Hold of the Bone

by Baxter Clare Trautman

  “That was pretty risky of her. Do you think she might have wanted to get caught?”

  “Why would she want that?”

  Frank shrugs. She keeps to herself all the homicides she’s investigated, where spouse and lover provoke the other spouse into a rage so violent they can turn murder into a justifiable homicide. “Why do you think she was playing with fire like that? I mean, she must have known the consequences.”

  “I’m sure I couldn’t tell you. It’s not the kind of conversation a teenage girl has with her mother.”

  “No,” Frank agrees, considering her own mother’s eccentric behavior.

  Through gaps in the redwood needles, the sun shimmers across the water. A fly lands on Frank’s arm and she leaves it to whatever delights it can find. The dogs nap, as still as the cliffs around the pond. Dune and Buttons munch their patch of grass. The air is languid. Time stretches. They might have dozed, Frank isn’t sure. Redwood shadows reclaim the pond. Sal stirs and the dogs lift their heads.

  “Why are you showing me all this?”

  Cicero stands, shaking off dead needles and bits of rabbit dream.

  “Someone has to remember it.”

  “Why me? Why not show all this to someone who can stay here? Cassie or someone?”

  “Because I trust you.”

  “To do what?”

  Sal won’t answer, and Frank swats at a fly.

  “This is ridiculous.” Frank stands, ignoring the throb in her hip. “You live this hermetic existence in this rarified air and have given me a very generous taste of it, but it’s nothing I can ever make a meal of. I can’t have any of this. I have to go back down to the real world. I can’t just saddle up a horse anytime I feel like it and trot on up here. You’re showing me things I never even knew I wanted until I came here, but I can’t have them, so I don’t know why you keep showing me.”

  She stalks to Buttons and yanks the reins over the horse’s head, but the hobbles thwart her. “How do you undo these goddamn things?”

  Sal comes and unbuckles them. Too angry to be afraid, Frank swings painfully into the saddle. She trots from the glade, then stops. She has no idea which way to go.

  Chapter 31

  The return to the cabin is in chilly silence. When they drop from their horses, Frank says, “Look. I’m sorry. I have been incredibly unprofessional, and I just want you to know that my shortcomings are in no way representative of the LAPD. I am a rogue cop acting completely on my own.”

  “That’s too bad. From what I’ve heard, they could use more like you.”

  “Not the way I’ve been lately. I’m starting to think you’ve put ranch crack in my food—this place is magical. It’s all I can think about lately. And then the minute I’m here, my brain flies out the window.”

  “Maybe that’s not such a bad thing.”

  After they feed the animals, Sal slices apples and puts a small wheel of cheese on the table. Frank is browsing the bookshelves, and says, “Hey, I’ve got all your books. Remind me when we get to my car.”

  “Did you read them all?”

  “I did. I really liked them. But it kinda freaked my girlfriend out that I was reading up on morphic resonance.”

  She taps a tarot book, asking Sal if she reads cards like her daughter.

  “No, I’m just curious how they work.”

  “And how is that?”

  “I think the images and symbols, all the archetypes, speak to our souls. They stimulate our deepest, most innate intelligence.”

  “So they’re not magic.”

  Setting a plate of tortillas on the table, Sal says, “No more magical than your soul. Sit. Eat.”

  Frank pulls out a chair. “Does everything in your world have a soul?”

  “Everything.”

  Frank tips her head to the window. “Even the mountains?”

  Sal smiles. “Especially the mountains.”

  “How do you know?”

  “How do you not?”

  They eat in silence, the dogs asleep under the table. Mindful of the deepening shadows, Frank drags herself from pleasure to business. She asks about her father’s work with his uncle, how often, was it always in LA? “Did he always go down alone?”

  Sal nods.

  “How often did your uncle Roderick work with him?”

  The question catches Sal raising her tortilla. She pauses, lowers it back to the plate. “I don’t know. I don’t think very often. Louis didn’t like him. I think he only used him when he was desperate. I’d forgotten he used to work with my father.”

