Alibi Creek (13 page)

25

SUNDAY OCTOBER 7, 2007

N
OT THAT NIGHT DIDN
'
T HAVE
certain advantages or bestow certain delights, but morning offered possibilities. A morning was like a newborn baby—full of potential. Some insignificant detail might align loose thoughts that hadn't quite jelled into a plan, bring certain energies into play, tickle some urge that had been lying dormant, like the day a little Cheerio in the breakfast bowl triggered the desire to buy Jo a pair of hoop earrings and he'd taken off for the Albuquerque Flea Market where row after row of folding tables offered hot bargains at cheap prices. He'd struck up a conversation with a long-hair selling genuine merchandise and ended up at a party in a second story apartment where a maniac came at him with a knife and he'd dropped to the floor, crawled under the coffee table, scrambled to his feet, shot out the glass doors to the patio, jumped the railing on one hand, dropped like a circus act onto a kid's trampoline, hit the air a few times, and bounced off without a scratch.

From the chicken house Sir Galahad sounded off, claiming his territory before sunup. Walker considered drifting back into dreamland, but nature's alarm clock wouldn't quit. He threw off the covers, rose up on one elbow and crowed along. “Sit up. Stand up. Roundup.”

He met Scott and Dee at the barn loading the horses into the stock trailer, ready to drive the rutted roads across
the range to Turkey Mesa. Dee latched the bolt and they climbed into the pickup.

“Let me tell you about these two gals I met in Show Low…”

“Jesus.” Scott slammed the door, put her in reverse, then drive. “Later, okay?”

So he quit talking, slumped down in the seat and leaned against the door, watched the stars burn out one by one. Jo hadn't looked so good in the morning. No sir. Still, he'd rolled her over, spooned her, and buried his nose in her hair, cupped her breasts and asked if she'd like to postpone breakfast. She made a noise between a sigh and a groan and wiggled her butt against him. Thankful for curtains blocking direct sunlight, he'd tried to recreate the magic. Didn't work. “Abracadabra” didn't bring the bunny out of the hat. His palms went clammy, so did his feet. The head of his penis dropped and his half-hard hard-on lost its hard.

“Right back where we started,” Jo said.

“I got a lot on my mind.”

“Sometimes I think your mind is like a vegetable strainer, full of holes.”

“Well, that's good. Nothin' gets stale.”

“Nothing sticks.”

She sat up and threw her legs over the edge of the mattress.

Although he couldn't see her face, her bowed head and drooped shoulders signaled tears brimming. He stepped into his jeans and took both her hands and circled them around his waist. She rested her head against his pelvis. She wouldn't hold on too long. He let her say good-bye.

As they crested Turkey Mesa, milky blue light seeped into the sky. The sun spilled its rays over far-off mountains, striking tumbleweed branches with gold. Round chamisa
bushes stood alone and apart—companions, not lovers—looking ready to roll across dirt that appeared light as dust. But Walker's boot treaded on sand and clay, hard as the rocks imbedded in it. A windmill groaned beside the metal stock tank. Jackrabbits had been busy the last couple of months, producing babies with long, translucent ears darting, stopping, hopping between anthills and gopher mounds. They unloaded the horses and waited for Eugene to arrive with the second trailer.

Scott scoured the ground and knelt to inspect a handful of earth, snapped tumbleweed and Apache plume branches, and compared their growth patterns. Dee blinked with heavy lids and fiddled with the horses' reins and readjusted their saddles. Walker followed his shadow off a ways and nudged stones with his boot heel, kicked a few, did a little dance, took a deep breath. Morning!

The clank and rumble sounded long before Eugene's pickup bumped to a stop, Manuel and Rudy filling out the cab. They led the horses out of the trailer, mounted, and looked to Eugene to set the day in motion. No one questioned Eugene's authority. When he stepped into the stirrup, Walker and the boys did the same.

They paired off and fanned out, Walker on the gray with Dee on the buckskin, riding south toward distant ponderosas that looked like a manicured hedge trimming the horizon, jackets zipped, breath misting the air, the horses high-stepping in the brisk morning. Butch, Dee's red heeler, dashed ahead, detoured down shallow arroyos and returned with his nose to the ground, tail straight, tracking a scent, chasing another.

