Full Dark, No Stars

I laughed at that, and I could see her pretty face lighten with relief. “Shan, listen to me. Because I am your friend. Summer’s always a hardworking time, and with Arlette gone, Hank and I have been busier than one-armed paperhangers. When we come in at night, we eat a meal—a fine one, if you happen to show up—and then read for an hour. Sometimes he talks about how he misses his mama.

After that we go to bed, and the next day we get up and do it al again. He barely has time to spark you, let alone another girl.”

“He’s sparked me, al right,” she said, and looked off to where her father’s harvester was chugging along the skyline.

“Wel … that’s good, isn’t it?”

“I just thought… he’s so quiet now… so moody… sometimes he looks off into the distance and I have to say his name twice or three times before he hears me and answers.” She blushed fiercely.

“Even his kisses seem different. I don’t know how to explain it, but they do. And if you ever tel him I said that, I’l die. I wil just die.”

“I never would,” I said. “Friends don’t peach on friends.”

“I guess I’m being a sil y-bil y. And of course he misses his mama, I know he does. But so many of the girls at school are prettier than me… prettier than me…”

I tilted her chin up so she was looking at me. “Shannon Cotterie, when my boy looks at you, he sees the prettiest girl in the world. And he’s right. Why, if I was his age, I’d spark you myself.”

“Thank you,” she said. Tears like tiny diamonds stood in the corners of her eyes.

“The only thing you need to worry about is putting him back in his place if he gets out of it. Boys can get pretty steamed up, you know. And if I’m out of line, you just go on and tel me so. That’s another thing that’s al right, if it’s between friends.”

She hugged me then, and I hugged her back. A good strong hug, but perhaps better for Shannon than me. Because Arlette was between us. She was between me and everyone else in the summer of

1922, and it was the same for Henry. Shannon had just told me so.

One night in August, with the good picking done and Old Pie’s crew paid up and back on the rez, I woke to the sound of a cow lowing. I overslept milking time, I thought, but when I fumbled my father’s pocket watch off the table beside my bed and peered at it, I saw it was quarter past three in the morning. I put the watch to my ear to see if it was stil ticking, but a look out the window into the moonless dark would have served the same purpose. Those weren’t the mildly uncomfortable cal s of a cow needing to be rid of her milk, either. It was the sound of an animal in pain. Cows sometimes sound that

way when they’re calving, but our goddesses were long past that stage of their lives.

I got up, started out the door, then went back to the closet for my .22. I heard Henry sawing wood behind the closed door of his room as I hurried past with the rifle in one hand and my boots in the

other. I hoped he wouldn’t wake up and want to join me on what could be a dangerous errand. There were only a few wolves left on the plains by then, but Old Pie had told me there was summer-sick in

some of the foxes along the Platte and Medicine Creek. It was what the Shoshone cal ed rabies, and a rabid critter in the barn was the most likely cause of those cries.

Once I was outside the house, the agonized lowing was very loud, and hol ow, somehow. Echoing. Like a cow in a well, I thought. That thought chil ed the flesh on my arms and made me grip the .22

tighter.

By the time I reached the barn doors and shouldered the right one open, I could hear the rest of the cows starting to moo in sympathy, but those cries were calm inquiries compared to the agonized

bawling that had awakened me… and would awaken Henry, too, if I didn’t put an end to what was causing it. There was a carbon arc-lamp hanging on a hook to the right of the door—we didn’t use an

open flame in the barn unless we absolutely had to, especial y in the summertime, when the loft was loaded with hay and every corncrib crammed ful to the top.

I felt for the spark-button and pushed it. A bril iant circle of blue-white radiance leaped out. At first my eyes were too dazzled to make out anything; I could only hear those painful cries and the hoof-thuds as one of our goddesses tried to escape from whatever was hurting her. It was Achelois. When my eyes adjusted a bit, I saw her tossing her head from side to side, backing up until her hindquarters hit the door of her stal —third on the right, as you walked up the aisle—and then lurching forward again. The other cows were working themselves into a ful -bore panic.

I hauled on my muckies, then trotted to the stal with the .22 tucked under my left arm. I threw the door open, and stepped back. Achelois means “she who drives away pain,” but this Achelois was in