The Blue Corn Murders Page 14

  “Gabby reminds me of Tonya,” Lillian told her. “The passion, the naiveté. Tonya was like that. And toward the end, she was hallucinating, all the time, like—”

  Genia realized with a start that Lillian was thinking about Gabby’s strange antics in the meadow. Was she comparing the hallucinations of a terminally ill daughter with the behavior of a fully alive young woman? If she was, there was something askew in Lillian’s perception of Gabby, Genia thought with a small frisson of unease. Gabby may be intense, even obsessive, but physically she looked as healthy as a horse. She was quite alive. Genia felt she should say that to Lillian, but she couldn’t find the words to do it.

  Lillian opened a second small photo album, and Genia’s opportunity to say something passed, soon forgotten.

  Twenty

  The trees smelled of nutmeg, the ground smelled like meat, and she herself gave off a weird fragrance of straw. The sight of the moon knocked her out, because there were curlicues of light popping off of it. She heard a sizzling sound every time one of them fell into an ocean.

  That was all very nice, Gabby thought, as she felt herself flung from one tree trunk to another like a pinball, but she didn’t see anything unusual about it. Perfectly normal. This LSD business was a crock. There were so many things she had expected to happen that weren’t happening!

  Tired of being pushed around by trees, she sat down.

  For the longest time she stared at the palm of her own hand, anticipating that the skin would soon part into its various layers, revealing sinew, corpuscle, and bone below, and then that her vision might rocket on down to the cellular level. Before she took the LSD, she had been terribly excited about the possibility that she might get to actually see the difference between what her blood looked like going into her heart and what it looked like when it was going in the opposite direction.

  Maybe she’d have a vision of oxygen! Or carbon monoxide!

  Or maybe that was carbon dioxide—she was always getting those two confused. Biology had not been one of her stronger grades in high school or college. Actually, nothing had been, she had to admit.

  But for some strange reason, she had always remembered the composition of an atom, possibly because everybody in her sixth-grade class had had to make a three-dimensional model of one. She was holding out hopes—as she held out her palm in front of here eyes—of seeing an actual atom: nucleus, outlying electrons, and all.

  No such luck.

  For a short while a certain tree seemed willing to reveal itself: a squirrel hole gaped, and its inner light glowed as if a fire burned within. But then it was just a tree again, pushing her around. Gabby wished she’d paid more attention in botany, so she’d know what names to call these listening, human-pinball-playing trees.

  Darn it, the LSD wasn’t working!

  Apart from a feeling of light-headedness—and of being just slightly unsteady on her feet so that she had to throw up her arms and lift her knees and cant her head back a bit in order to keep her balance—she felt perfectly normal.

  Actually, she felt rather sick.

  She wondered if some jerk had sold the gods a bill of goods. She was then heartened by an ever-so-vague realization that that was a very strange thought to have. If she was having strange thoughts, maybe the drug was working after all! Good. Now if only she could recall why she had taken it in the first place.

  She didn’t feel very good.

  Gabby looked around her, although the sensation was more that the world was revolving while she sat still. “Well, would you look at that,” she said. “There’s a huge apple with wheels on it, and a door.” This was confusing. She remembered Cinderella riding to the ball in a pumpkin, but maybe that was inaccurate. The truth was important. She must find out the truth. She struggled to her feet and commenced to skip (she thought) toward the apple (knowing better than to take a bite of it, for it was poisoned). She was thrilled to see for the first time how her shoes sparkled and shot off penetrating beams of rainbow-colored light. Funny, she had not noticed that when she bought them.

  Everything was suddenly so pretty and so funny.

  If only the drug would start working, it would all be fantastic!

  Gabby pried open the back door of the apple, lay down upon the church pew that had unaccountably fallen there, pulled a choir robe over herself, and closed her eyes. Many centuries passed. When she next opened her eyes, after having been to a little-known planet on the edge of Mercury where it was very hot, she seemed to be moving rapidly through space. Then the whole world stopped, and she was thrown off the church bench.

