Hold of the Bone

by Baxter Clare Trautman

  “Then you’ll have it. If you don’t, it may have outlived its purpose and the help will manifest elsewhere. I’d caution you not to become so fixated on one form that you overlook another. And why can’t you get to this place?”

  “It’s private property. I can’t go whenever I feel like it, but the damn place is seeping into my bones.”

  “Maybe it has always been in your bones and is finally seeping out. Can you hold the line a minute?”

  “Sure,” Frank sighs, irritated to be put on hold. But as she waits she can hear the mambo breathing. Frank drops her head into her hand, listening to the steady rhythm of Marguerite’s breath. She sways in her chair to the gait of a horse and hears the steady clop of hooves, the ring of an iron shoe on rock, a gnat’s complaint. Sun heats her back. She touches her tongue to her lips, taking away a salty grit of sweat and dust.

  “This place,” Marguerite says. “It’s very much with you. Even when you’re not there. It has many animals?”

  “Yeah. Dogs, chickens. Rattlesnakes. Bears. You name it.”

  “Yes. I can feel them. I think they’re touching your heart, that through them you’re opening to the larger energies of this place, this land.”

  “And the woman, is she—”

  “Yes?”

  “Nothing. Never mind.”

  “If it’s any consolation, your estrangement from this place seems temporary. I feel your time there isn’t over, that you have much more of a relationship with that land than you can even begin to imagine.”

  “You’re right. I can’t imagine.”

  “Don’t despair,” Marguerite encourages. “If I know you, you’re trying to put this all behind you, to close the door on your experiences as if they never happened. If you can’t have them, you’ll deny them. Am I close?”

  Frank has to smile. “Center mass.”

  “Don’t do that. Don’t deny them. Remember the land as clearly and as vividly as you can. That will keep it connected to you. Distance doesn’t matter.”

  “That’s what Darcy said. Called it ‘spooky action at a distance.’”

  To Frank’s surprise, Marguerite chuckles. “Yes. That’s exactly it. Lieutenant, I know this is difficult, but I’m proud of you for keeping such an open mind.”

  Frank can’t remember the last time she made anyone proud and deflects the praise. “I don’t know how proud you should be. I’m a terrible cop.”

  “That may be. But your heart is opening, and that is far more important than being a good cop. I’m glad you called me.”

  “Thanks, Marguerite.”

  The mambo tells her to take close care, and Frank hits End. Determined to keep at least one promise to Pintar, she settles to her paperwork. It takes a grinding, concentrated day, but she gets it all done.

  “Tatum!” she yells.

  He pokes his head in the door.

  She waves a bill at him. “I need you to run up to the CVS Pharmacy, get some wrapping paper and a bow.”

  “Me?”

  “Is there anybody else in here?”

  “I was just about to leave.”

  “Alright, forget it. I’ll just tell Pintar you couldn’t get her paper.”

  “It’s for her?”

  “Yeah, but don’t worry about it. Go home.”

  He reaches for the bill. “Nah, I got it. What type you want?”

  “Doesn’t matter. Just something bright and girly.”

  Lewis barges past Tatum, a grin slicing her face. “Who’s your number one detective?”

  “Uh . . . Tatum?”

  He looks on with interest.

  “This boy here?” Lewis scoffs. “He couldn’t find a clue if it was stapled to his willie. Check this out.” She waves a faded green ledger and Frank flaps a dismissive hand at Tatum.

  “I found Miss Henry, ’member the niece I was telling you about this morning?”

  Frank nods, hiding a yawn. She wants to go home and get on her treadmill for an hour.

  “She a sweet old thing, lonely, and well, you know how charming I can be.” Lewis bats her lashes. The delighted grin returns. “Turns out she got all Saladino’s old records. Boxes of ’em. Full of these old notebooks. ’Fraid the minute she throws ’em out, ol’ Uncle Sam gonna want to know something about the house or her uncle’s business. Keeps ’em all in storage. And she gimme the key.

  “1968,” she says, brandishing the register. “Got notes of everyone Louis Saladino paid and how much. Some of it legit, but mostly like it’s under the table. But three times there’s a record of payment to one Roderick Dusi, and the last one?”

