by Alisa Valdes
“What are you trying to do?” I wobbled on feet I could no longer feel. Again, he caught me by the arm. His grip was hard, nonnegotiable.
“The dog. That’s all. Your dog needs help.”
He opened my coat gently, and took Buddy from me. The dog was limp, unconscious, tongue lolling out. My jacket was soaked with blood. I was freezing, the dog’s small heat gone from me now.
I whined. “Please be careful. He’s really hurt.”
“He’s okay. No worries.”
He folded his legs beneath him, and sat on the ground, in the snow with Buddy in his lap. He opened the tool kit and, horrifyingly, pulled out a syringe.
“What are you doing?”
“Helping him, mamita, what’s it look like?”
“You can’t just give him a, a, a shot!” I began to hyperventilate, and a sputtering cough gripped me. “You’re not a doctor! Give him back. What are you doing with a syringe?”
“Relax, dang,” he said. “I take care of animals all the time. It’s a painkiller. Back up off me, girl. Everything gon’ be fine. I promise.”
I watched, helplessly, as he injected Buddy between the shoulder blades.
“Omigod omigod omigod omigod.” I chattered.
He ignored me, ran his hands over Buddy’s legs and body, with his eyes closed and his forehead creased deeply. He’d stop in a spot, hold his hands there for a moment, and then move to the next; wherever he’d been, the wounds seemed to spontaneously stop bleeding. I realized then that I might have hit my head. I was probably hallucinating this whole thing.
I fell silent for a moment, then whispered, “How did you do that?”
“Do what, mamita?” He looked bored.
Buddy opened his eyes then, saw me, and moved his tail weakly.
“That! How did you do that?”
“It’s what country boys do. I got skills.”
He took his coat off, laid it on the ground at his side, and placed Buddy on it - bundling him cozily.
“He was practically dead.” My body trembled violently. “What you did, that’s not normal.”
“Nah, man. Your dog was just stunned is all. He was feeding off your fear, too. He just needed reassurance.” He stood and moved toward me. “Your turn, mamita.”
“No, no, I’m okay.” I recoiled from him. “I’m, I’m, I’m going to walk to Golden for help.”
“You can barely walk. And Golden is pretty far.”
My legs buckled. My head spun. I began to cry, a pathetic moaning weep. He backed up an inch or two, as if to reassure me, and dug in his jeans pocket. This is it, I thought. He’s got a gun. But all he had was a cell phone; he held it toward me.
“Listen. I called 911. They said they’re on their way, but it might be a while. You’re kind of out in the middle of nowhere. Let me make your pain a little better.”
He came to my side faster than I could get away from him, and touched my shoulder. I winced and whimpered.
“Shh.” His eyes were so bright, so soothing. He smelled dry and warm, like sunshine.
He closed his eyes again with that intense look on his face, and I felt a soft heat radiating from them to my injured shoulder. Thirty seconds or so later, the pain was less than it had been.
“What, how, but -”
His eyes narrowed into a self-assured smile. “Feel better, mamita?”
“How did you do that?” I whispered.
“Do what, girl?” He looked deeply into my eyes, and smiled with a playful intelligence, evasive. “I didn’t do nothing. Just helped you relax is all. It’s like with a cow that’s calving. You just have to calm them down a little, and the pain goes away.”
♦
The vato’s hands continued to move across my body, patching me up and stopping wherever there was pain. The warmth came, and then a bit of relief. He took off my glasses with incredible gentleness, and wiped the blood from my face. When he slid them on me again, he said I was pretty.
“This is impossible,” I said, ignoring the compliment. “What - what are you, some kind of, what do you call them? Those preachers…”
He laughed at me. “Nah. You crazy? You watch too much TV, girl. All you needed was a little TLC and human contact.” He stood up and dusted his hands together. “You was panicked is all. That makes it all seem worse than it is.”
“No, there’s more to it than that,” I insisted. “You’re lying.”
He shrugged at me like I had offended him, but exhibited powerful self-control. “I don’t lie, but I’ma let that slide. Think whatever you want. It don’t bother me. People get crazy thoughts in accidents, I guess. Stress.”
