Stealing Fire Read online

Dinner was ready, and so was the dining room.

  There was good silver at every place on the table. None of the curlicue stuff I saw in Chicago’s store windows. These pieces were hammered and shaped by hand, heavy and gleaming. We also had pottery made by an artist near Oljato. Nice china from my great-grandmother, so thin you can see through it, and so clear it sounds like a bell, sits in the cabinet. Mom prefers her own, gods and rabbits running around the edges. Creamy colored, burgundy designs made from squawberry dye and baked in an earthen oven for days. These were her particular prize. Nothing that was handed down.

  After a meal that sent groans of satisfaction all around, we ambled back to the company room. Mr. Wright sat at the piano and knocked out a piece that was fast and bright.

  Grandpa wore a puzzled look.

  “Don’t try, Mose,” said Mr. Wright. “I made that up on the spot.”

  We cheered. I was getting to like the man. Frieda reached for her viola case and some sheet music for a duet. She cherished her instrument, kept the finish just so with her own combination of oils and waxes. Changed her strings and the hair on her bow often. She and her viola have belonged to each other for almost fifty years. She opened the case.

  The head of the instrument hung from the neck. Frieda fell back into her chair as if she had seen a murder. For her, it was the same.

  I ran over to her, Mom went to get a cold cloth, and Iris sat, stunned. Inside the case, swathed in blue velvet, was a note. Hope you enjoyed the concert today. I grabbed it.

  Grandfather motioned me and Mr. Wright into his office.

  “Yazzie,” he said in a hard tone, “this is your business, I understand, but it’s our home, our sanctuary, where we’re supposed to be safe. I’d like to see the note in Frieda’s viola case.”

  He read it. He waved the paper in the air. “What do you make of this?”

  “Here is what we know for certain.” I turned to Mr. Wright. “Whatever your troubles are, they have come into our home. We can’t have that.”

  “I thought we were going to use me as bait.”

  “Use you as bait, not Frieda. I underestimated the danger to my family. I’d figured on a few days to hide you out here and then safely escort you to Taliesin West.”

  “Are you quitting? I am in danger!”

  Very self-absorbed. If he hadn’t been an old man, I might have slugged him. I felt like it.

  “Mr. Wright,” I said, “we can be friends. I’d like that. But I can’t protect you.”

  “What will I do without you?”

  “It doesn’t seem to me I’ve done a very good job so far.”

  I breathed deep, calmed myself down. “I’ll get another man for the job, hire a car for you, and you can get a good start in the morning,” I said. “You’ll be all right.”

  And then a lightbulb, a ridiculous lightbulb considering the situation, went on over my head. I had an idea and we three talked it over.

  If they agreed, the women would stay here. I could probably get a detective friend to be available. Meanwhile, I would take Mr. Wright somewhere no one could follow us. And if they did, it would be the best possible outcome. I’d be able to take care of the situation on my terms.

  “Mr. Wright, I’ll stay on this,” I said, “because some of my family thinks you’re the eighth wonder of the world. I made a commitment to you, and I don’t like to walk away from that. Plus, my grandfather feels we owe it to you—I have no idea why.”

  “Because he’s an elder,” said Grandpa. “Sometimes our choices aren’t entirely rational, but they should be respected.”

  I looked at Mose. “You just like being around someone older than you.”

  “I was kidding when I said that, although it’s partly true. What is entirely true is that art should be protected, and Mr. Wright makes art.”

  Art and buildings, they’re not the same thing, and I said so. Grandfather walked to his bookshelf, magazines and books lying on their sides in disarray. He pulled out two copies of Architectural Digest and handed them to me. The home called Fallingwater, designed by Mr. Wright, right down to the furniture, took up five pages. It was a house like no other. A miracle. The ideal tree house, water pouring out from under, a magical world of forest and ferns and greens of every shade cascading around it. More greens than I had known. Like our trading post in Oljato, the home didn’t own the land. The land owned the home. Grandfather was right. Mr. Wright created beauty out of raw materials. He was an artist.

  I looked across at Aunt Frieda. She was cradling her viola like a baby.

