The Wailing Wind

'But you did.'

'Well, not exactly. I was just curious.'

'So am I,' Louisa said. 'About when you're going to tell me about how this old Hispanic legend of the tragedy of a lost lady got involved in this gold mine swindle.'

'I heard about that Halloween evening call, got the name of the caller, and went out to see her. She's a teacher out at McGaffey School. Said these kids showed up at her house that Halloween night—students of hers. They told her about cutting across the corner of the fort to get out to the road and catch a ride into Gallup, and they heard these awful terrifying moans and crying sounds. She said they seemed genuinely frightened. She'd called the sheriff.'

'And his deputy found absolutely nothing?'

Leaphorn chuckled. 'Nothing. But she told me it turned out to have a healthy benefit because two of the kids were Hispanics, who connected the sounds with the Wailing Woman ghost story, and one was a Zuni. She thought they were hearing a skinwalker, or another of the Navajo version of witches, or maybe that Zuni spirit who punishes evildoers, and the white girl thought it might be an ogre, or vampire, or one of their things. So the word spread around McGaffey School, and it put an end to the student body's practice of taking that forbidden shortcut.'

'Did you talk to any of the kids?'

'Somebody from the sheriff's office did.'

'You didn't.'

'Not yet,' Leaphorn said. He picked up the old notebook, flipped through it.

'I still have the names. You want to go with me?'

'Golly,' she said. 'I wish I could. I've got to meet with an old man named Beno out at Nakaibito. He's supposed to know a story about his great-grandmother being captured by the Mexicans when she was a child. His daughter is bringing him into the trading post there to talk to me. Could it wait?'

'It could,' Leaphorn said. 'But it's already waited a long, longtime.'

Chapter Seven

« ^ »

The first name on Leaphorn's old list was a Zuni girl whose father worked at Fort Wingate and who was now a student at the University of New Mexico and out of reach. The second was Tomas Garcia, now a husband and father. Leaphorn found him at his job with a Gallup lumber company.

Garcia threw the last bundle of asphalt shingles on the customer's flatbed truck, turned up his shirt collar against the dusty wind, and grinned at Leaphorn. 'Sure, I remember it,' he said. 'It was a big deal, getting interviewed by a deputy sheriff when you're in high school. But I don't think it ever amounted to anything. At least not that any of us ever heard about.'

'You mind going over it again? They didn't put much in his report.'

'There wasn't much to put,' Garcia said. 'I guess you know the layout at Wingate. Miles and miles of those huge old bunkers with dirt roads running down the rows. It's easy to get through that fence the army put up in the olden days when it was storing ammunition out there, and we'd cut through there to get to the highway when we wanted to go into Gallup. That evening one of the kids was having a sort of Halloween party in town. So we were going to that. Catch a ride in, you know. Cutting across through the bunkers, we started hearing this wailing sound.'

Garcia paused, recalling it, bracing himself against the west wind that was blowing dust around their ankles. 'I guess it was just the Halloween idea in our heads. Kids, you know. But it was spooky. Just getting real dark, and a cold wind blowing. At first I thought it was the wind, whistling around those bunkers. But it wasn't that.'

'What do you think it was?'

He shook his head. 'Why don't we talk about this where it's warm,' he said. 'Get Gracella in on it, too. She might remember it better than I do.'

'Is that Gracella deBaca?' If it was, Leaphorn had found the fourth person on his list.

'Gracella Garcia now,' Garcia said, looking proud of that.

Leaphorn followed Garcia's pickup home and got a free lunch of excellent posole generously seasoned with pork. Gracella was on maternity leave from her job at the McKinley County hospital, and to Leaphorn's unpracticed eye she seemed extremely close to motherhood. Her account of that twilight Halloween was much like her husband's—as Leaphorn had expected. They would have relived the affair and more or less agreed on the memory.

'It was very, very scary,' Gracella said, as she dished Leaphorn another dipper of posole. 'Tomas pretends he thinks it was just some sort of a practical joke for Halloween. That's what the cops told us.' She gave her husband a stern look. 'But he knows better,' she said. 'He's just macho. Doesn't want to admit he believes in La Llorona.'

Garcia let that pass. They'd been over this before.

'I'm not saying it wasn't Gracella's mythical lost mother, but how about the music?'

'We always get to that,' Gracella said. 'I'm not even sure I heard the music. Maybe you talked me into that.'

'What sort of music?'

'Not my kind,' Garcia said. 'I'm into hard rock, or heavy metal. This sounded like classical stuff.'

'You could barely hear it,' Gracella said. 'The wind was blowing. Sometimes you thought you heard like a piano playing. Sometimes not.'

'The wailing and the music came together?' Leaphorn asked.

'I better explain,' Garcia said. 'We were hurrying along, cutting across where the rows of bunkers are lined up.