Jaguar (22 page)

He set the rabbit into a cut in the red rock face above his head. Clumps of gray-brown fur stuck to the spatters of dried blood on his hands. He wiped them off in the sand. His thighs were damp with sweat, the heavy cotton pants stuck tight to his skin.

Rafferty picked bits of sage and dried grasses for his fire. He gutted the rabbit and ate the liver raw, something he’d seen Old Cristina do many times. Surprisingly sweet, about the texture of his own tongue. Eating more might drive off the vision, but he felt the need to cook the rabbit just the same.

His fire took off from his sparked tinder, and he spitted the rabbit on a thick piece of sage propped over the fire. Rafferty relaxed against the rocks. Off in the distance he watched his crow lift off, finished with the offering of the head. The last of the sun let slip the gray-black shadows of twilight, and the first nightstalker slunk towards him about a hundred meters out. He picked up a few sharp, fist-sized rocks and piled them beside the fire.

He could’ve thrown them the skin, the guts or the carcass and they would drift away like spots of fog, or dreams. If they knew him to be truly empty-handed, they would leave. But Rafferty wanted them to have to come after him for it. He was in that kind of mood.

Night dropped fast in the southland, and by the time the rabbit was properly blackened the first nightstalker crisscrossed the outside halo of the firelight and worked its way to the edge. Even in the bad light Rafferty could count ribs and patches of raw skin.

His first rock missed the animal and didn’t raise a flinch. The next hit high on the stalker’s shoulder. The skinny shadow yelped, jumped out of the firelight, then circled back. Two more shadows hissed and coughed at each other, then the first rushed head-on. The second and third flanked him evenly. Rafferty snapped a quick throw at the blur in the middle and a poor throw at the one on the left. He reached for another rock and the stalker on his right trotted off, head high, a snake of rabbit guts trailing from its mouth.

Her
mouth. In her high-headed trot across the light he saw her bone-thin back, her teats, and what was left of her nipples chewed and crusted thick with blood. The others ran her down.

When she turned again, robbed and snarling, she fixed his gaze across the fire, and he knew he would need his knife. He saw in her eyes the deeper strength that starving offspring can bring.

“So this is for keeps,” he muttered. He crouched, facing the dark across the fire.

More than anything, she wanted him to go away.

Just go away and leave that sweet moist meat right there.

The others were busy with the guts, and Rafferty saw in the dream-way four half-grown kits whining in the dark behind her. They snarled in some sandy pit, wanting milk or meat but they would settle for her, this time, if she came back empty. They would not stop at her teats, and she had no blood to spare.

She jumped across the fire, and Rafferty caught her under the jaw with his left hand, blocked her upwards and slammed his knife into her belly with his right. They barked together in surprise when his knife hit a rib and folded across his fingers.

He held her tight so that he could re-open his blade. He clutched her to his chest while she bit up his ear and his face. Her hind legs raked open his shirt and thighs. She caught him under the left eye high on the cheek and pulled until he felt the top of his cheek sucked from the bone.

He dropped her and grabbed for her eyes but she held on long enough to pull him down onto the fire. He let go and rolled into the dirt while she spun, snatched the rabbit and snarled into the night.

Rafferty listened to the rustle and growl through the sage beyond the fire, then they were gone. He lay on his back, catching his breath, and in the morning his crow brought him the remnants of the skull. But meanwhile, in the night, by the dying fireglow, Rafferty received his vision.

He saw that the Jaguar was not a jaguar at all, but a fat man in a jaguar skin. He danced in circles on a red tiled floor, sweating and grunting, while a ring of white-frocked priests set out spicy meats and liters of fine wine. Rafferty watched from a high vantage point, as though he’d stolen the eyes of his crow.

In the courtyard of the dance, statues of warriors in helmets stood, some in the thick-lipped, thick-nosed style of the Roam. They wore a battle dress that Rafferty didn’t recognize, a bulky dress with no decoration. Outside the courtyard, sniffing the wind and snarling, a real jaguar circled the compound, testing every gate and door, every window, every tiny crack.

