The Almanac of the Dead: A Novel Page 9

  Sterling nods, but now he is looking at the large old house on Main Street. It appears to be empty. There is a real estate company sign in front of it.

  “Geronimo’s house is for sale,” Seese says, smiling.

  “Actually, it is just the place they took him to sign the papers declaring he and his warriors had surrendered.” Sterling follows Seese up the steps to the long territorial-style porch. They press their faces against the windows. The big room is lined with glass cases made of oak. Whatever antiques were once displayed are gone except for the remains of a skull collection. Seese identifies dog and wolf skulls. Sterling sees a pronghorn-antelope skull and that of a horse. Otherwise the big room and the smaller rooms off it are empty.

  “I wonder what Geronimo thought,” Seese says, sitting down on the front steps staring straight ahead at the pickup loaded with all the purchases.

  “He thought he and his men would be allowed to go back to the White Mountains and live in peace.”

  “You mean he had to take their word for what he was signing?”

  “Well, look. The U.S. army had kept five thousand troops in southern Arizona and southern New Mexico in the 1880s and ’90s trying to catch him. They never did catch him. The only way they could do it was by tricking him. They sent word General Miles just wanted to talk to him. And General Crook had promised Geronimo the Apaches could go home to live in peace. But the territorial politicians and the Indian agents didn’t like Crook. General Crook was on his way out when he met with Geronimo. None of the promises were ever kept.”

  Seese got up suddenly. “I don’t want to be anywhere near this place.” She drove slowly through the “historic district’s” old mansions.

  “They made money off the Indian wars, did you know?”

  Seese felt a sinking sensation in her chest. She shook her head. “I even went to college for a while and I don’t know the things you do.”

  Sterling smiled modestly. “I only happened to learn it from this magazine article. There was money to be made by getting the government contracts to feed all those soldiers. Somebody had to sell them horses to ride.”

  “Oh,” Seese said, “I get the picture.”

  “I don’t know if this was ever proven, but there was something here called the Indian Ring,” Sterling continued. “Tucson merchants who did not want to see the Apache wars end. So they paid off a whiskey peddler. They sent the whiskey peddler to get Geronimo and his men drunk. The peddler showed Geronimo newspaper headlines from Washington, D.C., and warned Geronimo if he or his men ‘came in,’ they’d all be hanged. The newspaper headlines were quotes from U.S. congressmen who wanted Geronimo dead. The Indian Ring in Tucson kept the Apache wars going for years that way.”

  “I like that!” Seese said fiercely. “I really like that! All these fancy houses, all these Tucson family fortunes made off war—the way all money is made!” Her sudden shift in mood made Sterling uneasy. Before he could reassure her that things had not ended as badly as they might have for Geronimo and his people, Seese said, “Now I know what you meant a little while ago. About judges and courts.” Sometimes her anger frightened her; it was leftover anger that surfaced while Sterling was talking about the Apaches. She had to get rid of the feeling that Monte had been lost because of anything she had done. The old Tucson mansions along Main Street were the best proof that murderers of innocent Apache women and children had prospered. In only one generation government embezzlers, bootleggers, pimps, and murderers had become Tucson’s “fine old families.”

  They parked in an alley not far from Geronimo’s house and Dillinger’s stucco bungalow. Lecha had arranged everything. All Seese had to do was follow the instructions at the appointed time and place. At three o’clock exactly, the tall redwood gate swung open to the alley. Seese got out of the truck holding the purse close to her body.

  After she stepped inside, the gate closed again without Sterling ever seeing anyone. Somehow her reaction to the mansions and rich people in Tucson had made Sterling feel uneasy. He had misjudged Tucson. He had never learned much about Barstow, but as far as he knew, Barstow had no mansions, old or new. Winslow certainly had no mansions. So this might be the first time Sterling had ever lived anywhere near a place founded mostly by criminals.

  Sterling rolled up the window partway although it was very hot. He was glad that he had spent all those years keeping up with each issue of the Police Gazette and the True Detective. He seemed to recall there had been something about the Mafia in one of the more recent issues, something about the Mafia in the Southwest. Sterling was a little ashamed he had skipped over that article. But he had never found articles on the Mafia nearly as interesting as articles about Chicago trunk murders or the white-slave trade conducted in Wyoming boomtowns. Sterling was beginning to like the fact that the old ranch house was high in the foothills. He thought the fences and gates and even the guard dogs might be a wise precaution around people who had got rich off the suffering of Geronimo and his people.

