Stone Junction

by Jim Dodge

  ‘Hello,’ Annalee answered.

  ‘Mrs Ethelred?’

  She recognized Smiling Jack’s voice. The married name was the beginning of the confirmation code. ‘Yes, this is Mrs Ethelred. And Daniel.’

  ‘Where did we buy the diapers?’

  ‘Lincoln.’

  ‘Was I late getting back to you?’

  ‘Thirty-two months.’

  ‘That’s actually pretty quick for me. But I hope you can make it home a helluva lot faster than that. There’s a duck on the pond. Sorry to do you like this the first time out, but things got screwy somewhere else and we had to make a hot switch. Your friend may be there waiting, or already gone.’

  Annalee had a vehicle now, an oil-guzzling ’50 Ford flatbed, and she immediately picked up Daniel from the sitter’s and drove back to the Four Deuces, jolting the last two miles to the cabin. The house was dark when they entered.

  ‘Why don’t you just stop right there and relax.’ The woman’s voice was soft, but carried the unmistakable authority of a person holding a gun.

  Annalee and Daniel stopped.

  ‘Who we got?’ the voice asked. Annalee could make out the woman’s shape against the far wall. She was indeed holding a gun, some kind of short rifle.

  ‘Annalee Pearse, and my son, Daniel.’ She felt Daniel pressing against the back of her leg.

  ‘Good enough, gal,’ the woman said, some boom in her voice. ‘Didn’t mean to throw ya a shit-scare, but I’ve had a mean day and a hard night and for all I knew you might have been looters or the law. Light a lamp so we can look each other over.’

  Annalee lit the two lamps on the mantel. As the light flared, the woman lowered the sawed-off shotgun. ‘My name’s Dolly Varden.’ The woman looked bloodlessly pale in the lamplight, but her clear blue eyes, her voice, and her short, sturdy body erased any sense of frailty. She was wearing a gray cotton chemise and grimy tennis shoes.

  ‘I was told you might be here, Dolly,’ Annalee said, ‘but I was still startled.’

  ‘Hardly blame ya,’ Dolly grunted. She looked down at Daniel, still pressed against his mother’s leg. ‘And your name’s Daniel, right?’

  Daniel nodded once, quickly.

  ‘Did I scare you, too?’

  Daniel answered with another nod, this one even quicker.

  Dolly Varden squatted down in front of him and smiled. ‘I got to admit that when you two came driving up, scared me so bad I almost jumped plumb outa my skin and shimmied up the flue.’

  Daniel buried his head behind Annalee, who reached down and lifted him into her arms.

  Dolly stood up. ‘Well, now that we all had a good scare, I want you to get ready for another one.’ She turned around. The bottom half of her shift was soaked with blood. ‘You any good at first aid, honey?’ she said over her shoulder.

  ‘Not really,’ Annalee said, shuddering faintly at the sight.

  Daniel felt the shudder, and twisted around in her arms to look at her face. ‘That’s blood,’ he said, as if reassuring her.

  ‘Well, don’t stand there gawking, you two. Boil water and tear petticoats. I don’t think it’s much, but I haven’t got a good look yet, seeing as how the bastard got me in the ass. Damn but my ass has taken a ton of punishment. Men, motorcycles, general kicking, and now buckshot. Fucking guards don’t use rock salt like the farmers did when I was just a freckle-faced filly raiding the pumpkin patch.’

  Annalee set Daniel down and went in to start the stove. Dolly turned her back to Daniel and pulled the chemise over her head. Daniel stared. Dolly’s back and thighs were covered with tattoos, her panties torn and blood-soaked.

  ‘My mommy has one,’ Daniel said.

  ‘One what?’

  ‘Tattoo picture. A little one.’

  Annalee, following the conversation from the stove, said, ‘I did it myself. It’s not very good.’

  ‘You must have been in deep to do it yourself.’

  ‘I was,’ Annalee said.

  ‘What is it? A lover’s name, a flower, an animal?’

  ‘A cross.’

  ‘Would’ve never guessed,’ Dolly said. She sounded faintly disappointed.

  ‘No, no – it’s not religious. It’s a twisted cross. They tried to humiliate me.’

  ‘Me too, honey,’ Dolly said with sympathy. ‘And now they shot me in the ass. How’s that water doing?’

  ‘Pretty soon.’

  ‘Does it hurt?’ Daniel said.

  Dolly turned to face him, her large breasts swaying as she moved. ‘Some, but not terrible. Kind of a steady ache.’

