Cricket Hunters

by Jeremy Hepler

  Thirty minutes after the Cricket Hunters had planned to meet in Cel’s backyard to hunt, Natalie appeared outside the glass wall looking into Dillo’s room and gave a tentative wave when Cel finally looked up. Cel raised an acknowledging hand, patted Yesenia’s shoulder, gestured at Natalie, and said, “I’m going to go talk to Natalie. I’ll be right back. Do you need anything?”

  Continuing to whisper spells, Yesenia shook her head without looking at Cel.

  Cel knew it was selfish to leave Yesenia alone, but she needed a break from the cold room, from the steady beeps and chugs counting down the last hours of Tia Dillo’s life, from her abuela’s incessant desperate whispers. She needed a brief respite from the crushing pressure of lingering on Death’s porch. So she left the room as gingerly as possible, like a guilty sinner exiting a rapt congregation during the heart of a sermon.

  Natalie greeted her with a one-armed hug in the hallway. She had switched to sweatpants since leaving the hospital and had put on her Astros cap. She raised the paper bag in her right hand. “Me and Mom made you guys some bread. It’s not much, but…” She shrugged.

  Cel took the bag and smiled weakly. “Thanks.”

  Natalie’s eyes moved to Tia Dillo, but then quickly moved back to Cel, as if she didn’t want to look at a dying person too long or too hard, either. Other than the loss of family pets like dogs and cats, hamsters and gold fish, none of the hunters had experienced much death, and never firsthand. Never face-to-face. Parker had lost both of his grandparents on his father’s side, but they’d died before he was born. Natalie’s aunt, Bonnie McIntyre, had drowned in Lake Travis when Natalie was a toddler, so she barely remembered her. And one of Omar’s grandfathers had passed from a heart attack recently, maybe a year or year and half ago if Cel remembered correctly, but he lived in Mexico, and Omar had met him only a handful of times and hadn’t attended the funeral.

  “Any changes?” Natalie asked.

  Cel shook her head.

  Natalie nodded sadly and looked down, shielding her eyes with the bill of her cap as she fidgeted with her hands. “Everyone else is in the waiting room.” She looked up. “Me and Omar met Parker and Abby at your house and told them what happened. Will your grandma care if you…or do you want to…” She drifted off and thumbed behind her.

  Cel simply nodded, and then followed Natalie to the ICU waiting room.

  The hunters were the only people in the waiting room save for one elderly man dressed in dingy overalls sitting alone in the corner. Between his legs, a cane rested against his thigh, and he stared at the nothing in front of him with a faraway look in his eyes. On the opposite corner of the room, Parker, Abby, and Omar had arranged five of the chairs to form a closed-off circle. Parker closed his copy of The Illustrated Man, and Abby’s and Omar’s hushed discussion stopped as Cel and Natalie approached and sat in the two empty chairs.

  “How is she?” Parker asked in a hushed tone, as though Dillo’s condition were a secret.

  Clenching the top of the sack of hot bread on her lap with both hands, Cel met eyes with him. “Bad. Very bad.”

  He touched her knee. “Sorry.” After Abby, Omar, and Natalie echoed his condolences, he added, “Are you okay?”

  Cel bit down on her bottom lip and nodded, lied, her eyes brimming with tears. She was far from okay. Such an overload of emotion. On top of the sadness and guilt she felt about Tia Dillo’s situation, she was also terrified she’d been cursed.

  Since the day after the fair, the day Yesenia had taken her to the Oak Mott police station to file a report about Jose assaulting her, she’d had trouble sleeping. And not because she was overly worried about Jose anymore. She was a little worried, had even purchased small cans of mace at K-Mart for each hunter to carry in their pocket just in case, but none of them had seen him since the night at the fair, and she assumed he’d lay low for a while. The reason she’d had trouble sleeping was because of the crickets lurking around Yesenia’s house. They seemed louder than before, closer, their relentless chirps triggering surges of paranoid thoughts in her. Lying in bed alone while Yesenia was at the hospital, she had been covering her head with her pillow, and repeating out loud what Parker had assured her. That they only seemed louder because the hunters hadn’t been hunting. That their numbers had grown simply because the hunters had been going inside before sunset the past two nights as an added safety precaution. But no matter how many times she repeated the rationale, she couldn’t quiet the crickets. She couldn’t dispel the fear that Maria had sent them—espiritus venganza—to torment her just like she had with Tia Dillo, and that her abuela’s protection attempts would do no good.

