by Bella Pollen
In the end, though, I gave up and had preliminary plans for Temerosa drawn up by an architect who had sounded, leastways on the telephone, adequately qualified for the job. He agreed to drive down from Tucson to take a look, and turned up with both his wife and an engineer in tow, the latter spending most of the afternoon complimenting his boss on his choice of headgear. Surprisingly, the plans they’d sent had looked reasonably good. Nevertheless Duval turns each page with quiet disdain.
‘How did they get on to you in the first place?’ I ask. It’s essential that I muddle through all preliminary meetings without giving away that I am less than sure what I’m doing. I began training as an architect, it’s true, but dropping out after three years to marry Robert meant exchanging girders and foundations for flora and fauna, a mistake I have regretted ever since and one that now puts me at a distinct disadvantage. Once I have extracted a quote from him, I’ll feel more secure; until then there’s no doubt I’m an easy mark.
‘Can’t recall,’ he replies. Duval speaks slowly, allowing a pause to lapse before answering. Everyone does it round here – as though it’s necessary to think long and hard before producing the most unembellished of answers. Granted this is not a part of the world where the snappy rejoinder is celebrated, even so, it’s hard to get used to. I constantly find myself biting my tongue in order not to start other people’s sentences for them.
‘And what were they renovating the town for?’
‘Oh some kind of getaway for rich city folk.’
I take this dig with extremely good grace. ‘Why did they not get you to finish the job?’
Pause. ‘Ran out of money.’
‘Did you get paid at least?’
Pause. ‘Yup.’
‘You’re lucky. The whole group went bankrupt – that’s how we ended up here.’
There’s no need for me to elaborate on my back story other than a desire to distance myself from any profligacy on the part of the former owners. To some-how illustrate to this man, who probably doesn’t care one way or the other, that I’m different, that I’m going to be honest and fair and straightforward to deal with. You and me, mate, we’re going to see eye to eye. It’s a little sad, and don’t I know it – but if my cowboy builder were a chippie from the East End, I’d probably be talking cockney by now.
Duval leans back in his chair as though to confirm that as far as he is concerned, one absentee owner is pretty much the same as any other.
‘Do you know how much they spent?’ I persist. ‘Including everything . . . generators, utilities, the well?’
Such a long pause now, that I wonder whether he’s adding it all up in his head, nut by screw by bolt.’ ‘Bout three hundred thousand,’ he says finally.
I whistle.
‘It’s an expensive business finding water in the desert, Mrs Coleman.’
As his expression betrays no trace of irony, I assume none is intended. ‘Call me Alice,’ I murmur.
He flicks through the rest of the drawings and I stare at his hands. His nails are black with dirt. A deep, partially healed cut runs through the middle of his index finger. ‘So what is it you’ve got in mind for the place?’ he asks.
‘Oh, you know,’ I lean back in my chair, ‘some kind of getaway for rich city folk.’
For the very shortest second his eyes flick to mine. Gotcha, I think with satisfaction.
I scribble a figure on a piece of paper and push it over to him. ‘This is what I have to play with.’
He studies it. ‘I’ll need to price the job up for you.’
‘Ballpark, though? Do you think it can be done?’
‘Maybe,’ he says non-committally.
‘Okay. Great. So ...’ I stare at him awkwardly. ‘So ... how many men do you have in your crew?’
Pause. ‘Enough.’
‘And they’re local?’
‘Mostly.’
‘And they’re good?’
Duval reaches for his hat and puts it on, giving it a quick anti-clockwise turn, the way everyone does round here, as though important to screw it directly into the scalp in case of high wind or a rogue bird swooping down to snatch it off.
‘Why don’t we go down to the town and you can see for yourself.’
I choke on my coffee. ‘Now?’
‘Now,’ he says.
Men are swarming in and out of the bunkhouse, stripping the place clean like an army of red ants. One by one they push through the screen door carrying animal skins, galvanized buckets of stones, armfuls of cans and dismembered sections of rusted boiler. I count fifteen workers, the older men dressed in plaid shirts buttoned over jeans and slant-heeled cowboy boots, the younger men in faded sweatshirts, trainers and baseball hats.
