by Sylvia Nobel
With profound relief, I extricated myself from the car, stretching my stiff limbs and stomping the circulation back into my feet. No way was I doing that again tonight. But then, I shouldn’t have to. Lupe would be going back home this afternoon, which would make the cot in Javier’s room available. But did I really want to stay at the mission with her gone? It just might be worth driving the distance back to Green Valley to find a nice comfortable motel tonight.
It was downright chilly, so I pulled on my jacket and watched the shadows slowly surrender to the ruby glow on the horizon that gradually ripened to a radiant shade of scarlet-orange. The fiery tide of light chased away the goblins of the night as it spread across the rolling grasslands to the foothills, finally igniting the granite face of Baboquivari Peak to a breathtaking shade of crimson. “Wow,” was all I could muster in the way of adulation as my grandma’s old proverb, Red at night, sailor’s delight, red in the morning, sailors take warning, came to mind.
Behind me, the kitchen door squeaked open and all I could think about was hot coffee and an even hotter shower. I exchanged a wave of greeting with Celia, grabbed my overnight bag from the car and hurried inside. After helping myself to a mug of aromatic coffee, I made a beeline for the bathtub, passing Sister G in the hallway, all decked out for Sunday services. The vision of her simply styled salt and pepper gray hair, the long flowing white robe, along with the Bible clutched in her right hand, imparted an aura of dignity she’d lacked yesterday. For the first time since my arrival, she favored me with a smile that was almost amicable.
“Will I be seeing you in the chapel this morning, Miss O’Dell? My sermon begins promptly at eight.”
I hesitated. I planned to leave early with Lupe so she could retrieve her car before we met the UFOlogist for breakfast, but I was also curious to hear what this woman had to say. “I have an appointment in Arivaca at nine-thirty, but I’ll certainly stay as long as I can.”
She sniffed in approval, squaring her shoulders. “Good. I’ll expect to see you there.” She continued down the hall and I watched her until she was out of sight. It was true. People often assume a different persona when they don costumes and uniforms.
Forty-five minutes later, freshened up and feeling much improved, I opened the door to Javier’s room, expecting to find Lupe in the closet grilling him for more answers. Instead, she was still sprawled on the cot. Apparently ten hours of sleep wasn’t enough for her. And since I’d slept maybe two at best, I couldn’t work up a lot of sympathy. “Hey, come on, we’ve got things to do,” I said, whipping the blanket off her. “Time’s a wastin’.”
She cracked her eyes open and met mine. “I’m sorry, I don’t feel very good this morning.” Her voice sounded faint and her skin had a grayish tinge.
“What’s wrong?”
“I don’t know. I think I’m running a fever.”
I laid my palm across her forehead. It was burning hot. I winced inwardly. Oh, great. This was all we needed.
She struggled to a sitting position, sniffling. “I’m sure it’s just a cold. The kids I was babysitting last weekend were all sick. Don’t worry, I’ll take some aspirin and be fine soon.” As if to contradict her statement she sneezed twice.
I perched on the far edge of the cot to think. This trip had been one huge headache since its inception. Perhaps it was time to cut bait. “I don’t think we have any choice but to head back,” I said as Lupe’s eyes drifted shut again. “One of us has to cover the office tomorrow, and I can’t expect you to do it if you’re sick.”
Her lids popped open and accusation flared in her bloodshot eyes. “But…but you promised!”
“I know I did, but this thing is turning out to be way, and I mean way, more complicated than you can imagine. If I stayed another week, it’s doubtful I’d be able to find out what’s really going on.”
She grabbed my hand. “I will not break my promise to you. I’ll go back home early, stay in bed today and get better. Tomorrow morning I will be at my desk. Please, Kendall! What if it was your little brother, your uncle that was missing? Could you just go away and do nothing?”
I studied her grief-stricken face while trying to imagine my own family embroiled in such a tragic situation. “No, I couldn’t,” I said, stifling a weary yawn, “but there are quite a few things you don’t know yet.”