  Natalie leaned over and put her arm around Cel’s shoulders, and Cel closed her eyes. No one spoke. Seconds stretched into minutes.

  When Cel opened her eyes, she scanned her friends’ solemn faces, and Omar asked, “Have you been sleeping any better?”

  “Not really.”

  “The crickets still bothering you?” Parker asked.

  She hesitated when Abby leaned back and pushed out a loud breath, but eventually nodded.

  “You want me to steal some of my mom’s sleeping pills?” Parker asked. “They might help.”

  Cel instinctively shook her head. Through teachings and by example, Yesenia and Tia Dillo had ingrained in her the idea that medications wouldn’t trump magic. “If Maria’s cursed me, they won’t help much.”

  “But what if she hasn’t?” Abby fired back. “What if you’re just freaking out about Tia Dillo and the Jose thing, and those pills will help you rest and feel better?” Her eyes moved up to the ceiling for a moment, then moved back to Cel. “I mean, if she cursed you, why hasn’t she cursed me or Parker? She knows we were involved, too.”

  Cel stared at Abby. Her expression remained neutral, her lips zipped. She didn’t have the energy to debate Abby about her family’s beliefs tonight, or defend herself against the notion that she was freaking out, or purposefully strange, or too superstitious, or just flat-out crazy.

  “What if we go hunt the crickets around your house when we leave here?” Parker asked. “I’m up for it if everyone else is.”

  Cel wanted to jump up and hug him for the offer, kiss him for understanding her, show the others how he was her favorite, but she simply held eye contact with him instead, hoping her eyes relayed the same message. “Thanks, but you don’t have to. I’ll probably be staying here all night tonight, anyway.”

  “What if,” Omar said, and all eyes snapped his way. He was looking at the ground, through the ground. His face was pinched with the deep thought of someone who’d been crunching numbers and percentages, running through a litany of possibilities, searching for the best solution to a problem. “Her curse is hurting you more than us because you believe in the power of her curses more. Kind of like in that movie, Nightmare on Elm Street, or that book, It.”

  “That’s what I said,” Abby professed. “It’s all in her head.”

  Omar jerked his head toward Abby. “That’s not what I meant.” He met eyes with Cel and curved his eyebrows in an apologetic gesture. “I didn’t mean it that way. I was just saying that maybe since you’re more saturated in magic than we are, since you’ve been raised on it, live it all day, every day, are surrounded by it, and you’re a lot more connected to Maria than we are, that’s why it’s affecting you more.” He dipped his head and lightly shook it. “I don’t know. It was just a thought.”

  Abby bumped his shoulder with her fist. “I think you think too much.”

  Omar looked up, a faint smile on his lips. “So does my mom.”

  Everyone, including Cel, lightly chuckled.

  Natalie took her arm off of Cel’s shoulder and pressed it against her own chest. “Well, I personally do believe there are powers out there that we can’t all control or understand. Unexplainable things happen every day. Miracles happen all the time.”

  Cel flashed Natalie a shadow of a gracious smile, then looked at Omar. She knew he meant well. His
analytics never carried malice. “I know what you’re saying, but I think if it was that easy to block her curses, my abuela wouldn’t be so worried, and Tia Dillo wouldn’t be dying.”

  Whether they agreed with her or not, everyone gave slight nods, and then looked everywhere but at Cel. While the uncomfortable silence dragged on, Cel glanced at the sack in her lap and lay her hand flat across the bread. It was no longer hot, barely warm. That’s what this place does, she thought. Death’s doorstep. It drains the warmth and love and life from everyone and everything. She lifted the bag. “I better take this to my abuela before it gets too cold.”

  The other hunters’ eyes found her, and they all nodded again. But rather than the awkward, uneasy nods she’d received minutes ago, these came quick, with a sense of relief that the unsettling pow-wow was ending. They didn’t like being in the hospital any more than she did, and that was okay.

