The Painted Boy

by Charles DeLint

  “We’re just friends,” I tell him. “Really.”

  He laughs. “I know that. Rosie and me, we’re tight. I don’t have any worries there.” He waits a moment, looking away to the horizon before turning back to me. “But I get the sense she’s . . . disappointed in you.”

  I sigh.

  “You don’t want to talk about it, that’s cool,” he says.

  “It’s not that. It’s just . . . she thinks I can get rid of El Tigre. That I can get rid of all the bandas.”

  His eyebrows go up in surprise, but all he says is, “Can you?”

  “No. I don’t know. It’s hard to explain.”

  He waits, but while I like him, I’m not about to start talking about dragons.

  “Well,” he says when he realizes I’m not going to continue. “You ever decide to give it a shot, you can count me in. I hate those freaks.”

  See, that’s the way he is. That’s what makes him so cool. Something comes up and he just makes the decision. He does the right thing without having to think about it. I wish I could be like that, but I don’t even have the first clue about what the right thing is that I should be doing.

  We walk awhile longer in silence until finally I have to ask: “Aren’t you even curious how a kid is supposed to be able to shut down a gangster and all his bandas? Because I sure am.”

  Ramon shakes his head. “If Rosie thinks you can do it, then I do, too. I’m guessing you’re just not ready yet.”

  “How are you supposed to get ready for something like that?”

  “Beats me. I’m just a musician—what the hell do I know?”

  It’s a couple of hours later before we reach the vantage point that Ramon wanted to show me. The air feels thin up here, but it’s so damn clean it doesn’t matter. I can’t remember ever tasting air this clean. We’re on the very top of the sky, away from all the pollution and crap, and every breath I take feels like it’s purifying me. And the view . . . if the view from the ridge was something, this one’s almost impossible to take in. We have the mountain at our back, while in front of us, its brothers and sisters spread off into the horizon, tall and majestic, with a sky above that’s so big it doesn’t have an end.

  “Isn’t this the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen?” Ramon asks.

  I stand there mesmerized. He’s right. It’s totally amazing. But the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen? There’s another picture in my head, but I’m not about to tell Ramon what it is.

  “Okay, give,” he says. “I can tell you don’t agree. Tell me one thing you’d rather be looking at.”

  I shake my head.

  “No, this pretty much beats any view I’ve ever seen before,” I tell him.

  “Except for . . .”

  “Give it a rest,” I say with a smile.

  “Nope. Not until you tell me. Because if you know something better than this, I want to go see it.”

  “You’re going to think it’s stupid.”

  “No, I won’t.”

  I sigh. “Okay. How about every time I look at Anna?”

  I can’t look at him. It’s worse when he laughs. But then he punches me on the shoulder and I know he’s not laughing at me. He’s not laughing with me—because I’m not laughing—but at least he’s not laughing at me.

  “If you feel that way,” he says, “why don’t you do something about it? Ask her out, man.”

  “No. She’s totally not into me that way. It’s . . .” I hesitate, then give a mental shrug. “It’s got to do with this whole business of how I’m supposed to be able to take down the bandas and clean everything up.”

  He gives a slow nod. “I can see how she’d want that. You know her brother was killed by the bandas, right? She’d want to see them go down more than any of us.”

  “It’s not that she thinks I can do it,” I tell him. “It’s that she thinks it’s all bullshit. Or if it’s not bullshit, then it freaks her out.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “It’s . . . I don’t . . . oh, hell.”

  I sit down on a rock. The landscape frees me. Staring out at the vast display of the mountains, I can tell him the whole thing. About Paupau, the mark of the dragon appearing on my back, what happened when I first got here, meeting with El Tigre, everything.

  He sits down beside me and doesn’t interrupt.

  “Is that why Anna calls you the Painted Boy?” he says when I’m done.

  “Yeah, it’s really ha-ha.”

  He gets more serious. “So you don’t think you’re ready?”

