The house was quiet. An absolute, suffocating quiet. She hopped down the stairs, using the railing and avoiding her injured ankle. She didn’t look into the kitchen; her stomach revolted at the thought. She opened the front door and limped into the porch light, shuffling as quickly as she could out of the house.
There was nobody else. The guard had apparently stayed hidden after he’d been ordered to. Luz stepped off the porch and crossed the clearing, eyes adjusting. The night was loud with life twittering in the pines. She heard men laughing inside the cottage.
Luz found Cecilia standing in the dirt road out on the slope. Hands on her hips. Watching the stars. She nodded as Luz drew even with her and held her gaze. Untold memories, inarticulate thoughts. But Luz knew her story. She could see it shimmering in her dark pupils. Cecilia pivoted and began to hike up the trail. A few steps out, she raised a hand in farewell.
Luz took a deep breath. Then she started down the mountain.
XVIII
Be thankful. Don’t look back.
1
COLBY’S MOTHER ANSWERED, BUT ALL SHE SAID WAS, “HANG on,” and shut the door in Jonah’s face. Colby appeared a few moments later. “Mickey-Bee!”
They walked together through the neighborhood, swatting at the flies roiling over the decomposing palm fronds stacked on the curb along with somebody’s trash. Jonah told him about the burning car and the masked man and how he thought it had been a dream. Colby stopped, looked at him. “You fuckin’ crazy, you know that? I’m glad I came back.” He reached into his pocket and produced Jonah’s keys.
“You did all right, then, driving? I told you.”
“Took me forever.” Colby shrugged. “My mama, she’s mad at you.”
“Mad at me?”
“Yeah. But she was pretty mad at me, too, so don’t sweat it.”
They walked for a long while, crossing the streetcar tracks, past the bars and restaurants on the avenue, and then past the finer homes on the other side of the street. A man selling watermelons from his flatbed. A taco truck, empty of business. They reached the levee and sat on the steps overlooking the river. A massive container ship had paused in the process of either taking on cargo or unloading it. Colby finally asked him:
“The suspense is killing me, Mickey-Bee. What happened with Luz?”
Jonah scratched an imaginary itch on his forearm. “Didn’t go too well.”
“You got there? She was home?”
“Yeah.” But what else to tell him? How to tell him? “We broke up.”
“Shit.” Colby let the word out slowly, like a sigh. “What about . . . ?”
Jonah said, “She lost the baby. Before I got there.”
Colby squinted at him in the sunlight. He opened his mouth, closed it. He left it unsaid. He scooped a handful of gravel and rolled it down the levee slope. A cyclist blew past on the levee trail, dinging his bell. Way out in the river a tug labored against the current. Downriver, the bridge reached out of downtown. The cruise ships must all have been out at sea. Colby leaned over and elbowed Jonah. “She missed me, didn’t she?”
“Yeah. I think she did.”
The river was still there, broad and brown. It seemed calm. Jonah knew it wasn’t.
“You coming back to school?”
“Yeah,” Jonah said. “I guess I better. See if I can graduate.”
In the lull, Colby plucked a desiccated cicada shell from the step beneath them, palmed it, and showed it to Jonah. “I’m leaving right after graduation for Georgia.”
“Georgia.”
“Yeah,” Colby said. “Fort Benning.”
Jonah looked at him.
“I signed up last week.”
Jonah shrank back into his own head. Didn’t know what to say.
“I ain’t been selling shit, neither. Gave it up.” Colby folded his arms, rested his elbows on his knees. His eyes were on the river, but Jonah sensed that his friend looked somehow through it. “The other day,” Colby said, “I’m sitting in the back of Mr. Sise’s classroom. He was up front with a few kids, watching something on the computer. Me, I’m just spacing out. Thinking about you, probably, hoping you weren’t dead.” He grinned, then went on. “There’s this kid at the desk next to me. I’m not really watching him, but he thinks I am. See, he’s sitting there thumbing through a stack of bills. Like, a lot of money, Mickey-Bee, and you know how he been earning it. And he’s staring at me, thinking I been watching him, and he go, ‘What you looking at, nigga?’ Said it like a threat. I got my ass up and went to the front of the room, and the dude goes on counting.”
