I wasn’t sure what she meant about the trees, which I was grateful stirred no memories for me, but after ushering me into the house with a short gesture and handing me a small silver key, she turned and made her way slowly back across the street, talking in Spanish, one hand cutting a graceful arc in the air. For days afterward, I felt the heat of her energy.
I unloaded the car, opened the windows, turned on the ceiling fans, then drove back into town and found what passed for a Goodwill in the main square and bought fold-out furniture—couch, table, chair—a cast-iron skillet, an old library lamp, and some silverware from a listless woman who was content to let me tell her the price marked on each item.
A man with narrow hips and a lean, deeply lined face was unloading an oven from his pickup out in the parking lot, and after he watched me maneuver the table and chair into my car and then stand, stumped by the couch, said, “Want some help?”
“No, thanks.” I didn’t bother looking at him.
“Don’t think it’ll fit on your roof.” There was an undertone of laughter, but when I turned to him, his face was expressionless. His nose was small and sharp; a dimple rested on his chin, almost like an afterthought. “It’s no problem, really.”
I hesitated. He grinned lopsidedly around the toothpick he twirled in his mouth and said, “I’m not the biting kind.”
“No?”
He gestured back toward the store with a tilt of his head. “They don’t deliver.”
“No. I don’t suppose they do.” I looked at the couch, thought maybe I should try hunting for a futon, but this didn’t look like a town that would even know the word. Maybe a mattress? It was hot, and I was tired.
“Thank you,” I finally said, the air sucking all life from my words. He tossed his toothpick, and we lifted the couch into the truck bed. I gave him my address, which made him start and turn to stare at me, his pale green eyes hidden deep in a tanned squint.
“Well, you must be something,” he said. His brown hair was cut short, with the faintest touches of white at the edges.
I raised an eyebrow halfway.
“Place’s been empty nearly two years,” he said. “She’s turned down the last three people who tried to rent it.”
I shrugged, avoided his gaze. As I pulled out of the parking lot, he stood at the back of his truck, watching me.
The heat was sharp and relentless, and I was acutely aware of my own tired smell. I’d been in the same sleeveless white T-shirt and jeans for three days. The thin line where my watch used to rest was sunburned. Looking down at my arms, hands clenched on the steering wheel, I thought it seemed remarkable they were a part of me, these strange clumps of flesh, and I was unsettled by the momentary feeling that I was separate from my body, that it was merely a shell.
Back at the house, an ash gray cat crouched in the middle of the room. It stretched out its front paws in greeting, then huddled up again, purring.
“Aye,” said the man behind me, “you got yourself one a Tommy’s cats.” When his face relaxed out of the sun, tiny sugar lines appeared around his eyes. He was younger than I’d initially thought, maybe in his early forties.
“How’d it get in?” I demanded, checking the back door, then moving swiftly past the row of windows across the near wall looking for openings.
“Tommy’s cats have their ways. They’re always welcome hereabouts.” He stomped his boots on the wood floor. “Still solid, no termites. Clean too.”
“Well, how do I take this back?” I asked.
The man looked at me. “What?”
“The cat? I don’t want it. I don’t do cats.”
“You don’t do—” The man gave a low chuckle. “You’re a funny one.”
I moved toward the cat, put out a leg to sweep it encouragingly toward the door, but it arched its back, hissing, and swiped a paw at my hiking boot.
“Jesus!” I stepped back as it resettled into its crouch, staring, tail twitching with short snaps. I looked back at the man.
He shrugged. “Squatter’s rights.”
The cat didn’t move out of its tense crouch as we brought in the rest of the furniture.
“Where to?” the man asked, tilting his head toward the couch just inside the front door. Even wearing jeans and a button-down shirt with the cuffs rolled back, he’d barely broken a sweat. Hair bleached gold from the sun ran up forearms corded tight with muscle. He smelled faintly of manure and something medicinal.
“It’s fine, leave it,” I said. “You’ve done enough, thank you.”
“Pick your spot,” he said firmly. “Then I’ll leave.”
