by K M Stross
“The only taxi in town, I’m assuming,” Cross said.
Maria smiled. “The driver is cheap and quiet.”
“I need to get down to Cielo,” Cross said. “As soon as possible.”
“Then go,” Maria said. “You do not need our help to cross into Mexico.”
“I do,” Cross said. “Because I can’t do it legally.”
Maria stared at him for a moment, half-expecting him to laugh it all off as a joke. When he didn’t, she asked, “Why not?”
“I don’t have a driver’s license or passport,” Cross said. “I have no identification.”
“Why?” she asked.
Cross shook his head. “I can’t say right now. All I can tell you is that I need to talk with Yolanda. I have to know what happened to her sister.”
“You do not need our help,” Luone said between mouthfuls of cereal. She glared at Cross. “You are a white priest. They will not hassle you.”
Cross shook his head. “I’m no priest.”
Maria cocked her head, less disappointed than he had expected. “What are you, then?”
“I’m nothing,” Cross said. “I’m just… I need to talk to Yolanda.”
Maria glanced at Luone, who cast a disapproving look. They exchanged three very calm Spanish sentences.
“Luone wants money,” Maria said. “And I want an explanation.”
“I’ll provide both,” Cross said. “Once we get there.”
“It will not be easy,” Maria said. “We will have to avoid the People in the Hills, and we will need a ride as close to the border as possible. It will take hours to get to the town. Are you sure you want to take this risk?”
“Yes,” Cross said quickly. Without hesitation.
“
“Yes,” Maria said, turning back to Cross. “We will go through the national park to cross the border.”
“Whatever gets me there fastest,” Cross said.
Maria looked at Luone, and the two exchanged a quiet laugh. Maria stood up and opened the refrigerator, pulling out three bottles of water. She set them on the table. “We need a ride into the park. We need someone who is willing to break the law.”
Cross took off the white cardboard tucked under his collar, stuffing it into his pocket. “Do you have a phone?”
CHAPTER 18
The cab traveled west along Ajo Mountain Drive, deep inside Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, a national park southwest of Purgatory. The sun had already set behind the large rolling mountains that stood out as sparse peaks between heavy desert vegetation, casting a twilight hue across the arid landscape. They sat three deep in the backseat, Cantrell very quietly humming to himself as he followed the winding road south. Cross kept his eyes on the rolling hills that reminded him of the northwest, the way the mountains could cut off and just as quickly return between flat expanses of the desert plain.
The cab’s headlights flipped on. Cantrell turned onto dirt. The car bounced on the uneven road, its tires crunching on gravel. They drove another thirty minutes, slow and steady, Cantrell humming to himself.
“Secret Not-So-Real Road,” Cantrell announced. “Hope you got good shoes on.”
“No,” Maria said, shifting in the seat. “We need you to take us farther west.”
Cantrell shook his head, pulling the cab over on the dry road and putting it in park mode. He didn’t turn around, choosing instead to address the rearview mirror. “Vigilantes are everywhere over there. You’ll have better luck down here.”
“Okay,” Maria said. “Thank you.
Cantrell breathed out through pursed lips, whistling. “
“Gracias.”
Cross followed them out, leaning on Cantrell’s open window. “Can you be here tomorrow morning?”
“Of course,” Cantrell said. He smiled. “Unless I get another customer.”
Cross watched it make a U-turn and drive off before turning to the two women standing just off of the road. The road simply ended, giving way to a hilly expanse of leading to the border. It was peppered with large stalk-shaped cacti that blended into the darkness, making it difficult for Cross to see between the thick trunks. All he saw were shadows of thin, human-shaped forms, some of whom seemed to be holding one hand in the air as if warning him to turn back.
“Stay close,” Maria said. “Let Luone lead. Stop when she stops.”
They walked through the field of saguaro cacti, some taller than Cross’s head and others so small that he found himself tripping over them before his right eye could even distinguish their shape. Between the fatter ones that squeezed together, Cross found his shoulders on the receiving end of the needles that otherwise missed the smaller petite frames of the two women. They traveled in silence, stopping only occasionally through the field to take a sip from their water bottles. At the first low basin, Luone led them around the edge where exposed rock jutted up perpendicular to the ground like a looming tower. Luone led them around the base of the next hill, taking them up the steeper end that tested the muscles in Cross’s legs.
Still, he took the time to look up. The stars were beautiful. They were even more remarkable than in northern Wisconsin on a cold winter day when just a hint of the Northern Lights could be seen dancing on the far horizon like ghosts. He stopped when he found Cygnus, the Northern Cross. The constellation sat near the horizon but it was plain as day, and it seemed as though the tunneling in Cross’s left eye had entirely subsided while he stared at it.
Stars were the knots in the net of heaven. And he loved them.
“Cross.”
It took an effort to turn away from Cygnus. When he did, he found Maria’s dark eyes looking sternly up at him. She reached out, grabbing his elbow. “We cannot stop.”
