Manuel trotted after him.
“No,” Luis said in a slurred growl, waving him back. “Drive them home.”
“Throw me the keys, old man,” Michael called out, his voice laced with disgust. “We’ll drive ourselves home.”
Luis stopped and dug into his pockets, standing wide legged, head bowed. He pulled out his keys and threw them back. They skidded in the dust by Michael’s feet.
“Hey, Manuel,” Michael called out as he watched the two men walk away. “How does it feel to have some bruises, eh? You like it? Like you give Cisco?”
Manuel stopped like he’d been hit, bunched his fists, whirled around and stalked back, his face a red cloud in the darkness. Michael lifted his arm against him, expecting a blow.
“Esse,” Manuel spat out, stopping at Michael’s feet. His eyes rolled in his head with fury. Then he bent near and ground out, “It isn’t me. It’s Rosa. Your sister.”
Michael took the news like another blow. Manuel spun on his heel and hurried after Luis.
“Damn.” Michael cursed, bringing his hand to his forehead. “What the hell’s going on here? Has the whole world gone nuts?” He laughed, because if he didn’t he would cry. “And Papa wants to make us men? This is machismo? You are cowards!” he shouted after them. “All of you!”
Bobby drew himself up, clutching his ribs with his hand. Michael hurried to grasp his arm and help him.
“No, back off,” he said, his face twisted with scorn.
“You think the blood can’t hurt you, too? You think you’re some kind of a god?” He pushed himself up to his knees, groaning in pain. Still he pushed Michael’s hand away.
“Christ, Bobby, let me help you.”
“I don’t need your help,” he cried back. “I don’t want your help.”
Michael gave it, anyway, grabbing hold of Bobby’s elbow and helping him to his feet. Michael led him across the grass, wincing inwardly as he watched each small, limping step Bobby made to the car a few yards away. He settled his brother in the seat, taking off his jacket and covering Bobby with it, then bending to swing his legs into the car for him. The linen trousers Bobby liked so much were torn and stained with mud. He closed the door, feeling the first fat drops of rain on his head and shoulders.
“Wipe your hands,” Bobby told him when he got in. The car light was dim, but bright enough to reveal their cuts and bruises. “Madre de Dios, look at your knuckles.”
“Don’t worry about me. Put your head back. It’ll stop the bleeding. Use the sleeve of my jacket to stanch the flow.”
“It’ll ruin the leather.”
“I don’t give a damn about the jacket. Use the lining, it’ll be softer.”
Bobby dropped his head back on the seat and brought the jacket to his nose.
Michael slammed his door and thrust in the key, determined to burn rubber to the nearest hospital. Where the hell was one, anyway? The engine roared and Michael swerved the car out of the field, sending a spray of gravel into the air. Catching sight of the Clubhouse in his rearview mirror, he prayed a silent prayer that the place would get struck by lightning and burn to the ground.
“I want to go home.”
“I’m taking you to the hospital.”
Silence.
“Maybe I’ll get lucky and die there.”
“Cut it out, Bobby. I don’t need that.” He stepped on the gas and pushed on. “You don’t need that, either. Papa’s not worth it. He turned his back on you.”
“And you think you’re so different?”
Michael swung his head around to stare at him, feeling stunned. “What?”
Bobby was barely able to move a muscle in his swollen face, but somehow he managed a half smile. “You always say you’re not like Papa. Don’t you see? You are exactly like him. In so many ways.”
A muscle twitched in Michael’s jaw as he heard this. He didn’t interrupt, despite his gut urge to tell Bobby to shut up. The rain was coming down in earnest now. He squinted his eyes, flicked on the wipers and cursed the heavens.
“Go on,” he said.
“I told Papa tonight because I had to. To protect him. Because I loved him. I didn’t mind not telling him before. I know it bothered you. You thought I was living a lie.” He closed his eyes and swallowed hard. “I was just living, Miguel. Surviving. I endured because I didn’t want to cause him pain. Or Mama. Or me, either. I didn’t want him to reject me. It’s true, I was afraid. And when I saw that pain in his eyes tonight…” His voice hitched and his Adam’s apple bobbed.
