Stallion Gate (12 page)

Sunday morning. While Oppy was in Washington, Joe was assigned to the workshops on Two Mile Mesa. They were nail-bright sheetrock structures; inside was a general sense of panic over the one-month deadline of the Trinity test. In the casting building, the commercial candy kettles in which high explosives were melted had broken down, the stirring paddles clogged with a brown “fudge” of Baratol, a TNT derivative.

Cast 200-pound wedges of explosive were carted in red Radio Flyer wagons designed for kids. When axles collapsed, everyone jumped. Replacement wagons were in a stockroom called FUBAR, for Fucked Up Beyond All Repair. Besides a shortage of wagons, there was a shortage of Bar Top varnish. To prevent them from chipping, castings were always painted with Bar Top; there was nothing more fragile than explosive.

Rough castings of high explosive were trimmed with bronze saws to minimize sparks. Joe hosed a casting while a machinist delicately cut the riser tabs left from the mold. Both men noticed the spark at the same moment.
Joe hosed the casting furiously until he was sure only a single crystal of Baratol had sparked and didn’t propagate. The machinist was soaked through. “What I like about this job,” he told Joe, “is I can piss my pants and no one knows.”

Afternoon. A basalt canyon topped with cedars. Below, a stream, moss, violets and a single Apache willow. Joe watched Shapiro balance anxiously on a twelve-year-old mare named Dixie.

“That’s much better,” Joe said, and walked around the horse and rider. “The secret is, Dixie’s not going to fall down. She’s just going to follow the horse ahead of her. You never go first, you never go last. She’s happy carrying a sack. You are her sack. Be a sack for her.”

Shapiro frowned. “Oppenheimer, he gallops, he jumps his horse.”

“His horse’s name is Crisis. You want to ride a horse with a name like that? You get friendly with Dixie. Take her carrots, apples, sugar cubes every day.”

Shapiro sagged in the saddle a little more confidently. “Back in Brooklyn, my brother kept pigeons,” he said.

Joe got an image of Shapiro in a rooftop pigeon cote, feathers and blood on his hands.

“Nice. Well, you get friendly with Dixie like that.”

Overhead, the cedars were a gallery of cut-outs against the sky. Joe thought he saw something watching from above. Could have been a crow.

“Chief, you want to do me a real favor, you’ll help me fight. You see Ray Stingo fight the kid from Texas?”

“Yeah.”

“I’m fighting the kid.”

“He’ll kill you.”

“It’s southpaws.” There was agony in Shapiro’s voice, as if he were talking about an incurable disease. “The first thing I ever learned was to circle off the jab and counter with the right. That moves me square into a leftie’s cross. I don’t see it coming, I never see it coming.”

“Maybe you have a chance.”

“Augustino’s behind it. He’s betting on the kid. Those fucking Texans stick together.”

“Get down.”

“I really appreciate this, Chief.”

Shapiro dismounted. Both men removed their caps, web belts and .45’s and assumed boxing stances.

Joe put his right foot forward as if he were a left-hand boxer. “Your right hand is low. Better. Let me see you move.” He hung out a lazy, openhanded jab to see Shapiro’s reaction. “Don’t move that way. Duck and move to your left. Keep the right up. Again. Now hook with your left.” Shapiro bored in, hands pumping like a maddened milkmaid. Joe put out another slowmotion jab. “Duck, move and hook.” He caught Shapiro’s hook on the arm. The moss was springy, dappled by sun that broke through the willow.

“You think I have a chance, Chief?”

“Let’s see.”

Joe shot a right jab at more speed and slapped Shapiro’s chin. Reflexively, the MP moved to his right and into a slap from Joe’s left hand. He slipped a couple of
Shapiro’s jabs, then slapped Shapiro’s chin and cheek again. As soon as he saw anything coming his way, Shapiro locked into his old habit, moving counterclockwise into another slap. Joe blocked two hooks, ducked a jab and slapped Shapiro again. The MP’s right cheek turned from blue to stinging pink.

“Forget it.” Joe grabbed Shapiro’s wrists.

“Forget it?” Shapiro’s muscles bulged with frustration.

“You can’t win. Sorry.”

“Help me.”

“How many rounds is it?”

“Six.”

“Kid’s an amateur, basically. He’s probably never fought longer than three rounds. I hear he knocks everyone in two.”

“Swell.”

