“And that’s what you’ve done? You’ve gone after what you wanted?”
“Yes.” Maggie looked uncomfortable. “Well, kind of.” She did not elaborate.
Fox glanced at her as he turned off River and onto a busy road running north. “But you assume that what I want is what you would want: Success. Recognition. I’m not like you. I’m not like Cooper. That’s not what a good life means to me. Playing music is a high, for sure—but there’s other things that I like just as much. Carpentry, for instance; it’s honest work, it’s solid, it’s real, it pays a living wage. And the Mentor Program, that’s another kind of high.”
“What’s that?”
“I give free music lessons to kids—in the barrio, and on the reservations. I like having time for things like that. And time for my friends. And for myself. I don’t want to spend all my time hustling music. Just want to play it, enjoy it, and have a life.”
Fox braked abruptly, turning toward the Interstate. Then he glanced over at Maggie again, and saw that she was smiling.
He said, “Sorry for that diatribe. You pushed some old buttons, that’s all.”
“You’re arguing with Cooper’s ghost again, aren’t you?”
Then he smiled himself. “I reckon I am.”
Maggie said, “You’re right, though. I am like Cooper. Art is the thing that matters to me. It’s not the desire for fame that drives me, but to do good work, the best that I can. When I was married, it was as if my energy was in hock—to Nigel, to the magazines, to anyone who asked for it loudly enough. Now I’m more single-minded, I admit it. I want to leave something good behind me when I go, something that will last.”
“There’s the difference between us then. Immortality means nothing to me. I’m a desert boy. ‘I have learned to walk lightly on this land, and to leave no trace behind.’ ”
“Ghalad Keller’s ‘Stone Canyon’?” she guessed.
He was pleased that she recognized it. “ ‘The mountains reach into heaven,’ ” Fox said. “ ‘And a man, so small. And a man, so small.’ ”
As they climbed the ramp to the Interstate, the city stretched around them, filling the valley from the mountains in the east to the mountains in the west. The sky was a clear, deep blue above them, the rich color of old Bisbee turquoise. The sound of flute and drums filled the truck, masking the traffic’s noise.
The traffic was light on the highway as soon as they left the city center. It disappeared almost altogether when they turned off the Interstate again, heading west into low hills. Fox’s mother lived north and west of the city, between the Tucson and Tortolita Mountains. The desert here was drier, scrubbier than the land below the Rincon range. The Tucsons were volcanic plugs with the jagged profile seen in a hundred cowboy movies. It was a land of saguaro and ironwood trees, unique in Sonoran ecology. Builders’ signs were everywhere on it, announcing high-density developments to come.
The imminent construction disappeared as the road beneath them turned to dirt. There were still houses here, but individually built and tucked into the low desert scrub. The desert was peaceful, but arid and rough. The sky made a vast blue dome overhead. The heat shimmered in waves just above the dusty road they travelled on.
He turned suddenly onto a narrow track that bumped its way along a dry creek bed. Maggie grabbed for the dashboard as the truck hit a rock. “My god, what kind of a road is this?”
“We’re on Cooper’s land. Well, it’s my mother’s land now. Two hundred acres, going up into the Tortilitas. These last ten years he was buying up what he could, one step ahead of the developers. Cooper’s version of the National Trust. It was one thing we could agree on.”
“How does your mother get in and out?”
“She doesn’t. She doesn’t like to leave it. There’s a Mexican family that lives over that way.” He gestured vaguely to the north. “They look after things and look after Mama. The eldest of the Hernandez boys dates one of my sisters.”
“What do I call your mother?”
“Her name is María Rosa.”
“Ms. Rosa?”
“Just call her María. That’s what everyone else does.” He ran the pickup through another wash, over a hill, and into a little hollow. He stopped the truck. The tape deck switched off, and the desert seemed suddenly very quiet. He could hear many birds and the steady hum of traffic, although the rise of the land hid the Interstate from view.
