More than ten years I’ve put up with it, mostly for Stephanie’s sake. But I work hard, too hard sometimes, and I don’t ask for much or want much out of life, and when I can’t even get the little I do ask... well, every man has his limits. Is it any wonder I’ve been driven past mine?
No, it isn’t. The wonder is that it didn’t happen sooner.
“... tell you, Howard,” she was prattling on now, “that man is one of Satan’s own. Something terrible will happen if he’s allowed to run loose on our streets. You mark my words.” Shrill, that voice of hers, like a razor slicing into my eardrums.
“What makes you so sure?” I asked wearily.
“If you’d seen him you wouldn’t have to ask that question. He has an evil face. Pure evil.”
“Man can’t help how he looks.”
“Howard, he’s been in Pomo two days now. And all he does is drive around in that old car of his, hardly saying a word to anybody. Just looking.”
“Looking at what?”
“Everything. Our house, this morning. Driving by so slowly he was hardly moving and staring right at our house.”
“So? Maybe he likes this kind of old-fashioned style—”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake, Howard! That’s not it at all. I know why he was staring. It gives me chills just thinking about it.”
“You figure he’s a rapist, I suppose? Hot after housewives?”
“You’re not funny, not one little bit. Rape is serious enough, but there are worse crimes.”
“Such as?”
“Kidnapping. Child molesting.”
“Jesus, Zenna!”
“Blaspheme all you like, but you weren’t here and I was. Our house wasn’t all he was staring at — he was staring at Stephanie and Kitty Waylon, too. Watching them on their way to school.”
She’d been saving that, easing into it for maximum effect; I could tell by the way she said it, with a kind of triumph mixed in with the fearful condemnation. Still, the words gave me a chill. I’d lost all love and respect for my wife, but Stephanie... I loved that kid more than anything else in the world.
“Are you sure? You weren’t just imagining the worst?”
“I was there, wasn’t I? I know what I saw. If I hadn’t stepped out on the porch just then, the Lord knows what might’ve happened.”
“What did you do?”
“Ran out and got the girls and drove them to school.”
“Did he say anything to them? Try to get them into his car?”
“No. They didn’t even know he was there.”
“What’d he do when you ran out?”
“Drove away. He saw me, that’s why.”
“Has he been back?”
“No, thank the good Lord. But the police haven’t seen fit to do their duty; he’s still in town, up to the devil knows what. Claire Bishop saw him less than an hour ago—”
“You called the police?”
“Well, of course I called the police.”
“And they said what?”
“What they always say. They’ll look into it. But I told you, they haven’t done anything — he’s still roaming around free.”
The edge was off my concern now. I’d been through this kind of thing too often with her — too damn often. Another false alarm, another pot of trouble stirred and boiled for little or no reason. The only danger Stephanie was likely in was from too much exposure to her mother.
I snapped open a beer, drank half before I lowered the can. It didn’t take away the sour taste in my mouth. “Made a bunch of other calls, too, I’ll bet. All your cronies.”
“Cronies? What kind of word is that to use?”
“The mayor? You call him, too?”
“No, I didn’t call Mayor Seeley.”
“The newspaper?”
That produced one of her tight little smiles. “Yes, I called the Advocate. I spoke to Douglas Kent himself. He listened to what I had to say. And he did something, at least.”
“What did he do?”
“Wrote an editorial,” she said, and the triumph was in her voice again-sharper this time, almost savage in its serf-satisfaction. She pushed today’s issue under my nose. “Right there on the front page. Read it, Howard, then you’ll see. Go ahead and read it.”
I read it. When I was done, I didn’t say a word. Zenna was waiting for me to make some comment, but if I’d opened my mouth I’d have said what I was thinking, and I wasn’t ready to do that yet. Soon, but not yet.
I’d have said, “This is why, Zenna, exactly why I’ve been driven way past my limits.” And then, with the same savage triumph in my voice, I’d have told her where I really was and what I was really doing last night when she thought I was sitting alone in a Redding motel room.
Audrey Sixkiller
Dick said, “I’m worried about you, Audrey. You sure you’re all right?”
It was what I wanted to hear. But I couldn’t help thinking: If you’re so worried, why didn’t you stop by instead of calling? Or at least call earlier?
“Don’t I sound all right?” I said. “I’m fine, really.”
“Maybe you’d better not stay there alone tonight.”
“Where would I go?” Your house?
“Stay with a friend.”
“I won’t be driven out of my home, not even for one night.”
“Then ask someone to come and stay with you.”
How about you? I almost said it. And at that, what came out was a variation: “Why don’t you come over after you’re off duty? I’ll make something to eat, and we can talk.”
“... I don’t know, Audrey. I’d like to, but I’m pretty tired and likely to be here late as it is. You know how Friday nights can be. I don’t want to make any promises I can’t keep.”
Oh, I knew how Friday nights could be. Lonely. And I knew excuses when I heard them, too. I had an impulse to ask him if he was too tired to accept an invitation from Storm Carey, but that would have been senseless and catty. I didn’t know he was seeing her again. Didn’t want to know if he was, not right now.
“Try to make it if you can,” I said. “For supper or... anytime.”
“All right. In any case, I’ll have one of the patrols keep an eye on your house.”
“Please, Dick, I really do want to see you... I need you tonight.” Shameless. How much plainer did I have to make it? Four-letter words? Storm Carey plain?
All he said was, “I’ll try.”
I went into the kitchen and brewed a pot of tea. The old, bitter Elem variety made from pepperwood leaves. William Sixkiller’s favorite cure-all for colds, fevers, sores, boils, and general malaise. When it was ready I carried a cup back into the living room. But instead of sitting down, I stood, sipping the tea in front of my memory cabinet.
After William Sixkiller died I gave most of the native artifacts he’d collected — woven sedge baskets, beadwork, bows and arrows, spear points — to the Pomo County museum. But I’d kept a few special items, favorites of mine and his. Looking at them, touching them, made me feel close to him. I slid the glass door open, ran fingers over the blackened bowl of the long pipe he’d carved from wild mahogany and smoked for forty years. He had helped to make the baby basket, too, that had been mine when I was an infant; the beads and bird feathers and other sleep-inducing charms attached to the hoop above the head were still bright after nearly three decades. The elderberry-shoot flute he’d played so sweetly had belonged to his grandfather. Even older was the musical bow made of a willow branch two feet long, with its twin sinew strings and the small stick you struck against the strings while you blew into the hollowed end of the bow; it dated to the days before the white man came, when, according to legend, the People were giants and the blood of the young warrior Kah-bel, slain in a battle over his beloved Lupiyoma, daughter of powerful Chief Konocti, painted the hills red and Lupiyoma’s tears of grief formed the mineral spring called Omaracharbe.