“You didn’t know him?”
“Nah, man. That’s the thing. I didn’t know him at all. Felt like I’d never seen him before. I had this sense all of a sudden of the whole game, just how fucking big it is. Swelling from New Orleans and Mexico and a million other places, all of it connected. I saw it, right then.”
Jonah had the sensation that he was looking at his friend from a great distance.
“You know,” Colby continued, “I was nervous coming back. Thinking about Davonte. He vanished, and first time he pops his head up, blam. I didn’t know what to expect. I was gone, hadn’t been selling. I was scared.”
Colby shook his head, then looked at Jonah: “Shit, I get back, and it was like nobody even noticed I’d been missing. Except my mom.” Colby paused. “I got it finally, how big the business was I had my fingers in. I saw how little I actually pulled from it. Not enough for motherfuckers to even notice. Might as well have been nothing. Made me realize it’s like I’m buried under this whole city, all of it just pressing down on me. I’m down here getting chewed up in the guts of it all. I ain’t nothing more than a bit of fuel. So I gotta get up and get out. There’s a lot of world out there. I hope there is.”
“I’m sorry, Colby. I’m sorry I’m not going with you.”
“I understand, Mickey-Bee. The army stuff was all just talk for you anyway.”
Gulls rose and fell all along the levee, their lonesome cries.
“You know,” Colby said, “they, like, made the Mississippi go where they wanted it to. With all the levees and shit, they forced it to flow just the one way so they could build all around it. But that ain’t how rivers work. Not supposed to, at least.” He swished his hand to illustrate. “Gotta flow where they want, else you end up with problems.”
Jonah looked slantwise at him, grinning. “Where’d you learn that?”
“School, I guess.” Colby smiled. “What you getting into next?”
“Well,” Jonah said, “I got a business plan.”
“Listen to you. A business plan.”
“Yeah, man. You broke right now?”
“You know it.”
“Wanna make some cash?”
“What, you paying?”
“I am.”
Colby narrowed his eyes, tried to figure out the joke.
“I’m serious. I’ll pay you to help me out with something.”
“Pay me with what?”
“My brother’s working it out. He’s here.”
“Dex is in New Orleans?”
“Yeah. I told you. We’re going into business.”
“How much?”
“We’ll figure out the details.”
Colby grinned. Looked out at the river. An airliner quietly thundered high overhead, going someplace. Colby turned to Jonah. “What do I got to do?”
Jonah shrugged. “Might have to sweat a little bit.”
2
JONAH FELT GOOD, HAVING DEX AT THE HOUSE WITH HIM. ON Jonah’s nineteenth birthday, Dex sat up with him late into the night drinking beers and talking, making plans. Dex looked at the photographs on the walls, told stories. Donald the dog made himself at home on the couch. They were family, under one roof.
The next week, an oil rig in the Gulf exploded. It was all over the news. Nobody talked about much else. Eleven had died. The rig sank, and now crude geysered from the seafloor with no sign of stopping. Jonah and Dex watc
hed the news, images flashing in silent catastrophe. Dex wondered aloud whether he’d known any of the workers.
“Everybody down the bayou either works out there or knows people who do.”
A graphic on the screen showed potential currents and drifting slicks, miles long.
“Fuck,” Dex breathed out, slow.
Sharon arrived at the house Friday night. Jonah met her out front with Dex. She had planned to come over and help them get started on the cleanup of the McBee Auto building. The three of them talked well into the night. She was worried about her brother, now that the shrimpers were being docked due to the oil pumping toward the surface and washing inland. “All the shrimp fleets are coming in,” she said.
Jonah understood the problem. Workless days were no good for those who had good reason to be restless. He said, “Tell him to come up here and help with the renovation.”
Sharon and Dex looked at him.
“I mean, I gotta get help eventually anyway. Maybe could hire him to do some work once the bank money comes through. What do you think, Dex?”
“Hey.” Dex shrugged and raised his beer. “You’re the boss.”
