A Snake in the Grass

by K. A. Stewart

  “Working the boy too hard. Old bat.” Terrence hobbled over to sit beside me like he was my long lost best friend, and glared at Carlotta.

  “Idiota borracho,” she grumbled at him in return, and took a seat on the bench opposite us, arranging her long skirt neatly. “We are getting nowhere, and honestly, I do not know if the pain we are causing you is worth the effort. It may be more beneficial for us to work on the theory of this for a while, without your presence.”

  I looked skeptically between the two of them. “Do you really think you can play together unsupervised?” The absolute lack of amusement on both faces was identical, and if I was a bit more suicidal, I would have laughed.

  Before we could hash out any more details, there was a knock at the door, and Rosaline’s voice. “Mama Carlotta?”

  “Come inside, Rosaline.” The door swung open, and Rosaline gave us all a bright grin before setting her gaze on Carlotta. “Señora Alvarez. She is calling for you.”

  Carlotta heaved herself up off the bench with a decisive shake of her skirts. “Well, that ends this for today. Babies do not wait. Fetch my bag, Rosa.” She glanced back once, to fix Terrence with a stern look. “Do not touch my things, I will gather them up when I return.”

  “As if I’d want to touch anything of hers…” The old grouch muttered at Carlotta’s back, but I noticed it wasn’t loud enough for her to actually hear him. “All right, you, go make yourself useful elsewhere. I’ve got work to do.”

  You don’t have to tell me twice. I bailed before anyone could change their minds, yanking my T-shirt on as I beat a hasty retreat. The burning sensation in my skin eased as soon as my back was covered, as if the souls knew they weren’t going to be assaulted anymore for a while.

  The Perez compound was bustling with life as I made my way back toward the main house. Children ran across my path, playing games and shouting to each other. A few of them even paused to give me grins, then darted off again. There were women at a few of the other buildings, hanging out laundry on lines, or shaking dust out of rugs. I nodded and waved when they noticed me, but I couldn’t have told you any of their names. There were just so many people.

  No one was in the kitchen when I sauntered through, so I grabbed a stray orange out of the bowl and headed out the back door to keep looking. Wasn’t hard to locate Estéban, all I had to do was follow the sound of a pounding hammer.

  As promised earlier, my protégé was working on the fence for the goat pen, nails sticking out of his mouth as he carefully hammered the loose boards back into place and replaced a few that had gotten too chewed or rotten to be of use anymore. He didn’t even hear me coming until my shadow fell across him, and he looked up, blinking against the sun.

  “You need some help there?”

  He spit the nails out into his hand before answering. “No, I’m almost finished.” Standing, he stretched with a grimace, proving that he’d been at it a long time. “I do not understand why it was allowed to get like this. Paulito could have made repairs, or anyone really. This didn’t need to wait for me.”

  “Maybe they just didn’t think it was important. I mean, it looks like the goats are all still here, right?” One of the furry beasts, all wiry black fur and gnarled horns, looked at us and gave a disgusted “blaaaah!”

  “Only because of Pueblo.”

  “Who’s Pueblo?”

  “That’s Pueblo.” He pointed toward some scrubby shade trees across the lot, and at first I didn’t see anything. Then, the shadows shifted a little, and I realized I was looking at a dun colored donkey, the creature’s ears perked and his gaze fixed on us as if he knew we were talking about him. Standing under the low hanging branches, the dappled light broke up the tan form and made him almost invisible if he remained still.

  “That’s a donkey.”

  “Mhmm. Best guard dog you can have. He will not let the coyotes get to the babies, and he keeps the goats together if they get out.”

  “But…that’s a donkey.” Despite my rural-ish origins, I am so not a farm guy.

  “Burro.”

  “Whatever.”

  The kid chuckled at me, gathering up his tools. “Come on. We will wash up and then find lunch.”

  I offered him a few sections of my orange as we walked to the tool shed. “Your mom had to run off on a baby thing, so looks like I’m free for the afternoon. Any more repairs need to be done?”

