Hold of the Bone (36 page)

They ride east into the sun. Frank has questions but no desire to ask them, trusting the answers will appear when needed. They arrive at the cabin just as the sun bends to the mountains. Sure it is the last sunset she will see here, Frank volunteers to stay outside and start a fire while Sal makes dinner. Bone accompanies her to the woodpile, and after she lights the fire he sits beside her. She is petting him when Kook sidles near. Sweeping the ground with his tail, he stares inquiringly at Frank.

She pats her lap and the little dog leaps in answer. He settles happily, and Frank gives him a few pets before returning her hand to Bone. Coyotes call from the hill behind them. Bone howls a reply and Kook jumps down to join him. Abandoning all self-consciousness, Frank howls too.

Sal brings tamales and steaming bowls of chile. Frank retrieves
the coffee pot and cups. They eat with the day's last light spread before them and the fire glowing behind. When they are done, Sal rolls cigarettes. The dogs sleep contentedly by the chairs.

“Who is she?”

Sal twists to prop another log on the fire, then settles to the purple-black mountains.

“No one knows. My father took me there when I was twelve. She was old even then. He brought food like we did. Like his father had.”

Frank quickly does the math.

“Some claim she's the last Indian, that she led her people up there to escape the missions. Some of the
abuelas
say she's a Mexican woman who ran away from a
gavacho
husband that was going to kill her for cheating on him.”

The cigarette flares as Sal draws on it.

“How long has she been blind?”

“Years. But I don't know that I'd call her blind. She sees things you and I can't.”

“How often do you go up there?”

“Fall and spring.”

Frank blows smoke at the risen moon. “Why'd you take me there?”

“The same reason I've taken you everywhere.”

“So I'll remember.”

Sal nods beside her.

The evening has inked imperceptibly to night. Paled by moon and starlight, the sky hangs jealously over the true, solid black of the mountains. An owl screeches from the barn. Another answers from the creek. Frank leans her head back. Night seeps into her bones, and when Sal rises to turn her chair to the fire Frank does the same. Sal stirs the coals with a log, then lays it down to burn.

Frank doesn't want to ask what she must, but it is time. She hunches closer to Sal so that she can better read the answers when they come. “There's just one thing I don't know.”

Sal turns fire-lit eyes upon her. Frank holds them with her own, knowing the fire dances within hers, too.

“The thing I don't know,” she says slowly, “is if it was you, or if it was Cass, that killed your father.”

Sal stiffens. She drags in a long breath and faces the leaping flames. “I knew the minute I saw you in the store that it was just a matter of time.” She hugs her knees and leans toward the heat. Her hair catches the fire and throws it back, darkly red. Frank flashes on the Beretta in her pack but doesn't think she'll need it. She watches and waits patiently. The fire snaps. Cicero whimpers in a dream.

“His uncle told us he was working at a building over on Western Avenue. That they wanted to finish the framing so they could pour concrete in the morning. When we got there, it was almost dark. Only my father and another man were there. He turned when he heard us pull up, and then when he recognized the truck he broke into a big smile. Then Cass fell out of the truck—she was dead drunk—but she got up and ran over to him. She was crying and screaming that he'd killed her, our mother. He grabbed hold of her, to try and calm her down, to make sense of what she was saying. I told him that Mother was dead. At first he didn't believe it. He kept asking, ‘What are you talking about?'

“Cass was hysterical. She was screaming, sobbing, ‘You hit her, you killed her. You're a murderer. You killed her.' Then you could see it dawn on him, what had happened, and he started to shake Cass. ‘Hold on a goddamned minute,' he said, and that was that. I literally, truly saw red. I wasn't going to let him start hurting us the way he did our mother. There was no way I was going to let us become his new punching bags. I didn't think at all. It just came to me in a flash that I wasn't going to let him do that and I picked up a shovel and swung it. I just wanted to hurt him, to get him to let go of Cass. I never meant to kill him. I knew the way he fell, the way he just crumpled, that I'd done something awful.”

Sal stares through the fire. Frank waits for her to surface from the hold of her memory.

