Stone Butterfly (5 page)

A certain clarity of understanding began to dawn on the poverty-stricken girl.

Seeing a hint of avarice glinting in her eyes, Oates hurried on. “I know that sounds like a huge pile of cash to a little kid like you, but it's pocket change to me. But don't think you wouldn't earn it.”
Now for the ticklish part—I sure hope she gets my drift.
“See, what makes this go-between job hard is that Ben don't want me to have the pretty thing. If he knew I was the buyer, he'd never sell it. Not for a
hundred
thousand. The deal you set up would have to be…well, whatever you can think of.” He looked up at the acoustic-tile ceiling. “But consider this as a for-instance—maybe you could convince Ben that some other person wants to buy it on the Q-T. Like say, some rich out-of-towner who's a good friend of yours—somebody who'd give you the money to buy it.” Oates stuck the cigar stub into his coffee cup. “First of all, you'd have to find out where Ben keeps the thing—just to make sure he still has it in his possession. And you'd have to get a good look at it.” His bleary blue eyes became hard as glass marbles. “Work it out any way you want, but here's the bottom line—when you bring me the pretty thing, you'd get eleven thousand bucks. All in twenty-dollar bills.” His face flushed rosy pink. “How much of that wad you take back to Ben—well, that's entirely between you and him.”

Sarah Frank stared at the attorney.
He wants me to steal it.

Raymond Oates saw the flash of fear in her eyes, “Think it over, kid. You decide to help me on this, and over and above any cash you earn—I'll give you a
real
nice present.” He jutted his chin at the crimson-tinted, ribbon-tied parcel at her elbow. “Something worth a damn sight more than what's in that little package.” He read the question in her eyes, removed a black velvet pouch from his jacket pocket, pushed it halfway across the table. “Want to take a peek inside?”

Again, her hand moved as if it had a mind of its own. When she saw the opal pendant, Sarah's mouth gaped—her heart stuttered, seemed as if it might stop.

The chubby tempter attempted a Santa Claus smile; what he produced was a hideous leer. “Pretty bauble, ain't it? Should be—set me back nine hundred bucks!” He snatched her heart's desire away, stuffed the pouch back into his pocket. “You want to hang this geegaw around your neck, all you got to do is come up with a workable plan for getting me what I want. I have my lunch here at high noon, almost every day of the week.” He pointed toward the parking lot. “If you see my Town Car out front, come inside and tell me what you've got in mind. If I like your plan, the pendant's yours to keep, and I'm talking up front—before you deliver the property that's rightfully mine. And when you bring me what Ben stole out of our house before Daddy's corpse had time to get cold—then you get the cash money.” The piggish man's right hand doubled into a hamish fist, hammered the table just hard enough to make the stainless flatware rattle. “But whatever happens, kid—don't you
ever
say anything to anybody about this.” His final words came slowly, floated between them like balloons about to pop. “You—understand—what—I'm—telling—you?”

Sarah Frank felt her head nod.

Late that night, shortly after Marilee Attatochee and Al Harper had gone to bed, Sarah switched on a tiny plastic flashlight. Ever so carefully, she untied the blue ribbon on the shiny red package. Unfolding the paper, she could hardly believe her eyes. How could he have known….

There on her lap was
The Book. Grandmother Spider Brings the Sun.

It was like an impossibly wonderful dream. Almost as good as those sleep-visions where Charlie Moon showed up in a gold-and-white limousine and drove her back to Colorado where they would get married in St. Ignatius Catholic Church and then live ever-so-happily together in a three-story redbrick house on the banks of the Piedra.

One by one she turned the pages, whispered the written words. When she got to the page where the little spider lady was dancing by the clay pot she had brought the warm light in, all the smiling animals in a circle around her…Fox and Wolf and Moose and Bear and…Sarah wept. Her tears fell onto the charming picture.

