Ill Wind (3 page)

Patsy, who’d been rereading the note over Anna’s shoulder, slid onto the bench beside her. Such proximity made Anna uncomfortable. Before her husband, Zachary, had been killed, when she’d lived in the confines of New York City, Anna’d fought for personal space on elevators and in subway cars. Since joining the Park Service and moving to less constricting climes, the need had increased, rather than the opposite. An acre per person and bullhorns for communication struck her as about right for socializing.

She turned as if to give Patsy her full attention and put some space between them.

“I told Frieda it was a suicide note because it seemed easiest—you know, made sense for me to be calling.” Patsy picked up her coffee but just stared into it without drinking. “It was that ear thing he said—like van Gogh. Besides the chocolates there was an envelope. One of those little square ones that come with florists’ arrangements.”

Anna waited, sipping coffee made gray and tepid by skim milk. Patsy didn’t go on with her story. “And the envelope?” Anna prompted.

“I burned it.”

Since silences didn’t draw Patsy out the way they did most people—too many years of being a good girl and not speaking till spoken to, Anna guessed—she asked her what was in the envelope.

“A little piece of brown material, soft, like expensive crepe. Tom isn’t circumcised. I think it was foreskin.”

Anna winced. It seemed a little “edgy” to her as well.

For maybe a minute neither spoke. Whether Patsy sensed Anna’s discomfort with her proximity or, once her information was told, no longer needed the closeness, she moved to the sink to dump her untouched coffee. When she returned she resumed her place on the bench opposite.

“What do you want me to do?” Anna asked.

Patsy burst into tears.

While Patsy Silva cried, Anna thought.

“I don’t suppose Tom has any outstanding wants or warrants against him?” she asked hopefully.

Patsy shook her head. “I’m sorry.”

Anna didn’t know if she was apologizing because she still cried or because her ex-husband wasn’t a known felon. “I’ll run him anyway. You never know.” After a moment she said: “Maybe a court restraining order; keep the guy away from you. I’ll look into it; see if you have to prove harassment, what it will take to keep him out of Mesa Verde.”

“It’s too late. He’s here,” Patsy wailed, sounding like the little girl who saw poltergeists. “He’s got a job with the contractor putting in the new pipeline.”

The waterline. It was getting so Anna was tempted to blast the thing herself. Perhaps Mesa Verde’s staff had been on the outs for decades—living in isolation where dead people were the main natural resource had to have an impact—but since she’d entered on duty the pipeline had been the lightning rod.

“Are you dating anybody?” Anna asked abruptly.

Patsy looked pained. “Not exactly,” she said, not meeting Anna’s eye.

She was dating somebody. A tidy old-fashioned triangle in the making. “Does Tom know?”

“No! I don’t even know for sure.” Patsy smiled a shy smile. Inwardly Anna groaned.

“Talk to him,” Patsy pleaded.

“Sure,” Anna promised.

“Talk to his boss. Mr. Ted something. He seems reasonable.”

“Ted Greeley. I can do that.”

“But don’t get him fired. With Missy and Mindy both in high school next year we’re counting on the child support.”

Anna repressed a sigh. Domestic stuff. “Gotta go,” she said, glancing at the clock over the sink. “Quittin’ time.”

Patsy laughed for the first time in a while. “Hills blew his overtime money on an all-terrain vehicle. I’m kind of glad he did—he’s so cute at budget meetings when he begs.”

“Take care,” Anna said, setting her Smokey Bear hat squarely on her head and taking a last look around quarters she hoped soon would be hers.

“I’ll keep anything else... personal... Tom sends and give it to you,” Patsy promised as she held open the door.

“I can’t wait.”

Summer was off and running.

NO REST FOR THE WEARY—OR WAS IT THE WICKED? Anna couldn’t remember. There was definitely no rest for those fated to share dormitory quarters.

Her briefcase, used for carrying citation notices, maps, and brochures, banged against the screen door, jarring her elbow. Simultaneously her ears and nose were assaulted. The first by the Grateful Dead and the second by a kitchen that would daunt even the most hardened health inspector.

Early on in this allegedly temporary housing arrangement Anna realized she had two choices: bite the bullet or play Mom. As she had neither the taste nor the inclination for the latter, she had spent the four and a half weeks since the seasonals entered on duty knee-deep in unwashed dishes and empty beer cans. The mess wasn’t as hard to take as the noise. After some sparks had flown she’d been given a room of her own but the walls of the flimsy, prefab structure were so thin, at times she swore they served better to conduct than deflect sound waves.

