The-Hummingbird-s-Cage(63)

I hugged the shawl tighter. “Laurel’s waiting. I told her I’d read to her before bed.”

“Night, then.”

He turned and headed to his pickup truck. I waved as it pulled away, certain he was watching.

As I entered the house again, I noticed the door to Olin’s den still ajar. I could hear him and Jessie puttering in the kitchen, so I slipped inside for another look, pausing just inside the doorway.

I looked around at the sage green walls and white molding. His rifles and shotgun were mounted on a far wall, along with an old-style cavalry carbine. No deer heads, though, and no leather sofa. Instead, there were two overstuffed club chairs slipcovered in yellow flowers; both looked comfortable and well used. There were shelves lined with books flanking a deep stone fireplace, and on the mantel a display of Indian pottery, pewter mugs and candlesticks, and an enameled tobacco box.

As I turned to leave, I spotted a photograph in a silver frame on a small table. It was an old black-and-white of cowboys in slouch hats, kerchiefs knotted at their necks. They were surrounding a standing figure that looked remarkably like Teddy Roosevelt. As I read the caption, I realized it was Teddy Roosevelt: Rough Riders, 1898.

Several of the men were on their feet while others knelt on one knee or sat cross-legged on the bare ground. The landscape looked like Southwestern desert.

I scanned the faces—the young and cocky, the stern and worldly-wise. Kneeling in the foreground was a youthful cowboy with dark hair and a bristly mustache, grinning into the camera, cradling a carbine very like the one now mounted on the wall.

I leaned closer. The cowboy looked like a young Olin Farnsworth.

“See the resemblance?”

Olin was behind me, gazing over my shoulder at the picture.

“I didn’t hear you come in,” I said. “What a time you must have had . . . storming San Juan Hill.”

Olin paused. “Well, that ain’t exactly the case. Not all Teddy’s boys made it to Cuba. When orders come, they wasn’t enough room on the transport ship.” He nodded at the picture. “Some had to stay behind in Florida. Most of the horses and mules did, too, which wasn’t an ideal situation for a crack cavalry outfit. And that’s why the Rough Riders took San Juan on foot.”

I looked over the kachinas one last time. All those intermediaries between people and their gods. All that blind faith in the unknowable. Faith that something better was waiting, just out of sight. And spirits ready to step in, if asked. To guide and protect. To fend off mortal enemies.

And what of those enemies? Do they have their own spirit champions? And when they die, do they ever get to see what’s on the other side of the sky?

“What about someone who does bad things?” I asked finally. “Does he deserve to be happy? Does he deserve heaven?”

“I figure a man can’t be all that happy if he does bad things. And it ain’t up to me to say what he might deserve. But I figure when he passes on, he’s where he oughta be.”

“Some people . . . some people don’t believe in Judgment, a reckoning. Any of that.”

Olin shrugged. “I figure it ain’t up to them.”





Red Bird





This is a dream

I wade through wet cement . . . straining to run . . .

A scarlet bird flies in my face, wings flapping like a Fury. My head explodes like shattered glass and I fall and fall until I can’t fall anymore I smell heat rising from red rock . . . I taste grit . . .

This is a dream

My mouth opens to scream, but no sound comes. I scream again and again until my throat is scoured raw. But no sound comes I know this is a dream

I fight like a demon to wake up wake up wake up but can’t move . . . only my mouth moves, gaping like a canyon, mute as rock *

I bolted upright in the dark, gasping for breath like a drowning woman breaching the surface.

Like a cornered animal, I threw wild eyes around me at every shadow.

There was no cement, no scarlet bird.

I was in my own bed at the farmhouse. My nightgown was drenched with sweat and I couldn’t suck in air fast enough.

No cement. No scarlet bird. No explosion inside my head. I groaned and buried my face in my hands.

The nightmare still gripped me like a claw. Every smell, every taste. Every fresh stab of fear. I could even hear it—the screams that wouldn’t come. But they were coming now, high-pitched and howling . . .

. . . and down the hall.