Perdido

by Rick Collignon

  Ray’s truck was gone from Will’s house. Lucero told him that a wrecker had come and towed it off. He climbed out of the car and let Will out of the back seat. Lucero looked as though he wanted to say something, but whatever it was, he kept it to himself. He got back in the squad car and drove off slowly, the sound of stones beneath his tires. Will watched the taillights swing down the road and behind the trees and disappear altogether. Then he turned and looked at his house. He thought that it seemed larger to him in the dark, unfamiliar, as though something had changed while he was gone.

  Eleven

  LATE ONE AUTUMN, Telesfor Ruiz had told Will the story of his father’s death. The leaves had turned but had not yet fallen, and the scrub oak on the foothills was burnt red. The aspens higher up were the color of gold. It was a still, warm day, but beneath it was the feel of another season. Will had listened as Telesfor spoke of his father and the tree that had killed him, but in his mind, along with Telesfor’s story, he heard his own.

  Will had been raised in a place where the country was flat and never changing and where the sky always seemed to be a different shade of gray. His father, who was quiet and good natured and who mistakenly thought that he would get somewhere in his life if he just placed one foot in front of the other, day after day, had died not long before Will came to Guadalupe.

  He died when the tractor he was riding reared up like an animal one spring morning, throwing him to the ground and snapping the small bones in his neck. Will’s father had lain there alone for hours without the ability to move, and all he could see with one open eye was the ground he had just plowed.

  Late in the day, Will found his father lying in the fields. His father’s eyes had remained open in death, and his face was pressed into the earth. Will knelt down and lifted his father’s head and brushed the dirt from his face. He said his father’s name aloud and then in a whisper. And in that moment, he felt far older than the man he was holding.

  Will said none of these things to Telesfor. He only listened as Telesfor’s story and his own wove through his mind. When the old man finished speaking, he pushed himself up from the table and walked stiffly to the window and stood there gazing out at the foothills. In the silence between them, Will asked what Telesfor thought his mother knew about her husband’s death that no one else did.

  Without turning, Telesfor said that his mother had always been a religious woman. He had heard stories from his grandmother that even as a child his mother had dressed her dolls as if they were saints. She would take them to mass on Sunday and sit them in a row beside her, a thing, his grandmother had said, that always confused the priest. When she was grown and married, his mother no longer kept dolls but santos of Our Lady of Guadalupe, and although these things held little interest for her husband, she believed their presence kept her family from harm.

  One winter, at the urging of the priest, who thought that God should remain in the church, not in his parishioners’ kitchens, Telesfor’s father removed all of the Ladies and placed them in a shed, where they stood by themselves looking out over fields of snow. Soon after, Telesfor’s grandmother fell ill and did not recover, and the summer that followed brought with it his father’s death. Telesfor’s mother knew in her heart that when she allowed her husband to remove the Ladies, she had lost her family.

  Will woke feeling as though he hadn’t slept but had spent the night in a coma. It was seven A.M. and the sun was shining in the window. He rolled over onto his side, his lip throbbed softly against the pillow, and he could feel a pulsing behind his eyes that he knew would turn into a headache. Shadows of dreams stirred in his head. There was nothing vivid enough for him to draw on, but there was enough to bring back the sight of large black birds flapping their wings and Ray lying in the dirt in the midst of them.

  “You shouldn’t have left him here like that,” Donald Lucero had said. Will shut his eyes and groaned.

  If the phone hadn’t rung in the kitchen, Will might have tried to block out the entire day and stayed in bed. He managed to get to the phone by the third ring. When he picked up the receiver, whoever was on the other end of the line said, “You’re a dead man, jodido,” and then there was just the soft click as he hung up. Will put the phone down, walked over to the door, and looked out at nothing. He realized that he had absolutely no idea what to do about anything.

  Lloyd Romero was skulking around outside the lumberyard when Will pulled in. Even before Will shut off the engine, he could see Lloyd moving toward him. He knew how much it took to get Lloyd out of the café before eight A.M. Here we go, he thought. The front door to the store was propped open, and Will could see Joe and Lawrence inside, talking at the front counter. Lloyd cut the distance quickly, angling to head Will off at the door as though if he didn’t make it, he might tackle Will from behind. Will slowed down to let him catch up.

