Red Lightning

by Laura Pritchett

  Ed makes a circular motion with his hand, a speed-it-up. “I want the truth before I ask you to leave. What kind of situation are you in?”

  Libby starts to say something, but I interrupt her and keep my eyes on Ed. He’s the one who will need convincing. “A group was coming in this past week. In the mountains near Alamosa. With coca y mota—because now they’re more or less required to carry stuff. So this guy, Lobo, he’s the coyote, a culero, the head honcho, you know, el pollero, it’s his men who get everyone across the U.S.–Mexico border. My job is just to pick them up in the mountains and get them to Denver. That’s all. No big deal. I especially move women and children. I just drive and stay out of it. ICE is just a bunch of fuckers these days, and you know, being a gringa—”

  “What I want to know, Tess—”

  “—The freakin’ pollos didn’t show, Ed. I don’t have anyone with me.” I look toward the mountains so he can’t see my eyes. I don’t know how much longer I can stand up. How much longer my heart can possibly beat. The granola bar has awakened a giant, and the giant is roaring for food and is thrashing, thrashing, thrashing, and if only I can stay calm a little longer. “They didn’t show. I was at the right place. I waited for three days. They didn’t show. So I came here. The end.”

  A flash in the air—Ed and Libby share a glance of something deep like a river, an energy, something big enough to send out a flash of feeling, and it startles me.

  “Wait, what . . . you—” Ed starts, but Libby interrupts him with a palm that flies up, a shake of the head, no. “We can’t talk about this now. Let her take a shower.”

  I glance back and forth, trying to figure the energy out. “I came here,” I finally say into the silence, “for three days. Then I’m out of here. Heading east this time, actually. Gonna disappear into the flatlands of the middle of this country. But stay three days with you guys, that’s what I wanted. If you’ll have me. If not, I’ll take off now. No one is with me.”

  “Tess, Tess, Tess.” Ed has recovered and puts his hands in his hair and rubs his scalp. “We can’t have that sort of thing around here. We have a child, we have Amber—” He throws his hands in the air. “You never understand the gravity of anything! We can’t have someone who is involved in trafficking here. Comprende?”

  “Well, so, that’s what I’m saying. I’m done with it. I just came for a short visit. And then I’ll leave.” I hear the shake in my voice, feel the tremor up my spine. I hear also what I am not saying, which is: I did that run for Amber. To leave her a bit of money. To leave a small evidence of my existence. But I couldn’t find the damned people, and I never got paid, and now I have to disappear for good without leaving her anything at all.

  Libby and Ed stare at me, and I stare at my feet, shift my weight. Finally, Libby says, “I have no idea what to do with this . . . and I gotta change Kay’s bag . . . and I gotta get to work. I just can’t—”

  Ed’s hands are still at his temples, rubbing. “I’ll do Kay’s medicine. You go.”

  The world is so heavy, my body so heavy, my eyelids so heavy. My feet hurt, my mouth hurts, my bones hurt, and the world is spinning, and my mind is retreating away from my body, moving into the sky. I feel my body sink down, lean over, sideways, feel the gravel under my cheek. I close my eyes.

  In the Beginning and Once Upon a Time,

  there was baby girl born in the

  Kingdom of Colorado,

  a sweet child named Tess.

  Who grew up and each year got more messed up,

  perhaps because of slaps and screams

  or alcohol

  or the boyfriend or two (boyfriends of the mother, that is) finding ways to open her up

  or because she was not strong enough to keep her chin up in this life.

  This Tess became a pirate. A land pirate.

  Then she sailed to a place and she saw something that killed her.

  And that’s when

  Tess one day found herself looking down at herself instead of inside herself.

  At the End, of this particular story,

  Tess had to go.

  She had gotten surrounded.

  Had to surrender.

  But this girl, Tess, had already begat another girl named Amber.

  And Tess wanted to tell her goodbye.

  I dig my fingers into my arm in order to try to come back, but I keep my eyes closed. At first there is silence, and then murmurs that do not involve me. Go on in to work, Libby. They need you. I’ll deal with this. I’ll figure something out . . .

  Get her some food, at least . . . a shower.

  I’ll call you. Let me see what’s going on here.