Clad in a homemade ankle-length sarong of double knit, Jamie Burke was draped across one sofa. Jennifer Short, the other woman with whom she shared the two-bedroom house, was sprawled in a pajama-party attitude. They were intelligent, funny, interesting women. Left ignorant of their domestic habits, Anna would undoubtedly have found them delightful.

As she tried to slip unnoticed into her bedroom the imperious call of “Stop there!” arrested her progress.

The order came from Jamie, one of the army of seasonal interpreters hired on each summer to lead tours of the cliff dwellings and, for a short time—or so Hills repeatedly promised—Anna’s housemate at Far View.

Dutifully, Anna waited, briefcase in hand.

In her late twenties, Jamie had the look of someone who has been athletic all her life. Muscular hips and legs gave her a stocky silhouette that was accentuated by the flat-brimmed hat and cloddy shoes of the NPS uniform she wore on duty.

In contrast to her juggernaut physique, her face was a perfect oval, the skin flawless, setting off pale blue eyes and a sensuous mouth. Jamie’s hair, fine and smooth and blue-black, fell to her knees in a single braid thickened by red yarn woven through and bound around, Apache style, at the tail.

Jamie boasted that she inherited the black tresses from a half-blood Cherokee mother but Anna strongly suspected that she dyed it. In a women’s dorm there were few secrets. All of Jamie’s body hair was not of the same raven hue.

“What’s up?” Anna asked, trying to keep the weariness from her voice.

“Stacy had to walk an old lady out of Cliff this morning. Where were you?”

Anna ignored the accusatory tone. “What was the problem?”

“Some kind of pulmonary thing. Wasn’t breathing right. There was that old guy last week.”

“Yup.” Again Anna waited.

“They’re pissed. I’m not surprised, either.”

Now Anna was lost. The previous week’s carry-out had gone well. The man’s wife had even sent a glowing thank-you letter. “The man’s family is pissed?”

“No-o.” Jamie drew out the syllable slightly, as if Anna was too obtuse for words. “The Old Ones. The Anasazi. They should close this park to everybody but native peoples. It’s not Frontierland, it’s a sacred place. We shouldn’t be here.”

Jamie Burke leaped from one drama to the next. In the few short weeks Anna had known her she’d been through exposure to AIDS, been engaged to a nameless state senator in Florida, and been involved in an affair with a married man so discreet it had to be imaginary. The pipeline was a bandwagon made for jumping on.

“Ah. Chindi.” Anna used the Navajo word for spirit or—she was never quite sure—evil spirit. “Could be. Listen, I’ve got to slip into something less deadly.” She grimaced at her gun and escaped down the hall.

Once divested of the dead weight of her gun and the airtight shoes required by NPS class “A” uniform standards, Anna felt less hostile. By the time she’d poured herself a generous dollop of Mirassou Pinot Blanc, she was civilized enough to join the party in the front room.

The television was on with the volume turned down and Jamie was verbally abusing Vanna White as she turned the letters on “Wheel of Fortune.” It was a nightly ritual that seldom failed to amuse.

“Arms like toothpicks! Look at that,” Jamie was exclaiming. “I don’t think she’s pretty. Do you think she’s pretty? Who in God’s name thinks she’s pretty? Little Miss Toothpick Arms. Little Miss White Bread.”

Anna curled her feet under her on the nubby fabric of an armchair. The boxy room was furnished in Early Dentist’s Office but it was serviceable. Anna, barefoot, in pink sweat-pants and an oversized man’s shirt, surrounded by girls with Budweisers—or women that looked like girls from a vantage point of forty—had a sense of being an uncomfortable traveler in time. Even the cheap southwestern print of Jamie’s sarong put her in mind of the India-print bedspreads she’d found so many uses for in her college days. In a gush of self-pity she felt her world as dead as that of the Anasazi. She missed Christina and Alison, the woman and her daughter with whom she’d shared a house in Houghton, Michigan, when she worked on Isle Royale.

Chris was a rock: gentle and soft and stronger than Anna ever hoped to be. Alison, at six, was like a kitten with brains—irresistible and a little scary.

Anna’d left on the pretense Mesa Verde was a promotion as well as a return to her beloved southwest. In reality she’d cleared out because she knew Chris was in love but wouldn’t move in with her sweetheart if it meant abandoning Anna. So Anna’d abandoned her.