He'd been home eight days and already the light had changed, the sun's distance coloring land and sky in cooler tones. Crazed elk had begun bugling until mid-morning.
Animal patterns had shifted; bears seeking havens in which to hibernate, birds heading south, squirrels hoarding acorns, rodents wintering in, everyone putting on a warm coat. Bruja Mountain, her craggy, pockmarked face more visible out here, warned of ominous, unpredictable events—flash floods, wind storms, blizzards, hail in July, forest fires. He snubbed the witch, flipping his fingers off his chin. This glorious day would not fall under her spell. As a matter of fact, old woman, life had taken a turn for the better. Tomorrow, he'd be rich. Bruja's enemy, Lady Luck, was on his side.

“One hundred bottles of beer on the wall, one hundred bottles of beer…”

“Oh, no you don't.” Dee gave Sonny a light jab with his heels and took off.

“…if one of those bottles should happen to fall, ninety-nine bottles of beer on the wall. Ninety-nine bottles of beer on the wall…”

At eighty-two bottles, Dee returned and directed him to a grassy area just this side of the forest. The tall pines were sparse and evenly spaced, decades of dropped pine needles creating dense groundcover at the base of their trunks. In front of the trees, where the grass ended, eight cows stared at them, as if they'd held those exact poses all season. Walker split off to one side, Dee to the other. The cows got nervous and started to shift their weight and lift their feet.

“Well, hello to you, too, good lookin'. Now, take it easy,” Walker said. “Nobody's going to hurt your little one. We're just fixing to move you toward the tank.”

He veered off after a calf.

“Come on, little fella'. Your mama will be missing you. Time's a-wastin'.” The exact moment a calf changed from a lively, frolicking midget into a heavy, lumbering giant was a
mystery. Seemed to happen mighty quick. “Come on now. We ain't got all day. You know the routine.”

Cows weren't stupid. They babysat each other's calves, recognized their owner's truck, and ambled over to say good afternoon. They bleated and bawled if upset. Each one had a personality, buried, but there, this big red one obstinate as hell.

“Hi ya! Get a move on, gal. Eighty-one bottles of beer on the wall, eighty-one bottles of beer…”

Damn cows moved slower than jail time. The mamas' heads bobbed up and down, up and down, little ones dallying along. Low mooing. The sound of plodding hooves. Dee's horse sneezing. Tails flicking. Not a cloud.

A dozen young ravens cruised overhead, wings pumping air, powerful and steady as a heartbeat, flapping over the trees. As their caws grew weaker, their message grew stronger: “Join us! Join us!” And Walker raised his hat to salute them and yelled, “Tomorrow!” The birds got smaller, the swoosh of their wings faded to a hush, black specks dwindled to no specks and dissolved into the blue.

The men brought the cattle to the tank, Manuel and Rudy arriving last, having gathered the largest group. Eugene took a head count.

Walker squirmed in the saddle. He said, “Look, man, let's take a shortcut along the highway instead of traveling the usual route through the hills. Save about two hours.”

“I don't think so,” Eugene said.

Walker kept on. “We'll get to lunch quicker, reserve our energy for the afternoon's work. One mile along the road will save three miles up one mesa and down another, through two canyons and up the valley. Hell, we don't have to stick to the same routine year after year, do we, huh? Do we?”

Eugene glared at him. Walker stared back. The others sat in the saddle smoking, tucking plugs of chew behind their lips.

Eugene said, “You and Dee do what you want with a quarter of the herd. The rest of us will go the regular way.”

There were sixty pairs of mothers and calves in all. Walker winked at Dee.

“Think you can handle fifteen pair of sleep-walkin' cows?”

Dee chuckled, sure. With Butch running drag in the rear they separated their share of cows from the herd and with hats lowered against the sun, headed across the mesa toward Thatcher Canyon.

“Thought I missed this work, but my ass is kinda' sore,” Walker said, sipping from his flask.

“You're out of shape is all.”

“That's why I picked Howard here.” He bent forward and stroked the gray's neck. “Old Howard was born with horse sense, ain't that right, Howard? Between you and Butch, we'll deliver this whole gang to the Walker Ranch in record time. If the hammock ain't full of holes, I'll lay my sorry ass in it and light up a smoke while we wait for the others to show up for lunch. I guarantee before the first bite's swallowed Eugene will commence with the afternoon schedule. He's your step-dad and he's been good to you, but he's what's known as a benevolent dictator.”

