Nightwing

  He pulled the black hood aside and uncoiled an extension cord from inside the box to a dry cell battery he’d placed under the table. A frosted white light panel—the type used for X rays—glowed underneath an acetate map of the Navajo-Hopi reservation. Paine removed the map. With a clean scalpel he cut into the flesh of his little finger and milked three drops of blood onto the glowing panel. Over the blood-specked panel he set a clear plastic cover that had one circular, threaded opening. He picked up the specimen jar, shook it gently, counted the fleas at the bottom of the glass, and carefully unscrewed the lid, sliding a paper card between lid and jar. He turned jar and card over and slid the card away as he screwed the jar into the plastic cover. Then he set a microscope over the panel and pulled the crepe hood over the back of his head.

  Magnified by 20X, the fleas lurched uncomfortably within the confines of the panel and cover. The heat of the glowing panel, though, spread the rich vapor of an abattoir. Antennae twitched and the hair of their palps stiffened. The sighted Dog and Carnivore Fleas were first to move towards the balloon-like drops of blood, but the blind X. Cheopis and Bat Flea joined the rush. There was enough for all. Sheaths pulled back from sucking stylets, which plunged into the walls of the blood.

  At 50X, the bodies of the fleas were transparent. Paine watched a stream of red flow through stylet, esophagus, and pour into the stomach. The walls of the pharynx and gullet expanded and contracted, pumping the blood in. He studied Dog Flea, Carnivore Flea, and X. Cheopis before focusing on one of the two feeding Bat Fleas. A red stream flowed through the stylet, swirled and flowed back out again into the blood drop. The Bat Flea was sick, vomiting up its food, dying slowly from starvation. At 75X Paine could see why. A gelatinous mass was blocking the esophagus, distending it so that the valve action was malfunctioning, sucking as much blood out of the flea’s stomach as it brought in. The second Bat Flea suffered from the same blockage.

  Paine unscrewed the jar from the cover and slipped in a gloved hand. He tweezered one Bat Flea and crushed it in a bowl of blood culture gelatine. The second Bat Flea he picked up carefully in the tweezers and held over a slide as he squeezed the stomach. A red strip shot over the slide. Paine dropped the flea in a killing solution. He screwed the jar back on the cover.

  Paine moved to another table that was almost dwarfed by a fluorescence microscope. The microscope had ordinary compound optics built into a sway-backed system of mercury-discharge lamp, radiation shields, and ultraviolet filters that flooded the slide stage with blue-violet light. It was an ungainly, hot, and power-draining apparatus, but Chee had insisted on no more communication between Paine and the Navajo labs at Ship Rock except by radio. And the fluorescence microscope was a bacteriologic laboratory in itself.

  Paine prepared a slide smear of the contents of the Bat Flea’s stomach, dried it, and dyed it with fluorescent stain. He set the slide on the stage, pulled the hood over his head, turned on the lamp, and focused.

  The stain was still taking effect. Paine waited, only fearing that the pounding of his heart would disturb the delicate focus. In spite of the canyon shade, the heat of the lamp rolled sweat down his neck and chest.

  On the slide, invisible organisms were becoming visible against a dark background. They were short bacilli, slightly resembling safety pins.

  Plague bacilli. The bats carried plague.

  Chee had hired the right man.

  On the way back to Gilboa, having left his wife at her brother’s trailer, Selwyn was roaring drunk.

  “So, big Walker Chee took you to the cleaners, huh? Did a war dance on you and hit you over the head with his Phi Beta Kappa key. You always have your leg half down a scorpion hole before you watch where you step? You’re not just dealing with another savage, boy. You’re fighting Peabody Coal and Kennecott Copper. My friend, you are a turtle on the superhighway of progress. Know what happens to turtles on highways?”

  Youngman handed back Selwyn’s bottle. He was feeling a little run over already.

  “You’re right, aren’t you, Selwyn?”

