Perhaps Paul was an empath, she thought as she put the cover back on the abandoned typewriter. Like in the science fiction movies. Maybe other people's pain actually hurt him, even when they were strangers.
"Well, I'm off to Dog Canyon," Anna said to Christina's back. "Mrs. Drury's here to collect Sheila's things. Thanks," she added. "I owe you a beer."
The clerk waved a "De nada."
This beer was a social debt Anna actually considered paying. There was something intriguing about Christina Walters.
Probably just a classy flake, Anna thought uncharitably as she threw her satchel into the jeep. But she was looking forward to that beer.
Mrs. Drury-Mrs. Thomas Drury as she had corrected Paul when he'd introduced her-was in her late fifties or early sixties. Makeup, carefully applied, gave color to her pale skin and muddied her age without making her look younger. Her short, permed hair had been dyed a light brown. Anna assumed the shade was chosen to color the gray but not seem flashy or "fast." Mrs. Drury wore an inexpensive polyester pantsuit of sage green. A purse of the same white leatherette as her low-heeled pumps was clamped tightly beneath one arm. Respectable but not rich, Anna summed her up.
During the two-hour drive to Dog Canyon-twelve miles on foot over the high country, nearly a hundred by road around the park's perimeter-Mrs. Thomas Drury told Anna more than she'd ever wanted to know about the Drury family in general and Sheila in particular.
Sheila's father had died when she was ten "… but in the sixth grade, not the fifth. Sheila may have been odd but she was always bright." Mrs. Drury had gone to work as a secretary then at Minnegasco in St. Paul, Minnesota. It was a good job. She still held it. During the drive from the Dark Canyon turnoff at Highway 62/180 to the Wildersens' goat farm six miles in, she listed the employee benefits.
At twenty-nine (Anna had been way off on Sheila's age. "She'd never use a decent night cream, though heaven knows I bought her enough jars-" Mrs. Drury explained), Sheila had still been on the company's life insurance plan. 108,000 would now come to Mrs. Drury. Five years' salary.
Anna had agreed that Minnegasco had an excellent employee benefit plan and Mrs. Drury's monologue moved on to new subjects. Sheila was an only child. Mrs. Drury's second pregnancy had ended in miscarriage and she hadn't the heart to try again, though she'd often thought it might have been better for Sheila if she had. Sheila was an odd girl, headstrong and wayward.
From the scraps of information dropped amidst the drawn-out recitals of people whose names and indiscretions meant nothing to Anna, she came to believe that Sheila's "waywardness" consisted mostly of a refusal to get her hair foiled though it was "… impossibly dark-almost like a Jewish person's"; her nails manicured "-though I offered to pay for it, and in the Cities manicures aren't cheap-"; and her steadfast refusal to date "nice boys."
By the time they reached the Queens Highway turnoff, Anna found she liked Sheila more in memoria that she would've guessed. For the first time since she'd stumbled across the body, she felt a personal sense of loss. She wished she'd gotten to know the Dog Canyon Ranger better. They might have been friends.
As they drove down the miles of winding road cutting back west through the Lincoln National Forest, Mrs. Drury asked: "Are we in the park now?" She was pointing to the fenceline on both sides of the road. It was the first time Anna had noticed the new fencing edging nearly all of the Paulsen Ranch. "That's Jerry Paulsen's property. He owns forty sections. Not really a big place in this part of the country. It abuts the park on the northern boundary outside of Dog Canyon."
The fence cut down the middle of a lot of man-made divisions: it marked the border between Texas and New Mexico, between public and private lands. Deer jumped it, toads hopped under it, and birds and clouds floated over it without a downward glance. But in the petty depths of humanity it was an important line.
Paulsen had spared no expense: new green metal posts, shining silver wire with four-pronged barbs half an inch long and, every fifty or sixty feet, a brand-new sign reading NO TRESPASSING.
Paulsen was dead serious about private ownership. STAY OFF JERRY PAULSEN'S LAND was xeroxed on every page of the Boundary Patrol Report Forms to remind rangers riding fenceline. Anna wished he'd return the favor. The next time he flew his shiny new helicopter over so much as one corner of the park she would go to the Federal Aviation Agency.
There'd been bad blood between the park and the local ranchers from the beginning. The Guadalupes had been their backyard for generations. They hunted and camped, drew water from the springs, grazed cattle and goats in the high country. Then suddenly in 1972 it was off-limits.
Though they had been quick enough to accept the sale money when the government bought it, some ranchers refused to accept that it was no longer their private preserve.
Anna knew Paulsen had been suspected on more than one occasion of shooting the park's elk.
"Paulsen," Mrs. Drury nursed the name between her lips as if it tasted familiar. "Oh. Sheila wrote of him. He sounded like a very nice man."
Anna blinked her surprise, but said nothing. It was possible Sheila had gotten along with him. More likely, Mrs. Drury said it to express her approval of the conservative way of life. To Anna's ears it sounded vaguely like a snipe at Sheila. Tired of the constant dripping of Mrs. Drury's voice, she switched on the radio. Paul had it tuned to a country western station out of Carlsbad. Travis's "Diggin' Up Bones" was playing.
Anna turned it up hoping she might silence Mrs. Drury without actually appearing rude.
Near noon they pulled into Dog Canyon. The terrain on the northern edge of the Guadalupe Mountains was very different from that on the Frijole District side. Small hills rolled away to the north in tufted golden grass and juniper trees. Once there'd been prairie dog colonies; hence the name Dog Canyon. They'd long since been exterminated by ranchers. Now and then there was talk of reintroducing them into the park but so far no superintendent had been willing to antagonize the local landowners over such an unglamorous species. And Drury'd been dead set against it. The little creatures were too destructive when loosed on "improved" campsites.
Rogelio had talked for a while of smuggling in a few breeding pairs and turning them loose, see how they fared. Rogelio talked of a lot of things. When Sheila Drury had started pushing for a recreational vehicle campground in Dog Canyon, he talked for a while of pipe bombs and monkey-wrenching bulldozers.
All just talk on both sides. Neither the RVs nor the prairie dogs had ever materialized, though the RV camp might have become a reality had Sheila Drury lived.
"This is it," Anna said. To the left of the road was a campground. Hardened sites were sprinkled amid big old cottonwood trees above a dry creekbed. Ahead several hundred yards the road ended in a loop at the barn and machine shed.
Sheila's trailer was to the right, set back from the road. Her battered Subaru wagon was parked in the scant shade of a juniper near the end of the trailer. Anna pulled the truck in behind it and climbed out, glad to straighten her legs and stretch her back. Mrs. Drury didn't move. It crossed Anna's mind that, despite her complaints, she must have loved her daughter. At least at one time. Going into her house, seeing all of her things left behind, would not be easy. Anna walked around the truck and opened the passenger door. "This is it," she said again.
Mrs. Drury took Anna's proffered hand and allowed herself to be helped down from the cab.