By then I could no longer hear the tornado sirens under the storm’s roar. The head, a snarl fixed forever on its vicious muzzle, dissolved into blight between my fingers. I couldn’t wait long enough to watch the rest of the body dissipate back to its hellish origins. There was no more time.
Esteban stared blankly at me with eyes glazed in pain and shock, and I grabbed his good arm, dragging him to his feet. “Run!” I screamed in his ear, but he couldn’t hear me. I couldn’t hear myself. The tornado was here, and we had nowhere to go.
The deafening roar blotted out all else. It became the be-all and end-all of our existence. Large chunks of gravel peppered us as we stumbled for shelter, wherever that might be. Something heavier hit the center of my back, staggering me, but I managed to keep us both moving. Out of the darkness and storm-blown debris, we crashed into a concrete barricade and simply couldn’t see to go any farther.
Huddled at the base of the pillar, I tried to shelter Esteban as best I could, almost wrapping myself around him. Mira’s spells were forfeit for fighting the demon, but I prayed to anyone listening that they’d still protect me from an ordinary, everyday tornado.
Sharp things bit at my exposed skin, drawing blood in what seemed to be a hundred places. The kid screamed. I think I did, too, until the tornado sucked away all air and the ability to breathe.
It felt like we were there for years, with nothing but noise and pain in that horrible vacuum. I wished for my eardrums to burst, just to relieve the immense pressure. Every breath was full of dirt and grit, and we choked and gagged on what little air we got. And just when I was certain we were dead where we sat, it was gone.
In the abrupt silence, I thought I’d gone deaf. Then I heard water dripping somewhere nearby. One beam of sunlight found us, amidst the mud and the shambles of concrete and twisted rebar. The breeze, once so punishing, flirted around us, smelling freshly scrubbed, like spring. I think somewhere, a bird was singing tentatively.
Esteban was curled around his injured arm, and I wasn’t sure he was even conscious until he moaned and mumbled something in Spanish. “Hey, kid… You with me?”
He said something else, something I knew wasn’t polite, but nodded, and finally raised his head. His skin was a sickly gray, his dark eyes wide and staring. I eased his hand away from his broken arm to have a look. The thick leather bracer had protected him from the ravages of fang and claw, but it was bent at a wholly unnatural angle.
“Boy, when you do it, you do it right, hey, kid?” I smiled at him, and he rallied enough to give me that “Are you nuts?” look. He was going to be okay. Getting to my feet, I decided I was going to be okay, too.
Sure, I felt like shit. Blood trickled down my stubbly cheek from a cut I didn’t remember getting. My right leg was done with me, and refused to hold my weight. I was going to have scars down my left thigh, and the small vain part of me briefly mourned the marks. Luckily, I couldn’t feel either of them, the blight-numbness extending almost all the way to my hips. The knuckles on my left hand were going to scar, too, but I flexed them and they still worked. Most important, I was alive and I had my soul. My right hand was bare of all marks.
As I glanced around the wreckage, I came to appreciate how unlikely that had been. The pillar that sheltered and protected us had been sheared off two feet above our heads. The shattered remnants were strewn about us, a jagged garden of concrete chunks and mangled rebar. Any one of those would have cracked a skull, ending all our troubles in an instant. Bless Mira and the powers that sent her to me so many years ago. “One of us is the luckiest sumbitch on the planet, Paulo-er
… Esteban.”
A gleam atop the broken column caught my eye, and I limped closer to have a look. Perched there, sweetly as a centerpiece, were two pale white river stones, shot through with clear quartz veins. Matching nothing else in the debris around us, they lay nestled together as if placed by a careful hand. I picked them up, rolling them over between my fingers. They were warm and dry.
I’m not sure about religion, or God, or where we go when we die. But wherever it is, I think it must be a good place. And I decided Guy and Miguel were there. I pocketed the stones, to be placed in my garden. I’d take my signs where I found them.
“Be at peace, guys,” I murmured.
Esteban finally struggled to his feet and immediately blanched. “I’m going to throw up.” And he did. I think he felt better afterward. At least, he had more color to his ashen face.