  “What’s this I hear?” Lloyd said, puffing a little bit from his sprint. He was standing on the cement walk, which made him and Will nearly the same height.

  Will took a deep breath and widened his eyes, stretching the skin on his face. “I’m running late, Lloyd,” he said and took the step up. Lloyd grabbed his arm just above the elbow.

  “What the hell you shoot Ray Pacheco for?”

  Will stopped walking. “What are you talking about?” he said. “I didn’t shoot Ray. He shot himself.”

  Lloyd’s fingers clenched a little tighter, and he pulled Will’s arm to his chest. “I’ve known that asshole my whole life. He was too mean to shoot himself. What happened out there?” Will noticed that Lloyd couldn’t keep his eyes off his bruised lip.

  “I was just along for the ride, Lloyd,” he said. “The man was sick with cancer and depressed as hell about it.” He pulled his arm away, and Lloyd’s arm came along with it. “Lloyd,” Will said, “I got to go.”

  “So what’s all this about Ray raping some hippie girl from Canto Rodado?”

  Will felt as though he’d been hit in the stomach. “What?” he said.

  Lloyd let go of his arm, reached in his pocket, and took out a cigarette. He stuck it between his teeth and wobbled it up and down, grinning. “I hear,” he said, “that you got pictures of Ray putting it to some white girl.”

  “That isn’t right, Lloyd. I don’t know who you’ve been talking to, but Ray was sick. Real sick. And I don’t know anything about any pictures.”

  Joe walked out of the lumberyard. He stood in the sun, squinting, his hands in his pockets.

  Lloyd lit up his cigarette. “That’s not what I hear,” he said.

  Will looked over at Joe. “Joe,” he said. “Has Felipe been here?”

  “He came in early, Will. He was here when I opened up. Got a load and took off.”

  “What’s Felipe got to do with this?” Lloyd said.

  “Nothing, Lloyd,” Will said. He thought that if he had a stick in his hands he could pound Lloyd over the head with it. He looked back at Joe. “You got any coffee inside?”

  A pickup pulled in and parked in front of the three of them. The windows were tinted and Will could see only the glare of the sun off the windshield. Joe turned his head toward Will.

  “No, Will,” he said. “There’s no coffee.”

  “So,” Lloyd said loudly, “if nothing happened out there, how come your lip’s like that?”

  “Never mind my lip,” Will said. “I got to go.”

  “Hey,” Lloyd called after him. “Ray was always a sonofabitch. If you were family or one of his friends, you could crap in the road and he’d drive around you. Come over to my place later, Will. We’ll talk about this. You need help, you know where I am.”

  Three miles south of Guadalupe, up on a wooded mesa, Will turned east onto a long, winding private drive. It was narrow and graveled smooth. Tall piñon and scrub oak pushed in on both sides. Will could see fresh tire tracks. By now, Felipe had probably unloaded his truck and was stringing lines for the redwood deck they were to build.

  A little way in, Will began to lo
se his breath. He slowed down and then stopped in the middle of the road. He shut off the engine and rested his forehead on the steering wheel. Outside the cab, there wasn’t a sound, only a heavy stillness. Will watched his stomach and chest rise and fall too quickly, as if there weren’t enough air for his lungs to swallow. For the first time, he realized that if it hadn’t been for him, Ray would still be alive. He thought that when Ray had raised the gun and placed it under his chin, Will’s own hand had rested like a shadow on Ray’s, and the two of them together had pulled the trigger.

  Felipe had just finished shoveling the load of sand and gravel out of the back of his truck and was drinking a cup of coffee when he heard the sound of a vehicle. Will’s pickup swung slowly around the last curve before the house and came to a stop a few yards away from him.

  Out the open window of the truck, Will said, “I thought you’d be done by now.”

