Moonlight Water by Win Blevins Read Free Book Online Page B

ridges, mesas, buttes, spires, and towers. Gianni had described this place as the epicenter of nowhere, maybe what Red needed. And with Gianni it would be full.

 
    9
    MOONLIGHT WATER, A FEATHERED SPY, AND THE LAW
    Don’t throw rocks at a whirlwind. It will chase you.
    â€”Navajo saying
    Â 
    There it was down below, a single man-creature.
    â€œSomething’s going to happen.” That’s what Winsonfred told Ed, and he’d asked Ed to watch for the something, maybe for trouble. It was the something, all right, but Ed couldn’t tell if it was trouble. Not yet.
    Ed wheeled out of the thermal, adjusting his wingtips, and made a wide circle clockwise. He took in the dried-blood color of the sun on the huge, red-rock monoliths of Mythic Valley to the southwest. That red was his favorite color, low-pitched and primal, the fundamental color of this country. He looked at the river that oozed like a glorious green snake across the desert floor. Then he felt the cool air rising from the water and used it to lose a little altitude. He eyed and sniffed Moonlight Water Canyon, the ancients’ highway to the Azure Mountains in the north. Ed’s eyes and nose were primo.
    He angled easily downward toward the strip of concrete through the slender green canyon that sloped into the village. Ed kept everything in his life easy. It wasn’t smart to work hard in the heat of the desert, and besides, ease was his style. He feathered his wingtips just right and cruised toward the man-creature.
    He was standing in the graveled area alongside one of the automobiles that human beings traveled in, taking a piss and looking at the cliff drawings. That was okay with Ed. He understood pissing just fine, along with all other means of getting rid of unwanted baggage—he didn’t carry any extra weight himself. Ed didn’t care for the contraptions people traveled in. Why not get rid of them and walk, so you can see and smell and touch the whole country? Now, cliff drawings, Ed had never figured out what people wanted with them. The creatures in those weren’t merely dead, which would suit Ed’s appetite, they were way, way dead.
    The creature lifted a soda pop can, and Ed feared he would give it a heave. But the creature drank and held on. Good. Of all the humans’ bad habits, Ed had the least tolerance for littering. He often passed judgment on litterers from above with a glob of guano. His aim was excellent.
    Ed passed over the creature and banked into a turn for another gander and a good whiff. In Ed’s previous life he’d been a human being, more or less like the creature down there, and a lover of the Canyonlands of the Four Corners region. This had given him a good beak for trouble. Ed was the self-appointed guardian angel of this piece of the gods’ good earth.
    He swooped over the creature’s head. The creature walked toward the drawings, and in a flash Ed knew. This was a lost soul tinged with a hint of desperation and a wild spirit. Well, he’d be right at home in Moonlight Water. The place was full of souls searching for something. Some of them felt the call of the Four Corners and stayed. After a few months they got their rhythm back—the country had something good for them.
    The creature tilted the soda pop and drank deep. Ed himself had loved such cans, his were full of beer, but now he preferred the taste of water and judged that no drink was worth the trouble of bottles and cans.
    Ed watched. Scores of man-creatures and woman-creatures turned their mechanical contraptions into this spot every day and got out, and Ed felt zilch about most of them. Some, mostly locals, gave him a good feeling. A few troubled him. This one felt like Winsonfred’s something, maybe good, maybe trouble. Ed would tell the old man about it tonight.
    The stranger was still staring at the wall of cliff drawings.
    Ed watched and waited. Of course, he didn’t have any word like love