Sweet Jiminy (13 page)

He shifted back into drive and continued rolling up to the house, feeling silly for even contemplating flight.

“Hey,” he said as he climbed out. “I was surprised to see you here.”

“I came with Carlos,” Jiminy explained. “He's talking with Lyn.”

Bo had yet to meet Carlos, though he appreciated what he and Jiminy were trying to do.

“How's it all going?” he asked.

Jiminy shrugged her pointy shoulders.

“It's going,” she said.

She sighed and looked up.

“I don't mean to be like that, it's going well, actually. We're uncovering a lot. I'm just not sure how I fit into it all sometimes.”

She couldn't keep the sadness out of her voice, and looking straight into Bo's eyes had been a mistake. She longed to be comforted by him in ways that were no longer possible.

“It seems to me you're the reason it's all happening,” Bo replied. “I think that makes you God of the entire operation, which is a pretty good way to fit into anything. Though occasionally thankless, sure. People doubt you, turn their backs on you, take you for granted, take your name in vain. They'll come back to you in the end, though. You just gotta hang in there. Take comfort in your omnipotence.”

Jiminy smiled, which made her almost beautiful. Her turned head set her face at a fresh angle, and Bo felt himself falling for her all over again. It wasn't up to him, which was frustrating. It never was.

“Maybe I should come back another time, if they're gonna be a while,” Bo said as he turned to leave.

“Are you studying a lot?” Jiminy asked.

“Not enough, probably,” he answered. “But I'll pick it up,” he continued. “I've just been a little distracted.”

“By who?” Jiminy asked sharply.

Bo appreciated the jealousy in her voice and let himself fantasize briefly about reconciliation, but he knew it wasn't a responsible option. For her sake, he had to be strong.

“No particular who. More of a what. Regular life stuff,” he answered. “Listen, I'm gonna head out now and come see Aunt Lyn this evening. I'll catch up with you later on, okay?”

“No!” Jiminy protested.

She hadn't meant to shout. She hadn't meant to say no at all. It had just forced its way out of her, in visceral response to the idea of Bo leaving her again. The power of her objection startled them both.

“Everything all right out here?” came a voice from behind them.

Carlos was in the doorway. Behind him, Lyn looked concerned.

“Everything's fine,” Jiminy said, struggling to regain her composure. “Carlos, this is Bo. Bo, please meet Carlos.”

“Hey, man,” Bo said, reaching out his hand.

“Pleasure,” Carlos said, smiling at him.

As the two men shook, Lyn moved out onto the porch.

“Anything wrong?” Lyn asked her great-nephew.

She hadn't been expecting Bo in the middle of the afternoon. She worried something unpleasant had driven him to seek her out when he otherwise would have been studying under the hickory tree, divining the secrets of the mass of blood and muscle and tissue we humans dragged around day after day after day.

“Everything's fine,” Bo reassured her. “I didn't mean to interrupt, didn't know you had company. Just wanted to check in.”

Lyn looked from him to Jiminy. She saw the flush in the girl's cheeks and the agitation in both their postures. She sighed.

“There's absolutely no reason you two can't be friends,” she said.

Jiminy and Bo looked quickly at Lyn, surprised.

“We know that, Aunt Lyn,” Bo said.

“And we are,” Jiminy chimed in. “We will be.”

“No reason,” Lyn repeated. “No reason at all . . .”

She trailed off, suddenly feeling completely worn out. She knew they were all staring at her as she sank down to take a seat on the porch steps, but she kept her head bowed. Gravity had gotten the best of her for the day—she was ready to concede defeat.

From her new vantage point, she could see a village of ants stretching themselves thin from their hill toward unknown destinations through the grass and into the woods. She wondered if they ever slept as she watched a group of them carry a dead cricket on their backs. Such strength! Such endurance! She marveled at their ability to march steadily on, underneath such an outsized burden, myopically undeterred.