  “I haven’t had a chance to look around yet. Probably. Where is Sveta?”

  I shrugged, my mouth full of orange, then helpfully added, “Dunno. Said she was going to walk the perimeter or something, but that was at breakfast.” If I had to wager, she wasn’t too far away. She struck me as the lurk-in-the-shadows-and-watch type. That thought made the souls across my shoulders ripple uncomfortably, and I had to remind them (and myself) that Sveta was on our side.

  The tool shed was more of a small barn, and as we went in to store the hammer and a few other things, a tarp-covered shape caught my eye. If I didn’t know better, I’d say that looked like… “Is that a motorcycle?”

  Estéban glanced to where I was pointing, and tensed up so hard he almost tripped over his own two feet. I caught his elbow until he could find his balance again. “Hey, you okay?”

  “That is Miguel’s motorcycle.” Ah. Oops. I watched him as he tucked his tools away, noting the uncomfortable hunch to his lanky shoulders. His eyes kept going back to that dusty tarp in the corner, and his jaw was clenched so tight I thought he was going to grind his teeth to powder.

  I just stood silently, watching him struggle with whatever it was going on in his head. After a few moments, he sighed, resting his hands on the workbench in front of him and hanging his head. “He was working on it, you know, before. He didn’t get to finish it. I don’t think it even runs.”

  “Can I look at it?” He nodded his permission, so I went over to strip the tarp off the bike, sending clouds of dust swirling into the air. Crouching down, I examined what I had revealed.

  It wasn’t anything special, just an old dirt bike in a state of semi-disassembly. Looked like it had been red and blue at some point in its life, but it had been used hard, and the paint was more scuffed and scraped than solid color. A small box of parts rested behind the front wheel, obviously a project in mid-completion that someone had expected to come back to shortly. He never made it.

  “Miguel was teaching me about engines. He said once we were done with this one, we would find one for me.” I could hear a ghost of a smile in his voice as he came to stand behind me. “Mamá would have freaked out, so we weren’t going to tell her until we were done.”

  Secret plans, promises between brothers. I knew how that was. Cole and I had made a few of our own, back in the day.

  “Didn’t know you knew about engines.” Funny how you can live with a guy for over a year and still know so little about him.

  He crouched down beside me, hand resting on the handlebars to hold his balance. “I don’t know it well. Like I said, he was teaching me.”

  “Maybe you can finish this yourself, then. If you can find someone to help.”

  “Maybe.” Absently, like he wasn’t even aware of what he was doing, he picked up a small socket wrench, twirling it between his fingers. “We spent hours out here. We’d go in for dinner, covered in grease, and Mamá would yell at us for not washing up. Miguel would just give her this grin, and then it was all okay. I think he was her favorite.”

  “Parents don’t have favorites,” I lied, because it was what you are supposed to say. Cole was my mom’s favorite. We’d always known it, and I never really thought about it anymore. Cole was the good son, and I’d been the hellion she was always pulling out of trouble. It wasn’t until I was an adult that my mom and I had truly gotten to know each other.

  I quickly jotted down a few mental notes for things to do (and not to do) when my own second child arrived. I didn’t want either of my kids to ever feel like I favored one over the other.

  Estéban re
ached out and tweaked something with the wrench in his hand, the ratchet making a clicking sound that was loud in the quiet barn. Whatever it did, it wasn’t want he wanted, because he frowned and started digging through the box on the ground for something else. Hey, what I know about engines is confined to my ancient Mazda pickup, and largely revolves around making sure I’m not walking home. Finally, he fished out a different socket, and leaned in close to fiddle with something else.

  “Hey, could you hand me that…?” He gestured vaguely to my right, and when I offered him an allen wrench I found lying there, he seemed satisfied.

  With a small smile, I settled down on the pile of tarp, watching as my student started fiddling with the motorcycle engine. I could totally imagine him in here, with Miguel, both their dark heads bent close together as the older brother explained this or that about what they were working on. Miguel’s presence seemed to linger here, even though I knew very well that his soul had passed on to wherever good people go in the end. (Despite the fact that I’d recently met an actual angel, I still wasn’t completely sold on the idea of heaven. Hell, on the other hand, that I believed in whole-heartedly.)

