South of Nowhere: A Mystery

by Minerva Koenig

  “Let me call you back in a minute,” I said. I hung up and asked Hector, “What’s halfway between here and the reservation that’s not on it? That I can get to?”

  He thought a minute, then put his cup down and said, “Let’s go ask.”

  I got up and followed him through the blanket covering the door. Finn was sitting at the fire with Cigar and the rest. They’d found him some clothes, but he looked like hell. Hector took the stump next to Cigar and asked him my question.

  “Sasabe,” Cigar said. “It’s on the border, right outside the wildlife refuge. They got a nice little church.”

  “How long does it take to get there?” I asked him.

  “It’s about three hours, if you drive,” he said. “The country gets rougher up that way.”

  I groaned. “Man, am I ever going to sleep again?”

  Finn, who was sitting in one of the folding chairs, said, “I’ll fly you.”

  I let out a dry chuckle. “You can’t even walk.”

  “I got the plane back here,” he reminded me. “I don’t need to walk to fly.”

  “You should write inspirational posters,” I told him.

  “Sasabe straddles the border,” Hector said. “Which side is the church on?”

  “Mexican,” Cigar said.

  Hector turned to me. “I’ll slap Finn if he passes out. Let’s go.”

  CHAPTER 32

  The church in Sasabe did have some nice qualities, namely that it was a clean, simple adobe building with three plain arched windows on each side. A bell tower clung to the north corner, but didn’t look like it had rung since Coronado came through.

  The surrounding town—population fifty-four, according to the sign—was dead quiet and appeared to be completely deserted except for a couple of dogs and a horse penned in the field next to the church. Finn had stayed with the plane, so it was just me and Hector in the battered truck that had been waiting for us after we landed on the road a couple of miles away. The only sound I could hear was the quiet shrilling of grass crickets. It was just past noon and hotter than East Jesus.

  Hector stretched, looking around. “Bet the real estate is cheap here.”

  “Hm,” I said.

  He looked at me. “This is one of the quieter spots on the border. Pretty safe, and easily accessible to the States. I think they got one guy at the crossing, and he probably won’t even look twice at Norma and your mom.”

  “Down, boy,” I said.

  He grinned, his high cheeks crinkling up under his eyes. “Yeah, because you moving to Mexico was my idea.”

  “I gotta live somewhere.”

  “Mike’s gonna be pissed.”

  “Not my problem,” I said.

  “Seriously, Julia,” he said, coming over to lean on the truck. “Living in Mexico isn’t like being on vacation in Mexico. You should give it some serious thought before you start packing. Don’t come down here just because I’m here.”

  “It’s almost like you don’t want me in the neighborhood.”

  “It’s just not going to be some kind of domestic bliss situation, that’s all I’m saying. I’m on the move all the time, gone for days, sometimes weeks. I get shot at, hounded by los perreros verdes like it’s their hobby. And I don’t always shower on a regular basis.”

  “Do I look like a soccer mom to you?” I said.

  A car was coming; we could see the dust. Hector opened the truck and got out the denim jacket he’d been wearing over his T-shirt when we left the encampment.

  He saw my look and said, “Gotta make a good first impression.”

  His concern about my mother’s opinion was endearing. I almost forgave him for trying to talk me out of moving.

  Norma’s car was a classic rez pony, a nameless Mopar of some sort, covered with rust spots and dents but purring like a race car under the hood and showing plenty of tread on the tires. Down here, where everything was hundreds of miles apart, you didn’t care what your ride looked like. It just had to get you there.

  A weird excitement grabbed me as I watched the tiny woman on the passenger side get out. I hadn’t seen her since my wedding, fifteen years ago, but she hadn’t changed much. She approached us with her characteristically slow, measured pace, her eyes half averted, as if she were simply taking a walk and hadn’t yet noticed the people in her path. She maintained this nonchalance until she was standing directly in front of me, at which point she finally raised her eyes to my face.

