The Bird Saviors (18 page)
    Elray returns to the road and squats down low, the asphalt still covered with hail. He finds broken glass from both headlights and turn- signal plastic covers amid the strewn hay. Where'd the illegals get all this hay? he asks the troopers.
    They stare at him. Same place they got the semiautomatic weapons, says the blond. Retail most likely.
Where would you buy hay around here?
I don't know. Farm- supply place?
    Ranchers make their own hay in this valley. Leastways when they have enough rain.
    You saying ranchers did it?
    I'm saying it was someone or a group of someones who knows a rancher who has access to hay. By the size of these tire tracks they had a big flatbed here. Elray squats again to get a look at the tread pattern. I just don't see a Mexican gang getting easy access to a flatbed full of hay. Without we'd hear about it.
    Mex drug gangs do whatever they want, whenever. And kill when they want too.
    Elray stands to leave. Well, then. I guess you two got things covered and figured out. He smiles like he's giving them the finger. I thank you for all your help. Maybe I'll be seeing you in church sometime.
    I don't see how this is any business of yours, says the blond trooper. Aren't there enough crimes in Pueblo to keep you busy?
    Oh, we make out.
    That's what I hear. The cop smirks. In fact, what I hear, it's a hellhole.
B e c c a  w e a r s  a corduroy jacket that belongs to Crowfoot and her dark hair spills over the collar, down her back. She brushes it away from her face and cheeks, showing off a pair of silver crucifix earrings. By the campfire she tells him the whole story. Why she ended up in Little Pueblo, shackled to a kitchen counter, kneading bread and swatting flies. She gets excited as she talks, waving her hands in the air and mimicking Jack Brown's weakness, complaining how they were treating his "girlfriend" rough.
    Crowfoot doesn't comment except to laugh when she tells about mock- swallowing the ring. It is a cloudless June night. The tang of piñon and sage in the nearby gullies. On the eastern plains below the mesa city lights shine and shimmer, while Crowfoot and Becca face the north star, with the Big Dipper pointing toward it on one side and the witch's signature of Cassiopeia on the other.
    And when he gave you to the Saints and kept you hostage, you never gave up the ring?
    No way, says Becca. He threatened me with all kinds of things, but I wouldn't give in. That's how I ended up at the compound. They said I owed them eight thousand dollars plus interest, so they wrote up this contract and made me sign it, saying I'd work off the debt.
    I thought it was supposedly worth twenty thousand?
    Even Saints aren't that stupid.
    Crowfoot adds a juniper branch to the fire. What happened to it then?
    The ring? I hid it. It's in an undisclosed location near the motel where I was staying. I was lucky to squirrel it away. Two minutes after I did it, Jack Brown showed up with a couple of his goon friends and grabbed me in the parking lot.
    Crowfoot stands and walks over to a pyramid of split wood stacked near the trailer porch. He collects a handful of white aspen pieces and returns to the fire, adds a couple to the smoldering branches. After a moment the aspen begins to crackle and flame, casting an orange glow on Becca's face. The smoke swirls and shifts direction, heading her way. She stands and steps back from the smoke, her shadow oversized and dramatic against the walls of the trailer.
    You should give it back, says Crowfoot.
    Becca steps farther away from the campfire and her shadow shrinks against the trailer wall. She rubs her eyes and walks in a wide circle around the fire, staying behind Crowfoot. She watches as he gathers his long black hair to loop a hair tie around it.
    People are always telling me what to do. Especially men.
    Crowfoot finishes putting his hair in a ponytail. She watches his slow, careful movements and waits for him to say something. He picks up another piece of split aspen and pokes at the fire, says, My eyes are burning. This fire's too smoky.
    Everything smells like smoke. My hair, my clothes, my skin, says Becca. Here I am holed up in the mountains like an outlaw and I smell bad and I have some Indian guru telling me I should give up the only thing I own that's worth anything.
    Medicine man, says Crowfoot.
    What?
