22
“
I
t was a threat,” Cat said. “He’s not done with us.”
“He’s never going to be.” Matt waited until he’d gotten his pickup over a particularly rough spot before glancing at Cat. “We need to know why he’s selected us.”
“Us? Matt, it’s you he’s after.”
As soon as the air had settled down, if that was the right explanation, Cat had grabbed her cell phone and told him she was going to ask Helaku to see them as soon as possible. Maybe the old Paiute couldn’t tell them anything, but she felt compelled to show him the photographs, all of them.
“Me,” Matt muttered, and forced himself to relax his hold on the steering wheel. Cat was right. They had no choice but to accept Helaku’s invitation to come right over, so why did he wish he was doing anything else?
“You sound surprised,” she said.
“Did you expect anything different?”
If his retort bothered her, she showed no sign. “I know I shouldn’t. Ghost Wolf has made no secret of his obsession with you.” She slapped the passenger door. “I hope metal is the same as wood and his body can’t get past this either. Insane. Absolutely insane. And yet reality.”
Damnable reality when he’d give anything to be back on her bed listening to her talk and telling her things he’d never believed he’d tell anyone. Sealing their words with more sex.
“My mother didn’t want me,” he said, because he needed to start somewhere. “Until Santo and Addie took me in, I didn’t know what belonging felt like.”
Her still catlike green eyes bore into him. “What about your father? Addie told me some things about him, his mental illness, his—”
“She told you he killed himself, right?”
“Yes.”
They reached the county road, which meant he’d be able to look at her even less than earlier. Maybe it was better that way, easier at least.
“Does that bother you?” she asked. “Maybe you’re upset because she confided in me.”
“No.” He had to mentally repeat the word before he fully believed it. “She thought you needed to know.”
“It wasn’t just that, Matt. I came to her because I didn’t understand what was happening to you.”
“When I started acting crazy.”
“Don’t say that! You aren’t. Just because your father—”
“You weren’t there.”
Cat stared at him until he half believed she could see through him. “But you were.”
Tell me,
he heard in her tone. He’d never spoken a word about the last day of his father’s life, but that had been a boy’s attempt to deny the unbearable. Now the time for the truth had come.
“I wasn’t when he killed himself.” Right now the road was empty except for the occasional farm equipment lumbering along. Still he didn’t look at her. “But earlier in the day and shortly after.”
“Did you find him?”
“Yes.”
That December day that changed the course of his life hadn’t begun any different from the hundreds before, he told her. Kaga had been
living
in a lean-to he’d built about a mile from where Matt was staying. Through spring, summer, and fall, the lean-to had filled Kaga’s need for a place to keep his few belongings, but now the temperatures often didn’t rise above freezing. Matt had stolen some plastic sheeting and several blankets, thinking they’d be better than his father sleeping on the ground. Kaga had passively watched while Matt made the improvements, but when Kaga sat on it, the plastic had made a crinkling sound.
“He said it hurt his ears and made it impossible for him to think—he was fixated on contacting the sun.”
“Oh.”
“That’s an example of how his mind was working. Ancient Native Americans worshipped the sun, he told me. From what I understand, winter scared them. They feared the days would continue to get shorter unless they regained Sun’s favor. My dad believed he could keep winter from coming if he did certain things. I kept begging him to move into a nearby abandoned barn at least, but he said he needed to remain where he was so Sun God could find him. I told him he was crazy.”
“How did he respond?”
Matt shook his head. “I don’t think he heard. He didn’t act like it. Cat, his emotions were all over the place, high one minute, low the next. He thought
they
were out to get him.”
“They?”
“The world. Police. It kept changing.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“So am I. Mental illness . . .” The term swirled around him to remind him of how many times recently he’d wondered if it applied to him. “It’s hard on the sufferers and everyone around them.”
“Was he diagnosed?”
“He didn’t trust doctors. I tried.”
Not hard enough obviously.
“You were a child. There was only so much you could do.”
To the left were the twenty or so acres where Randy Thompson grew his hay; to the left were basalt rimrocks with evergreen skeletons at the base. And next to him, Cat with her awesome body. “Maybe.” His throat closed down and then opened. “I used a bike I’d found and fixed up to ride out to where he was staying. That last day, I’d hooked a wagon to it so I could bring the bedding stuff to him. Thinking about everything I’d done to try to help only to hear him spout more nonsense, I did what I’d sworn I never would. I called him crazy.”
“Yes.”
Don’t say anything more, Cat. Just listen because I don’t know how long I can keep going.
