Desert Jade

by C. J. Shane

  "Yeah?" Eduardo asked. "What's she talking about?"

  "She told me a little about her family and her village. It's like you thought. She's from southern Mexico, I think from the mountains of Chiapas. I’m not sure which indigenous group. Maybe she’s a full-blood Maya."

  "No kidding," said Eduardo. "She's pretty far from home then."

  Valerina continued. "She asked a lot of questions about you......Angelito." Valerina mimicked the name with a big grin." She wants to know all about you."

  "She does? Like what?" Eduardo asked. He was surprised and a little embarrassed.

  "Like does Angelito have a novia?" Valerina's laugh came from deep in her chest and her belly shook. “Novia” was the Mexican Spanish word for “girlfriend.”

  Eduardo laughed nervously. He shrugged his shoulders.

  "Come on, Guapo. Supper's on the table." Valerina poked him in the ribs, and Eduardo turned to follow. She had called him guapo, handsome, since he was a little kid. He just hoped she didn't call him that now in front of Esperanza.

  Despite reports that she had chattered like a magpie all day, Esperanza said almost nothing at dinner. All through the meal, she looked shyly at Eduardo, then down at her food, then at Eduardo again. This amused Valerina and Mando to no end.

  Later when they were in bed, Mando told Valerina that it was about time that Eduardo found himself a woman.

  "Good things come together," Mando said. "Elena got herself that musician boyfriend and now it's time for Eduardo to balance things out."

  “Too bad we can’t find a man for Letty,” Valerina said seriously. “I think she’s lonely.”

  When the evening meal was finished, Eduardo announced that he had to check on the horses. Esperanza offered to help clean up, but Valerina and Mando both said no.

  "You go help Eduardo," Valerina said.

  The girl didn't have to be told twice. Off she went with a big smile on her face.

  Esperanza found Eduardo leaning against the corral rails slowly rubbing Bonita's head and ears. The girl stood beside him silently.

  "What will you do now?" Eduardo asked her softly in Spanish.

  "The coyote gave me the name and address of a man in Tucson who has a job for me." She pronounced the city's name in the Spanish way - Took-Sohn.

  Eduardo nodded. "Then I will take you there when you are ready."

  They fell silent. Esperanza stepped closer and reached to stroke the mare.

  "You know my people gave that town its name." Eduardo said. "We had a village there a long time before the Milga:n came. We called it ‘Chuk-son.’" Eduardo didn't know if she was interested in a history lesson, but he also didn't know what else to say.

  "Valerina told me your people are the Tohono O'odham, the desert people."

  Eduardo nodded.

  "Who are the Milga:n, Angelito?"

  "Everybody else, I guess. Well...really the white people, the Anglos."

  Eduardo looked down at Esperanza. Nearly six feet tall and broad-shouldered, Eduardo towered over her. Esperanza, five feet tall if she stood up straight, was fine-boned and slender.

  He smiled at her.

  "You know I'm not really an angel. My name is Eduardo Ramone."

  "I know. Valerina told me." Esperanza hesitated and smiled shyly. "But you are my angel because you saved me from death."

  Eduardo shrugged his shoulders nonchalantly, as if rescuing people were no big deal to him. His embarrassment was intense.

  Esperanza smiled sweetly. "How can your people survive here for so long in this desert, Angelito?"

  "The desert is full of food," Eduardo said. He was glad to change the subject.

  She looked at him skeptically.

  "Truly," he said. "There are many plants here that make delicious food. The mesquite bean makes a good flour for pancakes and muffins. Cholla buds are good to eat and so is nopal and the saguaro fruit makes wine for our sacred ceremony. Tomorrow I'll show you all the things to eat."

  "And water?"

  "When I found you, you were very near a spring that has water in it year round. You just didn't know it was there. If you are really desperate, you can get some water from young nopal pads or fishhook barrel cactus. This just for emergencies because too much cactus juice can make you go to the toilet a lot. You just have to learn the stories from the old ones and know the ways of this land if you want to survive here."

  "Tell me the stories, Angelito, por favor. I want to know about you and your people."

