Rainbow's End (48 page)

What if the death of one of them—
only
one of them—had been planned and the other deaths were accidental? Part of the whole picture, yes, but not part of the original plan. Not coincidence, but accident, an unlucky confluence of events. Frances Hamilton and Helen Hawes meeting accidentally in Santa Fe; both of them coming across Angela Hope, another accidental meeting. One of them had been meant to die and he chose Angela Hope as the target; Nell Hawes and Fanny Hamilton had died (metaphorically speaking) from the terrorist's stray bullet. The deaths of Nell and Fanny were only afterthoughts.

“Make a good mum, you would.” Gabe grinned for the first time that afternoon.

Rosella believed that Mary came out here to the middle of this desert in order to commune with nature or to meditate. That was a laugh. The last thing nature wanted was to commune with the world of men, especially during the tourist season. Mary could think better out here where the flat land stretched away as far as the eye could see.

She sat on a smooth rock by a clump of rice grass, looking out over the arroyo. Sunny lay beside her with his head on his paws, his eyes darting between the massed rocks and the piñon bushes, tracking mice or ground squirrels. She let people think that Sunny was part silver-gray German shepherd and part something else. She was vague about the something else, hoping that would explain Sunny's extremely long legs. Sunny was a coyote. She had found him when he was a pup and could hardly believe her eyes when he squirmed out from a den in the hillside. What had happened to his family? Coyotes never abandoned their children. Unlike humans, who would do it in a heartbeat. Many knew that coyotes couldn't be tamed altogether, that deep down was the raw spirit that could exert itself. “
Attani
” was what Rosella called it: danger.

She remembered passing a sheep ranch once where there must have been a hundred coyote hides looped all along the fence. An old Navajo had told her once that if you skin a coyote, you release a powerful spirit. And she believed it. There was something about Sunny that was magical. The way he could disappear and then as suddenly reappear. He'd be there, then he wouldn't. Always he came back to her but she couldn't for the life of her explain how he managed this trick. Rosella said “that coyote” was a magician in his past life. Ghost dog, Angela had called him. Rosella called him
Trickster.
What would become of Sunny if she had to go and live with foster parents?

That social worker. How could anyone take
anyone
seriously with a name like “Bibbi”? What sort of grown-up would allow herself to be hampered by a childhood nickname like that? Babyhood nickname, even. But the social worker (whose name was really Barbara) seemed to think it was cute. Now it appeared that Mary Dark Hope's own future depended on somebody who called herself Bibbi and asked questions like “What do you want to be when you grow up?”

Alive. That's what she wanted to be; that's what she'd told the social worker. As far as Mary was concerned, she'd been born grownup. She was the one who had to call up the electric company when the lights went out. Rosella would go around wringing her hands and praying; Angie would just get out candles and sit in the dark meditating.

She wouldn't do it, that's all. She wouldn't go live with total strangers.

Mary Dark Hope put her head in her hands.

Now she came here more often and stayed longer since Angela's death. When the news had first been told her, she must have gone into a sort of fugue state, a state of nonfeeling.

Sometimes she saw her, saw Angela; she saw Angela walking toward her. Sometimes she would be called from sleep, and Angela would appear as if a distance away. And then would walk toward her, coming closer and closer, but never within touching distance. Angela was always wearing the same loose bluish-greenish dress that tie-dyeing had made look watery and always there would be that ankle bracelet she wore giving off the faint tinkle of bells. At other times Mary would see her out here, walking toward her from a distance, shimmering through the electric heat.

Mary had never told anyone this, first because no one would believe it, except Rosella, and she'd believe it in the wrong way. Rosella was still crying—sad that Angela's body was lying on a slab in another country, when she should have been buried the day after she died. Also, Angela's “wind spirit,” her
pinane
, was to inhabit her home for four days following her death. Rosella felt wretched and Mary (who didn't believe a word of it) had tried to cheer her up by saying that her sister's
pinane
could easily make the flight from England to the U.S. in a lot shorter time than a 747. Rosella was not comforted by this remark. Second because she didn't believe it herself—which
was another reason for not telling Rosella. It was a making of her own imagination, she knew. A wish. A trick. But Rosella would start with her herbs and roots and sacred incense, would start brewing and burning and go down on her knees before her own private little chapel.

