Читать книгу Spirit Walk - Jay Treiber - Страница 8

One

A hoarse wind had piled up from the south and by afternoon blew strong enough to make the wires on that particular stretch of fence hum. Kevin noted their faint music as he looked down at the kid, maybe half an hour dead, his jacket sleeves tangled in the barbs as if he had tried to climb his way out of oncoming death. The boy’s hazel eyes had clouded, and with his slack body hanging from the strands, he appeared for all the world like a scarecrow on permanent vigil over his charge of jack wood and cedar trees. His hat had fallen to the wayside, and a lock of his sand colored hair lifted with the late fall breeze. The neck wound had emptied down the front of his shirt, the blood gone tacky and smelling, Kevin thought, the same way an old penny tastes on the tongue.

A tapping noise lifted Kevin away from the grip of that long-ago moment. He turned his head to find Julie, the student aid, rapping lightly on the doorframe to his office. “Dr. McNally?” she said, smiling. “Are you okay?”

He pushed his fingers back through his hair and swiveled his chair around to face her.

“The lady in the Indian dress came by again.” Julie shifted a leg, fidgeted with the pen she held. “Your stalker?”

Olivia Hallot had phoned the office earlier and said she’d be on campus sometime that day. He’d successfully ducked her all afternoon, but now that he was back from his last class, it looked like she would finally corner him.

Kevin shook his head, looked to the computer screen where he’d been pretending to vet emails. “She’s not a stalker, Julie. She’s an old friend.”

“I think she might be lost on campus somewhere. What should I tell her if she comes by again?”

Kevin struggled to call up a response. “You don’t have to worry about her, Julie. I’ll handle it.”

The girl backed out of the office a step. “Okay,” she said, lingering a moment before stepping away, her heel clicks fading down the hallway.

Alone now, Kevin closed his eyes and pressed his palms hard against his forehead. “Shit,” he said, shaking his head. “It’s not her fault.” Olivia had come unbidden, and like the bad memories, could not be ignored.

Those memories caught Kevin off guard frequently now, the triggers that prompted them multiplying by the day. The nightmares could not be helped, but the daytime memories brought a distinct kind of discomfort, as though he had lost the refuge of his waking hours when the old hurt could be pushed away with the sunlight.

Perhaps it was Olivia’s presence or the breeze that swayed the branches on the planted mesquites outside his window that had brought him back to a place in his mind he did not usually go. As if caught in some kernel of compressed time and space, he found himself in that long ago November morning on the Escrobarra Ridge. The dirt smell of grama and bunch grass rode on a soft wind and the grackles spoke from the tops of the oaks. The sky had begun to whiten in the east, and young Kevin wore the easiness of seventeen years like a light jacket.

The hunt that Friday morning had started with the customary excitement. He’d parked his truck at one of the usual spots, and with him as always was Armando Luna—they had hunted deer and javelina together these last five years. An hour before, Kevin had stopped in Douglas at a ramshackle duplex apartment. Luna had emerged half-dressed, rheumy-eyed with sleep and offering no excuses or apologies.

“Shit, Mondy,” Kevin said. “You told me you’d be ready.”

“I am ready,” Luna said. “Just give me a minute.”

Mondy was broad and thick at the belly and chest, built like a middle linebacker, and despite his 250 pounds walked light on his small feet. Kevin stood in the doorway as Mondy clambered in and out of rooms. A young woman’s voice came from the bedroom, and Kevin recognized it immediately as that of Jolene Sanders, who’d been two years ahead of him in school. Jolene had wavy nut-brown hair to her belt loops and blue eyes. She was stone-cold beautiful and Kevin stood livid and jealous that she now lay in Armando Luna’s bed. He could not for the life of him determine why. Kevin could hear their voices, a soft love-clucking behind the bedroom door, until Mondy stepped out with his rifle and gear and smiled at Kevin quick and smug as he passed him in the doorway.

They took Geronimo Trail east twenty miles to the Magoffin Ranch road, where they unlocked and passed through the gate, then bounced Kevin’s old three-quarter-ton truck to the head of Baker Canyon. They hooked south a mile on a track that quit at a windmill, water tank, and a scattering of salt licks at the base of the Escrobarra. Shot with runs of granite rim rock and dense stands of jack pine, juniper and oak, the ridge occupied a six-mile length of the twenty-five mile Peloncillo mountain range. It started on the Arizona side, doglegged two miles into New Mexico, then tapered into a gentle slope across the Mexican border at the point where the two states and Sonora intersected.

Mondy tried to convince Kevin to park at a different spot, another half-mile up canyon, but Kevin, as usual, ignored him. They stepped out into the chilly near-dawn and gathered their essentials from the truck bed—rifles, binoculars, canteens, a single daypack in which they carried emergency items, and a lunch of left-over roast beef and tortillas.

