by K M Stross
“Why is that?” Cross asked.
“” Yolanda said, picking up on enough of Cross’s English. Her eyes shifted in Sheriff Taylor’s direction, then back to Cross, then quickly back to the sheriff when he shifted his weight. “
Sheriff Taylor frowned. “She says Marianna continued having trouble with the heat. Arizona had a bad heat wave that year, and it began to affect her health.”
“
“
Yolanda leaned forward and continued, a tear streaming down her left cheek. “”
“What is it?” Cross asked, frustrated. “What’s wrong?”
Sheriff Taylor’s hands gripped the brim of his black cap, bending it between his fingers. “She’s talking too fast. She said Marianna’s health continued to decline slowly during the heat wave. The two… tried to take up jobs in the air-conditioned hospital down in Dade County, but couldn’t because they were illegals. They moved to this house in the summer and used the rest of their money to purchase a few steers that died. They had planned to raise them and sell them at auction.”
“They were going to walk to the next county over?” Cross asked with surprise.
“Well, the illegals go in bunches,” Taylor said. “Carpooling and all.”
Yolanda’s face had begun to pale between the wrinkles. “”
“She says she called the family in Mexico, but none of them would help her or Marianna,” Taylor said. His face very briefly cast a look of surprise before disappearing again under his steel expression. “Her sister and the rest of their family had had a falling out over emigrating to the U.S., and their family didn’t forgive them… huh. I didn’t know she still had family south of the border.”
Yolanda began shaking her head. Her cheeks were growing puffier, the area around her eyes glazed with a mixture of tears and sweat. “
“Ah,” Sheriff Taylor shook his head, reaching up with one hand and wiping the sweat that had begun to gather in thick droplets above his eyebrows. “She’s… repeating how much her family hated her. Her sister couldn’t take it, and so she tried to travel back to Mexico. She didn’t make it back.” He looked down at her. “
Cross watched Yolanda’s face harden. She reached into the pocket of her rust-colored dress and pulled out a napkin to dab at the puffy wet area around her eyes. He moved over on the sofa to reach out and lay one hand on her knee.
“” Yolanda said, taking her fist and cutting it across the air, “
Sheriff Taylor paused, resting a hand on Yolanda’s shoulder while the woman paused to weep. She shook his hand away. “Goddammit! She’s being so melodramatic, that’s why I’m having trouble understanding. She says she wanted to chase after her sister but was too weak to follow. The Border Patrol contacted her a week later saying they had found the body.”
<”I buried her again,>” Yolanda said between tears. “
“She decided to have Marianna cremated,” Sheriff Taylor said. He ran his teeth along his dry lips, exhaling slowly. “Yolanda took the ashes and scattered them over the memorial to Father Aaron in the center of town.”
“The memorial?” Cross asked.
“Ayup. You visited it yet?”
“I was going to stop by yesterday,” Cross whispered. He rubbed violently at his eyes, pushing back the fatigue that had begun to dig in behind them. Long, deep trenches of exhaustion. “It slipped my mind.”
“I could take you there today if you want to,” Sheriff Taylor said. He gripped the brim of his hat tightly. “I think Yolanda’s talked enough for one day. This is a rough subject for her, that’s for sure.”
Cross gently squeezed Yolanda’s leg. He could feel her skin through the dress, and it was cool to the touch, loose, shaking slightly. She took his hand and squeezed it, trying to talk, but her sobs caught the words inside her throat.
“Thank you for your time,” Cross said. “I’m sorry we had to talk about this. I truly am.”
“” she said, looking up at Sheriff Taylor. “
Sheriff Taylor glanced down at the top of her rebozo. “
Yolanda looked up at Sheriff Taylor. “
Taylor frowned. “
“
“Did she remember something else?” Cross asked.
Sheriff Taylor shook his head, still staring at Yolanda. “No, she’s just asking about someone in town. We should leave now, Father. I feel bad enough just bringing all this up.”
Cross stood and followed Sheriff Taylor to the door. They walked onto the porch, and the sheriff stopped to take in a deep breath through his nose.
“God, smell that air,” he said, putting his hat on and taking another deep breath. “Makes you feel like you’re standing on the set of a fucking western. I love this town, even those assholes sitting in the hills playing cowboy. Even with the illegals. Even with a dozen different people pissed off at me every day.”
Cross looked up at the blue sky, then back to the empty plains surrounding the old house. There were no fences or any other houses nearby. He wondered why Yolanda would stay here away from everything. Maybe she felt safer away from the town, he thought. “Do you believe Father Aaron brought Marianna back from the dead?” he asked.
Sheriff Taylor sighed and hobbled down the steps. He opened the passenger door for Cross before walking around and getting into the driver’s side. They sat in the car while Taylor thought in silence for a moment. “I'm sure as hell, and I think old Marianna was deader than a doornail by the time Father Aaron got to her.”
