Authors: Baxter Clare Trautman
“If he was so broke, why'd everyone let him keep tabs?”
“He was always good for them. When he got paid, he'd settle up, then start a new one.”
“You didn't have much money growing up?”
“We didn't. But we got by.”
Frank nods, commiserating more than Sal knows. “How'd you feel about your aunt having him declared dead?”
“I didn't care one way or the other. It made sense by then.”
“You must have been pretty angry to be so ambivalent.”
Sal shrugs. “Maybe. It was a long time ago.”
A bat swoops and glides at the edge of the clearing where fire and night meet. Frank would rather focus on the tiny aerialist but dutifully asks if her father always stayed with his uncle.
“Usually, but sometimes his cousins took him in if his uncle kicked him out.”
“Why would he do that?”
“Because he'd get drunk and mean. His wife wasn't very patient with that in her house.”
Frank retrieves a notebook from her back pocket. It is bent and damp. The little pencil stuck in the binding is snapped in two. She turns the book so that it catches the light and scribbles the names of cousins and spouses. When she looks up, the eastern sky is glowing over the outline of trees.
“What's that light?”
Sal looks where she points. “The moon, silly.”
The sky continues to brighten, such that it seems dawn must be coming. As they watch, a full white moon creeps over the backs of the trees. It rises imperceptibly yet soon clears its leafy moorings and drifts into the sky.
“I don't know that I've ever seen the moon come up.”
“Never?”
“I must have. I guess it just looks different in the city, like a Hollywood prop.”
Placing another log on the fire, Sal says, “I take it you're spending the night.”
“I should really get back.”
That is Frank's cue to get up and leave, but she stays in the comfortable Adirondack chair. A pair of bats dive and twirl in the swaying light. The moon sails farther into the night and Cicero wags his tail, deep in a dream.
“I'd like to stay.”
Sal nods. “Inside or out?'
“What?”
“You can sleep inside if you want, but I sleep out here.”
Frank looks around. “Where?”
Sal pats the dirt with her bare foot. “Right here.”
“On the
ground
?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Why?”
“I don't like sleeping inside. I won't go in until the weather forces me. Try it. I'll lay down some sheepskins for you. It's cozy as can be.”
“Sounds hard as can be.”
Sal stands over her. “Your choice. What'll it be?”
“What about snakes?”
“I've been sleeping outdoors all my life and have yet to wake up with one.”
“What about that one under my chair last time? It must have relatives somewhere.”
“Tell you what,” Sal says walking to the cabin, “I'll lay out a bed and you can try it. If you don't like it, you can go inside.”
Frank asks Bone, “You wouldn't let a snake get me, would you?” She can make out his black stub wiggling. “Is that a yes or a no?”
The screen door bangs. Sal strides into the circle of light with an armful of woolly skins. She drops two by Frank's chair and two by her own. A second trip to the cabin produces a pair of sleeping bags. She arranges the thick sheepskins end to end, unrolls a bag over them, and pats the pile. “Lie down.”
Frank casts a dubious eye but oozes from her chair onto the makeshift bed. It is surprisingly well-cushioned and she stretches along its length.
“How's it feel?”
“Not bad.”
“I'll get you a pillow.”
Frank lies back under the impartial night. Bone edges onto the fleece, and she wonders what in hell she is doing. Enthralled by the land and all its enticements, she's abandoned all perspective and persistently overlooks the possibility that Sal may be implicated in, or actually responsible for, Domenic Saladino's murder. Instead of conducting a professional homicide investigation, she's acting like a kid invited to her big sister's slumber party. Worse, she doesn't seem inclined to stop herself.
Bone sighs and snuggles closer. Frank pets him, vowing to turn in her retirement papers as soon as she gets back. The wind waltzes with the fire, the stars keep time, and the creek sings from its long and wandering bed. Frank is asleep before Sal can bring the pillow.