“We’re pretty close to the border,” Mondy pointed out. “Muy cercanos.”

“¿Qué importa?” Kevin asked. How does it matter?

Mondy shrugged, moved to the other side of the truck bed. “You bring extra ammo?”

Kevin winced at the question but offered no response. He lifted his right foot to the back bumper and tightened his bootlace, allowing the question to hang between them, then looked up at the ridgeline where they would soon break trail. “That’s not a question, Mondy,” he said. “You’re just making noise.”

“I just wanted to know how many shells you had, that’s all.”

Kevin looked at him. “Eleven.”

“I’ve seen you miss that many times.”

“I’ve seen you miss that many times.”

“Everybody misses.”

Mondy’s concern over extra ammo, in Kevin’s estimation, was due to his own lack of talent in marksmanship. In the last five seasons, Kevin had watched him miss a number of game animals, the bullet flying several feet over the intended target’s back. Mondy was twenty-three, six years Kevin’s senior, but age gave the big Indian no advantage.

“I brought extra,” Mondy said, finally. “But I guess you didn’t.”

“Kiss my ass,” Kevin came back.

“Andale pues,” Mondy said, forcing a chuckle. “I’m just shitting you, man. Eleven shells. A good shot like you only needs one. You’re a good kid. I think you got potential.”

For the next half hour they negotiated their usual route over the high saddle to the north, picking through a thatch of cat claw then up over the shale slide and finally to the rim rock at the top, where they squeezed through a small gap, just wide enough for an average-sized man to pass. Mondy turned sideways, hitched up his gut, and inched through while Kevin, smiling on the other side, held his rifle and pack. When Mondy finally grunted his way out, he glared at Kevin’s grin.

“Are you saying something?”

Kevin shook his head, motioned toward the gap. “It’s plain to see the damn thing’s shrunk since last year.”

Mondy gave a quick nod. “Good kid. I knew you had potential.”

“You got potential, too,” Kevin said. “I mean, by Christmas you could weigh…I don’t know…”

Mondy squared another hard look at Kevin. “I got two words for you,” he said. “Jolene. Sanders.”

“Okay,” Kevin said. “It’s all in the interest of your health, anyway.”

“Well, quit being interested in my health.”

When they finally crested the bald saddle, the sun was just touching the top of the ridge five-hundred yards opposite them. Mondy was winded, but Kevin knew, despite the labored breathing, that the big Indian would light a cigarette. So proud of his O’odham heritage, Armando Luna often introduced himself as Armando White Moon—especially to women—and, despite Kevin’s derisive laughter, donned a beaded headband, Concho-spangled vest, and knee-high moccasins to drink at a bar, looking more Apache than Papago. Kevin always carped at him about his smoking, pointing out that Indians in movies weren’t fat and didn’t smoke cigarettes. Mondy fished one from his breast pocket and stropped at his Bic lighter until his muttered curses, it seemed, finally brought the thing to flame. He drew in the smoke and looked at Kevin.

“Smoke ‘em up,” he whispered. “You want one?”

Kevin shook his head. Though he sometimes smoked, the thought of it seemed distasteful when hunting. The wind, gentle on their faces for now, rode out of the ever-whitening east, and the scent of the smoke would not be picked up by any game in front of them. Mondy puffed on his cigarette, and they stood some moments taking in the old familiar canyon. Though Kevin had looked on it from this vantage point many times, the waxing dawn light seemed to wash it anew. Opposite them, several runs of limestone rim rock descended like ribs halfway into the canyon, where in its lower side grew generous sprinklings of Emory oak, mountain mahogany, and mesquite. The south end seemed bare but for the brown tobosa grass, yet a pair of binoculars would betray a forest of ocotillo cactus, its crazy tendril-like limbs as impenetrable as chain mail.

For the two hunters on the saddle, the canyon pulsed with life. Each picked a clump of nearby broom grass and sat. They raised their binoculars to their eyes simultaneously, as if on cue. Others they’d hunted with had noticed this idiosyncrasy in the pair—Kevin’s father found it especially hilarious—but the two seemed impassive to any ridicule and seemed altogether unaware of the quirk.

“Venado,” Mondy said almost immediately.

“¿Donde?”

“Abajo,” Mondy said. “Low in the canyon, debajo del árbol grande—el verde.”

“Shit, Mondy, there’s a thousand green trees in that canyon.”

Though their tones were flush with the excitement that comes with sighting game, still they whispered.

“Where?” Kevin asked again.

“Big tree, man, right down toward the bottom.”

Kevin was reminded of the futility in following Mondy’s spoken directions. He glanced over and tracked the line of Mondy’s binoculars where it ended slightly north, up canyon, at a clutch of juniper trees.

He raised his glasses and almost at once picked the all-but-transparent forms of the two animals out of the grain of the slope. The camouflage, the uncanny cryptic coloration, of the Couse Whitetail always stunned him. Even in the open, these tiny, mouse-colored deer—a big buck weighing little more than a hundred pounds—were difficult to see with even the best optics.