  She slaps the ledger down and points to a line on an open page.

  “December 17, 1968.”

  Frank thinks. “That’s the day before Mary Saladino died.”

  “Uh-huh. Why the uncle be writing out a check to this Roderick unless he be down here to collect?”

  “Maybe Saladino was gonna take it back for him?”

  Lewis shakes her head. “You do temp work, you get paid by the day or as soon as the job’s over. You don’t get your money later.”

  She taps Roderick’s name. “Mary Saladino’s brother was down here the same time her husband was. Right after he put the beatdown on her.”

  “Son of a bitch.”

  Frank pulls the notebook close. Studying the entries Lewis has tabbed, she mutters, “What else aren’t you telling me, Sal?”

  Chapter 30

  Frank is waiting next Saturday when Sal leaves the store. She looks drained and her shoulders slump even more than usual. Frank opens the truck door so Sal can stash her bags. “Rough morning?”

  Sal nods.

  “I’d offer to buy you a cup of coffee, but I know the dogs are waiting.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Could I ask a couple quick questions?”

  “You’re welcome to come up.”

  “You sure? You look beat.”

  “I just need to eat. I’ll be fine.”

  Frank isn’t convinced but Sal urges, “Hop in.”

  “How ’bout I drive? You can sit back and relax. Survey your kingdom.”

  Sal gives up a wan smile. “That’d be a treat.”

  Frank slides in behind the wheel, hoping she remembers how to use a clutch. “Don’t forget to tell me where to turn.”

  Sal nods. Except for directions, they drive without speaking and Frank is surprised how much she has missed the companionable silence. She thinks of all the people in her life and how much they talk. There is never silence in her ears. Not like here, where even the truck straining at the top of its gear is a kind of silence. Frank parks at the barn. “Quad or horses?” she asks before getting out.

  Sal thinks a second. “Horses.”

  They saddle up and ride the worn track to the cabin. Frank sees as they approach the creek that the sycamores have changed from emerald to a brassy green. Riding into their embrace, she wonders why they ever gave her the willies. The dogs bark as the horses clop across the bridge and Frank smiles at the water tumbling below.

  Sal opens the corral gate and Frank offers, “How about I take care of the horses and you fix something to eat?”

  Sal lifts a brow. “Last week you didn’t know what a hoof pick was and today you’re a regular Annie Oakley.”

  Frank grins. “I had a good teacher.”

  “Actually, I want to take a ride after we eat, so just leave them saddled.”

  “Where to?” she asks, trying to copy Sal’s fluid dismount. While lacking grace, she manages to get off without kicking Buttons and scratches her belly.

  “You’ll see.”

  Frank mutters, “Why’d I even ask?”

  They feed the dogs, then themselves. Sal finishes her coffee and asks, “Ready?”

  “I guess. How far are we going?”

  “Not far. We’ll be back before dark.”

  Frank checks her watch. Sunset is around 7:30 and it’s not even three o’clock now.

  “Four hours?” she
protests, but Sal is already out the door.

  They ride north, paralleling the toe of the mountains until Sal suddenly turns up a dark green canyon. Madrones and maples filter the light. Soft, leafy branches swat them. A layer of duff muffles the step of horse and dog alike. The only sound is the swish of cloth upon leather, the occasional note from a bird. The leaves on the ground thicken. The trees lengthen into shaggy-barked redwoods that blot the sun. Sal weaves Dune between the somber spires. They cross and re-cross a dry, ferny stream at the bottom of the canyon. Dune hops up a series of boulders, and before Frank can protest Buttons clambers after him. Frank clings to the horse’s neck and manages to stay in the saddle. She rubs under Buttons’ bridle and whispers what a fine beast she is.

  The cobbled streambed leads deeper into the mossy cool. Sal stops at a cliff rising straight from the creek. They lift their heads, looking to where the wall disappears in an apse of needle and bough.

  Sal insists, “You’ll have to come back when the water’s running.”

  Almost afraid to break the churchly silence, but glancing at the tight sides of the canyon, Frank asks, “How do you get up here if the creek’s full?”

  “There’s another trail. It’s longer, but it comes out at the top of the falls.”

