Red Lightning

by Laura Pritchett

  “We were dying. Mama’s leg—”

  I hear my voice, but I am far away from it, in another world altogether. “I didn’t know it was you, Alejandra. But I was looking. Waiting and waiting. And you never came. Forgive me. I was there. I looked. I waited and I waited.”

  “When we got to the road, Ed was there.”

  I close and open my eyes. I am sitting with a group of humans outside a small home, under the trees, in this huge expanse of a universe. Flies are buzzing around, and the sun filters through the yellow cottonwood leaves. I sip water from the glass in my hand.

  “The color of the desert, the color of the land. That’s how we were dressed, because that’s how you survive. It was hotter, much hotter, than it is right now. One of the Lobo’s coyotes was in the tallest building in Morales, watching the Border Patrol walk back and forth, and he had two more guys on the ground, watching as well, so that they could communicate, by radio, the—”

  “Coordinates.”

  “Yes.” She smiles at me but looks concerned. “In this way, they helped us cross the scariest part. The one hundred yards of barren land between the Mexican side and the U.S. side. We were on our stomachs. We did exactly as they said. ‘Five meters forward. Stop. Okay, go. Stop. Down, stay down. Man looking your way. Down, down. It’s gonna be a few hours, man. The guys are chatting. Rest. Fast, go five more.’”

  “Oh, Alejandra—”

  “Never did we raise our heads. Even when we had to—”

  “Yes, I know.”

  “We only raised our heads to drink from the water bladders we each had on our backs. Enough to swallow. In this way, on our stomachs, we crossed one hundred meters of dry desert. Try to imagine, try to imagine moving so slow.” She closes her eyes, and I do too, listening from the place of darkness beneath my eyelids, letting the red seep in. “Once we’d made it to the U.S. side, at the first vegetation, we could get to our hands and knees. Even though we had padded our knees and put on gloves, it was painful. Finally, we saw it, the small ditch, the blue Toyota—how happy we were to see the blue Toyota! It was another of Lobo’s men. We climbed in, went to a house, and it was dark and horrible for days. It made us wish again for the sky and earth. We could hear a race track. The horses, the loudspeaker, the crowd. Such a gamble. Such a gamble, all of our lives are. Out there was food, water, life. But we stayed inside, and it is there that the money was delivered, four thousand dollars each, paid partly by your friend—”

  “Slade?”

  “Yes, Slade. We knew we were a surprise for you. We also had to carry mota and coca. I didn’t want to, Tess. Then we were driven to a small road west of Alamosa. Lobo’s man said, ‘Wait here, wait exactly here.’ So we did. We waited and waited. But there was no water in the creek where usually there is water. And so we moved. Directly to the west, only one rise of a mountain, one day of hiking, because there was a stream of water, and then we walked back. We took turns leaving one person at the pickup spot.”

  “Oh, Alejandra—I must tell Slade. I must somehow tell him. He’ll be so happy you’re alive—”

  “The cell phone had no reception. Only if we walked to the road. And so I did, and I called Lobo, but no one answered. We knew then we were alone. Then Mama fainted. And then I lit the signal fire, I did it.” Here, tears rush out of her eyes. “We had no water to put it out, only a rock, but we did a good job. Then the wind started rising. I worried, but I thought it was out.” Alejandra’s tears turn to weeping, now, loudly. I touch her shoulder and then pull her into my lap. I glance at Lupe, whose leg is in a splint of sorts, the work of Libby, I can tell, the very way she wraps Kay’s bandages. When my eyes travel up from Lupe’s legs to her eyes, I see how dead they are, how this ordeal has been too much for her, too much open space, too much dark, too much fire. She has shut down, and I recognize it.

  “Hay más . . . just so much more.” Alejandra sucks in her breath and glances at me, her mother, back at me. “One of the men was bitten by un cascabel, while on his stomach, drinking. From the poison, he got so weak . . .”

  “Es demasiado, it’s too much, too much.” Lupe’s voice is a broken mumble, an empty not-right mumble. Despair that is beyond despair, dead that is beyond dead. “Demasiado, too much.” She says it over and over, blurring the words together in English and Spanish. One of the men goes to her side and rocks her.

