Call the Devil by His Oldest Name (11 page)

“I'm so sorry…” Her apology came out in wrenching sobs. “Jonathan was right. I never should have come here…”

As Ruth wept, Mary sat numbly, unable to comfort her. Once again, Jasmine Harris's scream echoed in her head, this time joined by a newer, smaller voice, both crying for help, both turning dark, imploring eyes directly at her.

Fourteen

MARY LAY IN Jonathan's
camper, trying to tamp down the panic she felt in closed-in, cave­ like places. Before Russell Cave exploded, small spaces had not bothered her. Now she hated airplanes, walked up the six flights of stairs to her office, and had only recently begun turning off her light to go to sleep. The camper was low-ceilinged and close, and every time she closed her eyes she saw Irene Hannah's face swimming up at her through the darkness.

They'd gone to bed after Sheriff Dula left. Ruth had finally introduced the pouty Miss Wachacha as Clarinda, her cousin from Oklahoma, then proceeded to darken the young woman's mood further by telling her that she had to surrender her bed to Mary. Before they doused the lantern, Mary had offered Ruth one of her Xanax, thinking it might help her get through this horror of a night, but Ruth brewed a cup of tea with some leaves she fished out of the medicine bag she now carried. By the time Mary got back from brushing her teeth at the nearby bath house, Ruth was stretched out on the mattress, snoring.

“What did she take?” Mary asked Clarinda, who appeared to be medicating herself with a bottle of Jack Daniel's.

“Beats me,” Clarinda replied sourly. “You Carolina people are the ones into this herb shit.” Mary took off her shoes and collapsed on top of Clarinda's bed. The insistent rhythm of the rally drum had finally stopped; only the gurgle of the nearby creek broke the nighttime silence. She lay staring into the darkness, her claustrophobia forgotten as she tried to figure out who might have stolen this baby. Ruth had apparently made some serious enemies: both the construction workers and John Black Fox's militant environmental group seemed to have reason to hate her. Though Indians were not above stealing cars and TV sets and other people's wives, babies were rarely included in their criminal repertory, and most hard-hatted construction workers were more likely to take a lead pipe to someone's skull than to snatch an infant. As Mary stared into the shadows, the only other possibility she could think of was an obsessed, childless woman who stole infants for pleasure and profit.

Dwayne Pugh.
The thought struck her so hard, she felt as if she'd been slammed with a brick. She'd blindsided him in court Friday with Jas­mine Harris, stunned him with that child's testi­mony against him. Could this be his sick idea of revenge? Her mind raced. Pugh was easily capable of something like this—he had the money and the smarts, and his kiddie-porn network consisted of a bunch of self-aggrieved perverts who would rejoice at sticking it to someone with an office in the courthouse. But how could Pugh have connected Lily with her? No public record existed that linked her with any of the Walkingsticks, and the friends to whom she'd shown off Lily's picture certainly wouldn't have told Dwayne Pugh about her.

“Don't be so self-centered,” she whispered, forcing herself to breathe more slowly. “You prosecute criminals in a courthouse hundreds of miles away from Ruth and Jonathan. Not all the dots connect to you.”

Satisfied that Pugh's trial and Lily's abduction were just a miserable coincidence, she tried to sort through all the other people Ruth had likely pissed off. Finally she fell into a dream where Dwayne Pugh held a shrieking baby bear in his arms as Stump Logan chased her like Frankenstein through a mine shaft, his footsteps rever­berating like gunshots in her ears.

She jumped as if she were falling, and her eyes flew open. The dream seemed so real, the footsteps so loud that she sat up in bed, her heart thumping. Then she realized that the banging was real—someone was pounding against the side of the camper.

“Mrs. Walkingstick! Wake up!”

Mary rolled off the mattress and shot to the door. Dula and Benge stood outside, their faces grim.
Dear God,
Mary thought.
They've found Lily. And she's dead.

“What is it?” she asked, dreading their reply. “The search-and-rescue boys are here,” Dula informed her. “They'll need to get a scent from the baby's clothes.”

“Give us a minute, Sheriff,” Mary answered, limp with relief. “Mrs. Walkingstick's still asleep.” She glanced at her watch: 5:02 a.m. The sleep that had felt like a ten-minute nap had lasted four hours. She put her shoes on, then shook Ruth and her cousin awake. Moments later, they stepped from the camper. Ruth carried one of Lily's little jumpsuits and a bright pink blanket.