She was closing the book when, tucked in between the last page and the cover, she found the “bookmarks”—five twenty-dollar bills! After staring wide-eyed at the most money she'd ever had in her hands, Sarah switched off the flashlight, hurriedly slammed the book on the greenbacks, stuffed it under her pillow. The thin girl sat on her bed, nervously curling and uncurling her numbly cold toes.
With a hundred dollars I could buy a bus ticket to Durango, and even have some left over.
The desire to leave for Colorado on the first eastbound bus out of Tonapah Flats was intense enough to make her entire body tingle. The thought of the magnificent fire-speckled opal, suspended from her neck on the silver chain, made her shudder with anticipatory delight.
But until I got to Aunt Daisy's home, I'd have to keep it under my dress so nobody would see it.
Still another but:
But unless I can come up with a good plan for getting that pretty thing from Mr. Silver, Mr. Oates won't give me the opal pendant. And if my plan works, he'll pay me thousands of dollars.
For a child who had always been so wretchedly poor, the urge to stay and give the seemingly impossible task a try was compelling. Sarah made her decision.
First, I'll try talking to Mr. Silver.
She sighed.
He'll get all red in the face and yell at me. No, he'll never give the pretty thing up…so what can I do?
She knew, of course, and blushed with shame. Like lying, stealing was a dreadful sin.

Instantly, it was as if someone whispered in her ear:
Mr. Silver stole it from Mr. Oates's father, so returning it to the rightful owner wouldn't really be stealing—it would be a good thing to do.

Thus justified, Sarah Frank snuggled into her small bed, was pleased when Mr. Zig-Zag cuddled himself behind her head. She yawned.
I should never have thought Mr. Oates was the Devil. He's more like an angel.
As she was slipping off to sleep, a troublesome thought floated along with her: Wasn't the Devil also some kind of an angel…a very
bad
angel?

While a spray of stars still sparkled overhead, Daisy Perika groaned and grunted her way out of bed. She dressed herself with the patience necessary for one whose arthritic joints protest when flexed. As a final touch, she pulled a woolen shawl around her stooped shoulders, stepped outside on the porch. Aside from the rhythmic sigh of her breaths, and the barest whisper of a breeze in the junipers, there was not a sound. Though summer was only days away, the pearly-gray dawn blooming over the black ridges filled her with a shuddering chill. The warm comfort of her bed pulled at the sleepy woman, but having made up her mind, she went back inside, pulled on a heavy overcoat that had belonged to her third husband. Wanting an early start for the journey that got longer with every passing winter, the tribal elder had decided to take her breakfast with her. She stuffed a foil-wrapped egg-and-pork-sausage sandwich into one of the spacious coat pockets, a pint jar of honeyed coffee into the other. Thus prepared, she slung a hemp bag over her shoulder, got the sturdy oak staff in hand—and left her cozy home behind.

Daisy felt uneasy about venturing along the particular path she had in mind. Father Raes Delfino had issued several stern warnings that she should stay away from the dwarf, whose hole-in-the-ground dwelling was in
Cañón del Espíritu.
Unlike other
matukach
—and even some of the younger tribal members—the Catholic priest did not disbelieve in the little man's existence. On the contrary, it was Fr. Raes's view that the
pitukupf
was real—and potentially dangerous. It was his concern for Daisy's immortal soul that led the Jesuit to counsel this reckless member of his flock to avoid any communion with the deceitful creature. But since the priest's retirement as pastor at St. Ignatius, Daisy rarely saw him and so his influence in her life had gradually diminished. When Fr. Raes wasn't off gallivanting around some foreign country, he spent his days in that little cabin on Charlie Moon's ranch. Which reminded Daisy of another reason she felt guilty about today's errand—her nephew also strongly disapproved of her walks into Spirit Canyon. Charlie's objections had nothing to do with the
pitukupf
—he was one of the younger generation who dismissed the dwarf as a tribal myth. He worried that his elderly aunt would take a bad fall, break an ankle or hip. If that happened, she would be stranded in the wilderness between the walls of Three Sisters and Dog Leg Mesa, where only cougars and coyotes would hear her calls for help. By the time he came looking, it would be too late.

As far as the priest's objections, the aged Catholic maintained a tolerably clear conscience.
After all, I haven't brought any gifts along for the little man. And anybody who knows anything about the dwarf knows that he never gives away his secrets for free; he always expects some food and a trinket or two.
One well-crafted rationalization led to another.
And Charlie Moon shouldn't worry about me falling and breaking a bone. I know the canyon like it was my own backyard, and I'm careful where I put my feet.
And another.
And even if I was to die up here, that's lots better than wasting away in a [expletive deleted] nursing home while some freckle-faced white girl spoons me [another expletive deleted] mashed squash from a baby-food jar and tells me how nice I look today.