  ‘I hit my leg with the ax one time. Not the sharp end, the other end. That hurt a lot.’

  ‘I bet it did.’

  ‘I cried and cried.’

  ‘I would too.’

  ‘You’re not crying now.’

  ‘Well, I probably will be in a few minutes,’ Dolly said.

  ‘You’re supposed to,’ Daniel said solemnly. ‘It helps it go away.’

  When the water was ready, Dolly slipped off her panties, wincing, and laid face down on the bed. There was a narrow, ragged furrow across her left buttock.

  Examining the wound, Annalee said, ‘Doesn’t look bad at all. But you appear to have lost a tattoo.’

  ‘My cherry,’ Dolly groaned.

  Annalee giggled. ‘You’re kidding.’

  ‘It was my first and my favorite. Made me feel young and salty, know what I mean?’

  Dolly’s buttocks clenched when Annalee touched the wound with the clean, wet towel. Daniel watched, fascinated.

  ‘Where’d you get it?’ Annalee said, hoping to distract her.

  ‘Going over the wall,’ Dolly said, her voice tight. ‘Wasn’t a tower guard, though – it was one of those bull bitches off the yard.’

  ‘No, I mean the tattoo.’

  ‘Oh. Had it done when I was about your age. In Oklahoma.’

  ‘That where you grew up?’

  ‘Yup. Near Carver, down in the southeast corner. In the thirties, that was still outlaw country. Never forget my first day in school the teacher told us, “If you come runnin’ and tell me about somebody doing bad, I’ll give him a fair switchin’ ’cause he did wrong, but I’ll whup on you till I can’t lift my arm no more, because the one thing I can’t abide is a snitch.” It was the kind o’ place––’ she flinched and quit speaking as Annalee reapplied the towel.

  ‘Well, you still have the stem and two green leaves,’ Annalee said absently as she wiped away blood.

  ‘Had a gal friend in the joint, Doris Kincaid, who said it wasn’t so bad if they got your cherry as long as they didn’t get the pit.’

  ‘What did you do down there in Carver?’

  ‘Mostly robbed banks. I rode with the first motorcycle gang in the country, the Bandits of Vermilion. I mean, we had class. We were like family. It wasn’t like it is now. Bikers these days got no heart. Take drugs and beat on the weak, dress grubby and act stupid – most of ’em are defectives. Look how they treat their women! You don’t treat nobody like that if you got a drop o’class.’

  ‘What’s vermilion,’ Daniel asked.

  ‘Brilliant red,’ Annalee answered.

  Dolly lifted her head and looked back at Daniel. ‘We wore these long vermilion scarves,’ she explained. ‘Looked good.’

  ‘Did you kill people?’

  Annalee cut in on Daniel’s question, telling Dolly, ‘I’m going to pack this with antibiotic ointment – it’s all we have – and then just tape a gauze pad over it. How’s that sound?’

  ‘You’re the doc,’ Dolly said.

  ‘Did you kill people?’ Daniel repeated impatiently.

  ‘Dammit Daniel!’ Annalee snapped. ‘Don’t harass us during surgery.’

  ‘It’s a fair enough question,’ Dolly said, sounding more resigned than irritated. ‘We were bank robbers, Daniel, not killers. We had guns, but we never loaded them. We did have to hurt a few people, but we didn’t like to do that – it was a matter
of honor among us never to cause anyone pain if we could help it. That was my boyfriend’s idea, never loading the guns.’

  ‘Where’s your friend now?’

  ‘He’s dead. Wrecked his motorcycle on a frosty road.’

  Daniel didn’t say anything.

  Annalee ripped off two strips of adhesive tape and secured the gauze pad. ‘There it is,’ she said to Dolly. ‘I don’t have an M.D., but I’d say you’ll pull through.’

  ‘I reckon,’ Dolly said, her voice muffled against the pillow.

  ‘Let me see if I can dig out some panties to help hold the bandage.’ Annalee gave Dolly’s unwounded buttock a light pat as she rose and headed for the bedroom.

  Daniel stepped closer to the bed and put his small hand on Dolly’s back, gently rubbing.

  Dolly lifted her head and turned to give him a smile, her eyes glistening with tears. ‘My, ain’t you something,’ she said, quietly beginning to cry.

  As they sat down to breakfast the next morning, a small blue plane buzzed the house.

  ‘That’s for us,’ Dolly said. ‘He’ll drop something on the next pass.’

