Chapter 7 #2
His feelings, however, were changing rapidly. Or maybe they were just coming more fully online as he gained distance from the death of his mother and the shock of her revelations. His attraction to Camellia was powerful, but there was more. Something beyond the physical.
Yeah, the kind of stuff I don’t believe in.
He shook his head at his own bizarre train of thought.
They’d waited to get “home” before eating their dinner of sandwiches and potato chips, and she was still working on hers. He kept looking at her while trying not to let on that he was. He liked looking at her. And he still hadn’t seen her with her hair down.
She did seem more relaxed, he thought. Maybe he could…broach the subject of…them. The thing was, it was becoming clearer and clearer to Wolf that he didn’t want to be Camellia’s friend. He wanted to be her lover.
Even as he thought it, she reached across the space between his chair and hers and clasped his hand. His heart sped up. Hell, maybe her feelings were changing, too.
She said, “I want to thank you, Wolf.”
He turned his hand over so they were palm to palm. Her hand felt good there, small and warm, with their fingers sliding between each other’s. “For what? You’re the one helping me here.”
“It’s helping me, too. I feel safe with you. And I wouldn’t have if you’d been all…but you haven’t. You haven’t been like that at all. You’ve been a gentleman. It’s good to know they still exist.”
Ice water dousing complete.
Wolf gave her hand a squeeze, then let it go and took his beer from his camping chair’s cup holder.
He took a big enough drink to relax his loins.
He liked Camellia. Her trust in him made him feel pretty damn good, and it also made him feel like he didn’t want to break it.
She felt safe with him. That made him feel ten feet tall.
He couldn’t let on that he was just a horn-dog who wanted to get into her pants, like every other guy she knew.
She was absolutely irresistible. Of course every guy she knew wanted her.
He said, “I’m beyond sorry he scared you so much.”
“He didn’t at first. Like I said, he changed.
Got in with a group of fanatics. Gun club, ostensibly.
But it got progressively darker, meaner.
He was always talking about everything he was against—which was dang near everything—and how society was better when women stayed home and raised the kids.
” She lowered her head, shaking it. “I knew it was over before I ended it. That last day, he was pissed I wouldn’t let him use my dad’s camping gear for one of his angry-boy campouts. ”
“You wouldn’t let him use it?” Wolf asked, raising his brows.
“Hell, no. He wasn’t worthy of my dad’s stuff.”
He couldn’t help himself. “Does that mean…you think I am?” he asked. Shit, was that flirting? That was definitely flirting. He wanted to pull the words back.
She shrugged one shoulder and said, “Most worthy, I think.” And she tapped her bottle to his and took a slug. “Earl wasn’t, though. He hated everyone. Immigrants, gays, women.” She shrugged. “I noticed the last few times we went out that he brought a gun along. On a date. Can you even?”
“I can’t even,” he agreed.
“But that last day, he shoved me, and I fell, and I realized the guy’s a lot bigger than me and decided to stop waiting for the right moment to end it. It was clear he was getting worse, not better.”
The fire snapped loud and shot red sparks into the night sky. They faded to black on the way back down.
“After we broke up, I saw him in that black Blazer of his a couple of times, parked near where I was working a case. Once I started paying attention, I realized he was following me. Then the calls started, and the creepy gifts arrived at my work or at my mom’s house.”
“Creepy gifts?”
“A ball-gag, a vibrator, whips, paddles, shit like that.”
Wolf swore softly.
“Threatening notes too, talking about how he’d teach me to be a good girlfriend this time.”
He swore louder.
“I called the cops. Detective Marcia Simms had me start documenting everything. So I did. He was brought in, questioned, lectured. We were gathering evidence for a restraining order when he just…” She raised her open hands.
“Stopped. I assumed the cops talking to him shook him, you know? But no, turns out that’s right around the time he changed his status from ‘it’s complicated’ to ‘in a relationship’ and tagged that poor girl who’s now dead. ”
She closed her eyes. “Mary Jo Gallagher.”
“You’re safe here, though,” Wolf said, because he could see that talking about Earl brought the tension back to Camellia’s face, to her eyes, to her body. She was all tight and trembling again.
“I feel safe,” she said. “But I need a little distraction.”