  “You guys better leave so you can get home before dark, anyway.”

  “Are you sure you don’t want us to stay a little longer?” Natalie asked.

  “I’m sure. I need to get back in there with my abuela.”

  They all stood and hugged Cel, and she told them thanks for coming. Natalie told her to call if she needed anything and that they’d come by tomorrow after school if they hadn’t heard from her. Parker asked if he could please borrow her bike for the ride home, promising to bring it back in tact whenever she wanted. Tonight, even. He could have his dad drive it back up here in the back of his truck. She said of course he could use it, and not to worry about bringing it back; her abuela’s car was there. Natalie waved as they filed away, and just before he was out of sight, Parker glanced back over his shoulder and winked, striking a warm flame in the center of Cel’s chest as she spun and headed for Dillo’s room.

  But the flame quickly extinguished and the warmth vanished the second she turned onto Dillo’s hall. She momentarily froze when a loud continuous beep pierced her ears and she saw an elderly nurse in blue scrubs rush from the nurse’s station into Dillo’s room. A few seconds later, the young blonde nurse who’d been checking the monitors all evening appeared in Dillo’s doorway. She had one arm hooked around Yesenia’s shoulders, the other locked onto her forearm. Yesenia was looking back over her shoulder. Indiscernible Spanish words streamed out of her mouth as she fought the nurse’s attempt to guide her into the hall.

  Cel dropped the sack of bread and ran toward Dillo’s room, the blaring beep growing louder and louder as she went. When she reached her abuela’s side, the young nurse passed Yesenia’s arm to her as though it were a baton. “You need to keep her out here.”

  Yesenia continued spewing Spanish heartache as they stood there shoulder-to-shoulder and stared through the glass wall into Tia Dillo’s room. A prim doctor with a puddle of white hair atop his head was inside with two nurses who were frantically removing blankets and clothing, exposing Dillo’s bare chest. He had defibrillator paddles in his hands, urgency in his eyes. As Cel and Yesenia looked on, their eyes locked on Dillo’s protruding ribcage, he yelled, “Clear,” and Tia Dillo’s body was violently jolted for the fourth time in twelve hours in an attempt to restart her heart.

  Looking back, Cel wasn’t certain if she saw the doctor paddle Tia Dillo five, or six, or even seven or eight or nine times. What she was certain of, however, was that after each paddle, as she held her breath in anticipation, the heart monitor continued wailing, its unyielding cry as knife-like to her mind as fingernails down a chalkboard.

  Chapter 20 - Parker

  Sans Cel, the hunters walked out of the hospital to a colorful sunset. Various shades of red and pink and gold and blue colored the cotton ball clouds hovering above the day’s last edge of sun. The onslaught of hues and their otherworldly smearing brought to mind a description Parker had read in The Illustrated Man earlier in the waiting room. Something about a sky of diamonds and sapphires and emeralds and streaking comets. That summer, his sister Jennifer had given him her worn copy with a bald tattooed man on the cover, and he’d quickly discovered that Bradbury was a painter with words, his descriptions often conveying more in one sentence than most authors did in an entire chapter. As Parker followed the others around the north end of the two-story brick building, he felt as though he were looking at a Bradbury crafted sky. As though God Bradbury had whispered a sentence into existence.

  When they reached their bikes, which were propped against a hurricane fence behind a row of dumpsters on the side of the hospital, Omar, Natalie, and Abby mounted theirs, and Parker mounted Cel’s. All four aimed their bikes in the direction of home, at the dying sun. Pockets of chirping crickets provided the only noise.

  “How long you think until it’s all the way down?” Abby asked.

  “Fifteen minutes or so,” Omar said.

  “Just enough time to get home before dark if we hurry,” Natalie said.

  Abby glanced at Parker. “You don’t really want to go cricket hunting at Cel’s do you?”

  Parker listened to the nearby crickets for a moment, then shook his head. “It doesn’t matter.”

  “Good,” Abby said, and pedaled away. “Let’s go.”

