Hold of the Bone

by Baxter Clare Trautman

  Frank is so engrossed in alcoholic dreams she almost runs Buttons into Dune’s ass. Sal is stopped, staring into a thicket of boulders and thorny brush. Dune whinnies and dances in place. His nerves are contagious, and Buttons shies from the brake. Frank reins her sharply, but is sympathetic with her urge to bolt. Sal slides the shotgun from its scabbard just as a flock of vultures erupts from the thicket. They flap desperately, barely clearing Frank’s head. Buttons leaps sideways, but Frank keeps her seat. She yanks the reins to keep the horse from getting her head and Sal yells, “Not so tight. She’ll rear.”

  Sure enough, Buttons is gathering her haunches and Frank drops the reins. The birds wing heavily into the sky and the sun returns. Sal dismounts, motioning Frank to do likewise. Sal hands Frank her reins and creeps around the tangle of brush. Crouching, she presses through and disappears. Frank watches nervously until she reappears with the Winchester crooked in her elbow. She takes Dune’s reins and tells Frank, “Go look.”

  “At what?”

  “You’ll see.”

  “Jesus!” Frank shakes her head. “Always with the mysteries.”

  She gives Sal her reins, and nods at the shotgun. “Can I take that?”

  “You won’t need it,” but she hands it to Frank anyway.

  Approaching the concealing brush, Frank catches the familiar whiff of high blood. She parts branches and peeks in. The sound of flies leads her eye up to to a broad boulder. Splayed across it is a deer’s head and what’s left of a torn carcass. She backs out and gives Sal the shotgun. Without thinking she takes Buttons’ reins and lifts effortlessly into the saddle. Her feet instinctively find the stirrups.

  “What the hell did that?”

  “What do you think?”

  “I don’t know. Something strong enough to drag a deer around. Bear?”

  Sal shakes her head. “A bear would eat it out in the open.”

  Frank sighs. “I don’t know, Sal. Just tell me.”

  “Mountain lions like to drag their prey up and cache it.”

  “Aw, Jesus.” Frank scans the scrubby glade and cliff above. “Is it coming back?”

  “Maybe. Maybe not. There’s not much left.”

  The horses are still spooked and Buttons dances in place. Sal notes, “You’ve turned into a fair horseman.”

  “I should be with the amount of time you’ve made me spend in a saddle,” Frank grumbles, but the compliment pleases her. They ride out, around the cliff and up. The horses reach and climb in loud, labored grunts. When they gain the top of the bare ridge, Sal lets them rest. She hands Frank the canteen.

  “Finish it.”

  She does, greedily. Sal stashes the empty canteen and they plod on. The sun slants fiercely into their faces. Frank rolls her head around her shoulders and squeezes the muscle bunched in her neck. Sweat stains the horses and she is sure they are as miserable as she is.

  Their climb levels out onto another mean, stony ridge, but this one falls west to a series of dark canyons and beyond them is the purple smudge of sea. Frank waves at a persistent gnat. The horses step in alternating rhythm along the wide ridge. Occasionally one gives a snort and shakes its bridle as if rousing from the verge of sleep. Their saddles make the creaking sounds of old leather. Frank sways drowsily to Buttons’ step, her attention returning as they drop into sudden, cool shade on the lee side of the ridge.

  Sal stops and slides from her mount. “We get off and walk from here.”

  She leads Dune across a steep slope of broken rock and shale. Frank hesitates. Buttons wants to follow, but Frank grips the reins. Loosening her feet from the stirrups, she swings a leg and slides free of the saddle. Buttons nickers for Dune but stands still. Frank scratches under her belly band and starts across the scree. Buttons rear, hooves slip, and Frank scrambles to get on the uphill side of the beast. Ahead, a little higher on the slope, Dune skews sideways. He slides a couple feet before finding purchase.

  Frank swears as Buttons does the same. She gives the horse plenty of rein, figuring she knows more about traversing the gravelly slope than Frank does. The horse lunges a dozen feet upslope to more stable footing. She is breathing hard and Frank pats her shoulder. They pick their way slowly over the loose rock. She glances up, hoping to see where the slide levels out, but sees only the tall wall of ridge curving around to block them.

  “Oh, for Christ’s sake.”

