The Bird Saviors (10 page)

    I sense some disappointment.

Far as I can tell they think they're above the law.

    Crowfoot smiles. They might be above it, but perhaps they need to look out for what comes from below.

G e o r g e A r m s t r o n g C r o w f o o t pulls into the weedy parking lot of the Department of Nuisance Animal Control in his demolition- derby pickup, kills the engine, and waits. He's a half hour early, the first vehicle to show. He wears his long black hair loose. In his faded jeans and size thirteen cowboy boots with brass- plated tips, Crowfoot looks like Sitting Bull turned livestock rancher. Tucked in the crease of his cab's bench seat is a bowie knife. Under the seat a .45 sidearm wrapped in oilcloth. And Crowfoot is not comfortable. The gimp leg from the cattle- stomping incident hurts to move. It hurts to sit.

    He bides his time for the boss man to show. He eats a pair of breakfast tacos, potatoes and eggs, hot sauce burning his lips when he wipes them on his sleeve.

    As he waits, he listens to the steady hiss of traffic on Highway

50. After a time sirens wail and Doppler toward and away from him, fire trucks and a police cruiser. The sky is a dirty tan color. After the emergency vehicles pass, a hot rod races the other direction, bass throbbing, airbrushed flames licking down its side.

    At the Department of Nuisance Animal Control the employees begin arriving, lumpy and misshapen, like a crew of carnies about to pitch a tent. When it comes time to punch the clock there are a dozen cars and trucks in the lot. Mosca is a no- show. Silas the boss man is last to arrive, parking in his designated space. When the heavy man climbs out of the hatch of his tiny China Doll, he looks like a rodeo clown there to distract a bull from the one true thing he wants to gore. He walks up to Crowfoot's pickup and bongs the hood. Crowfoot opens the door and eases himself to his feet, wincing. Silas asks how he's feeling.

    Crowfoot shrugs. Crushed and broken. Otherwise, peachy.

    What's the story?

    You don't want to know.

    Silas smiles. Could be worse. Could be your dick, right?

    You got a point, says George. There's priorities involved.

    Crowfoot follows Silas into the office and eats a glazed doughnut while he waits for the week's assignment. Silas sings the executioner's song on a group of crows that has been sighted off Highway 96, a murder that needs to be taken care of. Convince them to leave. By hook or crook.

    Where's the fly?

    El Señor Mosca is no longer with us. Silas shrugs. The screwball hasn't even shown to pick up his check.

    You checked his home?

    No answer. Silas shrugs. My guess he's on the lam. Must have crossed somebody. Like news at eleven, right? He probably sold somebody that head.

    Crowfoot smiles. Maybe they truly believed it was Black Jack. Then the stupid wore off.

    Silas says he's been thinking along those lines. And maybe they paid real money. For a fake head.

    Crowfoot makes a few phone calls and gets nowhere. Mosca has vanished like the cartoon roadrunner, leaving only a puff of smoke behind, even if he more closely resembles Wile E. Coyote. No one seems to mourn his absence. In the alcoholic cave of a cocktail lounge, Crowfoot ends up talking to a barfly named Ramona. Body double for an Oompa- Loompa porn queen. Short and chubby, with thick mascara on her raccoon eyes, neck wrinkles galore. Mosca isn't exactly the discriminating type. Crowfoot buys Ramona a drink, feeling a pang of guilt. He doesn't usually encourage self- destruction. Then again, he doesn't usually get stomped while cattle rustling. Or cheated out of a thousand dollars.

    A half hour and two drinks later, Ramona tells him where to look.

    West of town, toward the Sierra Mojada, the prairie landscape undulates with foothills. George parks his pickup at the edge of a padlocked gate above a cattle guard and hoofs it across the desert. He follows a faint trail of tire tracks and beaten grass ruts. At the end of it a rusty freight boxcar sits stranded in this middle o' nowhere, with an old, low- slung Pontiac parked behind it. It's hidden from Highway 96. Crowfoot approaches from the blind side.

    The wind gusts, yellowed grass trembling. Stick- people cactus don't move, as if to deny the wind. The sky is a tangerine color, dust and smoke filling the air from a fire in Huerfano County. It's said to be ten thousand acres wide, a mountain of smoke rising as if after a volcanic eruption. Crowfoot wears a mask over his nose and mouth, but his forehead is gritty with dust, and he has to squint his eyes to tiny slits just to see.

