Nail’s Crossing: A Novel

Smith

Prologue

Hannah Bond had delivered a summons out on the rock prairie. She was heading back to the Johnston County Courthouse in Tishomingo, onetime capital of the Chickasaw Nation, when she passed a young woman standing beside a dusty red Chevy Aveo on the unshouldered margin of US 377. It was dusk, and the remote stretch of highway ran through a stark, boulder-strewn patch rare in Oklahoma. The fence junctions of stacked stone looked like something out of New—or old—England. The woman was staring at her cell phone. It was a dead zone, Bond knew. Most likely, the first rig to pass by would be a kindly rancher or roustabout who would change her tire and give her a goodbye salute, but …

Bond flicked on her strobes, made a U-turn, and pulled up in front of the car, which was headed south, same as she was. Hit by the headlights, the young woman squinted and frowned, let her arms fall at her sides. Clearly not looking for help from this quarter. Bond wasn’t going to call in her temp plate or check her license, but the girl had no way of knowing this. And anyway, the deputy was accustomed to scaring people when she helped them. It never got any better when she unfolded all six feet two inches from the cruiser.

Not a big girl at all, this one. In the glare, her face looked pale against black hair that fell straight across her cheeks. A deep worry line creased her brow. Her lips were plump but a little drawn. Endurance, Bond guessed.

The left rear wheel was already jacked up, the doughnut spare and plastic hubcap lying on the ground. Having some trouble? Bond asked.

The young woman instantly relaxed. She swung her arm at the flat and dipped her knees. I can’t break the lugs. I stomped on the handle.

Damn pneumatic wrenches. Go stand further in the bar ditch, away from the road.

In Bond’s hands, the subcompact’s jack handle and lug wrench looked like toys. She broke the lugs loose with no effort, affixed the spare, jacked the car down, and replaced all the equipment in the Aveo’s trunk. Hand on the lid, she paused. You got the keys with you?

The girl jogged from the shadows, waving a long cigarette. No. Wait, I don’t! Oh, God, they’re in the trunk! I never woulda thought of that. She yanked the keys from beneath a red suitcase and slammed the trunk lid. When she thanked Bond, she was facing away, staring up the dark road she had traveled.

By the time Bond made another U-turn, the Aveo’s taillights had disappeared.

Chapter 1

Ever since he got back to Lighthorse Police headquarters at ten thirty, Bill Maytubby had been thinking about Mazen’s chicken shawarma. He could just about smell the garlic. The egg whites he bolted at five a.m. had evaporated hours ago. He looked down at the clutter on his desk. He hated being in his office—in any office, really.

He could see the drought-seared Oklahoma hills behind downtown Ada, seat of Pontotoc County and modern capital of the Chickasaw Nation.

The clock next to a photo of the nation’s governor read 11:58. Maytubby looked through the plate glass at the clock on the desk of his chief, Les Fox. It said 12:01. Don’t think about the grisly turkey buzzard, he told himself. Think about Jill Milton.

And there she was, standing in Mazen’s parking lot and smiling at Maytubby as he pulled up in the cruiser. At the end of Main behind her, the East Central University admin building shimmered like a mirage. There was too much white in the sky. The Citizens Bank thermometer flashed 105.

Sergeant William of the Royal Lighthorse Police. She tapped the brim of his Mountie hat. Sounds downright colonial.

Change it to ‘Maytubby.’ Then it won’t.

Quite right, Sergeant. Carry on. She took his arm as they entered the restaurant. Normally, he braced for the Chill—that silent half second when he entered a public place in uniform and all eyes but the children’s snapped down. Jill Milton rendered him invisible, though; everyone but the children stared at her.

Important wavy black hair to her shoulder blades, keen obsidian eyes, and a big, fierce smile. Maytubby also marked the diners’ curiosity—tumblers turning in racial padlocks.

The waitress raised her eyebrows as they walked past. They nodded, and she went to tell the cook chicken shawarma, hummus. Jill said, Sergeant, don’t you have something on any of the tribal brass to make them rescind the panty-hose policy? It’s the twenty-first century. It’s been over a hundred degrees for a month!

Are you saying our government is co-opting the fashions of our oppressors?

No, I’m saying no guy would work for the nation if he had to wear a salmon polyester double-knit leisure suit.

Maytubby pointed to his campaign hat on the table. We all have our burdens.

She snatched it up and put it on. The brim dropped to her nose.

I’d say you’re undermining my authority.

I can’t believe your people were my people’s masters, she said.

The waitress appeared, and Maytubby put his finger to his lips and motioned her to give him his food and take Jill’s away. He was twirling a hunk of shawarma on his fork when she lifted the hat.

Hey!

Some of your people were masters, too.

Static crackled from his shoulder radio. He frowned and turned down the volume.

The waitress set Jill’s hummus plate in front of her.

Bill? his shoulder said.

Yeah, Sheila. What do we have?

Hello, Jill.

Jill Milton waved at the radio.