On the other side of the hill, Luone stopped. She crouched down, waiting for Maria and Cross to follow suit while her eyes scanned the southern horizon.
“What is it?” Cross asked.
“The border,” Luone said, pointing ahead of them. “Una valla.”
Cross looked to Maria for clarification.
“There wasn’t always a fence there,” Maria explained. “It’s new.”
“I don’t see anything,” Cross said, closing his left eye. He noticed Maria studying him and immediately opened his eye again, trying to focus on the obscure shadows. They made him anxious.
“Barbed wire,” Maria said quietly, still watching his eyes. “We will have to slip through carefully and walk slowly in case there are more.”
Cross nodded. “Whenever you’re ready.”
Luone started forward, but Maria stopped Cross. She kept her hand on his bare arm. “Would you like to hold my hand?”
“I’ll be okay,” Cross said.
She ran her hand up his arm, sending a tickle through his chest. Suddenly, he felt a sharp pain in his shoulder accompanied by a warm wetness soaking into his shirt. He looked down—she was holding a three-inch long cactus needle. “You could not avoid the cactuses.”
“Cacti,” Cross said, smiling. He grabbed her warm, rough hand and let her lead them both down the hill.
At the bottom, they hurried across the flat plain single-file to avoid the cacti. The air smelled dry, a hint of aloe tickling Cross’s nostrils every time the wind picked up. Luone crouched next to the makeshift barbed-wire fence dividing the U.S. from Mexico.
“No es el gobierno,” she said, pointing to the splintered wooden post nearest to them. It could have been a piece of a rocking chair or a round plank from the banister of an old house porch.
“No,” Maria said. “The vigilantes did this.” She said it with apprehension as if mentioning them would result in their appearance.
Cross examined the shoddy design. It was purely symbolic, with two lines of barbed wire running horizontally between the posts. The wires were spread apart by a good two feet
, easy enough for anyone in good shape to squeeze between or simply jump over. They took turns carefully ducking between the first and second wire, then started moving at a slower pace. Cross watched Luone’s movements carefully, stopping when she stopped, glancing in every direction her head turned. She was in tune with their environment on a level he couldn’t comprehend, honed by years of following these exact actions.
They picked up the pace and moved in silence, following Luone while she continued on an invisible, familiar trail. Cross admired her ability to see in the darkness, to understand the environment around her so intimately that it was possible to close her eyes and continue simply.
“She’s done this before, hasn’t she?” Cross finally asked Maria.
Maria nodded. In a low whisper, she said, “Ever since the vigilante groups began forming, there has been more fear about crossing. It got worse when the National Guard began patrolling too. More people try to sneak in inside trucks, and my sister knows firsthand how dangerous that can be. Los coyotes often care more about money than human lives. Not all, but most.”
“Isn’t Luone afraid of getting caught when she helps people?”
Maria didn’t answer at first, weaving around a large organ pipe cactus that was almost invisible in the darkness, pulling Cross’s hand to prevent him from bumping into it.
“It is rare in this area,” she said. “The vigilantes are easy to spot, and the government trucks make a lot of noise. The cactuses help.”
“What would the vigilantes do if they caught us?” Cross asked.
Maria hummed between her lips a moment, thinking. She stepped over a budding cactus, motioning for Cross to follow suit. “They keep people until the government patrols arrive.”
“I find that hard to believe,” Cross said. He let her guide him around another near-invisible cactus.
“You’ve seen them,” Maria said.
Cross rubbed absently at his left eye, peering ahead into the darkness without any depth perception. On the horizon, the stars seemed to hang directly over the land. “How did you know?”
“Because,” she said. “Most people who have never seen them think they are doing a good thing. You do not seem to think so.”
“They thought I was a Mexican,” Cross said. “On my first night here. They didn’t seem to have much interest in following any sort of Geneva Conventions.”
She glanced up at him. “Geneva what?”
“Never mind.” Ahead, near the horizon where the stars hung close to the earth, he could see other much brighter lights peppered across the landscape. “We’re close, aren’t we?”
Maria nodded. “
Cross stopped, letting Maria’s soft hand slip out of his. “Why are we stopping here?”
“Luone’s payment,” Maria said. “And mine.”
Cross reached into his back pocket and pulled out two hundred-dollar bills from his wallet. He put them in Luone’s outstretched hand. She held them close to her eyes for a moment, scanning each one with satisfaction before placing them in her front pocket.
He opened his mouth to point out this was it, the last of his money. It was the last of the money from his checking account, the last of the money he had received from selling his grandmother’s property. After so many years of searching for Morrissey, so many years of traveling and investigating and bribing and lying, he had finally exhausted his treasury and his soul.
Now, he was alone, with a few wadded-up bills in his pocket and nothing else.
“Now my payment,” Maria said.
Cross took a deep breath. “I don’t know where to start.”
“At the beginning.”
“The beginning,” Cross said, feeling his thoughts slip away into the darkness. He looked up at Cygnus, still hanging in the sky like a crucifix nailed over a bedpost. “The beginning was a long time ago.”