We looked at each other. I was struck by how at ease he seemed, how his presence filled the room, and this perception made me edgy. His hand rested on the arm of the couch, waiting.
I nodded toward the far wall, then bent to move boxes, bulging garbage bags, a loose tarp, and sleeping bag out of the way. I liked that he didn’t offer to help. After I pushed everything to one side, we put the couch against the inside wall. I wanted to face the windows when I woke.
I held the screen door open for him, but when I turned around, he’d slid the toe of his boot up underneath the tarp. He looked at the shotgun and bulletproof vest, the revolver still in its holster, then dropped the tarp back down.
The guns weren’t loaded—at least those weren’t—so I let the screen door bang closed, walked down the steps and out into the yard. It was cooler out here; the sky had softened to a bruised apricot. Seconds later the screen door banged again, and I heard his boot steps. His faint shadow passed me first, headed toward the pickup.
“Hey,” I said. “Is there any work to be had around here?”
He looked at the house briefly, then back at me, one boot resting on the running board. “What can you do?” he said, his smile more tease than genuine.
I didn’t answer.
He shrugged one shoulder, got in the truck, and put it in gear. The truck was rolling slightly when he leaned out the window. “They’re looking for a driver at the UPS next town over. You look like you could handle it, if you’re interested. It’s either that or a waitress job at Maria’s back on the square. Take your pick.” Metal screeched as the truck bottom scraped the dip between driveway and road. He didn’t wave or acknowledge me again as he drove off.
Next door, two Mexican children hung on the fence, their toes curled over the bottom rail. Their straight hair was long and even darker than their wide, round eyes. I thought one might be a boy, but I wasn’t sure. I held their gaze, each of us measuring the other, when the yard behind them wavered into a flicker of light and shadow, and I saw water churning, heard babble, white noise connected to nothing. And then the smaller of the two children waved, a slight wrist movement from a hand held stiffly upright at the chest, and I returned, a gentle slide back into my body. I nodded briefly in acknowledgment.
That night I fell asleep under the watchful gaze of the ash gray cat, her body hunched tightly against the floor near my bed. Thunder rolled in the distance. I kept waiting for the edgy panic of nightfall, for the muscle memory of where I came from, yet I woke only once, to rain drumming hard on the roof and the slight sweet smell of pine. I slept again, dreaming of many disembodied hands dancing in trees, mother-of-pearl fingers playing a trill against one another only to separate and dance and swoop again through rustling golden leaves.
The place I had come to seemed governed by heat, a transparent, shimmering blanket of hot that smothered the lungs. This world seemed to go quiet between noon and four. Even the birds’ chatter hushed, though I frequently saw hawks soaring open-winged across the cloudless sky, lazily riding the air currents. Nut brown beetles buzzed along the ground, their hard-shell bodies making futile attempts against screens and glass, falling back with a dull thonk. Dogs dug shallow pits in the dirt under porches or at the base of trees and lay panting, not bothering to raise their heads when anyone came near. Only their eyes moved; occasionally a tail thumped.
The paperwork to appl
y for the UPS job was minimal, and I passed the physical easily. It was a temporary job, which was fine with me. Three months, they told me, maybe five; the regular fellow had tripped and shattered an arm and wrist. I endured a week’s on-the-job training from a burly Mexican whose gestures were impatient and words were curt. The training basically involved a set of rules—always run to and from the truck, don’t accept food or drink from customers, smile at everyone, complete and turn in all paperwork at the end of the day, wear your back brace. I started work two days later.
The branch I worked for was in the largest town UPS serviced in the tricounty area, with thirty-five hundred people, a one-screen movie theater, and a Wal-Mart. Two and a half hours north/northwest, according to my map, was a city of 250,000. I asked for a route that would take me in the opposite direction. The fellow in charge politely told me that this wasn’t the sort of place where you could make such requests and reminded me that I was filling in for someone else and that his was the route I was getting, which ran south, mostly farm roads and blue highways.