  Annalee went outside, Daniel scampering in front of her. They watched, hands shading their eyes against the low sun, as the plane banked slowly to the left and came back over, dropping a small silver cannister that bounced along the road and finally rolled to a stop behind the flatbed.

  ‘That was a great shot!’ Daniel enthused.

  Annalee picked up the cannister and handed it to him. ‘You can carry it in to Dolly.’

  They read the message together at the kitchen table: ‘H1M1142400. Beach. Walk. NoV.’

  ‘I hope you know what it means,’ Annalee said, ‘’cause I don’t have a clue.’

  ‘Highway 1, Marker 114, at 2400 hours,’ Dolly translated. ‘That’s midnight. Meet on the beach. Walk over. “NoV” means no vehicles. How far is it from here?’

  ‘Two miles maybe – an hour at the most. There’s an old saddle trail. But that’s just to the highway. I don’t know the highway marker.’

  ‘I’ll bet 114 is close to the trail. I guess I should leave around ten o’clock. You have a spare flashlight?’

  ‘I’ll walk down with you,’ Annalee said. ‘We hike over all the time for fish and abalone.’

  Dolly glanced at Daniel.

  ‘I carry him. One of those kiddie-carriers, sort of like a backpack.’

  ‘It’s fun,’ Daniel said.

  ‘There’s no point, really. And if somebody caught up with me at the last minute…’

  Daniel said hotly, ‘I wouldn’t tell! Never, never, never.’

  Chuckling, Dolly rumpled his hair. ‘I wasn’t worried about that. You got so much face you could never lose it all. But I don’t want them to take you hostage.’

  ‘What’s hostage?’

  ‘Where they trade you for me.’

  ‘I wouldn’t trade,’ Daniel said flatly.

  ‘I would,’ Dolly told him. ‘That’s why you and your mom are staying here.’

  Dolly left a few minutes before 10.00. Annalee and Daniel walked with her down through the orchard to the saddle trail. Annalee gave her an old day pack that she’d stocked with a sandwich, the last of the large gauze pads, and extra batteries and bulb for the flashlight. Dolly lifted Daniel in her arms and gave him a huge hug, waltzing him around a moment before setting him down. She and Annalee embraced briefly.

  ‘Thanks for the help and hospitality,’ Dolly said. ‘You’re real people, both of you.’ She took a deep breath of the clear October night. ‘Damn,’ she sighed, ‘it’s so good to be loose.’

  ‘Stay that way,’ Annalee said.

  Hand in hand, Daniel and Annalee watched as Dolly, limping slightly, set off alone toward the coast.

  Shortly after Daniel’s fifth birthday, Annalee sat down with him and outlined the possible benefits and disadvantages of attending school as carefully as she could. She left the choice to Daniel. It only took him a moment. ‘Naw,’ he said, ‘school sounds shitty.’

  However, while Daniel was unschooled, he wasn’t uneducated. Annalee – an excellent student herself before her parents’ deaths – had already taught him to read by the time he decided against institutional learning. On their supply runs to town, they spent half their time at the library as Daniel selected his reading material till the next trip – and he was always careful to determine from Annalee exactly when that would be. His reading choices were eclectic, but he had an abiding interest in animals and the stars. When he was nine years old, he ordered a color poster of the Horsehead Nebula. He rhapsodized over it for days, lecturing Annalee on the nature and mysteries of the seething whirl of gas and dust. Annalee had never seen him so entranced.

  She said, ‘I bet I know why you like the Horsehead Nebula so much.’

  ‘What are we betting?’ Daniel said. She only made bets like that when she wanted to know what he was thinking. He liked the odds.

  ‘Dinner dishes.’

  ‘Okay,’ Daniel agreed. ‘Why do I like it?’

  ‘Because it’s beautiful.’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘Well – why then?’

  ‘I like it,’ Daniel said, ‘because it’s as much as I can imagine.’

  Annalee pounced. ‘That’s exactly what I meant by beautiful.’

  ‘Wrong,’ Daniel declared. ‘You have to do the breakfast dishes too, for trying to cheat.’

  Like most teachers, Annalee learned with her student. Each New Year’s Eve they chose a subject to study together. One year it was rocks. One year, birds of prey. The year devoted to meteorology was the most fun. Each night they put their sealed forecasts for the next day’s weather into a jar, opening them after dinner on the following day as if they were fortune cookies. They plotted their relative accuracy and the day’s weather data on a wall chart that had become a mural by winter solstice. On New Year’s Eve, a few minutes before midnight, they ceremoniously rolled the mural up, tied it with a sky-blue ribbon, and stored it like a precious scroll in a fishing-rod case.