  "This is a good time. The winter is the right time for stories, not the summer. That’s because in summer the snakes will hear us and maybe bite us. But if you go to town and take a job, I don’t know when I can tell you the stories."

  "I must find a job, Angelito. For my brothers and sisters.”

  "If you allow me to visit you….." Eduardo’s voice drifted away. He looked intently at the horse, shy and uncertain and surprised himself at his own boldness. When he finally looked at her, Esperanza was smiling broadly.

  "Yes, por favor, Angelito. I want you to come to visit me when I start my new job and my new life. I will be very happy to receive you."

  Eduardo shook his head happily. "Good. You can call me when you are set up."

  A frown flickered over her brows.

  "Do you know how to use a phone?" he asked gently.

  "No, Angelito. I am from the countryside."

  "I will show you. In fact, I will give you a cell phone to carry with you."

  Eduardo went into the house and returned with two cell phones and a charger.

  “Here's how you turn it on. Be sure to turn it off after you talk, or you'll run down the battery. Here's how you dial my number. Memorize the number." She practiced. Then Eduardo walked to the backyard and left her in the front. She called him using the new phone. She giggled uncontrollably when he answered. He also handed her a charger and explained how it worked.

  He found old clothes belonging to his sister Elena for Esperanza to wear so she wouldn't look so much like an illegal immigrant peasant. Dressed in tight jeans and a red Arizona Wildcat t-shirt with her hair piled loosely on her head and a pair of cheap dangling earrings in her ears, Esperanza looked like an O'Odham teenager on her way to shop at the El Con Mall.

  Two days later, Eduardo had driven away from the rancho in his dented pickup with Esperanza at his side.

  He made sure that Esperanza put the cell phone in her bag.

  “Call me right away when you are settled at your new job. Then when you are ready to receive visitors, you can use the cell phone to call me again. No matter where I am, I will come to you."

  Eduardo delivered Esperanza to the address in South Tucson which Esperanza had carefully written on a small piece of paper. It was the same house he now sat watching in the growing darkness. After he'd left her there, Eduardo decided to give her a day or so and then try to call her to see if she was with her new employer. He hoped that she would call first. That would tell him that she was really interested in seeing him and not just contacting him out of gratitude for rescuing her.

  Eduardo thought about her all the time. It was strange to him to realize how comfortable he felt with Esperanza. She didn't laugh or look at him like he was being foolish when he talked about the ways of his people. She showed every sign that she respected him and his effort to live the old ways. And why not? Esperanza was indigenous herself, so pretty, too, and so brave to have traveled from so far away. She was seventeen, old enough to know her own mind. She seemed to really like him, too. That was important. He wanted her to like him.

  Eduardo dropped her off. The last thing he said to Esperanza was, “Don’t forget to call me.” She nodded her assent.

  “I will not forget, Angelito.”

  After Eduardo left Esperanza at the coyote’s house in South Tucson, he waited for twenty-four hours, but still Esperanza did not call. Finally, he couldn't stand it anymore and he dialed the cell phone's number, but there was no answer. He tried repeatedly but no one
answered. Perhaps the phone was broken or lost? Had she forgotten how to use it?

  Concern about Esperanza, and just plain missing her, pushed Eduardo to action. On Saturday, he drove into Tucson and went to the house where he’d dropped her off. An angry-looking man with an ugly scar on his face answered the door and told Eduardo that he didn't know any Esperanza and to get the hell out of there. Eduardo went back a second time and again was rebuffed. That time he was shoved off the porch, and the door was slammed in his face. On the third try, the man pulled a gun on Eduardo and told him to not come back.

  Eduardo knew something was really wrong.

  He began knocking on doors in the neighborhood and asked if someone had seen Esperanza. No one knew anything, or at least, they claimed they knew nothing. Eduardo knew that going to the police would be a mistake. Esperanza was an illegal, and if the man in the house got busted, then Eduardo knew he would never find her.

  Why did things have to be so hard for some people? He would never understand. He just knew he wouldn't stop looking for Esperanza.

  Chapter 7

  Letty awoke later than her usual five a.m. on Saturday morning. The night had been too turbulent. There had been more of those Iraq dreams that didn't seem to ever go away. Maybe “nightmare” was a better word. The smell of human blood hung in the air. She groaned and pulled herself out of bed and went to the kitchen for a quick cup of coffee. There was a note on the kitchen table.