  “Ready? I wouldn’t know where to start.” I study him for a moment before I add, “How come you believe me?”

  “I didn’t say that I did.”

  “But you’re not calling me out on it.”

  He shrugs. “What would be the point? I know there’s weird crap in the world.” He smiles. “You know, like the mescaleros and the ghosts of long-dead fish. But whether I believe it or I don’t, that doesn’t change the fact that you’ve got to deal with it.”

  Like I said, how can you not want a guy like this for a friend?

  “So there’s that,” he goes on, “and I can’t do anything about it, but Anna . . . come on, man. Have you told her how you feel?”

  “I never get the chance. She always makes sure we’re in a big group where I can’t even start.”

  He laughs. “Yeah, I can see her doing that.”

  “And besides, just look at her. She’s way too cool for a guy like me.”

  “Bullshit. Yeah, she’s all glam onstage, but that’s not who she is. Or it’s only part of who she is.”

  “Maybe. But when she is on that stage . . .”

  “Let me tell you,” he says. “She’s serious about the music and she’s no showboat. She listens to what’s happening around her and serves the song. Sure, when it’s her turn to step up for a solo she lets it all out, but that doesn’t make her too cool or special—not the way you’re thinking.”

  He stops for a moment, then goes on, “Let me put it another way. People think we’re special up there on the stage, but we’re the same as everyone else. What makes us different is only that we get up there and play out our dreams. Do you get what I’m saying?”

  “I guess. . . .”

  “Because if your dream is to be the damn best car mechanic or plumber, and you work at it every day, then you’re special, too.”

  “Easy to say.”

  He shakes his head. “I’m serious, man. You have the balls to follow your dreams and you’re living the beautiful life.”

  “Which makes me . . .”

  He laughs. “Well, I don’t know about all this dragon crap, but you’re one damn fine cook.”

  I don’t say anything, but he won’t let it go.

  “And that means,” he says, “that you’re cool enough for her. But you’ve got to tell her how you feel. You can’t write the movie in your head and then get pissed off because she’s not following the script. Or maybe she’s following it too well, considering you already wrote the bummer ending.”

  “You make it sound easy.”

  He shakes his head. “Laying your heart out there is never easy, man. Doesn’t matter if it’s getting up onstage or telling somebody how you feel. Maybe you’re going to blow it. Maybe you’re going to get hurt. But you can’t not try. What the hell kind of way is that to live?”

  “Safe,” I say.

  “Unhappy,” he corrects me.

  I nod. “Okay. I get it.”

  “So maybe she’ll shoot you down,” he says, “and you’re still going to be bummed. But maybe you’ll hit the jack-pot.”

  “How’s that?”

  “Maybe she’ll say, ‘Sure, let’s do something together.’”

  “Maybe,” I say and we leave it at that.

  The rest of the day we just talk about how it was growing up—me in Chinatown, him in the barrio—and he tells me about the land. What the plants are called, what they’re good for. The wildli
fe. Names the birds we see. I saw a lot of this stuff in the little guidebook I read on the bus coming down, but seeing it up close makes it real like a book never could.

  By the time we get back to Tío’s house I’m glowing from both a bit too much sun and the great time I had. That night I sleep deeply and dream I’m back in those mountains, but this time I’m like one of the mescaleros that Ramon was telling me about. I’m riding the winds high in the thin, cool air, sailing effortlessly above the peaks. When I wake, I can’t remember if my wings were a hawk’s or a dragon’s.

  After that Sunday with Ramon, I take to going out for walks in the neighborhood after work. I like the quiet and the night air, and there’s not much else to do that late, anyway. I’d call my parents, but because of the time difference I can only do it from the restaurant just before we start serving dinner. Otherwise they’re fast asleep. Tío’s usually busy working on the restaurant’s books, making up the deposit, putting together his food orders. Ines is friendly enough, but she’s got a whole other life that only seems to start when the restaurant closes, and she doesn’t come by the house much. The clubs she goes to don’t get happening until around midnight, and that’s not my scene. Not that she’s ever asked me to tag along or anything.

