by Gorman, Ed
We looked over the Grant Wood colors, red of barn, green of cornfield, fast dark blue of river, black-and-white of dairy cows, mahogany of horses in the hills, cool and deep shadow of forest, burnished gold of limestone cliffs.
Every few minutes, she'd shout, "I love this, Mr. Payne! I love this!"
She was sure going to have a lot of good new material for her friends.
We were just swooping down near the old dam, where a woman in red shorts and a white halter and summer-blonde hair was fishing from a battered green rowboat, when I saw, to the east along a mile stretch of gravel road running parallel to the river, Cindy Rhodes' personal car, a brown Dodge station wagon, traveling at a high rate of speed.
The Dodge wagon came to a T-intersection and then turned west. I had a terrible feeling that I knew what she was doing. Silver Moon leaned forward and tapped me on the shoulder. "You know how I said I didn't want you to try any fancy tricks?"
"Uh-huh."
"Well, how about if you tried just one, just a real little one."
The sweetness she shared with her brother should be bottled and each of us, every man, woman and child on the planet, should partake of the fabulous elixir at least once a day.
"I'll do a real little one."
A sort of half-roll is what I did, the nice gentle tailwinds helping a lot, nothing spooky, just one more thing for Silver Moon to talk about.
"Would you do that one more time?" she said when I was done.
I laughed and did it again.
At the same time, I noticed the brown Dodge had pulled off the gravel road into some deep woods.
Cindy, in her khaki uniform, got out of the wagon and started into the trees. She was soon lost in shadow.
She was, I suspected, about to throw her life away, the life she'd built so carefully, so proudly for herself.
"Mr. Payne?" Silver Moon said when I came out of the half-roll.
"Uh-huh?"
"Just one more time. Please? Just one more time?"
Chapter 22
In 1773, a man named Peter Pond came all the way from Connecticut to Ioway Territory to try his luck at making a fortune in the fur trade. Pond left a journal and it's quite a good one, filled with images of bark canoes laden with blankets, cloth, guns and powder that he and his companions hoped to trade with the Indians for buffalo hides, beaver, fox, and otter skins.
Seventeen days into their journey, Pond wrote down what may have been the new country's first "fish" story, though he got three men to sign his journal and testify to its veracity. Pond claimed that he caught three catfish weighing, respectively, seventy-five pounds, one hundred pounds and one hundred and four pounds. As Pond noted (in his most peculiar spelling), the fish fed twelve very hungry men and "Thay all Declared that they felt the Better for The Meale. Nor did I perseave that Eney of Them were Sick or Complained."
I always remember Pond whenever I'm out in the deeper forest because he felt an affinity for the shifting shadows and sweet scents and myriad life-forms you find in the woods — an affinity that bordered on the religious. "Worlds unto Their Own," as he remarks at one point. "And the Breath of God Hisself Sweet and Cool on yer back."
The woods surrounding the cabin where David Rhodes was holed up were nearly as sweet, shadowy and swarming with life, seen and unseen, as Pond had known them.
What always struck me about forests this deep — wild plum and wild cherry and box-elder and soft maple and Virginia creeper; walnuts and hackberries and cottonwoods and bur oak and steep clay ridges — was that some of it pre-dated even the dinosaurs of sixty-five million years ago. If that doesn't make you think about a cosmic creator of some kind, nothing ever will.
I came up over a grassy ridge on my haunches and down below, in a valley of prairie flowers giving way to prairie grasses now that late summer was upon us, there sat a crude wooden cabin that had been painted turd-brown.
All the shades were drawn. No radio, no TV played. Insects were loud in the stillness and rabbits thumped and thrashed in the long grasses nearby. Afternoon's shadows were deepening, tainted with the purple of coming dusk.
I was on a simple mission.
Or maybe not so simple, otherwise why would I not only have brought my Ruger along but have it in my right hand, ready?
A few scenarios played furtively through my mind: Cindy had come to the cabin door and he'd killed her and fled, hence the drawn shades and silence; Cindy had decided to capture him herself, getting him into her car before any other cops could hassle him; man and wife, they'd taken off together. In a fast car, Mexico was just two days away.
I started down into the valley, Ruger ready, winding my way through a steep stand of cedars and oaks, keeping a constant eye on the side window of the cabin for any sign of movement inside. Maybe they really were gone.
The closer I got to the cabin, the more evidence I found of teenagers using the place as a rendezvous point: rusty beer cans and Trojan packs that looked like red cut flowers, tiny insect-like marijuana roaches and pop bottles broken to saber-like points, and crumpled cigarette packs that dew had stained piss-yellow.
A voice. Female. Inside the cabin.
Not loud. Not anxious. Under control, even soft, but just loud enough to carry on the same breeze that also lofted the red-shouldered hawks I'd seen earlier.
Cindy. Talking. Voice through the screen.
Crouching, I ran across the clearing to the oak tree that stood at an angle to the front door. Only one way in and that was it.
I would have to assume two things. One, that the cabin door would be unlocked and two, that I could get through the door before David Rhodes — or Cindy, depending on her mood — could draw down on me.