Rafferty’s felt revulsion for the jaguar-man, and the odor that wafted up to his vantage point was not the odor of honest sweat but the stench of sun-bloated death. The real jaguar outside the walls, though beautiful and well-muscled, showed the sharp ribs of hunger and his scarred muzzle, the prizes for repeated attacks against the impervious stones of the courtyard. On his flank, in blue, the butterfly brand.

As the Jaguar-man danced inside, the real jaguar threw itself against the glassy walls, only to fall back and rise slower each time. At last, forepaws high against the wall, tongue lolling drool, its green gaze fixed on Rafferty.

You.

The huge voice in his mind was unfamiliar, all-encompassing.

You, Rafferty, let me in.

The Jaguar-man danced with hundreds of ribbons in his hands, and he wound them around a great pole. Far on the horizon, at the ends of the ribbons, Rafferty saw the people of the Roam pulled closer, dragged helpless by the red ribbons piercing their chests, knotted to their bleeding hearts.

He woke to the dawn-thunder of the Jaguar’s command.

You, Rafferty, let me in.

. . . all the iron and concrete
heaped into order
can’t keep these single blades
of grass from breaking through
back into the world.

—Finn Wilcox,
Here Among the Sacrificed

Mark White lounged in a hammock that his wife had brought him from Mexico, her encyclopedia of Mayan art open on his chest. He half-dozed and listened to the comforting rattle of her suitcases as she unpacked. This trip had taken her away for five weeks and three days. They had been in bed now, by his estimate, for thirty-four of the thirty-six hours she had been back. He was sleepy, a bit achy in the low back, and very hungry.

Something niggled at him while he dozed. As he’d browsed the Maya art book he’d had a clear and ongoing sense of deja vu. He was particularly drawn to the jaguar motif carved in a ballcourt wall, and to the figure of the hawk-nosed priest standing beside it. The name “Eddie Reyes” had just sprung to mind when the phone rang.

“Don’t answer that,” he called. “We’re on vacation for one more day.”

“Sorry,” Sarah said. “I told my editor she could call me today. If it’s for you, I’ll lie.”

Mark had just found a comfortable position for his low back when Sara came back biting her lip.

“What’s up?”

“It’s for you. I couldn’t lie.”

“What, the yellow press couldn’t lie? Must be serious.”

When she didn’t crack a smile, he sat up and swung his legs over the edge.

“It’s the sheriff’s office,” she said. “They have Eddie.”

“Well, what . . . ?”

She motioned him to the phone.

“Attempted murder,” she said, “of Maryellen Thompkins.”

“Shit!”

After a quick assessment over the phone, Mark made two calls, one to Eddie’s uncle Bert who, as usual, was never home. The other went to their hospital lawyer, Kurt Prunty, who agreed to meet him at the jail. Mark had been busy, lately, too busy to catch up with Eddie. This wasn’t how he’d wanted to do it.

Mark hurried into the new gray suit that Sarah had bought him and guzzled a pint-sized Coke to stop his stomach from growling. The fifteen-minute ride to jail didn’t help him to more insights than he already had, but it gave him time to catch his breath and become Dr. Mark White.

He wrestled his old Volkswagen van into a tight spot in front of the county offices and ignored the “expired” reading on the meter. The receptionist gave his rumpled hair a cursory raised eyebrow and handed him a message before opening the gate to the back.

“Call ER,” was all it said.

“Did you take this?”

She nodded.

“It’s the girl,” she said. “They took her to the emergency room because they couldn’t rouse her. They say she’s real sick with whatever he gave her. The parents don’t want you there. You’d better call first.”

“Thanks. Call the charge nurse for me. Tell them not to give her anything until I get there. The girl has a sleep disorder and that’s probably all that we’re dealing with. I want to talk with Eddie first.”

At the mention of Eddie’s name the receptionist sat a little straighter in her chair and adjusted the slippage in her sweptwing glasses. She buzzed the gate again without a word and Dr. White let himself into the back complex that made up the valley’s jail.

A young deputy led him into the cellblock. When Mark asked him for a briefing, the tight-lipped deputy merely shook his head and kept walking. The cellblock’s deterrent against escape was confusion, and as many times as Mark had walked these hallways he was still unsure that he could find his way out.