“After that, I climbed back on my bike and pedaled out of there. The last thing I said to him was that I never wanted to see him again.”
“You didn’t mean it.”
“No, I didn’t, but it took me hours to calm down long enough to admit what I’d done. I was the only one he’d let get close. He needed me.”
She touched his arm. “No more than you needed a father, but he wasn’t able to give you that.”
“I couldn’t stop thinking about him.” The emotional mountain was ahead of him. The hardest words yet to be said. “Instead of going home after school, I went back out to his camp. The whole time I was on my bike I knew it was going to be bad. If there’d been anyone I could turn to . . . A couple of years ago, I’d given him a knife for his birthday.”
“The one you’ve been carrying?” she softly asked.
“Yeah.”
Keep going. Get it all out. Don’t lose yourself in her voice.
“The people I had to live with didn’t believe in allowances. I stole the knife because just once I wanted to have something to give him.”
This time Cat’s fingers lingered on his arm. “Of course you did.”
Gripping the steering wheel until his fingers cramped, he studied the land that owned his soul. “That’s what he used to kill himself with.”
For too long there was only the sound of the engine and tires. Then Cat undid her seat belt and slid over so their hips touched. She rested her hand on his thigh. “And you saw—”
“Yeah.”
His lifeblood staining the bed I’d set up for him.
“Oh, God. Please tell me you didn’t blame yourself.”
“No.” Releasing the steering wheel, he briefly covered her hand with his. “Maybe it was a coping mechanism, but I told myself nothing would have stopped him from finding a way out of his hell. Maybe that damned knife was a gift in more ways than one.”
She rubbed his thigh, causing sexual energy to shoot through him. “Did, ah, did he leave a note?”
Keep going. Give her everything.
“He’d drawn something in the dirt. I destroyed it before I brought the police out.”
“What a nightmare.” She sounded on the verge of tears.
“Knowing you had no one to turn to, no one to hold a boy who—What was the drawing of?”
Without warning, Ghost Wolf’s spirit appeared, floating on the air outside the cab. It was waiting to hear what he had to say. He’d go to his grave believing that.
“Two stick figures,” he told both Cat and the creature that had invaded his life. “A man with his arms around a child.”
23
H
elaku lived west of Lakeview in a cabin on land owned by someone the old Paiute called his nephew. Cat’s understanding was the
nephew
was a relative on Helaku’s dead wife’s side who’d invited him to stay as long as he wanted. Before the arthritis in Helaku’s hips curtailed his horseback riding, he’d been the driving force behind natural horsemanship. Although he was still involved, these days he spent much of his time researching his people’s history for a book he was writing for the University of Oregon Press.
Life was to be lived for today, he’d told Cat when she asked about his project, but today couldn’t be fully appreciated without an understanding of what had gotten people to that point.
Instead of sharing Helaku’s wisdom with Matt, she said nothing as they headed behind the nephew’s house to a small, weathered structure. How could she put words together in the wake of what Matt had told her on the way here?
Unlike her and Matt’s places, Helaku’s didn’t have a front porch. Someone had added a roof extension that kept rain away from the front door. Standing under the overhang with the large envelope holding the photographs against her breasts, she knocked.
You’re here, Ghost Wolf. Somehow you accompanied us. Stay outside. That’s all I ask. For Matt’s sake.
The door opened and Helaku, who was no taller than her and dressed in a faded flannel shirt rolled up at the sleeves and baggy jeans, acknowledged his visitors. He didn’t immediately invite them in but studied her and Matt in turn. Then his gaze went to the land. Old, dark eyes widened. “Now I understand,” he said.
Instead of asking the Paiute if he, too, sensed Ghost Wolf’s presence, Cat held up the envelope.
“I know,” Helaku said before she could speak. He nodded, which caused his long, sparse gray hair to rise and fall. “The time has come.”
Cat had been in the cabin before, but that didn’t stop the artifacts filling the living room from stealing her breath. The High Desert Museum had chosen Helaku as caretaker for everything from fragile reed moccasins and ancient deer-hide dresses to spears, bows and arrows, stone knives, and fishing implements. An employee at the museum had told her that Helaku’s collection—the Paiute collection really—far exceeded what the museum had. Did Ghost Wolf know about it? Hell, maybe his spirit was in the room right now.
“My God,” Matt whispered. He’d shaken Helaku’s hand, but instead of taking the chair the older man indicated, he walked over to a glass case filled with pictures taken of traditional Paiute life by early white photographers. “I had no idea . . .”
