All the faces turned to me, and there was a small burst of energy: to determine if I was friend or foe, although they hardly had the energy to care. This girl whistled and, when I got closer, called out to me, “Hola, güerita bonita.” As if she had already determined that I was good, beautiful, worth loving.
I stood there, staring at her. It took me a moment to understand that they had arrived sooner than I’d been told, that their milk jugs of water were empty, that they had been waiting and waiting for me. As I got closer, I could smell them, the blood and stink and perhaps even burnt flesh. I could see their blistered lips, ripped shoes, deadeyes. I could see the coming of hyperthermia, dehydration. Their story, which came in fragments, was similar to every other story I’d heard, but unique in the particulars of their souls. All from Chiapas, all going to Denver to meet cousins. To work on tennis courts. They’d been told that the walk was only a day or two and that two gallons of water each would suffice. A coyote lie. They’d been told I’d be there two days ago.
The kid, Alejandra, was squatting over the woman who I later learned was her mother, Lupe. Alejandra’s black hair was caught in knots and greasy enough to hold the dirt. Blisters all over her mouth, a bloody scrape that ran alongside her face. She kept saying, “Mamá, la levantona está aquí! Es una gringa! Una güerita bien bonita!” She kept licking her lips so that she could smile, completely oblivious to how horrible and beautiful she looked. She kept smiling at me as if I were something special, and the others looked at her as if she were special. Clearly, she’d been given the most water, the last of the food.
I got water and food and slowly helped them to the truck, one by one, even the men leaning on me, all of us stumbling around, tripping over the bush and the yucca and the prickling floor of the desert, past the empty milk jugs, abandoned clothing, past the sign proclaiming No más cruces en la frontera. We walked as if we were drunk. Piss and blood and dirt and grime. Gagging with the smell of animal, with heat. Finally, the men were able to settle in the back of the horsetrailer—gracias gracias, they kept murmuring—their throats too swollen to make it sound like anything but a blur. Their toes swollen and rotten when they pulled off their shoes.
I put Lupe and Alejandra up in the cab with me, though it was not protocol and would have sent Slade into a frenzy. But I didn’t care. I was too carefree to care. I wanted them to have air conditioning and comfort. If any vehicle came into sight, they were to crawl under a blanket. Risky, but I felt like a god. Better than a god, because I was trying to temper their suffering.
They were so grateful for water. They had tears for the crackers, moans at the bananas. Ointments and tortillas and pillows. And that girl, her fingers always roaming over her mother, and after the initial recovery of drowsy sleep, always chattering, asking me questions, translating for her mom in solid English interspersed with awkward sentences.
That was five years ago. Then something else happened, and that’s the last moment I remember of my old self, the one that was seamless, the one who was just me, just Tess, united. That’s when I began to hear a voice speaking to me. A voice that spoke to me of forgiveness and redemption. It wasn’t my voice, exactly. It wasn’t anyone else’s voice, either. It was the broken voice of the universe, and I was finally sunk enough to tune in and listen.
*
From the kitchen window, I see that the sun has sunk to its low-down setting position, and the sky lights up in one last fling of red-orange glow. I shake my head to let the memory go, then I slam my palm on the counter to make my brain listen. I cradle my stinging palm in my other hand and then turn the radio dial again until I get the crackly NPR station, which has finally decided to air the news. Wildfire, as per usual: Type I fire. White Wolf Fire. Trailers, communication units, hotshot crews, heli-tankers. Wild-urban land interface. The fire is burning a little bit of everything, but not all of anything. The burn line goes up and down canyons, through houses and around houses. Always reported with such surprise, though Colorado has been burning for years now. I’ve been through the remains of enough of them to cease being surprised. The burned skeletons of old trees. The emerald green grasses of spring. The baby aspen trees poking up through charred soil. The waves and waves of blackened trees in the far distance.
Ed crosses my line of sight. He’s moving from one shed to another with large white buckets in his hands. Feeding the cows or chickens or donkeys, I suppose. A bit later, he moves again, carrying white boxes into an outbuilding, and although I think they are bee boxes, he’s not even wearing one of those goofy bee suits.
