Last Summer of the Death Warriors

by Francesco X Stork

  “You know all that?”

  D.Q. put the tin cup on the ground beside him and tightened the red blanket around his shoulders. “When I was first diagnosed with cancer, six or so months ago, I set out to become an expert in the disease as well as in all possible cures. I spent hours, days, weeks, months, learning all there is to know. I even had Brother Javier drive me over to Juarez to buy drugs we couldn’t get in the U.S. You should see the stash of herbs Lupita has in her kitchen.”

  “You don’t believe they work?”

  “Sure I do. I mean, they can work. Why not? They definitely help. If you go on the Internet, you can read reported cases of someone who got cured taking this or that. I don’t think what we call Western medicine has all the answers. I’ll give anything a try so long as it doesn’t kill me any faster. I probably have a better shot at keeping my senses with Johnny Corazon’s stuff than I have with the chemo. Oh! Did you see that?” A star shot across the dark night. “Quick, close your eyes and make a wish.”

  Pancho instinctively obeyed and closed his eyes. It wasn’t a wish as far as he could tell, but the image of Marisol appeared before him. D.Q. still had his eyes closed when Pancho opened his. He could still see the phosphorescent path left by the disappearing star.

  D.Q. broke the silence. “All that Johnny Corazon can do here can be done just as well in Las Cruces. I thought it would be good to go along with him because, well, it might make it easier for Helen to let go and…”

  “You would get to see Marisol again,” Pancho said tentatively.

  There was a long pause. “Remember what we’re supposed to be looking for here tonight?”

  “Meaning. Healing.”

  “Yeah. I always thought that sometime before I died, I would learn what life had to teach, as Thoreau said. I was expecting some kind of answer, some kind of big meaning that I could put into words. I think I was looking for the kind of faith you talked about, or I was hoping to get some kind of revelation.

  “But what I found out these past couple of weeks is that I’m probably going to die without finding that kind of meaning or that kind of extraordinary revelation. Every day I want to suck the marrow, and most every day I end up thinking that the things I did that day or that happened that day didn’t even come close to the marrow. The only times I felt like I was getting close were when Marisol and I were walking together and it seemed as if all of me, all of my senses and all of my awareness, was focused on her. I didn’t want to miss a single thing she said. I wanted to feel everything about her, how her hair smelled, how it felt when she accidentally touched my arm, the way she raised her hands to shield the sun from her face. During those moments, I felt like I had finally touched the marrow of life. There were other times too, like when you and I talked late at night and when we joked around, but they weren’t quite as intense as those moments with Marisol, you’d be happy to know.”

  Pancho didn’t respond. He was thinking about the time in Marisol’s kitchen when they were washing the dishes together. All his senses were tuned to Marisol standing next to him. He had experienced an expansion of feeling in his chest, a sense he did not understand, until now, as he listened to D.Q.’s words. He took a stick and stirred the fire.

  “I’m glad she’s coming tomorrow,” D.Q. continued. “And I know she’ll come to Las Cruces to see us.”

  Pancho shook his head, telling D.Q. he was mistaken if he thought he was going to stick around, Marisol or no Marisol.

  D.Q. went on, “You know how I yelled at you that night after we came back from Marisol’s house.”

  “You didn’t yell all that much.”

  “I was jealous.”

  “You didn’t need to be.”

  “I made it sound like I was angry at you for throwing your life away, but I was really jealous of what Marisol felt for you.…When Marisol and I were walking to the park she…I realized that she loves you. I had this crazy hope that she and I could be together despite everything. And then I had to let go of that hope, and it hasn’t been easy.”

  “You shouldn’t talk.”

  “But it’s slowly dawned on me that if what happened with Marisol hadn’t happened, I might have gone on being a perico until the very end.”

  “A perico?” Pancho asked.

  “Remember when she told you I was in touch with another dimension and that she had never seen anyone with such strong faith?”

  “Yeah.”