  “Can it be repaired?”

  “I think so,” she murmured. She looked up at me. “This is an eighteenth-century instrument.”

  I nodded. I knew that.

  “Mr. Wright, if we’re going to stay in a working relationship I need to ask you some questions.”

  “We already did that on the train.”

  “We didn’t even start,” I said. “I can hear the spaces between your words. The spaces where the truth of your stories lives.”

  “All right, then.” Large sigh. He sank into my grandfather’s couch.

  “I want to know details,” I said, “things you think wouldn’t matter. I’ll ask you questions, you answer. And this time come clean about your enemies. All of them.”

  He looked at his shoes and he looked at the ceiling, quick glance at Grandfather, and then he leveled me with his pale, blue-eyed stare.

  “Enemies? Mr. Yazzie Goldman, I wouldn’t know where to begin.”

  But he began to tick them off. I wondered how many names he’d left out, and how many people were long-gone fantasies of his petty anger that should have been buried and forgotten.

  In the end I decided he had as many enemies as ravens filled the sky. No sense in trying to guess which one might drop white stuff in our hair.

  Twelve

  We gathered the family and our guests in the company room.

  Mrs. Wright had a sour look on her face, and I didn’t blame her. She was in a stranger’s home, running from phantoms because of some peccadillo she wasn’t responsible for. Considering all that, she was handling it with a lot less volume than the women in my family would have been.

  I told them my plan. There was some grumbling, but in the end we made a few tweaks and got it sorted out.

  “Yazzie?” That was Mom. “I think you’re right to change course, but I’m not ready to go back to Oljato. I don’t think Iris should go, either.”

  “You’re both good here in Santa Fe? That’s what I have to know.”

  “After what happened last year,” my mother said, “I’m good anywhere but there.”

  “Staying in Santa Fe is fine with me.” Iris frayed the threads on her sweater.

  “All right.” I handed Iris a phone number. “This man will be at home and available any time you need help.”

  She said, “But I’ll be sitting here worried about you.”

  “I’m always okay. You know that.”

  “I know you think you are.”

  Quiet. Quiet that was soon cut by my mother’s voice. “The air is so heavy in here, it feels like I can’t breathe. Everyone bubbling inside their own thoughts. I don’t even know exactly how we came to this. The details, what brought this into our home. So many questions.”

  “I can only tell you what I know.”

  “That’s a beginning,” she said.

  “Mr. Wright got himself into hot water over money. He’s up to his ears with a guy that has sky-high interest rates, a loan shark. A very large shark. He’s mobbed up, and so are his enforcers. On the other hand, he seems to be trying to play it straight, too.”

  Pause. Deep breath. “There was a fire at Taliesin West, and a shed burned down. Don’t know if it’s an accident or not.”

  I turned to Mrs. Wright. “This puzzles me, too, Mrs. Wright. I understand the students come to you when they have problems. That’s terrific. But I don’t understand you huddled up with that pretty boy, Payton, for so long. How b
ig could his problem be?”

  It was almost as if I’d pushed her. She’d been leaning forward before. Now she sat back, as stiff as if she’d been in a deep freeze. She said nothing.

  “There are a lot more questions than answers,” I said to everyone. That much I was certain of.

  There was something else bothering me, but I was holding this card tight. It was about the evening when I thought I’d seen Payton in the middle of reporters in Albuquerque. When the reporters were asking questions about the fire, about the Guggenheim, and how did Wright enjoy the Super Chief? It was that one split moment, too jumbled to feel it as fact or not, when I thought Payton smiled at me, a slim, nasty smile. A secret smile. Then he was gone, and only I had seen him, or someone very like him.

  “You need clear air to think,” Mom said to me. “A place to collect yourself.”

  “I need to be able to protect my family and Mr. Wright. Both. Oljato is remote as it gets, even the rez. Even most traders and Indians don’t know where it is.”

  Mrs. Wright unfroze long enough to turn to me. “I should have gotten off with the rest of the crowd at Flagstaff. Is there any way I can get down there?”