“Cass was rocking and moaning, ‘My God, what did you do? What did you do?' She kept saying it over and over. Then we just sat a long time, staring at him. It was dark. And cold. And finally Cass stood up and found the shovel and started digging. I asked what she was doing, and she said no one would believe us that it was an accident, and that we had to bury him. I didn't argue. I couldn't.

“We dug a hole and dragged him into it. We thought to take his wallet, but not his wedding ring. Cass built the framing out over the hole. We had to do it by the truck headlights. I was terrified sick someone was going to call about the noise and that the police would come. But they never did. Not until you.”

Sal slumps back into her chair. Frank watches the flames of the fire rise and die, rise again, fall.

“I've kept that secret for forty years.”

“And Cass,” Frank says softly. “It wasn't an accident, was it?”

“No. She couldn't stand the lie anymore.”

She feels in her shirt. Frank tenses, but Sal's hand comes out with the tobacco pouch. She rolls a cigarette, passes it to Frank, and makes another. Frank puts a new log on the fire. A rabbit creeps at the edge of the black-red light. The women smoke.

“What happens now?”

“I take you in and we get you an attorney. There'll be an arraignment. Depending on the judge, you might be able to post bail or be released on your own recognizance.”

“If not, I go to jail?”

“Yeah.”

Sal nods. She drops her cigarette into the fire and sits with her arms wrapped around her knees. The fire snaps. A jet drones many miles above. Frank wishes she were up in the blackness with only moon and stars for company. She is glad she's turned her papers in.

“Do we have to go tonight?”

“No. He's been dead forty years. I don't think one more night'll make a difference.”

The fire slashes Sal's features, reddening, then darkening the planes and hollows. In an effort to still the shifting mask, Frank breaches the distance between them, resting the back of her fingers against the lean, brown jaw. The weathered skin is soft there, much softer than Frank expected.

“I'm sorry it has to be this way.”

“Don't be,” Sal murmurs. “It's right.”

Her hand covers Frank's, brings it to her lips. She rests it there a moment. Frank unfolds her fingers, cupping the side of Sal's face,
running her thumb over the ridge of cheekbone. Sal clings to her wrist. The fire lifts a question in her eyes. Frank answers it with a kiss. Their lips linger, touch, merge again. Frank tugs Sal to her feet and tilts her head toward the cabin. This time, she leads and Sal follows. Frank undresses Sal and guides her to the bed. She strips and lowers herself beside Sal, who lies as still and cool as the sliver of moon peeking in the window.

Frank strokes and soothes her as if she is a spooked horse, and Sal softens beneath her. She presses into Frank's touch, tentative at first, then eager. Frank stokes the burning hunger. She leads Sal to the edge of satiety, then backs her down, only to climb her back to the brink and keep her there, quivering but silent, until Sal breaks and floods against her, into her and upon her, and Frank lets go and falls, falls from a great wine-dark height over mountains down through fire-glowing canyons and red-breaking sea, falling down, down deep into the lightless, soundless hold of the bone.

For a long moment, Frank is nothingness. Not thought, sensation, sight, or sound. She floats in dark and empty fullness. Slowly she surfaces to the moonlit room. Sal is motionless beside her, eyes on the ceiling. They glisten in the little light. Frank reaches, but Sal moves away. She sits on the edge of the bed. The moon holds her in silhouette. “I need to be alone.”

She rises and finds her clothes, closes the door softly behind her. Frank falls back, needled with doubt, but she doesn't believe that Sal is dangerous or a flight risk. To be safe, she finds her pack and feels out the Beretta. She lays it on the bedside table and tugs her clothes on. Sal can have her privacy, but Frank will keep vigil. She fluffs the pillow against the wall and leans into it. The room is cold, and she flips the bedspread over her legs. Determined to keep watch with the stars, Frank is asleep within minutes.

Chapter 38

“Shit!”

Frank throws off the bedspread. Though stiff from the saddle and mantling over Sal, she is instantly on her feet, taking in the silence, the fact that it is still dark. Pulling on shoes she glances at her watch. Almost four a.m.. Frank swears again.

