The Matriarch

  This novel is a work of fiction. Any references to real people, events, establishments, organizations, or locales are intended only to give the fiction a sense of reality and authenticity, and are used fictitiously. All other names and places and all dialogue and incidents portrayed in ths book are the product of the author’s imagination.

  THE MATRIARCH. Copyright © 2016 by Sharon Hawes

  All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information, address Cliff-Hanger Publications, 1239 Monroe Avenue, San Diego, California 92116.

  Book Design by GKS Creative, Nashville

  Printed in the United States of America

  FIRST EDITION

  ISBN: 978-0-9972652-2-4 (trade paperback)

  ISBN: 978-0-9972652-0-0 (ePub)

  ISBN: 978-0-9972652-1-7 (mobi)

  Cliff-Hanger Publications

  1239 Monroe Avenue

  San Diego, California 92116

  www.Cliff-HangerPublications.com

  To my sons, Will, Andy and Pete

  PROLOGUE

  It is a day in the spring of 1524. The humidity is fierce, but this population is used to it. Almost two hundred strong, the natives gather at the base of the temple, patiently waiting. It will be a ritual sacrifice to the gods of the Warenkia tribe, an event to be respected and cherished by all. The tribe hopes that the sacrifice of the young virgin they have chosen will be acceptable to the gods, and that they will bless the Warenkias with a substantial crop of corn and barley for the natives as well as grass for their goats.

  The crowd roars with excitement as at last the girl is led from the adobe enclosure at the peak of the temple by four natives. She is clothed in a white, gauze-like gown, her feet and arms bare. Her hands are shackled in thick, leather thongs. The five descend on clay stairs to an area about halfway down the temple to a stone alter, where four additional natives and a naked, brightly painted man with a heavily beaded head-dress stand waiting. The shackles are removed and the crowd cheers.

  Completely willing—almost eagerly—the young girl sheds her gown and lies down on the flat surface of the alter which is adorned at the head and foot with bright yellow daisies. Her hair is a glowing blue-black against the yellow of the flowers, and she is smiling, so proud to have been selected for sacrifice. Four natives attend her. One at each arm and one at each foot, they hold her limbs loosely in their hands.

  The painted native approaches her, in his hands a sharp stone blade, painted red. He holds it out in front of him. He stops behind her midsection and speaks to the crowd and to the sky. He calls the gods by name, and pleads with them to accept this virgin, to enjoy her presence in their midst, and to bless the Warenkias in the coming season. Raising the blade high, out over her breast, he pauses, and the crowd quiets, becoming absolutely silent. The girl looks up at the painted native and his blade.

  Suddenly realizing that blade will soon take her life, she cries out, struggling and raising her arms and legs against the natives. They tighten their hold on her limbs and she is helpless against them. The executioner plunges his blade into the chest of the girl while the four natives hold her down. A shattering scream comes as he circles her heart and goes beneath it with his blade, severing it from her body. Her scream is now an eerie, fading cry as he thrusts his other hand into her chest, grasps the heart and pulls it up and out of her chest. He holds it high and the natives see it is still beating in his hand—proof of a successful sacrifice.

  The crowd cheers its approval, its joy, its belief that the gods will now smile on this tribe. The painted man respectfully places the heart onto several green leafs that rest on a raised stone near the altar. The natives then lift the girl’s bloody body from the altar and lay it gently into a nearby stone trough, where it quickly slides down the stone passage. It drops into a deep limestone sink hole where it joins the rotting remains of the many previous sacrifices. The girl’s blood and tissue mingle with that of the others. These decaying bodies rest there as if waiting.

  Centuries later … in July of 2002 … on a Wednesday at 5:08 in the morning …

  Movement—sudden and powerful. Deep within the earth, a mass of molten rock that has been smoldering for hundreds of years bursts into chaotic motion. Heat and pressure grow and gather momentum. With a furious rending of stone, a rough conduit is formed and liquid rock rushes through this virgin channel, blasting it’s way upward toward the surface of the earth. This conduit soon shatters and splits into branches that swiftly fill with ascendant energy. Awesome in its strength, it merges with an unstable tectonic plate, where a violent coalescence takes place. An earthquake is born.