  “He was down there the day before your father was.”

  “Was he?”

  “You didn’t know that?”

  “If I did, I don’t remember.”

  “Did he ever talk about that time down there?”

  “Not that I recall.”

  “Never said anything about your father before he disappeared?”

  Sal pushes her plate aside. “No.”

  “Did you ever go down to LA to look for him again?”

  “What would have been the point? Where would we have started? He just vanished.”

  “Did Roderick keep working for Louis?”

  She cocks her head as if to a far sound. “It was so long ago. We lived up here, everyone else was in town. We didn’t keep track of everyone. We were living our own, suddenly very different lives. I really don’t remember much about that time. It all seems very foggy.” Sal carries their empty plates to the sink and pours coffee. “Let’s go outside.”

  They take their seats by the fire ring and sip coffee. Along the creek, birds begin squabbling over night perches. A tree frog croaks, then another. They watch as the great black snake of the ridge catches the sun and swallows it alive. It is a beautiful, bloody business. Wholly frightening and wholly necessary.

  As she bears witness to the vivid death, Frank’s limbs grow heavy, as if the mountains have stolen under her skin to replace blood with dirt and bone with granite. From the darkening mountains comes the sound of sticks being hit together, then a woman singing. “Who is that?”

  Sal looks from the sunset to Frank. “Who’s what?”

  “There’s someone singing out there.”

  Sal listens intently. “I can’t hear anything.”

  “That.” Frank points in the direction of the sound. “You can’t hear that?”

  Sal shakes her head. “Is it just one woman?”

  “Yeah. And sticks clapping. Who is it?”

  Sal’s gaze returns to the ridges. “It’s the mountains. They’re singing to you.”

  “The mountains.”

  Sal nods. “I’ve never heard them, but my mother used to. After she put the food out for the hosts, she’d sit here and do chores and watch the sun set. Every now and then, she’d get an odd look on her face and start humming. If we asked what she was singing, she’d say it was the song of the mountains and that not everyone could hear it. When we asked her to tell us the words, she said there weren’t any. It was just the sound of a woman crying and beating sticks. The Esselen didn’t have drums. They used sticks.”

  Frank insists, “Somebody lives up there.”

  “No. It’s just the mountains. You’re lucky. I’ve always wanted to hear them.”

  Frank shakes her head. “It’s a recording or something.”

  Tucking her knees up under her chin, Sal asks, “Isn’t there a paint or a compound you use to find blood?”

  Without taking her eyes off the mountains, Frank answers, “Luminol.”

  “And don’t you need a black light to see it?”

  “Yep.”

  “That’s how the mountains are. There are things in them that not everyone has the ability to see with the naked eye. It doesn’t mean they don’t exist, it just means not everyone can see them.”

  Frank is tired and her hip aches. She snaps, “Does anything up here have an explanation that’s not supernatural?”

  Sal laughs. “I hope not. There’s nothing
supernatural at all. Everything is natural and normal, but we each have different detection ranges. Bone can hear a mouse digging a foot underground. Just because you can’t hear it, doesn’t mean the mouse doesn’t exist. He can smell a man walking up to the house from a couple hundred feet away. Just—”

  “Okay, okay.” Frank finishes, “Just because I can’t, it doesn’t mean the man’s not there.”

  Frank likes the idea that there is an enclave of hippies living out in the hills, growing dope, playing sticks, and chanting their oneness with the earth, but is resigned to the possibility—no, at this point the probability—that this is just the auditory version of a vision.

  “Has anybody else heard this, besides your mother?”

  “Yes.”

  “Who?”

  Sal studies her in the gathering twilight. Frank repeats her question. Twisting back toward the outline of her rough, old gods, Sal promises, “You’ll see.”

  “Jesus,” Frank breathes. “Why do I even bother to ask?” As she glowers west at the brooding mass, her frustration transforms into fascination. “They’re not unfriendly, are they?”

