Always Time to Die

by Elizabeth Lowell

  The old woman didn’t answer.

  Slowly, like a leaf caught in an uncertain eddy, Sylvia’s head turned toward the window. It was the only movement she ever made, gradually turning her head to one side or the other. Since her eyes never focused on anything, it was impossible to say why her body made the effort.

  “Get out and leave her be,” Winifred said, pulling up the blankets again. “She’s got pain enough without you.”

  For a moment Josh’s eyes narrowed and his hands flexed. Winifred’s insistence that her sister had times of awareness was maddening. Every famous clinic in America—and more than a few overseas—had declared the opposite. The stroke that felled Sylvia had left her body alive and her mind forever beyond reach. The fact that she’d survived so long was a miracle.

  “If you don’t want her disturbed,” Josh said evenly, “we should leave the room while we discuss this pseudo-historian you’ve hired.”

  “Nothing to discuss.”

  “I don’t think this ‘family history’ is anything more than a scam.”

  “Doesn’t matter what you think,” Winifred said. “I hired her, it’s my money, and that’s that.”

  “That might have worked with the Senator, but it won’t with me. As long as you’re living on my ranch, you will at least be civil to me.”

  Winifred gave him a look from black eyes and touched Sylvia’s hair gently. “It’s not your ranch. It’s hers.”

  Josh told himself not to lose his temper. He dealt with more difficult and more powerful people five times a day. And that’s what he should be doing now—working as the governor of New Mexico, not dancing attendance on one madwoman and the ghostly remains of another woman who hadn’t spoken in almost forty years. It was nearly impossible to think of that slack mass of skin and bones as alive, much less as his mother, but a politician didn’t get anywhere speaking ill of a woman who hung on to life long past reason.

  So long, so damned long. When will it end for her?

  For all of us.

  “I’m her guardian now,” Josh said. “The ranch is part of my legal responsibility to her.”

  “Throwing me out won’t win you any votes.”

  Wearily Josh shook his head and pulled at the tie he’d worn for a taped TV interview an hour ago. A waste of time, but the reporter worked for a well-known national paper and was solidly in the governor’s camp for the coming election.

  “Nobody said anything about throwing you out.” Josh sighed as his collar button gave way. “The ranch has been your home for a long time. No matter what changes, I’ll see that you’re taken care of.”

  Winifred gave him a long, black look. It was the kind of look that had the more superstitious—or cautious—of the local people crossing themselves when she walked by.

  “I’ll hold you to that,” she said finally.

  “I’m hardly likely to forget,” he said impatiently. “But there’s a difference between having a roof over your head and running the ranch and the house according to your whim. Important people in my party have decided that I’m first-class presidential material. The primaries will be tough. The presidential campaign will be brutal. The last thing I need is a bright-eyed little outsider mucking around in the Quintrell past. Some things are better left buried.”

  “It’s the Castillo past she’ll be researching.”

  “One way or another, the Quintrells and the Castillos have been tangled up since before the Civil War.” Josh’s voice, like his expression, was impatient. His blue eyes were icy. “At least have the decency to wait until after the election in November. Then you can air the Senator’s filthy laundry from hell to breakfast. But not now.”

  Handsome, angry, arrogant, he looked so much like the Senator that Winifred wanted to slap him. “I’m only interested in the Castillos. The Quintrells—all of them—can go straight to Satan where they belong.”

  “But until then, you don’t mind living on the devil’s generosity, do you?”

  “It’s the least you Quintrells owe me for taking care of Sylvia.”

  “Sylvia is a Quintrell.”

  “Not since that philandering son of a bitch broke her heart. Not since her first son died. Not since she went to make up with Liza and had a stroke. Not since you took over. She’s Castillo now. Mine, not yours.”

  Josh shook his head and gave up. Winifred lived in the past. She always had. She always would. Nothing he said could change that. He turned and headed for the door. “If you don’t keep a tight rein on your little historian, I will.”

