by Alisa Valdes
ALISA VALDES
The Temptation of Demetrio Vigil
Copyright © 2013 by Alisa Valdes
May 16, 2013
VEE Books
The right of Alisa Valdes to be identified as author of this Work has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in retrieval system, copied in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise transmitted without written permission from VEE Books. You must not circulate this book in any format.
This book is dedicated to the ghosts of Golden, New Mexico.
A NOTE TO MY READERS
Years ago, I wrote this book. I wrote it in practically one sitting, entranced, surrounded by spirits from my beloved New Mexico, spirits that had come to visit me and tell their stories. During the writing of the book, and long after it was done, I got signs from the universe, signals that I couldn’t ignore, synchronicities popping up everywhere as though to pat me on the back for writing what had to be written.
I turned the manuscript in to my agent, and she sent it out to various publishers. A few were interested. I was running low on cash, and so I signed with the publisher who offered me the most. My editor at the publishing house liked the concept of the book well enough, but thought that a Hispanic gangbanger boy might not have been the most sympathetic of characters for a mainstream audience to love. Likewise, the editor felt that all of the Catholic and Native American and New Mexican folkloric and mythological references were too obscure and would be lost on a teen audience. Most of all, she felt that my attempts to tie faith and science together, to discuss mathematics, physics and parallel universes with a young adult audience would bore readers.
Even though everything in my gut rebelled against what this editor was saying, it was too late. I was under contract to do what they wished. I changed almost everything about the original book, and we published it as THE TEMPATION. Unsurprisingly, the book tanked. While some readers liked it, the book mostly got terrible reviews, many of them complaining that the book lacked the very things I had taken out – depth of character, humor. Sales were so disappointing that the publisher decided to cancel our deal for the next two books in the series. As usually happens in these instances, the publisher blamed the author for writing a bad book, and went on with their lives. No one ever stopped to wonder whether the book had simply been drained of all its life during the editing process.
At first, I was sad about the failure of TEMPTATION. Then I realized it was a blessing in disguise. I was now free, thanks to improvements in digital book publishing, to release the original version of the book on my own, through VEE Books, the publishing wing of my entertainment company, Valdes Entertainment Enterprises, Inc.
I went back to my computer files, and sifted through them, seeking out that original manuscript from long ago. There it was. As I read through it again, I realized it was much, much better than the book the big publishing house had twisted it into.
So, here it is. The original version, the magical version, the one that was meant to be seen but, because I was an insecure author who wasn’t able to fight back when certain people made bad decisions about my work, has been in hibernation. Without further ado, I bring you THE TEMPTATION OF DEMETRIO VIGIL. Oh, how I’d LOVED that title! It just sang from my lips! But the publisher had found it too ethnic and wordy, and had advised we change it; when I protested, they changed it anyway, without my permission, just as they’d changed so much else about the book – including making the lead character, a dark-haired Latina in both books, blonde on the cover.
Never again.
I hope you will read this book, and compare it to the other version, and let me know what you think. I designed the cover with my amazing fiancé (husband if you’re reading this after September 8, 2013) Michael Gandy, and I want to thank him, and the universe, and all of you, for allowing this book to be resurrected, just like its namesake.
Alisa Valdes
FIRST THIRD
tercio de capa
{whereby the matador tests the bull’s ferocity}
The storm came out of nowhere. One minute I drove along Highway 14, in the bright winter sunshine of New Mexico; the next, I struggled to keep the car on the road, enveloped in a sudden windy blackness that rubbed out the frozen sky.
Hail pounded the metal roof and nearly cracked the windshield. Violent gusts buffeted the car along the slippery road. There were no other cars. I vowed in that moment to always check the weather forecast before my weekly trip to my dad’s - presuming I survived.
The din of hail scared Buddy. He cowered on the passenger seat, as though he expecting to be hit. Then again, Buddy is a Chihuahua. The songs of baby birds on sunny days frighten Buddy. Trembling and anticipating doom are the Chihuahua’s homeostatic state. I teased him nervously.
