Water and Stone (17 page)

She felt like a thief in danger of being caught out for it.

The piedra had been sent to Evalena yet she'd kept it... first out of anger for her sister after having threatened Church but later in fear of what the girl might become if she had access to the stone. Drugging Billy with a sleeping herb and then going and digging up the treasure herself had been a mistake. She should've just let them have it.

It seemed as if things were going ill for everyone ever since that day. First, Rancher Ford had taken sick... the doctor told him that he had kidney disease and was suffering from renal failure... that unless he received a transplant he would likely die. The dialysis pulled hard on him but it was the only thing keeping Rancher alive.

Going into the relationship Yani dreamed of how she was going to be his new wife... instead, she was a nursemaid. Where once Rancher Ford was a big man he had shrunk into little more than a skeleton and each day he seemed to lose more weight.

And then Church disappeared. While it was true she'd given him the stone while asking him to hide it somewhere safe she never dreamed he'd leave the ranch without a word to anyone. Though she asked around town no one'd seen him. She wondered if the boy finally decided to quit the Triple Six and strike out on his own... he'd talked for years of seeing the world and she liked to think of him finally living his dream.

On the other hand, had the boy found his death? As a mother she thought she'd sense the scream of his soul going back to that eternity from which it issued but she'd felt nothing. Did that mean he yet lived? Or merely that she was and would always be but a fool?

It seemed odd that Rancher had taken sick the day after he said he'd ridden to the chabola to speak with Billy. Apparently he'd seen an old man there who he thought might be his own father—the resemblance was startling—but when he tried to speak him Evalena rushed out to hurry him away saying he was no longer welcome there.

"When I first saw him I swear it was my father, Yani... but how could he have found his way here?"

"Evalena has a way with men, Rancher. It could have been anyone."

"You're right, of course... maybe it was someone else with Evalena and not my father at all. But who could it have been? And where's Billy? None of this makes sense."

"Did you ask Evalena about Billy?"

"I never had the chance. She came storming out of the cabin like I was there to steal everything she owned. I only wanted to see Billy."

She knew it hurt him how Billy didn't go to his mother's funeral. Even though they made arrangements to fly out east together, Billy hadn't showed up at the airport. Instead, at the last minute Church had gone with his father.

"What did Evalena say to you, Rancher? Why was she angry with you?"

She hadn’t known he was going to the chabola or she'd have insisted upon going along with him. Evalena could be cantankerous when confronted by the unexpected visitor. It bothered Yani that Rancher didn't see fit to confide his plans to her but then again they weren’t man and wife... he wasn’t beholden to her for anything.

"She told me to leave and not to return. She said I wasn’t welcome there... that I was sullying my dead wife's memory by wallowing with you and by allowing Church to move into the hacienda. I swear though... I think she was hiding something or someone."

Later that same day Yani had gone to the chabola. Hoping Church might be there and despite knowing he wasn’t she'd taken the Jeep to drive out to Cherry Creek Road. She also had half a mind to give Evalena a scolding for having treated Rancher Ford in such a manner... after all, the man owned the dirt under the girl's fingernails.

The first things she noticed were the cobwebs. They were draped everywhere. The enormous black spiders seemed to take notice of her and for a maddening moment she wondered what it would be like to be attacked by them, pumped full of venom, and wrapped up like a mummy. How long would she live while the life was sucked out of her a little at a time?

She always thought it strange how the spiders seemed to multiply after Evalena moved into the chabola with her and Church. Prior to her sister's arrival it was rare to see any cobwebs at all. But shortly after Evalena appeared on her doorstep the spiders seemed to proliferate.

While she lived at the chabola along with her sister she was able to keep the population down by planting peppermint throughout her many gardens. The spiders hated it. Now she noticed right off that all her gardens were dead... either Evalena had ceased to water them or more likely the spiders had killed them.

