Anna Pigeon - Track of the Cat Part 11

She worked one foot up onto the tiny ledge then drove her hand into the narrow crevice and made a fist. The flesh jammed tight and she pulled herself up till she was standing one foot on the ledge to either side of the chimney.

Ignoring the pain in her injured shoulder, she drove her left hand into the crack above her right and made a fist, a wedge of finger bones. Pulling herself up, she scrabbled for footholds. The stone, broken here, less weathered, gave better purchase. Hand over hand, skin sc.r.a.ped away by the rock, Anna dragged herself up.

A snapping sound beneath her left shoulder shot fire up into her brain, but her right hand was on the bole of a small tree at the trail's edge and her feet were solidly placed. With an effort that dragged a grunting cry from her, Anna rolled onto the welcome cradling rocks of McKittrick Ridge Trail.

It was good to lie still, to hurt in peace, to be alive. Soon, though, the kindly rocks of the trail grew sharp, digging into her back. Flies swarmed around the oozing sc.r.a.pes on her body. Thirst dragged her back from drifting dreams of rescue.

Anna shoved her useless arm into her s.h.i.+rt front and b.u.t.toned it there with the three remaining b.u.t.tons. Step by step she stumbled down the familiar trail. Somewhere near the bottom, a round face under the shapeless cloth brim of a fis.h.i.+ng hat swam into view. Beneath it, Anna was dimly aware of a woman with pure white curling hair wearing a lime-green T-s.h.i.+rt.

"Pardon me," Anna said and was surprised at how human she still sounded, "but could you do me a favor?"

Evidently she could. When next Anna opened her eyes it was Cheryl Light's face she saw.

"You're doing good," Cheryl said, her square, seamed face as comforting as some generic mom's. "We're taking you out. We'll be to the first water crossing in a minute. You're doing good."

"Good," Anna repeated. Tree branches flowed overhead. She was in the Stokes litter being trundled home. Anna was glad it was Cheryl Light. She hadn't anything against Cheryl. As consciousness drifted away again, Anna wondered what it was she had against everyone else.

CHAPTER 13.

Widespread but not deadly was how the doctor at the Carlsbad Hospital had described Anna's injuries. Her collarbone was cracked, her abdomen badly bruised, she had a slight concussion and severe contusions on her hands, legs, and torso.

Two days in the hospital for observation and she could go home. The first day she was called a "lucky girl" and a "brave girl" so often she was ready to punch somebody. When Rogelio appeared, a cold quart of Ballena and two flat loaves of Mexican sweet bread in a paper bag, Anna began to feel a little less vicious. When he kissed her and said: "Jesus, but you're one h.e.l.l of a strong woman," she began to feel downright cheerful. At least till the tears came. But they were slow and healing. The kind she could laugh through and mean it. She was not utterly alone. Life no longer hung by a fingernail.

Rogelio pressed her bandaged palm to his lips. Beneath her fingertips she could feel the rough stubble on his cheek. "All the perfume in Arabia couldn't sweeten this little hand," he said and smiled. "See. Not a complete illiterate."

Anna laughed. "Because, like Lady Macbeth's, it is drenched in blood?"

"Whatever," he said. He dipped his finger in a tear caught in the corner of her mouth. Delicately, he dabbed it behind his ear and, though she would've liked to cry for another hour-another day-to flush the fear and helplessness from her soul, she found herself smiling.

Rogelio brought the Ballena and the bread to her table. They looked rustic, real in contrast to the formidable efficiency of the stainless-steel tray. Anna took some of the bread but shook her head when Rogelio pa.s.sed her the beer. "I'm on drugs."

"Ah." Rogelio didn't seem displeased to have the beer to himself. "Seen G.o.d yet?"

"Wrong kind of drugs," Anna replied. "But then I don't feel like h.e.l.l anymore. I'll take that and be happy."

"You're pretty beat up, Anna. We'll make love like porcupines for a while."