“What are you, a cat or a dog?”
Buddy licked his chops, to be polite, but his eyebrows (such as they were) registered grave concern.
I should have pulled over, but my dad is very strict about being on time for dinner. He is strict about most things, and you don’t want to make him mad. His new wife always worked hard to make a nice meal for us on Friday nights, and I didn’t want to offend her. So I kept driving, cautiously, past the tiny hillside town of Golden, nothing more than a few houses, and a little adobe church. I hoped that the storm would go away as quickly as it had come, but it didn’t. Ten minutes in, the road was icier, the sky darker, the wind angrier.
I was worried, sure. I acted brave to try to comfort Buddy. I told myself everything would be okay. I knew the way well. I’d driven the route a million times, back and forth from my mom’s in Albuquerque to my dad’s in Santa Fe. But sometimes knowing the route isn’t good enough. Sometimes things just happen.
I felt the tires spin out of control, just as I spied an injured coyote in the middle of the road. It was maybe twenty feet ahead, dark gray, soaked and scrawny, about the size of a medium dog but with bigger ears and a longer snout. It limped pitifully in circles in the center of the road as though confused. I felt terribly sorry for it, and slammed on the brakes; this only made the car slide harder, sideways toward the creature.
“No!” I cried out, in a panic.
The animal swiveled its head to look at me, as though it had heard me. In the split second before we were destined to collide, it made the oddest expression. I could have sworn it actually smiled at me, with cruel yellow eyes. It creeps me out to remember it now, because that coyote-smile was the single scariest thing I had ever seen.
My father, an outdoorsman, would later tell me I should have just run over the coyote. Later, he’d accuse me of being a bleeding heart animal-lover. It was probably true – I did love animals. I always had. I did what I could to avoid killing the coyote. I yanked the wheel to the right, stomped again and again on the brake pedal, and then it just happened: The BMW my dad had given me for my sixteenth birthday lost grip with the road, spun, and toppled end over end in a sickening crunch of metal and glass.
It was all so fast. I remember it as a horrible, noisy blur. End over end, tumbling off the road, down the small rise. I screamed and tried to reach for Buddy, to hold him in his seat the way my mom used to put her arm out for me when I was little, but I couldn’t find him. He was tumbling loose in the car with my phone, wallet and old paper coffee cups, round and round like clothes in a dryer.
When the car finally stopped rolling, it was on its side, making strange burbling sounds and ticks, almost like a moan. The car was dead, or dying. The cold wind wasted no time in ripping through
its hull with frenzied glee. What fun, what fun! it seemed to cry. The sound of the wind was like ghosts laughing.
I dangled, a sock puppet, disoriented. My shoulder burned. Something pierced my chest sharply with each inhale. My hands bled, and my left foot felt like something had taken a large bite out of it. I looked around again for Buddy but he wasn’t in the car. The world was blurry because I’d lost my eyeglasses somewhere in the tumult, and blood dripped into my eyes. I wiped what I could away, and squinted, but couldn’t see my little dog anywhere. I called his name. No response but the wind. What fun this is! What fun!
I suddenly remembered all those movies where the crashed car bursts into flames moments after impact. I found the button to release the seatbelt, and wriggled myself free. Gravity dumped me onto the passenger door. My shoulder and back screamed with pain.
Gulping for air, I wormed through the jagged hole where the windshield used to be, shaving off bits of clothing and skin as I went. I intended to run from the car, but my wounds limited me to a stiff, slow crawl.
I blinked against the blowing snow, dragged myself along, a rasping pant rising from my throat. My hands and knees pressed through the snow to the frozen sand and dead weeds beneath. I hoped there were no cacti under there, hiding. A hot agony stung my back and shoulder with every motion. Each breath was a nauseating knife in my gut. I was dizzy. I had to get to my feet. I needed to find help.
