Desert Wind (13 page)

I wasn’t going to let him off the hook that easily. “This case is starting to look hinky, and if I’m going to help Ted, I need to know everything, even stuff you’d rather I didn’t.”

“My problems with Dad have nothing to do with this case.”

“Let me be the judge of that.”

Ma’s apple pie arrived, letting Jimmy off the interrogatory hook for a while, but as soon as the pie disappeared down our respective gullets, I brought up the subject again. “Does the problem have anything to do with your moving down to the Pima reservation and taking back your birth name?”

“Kind of.” His answer was grudging, but at least it was an answer.

“Explain
kind of
.”

“Dad wanted me to help run the ranch with Ted. But I wanted to find out who I was, and I couldn’t do that while leading someone else’s life.”

“What do you mean, ‘someone else’s’?”

Brown eyes regarded me steadily. “In case you haven’t noticed, Lena, I’m not white.”

I thought back to the family portrait in Olmstead’s office and the Technicolor children. “Your brothers and sisters weren’t white, either, so what does color have to do with anything?”

He looked down at his pie plate, as if hoping another slice would magically appear. “Considering your own background, I thought you of all people would understand.”

How often in life we miss the obvious. While I’d been scrambling around for the past few years trying to find my birth parents, Jimmy had been doing the same thing. The fact that he, unlike in my own situation, knew his birth parents’ names and where they’d lived didn’t make his job easier. Names are just words, phonics written on air. It’s the meaning behind a name that matters, the centuries of genetic loading the word represents. For good or ill, when you’re cut off from your birth name, you’re cut off from your past. Like most adoptive parents, the Olmsteads had given their children new first and last names, saying in effect, “Now you are one of us.” This was true and commendable. But the new name only told part of the story.

Take mine, for example: Lena Jones.

A couple of years ago, in a brief thunderclap of memory, I had remembered that my mother called me “Tina,” but after being shot, my wounded four-year-old mouth slurred the “T,” and I was temporarily given the name Lena Doe. When I was fostered out, an unimaginative social worker turned “Doe” into “Jones,” and Lena Jones was born. Neither first nor last name had anything to do with my biological life; my real identity had been shot away along with a piece of my brain.

Did Jimmy feel like that?

I bore a scar on my forehead where the bullet had entered. By odd coincidence, Jimmy bore a tribal tattoo in the same place. Maybe it wasn’t coincidence. Maybe, as he once told me, we had always been connected in spirit.

“I’m sorry, Almost Brother,” I said. “I didn’t think.”

His face softened. “Sometimes you forget to, Lena. You’ve always been…” He paused, then started again. “Anyway, my birth parents died so early that I don’t remember them, but that doesn’t mean I can’t feel their pull. As soon as I graduated from ASU, I moved over to the reservation to learn how to be Pima again, and that’s when the problems with Dad started. We’d gotten along fine before.”

I didn’t have to ask if moving onto the reservation had worked, because I already knew the answer. Jimmy was the most peaceful soul I had ever met. Olmstead, however, was like the sharp edge of a knife. “Your dad felt betrayed, didn’t he?”

Jimmy nodded. “None of the other kids, not even Ted, did anything like me.”

“But Ted married another Paiute. Attended pow-wows. Remained Indian.”

“He didn’t leave the family. Or the church.”

There it was: faith. Like many people in this part of the state, the Olmsteads were conservative Christians. In accordance with their fundamentalist beliefs, they led lives that glorified home, family, and healthy living. They didn’t drink, smoke, or use anything that contained caffeine. Whenever possible, they even raised their own food. Ted was still a member of his father’s denomination, but Jimmy, having embraced the ancient polytheistic faith of his tribe, was not.

Oh, religion—the great divider.

“Couldn’t your mother have done something to mediate the situation? From what you’ve told me she had a soothing effect on your father. And was more broad-minded.”

He started fingering the doily again, his face suddenly sad. “She was dead by the time I left for college. She’d been sick for a while—cancer, like so many around here—but just as we thought she was getting better, she had a heart attack. Afterwards, Dad became even more stubborn. That’s partially the reason I chose ASU; it was as far away as I could get from here without leaving the state. It was also right next door to the Pima Reservation, and I started going over there and, well, I found my people. You know the rest.”

What must it have been like for him, finding his extended family after so many years? Would it be like that for me if I ever found mine? “Jimmy, do you think…?”

Before I could finish, Tara returned with the check in a pink plastic tray. Slapping down some bills, I told her to keep the change, then added, “Tell Ma her food’s delicious.”

“Tell him yourself.” She pointed toward the lunch counter, where a big hairy man wearing bib overalls and a chef’s toque stood chatting with a customer.

When he looked over at me, I blew him a kiss.

Ma blew one back.

After that, Jimmy returned to the Desert View Motel and his trusty laptop, while I drove to the Walapai Gas-N-Go, scene of the infamous altercation between Ike Donohue and Ted Olmstead. Time to talk to an actual witness.

***

Like most of the town’s buildings, at first glance Walapai Gas-N-Go looked like it had been built in the late eighteen-hundreds, but on closer inspection, I saw two islands of gas pumps half hidden by a wall of plastic designed to look like logs. Since my rented Trailblazer was jonesing for some high-octane, I pulled alongside a full-service pump and waited, my digital recorder already turned on. Within seconds, a rangy, dark-skinned Indian strode out of the building and over to me. The script above his left pocket identified him as EARL.

“Fill her up, Ma’am?”

“Yes, please.” Indians value good manners, and since I’d already irritated one Indian this week, I introduced myself politely and eased into conversation while the Trailblazer drank deep of Saudi Arabia’s finest.

“Sure is pretty country up here, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“Hot, though.”

“Yes.”

“Worked here long?”

“Yes.”

“I understand that you know Ted Olmstead.”