  The door closed hard behind him.

  TAOS

  NOON MONDAY

  9

  CARLY MURMURED INTO HER COLLAR AS SHE BENT OVER THE MICROFILM READER. Until Dan brought her up to speed on the computer program he’d used for archiving, she was stuck researching the old-fashioned way. Somehow she didn’t think Dan was in any hurry to make her job easier.

  Despite the rather primitive room with its cracked, uneven concrete floor, the microfilm was in good shape and the filing cabinets were kept warm enough that she didn’t have to worry about condensation on the film when she took it from its canister and put it into the reader. For the moment, her biggest problem wasn’t the equipment, it was translating the oldest documents. Her colloquial Spanish was good enough, but her historical Spanish was barely passable.

  “Wonder if Winifred could translate these?” she muttered.

  “Probably,” Dan said from the bottom of the stairs. “She spends a lot of time with old books.”

  Carly jerked and barely managed to bite back a shriek. “Don’t sneak up on me like that.”

  His left eyebrow lifted. He hadn’t made any special effort to be quiet when he secured the cellar door and walked down the steps. “You asked a question. I assumed you knew I was here.”

  “I’m taking notes,” she said, pointing to the tiny microphone along her jaw. “I thought I was alone.”

  He glanced at the microphone, then came in for a closer look. “Nice. Voice recognition or straight recording?”

  “Both. Voice right now, record when I’m interviewing. They haven’t come up with reliable multivoice recognition software yet.”

  Dan knew they had, and it was classified, so he just nodded. “How much longer will you be?”

  She blinked. “Is there a time limit?”

  “Usual business hours.” He glanced at his watch. “You have until five.”

  She looked at her own watch. “Does someone have to be here with me all the time?”

  “Yes.”

  Carly wasn’t surprised, but she wasn’t pleased that Dan had been assigned to babysit her. Something about him was distracting and she had a lot of work to do.

  From beneath lowered lashes she watched while he shrugged out of his jacket and denim shirt. Stripped down to a black turtleneck and faded jeans, he went to a storage cupboard at the back of the room. He pulled out some yellowed, fragile papers, and went to work with a piece of equipment she assumed was some kind of scanner. Despite the size of his fingers and a physical strength made clear by the fit of the turtleneck, he handled the papers with a delicate patience that intrigued her.

  “You’ve done that a lot, haven’t you?” she asked.

  Dan nodded without looking up.

  “But you’re not an archivist?”

  He nodded again.

  She didn’t take the hint. “Then why did you take on the job of translating microfilm into computer files?”

  He looked up at her. In the stark light and shadows of the room, his green eyes had a catlike glow. “I wanted to.”

  “Why?”

  “Why do you care?”

  “I’m curious. And don’t bother telling me about curiosity and the cat. Been there, heard that, wasn’t impressed.”

  The line of his mouth shifted slightly. Almost a smile. But then, his face was in shadow so she couldn’t be sure.

  “Somehow I’m not surprised,” Dan said.

  “Somehow I don�
��t think much could surprise you.”

  He looked at the smoky gold of her eyes and knew she was wrong. She surprised him. Everyone else walked on tiptoe around him, trying not to disturb whatever was brooding inside him. But did she tiptoe? Hell, no. She nudged and nipped and kicked.

  “When I was thirteen, I chose to microfilm the computer files as a school project,” he said, surprising himself again. “Back then, the newspaper wouldn’t let me near the really old stuff, so there’s a lot still to be done.” He lifted and turned the sheet and hit the button again. “I modified a computer scanning program and kept working on it until I left for college when I was eighteen. No one else could figure out how to make my program work, so they just kept on with the microfilming and I’d do the ‘translation’ when I visited.”

  She looked at the power implicit in Dan’s shoulders and shook her head.

  “What?” he said.

  “I’m trying to picture you as a pencil-necked geek teenager. Ain’t happening.”