   Â
Medicine man
is what I should be called. He turns to her and smiles, the campfire glow casting his wide face and sharp nose in shadow and light, like the features of a carved talisman. I'm a licensed Arapaho medicine man.
Medicine man
is what I should be called. He turns to her and smiles, the campfire glow casting his wide face and sharp nose in shadow and light, like the features of a carved talisman. I'm a licensed Arapaho medicine man.
    And you think I should give back that ring? After all the trouble I've gone through because of it.
    Crowfoot shrugs. It's just my opinion. Don't worry yourself. People have opinions.
    Well, yes, they do. And maybe they should keep them to themselves.
    He looks at her and smiles again. After all this time? I thought you wanted some feedback.
    You thought wrong, she says.
    He nods. The fire burns brighter, the split aspen aflame and the branches no longer smoldering. You hungry?
    Maybe.
    Think you could eat elk?
    Becca laughs and shakes her head. I smell like smoke and sweat and juniper and bacon grease. I'm using the bathroom in a lime pit on a cliff face. And I think I missed my period. Can I eat elk? I don't see why the hell not.
    Crowfoot looks at her for a long time, a softening expression on his shadowed face. I like the way you smell, he says. You smell like a woman who has more on her mind than shopping.
    I don't even know what that word means, she says.
    He stands up and heads toward the trailer. One elk steak coming up, he says.
    Becca sits by the fire, watching the embers pulse and glow like stars in another galaxy. In a minute Crowfoot is back with meat wrapped in wax paper.
    And what was that about you missing a period? he asks.
    I'm three weeks late, she says. I don't know. Maybe it's just a scare.
    I'm not scared, he says. He leans down and kisses her forehead. I've always wanted to be called Daddy.
    She keeps her head down but can't help but smile. You might just get that wish, hot stuff.
The next morning Becca lies alone in bed, feeling peckish and put out. A russet glow is visible outside her window. Just after dawn. She hears Crowfoot rattling around outside, but she stays in bed, sulking. She tells herself that today she's going to leave, that she's not going to have anything more to do with George Armstrong Crowfoot, no matter how charming and New Age sexy he can be. If she's with child, she'll go to a clinic and never look back.
    George is getting on her nerves. Waking her at dawn, telling her what to do, making enough noise to wake the dead. The bedroom of his tin- can trailer smells like horse and he doesn't even own one. The outhouse is a hike and when you get there, you have to hold your nose.
    She lies in his horse- smelling bed for a good fifteen minutes, trying to get back to sleep, trying to deny her hunger, trying to pretend that the day has not yet begun. Outside her window there's a sound of chopping. Rhythmic and quick.
    When she can't take it anymore, Becca pulls on a sweater and crouches on the bed to look out the window. George has his hair down, an ax in his hand, facing the other direction. She feels as if she's spying on an untamed animal. Like a nature program on PBS. It must be 40 degrees out there and he's wearing a western shirt and jeans.
    There's a thin line between brute strength and brute. Crowfoot is so strong he's scary. She notices how he can wield that long ax one- handed. Living with him all alone on this cliffside, she gets a spooky feeling now and then, knowing he could split her head like a watermelon with that ax and no one would be the wiser.
    Crowfoot's movements are unhurried, graceful, exact. He places a bucked log of aspen on his chopping block, spreads his legs wide, and swings the ax in a quick and fluid arc. The log splits, and he calmly picks up the pieces and splits them as well until the pieces are thin white staves. When he's done with the first log, he grabs another and starts on it.
    She watches, half fascinated and half disgusted. He looks like the kind of man who would chop off a chicken's head like it was nothing. He gets a pile together and squats over his campfire, stirring the coals. He adds a handful of tinder from a coffee can and places it in the center, leans forward to blow on the embers, and soon has a flame. The other day he told her that using paper and lighter fluid was cheating. He doesn't cheat. He's so competent it irks her.
    Becca gets up and puts on her clothes, keeping her eye on Crowfoot through the window. She half wants him to come inside and apologize, then beg her to get back into bed. He doesn't do that. He squats beside the fire and nurses it, and she sees that he has a skillet and a pound of bacon in a wax- paper bundle on a rock nearby. She walks into the kitchen, makes a pot of coffee on the Coleman stove.
