Last Summer of the Death Warriors (17 page)

He felt drops of water on his face. Marisol had sprinkled them on him with her fingers. “Now where did you go? Still worried about how you’re going to get back home?”

“It’s still early. Maybe we can walk over to that park that’s supposed to be close to your house.”

“Okay. But what do we tell the others?”

A shiver of something similar to fear ran through his body. “I didn’t mean…I meant all of us. You thought—”

“I’m kidding.” She pushed him with her shoulder. “Geez! So there is something that scares you! I was beginning to think you weren’t human.”

“What scares me?” Pancho said.

“Walking alone with a girl obviously terrifies you.”

“Not just any girl.”

“Mmm. Did you just say something nice to me?” She turned slowly toward him, and he felt himself go red from the top of his head to the very end of his toes. She stayed like that, looking at him, and he felt a force pulling him toward her. He began to yield to it and then he pulled himself back.

“D.Q. is looking forward to walking with you in the park.”

“D.Q.?”

“Yeah.” He concentrated on drying the dish he was holding.

“He told you that?”

“Yes. I don’t think I’m supposed to tell you.”

“Why?”

“He was looking forward to talking to you. He’s hoping he’ll get to see you again. We’re leaving tomorrow for his mother’s. He thought this was the last time. He doesn’t want it to be the last time but, after tonight, it may be hard for him to…see you. He hopes you…He’ll tell you. That’s why he wants to talk to you.”

They were done with the dishes, but Marisol remained standing in front of the sink. Then she said, her head down, her hands looking for the stopper that would let the water drain, “What about you?”

“Me?” He sounded scared.

“Yes, you, Pancho Sanchez. What about you?”

“What about me what?” He wasn’t as dense as he was pretending to be. He half knew, half hoped what she was asking. But what was he supposed to do? What was he supposed to say? There was no future for him. It was D.Q. who needed all the future he could get.

“What about you?” This time she said it softly, almost as if she were all alone and speaking to herself.

He folded the towel and watched the last of the so-called clean water ebb away. “I can’t…” He stopped himself.
I want to but I can’t
is what he wanted to say. He looked at her for a few moments and then said softly, “Come on, let’s go to that park.”

“Okay,” she said. “Wait.” There was a calendar attached to the refrigerator with a magnetic strip. Marisol ripped off a corner of
the calendar. She went back to the counter and wrote something on the paper with a small pencil. She handed it to him.

“What?” he asked.

“My phone number. You better call me.”

He opened his wallet and placed the piece of paper in there, next to Robert Lewis’s address.

“
P
ancho!”

“What?”

“You asleep?”

“Yeah.”

“What do you think of Marisol’s brother?”

“He’s an asshole.”

“What’d you guys talk about on the way to the park?”

“I don’t know. He wanted to know if I was interested in joining Los Locos.”

“His gang?”

“Yeah.”

“What you say?”

“I said I’d think about it.”

“Think about it?”

“I didn’t want to show disrespect. On account of the fact that you’re romancing his sister and all.”

“Pssh. I hope you’re not even considering it. Los Locos.”

“I don’t know. He made it sound like it was just a regular
business. He said gangs have gone modern now. It’s all about the money. And I’ll have some protection when I end up in prison.”

“You’re kidding, right?”

“Yeah, I’m kidding.”

“Good. I mean, not that what you might end up doing is much better.”

“How’d it go with you and Marisol? You get a chance to tell her what you wanted to tell her?”

Silence.

“Hey, you still there?”

“It went okay.”

“You sound disappointed.”

“No, it’s okay. It’ll be okay. I expected it.”

“You’re making no sense.”

“Well. Let’s just say that she’s going to visit us.”

“At your mother’s?”

“And in Las Cruces. She has an aunt and a cousin in El Paso, which is only an hour away. What did you and her talk about when you were doing the dishes?”

“Just stuff. You know. About her brother. How they used to live in a bad neighborhood before. Things like that.”

“That’s all?”

“Pretty much. Why?”

“I don’t know. She seemed happy.”

“I didn’t say anything. We washed the dishes.”

“Sure you did.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Don’t pay any attention to me. I don’t mean to sound resentful or anything. I’m glad. I’m glad whatever it was you said made
her want to come see us. Of course, it means you’ll need to be around when she comes, which I hope you are.”

