Last Summer of the Death Warriors

by Francesco X Stork

  It occurred to him that he should just start running. He had some money in his pocket. He could offer the men he saw down the street forty dollars to drive him back into town. Or he could just walk back. How long would that take him? It took them about five minutes to get there and the woman was driving around eighty miles an hour. If you drive for five minutes at eighty miles an hour, how many miles have you gone? Why did he keep giving himself math problems when there was no way for him to figure them out? He thought of the time D.Q. had asked him how long it would take to walk from St. Anthony’s to the mountains. “On those things?” he had said, pointing at D.Q.’s legs.

  He was walking behind D.Q.’s mother and Johnny Corazon, who were whispering to each other. The guy was wearing red gym shorts and yellow flip-flops. Next to him was D.Q.’s mother in her pink skirt, her back very straight, like the queen of some cold country. If he ran now, would he be able to find his way back? Johnny Corazon was holding the door open for him. “Come in, come in. Mi casa es su casa,” he was saying. Pancho was about to go into the house of a witch doctor wearing gym shorts.

  As soon as he entered the house, he was hit with an overly sweet smell that made it hard to breathe. The room was dark except for the light of dozens of flickering candles scattered on shelves, on tables, even on the floor. Against a wall stood an altar with a statue of the Virgen de Guadalupe surrounded by a string of multicolored Christmas lights. The altar had a white tablecloth. Next to the statue, on either side, were two milk bottles filled with large black and brown feathers. The wall behind the statue was plastered with pictures of people. In the middle of the room was a cot covered with a Mexican sarape. A black sofa and an assortment of chairs were arranged around the cot like theater seats.

  “Sit, sit.” Johnny Corazon moved some chairs out of the way and pointed at the sofa. D.Q.’s mother sat in the middle and patted the space next to her. Pancho grabbed a metal chair instead. Johnny Corazon pulled a chair in front of Pancho and dropped the bag with the cigarettes on the floor. He crossed his legs. “Well,” he said, “here we all are.” His unblinking eyes fixed on Pancho as if trying to peer down his insides.

  “I gotta get back pretty soon,” Pancho said uncomfortably.

  “Excuse me, do you mind?” Johnny Corazon leaned across and stretched his arms so that his hands were a few inches from Pancho’s face. Pancho flung his head back as far as the chair would let him. “I just need to feel your aura for one second.” He closed his eyes and spread his fingers. “Oof,” Johnny Corazon said. He opened his eyes and put his hands flat on his lap.

  “What is it?” D.Q.’s mother asked.

  “That’s a lot of anger you’re packing, son.” Johnny Corazon touched his heart as if in pain. Pancho narrowed his eyes. No one had called him “son” since his father died.

  “I’m not angry,” Pancho said.

  “No?” Johnny Corazon stuck his right hand out like he was about to bless Pancho. “Maybe you don’t feel angry anymore, but anger is there. It’s dried and set like concrete. It’s the worst kind.”

  Pancho looked away. When his father died, his father’s friends had sent flowers to the funeral home. He was surprised at how many flowers surrounded the closed wooden coffin. Johnny Corazon’s living room had the same sickening smell.

  D.Q.’s mother said, “Johnny, tell Pancho about the people you healed.” Pancho followed her eyes and saw she was looking at the pictures behind the altar.

  Johnny Corazon uncrossed his legs, stood up, went to the pictures, searched for a few moments, and then removed one from the wall. He sat down again and offered the picture to Pancho. It was a black-and-white picture of a boy who looked a lot like Memo back at St. Anthony’s. D.Q.’s mother scooted to the edge of the sofa and stretched her neck to see the picture. Pancho handed it to her. “Ahh,” she exclaimed, “Esteban.”

  “Esteban is twelve years old. He had a rare form of lymphoma, a very deadly cancer. He’s in total remission.”

  “Johnny healed him,” D.Q.’s mother said.

  “No,” Johnny Corazon corrected her. “He was healed through me. I don’t feel like I’m responsible for the healings. I’m a conduit.”

  “A what?” Pancho said.

  “Powers work through me.”

  “What kind of powers?”

  “Good powers,” D.Q.’s mother piped up. Johnny Corazon motioned to her that it was all right, that he could handle Pancho’s questions on his own. “Sorry,” she said.