At present she felt she'd never again want to be touched anywhere on her person with anything more forceful than a feather duster. Even through the painkillers, she knew she hurt. Knowing the feeling would pa.s.s, Anna smiled and said nothing.

"Tell me what happened," Rogelio said.

Anna pushed her thoughts back to McKittrick Ridge. Her mind's eye was not seeing too clearly. "Not much to tell," she said after a moment. "I got careless. Just stepped into s.p.a.ce is what it felt like. With the pack I couldn't recover my balance and fell over. Then a rock busted loose and hit me." She tried to remember the exact sequence of events and failed. "Then Gertrude died and Hamlet died and Laertes died and everybody else lived happily ever after," she finished.

Rogelio kissed her gently as if she were made of gla.s.s. "Whatever they're giving you, save some for me."

What sounded like the report of an automatic weapon rattled outside the window and Anna started. "Firecrackers," Rogelio explained soothingly. "The kids are gearing up. Tomorrow is the Fourth of July."

The third of July: Anna's mind turned on the date.

"What is it, querida?" querida?" Rogelio asked. "Why so sad?" Rogelio asked. "Why so sad?"

"Today Zach would have been forty." Usually Anna forbore speaking of Zachary. Not just to Rogelio, but to anyone. The drugs had lowered her defenses.

For a while Rogelio said nothing. He finished the Ballena, stared out of the second-story window. Beyond, where the low hills north of Carlsbad met the sky, afternoon thunderheads were beginning to build.

"My birthday was a week ago yesterday," he said finally. "June twenty-fifth."

"Happy birthday," Anna said and: "I didn't know."

"You never bothered to ask," he said evenly, his eyes still on the thunderclouds. "I turned thirty-two." Anna hadn't bothered to ask about that, either. "To get your undivided attention, it seems a person has got to die. I'm not willing to go quite that far." He rose, put the empty beer bottle in the front pouch pocket of the Mexican-made cotton pullover he wore. The hospital could not be trusted to recycle the gla.s.s.

"I'm glad you came." Anna felt lost and guilty and tired. "I'll try to pay more attention."

"Don't knock yourself out." He kissed her and left.

Anna promised herself she would take better care of him. She would make a plan. First, though, she must sleep. "Happy birthday, Zach," she whispered as the drugs took her back.

She dreamt of trying to call him, of standing in a phone-booth at the corner of Fifty-second and Ninth, but the street gangs had spray-painted over his number and the holes on the dial phone didn't match up with the digits.

Anna was awakened to eat a supper not worth being conscious for and again, later, to take a sleeping pill. By the next morning when a nurse, a woman in her fifties who managed by some miracle of personal grooming to make the white polyester nurse's uniform look chic, poked her head in to say: "Want a visitor?" Anna did.

The drugged sleep had obliterated the memory of much of Rogelio's visit but Anna was left with a vague sense that she needed to make amends.

She was not to have the chance. It was Christina and Alison. Alison had a hand-drawn get well card with a camel on it. She'd wanted to draw Gideon to keep Anna company while she was sick, but she was better at camels so she drew a camel with "Gideon" carefully lettered in a cartoon bubble coming out of its mouth.

"I fed Piedmont. Your door was unlocked," Christina said.

"You lifted down the sack. I I fed Piedmont," Alison corrected her mother. fed Piedmont," Alison corrected her mother.

Christina winked at Anna. The gesture seemed rakish on her serene countenance.

"Credit where credit is due," Anna said. "Thank you both."

"We stayed and petted him for one half of a hour," Alison added. "I kissed him on his head." That seemed to finish the subject in the child's mind. The top of her head disappeared from Anna's sight below the foot of the bed and sounds of rummaging ensued. Something ordinary being converted into a toy, Anna guessed.

"Thank you," she repeated, this time for Christina's ear alone.

Christina had brought a change of clothes, a comb and brush, hand mirror, colored hairbands, and some "Safari" cologne. "It seemed more fitting than 'White Shoulders,' " she explained.

