Fourteeners

by Sarah Latchaw

  “How much of it did you drink?”

  He groaned and fell back into his pillow. “Just a little. It turned my stomach and I wretched it up.”

  “Are you telling me the truth? Because if you drank more and it’s mixed with your meds, we could have a serious problem.”

  “I suppose there’s no way to prove it, is there? You’ll have to trust me.” I returned to the kitchen, speechless.

  Was it possible to feel such relief and, at the same time, such heartbreak? I held the bottle up to the ceiling light. The iris of the wine glowed dark red, nearly three-fourths full. I watched the burgundy liquid gush out of the bottle like blood from a vein and splash down the drain, its deeply painful color blurring through the mess in my eyes. He hadn’t even tried to hide it. Did he care so little? So much? Was he so defeated? Or maybe he was asking for help?

  Another thought crawled in: What if we’d had an infant in our home? A toddler? An eight-year-old? Would I have sent him to Sofia and Alonso while I cared for my husband? Or perhaps I would have sent Samuel to his parents’ home. I’d have been in way over my head.

  Perhaps it’s for the best, this thought whispered. I shrugged it off, a sweater that was too warm.

  By the time the port bottle was emptied of every last drop, I’d made a decision.

  In the morning, I would go to his parents for help.

  As I held the receiver, I played out different conversations in my mind:

  Alonso, Samuel’s depressed again.

  How long? How bad?

  It’s really bad this time. He drank again, kind of.

  Ay Dios mío, his medication. He needs to be in the hospital...

  No. Take two…

  Alonso, Samuel’s had a rough time, ever since he came back from Mexico—

  Why on earth was he in Mexico? Nobody mentioned to us he’d be out of the country...

  No. Take three…

  Alonso, Samuel is depressed because his secret illegitimate half-sister needs help and even Interpol can’t track her down. So he’s lying on the couch in four days’ worth of stale sweat and filth, contemplating whether he’s going to renew his acquaintance with alcohol.

  Silence...

  It had potential.

  As it turned out, I didn’t get a chance to make that phone call.

  Early the next morning, a rapid pounding sent us tumbling from our bed in a heap of blankets. I glanced at the alarm clock: five-fifty a.m. I hadn’t slept much, instead holding vigil while Samuel tossed and turned, watching for any breathing difficulties or convulsions.

  Sam jerked on his pants and peered through the peephole, as if he didn’t already know who it was by the trills and tildes fired at our door. Perhaps he was taking stock of Alonso’s fury before he admitted the Spanish cyclone. I couldn’t make out his words until Samuel opened the door, and it all became clear. My mind rushed to translate.

  “A sister!? Why in God’s name did you not tell us this woman in Tamaulipas you befriended is our niece?”

  “I had my reasons.” Samuel shot me a look, but I wasn’t the droid he was looking for.

  “They had better be good reasons.”

  “My reasons are my own. Perhaps you could afford me a modicum of trust?”

  Alonso clutched Samuel’s bare arm and steered him into our living room, as if he were a naughty five-year-old who’d just kicked the cat. Kudos to Samuel for not shaking him off, though he was entirely capable.

  “I’ll trust you when you can prove to me you aren’t ruled by your moods and whims!”

  I almost went to bat for Samuel, but Sofia beat me to the swing. “Alonso, that is entirely unfair. You know he has put forth great—”

  “He hid our niece from us!”

  “He said he had his reasons.”

  “What if she needed us? The Valdez boy says she’s in trouble.” Oh, Santiago was a dead man.

  Samuel’s neck reddened and his eyes flared. Now it was game on. He stepped right up to his father, emphasizing the full six inches he had on Alonso. “Don’t you have any faith in me, Papá?” he said in Spanish. “Do you believe I am a fool? Your own mother kept the girl a secret, took it to her death. Your own family turned her away.”

  Alonso grasped the back of his son’s neck and pressed their foreheads together. “Mijo, do you honestly believe I would have done the same? You of all people should know better.”

  “Because you adopted me?”

  “Because you are my child! Because I have given you my life, fully and freely!”

  Samuel bit his lip and stepped down. Tears shone in his eyes. One sob, two. Alonso yanked him into a hug. Everything in me wanted to go to my husband, but in this moment, he was a son, first. I quietly stepped onto the patio and allowed Samuel time with his parents.

