brush mark. Then he bent close, examining it in the dimming red glow of the twilight.
“He’s sending some sort of signal to flying saucers,” Janet said. “Or when the Mesa airliner comes over here flying down to Gallup, this says ‘YOU’RE LOST’ to the pilot. Or the guy who is doing it, they lost his luggage and when you look down from the airplane this is some sort of awful obscene insult.”
“Look at this,” Chee said.
Janet bent closer. “What?”
“It washed down a little,” Chee said, indicating the flow with his finger.
“So?”
“So I think the paint was fresh when it started raining. He was still painting when the rain began.”
“Ah,” Janet Pete said. “So maybe there was a witness. Maybe
“ Her voice trailed off, turning squeaky. She shrank away from the slab where she had been leaning, away from a buzzing sound.
“Jim,” she whispered. “Don’t tell me that’s what I think it is.”
“Only if you don’t think it’s a rattlesnake,” Chee said. “Move back toward me. It’s under the edge of that slab. See it?”
Janet made no effort to see it. “Let’s go,” she said. And went, and it was still light enough to see that the old green Bronco II was no longer parked behind the junipers.
She rolled the Toyota to a halt under the cottonwood tree that shaded Jim Chee’s home?a well-scuffed and dented aluminum trailer parked on the low north bluff of the San Juan River. Chee made no move to get out. He was waiting for her to turn off the ignition. She left the motor running and the headlights on.
“The only other time I was here you had a pregnant cat,” she said. “Remember that? It seems like a long time ago.”
“I didn’t have a cat,” Chee said. “It was just hanging out here.”
“You were looking out after it.” She grinned at him. “Remember? You were afraid a coyote was going to get it. And I thought about getting one of those cases they ship animals in on airplanes to use as a cat house. Coyote- proof. And you bought one in Farmington. What happened?”
“You moved away,” Chee said. “You followed your boyfriend to Washington and joined his law firm and got rich and came home again.”
“I meant what happened to the cat,” Janet said.
“I couldn’t deal with the cat,” Chee said. “It was a biligaana cat. Ran away from some tourists I guess. And I thought maybe it could become a natural Navajo Reservation-type cat and live on its own. But it wasn’t working.”
“But what happened?”
“I put it in the shipping case and sent it to Mary Landon,” Chee said.
“Your white schoolteacher,” Janet said.
“White schoolteacher, but not mine,” Chee said. “She moved back to Wisconsin. Going to graduate school.”
“Not yours anymore?”
“I guess maybe she never was.”
They sat in the Toyota considering this, listening to the engine run.
Janet looked at him. “You all right now?”
“More or less,” Chee said. “I guess so.”
They considered that.
“How about you?” Chee said. “How about your ambitious lawyer? I don’t remember his name. How about your own ambitions?”
“He’s back in Washington. Getting rich, I guess. And here I am, trying to defend a destitute drunk who won’t even tell me he didn’t do it.”
Chee, who had been listening very, very carefully, heard nothing much in her voice. Just a flat statement.
“You’re all right now? Is that the message you’re sending me?”
“We don’t write,” she said, voice still flat. “I guess so. Except it leaves you feeling stupid. And used. And confused.”
“I’ll make some coffee,” Chee said.
No response. Janet Pete merely looked out the windshield, as if she was seeing something in the darkness under the cottonwoods.
“Maybe somebody told you about my coffee,” Chee said. “But I don’t boil it anymore. Now I’ve got some of these things where you put a little container on top of the cup, and coffee grounds in the container, and pour boiling water through. It’s much better.”
Janet Pete laughed and turned off the ignition.
The coffee was, in fact, excellent. Hot and fresh. She was tired and she sipped it gratefully, surveying Jim Chee’s narrow quarters. Neat, she noticed. That surprised her. Everything in place. She glanced at his bed?a blanket-covered cot suspended from the wall. Monastic was the word for it. And above it, a shelf overflowing with