Squaring her jaw, she leaned back against the wall and pressed the blanket to her chest. “Then tell me.” I watched her frown deepen as I relayed my telephone conversation with Walter, recapped the contents of his articles, shared my suspicions about Sister Goldenrod and Froggy and then described my early morning experience.
“So…what do you think?” she asked, her eyes searching mine.
“To be honest, I don’t have a clue.”
She was silent for a few seconds. “What were you planning to do today and tomorrow?”
Just thinking about it made me tired. “Talk to Bob Shirley’s widow, see if I can extract more information from Froggy and Sister G, and then make a trip over to Morita to question the caretaker. If I have time, I’d like to visit some of the ranches where these animal mutilations took place, find out if anyone saw anything unusual. Even then, I may not have any answers for you.”
“But at least you can try,” she said in a small voice. “Please.”
The guilt was full-blown now. If she kept her end of the bargain, sick or not, I had no alternative but to keep mine. “Okay, I’ll stay and do what I can.”
The gratitude shining in her dark eyes heightened my sense of responsibility towards her, but also feelings of dread. Something terribly weird was going on here and my instincts told me the outcome would probably not be something she’d want to hear. “We still have to get your car. Do you feel up to having breakfast with me and this lady UFOlogist?”
She threw off the blanket. “Give me twenty minutes and I’ll be ready.”
We looked in on Javier before leaving, noting his empty breakfast tray on the floor beside him. Sister G must have fed him early. But then, she may have already been up at the crack of dawn for other reasons. He and Lupe exchanged a few sentences and when he edged me a shy smile, my heart warmed and broke at the same instant. What was to become of this little guy? “Were you able to find out anything new from him before you went to sleep last night?” I asked Lupe after she closed the closet door and shouldered her overnight bag.
“Not much. He did say that when he was running from the creatures, he fell into an arroyo and slept for a long time. When he woke up, he had trouble remembering exactly what happened.”
“Fell into an arroyo,” I repeated. Why did that sound familiar to me? “He slept a long time? Sounds more like he knocked himself out. Perhaps he’s suffering from temporary amnesia.”
Lupe nodded in agreement. “I just asked him to talk about anything that came into his head.”
“And?”
“Well, he talked more about his momma. She is very pretty, very young. He said his father stopped sending money home to them and that’s why they were coming to look for him. He also said before they were picked up by the coyote at the border, his mother told him they were taking the same path through the desert to the special crossing place that his great-grandfather and other relatives had used for many generations to come to this country.”
“Word of mouth,” I mused. “Now, if we could only find out where that particular spot is. And if your brother and uncle crossed at the same place, then maybe we can make a connection. Did you ask Sister G to see if she could contact the coyote?”
“She says she does not know the name of the man since all of her information comes second and third hand, but she will try to find out. ”
“Good.”
I glanced at my watch as we stepped into the hallway. “While you’re getting your shower, I’m going to listen in on Sister G’s sermon. Will half an hour be enough time?”
She pressed a tissue to her nose and nodded. “I�
�ll be ready.”
I turned to go when something occurred to me. “One more thing. Did Javier say anything else about seeing this horse he’s so afraid of?”
“No, why?”
“Just curious. I can’t seem to make a correlation between that and the UFO memory.”
“Maybe they rode from his home to the border on a black horse.”
I shrugged. “Beats me. Well, see you shortly.”
Quilted gray clouds hung overhead when I stepped outside and strolled across the clearing. An impressive number of cars and pickups were parked near the old mission. I watched with interest as a well-dressed Mexican family with four children piled out of a late-model mini-van and trooped inside the wide double doors which now stood open in welcome. Inside the tiny sanctuary, the parishioners were packed shoulder to shoulder in the wooden pews. Curious heads turned in my direction so I smiled in return, seating myself in the back pew in hopes that I could make my escape later without disturbing anyone.