  To Frank, the mountains are an impenetrable tangle, and she marvels, “You know this place as well as your own face in the mirror.”

  Sal shakes her head. “Much better than that.” Turning Dune toward a jumble of boulders, she calls, “She won’t want to, but you have to make Buttons jump up here. Hang on when she does.” With that, she digs her heels in, bends over Dune’s neck, and sails onto a flat ledge.

  “Oh, sure.”

  Sal wheels to watch. “Walk her up to it, then give her a big kick in the ribs. She’ll go.”

  Frank rides up to the boulders. “How ’bout I get off and walk her up?”

  Sal shakes her head. “She won’t go that way. Just give her plenty of rein and a hard kick. Bend over her neck and hold tight with your knees.”

  “This is crazy,” she says more to herself than Sal.

  Frank pulls in a deep breath, savoring it as if it might be her last. She lets it out with a loud “Yah!” and jabs her heels into Buttons’ ribs. With a great gathering of haunches, Buttons launches into the air and Frank loses a stirrup. She squeezes her eyes shut as Buttons lands with a jolt and clatter. Giddy with relief, Frank grins and feels for the loose stirrup. Before she can find it, Buttons shakes herself and Frank slides out of the saddle. She tries hanging on, but her other foot slips through the stirrup up to her shin.

  The crack of bone on rock knocks her breath loose. She waits for Buttons to bolt and drag her to a gruesome death, but Sal has the reins and is twisting Frank’s leg free. Her foot drops to the ground and Sal crouches next to her. “Are you alright?”

  Frank studies the sky beyond the dome of trees. She murmurs, “I think you ask that every time I’m here.” Bone licks her cheek.

  “Does anything hurt?”

  Almost everything, Frank thinks. Shifting her gaze from the sky to Sal, she grumbles, “You’re the psychic healer. You tell me.”

  Sal rolls her eyes. “Do you really want me to sit here and take the time to do that?”

  “Yeah. I think I do.”

  Sal shakes her head, but she gets up and ties the reins onto a sturdy bush. She sits back next to Frank and closes her eyes. Frank does too. She braced her neck to keep her head from slamming on to the rocks and it aches like a sonofabitch. The shoulder and hip she fell on, too. After she inventories the rest of her parts, she decides nothing’s broken and sits up. “I’m okay,” she whispers.

  Sal opens her eyes. “You seem to want proof.” She touches the stiff muscle in Frank’s neck. “It’s hot here.” Her hand falls to Frank’s shoulder. “And a little bit here, but more right about. . . here.” She holds her hand a couple inches from Frank’s hipbone. “We’ll get some ice on that when we get back to the cabin, but for now . . .” Sal stands and reaches for a handful of bay leaves over her head. She crushes them between her hands, pours a little water on the mix, and rolls it into a loose ball. “Hold this on your hip. You’re going to be sore, but this’ll help with the swelling.”

  Frank stuffs the fragrant mash into her jeans, wincing when she presses it in place.

  “Can you ride?”

  “I’m not getting back on that horse.”

  “It’s a long walk down.”

  “I’ll crawl.” Frank slaps dirt from her pants with a bloody palm. “What the hell’s up here anyway?”

  “You’ll see.”

  “And why’s everything always such a goddamn mystery with you?”

  Sal turns Buttons sideways to a boulder. “You’re a detective. You should like mysteries.” She pats the rock. “It’ll be easier if you get on from here.”

  Frank swears but eases herself gently into the saddle. They climb a series of boulders that top out onto a wooded plateau and the dogs break into a run. She hears splashing, and rounding a fern-covered cliff sees them swimming in a pond as black and round as an eye. After the horses drink, Sal hobbles them near a patch of swordlike grass, then sits and tugs her boots off.

  “Don’t tell me you’re going in there.”

  “Why not?”

  “It’s dirty. There’s snakes and bugs and . . . things in there.”

  Sal is out of her shirt and unbuttoning her jeans. Frank looks down until she has splashed into the water. She yells after her, “You’re going to get a disease!”

  Sal’s laugh floats to her in a silvery tinkle. It echoes, rare and lovely, from the cliff on the other side and Frank wishes she could hear it more often.

