Fox let out a deep exhalation. He hesitated, and seemed to be weighing his words. Then he said, “That’s what they say about Anna, you know. That she believed what she painted was real.”
“Who is they? Who says that?”
He shook his head. “Maybe my mother told me that. Or Lillian. I don’t remember now. But Cooper was a bit like that as he got older. You have to remember, the man was an alcoholic; he could have been seeing little blue Martians and no one around here would have been surprised.”
“I’ve gotten drunken letters from Davis. And I’ll tell you, the bits of new poems I’m finding in his notes don’t read like the work of a drunk. I still don’t have the foggiest idea of why he wouldn’t tell anyone he was writing them. And the further I get into his paperwork, the more I don’t understand.”
Fox gave her a wry look. “Well, join the club. I’ve been trying to understand that old man for thirty-five years. And all I’ve done is to find out just how little about him I ever knew.” He stood up. “Look, you still want to meet my mother?”
“Yes, I do. Your sisters, too, if I could.”
“I’m going to my mother’s place today and I’ll ask her whether she’ll talk to you. I’ll be out of here in another hour—then you can make all the phone calls you want.”
As if on cue the phone rang again.
Maggie groaned. “That had better not be Nigel,” she said as she rose to answer it. She paused. “Thanks, Fox. Talking like this, it helps me sort it out.”
Fox smiled. “De nada.” He headed for the ladder to the roof as she stepped into the house.
It wasn’t Nigel on the phone. It was Nigel’s editor friend, Jennifer, calling from New York and eager to hear all about Cooper’s biography. Which Nigel had neglected to mention wasn’t even started yet.
In the end, Maggie found herself telling the woman all about the book as she envisioned it—as Nigel had clearly intended. As she did so, she heard Fox banging loudly on the roof over her head.
• • •
Fox turned up the radio as he drove down from the Rincons, singing along with Luka Bloom’s “Diamond Mountain,” slightly out of key. The truck bounced from dirt onto solid paved road, and he switched it out of four-wheel drive. He made the turn onto Wentworth, then followed Speedway into town, watching as the roadside changed from horse ranches and pecan groves into a depressing modern maze of new construction, builders’ signs, and bulldozed ground barren of life where his beloved desert used to be. Every six months another piece was gone, and he would never get it back again.
Halfway into town the developments turned into used car lots, fast food joints, and shopping plazas standing half empty. But closer to the city’s heart the street turned back into one he enjoyed, lined with old adobe houses, Mission style and Mexican; houses meant for the desert and built on a smaller, more human scale. Fox maneuvered his truck through the tangled traffic around the university; past the second-generation hippies lingering on the sidewalks of 4th Avenue; under the tunnel and up to Congress Street in the city’s small downtown core.
He parked in front of Cafe Magritte, and then walked up to Dora’s gallery. He could see her through the plate-glass window, leaning on the counter, looking lovely but tired.
“What are you doing here?” she said as Fox came through the gallery door.
“Have you eaten? I’ve come to take you out. I’m headed out west to my mother’s place and I thought I’d come and bother you first.”
“Let me check with Dick and Marie if they can spare me for a while.” Dora disappeared into the back while Fox lingered over the handmade book displays and illustrations on the wall. Dora returned a few minutes later, an embroidered velvet purse over her arm. She was dressed in typical Dora style, like some cowgirl Pre-Raphaelite, in a long, full skirt, an antique shirt, her steel-toed boots and a Zuni bolo tie. Fox had the urge to swoop her up and take her dancing just to see that long skirt swing.
He said, “Where do you want to go? Magritte? The Congress Hotel?”
She chose the latter, and they walked together up Congress past the other galleries and shops. The Congress Hotel had been built in the twenties and renovated in the last several years as part of the Downtown Arts District that sprawled across several city blocks. The hotel was a wild-looking old place, its walls painted mauve and turquoise and covered with bright southwestern designs; its lobby full of old Mission couches and the tables of a small cafe. The bar beyond was a smokey affair filled with students, painters, musicians, and old cowboys. A dance club operated out of the bottom floor, and anyone who stayed overnight in the hotel was treated to wall-shaking music until the wee hours of the morning.