“So God helped him bring her back,” Cross said. He tried to control the tone of his voice, to sound like he believed it too. But he didn’t. A heart-stopping, then starting, was not necessarily a miracle. Drugs could start a heart. Drugs could stop a heart too.
“Absolutely.” Sheriff Taylor started the car. The country music station was in commercial, one advertising new tequila deals in Purgatory. “Well listen to that!” Taylor said, turning up the radio. The smooth radio voice spoke quickly began glossing over the legalese of consuming hard alcohol.
“What is it?”
“That’s Bert’s Liquor!” Taylor said excitedly. “Purgatory’s own Bert�
��s Liquor on Abaddon Drive, advertising on Country one-oh-seven. Boy, that must have set Bert back a pretty penny.”
Cross rubbed his eyes hard. His left eye began secreting from the corners and wiping it away seemed to make it worse. He held his palm against his eye like it was an open wound. “Sheriff… typically, the Church looks more carefully at miracles that happen after a possible saint’s death. Miracles like the ones Father Aaron performed inside the church are good, but it’s the ones that occur post-mortem that really excite the Vatican.”
“Oh, we’ve had plenty of those,” Taylor said. “Boy, after more Mexicans started pouring in to see the memorial, everyone started claiming the weirdest shit. Seemed like every week, someone was getting cured of something. A cancer here, a tumor there… all in a day’s work for Saint Aaron.”
“Was there any particular post-mortem miracle the Church scrutinized particularly carefully when they sent an investigator?”
Taylor rubbed at the thin gray and black whiskers lining his chin. “The plaque,” he said. “It happened right after the plaque was put up. An illegal with intestinal cancer kissed the plaque and got cured. The Church came and checked out her medical records.”
“What happened to her?” Cross asked. “Where is she now?”
Sheriff Taylor grunted, pulling onto the main road. “Moved on, like they all do.”
Cross sighed. It seemed to be the town’s motto. Stop by, witness a miracle and then skip town. Don’t leave a card or a forwarding number, or any evidence that you were even here. “I see,” he said.
“That’s why this whole saint business means a lot to a lot of people here. Especially the ranchers. Before Father Aaron showed up, this town was on the verge of death. The ranches were falling apart. Stores were shuttering. Now, we get devoted Catholics from south of the border who’ll do just about anything to stay in this town and pray to the local saint of immigration. They’ll even tolerate those assholes sitting in the hills with their guns. For a while, at least.”
“A saint of immigration,” Cross said, letting the last word roll off his tongue.
“They take it seriously. And they stay put right here for an entire season, working their asses off for shit wages because they think they’re in the presence of God. His gift to them—to all of us, really—was Father Aaron. Sure one or two of ‘em turn out to be trouble, but the majority are dedicated Christians, and a part of every penny they make goes back into the pockets of good people. Everyone but Jesus, I should say. That fucker doesn’t deserve a penny from all this.”
Cross looked out the window, picturing the hallucination of Jesus Ramon in the basement of the church. In the distance, a handful of chocolate brown cattle were grazing next to a small watering hole. Behind them, two dark-skinned men were using shovels to scoop up the piles of feces. “A saint to save the town,” he said quietly. He turned back to the sheriff. “And what if we’re wrong about him?”
Sheriff Taylor remained silent.
Cross continued, “What if Father Aaron wasn’t a saint at all?”
“Is that why you’re here?” Sheriff Taylor asked. “To tarnish our priest’s name until it ain’t worth shit?”
“It’s my job to ask the tough questions,” Cross said. He could feel the car speeding up. “This isn’t a matter that should be taken lightly.”
Sheriff Taylor’s sunburned face darkened a shade. “I can assure you that everyone takes this matter seriously, Father.”
Cross grunted. “Funny how the only people who don’t stick around town for long are the ones who can answer the questions I have.”
“Some of us are still here,” the sheriff said quietly. He followed the road as it wound around the center of town, taking the curve without slowing down. “Some of us like living in Purgatory.”
Cross stayed silent. He knew he was pressing the sheriff’s buttons but he didn’t care. He needed some kind of clue to point him in the direction of Morrissey.
Sheriff Taylor jerked the wheel and brought the car to a stop in front of the motel. “If only you knew what it was like to see Father Aaron for the first time. Everything about him just felt right.”
“I would love to hear it,” Cross said. He thought back to the church, the way the hallucination created a person who walked and talked, the way the shimmering image of Father Belmont introduced Father Aaron to the sleepy congregation. Father Aaron had turned into Morrissey, had been Morrissey all along in Cross’s hallucination. His mind had created the connection because it believed there was a connection.”
“Tell me about the day you met him. Please, Sheriff. It would mean a lot to me.”