“C’mon, Paulo… er, whatever I call you. Let’s go see what’s still standing.”
With my arm around his lanky shoulders, we hobbled out of the wreck of a parking garage, to find that Sierra Vista looked as bad as we did. The ground was littered with shards of plate glass, the storefronts gaping like toothless mouths. The cheerful neon signs were tangled in impossible ruins, if they weren’t gone altogether. Water sprayed from a fountain that no longer existed, and only one hardy sapling swayed in the spring air. One building had collapsed in on itself, and I thanked the powers that be that the tenant hadn’t moved in yet. Okay, so maybe sometimes I believe in God.
All in all, it looked like a war zone, Esteban and I being the walking wounded. I wiggled a finger through the shreds of my jeans and sighed. “Mira’s going to kill me.”
“Quien es Mira?”
“My wife. These were my good jeans.” I was probably in shock, and I’m allowed a warped sense of humor. I just chopped the head off a hellhound that was trying to eat a seventeen-year-old boy.
“Jesse? Jesse!” Funny, that didn’t sound like my wife’s voice, but sure enough, a woman was frantically calling my name. Kristyn pelted toward us, multicolored hair standing at sharp angles like a terrified hedgehog. I wasn’t even sure she’d known my real name, until that moment. “Ohmigod! Ohmigodohmigod! Did you see that?” For one horrifying moment, I thought she was going to hug me, and I braced for the excruciating pain. Instead she skidded to a halt, all but vibrating, she was so worked up, and blinked at our obviously injured state.
“Is that… blood?” Kristyn went as pale as Esteban and slumped toward the ground.
Somehow, I caught her with one arm. “Aw crap. C’mon, Kristyn. I can’t carry you. Don’t do this to me now.”
She whimpered, doing her best to keep on her feet, but she was now covered in the very blood that had her swooning. My day just wasn’t getting any better. It was Murphy’s Law at its finest, right here. This crap only happens to me.
I glanced at Esteban and chuckled. Then he snickered. Then we both burst out laughing. Groggy, Kristyn eyed us as if we’d finally lost it. I guess maybe we had. But under the circumstances, I think it was excusable. We laughed until our eyes watered and we were gasping for breath. We laughed so hard it hurt. We were still laughing when the ambulances started arriving.
There was a minor incident when I refused to leave until I checked on my truck. It was going heavily against me, but about the time one paramedic had a syringe full of sedative pulled out, the other one relented. I was allowed to hobble to the parking lot, leaning on Kristyn, who seemed to have recovered her moxie.
My truck was there, all beautiful in her rain-washed glory. And miracle of miracles, she was untouched (barring all previous damage, of course). In a tornado’s inexplicable way, the same forces that had trashed the shopping center had neglected the employee parking lot. All twenty or so cars sat there just as they’d been parked. I made a mental note to send Will and Marty back out to pick her up, then went along with my captors like a good boy.
Esteban and I had one brief moment alone, as the paramedics got us loaded into the same ambulance. He glanced at me, steadier now that his arm was secured to a board. “What happened to the baseball man?”
“Tell you the truth, kid? I don’t give a rat’s ass.” And that’s all I had to say about that.
23
They never found Nelson Kidd. I suppose it’s possible the tornado carried him off, and we’ll find his body years from now stuffed un
der some random rock by the terrible forces of nature. But I think it’s more likely he just vanished, ashamed to face what he’d done. Ivan sent word out to the other champions. He’ll never be able to pull the same stunt again.
Being the last person who saw him alive, I was of great interest to the police, no doubt aided by the almost-restraining order I had against me. Having two hundred thousand of a missing baseball player’s dollars in my bank account didn’t help, either. I spent the next two months answering questions of varying levels of accusation before a phone call from a former client (thank you, Mr. President) convinced them to look elsewhere. I heard later that his family had him declared legally dead. His grandson is now a very rich little boy.
