by Donis Casey
“No, I’m just saying it’s strange, is all.”
Alafair was not in the mood for conjecture. All she could think of was Mrs. Carrizal, who was shortly to learn that her beloved eldest son was soon to die, murdered. That poor woman, that poor woman.
Matt Carrizal was such a nice young man, so compassionate and concerned with the plight of the less fortunate. Who on earth would want to do him in? They had told the marshal about finding Tony Arruda at the scene, but Alafair did not believe that he would have cut the throat of his friend, co-conspirator, and employer. And yet, after he had summoned the doctor to Matt’s aid, Tony Arruda had disappeared. “I can’t figure it out,” she said, more to herself than to Dillon.
“I know y’all have your doubts about the cook, but it looks pretty straightforward to me.” Dillon said, as though he had heard her thoughts. “Tony fears that Matt will live to tell a tale that he don’t want told. Maybe Carrizal found out something about the Arrudas’ spy ring and Tony decided to shut him up. No matter why, it looks bad for Tony. I’ll talk to the sheriff soon as we’re done here and have a judge issue me a warrant for Tony’s arrest.”
“You can’t think he killed Bernie as well,” Shaw said.
Dillon shrugged. “Mexicans are easy to fly off the handle. They’re always killing one another for some blame reason that makes no sense. Still, I doubt he murdered his own brother. Could be he figures Matt Carrizal did it and took his revenge. If that is so, I’d like to know what makes him think that Matt attacked Bernie. No matter the reason, once we bring Tony in he’s likely to be able to untangle this skein for us.”
Rage
The rest of the day was a blur. They finally returned home late in the morning to find Elizabeth pacing the floor with worry and Cindy in a state, bundled up in a quilt on one of the long couches in the parlor. Nettles had shown up at the Carrizal house an hour earlier to deliver the bad news, and Elizabeth had heard Elena’s scream across the distance that separated their back doors. She had hollered at Blanche to watch Chase and ran across to learn the terrible news for herself. There was nothing she could do but weep along with Matt’s parents and sisters.
“I offered to fetch Artie from school and keep him here a spell, but they said they’re in no hurry to grieve him until they have to,” she told Alafair.
Elizabeth and Alafair spent much of the afternoon cooking dishes to take to the soon-to-be-bereaved family. Cindy helped with the preparation, but when time came to carry the offerings to the Carrizals’, she had demurred. Elizabeth did not argue with her. It was better for the Carrizals not to have to deal with Cindy’s burdensome presence right now.
On the other hand, Blanche asked if she could come, and Alafair allowed it. Artie was her friend, and she had the right to offer her comfort and concern.
When they took the food over in the evening, they found the Carrizal house packed wall-to-wall with relatives and neighbors. Alafair had an eerie feeling of déjà vu when she approached Mr. Carrizal, sitting on the horsehair sofa in the parlor, next to his daughter Juana, receiving well-wishers, hollow-eyed but calm as he kept his death watch. Had it only been yesterday that she and Elizabeth had paid just such a condolence call on Bernie Arruda’s mother? She wondered briefly if the two families knew each other at all. Probably not. The well-to-do descendants of the Spanish conquistadors and the refugee Yaqui Indians inhabited different worlds.
She extended a hand. “I’m so sorry,” she said.
Mr. Carrizal’s dark eyes regarded Alafair quietly before he replied. “Thank you, hija. Esmeralda and Elena are at Mateo’s bedside. I know they would take comfort from your visit if you would like to look in for a moment. Juana, please take the ladies back.”
Juana led them up the stairs to an airy bedroom at the back of the house, where they found Mrs. Carrizal and Elena seated in chairs on either side of a single bed. Elena looked stricken, her eyes red from weeping, but Mrs. Carrizal’s eyes showed something that Alafair could not quite put her finger on.
The room was small, containing not much more than the narrow bed, the chairs, and a painted chifferobe, but pleasant nonetheless. The window was open, and occasionally the white lace curtains belled when they caught a puff of the scented breeze. A man’s shaving cup and brush stood on top of the chest beside a framed picture of a sports team of some ilk. Alafair wondered if this had been Matt’s boyhood room, still kept for his convenience whenever he decided to spend the night at his parents’ house.
