Shadow Man (38 page)

“Plop, plop, plop.”

Moon shook a wrinkle out of the newspaper. “What?”

“That was the sound it made.”

He stared at her hunched back. “The sound what made?”

“The blood.”

“What blood?”

She brought him a man-size platter of eggs, sausage, and potatoes. “The blood dropping onto that dead man’s face!”

“Oh. Right.” He reached for a paper napkin, considered tucking it over his new white linen shirt with the mother-of-pearl buttons, decided to put it in his lap.

She hurried back to the stove. “You don’t have the least idea what I’ve been talking about.”

“Sure I do.”

“Then tell me.”

“The blood. It was going…uh…drip-drip.”

“It was going plop-plop-
plop.
” She turned down the ring of blue flame under the pot, tossed him another challenge. “And how was it that I happened to hear that blood going plop-plop-plop?”

With Aunt Daisy it was nine-to-one for a nightmare, so he played the odds. “You was having one of them weird dreams.”

“I knew you wasn’t paying no attention.” She banged the wooden spoon on the stove. “What I said was—I’ve been having the same
bad
dream, over and over.”

Might as well get this over with.
“Tell me all about it.”

She sniffed. “Oh, you don’t really want to know.”

“Yes, I do. And if you keep me in suspense, I won’t be able to eat a bite of breakfast.”

That’ll be a day to remember.
Daisy brought the stewpot to the table. “I dreamed about a skinny little girl.”

He watched her ladle a generous helping of green chili stew onto the mound of scrambled eggs.
That looks good enough to eat.
He took a taste.
It could use some salt.

She reached out to tweak his ear. “You’re supposed to ask me: ‘Who is this skinny little girl?’”

“Consider yourself asked.” He reached for the shaker.

She slapped his hand. “Don’t do that—I’ve got it seasoned just right. I don’t know who she is.”

Momentarily deprived of salt, the Ute warrior raised his fork, expertly speared a sausage. “Then why should I have asked?”

“To show proper respect to a tribal elder.”

“Right.” He opened a steaming biscuit, inserted a generous helping of butter.

“I don’t know who the girl is, because in these dreams, I don’t ever see her face.” She hobbled over to the stove.
Back and forth, back and forth—it’s a wonder I don’t wear a path ankle-deep into the floor.
“But I know she’s in trouble. Serious trouble.”

Behind her back, Moon snatched the shaker, added several dashes of sodium chloride, tasted the result.
That’s some better.

While preparing a plate for herself, Daisy paused to stare through the window at a diaphanous fluff of cloud floating over the big mesa. She watched it snag itself on the tallest of the Three Sisters. “In these dreams, the girl is standing over the dead man.”

He took a sip of black coffee.
I forgot to put sugar in it.
He remedied this error with six heaping spoonfuls.

Daisy was silent for a long moment, watching the cloud that had become a misty wisp of gray hair on the petrified Pueblo woman’s head. “And what makes it so awful, is that her little hands is soaked in blood.”

As chance would have it, he had just poured tomato ketchup onto a heap of fried potatoes.

The shaman shuddered. “And that blood just keeps dripping off the tips of her fingers—onto the dead man’s face.”

Charlie Moon was not a squeamish diner, but food was meant to be savored. He eyed the bloody chunk of spud on his fork.
I wish she would wait till after I’ve had my breakfast to tell me about her nightmares.

Daisy Perika brought her plate to the table, thoughtfully watched her nephew frown at a slice of ketchup-painted potato. “All night I could hear it, even when I was wide awake—all that blood dripping off her hands, onto that dead man’s face.” She saw the indecision on Charlie Moon’s face. “There was so much that it puddled up in his eye-sockets.”

Knowing she would finally tire of the subject, he decided the fried potatoes could wait. In the meantime, he would fortify himself with eggs and sausage and buttered biscuits.

The old woman settled herself into a chair. For a while, she absentmindedly picked at her scrambled eggs. After a few tentative bites, she lost interest in her meal. Fixed her gaze on a Wild Flower of the Month wall calendar. Began to hum her favorite Ute ballad, which she claimed had been stolen from her tribe by the British. Then, in a scratchy-creaky voice that would have seat a deaf man’s teeth on edge, she sang thusly:

And so on. Until she got to the good part:

After the next and semi-final verse, and following his aunt’s long, melancholy sigh, Charlie Moon concluded that he had won the waiting-game. He could almost taste his starchy, ketchup-tinctured victory.

From the corner of her eye, the tribal elder spotted the home-fry that was newly impaled on the tines of her nephew’s fork. She mumbled a hastily devised and highly discordant epilogue:

The crimson-dripping morsel was rising toward Moon’s lips.

Her mumble rose to a mutter:

She watched the fork slowing—possibly coming to a stop…

“Plop,” Daisy said. “Plop-plop.”