  The sun was now a brilliant orange in the eastern horizon. I trailed my finger through the dew on the railing, the patio chairs, and waited with a strange detachment for the drama to unfold, relieved, for once, not to be in the middle. My phone buzzed in my sweater pocket. I glanced at the caller and grimaced. Santiago.

  “Samuel’s going to murder you. Couldn’t you have waited until daylight?”

  “I’m guiding a group of German tourists into the National Park this morning, and I wanted to call before my signal got spotty. Listen, Kaye. I know this has caused an all-out-smack-down in your family, but it had to be done. I asked myself, ‘what would Angel do?’ He’d do the right thing. And it wasn’t right, the Cabrals not knowing they have a niece.”

  My thoughts exactly. “I should have said something sooner. I’m sorry, Santiago.”

  “Nah, you’re in a rough place. Consider this a late Christmas present.”

  I flinched as the raised voices of Samuel and his father thundered inside our apartment.

  Sofia slipped through the screen door. I ended the call.

  “Walk with me?” she said.

  I nodded and yanked on my ecosneaks. We clomped down the outside stairs and turned north, toward Pearl Street. Summer air hung heavy this morning, unusual for Colorado’s arid climate, but the sun would soon dry up any lingering humidity. It promised to be a hot one. Pearl Street was quiet, save for a handful of bakeries and coffee shops open to early-birds. Sofia twisted her long, heavy hair over her shoulder. They had left home in such a rush, she hadn’t taken the time to braid it.

  “How long has Samuel been this bad?”

  I sighed. “A couple of weeks, though it’s crept up for a while. Ever since...” I bit my tongue, but Sofia knew.

  “Ever since you argued about children.”

  I rushed to explain. “I love your son, Sofia. I’m in this with him. And I knew when we married that children might not happen.”

  “Oh mija, your mouth says one thing but the pain in your eyes says another. You can be honest with me.”

  The dam broke one time more than I cared to count. “I brought this episode on with the way I harped at him about kids. I knew. I knew it would distress him, but I did it anyway.”

  “You are my whirlwind child,” Sofia smiled. “It would have been wrong for you to lock up all of this feeling, to hide it away from your husband. You must be real with each other. As for causing him stress...” Her face filled with a world of worry. “I believe this horrific web in which he’s ensnared has placed a lifetime’s worth of stress on his shoulders. The Zacatón Cartel.” She shook her head. “My poor, confused, heroic boy. Always charging in on his white horse to right wrongs, always shielding those he loves. A sister! I wish he had told us.”

  “He was scared, Sofia. He didn’t want to bring it to your doorstep.”

  “Oh, I know. Only three weeks ago, another fifteen bodies were dumped on the highway north of Ciudad Victoria, their heads, hands and feet removed so they couldn’t be identified. Four were children.” She crossed herself. “I tell mi familia, every time I speak with them, to be vigilant. The people are sick of it. Lucia told me about the hacker group...Incognito?”

 
“Unknown.”

  “Yes, that’s it. There is a branch in Ciudad Victoria that publishes addresses and photos of homes and businesses belonging to the cartel, to drive them out of our city. Just last week, they released information that caused near riots around these Zacatón places, the people hate them so much. Lucia tried to google it, but you have to know how to access the Dark Web.”

  “Listen to you, you techie.”

  Sofia shrugged. “Now tell me more about last night.”

  So I did, starting with the open bottle of wine and then the depression.

  “What do I do now? I’ve watched his meds, got him to the doctor, even took him out for his birthday.”

  Sofia stopped beside a bed of day lilies and stooped over to finger one of the delicate petals. She always sought out flowers. “He needs work away from his laptop. Something to get him outside, into the air. Manual labor. Not a cure, I know…but it may help him to ‘switch frequencies,’ so to speak.” Her eyes shown with an idea. “What is your mother typically doing this time of year?”

  Oh, Sofia was a genius. “Her early root vegetables—beets, radishes, carrots—might be ready for harvest. English peas and snap peas will need to be picked soon. Otherwise, lots of watering and weeding the other plants.” I pictured my mother in her tattered straw hat and gardening gloves browned by the dirt. Last time I saw her, she was up a ladder replacing glass panes on the roof of her greenhouse. “Greens like kale, spinach, and arugula will be in the greenhouse. Planting squash maybe. I think she’ll have a couple of lambs by now, and chickens every day.”

