Silk - Caitlin R. Kiernan [47]
“I got them,” he’d said, looking over his shoulder again, his eyes bright and proud and nervous.
“You got what, Walter?” Spyder asked, and then she’d lost count of the twenties and cursed him before she started over again.
“I got the peyote,” he’d said, almost whispered, the last word squeezed down to a cautious hiss that had reminded Robin a little of Peter Lorre in Casablanca or Arsenic and Old Lace.
“No shit,” and Robin had reached past Spyder and the cash drawer, had thought for a second that Walter was going to snatch the bag away from her. She’d unrolled the crumpled paper and in the shadows down at the bottom were three or four large Ziploc baggies, each filled with lumpy dark buttons of sun-dried peyote.
“Goddamn it, Walter,” she’d said, and then Spyder, who’d given up trying to count the twenties, had taken the bag away from her and peered skeptically inside.
“Holy fuck,” she’d whispered. “Where’d you get it all?”
Walter had smiled his tense half-smile, the dimpled corners of his mouth still drawn stubbornly down.
“Randy’s got a connection somewhere out in Texas. It’s legal for the Indians to grow it out there for religious purposes, but you have to be a member of this Indian church and have a lot of Indian blood to buy it.”
“The Native American Church,” Robin had said, remembering a book she’d read about the peyote religions, the state-licensed peyoteros who grew their sacred cactus, could legally sell it only to registered members of the NAC.
“A group of Oklahoma peyotists formed the Church in 1918 to protect their ceremonies from the Feds,” and she hadn’t missed the way that’d impressed him, took her full measure of delight from his futile admiration.
“Well, I told you I could get it,” he’d said, and his unaccustomed smile had stretched wider, revealing a rare glimpse of uneven front teeth.
Spyder had continued to stare into the Piggly Wiggly bag, shaking her head slowly, mild, pleased disbelief on her face.
“But what did all this cost?” she asked, and he’d shrugged. “Not so much as you’d think. It’s cheap shit, really. The Indians can get a thousand buttons for about a hundred and fifty bucks. Of course, Randy has to charge me a lot more than that, though. I got fifty buttons in there.”
Spyder had handed the bag to Robin and gone back to counting the crumpled green bills.
“So, you guys want to call Byron and get fucked up tonight?” Walter asked, hopeful, fairly glowing with his little victory.
“No,” Robin replied. “We’re gonna do this right,” and then she’d rolled the bag closed again.
3.
Or this is where it started, where it really started.
The night that Robin met Spyder Baxter. Still months to go before high school graduation, pomp and circumstance and her parents picking colleges for her like arranged marriages. Waiting around the civic center parking lot after the show, the Jim Rose Circus and Nine Inch Nails, as if something worth seeing might happen; one more in the smoky clot of bodies assembled around Tony’s new Honda CRX. Warm Boone’s Farm like soured Kool-Aid from a jug, and an amber bottle of Jack Daniel’s making the rounds, too.
She’d sat in the open hatchback, too drunk to feel the cold night, Tony all over her, his rough hands and whiskey mouth, wanting inside. And she’d taken her turn at the jug and passed it on to someone else, another girl, nameless blonde from another school. The blond girl was almost ready to spew, and Robin had dimly hoped she’d at least go somewhere else to do it.
“There was a drive-by shooting here last week,” someone said, and she’d blinked through the booze, trying to match the slurred voice to a face. “There’s still broken glass all over that side of the street.”
The other faces had oohed and ahhhed their suburban awe, and then Tony had pushed her down, the kittensoft