Michael’s jaw worked while tears burned in his eyes.
“It hurts, man. Rejection bites.” Bobby sniffed and wiped his nose again.
Michael passed a weary hand through his hair. “It’s okay,” he said, for lack of anything better. They drove on for a while down the rain-slicked roads, covering the miles quickly, heading out of the dark hills back into the lights of civilization ahead. Bobby moaned from time to time, especially when Michael hit a pothole or took a curve too fast. He wanted to make good time, even in this damned storm. He didn’t like the pallor of Bobby’s face. How could Luis have left his own son? Left him to die?
Then, not because he wanted to know, but because the comparison rankled so deep, he had to ask, “How can you say I’m like him?” He spat out the word.
Bobby turned his head, his eyes puzzled over the black leather jacket. Then he lowered the jacket from his nose, dabbing a few times. The blood flow seemed to have stopped. “You really don’t know?”
“No, I don’t know,” he snapped back.
“A goddamn Mayan statue,” Bobby murmured, his eyes blinking heavily. He tilted his weight, slumping into the corner. He licked his swollen lip, wincing, and sighed heavily.
“Miguel, Miguel, Miguel…” he mumbled, slurring the words. “You walked out on Charlotte, too.”
“What?” he asked, turning his head to face Bobby.
“What did you say?”
Bobby was still slumped in the corner, eyes closed and still. Michael’s heart raced and he reached over to tap Bobby’s thigh. But he didn’t open his eyes. Panic set in and Michael leaned over, taking hold of his wrist. The skin was warm. The pulse was weak, but there.
“Thank God,” he cried, leaning over the steering wheel and pushing the pedal to the floor, racing for the lights. He prayed as he roared across the slick highway in Luis’s Buick, the rosaries jangling wildly from the mirror. “Let me get him to a hospital. Please, God, let him be all right.”
His soul felt more battered than his body. He hadn’t prayed in years, yet tonight he’d prayed like an altar boy, fervently and with utter faith in being heard.
At length he spotted an exit for a hospital and took it at breakneck speed, racing into the emergency room lot. He squealed to a stop between two ambulances at the door. “He has AIDS,” he informed the medical emergency team as they raced out.
“Thanks. We’ll take over from here,” one man replied, opening the car door. The team acted quickly, lifting Bobby to a gurney with their gloved hands and rolling him through the double doors into the emergency room.
The gray stone facade of the hospital was barely visible through the torrent of rain. Rivulets cascaded across the parking lot, soaking his shoes, plastering his hair across his cheeks. Michael slunk against the car and bowed his head. No amount of rain would wash the blood off of this night.
Michael hated hospitals, but he loved his brother more. So he waited in the lobby throughout the night while Bobby was in surgery getting his jaw rewired. His own cuts and bruises had been attended to earlier, and he was relieved to find that there were no open wounds. But he would have an AIDS test, anyway, just to be certain. He nodded off a few times in the hard-backed chair, but sleep was elusive. By the time the night shift ended and a fresh batch of nurses had taken their posts, Michael was allowed in to see his brother.
Bobby was resting uncomfortably when he peered into the narrow two-bed room. He was relieved that the other be
d was empty. It was more private and he could speak openly. He hovered at the door of the room, lest Bobby be asleep. His brother was hooked up to intravenous tubes and lying still. Peering closer, he saw Bobby’s face and his own face fell in shock. Bobby’s face…It looked like someone had tried to rearrange it with a mallet. His proud, beautiful nose was broken, his cheekbone was beaten so badly it caved in and his left eye was hidden in the massive swelling.
Michael stopped short, his hands clenching and unclenching at his sides, breathing heavily. He felt an urge to run outside, run all the way back to the hills and find those who’d done this to his brother. He wanted to see them lying in a hospital bed, looking just like Bobby.