At eight sharp, Sister G limped to the podium and asked us to bow our heads in prayer. In the wake of yesterday’s inauspicious introduction, together with all the other things I knew and didn’t know about her, I was surprised by the passionate tone of her sermon. It contained thought-provoking messages of love and truth, good versus evil, and the need to practice kindness and tolerance to those different from us. The dialogue was generic in nature, included quotes from the Bible and preached all-encompassing, familiar and nonsectarian themes. None of the rough edges of this coarse woman were apparent today. Okay, so maybe she really was a minister. That made the entire situation even more puzzling.
It was time to go, so I quietly got up, dropped the donation check I’d promised her into the collection basket near the door, and slipped outside. A few raindrops spattered on my head as I made my way across the parking lot. “Way to go Grandma,” I murmured, thinking about her weather proverb. Perhaps a good drenching would wash the accumulation of crud off of my car. I fetched Lupe from the kitchen and we retraced the previous day’s route to Arivaca, again passing very little traffic along the two-lane road. She was silent most of the way, but suddenly said, “Tell me again why we are meeting with this woman? How is she supposed to help us?”
“I don’t know that she can, but according to the stuff I read last night on the Internet, these people research UFO sightings and related stories. What’s really important for us is the fact that she hosts this abduction encounter group. I want to hear if there are similarities between their accounts and Javier’s.”
“But what about our promise to Sister Goldenrod not to tell anyone about him? And what about me? How much do I tell her? What if she repeats the story to INS or someone else?”
As if to emphasize her fears, Lupe stiffened as a Border Patrol van sped past in the opposite lane. “Until we can determine how trustworthy she is, we’ll have to be careful how we word our questions,” I answered after a brief glance at her pained expression, “so, if it makes you feel better, I can handle most of the interview.”
She sneezed into her hands and mumbled, “sorry” as she fished in her purse for tissues. “I hope you don’t catch this.”
“Me too.” I opened the window a little further to let in fresh air. She blew her nose again before saying, “I’d feel better if you ask the questions. You know as much as I do about this mess, probably more.”
I agreed and slowed speed as we entered the town limits of Arivaca. A sizeable number of cars and trucks were lined up in front of the café and parked at odd angles on the opposite side of the wide street. As we rolled past La Gitana, my pulse accelerated when a big red pickup truck backed out a few car lengths ahead of us.
“Oh, no,” Lupe whispered, her watery eyes widening with anxiety. “Not those bastards again!”
The same young dude with the black Stetson who’d tongue-washed my window yesterday, narrowed his eyes at us in a menacing fashion as he and a companion drew even with my car. His hostile scowl, designed to be intimidating, didn’t invoke the fear in me it had yesterday because there were plenty of witnesses milling about town this morning. Boldly, I returned a glare of my own.
“Not such a big shot today, “ I muttered to Lupe, watching him disappear around the corner in my rear view mirror. “I’m going to make it my business to find out who that guy is.”
“Be careful. I can tell by his eyes that he has an evil heart,” Lupe remarked, dabbing the end of her nose.
I had a suspicion that the young man’s hatred was directed more towards Lupe than myself but, because we were together, that also put me squarely in his sights.
After retrieving her car without incident, we returned to the main street, Lupe following close behind me. Preoccupied with the appetizing prospect of what to order for breakfast, it took a few seconds for the ominous sound of squealing tires to penetrate my thoughts. My insides clenched at the sight of the familiar pickup rounding the corner a block ahead of me and barreling in my direction. “Shit!” What was this moron doing now?
Apparently playing a dangerous game of cat and mouse, or who would flinch first, he aimed the grill of his truck at me and floored it. Thinking about it afterwards, I couldn’t remember the exact sequence of events. While frantically motioning for Lupe to pull over to the side of the road behind me, I noticed a little orange cat dart from underneath a parked car and run directly into the path of the truck. The young cowboy saw it too, but did not slow down. “Stop it, you idiot!” I shouted, absorbing the wrath of his demonic smile as he cut the wheel away from me at the last second. The next thing I knew I was staring at the terror-glazed eyes of the little cat as it slammed into my windshield. “Oh, my God!” It clawed desperately for a foothold, but when I instinctively hit the brakes, the ginger-colored bundle of fur tumbled off the hood and disappeared beneath the car with a sickening thud.