  “Right, I’m right. Watch the road. Bad enough you’re drinking my booze, don’t get me killed. You know, Tonto, I can’t believe Abner’s dead. I think I’ll drink to Abner.”

  “I thought you hated Abner.”

  “Me? Never! A wonderful guy. Weird but still a great individual.”

  “Not Quaker, either.”

  “Let’s drink to the Quakers. Now, goddamn it, you stay on the road.”

  Youngman steered the jeep off the road and between a close-set pair of barrel cactuses. He kept on an angle away from the road while Selwyn clutched the windshield.

  “Where we going?” Selwyn shouted.

  “You want to drink to Abner, we’ll go drink to Abner.”

  The jeep shook as Youngman raced over the stones of a dry wash. Ahead, the land developed those stubby rises of piñon and mesquite trees that Southwesterners like to call hills. The jeep’s speed created a false breeze.

  “My bladder!” Selwyn warned.

  Youngman wasn’t listening. He needed a blast of air in the face and the physical tension of handling a fast-moving vehicle on sliding, exploding rocks without losing control.

  “Hang on.”

  “Holy . . . !” Selwyn exhaled as the jeep flew up a side of the wash and landed on two wheels, then four.

  Youngman, more relaxed, slowed down as he wended his way through the mesquite trees. Where water was next to nonexistent, mesquite was the familiar scruffy bush, but where there was any decent water table mesquite became a true tree with olive-green leaves. Half a mile on, his eye caught the brilliant yellow of paloverde branches through a screen of mesquite, like the plumage of yellow birds.

  “We going where I think we’re going?” Selwyn muttered.

  The jeep’s trail of dust curled through the hills. Inch-long cholla spikes clicked under tires. To Selwyn, drunk or sober, the desert was a labyrinth. He had never understood why the Hopi weren’t a tribe of people continually lost and meandering about in the wilderness. Somehow, to him, Youngman picked out one rise of paloverde trees from all the rest.

  “Bring your bottle.” Youngman stopped the jeep.

  “I always hated that son of a bitch, you know that.”

  “Come on.”

  They leaned against each other and stumbled up through the trees. Youngman remembered that he should have brought something, a bowl of cornmeal or a candy bar, for Abner’s spirit to eat. Selwyn tripped.

  “You can make it,” Youngman said.

  “Look, if I could walk I’d be going in the other direction.”

  Youngman put Selwyn’s arm over his shoulders and half-carried him up the slope. They ducked the low branches and waded through poppies, while Selwyn’s curses grew in intensity. A real wind came up. The trees bowed.

  At the top of the rise, Selwyn slipped from Youngman and fell to his knees. All around the grave were dirt and rocks, and the grave itself was empty.

  “He’s not dead,” Selwyn said. “I knew it. The bastard rose.”

  Youngman walked around the hole. Not even the winding sheet was left.

  “He’s dead. Somebody dug him out.”

  “I don’t see any shovel marks or any footprints. He came out. I told you he was a witch,” Selwyn moaned.

  “A graverobber doesn’t have to leave his name. It was those bastards up on the mesa, Abner’s old friends. Or that pahan who tried to get at Abner before. Paine.”

  “No, he rose. He’s not dead, Sweet Jesus, he’s not. Feel that wind. Christ, he’s walking around. He’s out there.”

  “Michael, row the boat ashore, hallelujah, Michael row the boat ashore, hallelujah! The river Jordan is deep and wide, hallelujah, Milk and honey on the other side, hallelujah!”

  The song mixed with the sounds of tin plates and utensils being distributed, and the sizzle of hamburger patties in the campfire. John Franklin directed his choir with a cigarette. The campers sat on bedrolls; their silhouettes, cas
t by the fire, wavered over the side of the van.

  “Excellent,” Franklin applauded. “Wasn’t that excellent, Miss Dillon?”

  Anne mustered a faint smile.

  “My voice isn’t what it used to be. La!” One of the ladies tried a high note.

  “I’m hungry. That desert air sure does it to you.”

  “George, you’d be hungry underwater.”

