by Steve Earle
A quick hustler’s read of Hugo’s face detected no obvious tell unless it was the openness Doc had never seen there before. “Well, all right then …” Doc glanced over each shoulder. “So, you’ve got someone in trouble.” That was interesting, mused Doc. The cop actually blushed!
“Well, uh, someone’s in trouble, that’s true enough, but you can help me, can’t you, Doc? Folks around here say you’re really good at … what it is you do. I’ve asked around and everybody reckons that somebody, a girl, I mean, that was in trouble would be in good hands if she come to you for help, I mean, if that’s what she needed.” Now Hugo was searching Doc’s face for answers.
“I may be able to help you,” said Doc, “and your friend. I’d obviously have to examine her. Would you happen to know how far along …?”
“Six weeks. Exactly.”
Doc thought that there was something disconcerting about the cop’s certainty. “Six? Well, that’s good, then, the earlier, the better. Of course, there’s the matter of my fee.”
“Yeah.” Hugo nodded. “I understand that the going rate is a yard. Your arrangement with me has always been fifty a week but I’m willing to suspend your payments until—”
Doc was already shaking his head. “No.”
Hugo raised both hands, palms up, in genuine surprise. “I-I don’t understand!”
“That’ll be cash. Fifty now. Fifty on completion of the procedure. Same as anybody else.”
“But—”
“But nothin’. Like I said, I quit shootin’ dope so I don’t need any more, uh, protection from your intrusions into my personal life. Yeah, you could plant something in my room but you won’t because if I’m locked up I can’t help you with your little problem, can I? As far as my professional activities are concerned I reckon that you’re no longer in a position to be pointing any fingers. Let’s face it, Hugo, your options are somewhat limited. If you were one of those Alamo Heights swells, then things might be different, but the truth is that when a regular everyday hard-working guy like yourself knocks up his little girlfriend, I’m the only game in town. After me, all you’ll find out there is some butcher with a wire coat hanger or an enema bag full of lye. That being said, I’ll be glad to help you and your lady friend out, but I’ll sleep better sleep if we keep this transaction on a cash basis, from my hand to yours. That way nobody gets confused.”
Hugo hung his head for an instant, then reached in his pocket, pulled out a small stack of bills, and counted out two twenties and a ten.
Doc raked them up and tucked them into his hatband. “Seven o’clock at the Yellow Rose. Bring the rest of the money.”
Detective Ackerman stood up and walked out of the bar without a word. Manny and the other domino players migrated back to the table. Doc checked the bar clock and determined that there was enough time for at least a couple of hands before he had to punch in, but Graciela, he knew, liked a little warning before patients arrived. He surveyed the room for a likely courier. Not sticking every extra dime one made in one’s arm afforded one luxuries.
“Precious!”
The skinny working girl spun on her barstool to face the domino table. “Yeah, Doc?”
“You reckon you could stick your head in the door up at the boarding house and let Marge and Graciela know that we got company coming at about seven?” He held up a neatly folded ten-dollar bill.
“I’d be glad to, Doc, and you just hang on to your money, hon. I pass right by there on my way home anyway.”
“I’ll be damned!” Doc muttered, shaking his head and pocketing the ten. Manny grunted. “Told you, Doc! Somethin’ funny’s goin’ on around here.”
Graciela ran through the list in her head, checking off some items in Spanish and some in English, as she knew no words in her native tongue for hemostat or even …
“Stethoscope, stethoscope, stethoscope,” she repeated under her breath in an attempt to maintain her concentration as Marge bellowed at her from below.
“Graciela! Where you at, girl!”
It was Marge’s nature to act put out. She usually did whatever she was asked to do, within reason, but she reserved the right to bitch, at least to herself.
The stairs above rumbled softly and then bare feet slapped on the linoleum floor as a smiling Graciela stood catching her breath in the kitchen door. “Yes?”
