The Salt Maiden (8 page)

Back before I switched my major from cultural anthropology to tequila (with a minor in hashish), I got really into the mythos of the native people of what’s now the western U.S. From Kokopelli to Coyote to the Kachinas, I listened to visiting storytellers and read up until I dreamed their legends in fluorescent colors (which might have been the hallucinogens talking, now that I think back on it). But the stories that spoke loudest to me focused on the sacred feminine, powerful chicks like White Buffalo Calf Maiden, Corn Woman, and, of course, the Salt Woman. My veins might not carry a single drop of native blood (biologically, at least, I’m a child of the oppressor), but these are the figures that show up when my fingers touch the loom’s shuttle.

Maybe that’s why it wasn’t Mother Mary or even the Wiccan goddess who guided me to my place of healing, but that white-haired desert wanderer who moved westward through my nighttime dreamscape, until I followed her steps past the domes that form her rounded breasts to the sparkling, salt-white cavern of her empty womb.

—Entry seven, March 13 Angie’s sobriety journal

With the full moon shining through the window and her eyes watering with exhaustion, Dana decided it was high time to collapse on the cot she’d picked up in the camping aisle of the Pecos Wal-Mart. After dragging it a safe distance from the grungy old mattress her sister had been using, she sank back against her pillow. But as she reached to shut off the battery-operated lantern, she spotted a slitlike hole partly hidden behind a leg of Angie’s big, freestanding loom.

“I’ll check it out tomorrow,” she told the dog, who had stretched out across the newly swept floor near her feet. She was far too tired to get down on her hands and knees tonight.

But the thought of that hole—which probably meant nothing—kept her from sleeping, even more than the aching of her healing leg and her regrets about what had happened—and what hadn’t—with the sheriff. Besides that, whenever she was still for too long, she saw images of a little girl with Angie’s brown eyes shrinking down to nothing amid a tangle of IV tubes.

The silence proved equally unnerving. Dana had shut down the generator to save gas, since the temperature was cooling. But she missed its friendly hum and the oscillating fan’s buzz, thin reassurance that she still lived in the twenty-first century.

After tossing and turning for an eternity beneath a light throw—a tricky business on the narrow cot—she finally sat straight upright and huffed out, “Screw it.”

She slipped into her sandals and pushed back the heavy loom. Then she squatted down to peer into the opening, setting the lantern close beside her.

The hole was so small—a three-inch slit, only a half inch or so across at its widest—Dana couldn’t see much, except for a dried curl of torn paper. Maybe a rat’s nest, she thought. Pack rats were common in this area, and they were known for incorporating human possessions into their nests.

In this part of the country they were also known to carry the fleas that transmitted bubonic plague. Dana decided that anyone unlucky enough to be bitten by a diamondback in her own car had no business tempting fate with the Black Death. So she tied a T-shirt over her lower face, pulled on a pair of latex gloves from her first-aid kit, and hoped like hell she wasn’t risking killer cooties to pull out shreds of decades-old newspaper.

But the scrap she prized free was marked with blue ink and not newsprint. As she held it closer to the light, Dana
could make out only isolated words and fragments, but her nerve endings buzzed with recognition. The messy script was clearly Angie’s.

Dana looked over to where the dog was watching and said, “There has to be more.”

Desperately she chipped at the hole’s edges with a Swiss army knife, another addition to what was sure to be a record credit-card bill. Soon a few more inches of adobe crumbled. With the stump of his tail wagging, Max pawed at the debris.

“No, boy,” she said as she pushed the dog out of the way. “Go lie down, will you?”

To her surprise the shepherd mix trotted over to the old mattress and then jumped on it. After turning in three tight circles, he lowered himself with a groan of satisfaction.

“Go ahead and sleep there if you want to,” Dana told him, “but don’t blame me if you end up with bedbugs.”

She poked her blade into the hole’s depths, trusting that her banging had scared off any occupants. A fat black spider scuttled up the handle and onto her gloved hand. With a shriek, she shook it off. Landing on its back, the widow flashed a bright red hourglass before Dana reflexively crushed it with a sandal.

“I’ve had enough venom for one week, thanks.” She shuddered before forcing herself back to her explorations.