She'd rather deal with most anything other than spiders. Snakes and scorpions didn't bother her nearly as much as running headlong into a gigantic cobweb and not knowing if it was full of the eight-legged critters or not.

Despite her consternation over the spiders she parked the Jeep far enough away that she was certain no one in the chabola could hear her approach. Walking up the path to the little shack she mourned the devastation unfurling all around her. Through the tiny windowpane in the door she could see the oil lanterns were lighted inside the shack as the purple hand of deep dusk was just beginning to shadow the land. She didn't knock at the door, however.

In years past even though the land was dry colorful wild flowers had grown in the shade offered by the ash trees she had planted along the rocky path. Yani harvested the flower seeds each autumn and in the spring she sprinkled them in places she knew they liked taking care to water them copiously using buckets to haul water from the creeks out back. Now all that grew was a kind of prickly iron weed and even it looked sickly.

Coming to the copse of dying oak trees she'd planted years ago she surveyed the little cabin from a distance. Instead of colorful flower blossoms and medicinal herbs, creeping vines as thick as her wrists had taken over the yard. The roof on the shack seemed to be sagging in the middle the way she never noticed in the past. The single window had been boarded over on the outside with a piece of crooked and weather-beaten plywood and on the east side of the shack a dark viscous substance seemed to be leaking through the bottom of the wall from the inside.

The indifferent air around the chabola was redolent of spilled sewage, rotting food, and something even more noxious that she couldn’t quite place. She wondered how anyone could live under such harsh conditions.

Within a few minutes and almost like she knew someone was watching Evalena emerged through the front door and stood on the crooked stoop of the chabola peering out over the darkling landscape with that eye of hers. She looked like a teenager. Yani didn't attempt to hide but instead she stood stock still wondering if the girl had seen her or was merely sensing a presence.

She wasn't so close to the chabola that she'd be easily noticed yet Yani was near enough she could hear someone having a coughing fit. The hacking reverberations seemed interminable as the noise echoed off the walls inside. It sounded like an old man yet for some reason the cough reminded her of Billy Ford when he'd been sick as a child and she cared for him.

Even from where she stood Yani could smell the odiferous atmosphere being expelled out the open door of the chabola as if it had been pent up for so long that the stench of decay, death, and disease had expanded beyond the boundaries surrounding it and now it rushed out as if pressurized like the air inside a rent tire hissing to make its escape.

A million thoughts rushed through Yani's mind as she was caught between the desire to rush to the shack to see who was inside and the longing to turn and flee, to put as much space between her and Evalena as possible.

Was it her father?

The man terrified her. Though Evalena had told her of his death, Yani had never believed it. A man like father didn't die so easily... not like her sister said. Evalena was hiding someone inside the chabola... that much was clear. Why else would she have nailed the rotting plywood over the only window?

He'd come looking for her just as she always knew he would. Evalena must have informed him of her whereabouts. She knew it would happen sooner or later... what he'd done to her wasn’t something to be forgotten. He had a purpose.

Staring at the chabola and at Evalena she was too frightened to move, to even breathe. She figured that with only one eye her sister had no depth perception but any small movement would alert the girl to her presence.

Yani wished she had brought the rifle. If she had she could put an end to it all now... she could kill Evalena with one shot and her father with another. There wasn’t another soul around for miles. By the time the crime was discovered whatever evidence she left behind would be scoured clean by the incessant wind blowing fine sand over everything... and the spiders.

Could she do it?

An image arose in her mind's eye of sighting down the rifle scope and at the last second being unable to pull the trigger while Evalena having spotted her came ever closer with a terrible gleam in her eye as she gradually removed the eye patch to reveal what she had been hiding for so many years.

Apparently satisfied that no one was around, Evalena disappeared back into the rank innards of the chabola slamming the door shut behind her as the sound of a heavy bolt being locked in place echoed off the trees. For just a moment Yani was tempted to move closer... to see if she could catch a glimpse inside the shack to spot who it was that was coughing so hard and so long... but she hadn’t the courage.

