Jumlin's Spawn Read Free

grave-robbing.”
    “Looks like he stole from everybody,” Yancey said,
shaking his head. “I wonder how he'd have felt if somebody dug up
his grandma and sold her skull on eBay.”
    “How do we know he didn't?” Elfie asked.
    “Boy, you really don’t like him now, do you?”
    She made a hum of affirmation and then placed the
artifact back in the box. “Heaven knows what else he has in
here.”
    “Maybe even the sacred stuff. Boy, wouldn’t that make
the traditionals crazy?” Yancey asked.
    Elfie shook her head. “No, the sacreds are somewhere
else.”
    Yancey looked at her strangely. “How do you
know?”
    “We’ll get to that later,” she said. “When we’re
somewhere more private. Just trust me on that one.” “Okay,” Yancey
replied, glancing around again. “Based upon our initial
investigation,
    we have reasonable cause to think these are all
stolen Indian artifacts. Can we all sign-off on that?”“I’d rather
not search through every box,” Oliver said. “So I’ll just
stipulate, yes.”
    “What about you, Elf?”
    Elfie nodded, without hesitation. “Yeah, I
agree.”
    Yancey pulled out a roll of yellow tape. “Then this
is officially a crime scene. Let’s tape it off so we can get back
to our place and talk for real.”
     
    **** 
    His home had once been a modular house onto which
Yancey had grafted handcrafted pieces of his soul.  Yancey’s
huge carved owl still hung above the archway.  His willow
hoop dream catcher still dangled at its side.  His medicine
wheel swung off the verticillated transom. As they crossed the
house's threshold, Elfie felt like she had awakened from anesthesia
after being knocked out for the better part of a year.
    A mountainous Newfoundland sprung up from the front
room’s hearth.  The dog trotted over to greet her and leaned
against her like the old friend she was.
    “Hey, Mato boy,” she said gently, scratching behind
the dog’s ears.  She looked over at Yancey.  “Where’s
Chikala?”
    “He took the journey two months ago. Bone cancer,”
Yancey said, with his face still grim, “I had to put him
down.”
    “I’m so sorry,” she said softly, absorbing the news
with a hesitant sigh.  She gently patted Mato’s head, as if a
stand-in for an unseen lost friend.  “I know how badly that
must have hurt.”
    “Oh, it hurt. Like hell,” Yancey said
sharply, “but not like the hell Oliver and I went through in
losing you.”
    “Yancey –” she said softly, as if bereft of anything
further to say.
    He waved away her reply, and then pointed toward the
hallway. “Forget the past for now. Let's head to the den and go
over tomorrow.”
    Oliver gestured toward her luggage, which he had
placed on the floor. “I'll take these to the guest room.”
    “Thank you, but actually,” Elfie said, reaching for
the smallest case, “I'll take this one with me now. I have
something to give back to Yancey.”
    “You do?” Yancey asked.
    She failed at a smile. “Yes. I do.”
    Oliver led their way down the hall with as much city
grace as Yancey followed with flat-footed Sioux directness. As they
moved toward the den, Elfie realized they were approaching the
Door.  The Door .
    Through their years of friendship, she had walked
past the Door a hundred times on her way to somewhere in Yancey’s
house.  The last walk by before this one, she had been stopped
dead in her tracks.  The Door was the door to Yancey’s
bedroom-the open door to Yancey's bedroom. What she had seen there
in that moment almost a year before had changed her life
forever.
    The stark clarity of the series of images had faded
little over the last year.  The memory rushed through her like
an aftershock every time she recalled it.  
    At first, she had remembered it in every moment she
wasn’t thinking of something else…anything else…Oliver and Yancey,
intertwined. Yancey’s long black mane streaming over Oliver's blond
hair as their mouths mashed together. Oliver seizing the