Call Down the Hawk, page 21
After dinner the lot of them went their separate ways, Irma home, Gerd and Gus to the bar by the pool, Jane to her room. When she phoned Russ, the call went to voicemail. Not surprising. She opened her Kindle to the last chapter of the comedy of manners.
She woke abruptly in the middle of the night, conscious that the phone had been ringing for a while. “H’lo.” Silence. “Who is it?”
“Russ.”
She sat up. “My dear, what happened?”
“Nothing. That is…” He cleared his throat. “Can I come to you?”
Jane shivered. “Yes, yes. Where are you?”
“Leaving Two Falls.”
“I’ll be at the front door.” She struggled into her robe. “Russ?” But he had disconnected. It was three a.m.
She stumbled out to the hallway, scrunched onto a chair near the door, and shivered and waited. Her thoughts bumbled like flies in a bottle. “Nothing” had happened. But it was three in the morning. If Russ was just leaving Two Falls he hadn’t been home yet. Where is the man? It doesn’t take ten minutes to drive here. What am I going to say to him? Jane had no comfortable thoughts to offer. Whatever had happened and to whom, it was not for the better. She thought of Judith’s loss of language and started crying. It isn’t fair, not fair, not fucking fair.
When Russ finally drew up at the door and killed the engine, she blew her nose and stuck her head out the door. He sat still, his head bent to fists clenched on the steering wheel. At last, he stirred. She slid into the passenger seat. He was strapping on the artificial leg. He had been driving without it. He did not look at her.
After a moment she said, “Where’s Alice?”
“With Jack and M-maddie. M-maddie said she’ll do a p-purification.” He gave his head a shake, as if he were clearing his vision in a fog. Maybe he was. He sounded lost. The stammer frightened her.
When he unlatched the door and turned sideways to dismount, Jane slipped out. She ran to the driver’s side in time to keep him from falling. She steadied him, making comforting sounds that were not quite words, and they seemed to work. He straightened and leaned on her for balance, but he didn’t fall. He also said nothing, explained nothing, just walked, accomplishment enough in the circumstances.
She didn’t care. She also didn’t care when Libby cracked the door of the master suite and peered out as the two of them approached Jane’s room. Her stepmother made a hissing noise, and Russ stumbled. Jane took him into her room. He headed straight to the bathroom and shut the door. She could hear him throwing up. That frightened her as much as the stammer had. He was not drunk. There was no smell of booze.
Purification. What did that mean? Russ had mentioned that he was going to ask his aunt to perform the ceremony. He ought to be glad she was willing, not upset about it. Jane waited, silent and sleepy. At last he came out. He looked green.
“I’m sorry. Lousy day. Hits me in the stomach every time. That stepmother of yours…”
“She’s a snake. Is Judith…”
“She’s not all right, but she’s not worse. It’s the VA. They’re moving her to a nursing home tomorrow.”
“Labor Day?”
“Yeah. For occupational therapy.” He made quotation marks with his fingers. “So-called. They’ll continue the speech therapy while she’s in the skilled care facility but not afterwards.”
“They’re giving up?”
“Sounds like it. We had a long session with Jack and Maddie, trying to decide what to do.”
“I’ll say it was long.” Jane glanced at her watch.
“I shouldn’t have—”
“Cut it out,” she said mildly. “I’m glad to see you any time, Russ, and I think I know why you called me now.”
“Why?”
She drew a breath. “Because you don’t want to be alone in that house.” He started to say something about Alice staying in Two Falls again, but Jane touched his lips with her forefinger. “Shall I take your leg off?”
“You can’t—”
“Yes, I can. You need to rest now if you have to work in the morning.” She pulled his pant leg up and unstrapped the prosthesis with deft fingers. “Off with the clothes. Explanations later.”
He slid out of his shirt and pants and fell asleep in his boxers. Jane inched in beside him. She didn’t think she’d be able to sleep. It was nearly four, but she had hardly turned her bedside light off when she conked out, too.
* * *
A moist low-pressure front moved in. By midmorning it was raining, not hard but steadily.