I was uncomfortably sweaty and it wasn't from the heat; the temperature was in the low seventies. Mine was the sweat of anxiety. I could get killed, I could alienate Cindy forever. I didn't want to keep on thinking about last night but I couldn't help it. I hadn't tasted such sweet warm breath since the death of my wife, or felt such tender yearning breasts, or dozed and dreamt so comfortably afterward in the darkness. I had this obtrusive crush on her and I felt as awkward and untutored as a fourteen-year-old.
I ran across the clearing between tree and door.
I raised my foot, cop-style, kicked once hard at a spot just below the doorknob.
And charged forward — hoping that the big wooden slab of door would oblige me by popping inward.
The door slapped backward against the wall. A scream. A deeper voice, cursing.
I went through the doorway.
A snapshot: Rhodes in a straight-backed wooden chair at a small wooden table, reaching for his gun. Cindy grabbing a coffee pot to hurl it at me. They froze this way just long enough for me to get inside and impress on them the fact that I held a gun and they didn't.
"You sonofabitch," Rhodes said.
"Just stay where you are."
"Robert . . ." Cindy said.
"I want you out of here," I said.
She looked startled. "What?"
"Out of here. Back in town." I came deeper into the cabin. It appeared as if the Salvation Army had stopped by one day and unloaded some furniture they'd had in the basement for many long and dark years. The frayed plump couch and matching frayed armchair smelled of mildew and rot; the shaggy blue throw rug on the floor stank of animal urine of some kind. In one corner, there was a sink with rusty streaks down its white back, and a hotplate on the counter next to it. Two cans of Campbells tomato soup stood empty.
"What the hell are you talking about, Payne?" he said. "Why take her down with you, Rhodes? You've never done a damned thing for her. Why not let her go back to town so Gibbs won't know she was helping you."
"What I do is my business," Cindy said.
Rhodes said, "He's right."
He surprised me and I sensed he also surprised Cindy. You didn't expect such largesse from a man like Rhodes.
"You go back to town, Cindy," David said.
"Don't list
en to him, David. This isn't any of his business." Rhodes shook his head. He looked older today, and tired, his gaunt handsome face strained with worry. He sat in his straight-backed chair, shoulders slouched, a beaten man. "Go on, Cindy. Now," he said.
She glared at me then looked back at him. "I don't want to go, David. I want to be here with you. I can help you get a car and get out of here."
She went over and sat down on the edge of the day bed, the only place to sleep, except for the floor, in the cabin. If he looked old, she looked young, very young and sad and lost.
She said, quietly, "We didn't finish talking, David. This is the first good talk we've had in years."
He stared at her a long time. "You heard me, Cindy. I want you to go."
"You sonofabitch," she said to me. "You had no right to come here and do this to us."
I wasn't sure what to feel. Things had been so simple when I'd been outside the cabin. Rhodes was a bad guy and Cindy his naive victim and I her knight in slightly tarnished armor. I would rescue the damsel. But things hadn't worked out quite the way I'd hoped.
Now I was an intruder, and a callous one, and I saw that whatever tenderness we'd shared in the lonely darkness last night had been furtive at best. She was in every respect, good and bad, right and wrong, in love with this man. I felt ridiculously betrayed, as if a few moments in the rainy shadows of a motel room had given me some kind of spiritual claim on her.
Now I really was an intruder.
I needed to hate Rhodes pure and clean, and I tried to, too.
I told myself that he had escaped from police custody, that he had never done a damned thing for this wife of his here, and that he was most likely the killer of at least two women.
But that didn't help any.
He was sad and she was sad and now I was sad, and we were all together in this tiny sunless mildew-smelling cabin and it didn't seem to matter if he was a killer or if she was going to lose her job. We were just three people who knew only one thing – that what lay ahead was likely very, very bad.
"Go on, Cindy. Please." He looked old; and now he sounded old, too.
"You don't have to do what he says, David."
He raised his eyes to hers. I sensed he was about to cry. "I've done things, Cindy – things you don't know about things you'd hate me for if you knew."
"Don't say any more, David. Not in front of him."
"I'm not exaggerating, Cindy. If you knew the things I'd done . . ."
"Why don't you go, Cindy?" I said. "Somebody might have spotted you here and told Gibbs, and—"
"You think I give a damn about that? That's your white-man bullshit. Worry about the job, worry about being respectable. They're going to kill him, or haven't you figured that out yet, Payne?"
She went over, knelt down next to him. Her knees cracked in the stillness.
She took his hand, smoothed it across her lovely cheek.
She set his hand down on hers, then, and she said to me, "One or two men in that posse, they'd just love to kill an Indian and that's just what they'll try to do with David."
"You go back to town," I said. "I promise I won't let that happen"
She laughed bitterly. "Do you know how pontifical you sound, Payne? The Great White Father! ‘I promise I won't let that happen.’ This isn't the FBI, Payne. This is a small town with a lot of people who hate Indians and who now have a half-ass excuse to kill one in cold blood."
"I'll call Gibbs. I'll tell him to come out alone."
"It could still happen." She had a child's terror at that moment, an image of death so compelling that she couldn't let go of it.