“That means if you get to the fourth round, this kid is punched out. You can count to four? Good. So don’t move left, don’t move right, don’t move back because you’re not fast enough. Just move in. You’ll get hit on the way in, but you can take it. Then you wrestle. Catch my arm, come on. Lean on it, yank it, that wears down the shoulders. Keep moving in.” Joe backed away, slipping to one side and then the other. “Three rounds is nine minutes. If you wrestle him for eight of those minutes, he’s only killing you for one. When you grab him, don’t butt. You’ve got scar tissue like me. You’ll cut before he does. Move in, move in.” Joe was disgusted with himself because he was enjoying the trickle of
sweat down his ribs, the concentration, the peripheral dance of boxing. Ducking a branch, slipping a jab. When Shapiro stood still, Joe waved him in again. “You dumb palooka, move.”

Shapiro looked over Joe’s shoulder. He turned and saw someone standing outside the shade of the willow. He had to squint because she was so dark against the sun.

“Klaus is climbing a mountain,” she said. “It was boring watching him climb a mountain, so I left.”

He had to take her from the edges in. Back-lit trim of short-sleeved white shirt and pants. Hair cut in a page boy, ink-black and straight. Gray eyes making a study of him. No lipstick, but full lips with the expression of a person looking into a bear pit.

“The Chief was teaching me how to ride,” Shapiro said.

“An old Indian method?” Anna Weiss asked Joe.

Sun, white-hot, edged her cheek.

“At least with the Indian method, nobody gets bored,” he said.

Wrens darted headfirst into the canyon rim to their nests.

Far below and behind, Shapiro rode alone in the opposite direction, letting his horse follow the stream back to the Hill.

“I told you,” Joe said, “some of the land here is still used by the local people. Which mountain was he climbing?”

“Not so much a mountain as the next valley.”

“Canyon?”

“I forgot. You have no valleys here, only canyons. And gulches.”

At the top, through the fringe of cedars, the Jemez spread out ahead. High peaks surrounded by pines, the range smoother to the south and building like an ocean swell to the north. Anna turned, exhilarated by the climb, taking in mountain meadows colored an extravagant purple by mariposa lilies. She turned the way children turned, Joe thought, as if the earth turned around her.

“You’d think you could see the world from here,” she said. “What’s so good is that you can’t.”

“You’re going back to Chicago?”

“Soon.” As Joe stepped in front of her she asked, “Shouldn’t the lady be first?”

“Rattlesnakes.” He nodded to the rocks along the path.

She fell in behind him. “So, Sergeant, these mountains are your home.”

“According to the Army.”

“You don’t like the Army.”

“I don’t know anyone sane who likes the Army.”

“That’s not a direct answer. Captain Augustino seems to like the Army.”

“Stay away from Captain Augustino.”

“You told him about Harvey?”

The captain’s interested in you, not Harvey, he thought.

“Nothing to tell,” he said.

“Tell me about Mrs. Augustino,” she said.

“Mrs. Augustino left the Hill months ago.”

“In a hurry, people say.”

They came to a stop. She seemed to be studying him as if he were stuck against the sky by a pin.

“What else do people say?” Joe asked.

“They say you have a weakness for officers’ wives.”

“For women.”

“You think I’m rude, Sergeant?”

“No, I think you’re interested.”

Wind lifted a wing of her collar and rubbed it against her hair.

“Perhaps we’d better look for Dr. Fuchs,” she said.

The path descended into a spring-fed canyon where water had cut through tiers of pumice, pink sandstone, limestone. Box elders grew at the canyon floor, ponderosas up the sides. Much of the Jemez pines had been cut for timber. Not this canyon. These ponderosas were deep orange, diamond-plated, over a hundred years old. In the soft stone walls over the treetops, jays and dippers made their nests. In the highest and least accessible reaches of the walls were the pockmarks of handholds and the shadows of rock shelves.

“This is where Fuchs went climbing?”

Anna nodded. “It was very dull.”

Joe picked a crow feather off a twig and it left a gray smudge on his fingers. “Could be fun by now.”

At the base of the wall behind a screen of pines was a rough ladder with more feathers. Joe told Anna to
stay on the ground. He scaled the ladder and was climbing the niches in the stone when he heard her following.

“Why should I miss the fun?” she asked.

The pines as they swayed brushed his back. Sixty feet up, he climbed above the treetops and reached a rock ledge about ten feet wide and fifteen feet deep carved out of soft tufa. The low roof and floor were blackened with soot mixed with feathers. Two men sat, facing each other. Klaus Fuchs, his shirt torn and dirty, and Roberto, the blind man from Taos.