  BUSINESS WITH CALABAZAS

  LECHA SPOKE FONDLY of the “old man,” and she had used sweet tones when she talked to him on the phone. Seese saw he wasn’t that old. He might not have been as old as Lecha. Lecha had gone out of her way to explain she and “the old viejo” had never “been involved.” Lecha had acquired all the correct expressions for sex on the regional TV talk show circuit.

  Seese had smiled and politely reminded Lecha that she of all people did not have to worry about those sorts of things. Instead of smiling back, Lecha had suddenly launched into a harangue about a dying woman. “A dying woman,” she lectured, “must above all put her reputation in order. Before all other business affairs, a woman’s reputation must come first!” Lecha saw Seese was frightened. She had not meant anything by it, so Lecha lowered her voice. “Poor thing! You have to hear all of this from me. But if you only knew all the lies that have been told against me!” Lecha had lowered her voice more. “Even in my own family.” Then she abruptly changed the subject to her “medicine.” Her last warning had been “old man” Calabazas liked to have compliments on his cactus and his burros.

  Calabazas was not any taller than Seese. She knew she had Geronimo on the brain because the face Seese saw resembled Geronimo’s, although Seese realized Calabazas was a Mexican Indian, not an Apache. She felt as if Calabazas’s eyes had her pinned by the shoulders. She could not return his glance, so she looked around the yard.

  The cactus garden was intricately planned. Smooth, light-orange rock bordered a vast collection of little pincushion cactus covered with purple-pink blossoms. Other cactus plants were bordered with small white stones. The largest and most formidable varieties of cactus had been planted next to the walls of the house. Snaky night-blooming cactus plants climbed around all the windows, and it occurred to Seese that Calabazas’s cactus also created an elaborate barricade around the house. He startled her when he said, “Yes, you would find it rough going.” Seese wanted to deny he had read her thoughts, but instead said how beautiful the garden was. He seemed not to hear her and disappeared through a door in an adobe wall. He left her standing there a long time. Seese could see the corrals and the burros shaded by big cottonwoods. John Dillinger might have done better if he had rented this place. It was too bad Sterling couldn’t see this. He could have gotten ideas for his landscaping around the ranch house. The old man returned with a small brown paper sack with the top twisted rather than folded shut. He handed it to her and opened the gate without saying anything. Just then a United Parcel delivery truck pulled up behind the pickup in the alley. Calabazas’s expression did not change, but Seese sensed he was uneasy. She knew Calabazas didn’t want her or Sterling to see what the parcel service truck had come to pick up. Seese started the pickup engine quickly, but then pretended to have trouble getting it into gear. As they drove down the alley, Seese watched in the side mirror; the deliveryman was loading boxes. Calabazas’s shipments. In the truck mirror, Seese saw Calabazas’s sharp eyes on hers. She figu
red she would hear about it from Lecha when she got home. “What was that, I wonder,” Sterling had said when they turned onto the freeway access road. He had the paper sack on his lap, holding it carefully so that the twist did not come undone and cause any suspicion of tampering. Sterling was learning quickly that Ferro and Paulie and the old boss woman watched closely for any signs of tampering. Sterling figured the old twin sister would do just the same.

  IN THE BACKSEAT OF A CHRYSLER

  “CALABAZAS DIDN’T LIKE either one of you,” Lecha said, laughing. “He got right on the phone to complain to me!” Seese and Sterling had just carried the blue peacock chair into her bedroom. Lecha was sitting up in her bed with the paper bag in her lap. Sterling hurried out of the bedroom. Bedrooms of women not related to him had always thrown him into a panic. He had always preferred motel rooms or the backseat of a big car. While he had been living in Winslow at the railroad section-gang compound, an amazing thing had happened. A white woman passing through Winslow on Route 66 had had car trouble. The only mechanic in Winslow told the woman it would cost hundreds of dollars because the car was one of those huge ’59 Chrysler Imperials. Later, the mechanic told how he had advised her to sell it for scrap and to catch the Greyhound to California, which was where she had been headed. But the woman would not hear of it. The mechanic was nervous about a down payment for all the parts he’d have to order from Phoenix or Los Angeles. So she had opened up the huge trunk of the black Imperial and had started unloading suitcases. The mechanic said later he thought she might have been a little crazy or something. They all knew the mechanic because the rail-lifter machine they used for laying new track had never worked right, and one of them, usually Sterling or one of the Mexicans, had to take the mechanic a message from the foreman to come fix it. So they knew the mechanic, they knew he wasn’t exaggerating or lying later on when he told them what had been inside those suitcases: mink coats, fox stoles, and leather jackets. And shoes—every color and kind of high-heel shoe—even those platform shoes with clear plastic heels so you could see the plastic goldfish swimming inside them. When she started to open the fifth or sixth suitcase, the mechanic said he had waved his hands at the pile of furs and shoes and told her that was enough down payment.

