Stealthy Steps

by Vikki Kestell

  “Pardon me. Could you move back a tad?”

  I started pulling down the door. She glanced up and backed up. A tad.

  “But aren’t you discouraged, dear?” The door was coming down between us. “I’ll look in the papers for you. Perhaps a waitressing job while you are looking for something more, ah, suitable. But you mustn’t be too picky or presumptuous, Gemma. I know Lu didn’t leave you anything, what with all the medical bills. Why, you’re probably still digging out from under them! I don’t know how you’ll survive.”

  I slammed the door down in her face and shoved a big screwdriver into the door’s track with more force than needed. I could have been more polite—Aunt Lucy had taught me to be polite no matter what. I would have been more polite, but when she dragged Aunt Lucy into her gossip?

  I about lost it.

  I strode out the garage’s side door, up the steps, and into the house without a backwards glance.

  I’D BEEN OFFICIALLY unemployed for two weeks when a news ticker jigged across the TV screen. I shook myself out of a stupor: An explosion of some kind at the national laboratories on Kirtland Air Force Base. As the local anchor reported more information, my mouth fell open.

  “Bob, we’ve just been told by a Sandia spokesperson that an explosion has taken place on the campus of Sandia National Laboratories in one of its laboratories within the MESA complex.

  “The spokesperson stressed that the resulting fire has already been contained and presents no danger to other buildings nearby, but he also warned that the explosion did result in loss of life. No names have been released at this early point in the investigation.”

  I was holding my breath.

  “Ted, when do we expect to hear more on this breaking story?”

  “Bob, this information was released with approval of the lab director. The spokesperson expects the director to deliver a prepared statement sometime in the next hour. Live from outside the Eubank gate, this is Ted Martinez for Action 7 News.”

  A laboratory within the MESA complex! My heart plummeted into my shoes.

  I stayed glued to the television all that afternoon and into the evening. News units outside the base caught additional fire trucks and ambulances racing to support the Kirtland department.

  Of course, the base was shut down. Until a security assessment determined that the explosion and fire had not been a deliberate act and that the event posed no further danger, the base would remain under lockdown.

  News helicopters could not fly over the base so they hovered as close to the boundary as allowed, which was not close enough for me. From far outside the base perimeter the news chopper’s camera picked up only a thin plume of white smoke—all that remained of the fire.

  I stayed riveted to the coverage all day and into the evening. That night, under bright lights, the lab director and the base commander held a press conference outside the base’s Eubank gate. The lab’s director, a tall, well-spoken man, addressed the cameras, his arms folded across his chest. He was not a happy camper.

  However, rather than the director addressing the crowd, the base commander stepped to the microphone and spoke to the cameras. He didn’t look much happier than the lab director.

  Through pinched lips he announced, “Working laboratories deal with volatile materials and, for that reason, we have strict safety protocols in place. However, mistakes do happen. Our initial assessment indicates that the incident was caused by human error and affected only one laboratory. The investigation is, of course, ongoing. We can, however, with heavy hearts, tell you the names of the two Sandia personnel who perished in this tragic accident.”

  I swallowed, not wanting to hear, but not able to tear myself away.

  “Long-time Sandia employee and respected scientist, Dr. Petrel Prochanski, and his esteemed colleague, Dr. Daniel Bickel, perished today. We are told that their deaths were immediate. We can provide no further information at this time. Our hearts go out to their families, friends, and coworkers.”

  The commander stalked away from the microphone, ignoring the barrage of questions. The lab director, grim and silent, followed behind, and they were surrounded by their people as they filed through the gate and onto the base where reporters could not follow. My view on the television changed to a camera following their passage through the crowd.

  As he had pronounced the names of the dead, I had leapt to my feet, crying, “No! Oh, no! No, no, no!”

  Then, through my hot tears, I saw her.

  General Cushing, her mouth curved in a tight smile, her eyes hard and glittering, stopped the laboratory director and spoke to him. The man tried his best to get free from her while maintaining his temper—that was apparent. Then Cushing placed one hand on his arm and the director looked her in the eye.