They parked themselves at a table in the lobby, which was nearly empty this late in the afternoon. The waiter was propping up the counter, an Anglo boy with Indian braids, so studiously laid back he was nearly comatose. He finally deigned to notice them and sauntered over to take their order, as if he was doing the greatest of favors. His cowboy boots were a neon blue so bright they made Fox’s wisdom teeth ache, and they looked like they pinched besides.
“Check out the quesadillas,” Fox suggested. “They make them with Brie and mango and I know that sounds just too damn hip for words, but it’s pretty good.”
“Sounds great. Will you share some gazpacho with me?”
“You’re on.”
The waiter wrote the order down and sauntered slowly away again. It worried Fox that he was not sauntering in the direction of the kitchen.
“This is my treat, by the way,” said Fox.
“What did you do, rob a bank?”
He smiled. “I’ve got a gig tonight. It’s good for a few bucks.”
“Which band this time?”
“I’m sitting in with Diamondback Rattlers, down at the Cushing Street Bar.”
“What do they play?”
“A little bit of everything. Tex-Mex, worldbeat, chicken scratch. They’ve got a didj player sitting in too, so I reckon it could get interesting. You and Juan want to come?”
“I’m beat, Johnny. Next time you play, okay? Have you asked Maggie?”
Fox shook his head.
“Why not? The woman has barely been out of the mountains since she got to Tucson. I bet she’d love a night out on the town.”
“Well, as much of a town as we’ve got around here.” Fox hesitated, uncomfortable. “I don’t think it would be her scene… Look, she was married to Nigel Vanderlin. That man plays the viol like he was the one who invented it. I play the accordion, for crissake.” To his disgust he could feel his face going red. And Dora didn’t miss that either.
“Fox,” she said, “I’ve never seen you get shy around a woman before.”
“Yeah, well, don’t rub it in, okay? I’ll get over it. Maggie Black’s not going to be hanging ’round here all that long anyway.”
“Now what makes you say that?”
“I’m just repeating what she says. That this is only a stopover, while she sorts out Cooper’s papers. Then it’s back to L.A., or maybe it’s Europe. Or Timbuktu…”
“But what about the house?”
“I don’t know. Maybe she’ll sell it,” Fox answered moodily. “You think that lad took our order or has he just gone to take a nap?”
Dora looked around for the waiter and she didn’t see him either. She shrugged. “Well I hope you’re wrong about Maggie. I think Cooper’s house suits her. And I think she’d like Diamondback Rattlers. And I think it’s cute that you’re shy.”
“Cute,” Fox said, kicking her boot with his own. “Puppies are cute. Small children are cute. I want to be sexy and brilliant and devastating.”
“You’re just lazy. Every other woman falls at your feet like a gift-wrapped present with a nice big bow. And of course you fall for the one who doesn’t.”
“That’s right. That’s the only reason she interests me. It’s not that she writes like an angel, or has a voice that makes me shiver to my toes, or that she lives
her life with more sheer guts than any ten people put together. No, you’re right. It’s just her singular good taste in not falling for me.”
“Not every woman falls like fruit out of a tree. Some of us take a while. You’ve known her now, what, a whole two weeks? Maybe you ought to work on it.”
“Why? So I can be her townie boyfriend until she gets back to her real life in L.A.? No thanks. I’ve thought this all through already, Dora, and I’m staying clear of it.”
“If you say so,” she told him dubiously.
“I say so,” Fox said firmly.
The waiter appeared, flung down a tray, and drifted out of the room again. Dora picked up her bottle of Dos Equis and looked at the food on her plate. “What is this?” she said.
“It looks like a chimichanga and, let’s see—” Fox poked with a fork. “A bean burrito,” he announced. He ate some. “It’s not bad actually. It’s got spinach and walnuts or something else weird inside.”
