Tentatively, Logan sat on the higher step. Only his head and shoulders above water.
Blythe turned the dials. The calm pool upwelled into a churning froth.
“Hot,” he said.
“Uh-huh, so your pores can swallow those magic minerals.” Her words conjured her mother. For every scrape, patch of eczema, or bonfire burn she and Jackie endured as children, their mother would bring them to the waters, and it did seem miraculous, how the natural minerals soothed their wounds, rejuvenated their spirits. She remembered the fun of breath-holding contests with her sister in the warm shallows of a public pool, no eye sting when you went under. Like swimming in holy water. At the deep end, Mama sunbathed like a starlet, sweeps of blond hair pushed back by her shades. Blythe could see her there, propped up on her elbows, pretending not to notice stares from men, or her daughters calling for her attention.
Blythe pointed a stern finger at her boy. “Twenty minutes, young man.”
In the suite, she finished unpacking the suitcases Jackie had put in the car for them, then placed calls to her booking agent, her boss at the diner, and Logan’s school. Told them the same lie: they’d been in a bad car accident, suffering injuries that would keep them home for a couple of weeks.
Twenty minutes later, while Logan leaned against the foot of the queen bed, eyes drooped, Blythe unstrapped his gel pack and finished drying him with a towel.
“I miss Aunt Jackie,” he yawned, lying back in bed.
Blythe said, “Me too.” But the boy was already asleep. She slid a cool sheet over him until she got to his hurt arm, the blue sling. Quiet tears overtook her. Yes, she had moved in with a creep, just like Jackie said. Stupid. A stupid, bad mother—that’s what she was.
In the kitchenette, she made herself a cup of coffee and leaned against the counter. The late March afternoon had risen to eighty-one degrees. Through the wall glass, in the distance above a windbreak, she found the snowy peak of San Jacinto, a steady companion her whole life. Logan’s sun-bleached hair was almost as white as the mountaintop. Looking at his resting face, she feared there would be no father figure for him ever again, no happy family.
She checked e-mails with her phone. Nothing from the UFC yet. Most of the women at the audition had been in their early twenties. How many more years could her body, pushing thirty, compete? Not many, but what a way to go, right? Traveling the country to strut the best fight venues, streamed internationally. Even if they didn’t take her, Blythe resolved right then to save every penny and move herself and her boy to LA anyway. Grab some casting calls for movies.
Digging out the prescription bottle in her purse, she took a Vicodin and dropped it into the steaming mug to melt it. Her broken nose throbbed. Breathing deeply brought a twinge of pain, a chronic reminder that, once Sandro had released his choke hold, she’d fallen to the floor, her ribs hitting a metal leg of the dummy on the way down, then a face-plant into an iron dumbbell plate. Out cold, like Musaff Ali.
Her phone vibrated on the counter. There were three texts from Sandro:
i wan 2 die 4 what I don
u no i lov u
and logan
So, he had his cell phone now, which meant he was back on the street already. Sure enough, a new post on his Instagram page promoted his upcoming fight, in ten days, at the sports arena again. He was out there, free as a tumbleweed. She wondered if she should have pressed charges. No. Somehow she would handle things her own way. For starters, she blocked his cell number.
While Logan slept, Blythe went out to the Camry, hoodie pulled down around her face, and retrieved the weighted beach towel folded up under the driver’s seat. Locking her self in the bathroom, she placed the towel on the counter. Her hands undid the folds from a snub-nosed Diamondback .38 Special, the handgun her father had given her when she turned sixteen. And a box of shells. After loading the weapon, she shoved it into the waistband of her jeans and dropped the tail of her blouse over it. The gun’s stability felt good against the small of her back.
First gun she ever fired was her father’s Sterlingworth shotgun, in the open desert. She was nine. Got thrown to the ground after an ugly explosion. She didn’t want any part of the shotgun after that. But he made her stop crying and put the shotgun in her hands again. Told her to say I am not afraid then fire the other barrel. The kick wasn’t so bad that time because he showed her how to be ready for it. And she felt proud by his smile, one coffee can blown off its hook.