He returned to check on Buddy, who seemed to be almost completely recovered, happy, as Chihuahuas often are, to be nestled within the protection of a warm coat. The dog was busy licking darkened blood off his front paws, seemingly unaware that this tasty treat had come from his own body. Chihuahuas are cute, but no one ever accused them of being smart.
The hail and snow began to taper off. The guy turned away from me, moving with purpose, digging through the snow for sticks and twigs. He dried these on the legs of his jeans, and set them in a pile near Buddy. He dug for rocks next, and made a ring around the sticks. He pulled a lighter from his pocket, and tried to start a small fire. It wouldn’t catch.
“Too wet,” he said. He started looking around in frustration. “We need something paper, something dry.”
He spotted a couple of old black paper coffee cups from Einstein’s Bagels that had spilled out of my BMW during the crash. I was a bit of a caffeine addict, and wasn’t always so good at keeping my car any cleaner than my room. I was a bit of a slob, actually. I was embarrassed, but he seemed to think they were just perfect. He went and scooped them up, tearing the paper with his hands, and lining the little pit with the scraps.
“I have a study group,” I babbled, trying to cover for my mess. “Some friends, physics and math mostly, the left-brain stuff I need extra help with, we meet in the mornings at the bagel place by my school. I kind of forget to throw the cups out sometimes.”
“No worries, mami,” he said, without looking up. “No judgment. The paper’s a little waxy on the inside, but it’ll do.”
“I’m really not a pig all the time.”
“Come, sit.” He patted the ground next to him. “Warm up.”
“I’m not even that cold anymore.”
This seemed to worry him. “Snow calmed down is all. You need to stay warm. Frostbite can make it seem like you ain’t cold no more when you’re colder than before. Here. I won’t bite you. C’mon.” He patted the snow next to him. “Stay close to me. We conserve body heat that way.”
I did as he asked, and he pulled me in close. He did not touch me in a romantic way, more like the way a nurse might adjust your pillows in the hospital. I noticed his exquisite hands now. They were large, the color of soft caramel candies, and strong, with clean, short nails. He had long, graceful fingers. His left hand had a dark blue tattoo on the back of it, in the space between the thumb and index finger. It looked like roman numerals, like the tattoos on his neck.
“What’s that for?” I asked.
“You really wanna know?” he raised a brow at me.
I nodded.
“Gang symbols,” he said, hugging me closer.
“You’re in a gang?” It was scary, but also sort of exciting, to hear this. I’d never known anyone in an actual gang before.
He laughed out loud. “Nah. Not no more, mami. I’m working on getting’ out right now.”
I sat uncomfortably with this information for a moment, not able to think of anything to say. Then I joked, stupidly, “Is that where you learned to build fires? Your gang? Like boy scouts? Do you get gang patches to put on your sash?”
He looked surprised and pleased by my obnoxious humor. “Nah. I learned fires and all that after, on, well,” he paused, “on the farm.”
“Well, wherever you learned all of this stuff, thank you,” I said we
akly. “Whoever you are.”
He held me against his side with one strong arm and used the other to coax a water bottle out of his toolbox. He popped the cap and handed it to me.
“Drink,” he said. “You lost some blood. You need it.”
I chugged the cold water. I wondered why it wasn’t frozen, but thought maybe it was warmer in the box where he’d had it. It tasted unusually sweet, and felt unbelievably good on my throat. When I was finished, I asked him, “You got a name?”
He leaned forward and rubbed his hands together over the fire, smiled up at me. His teeth were perfectly straight, and very white. They made my heart hurt. “Demetrio.”
“De- what?”
“Demetrio,” he said, with a palpable exhaustion that probably came from having to explain his weird name all the time. “Demetrius in English. Demetrio in Spanish.”
“I’m Maria,” I told him. “It’s probably Maria no matter what. Maybe not in Mandarin. I’m not sure what it is in Mandarin. Maybe Hoochie Min.”
“Maria.” He smiled at me.