  I’d forgotten how small she was, and she’d shrunk a little with age, so that the top of her head now only reached about earlobe height on me. At five-two on a good day, I could count on the fingers of one hand the number of people I knew who had to look up to me. There was some gray in her dark hair that wasn’t there the last time I’d seen her, but her eyes were still like live coals in her expressionless face, full of appetite and uncertainty.

  “Thank you for seeing me,” she said.

  Her voice was quieter than I remembered; certainly the manner in which she used it was unusual.

  Norma had gone to see if the church was unlocked, which it was, and called over to us, “Let’s go inside. It’s hot out here.”

  My mother had shifted her gaze to Hector, so I said, “Hector Guerra, Nascha Tafoya.”

  Hector put his hand out, and my mother examined it for a brief second before extending her own. Hector shook it, doing a poor job of hiding his curiosity. I watched my mother read him like a book and produce a small, closed-mouth smile. From her, that was equivalent to a bear hug, and it stung. She liked him better than she liked me.

  It was much cooler inside the church, which was just as clean and plain on the inside as on the outside. Simple cedar pews, a tan clay-tile floor, and a table at the far end with a plain wooden cross perched on it. Everybody but me genuflected automatically, then my mother and I sat down side by side in the rear pew. Norma tugged on Hector’s sleeve, and the two of them went up front and sat down with their backs to us.

  My mother pressed her hands together. I was surprised to remember how small they were. She’d always seemed larger than life to me.

  “I don’t really know how to start,” she said, laughing quietly. She seemed slightly nervous, which surprised me. I’d seen my mother do a lot of things, but show her nerves was not one of them.

  “It’s been a long time,” I allowed, keeping my voice low. Hector and Norma were chatting quietly and far enough away that unless things went seriously wrong, they probably wouldn’t hear us.

  “You look so much like your father,” she told me, gazing toward the makeshift altar.

  My neck muscles tightened. “That’s probably not your best opening salvo.”

  “I can start there,” she said, suddenly sure. “Your father.”

  Of course she could. She’d start where the blood showed, where the weakness was, where I didn’t want her to. She always had. I was suddenly glad we weren’t sitting face-to-face.

  “Those Finns,” she said, chuckling. “They can drink. I can’t. Couldn’t, really, even back then.” She tapped the side of her head. “The genes, you know. We don’t process alcohol like the white people.”

  She was looking at the altar, her black eyes narrow. “He was so blond. I’d never seen anything like him.”

  “You never told me how he ended up in Florence.”

  “I never knew,” she said, lifting her shoulders. “I was just out at a bar with some people and there he was.”

  “And so you got pregnant,” I prompted, hoping to cut her off at the pass. The last thing I wanted to hear from her was some tale of youthful romance.

  My mother turned her head and looked at me with those black eyes of hers, thoughtful.

  “And so I got pregnant.” Her eyes went back to the altar. “He never knew.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “He was gone before I was sure,” she said. “And it wasn’t like we were dating or anything. We didn’t exchange phone numbers and addresses.”

  An
ger began to creep up my neck. “A wild weekend.”

  “Yes, something like that.”

  Her expression was still thoughtful, which surprised me. Remarks like the one I’d just made usually sent her into a fury. I don’t know why I hadn’t learned to stop making them. “Do you have problems with addictions?” she asked me suddenly.

  “Me? No.”

  “Ah. Thank God.”

  This calm, rational woman next to me was bearing less and less resemblance to the person I’d grown up with. I was becoming disoriented.

  “Is that what you wanted to say you were sorry for?” I asked her. “That you got pregnant with me by accident?”

  “I’m not sorry I got pregnant with you,” she said. “I regret some of the things I did after you were born.”

  “You mean the drinking and whoring around?”

  My mother took a deep breath, but she kept her eyes on the altar and didn’t react. “Yes. The drinking and whoring around. And some other things, things you may not remember.”

  “If I don’t remember them, what’s the point of apologizing?”

