Charlie Moon waited patiently while the enthusiastic diner devoured the hearty breakfast. After Dixon had wiped his mouth on his sleeve and burped, the tribal investigator gave him a look that would have shaken a more sensible man. This was accompanied by an order. “You bring that ax back today.” As the sly fellow was opening his mouth to protest, the Ute cut him off: “And if you so much as steal a look at any of my aunt’s property, I’ll give Chief of Police Whitehorse a call. The very least he’ll do is run you off the res. More likely, he’ll put you up in the tribe’s modern correctional facility for ninety days.”
Normally such a threat would have caused Dixon to protest, or at least raise an eyebrow, but a full stomach has a calming effect on a man. He picked a pointy juniper needle off a convenient branch, thoughtfully picked his teeth, pondered the offer of a free room and three meals a day. Concluded that it would place too many restrictions on his cherished freedom of movement. “I will certainly return the lady’s ax.” He tossed the toothpick aside. “And henceforth, I promise not to—uh—borrow any property that belongs to your charming aunt.” He raised his right hand to show Moon a soiled palm. “You have my word of honor, sir.”
Great. With that and six bits I could buy me a seventy-five-cent cup of coffee. Moon looked up to watch a golden eagle float by. By the time he lowered his gaze, the scruffy-looking white man had ambled over to the Columbine Expedition.
The visitor caressed the Ford Motor Company product. “This is quite a spiffy motor car.”
Moon winced at the greasy streaks Dixon’s grubby fingers were tracing on the glistening fender. “I just waxed it.”
“And you did a fairly decent job.” Mr. Dixon got that faraway look in his eye, also cleared his throat. Which is a double warning that whether the unwary listener likes it or not, he is about to share a favorite memory. “Back in Michigan, when I was just a young lad, my daddy owned a cherry-red 1963 Jaguar XKE 3.8 Coupe. Pop kept it garaged, except on Sundays when he’d roll it out and take me for a ride into Lansing.” His sigh was scented with nostalgia-blossom perfume. “Talk about your fine automobiles—there is absolutely nothing like a Jag.”
Aunt Daisy’s very bad dream
Daisy was busy at the propane range, putting the final touches on her nephew’s breakfast. This amounted to one skillet filled with sizzling sausage and fried potatoes, another of fluffy scrambled eggs, plus a simmering pot of green chili stew. Work, work, work—that’s all I ever do. As a gray mist slipped out of Spirit Canyon and settled over her mind, the cook sighed. I bet that thieving white man’ll be back here tomorrow, licking his lips and asking for any prime rib and baked potatoes that’s left over from my lunch. Recalling his whining request for an apple core, her wrinkled face crinkled into a crooked little smile. I ought to give him a big, shiny red apple with enough pickleweed poison in it to kill a dozen smelly moochers—that’d teach him a lesson he wouldn’t forget! In Daisy’s version of the heartwarming tale, this was how Snow White had dispensed with the witch, who should have known better than to trust a peculiar white girl who had run away from home to hang out with a truckload of dwarves. From the shaman’s experience, one pitukupf in the neighborhood was sufficient.
Fortunately for Mr. Dixon, the cook had dismissed him from her malevolent thoughts. But Charlie Moon was not so lucky. As the broth began to froth and bubble, Daisy sensed the time was ripe to make some trouble—and commenced to stir the pot. “Charlie, there’s something that’s been bothering me.”
Moon turned another page of the Southern Ute Drum. No sham this time.
“I’ve been having this same bad dream, over and over.” No response. She turned up the volume. “Last night, I had it again. It was so scary I woke up with the sweats.”
He frowned at a full-page listing of Upcoming Events, had a great notion. I should take Lila Mae McTeague to the dance. No two ways about it—the long-legged FBI agent would be the best-looking woman there.
The Ute elder turned to scowl at her nephew. “Did you hear what I said?”
“Sure.” I wonder if Lila Mae’s ever been to a Bear Dance. Probably not.
“Plop, plop, plop.”
Moon shook a wrinkle out of the newspaper. “What?”
“That was the sound it made.”
He stared at her hunched back. “The sound what made?”
“The blood.”
“What blood?”
She brought him a man-size platter of eggs, sausage, and potatoes. “The blood dropping onto that dead man’s face!”
“Oh. Right.” He reached for a paper napkin, considered tucking it over his new white linen shirt with the mother-of-pearl buttons, decided to put it in his lap.
She hurried back to the stove. “You don’t have the least idea what I’ve been talking about.”
“Sure I do.”
“Then tell me.”
“The blood. It was going…uh…drip-drip.”
“It was going plop-plop-plop.” She turned down the ring of blue flame under the pot, tossed him another challenge. “And how was it that I happened to hear that blood going plop-plop-plop?”