  "Hey, Big Sister. I fed Millie and let her out and in again. She'll want to go out again. I got a call from one of the Tucson Bicycling Warriors. We're going to bike up to the top of Mt. Lemmon today. See ya, Will."

  Letty sighed. Even the thought of cycling from the desert floor all the way up a nine-thousand-foot-plus mountain exhausted her. Warriors indeed. Of course, they had it easy on this trek up the mountain. No one was shooting at them, and there were no IEDs on the Mount Lemmon Highway. Letty gulped down a banana and a cup of black coffee and tried to empty her mind of the nightmares. She put on jogging clothes and laced up her running shoes.

  "Out you go, Miss Millie, you big baby," she said. Millie wagged her tail, so Letty rubbed the dog’s ears and gave her a dog biscuit. Millie went out, and Letty closed the kitchen door and locked it behind her.

  After a five-mile run in a big circle around her neighborhood, Letty felt better. She took a shower and brewed a second cup of coffee. She called Jade.

  "Everything okay over there?"

  "Yes! I'm learning tai ji."

  "What? Is that Chinese cop already at your house?"

  "Yes, he is. He's teaching me tai ji, and everything is just fine, Letty."

  Letty frowned. Jade was talking to her in that reassuring voice that elementary school teachers use when talking to eight-year-olds. Letty decided not to make an issue of it.

  "Well, okay. Can you two meet me at the police headquarters at eleven a.m.?"

  "Sure. See you then." Jade hung up.

  Letty looked at her phone. Jade was so trusting. He might act like a nice guy, but as far as Letty was concerned, the jury was still out on Zhou Liang Wei.

  ***

  Earlier that morning just as the rising sun began to lighten the sky, Zhou rose from his resting place on the reclining patio chair. He rolled up the sleeping bag and stripped down to his t-shirt and long pants. In bare feet on the flagstone patio, he began doing the morning tai ji exercises, just as he had been doing since the age of nine. Many Westerners were familiar with this ancient practice although they typically used the Cantonese term, "tai chi," rather than the Mandarin words used most often in China, "tai ji." In recent years, Westerners had begun to practice tai ji for health reasons, yet most did not realize that the practice was actually a martial art in slow speed. For a man like Zhou, who was already a skilled martial artist, tai ji was a way to practice his defensive skills and to build inner strength.

  Zhou closed his eyes. He emptied his mind and focused on his breath. Slowly breathing in and out, he raised his hands in front of himself several times. After a final downward motion, Zhou moved his arms and hands slowly to the right, and at the same time he stepped to the right. His arms moved gracefully to form a circle. The movements progressed slowly, elegantly, with a sense of purpose that went beyond the problems of the current moment. He quickly felt himself settling, feeling calmer and stronger as he moved through the twenty-minute short form. All the while he kept the qi balance in the center of his torso. His hands and arms thrust sharply forward to deflect an opponent's intrusion. As he turned, he bent deeply at the knees from the center of his body. Yin and yang. Male and female. Heaven and Earth. Finding balance in all things. In the final movements of the form, he returned to slow, deep breathing as hands rose and fell in front of his body. His qi was strong today.

  Zhou opened his eyes.

  Jade was there watching. He didn't know how long she'd been watching. She smiled that radiant smile, and he felt himself growing warm.

  "You are very graceful. Will you teach me?" she said.

  "My pleasure," and for ten minutes Zhou did just that, starting with the initial centering pose and focus on breath.

  "Remember. Start with qi. Do not resist force with force. Follow the motion of force and redirect it. Maintain balance. Willow bends in the wind. Willow does not break. Redirect force away from you."

  The phone interrupted. It was Letty. The conversation was brief.

  Jade put the phone down and said,

  "Come on, Zhou. I'll fix you some breakfast."

  "May I use your water closet?"

  Jade giggled.