  Sal’s about a hundred feet ahead. Frank is about to call out to her, but she and Dune disappear into the granite face of the mountain.

  “What the fuck?” Frank stops, but Buttons pulls her on. She staggers but breaks the fall with her scabbed hand. The cuts from last week open and weep red, but she doesn’t feel them. She stumbles closer to the wall. What had seemed a shadow in the rock slowly becomes a fissure wide enough to allow a horse through. Frank’s breath rushes into her lungs and her knees wobble; if she weren’t so eager to leave the slope, she’d have sunk to them, rocks and all. Cursing for following Sal on this last, harebrained adventure, probably the one that will kill her, Frank steps into the crack’s quick gloom. She starts to lead Buttons through but the horse balks.

  Frank coaxes, “Come on, girl.”

  Buttons takes one step, but backward. Her rear hooves begin to slide. Frank tugs on the reins but is dragged along the dusty fissure floor. Buttons scrabbles for traction in the loose rock and can’t find it. She makes a panicky scramble, only to lose the little footing she had. She slides slowly down the slope, and Frank slides with her. Her ankle knocks against a sharp rock, and Frank plants against it.

  “Yah!” she encourages, pulling with all she’s got on the reins. Buttons slips and gains her footing, but she is still sliding. Frank is pulled out of the skinny chasm out onto the treacherous slope. She yanks the reins, screaming, “Yah! Yah!” With a desperate lurch, eyes rolling white, Buttons heaves past Frank only to start slipping back again. Frank drops her ass into the loose rock and braces her feet into it. With every last ounce of strength, she pulls on the reins, praying they won’t snap. Buttons’ hooves ring and skid, but for a second she finds traction. It is enough for a final lunge past Frank, up and into the safety of the fissure. Frank crawls in behind her, using the cool, rough walls to stand. She squeezes between rock and horse, knowing Buttons could crush her and knowing she won’t.

  They stand head to head, catching their breath in sweet, long draughts. Frank reaches down and drags her nails through Buttons’ hot, greasy hair. Her big chest heaves. The horse trembles, and Frank does, too. “Shhh.” Frank smoothes a palm over the sweat-slick coat. “Good girl. Good girl.”

  Dune’s nicker drifts into the crack and Buttons lifts her head to answer. She bumps her nose into Frank’s shoulder. Frank nods and leads her through the cleft. Sal waits just outside in a copse of short, wind-bent pine.

  “Everything alright?”

  “Yeah.” Frank looks at her horse. “We’re good.”

  They continue on foot across a much more reasonable slope. The pines give way to a portrero, strewn on its far side with house-sized boulders. They cross the soft, round hill bending tall, yellow grass before them. The horses snatch mouthfuls, and Frank absently picks at ticks that brush off from the waist-high grass.

  As they approach the boulders Sal croons in a low voice, “Hola, Abuela. Es Saladino. Vengo con una amiga.”

  Frank is surprised Sal’s Spanish is so good, but more surprised that someone might actually live here. Sal and Dune stop as one. Coming up alongside them, Frank sees why.

  A woman beyond old waits between the towering boulders. Dry and hunched, she has less substance than a stalk of the yellowed grass. Eyes blued with age peer from folds of skin as dark and creased as the mountains. A wild spume of hair cascades around her shoulders. She wears a colorless cloth that might at some point have been a dress.

  The old woman asks something in a croaky, thin voice.

  Sal responds, “Si, Abuela. Si. Saladino y una amiga.”

  The old head bobs like a
dried apple in a pond, and a clawed hand waves Sal forward. Sal steps slowly to the grandmother, stopping just short of her. The crone cups her hands. Sal takes the hide-covered bones and guides them to her face. The ancient claws pat briefly, then fall away. The woman speaks in a language that sounds like Spanish but not quite. Sal motions Frank over.

  She leads Buttons next to Dune. The horse shies at the old woman, startling Frank, and she grips the reins tighter. Frank winces—not at the scent of old urine and flesh, but at the smells behind the woman, of rancid grease and rotting meat. The hag reaches up.

  “Go on,” Sal urges.

