Rattlesnake & Son

by Jonathan Miller

  “Are you having a seizure or something?” I asked Marley.

  Before he could answer, an armed man in desert camouflage urged us to take our seats.

  The freshman students—both boys and girls—were from all races, including a few Sikhs in turbans. Still, there was something very conformist about all of them. From the state championship banners on the wall, everyone could see the school prided itself on its swim team, and each prospective student looked like they could swim across Elephant Butte and back. I already sensed that they had scoped out Marley and saw him drowning. Hell, I never mastered the butterfly myself, much less the back stroke.

  The camouflaged man pushed us into the final row of seats in the very back. Marley started to ask him something, but the man pantomimed reaching for his gun.

  “No time,” he said. “Sit down!”

  No one sat with us in the back row. Apparently, there was a lower school down in the valley, so most of the freshman already knew each other and sat with their friends in the rows in front of and below us. The others were local New Mexico kids on scholarship who bonded with peers they knew from local public schools. The few new kids must have bonded over prayer in chapel. We felt very much alone.

  The head of the school, Dean Damon Korn, entered. He had a shaved head and wore a khaki suit with a purple tie, his idea of a "power clash." Yet once he walked to the podium, with the gigantic American flag behind him, he could be George C Scott in Patton, addressing the troops.

  Korn gestured with an outstretched arm, palm facing down. Even though he was merely gesturing for us to be seated with his right hand, it looked like that straight arm wanted to “heil.”

  The chattering stopped after another half-heil. Korn welcomed us then gave the standard prep school speech. He even added the old cliché, “Look to the left of you, now look to the right. Soon, one of you won’t be here.

  “I’m kidding of course,” he said. “We will do everything to make sure you succeed here at CCMI—I mean Caldera Academy.”

  By CCMI, he must have meant the school’s former name, Caldera Christian Military Institute. I was even more uneasy now. Dew and Denise leaned closer together, and Denise put her hand on Marley’s shoulder. As Marley squirmed, we all squirmed in sympathy with him.

  There wasn’t much time. While school didn’t start until a week from Monday, move in was this Friday. There probably wasn’t a hell week, more likely what Dew called a “hell weekend.” That could be more intense.

  The dean kept talking, but the troops were getting restless. This was a school that prided itself on discipline and faith, two things I had in short supply. He talked a lot about training the “leaders” of tomorrow. After the half-heils. I half expected him to start speaking in German.

  After a few more minutes talking about discipline and faith. Dean Damon Korn smiled. “Any questions?”

  “Where’s the bathroom?”

  I didn’t have to be a psychic to know who asked that question. It came from a squeaky voice with a New York accent. I finally knew why Marley was squirming. God knows he had drunk all that water. I clenched my fists. This was my fault as much as Marley’s.

  Everyone laughed. They might as well be laughing at me.

  “Around here, you need to learn to hold it in,” Dean Korn said.

  Who was the doomed student in A Separate Peace? Marley was already the Leper Lepellier of Las Cruces, even before the end of orientation.

  The camouflaged man nodded to Marley that he could run to the bathroom. The poor boy nearly tripped on the way, and then had trouble opening the door as he did his little dance.

  Everyone laughed even louder.

  With Marley gone, the dean started the introduction of the faculty and staff. My eyes perked up with the introduction of the creative arts instructor, Ms. Yvette Castaneda. She was young, attractive, and wore a brightly colored outfit, as if she’d taken her class on a field trip to paint an uplifting mural on a Juarez wall. She was the woman from the video.

  “Love you guys!” she yelled. She told a private joke in Spanish and students whooped it up.

  The last man to be introduced was head of campus security, the camouflaged man who had shown us to our seats. “Let’s give it up for Pistol Pat Chino!”