  Just east of San Diego, California, on the cusp of the desert, this quake shudders into life.

  A boulder, not yet liquid, shoots up into one of the newly formed channels and slams into the wall of a subterranean chamber that has been gradually rising for centuries, and is now some ninety-two feet below the ground surface. A sharp edge penetrates this wall and makes a hole as it gouges its way into the chamber where the rotted bodies of the sacrifice victims are resting in contaminated water. Tiny veins of air weave down through the earth, and for eons have allowed the water there to breathe. Though tainted, it lives.

  The hole the boulder has made creates a vacuum that sucks this water into a widening hole and upward, where it bursts into the twenty-first century, reaching another chamber that lies just fifteen feet beneath the surface of a horse pasture.

  The quake begins to wane, but the rushing water is still warm and percolates about, as if celebrating its escape from the depths, and its journey upward through rock and time.

  Above this new chamber, growing down through the dirt, is a complex root system, a network almost thirty feet across. This is unusual because the fig tree this root system supports is not large at all. It’s a spindly thing, close to fruitless, and stands only six feet tall. In an effort to reach sustenance, the tree has created a plethora of slender roots that stretch downward, their delicate tendrils reaching, searching for nourishment. Until this quake, that search has been nearly futile.

  Now, these starving roots bathe in liquid born in sleepy depths centuries ago. They waft back and forth, grateful for this unexpected tonic. At long last, the tree begins to thrive …

  “Honey?”

  Where is she anyway?

  His Lindee, his love—where the hell is she? He walks through the living room, the dining room, and then into the doorway of the kitchen. And there she is. At least Arty thinks it’s her.

  She stands in the open doorway to the back yard, the fading sunlight making a dark silhouette of her body. What does she have on? Oh Christ, she’s wearing that silly Kiss the Cook apron of hers. And apparently … nothing else. And her hair! She’s lost her mind and dyed it some sort of glitzy red. Sweet Christ, what’s she done to herself … his love, his beauty?

  “Lin-dee-hon-ee, ice me up a drink, will you?”

  She doesn’t move, just stares at him. Arty’s eyes go to her feet and work their way up, trying to find his lady somewhere in this apparition. Lindee’s bare feet are one feature of his beloved’s body that he doesn’t find appealing. They’re big, flat, and ever-so wide. The rest, though, is lovely as always, marred only by the fussy frills of that stupid apron.

  Lindee’s face and hair are an unholy sight. As he peers at her, he actually staggers, off balance and dizzy. Teased to an unnatural height, the pale lemon of her hair is gone, changed—no, corrupted—into an oily, rusted red. And her face! She looks like someone from another planet with her eyes so heavily outlined in shiny black. Brows too. What is she thin
king? Her lips are the color of her hair—dark and garish—and she has smeared some reddish stuff onto her cheeks.

  She stands ramrod straight, hands behind her back. Her appearance and demeanor are decidedly unpleasant and unnerving. Arty is actually … well, yeah, maybe … just a little … scared.

  There’s a large bowl of fresh figs on the counter giving the room an odd scent … cloying and sweet.

  “Lindee!” His voice sounds foreign to him, as if he’s in pain.

  She grins.

  And then—like an ocean breeze on a hot day, like a draught of icy beer sliding down his parched throat—sweet relief washes through Arty Banyon.

  God love her, she’s playing a game!

  Of course! She’s probably read some hot shit article in one of those damn magazines about “How to drive your man crazy-wild for you!” Something like that. She’s gotten carried away, that’s all.

  Smiling with relief, Arty takes a couple steps toward her, his arms outstretched.

  What a wild and wonderful woman my Lindee is.

  A blur of motion as Lindee swings something out from behind her back. He hears a pop, and there’s a stinging, scalding pain at his wrist.

  Christ-a-mighty, but that hurts!

