The-Hummingbird-s-Cage(86)

“You two go on,” I said. “I couldn’t eat another bite.”

Simon looked back quizzically as Laurel pulled him toward the trailer.

“Really, I’m fine,” I insisted. “I just want to enjoy the quiet.”

I found a seat on a tree stump near a stand of junipers. There was a fire crackling a few yards off, with three men hovering over it watching a skillet of meat and fry bread on a grill. Now and then the burning wood spat out a spark in a soaring arc that was hypnotic to watch.

I turned to the trailer again and the children playing inside, loud and giddy. Each of them had a story like Trang’s; I was sure of it. Only—God willing—not so tragic. Stories that were cut short. They looked happy enough, all of them. But how many would choose to stay here, and how many would take up their stories again, if only they could? And Laurel . . . on her next birthday, would she be just as happy here in Morro? Would she turn eight years old, or would she be seven forever, here in the forever place?

That first day at breakfast, Olin had told me I still had something to accomplish. Laurel, too. He’d seemed so certain . . .

“It’s the violet hour, isn’t it?”

I started at the voice—female, coming from behind me. I turned, and there was a dark shape next to a juniper tree—a shadow within a shadow—not ten feet off. It shifted, apparently to reposition itself in a better light so I could make it out.

It was Jean Toliver, cocooned in a woolen blanket from neck to ankles.

“I didn’t startle you, did I?” she asked.

“Well, no.”

“Good. I always do like the dusk—don’t you? I like to greet it alone when I can.”

“Ah,” I said, finally getting the drift of her remark. “Eliot’s violet hour—‘The evening hour that strives homeward, and brings the sailor home from the sea.’”

Jean rose from her seat and moved closer, settling on a fallen log. She drew her blanket over her head.

“Not quite,” she said. “I was thinking more along the lines of DeVoto.”

I wasn’t sure if she was referring to a person or a car—the name meant nothing to me.

“Sorry?”

She turned toward me, and I could see the flames from the grill fire dancing in the round lenses of her glasses. She reminded me of an owl.

“Bernard DeVoto. Historian and author. ‘This is the violet hour,’ he wrote. ‘The hour of hush and wonder, when the affections glow again and valor is reborn, when the shadows deepen magically along the edge of the forest and we believe that, if we watch carefully, at any moment we may see the unicorn.’”

Her voice was tremulous.

“That’s lovely,” I said. “A poem?”

“A cocktail manifesto. Would you like some?”

The blanket rustled and I looked down. She was holding a small silver flask, half buried in the folds. She put a warning finger to her lips. “Shhh.”

I choked back a laugh. If the Navajo reservation was dry, apparently Jean would make do.

The flask was etched with Celtic knots. I uncapped it and took a sip. It went down with a scouring that made me shiver.

I handed the flask back to her. “What is it?”

“Rye whiskey,” she said, stealing a quick sip before recapping it and tucking it back in the folds. “Chilled.”

She murmured the last word primly. Then together we burst into snorting giggles that drew the attention of the men around the fire.

“Too much of that and you will be seeing unicorns,” I whispered.

“Wouldn’t that be charming?”

“And yet a unicorn wouldn’t be the strangest thing I’ve seen since I came here.”

“New place, new rules,” she said.

“Excuse me?”

“I think the most important thing when you’re a stranger in a strange land is to try to enjoy it while you’re there. Besides, the farther back you go, there are no strangers, are there?”

I began to wonder how long she’d been tippling from that flask.

“Come, Joanna. You’ve noticed it—I know you have.” Jean was nodding meaningfully at Trang, still framed in the open doorway. She waited.

She was trying to herd me toward something. But what?

I looked at Trang. At the toddler in his lap. At the faces of the other children gathered around the table. What was I seeing? Except for Laurel, nothing but dark eyes, dark hair on dark heads. Nothing unusual. I looked from one face to the next, sifting through . . .