  “Muscles don’t reduce your IQ.”

  “Maybe in your case.” Carly shrugged.

  “You have something against men who aren’t nerds?”

  “As long as they don’t mistake brawn for the Second Coming of Christ, no.”

  “Somebody burned you good.”

  “No. Somebody bored me. Big difference. Then he couldn’t believe I didn’t want him. Finally had to serve the jerk with a court order not to be where I was, ever, under any circumstances.”

  “How long ago was that?” Dan asked.

  A quality in his voice made her look at him again. Though he hadn’t moved, there was a difference in him, more intense, more alert, all relaxation gone.

  “Eight, nine years,” she said. “A long time.”

  Whatever had tightened his body left as silently as it had come. He leaned back into his chair and said, “Not long enough, apparently.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You’re still afraid of men.”

  Carly didn’t like that description. Being careful wasn’t the same as being afraid. “I don’t like men who won’t take no for an answer,” she said. “The big boneheads are more intimidating than the smaller sizes of stupid. Must be something genetic in me that makes me avoid the big ones.”

  “Common sense?” he suggested dryly.

  “Bingo. So what interested you about the past enough that you spent a lot of time down here scanning old newspapers and making high-tech computer files out of microfilmed data?”

  For a while she thought he wasn’t going to answer. So did he. Then he surprised both of them.

  “I believed that the past explained the present,” Dan said.

  “It does.”

  He lifted one shoulder. “The recorded past? Not really. It’s written by winners. That leaves at least one whole side unrecorded. Playing cards with half a deck is a sure way to lose the game.”

  While Carly thought about his words, she wound a curl around her index finger, a childhood habit she’d never been able to break. “That’s an unusual insight,” she said finally.

  “If you’re thirteen, maybe. After that you outgrow it.” He went back to scanning in old papers.

  She tried to decide if she’d just been personally insulted or if he was rude to everyone.

  Not my problem. I’m here on Winifred’s nickel and his last name isn’t Quintrell or Castillo.

  Having decided that, she heard herself asking, “Do you understand the old Spanish?”

  “Yes.” He brought down the scanner lid and hit a button.

  “Good. The more I read about the original Oñate land grant, the less sense it makes. Since you have to be here anyway, would you help me with the translation?”

  “There’s a lot about the old land grants that no one understands, no matter what the language.”

  “Is that a yes or a no on the translation?”

  He looked up. “It’s a possible maybe. What’s giving you the most trouble?”

  She rolled her eyes. “Maybe it’s more a cultural question than a translation issue. The original Oñate grant was passed along under the Spanish rules of inheritance, right?”

  “Every son inherited equally, and under some circumstances, so did the daughters. Is that the sort of thing you mean?”

  “Yes. It’s confusing to me because the only family histories I’ve researched this far back have been under the British system where the oldest son inherits and the rest of the sons go into the military or priesthood or whatever, because in terms of any inheritance, they don’t get much more than a few hundred dollars and a pat on the head.”

  “The British way is very effective for concentrating family wealth and power from generation to generation,” Dan said as he removed the paper, turned it, and placed it on the scanner again. “The Spanish method was different. The grazing and woodcutting lands were held in common by all family members. Rights to the river and irrigated lands were divided so that each inheriting member of the family had a water source and fields for crops.”

  Carly hesitated. “Common lands? Like the Indians had?”

  “Not quite.” Dan hit the button on the scanner. “The Indians, whether they lived in pueblos or followed the old hunting, gathering, and raiding way of life, held all land in common—if they held any land at all.” Carefully he set the paper aside and picked up another yellowed sheet. “The Spanish rules were more complex. They called for a combination of individual and common lands within the original grant. The common lands remained the same size. The individual lands got smaller and smaller with each generation. Big families dividing and subdividing the same land over and over again.”

  “Got it. But what happened to the land grants when political control passed from Spain to Mexico?”