The two deer, feeding, picked their way into a mesquite where now only the hind end of the smaller one could be seen.

“Doe and a fawn?” Kevin asked.

“I don’t know. The bigger one—I looked for horns. ¿No hay, pues?”

“Doe and a fawn, I think.”

“The one was big,” Mondy said. “Big chest, like a buck. But I think you’re right.”

“Yeah,” Kevin allowed. “Like a buck, but bald.”

They sat the canyon an hour longer and glassed up seven more deer, three doe-fawn pairs and a small fork-horned buck high in the canyon under a mature oak, on whose acorns the young deer fed. The buck was too small for either of them to consider.

“I think I see three points on one side,” Mondy offered hopefully.

“He’s a piss-ant two point,” Kevin assured. “A dink. You’re welcome to go after him, if you want.”

Mondy sighed and lowered his glasses, touched his chin philosophically. “No,” he said, “I think I’ll let him grow up.”

“Good,” Kevin said. “Fat as you are, little bastard look like a jack-rabbit when you dragged him down the mountain. Be shameful and tacky, downright untoward.”

Mondy sighed again. “Have I given you an ass-kicking yet today? Because you’re in definite need.” He paused, and Kevin knew what was coming.

Mondy reached for his rifle, shouldered it, and with some effort found the deer in his telescopic sight. “Untoward,” Mondy said, peering through his scope. “I bet you got that word from me.”

“I read it somewhere.”

“Most fancy words,” Mondy said, “you get from me. You use my words all the time and don’t even know it.”

Kevin didn’t deny this. Armando Luna had an admirable vocabulary, though along with his penchant for big words he bore an embarrassing tendency toward malapropisms. During a heated conversation on evolution, of all things, with Kevin’s mother, Mondy had used the word relative when he meant relevant half a dozen times. And though Teresa McNally was perfectly aware of the misuse, she was gracious enough to not so much as smirk. At the hands of her son, however, Mondy suffered greatly for such language errors. Luna never failed to use conscrew when he meant construe, which Kevin first corrected then derided, and he could speak no more than two or three sentences with his nouns and verbs in perfect agreement.

“If I could hit him from here,” Mondy suggested, his rifle still trained on the small buck across the canyon, “it would make it worth it—bragging rights, man.”

“Hell, Mondy, that’s over five-hundred yards.”

“Yeah, you’re right,” Mondy said, lowering the rifle and stroking the butt almost affectionately. “A little too far for my .243.”

“Shit, you couldn’t hit that deer with a .338.”

“There you go, disrespecting your elders again. I’m pretty sure it’s about ass-kicking time.”

“I’ve never seen you hit anything over two-hundred yards but the one time, and that was an accident.”

“Details,” Mondy said. “You gabacho white eyes, so concerned with fucking details. You know, you’re being kind of a little punk today.”

Kevin was quiet a moment. “How’d you meet Jolene?”

Mondy shouldered his rifle, looked through the scope again. “You know, here and there. I don’t even remember anymore.”

Kevin looked at the ground.

Mondy lowered the rifle, looked over at him. “Opportunities come around,” he said. “You’ll see.”

They had planned to hunt south as usual but lingered in this first good canyon just past an hour. The cue to get up and move on was usually given by Kevin, and the older man had always conceded this, an unspoken custom of their friendship. For some reason, today, Kevin wanted to take in this canyon a little longer.

And now, over three decades later, as he sat in his air-conditioned office, where he normally worried over the petty vagaries of the English department he headed, his mind had suddenly traversed those many years and dropped him onto a hillside a hundred miles south. He glanced out his office window, which neatly framed Sentinel Peak near the Tucson Mountains. Pima College was a nice place, but he found himself longing for the excitement that attended the sharp morning air and dawn light of that canyon in the Escrobarra, where he could go tomorrow and still find deer.

Even with his back to the door, Kevin could feel Julie’s presence behind him. He swiveled in his chair, reminding himself to look the girl in the eye and not let his gaze drop below her neckline. Julie had been the office work aid for the past seven weeks, hired that fall by Norma, the department secretary, though Kevin would not have hired the girl simply for the way she dressed. She never wore a top that didn’t sport a bit of cleavage nor a skirt that didn’t allow the distraction of her young legs.

“Yes, Julie?”

“Norma just called. That lady was over in Student Services earlier asking for you.”

Kevin glanced again toward the window.

The girl tilted her head, squinted. “Seems like she’s lost. Are you sure she’s not crazy or something?”

“No,” Kevin said. “She’s not crazy.”

“They told her your office hours, but she didn’t come here. Norma saw her sitting at the campus Starbucks drinking coffee. Do you even know her very well?”

“I know her quite well,” Kevin said. “And she’s not lost.”