They’re all Mexican, every one of them.
A boy no more than sixteen, with an angry red birthmark on the side of his neck, looks up as we approach. One or two others also glance in our direction but Duval shouts something in Spanish and they quickly look away, dumping their loads on the ground before heading once again back into the house. Duval watches the activity through narrowed eyes.
‘Isn’t it a little unusual to put men on a job before you’ve met the client?’ I ask him.
Pause. ‘Benjamín said you were in a hurry.’
‘Well yes,’ I concede. ‘But how do you know I haven’t contracted somebody else to do the work?’
Pause. ‘I can have these men cleared out of here in ten minutes flat, ma’am.’
‘Alice,’ I correct vaguely, still playing for time. Short of a total miscommunication from Benjamín it’s bizarre that Duval should have brought his men here and just started work. Bizarre and stunningly presumptuous, as though the idea that I might want to ask for references or get him to formally tender a bid was ludicrously nit-picky. Nevertheless the men were here. Moreover the figure I’d written down was 20 per cent less than the Tucson company had quoted for the job.
‘Are they the same lot that worked on the town originally?’
‘They’re a good crew.’
‘I’m sure they are, but are they ... I mean can th—’
‘Between them they can supply everything you need, from finished carpentry to roofing.’
‘They’re all Mexican.’
As I’m presumably stating the obvious, Duval makes no answer.
‘So how would it work? Who would my contract be with?’
‘You pay me, I pay them. Simple.’
At that moment one of the men struggles through the patio door, the base of an iron bed on his back. I watch him thoughtfully. It’s late February now and, according to Benjamín, the weather will soon break. Sun up no longer guarantees a big blue. Dark clouds form and disappear, occasionally seeping a little rain in defiance of the sun. Rainbows come and go, throwing a yellow misty light over the town. A raw wind flips the hood of my jacket over my head and whips the cottonwood leaves into mini typhoons around our feet. Time is passing. Duval might be high-handed and he’s certainly odd – but maybe round here it’s as he claims. Simple. I need someone who knows the vagaries of this site, and he does. I need workers, and he has them.
‘All right,’ I say slowly. ‘Fine.’
I start towards the boarding house. ‘So will you introduce me to the men?’
‘Not a good idea.’
I stop. ‘I’m sorry?’
‘You won’t remember their names and besides none of them speaks more than a word of English.’
‘How am I supposed to communicate with them then?’
‘You don’t have to. I’ll communicate for you.’
I feel my face flush.
‘And if you’re not around?’
As I said, Mrs Coleman, it’s very simple. You tell me what you need doing and I’ll get the job done for you.’
7
I’m ten miles from the school when the big white Ford Explorer materializes out of nowhere and flashes me to a standstill. What is it with these patrol vehicles? Behind me the road is straight, the e
dges are flat and I do, I swear, occasionally look in the rear-view mirror – possibly not as often as specified in the highway code book, but enough to notice when there’s a chunk of metal biting my ass. I watch with weary resignation which swiftly turns to disbelief as, with a twiddle of hat and gun holster, Winfred Tennyson advances the fifty yards to my car.
I wind down the window. ‘Look, I really wasn’t going that fast.’
‘My machine says fifty-two, ma’am.’
‘Well, there you go!’ I say triumphantly.
‘Speed limit is forty-five here, ma’am.’
‘Oh, come on.’ I bang the wheel in frustration. ‘Just where is the sign that says that?’
‘Ma’am, may I see your driving licence?’ Then at my heartfelt sigh, he adds, ‘It’s an offence not to carry your licence, Mrs Coleman.’
‘Yes, yes,’ I say irritably, ‘so I’ve heard.’
‘Is this your truck, Mrs Coleman?’
‘Dammit, you know it’s my truck, Winfred. Come on, give me a break, will you? I’m on my way to pick up the kids from school.’
