Jumper: Griffin's Story (6 page)

My hands were shaking and I didn't know if it was fear or rage but I didn't trust myself to throw the brick and hit anything.

The guy from upstairs came out and dropped the empty shoulder bag over the railing, then swung over, lowered himself until he hung at arm's length and dropped.

Dammit!

I jumped to the middle of the street and stepped up to the police car. "Hey," I whispered.

The cop recoiled, surprised, his book dropping and one hand going down to his gun belt. "Aren't you–?"

"Yes! But the men who killed my parents are right there!" I stabbed my finger back down the brick path to the stairway. "Behind the garage."

Only they weren't behind the garage.

Projectiles shattered the passenger windows and slashed sideways and then the cop was bent over, his head halfway out the window, clawing at the thing sticking out of his neck, a thing with a cable attached to it, and I was in the
Empty Quarter
in a whirlwind of dirt and brush.

Oh god, oh god, ohmigod. Had they seen me jump? When I appeared at the cop car? But I was on the other side, away from them. I'm short–the car should've blocked me.

I still had the brick in my hand. There was blood on my shirt. The cop's blood.

I jumped back to the alley and peered up the path. The three were out by the car, weapons leveled, each looking in a different direction, but they all turned back toward me the instant I appeared.

They know when I jump.

They ran back toward the flat and I jumped again, but only down the alley, below my bedroom window. I heard their footsteps by the stairs and I heaved the rock up, hard as I could, through my window.

Fire, light, sound, and flying glass. I couldn't have stayed there if I tried, but I returned to the end of the block almost as soon as I'd flinched away to the
Empty Quarter
.

Debris was still raining down and the roof was gone from the flat and every car alarm in the city seemed to be going off. I walked carefully up the sidewalk as dozens of people came out of their homes to look wide–eyed down the street.

I backtracked and looked down at the mouth of the alley, where the men had come from when I first saw them. After a minute, two of them appeared, dragging the third with his arms across their shoulders. As they passed under the streetlight I saw blood on their faces–flying glass, I decided– and one of them smoked, literally, puffs of smoke rising from his hair and shoulder.

A car came up the street and stopped abruptly. They pushed the man who couldn't walk into the back and climbed in on both sides, then the car was moving toward me.

I stepped behind a tree and watched it go by. At the next block it turned right. In the distance, the blare of car alarms was replaced by the rising sound of emergency service sirens.

For a moment I thought about walking back to the fiat, to see if there was anything left, anything I could take away, but the neighborhood was well and truly roused and too many of them knew my face.

I jumped.

When the bus stopped in La Crucecita, I thought it was just another stop in the journey. We'd been five days on second–class buses and ruteras–shared minivans in which the other passengers might include chickens and where I'd ended up with a baby or toddler in my lap more than once. We'd stayed one night in a hotel in
Mexico City
but otherwise it was nap as you could on the crowded, bouncing buses.

Consuelo said, "Hemos llegado," and after five days of hearing nothing but Spanish, I actually understood her.

We'd arrived. I couldn't smell the sea. I couldn't see it. I smelled diesel smoke from the bus. I smelled something involving cattle. I smelled someone cooking onions.

My stomach rumbled. Except for some crisps on the bus, we'd last eaten in
Oaxaca
, half a day before.

Most of the passengers who'd gotten off at La Crucecita took the street toward downtown but Consuelo led me behind the station and up a forested hill on a trail half overgrown by banana trees and brush. It was humid but not too hot–not like some of the places on our journey where it had taken all my willpower not to jump back to some air–conditioned mall.

We crested the hill in less than ten minutes and walked into a breeze that did smell of the sea. Looking between the trees I saw flashes of sapphire blue. Consuelo turned up the ridge, away from the water, but thankfully, still in the breeze. After another five minutes she pointed downslope at a red clay–tiled rooftop visible between the trees. "Finalmente hemos llegado!"

I shifted until I could see more of it around the trees. It was narrow rows of building around three sides of a brick patio. A low wall stood at the open end but there was also construction–additions to both wings were in progress, extending the rectangle.