  Sterling had not gone to her while she was in the room at the Painted Desert Motel. But he had heard stories from the Mexican guys who had. They said she was expensive, but that she knew things they had never ever heard of, let alone had a chance to try. Then, right before Sterling got up enough courage to stroll by the Painted Desert Motel, Room 23, a very strange and exciting thing had happened. Right at quitting time at the big Sante Fe Railroad maintenance yard, and on payday too, the big black Imperial had come gliding up to the gate. Sterling had been a little shocked at how many of the married men who had families living with them in Winslow also seemed to know Janey. She was smiling and laughing more to herself than with them as she showed off the car. “This is my baby,” she said over and over. “Now I have to get my beautiful wardrobe out of hock.” She swung open the door and Sterling thought he had never seen such a huge backseat. Later he realized the car had been a special model, something less than a limousine, but “big as a bedroom,” someone joked. Of course they all started making jokes, laughing and pushing one another toward the luxurious black leather seats. Then they had grabbed Sterling. All of them—Mexicans and Indians and even the white foreman—thought Sterling spent too much time reading. He told them he had a weak stomach and any more than three beers made him sick. But they had not quite forgiven him for not drinking and carousing with them anyway. They had shoved Sterling into the backseat to get even with him for all the nights he had eaten alone at the section-gang cafeteria then gone to his room to read magazines. “Give him the deluxe!” they yelled to Janey as she drove away.

  Sterling could feel the grime on his hands. The odor of the motor oil on his coveralls competed with the wonderful smell of Janey’s perfume. This was about the worst thing that had ever happened to Sterling. Janey had pulled onto Route 66 and they were zooming in the direction of Holbrook until she took a turn onto a dirt road. The road wound through small outcroppings of yellow sandstone and up into the juniper forest. When she stopped and turned off the engine, Sterling thought he had never heard such silence in all his life. He must have looked scared because Janey started laughing when she opened the back door.

  The backseat of the black Chrysler was so big that they could do the entire “deluxe” with the doors closed. But Janey put all the electric windows down, for the gorgeous clean air, she said, and Sterling had thought the juniper and sage in the breeze did smell good. Open windows also prevented the smell of motor oil and a day’s worth of sweat from spoiling things.

  Janey stayed around Winslow for two more weeks performing “the deluxe” in the backseat of the Imperial. The mechanic said later she had been able to pay the repair bill the day he had finished with the car; so the extra two weeks in Winslow must have been Janey’s insurance policy. All of them were a little amazed that Janey had made enough in five days to pay for eight Chrysler valves and a camshaft.

  After that, when the section-gang guys wanted to go carousing, Sterling told them he would settle for nothing less than “the deluxe.” So many nights he had lain awake remembering how Janey had undressed him and how she had told him to close his eyes and leave everything to her. For Sterling that would always be “the deluxe”: to lie naked on soft, plush cushions with his eyes closed so he could simply feel her hands and mouth moving over his skin. He had decided years earlier that the trouble of getting ready to have sex spoiled the sex once you ever got to it. With the deluxe it all happened like a dream—feeling the sensation spreading from his balls and cock outward, and then that last sudden squeeze that brought all the sensations rushing back to the tip of his cock, leaving his fingers and toes numb.

  Sterling tried the deluxe three more times after the first go. The guys badgered him to tell them about it, but he told them he had his eyes closed. That had really horrified the Mexicans and the Hopis. They were incredulous. What had been deluxe for them had been Janey’s powder-blue eyes and her white-blond hair, and the way her breasts almost pointed up—some of them swore the nipples curved up. And the pink—bright pink. You didn’t get any of that with the Winslow whores even as teenagers. Well, how could a Navajo or Mexican or Negro, even as a teenager, ever give you that bright shade of pink? All dark meat to begin with.