  Anne passed out potato chips and rolls. Since they’d started out from Gilboa, her pious charges had yet to help with the cooking or cleaning up. As long as they doled out some money to the reservation, she reminded herself.

  “You can do your own toasting.”

  “I sure like my burgers rare.”

  “Is that coffee ready yet? Gee, it gets nippy here at night, doesn’t it?”

  “Rough it, Henry,” Franklin said, a moment before Anne answered with a phrase that sounded vaguely the same.

  “Hey, will you listen to that!”

  Everyone fell silent. Anne had set up camp in late afternoon in an area that had seemed comfortably closed in by bouquets of ocotillos. The night dissolved the ocotillos, while the fire brought closer a grim ring of saguaro cactus. A call trailed over the desert.

  “An owl,” Anne said. “They roost in holes in the cactus.”

  Mrs. Franklin continued to stare into the dark. She hadn’t recovered from the sight of that old Indian they found dead the day before. She’d seen dead folks before; Lord knew, she’d made enough calls to hospitals. But that was dying like a person. That Indian had died like some animal, well, like a pigeon in a gutter, she thought. Such things shouldn’t happen. And the desert bothered her. The starkness disoriented her. She was accustomed to the soft clouds and stately green trees of her Minnesota lake country. In contrast, the desert was a graveyard, and the saguaros like tombstones.

  “It is beautiful,” she lied. “Do we have any more wood for the fire?”

  “Leave it alone, Claire,” one of the other wives answered. “It’s romantic.”

  “Don’t be a dude, Claire.”

  “I’m still cold,” she said.

  Anne walked away from the camp in search of wood. She didn’t expect to find any, not even a greasewood tree, but after a day of driving in a crowded van, she was happy to be alone for a couple of minutes in the dark. A moon hung out of reach above the upraised arms of a dead saguaro. Anne was about a hundred feet from the camp when she heard a step behind her.

  “It’s me,” Franklin said. “I thought you might need some help.”

  “There’s no wood out here.”

  “I know.” Franklin oozed complicity, and then shifted to concern. “Have you been giving any more thought to my offer, Miss Dillon?”

  “No. I don’t see myself as a secretary.”

  “Oh, it could be much more interesting than that. Actually, you’d be more of a personal aide. You’d love the travel. There’s going to be a World Council of Churches convention in London this winter. Philanthropy has a lot of fringe benefits.”

  “I’m not one of them.”

  While Franklin decoded Anne’s insult, his wife called from the van.

  “Never mind, John, don’t bother.” She watched her husband and the girl walk back. “A blanket will do.”

  At the fire, Anne served up hamburgers and dished out beans from a pot resting in the center of the coals. Franklin said the blessing.

  “Miss Dillon,” said the hungry man called Henry, “I can’t help thinking about that deputy we ran into. Are all the Hopis as unfriendly as that? It seems to me after all the work you’ve done for his people that he was less than grateful. What’s the point of donating work or money if these people are going to bite the hand that feeds them?”

  Between bites there was a general echo of agreement around the campfire.

  “I don’t think foundations can depend on gratitude,” Anne said.

  “We all certainly know that,” John Franklin remarked. “What we really want from you is an assessment of their character. Now, take that deputy as an example. How do you explain him?”

  “I don’t know what you mean, ‘explain him.’ ”

  “He’s the only Hopi that we’ve met so far, unless you count the women making pots. He seems to be a friend of yours, you’ve talked about him enough.”

  “You’ll meet other Indians.” Anne tried to dodge the question. “The Momoa family, people at the Snake Dance.”

  She didn’t like the turn the conversation was taking. Franklin wanted to punish her because she had refused his offer, and the others were joining in. Or maybe Youngman’s paranoia was contagious. But the boredom that had been settling in on the group was definitely gone.

  “Is he a good friend?” Claire Franklin asked.

  “Yes. You have to get to know him, though.”

  “Well, apparently you do, dear. How ever did you manage it?”