‘Oh sure, the kids.’ He casts an eye further into the car as if only just noticing their absence and once again I’m struck by his intonation. His words are shunted up together, the back end of one sentence bumping up against the next like freight carriages whose driver has braked suddenly.
‘That’s a big feather.’
‘Yes, it is, isn’t it?’ I pluck the feather off the dash-board and again smooth down its tendrils. ‘I think it’s an eagle. A bald eagle, maybe?’ I muse, seeking to distract him. ‘It had a white head anyway and a huge wingspan.’
‘Nuh-huh,’ Winfred says. ‘May I see it?’
‘Sure.’ I pass it to him. He turns it over in his hand.
‘Eagles are protected around here, Mrs Coleman.’
‘Well quite right, so they should be.’
‘There are big fines.’
‘Good, great. I’m all for it.’
‘Thousand dollars, maybe more, maybe five thousand dollars. My sister Brunhilda, when she found a—’
‘I’m sorry,’ I interrupt, ‘you have a sister called Brunhilda?’
‘Yeah, and another called Moira, but she’s pretty fat. She doesn’t go out much.’
‘Oh ... I see.’
‘So, okay, when my sister Brunhilda found out about the fines, she buried her eagle feathers in the ground so she didn’t get caught.’
Finally, finally, I hear the muffled clang of a warning bell. ‘What exactly do you mean by caught,’ Winfred?’
‘It’s against the law to take eagle feathers, Mrs Coleman.’
‘Well I didn’t take this feather, Winfred, it dropped out of the sky.’
‘Mrs Coleman—’
‘Alice, please.’
‘You could be in big trouble.’
‘Really? Well you know what? Maybe it’s not an eagle’s feather, after all. Come to think of it, I may have exaggerated the wingspan. It was actually pretty small. More the size of a pigeon, I’d say.’
‘I’m not kidding, ma’am, I can impound your truck.’
‘Oh really?’ I’m beginning to get very annoyed with Winfred Tennyson. ‘On what grounds?’
‘The US 668 Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act,’ he recites flawlessly. ‘All vessels, vehicles, aircraft and other means of transportation used to aid in the taking of any bird, or body part, nest, or egg or feather, shall be impounded.’
I look at him sceptically. Either he’s bullshitting or Winfred has a truly impressive grasp of obscure prohibition acts protecting migratory birds of the USA.
‘So what you’re saying is that this eagle feather is protected by and is in fact the property of the US government?’
Winfred nods. ‘Yes, ma’am, that’s what I’m saying.’
‘Well, Winfred, put this in your pipe and smoke it. This eagle feather landed on my truck. So the way I see it, this eagle feather is guilty not only of trespassing on, but also deliberately inflicting damage to my property and I’m going to have to seriously think about suing the US government, naming you as a co-respondent.’
Winfred considers this at some length. ‘Mrs Coleman, I’m letting you off the bald eagle offence.’
‘Very decent of you.’
‘But I am going to have to fine you for speeding.’
‘Oh, come on, Winfred!’ I bang the steering wheel again. ‘Considering that we’re old friends, considering you’ve already had a hundred dollars off me, don’t you think you should let me off this time?’
‘You’re a very funny lady, Mrs Coleman, and I like you, but you better pay me the seventy dollars anyway.’
‘Oh, so it’s seventy this time, is it?’
‘It’s ten dollars for every mile over the limit, ma’am.’
‘Tell me something, Winfred,’ I ask, clawing at the money in my wallet. ‘How did you know I lived down the Temerosa road when you stopped me before?’
For the quickest second his eyebrows pull together and pucker up the smooth skin of his forehead. ‘Hey, everyone’s been saying how an English lady’s bought up the town.’ He tears off the ticket and hands it to me. ‘I just figured out it was you.’
‘Really,’ I regard him doubtfully, ‘you just figured it out.’
‘Yes, ma’am, that’s right.’
