Barbara Samuel (42 page)

Luna felt unexpectedly shaky as she reached for it, and it nearly slipped out of her grip before she caught it tight and settled it at her feet. “He left home when I was seven,” she said. “We never saw him again.”

He nodded, but it was the patient nod of a person ready to listen, not one of knowledge, particularly.

“I never stopped waiting for him to come home.” She opened the flaps and looked inside. It wasn’t as hard as she’d expected. There was a jumble of odds and ends— a watch, an AA marker, a jar full of matches collected from various places. “He liked Las Vegas, I guess, huh?”

“Went once a year, rain or shine. Loved those slot machines. And probably a few wild women.” He winked.

She put the matches aside and looked deeper into the box. And froze.

Blue curtains, dusty with desert air. The couch, a nubby brown beneath her elbows. Something sticking her knee—a broken spring, probably—as she stared out the picture window. A forgotten Barbie lay beside the sidewalk to the house and somebody should go get her before she got messed up, even though it was one of the ugly ones with short hair and straight knees. Ancient.

Smell of supper in the air. Onions and meat and something sweet baking in the oven, a little extra.

Concentrate. See him coming up the walk. A tank top showing his big brown arms, tanned so dark, dark, dark. Jeans dusty with concrete. Black boots. A black metal lunch bucket in one hand, his hard hat in the other. Black curls stuck to his head with sweat.

In the bottom of the box was a Barbie doll. Luna pulled her out and saw the hat-pin earrings she’d stuck into the lobes of her ears. It was an old one, with short
dark hair in a bob, and straight legs. Most of the paint was worn off her face now, and her knees and ankles were grimy, as if she’d been handled over and over again. She didn’t have any shoes, but she wore the blue gingham dress Kitty had sewn for her.

“He loved us,” Luna said. “I always knew that. This was my doll. He must have picked her up on his way to work. Or maybe he knew, that day, that he was going.”

The old man nodded.

“Did he ever say? Why he left, I mean?”

“That I don’t know. He didn’t go back after he was sober because of the ninth step. I do know that. He didn’t want to do your mama any more harm.”

The ninth step in AA was making amends to people you’d injured, except when to do so would cause further injury. And Luna thought of Kitty, sailing in Greece with a man who adored her. She thought of her, chin up all those years, never showing for one minute how much she hurt except when she had to put on the Beatles and think about it now and then.

“He did the right thing,” Luna said. “But I would have loved to have seen him.” Then she bent her head and cried. Ralph didn’t do anything but just let her.

They walked around afterward, through pastures and spotty forest, along a small, deeply prized creek. The mountains here had an odd feature—they were very high mesas, their blue tops chopped off as clean as if an ax had done it. Luna imagined the vast sea that once flowed here, thought about the prehistoric creatures who’d died to make the sand beneath her feet.

And she thought of her father, seeing this land. Knowing he would leave it to Kitty and his girls. It made her ache, but finally, it was a sweet ache, not a sad or yearning
one. There was a lot of comfort in closure, somehow.

Ralph complained about the “New Age groupies” who wanted the land because it was on a ley line— “whatever the hell that is”—but he had a greater horror of the upscale developers drifting northward from the Santa Fe/Taos block.

“What happens if we sell?” Luna asked when they’d circled back to the car.

Ralph’s mouth worked. “Not much, I reckon. They’ll bring in a temple or some foolishness, but they want to buy it to keep it from developers, so the cattle can stay. I’ll still be caretaker.”

Luna nodded. “Thanks, Ralph.” She stuck out her hand and he took it in both of his.

“I want you girls to know he was a good man. He was a sinner, no question, but he spent a lot of years trying to make up for that. It’ll do him some good if you forgive him, even now.”

“Thank you for your time,” Elaine said briskly. “We have to go now.”

They stopped at a Trinidad café for lunch. It was a plain, homespun place with biscuits and gravy and pot roast on the menu, and a pie keeper on the counter. “Oooh,” said Joy. “They have pecan. I love pecan pie.”

“You can have some for dessert.”

Elaine had been quiet the whole way into town, her jaw set in that grim way, and after they ordered, Luna said, “What are you thinking, Sissie?”

“You know what I’m thinking.” She stirred artificial sweetener into her tea. “I’m thinking I want the money. I don’t care about the land, and I can see you getting all soft and misty-eyed and I know you aren’t going to sell it, so just tell me straight out, okay?” She crossed her arms on the table, hard.

