by Mary Morris
He’s been airbrushing a coyote across the hood of Alberto Pinto’s souped-up Chevy. The coyote with its fangs exposed, eyes aflame, is chasing a herd of deer along the sides of the car and onto the hood. In the center of the hood is a cross and Alberto’s brother’s name. Jaime was killed in a gunfight near Chimayó—probably over drugs. Roberto knows that most of the money he’s paid to airbrush comes from the heroin trade. In fact Española where his client base lives has the distinction of being, along with the murder capital, the city in America with the most overdoses per capita. Roberto has done his best to stay clear of most drugs, except for some recreational enhancements now and then, but he is pleased to profit from its industry. Besides, alcohol is his drug of choice.
Roberto has been working on Alberto’s car for a few weeks now. He is proud of the terrified look in the eyes of the deer as the coyote nips at their hooves. Roberto is known throughout Rio Arriba County for his fine work. His art isn’t just decorative. He paints murals that tell a story. Seeing the coyote makes him think of Miguel. His wily son. It is almost six o’clock. He should be home from school by now. Perhaps he can catch up with him, maybe toss a ball around. Not that Miguel ever really likes to toss a ball with him.
At the thought of Miguel something darts in front of his eyes. A green flash. At first he thinks it is a hummingbird. At times Miguel comes to him like this. A flash, and it is always at these moments that Roberto knows that something is wrong. He needs me, Roberto thinks. And then the thought drifts away, lost in a haze of smoke and the five beers he’s already had this afternoon. The day has grown dark. To the south, storm clouds seem to be heading his way. It must have rained over Santa Fe. It would be good to get some rain up here. Putting out his cigarette, he goes back inside to finish the coyote.
Before he starts up again, he pauses to admire his painting. His work is getting better and better. Everyone says so. Some of the creatures on his cars seem almost alive, as if they can pounce right off the hood and attack you. Roberto has more orders than he can handle. Everyone and his uncle, it seems, wants coyotes and wolves, flowers and flames on the sides and hoods of their cars. And on their bike helmets too. He’s done volcanoes, tsunamis, dust storms. He’s done too many RIPs and too many beautiful girls gone away.
On his own car, for instance, a 1964 Pontiac, he painted Morning Glory’s image when they first got together and, despite her protests, despite the fact that she kicked him out almost five years ago, he still keeps her picture on the driver’s door of his car. He likes to cruise around Entrada, tormenting her. Sometimes he drives by the trailer that had once been their love nest just so she can fling open the window and shout, “Loser.”
Ever since they split he’s been living in his late mother’s trailer and using her garage out back as his airbrush studio. Actually his mother was alive when he first moved in. “It’s temporary, right?” Rosa asked, and Roberto assured her that it was. But then she got sick and with Elena in New York (and even if she was right next door, who could count on Elena?) Roberto stayed on to take care of her. Before she died, she told him to keep the trailer and garage. He is probably more or less squatting on this property at this point because she rented it from old man Roybal who was her great-uncle by marriage and maybe also by blood, or something like that, but Roybal has never asked for rent money as far as Roberto can tell, so he figures he will just stay until someone decides to tell him to leave. But who can? Old man Roybal has probably forgotten that he is living here. And his sister, Elena? Hell will freeze over before Elena comes home.
He can’t blame her. She got away, didn’t she? After all she had the talent. That odd ability to stand on the tips of her toes. Even after she’d had the accident that shattered her ankle, she’d managed to stay away from Entrada and make a life for herself on the East Coast, and perhaps it was all for the best. There was a time that Roberto doesn’t like to remember when the scent of his sister’s shampoo threw him into an incestuous frenzy. He’d had so many girls clinging to his arm, but when he was young, it was Elena who set him on fire. The way she danced in the living room of their trailer in those leotards that fit so snugly around her breasts and thighs. Hers were the first breasts he’d dreamed of fondling. His sister was his first wet dream.