No, Mary didn't want to give Rosella any visions to chew over.

The arroyo was flanked by a grove of low pines which Sunny was now cautiously penetrating. For what, she didn't know; she had seen no movement over there. Imagine what it would be like to have the attention span of a dog or a cat. Especially a cat. Cats could hold perfectly still for eons and focus on something a person had no awareness of.

And then she thought: they were like that, the scientists at the Santa Fe Institute. They could focus on a concept for hours at a time, like cats. Mary loved the idea of a place that existed purely, and only, for thought, for people to think. Smart people went there to think. This amazed her because so much of the world was simply thoughtless. Imagine getting your living by sitting around all day thinking, like Dr. Anders.

Mary cupped her chin in her hands and thought about Dr. Anders. And Angela. She supposed he must be—must have been—in love with Angela, the way he hung around in the shop. Angie had certainly been in love with him. Mary could see that.
That
didn't surprise her. But
his
returning the feeling did, because Angela was never much of a thinker. She
appeared
to be, what with all of her meditating and reading and Sedona trips. All of this Earth's-center stuff was about as meaningful as walking around with a dowsing rod looking for water. Though dowsers, she had to admit, served some practical purpose, since they sometimes found what they were looking for. Angie was not even that practical, though. Angie was not really very self-reliant; she waited for things to come her way, rather than going in search of them.

Mary stopped this critical line of thinking, feeling ashamed. She wanted, vaguely, to atone for it, and decided she would make a prayer-stick, just a rude one, and gathered two of the twigs from the ground. She should have willow sticks, but there weren't any. Then she searched around for a feather, found only a buzzard's, and decided it would have to do. It would be a really shabby prayer-stick, but since (according to Rosella) women weren't supposed to make them anyway, only men were, she supposed it wouldn't have any power, and
went ahead and and made a cross. The cross was held down with a small stone. Since she herself did not believe in the power of prayer, she would let the prayer stick do the work for her, that is, if there were any power in it at all.

All of Angela's mysticism—the aura balancers, the channelers—passed right by Mary like smoke. But what the Indians believed, that was different. Like them, Mary Dark Hope looked at nature from a materialistic standpoint. Whatever was spirit was connected to the material world. The Zuñi were practical in their offerings—clothes and food. It was easier to believe in supplying something basic and needful than in Angela's praying to a dolled-up version of Our Lady of Guadalupe. Mary pulled a sandwich bag from her pocket, it contained some of Rosella's jeweled cornmeal, meal mixed with bits of turquoise and coral. Mary didn't know what to do with it, but she liked looking at it.

She stretched backwards over the rock, keeping her feet on the ground and her head arched back and touching earth on the other end. She liked to feel the blood rush to her head; she liked to see the world upside down. What would she look like to someone passing by (as if anyone would, out here)? An acrobat? A dancer? None of which she wanted to be. Or would she look like someone having convulsions or a fit? No, she didn't think so. She stretched her arms out and back so that the palms of her hands were flat on the land. This she imagined was the pose of a gymnast. She hoped Sunny wouldn't think something was wrong and lumber over and start licking her face. He didn't. She could hear Sunny away somewhere scratching and digging and wondered what treasure he had found; Sunny was always burying things and then digging them up.

It reminded her of Angie, going off on some dig when she was taking that anthropology class. No, archaeology. Anthropology was something else. Anthropology, archaeology. They both sounded boring to Mary. Though she liked this particular rock. It was almost comfortable. And wrenching her body around like this kept her mind free of painful thoughts and images. The rock supported the small of her back. She lifted her arms and settled them across her tilted-back chest. Almost comfortable. Well, as comfortable as a rock could be. But she was fond of this rock; she considered it hers. Whenever she and Sunny came out here, she always ended up on this rock. She liked its changeable grays, its ripples, its indentations, the microscopic river—that is,
she thought of the crevice that circled the rock as a tiny riverbed, after she had watched rain run into it, narrow as a needle at some points, widening out near the bottom. And she would have loved to think she herself had worn this seat smooth on top, which was perfect for sitting; but, of course, she hadn't. Weather had worn it away.