    The walk is nearly two miles. By the time he reaches the boxcar his left leg burns from his ankle to his hip. Each step jabs a bolt of searing heat up his sciatic nerve, each step a hot reminder of betrayal. He struggles on, sucking air, his broken ribs aching with his labored breath.

    Trash litters the periphery of the boxcar. On its side a spray- painted sign reads, say no to socialism

! Crowfoot weaves past a
set of box springs rusting on a heap of cans and bottles. A mess of
shattered glass around a low wall of cinder blocks blinks in the
dull sun. Target- practice debris.

    Twenty paces from the cinder- block wall for the target bottles sits a tattered sofa. Cotton stuffing yellows in the sun like bad teeth. A stack of porn magazines covers the cushions, once toothsome young maidens in shameless poses now bleached. Like a science project of what time does to lust. Pages flutter in the wind. Against the windward side of the boxcar clusters a jumble of jaundiced tumbleweeds.

    Crowfoot moves slowly and with no sound to the south end of the boxcar, his faint shadow following. The entrance is a sliding rusty metal door kept open, a wool blanket hanging over the rectangular gap. At the foot of the rough curtain a black extension cord runs from the boxcar to a small generator propped on a wooden pallet. Another stack of gray cinder blocks serves as a porch.

    Crowfoot swallows the pain as he gets a good footing on the blocks. He inhales deeply, hauls himself up and inside the boxcar in one quick jerk and step. The pale sunlight casts an amber glow inside the darkened interior. Crowfoot blinks and steps to the side, feeling something squish beneath his boot.

    He looks down to see what it is, stepping sideways to get out of it. The opening of the wool curtain, hooked on his shoulder, briefly floods the room with light. In the guts of the boxcar, a packrat's mess. Clothes and pizza boxes and paper sacks. Empty bottles of Nyquil, tequila, and a pair of folding chairs. Before him a figure prone on another old sofa.

    
Cabron!
hisses a voice. Close the fucking door.

    Crowfoot lets the curtain fall back, though it catches on a box he knocked awry when he entered. The gap in the curtain lets a blade of yellow sunlight into the room.

    It's you, says Mosca.

    Crowfoot doesn't reply. He lets his eyes adjust to the dimmer light and notes the band of light falling on a folding chair, illuminating a rifle propped upon it. He reaches over and lifts it. As if he's in the market for such a weapon and might just offer a price. It's a bolt- action coyote killer. He checks and finds it loaded, then rests the rifle across his shoulder, barrel pointing to the wall.

    Yeah, it's me all right. And I'm guessing I'm the last person you expected to see today.

    Mosca tries to rise on the sofa. His breathing is raspy and he stinks. Jorge,
que tal?
he asks.
Estoy enferma.

    What's wrong with you?

    What do you think?

    The usual.

    Mosca coughs, wet and ragged. More like the unusual, genius.

    Crowfoot pulls his gauze mask into place over his mouth and nose. Mosca looses his hissing cackle and says something about an infection finding its home, no matter what you do.

You think you're immune, I bet, he adds. You'll see.

    Crowfoot pulls the wool curtain farther back and hooks it on a metal ridge above the door slot. Let's shine some light in this pit.

    It hurts my eyes.

    
Pobrecito
, says Crowfoot. He lowers the rifle and uses the barrel as a tool to pick through the clutter and rubble in the room. In front of the sofa an old spiderweb- cracked windshield on milk crates serves as a coffee table. On it are tequila bottles, cough syrup, a small mirror with traces of white powder.

    Crowfoot shakes his head. Look at all this shit, he says. What's the story? You come out here the middle of nowhere to die, is what I'm thinking.

    I'm not dead yet.

    Close to it.

    And maybe you're closer than you think.
Claro, hombre?
Mosca laughs again, his gaunt face looking like a
calavera
from the Day of the Dead carnival toys.

    Not as close as you, shithead.

    Mosca snickers, devolves into a coughing jag. When he's finished he whispers hoarsely, Aren't you the lucky one.

