by Mary Morris
Jeremy groans but Davie perks up. “Bandits,” Davie shouts, raising his fist in the air. Rachel takes the boys out of the car and holds their hands as they scramble up the dune and climb over the wooden fence. “Oh my god,” Rachel says, “this is so much fun.” But now with nothing but sand before them Davie’s eyes scour the ground.
“I want to go back to the car,” he tells her. He is about to cry again.
“Nothing is going to hurt you,” Rachel says and hugs him, “I promise,” but still he starts to whimper. It’s about the snake, of course. My snake, he calls it. He tells her about it dozens of times—how it came upon him, how it tracked him down, how it was after him all along. Davie long ago stopped stepping on it. Instead he has his snake chasing him down the path. “It was after me,” he says. Night after night it’s lurking under his bed, in his closet. It is in the toilet, in the tub. He has stopped going into the backyard—not for a tetherball game with her, not for a plate of sugar sandwiches with Ovaltine, made with soy milk, that she prepares just for him. Lately he throws a fuss if he has to go outside at all because his snake could be anywhere—in the driveway, on the playground. When they go to school, she practically has to carry him from the car, and when he comes home, he races back into the house.
Rachel assumed that after a while it would fade from his memory the way most things fade in a child’s mind, but instead his snake is getting bigger, thicker, longer. It rises up five, six feet into the air. Its rattle sounds like a jet engine. And its strike. He remembers the searing pain as if someone set him on fire. Except this fire comes from inside. She cannot bear the thought of what will become of her son. Through his whole life, when he is disappointed in love or fails to get into med school (where he never belonged in the first place), he will feel his snake coming around the bend, waiting for him in the dark corners that house every one of his fears. If Miguel were here, Rachel thinks, he’d coax Davie outside. He’d show him how not to be afraid. He’d tell him how brave he was. Miguel made a mistake, it’s true, but it was a mistake, nothing more. He is just a boy like her own, flawed but well meaning.
She thought he would return. She anticipated his call. Or perhaps he’d just show up. But in the weeks since the incident he has not made an attempt to contact her. And she has looked everywhere for his number. She only had to call him once—that first time he came to the house. She should have scribbled it on the refrigerator door where she keeps important numbers. But she didn’t. She forgot. And now she has no way of reaching him unless he comes to them.
It was better for the boys when Miguel was around. Better for her too. He provided company for them all. And the boys miss him. Davie especially wonders about Miguel and where he is. “Did he forget about me?” he asked one night as she tucked him in.
“Oh no, he’ll never forget about you. He just has to study harder now so he can get into a good school.”
Jeremy has raced ahead and Rachel takes Davie by the hand. “We’re going to do this,” she says. “Remember, we’re bandits.” She manages to drag him to the top of the pure white dunes. They stand at the crest, peering down. Below they can see the others who’ve climbed the fence as well, racing, rolling, flying down the sandy slopes that are as soft as any bed she can remember. Taking Davie by the hand, Rachel runs. They catch up to Jeremy and she clasps his hand too. “Get ready. On your mark. Get set. Go!” Rachel runs and they have no choice but to run beside her. They race across the glistening sand to the crest of the dune, and then she leaps. She flies into the air, pulling her boys with her. And suddenly the three of them are flying. As their feet touch the sand, she releases them and they roll, tumbling head over heels down the soft white dune, a softness she’s never dreamed of. The world has become a pillow.
At the bottom they come to a halt, their feet deep in sand, and Rachel hears what she first assumes is Davie crying. But turning, she sees something she hasn’t seen in weeks. He is laughing. Hysterical belly laughs, the kind when you might pee in your pants. She wants to cry. Her eyes well with tears. “Let’s do it again,” she shouts. She turns and starts to scramble back up the dunes. “Race you to the top.” And now both boys are laughing, scrambling after her, and of course she lets them win. And before she even gets near the ridge of the dune, Davie is flinging himself down again, somersaulting his way past her outstretched arms.
For lunch they stop at a Dairy Queen where they all order burgers, sodas, and fries. Just no cheese for Davie. They sit at a picnic table and Rachel distributes their food. “Wow,” Jeremy says, taking a huge bite, “this is the best burger I’ve ever had.”