“I don't mind. Most often he's within reason. Now you, you don't like taking orders.”

“Don't like giving them, either.”

By late morning they'd crossed the mesa and stopped to rest above the rim rock overlooking the highway. Walker pinpointed Lee Ann's house, its shape suggesting a tiny white rectangle snipped out of the landscape rather than
an object situated on it. They rode south until they found an elk trail and made their way single-file down the rocky slope, unlocked the forest road gate, and turned the cows onto Highway 34 north of the Alibi Creek Store, a mile from the Walker Ranch.

About six cars an hour used this road, less on weekends. The speed limit was fifty-five, but folks drove slower. No hurry, no worries, no deadlines. Walker felt Howard anxious to get home and told him, “Be patient, old boy.” They approached the top of the last hill, the cattle tromping through tall, dry grama grass, thistle, and cota along the shoulder, Walker between the cattle and fence, Dee riding Sonny on the edge of the road, his hat's shadow just touching the asphalt. Butch nipped ankles and darted out on the highway, keeping his charges in line. The day had warmed and a gentle south breeze pushed against their backs. The cows maintained a steady pace, as if they too anticipated the journey's end.

A car topped the hill, a silver sedan, speeding straight at them as if the wheels were locked in a track. The highway in front of the vehicle sloped downhill, clear of traffic for two miles, the cattle and riders clearly visible. The car came on, first in silence, then wheels humming, silver paint flashing, sunlight reflecting off the grill, zooming down the hill at eighty miles an hour. Walker yelled to Dee, “Maniac!” and Dee gave Sonny a sharp tug away from the pavement. The horse jerked his head high, stopped mid-step, ears back. Walker yelled, “The car! The car!” Dee tugged again. Sonny reared and twisted, came down on his front legs, lowered his head and kicked his hind legs in the air. Dee lost control of the reins, grabbed for the saddle horn too late, sailed into the air and landed among the cattle. Brakes screeched. In the passenger seat, a woman spread her fingers in front of
her face as the vehicle swerved into Sonny's forelimb. Glass smashed, the windshield crazing into an opaque maze of blinding cracks, and the left headlight jammed up under the hood. The man wrestled with the wheel, but the car spun a circle and dove nose first into the ditch, stinking rubber streaking the road.

The cows had scattered. Butch dashed here and there after them. Dee sat up wincing, clutching his upper arm, his hat ten feet off in the weeds. Sonny lay on the road, his nostrils expanding and contracting, snorting short gusts of wind.

Walker jerked his leg over Howard's back, slid down his side and rushed to Sonny, knelt and ran his fingers over the humerus. The skin hadn't broken, but he felt the fracture. End-of-life fracture. An eight-inch gash had slit Sonny's golden chest. Blood pooled on the asphalt, red on black. Walker laid his hand on Sonny's neck. A rock—or was it his heart?—sank to the bottom of his stomach.

“I know you want to get up,” he said. “But, don't. Rest easy.”

The man and woman sat behind the shattered windshield. The passenger door was crushed. The man helped the woman crawl over the seat and climb out his side. They spewed apologies and worries over the injured horse. Walker paid them no mind. He mounted Howard and slapped his rump, said, “Git on! Make it quick!” The couple asked Dee what they could do. They had no idea horses and cows on the road presented a danger. They were from Cleveland.

26

P
LACEMATS WERE ARRANGED ON THE
dining room table, silverware laid out, napkins folded. Lee Ann re-counted chairs and took glasses from the buffet. Despite attempts to decorate, the house lacked frilly touches. Men lived here and she catered to their interests and needs. A narrow print of a southwestern landscape with a too-bright sunset ran the length of the buffet. Hunting magazines, work gloves, and equipment manuals formed sloppy piles between vases of dried, dusty flowers. A canning jar ring Dee had tossed when he was twelve was looped on a pair of elk antlers hanging over the doorway to the kitchen.

She laid her palm on the carrot cake and mixed softened butter and cream cheese, adding two cups of confectioner's sugar and a splash of vanilla. As a girl she'd balanced on a stool in an oversized apron sprinkling chocolate chips and pecans into a batch of cookie dough in this same turquoise Bauer bowl. Chocolate chips had been her favorite, but Walker had once thrown up from gorging himself and couldn't stomach the sight of them. Since then, Mother had limited her repertoire to oatmeal crinkles, brownies, and lemon bars.

