The same fluorescent lighting that zapped the food aged the birders badly. Marcia and Burt were helping themselves to slices from the end of the beef. Under the glare of the lights I noticed something that I hadn’t before—Marcia was older than Burt. Burt looked weathered and sallow, although twinkly eyed, but Marcia looked even worse. She was overweight enough to plump out the skin’s fine fissures, but she had a double chin and crepe beneath her eyes.
“That your old man?” asked Burt, nodding at the Kid.
“You could say that.”
“He’s cute,” said Marcia, and then she leaned over and whispered confidentially, “You know something? I’m ten years older than Burt.”
“Would you believe it?” asked Burt.
Seven or eight maybe, but ten? “Never.”
“We’ve been married for twenty years and we get along great,” said Marcia. “We always have.”
“Never even had a cross word,” said Burt. He smiled, she smiled back.
I followed them over to a circular table and sat down with Bea, Muriel and John King. Avery and the Kid were still engrossed in their pigeon conversation. Avery’s hands made swooping motions through the air, while the Kid nodded. “Claro, claro.” Cortland James hadn’t shown up yet.
“We’ll be watching the newspapers but I’m also going to give you our address so you can let us know what happens to March,” Marcia said. “We know you’ll get him off soon.”
“I hope you’re right. I guess you’ve heard all about the sting,” I said to John King, who had tried to pick a vegetarian path through the buffet. There was a lump of cottage cheese on his plate, some corn relish, a few carrot sticks, barely enough to feed a bird.
“It’s hard to believe our government would have set up such a clumsy, stupid operation,” John replied. “Or maybe it isn’t. You know they took forty birds out of the wild to use as bait to trap the poachers? Some of those were endangered species that will be hard put to recover from the loss. Pedersen was a pro compared to the rest of the guys who were involved in the operation. Many of the birds were hurt, eggs were taken from the nests and broken. Falcons are vulnerable to predation and have a fifty to seventy-five percent mortality in the wild in the best of times even without the government’s interference.” He shook his head sadly and looked down into his food, which probably didn’t help his mood any. “I don’t like poachers, but taking birds from the wild to entrap them isn’t the answer. As you may have noticed I have a strong commitment to raptors. Some might say it borders on insanity. It breaks my heart to lose even one bird. All the condors had to be pulled in from the wild to save them; if the falcons go, the eagles will be next. When that happens, as Chief Seattle said, it will mark the end of living and the beginning of survival. Well, you can be sure the Falcon Fund is going to have something to say about this.”
“I hope so,” I replied. “Well, in spite of everything, has it been a good trip?”
“Yes,” said Bea.
“I’ll never forget it,” Muriel agreed.
“We’ve kept busy,” said John King, “and seen a lot of birds. We went back to Freezeout and saw the gyr again. She really is spectacular, one in a million.”
“So Avery told me.”
“We spent a couple of days at The Pipes Sanctuary. One day I gave a lecture and showed slides of the Arctic.”
“What did you all do last night?”
“Last night was free time. Some of us went to the movies, some of us stayed in and went to bed early.”
Cortland James had just come through the sliding glass door from the pool and was heading our way. His shape grew in size as he approached, but his outline remained the same. He wouldn’t cause alarm by being unpredictable in his baggy khakis and faded Shetland sweater, the look of old money pretending to be no money, but not hard enough to fool anybody. He’d made a concession to Montana and the season, however, by replacing his Top-Siders with a pair of hiking boots that he’d probably ordered from the L. L. Bean catalog.
The Kid and Avery had moved on to the buffet table. Avery had the appetite of an eighty-two-year-old man. A couple of nuts and seeds were all right with him, but the Kid, who was only twenty-five years old, had taken a giant helping of just about everything on the table. His plate overflowed with gravy, meat and cheese and anything else that clogged your veins. I cleared a spot at the table for him next to me.
“I guess you didn’t like the airline’s food,” I said.