Then when they were still in their teens, that bad thing happened. That is how he refers to it. That bad thing. Something he didn’t have anything to do with, not exactly, but still he blamed himself. And he is certain that his sister and his mother blamed him as well. He stoked the flames, didn’t he? He didn’t stand up for her. When the older boys made comments about his sister, those punks who’d dropped out of school and rode motorcycles, who used to come around and rough up the kids who went to White Pine High—especially ones who had a reputation of being odd, queer, fairies, not tough enough, not man enough, not hombres, no cojones. Then one night they laid eyes on Elena, and Roberto did nothing to stop them. He didn’t say what a man is supposed to say: “You leave my sister alone.” And he didn’t go after them when he saw her getting into their car, drunk, her body limp. It had taken two boys to drag her.
But she didn’t put up a struggle, so he assumed she’d wanted to go. She’d been dressed for trouble, hadn’t she, the way she wore that tank top and those short shorts? Girls who dress like that are asking for it, aren’t they? It is an invitation, right? At least that’s what Roberto believed then. He didn’t see those boys twisting her arm. He didn’t see her trying to fight them off. He was down a six-pack already and laughing with his friends. “Look at that idiot sister of mine.” He laughed and inside he was trembling, not from fear but from his own arousal.
He hoped that someone else would do the job for him. Someone else would be her first so that he could stop thinking about her the way he did. The way she walked around with a book balanced on her head. She danced through the trailer, stretching with her feet on the kitchen counter where his mother wouldn’t let him leave a dish or his penknife. He watched her in her black leotard and tights, her thick black hair pulled into a tiny bun on the top of her head. The way her body arched into a question mark. The way she spun on one toe, her gaze fixed on the oak tree on the hillside above the house. She had no idea that she’d entered her own brother’s dreams, or that he lay hot and twisted in his sheets with thoughts of her.
She came home late that night. He heard her open the door. He heard her broken sobs, and before he could go to her, he saw their mother rushing to her daughter, for Rosa had been sitting up, waiting the way only a mother can who senses that something is wrong. He saw Elena with the bruises on her face and arms. And the blood crusted on her thighs.
But the worst was her sobbing. Tears that couldn’t stop, that wouldn’t go away.
It seemed as if she cried for months. She became La Llorona, the woman who cries because she has been betrayed and left alone. The woman whose voice you hear in the wind in the canyons and through the branches of the piñon. La Llorona who haunts the dry riverbeds, whose tears can bring on a flash flood.
That was what his sister became.
Then that dance teacher helped Elena apply for a scholarship to the American Ballet Extension School in Manhattan. Elena didn’t expect to get it, but how many Hispanic dancers from New Mexico applied? How many good ballet dancers? Elena had been lucky in this one regard. A teacher with the ballet school in Santa Fe took her under her wing. She’d recognized Elena’s talent when she was just nine years old. And now Elena would have her chance. She would forget Entrada and the boys who raped her. She would forget her home and their trailer and even their mother, and yes, she would forget her brother too.
It was for the best that she went away.
Then he had gone out and been with MG. He’d gotten her pregnant when they were both practically children and his sister was dancing with the New York City Ballet. He’d done the right thing as his mother said. He’d married her.
He doesn’t know why he thinks of these things, dredging up the past. He shakes h
is head as if waking himself from a dream. He should not let his thoughts go there. He knows this, but sometimes he can’t help himself. Sometimes his mind wanders and then he finds he is trapped inside of what he prefers not to recall. He turns back to his painting. The coyote has fire in its eyes. Roberto is proud of this. It seems to be glaring right at him, burning, almost alive. That is important. Nobody wants a coyote or a wolf with dull eyes. They want to see those flames, rising right off the hood.
But he is getting tired of spirit animals. He has ideas—some big ones in fact. His latest, but he needs a marketing person, is custom-made bike helmets. For forty dollars he figures he can airbrush anything onto a bike helmet. He wants to call it Hopes and Dreams Helmets and people will flock to him, he feels sure. But he needs a delivery system—a way to get the word out.