  Frank bends her head to the wizened hands. She stumbles and drops the reins. On her knees, she hears the voices of women raised in high keening. She tries to stand, but bony fingers grip her head. There is the smell of smoke and dust and sun in small green pools. The voice of the old woman joins in the wailing. Frank tries again to pull away. The abuela holds her easily. A cacophony of sticks clack in time to the voices. Columns of gray smoke twist to the sky. They reach Frank, high in her dizzying flight over mountain, dusk, and winking fire. She grabs the crone’s gristly wrists to keep from toppling.

  The abuela releases her and Frank sits back. The singing stops, the clacking sticks and twilit flight, too, but Frank is still dizzy. The old woman cackles. She chatters and finds Sal’s hand, following it to the reins and loaded horse. She feels the full bags and nods.

  Sal leads the horses past. Frank doesn’t watch where. It doesn’t matter. Nothing makes sense. Not the sticks or singing or familiar flight, or that an old woman lives, alone and blind, at the top of a remote mountain range. None of it makes sense—yet all of it makes sense. As if it’s always been, layer upon layer of time and stone, wind and plant, humans and animals.

  A hand on her arm tugs her to stand. Sal says, “Help me unpack.”

  Frank follows mutely to the hobbled horses. She takes the weight handed her, as silent and patient as another horse, and trails Sal just as obediently between the tall boulders. After two trips back and forth, they sit on random rocks within the stone nest. A pit in front of Frank holds the ashes of countless fires. The old woman rustles inside a hollow in the boulders. Frank can hear the shuffle of naked, calloused feet. A bitter smell assaults her and she looks for the source. On a rock opposite her, across the cold ashes, Sal smokes nonchalantly.

  The beldam steps nimbly from her cave. She waves a smoldering bundle of leaves and smoke grays the air. She circles the rocky enclosure, waving the bundle at each uneven corner and around the entrance. All the while she sings. Encircling Frank and Sal in smoke, she sings. Her voice is preternaturally young and strong. Her song rises in Frank’s chest, ancient and wordless. The old woman sings the breath from her, and just as Frank thinks she can bear the song no longer, the abuela stops. She sways in front of Frank. Eyes sightless yet seeing, she intones a low and liquid song. Frank yields to the incantation as a sleepy child to the murmur of a parent. Her eyes close.

  A lightness falls upon her hair, her face. She opens her eyes to find the abuela sprinkling ash upon her. Frank wonders dimly if Sal understands the chanted words. The old woman reaches. Frank allows her head to be cradled. A calloused thumb grinds between her brows. The abuela shifts her sinewy hand to Frank’s shoulder, then the other, before pressing her palm to Frank’s chest. It is warm where she touches. Quite clearly, Frank hears Marguerite James say, “Trust here.”

  She opens her eyes, sure she will find the mambo in the circle of boulders, but there is only the wizened, chanting grandma. The abuela removes her hand. She turns to Sal in a waft of salt and smoke and sage. Her song becomes soft and mournful. Frank’s eyes drift shut again. She listens, dreaming. In her blood and bone, she understands the story of the song.

  Chapter 37

  “Come on.”

  Sal is shaking her knee. A small fire lightens the rocky surround. The abuela is gone. Frank stumbles after Sal. A fresh quarter moon clears the portero. The dark shapes of the horses stand out against the paler grass. They chew and watch the women come toward them. Sal undoes their hobbles and the women lead them past the boulders. The beasts nicker, and Frank knows they have smelled water. She smells it too. The ground becomes soft and the horses step forward to a small pool glazed with night.

  Frank has been here before. She knows the source of the pool is a seep in the cliff that rises blackly to the stars. It is cloaked now in layers of night, but come morning the rock will sport the ferns and mosses that crave water. They cover the source of the spring to the edge of the deep green pool. She knows this without knowing how and accepts the knowledge calmly.

  Sal kneels in the darkness and splashes her face. The horses suck quietly beside her. When they have had their fill, the women walk across the portero to the sentinel stand of pines.

  “We’ll camp here.”

  They tie and unsaddle their mounts. Sal hands Frank a nose sack. She buckles it on by feel while Sal hobbles the horses. After they roll out their beds, Sal offers an apple and hunk of dry cheese. Frank refuses and slides into her bag. She listens to Sal eat, then rustle a cigarette. When a match splits the darkness, Sal’s features leap in peaks and hollows that seem carved from the mountain. The match dies and Frank settles deeper into her bag. Before she closes her eyes, she notices there seem to be twice as many stars as usual. She blinks, but the silvery lanterns remain steadfast. Wearing them like a magic cloak, Frank sleeps.

