The Bird Saviors (15 page)

    They could but they won't. You left your daughter and that's how it stands.

    I left you. There's plenty of house for the two of you here.

    The three of us, he says.

    I know you'll do the right thing about Ruby and Lila.

    If you know that, why did you leave?

    Juliet backs away from Lila's crib and leaves John standing in the shadows. In the kitchen she puts the kettle on for tea. She stands at the window, looking out at the trio of aspens, her favorites. The leaves are shaped like green hearts, casting lovely shadows on the woodshed. A Robin perches in the upper branches, and as Juliet stands there lost in thought, a Flycatcher swoops out of the lower branches to feed off insects that hover around the wet patch of earth beside the water faucet.

    Beyond the aspens and woodshed stretch the reddish prairie fields with parched grass and yucca. It's a landscape she has seen many years of her life, as she stood here washing dishes. She misses it. The view out the kitchenette window of her apartment in town looks out on a liquor- store parking lot. Here beyond the prairie loom the gentle ridges of the Sierra Mojada. The presence of mountains in the distance has always felt like the promise of things to come, a sense of hope.

    John shuffles down the hall and into the kitchen. She knows this without turning, his presence always behind her, a part of her life left behind.

    I said why did you leave?

    John? Why are you doing this?

    Doing what?

    Dredging up all the past?

    Because I want to know. Because it's not the past.

    It is. I don't live here anymore.

    Tell me what to do, he pleads. Tell me what I did wrong. Tell me how to make it right.

    Don't play stupid. You know. I left because I couldn't stand living here any longer.

    You act like there's only one way. Like I can't change.

    Can you?

    I don't know. If I thought it was the right thing. If I needed to.

    You don't think you need to.

    Maybe you can change my mind?

    Don't start that. I'll leave if you don't give me some peace. And I mean here. Right now.

    Calm down.

Don't tell me to calm down.

    From the hallway comes the sound of Lila crying. Juliet goes toward her first without a word. John follows. Lila is standing in her crib, tears in her eyes, her black hair matted on one side where she has slept.

    What's the matter, angel? asks Juliet. Did you have a bad dream?

    Lila whimpers and holds her arms out. Juliet lifts her in her arms and kisses her cheek. Oh, there, there, she says. It's not that bad, is it?

    Lila nods and burrows her face against Juliet's neck.

    What do you have to give you bad dreams? It wasn't the Donkey Woman come to take you away from Grandmommy, was it?

    Lila stops crying and gives a half smile. She shakes her head.

    I didn't think so. Was it a coyote wearing cowboy boots? Juliet nibbles at Lila's ear. Did he try to bite your ear like this?

    Lila giggles and squirms. She shakes her head again.

    Juliet smiles at John, who has come to stand beside them. He ruffles Lila's hair and tugs on her other ear.

    Well, then, says Juliet. If it's not the Donkey Woman or a coyote in cowboy boots, I think you're going to live.

    Cookie, says Lila. Cookie duck duck.

    She wants one of the Nilla Wafers in the duck cookie jar, says John. She's crazy for those things.

    Then let's go find a cookie duck duck, says Juliet.

    She carries Lila to the kitchen, where the lighting seems to have dimmed. The back door shudders and a fine spray of dust sifts through the cracks of the doorjamb. Out the window a clay- brown cloud of dust roils across the prairie toward them. Juliet finds the Daffy Duck cookie jar and takes a handful of Nilla Wafers. Lila yelps with delight. As soon as Juliet hands her a cookie, she smiles and her eyes go wide and electric with joy.

    I hope Ruby isn't out counting birds in this duster, says John.

    Lila makes a face and reaches into her mouth, removes a masticated lump of wafer, and drops it on the floor. She reaches her hands into the air and starts to whine.

    What is it, baby? asks Juliet. I don't know what you want.

    Lila continues to whine, drops her head, and huddles into Juliet's thighs, whimpering.

