Wicked Prayer (15 page)

Dan squinted through the fading sunlight.

He knew that the woman was right.

The same way he knew that he didn’t want her to go.

And then she was gone, in a flash of sunlight that burst over the top of the canyon like liquid gold.

And there was nothing to prove that she’d been there at all.

Paperweights,
the woman had said.

As clues went, even a straight-ahead guy like Dan Cody could run with that one. For the next two months, he stopped at every tourist trap in southern Arizona. Southern New Mexico, too, because Cuervo Canyon was near the state border. He hit every trading post, barradorio, gas station and mini-market he could think of, trying to get a line on the scorpion wrangler with the blue, blue eyes.

But he came up dry every time. No one seemed to know who the woman was.

So, like any good detective, Dan returned to the scene of the crime. He spent his spare time in the dry, still heat of Cuervo Canyon, hoping to find the cool oasis of the mystery woman’s eyes.

But the desert held on to its secrets. The woman didn’t return. So Dan branched out, hit the neighboring canyons, arroyos, washes, wastelands, mountains, and valleys, still searching . . .

And he came up dry every time.

After two months of searching, Dan Cody figured enough was enough. If he kept this up, he’d be certifiable by summertime.

But for Dan, metaphorically speaking, summer was already here. It was long and it was hot, and the scorching heat baked straight through his soul until his heart was as dry as an empty clay cup.

Dry as the desert wind that blew endlessly through Cuervo Canyon.

Though he didn’t want to admit it, Dan had never been so thirsty in his life.

It was Emily Carlisle who finally led the horse to water, on a blistering afternoon when Dan dropped off a bag of scorpions at the primitive field office four miles southeast of Desert Station in Tucson Mountain Park.

Emily handed Dan his paycheck, and they did a little catching up. They talked about how busy they’d both been the past few months, though Dan didn’t mention anything about the scorpion wrangler he’d met at Cuervo Canyon. When they finished with the chitchat they talked shop, discussing the stretch of desert where Dan had picked up the latest batch of scorpions.

Soon Dan said his adios and headed for the door.

Emily said, “Mind if I ask you a personal question, Dan?”

Dan turned. “Shoot.”

“Why don’t I ever see you with anyone?”

“What are you talking about?” He grinned. “I’m always surrounded by company. In fact, there are about a hundred of my closest friends squirming around in that bag on your desk. And they’re pretty anxious to get acquainted with you.”

Emily laughed. “Hell, Dan, you know that isn’t what I meant.”

 
“Yeah ... I guess I do.”

“So?”

“So, what?”

“Dan, I don’t pry into your life, do I?”

Dan hesitated. He knew what was coming, and he didn’t like it. Maybe it was time to cut out of here, anyhow. He’d saved up some money. He could quit this job, find another—

“Dan?"

He sighed. “No, you don’t pry. Dr. Carlisle. And I appreciate that. In fact, I return the favor, because I could ask you the same question if I wanted to. How come I don’t ever see
you
with anyone?”

“Fair enough.” Emily inhaled deeply, gathering herself “I promise that someday I’ll tell you my story. But right now we’re not talking about me. We’re talking about
you
—”

“No,
you’re
talking about me.” Dan sighed again, wishing Emily would drop the whole thing, or change the subject.

Maybe he’d try the latter himself. “Being alone’s not so bad,” he said.

“Name me one good thing about it.”

“Keeps me from drinking too much.”

“How’s that?”

“I’ll tell you. Doc. You hang around people and you end up talking. Your throat gets dry, and then you need something to drink.”

“Uh-huh . . .”

“It’s simple—you don’t talk, you don’t get so thirsty.”

“You’re not thirsty, Dan?”

Dan held on to his grin, but it was weak around the edges—a sandstone cliff crumbling under its own weight. “I told you,” he said. “Being alone’s not so bad.”

“That’s the biggest load of bullshit I have ever heard in my life.”

“Maybe so, but it’s
my
bullshit.”

“When’s the last time you were out with a girl, Dan?”

“I don’t see that’s any of your business.”

“I’m just asking.”

“You can ask what you want, but that doesn’t mean you’re gonna get an answer”

“When’s the last time you got fucked, Dan?”

Dan actually blushed. “Jesus, Emily—”

“Did I shock you, Dan?” She chuckled. “I bet you didn’t think a dull old academic desert rat like me could ever stumble upon a word like that.”

“That’s not it,” Dan said. But that was
exactly
it. He’d had conversations like this plenty of times. They usually ended with him walking out a door and never coming back through it. But there was something about Emily Carlisle that kept him from doing that. He understood exactly what she was trying to say, in her own inimitable roundabout manner. She might not have said so in so many words, but Emily Carlisle cared about Dan Cody.

And he cared about her. So he gave the woman an answer, and she listened attentively. He told her about the woman he’d met in Cuervo Canyon two months before. He told her how hard he’d
tried to find that woman. He told Emily about all the tourist traps, trading posts, barradorios, gas stations, and mini-markets that he’d checked off his list. He told her about all the canyons, arroyos, washes, wastelands, and valleys he’d crossed.

He told her how much he needed to see that elusive woman’s blue, blue eyes.

When he finished, Emily said, “She wants to see you, too.”

Dan was silent a full minute. Then: “How do you know that?”

Emily smiled. “She told me.”

“She—”

“Told
me. The woman you’re looking for, Dan, is named Leticia Dreams the Truth Hardin. She’s a former grad student of mine.” Dan could hardly think straight. Suddenly everything fell into place: Emily’s mysterious little comment on the day she’d first sent him to Cuervo Canyon:
“You’ve got a good eye, Cody. Just bring back anything interesting.”
The surprised gleam in Leticia Hardin’s eyes when Dan first mentioned Dr Carlisle.