    Crowfoot comes in and smiles at her as she hands him a cup. You're an angel, he says, then reaches into his Igloo ice chest for his creamer.
    He has his back to her, stirring his cup of coffee, when she says, I want to thank you for everything, but I'm starting to feel kind of stir- crazy. I've thought about this over and over. So I've decided I don't care anymore about what the Saints might do, I'd like to head down the mountain today. I mean, if you could give me a ride to Pueblo, I'd appreciate it. It's time I get on with my life.
    No problem, says Crowfoot. But you think you could do me a favor?
    What? she asks. You want me to give you the ring and let you sell it? For rent?
    Crowfoot laughs. I was hoping you'd help me carry some things to the cliff face. I haven't done any work on it in a couple weeks and I've got the itch.
    Oh, sure, she says. I'm sorry. I was just kidding.
    He nods and ambles outside. She follows and finds him staring at the flames, a half smile on his lips. Let's have a little breakfast first.
    I'm starving, says Becca.
    Good. I like a starving woman.
    Why? Because they're desperate?
    He grins. Desperate, thankful. What's the difference?
    Good manners, she says. Plus a kiss on the cheek.
    Crowfoot nods. Now you're talking. He lays out strips of bacon in the skillet. It starts to sizzle, filling the fire smoke with the bacon smell. Get a little food in your belly and you'll be a whole new wonderful.
    Becca huddles in her sweater and shakes her head, unable to hide a smile.
    What? asks Crowfoot.
    Don't you go trying to get on my good side.
    After breakfast Crowfoot mixes three pails of clay with red, black, and yellow pigment. It has the texture of watery mud. In an old paint can he carries a half- dozen brushes. He hands one of the pails to Becca and heads toward the painted face without a word. She follows behind him, watching his footsteps, his long hair blowing in the cold wind. The ledge that looked narrow and nightmarish is safer than it seemed that first night and is wide as a decent footpath.
    It's still unnerving: To the north there's a hundred- foot drop broken only by buffalo- sized boulders and jagged cliff spires. In the tight spots Becca keeps her eyes on her feet and follows Crowfoot until the ledge opens up to the width of a road, and on the left is the low- ceilinged wind cave with Crowfoot's petroglyphs in a row above it.
    He heads to the end of the forty- foot- long mural and arranges the pails of clay, explaining that he's putting them where both of them can reach all the colors.
    You can mix the colors together if you want, he adds. He picks up a plywood scrap that has dried clay on it. I've used this before to make a purple.
    Becca puts her hands on her hips and walks up and down the mural. I don't know, she says. It's your project. What if I screw it up?
    You can't screw it up.
You don't know that.
    Yes, I do. Besides, I don't think of it as my project. It's a mural, a painted cliff. I shouldn't be the only one working on it. It's kind of hollow and lonely that way, isn't it?
    I don't know. Maybe.
    Crowfoot dips a brush into the pail. So quit your yappin' and get to work.
    What do you want me to paint? asks Becca.
    It's not a matter of what I want you to paint. It's what you want.
    That's a lot of pressure.
    Oh, Jesus. Crowfoot makes a wide arc of red, daubs a series of dots below it. He adds more swirls that look like wind.
    The pink snowstorm, says Becca.
    Crowfoot keeps working, his back to her. By his silence, Becca thinks she's guessed right. That he thinks they should not talk, only work.
    After a while she gets to it, doing her best to draw a buffalo headâ in profile, with great black horns and clouds of smoke puffing out its nose. Inside the lines of the buffalo's head she places a yellow ring with rays shooting off it to convey its brightness. She doesn't have any white to show the diamond, but at least the yellow represents the gold band. Halfway through it she calls out to Crowfoot, Why do you say I should give the ring back?
    He keeps his eyes on his work but shrugs. That rock is worthless. It's got bad energy. All it's good for is greed.
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