Again, Anna started to cry. "d.a.m.n," she cursed herself and immediately regretted the fist she pounded into the coverlet in accompaniment. Pain shot up her shoulder and neck and into her skull. "I'm turning into a weeping willow," she complained.

"Heaven forbid!" Christina returned with easy laughter. "We can't have Anna Pigeon The Great And Terrible in tears. What is the world coming to? Here," she arranged Anna's pillows and, standing beside the bed, began to brush out her hair. "Hold this."

Anna held one pigtail in her hand while Christina French-braided the other side into a neat plait. "Already I'm feeling healthier, more together. The next braid might perform miracles. Where did you learn to do that?"

"Well, you can either go to beauty school or have a four-year-old daughter who is a little V. A. I. N."

"Vee, ay, eye, en: vain," Alison chanted by rote from the floor, where she'd dragged Anna's hiking boots from the closet.

Anna laughed. It hurt.

"Well, well," Christina said. "We learn something every day. So. Learn me. What happened? I thought you were Ms. Backwoodswoman, able to leap tall trees at a single bound."

"Fell off the trail," Anna replied. "Heavy gravity area." She was rewarded for the feeble and plagiarized witticism by the warmth of Christina's smile. She enjoyed even its reflection in the hand mirror where she watched the other woman's porcelain fingers weave her hair. "Will you come do my hair every morning till my collarbone heals?" Anna teased.

"Yes," Christina said simply and Anna believed her. "You don't whine half as much as Alison does when I pull too hard."

"Comb too hard, Momma," came a correction from the floor. "You make groves in people's heads."

"Grooves," Christina said mildly. "Gee, are, oh, oh, vee, ee, ess: grooves."

"Grooves," Alison repeated obediently and added: "In people's heads. Look! Magic! Alley shazam!" She stood. Anna could just see her head over the foot of the bed. The little girl held her finger out, a rock balanced on the tip. Slowly, she turned it over. The rock didn't fail off. "A sticky rock," she explained, as if to free her mother and Anna from unbearable suspense. With her other hand she plucked the magic rock from her finger and stuck it on her tongue.

"Alison!" her mother cried. "Stop that. For heaven's sake! You know better." If she hadn't held three strands of half-plaited hair strung through her fingers, Anna didn't doubt that she would have vaulted the bed and made the little girl spit the rock into her hand.

Unperturbed, Alison lifted the bit of gravel carefully off her tongue and stuck it on the bed's footboard. "Tastes like the paste in Dottie's toy box," she said.

Christina wrapped Anna's braids into a graceful figure eight and pinned them in place. As she put away the comb and mirror, Anna dabbed on a little cologne. She hoped Rogelio would come back. But not just now. She looked in the other woman's guileless face. The dark eyes were opaque today. "After the lion-taming episode, I was afraid you wouldn't ever speak to me again," Anna said.

"I thought about it," Christina admitted. "Sometimes you are such a pain in the pasta fazzouli, Anna!"

"Why did you come today?"

"I don't know. To clear my good name?" Christina smiled as she folded herself gracefully into the uncompromising right angles of the red plastic visitors' chair. "You're hurt. I like you. I'm here."

"Thanks," was all Anna could manage but it was, at least, sincere.

"I wouldn't take that kind of abuse from a lesser person, you know," Christina said. "I hope you're duly flattered."

"I hope you never take any abuse from anybody, ever," Anna said seriously. Christina looked a little startled at her vehemence, and Anna wondered if she'd hit a nerve.

"Will you come shoot anyone who tries?" Christina teased.

"No problem."

"Why, Anna Pigeon!" Christina said lightly. "I do believe you care. Say you'll come visit me in prison after you put me away for killing my lover."

"It's a promise. I'll bake you a cake with a file in it every year on your birthday."

Then they talked of baking, both glad to change the subject.

Christina and Alison stayed another hour, an hour that pa.s.sed quickly for Anna. She was sorry to see them leave.

