Apache Country

by Frederick H. Christian

  He went softly up the stair to the bedroom where he found Jessye sprawled across her bed, the duvet kicked off, both her arms thrown over her head, her long, light brown hair slightly damp with perspiration. Because she wouldn’t wear pajamas, he had some T-shirts done with silly names on them for her to wear to bed. The one she was wearing tonight said ‘Mrs. Ticklespot.’ There was a place just above her third rib you only had to touch and she’d explode with giggles. That was where the name had come from.

  She looked angelic and Easton smiled as he remembered an old saying: ‘The devil was an angel, too’. He kissed his daughter very gently on the forehead so as not to wake her. She smelled of No More Tears.

  “I love you, Mrs. Ticklespot,” he whispered.

  As he came down the stairs he heard the ping of the microwave. Grita had heated up the burritos and some refried beans and set a place for him at the pine table in the kitchen. Coffee was gurgling through the machine.

  “Sit,” she told him. “Eat.”

  “You still mad at me?”

  She h’mphed. “Jessye got a gold star at school today.”

  “I could use one of those myself,” he said ruefully.

  “She wanted to tell you herself.”

  He sighed and got up to get a Rolling Rock out of the fridge, took a chug as he stood there, then sat down. The burritos were good and hot. There were a lot of Mexican restaurants in Riverside that made good burritos, but nobody made them the way Grita did.

  “We made an arrest in the Casey murder,” he told her. “That’s why I was late.”

  It was his way of explaining why he hadn’t been home in time to say goodnight to Jessye and hear how she got a gold star. Grita knew it, too. It was kind of a code they had devised. She nodded, which meant it was okay now.

  “It was on the news. They said an Apache. That surprise me.”

  “Why?”

  “Apache like the Mafia, usually only kill each other,” she said. “Must be nearly ninety years since a Mescalero killed a white man.”

  “This guy’s not a Mescalero, he’s a Chiricahua,” he said.

  She gave a tiny shrug. “Same difference.”

  Easton was intrigued. “How come you know about Apache?”

  She tried to look inscrutable and he hid a grin. Margarita Gutierrez, woman of mystery. “Plenty of us Chihuahuans got a little bit Apache in them,” she said.

  One thing Grita hated above all was political correctness. She would not use the word ‘Hispanic.’ With her, it was a straight call: people of Spanish descent who lived in the US were Mexican-American. Or Chihuahuan. Or Venezuelan or Caribbean or Puerto Rican or Chilean. But never Hispanic. She said only those sinverguenzas the politicians would make ‘Mexican’ a dirty word.

  “You want to tell me some more about Apache?” he asked her.

  She frowned. “Like what?”

  “How they tick. Why they act like they do.”

  “They Apache,” she said with a shrug, like explanation was unnecessary. Or impossible.

  “Come on, Grita.”

  She sighed and settled not ungratefully into a chair opposite him at the table.

  “Listen, patrón. Apache not like you, not even like me. They live different. Think different.”

  “How, for instance?”

  “Just … different. Different way of looking at life. Different beliefs, different needs. You know what Apache call white men?”

  “Biliga’ana?” Easton guessed.

  She shook her head. “That’s Navajo. To their face, Apache call white men indaa, sort of means Anglo. But when there’s no white men around, the diehards use the old Apache name, pinda’ lick’ oye.”

  He repeated the word. “What does it mean?”

  “Something like ‘white eyes.’ It’s not a compliment.”

  “What about Mexican people?”

  “We called Na’kalyes. They don’t like us much, either. Don’t like anyone much. They believe one day their God, Yusn, will destroy us all. Everyone except the Apache.”

  Yusn, the Creator, Life Giver, had promised the Apache that in His own time the world and everything in it would be destroyed, she explained. But after four days, the Apache would return from the dead, the buffalo would return to the plains and the antelope to the hills, and the land would belong to the Apache forever.

  “You want to hear Apache song? Yusn’s promise?”

  “You know it?”

  “Bit,” she said.

