The Grey Pilgrim

by J. M. Hayes

  See Spot Run

  Mary was at the typewriter when the telephone rang, pounding out a blazing sixty words a minute because this was just a rough draft and she had a handle on what she wanted to say and felt it was important enough to say it. Larry must have been into something himself because he let it ring five times before he got it and that made her lose concentration as she thought about making a last second dash for the phone.

  Larry said “Hello,” and “I don’t think I should disturb her right now.” She nearly had the thread back when his voice got very quiet and he almost whispered into the phone, “Yeah, I heard about it, but she doesn’t know yet. I’ll tell her, but I was going to let her finish today’s work on the dissertation first.” That tore her away from further consideration of the role of the Mahkai in traditional O’odham society. She found herself paying close attention to a silence that went on for several minutes while Larry listened to further details of something he didn’t want to disturb her with. She got up and went into the living room. She hooked her thumbs in the pockets of her faded old Levis and leaned up against a bookshelf while Larry glanced at her and looked guilty, but kept nodding to the person who couldn’t see him from the other end of the line.

  “OK,” she asked, after he thanked that someone for calling and put the phone down, “what’s going on?”

  He got up from the couch and limped over and put his hands on her shoulders. Except around the house, he was still using a cane because of what the bullet had done to his pelvis.

  “Jujul’s dead,” he said. “I should have told you, would have, but you were being so productive and I knew it would upset you and, besides, there’s nothing you can do about it.”

  She slipped out from under his grasp and went over and sat on the sofa and held her face in her hands.

  “How?” she asked.

  He’d hidden yesterday’s newspaper under a stack of archaeological texts on the end table next to his favorite chair. He handed it to her. It was already folded open to the appropriate page. The story was in back of all the latest disasters from the Pacific, just above an ad for a Christmas sale at one of the downtown department stores and a notice that The Maltese Falcon would soon be opening in Tucson.

  “Papago Chief Murders Guard, is Slain in Escape Attempt!” the headline cried. The article didn’t say much more. It just gave his name, Jujul, and mentioned his trial in Tucson in the spring for assault on BIA agent Edward Larson, then gave spare facts and lurid hints about events the reporter clearly didn’t understand.

  Mary didn’t want to believe it. She knew Jujul wouldn’t hurt anyone without a reason. It didn’t make any sense.

  “There’s more,” Larry said. “That was the attorney who defended Jujul last spring. Jesus Gonzales read this same article yesterday. Then he decided to go pay a personal visit on Larson. I guess he thought it was all Larson’s fault. They’re holding Jesus down at the county jail. The attorney tells me Larson’s in about the same shape as the banks were after the crash of ’29. He’s probably going to be a mouth breather unless they can surgically undeviate his septum while they’re setting his jaw and doing something with his broken cheekbones. He needs a dentist too.”

  “I’m going down to the jail,” she said. “You stay here. See if you can find out anything more about what happened to Jujul. Maybe try to call J.D., make sure he knows about Jesus.”

  She grabbed her keys from a bowl on the mantel and sprinted out the door.

  It was a cool grey day, the streets still damp from a morning shower, the sky still heavy with the threat of more. With less than two weeks till Christmas, holiday decorations had appeared in most downtown merchants’ windows, but they seemed more forlorn than cheerful, reflecting prevailing fears and doubts instead of conventional joy.

  Mary aimed the Auburn toward the Pima County Courthouse. She loved the dome, thought it was one of the few pieces of modern architecture in Tucson that dared show any character of its own.

  She found a vacant parking place a couple of blocks south on Church, abandoned her vehicle, and started north on foot, sidestepping a profusion of puddles on the uneven sidewalk. She glanced up just in time to see J.D. cross Broadway and duck into a bar on the corner. It didn’t surprise her, but it made her a little sad. By the time she got to the bar her feet were soaked. Her mind was on other things than avoiding puddles.

  ***

  “Good Spot, good boy,” Mary said, slipping between the fence rails and into the pen.

  Spot snorted and pawed at Stephanie’s jacket again. He wasn’t the cute, adorable calf she’d helped raise anymore. He’d grown up, turned into the foundation bull for one of the finest herds of Holstein cattle in the state of Ohio.