  As for Rosalie, if it’s a night off, she spends the evening with Ramon after she’s done her homework. If she’s been in the restaurant that night, she usually hits the books in her trailer.

  “I can’t believe you don’t miss school,” she said to me once.

  “I can’t believe you like it.”

  She shook her head. “In five or ten years, when you get tired of working in a restaurant, you’ll regret not having your diploma to fall back on. Graduates get the good jobs.”

  “In five or ten years,” I told her, “I could be a dragon for real, doing whatever the hell it is that dragons do. Then whether or not I have a diploma won’t matter, will it?”

  We’ve only known each other for a couple of weeks, but it’s already an old argument.

  So she’s got her boyfriend and her studying. Sometimes I hang with them. Sometimes Rosalie and I go to band rehearsals. Sometimes I sit with Tío on the patio and get him to tell me stories of how things used to be in the barrio. But mostly it’s just me and the desert night.

  With Tío’s house so close to the national park, all I have to do is walk that long block and I’m at the parking lot by the trailhead. Even sitting on the front porch, I can hear the coyotes. But I like walking along Redondo Drive, which borders the park. I can smell the creosote and dust; the sky is huge above me and filled with stars. Sometimes I catch glimpses of javelinas rooting around in the prickly pear.

  The third or fourth time I take a late night walk, I bring the dogs with me. I already walk them sometimes before work. Rosalie just shakes her head because I can take them all off leash and even she can only do that with maybe half of them. She’s got a few rescues that are really skittish and liable to snap—or so she says. She talks about how they’ve been mistreated and they need to regain their trust of people, but they’re cool with me. All of them are. They just flow around me, marking cacti and clumps of dead weeds, checking everything for smells. But they stay close and come as soon as I call them. We’ve got an understanding, I guess.

  So I’m a little surprised and freaked out when they take off on me just after midnight one night. I’m even more worried when I see the figure they’ve spotted down the street ahead of us. I yell at the dogs and chase after them, but they don’t listen. The dogs herd what I see is just a kid up against a chain-link fence, then they pen her there in a half circle of bared teeth and fierce growls.

  “I’m sorry, I’m sorry!” I cry to the kid as I catch up. I pull dogs away so that I can get to the girl. “Go on, get out of here,” I tell them. “Jeez, Oswaldo, what’re you thinking?” To the girl I quickly add, “They won’t hurt you. I won’t let them hurt you.”

  I repeat the words in Spanish.

  I’m so pissed off at myself. Why did I have to get so cocky, thinking I could control the dogs just because I’m supposed to have some kind of stupid dragon blood? Rosalie warned me that a few of them aren’t properly socialized yet. I’ve never had a dog in my life, but suddenly I know better? This girl could have been seriously hurt.

  She’s maybe fourteen or fifteen, barefoot, in raggedy pink cotton trousers and a lime green T-shirt that hangs down to her knees. Her hair’s a mix of light and dark brown tangles, streaked with blond. Her eyes are large and seem almost luminous in the dark.

  I find it odd that she doesn’t seem scared. That she’s out here on her own so late at night.

  Odder still is the little ping of recognition that tells me she’s from one of the animal clans. Except that can’t be right. I mean, she’s really just a kid.

  “I know they won’t hurt me,” she says. She’s got a lower voice than I expected. “Not with you here to protect me.”

  Trusting much? I think.

  But the dogs are no longer paying attention to her. My pulse starts to slow down and I guess everything’s okay. No harm done. But no more midnight rambles with the dogs, that’s for sure. It’s not fair to anyone we might run across. I mean, this poor girl . . .

  “I’m really sorry about them scaring you like that,” I say, feeling the need to keep apologizing.

  “I wasn’t scared.”

  So now I’m wondering what kind of drugs she’s using. But I go on. “They’ve never done that before.”

  She shrugs. “It’s just their nature.”

