Part 9 (2/2)

”You must be very hungry,” said Alice. ”Diet doctors and fasting girls. I'm hungry, too. I wish you'd shut up.” It wasn't a very nice thing for Alice to say.

Alice was given crackers for breakfast. Tilly had a Cayenne banana and their own dried jerky and some kind of fruit juice. Tilly sat beside Alice and made Alice take a bite every time Tilly took a bite. Alice didn't even thank her. When they finished breakfast, two more of them came and took Alice.

They brought Tilly coffee. There were sugar and limes and tinned sardines. There was a kind of bread Tilly didn't recognize. The loaf was shaped in a series of concentric circles from which the outer layers could be torn one at a time until the loaf was reduced to a single simple circle. It was very beautiful. Tilly was angry at Alice so she ate it all, and while she was eating it she realized for the first time that they loved her. That was why they brought her coffee, baked bread for her. But they didn't love Alice. Was this Tilly's fault? Could Tilly be blamed for this?

Tilly was not even hungry enough to eat the seeds of the limes. She lifted her pad to hide them with the fish bones. Many of the tiny bones were still attached to the fish's spine, even after Tilly had slept on them all night. It made her think of fairy tales, magic fish bones, and princesses who slept on secrets, and princes who were nice men or maybe they weren't; you really never got to know them at home. She could imagine the fish alive and swimming, one of those transparent fish with their feathered backbones and their trembling green hearts. No one should know you that well; no one should see inside you like that, Tilly thought. That was Alice's mistake, wearing her heart outside the way she did. Telling everybody what she thought of everything. And she was getting worse. Of course she didn't speak anymore, but it was easier and easier to tell what she was thinking. She felt a lot of resentment for Tilly. Tilly couldn't be blind to this. And for what? What had Tilly ever done? This whole holiday had been Alice's idea, not Tilly's. It was all part of Alice's plan to separate Tilly from Steven.

Tilly got out Alice's papers, looking to see if she'd written anything about Tilly in them. But Alice hadn't written anything for a couple of weeks. PD, the last entry ended. PD. Tilly traced it with her index finger. What did that mean?

When Alice came back, Tilly was shocked by the change in her. She was carried in and left, lying on her back on Tilly's mat, which was closer to the door, and she didn't move. She hardly looked like Alice anymore. She was fragile and edgeless, as if she had been rubbed with sandpaper. The old Alice was all edges. The new Alice was all bone. Her bones were more and more evident. It was a great mistake to show yourself so. ”What does PD mean?” Tilly asked her.

”Get me some water,” Alice whispered.

They kept a bucket full by the door next to the empty bucket which functioned as the toilet. A bug was floating in the drinking water, a large white moth with faint circles painted on its furry wings. If Tilly had seen it fall she would have rescued it. She doubted that Alice would have bothered. Alice was so different now. Alice would have enjoyed seeing the moth drown. Alice wanted everyone to be as miserable as she was. It was the only happiness Alice had. Tilly scooped the dead moth into the cup of water for Alice, to make Alice happy. She held the cup just out of Alice's reach. ”First tell me what it means,” she said.

Alice lay with her head tilted back. The words moved up and down the length of her throat. Her voice was very tired and soft. Shhh said the door. ”It's a cartographer's notation.” Her eyes were almost closed. In the small s.p.a.ce between the lids, Tilly could just see her eyes. Alice was watching the water. ”It means position doubtful.” Tilly helped her sit up, held the cup so she could drink. Alice lay back on the mat. ”Prospects doubtful,” said Alice. ”Presumed dead,” said Alice.

Outside Tilly heard the howler monkeys, closer today. She could almost distinguish one voice from the rest, a dominant pitch, a different rhythm. She had once stood close enough to a tribe of howler monkeys to connect each mouth with its own deafening noise. This was at the zoo in San Diego. In San Diego, Tilly had been the one on the outside.

It was so like Alice to just give up, thought Tilly. Not like Alice before, but certainly like Alice now. Alice now was completely different from Alice before. Living together like this had shown her what Alice was really like. This was probably what the South American Headshrinking s.p.a.ce Alien Children of the Boto had wanted all along, to see what people were really like.

Well, what did they know now? On the one hand, they had Alice. Alice was completely exposed. No wonder they didn't love Alice.

But on the other hand, they had Tilly. And there was no need to change Tilly. They loved Tilly.

THE FAITHFUL COMPANION AT FORTY.

This One Is Also for Queequeg, for Kato, for Spock, for Tinker Bell, and for Chewbacca.

His first reaction is that I just can't deal with the larger theoretical issues. He's got this new insight he wants to call the Displacement Theory and I can't grasp it. Your basic, quiet, practical minority sidekick. The limited edition. Kato. Spock. Me. But this is not true.