Four men in coveralls stood quietly by Gabe Benge's van, accustomed, Mary supposed, to meeting at odd places at even odder times of day. Coffee steamed from the paper cups in their hands, and four sad-looking bloodhounds lay at their feet, thumping the ground with their tails as the three women walked toward them.

Dula pushed forward. “Have you got something with the baby's scent on it?”

“These.” Ruth held out the clothes and the blanket. Her whole body shook as if she'd been marched at gunpoint in the endless hours since Lily's abduction, she managed to keep her voice clear and steady.

“That'll do,” said one of the trackers. He took the little jumpsuit and stooped to hold it to his dog's nose. The rangy hound sniffed it noisily, then scrambled to his feet, pulling his master toward Ruth's camper. “Come on, Moe,” the tracker urged. “Let's go find her.”

His companions did the same thing with their own dogs. In moments, all the teams had dis­persed, dogs with noses to the earth, men fol­lowing them, leather leads in hand. Mary wondered if the dogs would bay like Plott hounds or beagles, but Moe and his companions worked without a sound, as if mindful of the sorrow of their task, graceful as ghosts through the trees.

“What do we do now?” Ruth pitifully asked Sheriff Dula as the last team disappeared into the shadows.

“Nothing,” he replied glumly, running a hand over his hairless head. “Except wait.”

Fifty miles across the mountains, Jonathan Walkingstick lay staring into the darkness, listening to the quivering cry of a screech owl. He'd drunk the six pack of beer he'd brought and spread his bedroll in the back of the broken-down truck, curling up with an old Stephen King novel he'd found stuffed under the seat. He'd slept fitfully, waking for good when the owl began calling close to the camper, as if protesting his intrusion into its hunting grounds.

Yawning, he sat up, reflexively uttering the Cherokee word for screech owl,
“Wahuhu.”
Though he heard screech owls most every day, he hadn't spoken that particular word in years. Why had it floated to the top of his subconscious today?

“Wahuhu,”
he repeated, the syllables sounding strange to his ears. Mostly he was happy to leave the Cherokee speaking to Ruth. He thought it pointless to become fluent in a language that no more than a few hundred people still spoke, but sometimes the old words came to him.
Wahuhu. Ahwe. Atsadi.
Owl, deer, fish. Ruth, of course, would claim he was channeling some long-dead Cherokee hunter. He chalked it up to too much beer and too little sleep. Still, it would be fun to teach Lily a few words of his own someday. Let Ruth instruct her in Granny Broom's goofy herbal remedies and political nonsense. He, her father, her
ehdoda
, would teach her about real things.
His
things.

All that, however, was years away. Right now Lily was asleep across the mountains in Tennessee and he had a fifteen-mile hike ahead of him and a clutch to replace.

He scooted out of the back of the truck, grab­bing a package of Ding-Dongs and the thermos of coffee that amazingly, he'd remembered to bring with him. Though it was still dark, he knew by the soft, feathery fluttering in the trees that the birds had awakened, the sun would soon rise. Sitting in the driver's seat of the truck, he ate the cupcakes and drank a cup of the still­ steaming coffee and wondered how his family was doing. Probably just fine, he decided. As long as Lily has Ruth, she's happy. As long as Ruth has a scratching post to sharpen her claws on, then she's happy. If they lived close to a competent mechanic, they could probably exist perfectly well without any help from him at all. Still, he was going to join them.
He
needed
them,
even if they didn't need him.

He popped the last bite of Ding-Dong into his mouth and washed it down the rest of his coffee. He'd better get going if he wanted to make it to Tennessee by tonight.

Without bothering to lock the truck, he shoved his wallet and car keys in his back pocket and began to make his way up the road in the darkness, walking in the long, silent strides that had carried his ancestors up and down the Appalachian mountains for the past two thousand years. He and Mary Crow used to walk like that for hours when they were children, and he could still cover more ground at a walk than most white men could jogging.

Two hours later, he reached the paved road. Fifteen miles to go, he told himself. Unless somebody comes along and gives me a ride.

“Fucking bastard.” Aloud, he cursed the stu­pidity of his plight, the time and money lost on this wild-goose chase. If he ever saw that Dun­can character, he was going to beat his five hun­dred dollars out of him. If he ever saw Ruth again, he was going to show her the proper way to drive a manual transmission in the mountains.

He stopped abruptly, surprised. What did he mean
if
he ever saw Ruth again? Of course he would see Ruth again. Tonight, if he had any luck with the clutch. Tomorrow, at the latest. What was he thinking about, never seeing Ruth again?