“It is, isn’t it, Davie?” Rachel says.
And Davie, his mouth full of food, just grins. Then he picks up his straw and blows the paper end at his brother and Jeremy blows his back and soon they are all laughing again, then hurling French fries, and Rachel doesn’t stop them because it’s good to have a food fight after you’ve spent the morning flying down sand dunes. And they’re on the road again, driving past innumerable gas stations. Rainbow Pawnshop and Cash. Lines of government tract housing in the middle of nowhere. Fast-food joints and cut-rate motels. Stores with steel grates, all abandoned as, is Herman’s Filling Station. There’s an “Injured? I Sue Drunk Drivers” sign on the highway, except the sign is facing the wrong direction, going against the traffic. Rachel can’t help but wonder if this is for people driving on the highway the wrong way. In the middle of a red clay mesa a giant refinery looms like something out of Star Wars.
Then Rachel sees the sign for “Trading Post.” She pulls into the parking lot. They’ve never stopped at a real trading post before. “Okay, everybody can get a souvenir.” The boys dash inside and find what resembles Santa’s workshop if it were set in the Southwest. It’s a hodgepodge of everything. Owls made from rocks, “rock” concerts, fool’s gold, statues of prospectors, petrified wood with small carved animals on top, carved figures of coyotes and bears and wolves and eagles, dream catchers, tomahawks, imitation Kachina dolls, faux Navajo rugs, cowboy hats, boots, saddlebags, fake saddles, real saddles, hobbyhorses. There’s a rack with every kind of beef jerky in the world: teriyaki, hot pepper, Cajun, sweet and sour, sausage, salmon, shrimp.
It’s a tourist trap but the kids are entranced at the aisles packed with junk. Jeremy is cradling an amethyst geode. He’s trying on rings of turquoise. Davie has gravitated toward the polished stones that are being sold as dinosaur eggs. Rachel is reading the back of a package of soil conditioner for cacti when she hears the scream.
Racing around the corner she sees Davie, hand raised to his face, pointing, shrieking. It is a shelf of snakes made into key chains, toilet seats, wall hangings, and the one that he is pointing at—a stuffed diamondback, poised and ready to strike.
“It’s all right,” she says to him, cradling him in her arms, pulling him away. “It’s not real. And I’m right here.” But Davie stands, hands over his eyes, screaming his head off. It’s not until long after they are on the highway heading home that Davie cries himself out, crumples onto the seat, and sleeps.
* * *
Later that night the boys are watching cartoons. Davie seems to have forgotten the incident at the trading post, but Rachel can’t get it out of her mind. She sits at the kitchen table, drumming her fingers on the granite countertop. She should get dinner going. She’ll give the boys mac and soy cheese, and throw in a little diced chicken. She’ll nibble from their plates. Maybe she’ll cut up some broccoli and toss it into the macaroni water. She tries to give them balanced meals. And without Nathan at home why can’t they just eat like that every night? What difference does it make?
My son is afraid of the world.
At moments like this Rachel wonders if she isn’t losing it. If she isn’t becoming her own mother, something she decided long ago that she would never be. She really wants a drink. She is very careful not to drink in front of the boys. She waits until they are asleep. But right now she wants a drink. She’d love a couple of fingers
of Scotch. She would love to numb herself to this pain.
As she starts to boil the water, it comes to her. “It began with an E.” The town he came from. It started with an E. How many towns beginning with an E can there be in northern New Mexico? Leaving the water on, meaning that it will boil down and she will have to begin again, Rachel goes out to her car. Opening the glove compartment, she takes out the map of New Mexico and brings it back inside. Laying it out on the kitchen table, with her finger she traces a trajectory north until it lands on Española. “That’s it,” Rachel says. And there at her kitchen table, Rachel Rothstein makes the first clear decision she has made in a very long time. She will find Miguel.
