Last Summer of the Death Warriors

  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.
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  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.

  “Don’t be silly. Let Juan take you in the wheelchair. We just built a new ramp up to the back door.”

  Pancho expected D.Q. to question why they built a new ramp when he was only going to be there two weeks, but D.Q. didn’t say anything. He waited for Juan to bring the wheelchair. “Hello, Juan,” D.Q. said as he sat down.

  “Hello, Señor Daniel,” Juan answered with a slight bow of his white head.

  “This is Pancho.” D.Q. pointed at Pancho.

  Juan gave Pancho a smile and Pancho nodded back. There were deep creases at the edges of Juan’s eyes, probably from having to smile all the time, Pancho thought.

  Pancho turned around to get his backpack. “Leave your things in the car,” Helen said. “Juan will take them to your rooms later.” Pancho grabbed the pack anyway. He wasn’t going to let the revolver out of his grasp.

  “Rooms?” D.Q. asked. “What rooms?” He stopped the wheelchair by grabbing the edge of the wheels.

  “Your room, the one you always stay in,” Helen answered.

  “And Pancho?”

  “I thought he’d be more comfortable with Juan.”

  “Oh, Helen!” D.Q. was shaking his head in disbelief. “What a piece of work you are.”

  “Daniel—” She stopped herself. “Please don’t talk to me that way.”

  They all stood in the space between the garage and the side of the house. D.Q.’s knuckles were red from gripping the wheels of his chair. Juan was smiling like an idiot. In the distance, Pancho could see a brown horse trotting around the boundaries of a corral, looking for the gate.

  “Pancho is staying with me.” The veins in D.Q.’s neck were sky blue and bulging.

  Helen’s face was red. “In your room?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ve made plans for a night nurse to come in. I don’t think…”

  D.Q. grabbed the sides of his head. It looked as if he were trying to keep his skull from exploding. “Helen. I don’t need a…night nurse. I…need…Pancho. That’s…why…he’s here.”

  Pancho looked at D.Q., surprised. He remembered what Marisol’s brother had said about D.Q. having his own servant.

  The wheelchair moved forward, catching Juan off guard.

  “There’s only one bed in there,” Helen said behind them. D.Q. wasn’t paying any attention to her. She turned to Pancho. “I just thought you’d be more comfortable in Juan’s apartment. The apartment has two bedrooms. You’d eat with us, of course. But you could also cook in your own kitchen if you wish. Or eat Juan’s cooking, which is out of this world. You guys can watch the Spanish channels. Wouldn’t you be more comfortable with Juan?”

  “Could be,” Pancho said, still thinking about D.Q.’s words.

  They went up the ramp at the back of the house. D.Q. motioned for Juan to stop at the top. The far boundary of the property seemed to be the same place where a rocky formation began its slow transformation into hills and then mountains. Close to the house, there was a swimming pool in the shape of an S. A red barn stood next to the corral and now Pancho saw two more horses. They looked older and more subdued than the horse that pranced round and round the corral. “That’s Caramelo,” Juan said, pointing at the restless horse.

  “Isn’t he beautiful?” Helen asked D.Q. She was beginning to calm down. “This will be so good for you. Look over there.” She pointed at a grove of piñon pines halfway down the property. “Stu had a contractor build you a screened-in porch in the shade of the trees. We ran electricity out to it and installed a hammock, because I know how much you like hammocks. There’s even a bathroom. You can sit out there and breathe in all that fresh air.”

  “While I go to the bathroom?”

  “I didn’t mean that.” She tried to smile.

  “It’s cold out here, isn’t it?” D.Q. crossed his arms.

  Helen and Pancho looked at each other. They were in the shade of the house, but it was a warm eighty-degree day. Helen opened the screen door, and Juan pushed D.Q. inside.

  They moved through the kitchen with its dozens of copper pots and pans hanging from a structure in the middle of the ceiling. They passed a room with a small table for four, and then another room with a table long enough to seat sixteen. Then they were in a long hallway with rooms on both sides. At the end of the hallway, there was a wheelchair on a steel platform. The platform was connected to a steel tower that rose to the top of the stairs.