One question kept running through her mind as she tip toed back to the Jeep: where was Billy? She was sure he was living at the chabola with Evalena... everyone in town said so... it was the latest in a long scourge of gossip being emitted by the old hens who cackled around the diner and the old fools who whispered in the drinking club at night.

The fact that Billy Ford had taken up with an itinerant migrant worker from who knew where was nearly as great of news as Rancher Ford doing the same with the sister and with his wife's body not even cold yet.

Had she the strength Yani thought how she might cast a spell over the entirety of north Texas and damn them all to whatever special hell was awaiting them.

Tree had always been a careful girl, even timid.

Back in high school she suspected that Church might be as smitten with her as she was with him. One time she even tried borrowing a book from the boy but all he did was hand it over without so much as a word. He wouldn’t even raise his head to look at her in the eyes.

He had grown into a strikingly handsome young man, or so she thought. It was clear his mother no longer cut his hair by placing a bowl over the top of his head... he kept his jet black hair greased back with a pleasant smelling pomade though the natural curls always took on a life of their own.

He was a slightly built boy though tall. His complexion was dark yet flawless, his dark eyes were spaced perfectly apart for the slightly aquiline nose that turned up just a smidgen at the tip, and though some boys teased him for being effeminate Church had a way of carrying himself that exuded a rare confidence which only served to further confuse Tree. Why didn’t Church have clouds of girls flocking around him like all the football jocks?

Once she'd taken a chance and confided about her feelings for Church to her older sister, Beth, hoping to gather some advice on interacting with him or with any boy for that matter. Most of her friends were going out on dates but all she ever did was sit at home dreaming of a life that seemed infinitely better but was as remote as the dark side of the moon. But Beth had only scoffed.

"Real boys don’t like aggressive girls, Tree. If he was actually attracted to you like you think he is, Church would find a way to make things happen. I think you're just fooling yourself... it could be that he really is gay... maybe the reason he doesn’t have anything to do with you is because he dislikes girls."

Beth was four years her senior, as pretty as any actress, and always had a parade of boys tailing behind her though she never seemed to take up with any of them on a regular basis. Tree remembered when her mother and father had eagerly planned how Beth would attend college but instead she used the money she had saved for school and bought into the only used book store in the county called Time and Again which she managed together with a friend of hers named Allison Johns.

Mother was devastated at the news. She refused to attend the grand opening and forbade Tree from going as well. At first she thought father might allow her to go with him but in order to ameliorate peace in the household he did as he'd always done and followed his wife's orders by not being present either.

One day just before summer vacation Tree cut her last class at school and had gone to the store to see if she could find any good books to read... the library was hopelessly inadequate in Guthrie... most of the books she wanted to read were banned by the blue-haired old lady brigade who oversaw the library board.

Most of all, however, she had gone to the store in order to see her sister Beth once again. Tree missed her. The girl hadn't been home ever since mother had taken all Beth's clothes and thrown them out the window onto the front lawn as the neighbors gawked and the cars driving by slowed way down as if to witness the spectacle.

Tree was soon to learn that she'd misunderstood the scope of Beth's leaving... that it had less to do with her refusal to attend the university and more to do with something her sister simply couldn’t change.

She remembered how it was one of those hot Texas late May afternoons when the sun was a blowtorch in the sky and the heat seemed to boil right up out of the concrete upon which she walked and how all the people she passed along the way seemed to be wilting before her eyes.

The sign in the bookstore window said open and she heard the air conditioner above the door running so dodging the water dripping from it she walked inside both to seek relief from the heat and to see Beth. There was no one behind the counter—she assumed perhaps they were in back or on lunch—so she started browsing through the aisles of books noticing they were arranged alphabetically by author.

She loved the smell of old books. Some were hard covers but the majority seemed to be paperbacks with reams of the kind of fluffy romance novels she detested. She wanted something juicy... the forbidden fruit of knowledge that lurked at the edges of society daring her to take a look.

