“Yes.”
“And did they come while you were watching?”
He sighed. “They did not. But we put several people on the bluff at once. You are alone.”
“You haven’t met my mule.”
Roshi Mallory was still reluctant, but after he talked with Thây Hahn, he said, “All right. Please be careful.”
To drive his cart there he had a choice of going upriver a mile or downstream two miles to Pecosito proper. He chose upstream, working back on a county road until he came to the section marker that delimited the corner of the property. According to Roshi Mallory, the property to the north belonged to the daughter of the late rancher. The property to the south belonged to an unrelated rancher and the brothers’ property was directly across the river. “Ms. Peterson, the daughter of Mr. Ronson of honored memory, grazes her sheep on the land above. She pays us in wool, which we spin and weave. If you see her shepherds, just tell them I sent you, right?”
He didn’t see them, but he could tell they’d been there by the patches of cropped grass and dried sheep dung.
He camped well back from the bluff’s edge in a sandy wash four feet lower than the surrounding grass. It led to a steep gully that cut down to the river bottom. The path down the bluff could be navigated by a man, and possibly by a mule, but not the cart. A hundred yards south of the cut was where the bluff directly overlooked the Zen Center and its glass solar still.
The vegetation there was tall grass, but Kimble found places where hooves had cut the roots, and there was a pile of rocks sitting on top of yellowed grass. Clearly they’d been brought there within the last month. He pitched these rocks over the edge of the bluff where they fell to the ground behind the monk’s vegetable garden. If they want to throw more rocks, let them bring more.
* * *
THERE were fourteen theaters in Pecosito, with a local repertory performing in about half. The others featured touring companies, often running live productions of popular TV shows or movies from beyond the curtain. Kimble was partial to musicals, himself.
He’d been tempted to buy a ticket for a show but it wouldn’t have been in character. He sat to the left of the entrance, instead, during a matinee performance, offering his wares. Some were the baskets he and Thayet had made on the trip, but the only thing that was really moving were the relatively simple hand-fans he’d cobbled up just that morning as he’d walked into town. He’d meant to sell them for next to nothing, but the day was unseasonably still and hot and the regulars knew it would be stifling inside so they were paying half a territorial dollar each.
The smarter theatergoers had brought their own fans, all kinds, from silk-and-wood, to plastic windups powered by twisted rubber bands. But some had not and Kimble had a pocket full of hard plastic coins as a result.
Even though the customers were all inside, he continued to weave more fans. He owed ten of them to the concessions manager for allowing him to park in front of the theater. The man had made it clear that he’d prefer Kimble in front of the theater instead of the usual panhandlers. A town deputy also came by and started to roust Kimble, but the concessionaire had warned Kimble about the going rate. He remained, unmolested, but a dollar poorer.
He was almost done weaving the fans when a group of five Rangers came up the street, obviously off duty, for while they wore their fractal pixel desert camo fatigues, they didn’t have their rifles and they certainly weren’t in any sort of formal formation. Two of them were officers and the other three noncoms. They glanced at the theater marquee and one of the sergeants said, “Hey, that’s the next episode of Blood and Laughter.” He looked down at Kimble. “What time does it start?”
The town drummer had beat the third quarter of the hour a little earlier so he could say, “Matinee started twenty minutes ago, I believe, but of course, there’s an evening show, and it won’t be quite so hot.”
“Damn. We’re on duty later.” He looked back up at the marquee. “Oh, well, it plays until next week.”
The younger of the two officers, a lieutenant, casually said, “Do you barter for your baskets? I have some precious stones.”
Kimble’s hand stilled upon the fan he was weaving, and then he said, “Do I look like a man who buys precious stones?”
“Even a very poor man can buy a turquoise or posole,” said the officer quietly, picking up one of Kim’s square baskets. The cloth name label over his left breast pocket read, “Hodges.”
“Let me see the posole,” Kim asked.
