The Witch's Tongue (7 page)

Feeling desperately lonely for Charlie Moon’s company, Jim Wolfe stared at the closed door. After the sound of the Expedition had faded in the distance, he felt the need for conversation. “I’m a good friend of Charlie’s.”
So don’t do nothing to hurt me
.

“I’m glad to hear it.” Daisy snorted. “That big jug-head needs all the friends he can get.”

Wolfe managed a sickly smile.

She glared at him. “What’s so funny?”

“Oh, nothing.” The smile slipped away. “Nothing at all, ma’am.”

He had the lean, hungry look of a West Texan. “Where’re you from?”

“Cherokee County, Oklahoma.” He said this with a faraway look. “It’s real nice.”

“I was in Tulsa one time back in 1935. Ate some bad pork, got food poisoning.” Daisy Perika disappeared into her small bathroom, returned with an ancient bottle of Mercurochrome. “I don’t work for nothing. But if you’re short on greenbacks, I might accept something in trade.” She glanced at his wrist. “Like maybe that watch.”

He pushed his cuff over the expensive timepiece. “What will I owe you in cash money?”

“Fifty dollars.”

He squirmed under her avaricious gaze. “I don’t think I’ve got that much on me.”

The old woman’s mouth twisted into a wicked grin. “How much
have
you got?”

Wolfe checked his wallet. “Twenty-six dollars.”

“That’ll do for a down payment.” She shook the small brown container, unscrewed the cap.

He stared suspiciously at the bottle. “What’s that?”

“A special potion. I make it from horny-toad livers, green grasshopper vomit, and salted hummingbird tongues.”

“That sounds pretty…uh…potent.”

“I learned the recipe from a blind Hopi sign painter who drives a school bus down by Shungopavi. Now hold still if you don’t want your eyeball painted too.”

Wolfe clamped his eyes shut, gritted his teeth.

The shaman poked the glass applicator at the split lip, leaving a scarlet streak of Mercurochrome.

“Ouch!”

“Don’t be such a sissy.” She muttered a few words in the Ute tongue, spat on her fingers, rubbed them across the patient’s forehead three times. “Get up,” she commanded.

The wary man stood.

“Now don’t move a whisker.” The old woman picked up a broom, made a swing, slapping the linoleum near his boots.

What was that all about?
But the alarmed patient dared not ask.

“I swatted your shadow,” she said. “That scares away any bad spirits that might be pestering you.”

“Oh—thanks.”

“Now sit down again.” Having completed her surprise assault on his shadow, Daisy Perika stood with her eyes closed, teetering back and forth on her heels.

Wolfe stared at the performance.
I hope she don’t fall down
.

Presently, the shaman opened her eyes, observed her patient’s lip. “That’ll be better by morning. Now I’ll tend to your other cuts.”

Worried that the notorious woman might be about to do some more spitting, Wolfe thought he might steer her off on another course by changing the subject. “Ma’am, I was just wondering. Do you still mix up them…” He could not make himself say it.

The shaman capped the medicine bottle, scowled at the impertinent fellow. “Do I still mix up them
what
?”

He wilted under her searing gaze. “Oh, nothing.”

Having bullied her patient into submission, she dropped the Mercurochrome bottle into an apron pocket. She went to a cabinet over the sink, removed a black shoe box, placed it on the table. Under her patient’s watchful gaze, she removed the lid, rummaged around in the assortment of jars and bottles half-filled with viscous liquids, bits of dried roots and seeds and leaves, a lumpy tobacco sack that looked like it was filled with pebbles. “I was hoping there might be something here good for healing cuts, but I don’t see what I was looking for.” She removed a plastic sandwich bag that contained a gritty, yellowish gray stuff. Daisy turned it in her wrinkled hands, muttered something in the Ute dialect, placed it ever so carefully on the table beside the shoe box—as if it contained a few grams of well-aged TNT. To add to the effect, she covered it with a paper napkin. Pretending not to notice Wolfe’s interest in the small ritual, Daisy found a squat blue jar in the shoe box, opened it, and applied a soothing white salve to cuts on his face and neck.

Now that’s more like it
. “What’s that?”

This time she was truthful: “My own special bee-weed ointment.”

“Oh.”

But that’s not what you really wanted to know
. Daisy waited for curiosity to get the better of the white man.

