The Darkness Rolling (26 page)

Except that Adikai Begay killed him.

Both Mom and Grandpa testified at the trial. The sentence was life in prison. They thought they’d never see him again. And they took an oath never to speak his name again.

“Family secrets,” Iris said in a voice curdled with anger.

Both Grandpa and Mom nodded and touched each other’s hands.

Mom’s going to need more than that,
I thought.

Twenty-six

Grandma Frieda was waiting for us at the hospital in Santa Fe. She was a complete surprise. I’d have taken her for a Gypsy, not a Jewish lady, and for forty-five years old, not sixty. All her clothes seemed to be scarves. I wondered if she was entirely decent when the wind blew. Plus, she spewed words like a machine gun. Spewed instructions, I should say.

Two of the three women played commanding officer, Grandma Frieda and Iris. Just try to talk back to women like that—even Mom couldn’t. Half the Navajo men I knew had more than one wife. I couldn’t figure how they survived it.

We all sat in a waiting room while the doctors X-rayed, poked and probed, and then repaired Grandpa’s leg. I could hear his protests all the way down the hall.

Finally, a white-coated guy came out and introduced himself as Dr. Such-and-So. After the navy and the FBI, I had to squelch my impatience with uniforms and assertions of rank. His summary was compound fracture of the right leg, which we knew. Now the skin was stitched up and the bone set. Probably two months in a cast. And then?

The doc introduced a physical therapist who asked us questions about how much Grandpa tried to talk, how often we could understand his sounds as words, how active he was in the walker, how much he was using it, and on and on. Endless, all of it.

When we’d told him, he said that the partial progress indicated Grandpa could recover from the stroke a lot more than he had. Then he began a recitation of the treatments Grandpa needed.

Frieda and Mom took turns interrupting the man. The gist of it was that Grandpa would stay in Santa Fe as long as needed and show up for his therapy every day.

“Mr. Goldman doesn’t seem to want to do that,” the therapist told us.

Mom spoke quickest. “Mr. Goldman isn’t running this show. How long?”

“Probably six months.”

Frieda said, “A full house.” She grinned at us. “Won’t that be fun?”

When the PT guy left, I said to Mom, “It’s okay with you to close the trading post that long?”

She said, “What trading post?”

They gave Mom an appointment with a psychiatrist in two days. She shrugged. I wondered how many times she’d actually go to see him.

*   *   *

I was charmed by our family home. She was one block off the plaza, a dowager of fading grandeur.

“I could fix her up,” said Frieda. “I have the money but not the time.”

“The time!” Mom said. “What are you doing?”

“Hey! You don’t know … Saint Michael’s College,” Frieda said. Her tone changed. “So exciting. We do music, creative writing, theater, art, graphic design, movies, costumes, sets, and photography. With the talent I have, it’s perfect. I love it. And, oh, our string players.”

She embraced the whole house with spread arms. “Yes, I know. I’m sorry, you beauty, you old darling.” She shrugged. “I’ve neglected you, and you take care of me still.”

Frieda walked Mom through the rooms, one by one, Iris and I trailing behind them. There was a grand living room with a fireplace made of petrified wood from the Painted Desert. Also a genuine crystal chandelier that looked like it hadn’t been dusted in centuries, a more private sitting room, a kitchen where you could cook for fifty, a library that would serve a department of professors, a dozen bedrooms, and best of all, a walled garden with a fountain and shaded chairs. Grandpa had always wanted a walled garden at the trading post. He claimed that “walled garden,” in the language of Persia, was another expression for paradise. Mom said that a walled garden would do her more good than any psychiatrist.

She spoke of putting one of Grandpa’s rugs here and this one there, a certain pot here and a certain one there, a ceremonial basket over every door, with the traditional weaver’s path in each basket pointing east, naturally.

She would like it here.

Grandma Frieda showed me to a small bedroom on the third floor that had a panoramic view of the town.

“Beautiful,” I said.

While I was reading on the bed in the late afternoon, I heard Iris unpacking in her room, which seemed to be across the hall. I liked that. For a while I would live in a fine house in a real city.

Why make plans in this life? As soon as you do, the currents change, the wind shifts, the waves come up, and off you go where the ocean wills, for better or for much worse. But you ride the waves, you stay afloat, you survive, you thrive.

