Night Vision

by Randy Wayne White

  Squires could barely speak, he was so incredulous, but managed to ask, “You admit that you saw me?”

  “Of course,” Tula replied, and then repeated a familiar phrase: “I would rather die than to do something I know to be a sin. I will never lie to you. It’s an oath I have made to . . . to someone important. On the radio, the man said the bones they found were probably from a woman’s hand. Because of the ring she wore. Why would you murder a young woman?”

  Squires couldn’t believe what he was hearing. She would rather die than tell a lie? Jesus Christ, the girl was begging for it.

  “I didn’t kill her!” Squires yelled, leaning toward Tula. “You hear me? I didn’t goddamn kill her! All I did was get rid of the body! So why did you have to be there, snooping around?”

  Tula said to him calmly, “Why do you use such terrible words—taking God’s name in vain? That’s a sin. I won’t listen to you anymore if you use profanity.”

  Squires pushed his face toward the girl, his eyes glassy as he bellowed, “Kiss my goddamn ass! Do you realize what this means, you idiot? Why’d you have to be there watching? Now I got no goddamn choice! Do you even understand what I’m telling you?”

  As Tula began to answer, the man drew his hand back again to slap her and roared, “I’m warning you for the last time! Shut your mouth!”

  Tula could see that Squires was crazy with anger, and she sensed that he was on the brink of an emotional explosion. The man appeared near tears.

  When she tried to comfort Squires, though, by patting his knee, it only caused him to moan in frustration, then swear at her, using a word Tula had never heard before but she assumed was profane.

  By then, they were at the gate.

  Now Squires was wrestling the truck over a rutted trail that tracked for a half mile through pine flats, cypress and myrtle to where an RV and his steroid cookshack were anchored with hurricane stakes, the building hidden beneath trees near a cypress pond that looked cool and inviting to Tula.

  Focusing on the cypress trees helped keep Tula from weeping— that’s how badly she felt for the man. She was also beginning to feel frightened for herself. During the hours since they had left the trailer park, the Maiden had not come into Tula’s head to speak with her or to calm her.

  Tula knew that the Maiden would not abandon her. There was no possibility of that. But where was the Girl of Lorraine now when Tula sensed so much danger?

  I must find a tree, Tula thought. If I can sit peacefully in a tree and breathe into my belly, the Maiden will return and tell me what I should do.

  Tula could think of only one reason why the Maiden would order her to travel with this giant, angry man who might also be a murderer. It was the Maiden’s way of providing Tula with a vehicle and a driver to go in search of her mother. Tula had became convinced of this when she saw the sign that read IMMOKALEE 22 MILES. But how could she make Squires understand that the Maiden wanted him to help with the search?

  Yes, Tula needed guidance. It seemed unlikely that the man would react kindly if she asked to be left alone in a tree. Not until he calmed down a little—then, perhaps, Tula could reason with him, and possibly even win him over as a friend.

  So instead of asking to be allowed to walk into the cypress grove, Tula said, “Why have we come here? You should eat some food, it’s no wonder your body is trembling. We haven’t eaten all morning. And I have to use the bathroom.”

  Squires had pulled into the shade of a tree near a medium-sized trailer, white with green trim, its paint fading. Unlike the trailers at Red Citrus, this trailer was also a motor vehicle, with tires jacked off the ground on blocks and a windshield covered with shiny aluminum material. There were also a couple of wooden structures that looked homemade, one of them with locked shutters and a heavy door.

  Squires switched off the engine and said to Tula, “Get out of the truck and shut up. I don’t want to hear nothing else out of you. Just do what I tell you to do. We’re going for a walk.”

  There was something strange about the man’s voice now. It was a flat monotone, all of the emotion gone out of it. Tula could smell the alcohol on his breath, but his eyes looked dead, not drunken.

  “Walk where?” she asked, trying to be conversational. “It’s very pretty here. There are trees down by the water that look good for climbing. And lots of birds—egrets with white feathers, I think. Do you see them up there?”

