Last Summer of the Death Warriors

by Francesco X Stork

  “It doesn’t make what you say in there any less true.”

  D.Q. rubbed the perico against his heart. “It’s very noble of you to be so understanding and all. On the other hand, it’s not hard for you to be noble, is it?”

  Pancho didn’t know how to answer the question. Yes, he could afford to be noble and kind. He wasn’t hurting like D.Q. On the other hand, being noble and kind wasn’t in his nature. He was still making an effort he didn’t have to make and it was not being appreciated. He moved to get up.

  “You want to know what was on my mind just before you sat down?” D.Q.’s speech was slurred.

  “Yes,” Pancho said. He sat back in the patio chair.

  “I was thinking that when you think about it, one place is just as good as another. I’ve been making a big deal about going back to Las Cruces and now I don’t know why I was doing it. What’s wrong with this place?”

  “There’s nothing wrong with it, if this is where you want to be.”

  “This place isn’t so bad.”

  D.Q. lifted his face as if to receive the rays of the midday sun and closed his eyes. Pancho gazed at Caramelo. The horse tossed his head and trotted round and round his corral. He looked as if he wanted to explode from his confinement.

  Pancho stood up suddenly, remembering. “There’s something you need to see,” he said to D.Q.

  “What?” D.Q. said, startled.

  “If you want to stay here, there’s something you should see.” He crouched in front of D.Q.’s wheelchair. “It’ll be easier if I take you. Hop onto my back.”

  Pancho climbed the three flights of stairs silently with D.Q. on his back. D.Q. seemed weightless, as if his body was slowly vanishing. Pancho opened the door to the studio. The light from the windows was dazzling and he blinked first and then squinted. D.Q. tugged at his shoulder to let him know that he wanted to get down. They stepped into the room side by side, Pancho holding D.Q. up by the waist. They walked toward the painting on the wall nearest to the door.

  “Father,” D.Q. said.

  D.Q. looked at the painting of his father in silence for a while and when he nodded that he was done, Pancho led him slowly toward the easel in the middle of the room—the painting of D.Q. without cancer.

  D.Q. gasped when he stepped in front of the painting. He began to slip from Pancho’s grasp, but Pancho held him up. He looked away to give D.Q. as much privacy as possible. He wanted him to see what kind of place this was, how Helen saw him. The painting of him was a good painting, but it was a fake. It was what Helen wanted to see and not the truth. He could feel D.Q.’s breath quicken and his body shake slightly.

  “Are you okay?” Pancho asked.

  D.Q. lifted his finger to his lips but held on to Pancho’s waist. There was a look of determined concentration on his face, as if he were seeing something painful that must still be understood. And so they stood there in silence, and after a long while, Pancho saw D.Q. wipe his eyes with the back of his almost translucent hand.

  “I’m ready to go now,” D.Q. said.

  Pancho stepped in front of him, and D.Q. wrapped his arms around Pancho’s neck from behind.

  “Thank you,” he said.

  CHAPTER 31

  Pancho took D.Q. to their room, where he spent the rest of the day either looking out the window or lying down with his eyes open. When Pancho came in that night, D.Q. stirred and said good night to him before falling back asleep. The next day D.Q. and Johnny Corazon sat by the pool cabana, engaged in what looked to Pancho like a serious conversation. Then that afternoon he saw D.Q. writing in his journal for the first time that week.

  On Friday morning Helen, Johnny Corazon, and D.Q. were sitting by the pool cabana. Pancho was walking toward the corral when he heard D.Q. call his name. As he approached, D.Q. asked him: “Pancho, do you want to go on a healing ceremony with me?”

  “When?” That was a stupid question to ask since he didn’t even know what he was being asked to do.

  “I told Daniel that if he’s truly committed to getting well, it would be good to have a healing ceremony—a ritual showing his desire for spiritual healing,” Johnny Corazon explained.

  “And physical,” Helen added.

  “And physical,” Johnny acknowledged.

  “You should participate. You need the healing even more than I do,” D.Q. teased Pancho. It seemed like ages since the last time D.Q. had cracked a joke at his expense.