  “Pistol Pat!” everyone yelled as if they knew the lyrics to a song that we hadn’t learned yet. The New Mexico State University Aggies mascot was Pistol Pete and “Pistol Pat” was that mascot’s evil twin brother who dressed in purple. I vaguely remembered that one of Luna’s other half-sisters, Mia, had used the name Pat Chino from our last adventure, (it’s a long story), but this Pat, apparently, was the real deal.

  I could see why someone would steal his name. Pistol Pat Chino was a bad ass who would look naked without a firearm.

  Pistol Pat pointed his fingers at the students like a rooting tooting cowboy. The students then whooped it up, pointing their own fingers back at him.

  “Bang! Bang! Bang!” they yelled. “Beware o’ Caldera!”

  Beware o’ Caldera? That was the school cheer?

  Not be strong, be brave, or be creative, but beware? What should we beware of?

  Marley returned from the bathroom and accidentally slammed the door. The pistol play stopped, and the other boys and girls started laughing. I felt a rattling of the stained-glass windows, and even more intense rattling inside my head.

  Did Marley do that? Denise said he sometimes didn’t know his powers. I didn’t want to tempt fate. I turned to him and pantomimed zipping my fly, just so this moment would end.

  Marley adjusted himself and hurried to his seat.

  “Let’s bow our heads for one moment,” the dean said. I was half-expecting a prayer, but this was supposedly a non-denominational school. There was still some rumbling, must be from the trucks over on the freeway, right?

  After the world’s longest and loudest moment of silence, the dean dismissed the auditorium. “Hope we don’t get any aftershocks,” he said.

  After Dew and Marley walked ahead, Denise kept pace with me. “I’m afraid it will get worse if Marley ever hits puberty.”

  “He did that? The little earthquake?”

  She nodded.

  • • •

  At the lemonade reception, out in the dirt courtyard without shade, the lemonade was watery and lukewarm, and tasted like another yellowy liquid. The lemonade had been left in the sun too long, much like the school. Of course, the accompanying cookies were dry and stale. We looked for some shade, but there was none left.

  “This tastes like donkey piss,” Dew said, spitting out the lemonade and her cookie.

  No one talked to us. Everyone else must have liked the food.

  “Let’s get out of here,” I said.

  “Hogwarts from Hell,” Dew said again. “It’s like Slytherin took over.”

  On the way to the parking lot, we encountered Dean Korn, who glanced at us as if he was going to ask us for our papers. “Your name is Cruiser Arnold, right?”

  “I think I’m going to go with Marley now.”

  “I’m Dan Shepard, his father. His mother is Luna Cruz, the new head of the spaceport.” I didn’t want to say the Arnold name any more either.

  “We’ll keep an eye on you,” he said to Marley.

  Marley squirmed.

  The dean left and approached the bully and his father. “General, so good to see you,” he said to the bully’s dad.

  The bully’s dad was a general. A general outranked a spaceport administrator in this part of the world.

  We started to slither away. But before we made it to the car, Pistol Pat Chino came over.

  “I’m Pistol Pat,” he said, pointing down to his guns while flexing his biceps. Were even his guns in the school colors? “Hopefully I never have to use these on a student.”

  “I hope not, too,” Marley said
.

  “I’ve heard your name before,” I said. “Well, somebody used the name Pat Chino in a case of mine a few years ago.”

  “Not surprised,” Chino said. “I heard about that when I was over in Afghanistan in Special Forces. I almost got kicked out the military because they thought I was the wrong Pat Chino who was getting in trouble over here. Somebody stole all our personal data when our unit got moved overseas because they figured we’d never find out about it. Hell, it was some chick who pretended to be me and got hired as a paralegal at the attorney general’s office. How did you find out about it?”

  I certainly didn’t want to tell the story of my interaction with the faux Pat Chino. The real Pat Chino sensed I knew more about it than I’d reveal.

  We didn’t say another word, and Denise gunned the vehicle out of the Caldera the minute we crossed through the campus gate.

  Marley was wiping away tears. “I don’t want to go there on Friday!”