Matt was taller and stronger than Helaku, but at the moment her lover made her think of a young and uncertain boy. He didn’t seem to know what to do with his hands.
“I know you didn’t,” Helaku said. Joining Matt, he pointed at something Cat couldn’t see. “That’s my grandmother, and the baby in the papoose carrier is my father.” His knuckles grazed Matt’s arm, reminding her that she’d touched Matt on their way here. She’d give anything to have his body to herself. “When you’re ready, I’ll show you everything.”
Nodding, Matt trudged over to the chair and sank into it. She couldn’t tap into his emotions.
“We could talk of things that don’t matter,” Helaku said as he joined Cat on the couch, “but that would only put off what needs to be done.” He jerked his head at the envelope she’d placed on the couch between them.
In the past, Helaku had been so talkative she’d had trouble getting her questions out. She didn’t know what to make of the change. Maybe he was reluctant to touch the envelope. Not wanting to, she drew comparisons between how Helaku was acting and how Matt must have felt while riding out to his father that last time.
Unable to keep her hands from shaking, she undid the latch. She wasn’t sure how well Matt could see the photographs from where he sat. As she’d done with Matt, she began by telling Helaku where and how she’d found the cave and the trouble she’d initially had taking decent pictures. She took out the first picture and handed it to Helaku.
“Ah,” he muttered. “Finally.” In contrast to Helaku’s weatherblasted features, his bright eyes shown.
“Finally?” Matt said.
Helaku ran a ragged nail over the stick figures. “My grandparents told me,” he whispered. “I knew this place existed; they wouldn’t lie.”
“You’ve never seen it?” Matt asked.
Blinking repeatedly, Helaku shook his head. “My grandparents and others of their generation didn’t share it with their children, because they feared whites would find out. When he was dying, my grandfather said it was better for the cave to be lost forever than for what was sacred to be desecrated.”
“So no one has seen Ghost Cave since your grandparents—”
“My people call it Grizzly’s Home.”
“Oh.”
“According to the stories handed from one generation to the next, an ancient warrior following a grizzly was the first to see the small opening and large space behind it.”
“Wait a minute,” Matt said. “You mean this warrior crawled into a bear den?”
Helaku shrugged. “He was on a spirit quest.”
For the first time since coming in here, Cat met Matt’s eyes. Helaku’s explanation made sense, kind of.
Picking up the envelope, Helaku placed it on his bony knees and drew out the next photograph. It was as if he knew not to try to absorb everything at once. “If I were my grandfather,” he said, “I would build a sacred fire out of manzanita and oak and hold this in the smoke.”
“Why?”
“To bless what was created by Paiute but captured by a white. To ask the spirits for forgiveness.”
For a moment, Cat thought Helaku was accusing her of the desecration he’d mentioned earlier, but going by how he lightly stroked the envelope, she told herself his gratitude overran everything else.
One by one, the photographs emerged. Helaku held each one up so light from the nearest window reached it. He mumbled under his breath while occasionally nodding but said nothing. Torn between watching the Paiute peel back the past and watching Matt, she wondered if she’d survive today intact.
Her place smelled of dried roses while Helaku’s held the not-so-subtle scent of sage. Maybe she was getting high on it, because she could only stare when the old man thrust the petroglyph of the wolf pack looking at Ghost Wolf at her. “Matichu,” he said.
She reluctantly took it from him. “What?”
“Matichu. Guider of all spirit quests.”
Matt was on his feet and standing over her without her knowing how that had happened. He took the picture from her. “Explain,” he said.
“Wolves are pack animals,” Helaku began. “My ancestors admired that quality more than the predators’ hunting prowess. According to my grandfather, the old ones—he never considered himself old—were simple humans who learned from studying the creatures around them. They didn’t want to act like prey animals. If they were going to survive the harsh world they found themselves in, they’d better learn how to conduct themselves like predators.”
Hearing Helaku use modern speech to describe something ancient kept her from getting sucked too deep into the past. Still, she was afraid she might lose touch with the present at any moment. Maybe Ghost Wolf—or Matichu—was responsible for this drifting sensation.
“The old Paiutes followed bears, cougars, wolves, and other predators. They tried attacking the way a cougar does, but most times the deer or elk—even rabbits—got away. Their success rate increased dramatically when they hunted in a group. Mirroring wolf behavior regarding protecting and rearing their pups increased the Paiute survival rate. That’s when, over time, of course, my ancestors—yours, too, Matt—determined that wolves were at the top of the food chain. And thus the most sacred.”
