A wasteland of strangers (28 page)

"Shut that freakin'light off!"

I snapped the room dark again, quick, but not before I got a straight-on look at him. It bugged my eyes. Clothes all wet and torn, whole left side of his face a piece of raw meat. Scraped, swelled up, bloody. And half his ear torn away, rest of it hanging there dripping red. And his eyes . . . wild, man, half bugfuck. Scared. That was the worst thing of all, the thing that chilled my guts. I'd never seen Mateo scared before. Never.

"Man, what happened to you?"

"No time for that. Listen, get your—"

"Fight, man? Some dudes jump you?"

"I said there ain't no time!" The scare was in his voice, too. It shook like an old woman's. "Get your shit together, make it fast. We got to move."

"Mateo, what're you talkin' about?"

"Clothes, cash, whatever else you need."

"Need for what?"

"Travelin', man. Don't be thick."

"Where to?"

"What'd we talk about this morning, huh? L.A."

"Now? Just pick up and split in the middle of—"

"Yeah, now, yeah. Haul ass."

"You in trouble, man?"

"Keep your voice down! Wake up the old man and old lady, for Chrissake?"

"You got to tell me what happened."

"I don't have to tell you squat. You comin' or not?"

"I don't know—"

"Don't know, don't know, that's all you know how to say."

"I'm just tryin' to find out—"

"You with me or what?"

"Always with you, man. But give me a clue what's goin' down here. Cops? Heat on you?"

"Yeah, all right, I'll be hot as hell pretty soon. The bitch saw my face, man. Her and the dude busted me up like this."

"What bitch? What dude? Jesus, Mateo, what'd you do?"

"iCagon de mierdas! Quit asking stupid questions!"

"Hey, man, don't dis me. You're the one—"

"I got no more time to waste with you, Anthony. Comin' or not? Yes or no, spit it out."

It was in me to say yes. He was my brother, man, I looked up to him all my life. But he done something real raw this time—the way he was beat up said so, the scare in his eyes said so, my chilled guts said so. Cops after him ... I didn't want a piece of that. I'm no outlaw. I never saw nothing cool in being an outlaw.

"I'm no outlaw, man," I says.

"It ain't gonna be like that."

"Yeah it is. I wouldn't be no good at—"

"How much cash you holding?"

"What?"

"You heard me. How much you got stashed?"

"Not sure, man. Fifty, sixty bucks ..."

"Give it to me. The whole wad and no more crap."

I went and got my stash from behind the loose board in my closet.

When I gave it to him, up close like that, I could smell him, and he stank. He stank of the fear that was crawling in him.

"Last chance, bro. You gonna go to L.A. with me or stay here and rot in this hole?"

I flashed on Trisha, the kid she had in the oven—my kid. My brother, man! Yeah, but he'd crossed the line, done something raw this time, turned outlaw, and I couldn't get past the stink of his fear. I couldn't get past it, man.

"I can't do it," I says. "You're my brother, I'd do anything for you, you know that, but this—"

"You ain't my brother. I ain't got a brother no more."

"Hey, Mateo—"

"Fuck you, Anthony," he says. "Vaya a la chingada" and he went out fast through the window into the rain and dark.

But he left the stink of his fear behind. I couldn't chase it even with the window up and the cold wetness blowing in. It hung there, heavy, and I kept smelling it, and the more I smelled it, the sicker I felt. It wasn't like the stink of a brother, not anymore. It was like the stink of somebody I didn't even know.

Audrey Sixkiller

TIME PASSED IN a seemingly endless series of ticks and slow sweeps and frozen moments. For long periods it was as if I could hear the passage of each second—now like the faint pulsing of a clock just outside the range of hearing, now like the slow, steady beat of a heart. Then it would seem suddenly to stop. Then it would start again, lurch along, and then settle into the same methodical tempo as before.

William Sixkiller: "Patience is the great virtue of cats and Indians." Yes, but I had lost that virtue tonight. In its place was a restless need to be gone from this place, a frustrated sense of urgency even though Mateo Munoz was far away by now. Patience disappears from cats and Indians both when they are held against their wills.

