Joe stepped on the running board. "What are you leading up to? So I didn't get to the Casa last night."
"I'm selling it." Pollack was pleased with the surprise.
"The Casa Mañana?"
"Yeah. Eddie Junior's coming home from Italy. I'm going to set us up in a nice club in Harlem."
"That's too bad. I mean, that's great for you and Eddie, but the Casa was the best club in the state."
"The only one with the authentic big band sound. One hundred thousand dollars. That's including kitchen, tables and chairs, liquor, liquor license, plus parking lot. Practically an entire block. Albuquerque's going to boom after the war, you know."
"Why doesn't Eddie come here?"
"He grew up with his mother. All he knows is New York." Pollack's eyes wandered off in thought.
"And Italy."
"Italy, yeah." Pollack brightened. "A war hero like you. A veteran. Wouldn't it be great if you came to New York and played in our new club? One little thing, Joe. A matter of clear title. I'm going to need your signature on the papers, you being Mike's heir."
"Me being his heir? To what? I don't have a share of the club, you said so."
"It's a nicety."
"The nicety is, I'm a partner without a share?"
"There'll be a consideration."
"Money?"
"A consideration."
"A definite sum?"
"Considerable."
"Give me a number. A hundred dollar consideration? A thousand dollar consideration? Give me the range."
"I can't say."
"I can say. How badly can I fuck up your bill of sale?"
"Joe, we're friends, we're partners."
"I'm just finding out." Joe studied Pollack's aghast face. He slapped the top of the car. "Fuck it. Bring round the papers, I'll sign them. You don't have to bring any 'consideration'."
"You scared me." Pollack still looked gray.
"I'm sorry. Just… gravity's got me down today."
"Well. . ." Pollack didn't dare say much else.
"You ever wonder what they're doing up on that secret mountain? On the Hill? What would you say if I told you they were making a machine to end the world? To blow up the whole thing?"
"Now I know you're fooling." Pollack started the engine, eager to get away.
"Yeah."
"Well. Now we got that settled, Joe, I best be going. Good to see you back in your own home."
"Yeah."
Pollack backed up, U-turned and eased between the Reyes' yard and the goat fence that served as the boundary for outhouses, compost heaps, cornfields. With his eyes Joe followed the Cadillac in gaps between adobe walls, past the Winter Squash kiva, into the plaza and under the cottonwood. He looked back to the dirt road between the outhouses and the homes. He hadn't noticed before that Mrs Quist's Hudson had stopped halfway into a cholla cactus. Her door was open and he could see her hands over her face, although he didn't realize she was crying until her dark glasses fell on to the ground. As she leaned to retrieve them, she almost fell out.
It was unbelievable. Mrs Quist had been robbing Dolores as long as Joe could remember; for years she'd paid Dolores a dollar a pot, fifty cents a pot, a fraction of what she could get in Santa Fe or LA. When Joe thought of the money Mrs Quist had made out of Dolores… It was a predatory relationship. It was like watching a cat cry over a mouse. It was insane.
He went into the house. On the table was the black seed pot, a dark moon with a seed-sized hole on top. In the air, released from the newspapers, was the dust of the pots, the starchy smell of dry clay and overwhelming scent of memory. Dolores was there in the chair by the table and all he had to do to see her was raise his eyes. She was a small woman with fine features and unlined skin and complete concentration. Her hands worked quickly, moving her polishing stone over the pot. Starting from the bottom, she drew a straight line up to the lip, and a line beside that, and a line beside that, using only enough pressure for the clay to rebound brighter until the surface of the pot was faceted by hundreds of lines like the iris of an eye. Then she gave the pot another pass, following the infinitesimal ridges between the lines. He couldn't make out what she was saying, but he heard the sound of her voice, which was musical. He pressed his back against the wall and looked.
No Dolores. Only dust motes stirring slowly in the light above the table, chair and pot, the last and only piece of hers he had. He snatched it up and ran out of the door.
The Hudson was gone. Coming along the outhouses and fences was a jeep, Sergeant Shapiro at the wheel and Corporal Gruber with him. The MPs had helmets, guns and clubs, so they were on duty. They were weightlifters, mouth breathers. Gruber had blunt, ceramic features, Shapiro a slack, blue jaw. His face was screwed up into something approaching passion or desperation. Joe had never seen them on the reservation before.
