Water and Stone Read online

  Back at the Triple Six he noticed all the ranch hands had vanished along with the livestock. Even the roosters must have secretly pledged allegiance to silence or perhaps they had been made into stew. It seemed as if a plague of forgetfulness had swept over the bone-dry land leaving nothing but death in its wake.

  He mourned the loss of his ponies the most. He found himself involuntarily feeling in his shirt pocket for the packets of sugar he always kept handy. Had he said goodbye to them? Probably... but then again he hadn’t planned on being gone so long, and besides, would they have understood their parting was final?

  He didn't know and now, too late to find out one way or another, he supposed like him they too had a path to travel and in the end only doom waited for them all.

  Lorraine Ford had ceased her nocturnal visits, or perhaps like all the others the woman had never been there at all... only a figment of his overactive imagination like the rest of the people in the world. During the past months he had grown to depend upon her words of wisdom. Without her, he felt as lost as a dog dumped alone in the middle of sagebrush territory.

  After satisfying himself the hacienda truly stood empty and taking the tired old pickup truck on a ride out to the south quarter of the Triple Six and in a little hollow hidden from the road he found two fresh graves dug into the hardpan with a white wooden cross apiece planted in the loose soil.

  Looking up into the sky it seemed to Church the blue he saw was somehow harder than before and more uncaring than ever. The land empty and barren, and the heavens, not even a bird could be seen and the tepid breeze blowing over him smelled dry and brittle like it had never known moisture.

  Someone had taken a black magic marker to write the names Billy Ford on one cross and Rancher Ford on the other. The dust still piled in mounds like blankets covering the sleeping dead and testifying to the ongoing drought the wind seemed to ripple the unsettled mantles like something beneath yet lived. Though he wasn’t a religious man Church stood mutely saying a prayer over each plot before climbing back into the truck and heading into town.

  The sign hanging from the doorknob to Peter Brown's office said: closed on Sunday... Church had forgotten all about the days. Down in Mexico they ran together like water, holding no more meaning than the wind or non-existent borders and people he never knew.

  Peter Brown, the only real estate attorney in Guthrie, had always handled all Rancher Ford's affairs... Church thought that'd be the best place to start in finding out what had happened at the Triple Six... how it came to be deserted.

  Standing in front of the locked office door and wondering what to do next an invisible cloud carrying the heady fragrance of chicken fried steak wafted up the street as if meant only for him.

  For the first time in what seemed like years an intense hunger pulled at his guts so he followed the scent to its source... the only greasy spoon in town... the Whole Thing... masquerading as a restaurant during the day and like a demented Cinderella morphing into a sordid drinking club at night.

  When he entered the dingy diner with the air still morning cool though the heat was already building outside and walked down the aisle to a vacant booth hunkering under green and flickering fluorescent lights while simultaneously nodding at people he knew all his life everyone seemed to shun him like he had some dread disease that he might pass onto them if he came too close. They leaned into one another whispering in hushed tones that he couldn’t quite make out but the way they stared at him he knew who they were discussing.

  He sauntered across the room tasting the grease in the air and feeling the floor slick with it under his boots as he stood beside a booth yet to be cleared of the dishes of those before him. He couldn’t help noticing how one of the waitresses—a girl named Teresa Patterson who he'd gone to school with—looked at him and turned white like a low creek fog... as if she had seen a ghost.

  Perhaps that was what he was now... a wraith back from the days of the dead. Looking into the mirror mounted upon the wall he noticed for the first time how thin he'd grown and how haggard. He felt suddenly embarrassed.

  He remembered how he had an enormous crush on Teresa Patterson while they were growing up together but he had always been too shy to talk to her. Now she approached him wide-eyed while holding a menu to the side of her head to block sight of what she was saying from the other patrons in the restaurant.

  A vision of the kids at school teasing Teresa arose in his mind's eye... they were the same cruel children who used to berate him over things he couldn’t help. He was used to their taunts but it always set his nerves on edge to hear them calling Teresa Patterson a crack whore and other names not nearly as nice.

  Being so tall and thin like a stick one of the boys in a typical fit of meanness began calling Teresa a tree and the name stuck. Soon all the kids were calling her Tree. But in fact, Teresa Patterson turned the tables on them all by taking on the nickname as she began referring to herself as Tree. It wasn’t long before everyone called her by that name... all except the teachers who seemed to think it derogatory.

  Now, when she leaned over the table to talk to him he couldn’t help but stare at her pleasantly plump breasts bursting out of her low-cut uniform top and wishing that one more button might come undone. When she put a hand across her chest as if she might have noticed what he was doing he blushed while averting his eyes.

  "I couldn’t believe it when I saw you walk in the door, Church. It's been all over the news... even on the front page. Something bad happened at the Triple Six... the Fords are all dead and everyone thought you were too. What are you doing here?"

  Her voice was musical as she whispered the words while she looked over the top of the menu surveying the other customers around the room who were all staring Church's way. The looks upon their faces were not ones of welcome.

  "I came home as soon as I heard what happened, Tree. Why's everyone acting so strange?"