The punch line of it all, at least to me, is that when Kidd said Verelli was tied up, he was being literal. The hotel housekeeping staff found the agent in his underwear, gagged with a sock and bound with miniblind cords. Someone managed to get a cell phone video of his “rescue,” and that ran on the Internet for weeks, Verelli being paraded before the world in his tightywhities and garters for all to see. I think I’m the only one who caught a glimpse of a black mark on the inside of his left arm. The video was poor quality, so maybe it was a shadow, or a cop’s finger, or my own vivid imagination. Or maybe Mr. Verelli was more of a believer than he let on.
Though sweet Trav tried hard to convince the police that I was his assailant, I had an airtight alibi from half the population of Sierra Vista. In the end, he finally confessed that Kidd had beaned him with the clock radio and tied him up to get him out of the way. (Hey, I can’t fault the old man. I wanted to shut Verelli up from the moment I met him.) Being caught in his lies pretty much ended his dream of painting me as the villain.
Unfortunately, that revelation cast suspicion on Kidd’s mental condition at the time of his disappearance, which necessitated more legal dancing around to see whether or not I got to keep the money he paid me. I’m still waiting to find out if it’s mine free and clear, and in the meantime… well, bills are piling up. That’s the way things go. We’re not even going to talk about the insurance company. They dropped me like a hot potato.
I came out of the adventure with seventy-two stitches in my left thigh, two in my face, and a torn gastrocnemius muscle in my right calf. Try saying that five times real fast. They glued my gashed knuckles closed. Oh yeah, and there was that case of mild frostbite on my toes (and Esteban’s). Lemme tell you, that baffled them. Dr. Bridget was unthrilled, to say the least.
“God was watching out for you again, it seems.” She gave me that withering female look, the one that makes you just want to crawl into a hole and die out of pure shame, whether you’ve done anything wrong or not.
I was put on bed rest. Within half an hour, it became couch rest, and in another ten minutes, it became lounging-on-the-patio-in-the-sunshine rest. I’m not one to stay flat on my back if I can help it.
My injuries did save me from spending that Saturday chopping an enormous tree into burnable chunks. It came down in my mother’s front yard in the storm, and her birthday party turned into a lumberjack contest. I sat in my comfortable lawn chair, foot propped up on a log, and offered helpful suggestions to my brother and cousins on just how to best go about it. I thought Cole was going to kill me.
“I swear, big brother, somehow you did this on purpose, just so you wouldn’t have to cut up this tree.” Cole swigged from a bottle of Gatorade as he took a break from swinging his splitting maul. Despite the rather perfect spring day, sweat ran off him in rivers.
“You can’t make this stuff up, little brother.” I grinned at him and raised my beer in salute. He just glared daggers at me and went back to work.
Paulo-er… Esteban-was also spared the ignominy of physical labor. In fact, he got the hero’s seat of honor for “saving” me from the tornado. I ask you, where’s the justice? He seemed rather overwhelmed by my mother, who is a force of nature in her own right. Motherless boys of the world, beware. She can spot you a mile away. She has meat loaf, and she knows how to use it. I think we left her house that evening with ten plastic containers filled with various foods “absolutely necessary to a growing boy.”
That growing boy also got to spend a good hour on the phone with his mother, most of it in such rapid-fire Spanish that even Mira had trouble following. It ended with tears I wasn’t supposed to see, and our all promising to look after Esteban until he could be returned safely home.
The other phone call… Well, I claimed that duty for myself.
That night, when the house was safely locked and everyone else had gone to bed, I hobbled into my den and called Rosaline. She broke down and wept when I told her Miguel’s soul was safe. I even told her about the river stones, and how I’d placed them at the feet of my little Buddha statue. Mira was the only other person who knew. Somehow, I thought the two women would understand.
“Gracias, Jesse. Muchas gracias, siempre.”
“He’d have done the same for me.” It was an uncomfortable call, despite the good news I was delivering. First off, I don’t deal well with crying women. Second, I couldn’t bring her husband back, even as badly as I wanted to. “Listen, if you ever need anything, you only have to call. You know that, right?”