“It’s actually Maria Luisa, but people just call me Maria.”
“Cool. I like that. Maria. Good to meet you.”
“You too. You live around here or something?”
Demetrio jutted his chin to the south. “Down in Golden.”
“Kind of far from home, aren’t you?”
“I was out walking around when the storm came in. I was on my way home when I seen you crash.” His eyes strayed to the crushed corpse of my car. “Dope ride. Used to be.”
“Yeah.” I felt awkward, because I knew it was an amazing car, and I guessed that his type didn’t have access to amazing cars. So I said, “I hate cars,” even though it wasn’t really true.
Demetrio found this amusing. “Only people who ain’t never had to hitchhike or ride the bus say that. Or walk.” He raised a brow to indicate himself.
I eyed him doubtfully. “You always carry a bunch of first aid stuff when you just go ‘walking around’?”
“Actually, yeah.”
“Uhm, why?”
“Cuz city people be driving like crazies up in here,” he said with a sparkle in his eye, shooting another glance at my ruined BMW.
“Point taken.”
“And there’s always some rabbit or gopher or something, all smashed up. I try to help out.”
“You go around rescuing road kill?” I asked, incredulous and impressed.
“And the occasional pretty girl.”
I didn’t feel pretty, not after this ordeal. I felt chewed-up, and spit-out. I touched my face, felt up into my matted, frozen, tangled brown hair. I felt my face grow red. “Thanks,” I said, adding, as I channeled my inner fifth-grader, “guess it takes one to know one.”
He cracked a grin, embarrassed, and looked away. I watched him for a moment. He was handsome, for a homie. I usually ignored his kind. It confused me to look at him now and feel something like attraction. I thought I must have hit my head, because it wasn’t smart or like me at all to have thoughts like this.
“You go to school out here?” I asked.
He shook his head and chuckled. “Nah, man. Not exactly.”
“What does that mean, ‘not exactly’? You a dropout?”
He laughed. “What? No! I ain’t no dropout.” He considered his words before speaking again. “I’m home schooled, I guess you could say.”
He seemed distracted by something in the distance, and peered west, over his shoulder, crinkling his brow. I heard a faint thwacking noise in the distance.
“Helicopter,” he said. “Good. They didn’t waste no time. They’ll be here soon.”
A moment later, the coyote howl came again.
“I think that’s the one that tried to kill me,” I whispered, half-joking.
His eyes probed mine, worried. “What do you mean?”
“I know it sounds crazy, but you had to be there.” I was talking too fast, nervously. “It looked at me and it was, it was almost like – like a human being or something. I sound crazy. I realize that. Hard to explain. You probably think I’m nuts.”
“Maybe a little,” he said, kindly. His eyes strayed to a spot in the distance, and narrowed thoughtfully. “But you been through a lot with this wreck and all. Snow plays tricks on the eyes sometimes.”
I followed his gaze down the road. A couple of homemade wooden crosses stood planted in the ground, with gaudy plastic flowers and tacky Christmas tinsel on them. They are all over this state, on every road, marking spots where people died in car accidents.
“You’re lucky,” he told me, jutting his chin toward to the crosses. “Could have been worse. See?”
“No doubt,” I said, with a shudder.
He shook himself a little, dabbed a fresh bit of blood from my forehead with a bit of tissue, and asked, “Where you go to school at, Maria?” It was like when grownups try to distract children with questions they couldn’t care less about. He was trying to keep me calm until help arrived. I was grateful for it, but the new blood made me realize I really was still hurt, but probably just numb from the cold.
“Coronado Preparatory Academy. I’m a junior.”
He lifted his eyebrows, mockingly impressed. “Pretty fancy school, girl.”
I shrugged. It was a fancy school, the fanciest in the state and probably one of the fanciest in the nation. It made my mother look good for me to go there, where she could rub elbows with the city’s elite and powerful at PTO meetings. I loved my school, too, but I didn’t want to seem arrogant in front of him.
“You rich or something?” he asked with a half-grin that bore traces of insecurity. “Fancy car, fancy school. Fancy dog.”