  “The singer?”

  “No. The mountains. Gomez said Steinbeck called them unfriendly.”

  “Gomez said that?”

  “What, you don’t think cops read?”

  “I’m sure I don’t know enough cops to judge.”

  A bat glides through the purple sky and frogs croak from the creek. Tiny movement catches Frank’s eye and she watches a cottontail hop at the edge of the trees.

  Frank clears her throat. “What did your father like to do besides drink?”

  “He played a fair guitar. He liked music. He loved this.”

  She sweeps a hand toward the dusk-covered land. “It would have been confining for some men. They’d have wanted to see the world beyond the Gabilans and Santa Lucias, but not my father. There was nowhere else he wanted to be. It makes sense he’s dead. Death is the only thing that could have kept him away. Sometimes I wonder if even that’s enough.”

  “Are you your father’s daughter?”

  A slash of pain rearranges Sal’s normally placid features, only to be replaced by a joy so fierce it makes Frank’s breath catch to see it. She looks up at the night, embarrassed at having spied such naked love. The first stars are winking on and a chill slinks up from the creek.

  Sal stands. “I assume you’re staying?”

  It’s wrong, but Frank is past caring. “If you’ll have me.”

  “Of course. I’ll get a fire going.”

  She brings kindling and blows it to life from ash-covered coals. When the small sticks catch, she adds larger ones, then a hatch of logs. They turn their chairs to face the heat.

  Sal makes a cigarette and offers it to Frank.

  “Thanks.”

  She rolls another and they smoke as night settles upon them like an old favorite sweater.

  “Am I one of your suspects?”

  Frank studies the half of Sal’s face she can see. “Should you be?”

  “Isn’t everyone until they’re ruled out?”

  “Yeah. But you’ve got lots of company.”

  “Who?”

  Frank blows smoke, smiles. “I can’t tell you that, even though I’ve busted just about every rule in the rulebook.”

  “Whoever it is, I know you’ll find him.”

  “Him?”

  Sal shrugs. “Him, her, them.”

  Frank turns to her. “In your heart of hearts, who do you think killed him?”

  The blue eyes, turned black to gather the light, reflect only the fire.

  “In my heart of hearts, I couldn’t say.” Sal pitches her burning stub into the pit. “Are you sleeping inside or out?”

  “Out,” Frank says to the star-bright sky. “I wouldn’t want to miss a minute of this. There are only so many, aren’t there?”

  “Only so many,” she agrees, and Frank is certain she hears Sal’s voice crack.

  Chapter 32

  The wind rises up in the night. It is restless and swirls from the north, the west, then north again. Switching around, it comes briefly from the east, scattering leaves from the creek. Frank lies snug in her bedroll, thinking what a good thing it is to hear the strong, fine instrument of the wind playing its symphony against tree trunk and leaf and round the corners of the cabin. It sings clear and clean through the barbed wire and over bent grasses, blowing hard off the black, star-speckled ocean and across the wild humpback of the mountains. It is a noise that makes Frank want to throw off her covers and howl like a beast to its kin. She lies a long time listening and when she sleeps, she dreams of the sharp mountains and fires glowing like eyes.

  The next time she wakes, the waning moon is rising through a raft of clouds. One thin cloud crosses the hilt of the moon and together they hang like a shining scimitar. The cloud drifts and the moon becomes the moon again. Frank looks to Sal. Her hair glimmers against the still dark ground, but Frank can see from the way her head rests on her forearm that she is watching too.

  They stay in their bags until the sun has leached all the drama from the night. Then Sal frees the chickens and goes inside to make coffee. The dogs follow for their breakfast. Frank is left alone with hens scratching in the leaf litter and a covey of quail trundling down the hill for water. Frank puts on her shoes and pisses behind the sheds like Sal does.

