Improbable Fortunes
Page 35
“Marvin?” She didn’t so much recognize his face as she did his breath—which was still not very good.
“Forgive me,” the mighty Cha-loc-poc said, and kissed her.
“Am I dreaming?” she asked as he carried her out of the room.
“We are all dreaming.”
POSTSCRIPT
Till We Meet Again
It was round-up time. Buster and Stinker were down a little draw looking for strays. Buster found a yearling hiding near the place that Mr. Dominguez had, once upon a time, dropped him off to collect sheep dung. Gently, Buster rousted him out and over the top of the rim when he saw a three riders approaching. They looked like Utes, and had grim expressions on their faces. He shamefully found himself fighting off the Vanadian prejudice that dictated that if you saw an Indian on your property, he’s probably there to steal something. Stinker snorted. He could feel Buster’s jangled nerves conducting through the reins.
“Easy, old feller.”
The men came closer. They had rifles in their scabbards. The two Indians on the flank stopped. The rider in the middle got off his horse. He must have been the big cheese. Slowly, he walked toward him and didn’t stop until his nose was almost touching Buster’s. The Indian didn’t say anything, but handed Buster an official-looking envelope. Then he got back on his horse, and with his braves, road away. Opening the envelope, Buster discovered that it was the deed to the Mallomar ranch.
Cha-pol-lac returned to the reservation with his wife, Shaman Longfeather, Lilly, Lolly, and a menagerie of crippled animals that he intended to cure, time allowing. His people provided him with a double-wide trailer. The Elders, as well as the pit bosses and croupiers from the new Ute Casino, came to bless it. Sage was burnt. A six-hundred-pound steer was slaughtered—its brain offered to Cha-pol-loc. He humbly demurred and passed it on to the Great Spirit as an offering. If he hadn’t, his fellow tribesmen would have known he was a fraud and possibly assassinated him. Everyday was a new tightrope that Cha-pol-loc, the Messenger, had to walk, but then again, he had survived Wall Street and the SEC.
b
Dana went into labor. Before this, Dana could never have imagined having the slightest thing in common with Jimmy Bayles Morgan. Thirty-six hours of labor trying to bring a giant baby into the world taught her otherwise. She screamed for a cesarean. She begged for an epidural. She whimpered for an episiotomy. But Shaman Longfeather would not allow any of it, believing that the god-awful pain of childbirth would finally focus Dana’s psychic energy away from her poisoning ennui and into the meat and potatoes of life. And so it was. After Muatagoci—or Moon as she was called in English—was born, Dana never took another drink. She never took another pill. She no longer needed medicine. She had Heap Big Medicine now.
People in Vanadium wondered what was going to happen to Buster, now that Marvin Mallomar was no longer on the scene in the form of a cash-dispensing white man. Outwardly, Buster appeared to be the same loose-jointed cowboy. He and Destiny had a successful enterprise. The ranch was doing well. That being said, inwardly, Buster was in turmoil. The implications of his true provenance—being a Morgan—weighed heavily upon him. Living in Jimmy’s cabin with his new wife did not help. They could have afforded a nice place of their own, but Buster felt that since Jimmy had given it to him—and she was his real mother—he had no choice but to accept what had been bequeathed to him.
And there was something else, something darker. Even though most everybody in town thought of him as kind and caring galoot—secretly, Buster harbored the fear that the Morgan in him would someday show itself. Destiny noticed the change in him, but Buster refused to talk about it. He became quiet and withdrawn. Destiny suggested that he spend some time alone at the sheepherder’s wagon to mull things over.
Buster decided to take her up on that. He packed a few days’ supplies. Riding up to the old sheepherder’s wagon with Stinker and a packhorse, he came upon the resident elk herd. He hadn’t yet filled his tag, so he shot a young five-by-five. The rest of the day was spent gutting, skinning, and hanging the quarters in game bags a bear’s distance from camp. He kept the elk’s heart and roasted it in the same fire pit that he had built, once upon a time, when he sought sanctuary.
It was very quiet as sat looking down the canyon below Lame Horse Mesa. He ate his supper. Elk heart wasn’t necessarily the best tasting part of an elk, but the Indians believed that by eating it, the hunter took in the best qualities of the animal that gave up life for him. And that’s just what Buster was contemplating when a curious thing happened. The dead fir tree, fifty yards from his field of vision, which for years had been leaning on its young progeny, suddenly went cracking and crashing to the ground. Buster witnessed this and for reasons unknown to him, broke down and cried.
In the morning, he felt a strong desire to go home. He packed up his supplies, hung the elk quarters on panniers and headed down the mountain. As he came out of the woods, he was momentarily discombobulated. Jimmy’s cabin, his usual reference point from the ridgeline, was nowhere to be seen. Destiny, determining that they already had quite enough baggage between them, used Buster’s absence to burn the rotting place down. He found her with some high school kids calmly stacking planks of salvaged wood to the side. These, she informed her flabbergasted husband, would be used as paneling in the kids’ playroom when they built their new house.
Destiny McCaffrey was born for champion barrel racing, real estate, and childbirth. In the six years that followed, she gave Buster four children—Shepard, Morgan, Bayles, and Joe. Of the four, the latter was the apple of Buster’s eye. Joe was the winner of the Vanadium Cattle Roping competition five years running. Tall and strong like Buster, she could hit a muskrat at three hundred yards with a Krag .30-.40 iron-sighted rifle. At least, that was what folks in Vanadium said.
Telluride, Colorado
September 11, 2014