Beneath the hole’s edge there was a metallic clink, followed by a rustle that had Dana reaching down with two fingers and pulling out not more scraps, as she’d expected, but a thin sheaf of notebook pages that had been folded and refolded, as if someone had wanted to quickly fit them in the slotlike hole.

So what had jingled? Holding her breath, she reached in with her gloved hand and prayed the black widow had no revenge-minded relations. Once she snagged something she withdrew, pulling out a small key that hung suspended from a loop of dark blue yarn. A glance at the unfinished tapestry confirmed that the color was the same as Angie had used to
form the star field’s background. Since she hadn’t come across a lock, Dana dropped both key and “necklace” into a pocket of her shorts.

Moving away from both the hole and loom, she set the lantern on the only other furnishing, a tilted and paint-spattered table. Standing beside it she smoothed the papers and noticed that only the outermost pages near the back appeared to have been gnawed by rodents.

Near the center of the relatively clean front page, Dana once more recognized her sister’s script. In her usual bold and messy slash strokes, she had scrawled,
Angie’s Sobriety Journal, Devil’s Claw, Texas
, and dated it January of that year.

But as Dana turned the page, she started at a crunching sound from outside—a footstep on the gravel? Max leaped off the mattress and bounded toward the window, his deep, aggressive woofs echoing. Terror slamming through her, Dana bumped the table.

Its skewed leg gave way, which sent the lantern sliding to the hard floor with a splintering sound. She was plunged into velvet darkness, a void so black she had to bite her tongue to keep from screaming.

She crouched instinctively, her heart pummeling her chest wall.
Just an animal of some kind. It has to be an animal.
When the blazing eye of the sun closed, nocturnal desert creatures went about their business. She tried to picture furry rodents, the scrappy little wild pigs called javelinas, comically waddling armadillos. Tried to pretend the heavy tread hadn’t sounded human.

“Quiet, Max,” she ordered, so desperate to think it was a harmless animal that she was half-annoyed the dog had scared her.

Unless it isn’t harmless.
While Max went on barking, her stomach spasmed at the thought of what else could be out there.

Or perhaps
who
else.

Within an hour of her first arrival in Rimrock County
someone had nearly gotten her killed. She’d been furious, defiant—enough that she’d told Abe Hooks she was coming back to find her sister.

What if he had told whoever had put the snake in her car? Or what if he had been the one who’d done it in the first place? Could the guilty party have been watching for a sign of her return?

More agitated than ever, Max tried to scramble out the empty window. Dana sprang to her feet and grabbed his collar to keep him from getting hurt.

“No, boy. Please. Settle down.” Lingering near the opening, she scanned the salt flat…

…and spotted an unmistakably human silhouette standing perhaps twenty yards distant. The person held something long and slender, a shape that could have been a walking stick—except it glinted in the moonlight like the barrel of a gun.

With a strangled cry she dropped to the hard floor and fumbled in the darkness. She felt for her purse, which held her phone and SUV keys, her tickets out of hell.

Sunday, July 1, 12:04
A.M.

78 Degrees Fahrenheit

Though he’d gone to bed nearly an hour earlier, Jay’s brain was still running on nervous energy when his phone broke the silence. He caught it on the second ring.

“Eversole,” he said as he clicked on the bedside light.

“I’m coming over.”

The fear in Dana’s voice sent worry hurtling through him, had him reaching for a shirt. “What’s wrong?”

In the background he heard frantic barking.

“I have to get out of here. Come on, Max.” There was a double chirp, as if she’d deactivated her vehicle’s alarm. “Hurry.”

“What’s going on?” His pulse thundered in his ears. How could he have left her out there? “Is someone at the house?”

She didn’t answer right away, but he recognized the sounds of movement, of the SUV’s door closing. The dog fell quiet, so Jay could make out the jingling of keys and the chiming of the seat belt reminder.

“Dana, answer me right now.” He tasted bile as a new thought shook him. “Is someone with you?”

As he shoved his feet into his boots, he heard her engine starting.

“No, I’m all right,” she said. “He’s gone.”

“Who’s gone?” he asked, but she was talking over him.

“Max and I are heading your way. I, uh, I forgot to grab the directions you left me, but I think I remember. Follow this road to the left. Is that it?”

“Yeah, for six miles. Then you’ll catch the rural ranch road that Y’s off to the right and follow it for another ten-point-six miles. Now tell me, what’s this all about?”