Consuelo crossed herself and then turned to me. "Wal–Mart. Okay, Greeefin?"

We'd been working on my Spanish the whole trip. "No, acuerdate me llamo Guillermo."

"Okay. Lo recordare. Wal–Mart, okay, Guillermo?"

"Claw que si," I said. "Un momento."

The first time I'd jumped in front of Consuelo, she'd gone back to the altar in her room and returned with a vial of clear liquid. She'd splashed it across my face and chest and began a long Latin speech that began "Exorcizo te" but that's all I caught, really.

There followed an extremely long argument and discussion between Sam and Consuelo in which she kept using the words el Diablo and demonio, and he used the word milagro multiple times. Finally, to settle it, I had to go into
El Centro
with her and kneel in the sanctuary of Our Lady of Guadalupe, cross myself with holy water and take communion at Mass, which was probably a sin, since I wasn't Catholic, but she wasn't concerned about sin per se, but poderes
del
infierno.

She decided I wasn't a demon or possessed but she was never completely comfortable about it.

Sam wasn't home but the stuff was waiting where we'd left it, in the old stable–two garden carts (bigger than wheelbarrows) and a large pile of clothes, shoes, toys, diapers (for her grown daughter's newest baby), and tools. I started with the carts, a jump apiece, then began ferrying the rest. Consuelo took what I brought and stacked it in the carts, lashing the resulting head–high stacks in place. It wasn't all bought from Wal–Mart. Just mostly.

It was bumpy but downhill to the house so the issue was keeping the carts from running away from us rather than pushing them. Consuelo's mother, the matriarch of the family, was the first to see her. There were tears and hugs. Consuelo hadn't been home since her husband and son's funeral three years before.

Children and a few adults followed quickly, but most of the adults were at work and the older children were en la escuela. I was introduced as Guillermo, the orphan. La Crucecita is a village on the south coast of Oaxaca, part of a larger resort area called Bahfas de Huatulco, about five hundred kilometers southeast of Mexico City, a couple of hundred west of the Guatemala border. The blue Pacific water reminded me of the
Bay
of
Siam
, like sapphires shining in the sun. It wasn't that crowded, compared with Aca–pulco or
Puerto Vallarta
, but being a gringo, I wouldn't stand out that much, because of the tourists. That was the theory, explained by Consuelo through Sam.

Her extended family worked for the resort hotels as maids, gardeners, busboys, and cooks. Those who didn't work for the resorts were in the
U.S.
, sending money back, but this was changing as the resorts grew and entering the states became harder.

There was a welcome–home fiesta that evening and Consuelo handed out presents for one and all. I would've been lost except for Alejandra, one of Consuelo's many nieces. Besides Spanish, she spoke English, French, and German, was twenty–five and beautiful. She'd been working in the tourist industry since she was sixteen and had attended the Instituto de Idiomas in
Mexico City
. She ran a translation services agency and taught weeklong immersion classes in Spanish, working with the resorts. "Visit beautiful Huatulco, lie on the beach, and learn espanol," she said. She smiled often with her eyes but when her wide mouth opened into a grin, it was staggering.

It took me five minutes to fall in love with her.

We spoke in French, not because her English wasn't excellent, but because she had less opportunity to practice French. That was a little difficult for me–Mum and I would speak in French.

She introduced me to everybody from Sefiora Monjarraz y Romera, Alejandra's grandmother and Consuelo's mother, to her many cousins' children. I was given name after name, but only held on to a few. The food was both familiar and strange. I ate a tortilla filled with guacamole and some delicious, spicy crunchy thing.

"What is it? Uh, qu'est–ce que c'est?"

Alejandra's eyes were alight. "Chapulines. . . los salta–montes."

I looked confused and she tried French. "Les sauterelles."

It took me a minute. "Les sutere–GRASSHOPPERS? I'm eating grasshoppers?" I unrolled the tortilla and it became all too clear she was telling the truth: legs and all, fried, from the looks of them.

