Ninety-five degrees. Ninety-eight. Edging in on a hundred and three, hotter than a burnt boot. Snow in the high country melting fast. Ruby steps into the cold stream, red boots and all. Surrounded by bare palo verde, leggy ocotillo, and weedy brittlebush, the creek outside Jericho riffles over mica-tinged boulders, its braided channels flowing now with no indication that it’s dry nine months of the year. From a distance, the creek looks like a river of copper; up close, the water is clear, its bottom mottled with sand and glinting rock. Sometimes you can’t trust your own eyes.
Sometimes you have to. Last night, Ruby pored over her ledgers. Her eyes saw everything in black and white, no question about it. This inn-keeping business is a losing proposition, but she’s too proud to admit it to anyone else.
Sam balances on stepping-stones and angles his arms out sideways as he picks his way across the arroyo. He loses his footing and steps in the creek; a second later, he is back on the slippery rocks playing catch as catch can with the creek. He signs to Ruby, “o” and “k,” fist with a hole and then second and third fingers in a V with the thumb tucked between them. Ruby signs back and strides through ankle-high water and raises silt from the creek bed. As soon as she reaches the far side, the creek runs clear again. Ruby’s mouth and tongue are dry and gritty. She dips her hand into the flow and cups a mouthful of cool creek water. Sam comes up beside her.
When she raises her head, Ruby is at eye-level with a bobcat not twenty yards away. She puts her arm out instinctively to stop Sam and stares the cat down until it slinks away. “Don’t worry about cats, Sam. You can stare them down every time.”
Ruby and Sam sift in dirt and sand for arrowheads, bits of pottery, colored rocks. There were Indian camps here, not thirty years ago. Last time they were here, Sam found a button from a soldier’s coat stamped with a palmetto tree and Latin, a remnant of an army man who ran Indians off their land.
Ruby encourages Sam to keep everything, like she does. When you’ve lived on the traveling circuit, you tend to want to hold on to things of value, things that mean something to you. But Ruby’s penchant for hoarding pales in comparison to Wink, so there you go. “One man’s junk is another’s man’s treasure,” Wink says. That’s not Shakespeare as far as Ruby knows, but she can’t be sure.
Ruby hunts for rocks and gems along the water’s edge and pockets a piece of fool’s gold to add to her stash of desert souvenirs that travelers can take home or worry their idle hands with if they’re off the drink. Interesting rocks like this keep lodgers from taking other items from the hotel, towels and curtains and paintings right off the wall.
Not long after she opened Jericho Inn, one of the upstairs rooms was cleaned out, right down to bedding and rugs. If she ever has the opportunity to visit a Mr. and Mrs. Joseph T. Richards of Chicago, she expects she will be able to identify the décor of their parlor or bedroom, although she doubts Mr. and Mrs. Richards are actually man and wife, or live in Chicago at all.
Ruby plucks a small geode from beside a larger rock and fingers its rough edges. “Let you in on a little secret, Sam. You can’t judge something from the outside alone. Inside of this ugly rock is the most gorgeous gem you’ll ever see.” She hands the rock to Sam. “I heard you can go to university to study rocks now. Imagine that. Rocks. Well, we all find a way to make our way in the world. You will too, Sam. You’ll find your place.” She pockets a piece of rose-colored quartz. “In the meantime, you could work for the Burtons, stocking, taking in freight, that sort of thing. Nothing that needs words.”
The sun slashes across the desert like a knife. Ruby and Sam watch red-tailed hawks dip and fight in the air just above. When their pockets are full, they turn back toward Jericho. Away from the creek, the desert is still brown, all the way to the jagged ridge that separates mountain and sky.
After supper, Ruby sits on the back stoop nursing a whiskey-laced cup of tea.
Lengthening shadows take on animate qualities in the cracks and fissures of Oldfather Peak. One silhouette turns from the face of a dog to a fish to a pig, a nasty reminder of the hog’s head outside her window. Who? Why? She knows why. Perce. Just not who …
A kettle of nighthawks swiftly darts and dances and dives above Ruby’s head, as they feed on insects at twilight. Bats intermingle with the nighthawks, wings beating faster than hearts. She looks past them at the rose-colored mountains. One gash looks like her own face did once, after Willie took a razor strop to her. She doesn’t think of Willie much anymore, but you never know when something—simple as a shadow—will trigger a nasty memory.
Ruby scoops up her skirt and heads inside. When will the rains come to drench the desert green? On the flats, there’s nothing green in sight, not even in the kitchen, not a potholder or a tea towel or an apron, not wallpaper even. Just brown, brown, brown everywhere, inside and out, and old, like dirt.