  “So we waited, Tess. I daydreamed it would be you. I daydreamed that I was a little girl, and it was you again, pulling up in the truck, saving us from the desert. It had been so hard, and I prayed that it would get better. I prayed to the sky, and to the sand, to the earth . . .” She trails off and then leans against me, takes my hand. “And you didn’t come. We heard a car honking, and we heard someone yelling, but it was far away, and we couldn’t tell in what direction. The mountains are so large, Tess. People forget that. They are big. There’s not always water . . .” She trails off, glances at the sky. “We had three tortillas for the all of us. One gallon of water for all of us. We found piñones, and raspberries, and escaramujos. But it was not enough, and we were already sick. And one morning, I woke up, and I knew we were completamente solitos. I just knew that the person was no longer out there, looking for us. No one was coming. Ever.”

  She stops until I nudge her, an old joke from when she was younger and was supposed to be telling me stories to keep me awake while driving.

  She smiles a sad smile. “We were going to die. I could feel the sickness getting into all of us. I decided to build a signal fire and call 911. Even if we were deported, we’d be alive. Perhaps I wasn’t thinking correctly. People forget that the brain doesn’t work well when it’s tired and hungry—”

  I let out a laugh. “I do know.”

  Lupe looks at me, now calmed. “Danos la paz. Grant us peace.”

  Alejandra tilts her head at her. “Mama wasn’t going to last much longer. I hiked until I had reception, and I called 911. And then I called Salvador.” She breathes in, starts again. “I told him where we were. He didn’t want to come. He said, ‘I’m not doing that anymore,’ but I explained, I begged. Es un milagro his number worked. The same number, after all these years.”

  “But the fire?”

  “I walked back to the group. I smelled smoke. It had gotten windy. Clouds were coming. Then—aye! The fire jumped out of the little pit we had dug, but it was very small, and we put it out. We stamped and we threw rocks and dirt . . . and then, well, Ed was there, calling for us, and so we ran to his orange van, and I did not know his name was Ed, and it was just an orange blur, sitting there. That one moment was . . . what is the word? Heaven. But at the same time, the fire was starting.”

  Ed sits next to me. Nudges me with a water bottle. “I didn’t realize you knew these people. Until I picked them up, and on the drive here, in my bus, they started asking careful questions. They knew someone from out this way. They knew a dark-haired beautiful girl. Who had given them my phone number.” His voice is soothing, but it sounds far away, as far away as a hundred yards of desert. He is facing Alejandra and Lupe and the group of men. “Tess, you’re sick. Stay here. I’ll come back with the truck. I don’t want to make you walk back. I don’t want to drive the VW right now—I just used it for . . . this. Just rest here. Later, when you see Amber, don’t tell her. About any of this. In all other ways, we try to be honest. But not this. Secrets are burdens.”

  I nod. Yes. I know secrets are burdens.

  A sudden burst of noise startles us all. A mariachi band. It takes me a moment to realize that it’s the ringtone on Ed’s cell. And as he fumbles for it, and answers it, I claw out of my fog. My fog of this story—their story and my story. I’m too tired, and it seems too much: Alejandra and Lupe and their cousins, all rescued, all not burning. All here. With a future.

  From Ed’s phone, I can hear the tone and pitch of Amber’s voice: Please come now. It’s Kay.

  Ed holds the phone to his stomach, looks at me, reaches his hand to pull me up, decides otherwise.
“You can’t make it. I need to run.” His voice is firm. “You stay here. Do you understand? I’ll come back.” With that, he starts back to the farmhouse, speaking into the phone as he goes.

  I watch him jog away from us, heat waves on the earth spiraling up to make him warp, make the landscape warp, and I feel my heart finally warp too. Finally, finally. Finally it has lost its beat, its rhythm. Finally it is giving up. I wince, pull into my mind the picture of Amber sleeping, Alejandra’s smile, Slade with arms outreached, of my sister taking a step toward me.

  *

  Time flows like water, like wind, like air. Perhaps hours, perhaps minutes. I wake and drink water and shift around to the other side of the tree, where Lupe and Alejandra already have moved themselves for the shade.