Now and then John Faith would get up from the other couch and pace for a while, back and forth, back and forth. Once when he did that I complained that my legs were growing numb, and he did me the favor of unwinding the tape, rubbing circulation into the ankles, helping me stand and letting me walk awhile. I thought then of trying to run from him, hiding in the trees once I was outside, but it was a hollow scheme. Even if I could get my hands on one flashlight, he still had the other; and I didn't know the way out of the lodge and he must know it. I thought, too, of telling him I had to relieve myself and asking for privacy and taking advantage of that. But then I would not even have a chance at the flashlight and I couldn't hope to escape by blundering around in the dark. Besides, at some point I really would need to relieve myself and it would be an embarrassment to both of us if I forced him to stand watch over me when that time came.

When my ankles were taped again he returned to the other couch and I drew the wool blanket he'd given me to my chin. It was still raining steadily, the dampness intensifying the cold in there. For the third or fourth time, upstairs, there were faint chittering cries and leathery flut-terings. Bats. They didn't like the wet weather any more than I did; it made hunting difficult for them.

Except for the rain and the night sounds, we sat in a monotony of silence. We had said all there was to say on the subjects of Mateo Munoz and Storm Carey and the fugitive status of John Faith, and there was little else to talk about. But when the silence began to drag intolerably—

"John, there's something I'd like to know."

"... What's that?"

"Earlier you said you've been running most of your life. What did you mean?"

"Nothing. Another bad choice of words."

"They sounded true to me."

Silence.

"Has the law been after you before?"

"Once or twice. Minor violations, if it matters."

"Who else?"

Silence again.

"John? Please talk to me."

"People like you," he said.

"Like me? I don't understand."

"Ordinary people. Average."

"You think I'm average? A Native American woman?"

'Tou are as far as I'm concerned."

"I still don't understand," I said. "Why would you run from ordinary, average people?"

"I don't run from them. That's the wrong word, run—makes me sound like a coward. I don't back down from anybody. And I don't run unless I've got no other choice."

"Like last night."

"Like last night. I suppose Novak said I was running away when he showed up, but it wasn't because I'm guilty. I would've reported what I found. Anonymously, yeah, because I knew what'd happen if I called from the house and identified myself. Exactly what did happen—I got blamed."

"You only made things worse by assaulting him, trying to escape."

"Maybe. But I wasn't thinking too clearly at the time. You get pushed around enough, backed into enough corners, you figure your only chance is to push back."

"Has it really been that bad for you?"

"You wouldn't believe me if I told you how bad. Pomo's the worst by far, but there've been other times, other places . . ." He shook his head, as if shaking away memories. 'The hell with it," he said.

"So that's why you shy away from people."

"Shy away? Let's say I'm better off with my own company."

"Isn't there anyone you're close to? Someone in your family—"

"I don't have a family."

"Friends?"

"No friends, either. And no woman, if that's your next question. I made the mistake of getting married once. I won't make it again."

"What happened? Or don't you want to talk about it?"

"No, I don't want to talk about it. Let's just say she decided big and ugly wasn't as exciting as she thought it'd be."

"You're not ugly, John."

'The hell I'm not. I look in the mirror, I see what everybody else sees. Big, ugly, mean-looking ... dangerous. Face and body like mine, I must be some kind of monster."

'There's nothing that awful about the way you look."

"Nothing a team of plastic surgeons couldn't fix. Don't patronize me.

"I wasn't patronizing you, and I didn't say it to get on your good side. I mean it."

"Okay, you mean it. Some people don't judge a book by its cover. But ask most of your friends and neighbors what they think, what they thought the minute they laid eyes on me. Ask the guy who wrote the newspaper editorial, ask Novak, ask Trisha Marx's father."

'That's the poison talking," I said.

'The what?"

"Poison. Indians believe there's poison everywhere, in all things. Each person is born with some, and we can be infected with more, by others and by ourselves. Poison is the handmaiden of hate—my father said that. Together they can sour our hearts, eventually destroy us."

"I get the point, teacher. So there's poison in me, plenty of it. But I can't get rid of it without getting rid of myself. Simple fact is, I wouldn't be sitting here with a couple of holes in me and a murder charge hanging over my head if I looked like the frigging boy next door. And if you don't believe it it's because you don't live inside this body."