  I don’t know long we sat in that dusty, dimly lit barn while Estéban tinkered and fussed over the motorcycle. I handed him things when he needed, but other than the occasional request, we sat in companionable silence. When the sun wandered around to where it wasn’t beaming in the door, I found a work light and plugged it in to give us more illumination.

  We only realized we’d been missed when a small head crowned with dark pigtails poked in through the door, and a little girl’s eyes lit up in triumph. “Señor Smythe! Los encontré!”

  “Aw crap, we’re in trouble, kid.” I muttered before the doorway was filled with a large, grumpy frame.

  “Well it’s about goddamn time you two turned up! Scare an old man to death, why don’t you!” Despite his bluster, Terrence patted the little girl on the head, and slipped her a toffee candy when he thought no one was looking. Giggling, she ran off. “What the hell are you doing, all holed up in this dustbin?”

  “Working on Miguel’s motorcycle.” Estéban leaned back to show off his efforts, and Terrence shuffled closer, leaning on his cane as he bent to peer into the half-finished engine.

  “Hmph. Not bad. Needs a bit of tender loving care, is all.” Without even looking, Terrence leveled a gnarled finger in my direction. “You. Find me a seat.”

  “Sir, yes sir,” I mumbled, but managed to locate an overturned bucket that would suffice. I reclaimed my nest on the tarp and watched in amazement as Terrence proceeded to school Estéban in the finer elements of small engine work. Hunh. Who knew?

  Watching that grizzled old curmudgeon quietly and carefully explain the mechanics of your basic dirt bike made me realize that Terrence wasn’t exactly everything he wanted people to think he was. Old and grumpy, yes. Drunk, quite often. But he had a keen mind for a lot of things, and very little slipped past him when it came to true observation. I could tell by his attitude that he had fully grasped the importance of “Miguel’s motorcycle,” and that he possibly even cared that the kid was taking this very seriously.

  Under Terrence’s tutelage, the engine shaped up pretty quickly. The pair of unlikely mechanics figured out that all the parts were present, at least, it was just going to be a matter of getting them all functional before the bike would actually run. We were about to go in search of things like gasoline and motor oil when the kid’s stomach growled loudly, echoed quickly by mine. Then I remembered that we’d only had about half an orange each since breakfast. Lunch had obviously gone the way of the dodo.

  “Think that’s our cue to call it a day, gentlemen.” I shoved up off the ground, brushing the dust off my clothes with little-to-no success. “We need to get something for dinner, or I’m going to eat Pueblo.”

  Estéban snorted at me, while Terrence gave me a puzzled glance under his bushy eyebrows. “What the hell is a Pueblo?”

  We meandered toward the main house with a feeling of accomplishment that only comes from working with your hands. Hell, I even felt pretty good about myself, and all I’d done was watch and hand them things.

  Dinner was well underway in the Perez kitchen, but Carlotta was conspicuously absent. Instead, a rather lovely woman – “My cousin Alejandro’s wife, Veruca,” Estéban reminded me quietly – scolded us all in rapid Spanish until we lined up at the sink to scrub our hands.

  While we cleaned up, the first wave of the dinner crowd – Estéban’s younger siblings and several cousins I hadn’t met yet – scarfed down their food and then scattered to the four winds, leaving the long table ready to be filled again.

  By some unspoken signal, my roommates appeared about the same time we sat down, the adolescent boys jostling each other and conversing in loud, joyful voices. Like most teenage males, they didn’t seem to care what food they shoved in their faces, so long as there was a lot of it. With most of the conversation in Spanish, I could catch maybe every fifth comment, but that didn’t keep me from enjoying the meal. There was something about being absorbed into a large family that just made things all right. I even caught Terrence chuckling and shaking his head a time or two, though he’d probably deny it.