  Only some people know how important shade is,

  comforting, consoling, lifesaver.

  Tess takes Alejandra’s hand in one, Lupe’s in another.

  Three women, sitting under a tree, holding hands in

  silence. Something inside them shifting around.

  Tess wonders if she can hold the different parts of herself

  and bring herself back together.

  There is real talking to be done.

  Too bad humans can’t whistle the huge truths.

  I watch a leaf laugh its way down, passing tenderly through time and space, and I remember the last time I saw Libby and Amber before I left:

  —Infant Amber was sleeping in her car seat outside in the shade,

  —and she was rocking her head, back and forth, just coming out of a sleep,

  —and her eyes drifted open and stared up at me,

  —and she made a movement, then, kicking her arms and legs, like she was running with joy.

  —Behind her, Libby was painting our old house, and she had bought fifteen gallons of light purple paint, and I knew then, with that color choice, that she was making the decision to make a good and real life for herself.

  —And I was sorry. Sorry because I knew, when I left, that we would talk of smaller and smaller things. We would go backward, from love to not-knowing.

  —She looked down from the ladder and said, Tess, it’s rude to stare, but on the other hand, in order to see, you have to keep looking. Go ahead and stare. Keep looking at them, at people.

  *

  We doze. Then I awake to murmur, “Which one? Which one of those boys is your novio?”

  But she turns to me. “His name was Oscar. He—”

  I can feel the knowledge in her, that every fiber of her being has been worn out, nearly to extinction, and I understand, too, that her boyfriend had burned up. He had died of poison, of snakebite, then burned. I take her hand and pull her to me and rock her like a child. Two of us under a tree, in the sparse shade, rocking.

  *

  Time shifts, blends with earth and sky. Later, she starts up again. Her words land in my mind, circle around, a bird in flight. “I didn’t know you had a sister, a daughter, this, how do you say it? Cuñado, brother-in-law,” she says. “You never said . . . that part. You only told me, when I was a girl, to call this number if ever I was in trouble. Remember how you made me memorize it? But you never told me who it was. Salvador. That’s what you called him, that’s what we called him.”

  I nod. Lick my lips. Stare at the sky.

  She sighs. “Remember when I was a child. I was . . . how do you say it? Annoyed at you. For making me memorize that number.”

  “I remember,” I say, leaning my head back against the tree. “He stopped doing this work, you know. Because he had married Libby—”

  “Yes, and adopted your Amber. But I had memorized his phone number. Long ago, when I was a girl.” She looks at me, touches my chin so that I have to look at her. “You saved my life. You came to me, on the mountain, with that phone number. And hours later, a man arrived in an orange van. I did not know that he was related to you. We only hoped to be saved. But on the way here, across the fields of Colorado, aprendimos. He knew the color of your eyes. You saved us.”

  “I’ve never saved anyone.” But it is a whisper, and she doesn’t hear it.

  “It was a small fire. There were storm clouds building, and then it started to rain. And I was so relieved. I thought it was God, sending us a gift. And so we got in the VW, and we came here. I never knew . . . about wind, about the . . . wind and air and the earth. I just hope you are not too angry.”

  “You have no idea how happy I am to see you, happy you’re alive.” I whisper this to her and lean over, put my head onto her stomach. “I never told you I’d given birth to a baby. But I had, and then I left. I left my baby with my sister. And I became a levantona. I knew Ed back then, a little. I knew he was a kind man, doing the same work, but for different reasons.” Suddenly I laugh, an odd sound issuing from my throat.

  Lupe is reciting the Lord’s Prayer. “Padre nuestro que estás en el cielo . . .”

  We murmur it along with her, an old habit. When we are done, Alejandra touches my shoulder. “What about that man? Slade? Your novio?”

  “Well, he’s never quite been my novio.”

  “Ay, dios mío.” She says this disapprovingly. “But he’s liked you for so long. Back and forth you two go. Just decide, Tess. Decide to go for it. Loud up your heart.”

