Power in the Blood (16 page)

“Special for the work that will be ours.”

“There are no other Mescalero Apaches anywhere like us.”

“No, there are none.”

“We will make the others become like us when we are ready.”

“Except Grandfather. He will never become like us.”

“No, not Grandfather, but he will die soon.”

Drew smiled at them both. He liked them very much, and felt sorry for them.

In accompanying him everywhere, at all times, they were able to avoid classes others their age were obliged to attend. Drew attributed this apparent privilege to the brothers’ unique position as a pair of ecclesiastical teachers’ pets, until Nail in His Feet said, “Father Zamudio has been angry with us today.”

“Why?”

“Because you will not tell us things he must know.”

“But I don’t remember anything,” Drew protested.

“That is what we said to him, but he is angry.”

“He makes a big anger,” Bleeding Heart of Jesus said, turning down the corners of his mouth.

“He told you to ask me about who I am?”

The boys had indeed been pestering him to try and recall his life prior to arrival at San Bartolomeo; it was Drew’s only real source of irritation with them, apart from their prattling about God.

“Yes, many times. He must know the truth, he says. Father Zamudio believes you have not told him the truth. We do not say this.”

“No, we do not say this,” echoed his brother.

Drew was insulted that Father Zamudio doubted his story. It had been an excellent lie, in Drew’s opinion, and he further resented the way Nail in His Feet and Bleeding Heart of Jesus were being used as spies. It wasn’t right. It was low-down, sneaky behavior, altogether typical of a religion that made people give their money to the Pope. Even a madman like Morgan had been correct in his assessment of Roman Catholics.

“I already told him I don’t remember, so he’s got no call getting mad with you two. You tell him that.”

The twins exchanged a fearful look.

“He makes a big anger,” Bleeding Heart of Jesus reiterated.

During the silence that followed, Drew wondered how Clay would have handled a situation like this, and was shocked to discover he had no idea what Clay would have felt, said or done. Clay had become an abstraction, a face and a voice made less distinct with the passage of time. Drew had known, ever since leaving Morgan to rant at the sky, that he was on his own, but now he knew exactly how lonely his position was. Zoe and Clay were far away, probably no more capable of recalling his features than he was of recalling theirs. Watching the brothers shake their heads over the prospect of confronting Father Zamudio, Drew was even more certain than on his first day that he had no business at the mission.

“The road outside,” he said, pointing to the gate. “Does it go to Santa Fe?”

“Yes, to the east is Santa Fe,” Nail in His Feet said, his features brightening as the subject was changed.

“But it is less far to a place the other way.”

“What place?”

“We do not know its name,” Bleeding Heart of Jesus said. “It is just a place.”

“How far?”

“We do not know. Sometimes wagons pass by from there.”

“If it’s less far than to Santa Fe, how far’s Santa Fe?”

“We do not know. We have never been there.”

“Could I walk it?”

“To Santa Fe? I think you could not.”

“No, the other place.”

“We do not know.”

The twins appeared a little shamefaced by their ignorance. Drew smiled at them both. “That’s all right. I was just asking. It doesn’t matter.”

They sat together that evening to eat as usual, but no one spoke. Bleeding Heart of Jesus and Nail in His Feet knew that in revealing Father Zamudio’s request for information they had lost their friendship with John Bones, yet keeping the truth from him another day would have caused them even worse torment. The brothers were without guile or cynicism; they would not blame Father Zamudio for their sadness, so it must be they who had done wrong and caused such dejection at the table.

Drew found it easy enough to remain awake after the dormitory lamps were extinguished. Sheer excitement over what he proposed doing that night kept him alert. He was not bored while the hours passed; there was too much to contemplate, too many possibilities were invading his thoughts. The mission had been a way station, a place along the pathway to his future. He had not asked to be brought there, and he would not ask to leave.