“What I can’t figure is why you don’t want to stay with your mother. It’d be a lot easier for Marisol to come see you there than to go all the way to Las Cruces.”

“It’s hard to explain. Maybe it’ll be easier to explain it after we’ve spent some time at Helen’s. You’ll see for yourself. You wouldn’t want to…die…at a place like Helen’s. You’ll understand once you’re there.”

“That’s just it. Maybe you need to be in a place that’s not good to die, so you’ll want to live.”

“I want to live. Trust me. It’s just that there are some things more important than living at any cost.”

Silence.

“There’s something I didn’t tell you. I saw your mother. I was riding the bike from…I guess I was coming back from putting air in the tires or something. She wanted me to go with her to meet someone. So I went. His name is Johnny Corazon. We went inside his house and we talked. Your mother wanted me to meet him because she thinks he can help you. There were lots of pictures on a wall behind a statue of the Virgin, pictures of people he had healed. Or he says powers working through him are the healers. They showed me a picture of a boy who had gotten cured from cancer. I mean, the guy was kind of weird, he had these gym shorts and hair in a braid and he was this old dude trying to look like a kid, but it may be worth a try. I don’t think it would hurt. He said it definitely wouldn’t hurt. It would only help.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever heard you say so much all at once since I met you.”

“Sorry.”

“So, Johnny Corazon, that’s the guy’s name?”

“Yeah. He gave me that plastic heart that flashes, the one I gave Josie. He had a whole basket full of them.”

“That’s kind of funny, isn’t it? Little plastic hearts that flash from Johnny Corazon.”

“What do you think? You think you might see him?”

“You know what I always wondered? If God wanted to work a miracle and cure me, why wouldn’t He just go ahead and do it. Why would he wait for me to go see Johnny Corazon and have Johnny do whatever it is Johnny does?”

“Maybe God wants to see that you believe. That’s what your mother thinks. You need to believe first and then you’ll be cured.”

“Really? I wish she’d tell me how to do it.”

“Tell you how to do what?”

“How do I believe? What more can I do? Can I turn on a little switch in my head and after that it’s ‘Oh, I believe I’m going to be fine’? How can anyone possibly think that I don’t want to be cured? Just because I don’t want to be caught with my pants down when death comes doesn’t mean I don’t want to live. That’s what a Death Warrior does—he accepts death and gets prepared for death and yet he wants to live with all his soul, with all that is in him. It’s not a contradiction.”

“Oh, man. Maybe we should get some sleep.”

“Besides, who are you to be preaching to me about wanting to live? You’re willing to just throw your life away as if it were worth nothing.”

“I wasn’t preaching anything. I was just telling you—”

“Why don’t
you
go see Johnny Corazon and have him cure you? You have an illness too. A cancer that fills your head like a fog. That need for revenge no matter what, what’s that? That’s a cancer that will sure as hell kill you. At least I didn’t bring mine on myself.”

“All right.”

“It’s not all right. What would I not give to be you? I would give up my
brains
to have your body, to have your life, to have life ahead of me the way you have yours. And you don’t even realize what you have. You’re going to piss this gift away for what? I mean, have you ever stopped to think what your sister would say to you if she could talk to you? You think she wants you to kill this guy? Really? You say you’re doing it for her, you say it will make things right, but that’s bullshit! You’re killing that guy for you, not for her. You think killing that bastard is going to help you get rid of the loss and guilt and self-hatred for not being a good brother. You are so wrong. You’re so wrong it’s unbelievable.”

“I already told you. I thought about all that. I don’t have your brains, like you say, but this is one thing where I thought about all there is to think. I expect I’ll feel worse after I kill him, if I kill him. I’ll feel worse and I’ll feel better too. I’m not doing it because of feeling better or worse. That’s not what I mean by making things right. You wanna know something else? If I could give you my life, I’d give it to you. I’d say, here, take it. Use it, ’cause I don’t have any need for it!”

“Pancho.”

“Go to sleep, man.”

“They say that diffuse pontine glioma can affect how people act and talk and feel. Back there where the brain meets the spine, that’s where all your basic emotions come from. People that have DPG can get wacky as the illness progresses.”

“Great.”

“I’m just telling you so you’ll know.”

“Now I know.”

“All right.”

H
elen arrived at ten the following morning. She appeared in the doorway of the dining room where Pancho and D.Q. sat at a round table with a group of kids and their parents. “Hello, Helen,” D.Q. said when he saw her.

