River Walker

by Cate Culpepper

  Table of Contents

  Synopsis

  By the Author

  Acknowledgments

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  About the Author

  Books Available From Bold Strokes Books

  Synopsis

  Any night La Llorona walks the river is a night to stay indoors.

  One moonlit midnight, two very different women meet on the banks of the muddy Rio Grande. Grady Wrenn is a cultural anthropologist, enthralled by a local ghost story about a vengeful spirit known as the River Walker. Elena Montalvo, a spiritual healer, is that tortured spirit’s only defender. Together, Grady and Elena must find a way to end the River Walker’s murderous vendetta— and overcome a maze of cultural barriers to find each other.

  River Walker

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  E-Books from Bold Strokes Books, Inc.

  http://www.boldstrokesbooks.com

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  By the Author

  Tristaine: The Clinic

  Battle for Tristaine

  Tristaine Rises

  Queens of Tristaine

  Fireside

  River Walker

  River Walker

  © 2010 By Cate Culpepper. All Rights Reserved.

  ISBN 13: 978-1-60282-488-1E

  This Electronic Book is published by

  Bold Strokes Books, Inc.,

  P.O. Box 249

  Valley Falls, New York 12185

  First Edition: November 2010

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.

  Credits

  Editors: Cindy Cresap and Stacia Seaman

  Production Design: Stacia Seaman

  Cover Design By Sheri(GraphicArtist2020@hotmail.com)

  Acknowledgments

  My thanks to my excellent editors Cindy Cresap and Stacia Seaman for their skillful nurturing of this ghost story, and to Radclyffe and Bold Strokes Books for publishing it. My beloved beta readers Connie Ward, Gill McKnight, and Jenny Harmon supplied many months of helpful critique. Kudos also to talented BSB artist Sheri for her evocative cover design.

  The translation services of my fine YouthCare colleague, Jose Luis Bonilla, saved Elena’s beautiful language from my atrocious Spanglish.

  My longtime friend Katherine Unity Porter provided both warm encouragement and invaluable practical support. Thank you, KUP.

  I’m also grateful to my sister, Connie Warren, for prowling through the Mesilla cemetery and roaming the Organ Mountains with me, and for her general kind spoilage of her little sister whenever I visit our home state.

  Dedication

  For my mother, Joyce Culpepper, enjoying her well-earned rest at the Heart of the Mountain,

  and for my sister, Connie Warren,

  the classiest straight woman I know.

  Chapter One

  The dark river rolled silently beneath the desert’s full moon, shadowed and implacable as Grady Wrenn’s heart.

  Her boots rasped through the dry grass lining the riverbank. She lifted one hand to keep her balance on the uneven ground, the night air soft and warm against her palm. It was cresting midnight, and her eyes felt as hot and arid as the plains that lay west of this storied river.

  Grady had heard the desert was an acquired taste. She hadn’t acquired it fully yet, but perhaps it was growing on her. The Mesilla Valley held a crystalline beauty that still seemed alien after the easier, gentler allure of the Pacific Northwest. The blue velvet sky was spangled with stars, and she was half dazzled by them. The clouded heavens of Oregon never offered much sky. New Mexico’s skies were an embarrassment of riches, especially on nights like these.

  She settled cross-legged onto the sandy bank, the faint popping of her knees the only sound besides the lonely chirping of river crickets. Grady had always thought the ocean was grief’s most natural habitat, but she found solace here, too, watching the slow currents of the Rio Grande. There was subtle comfort in the ceaseless movement of the river. Just as the ageless waters sluiced away the embedded grit of the riverbed, she was starting to hope this gentle flow could do the work of her unshed tears and ease the pain of her loss. Her nightly wanderings often drew her to the Grande and usually brought her enough peace to find a few hours’ sleep.

  Only one small, smooth rock in the center of the river’s narrow span interrupted its patient flow. Grady scraped a handful of fine pebbles from the bank and tossed one after another at the rock. Her throws were short and her aim hopeless, but the whole point was to hear the soft plunk as the stones hit the water.

  She was plunking pebbles into history itself. She relished the moment, breathing in the distinctive rain-like smell of the creosote brush dotting the bank. Billy the Kid drank from this river. Pancho Villa led his rebels across its waters. If rivers could talk, this one had centuries of gossip to dish, and Grady only wished she spoke its language. As a cultural anthropologist, her greatest pleasure was to unravel the mysteries of—

  It began as a low, snarling cry, so mindless Grady thought a wild beast had to be near, and she spun on her butt in alarm. It seemed to come from everywhere. The keening moan rose from a growl to a harrowing shriek, an all but unbearable cacophony of rage—a wail of very human fury, and unmistakable grief.

  Adrenaline streaked through Grady in a painful burst, and she scrabbled in the dry grass of the riverbank, her only conscious thought to get away from that sound. She groped for the bank’s edge and it crumbled beneath her hand. She slid down the shallow side and her churning boots plunged into the cold water. She flailed on her back like a turtle, helpless as a child and terrified as one caught in a nightmare. She sat up and looked around wildly, her heart punching hard in her chest.