CHAPTER THIRTY
THE MOTHER OF THE MOON—1992
Four and a half billion years ago two planets hurtled through space. When they collided, they became one. The dust that rose from their collision formed a ball, and that ball became our moon. One of those planets was Earth. The other became known as Theia. In Greek mythology Theia is the mother of the goddess of the moon, Selene. If you want to know what became of Theia, you just need to step outside. You’ll be standing on her. We know that the moon comes from the Earth. When Neil Armstrong walked on the moon, he took soil samples. And the composition of those samples is identical to the stones found here.”
As Mr. Garcia lectures, Miguel sits in the back of the class, pondering the facts. He is nothing. We are all nothing. Since Mr. Garcia told Miguel he wanted to nominate him for a science scholarship, Miguel has scrupulously avoided his teacher. There is no project. Miguel’s only purpose right now is to stay one step ahead of the law. He’s trying to imagine all the things he might go to jail for that certainly go beyond driving without a license. And then there’s kidnapping. That carries a mandatory life sentence, doesn’t it?
As class ends, Mr. Garcia looks up at Miguel as if a thought has crossed his mind. He’s about to say something when Miguel slips out the door. He decides to skip his last-period class. He gets in his car and drives. He’s told his mother that now he’s going to his job every day after school so she never expects him before six. Instead he just drives around. Mostly aimlessly. Sometimes he stops in Española, but there is always some kind of trouble going on there. You can hardly ever stop in Española and not hear about another shooting. Mostly he drives farther north, toward Taos, though he has to be careful about gas because since he left his job at Mrs. Rothstein’s he isn’t making any money.
He thinks about the boys, especially Davie. He misses him. He betrayed him. He let danger come his way when all he wanted was to make him stronger, to teach him how to fight back. And he misses Mrs. Rothstein. He thinks about her at odd moments. In the science lab, on the ball field. She comes to him with a strange force. He wants to be rid of her. He wants her to go away. He dreams about her. Not the weird, kinky dreams he had for a while but just dreams where she’s walking or leaning against a wall, watching him, waiting for him to say something. Anyway, obviously she doesn’t want him looking after the boys again. If she did, she would have called by now.
Miguel turns onto the highway to Santa Fe. He can be there in forty minutes if he steps on it. Which he does. He pocket drives, almost daring a cop to stop him, but no one does. He drives through the center of town, then turns up Canyon Road until he’s about a block from Magical Years. He pauses to smoke a cigarette, and then he gets out and walks. It’s almost three o’clock. And like clockwork the doors of the school open and kids come flying out in the playground where their mothers and nannies and fathers are waiting for them. There’s the usual shrieking and chatter and hugs and off they go.
He spots Jeremy, racing out, surrounded by some friends. Though it’s only been a few weeks, Jeremy seems bigger to him, more grown-up. It’s the way it was with Miguel once. He was a child, and then suddenly he shot up. Jeremy is going around, giving his friends high fives. Then Davie comes out, walking slowly, eyes to the ground as if he’s looking for a marble he lost. He resembles a zombie pretending to be a boy. Miguel shakes his head. But suddenly Davie’s eyes light up and he rushes to the gate where his mother awaits him.
Rachel Rothstein stands on the curb, leaning against her car. She is thinner than he recalls and her features look almost hollowed. There are dark circles under her eyes. He wonders if she’s getting any sleep. He wants to go up and give her a hug. He wants to tell her he is sorry for what happened. But what good would that do now? They will go on without him. So he gives them all a little wave and heads back to his car. He has said his goodbyes.
Miguel gets back on the highway and drives to his father’s place. When he sees that Roberto’s truck is gone, Miguel pulls into the driveway and parks. He opens the garage door with the remote his father keeps hidden inside an old tire. He keeps it there in case Miguel gets kicked out one night or just can’t make it home. He is always welcome at his father’s place. As the garage opens, Miguel is struck by the fumes of spray paint. He doesn’t know why this stuff doesn’t kill his dad.
He walks to the back of the garage where his father keeps empty cans filled with lug nuts, bolts, nails, screws, old spark plugs, wire, cables. He also keeps loose change. Once every week or so Miguel comes by and helps himself to whatever he can put in his pockets. So far his father hasn’t seemed to notice. He doesn’t want to ask his parents for money because they think he is working and he doesn’t want to have to go into a long explanation about why he isn’t.