The door to Sal's room hangs wide, the bed smooth and unused. Sal isn't in the cabin. Frank peers through the window at the fire. It has burned to a bed of coals. The chairs in front of it empty. None of the dogs are around, and she feels a prick of alarm. She opens the cabin door quietly, but it's enough for Bone to hear. He whines urgently. Hair rises on the nape of her neck as she realizes the dogs are in the pen.

She jogs the moon-swept ground between cabin and barn. Buttons lifts her head and nickers a soft inquiry. Dune is gone. She runs her hand along the wall where the Winchester hangs. There is only rough wood and an empty nail.

She runs back to the cabin, slapping a light on as she enters. Only then does she see the envelopes on the table. Three, laid in a row. Addressed
Pete
,
Cassie
, and
Frank
. She tears her envelope open and reads the folded letter. She reads it a second time, then shuts off the light and returns to the still dark yard. The dogs whine as she paces the fire pit.

Frank runs to the barn. She saddles Buttons and trots her across the yard to the restless dogs. She turns them loose and mounts. The five of them cross the light-bled field at a gallop. As they near the hulking foot of the mountain, Frank slows to let the dogs lead the way. She gives Buttons rein, urging her at a trot behind the dogs.
The landscape is black and blacker, yet the trail gleams a lighter black between brush and rock. The dogs strain to keep ahead of Buttons, their breath pumping and ragged. Kook struggles to stay alongside but falls behind. Frank swears and reins the horse. She jumps down, scoops the heaving dog and plants him against the pommel. Buttons sidesteps, rearing her head in protest, but Frank keeps a tight hold. The horse steadies and she lifts herself into the saddle. Settling Kook in her lap, she tells the big dogs, “Go on! Go!”

They turn and run ahead. The trail narrows into the side of a cliff and she recognizes where they are. One foot dangling the verge, the other bumping into brush, she hopes to Christ that Buttons' night vision is as good as Sal says it is. It appears to be—until a rock clatters beneath a hoof. Buttons stumbles, quickly righting herself, and Frank almost pisses in the saddle. Her hand is cramped white on the pommel, the other wets Kook with sweat. Suddenly Buttons pulls up short. She lifts her head and whinnies. An answering whinny comes, then the sound of hooves striking rock. The dark shapes of Cicero and Bone back toward her as the bulk of a horse materializes round the cliff face.

“For fuck's sake.”

The horses stand at an impasse.

“Go on!” Frank waves an arm at Dune. “Go on! Hyah! Git! Go!”

Dune nickers uncertainly and steps toward her.

“No!”

She pushes Buttons a step forward. Caught between the two horses, Cicero tries to slink between Buttons' legs.

“Cicero, no!” Frank yells. “Stay!”

Remarkably the dog stops and sits. Frank grabs a bush sprouting off the cliff and snaps off a branch. She brandishes it at Dune and forces Buttons to take a step. The dogs squirm in a tight circle.

“Yah!” she screams. “Goddamnit, move!”

The horse whinnies but doesn't budge. Swearing again, she leans into the cliff and digs out a crumbly handful of rock. She hurls it in Dune's direction, and the horse takes a faltering, backward step. She grabs another handful of rock and flings it, yelling for the dogs to go. They each make a nervous move toward Dune. Frank spurs Buttons behind them. Dune whinnies his fear and tries to come forward, but
Frank screams and throws her branch. The horse hesitates, feeling his way into reverse. She yells Dune into a tentative step, then another, recalling Sal's assurance that horses don't want to die any more than she does.

Dune is making slow but steady progress, until he slips. His rear end slews from the trail and his hooves clack on bare granite. She hears them drag and scrape and Dune heaving in loud, heavy grunts, but the dark mass of him continues sinking over the verge. He makes a final lunge but can't gain the ledge. Dune falls, screaming, and Buttons echoes his scream. She dances on the skinny trail and Frank weakly kicks her, turning her reins into the cliff. Buttons takes a reluctant step, then stops and screams again. Frank jabs heels into her ribs and Buttons dances backwards.