Old lady Jordan looked frailer than she sounded, the skin on her face a collection of wrinkled, gray folds. Her gray hair hung long and loose about her shoulders. One eye was completely white with cataracts, but the other eye was bright and vivid blue, seeing everything. Her dress was old and black. Support hose. Ugly shoes. When she smiled, her teeth were so white and perfect they had to be false and gave her a demented Cheshire cat expression.
“I saw Meredith James at Church last Sunday.” She said it like I knew who she was talking about, like we were already in the middle of a conversation. “She’s recovering from a stroke. She’s seventy. You know how old I am?”
“No ma’am.”
“Guess.”
Why did old people like this game so much? “I would-n’t know, ma’am.”
“I said guess.” “Sixty?” “Don’t mess with me, young man. Guess right.” “Seventy-five.”
“I’m ninety-six.”
“That’s amazing.” I said.
That must’ve been the right response because she smiled. “I still cook all my own meals. The boys take good care of me, of course.” She sipped tea.
“Where are the boys now, Mrs. Jordan?”
She tilted her head, gave me another long look with her good eye. “You’re one of Krueger’s?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
She
“It’s been a long night.”
“I never sleep at night, haven’t for years.” She sipped tea, just a little at a time like she enjoyed going through the motions. “When you get my age you either sleep all the time or you never do. I never do. So I’m up all night and hardly ever get any visitors.”
“I’m more than happy to sit with you a bit, Mrs. Jordan.” I sipped tea to show I meant it. “Can you tell me where Jason and the others got to?”
“You and Krueger need to leave them boys alone. We’re good God-fearing white people out here. Every whiskey drinking Indian gets more respect than us, government money, tribal money. Every son of a bitch in the state who can prove a redskin in the woodpile gets a card and all the benefits. Now they’re even changing all the names of the high schools so the mascots don’t give offense. And my own boys can’t do a few extra things to make ends meet without you lot harassing us.”
“I know what it’s like to be poor, ma’am.”
“That’s right,” she said. “But you and me can’t go open no casino, can we?”
“I don’t know anything about that. I’m just worried about people getting hurt. It’s my job to help look after everybody.”
“We look after our own. You want a graham cracker?”
“No thank you, ma’am.”
“Wait a minute.” With a little effort she stood, waddled to a shelf and brought back a photo album. It was black leather, looked worn and very old. She turned to the first page and set it in my lap before flopping back into the armchair with a little grunt.
I looked at the first photo, black and white, five by seven, thick paper. On the album page below the photo someone had written
The girl looked back over her shoulder as she ran, raw glee on her face, eyes wide as if being chased by a parent or sibling. It was easy to imagine a squeal of laughter, a breezy sunny day.
“That’s me,” she said.
“Where?”
“Here,” she said. “The cabin burnt down in 1937.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Me and my folks and six brothers and sisters lived in there. Coyotes stole all the chickens the third year. We fought drought and ice storms. My brothers and sisters grew up and scattered, but I stayed. I stuck, by God, and that should be worth something. It should mean something when you endure and stay and the whole world changes around you, changes and forgets you. It should mean something.”
“I guess so.” But I couldn’t say what it might mean. Maybe not anything good.
She sighed, deflated a little into the depths of the armchair. “There was nothing here. The land was raw and the sky was wide and there was nothing. No town. We took the land and made it submit to us. There was nothing, and then there were the Jordans.”
It was easy now to understand why the brothers strutted around acting like they were entitled to everything. I could imagine years of this old woman whispering her poison to the boys, making them out to be barons of the endless prairie. Might makes right. Cowboys and Indians. It was hard to think of the Jordans as a family dynasty instead of a mob of rednecks, but the old woman had her own view of the world. Old people always did.
I turned the page in the photo album and the decades flew by. Smaller black and white photos of people I didn’t know. A woman on a horse. A gaunt man in an Army uniform, sergeant stripes. A barely recognizable picture of Main Street. Somehow the town looked more prosperous then than it did now.
More pages and more decades. Faded color photos of young boys, shirtless, lined up and mugging for the camera. I recognized Jason Jordan. I looked into his eyes, tried to discern the seeds of evil that would bloom in later years. I wanted to believe it was easy to recognize the bad, that you could see it coming a long way off and have time to duck or hide, like the eerie green clouds that warned of tornado weather. But all I saw was some kid with buck teeth.
When I looked up from the photo album, I saw Antonia Jordan had nodded off, her chin against her chest, snoring lightly, tea cup precarious in her bony fingers. I set the album aside, and carefully took the cup, set it on top of the album. Delicately, I extracted the revolver from her lap and hid it beneath her chair. She’d find it later. Or not.
I tried to see the same evil in the sleeping old woman that I’d tried to see in the old photo of Jason but couldn’t do it. Still, I knew it was there, or if not evil then something broken, something that had gone wrong with her as a human being. It’s so easy to think of old folks as kindly and cute, but anyone can go wrong. The hardships and disappointments and tragedies of our lives can make us strong or they can twist us wrong and nobody is exempt from this crapshoot. Not old women or Mexican hellcats or part-time deputies.
You spin the wheel and you take your chances.
I stood, felt my knees pop, back sore, ribs still tender. I needed three cold beers and ten hours sleep.
I’d settle for the Jordan brothers.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
The room beyond Grandma Jordan’s kitchen was a thin unfinished hall, cement floor, exposed wiring, a bare light bulb pumping out sixty watts overhead. A washer and dryer, some paint cans stacked on the other side. I looked at it a minute and thought the room was maybe some kind of buffer zone, a combo laundry storage room between Antonia Jordan’s add-on apartment and the main part of the house.
I had no intention of trying to make my way past Lucifer again, so I went through the door ahead of me. I drew my revolver as I went. I didn’t want any more Jordans to get the drop on me.
The main part of the house was mostly dark except for a tiny lamp on a roll top desk. It was enough to see, and I took a quick look. The desk was cluttered with mail, much of it going back several months. It seemed like the Jordans preferred to be reminded a few times before they paid bills. Gun accessory catalogs.