“I saw somebody outside. Couldn’t see who it was, but I’m sure it was human.”

“Shit.” He should have brought her here with him, should have kept her safe. “How close?”

“I think he was right outside—I heard a footstep, but when Max barked he ran to the salt flat. He was armed, I’m pretty sure. Rifle, shotgun—one of those with a long barrel. It was hard to get a good look. Max was going crazy, and when I looked back, the guy was gone.”

Jay grabbed his keys. “I need you to check your rearview. Do you see anyone behind you?”

After a short pause she said, “I don’t see anything at all. But the moon’s behind a cloud now, and it’s dark as death.”

He knew the desert blackness shook those used to man-made lights. That terror was as instinctive as the fear of isolation. Could the combination have led her to imagine
she’d seen something she hadn’t? Could it have been the same animal that had stirred up Max?

He’d be damned if he took that chance, even though she’d made it more than clear that she was only interested in him as the sheriff. Not the man who chose to live in exile, nor the would-be lover who was sure to complicate her life. If he had any sense, he would quit hoping she might change her mind.

“I’m heading your way, Dana. When you see headlights, flash yours. Then I’ll flash twice to signal for you to pull over.”

“All right.” She sounded shaky, breathless with the exhaustion that followed hard on adrenaline’s heels.

“Stay on the line,” he told her as he headed out to his Suburban. “But don’t panic if I lose you. My phone isn’t that reliable, especially in your area.”

Unlike Dana Vanover, Rimrock County couldn’t afford expensive satellite phone service. And she didn’t have a radio, which was what he and Wallace used to keep in contact.

“I’ll watch for you,” she said. An easy promise, since there was almost no chance of meeting another vehicle at this hour.

Almost no chance of meeting anyone except the stranger with his weapon, as he came in pursuit.

Hey, sis,

The birth mother’s sister has been calling a lot lately, asking after Nikki. Asking after John and me, too. It’s funny the way she acted all stiff and distant the day she came to visit. Guarded, like she didn’t want to get involved. But it turns out she’s the one who’s gone out looking. The one who refuses to give up.

I even heard that she was bitten by a rattlesnake. But when I asked, she changed the subject. What she really wants to talk about, she can’t bring herself to ask me. But then, only God could answer that one, and I’m afraid I’m not on speaking terms with Him these days.

So the next time you bow your head, maybe you should ask Him for us. How long do we have left to find a donor? How late is really too late—for my daughter, for my marriage? And while you’re at it, O, almighty Father, how could You do this to a child I prayed for so hard? How could You do something like this to any child at all?

—E-mail message from Laurie Harrison

As his Suburban slewed around a long curve, Jay fought off the panic pounding at his temples. He should have met her by now. Where the hell was she?

The roads out here were shit. Rutted, dusty, unlit. Probably they’d slowed her down more than he’d figured, since she would be far more used to driving freeways.

The moon, at least, had emerged from its veil of clouds. Emerged to light the carcass of an armored vehicle with dark streamers of smoke rising…

Goddammit, no.
He blinked hard, willed the nightmare image back into the shadows. Scanned the empty stretch of road that took its place.

“Come on, Dana,” he murmured as he tried the phone
again. But the signal was no stronger than when he’d dropped out of range ten minutes earlier.

Might as well forget that and try Wallace on the radio for backup. He grabbed the handset, only to replace it as he finally spotted headlights. When they flashed he gave a whoop and thanked the same God who had let him down in Baghdad.

Signaling back, he pulled over, then bailed out of his vehicle. With the gravel still crunching underneath her Ford’s tires, he pulled open the SUV’s door.

“You all right?”

She killed the engine, then nodded as she slid down from the seat. Max jumped down behind her, looking no worse for the unholy racket he’d been making.

When Dana threw herself into his arms, Jay stroked her back to soothe her shaking. And hoped she wouldn’t think him weak if she felt his own.

“It wasn’t my imagination. I really saw somebody out there,” she said. “Scared the snot out of me.”

“You’re safe now.” He breathed the words into her hair, gave her another squeeze of reassurance. Then he let her go before he reacted in a way that would make her doubt his motives. “You never saw anything else on the road?”

She shook her head. “Somehow the emptiness made it that much worse, the idea that headlights might come up on me at any second. It’s really creepy out here after dark.”

