by Win Blevins
I had turned it over on my walk home, all night, trying to find the truth of the matter. “I can’t figure out how the guy got in. I stayed right there, guarding the only way in or out, and the other guard—your Colin, Iris—and the makeup fellow were right with me. When the makeup man went in to take her down to her dressing room, he found her battered.”
I played it through my head again. “Since no one went in or out of that cabin but me, I have to be the bad guy. That’s how it would look to me. Someone figured just how to set me up. I was the perfect fall guy.”
“Yazzie,” said Mom, “we are all attached to Linda. She is a good woman who has lost her way, and somehow you got in the way of a road she started down long before you came into her life. Sometimes we have to be careful who we draw close to us.”
That rubbed me the wrong way. I thought, Your mating choice wasn’t so great … whoever he was. And then I brushed that aside. I hated to think so, but part of my mother’s words were right because they came from experience.
Six eyes on me, plus Cockeyed’s straight one, waiting to see if I had more to say. Grandpa wore a face that was terrible even for him. And I was bone tired and buzzed up at the same time.
“They assigned Hugh Cly and Melvin Etcitty to take me to jail,” I said, “So, you know—”
Mom explained to Iris how I got away.
“That was a piece of luck, anyway,” Iris said.
Mom stepped in front of Iris, took me by the upper arm, and led me toward my bedroom. “You sleep,” she said. “Some biligaana lawyer will get here plenty soon.”
I wanted to shut my eyes, to turn off my mind. I couldn’t stand looking across the landscape of my future. It was a badlands. Finally sleep, that great healer, found me.
* * *
About noon Mom rousted me out to meet the tribal lawyer.
“Martin Green,” he said, offering his hand. The tribal lawyers’ being biligaanas made things sticky. I wasn’t sure how they could help people they didn’t understand. Our home may as well be in a different country.
Green was a timid-looking fellow with round, gold-rimmed spectacles, and his thin hair parted right in the middle. He was disheveled, and the knees of his pants were sandy. Turned out he’d gotten his tribal car stuck in the sand twice between Kayenta and Oljato.
Grandpa came wheeling out, and I smiled sideways at him. He didn’t send back his lopsided smile—he was feeling pissy. He held his board behind the lawyer to show what he’d already written: SHUT MOUTH. I nodded.
Iris came in from the back door, and she and Mom sat thigh-to-thigh with me on the eight-foot sofa. Female guardians. Mom gave me a pat of confidence on the knee.
“I’m here on official business,” said Green. “I need to talk to Mr. Goldman in private.”
“We’re a family,” Mom said.
“I—”
“Don’t take any risks,” Iris said, “with your welcome in this house.”
He should have known his position from the fact that Mom offered him nothing to eat or drink. With Navajos, no hospitality means not welcome.
Green sighed and sat down without invitation. “I have to ask Mr. Goldman a few questions.”
“Which he may or may not answer,” said Iris.
Grandpa shook his fist, like Way to go.
“I’m a cop,” I said to everyone. “I know what not to say.”
Iris got on me. “People who think they can’t incriminate themselves—”
I put a hand on her arm. She stopped. I finished gently. “Right. I haven’t done anything wrong, so that protects me. Dumb. Anything can be twisted to work against you.”
“Could we back up here? “I’m your lawyer,” Green reminded us. “Whatever you say to me is privileged. I can’t repeat it to the authorities.”
“Let’s get going,” I prodded.
He nodded, uncertain. “You know something about the law governing arrests and criminal charges.”
“Damn straight,” I said.
“The FBI is on the way. The jurisdiction—”
I held up a hand to stop him. “I know. Anglo and Indian, felony. It’s the feds.”
“Right.”
“So some feds are coming by train from Albuquerque and driving the dirt road up here.”
“Actually, one of them stayed in Flagstaff to get a statement from Miss Darnell, and the other two are on the long drive. But the evidence looks strong. You’re guilty.”