The gun gave her courage. Since leaving the hospital, she’d been avoiding her own reflection. Now, taking a deep breath, Blythe looked into the cabinet mirror. An apparition stared back. A face with gauze cross-taped over the swollen nose, ruined by the macabre colors of Sandro’s rage. She experienced again the incredible pressure of his arm around her neck, a steel bar compressing her carotid, his feral growl in her ear. She had quick-tapped his forearm like she saw them do in the octagon. The gesture meant you’d had enough. But there was no ref to jump in.
When she came out of the bathroom, Logan was awake, sitting on the edge of the bed.
“How’s the shoulder, my little man?”
“Aches.”
His sling was askew, so she had him stand still while she adjusted it. A bolt of pain made him suck in air. She pulled a Vicodin from her jeans pocket and held it up for him. “After I get you some water, I want you to take half of this, to make it hurt less.”
Logan shook his head. “I don’t need it. Pain is good.”
The back of Blythe’s neck tingled.
Whenever he and Sandro had roughhoused, and Logan inevitably got bonked somehow, Sandro coached him to tough it out, pulled him back from tears, and said, Pain is good … pain makes you stronger … She had loved the way Sandro taught him to be strong.
“Please don’t ever say those words again,” she said.
“Why? What did I say?”
“I’m sorry. Your mama is just in a strange way right now. Never mind, give me a hug.” She pulled him close, careful of his sling arm.
Stepping back, Logan held it up for her, the .38, gripped in his hand. “Is this a real gun?”
Blythe eased it from his grasp, but he still held it with his eyes. Her son deserved a straight answer, she decided. Especially now. She laid the .38 across her palm, barrel pointed to the side. “This is to keep us safe.”
“From him?” Logan said.
She nodded.
“But he’s in jail now, right?”
“He won’t stay in jail, honey. That’s why we can’t go home for a little while.”
Logan reached for the gun again, but she tucked it back in her jeans. “Time to put it away.”
The boy’s eyes converged on the gauze over her nose. “It’s my fault he hurt you, Mom. I know I wasn’t supposed to use Sandro’s stuff.”
“No, it isn’t your fault, don’t ever think that.” Blythe’s voice constricted. “It’s my fault. I couldn’t protect you, so you protected me instead.”
He shook his head. “But I didn’t. I ran away.”
“So you could call 911.” She held his face in her hands. “That was a very smart, awesome thing you did.”
He shrugged, then his eyes darted behind her. “Mom, a scorpion!” he said, pointing to the marble floor.
The bug idled only a few feet from them, pinkish exoskeleton a translucent window to its dark innards. The stinger was folded downward into the lowered tail.
“Stay here,” Blythe said.
As she drifted toward the invader, it did not back away. The stinger rose. With her boot, she quickly stepped on the tail end. Squatting, she used the butt of the gun as a hammer, twisting each blow into the writhing body. Even after the scorpion went still, she kept on hammering and hammering until Logan touched her shoulder. “Okay, Mom.”
Lodge time elapsed in a reel of mindless TV, board games on the bed, takeout and pizza deliveries. Logan, young and resilient, didn’t need the sling for long as his range of motion in the shoulder improved. Blythe
’s rib pain faded enough so she could tolerate sit-ups and some floor exercises. The bruises on her face slowly cleared. Her nose, bandage-free, now had a subtle curve to the left but thankfully wasn’t flattened any.
Sometimes Logan cried out in his sleep. He told her he was having nightmares of Sandro chasing him. And he was drifting inward, away from her. Was he shifting blame to her for what happened?
Sandro had done this to her son, to them, and she hated him for that. Yet there were also moments when her mind replayed the good times and she pined for what could have been. It was a maddening cycle that manifested as long late-night soaks after Logan crashed, plus Vicodin, washed down with whatever beer was on special at the liquor store.
She was soaking this way when her sister called just after midnight.
Soon as Blythe answered, Jackie blurted, “Your creep was here.”
“Sandro? When?”
“Like three minutes ago.” Blythe heard the crackle of a joint being hit, hard, before her sister continued. “Fucker wakes me up knocking on the window of the master. He thought I was you, kept calling your name.”
“What happened?”
“Not much. I showed him Dad’s shotgun and he got gone like real fast.”
“You had Dad’s shotgun that handy?”