  Let her sleep . . .

  I’ll call you . . . A doctor?

  We’ll talk later today. Let’s just leave her here at the house for now. There’s nothing she can really do.

  We can’t leave her alone with Amber. Can you be here when she gets off the bus?

  I open my eyes to see Ed holding Libby’s head to his chest, his head bent so he can whisper in her ear, hers raised to whisper back, and if ever there was a position of love, that is it.

  I slap the gravel, hard, with my palm, to stop my inside voices: I want the vocalchord voice. I do not want them to see how bad off I am. “I’m not going to hurt or kidnap Amber,” I hear myself say. “If you could just let me rest.”

  “Go,” Ed says firmly to Libby. “I’ll work it out. I’ll call you.”

  I hear the truck door slam, the pebbles of the driveway crack and snap, the murmur of retreating tires. When she’s driven off, Ed gets on his hands and knees so that his head is right across from mine. I think that maybe he’ll reach out and touch my head and bless me, but he does not. He waits until I open my eyes and look at him. Stare, stare, blink. A good coupla minutes go by. Finally, he props a water bottle next to my face. “Drink this. Do you or do you not need a doctor? Answer me now.”

  “I do not,” I say to the pebbles in front of my mouth. “I need sleep and food.”

  He nods, agreeing with me. “I am trying. To. Find. Lovingkindness.” Then, “Oh, Tess, you can’t—” Then, “Say something, anything, to help me find some warmth. I’m human, too, Tess. With my own limitations. I can see you’re suffering. But you’ve also caused so much of it . . .”

  I don’t move my head from the gravel, even when my ear and jaw hurt from the talking. “Ed. I’ve got a side to the story. And it is influenced, in part, by you. The good comes from you. I’m helping the immigrants start a new life. Right? Like you once did. You taught me.” The scrape on my cheek is opening up from the movement of my jaw, but still I don’t move. “So, Ed, for example, I always dropped off water and tennis shoes whenever I was in the middle of nowhere. Because, you know, you and Libby . . . last time I saw you, ten years ago, you said to . . . you know, act like a human because I was dealing with humans. They’re not just pollos, chickens who need to be crossed by the coyotes, they are individual lives, with loves and dreams and stories. You told me that once. I remembered.”

  He puts his hand gently on my skull, on my greasy matted hair. “Yes, Tess. And there are kind people, and there are dangerous people. You know that better than I. You’re dealing with people who kill. And you come here, to your own kid’s home? I’m worried because you’ve often been so naive. I need to know the status. Anyone pissed at you? Is anyone coming after you?” He pulls his hand away. “Sit up, Tess. Get up off the driveway.”

  Brainspeed, please. Find a multisplendored lie. The chunks of gravel in front of me are beautiful: blues and grays and whites. “I’m done. I brought no trouble. I’m really done.” I can hear the dream in my voice, from the crazy place, from the fluid nature of being nearly gone. “But you know, Ed? I did something smart,” I singsong. “I remember lying to Lobo, he’s the coyoteprimero. I told him I was from Oklahoma, from a town called Normal, and that’s why I was so messed up—get it, that sad joke? And that was ten years ago, when I was first getting started. Slade might guess
where I am, but that’s okay because he’s a good man, a little like you, actually, sometimes doing things for the right reason. I’ve been homeless since . . . I don’t know . . . last spring. No one knows where I am. That was really going to be my last job, Ed. I wanted to be done with that life. I just needed one last bit of money for a new start.”

  “This Lobo. He really doesn’t know where you are? There’s no way he can track you?”

  “I’m not stupid, Ed.” And now I can hear my voice rising to a higher pitch. “Who knows what happened to that group of people? I’m sure someone picked them up. I don’t know. Probably they got to Denver. And the drugs got to Lobo. No one knows where I am. No one is after me. So just tell me. Can I stay for a few days or not?”