Twenty-seven

I hurried down the hallway. A rug from Belgium ran its length, and a small carved table sat in the center under a mirror.

“Seaman Goldman, please.” It was a female voice of some authority, probably a secretary to a bigwig.

“This is him.” A telephone in the downstairs entryway—imagine having a phone in your own house.

She said, “Mr. Leland Chapman, as you may know, is director of security for the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railroad.”

“Yes.” Jack Ford had called an hour ago to tell me about it. He had called the president of the railroad to recommend me as a security officer—a railroad dick! In a tone of amusement, Jack added, “Howard Hughes made the same call for you.” Probably after Jack suggested it, I thought.

The secretary continued. “Would you be available at the depot office in Lamy, New Mexico, on Tuesday next at ten
A.M.
? Mr. Chapman would like to speak with you.”

‘Tuesday next’—that was how ritzy people talked. I said, “Sure.”

Lamy was eighteen miles south of Santa Fe. Crazy but the main line of the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe didn’t go to Santa Fe, the capital of New Mexico. The last eighteen miles of mountains, they’d decided, were too steep and too rough. Either that, or the railroad magnates didn’t have what it took to build that track.

*   *   *

Somehow, during the next few days, Iris and I found time alone together to talk about what we had seen, heard, and felt. About the horrible deeds that had smashed the peace of our home, about almost losing Grandpa, Mom, and about Iris’s own near brush with death. It was all just too much to think about at once. What we both needed was comfort from another person who’d also gone through it. And that’s what Iris was—comfort, home, and warmth.

And what about her painting dreams? She had left her painting haven behind, a land that inspired her and energized her. I had left future dreams and also my past behind. New dreams were being born, but they still had small voices. I had gained Mr. John. My feelings for him crept up on me and were a surprise. Truth is, he felt like an uncle.

At noon, the day before my railroad interview, Grandpa came home from the hospital. After that, he would go to the hospital every morning. Otherwise, he was at the house. Unable to use his walker yet, but he was home and he could soak up the beauty of the walled garden, the paradise.

I had gone to a wonderful shop in Santa Fe and bought a surprise for my grandfather to keep on hand when he came home. Grandma Frieda brought out a bottle of champagne. “Welcome home, Mose!” she declared, and popped the cork.

A couple of lifts of champagne flutes all around, and the bottle was empty.

Now I brought out his real homecoming gift, a gift that was his alone. “My turn to welcome you home, Grandpa.”

I walked across the room, and I pulled it out of the closet. It wasn’t wrapped, because Grandpa couldn’t do much about wrapping paper with only one good working hand. It was a brand-new Underwood typewriter. I set it right where his plate had been.

Grandpa’s hand dived straight for his chalkboard. He wrote,
CAN
’
T.

Meaning he couldn’t type.

“You’ll learn,” I said.

Iris pulled a stack of paper from beneath her chair, her collaboration with my surprise. “One-handed peck,” she said, and rolled a blank piece of paper into the Underwood.

“And after a while two-handed,” I pitched in. “Your therapist says typing will be good exercise for your right hand.”

Grandpa studied the keys. I thought the look on his face was more surrender than eagerness. He wrote on his board,
WHAT?

Meaning, ‘What on earth would I write?’

“Write whatever you want to.”

Grandpa pulled out his chalkboard.
NO IDEAS.

“Then start here: Tell the adventure of you and The Monster.” I had decided to call my nonfather by that name, having promised Mom never to say his actual name, although I said it in my head a few times and then pushed it away. “Adikai Begay” sounded too human, too real. The man was a monster. Let him be called that.

I went on, “Tell how Monster kidnapped you, took you out to that place on the slickrock, tied you up, and abandoned you to die, slowly, of starvation and thirst.

“Then how you freed yourself, struggled one-handed and one-legged up that hill, then cut loose on a crazy ride downhill, crashing and breaking your leg.
After
you’d gotten near the road, where we couldn’t help but find you.

“It’s a heroic story, Grandpa. One that everyone in the family should know about and remember.”

He tried to say something. “Kah” came out. He tried again and managed, “eroh.”