Wolfe knew with every fiber in his body that he should not ask. “Uh…what’s in that plastic bag?”

“What plastic bag?”

Like a small boy standing at the end of a diving board thirty feet above the water, he hesitated. “The one under the napkin.”

“Oh,
that
plastic bag.” The old woman’s expression was unreadable. “You sure you want to know?”

He nodded himself straight into the abyss.

She stared at the man as if appraising whether he was worthy to share the dark secret. “If I tell you what it is—you have to promise me you won’t never tell a living soul.”
Especially Charlie Moon
.

The policeman’s voice was raspy with apprehension. “Yes ma’am. I mean, no ma’am. I mean—I wouldn’t never breathe a word to nobody.”

Daisy continued to stare at her patient. The interlude stretched into the longest moment of his life. Finally, she removed the napkin and said, “It’s
corpse powder
.”

Wolfe’s back flattened against the chair. He could not pull his gaze from the transparent sandwich bag. “You don’t actually mean…”

She nodded. “Sure I do. It won’t work if it ain’t got some parts from a dead person in it.”

Oh my God
. “Like—a sliver of fingernail?”

She dismissed this optimistic guess with a grim expression, a slow shake of her head.

Fearing that the old crone was about to reveal the grisly ingredients, he hurried to divert her from this course. “So what do you do with the—uh—preparation?”

“It’s only used for one ailment—ghost sickness.”

It had not occurred to Jim Wolfe that ghosts ever got sick, and he barely stopped short of saying so.

Taking note of the perplexed expression on the white man’s face, the shaman explained, “Sometimes, spirits of dead people come back to torment the living. That’s what Indians call ghost sickness.”

The light was slowly dawning. He nodded at the plastic bag.
I bet they have to swallow some of it….
“So you treat the haunted person with that concoction?”

“That ain’t no concoction, that’s a medicine. A
powerful
medicine.”

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to—”

She fixed him with the sort of gaze a gray fox uses to mesmerize a cornered chicken. “If someone was to come to me, needing protection from a ghost, I’d sell ’em some of that medicine. They’d take it to where the dead person’s mortal remains was, and sprinkle the corpse powder over the body.”

He tugged at his shirt collar. “And that’d work, would it?”

“It has never failed.” She got another gob of bee-plant ointment on her finger. “If you want me to doctor those other cuts, take off your shirt.”

He did.

And the old woman was stunned by what she saw.

Suspended on a leather cord around his neck was a marvelous lump of turquoise. The crescent-shaped stone was the deep blue of the western sky on a cool October morning. Moreover, it was wonderfully marbled with silver veins—suggesting a multitude of glistening streams. So very beautiful. And so familiar. The shaman knew that this was more than a bauble—this was a very powerful object.
But where have I seen it before?
As she pondered this question, Daisy applied the bee-weed balm to a laceration on his arm.

Noting the old woman’s interest, Jim Wolfe tapped his finger on the turquoise pendant. “Couple of years ago, I bought this in a pawn shop down at Farmington. Cost me three hundred bucks. It’s a good-luck charm, but only if you to wear it next to your skin.”

She took another look at the lump of blue stone. And the old woman who could not recall what she had for supper yesterday, suddenly remembered a day more than seventy-seven years ago. It seemed unbelievable, but there could be no doubt. This was the very pendant that had belonged to Hasteen K’os Largo, the famous Navajo medicine man who had done a sing for Daisy’s father, when Daddy returned from France after that terrible War to End Wars. Its appearance here and now was nothing short of a miracle—and it was far too sacred and powerful an object to hang around the neck of this know-nothing
matukach
. Thus it was that the corrosive sin of covetousness took firm hold of Daisy Perika’s heart.

Jim Wolfe watched her face, wondered what was going on behind the mask.
I think she likes it
. He removed the pendant, offered it for her inspection.

She backed away, raising her hand in a protective gesture. “No—I’d never touch that thing.”

He blinked at the eccentric woman. “What’s wrong?”

The shaman shook her head. “I shouldn’t say.” But of course, she did: “That’s a bad piece of stone.
Very
bad.”

“Oh, I don’t think so.” Jim Wolfe dangled the stone in her face. “This is where all of my good luck comes from.”

She fairly hissed at him. “It’ll make you sick.”