“So, wait, all this shit’s gone down, and you think I wouldn’t sleep with it like a lover?”
Anger, its molten lava, gushed from Blythe’s chest, up her neck and into her cheeks. Now he was terrorizing her sister. “I’m sorry, Jackie, for all of this. I should’ve gotten a restraining order.”
“Hon, I just showed him two barrels’ worth of restraining order.” Her joint crackled again. “Just come home. You can have your room back.”
“Not yet.” Blythe wanted off the phone, to think, to plan, to do what? “Soon though. Love ya loads, sis.”
“Do not go back to that creep, Blythe, no matter how much he begs.”
Next morning, northwest of the valley, past the wind farms where a dirt lane dead-ended into open desert, Blythe stood behind Logan, a hundred yards from the car. His arms were extended, the .38 in his hands. Blythe reached around him and held his wrists to help him aim. He needed both thumbs to cock the hammer.
“Just relax,” she said, resting her hands on his shoulders. “Now exhale as you squeeze the trigger like I showed you.”
A bull’s-eye target, drawn on cardboard from a pizza box, was stuck to the spines of a saguaro cactus twenty feet away. Beyond, the desert raced toward the apron of the mountains. Blythe loved the desert at this hour, how the early sun on its upward arc gave this world a flaxen sheen.
She felt Logan’s shoulders tense. The gun barrel flinched upward with a crack like a giant whip snapping, followed by three echoes slapping off the distant rock face.
Logan lowered the gun. “Cool.”
“Right?” Blythe said, mussing his hair.
“How far does a bullet go?”
“Far, but we want to hit the target, not the mountainside.” She positioned herself behind him again.
When he brought the gun up to the target, Blythe spoke into his ear: “Pretend the cardboard is Sandro’s face.”
Logan’s hands tightened around the gun. “Yeah … I hate him.”
“I hate him too,” Blythe heard herself say, which immediately brought pangs of guilt, as if she were somehow betraying Sandro.
Three days later, on an unusually cool early April evening, they were at the sports arena. Blythe knew the promoter, so they’d slipped through a staff entrance to avoid the pat downs and security wands. She and Logan sat in a reserved row alongside the octagon. Biggest crowd she’d ever seen, maybe five thousand heads. She had taken extra time with her hair and wore her short black leather jacket over a mauve blouse. Tight jeans. She wanted Sandro to see what he could never touch again. Never is a long time came a voice deep in her mind.
“Fuck off,” she said aloud.
Embarrassed, she looked down at Logan but he hadn’t heard her over the crowd noise.
Logan sat frowning, hands clutching the armrests. He had not wanted to come, but she told him if he did, if he met Sandro in the eye, the nightmares would go away. For herself, she hoped it would reduce her flashbacks of the incident.
The first three fights blew by. Then, impossibly, the emcee was back in the cage announcing Sandro Garcia and his opponent, Hank “Inglorious” Stoddard, also undefeated, for the amateur super-welterweight matchup.
Attacked by nauseous fear, Blythe struggled to hold it together. Logan sat low, head sunk into the neck hole of his sweatshirt. She pulled it back down under his chin. “C’mon, Logan. Show him you’re a brave boy, not a turtle.”
He sat up and repeated the word turtle, and for the first time since the assault he actually laughed. The music of it filled her with relief and she laughed with him, thankful for this momentary lifting of a long dark stretch.
Both fighters were in the cage now, loosening up as Chicano rap pumped through the house.
Against her nervous fear, Blythe felt the excitement of fight night coming back.
Sandro shadowboxed and shuffled in her direction.
Blythe stood. Look at me, asshole, she willed, even as her knees trembled.
When he saw her, his hands dropped.
“Stand up, Logan, and look at him,” Blythe said, reaching her hand down for his. “C’mon, Logan.” But her boy had slumped into his chair again.
Through the mesh of the cage, Sandro smiled at her. Blythe did not smile back. She felt untethered, light-headed.
The fighters were called to the center of the cage for instructions from the referee. In a neon-orange sport bikini, some redhead walked the octagon perimeter hoisting a round one card. Decent legs but no flow in her stride, Blythe thought.