Matt was stretched out in the bed with the covers pulled up tight under his chin. His face was blank and bloodless and so still that Alafair’s first thought was, we’re too late.
Mrs. Carrizal looked up at the women and smiled. She looked pale and tired. “He lives still,” she said, reading their thoughts. She gestured at Elena, who stood and offered her chair, but Elizabeth shook her head.
“Thank you, hon, but we won’t stay long. We brought food and we want to express our love and prayers, but we’ll not be intruding.”
“I cannot tell you how much your prayers mean to us, Elizabeth.”
“Is there any change?” Alafair asked.
Mrs. Carrizal shook her head tightly. “No, no better. But no worse. He walks in the valley of the shadow, and we must wait.” She reached up and took Alafair’s hand. “How is Blanche?”
Alfair blinked, not expecting the question but not surprised that Mrs. Carrizal could think of something besides her own worry and grief. Sometimes the reality of a tragic situation took a while to fully sink in. “Blanche is so near to well as to make no difference, ma’am. Thanks to you. God sent us to you. I don’t know how I’ll ever be able to thank you.”
Mrs. Carrizal managed a wan smile. “She is such a lovely girl. I am so glad I could help her.”
Alafair started to withdraw her hand, but Mrs. Carrizal drew her down close to whisper in her ear. “Tony Arruda never did this thing.”
Alafair caught her breath before she pressed her cheek to the older woman’s. “I don’t think so, either. Do you know who did?”
“Not yet. But Tony will contact us eventually. He may know who Matt was meeting.”
“Tony is in danger,” Alafair whispered. “If he’s smart he’s already on the run.”
“Matt told us you know about our enterprise.” Mrs. Carrizal’s voice was as low and soothing as one of the doves in her backyard cote.
Alafair murmured, “Yes, Elizabeth and I called it ‘the Yaqui railroad.”
“Our ‘Yaqui railroad’ runs both ways, dear one. We will save Tony Arruda and have justice for his brother and my son.” Mrs. Carrizal placed her hand on the back of Alafair’s neck and gave a squeeze. It was an affectionate move, but her hand was hot and alive with such rage that Alafair jerked as though she had been touched with an electric wire.
“If Elizabeth or I can do anything, let us know,” she murmured. Mrs. Carrizal released her and she straightened up.
Mrs. Carrizal turned her attention back to the still figure on the bed. “Thank you for coming.”
Speaking of Home
Alafair was surprised but glad that the activity and emotion of the day had not overtired Blanche or made her ill again. In fact, the girl had seemed energized by her determination to comfort her friend Artie. Perhaps Mrs. Carrizal had been right when she had told Alafair that folks can get into a habit of sickness.
Alafair had not realized how much she had missed Shaw’s comforting presence next to her until they went to bed that night. Early in the winter, when Blanche first became so sick, Alafair had either spent her nights in a chair next to her daughter’s bed when the illness was at its worst or curled up next to her when she was better. Since they had arrived in Tempe, as often as not Alafair had slept with Blanche and Shaw had taken the cot. No one had made any decisions about who was sleeping where. It just was as it was. But that night when his big frame sank the mattress next to her she nearly wept with gratitude that he was so near. The tickle of his mustache and the scratch o
f his unshaven cheek was as familiar as the touch of his hand on her body.
“What would I do in this strange place without you, honey?’ she murmured.
“I’d hate to think.” His voice held only a hint of irony.
“Blanche sounds a lot better.” The child’s even, unlabored breathing was like music to Alafair’s ears in the quiet night.
“She does, thank Jesus,” he murmured back.
“I want to go home, Shaw. I want to take my girl and go home. My sister has turned into someone I don’t know at all. A murderer is on the loose and death is hovering close. Too many bad things are going on here, and I miss my children.” Her voice caught. “I miss little Fronie. I miss my baby Grace.”
