Walking Back The Cat

by Robert Littell

  Finn slipped into the empty seat and dropped his last five-dollar chip onto the table.

  "Handle's Mildred," the woman in the pink Stetson informed him out of the side of her mouth. Across the casino a woman feeding quarters into a one-armed bandit shrieked as a cascade of coins spilled from the slot machine into her plastic cup. Mildred shut one eye and sneaked a look at her closed card with the other eye. "Hit me," she told the dealer. Then: "Once more." Snorting in frustration when she saw the card she had drawn, she slipped off her stool. "My daddy always said, the first thing you got to do if you're in a hole is stop digging."

  Finn held his own for a quarter of an hour, then hit a lucky streak that included two back-to-back blackjacks and quit while he was ahead. Collecting his chips, he headed for the bar, treated himself to a whiskey, then threaded his way past the tables and gamblers to the double green doors on one side of the casino. A small silver plaque over them read, "High Roller Heaven." Clinking the ice cubes in his glass against each other, he pushed through into the green room.

  Nahtanh, the Cornflower, sidled up to him. "This here section of the casino is for the heavy hitters," he said. He flexed his sinewy shoulder inside his tuxedo. "You don't appear to me to be a heavy hitter."

  "Looks can be deceiving," Finn said. He wandered over to the poker table and watched Shenandoah deal five-card stud to four heavy hitters. She was dressed in black trousers, a white-on-white shirt without pockets or cuffs and a black string bow tie. Distributing the cards, she let her eyes flick over Finn without a glint of recognition. A few minutes later a short, muscular, balding middle-aged man wearing a green bow tie joined the game. He set out half a dozen thousand-dollar chips on the table.

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  Shenandoah never looked up at him. She dealt everyone a closed card, then started setting out the open cards. After each round of open cards, the players bet.

  "Cost you five hundred," an Indian Finn recognized as a Watershed Station Apache announced after Shenandoah dealt him an open king.

  "Up five hundred," said the man in the green bow tie, who had a queen showing. His voice had a pompous guttural quality, as if the possibility of losing never crossed his mind.

  Two of the heavy hitters stayed; the fourth dropped out. Shenandoah dealt everyone a second open card. The Apache had a king nine showing. Pushing hundred-dollar chips forward, he bet five hundred again. Green Bow Tie barely glanced at his queen seven, both spades. "Back at you," he said, raising the bet to one thousand. One of the other players, with a jack four showing, turned over his cards and dropped out. The heavy hitter next to him pursed his lips, studied the king nine in front of the Apache and the two spades in front of Green Bow Tie, then saw the bet.

  Shenandoah set out a new round of cards. The heavy hitter still in the game smiled as she dealt him a six, giving him a pair of sixes. "Sixes talk," Shenandoah announced.

  "Sixes say two thousand," the heavy hitter said, pushing forward a fistful of chips.

  His face expressionless, the Apache raised a thousand. Green Bow Tie, who had three spades showing, raised another thousand. The pair of sixes and the Apache called.

  Shenandoah dealt the last round. The Apache drew a second nine, Green Bow Tie a fourth spade, the heavy hitter an ace.

  "Nines talk," Shenandoah said.

  "You want to see my hole card," said the Apache with the nines showing, "it's going to cost you." He pushed forward five thousand-dollar chips.

  Green Bow Tie didn't bat an eye. "Up five thousand," he said.

  Looking worried for the first time, the heavy hitter with the pair of sixes peeked at his hole card again. "You're bluffing," he announced. "Five more."

  The Apache, betting into a possible flush on one side and aces over on the other, thought a moment, then raised another five thousand.

  "Three raises is the limit," Shenandoah announced.

  Green Bow Tie and the hitter with the sixes showing called.

  "Kings over," the Apache said, turning over a king in the hole.

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  "Aces over," the heavy hitter said, turning over an ace in the hole.

  Green Bow Tie flipped over his hole card. It was a low spade. Tm afraid I caught the flush, gentlemen," he said.

  The heavy hitter with the aces over pocketed the few chips he had left. Tm afraid I caught cold," he said, sliding off his chair.

