“I’m ready,” Blanca said. “I packed up my steamer and everything.”
“Inside,” Roberto said. He herded them back into the living room. “I got to think a minute.”
Wouldn’t it be funny, Dorothea thought, if I became someone else right now, if all of a sudden my heart stopped stamping, and I became cool and purposeful and threw away the message of the ghost. If I said, Roberto, take me with you. Maybe in the next instant. But instant followed instant, and she did not.
“Let’s go, if we’re going,” Bobbie said desperately. “Even if she didn’t say anything, even if that guy doesn’t know, we can’t stay around here forever! Somebody will come!”
“Leave him alone,” Blanca said. “Beto knows what to do. He knows we have to go. I’m going to get my things and put them in the truck. And I want to say goodbye to Ricky.”
Roberto said, “We’ll go. But if that guy really doesn’t know, if he doesn’t say anything, there’s no point tipping off the next one to come rolling up to the front door for whatever. We don’t want them poking around any sooner than they have to. We’ll take her truck, so they’ll see it’s gone and they’ll think she’s down in town or something and they’ll just take off again. But we got to get that damn dog off that hillside. Anybody can see it from the front yard.”
Bobbie protested, “Why waste time on that? They could be here any minute —”
“Keep your shirt on, we’re going. It’ll take a minute to pack up the truck anyhow. We should have some water and food and stuff with us. Then we’re going to lock Blanca up with her precious Englishman in there so she can’t hassle us, and we’re going to get out of here — with one of the others in the truck with us for insurance. There’s room for three up front.”
Dorothea stood rigid. She could not speak.
Bobbie licked his lips, looking dismayed. “Who’re we going to take?”
“I don’t know.” Roberto looked at Dorothea, hard-eyed. “One of the girls, they won’t be hard to handle.”
“Beto, we’re going to have enough on our hands without somebody else in the truck,” Bobbie said.
“You think I’m just going to head out with the two of us and no protection? Anybody knows better than that, man. We’ll take somebody. But first you go get that dog and toss it down in the arroyo.”
“Not me,” Bobbie muttered. “I don’t want to touch it.”
Roberto said, “Well, I’m sure not going to do it.” Then he grinned. “I know,” he said. “Go get old Alex to do it. He’s been dying to help us out all along, right? Here’s something for him to do.”
Bobbie held the twenty-two on Alex, who trudged up the hill ahead of him carrying a coil of rusty wire to drag the dog with. When Bobbie looked back over his shoulder, he could see Roberto standing down in the back patio outside the kitchen, shotgun in his hands, watching.
Alex was still crying. Roberto had let him think they were taking him out to hang him with the wire. As soon as they were out of earshot Bobbie had told Alex it was only the dog’s carcass they meant to move, but the guy couldn’t seem to quit crying. It was embarrassing.
“Let’s go, man, all you got to do is move the dog,” Bobbie said again. He was anxious to get it over. Any minute the cops could be swarming all over the place. How could that guy not have seen the dog, how could he not have guessed something was wrong?
Alex moaned and rubbed his eyes, stumbling as he walked.
Bobbie could smell the dog already. Poor dog, nothing but bug food now, he thought. His stomach squirmed. He looked back down at Roberto, wishing they were further away from him. He could still see Roberto’s mean face. Roberto yelled something.
“Do it,” Bobbie urged.
“Well, how?”
“Make a noose, you know, twist the wire. You can slip that over his head and, like, drag him.”
Alex looked like he might throw up. He rubbed his palms on his jeans.
“Come on,” Bobbie said. He stared around, trying to see if there were any cops sneaking through the piñons.
Alex knelt down and started working on the wire. Then he jabbed at Mars with a chunk of wood, levering the head up so he could slip the noose over it.
Bobbie watched out of the corners of his eyes, thinking about that time he found a dead goat in a neighbor’s yard. That was on Pinto Street, when he’d still been real little and hadn’t known any better than to go poking at the dead thing. All he remembered clearly was how stiff and heavy it had seemed, like a toy made with badly cured leather and stuffed with horse-hair.