  The man’s face colored, but he got himself under control before saying, “I’m going to tell you one more time and I want you to listen. No more talking. You’ve got nothing to say that I want to hear, so shut up and follow me. That’s exactly where we’re going, to look at all the pretty birds.”

  “But I need a bathroom,” Tula insisted as she watched Squires lift the driver’s seat and then open what appeared to be a hatch in the floor. He removed a canvas bag that was heavy, judging from the way he handled it.

  Squires turned and began walking toward the cypress pond where Tula could see white birds suspended like flowers among the gray limbs, some on nests in the high branches.

  “Get moving,” he said without looking at the girl. “And I’m warning you—I don’t want to hear another goddamn word out of you.”

  Tula got out of the truck and realized that her legs were shaking. Staying calm when the man was angry had not been easy, but this different voice, so flat and dead, was scaring her. She walked around the back of the truck, wondering if she should risk telling the man that her bladder was so full that she feared wetting herself. But Tula stopped after only a few words when her voice broke, afraid that she would start crying.

  The Maiden had never cried, even when tortured by her tormentors. Even as flames had consumed her, the brave saint had not wept, but, instead, had called out the name of her Savior.

  “Jesus,” Tula whispered now, her right hand clutching her amulets, as she followed Squires toward the trees. “Please protect and keep me, Jesus,” she said in Mayan, and continued repeating the phrase as they walked along the edge of a pond that was cooled by cypress shadows and moss. The giant kept walking, far into the tree shadows, so far that Tula’s abdomen began to cramp because of the pressure in her bladder.

  Finally, Squires stopped beside a tree at the edge of the pond, where water black as oil was flecked with leaves, white-feather down and long-legged insects that skated on the surface beneath cooing birds. For a time, the man stood with his back to her, and Tula realized that he was taking something from the canvas bag.

  “Turn around and look at the water,” Squires said to her in the same flat dead voice. “Do it now.”

  “Can I please go to the bathroom first?” Tula asked the man, frightened but also angry at herself because tears had begun streaming down her face.

  Squires was looking over his shoulder at her. “No. Just do what I tell you to do. This won’t take long. Turn your back to me and look at the water. Hurry up.”

  Tula could see that Squires had something in his hand. She got a look at it when she pivoted toward the pond.

  It was a large gun, silver with chrome.

  Tula had seen many guns during the fighting in the mountains, but she had never seen a gun so shiny before. The metal was hypnotic, it was so bright, which scared her.

  Tula’s chest shuddered, and she couldn’t help herself. Urine dribbled down her leg as she began crying, but silently, keeping her weakness to herself as she sensed the giant walk up behind her, the gun in his hand that was soon a silver reflection on the black water, the man on the surface huge, the size of a tree.

  “Get down on your knees, child,” said a voice in Tula’s head, and Tula obeyed instantly, overwhelmed with relief, because it wasn’t a man’s voice. It was the Maiden. The Maiden had returned to her in her moment of need, and Tula knew everything would be okay now.

  Get down on your knees, the Maiden counseled, and pray.

  Behind Tula, as she whispered a prayer, the giant stood in silence. A minute passed. Then two minutes, t
hen three.

  In the water’s reflection, Tula could see that Squires was pointing the pistol only inches from the back of her head. Occasionally, he would lower it, but then he would raise the pistol again. But Tula was no longer frightened.

  Once again, she felt a serene immunity from fear. The amulets she clutched in her hand provided strength. What happened would happen. She was with God and she was content. The Maiden would not allow her to suffer pain, and, ultimately, Tula would be reunited with her mother, her father and family again, which was something the girl wanted more than anything she had ever wanted in her life.

  Be at peace, child. I am with you always, the Maiden said, speaking as softly as the muted light inside the girl’s head.

  For another minute, Tula waited, her head bowed. She felt so confident and content that she decided to help the man along by saying, “If this is what you must do, then I forgive you. If it is God’s will, then you are doing the right thing. Don’t be afraid.”