3
COME THE MORNING JONAH WAS UP EARLIER THAN HE MEANT to be, willing his headache away, pacing the kitchen. While he sipped coffee he went out back with Donald the dog and watched the light kindle through the canopy of the ancient live oak rising over the roofs.
Dex and Sharon came downstairs soon enough. There was a somber air about them. The news said that the oil was still gushing. All attempts to stave it off had failed so far, and the next option wasn’t yet clear.
They ate a quiet breakfast and loaded the truck bed with sledgehammers, breathing masks, hedge clippers, a weed eater, a couple of crowbars, an electric sander. Some of the tools were old, having sat in the backyard shed for years. Some were new. Some were Dex’s, from the camp. Jonah also had a box of contractors’ trash bags and a gallon of herbicide for the tall grasses growing through the cracks in the sidewalk. He’d need many more materials, but he’d learn as he went. There was something exciting about that.
Warm wind blew through the open windows and filled the cab. It felt good to all of them. So did the movement, so did the promise of sincere and honest work. They could each imagine a day well spent, and it took their minds off the Gulf and the oil.
Colby showed up soon after they arrived. He struck a pose with his fists on his hips. He watched Jonah unloading materials from the truck. He looked the whole structure over and whistled. “You know, Mickey-Bee. It ain’t too late to enlist.”
Jonah grinned, passed him the hedge clippers, and said, “Why don’t you get to work on them vines?”
“Shit,” Colby said. He grabbed the clippers and moved toward the facade, calling over his shoulder in jest, “Figure out what you paying me yet?”
“We’ll talk over a beer later.”
“All right.” Colby said to Jonah’s brother, “What up, Dex,” and Dex nodded back.
Jonah leaped to the sidewalk, crowbar in hand. Movement caught his eye. An elderly woman in a nightgown had come out onto her porch and sat in the shade to watch what was happening. Jonah waved to her and she waved back. Then Jonah went to the shop’s front door. It had been glass, though now there was just a sheet of plywood bolted over the frame with stripped and rusted screws. Layers of graffiti slashed across it. Jonah looked at the old X code painted alongside the door. Then he wedged the tapered end of the crowbar under an edge of the plywood, braced himself, and heaved the first fresh breath into the place.
4
JONAH WAS THERE TO SEE COLBY OFF AT THE BUS STATION WHEN it came time for him to depart for Georgia. Jonah embraced his friend. They were in the middle of downtown New Orleans. The bus idled and the air was hot.
They’d gotten drunk together the night before. “You better hope that hangover wears off before all the push-ups start.”
Colby patted him on the back, then pulled away. “You be good, Mickey-Bee.”
Jonah wished his friend luck and told him to keep in touch. Then he stepped aside and let Colby’s mom say good-bye. Moments later, the bus pulled away.
Jonah drove by the shop on his way home. There was still a lot of work to do. They had put new plywood over the windows, but he needed money before he could cut new glass. He’d have to order replacement garage doors. The inside was gutted, awaiting renovation, including electrical and plumbing work. The vines and weeds were gone. A fresh coat of primer had dried over the graffiti. Lots of work to do, but it was looking brighter. It was looking better. Jonah had decided to let the X remain alongside the door. Might be a nice thing—a reminder of times past, holding at the center of everything he would build in the future. He thought maybe he’d construct a frame and bolt it down around the X, like a little work of art. He looked at the shop, on its way to new life, and he thought: This, right here. This is me reaching for them. Mom and Pop and Bill. Remembering them and moving on still.
He parked in front of the house and went up the steps. Dex was also departing today, going back to the bayou. The authorities were hiring folks who owned boats to lay boom and skim oil along the wetlands. The only money to be had at sea these days. Dex thought he should get in on it. The loan money will come through shortly, Dex told Jonah, and I’ll be back soon as I can to help with everything.
Inside, Dex was shouldering his bag. He pointed to a short stack of mail on the coffee table. “Showed up while you were out,” he said.
