Stealing Fire Read online

  But when he came out, Hambler was real fidgety. He asked if we wanted a cabin for the night, and I said we did. Then he whispered to me, saying to go ahead and stay at his place. He gave me the key to his house and told me to let Mr. Wright and Grandpa in through a small side door. Said an extra room was all made up and his son had gone to Gallup.

  Something was definitely off. Hambler was always the heart of generosity, and normally he would have put down his broom and pulled out more rocking chairs. Giving us the key to his house, to what looked like a basement, instead of a cabin? No offer of dinner? And no excitement about talking with visitors? They’re always a treat for the far-off posts, especially when folks stop by who speak English—not so common, and it’s nice to speak the tongue you grew up with. The whole picture didn’t make sense.

  “Quick. Take the old gents downstairs in my place, and tell them to stay put. And,” he said, “I’d appreciate you coming upstairs with me.” Maybe a flutter behind the curtains, I wasn’t sure. “And bring your weapon.”

  “Sounds like we’re walking into danger, and I’m happy to help you out.”

  “Yes. Let’s not talk too long.”

  “One thing,” I said. “Did you get that phone put in here?”

  “Last month. I can’t remember how many people I had to strong-arm to get it. It’s the only phone within a hundred miles—for many it’s a lifeline.”

  “If that’s the story you used, it’s the truth.”

  “Other things, too. But right now, please, get the old men moving, come inside, and make that gun of yours visible.”

  I handed Grandpa the key to Hambler’s side door, gave him a short summary, and asked him to keep Wright under control.

  We walked through the trading post door, Hambler in front of me. Next to Hambler’s cozy woodstove was one of the largest Ute Indians I have ever seen, wrapped in a very pricey blanket, sitting in a rocking chair. Must have been Hambler’s blanket—it was a Two Grey Hills design.

  I stared at the man. Then I looked away. Looked back at him. He was surly. I didn’t know if that was his usual mood, but it was then.

  We nodded to each other.

  I said, “You visiting Hambler?”

  He wore disgust like it was painted on his skin. “Out of gas,” he said. “Car won’t go. Cold outside.”

  “You rent a room from him?”

  “No money.”

  Even if he’d had money, Hambler wouldn’t have given him a room. He smelled of booze and bad times.

  He looked me straight in the eye and slipped a knife down into his hand from the edge of the blanket. He made sure I saw the sharp end of it. I opened my jacket, and he saw my .45. We nodded to each other again.

  We’re even.

  “What’s your name?” I said.

  “Charley Buck.”

  “Charley, you and I can sit up all night, but let’s start with the truth. There’s no car outside except for Hambler’s and mine. You’re not out of gas.”

  He grunted.

  “There is a very nice paint out there, a stallion. That’s yours.”

  “I’m cold. No money.”

  “Having a knife inside Hambler’s blanket is not going to make him or me feel kindly to you.”

  “Stuck here.”

  “You got any relatives close by?”

  That was a long shot. He was far from his own rez. On the other hand, there was some reason he was here.

  “Got a daughter. Two miles over the ridge.”

  “That’s why you’re here.”

  “She married a Navajo.” He made the word “Navajo” sound like spit. Utes and Navajos hate each other.

  “You’ve seen her?” I said.

  “Her husband kicked me out. My wife is dead. Got no other kids.”

  “How much money you think it would take for your son-in-law to let you in?”

  He looked at me, measuring me.

  “One hundred bucks.”

  Hambler stood, mute, against the wall. He’d been thinking of selling the post for some time and moving to Albuquerque. His son was itching to go. I thought this would probably be the last straw, sending them off into the city. He had a lot of quality Indian art. Enough to fill a new store, ripe with goods for new tourists to the Southwest.

  “Hambler,” I said, “how much is that blanket worth?”

  “About two hundred and fifty dollars.”

  “Wholesale price?”

  “One hundred, give or take.”

  I pulled out fifty dollars and handed it to Mr. Buck. “Give Hambler the blanket and get to your daughter’s before someone swipes that fine horse of yours. Hand her son-in-law the money, and I think you’ll be welcome.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Take it or leave it, but you’re going out the door.”