The jeep skidded to a stop in front of him. Gruber looked disgusted. Shapiro had trouble finding words. "Chief, did you see me the other day?"
"When?" Joe was still glancing around for Mrs Quist's Hudson.
"On patrol, walking my horse."
"No." Joe brought his attention back.
"It was the day the high explosive was stolen at the HangingGarden. You didn't see me on patrol?"
"What day was that?"
"It was bad enough the bunker was broken into. Augustino saw me. Captain Augustino says I learn to ride or I go into the infantry and he's personally going to see I go to the Pacific. He says I'm going to be in the first fucking boat that hits Japan."
"The first asshole in the water, the captain said," Gruber reminded him.
"You taught Dr Oppenheimer how to ride, you can teach me to ride," Shapiro told Joe. "Tomorrow's Sunday. My life is in your hands."
"I'm working tomorrow."
"Chief, I'll make it up to you. Anything you want. You'll see."
"Maybe in the afternoon."
The Hudson still hadn't crossed the plaza. It seemed to have just disappeared. As if Mrs Quist had gone straight to heaven to buy from Dolores direct.
12
Sunday morning. While Oppy was in Washington, Joe was assigned to the workshops on Two Mile Mesa. They were nail-bright sheetrock structures; inside was a general sense of panic over the one-month deadline of the Trinity test. In the casting building, the commercial sugar kettles in which high explosives were melted had broken down, the stirring ladles clogged with a brown "fudge" of Baratol, a TNT derivative.
Cast 200-pound wedges of explosive were carted in red Radio Flyer wagons designed for small children. When axles collapsed, everyone jumped. Replacement wagons were in a stockroom called FUBAR, for Fucked Up Beyond All Repair. Besides a shortage of wagons, there was a shortage of Bar Top varnish. To prevent them from chipping, castings were always painted with Bar Top; there was nothing more fragile than explosive.
Rough castings of high explosive were trimmed with bronze saws to minimize sparks. Joe hosed a casting while a machinist delicately cut the riser tabs left from the mould. Both men noticed the spark at the same moment. Joe hosed the casting furiously until he was sure only a single crystal of Baratol had sparked and didn't propagate. The machinist was soaked through. "What I like about this job," he told Joe, "is I can piss my pants and no one knows."
Afternoon. A basalt canyon topped with cedars. Below, a stream, moss, violets and a single Apache willow. Joe watched Shapiro anxiously balance on a twelve-year-old mare named Dixie.
"That's much better," Joe said and walked around the horse and rider. "Here's the secret. Dixie's not going to fall down. She's just going to follow the horse ahead of her. You never go first, you never go last. She is the sweetest, slowest horse in the MP stable. From now on, she is your horse. You are her sack. Be a sack for her."
Shapiro frowned. "Oppenheimer, he gallops, he jumps his horse."
"His horse's name is Crisis. You want to ride a horse with a name like that? You get friendly with Dixie. Take her carrots, apples, sugar lumps every day."
br /> Shapiro sagged in the saddle a little more confidently. "Back in Brooklyn, my brother kept pigeons," he said.
Joe got an image of Shapiro in a rooftop pigeon cote, feathers and blood on his hands.
"Nice. Well, you get friendly with Dixie like that."
Overhead, the cedars were a gallery of cut-outs against the sky. Joe thought he saw something watching from above. Could have been a crow.
"Chief, you want to do me a real favor, you'll help me fight. You see Ray Stingo fight the kid from Texas?"
"Yeah."
"I'm fighting the kid."
"He'll kill you."
"It's southpaws." There was agony in Shapiro's voice, as if he were talking about an incurable disease. "The first thing I ever learned was to circle off the jab and counter with the right. That moves me square into a leftie's cross. I don't see it coming, I never see it coming."
"Maybe you have a chance."
"Augustino's behind it. He's betting on the kid. Those fucking Texans stick together."
"Get down."
"I really appreciate this, Chief."