He has no idea how he learned to do what he does. In school he was always doodling, drawing. He decorated every notebook he ever had with stickers, collages, and paintings. He never handed in a paper that wasn’t illustrated in some way. Though his teachers reprimanded him, he couldn’t sit in class and not scribble. Mostly he drew patterns, strange elliptical patterns of curlicues, circles entwined with other circles and shapes.
Sometimes he drew people, but they never looked that much like the people they were supposed to be. His people resembled superheroes. Exaggerations. Often he just drew whatever came into his head. Dragons. Mermaids. Unicorns. Women with snakes coiled in their hair. He used to trap snakes and put them in his mother’s casserole dishes (when she wasn’t using them, of course). Then he’d draw all the details of their scaly spines and let them go. His mother would serve a tuna noodle casserole and never know that a diamondback had been living in her dish for the past two days.
The rain is pounding like gunfire on the tin roof, but the fresh air is a relief and for a day at least the dust will settle. Everyone will be able to open their windows and breathe again. Roberto steps back into the doorway. In a few moments the rain will let up. His coyote is done.
As he looks up, there is MG, getting soaked. She looks like an apparition, standing in the downpour. He runs to the open garage door and motions for her to get inside. “Miguel hasn’t come home,” she shouts, still standing in the driving rain. “I’m worried. Go and find him.”
Roberto recalls that flash of green. His son was calling out to him. “Why didn’t you call me?” he shouts.
“I did. You didn’t pick up.”
Roberto nods. It’s true; he didn’t. He’s a little high. Time moves differently in this state of mind. “I’m sure he’s fine.” He doesn’t know why he says this because he’s not at all sure that he’s fine, but Roberto has a habit of pushing bad thoughts out of his head.
MG stands there, drenched. “He always calls if he’s going to be late.”
It is a little after seven and there are only a few places where Miguel could be. Roberto gets into the jeep that he’d gotten secondhand and sets off in search of his son. It should be easy to find him. Miguel isn’t like other kids his age—the ones who wander off after school with a gang, who hang out at the local fast-food joints or by the railroad tracks. The month in juvie cured him of that. Now he is more like an old man. He has his schedule, his routines. And he rarely varies. If he isn’t in science lab after school, he is on his way home to start his homework. On weekends he is probably in the library. Or tinkering with that telescope of his. Roberto thinks it isn’t normal. While his other friends are playing video games and chasing after girls, his son is trafficking in dark magic and charting the course of the stars.
Is it too much to want a kid with whom you can shoot a deer and throw back a few beers? Is it too much to ask that your son share a Sunday football game with you instead of reading every word in the Amateur Astronomer’s newsletter? It hardly seems like a lot to ask and yet the universe is unable to deliver.
Many evenings Miguel doesn’t come home until late. Those are the nights when he goes out to do his stargazing or whatever it is he does near the old cemetery. Who knows? Maybe he is divining spirits. Maybe he goes there to be with a girl. Or, god forbid, a boy. It occurs to Roberto from time to time that he has no idea if his son is into girls or boys. Not that he can’t handle it if he is into boys, but he just wants to know. Most boys Miguel’s age hide girlie magazines featuring big-breasted bombshells under their beds or in the back of their closets. Or they make some faint rumblings if a gorgeous thing walks by. Roberto certainly did when he was Miguel’s age. And, of course, look where it got him. But still. Anyone who knew Roberto Torres years ago had no doubt that he was a boy who loved women. But they would be stunned to know who his first love was.
Roberto drives down the main road of Entrada, such as it is, looking for Miguel’s car. It is easy enough to recognize. He airbrushed the flames on the hood himself. He cruises past the adobe houses with broken fences and auto parts on their front lawns. Some have vehicles piled up. Or refrigerators. Others have old metal chairs rusting on a broken-down porch. Some parts of Entrada, like over where the Roybals live, are nicer than this part, but they aren’t what you’d call fancy. It is more a place you look at and think food stamps and welfare.