  But she didn’t feel any pain.

  Instead, she heard a haunting chorus of men’s and women’s voices blended in perfect harmony in her skull. Then Jesus suddenly appeared, looking worried. Mary, the Mother of God, led Him away by His hands, which had bloody holes in them. (This was quite a surprise, because she remembered having expected to see other spirits, like maybe the spirit of Crazy Horse, or the spirit of Chief Joseph.) Oh, the singing was lovely! But Jesus and Mary were leaving her!

  Suddenly Gabby felt an onslaught of dreadful fear and nausea, all of it growing from the middle of her chest. Oh, God, if Jesus and Mary were getting out of here, she didn’t want to stick around by herself!

  Wait! Wait for me!

  She was so frightened—she’d never been so scared in her whole life! There must be something very, very evil nearby, if even the gods were fleeing.

  Don’t leave me! Don’t leave me alone!

  She had to get out of there and run! Gabby frantically struggled to get out from under the blanket she had imagined was a choir robe, and then fumbled around until she got the car door open. She stumbled into open air.

  The considerable noise she was making attracted attention.

  “My God,” a voice said, “what’s she doing here?”

  Gabby felt herself grabbed by invisible hands. She surrendered into them, sobbing with relief and jubilation: “Thank you, thank you!”

  The spirits were taking her, at last!

  Twenty-one

  When Gabby did not return to hogan one by the time Genia switched off her reading light, she didn’t know what to do about it. But she discovered that lying awake in bed worrying for two hours didn’t help at all. She had learned that night that Lillian regularly took sleeping pills, so at least she wasn’t also awake and fretting about strange young Gabriella.

  When Teri and Judith tiptoed in, Genia reached for her travel alarm clock. Its luminous dial said it was almost midnight. “I’m awake,” she told them. “You don’t have to be quiet. Gabby’s not back. Have you seen her?”

  Teri yawned as she started to prod one boot off with the toe of the other one. “Nope,” she said. “I wouldn’t worry, Genia. She’s probably just out chanting to Orion or some damn thing.”

  “I suppose,” Genia murmured. “She didn’t ever come back to the lodge?”

  “I don’t know,” Judith answered. She was undressing in front of her bed. “I didn’t see her. Is her bedroll here? If it’s not, then she’s probably sleeping outside tonight under that glorious moon. I wish I’d thought of doing that, but I’m too pooped now. Time for bed. ’Night, all.”

  Genia started to get up, but Teri did the looking for her.

  “Well, you’re a smart one, Judy,” she said. “It’s not here. How’d you think of that? Yep, she’s sleeping out tonight, Genia.”

  Genia fell back onto the pillow, relieved but also annoyed. She wished she’d thought of that possibility and saved herself two hours of tossing and turning. She also wished, with no small measure of irritation, that young Miss Gabriella Russell had thought to inform her roommates that she wouldn’t be coming home tonight.

  Then Genia had to smile at herself.

  You sound like her mother, she chided herself.

  “Did you have a good time tonight?” she called out softly to Teri, since Judith seemed to have entirely conked out. A waft of the smell of alcoholic beverages and cig
arette smoke had floated into the hogan with them. Genia hoped the open windows would allow in enough breeze to waft it right back out again. “Who was up at the lodge with you?”

  “Oh, everybody came and went,” Teri whispered, sounding vague and sleepy. “Our group. People from other groups. You know. It was fun. We met a lot of people. Judy and I had our first cigarettes in thirty years.” Genia heard a low, rich chuckle. “And I’d say that would be our last for the next thirty. We both stopped smoking when we got pregnant with our first babies. I always thought I missed the taste of it. Now I don’t know why I ever liked it in the first place. Yuck, I thought I’d barf. We got them from Madeline. She’s really a riot when you get to know her. She calls herself the ‘designated sinner’ of the group, isn’t that funny? She says when any of us gets sick of all this fresh air and healthy food, we should stop down at her hogan. She’s got junk food and hooch and smokes.”