“But Fox, it’s not what we ordered.”
“Darlin’,” he said, “I count myself lucky that we got anything from that young man at all. Try it, it’s good. Like life, you know? It doesn’t always give you what you ask for, but usually it turns out fine just the same.”
Dora gave him a disgusted look. “Thank you for that deep philosophy. Life doesn’t give you a bill for it afterward.”
“We’re not going to get one either. He’s forgotten about us already.”
It was true. Their waiter was heading out the door and sauntering along up Congress Street. Now there was no one but them in the cafe or in the hotel lobby. They ate their meal, poured themselves some coffee from a pot they found behind the counter, and when they rose to leave again the waiter still hadn’t returned.
Fox left a big tip on the table, and then he saw Dora’s puzzled look. He said, “I reckon anyone that bad at their job is going to need the money more than me.”
Dora smiled and put her arm through his as they walked together up Congress Street. “That’s the screwiest logic I’ve ever heard. But things are always screwy when you’re around, Johnny—why do you think that is?”
“It’s a natural talent,” he assured her.
She laughed. “Yeah, I reckon it is,” she said, mimicking his drawling voice.
• • •
The sun set quietly that night, slinking behind the Tucsons with subdued whispers in blues and pinks, and then a long violet sigh. Maggie watched from her sunset place on the hill above the upper cabin. She’d been here every night this week. The dark-haired man had not shown up again—except, inexplicably, in a canvas painted over forty years ago. Each time she came here and found the hill empty there was relief mixed with her disappointment; and yet she continued to dream of him. Just the thought of those dreams brought the blood to her cheeks. She sighed, and turned away from the vast purple sky to climb back down the slope.
There were lights on in the upper cabin now, and a red Ford truck in the narrow drive. She saw someone was sitting at the outdoor table and her heart beat faster. But no, it was not the man from the hill. This man was older, stern-looking, with a barrel chest, copper skin, and black hair tied in a single braid. He sat very still, just watching her. His face was fierce, etched deep with lines of age around the eyes and mouth. If this was Tomás, then her tenant was not the man she’d met up on the peak.
Maggie took a breath and went on over to him. “I’m Marguerita Black. Thank you for the apples.”
He smiled, and it transformed his face. She’d pegged him as an older man and now she hadn’t any idea; he could be her age, or John Aider’s, or anything in between. He was dressed in jeans and a denim jacket; he wore a string of beads at his neck, and a necklace of animals carved out of polished stone.
“Tomás Yazzie,” he said in an accented voice. “You’re the new landlady. Pleased to meet you.”
“Likewise. But I don’t feel like a landlady yet. I still feel more like a guest up here.”
“My Dineh relatives call this land God’s Backyard. So really we’re all guests here.”
She smiled at him. “I like that. But what’s ‘Dineh’?” she asked.
“Navajo, in our own language,” he explained. Then he offered, “I’ve just made some coffee. Stay for a cup?”
“I’ve never been able to resist the offer of coffee in my entire life,” she confided.
“A sensible woman. And here I thought all you California people were too healthy for that. Fox told me you’re a vegetarian.” He said it in tones that somebody else might say a serial killer.
“I am. But I still have a few vices left, and I cling to them tenaciously.”
“Well I’m not going to ask you what the others are,” he said as he led her to the house. They passed through a fenced garden area, where corn, beans, tomatoes and squash were growing in lush profusion. She stared, astonished by what the man had coaxed from the dry desert soil.
Maggie stepped into the mechanic’s cabin. He turned from the stove, eyeing her suspiciously. “Now this isn’t your fancy L.A. coffee. It’s cowboy coffee. The grounds are boiled right here in the pot.”
“That’s the way my grandaddy always made it,” she assured him. “He called it coalminer’s coffee. He used to say coffee should be thick as mud and strong enough to put hair on your chest. Then I worried that he was right and it would.”
He gave her that delightful smile again, and handed her her coffee in a blue tin mug. It was strong. It tasted like West Virginia and smelled of a decade long past.