Cat thought Matt might object to what Helaku had just said. Instead, now looking at a home surrounded by what of the Paiutes had survived the centuries, Matt nodded. Had she ever wanted to touch him more than she now did?
“So,” Matt said, “Paiutes prayed to Matichu before going on spirit searches?”
“Yes.” Helaku smile highlighted the wrinkles at the corners his mouth. “I tried it myself. Because my parents were determined to assimilate, to focus on being Americans and not Indians, they didn’t pass on most of what their parents tried to teach them. Consequently, it’s taken me a lifetime to fill in the blanks.” He took the photograph back from Matt. “I’m still learning. This”—he held the photograph against his chest—“is incredible. I’ll die content once I’ve stepped inside Grizzly’s Home.”
Helaku’s awe had Cat blinking back tears. There were only two pictures left for him to see but not until Helaku was finished talking. Going by the unease in Matt’s eyes, she believed he felt the same.
“For all I know,” Helaku continued as he studied the dramatic cave wall rendering of pack and massive wolf, “my grandparents’ grandparents created this. It was their way of saying that everything, even other wolves, revered Matichu.”
“Matichu,” Matt said. “One spirit wolf, then? A single entity.”
Helaku nodded. “Symbolic, of course.”
Cold and hot, Cat looked up at Matt. Except for his eyes, his features were neutral. “No,” Matt said, and took control of the envelope. “Not symbolic.”
Don’t do this!
she wanted to scream.
Helaku placed the final cave photograph on top of the others on his lap. He studied Cat and then Matt before turning his attention to the nearly empty envelope. “Show me.”
He knows. At least he suspects.
Matt was her lover, the lighter of all her lights, a complex and half-savage man. He didn’t belong in this small cabin surrounded by the past. Instead he should be racing across the prairie with the desert air in his hair and the sun burnishing his skin.
Those thoughts and a familiar tightening in her groin distracted her from comprehending what Matt was doing. Working so slowly she thought she’d scream from the waiting, Matt pulled out the final photographs and fanned them over Helaku’s lap. Leaning over, Helaku trembled.
“Matichu,” the old man breathed at length. “Alive.”
“I’m not sure we can call it that,” she whispered. “The wolves that returned to Oregon are real, alive.” Her fingers hovered over Ghost Wolf’s / Matichu’s muzzle. “He is something else.”
“Tell me, Cat, what did you feel when you saw him?”
“Where do I start?” She tried a light tone she didn’t feel. “Scared shitless, of course. In a way it was like being in a whiteout. If I panic, I’m dead. I knew I had to focus, concentrate. Take pictures.”
“What about Matichu’s emotions?”
Weren’t they debating whether the great wolf spirit figure was alive? Did the old man really expect her to answer his insane question?
Yes,
Matt’s expression said.
“I have no doubt he resents me. Maybe he hates me.”
“Because?”
Listen to your heartbeat. Concentrate on filling your lungs. Then say what you need to no matter how insane it sounds.
“Matichu wants Matt. He wants me out of the way.”
In another room a clock ticked. The refrigerator powered up. Beyond these walls the wind increased. And inside Cat’s head, something roared.
A dry weight settled over her hand, and she studied Helaku’s weathered fingers covering hers. “I’m an old man,” he said. “Because they love me, my children and grandchildren listen when I go on about our heritage, but I haven’t told them about Matichu.”
“Because you think they won’t believe you?” Matt asked.
Helaku squeezed Cat’s hand. “If they saw what she took, they would.” He nodded at the final photographs. “But only then. Without this they would make fun of their ignorant and superstitious ancestors. A question for you, Matt. When did you first accept Matichu’s existence?”
Matt started to ram his hands into his back pockets only to stop and caress the knife handle sticking out of the sheath at his waist. “I’m not sure. Do you know who Santo is—was?”
“Of course. One horseman knows another.”
Watching Matt stride to the window and look out, she couldn’t imagine ever feeling more in awe of and concerned for him. Sexual need barely mattered. Where was Ghost Wolf/ Matichu?
“Then you know how Santo died.” Matt’s voice was muffled. “I was with the group that found his body. When we were searching, I sensed something out there. Something new on the desert. More than an animal. Like a building storm.”
“Ah, yes,” Helaku said. “Well put.”
“You never said . . . Did you tell anyone?” she asked.
“No.” Spinning around, Matt fixed his gaze first on Helaku and then on her. “Matichu is here.” He reached behind him and slapped the window glass. “Waiting for me.”
“Yes,” Helaku said.
“Why?” she managed. “Of all the people he—it—could fixate on, what makes Matt different?”