“Yes.”

Gee, we were getting along like a house afire. “How well do you know him?”

Two Horses stared at the gas pump. He hadn’t yet looked me in the eye, a habit Anglos consider essential for polite conversation but many Indians construe as rude. Then he surprised me by volunteering, “Ted Olmstead did not kill Ike Donohue.”

“But he hit him, right?”

“No, he did not. Mr. Donohue was so busy looking at Mrs. Tosches that he did not see some spilled oil on the ground and he slipped.”

Before I could ask anything else, a silver minivan pulled up to the pump behind me. In it were several yelling children and two young women who looked like they’d rather be anywhere other than where they were. Without another word, Two Horses walked toward the van, but halted midway when one of the women jumped out and said, “Let me get it, Earl. Anything to get out of this damned van.”

He came back, smiling faintly at the ground.

I hated to intrude upon his Laugh of the Day, but I had a job to do. “The newspaper article said Mia Tosches saw the whole thing, and that Ted most definitely hit him.”

“Ted grabbed at him, trying to keep Mr. Donohue from falling, but Mr. Donohue fell anyway. That is what Mrs. Tosches saw.”

“She was confused, then?”

His eyes flickered. “Maybe confused, maybe not.”

Well, well. Another person who didn’t like Mia Tosches. “Do you know of any reason she would make up that story?”

After a silence long enough to grow uncomfortable, he finally answered, “You need to talk to Ted Olmstead about that.”

I was about to ask another question when the silver minivan’s pump gave a loud click and the sound of gushing gas stopped. The second woman in the van climbed out. Her hair was awry and she looked even more crazed than the first.

“Hey, Earl!” she called. “You got any Valium in that store?”

“We did not receive our regular shipment of mind-altering drugs this week,” he answered with an Indian-straight face.

“Aw, shit.”

Pump Woman reattached the hose to the pump while the other fiddled with the gas cap. “We have to get back in that van,” Pump Woman said.

“Aw, shit.” Gas Cap Woman repeated.

When they left, their kids were still yelling and fighting.

“Was something going on between Ted and Mia Tosches?” I asked Earl.

His eyes still on the departing van, he answered, “Not that I am aware of. In the meantime, Miss Jones, you have a nice day.” With that, he walked away.

When an Indian signals that he’s through talking, he’s through talking. With nothing else to be gained at the Walapai Gas-N-Go, I drove off thinking about young Indian men and blondes with elderly husbands.

Chapter Ten

July, 1975: Northwestern Arizona

After saluting the autographed photograph of John Wayne hanging over the sofa, as he did every time he entered the house, Gabe locked up his rifle in the gun cabinet. He’d clean it later, but right now he smelled sausage frying. As upset as it made him, he had to admit he was starved.

Black nose twitching, Blue Two followed him into the kitchen.

Abby was sick again, not just sad over all the dying, but sick in a way that scared Gabe half to death. Tired all the time, bones hurting, throat swole up so bad she could hardly swallow, ignoring everything the doctor said about taking things easy. Yet she paid no mind to her pain and worked as hard as any ranch hand, spent the cool mornings milking the cow, feeding the chickens, tending her garden—growing fat tomatoes, red-tipped lettuce, onions the size of a man’s fist—then, when the sun began to sizzle the day, she’d come in and start cooking.

Made him furious, it did.

“Girl, you sit down! I’ll finish cooking, do the dishes, too.”

Mule-like, she shook her head. “Don’t you tell me what to do, cowboy. You need to be minding your own store. Wasn’t you and Blue Two supposed to go look for that heifer disappeared yesterday?”

“Already found her. While you was messing around in the garden.”

When Abby smiled, she looked almost well. “Don’t keep me in suspense. Where was she and what was she doing?”

“Dying in that cottonwood grove by the river, that’s what she was doing. I put her down. Coyotes gonna be happy tonight.”

The smile disappeared. “That’s the third one lost in a month. If this keeps up…” She didn’t finish. A rancher’s granddaughter, daughter, and wife, she knew dead cattle meant money trouble. Their little herd, once a hundred and climbing, now stood at sixty-three, and half of them didn’t look much better than the dead heifer.

Bad news delivered, Gabe decided this was a good time to tell her what he’d been thinking. “Uh, Abby, I thought I’d drive over to Miller’s spread this afternoon, see if he could use an extra ranch hand.”

Her face crumpled. “Miller’s? Surely he has all the help he needs! Besides, if you start working for him, how are you going to get anything done around here? Not unless you can figure out a way to make two of you, like they do in them crazy science fiction movies. Oh, it’s my fault, all my fault. If I’d been able to give you babies, they’d be old enough now to help and…” She trailed off again.

Gabe fixed a smile, pretended he was happy about the way things had worked out. “Why, they’d do nothing but take my mind off you, girl. Can’t have that, can we? You’re all I want, and haven’t I told you a thousand-plus-times how much I…”

“Love don’t mend fences or milk the cow.”

She’d braced herself on a chair back to stay upright, so Gabe decided it was time to lay down the law. “Worry-wart, that’s what you are, Abby, and worrying never got nothing done. Now I don’t want no arguing, ’cause you’re going back to bed whether you like it or not. Can’t have you fall on your pretty face, can I?”

He followed his tough talk with a grip around her ever-narrowing waist and shepherded her down the hall toward the bedroom, with Blue Two close behind. Abby was too weak to struggle, just leaned against him and whispered, “I’m so sorry I let you down.”

At that, he halted their march and turned her to face him. She looked ten years older than she should have, lines trenching her face, gray growing through lusterless hair, shoulders hunched from pain. But still his Abby.

He pressed his lips to her hair, smelling sausage and Evening in Paris. “Ain’t nothing you could do would let a man down. Don’t know what I’d be without you.”