There wasn’t much to his mother’s place. A small trailer, with a porch that he’d built for her out of lengths of Rincon mesquite. An outdoor oven. And the remains of a corral that hadn’t seen a horse in years. The trailer was parked in a semicircle of tall saguaro cactus, nestled beneath their protective arms. At their base was a scattering of wildflowers, tall, slender stems of pink penstemon and the smaller, fluffy fairy dusters.
“There are so many saguaro here,” said Maggie with wonder as she stepped from the truck. “Do you suppose this is where Cooper got the inspiration for the name The Saguaro Forest? It’s an odd name, don’t you think?”
“That’s what this is called, a saguaro forest.”
“Really? I thought he’d made that up. I thought a forest had to have trees.”
“When I was a boy, my mother used to tell me that at night the saguaro all dance together. That’s why they look the way they do—with all their arms raised high. They won’t move while you’re watching them, they wait until you fall asleep. And then at dawn they all have to rush to get back into place again. She used to say to me, ‘Close your eyes, mijo; the saguraro are waiting for you to sleep so they can run off to dance…’ ”
Maggie looked enchanted, holding her arms up like a saguaro ready for a waltz. “I can almost see it. Aren’t they wonderful? Almost like they’re human too.”
“That’s what the Tohono O’odom say. They call them ‘Aunt’ and ‘Uncle.’ ”
He stepped up to the little trailer and called out to his mother, but no one answered him. Fox opened the unlocked door and stepped inside. The air was sour with old cigarette smoke, the place dusty, abandoned-looking. It often looked that way when he came to visit—as though his mother had decided she’d cleaned up houses for too many years and simply wasn’t going to do it again. He usually spent time with a bucket and mop before he left.
He stepped outside and said to Maggie, “She’s either out in the desert, as usual, or she’s gone over to the Hernandez place.”
“Did she know we were coming?”
“I told her last week. But she’s a forgetful old woman. She likes to keep the phone unplugged so I have no way to remind her. Come on. Let’s take a walk.”
He led Maggie on the narrow path that skirted the hills to the Hernandez spread. They could see the Hernandez house in the distance, a low wooden building, a couple of stables, and several empty horse corrals. The land here was dotted with ironwood trees, growing hand in hand with the saguaro. They were small trees, but strong, and tough—like his mother. Halfway down the trail they found her. She was gathering wild desert plants in a flat-bottomed basket hung over one brown arm. She was a tiny old lady, small as Dora, her face covered with a fine network of wrinkles. She wore a shapeless, faded cotton dress that looked exactly like every other dress she’d ever worn. A red bandana tied back silver-grey hair, and on her feet were dusty socks and sandals. Fox couldn’t even imagine what Maggie Black was going to make of his mother.
A smile lit up the wrinkled face when María Rosa saw them. She waved her hand at them like a child, and then waited in an ironwood’s meager shade while Maggie and Fox approached. Fox leaned down and kissed her cheek. He introduced Maggie, glad that he had warned her that his mother was the shyest old woman on God’s green earth.
But now María was beaming at Maggie, and the two women were soon chatting up a storm as his mother took them on a circular path, pointing out the desert flora. Fox scratched his head as he trailed along behind. There was just no predicting his mama, he reckoned.
“Creo
sote,” María was instructing Maggie. “A little branch under your pillow every night, you’ll never have trouble with arthritis. Or in a salve, it’s good if you cut yourself. Now this, this agave. A tincture of this, very good for colic or indigestion. This sage here, dry it out, make a tea—you have a sore throat? You gargle with it. White sage, that you smudge with, you know? Good for purification. This here, sagebrush—not sage. Good for diaper rash. Ocotillo here, you make a tincture of the bark, put in the bath, good for fatigue.”
This lecture continued all the way back to the trailer, but Maggie seemed completely fascinated. Fox had heard all this many times before, and he wasn’t sure why Maggie needed to hear it now, but he knew better than to question his mother. He’d never get a straight answer anyway.
The women sat down at a picnic table in the small bit of shade provided by the porch. His mama pulled out her tobacco pouch and rolled herself a cigarette—a habit she knew Fox worried about as her voice grew raspier with each passing year. She gave him a little smile as she lit up, half guilty and half devil-may-care. He rolled his eyes and he went inside to brew a pot of tea.