  Time to be a dad, not play a dad. As we passed the cemetery, I touched Marley on the arm. “I’ll talk to your mom about getting you into another school. I know the public schools closed registration, but I’m sure we can find a way.”

  “Please help me,” he said. “I start here in five days.”

  I looked at the cemetery through the rear window. I already knew that Marley wouldn’t make it through the year here. When I looked at the single tear that he was wiping away, he knew that he wouldn’t make it either.

  What could I do to save him before Friday? As we drove back on the interstate, I started to come up with a plan. Time to be the rattlesnake lawyer for real. Rattlesnake Domestic Relations Lawyer.

  Chapter 8

  My Fair Lady Justice

  We dropped off Dew at a crappy NMSU grad student dorm on campus and did the jornada del muerto in reverse. I felt the same butterflies on the jornada that I usually felt before a trial. Well the butterflies I got before a trial I cared about. I was worried. I had only known my son for a few hours, so how could I convince Luna to beware o’ Caldera?

  I started to come up with the semblance of a plan. After the longest seventy-seven miles in my life, Denise dropped us off at the Luna Landing and then left with her typical high velocity, off on a mysterious errand.

  Luna was in her work out gear, black biker shorts and a blue athletic tank-top, pouring prickly pear lemonade in clear plastic cups to workmen who sat in the shade. They thanked her profusely. Was I jealous already?

  One of the workers chugged his tea, looked at me, and smiled. “You’re lucky, ese,” he said, assuming that I was still with Luna.

  Lucky?

  Maybe it was the fact that she looked so informal that I felt comfortable enough to approach her. Before I got there, she put up her hand and ushered Marley and me inside.

  “Since Marley doesn’t have school for a few days, can he stay up with me?” I asked.

  “Can I, Mom?” he asked. “Can I?”

  “We’ll see,” she said.

  She looked at me, “Let’s you and I talk outside by the pool.”

  • • •

  Marley stayed behind as Luna and I walked out to the patio. I followed her through a side gate in the adobe wall, and down a tiled walkway to a gated pool, that had a view down to the Rio. It was still well over a hundred, maybe over a hundred and ten, so we walked to the shadows under the hillside.

  The pool area tile job was finished, except for the corner, as if the patio needed one last piece of a puzzle. The pool itself had an odd shape, almost as if the architect wanted it to look like Elephant Butte reservoir. It was narrow enough so only one person could swim laps in it.

  “We can talk here,” Luna said. She pressed a button and water gurgled out of a small fountain at the base of the pool. Although the deck wasn’t finished, the pool was full.

  “What’s going on?” I asked.

  “I’ve told you that I love my son dearly,” Luna said. “I’ve sacrificed everything for him, and I am here in this god forsaken town doing a job I’m not remotely qualified for, for one reason and one reason only. That’s to provide for my son.”

  “I don’t get it. Are things really that bad?”

  “Disgraced CEOs from dying companies don’t get golden parachutes like they did in the old days. If I screw this up, and our satellite doesn’t make it into orbit, we will be out on our elephant buttes. The company owns this house and all my net worth is tied up in a worthless stock. At least Marley would have a roof over his head at the school while I have my nervous breakdown.”

  “I’m so sorry. I had no idea.”

  “That’s why I need your help. I can’t do it alone, even with Denise helping out.”

  We sat for a moment and looked at the waters of the pool. I saw our reflections until a gust of wind scrambled them in the waves. “But why do you have to send him to this horrible school?” I asked.

  “I couldn’t send him to public school. You know that. They are not equipped to teach a gifted/special ed kid like him. And, I can’t homeschool him. No other private school would take him this late in the summer. He will still come home every weekend, after the first few weeks.”

  “That school is all wrong,” I said. “I’m genuinely worried about him.”

  “I didn’t have a chance to check it out. That’s why I sent you.”

  “Well, he shouldn’t go there. Not even. Does my opinion count for anything?”

