Read Online Three Sisters by James D. Doss - Free Book Online Page A

apple core at his aunt. “Half the time, they are just blowing smoke.”
    Daisy Perika stared at her nephew as one might regard a backward child. Every once in a while, Charlie says the strangest things, like his brain was about half baked . The tribal elder, who was not a devotee of dead Greek sages, pursued her own philosophical persuasions, which included pseudogenetic hypotheses such as “blood will tell” and “insanity is passed on by the males.” I think he gets that craziness from his daddy’s side of the family .

    Hours after her nephew had left for the drive north to the Columbine, and Sarah was home from school and asleep in bed, and Mr. Zig-Zag had extended his after-supper nap into a long night of mysterious feline dreams, Daisy was under the quilts. But not asleep. The aged woman stared at the ceiling, sighed at a parade of sorrowful memories. Young loves. Missed opportunities. Old friends gone. Her parents, of course—and baby brother. Uncle Blue Hummingbird. Charlie Moon’s mother, a sweet woman and a good Catholic who had done her best to raise Charlie up right. Most of all, though Daisy would not have admitted it to a living soul, she missed Father Raes Delfino—in spite of the fact that the Jesuit priest was a tough, no-nonsense fellow who had never hesitated to warn Daisy that she should have nothing to do with the dwarf spirit who lived in Cañón del Espíritu . Unlike most whites, Father Raes (probably because of his strange experiences as a missionary in the South American jungles) accepted the Ute shaman’s “power spirit” as a reality. A dangerous reality.
    Daisy was surprised to realize that she also missed seeing the dwarf, who, though he would occasionally provide her with useful information in exchange for a modest gift of food or tobacco, could be an annoying fellow to deal with. But it had been well over a year since their last encounter. I guess it’s because I don’t get up into Spirit Canyon much anymore . Not that the shaman had always met the pitukupf at his badger-hole home. Once, the impudent little imp had shown up in church! Daisy had been horrified at the creature’s brazen intrusion into St. Ignatius, and had the uneasy feeling that Father Raes had spotted the uninvited visitor there on the pew beside her. On a few occasions, the dwarf had visited Daisy at her home. She half wished he would show up now. Maybe he could tell me something about those Spencer sisters. I’m still not sure where it was that I saw them. Or what it was that made little Astrid get so sick .
    The clock ticktocked away the minutes. Almost an hour’s worth.
    The pitukupf did not make an appearance.
    Having worried about everything else, Daisy began to fret about the little man. Maybe he’s like me—too old and feeble to get out and go anywhere without help. Yes, that must be it. He’s probably layin’ in that dirty hole in the ground, thinking back about old folks that are gone—like his momma and daddy . Which suggested a startling possibility that she had never considered. I wonder if he ever had himself a little half-pint wife. If he did, the poor thing was probably every bit as homely as he is . This might be why no one had ever reported seeing a baby pitukupf. Maybe, a long time ago, the Little People were fairly good-looking . But if they were, something bad must have happened to the pitukupf clan. An ugly-curse, I bet—put on ’em by a Navajo or ’Pache witch they got crosswise of. Since then, she conjectured, the tribe of tiny folk had been dying off.
    Late at night, when the mind tends to drift off into silly thoughts, is not the best time to develop startling new theories intended to reshape the very foundations of human knowledge. Nobel Prize winners know this.
    The weary woman’s yawn was interrupted at half-gape when she spotted a dime-size spider eight-footing it across the windowpane. It had not been all that long ago when another such pest had taken a hike across her