Come In and Cover Me (17 page)

And they would take the blanket away, and she would cry. And he would laugh. Then the laughing would stop. He would start saying, pleading, “I'm gonna give her the blanket back, okay? She's been punished enough, okay?” And he would pat her head like she was a terrier, kiss her cheeks, hold her in his lap while she yanked at the holes in his jeans.

It's only a story—Ren doesn't remember any of it. It is not that they were particularly close. They were not friends—they were brother and sister. It was something not as smooth as love between them. Maybe they didn't even like each other. She had certainly hated him at times, hated him for always doing everything faster and smarter and better and first. But he knew her when things were still right. He knew her when their parents were right. He knew her when she was right. He was the only one who could see what happened, how things had changed, only he was dead by then. But he still remembered. He was still right, the only right thing left. She loved him for that.

“Some mother's child has gone astray, she can't find him anywhere,”
he sang.
“But I can hear another drum beating for the dead that rise/Whom nature's beast fears as they come, and all I see are dark eyes.”

She felt a chill, a tremble along the surface of her arms and shoulders. “I do love your voice. I always did. It has character. And feeling. Dylan doesn't have a very good voice, either.”

He frowned at her.

“Well, he doesn't, technically.”

He leaned one shoulder against the wall of rock, draping an arm over his folded knee, looking up at her. Once upon a time, he would have tickled her next. That look of affection had always led to bottom-of-the-feet attacks.

“Silas is getting gas for the trucks, and I told him I wanted to take the afternoon to hike,” she said. “We're all going home for a little while to catch up on phone calls and e-mails and sleep and stuff. Then we'll come back.”

He looked puzzled.

“I have real work to do that pays me money. But we'll come back before the month's over.” She rubbed a popped blister on her palm. “So do you like him? Silas?”

Scott tilted his head, fondness back on his face. Fondness and something more painful.

“I like him,” she answered. She looked at her brother, smiling as his silky hair brushed against rock. “Is he a good man?”

She couldn't read his face.

“I think he is,” she said. “I think it's different this time, Scott.”

He leaned forward, his forehead nearly touching hers. His eyebrows were in disarray.

“Could you maybe find some of his dead family members and pump them for information?” she asked.

Sometimes when he came to her, time seemed to waver. She could almost see it quiver, like heat waves rising off asphalt. It was as if she had a fever that crept up degree by degree, not noticeable at all when he first appeared. But the longer she looked at his face, the less steady the rest of the world seemed. Now her head felt fuzzy. She did not know if he had been beside her for minutes or hours. Her fingers felt thick and swollen, as if the circulation to her hands had been cut off. She rubbed at her temples again, and when she looked up, he was gone. Her cheeks felt like they might have blistered. She reached for her hat, and her fever lifted slowly.

She took a long swallow of warm water and reached for a bag of peanuts in her pack. She heard a noise behind her. She thought Scott had come back, and she half turned.

It wasn't Scott. There was a rustle of bright feathers, and a movement of legs. The woman stepped onto the rock, her sandaled feet a hand's length from Ren's hip. The yucca cords between her toes were dusty and starting to fray.

Ren looked up, recognizing the woman by her skirt but wanting a better look at her face. The woman's torso was solid and strong, a small wrinkle of fat or muscle pressing against the band of the feathers. Her two bracelets were fixed in place around her forearm. The undersides of her small breasts lay flat against her rib cage. Her chin was sharp, and there was no paint on her face this time.

Then there was heat against Ren's back, so much heat that she was afraid her skin would scorch. She spun on the rock and saw a fire in the open dirt, between the clumps of rocks. There was too much smoke for her to see it clearly—her eyes burned. But it was roaring, burning fast and hard.

A young woman, slender with long legs, was sitting near the fire, cross-legged. She was sweating from the heat of the fire, beads dripping from her forehead into the dirt. She was hunched over a bowl. Her knuckles were scabbed over in places, freshly bloodied in others. She held a stripped piece of yucca in her hand, and the end of the plant was in her mouth. She chewed contemplatively, large eyes glancing at the older woman, at the sky, at the high walls of the canyon. Ren could see her face. It was the girl she had seen cut off her hair in the river. She was several years older, in her late teens or perhaps early twenties, with her hair thick and long again.