I rose to my feet, slowly and with a pounding sensation in my head. Resting my hands on my thighs, I squinted hard and craned my neck, with some difficulty, looking for Buddy. Stupid Chihuahua. Where did he go?
“Buddy!” I called, my voice small and gruff. He didn’t come.
I looked toward the road, but there was no sign of my dog, or of the injured coyote. I staggered from the car like a zombie, amazed I’d come out of the mangled wreckage alive.
As I scanned a nearby field, I saw a small dark lump in the snow, maybe twenty feet from the car, on the other side of a barbed wire fence. It was the size of a roasting hen, like Buddy. I limped faster toward to the fence, and squeezed my way through the wires, impervious now to the new waves of pain.
Sure enough, it was he.
I’d found my sweet little dog, covered in blood but still alive, stuck on his side, licking his chops the way dogs do when they’re hurt, his innocent black eyes searching mine for an answer. Had he been bad? He seemed to ask. Was I angry with him? He’d be good now, his eyes told me, he promised.
“Oh, my poor baby,” I cried. “No, no, you’re a good boy. What a good doggie you are!”
The effort of wagging his tiny tail to please me exhausted Buddy’s reserves. His eyes rolled back into his head. He quivered. He seemed to be in a mild seizure. It was the worst thing I had ever seen.
In a complete panic, I remembered my smart phone. I’d had it charging in the center console of the car, and now I had no idea where it was. It could be anywhere. I stood and looked for it, but my eyes were useless. There was nothing. Not the blur of a house, not a car, not a cow. Nothing. We were on one of those desolate stretches of highway where it is only earth and sky.
“Help me!” I cried, as loud as I could, my voice cracking. I tasted the bitter metal of blood, spit it out. “Hello! Help us!”
I stood at Buddy’s side and waited. No sound came back. Not even an echo. My words were absorbed completely by the snow.
I knelt again, shivering and suffering, but focused on Buddy. My mother, an attorney and city councilor with her eye on the mayor’s seat, had long accused me of being too compassionate for my own good. The hail stung my cheeks as I scooped Buddy’s limp body into my arms. I worried I’d hurt him more by moving him, but I couldn’t just leave him to freeze. I returned to the fence, struggled through the wires with my dog cradled protectively in my arms.
I lurched toward the road and wandered along its shoulder, my pain numbing to a low, hollow throb all over. I tasted more blood. The ankle gave way when I put weight on it. I grew dizzier, faint. The hail blurred my already dismal vision, pelted my open mouth as I wheezed. If only a car would come, just one car. But none came.
After a minute or two of helpless waffling, I realized that to survive I’d have to get myself back to Golden, and pray that someone was home.
I limped back to the car, which had not exploded, to see if I could find my coat, phone, glasses. I found my eyeglasses, a little twisted but still in tact, in the snow and picked them up, wiped them on my sweatshirt, and shoved them back onto my face.
My parka tangled with the steering wheel. I tugged it loose with great effort and excruciating pain, draped it over my shoulders, Buddy in my arms beneath. The dog’s breaths were shallow and inconsistent. I tried to be brave, braced myself for the painful journey. I assured Buddy everything was going to be okay, but my voice broke with fear.
As I turned toward the road, a dark gray blur loped across the highway and disappeared. Yellow eyes. I rubbed snow from my glasses, and tried to get a better look at it. I saw nothing, but heard a howl. It wasn’t the sorrowful wail of an injured animal. It was something much, much worse. When you grow up in the foothills, on the outskirts of Albuquerque, as I have, with cats you cannot bear to keep imprisoned inside, you learn what coyote calls mean. I had lost three cats to the desert predators in my lifetime. I recognized this sound.
It was the manic, wild yipping that called the rest of the pack to feast; it signaled an impending kill.