She wakes twice in the night. The first time she is afraid, but Bone presses against her and she goes back to sleep. The second time, she lies staring at the sky. She finds Orion's star-studded belt, saddened that she knows only one of the hundreds of constellations above. Hands pillowed beneath her head, she studies the stars, wondering what else she hasn't bothered to learn. And if it's too late.
Dawn begins as a grayness less than night. The sky becomes an orange smear over the black outline of land, then a translucent, eggshell blue. Plants take form in the dark light, all the same shade of muddy brown. As orange and blue fade to the white of an aged eye, the greenery grows distinct; olive and yellow leaves appear, tipped with sepia and red. Farther away, oak and chaparral and pine assume their blue-green mantle. Remnant patches of night cling to their feet.
Sal is awake, watching too, and Frank asks, “Is it always this beautiful?”
“Always.”
“But different. Every morning.”
“Yes.”
Quail cluck down the hill. Bone stands and spreads his forelegs flat to the ground. His butt wiggles in the air. He comes to Frank and she lets him greet her with a lick to her check. Dragging an arm from her sleeping bag, she scratches his chest. “Good job keeping the snakes away.”
Pressure squeezes Frank's chest. She wonders if it's a heart attack, then realizes she is just happy. Ridiculously, rarely happy. Yet close on the heels of her joy comes sorrow. Dawn's palette, Bone's affection, the cool silhouette of mountainsâthey are gifts she can't keep. Borrowed
presents she has no more claim to than a street urchin looking in the window of a warm, well-lit home.
Sal slides from her bag, prompting the dogs into a tail-wagging dance. All four of them stretch and shake the night from their bones. Frank recognizes it as their morning ritual and rolls toward the mountains, feeling very much the outsider. Hunkering deeper into her bag, she studies the sharp-planed faces etched beyond the barn. Strands of mist filigree the canyons and hollows like strands of hair. Frank wants to tuck the gray strands neatly back behind ridge and knob. She wonders if there is an inch of the mountains that Sal hasn't traveled.
Sal bangs out of the cabin carrying the dog bowls and sets them down. She is about to go back inside but stops with a hand on the door. “Do you have to leave right away?”
“Not necessarily.”
“Good. Get dressed. I want to show you something.”
Frank covers her surprise. “Does it involve horses?”
“Not today.”
“My ass thanks you.”
Sal smiles and bangs back inside. Frank eases her saddle-sore bones from the sleeping bag. Getting dressed is easy, as she fell asleep with most of her clothes on. She is tying her tennis shoes when Sal plunks a mug next to her.
“Where are we going?”
“Not far. I won't keep you long.”
“That doesn't answer my question.”
“Neither will my telling you where we're going. Come on.”
Frank makes a token, guilt-induced protest. “You know I'm supposed to be investigating your father's murder, right?”
“Aren't you?”
“Hardly,” Frank murmurs into her coffee.
Sal leads straight up the hill behind the cabin along a clear but crooked trail defined by chamise and boulder. Sweating and breathing hard, Frank leaves her cup on a rock and struggles to keep pace. She thinks she is in good shape, but Sal puts the lie to that. Just as she wonders if riding wouldn't have been better after all, Sal veers onto an outcrop. The ledge is a couple yards wide but tangled with thick
scrub. Watching Sal inch sideways against the prickly brush, she gauges that a tumble from the ledge wouldn't kill her but it'd be damn uncomfortable.
“How 'bout I wait here?” she calls.
Concentrating on her footwork, Sal waves for her to follow. The dogs have already crawled through the underbrush, out of sight. Frank debates if crawling after them would be too cowardly. Sal rounds a clump of brush and disappears too.
“Shit.”
Frank steps onto the ledge. Manzanita and buckbrush poke her belly, but she clutches the shrubs and toes the edge of the shelf. Salt stings her eyes and the tough little branches scratch her arms, but Frank clings to them as if they are her best friends. After a couple dozen feet, the ledge suddenly widens into a long, bare balcony. Sal sits with her legs dangling over the edge and the dogs lie panting in a strip of shade at the base of the cliff behind them. Frank glances at the smooth wall, then squints at a tall, crooked gash concealed by a spindly bush. She steps closer. Her mouth goes dry and her heart beats in her ears.