I made a mental note to talk as little as possible, get in, do my job, and get out. I wondered how long the information on my application would take to make the rounds of coffee shops and barber chairs, then decided it didn’t matter. I didn’t plan on staying long.
I liked the job. I could wear shorts; no hats required. I enjoyed the preciseness and simplicity: you picked up packages, you dropped off packages, you filled out paperwork. There were no surprises—except for a few growling dogs—no partners, no one to be responsible for, and no supervisors per se. Just me and my truck and the landscape. Cars were sporadic, and once I got out of town, which took about three minutes, they were practically nonexistent. I had the roads to myself. I liked to go fast, changing gears hard on the hills, letting the air sweep in through the open side doors of my brown panel truck, drying the sweat that had formed in layers all over my body. I imagined my skin presented a modern geological specimen, each stop adding another layer of sweat that dried crusty as I got the truck up over forty again.
After the first day on my route, I located a barbershop and told the grinning old Mexican what I wanted. He tsk-tsked as my straight reddish-blond locks fell, but I couldn’t be bothered with braiding or bobby pins anymore. I was bemused to discover my hair curled, wispy flips this way and that, without the weight.
The customers on my route were mainly Anglos and Mexicans, a few native Indians. I deliberately ignored many of the UPS rules: I got to know the regulars, enjoyed the few minutes of idle chatter, usually about the heat or the contents of the package I’d delivered, and I was offered enough iced tea or water that I didn’t need my water jug. I liked that they were all generally happy to see me. I even started picking up some Spanish words: hola and qué pasa, gracias, de nada, and cómo se dice. I enjoyed the way they felt in my mouth, the indulgent smiles the natives gave me as they corrected my pronunciation or repeated a word several times until I could control the vowels. I was an utter failure at rolling my r’s.
I started at 8:00 in the morning and finished anywhere between 5:00 and 6:00 in the evening. It was physically hard work—the heat and the wind through the truck and the constant rattling over less-than-serviceable roads wore me down so that by quitting time both my brain and body were numb, and the promise of the cool pleasure of the shower became a single-minded purpose.
Back at the house, I’d lean against the shower wall under the sharp needles of water, raking my fingernails hard across my flesh, scraping up grayish pills of dried sweat and dead skin to find the new underneath, wondering how long before all six layers were born of this place, finally downing half a beer in a single swallow before the second half went as rinse for what was left of my hair.
The damn cat, as I taken to calling her—and she was a her—relaxed out of her crouch and took to lying on her side purring, watching me, tail flicking irregularly at some imagined slight. Any attempt to move her from her spot resulted in the same arched hissing threat of the first day. I’d discovered where she came in, a hole under the house by the hot-water heater in the closet. I waited until she left the house one evening, hunting out back for prairie dogs or chipmunks or birds, and then boarded up the hole. An hour later, she let forth an ungodly screech that did not stop. I endured ten minutes of her protest then pried loose the board. She slipped swiftly up and out into the room where she furiously licked her fur.
I was defeated and not a little admiring of her tenacity. She didn’t demand much of me, only access to the house. I became accustomed to the purr and the watchful gaze, and after the first week she joined me on the porch after my shower, where she lapped milk, I drank beer and smoked cigarettes, and we watched the sky turn from apricot to lilac to ragged strips of plum before night fell for good and stars danced out across the world like rain scattered on a mountain lake.
The street came alive as the sun began to drop and people migrated outside to porches or lawn chairs set up in the shade of juniper, pine, and oak trees. Unasked, the two Mexican children from next door came over the second week, shyly approaching my porch. They stood at the bottom of the stairs, smiling at me, until I smiled back. It seemed impolite to snub them, and I soon looked forward to their nightly visit.
One of them was a boy, I’d discovered; Isael was seven and his sister, Luisa, was five. They talked, and I listened. Their chatter wove the darkening strands of night into a cocoon of suspended time that was soothing. The ash gray cat let them scratch under her neck, something she’d refused me the couple of times I’d tried. They named her Luz, which they said meant light.