9
Choking back ragged sobs, I scrambled from the car and knelt down beside the motionless cat, positive that I’d snuffed out an innocent life. Blood oozed from its little pink nose and there was a jagged cut behind one ear where it had probably hit the edge of my bumper. “Oh, kitty, I’m so sorry.” I placed a finger on its neck feeling for a pulse. Was that a faint heartbeat or my own trembling hand?
Lupe arrived at my side, crying, “What happened? Oh, my God! Did you kill it?”
“I don’t know,” I said, stroking the dust-covered fur while trying to swallow around the knot of remorse clogging my throat. “I…I tried to stop, but it was too late.”
“It wasn’t your fault, lady,” said a raspy voice from behind. Turning, I stared up into the concerned brown eyes of a gray-bearded stranger. Two younger men wearing Levis and soiled T-shirts walked up and stood beside him as he doffed a ragged hat in my direction before placing it over his heart. “Say a prayer, gentlemen. It looks like the last of the little feller’s nine lives has run out.” He cocked his shaggy head at me. “I can get some newspaper to wrap him up in, if you like.”
Guilt and anger burning a hole in my chest, I turned my attention back to the cat. It twitched a couple of times, blinked, and then was still again. It took a mighty effort not to burst into tears. I pressed fingers to my temples and pulled in a few deep breaths. “Just…let’s just wait a minute. I don’t think it’s dead, but I need someone to help me.” I looked up at the men. “Is there an animal hospital around here?”
“Nope,” answered one of the younger men. “The closest one is in Green Valley, but hey, Matt,” he said, knuckling his companion on the shoulder, “Payton’s in there having breakfast. Go get him. He’ll probably know what to do.”
A tiny spark of hope flared inside me as I watched the third man lope across the street and disappear inside La Gitana. “Who’s Payton?” I asked, rising to my feet and trading a hopeful glance with Lupe, who looked every bit as distraught as I felt.
“Payton Kleinwort. I think he used to be a veterinary assistant or some such thing,” the
bearded man replied, finger-combing his shoulder-length hair behind his ears before replacing his hat. “Nice fella.”
A moment later, the front door of the café flew open and a slender man wearing khaki shorts, a long-sleeved shirt and hiking boots trotted towards us with Matt following close behind. Without saying a word to any of us, he knelt to examine the cat. Breathless, I waited in agony for his verdict. What ironic timing. Two days ago I’d voiced the desire to adopt a cat of my own and instead, I’d probably ended up killing one.
“Is it alive?” Lupe asked, placing a comforting hand on my arm.
“Yes, but this little critter needs professional medical attention right away. What exactly happened?” His expression grave, he pushed his steel-rimmed glasses up the bridge of his narrow nose. The trace of condemnation in his sage-green eyes nudged my guilt thermometer several degrees higher. I repeated the incident with Lupe chiming in her version from the sidelines. “Whoever this guy is, he ought to be locked up,” I said through gritted teeth. “He’s a complete psychopath.” The knowing look circling among the four men prompted me to dryly observe, “So, I gather you all know who he is.”
Payton Kleinwort rose to his feet, brushing the dirt from his knees. “Everybody knows Jason Beaumont.”
I gawked. “Beaumont? Of the Sundog Ranch?”
A look of appraisal flickered in his eyes as he nodded. “One and the same. But, he’s really not a bad kid, just mischievous sometimes.” His sheepish expression suggested there was a lot more to tell, but I wasn’t in the mood to listen to anyone defend him. “Mischievous, my foot. He’s a sadistic bully. We’ve had two run-ins with him and his buddies in less than twenty-four hours. I think he should be reported to the authorities for harassment and reckless driving at the very least, which I think I’ll do when I get to Green Valley.”
The older man shook his head slowly. “It wouldn’t do you any good, my dear. Champ’ll get the kid off the hook just the same as every other time.”
