Nightwing by Martin Cruz Smith Page B

friend. The least you could have done was made a visit. Two years, you didn’t visit him once and now he’s dead.”
    “You’re angry.”
    “Hell, yes. What am I, some bum. Some bum buried Abner. That doesn’t make any sense to me, uncle. Abner was somebody, he deserved a lot better than that. A lot better than everybody turning their backs on him and leaving him to die alone in the desert. Even when I was a kid, Abner was a great man.”
    “Abner was a great man,” Harold said after a space of a minute. “But then he became crazy, dangerous. Before that, he was a very great man as you say. Maybe the greatest man in the world. Hungry?”
    Harold went out the back screen door to where his wife was tending a horno, a stone oven. He returned with flat, steaming pan bread.
    “Got no butter. You want margarine?”
    “No thanks, uncle.”
    The old man sat on the sofa in thought. The bread cooled in his hands. Finally, Youngman lost patience.
    “You treated him like dirt, worse than a pahan. You and the Fire Clan and all the elders. Now the poor guy is dead and you still act the same way. Well, why?”
    “Abner was old, old,” Harold sighed. “Older than me. Hard to think he’s dead, but he’s among friends. I was his friend, as you say. It bothers me what we did, but it was necessary. And if he’s dead, like you say, then he’s got friends.”
    “Uncle, that’s not what I asked. Just give me an answer. How could you treat Abner like that?”
    “You’re more Tewa than Hopi. You’re a warrior—”
    “Knock it off, uncle.” Youngman inched forward on his chair. “I was no warrior. I was a goddamn convict in Leavenworth. Abner deserved better company than that for a funeral and I want to know why that’s all he got. I want a reason.”
    Harold picked up a prayer stick, then put it down and looked at Youngman.
    “See, he talked to Masaw all the time and Masaw crawling up the mesa wall, that scared people. And Abner he’d go off to the pueblos of the dead people and come back smelling of the dead, and that was unpleasant for the rest of us.”
    “You mean, Abner was a witch. That’s it? The whole thing? You all, all the priests, you believed that.”
    “You know how it is,” Harold said. “Everything will be all right as long as we tend to things. As long as we do the ceremonies right, there’ll be rain and Masaw will protect us from our enemies. Okay. But Abner he went too far.”
    “Too far?”
    “He had Masaw walking around here every night. I seen him,” Harold said.
    “Masaw?”
    “Right. From far-off ’cause if he touches you, then you’re dead. You see what I’m talking about? Even Death gets hungry. It has a stomach to fill.”
    “I’ll tell you what I saw. I saw the body of an old man. Not a witch. An old man who was a friend of mine and who had been a friend of yours and everyone else on the mesa. And if he acted crazy lately, maybe it was because all the priests up here, all his old friends made him that way.”
    “You did a good thing to keep him company this last year.” Harold Masito averted his eyes from Youngman. “It makes me feel good to know we were right about you. Was there anything else?”
    Youngman sighed.
    “Well, uncle, there was. His possessions. What should I do about those, or who should I give them to?”
    “I see. I’m afraid you’re late. The Fire Clan priests they already went down into a kiva and they won’t be up for a couple days. Anyway, they took the clan tablet from Abner a year ago.”
    “What tablet?” Youngman asked.
    “The Fire Clan tablet. Abner can’t stir up too much trouble without that.”
    Youngman wasn’t interested in stories about a tablet and there was nothing left to do in Harold’s house. He thanked Harold for talking. At the door he stopped.
    “One more thing, uncle. Did you hear anything about Abner wanting to stop the world?”
    “No,” Harold answered curtly. He picked up a prayer stick and a fluff. The fluff escaped