I still remember the two general theories we were taught on the reservation which purported to explain the movement of history. The first we named the Great Man Theory. Its thesis was that the critical decisions in human development were made by individuals, special people gifted in personality and circ.u.mstance. The second we named the Wave Theory. It argued that only the ma.s.ses could effectively determine the course of history. Those very visible individuals who appeared as leaders of the great movements were, in fact, only those who happened to articulate the direction which had already been chosen. They were as much the victims of the process as any other single individual. Flotsam. Running Dog and I used to be able to debate this issue for hours.

It is true that this particular question has ceased to interest me much. But a correlative question has come to interest me more. I spent most of my fortieth birthday sitting by myself, listening to Pachelbel's Canon, over and over, and I'm asking myself: Are some people special? Are some people more special than others? Have I spent my whole life backing the wrong horse?

I mean, it was my birthday and not one d.a.m.n person called.

Finally, about four o'clock in the afternoon, I gave up and I called him. ”Eh, Poncho,” I say. ”What's happening?”

”Eh, Cisco,” he answers. ”Happy birthday.”

”Thanks,” I tell him. I can't decide whether I am more p.i.s.sed to know he remembered but didn't call than I was when I thought he forgot.

”The big four-o,” he says. ”Wait a second, buddy. Let me go turn the music down.” He's got the William Tell Overture blasting on the stereo. He's always got the William Tell Overture blasting on the stereo. I'm not saying the man has a problem, but the last time we were in Safeway together he claimed to see a woman being kidnapped by a silver baron over in frozen foods. He pulled the flip top off a Tab and lobbed the can into the ice cream. ”Cover me,” he shouts, and runs an end pattern with the cart through the soups. I had to tell everyone he was having a Vietnam flashback.

And the mask. There are times and seasons when a mask is useful; I'm the first to admit that. It's Thanksgiving, say, and you're an Indian so it's never been one of your favorite holidays, and you've got no family because you spent your youth playing the supporting role to some macho creep who couldn't commit, so here you are, standing in line to see Rocky IV, and someone you know walks by. I mean, I've been there. But for every day, for your ordinary life, a mask is only going to make you more obvious. There's an element of exhibitionism in it. A large element. If you ask me.

So now he's back on the phone. He sighs. ”G.o.d,” he says. ”I miss those thrilling days of yesteryear.”

See? We haven't talked twenty seconds and already the subject is his problems. His ennui. His angst. ”I'm having an affair,” I tell him. Two years ago I wouldn't have said it. Two years ago he'd just completed his est training and he would have told me to take responsibility for it. Now he's into biofeedback and astrology. Now we're not responsible for anything.

”Yeah?” he says. He thinks for a minute. ”You're not married,” he points out.

I can't see that this is relevant. ”She is,” I tell him.

”Yeah?” he says again, only this ”yeah” has a nasty quality to it; this ”yeah” tells me someone is hoping for sensationalistic details. This is not the ”yeah” of a concerned friend. Still, I can't help playing to it. For years I've been holding this man's horse while he leaps onto its back from the roof. For years I've been providing cover from behind a rock while he breaks for the back door. I'm forty now. It's time to get something back from him. So I hint at the use of controlled substances. We're talking peyote and cocaine. I mention p.o.r.nography. Illegally imported. From Denmark. Of course, it's not really my affair. Can you picture me? My affair is quiet and ardent. I borrowed this affair from another friend. It shows you the lengths I have to go to before anyone will listen to me.

I may finally have gone too far. He's really at a loss now. ”Women,” he says finally. ”You can't live with them and you can't live without them.” Which is a joke, coming from him. He had that single-man-raising-his-orphaned-nephew-all-alone schtick working so smoothly the women were pa.s.sing each other on the way in and out the door. Or maybe it was the mask and the leather. What do women want? Who has a clue?

”Is that it?” I ask him. ”The sum total of your advice? She won't leave her husband. Man, my heart is broken.”

”Oh,” he says. There's a long pause. ”Don't let it show,” he suggests. Then he sighs. Again. ”I miss that old white horse,” he tells me. And you know what I do? I hang up on him. And you know what he doesn't do? He doesn't call me back.

It really hurts me.

So his second reaction, now that I don't want to listen to him explaining his new theories to me, is to say that I seem to be sulking about something, he can't imagine what. And this is harder to deny.

The day after my birthday I went for a drive in my car, a little white Saab with personalized license plates, KEMO, they say. Maybe the phone is ringing, maybe it's not. I feel better when I don't know. So, he misses his horse. Hey, I've never been the same since that little pinto of mine joined the Big Roundup, but I try not to burden my friends with this. I try not to burden my friends with anything. I just nurse them back to health when the Cavendish gang leaves them for dead. I just come in the middle of the night with the medicine man when little Britt has a fever and it's not responding to Tylenol. I just organize the surprise party when a friend turns forty.

