Wild Penance (6 page)

As I closed in behind him, I heard a little whine in his breathing, a high-pitched plea from his lungs for rest. He cut to the left, passing behind the restroom building, and I was right on his heels.

Suddenly, a fast-moving black shadow flew from behind the back wall and delivered a breath-propelling blow to my abdomen that sent me reeling backward. The air from my lungs rushed on before me in a spray of fine white mist.
Whhhoooossshhhhh.

I hit the ground, the impact jarring my spine, my brain disconnecting as suddenly as a downed power line. I couldn’t move for a minute; all communication between mind and body had been interrupted. Then I began to reconnect . . . and wish I hadn’t. Oh, my back! It hurt the worst—that and my head, which must have hit hard. But I was okay. I sat up. Nothing broken. I was still slightly stunned as the cloud slowly cleared in my head, my senses gradually reengaging. I sat for a few seconds, looking around me, reading out my body’s messages. I was all right.

I took my time getting up and heard two car doors slam near the highway,
ka-thunk!
Then the roar of an engine as the car sped off to the west, toward Tres Piedras. I started back to my Jeep. Its doors were still yawing open from the robbery I had interrupted just minutes before. I saw my bag on the ground where the thieves had ditched it. I picked it up and went through it. Everything was still there—my wallet, credit cards, even the small amount of cash inside. I looked in the car. My handgun was still locked in the glove box, undisturbed. The standard car stereo and BLM radio remained intact on the dash. I looked in the floor of the backseat. My shotgun and rifle rested in place. I checked the rear cargo area. My backpack had been rifled through, but nothing was missing. Nothing of value had been taken.

Confused, I stopped looking through the cargo area and straightened, the backpack still dangling from my hand. I scanned in every direction, studying the panorama around me for answers. The pink light had fled across the mesa and left a soft mauve blanket over the desert. A solitary truck rumbled across the gorge bridge, its rear lights creating a neon reflection along the silver railing of the structure that stretched out like a fiber-optic red tail. And way out in the lap of the big mountain that shelters Taos from the blistering cold northern winds that sweep down the spine of the Rockies, tiny lights twinkled on as night overtook day. Suddenly I felt a stab of white-hot burning in my chest as I realized what was gone.

My book! They had stolen my book!

Summoned

When I went to the command center tent to report the theft, the deputy on duty seemed relieved to have a visitor to break the monotony of his evening. But he was not particularly excited about taking a report on the theft of my book, especially when he learned that all the valuables that normally would have been stolen had been left intact. I recalled Jerry Padilla’s warning not to talk to anyone except the task force members about the incident that morning, so I didn’t mention what the book was about, or that I thought the theft of it could possibly be tied in some way to the crime that had occurred earlier that day. I decided I would wait and let Padilla know that the next time we talked.

I headed west to my cabin, which sat alone in the pines on a remote piece of property that backed to forested foothills and Forest Service land. As I drove up my long dirt drive, my headlights illuminated something white pinned to the door. I killed the lights, then the engine, stopping thirty yards from the house. I reached into the glove box, took out my handgun and readied it, then slid silently out the driver’s side and eased the car door shut. I panned the property in front of my cabin from east to west. No sign of anyone; however, it was so dark I couldn’t see far. I crouched low as I made my way on foot to the end of the drive. I stepped up on the porch, scanning the ground around my place once again, but there was no one in sight. Still holding my pistol up in both hands, I walked to the door. A note written with black marker on a white paper towel had been secured to the wooden door with several pushpins. It was too dark to make out the fuzzy letters where the ink had bled into the fibrous paper, so I opened the door of my cabin and flipped on the light. I scanned the one main room before I glanced at the note. It read:

I gave a sigh of relief. I knew Bennie. Bennie was a friend. This was the kind of thing Bennie did.

But just the same, perhaps because of the other events of the day, I didn’t relax until I crossed through the main room to the pass-through hallway on the other side that led to the bathroom—a shed-style addition that had been added on years after the original one-room cabin had been built. I looked in the narrow closet on one side of the hall as I went through, checked behind the shower curtain in the bathroom. No one there.