  She’s way too calm about this.

  “You’re out kind of late,” I say.

  She nods. “But it’s so nice late at night. I mean, look at the stars. Just look at them!”

  She twirls in a circle as she speaks, her fingers pointing straight up at the night sky. I know just what she means— it’s one of the reasons I like to go walking this late—but I’m not some little kid who should have been in bed hours ago. And she’s definitely got to be stoned.

  “Where do you live?” I ask.

  She gives a vague wave of her hand toward the east.

  “Let me walk you home,” I say.

  “It’s a long way.”

  Maybe in her mind it is, but I know there are only a few houses between here and the trailhead, so it can’t be that far. And I’m sure not leaving her out here on her own. I start down the street and she falls in step beside me. The dogs range ahead, except for a little Jack Russell/toy poodle mix named Pepito who growls at the girl until I shoo him away.

  “What’s your name?” I ask.

  “Lupita.”

  “I’m Jay,” I tell her.

  She grins. “I know that. Everybody knows about you.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You know, how you’re all dragony and everything.”

  I stop in my tracks. “Who told you that?”

  Lupita’s got a big smile. “Why would someone have to tell me? Ai-yi-yi! If you don’t want people to know you’re a dragon you shouldn’t walk around the way you do, all big and rumbly, with a fire in your belly.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Oh, you’re so cute. Are you still going to walk me home?”

  She seems to shimmer under the streetlights. For a moment I think I see small antlers poking up from the tangle of her hair, long droopy rabbit’s ears hanging down on either side of her face. I remember the little inner ping I felt when I first saw her. Then the antlers and droopy ears are gone.

  “What do you mean by ‘everybody’?” I ask. “Who’s this ‘everybody’ that knows about me?”

  She shrugs. “Oh, you know. All the cousins.”

  I give a slow nod. “And you’re one, too.”

  “Well, duh.”

  “How old are you really?”

  She cocks her head. “What do you mean by ‘really’?”

  “Well, you look fourteen or fifteen—in, um, human years.”

&nbs
p; “Oh, that,” she says. “We always look young to the five-fingered beings when we change over.”

  “By ‘we’ do you mean all the cousins?”

  “I don’t know about all the cousins,” she says, “but that’s how it works with the jackalope clan.”

  “Jackalopes aren’t real,” I tell her. “Even I know that. They’re just this joke that somebody started—some taxidermist putting deer horns on a jackrabbit.”

  She pulls a face. “That’s gross.” She pokes me with her finger. “Does this feel real?”

  And then she does it some more—poke, poke—after which she pouts, crosses her arms across her chest, and turns away.

  “I’m sorry,” I say. “I didn’t mean to be insulting. This is—all of this is just really new to me.”

  She looks at me over her shoulder.

  “Are you really sorry?” she asks.

  “Really.”

  “How big is your sorry?”

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  She’s turned fully around now. “Is it as big as a house? As a mountain? As the moon, moon, moon?”

  She does another one of her twirls, arms held straight out. Pepito gives a sharp bark.

  “Oh, be quiet,” I tell him.

  “That doesn’t sound like you’re very sorry.”

  I point at the dog. “I was talking to Pepito.”

  “I think you’re bossy.”

  I sigh. “I’m not. It’s just that it’s late and I don’t want to wake people up.”

  “Why not? It’s a beautiful night. I love the night, don’t you? Or are you like the snake and lizard cousins who are always looking for some stretch of sunlight to loll about in?”

  She keeps twirling as she speaks but now she stops and looks at me, hands on her hips, waiting for an answer.

  “I like the night,” I assure her.

  “I knew you did. I’ve seen you out walking before. We have so much in common, don’t you think? Except you’re not very good at saying you’re sorry and I am. If I was sorry about something, I’d be as sorry as the whole wide world.”

  “That’s exactly how sorry I am,” I say, falling into the spirit of things. “I’m as sorry as the whole world and the sky above it, too.”