  He grunted again, and sat back. Folded his arms across his chest.

  Hambler and I said nothing. I put my hand on the gun barrel. He sat in silence a few more minutes.

  “Okay.” He got up, left the blanket, and ambled out the door, his fist tight around the money.

  I watched him mount his horse and ride to the west. “He’s gone. His son-in-law will take the money, at least for this night.”

  “Let’s get your grandfather and the other fellow. They’ll want out.”

  “Your house a mess?”

  “That key was to the rug room. Didn’t want them inside the house in case the Ute decided to search the place or drag us there.”

  “No light?”

  “And no heat. I’ll go let them out,” he said. “You asked about the phone?”

  “May I use it?”

  “Party line, and the service comes and goes—depends if Mildred Etcitty is awake and anywhere near the switchboard.” Hambler ran toward his house.

  I called our home in Santa Fe. What a day! I needed a big dose of my wife’s voice. It was late, no answer. I tried again. Iris picked up.

  “Iris?”

  “Yazzie, I have something important to tell you.”

  “About the baby?”

  “What baby?” Hesitation. She said, “It’s about Mrs. Wright.”

  “Yes?”

  “We got up a few hours after you left,” said my wife. “She was gone.”

  “No one took her to the depot?”

  “Like I said, we were asleep when she left.”

  “Cadillac still there?” I asked.

  “Yes. Frieda left us a note about Mrs. Wright before she went off to class this morning. Note said she took a cab.”

  “Have you talked with Frieda since?”

  “No,” she said. “Your mom and I, we’d both just woken up when we found the note. Frieda must have written it fast. It was scrawly and didn’t make a lot of sense—she was probably running late. You know how she is about being on time. All we know about Mrs. Wright is in that note.”

  I had gotten myself into the biggest possible mess, and I didn’t know how to untangle it. I would, I had to, but first things first.

  “Iris, that can wait for a minute,” I said. “Grandpa and Mr. Wright both said you’re, we’re, expecting a baby.”

  She laughed. Actually, I had to hold the receiver away from my ear. She was pretty loud. When she pulled herself together enough to speak, she said, “You have got to be kidding me.”

  “That’s what they said.” I was starting to feel pretty stupid.

  “And you believed those two old tricksters about something like that?”

  “I love you, Iris.”

  “I love you, too.” Then she laughed some more.

  “Have you got that out of your system?”

  “Probably.”

  “Okay. Read me the note Frieda left about Mrs. Wright.”

  She did.

  I wasn’t going to breathe one word about it to Mr. Wright. Not tonight.

  Sixteen

  Hambler was worried that the Ute was still nearby. I assured him he wasn’t. The trader looked pretty frail since the last time
I’d seen him. Clearly, his son was now carrying most of the business.

  Grandpa stormed through the trading post door, bristling. Wright followed him inside, looking like he’d lost twenty years of dignity.

  “Don’t ever, anyone, tell me to hide out again, understand?”

  “What the hell was that about?” chimed in Mr. Wright. I think it was the first time I’d heard him swear.

  “There was a Ute here,” I said, “sitting at Hambler’s fire. Had a knife up his sleeve, covered himself with one of the rugs—he was cold—and he made sure we saw the business end of that knife.”

  “What?” Grandpa hollered. “You should have let me at him.”

  “You needed to take care of Wright.”

  He looked dubious.

  “I made sure he knew I had a gun,” I said.

  “Excuse me,” said Mr. Wright, “what is a Ute?”

  Grandfather looked at him as if he had just asked, “What is a table?”

  “Utes,” I said, “are Indians whose piece of reservation is right next to ours. We don’t like each other.”

  “Simply don’t like each other?”

  “We took each other as slaves, stole each other’s wives or children, or both.”

  “I see.” He ran that through his head for a minute. “Well, this is much more of an adventure than I expected!”

  I shook my head. He was an unending source of surprise and aggravation.