“No, it was great,” he replied. “They had eggs and sausages and…”
“Good evening, everyone,” said Cortland.
“Good evening,” everyone replied.
“Are you going to introduce me to your young man, Neil?” he asked with a smile that might be called amused, might be called condescending, might even be called friendly where he came from.
My “young man” stood up and shook Cortland’s hand. “This is the Kid,” I said. “Kid, Cortland James.”
“The Kid?” asked Cortland raising an eyebrow, implying perhaps that was an unsuitable name for a “young man.”
“Mauricio Babilonia,” said the Kid. “El gusto es mio.”
“My pleasure,” said Cortland. If he’d learned Spanish in his peregrinations, he wasn’t doing anyone the favor of using it.
Mauricio Babilonia was the garage mechanic in Cien Años with the dreamy air and the stupefying odor of grease, the man who loved Meme Buendía, was followed by yellow butterflies and was shot (unfairly and maliciously) for being a chicken thief. The Kid’s favorite character. Mine, too.
“Did you hear about the New Mexican fireman who had twins?” asked Burt Collier, inspired by the Kid’s grandiose Hispanic alias. “He named the first one José, the second hose B.”
“I hear you got the night off last night,” I said to Cortland, while the Kid sliced into his roast beef and some people laughed at the joke.
“I did. I spent it reading and turned in early. How’s the roast?” Cortland asked the Kid.
“Good,” replied the Kid, taking another bite.
“At least they’re giving us some meat for our money. On most birding trips you’re lucky to get chicken. I guess we should be grateful for that, although that roast is a little on the gray side.”
The Kid took another bite. Gray, pink, red—made no difference to him.
“Sorry to hear about your accident,” Cortland said to me, leaning forward and brushing his bangs from his forehead.
“Just a little bump on the head. It won’t slow me down any.”
“Are you sticking around or leaving tomorrow?”
“I’m sticking it out,” I answered. “And you?”
“Leaving tomorrow. I’ve got no reason to stay on here.”
“Won’t you lose your discount fare?” Muriel asked me.
“Yes, but I wouldn’t consider leaving without solving the case.”
“She’s stubborn,” said the Kid.
“Really?” said Cortland.
“You’re going back to Connecticut?” I asked him.
“Yes.”
To the house he grew up in? I wondered. Or had he moved out and bought himself a condo by now? The family homestead probably had twenty or thirty rooms and was filled with sloppy dogs and dull antiques, a house where the grand piano was covered with pictures of extinct ancestors, where they hung the past on the wall and sat on it as well, where they had the best of everything old and boring.
“What exactly does the Conservation Committee do?” I asked him.
“My father has access to a number of conservation-minded individuals…”
Wealthy conservation-minded individuals, of course.
“…who are willing and able to buy up land to keep it out of the hands of developers. Our particular mission is to preserve and protect wildlife habitat. The world is being destroyed at an alarming rate. Seventy-four thousand acres of rain forest vanish every day. The Conservation Committee tries to save what it can.” For a man with a mission there w
as a lack of enthusiasm or conviction in his voice.
“Is the committee successful?” I asked.
“They try.” He shrugged.
The birders began talking about what time their planes were leaving and what airlines they were flying, and making plans to get to the airport.
“I’m on American Three-oh-Four. I leave at eleven-ten,” said Cortland when Bea asked him. He was leaving on American, but he’d arrived on Frontier, I remembered, which meant no discount fare for him. He didn’t seem like the kind of guy to pay full fare just because he could afford to.
“Didn’t you come in on Frontier?” I asked him.
“Yes, I guess I did.”
“Two different airlines. You won’t get a discount fare.”
“Really? I’ll have to mention that to my travel agent.”
We finished up with a selection of gummy pies and dry cakes for dessert. My head was hurting again so the Kid and I decided to turn in early. We bid the birders adieu and wished them good birding. “It’s been a pleasure meeting you,” I said and in most cases I meant it.
