He heads into the outskirts of Pueblo, a no- man' s- land of abandoned strip malls with jagged- teeth windows, ratty vacant lots, and dusty Mexican restaurants. The blackened husk of a burned XXX adult bookstore. A dark brown sky spreads in the west.
His cell phone rings and rings. He fishes it out of the console, sees the caller ID display, and cringes: his sister- in- law. After the rings stop the beeps begin, telling him he has voice mail, telling him to be connected, demanding that he pay attention, for God's sake. Telling him no matter how much he wants to be alone he can't be. He listens to the message, the only way to stop the idiotic beeping.
Nisha's voice is all about broken promises, suicide- hotline desperation. The electric bill is over four hundred dollars, she says. If he doesn't pay, they're going to turn off the power. It's his house, so he has to pay it, doesn't he? Legally? Isn't he financially liable? This is a country of laws, isn't it? True, she happens to be living there now but she has no job and no money. What does he expect? It's his house she's sitting, right?
Please help me please. Why did you leave me? You touched me and that's okay. I wanted you to. But you left and you don't talk to me now? Are you ashamed of me? Of us?
Ward listens as her voice fades in and out on the spotty connection. Nisha's voice resembles her sister's. Like voice mail from the dead. This isn't her only similarity: The last night Ward stayed in his home he slept with Nisha. Even her body, her spicy smell, was like Sita's, like sleeping with a twin. Only needier. She wanted to marry him. She wanted him to bless her with child. She said her time was running out.
The next morning he walked out of the house, leaving her naked in his bed, her sleeping body sprawled atop the white sheets, her mocha skin and darkly painted eyes, arms wrapped around a pillow and black hair tumbled and thick. He will pay the power bill. If it comes to it, and it will, he will deed the house to her and assume both the financial and moral debt.
On voice mail she begs him to come back. Come home soon, she pleads. Don't forget me now. You can't forget me, can you? I know you can't.
O n t h e o t h e r s i d e of town George Armstrong Crowfoot tries to avoid the severed head. He has bad dreams and a thing like that, once seen, skyjacks your nightmares like a special guest star. Like a relative with a shot liver who won't go home and won't quit asking where you hid the whiskey. George has never seen a severed head except in movies, and he figures special effects are good enough.
Mosca won't shut up about it. The infamous head. Said to be that of outlaw Black Jack Ketchum, hanged in Clayton, New Mexico, in 1901. When the trapdoor opened and Ketchum's body dropped twelve feet to the noose bite, his head popped clean off, shocking the crowd of morbid onlookers. Now Jimmy Rodriguez, aka Mosca (the Fly), says he won it in a poker game.
Right, says George. I believe that.
What? You think I'm lying? You calling me a liar?
What I find hard to believe is you winning a poker game.
You never seen me play, says Mosca. I got a poker face. I got luck.
George Armstrong Crowfoot does not believe that either. Mosca works with him on patrol for the Department of Nuisance Animal Control, and George knows anyone who stoops that low likely isn't a lucky bastard. Not to mention that Mosca is skinny and tattooed, like an overgrown Chihuahua. Crowfoot frowns and sniffs. Oh, Jesus. What's that smell?
Mosca sniffs the bowling- ball case. Oh, Black Jack's got an aroma, yes, he does. Mosca worries open the zipper. Behold the mighty, he says.
The skin is leathery, shrunken. Stiff as dried masking tape. A rictus pulled back to evince a death- scream grimace, reveal a set of long yellowed teeth. A black mustache all wiry and tangled above the grimacing maw.
George frowns at the head and says, Black Jack Ketchum was hanged in 1901. This individual looks to be only a few years departed, you ask me. Wouldn't Ketchum be not much more than a skull by now?
It's Black Jack's head, says Mosca. I shit you not.
Whatever you say, hombre. But before you get your panties in a wad, maybe you ought to take this to the Antiques Roadshow people. One of those queens will set you straight.
I don't need any queen to tell me what's what.
Antiques Roadshow, repeats Crowfoot. They talk about provenance and whatnot.
What's provenance?
Proof of where it came from.
I don't need proof. I got a head.
Right.
He's well preserved is what he is. Like my grandmother. We had to dig her up for an inquest thing. To prove if my grandpa poisoned her or not. For the insurance, you know.
And did he?
Probably, but they couldn't prove it. Grandma looked pretty good, considering. Like she'd been dead only a month or two.
I don't know about your dear departed. But I tell you it doesn't take a genius to figure that ain't Ketchum.
Is too.
You been had.
Mosca considers the withered human head in his lap. The wispy black hair, ears like dried apple slices. A flake of yellow epidermis peels away from the edge of a sunken, gaping eye socket. Mosca picks at it, trying to neaten the skull. It's like trying to scrape the label off a mayonnaise jar. All he manages to do is to loosen a bigger hunk. He licks his finger and dabs at it.
Damn, he says. I didn't mean to do that.
George shakes his head and backs out of the driveway. You can probably hock it.
You think?
George shrugs. Hock shops value the odd. It might fit right in. I mean, it's a head all right. Even if I doubt it's Black Jack's.
Mosca stares at the grimacing, leathery mug. People will pay good money for the head of Black Jack Ketchum. Man I won it from said it was worth a grand at least.
Crowfoot shrugs. You might get something for it. I don't know about a grand. Maybe a hundred bucks.
Shit. I get more than that. He's a famous outlaw.
Ketchum was. This dude, he probably robbed a liquor store and forgot to grab a top- shelf bottle of tequila, the dumbshit. Crowfoot grins. That's if you ask me.
Mosca says, Fuck it. He stuffs the head back into the bowling- ball bag, crams it between his feet on the floorboard. I'm going to make some money off this head if it's the last thing I do.
That's just peachy, says Crowfoot. They drive taciturn and moody through the streets of Pueblo to the Department of Nuisance Animal Control office, where they check in and get their assignment for the day. Crows and cowbirds near a feedlot. Exterminate with all due diligence. The boss man Silas tells them to get started pronto.
Halfway across town Mosca says, You hear about the fatso kidnappings?
Crowfoot holds the steering wheel with one finger, his hand in his lap, staring at the landscape of pawnshops, strip clubs, and palm readers that clatters by the pickup's window like lemons and cherries on a slot machine. After a moment of silence he says, You want the truth? I bet Black Jack Ketchum's head is buried along with his name.
They're kidnapping fat people and liposuctioning them skinny to sell the oil on the black market. That's what I heard.
The sky looks darker the farther west they travel.
What do you mean, "they"? asks Crowfoot.
You know, says Mosca. The lipo gangs. The ones who sell it
on