  “Sure, Pancho can participate as well,” Johnny Corazon said.

  “Are you sure it’s a good idea?” Helen asked. “I mean, spending the night outside.”

  “It’s very important to express in some outward form your desire to be healed,” Johnny Corazon declared. His voice had suddenly acquired a solemn tone.

  Pancho looked hard at D.Q. to see if that was what he really wanted. D.Q. winked at Pancho. His body seemed frailer than ever, but there was a spark of life in his eyes.

  “Where?” Pancho said.

  “You will spend the night alone by the pinon grove. It’s not that far from the house, but it is far enough for you to be under the stars, open to the sacred energy that surrounds us. I will go with you, get you started, and guide you a bit. I’ll need my sacred rocks,” Johnny Corazon told Pancho.

  His sacred rocks, as in the rocks inside the suitcase Pancho had lugged to the third floor.

  “Can we do it tonight? Let’s go tonight,” D.Q. asked.

  Johnny Corazon seemed surprised at D.Q.’s eagerness. For that matter, so was Pancho. “Yes, I think you are ready. The sooner the better,” Johnny Corazon said.

  Helen started to object, but D.Q. cut her off. “That’s great. You hear that, Pancho? We’ll get to spend the night out in the open and fight off the mountain lions.”

  “What mountain lions?” Pancho asked.

  In the early evening, as the sun began to go down over the mountains, Johnny Corazon led the way to the pinon grove. The all-terrain vehicle was not working, so Pancho carried D.Q. on his back. Juan and Johnny Corazon walked ten yards ahead with the rest of the gear.

  “Johnny’s getting his crocodile boots all dirty,” D.Q. said. Pancho was glad he wasn’t the only one who had noticed the unusual shine of Johnny Corazon’s boots.

  “Crocodile?”

  “Some kind of lizard.”

  “What’s got into you? A couple of days ago, you were miserable and sliding toward zero on that scale, and now you want to spend the night out in the cold.”

  “Don’t talk so loud. You don’t want to hurt Johnny’s feelings,” D.Q. whispered. Then he answered Pancho’s question, his voice serious. “I don’t want to waste any more time. It will be good to spend the night outside.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know why. It feels like I should. I’m tired of moping around, feeling sorry for myself and being angry at people for no reason.” D.Q. hit Pancho lightly on the side of the head. “And…”

  “And what?”

  “I feel like I’m slipping. I can sense it. Maybe this will help. Who knows?”

  “You gotta believe.”

  “‘I believe. Help my unbelief.’”

  “What’s that?”

  “Nothing. Something I remembered.”

  They walked in silence. Pancho could feel D.Q.’s body on his back, hot, as if he were carrying a sack of slow-burning coal. He said, “What if it works?”

  “Johnny Corazon’s healing?”

  “Yeah. Not just tonight, but all of it.”

  “I wouldn’t be opposed to it. Actually, the things he says make a lot of sense. I like talking to him. He’s been helpful already.”

  They saw Johnny Corazon bend down to pick up a stick of wood. He brought the piece up to his nose and smelled it. “Mesquite,” he said. He kept on walking, the piece of wood dangling by his side.

  Pancho looked at the pale sun. Soon it would disappear behind the mountains.

  “Pancho,” he heard D.Q. say. “Did we bring my perico?”

&
nbsp; “Yeah. It’s in the backpack that Juan is carrying.”

  “Marisol is coming tomorrow,” D.Q. said. Pancho couldn’t see his face, but there was sadness in his voice.

  “Yeah.”

  “Thank you for calling her.”

  “You want her to come, right?”

  “Yes.…Yes, I do.”

  “She was looking forward to seeing you.”

  “Seeing us.”

  “I…I told Juan I’d go with him to see his friend Rafael. I won’t be here.”

  “Oh. Tomorrow? Oh. You have to be here when she gets here.”

  “Juan leaves around five for his friend’s.”

  “She said she was coming around four, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “At least that’ll give us an hour together. Do you have to go with Juan tomorrow?”

  “Yes,” Pancho said, taking a deep breath. It is time to carry out what I have to do, he thought.