“Hello, Daniel. Hello, Pancho.” Pancho nodded. She was wearing a white pantsuit with a blue scarf tied loosely around her neck. Nothing she wore ever had any wrinkles. He took the last bite of pancakes drenched in syrup and butter. Andrés’s mother made the pancakes as a sort of thank-you gift. She also made a fruit salad with mangoes, papayas, and pineapples. Pancho thought she probably bought the expensive fruits with all the money Andrés had won off of him.

“Are we almost ready to go?” Helen asked when she didn’t see anyone getting up from the table.

D.Q. rolled his wheelchair away from the table. “Well, good-bye, guys,” he said to the group. Pancho pushed his chair back and stood up. Andrés’s mother was the first to hug him. Then
Andrés, the little hustler himself, leaned his head against Pancho’s chest. In return, Pancho pulled his ear. There were no words spoken.

They went back to their room and got their things. Helen carried the smallest of D.Q.’s bags, and Pancho carried the rest. Pancho was folding D.Q.’s wheelchair in the driveway when he remembered Josie. He had not seen her all that morning. He put the wheelchair in the back of Helen’s SUV. The same group of people who was with them at breakfast was standing by the entrance, waiting to wave good-bye. “Have you seen Josie?” he asked Andrés’s mother.

“No. That’s strange,” Andrés’s mother said. “I’ll go check her room.”

“I know where she is!” Andrés said. “She’s hiding.” Andrés pointed to the back of the house, and Pancho knew exactly where to go. He motioned to D.Q., who was already sitting in the front seat, that he’d be right back, and D.Q. motioned for him to go on and take his time. Helen was sitting in the driver’s seat, a frozen smile on her face, her two hands gripping the top of the steering wheel.

Pancho went around back and climbed up the ladder of the jungle gym. She was crouched inside the tent, hugging her knees against her chest. “Now what?” he asked, poking his head in. She looked away without answering. “Don’t tell me you’re crying?”

“Nooo!”

He clambered in and sat in front of her. “D.Q.’s mother is out there waiting for me. She’s going to take off without me if I don’t get back.”

“Good,” she said. “I mean, that’s not good.”

“You want me to go?”

“Yes.”

“Marisol’s going to take you and Andrés to the movies in the afternoon when she comes in.”

“I don’t wanna go.”

“I guess I don’t want you to go either. I think Andrés likes you.”

“Yuck!”

“Yeah. Better stay away from him.”

She looked at him finally. “We’re leaving for Santa Fe tomorrow.”

“Your mom told us this morning. Your tests came back. Your cancer’s in revision.”

“Remission, dummy.”

“That’s what I said. You’re gonna be okay. You’re gonna get your eyelashes back and everything.”

“I
have
eyelashes! They’re just white. See?” She batted her eyelids, like she had something in her eyes.

“D.Q.’s mother has a horse.”

“So?”

“Maybe you can come visit.”

“All the way from Santa Fe?”

“Is it far?”

She rolled her eyes like she couldn’t believe how dumb he was. She opened up her hand. “Here.” It was Johnny Corazon’s plastic heart. “It doesn’t work anymore.”

“I gave that to you.”

“I don’t want it anymore.”

“Okay.” He took it from her. “I guess I better go.” He lifted himself from the floor so he could crawl backward and then descend. He turned to look at her one final time just before he went down the ladder. Her lip was quivering and her eyes were bright red. He opened his arms and she came to him. He held her head against his chest and he opened his eyes as wide as they would go in order to keep them dry. She wanted to say something, but he pressed her tight. “Shhh. Don’t say anything.” He let go of her and started down as quickly as he could.

“I want my heart back,” she said between sobs.

He still had it in his hand. He went up a rung and gave it to her. His vision was blurred as he walked back. He stopped beside the house and wiped his eyes with the sleeve of his T-shirt. He clenched his jaw shut. This was ridiculous. He didn’t cry after his father died. He didn’t cry when Rosa died. Why now? Hot snot was flowing out of his nose and he could feel waves of pain rising up and getting stuck in his throat. He thought of Rosa. Had he ever been playful with her like he’d been with Josie and the other kids? Had he ever felt the loneliness of loss he was feeling now?

