Desert Shadows (9781615952250) (20 page)

Chapter 22

A week later, I was anxious to leave Jimmy's trailer and return home, but every time I mentioned it, he pointed out the long flight of stairs that led to my apartment. “You're not good with crutches. You'd fall and wind up back in the hospital.”

“No, I wouldn't.”

“Yes, you would.”

“Wouldn't.”

“Would.”

Jimmy had become a little bossy in the week since I had moved in with him, and I wasn't sure I liked it. I resented anyone telling me what to do, even my partner, and was about to tell him so when he added, “Your apartment's not finished, anyway.”

Good point. In the way of workmen everywhere, the drywall guy who had been repairing my ceiling and walls had accepted another job. Once he battened down the hatches against rain—which Arizona tended to experience in March—he pointed out that his work for me was below scale. He'd received a more lucrative offer up at the Biltmore Resort, and wanted to take it.

“It'd be for a couple of days.” He raised his voice so I could hear him above the roaring in my ears.

“Be my guest,” I muttered, consigning myself to more time in Jimmy's trailer.

I hadn't realized Jimmy was such a party animal, but his trailer seemed to serve as Party Central for his many Pima cousins and friends. To add to the throngs of visitors, Jimmy's girlfriend Esther frequently dropped by with her daughter. Watching Jimmy interact so naturally with them made me feel more alone, more isolated, even made me miss Dusty.

Dusty, who had not shown up at the hospital after the explosion.

Dusty, who had not even sent me a get-well card, let alone flowers.

Fine with me. Who needed the faithless son of a bitch?

***

“Jimmy, weren't we supposed to have dinner over at Owen's?” I asked one day, as I tested my feet for odd spots of tenderness. The wheelchair and ear noises long gone, I sat on the sofa, watching Jimmy fuss around the trailer's galley kitchen. As with many other areas in the trailer, the kitchen was lively with Pima designs, which turned its former blandness into a running pictograph history of his people. The cabinets over the sink showed Elder Brother wrestling power away from Earth Doctor, the creator of First World. On the double doors under the sink Jimmy had painted the Maze, the underground labyrinth where the humiliated Earth Doctor took refuge after his defeat, and where—the Pimas say—he still lives. Coyote, Spider Woman, and Snake danced along the hallway walls leading to the back bedroom where Jimmy had moved my things.

Above the sofa, which had been slip-covered in bright colors to match the Navajo rugs flanking the trailer door, hung elaborately framed photographs of Jimmy's parents. All four of them. His Mormon parents, who still lived in Salt Lake City, and his biological parents. Etched into the wooden frame beneath them were the Pima words which Jimmy had translated for me:
Soul reunited with Soul.

Two orphans. Two completely different lives. Jimmy had found a place in the world. I never had.

“Dinner at Owen's? Good thing you reminded me.” Jimmy put away the package of hamburger meat he'd been getting ready to fry. Compared to me, he was a gourmet chef. “I don't know where my mind's been these days.”

But I did. Obsessing over Owen's looming murder trial.

Earlier that morning at Desert Investigations he had downloaded the video in which Sandra played a starring role. The quality had not been good, and at first all I could see were squirming bodies, none of them recognizable. But then the cameraman—or camera
woman
, let's not be sexist about this—hit his/her stride. The camera steadied, the focus tightened, and there was Sandra, dirty blond hair spilling across her face, arms and legs splayed out, a motley assortment of men and women poking at her various orifices. The whole scene looked as appetizing as a bunch of intertwined worms in a bait can.

Jimmy turned away with a grimace. “That's nasty.” He had always been a prude.

I'm not. I leaned closer to the screen, studying it carefully. “Freeze the picture here, Jimmy.”

“I'll freeze it, but don't expect me to look at it.”

Tapping the screen, I said, “Right there. Look.”

Although he didn't want to, he looked. “Now you're going to tell me that's Kama Sutra position number eighty-two, right?”

“I wouldn't have the faintest idea. But I'll tell you one thing I do know. The guy there? That's John Alden Brookings.”

John Alden Brookings, who had been so quick to tell me about Sandra's sins. Why? Because he shared them?

