“I’m doing home health care. Whatever he stole he kept. Killing himself was the one good idea he come up with in the last thirty years. At least it’s kept the government from garnishing my wages, what little they are. I been through all this with the other guy that called, and we have to wait for his death to be confirmed before I get no benefits. If I know Ray, he’s on the bottom of the Tuolumne River, just to fuck with my head. I wish I could have seen him one more time to tell him I gave his water skis and croquet set to Goodwill. If the bank hadn’t taken back his airplane, I would have lost my house and been sleeping in my car. Too bad you didn’t meet Ray. He was an A-to-Z crumb bum.”
“I’m terribly sorry to hear about your husband,” David said mechanically.
“I don’t think the government is terribly sorry to hear about anything. You reading this off a card?”
“No, this is just a follow-up to make sure your file stays intact until you receive the benefits you’re entitled to.”
“I already have the big one: picturing Ray in hell with his ass en fuego.”
“Ah, you speak a bit of Spanish, Mrs. Coelho?”
“Everybody in Modesto speaks a bit of Spanish. Where you been all your life?”
“Washington, DC,” David said indignantly.
“That explains it,” Mrs. Coelho said, and hung up.
Of course he had no car when we met, David thought. No need to leave a paper trail by renting cars or buying tickets on airplanes. He’d got done all he needed to get done on the Modesto library computers, where he and Morsel, two crooks, had found each other and gone into business without ever laying eyes on each other.
Before heading to Billings, Morsel had told David how to get to the Indian smallpox burial ground to look for beads. Otherwise, there was nothing to do around here. He wasn’t interested until he discovered the liquor cabinet and by then it was early evening. He found a bottle marked Hoopoe Schnapps, with a picture of a bird on its label, and gave it a try: “Bottoms up.” It went straight to his head. After several swigs, he was unable to identify the bird but he was very happy. The label said that the drink contained mirabelles, and David thought, Hey, I’m totally into mirabelles.
As he headed for the burial ground, David was tottering a bit. Rounding the equipment shed, he nearly ran into Weldon Case, who walked by without speaking or apparently seeing him. Behind the ranch buildings, a cow trail led into the prairie, then wound toward a hillside spring that didn’t quite reach the surface, visible only by the greenery above it. Just below that was the place that Morsel had told him about, pockmarked with anthills. The ants, Morsel claimed, carried the beads to the surface, but you had to hunt for them.
David sat down among the mounds and was soon bitten through his pants. He jumped to his feet and swept the ants away, then crouched, peering and picking at the anthills. His thighs soon ached from squatting, but then he found a speck of sky blue in the dirt, a bead. He clasped it tightly in one hand while stirring with the other and flicking away ants. He didn’t think about the bodies in the ground beneath him. By the time it was too dark to see, his palm was filled with Indian beads and he felt elevated and still drunk.
As he passed the equipment shed, he made out first the silhouette of Weldon Case’s Stetson and then, very close, the face of Weldon himself, who gazed at him before speaking in a low voice. “You been in the graves, ain’t you?”
“Yes, to look for beads.”
“You ought not to have done that, feller.”
“Oh? But Morsel said—”
“Look up there at the stars.”
“I don’t understand.”
Weldon reached high over his head. “That’s the crow riding the water snake,” he said, and turned back into the dark.
David was frightened. He went to the house and got into bed as quickly as he could, anxious for the alcohol to fade. He pulled the blanket up under his chin, despite the warmth of the night, and watched a moth batting against an image of the moon in the window. When he was nearly asleep, he saw Morsel’s headlights wheel across the ceiling, then turn off. He listened for the car doors, but it was nearly ten minutes before they opened and closed. He rolled close to the wall and pretended to be asleep, while the front door opened quietly. Once the reverberation of the screen-door spring had died down, there was whispering that came into the bedroom. He felt a shadow cross his face as someone peered down at him. Soon the sound of muffled copulation filled the room, stopped for the time it took to raise a window, then resumed. David listened more and more intently, until Ray said, in a clear voice, “Dave, you want some of this?”
David stuck to his feigned sleep until Morsel laughed, got up, and walked out with her clothes under her arm. “Night, Ray. Sweet dreams.”
The door shut and, after a moment, Ray spoke: “What could I do, Dave? She was after my weenie like a chicken after a june bug.” Snorts, and, soon after, snoring.
Morsel stood in the doorway of the house, taking in the early sun and smoking a cigarette. She wore an old flannel shirt over what looked like a body stocking that revealed a lazily winking camel toe. Her eyes followed her father while he crossed the yard very slowly. “Look,” she said, as David stepped up. “He’s wetting his pants. When he ain’t wetting his pants, he walks pretty fast. It’s just something he enjoys.”
Weldon came up and looked at David, trying to remember him. He said, “This ain’t much of a place to live. My folks moved us out here. We had a nice little ranch at Coal Bank Landing, on the Missouri, but one day it fell in the river. Morsel, I’m uncomfortable.”
“Go inside, Daddy. I’ll get you a change of clothes.”
Once the door had shut behind him, David said, “Why in the world do you let him fly that airplane?”
“It’s all he knows. He flew in the war and dusted crops. He’ll probably kill himself in the damn thing.”
“What’s he do up there?”
“Looks for his cows.”
“I didn’t know he had cows.”
“He don’t. They all got sold years ago. But he’ll look for them long as he’s got fuel.”
Morsel turned back to David on her way inside. “I can’t make heads or tails of your friend Ray,” she said. “He was coming on to me the whole time at the cage fights, then he takes out a picture of his wife and tells me she’s the greatest piece of ass he ever had.”
“Huh. What’d you say to that?”
“I said, Ray, she must’ve had a snappin’ pussy because she’s got a face that would stop a clock. He didn’t like that too much. So I punched him in the shoulder and told him he hadn’t seen nothing yet. What’d you say your name was?”
“I’m David.”
“Well, Dave, Ray says you mean to throw in with us. Is that a fact?”
“I’m sure giving it some thought.”
David was being less than candid. He would have slipped away the day before if he hadn’t felt opportunity headed his way on silver wings.
“You look like a team player to me. I guess that bitch he’s married to will help out on that end. Long as I never have to see her.”
David had an unhappy conversation with his mother, but at least it was on the phone, so she couldn’t throw stuff.
“The phone is ringing off the hook! Your ranchers are calling constantly, wanting to know when you’ll get there.”
“Ma, I know, but I got tied up. Tell them not to get their panties in a wad. I’ll be there.”