He didn’t know how much time it took for all that to come out of his system. He half expected D.Q. and his mother to be gone by the time he came around to the front of the house. But they were still there, sitting in the SUV with the windows open, talking calmly. He looked down, keeping his eyes away from them, when he entered the car.

“Ready?” Helen asked pleasantly. D.Q.’s conversation, whatever it was, had made her happy.

“Sorry,” he said. The four or five people still standing at the entrance waved at them. The last thing Pancho saw as they pulled away was the rickshaw beside the house.

They were on the highway for a while before he realized that D.Q. was acting strange. Strange wasn’t the word; D.Q. was always strange. D.Q. was acting different, like nothing had ever happened between him and his mother. Helen was talking about the treatments and how well they had gone, according to Dr. Melendez, and D.Q. was taking it all in. He almost seemed to be agreeing with her. She was saying that they would not be able to tell, of course, whether the cancer had been arrested or diminished in such a short period of time. But Dr. Melendez was happy that D.Q.’s white blood cell count had remained steady. It meant that he would tolerate further treatments well.

“But we can discuss that later,” she said tentatively, like she didn’t want to push her luck too much, “after you rest for a couple of weeks.”

“A couple of weeks,” D.Q. repeated absently.

Now Pancho remembered that D.Q. had looked different all morning. He was like a party balloon with half its helium leaked out, his head listing a little to the side. Pancho had noticed the difference at breakfast and attributed it to sadness at not getting to see Marisol for a while. But now as he listened to him, he thought the Death Warrior sounded like he had lost a battle, if not the war.

They were on 1-25 North heading toward Santa Fe, leaving
downtown Albuquerque behind. The morning was crisp and the air rushing in from D.Q.’s open window was like a playful slap on his face. Two weeks from now, he would leave Helen’s house and D.Q. for good and go directly to see Robert Lewis. After that he’d keep going, he didn’t know where.

“Pancho told me,” he heard D.Q. say.

“He did? I really think you’ll like him. I’ll have him come to the house for the first visit, but later, you’ll need to go to his house. Johnny says that makes a difference.”

“Fine.”

Pancho leaned forward. He thought he had heard D.Q. say “Fine.”

“So you’ll see him?” Even Helen was looking at D.Q. as if something was wrong with him.

“Why not.”

“Pancho will tell you. He’s a little bit of a character.” She was looking in the rearview mirror, searching for Pancho. He moved closer to the door, out of her field of vision.

“You might want to pull over there for just one second.” D.Q. lifted a hand weakly and pointed at the emergency lane of the highway.

“We’re about five minutes from home,” Helen said.

“Please.” Even without looking at his face, Pancho could tell that D.Q.’s eyes were shut tight.

Helen swerved and came to a stop faster than Pancho expected. D.Q. opened the door. A buzzer sounded. “Your seat belt,” Helen reminded him. D.Q. tried to find the buckle, gave up, leaned out the door, and vomited.

“Oh, Daniel,” Helen said.

Pancho got out and waited for D.Q. to finish. Then he leaned in and unbuckled him. He swung his legs outside the car. “Don’t step in it,” D.Q. said to him.

“You got more?”

D.Q. nodded. Pancho took him to the side of the car. He had found out during their stay at Casa Esperanza that it was easier for a person to vomit standing up than sitting down. He held D.Q. by the abdomen while he was bent over. Cars whizzed by. One idiot honked. Pancho placed his hand on D.Q.’s back. Vomit splashed on his pants and sneakers. D.Q.’s knees twitched as if unable to sustain even the little weight they held.

“You done?” Pancho asked after a while. D.Q.’s eyes were closed, saliva dribbling from his lips, but he nodded. Helen sat frozen in the driver’s seat, a scared look on her face.
Hadshe ever seen a chemo patient throw up?
Pancho wondered. Even when they didn’t have anything inside to throw up, the violent retching continued just the same.

Pancho sat D.Q. back in the front seat. Helen tried to wipe his mouth with a Kleenex, but D.Q. moved his head away from her hand. He leaned his head as close as he could to the open window. Helen waited for an opening and sped away.

“Did you take your antinausea pills?” she asked him.

“He took them,” Pancho answered when D.Q. remained silent.

“Johnny gave me some herbs for your nausea. As soon as we get home, I’ll have Renata make you a tea. You’ll be good as new in no time.”