“You get March out of jail soon,” said Bea.
Marcia: “And let us know how you make out.”
Burt: “Don’t forget all you learned about field identification.”
John King: “Raptors deserve their place on the planet, too, and not just because they are fast and beautiful and we enjoy watching them, or even because they serve a valuable role in nature’s system of checks and balances, but simply because they are here and they have been for millions of years. That’s reason enough. Spread the word.”
Cortland James: “Good-bye.”
The Kid felt right at home in the Aspen Inn. I made us some tequilas and he pulled out a package of smoked almonds he’d saved from the plane. We opened up the plaid fold-out couch and sat on it.
“That Avery is fantastic,” the Kid said. “I want to be like him when I get old.” I could see it; he was already showing signs of eccentricity that aged well, but he’d have to change his eating habits.
“Would you ever keep pigeons again?” I asked him.
“Not now. I am a man, I was a boy then.”
“Do you miss them?”
“Sure.” He shrugged, Third World and sentimental as always.
“Mauricio. That was great but why didn’t you give Cortland your real name?”
“Why did he have to ask?”
There was a brief silence and then I said, “Kid, I’m really glad to see you, but we may have to improvise because I lost my purse in the accident.”
“You mean you don’t have your ‘friend’?” That’s what he called it. I called it a derby. Some would say diaphragm.
“Yup.”
“Don’t worry, Chiquita.” He stood up to get into the pocket of his jeans and pulled out a three-pack of condoms.
It was the beginning of sheathed love and responsibility and, while there was certainly much to recommend it, it wasn’t the same.
14
I SLEPT WITH my cheek pressed against the soft spot on the back of the Kid’s neck and dreamt soft, silky dreams. The first time I woke in the morning I kissed his shoulder and whispered, “You awake, Mauricio?”
The next time I woke he wasn’t there, but he’d left a note: “Gone for coffee, Chiquita.”
I showered, dressed, walked down the hallway. Gloria was under the stairway playing the keno machine. My Odd Fellow, the Kid, watched as a few hard-won quarters tumbled out.
“All right,” he said.
“You speak English?” she asked.
“Sure, why not?” he replied.
She shook her head. “I was in Mexico for a while, but I didn’t learn much Spanish.”
“You must have learned something,” I said.
“Yeah, but I wouldn’t want to repeat it here.”
“Hasta luego,” said the Kid.
“See you later,” she replied, recycling her quarters.
We were on our way to the scene of the accident in the gray, no-frills Pontiac the Kid had gotten from Rent A Wreck. “Couldn’t you have gone to Avis or Hertz?” I asked.
“What’s wrong with this car?” He thumped the dash. “Runs good.”
“I don’t like the name.” It didn’t have a radio either. Montana was big silence country. Nobody blasted a boom box under your window at midnight, or left their windows open at red lights to share their favorite song. You didn’t have to listen to other people’s music in Montana or look at their trash either. You didn’t even have to look at them.
“I never see such an empty place,” said the Kid, once we were out of the Fire Pond city limits. “That’s why they care about animals so much; they don’t have people.”
The roadsides were devoid of the signs of passing motorists—beer cans, plastic bags, soda bottles. The shoulders were spotless and the trails I saw at Freezeout had been, too. In the Sangre de Cristos you can backpack ten miles in and still come across beer cans beside the trail. It makes you wonder at the trouble people go to lugging their trash all the way into the wilderness just to leave their mark, but they do it on horseback; you can cover a lot more ground that way.
The Kid covered the distance in about the same time as the ambulance, and we were at the site of the wreck all too soon. It was a blight on the clean landscape, and reminded me of the place behind La Vista Luxury Apartment Complex, where I live. There’s some land there that hasn’t been developed yet and people like to drive in on Saturdays to party and change their oil. On Sunday mornings the ground is littered with oil, broken glass and party debris. But on this morning, in this spot, the trash was mine, I was embarrassed to notice. The ground glittered with broken glass and oozed spilled oil. The van had been towed away.