♦
I hunched against the wind, staggered along in the snow, and tried to escape being coyote dinner. I listened to the echo of the celebratory wail of death, coming from all directions around me, and felt the hairs at the base of my head rise up.
I had to keep moving, to escape the animals watching me from the bushes. They were small, but they were strong, and in the winter, starving. They would take what they could find. I knew the hot red scent of my freshly spilled blood was carried to them on the wind, and that they, desert sharks, would soon begin to circle.
I focused my attention on the road again, only to find my path blocked about ten feet away, by a young gangster-looking guy. My dad, who grew up in the South Valley but likes to brag that he “escaped,” called this kind of guy a vato, or a cholo. My friends and I called them homies or Gs. I didn’t think anything could have made me feel more afraid than I already was, until I spotted the unlikely gangsta in my way.
He stood perfectly still, arms crossed, staring at me. The defiant set of his jaw seemed to dare me to pass him. He wore baggy dark jeans, unlaced beige work boots, a puffy black ski jacket and a black ski cap with a skull and crossbones on the front. He was probably somewhere around my age, maybe a little older, with what might otherwise have been a sweet baby face - a pretty face, for a boy, with long lashes and full lips - if not for the gang tattoos all the way around his neck, and the hard, streetwise look in his eyes.
The sight of him was so unexpected, my pain so great, and my assumption that he was a criminal so strong, that I screamed, in a voice muddled with cold and blood: “Please don’t hurt me! I don’t have any money! It’s all back there, in the car! I don’t have anything you’d want!”
His tough expression melted into a look of cool concern. He uncrossed his arms and started toward me.
“Hey, don’t be screamin’ like that, girl. Calm down. I’m here to help you.”
“Stop!” I held my free hand up, trembling. “Don’t come any closer. I, I know karate.”
He laughed - not in a cruel way, but with pity. He stopped coming toward me, pulled his jacket’s collar up higher on his neck, and watched the sky for a moment before gazing at me again with strong, steady brown eyes.
“Karate?” He shook his head as though he felt sorry for me. “Won’t do you much good with them massive injuries.”
“I’m fine.” I was so weak I could barely stand. “Just leave me alone.”
“You’re hurt, bad.”
He had a certain way of leaning into his hip, and of p
ursing his closed lips, and holding his head back and to one side, that sent a chill to my marrow. He looked dangerous. My knees wobbled, and nearly gave out.
“I am hurt.” I began to cry, in fear and pain, like an insane person. “But I don’t want to die. Please don’t kill me.”
“Pssh.” He bucked his head slightly with a concerned look in his eyes. “I ain’t gon’ let you die. I’m here to help you, I said. I’ll stand right here ‘til you ain’t scared no more. Deal?”
His deep voice crested and fell with a rural New Mexican rhythm. He was tall and well built, with smooth brown skin and large, dark eyes that turned down a little at the outer edge. His cheeks and nose were red with cold.
“Trust me,” he said. “If you can.”
One hand was in his pocket; I worried he had a gun. In other, which bore no glove, he carried a metal toolbox. I did a double take. What was that for? Dismembering girls?
“Please don’t hurt me.” I was so cold, so very, very tired. Energy drained out of me. A stiff numbness began to set in.
“Shh. I seen the accident. Don’t be talking so much. Conserve your energy.”
He came to my side.
“There was a coyote.” I pointed to the road nervously. “It made me crash, and now I think it wants to bring its friends to eat me for dinner.”
A look of worry came over him. He scanned the road past his shoulder suspiciously, pushed his lips tightly together, then turned back to me. “You’re wasting time and energy talking. Let me help you. There’s not much time. The cold will get you if you don’t let me help you.” He moved closer, and reached to open my jacket. I stumbled back, pain and nausea undulating through me. I began to fall, and threw up a little.
“Listen to me.” He held me up, kept me from falling. His eyes connected intensely with mine. “This is important. You gotta trust me. We don’t have time for fear right now.”