“I know, honey.” Shaw’s tone was soothing. “We’ve been away long enough. I’ll tell you what. Tomorrow I’ll talk to Doctor Moeur and see if he thinks Blanche is healed enough to go back to Oklahoma without getting sick again. If he says yes—and you can see for yourself how much better she is—then we’ll leave as soon as we can pack up and hope the rails are in better shape than they were when we came out.”
“Oh, God willing,” she breathed. “But what about the law? Will Dillon make us stay around until someone is arrested for these awful events?”
“I’d think he could take our depositions and let us go home. No one suspects we had any more to do with killing than just being in the neighborhood at the time.”
Alafair was not as confident as he that all would go well. “I hope you’re right.”
Ritual
No matter how tired she was from the momentous events of the day, sleep eluded Alafair that night. She would drift off, then awake suddenly in the middle of some disturbing dream she could not remember.
Eventually she gave it up as a bad job and sat up on the edge of the bed. A sliver of the waxing moon and a diamond river of stars were bright in the cloudless sky, and the bucolic stretch of Elizabeth’s back yard was clear enough through the long bank of windows. She sat with her feet dangling just off the floor for several minutes, staring into the night at the silent, peaceful forms of the trees and sharp, colorless outlines of outbuildings and fences.
Her mind was just beginning to settle when something caught her attention. A movement. Her forehead wrinkled, and she slipped out of bed and padded over to the window, where she absently pushed her long braid off her shoulder before leaning in toward the glass for a closer look.
Something white appeared in the distance, across the fence in the Carrizal’s yard. It passed in front of Mrs. Carrizal’s garden shed and disappeared from view behind a stand of citrus trees.
Alafair had not been able to see the moving object with any detail, but she knew without doubt that the White Lady was about in the night again. She took her shawl off the back of a chair and slipped her stocking feet into her shoes before stepping as quietly as possible out the door.
She did not go far into the yard, only enough to get a clear view of Mrs. Carrizal walking purposefully toward the goat pen. Her silver hair was loose about her shoulders, and she was clad in a light-colored dress covered by a white bib apron with several large, bulging pockets. She carried no light with her, so Alafair could not judge her expression, but she sensed that Mrs. Carrizal would not welcome an observer. Alafair looked back over her shoulder, seeking an escape route, but she had drawn too close to the Carrizal property to be able to get back into the house without being seen. Gently she stepped back behind a bush, out of Mrs. Carrizal’s line of sight.
Mrs. Carrizal disappeared behind the chicken house for so long that Alafair wondered if she had gone back into the house by some unseen route. The night was dry, still, and cold, and Alafair’s nose was getting numb. She shifted from one foot to another and made faces, trying to get the blood circulating. She was just about to give up the vigil when Mrs. Carrizal reappeared from behind the coop, carrying a large wooden box by a handle on its top in one hand and a small axe in the other. Chica and Nina, the two goats who had proven themselves more pets than working farm animals, were trotting at her heels.
Mrs. Carrizal stopped at the flattened stump of a tree next to the woodpile near the back fence, not six yards from where Alafair was standing behind the bush, and put the box on the ground. She drove the tip of the axe blade into the stump to hold it in place, then drew a couple of small objects out of her apron pockets—one small and square, one larger and rounded. It was too dark and too far for Alafair to determine by sight what the objects were. Mrs. Carrizal placed the round object onto the stump next to the axe and poured something powdery from the square item into it. She is pouring something from a little bag into a bowl. Alafair picked up the distinctive pungent aroma of thyme. The goats nosed the stump and the axe, but uncharacteristically left the bowl of powdered thyme alone.
Mrs. Carrizal bent down to open the box and withdrew a white dove, which she cupped in her two hands and brought close to her face. Alafair could hear her soft sing-song murmur as she spoke gently to the bird. When she finished whatever prayer or litany or words of comfort she intended, Mrs. Carrizal dislodged the axe, placed the dove on the stump, and whacked its head off in a businesslike manner.
Being as Alafair had beheaded many a bird in her time, it was not the act itself that caused her to gasp in shock, but the unexpectedness of it all. Mrs. Carrizal held the decapitated dove by the feet over the bowl and let its blood drip into the herbs for a minute or two before she swept the little severed head onto the ground with the edge of the axe and laid the body on the edge of the stump. She reached back into the box and withdrew a second dove.