“This is a cave.”
“It is.”
The dizziness comes and Frank grabs at a buckbrush. Thorns pierce her palm, but she doesn't notice. Afraid she will stumble off the ledge, Frank's last conscious thought is to fall to her knees. When she comes to, she is rocking on them. She hears a woman keening. Realizes she is making the sound and stops. Sal squats on her heels in front of her. She appears concerned but not alarmed. For some reason, that relieves Frank. She runs her tongue over cracked lips tasting of blood and wipes her hand over her eyes. The sting of sweat brings her fully back. The dogs pant in the shade, the sky remains an impassive blue, and scrubby little trees still guard the cave.
“What is this place?”
“Come. I'll show you.”
Sal helps her stand. Frank lets her part the bushes and lead her to the passage. The entrance is tight, and they squeeze through sideways. The southing autumn sun filters in behind them, illuminating painted
deer running on the walls between leaping dogs and banded snakes. Charcoal birds soar across the limed ceiling down the opposite side. Chalked lizards and many-legged bugs climb from the bottom of the cave. Painted in ghostly daubs of black and white, a wispy, winged human curves from floor to ceiling. Its head is beaked and fiercely red.
High over the crack are a row of handprints. Dimly aware she shouldn't, that the art is fragile, Frank stretches to place her palm in the center of an ancient hand. It fits perfectly. She lays her cheek upon the cool, rough stone. Her arm vibrates like a tuning fork.
She whispers into the rock what she has seen: women and children huddled in the cave. Air made solid with smoke and ash. Coughing and gagging made almost inaudible over the crackle of brush and roar of fire. Parched skin cracking and oozbing in the searing heat. Lips splitting and tongues swelling in spitless mouths.
Sal's hand is on her shoulder. She says, “You see all that?”
Too big to slink through the skinny entrance, Cicero whines alone outside the cave. Frank drops her arm. The thrumming ceases. She rubs her hand. It's as cold as if it's been packed in ice. She squeezes from the cave, blinking in the mellow autumn light. Bone pads behind and Cicero greets him, leaping and fawning. Kook prances around the big dogs on his hind legs. Dust lifts in the air, like the ash that once sifted in the cave. Frank sits on the edge of the ledge, Sal beside her. They look out over the cabin far below and the meander of creek and sunny field, and brooding over them all, the watchful Lucias.
Sal rolls a cigarette. “What else do you see?”
With rushing relief, Frank describes all the visions. When she finishes, Sal passes the cigarette. Frank takes it with a trembling hand. “It's like they're are all related to the land here. Even in Morro Bay it was connected, the way the harbor was sheltered by the very last of the mountains.”
Sal nods and rolls another cigarette. “Angelo Saladinoâthe first Saladino to live hereâmarried an Esselen woman.”
“Cassie told me. Said the woman was born where the cabin is now.”
“That's right.” Sal smiles. “I'm surprised she remembered. At any rate, every spring the Esselen burned around the oak trees to get rid
of bugs that might otherwise infest the acorn crop that was a goodly part of their diet.
“One spring the men went out and set the fires as usual, but the wind shifted halfway through the burn and started blowing back to the camp, where all the women and children were. The girl who would eventually become Angelo's mother-in-law was the first to see the smoke bending toward the camp. She heard the men shouting, trying to contain it, and when she realized it was out of control she ran around the camp and gathered everyone and herded them here. The fire overran the camp not long after she got everyone into the cave. Some of the men died, but everyone in the cave lived, and for as long as the people were alive they left gifts hereâdeer, quail, baskets of acorns, whatever they had. The girl became the leader of her clan, and legend has it that when the Spaniards began rounding up the Esselen for slave labor, she fled into the mountains with the last of her people.”