  Arty clutches his wrist and goes down onto his knees. With a loud crash, he falls against the small table—the one where Lindee has her glass animal collection. Her cherished animals fall to the floor, many broken and scattered.

  What a clumsy oaf he is! Lindee will be so pissed. Arty holds his throbbing wrist against his chest and struggles to get up. He lurches into the counter and knocks over a jar of freshly harvested honey. It shatters and honey oozes out onto the floor.

  “Lindee, help me up, will you?”

  She looks strange to him—an alien being. In detached bewilderment, he watches her lift up a silvery object.

  That’s my wallboard hammer!

  It’s his favorite—the one with the raised grid on its striking surface. He can’t think just now why that grid is so special to him, but it irritates him that his wife is playing around with it. She shouldn’t be—

  Lindee hauls the hammer up high over her head, holding it with both hands.

  It comes to Arty then that Lindee has broken his wrist with his favorite hammer. And then …

  She cocks it back, grunts, and swings it down onto Arty’s left temple.

  He goes down again—this time all the way. His mind—what’s left of it—turns all reds and yellows. It’s a light show sweeping through his head, a jumble of bright, flashing colors. He’s on his back among broken glass and fallen figs, his eyes tightly closed, his face clenched in pain and terror. Arty hears himself whimper. He forces his eyes open.

  She stands over him, his Lindee, her knees bent and feet planted on either side of his body. Arty hears her heavy, ragged breath and smells it—a heavy, too sweet smell, like fruit gone bad. Hands thrust high over her head, she still holds the hammer. Her face is a mask of pure loathing.

  Arty tries to move, to somehow help himself. He manages only a faint fluttering of his hands. He sees the hammer twitch in her hands and knows she’s about to finish him off.

  “Why?” he asks, but the sound is just a weak gurgle.

  The hammer begins its descent. He sees the grid on it coming down for him. In the precious mote of time left to him, Arty gets mad. His Lindee is sending him to eternity, and she doesn’t even do him the common courtesy of telling him why.

  SATURDAY AUGUST 10 2002

  We’re up early, Louie and me, packed and making our exit. No point in hanging around—that’s for sure—not after the blow-up last night and Lauren throwing me out. I can still hear her strident cry when I arrived home with Louie, the sweet puppy I just rescued—well, okay … stole—from some punks.

  “That’s a Pit Bull for God’s sake, Cassidy,” she cried. “You brought home a Pit Bull—the most vicious breed of dog known to mankind.”

  “Lauren, he’s a puppy.” I kept my voice low in what I hoped was a calming tone. “He’s just a few weeks old, sweetheart.”

  “Puppies grow, Cass. Did you know that? And Pit Bull puppies grow up into killers!” She threw the Time she’d been reading at me. “And what about your job?”

  Oh yeah. The next thing I told her, while clutching little Louie to my chest, was about the job. The one I quit right before I stole Louie.

  “You come home with a soon-to-be-savage dog in your arms and tell me you quit your job. A perfectly good job!” She was practically snarling. “What do you think your news does to our possible … maybe … heavy on the ‘maybe’ …get married plans? You think I can support the two of us?”

  Yeah, yeah. I’m remembering the situation now as Louie and I pack up the Ranger. I realize though, this action is more of an escape than an exit. If I’m completely honest, I’m relieved. Actually relieved to be getting the hell out.

  Lauren is driving me crazy. Endless complaints about my complaints. “If you don’t like your job, get another one, for heaven’s sake!”

  Yeah, sure, like that’s a piece of cake, a simple thing to do. Hell, I was lucky to have been employed at all. Local businesses here in Eugene aren’t lined up waiting for a chance to employ Cassidy Murphy.

  She called me a runner. “When there’s a problem,” Lauren went on in that harsh voice of hers, “you run from … stuff. Whatever. You never really address the problem—whatever it is. You just never resolve it. I can’t trust you, Cass. You quit a perfectly good job just because of a bad day. My God! You have no positive direction, you know that?”

  “Isn’t ‘down’ a direction?” I said with my usual charm.

  “I’ve had enough, Cass. Tomorrow morning … please leave. Enough is enough.”

