Down Dog Diary

by Sherry Roberts

  Marianna tossed her waist-length brown hair back and decided today she would like me. “Thanks. Yes, it is.” She sat close to Zeke. A silver necklace sparkled at her neck, Zeke’s work; the design was delicate yet strong with a mix of turquoise and amber stones. The slender French woman wore pregnancy like a beach ball under her lavender T-shirt.

  I motioned to her tummy, “Your first?”

  She gave me a proud smile. “Third. We have two girls, ages seven and five. Already they are taking to the bread. But I do not think Isabel, the oldest, will have the patience.”

  “She prefers the finer things in life,” Zeke teased his wife.

  “You lure her with your silver and gemstones,” Marianna said, elbowing him.

  I explained to Jorn, “Everyone at Whispering Spirit is an artist. Marianna makes breads and is known for her French pastries. Zeke is a silversmith; he made Tum’s cuff.”

  Jorn’s eyes went to the bracelet on my arm.

  “And those earrings of yours,” Zeke smiled.

  I felt Jorn shift his attention from the bracelet to my ears.

  “We support the community with our art—weaving, sewing, gardening, painting— usually taking our goods to the marketplace in Taos,” Zeke explained. He turned to me. “Larry’s been nagging us to sell our products online, too. Our honeys and jams, some of our textiles, my silverwork. I’m not sure I want to mess with all the order taking and shipping stuff. We do just fine at the marketplace.”

  “A Whispering Spirit Farm website.” I pondered the implications. “Larry just wants an excuse to program something new.”

  Zeke and I shared a smile. He was three years older than I, but we’d gravitated to each other from the beginning. When I looked at him, I saw the boy who made kites for me out of grocery bags, who carried me home the day I twisted my ankle, who taught me how to pick a lock. Zeke’s dad had gone to prison because he practiced that “art” a little too much.

  At one time, when we were kids and inseparable, both Zeke and I had thought we would live here together for the rest of our lives. Now, I saw that Zeke was happy, content with his life on this mountain, in this community. He had been meant to stay at Whispering Spirit Farm, and I had been meant to go. Still, I wouldn’t be human if I didn’t feel a twinge of envy that Marianna was living the life I had assumed would one day be mine.

  Jorn cleared his throat and leaned closer to me. I broke eye contact with Zeke and realized both Jorn and Marianna were frowning at us.

  Taking a sharp turn off memory lane, I said, “We were just at Tum’s place.”

  “I figured you would come eventually to pay your respects.” Zeke took a drink of lemonade and placed the glass gently on the table.

  “I also wanted to make sure everyone here was all right.”

  Zeke stilled. Marianna’s hand went protectively to her belly.

  Into the silence, Jorn said, “Nico told us you’ve had some visitors asking questions about Tum.”

  Marianna and Zeke exchanged glances.

  “Two men?” I asked.

  “Imbéciles,” Marianna said. “They filled the mountain with bad energy.”

  “Describe them,” I said.

  Zeke reached for Marianna’s hand. “Big but not as big as Nico. Muscular. Blond military cuts. Fancy clothes. Looked like twins. One had a tattoo on his hand.”

  “You mean identical twins? Brothers?” Jorn asked.

  Zeke nodded. “They drove a new Range Rover. And, Maya, they were carrying.”

  I straightened. To bring a weapon on Whispering Spirit land was verboten. The ban was posted in numerous places. The community leaders had turned Tum away twice before he came back unarmed and ready to join us in peace.

  “What did they want?” Jorn asked.

  Zeke looked from Jorn to me. “They wanted to know if Tum had left anything here. I told them no. They didn’t believe me.”

  I sensed a new energy in the room, the coldness of fear. Tum, what have we brought down on our friends? “Was anyone hurt?” I whispered.

  “They hit my Zeke,” Marianna said, her French accent slipping deeper into her voice with her anger. “I got my rolling pin.” That I could believe. Marianna never did quite buy in to Whispering Spirit’s philosophy of ahimsa.