    She wants her pacifier, says John. She can't go five minutes without having that thing in her mouth. She's still teething. It makes her feel better.

    Juliet finds a pacifier beside the kitchen sink and waves it in front of Lila's face. Look here, look here. Is this what you want?

    Lila smiles when she sees it, grabs the pacifier, and plops it into her mouth.

    That's what I do all day, says John. He smiles. It beats getting your head shot at in the desert. Or playing Ping- Pong on one leg.

    I clean up dog crap is what I do. Juliet rubs the back of her neck. Not all the time, of course. But maybe too often.

    John puts a teakettle on the stove. I thought you were the one who wanted to work. You were the one who thought working for a vet would be fun.

    I didn't say fun.

    What'd you say? Rewarding?

It is. Sometimes.

    Juliet? The word out of John's voice sounds odd, off- kilter. As if he were trying to speak another language. Juliet? What can I do? Tell me what is and I'll do it. In a heartbeat.

    What do you mean?

    You know what I mean. What can I do to bring you back? I don't want to live this way. We've been married for eighteen years. And you know I love you. Doesn't that count for anything?

    Juliet doesn't reply. She watches the teakettle boil and puts an animal cracker in Lila's mouth. You want a cup of tea?

    I can do that.

    They sit down at the table and both smile at Lila and stroke her face, giving her animal crackers, hiding the pacifier behind the sugar bowl.

    Isn't she the prettiest thing ever? says Juliet.

    She is. John rubs the spot where his prosthesis connects to his thigh. She's a little angel is what she is.

A f t e r  C r o w f o o t  r e s c u e s  Becca Cisneros from the Saints, he takes her to his trailer, leaves her there alone, and explains nothing.

    Hang loose, he says. I've got errands to run, but I'll be back.

    What am I supposed to do? she asks.

    Nothing, he says. Relax. I'll be back with something for dinner.

    I can cook, she says.

    He frowns. That sounds like work, right? You've been working

enough. I think you'll be safe here for a few days. There's no lock and key. You want to leave, it's your choice.

    That's an improvement, then, she says. Maybe I'll just lay low here for a few days, you think?

    He nods. I think.

    She watches him leave, his beaten truck bouncing over the rocky driveway, disappearing behind a ridgeline of junipers as it switchbacks down the mesa. Becca senses he's a badass but a good man, the kind who gets misunderstood, easy- like. She's heard his name before, and placed him in her mind as something of a legend, like the blind circus knife thrower El Ciego or the Donkey Woman.

    Turkey vultures float by the windows, catching updrafts out of the valley below, their raggedy black wings and ugly red heads stark against the blue sky. Alone in his trailer, she doesn't know what to do with herself. Liberated from a work camp into a hermit's nest.

    She cleans his kitchen and straightens his living room. She finds a pile of oil- stained rags and wipes the sandstone dust from everything and sweeps the floor. She scrapes old bacon grease off his stove. She doesn't go near his bedroom.

    Early evening he comes home and looks around. What the heck? he asks. I seem to have misplaced some coffee stains and dirt clods.

    I take that as a thank you very much, says Becca. If not I'll beat you with a broom.

    She sits in a folding chair and watches clouds roil out of the Sangre de Cristo mountains. The metal chairs perch beside a wooden cable spool used as a table. Everything is makeshift and functional. Atop Wild Horse Mesa, the trailer sits in the shadow of a cliff face above Cañon City. There's no running water. She has to hike a short ways to the outhouse perched above a shallow rock pit.

    He has no electricity except a sheet of solar panels on the roof hooked to a pair of truck batteries, plus an arc of solar lawn lights in front of the trailer. I've been off the grid for years, he tells her. They say the oil is going to run out and the power plants close. Okay, then. He smiles. Bring it on. I'm ready.

    At dusk Crowfoot builds a fire in a pit of blackened stones at the foot of the cliff face where the trailer is tucked. Soon the solar lights leak their blue glow into the air and flames of the campfire toss their shadows against the sandstone cliff face. It seems they're living in a time beyond work shortages and immigration wars.