He waited.
“By now Miss Darnell has told them it wasn’t me.”
“We’re in contact by shortwave. The agent asked her who did it, but she just babbled and cried. Now she’s under heavy sedation again. He’s hoping she can give a statement tonight or tomorrow.”
“I didn’t do it. Take my word for it.”
“To them your word is a fart in the wind.”
“At least you have some juice in you,” Iris said.
Green blinked several times. “All right. You, the other guard, and the makeup man were stationed in front of her cabin with an excellent view of the only entrances and exits, right?”
“No questions yet. Tell me what they think. Then I may correct something.”
“Okay, here’s the picture. You took your usual lunch break with Miss Darnell, maybe an hour.”
He waited, but I said nothing.
“You came out. Miss Darnell customarily takes a nap at that point. Colin Murphy, the other guard, and the makeup man, Raphael Garibaldi, were sitting under a tree. Garibaldi meditated while he waited for the chance to take her down to her dressing room.”
Green looked at me, paused, and without hearing anything from me, he went on.
“When Garibaldi finished meditating, he talked you into meditating while he and Murphy watched the cabin.”
I nodded. Grandpa gave me a sour look.
“Garibaldi’s under the impression that you actually fell asleep instead of meditating. Yes, Murphy was on duty, but … When he woke you up, Garibaldi was out of patience. He knocked on Miss Darnell’s door and got no response. So he went down the hill to get a key from Miss Downs.”
Green thought I might confirm some little thing, but I didn’t. I wanted to get information, not give it.
“When he got back, he opened the door, looked inside, excused himself, and went back down the hill in a hurry.”
“While he was gone, you went inside. Miss Darnell had been beaten. Garibaldi, Murphy, and Julius Roth arrived a couple of minutes later.”
Green went on quickly. “Here’s the difficult part. All three say Miss Darnell was crying out at you, telling you to get away.”
“The words weren’t to me. Her eyes were vacant and swollen shut.”
Iris put a hand on my arm and looked a reprimand at me. Grandpa said “Da-a-a…” but couldn’t get out whatever it was.
Green went on, “I don’t want you to tell the police anything about that. When they ask what she said, just don’t answer.”
I stopped myself from protesting. It was like jamming a log down my throat.
“Unfortunately, Garibaldi, Murphy, and Roth were there and heard her. But do not confirm that. Roth pointed his gun at you.”
“Actually, he held it in my face.”
Grandpa snorted like a bull.
Green lurched on. “Garibaldi’s hands and Murphy’s show no signs of abrasions or bruising. Neither do yours, but that doesn’t mean anything. Any of you could have worn heavy gloves.”
I couldn’t stand this. “I didn’t do it. Neither did they. Garibaldi doesn’t even go for women. Someone,” I said, “is still out there, still enraged. Probably still gunning for Linda and possibly me. Even my family.”
Green looked into my face a long while in that prying, white-man way. Then he let his breath out in a gush. “I understand, but it looks bad,” he said. “You were in the cabin with her long enough to do anything.”
I nodded.
“I warn you,” said Green. “Don’t take Murphy or Garibaldi
lightly. Their stories match, they both fit the facts and time at the scene, and their recall of detail is excellent. They will make powerful witnesses for the prosecution.”
Iris and Mom stood up at the same time, and I thought they were about to throw Green out. With a gentle hand I pulled Mom down next to me.
Grandpa made a coughing sound. Okay, I nodded, I get it, he’s on my side.
“When Julius Roth alerted him,” Green went on, “Mr. Ford got Mrs. Goulding to shortwave Kayenta and send the police. Then he had Mr. Roth drive Miss Darnell to the hospital in Flagstaff. They’re worried about a concussion. They probably won’t be able to tell, even with examination, if she was raped.”
I glanced sideways at Mom. Her face was set hard, her lips pursed. I could feel the familiar lecture coming later—this-is-what-you-get-when-you-stray-too-far-from-your-roots.