"No, but I live inside an Indian woman's body. I'm not a stranger to mindless prejudice."

A few seconds trickled away before he said, "I don't doubt it. So you ought to be able to understand how it is with me."

"Up to a point."

"What point? The amount of violence I've had to deal with? I'm a man, oversized and ugly, and that makes me a target."

"A small young woman isn't a target?"

"Sure she is. But her odds, your odds against it are a lot better than mine. You haven't had much violence in your life before tonight, I'll bet."

"Not directed at me, no. But that doesn't mean it won't happen again. Or that if it does, I'll survive it. There are as many men in this county who hate women and Indians as there are who hate big white strangers. The same men, many of them."

"Look, I don't want to argue with you. Maybe you're right, maybe we're more alike than I think and it's only the kind and amount of crap we have to deal with that makes us different."

'There's another difference, too. You keep dwelling on your crap, your poison. You let it rule your life."

"And you don't? No sourness or anger in your heart? Well, then, you're a better person than me. Or else you've got a thicker hide."

"I didn't say I have no bitterness or anger. I'm angry right now. My skin is thick enough, but I can still be poisoned."

"You don't show it."

"Indians learn to mask their emotions," I said. "And I channel mine into teaching, volunteer work."

"So you are a better person. Can't be easy to keep a mask on or to turn the other cheek in a place like Pomo."

"Easier than it would be if I drifted from place to place, always alone. I was born in Pomo, it's my home."

"Right," John Faith said. "And that's the biggest difference between you and me."

"What is?"

"I've never had a home."

That was all he would say; after the words were out he seemed to retreat inside himself again. It's the only place he feels comfortable and secure, I thought. Within his own skin.

I watched him for a time, sitting motionless and staring into the cold shadows beyond the candle glow. Swaddled in my thermal blanket, he seemed not nearly so large, but aged, shrunken somewhat, like an old man waiting quietly for his spirit to leave and enter the Abode of the Dead. But the illusion was false. I remembered him as he'd been earlier, when he'd finished changing his bandages: his bare torso sweat-oiled, the candlelight giving it a burnished look so that he resembled a life-size figure sculpted in bronze; shadows altering the rugged contours of his head and face without softening them. In that aspect, huge and dark and stoic, he might have been one of the People —a warrior marked by spear and arrow wounds after battle. One of the legendary chiefs, perhaps. Konocti, Kah-bel...

But that, too, was illusion. When he'd gotten up to bring the water bottle to me, he'd become again what he really was: another big, unfathomable white man. That was what I'd thought at the time, anyway. Now I wondered if there might not actually be something of the warrior in him, a man different from other men, strong, and big in ways other than size. I was not sure I liked him, or would care to know him well; but I did understand and feel compassion for him, and I sensed that he was an honest person, a good person, and most if not all of what he'd told me tonight was the truth. How can a wounded fugitive who risks his own safety to save a woman he barely knows from sexual assault be either a cold-blooded murderer or a threat to any community?

But the way I felt didn't change the fact that I was his prisoner and would remain his prisoner for several more hours. Nor did it help the time pass any more quickly. Nor did it prevent my body from protesting the treatment it had been subjected to tonight, or exhaustion from creeping through me until my limbs felt as heavy as pepperwood logs. My eyelids were heavy, too. Yet it seemed important to stay awake and alert; to give in to sleep was a kind of betrayal.

I dozed in spite of myself. And jerked awake.

What time was it? I fought the urge to look at my watch.

So cold in here. I snuggled down deeper under the blanket.

Had Mateo Munoz killed Storm? If John Faith was innocent, then Munoz must be guilty. Suppose he ran all the way into Mexico? He had family there. Could the authorities find him, bring him back . . . ?

Dozing again. Wake up! Stay awake.

But I was so tired ...

Richard Novak

IT WAS NEARLY three before I went home again. Details to clear up, my recommendation on the shooting death of Earle Banner to bolster Mary Jo's report. Two cups of coffee and some pointless talk with Verne Erickson. And still no word on John Faith. It was the frustration of that, more than weariness and throbbing pain, that finally prodded me out of the station and back to the house.