“She is not so dark as the other gatos,” Luisa explained, “y cuando the sun hits, the fur is like hot light, so we call her Luz, si?”
I looked at the cat, splayed out across the wood, her purr a deep rumble of fading thunder, and thought she was still a damn cat, but I told Luisa that Luz was a grand name, and she giggled, stuffing her fist into her mouth.
Isael and Luisa brought me lizards, grasshoppers, beetles, and lightning bugs and showed off their latest scratches and bruises. I bought a hummingbird feeder, and we tried to imitate the Rufous hummingbirds’ noisy trill and laughed at the pugnacious antics of the males fighting for territory. Isael taught me the names of some of the plants: yucca and agave, ocotilla and creosote, mesquite and prickly pear. And the Mexican evening primrose, which was my favorite; it bloomed only once, for just an evening, the long, delicate petals a startling spot of color. Luisa and Isael played with my water hose, making dark whorls in the dirt, writing their names in my front yard, until their mother chased them in for the night.
Eva Posidas, my landlady, had sent several dishes over by way of her granddaughter, Marisela, the mother of Luisa and Isael—pork and corn tamales, black beans cooked long and low with bits of meat and green chiles and some other unknown green substance, corn and chile enchiladas with a spicy red sauce. Marisela brought me homemade tortillas and something that resembled grits. She told me her husband, Jose, the father of Luisa and Isael, would help me with anything that needed fixing on the house. “Abuelita said we are to watch over you, Sarita,” she told me, her words only slightly accented. I told Marisela that the house was fine, and I was pretty self-sufficient. She laughed in consternation at this comment, her lips moving like butterfly wings.
Luisa and Isael liked to tell me stories about their family. They told me their great-grandmother, Eva Posidas, had grown up in a small village in Mexico and come here many years ago with her parents and eight siblings. They told me she could be fierce, their abuelita, “as angry as the prickly pear,” Isael said.
“But not to us.” Luisa ran her fingers the wrong way across the damn cat’s fur. “Just to the people who make her insides itch.”
“Or if she forgets something,” Isael said. “She doesn’t like forgetting, and she forgets a lot.”
Luisa reached over and pinched Isael. “You aren’t supposed to say bad things about people.”
“Eh,
eh, no pinching,” I said. Isael scowled at Luisa. “Tell me more about your grandmother’s family.” I rubbed his knee where Luisa’s fingers had dug in.
“They were the first ones here, guelita’s family,” he said slowly, still scowling at Luisa. “They built much of what you see. My great tío built your house with his own hands. They named this town for a special tree that lives in the woods near Moon Mountain. Guelita says it’s a healing tree, there are many of them, and she has found many good plants there.”
“Guelita?”
Luisa pointed toward Eva Posidas’s house. “Grandmother. Guelita.”
“I thought ‘abuelita’ was grandmother.”
“It is. They both are,” Luisa explained.
“Ah.” I nodded as if I understood. “And where is Moon Mountain?”
Isael waved his hand toward the west. “Out there. I’ve been twice. I even heard it sing once.”
“The mountain?”
Isael looked at me strangely. “Sometimes, Sarita, you are funny when I don’t think you mean to be funny.”
I lowered my head slightly and grinned at him in mock horror. “No one’s ever told me that before, Isael.”
“That’s bad?”
“No,” I reassured him. “It’s funny.”
He paused for a moment, clearly trying to determine how it was funny, before he said, “The tree. They are the ones who sing.”
“Really? What did the trees sing?”
Isael shook his head slowly. “They don’t have words, just,” he shrugged one shoulder, “singing. You have to believe though, to hear it sing.”
“Guelita taught us,” Luisa said. “She’s a curandera.”
“I see. And what does a curandera do?”
“She makes all the pains go away,” Luisa explained. “She cracks an egg over your head and,” she slapped her hands together, “it’s gone. I’m going to be one when I grow up. Guelita said so.”
“But you must want them to go away, el dolor,” Isael said. “You must ask for the help.”
Anything You Say Can and Will Be Used Against You Page 23