 

Later, at the Comfort Inn, Carlos flipped through the channels of his small, unsatisfactory television. He didn't care what he watched; he was in search of the numbness that comes with staring at a screen in an artificially dark room on a sunny day. He needed to give his brain a rest.

He settled on a national newscast, which was breathlessly covering the story of a missing eighteen-year-old from a suburb of Minneapolis. Apparently, the girl had made a cell phone call to her boyfriend from the parking lot of a mall and mentioned that she was scared someone was following her. Her phone had turned up two days later in a Dumpster four miles away, but there still hadn't been any trace of her. The newscaster gave an update on the hundreds of volunteers conducting all-night searches and urged anyone with information to please call. He showed a full-screen photo of the missing young woman, who had curly blond hair and a cherubic face, complete with dimples. She was adorable, and, Carlos guessed, also dead.

He sighed and turned the TV off. When Carlos was on the road, he didn't let himself think too much about home, but at the moment, he was missing it. He closed his eyes briefly and let himself imagine he was back there. Not where he lived now, but where he had grown up, in a house in the woods by a creek.

This was the place he mentally went to relax. He'd never taken a meditation class, but he was familiar with the essential “go to your happy place” concept. Carlos didn't consider himself a well-adjusted person generally. He was haunted and driven, with little time for comfort-seeking. But he understood the value of a calm, clear mind, and over the years, he'd developed his own mode of achieving it.

The creek had been his constant companion as a youth. His bedroom window had opened up to it, so he'd read and dressed and slept to the sound of rushing water all his growing-up years. He'd ridden a raft down it, caught crawdads in it, and studied all the various plants and trees beside it. Along its banks, he'd become fascinated with sweet gum, tupelo, bald cypress, Spanish moss, prickly pear cactus, and all different species of pine. When the rain came, the creek would swell and spill, threatening to swamp the little house his family owned. Carlos had always been aware of the potential damage, and he was sensitive to his parents' stress, but he couldn't help but side with the creek. If it wanted to go for more, he was with it all the way.

In his mental visitations to this childhood sanctuary, Carlos would stretch himself out in the moss on the sunny side of the creek, with one leg dipped in the water and the rest of him comfortably sprawled. His eyes would be closed, his ears open, his mouth and nose filled with freshness. He could practically feel the cold water ebbing around his shin, and he imagined it seeping into him, traveling up through his body and into his head to cool his overheated brain.

He held this sensation as he consciously turned his cooled mind toward his current case. There was something that was bothering him about it; some sense that Lyn knew more than she'd revealed. He wondered if he'd be able to coax it from her, or hit upon it some other way. This is what he turned his mind to. Experience had taught Carlos a few things, and he knew that at the intersection of relaxation and concentration lay some of his most important breakthroughs. He headed there now, with his eyes still closed, purposely wading deeper into the waters.

 

Down the road at Tortillas, Rosa had been nervous about the man staying at the Comfort Inn. She'd spotted him the day before and hadn't had time to investigate who he might be, so she was left agitated by paranoid assumptions.

Ever since the incident with the chairs and the trucks full of brutal young men, Rosa had been fearful of further trouble. She worried that someone had put in a call to Immigration and that deportation was imminent.

She'd heard that the government had begun employing professional Latino men for immigration assignments, and she was now convinced that this explained the stranger's presence. He might look like her and speak her language, but he could be her worst enemy, sneaking up.

Juan was in the United States legally, but Rosa was not. Even being the mother of an American citizen couldn't change her status. Opening their restaurant had been a risk, but they'd put Juan's name on everything and hoped that positively contributing to the life of this small Mississippi town would grant them some amount of karmic amnesty. It felt more constructive and proactive than lying low and barely scraping by.