Rob and Meg had gone to bed early. Meg had a Southern California reaction to rain. She wanted to be cuddled and consoled when she heard the musical patter on the windows. Rob was prepared to oblige. Cuddling led to pleasant consequences, including, ultimately, very deep sleep.
They slept late on Labor Day—late for them. The phone rang at seven—Beth McCormick with news of Judith Hough’s sad situation. Madeline had already called the sheriff. Meg woke. While she listened to what Beth said to Rob, she began to cry. As he patted her and murmured vague kindnesses, Rob suppressed irritation. Women were so facile. Meg barely knew who Judith was. She ought to be consoling him. He didn’t want to cry exactly, but sticking his fist through the wall would be an option.
As soon as he decently could, he handed the phone to Meg, and let Beth and Meg cry at each other. He took a shower. When he finally emerged, having run out the hot water, Meg had gone downstairs. He heard her grinding coffee beans. He pulled on his gi and waited, head down, centering. No, he would not punch the wall.
He headed to the courthouse annex at eight. A part of him grieved for Judith. The cop part blazed with fury. She would have been his best witness, but she had no language. Did that just mean she had trouble with English or that she was like an infant, her speech patterns blank, waiting to be written on? He felt a stir of hope. If she could understand what he said and make some kind of yes or no signal, he might still have his witness. All he had to do was figure out the right questions.
He spent a couple of hours reviewing what he knew about Judith, trying to generate questions about the August killing—she had clearly considered the burial an invasion of her territory. He wasn’t very successful in coming up with good questions. He needed to know if she had seen the SUV, of course, and whether she’d been able to see who had driven it down into the orchard.
Shortly before noon, Russell Hough called him on the office extension. Rob asked after Judith. Hough made polite generalizations—his sister was intermittently conscious, her speech unintelligible. That was what Rob had gathered from Beth’s call.
“I’m sorry she can’t tell us what she saw.” Rob sighed. “But that’s less important than her general improvement. I’m glad she recognized you and Alice. Surely it’s only a matter of time before she’s talking again.”
“I suspect her memory of that evening—when she sh-shot herself—is g-gone.” Hough broke off and went on with painful clarity, “That’s not why I called. It’s raining. The fire marshal has lifted the burning ban. Can I burn the slash in the orchard? I had the discarded limbs chipped, so there’s not much left to burn.”
Rob’s impulse was to say no.
“I’d like to clear everything away, harrow the orchard, and plant a cover crop before Maddie performs the ceremony.”
“I thought that would take place in the house—”
“Some of it will, but the land needs cleansing, too.”
That made sense, even though August had not been killed where he was found. Rob reviewed the forensic team’s examination of the burial site. They had gone over that part of the orchard teaspoonful by teaspoonful.
“Will your neighbors, er, Jane August, object to the smoke?” There were no other close neighbors.
“No. The forecast calls for wind from the southwest the next few days—should blow most of the smoke past the August house.”
“What about the highway?”
Hough didn’t think the smoke would cause problems for drivers. Rob wasn’t so sure, but he agreed to allow burning if the fire marshal didn’t object. They talked for a while about the purification ceremony. It would attract young tribal members, Judith’s contemporaries, as well as Bill’s. She had been well-liked before her military experiences turned her in on herself, and of course the family was related to the chief by marriage.
“You can burn your slash tomorrow, but not until the morning traffic rush is over,” Rob said when Russ had agreed to limit the number of people who would be attending the purification. As for the slash-burning, traffic would be heavy the day after a holiday. “We’ll have to close the highway for the cleansing ritual if not for the burning, so let me know as soon as you can what Madeline decides about that. I’ll see to it that traffic on Fourteen is diverted at Two Falls the day of the ceremony.” To Miller Road, a nice irony. Perhaps Madeline could be persuaded to bless the blackberry thicket. Rob suppressed the thought unspoken. Purification was not a joke.