  They reached a grove consisting of eleven or twelve piñon trees. In the middle, Pancho could see what Juan called the kiosko, a round structure screened in on all sides with a roof that resembled a very pointed umbrella. He let D.Q. down on the steps of the kiosko. Johnny Corazon had chosen an open spot a few yards away and was drawing a circle in the dirt with the mesquite stick he had found. “We’ll build the fire here,” he said, standing in the middle. Then he went over to where D.Q. was sitting and asked Pancho to sit on the steps of the kiosko as well. He sat in front of them cross-legged. His shiny crocodile boots were covered with dust.

  “Let’s go over what’s going to happen tonight,” he said. He paused as if waiting for D.Q. and Pancho to stop talking, but they were already quiet. “First thing we’ll do is collect some dry wood and then we’ll build a fire. Then, when the fire dies down a little, we’ll put the sacred rocks in there. You will listen for the signs that come to you tonight. They’ll have messages for you…about your healing and about the direction and meaning of your life. I’ll be back in the morning and, if you want, you can tell me what you dreamt or heard or saw, and that will help me direct your healing. Do you have any questions?”

  Pancho was staring at the ground. He looked up and saw D.Q. was doing the same. Johnny Corazon’s voice was different, stronger. He was like the boxers who hung around Manny’s gym. Outside the ring, they goofed and clowned around, but once they stepped inside the ring, they dressed themselves in an invisible robe of authority.

  Johnny Corazon waited to make sure no one wanted to speak, and then he opened the red suitcase and took out ten rocks about the size of his hand. The rocks looked like beehives, like they had been chipped off the side of a volcano. Then he took out a steel pot and after that a small green collapsible shovel. “My old army shovel,” he said.

  “You were in the army?” Pancho asked. He didn’t figure Johnny Corazon for an army man. Pancho followed him over to the circle in the dirt.

  “I got the calling to be a healer while I was in the army. After I came back, I went to the University of New Mexico at Taos and got a certificate in holistic medicine. What’s the matter? You look surprised.” Pancho grabbed the shovel from Johnny Corazon’s hand, but Johnny Corazon refused to let go of it. “I’m glad you’re participating. I’d like to help Daniel, but if that’s not possible, then I’d settle for one out of two.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Maybe this night is for your benefit as well.”

  Pancho wrenched the shovel from Johnny Corazon’s hand. That kind of comment wasn’t worth a response. “This healing you do, how long does it last?”

  “How long?”

  “How long does it go for? When will we know if it’s working or not?”

  “Working or not?”

  Was something wrong with the way he was speaking? “One week, two weeks, a month? When will we know if you cured D.Q.?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “How long will you keep on with your cures? Is there a time when you say, ‘Okay, it didn’t work, I guess we can stop’?”

  “Well, it’s up to the patient. In the case of cancer, nontraditional medicine can make the person more comfortable up to the very end.”

  “It’s up to the patient?”

  “Sure.”

  “So let’s say someone’s mother wanted you to keep on going with your treatments, but the kid wanted you to stop. Who would you listen to?”

  Johnny Corazon sat on the sawed-down tree trunk. Apparently the question required some deep thinking. “I’d have to consider the circumstances,” he said after a while.

  “That’s what I thought,” Pancho said.

  Johnny Corazon continued, “In the case of Daniel, because of his age, intelligence, and maturity, I’d stop when he told me to stop.”

  Pancho nodded. That was what he was hoping to hear.

  He told Pancho to dig a hole about six inches deep for the fire. Pancho dug the hole and placed the rocks next to it, and then Johnny Corazon built a fire with the wood that Juan collected.

  Johnny Corazon, Pancho, and D.Q. sat quietly around the fire. When the wood had burned down, Johnny Corazon lifted each of the rocks with the shovel and placed them in the fire. After he sat back down, he took something that looked like tobacco out of a brown pouch and packed it with his thumb into a battered pipe. Then he lit the pipe with a stick from the fire. Johnny Corazon puffed on it lightly and then passed the pipe to D.Q., who closed his eyes and inhaled deeply. Pancho took the pipe from D.Q. and drew the smoke into his lungs. He felt something like a dry fireball burn his throat and he began to cough. He gave the pipe back to Johnny Corazon, who leaned it upright against a rock on the ground.