Outside, the lecture continued. “Now these prickly pear cactus, you must carefully cut off the spines and the skin, and then you have a poultice for bad burns. Leave it right on for several hours; it will draw the fluid out.”
“What about the saguaro?” he heard Maggie ask as he put three mugs on a battered tin tray.
“Ah, make wine from the fruit. Drink till you puke,” the old woman answered and the two women laughed. “Very good purgative.”
He carried the pot of tea to the porch. His mama stubbed out her cigarette as Maggie took a notebook from her bag. “María,” the younger woman said, “what I’d really like to talk to you about is Davis Cooper. Fox told you I’m here to write a book about Cooper, didn’t he? It would be very helpful, and I’d be grateful, if you could tell me some stories about your life with him.”
His mother folded her hands on her lap, looking like a good little schoolgirl. She nodded, her eyes round and dark in her face. She didn’t volunteer anything.
Maggie shot Fox a look.
“Mama, what if Maggie just asks you some questions?”
She nodded again, retreating back into the shyness she usually presented to strangers.
Maggie took a breath. “All right. For instance, when did you first meet Cooper?”
“Oh,” María said, in a hesitant little voice, “years ago it must have been.”
“Where, Mama?” Fox prompted.
“Oh,” she said, “on the mountain.”
Maggie said, “Now, what I’ve been told is that Cooper advertised for a housekeeper, and you saw the ad and you answered it. Is that right? Is that what happened?”
Her head bobbed.
“Well, when would that have been? What year?”
“Umm. Nineteen seventy-three?” María guessed, as though she were reaching for an answer on an exam she hadn’t studied for.
“Mama, I was born in fifty-eight. It was the year I was born, wasn’t it?”
“Yes!” she said, and a smile lit her face.
“But where were you before then?”
The smile left. She looked confused. “Well, I was here.”
“Here, where?”
She sketched the air with her hand. She could have meant this spot, she could have meant Tucson, she could have meant the United States.
Maggie tried another tack. “When I was reading Cooper’s work today, I came across some notes for his poems. Perhaps you’ve seen this one before? He wrote it in 1959. I think it must be about Fox.”
María looked at the notebook. She sat very still. Then she put her two hands on the page, and touched the letters gently, a strange expression on her round, wrinkled face. A look of wonder, and tenderness. Then she rose abruptly, and she went into the trailer, and shut the door behind her. She did not come out again.
“Oh dear,” said Maggie. “I’m not doing very well at this at all, am I?”
“It’s not you. It’s my mother. She never talks about the past like this. Or to people she doesn’t know. Actually you’ve done rather well.”
“Have I upset her?”
“Not exactly. But she won’t come out again now, I’m afraid.”
But Fox was wrong. When they finished their tea and got back into his pickup truck, the trailer door opened and María came out, a lidded basket under her arm. She came to the window and gave it to Maggie. Maggie opened the lid. There were herbs inside.
“Thank you,” said Maggie. She sounded touched. “May I give something to you then?”
The old woman gave her a shy, delighted smile. Maggie took a turquoise stone from her pocket and put it in his mother’s palm. María clutched it tightly with the sweetest of expressions breaking over the sun-browned face. She waved at them as Fox turned the truck around, and then she struck out into the desert. As the truck pulled away, she was bent down in the dirt, absorbed in her plants once again. Fox knew from past experience that she’d soon forget all about them.
“Your mother is a doll,” Maggie commented. “She and Lillian must get along famously.”
“You bet,” Fox said as he steered the truck back over the broken trail.
He turned onto the graded dirt road, and headed east for the Interstate. The afternoon sun was a blaze of light behind them, throwing long shadows.
Fox looked at Maggie. “So what was that page of Cooper’s you showed my mother, anyway?”
She turned to him, her eyes opaque. When she spoke, her voice was hesitant. “I think it might be about your birth.” She read the passage to him.
Fox was quiet for a long while.