  "If I were you, Church, I'd leave right now and go back to wherever it was you came from... there are people here who believe you killed your whole family. If the sheriff sees you he's liable to arrest you on the spot."

  "But I didn’t do anything, Tree. I've been in Mexico this whole time."

  "Go back there, Church... don't wait... leave now... this instant. If you stay here terrible things are going to happen and not just to you. The whole town is riled up about what happened to Rancher and Billy Ford not to mention Lorraine. Lots of folk are saying you and your mother had something to do with their deaths... that you wanted the ranch for your own."

  A shadow of a reflection in her eyes made Church turn around in time to see fat John Gerhard... the same boy who tried to bully him on his first day of school... sneaking up behind him while making to land a haymaker sucker punch. Church sidestepped it easily while simultaneously jabbing John in the kidney hard enough that it drew a loud and prolonged fart from the boy.

  As he grunted and fell to his knees four other boys—obviously friends of fat John—surrounded Church all of them with serious looks on their faces. When two of them took hold of his shoulders and the other two moved in front cocking their fists as if readying to punch him he knew he might be in for at least a beating and maybe worse.

  A moment later before any fists found his face the sound of a shell being chambered into a shotgun sounded, clearly rattling the nerves of his attackers. A man Church recognized as one of the cowpokes by the name of Dan Stokes who once helped him run fence at the Triple Six stepped out from the kitchen holding a double barrel shotgun leveled in his direction. At first he thought Dan might be intent on holding him for the sheriff but then the man motioned with his chin for Church step aside.

  "You five boys move away from Church and put your hands up... do it now."

  There was no nonsense in Dan's voice. Church heard the sound of water running on the floor. Turning he sidestepped a growing puddle of piss issuing from the legs of John Gerhard's pants. The boy had made it to his feet only to be confronted by a shotgun pointe
d at his guts.

  "You always treated me fair and square, Church. Take off. I'll keep these guys on ice until the sheriff gets here... and watch you don't slip in the piss."

  By now all the diners in the restaurant were on their feet. Several had cell phones in their hands and the way they were looking at Church he knew they were most likely calling the police. Stepping to the door Church looked back to see Tree right behind him.

  "You're going to need help, Church. I'll come with you."

  For just a moment he wondered if he was in fact dreaming... that instant he was sure he'd never seen a prettier girl in his life as he gazed at Tree. Though she didn’t have on a hint of makeup and her hair was piled in a knot on top of her head with wayward strands come loose she radiated the same beauty that she had the first time he saw her. Trembling, he took Tree's hand and led her to his pickup truck parked in front of the diner.

  "Can you drive a stick shift, Tree?"

  "I might not have grown up on a big time ranch like you, Church Gutiérrez, but I can drive anything that has wheels. Give me the keys and hide. If they see you in the truck we'll likely as not get stopped."

  As he hunkered down on the rusty passenger side floorboard doing his best not to fall through Tree started the truck, backed up, and rolled down Main Street. She rose several steps in his estimation the way she handled the give-out clutch without killing the truck and managed the broken off three on the column stick shift like she'd been doing it her whole life. Church could hear sirens coming closer though he didn’t dare sit up to look. Tree must have read his mind.

  "Stay down, Church... I don’t think they'll pull me over if they see I'm alone... it looks like they're all heading for the diner... Christ, they must have sent the entire county police force... the town cops are coming too."

  He had to hand it to Tree... she had panache. With dozens of screaming sirens homing in on the restaurant they just left she acted as if she was out for a Sunday cruise. Even with the real possibility of being arrested Church couldn’t help but wonder if Tree had a boyfriend or worse a husband waiting at home.

  "We'll be safe at the Triple Six... can you make it that far, Tree?"

  "Have you been eating peyote down there in Mexico? That'll be the first place they look for you, Church. My house is bound to be the second. We need to get out of the county... even the state... do you have any ideas?"

  "I have to find my mother... that's why I came back. I think she's in trouble."

  "I understand she left town a few days back... Lucy at the travel agency comes into the diner regularly. I overheard her saying your mother bought a plane ticket to Miami... do you known anyone who lives there, Church? Do you have relatives in Florida?"

  "No one... originally my mother and my aunt came from Cuba... is it possible she's trying to go back there? It'd make sense... I imagine she could hire a boat to take her to the island. It's only a short distance from Miami."

  "Miami it is then... do you have any money, Church?"

  "Money is one thing I have plenty of... but do you really want to get mixed up in all this, Tree? It could be dangerous."

  "No, Church... I want to spend the rest of my life stuck in the booming town of Guthrie waiting on tables at that thriving diner and getting pinched on the ass by all the drooling old men without any couth and even fewer teeth."

  "I just want to be sure you know what you're getting into... we could be arrested if we try entering Cuba illegally... and I don’t know of any other way to get there."

  "We ain't waiting on me, Church. Let's go."

  Chapter 3

  On the day Yanielle Gutiérrez arrived at the Triple Six she felt as if she'd finally made it home.

  The owner and man of the vast ranch and enormous hacienda, a man named Rancher Ford, seemed to have taken as much of a liking to her as she had to him. Though she knew the man happened to be married to another woman she soon found herself giving over to him without a second thought.