This was unusual, this crowd of ghosts dropping by for social calls.

The girl wore her dark hair in a loose braid, and the apron around her waist was more standard than the older woman's. A braided brown belt—plant fibers, probably also yucca—held a bundle of cords in place. The cords were tucked between her legs and hung over the belt at the small of her back, arcing and spreading across the dirt like a drab tail. As plumage went, it paled in comparison to the parrot skirt's brilliant rainbow.

The unfinished bowl in her lap explained the heat of the fire—finished and dried pieces must be in the blaze, baking, layered between broken bits of pottery. The fire was piled with enough fuel to suck up all the oxygen, leaving not the slightest draft of oxygen to tinge the black color of the paint.

The end of the yucca brush had grown pliable enough, apparently, because when the girl pulled it from her mouth and nudged it with the pad of one finger, she seemed satisfied. Holding it between her thumb and two fingers, she dabbed it in a small clay jar, then pulled the brush across the interior of the bowl in a long movement followed by several shorter dashes.

Her eyes did not leave the bowl once the brush touched the paint. A frown line appeared by each eyebrow, making an upside-down V over her nose as she concentrated. She did not look as if she smiled easily or often. Her face was harder than it had been when Ren had seen her at Crow Creek.

The older woman stood, legs apart, watching the younger girl. Ren scooted toward her, across the rock, trying to read the woman's expression. Her face was soft, fond, proud. Ren could see the wrinkles around the woman's eyes, deeply set, plus laugh lines etched around her mouth. It was a mouth that had smiled often. This woman certainly was old enough to be the young woman's mother.

The older woman looked down at Ren sharply, holding her gaze for a moment, and Ren was sure the woman could see her.

But the parrot woman looked away and called to the girl—Ren couldn't really make out the sounds, much less the words—stepping nimbly from the rock and pointing toward the bowl being painted. The girl shook her head, and the woman mouthed something more emphatically. The girl gestured for the woman to go away. The girl did not look away from her bowl, and Ren couldn't tell if she was angry or amused.

The parrot woman did not step away. But she did stop speaking. For a moment, the girl painted silently, and the woman stood by her side, watching. Then the woman raised her fingers to her mouth, squashing her lips together, making them flat and wide. She rolled her eyes and in general made herself ridiculous. She seemed to have a problem with some part of the bowl.

Ren rose from her rock and walked toward the painter. She took a wide route around the fire, still flinching at the heat, and came up behind the girl. She could see the head of a parrot taking shape in the bowl, and the last pull of the brush had finished the beak. It was a style of beak Ren recognized instantly.

She heard the clap of the other woman's hands and jumped. The girl looked up quickly, nearly smudging the paint.

A parrot flew down, from a tree or a rock or from thin air, Ren wasn't sure. The woman held up her arm, and her two bracelets rattled against each other. The parrot landed between her elbow and her wrist. Ren again noticed the small scars along the woman's arms.

The woman whispered in the parrot's ear. It squawked twice, then ducked its head.

“Ly-nay,” it called out. “Ly-nay. Ly-nay.”

Apparently, Ren thought, she could hear words if parrots spoke them.

Now the girl laughed, showing white teeth, with the bottom row slightly crooked. It was a short, quiet laugh, let out on an exhale. Ren suspected the parrot had said her name.

“Non,” said the parrot next, and the older woman tipped her head in acknowledgment. She turned her head to the side, mimicking the pose of the parrot.

“Non Non Non Non Non Non Non Non,” chattered the parrot, steady as an alarm clock. “Ly-nay. Non.”

Then the woman—Non, Ren assumed—placed two fingers under the bird's beak, lifting its head. She said something to the girl, jerking her head toward the parrot, holding her forefinger close to her thumb.

“You think she drew the beak too big, don't you?” Ren said.