He could use a little distraction, too, but she probably wasn’t thinking of the same kind he was. She went into the tent and came right back out with his mother’s diary. “Shall we read?”
That would probably do it. “Okay, but it’s my turn,” he said, holding out a hand.
She handed him the old journal. He opened to where they’d left off on the drive, cleared his throat, and said, “Wow, she took a long break. This section was a few months later later.”
Cilla
January 15th
Our lives changed entirely today. I need to get this down while it’s all fresh in my mind, for Wolf.
He’s four months old, near as I can figure. He has sleek black hair and skin like the red rocks that rise among the more common brown ones. The older he gets, the prettier he gets.
We’ve been venturing farther into the rocky badlands from the park, way up into the tops of those towering cliffs above the Rio Grande, and then farther from the river, among the boulders.
I carry Wolf in the backpack-baby carrier I made from his diaper bag.
I didn’t know what we were looking for until today when we found it.
A tumble-down shack with a rock formation behind it that looks like an anvil balanced on top of a pole—like it’s just waiting for Wile E.
Coyote to pass by so it can fall on his head and flatten him.
It’s up high, and it smells good there. Even better than below.
There’s no fishy smell from the river, and the warm, dry wind comes fresh from the sky, and isn’t yet contaminated with all the nonsense down below.
The outside of the shack is made of wide boards that have more splinters than a porcupine has quills, sun-bleached to palest gray.
There are two windows in the front, covered from within.
A crooked chimney of cobblestones is the most solid-looking part of the whole building.
Outside, there’s a tiny, falling-down barn, a well with a hand-pump, and patches of weeds that look more or less cultivated. The place looks abandoned, but not.
It looks as if it wants to look abandoned.
Okay, I’m writing this as closely as I can to how it happened.
Wolf chattered like I’d never heard him before as we got closer. The shack didn’t feel empty. It felt…sad. Lonely. From a few feet outside the door, hanging crooked with one hinge loose, I called, “Hello?”
No one replied, so I moved closer and said it again. “Hello? Is anyone there?”
“Please.” Her voice was soft and hoarse. It came from inside the shack.
I went to the door, but hesitated. I had to think of the baby, after all. What if this was some kind of criminal, holed up out here in the middle of nowhere, luring us in to…rob us, or whatever?
“I need water.”
That was definitely a woman’s voice. I was sure of it. An old woman, I thought, and I opened the door just a little bit, so I could get a look inside.
An old Black woman lay in a bed inside the house, over near the front window to the left of the door. She had pure white hair like a ripe dandelion and skin of faded leather. Her fireplace was cold and dark. Herbs hung upside down in bundles from the ceiling.
She said, “There you are,” in a raspy voice and asked for water.
I looked around the place to make sure nobody was waiting to jump me before going inside. But the shack was empty. So I grabbed the pitcher and ran back out, then started pumping the well handle up and down.
At first nothing came out of the well’s spout, and I was afraid it had gone dry. But then I heard an encouraging gurgle, and after more pumping, water gushed out. It hit the pitcher so hard it rebounded back up into my face, and I sputtered.
Then I realized I was thirsty, too, and this water was sweet. I pumped a few times till it ran clear, then rinsed the dust from the pitcher and filled it. I took a sip as I hurried back inside, where I quickly rinsed and then filled the glass.
Standing beside the bed with Wolf on my back, I held it out.
The old woman lifted her head and reached out weakly.
Then she let her hand fall to the mattress beside her, and her head sank back onto her pillow.
So I knelt beside the bed and held the glass to her lips.
She drank deeply and when I started to move the glass away, she put a hand over mine to hold it there longer and drank more.
Finally, she relaxed back. I told her I wasn’t whoever she was expecting, but she said we were exactly who she’d been expecting and asked me to show her the baby.
I was protective of Wolf, but I did not think this woman was a threat.
I slid the carrier from my shoulders, eased the baby out of it, and went to the edge of the bed to give the old woman a closer look. She was probably senile, and apparently all alone out here.
Then she said, “You’re the one. I had a vision you’d come.”
And when I looked skeptical, she told me when death is near, visions come strong. A white girl with a Comanche child from the river came to her in this vision. The girl told her she would care for her until her death in exchange for a safe place to raise the child.