  “It’s an elevator, basically, with a special battery-operated wheelchair that can be detached. We had this installed so you wouldn’t have to climb the stairs,” Helen announced. “Isn’t it nifty?”

  “Nifty,” D.Q. said, unimpressed. He transferred himself to the motorized wheelchair. Helen buckled a seat belt around his waist and pushed a green button. D.Q. began a slow ascent.

  Pancho tried to carry the wheelchair upstairs, but Juan didn’t let him. “No worry. I get it,” Juan said. He had a heavy Mexican accent. He was an old man, Pancho noticed, much older than his father. His dark brown arms were thin and sinewy, like the roots of pecan trees. Juan folded the wheelchair and placed it underneath the stairs, out of view.

  “He won’t need that anymore,” Helen said.

  Helen, Pancho, and Juan climbed the stairs. They reached the top at the same time as D.Q. Helen walked up to the wheelchair and detached it from the platform. Then she moved a black lever on the right armrest. The chair rolled forward and hummed. “What do you think?”

  She had thought of everything. Pancho was sure that D.Q. was thinking what he was thinking: There was no way he was getting out of there in two weeks. But D.Q.’s face was expressionless. “Try it,” Helen urged. “Juan, help him.” Juan seemed to jump every time Helen called his name. Whether he jumped with fear or eagerness to please, or both, Pancho didn’t know.

  “I can do it.” D.Q. put out his hand to stop Juan. “I’m not an invalid yet.” D.Q. pushed the black lever, and the chair zipped forward, the wheels leaving a trail in the lush green rug. D.Q. went down the hall, tried to turn left, and crashed into a corner. “Oops,” he said. “This isn’t as easy as it looks.” He set the wheelchair in reverse, straightened out, and turned the corner. Helen touched the scratch on the flowered wallpaper as she walked by.

  D.Q.’s room was blue: blue curtains, blue bedspread, blue walls. Only the carpet was white. The bed was bigger than any bed Pancho had ever seen. On the w
all in front of the bed hung a flatscreen television. D.Q. went immediately to the window and opened the curtains. Pancho knew that D.Q. liked daylight. At Casa Esperanza, D.Q. never closed the curtains during the day, or at night for that matter. D.Q. turned the wheelchair around and surveyed the room. Pancho looked out for the mountains, but all he could see were other large houses and the interstate highway in the distance.

  “We can put Pancho’s bed over there.” D.Q. pointed at a desk with a computer. “We can move the desk under the TV.”

  “You’re going to be so crowded here.”

  D.Q. ignored her. “Juan, is there a bed for Pancho that you can move in here?”

  Juan was standing by himself out in the hall. He looked at Helen and waited for her to nod before he spoke. “I can bring cot that folds. It has good mattress. Thick mattress. I get it?”

  “Go ahead,” Helen said, giving up. “There are some sheets in the closet of the guest room next door.”

  Pancho put the backpack on D.Q.’s bed. “I’ll help with the bed.”

  “Is okay,” Juan said. “It has wheels.”

  “Well, I guess I’ll let you boys get settled. Juan will bring your bags. Is there anything you’d like to do?”

  “Sleep,” D.Q. answered.

  “Yes. Rest for a little while. We’ll have lunch around noon. Then maybe…well, we can talk later, after you rest.” She looked at Pancho, inquiring with her eyes what he was going to do.

  “I’ll go take a look at that horse.” It was the first thing that came to his mind.

  “Help me get in bed,” D.Q. said to him. “I’ll see you in a while, Helen.”

  “Should I ask Juan to wait to put the bed in until after your nap?”

  “No, he can bring it right in.”

  She seemed at a loss as to what to do or say next. “I’m so very happy you’re here,” she said.

  “I know,” D.Q. said softly. “I’m glad you’re happy, Helen.” It sounded to Pancho as if he meant it.

  “Until later, then.”

  Pancho exhaled loudly as soon as she left the room. D.Q. said, “She sure is trying, isn’t she?”