Nothing grows out here except beans. Scrawny animals graze. Mostly it is cottage industries. Women at home weaving blankets and making cheap jewelry for the tourist trade up in Taos (which he referred to as Tacos) and down in Santa Fe, men and women who worked in the hotels and restaurants as maids and busboys, on road crews or as nannies. There isn’t any real industry unless you call auto repair an industry. Mike’s shop on Riverside Drive has a sign that reads “Filling Station and Divorce,” but that’s because Mike is a notary too. He makes more money on divorces than on auto repair. For centuries his people have scratched out a living in this hot, dry place.
He wends his way around Entrada, searching for Miguel. If he is coming home from the cemetery, he’d be driving this way, but he isn’t. Roberto goes past Roybal’s store, and then slows down in the waning light under the old oak tree. No sign of him. He heads up by the school and traces the way Miguel drives home. He isn’t there. He isn’t anywhere. It is the first time he can remember hearing some actual concern in Morning Glory’s voice. The boy should have been home. Roberto doesn’t want to think about the two boys who went missing up in Mesa in the spring. Their bodies have never been found.
He circles back to their trailer. MG sits on the sofa on their porch. As he pulls in, she leaps up. “You see Miguel?”
“No, no sign of him.”
MG gazes outside. It is growing dark. “I’m just remembering. I think he went down to Santa Fe about a job.”
“What kind of job?”
MG shakes her head. But suddenly she seems to remember. “Babysitting. I never should have let him go.”
“Babysitting,” Roberto whispers under his breath. He can’t imagine another kid Miguel’s age who’d want a babysitting job. He looks out. The rain has stopped but rivulets run through the culverts. The arroyos can flood as well. “You know where?”
MG hangs her head. Her eyes and face look tired, beaten down, and her body slumped. Roberto recalls when her breasts were perky and firm, her ass nice and round, when there were no rolls around her middle and her jeans clung sweetly to her hips. She used to run like a deer. Now she barely walks down to the road to pick up her mail. She’s just past thirty, but her dark hair is stringy and already flecked with gray. On the other hand he isn’t looking so good himself, is he? He’s definitely gone to pot. And he has the belly to prove it.
But she looks up at him with those penetrating eyes and he sees their old sparkle. Though she is no longer the girl he made love to when they were teenagers, he still gets a twinge for her. A flicker of longing. Or perhaps it is for them as they’d once been. He’s been with other women—lots of them, in fact—but something keeps him coming back to the piney scent of her hair, though it has been months since she’s let him get much more than a foot in the door.
“Out on some canyon road where you did a job once, I think.”
Roberto nods. “Colibri Canyon?”
She nods. “Yes, I think that’s it.”
“Okay, I’ll find him.”
She manages to give him a little smile as he leaves. It is enough of a smile to encourage him. Maybe they can get something back again. It isn’t too late. They aren’t that old. They could even start another family. People do things like that all the time.
As Roberto drives out of Entrada and onto the highway, his heart is beating fast and his skin is itching. It always does when he is nervous. And now he’s nervous. Shit happens out here, doesn’t it? How does he know that this whole babysitting thing isn’t some kind of a trap? As he grips the wheel, his palms are sweating. He wants a drink. He wishes he could stop for one, but he won’t.
It is getting dark as he turns onto Colibri Canyon Road. As he suspected, the road is a bog after that heavy rain. He downshifts and makes his way. The jeep has four-wheel drive, though the car Miguel is driving doesn’t, and this makes him worry all the more. He drives carefully so as not to slide off the road or get stuck in the muck. In the distance the lights of the adobe mansions that line this road shimmer. The storm is over and the sky clear. Stars are bright overhead and there’s a flicker of moonlight to guide him.
CHAPTER EIGHT
TIME CAPSULE—1992
Miguel lies stretched across the hood of his car. It’s the clearest of nights, the storm long gone. The waters receded as quickly as they came, leaving Miguel and his car stuck in a muddy ditch. For the past two hours he has been trying to shove the car out of the gully where it settled in six inches of mud. Now, weary, he looks up at the stars that are beginning to brighten overhead.