Marge clucked and harrumphed and glanced over her shoulder. She still wasn’t sure what to make of the Mexican girl and the strange goings-on that seemed to follow her around. “You’re gonna mess around and break your fool neck, you keep flyin’ down them stairs like that!” She pulled her apron off over her head and hung it on the nail in the wall by the stove. “I’m off to meet Dallas and I reckon we’ll stop for a Mexican meal at Mi Tierra while we’re downtown.”
“Okay, Marge.”
Normally Marge would have helped prepare for the arrival of a client, but tonight Doc and Graciela were on their own. Marge’s gal, Dallas, was getting out of jail later that evening. She’d been picked up in a vice sweep on her way home from the store one night a month earlier, just swinging innocently down Presa Street with a bag of groceries on her hip. She couldn’t help but attract attention, Marge reckoned. She just walked like that. As it turned out, Dallas had an outstanding warrant from a year and a half back. Given the choice between a fine plus six months’ probation or thirty days in the Bexar County jail, Dallas had cheerfully opted to serve the time and walk away with a clean slate. Marge had shaken her head and spat on the ground and proclaimed, “Everybody’s goin’ crazy ‘round here, I swear to God!”
But now that Dallas was getting out, Marge had scrubbed the floors and washed the windows and was fixing to catch the South Presa bus downtown and be waiting for her sweetie when she walked out the jailhouse door.
Graciela spoke English now with almost no accent, unless it was a hint of Doc’s antebellum drawl.
“Kiss Dallas for me, Marge!”
The remark drew a sideways glance from Marge that Graciela never saw. The screen door slammed, and Graciela was alone.
Graciela relished the rare moments of solitude afforded by her life at the Yellow Rose. Doc, Marge, Dallas, and even Helen-Anne hovered over Graciela constantly, like hawks defending a fledgling. Manny was every bit as overprotective when he was around. But today she was alone. No boarders. No patients.
No pilgrims.
The word was out, and they had been coming for weeks, not in droves but alone for the most part and in twos or threes at most. They were mostly working girls with heroin habits. They came asking after a Mexican girl and then, later, asking for Graciela by name. They had heard that they might find hope for a new life if they really wanted it and none was turned away and no one left disappointed.
But on this day everything was quiet and Graciela reckoned that she had a couple of hours before Doc arrived to scrub for the procedure. She closed her eyes and breathed the silence in. When she breathed out again, the dust that she disturbed danced in a column of sunlight and she was reminded of lying on a blanket watching falling stars with her grandfather back home in Dolores. Long ago and far away. She sighed. Further still since her grandfather had died.
She had received no word from her family since she’d come to South Presa, nearly a year ago. She wasn’t even certain that her mother was alive. But there was no doubt in her mind that her grandfather had passed away in April.
She had awakened in the middle of the night calling for him. When Doc woke up and asked, she told him that she was certain that her grandfather was dead. What she didn’t say was that he had come to her, or at least his words had, in the mouth of a jaguar spirit. She didn’t ask, but she knew that she would never again see him in his human form, in this world or any other. Now for all intents and purposes, Doc was all the family she had, and the Yellow Rose was home.
And for the moment she had her home to herself and there was no time to waste.
It was like a dance without rhythm, deliberate and slow. S
he moved from room to room tracing faint figure eights on the dusty floor. She scanned the shadows, sniffed the air, and listened without and within, searching for any weakness in her own handiwork, the defenses that she maintained around the house and all who entered there. She burned sage against malice and secreted cedar cuttings beneath beds to protect against nightmares. She lit candles in honor of saints and animal spirits alike. Her grandfather had said, “There are no evil spirits in this world, child, only people who aren’t listening to what God is trying to tell them.” Graciela prayed for people like that. She invoked spirits to protect them from themselves. Not just for Doc and Dallas and Manny. She certainly mentioned them still, but they needed her prayers less and less every day. She concentrated her intercessions on Marge and Helen-Anne and that boyfriend/pimp of hers, Wayman. She even said prayers for the souls of Jack Ruby and Lee Harvey Oswald, and when she did the blood flowed freely from the wound on her wrist and the bandage soaked through.
