Theft (13 page)

Right then I was hooked. I knew I'd someday learn to track animals, and I dreamed of being as good as Raymond.

Before he left that afternoon we made a pact to keep in touch, to tell each other if we heard anything from Brenda. It was twenty-some years later now, and Raymond's hair had greyed, and I'd grown up, but I still got the kid-jitters before seeing him. He was a man I admired, a mentor, a friend.

UP AHEAD, BLURRED BY a wave of midday desert heat, sat the
Snack-n-Pump,
the familiar convenience store where Raymond worked, the word GAS painted in bright turquoise on the stucco, and ghosted behind it: CAFÉ, then CIGARETTES, then SOUVENIRS, each word still visible in a sketchy outline. No one had bothered to cross out one word before painting over it with another, and so this timeline of American vices greeted tourists to Indian land. I turned my blinker on by habit, no one else driving this desolate
highway, and pulled into the dusty lot where I was surprised to see a white and gold Lexus SUV.

From my truck, looking in through the smudged, plate glass windows, I saw Raymond and his skinny friend, Simon, standing side by side behind the counter. A well-coifed, middle-aged blonde woman made her purchase: gasoline, gum, an arrowhead souvenir or Kachina keychain, something from the kitsch bin. I walked into the store, waved huge, and Raymond smiled and jutted his chin toward me to say hello. He kept his attention on his customer.

I grabbed a bag of red licorice from the shelf, a bottle of water—five bucks—from the cooler. By the time I got to the counter, Simon was bent at the waist, his wiry arms wrapped around his belly, laughing without making a sound. Raymond gave him a big, friendly slap on the back. “And my friend here, Grandfather Simon, he's the most spiritual one of all, completely in touch with nature and everything. He never wastes any buffalo he kills.” Raymond all but lifted Simon by his thin black T-shirt and turned him around to face the woman. “Do you, Grandfather Simon?”

Simon wiggled out of Raymond's grip now, stood up stiffly and looked straight at the woman. I tossed my purchases on the counter. The customer nodded, sad-faced. “It's a shame what we've done to your people,” she said. “I'm sorry.”

“Excuse me?” Simon said.

“And thank you so much,” she said. She held up her gum and arrowhead.

Raymond dipped his head in one nod.

“Oh, and how far is it into Sedona?” she asked.

“Sedona?” He looked at me and chuckled. “Why are people always going to Sedona?” The woman sized me up, and Raymond raised his thick arm, pointed north. “Up the highway, about two hours, longer on the scenic route, either way you take the exit just after Oak Creek and then Bob's your uncle.”

“Bob's my uncle?”

“Yup. Bob's your uncle. You'll be in Sedona.”

She forced a smile, and I was glad Raymond hadn't undone her mercilessly, his usual habit with tourists. But then, as she opened
the door, he called out, “Ma'am, you'll see lots of my namesake along that highway. Might interest you.” He pointed to the name tag on his blue shirt, his initials.

The woman placed her hand over her heart in thanks and looked closer at his tag. “RK?”

“Road Kill, Raymond to some, but my Indian name's Road Kill.” He offered a handshake.

I could see her pulling back instinctively, but there her hand was, sitting limp inside his grip. He squeezed tighter now, and she smiled harder. “Road Kill.” She practiced his name, and he kept up his wide smile.

“This here is Simon Goes-Extinct. We try to keep up with the times, you know.”

I leaned on the counter, shook my head. The man would never change. His deep chuckle echoed over the click of the woman's shoes as she hurried across the floor, out the door.

“So how the hell are you?”

“You're such an ass, Raymond.” I smiled.

“Raymond Road Kill.”

“Raymond Pain-in-the-Ass.”

Simon got a howl out of that one, and Raymond opened his arms and wrapped me in one of his smothering hugs. “What's news? Got some wolves ready for freedom today?”

“Not this time. I'm heading home.”

“Lucky chica. Give Cario and Magda my love, will you? Damn, I gotta get down to their place. I owe Magda twenty bucks, and a lesson at poker,” Raymond said.

“The other home. Colorado.”

His smile went hollow. He waited to see if I had something else to say. I didn't. So he started sorting the buffalo jerky on the end cap.

“So, how long you gonna be there?” Simon asked, trying to fill the silence. His arms fluttered from cash register to counter to the cigarette rack. If he'd been born in more traditional times, he'd have been named for some kind of small flitting animal, a hummingbird or bee. “In Colorado, I mean, back where you were from a long time
ago. You're just visiting there, right? Not staying. She's just visiting Colorado, Raymond. She's not moving there, or anything.”

Raymond hissed.

“You know, Raymond,” I said, carefully, “She'll make her way back someday. Brenda will come back around to you.”

“Well, she's doing it on granny time. Going on how long now?”

“So maybe she takes after her father? Slow and easy.” I tried to nudge his arm, but he dodged me, then started sorting the candy.

“You know, I never chose to give her up for adoption.”

“I know. It was a government decision. She was taken from you. It's fucked up, Raymond.”

“They had no right. No reason. It would never have happened that way outside the reservation.” He talked through his teeth, stayed focused on this task. “I have no idea where my own daughter is.”

“I miss her, too,” I said. “And I
know
she misses you.”

“Not bad enough, eh?” He forced a new topic. “So, anyway, same road going into Colorado is the same road coming out. We'll catch you on the flip-flop, right?”

“Well, yeah. I'm hoping there is a flip-flop.” His look questioned me. “I'm tracking some rugged terrain.”

“You always track rugged terrain.”

“Not usually tracking my own brother, though.”