  “She was wrong on both counts. I wasn’t in touch with any other dimension then and I didn’t have any faith, strong or weak. I had some beliefs and hopes maybe, but not faith.” D.Q. took a deep, wheezing breath. “The other day when you took me to Helen’s studio, I realized I was as fake as that portrait of me that Helen was painting. That portrait was not me, just like I wasn’t a Death Warrior. I was an angry, jealous person who was grasping at what I couldn’t have and resentful of what was taken away from me. I had no love for life or for anyone else.…So in many ways, I’ve been like the perico, you know? A parrot just says things without understanding them, without believing in them. The Death Warrior Manifesto is full of words about loving life at all times and in all circumstances, but they were just words. I never truly felt that way.”

  “It’s all right if you don’t.”

  “But the thing is, even if I wasn’t living up to it, I was wrong the other day.…The manifesto isn’t bullshit. I did feel full of love for life once. When I was nine, Helen and I were in a car accident and I was in a coma. When I came out, I was overwhelmed with this feeling of gratitude, not just for my life but for all of life. It felt as if life was this incredible, awesome gift. I remember walking out of the hospital and the whole world seemed on fire with a glowing brilliance, like I was seeing things for the very first time. Everything I saw and touched was filled with love, and I was full of joy just to be a part of it. Then after a while, this ‘dimension’ that I was in touch with disappeared.” D.Q. coughed.

  “You need to speak less fancy ’cause you pretty much lost me back there by the parrot. What dimension are you talking about?”

  “When you are with Marisol, you feel different than at other times, don’t you?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You feel like I do, I know. Being a part of that other dimension is like being with Marisol. We feel as if everything matters. We don’t want the moment to end. We’re happy and grateful just to be with her, we don’t ask for anything more than what she gives us. We love her, but we are content even if she chooses to love someone else. Can you imagine that?”

  “Yes.”

  “That love and peace, that’s what it feels like to live in that other dimension. I mean, we can’t always feel this love. There are times when it all seems so hopeless, so pointless.…Like this last week for me. Looking at that portrait made me realize how scared and selfish I was in many ways. But I also understood that it was all right. I’m not perfect like Helen’s image of me. I’m just human. Our task is to try. Being a Death Warrior is all in the trying.” D.Q. paused to take a deep breath. “If we live in accordance with the Death Warrior principles, if we live with gratitude, not wasting any time not loving, we can enter that dimension. That is my faith. I’ve been writing about what this faith looks like and talking about it like a perico, but now I’m ready to live it. That’s so good.”

  Pancho and D.Q. listened to the crackling of the fire for a few moments and then D.Q. continued, speaking slowly. “Helen’s need to cure me would keep me in a hospital throwing up. But I don’t want to miss out on whatever living I have left. I need to be where I can try my best to be a Death Warrior. I want to go back to Las Cruces with my perico as a reminder of how to live, and I’m never going to lose my faith again.”

  Pancho didn’t understand all that D.Q. had said, but he recognized, in a way that did not require understanding, the feelings that D.Q. had expressed.

  They both sat looking at the flames of the fire for a long time. Pancho watched the mesquite stick that Johnny Corazon
picked up burn with difficulty. It was on fire but there was no flame. The barking of a dog or a coyote broke his trance.

  “When you saw that shooting star and I said, ‘Close your eyes and make a wish,’ you saw Marisol, didn’t you?” D.Q. asked.

  Pancho stirred the fire once again. Hundreds of blue and orange sparks ascended. “Yes,” he admitted. He kept his gaze on the fire.

  “Johnny’s right, you know. We’re two strands of the same rope. Only the rope has three strands.…It’s all right for both of us to love her. She loves me as a friend, and trust me, friendship from her is not bad. She loves you as a friend and as a man. She loves us differently so we need to try to love her differently. I need to appreciate what she’s given me and let her go. You need to figure out how to truly love her.”

  “How do I do that?”

  “You’ll find out…in time. It takes time to learn to love, unless you’re a Death Warrior. Then you get to go on the accelerated ride, like me. I know you’re wondering why I’m so wise.” D.Q. laughed.

  “Whatever was in that pipe really got you going.”

  “That was good stuff.”