When she was again alone, she looked at the mail that Christina had brought. Too tired to read but not sleepy, she flipped through bills and credit card offers. Near the bottom of the tidy bundle was a phone message from the police lab in Roswell, New Mexico, where she'd sent the samples sc.r.a.ped from Karl's truck. All the note said was Tim Dayton had called and the number.

The next item was a blue, sealed, For Your Eyes Only envelope. Inside Anna found a copy of the four-page autopsy report on Sheila Drury. Paul had finally come through. She set the report aside to be read when her mind was sharper.

Last in the pile was a packet of photos. The pictures Anna had sent in a mailer to Kodak from Ranger Drury's camera. She opened the package. There was nothing of interest: photos of cholla in bloom, several shots of Gabe-the Dog Canyon horse-being shod by Karl, and four pictures of lightning over the hills north of Dog Canyon all taken from funky, artsy angles.

Rogelio didn't come and Anna began to feel depressed. Merely the drugs wearing off, she told herself. Partly, at least, that was true. From the crown of her head to the soles of her feet, she hurt.

Irritably, she rang the nurse and demanded more painkillers. She was given two Advils.

Simply to spite consciousness, Anna tried to sleep. She had almost attained her goal of temporary oblivion when she was pulled from the confused dreams of half-sleep by a tap on the door. Optimism kept her eyes closed for a second; in her drowsiness she hoped Zach would be standing at the foot of her bed.

Reality came with its usual quick brutality. Zach vanished. Anna opened her eyes, fully awake.

Harland Roberts stood in the doorway. He leaned against the doorframe. The setting sun, slanting through the hospital windows, dyed the white streaks at his temples a rich gold and glowed on his sunburnt skin.

Surprise cleansed Anna's mind of the lingering cobwebs of dreams. Two emotions filled her, neither of which was particularly welcome: an annoyingly girlish pleasure at the sight of the hothouse flowers held negligently down by his thigh, and a sudden rus.h.i.+ng love of Christina Walters for dressing her hair and giving her cologne.

"A bribe," Harland said. When he smiled the resemblance to Stewart Granger was startling. He held up the flowers. Yellow roses. "Can I buy your silence?"

"I'm easy," Anna said.

"I doubt that," he returned and there was that in his voice that would've made Anna blush if she'd been the blus.h.i.+ng kind. He confiscated her water pitcher and began arranging the flowers with an expert domesticity that seemed natural to him. "My wife is a decorator-was a decorator," he amended and ducked his head to his work so Anna couldn't read his face.

"Yellow rose of Texas," Anna said. She could see the smile wrinkle the skin high on his cheekbone. "What am I to keep quiet about?"

He stopped his deft fiddling and looked straight at her, his gray eyes unwavering. "That stretch of trail above Turtle Rock should've been brushed and leveled. I've been meaning to send someone up to do it. I put it off. You could've been killed. It's fixed now. Nothing like shutting the barn door after the cows get out."

Anna was touched, tears again threatening. d.a.m.n the drugs, she thought, choosing to blame chemistry rather than psychology. "I've been around the block, as they say. If I haven't learned to watch my step by now it's n.o.body's fault but my own."

"Anyway," he drew the word out like a man anxious to change the subject. "I was in town and, I must confess, I couldn't resist the temptation to have a conversation with someone who, politically speaking, is somewhat to the left of Yippi Ti Yi Yo."

Anna smiled. It still hurt. "A Texas liberal. I thought that was a contradiction in terms."

Harland sank down on the foot of the bed. Even that small jolt sent an ache reverberating through Anna's bruised innards. Still she hoped the nurse wouldn't come and shoo him into the red plastic chair.

"I'm not from Texas," Harland said.

Anna was surprised. "You drawl," she accused, raising a speculative eyebrow. That hurt, too.

"Pensacola, Florida. Navy brat."

"You've been around the block and around the world?"

He laughed, a rich male noise that warmed Anna's cracked bones like good brandy. "I've done this and that," he admitted.