Hodges stood, laughing, dropping the basket back on the steps. “Who’s for a beer?”
“Maxine’s?” said the captain.
The Rangers headed down the street in a group, but when they were halfway down the block, Hodges waved his fellows on and came back. “About the posole—it was cooked by a woman and that could be against your customs.”
“There is no custom where men go to,” and here Kimble paused before finishing, “look for posole.”
“Right. Should we go somewhere?”
Kimble smiled broadly, ingratiatingly, the picture of someone trying to make a sale, but his voice showed his irritation. “Hell, no. After dark at the New Bridge. Moonrise.”
“Moonrise? When is that?”
“Don’t get out much? Tonight it’s about two hours after sunset.”
Hodges said, “I don’t see why we can’t talk now.”
Kimble smiled again but his teeth ground together. “Buy a basket and get away from me.”
Hodges looked a bit offended, but he picked one of Kimble’s square shelf baskets, haggled loudly about the price, then left.
Kimble settled back onto the steps and resumed his fan weaving.
Traffic was light but there were windows in all the facing buildings. What the hell had Hodges been thinking?
While it didn’t have the commercials that padded the original broadcast out to an hour, set changes and a comedic or musical spot at the beginning and end filled out the full sixty minutes. This was especially important when the episode ended with a cliffhanger, to ease the audience’s frustration.
Kimble returned to his baskets and managed to sell one of the larger hampers to a matron headed back to her house.
“Give it a good soaking every four months and it will last years,” he said. As she counted the coins into his hand, he asked politely, “How was the show?”
“This was a good one! Of course, I see every episode, but I think I’ll see this one again. I had to go outside for a medical procedure last year and I indulged in a positive orgy of HD watching—I saw all the back episodes.” She headed off with her basket.
He stacked his remaining baskets for transport before he delivered the promised fans to the concessionaire.
“Good-oh,” the woman said. She examined the fans critically, testing the flex and stiffness. “Nice work. You can have the same deal any matinee showing. Evening shows, double. We have packed houses so it’s worth it.”
“I’ll think on it,” Kimble said.
His baskets, stacked and tied together, made a large cluster, nearly four feet in diameter, but easily carried on his shoulders. As he started down the street, a man leaning against a wall across the street straightened and wandered in the same direction.
After the second turn, Kimble was sure of the tail. Lieutenant Durant would not be impressed.
Kimble went to the central plaza. It wasn’t a regular market day and the stalls were mostly empty, but there was a middle-aged woman selling some early apples as well as bags of dried ones from last season. Her display consisted of burlap-lined, plastic five-gallon buckets, the contents of which she replenished from woven bags of recycled plastic in the typical ugly dark gray. She sat in front of the bags, but behind the buckets, on an overturned bucket, playing the main theme to Bach’s third Brandenburg on a ten-hole ocarina.
Kimble stopped in front of her and lowered his collection of baskets to the ground, using the motion to get a better look at his tail. The man looked l
ike a ranch hand—his boots were better suited to riding than walking. Worn jeans, denim shirt, white-blond hair sticking out of a straw cowboy hat. He had the local paper, all four pages, and was pretending to read it.
Most of what Kimble had left were the rectangular pantry baskets, though he also had three thigh-high hampers, one of which had been converted into a fish trap by the addition of a conical entrance tapering down to sharp-pointed split bamboo stakes.
The apple seller eyed him but didn’t stop playing her ocarina, so Kimble took one of his smaller rectangular pantry baskets and arranged three different kinds of apples within—green Granny Smith, dark-red Macintosh, and Yellow Golden Delicious.
The apple seller came to the end of the movement and said, “Pretty enough. Making up a gift basket? For a friend or are you a reseller?”
Kimble squatted back on his heels. “Sell you all these baskets, except the fish trap, for three bags of dried apples.”
The woman eyed the baskets. “What’s the catch?” It was ridiculously cheap. “You steal them?”
