Snake Dreams (6 page)

AS THEY
meandered through the bakery section, Daisy paused to inspect a transparent plastic bag of dinner rolls, pressed a deep impression into each of the half dozen with her thumb.
I bet these are a week old.

Sarah edged over to a display of multicolored pastries. “They have some
really
big cakes.”

As she fumbled through her purse, Daisy mumbled, “I wonder where I put those coupons. There was one for nineteen cents off on a loaf of Wonder Bread.”

“The cakes don’t cost all that much.” No response from Miss Daisy. “And the sign says they’ll make any kind you want.”

The mumbling fumbler found what she was looking for. “Here they are—I forgot I’d put ’em in my coat pocket.”

Having eliminated several perfectly presentable candidates, the youthful judge was attempting to decide between two stunning, high-calorie finalists. Would the winner be the Strawberry Dream with inch-thick pink icing—or the three-layer fudge-and-ice-cream creation? Sarah could not make up
her mind. Not that it really mattered.
I’ll never have a cake like those.
Her long, wistful sigh was spiced with a hint of self-pity.

Daisy snapped at her sweet-toothed companion, “C’mon—let’s go load up on some groceries.”

And so they did.

A half hour later, after sending Sarah to get some bananas, Daisy Perika was gripping her oak staff with one hand, had the other fastened to the supermarket cart, which she had filled with such necessities as three gallons of pasteurized cow’s milk, two dozen brown-shelled chicken eggs, four pounds of Snow-White Pure Lard, a dozen 100-percent pork hot dogs, and a package of grape Popsicles. As it happened, the tribal elder was blocking aisle 14, which (according to the overhead sign) was where the shopper could find canned and dry soups. Casting doubtful glances at several products, Daisy searched the shelves for the tried-and-true Campbell’s Chicken Noodle. One of the more blatant imposters featured the entire alphabet, a second one little
O
s, while still another offered a swarm of tiny fishes.
Why would anybody in her right mind want to see little letters or circles or baby carp floating in their soup bowl?
The old woman shook her head at the craziness of it all.
Some of these aren’t even made by Campbell’s.
She glared at the perplexing display.
Just as soon as I get used to something, I can’t find it in the store anymore.
A painful grunt.
And some of these shelves are so low I have to bend my back like a bobby pin just to read the labels on the cans.

These musings were interrupted by a finger tap-tapping on her back.

Daisy turned her head to identify the tap-tapper. What she saw was a short, plump woman in a too-tight yellow satin party dress, yellow high heels, a yellow ribbon in her black hair, and a black ribbon around her neck. The tips of the high heels were
soiled with mud that had dried, and the dark ribbon had been tied to suggest a rose.

Too much detail—move right along to the
good stuff
? Very well.

The woman’s throat had been deeply slashed, literally ear to ear. The blood that flowed from the hideous wound was soaking into the pretty dress.

It was too late for Daisy to pretend that she had not felt the finger tap or seen the awful apparition. “Oh,” she said. “It’s you.”

The ghostly remains verified that it was.

“What brings you here?” The shaman grinned. “Big sale on Band-Aids?”

Apparently not offended, the bleeding woman replied in the negative. The reason for her appearance was that she was worried
to death
about something. And she needed some help.

That’s what I was afraid of.
“Well, I’d just as soon not hear about it—I’ve got troubles enough to last me till doomsday.” The curious old soul picked up a can of beef-and-barley soup, pretended to read the list of ingredients while (from the left corner of her mouth) she said, “But if you’re in the mood to chat about this and that, why don’t you tell me where your body is.”

Apparently encouraged by this interest, the whatsit replied that she was buried in a sandy, rocky place where water flowed after a heavy rain.

The shopper arched a brow. “In a ditch?”

No. In a dry wash. Not far from some mountains.

Daisy asked for a more specific location.

Somewhere east of El Paso.

“Well, that narrows it down some.”

Apparently oblivious to this sarcasm, the haunt began to describe the injury responsible for her untimely death, and how she couldn’t get her breath and gagged and choked and coughed up a gallon of blood and—

“Excuse me, Chiquita—but
how
you died is plain enough to see.” What Daisy craved was a dose of high-octane inside
information. She returned the red-and-white can to the shelf. “You want to tell me who did it?”