Luna lifted her eyebrows. “Got me all figured out, huh?”

“I know how you are, Lu. Miss Sentimental.”

“Well, you’re wrong.” She pulled the Barbie doll out of the box she carried in from the car. “I got what I wanted.”

“Oh, my God!” Elaine said. “I mean, gosh.” Her hand went for the doll. “He kept it, all this time?”

“Yeah.”

Elaine stroked the doll’s hair with a thumb. In a voice devoid of air, she said, “I cried every night.”

Maggie, who was sitting next to her, put her small hand on Elaine’s arm. “You can cry, you know. We won’t care.”

And Elaine did exactly that.

Placida was restless. There was something wrong. Something really wrong. She listened for the ravens but did not hear them. She looked for that ragged black dog and did not see her. She went out to the porch, listening for the whispers of Santo Niño who might tell her what to do, but the air stayed still and hushed as death.

But still she felt the press of danger in her chest, pressing down hard. She couldn’t sit still for it, and carried her rosary clenched in her hand, rubbing that place below her breast that was hurting.

Tomás came to find her after James and
La Diabla
were curled and crying in the living room, making like lovebirds in the house of the man they had wronged. Evil. There was no respect in the world nowadays. None. Once, a man could have killed his wife if she did that, and he would have killed his brother for certain. She didn’t understand a world that overlooked it, left so many hurting when men didn’t take care of their families, when women didn’t care for their children. So much pain it caused, those broken vows, couldn’t they see it?

“You okay?” Tomás said, bringing her some tea in a big metal glass.

She looked out to the horizon. Shook her head. “Something’s wrong. Something wicked, somewhere.”

“Oh,” Tomás said, “you mean
La Diabla?”

He used the name to please her, and Placida should have smiled, but she couldn’t. Again she pressed her hand to her breastbone, feeling that hard hand against her heart. And suddenly, she had a sharp vision of roses, pink roses, snowing down on Tiny Abeyta’s head. There were drops of blood on the petals, and she stood up, fast. “Find Manuel. Find him at his wife’s house. He’s going to kill her.”

Tomás didn’t jump to his feet, and she turned around, raising her arms and shouting. “Go! Go now! Go find him at her house.”

Something in her face or voice must have frightened him, because he listened. “I’ll be right back,
Abuela
, and you’ll see he’s fine.”

“Go,” she commanded, and he went. She sat in her chair and pulled the rosary into her gnarled fingers, the pressure growing on her chest. “Hail Mary, full of grace,” she said aloud, holding Tiny in her head, in the Virgin’s arms, cradled and protected. “The Lord is with thee.”

She put all she was into her prayer. Into this last thing. This one last thing.

Thomas found his heart pounding as he started his truck and drove to Tiny’s old house. It was a distance of several miles, and not a straight course. He kept hearing his grandmother’s voice.
Go. Go now!
The sound was mightier than any voice he’d ever heard from her, as if her body had been overtaken by some being greater than she, a young and mighty goddess. It had scared the hell out of him.

So even though it was foolish, even though his head told him Tiny was upstairs asleep, he drove to Angelica’s house. And a huge sense of relief went over him when he pulled up in front of the house, a small stucco
model with pink roses growing on trellises all around it. Their petals lay in scatters on the grass, blown in great handfuls from last night’s wind. They made him think of a wedding. There was no sound of fighting as he stepped out of his truck. Angelica’s car was parked neatly under the carport, and her hoses were rolled up on a special gizmo designed to keep them out of the way.

He felt downright silly going to her door. Hesitated at the gate, thinking it was Sunday morning—maybe she’d want to sleep in and his knock would bring her out of bed. A curtain fluttered out of a window. He turned in a circle, listening for anything amiss.

Go. Go now.

Taking a breath, he opened the gate and let himself into the rose-scattered yard and went up to the door, and knocked.

Nothing.

Maybe she wasn’t home. He’d never known her to be here without playing the radio, and that was kind of weird. Or maybe he was being infected by his grandmother’s paranoia and he ought to just go back home and check on Tiny there. He’d probably find him asleep in the big pile of comforters he liked, his head buried, a pillow tucked to his chest in place of the woman he missed so much.