He stopped stocking the buffalo jerky. “What crazy shit are you into now?” He sat on the counter and leaned in close to me. “
Tell
,” he said.

I told him about the phone call, said Zeb had turned himself in, a confession. But, crazy as he is, after he'd confessed, Zeb took off into the woods. “They searched for him for a couple of days. Nothing. Now they say I'm the only one who knows him well enough to track him.”

“They got a point there.” He tapped his own head with one finger. “Tracking's all up here, so you're a good choice. They're smart,” he said. “So the cops had your brother right there, confession and all, and he ran?”

“Seems so.”

“Hell, if they fucked up and let him get loose, it's on them. Right? They got nothing on you, Willa. You don't owe them spit in a rain puddle.”

“You don't have to fuck up for Zeb to slip out from under you.”

“Your brother's pretty wily?”

I nodded. “If he doesn't want them to, they won't find him.”

“Sounds like your brother's a coyote.”

I half-smiled.

“You ain't catching no coyote, you know that, don't you?”

“I'm a decent tracker. I had a good teacher.”

“Yeah, I'm a good teacher. And a good tracker. And
I
ain't catching no coyote. What the hell, Willa? I don't get it. Why you chasing down your own blood, putting yourself at risk?”

“Fifty-percent of Zeb is me. If he doesn't want to come out, there's no way they'll get him. At least, not living.” I hoped it sounded like an answer.

Raymond went quiet again, studying me. “Here's the thing, Willa. Whatever's going on, whatever
real
reason you got for going back, it is not good enough. You're in over your head. You got no reason to go there. You've told me a few stories about your brother. Tracking him is stupider than sleeping alone outside with those wolves like you do.”

“Speaking of which,” I said.

“Speaking of which, you are changing the subject, my friend.”

“Ciela and Hector.”

“
My
wolves? What about them?”

There was little that meant more to Raymond than keeping these wolves alive and thriving on this land. Contrary to the WWA's findings, Raymond said Mexican grey wolves had been on Navajo, Zuni, and Hopi land since before the Mayflower, and they'd stayed the whole time, no interruption, no extirpation. “Sure, there were animals we Indians might've overhunted
at times. I'm not claiming tribal sainthood here. But those wolves have been here all along. Thinned out as they got from being shot elsewhere, they never left this ground.”

The WWA had their statistics, and the Indians had their lives, their day-by-day observations across centuries, something that no study or pile of statistics could even touch.

But even though they knew Raymond had more knowledge about native wildlife than most of their biologists, Raymond's credibility with WWA had been dented. He had an unlicensed rehab center, of sorts, in his own backyard—abandoned greyhound dogs, sometimes coyotes or birds of prey that he nursed back to health—and he was part of a small group of folks who volunteered with a handful of big shot biologists from universities who believed in “Pleistocene rewilding,” which meant restoring devastated ecosystems in America with wildlife from thirteen thousand years ago. He'd helped reintroduce the Bolson tortoise, which was fine, according to the law. But when he and two “rogue” professors started trying to make their own connections, hell-bent on restoring jaguars from south of the border back to New Mexico and Arizona—no matter what any law said—Raymond became a “person of interest” to every wildlife agency in the Southwest. So when the WWA found a pack of Mexican grey wolves on Navajo land, they accused Raymond of “importing” them, and they immediately deported the wolves to the established rehab territory. But soon enough, those wolves—followed by Ciela and Hector—were back on Navajo land again, and again the blame went to Raymond.

“I never touched those wolves,” he told WWA, and he reiterated to them that they'd been on this land all along, unobserved by their wildlife officials. It was a constant argument between Raymond and the WWA.

When I told him Ciela and Hector had a bullet with their names engraved on it waiting for them, and that just a couple days back, I'd witnessed them hunt a deer successfully—something that
might
save their lives, if documented—he forgot all about probing deeper into my reasons for going to Colorado.

“Fuckers!” he said. He slammed the rack of buffalo jerky and Slim Jims. “Those wolves are officially off limits to them.”

“They're not off limits to anyone. They're classified as a special, non-essential species. Anyone can kill them if they can prove a need.”

He smacked the rack of jerky harder this time, and Simon ducked and covered. “I could help,” Simon offered. “I could witness it with you, Raymond.”

“Two Indians witnessing wolves killing a deer. That ought to change their minds, yeah.” Raymond paced the store, going nowhere, trying to calm himself. He took a deep breath and came back to me. “This is jackass-stupid, Willa. The WWA is jackass-stupid on a normal day, but you're competing with them now, going away to chase your coyote brother when all this shit is going down.”

“I'll be back in a week or two.”

“You have no idea when you'll be back.”

“I just—I need you to watch Ciela and Hector, for me. Track them. Witness them hunting, not killing cattle. Get some evidence of it, if you can. Andy—he's the
one
guy at Wilderness and Water who knows you're the best. He'll listen to you.”

“Andy got me arrested.”

“He didn't have a choice.”

“They always have a choice.”

“Please, Raymond, just tell him you saw Ciela and Hector, he'll call off the shooting, at least till I get back. He's the top guy there, Raymond. He's not a bullshitter. And he knows you're good.”

“He sure didn't help me when they dragged my ass to jail.”

I shrugged. “Were you bringing in jaguars?”

“Jaguars, other large predators, shit, they've been on this land since who knows when? Getting them back here's the only thing that'll restore this land to the way it was, the way it needs to be.”

“You might be right. But were you bringing in jaguars?”

“They keep people humble, too. Large predators, they remind us we're part of the food chain. Arrogant shits that we are.”