“I’ve been told it’s not exactly a garden spot by daylight either.” He smiled at her and was relieved to see some of the tension melt out of her posture.

“You okay to follow me back?” he asked. “To my place, that is. If you’re not feeling up to driving I can bring you back here in the morning.”

“I’ll follow,” she said. “I’ve already caused you enough trouble.”

“Not you, but someone sure as hell has. And starting at
first light I mean to find out exactly who’s behind this.” Jay could already imagine Wallace’s grumbling about city women and their overactive imaginations, but that was too damned bad. They were going to scour the area where she had seen the armed man—and then he meant to rattle some cages by questioning whatever possible suspects came to mind.

Fifteen minutes later the two had pulled into the long driveway and were climbing out of their vehicles beside the old RV next to his uncle’s house.

“I’d invite you inside the house, but it’s still a mess with the construction. So why don’t you come on in the Beast here.”

He gestured toward the hulk at his right.

“What happened to your hand?” she asked.

He glanced down at the bandage, embarrassed to think of his earlier fit of temper. “Oh, uh, I cut it earlier, working on the cabinets.”

Something in his voice must have clued her in that he was lying, because she looked at him oddly. But instead of saying anything she mounted the concrete-block steps and pulled at the RV’s door.

“It’s locked,” she said when it didn’t open.

“Pull harder,” he suggested, and the nearly frozen hinges squealed a protest as they opened.

The space inside was dated, but thanks to military habits he kept it spotless, with his possessions all stowed neatly. He’d picked up the nearly thirty-year-old relic outside of San Antonio for a song. After loading his few things, he had babied it through a journey fraught with two breakdowns and a flat. Jay was pretty sure the Beast had made its last road trip, but it served his purposes for the time being—and more important, his jury-rigged AC system worked well.

“There’s something I wanted to show you.” Dana slipped a hand inside her purse and pulled out some folded papers. “I found this tucked down inside a slot in the adobe, back behind
the loom. It’s some kind of diary my sister was keeping.”

“You’ve read it?”

“I was about to when Max here went ballistic.” When she said his name, the black-and-gold dog looked up at her and wagged his tail until she murmured, “That’s a good boy, Max. Good dog.”

Soon they were seated on either side of the RV’s kitchen table with the papers spread between them while the coffeemaker made indelicate sounds atop the nearby counter. Max had slunk off to bed down in his favorite spot, the driver’s seat, where he curled in a ball and closed his eyes.

“Can’t read it upside down,” Jay said as the rich aroma percolated through the small space. “Scoot over, will you?”

She complied, and he moved around to sit next to her. Their thighs touched in the tight booth. The contact dragged his attention downward, where the hem of her shorts had ridden up to bare her leg.

Don’t look
, he ordered himself, and concentrated on the first of Angie’s entries. Dana winced at the reference to a certain “clueless little sister.”

“Guess she’ll be glad to hear how my so-called ‘perfect life’ has turned out,” Dana grumbled before flipping to the next page, but Jay glimpsed the raw pain in her expression.

The entries that followed appeared sporadic, though it was difficult to tell for sure, since so many were undated. The handwriting, never neat, became so shaky in some places that neither Jay nor Dana could make sense of what was written. But often the problem lay not in the writing but the writer, as Angie vacillated between anger and despondence, vulgarity and surprisingly poetic prose. At times she graphically described alcohol withdrawal—pulling no punches about its physical effects. In other cases she lapsed into what appeared to be delusion as she spoke of almost otherworldly visitations and what might be either a lover or a simple flight of fancy.

Jay glanced beside him to see tears rolling down Dana’s
cheek. Putting a hand on top of hers, he prevented her from turning the next page. “That’s enough for now.”

Already it was past one-thirty, and despite the empty coffee mugs before them, each of them had paused to rub at tired eyes.

“She was so sick,” said Dana, “and to suffer like that all alone, without anyone to help her…”

After squeezing Dana’s hand, Jay said, “She knew you’d be here in a minute if she asked you. That counts for a lot, Dana.”

She chewed her lower lip, then said, “Angie resented everything about me.”

“And at times you’ve probably resented everything about her. I’ve never had a sibling, but I’ve been around enough to know that’s how it usually works.”