We can’t figure out where the fire line is, because it’s everywhere. Perimeter crews. One homeowner missing.
I push jars around in the cupboard. Wheat germ and jars of homemade rosehip tea and homemade pickles. Surely, some alcohol around here somewhere! Finally, behind the bag of coffee in a cupboard, I find a bottle of Seagram’s 7, full up to the neck. What a pretty color, both in the bottle and as it faucets down into a coffeecup. What a pretty smell. What a pretty taste.
All residents encouraged to evacuate. It’s the most difficult conditions here. Leave your homes. Winds are changing direction.
Ed appears again, water buckets now hanging from his arms. Ringo follows in a roundabout way, guided into figure eights and in crisscross patterns by his sniffing nose—imagine people crossing the desert like that. They’d die before they got a half mile. He pounces on some imaginary mouse, runs in happy circles.
Immigrants not located. We now believe that an immigrant started the fire, as a signal fire. (Huh. Stupid, stupid. I wonder whose run that was.)
Ed has stopped midway and is glancing toward me, at the window, and then toward the mountains, as if he, too, is considering the source of the smoke. He shakes his head to himself.
“Is that the fire we smell?” Amber is suddenly behind me, leaning against the wall.
“Yes, I think so.” I put my coffee cup on the counter, though I can see she’s noticed it. I turn my attention back to cutting the gnarled and curved carrots.
“It sounds bad.” Amber walks into the kitchen and leans against the fridge. “Remember that about a month ago, there were four different fires going? I’m glad we don’t live in the mountains after all. I used to want to live there. But not now.”
“Yes. I heard about those. It’s been a bad summer. Winter is coming, though, and that might make it better.”
“The fire won’t get here. You said it wouldn’t.”
“No, it won’t get here.” I move the carrot chunks to the side of the cutting board with my knife and then pick up a tomato. “Hey, Amber? Where’s White Wolf Canyon? I never heard of that one. Could you do a search for me? Which part of Colorado is burning? I’m just curious.”
Tess’s heart is pounding or quitting
or she doesn’t know what,
and she grabs on to the kitchen counter, and the room
spins, and her heart spins, and the universe spins.
She needs Amber out of the room.
She disappears and after a pause yells, “Near Alamosa. That’s in the southern part of the state, they say. It looks pretty, on the images. The mountains, I mean. They’re big. They go on forever.”
“Did they say when it started?” I keep my voice steady.
Pause. “Yesterday.”
“That many acres in one day? That’s impossible.”
Amber comes into the kitchen. “The wind, they say. The wind gusts are super bad. I’m glad you’re not in the mountains, that you came to visit us now.” Those almond-shaped deep brown eyes have the smallest lines of green near the pupil. Just like mine. But the green is like flecks of fishscale, flecks of mica, flecks of lifegreen. “That would be scary, wouldn’t it? To be there now? You okay?” Amber whispers it, with real concern.
“Oh, maybe. It’s because your eyes are so pretty,” I whisper, calm, fading out. “They’re so beautiful, Amber. You are so beautiful.”
“Thank you.” Shrug. But she’s smiling.
It meant something. She feels seen. Then she adds, “Tess? Are you really all right?”
I lean against the counter to brace myself. “Amber, can I say one thing?” Still my voice is quiet, a calmness enforced by the universe, a solidness pushed into me by some outside force. I clear my throat. “When you walk behind a horse, you’re supposed to walk right behind the horse. As you know. Because if you step back a bit, and that horse kicks, it has more power, more momentum, and he’s gonna get you good. You need to get way behind the horse, or stay up close.”
“I know. Kay taught me. Baxter too.”
“Yes. Life is like that. Move toward danger. It’s safer that way. Either that, or get the hell out of the way.” I pause. Try to look brighter, more alive. “Not that you are in the mood to be taking any advice from me. For sure. But I learned something from leaving you.” And here, I take my hand off the counter and put it over my eyes so I can have the dark. My voice goes soft again and not even really of my own accord. I just hear it, with a bit of surprise. “To me, Amber, you were a danger. Your infant self. Because you represented everything I didn’t want to give up. My freedom, my partying. So I ran off. I got far away from that danger. Which was you. I’m sorry to say. But Libby did the opposite. She looked right at the danger, which was you—because you were also a danger to her—she had no money, no real job, no love, no nothing—and she pulled you in. In close.”