  A young man in designer jeans, a Texan judging from the string tie and the gold buffalo clasp on it, took his place. "You-all sure got yourself beautiful fingers, babe," he told Shenandoah. "When did you say you got off work?"

  "Past your bedtime."

  Td sure be willing to hang out to the crack a dawn for you, babe."

  Shenandoah said very quietly, "Simmer down, midnight cowboy, or one of my Apache brothers will scalp you."

  Behind her, Gianahtah, the Always Ready, bared his teeth in a wintry smile.

  Shenandoah set out closed cards, then dealt each player an open card. As the game progressed, a mountain of chips accumulated in front of the man in the green bow tie. The big loser was the Apache. Word spread that there was a heavy winner. People drifted over from the roulette table. "There are nights when the gods smile down on people in bow ties," Green Bow Tie announced when Shenandoah dealt him a second eight. "This has to be one of them."

  Finn noticed Eskeltsetle standing off to one side, his heavy-lidded eyes fixed on the game. Shenandoah seemed to glance in his direction. Eskeltsetle nodded imperceptibly.

  Her hands moving over the deck in a blur, Shenandoah dealt another round of open cards. The Apache, with a pair of jacks showing, pushed forward the last of his chips. Tm in for four thousand."

  "I figure the Indian for three jacks," the woman next to Finn whispered. "Else he wouldn't raise."

  With only a pair of eights showing, Green Bow Tie matched the bet. The Apache turned over a seven in the hole. "All I got is the jacks," he said.

  Green Bow Tie turned over his hole card. It was a third eight. "Gotcha," he said, reaching for the chips.

  Nahtanh materialized at his elbow with a plastic bucket. Green Bow Tie raked the chips into it and headed for the teller's window to cash them in. Trailing after him, Finn watched from behind a slot machine as Pet-

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  wawwenin, the Smoker, counted the chips, then filled a leather attache case with cash and handed it over the grille. Turning toward the exit, Green Bow Tie pushed through the swinging doors and disappeared into the night.

  "Looks like you quit while you were ahead," Petwawwenin commented when Finn cashed in his chips.

  "I was following the lead of the dude in the green bow tie," Finn retorted. "Does he play here often?"

  Petwawwenin slid one hundred and twenty dollars in crisp twenty-dollar bills under the grille to Finn. Each bill was folded lengthwise down the spine as if someone had started to turn it into a paper glider. "You obviously ain't heard about curiosity killing the pussycat," Petwawwenin remarked, and he brought up from the pit of his Apache soul the iciest smile Finn had ever seen.

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  The music broke off in mid-riff as Shenandoah came barreling through the door. "Round here we're careful 'bout kickin' fresh turds on a hot day/' she said angrily. "What the hell, I'll make an exception for you."

  "What are you steamed about?"

  "I been lookin' everywhere for that damn cat."

  "She was the one who came to me."

  Shenandoah took a deep breath, shook her head and simmered down. "The next thing you're gonna tell me is she opened the goddamn door."

  "I opened the door." He tried not to smile. "I didn't want to be rude. What do you call your cat?"

  "I call the cat Geronimo."

  Finn leaned the banjo against a wall. "Could I interest you in a saucer of milk?" he asked quietly.

  There was a sudden stilln
ess in the room.

  Eyeing him warily, Shenandoah chewed on the inside of a cheek. "Let's get things real straight between us, Saint Louis. I'm hitched till death do us part to Eskeltsetle, and glad to be. He's one beautiful Apache even if he is old enough to be my father." She stared unblinkingly into Finn's eyes. "Here's the deal: I like you real fine, but like is the limit of my possibilities."

  He looked away. "You're giving me more than I got a right to, but less than I need."

  "I'm givin' you as much as I can give you. You can take it, you can leave it."

  Finn looked back. "I'll take it. Let's drink to friendship."

  "I don't mind, long as we're talkin' the same language." She nudged the saucer of milk with her big toe. "Do you have somethin' with more alcohol content than milk?"

  Finn spilled some cheap whiskey into two tumblers. "I'd offer you ice if there was electricity and I had a fridge. Do you want water?"