She'd heard rumors of a man who lived as a vagabond in such places like Paris and Corfu and how he'd written books about those adventures and of his sexual conquests and how his novels were so explicit that they'd been banned in most countries around the world but he kept on writing them anyway.

It seemed a shame that a man like that had the audacity to die before she was even born. She would've enjoyed meeting him, being his plaything if he liked, and then gone on her way like none of it had ever happened. As she walked dreaming down to the 'M' aisle to see if she could find any of Henry Miller's books she heard a sound she couldn’t quite make out.

At the end of the corridor formed by rows of books she saw a brown curtain partly drawn over a doorway to a small cubby hole or perhaps a broom closet. She hadn’t been snooping... not really... but that was where the sound seemed to be coming from so she peeked through the curtain.

Beth and Allison Johns were kissing and moaning with the pleasure of touching each other... that was what she was hearing, the sounds of love. She'd seen mother and father kiss but not like that. The two girls seemed intent upon devouring one another and the way they caressed each other's body was the most erotic thing Tree had ever seen. Within seconds they'd nearly undressed one another and Henry Miller was promptly forgotten.

She stood transfixed watching and wondering if she should attempt to walk away but fearing the floorboards under her feet might creak and reveal her presence. Just then a lady customer who must have just walked in called out from up front of the store.

"Hello! Is anyone here?"

In a scurry of clothes and zippers Beth and Allison put themselves back together as Tree faded back into the darkness afforded by the towering aisles full of books. She'd never revealed that she knew Beth's secret but from that moment on she stopped asking her sister for advice about boys just as she realized the true reason for mother's wrath and father's apathy over her sister's decision to forego college and instead go into business with Allison Johns.

A few months later, Beth vanished without a trace. Allison Johns told a tale of how the girl simply disappeared after they found a strange object in the desert... the girls had apparently gone hiking, ran out of water, and became disoriented. By the time Allison made it back to civilization she was alone. The authorities treated Beth Patterson's disappearance as plain bad luck.

Allison Johns had apparently gone insane from her ordeal. She kept telling anyone who'd listen about how she and Beth had found something strange out there in the desert and that when the girl touched the object she'd abruptly vanished.

The doctor examining Allison said how her delusions were caused by acute dehydration... that under great stress the girl's brain began to imagine scenarios not in keeping with reality... that Allison Johns was extremely fortunate to have found her way out of the desert. The odds were that Beth Patterson wasn't as lucky and ended up succumbing to the heat.

Upon hearing the news of Beth's disappearance Tree went to Santa Fe where Allison Johns was convalescing making the trip with her father though mother stayed behind in Guthrie. The woman seemed angry about what had happened even though everyone said it was only an accident.

Each day they were there Tree had made it a point to visit Allison in her hospital room while she recuperated from her ordeal while father was off talking to the police and others, giving them information on Beth in hopes of locating her.

Allison had slept most of the first day and part of the second when she woke with a tiny scream and glancing about the room she'd grabbed hold of Tree's hand like it was a life preserver thrown to her upon an endless ocean. Tree couldn’t help but notice that Allison's touch was not unpleasant.

"I still have it, Beth... don't worry, I hid it so no one else can ever find it."

"I'm not Beth, Allison... I'm her sister, Tree."

"Oh no... she's really gone then..."

For a moment Allison seemed befuddled as if she didn’t know whether to believe her or not but then she let go of Tree's hand and the tears loosened in her eyes as she wept and wailed over the loss she'd suffered.

"What happened to Beth, Allison? Where were you at when she disappeared?"

"Oh Tree... we'd just gone off the old logging trail leading to Monument Rock. It was right where the map said it would be... buried under the east end of a rock they call the Thumb. I couldn’t get the box to open but Beth did."

"What are you talking about, Allison? What box... what map?"