OHP and nation road crew boss both called. Austin Love’s silver-over-green jacked ’78 F-one-hundred … Maytubby grabbed his hat, smiled at his fiancée, looked longingly at the uneaten shawarma, and made for the door, … east off One at Kullihoma Road. OHP abandoning pursuit on Fifteen-O-Five at the stomp grounds.

Maytubby pushed the black Lighthorse Charger over the breaks of the Muddy Boggy River, east of Ada, through Happyland toward the Kullihoma Grounds, where the nation gathered for ceremonial dances. He passed sun-scorched hay fields. A few skinny cattle stood around where ponds used to be. Ranchers had sold most of their herds in Ada weeks ago, when hay hit eighty dollars a big bale.

Leaving the highway, he faced a slalom course of construction signs and roadblocks on Kullihoma Road. A hundred yards of one-lane blacktop, a half mile of dirt, more one-lane blacktop. He blinked his lights at the Highway Patrol cruiser coming out. Jake Renaldo waved. Maytubby couldn’t blame him for bugging out. Jake didn’t know the roads in there. And in fresh pursuit, he couldn’t arrest an Indian on tribal land. It was enough that he’d stay parked on Oklahoma 1 in case Austin Love came back west. Sheila would have a Pontotoc deputy where Kullihoma hit State 48 on the east side.

Luckily, the last couple of miles were paved on at least one side. He could make time without raising a giant dust cursor.

* * *

She had not gone gently, Majesty Tate. Her knuckles were bloody, and she had made the best of her gnawed fingernails, ripping sizable hunks of flesh from her killer. She had lost her silver Converse Chuck Taylors when she was dragged from her red Aveo, and her heels had torn the ground in every direction between there and her house. It looked as if a razorback or two had come through.

Finding the smeared antler-handle bowie had cost Maytubby the better part of a day. While FBI Evidence Response worked at Tate’s rented house—on a patch of tribal allotment land, which made it federal—he had walked miles of dusty road from Ms. Tate’s house toward Witch Hole Lake on Delaware Creek, clear into the defunct resort of Bromide. On the left side coming down, on the right, back up into the hills. As he went, he tossed pebbles into the brush. When he flushed a swarm of blowflies, he walked to the dead thing—a coon, as it turned out. Near evening, he had found the knife in the bar ditch near Houghtubby Springs. A custom bowie. Whoever left it there either wanted it found or had a sorry arm.

* * *

Maytubby pulled into the stomp grounds, drove past the Thinking Warrior brush arbor and the Crazy Warrior arbor. It didn’t take a skilled tracker to follow the pickup’s trail. Love had fishtailed at every turn.

Even though Love had almost ten minutes on him, Maytubby drove slowly. He lowered his car windows, but closed them again when the cicada chorus washed in. Ears useless today. At each fork, the road got fainter—and rockier. It mattered less now that Maytubby knew Love veered left at every fork.

Sheila?

Yeah, Bill.

You get a Pontotoc deputy at Fifteen Thirty-Three and Forty-Eight?

Katz.

Ask him to go south to Fifteen Fifty. Love was probably in Coal County by now.

Maytubby coddled the Charger down the ridge to Sincere Creek and jolted across its dry bed. He accelerated over a patch of chat, pinging bits of it up against the undercarriage, and gained the opposite bank with a little momentum. Rocks banged against the tranny and chassis. He was kicking up dust now. And he needed the four-by-four. Burr oak and sumac closed in on the track and scraped the cruiser’s fenders. He could see where Love’s pickup had snapped branches higher up. Before he crested the ridge, he was in deep shade.

When his grandmother was a child, she had seen the mischievous little people, the konikosha, here, and they had stolen her shoe. She had taught Maytubby to rearrange any place where he played, so the little people couldn’t find their way to him. Those stories had given him the creeps.

He lowered the front windows. The trail switched back once. Braking for the hairpin, Maytubby instinctively scanned the road going up over his right shoulder. Then he looked again. Grass growing high in the ruts, no coat of dust on the oak leaves. Nothing in his mirror, nothing up the hill. He peered into the dark woods in front of him, let his gaze walk slowly to the left.

The hairs on his neck stood up, and he covered the grip of his Beretta. A Mississippi kite whistled as it rode the midday thermals, but the timber was still. Without taking his eyes off the thicket, he slapped the shifter into reverse so it would make a noise. A shadow twitched among the leaves, and when he refocused deeper in the blackjacks, Maytubby was staring into the slate-gray eyes of Austin Love. Greasy black hair plastered his handsome face and spilled over his bony shoulders. He grinned at Maytubby, fired the Ford’s big eight, and roared onto the road behind the cruiser.

Dust and reefer smoke spun in the Charger’s tonneau as Maytubby backed down the bluff, overcorrecting at every bend until the cruiser slewed hard and finally spun usefully around in a bootleg turn. He regained the creek just in time to see the pickup bouncing away down the rocky bed.

Love had no doubt planned for Maytubby to get halfway to Gerty before he did that. If he got to the Muddy Boggy that way, he would have to take out a few fences.

Katz?

Yeah.

Love’s coming your way, down the Sincere.

"Driving down the creek?"

’Fraid so.

"Phoo-oo!"