Shapiro dismounted and both men removed their caps, web belts and .45s. They assumed boxing stances. Joe put his right foot forward as if he were a left-hand boxer. "Your right hand is low. Better. Let me see you move." Joe hung out a lazy, open-handed jab in the air to see Shapiro's reaction. "Don't move that way. Duck and move to your left. Keep the right up. Again. Now, hook with your left." Shapiro bored in, hands pumping like a maddened milkmaid. Joe put out another slow-motion jab. "Duck, move and hook." Joe caught Shapiro's hook on the arm. The moss was springy, dappled by sun that broke through the willow.
"You think I have a chance, Chief?"
"Let's see."
Joe shot a right jab more at full speed and slapped Shapiro's chin. Reflexively, the MP moved to his right and into a slap from Joe's left hand. Joe slipped a couple of Shapiro's jabs, then slapped Shapiro's chin and cheek again. As soon as he saw anything coming his way, Shapiro locked into his old habit, moving counter-clockwise into another slap. Joe blocked two hooks, ducked a jab and slapped Shapiro again. The MP's right cheek turned from blue to stinging pink.
"Forget it." Joe grabbed Shapiro's wrists.
"Forget it?" Shapiro's muscles bulged with frustration.
"You can't win. Sorry."
"Help me."
"How many rounds is it?"
"Six."
"Kid's an amateur, basically. He's probably never fought longer than three rounds. I hear he knocks everyone in two."
"Swell."
"That means if you can get to the fourth round, this kid is punched out. You can count to four? Good. So, don't move left, don't move right, don't move back because you're not fast enough. Just move in. You'll get hit on the way in, but you take it. Then you wrestle. Catch my arm, come on. Lean on it, yank it. That wears down the shoulders. Keep moving in." Joe backed away, slipping to one side and then the other. "Three rounds is nine minutes. You wrestle him for eight of those minutes, he's only killing you for one. When you grab him, don't butt. You've got scar tissue, like me. You'll cut before he does. Move in, move in." Joe was disgusted with himself because he was enjoying the trickle of sweat down his ribs, the concentration, the peripheral dance of boxing. Ducking a branch, slipping a jab. When Shapiro stood still, Joe waved him in again. "You dumb palooka, move."
Shapiro looked over Joe's shoulder. Joe turned and saw someone standing outside the shade of the willow. He had to squint because she was so dark against the sun.
"Klaus is climbing a mountain," she said. "It was boring watching him climb a mountain, so I left."
He had to take her from the edges in. Back-lit trim of short-sleeved white shirt and trousers. Hair cut in a page boy, ink-black and straight. Gray eyes making a study of him. No lipstick, but full lips. And the expression of a person looking into a bear pit.
"The Chief was teaching me how to ride," Shapiro said.
"An old Indian method?" Anna Weiss asked Joe.
Sun, white-hot, edged her cheek.
"At least with the Indian method, nobody gets bored," he said.
Where basalt had broken off in storeys of black columns, wrens darted head first into the canyon rim, into their nests.
Far below and behind, Shapiro rode alone in the opposite direction, letting his horse follow the stream back to the Hill.
"I told you," Joe said, "some of the land here is still used by the local people. Which mountain was he climbing?"
"Not so much a mountain as the next valley."
"Canyon?"
"I forgot. You have no valleys here, only canyons. And gulches."
At the top, through the fringe of cedars, the Jemez spread out ahead. High peaks surrounded by pines, the range smoother to the south and building like an ocean swell to the north. Anna turned, exhilarated by the climb, taking in mountain meadows colored extravagant purple by mariposa lilies. She turned the way children turned, Joe thought, as if the world turned round her.
"You'd think you could see anything from here," she said. "What's so good is that you cant."
"You're going back to Chicago?"
"Soon." As Joe stepped in front of her, she asked, "Shouldn't the lady be first?"
"Rattlesnakes." Joe nodded to the rocks along the path.
She fell in behind him. "So, Sergeant, these mountains are your home."
"According to the Army."
"You don't like the Army."
"I don't know anyone sane who likes the Army."
"That's not a direct answer. Captain Augustino seems to like the Army."
"Stay away from Captain Augustino."
"You told him about Harvey?"
"Nothing to tell."
She had a light step; she was more athletic than he'd thought.
"Tell me about Mrs Augustino," she said.