  I don’t know what she said, but its effects were immediate. The director flinched. Cushing, her hand still on his arm, smiled again and spoke further.

  The director nodded. His lips were stretched thin, but he nodded.

  I knew a beaten man when I saw one.

  Chapter 5

  The first sting of horror lasted a week. Then the pain that had been cutting so deeply began to numb. After that I had to turn off the news, had to stop watching. It wasn’t as though the news had any new news to report anyway. I could almost mouth the reports as the anchors spoke.

  A strong conviction grew in my gut that General Cushing—and whomever she reported to—were the actual figures in control of the investigation, in which case anything the news reported was exactly what Cushing wanted the public to know.

  It wasn’t hard to imagine Shark Face—plump lips lifting to reveal white, gleaming teeth— pulling strings, asserting her will and that of her superiors, and manipulating the lab’s federal oversight and contractor employees. I’d seen her exert her power over the lab director and, no doubt, she’d done the same with the base’s commander.

  She has to be well connected to wield such power, I mused. I sneered as I pictured her.

  I made a meatloaf for Abe and carried it over to him for his dinner. Of course he’d seen news coverage of the explosion in the lab and we’d talked at length about my relationships with the two scientists who’d perished in the accident.

  That afternoon, though, I finally confided what had really happened my last day of work, and I started by confessing how I’d spied on Dr. Bickel for Dr. Prochanski. Abe listened without saying anything, nodding once in a while to show that he was following.

  Once I’d aired my guilty conscience and expressed my regret, a dam broke loose inside of me. I had to tell Abe everything—it was eating me up inside.

  I described General Cushing, including my sense of her as a person (I use the term “person” loosely), and I described that fateful meeting between Dr. Prochanski, Cushing, and Dr. Bickel in the conference room. I whispered what I’d overheard Dr. P and General Cushing decide—the real reason I’d been let go.

  When I had finished unburdening my heart, Abe’s countenance was grave. I’d never seen him so serious.

  “Girl, you have no experience with the military like I do. This General Cushing? You are well served to be away from her—you can be thankin’ God for that. She’s no one to ever mess with, I can tell from the way you described her.” He shook his head.

  “Thank the Lord, you don’t have to worry ’bout this woman anymore. Now, let’s talk ’bout you.” He studied me, and I didn’t like what I saw reflected in his black eyes.

  “You got you a good conscience, Gemma. Lu made sure of that. But just sayin’ you wish you hadn’t done somethin’ don’t fix it. Don’t make it right an’ don’t make your heart light again.”

  I swallowed. He’d hit my sore spot. Exactly. “But I don’t think I can fix it, Abe. They-they’re dead.” I was thinking of Dr. Bickel in particular. I couldn’t apologize to him, couldn’t ask his forgiveness. Somewhere in a corner of my heart, I felt a twinge of responsibility for his death because of how I’d so dishonored him.

&nb
sp; “No, you can’t fix what you done, but you can still be forgiven for it.”

  I didn’t want to hear what was coming next.

  “You can ask Jesus t’ forgive you, Gemma. That’s the only way to get shut of the guilt.”

  I nodded but didn’t say anything. It was far easier to feign agreement with him than to answer back.

  I ATTENDED THE MEMORIAL services for Dr. P and Dr. Bickel—closed casket, of course—before their bodies were shipped to their home towns for burial. The powers-that-be held the services off base so that access to the service wouldn’t be a problem for attendees. It pained me to see my old coworkers again and to know I wasn’t part of their everyday life anymore.

  I felt adrift, lost at sea.

  I wasn’t part of anyone’s everyday life anymore.

  IT WAS MID-MAY WHEN I grew a wild, ambitious hair. Before Aunt Lucy got sick, she and I had xeriscaped the front yard, replacing the old, thirsty grass with colorful gravel and adding some big rocks for accent along with a few drought-tolerant shrubs and plants like lavender and sage. This year I wanted to do something different in the backyard: I decided to plant a little vegetable garden.