  She wakes to the quarter moon scything through the boughs. The light glimmers on her face. She closes her eyes and listens to the voice of the pines. Needle and bough whisper to the wind, of roots and dirt and water, and grasping, reaching, always yearning for the sky and of the sky but never free to roam it like the gypsy wind. She looks once more to the twinkling stars, then sleeps until all but the most stalwart have faded.

  She wakes as the dawn begins its kaleidoscope. Sal watches too. They rise when the blue stakes a permanent claim to the day. The horses whinny greetings, and Frank leads them to the spring. In daylight it is exactly as she knew it would be. She cups the water from its source in the rock. It is cold and soft and tastes faintly of earth and stars. She returns to Sal and they drink coffee while the horses munch grain. Sal shakes her empty cup clean and Frank swallows the dregs. They saddle up and walk to the cleft. Frank watches Dune and Sal negotiate the steep talus. When they gain the other side, Frank steps from her solid hold. She thinks she should be scared but is not. Hugging the cliff as closely as possible, she lets Buttons trail behind. The mare skitters a couple of times, but they cross the shifting rock and are soon pointed down the mountain.

  They ride east into the sun. Frank has questions but no desire to ask them, trusting the answers will appear when needed. They arrive at the cabin just as the sun bends to the mountains. Sure it is the last sunset she will see here, Frank volunteers to stay outside and start a fire while Sal makes dinner. Bone accompanies her to the woodpile, and after she lights the fire he sits beside her. She is petting him when Kook sidles near. Sweeping the ground with his tail, he stares inquiringly at Frank.

  She pats her lap and the little dog leaps in answer. He settles happily, and Frank gives him a few pets before returning her hand to Bone. Coyotes call from the hill behind them. Bone howls a reply and Kook jumps down to join him. Abandoning all self-consciousness, Frank howls too.

  Sal brings tamales and steaming bowls of chile. Frank retrieves the coffee pot and cups. They eat with the day’s last light spread before them and the fire glowing behind. When they are done, Sal rolls cigarettes. The dogs sleep contentedly by the chairs.

  “Who is she?”

  Sal twists to prop another log on the fire, then settles to the purple-black mountains.

  “No one knows. My father took me there when I was twelve. She was old even then. He brought food like we did. Like his father had.”

  Frank quickly does the math.

  “Some claim she’s the last Indian, that she led her people up there to
escape the missions. Some of the abuelas say she’s a Mexican woman who ran away from a gavacho husband that was going to kill her for cheating on him.”

  The cigarette flares as Sal draws on it.

  “How long has she been blind?”

  “Years. But I don’t know that I’d call her blind. She sees things you and I can’t.”

  “How often do you go up there?”

  “Fall and spring.”

  Frank blows smoke at the risen moon. “Why’d you take me there?”

  “The same reason I’ve taken you everywhere.”

  “So I’ll remember.”

  Sal nods beside her.

  The evening has inked imperceptibly to night. Paled by moon and starlight, the sky hangs jealously over the true, solid black of the mountains. An owl screeches from the barn. Another answers from the creek. Frank leans her head back. Night seeps into her bones, and when Sal rises to turn her chair to the fire Frank does the same. Sal stirs the coals with a log, then lays it down to burn.

  Frank doesn’t want to ask what she must, but it is time. She hunches closer to Sal so that she can better read the answers when they come. “There’s just one thing I don’t know.”

  Sal turns fire-lit eyes upon her. Frank holds them with her own, knowing the fire dances within hers, too.

  “The thing I don’t know,” she says slowly, “is if it was you, or if it was Cass, that killed your father.”

  Sal stiffens. She drags in a long breath and faces the leaping flames. “I knew the minute I saw you in the store that it was just a matter of time.” She hugs her knees and leans toward the heat. Her hair catches the fire and throws it back, darkly red. Frank flashes on the Beretta in her pack but doesn’t think she’ll need it. She watches and waits patiently. The fire snaps. Cicero whimpers in a dream.