  So, the breakup is something of a relief, but I’m not sure how long that relief will continue.

  I pick up the latest letter from my uncle Frank as Louie and I make our last trip to the truck. This letter has teeth—financial teeth—500 of them. Frank wants me to come down to his ranch where I lived as a boy near Santa Barbara, California. He goes on and on about a fig tree of his and how, since the recent earthquake, it’s growing like crazy and producing a huge amount of figs.

  “Why?” He writes, “What’s going on? I thought that tree had died! Somethin’ strange goin’ on here, Cassidy. I need you to come have a look.”

  Uncle Frank writes also that he’s hired a man, Lester-Lee, to help out around the ranch since the quake. But he says the man isn’t working out all that well. I know my uncle is probably thinking that I’ll work out as a hired hand better than Lester-Lee. Hell, maybe I would!

  It’s just 6:30 when we put the Ranger in gear and take off for the Santa Barbara area to check out Uncle Frank and his crazy fig tree.

  SUNDAY AFTERNOON AUGUST 11

  Louie and I drive through the small town of Diablo on our way east from Santa Barbara to the Diablo Valley where Frank’s ranch is. A charming addition to the place is a meridian down Main Street planted with jacaranda and myrtle trees along with white and blue daisy-like flowers. And, a few of the shops have new wooden facades, giving an old west look to the street.

  It’s quiet, no people about anywhere, and every shop is closed which seems strange. Isn’t Sunday a good day for tourists to be out and spending? I see an old restaurant my family used to enjoy, The Main Street Dairy Lunch and Lounge. It’s closed as well, but I can remember Sunday morning breakfasts there once in a while—a special treat.

  I feel an ominous, almost threatening vibe coming from the town, and I’m pleased to simply drive on through.

  It’s late afternoon when we pull the Ranger into Frank’s driveway. I see that my uncle has company. Two cars are parked in front of the ranch house: one a dirty red Cherokee and the other a gleaming blue woody. I park my truck behind the blue wagon and stare at the old house. I remember the Spanish tile roof, the adobe walls, and the big porch shaded by a generous overhang. The place looks worn around the edges, like a
n old friend whose features have softened and blurred with age.

  Frank comes down the porch stairs and walks quickly toward us. I clip Louie’s leash to his collar, take a deep breath, and climb out of the truck. Stiff from the drive, I stand, weaving slightly—a little off balance. Louie pees in the dirt as Frank comes up.

  “Hi Uncle Frank.” He’s shorter than I remember but hasn’t changed all that much. Frank’s thick white hair still stands up in spikes as if he’s plugged in to a power source unavailable to the rest of the world. He’s sun-tanned a rusty brown, and his skin stretches itself firmly over the corded veins in his neck and arms—it wraps him up tight.

  “Cassidy?” Frank peers at me, frowning.

  Who does he see when he looks at me? Except for the same blue eyes as my uncle, the adolescent boy I used to be has disappeared. He sees heavy dark brows, a skinny nose, and a bony jaw covered with a gunmetal stubble—all softness gone. And at six-foot three I’m certainly a lot taller.

  Frank reaches out and grasps my arm. “C’mon boy, I want to show you somethin’. We’ll meet up with those folks on the porch later. Get back in your truck; we’ve got to drive.”

  “What—”

  “What kinda dog is this anyway?” Frank shoos Louie back up into the front seat and gets in next to the pup. “C’mon Cassidy!”

  I climb back in and start up my Ranger. “What the hell, Frank? Where are we going?”

  “Across the bridge to Georgie’s pasture. I’ve got to show you that tree.”

  I see my uncle has a holster and gun on his belt. “Uncle Frank, you’re wearing a gun!”

  “Yeah, I am. I got one for you too, Cassidy. It’s back at the house.”

  “Why?”

  “You’ll see.” Louie puts his head in Frank’s lap, and Frank scratches him behind his ears. “Nice pup,” he says.

  “Yeah, I think he’s a Pit Bull. Maybe got a little Boxer—”