  “You’re anxious. You want to get back. Someone is expecting you. Children perhaps? Don’t worry, they’ll understand if you’re late just this once.” Johnny Corazon raised his eyebrows as if to ask, Did I get it right?

  “Yeah. They’re waiting for me.” Pancho was not impressed by Johnny Corazon’s guess. D.Q.’s mother could have whispered something to him on the way in.

  “Okay. You ask what kind of powers? Helen says they are good powers because they bring good results. And maybe they do here, in this room, in this sacred space. But for all I know, these same powers also bring results that we humans would call ‘bad.’ Esteban there was healed.” He nodded toward the picture. “The same power that caused the cells in his body to go wacko caused them to settle down and act normal again. Where is that power? It was in Esteban’s own body. It is everywhere. For some reason, it sometimes comes when I ask it to come, and for some reason it sometimes acts in ways we humans call ‘good.’”

  “Esteban believed in that power, didn’t he?” Helen said. “He surrendered to it. Pancho—” She waited for him to look at her. “Remember at the hospital, I told you about the illness that forced me to take Daniel to St. Anthony’s?” Pancho didn’t answer. He was trying to think of the term she had used, something to do with a pole. “Bipolar disorder, remember? Johnny helped me get better. I owe him my life, really. I think I would have ended up hurting myself or hurting many others if I hadn’t met him. He says it isn’t he who heals people, but if powers act through him, then as far as I’m concerned, he’s the one who heals.”

  She was beaming at Johnny Corazon. Johnny Corazon winked gratefully at her. The whole scene was making Pancho ill. He tried to picture D.Q. lying on the cot in the middle of the room, and Johnny Corazon waving feathers around him and blowing smoke in his face, or whatever it was that he did to invoke the powers. There was no way that D.Q. would agree to it. Not if his life depended on it, which it did.

  Johnny Corazon said, “Don’t let appearances deceive you. I know this place looks a little hokey. People kind of expect this kind of atmosphere, so I give it to them. It helps them. I have an Indian outfit and bead necklaces that I can put on if you want me to.” He laughed. “I didn’t choose to do this. It chose me. I’d rather not have gone through all the humiliation I’ve had to go through because of this. I’m just a poor Chicano recovering heroin addict, and every day is a battle to stay sober. I’m not going to lie to you. This so-called gift I got is a royal pain in the ass.”

  Pancho thought of D.Q. If D.Q. were here, what would he say? He would be looking at Johnny Corazon to see whether the guy was a Death Warrior. A question came to him. “Can you heal all the people that come to you?”

  Johnny Corazon and D.Q.’s mother glanced at each other. “No,” Johnny Corazon admitted—reluctantly, it seemed. “Not always.”

  “If they have faith—” D.Q.’s mother started to say, but Johnny Corazon cut her off.

  “Here’s what I do.” Johnny Corazon edged his chair closer to Pancho’s. Their knees touched. Pancho moved his legs. “It depends on the age and intelligence of the person. I use everything at my disposal, herbs, ancient purification rites, trance sessions, spirit invocations, meditation, plain old talk therapy, acupuncture, homeopathy. I meet with people and sometimes we discover the emotions or the memories that are affecting the body. Sometimes I bring the whole family together. Sometimes we have rituals of mutual forgiveness. I let myself be led by the person’s spirit. I practice holistic medicine. Holistic as in �
��whole,’ because we take in the whole person, heart and soul, and no approach is excluded.”

  “You ever have kids die on you?”

  “Yes. I’m not God.” Johnny Corazon seemed offended by the question.

  “Kids can get their hopes up high to be cured, and if they don’t, then they would be worse.”

  “It doesn’t work like that,” Johnny Corazon said quickly. “It’s never worse afterward, even when people are not healed. Holistic medicine can even make people tolerate regular treatments like chemotherapy and radiation better. And even if the body is not healed, the person’s spirit will be strengthened. I have no doubt about that.”

  “But so many people do get healed,” Helen broke in. “Look at all those pictures on the wall.”

  “Okay,” Pancho said impatiently. “I get it.”

  “Do you believe that Johnny can help D.Q.?” There was a trembling quality to her voice. “That’s the important thing.”

