Nightfire! (The Corvette Nightfire Prequel) (4 page)

While Luna screamed, Día floored it. He
revved the Corvette's engine, popped it into second gear, took it
whining to a scream, hit third, and sailed through the opening in
the highway just as soldiers rushed forward trying to shoot at him
and the Ford behind them.

But Día got through! A shot blew out the
passenger side window, and Luna shrieked and threw her hands to the
right side of her head. It happened fast, but, at the same time,
Día saw her movements as if she were in slow motion. As his mind
took in things at super-speed, it seemed like he was looking at
Luna and in the rear mirror at the same time. There he saw that the
Ford had stopped and that soldiers were running towards it, firing
their rifles furiously.

"Luna! Luna! Are you okay?" Día shouted,
feeling panicked that she was hurt badly. But his feet and hands
fired the Corvette into the Chihuahua night. The car made a loud
rifle shot of its own as an orange flame spumed from the exhaust
and then extinguished. In a flash, they were in the pitch-darkness
of Mexican countryside.

It didn't seem like a serious injury to her
head at first, but Luna never was the same. As months and years
passed, she became quieter. Her eyes stayed on Día as he fixed her
meals or helped her dress in the mornings. She sat silently nearby
as he worked. Every now and then she brought him an exclamation of
joy, because out of the blue, she would say simply, "Thank you" or
"I love you." Once she said, "Look at the sky!" But then her cough
developed and became worse with every passing month. She stopped
speaking completely then.

They moved a lot. Día made a trusted friend
who kept his Corvette in storage for him. Several times, Día went
to visit it and he took Luna with him. He gave her rides in the
night, which she seemed to love. He never disturbed the roofliner
or told anyone about the cash behind it. He remembered that he had
never changed the vehicle number because he had learned that there
would be no inspection at the border. So a knowledgeable person
looking at the vehicle tag mounted on the driver-side dash by the
windshield would know that the Corvette was originally silver.

He told Luna, "We will take this to Rogelio
when he is grown. It will be our gift from us to him. Or maybe one
day he will look for his people, and he will come to Chihuahua and
find us."

Luna's cough began producing blood. With the
help of his friend, Día took her to receive medical care in the
city, Chihuahua. The doctor admitted her to the hospital, and she
died a couple of weeks later. It was 1968, and she was only
twenty-eight years old.

It took Día weeks in the canyons, but he
finally found his brother still living among the Rarámuri. His
heart grieved the loss of Luna so painfully that there were days in
the mountains and canyons when he did not have the spirit to walk
and search for his brother or his family. He didn't find him until
winter, when many of his people migrated to the warmer canyon
bottoms. The brother was married at the time and had two small
children.

Día didn't want his family to know much about
the life that he and Luna had led. His heart wanted the memory of
Luna to be what she was before she left the mountains with him:
happy, young, beautiful…and a true runner. In the few years that
Día spent with his brother's family, he said that he and Luna had
been deported suddenly. They had left Rogelio with the ranchers in
Texas to protect him, Día reported, and they had worked together in
different cities to avoid retribution by the cartels. He didn't
tell them how quiet Luna had been, that she had been injured, and
that she had followed his every movement with her trusting eyes. He
didn't say that he had stolen the only legacy which he might be
able to leave his son: the car and the cash. He debated with
himself to tell his brother that the cartels might look for the car
because it had so much money inside it. Día was about to explain
that, finally, to his brother, but before he could, he died in an
accident in the mountains. The homeland that had nourished his
spirit as a young boy betrayed him: a rocky point on a cliff
crumbled, causing Día to slip and then fall to his death.

After Día died, the brother inspected the box
that Día had brought with him when he had returned to the
mountains. Inside were the keys to the Corvette, a couple of
Polaroid photographs taken of Día and Luna in Texas, a picture of
the vehicle identification number of the Corvette, a paper with
contact information for the man keeping the car, and a few random
odds and ends: a whistle, some coins, a rosary...not things in
summation that would explain the years away from home. The brother
had a better understanding from a story that Día had told him
once:

"I left behind this car, a crazy car that
spits fire sometimes. I used to take Luna out in it in the night,
and we would race through the dark countryside until the car would
shoot its flame and make a big light behind us and a noise. Those
were times when a smile would appear on Luna's face. I adored
seeing her smile. Before we left the United States, I told her that
we would have a last name as is the custom of the gringos, in honor
of our car, and we would say that we were Fuego de Noche, which in
English means 'Nightfire.' One night in Mexico, when our car
sputtered the fire, I reminded her of our gringo last name. She
looked at me and laughed in a way that I will never forget. At that
moment, a shooting star lit the night, and Luna said to me, "Look
at the sky!"

And then Día broke into sobs, and his brother
sat and put his arm around him.

Remembering this story a few days after Día
died, the brother said to his wife and children, "I want us to
remember my brother and Luna in our hearts forever. They were great
runners. Their names meant, 'Day' and 'Moon.' Their names honored
the creators of the Rarámuri. They had the spirit of fire in the
night. They called themselves by this name in Spanish. We have
Rarámuri names, but we will remember my brother and sister-in-law
by using this Spanish name when the chobochi ask our full names.
Ours is the family, 'Fuego de Noche.' We are proud to be this."

The brother was old and his wife had long
died when the young man appeared in the canyon with a woman and a
Rarámuri guide. The brother was nearly blind, but when he stood
close and looked at him, when he traced his eyes and face with his
fingers, he could see that the man looked very much like Día had
looked just before he died. He had always expected that Día's son
would find his way to him, but this was not his son. This could
only be a miracle of the Creator: The young man before him was
Día's grandson.

And he said that his name was Corvette
Nightfire.

The brother had a box to give him.

The End