Jonah lifted two bills and a postcard. The postcard was a battered-looking thing, an old photograph of a tropical beach. Breakers roll in. Thunderheads loom on the horizon. Along the bottom of the photo, in cartoonish orange print: Golfo de México.
Jonah flipped the postcard over. The only thing in the white space was a simple line drawing of a butterfly. A monarch, Jonah was certain. A few pen strokes, no words.
“What?” Dex asked.
Jonah shook his head.
“That from Luz?”
“Yeah,” Jonah said.
“Listen to me,” Dex said. “Did y’all make the most of it when you had it?”
“I think so.”
“Then be thankful,” his brother said, “and don’t look back.”
“Be thankful,” Jonah repeated. “Don’t look back.”
He walked Dex out, watched him get into his truck. A moment of vision-warping déjà vu, like dancing waves of heat. But everything steadied, and Jonah waved to his brother. Dex called back that he’d see him soon, and then he shifted into gear and drove away. And Jonah lingered on the porch for a moment and closed his eyes, and the morning sun warmed his face. He thought again of Mom and Pop and Bill and felt a tentative urge to offer something not unlike a prayer. Then he turned toward his door, turning toward home.
XIX
. . . sino una mujer.
1
SHE HAD LIMPED OFF THE MOUNTAIN AND REACHED THE TRAIL toward the pyramid before she heard the vehicles. She lay flat in the dirt and watched the headlights pass in the road. Then she got up and dragged herself on. Onofre answered his door when she knocked. The old leñero seemed neither surprised nor relieved as he waved her inside. One room, a low ceiling, a cot with a thin mattress. The floorboards lay directly on the dirt. Onofre built a fire and boiled water and sterilized a needle. He produced a spool of thread. He had Luz sit on the stool in front of the fire so he could clearly see her triceps.
“Do not worry,” he said. “I have performed this surgery on Magdalena many times.” Magdalena, Luz found out, was the mule.
Onofre insisted she take his cot, and he made a pallet for himself on the floor. His son would arrive from Saltillo in three days’ time in order to make his weekly delivery of groceries. Luz could leave with him. Onofre insisted that she stay hidden in the meantime, and only leave when she needed the outhouse. Onofre loaded up Magdalena each morning, made his rounds, returned, and made supper. On the second day, he reported that the large house on the hill stil
l stood empty.
2
ONOFRE KNELT BENEATH HIS WINDOW, A LONE CLOUDY PANE OF glass, before bed each night. A Virgen de Guadalupe santo stood on the sill, a short candle beside it. Luz sat on the cot and watched him mumble through his devotions.
The evening before she was to leave, he asked if she’d like to pray with him. Luz declined with thanks, but she liked to listen. So Onofre said his prayers. He got to his feet. He seemed more hunched than usual as he raised a finger. “God,” he said, “cannot be understood because God belongs to the good man and the evil man, one and the same.”
Luz thought about this. Something resonated, though she couldn’t quite pinpoint it in her blurred memory. The conversation with Oziel had become a film of static.
“You see”—Onofre lowered his finger toward the statuette on the sill—“it is the mother we can understand. People forget this. The mother is who we must contemplate.”
Luz sat with her elbows on her knees. She looked at her hands. Mamá’s hands. This makes you strong, my Luz. She closed her eyes and reached for her.
3
LUZ WALKED THE MARKET IN SALTILLO, ATTEMPTING TO SELL the knife and sheath. She didn’t want to—for some unnameable reason—but she had no choice. She needed the money. The vendor at a jewelry stall looked the knife over. He was a short man with a lazy eye. He glanced at the shoppers in the market quickly, nervously perhaps, and Luz knew that the man wanted the knife. When he lowballed an offer, Luz leaned in and told him that the knife had belonged to Cicatriz Medina, and that it was the same knife that killed Oziel Zegas. The jeweler said, “And now I know you are lying, for Cicatriz was finished before Zegas died. Anyway, I heard it wasn’t one of Cicatriz’s men who killed Zegas at all but a woman.” And Luz stared at him until something dawned in the eye that watched her, and he bought the knife for a good deal of money. She hurried out of the market after that, feeling ill and cheap. She took the first bus south.
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