    On that rustling job I wasn't so lucky, was I, now?

    Mosca raises his dark eyebrows and acts as if he's just remembered. Oh, right. Had a little spill, didn't we?

    You could have given me a hand.

    Mosca shrugs. What can I say? Cattle rustling isn't shooting crows from a pickup cab, is it, now?

    You said it would be easy money.

    Did I? So I was wrong. So sue me.

    Crowfoot cocks his head as if considering the idea. The band of sunlight from the doorway illuminates half his body, the light falling on the back of his head, giving his long Indian hair a late- afternoon glow, like the aura of a badass saint.

    It stinks in here, he says.

    I like the smell. Reminds me I'm alive, says Mosca. He adds that he hasn't been out in days. He's living off crackers and cheese and peanut butter, when he can eat. Listen, full- of- bull. I'm sweating and chilled at the same time. Think you could close that curtain?

    Crowfoot fits the rifle to his shoulder and takes aim at Mosca's face. The sick man blinks and licks his lips.

    If you want to pull that trigger, be my guest. Put me out of my misery.

    I did, says Crowfoot. Before I came here, the whole fucking way I limped here across those fields of nothing, I was planning on ways to make you bleed and squirm. Now look at you.

    Mosca closes his eyes. Whatever.

    I'll make you a deal. Tell me the whereabouts of the head honcho on that rustling gig. Do that and I'll walk away.

    I do that and I'm fucked anyway.

    Maybe so. But in the meantime, you can enjoy your place among the living, right?

    I don't think you'd do it, says Mosca. He musters the closest he can come to defiance. I think you're so disgusted with me you don't see the point in hanging my scalp on your belt.

    Crowfoot allows there's some truth to that. Only thing is, he adds, I don't plan on killing you. He pulls his bowie knife from its sheath and lets it catch the sunlight, sparkle and wink. Remember I said you could have given me a hand?

    Mosca shrugs. I done so much crank, my memory's shot.

    You could have given me a hand before. You didn't. Now you make a choice. Either you give me that name or I'm taking your hand right here, right now.

    Mosca coughs painfully. Crowfoot winces just hearing it. Finally, when Mosca can breathe again, he croaks, Page. Hiram Page. Happy now?

    Where does he live?

    I don't know. Check the phone book, genius.

    I'm asking you.

    And I'm telling you. I don't know. Now, leave me alone.

    I'll leave you all right. Same way you left me.

    Mosca pulls a serape tighter about his shoulders and, with trembling hands, takes a sip from a bottle of cough medicine. I was one of a dozen, he says. Just one of the braves.

    Crowfoot gestures with the knife. Put out your hand.

    Like hell.

    I said put out your hand.

    You got to be kidding.

    Do I look like I'm kidding?

    George? Don't do this to me. Mosca's bottom lip quivers. I'm begging you, George. Don't do it. It wasn't my fault.

    I'm not going to do anything. Crowfoot places the knife on the table. You do the honors.

    It wasn't my fault. You trying to get back at someone? It was those fucking Saints, that's who. They're the ones who said to ditch you. You want to find Page? Go see Gata. He's got a pawnshop right down the street from her. Maybe she knows. Or you could just follow him like a stalker.

    Gata de la Luna?

    One and the same.

    Without reply Crowfoot eases his gimp leg down from the boxcar, holding fast to a vertical iron bar as he climbs down, and limps away. Still in earshot, he hears laughter behind him and turns to see Mosca standing there, grinning, holding wide the curtain door.

    I'm not that sick! shouts Rodriguez. I was just plucking your heartstrings so's you wouldn't hurt me.

    Crowfoot nods, grins back. Yeah, well, I wasn't going to cut you anyway.

    Mosca does a little fandango jig. I'm feeling better already!

I n  c h u r c h , R u b y C o l e leans against her mother's shoulder and suffers the rants of Lord God. He says the one true prophet believed it was the duty of right men to propagate the earth, and to preach the word of the one true church.

    We are bidden to bring forth the flowers of children to this desert. And we shall! The prophet did not die in vain! Brother Joseph was martyred by nonbelievers but his blood yet flows like cold mountain water in all his descendants and all the children of the Latter- Day Saints who know he lives on as the second true martyr.