"That's why we were in New Mexico... we found a treasure map inside one of those old books we bought at an auction. We thought it'd be fun to try and find the treasure... I never dreamed it was real."

"What did you find, Allison? Where is it?"

"We had a friend of ours help us with the translation... the book seemed old and it was written by hand and in Spanish. The first line was written in Latin, however, and I still remember what the translation was...

"Limitless life, the perfect possession."

"But what does that mean, Allison? What was it you were looking for?"

"Apparently the object we were searching for was something called the first material. From what we could decipher, it exists outside of time and yet it exists as a whole at any time."

"I'm not sure what you're talking about, Allison."

"The object exists all at once. What we see in the world—and of it—is only a representation inside our brains. The normal objects we see in the world are transitory... they exist within a flow of electrons within our brains, one after another... nothing is permanent... at least nothing except the thing we were looking for."

"But what was it, Beth?"

"The object we were seeking is called a piedra... that means stone in Spanish. The book said it looks like a rock but isn’t solid... but it isn’t exactly a liquid either. I couldn’t figure that part out but when I saw it, I realized what that meant.

"What did it look like, Allison?"

"You'd have to see it for yourself, Tree. It looked something like a stone, just like the book said, but it glistened like liquid. If you breathed upon it, it shimmered. I got the distinct feeling that whatever it was, it was alive."

"Allison... please tell me what happened to Beth."

"Oh... you know I believed you were Beth for a moment... you two look so much alike. I thought that I just had a nightmare... but she's really gone, isn't she... she still has it... she still has that thing we found together..."

When Tree informed the authorities about the location Allison had described to her a search ensued but the terrain was so rugged the authorities soon had to rescue the rescuers. Between the rattle snakes and the scorpions, the paths all leading nowhere, and the relentlessly hot and dry weather, the hunt for Beth Patterson was called off and never resumed.

Allison Johns came back to Guthrie, shut down the bookstore she and Beth had run together, sold her home, and went west. Some people said she mentioned going to California while others thought maybe it was Oregon. Either way, the girl never returned to Texas and Beth was never found.

Had Allison Johns made up the story about finding something in the desert? Most of the townspeople thought so... rumors abounded that she had something to do with Beth Patterson's disappearance and had only used the excuse of becoming lost as a convenient way of allaying the suspicion that would be layered upon her should the truth ever become known.

Where was Beth? Was she still alive somewhere? Or was she in a shallow grave? And if in fact they did find a strange object in the desert, where was it? What was it? Did Allison Johns have it as most people surmised? Or had Beth taken it as Allison said she did? Until Beth Patterson was found—alive or dead—Tree supposed the answers would elude everyone.

When Church walked into the diner on a particularly hot Texas morning she couldn’t believe her eyes. Talk around town was that the boy had turned bad—just like Allison Johns... and how like her he always had it in him—and planned the deaths of both his father and his brother so that he and his mother might inherit the Triple Six.

Even the sheriff had seen fit to mount an investigation into the matter, especially after the shack where Church lived had been leveled by an explosion. Lately the talk in town seemed to center around the Ford family becoming involved in drug smuggling and how the Mexican cartel might have come calling over an unsettled account.

Most of the gossip seemed to issue forth from the direction of Big John Gerhard who she knew had always held a grudge against Church. Tree had been on board the bus that long ago day and saw exactly what happened. Big John had no cause to blame Church for his shaming... if anyone was at fault it was Big John himself what with picking on a boy half his size. If Billy Ford hadn’t stepped in to stop it she was ready to do so herself even though she wasn’t any bigger than Church.

Now Tree knew if she didn’t act fast Church would be shown to a cell in the county jail, if only for his own good. The news of the deaths of Rancher, Lorraine, and Billy Ford hit Guthrie hard. The Fords were known as people who could be trusted and who were always ready to lend a helping hand. If indeed there was a Mexican death squad in the area Church and his mother would doubtlessly be the next victims.