  The toughest subject for them both had been plants. They’d worked hard, but the subject was simply too large. The living room worktable was usually covered with sprays of specimens and stacks of well-thumbed botanical keys. Wildflowers and trees weren’t too difficult, but the fungi were tough, and the grasses proved impossible.

  Paradoxically, playing permanent hooky provided Daniel with a healthy diversity of teachers. Not all the safe-house guests took an interest in Daniel’s education, but most found his eagerness and aptitude irresistible.

  He studied penmanship with Annie Crashaw, a forger of considerable renown. Sandra XY, a revolutionary witch, instructed him in the delicate arts of subversion and sabotage, stressing the importance of analyzing whole systems for points of vulnerability, seeing not only the parts but how they were connected. The delicacy of Sandra XY’s art stemmed from her commitment to nonviolent means, a conviction somewhat lost on Daniel. His only examples of violence had been supplied by nature and he was neither attracted nor repelled. Violence was a fact of life. When he pressed the point, Sandra XY said, ‘Fine. As long as you eat what you kill.’

  He received detailed lessons in structural engineering from Bobby ‘Boom-Boom’ Funtman, who’d developed his knowledge on the subject as a necessary adjunct to his passion for precision and efficiency in explosions. Boom-Boom knew whereof he spoke, for it was widely claimed that he could do more damage with a single stick of dynamite than a squadron of B-52s. ‘It’s not the size of the charge,’ Boom-Boom constantly reiterated, ‘it’s the placement.’

  A young poet named Andy Hawkins, a draft resister on the run, echoed Boom-Boom’s lesson when he introduced Daniel to Japanese poetry, particularly the ephemeral density of haiku. Daniel’s studies in Oriental verse were often frustrated by the absence of his teacher, who was in bed with his mother. She had seduced young Andy about three minutes after he walked in the door. She’d never slept with a guest before. When Anna
lee had said, ‘Good night sweetie, I’m going down to the guest house and sleep with Andy,’ Daniel was shocked, jealous, frightened, bereft, confused, and utterly delighted by his mother’s clear happiness.

  Daniel’s favorite teacher among the forty or so who’d been guests was Johnny Seven Moons. Johnny Seven Moons was the closest Daniel had come to a father. Johnny Seven Moons was also the only guest who’d ever come back for a purely social call, though a few of the more incorrigible offenders had returned on business, the continuing thermal exchange of hot and cool.

  Johnny Seven Moons was an old Pomo Indian who fervently believed that one of the highest spiritual pleasures available to human beings was blowing up dams. Early in March, just before Daniel had turned seven, he went out to feed the chickens and found Johnny Seven Moons sitting on the porch, comfortable, self-contained, as if he’d materialized with the sunrise. For both of them, it was love at first sight.

  The old claim that great teachers have no subject was certainly the case with Johnny Seven Moons. Another pedagogical assertion – ‘The great teachers don’t teach’ – also applied. Seven Moons just did things with Daniel – make a bow and arrows, build fish traps, paint the guest house, gather mushrooms, cook and clean – taking what the day offered and Daniel’s thriving curiosity suggested. Like Annalee, Johnny Seven Moons treated Daniel more as a companion than a charge. Seven Moons, to Daniel’s initial disappointment, didn’t pass on much Indian lore. As he explained to Daniel, he didn’t know a whole lot, having attended missionary schools. His hitch in the army had given him advanced training in demolition. After his discharge, he’d spent time in prison for applying his military training to man-made impediments of natural flows, such as dams, irrigation canals, and aqueducts. ‘But don’t worry,’ he told Daniel, ‘I know some Indian stuff. You see, I have the Indian mind, but not all the little details.’

  If it was sunny Daniel and Seven Moons did something outside. Rainy days were devoted to marathon games of chess, played with a small set Seven Moons had carved from elk horn. The white pieces were done in the likeness of cowboys, the reddish-brown pieces as Indians. However, according to Seven Moons, when you played Indian chess, the dark pieces always move first, and only Indians can play the dark pieces – though in Daniel’s case he made a magnanimous exception. Seven Moons played shrewdly and without mercy, exploiting every blunder Daniel made, and crowing with glee as he did.