  “What the fuck.” Breath whistled in and out of Grady’s lungs in sharp bursts. She had walked between a mother grizzly bear and her cub once during a study of a mountain Klickitat tribe. Even that towering beast’s roar hadn’t frozen the blood in her veins like this.

  The wailing rolled on, impossibly prolonged, a disembodied wave of enraged suffering. There was something inescapably feminine in that discordant melody that chilled Grady to the bone.

  Then, as abruptly as it began, the sound faded. The night was silent again, and the river continued its peaceful, serpentine trek through the desert valley undisturbed.

  Undisturbed except for the rock in the center of the stream, which was rising slowly to its feet.

  “Jesus!” Grady yelled. She kicked her way back up the bank, clawing for purchase. She gaped at the lush form that rose gracefully from the water.

  It was
a woman, the moonlight revealed that much. A naked woman. A young naked woman, her dark hair a smooth, wet sheen around her bare shoulders. She stood in the center of the shallow river, the water lapping against her thighs.

  “Cálmate,” the woman called. “Usted no tiene nada que temer.”

  “What are you?” Grady croaked. Perhaps a person with a doctorate should be capable of a more articulate greeting, but she forgave herself that lapse for now.

  The woman seemed to study her for a moment, apparently at ease with her nudity. Grady was finally able to accept that this strange creature was mortal and not the source of that nerve-shredding wail, when she took a quick side-step to steady herself in the sluggish current.

  “You have nothing to fear.” Her words carried clearly across the water to Grady. “Maria has no interest in you, or in any woman.”

  “Good,” Grady called back. She was glad to hear this. Her pulse was only now slowing its frenzied pace. “Who’s Maria?”

  The young woman turned carefully in the river and began making her way toward the opposite bank.

  “Hold on!” Grady scrambled to her feet and tried to inject some authority into her voice. “Who is Maria? Who are you? What was—”

  “Go home to your nice bed, gringa.” The woman paused and glanced back over her shoulder. There was no mockery in her voice; she just sounded tired. “Any night Maria walks the river is a night to stay indoors.”

  Grady folded her arms, shivering. She watched the woman step nimbly up the bank, water streaming from the rounded swells of her hips. The moon’s illumination was too faint to pick up much detail, but Grady placed her in her mid twenties. Her body didn’t carry the sculpted sleekness of the gym, but her curves held a softer and more natural appeal that reached Grady even through her daze. Her wet hair looked dark against her pale shoulders.

  Grady had felt no desire to touch a woman in well over a year, and she didn’t feel it now. But she recognized a sweet sensuality in the girl’s movements, in the obvious comfort she felt with her body. A slight breeze caressed Grady’s face, and she imagined it reaching across the river to touch the girl’s cheeks. She wished she could see her expression.

  The distant figure lifted a folded pair of pants from the ground and pulled them on. She shook out a loose shirt and snaked her arms through it, then stepped into a pair of sandals. She walked to a spindly tree and the small horse—yes, a horse—tethered to it. Grady had been so enamored of the river, and then scared shitless by some banshee’s cry, and then fascinated by this naked naiad, she had missed an entire horse, not fifty feet away. The woman mounted the unsaddled beast with one agile leap, then lifted the rope reins from its neck. She looked back toward Grady, and the moonlight flashed briefly across her smile. “Sleep well,” she called. “I’m sorry you were frightened.”

  Grady lifted one hand in feeble acknowledgment. The adrenaline rush left her mildly nauseous. She watched the small horse canter gamely off, headed east toward the town of Old Mesilla. The woman’s shining curtain of hair lifted and fell with her mount’s gait.

  “Good night,” Grady whispered. She was chilled in spite of the warm air, and she snuck her hands into her armpits. Her pickup was parked on a frontage road about a half-mile away, and she shuffled toward it, looking over her shoulder to keep the horse and rider in sight. They dwindled into the shadows in moments.

  The clock of Grady’s boots on the stony path echoed hollowly in her ears. If she had hackles, they were still prickling high on her neck, and she pulled the collar of her cotton shirt around her throat. She listened so hard her scalp twitched. If she heard even the faint beginnings of that growling cry again…

  Grady reached her lonely truck unmolested. She ducked into its cab and keyed the ignition, the wet cuffs of her jeans chafing her ankles. In the dim glow of the dome light, she caught a glimpse of herself in the rearview mirror; the dark circles beneath her eyes aged her a decade beyond her thirty-four years. She drifted her fingers through her hair, noting the strands of gray that had been there even before the banshee—Maria?—scared her stinking witless tonight.

