.”

  “But you know me,” Dallas said.

  “Yeah, but I don’t know where Ernie is. He kind of wanders, you know? It’s tough to say where he might turn up. Hey, I got an idea, though, if you don’t have any cash.” It took Dallas a frustrated minute to realize he had changed the subject. “Why don’t you go next door to that motel coffee shop? Buy yourself something to eat and pay with a credit card then just get fourteen bucks more in cash money and bring it back to me.”

  Dallas gave him a wry look. “And you’re going to trust me to come back? A belagana stranger?”

  “No way. They’d take it outta my paycheck. You’re gonna leave me your car.”

  Dallas guessed he didn’t have much choice. He parked in a corner of the gas station lot and walked to the coffee shop.

  There was a sign on the counter stating that the minimum charge for a credit card purchase was ten dollars. He hadn’t really planned on eating anything—he was too tense, too anxious to resume his search. But he was damned if he was going to charge that much without having anything to show for it. He sat down at the counter and ordered two club sandwiches and a cup of coffee. He figured he could take one of them to go. Finding Ernie was showing all the earmarks of taking all day.

  He finished the first sandwich and was eyeing the second when there was a rustle of movement beside his right shoulder. He glanced up into a pair of very black, very amused eyes, surrounded by a million creases and lines.

  Uncle Ernie. He wore braids again, and tufts of his bushy gray hair stuck out from them here and there. But this time a very old cowboy hat was perched above them, almost shielding his eyes. It was black and several startling red feathers stuck out from the band.

  He sat down on the stool next to Dallas. “Yutaheh.”

  “I beg your pardon?” Dallas was bemused with surprise. He knew without being told that while no one would tell hi
m where Ernie was, someone had told Ernie where he was.

  “That means hello,” the shaman explained. “Now you say, ‘Yu te.’ It’s common courtesy.”

  “Oh. Yu te,” Dallas said, feeling foolish, then he hesitated. He had the strong impression that nothing Anglo or modern would ever touch those wrinkled lips, but he asked anyway. “Can I buy you a cup of coffee?”

  “Good coffee,” Ernie said promptly, “is one of life’s greatest pleasures. Even my ancestors accepted it from the white man.”

  So much for impressions, Dallas thought dryly.

  “You were looking for me,” Ernie prodded when the waitress brought him a cup.

  Dallas cleared his head with a deliberate effort. “Ellen says you think a wolfman is chasing my son. That Ricky met up with him somewhere, that he knows something or has something that makes him a threat to...whoever it is.”

  Ernie nodded, savoring the coffee. “Yes. He had a problem at that Kinaalda.”

  “He says he saw a flying horse in the arroyo.”

  “He did.”

  Dallas felt his heart thump. The old man said it so matter-of-factly. “Then the next weekend he thought he saw his dead mother in a motel room,” he went on.

  The old man’s expression changed. His eyes thinned so completely, so suddenly, it was no longer possible to see their color. His mouth tightened. “Ellen didn’t tell me this. Is your boy well? Not sick in any way?”

  Dallas frowned. “He’s fine. Ellen explained chindis. About the ghosts of kin.”

  “Then you understand my concern. But there must be more. You say this happened a couple of weeks ago. But you are only now looking for me. Why?”

  Dallas took a deep breath and plunged in. “Because right after that someone broke into my apartment and left a pile of animal crap on my carpet. The cops say it’s from a badger. And coincidentally, a badger made its way into my kid’s tent last weekend when we were camping in de Chelly. I want to know what the hell’s going on here.”

  Uncle Ernie eyed him, passive again. “You know what’s going on,” he said finally. “You want me to tell you what you already know so you can argue with me and tell me it can’t be. You will struggle with your common sense for a while, and by the time you come around to accepting what I say, it will be too late.”