  I wanted to grow simple stuff that would do well in the summer heat—squash, tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, and a little patch of corn. The only problem? Aunt Lucy had never grown anything in her backyard except grass.

  Well, I had a good shovel and a strong back. Just add elbow grease, right? That’s when I discovered that the backyard’s soil was composed primarily of unyielding “hardpan” clay—much like cement.

  You know: concrete.

  Did I mention I knew next to nothing about actual gardening?

  I staked out the area I intended to plant and worked at digging up the sizable patch of grass for four days. Each day my vision for the size of my plot shrank. At the rate I was going I might have enough ground turned and tilled to plant a couple of tomato plants.

  Jake came to investigate my efforts. He sniffed around the dirt but stayed out of range of my hands. God forbid that I should try to pet him let alone touch him! Anyway, I’d earned enough stripes trying to pet him. I knew better.

  Jake sniffed a patch of dirt and turned around over it a couple of times—

  “Get out of there!” I tossed one of my gloves at him. He hissed at me before stalking away.

  “He’s probably planning to come back and use my garden as his new litter box just to spite me,” I growled. “Devil cat!”

  I kept at my digging, though. Finally I had a plot about twelve-by-twelve turned, weeded, and ready. I bought some pepper, tomato, cucumber, and squash plants at Home Depot, put them in the ground, and called it good.

  Whew.

  It was hot already, too. Once the sun fully rose and it was too hot to work in the yard, I retreated indoors. I was grateful for the relief my old swamp cooler afforded. However, by late in the day the vintage evaporative cooler barely kept the house livable. It did the job, but just.

  Most days after coming inside, I would sit in the dining room at my little table overlooking my front yard and the cul-de-sac. The swamp cooler blew air from a back window through the kitchen into the dining room, making my perch the most comfortable in the house. I’d spend a couple of hours searching for jobs on my laptop and applying to the scant few positions I found.

  While I worked, I’d keep watch through the dining room window. I told myself that I was just admiring my blooming lavender bushes and the creeping sedum in my rock garden, but I watched the other houses in the cul-de-sac. I watched Mr. and Mrs. Flores, I watched nosy Mrs. Calderón, I watched the Tuckers, and I watched Abe.

  I talked about this earlier, but I should add a few more details. You see, in my neighborhood that’s what we did: We watched. All around our cul-de-sac the neighbors watched each other—and everyone watched everyone else watch them back. It didn’t used to be that way, but these days it was a necessary evil.

  I’ve already told you a lot about Abe and Mrs. Calderón. The folks on my right, Mr. and Mrs. Flores, are very simple folk. They have three grown children and a busload of grands, but the kids and grandkids live in other states. Usually the Floreses go to see them instead of the other way around. I don’t blame them, given the deteriorating condition of our neighborhood.

  These neighbors I’ve mentioned? We mostly watch out for each other. The reason for our constant vigilance comes in the person of the one neighbor I haven’t yet described, our local gangbanger, Mateo Martinez.

  The rest of us? We all watch him and his girlfriend, Corazón, who live on the other side of the Floreses, in the house between the Floreses and Abe. We keep tabs on Mateo’s gang buddies who roar in and out of our cul-de-sac on a daily basis. Some of the neighbors probably keep one finger on their phones, ready to dial 911.

  Abe does his watching from his front porch, usually with an old revolver next to him on the swing. (Abe is retired military and of the anti-gang persuasion—and New Mexico is an open-carry state.)

  APD publishes a list of the two hundred and fifty gangs operating in Albuquerque. Of course, some gangs are larger—and scarier—than others are. I don’t know what Mateo’s gang is called. I know them by their shaved heads and distinctive tattoos, and I know they are a blight on what had once been a cozy, happy neighborhood.

  I remember when this was a quiet, safe place to be a kid. Now the only kid left on the block is Mateo’s nephew, Emilio, who moved in with his uncle about a year back.

  Emilio. That kid, Mateo’s scrawny nephew and the burr under my saddle, spends more time outside than in. All weekend and before and after school (if he actually goes), he perches on the curb in front of his uncle’s house.