“You can go right on in. He’s on some pretty heavy painkillers, so he’ll be a little groggy.” The nurse—a tall, dark woman with hair swept back and glasses that slipped down her nose—nudged him forward. “You have company, Mr. Mondragon,” she said in the cheerful, loud voice endemic to nurses.
Bobby pried open his right eye and made a muscle twitch, which Michael could only guess was a smile. “Hey…”
“Hey, big brother. You look pretty good for someone who had the stuffing kicked out of him.”
“Look who’s talking. Still, we did okay, eh?” His voice was raspy and hoarse, and he could barely articulate.
Michael chuckled and held back the tears. “Yeah. We’re alive.”
“Yeah, barely.”
“I’m sorry, Bobby. I should’ve been there for you.”
“It happened. I’m not a victim.” Bobby’s words were slurred because of the wired jaw and swollen lips. He closed his eyes with a twisted grimace. “Never again…”
“Has this happened to you before?”
“Not this bad. But the body remembers.”
“Aw, Bobby…”
He sighed. “They got my nose. I was always able to save my nose before.”
“It’s okay. They tell me they can fix it.”
“Good. I’d like to breathe through both my nostrils….”
Michael looked at his shoes, not wanting his brother to see the flash of tears. His face was a remnant of what it had once been.
“Does Mama know?” Bobby asked, his one eye visibly sad.
“Yeah. Sure. She’s on her way.”
“What does she know? About the other…”
“She knows everything. I talked to her on the phone. Papa was drunk by the time he got back. He forbid her to come. But this time—” he smiled slowly and patted Bobby’s hand “—this time she packed a bag and left.”
Bobby turned his head a bit, his bandages and broken ribs preventing him from moving far. “I didn’t want that.”
“She had to take a stand. She couldn’t not come. Frankly, I’m damn proud of her.”
“I don’t want her to see me like this.”
“How can you even think that? You’re her son. She loves you. You’ll always be beautiful to her, no matter what.”
Bobby slowly brought his gaze to Michael, and when their eyes met, they both understood what was unspoken.
Will Charlotte always be beautiful—no matter what—because you love her?
“I heard she’s engaged now,” Bobby said softly. “To that agent guy.”
“That’s what they say.”
“And you’re just going to let it happen?”
“It’s over, Bobby. Things have happened that you don’t understand.”
“All I understand is that you still love her.”
“She left me.”
“No. You let her go.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“If love doesn’t matter, then what does?”
Bobby smiled then, that slight upturning of swollen lips in misshapen cheeks. But it was his eyes that held Michael. Deep pockets of sympathy—and a wisdom there that belied the few years’ difference between them. Michael understood then that his brother had always been there for him, not the other way around. Whenever he needed someone to mend a bird’s broken wing, to hold his hand when he walked into the first grade, to stand in the bleachers and cheer him on to victory when their father was too busy to go to his games—Bobby was there. Bobby had understood why he needed the leather jacket, why he had defied the family and taken the scholarship, and why, too, he had returned home.
Taking the punches to the body, that was easy. Michael had always thought he was doing the big favor, playing the hero when he stood, fists at the ready, between Bobby and whoever tried to hurt him. But as Bobby said, he was not a victim. He was the hero all along. Michael saw that now. The body blows couldn’t hurt Bobby. His was a greater strength. He loved his father and mother, his brother and sister, unconditionally.
Michael’s shoulders drooped “I don’t know what to do,” he confessed.
“You will,” Bobby replied, closing his eyes.
A few hours later, Michael awoke feeling a nudge on his knee. He pried open an eye to see his mother bent over him, her eyes soft with concern.
“Miguel, wake up. Miguel…”
He mopped his face with his hands and yawned, then stretched his stiff shoulders. Looking around, he saw that he was still in Bobby’s hospital room. Bobby was in the bed beside him, asleep. The room was a dark gray, rain still splattered angrily against the windows, and in the distance, he could hear the low rumble of thunder.
“I must have fallen asleep. What time is it?”
“It is almost noon.”
“So late?”
