The Indigo Notebook

by Laura Resau

  She looks doubtful. “I heard they’re really big, mean dogs.”

  “Even big, mean dogs can’t resist stale bread.”

  The girls perch on a rock by the roadside. “We’ll wait for you,” Eva says. “And if you’re not down in an hour, we’ll call Taita Silvio for help.”

  I laugh uneasily. “Thanks.” I turn to go up the hill, and then notice Wendell. He’s staring at the girls with a distant yet intense expression.

  “Ready, Wendell?”

  He blinks fast a few times. “Zeeta, tell the girls—tell them to stay away from their father.”

  “What?”

  “Tell them if they feel scared, even a little, to run straight to Mamita Luz and Taita Silvio’s.”

  I translate for the girls. They don’t seem too surprised. They all nod, and Eva says, “We’ll be extra-careful.”

  Isabel studies Wendell’s face. “You’re like Taita Silvio. You have his same powers, don’t you?”

  He lets out a long breath. “Except I have no clue how to use them.”

  “But Wendell,” Eva says, “you just did.”

  Climbing up the hill, I say, “So these feelings you get. Can you actually see the future?”

  “It’s pretty vague.” He pauses. “With your mom in the waterfall, I kind of felt something bad would happen, something that had to do with water.”

  “Can you change the future?”

  “Sometimes. Sort of. Not always.” He tears a leaf from a tree, rips it into tiny pieces. “Like the thing with my ex. We were together for seven months, and then I started to have this feeling she was gonna break up with me. I kept asking her how I could make her happy. She got sick of it. And broke up with me. Ironic, huh?”

  I try to muster up some sympathy about the breakup. Not working. “What about the bus accident?” I ask instead.

  He tosses his tiny leaf pieces to the wind and picks another leaf. He’s nervous talking about this, cautious almost. “I saw the bus and got this terrible feeling. It felt like broken glass and fire and smoke. I had to decide in that second whether to make everyone get off the bus. If they did, and the accident didn’t happen, they’d just think I was crazy.” He tosses the next handful of shredded leaf. “Ya no aguanto, Z. I can’t take it anymore.”

  “Taita Silvio can help you.”

  “Or maybe Faustino can.”

  “Maybe.”

  He touches my hand, lightly at first. Then he holds it. Then I squeeze and he squeezes back. We continue uphill, my heart pounding from happiness and fear. I want to ask him if he has a feeling about us in the future.

  I want to, but I don’t.

  “Thanks for believing me,” he says after a while.

  “Of course.”

  “And for not thinking I’m hopelessly weird.”

  “Trust me, Wendell. I’ve been around hopelessly weird my whole life. You don’t come close.” I elbow him. “And maybe hopelessly weird isn’t a bad thing, anyway.”

  Chapter 18

  Halfway up, furious barks and growls break the silence around us. Through the fog, four mangy dogs appear. I untie my bread bag. “Any visions of these beasts eating us alive?” I say under my breath.

  Luckily, the dogs come no farther. The house’s form emerges from the mist—a gray, unfinished concrete structure, two stories, with wrought iron on the windows and door. A huge satellite dish is mounted on the roof and a mammoth black truck looms beside the house. On either side of the doorway are clay pots holding a few tall plants whose leaves form umbrellas, clusters of crimson berries at the base.

  A man limps through the doorway. He stands there between the umbrella plants. He’s wearing black jeans, a white undershirt, and black boots, and leaning on a thick stick, a cane maybe. I keep a piece of bread clutched in my hand.

  As we get closer, the dogs’ snarls grow louder until the man kicks them. They whimper and quiet down, except for some guttural rumblings.

  “Is that a rifle?” Wendell whispers.

  I take another look at what I thought was a cane. “Let’s turn back.”

  After a brief pause, Wendell shakes his head.

  From about fifty feet away, I call out, forcing my voice to sound strong and steady. “¡Buenos días, señor! We just need to talk with you for a moment.”

  A few seconds pass before he says, “Who are you?” His words land like cold pebbles tossed through the fog.

  “I’m Zeeta. This is Wendell.” And since he doesn’t seem one for small talk, I get straight to the point. “We think you’re his birth father.”