The bleeding presence shook her head, which (and Daisy was thankful for this) managed to stay more or less in place.

“Why don’t you want to tell me who murdered you?”

The spirit did not respond.

Daisy knew that playing coy was a favorite ploy of those who are barely containing a delicious secret. Confident that the dead woman was just
dying
to tell her, she offered a teasing speculation: “I bet it was some nasty man you took up with.”

Chiquita informed the old know-it-all that she had it figured wrong.

“Then set me straight.”

Ms. Yazzi refused the bait. Stood pat. And that was that.

Accepting a defeat that she believed was temporary, the aged Ute woman put on her most amiable expression, which suggested a Tasmanian devil suffering from severe gastritis. “So what did you come to bend my ear about?”

The haunt was worried about her daughter. Poor Nancy was in trouble. And the situation was about to get worse. Much worse.

Daisy was not surprised.
Nancy Yazzi’s probably smoking dope and shoplifting dime-store jewelry and no telling what else and Chiquita wants me to give her a good talking-to. For all the good that would do.
For a moment, the old sinner considered playing the good Samaritan. The moment passed quickly.
No, I’d rather chew my foot off at the ankle.
In contrast to this internal reference to self-mutilation, Daisy’s reply was flavored with sympathy and common sense. “I’m sorry to hear it, but whatever her problems are, Nancy’ll just have to grow out of ’em.” She set her face like stone. “There’s nothing I can do to help you.”

Ah, but there was. The wispy apparition smiled, and asked a favor. Just a
little
favor. Which she expanded upon.

“No.” Daisy shook her head. “I won’t ask Sarah to do no such thing.”

The favor seeker began to wheedle and whine and plead and—

“Chiquita, listen to what I’m saying!” Daisy stamped her foot. “The
pitukupf
told me you was coming, and when me and Sarah went for a walk in Spirit Canyon, you followed us around like some sneak thief. And now, when I’m trying to find some chicken noodle soup, you come and aggravate me.” The shaman shook her knobby walking stick at the offender. “If you don’t vamoose right now, I’ll put a spell on you—one that’ll turn you into a horned lizard that eats nothin’ but fire ants and burps up red-hot cinders!”

Clasping a trembling hand over her oozing wound, the apparition asserted that Daisy had no such powers. But even if she was capable of doing such a cruel thing, she surely would not.

“I can and I will.” The spell caster assumed the narrow-eyed, flared-nostril, bared-teeth expression that terrifies little children. She used her stick to draw a triangle on the floor. Spat in it!

Truth was, Daisy couldn’t and wouldn’t. But the old woman knew how to throw a world-class bluff.

The ghost was gone before the spit hit the floor.

But if the presence seen only by the shaman was not merely a hallucination—and this is not an entirely academic question—
where
did it go? Those of us with inquiring minds want to know.

Sarah and the Sinister Vegetable

Daisy’s helper was trying to decide which cluster of green bananas looked just right when she was distracted by a more interesting display—a tangle of gingerroots. After a careful inspection, Sarah selected a curious little sample for closer examination. Unlike its more ordinary fellows, this one had a face. Well, sort of. The imaginative girl turned it this way and that. Concluded that the countenance most resembled a certain genus of amphibian. She looked over her shoulder to make sure that no one was near enough to hear, addressed it in a whisper: “Poor little thing—you look like a frog. If I kissed you, would you turn into a handsome prince?” She could have sworn that the frog’s mouth curled, as if it was about to speak, then—

Help me, Sarah!

“Aaaaiieee!” The terrified girl flung the unfortunate root far across the produce section, where the lumpy little missile impacted a yard-high pyramid of Vidalia onions, which commenced to tumble to the floor with a thunderous rumble.

At that inopportune moment, Daisy Perika rounded the corner with the shopping cart and found herself stumbling over the sweet Georgia onions. She was not amused. When the startled produce manager appeared to find out what the matter was, the elderly woman gave this victim of opportunity a condescending lecture on how to stack onions and got yes-ma’amed several
times, which annoyed her no end. After leaving the ruffled supermarket employee to clean up the mess, Daisy gave Sarah the gimlet eye and posed what she supposed was a reasonable question: “Why’d you throw that carrot at the onions?”

The girl was a stickler for accuracy. “It wasn’t a carrot.”