  Pancho moved one of the sacred rocks with a stick. They had begun to glow. When he sat back on his sleeping bag, D.Q. spoke. “I told you what my faith was like. Now you tell me what yours is like.”

  “Someday I’ll be with my father and my mother and with Rosa.”

  There was silence and then D.Q. slipped inside his sleeping bag.

  “You’re not waiting around for the meaning and the healing?” Pancho asked. He was not being sarcastic.

  “Mr. Pancho, I believe we done found them tonight.”

  CHAPTER 32

  Johnny Corazon arrived around eight. Pancho and D.Q. had been up since sunrise. D.Q. was sitting against a pinon tree, his legs covered with a blanket, observing what remained of the dawn, and Pancho was cleaning up the pan where he had cooked the pork and beans for breakfast. Pancho had already taken the sacred rocks out of the fire and rolled up the sleeping bags. They packed up all of Johnny Corazon’s gear and left it there for Juan to get later. Pancho carried D.Q. on his back. He seemed to have gotten even lighter overnight.

  When they got to the house, Pancho went to help Juan fix the all-terrain vehicle, and D.Q. sat by the cabana and wrote in his journal. At noon, Renata brought them chicken sandwiches, potato salad, and slices of watermelon, and Johnny Corazon, Helen, D.Q., and Pancho ate by the pool. Juan went to his apartment to eat his own lunch and to nap. Pancho wished he could go with him. After lunch, Pancho took D.Q. to his room, and Johnny Corazon and Helen left in Helen’s car for a conference on holistic medicine that was being held in Taos. For a moment it seemed as if Helen might change her mind and stay behind just so she could meet Marisol. But D.Q. promised to ask Marisol to dinner the following Friday night.

  After they left, while Juan and D.Q. were napping, Pancho went to the corral, sat on the top post, and watched Caramelo for a while. As soon as he started to replay in his mind the conversation with D.Q. the night before, he went back to working on the wall. Juan came back and they worked side by side until three o’clock. Renata brought D.Q. out to the pool again.

  “Enough work already,” D.Q. tried to shout at them, but his voice was even weaker than the day before. “It’s Saturday. What’s the matter with you two? Pancho, go take a shower. Marisol will be here any minute and you don’t want her to see you like this.”

  “Who’s Marisol?” Juan asked.

  “His girlfriend,” Pancho told him, wiping sweat from his brow with his forearm.

  “Our girlfriend,” D.Q. corrected him with a grin.

  “I go in my place and watch Mexican fútbol. Some things better for an old man not to know.”

  Pancho took as long in the shower as he could. All day long he had said no more than twenty words, and he did not want to be around D.Q., where he would be forced to talk. If he could avoid seeing Marisol, he would. He didn’t know how he would react to her.

  Someone had placed a stack of brand-new clothes on the cot that Juan had set up for him. There was underwear still in its plastic package, cotton pants and polo shirts still with their tags. Helen must have gone shopping, trying to make him look more respectable. He put on dark blue pants and a black polo shirt. He threw his sweaty clothes on the floor of the closet and then stepped into the black loafers laid out for him at the foot of the bed. Amazingly, Helen had gotten all his sizes right.

  He went to the window and saw D.Q. by the pool, continuing to write in the Death Warrior journal. There was urgency in the way he moved his hand across the notebook, and Pancho remembered the painfully slow way Rosa wrote in her diary. He had a moment of fear that Helen had gone through his backpack and discovered the revolver. He opened the closet and saw with relief his backpack slouched in the corner, where he had left it. He dug it out, placed it on the bed, and fished out the revolver from inside the leg of the folded blue jeans and the seven bullets from the hidden inside pocket of the backpack. He inserted the bullets in the revolver. The .22 caliber bullets were almost too small to kill a man, and the aluminum-alloy revolver was light as a toy. The box in which the revolver had been packaged said the gun was perfect for competition, plinking, and killing varmints. He didn’t know what “plinking” meant. Was he capable of plinking Robert Lewis?