Still, Rosa was periodically terrorized by the idea that she might be forcibly separated from her husband and daughter. If she was found out and deported, she wasn't sure what they would do. They'd left Mexico for a fresh start and a better life, and she hated thinking she could be the reason they'd have to give it all up. But she also couldn't stand the notion of being separated from Juan and Penelope. Would she insist that they stay on without her? And if she did, would Juan agree to this arrangement? The possibility that he would made her prematurely angry with him. She recognized that this was a regrettable consequence of her paranoia, and a self-sabotaging one. Because the more short-tempered and unreasonably bitter she acted now, the more likely her husband would opt for the enforced separation rather than returning with her to a place they'd decided they didn't want to be. Unfortunately, the more she contemplated this likelihood, the more angry and bitter she became. And her bad mood was only worsened by her realization that if these were their last days together without her knowing it, she was wasting them on acrimony. Rosa had worked herself into an emotional sand trap.

To make matters worse, the baby had become increasingly colicky, keeping them up all night, almost every night. Rosa had tried everything she could think of, but nothing seemed to work. If something was really wrong, she wasn't sure what they were going to do. Rosa was wracked with worry, dangerously sleep-deprived, and generally all-around miserable.

When she had first come to Fayeville three years previous, people had been so much friendlier. They hadn't bent over backwards to make her feel welcome, but neither had they gone out of their way to try to make her leave. But attitudes had changed in the last few years. More and more of her fellow countryfolk had arrived, so perhaps the town had just reached some invisible tolerance threshold. Whatever the explanation, something basic had gone sour.

She tried to focus on her empanadas to give herself a break from her wretchedness. Empanadas were something she could handle. They took time and effort—particularly the secret-recipe, melt-in-your-mouth empanadas for which she was legendary—but she knew she could turn them out perfectly. As long as she had the ingredients and a working oven, she could coax the desired results. In Mexico, in Mississippi, at various roadside kitchens in between, Rosa had whipped up her empanadas in a variety of circumstances. And the results were always the same. People called her gifted, indispensable, a wizard. They considered themselves lucky to have been able to taste her masterpiece just once. This made her happy, it was true. But Rosa would give it all up in a moment if she could instead find as reliable a recipe for how to keep her family safe and whole.

When the bell on the front door jangled, Rosa peeked out between the slats of the screen that separated the kitchen from the main room, then gasped quietly and backed away.

It was the government immigration officer. He was coming for her after all.

“Anyone here?” he called.

Rosa weighed her options. She could scoot out the back door, but then the man would have the run of the place, and her empanadas would burn. Plus, she'd be giving him reason to suspect her. Better to act normal, charming, American.

“Be right with you!” she called back.

She held up a scrubbed pan to check her reflection, then smoothed her hair back and pinched her cheeks. She patted down her shirt and skirt, took a deep breath, and walked into the main room.

The man and his companion were still standing by the door, not fully committing to the inside space.

“You open for business?” the man asked.

Rosa smiled accommodatingly.

“Sure, what can I get for you?”

“
Que nos recomienda?
” he asked.

She hesitated for only a moment, then smiled.

“What do I recommend?” she replied in English.

She looked at the man until he nodded, determined to show that she needed to check the accuracy of her Spanish comprehension.

“It's all delicious,” she said. “I have empanadas fresh from the oven.”

“Perfect. And how about a Corona?”

Rosa had beer back in the fridge for her and Juan, but she wasn't legally allowed to sell it until Tortillas was granted its liquor license, which might never happen given the county's reluctance to “encourage debauchery,” as it had been put in a recent Fayeville City Council meeting.

“If I gave you one, it would have to be our secret,” she replied.

He looked confused, but the young woman with him smiled.

“Fayeville was a dry county till recently,” she explained to him. “Lots of places still can't serve alcohol.”

Rosa nodded. She'd made it clear that she was willing to provide though, partially because she wanted to gauge the man's openness to bending rules. She knew that she was risking the possibility that this was another test and that she should adhere as closely to the law as possible to deny him any reason to find fault, but she was beginning to hope that he wasn't there to bust her after all. She was gambling on his developing an affinity for her.