I went back outside and pulled my Jeep to the end of the drive, turning it around to face nose-out, ready to go, the way I always parked. I got my shotgun and rifle out of the back and grabbed the little cloth pouch that Momma Anna had given me with the prune pies in it. After I took all this inside, I went back once more for my backpack, boots, and duty clothes, and I took my sidearm with me when I went.

It was a rare night outside of the months of July and August that I didn’t want a fire in the woodstove at night. Here in mountainous northern New Mexico, the sunny days of early April held the promise of spring, but the nights clung to the cloak of winter. I opened the doors to the firebox and stirred the ashes around with a little shovel until I saw a few coals from last night’s fire pulse red. I left the doors open to let air onto the glowing coals, threw in a handful of twigs for kindling, and laid a couple logs on top of that. Next, I took the cast-iron kettle to the kitchen sink, filled it with water and set it on top of the woodstove, then got the mug I’d washed after my morning coffee and put a little pouch of tea in it for when the water came to a boil.

After washing up and putting on some old sweatpants and a hoodie, I sat down in the chair in front of the woodstove with my tea and the two little pies Momma Anna had given me.

This cabin was my haven, even if it wasn’t mine. I rented it from a Denver landscape designer who had inherited the land from his family and had no interest in living or vacationing here—too isolated. There was no water, but I paid someone to haul it to the cistern every other month, and I had learned to be frugal in my use of the precious substance. I had electricity, but there were no phone lines anywhere near me, and the mountains made getting a cell phone signal here impossible. Nor was there any point in trying to watch television, as there weren’t enough residents in this remote area to make providing services like that worthwhile. None of this bothered me. I had learned to love the quiet, and I liked my own company.

I sat in my chair, sore where I had hit the ground and from whatever had hit me. The events of the day replayed in my mind, beginning with the vision of the man on the cross—upside down—soaring silently into the gorge. I shuddered at the memory, and my mind wandered on to Momma Anna’s strange assignment and the stone she called the “Old One.” I got up and went to get the tiny black river rock out of the pocket of my jeans. I brought it back to my chair and rubbed the smooth surface between my thumb and index finger as I remembered the startled faces of the three men I caught going through my Jeep. All three looked Hispanic, in their forties, plainly dressed in jackets and jeans. What on earth did they want with my book?

I ate my pies and I drank my tea. And as the quiet of the night and the fatigue of the day settled on me, I grieved the loss of my book. It was the only copy I had, all those hours given to it gone now, and for nothing.

Father Ignacio had been right. I was lonely. Right then, I yearned for the book like a lost love. I wanted to pick it up, to feel the smooth, cool deerskin cover. I tried to remember how many shrines I had mapped, which ones I had sketched. I went through the book in my mind, page by page, trying to see what I had written.

The names the father had given me were in the stolen book. One of them was the tract by Padre Martínez, I remembered that. But for the life of me, I could not remember the other name. I tried to remember it as I sat there, staring at nothing, twisting at the ends of my hair with my finger, unable to think of anything else for the moment. Or perhaps not wanting to think of anything else, grateful for the distraction.

Finally I got up and took my mug and the cloth towel to the sink and set them on the counter beside it. On the table was the paper towel I had taken off of the door. I held it up and read again the curious summons from Bennie. What did “Woman down” mean? I would have to find out tomorrow.

Bennie

I woke the next morning with a plan. I was going to start over on my book, do it all again. And this time, make copies of everything.

I brewed some coffee while I took a shower, then sat at my table and ate a bowl of cereal while I made a list of things to do that day before starting my night ride duty. I packed my backpack with items I would need. The first thing on my to-do list was to go see Bennie.