  “I’ve been swimming in this pond for sixty-two years and haven’t caught anything yet.”

  “That’s a long time,” Frank admits.

  “It is,” Sal answers. “Come on. You don’t know what you’re missing.”

  Yes, she does, because before she’s even left them Frank is missing Sal and the trees, the pond, and cabin, dogs and mountains, even Buttons.

  “Come and soak for a minute. It’d be good for your hip.”

  “Oh, for Christ’s sake.”

  Toeing her sneakers off, she shucks her clothes and limps into the pond before she can talk herself out of it. She dives, eyes squeezed tight, and surfaces gasping. “It’s cold!”

  Sal laughs while Bone and Cicero splash in circles. Kook barks and races around the rim of the pond. The big dogs tire and join him on shore. Cicero and Kook play a frenzied game of tag while Bone keeps a worried eye on his women. Copying Sal, Frank floats on her back. The dark water holds her, offering her tenderly to the brilliant blue bowl of sky between cliff and leaf. Frank is a willing sacrifice.

  She turns over and watches Sal swim out, appreciating that she is as graceful in water as she is on a horse. Frank follows her, skimming beneath the surface. It is quiet under the water. Peaceful. If she drowned in the still, blackish pond, she would become the mud and trees and rain and sky and stay forever a part of the land. Her lungs pound for air and she rises. Bone wades out to meet her.

  They dry themselves with their shirts, and when they are dressed, they sit in a patch of sun slanting through the trees.

  Sal tells her, “You should see it when the lilacs and buckbrush are in bloom. Promise you’ll come back in the spring.”

  “You keep treating me like I’m some kind of tourist when I’m supposed to be investigating your father’s murder.”

  Sal pulls the tobacco from her pocket and Frank asks, “Who would want to kill him?”

  “Who wouldn’t?” She folds a paper, sprinkles tobacco in the crease. “He wasn’t a bad guy, he really wasn’t. He just—I think he truly believed that somehow, some way he’d get the ranch back into the Saladino name. He had so many ideas about the ranch, so many things he wanted to do with it, but he could never interest John in them. He was a dyed-in-the-wool rancher and didn’t have any interest in
converting rangeland into fields of broccoli or sweet peas. It drove my father crazy.”

  The cigarette is rolled and sealed. Sal twists one end and tamps the other against the bag.

  “My mother didn’t help. She’d nag that he was always going to be John’s hired help and that he should just get used to the idea. I think his dreams made them both miserable. And it was only when he drank that he was bad. When he was sober, he was really very nice. Very kind. Almost as if he were trying to make up for his drinking.”

  “Do you know if he ever had an affair?”

  Sal shakes her head adamantly. “It’s a pretty small town. I’m sure we’d have heard.”

  “How about your mother?”

  “What about her?”

  Frank shifts her attention from the pond to Sal. “Did you know she was having an affair with John Mazetti?”

  Sal studies her unlit cigarette. “Where’d you hear that?”

  “George Perales.”

  Frank stopped by his place last night. Actually his daughter’s place, in Greenfield. Twisted with arthritis, Perales sat in a wheelchair and watched his grandkids while his daughter was at work. “Useful even in this,” he’d said, patting the chair. And he was.

  “Gonna smoke that?” Frank asks.

  Sal hands it to her and fixes another.

  “Did you know?”

  Sal nods.

  “How old were you when you found out?”

  “I don’t remember.”

  “Did you know during or after the fact?”

  “During.”

  “How old were you?”

  “I just told you, I don’t remember.”

  “A girl or a teenager?”

  “A teen. I think it was my sophomore year. We’d have been seventeen.”

  “How’d you find out?”

  “We caught them in the barn together. They weren’t doing anything blatant, but it was obvious we’d interrupted them. I think we’d kind of suspected anyway.”

  “Did your father know?”

  Again Sal gives a firm shake. “He was always jealous of John—they both courted my mother. My father would throw that in her face when he was drunk—accuse her of wishing she’d married John instead of him, how she could’ve been proud of her husband, and be the wife of a ranch owner instead of a ranch hand. But his jealousy came more from his failings than her deeds. With his temper when he drank, he couldn’t have known, he’d have killed her.”