  “My answers may not be your answers.” That was a poor evasion, Anne realized. “See, I’ve lived here for a while.”

  “Alone?” one of the other women asked with the thrill of possible titillation in her eyes.

  “We haven’t lived here.” Franklin gave the interrogation a more dignified tone. “We haven’t had the privilege. Now, you mentioned us helping these people. In fact, I tend to doubt we would have the benefit of your company unless you thought you could put forward a case for some sort of aid. But for us to help these people, you have to help us. Tell us about your deputy.”

  “All I can tell you,” Anne said after a moment’s thought, “is that he’s a desert person. A desert creature. It takes a very different kind of animal or plant to survive out here. Something very tough and self-sufficient. Well, take the bushes here as a kind of example. They grow wide apart from each other, and one of the reasons is that each bush spreads a poison around itself that will kill off another seedling. It has to be that way, because if the bushes grew closer to each other there wouldn’t be enough water for either.”

  “He sounds more like a scorpion, the way you describe him,” Franklin said.

  Anne looked at their silly, food-stuffed faces. Any appetite she’d had for their company was gone.

  She dropped her empty plate to the ground. “I’m going to catch the weather report.”

  As soon as she was in the van she closed the windows to shut out the sound of their voices. Her fingers reached for the radio, and then left it silent.

  “You think there’s something going on between our Miss Dillon and that deputy?” Henry’s wife wondered aloud.

  Anne stared through the windshield. Was Youngman like that, as impossible to approach as she’d said? Was killing love a form of self-preservation?

  “I hope it doesn’t rain tomorrow,” Claire Franklin sighed. “A day in a van is not my idea of a vacation.”

  “It might rain tonight. Hear the breeze?”

  “Pass the ketchup, please.”

  “I can hear it, but I don’t feel it.”

  “Can you imagine, Miss Dillon and that deputy?”

  “Why didn’t you and Miss Dillon bring back any wood, dear?”

  “It sounds like wings, actually.”

  “There’s nothing like a hamburger cooked out of doors.”

  “You know, she was pestering me about that donation.”

  “We have enough people who need help closer to home.”

  “I still don’t see the ketchup.”

  “Look at the moon.”

  “I don’t see it.”

  “That’s what I mean. It was there a second ago.”

  “Never mind, I found the ketchup.”

  “Just keep your hands off her, John, that’s all I’m going to say,” Claire Franklin whispered.

  “Listen to that.”

  “Oh!” Mrs. Franklin jumped to her feet and swung at the air. “A bat!”

  “I didn’t see anything.”

  “For heaven’s sake, dear.” Franklin was disgusted. “It isn’t going to nest in your hair.”

/>   “That’s an old wives’ tale.” Henry pitched the ketchup bottle aside. “I don’t know, maybe that means they only bother old wives.”

  “There’s another!” Claire ducked.

  “All right, all right.” Franklin stood up holding a blanket. “Show me.”

  A muffled sound streaked over the campfire. Claire Franklin swayed, her hands up to her head. She took her hands away. A gouge ran from her left eyebrow to her right temple and from the wound, over her eyes, ran a sheet of blood.

  “John!” she screamed. “Help!”

  Franklin swung the blanket, and stumbled as something like a fist hit him between the shoulder blades. He felt teeth slice into his back.

  “John,” Henry, like the others, didn’t understand what was happening. “John, boy, what’s the matter?”

  Then the sound, first like a scattering of dry leaves, then like a tide rushing over steps, poured over the camp. It spread and blanketed the camp. Ten, twenty bats on a body. Hundreds swirling overhead.

  “Maude!” Henry pitched on the ground, two bats on his neck, and watched one rip open his hand. Beyond was his wife, on one knee, screaming in a coat of bats. A bat fixed on her cheek. Another bat landed on the ground. It drew up its wings and scuttled towards Henry like a spider.

  The ground was covered with running bats. Claire Franklin rose from the ground, a statue in red. Another figure, seemingly two-headed, ran through the fire. Franklin and another man spun like maddened dancers.