  "An Apache never dilutes whiskey with water unless he's runnin' outa whiskey."

  Finn handed her a tumbler. They clicked glasses. "Cheers, I guess," she said without enthusiasm. She tilted back her head and downed a shot. The whiskey burned her throat. She opened her mouth and breathed out. "This here ain't whiskey, this here is pure unadulterated Suma firewater. I need to ventilate my lungs."

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  Shenandoah curled up on a corner of Finn's army cot, her sheaths riding up her thighs, her back against a pillow, the pillow against the wall. Geronimo leaped up next to her and she absently ran her long fine fingers against the grain through the fur on the cat's arched back. Finn settled down on the floor facing the cot, his legs stretched out in front of him, his back against the brick-and-wood bookcase he'd built for the books he was going to buy when he got some money. Sipping his whiskey, he tried to keep his eyes off Shenandoah's bare thighs.

  Shenandoah picked up the two frayed paperbacks lying on the cot and started leafing through them. "You read books?"

  "Sometimes."

  "So who collected the Collected Works? Who's Robert Frost?"

  "He wrote poems," Finn said. "All the poems he ever wrote in his entire life are collected in that one book."

  She worked the ball of her thumb down the spine of the other paperback. "What makes Gatsby great?"

  Finn thought about that for a moment. "When he thinks, he thinks big. When he loves, he loves big. When he loses, he loses everything."

  "That's a fair description of Skelt. He's as great as this Gatsby fella, only Apache style."

  "How did you guys get together?"

  "I was wonderin' when you'd get around to that," Shenandoah said, flashing a faint self-mocking smile. "Everyone always does." He started to take back the question, but she cut him off with an impatient wave of the hand. "Hell, I don't mind."

  She began talking so softly that Finn had to strain to hear her. "Emotionally speakin'," she said, "I'd gone and dug myself into a hole. I was hangin' out in Santa Fe, but I was fed up with the white guys I was datin', I was fed up with the white world. I was livin' with a white dude at the time, one day we saw this hombre ridin' a bi-cycle with a blond-haired kid balanced on the handlebars, they was both grinnin' awful ear-to-ear grins. 'So did you see that, Shenan!' my dude says. 'Why, it makes me regret we never had a bi-cycle together,' he says. A bi-cycle together! Truth is I woulda married the first Apache that happened along. Thanks God it was Eskeltsetle. He was on the short side but strong as an ox and one hunk of an Indian, with that flat nose of his that starts up above his beautiful eyes and plunges straight down like a ski jump. Skelt saw right off what the problem was: I wasn't sure who I was. In White Eye country they got a

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  fancy name for this; it's called an identity crisis. So Skelt—who is one crazy Apache, right? who claims he talks to the Great Spirit—Skelt went 'n' talked to me. And who's to say what he told me didn't come straight from the horse's mouth? I mean, who's to say God wasn't speakin' to me through one crazy Apache named Eskeltsetle?"

  Finn was mesmerized by her story. "What did Skelt tell you?"

  Shenandoah shrugged a shoulder back into her sheaths. "He wanted me to come back and live with him on the reservation, but I wasn't sure I'd fit in. So Skelt takes me down to the Santa Fe military cemetery and shows me these two old grave markers, they were so faded you had to read them with your fingertips. One said 'Indian Scout—O. Y. Slater—Medal of Honor—Sergeant Company A—Indian Wars —March 29, 1893.' The other said 'Ishkaynay—Apache Woman.' "

  "Ishkaynay was the name of your great-grandmother," Finn remembered.