  Daddy had let her pick the silly name. It fit. He was predominately white but covered with the big, black blotches that had inspired her.

  Stephanie was her best friend, and had been most of their lives. She was the daughter of the couple Daddy had hired to help raise her after her mother and baby brother failed to survive the ordeal of a breech birth. Stephanie’s mom had been Mary’s surrogate mother for as long as she could remember, as well as Daddy’s housekeeper and cook. Steph’s dad was their chief hired hand.

  Mary and Steph had grown up like sisters, closer even, since Steph was only seven months older. Like sisters, their friendship sometimes waxed and waned, though the bond between them had remained steady. Just recently, it was stretching a little thin.

  Steph’s jacket was in the pen because Larry had tossed it there. That’s what adolescent boys did to the girls they wanted to impress—tease them, pester them, annoy them.

  Larry Spencer’s parents lived just across the road and Larry had been the third member of their trio through most of their childhood. There weren’t any other nearby farms with kids their age. The three had played together whenever Larry’s parents allowed, or Steph and Mary weren’t busy with chores. Steph had always been number three in the trio. She was the most reticent to take a dare or play rough and tumble, the way pre-adolescent boys and tomboys preferred. But strange and dramatic things were happening to their bodies, Steph’s especially. Larry had suddenly begun to perceive them as girls instead of friends. It was weird.

  Larry was cutting up and showing off for them. They were the sort of silly, boy things that Mary usually enjoyed beating him at, before Steph became their prime target.

  Larry claimed he’d sneaked into the tent and watched the hootchie kootchie girls at the county fair. He demonstrated the strip tease he’d seen, peeling off his jacket, then dared Steph and Mary to try it themselves. Mary was planning to refuse, only Larry didn’t bother pressing her. He concentrated on Steph instead and Steph finally agreed. She did a surprisingly slinky imitation that had Mary considering getting a bucket of cold water to throw over both of them, or telling them to just get fucked, though she wasn’t clear exactly what that ultimate obscenity meant.

  Steph got the jacket off, but Larry wanted it as a prize. He tore it out of her hands and made her chase him, squealing like some silly, well, girl, around the pens behind the barn, then tossed it into Spot’s pen. That was too much and Steph instantly metamorphosed from flirty femme to ice virgin.

  Steph had started after her coat until Spot noticed. He turned and she broke and headed for the nearest fence. They could all see Spot run at her, his intent apparently serious until she vaulted the rails.

  Steph quickly climbed back to the top one. The fence she’d hopped was between Spot and some of his offspring, several young bulls Daddy was planning to take to the next cattle sale in Columbus.

  “Larry Spencer,” Steph demanded, shaking a pretty fist, and, incidentally, the bosoms Mary didn’t have yet, “you get my jacket out of there right now. And you get me out of here too, or I’m gonna tell Pa you were trying to take my clothes off.”

  Steph’s Dad was a big Swede with remarkable red hair, and, occasionally, a matching temper. Larry hurried to obey, only Spot wasn’t offering much encour
agement. He was out there butting the jacket around, pawing at it with his hooves, and glaring at Larry like he though Larry had designs on his feed trough. Larry paused and turned pale. Mary thought he was considering whether Spot or Steph’s dad was the bigger threat. Was he better off dead, or with his privates ripped off by an irate father.

  “Oh, you’re such a baby,” she told Larry. “I’ll get it.” Actually, Mary thought he was showing a sensible bit of discretion, but she was hardly going to tell him that. Spot was used to Larry, but only on the other side of fences. She, on the other hand, had handled him all his life.

  Only, once she was closer to most of a ton of Holstein bull than the fence, she noticed Spot wasn’t treating her with much more respect than he’d shown Steph and Larry. At least he wasn’t stomping on the jacket anymore, but he was pawing the earth, throwing up muddy clods like a track star digging in for the start to the hurdles. There was nothing out here to hurdle, except maybe Mary or the fence. She was more likely to be able to clear the fence, but she wasn’t going to get to it before he got to her, if he wanted.