He frowned at the turquoise lump.
What’s she talking about?

All that was required was a seed of doubt. “For a while, you won’t notice nothing much.” The man had bloodshot eyes. “Then you’ll have trouble sleeping.” She had seen a pouch of tobacco in his shirt pocket. “And you’ll get a cough.”

“I feel fine,” he said hoarsely.

There were hints of fingernail marks on his dry, flaky skin. “And sooner or later, there’ll be the itching.”

He valiantly fought the urge to scratch.

Daisy looked immensely sorry for her unhappy patient. “And then you’ll start to worrying all the time.”

The worried patient nodded.

“I hate to tell you, but when it’s almost too late—there’ll be heart palpitations.”

The thumping pump under his sternum missed a beat.

“And finally—” She interrupted herself with a sigh. “No, I’d better not talk about
that
.”

He leaned forward. “What?”

“Trust me. It’s better that you don’t know.”

His complexion now resembled chalky eggshell. “You saying this little piece of rock can do all that?”

“All that and lots more.” She shrugged. “Of course, I could be wrong.” Her confident expression was testimony that this had never happened. “But if it was me, I wouldn’t keep that thing next to
my
skin.”

Absently, the victim scratched at his chest.

“I wouldn’t even want it in the same house where I slept,” she added. “Not unless it was…” She let the suggestive words hang in the air.

“It cost me a lot of money.” Wolfe laid the cursed thing on Daisy’s kitchen table, gave her a hopeful look. “Isn’t there some way it could be fixed?”

The shaman stared longingly at the lump of turquoise. “It all depends.”

“On what? Soon as I get my next check, I’d be glad to pay you whatever—”

She silenced him with a wag of her finger and a saintly expression. “I don’t charge money for taking dark spells off people—or their things.”

His eyes were wide with hope. “Look, anything you could do—I’d sure appreciate it.”

“I might be willing to give it a try,” the sly old woman said. “But it could be dangerous.”

“Dangerous?” Wolfe’s mouth went dry. “What could happen?”

“Maybe nothing at all.” Daisy pointed at the subject of their discussion. “But if it’s been witched real good—it might sizzle like a sausage in a skillet. Or go
boom!
”

His forehead furrowed into a puzzled frown.

She explained, “It might
explode
.”

The wretched man’s mouth fell open. He drew a raspy breath.

“Do you have a clean handkerchief?” She had seen it in his hip pocket.

Wolfe produced the folded piece of linen.

Daisy gave him an order: “Take that turquoise off the string.” She went to a small table under a window, removed a cracked saucer from beneath a potted geranium. She pointed with a jut of her chin. “Put it on the saucer.”

He hesitated. “Wouldn’t it be better if you—”

“I’m not laying a finger on that thing.” She appealed to reason: “You’ve had it against your skin all this time. One more touch won’t matter all that much.” She watched as he fumbled to disconnect the leather cord.

“You can throw the rawhide string on the floor. I’ll sweep it up later.”

Wolfe did as he was told, and laid the blue stone on the saucer.

“Now put the handkerchief over it.”

He did.

The shaman closed her eyes. Passed her hands over the shrouded stone. Mumbled a few words in the choppy Ute dialect. Cracked one eye to check on the white man. His fists were clenched, his eyes wide open.

Daisy looked at the ceiling.

His gaze followed hers.

She shouted, “Hah!”

Wolfe jumped halfway out of his chair. “What?”

“You can take a look at the thing now. If it’s still in one piece, you should be able to wear it without any problem.”

He removed the handkerchief. In the center of the white saucer, where the lump of turquoise had been, was a pinch of dark powder.

The shaman groaned. “I was afraid of that.”

The white man’s voice quavered: “What happened?”

“That stone was witched, all right—when I took the spell away, it turned to poison stump dirt.”

This is absolutely astonishing
. He reached out a fingertip to touch the residue of his three-hundred-dollar investment.

“Don’t!” Daisy snatched the saucer out of his reach. “It’d rot the end of your finger off.”

He opened his mouth to speak, was interrupted.

“Don’t thank me,” she said in a kindly tone. “You’re a friend of my nephew, so it was only right that I help you.” She added, with a wag of her finger, “It would be better if this bad business wasn’t talked about.”
Especially to Charlie Moon
. “And you can give me that twenty-six dollars now.”