  I smile. Our old conversation, relived. “He’s at the old house, the one I grew up in. He brought you here. He paid your way as a gift to me. Ay, mija, we need to tell him you’re alive.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  I stand in the middle of NoWhere, Colorado, my homeland. In front of me is the podunk crummy house that held the enormity of my childhood; at my feet is a red cooler with a smashed red bow on top. I open it up and see that Slade has provided well for me, offered up my version of frankincense and myrrh: Seagram’s 7, 7 Up, a plastic cup, some pot, aspirin, and a note. Worried about you. Drove by Libby’s and Kay’s looking for you this morning. Was discreet and didn’t stop—but want to check on you. Don’t do anything stupid. Drove up to the reservoir. You know the direction I’ll be at. Worried I might be seen here. I’ll spend the day up there. Gonna fish. I threw away my cell phone, didn’t want any way to be tracked. No way to reach me, I’ll be back. Be there with your family. It’s a good idea. Chin up. Together we’ll figure out the next steps.

  I pour myself a drink and sit on the cooler, hold my hot head to my hands, and glance at Ed’s orange VW bus that got me here. Something about the purple of the house, the orange of the bus, the blue of the sky makes my head spin. I should go check on Kay, I should find Slade to tell him the news. But the Seagram’s and 7 Up sliding cool down my hot throat, the yellow leaves, the white puffs of cloud, turquoise sky.

  Oh, universe, thank you. Alejandra is alive. Really, that is something. All of them: Libby, Amber, Lupe, Alejandra—all alive, and each of them has someone, they have family, and, yes, really, that is something. I stare at the old house, a small violet square in a vast expanse of fields. From here I can see the rusted-out cars. The birdbath Kay used as a cigarette tray. The burn barrel where once I saw the streamers floating out with the WELCOME HOME TESS AND BABY AMBER sign that Libby had made in her lastditch effort to keep me around. The rise of a windmill and a few trees near which a hawk circles.

  The memories flood. There I am on the day we moved in: a skinny-legged young kid in jeans and a red T-shirt standing at the threshold of the house, afraid to walk in the door of this new and dark place. Kay walking by me, carrying cardboard boxes from the bed of the pickup, mumbling about leaving our old life behind, starting a new chapter in a place where the bills could be met and she could finally relax.

  There is Libby, my big sister, saying, Come, Tess, come look at these purple flowers, come look at the barn, it’s all empty and abandoned! Come look at these barrels where you burn trash! Come look!

  There I am, later in the day: cautious and watching an old man with blue eyes and white hair poking from a ballcap introducing himself as Baxter. I wander by so I can listen t
o him discussing with Kay the details of the deal, free rent in exchange for work as a ranch hand. Libby is at my side, whispering. See that big farmhouse across that field? That’s where that man lives. He’s our landlord. He owns this ranch. He has cows over in a far pasture. We can pet them!

  There I am, new backpack and shoes, standing at the doorway of this house, afraid to step from the dark cool out into the hot morning for my first day at a new school that has PIRATES as its mascot. There I am the next year and the next, new backpack, new shoes. Older. Year by year. Marked only by sharp points: the time I broke my arm, the time Libby’s cat died, the time Kay was covered in vomit and pee and Libby said, I’m not sure we should drink when we get older. The time Kay dated the guy with the eyepatch, the time she dated the one with the motorcycle, the time she dated no one and drank even more. The rest is a blur. Of breakfasts. Of homework. Of running through alfalfa fields. But mostly a blur of fear. Why, Tess, why? Because my voice would not work. Words would not come. My body was too small. The world was too loud, the screaming too sudden, the wall too hard, the slaps too stinging, the choking too tight.

  There were no words that could protect me.

  But, yes, there were.

  Libby’s sharp voice: That’s enough, Mom. Leave her alone.

  Baxter’s low growl, You’ll be leaving now and not be coming back, to a boyfriend of Kay’s, and then Baxter turning to Kay with fury in his eyes and saying, That’s enough of that now. You’ll be leaving that life alone.

  They found the words. I raise a toast to Baxter and to Libby.

  And then to Kay, who in all those years was lonely and strungout and surprised by the stupidity of life. Now her time is up. Her clock is stopping. I raise my glass and murmur a toast to the stars, whose cold distraction only confirms my suspicion that they long ago disassociated from the warmth the world had to offer. I wish they would come back and give us another try.