  "He loves me as I do him. He'll take care of me."

  She sensed the love he professed might well be a lie yet she believed it anyway. Most men frightened her... even boys. They all seemed to desire the same thing and they were rough about it too. She'd rather be alone than to risk an encounter with such beasts.

  Rancher Ford seemed different. Not only was he a man of substance, he treated his workers well. She'd worked her way across Texas picking fruit and cutting asparagus before landing in Guthrie. All the other farmers acted as if they owned her. One particularly nasty old man had even tried to have his way with her until he realized she carried the asparagus knife in her back pocket and wasn’t afraid to use it.

  She left town after that. Another of her compañeros had regaled her with tales of how it took nearly a hundred stitches to put the nasty bugger back together and how his gut had been severed so badly that he'd have to wear a colostomy bag for the rest of his life.

  She felt glad. Maybe the next time a pretty girl happened his way the old coot might think twice before trying to take her against her will. He must've thought she was just another girl when in fact Yani had suffered a fate far more horrible than being raped by a man with no asshole.

  She'd survived the worst that life threw at her. Betrayal was the norm for Yani. Her family had forsaken her long ago. She expected nothing yet when Rancher Ford looked her way she found herself melting into his arms without a struggle.

  On the night they first made love and he mounted her it hurt like she was being split in two and she remembered how she put a hand to her mouth to stifle a tiny screech like a dying bird or perhaps the same song the Virgin Mother Mary might have sang when she saw her Son so cruelly nailed to the cross yet afterwards Yani clung to the man lying on top of her as if he was life itself.

  It bothered her how he must not have realized it was her first time. Shouldn’t a man know such things? Perhaps he mistook her for a puta... a whore... a girl who spread her legs for any man who paid her some small attentions. She supposed she couldn’t blame him.

  Yani didn't consider Rancher Ford a handsome man yet she found herself attracted to his naiveté... how he touched her so reservedly and always only after asking permission to do so, or maybe the way he said her name rolling it off his tongue with just a trace of a Midwest accent... like he might have been a gangster from Chicago in a previous life.

  In the beginning he treated her like his own private princess always ready to ride to her rescue no matter how innocuous were her circumstances. Those actions served to mitigate the fact that she discovered how Rancher Ford was by nature a taciturn man who rarely smiled and was even less apt to laugh.

  Despite being over fifty years old Yani still retained both the appearance of youth and her virginity. Men, while they were initially drawn to her, were invariably repulsed by something hovering about her that she herself didn't fully understand.

  Though swarthy in appearance Rancher's complexion seemed more the result of all the days he spent in the sun and the wind rather than in possessing the same naturally brown skin as the island boys she remembered fawning over as a girl. Though he hid it under a façade of bravado the man seemed to carry the same hurt as she did... the pain in knowing those who should love them the most were in fact their sworn enemies.

  He walked with a bow-legged gait which at first Yani put off to all the time Rancher spent in the saddle. Later she learned that in actuality it was a birth defect—a club foot—that made him walk that way, something that could have been easily remedied when he was a boy if only his parents had cared enough.

  Though he rarely spoke of it, when he did it saddened her to think of all the years Rancher spent living in a loveless home and the sadder she became the more she loved him for it.

  He came to her each night for weeks and though she hated herself for it she looked forward to each visit with the same anticipation as their first moment together. When she missed her time of the month she said nothing hoping it was only an irregularity in her cycle.
By the time Rancher Ford had quit visiting, she knew she was pregnant.

  Though she told herself to leave the Triple Six and the man who owned it behind, instead she stayed. On the first day she arrived on the Triple Six Rancher Ford showed Yani to a tiny cabin perched on the edge of the hardpan that went on as far as the eye could see.

  "This will be a better place for you to stay than that old barn where the men bunk, Yanielle. I used to live here years ago. Do you like it?"

  "Yes, Senor Ford... thank you for your generosity... and please call me Yani."

  "Yani... that's a pretty name... well, just make yourself at home and I'll be expecting you at the hacienda come morning."

  Though he'd hired the men and the other women in the group of migrants that she traveled with to work the fields for some unexplained reason Rancher Ford offered her a job working at the big hacienda where he lived with his wife and son.

  Yani, simply glad for the work, didn't question his motives and though she found herself unexpectedly attracted to the man she thought it better that she keep those feelings to herself.

  Leaving Cuba, Yani thought she had taken care to leave no trail to follow but she had been mistaken. Evalena, her sister, had appeared unlooked for out of the dark on the same cold and windy winter night Yani gave birth to Willem.

  She had all intentions of naming him William but the name was already taken by Rancher Ford's other son and the more she thought about it Yani didn't wish to offend the man's wife. Working at the hacienda as she did, Yani sometimes caught Lorraine Ford covertly staring her way as if the woman knew something was going on between Rancher and herself yet didn’t know exactly what to do about it.

  Willem seemed a good choice though she often wondered if the name had somehow angered Rancher Ford. After spending nearly every night with her for over a month, he simply quit appearing at the chabola. He even seemed to shun her at the hacienda, leaving in the morning before Yani got to work and apparently staying out late. Was he purposely staying away from her? Had she offended the man somehow?