I couldn’t guess it.

On his blackboard he wrote,
QXTE.

“Right. Exactly so. Don Quixote, sometimes comic, sometimes heroic.”

Always heroic, that seemed more like the truth to me. He gave his nutty grin.

I spread my hands. “You are the Don. Overcoming all odds, you kicked the windmill down.”

He pointed a finger at me. “Pan.”

I bowed to him. “And I, at your service, am Sancho Panza.”

With his good hand he clapped the lame one.

*   *   *

That afternoon Grandpa and I played chess. We talked. Or I talked. So many feelings to get out, dreams, stories. I would have loved to hear his voice. But some part of me liked talking and getting nothing but nods and wise looks in return. Left me free to do my own thinking, and get his nods, growls, or cheers.

“They all want to know what I’m going to decide.” He knew I meant our three women. “Go to work on the railroad or stay here and do … whatever. Sleep in Pullman cars all the time or be with my family. Stay in Santa Fe and find work or go home and reopen the trading post.”

Every day the post was closed was another day local people took their trade to Goulding’s, we all knew that. In a couple of months we’d lose most of our business. But we thought we could get it back. Goulding’s looked to sell to white people. We aimed at red people. Mom was right—there was enough family to work it out one way or the other.

Besides, I couldn’t imagine selling Grandpa’s life’s work to Harry and Mike, as much as I loved them. Or worse, selling the trading post to a stranger.

The way things were going right in front of me, I wouldn’t have to imagine getting beat at chess again—it was about to happen.

“I definitely need something to do. A real, paying job,” I said. “But working for the railroad? Do I want to leave my family again? Still, shoving furniture around the house, hanging curtains, patching stucco, painting walls—that’s no way to live.”

Silence. “Eating on white tablecloths is,” I said. Then I took thought. “Of course, we do that here.”

Santa Fe, the house, my family—yes, I loved it.

“What should I do, Grandpa?”

He gave me his big grin, and while I made what I hoped was a surprise move with my knight, he wrote on his chalkboard,
LISTEN SONG HEART.

I said, “But which song?”

He shrugged and took my queen. His grin was starting to look less weird.

I picked the Underwood up from a side table and set it in front of him. Now it was my turn to grin. “Get to it. No excuses.”

*   *   *

At dinner that evening Iris volunteered to drive me to Lamy the next morning.

I said, “Sure.”

That night I went to bed early. I didn’t sleep. I tried to think, but nothing added up. I did a lot of fretting.

The next morning I put on dress whites. It struck me that I should wear a suit and tie—the railroad would surely require that—but I didn’t own such clothes.

As soon as she started the truck, Iris said, “What are you going to decide?”

“I don’t know.”

Pause. “Do you have to be so chintzy with your words?”

“Grandpa said to listen to the song in my heart. But what I’m hearing is more like the banging of pots and pans.”

We drove in silence. She parked at the depot and looked at me with an expression I couldn’t read. Iris said, “I’ll be right here.” She gave me a little wave, got out, opened a big pad, and starting sketching.

*   *   *

Mr. Leland Chapman wore not only a suit and tie but a vest. His tailored English clothes made him look entirely too elegant for the station master’s office.

He introduced himself. “Cigar?” he said, extending one.

I had no doubt it was Cuba’s finest, but I said no.

From there he was direct. He spoke like the job was a done deal.

“You are well recommended. Also, you speak three languages common in the Southwest. We have no one else who can do that.” He ahemmed. “So I am able to offer three kinds of positions. Two are riding trains.”

“I’ve always wanted to ride the Super Chief.”

“That is protecting the well-to-do passengers against those who would prey on them. It’s a good job.

“The other riding job is on our regular trains. There you protect the passengers, protect the freight, and keep hoboes off. A lot of work, and sometimes rough. Good for a man who likes to be active.”

Since it sounded to me like Jack and Hughes had nailed the top railroad deal down, I went for it. “Tell me more about the Super Chief.”

“It’s specialized. We need men to ride all the way from Chicago to Los Angeles and back. That’s forty-one hours straight on duty, a night at a hotel in L.A., one we have an arrangement with. Then, another day and a half back to Chicago. Two weeks of work in three and a half days.”