The red dirt parking lot in front of the Golden Gecko was deeply rutted from the snowmelt. As I rode the dips, I jounced and jostled in my seat. A row of five pickups lined the front part of the building near the door. The pink and blue neon Open sign buzzed in the one small window, and the plain plastered face of the adobe building basked in the bright morning sunlight. The only other sign was a big carved wooden gecko mounted on a post by the road. It had once been painted all over with gold enamel, but the paint had peeled and flaked off in patches, making the place’s namesake look more like a spotted salamander.

When I opened the car door, I felt the sting of clear, cold air on my face, and the bright sun hurt my eyes. I squinted and got out, narrowly missing a puddle of red clay and icy water. The smell of grilled chorizo, onions, and peppers wafted from the groaning grease fan on the roof. I walked toward the entry and heard the faint sound of a jukebox.

When I pulled open the heavy door, the sound grew louder and I made out the harmonies of Los Lonely Boys serenading through the speakers. Inside, the Gecko was like a dark cave. I stopped to let my eyes adjust until I could see more than the neon beer signs over the bar. The aroma of warm tortillas and breakfast burritos mixed with the sour smell of last night’s stale beer in the closed room.

On the left was the black, yawning mouth of the empty, unlit stage. In front of it, in disorderly rows, stood tiny tables with chairs upturned on them. Built in the late 1950s, the Golden Gecko was a famous nightclub in its heyday. Film crews maintained an almost constant presence in northern New Mexico then, unable to supply enough westerns to meet the seemingly insatiable demand. The Gecko, conveniently located on a two-lane blacktop near several scenic film locations, served as a watering hole and recreational outlet for the casts and crews and attracted brand-name celebrities as both entertainment and clientele. But in the sixties, the glamour of westerns began to wane, and with it, the Golden Gecko. Since then, the place had been alternately closed and opened for long periods of time, resurrecting and then dying in a variety of incarnations: a strip club, a dinner theater, even an exercise and dance studio. The Gecko was now open in a dual role: as a restaurant through the week and as a club featuring rock and country bands on the weekend.

A group of men, mostly Anglos, were sitting at the tables in the right half of the room, talking loudly among themselves, guffawing over something one of them had said. They turned to look at me when I came in, and a little wave of sniggering and elbowing erupted as I felt their eyes scanning my figure. There is something about dark places that makes some men forget that they have daughters or sisters or mothers. Or manners.

I walked across to the counter. I could feel grit under my boots from all the mud the breakfast crowd had tracked in. White diner plates stained orange from red chili shared the tables with wadded-up napkins and plastic soda cups. The men were now silent, all eyes on me. I nodded as I came close. One of them nodded back.

There was no one behind the bar. I heard dishes clatter in the kitchen, so I stepped around the end of the counter and went on back. A man leaned over the grill, spritzing it with a spray bottle then swabbing it with a rag, sending up a hissing cloud of chlorine-scented steam each time the spray hit the hot metal plate. He turned and picked up a stack of dirty plates from the island counter in the center of the kitchen and headed across the room to the dishwasher.

He hadn’t seen me, so I moved a step farther into the kitchen. When he turned around to get more dishes, he gave a start, stopping in his tracks, his eyes opening wide with surprise.
“¡Ay, señorita!”
In a thick Hispanic accent, he said, “I didn’t see you come in. You surprised me.”

“Sorry. I was just looking for Bennie.”

“Bennie went to the trailer in the back to get something.” He picked up the next stack of plates, turned away, and started rinsing and stacking them in the rack of the dishwasher.

I stood for a moment wondering what to do next—wait here or go out front and sit with the sharks. The man stole a worried glance over his shoulder at me and seemed embarrassed when I returned the look. There was something unnerving about his surreptitious peeking.

He was a large man with a barrel-shaped torso. He looked like he had done time in the ring: his nose was wide and flattened, and his lower lip was bisected by a badly healed scar. His forehead also bore a scar over one brow and to the side of one eye. He looked over his shoulder again, and when he saw that I was still there, he turned to address me directly, wiping his hands on his apron. “Señorita, what are you doing here?”