Clarinda, he decided, attributing his subcon­scious slip to his wife's cousin. He'd known that girl was trouble the minute she'd walked in their door. Clarinda, the adored cousin. Clarinda, the small bent twig on the much-missed family tree in Oklahoma. Clarinda, the secret spoiler, who would happily sow the seeds of discontent just to see what might grow.

“Fuck,” he muttered, quickening his pace, his footsteps echoing on the blacktop. He should have gone to that rally, regardless of how angry he was with Ruth. Now Clarinda would have her ear, unimpeded until he got there.
But Ruth,
he could just hear her say, her voice soft as down yet lethal as a whiff of cyanide.
North Carolina's so green and strange. You're so for away from home. Everybody misses you so. You don't want Lily to grow up without knowing your own family, do you?

All that, Jonathan knew, was true. He and Ruth had talked about it, and although she missed her parents horribly, she also realized that their life was here. But he knew the kind of spin Clarinda could put on it.
Why won't Jonathan let you come home? Why does he hate the causes you be­lieve in? Why is he so anal about Lily? Pretty soon, he'll be making you stay at home, too.

All at once he grew aware of his footsteps. Rapid, hard,
urgent.
He was almost running. He stopped and looked at his hands. They were clenched into fists. He was out here in the middle of a forest, ten miles from the nearest human being, spoiling for a fight. He shook his head. What was he thinking of? Ruth loved him and Lily and the store. He loved her. Sure, they had been at odds with each other since Lily's birth, but what couples didn't fight? And what man wouldn't balk at having his baby daughter cared for by someone who thinks pi
ñ
a coladas are a food group and Buffalo wings are haute cuisine?

“You should bring Ruth some strawberries,” he told himself, remembering the old Cherokee legend of how when the first man and woman quarreled, the man brought the woman strawberries as a peace offering. He chuckled. How many repentant Tsalagi husbands had, in cen­turies past, relied upon the sweet red berries to assuage the wrath of their wives?

“It's probably worth a shot,” he decided, re­membering how Ruth smiled when he would revert to some old tribal custom that most people no longer remembered.

As the day dawned clear and bright, the au­tumn foliage burned like fire in the trees over­ head. Maybe some tourist would come along. Maybe he could hitch a ride with some family who would be thrilled to give a full-blooded Cherokee Indian a lift to Murphy, North Carolina. Once he got to Tennessee, Clarinda could go back to Oklahoma, and he and Ruth and Lily could get back to normal.

Fifteen

October 13

Early Sunday morning

HE KNEW IT had
gone too smoothly—Paz walking up through those pine trees carrying the baby, the still-sleeping child snuggling into Ru­perta's bosom, the ease with which they had simply rolled back through the campground and onto the highway beyond. At first he thought Clootie's Commit Your Life To Jesus card might be making his luck hold, but as soon as he merged onto I-75, Jesus bailed out. The baby woke up and started to shriek. Ruperta opened a bottle of the formula he'd bought, but the damn kid didn't seem to know what to do with it. The baby'd take the rubber nipple in her mouth, then spit it out as if it were something nasty. The more Ruperta offered it, the angrier the brat grew, balling up her little fists and yowling like some bear cub separated from its mother.

The racket continued for hours—the baby screaming, Ruperta jabbering in Spanish, Paz alternately swearing and crossing himself.

Finally, when the hard, bright tongue of a headache began to lick around his eyes, Stump Logan turned, worn out, into a Kmart parking lot, understanding fully why some parents beat their babies to death. They must do it with great joy, relishing each blow as payback for all their suffering. Even Paz looked grateful as Stump or­dered him to leave Ruperta and the squalling kid in the van. For an hour he and the little wet­back strolled up and down the aisles, tossing items in their cart. By the time they returned, both Ruperta and the baby had fallen into an exhausted sleep, Ruperta's dark hair damp with sweat, the baby's diaper oozing with shit.

Now they were in Chattanooga in room 114 of a ratty cinder-block motel called the Taj Ma­hal, rented from an Indian woman in an orange sari who wanted five dollars extra to supply them with a phone. Paz snored from one of the lumpy beds, while Ruperta and the baby slept in the other. Logan sat in a chair propped up against the door, studying a map of Tennessee and praying the baby would not wake up and cry again. The throbbing in his head had just be­gun to ease. If she woke up and brought it back to full flower, he'd have to kill her.

He leaned over and lifted one corner of the water-stained curtains. Though it was still dark, the truck-driving couple he'd listened to farting and fucking all night were climbing back into the J.B. Hunt cab they'd driven up in. He checked his watch: 4:33. Almost time to get up. They had a lot to do today.

