Owl Dreams
Page 52
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
The afternoon sun cast long shadows behind the slender headstones inside the Indian Baptist Cemetery. Big Shorty stood on the path leading to the Maytubby bonehouse and pointed out the yellow puffballs Robert missed the first time through.
“Can’t clean the place up until every last one of those mushrooms is gone.” He directed Robert to a rotten cottonwood branch that was partially obscured by moonflowers. Shorty hadn’t decided whether to remove the Datura plants or the sandstone wall that separated the Native American graveyard from the rest of Riverside Gardens Cemetery, but he had already painted over the white owl on the Maytubby bonehouse door.
Sarah felt the spiritual boundaries of the little cemetery dissolve as Robert used one of Shorty’s kitchen knives to scrape the mushrooms off the deadwood. He and Shorty searched out the remaining puffballs with the enthusiasm of children on an Easter egg hunt. Archie, Marie, and Sissy stood around the perimeter of the little graveyard like fans at a sports event, cheering the home team on to victory.
Sissy McCurtain was clearly impressed with Big Shorty. “Don’t see a man like that too often.”
How could Sarah disagree?
“You think he’s got a woman?”
Sarah didn’t answer. No point in discouraging romantic interest, no matter how unlikely it was to work out. She had learned that at her mother’s knee.
When Robert bagged the last of the puffballs, Big Shorty motioned for everyone to come inside the sandstone wall.
“I’ll care for this place now that the witch is gone.” He didn’t seem to notice Sissy standing by his side.
“I can help,” she offered. “I don’t know much about these bonehouses, but I’ve got relatives who’ll tell me.”
Shorty nodded his head in the affirmative. Sarah wondered if he had any idea what Sissy had in mind.
Sissy walked over to Sarah’s mother. She took Marie’s left hand in both of hers and kissed it gently.
Like the final scene from The Godfather. There was something going on between Sissy and Marie that Sarah didn’t understand. It started when Marie found them unconscious in the forest.
“The Maytubbys is all done with magic men,” Sissy said. “That finished when Hashilli drowned.” She placed a loving hand on Marie’s belly; she moved her fingers firmly but gently the way a doctor might check for enlarged lymph nodes.
“The next one won’t be a Maytubby—won’t even be a Choctaw.” Sissy walked back to stand beside Big Shorty, but she kept her eyes on Marie. “The ancestors have made their choice, but they won’t help you none.”
Marie smiled. She and Archie exchanged a look.
“Archie will take care of us.” Marie’s voice was steady, unmodified by manic energy or depression. Sarah looked into her mother’s eyes and saw something she had seen only rarely in all the years they had been together. The look of sanity.
“What’s going on?” Sarah had been Marie’s confidant since she was five years old, but now her mother seemed to be sharing secrets with Sissy McCurtain, a stranger she had known for only a few days.
Sissy took up a new position putting Big Shorty between Sarah and herself.
She peered over Shorty’s shoulders and held her hands up as if she were surrendering to an armed posse. “Didn’t mean to give away no secrets.” She took a dozen unsatisfying breaths then lowered her arms.
“The cat is definitely out of the bag,” said Marie. “I’m pregnant, Sarah. Sissy thinks there’s more to it than that. I’m not so sure.” She looked to Archie for support. He placed an arm around her shoulders, but did not speak. He retreated to the safety of his Indian ways.
Sissy stepped out from behind Big Shorty. “Owl dreams came with the mushroom powder sleep. I figured you had them, too,” she told Sarah. “The ancestors had give up on Hashilli. They wouldn’t let him find an heir.”
Marie said, “That’s why he stole the babies, Sarah. With Indians, nothing is ever about money.”
Robert fastened a twister seal around the last trash bag of mushrooms, dusted his hands off on his pants, and came to stand by Sarah. He didn’t look surprised to hear what Sissy and Big Shorty were telling her, but then Robert was a man who was accustomed to hearing voices in the wind. It would be hard to shock him. Sarah saw with some satisfaction that he did look surprised when she reached out and took his hand.
“Your mother’s baby is Hashilli’s heir,” Sissy said. “It don’t matter who the father is. Everything really important comes through the mother’s blood.”
Archie pulled Marie closer to him. He kissed her cheek and favored Sarah with one of his hundred-watt smiles. She wondered what Geronimo could have accomplished with a smile like that.
Sissy appraised the afternoon sun. “Showin’ beats tellin’ every time.” She walked to the newly painted door of the Maytubby bonehouse and motioned for Marie to join her.
Marie stood at the threshold and allowed Sissy to adjust her position as though she were a supernatural television antenna.
“Here we go,” Sissy stood back, evaluating Marie’s shadow. She pointed to a spot in front of the shadow’s belly that would be occupied by Sarah’s new sibling in another six months. “Look careful, now.” Sissy used her own shadow’s finger to trace the faint outline of an abstract owl on the door. The owl shadow was barely visible, but it was definitely there.
“It’ll get clearer as birth time draws closer.”
Sarah saw the silhouette of the owl, but she also saw how it blended with the shadows of cotton wood leaves and branches moving in the wind.
There is always a rational explanation.
Marie took no position on the matter. Neither did Big Shorty or Archie, and Robert never took a position on anything. With or without magic, this part of the adventure was finished. The next part was about to begin.
Archie told the group that he and Marie would move to the northeastern quadrant of Oklahoma. “The Cookson Hills. It’s always been outlaw country. A good place for a renegade Indian to hide out.”
Big Shorty would remain in Riverside Gardens Cemetery, waiting for his opportunity to wrestle death. He hadn’t offered Sissy McCurtain an invitation, but it was clear that she intended to stay with him, and Shorty did not object.
“I guess I’ll go back to Albuquerque,” Sarah told the group. “It looks like I’ll need a new roommate now that mother is moving out.”
Robert accepted her offer with a smile. The voices in the wind were gone, but Sarah’s voice was loud and clear.
THANKS
To my wife, Margaret Anderson Biggs for her patience. To William Bernhardt for coaching and workshopping this book. To Regina Williams, for publishing my stories when no one else was interested. To Bill and Pam Wetterman for their critiques and evaluations. To Dusty Richardson, perhaps the best living author of Western Fiction, for his encouragement.
ABOUT JOHN T. BIGGS
John Biggs has two dilemmas: he’s seen the magic that surrounds everyone and he can’t stop writing about it. We don’t know if it has anything to do with the Native American culture that surrounds him, but we wonder. There was that business with the paint. He swears it was just a smudge on his cheek he got when doing a little touch-up around the house, but we’re not so sure.
His knowledge of the criminal underworld benefitted from a part time job as a night security guard in Chicago and his later work as a prison dentist in Lexington, Oklahoma. His familiarity with the mystical realm is a mystery to most who know him as a pretty regular guy.
John moved to Chicago in 1968, in time for the Democratic National Convention riots, which he didn’t attend but remembers in great detail. He’s written many research articles—a very bad way to learn the craft, he says—and started writing fiction in 2001. Since then he’s published dozens of short stories and won numerous awards, including the grand prize of the 80th Annual Writer’s Digest Writing Competition for “Boy Witch.”
John and his wife travel at e
very opportunity. He loves reading and writing to the point of fanaticism, and spends altogether too much time in cemeteries. He won’t tell us who he talks to there, but it’s clear he’s got a direct line to someone—or something—that’s giving him inspiration.
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