* * *
“It’s not a joke, no. What makes you say that?” Russ set his water glass down. Slow days had passed. He was fasting in anticipation of the purification ceremony the next morning, Sunday, so he hadn’t come to dinner and would not stay the night either. Alas, fasting every which way.
Saturday evening. It had finally stopped raining. They were out on the deck, all of them, Gerd and Gus working at the scotch and Jane and Libby sipping wine. Undersheriff Neill had approved of Sunday for the ritual because closing the highway then would cause the least inconvenience to passersby.
“I see a certain amount of comedy in drums and dancing.” Libby’s eyes roamed. She really didn’t like to look at Russ. He was wearing shorts. Her mouth curled with distaste.
Russ didn’t comment. He kept his face bland and took another judicious sip of water.
“Why don’t you go out and play in the mud, Libby?” Jane drew a huge breath. She had about reached her limit with her stepmother. Besides her appalling rudeness, Libby’s very presence offended. She had not warned Irma she would show up for dinner, and that had put Irma in a snit.
“I asked an honest question.” Libby stirred her wine with her little finger and licked at the residue.
Disgusting, Jane fumed, silent.
“We put up with days of clammy smoke from the farm.” Libby gave an ostentatious sniff. “Now we’re expected to tolerate hours of primitive caterwauling. I don’t mind, I guess. If you think your farm needs ‘purifying,’ it probably does. I just find it hard to accept that a grown man with a college degree can believe in a bunch of mumbo-jumbo. Purification?” She sniffed again. Maybe she was coming down with a cold.
Gerd said, “People everywhere have customs outsiders find strange. In Spain, the running of the bulls, for instance. Or processions carrying statues of the saints through the streets.”
Libby snorted. “That’s just Catholics.”
Russ said mildly, “My mother’s a Catholic.”
Oops. Jane kept her eyes on Libby. She had to wonder why Stepmama had chosen to grace them with her presence.
“Well?” Libby took another sip.
Russ wiggled his prosthesis and admired his gleaming ankle. “Well, what?”
“You heard my question.”
“Ah, I thought it was a speech.” He straightened and looked at her directly. “People will believe anything. If I were malicious I might point out that some people believe Christopher Columbus discovered America.”
Libby sneered, but she looked away.
“Speaking as a biologist, I find Christianity odd. Think about the Noah story, for instance. The main god decides to erase the world in a huge flood, but there is one man the god warns. Noah. A faithful man and a clever shipwright. Up in the scrub-covered mountains of Asia Minor, he whips a big boat together to the god’s specifications. It doesn’t take Noah more than a couple of months to build his ark out of fresh-hewn planks, though he works with stone tools and has nobody to help him but some rather dim sons. He fills the ark with mated pairs of all the animals on earth. That probably takes another month. Then the rains come and drown everyone and everything not on the ark. The salvaged animals on Noah’s big boat refrain from eating each other or breeding recklessly or dividing themselves like amoebas. After forty days and nights the rain stops and there’s a rainbow. The god promises not to drown the world twice. Next time he says he’ll incinerate everything.”
“ ‘The fire next time,’ ” Jane said. Didn’t it rain.
Russ’s mouth quirked in a grin. “A dove is sent out and comes back with, what is it, a leaf in its beak? Noah sends it out again and when it doesn’t return, he ties the bobbing boat to a handy pier. The ark sinks into the mud, the animals file out two by two, and Noah instructs them to repopulate the earth. They go forth and multiply on command. Except for one pair of snakes.” He looked from Libby to Gus to Gerd and then to Jane.
Jane groaned.
Gerd scowled. “What snakes?”
“Unlike the boa constrictors and cobras on board,” Russ said placidly, “those two snakes can’t multiply. They’re adders.”
Gus snorted. After a puzzled moment, light broke across Gerd’s face. He giggled and covered his mouth with his napkin. Jane thought “adder” was probably not a pun in German.
“That joke is at least as old as Genesis,” she said. “And I think the multiplication directive comes from God not Noah.”
“That may be so, but you can see why I have trouble believing such a tall tale. And adders can multiply, if they use logs.”