  He lay down on the cot and went over in his mind what he would say to Robert Lewis. When he heard the sputtering muffler of Marisol’s car, he sat up. The doorbell rang, then Renata’s muffled steps made their way from the kitchen to the front door. Through the window he saw Marisol hug D.Q. on the terrace and the delight that filled his face. She pulled a chair close to D.Q. Pancho went back to the cot. There was still an hour before Juan went to town.

  A few minutes later, Renata came to the room. He sat up again when he saw her.

  “They would like you to come outside,” she said, clearly embarrassed to have to deliver the message.

  “Gracias,” he said. It made her smile to hear him speak Spanish. They walked down the stairs in silence. When they got to the kitchen, he asked, “Can I leave this here?” He showed her his backpack. She opened the door to the pantry and he placed it there. Then he took a deep breath and stepped outside.

  Marisol stood up, smiled, and walked slowly to hug him. He looked at D.Q.’s face briefly during the hug and he saw no jealousy there.

  “It’s so good to see you,” she said in his ear.

  D.Q. spoke up. “Pancho, I want to show Marisol something over by those boulders. Let’s all take a ride in that ATV. It’s working now. It’ll be fun.”

  Marisol shrugged her shoulders as if to say that she was okay with whatever everyone decided.

  “I didn’t see any kind of top on that cart. The sun is strong,” Pancho told D.Q.

  “I’ll wear a cap. Come on, don’t worry so much.”

  The three of them sat in the front seat of the ATV. Pancho took the wheel and Marisol sat in the middle. D.Q. gave directions. They passed the grove of pinons where they had spent the night. Two or three miles later, they reached a wire fence. Pancho stopped. On the other side of the fence, black rocks rose up out of the earth, a series of foothills for the surrounding mountains. Pancho remembered the shooting star he saw the night before. These rocks looked like they might have fallen out of the dark sky. “Now what?” he asked.

  “You have to climb over or under the fence, and on the other side of the rock, there are some petroglyphs. You two got to see them.”

  “Some what?” Pancho asked.

  “Petroglyphs,” D.Q. said. “Images or designs etched into the rock by Native Americans as far back as the fourteen-hundreds.”

  “What about you?” Marisol wondered.

  “I’ve seen them before. I’ll be okay. Go, go. They’re on the other side of that rock.” Pancho looked up at the sky, calculating whether D.Q. could tolerate its heat. “I’m really okay. My temperature is normal, look.” He gripped Pancho’s forearm. Pancho
flicked his hand away, but not before noticing that the hand was cool.

  Pancho lifted the middle barbed wire for Marisol to cross to the other side, and once she was through, Marisol held it for him. They waved one last time at D.Q. and then they began to climb up the rock. Soon they were on all fours, grabbing on to jutting stones and miniature trees. It was not a difficult climb, just an awkward one.

  “You’re very quiet today,” Marisol said to him when they were halfway up.

  “I’m always quiet,” Pancho answered. He refused to look at her, pretending to concentrate on finding a handhold.

  “There’s quiet because you don’t need to say anything, and then there’s quiet because you don’t want to say something. Today you’re quiet because you don’t want to say something.”

  They reached a place in the rock where they could stand up straight again. Pancho saw D.Q. down below with his eyes closed and his arms crossed. “We shouldn’t have left D.Q. alone,” he said.

  “He wanted to give us a chance to talk.”

  “Why?”

  “Beats me,” she said, trying to hold back a smile.

  Pancho didn’t answer. He saw a path that would take them to the top of the rock and he started up with Marisol following. At the peak, he peered down the opposite side of the ridge. There were various options for descent. “How do they make these peterlifts?”

  “Petroglyphs,” Marisol said, laughing. “They’re chiseled, usually with another rock.”

  Pancho surveyed the rock. If he were an Indian, where would be the best place to chisel a…something? He wanted to find one quickly and get this over with. A smooth black surface about five feet tall jutted out of a ledge that was easy to reach. He stepped carefully down in that direction. Marisol followed him. It was the most difficult of the paths they could have taken. That was good. Marisol would have to concentrate on where she was stepping and probably would not be able to talk.

  “Do you think his mother will let him go back to Las Cruces?” she asked.