"Mrs Augustino left the Hill months ago."
"In a hurry, people say."
They came to a stop. She seemed to be studying him as if he were stuck with a pin against the sky.
"What else do people say?" Joe asked.
"They say you have a weakness for officers' wives."
"For women."
"You think I'm rude, Sergeant?"
"No, I think you're interested."
Wind lifted a wing of her collar and rubbed it against her hair.
"Perhaps we'd better look for Dr Fuchs," she said.
The path descended into a spring-fed canyon where water had cut through tiers of pumice, pink sandstone, limestone. Box elders grew at the canyon floor, ponderosas up the sides. Much of the Jemez pines had been cut for timber. Not this canyon. These ponderosas were deep orange, diamond-plated, over a hundred years old. In the soft stone walls over the tree tops, jays and dippers made their nests. In the highest and least accessible reaches of the walls were the pockmarks of handholds and the shadows of rock shelves.
"This is where Fuchs went climbing?" Joe asked.
Anna nodded. "It was very dull."
Joe picked a crow's feather off a twig and the feather left a gray smudge on his fingers. "Could be fun by now."
At the base of the wall behind a screen of pines was a rough ladder with more feathers. Joe told Anna Weiss to stay on the ground. He scaled the ladder and was climbing the niches in the stone when he heard her following.
"Why should I miss the fun?" she asked.
The pines as they swayed brushed his back. Sixty feet up, Joe climbed above the tree tops and reached a rock ledge about ten feet wide and fifteen feet deep carved out of soft tufa. The low roof and floor were blackened with soot mixed with feathers. Klaus Fuchs, his shirt torn and dirty, sat facing Roberto, the blind man from Taos.
"Gott sei Dank, du bist hier," Fuchs said when he saw Anna.
"It's me, Joe Peña," Joe told Roberto.
"I heard you coming," Roberto said. "Come in."
Roberto's hair was long and unbraided. He had his blanket over his shoulders and it wasn't un
til Joe helped Anna up that he noticed that Roberto was holding a Marlin double-gauge shotgun with its muzzle nestled firmly in Fuchs' crotch.
"We're not disturbing anything, are we?' Joe asked.
"Not you, no," Roberto assured him.
"I am a guest of the American government, on American government land, with American government protection, is this not so?"
Fuchs' neck was covered with finger smudges, so there'd been a scuffle. His hair stood up with fright. There was about a three-foot-long wooden idol wrapped up in red feathers and painted leather in a corner of the shelf. Cut in the rock under the layer of soot were ghost figures, snakes like hoops, lightning drawn as sticks.
"There are parts of this area, this canyon especially, that are set aside for local people so they can carry on their religion," Joe said.
"You mean Indians," Fuchs said.
"Those are the local people," Joe said.
"You mean–" Fuchs began.
"Enough," Roberto said and jabbed the barrel, not savagely, just enough to make Fuchs lean forward tenderly. "He was up here when we got here, Joe."
Joe could imagine the scene. Fuchs discovered by probably a dozen priests, most likely including Ben Reyes. It was unusual for someone from Taos to take part in a Santiago ceremony, but not unknown. A lot of men were in the service. Priests went back and forth between pueblos just to keep the old rituals rolling. The shelf must have stored altars, which Ben and the others had carried away. Ben would be back. Certainly Roberto and Fuchs weren't going anywhere. Joe had to stoop under the low ceiling. If Roberto fired the shotgun anywhere it was going to get messy. Smart of a blind man to choose a weapon with two barrels.
"Why don't we let the lady go back down?" Joe suggested.
"And run for help?" Roberto said.
"May I sit?" Anna Weiss asked.
"Yes." Roberto was pleased. He switched the shotgun from one arm to the other and held out his blanket.
"Thank you." She spread the blanket on the rock and sat.
"You too, Joe," Roberto said.
"Thanks." Joe took the hint.
"Like a picnic." Roberto tilted his face in Anna's direction. He was wearing white shirt and work trousers, the shirt buttoned at the neck and cuffs, barely showing gray body paint inside. His closed eyes were slightly sunken, otherwise he made a more handsome man than Joe had first supposed. Joe's .45 was on a snap holster. He wondered how good Roberto's hearing was.