‘I guess that was pretty clever of you then.’ But as I watch him making his leisurely way back to his patrol truck, I wonder, just as I had wondered with Benjamín, what reason Winfred could possibly have for lying.
Crawling along at the prescribed forty-five mph makes me late for pick-up. By the time I arrive, school is well and truly out and Emmy is swinging on the giant tyre, flirting languidly with a couple of older boys. As I hurry up to her, one tugs the shirt of the other and says darkly, ‘So here’s the mom now,’ and they both nudge Emmy.
Jack is nowhere to be found.
Sue is at her desk in the main classroom reading a copy of Defenders of Wildlife magazine. ‘Oh yeah, the little English boy, sure, sure.’ She cocks her head to one side in faint recognition at his name. ‘Funny little kid.’
‘Well yes, maybe,’ I concede, ‘but I’d like him back nonetheless. Where is he?’
Sue is slight and almost pretty but I already suspect her of being one of those women who always manage to look at the world with weary eyes, irrespective of how much sleep they get. She rests her pencil on an article entitled ‘The Air We Breathe’ before looking up. ‘He went home with Travis on the school bus.’
‘He did what!’
Her neck snaps straight at my tone. ‘Went home with Travis?’ she hazards more cautiously.
‘And you let him go, just like that?’
‘Is there a problem?’ She’s now blinking out a hurt expression, but I’m in no mood for emotional Morse code.
‘Yes, there is a problem. Aren’t you supposed to keep him here at the school – you know, till a parent or a guardian comes?’
‘No, I don’t think so,’ she says, and looks so genuinely puzzled at this deeply foreign notion that my anger evaporates.
I break all speed limits following Sue’s directions. What if Travis, right now, is helping Jack onto a wild stallion or letting him play with his pet rattler or just beating him to a pulp with a large stone? Travis’s home turns out to be a car junkyard about five miles from the school. Two or three acres of cars and trucks in varying stages of dilapidation enclosed by a chain link fence. Jack is sitting on the gravel by a trailer in the centre playing with broken pieces of toys. He ignores me when I call his name. Next to him Travis is performing an autopsy on a dead bicycle.
‘Hi. Travis, right?’
He nods.
‘Are your parents here?’
‘Nope.’
‘Okay.’ Jack’s head is still down. ‘Well ... Jack ... it’s time to go home.’
Jack doesn’t stir.
‘Jack, I said it’s time to go home.’
Jack acknowle
dges my presence with angry, glittering eyes. ‘You shittin’ me?’ he says.
I steal a look at him on the way home. His face is set stubbornly and he lolls in his seat, body language indicating that right now, right this minute he’d rather move in with Travis and live in his nice trailer for the rest of his natural life than come home with his mother.
‘Jack,’ I say finally, ‘are you cross I was late?’
Nothing.
‘Did you think I wasn’t going to turn up?’
Still nothing.
‘I got stopped for speeding. By the same cop. I’m sorry I was late but, you know, you could have waited.’
No comment.
‘Emmy waited.’
His eyes slide to the left just in case his sister dares to look smug.
‘Didn’t you wonder what might happen to Emmy if you abandoned her . . . don’t you think she’s too young to be left on her own?’
‘Certainly am not,’ Emmy says furiously. ‘God!’
‘What if something had happened to her?’
‘What could have happened to me?’
‘Anything, anything could have happened to you.’ I turn back to Jack. ‘What if a mountain lion had run up and bitten her head off?’
‘Mummy!’ Emmy cackles throatily.
‘How would we have got her home again? How would we have got a seatbelt round just a head?’
‘Mummy! How dare you?’ Emmy is thrilled with this unexpected twist in the conversation.
‘Think of the mess!’
Finally, Jack chances a look in my direction.
‘Look, Jack, I don’t want you going to a friend’s house or anyone’s house unless I know about it first.’
He nods.
‘I need to know where you both are the whole time, okay? Or I’ll get scared.’ I put my hand out to him and he touches the pads of his fingertips to mine. ‘Okay?’