Good as new,
Pancho repeated to himself. What was wrong with the lady? Something was not right with her, but Pancho didn’t know exactly what.

Pancho wanted to pay attention to the roads so that he would know which way to go when he left, but soon his mind wandered. Scenes from the past two weeks flashed before him. There was the fat guy called Billy Tenn asking him, knife in hand, “Why you want to die?” There was Marisol waiting for D.Q. so they could go for their daily walk. Had he really thought that she was nothing to write home about? There he was sitting next to D.Q., watching cartoons while D.Q. had his eyes closed, a pale yellow liquid flowing into his arm. Now he was pedaling the rickshaw up a small hill with Marisol and Josie in the back, Marisol pretending to get angry when he told her he wasn’t used to pulling so much weight. There was Andrés maneuvering his spaceship—magically, it seemed—so that instead of being pursued, it was now shooting red lasers at Pancho’s rear. There was D.Q. bumping into his bed in the middle of the night on yet another trip to the bathroom. Why did he never make D.Q. take the bed closest to the bathroom, the hell with his being close to the window? There was Josie’s mother announcing to the breakfast table, her voice trembling, that Josie’s cancer was in revision—at least that’s what he thought he heard, and he knew it was good news because people at the table cheered. He looked for signs of envy in the faces of the other mothers, but he didn’t see any.

“Here we are,” he heard Helen say. She said it as if now, finally, everything would be just fine.

It wasn’t like any kind of ranch that Pancho had ever seen. The
house looked more like a small castle. It even had a tower rising from one of the corners, white like the rest of it, with a red tile roof. The house was in the middle of a field about the size of the trailer park where Pancho used to live. A white stucco fence lined the front of the property, low enough that the house was not hidden from the street but high enough, Pancho imagined, to keep a horse from jumping out. The rest was bounded with a log fence. They stopped by a black iron gate. Helen pushed a remote control on the visor, and the gate swung open. She drove down a long pebbled driveway and turned the car off in front of a separate four-car garage. The garage itself looked like a house large enough for a family to live in. Pancho could see an air conditioner in one of the upper windows.

Helen nudged D.Q.’s shoulder. “We’re here, Daniel,” she whispered, like she was afraid of waking him.

“Oh, no,” D.Q. mumbled.

“I’ll get Juan to help you out.” She started to open the door.

“I think I left the perico back in the room.”

“The what?”

“I checked the room before we left. We didn’t leave anything,” Pancho said.

“What is the perico?” Helen asked.

“I was holding it in my hand last night, when I couldn’t fall asleep. It’s in the bed under the sheets.”

“What is it?” Helen turned to Pancho.

“It’s a wooden parrot,” Pancho told her.

“We gotta go back and get it,” D.Q. said. His voice was weak but determined.

“A wooden parrot?” said Helen.

“Did you strip the beds?” D.Q. asked Pancho without turning around.

It took Pancho a few seconds to realize that D.Q. was saying
strip
the beds and not
rip
the beds. “No. Was I supposed to?”

“We have to get back there before they clean the room. Otherwise it might get thrown away. Let’s go, Helen.”

Helen looked at D.Q. “What’s so special about this wooden parrot?” she asked Pancho.

Pancho shrugged his shoulders.

“Helen, please!”

“Can we call someone to look for it, and if it’s there, to hold it? I’ll send Juan to pick it up.”

“We can call someone,” Pancho said quickly. “I’ll call Marisol.”

D.Q. looked up. “How do you have her phone number?”

“I—” Pancho began to answer.

“I need the perico,” D.Q. cut him off. He sounded delirious.

“Okay, let’s get you inside.” She tapped the horn twice.

Pancho stepped out of the SUV and opened D.Q.’s door. D.Q. seemed to be measuring the distance between his seat and the ground. Pancho grabbed him by the armpits, lifted him off the seat, and stood him on the ground. He supported him until he was sure D.Q.’s legs would hold. An older-looking Mexican man in a white short-sleeve shirt and gray pants appeared by his side and offered to take D.Q.

“Juan, there’s a wheelchair in the back,” Helen said to him. Juan scurried to the back.

“I can walk,” D.Q. said. “What’s everyone making such a fuss about?” But Pancho could see his legs tremble like they
were about to buckle. In the space of one night, D.Q. had gone from more or less okay to bad. Worse, Pancho thought, was not that far off.