Logarithms. Jane covered her laugh with a cough.
Libby shot to her feet, glaring.
Gus sputtered.
“After the flood there weren’t any logs around,” Russ said sadly. “Not on top of Mount Ararat. Noah must have used all of them to build the ark.” Libby stalked from the room. Russ watched her out of sight. He was not smiling.
When the garage door slammed, Jane cocked her head. She listened as Libby’s Jeep roared away. “You can stop now.”
Gus looked anxious. “You shouldn’t provoke Libby, not even joking. She has a real bad temper.”
“I believe it. I also believe in Darwin.” Russ rose. “If you’ll excuse me, I ought to go forth and help Ma tidy the house. She’s convinced everyone will diss her housekeeping tomorrow.” He smiled at Jane.
She smiled back and saw him to the door. He said he’d take her out to dinner again after all the fuss was over.
She gave him a juicy kiss. She would have volunteered to help with the housekeeping, but she thought mother and son had things to discuss. The move seemed to have set Judith back. At least the VA had chosen a nursing home on the Washington side—near Two Falls.
It was a pity there were so few alternatives for Russ’s sister. Jane would have offered to pay for anything up to and including twenty-four-hour nursing, but she knew Russ and his mother would find the offer embarrassing and even intimidating. She was beginning to see how having a lot of money could lead to bullying. It certainly intimidated her. Besides, she didn’t have the money, not yet.
14.
The drumming started after dawn on the south side of Highway 14. Russ and his uncles and cousins had built a sweat lodge on the Columbia. The purification ceremony would move across to the farmhouse when he was ready to bring the men to the chief and the other dancing women. Jane would hear that when it happened, when the drum took up the burden of the chant on the site of her father’s burial.
Jane had slept later than usual with the faint drumbeat pulsing through dreams of Russell, Alice, Judith awake and accusing; Tom Dahl, Gerd, and the cave; Libby, Gus, and her father’s ghostly killer. She drifted awhile between sleeping and waking, then woke again, dry-mouthed, as the drum, much closer, repeated the established rhythm, cold and clear. It moved to a faster beat.
Russell had invited her to attend the ceremony if she wanted to, but she knew the police had restricted the number of participants, so she’d asked if she could just witness the cleansing of her father’s burial site. She could see the spot pretty well from the pool deck and didn’t want to intrude. Russ seemed content with that.
He’d thought his aunt would bless the burial site before she purified the house. Jane set the coffee brewing, then showered and dressed hastily. Crumbs on the kitchen counter, juice glass and plate in the sink, suggested that someone had come and gone—Gerd probably. She knew he meant to join the dancing men, but Sunday or no, he would check in at the cave first. No one was yet visible below. The garage blocked the area in front of the farmhouse from view. The tension in her shoulders relaxed, and she went back in for a much needed jolt of coffee. To her utter surprise, her brother appeared as she reentered the kitchen.
Gus took a cup from the pot and straggled out to the deck without saying anything. Jane followed. She brought the Thermos with her.
When she thought he had drunk enough coffee to reach the state of articulate speech, she said, “I didn’t hear Libby come back last night. Did you?”
He grunted.
“What?”
“No. Wasn’t listening for her.”
Jane sighed and set her cup down. She went to the rail. The drum—drums, really, there were three—kept up a brisk rhythm. She thought she heard distant chanting in chorus.
“She’s right.”
Jane turned, blank. “Who?”
“Libby,” he said. “The noise is irritating. I wish they’d quit. My head’s throbbing.”
“Why is that not a surprise?”
“What’s it to you?” he snarled.
“You don’t really want to know.”
He sulked, silent. If she supplied whiskey, she was enabling his hangover. She ought to stop doing that. Her head began to ache.
“I’m your sister,” she said, “not your mother. I’m not about to enforce Prohibition. I wish you’d moderate your intake, though. I need help.”
“You need help? What about me?”
“When the estate is settled, I’m thinking of splitting Dad’s money. But you’re not giving me much reason to want to. I need help,” she repeated, “with Libby. I want her to leave.”