Bang! Rattle! Bang! Rattle! Bang! Rattle!
It never failed. Somebody was knocking on the screen door downstairs. She sighed but she knew that she was alone in the place and that if she didn’t answer it, no one would.
She padded down the stairs but before she reached the landing where she’d have a clear view of the front door, something nameless whispered in her ear. The voice was softer but more credible than Marge admonishing her not to run down the stairs, and she stopped and leaned around the corner and peeked under the banister. The silhouette of a man in a dark suit stood on the other side of the screen. When he leaned forward to knock once again, his features came into focus and Graciela stifled a gasp when she recognized the pastor from the mission church. In nearly a year that Graciela had lived in the Yellow Rose, no member of the clergy had ever come calling.
The young priest shaded his eyes and peered into the half-light where the small noise had come from.
“Is there anyone at home?”
Graciela took a couple of steps downstairs into the light.
“Well, hello there!” he began, and then, “Uh, buenos días, señorita.”
She responded mostly out of pride in her English and regretted it immediately.
“May I help you, Padre? I was working. Cleaning. Upstairs, and I didn’t hear you knock, Padre …”
It was several seconds before the priest realized that Graciela was speaking rather than singing.
“Killen. Yes! So! You speak, uh, well, yes, I’m Father Killen. From the mission church.” He pointed vaguely behind him and then self-consciously covered his bandaged right hand. His instinct was correct but it came too late. Graciela had noticed it immediately. “I was just in the neighborhood and I, well …” He leaned closer to the screen and then retreated. Graciela had yet to blink. “I wonder, would it be all right if I came in? It’s a little awkward standing out here like I’m selling something, if you follow me. And I’m not …”
The voice in Graciela’s ear hadn’t given her permission to allow the priest past the threshold. “I can come out,” she offered, and when she pushed the screen open the priest noticed her own bandage, bright red with fresh blood.
“Well, uh, okay then. Please, I would appreciate that … Are you all right?”
“It’s nothing. I bleed too much,” she explained. “It doesn’t hurt.”
Father Killen stepped back a full two paces, twice the distance necessary to allow the door to open. He stumbled a step farther back when the screen door swept aside like a galvanized veil to reveal that Graciela had the face of an angel, both innocence and experience peering back at him through unblinking black eyes that seemed to assay his intentions. Still he lied without hesitation when she inquired after his own injury.
“An accident,” he said. “Gardening. I—well, I just wasn’t very careful. It’s a nuisance but it isn’t painful.” As if to corroborate his story, he offered Graciela the injured hand in greeting. “Well, it’s very nice to meet you,” he said. Graciela held his hand for only an instant before she let it go as if it were hot, but the priest was so mesmerized that he took no notice and prattled nervously on. Up close she was even more beautiful than he could possibly have imagined. He found that he was able to maintain eye contact for just a few seconds at a time. He would glance away at intervals to avoid drowning in infatuation, only to look back and ecstatically submerge again. Words came to him, but very nearly randomly, and he found himself nervously anticipating the endings of his own sentences. “Like I said, I was in the neighborhood and I’ve always wondered about this big old house. I drive by it nearly every day and I, well, is it yours?”
Graciela smiled at the absurd suggestion, and Father Killen’s heart nearly stopped. “No, Padre. It’s a boarding house. I rent a room here.”
“Well, of course it is! The sign in the yard. How silly of me. Oh, I’m sorry, did I introduce myself? Before Graciela could remind him that he had, he went on. “Let’s just start over, then, shall we? I’m Father Padraig Killen from the mission church, and you are … ?” He extended the bandaged hand again but Graciela ignored it this time.
“Graciela.”
“Graciela!” He pronounced it correctly. “That’s a beautiful name. Are you called Grace sometimes?”
“No.”
“Well, fair play to you. It’s a beautiful name. Your Christian name, I take it? You were christened in the Catholic Church?”
“Yes, Padre.”
“And confirmed?”
“Yes, Padre. When I was seven.”
