“I’m gonna go on back inside, if you don’t mind,” he said. “Maybe I can watch a few minutes of pro football before Eva Lou makes me turn off the set to come eat dinner. She’s real stubborn that way. Fussy. To hear her tell it, you’d think food eaten in front of a television set is plumb wasted.”
“It does seem like a waste of good cooking to me,” Joanna said.
Jim Bob Brady squinted at her and then grinned. “You women are all alike, aren’t you?” he muttered. “Not a hair of difference.”
As he marched off toward the house, Joanna stayed behind, enjoying the warmth of the early-afternoon sunshine and the crystal-clear blue of the sky overhead. It had been a strange fall with unseasonably cold and wet weather in October. Now, the week before Thanksgiving, warm, shirt-sleeve temperatures had returned, even in the high desert country of southeastern Arizona.
Joanna stood near the Blazer and gazed off across the broad, flat stretches of the Sulphur Springs Valley toward the broken blue lines of mountain that surrounded it—the Chiricahuas and the Swisshelms to the north and east, the Dragoons directly to the north, and behind her, to the west, the steeply rising foothills of the Mules.
As clearly as if it were yesterday, she remembered the first time she had stood in almost that same spot with Andy while he had pointed out those same mountain ranges. Andy had loved High Lonesome Ranch when he had lived there as a boy with his parents. Because he had cared about the place so much and because it had been so much a part of him, Joanna had loved it, too—at least she had when she was sharing it with Andy. Now, though, she wasn’t so sure. Trying to run the place by herself seemed overwhelming at times.
The half-formed thought was interrupted when the dogs—Tigger and Sadie—scrambled out from under the empty swing, leaped off the porch, and came bounding through the gate, barking wildly. Ranch dogs traditionally earn their keep by functioning as noisy early-warning systems. Over the chorus of barking, Joanna couldn’t tell what kind of vehicle was making its way up the road, but knew for sure that someone was coming. Moments later Frank Montoya’s blue Chevy pickup rounded the corner, followed by the two noisy dogs.
“Quiet, you two,” Joanna ordered. “It’s okay.”
The
“Maybe a little of both,” she answered. “How’s it going, Frank?”
Chief Deputy Frank Montoya climbed down out of the truck. He was a tall, spare, easygoing Hispanic. The youngest son in a family of no-longer migrant workers, he was the first person on either side of his family tree ever to attend college. Working full-time and taking mostly night courses, Frank had completed his associate of arts degree at Cochise College. Now, commuting back and forth to Tucson and taking only one or two classes a semester, he was slowly working away at attaining a B.A. in law enforcement.
Well into his mid-thirties, Frank’s neatly trimmed crew-cut hairline was showing definite signs of receding. Friends, including Joanna Brady, teased him, telling him that when he was finally ready to graduate, he wouldn’t have any hair left to wear under his mortarboard.
Frank hurried around his truck to the rider’s side. He opened the door to reveal a short but massive Mexican woman whose iron-gray hair had been plaited into a long, thin braid. It was wrapped into a dinner-plate-sized halo and pinned to her head. Her features were stolid, impassive. When Frank opened the door to help her out, she stepped down heavily and stood, splay-footed and unsmiling, with her hands folded across her broad waist as Joanna moved forward to greet her. An over-sized black purse dangled from the crook of one elbow. The other hand gripped a large manila envelope.
“You must be Mrs. Grijalva,” Joanna said, holding out her hand.
The older woman responded by turning toward the sound of Joanna’s voice, but she made no move to return the handshake. Cataracts leave visible signs of their damage. The glaucoma that had robbed Juanita Grijalva of her vision had left no apparent blemish on her eyes themselves. She looked past Joanna with a disconcerting, unblinking stare.
After a moment, Joanna