  It was more of a chant than a song, atonal, throaty, with a strange broken rhythm. The alien sounds hung in the air after she stopped.

  “What does it mean?” he asked her.

  Grita frowned. “Something like … Yusn gave us this land.

  Through our forefathers it has come to us.

  It was our land before the white eyes came.

  It is still our land.”

  “And they really believe that?”

  She nodded emphatically. “That is Yusn’s promise made long ago to Apache people, and a lot of them believe it gonna happen one day. They might not tell a white-eye they do. But they do.”

  “They hate us that much?”

  “Not hate,” she said. “More like, despise. Look down on.”

  Easton got up and poured himself another cup of coffee. His back ached and he stretched, then yawned uncontrollably.

  “You need to get some sleep,” Grita said.

  “It’s been a rough day,” he admitted. “Think maybe we earned a nightcap?”

  Grita looked disapproving, then her fierce frown dissolved into a broad and wicked grin. “Any that malt whisky left?” she said.

  He got two of the heavy crystal whisky glasses Susan’s parents had bought them for a wedding present, and poured them each a couple of fingers from the bottle he had bought himself for Christmas, as much to prove to himself he didn’t need it as for any other reason. It had cost a leg and an arm but he figured that if he took one drink a week, it would last through his birthday. But that was before he made the mistake of letting Grita try it. After Glenkinchie, forget tequila. She picked up the glass, rolled the whisky around in it and sniffed it. Then she took a sip and rolled her eyes.

  “Good job I din found out about this stuff when I was twenty,” she giggled, and for a moment he caught a glimpse of the pretty girl she must once have been. A little over a year after she and her husband were married by Father Tafoya in the little adobe church at Pacheco, Patricinio had been run down and killed by a drunk driver. That had been more than thirty years ago. She had worked seven days a week every week of her life since.

  “Where did you learn all this stuff about Apache, anyway?” Easton said to her.

  “My grandmother lived at Santa Rita, near Silver City. Her people traded with them. One or two of them married Chiricahuas.”

  “Mangas Coloradas was a Chiricahua,” Easton said. “And Cochise.”

  She smiled. “Also Geronimo.”

  “We treated them all so badly. We lied to them and we stole their land and after we sent the entire United States Army to make war on them, we shipped what was left of them to a mosquito-ridden sandspit in Florida and left them there to rot.”

  “They haven’t forgotten,” Grita said, taking another sip of her whisky. Easton’s glass was empty and the urge to have another tugged at him. He disregarded it. He could do that now.

  “Do the different tribes have different rules, different customs?” he asked her.

  “Not like the old days. They mingle more than they used to.”

  “But …?”

  “Is not easy for white people to understand,” she said. “Jicarilla not like a Chiricahua, Mescalero not like a Lipan. Chiricahua go to live with Mescaleroes, he still a Chiricahua. He marry someone from another tribe, his children be neither one nor the other. Spite of that, all Apache think they one people. Different, but the same – n’dee, The People. Or Shis’ n’dee’, People of the Woods.”

  “I seem to recall I read some
place ‘Apache’ means ‘enemy’.”

  “Lot of people think that. The Zuni name for Navajos was apáchu, enemy. But that makes them sound bad. They not bad people. They got sort of, como se llama, mandamientos?”

  “Commandments?”

  She nodded. “But not like Christian ones. Life rules, maybe. They don’t believe in ‘love thy neighbor,’ got no time for wimp stuff like that. But some their beliefs the same. Respect your father and mother. No telling lies, no stealing.”

  “I know plenty of instances where Mescaleroes have stolen. And lied.”

  “Nobody say Apache perfect, patrón,” she grinned. “But generally, they try hard. Like if an Apache asks another for help, the one he asks must give it. Not because he maybe get punished later for not helping. It’s doing what’s right because it’s right.”

  “What do Apache consider great sins?”

  “For a woman, adultery. To be unfaithful. After that, mistreating her children.”

  “And men?”