  Ed’s face flashes a reluctant storm. “I just . . . don’t understand how you can be so unkind, Tess.” His voice is calm but somehow still full of rage. “You abandon your sister and your baby and your mother, and you don’t keep in touch at all? Except postcards once every two years proclaiming you’re alive? Do you understand the things you set in motion? By your neglect? The things you didn’t do? Never a birthday card to Amber. Never a Christmas card. You know how that made her feel, what trouble it has caused?” He stands up with a grunt, brushes off his knees, throws his arms out and walks in a tight circle, and then comes back, facing me. “It’s just that I think your core is rotten in ways I don’t understand. I know you had it bad, Tess. But that’s not an excuse for leaving Amber, for ditching immigrants in the mountains, whatever you’ve done that landed you here.” He stops, looks to the sky as if begging it for patience, exactly like Libby did earlier, and it occurs to me that she learned this from him. He glances at the Buddhist flags and does some deep breathing. “Man, you are the only person on Beautiful Planet Earth who could get a rise out of me. I don’t usually—” and here he stops and puts his head in his hands again and breathes. “I don’t want to be the one who threw away the chance for you to meet Amber. I don’t want that hanging on me. I suppose you should.” He breathes in. “Look, I need to bring in the bee boxes, I need to check on some neighbor’s animals, I need to fix some fence, but I’ll make sure I’m home in the afternoon. Libby is one of the few nurses still over in town these days—that town is dying—and if she doesn’t go in, then the people get no help. Do you see? Do you see that she has to go because she’s got a responsibility? Because there’s no one else to do it? Like raising a child?”

  “I came to say thanks—”

  “I’m going to leave you alone till this afternoon. Sleep and eat and drink and shower. Amber will get off the bus at three forty. I’ll talk to her, and if she’s willing, I’ll let you guys hang together.” He nods, agreeing with himself. “I’m thinking aloud here as I go. Are you listening? You will be kind and considerate of her feelings before you consider your own. You will sit down or take a walk and ask her about her life. You will not talk of pollos and coyotes. If she wants you to leave, I’ll take you to the bus station over in Lamar. If she wants you to stay, we will all have dinner together. You will explain to her why you never sent a birthday card or a Christmas card or anything. You got it?” He pulls out a wallet, crams some bills under my arm, where they’re pinned down from the breeze. “If you want to leave earlier, here’s some money for the bus.”

  “I got it.” And then, “Ed? That’s what . . . I came here for. No one has asked why I came—”

  He throws up his hand like he doesn’t want to hear. He walks away from me, opens the door of an old green Harvester truck. “You came because you didn’t have anywhere else to go.” He turns his head over his shoulder to say this to me. “There’s nothing much here to steal, so don’t even bother looking. There are twenty more bucks in my sock drawer; take it if you want it. Make yourself at home, though. Eat. Take a shower. Put on some of Libby’s clean clothes. We have to truck in water, though, so take it easy. Strip at the door in case you’ve got lice or bedbugs, then take your clothes to the burn barrel. You look . . . lousy.”

  I roll over to my back. “The clouds are pretty from here.”

  He climbs in his truck, backs out, walks back, reaches down, touches my forehead. “I’m just noticing—how much pain are you in?”

  I move my face so I can look at his eyes. “I feel great. I don’t need a doctor. I just need sleep.”

  His hair lifts a fraction in the breeze. He reaches out his arm. “Ringo is in the truck. I’ll take him with me. Let me help you up. Go on inside.”

  “No, I want to get up on my own.”

  He sighs. “See, you think you’re being tough right there. But really, you’re being selfish. That, Tess, is what is so hard to forgive about you. You don’t want to give me the peace of mind that you’re safe inside. I can’t very well just leave you lying here in the hot sun in a gravel driveway. Help me out, here.” He regards me. So for his benefit, I push myself to my hand and knees, and then, slowly, stand. The world tilts a little, my feet start pulsing with their ache. He puts the water bottle in my hand, nods approvingly.

  I watch him pulling out of the driveway, the tires snapping gravel, and I want to shout something after him. Something along the lines of: Guess what, I’m in so much pain that I can’t believe my body is still here. Guess what? I’ve come here to at least pretend to be human, I can do that, and I can at least put up a show. Guess what? I’ve come here to have one more burst of flame, of wildfire, of life, one more rage-against-the-night, and tenderness is the last whisper of a breeze on the embers.

  When he’s out of sight, I sink down till my knees touch gravel, and I bash my forehead into the rocks. I never thought a person could end up so alone.