  Mary recalled her father’s warnings. “Spot’s no fucking calf anymore,” he’d told her. “He’s a full-size, grown-up bull who gets testy and mean when he’s not ballin’ the ladies.”

  “Spot, you cut it out,” she commanded. Spot took a step back, tossing his head and blowing a little spittle.

  A couple more steps and she would be there. Spot bawled, a noise that sounded like a warning.

  “Don’t you even think it,” she said, steadily advancing. She bent slowly, retrieved the jacket. Trust Steph and Larry to put her in front of a bull with a bright red cloak.

  Mary began to retreat. Spot began to advance. Mary stopped. Spot didn’t. He lowered his head and drove toward her as if he wanted to do some real damage. Mary flicked the coat to one side and tried to dodge to the other. Spot didn’t buy it. He hit her in the pit of her stomach and she felt her legs come flying off the ground as he snapped his head up and tried to run through her. She heard somebody scream and knew it wasn’t her because she didn’t have any air in her lungs to scream with. She flipped over his back and came down hard in the mud and manure with that terrible feeling you get when the wind’s been knocked out of you. Just as she managed to gasp in a little air, there was Spot, jamming his head into her again, apparently trying to push right through her and splatter her guts all over his pen.

  “What the fuck!” she heard Daddy roar. Daddy never took the Lord’s name in vain but he had a fondness for a host of obscenities that Mary had already appropriated as her own. Spot pulled back and she could see that Daddy had jumped into the pen. Steph had left the back rail and was in the pen too. Daddy looked at her and he looked at Steph. Spot looked at all of them. Daddy ran over and scooped Steph up and carried her to safety. Spot came back and stuck his head in Mary’s gut again and shoved. Being up to her ass in mud and bullshit, she slid. She was near the fence. She felt a hand reach through and grab her arm. She got hurt worse being yanked between the boards of the fence than by Spot, in spite of both intentions. She was surprised to discover it was Larry who had pulled her from danger. Daddy still held a thoroughly hysterical Steph in his arms.

  For a while, Mary thought Daddy was going to turn Spot into about a year’s worth of hamburger. He didn’t though. Spot was too valuable. Mary wasn’t surprised anymore. Her world had shifted. It no longer revolved around her. Daddy had saved Steph and abandoned her. She didn’t get too upset when she discovered Larry and Steph skinny dipping in the creek a couple of years later. Larry had rescued her. After that, she could forgive him almost anything. She owed him. When Larry came back to her, the way he always did, she agreed to be his steady girl, and she said yes when he asked her to marry him. She hardly gave the succession of other girls he fooled with a second thought, and never dreamed of doing anything similar…until J.D.

  The Sincerest of Emotions

  The bartender had curly white hair, a full jolly face with dimpled cheeks and a red nose, and, if he’d only had a beard, would look exactly like Santa Claus. He’d bring you what you asked for, too, and never inquire whether you’d been naughty or nice. J.D. wanted a double and innkeeper Claus set it in front of him with a hearty smile and reduced the stack of silver J.D. had placed on the long wooden bar.

  His drink glowed warm and amber in the glass and then it started to glow inside J.D. too and the awful sense of failure he’d been carrying since he woke up in the hospital dulled a little.

  He’d just finished typing up his report on the Japanese battle flag that had been found atop the pole in front of Old Main on the University of Arizona campus the morning after Pearl Harbor. Some local Japanese Americans were suspected, but they turned out to be among the most patriotic citizens J.D. had met, even now, when neighbors they’d known for years had suddenly stopped speaking to them. He had come out of their house to find the guy next door standing guard on his porch with a shotgun. J.D. showed the man his badge and told him what to expect if anything should happen to the family he’d just visited.

  Things were getting out of hand. They’d be rounding up the Japanese soon, putting them in camps, and then they’d start drafting them, the ones who didn’t volunteer first, but not for service in the Pacific.

  He knew about the flag. It was a fraternity prank. He even had a pretty good idea which fraternity, but Tucson had been so outraged that no one was talking now and he couldn’t prove it.