  Then he began to speak in a low voice that Pancho could barely hear. “Let tonight be your quest for healing and for a meaning that will guide your days. Ask for help from the Great Mystery that creates and sustains all life. Stay awake as long as you can, and if you must sleep, remember your dreams. Either awake or asleep, you will see or hear what you need to see. Your intention alone can transform this into a sacred night. Let it be an outward sign that you open yourselves to the Great Mystery of life, just as you open yourselves to the stars. You are seekers of meaning and healing because we all need meaning and healing, but you know that the ultimate meaning and healing does not come from you. You open yourselves to it. You wait for it. You hope for it. And you trust in its existence even if you can’t see it or feel it.”

  Pancho felt himself being lulled into relaxation by the smoke and Johnny Corazon’s voice. Johnny Corazon paused and passed the pipe around one more time. When it came back to him, he said, “This kind of ceremony is usually undertaken by the individual seeker alone, but under the circumstances”—here he looked at Pancho—“I think it is all right for you to stay together. I can feel you two are bound to each other like two strands of one rope. Try to keep quiet, but you may talk if you feel you must. If you do, let your talk be guided by the Great Mystery. How do you feel?” he asked D.Q.

  “I feel good. Better than I have in a long time. The fever is gone. The nausea is gone. Can I have some more of that pipe?”

  “No, no more of this pipe. But I made you a tea that you should drink as much as possible.” Johnny Corazon pointed at an old-fashioned coffeepot sitting by the fire. He stood up. “Oh. There’s a cell phone over in the kiosko. Helen insisted. In case of an emergency, you should call. I’m taking the bread and cold cuts she packed. You don’t want to have food out here. There may be mountain lions or coyotes.”

  “They wouldn’t be interested in me,” D.Q. said. He grinned at Pancho.

  Johnny Corazon grabbed something that looked like a backpack and slung it over his shoulder. He disappeared into the grove of trees without a flashlight.

  Pancho threw a stick into the fire. The darkness of the night made the stars shine with extra brilliance. He looked for the moon but couldn’t find it. A battery-operated lantern sat nearby. He stretched himself on the ground and pulled it toward him. He might
as well know whether it was a mountain lion or a coyote that took a bite out of him.

  They sat in silence for about an hour. Pancho poked at the fire, and D.Q. stared at it. Pancho began to list in his mind some of the people he had met since he first arrived at St. Anthony’s. Besides D.Q. and Marisol, there were others, like Father Concha, Memo, Josie, Andrés, and Juan; and toward each he felt a closeness he had never experienced before. He was reflecting on this when D.Q. spoke. “I feel like I’m in some kind of Western movie.”

  “Shhh. You’re supposed to keep quiet. You cold?”

  “No. But it’s going to get cold tonight. We should bring the sleeping bags closer to the fire.”

  Pancho silently moved the two sleeping bags, placing them far enough away that a spark wouldn’t set them alight.

  “I wish he’d left that pipe behind,” D.Q. said.

  Pancho sat on his sleeping bag with his legs in front of him. “I’m getting hungry,” he said. “You think there’s something to eat somewhere?”

  “I think I saw a can of pork and beans and a pan in the kiosko. You should fix yourself some supper.”

  Pancho imagined the delicious smell of pork and beans. Then he imagined a mountain lion or a coyote sniffing the air with his muzzle, detecting the distant odor of food. “That’s all right,” he said. “I’m not that hungry.” D.Q. extended his arm and motioned for Pancho to fill his cup. Pancho took the cup and filled it with the liquid from the kettle.

  “How’s the tea?”

  D.Q. sipped. “Good.”

  “What is it?”

  D.Q. made tasting motions with his tongue. “I detect a base of chaparral tea with a tinge of ginger, a couple of drops of peppermint extract, and lime juice. The chaparral tea has been reported to be good for some types of cancer, the ginger is good for settling the stomach, and the peppermint is great for nausea. The lime juice makes the whole concoction taste good, plus it has vitamin C, which is good for the immune system.”