When the buzzer sounded round one, she sat, letting herself breathe again.
Inglorious, a muscled slab with a shaved skull, charged in and went for a hip toss. Sandro evaded it and they both ended up on the mat, bodies grappling like angry crabs. Sandro’s panther speed allowed him to slip behind Inglorious and throw his right arm around his throat. He wrenched Inglorious back and cradled him between his knees, trapping his neck in the vise of his forearms. In a lion-killer choke, Inglorious was at Sandro’s mercy now.
The crowd cheered, and up came the chant: “San-dro … San-dro …”
Blythe knew what it felt like to be Inglorious, and it reminded her how easily Sandro could have killed her, or her beautiful boy.
“Can we go?” Logan said.
“Not yet, honey.”
Any moment now, Inglorious would tap, or black out. But for some reason Sandro released him. Both men jumped up and faced off again. Boos erupted at Sandro for not finishing the job. Why would he do that? Blythe wondered. He never gave his opponents a break.
Sandro’s feet planted. He looked right at Blythe and winked, doing nothing when Inglorious threw a right hook that connected solidly against his jaw. The crowd moaned with the impact.
Inglorious went on throwing hooks, uppercuts, elbows to the face, knees to the body. Almost everything landed, the crowd roaring. Yet Sandro, staggered, one eye badly cut, threw nothing back.
Boos and jeers. Plastic beer bottles struck the cage.
The fighters stood slightly apart now, gathering their breath.
Sandro dropped his hands again and stood, as if waiting for a bus.
Reflexively, Blythe shot to her feet. “What the fuck, Sandro!?” she shouted through her hands. Others nearby stood and repeated, “What the fuck! What the fuck!” and soon, the whole arena joined, even Logan. Blythe’s body vibrated with the energy of the crowd.
This was her city, these were her people, in all their raunchy glory, who bled Mojave sand, bathed in the lustful winds, who were durable as cactus against the changing climate of their lives. Jackie was her people, the coolest, most giving person Blythe knew. Didn’t she and Logan need a person like that by their side for the long h
aul? Fuck yes we do. Fuck if the three of them weren’t a happy family whose love for one another ran pure as the waters beneath them. So fuck LA anyhow.
I’m a hard core of the low desert, like my father, my sister, and now, my son.
The WTF chant faded and everyone sat back down. Looking over at her boy, Blythe grew teary-eyed, his tender profile bracing her decision.
When she looked toward the cage again, Sandro met her eyes. He nodded as Inglorious rushed in and delivered an uppercut into Sandro’s chin. Backed against the mesh of the cage, face a smear of blood, Sandro seemed doomed as Inglorious kept on swinging, Sandro’s head getting banged side to side. After what seemed like eons to Blythe, Sandro broke away, so quickly that for a moment Inglorious punched at nothing but mesh, until he looked left: Sandro’s fist blazed in striking Inglorious’s jaw, hard enough to send his mouthpiece flying.
Inglorious crumpled to the canvas.
A roar swelled from the crowd.
With seconds left in round one, the ref stopped the fight.
Inglorious lay brain-rattled. Sandro wasn’t much better off. He stood swaying, fingers grasping the mesh to hold himself up as he gazed toward Blythe. Franco got in his face, screaming angrily. The trainer didn’t understand what had gone down.
But Blythe did now.
Sandro had taken a horrendous beating, nearly ruined his perfect record, and possibly his whole career, for her. That meant something, didn’t it, his willingness to risk his UFC dream? What other man would do that? Since growing up wild on the mean streets of Mexico City, Sandro had known no other way than the fist. Violence was his currency, his language, and now, his apology to her.
The emcee announced Sandro the winner by knockout to fresh boos and cheers. Entourages of both fighters swelled into the octagon until Blythe could no longer see Sandro.
“Can we go now?” Logan said.
In the concession area behind the bleachers, Blythe bought a draft of PBR then leaned against the sidewall. Logan beside her, they watched yabbering men line up to order schooners before the next fight.
“You said we were going, Mom.”
As if not hearing the boy, Blythe popped half a Vicodin, chased it down with gulps of beer. By the time she drained the plastic cup, she knew she had to see him. To finish things, one way or another.
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