James Doss: The Shaman Laughs

The policeman did not hear the presence behind him, but he felt something like a feather sweeping over the back of his neck. Moon turned slowly, unconscious that his right hand was moving upward toward the bone handle of the heavy revolver holstered on his belt.

Armilda Esquibel was both amused and annoyed at this big Ute policeman who had never believed her eye-witness account of the shepherd's remarkable disappearance. "Don't need to be afraid, young man. I'm only a harmless old widda woman." But she had her wrinkled right hand in the pocket of her plastic rain coat. Her fingers were wrapped around the black grip of an antique Remington derringer that had not fired any.41 caliber rim fire cartridges since 1952 when Armilda shot a fat Apache woman in the thigh.

Moon grinned and tipped his hat. "You're pretty light on your feet." Sneaky was more like it. He warily watched the twitching hand in the coat pocket. He thought about dying. A policeman's life had little glamour; his death none at all. According to the FBI statistics, he was far more likely to be shot by a deranged old woman than by a vicious bank robber.

She chewed on a tiny plug of Red Man tobacco in her jaw, and relaxed her grip on the hidden derringer. "Since that poor old man was taken away to heaven by them angels, there are yahoos and galoots and pumpkin-heads comin' around here to carry away everything that ain't nailed down." She removed her little hand from the raincoat pocket and pointed toward Nahum's grape arbor, where a dozen excavations pockmarked the clay. "Them chuckle-heads, they think old Nahum buried his greenbacks out there. They come around sometimes and they dig for it… like gophers they dig." She spat tobacco juice very near Moon's left boot and grinned at some private joke. "I come down here," her little brown eyes sparked fire, "and I chase them thievin' bastards off."

"You should call the station," Moon advised gently.

"We'll take care of any trespassers." Most likely, protect them from this unpredictable old woman.

She grunted to show her derision. An honest widow woman could not wait half a day for the Utes, who operated on "Indian time," to make an appearance and then treat her like she was feeble-minded. Besides, Armilda enjoyed chasing the thugs away. Every confrontation made her feel young again. Like she might live forever. Secretly, she hoped that one of these vandals would give her reason to shoot him right between his beady little eyes. "You goin' to go inside his house?" On her television screen, policemen always wanted to nose around inside the house of a missing person to discover some wonderful clue. Armilda Esquibel also wanted to see inside.

Moon didn't answer, but he headed toward the front door. The old woman followed behind, working hard to keep up with the big man's long strides. "I know where Nahum kept his key hid, but I wouldn't never use it myself." It was much too high for her to reach. "But you're a policeman and a Ute Indian like Nahum, so I guess it would be all right if you wanted to go inside and poke around some."

He was certain that Armilda remembered that he had examined the house on the day after Nahum disappeared. "Why don't you come in too?" The Ute looked thoughtfully at the skinny old woman in the plastic raincoat. "Maybe you'll spot something I missed."

"Well, maybe I will come inside," she said between short gasps for breath, "if you think it'd help."

Moon stepped onto the low porch steps; the unpainted pine boards creaked under his weight. He counted the two-by-four porch rafters until he was seven from the south end. The Ute ran his fingers along an unpainted rafter, wiping away a thin veil of spider webs. He found the tarnished brass key where he had left it last year, hanging on a galvanized roofing nail. Nahum had not been a careful man, but he had been lucky. The windows were unbroken, the door lock showed no signs of tampering. There was no indication that vandals had entered the house. Maybe it was because of the persistent rumors that Nahum came back to sleep in the loft of his log cabin every night. And that he drank gallons of whiskey and would surely shoot anyone who was foolish enough to enter his home. But local folks craved such stories, and many believed Armilda's fantastic tale of a band of angels that carried the old shepherd up to heaven. Swing low, sweet chariot! It was all nonsense, of course. Self-delusion. But the Ute's stomach tightened as he opened the door.

Armilda did not expect to find Nahum Yacuti in the house; she followed the policeman in quickly and flitted about the dusty space like a ragged old moth, touching this, rubbing dust off that, muttering her amazement that "… a man could live in such squalor."

Moon thought the place was reasonably tidy. The downstairs was a single large room. A heavy redwood table had been placed at the west window, which had a view of the rolling waters of the Animas. This sturdy piece of furniture served for eating and, judging from the scattering of papers and lead pencils on its surface, as a desk. And everywhere, there were books. A tattered family bible. An English-Spanish dictionary. A cookbook entitled The Complete Book of Baking .

"Too many books, too much reading," Armilda tapped her temple with an arthritic finger and assumed a sage expression, "that was Nahum's problem. Made him think too hard and the poor old man just wore out his mind."

Moon opened the cookbook to a page that had been marked with a slip of yellowed paper. Macaroon Hats. Hazelnut Fingers. Ginger Snaps. Vanilla Paisleys. One and three quarter cups of flour. One half cup ground almonds. Margarine for greasing the pan. The Ute shook his head and smiled. It was hard to picture old Nahum spending his evenings baking cookies. But you never really knew people.

He carefully placed the cookbook back into the rectangle of dustless space on the table and turned to study the room. It was just as the policeman remembered it. A large RC Cola calendar tacked to the wall over the sink displayed an im-possibly pretty brunette. A long, shapely leg was draped over a red bicycle; she held a bottled soft drink near barely parted lips. The Winchester carbine Moon had found in the Dodge pickup and hung on a rack over the back door was still in its place. There was a kerosene lamp on the thick pine mantle over the stone fireplace; the scarlet fuel in the glass chamber looked like cheap wine. A painted iron bed stood in a comer, the fine patchwork quilt still turned back on a blue sheet, inviting the old shepherd to rest his bones. An antique vacuum-tube radio in a varnished wooden cabinet sat mute in a dark comer.

The policeman found his notebook and turned the dated pages back toward that cold autumn morning last year. Moon had made a record of the contents of the log house, including a detailed inventory of the food stored in a rough pine cupboard in the comer. Now he compared his notes to what he saw. Six cans of Bush's Best pinto beans, eight small tins of Hatch green chili. Ten cans of a generic store brand of sweet com. There was an unopened five pound bag of whole-wheat flour. A two gallon tin of com meal. A glass jar filled with brown sugar. A plastic bottle, half-filled with maple syrup. And an unopened glass jar of Aunt Nellie's Com Relish. It was all there, just as it had been last year. Waiting for the owner of the household to return.

A small refrigerator still hummed by the back door. Probably needed defrosting. A dual wire basket hung from the ceiling; one section was filled with yellow onions that had sprouted months ago. Another with shriveled potatoes that needed throwing out. Almost enough supplies to feed an old man through the long Colorado winter.

The Ute climbed a ladder and peered into the dusty attic. Pale sunlight filtered in through the single four-pane window; a black mouse scurried for cover under a pile of yellowed newspapers. There was an old cedar chest missing a hinge, odd bits of lumber, stacks of books and magazines. There was also another iron bed, but this one had no mattress on the sagging springs. The policeman made his way down the creaking ladder.