When I called Brookings, all I got was his answering machine. Maybe he was at an editorial meeting.

Or filming another X-rated movie.

***

Even in the early twilight, I could tell that Owen Sisiwan's house was coming along nicely. Smack dab in the middle of the Rez, it reflected the extra money Owen had made from his job as Gloriana's handyman. At least that's how I hoped he had earned all that extra money.

Unlike so many Anglo homes in design-muddled Arizona, Owen's house didn't ape those in Seville, the Mediterranean, or New Mexico. The design appeared to have been ad-libbed as construction continued, yet somehow it all worked. The gently curved walls rose discreetly, their soft, sand-colored stucco barely interrupting the surrounding desert. A half-built loggia at the rear held out promise of a large patio; the untouched palo verde tree rising safely through its open beam work testified to Owen's reverence for nature.

A large brown dog, pedigree indeterminate, ran barking to me as I climbed out of Jimmy's Toyota, trying not to trip over my own crutches.

“Don't let Rebel scare you,” Janelle Sisiwan called from the door. “He's a big phoney.”

Threats duly delivered, Rebel proved Janelle's words by capering along with us to the door. “You can't come in,” she said to him. “You'd make an even worse mess.”

After a brief whine, the dog trotted over to Owen's truck and lay down.

“Try not to trip,” Janelle warned, as we entered. “We're still trying to get things together.”

Like the outside, the interior of the house proved to be a work-in-progress. The walls were rough, the seams which held the drywall together still obvious. Other than the furniture, the only items of decoration in the not-quite-finished living room were several Pima baskets hanging over the sofa. Janelle ushered us to the completed family room, where the Sisiwans apparently did most of their living. But over the delicious aroma of baking chicken, I could still smell the fresh drywall.

The walls in the family room were also relatively bare, except for a large, dark blue flag displaying the insignia of the U.S. Marine Corps, and an even larger American flag. The flag wasn't the standard Stars-and-Stripes issue, however. A portrait of a war-painted Plains Indian had been superimposed upon the red stripes. Sitting Bull, the guy who'd whipped Custer's ass at the Little Big Horn.

Beneath the flags, Owen and his children laughed together as they played with an assortment of Hot Wheels on the carpeted floor. The baby burbled at us from his basinet. From the CD player in the corner wafted the sounds of Carlos Nakai's wooden flute, his tune a modern riff on an old Navajo song.

A pang of envy struck me. Even in its unfinished state, this house was a home already.

I heard a car pull up outside, Rebel barking. “Excuse me,” Janelle said, rushing past us toward the door. “More guests.”

A minute later, she ushered Esther and Rebecca into the family room.

Jimmy's eyes lit up in delight as Rebecca threw her arms around him. Her mother, mature enough to have picked up on the Pimas' less demonstrative ways, just smiled. But her smile held as much affection as did Rebecca's hug.

At first, dinner at the Sisiwans' seemed to be as pleasant as ever, but after a while I thought I detected strain in Owen's voice. And he didn't seem to want to meet my eyes.

Cultural differences, I told myself. The Pima Way.

Part of me knew better. Owen was open enough with Esther and Rebecca, even teasing Rebecca about her newly pierced ears. And he was his usual jovial self with his wife and children. It was conversation with me that he was trying to avoid.

For a while, I played along, eating more than my share of Janelle's delicious baked chicken and spicy bean casserole, an old Pima recipe. I even coaxed Owen into conversation about his flags, treading delicately—I thought—around Native American sensitivities.

“Cool flag,” I said, pointing toward it.

“Which one?”

I smiled. “Both, I guess. But where'd you get the flag with the Indian? I haven't seen any like that before.”

“They sell them all over the Rez. Flags are very popular out here, even the standard Red, White, and Blue.”

I had noticed. It was unusual, in these post-9/11 days, to see a Pima home that didn't have an American flag flying somewhere on the property, or to find a recruitment center that didn't have a steady stream of Indians filing into it. Considering the government's shabby treatment of Native Americans, their never-failing patriotism surprised me. Cautiously, I said as much to Owen.

