waited for her to notice. ‘Friend of yours?’
‘Daryl?’ Rita shook her head as if even saying his name was wearisome. ‘He ain’t friends with no one. ’Cept maybe the banks. What you wanna eat?’
‘Steak, please, as rare as you dare. Also two eggs, fried and sunnyside, and some home fries if I may.’
She nodded. ‘Drink?’
‘Ice-water would be fine. Can I ask you a question?’
‘Depends. Do I have to buy you another steak dinner if I give you a wrong answer?’
Solomon smiled. ‘No, this one’s on the house.’ He pointed down at the photograph. ‘The Indian chief mentioned in this agreement, are you by chance a relative?’
Rita nodded slowly. ‘My family name is Treepoint. I think my great-granddaddy changed it in the thirties or forties. I guess Three Arrows in the Wind was too much to fit on a cheque.’
‘So this land is yours?’
She nodded. ‘Government took all the land in 1854 and moved everyone onto reservation ground in the next county, everyone ’cept my family, that is. They stayed put and opened up a trading post so they could make enough money to live. We should have been called Stubborn as Mules. Anyways, in 1968, when people finally got around to feeling bad about stealing all our land, the Federal government restored title to us on account of there being a Treepoint on the land continuous for over a hundred years. Which means now it belongs to me, till tomorrow morning leastways.’
Solomon nodded. ‘So there never was a Bobby D?’
She shook her head. ‘When my granddaddy opened up the gas station he figured white folks were more likely to stop for other white folks so he made him up.’ She leaned down and studied the photograph, bringing her head closer to his so that the words she murmured would be heard only by him. ‘Does this really say what you said it did?’
Solomon nodded. ‘Yes.’
‘Can you prove it?’
Solomon twitched his head to the side as more information flooded his mind then shook it. ‘No.’
‘That’s what I thought.’
‘For that you’d need to contact a Doctor Andrea Thompson, head of the language unit at the Center for Native American and Indigenous Studies at the University of Colorado. Doctor Thompson and her team recently discovered a new cave system in Colorado near the Arizona border filled with petroglyphs similar to this. They’re calling it the Rosetta Stone of the plains because it’s filled with petroglyphs from different tribes recording a declaration of peace in several languages. Some, like Sioux, they already know. And some they don’t, like Western Suma. But now they can figure it out by comparing it to the languages they do know.’
Rita frowned. ‘Then how come these folks ain’t come back here to take another look at the cave?’
Solomon shrugged. ‘I bet they took plenty of photographs the last time they were here, didn’t they?’ Rita nodded. ‘There you go then. They’ll look at those first. The cave in Colorado was only discovered a few months ago and it’ll probably take them years to work through the archived material they already have on file.’
Rita nodded again. ‘So what you’re saying is the only proof you can give me that what you said is true is some academic discovery no one’s actually heard of?’
‘People in the academic field of Native American studies have heard of it. It’s big news for them. You should call the University of Colorado and ask to speak to Doctor Andrea Thompson. She’ll confirm everything I just told you.’
Rita smiled sadly. ‘I want to believe you, mister, I really do. Only that quarter you said was so rare it was worth at least a hundred bucks.’ She slapped her hand down hard on the counter and removed it to reveal two worn quarters. ‘I found two more of ’em in the register. So either it’s my lucky day and I just happen to have a coupla hundred bucks’ worth of rare coins in my cash drawer, or Daryl was right and you’re just a smooth-talking grifter looking for an easy meal. Either way what I want you to do is eat your steak and hit the road. We clear?’ She held his gaze for a moment then turned and headed back to the kitchen, leaving the two quarters on the counter.
Solomon zeroed in on the dates on the coins, 1976. It didn’t matter whether she believed him or not, he’d already secured his meal, which was what he’d come for. Nevertheless, it bothered him that his one lie about the value of the quarter, a lie that should have had no consequence because he knew he wouldn’t lose the bet, had now tainted all the truths he’d told her.
‘Truth always withers in the shadow of a lie,’ he murmured, recalling something from … who knew where.
‘What’s that you say?’ the man in the Coors Light T-shirt reappeared at his side, a fistful of dollars in his hand and his face shining with victory.
‘Nothing,’ Solomon nodded at the money. ‘Thanks for the vote of confidence.’
‘Nah, man, thank you. Name’s Earl,’ he bundled his cash into one fist and held out his hand. Solomon took it, shook it then picked up the photograph.
‘Say,’ Earl said, leaning in close. ‘How do you know all that stuff? That some kind of a trick or d’ya got one of them, whatya callit, photographic minds or sump’n’?’
‘Something like that.’ Solomon re-read the message, his mind translating the symbols as his eyes passed over them. ‘You a regular here, Earl?’
‘I guess. Been coming here for close on twenty years. I run my rig all over the south, delivering pipe mainly. I stop by whenever I’m on the I-10, maybe once a month at the moment. I’ll sure miss it if it closes. It’s up for auction, you know.’
Solomon nodded. ‘So I heard.’
‘Yep. Damn shame if they close ole Bobby D’s. Anyways, just wanted to shake your hand and say if you wanted a ride anyplace east then I’m your man.’
Solomon stretched his legs, still aching from the miles they’d already walked, and thought of the road ahead, his mind providing exact distances to possible destinations:
Corpus Christi 557 miles
Galveston 656 miles
The Gulf of Mexico was maybe two weeks’ walk away but he could be there by morning if he caught a lift.
‘That would be very kind,’ he said. ‘When you leaving?’
Rita reappeared with a plate in her hand and clacked it down on the counter in front of Solomon. The steak was almost raw with red juices pooling around the fries and eggs.
‘Rare as you dare,’ she said, then she picked up the photograph and walked away.
‘Man,’ Earl said shaking his head. ‘That ain’t even cooked. You go ahead and take your time eatin’ that, you done earned it. I’ll go finish my dinner, count my gains and try to figure out the quickest and funnest way to lose it again.’ He touched the peak of his cap with a nicotine-stained finger and headed back to his table where a half-eaten basket of chicken wings waited for him.
Solomon cut into the steak, the juices running red around his knife and fork. He put a chunk in his mouth and flavour flooded his tongue, rich and delicious.
Over by the souvenir stand Rita hung the photograph back on the wall. Solomon chewed his steak, the memorized petroglyphs still burning in his mind. He thought of the one showing three arrows and the symbol of a man on horseback and focused on them until the noise of the diner faded and the walls melted away and he sat like a ghost from the future in the middle of a pristine wilderness, before paved roads and power lines, before cars and white streaks in the sky scratched by high-flying planes. He continued to eat and his mind carried him further back to a time before man, when the desert was a field of ice and the slow-moving glaciers carved mesas out of solid