  Of course there was a way. I could stick her on the train from Albuquerque to Flagstaff, and someone from Taliesin could pick her up. Risky, but doable. And if she was gone, my family would be out of danger.

  “Mr. Wright, how do you feel about your wife going to Taliesin West alone? I can’t watch both of you at the same time in two different places.”

  “Obviously,” Wright said, “I don’t like to be without my wife, but I don’t own her.”

  I told him it was their decision. She could stay in Santa Fe, go with us to the outback of the rez, or head to Taliesin West. She could board the train and go clear to Los Angeles. Unless it affected Mr. Wright or my family, it was really none of my business. That’s what I told myself.

  “I won’t impose on these people, Frank. I will find a way to get to Taliesin.”

  Wright turned to me. “Have you ever dealt with women of Russian descent, Mr. Goldman?”

  I told him that I had not.

  “They are wonderful in many ways,” he said. “They organize your life. They are excellent homemakers. They take care of details. They appreciate beauty and hard work. They are terrific partners and help your visions become real. And they will rarely be told what to do. Stubborn.”

  I was very grateful for Iris.

  “In other words,” I said, “if she wants to go to the moon, she’s going.”

  “She will go wherever she thinks she’ll be most useful.”

  “Frank,” Mrs. Wright said, “I’m going to Taliesin West. Period. To run our business.”

  He smiled broadly. “And to meet Ayn Rand when she shows up.”

  “Oh, God. Well, she has written a bestseller—the woman is a draw. She modeled The Fountainhead on you.”

  “Don’t remind me,” Wright said. “She came to one of my lectures in an expensive black velvet gown to get my attention. Never saw her, but that’s what I was told. Ayn Rand? No thanks.”

  “Frank!”

  “Have you read that book?”

  “No.”

  “I have,” he said. “It is not me.”

  “That isn’t the point.”

  “Her fictional architect is the opposite of me. Skyscrapers, ice cubes in a vertical tray. Cold things, not grounded in Nature, nor am I an atheist.”

  “She has a reputation among the well-heeled.”

  “Oh, please. I see God in everything that’s natural, and that’s what my work reflects. Our ideals are 180 degrees apart.”

  “Her new home, designed by you, will reflect your ideals.”

  “I doubt that.”

  “Imagine the movie stars she will entertain! You’ll want to design some of their houses, too.”

  “Fine. You go down and meet with the atheist who writes flinty books. I’m going to Oljato.” He got a blissful look. “Nature, Nature.”

  Silence, thicker than a winter blanket, settled over the room.

  “How soon can I leave?” she said. “There are plenty of young, strong men who’ll watch out for me once I get to Taliesin West.”

  I didn’t like the sound of that, and my face must have shown it.

  “If anything looks suspicious,” she said, “I’ll wire you.”

  “You have a phone at Taliesin West?”

  “A party line, four parties on it.” As soon as I could leave the table, I’d send a wire asking for solid information about the fire.

  “Use it if you need to, but call the police. I can’t get down there fast enough.”

  “Well, when can I leave?”

  Wright spoke up. “Yazzie, could you find someone to escort my wife from here to Taliesin West?”

  Mrs. Wright tapped one foot on the floor, a caffeinated metronome. “I will call Taliesin West,” she said. “Any Fellow I instruct to will pick me up at Flagstaff.”

  I’d have bet she was thinking of Pretty Boy Payton.

  * * *

  We all moved outside to enjoy the soft evening. Our double glass doors were painted Taos blue to invite long life and kind spirits. Colored lanterns cast frail light, and the last blossoms were closing up for the night.

  We sat at a wooden plank table in the courtyard. My grandfather was regaling the Wrights with stories of the old days. Wright joined in. They were deep into talk about building, doing it right, working before the sun came up until after it went down, so tired that you couldn’t move another inch, and then starting all over the next day. They compared notes about how great life was in the old days, and how the world was going to pot.

  Frieda was still looking mournfully at the viola in her lap. I was glad Mrs. Wright was leaving.

  “Mother, you’re certain about this?” Wright said.

