Read Online Moonlight Water by Win Blevins - Free Book Online

doesn’t get stoned,” she said.
    Red watched the young blond. He talked like a cool kid, but with his hair cut into a burr and his toned body, he could have been an advertisement for “our finest Mormon youth.” Red just hoped the guy wouldn’t come back and call him Rob Roy.
    On the porch of the Locomotive Café they found a comfy table outside with iron seats painted dark green. After a moment he realized Zahnie was studying his face instead of the menu. She was wearing a cop look. “Why is your face familiar? You’re not tacked on the post office wall, are you?”
    He lied with perfect glibness, “I am Red Stuart, late of California, now a wanderer and seeker.”
    She ordered a Dr Pepper, and so did the other two. “I think you’re full of it.” Her dark eyes nailed him to a cross of cuckoo truth.
    â€œYou got that right.” Red grinned at her.
    Gianni squirmed and made a worried face.
    She said to Red, “You’ve spent the last month, according to your buddy, wandering from state to state, looking for something. Find out what you want?”
    â€œTo live my life large, very large.”
    â€œOh my.” Zahnie kept her eyes on him and sucked on her straw until the last sip of Dr Pepper was gone. “Well, this place has enough room, and it’s a magnet for lost souls.” One last slurp of bubbles made enough noise to turn the heads of the people at the next table.
    Red turned his head away and grinned. “Might be a good place for me to spend a little time,” he said.
    â€œAmendment: lost souls who are honest,” she said.
    â€œI vouch for him,” said Gianni, easing the conversation into a different parking spot. “Red, this is the only place in town you want to eat. It’s also the trading post, where Navajos go to pawn stuff, the general store, and the post office.”
    â€œNot to mention,” said Zahnie, “where my vehicle is.” She motioned to the stone and beam building behind the trading post. “The far end is the BLM office, where I work. It used to be the jail.” The other buildings were a string of railroad cars set on uneven foundations, like tumbled dominos.
    â€œThe café is named after that huge rock.” Gianni pointed at a formation about a half mile away. “See that monument charging out of the rock wall, sort of the shape of a locomotive with an engineer at the controls? It’s speeding forward at ten feet per eon. The trader here is the owner of the restaurant and the river ranger. I mean, the other ranger, along with Zahnie.”
    â€œLet’s go,” Zahnie said. “It’s getting toward dark and we’re having supper at home.”
    Red walked with Zahnie to her BLM Bronco, opened the door for her, enjoyed the rear view of her bottom, and then climbed into his van. Zahnie stuck her head out the window and said with a grin, “By the way, Red, you’re in luck. Because you’re Gianni’s pal, you have a free hotel—the old folks’ home.”
    Red raised an eyebrow.
    â€œConsider this treat a preview of hospitality to come,” she said. “Follow me.”
    â€œI’ll ride with the lost soul,” said Gianni, and he climbed in next to Red.

 
    10
    MADHOUSE AND REFUGE
    Don’t look into a mirror at night. Your shadow might leave you and you’ll die.
    â€”Navajo saying
    Â 
    Zahnie’s Bronco spat gravel. Red and Gianni trailed her in the van, north out of town and onto a dirt road leading up a wash. Red had already learned that a wash was a wide creek bed without a creek when he’d blown a tire exploring New Mexico.
    â€œI haven’t slipped up and called you Robbie once.”
    â€œYou better not.” They bumped along. The road was probably no smoother than the creek bed. “So this is the loneliest, most remote place in the lower foty-eight.”
    â€œYou better believe