  Poor Lillian! Genia thought privately. All that and Martina Alvarez, too!

  “So what’d you and Lillian do?”

  “Oh, we just talked for a while. Then I got tired and came on back here. It’s been a long day.”

  “Man, you said it.” Teri groaned softly. “I thought I was in shape, but my legs hurt from just the little bit of climbing we did today. How do you and Lillian do it? I mean, it really gave the rest of us an inferiority complex to see you two way out ahead of us. Especially Lillian. She must be in her seventies.”

  “Whereas I am a mere youth of sixty-four. I don’t know about Lillian, but I get a lot of exercise on my ranch.”

  “Oh, well, Judy and I have decided that we both want to be just like you when we grow up.”

  Genia laughed, feeling completely surprised and flattered.

  “Until then,” Teri said, “you may have to attach pulleys to me tomorrow to get me up any more mountains.”

  Genia closed her eyes.

  She heard Teri turn over in her bed. “Gee, I hope Gabby remembers about the mountain lion.”

  Genia’s eyes flew open again.

  Then stayed that way until the weight of gravity and exhaustion pulled them down.

  Genia awoke to the sound of whispering.

  She opened her eyes reluctantly, half-expecting to find the hogan still dark. But the room was light with morning sunshine. She rolled over and discovered that the source of the whispering was her roommates, Teri and Judith, who were seated on Gabby’s bed, engaged in an intense conversation.

  “Is something wrong?”

  When they turned their faces toward her, she saw how upset they were. Teri particularly looked anxious, even near tears. Judith looked just generally emotional.

  “Oh, Genia!” was all Judith managed to say. Her actress’s voice imbued the two simple words with heavy drama. When she heard it, Genia didn’t know what to expect. Perhaps the toilets were clogged up, or somebody had died in the night. She found Judith hard to read, because her every word seemed to be invested with such profound meaning.

  “We didn’t mean to wake you up,” Teri said more plainly.

  She waved off the apology and struggled to sit up among the sheets and bedcovers. The temperature inside the hogan was a cool slap to her skin, waking her up entirely. “What’s wrong?”

  “Look at this.” Teri nudged Judith off Gabby’s single bed. They both stood up. Teri reached down and pulled back the covers. It took an instant for Genia to understand that she was seeing a bedroll, spread out underneath the top covers like another blanket. “Look. Gabby put her bedroll under her blankets. So if she didn’t sleep here last night, and she didn’t take her bedroll and sleep outside, then where is she?”

  “Oh, dear” was Genia’s immediate and admittedly not very helpful response. She didn’t like the sound of those facts, either, but she wasn’t sure they deserved quite the dramatic response they were eliciting from her roommates. After having been reassured by Teri the night before, Genia now found herself trying to calm them. “Well, she’s probably in the dining hall, eating breakfast. Let’s go see.” She made a show of getting briskly out of bed and starting to dress, because she’d always found with her children that a steady voice and an efficient manner could sometimes dissipate hurricanes of emotion into gentle sea breezes. Not that she herself felt at all happy about this latest discovery; but getting hysterical—as Teri looked close to being—wasn’t going to solve anything, either.

  In the dining hall they found pecan waffles, venison sausage, Canadian bacon, hot oatmeal, omelettes, toast, biscuits with sausage gravy, an assortment of cold cereals, sliced cantaloupe, grapefruit halves, strawberries, milk, orange juice, tomato juice, coffee, and tea. But they didn’t find Gabby. They located every other member of their group, including Martina Alvarez, but none of them reported having seen her. When Lillian Kleberg heard that Gabby hadn’t returned to the hogan, she pushed aside her full plate of breakfast, as if she’d entirely lost her appetite. Then she insisted on accompanying the three women from hogan one on a search for Naomi O’Neal, to report Gabby’s absence.

  Naomi wasn’t hard to find, just down the hall in her office.