“Well, I don’t care what it was. What I want to know is why you threw—”

“It was a gingerroot—with an ugly little frog face!”

Daisy snorted at such foolishness. “I’ve never seen a gingerroot that was much to look at. And it being ugly is no reason for you to squeal like a stuck pig and pitch it halfway across the store.”

Sarah leaned close, whispered, “It
spoke
to me!”

The shaman’s face went blank.

“The gingerroot said, ‘Help me.’ ” The teenager recalled an important detail. “And it called me by name. It said, ‘Help me,
Sarah
!’ ”

The old woman hesitated. “This face you say you saw on the ginger root—did it have big, pop eyes and a silly little grin like this?” Daisy bulged both eyes, did her best imitation of a silly little grin.

“Yes!”

The shaman groaned.

Sarah wrung her hands. “What?”

Daisy shrugged. “Oh, nothing.”

“Then how did you know what that face looked like?”

“Frog faces are pretty much alike. You see one, you’ve seen ’em all.”

“Oh.” (There was more than a hint of suspicion embedded in the girl’s “Oh.”)

Daisy pondered what to do.
It was Chiquita, all right. And if we don’t help her she won’t let Sarah alone. She’ll come creeping around the house at night, scaring the poor little thing out of her wits, and I won’t get a wink of sleep.
The surly shopper glanced in the direction whence she had come. “I happened to run into a certain person over by the soups.”

The needle on Sarah’s suspicion meter edged into the red zone. “Who?”

A sly smile cracked Daisy’s leathery face. “I’ll tell you if you’ll promise to keep it to yourself.”

Discretion was Sarah’s long suit. “Okay.”

“Cross your heart?”

The secret keeper’s finger made an X on her chest.

Daisy whispered, “It was Chiquita Yazzi.”

“Nancy’s mother’s come back?”

“Yes she has.”
In her own special way.
“And she asked for a little favor. It’d make her real happy if you’d talk to her daughter.”

“What about?”

Daisy avoided the girl’s stare. “Chiquita said Nancy was about to get herself into some serious trouble—I guess she figures you could talk some sense into her head.”

“Why doesn’t she talk to Nancy herself?”

“Oh, after running out on her second husband and her daughter, I expect Chiquita has her reasons for staying out of sight.”
Like a neck that oozes buckets of blood.

Knowing this peculiar old woman only too well, Sarah addressed the issue that was still making her skin crawl: “Does this have something to do with a ginger root talking to me?”

Daisy reached into her bag of deceitful tricks, found her Appalled mask, put it on. “Well, that’s a silly question!”

Having seen this phony face before, Sarah was not impressed. She assumed her I’m Waiting for an Answer expression.

For the longest time, the old woman and the youth stood toe to toe. Eye to eye.

It was Daisy who blinked. Appalled was reluctantly exchanged for Guilty as Charged.

Aha—I knew it!
“Tell me.”

The shaman sighed, shook her head. “Chiquita can’t talk to her daughter because . . . because . . . well . . . she’s
dead.
”

“Oh.” The girl felt her fingertips begin to tingle. “How did Mrs. Yazzi die?”

The morbid old woman drew a finger across her neck.

“Oh my!” Sarah tried to swallow. Could not. “Who did it?”

Daisy headed for the banana display. “Chiquita won’t say, but I figure it was one of her lowlife boyfriends.” Another possibility occurred to the tribal elder. “Or maybe it was her husband. That Hermann Wetzel’s a dangerous man—and jealous. He might’ve tracked Chiquita down and slit her throat.”

In an attempt to dismiss this grisly scene from her mind, Sarah tried to remember happier times when she and Nancy Yazzi had been close friends. After her mother had abandoned her, Nancy was very angry and said she hoped she’d “never see that bitch again!” But when a long-haul trucker from Bayfield claimed that he’d spotted Chiquita in a Las Cruces honky-tonk, Nancy had dropped out of school for a few weeks and there were rumors that she’d borrowed her boyfriend’s car and gone looking for the errant mother. Other tale tellers claimed that Nancy had simply shacked up with the boyfriend while Hermann Wetzel had gone searching for his wife. Whatever the truth of the matter, after Nancy returned to school, she never said a word about her mother. It was as if Chiquita Yazzi no longer existed. Sarah wondered aloud, “What are the police doing?”