“So, Mr. Goldman, you tell me—how could anyone but you have beaten Miss Darnell?”
“I have no answer for that. And we’re done here.”
“I represent you. You can tell me everything. If you confess to murder, I wouldn’t be allowed to reveal that.”
“I know the rules. But I’m done talking.”
“Tell me why.”
“I’m a cop.”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“Watch and see.”
“If you—”
“Mr. Green, ‘done here’ means ‘done here.’ Next time I see you, I hope you’ll have evidence for me. For now we’re finished.”
I went to the front door and held it open. I was not impressed with my legal representation. It seemed clear to me that he thought I did it, and until that changed, he was useless.
Green got up and started out. Then he stopped. He set his jaw, gave me a long look, and came out with it: “If you interfere with the investigation, you’ll go to jail for obstruction. You know that.”
I stared him down.
“I advise you in the strongest terms to stay away from that cabin and away from Miss Darnell. As of today you are not guilty, or may not be. If you insert yourself into their investigation, you will be guilty of obstruction, beyond any possible defense.”
I looked at him, gave him no words.
“I beg you not to try to solve this yourself.”
I said, “I agree. Trying wouldn’t be enough.”
* * *
After I closed the door on him, I turned to my family. “I’m sorry…” I began.
I put my arms around my mother. Over her head I saw Grandpa writing on his blackboard. Iris watched the three of us, her face sorrowful.
After a while Mom turned an anguished face up to mine. “You have no idea,” she said again.
She wasn’t making any sense.
Mom jerked herself away and ran to her bedroom.
I looked at Iris. “Looks like Raphael is against me now. Also Colin Murphy.”
Iris said, “Then he’s against me. You want me to go to Flagstaff with you?”
“No.”
“She may want a woman there. A friend.”
“I’ll handle it.”
Grandpa held up his slate. TAKE JAKE C.
Eleven
I scouted the hospital, just four long halls in the shape of an X. I told Jake Charlie, “Drop me on the east side and wait there.” The main entrance was on the west, exactly the wrong direction for any entrance door by Navajo ways.
I got out and looked up at the sky. According to the Big Dipper, we were square in the middle of the night. “You need to sleep,” I said to Jake Charlie. He answered with his customary silence. “Stretch across the front seat and leave the keys in the ignition. If you hear me get into the truck, drive out of here. Fast.”
Jake Charlie was probably snoring before I opened the east-facing door.
I wondered what the hell I was getting into.
I’d never been in a hospital, and was traditional enough to be wary. Hospitals are packed full of chindi. If a person dies in a hogan, no Navajo will go in there again. Going into a place where people die every day—that really doesn’t work.
When I got home, finally and truly back home, without one foot in the glamorous world of movies, this hospital would be another reason I’d need an Enemy Way ceremony. The Navajo word for “hospital” means “place where white people go to die.” Dying is something you can do on your own.
I was nervous, but I damn well meant to find Linda. I needed to make up for my failure in my duty. I liked her, to understate the case, and I was beyond worried about her. It wasn’t me who hurt her, and the one who did could be anywhere, even walking the halls, dressed as a doctor or nurse. My imagination was on the loose, but considering the situation, I was giving it as much room as possible.
The halls were an eerie quiet. They smelled like alcohol and anguish. The lights were at half-mast, and the flooring caught the glow, bouncing it off curling edges. Impossible to imagine that people came onto the earth almost every day in such a place. That people died here? That seemed very real. This was a railway station gone crazy with no particular schedule, a place no one wanted to be, hauling in new people and hauling out the dead on her linoleum tracks.
I slipped down a twilit hall toward the bright center area, wondering which room she was in. Flagstaff only had this one country hospital, no security, but I didn’t want to attract attention. Didn’t want to cause the slightest stir.