    Lightning zigzags over the plains, over the old Arapaho lands now full of cattle ranchland and dry crops, all of it parched with drought. Crowfoot cuts an onion and takes a pound of ground meat from the ice chest that serves as his refrigerator, puts the onion and meat in a cast- iron skillet on the fire, stirs it with a rough- hewn wooden spoon he carved himself.

    Can I help? asks Becca.

    At first he doesn't respond. She's about to repeat the offer when he says, What say you clean up after.

    It's a deal, she says. What are you making?

    Sloppy joes. He offers her a rare smile. You ever had buffalo?

    He places a foil- wrapped bundle of tortillas on the hot stones

at the fire's edge. After a few minutes he flips them with his bare hands, wincing and waving his fingers in the air. Then he yanks them from the stone and opens the foil, rubs a stick of butter on one, rolls it up, and hands it to her.

    Appetizer, he says.

    She eats a half- dozen tortillas like this, licking the butter from her fingers. The moonless night opens before them like a black hole. There's a sharp drop- off at the cliff edge not twenty paces from the pit.

    When Becca steps away from the flames' glow she looks up at the black velvet sky. Above her the Milky Way flows like a powdered- sugar river of other suns. After two months as a polygamist captive, she feels the cool air on her face, the stars in her hair, like proof of the world's wheeling.

    You're welcome to sleep on the sofa, says Crowfoot. It might be a bit dusty. But I got a spare pillow and a good wool serape. He grins. Actually, it's a horse blanket.

    Do I look like a horse? she asks.

    He squints one eye and cocks his head. What about a pony? Graceful and high- spirited?

    You're a sweet talker, says Becca. And yes, she adds. The sofa will be fine. Besides, I can't thank you enough. You saved me. I won't forget that. Ever.

    Crowfoot shrugs. Whenever you save a person, it doesn't end there. It's like you're tied together the rest of your life.

    I'll pay you back somehow.

    You make dinner tomorrow night, he says. We'll call it even.

    Okay, she says. We won't be even. But we can pretend.

    After dinner a gibbous moon rises, swollen and bright above the eastern plain. Crowfoot says, Come here a sec. I got something I bet you never seen the likes of.

    He leads her away from the trailer, along the sandstone cliff face on an ever- narrowing ledge. They find their way in the moonlight. He leads the way and she follows. At one point he turns and says, It gets kind of tight here. You best hold on.

    He hooks her hands to his wide leather belt and slows for a moment. In the pale blue moonlight Becca sees they're on a cliff edge no more than four feet wide, with a good forty- foot drop to a jumbled talus slope below. They shuffle on.

    You scared? he asks.

    A little.

    Don't be. I wouldn't let you fall.

    I know.

    I saved you, remember? He says this with a hint of humor in his voice. Wouldn't make sense to tumble off a cliff after all that, would it?

    I guess not, she whispers.

    The ledge widens. After what seems a long passage they reach a hollow in the cliff face. Crowfoot removes a wooden pole jammed into a crevice, takes a butane lighter from his pocket, and lights the end of it. The torch burns fitfully for a moment, but he rolls it this way and that until it burns smoothly and casts a smoky flame.

    A little art project of mine, he says, holding the torch against the cliff face.

    Becca stands for a moment, spellbound, until she realizes her mouth is open and her eyes sting from being kept wide.

What in the world, she says. I mean, amazing. You did all this?

    No big deal, says Crowfoot. Like I said, it's a project. Been working on it three years now.

    On the cliff face before them, illuminated by the smoking torch, stretches a tableau of petroglyphs. The figures are palm- sized or bigger, in arching rows, rough but recognizable figures of cars and planes and trains and explosions. In the lowest left corner is a figure of stylized towers in flame, into which two planes crash. Beside it a giant wave. Farther down the wall a circle with a long tail to symbolize the great comet.