  They crowded in, filling what little empty space there was between the doorway and the director’s desk and file cabinet. Genia saw a telephone with many buttons, a pile of pink memo pads, and a desktop computer, displaying a grid that reminded her of her own year-end profit-and-loss statements at the ranch. Naomi looked up at them in surprise but took a moment to close down the document she had been working on. Then she swiveled her chair around, looked up at them, and asked quietly, “What’s going on?”

  But when she heard why they had come, she grinned at them.

  “Ladies, ladies,” she said mockingly, “you’re forgetting one thing. Gabriella is a beautiful young woman, right? And she’s in love with Indians, right? And who did we have here last night?” Naomi raised her eyebrows suggestively, as the light dawned in four anxious faces. “A number of handsome young Indian men, that’s who. Now, do you really want me to go wandering around the Wheel saying, ‘Has anybody seen Gabby Russell?’ ”

  “Oh, God.” Judith slapped her own forehead and laughed out loud. “Are we old fogies or what?” She turned to face the others. “Come on, guys. Gabby’s all right. She’s probably more all right than any of us are this morning!” She laughed again. “I’m starving. Let’s eat.”

  “Wait,” Genia asked them. “What about her odd behavior last night?” She told Naomi about Gabby’s strange prancing about in the meadow. “You may be right, Naomi, but it worries me, the way she was acting last night, and the fact that nobody’s seen her since then.”

  “You don’t know that, Genia.” Judith was cheerful about it, almost flippant. “Maybe none of us has seen her, but that doesn’t mean nobody has.” She grinned slyly at Naomi.

  “Well, that’s probably true,” Genia admitted.

  “I don’t like the feel of this,” Lillian said, still looking worried.

  “Nor I,” Genia concurred.

  “All right,” Naomi said, seeming willing enough to indulge their lingering doubt. “I’ll ask around.” She smiled. “Tactfully.”

  It appeared to be the best that Genia and Lillian could do at the moment.

  As she followed the other women out of Naomi’s office, Genia was surprised to observe that Teri didn’t look any happier than she had looked going in. Genia heard her say to Judith, “Yeah, but would Gabby have done anything like this, if it weren’t for—”

  Judith cut her off sharply with two carefully enunciated words: “Shut up.”

  There was gossip in the dining hall that morning.

  At their meeting the previous night, the Native American Advisory Council had voted to continue its existence and even to strengthen its ties to the Wheel by assigning a permanent paid liaison: Lillian’s friend, Robert Goode, who was a member of a Pueblo tribe living within easy driving distance. It was said by people who claimed to have talked to somebody who had been there that Martina Alvarez had hect
ored, lectured, insulted, and offended, managing only to turn pivotal votes in the opposite direction. Then, it was rumored, she had stormed out of the meeting, threatening “dire consequences” that all present had assumed to mean financial. A half-dozen Native Americans—all young men—had angrily followed on her heels, muttering their own threats to “shut this place down.” It was said they’d gone off alone into the mountains to convene a secret ceremony.

  “Maybe Gabby went with them,” Teri whispered.

  But Madeline retorted, “What would any self-respecting real Indian want with her?”

  Twenty-two

  “We have a surprise for you today,” Naomi told them as they boarded the van for their second day of adventuring.

  Neither Lillian nor Genia had wanted to leave without Gabby, but Naomi had finally persuaded them. “I’ve spread the word among our staff to keep an eye out for her,” the director assured them. “As soon as Gabby shows up, somebody will bring her out to join us.” And so, amid a chorus of “Don’t worry!” the two older women climbed into the van with the others.

  Genia thought the director and the archaeologist seemed eager to get going and as excited about something as two girls with a secret. “It’s an experiment that we’re trying for the first time. You’re our guinea pigs. If you like it, we’ll do it for other groups. You’ll see what it is when we get there.”

  “Where?” asked Lillian, in a sharp tone that betrayed her lingering concern.

  “There,” answered Naomi, and grinned into the rear-view mirror. She seemed in a lighthearted mood, Genia thought, probably because Martina had remained on campus. Although, Genia added to herself, if she were Naomi, she’d be worried about what Martina was doing there.