Both women looked toward her. The woman made a shuft-shuft sound to the parrot, and it flew to a tall basket Ren hadn't noticed among the rocks. The girl, Lynay, stood, carefully placing the bowl on the ground, and Non held out an arm toward her. Arms linked, they took a step toward Ren.

Ren took a step back, bringing her closer to the heat of the fire. It was still bright daylight, but somehow the older woman's face seemed cast in shadow. She knew they could see her. They were looking right at her, still walking toward her. If she backed up more, she would be in the fire.

They were only ghosts. They were only shadows that she could see when the light fell just right, and they would be gone soon. But she was afraid nonetheless. She was not used to this attention. She assessed the dead: They did not assess her. When she met the stares of Lynay and Non, she felt less substantial.

Lynay showed her crooked teeth, opening her mouth to speak. But the older woman placed a hand on the top of her head, and Lynay closed her mouth. They both stopped moving. All the women, living and dead, stood still.

“What do you want?” Ren asked. She was pleased that her voice sounded strong and sure.

“You will lose him,” Non said. The smoke circled her hair.

“What?” said Ren. The fact that the woman answered her and that she answered in English kept the meaning of the words from penetrating. They were only sounds.

“You will lose him,” Non repeated calmly. “There is nothing you can do.”

 

T
HE PARROTS CAME FIRST.
They were splashes of paint in the air. Lynay had never seen one until the day that Non came, announced by the parrots. They came as a pair, circling, and Lynay called to her mother and asked what they were, knowing they had too much red and blue to be hawks or eagles, were too big to be firebirds or jays.

This is what Lynay noticed about Non: The air around her vibrated, as with heat. Years passed before she realized that not everyone found Non beautiful, that it wasn't something undeniable like small feet or long hair. Non made no noise when she walked. Her thighs were long and muscled like a large cat's. Her teeth were large, and she was missing none of them. When her wide mouth smiled, her teeth formed a white wall.

It was not unusual for a woman with sons of the right age to make the journey to find suitable women. It was a helpful bargaining piece for a man to have his mother with him, to have some visible sign that he was of a good family, that he had connections of his own. It meant something to the women of a place to know the beginnings of a man who would be climbing down their ladder, laying his sleeping mat next to one of their daughters'. Of course, many men came by themselves, small clouds of dust announcing they were coming to Women Crying.

What was unusual about Non arriving, other than the parrots, was that she came alone with her sons. The traveling groups were usually larger. Mothers needed someone to accompany them on the way back to their own people if their sons did indeed find women. No mother would stay with her sons. But obviously Non intended to do that.

She came with her bright waving apron and her hair threaded with red and blue and green feathers and her jangling shell bracelets and a basket on her head and one on her back. She came with two boys and two parrots. After a few seasons, she would have only one of the four left to her.

The men and women of the village, the older ones who always knew of things without being told because the wind brought all secrets to them, whispered that there had been trouble, that Non had been someone of considerable power in a large place farther north. But the water had gone dry, and even Non and her parrots and all the power their feathers brought could not make the water return. The elder men and women said Non had a daughter and the daughter had been chosen for one of the blessing ceremonies, the killing ceremonies, and Non had turned dark after that. She refused to intercede on her village's behalf anymore. She had closed the door on top of her head, so she would no longer listen to the will of the Creator. But because of her power, her village was afraid to punish her. Instead they asked her to leave, which she was quick to do. She headed south with her sons.

Now the elders in Lynay's village were forced to decide whether to welcome this woman or to turn her away. Either decision had certain dangers.

Here was the essence of Non's power, as Lynay knew on that very first day: She charmed the parrots, and the parrots charmed the earth into blooming. Lynay had known colors as long as she could remember. She tried to capture the colors even in black and white, capture the movement of water and the blue of sky, but these birds were made of the most fundamental colors—sky, blood, sun. And this woman who could touch the birds also had her hands on all the rest. Lynay loved her immediately. She hungered for her attention, for the touch of her hand, for her strong-toothed smile.