The dog’s head lolled against the stick, dusty-eyed, gaping. That’s how you look when you’re dead.
Alex pulled at the wire. It tightened around the dog’s neck. His uncle had once told him how in the old days they had to figure how much a man weighed before they hanged him because the force of too long a drop for his weight would jerk his head right off his body.
The dog’s corpse moved like something in a bad dream. There was a pinkish, raggedy hole in its side with white splinters sticking out. Noticing that, he nearly spewed.
He could see Roberto watching them from the patio. Funny how the house from here was just some old building, unrelated to the prison of the studio, which was all Alex really knew of it — that and the kitchen.
I’m not going back in there, he thought. Next time it could really be me, not a dead dog, with wire around my neck.
“Where’m I supposed to put this?” he said.
“Beto says just haul it down into the arroyo there,” Bobbie said.
Alex wrapped the hem of his shirt around his hands and laid hold of the wire, gathering his legs under him like he meant to stand up and start dragging the dog.
Roberto had to be a good shot or very lucky to have hit the dog from down there with just the patio floodlight to see by. Maybe good and lucky both.
I can’t believe I’m going to do this, he thought, feeling a muscle twitching in his thigh. What if it’s too heavy? Down below he saw Roberto kicking at the base of one of the patio benches, bored, only looking up the hillside now and again.
Alex surged up out of his crouch, heaving on the wire with both hands as hard as he could. For a second, when he hit the weight on the end of it, he thought, it’s not going to work, the head will come off —
The round-bellied carcass came up and up and arced clumsily through the air straight at Bobbie. Bobbie threw up the deer rifle cross-wise in both hands to fend the thing off, his mouth wide with revulsion. The corpse struck him and sent him staggering backward down the slope.
Alex sprinted for the skyline.
Dorothea stood by the living room window, looking out. Soon she could celebrate a lucky escape with Ricky while Joyce or Cindy or Sarah or even Ellie jounced along in the truck between the two Cantu boys, trembling with fear. Right and proper, according to the judge. Think of it this way: you may not be more worthy of survival than any of them, but are you less so? That’s what the judge would say. He warned you. Save your life; save your talents; take no risk. Listen to the judge; he knows. But Heavens, how she hated him. Without him, perhaps she would have had the courage to break out of this rictus of fear.
It’s all going wrong. It will never be right again. Like a great black muffled bell, the future tolled in her mind: an endless round of self-loathing and self-justification after the word came back, this child or that one got killed or wounded or psychologically maimed, even, in her place. And there was not a thing she could do to prevent it, because the judge had spoken to her animal core that did not want to be hurt, let alone die. The judge had told her what she wanted to hear.
Something moved on the patio, catching her eye: Roberto, staring up the hillside, flinging the shotgun up to fire.
“The fucker’s getting away!” he screamed.
On the hillside, Mars’s carcass slid sideways into a rock. Bobbie scrambled for the rifle he had dropped. Alex lunged toward the crest of the hill. Astonished, Dorothea saw Alex’s angular shoul
ders and elbows and big, driving feet all thrusting desperately for safety over the skyline.
Now. This moment.
Roberto’s mouth twisted into a tiger snarl. He hunched over the gunsight, and the muzzle tracked Alex’s pounding progress up the hill. The hammers cocked with a fat, rich sound. Alex seemed to run so slowly.
How simple. There was no question after all. We do not permit children to murder children. Dorothea moved.
A howl of protest filled her mind, and something plucked violently at her left hand as she dashed outside. She threw herself across the patio and upon Roberto as if smothering a live grenade. Thunder enveloped her and something hard hit her a swift double wallop in the side and flung her down.
A weight stamped down on the bricks, right next to her face: Roberto’s heavy boot as he arched above her with the empty gun swinging down to brain her where she lay. She could not hear his voice, but she could see him: a child bringing death.