She laughed. "If you don't want them, I'll eat them." She reached out.

Stubbornly, I rolled them back up and ate the rest of it. Crunch, crunch, crunch. It was still delicious but knowing ... I didn't go back for seconds.

The next day I had la turista, really bad, with a fever and cramps and the groaning, stumbling run to the toilet over and over. I wanted to blame the grasshoppers, but no matter what else I thought, they'd certainly been cooked well. Consuelo brought me a bitter tea to drink. When I asked what it was, she said something in Spanish and added, "
Para
la diarrea."

Grasshopper tea, no doubt.

Later, she brought a small wooden box and burned it by the window in a metal pan. When the charcoal had cooled down she mimed eating it. "Comete el carbon de la leha."

"Yuck! Absolutely not."

Alejandra came and coaxed me into taking it. "It absorbs toxins and is the quickest way to stop the diarrhea. You only take it this once. No more after. That would be bad for you."

"I don't want to. You also eat grasshoppers!" I set my teeth and curled in on myself, prepared to resist to the death. But she didn't play fair.

"Faites ceci pour moi, mon cher."

French, dammit.

"For her." I managed half of the charcoal washed down with some salty boiled water. "For electrolytes." And they stopped bothering me.

The runs did stop after that and I was able to eat rice with chicken broth that evening. Two days later, after my first fully solid meal, Alejandra and Consuelo took me out to the patio and we sat in the shade of the banana trees growing near the wall.

"My aunt tells me that you are not just an orphan, but that those who killed your mother and father are still after you."

Reluctantly, I nodded. I knew we had to tell her. It wasn't right to ask her to help without knowing. But I liked her. I didn't want her to push me away, to not want anything to do

with me.

"And she brought you here to avoid them. They would still kill you if they could find you."

"Yes."

"She won't tell me why they want to kill you. She says

only you can tell me."

"Ah." I licked my lips and nodded to Consuelo. "Gra–cias." To Alejandra I said, "That–that was good of her." Consuelo was keeping my secret.

Consuelo said something then, and there was a brief back–and–forth between her and Alejandra that was too fast for me to follow.

Alejandra looked back at me, a little confused. "She says she is willing to try that thing. The thing she said she didn't want to do before."

I raised my eyebrows at Consuelo. I knew what she was talking about. I'd suggested it back in Sam's living room, where he could translate, but she'd been afraid. I guess the thought of five more days on buses and ruteras was more daunting.

And it would certainly answer Alejandra's unspoken question.

"When does she want to leave?"

Compared with the stuff we arrived with, Consuelo's little suitcase was tiny, but she was taking back a box of regional foods she couldn't buy in
California
.

"Any grasshoppers? iChapulines?" I asked.

Alejandra laughed and Consuela said, "No. Sam no like."

Still, walking uphill into the jungle, the box was heavy and I was sweating by the time we reached the level spot where I'd transported Consuelo's gifts. I could've jumped here from the patio but I was cautious. I'd decided that the rules had some merit.

So what about rule four? Who tells you when it's okay to jump?

"Can you keep a secret? Like your aunt?" I used English. I didn't trust my French and it had to be crystal clear.

Alejandra tilted her head to one side. "Will it hurt me? Will it hurt my family?"

I swallowed. "Not keeping it could hurt your family." She frowned and I said, "I would never hurt them, but those who are after me might hurt them, getting to me."

"Okay. I can keep a secret." She leaned slightly closer to me than her aunt and whispered, "And who tells their parents everything?"

Ouch.

"All right. Let's start with this box."

I jumped to Sam's living room. He wasn't in there but I heard movement in the kitchen. I called out, "Sam, it's
Griffin
."

"Jesus!" I heard a dish clatter across the bottom of the sink. He appeared in the door, wiping his hands with a dish towel. "Everything okay?"

"It's fine. These are Consuelo's," I said, raising the box slightly. I put it on the table. "She changed her mind about the traveling thing."

"Oh? You guys someplace private?"

"You ever been there?"

"For the funeral."