  The screen slams and she hears Kook barking for his bowl. She meets Sal carrying two mugs. They wander to the bridge and drink coffee. Their legs dangle over the coming and going water. The dogs press between the women, Bone close to Frank. She strokes his flank, noting the browning sycamore leaves.

  “I can’t believe it’s fall already.”

  Sal nods. “It won’t be long before we get the first hard cold. Just a couple weeks.”

  “How do you know that?”

  Sal shrugs. “It’s in our bones.”

  “You mean Saladino bones.”

  “No. Our bones.”

  Frank wags her head. “I’m a city girl. The only thing in my bones is glass and concrete.”

  “That’s what’s in your brain. This—” Sal indicates everything around them “—is what’s in the hold of your bone.”

  Quail approach from the ranch side of the stream. A male scouts the way, topknot bobbing.

  “Do you ever eat them?”

  “Pete will give me a couple when he goes hunting.”

  “Do you spend a lot of time with him?”

  Sal rolls them cigarettes. “Depends on the time of year. I see him a lot when we’re branding and gathering.”

  “Is this a pretty profitable spread?”

  “It’s good enough for Pete, but it could be better.”

  “How long did he and your sister date?”

  “I couldn’t say. Off and on, a long time.”

  “Why’d your father want Cass to marry him instead of you?”

  Sal is lighting her cigarette and chokes. “Why wouldn’t he? Cass and Pete were pals, even as kids. They were the daredevils, the risk-takers, the ones that always had an idea up their sleeve. The rest of us just bobbed along in their wake.”

  They smoke and listen to the water. The quail come closer.

  “You said John let you stay because it would look bad if he tossed two orphans out, but why does Pete let you stay?”

  “I also told you John let us stay because the land needs a Saladino. Pete lets me stay for the same reason.”

  Frank remembers the old clerk in Celadores saying something like that. “What’s that mean exactly?”

  “Just that. The land needs a Saladino. Things don’t go well if we’re not on it.”

  “What sort of things?”

  “Blackleg. Scours. Drought. Fire.” Sal lifts a shoulder. “Things.”

  “So. Your being here changes the weather?”

  “It seems to.”

  Frank wags her head. “I’ll admit I can hear mountains singing, and that you knew exactly
where I was hurt yesterday, but you really think you can change the weather?”

  “I didn’t say we change it, it’s just that it’s different when we’re not here, more destructive. In 1872, when John’s grandfather turned us off the land, he was struck in the course of three months by an outbreak of brucellosis, drought, and a wildfire that came over the mountain and burned down his barn but didn’t touch the neighbors on either side. The rains came a week after he hired Mateo Saladino back, and that spring the Mazettis had a record number of calves that survived and made it to market. In 1914 Mateo’s son Paul was working the ranch. When he got drafted, there was another drought, worse than the one in ’72.”

  She tips her head back toward the mountains. “Springs that had held water even in the driest years went bone dry. There wasn’t enough grass to get the cattle to market, and ninety percent of the herd died of starvation or were slaughtered and left for the vultures. In August, a month after Paul came home, the rains started. The next year, the Mazettis shipped out seventeen hundred head of cattle. He made more money than anyone in the valley that year. And next year and the next. The only other time there wasn’t a Saladino on the ranch was after I married Mike.”

  “And what calamity happened then?”

  “We had a windstorm that spring that toppled a perfectly healthy oak tree into the ranch house. Pete and Linda were out branding, so they didn’t get hurt, but their twin boys were killed. A month later, an outbreak of swamp fever wiped out every horse on the ranch.”

  “No drought?”

  “Not that year, but the winter was drier than usual. They had to sell the cattle early, and all summer they were plagued by lightning fires. I’d sit in our living-room window in town and watch the storms come in. The clouds were like wild, black animals licking the mountains with tongues of lightning, starting fires everywhere they touched. It was terrifying, watching the lightning strike and not being there to do anything about it.”

  “What would you have done if you were here?”

  “I don’t know if it would have happened if I’d stayed.”