  He tilts his head, then motions for us to come closer.

  Slowly, we make our way toward him, through a crowd of squawking chickens and past a sorry-looking donkey covered with flies and patchy fur. I throw pieces of bread ahead for the dogs. They pounce on it, ravenous.

  Up close, I study the man. His hair hangs in a long braid down his back, strands falling out around his face. His face is shaped like Taita Silvio’s—a strong jawline and sloping nose—only he looks younger and older at once. Older because his face is more worn, with scars and deep wrinkles. Not like Taita Silvio’s wrinkles, all laugh lines fanning out around his eyes and mouth. No, these are heavy wrinkles, pulling at his eyes, furrowing his forehead. Yet younger because of his broad shoulders like Wendell’s, and ropy, muscular forearms. His T-shirt is stained with something red, salsa maybe. His snakeskin boots come to sharp points at the toes.

  He eyes us with suspicion. “What do you want from me?”

  “He just wants to meet you,” I say. “That’s all.”

  Almost reluctantly, he extends his hand to Wendell and then to me—a hand not as thick and calloused as Taita Silvio’s, not as accustomed to hard labor. “Faustino.” He pulls a few stools from the side of the house into a patch of weedy dirt. Now the dogs are sitting by my feet, wagging their tails and drooling, eager for more bread.

  He turns back to Wendell.

  He stares.

  And stares.

  And stares.

  Is he thinking? Plotting? Trying not to cry? Trying to cry? Impossible to tell. His face is expressionless, a mask.

  “So,” he says finally. “You’re my son.”

  Wendell braces his jaw. “I’m your son.”

  “Well, at least we think so,” I add. “We think Lilia was his birth mother.”

  He says nothing, and Wendell seems to be in a state of mild shock, so I say, “You two look alike. Don’t you think?”

  “Yes.” And then, in a tight voice, Faustino says, “Did my brother send you here?”

  I translate.

  Wendell shakes his head.

  “The boy doesn’t speak Spanish?” Faustino asks me, surprised.

  “Speak slowly and he might understand.”

  He draws out his words, eyeing Wendell. “What did Silvio tell you?”

  “He told us about Lilia.” I translate Wendell’s answer, trying not to look at the gun. “That she lived with you for a while.”

  He sighs, props the gun against the house, then disappears through the doorway. There’s the faint sound of the TV—some elephant squeals and a man narrating in a deep voice. Maybe the Discovery Channel in Spanish, which Layla’s taken to watching lately.

  More from curiosity than bravery, I peek my head inside the doorway. To the left is a bedroom, where I catch a glimpse of a bed, a big flat-screen TV, and a giant heap of teddy bears. Bizarre. Straight ahead is a hallway with a concrete floor and unpainted walls, and a bare bulb hanging from the ceiling, as though Faustino hasn’t quite finished the house. To the right is a doorway to the kitchen, where he’s rummaging through a box, his back to me. Quickly, I slip away, outside, past the rifle leaning against the wall. If he planned to hurt us, he wouldn’t leave the gun right there, would he?

  Wendell, meanwhile, has walked around to the side of the house. “Hey, look at this!”

  Behind the house is a high stone wall with a solid black metal gate. Brilliant leaves and giant flo
wers cascade over it. I recognize the long, trumpet-shaped blossoms from the floripondio tree the girls told us about.

  Wendell spots them too. “Aren’t those the zombie flowers?”

  My mouth is suddenly dry. “Let’s leave soon, okay?”

  As we sit back down, Faustino emerges from the house with three glasses and a bottle of clear liquid in a beat-up plastic Coke bottle. He pours us each a glass and clinks his against ours in a toast. “To my son.”

  Wendell raises his glass. “To my father.”

  Faustino drinks first, all in one gulp.

  Wendell sniffs his. “Smells like rubbing alcohol.”

  “Go ahead, drink,” Faustino urges.

  Wendell gulps the liquor, then screws up his face. So much for his promise to his mom.

  I hold up my glass, examine it. Perfectly clear. Probably just alcohol. No evidence of extra ingredients like poisonous flowers. And he’s poured ours from the same bottle. Still, drinking with a possible devil man seems like a terrible idea.