The stock of the shotgun crashed down near enough to fill her nostrils with brick-dust, and then down again on the other side. Roberto grunted with the furious effort of his blows. Yet she was still alive, unable to draw breath to laugh with at the absurdity of it. The stock of the shotgun split with a sharp sound, and Roberto bellowed something in Spanish and slammed the gun like a baseball bat against the trunk of the big cottonwood. The wrecked gun flew out of his hands and clattered onto the table, the bench, the flagstones.
Up on the hill Bobbie shouted, “Should I follow him?”
“What the fuck for, you dumb asshole?” Roberto howled back, his hands clenched together. “He’s gone, that’s all, you retard, you let him go!”
Dorothea could not breathe. Not shot, she was sure — the recoil, of course. The stock had kicked her a good one. Can’t breathe. Does Ricky feel anything like this? Or Blanca, having an attack? Jesus.
She fell thankfully into a darkness in which she did not need to breathe.
Great, man, Roberto mourned, now you busted the shotgun. All you got left is that rifle and the pistol Great-uncle Tilo left you. Shit. Wonderful. Better get going and run away because you got no fire-power to speak of, and they’re going to come and get you for sure.
Here came Bobbie, that stupid cunt. If he tripped carrying the twenty-two like that he might blow his own head off, with luck. Running down the hill and whining like usual: “Beto, we got to go right away, let’s get out of here quick!”
Roberto’s hands still stung from the impact of smashing the shotgun. He tucked them into his armpits and hugged himself with his arms. He didn’t want Bobbie to see him cry. Not because of his hands hurting, either. It was frustration, that was all. And there was Blanca at the door, staring out with that goddamn curiosity of hers about things that were none of her business. What would she know about his frustrations? She’d just see her brother crying, that’s all, and she’d be scared, and what good would that do?
I could have killed that kid, he thought. Maybe I’ve killed the old lady. Maybe she’s dead from the recoil. Some witch. Why is the whole world such a bunch of hopeless wimps?
“I’m going to go load the truck,” Bobbie dithered. “I’ll come get you when I’ve checked it out, all right?”
He didn’t wait for an answer. He went. Speaking of wimps. And I was thinking I wasn’t too bad off, having him with me. Jesus, how desperate can you get? This is all Bobbie’s fault.
Roberto looked at his sister. “Get back inside. Tell your English guy Mrs. Howard’s okay, right? He must have heard the shooting. He’ll be worried, won’t he? Well, go tell him!”
The old lady wasn’t dead. She looked up at him and groaned. Just an old lady with a couple of busted ribs, man, you couldn’t do that to a bruja. No bruja would do what she did, either, jumping a guy with a gun.
“Shit,” he said, dabbing at his nose with his cuff. Never been so damn mad. Would have shot that dude right in the back, man, and he deserved it, the sneak. If I could have even hit him at that distance. He was pissed off to have lost the chance, but it was funny how now he was relieved, too. So much, his legs sort of gave out. He squatted down on his haunches.
“Can you sit up?” he said.
She was just an old lady, like his aunt Lucy or his aunt Marguerite, for cripe’s sake. He couldn’t leave her laying there on the bricks, with the stars on them where the shotgun-stock had come bashing down. Whoo, man. What a dumb thing to do! But he was so mad, it was all so unfair — he was still mad, he was still busting with tears, like a baby, and he wasn’t even sure why.
Funny, touching her finally. Like after a wedding or something and all the old aunts and people like that hugged you and patted your back. Not like grabbing a chick, none of that at all. And he wasn’t scared to touch her either, like he had been before when he thought she was a witch.
He reached down and took hold of her arms, thin arms under the flannel sleeve, but not flabby. It was probably good exercise, gluing things to that rock out there, but don’t think about that, she might pick up on what you did there right out of your head, the way people do sometimes even if they’re not witches.
He helped her sit up. She grabbed his wrist a moment, gasping, before she would let him release her to lean back against the trunk of the cottonwood with its fresh scar where the shotgun had hit it.
“God damn it,” she whispered.
He liked that.
“Better go,” she gasped.