This labyrinth of cells, storage rooms and privileged areas for the trustees had been a cannery, and decades of berry stains still darkened the floors. Less informed visitors assumed they were bloodstains, and most new prisoners were encouraged in that assumption, it made for easier handling. The jail seldom held more than three prisoners at any one time, but some enthusiastic contractor talked the county into building thirty cells just before the end of the war. The cells were filled twice, and on both occasions the valley was the center of national scrutiny. The first time they held prisoners from the Japanese internment camp, which had been a hasty transformation of the local fairgrounds. The prisoners were all young men from the camp, American citizens, who had refused to report for the draft. They were trying to make a point, but so was their country that sent them all to the federal penitentiary for the duration of the war.

The second time the jail was full the dominant language was German. German citizens who had been captured in the Pacific and classified as prisoners of war were to be repatriated. The government was so pleased with the way the valley handled the Japanese situation that they gave them the German situation. None of the prisoners had served in the armed forces, and many townspeople brought them traditional foods and played Bavarian music for them outside the walls. Most of the prisoners had lived in the Pacific to escape their German culture. Nevertheless, they displayed the appropriate gratitude for this relatively innocuous discomfort.

Mark had worked with the sheriff’s office before, and regardless of personal feelings about his patients the deputies had usually treated him well. Mark noted that his presence was bringing out an intense fear reaction in this rookie. When he saw Eddie, he understood why.

Eddie was curled on his bunk in a fetal position, face to the wall. The stains on his clothing, his blankets and arms and the marks on the floor where he’d been dragged into the cell were bloodstains, not berry stains. His left tennis shoe was missing and the bottom of that foot had a large, drying bloodstain. A strong smell of vomit thickened the air.

“Jesus Christ!”

Eddie’s breathing was so shallow that Mark could barely feel it on his cheek. His pulse was undetectable at the wrist but present in his neck, also fast and very weak. His eyes were half-open and staring, both pupils reacted when Mark blocked off the light from the doorway. When Eddie was in his post-dream state, his pulse was always very slow and strong, his breathing very slow and deep.

“Call an ambulance,” he told the guard. “He’s in shock. He hasn’t bled that much on the outside; he must be bleeding inside. He’s going to the hospital.”

“They’ve been called, Doc. . . .”

“Then leave us alone,” Mark snapped. “You can think about doing five to seven for manslaughter if he dies.”

The door slammed shut and the overhead light snapped on. Mark hadn’t done a primary trauma exam in awhile, and he kicked himself for not bringing his bag.

Getting soft, Dr. Fat-Cat Shrink?

He got down next to Eddie’s ear and said, “Eddie, Eddie, can you hear me?”

Eddie blinked his eyes and grunted.

“I need to find out where you’re hurt,” he said. “Let me know if I hurt you. Can you do that?”

Another grunt.

No vomit on the bed, only on the front of Eddie’s shirt and jeans.

He threw up before they brought him here.

Most of the blood on his clothes was nearly dried. The only fresh blood that Mark saw stained the bedding under Eddie’s mouth and nose.

He bled before they brought him here.

In spite of himself, Mark watched anger put a tremble into his hands. He started his exam at the top of Eddie’s head, moving his fingers through his hair, looking for bleeding sites. He found a small one on the right that had stopped; the hair was clotted around it. Eddie flinched from touch in the area.

Mark checked the back of Eddie’s neck and his spine and was relieved when he got no sign of pain there.

“Can you wiggle your toes, Eddie?”

The bare left foot moved. The right foot moved.

“Fingers?”

His hands clenched and unclenched.

Mark reached underneath Eddie and slid his hand along his body where his right side lay on the bed.

“I’m checking you for bleeding here, Eddie.”

He got a grunt of pain at the right shoulder, and on his upper right rib cage. The ribs there were mushy, and moved out when they should have moved in with his breathing.

Flail chest.

Eddie had instinctively done the right thing by lying on that side; he stabilized the fractures and probably saved himself from lung damage. No pink froth at his nose or lips.

Eddie’s face was something no mother would recognize. His lips were swollen purple, both eyes were blackened and swelling, and the right side of his face was nearly twice as big as the left.