  Pancho reflected. All he knew was that if he were ill, he would not want to spend time in this dark room that smelled like a funeral parlor. But he didn’t say what he was thinking. He just wanted to get out of there. “Sure,” he said. “Anything is possible.”

  D.Q.’s mother smiled, but Johnny Corazon looked concerned. He wasn’t convinced that he had won Pancho over, and he was right. “I wish you would come see me again,” he said slowly and meaningfully. “Your anger is going to kill you.”

  “Could be.” Pancho stood up. “I’ll talk to D.Q. That’s what you want me to do, right?”

  Johnny Corazon and D.Q.’s mother both rose, but not as quickly as Pancho. Johnny Corazon went to the altar, grabbed something from a wicker basket, came back, and placed it in Pancho’s hand. Pancho opened his hand and saw a key chain with a round plastic heart. It was the kind of thing you get out of a bubblegum machine. On top of the heart was a black button. Johnny Corazon flicked it, and a red light began to throb inside.

  “For you,” Johnny Corazon said solemnly, as if he had just given Pancho a most valuable treasure. “To remind you.”

  CHAPTER 26

  It was Friday afternoon and Pancho, D.Q., and Josie were waiting for Marisol to pick them up. It was cloudy, probably the first cloudy day since Pancho and D.Q. had arrived in Albuquerque. Josie’s mother had given her a jacket, which she had taken off, so now Pancho was holding it.

  “What time is it? Maybe we missed her,” D.Q. said. He was rolling his wheelchair forward and backward nervously.

  “It’s five,” Pancho said. “That’s the time she told us to be here.” Pancho wasn’t happy to be standing there. He had decided to come only after Marisol told him that D.Q. refused to go unless Pancho went. She pleaded with him, “Please, do it for me,” and he had fallen for it. So Pancho had to put up with days of D.Q.’s nervousness and anticipation. Helen had left a message that she would pick them up Saturday morning at ten A.M. Pancho’s sacrificial visit to Johnny Corazon’s had bought them an additional day.

  “Look, Pancho.” Josie was sitting on the front step of Casa Esperanza tugging at his sleeve. “It died.” He had given her the key-chain heart he got from Johnny Corazon and now it had stopped blinking. He took it from her and examined it. There was no place for a battery. When it went, it went for good.

  “It was a cheap thing.” He moved to throw it away.

  “Nooo! It’s mine,” Josie protested. “I want it anyway.”

  “Why?” He held it away from her grasp.

  “You gave it to me.”

  “Pancho gave his heart away,” D.Q. teased.

  “He’s not my boyfriend or anything.” Josie grabbed the plastic heart. “I already have a boyfriend.”

  “Maybe we should call.” D.Q. was very fidgety. Pancho thought he knew why. The past couple of days, D.Q. had been unusually quiet, thinking overtime. Pancho had caught him talking to himself a couple of times, as if he were rehearsing a speech. He suspected that D.Q. saw the dinner at Marisol’s house as an opportunity to tell her how he felt about her.

  “She’ll be here,” Pancho said. “Stop worrying.”

  “I don’t worry,” D.Q. said. He said it the way Pancho always said it, like he was way too tough to worry.

  “Now what?” Pancho asked Josie. She was rubbing her eyes with her hand. “Why are you crying now?”

  “Shhh.” D.Q. gestured to Pancho. He reached over from his wheelchair and put his hand on Josie’s back. “We’ll see each other again, I promise. Santa Fe is not so far. We’ll come visit. Or you’ll come visit.”

  “She’s not crying ’cause we’re leaving,” Pancho said, trying to sound funny. “She’s crying ’cause the heart doesn’t light up anymore.”

  “I’m not even crying,” Josie said.

  Everyone was silent. Maybe they were thinking like Pancho that no matter how much D.Q. promised Josie and the other kids that they would see each other again, the truth was that it was unlikely that they ever would.