  “It’s for my own sanity,” she explained. “We make amends so that we can stay sober.”

  “Oh, so this is all about you,” I said. “How unusual.”

  Anger finally flashed up into her face, but she didn’t say anything, just closed her eyes and took a deep breath.

  “I was very self-centered,” she said. “Alcoholism does that. I was diseased, and you suffered for it. I regret that every minute of the day.”

  I started to reply, but she kept talking. “The things you don’t remember, the things that I worry about the most—”

  Her voice caught, and she stopped. I’ve never seen my mother scared, and for a minute I didn’t realize that’s what was wrong.

  She closed her eyes again for a few seconds, then shifted on the pew, turning so that she could look directly at me, and said, “I tried to kill you.”

  “You—” I started, then stopped. My brain wouldn’t take it in. My hands and feet started to tingle and feel cool.

  “We were up at the lake,” she said. “Me and my brothers—your uncles Nitis and Taza. It was a bad day for me, too much drinking. You were just a baby. You kept crying. I didn’t know what to do with you. I was on the dock with Taza and my head was hurting. He said you were scaring the fish. So I threw you in.”

  I wanted to get up and leave but I couldn’t make my body do it. I just sat there staring at her, only half hearing her now.

  “Taza jumped in after you and got you out,” my mother said. Her voice was its usual calm, measured weapon, telling the story plainly, without any drama. “He took you home and they kept you for a little while, until I sobered up.”

  I’d found my voice again, although my limbs were still threatening to check out. “How old was I?”

  “I don’t remember,” she said. “Young. Less than a year old. You weren’t walking.”

  That smothering morning sensation, like coming up out of water that was trying to drown me. Could it be this simple? Just an old memory?

  “Why did Uncle Taza and Aunt Retta give me back?” I asked.

  “They didn’t, really,” she said. “Maybe you don’t remember.”

  “No, I do. I was always at their place. But I never thought it was home. Are you saying that they adopted me or something?”

  “No,” she said, looking away again now. “Not formally. You just stayed there when I was drinking bad—which was often—after.”

  “After you threw me in the lake, you mean?”

  She nodded slowly.

  “I don’t know how to make amends for something like that,” she said. “I don’t even know if it’s possible.”

  I didn’t know, either, and it was taking all my energy not to disappear, so I kept quiet. Focusing on the back of Hector’s head seemed to help.

  We sat there for a while in the cool, dark church, listening to the silence, then my mother said, “Joachin and Norma ask about you all the time.”

  I nodded, glad to be moving on. “Norma says she’s got a couple of kids now.”

  “Yes, two. Well, two left. They lost a little girl a few years ago. Lucia.”

  I looked up toward Norma and Hector again, surprised. “She didn’t tell me. What happened?”

  “She went missing down here while she was visiting her father.” My mother made a contemptuous noise. “Not surprising. He’s no good. I’m sure he just let her run wild while he drank.”

  The words dropped between us like hot rocks. Realizing what she’d just said, my mother bowed her head, taking another deep breath.

  I changed the subject. “What’s Joachin up to these days?”

  “The same,” she said. Which meant he was still running around with criminal elements, probably blowing shit up. Or in jail. One of the two.

  I didn’t have any more questions, and my mother seemed to be finished talking, so I stood up. Hector and Norma, hearing me, came over and rejoined us. Norma helped my mother out of her seat, and we all proceeded silently back out into the heat.

  “I’m sorry to hear about your daughter,” I said to Norma after she’d gotten my mother into her car and it was just the two of us and Hector.

  She shot a look at him and said, “Nothing to be sorry about. We know who took her. We just can’t prove it.”

  “Took her?” I repeated, surprised.

  Norma’s eyes shifted toward the car where my mother sat looking out the window, away from us. “Some people would rather believe she’s dead. I can understand that. It’s easier.” Norma touched her chest. “I know better. I can feel her still breathing out there somewhere.”

  “How old was—is—she?”