  “Toma,” Faustino says.

  “Thanks, but I don’t drink,” I say, pasting a polite smile on my face.

  “Just one.”

  I taste a bit with my tongue. It burns. “Sugarcane liquor?” I ask, stalling.

  He nods. “Drink up.”

  I look at him hard. I’ve been told by people in other Latin American countries that I have a strong gaze. A gaze with powers to cause good or harm. Of course, I don’t believe that, but it’s useful for freaking people out in certain situations.

  He meets my gaze, looking only amused.

  I raise my chin, try another tactic. “If you had one wish, Don Faustino, what would it be?”

  He blinks. “Why? You’ll make it come true?”

  “Just curious,” I say, keeping my gaze level.

  He looks over the mountains, thinking, and in that moment I casually dump the liquor over my shoulder.

  He doesn’t notice. “That this piece-of-crap house was a mansion with a hundred rooms. That those chickens were my servants. That the donkey was my private jet. That I could be the richest man alive. That’s what we all want, right?” He refills our glasses.

  “Don’t drink any more,” I murmur to Wendell.

  “Just one more glass,” he whispers.

  “What about your promise?”

  “I don’t want to be rude, Z.”

  Faustino gulps his, Wendell sips his, and I toss mine discreetly over my shoulder.

  “So,” Faustino says, leaning back. “Some gringos raised you?”

  Wendell nods. “Sarah and Dan Connelly of Colorado.”

  “Those gringos are all loaded, huh?”

  Wendell stares, not getting Spanish slang, until Faustino says slowly, enunciating, “Mucho dinero.”

  “Not really,” Wendell says, looking woozy. “I mean, maybe by these standards, but in the U.S. we’re just a regular middle-class family.”

  Reluctantly, I translate.

  Faustino nods. “Why’d you come to this crap hole?”

  I want to put my arm around Wendell. He looks so unstable wavering on the stool, as though he could fall at any moment.

  “To find you,” he says in a raw voice.

  Something in Faustino’s face cracks. A glimpse of emotion shines through, tenderness maybe. “You came all the way here for me?”

  For what feels like eternity, but is probably about a half hour, we talk. The conversation stops and starts in fits. Right when I think Faustino might be a decent guy after all—just a little out of touch with his emotions, maybe—something slimy pops out, like his asking how much Wendell’s watch costs or how much money his parents make. With every question he asks about Wendell’s life in Colorado—even the apparently innocent ones like how he likes school and what sports he plays—I can’t help questioning his motives, wondering if he’s hatching a devious plan.

  But I also wonder how much of my suspicion has been sparked by what we’ve heard about Faustino. I want to give him a fair shot. I do.

  It’s not easy. He’s as good at evading our questions as Silvio. He brushes off questions about Lilia, saying it was too long ago. “Some things are best left alone,” he says, waving the questions away with his hand.

  Wendell seems more patient than me. By now, he has an obvious buzz from the liquor. It’s made him relaxed. Too relaxed. His words are slurred, his head wobbly.

  I take out my indigo notebook. “Don Faustino, what’s your earliest memory?”

  “Hiding in a crystal cave.”

  I jot it down. “Hiding from what?”

  “My father, that hijo de puta.” Grinning, he pours another round of drinks.

  When he doesn’t elaborate, I open my mouth to ask why.

  “Don’t ask me why.”

  Instead I ask, “What matters most to you?”

  He shakes his head, laughing. At me or with me? I can’t tell with this man. He tilts his head back. “Besides getting rich? Two things.” Abruptly, he stands up, stretches, and disappears inside.

  I ditch my drink. “Ready to go, Wendell?”

  “Just a little more time, Z.”

  “You’re drunk, aren’t you?”

  “No.”

  Faustino comes out with two cardboard boxes stacked one on top of the other. One is the size of a shoebox, the other is as big as a fruit crate. Tiny holes have been poked in the sides. “Here, look.” He unwinds the twine wrapped around them and opens the larger box a crack.

