Jax feels entirely separate from his hands as he looks out the window. His eyes follow the golden, drawn-out shape of what he finally understands to be a coyote circling the trunk of a palo verde tree. His hands go still. The coyote’s belly hangs low with incipient pups or with milk, it’s impossible to tell which, because she keeps herself low in the brush.
Suddenly with violent effort she leaps into the tree and falls back, bouncing a little on her forelegs, with a nest of sticks in her mouth. A dove flies off in the same instant, startled as a heartbeat. The coyote crouches at the base of the tree and consumes the eggs in ugly, snapping gulps. She stands a moment licking her mouth, then creeps away.
Jax is crying. He feels deeply confused about whom he should blame for his losses. The predator seems to be doing only what she has to do. In natural systems there is no guilt or virtue, only success or failure, measured by survival and nothing more. Time is the judge. If you manage to pass on what you have to the next generation, then what you did was right.
19
CHEWING BONES
ALICE DIALS DIRECTORY ASSISTANCE FROM a motel room in Sacramento, in pursuit of Hornbuckles.
“You can’t find a Robert? No, wait,” she commands the operator, shifting the receiver to her better ear. “It’s Roland, I think. Roland Hornbuckle. Look up that one.” She waits, rolling her eyes across the room to Taylor, who returns a less irritated, more troubled version of her own expression.
Alice has never gotten over the initial shock of seeing her own facial features plastered across another human being, with plans of their own.
“You worrying about Turtle?”
Taylor nods.
“What’s her problem?”
“She found out you were leaving. She hates when anybody leaves her. I just went in there and found all our shoes and Barbie’s slippers in the toilet. Now she’s lying in the tub.”
“I’ll talk to her,” Alice says. “I’ll tell her it’s just so I can try and make them let you and her stay together.”
“I already told her that. It doesn’t matter if you have a logical reason.”
“Well, then, try Rocky Hornbuckle,” Alice tells the operator. She whispers to Taylor, “Has she got her flashlight in there? I don’t mean to worry you, but Harland’s sister got killed listening to ‘Jesus Loves You This Morning’ on the radio in her bathtub.”
“Oh, don’t worry, there’s no water. She just gets in with her clothes on and pulls a blanket over her head and says she’s buried.”
Alice says in a louder voice, “No? Okay, listen. Just give me every Hornbuckle you’ve got in Heaven, Oklahoma.”
Taylor gets up to examine Barbie’s slippers, which are drying out badly in front of the air-conditioner unit. “Boy, is she going to be pissed off when she sees these. They look like drowned guinea pigs.”
“Where’d she go?”
“Who, Barbie? Out to get more Cheese Doritos, I think.”
Alice begins writing hurriedly, trying to keep up. She hangs up and waves her list at Taylor. “Eight Hornbuckles with telephones. One of them’s got to be Sugar, right? Maybe she remarried.”
“Well, then, her name wouldn’t be Hornbuckle anymore,” Taylor points out.
“Isn’t that the dumbest thing, how the wife ends up getting filed under the husband? The husband is not the most reliable thing for your friends to try and keep track of.”
“Nobody holds a gun to your head, Mama,” Taylor says.
“Even if I married Jax, which I’m not going to, but what would I want with his stupid name? Just learning how to spell it is a big commitment.”
“I’m going to call this whole list. One of them’s got to know her, at least.” Alice takes a deep breath and dials.
“I don’t think he even ever spells it the same way twice.”
Alice holds up her hand. “Ringing,” she says. They both wait. After a moment they wait less breathlessly. Alice finally disconnects, then dials the next number on her list. “You’ve been picking on that boy all day long, Taylor,” she says in a quiet voice, as if the ringing phone might otherwise hear her. “Either he’s your boyfriend or he isn’t, but don’t just sit on the fence and run him down.”
Taylor slumps in the swivel chair by the window and falls silent, twisting the chair slightly back and forth, while Alice tries two more numbers.
“I think they done dropped the bomb on Heaven, Oklahoma,” she announces after getting no answer on number four. She scrutinizes her list, then glances up at Taylor, who is looking out the window with tears in her eyes.