  "Seems like O. Y. Slater, maybe his Medal of Honor was rattlin' against his faded blue army tunic, maybe it wasn't, it don't change the story none, O. Y. Slater turned up one winter mornin' when a fresh snow'd blanketed the four tepees in a clearin' in the woods. The women were boilin' roots over a fire. The braves were off huntin', the winter was particularly hard, they was all starvin' from lack of game. Medal of Honor winner O. Y. Slater worked the lever of his Sharp repeater and shot the four old men who were guardin' the women and children, then he scalped them to collect the bounty on Apache scalps. Medal of Honor winner Slater picked out one of the Suma Apache women —she was fifteen at the time, beautiful the way only an Apache can be beautiful, with a long nose and lean body and fire in her eyes —he picked her out and tied her hands and led her on a leash out of the hills and down to Santa Fe. She scrubbed his floors, she cooked his food, she warmed his bed, eventually she gave birth to a daughter, then she fell sick with what they called swamp fever in those days. Medal of Honor winner Slater and Ishkaynay died of swamp fever the same week and was buried next to each other in the cemetery. It was Skelt's grandfather who came and took Ishkaynay's little half-breed daughter back into the hills and raised her with the Suma Apaches, which is how come he knew the story. That little girl was the mother of my mother."

  Finn reached out to touch her ankle, but she jerked it back as if she had been burned. "So Skelt shows me these grave markers—that was ten years

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  ago next month —he shows them to me and he says, 'Shenandoah, you are who you think you are. All you got to do is invent yourself over again.' So there I was, with cold Indian-killer blood contaminatin' my hot Apache blood, and Skelt was tellin' me I could be anythin' I wanted to be. And what I wanted to be was female and Apache and a dealer who had some control over the games she played in."

  "And here you are . . . ," Finn said carefully.

  "Here I am," she agreed.

  ". . . controlling the games you play in."

  "You bet."

  For a while neither of them said anything. Then: "I watched you dealing poker in the casino last night."

  "What's that supposed to mean?"

  "The game was rigged. You were double-dealing everyone. I watched you shuffling; you were counting the cards as they came off your thumbs."

  Moon shadows from the branches of scrub oaks outside the window flitted across Shenandoah's face as she leaped from the cot to prowl the room. Startled, Geronimo turned around her ankles, upsetting the saucer of milk. "Fuckin' Saint Louis," Shenandoah muttered. "You oughta mind your own goddamn business." She grabbed the cat and tried to coax her into drinking the milk from the floor. "I don't goddamn believe it," she said, suddenly on the verge of tears. "I'm goin' to fuckin' cry over spilt milk!"

  Finn held up his hands. "Peace, huh? I'm sorry I shot my mouth off—"

  "Listen up, Saint Louis. I mean, fuck, everyone in that casino cheats at somethin'—the stock market, their expense accounts, their taxes, their wives." She went to the window and stared out into the night, then turned and came at him, her bare feet slapping against the floorboards. "It was only a card game; it's not somethin' you want to work up a sweat over." She blew air through her lips in exasperation. "Jesus, you're so fuckin' innocent it hurts. You got no idea what really g
oes on in this world."

  Finn climbed to his feet and stood with his back against the wall. "What goes on in this world? What do you know that I don't?"

  "I know plenty you don't even dream about."

  "Like what?"

  "Like what goes on in the casino, to name one situation," she spit out in a cold fury. "Like how this dude in the green bow tie strolls into the room they set aside for heavy hitters and waltzes off with the loose change.

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  Forty thousand here, a hundred thousand there. The Apache who did most of the losin' was playing with casino money."

  "The casino tells you to lose that kind of money on purpose?"

  "You think I lose it by accident?"

  "Who's the joker in the green bow tie? Who sends him?"

  Shenandoah heaved a shoulder.

  "You got to have an idea."

  Shenandoah was sorry she had raised the subject. "I have an idea, but they'd tickle me to death if I passed it on to you."

  Finn asked quietly, "Who'd tickle you to death?"

  At Shenandoah's feet Geronimo started lapping up the milk on the floorboards. Shenandoah shook her head in disbelief. "Crying over spilt milk," she said. "I suppose there has got to be a first time for everythin'."

  Walking Back the Cat

  adobe houses with flat roofs and narrow slits for windows. A torreon, or watchtower, stood at each of the fortress's three corners. Over the centuries two of the towers, and portions of the houses that formed the walls, had collapsed in ruins. At the center of the fortress, looking like a wind-eroded sand castle, stood the two-story adobe Church of San Antonio de Gracia. On a clear day, from its bell tower it was possible to see as far south as the Sandia Mountains above Albuquerque, as far north as the volcanic San Antonio Mountain at the Colorado border.