  “Could she use a farmhand?”

  “Oh, I think she could definitely use the help.”

  Sofia winked. “I wonder what sort of fastidious, detail-oriented, hardworking person we could find to assist her?”

  Chapter 14

  Gaston

  Named after a French mountain guide, this is a climbing hold that looks as if one is using their hands to pry open elevator doors.

  I yelped as some wild animal streaked from my mom’s living room and through the kitchen, leaving a trail of bleats behind. An old cloth was wrapped and safety pinned around its rump. Its stump tail wagged through a round hole cut in the cloth. I stumbled into a rack filled with blue, green, and orange glass bottles and they rattled, scattering rainbows throughout the kitchen.

  “Cheese and crackers, Mom! Why is there a diaper on that lamb?”

  Mom looked at me as if I were crazy. “You think I’m going to let a lamb take a big ol’ dump on my carpet?”

  “Why is there a lamb in the house to begin with?”

  “Her name is Loppy.” The lamb butted her head against Mom’s leg, and she scratched it as if it were a cat. “Her momma rejected her, so I’ve been bottle feeding.”

  “Can’t she stay outside?”

  “Nah, still too cold at night. She sleeps in a laundry basket by my bed. She’s a sweet, playful thing, but she chewed the heck out of the furniture I got from your Gran.”

  Not a big loss. If not for its sentimental value, that old plaid couch would have been retired with 8-tracks. (Although, I’m not sure Mom had retired those, either.)

  Loppy bleated again and nudged my mother, then moved on to my shoes. She sniffed the Tevas, sucked one of the shoestrings into her mouth and chewed.

  I dodged Loppy’s chompers. She followed me across the kitchen, into the living room. I tried to hide my feet behind the table, but she pushed past the table legs and lapped happily at my favorite climbing shoes.

  “Aspen! Don’t let her eat it, it’ll make her sick.”

  “Kinda don’t have a choice here.” I jerked the shoes off my feet and shoved them in the cabinet under the sink. Loppy dived for the shoes and ran smack into the cabinet with a surprised “maaa!” I chuckled. “That’ll teach you, you cute little garbage disposal.”

  “Might have to go to the pet store and buy a few toys.”

  I smiled knowingly. There was a distinct possibility Loppy might not ever be put in the sheep pen. “Hey, is Samuel out back?”

  “He’s in one of the west gardens with the migrants digging weeds out of the beet rows. Man’s a hard worker, does good, too.”

  “Is he okay?”

  Mom nodded, understanding what I meant. “We spent most of the day in the back field thinning out those damned prairie dog colonies with my twenty-two. Does wonders for dark moods.”

  “Murderers.”

  She snorted. “Wreak havoc on the land. They signed their own death warrant when they collapsed my fence line with their burrowing.”

  “Hey.” I touched my mother’s hand, rough and cracked as I always remembered it to be. “Thanks, Mom. I know I don’t say it often enough, but I’m grateful.”

  She looked away, embarrassed. “I know I’m not a normal kind of mother, but I do try, Aspen Kaye, in my way. Now get some fresh air with my new farm hand.”

  I grabbed my Tevas from beneath the sink and high-tailed it out the door before Loppy nipped my ankles.

  “Don’t let that lamb out!” Mom called, just as I closed the screen door to Loppy’s bleats.

  The mosquitoes were visible clouds of annoyance, this close to the St. Vrain. The combo of water and my mother’s delicious gardens made her farm a blood-sucker breeding ground. I grabbed the insect repellent from her work shed and sprayed myself down, slipped into one of her old flannels, and hopped onto her four-wheeler.