He manages to cobble together five dollars in change. It will give him a few gallons of gas—enough to last him a day or so. He will leave Entrada. He will get away. He has no idea where he will go or what he will do, but that isn’t what Miguel is thinking about. All he wants to do is disappear. But first he stops at his mother’s trailer. She won’t be home for hours so he’s not worried that she’ll catch him as he’s filling a duffel with a pair of jeans, sneakers, and a few T-shirts. He takes his telescope. Not the one Aunt Elena gave him but the one he made himself. He’s heard that the space shuttle Discovery has taken a telescope into space where it will remain for years, photographing the solar system and sending pictures back to Earth. He grabs the last forty dollars that he’s saved from when he worked for the Rothsteins. He thinks about leaving a note for his mother but decides against it. He’ll call her once he gets somewhere—wherever that might be.
On his way out of town he decides to swing by the old cemetery one more time to say goodbye to this place as well. Old man Roybal is standing on his porch, smoking a cigarette, and he gives Miguel a wave as he drives by. He wishes the old man hadn’t seen him but there’s nothing he can do about that now. Usually he walks but today he is in a hurry. It’s already getting dark. He doesn’t want to change his mind if he’s going to get on the highway and disappear. He parks near the top of the hill and climbs the rest of the way. It is dusk as he is standing among the tombstones, looking out across the dry scrub valley that he has called home. He feels no particular attachment to this place and yet it will be difficult to move on.
He sits looking out across the Sangre de Cristo Mountains down into the desolate valley where he is from. Some cows have been up on this hill. That’s all that ever comes here. Cows and Miguel. The cows leave their pies behind. Miguel laughs to himself. That’s more than he’s leaving behind. As he sits, he looks down at the ground. Dozens of dung beetles are making their way to the cow pie. This is not a good memory for Miguel. It was these beetles that distracted him and caused Davie to be bitten by that old rattlesnake. What was it that intrigued him anyway? He can’t remember, but he was right about the snake. It conserved its venom. Its intent was to protect itself, not to kill. Still it struck. And this changed everything. Now a boy walks like a zombie, afraid of all the snakes that will bite him. And Miguel can no longer live in the place he calls home. He hates these vile beetles and he wants to crush them, murder them all. Instead he watches.
They walk a straight line forward toward the manure, as he’d seen them do the day Davie was bi
tten. They gather their little pile of dung and then walk backward, exactly as they had come. Forward and backward, one after the other. Always in a straight line.
Why do they do that?
Miguel looks up and sees that the stars are starting to come out, twinkling along the horizon. For a long time he looks at the sky, then back at the beetles. Then he goes to his car where he finds an old Coke bottle. He takes a sniff. It is dry and with the tip of his knife blade he gathers up half a dozen of the beetles. He drops them one at a time into the bottle. And then he has a more unpleasant task to do. There is a small shovel, along with a bucket of sand in his trunk, something his dad gave him for the next time he had to dig himself out of a ditch until his four-wheel drive is ready. He dumps the sand on the ground and fills the bucket with manure. Then he heads back to his father’s place.
His father still isn’t home. And Miguel senses he won’t be back for a while. Maybe he’s got a job or he’s on a binge. Maybe he has a woman somewhere. Miguel hopes that he does. He’d like his father to find someone new and have a life—the way Miguel is about to have one. Miguel thinks about what he’ll miss when he leaves Entrada. He will miss his father and his mother. He will miss the night sky over the cemetery. Already he misses Rachel Rothstein and the boys, but there is nothing to be done about that. Soon he will be gone. But first he has to test something.
In the middle of his father’s garage Miguel dumps the cow manure. Then he places the beetles a few feet away. At first they head toward the manure pile, but then he turns off the light so that the garage is almost dark but not so dark that he can’t see their movement. Inside the darkened garage the beetles stagger. They cannot follow a straight line. He watches as they try to find their way toward the manure, then away, stumbling, uncertain of where they need to go. It is as if they are drunk.