  Pancho took the key-chain heart from Josie’s hand. He examined it and saw that the two halves were glued together. He might be able to open it with a razor blade and replace whatever it was that lit it up. Or he could return to Johnny Corazon’s house and pick up another one. Yeah, right, Pancho said to himself. He had not mentioned the trip to Johnny Corazon’s to D.Q. A couple of times he had started and stopped. If D.Q. knew that his mother had no intention of letting him go anywhere after two weeks or two years, Pancho’s own plans might be jeopardized. Already he was falling behind the schedule he had set for himself. This was the afternoon when he was supposed to have checked out Robert Lewis’s house. Andrés, the kid who always beat him at video games, had, for a fee of only one dollar, gone on the Internet and printed out a map of 145 Handel Road, with directions on how to get there from Casa Esperanza. It was only a half-hour bus ride away, assuming he didn’t run into anyone on the bus. He was set to go as soon as they got back from D.Q.’s last treatment at the hospital, but D.Q. never took his nap. Then the kids came and there were rickshaw-ride requests he found hard to refuse since it was his last day. When he came in after the rides, he was too tired to go anywhere. He fell asleep while D.Q., already showered and dressed, waited anxiously for five P.M. to finally come.

  “She’s not coming,” D.Q. said.

  “You smell like oranges,” Josie said to him.

  D.Q. tapped his cheeks. “I might have overdone it a little with the cologne.”

  “You think?” Josie pinched her nose.

  “I should go splash some water on my face. I don’t want to smell like a fruit.”

  “It’s better than what you usually smell like,” Pancho declared.

  “Ha-ha. Josie, is it really too strong?” Pancho fanned the back of D.Q.’s head with his hand. “What are you doing?”

  “I’m shooing the flies away,” Pancho responded. Josie jumped up. “I’ll be right back. I’m going to get a paper towel with water so you can soak your face.”

  “No, stay. What if Marisol comes?” D.Q. yelled after her. But she had disappeared inside already.

  “Where did you get that perfume? I didn’t know you brought any.” Pancho sat on the ledge. He peered at D.Q.’s face. “Did you put makeup on?”

  “No.”

  “What’s that on your face?”

  “It’s just a little sunblock.”

  “There’s no sun.”

  “It’s sunblock with some color so it looks like a tan. One of the nurses at the hospital got it for me…from the gift shop…when she got the cologne.” D.Q., who had started out embarrassed, was now laughing.

  “It looks like shoeshine.”

  “I’m too pale. You can see the veins on my face. I look like a skeleton tossed in flour.”

  “You think smearing your face with caca is gonna make you look better?”

  “Is it that bad?”

  Pancho took another look. “Only if you’re planning on getting kissed.”

  D.Q. ran his hand across his forehead. There was
a light brown tint on his fingers. He shook his head. “I don’t know what got into me.”

  “I can tell you, if you want me to,” Pancho said.

  “Has this ever happened to you?”

  It was one of the few times when Pancho knew exactly what D.Q. was talking about. He considered for a few seconds, then opted to answer with a joke. “I never got it so bad that I was willing to make an ass of myself.”

  “You’re right. I lost track of myself. It’s just that after tonight…If I can’t convince her to come see us at Helen’s or visit us in Las Cruces, I mean, tonight could be it.”

  “She’ll come visit you,” Pancho told him. He could say that with certainty from all that he had seen of Marisol.

  “Us. We need her to come visit us.”

  Pancho saw in D.Q.’s eyes a spark of secret understanding.

  “I don’t think she likes being around me,” Pancho muttered, embarrassed by the thought that maybe D.Q. knew more than Pancho wanted him to know.

  “Don’t be a dummy. You know that’s not true.”

  “She’s afraid of me.”

  “You may be killing someone. Can you blame her?”

  “She doesn’t know.…”

  “No, she doesn’t.” D.Q. lowered his head. “I have a feeling that’s not why she’s afraid of you.” His eyes were focused on some distant point.

  Pancho felt a pressure inside his head, as if all of a sudden a dozen thoughts were calling for his attention and he didn’t know where to turn. He grabbed on to one of them. “I’m not going to be around much longer.”

  “Me neither,” D.Q. said.

  Josie came out at the very moment they heard Marisol’s car down the block. Josie handed the wet paper towel to D.Q. “You do it,” D.Q. said to Pancho. “Hurry.”

  Pancho squeezed the water out of the soaking towel, then opened it and began to wipe D.Q.’s face. “She’s coming, she’s coming,” Josie was yelling.

  “Did you get something to dry his face with?” Pancho asked.