  "Yes, you may use my water closet. That's British English. You may use my bathroom, or my restroom. "

  Zhou took his knapsack with him, and she gave him a towel as she closed the bathroom door. He stripped to the waist and quickly washed, brushed his teeth and ran an electric razor over his face. He had a clean t-shirt in the knapsack. He put it on and added his long-sleeved shirt.

  He made a quick call to his contact in the Tucson Police Department and asked for Sam Lambert. When Lambert came on the line, Zhou introduced himself and apologized for his tardiness at contacting his American counterpart. Zhou wasn't surprised when Lambert suggested an eleven a.m. meeting. He guessed accurately that Letty had a role in that particular hour.

  At breakfast, Zhou learned some new words: "huevos (eggs) con papas (with potatoes) y frijoles refritos (refried beans)." He was learning that, although Tucson was an American city, Mexico had a very deep influence here. As they were eating, Zhou said, "Please tell me about this money that disappeared."

  Asking Jade a question was like turning on the radio. She talked, and Zhou listened. He suspected that she was lonely, and since she spent all day with eight-year-olds, she missed talking to adults.

  "Carlos won a big grant...well....it seems like a lot but really it’s not so much. You'd be surprised at how fast one hundred thousand dollars can go. The plan was to put a down payment on an old warehouse and refurbish it into a community center. There would be an indoor gym, a dance studio, and an arts and crafts room. There was a small kitchen to provide an afternoon snack and drinks, too. A lot of these kids just don't get enough to eat. Upstairs there was a tiny room that was an office for Carlos. He had just moved into the office. He created a budget using the grant money to guide remodeling the facilities. His next step was to find funding to pay for staff. He needed money to buy sports and arts equipment, supplies, and other things like a photocopier for the office. He also planned to recruit volunteers to work with the kids. The grant was just the first step. He was writing more grant proposals, and he'd gone to the city council to see if he could get funding there. Carlos had been in the building only a month when he disappeared. "

  Jade looked at Zhou directly. "I've gone over this a million times in my mind. I can't understand it really. This project was all Carlos talked about. It's impossible for me to believe that he would steal that money and take off."

  "Did you find
any helpful information in his office?"

  "No, Letty went through everything very carefully. She interviewed everyone he worked with, the people in the warehouse district, the people who gave him the grant. She treated his disappearance as if I were her client. She told me once that she was treating him both as a 'skip' and as a 'missing person.' She has big files on Carlos, just as if I had hired her. She did her best, and she found nothing. I think that's why she thinks he's dead. She has no idea who killed him. The police searched the office and took the computer, but I think they decided early on that he had taken the money and then run off. I don't think they tried very hard. Letty did most of the work."

  "What will Bao find in your house?"

  "You mean that Chinese man who was here? I don't know! I don’t know what he was looking for."

  They both fell silent.

  "Hey, I think you should search and see what you find. Want to do that?" Jade said.

  Zhou was glad that she asked. He had been trying to think of a way to ask her if he could search her home.

  "Yes, I will do this."

  "Okay, let's start in the living room."

  For nearly an hour, Zhou went from room to room in the house. Next he planned to search the garage and Jade's pottery studio. In every room of the house, he looked in drawers and on shelves, he turned over furniture to see if anything had been hidden underneath, he looked behind art on the wall, and even went so far as to remove the grates on vents to check inside. He looked up inside the chimney flue. He checked panels in the ceiling and tiles on the floor to see if any were loose. Jade followed him and handed him tools when he needed them.

  In the second bedroom that served as a small office, Zhou noticed a traditional Chinese ink drawing on the wall. It was done in the flowing style known as grass calligraphy. The two characters were "long" and "feng," dragon and phoenix, male principle and female principle.

  Jade said, "I bought that on a cruise on the Yangzi River."

  "You visited China?" Zhou was surprised.

  "Yes, last summer. I went with Seri. See, Zhou, for the first month after Carlos disappeared, I was frantic. Then I sort of became numb. After a couple of months, I went back to teaching again. Then when summer came, I had nothing to do. I was depressed. Maggie was worried about me. You'll meet Maggie. She's like everyone's mom or big sister. She's also a senior teacher and assistant principal at my school so she's my teaching mentor, too. She and Seri got together and decided that I should go with Seri on one of her trips. Seri travels a lot."