He hobbled to the bathroom, then crept over and touched Paz on the shoulder.

“Sí?” The little man jumped, instantly awake, alert as a fireman.

“Get Ruperta up,” Stump ordered softly. “But don't wake that damn baby!”

Nodding, Paz leaned over his sleeping wife and put his hand on her shoulder. Ruperta shot up, rubbing her eyes, then immediately turned to the child.

“Don't wake her up!” Paz cautioned in a whisper. “She'll give Gordo another headache.”

“Sí,” Ruperta replied. She smiled down at the infant, then rose and hurried into the bathroom, locking the door behind her.

Stump looked at Walkingstick's kid. The little brat slept on her stomach, her legs tucked under her, her butt high in the air. His timing was perfect.

Grabbing one of his Kmart sacks, he sat down beside her. She flinched at the sudden bounc­ing of the bed, but didn't wake. From the sack he withdrew a pair of small, sharply pointed scissors.

“Se
ñ
or?” Paz's eyes widened.

“Hold her still,” Stump ordered. “Let's get this done before Ruperta gets out of the john.”

Trembling, Paz did as he was told. Stump grabbed the dark fringe that curled around the back of the baby's neck, then began to cut the hair that Lily Walkingstick had come into the world with, smiling as the locks fell into his palm, feathery as cornsilk.

“Madre…”
Paz whispered in horror as he watched the gleaming point of the scissors snipping around the child's tender neck.

Stump snipped just above her ears, dropping the dark hair on the sheet beside her. She began to stir and squirm when he started trimming the crown of her head. He cut on. Minutes later he stopped and smiled. Not one hair on the little girl's head was now longer than half an inch. Edwina wouldn't consider her much of a prize, but who cared what that old heifer thought?

The bathroom door opened.
“Madre de D
í
os!''
Ruperta screamed as Lily began to cry. “What are you doing?”

“Shut up!” Stump commanded. “These walls are like paper. Do you want the police to come?''

“
Silencio
, Ruperta!” Paz pleaded with his wife. “He isn't hurting her.”

“Just watch.” Stump grinned at the terrified Mexicans. “You'll like this.”

With Lily awake and squalling, he flipped her over, unsnapped her dirty white jumpsuit, and tugged it off. The cold air on her warm skin enraged the baby further, and she flailed at him with her fists and legs. Digging down into his sack again, he pulled out a new jumpsuit, this one blue with a tiny cowboy stitched on the front. By the time he'd stuffed her legs and arms into the garment and snapped it shut, Lily's mouth was square with rage, her cheeks bright red. As tears rolled down the sides of her face and into her stubby hair, he scooped her up.

“There,” he said proudly, showing her to the stunned Mexicans. “Lily Walkingstick has just become Willy Gonzalez. Meet your new parents, young man.”

He thrust the screaming baby at Ruperta. She held Lily close, jiggling her on her shoulder until her shrill cries gradually faded into hiccuping sobs. Then she laid the little girl gently back down on the bed and started to unsnap the outfit he'd just put on her.

“What are you doing?” Stump roared. Surely this chattering parrot of a woman wasn't going to give him any grief.

Ruperta shot him a dark look. “She needs her diaper changed, Se
ñ
or.”

Muttering to herself in Spanish, she lifted the child's bottom and peeled away her diaper, revealing skin blistered with rosy bumps.

“Did she have that yesterday?” Logan frowned at the angry rash.

Paz shook his head. “Ruperta says nothing you bought the baby agrees with her. Not the milk, not the diapers, not the ointment for her bottom.”

Stump shrugged. “Life sucks. She'll just have to deal with it.”

When Ruperta had the child buttoned back up, she tried to feed her another bottle of for­mula. As the baby began to twist her head away from the nipple all over again, Stump could tell her opinion of it had not changed. Feeling a fresh rivet of pain above his left eyebrow, he let himself out of the motel room. The Taj Mahal's parking lot was empty, except for their van. He walked over and unlocked the driver's door. He needed a smoke. He needed chocolate. Mostly he needed not to have that kid shrieking at him all day. He would try it as they'd planned, then, if Ruperta couldn't keep that brat quiet, he would send her and Paz out to get some food and just mash a pillow down on her noisy little face. When they returned he'd tell them she'd had some kind of fit and died. Edwina would be furious at losing something she could turn into ready cash, but Edwina could go fuck herself. Right now all he cared about was getting his trap line out for Mary Crow. For that, dead bait would work just as well as live.