Then he said, “She told me I was born on the mountain. I knew that part of it before—that she didn’t go to a hospital. I knew Cooper or someone had to have been there. But to tell you the truth,” he added, swiftly braking for a pair of coyotes crossing the road, “I always thought Cooper was our father, and those two would never admit it.”
“Cooper?” Maggie’s voice was startled.
“Well, not that he ever acted like he was. But it made a kind of sense—more sense than Mama’s story. Now it turns out Lillian actually met my father. And here’s Cooper wondering about his Christian name. It seems,” he said with remarkable calm, “that Mr. Foxxe was a real man after all.” He put the truck back into gear, stepping hard on the accelerator.
She said quietly, “I’ve seen a man who looks like him. Like the man in Anna’s painting. I’ve seen him in the Rincons, wandering around the hills.”
“The man in that painting would have to be as old as Davis Cooper now,” Fox pointed out.
“I know,” she said, her voice husky. He could not read her expression.
“You think I’ve got a brother I don’t know about or something?”
“A brother? Oh. I hadn’t thought of that.”
“Or do you think Anna’s paintings are coming to life?” He said it in a teasing way, and then was sorry, for Maggie’s shoulders tensed.
“What do you think?”
“Me? Well shoot, I don’t know,” he said lightly, trying to smooth the tension away. “You’re the one who’s supposed to be making sense of Cooper. So you tell me when you find out.”
She was silent then, her face serious, lost in private thoughts of her own.
Fox flipped the Desert Wind tape over. The music began with a whisper of flute—the copal flute he’d had from Tomás. And then the low chanting of Begay’s Navajo uncles singing pow-wow songs. It made for a peaceful sound: the flute, voices, percussion like the rattle of stones. The moan of the didjeridu was the rising wind just before a storm.
Fox raised the volume, for it filled the silence between them as they travelled back to town.
• • •
That night she slipped through the shadows of the bedroom, making no noise with her bare human feet. Her heart was beating rapidly. She wished once again that the Spine Witch was he
re. But this was her task alone tonight, to retrieve that single copper band that had left the mountain for so many years and now had come back again. She could see it on the night table, glowing in the darkness like a star.
She crept up to the head of the bed. She cast a nervous glance at the sleeping woman, and slowly slid her hand to the table. She reached for the band, her fingers closing on it. Then her wrist was pinned. A light went on.
“I’ve got you,” the woman said, looking at her. Her eyes widened when she saw what she had caught.
The little one cringed against the side of the bed, covering her face with long jackrabbit ears.
“Oh good heavens. You’re trembling. And you’re such a little bit of a thing, now aren’t you?” The woman’s voice grew softer. “Come on now, I’m not going to hurt you. I just want to know who you are. What you are. And what are you doing with all my things?”
She lifted one ear and peeked up with one eye. She whispered the woman’s name—“Black Maggie.”
“That’s right,” the woman said to her. “But who are you, little darlin’?”
“I have no name.” Her human voice was both whispery and gravelly. She’d never tried it out before. She said hopefully, “You can call me what you like.” She felt a flutter of excitement in her chest. Was she about to get a name at last?
The woman smiled. “All right then. But what shall I call you? How about … Thumper?” She laughed, a husky sound. “You’ve probably never heard of Bambi, have you?”
“Thumper.” She lifted her other ear, and grinned, exposing little teeth.
“Thumper, if I let you go, are you going to disappear on me?”
Her smile left and she gravely shook her head.
“All right, I’m going to trust you then. But I want you to let go of the bracelet first. That’s Anna’s bracelet and I’m not going to give it to you, understand?”
Thumper shook her head again, and she let go of the copper band. Crow would not be happy. But what could she do? The woman had caught her fairly. There were rules about these things, of course. Even Crow was bound by that, although it was true he wasn’t bound by much. Not like the rest of them. Not like her, with the animal self always tugging at her, overwhelming her other senses. Not like the Spine Witch, bound to the cactus in which her magic was housed; or the Nightmage whose soul had been plucked from the wood like a bean popped from a mesquite pod and put only Earth knew where.
The Wood Wife Page 16