“Made every one with these hands.” He held them up so she could see the calluses. “Cut the reeds myself from the Rio Grande bosque traveling here.”
She turned her hand palm-up, conceding that he hadn’t stolen them. “Why you so anxious to sell then?”
“Well, if it helps you move your apples better, perhaps you’ll buy more later. Then you’ll know what they’re worth. Next sale, cash.”
The woman picked up the filled basket, examining how much the bottom and sides distended under load. She picked up an empty one and flexed it. “Still green. They gonna fall apart when they dry out?”
“Not if you soak ’em every four months or so. And if you don’t soak it, just throw it in the compost pile and get another.” Without pointing, he asked, “That guy reading the paper over there?” He flicked his eyes sideways. “The one holding up the wall? Seen him somewhere.”
The woman glanced over, then back at the basket. “That’s Steve Bickle. You could’ve seen him in church, maybe. He’s the handyman over at the Church of the New Paradise. You go there?”
“No,” Kimble said neutrally. “Do you?”
“No!” That was almost vehement. “Not much of a churchgoer, but when I do, it’s Mass at San Juan’s.”
“Isn’t New Paradise one of those Prosperity Gospel outfits? Rewards on this earth and all that?”
She nodded. “That’s it—pray and it will be given to you.”
She flexed the basket again, her lips pursed. It was a decent basket. Kimble had tucked all the ends cleanly and the corners were neat and square. “Okay. Check back next week and we’ll see how they’ve sold. While we’re harvesting I’m here for the full market on Wednesday. Monday and Friday, too.”
She started to hand him the dried apples and he held up his hand. “Can I send someone for the apples? Not going home right now.”
“Okay. Who?”
“Don’t know yet. They’ll say they’ve come for basket boy’s apples. Will that work?”
“Three bags, right? For basket boy. You sure I’m trustworthy?”
He shrugged. “One way to find out. Trust is like that.” He put the fish trap under his arm, and, with a smile and a nod, left the market square, walking briskly.
* * *
STEVE Bickle passed Kimble off to another man a few blocks north of the market, a bearded Hispanic on horseback who moseyed after Kimble despite several changes in direction. Closer to the western edge of town, Bickle showed up again, also on horseback, with an attractive young woman riding pillion behind him, but as soon as Bickle saw Kimble, he dropped back around the corner. The next time he saw the man he was riding alone.
The woman showed up in his path five minutes later, leaning against a boundary wall as if she’d been there all morning. But her chest was rising and falling rapidly, like someone who had just finished sprinting.
Kimble nodded as he drew abreast of her. She flashed a brilliant smile and said, “I don’t think I’ve seen you around. Are you new in town?”
Kimble smiled back and said, “Perdone me, Señorita. Yo no hablo Inglés. Qué lastima. Tu eres muy atractiva.” She opened her mouth and shut it again. Kimble blew her a kiss and kept walking.
He continued west, threading through the narrow streets as the more commercial parts of town turned to residential—big lots with small houses and large gardens. A system of irrigation ditches backed the lots and Kimble crossed the bridge over the main supply ditch, an eight-foot-wide waterway lined with reeds. He paused, perched on the wooden side rails, to watch a mother duck with seven ducklings splashing in the water where the edge of the bridge supports broke the force of the current.
Bickle and his companion turned their horses to the edge of a lot where the grass was growing thick and let their horses munch.
They’re about as subtle as hailstones. He didn’t want to lead them back to the monastery. He preferred keeping his base secure. Unless they followed you from the Zen Center? He reviewed the morning’s walk in, but he was sure he’d been clear all the way into town. No, they had picked him up at the theater and he was very much afraid they’d been watching Hodges.
Then there was the story Thây Hahn had told him about the Church’s lawsuit against the Center, as well as the vandalism of their solar still. Let’s just keep them away.