  “I’m sorry,” I said to both of them, glancing out the window at the prayer flags fluttering in the mountain breeze. Three strings of colorful flags—some new, some tattered from the elements—stretched like long fingers from a pole in the yard to the roof of the lodge. Traditionally, such flags contain prayers for long life and good fortune. It is a common misconception that these are prayers to the gods. Tibetans believe the prayers are blown by the wind to spread good will to all and, thus, a benefit to all the world. The prayer flags are meant to promote strength and wisdom, compassion and peace. I saw that the flag I’d added to the string just before I left was still there. It was ragged and faded. I wanted to climb up the pole and rip it down. I didn’t deserve a prayer flag. I had not brought peace to my friends. I had lured violence here.

  I had brought Tum’s killers to Whispering Spirit.

  “So Marianna fought them off?” I teased, trying to lighten the mood.

  Zeke grinned, lifted Marianna’s hand to his lips. “She is a firestorm, but I am stronger than I look.” I glanced from the face that still appeared boyish at the age of thirty-eight to the concrete muscles in his arms, strength won from years of taming metal.

  “And the disturbance drew others,” he said, his tone serious again. “We stood together.”

  “What happened?” I asked, but somehow I knew the answer by the set of Marianna’s mouth.

  “They took the kitchen apart,” Marianna nearly spat the words at me. “Slit open the sacks of flour and rice. They searched our homes.”

  “They had guns. How did you defend yourselves?” Jorn asked.

  Zeke gave Jorn a sage look. “The Whispering Spirit way.”

  Jorn glanced at me, puzzled.

  “With nonviolence,” I explained.

  Jorn clearly thought this was a nutty response to an armed enemy. “But the women and the children?”

  Zeke explained, “We formed a circle around the weak, a shield of our bodies, and let the men search.”

  I could imagine the people of Whispering Spirit—the women and the men—forming a line of peaceful resistance, protecting the old and the children with their bodies. It was the Whispering Spirit way. This was a community that did more than break bread together and encourage everyone to recycle. It maintained a code of peaceful coexistence and nonviolence. But if Zeke happened to clasp one of his hammers in a confident manner, if Marianna brandished her rolling pin, or some of the others armed themselves with garden tools and sharp axes, the intruders would have no way of knowing that it was all for show, that few if any would fight back.

  One of the reasons I no longer fit in here.

  “They tore apart the lodge, the barn, our homes,” Zeke said, “and then they found The Bank.”

  “The Bank?” Jorn asked. “You have a bank?”

  ZEKE AND MARIANNA LED the way behind the lodge to a small building not much bigger than a typical garden shed. As we crossed the grass to the shed, Zeke explained to Jorn, “No one locks their doors in Whispering Spirit. In fact, there’s only one place kept locked here: The Bank.”

  “It was Larry’s idea. The Bank was really an excuse to experiment with security.” I shrugged. “But people liked it.”

  “The Bank is filled with shoeboxes,” Zeke said. “Anyone can open an account, even the kids. What you put in your shoebox is your business. Gold coins. Important papers. Pretty rocks. We have only one rule: no live things deposited in The Bank.”

  We reached The Bank, which had seemed so much bigger in my memory. I said, “Here’s where Zeke taught me how to pick a lock.”

&
nbsp; “Pick a lock?” Jorn frowned.

  I nodded. “It was the only place we could practice.”

  “We hadn’t counted on Larry also installing an alarm system,” Zeke said with a grin.

  I laughed. “The night we broke in we must have woken people three mountains over. It was so loud.”

  Marianna huffed. “They scared everyone. We thought we were being raided. Papa flushed his entire stash. For nothing.”

  Zeke and I exchanged grins.

  Suddenly, memories were heavy around us, and we grew silent.

  I lifted the cheap combination lock. “Looks new.”

  Zeke nodded, “They destroyed the other one.”

  “Did the alarm go off when they broke in?” Jorn asked.

  Zeke and Marianna looked embarrassed. “It was unplugged,” Zeke admitted. “It has a short in it or something. It goes off at all times of the day and night.”

  I made a mental note to tell Larry to come here and fix it.

  “May I?” I asked, motioning to the lock.