  J.D. had been planning to buy a bottle and see if maybe Jesus might want to drive out to the reservation with him and look up some of the old men they’d ridden to Mexico with. Share their memories, and their pain. A last minute request for surveillance of yet another Japanese family had canceled his plans last night. This was his first chance to wash the bad taste of the duty from his soul.

  Claus came back down the bar and stood there and smiled and said “What’ll it be?” J.D. found that curious because he thought he was the only customer in the place and there was still plenty of whiskey in his glass.

  “Do you have any coffee?” she asked. Her voice opened the door on a huge empty space inside him, so big he didn’t think anything could ever fill it.

  She sat on the stool beside him while the bartender went to get her order. She looked tired. The scar on her cheek where Sasaki had kicked her was only a few shades paler than her skin. It should have made her less beautiful, but the flaw only added a hint of vulnerability and contrasted with her otherwise perfect features. He wanted to reach out and touch her so he reached out and touched the whiskey instead.

  “You never called,” she said, “or wrote. You didn’t even open my letters, just sent them back.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “You’d made your choice. I couldn’t think of anything appropriate to say.” At least he hadn’t brought up the redhead. He shrugged and sipped his drink again.

  When she spoke her voice was tight, lots of suppressed emotion just under the surface. “You know, when they released you from the hospital, the doctor called me like I asked him. I wanted to know where you were going and he said I should aim myself in the general direction of your house and try the first bar. It’s been over a month now, I’m glad to see you’ve gotten this close to home.”

  J.D. shoved a coin in the direction of the arriving coffee and Santa snatched it, paused to briefly twinkle his eyes at her, and returned to the cash register. He cranked the handle, it played jingle bell, and he dropped the nickel in the drawer.

  She nodded toward J.D.’s glass. “That make it any better?”

  “Fills a little emptiness, masks a little pain.”

  “Fuck that!” she said.

  Santa looked up from polishing glasses. J.D. glared at him and he turned away.

  “Listen,” she said, “if I hurt you when I went back to Larry, I’m sorry. I’m not sure it was the right thing to do. I’m not even sure he needs me more than you. But he’ll let me live with my flaws. I don’t think you can do that. Since yo
u have to be perfect, how could anyone you share your life with ever be anything less?”

  He reached for the bourbon and took a deep sip. It burned its way down his throat and helped relieve the sting of her words, but not enough.

  “You’re not going to find what you need in there either. You spent more than nine months in that hospital. You were hurt bad enough that you almost died, but you should have been out a long time before you were. They told me you didn’t commit yourself to living again. You didn’t give up, exactly, but you wouldn’t make up your mind to face things either.”

  She sighed and sipped her coffee and ran her hand through her thick dark hair. “What happened out there really scared me. I thought I was going to die and then all of a sudden Larry was there. I guess I always knew he cared, I just forgot how much, or how much it mattered to me. It means a lot that you came after me too, but then so did Jujul and Jesus, and, in some way, the three of you had to. Larry didn’t.

  “When I woke up we were each on a travois on our way to Sells and I was even more scared because I could hardly move my arms and I couldn’t move my legs at all. I was afraid I might be paralyzed. And you and Larry and Jesus were all hurt too. I didn’t know if any of us would make it.

  “After they moved us to Tucson and I could get around again, I spent the next couple of weeks sitting either by your bed or Larry’s. I don’t know if you remember that. I hadn’t decided yet, not then, but Larry responded to me and you didn’t and the doctors told me they didn’t think you would. It felt like you abandoned me. So, when they sent Larry back to Ohio, I went with him, and I didn’t come back till Jesus told me I might do some good as a character witness at Jujul’s trial. You didn’t respond much then either.

  “Larson was characterizing Jujul as some kind of savage and the only two people who ever had any control over Larson were you and Fredericks, and Fredericks had just had his stroke. The FBI was telling us we had to keep our mouths shut about Sasaki, that it might make things better for Jujul, but it sure as hell would fuck things up for his people and we needed you. God damn you, we needed you to sort things out or pull some strings or throw your weight around a little. We needed you to help us keep the old man out of jail and you just lay there and waited to see if you were going to die.”