  Dan placed another fragile piece of paper on the scanner and carefully lowered the lid. “Mexican rules of inheritance were basically the same as Spanish, which meant that old land grants generally passed intact to the next generation despite the change in government. Other than the change from Spanish priests to Mexican priests and the resulting outlawry of the Penitente sect of Catholicism, New Mexico hardly noticed the change from Spanish to Mexican governors. In any case, by the time Mexico kicked out the Spanish in 1821, New Mexico had been around long enough as a frontier to think of itself as a separate entity.”

  “So the effect through time was to have more and more New Mexican families owning smaller and smaller patches of the original grant?” Carly asked.

  “Yes, while still holding the mass of the pasturage and woodlands in common. Big common lands. Tiny personal lands.”

  “What happened when New Mexico became a U.S. territory?”

  “The shit hit the fan.”

  She smiled wryly. “I gathered that much from reading the microfilm. But why?”

  “Lots of reasons.” Dan kept working as he talked. It was easier than looking into her changing, intelligent hazel eyes or watching her pink mouth shape words or her tongue licking moisture over dry lips.

  Apparently his body had just decided that it was one hundred percent healthy and ready to ride.

  “Under Spanish and Mexican control, taxes were pretty much avoided,” Dan said. “A tax collector who was too diligent ended up beaten, dead, or run out of town. The taxes that were collected mostly stayed in New Mexico. In fact, throughout its history, New Mexico has been a fiscal drain on whichever government claimed it, right into modern times. That’s the thing about frontiers. They’re expensive to try to control.”

  “So the Spanish and Mexican governments let New Mexicans get away with not paying taxes?”

  “That’s modern thinking.”

  She blinked. “Excuse me?”

  “We live in a time when communication is immediate, every transaction is recorded, and the government gets its taxes at the same time a worker gets his paycheck.”

  “Sure,” she said, “but governments throughout history have managed to collect taxes, no matter what t
he state of the communications.”

  “In towns and settled areas, yes. Frontiers? No. It’s the nature of a frontier to be beyond the pale of society, of civilization, of control. Essentially, New Mexico spent more time after its ‘discovery’ as a frontier than any other piece of American real estate. New Mexico had three hundred years of being somebody’s edge of the earth, somebody’s dumping ground for outlaws, adventurers, city rejects, dreamers, and politicians.” Dan’s mouth turned in a wry downward curve. “While Oppenheimer and the boys were inventing the atomic age at Alamogordo, curanderos and brujos were still practicing their ancient trades in the rural areas, using natural drugs like morning glory, poppy, and mescaline, drugs that were outlawed by a culture that never understood them. Between formal wars there were still informal shoot-outs over land and water. Penitentes still carried heavy crosses and flogged themselves bloody following in the steps of Christ.” He shrugged. “Some say they still do.”

  Fascinated by the light and shadow flowing across Dan’s angular face, Carly watched his movements as he worked over the scanner. “What do you say?” she asked.

  For several breaths the room was quiet. Then he looked up, pinning her with a glance. “I say it’s better left alone. For every step you take away from a New Mexico city, you’re going back in time. Frontiers are dangerous. Smart people leave dangerous things alone unless there’s no other choice. You have a choice.”

  She tilted her head slightly. Light slid through her hair, picking out the gold among the shades of dark red and darker brown.

  “Something wrong?” he asked, sensing her intensity.

  “I think you believe a lot of things are better left alone.”

  “Sleeping dogs and land mines,” he said under his breath.

  “What?”

  “Nothing. Family joke.”

  “You don’t look like you’re laughing.”

  Dan put another sheet in the scanner and touched the button. “Once you begin thinking of New Mexico as a long-lived frontier rather than a modern state, its history makes a lot more sense.”

  Carly wanted to protest the change of subject, but didn’t. She was here to learn about a family history, not this man’s personal history. If she’d rather pry into Dan’s affairs than the Quintrells’, that was her problem.