His eyes flickered, and for a moment I thought he wouldn't answer. Then he did. “We're warriors, Lena. It's part of our heritage. Remember Ira Hayes?”

Hayes, a Pima, had helped raise the flag on Iwo Jima, and had been immortalized in both the famous photograph and the statue. But back in the States, he died alone in a ditch, forgotten by the country he had served.

“Ira Hayes is exactly my point,” I said. “Look what he did, and look what was done to him. That was wrong.”

Owen's eyes were dark and thoughtful. “Lots of wrongs out there in the world, plenty to go around for everyone.” Then he looked back over at the flags. “But before you get too carried away with Anglo guilt, think about this. Regardless of what happened to my grandfathers, America is my country. And sometimes we Americans have to choose what kind of country we want: a strong one or a fair one. I'm not sure the two always go together.”

If there had been a fly in the family room, it would probably have flown into my open mouth.

As if to purposefully increase my shock, Owen snapped off a quick salute. “
Semper fi,
Lena.”

Sometimes I think I'll never understand people.

After dinner, the children—including Rebecca—went outside to play with the dog, leaving the grown-ups to clear the dishes.

But I'm not the dish-clearing type. I seized the moment and said to Owen, “Say, guy, let's you and me step outside and get some fresh air, shall we?”

Jimmy frowned at me from the sink, knowing that I was about to mix business with pleasure. Janelle didn't look happy about it either, but I didn't care. When Owen began to mumble his excuses, I said under my breath, “I don't think you're going to want Janelle to hear what I'm going to ask you. And I will ask, either in here or outside.”

He glanced at her briefly, saw that she and Esther were preoccupied with the dishes, then headed out the door, motioning me to follow.

The children were grouped under the back porch light, thirteen-year-old Rebecca towering over them, playing what appeared to be Ring-aound-the-Rosie with Rebel. Owen and I walked away from them, toward the palo verde at the edge of the darkness, and settled ourselves into the two plastic patio chairs there. I waited for him to talk, but he didn't. He lit a cigarette and stared off into the night.

“That'll cause cancer,” I said.

He shrugged. “Cancer or diabetes, same difference. They both kill you.”

There was no answer in the face of such fatalism, so I canceled the rest of the lecture. “I've got a couple of questions I need to ask you. First, could a man using a walker get down into the section of Oak Creek where you took those hikers?”

He took a drag of his cigarette. “If he has enough strength in his arms, it's possible.”

I remembered Brookings showing me his scar. That biceps had looked pretty powerful.

Easy info collected, I now entered difficult territory. “Owen, tell me about you and Gloriana.”

“She was my boss.” The light was poor so I couldn't see the expression on his dark face. Too bad.

“I found the darkroom. And the prints.”

“Don't know what you're talking about.”

Impatiently, I shifted on the hard chair. The night was cool, yet mosquitoes had already begun to swarm near the glow of Owen's cigarette. If this kept up, I'd either freeze or contract West Nile before I learned what I needed. “C'mon, Owen, don't tell me you didn't know. Gloriana was in love with you.”

“In lust, maybe.”

“She didn't arrange that hike to be nice to the SOBOP attendees, did she, Owen? She did it so you'd have to spend the night at the Hacienda.”

“So you say.”

“But the night didn't go the way she wanted, and that's why she was so nasty to you during the banquet. Made you sit in the hallway while everyone was eating.”

The end of his cigarette glowed brighter. “You've got a reason for everything, don't you?”

Not everything, but I was getting there. “Tell me what happened that night, Owen. The night before the hike.”

“That's between Gloriana and me.”

“She's dead.”

He shrugged. “It's still private. Show the poor woman some respect.”

Poor woman? Slapping away a particularly determined mosquito, I said, “She treated you like dirt.”

“Women in pain sometimes do angry things.” He flicked his eyes toward the house.

“What other angry things did Gloriana do to you?”

“Not as many things as you believe.” He sighed, relaxed. “Yes, she was a hard woman, and yes, she was not easy to work for. But much had been done to her. One time, when we were measuring out the area for the new patio, she told me that her husband's nickname for her was ‘Old Prune Face.' She had tears in her eyes when she said that. If I comforted her then, it was only from kindness.”