  Grady gazed at her image in the small mirror. Through the dust on her skin, she traced the track of a tear. She remembered the terrible grief that had saturated that shrieking voice, a sorrow even greater than its rage. Her own mourning had found resonance there, an answering sadness. The river and the cry that haunted it had released the first tear Grady had shed in months.

  She glanced out the side window at the flowing Rio Grande and shivered again. The primeval river could keep her mysteries, if they included demons like that.

  Grady turned her truck east, back toward the glittering lights of the city of Las Cruces. It rumbled over the wide dirt road, its headlights gleaming weakly through the dust. The Grande’s mysteries also involved a shapely young woman who sat naked in rivers at midnight, and the wonder of that almost overrode Grady’s initial fear.

  Almost.

  Grady was tired and shaky and lonely and she needed a bathroom in the worst way. She needed long hours of decent sleep, too, but the night’s events all but guaranteed those would elude her. Again.

  Her truck rumbled over a small rise, leaving the muddy Rio Grande behind to keep its silent course throughout the night.

  Chapter Two

  Good evening, sweet Goddess, mi Diosa.

  Ha ha ha. You hear me laughing down here. You must be very pleased with Yourself. Like my mother when she covers my pillow with packages of condoms. I bet You and my mother cackle just the same. You are a very funny Goddess.

  My Catholic neighbors, who do they get for a god? They get to worship this wise old man who cuts tablets out of mountains and parts seas. I get a stand-up comic.

  How long have I been asking You for help, Diosa? How old am I, that is the answer. All my life. All my life I have prayed that You would send my family an ally, someone to help us. This is too hard to do on my own. You know my mother cannot help. I have told You all this every night for years and years.

  So what do You do? Who do You send to help me? A skinny gringa so brave she falls on her ass and tumbles into the river! She is not what I had in mind, Diosa. She was even scared of me, and all I did was stand up.

  But this Anglo woman did hear Maria’s cry. I have never met a female who is able to hear Maria. How have You afflicted this woman? What sadness does she bear, that she can hear the wailing of the River Walker?

  Questions for another day. Mamá is asleep at last and there is peace in our home, so I suppose there is something I can sincerely thank You for. Comfort all Your errant daughters, Diosa. Guide me all my days.

  Smile down on Your loving Elena.

  Chapter Three

  “Sorry, sorry, sorry.” Burdened with an armload of books and maps and balancing a box of doughnuts, Grady fished her keys from her back pocket and stepped through the small cluster of students waiting outside her office. “I’m usually a lot better about being on time.”

  “That’s okay. I’ve forgiven you already.” A plump Hispanic girl grinned broadly and lifted the toppling box of doughnuts. “I’m Sylvia.”

  “Hey, Sylvia.” Grady nodded at the other two and kneed open the door. She genuinely enjoyed her students for the most part, but she always had a devil’s time remembering their names at the beginning of a term. She had committed these three to memory before she peeled out that morning, and luckily she had a name for each face: Sylvia Lucero, Cesar Padilla, and Janice Hamilton, the full roster of her summer seminar.

  She let the others introduce themselves as she navigated behind the oak desk that dominated her small space. Her office was in Breland Hall, not one of the new and shinier complexes dotting the New Mexico State University campus, but it suited Grady well. Built in the 1950s, Breland struck her more as an old-time public school house than a center for higher learning, and she liked its informality. The old building housed both the anthropology and sociology departments, and as new faculty she was lucky to merit even
this wedge of a private office.

  “Is this yours, Dr. Wrenn?” Sylvia gestured at the cedar-framed tapestry hanging on the west wall, where the morning light could reach it. “It’s beautiful. I’ve never seen these designs.”

  “That’s one of my favorites. It’s a ceremonial mantle from the Klickitat River area, a tribe on the northwest coast.” Grady poured water into the coffeemaker. She hoped these kids could stand some high-octane caffeine this morning; decaf was not an option.

  She turned and rested her butt against the desk as the others settled into the folding chairs forming a small circle in front of it. She felt a little like Saint Francis addressing the lambs in this crowded space, with those young faces tilted up at her.

  Grady was already learning what she’d need to know about each of her students to inject useful knowledge into their heads. Sylvia gazed with open pleasure at the sand paintings and small carved animal totems that adorned the office, her eyes alight with curiosity. Cesar sat beside her, fumbling with his notes, trying to find a working pen, his brow creased and his broad shoulders hunched. Grady noted his affectionate hold on Sylvia’s hand. Janice was a bit of a cipher, so far—she returned Grady’s regard seriously, motionless, her gangly legs crossed at the knee.

  “So, let me start by coming clean with you guys about my near-neophyte status, here,” Grady said. “You all saw my bona fides on the syllabus, so you know I’m pretty well-versed in the Native American cultures of the Pacific Northwest. I’m handy with a half dozen other Native and Hispanic community models up and down the West Coast. But I can’t claim any great expertise in the social mores of southern New Mexico. I only moved here six months ago, so I’ll be on a learning curve myself this summer.”