“Sí. Virgencita…” She crossed herself. “The roads are very bad. Many are closed. It took forever to get here. Si Dios quiere. The water is rising in the river. Muy mal. And the rain, it no stopping.” She looked worn and stooped.
“The National Weather Service says flood warning.”
“Damn, when did they call it?”
“This morning. They say it is the flood of the century!”
“Yeah, the third one.” He scratched his head, waking up. “Okay, so where is Papa?” He sat up in the chair, alert now.
“He won’t leave his land. When I leave, he is putting plywood on the windows and getting emergency supplies. He said he no going to be chased away by a little water.” She shook her head and clutched Michael’s shoulder. “I pass the river on way here. It is not a little water, Miguel. I am frightened. The children are still there.”
“Where are Rosa and Manuel?”
“They won’t leave Papa.”
Michael swore silently, not wanting to increase his mother’s already overflowing anxiety.
“Aiee, Miguel. Cisco and Maria Elena—We must to—” she stuttered, too flustered to continue in English. She burst forth in Spanish, imploring Michael to save the children.
“Sit down, Mama,” he said patting her hand, then standing. “Stay with Bobby. He needs you now. I will go out and make sure the children are taken to high ground.”
She reached out quickly, taking hold of his shoulder with her small hand.
“Mi hijo, I am proud of you. Your father, he was wrong to do this to his son. I, too, am guilty. But Luis, he is a good man. He—” Her voice broke and she looked away.
“I promise you,” he said, placing his hand over hers.
“Everything will be okay. You don’t have to worry. I won’t leave him there. I’m going to drag that old man’s stubborn ass off the land if I have to carry him to do it.”
Twenty-Three
The storm was a hellion, screaming and hollering wind through the mountains and dumping a torrent of rain on the already waterlogged land. The speed and intensity of the storm was alarming. The river was cresting and the weather service was calling for families to evacuate immediately. Michael held the steering wheel to the Buick tight as he fought his way back up the mountains to the nursery, praying all the way that his family would have already heeded the warnings and left. In his gut, however, he knew his father wouldn’t go. Damn fool, he’d risk the lives of his family over a plot of land.
He had to concentrate
on the road. In spots, the car hydroplaned in several inches of water. Would he even make it back? The radio reported that, farther to the north, the levee of the Prajaro River had broken, sending eight feet of mud lurching through the center of town.
Approaching his exit, he spotted a yellow barricade. The police were waving people away, telling them over loudspeakers, in both English and Spanish, that they could not pass. That they should turn around and seek higher ground. Michael gritted his teeth, pressed the gas pedal and roared past them. In his rearview mirror he saw one policeman wave his hand, calling the other cop back in disgust. They no doubt thought that anyone who was crazy enough to head into the valley now deserved to die.
Common sense told him to turn back. Beyond the highway he could see the swollen river, already overflowing the banks and raging forward in a hell-bent current. He was far beyond the constraints of rational thought.
The clicking window wipers barely kept the torrents of water from his windshield. Thunder raged overhead, daring him to continue. Squinting, he leaned far over the wheel to track where he was going. A long trail of cars were inching their way in the opposite direction, leaving the valley for higher ground. He had to swerve to avoid hitting two dogs that were running alongside a pickup truck crammed full with people. Children waved from the windows at the dogs, crying out their names. So, he thought, steadying the car and gritting his teeth, it has come to a choice between people and their pets. It had gotten as bad as that.
As he toiled past the long line of cars, many people called out to him, honking and waving wildly, “Go back! Go back!”
He bit down hard, seeing only the road ahead. For once he wasn’t going to think, or analyze, or plan. He knew these hills. He knew the roads. His family was up there. He’d use his instincts. He just had to go on.
He pulled up to the house to find the windows boarded up with plywood and plastic sheeting, and Manuel’s truck parked outside. Michael slammed the car door behind him and ran inside. Water was dripping into his eyes, but he could still see Cisco and Maria Elena, sitting in front of the TV, watching the weather bulletins. They jumped up and ran to him when he entered the house, wrapping their thin arms tightly around his waist.
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