Harlan turned back. “Yeah, you go on and laugh, Begay. Wait till she starts stealin’ stuff out of your store.”
Self-righteous booger. When he’d shuffled his way out of earshot, the Indian said, “Cassie, what the sam hill are you going to do with this kid?” Like I wasn’t standing right there with his hand on my collar.
“Take her home and feed her, of course.”
“You think we should call the sheriff, try to find out where she came from?”
I nearly bit clear through my tongue. If the sheriff started making some phone calls or plugged me into his computer, I’d be back in Colorado by tomorrow night.
“Plenty of time for that after she’s got a decent meal in her.”
“Well, come on, I’ll give you a ride. How’s that hip?”
“A little sore, but I’ve had worse. We’d appreciate the ride, wouldn’t we, child?”
I stared at the toes of my sneakers.
“You ought to thank Cassie for helping you, girl.”
It was the first time they’d said a word to me, and they were already telling me what I should be doing.
I sat between them in the old flatbed truck and stared at the red rock mesas through the windshield, picking absently at the white stuff erupting like cottonwood puffs from a crack in the bench seat. Delbert shifted the black gearshift knob between my knees while he and Cassie chattered about whether it was going to be a drought summer; he said his nephew had gotten a part-time job as a fire spotter over by Magdalena and he told Cassie he’d give her some eggs if she’d make a poultice—whatever the hell that was—for his father’s arm.
Meanwhile, I was looking around, trying to figure out how and when I could get myself out of here. By the time he turned off the highway onto an unmarked dirt road and rattled across a dry wash, I was starting to get scared. Nobody could really live out here. The old lady might be crazy. They could kill me and no one would ever know. What if Tonto was one of those people Ridley used to tell us about who sell girls as slaves to black drug dealers?
“Where the hell are we going?”
They both looked at me like they’d forgotten I was there.
“To my house, child.”
“Don’t call me child.”
“Then suppose you give us your name.”
I chewed on the inside of my cheek.
The truck ground to a halt and Delbert flicked off the key.
I’d make my move the second he was out of sight. The old lady could never catch me. But when I jumped down from the cab and tried to stand up, my head got hot and my knees started shaking and things got suddenly dark.
When I opened my eyes, I was on a couch, covered up with a dusty smelling blanket. The room was dim and cool. The old lady was standing by a window with a ragged lace curtain over it. Just standing there, watching me. When I sat up, a wet rag fell off the egg-sized lump on my head.
She picked it up. “Feel like eating something now?”
She looked pretty harmless. Probably just some old do-gooder, but I’d keep her in my sight, watch everything she put in the food.
She fed me a bowl of thick stew that had no flavor except hot. It brought out a sweat on my face, made me conscious of my own stink—three days of walking and thumbing, four nights of sleeping in gas station restrooms and drainage pipes. She seemed not to notice. Just kept my glass full of water and my plate piled with dry cornbread. Compared to Esperanza, she wasn’t much of a cook.
“They call me Cassie Robert,” she said finally. When I didn’t answer, she said, “What’s your name, child?”
“Avery James.” I knew I should make up a name, but I was too tired. My brain wasn’t working right.
“Where you from?”
“Montrose.” It was the first town that came into my head.
“How long you been traveling?”
“Four days.”
“Made darn good time, didn’t you?” She gave me a sideways look, which I avoided. “How long since you ate?”
I was starting on the second bowl of stew, and my mouth was full, so I just held up two fingers.
“Won’t your people be worried about you?”
I swallowed something so fiery that my eyes watered. “No.”
“Where you headed?”
Nosy old toad. “Albuquerque.”
“You got family there? Friends?”
“Yeah.”
“Which? Friends or family?”
No answer.
“What’re you lookin’ to do there?”
“Get a job.”
“A job doing what?”
“Cooking.”
“I see.” She leaned her elbows on the table and peered at me.
I stared right back, folded my arms, waited for her to mention that my eyes were pretty unusual. But she just got up, carried the empty bowl and spoon to the sink, washed them.
“Thanks for the food.” I shifted uneasily on the hard chair.
She nodded at the window. “It’s dark now. Won’t be many rides out there for you tonight. Might as well sleep on the couch and start out fresh in the morning.”
“I should get going.”
“Suit yourself.” She dried my bowl and put it back in the cupboard. Then without turning around, she said quietly, “Nobody’s gonna come lookin’ for you here.”
I hesitated. Having a full stomach didn’t really put me in the mood for walking. Not to mention that it was dark and I had no idea where I was. She was puttering around, wiping crumbs off the table, setting the soup pot in the sink. Finally she dusted off her hands and said, “I’m goin’ to bed. If you leave, be sure to latch the door behind you.”
She disappeared into a little room off the other side of the door. I could hear her getting undressed, shoes hitting the floor, then a long, tired sigh, the rustle of bedcovers.
I knew I should get up, but I couldn’t move. My arms and legs were too heavy. Like in those dreams, where you’re running, but you’re not getting anywhere. I sat there staring at the flame of the oil lamp till I could hardly hold my head up. When she started to snore, I kicked off my shoes, blew out the lamp, and laid down again on the couch. It was saggy and hard as a damn rock, but I closed my eyes and that was it.