I open my eyes to find her staring at me, biting the inside of her upper lip. “Okay.” And then, because I look so pleading, she adds, “Either get far away from the danger, or move in really close. That’s what you’re saying.”
“Exactly.”
“Okay, Tess.”
“Another example. Let’s say I’m driving and a deer steps out in the road. If I swerve to miss that deer, if I take a half-assed position, I’m likely to die. I could drive off a cliff or swerve just enough to hit an oncoming car. They’ll teach you this in driver’s ed. If you must, you go ahead and keep the car straight and hit the deer. You go at the danger. Now, if you can stop, and avoid the deer altogether, then great, do that. But do not, ever, ever, ever, put yourself in that land in-between.”
She bites her lip again, regards me. “You’re softer than I thought you’d be.”
A soft, genuine laugh burbles out of me. “Worn down, like a river rock.” I don’t say: I’m crazyferal and that has made me soft now. I reach out to touch her cheek. “Life is a crazy mix of knowing when to step forward toward danger and when to run as fast as you can.”
That’s what Tess came here to say.
Oh, Amber.
Please try to watch for the two paths
and pick the right course.
She says something about her homework and reaches out to touch my arm and then wanders off. I put my hands on the counter and lean forward and look out the window toward the mountains. I can’t stay now. I’ll need to go far away, as far as I can go.
Chapter Seven
As we set the table and pass plates and move food from serving plate to dinner plates, the silence I keep nearly breaks my eardrums. I must guide the ship through calmer waters. In this way, we have our main course, which is to stay the course. Instinct tells us what will not be discussed. (The running of undocumented immigrants.) (My current situation.) (Whether I will see Kay.) (What caused the fire.) (What I should ask to be forgiven for.) Instead, we allow what will be discussed: “What happened to your tooth?” (Got it pulled by a dentist.) And “Do you need to see a doctor? For a checkup?” (No, I do not, but thank you.) And “How was Kay after Baxter?” (He’d helped her improve, so she handled it better than you might think.) And “She quit drinking?” (She slowed way down for a while, only took it back up recently.) And “She gonna die soon?” (Pause. It’s possible.)
What nearly lets the sails out, nearly takes me off course, is the miracle of an honest meal. Not cellophane wrap, not pizza, not chips. No. Here is steamed broccoli and grilled zucchinis and summer squash in herbs, salad, wild rice mixed with diced mango, yesterday’s leftover roasted chicken.
The four of us sit at a table with bright plates, bright napkins. Blues, oranges, yellows. The energy feels quietly bright, too: Amber, still in her turquoise sweatshirt, her brown hair pulled back in a pony, nervous but settling. Ed in a clean light purple T-shirt and thoughtful as he looks out the window, at the twilight, considering something. Libby, who came home from work and put on a skyblue dress and who has braided her hair and who looks prettier than she did at eighteen. She glances at me from time to time, whispers something along the lines of “You look better” or “I’m not so worried anymore” or “You just needed sleep and a shower, I think,” to which I nod and nod again. From time to time, I speak little phrases, too—“Thank you for letting me sit here and eat with you”—which seems to surprise Libby every time. She looks particularly startled at one moment, in fact, but it’s at something out the window, and we turn to see a fox calmly trotting by, barely visible from the leftover light in the sky and the outdoor bulb on a telephone pole.
“That fox doesn’t get your chickens?”
Ed chews thoughtfully. “Not yet.” Then, “Ringo, go give that fox a scare.”
Ringo seems to understand and charges out of the house through a dog door in a bounding woof, but the fox is already gone, and Ringo seems too lazy to take pursuit, and instead sits down to scratch himself in the circle of light.
“Did you know,” I say, “that there are about twelve million illegal immigrants in the United States?” I do not say: My pick-up location was called Lobo’s Pass, because it was Lobo’s favorite spot. White Wolf Creek. But what are the chances?