  “Be my guest,” Zeke smiled. “Let’s see what you remember.” He pulled a thin strip of metal from his pocket and handed it to me. Zeke always kept this shim on him; it had been his father’s. I knelt by the combination lock; took a deep, cleansing breath; and gently inserted the shim along the shackle of the lock. I twisted the shim and pushed down at the same time. That did it. I pulled on the U-shaped bar of the lock, and it popped open.

  I smiled and stepped into The Bank.

  The energy swirling in this small space struck the grin from my face. I gasped and fell back a step.

  “Maya?” Jorn and Zeke said.

  I could sense them here, the same dark energies that had been at Tum’s. I could sense their anger and found it feeding my own.

  The Bank was a mess. Boxes had been pulled from shelves, flung to the floor, stepped on, ground to pieces. I crouched to examine the shards of a porcelain face. The broken doll stared at me with one blue eye. Someone’s collection of bottle caps was strewn across the floor. I nearly stepped on one as I stood up. Carefully, I moved through the destruction: shattered glass from old picture frames; ripped books; a baby’s white christening gown, now dirty and torn.

  “It’s all still fresh,” I heard Zeke say behind me. “I’m sure eventually people will come back and straighten their things; put everything right.”

  I understood. I took a breath and turned. “Tum was murdered, Zeke. Shot in the head. They wanted the Down Dog Diary. That’s what they were looking for here.”

  Zeke took a step back. “The diary?”

  “Tum left it to me.”

  Zeke’s eyes widened. “Are those men coming after you next?”

  I shook my head. “Someone stole it from me. But you can bet I’m getting it back.”

  As I passed him, Zeke laid a hand on my arm. In a quiet voice, he said, “Don’t go getting into trouble, Maya.”

  I glanced down at his silver-dusted arm, so strong, so familiar. I remember that arm, the veins, the curve of the muscles, reaching out to me, catching me. I remember the warmth of his hand in my hand, on my shoulder, on my cheek. I remembered these things and realized how easy it is to mistake protection for love.

  I walked out of The Bank. Outside stood Marianna, hands protectively folded around her belly. She had refused to enter The Bank. I stopped in front of her.

  “Since the men came, our little one can’t sleep in her own bed, Maya,” Marianna said in a low, fierce voice as Zeke and Jorn locked up The Bank. “You will find them?”

  Understanding passed between us.

  “I promise.”

  IT WAS NEARLY DINNERTIME by the time we picked up Jorn’s car and he followed me back to Santa Fe. We met up with Nico at his favorite restaurant; polished off more tacos, burritos, and beers than any three humans should have; and then regrouped at his townhouse.

  Nico looked like someone who found civilization silly with its barbers and speed limits. But this wild man lived like a well-paid lawyer in an upscale townhouse with sturdy furniture, a kitchen with top-of-the-line gadgets, and a luxurious bath/spa that made me want to plead with him to adopt me. Fresh from a day in court, his suit jacket was unbuttoned, his hair was falling out of his ponytail, and his beard was in need of a trim. The diamond in his left ear twinkled. He was maybe ten years younger than Tum and forty pounds heavier. Where Tum had been your run-of-the-mill bear, Nico was a grizzly. When he propped his boots up on the coffee table, the table groaned.

  We were all drinking Coronas: Jorn to numb the pain in his shoulder and hip, me to dull the sense of failure that had descended upon me since leaving Whispering Spirit, and Nico because, well, that was what Nico did. He tipped another Corona down his throat, emptying half of it in one gulp, and said, “It’s a damn shame what those guys did at Whispering Spirit. Those are good people.”

  Hours ago, Zeke had sent me on my way, but not before pulling me into another monster hug and whispering in my ear, “This is not your fault, Maya Bird. Peace.”

  But it was my fault. Those were my people. No matter that I had left, no matter how much I couldn’t stay, they were mine. Now, sitting next to Nico, swallowed by his sofa, I was tired and couldn’t see how the pieces would ever fit together.

  “We’re two steps behind them,” I said. “How are we going to catch these guys before more people get hurt?”