Sheriff Taylor took a deep breath, holding it deep inside his large stomach. “Father Belmont introduced Aaron to the congregation on the worst day of the year,” he began. He shook his head. “The absolute worst. It was a hundred degrees at least, nothing new for the area, but goddamned if it didn’t feel twice as bad as usual thanks to the downpour from the night before. And the air conditioner was broken.”
CHAPTER 15
“I didn’t recognize Aaron as a priest at first because he had a good tan on him so I wondered if he might just be a bumpkin from Texas traveling through. We got a couple truckers now and then. Only a few illegals.”
“Father Belmont took the opportunity during Mass to welcome the new priest and said Father Aaron would be helping around until Old Damien officially retired. He wanted to do one more Christmas Mass. He always liked Christmas Mass, which was probably the only reason he didn’t just hand the reigns over to the new priest right away. Something about celebrating Jesus’ birthday, boy did that to get Old Damien excited, sure as shit.”
“That day when he was introduced, Aaron stood up from the front pew to let the entire congregation get a good look at him and give him a decent welcoming applause. He was sweating like crazy and dabbing at the sweat on his face with a white handkerchief. Told us the first thing he was gonna do was fix the danged air conditioner. His hair was a little shaggier than most people around here were used to, which probably didn’t sit too well with the older folks. But then he gave a little speech about how important penance was, and he went through a laundry list of the things he hated—sinners, atheists, criminals, politicians—and I could see everyone warm up to him on the spot.”
“Father Belmont smiled all proud-like at the warm applause after Father Aaron’s speech. He told us he was sure everyone would make Father Aaron feel right at home, and everyone clapped. That’s the type of place Purgatory is.”
“After the service, I waited for the couple a Mexicans to finish up confessing about whatever shit they had to confess about and then I went into Father Aaron’s confessional to let him hear what I had to bring to the table. You run law in one of these small towns where everyone knows each other, and you’ll find you’ve got a lot to confess. You gotta overlook some things; otherwise, half the town would be locked up on any given day, and I only have two cells in our little office.”
“I had something to confess, sure enough, and I don’t know why but I knew Father Aaron would figure some way to remedy the situation. I just knew it.”
“I took money from one of the ranchers, that bastard Jesus Ramon. He paid me to get rid of two legal Mexicans who’d been causing some trouble trying to unionize a bunch of people in the area. They’d been reading too much, I figure, and it had a lot of ranchers feeling really jumpy—especially this particular rancher because he was the type of bastard who would fire his own mother if he could pick up cheaper labor somewhere else.”
“It didn’t help that Ramon doesn’t know how to run a business for shit. He got the ranch in a bullshit trial, for Christ’s sake. He’d gotten it about ten years ago when more illegals first started crossing the border. The illegals would send the money they made back to family in Mexico.”
“But Ramon didn’t have any family in Mexico. He didn’t have shit, other than that ranch, and every penny he made went to some store in town. Liquor, groceries,
whatever crap porn movies they sold at the Citgo station. What few white ranch hands were left, well, they usually made some money and pissed it away in Phoenix on their off-days. So as much as I hated Ramon, I knew he was valuable to the town.”
“Swallow your personal feelings. I’d already gotten used to that philosophy by then. Had to if I wanted to keep the town running. And that was why I wanted to run for sheriff in the first place. I went to school just fifteen miles north. I lived above Bert’s liquor shop for five years while I was jumping through the law enforcement hoops, waiting for our Sheriff Bryson to retire.”
“‘I would have helped him out either way,’ I confessed to Father Aaron. ‘I took the money because I didn’t want to offend Ramon.’”
“Father Aaron listened quietly, and then he did this thing with his mouth where he sort of quietly sighed between his teeth. He asked me why I would lie to him, especially when he would forgive me either way. He was angry. The heat wasn’t helping, I’m sure. Poor guy was probably cooking alive inside that box.”
“‘I’m sorry, father,’ I said. It was the only thing that came to my mouth because I'll be damned if I wasn’t surprised that he could read me so well. I’d been lying to Father Belmont for years, and he’d never caught on. Never called me out on it, at least. Father Belmont was a bit of a softy, God bless him.”
“Aaron cut me a deal. He said my penance would be to donate the bribe money to the church. He said Father Belmont was already beginning to save money for repairs needed for the roof. I said okay and left.”
“The next Sunday, I put a hundred bucks in the offering tray. Then I went into the confessional afterward and told Father Aaron that I’d spent the rest of the money on a new TV. I started babbling like a schoolgirl about how much I needed a new TV and how I’d bought it before last Sunday and finally, thank God, he stopped me.”
“Tell me about the border,” he said. “Is it easy to get through?”
“What, to here?” I asked. “Oh, sure. Ain’t no fence or nothing.”