When he judged the hour to be around midnight, Drew rose and silently dressed himself. He stole through the dormitory and crossed the square to the kitchen. There was no need of locks within the precincts of San Bartolomeo, and he crept inside. He emptied a sack of beans onto one of the tables, then began filling it with such dry foodstuffs as could be hauled away and eaten without need of pots and pans. Most of his supplies could be located by touch; Drew had inspected the kitchen pantry closely late that afternoon, until chased out by an Indian woman. He filled two goatskin water bags and slung them over his shoulder, then picked up the bulging sack.

Fully laden, he crossed the moonlit square and carefully lifted the bar across the gate’s small door. Stepping through, he found himself face-to-face with Smart Crow. Drew should have felt surprise, but somehow did not. Smart Crow held out his bagged hand. Drew thought he was trying to shake hands with him, like a white man, saying good-bye maybe, but that was not Smart Crow’s intent at all.

The drawstring holding the bag about Smart Crow’s wrist was sliced with a long-bladed knife. A jerk of his arm shook the bag free, and Smart Crow held the pierced hand before his own face for inspection. Apparently satisfied, he knelt by the doorway and set his curling nails against the lower sill. Drew watched without breathing as the four fingernails were hacked off with one blow to each, then the curved thumbnail which, since it penetrated no flesh, could be removed at the thumb tip.

Smart Crow stood up and showed his hand to Drew, who continued to watch as Smart Crow’s fingers began to flex. Without assistance from his other hand, Smart Crow withdrew his truncated nails through the hand they had punctured years before. Released, the nails were set against the sill as before and shortened further. Smart Crow twisted his hand this way and that beneath Drew’s nose, making sure he saw it well. There was surprisingly little blood. Then the Indian passed through the doorway and closed it behind himself.

Drew heard the bar being replaced, and did not know what to make of the wordless ritual he had seen. He assumed Smart Crow Making Mischief wished to see his grandsons, a need Drew could sympathize with; it wasn’t right, the way Father Zamudio had kept them apart. Drew hoped Smart Crow understood Spanish, or his visit would be wasted. He wondered how Smart Crow would find his grandsons in the darkness of the dormitory, then decided there was no point in worrying about that; it was none of his business after all. Smart Crow had done him a favor by saving him from Morgan, and now Drew had returned that favor by allowing Smart Crow access to his own flesh and blood. That must be why he had withdrawn the fingernails from his hand—the importance of the occasion: reunification with his family.

Drew was almost envious, and had to make himself turn away from the gate. He began walking west, down the road to a place without a name. He wished he had a gun, but acknowledged you couldn’t have everything.

Smart Crow stood in the square and watched his own shadow, consulting with it. He would find his son’s sons with the help of his shadow self, which would lead the way, but first he must open his mind to the many presences in so confined a space. He wished to know where the blackrobes slept. These men, the tall thin one and the short fat one, had corrupted his grandsons, continuing the damage already done to them by their fool of a father, whom Smart Crow suspected of having secretly become a woman himself when his wife died giving birth. Only a woman would have surrendered sons that way.

Smart Crow was able to tell from his distant glimpses of the boys over the years that the blackrobes were turning them to women too. They would grow breasts, and their penises would fall off. It was a shameful fate, but it could be avoided if only they were taken from this place of unnatural magic. There was a sickness here, the sickness of the Dead Man Flying on Wood, which had plagued Smart Crow’s people for many generations; only recently had some of them begun to yield, his own son-who-became-a-woman being among the first. Smart Crow wept at the memory of such perversion. It had been necessary to kill his son in order to save him from the blackrobes, and then he had made himself suffer the pain of nails growing through his hands, since no man could kill his own son without himself suffering, even if the killing had been just.

All the suffering and perversion would be undone this night. His shadow told him in which direction the boys lay sleeping, and the blackrobes too. Smart Crow felt the spirit of his son stirring in the new hand held before him, the hand that would turn the world right side up again. It was Smart Crow’s luck to have as his destiny this righting of a great wrong. The sun tomorrow would shine upon a different world.

Smart Crow lifted his knife, a white man’s knife, admittedly superior. It would spill blood from the opened throats of the blackrobes without even waking them.