  Gravel spit behind the tires when I accidentally peeled out (I hadn’t driven the old thing in ages), but I found my bearings and floored it once I reached open field. Wind beat against my face and water streamed from my eyes. I swerved around a low-hanging tree branch, just in time. Gravel gave way to two tire tracks, and soon I bumped and thumped through waist high pasture until I reached her back gardens. I use the term ‘garden’ loosely. These things weren’t your neighbor’s five rows of beans and tomato plants. This two-acre stretch of baby green tops was her livelihood. Nurturing fragile plants from seedlings, watering and weeding round the clock as they unfurled their leaves and stretched their stalks, picking their fruits—these were her babies. As a child, I’d hated weeding and bitterly complained about how sunburned my neck was, how my back hurt. She’d get a good hour’s work out of me and send me off to play under the auspices of chasing rabbits from her vegetables.

  I heard the laughter of the seasonal workers. They were at the far end of a row of young turnips whose tops were barely distinguishable from weeds. A trail of uprooted thistles and tall grass marked their paths. I grabbed garden gloves from the ATV compartment and knelt in the dirt on the other side of Sam’s row.

  “Hey, firecracker. Your mom put you to work, too?” He smiled softly and reached up, untangling something from my curls. He held up a grass tassel for me to see.

  I returned his smile. “She sent me to make sure you weren’t yanking up the root vegetables with the interlopers. I can’t believe how quickly they took over, it looks like she just weeded a week ago.”

  “She hired a couple of high school students to work weekends. I heard all about how kids these days can’t tell a radish from a carrot, because any vegetable they eat comes canned and smothered in cheese.”

  “The smothered in cheese bit doesn’t sound so bad,” I laughed. “Mom used to go to Denver and talk to classes about responsible agriculture. One of the kids actually told her that farms would be obsolete in five years, because most people shopped at grocery stores. That Mom didn’t chuck a big fat textbook at the kid’s head is pure luck.”

  “Given the way she lit into me for offering to buy a bottle of Round-up, I’d say it’s a miracle of God.”

  “I’d say it’s a miracle of God that you didn’t end up in a pile with those dead prairie dogs. Don’t you know that Round-Up is to organic farmers what cliff notes are to Lit professors?”

  Joy leapt in my heart as I saw laughter in his eyes, his mouth, his body. Sunlight beat down upon his face and red streaked his skin, revealing the places h
e skimped on sunscreen. The burns would hurt if he didn’t put on lotion soon. I brushed dirt from his forehead. He caught my hand. Gently pushing the glove up, he lowered his head and kissed my wrist, ever so softly.

  “Thank you, Kaye. Somehow, you always know just what I need.”

  “I’d love to take credit, but it was your mother’s idea. Look, I know the sadness and the anxiety is still in there…”

  “A healthy outlet is never a bad thing. But you didn’t have to drive all the way out to Lyons every day after work, just to keep me company.”

  “I like keeping you company.”

  “Come here.” He helped me step over the garden row, led me away from the field and the other workers. Then he pulled me into his arms. Fresh earth, grass, and sweat filled my nostrils as I breathed. His muscles bunched and tensed under my embrace. He’d pushed them hard today. “This week out in the air, just me, the ground, and the things that grow? It lends honesty. Do you understand?”

  “Yeah. It cuts through all the world’s crap.”

  Samuel chuckled. “Exactly. Why do I hide so many things? Why do I let myself be swept up in wickedness?”

  “‘Wicked’ is a strong word.”

  “Oh mi vida, there are wicked people in this world. Here’s a lesson in root words from a writer: ‘wicked’ comes from ‘wick.’ In other words, ‘twisted.’ Wicker furniture, a candle wick. All twisted. And when a person twists something out of its natural state—the truth, for example— then they are wicked. I’m afraid I’m as wicked as the next person.”

  “If that’s the case, anyone who’s ever lied is wicked.”

  “Hmmm, I think it’s more a state of being. A habitual liar, if you will.”

  “Are you a habitual liar?”

  “I didn’t think so. But Gail reminded me that a lack of transparency is just another form of lying.”

  “My mother is the most brutally honest person I know. Awesome when you want the truth. Disillusioning when you’re a four-year-old who wants to believe in Santa Claus.”

  “In this instance, I asked to hear the brutal truth and I got it. Tricking people into believing you are something you’re not is lying. Keeping secrets from the people you love... Oh, I may tell myself I’m protecting my family. And I am. But there’s a layer of self-preservation at the bedrock of secrecy.” Samuel rested his chin on my head. “I don’t want to be a wicked person, Kaye. It’s time to come clean.”