  Tula waited for so long in silence that she had resumed praying before the man spoke to her, “It’s what I have to do. I don’t have a damn choice, and it’s your own fault. You’ll tell the police what you saw and they’ll arrest me. Even though I didn’t kill that girl, they’ll charge me with murder. Do you understand?”

  His voice wasn’t so empty of emotion now. It gave the girl hope, but she was inexplicably disappointed, too. She had felt so peaceful and free kneeling there, waiting for it to end.

  Tula considered turning to look at the man but decided against it. Looking into the barrel of the silver gun might bring her fear back, and she didn’t want that to happen. She didn’t want to risk crying or losing control of her bladder again.

  “I understand,” she said to Squires. “I’m sorry I saw what I saw. I didn’t mean to be in the tree watching you, but I was.”

  Tula glanced at the water’s mirror surface and saw that Squires was leaning toward her now. Then she felt the barrel of the gun bump the back of her head as the man said, “You told me yourself you don’t lie. Even if you promised me you wouldn’t tell the cops, I wouldn’t believe you. Do you understand now why I have to do this? Unless you promise me—I mean, really promise me—and mean it.”

  The man’s voice was shaking, and Tula knew he was going to pull the trigger. She closed her eyes, pressing her chin to her fingers, as she replied, “I can’t promise you, I’m sorry. If the police ask me, I will have to tell them the truth. I won’t lie to you and I won’t lie to them. It’s because of another promise I have made.”

  In Tula’s ear, she heard a metallic Click-Click and she knew that the man had pulled back the revolver’s hammer. On her cheeks, she felt tears streaming, but she wasn’t afraid. She was ready for what happened next.

  What happened next was, in the high cypress limbs above them, there was a squawking, cracking sound. Then the fluttering of wings as a bird tumbled from the tree canopy and thudded hard on the ground nearby. Tula looked up, surprised. Then she was on her feet and running toward it without even thinking, tucking the jade amulet and silver medallion into her T-shirt as she sprinted.

  “It’s a baby egret!” she cried, kneeling over a thrashing bird that looked naked because its feathers hadn’t come in yet. “I think it broke its wing.”

  Carefully, the girl cupped the fledgling in her hands, using her thumb to try to steady the bird’s weak neck. And she stood, saying over her shoulder to Squires, “That must be her mother up there. See her?”

  Tula motioned to a snowy egret that was hovering overhead, its yellow feet extended as if to land, excited by the peeping noises the baby bird was making.

  “Yes,” Tula said, “its wing is broken. At the convent, we took care of many sick animals. We can help this bird, I think.” Then she looked at Squires, adding, “I can’t stand it anymore. I have to go to the bathroom now.”

  Then she stopped because of what she saw.

  Harris Squires was sitting on the ground. He was rocking and crying, his hands locked around his knees, making a soft moaning sound in his misery. If the gun was somewhere on the ground nearby, Tula didn’t see it.

  The scene was even stranger to Tula because, the way the man was sitting, slope-shouldered and huge, reminded her of a bear she had seen begging for peanuts at the zoo in Guatemala City.

  The bear had struck the girl as being very sad, an animal as repulsed with itself as it was humiliated by its captivity. The scene was even stronger in Tula’s mind because her father had taken her to the zoo the day before he was murdered.

  Slowly, the girl walked toward Squires. She was embarrassed for him and sad in the same way that she had felt sad for the bear. She placed the little bird a safe distance away, in case the big man moved, and then hesitated before touching her fingers to Squires’s shoulder.

  Tula patted the man gently as she might have patted the bear, given a chance. And then said to him kindly, “I must go behind a tree and use the bathroom. I can’t stand it anymore. Please. But promise me something. It’s important. Promise me you won’t look. I know that you have seen me without clothes. But I don’t want a man ever to see me that way again. Do you promise?”

  Rocking and sobbing, the giant nodded his head.