Kimble heard the geese before he saw them. A group of twenty white geese, herded by a border collie and a teenage girl with hiked-up skirts and the top three buttons of her blouse undone, came around the bend from the west, looking like an illustration from a book of fairy tales. At the bridge, there was a revolt as several of the geese broke for the irrigation ditch and the dog cut them off with some sharp barking.
His followers could’ve arranged another attempt in this short a time, but he really doubted they could’ve managed the geese this quickly.
He smiled at her. “Heading home or out?”
She cut off a goose headed for the bank with the stout stick she held. “Home. We’ve been weeding a grove.”
“Pretty heavy stick for the geese, isn’t it?”
“For the geese, yes. For feral dogs? Not quite heavy enough. About perfect for the neighborhood dogs, though.”
Her look invited further inquiry, but Kimble sighed and resisted asking where she lived or what was she doing later. The girl opened her mouth to say something else but the geese were threatening to break out again and she moved on, chivying them over the bridge without additional revolts.
The horses Bickle and his companion rode did not like the geese and they danced as the honking mass went by. The riders, watching the goose girl instead of paying attention to their mounts, took a while to settle them.
When they finally stopped watching her progress down the road, Kimble was gone.
* * *
THE New Bridge was smaller than the old highway bridge several miles upstream. It didn’t span river bluff to river bluff; it was down in the bottoms and most years it was above the highest flood mark. It was poured concrete, reinforced with composite fibers and rods, and it had been modeled outside using the latest computer drafting and modeling systems, then built on site using the oldest methods—human and animal muscle.
Kimble waited on the east side of the bridge, just off the road, concealed in a stand of sagebrush. The traffic was light, a lot of off-duty Rangers headed into town from the barracks, ranchers and farmers returning home after business in town, ranch hands headed into town for some form of debauchery.
It was well past twilight and, of course, the glow of the moon was visible on the eastern horizon. Some people carried glass-globed oil lamps and some walked in greenish pools of chem-stick light, but most let their eyes adjust and followed the lighter swath of the roadway. If there was one good thing to say about the bugs it was that they’d really cut down on light pollution. The glorious span of the Milky Way provided enough light to avoid walking off the road.
The first
sliver of quarter moon was above the horizon when Lieutenant Hodges approached. He was using a service-issue reflector-focused chemlight, which made Kimble both glad and profoundly irritated. The plus was he had no trouble identifying Hodges from the other traffic. The negative was that neither would anyone else.
His first words as Hodges drew abreast were, “Keep looking straight ahead.”
Despite this, Hodges started to swing the light to the side, but he checked himself and swung it back onto the road.
“Tie your shoe.”
Hodges crouched, setting down his light so it shown on his boots, and untied one of his laces.
Kimble closed his eyes, to protect his night vision. “When you’re done, kill your light and walk on. When you get to the bridge, leave the road and go down the bank. I’ll meet you under the first arch.”
“What if someone’s there?”
Kimble nodded to himself in the dark. At least Hodges was thinking a bit.
“I checked. No drunks, no trolls. If I’m not there by the time the moon is above the bank, continue into town. Go now.”
Hodges retied his shoe and, as he stood, clipped the dark cover over his lamp lens. Kimble heard him walk on down the road, his steps tentative at first but gaining confidence as he continued. Kimble hoped he wouldn’t break his neck getting down the bank.
The tag was only a minute behind, a person Kimble had heard earlier, but whose footsteps had sped up as soon as Hodges had shielded the light. Kimble got a clear profile against the night sky as the figure walked past and the moonlight had increased enough that he caught a glimpse of straw hat and white-blond hair.
Kimble followed him long enough to see him continue across the bridge. Kimble spent a few minutes in the moon shadow of the railing, waiting to see if the man doubled back. When he didn’t return, Kimble worked his way down to the deep shadow under the bridge.
Hodges was at the far edge, looking up at the sky. The burbling of the river as it tumbled across scattered rocks covered the noise of Kimble’s approach. He stopped far enough away to avoid getting hit by mistake and said, “Evening.”