You want to bet even Attila the Hun had a party on his fortieth? You want to bet he was one hard man to surprise? And who blew up the balloons and had everyone hiding under the rugs and in with the goats? This name is lost forever.

I drove out into the country, where every cactus holds its memory for me, where every outcropping of rock once hid an outlaw. Ten years ago the terrain was still so rough I would have had to take the International Scout. Now it's a paved highway straight to the hanging tree. I pulled over to the shoulder of the road, turned off the motor, and just sat there. I was remembering the time Ms. Peggy Cooper stumbled into the Wilc.o.x bank robbery looking for her little girl who'd gone with friends to the swimming hole and hadn't bothered to tell her mama. We were on our way to see Colonel Davis at Fort Comanche about some cattle rustling. We hadn't heard about the bank robbery. Which is why we were taken completely by surprise.

My pony and I were eating the masked man's dust, as usual, when something hit me from behind. Arnold Wilc.o.x, a heavy-set man who sported a five o'clock shadow by eight in the morning, jumped me from the big rock overlooking the b.u.t.terfield trail, and I went down like a sack of potatoes. I heard horses converging on us from the left and the right and that hypertrophic white stallion of his took off like a big bird. I laid one on Arnold's stubbly jaw, but he cold-c.o.c.ked me with the b.u.t.t of his pistol and I couldn't tell you what happened next.

I don't come to until it's after dark and I'm trussed up like a turkey. Ms. Cooper is next to me, and her hands are tied behind her back with a red bandanna and there's a rope around her feet. She looks disheveled but pretty; her eyes are wide and I can tell she's not too pleased to be lying here next to an Indian. Her dress is b.u.t.toned up to the chin so I'm thinking, At least, thank G.o.d, they've respected her. It's cold, even as close together as we are. The Wilc.o.xes are all huddled around the fire, counting money, and the smoke is a straight white line in the sky you could see for miles. So this is more good news, and I'm thinking the Wilc.o.xes were always a bunch of dumb-a.s.s honkies when it came to your basic woodlore. I'm wondering how they got it together to pull off a bank job, when I hear a horse's hooves and my question is answered. Pierre Cardeaux, Canadian French, hops off the horse's back and goes straight to the fire and stamps it out.

”Imbeciles!” he tells them, only he's got this heavy accent so it comes out ”Eembeeceels.”

Which insults the Wilc.o.xes a little. ”Hold on there, hombre,” Andrew Wilc.o.x says. ”Jes' because we followed your plan into the bank and your trail for the getaway doesn't make you the boss here.” Pierre pays him about as much notice as you do an ant your horse is about to step on. He comes over to us and puts his hand under Ms. Cooper's chin, sort of thoughtfully. She spits at him and he laughs.

”s.p.u.n.k,” he says. ”I like that.” I mean, I suppose that's what he says, because that's what they always say, but the truth is, with his accent, I don't understand a word.

Andrew Wilc.o.x isn't finished yet. He's got this big chicken leg he's eating and it's dribbling onto his chin, so he wipes his arm over his face. Which just spreads the grease around more, really, and anyway, he's got this hunk of chicken stuck between his front teeth, so Pierre can hardly keep a straight face when he talks to him. ”I understand why we're keeping the woman,” Andrew says. ”Cause she has-uses. But the Injun there. He's just going to be baggage. I want to waste him.”

”Mon ami,” says Pierre. ”Even pour vous, thees stupiditee lives me spitchless.” He's kissing his fingers to ill.u.s.trate the point as if he were really French and not just Canadian French and has probably never drunk really good wine in his life. I'm lying in the dust, and whatever they've bound my wrists with is cutting off the circulation so my hands feel like someone is jabbing them with porcupine needles. Even now, I can remember smelling the smoke which wasn't there anymore and the Wilc.o.xes who were and the lavender eau de toilette that Ms. Cooper used. And horses and dust and sweat. These were the glory days, but whose glory? you may well ask, and even if I answered, what difference would it make?

Ms. Cooper gets a good whiff of Andrew Wilc.o.x, and it makes her cough.

”He's right, little brother,” says Russell Wilc.o.x, the runt of the litter at three-hundred-odd pounds and a little quicker on the uptake than the rest of the family. ”You ever heared tell of a man who rides a white horse, wears a black mask, and shoots a very pricey kind of bullet? This here Injun is his compadre.”

”Oui, oui, oui, oui,” says Pierre agreeably. The little piggie. He indicates me and raises his eyebrows one at a time. ”Avec le sauvage we can, how you say? Meck a deal.”

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