  There was an ashen color to Will’s face, and Felipe thought the words that came out of Will’s mouth trembled slightly. He grunted. “I didn’t expect to see you today,” he said.

  Will shook his head. “Next time I ask you to tell me any more stories, tell me to shut up.”

  Felipe drank some of his coffee. “I had a nice weekend,” he said. “I went fishing with the boys, and it didn’t matter that we caught nothing. Last night I fell asleep watching TV.” Will could see that Felipe’s eyes were clear, his face smooth and unlined. He looked as though he’d slept like a baby. “I hear,” Felipe went on, “you went fishing out at the river with Ray. You catch your lip on a hook?”

  “What did you hear?” Will asked.

  Felipe had heard the story the night before when Lisa had called Elena. He had been sitting quietly in the open doorway of his house, drinking a beer and looking at the shadows of his garden, when the phone rang. He had sat there listening to Elena’s voice grow more and more animated, thinking that he didn’t even want to know what she was hearing. When she hung up the phone, she walked through the house and stood behind him. She cleared her throat, and Felipe knew her hands were on her hips and she was not smiling. “I just heard,” she said, “that your stupid friend got Ray Pacheco shot, and now the whole village wants to kill him.” Felipe didn’t say anything. He moved his eyes away from his garden and stared straight ahead at nothing. “I just want to know,” Elena went on, “what kind of things you’ve been telling him for this to happen.”

  “I heard enough,” Felipe said now. He thought that Will looked as though he hadn’t slept in days and that his lip was too big for his mouth. He tossed the rest of his coffee on the ground. “It’s been nice working with you,” he said and walked to the back of the truck and began dragging out the bags of cement.

  Will got out of the truck and walked over to Felipe. He leaned against the side of the pickup. “This will blow over,” he said.

  Felipe tossed the last bag on the ground. “Sure it will,” he said.

  “I’m not going anywhere,” Will said.

  “Good.” He bounced a wheelbarrow out of the bed. “Maybe you can change your name,” he said. “Grow a beard.”

  “This isn’t my fault,” Will said, although there was little of him that believed it.

  Felipe moved toward Will. “Out of the way,” he said. He took out a couple of shovels and a pick and put them in the wheelbarrow.

  “You think it’s that bad?” Will asked.

  Felipe ran his hand across his forehead and then through his hair. “You think it can get any worse, jodido? In a long weekend, you have made the whole town mad and somehow managed to get Ray killed. Who cares whose fault it is? You stuck a stick in a hole, and now you’re surprised you got bit. Do I think it’s that bad?” He blew out a mouthful of air. “If it was me, I’d be home packing.”

  “Lloyd said if I needed help to go get him.”

  Felipe snorted. “Lloyd,” he said. “Lloyd likes you on Monday, forgets your name on Tuesday. If there’s a fight Lloyd’s right there yelling, but you watch, he never gets hit. What happened to your mouth, anyway?”

  “Lisa hit me with an ashtray.”

  “See. Even your girlfriend’s after you.”

  “This is what happened,” Will said.

  Felipe held up his hand. “No,” he said. “Don’t tell me. Lisa called and talked to Elena last night. So I heard some. I don’t want to talk about this now.”

  Will and Felipe had gotten the job through Joe at the lumberyard. He’d told them the owner thought his two-story house looked like a tall cardboard box, which it did, and wanted a deck built on the east side to soften the lines. It was the kind of job both of them liked. At the base of the foothills and for a homeowner who lived somewhere else most of the year and wouldn’t be around watching or talking or anything.

  Will picked up a shovel, hoping work might chase everything away. It would feel good not to talk and to have the sweat run down his spine and fly from his face when he shook his head. The ground was rocky, and it was all right wrestling stones and dirt out of the holes with the point of the shovel. But after a while, the sun began to burn through his shirt, and the silence in which they were working didn’t feel easy. Will’s pulse started up again behind his eyelids, and whenever his shovel struck rock, the impact shot up his arms to the base of his skull. By the time they broke for lunch, a quarter of the holes were dug and it seemed to Will as though they’d been working forever.