“And how long have you lived here? In the parish, I mean.”
Graciela said nothing to that, and the priest silently panicked. He had searched for this girl for weeks and he knew too well how easy it would be for her to simply vanish into the streets if he allowed her to slip away. If he couldn’t keep her talking, it was only a matter of time before she closed the door in his face.
“And why, then, have you never come to Mass?”
Graciela smiled again, even though she had already made up her mind that there was something about this priest that she didn’t like.
“Forgive me, Padre, but I have.”
It was true that Graciela attended Mass at the mission church from time to time, but it didn’t surprise her that the priest had never seen her there. Coming and going without being noticed was part and parcel of her gift.
Naturally it was her grandfather who had first recognized that spirits of all kinds were drawn to Graciela like moths to a flame and that she possessed the rare ability to see and hear them all. That same internal beacon attracted human attention as well, and her grandfather had told her that if she was to have any peace in this world, she had to learn how not to be noticed when she didn’t wish to be. It was simply a matter, he said, of damping down that inner light.
Graciela took a step forward and the priest retreated again, blithely unaware that only inches separated him from a nasty tumble backward down the steps.
“I am sorry, Padre,” the girl began, wringing her hands nervously, her eyes downcast as she shifted her weight from one foot to the other. “I know I should come to Mass more than I do but I work on some Sundays and most Saturdays, which is why I haven’t been to confession in such a long time.”
The priest looked down on the small figure standing before him, her hair hanging limply, her dress wrinkled and soiled, and her bare feet caked with yellowish dirt. The face that he had thought so fair only a moment before seemed rather plain now, and when the girl made excuses for her lack of devotion there was no longer any music in her voice. Even the bandage around her wrist had faded, going from a flaming red to a muted brown and dirty white in the light of the dying day, as had his conviction that he was in the presence of anything remotely miraculous. The girl droned on for some indeterminate period, responding to his questions without really answering, until, no longer able to recall what had been so urgent about his errand that day, the priest produced his card and offered it to Graciela. “Well then, we’ll have t
o try to do better about getting ourselves to Mass, won’t we?” The girl made no reply except to shuffle her feet some more. “Right. I’ll keep an eye out for you, and, of course, you don’t have to wait for Saturday or Sunday. You know where I am, so feel free to come call whenever you like. My door is always open.”
Graciela didn’t even look at the card. She backed inside and the screen rattled as the heavy oak door closed in Father Killen’s face.
Somehow the priest managed to make his way down the steps and back to his car, though later he would remember only finding himself behind the wheel and navigating the moral wreckage that was the strip through the gauzy haze that had suddenly descended on South Presa Street. He rolled past the beer joint and the pawnshop, paying no attention to the whores on the corner and the dope fiends lined up behind the liquor store. Some of the girls recognized the station wagon; the word was out that nobody had seen Big Tiff for a while, so maybe her special trick was fair game now. But the priest never even slowed down. Once he crossed Roosevelt Avenue he could easily have pretended that he’d never heard of anyone called Graciela, and he was beginning to wish that he never had. He was ashamed. He had spent weeks chasing after smoke from one end of hell on earth to the other on the words of a handful of degenerate strangers, and for what? She was only a girl. An ordinary Mexican girl. How could he have been so stupid? He pounded the dashboard with his bandaged fist as hard as he could.
And it didn’t hurt. Not even a little. He yanked the wheel to the right and slammed on the brakes, grunting out loud as the Ford lurched to a stop. He held his hand up so that the grimy bandage caught the light and he noticed a bright red smear and he knew instantly that the blood wasn’t his own, and his heart began to pound. He frantically unwound the bandage and turned his hand front to back and then back to front again. He shouldered the door open, activating the dome light, and repeated the inspection of the hand that Graciela had touched, but there was nothing to see. Not a scab. Not a scar. Not a trace.
Graciela hurried up the stairs. She knew that the camouflage she had conjured was temporary and permeable, and it was only a matter of time before the priest returned.