CHAPTER 19
“Everything started in a small township in northern Wisconsin. I grew up there. The winters were cold, and the springs were cold, the autumns were cold. The summers were hot. I remember playing in a sandbox as a kid, and I remember being surrounded by birch trees with white, papery bark and I remember having a metal bulldozer with two handles that would let me control its U-shaped blade. I remember pulling up sand and piling it in big piles for hours and hours.
“My town in Wisconsin was unincorporated, the kind of town that never had any supermarkets or Wal-Marts or any other chain stores. What we had was a family market and a thrift store on the edge of the town, and that was more than enough for all eight hundred locals. The main highway cutting through it was our version of Abaddon Drive, with a few small shops that sold mostly fishing souvenirs. There was one gas station, locally owned, where customers could get gas and a cheap hot dog before getting back on the highway and heading either south to Milwaukee or northwest to Minneapolis. If the hot dog didn’t take, there was an A&W next door, an old-fashioned one without any indoor seating and ten metal stools outside where the cooks could hand off the food through the open windows.
“And we had one church, Saint Paul. I went there because my grandma went attended that church, and it was the least I could do since she was the one who had chosen to raise me when my shithead parents got divorced. It had started like a game of pick-up baseball, only instead of fighting over who wanted to take me home, my mom wanted my dad to take me, and my dad wanted my mom to take me. So my grandma swooped in and said she’d love to have me live with her and that settled everything on the spot. Neither of my parents argued with her.
“We had one priest: Father Tony. I can remember him when I was just a boy—back then, he was still in his early forties, handsome according to the few single women who resided in town. When I hit my teen years, I kept my ears open more often and waited patiently every day for some news about Father Tony and one of the women in our parish. None ever came, not even when I started high school and I realized just how many of the girls my age had crushes on the guy who spent his Friday nights teaching free horticulture classes.”
Cross stopped to rub his eye. It had begun to hurt, and the tunneling darkness was giving him a headache. He looked up at the stars, thinking back. Trying to remember it all.
“I didn’t get to really know Father Tony until my grandmother’s funeral. By then I was seventeen and finishing my senior year of high school. I sat in the front row of the pews during Father Tony’s memorial service—I didn’t turn around a single time because I didn’t want to know how many people had bothered to show. Friends were few and far between; it was hard to make friends when everyone lived a mile apart from each other.
“Neither of my parents showed up. They probably cared, especially my mother—my grandmother’s daughter—but I always imagined her deciding to make the trip only to find a twenty in her pocket and take it to a casino instead.
“That was how bad it had gotten toward the end. I rebelled against my parents by going out of my way to please my grandma, because a few years after she took me in, they both started calling and asking to take me back. I was my mother’s property, even if she didn’t actually want the burden of taking care of me—she just wanted a body she could claim to get a tax refund. I remember seeing her using something when I was young, and I learned later in school that it must have been meth. My dad split the moment he could find someone better looking who could put up with his addiction to computers, which meant all the fun stuff in the apartment disappeared and all that was left was a woman in her mid-thirties who sat at the kitchen table and let empty Miller bottles pile up. Cigarettes in the Miller bottles. Crystal Meth sitting in the clean ashtray. Ashes on the tabletop.
“My g
randmother’s funeral was the first one I had ever been to. It was the only time I wished for my mom or dad. Grief is easier in numbers.
“Father Tony sat down next to me after the service. I could smell his Old Spice aftershave, and up close I could see every single fine line on his pale face, and all I could think about was whether he had dabbed the aftershave between the lines so the smell would linger longer. I had some sort of anger toward him, maybe because I thought he knew how “in demand” he was among the girls and I never got that kind of attention in high school. He wore a hearing aid in his left ear, and when he spoke during Mass, he sounded like he had suffered hearing damage as a child because he spoke in a dialect all his own, as if he was unsure of how to use his tongue to form words.
“‘Was it a long fight?’ he asked.
“I looked at him, not sure how to respond.
“‘Or was it a gentle death?’ he added.
“‘Gentle, I guess. I tried to wake her in the morning, and she didn’t wake up.’ I was clutching a book she’d given me, The Principles of Flight. She’d given it to me on my birthday that year because she knew how much I loved airplanes. Jets—especially the big ones. And the fast ones. And birds too. There was a huge section in the book about different types of birds and how differently each one flew.
“‘I’m glad it was gentle,’ he said. ‘She always struck me as the type of person who seemed at peace with the world. She knew when her time would come, I think, and she made sure to do it in the most gentle way possible.’
“Then I cried. I couldn’t help myself anymore, and the words he used seemed so perfect and beautiful. I told him about how I found her, lying in bed, the stench of shit hanging in the room and the way my skin went cold the moment I saw her lying on top of the blankets. She never slept on top of the blankets. He never tried to hold me or ease my sobs by saying anything cheesy. He just put a hand on my shoulder, and he kept it there until I had nothing left.