  “Worst thing Apache can do is betray his own people some way. He do that, he be banished, and that the worst thing can happen. The next worst thing is to be locked up in a cage. In a jail.”

  Easton caught the accusing note. “He’s in jail because he’s suspected of murder, Grita. I don’t make the law.”

  She took another sip of her whisky and said nothing, but he knew what she was up to, letting her disapproval work on him. He headed her off at the pass.

  “This man we arrested,” he said. “Ironheel. You know what he did?”

  She nodded. “Saw it on TV. I so sad for Mrs. Ellen.”

  I must call her, Easton thought.

  “We’re still trying to figure out why he did it,” he said.

  “Locos don’ need no reason,” Grita said.

  Some truth in that, too Easton thought. These days there was a whole new breed of animal prowling the streets, unfocussed hatred burning inside them like a banked fire. The new barbarians, marinated in racism, bigotry and envy, who would without provocation or hesitation maim or kill anyone who was not like them or showed them disapproval.

  “He’s not a psycho, Grita,” he said. “Not this one.”

  She shrugged. “Maybe a drunk. Lot of those, too.”

  He made a negative gesture. “I don’t think so.”

  “Could be a burnout,” Grita said. “Apache got their share, like everyone else. Some of them druggies, dropouts, whatchamacallems like the ones the sheriff had to roust out of Tierra Berrendo Park.”

  “Not ‘whatchamacallems’,” Easton smiled, remembering the incident. “He called them ‘homeless by choice’.” Apodaca had taken a beating from the liberals on that one.

  “Maybe your Apache a bronco,” Grita suggested. “You see that a lot these days. Among the Navajos, too. Clan systems, taboos, rituals, it all too much for them. They reject the tribal ways. Then they ajeno, lost somewhere between their world and our world.”

  Ajeno. In Spanish it meant foreign, strange, belonging to someone else. But the Apache Easton had talked to didn’t fit any of these categories. He stood up and stretched again.

  “I better hit the sack,” he said. “Busy day tomorrow.”

  “Only kind worth having,” Grita said, getting up to rinse the glasses and put them on the draining board.

  “All the time I was talking to him I kept getting the feeling there was something he was trying to tell me,” Easton said, more to himself than her. “But it was like ... he didn’t think I’d believe him. Or he was wondering if he could trust me.”

  “Apache,” she nodded, as if, again, the word explained everything. Easton got up and kissed her on the forehead.

  “You’re amazing,” he said.

  Grita snorted. “Hell, anybody know that.”

  Chapter Six

  Charlie Goodwin’s “hotshot” public defender turned out to be a short, overweight man in his late twenties with pale skin and watery blue eyes behind rimless glasses, wearing a rumpled tan lightweight suit with a white shirt and a plain dark blue tie. He stood up as Easton came through the door leading from the office into the tiny carpeted triangle that acted as the SO reception area. He carried a black plastic document case under his right arm.

  “Chief Deputy, uh, Easton, is it?” he said. His voice was tentative, as watery as his eyes. “My name is Jerry Weddle. I’m with Goodwin Massie Delgado Oppenheimer.”

  He didn’t offer to shake hands, just stood there blank faced, waiting for a response. It wasn’t diffidence, Easton guessed, more like he wasn’t sure what the protocol was. He might as well have had a sign around his neck: Fresh Out Of Law School. Easton determined not to let that predispose him one way or the other. Everyone had to begin someplace, and the new boys were often a lot better than some of the chancers the public defender system threw his way.

  “I thought I knew most of Charlie Goodwin’s people,” he said, making it a question.

  “I’ve been working over in Gallup,” Weddle replied, as if that explained everything. Probably didn’t want to let on how green he was, Easton concluded.

  “Let’s go through to my office,” he said.

  He punched in the numbers that let them through the security door and led the way down the hallway. On their left, framed black and white photographs of all the former sheriffs of Cháves County hung in the alcove above the Xerox machine. The main office was in its usual state of organized commotion, phones ringing, computers and laser printers at work.

