The-Hummingbird-s-Cage(99)

The adrenaline is pumping so hard now it feels like my head’s splitting open. Like I’m levitating off the ledge. Like I’m bristling with clarity. My face is hot. I lean on the staff, eyes locked on his, drilling him down. I can feel a shift in the air between us. Can feel him waver. The dynamic is changing.

“You have no idea what I’m capable of,” I say.

Thunder explodes above our heads. Rolls along the mesa like a diesel train. The air shudders with it.

The sleet is gone. Now it’s hail the size of peas, the size of golf balls, rattling, thudding against the sandstone rocks, bouncing off, pelting us both.

Jim looks more uncertain than ever. Like he’s not expecting this. Like he doesn’t recognize me, or what’s happening. He holds up his arms to protect himself, shoots a last glance at the cold-blooded sky.

Then he makes a choice. The only choice a man like him can make.

He heads toward me, an odd hitch in his step, fists clenched. “How did you think this was gonna end?” he shouts above the clatter.

He sounds desperate. Petulant. A grown man pitching a fit.

“And, Jim,” I tell him. “Bernadette? Don’t worry about her. She had a soft landing. You won’t.”

He’s coming at me like a bull. Like old times. When he reaches me, I know the staff is nothing against him. The adrenaline took me this far, but it can’t alter muscle mass. Can’t unbreak my wrist or teach me judo in seconds flat. I hold it ready anyway. Ready to fight back, even with no chance of winning.

He’s reaching for me, his ruined face like a Halloween mask, when I swivel and pivot on the staff at the last second, a clumsy move that puts me no more than a couple feet to the side, but just enough for him to overextend. He has no time left, no balance, when one spit-shined oxford hits an icy patch of red rock and slides right out from under him.


*

He brushes against me as he topples over the edge, so close I can see the startled look in his good eye.

Sixty feet below, the rocks break his fall.





After the Storm





The hail won’t stop. It falls like a blizzard. A stiff wind keeps shoveling it into drifts. The hike back down the trail is slow. Plant the staff one step ahead, inch my way forward. Plant the staff again. Adrenaline’s gone. Body’s on fire. I slide on the slick path, but don’t fall.

The rock nest where I left Laurel is nearly covered with a thick coat of ice and hail. For the first time I notice its shape—a rough dome, like a little hogan.

I call Laurel’s name and her face appears at the opening. She scurries out, takes my hand, helps me inside. She’s still dressed only in shorts and camisole and sandals. I’m soaked through, feverish. We curl up together on the floor to wait for the storm to pass.

In less than an hour, it does.

Blistered clouds roll off to the west; the sun splits through for the last hour of daylight. When Laurel peeks through the opening again, the air is already so warm the melting ice drips on her head.

She leaves me in a fitful sleep and makes her way down the hail-covered path, not once losing her way. She passes an indistinct shape a few yards off the trail, buried in a four-foot drift. She’ll never know it’s the body of her father.

She jogs to the highway and stands well to the side.

Minutes later, a plow driver out of Grants is clearing the interstate of the accumulation from a freak June hailstorm when he sees a little girl dressed in green shorts and a yellow camisole jumping up and down, arms flailing. He pulls over to see what on earth is going on.





Epilogue





As it is

It was Sam who told me about Bernadette. I was still in the university hospital in Albuquerque when he showed up with a bouquet of coneflowers he’d bought in the gift shop in the lobby, looking just as grizzled as the one and only time I’d seen him that night in the Javelina.

It wasn’t the maid who’d found Bernadette, but Sam.

Sam had known about the escape plan, of course. In fact, he’d pitched in to help fund it. So when Bernadette was discovered, it wasn’t hard to come up with a suspect.

Others came to visit while I recovered. Munoz and his wife. Sandoval and CeCe. The sheriff, who couldn’t quite meet my eye.

The investigation was brief. Jim hadn’t bothered to cover his tracks. Maybe he’d figured to just disappear once he was finished with us. Start over in some other incarnation. Or maybe my flight had taken him by surprise and he hadn’t thought that far ahead.