With Aunt Daisy it was nine-to-one for a nightmare, so he played the odds. “You was having one of them weird dreams.”
“I knew you wasn’t paying no attention.” She banged the wooden spoon on the stove. “What I said was—I’ve been having the same bad dream, over and over.”
Might as well get this over with. “Tell me all about it.”
She sniffed. “Oh, you don’t really want to know.”
“Yes, I do. And if you keep me in suspense, I won’t be able to eat a bite of breakfast.”
That’ll be a day to remember. Daisy brought the stewpot to the table. “I dreamed about a skinny little girl.”
He watched her ladle a generous helping of green chili stew onto the mound of scrambled eggs. That looks good enough to eat. He took a taste. It could use some salt.
She reached out to tweak his ear. “You’re supposed to ask me: ‘Who is this skinny little girl?’”
“Consider yourself asked.” He reached for the shaker.
She slapped his hand. “Don’t do that—I’ve got it seasoned just right. I don’t know who she is.”
Momentarily deprived of salt, the Ute warrior raised his fork, expertly speared a sausage. “Then why should I have asked?”
“To show proper respect to a tribal elder.”
“Right.” He opened a steaming biscuit, inserted a generous helping of butter.
“I don’t know who the girl is, because in these dreams, I don’t ever see her face.” She hobbled over to the stove. Back and forth, back and forth—it’s a wonder I don’t wear a path ankle-deep into the floor. “But I know she’s in trouble. Serious trouble.”
Behind her back, Moon snatched the shaker, added several dashes of sodium chloride, tasted the result. That’s some better.
While preparing a plate for herself, Daisy paused to stare through the window at a diaphanous fluff of cloud floating over the big mesa. She watched it snag itself on the tallest of the Three Sisters. “In these dreams, the girl is standing over the dead man.”
He took a sip of black coffee. I forgot to put sugar in it. He remedied this error with six heaping spoonfuls.
Daisy was silent for a long moment, watching the cloud that had become a misty wisp of gray hair on the petrified Pueblo woman’s head. “And what makes it so awful, is that her little hands is soaked in blood.”
As chance would have it, he had just poured tomato ketchup onto a heap of fried potatoes.
The shaman shuddered. “And that blood just keeps dripping off the tips of her fingers—onto the dead man’s face.”
Charlie Moon was not a squeamish diner, but food was meant to be savored. He eyed the bloody chunk of spud on his fork. I wish she would wait till after I’ve had my breakfast to tell me about her nightmares.
Daisy Perika brought her plate to the table, thoughtfully watched her nephew frown at a slice of ke
tchup-painted potato. “All night I could hear it, even when I was wide awake—all that blood dripping off her hands, onto that dead man’s face.” She saw the indecision on Charlie Moon’s face. “There was so much that it puddled up in his eye-sockets.”
Knowing she would finally tire of the subject, he decided the fried potatoes could wait. In the meantime, he would fortify himself with eggs and sausage and buttered biscuits.
The old woman settled herself into a chair. For a while, she absentmindedly picked at her scrambled eggs. After a few tentative bites, she lost interest in her meal. Fixed her gaze on a Wild Flower of the Month wall calendar. Began to hum her favorite Ute ballad, which she claimed had been stolen from her tribe by the British. Then, in a scratchy-creaky voice that would have seat a deaf man’s teeth on edge, she sang thusly:
In Sweet Grass town, where I was born,
There was a fair lass dwellin’….
And so on. Until she got to the good part:
O grandmo-ther, make my bed!
O make it hard and narrow—
My sweetheart died for me today,
I’ll be with him to-morrow.
After the next and semi-final verse, and following his aunt’s long, melancholy sigh, Charlie Moon concluded that he had won the waiting-game. He could almost taste his starchy, ketchup-tinctured victory.
From the corner of her eye, the tribal elder spotted the home-fry that was newly impaled on the tines of her nephew’s fork. She mumbled a hastily devised and highly discordant epilogue:
And knowin’ I’ll be no man’s wife,
I’ll slit my throat with a butcher knife…
The crimson-dripping morsel was rising toward Moon’s lips.
Her mumble rose to a mutter:
And my blood drips down,
Down in the dust in Sweet Grass Town…
She watched the fork slowing—possibly coming to a stop…
“Plop,” Daisy said. “Plop-plop.”
Also by James D. Doss
The Shaman Sings
The Shaman Laughs
The Shaman’s Bones
The Shaman’s Game
The Night Visitor
Grandmother Spider
White Shell Woman
Dead Soul
The Witch’s Tongue
SHADOW MAN
Copyright © 2005 by James D. Doss.
Excerpt from Stone Butterfly © 2006 by James D. Doss.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 2005046513
ISBN: 978-1-4299-0381-3
St. Martin’s Paperbacks are published by St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.
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