I shrugged, because it was a weird question. “I don’t know,” I said. “We do okay. But I do get a partial merit scholarship, in science. I like science, and I’m in the dance troupe.”
He looked delighted. “Even better. You’re a genius. A genius that gets her dance on.”
“I don’t know about that.” Tears welled in my eyes as I rubbed my sore ankle with my frozen hand. “I just hope my ankle will be okay by next weekend. We have the state contest for dance next Sunday, and I’d hate to miss it. I’m sort of helping choreograph and everything.”
“I think you’ll be okay,” he said. “State contest, huh?”
“Yeah, down at UNM. We’ve been working hard on it.”
“Sounds pretty cool. Is it like cheerleading?”
I balked, because I was not the cheerleading type. “What? No! We’re serious dancers. We do jazz, tap, ballet, modern, even hip-hop.” I felt foolish saying this last one to him because from the ironic look on his face when I spoke the words, he clearly didn’t seem to think I was the hip-hop type.
“Dang,” he shook his head, hanging it low and peering up at me, mildly flirtatiously, still impressed and unsure of himself the way guys with less money always get around girls like me. I’d been through this rigmarole a few times at the mall.
“I woulda never guessed you got your hip-hop on. Fancy school of yours, I’d think it was all about waltzes and afternoon tea.” He pantomimed sipping a cup of tea with his pinky out and lips pursed, and then grinned to let me know he was kidding. I admired him for trying to keep me distracted from my pain and panic.
“It’s not all that fancy,” I said, even though my school, built of dark red bricks and dripping with ivy in warmer weather, was the type to call the pool a “natatorium” and the cafeteria - which had solid oak tables and white linen napkins - a “dining hall”. We also had two gymnasium centers, our own visual arts complex, art museum, world-class library, bookstore and nature retreat in the mountains. Etc.
He seemed to understand that I was uncomfortable talking about my school. He watched the moody purpling sky with a calm expression of concern.
“It’ll be dark soon,” he said somberly. “I ain’t supposed to be out after dark, but I can’t just leave you here alone.”
“Wow. You must have supe
r strict parents.” I teased him, but he didn’t so much as crack a smile. In fact, he grew more serious, and frowned.
“Something like that.”
The distinctive sound of helicopter blades slicing through the air grew clearer.
“Good. They’re almost here. I, I have to go before they land. I’m sorry, Maria.”
“Why don’t you let them give you a ride back to town? You’re a good five miles away. It’s terrible out. You can’t be out walking around in this mess.”
“Nah, man. That’s cool,” he said, backing away nervously, all false bravado. “They need to get you to the city and make sure you’re good. I got this.”
“You sure?”
Demetrio seemed to gather his courage, inched forward, and gingerly took my hand. His was warm, in spite of the snow and wind. As our hands touched, and as we looked at each other, I felt a pleasant thrill pulse through me, almost a mild snap of electricity. He looked at me reassuringly, peacefully. It confused me to see such an expression on a gang member’s face.
“Look, mamita. Don’t worry about me, okay? I can handle myself.”
“Okay,” I said, overcome with an urge to kiss him.
“I bet you look amazing all cleaned up,” he said. “I probably shouldn’t say this, but I’d like to see that sometime. You know, I don’t know if you’re down for that, but, you know.”
“Yeah, uhm,” I said absently. My hand went instinctively to my neck, where I usually wore the Tiffany necklace my boyfriend Logan had given me for Valentine’s Day last year. It had a pendant shaped like a heart, with pink diamond inlays. My neck was bare. The necklace must have fallen off during the accident.
Demetrio watched my hand, and seemed to understand my hesitation.
“But only if you want,” he said, casting his eyes downward and biting his lip for a moment. “I mean, you don’t have to see me again. No pressure or nothin’ like that.”
“Do you have a last name?” I tried to change the subject. My cheeks flamed with the awkwardness of the situation. I wanted to see him again. I liked being around him. But I knew it was inappropriate in every possible way. I wasn’t a sickeningly good girl or anything like that, but I did tend to color inside the lines most of the time.