* * *

Renaldo was on the rusted truss bridge with Katz when Maytubby got out of the cruiser ten minutes later.

"This looks like a scene from Deliverance."

"My whole life looks like a scene from Deliverance," Renaldo said.

"Phoo-oo!" said Katz.

See what I mean, Bill?

You hear his truck in there? Sounds like a sawmill?

The others shook their heads. They stared down at the creek and listened in the silence between passing pickups towing cattle trailers to the Ada sale.

Sheriff told me you found the knife, Renaldo said.

"Found a knife. FBI forensics might find out if it’s the knife and if it has Love’s prints on it."

Renaldo folded his arms and looked into the sky. How do you know Love’s prints are in the system?

Katz and Maytubby snorted in unison.

He wore that stag knife ever’where he went, Katz said, wiping the sweat off his hatchet face with his forearm.

Where’d that girl come from? Renaldo said. What, Queen? Princess …?

"Majesty. Tate. Albuquerque license address. Still haven’t located next of kin. Nation rec ranger saw Love and her shooting eight ball at the Lazy K in Sulphur.

How long’s he been out of Mac? Katz said.

Twenty-six months. Gentlemen, I don’t want to waste your time. Thank you.

* * *

Maytubby drove back to the stomp grounds entrance and parked under a concession arbor. Under the passenger seat, he found a small bottle of Ozarka water. Hot day. He took off his Smokey hat and tied on a blue bandanna. The warrant for Love’s arrest, issued by the Chickasaw District court, crackled in his shirt pocket. Someone inside the court had alerted Love. Maytubby left his boots and socks on the floorboard, everything else but his cell phone and gun on the seat. If he disappeared, it would look downright Rapturish.

Until he picked up a deer trail into the back of the reservation, Maytubby scanned the stomp ground for glass shards. Jill mocked his awe of the Tarahumara runners. It’ll be all noble savage until you amputate a toe on a Choc beer bottle.

He found his pace and covered the two miles to Sincere Creek quickly. At the ford where he had lost Love, he stopped at the edge of the clearing, drank water, and listened. A distant crow, a semi testing the Sincere bridge. There would be no running down this creek, barefoot or shod. He picked his way along the rocky bed, wading a small pool here and there. The Ford’s cartoon tires had overturned large rocks and spattered low limbs. A mile from the bridge, Maytubby climbed out of the creek and picked his way through the brush alongside.

Not a hundred yards on, he saw a big mess in the creek where Love had spun his tires trying to get a purchase on the steep bank. The pickup was nosed into a thicket. Maytubby pulled his Beretta and held it in both hands as he circled the truck, walking backward then forward. The driver’s door was open—less racket in the woods. And by night, well, the dome light was smashed, likely during the Carter administration. He completed his circle and moved warily toward the pickup. He memorized the tires: forty-four-inch Ground Hawgs. Love’s first few steps were clear—long smudges that suggested some haste. Maytubby was flattered. The cab was littered with Marlboro Red boxes and butts, nasty shirts, and jeans. A dark liquid had dripped and then dried on the floorboard and some of the clothes. He holstered the gun.

Love’s first few steps led east, toward the bridge. But he knew there would be cops on the bridge—why he ditched the truck. Maytubby walked another circle, this one around the last smudge. A crushed blackjack acorn lay in a line with the other tracks. The next step left a clear print in deep sand. Herman Survivors—cheap at Walmart and common as dirt. After a rocky patch, a torn stem of poison ivy. He stopped looking for signs and followed the creek toward the bridge. In and around Majesty Tate’s house, Survivor bootprints, many of them bloody.

Every fifty yards or so, the prints reappeared. They stopped at the fence where the State 48 right-of-way clearing began. Maytubby semicircled. Nothing. He went through the fence and up under the bridge, searching the shadow until his eyes adjusted. Hundreds of Survivor prints, crossing and recrossing. He shook his head. Love was waiting for them to get off the bridge. His exit trail led not back down to the river but around the abutment and up toward the road. Maytubby resisted a foolish impulse to climb to the road and have a look. The first driver who saw him would call the sheriff. He tried to remember whether a vehicle had crossed the bridge more than once when he and Renaldo and Katz were up there—maybe a friend Love had texted for a ride. Maytubby walked under the bridge and opened his cell phone. The tower on Potato Hill gave him a few bars. Possible. Was Renaldo’s dash cam on?

He phoned Sheila as he left the road. Renaldo was writing up a speeder and would meet him in Stonewall.

And, Sheila? I’m going to need mules.

Chapter 2

The aquamarine eyes of Aaron Coblentz lit on the horizon behind Hannah Bond. The wheels of his black buggy rocked back and forth as his buckskin gelding settled. He set the brake.

Monday evening, this time? Hmm. You mean besides the speed demons from Wapanucka?

Yessir.

They put glass packs on their mufflers. Spooks my horse.

I bet.

Monday … Monday I got a spoke mended at Miller’s, bought cheese at the store in Clarita. Came back to Bromide on Limestone Road. Helped my wife can crookneck squash. Coblentz stared at the horizon while the buckskin’s ears flicked off horseflies.