  “Oh,” Sterling had said. Because he had never thought about colors with sex before, but that could be blamed on going to high school at an Indian boarding school where any sort of sexual act had to be performed in the dark of the basement or a handy broom closet. They had talked so much about the part of Janey that was so pink and how much they had enjoyed pulling it all open to look, finally the foreman got mad. All morning they had only pulled and reset two rails. After the foreman left them and they were yelling at each other to haul ass, a big Hopi from Third Mesa said bitterly, “Easy enough for that bahana to scold us. He’s been sucking little pink titties all his life.”

  Sterling tried a couple of times to get a “deluxe” in Barstow, but the women working there weren’t a whole lot different from the whores in Winslow, who not only wanted to take your money first, they wanted you to get the motel room, and worst of all, they expected you to tell them what to do. You had to tell them everything. Take off your shoes, get on the bed, take hold of this—no, not like that—it was so much trouble Sterling decided it wasn’t worth it.

  Living away from Laguna all the years the other men his age were marrying had saved him from his old aunts, who did question him when he visited home at fiesta time or at Christmas. He was not against marriage or women. He was devoted to his old aunts, who were always cooking and sewing for him and sending birthday cards. He got them free passes to ride the train anywhere they wanted. His main trouble with marriage was that he was not used to telling anyone else what to do. He supposed that might be traced bac
k to the way Aunt Marie had raised him when his parents were both gone. Sterling didn’t even feel he needed to trace it back anywhere. He was very happy going along on his own. He liked a simple life with his magazines, visits home to his old aunts, and the occasional vacation to Long Beach to ride the big roller coaster.

  The years had gone along like that and there had even been young widows set up by his dear old aunts, who worried a great deal about who would care for Sterling after they were gone. But it didn’t take a genius to see that the young widows and their children would expect Sterling to tell them what to do next. Finally when all his old aunts assembled at one table for a deer dinner, Sterling had given them each long-fringed silk shawls of brilliant jewel colors. And then he had told them that unless they could find a woman as able, as wise, as strong as they were, they should not bother. Each of the old sisters spoke in turn, and by the time Aunt Nora had performed the ceremonial eating of the deer eyes, and Aunt Marie and Aunt Nita had finished the brains, Sterling was relieved and happy to realize that they agreed with him.

  From that time on they pampered him even more, and Sterling was left in peace to enjoy dreaming “the deluxe.”

  STERLING’S ROOM

  SOMETIMES IN THE MIDDLE of the night the sound of Ferro’s four-wheel-drive truck would awaken Sterling. They came and they went at all hours. Fortunately, Ferro and Paulie were seldom at the house for very long. The old boss woman was more difficult to figure out because only occasionally did she go with Ferro and Paulie. Yet sometimes she was gone for days. Her absence wasn’t something Sterling could have proven, but when he walked down the hall past her office or outside the bedroom windows with the shades pulled, he could sense the rooms were empty. Sterling finished a second cheese sandwich and helped himself to more potato chips. He had enjoyed the errands and the drive with Seese very much. He thought if everything would continue along this way, he might be content to stay here for a long time. He carried an extra can of 7-Up down the hill to his room. The sun had almost set. The desert birds were calling and moving the way they did before darkness. The wind off the mountain peak smelled fresh, almost as if rain might be coming. The sky to the west was clear, but clouds could be smelled long before they were seen. He remembered Aunt Marie teaching him that. Around sundown Sterling sometimes felt his mood change. He would begin to think about his life. He would think about all the dear old grandaunts now gone on to Cliff House where they had planned a great many of their favorite activities for all eternity. He missed all of them around a table teasing each other, joking about old lovers and sexual escapades. The younger generations of women had not really matched the likes of Aunt Marie and Aunt Nora. But Sterling was certain that he had not matched them either, although they had loved him and spoiled him so much their own children, his cousins, had become terribly jealous of him. And in the end, the jealousy had been what had worked against Sterling when it came down to the vote of the Tribal Council over the decision of the tribal court judge. Sterling knew that sending the children away to boarding schools was the main problem. He and the other children had to learn what they could about the kachinas and the ways to pray or greet the deer, other animals, and plants during summer vacations, which were too short. Sterling might not have been sent away so young if his parents had not died. Still, that had been the policy of the federal government with Indians. Aunt Marie used to say there was no use in getting upset over something that had happened fifty years ago. Education was the wave of the future.