“Tess?” Ed hands me a plate of vegetables. “Are you okay?”
Blink, blink. “Oh.” Crack my neck. Then, “Do you ever feel like everyone is just pretending?”
He pauses, does a little relaxed bob with his head, which means, Maybe, yes.
“We’re all suckers for a happy ending. Or a happy story in the middle. Go around in our own private movies.”
“Sometimes, yes. Why?”
“I was thinking that I never even tried to grow a vegetable.” I clear my throat, feel my stomach churn. I thought I had a couple of days, and there is a lot I had hoped to say. I take a big breath. “Did you know that there are whistle languages in rural Mexico? When people need to communicate, and they’re far away from each other, and it’s too hard to yell? When your voice won’t carry? Lots of people use whistles, of course. Hunters. Campers. But this is a whole language.” I demonstrate. The whistle of a meadowlark. The whistle of a canyon wren. Some deep whistles, some twittering, flighty ones. “Did you know, for example, that a yell only travels about five hundred feet? But a whistle can travel for nearly ten thousand. No joke. One thing I did learn in my line of work was whistle language. But you don’t just whistle. If you need it to travel, you have to use your hands. It’s a real trick, a real skill.” Here, I put one finger in my mouth, another cupped around my lips, and blow.
They all startle, and Amber jumps in her seat and covers her ears.
“Cripes, Tess,” Libby says, scowling. “Please don’t shatter our eardrums.”
I laugh, do a softer one, this time rolling my tongue, cupping my hands around my mouth. “People have studied these languages. And once, it saved a girl. Can I tell you that story? I’d like to. There was a young girl that I did mother, once.” I look at Amber. “I didn’t do right by you, Amber. I wasn’t here for you. But I just wanted to tell you, I guess, that I was good to a child, once. Would it bother you to hear such a story?”
Amber glances at Libby and then back at me. “No.”
“This girl, I suppose she was twelve-ish at the time, and that was about five years ago, well, she simply came to me when I was ready, when I was a bit softer, and a bit more open than when I had you. Her own mother, Lupe, was a good one, but tired, and sometimes it helps to have an extra person who cares.” I stare out the window for a moment, at the twilight, at
Ringo, who is still resting in the circle of light. “I guess I just wanted to tell you about her. To show you that I had it in me to be kind.”
Amber nods, weighing this. “How did you meet her?”
“She was in a group of immigrants I was supposed to pick up in the desert.” At this, Ed clears his throat, and Libby starts to say something, and so I quickly add, “Back when I was doing this stuff, which, of course, I should not have been doing.”
“I knew you were doing that anyway.” Amber glances at Libby. “Kay told me a long time ago. Plus. Well. I’m not stupid. Let her tell the story. Please?”
Libby rolls her eyes at the ceiling but then nods, and so I continue. “She was whistling to me, the loudest whistle I ever heard. Otherwise, I may not have found them, they were concealed so well. I had driven out there in a truck with a horsetrailer. I parked the truck and walked up to them, and I could see right away that they were all tired and . . . well . . . not doing so well. I took the group to Denver, which was what I’d been assigned to do. But unlike every other person I ever drove, I stayed in touch with her. Helped them get on their feet.”
I listen to how quiet the room has become, breathe out, determined to try to finish my story. “When I met her, she was so thin, she’d been pounded thin by life, and her hair was so matted and filthy that I couldn’t brush it out. She said, ‘I’m feeling neargone.’ That was her word for it. I had to give her a haircut, just like I did today on me, and that made her cry. But it grew back, and she grew so fast that next year, just shot up. She’s back in Mexico, now, with her family. She went back because her grandmother was dying. We’ve fallen out of touch. I guess that’s my fault. Although I did send her packages sometimes, but she quit writing back. People move on to their own lives. Probably she’s working or in love . . . it would make me happy to think so, at least.”
Amber is smiling softly in a way that makes me think this story isn’t hurting her. Perhaps she never expected my love, so it doesn’t hurt that it went elsewhere. She waits for more and then finally says, “Is that the end of the story?”
Red Lightning Page 6