  “Seven when she left,” Norma said. “That would make her almost ten now.”

  I didn’t tell Norma that if Lucia really were still alive, there had to be a reason she hadn’t returned home. Norma probably knew that, under her hope. She didn’t need me saying it out loud.

  “So I know you can’t really call me or anything,” she said, veering away from the doubtlessly painful subject of her daughter, “but ya know, if there’s some way to keep in touch, I wish you would.”

  That was as close to “I miss you” as any Indian would ever get, and I was glad. I’m no good at that stuff.

  She gave me a quick hug before I could stop her, jumped into her car, and drove off.

  CHAPTER 33

  It was late afternoon when we got back to the encampment. Aguilito came out to greet us from his watch spot again and told us that most of the group had gone on “an errand,” but that Ruben—the one I’d been calling Grenade Launcher in my head—was keeping Mikela on ice. Finn gave Aguilito’s head a friendly rub as we passed through the gate.

  The fire was still going, and Ruben was sitting next to the open doorway of one of the shacks, playing with his phone. He raised his chin at us, and Hector said, “Anything in the kitchen?”

  “Yeah,” Ruben replied, not looking up. “Help yourself.”

  I hadn’t even thought about food since our dinner at the reservation cafe the night before. It seemed like a year ago.

  Hector went into one of the shacks and came back after a couple of minutes with some bread, dried meat, water, and various hot-weather condiments. It wasn’t cordon bleu fare, but it would get the job done.

  Hector put a pan of water on the fire and handed me a mug. There was a tea bag in it.

  “Score!” I breathed.

  “I’m gonna go lie down for a bit,” Finn said.

  Hector nodded. “Good test run. You handled her OK. Didn’t have to slap you once.”

  “I told you,” Finn replied, looking at me. “Next time try and remember that I used to be a badass.”

  “If there’s a next time, my opinion of you will be the least of your worries,” I assured him.

  Finn snorted a short laugh and gave Hector’s shoulder a soft slap on his way to the bunkhouse.

  The two
of us noshed in companionable silence while the sky took on the juicy blue of sundown and the temperature dropped. After I finished eating, I put my jacket back on and stretched out on a folding chaise longue to drink my tea and watch the night come in.

  When I woke up, the fire had burned down to coals and there was a thick, wool blanket over me. Hector was on watch, slouched in one of the lawn chairs with the Benelli resting across his knees.

  “What time is it?” I asked him, sitting up.

  “Just now five,” he said.

  “How’s the prisoner?”

  “Asleep,” he said. “I just checked.”

  I pushed the blanket off and swung my feet to the ground. “Let’s get a move on. I’m ready to be done with this mess.”

  He nodded and got out of the chair, stretching and yawning, and went to roust the troops. Cigar, Braids, and Ruben appeared about fifteen minutes later, and, shortly afterward, Finn. The sleep had done him good. He was standing up straight now, and except for the bruises and cuts on his face he looked almost normal.

  “Ready when you are,” he said to me and Hector.

  “We’re going to need at least one additional gun,” I told Hector. “She tried to kill an armed man last time, and Finn’s going to be busy keeping us in the air.”

  He shook his head. “You know I can’t risk it.”

  Ruben leaned forward. “I’ll go.”

  Hector and Cigar looked at me.

  “OK,” I nodded. “Thanks.”

  Ruben went to fetch Mikela from the shack, and Hector and I took a short walk away from the fire to say our good-byes.

  He pulled my arms around his waist and set his chin on top of my head. “Give me some warning next time, will you?”

  “How am I supposed to do that?” I said, disengaging so I could look at him. “Send up a flare?”

  “You can leave a message with the hot springs,” he said. “They always know how to get hold of me.”

  We stood there listening to each other breathe for a while, then Hector said, “I wonder why the Kokoi were so hard on Finn.”

  “Their whole thing is avenging crimes against women. I’m guessing they’ve probably got their own ‘most wanted’ database.”