"He's right," Rhodes said. "I'll be fine." He leaned down and kissed her gently on the mouth.
The intruder, I looked away.
"I've treated you like shit all my life and I'm sorry, Cindy, I really am."
And then he was crying.
She held him and let him cry and after a time I went to the door and opened it and stepped outside so I wouldn't have to intrude so much. I had both their guns stuffed into my belt. They weren't going anywhere.
I gave them ten minutes and sometime during it, Cindy started crying, too, and I had a sense of what wives visiting husbands on Death Row must sound like, that gravity of loneliness and fear and oppressive dread.
And then he was laughing.
It was a sad laugh, maybe even a crazy laugh, and I felt sure it was about some old memory they'd come upon together, like something valuable glistening at the bottom of clear water, and now they were holding it up to the sunlight and turning it around for observation, and enjoying themselves with the beautiful simplicity of children.
When I came back in, she was kneeling next to him and her head was in his lap as if he were her father. His hand looked knuckled and outsize on the slender beauty of her head.
"You go now, Cindy."
"I don't want to leave you."
"Payne's right."
"Payne doesn't give a damn about you. Or me. He wants to keep Chief Gibbs happy."
"Go now. Please."
She glanced up at him and saw that he was not likely to change his mind. Once again, she glowered in my direction, then got slowly to her feet, her khaki uniform wrinkled, her eyes red from crying.
I said, "I'll give you an hour to get back to town and then I'll bring him in."
"You really are a white man, Payne," she sneered. "Only a white man would think I'd care about my career that much."
"He's right," Rhodes said again. "You have to worry about your career."
I held her gun out to her. She couldn't hide her surprise. "What's this for?"
"You come back to town without your gun, it's going to look damned funny."
"What's to stop me from taking it and shooting you?"
"Nothing."
"You're crazy if you don't think I'd like to."
"But I don't think you will."
She nodded to Rhodes. "He'll never get a fair trial. You should let him run."
"I can't let him run. You know that."
"White people make me sick. Did I ever tell you that?"
Obviously she was insinuating something about last night but didn't want to hurt Rhodes' feelings by making it any plainer. She was doing a good job of hurting my feelings, which was her intent.
"You go on now," Rhodes said, sounding more tired than before. "He'll take care of me all right."
Another glare at me.
She walked over and kissed him. It was almost maternal, that kiss. The way she slid her arm around his shoulder, she was a mountain lioness defending her cub from all peril. You'd be crazy to go up against her at this moment unless you absolutely had to.
Then she was done and she stood up and walked over to me.
She spat in my face.
All sorts of feelings went through me. I felt more alone at that moment, I think, than at any time since my wife died.
While Rhodes was looking embarrassed for me, she stalked out of the cabin, khaki legs rasping against each other as she moved.
Only then did I realize what had just happened. When she'd gone over to kiss him, she'd slipped him her service revolver.
He had the .38 Smith & Wesson in his right hand and he was just bringing it up to the level of my chest.
And I was starting to bring my Ruger up, too.
Right here, in this small cabin, we were going to shoot it out.
And then he did something I never would have expected.
Another snapshot: Rhodes turning the gun around, putting the long barrel of it in his open mouth. Me, just now understanding what he was going to do, starting to lunge forward at him, trying to stop him but—
Too late.
He got a good clean barking shot off, one that carried maybe half the back of his head away and affixed it, with blood and hair and shimmering pieces of brain meat, to the rough wall behind him.
She came screaming in, terrified of what she was going to find.
She didn't seem to see
me at all, went right past me, right up to him, and dropped to her knees again, and held him, mother and child, as his eyes rolled back dead white and all force and spirit rushed from his body.
The strange thing was, she didn't cry at all, just rocked him gently back and forth, back and forth, easing his soul across the great dark river, to the other side where sweet warm eternity awaits all us sad and frightened mortals.
PART THREE
Chapter 24
In the fall, a librarian sent me a Xerox copy of a pioneer wife's journal. Not all the pages were there, and not all the handwriting was legible, but I'd been trying to write a piece about pioneers at harvest so this was very helpful.
Among other things, the journal reported how the woman had made mattresses from large quantities of moss stripped from trees; and spun yarn from the hair of wolves and coyotes, material that didn't always work so well; and turned worn canvas from tents and wagon-covers into overcoats; and battled the head colds and flu of the colder months by rubbing the children with warm goose grease and turpentine.
On the last day of the month, when the fiery leaves of the hills looked like the undulating wings of a vast butterfly, I knelt by the simple stone grave-marker of Katherine Louise Payne in the little country cemetery where I'd buried her. I formed soft words that were something like prayers, and shaped sentimental thoughts that were something like songs, and thought of how long I'd loved her — all the way back to First Communion in 1957 — and how long I would love her still, which was forever.
One day a package came from my friend in the Bureau who'd been checking up on murders involving the mutilation of noses.
The note attached read:
Similar Cases:
Cleveland, November 6, 1978
Syracuse, February 3, 1981
Los Angeles, June 4, 1986
Chicago, June 28, 1989