Thus justified in her mind, Daisy made her way happily along the winding path that took her into the gaping mouth, down the sighing throat, deep into the shadowy bowels of Spirit Canyon. As she hobbled along the deer trail, the elder's eyes searched the ground for those medicinal herbs necessary to stock her singular pharmacy. The primary object of this particular quest was a plant known to botanical science as
Corydalis aurea,
to local folk as Golden Smoke, and to traditional Utes as Stick That Gives You Nosebleeds. Loaded with alkaloids, including protopine and corydaline, it was a very dangerous weed indeed. Daisy had a secret recipe, which combined the herb with Skullcap and a few other bits of this and that. The process of preparation was quite tedious, requiring several days of boiling, drying, mixing, a touch of this and a dab of that, additional boiling, further drying, and so on. The end result was a sedative that was useful for treating twitching and nervous tics. So far (by the Grace of God, Father Raes believed) none of the Ute shaman's patients had died from her medications. Daisy was certain that several of her customers had enjoyed significant benefit from her chemotherapy. The self-taught herbalist had certainly benefited—to the tune of twenty-five dollars per dose. Cash money, if you please.

As Daisy was approaching a place where she had stopped many times before, she averted her eyes from the spot the
pitukupf
called home—a badger hole long-abandoned by the original tenant. During dozens of dreamlike trances (or trancelike dreams?) she had found herself inside the little man's underground dwelling. Straggles of roots hung from the ceiling, and resinous piñon wood always burned and popped in his fireplace—where a rabbit's carcass might be seen roasting on a juniper spit. More than this was difficult to recall.

Now, from the corner of her eye, she noticed a wispy something rising from the burrow. It might have been a smoke from his fire, or perhaps it was merely early morning mist. For once, Daisy really did not want to see the little trickster.
I'll stop a little farther up the canyon and have a couple of bites of my sandwich and some coffee.
And she would have done just that. Except for what she saw close to an aged, pink-barked ponderosa.

A cluster of Golden Smoke.

Forgetting about the dwarf, the enthusiastic pharmacist unslung the hemp bag from her shoulder, headed straight for the bonanza. On hands and knees, she used a short, heavy-bladed knife to dig up each plant root-and-all, place it with due care into her herb bag. When this work was completed, Daisy got hold of her staff, pushed herself to her feet with a groan. Doing so, she felt a sharp pain at the small of her back.
Maybe I should rest awhile.
She seated herself by the ponderosa, leaned the hemp bag against its trunk. A gray ocean of weariness washed over her, each wave pulling her in deeper…deeper.
Oh my goodness. Maybe I'm getting too old for these long walks—and this digging is awfully hard work…

The shaman slipped into that shadowy corridor between
Here
and
There.
It was a dim place, but she could still see the daylight side. And what she saw unnerved the old woman.

The
pitukupf
was standing by her left foot. Grinning. Like she was something to be made sport of.

It was irksome. Onerous. Also aggravating.

I'll find me a rock, throw it at the little imp.
But bound by the cords of an altered state of consciousness, Daisy was unable to wiggle a toe, much less lift her hand to cast a stone. The last thing she remembered was the dwarf reaching into her coat pocket, removing the egg-and-sausage sandwich. As she drifted even further away, the shameless little thief was unwrapping the foil. It was perhaps just as well that the shaman did not see the
pitukupf
eat her breakfast; she might have died from an attack of impotent fury. But whether she was better off or not is debatable. The visionary had fallen into that dark, noisome void where nightmares and madness are made. The dream was one Daisy had suffered through several times during her recent slumbers.

The skinny girl with the club in her hand leans over the old man's body.

As before, as always, she has his blood on her hands.

The blood falls. Plop.

Falls on the man's face. Plop. Plop.

Falls like it will never stop. Plop. Plop. Plop.

The girl seems to be mesmerized by the horror on the floor.

Until someone appears at a window, casts a long shadow.

Startled, the gaunt child raises her head.

Sees the living, breathing personification of her worst fears.

For the first time, the shaman-dreamer sees the girl's face.

Recognition jars Daisy Perika like a sudden thunderclap—completely stopping her heart.

After missing a half-dozen beats, it will restart.