10

Bryce and Zoe reached Pueblo, Colorado. Bryce spent a day ascertaining the availability of stone from a local quarry, then set up a store in the back of his wagon at the edge of town. On his first day of business he took in three orders: headstones for an infant death from unknown causes, a victim of heart failure, and the unfortunate loser in a drunken gunfight. It was clear the area needed Bryce Aspinall’s professional services.

He would journey no further, he said, then he asked Zoe to be his wife, adding, “You don’t have to answer right this minute, you can think about it awhile. I’ll wait.”

Think about it she did. Zoe’s capacity for honesty with herself obliged her to draw up a mental list of her suitor’s strengths and weaknesses. She felt no guilt over this; a decision of such magnitude required hardheaded calculation, plus and minus.

First, the good things: Bryce had never attempted to touch her, unlike Hassenplug, unlike Tully. He appeared to care for her baby, had never expressed a disparaging remark over the blue birthmark, even took the time to cradle Omie in his arms when Zoe’s attentions were elsewhere. He did not drink. He seemed intent on working hard in a respectable field of employment, with every likelihood of success. He promised he would build her a real home when this became possible. He seemed genuinely to care for her and Omie both. She was indebted to him for the way he buried Tully without condemnation and carried Zoe away from the scene of that incident. And he was the first man ever to ask for her hand.

Against this powerful current drawing her to him stood two mighty rocks. The first was her need to find Clay and Drew. If she settled in Pueblo, what chance did she have of ever finding them? She could only trust to fate and hope the nation’s westering winds sooner or later would bring her brothers to her. The second obstacle to acceptance was, if anything, even larger: she did not love him. Zoe didn’t know why this was so; if ever a man was deserving of love, it was Bryce Aspinall. She set aside his homeliness (Zoe would never again trust a handsome man such as Tully) and tried instead to isolate that aspect of Bryce which told her this was not a man she could love. Zoe devoted considerable thought to it, but could arrive at no specific answer. She simply did not love him, or see how love might develop between them. She felt affection, and no more than that.

To arrive at a decision, therefore, Zoe ignored her own needs. Her choice would be made for the sake of Omie; whatever was best for Omie would bring with it the resolution to Zoe’s dilemma. Viewed from this perspective, her options were reduced to just one. Seven hours after hearing Bryce’s proposal, Zoe accepted. She did so without any sense of compromise too large to deny her a measure of happiness. There was no reason, in Zoe’s opinion, why the marriage should not be bearable. She resigned herself to it not with regret, but with a feeling of relief at having made a decision. Once and for all, she would sever ties with an unsatisfactory past, without binding herself to some risky or unpredictable future. Bryce was a good man, and Zoe didn’t doubt she was a good girl. Despite everything, it would work.

After the wedding, Bryce located a small house for them to rent not far from the wagon-workshop. Zoe found herself happy enough with life, but she had formed the habit of mentally checking over her shoulder for approaching calamity. None came, and she wondered if maybe she was free to enjoy the new life that was hers, because she had earned it with pain. It seemed an appropriate attitude, so she embraced it, and became happier still for most of her waking hours.

Bryce worked hard and gave every cent to Zoe. “You go ahead and hold the purse strings and apron strings both,” he told her, “and leave the hammer and chisel work to me.” She often watched him marking with chalk the names and dates and floral edging that every headstone, even the simplest, required. Zoe admired the way Bryce tapped lightly but confidently at the flat surfaces with his tools, flawlessly executing the commonplace inscriptions of death and remembrance. Bryce had no time to set up fake stones as examples of his skill; business was so brisk his works-in-progress were the best recommendation he could have placed before the public.

In the evening he walked the hundred yards or so to their home, and was served the plain fare he preferred, a fortunate circumstance, since Zoe’s culinary talent was limited, even for that time and place. When darkness came, Bryce read to her from the tales of Sir Walter Scott, or Zoe read to Bryce, alternating chapters of this rip-roaring stuff.
Ivanhoe
was far and away Zoe’s favorite of the several volumes they had shared since marrying. Her own affection for Bryce in no way compared with the love between Ivanhoe and Rowena, but she was content; Zoe would not let niggling doubt mar her first enjoyment of living since she was very small.