“Gott sei Dank, Du bist hier,”
Fuchs said when he saw Anna.

“It’s me, Joe Peña,” Joe told Roberto.

“I heard you coming,” Roberto said.

Roberto’s hair was long and unbraided. He had his blanket over his shoulders, and it wasn’t until Joe helped Anna up that he noticed that Roberto was holding a Marlin double-gauge shotgun with its muzzle nestled firmly in Fuchs’ crotch.

“We’re not disturbing anything, are we?” Joe asked.

“Not you, no,” Roberto assured him.

“I am a guest of the American government, on American government land, with American government protection, is this not so?” Fuchs demanded.

Fuchs’ neck was covered with finger smudges, so there’d been a scuffle. His hair stood up with fright. Wooden idols wrapped in red feathers and painted leather lay in a corner of the shelf. Cut in the rock under a layer of soot were ghost figures, snakes like hoops, lightning drawn as sticks.

“There are parts of this area, this canyon especially, that are set aside for local people so they can carry on their religion,” Joe said.

“You mean Indians,” Fuchs said.

“Those are the local people,” Joe said.

“You mean—” Fuchs began.

“Enough,” Roberto said and jabbed the barrel, not savagely, just enough to make Fuchs lean forward tenderly. “He was up here when we got here, Joe.”

Joe could imagine the scene. Fuchs discovered by probably a dozen priests, most likely including Ben Reyes. It was unusual for someone from Taos to take part in a Santiago ceremony, but not unknown. A lot of men were in the service. Priests went back and forth between pueblos just to keep the old rituals rolling. The shelf must have stored altars, which Ben and the others had carried away. Ben would be back. Certainly Roberto and Fuchs weren’t going anywhere. Trying to move, Joe had to stoop under the low ceiling. If Roberto fired the shotgun anywhere it was going to get messy. Smart of a blind man to choose a small space and a weapon with two barrels.

“Why don’t we let the lady go back down?” Joe suggested.

“And run for help?” Roberto said.

“May I sit?” Anna asked.

“Yes.” Roberto was pleased. He switched the shotgun from one arm to the other and held out his blanket.

“Thank you.” She spread the blanket on the rock and sat.

“You, too, Joe,” Roberto said.

“Thanks.” Joe took the hint.

“Like a picnic.” Roberto tilted his face in Anna’s direction. Under the blanket he wore a white shirt and work pants, the shirt buttoned at the neck and cuffs, barely showing gray body paint inside. His closed eyes were slightly sunken; otherwise he made a more handsome man than Joe had at first supposed. Joe’s .45 was in a snap holster. He wondered how good Roberto’s hearing was.

“Warm.” Joe noticed that the safety on the shotgun was off.

“Going to be a dry summer,” Roberto agreed.

“I still have a share in a bean field down in the pueblo. How do you think beans will do?”

“Bad year for rain,” Roberto said. “Good year for lightning.”

“He’s blind,” Fuchs whispered.

“What’s that got to do with the weather?” Joe asked. Through his glasses Fuchs’ pale eyes were fixed on the gun on Joe’s belt. Joe reached for cigarettes. “Smoke? I owe you one.”

Roberto nodded.

“He’s a madman,” Fuchs hissed.

“He’s a spy,” Roberto told Joe.

Joe tapped the last cigarette from his pack.

“Sorry, only three,” he told Fuchs. He lit all three at once and handed two to Anna, who passed one to Roberto’s lips.

Roberto inhaled and smiled. “I can tell she’s pretty. There’s a feeling around pretty women.”

“He doesn’t sound crazy,” Anna told Fuchs.

“It’s not funny.” Fuchs looked at the muzzle between his legs.

“You’re German too?” Roberto asked Anna. “I like your accent.”

“I’d rather lose it,” she said.

“Study Billie Holiday. Get her records,” Joe told her. He told Fuchs, “A little Fats Waller would do you a world of good. You were spying?”

“He tried,” Roberto said.

“I wasn’t spying, I just happened to be here.”

“Did you apologize?” Joe asked.

Fuchs snorted.

Most of the priests were old men; they would have to spirit away altars, prayer sticks, stones, fetishes—a lot to carry off a cliff. Joe put in some silence for respect before saying, “Well, this is a very ignorant person, Roberto. What do you want to do with him?”

“Shoot him.”

“Dear God,” Fuchs muttered.

“That’s an idea,” Joe granted.

“Dear God,” Fuchs muttered again.

“Are you religious?” Roberto asked him.

“His father is a minister,” Anna answered.