  “You don’t know Marley like I know him. He needs structure.”

  “I know him better than you think. He’s like I was at fourteen.”

  She smiled. “I knew you’d say that. Today was a test.”

  “Did I pass?”

  Luna had been a judge, and now went into judge mode. “Let me think.”

  She closed her eyes and pretended to weigh the scales, just like Lady Justice. She then opened her eyes and smiled. “I want you to be a part of my son, our son’s, life.”

  “What does that mean? Do I get a say where our son goes to school?”

  She frowned and turned her head away, down toward the Rio off in the distance. In law, we called this one question too many. I had pushed it too far. Or had I?

  Luna thought for another moment, and did the Lady Justice thing with her hands again.

  “He’ll start at Caldera on Friday,” she finally said. “It’s too late for him to go anywhere else. But you’ll get a say in how long he stays there. Maybe a year, maybe just a semester if he gets decent grades and can transfer somewhere.”

  “I can live with that. Do we need to get that in writing?”

  “I’m way ahead of you.” Luna was always way ahead of me. She had really thought this through. Denise appeared out of nowhere with a stack of papers and a notary stamp. Had Denise drafted everything over the last few minutes, or driven to a courthouse to pick it all up?

  “What’s this?” I asked.

  “Temporary joint legal custody forms. For the week, at least.”

  “Hell yes.” I didn’t need a pen. I would sign in blood.

  “Don’t worry, I’ve got a pen,” Luna said after Denise handed her one.

  I signed so quickly that I nearly ripped the pages. Denise took a picture of the paperwork with her phone, clicked a few buttons, and nodded.

  “What did she just do?”

  “She just filed the paperwork. It’ll be signed by a judge tomorrow morning.”

  Denise wasn’t using psychic powers, just the internet. As a criminal lawyer, I had forgotten that all civil pleadings could be filed electronically.

  No one said anything for a moment, we stared at the cool waters of the fountain.

  “What’s next?” I asked.

  “Another test. I need you to take him with you for the next day or so,” she said, still staring at the fountain.

  “The next day or so?
”

  “We’ll play it by ear. If he does all right in your custody, he can stay with you for a few days before school starts on Friday. If he doesn’t . . .”

  “I have to prove myself to you?”

  “You have to prove yourself to him.”

  I looked at Luna in her sweaty athletic gear. The blond in her hair was losing to the gray emerging from her roots. If she was a barracuda, she was a barracuda out of water here on the patio. She kept looking over the wall down to the Rio as if she wanted to swim to the ocean. At least the pool here was finally calm. She took a pebble and skimmed the surface. Little waves spread out in a perfect circle.

  She wiped away a tear, hoping I wouldn’t see it. “I’m doing it all for him. If the launch goes badly . . .”

  “I have a little money,” I said. “I can help out.”

  “I might have to take you up on that if the launch goes south.”

  I hesitated a second, then gave her a hug. She hugged me back.

  As we hugged, she wilted slightly in my arms, and I remembered why I loved Luna so much. She made everyone around her better. She just didn’t know it. I thought about the way she corrected Marley; she’d had to be both mother and father to him since our divorce.

  “I’ll take care of Marley for the next day or so,” I said. “And then maybe we can figure out a way to keep him out of that school. I can pay for private tutors.”

  She let go of me. “We’ll see,” she said. “Like I said, he needs structure, or we’ll have a repeat of his Walmart adventure.”

  “I’ll take him on a scared straight tour,” I said.

  “Scared straight?” she asked. “I like that. I like that a lot. Will you try to scare him away from being a criminal, or scare him away from being a lawyer?”

  “Both,” I said.

  She kissed me on the cheek. “Time for you to be a father again.”

  If this was a court case, I had survived summary judgment by the opposing party, but the case wasn’t over yet. Everyone had a plan until they got hugged.

  • • •

  Marley was waiting for us back in the living room. Luna nodded. “You can go with your dad for the next few days.”