  Hambler grinned, which probably served to calm him down. I found my manners and introduced Mr. Wright and Hambler to each other. Like me, he’d never heard of Mr. Frank Lloyd Wright, but Wright was quite old, and that was reason enough to be generous.

  After a fine dinner of cow knuckle stew, Grandfather, Mr. Wright, and I shared a cottage. Two twin beds and a couch. I took the couch. Each bed was covered with an Eye Dazzler blanket, my favorite pattern. The two old juvenile delinquents whispered back and forth to each other, and every once in a while they laughed out loud. I thought of Iris by herself, curled up in our warm bed, and I couldn’t imagine what I was doing here. When we were apart, it felt like I was a man walking with just one shoe. The earth wasn’t balanced right.

  * * *

  Up before dawn, Hambler made sandwiches for our road trip and brewed coffee. We were the only ones awake.

  “Mr. Wright an old friend of Mose’s?”

  “They just met.”

  “Seems like they’ve known each other forever.”

  “I know. It’s kind of spooky.”

  I gave Hambler the Reader’s Digest version of who Wright was. He was flustered and worried. Said if he’d known he was entertaining a celebrity, he’d have put out the good dishes and wouldn’t have sworn so liberally. I told him he was a breath of fresh air for Wright. That he had plenty of people treating him like he was special. That he didn’t need it, and, in my opinion, it was crushing him.

  “I wish my son had been here. He would have enjoyed the whole evening.”

  “Maybe not the whole evening,” I said.

  “You mean the Ute? My kid would have taken care of him, and that’s part of the problem. He’s tired of taking care of trouble, and he’s got a notion that life will be simpler in Albuquerque.

  “He’s in love with a Mexican gal down there,” Hambler said, “and they want to open up a tourist restaurant that serves Mexican food—I don’t know how anyone can tolerate that stuff. Anyway, I only met her once, but she seems real nice. Got a temper, but any good woman does.”

  “Why can’t you take your art?” said Wright.

  “I’m getting on, and I’ll be living with them. She can’t stand this stuff.”

  “Hates Navajo art?”

  “Nope, just hates Navajos, like lots of Mexicans in the Southwest,” Hambler said. “People are crazy, you know that?”

  “I’m getting a crash course about it.” Wright needed one.

  Hambler loaded me up with canned peaches, and cobbler, and sheep sandwiches. Thermoses of coffee and cold water. I’d miss the man. We promised to visit each other when he moved to Albuquerque and I was back in Santa Fe. But it felt like one of those things you say that you don’t believe, even while you’re saying it.

  He got out a paper and scribbled his phone number on it. It was 0124. “I’ll be here a while yet. You need anything, get ahold of Harry Goulding and tell him to call me. I’ll be there fast as I can.”

  I was overwhelmed by his kindness, and stood without finding the right words.

  “It’s no bother,” he said. “I might not be alive and talking to you now, complaining about Mexican food, if you hadn’t come when you did.”

  I didn’t know how late Grandpa and Wright had stayed up talking, but it was time to hit the road. I rousted them out of their beds, they waved a bleary Good-bye and Thanks! to Hambler, and I poured them into the truck. Chilly outside, again. Come autumn, the days get short fast, and cool too soon. I never notice the slow progression of dimming light—the summer just seems to shut down one day.

  I started up the truck, she was purring, and we turned north with our headlights on in the still-gray morning. We crossed Coyote Wash. The two pals leaned against each other, snoring. We were deep into Navajoland, and all the trading posts and gullies and hogans were friends. We passed Long Goat Springs. My grandfather and I had gone there on regular trips for their extraordinary baskets. If we had any trouble around here, we’d either run into a friend or I could talk our way out of it.

  And if anyone was after Wright, they’d be white and would stick out like a sore thumb. I’d stop in Shiprock for gas and food, turn west, and head to Oljato. We’d be home for dinner. I’d stop at Goulding’s for supplies, just in case Eno hadn’t left any.