  “I thought he was going to shoot me,” Will said, sitting down under a piñon, not far from Felipe. His words sounded empty to him now, like a dream that wasn’t even his. He said it again, not just to repeat it but to try to bring it back.

  “I thought he was going to shoot me. We got to the river, and I swear all I wanted to do was drink some beers and make hamburgers with Lisa. I knew it was a bad idea to get in his truck, but I climbed in anyway. By the time we got to the river, Ray had finished off the pint. He starts talking about how sick he is and how he and his father spent summers out there grazing sheep. Then, all of a sudden, he’s got this gun in his hand. One minute we’re looking at the river and the next there’s this gun pointed at my face.”

  “Did your life flash in front of your eyes?” Felipe asked.

  Will looked at him for a few seconds. “No, my life didn’t flash before my eyes.” He wondered how, in the middle of what he was saying, Felipe could ask such a dumb question.

  “Ray said, ’Vaya con Dios,’” Will went on, “and then he brought the gun up under his chin and pulled the trigger. There wasn’t anything I could do, it happened so fast. He flew backwards and landed flat on his back.” Will stopped talking and looked down at the half-eaten peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich Felipe had given him. He picked it up and took a bite. It tasted as dry as dust, but he swallowed it down. “I never covered him up when I left,” he said. “When we got back, the birds were on him.”

  Felipe was scooping beans and chile out of a bowl with a tortilla. He looked at Will, his jaws chewing. “That probably bothers you the most, doesn’t it? When Ray’s around, you can’t stand him. When he’s dead and doesn’t care about nothing, you worry about birds.” He scooped some more chile out of the bowl and stuck it in his mouth. “If I was Ray,” he said, “it’s you I would have shot.”

  “Half the village saw us driving around,” Will said. “There’s no way he could have shot me and got away with it.”

  “Who said he wanted to get away with it?” Felipe remembered a day long ago when Melvin Cortez, a man who was born in a foul mood and who became even worse when he drank, which was always, shot and killed his neighbor. Melvin never told anyone why he did this, saying only that it was nobody’s business but his own. As Melvin’s second cousin was married to the sister of the judge in Las Sombras, and as the dead man had no family and was new in Guadalupe, this was a trial that never came to be. Felipe thought that it was just Will’s good luck that Ray was as sick as he was.

  “I think,” Will said, “that Ray just wanted to make sure everyone knew I wa
s the reason he shot himself.” Will ate some more of his sandwich and washed it down with cold coffee. He was beginning to feel better, but he didn’t know whether that was because of the food or sitting out of the sun or just being able to talk about all this instead of having it caged in his head. “Don’t Catholics go to hell if they kill themselves?” he asked.

  “If Ray had cancer like you say,” Felipe said, “he was half dead already. That doesn’t make it so bad. It might be harder to explain murder to God. Actually, Ray was pretty smart. He didn’t have to stick around and get sick, and he left it so his family will take care of you.”

  “You think so?”

  Felipe took in a deep breath and then belched. “He never had any kids,” Felipe said, “but he’s got a lot of relatives. Jimmy was mad at you for just talking to Ray. I don’t think he’s going to be too happy about this. Look, say you’ve lived your whole life in some little town and some stranger shows up and shoots your father or messes with your sister. You think you’d just forget about it? Hell, Will, you’d go get drunk with your buddies and then cut the guy’s balls off. That’s what would happen.” Felipe shoved the remainder of the tortilla in his mouth and looked past Will. “That house is ugly,” he said. “I think all a deck will do is make it look like a cardboard box with a lip.”

  Will stared at him for a few seconds. “You’ve got chile all over your face,” he said. A yellow jacket buzzed his head. He swatted at it with his hand and it flew off into the woods, droning like a small plane. “I hate those bees. They don’t make honey. They don’t pollinate anything. They’re like flies, but they bite.”

  “Flies bite,” Felipe said.

  “Maybe you they bite.”

  “In the fall they bite. When it starts to get cold. They get mean and want to take it out on something.”