And suddenly he just boiled over, he leaped up and started screaming and stomping around, just spewing it all out: “Why the Hell should I? Everybody keeps telling me to get out of here, and I’m not going to. I live here, this is my place, why should I run away? I can’t just run away, God damn it! That’s my street and my friends and who’s going to help my Mom out? She’s a widow, and Great-uncle Tilo’s a lush, and all my friends are down there; who the Hell’s going to be my friends in Canada, for Christ’s sake? I don’t have friends in Canada! I’d never have friends in Canada! I can’t just drive away with that shivering little cunt Bobbie. Jesus, I’d be better off with that gray dog of yours, it’s got more sense! Bobbie and some weepy Anglo girl whining and moaning the whole way and who knows what she’ll do soon as you turn your back — fuck that! What would happen to Blanca? You tell me that. What would happen? You can stop telling me to run away, everybody can just quit that. I’m not going.”
His face was all wet, and his voice kept cracking like a kid’s. He steadied himself against the redwood table and tried to take deep breaths.
“Guns,” she whispered. “You only have — two guns — people will get — killed and — you’ll still lose out — in the end. You can’t —”
“I just got through telling you not to tell me what to do! Jesus, don’t you listen? What you want me to do now, give myself up like some retard in a movie? Lady, they’d cream me, there wouldn’t be enough left to fill a coffin! You think I’m going to let them get their hands on me?”
“Maybe not if — they know somebody’s — watching,” she said. “Keeping track. Somebody famous, Beto. Got this damned importance — never wanted it — useful now. Use it. Good for something.”
He rushed on, borne along on his own rage and despair. “I’d rather — I’d rather load up the truck with the ammunition that’s left and drive right into the cops and shoot into the bullets and blow us all sky high, like those guys in Lebanon did to those Marines. I’ll do that before I’ll run away to goddamn Canada or LA or Mexico — or any place!”
“Don’t fight them,” she said in that same painful gasp. “Beto. I’ll speak — for you. Help the best I — can. Could be a lot. Try me.”
He stopped raging. She meant it, he could tell. And he already knew how tough she was, how she could damn well get what she went after. If she wanted to help him, shit, she could probably really help. She was what she said, a famous artist; he had seen the proof himself. Seen it and tried to trash it, man. What a fool he was. Dancing in the moonlight, smashing his chance to come out of t
his alive and get back home where he belonged.
“You won’t want to help,” he said, hunkering down again to her level but unable to look her in the eye. “You’ll want me dead more than anybody else will.”
“Oh, Beto,” she said. He saw her face go all crimped with pain and her eyes shining out so bright at him, waiting for it; she knew, all right. “Beto, what did you do?”
“I just saw it there,” he said sullenly, “and I couldn’t help it. I had to do something. So I did. You could fix it. All you got to do is glue some things over where I busted it and nobody would know the difference.”
He couldn’t stand it, the look she gave him. He really couldn’t stand it.
“It’s not my fault,” he stormed, “I didn’t ask to get chased up here by the cops! I didn’t ask for all this trouble!”
She kind of caved in right in front of him, going so slack against the tree-trunk that he was afraid she would die right there, as if he had killed her, not with the shotgun but with the rock he’d used to bash up the wall last night in the moonlight.
“Hey, I’m sorry,” he said, squatting down again anxiously. “I mean, I know it must have taken a long time to make that thing. You can see it was a lot of work.”
She seemed to come back from someplace way deep inside herself where she’d gone to cry privately about the ruined work. She looked at him with this very calm, very tired look and went right on as if he hadn’t said anything about that.
“Listen,” she said. “Get the phone. I’ll call — Frank at the hospice — he can bring Johnny Sanchez — out with him. Johnny’s — a policeman, but — calm by nature. Won’t panic, won’t do — stupid things — helicopters and sharpshooters — none of that. Good chance, if you — stay close to me — with the others. No guns. With the class. Can you try?”
Wow, was he tired all of a sudden. He couldn’t tell what was going on any more. Well, maybe what, but not why. He sat down on the flagstones. “Thanks for offering, I guess, but I think it’s more likely they’ll just kill me, you know? Because of the cop that got shot in the riot, and Mr. Escobar being dead and all.”