I jolted awake with the sun full in my face, needing to pee so bad I thought I’d explode. Smells of bacon and coffee and biscuits made the saliva pool in my mouth. I’d leave right after breakfast. I got up reaching for my shoes.
“Better shake ’em out first,” Cassie warned. “Make sure there’s no scorpions or black widows.” She pronounced it “widdas.”
I shook them hard upside down, then wiggled my feet inside. “I need to use the bathroom. Please.”
“Out there.” She jerked her head toward the door.
“Outside?”
“Yep. Just follow the path around back. And mind the snakes.”
The eggs were laced with mild green chiles, the bacon was crisp, and the biscuits were a little chewy, but there was some kind of spicy honey for them. She gave me coffee with sugar and milk. Esperanza used to give me sips of her coffee sometimes. They never let us have it at Carson. They said it was a stimulant, and one thing that Christian young ladies and gentlemen didn’t need to be was stimulated.
When I couldn’t eat another bite, I sat back and looked at the old woman across the table from me. Steel gray hairs like little bent wires poked out of the knot at the base of her neck. Her face was as wrinkled and faded as her dress. She had a thin mouth and a pretty big nose, and eyes that kind of reminded me of Esperanza, black eyes that could look smiley and sharp at the same time.
“Why do you want to help me?”
“I help you, then you help me,” she said.
She surprised me. I was expecting some goody God bullshit about Samaritans helping strangers like they used to put out all the time at Carson. But given the fact that she’d fed me two meals and let me sleep in her house, I figured I owed her.
“How am I supposed to help y
ou?”
“Garden wants watering and I need some herbs cut. It’s a small patch.”
Well, it wouldn’t take long, and then I’d be back out on the highway. Hitchhiking to Albuquerque. If I could figure out where she kept her money, I might even have a couple extra bucks in my jeans.
It was a small patch of garden, all right. But there was an amazing number of plants in it. Cassie tied on an old-timey sunbonnet, sat on a dented blue metal stool, and watched me haul buckets of water from a sink on the back porch.
The only flowers I recognized were sunflowers—the little wild ones that grow along the roads. There were some pink pompoms and some orange ones.
“Those marigolds.” She pointed at the orange ones. “Cut about a half dozen of those. No, child, at the base of the stem, not right under the flower.”
She had me snip a bunch of silver weedy-looking stuff, soft and silky to the touch. “Wormwood,” she said. “Mexicans call it agenjo. Good for arthritis and headaches.”
“Yeah.”
“This one’s feverfew. Altamisa. For upset stomach.” It looked like miniature daisies. She pointed at a pretty green plant. “This is bas—”
“Albácar.” The licorice scent filled my head with a memory of Esperanza.
Cassie shot me an odd look. “How do you know basil?”
“Albácar,” I said again.
“Same thing. Have you used it for tea?”
“Just for soup and stuff.”
She nodded. “Brings good luck, too.” She pulled off a leaf and tucked it into my shirt pocket.
By now the sun was beating down on the top of my head till I could just about keel over.
“Gonna be a hot one today.”
I squinted up at her. The sweat that kept popping out on my face evaporated before it could drip off. What was your first clue, lady?
“You might want to have a bath before you leave. Probably easier to get a ride if you don’t smell like a nanny goat.”
Before I could think too much about it, I was on the back porch up to my neck in a metal tub of barely warm water, my hair fat with shampoo suds. I closed my eyes and almost fell asleep. Except Cassie was making a lot of noise with pots out in the kitchen.
Then she hollered, “Seems a shame to put those filthy clothes back on. Now that you’re all clean. Might want to wait till they’re washed and dried.”
This made me nervous. I should’ve been out of here a long time ago. I should’ve left right after I ate last night. This morning at the latest. They could be looking for me. Never know who Tonto might be talking to. And old fat-ass Harlan obviously couldn’t be trusted.
I paddled my hand back and forth in the water and the ripples washed over my stomach like tiny waves. But Ridley probably thought I was headed for Denver. Trying to find Lee-Ann. Ha. I snorted and the little explosion of water made me laugh.
One more night wouldn’t hurt. One more free meal. Maybe there was something else she needed done—as long as I was going to be around for another night.
When I stood up out of the filthy water, a little breeze hit my wet skin, raising goosebumps on my butt. I wrapped the rough towel around me and started dragging the washtub toward the edge of the porch, water sloshing out all over.
“Don’t do that, child!” Cassie’s voice startled me and I straightened up.
“Don’t you want me to pour the water out?”
“Lordy, no. We don’t waste water around here.”
I looked down at the brownish scum floating on top of my bath. “It’s dirty. What else can you do with it?”
“The garden don’t mind dirty water. Leave it be for now. I’ll show you later what to do with it. Get dried off and let’s find you some clothes.”