  The clouds morphed and the sky lost color as the hunters crossed streets and cut across lots. By the time they merged onto Sylvia Street on the outer rim of the Gateway neighborhood, only a sliver of burnt orange lined the horizon. They stopped on the sidewalk beneath a street light where Sylvia merged with Yankee Road—the road Omar and Natalie needed to take north, Abby and Parker, south.

  “Well,” Parker said. “This is where we part ways.”

  Natalie took off her hat, wiped the sweat from her forehead with her forearm, and slid the hat back on. “Do you guys think we should—” She cut off and turned her attention to the road behind them when the sound of an approaching engine challenged her words.

  All heads swiveled to follow the red Mustang with tinted windows as it sped by at well above the posted thirty-mile-per-hour limit.

  “Oh, shit,” Parker said as the car’s brake lights lit up, and it abruptly pulled to the side of the road about half a block away. “Is that Jose’s car?”

  “I don’t know,” Omar answered. “It’s the same color and model, but I didn’t look at the plate. His starts with BLP.”

  As they squinted at the backend of the Mustang trying to make out the plate, waiting for any sign of movement, an unsettling quiver danced up Parker’s legs and spine, urging him to move. No matter how miniscule, he at least had a chance of surviving a face-to-face encounter with Jose. But he and the other hunters had no chance at all surviving a car-to-bike encounter. His eyes bounced from Natalie to Omar to Abby, back to the taillights and rumbling exhaust pipe. The engine revved, relaxed, revved. “I think we should get out of here.” He met eyes with Omar. “You guys stay off the roads as much as you can. I’ll start the round robin in thirty minutes.”

  Omar nodded, and with Natalie on his tail, rounded his bike north and pedaled into the dark alley that separated the houses facing Yankee Road and a seemingly endless line of storage units.

  When Parker turned to tell Abby to follow him, she was already veering into the same alley but on the opposite side of Sylvia Street, heading south. Parker called out her name as he wheeled Cel’s bike around. At the foot of the alley, he paused and glanced back at the Mustang again. A few seconds passed before it peeled away from the curb, U-turning his direction. When the headlights popped on, he chased after Abby with everything he had. The cat and mouse game was on.

  He passed three backyards before he heard the Mustang turn into the alley. Abby was two houses ahead of him. “Cut through the Collins’ yard,” he yelled, and she curved into a fenceless backyard on her left.

  At the edge the Collins’s yard, Parker looked back over his shoulder. The Mustang had stopped twenty yards behind him, where a dumpster had been irregularly set and partially jutted out into the alley, shrinking the space for vehicles to pass. That along with the uneven terrain fraught with crate
rs and loose, large rocks had apparently given the driver pause. The Mustang engine gave a defiant throaty roar, and then it began reversing out of the alley.

  Parker hurried through the Collins yard and turned south onto a fifty-yard uphill section of Yankee Road. Abby was on the sidewalk two houses away, struggling to maintain her speed, repeatedly checking the road behind her. Parker caught up with her and encouraged her onward, repeatedly glancing back as well. When they reached the top of the hill, the Mustang swerved onto Yankee Road, headed straight at them.

  “Come on!” Parker hopped the curb into a vacant lot, and Abby followed.

  Near the back of the lot, Parker’s front tire clipped a hunk of discarded metal hidden in the overgrown weeds. The impact jolted his hands off of the handlebars. As he slammed onto the ground and the bike crashed down on his back, the Mustang screeched to a stop in front of the lot.

  Abby slowed as she approached Parker, panic etched on her face. “Parker? Are you okay?”

  He squirmed his way out from under the bike and jumped to his feet. “Keep going,” he ordered as he righted the bike. She obeyed, and as she slipped down the alley at the back of the lot, the Mustang driver gunned the engine. Parker threw his leg over the frame, found the pedal, and then chanced a glance at the Mustang. The driver’s side window was lowered about six inches, smoke curling from the opening. When Parker forced his weight down on the pedal and began rolling toward the alley, waves of amused laughter drifted from the car. As he picked up speed and disappeared behind the neighboring house, a number of Spanish words caught up with him before the Mustang sped away, leaving the rustle of flung loose gravel in its wake.