He tried knocking a second time. And this time, there was the faintest whisper of sound. Something not quite … right. “Angelica?” he called. “It’s Thomas. Are you okay?”

“Go away, Thomas,” Tiny called. “We’re fine.”

Shit. Shit, shit, shit. “Angelica, I’ll only leave if you answer me. Are you okay?”

A mumble of sound, then a scream. “Help me!”

Thomas tried the door, found it locked. “Tiny! Listen
to me, man. You don’t want this. You’ve got a good life. You can’t do this.”

“Go away!” Tiny cried, and there was a sob in his voice. “We’ll work it out in private.”

Thomas stood back and gauged the door, then lifted his booted foot and aimed for the hinged side. The door cracked, but didn’t give way, and he kicked again. Another crack, and he heard Angelica scream. Thomas kicked one more time and the door fell open. He rushed in.

The first thing he saw in the gloom was more rose petals. More roses. They were everywhere. Enormous piles of them, chopped in a fury from some butchered shrub. They were all over the floor, petals and flowers and leaves and stems.

“Get out of here, Thomas!” Tiny had Angelica on her knees, her long hair twisted around his wrist, and he had a knife in his hand that didn’t quite qualify as a machete but came damned close. He held it in the air.

Thomas halted. “Tiny. Don’t do this.” He raised his hands to show he had nothing with him.

Both of them had tear streaks down their faces, rose petals stuck to their clothes. Scratches covered Tiny’s face, and Angelica’s arms and neck. From thorns, Thomas realized. Angelica wore only a plain sleeveless cotton nightdress. Tiny was disheveled, his hair mussed. Fighting or sex? Probably both. Tiny had a black eye coming on. Angelica’s lower lip was swollen. She sobbed softly.

“Come on, man,” Thomas said quietly. “Put down the knife. Let her go.”

“Go away! Let us handle it.”

Thomas took a chance on taking one step. “This doesn’t solve any problems. This makes problems.”

Tiny winced, as if he’d been struck. “No, it doesn’t,”
he said. “This is my life. My only life. Don’t you understand?”

Angelica stared at Thomas without a word, terror in her eyes. He hated himself for not taking steps sooner. Hated that love could turn to disaster, so often. Hated that this was the oldest and one of the saddest stories in the book of life. He had no idea what to do. “I don’t understand,” he said softly, thinking of Luna drawing Tiny out at the river. “Tell me.”

“We’re a family! A family is all a man is, everything he’s about. If I don’t have my wife and kids, man, what am I? I ain’t shit but a Lowrider son of a bitch.” Tears streamed down his face. “I just can’t make her listen. She won’t hear me. She’s found some other asshole to take care of her now, probably better than me, huh?”

“Think of Ray, Tiny. Think of him. Do you want him to hurt?”

“No,” he said brokenly, and at least the arm holding the knife up fell down. His shoulders sagged. Thomas edged closer. “I don’t want nobody to hurt. I want us to be happy again. I’ll do anything.”

Angelica’s eyes streamed with tears, too, and her shoulders started to shake. She bowed her head, weeping silently and in great grief.

“This ain’t the way, Tiny,” Thomas said quietly. “Let me have the knife.” He covered the last few steps and held out his hand.

Tiny raised his hand. “I can’t go to jail, man. What’ll my boy think of me then?”

“It won’t be long, Tiny.”

“Nah,” he said, shaking his head, his eyes brighter than moonlight with the tears in them. He wiped his face with the sleeve holding the knife, still shaking his head. “I ain’t got a future without my family.”

A jolt of horror went through Thomas as the knife
waved around. “Tiny,” he said urgently. “You saw me when Nadine left me, right? Remember?”

“Yeah, I remember.”

“I thought I was gonna die of the pain, that it would just shred me up inside, and there wouldn’t be anything left. I was lost, man. Really lost. I know you remember it.”

Tiny listened.

“And look at me. I’m in love, big-time. And her name matches mine—Luna and Coyote. I’m howling at that moon. It lights up my whole life. And maybe if you guys get some counseling, together, you know as a married couple, you’ll get back to being a family, but you won’t have any of it if you don’t stop right now and give me that knife and come out of here.” He held out his hand. “
Abuela’s
praying for you, right now, praying so hard she’s gonna give herself a heart attack if you don’t come back with me. Come on.”