  Tula said to Squires, “My mother had a little doll like this. She wore it pinned to her blouse. Even the same color, bright orange and green, instead of blue like most of them. They’re called worry dolls in English. At night, you tell your worries to the doll and put it under your pillow. The next morning, all your worries are gone.”

  The girl sniffed the doll, knowing it couldn’t be her mother’s—not way out here, so far from where a woman could get work cleaning houses or mopping floors in a restaurant—but, then, Tula had to wonder, because the odor of raw cotton was so familiar.

  Maybe it seemed familiar because everything else inside this man’s trailer was so foreign.

  Squires had started the generator, and they were inside the RV that smelled sour and stale like the ashes of a cold cooking fire. Tula had found the doll, only an inch tall, mounted on a brooch pin in a strange room where there was a camera, lights on tripods and a bed with a strange black leather contraption hanging from the ceiling.

  The doll was on a table piled with photos of naked women. The women were frozen in poses so obscene that Tula had looked away, preferring to focus on the miniature Guatemalan doll in traditional Mayan dress.

  The photos were of Mexican women, judging from their features, but a few Guatemalan women, too. Tula didn’t linger over details and closed the door to the room behind her, feeling as if the ugliness of that space might follow her.

  Squires was sitting in a recliner, looking dazed, eyes staring straight ahead as he drank from a pint bottle of tequila. He had found the revolver, which was now lying in his lap, and Tula sensed that he was rethinking what had happened out there in the cypress grove. She had witnessed his breakdown and he would begin hating her for it soon, the girl feared, if she didn’t get his mind on something else.

  After pinning the worry doll to her T-shirt, Tula went to the kitchen, where she found cans of beans and salsa and meat but no tortillas. There was a can opener, too, and plates, and a cheap little paring knife with a bent blade, but sharp.

  “You need food, that’s why you feel so tired. I’ll cook something,” Tula said to Squires as she carried a pan to the stove. A moment later, she said, “We have a gas stove at the convent, but I can’t get this one to light. Unless I’m doing it wrong.”

  Squires blinked his eyes, seeming to hear her for the first time. It took a while, but he finally said, “You’re a nun?”

  “Someday, when I’m older,” Tula replied. “I am going to dedicate my life to God and to helping people. My patron saint is Joan of Arc. Have you heard of her?”

  After a few beats of silence, Tula added, “I am modeling my life after the Maiden. That’s what the people of France called her, the Maiden. But to her friends, she was called Jehanne.”

&nb
sp; “The gas isn’t on,” Squires said to the girl but didn’t get up from the chair. His indifference suggested he didn’t care about food. But he did appear interested in the convent Tula had mentioned because, after several seconds of silence, he said, “You live with nuns? No men around at all, huh? That’s got to be weird. Not even to fix shit?”

  “The convent is where I live and go to school. I work in the kitchen, and the garden, too. That’s how I learned to speak English and to cook using a stove.”

  Tula had been twisting the dials for the burners without success. Now she was searching the walls, looking under the stove, hoping the man would take the hint and make the gas work. He needed food, not tequila, and Tula wondered—not for the first time—why so many men preferred to be drunk and stupid rather than to eat hot food.

  The giant took a sip from the bottle and told her, “I was raised Catholic. I used to be, anyway. But then all that stuff about priests cornholing little boys—and the goddamn Pope knew about it ’cause he was probably screwing boys himself before he got old. Little boys are in big demand in the Catholic religion. That’s probably the problem with you. You’ve been brainwashed by all that sick Catholic bullshit. Why else would you pretend to be a boy?”

  Tula wondered if Squires was trying to upset her, give himself a reason to get angry again and shoot her. So she changed the subject by saying, “I’ve been thinking of a way to solve your problem. I don’t want you to go to jail. There’s another way, I think, to keep the police from arresting you.”

  That surprised the man, Tula could see it, so she added, “I believe you when you say you’re not a murderer. Just looking into your face, you couldn’t do something like that—not by yourself, you couldn’t. I don’t want to tell the police what I saw. That’s why I’ve been thinking about this problem.”