  Easton’s office was as basic as the ones outside. He had done what he could to soften the flat whiteness of the walls with a Navajo blanket and some posters and framed certificates, but there was no way to camouflage the blown-on insulation the contractors had used to conceal the old asbestos ceiling tiles, or the unlovely fluorescent light fitments that went with them. Weddle looked around, clearly underwhelmed.

  Figured, Easton thought. The SO building hadn’t been designed to impress – cops didn’t rate blond wood furniture, fitted pastel carpets and smoked glass windows the way the corporate high flyers in Penn Plaza Tower did.

  “First time you’ve been here?” Easton asked.

  “I thought it would be bigger.”

  “County with seventy thousand population, this is about as big as a Sheriff’s Office gets. Can I get you something to drink? Coffee, maybe?”

  Weddle nodded, yes. “When can I see my client?” he asked. “Ironheel, have I got his name right?”

  “James Ironheel. You can see him whenever you’re ready,” Easton told him as he filled a cup from the machine on the bookcase behind his desk. “How do you take it?”

  “Just as it comes,” Weddle said. “Thanks.”

  He sat down in one of the two guest chairs facing the desk. He put the briefcase down carefully, then picked it up again and held it on his knees as if he wasn’t sure it was a good idea to let go of it.

  “You can let me have a copy of Ironheel’s stats?”

  “No problem.”

  “I’ll, uh, I’ll also need to see the arrest records. Crime scene photos, forensic reports. Whatever is relevant.”

  “I’ll have a dossier made up for you,” Easton said. “You can pick it up before you leave.”

  He buzzed DeAnn, and told her what he wanted. Weddle sipped his coffee and looked out the window like none of this had anything to do with him.

  “When is he being arraigned?” he asked when Easton put down the phone.

  “Monday morning.”

  Weddle looked discouraged. “That doesn’t give me a whole lot of time.”

  There were only two possible responses: Gee, I’m sorry or Tough shit. Easton decided not to bother. He could see Weddle wondering if his silence was significant, and let it stretch. The use of silence was an important skill. The judicious pause, the lifted eyebrow, the sympathetic nod, all these were levers to be used to get to the truth or to get your own way. A lot of cops found out that without their realizing it, they were also using them to manipul
ate or control people they loved. And by the time they realized they were doing it, it was too late. Silence and love are bitter rivals.

  “You think he can get bail?” Weddle asked.

  Easton was tempted to ask him how many Apache he knew who could raise a fifty thousand dollar bail bond. Instead, he told himself to make allowances. This was all new to Weddle and he was clearly feeling his way. He shook his head.

  “My bet is no. But even if he could, the DA’s office would almost certainly contend there’s a distinct risk of flight.”

  Weddle made an impatient gesture and put down the coffee cup. It was the first positive thing he had done since he came in.

  “Oh, come on,” he said scornfully. “A distinct risk of flight?”

  “We’re dealing with a double homicide here, Mr. Weddle,” Easton reminded the lawyer.

  “This is an Apache, right?”

  “Right.”

  “Where’s he going to run to?”

  “Maybe the same place he was going to run to when he put the two State Police officers who tried to arrest him into hospital.”

  “They told me all that. I still contend—”

  Easton interrupted. “Have you had many dealings with Apache, Mr. Weddle? Know anything about them?”

  The lawyer put on a defiant face. “Not Apache, maybe,” he said defensively. “But I’ve done quite a lot of PD work for the Department of Justice over on the Big Rez.”

  In New Mexico the words Big Rez meant only one thing: the Navajo reservation. The Navajos were the most populous tribe in America, their lands far and away the largest area occupied by Native Americans. Easton spent a moment wondering what sort of public defender work Weddle might have done over there. He didn’t talk like he had much experience and he didn’t look like he spent much of his time outdoors. Didn’t even wear a hat. Which probably meant he’d been doing paperwork. Depositions, subpoenas, locating witnesses, that kind of thing. What the hell was Charlie Goodwin thinking about, sending a greenhorn like this to handle a homicide case?