  Chapter Four

  Sleep. I wake in a not-enough-air panic, naked body sweat-covered. My throat is too tight, and so I gasp, stumble up. Stand, hunched over and breathing, and then sink back down to the floor, my knees giving way to the gravity that sucks at them. I sleep again. Wake again. Regard my naked body again. That bruise, and that one? That purple one, that yellow one. Where did I get them? Where am I? Where are my clothes? Oh, they’re outside, and I’m inside a strange Earthship, colors glinting in on me, on the bright colors of a mostly red rug. I reach up to touch the pulse on my forehead, feel out the bump. I feel my hairline dripping water and grease, I feel the slide of a bit of blood where my forehead hit gravel. My tongue feels out the gaping hole in my mouth and presses against the nerve-jangly ache. I sink back down and regard the colors around me.

  Sleep.

  Wake.

  When I open my eyes to the bright red softness I am on, sunlight is pouring in from the window. Sunlight out of water, my brain sings, and my eyes are not so sore, the sequencing of thoughts has been turned on, my self is in my body. I sit up, slowly, and regard my feet. I must have left my tennis shoes outside, too, but I don’t remember taking them off, how I managed to unstick them from my bloody heels. I stare at my feet now, swollen, streaked with dried blood, the circles of skin that mark the edges of blister. I ask them: Will you carry me? Please?

  They comply and hold my weight, walk me down a hallway. My fingers trace the wall for balance. I find a bathroom, step inside the shower, stand in the heat until the sting of cuts and scrapes blooms and then fades. I find shampoo and try to untangle my hair, then soap my body and soap again.

  I stand naked in front of a large mirror. I am too tired to be surprised, although not too tired to make note of that fact. My jutted ribs, the lack of fat on my ass, the scrapes on my side, the rise of hipbones, the raised welts of some rash, the bruise that runs down one thigh. I peer closer. My scraped cheek, the swell beneath it, the bump and blooming bit of blood on my forehead. My eyes, seeking myself. My pupils, tiny black holes adjusting themselves ever so slightly, the brown iris around, the blink of long eyelashes. Hey, Tess, do you see anything? Anything beautiful left in there?

  I wince and step back quickly. In a drawer I find scissors, and I cut my tangled hair into a bob and work with it until the brush runs t
hrough. The slices of hair fall in wet, scraggly tangles with one clean-cut edge. I find a pair of Libby’s clean underwear and sweatpants and a tank top and a T-shirt, and I pull them on.

  Back in the bathroom, I sit on the toilet seat and rub lotion into my desert skin. I rub ointment into my feet, rub a swath on my crotch in the hope it might help the ache that is thrumming there. I find a pad of Libby’s and stick it in my underwear to catch the blood that keeps seeping. I stand to gingerly brush my teeth, lift my lip so that I can see the raw tissue, see there is a pocket of pus, and swish my mouth out with peroxide and water. I look at myself again. Think: Morality is something we can smell on people, and you still stink.

  *

  All life starts in the kitchen, but I cannot find any alcohol in any of the cupboards to start my endeavor. I turn on the radio in search of distraction or news, but it’s not the right time of day, and there’s only country-western. I crack my neck to try to work out The Antsy and The Nervous. I offer myself a banana and a cracker and some kind of fizzy iced tea that I find in a jar in the fridge. I offer it all carefully to my body. I offer myself ibuprofen from a bottle I find in the bathroom, Percocets I find tucked in the back of their nightstand, underneath some pillowcases and reading glasses.

  Now I barefoot-wander the house, into the strange nooks and crannies, the sunroom, the tomatoes and basil growing out of hydroponic plastic bottles. My feet pad over the hard smooth gray floor, wander into rooms of jeweled sunlight made by different-colored wine bottles. There is a pattern to the colors of this house, and it takes me a moment to place it. North-facing walls are all a purple blue, the west walls are sage, east are peach, south are yellow. I remember this, something about the best way to capture sunlight, make every angle pleasing to the eyes.

  I end up in front of the mirror again to doublecheck Tess is there. The room is well lit with a bright burning series of bulbs, and it is clean and only has a small clutter of knickknacks-of-selfcare, and beyond that is a woman in a mirror.