“I love my sister, Jay. But sometimes I do hate her. For all the things she’s put my mother through. For giving away that beautiful little girl when I’d give anything to…” Dana shook her head, either unwilling or unable to finish the thought. After clearing her throat, she added, “For the way I’ve always had to be so strong to make up for her weakness.”

“What if I told you”—he picked a lock of blond hair off her cheek, then ran it, sleek and silky, through his fingers—“you don’t have to be the tough one?”

He feathered a caress along her jawline, then lifted her mouth close to his.

“What if I asked you to hand it over? If I told you I would take it off your shoulders”—he kissed all around her parted lips—“just for this one night?”

She looked into his eyes, her green gaze searching, worry etching furrows across her forehead. But a moment later a smile smoothed the lines away. Reaching to cup the back of his head, she whispered, “Tonight I’d tell you yes, Jay.
Yes.
Please. Now, before I overthink—”

He silenced her with a kiss, half-afraid she would pull back as she had earlier, run to her SUV, and drive all night to Houston. Half-afraid that she
should
, that his hunger for
her would erupt into something fast and selfish instead of the careful loving she needed and deserved.

But instead of running Dana kissed him back, as sweet and hot as melted honey. With a flick of his tongue her mouth opened to his, and her body pressed so close he could feel the pounding of her heart.

He didn’t move on for a long time, instead reacquainting himself with the forgotten pleasure of a kiss, allowing the warmth and moisture of their mouths to simmer, heating every square inch of his body. Allowing himself the luxury of languid exploration, in spite of the painful hardness that threatened to overwhelm his senses.

Make it last
, he urged himself, pausing for a deep breath before he ran a palm along her side to trace the gentle flare between her waist and hip. Breaking contact with her mouth, he feasted on a second curve between her neck and shoulder and smiled when she caught her breath. A murmur rose from her throat, a rumbling, feminine purr that made him want to sweep the papers from the table and spread her out on top.

Make it last
, he thought again, so he fought back the impulse, instead taking her by the hand and drawing her to her feet. She followed, unresisting, standing on her toes to nip his neck. Afterward she soothed the hurt with the most sensual of kisses as her fingers squeezed one of his nipples.

Pleasure arcing through him, he peeled off her T-shirt, running his hands along her back and kneading her buttocks, pulling her body to rub against his length. Not exactly subtle, but by this time his senses were too aroused for him to care.

He reached around, unhooking her bra with a single deft move, then kissed his way down to circle a small, pink areola with his tongue. When he sucked in a plump and perfect breast she gasped, and he gave himself over to drinking in her pleasure, dividing his attention left and right.

His fingers made brief forays, dipping beneath her waistband,
grazing her bare thigh. Dropping to his knees, he swirled his mouth in a teasing circle all around her navel.

“Jay,” she whimpered. “Jay, I…”

Her knees wobbled as he unsnapped her shorts, and again she gasped at the sound of her zipper losing its purchase tooth by tooth. He rose to strip off his own clothing, and soon they stood together naked, kissing, touching with abandon.

This felt so different from the wild dreams he had been having. So much deeper and more powerful, with her taste filling his mouth and her scent inflaming him. He wanted to devour her, to feel the whole of her, to take her in all of the ways he had imagined in such vivid detail.

So he swept her into his arms and carried her to the bed. Before he laid her down, he looked into her eyes and asked, “Is this what you want, Dana?”

She hesitated, and in that moment he saw how badly her trust in men had been shaken. In that moment he thought he had to be the biggest damned fool in West Texas to offer her the chance to back out now. But after blowing out a long breath, she nodded as she repeated in a silken whisper, “For tonight.”

Even so, he sensed an edge of fear in her, so he forced himself to take his time, his mouth once more lingering at each breast, his fingers teasing before testing. Bowing between her thighs, he explored her damp folds and tasted the heaven of her center, and as her writhing turned to a shuddering cry, the words
Make it last
morphed into
Make it count…

After sheathing himself in a condom he moved over her, and their gazes locked before she slanted her hot mouth against his, then flexed her hips to take the solid length of his hard thrust.

Though Jay had returned to his country four months earlier and had recently marked two weeks back in Rimrock County, Dana’s body felt like his true homecoming. In her
he forgot about the desiccated desert, forgot the way that death could slip up from its sands with stealthy menace…

Forgot all else but the lush heat of the woman rocking like the ocean just beneath him.