But why hadn’t the woman
said
anything to him about knowing Emily?

She probably didn’t like the idea of being “fixed up” any more than you do, idiot,
Dan thought.
And that’s probably why she took off like she did. I’ll bet she headed straight for a phone, called Emily and read her the riot act
—

“Emily Carlisle, you scheming arachnologist,” Dan said.

“I didn’t
almost
win the Nobel Prize for nothing,” Emily reminded him.

“So this Leticia, she’s a
grad
student. . . but she told me she collected scorpions for paperweights. She slumming or something?”

“She’s a
former
grad student. And she
does
collect scorpions for paperweights. She’s been doing it since she was eight years old. Her dad casts them and sells them at the Spirit Song Trading Post. Highway 80. Outside of Scorpion Flats.”

Scorpion Flats.
Dan struck his fist to his palm. “Goddamn it!”

“I guess you didn’t look
everywhere.”
Emily smiled, taking Dan’s tanned hand in her own warm brown one. For the first time, he noticed the set of thick white gold and turquoise rings on the third
finger of her left hand. “I'll tell you this, Dan Cody," she said. “A woman can’t wait forever. Take it from me: I know that girl. She won’t.”

A man can't wait forever, either,
Dan thought.

But he said: “Scorpion Flats?”

Emily Carlisle smiled, patting the back of his hand before she released it. “Right. Scorpion Flats. Now get out of here. I have work to do.”

Dan got.

First date: Dan Cody brought Leticia Dreams the Truth Hardin a bag of scorpions, and she laughed and said she’d get more use out of them than a fistful of roses. They went for a drive, and they hiked down into the twisting sandstone heart of Cuervo Canyon. There they built a fire and cooked dinner over it: rare mesquite-grilled steaks and roasted corn and sweet peppers. To this they added prickly pear salsa and something Leticia called Bacheeitche bean cakes, which she said were handed down from a traditional family recipe.

Dan just said the cakes were damn tasty. They washed down the meal with a six-pack of Mexican beer

Leti explained that she was half Crow Indian on her mother’s side. The blue eyes she’d inherited from her dad. “He’s just a plain old paleface from Tucson,” she said with a loving smile. “But man, can he cook some mean Bacheeitche bean cakes!”

Dan opened another bottle of beer for each of them, and they talked and laughed like they were long-lost friends who’d met up on a lonely trail ride. For his part, Dan had never wanted to tell anyone as much as he told Leticia. Everything he told her, it was like emptying some place inside where things had lingered much too long. Everything she told him, it was like filling that place back up with something fresh and new.

Leticia talked about her mother, a nationally renowned Native American painter, Julia Dreams the Truth. She talked about her father, who’d seen an exhibition of Julia’s paintings at the Desert
Rose Gallery in Tucson and decided right there on the spot that he had to know the woman behind the “Spirit Dance” watercolors. She talked of her parents’ great love, explained how they’d opened the trading post together, told Dan how wonderful it had been growing up in a place like that.

And then she spoke of her mother’s death, and her father’s despondency in the years that followed. Dan learned that Leticia had dropped out of grad school to take the reins of the Spirit Song when her Dad’s old bronc-bustin’ rodeo injuries forced him into semiretirement.

“Listen to me go on,” she said finally. “I must be boring you to death.”

“No,” Dan said. “It’s great listening to you. I really love it.”

And then he fell silent. She’d told him so much about herself, and her family. He’d told her things, too. Things he’d done, places he’d been, disappointments he’d endured. But when it came to family . . . and to love ... he didn’t know what to say.

When it came to family . . . and to love . . . Dan worried that he had nothing to say at all.

“You know,” Leticia said softly, warm firelight painting her face, “my mother’s people made their shields from rawhide. But the Crow warrior’s shields were stronger than the animal skins from which they were fashioned. The strength came from spiritual power, the same power that created the earth.”

Dan laughed uneasily. “Yeah . . . well, maybe sometime you could paint up one of those shields for me. I seem to go through a lot of them.”

“Maybe I could do that, Dan. Or maybe I could teach you how to do it yourself Sometimes young warriors painted symbols on their shields, things they’d seen in visions . . . Have you ever seen anything in a vision?”

“Only you,” Dan said, and on impulse he took her in his arms, and he kissed her, and her kiss was as sweet as mountain spring water to his thirsting Ups.

When the night grew cold they wrapped themselves up in an old Navajo blanket and stared at the full white moon. They held
hands like two shivering little kids, and Dan felt Leticia’s warm body next to his, her head leaning against his shoulder, and he couldn’t remember a time when he’d had anything like this, anything
close
to this.

If this were fate, he’d take it. . .

Dan held Leticia now.

Held her close, wrapped in a Navajo blanket, even as his arms ached from shoveling hard, dry dirt, ached from carrying her cold, stiff body . . .

But he couldn’t let go of Leticia. Not now.

Not yet.

He sat at the heart of Cuervo Canyon, in the place he’d first met Leticia Dreams the Truth Hardin. He sat by her open grave, where night-shrouded spires speared the silver eye of the moon, where that very same moon wept silver teardrops that splashed down the rocks to the dry canyon floor.

And then it was time. The black bird circled high overhead, calling to him, and Dan knew that he had to leave Leticia. Gently, he placed the bundled blanket inside the grave. And then he took up the shovel and buried the only woman he had ever loved.

When he finished, he dropped the shovel, and it rang against the stones.

Dan remembered another sound, one heard in the parking lot of the Spirit Song Trading Post. The subtle chime of a wedding ring landing on blacktop, a wedding ring that would never touch its intended’s skin.