  Nico patted my shoulder with his big paw, drunken comfort that nearly broke my collarbone. He was thinking of Whispering Spirit and Tum and getting rather maudlin after two buckets full of Coronas. “I was always the angry one, the one ready for action,” he said. “I used to make Tum look like the Dalai Lama, and that was before his shaman days. I wouldn’t have lasted a minute at Whispering Spirit. But I watched Tum change, stick it out.”

  “It wasn’t easy for him, Nico,” I said.

  “Leaving the gang life never is. Tum used to tell me that the answers come when we need them. Don’t push. Don’t grind. Don’t bulldoze.”

  “But you like bulldozing,” I said.

  He gave me a grin and a shrug.

  I passed him another Corona from the bucket by the sofa.

  Jorn had been so quiet I thought he’d fallen asleep. But he was reading messages on his phone. Suddenly, he sat up alert, began rummaging through his backpack, and pulled out his laptop. It took him several tries to swipe his finger over the security scanner, but finally, he was in and loading something.

  “A source here in Santa Fe has been following a lead for me. He’s just gotten his hands on some video footage.”

  “What kind of footage?”

  “The attack on Nico,” Jorn said.

  Nico shook his head. “I told you, man, I don’t have security cams in the alley by my office.”

  With some difficulty, Jorn lifted himself from the big, overstuffed chair across the room. Everything in this house was Nico size. He knelt by the coffee table and positioned the laptop on the table in front of the gigantic sofa. He tapped on the keyboard.

  “It occurred to me that even though you don’t have security cameras behind your office, Nico, someone else might have. This is the security footage the day you were attacked. It’s shot from the jewelry store across the street. The camera covers the front of the store and right down your alley to your side door.”

  Nico dropped his feet from the table and leaned forward. “I’ll be damned.” He fished in his pocket and pulled out a pair of wire-frame glasses. The glasses looked dainty in his large scarred hands. He stretched them over his ears and studied the video.

  We couldn’t see the men’s faces distinctly, just bodies thrashing around. However, when the men left the alley, they walked straight toward the camera.

  I gasped.

  “Yup, that’s the bastards,” Nico said.

  Jorn was watching me. “May
a, what’s wrong?”

  “I’ve seen one of these men before. In Minneapolis. Arguing with Sasha.”

  Chapter 21

  Energy Central

  JORN AND I FLEW home together, dragging our adrenaline- and Corona-flattened bodies aboard the plane. I tried to do the crossword in the New York Times Jorn bought, but he kept giving me the answers. Finally, I turned it over to him and fell asleep. When I awoke, my head was on Jorn’s shoulder. I quickly sat up and pushed my hair out of my face.

  “You drool,” Jorn said

  I stopped. “I do not.”

  “Like a Great Dane.” I spotted a teasing grin as he turned away. In the pocket of the seat in front of us was the crossword puzzle—completed, in ink.

  Evie picked us up in Minneapolis wearing paint-splattered jeans and a man’s oversize white shirt. I apologized for dragging her from her studio.

  “No worries,” she smiled.

  I told her about the thugs at Whispering Spirit. “Your father won’t like that,” she said. “But you’re sure everyone is safe now?”

  I thought of Marianna’s children. They were safe but . . .

  We showed Evie the photo from the jewelry store video of the men leaving the alley behind Nico’s office. “If you see these guys around Gabriel’s Garden, tell me right away, okay?” I was worried about my parents and Heart’s family.

  “Relax, Maya,” Evie said. “You don’t have to come running to the rescue. We can take care of ourselves.”

  I was sitting in the front passenger seat of Evie’s hybrid and, unlike when riding with Heart, didn’t have to reach for the handhold above the window once. Road rage didn’t exist in Evie’s universe, and she always found the perfect parking space. Gliding seamlessly between two semis and back into her lane, Evie said, “Do you think Sasha is the one who tried to buy the diary?”

  It was certainly possible.

  “I’m going to talk to Sasha,” I said.

  Evie gave me one of those looks I remembered so well from childhood. “Play nice, Maya.”