When I got farther from the door, I could see a rectangular counter at the junction of the four halls, like the brain of the four legs. A nurses’ station.
One nurse was standing, facing slightly away from me in three-quarter profile, looking at manila folders. She’d flip through one, put it down, and page through another. She wore the uniform, a starched white dress and one of those odd white caps with wings.
Then I noticed. Hard to see, in the half-dark beyond the brightly lit station, but midway down the hall opposite a slouchy man leaned against a wall next to a room door. I knew his shape very well.
Hoping the nurse wouldn’t look up, I padded back down the hall outside into the crisp night air and trotted around the building to the opposite door.
Big risk, but facing it head-on, that’s the best way I knew. From the west entrance I walked openly toward the slumping Julius. I didn’t want to look like I was sneaking around.
I eased up close without attracting his attention. Looked like he was dozing on his feet.
In a flash, his piece was in my face.
I breathed deep. I wasn’t surprised and it didn’t matter. He was doing his job. He thought I’d attacked her, and he wasn’t taking any chances.
I held up my palms so he could see my hands were empty.
“Give me your gun,” he muttered.
I pulled out my .45 auto, popped the magazine, jerked the slide back to eject the cartridge in the chamber, held it by the barrel, and stuck it out handle first. He slipped it into his suit-coat pocket.
He lowered his .38 snub nose.
“I’ve gotta make sure,” he said.
I nodded.
He patted me down, and then waved me through to her room. He said, “She’s sleeping now, but she was asking for you all afternoon.”
* * *
One look, and I almost felt like it was me who got hit in the face. Over and over and all over, brutally. My stomach went tight and terrible. Her face was ravaged—purple, yellow, misshapen. I didn’t want to do anything to wake her up, but she was so sound asleep … probably drugged. I stepped into the bathroom and flushed the toilet. I tiptoed back to her bedside. She didn’t even blink.
I knelt by the bed and looked at her, my eyes locked. I can’t tell you what my feelings were, because I only half knew myself. Large, beyond all words in any language.
The room had no heart, no soul. Like sitting inside a huge icebox. The furnishings were her bed, with the head cranked up, a stool on rollers that doctors use, and a hard-backed visitor’s chair. I took the chair and slid it close to
her. I knew one of my feelings—a fierce desire to protect her. I would watch and wait and not sleep. Julius was out there, sure, but I’d seen what happened when it seemed like she was being guarded. From then on out, having failed her once, and seeing how she’d paid the price? I wasn’t leaving her.
* * *
“Yazzie.”
“Yazzie.”
The words crept into my sluggard mind, like the half-light from the window. I opened my eyes and looked at her.
Linda was holding her arms out to me.
I slid into them like a ship into home port and held her, careful not to touch her face.
She pushed her battered cheek against mine. It must have hurt, but she needed holding and knew it.
She put her soft palms on my chest and moved me back a few inches. She looked into my face. Something had opened inside her, and the way she held my eyes now felt more intimate than anything we had done in the heat of sex.
Linda said, “Let’s get out of here.”
“Rest,” I said. “You need it.”
“It’s impossible to rest in a hospital, and get that expression off your face—I know what I look like. They said there’s no permanent damage. They’re going to release me this morning, but Yazzie, I want to get out of here right now.”
I went to the window and looked out. Sunup in a few minutes. When I turned back, she was at the closet, stark-naked, about to step into her underwear.
I started to turn her around by the shoulders, hold her, that’s it, but she brushed my hands away. “No touching, not yet. Sorry, I—”
“Linda, I’m the one who needs to apologize. I let you down in the most terrible way. I don’t know how it happened, but I do know you counted on me, and then…”
She started over. “The only place he hit me was in the face.”
“Over and over, Linda. Anything else?”
“We’ll talk in the car.”
We were leaving, and that was fine with me.
I opened the door carefully, but Julius was already facing me with his hand on his weapon.
Linda said, “We’re getting out of here, Julius.”