  Wendell and I move our faces close, peer inside. There’s a pile of sticks, leaves, and stones, shadowy hues of brown and gray and olive. Now they’re moving. No, wait, it’s a thick, smooth rope that’s moving, and it’s huge. Now its head appears, pointed with two beady black eyes.

  A snake.

  A pit viper of some kind.

  Something about the slow undulations and the arrow shape of its head touches a deep, instinctual fear inside me. It’s curled up on itself, but it must be a few feet long stretched out. It’s staring at me, as if deciding whether to leap from the flimsy cardboard box and sink its fangs into my neck.

  My heart freezes.

  “Jergón,” Faustino announces, closing the box again, securing it with the twine. “Also known as the X snake. See the X pattern? Got three of these fellows from the jungle east of here. A single bite swells the entire arm, turns it blue and black, forms giant blood blisters.” He shakes his head, grinning. “Monstrously ugly.”

  I find words. “This is the part where we leave, Wendell.” I stand up, backing away slowly.

  But Wendell’s captivated. Maybe the alcohol’s impaired his judgment. Or maybe he wants so badly to connect with this man that he can overlook the extreme creepiness of the situation.

  Faustino lifts up the smaller box, unties the twine slowly.

  I can’t resist. I peek inside. Some wood chips and sticks and leaves. Faustino pokes at the pile with a stick. Then, a scurrying set of brown legs, fuzzy and spindly, the span of my hand. As fast as the legs appear, they’re hidden again.

  “Phoneutria,” he says proudly. “Armed spider. Got him from the Amazon too. One of the most excruciatingly painful venoms in the world.”

  “We should be going now,” I say. “Thanks for the drinks and everything.” I tug on Wendell’s arm.

  “But I didn’t show you the second thing,” Faustino says.

  “What second thing?”

  “The second thing that matters most to me.”

  For a moment, indignance eclipses my fear. “One, the poisonous snake. Two, the poisonous spider.”

  “No, that was one thing. My venomous-creature collection. There’s a lot more of them inside.”

  I translate for Wendell. Unbelievably, he says, “Let’s see the second thing.”

  “Wendell, this is really, really messed up.”

  “Please? After this we can leave.”

  “What’s the second thing?” I ask Faustino flatly.

  “Follow me.” He heads around
the side of the house, toward the wall and the zombie trees.

  Chapter 19

  Without a moment’s hesitation, Wendell follows. And against my better judgment, I follow too. I can’t believe I’m doing something so incredibly stupid. At least the girls know we’re here. They’ll get help if we don’t return. “Just for a minute,” I say, deliberately adding, “We have friends expecting us at the base of the hill.”

  Faustino puts his hand on Wendell’s shoulder and leads us behind the house and along the stone wall to a thick wooden door with an old metal lock. “Not a word to anyone about this. You swear? I’m only showing you because you’re my son.” He takes a dull silver key from around his neck and opens the door. “Come in, amigos.”

  I pause. The walls are high, about seven feet, the tops rimmed with shards of broken glass poking out of concrete. I’ve seen this glass-shard technique in cities all over Latin America used to keep out thieves. But now I wonder: what if this wall is meant to keep people inside?

  “I’ll wait outside,” I say firmly.

  “Whatever.” Faustino ushers Wendell inside, leaving the door cracked behind them.

  “Wow!” I hear Wendell’s muffled voice. “Wow!” It’s the same kind of wow as the waterfall wow.

  “Wow,” he says a third time. The breeze has blown the mist away, and now the sweet scent of nectar floats out from behind the wall. Leaves make dappled shadows on my side of the wall. My curiosity wins. I take a deep breath and go inside, leaving the door slightly ajar.

  It’s amazing, the most beautiful garden I’ve ever seen, even in pictures, even in my imagination. What the Garden of Eden might have been like. Trees dripping with flowers and fruit, giant bushes of blossoms of all colors, all shapes, an explosion of petals and stamens and pistils. It’s magical. Bees and insects and hummingbirds buzz through the honeyed air. The smell is intoxicating, jasmine and lily and a symphony of scents I’ve never smelled before. In places, the foliage is so thick it forms a tunnel of petals and leaves around the path.