  The first hazed-pink light slithered across the bottom of the bluffs. I shook my grandfather and Mr. Wright awake, pulled over, and turned the truck facing east.

  Dawn busted the seams of the new day wide open with more kinds of orange and red, pink and purple, than Iris has on her palette. The hills pulsed their delight at another chance to taste life.

  Without words, we got out and shared the wonder. It felt like being in a cathedral with a never-ending-high ceiling.

  Finally Mr. Wright said, “Here it is. The real God. Nature with a capital N is what the real God is made of, just like we talked about, Mose. Isn’t it glorious?”

  It was glorious, and I was proud to have taken Mr. Wright’s breath away practically in my own backyard.

  There was surely trouble at hand, but there is never so much trouble that it should blind us to beauty.

  * * *

  I followed them until they turned off Route 66 just near Grants, New Mexico. I had no idea where they were going, but following an Indian guy onto reservation land—What was a reservation, anyway? A low-rent boarding school?—that wasn’t on my agenda. Only an idiot would do such a thing, and I was no idiot.

  Plans had changed, and I needed time to get my bearings. I checked into the one motor court on Route 66 that had a pay phone. Each room was a separate little cottage. Each cottage was shaped like a teepee with an arrow through it.

  What a miserable little speck on the road. It doesn’t cost that much more to build something beautiful as opposed to something hideous. That was something I’d learned, firsthand, from Mr. Wright.

  I used my real name to check into the motel. I got a lot of nickels from the desk clerk, walked to the pay phone, and called Taliesin West.

  My hands shook, and so did my voice. “Hello, may I speak to Helen Fine?”

  “Just a minute, okay?”

  I recognized the voice, but couldn’t place it.

  “My mistake,” said the voice from Taliesin. “She hasn’t arrived for the winter yet.”

  I knew the sound of a lie. I’d catch up with her soon.

  “This is Payton Wood. Would you please give her a phone number where she can reach me after she gets in from Wisconsin?”

  “Oh, sure, Payton.”

  Helen would call
me.

  * * *

  The dawn’s beauty, though, couldn’t soften what I had to tell Mr. Wright.

  “Mr. Wright,” I said, “Olgivanna left our house in Santa Fe shortly after we did yesterday morning.”

  “What? How did that happen?”

  “Your wife wasn’t a prisoner, and evidently she felt compelled to do what she thought was best.”

  “She disappeared? Simply vanished?”

  “No. She left a note. Frieda found it before she went to work in the morning. Your wife wrote that she was taking a cab to Albuquerque and getting on the train there. She arranged to be picked up at the Flagstaff depot and go from there to Taliesin West.”

  “But who is watching her now?”

  “She declined protection when she left Santa Fe. Her call.”

  “I know that, but … it’s been twenty-four hours, and I hate not knowing about my own wife.”

  “I had no business withholding information about your wife,” I said. “I heard about it last night when I spoke with Iris. My intentions were good, but I treated you like a child. Please, forgive me.”

  Wright took a deep breath. “Give me a minute to collect my thoughts.”

  I did. He had questions.

  “Did anyone see the cab she supposedly took?”

  “As I said, when Frieda found the note, your wife was gone. She’d written that she’d called a cab and was waiting for it.”

  “So, in the middle of all this trouble, my dear wife is alone.”

  “I’ll call the cab companies and ask about a pickup at our house. Damned few cabs running in the early morning, and damn few fares all the way to Albuquerque. Easy to find the driver. Third, I can check on the purchase of a train ticket from ABQ to Flag.”

  “Will all that help?”

  “I don’t expect any trouble. This seems in character for your wife.”

  “It is. I can only assume she’s safe. Can we find out who picked her up in Flagstaff, assuming she made it that far?”

  Oh boy, here we go. “You can call Taliesin West.”

  “Thank God!”

  Right about then I wished Mr. Wright had a few antennae of his own.

  Poor Frieda and her viola, a beautiful instrument that looked as if it had been lynched. I wondered if it occurred to him that our home had been a haven for over a century. I was glad I was not the one who had destroyed our sanctuary.