Then she started in thinking about rocks. Rocks, trees, the piñon bushes. Was there some sort of intelligence connected to them? And would Dr. Anders call this a “deep” problem? He had explained the various kinds of problems. The first was a problem that any fellow scientist trained in the field could solve; the second kind was the sort that made you famous and won awards; but a “deep” problem was the sort that confounded even a brilliant scientist and took a long, long time to solve. It went deep into the universe.

Dr. Anders was the one person in Santa Fe who treated Mary herself like an intelligent human being. He did not talk down to her, not even when he was talking about his theories, his work. And
that
was really hard to understand. Too complex. Well, that was the whole idea. Complexity. They were all sitting over there at the Institute on Canyon Road thinking about Complexity and Chaos. The edge of chaos. She had read the copy of the book he'd given Angela. Read it twice, but could understand only a few sentences here and there.
That's more than most people do
, Dr. Anders had said with a laugh. But Angela had read only the first few pages before giving up on it. “Too cerebral,” she'd said. Mary had been surprised by this: it was, after all, Dr. Anders's
work.
Shouldn't she try to understand it? She went back to wondering why he was in love with Angie. Especially since he seemed well acquainted with Angie's faults and didn't mind letting her know. When Mary had told him her sister had a reputation for being “too dreamy,” Dr. Anders had laughed and said, “Too lazy, you mean.” Mary was surprised he'd seen this. Not reading his book was really sheer laziness on Angie's part.

He was always around: in the shop on Canyon Road, at their house sometimes for dinner. Which Mary didn't mind at all. She hoped, though, that he wasn't being nice to her just to get in good with Angela. But she didn't think so. He was too sincere. He was too
real.
He was sort of like Sunny over there, waiting with incredible patience for something to appear out of those rocks, those trees. Other people she knew—Malcolm Corey, for instance—seemed to be wispy, like smoke you could drive your fist through.

There was something about Malcolm Corey that was more sad than silly, she supposed. He really desperately wanted to be a movie star or at least a second lead. But he got only these tiny, walk-on parts that never amounted to anything. And he was a terrible painter on top of it. In a way she had to admire him for at least trying to do something else when it was obvious he'd never make it in the movies, even if the “something else” was no more practical. Anyone who could hold a paintbrush seemed to wind up in Santa Fe. If you stood in the middle of the square and threw a stone in any direction, you'd hit another gallery. Yet, she could understand why painters came here. As much as Mary deplored all of its commercialism, Santa Fe and the desert around it had a fundamental beauty that no matter of glitzy galleries, and carved coyotes, and too much turquoise jewelry could ruin. She loved the long stretches of umber desert, the dark mountains surrounding it, the magnificent sunsets, the light like shaved glass. Sometimes she thought if she flicked her finger at the air, the light would ring like crystal.

She had no desire to be an artist. What she herself wanted to do, finally, was work at the Santa Fe Institute. Only, you had to be some kind of genius to get into it. Her grades in school were As, but she didn't think that qualified her as a genius. They were As because she'd figured out long ago it was as easy to get good grades as bad ones. It was as easy to hand in your English paper on time as it was to hand it in late. You had to hand it in sometime, didn't you? It was easier because then people let you alone. No principal after you, no teacher on your back, no family railing at you to do better.

Mary swung herself into a sitting position and saw Sunny was gone again. But where?

She worked at Schell's Pharmacy two days a week, minimum wage, sometimes at the soda fountain, sometimes delivering prescriptions at the end of the day on her bike. It was boring and she disliked Dolly Schell, and was quite aware Dolly felt the same way about her. No love lost, probably just because she was Angela's sister and she hated Angela. Insofar as Mary could figure, she always had, for as long as Mary had known Dolly, yet Angela was unaware of this.