I’m a fucking saint, she thought sourly, watching Vanna turn E’s on “Wheel of Fortune.”

The job wasn’t too bad. Though at times Anna felt more like a nurse than a ranger.

Mesa Verde was an old and staid national park. As early as 1906 it was clear that the ancient cliff dwellings, though already largely looted of artifacts, were a part of America’s heritage that must be preserved.

Visitors to Mesa Verde went out of their way to get there and had the money to do so. Consequently, the clientele tended to be older, with gold cards and expensive RVs. Retired folks with bad hearts and tired lungs from San Diego, Florida, and the south coast of Texas found themselves up at altitude for the first time in thirty years. If drug dogs were called in Anna suspected they’d sniff out more nitroglycerin tablets than anything else.

There’d been two fatalities—both elderly visitors with cardiopulmonary problems—and eleven ambulance runs, five of them out of Cliff Palace. And it was only early June.

Swallowing the last of her wine, Anna leaned back and let the alcohol uncoil her mental springs.

Jennifer wandered back to the TV with a fresh beer.

Short was a round-faced woman with good hair, bad skin, and too much makeup. Fresh out of Tennessee State’s one-semester course, she was the new law enforcement seasonal in her first national park job. Jennifer was a Memphis belle in what Anna had thought was a bygone tradition: all magnolia blossoms, little-ol’-me’s-led-a-sheltered-life, and eeka-mouse . Proven tactics, guaranteed to turn the boys to putty.

Anna hadn’t yet decided whether she was more irritated or intrigued with the femme fatale routine. On the one hand it would be interesting to watch. On the other, given the job, it could get a person killed.

“Jamie, I saw that poor little thing you were talking about,” Jennifer was saying. Or, to be more accurate: “Ah saw thet pore lil’ thang yew were tawkin’ abaht.”

“She had the cutest face, but her little body! I just couldn’t live like that. High school is going to be pure hell. It’d be a mercy to drown people like that at birth. I don’t want to sound mean, I mean for their own sakes. I wouldn’t want to live like that. I just wouldn’t.”

A natural silence fell and they all stared at Vanna. Jennifer had been talking about Stacy and Rose Meyers’ daughter, Bella. A sadness threatened Anna and she was glad when loud knocking interrupted her thoughts. She made no move to uncoil herself. Jennifer sprang up, “I’ll get it” out of her mouth almost before the knocking ceased. The first week on the mesa she had announced one of her prime motives for choosing law enforcement: a way to meet straight men.

A moment later two seasonal firefighters from the helitack crew followed Jennifer back in. Because of the wealth of ruins and artifacts on the mesa all wildfires were put out in their infancy by a crew of wildland firefighters flown in by helicopter. Dozers and other heavy equipment customarily used to cut fireline would be so destructive to the cultural aspects of the park that fire was never allowed to spread if it could be helped. When nothing was burning, helitack performed the high- and low-angle rescues often needed to evacuate sick and injured people from the less accessible ruins.

Jimmy Russell and Paul Summers had the youth and build of most seasonal firefighters and the living room fairly crackled with sexual energy. Russell’s heavily muscled arms and back were shown off in a tight T-shirt emblazoned with a flying insect wearing a yellow shirt of fire-resistant Nomex. A budding good ol’ boy from Kentucky, Jimmy chewed his words like tobacco. Summers was a striking blond with a born-again surfer haircut and finely chiseled features. Somehow managing to look sophisticated in worn Levi’s and a baggy, wrinkled, oxford shirt, he carried the libations: a six-pack of Coors Light dangled from each hand.

“Hiya, Anna.” Paul smiled at her and she was annoyed to find herself flattered.

Popping a Coors, Russell settled cross-legged on the carpet. Jamie pulled herself around on the couch and began kneading the muscles of his neck and shoulders.

Let the mating rituals begin, Anna thought sourly. Unfolding her legs, she levered herself up: time to go visit Piedmont.

On the way through the kitchen she grabbed up what was left of the Mirassou Blanc.

 

 

FRIEDA Dierkz had a house in what was called the Utility Loop. It was near the maintenance yard, about a mile from the Headquarters/Museum Loop. The houses were small, white one- and two-bedroom homes with the charm and inconveniences of 1940s construction. These homes were for lower-level permanents, the GS-4s and -5s and -7s. Higher-ups claimed the beautiful historic homes in the Headquarters Loop. The fire dorm, where helitack was housed, was also on the loop, as were a couple of aging trailers rented out to seasonal interpreters each summer.