She licked her finger and spread the icing, raising her head to activity outside. Between the binoculars and geranium above the sink, Walker galloped up the road past the house. Lee Ann put down the spatula, wiped her hands, and
rushed outside. Before she got fifty yards, the tick-tick-tick of the big Kubota tractor sounded from behind the barn, Walker driving at full speed.

She waved both arms from the middle of the road. Leaving the engine running, Walker dashed into the gunroom. She chased after him, but before reaching the house, he was back, stuffing Eugene's .45 ACP revolver into his belt.

“There's been an accident,” he said, jumping back in the seat, shifting gears.

“Wait. What?” she said.

“Out on 34. You'll want to get Dee to the hospital. He's broken his arm or dislocated his shoulder. Take the Blazer. I'll lead Howard back.”

“I'll be right there,” she said. Dear Jesus, let him be okay.

Dee held his right elbow to his waist. Sonny raised his head and stretched his neck and lowered it again. She crouched beside Dee, her eyes darting from the horse to her son, her body as immobile as theirs. Toby Utley, in a green Forest Service truck, and Emilia Holguin in her white Malibu, had pulled over. Toby took hold of Howard's reins and led him down the road, talking low. Emilia reached for the sobbing woman's arm and guided her and the man away from the horse and faced them toward Solitaire Peak, as though the mountain would offer consolation. The tractor ticked. Walker bent over and pointed the gun between Sonny's left ear and inner canthus and pulled the trigger.

The shot stilled the leaves, silenced the birds. Lee Ann lost touch with where she was, where the house was, that Dee was injured, that Sonny had died. When she came back, Toby was tying Howard to the fence. Cows wandered down the road, the calves roaming from side to side. Worn out,
Butch nipped at the ones that drifted too far. Emilia asked Toby if she should drive to the store and call the sheriff.

Walker yelled, “No!”

Lee Ann picked at a loose piece of skin on her ring finger with her thumbnail. One thing at a time.

She asked Dee, “Where's Eugene?”

“Coming down Salida Canyon with the rest,” he said.

“If you can get up, we can make it to Silver City by 3:30.” The clinic in Brand wouldn't be open today and even if it was, she didn't trust the staff. She reached under Dee's good arm and helped him to his feet.

Walker lifted Sonny in the tractor's bucket and steered to the side of the road, as solemn as she'd ever seen him, face and neck shiny with sweat, his shirt soaked. He took off his hat, wiped his brow with a forearm and said, “Toby, I'd sure appreciate it if you'd stick around and help me with these cows.”

Lee Ann sent Emilia on, asking her to call Lyle when she got home. She settled Dee into the Blazer and adjusted the seat. Forget the seat belt. She pulled onto the road. In the rear view mirror, Toby was untying Howard from the fence. The woman stood beside the SUV while the man got inside. The tractor inched along the highway, turned, and crossed the cattle guard to the ranch.

An hour later, the sun fell behind the pines on Saliz Pass as she maneuvered the sharp hairpin curves through short stretches of shadow and sunlight.

Dee shivered in spells that shook his legs and head.

“Are you cold?” she asked.

He didn't answer.

The ponderosas closed in, the road narrowed to a ribbon. The twinge that preceded a migraine traveled from her shoulder to behind her left eye. Sonny had been Dee's horse
since childhood—a strong, proud animal whose soft color belied an energetic temperament. His suffering was as real as if she'd been injured herself, the gash in his chest a slice in her own. His blood mixed with hers, swirled and surged, concocting a vile substance, and she pulled to the side of the road and vomited between two clumps of bear grass and slumped to the ground. She wiped the bitter taste off her tongue with the back of her hand. Get up. No time to cry.

The road descended into the Gila Wilderness and the land opened with prickly pear and yucca growing out of soft sand against purple mountains. She stopped in Los Olmos to fill up and use the restroom, where she wet her face and rinsed her mouth. Goodness, her apron was still on.

Dee's eyes stayed closed when she got behind the wheel.

“Walker is an asshole,” she said. God forgive me.