I stood, zero at the bone, at the spot where someone had tried to get rid of me. I was wearing my down vest, but I should have been wearing a down parka, too, because as far as I was concerned it had already gotten as cold as it could get. The Kid wore a sheepskin jacket an uncle had sent him from Argentina. He put his arm around me and, for a minute, I rested my cheek on the fleecy collar.
“The road is very straight here, Chiquita, like Avery said.”
“Sometimes straight places are the most dangerous,” I replied, “because that’s when you let your attention wander and your guard down. The side door must have swung open when the van rolled over and thrown my purse out.” We began looking for it in the scrub brush and tumbleweed, something the state police hadn’t bothered to do. About a hundred feet from the wreck we came across the first track, a line of filter-tipped cigarettes, then the red flip-top box they had fallen out of. The trail made as the purse’s contents were flung out told the story of my life and whoever had followed it could have learned a lot about me.
“Good you weren’t smoking when you ‘fell asleep,’ ” the Kid said.
Next were several wads of Kleenex, lipsticks, mascara, eyeliner, blush-on, a wide-toothed comb.
“You use all this stuff?”
“I carry it for emergencies,” I replied.
Then there were the Spanish-language tapes I rarely listened to and some English tapes I had gotten for the Kid that he didn’t listen to either.
“Your blood is red,” I quoted, “your veins are blue. I speak English and so can you.”
“Hey, Chiquita, here’s your friend.” The case had been flung open, the rubber derby plunked on the ground. I picked it up, an antique now, and put it back in its container to keep for sentimental value.
This trail we were following led directly to the highway; I wondered if the Kid had noticed. We came across my wallet, money and credit cards still intact; my key ring with my old nickname Nellie embossed on the plastic tag in gold letters; my address book with all the pages still inside; and scattered among all this, like rabbit droppings, light and darker brown M&M’s. I found a notebook with a blue cover that I keep for records of appointments, mileage, meals, anything that might be tax deductible. The Aspen Inn was in th
ere, some breakfasts and dinners. The last entry was the mileage to March and Katharine’s house. The trip to Jimmy Brannen’s hadn’t been entered, but whoever had gone through my purse must have known I went there anyway and knew some other things now as well, but they hadn’t found out what they’d hoped to—which was what I knew about them. And what was that? Subtle and unconscious clues might be more helpful here than the obvious. I had some parts, but I didn’t have a whole. Now that I needed it, where was the jizz?
“Here’s your purse,” the Kid said. It was lying wide open in the ditch beside the road. “You want any of this stuff?”
“Just my wallet and address book. The rest is junk.” But we walked back up the trail picking it all up, anyway, and stuffing it back into the purse. I didn’t like all these pieces of myself biodegrading beside the highway.
“What kind of a guy is this ‘April,’ ” asked the Kid, “who lets a woman go out and chase a murderer for him? I would never.”
“Kid, he’s in prison; he can’t do it for himself. Besides he’s not letting me, he’s paying me. It’s my job.”
The Kid didn’t say anything. He didn’t have to, his shoulders did it for him.
“When it comes to my work I’m not a woman, anyway, I’m a lawyer.”
“You’re a woman to me, Chiquita.” For one minute he looked like he was going to ask me to pack it all in and go back to Albuquerque with him, but he got in the Rent A Wreck and revved the engine instead.
When we got back to Fire Pond we had a late lunch in the Aspen Inn Coffee Shop. The Kid ordered coffee and chili. “The coffee is disgusting here and the chili is probably worse,” I warned him. Chiles are hot red, green or yellow peppers, where he comes from. Chili as we know it in North America, a bean and/or meat mess, doesn’t exist in Mexico. Close to the border they at least use chiles in their chili, but the further away you are the weirder it gets. I heard of a case where a woman in Minnesota who was hyperallergic to peanuts died because she unsuspectingly ordered chili that had peanut butter in it.
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