“ Si, I know. You are an angel, Jesse Dawson. Do not let anyone tell you otherwise.” We hung up after the usual exchange of greetings for the families, and I sat in the silence for a long time. Eventually, footsteps shuffled in the hallway.
“Is she all right?” Esteban appeared in the doorway, dressed in one of my Tshirts and an old pair of sweats.
I thought about chiding him for eavesdropping, then realized I didn’t really care. “No. But she’ll be better now.”
He scratched at his hand, mostly encased in neon blue fiberglass. “Thank you for calling her. I… did not know what to say.” He seemed to find everything else in the room more interesting than meeting my eyes.
He fidgeted with the cast on his arm, and I eyed him critically for a moment. “You’re up late. Is your arm hurting? I can see if Mira has something for the pain.”
That got the reaction I wanted. He straightened instantly, a hint of his usual anger flaring in his dark eyes. “I am fine. It does not hurt.” He was lying, but it was a small balm to his bruised adolescent ego. I let it slide.
“Was there something else, then?”
His jaw clenched as he debated his next words. “Miguel thought very highly of you. I… did not believe him. I thought you were just another overhyped gringo.”
I sat at my desk, watching him fidget. He blushed under my direct gaze. “And now?”
“I am grateful you were there. I would not have been able to do it alone.” It came out in a rush, one single breath. Every one of those words had to hurt. A meaner person might have called him on it. I wasn’t that person.
“Miguel was a good man, Esteban. He would have done the same for me.”
“But I do not know that I would have. Before. I would now.”
“You have a long time before you have to be making decisions like that. Just enjoy being a kid a little longer.”
I don’t know if he believed me or not. He nodded a little and shuffled back toward bed.
Ivan arrived on Sunday as he promised, to be greeted with a five-year-old’s squeals of “ Djadko Ivan! ” My daughter could officially speak more Ukrainian than I. After taking a few hours to spoil Annabelle-the teddy bear was bigger than the child, I kid you not-we adjourned to my closet den to have one of those manly sort of talks.
He examined the pictures and books on my shelves as he spoke. “When you are to being more mobile, I would ask you to be coming with me to Toronto.”
I nodded. “Guy’s place?”
“ Tak. I wish to find his weapon. It was not being sent to me, and so there must have been someone he cared about very much. We will to be taking care of them for him.”
I nodded again. I was all in favor of a widows and orphans fund. “Yeah, I’ll come with, no p
roblem.” I eyed my crutches. “In a week or two.”
He turned to face me, idly flipping through the pages of the Hagakure. “As for the other request I have… The boy will to be remaining with you. There is no one left in his family to be teaching him.”
Um… excuse me? That wasn’t exactly a request by my definition of the word. “Do I look like Yoda?”
Ivan gave me an “I’m wiser than you” smirk. Nothing like having a six-foot-four Ukrainian standing in a tiny little room to stare you down-I need a bigger den for these conversations. “You will be good for the boy. He is to be needing discipline.”
“I’m not training him to fight, Ivan. He’s just a kid.”
He raised one white brow at me. “When you were to being a boy, would you have avoided danger because someone was to be telling you, ‘You are too young’?” He shook his head, amused. “It is better he is to being trained, before he is to be getting hurt on his own.”
I hate it when he’s right, and he’s right a lot. I’m not sure how successful I’ll be, though. To quote the venerable Yoda, much anger I sense in this one. Esteban is a hurt, angry kid. It doesn’t make for the best learning environment. Then again, I wasn’t so different when Carl took me in hand. It could work out-maybe.
Mira is adamant that the kid go back to school in the fall, and being as he is here illegally, she’s started the process of getting him a student visa. He’s now in residence in my spare bedroom, which has evicted Mira from her sanctuary. She says she doesn’t mind, but I’m currently trying to figure out how hard it would be to add another room onto the house.
Though she wasn’t consulted, Anna has made certain we know she loves having Esteban here. She always wanted a big brother (or jungle gym, and he serves as both). And he in turn seems rather fond of her. Coming from a huge family as he did, I’m willing to bet he misses some of the joyous chaos small children can generate. Enter Hurricane Annabelle, and problem solved.
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