  Sveta showed up shortly thereafter, with no hint as to where or how she’d spent her day. She simply stared at one of the boys – Thing 1, I thought – until he squirmed under her gaze and scooted over to make room for her. After that, the conversation came to an awkward halt, more than one pair of dark eyes fixating more on the beautiful woman at the table than the plates of food in front of them.

  “Have a good day, Sveta?” I raised a brow at her.

  “Mmf.” Fine. Whatever she’d been up to, she was going to keep it to herself for now. She fished her boot knife out, using it to spear some sliced mango, and the boys decided to make themselves scarce in a mass exodus that was usually reserved for things like shouting “Fire!” in a theater. I didn’t miss the faint smirk that curved her lips as she nibbled delicately at the fruit impaled on her blade.

  “Oye, Estéban!” Paulito’s shout preceded him, and even then he only hung his head inside the back door, grinning rakishly. I only got about half the words in his question, but Estéban turned to look at me.

  “The older boys are going down into town. He wants to know if I want to go.” There was uncertainty in his dark eyes, as if he wasn’t sure he had permission to just be a teenager. That made me sad. I’d worked real hard when he was in Missouri to make sure he got to do kid things, too.

  “You should go. Have fun.” When he hesitated, I bopped him on the nose with a rolled up tortilla. “But I’m not saving you any food, so you’re going to starve.”

  He gave me a smirk and snatched the tortilla out of my hand, devouring it in two bites. “Not if you don’t move faster.” He gave Paulito a nod indicating that he was coming, and then disappeared out the door to answering whoops of excitement from the crowd of guys waiting for him.

  “It’s good, you know.” I glanced over at Terrence’s interjection, and he gave me a firm nod. “He’s too young for these things, these messes we get into. Not right to offer to give up your life before you’ve even lived it.”

  I was inclined to agree with him, for once, but I knew that Estéban would fight the notion that he could have a normal life. Lord knew, I wasn’t the best example either.

  I tried, oh sure, I tried. I had Mira, and Anna, and a baby on the way. One point five kids and a dog, right? I had a normal job working in retail, and I mowed the lawn and cooked dinner and did laundry, just like anybody. But in the past year I had been mauled by a hellhound, chased by spider-monkey zombie things, and nearly squashed flat by a monster made of living clay. My house was ringed with the most powerful magical wards created by multiple casters. I currently carted around two hundred and seventy-five souls that weren’t mine, and I truly believed that at any given moment, a demon was going to pop out of nowhere to take them, any way it could.
/>   Poster boy for normal I was not.

  But I’d made that choice when I was an adult. Well old enough to know better, sure, but able to give informed consent. Estéban wasn’t, despite his efforts to prove me wrong.

  Part of me wanted to go talk to Carlotta, to really plead the case that the kid was simply not ready to take on the duties they wanted to assign to him. Surely, if they seriously needed an active champion, one of the older boys could, one of the cousins. It was in their blood, too.

  I knew, though, that Estéban would never forgive me if I did. He’d see it as me, doubting his abilities, which I didn’t. The kid could fight, and he wasn’t going to turn tail and run at the first sign of trouble. I knew that. I’d seen it, and he’d saved my bacon. I just wanted him to know that I had faith in him, but that I didn’t want to see him turned into demon chow before he ever hit twenty.

  With a sigh, I pushed my plate away, no longer hungry. If this was what being a father was like as your child grew up, the years ahead of me were going to suck.

  The sound of the old pickup truck carried through the evening air, and there was a chorus of excited childish chatter, followed by Carlotta’s unmistakable soothing voice. When she and Rosaline came through the back door, she smiled to see the three of us still at the table. “Oh, good, there is some dinner left.”

  I stood up to let her take my seat, and took the big duffel bag away from Rosaline who thanked me with a grateful smile. “How was your…thing?”

  Carlotta chuckled and shook her head as she fixed her plate. “It was a false alarm. A new mother tends to fret over things that are quite normal.” Yeah, I remembered a few of those with Mira when she was pregnant with Anna. They weren’t always her false alarms, either. I think I did more fretting than she did. “I do not think the baby will come before next week, but I have been wrong before, so we will see.”