  “Absolutely. There is work to be done, and it can’t be interrupted by personal problems. That will only make them worse.”

  I agreed. She did have to attend to business, and she did have to act like they were on track. With the aging wizard away and unaccounted for, that was especially important. There was also the fire, the insurance, and any police business to wrap up. I admired the way she kept their ship afloat. No doubt they’d be floundering without her.

  On the other hand, keeping Mr. Wright safe would be no piece of cake. He had planted so many land mines over the decades that he couldn’t remember who, or where, to avoid.

  But the whole conversation bothered me. They were talking business. I was all nerves alive to the night around us and what might be there—who might be. When the wind made the bushes blow against the walls, I heard it and looked hard that way. When a dove flew overhead, I noticed its shadow and jumped a little. When someone walked past our outside walls, I listened carefully until the footsteps were gone.

  Meanwhile, the group didn’t seem to catch on.

  “Okay,” I said, “let’s take this inside. It’s cool.” I didn’t say anything about wanting the protection of adobe walls.

  Next morning my grandfather, Mr. Wright, and I would head off into the red-rock wilderness without any women to protect. They would be safer without us.

  Thirteen

  Sleepy gold sky, just before the dawn, and I kissed my wife good-bye. She knew our route, and no one else. She, and only she, knew the keys to the railroad’s Cadillac roadster were in our bedside table.

  Grandpa had coffee going while I got dressed. The night before, I’d told Mr. Wright to wear something normal. We found an old pair of coveralls that belonged to the workman who’d fixed the carriage house and had moved on. He’d been a little wider than Mr. Wright, but the length was right.

  Nothing we could do about his white hair, long and thick, but we found him a cowboy hat in the front hall closet. I thought he’d refuse to wear all of that, but he loved it. Happy as a clam. Dress him up so he looked like a regular guy, and he thought he was wearing a costume.

  Before the sun top
ped the peaks, we three were in the pickup.

  I wound to the south and west of Santa Fe and took Route 66 from Bernalillo to Albuquerque. Small road, but we made good time. Just after we got into ABQ, I spotted a green Pontiac that might be tailing us. Popular car, lots of them on the road, but I was keeping my eyes open. Stayed on Route 66 west, and didn’t see the Pontiac anywhere.

  We pulled over to relieve ourselves, and then we got out a picnic basket full of food. Ham sandwiches, fruit, some small fig cakes my mother makes for Frieda. She wraps them in gold foil. If my mother could spoil everyone in her world, she would do it.

  We sat, three frogs on the bumper, and looked at this piece of the planet. Seems like there’s not much there, and you’d be right to think so. But those hills, bluffs, buttes, valleys, ridges, dried creeks, caves, and rills have stories that go back before this fifth and present world.

  We tidied up, drank some water, and turned north on Indian Road 165, just before Grants, toward the Hambler Trader Post. I’d gotten more oil and water, more gas, in Grants and we were set.

  Old man Hambler had lost his wife some years before, and some said he never had a wife. But he did have a son, a baby someone left with him. Sam Hambler and his son, now grown, kept the place running. I planned to spend the night at Sam’s place, and then we’d hit our trading post in Oljato next day before dark. Usually takes us about six-seven hours between Santa Fe and Oljato, but I was trying for two things—keeping us on the rez, and making a route that went southwest when I really wanted to end up on the north end of the rez.

  About fifteen minutes up the road, I spotted that Pontiac again, and my teeth clenched. Same Arizona license plate. The driver had a heavy foot, and suddenly he came close. I said, “I don’t know who that son of a bitch is,” and stomped the gas.

  Like a predator the Pontiac leapt forward. Bile squirted up my gullet. I swerved till we brushed against the greasewood, hoping he just wanted to pass. Instead he followed and tapped my rear bumper. Then he did it again. Then again, but harder.

  Bile ripped up my gullet. “Bastard!” I yelled.

  Bastard. I put it to the floor, got our truck just enough in front of the guy. I flipped around sideways to the Pontiac, blocking the road. My fingers were damn near squeezing the steering wheel to spaghetti.