Tomás’s house was a simple place, one large room like the cabin below, with a kitchen, a couch, a big television. A small desk with a computer on it. A pine bed covered with a woven blanket. A Navajo rug hung over the couch and a single Indian flute over the bed. Before the hearth was a red clay bowl filled with herbs, like the one in Fox’s house.
This cabin too had an Anna Naverra painting on one side of the rounded fireplace, and a small framed sketch on the other side that might have been Naverra’s as well. Maggie stepped over to the wall, fascinated. The painting was of the huge granite boulders that topped the distant Catalina peaks, an ordinary landscape of wind-shaped rock and desert sky. Yet as Maggie stood and stared at it, a figure slowly emerged from the stone, a sleeping man, formed from the rock and the sepia tones of the earth. Three red slashes were painted on the back of one hand resting on the ground; the only bright color on the canvas, it drew the eye’s attention. The figure was so subtly rendered that it seemed to waver in and out of her vision; one moment it was there, and in the next she was looking at a simple landscape again. The title was printed next to Anna’s signature. “The One-Who-Sleeps,” Maggie read, recognizing the phrase from one of Cooper’s poems.
She moved over to the framed pencil drawing, lightly sketched on blue-grey paper with a few deft highlights of soft white chalk. The image was of a stag man, and Maggie wondered if it had been the inspiration behind the sculpture Juan had given her. But this creature, although it had the figure of a man, had the face of a stag, not a human face. The stag was pale, its eyes were dark, its rack of horns was heavy, and at the end of each point was a flame. The drawing was unsigned and untitled, but it was certainly by Naverra.
“Have you seen him?” Tomás said.
She turned around and stared. “Have I see a stag man?”
He smiled once more. “I mean our big white buck who runs around the hills here. Haven’t you seen him yet? He’s enormous, not like our little mule deer. He’s been here for years. It used to be a rare occurrence to see him; but now he comes out almost every night, drinking down there by Red Springs. Fox doesn’t believe me. He’s only even seen the buck twice himself. But Lillian Alder has seen him by the springs; and I wondered if you had too.”
“No. But I’ve still never been to Red Springs,” she admitted. “I’d like to. How would I get there?”
“Finish your coffee and I’ll take you. If it’s not too dark to see the trail.”
She
swallowed the dregs of her coffee quickly, before they lost the blue light of dusk. Maggie followed Tomás as he stepped from the cabin, making his way through the tall cactus to a path that she’d not noticed before. It was steep and rocky, leading down the mountain in the other direction from Fox’s house. When they got to the bottom, she realized they were on the road between Cooper’s place and Dora’s. The pathway led them through the trees, across the wash, and up the other side. In the distance she could see lights glow in the house where Fox’s sisters lived.
They skirted the bottom of another hill to the spot where the canyon narrowed; then the trail twisted up over boulders and roots along the bank of Redwater Creek. Tomás climbed it easily. For Maggie it was harder work; the footing was uneven, the sky was growing darker, Tomás was a silent shadow ahead. She found the man’s lack of small talk alternately peaceful and unnerving.
And then the ground levelled into a circle of soft, grassy land embraced by stone. The canyon walls beyond were steep, saguaro and ocotillo clinging to the slopes. The spring itself was circled by a tumble of boulders, white granite striped with quartz, and tall white trees that seemed to glow luminescent in the thickening dusk.
“Desert sycamore,” Tomás told her. They were beautiful, almost magical, as they arched over the water below. Their delicate leaves were green and gold, and trembled in the evening wind.
He put a hand on her arm, stopping her. She stood still and forgot to breathe. Against white trees and smooth white rock was the shape of a powerful seven-point buck, so white and still he could have been carved from a piece of the sun-bleached stone.
He looked at them. He knew they were there. And yet he didn’t turn to flee. He stood poised above the mountain spring, and then he slowly bent down to drink. She was standing so close she could see the muscles rippling in the stag’s strong neck.
The Wood Wife Page 12