Alafair stood watching the ritual in fascination and no little awe until six small headless bodies lay in a neat row on one end of the broad tree stump. Mrs. Carrizal calmly placed the dead doves back in the box before taking a candle out of her pocket and lighting it. After being so long in the dark, the flare of flame caused Alafair to blink. The candle glow illuminated eyes that were no more than dark hollows, but the shining track of tears shown on Mrs. Carrizal’s cheeks. She tilted the candle over the bowl and uttered a few soft words as a drop of wax fell.
A small trowel appeared from those voluminous apron pockets, and Mrs. Carrizal knelt on the ground to dig a shallow hole beside the stump. She dumped in the grisly contents of the bowl, covered it over with dirt, then stood. She turned around, looked straight at Alafair’s hiding place, then lifted the candle and blew it out.
By the time Alafair’s eyes had readjusted to the sudden dark, Mrs. Carrizal and her goat companions were gone.
No Sleep Tonight
By the time Alafair returned to the veranda room and crawled back into bed next to Shaw, her fingers and feet were numb with cold. She pressed herself up next to his back and gratefully soaked up his solid warmth, fearful that the touch of her icy limbs would wake him. She need not have worried. No frozen wife was enough to disturb his easy sleep.
She wondered briefly what time it was. She could see through the window that the crescent moon was low on the horizon. It had moved perhaps two hand-spans since she had gone outside—an hour or so. She reckoned it was nearly one o’clock by now. Still time for three or four hours of sleep, but she knew very well that there would be no sleep for her tonight.
What had she just seen? Was it the conjuring of a curse? She could not be afraid of Mrs. Carrizal, not after what she had done for Blanche. Still, the woman was about to lose a beloved son to murder. Alafair could not forget the feel of hot rage in Mrs. Carrizal’s hand when she touched her.
Alafair knew what she would be willing to do in the same circumstance. Even so, Mrs. Carrizal was nothing if not a gentle presence, so it was entirely likely she had been calling forth something benign; perhaps the uncovering of the assailant, or protection for her son on this side of the veil or the other.
Alafair had no intention of asking. And no matter how willing she usually was to share her fears and worries with Shaw, she knew she was not going to tell him, either. Men had a tenden
cy to disapprove of such things, even a man who had been raised by as fey a woman as Shaw’s mother. Alafair’s Baptist preacher father would have thundered his disapproval at such goings-on, but Alafair was more inclined to take her own mother’s attitude. It is only natural for us earthly creatures to work with the tools God gave us—the winds, the seasons, the movements of the stars and planets. Let the men have their ways, and we will have ours.
The Morning After
The dining hall bell at the Normal School rang every morning promptly at seven-thirty a.m. Its comforting toll served to mark the beginning of the work day for everyone within hearing distance, including the Kemps.
Elizabeth stood at her front door with Alafair at her shoulder and watched Webster walk purposefully across the yard toward the detached garage at the back corner of the house, clutching his briefcase in one hand, his breath making a light fog in the chilly air. Chase was dashing about in the yard and Blanche and Artie Carrizal were sitting in a huddle at one corner of the porch. Artie had appeared at Elizabeth’s door as soon as light tipped the horizon, asking for Blanche, and the two of them had had their heads together in the parlor or on the front porch ever since.
Alafair had no objection. A stricken household often had no attention to spare for a shocked and devastated child, and Blanche was willing and happy to offer what little comfort she could to her new friend. Besides, it was good for her heart and health to be concerned for another.
“I should have wondered before now why Web has been going to work alone these past mornings,” Elizabeth said. “I reckon I never pay enough attention when Web leaves the house to notice that Geoff hasn’t been coming over to go into town with him.”
“Do you expect we’ll be getting another visit from Mr. Dillon today?”
Elizabeth shot her an ironic glance. “Oh, I expect.” She turned away from the door. “After Bernie’s sombrero turning up under Cindy’s porch, followed close on by the attack on Matt, I wouldn’t be surprised if he was be out here with a warrant as soon as he can roust the judge out of bed.”