  Doing guess what? Watching. And chewing his lip, a shrewd regard darkening his eyes. He watches us and he watches his uncle’s gang members come and go. Of course, we watch him, too.

  Now that school is out for the summer, he’s always there, hunkered down on the curb, shifting his spot on the sidewalk as the shade progresses. His shade comes from the hedge of untended, overgrown juniper bushes that grows between his uncle’s yard and Abe’s. Emilio usually fiddles all day with a pocketknife and a scrap of wood. The kid has eyes in the back of his head, a surly temperament, and—for some reason that escapes me—an abiding grudge against yours truly.

  Emilio is ten or eleven, I think. He’s dark-haired and dark-complexioned, skinny, and perpetually sour. He’s the reason I use a hefty screwdriver to secure my garage door, why I paid an arm and a leg for some guys to mount bars over my windows, and why I insisted those same guys install metal security doors on the garage’s side door and the doors to my house.

  The kid hasn’t tried anything recently, but the first six months he lived in the neighborhood? Someone broke into my garage at least twice, and I’m sure it was Emilio. He stole some unopened jugs of motor oil the first time and all my tools the second. Abe had to give me the big old screwdriver I use to fortify my garage door because all my tools were gone.

  So that’s two thefts on the garage. The next time Emilio broke in, it was my house.

  It was spring last year. I had been at work, fighting a cold that morning. Exhausted, I’d finally given up the fight and gone home at noon.

  I’d come in the side door like always—and caught Emilio red-handed, in my kitchen, going through my cupboards, and eating the leftover pizza I’d planned to have for dinner. He had a plastic grocery sack stuffed with whatever he’d pilfered from me.

  We’d both been surprised—stunned—but for two to three seconds we’d just stared at each other. Then anger and hate had sparked in his eyes. And maybe something else? I don’t know, and I don’t know what he saw in my eyes that made him hate me with such vehemence.

  Anyway, he’d grabbed up the bag, hit my front door, and lit out across the cul-de-sac and around back of his uncle’s house. I called Abe. He came over and we debated calling the police and discussed the likely ramifications of riling up Emilio’s uncle.

 
; “Aint’ goin’ to be worth messin’ with that fool uncle o’ his,” Abe advised. The unspoken caution involved Mateo’s gang. They hadn’t bothered any of us in the cul-de-sac and, in return, we had not “rocked the boat” with regard to their bothersome presence in our neighborhood. It was an uneasy, unarticulated “truce,” but a truce nonetheless.

  The next week Abe got a friend to put up the bars on my windows and doors—and not for cheap, either. He managed to get me a discount at least.

  While the guys worked, Emilio had sat on the curb across the street. He’d watched, whittling on a stick and sneering at me. Two days later, “someone” spray-painted some nasty words on my garage door. Abe was painting over them when I got home from work that evening. From his regular seat on the curb, Emilio had glared, defiant and bold, shooting obscene hand gestures in my direction . . . and I wondered, not for the first time, why Emilio had been going through my kitchen cupboards.

  As I said, Emilio spent more time outside than in. I guess I didn’t blame him; it couldn’t have been any picnic living with Mateo and Corazón.

  If Emilio was the prickly sticker lodged in the bottom of my foot, then Mateo was the thorn in the whole cul-de-sac’s side. More than once, we’d witnessed his volatile temper as he’d shouted orders to his gang pals or personally issued a beatdown on one of them. I’d seen for myself the evidence of his violence in the bruises Corazón tried to cover up. I hadn’t seen any marks on Emilio, but then, the kid was pretty fast on his feet.

  In one way, we (the neighbors) should have been grateful, because the situation could have been much worse. Mateo used his house (and our cul-de-sac) for drunken parties and, for the most part, kept the parties down to a dull roar. Occasionally, when his crew got out of hand, one of us called the police. They cited Mateo a couple of times, but they never found anything to arrest him for—because Mateo kept illegal activities involving his gang far away from his own “crib.”