She gave me a plaid dress to wear, faded and soft like it’d been washed about a million times, and big as a tent. We had beans and rice for dinner. I saw peppers and tomatoes in the garden, but they weren’t ripe yet. She had masa, so I made tortillas. She didn’t say anything, but I could tell she was impressed. Patting out the dough, slapping them in her big old black frying pan, I felt for a second like I was back at Carson, kneeling on that chair next to Esperanza, smelling the cumin and chiles on her skin. I remembered her stories about how her whole family made tamales at Christmas. She said she was going to teach me, but we never got around to that.
After dinner Cassie boiled water in the blue metal coffeepot, threw in a handful of coffee and let it steep. She called it cowboy coffee. When she decided it was done, she dropped in pieces of shell from our breakfast eggs.
“Makes the grounds sink to the bottom.” When she smiled, she looked like a little kid. Well, a wrinkly little kid. She fixed two cups with sugar and that canned milk that smelled like the can.
We spent the evening tying plant cuttings into bundles by the soft yellow light of two kerosene lamps. Then we hung them to dry on nails hammered into the low ceiling beams. She gave me a pair of scissors and had me cut squares of a coarse material for teas and medicines, tie the packets with kitchen twine. Her hands were all knobby, with swollen knuckles, and I wondered how she could do this at all.
“Where’d you learn all this stuff, Cassie?” I’d started off calling her Miss Robert—I always had pretty good manners for a girl with no mother, and I believed you were more likely to get what you wanted that way—but she said I could call her Cassie.
Her eyes glinted behind the metal-frame glasses held together with white tape. “My momma taught me.”
“Where’d she learn it?”
“From her daddy. He was a doctor up in Minnesota.”
“That where you used to live?”
When she shook her head, the glasses slipped down her nose. She pushed them back up with her thumb. “No, I been here my whole life. My momma came here before she had me.”
“How come?”
“Because my daddy was a Chippewa Indian.”
I set down the scissors. “Really?”
“Yessum.” She punctuated it with a little jerk of her chin. “It was a big scandal in her little town. A tempest in a teapot, she used to say.”
“Because she was white?”
“Because she was white and her daddy was rich and the family was lily pure Lutherans.”
“What’s Lutherans?”
“It’s a kind of Christian. Like Baptist or Catholic.”
I dumped a spoonful of dried rosemary—what Esperanza called romero—on a white muslin square, gathered up the corners. “Like the Church of God in Jesus Christ?”
Cassie cocked her head to one side. “I don’t know that particular bunch. That what your people are?”
The packet dropped from my hand, sending tiny needles everywhere. “Oh shit.”
“Never mind, child. Leave ’em on the floor. When we step on them, they make the place smell good.”
“So what happened with your momma?” I asked quickly.
She sighed. “Her and my daddy left North Prairie and moved down to Colorado. He was a cowboy. It was about all the work he could get. Momma started makin’ the remedies she’d watched her daddy make back home, sold ’em to folks. They came down here ’cause he heard he could make better money workin’ in the Bisti Oil Fields, over to Farmington. He did, too. Till a rig blew up and killed him.”
“Why didn’t your momma go home to Minnesota?”
“Lord, child, I don’t know. I was just a little thing. Probably her family wouldn’t have her back there with her half-breed daughter. She just kept sellin’ her remedies, teachin’ me how. Then there was some influenza goin’ around and we both caught it. I got better and she didn’t. I was just about your age when I lost my momma.”
I thought about telling her that I didn’t lose my momma. That she lost me. On purpose. But what the hell.
I picked up the scissors and started cutting again. “You ever been married?”
She looked startled for a minute, then said, “Had a man once. Railroad roustabout. Not even worth tellin’.”
“Martin.” She didn’t look at me when she said it.
Two days turned into three. Suddenly a week was gone, and I was still there. Every night I made plans to leave the next day, promised myself I would. But every morning Cassie asked if I’d mind doing one more thing before I left—hang up some washing, deliver a medicine, water the garden. Then she’d say that I really should eat something. And then after lunch—or dinner, as she called it—the sun would beat down, till the heat shimmered off the ground in waves and she’d say that I should wait until the cool of the next morning.
Finally one night after supper, we were sitting at her table, stripping dried sage leaves off their stems, and she looked over at me. “Since you got no kin in Albuquerque, you might as well stay here awhile.”
I said very businesslike, “You know I can’t pay you anything.”
“You could help me with the garden and deliver the medicines. If you help out, that’s payment. Besides…” She reached into the cardboard box under the table for more muslin. “I kinda like your company, child.”
six
Cassie Robert was like nobody else I’d ever encountered. She was always making her teas and cures. She had a lot of weird little poems and sayings that she muttered continually to herself. When I asked her about them, she’d say, “Oh, they’re just prayers.” But they weren’t like any prayers I ever heard at Carson.
Weird as she was, I sort of liked her. I saw something of her in myself. Here was someone who was truly alone, like me. Had been for a long time. And she’d not only survived, but she looked to have things under control. She didn’t have lots of friends hanging around, but people respected her medicine. She didn’t seem to need any more than that.
Before I came to her, I didn’t know that anybody still lived the way she did. Her old, three-room wooden house squatted at the end of a dusty road a couple hundred yards off the main blacktop. She said it wasn’t quite three miles from Florales, but when you walked it in the midday sun, it seemed more like thirty.
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