I turned to give Miss Howard an uncertain little smile. “You want to watch it-you’re starting to sound like you look up to her a little bit.”
Miss Howard started to smile back, but stopped quickly. “Sometimes it seems that way, even to me,” she admitted. “And then I remember that picture of Ana Linares, and realize how desperately unaware of her own true motives-and therefore dangerous-Libby really is.”
“Okay,” I answered, trying to get Miss Howard perked back up by continuing our discussion. “So what about somebody like Goo Goo Knox? He knows Libby’s married to Micah Hunter and is playing the good wife to him, nurturing him-but he still wants to carry on with her.”
Miss Howard nodded vigorously. “It’s the same thing. Knox may be a gang boss, but he’s still a man-he still wants to slip women into convenient categories, to keep them from causing any problems. He doesn’t believe that Libby actually cares about Hunter. He assumes that in the deepest part of her soul she’s a libertine, a whore, and that when she performs for him, and with him, he’s seeing the real Libby. Yet what have we found out? That she’s persuaded Knox to place her home under his gang’s protection. His thugs are keeping watch over the very house where she’s constructed some sort of hiding place for the babies she’s still trying desperately to prove that she can care for. So for all we know, she loathes spending time at the Dusters’, but does it to facilitate her attempts to nurture.”
My hand went to my forehead, as if rubbing it would make my mind work harder. “So-then-she’s not the whore that Knox thinks she is?”
“She might be,” Miss Howard answered, confusing me again.
“But you just said she was doing it to take care of the kids-”
“She’s doing that, too.”
“So which one is the actual her?”I almost yelled, starting to feel a little dim and not much liking it.
“None of them, Stevie,” Miss Howard explained, slowing down a bit for me. “The actual her was broken to pieces a long time ago. And that’s what the different characters she assumes are-the broken pieces, separate from each other, no longer coherent. We don’t yet know the specific childhood context that made Libby into the killer she is. But we do know this much, especially given what we’ve seen and been through since we got up here: ever since she was just a girl, she was almost certainly told that there was only one way for her to be a full, complete woman.”
“To be a mother,” I said with a nod. “Which she wasn’t any good at.”
“Or which she may not, deep down, have even wanted to be,” Miss Howard said. “We don’t know. Again, all we do know is that the message girls get when they’re growing up-especially in corners of the world like this one-is that if you want to do something with your life other than raise children, not only will your road be difficult, but you’ll never really be a woman. You’ll just be a female, of some indefinite and not very appealing type. A harlot, maybe. Or perhaps a servant. Or, if you join a profession, a detached functionary. Whatever the case, underneath it all you’ll be a cold, unfeeling aberration.” With an angry flick of her finger, Miss Howard showered the road below us with sparks from the burning tip of her cigarette. “Unless you want to be a nun, of course-and even they don’t always get away with it… A man can be a bachelor, and still be a man-because of his mind, his character, his work. But a woman without children? She’s a spinster, Stevie-and a spinster is always something less than a woman.”
“Well,” I said, my brain working too hard at keeping up with her thoughts to worry about being tactful, “what about you, then?”
Miss Howard’s green eyes slid slowly sideways to give me a glance what said I’d better make my meaning a bit clearer.
“What I’m saying,” I added in a hurry, knowing how fast her temper could flare, “is that none of that business really goes for you. You’re not married, you don’t have any kids, but you’re-” I looked away, suddenly embarrassed. “Well-you’re as much of a woman as any mother I ever knew. If you see what I mean.”
That brought her hand gently to my arm again, and allowed the green eyes to open wider. “That’s the most decent thing anyone’s said to me in a long time. Thank you, Stevie. But remember, too, you’re still young.”
“Oh,” I said, grabbing at my own chance to get huffy, “so my opinions don’t count? Or they’ll change, just because I’ll get older?”
It was Miss Howard’s turn to squirm a bit. “Well,” she noised, “it does happen sometimes…”
“Okay,” I pressed. “What about the others, then? The Doctor and the detective sergeants and Cyrus-even Mr. Moore? They all feel the same way.”
Miss Howard shot me a doubtful look. “Hardly an average selection of American men. I’m sorry, Stevie. Of course I value and respect how you and the others feel-you may never know how much. But to the rest of our world I’ll probably always be that strange Sara Howard, the spinster detective lady-unless and until I have a family. Not that part of me wouldn’t like to, someday. If I ever feel like I’ve really made a difference with my work, I might consider children-it’s just that I object to the notion that I won’t be whole until I do. It’s a cruel standard-especially to the women who can’t achieve it. Libby couldn’t, and the failure broke her. Yes… for all her cleverness, she’s terribly broken. A little like your friend Kat, in that way. Clever, yet lost. Lost, and somehow-somehow-”
Suddenly Miss Howard’s face, so passionate while giving voice to ideas what I knew were as important to her as any in the world, went completely blank. Her words fell off with a quickness what let me know she’d caught sight of something-and there was only one “something” it could be.
“Where?” I said, whipping my head from side to side. “Where is he?”
Miss Howard put a steadying hand to my shoulder. “Just slow down, Stevie,” she whispered, “If I’m not mistaken, he’s right in front of us…”
I searched the dark road ahead; and there, to be sure, was the silhouette of a small person, the bagginess of the clothes and the bushiness of the hair giving away his identity. El Niño wasn’t moving, either away from or toward us; he seemed to be waiting for our rig to reach him, and as we got closer I began to make out that damned smile again.
“What the hell…” I mumbled. “Is he real, even? The mug gets around quicker than spit.”
“Oh, he’s real, all right,” Miss Howard answered. “The question is, what does he want?”
“Figure we should stop?”
She shook her head. “No. Keep going at a walk.” She pulled out her revolver and placed it in her lap. “Let’s see what happens.”
CHAPTER 38
I followed the order. The aborigine didn’t move, just stood there smiling until we were about twenty feet from him. Then, very deliberately, he put his hands into the air. I drew the Morgan to a halt, and we waited. Lowering one arm, the aborigine pointed to the ground.
“I don’t hurt you,” he said, his smile getting wider. Following his finger, we could see that there was a small bow, a couple more of the plain little arrows, and another wave-bladed kris on the road. “And you don’t shoot me,” he went on, putting his arm back up. “Yes?”
Miss Howard nodded; but she kept the gun right where it was. “All right,” she said. “What is it you want?”
“I to help you!” the aborigine answered. “Sure help you, yes! Sometimes, I help you already.”
“But you’re Señor Linares’s man,” Miss Howard answered. “Why do you help us?”
The aborigine moved to pick up his weapons, prompting Miss Howard to pull back the hammer of her Colt. The little man’s eyes went very wide, and then he threw up his hands again. “Is okay-I no hurt you, lady, and you no shoot me! I help you!”