Desert Angel

by Charlie Price

  “Ahorita. Now!” Abuela’s face was grim as she pushed the khakis at the girl.

  Was this a punishment? Angel fought an impulse to run. She glanced at the front door and noticed Tío and Matteo had moved and were now walking down the center aisle toward the front. Their hats, which they’d left behind on the pew beside Angel, were quickly picked up and carried away by the young man who’d delivered the pants. Angel watched as Tío chose a pew down front, sat next to an older man, and began taking off his shirt. She looked for Matteo but couldn’t spot him. Changing clothes. She finally got it.

  After she’d tugged the pants over her jeans, Abuela held out her hand.

  “Zapatos.”

  Angel thought she understood. “Shoes?”

  Abuela nodded and handed her some black cowboy boots that looked two or three sizes too large.

  “Over?” Angel asked.

  Abuela shook her head.

  While Angel slipped off the tennies, the young man returned, bringing Abuela a bright turquoise T-shirt and navy blue slacks. The old woman took the clothes and handed him the shoes Angel had taken off. “Panama,” she told the boy.

  “¿Qué?”

  “Sombrero,” Abuela said, pointing at Angel and shooing him away.

  Angel looked for Celina but couldn’t find her. Abuela walked to the back of the church to change. The young man brought the straw cowboy hat and offered it to Angel. When she put it on she smiled in spite of herself. If she kept the brim tilted down, from a distance she would look like a short, heavy Mexican rancher.

  Abuela didn’t return, and Angel sat beside the stocky older man who had donned a black sport coat that was too small to button. In a way, it made him look younger. The short-brimmed Stetson he’d worn earlier was missing. Angel wondered if he’d given it to Matteo. Someone tapped Angel on the back. She froze.

  “When it’s over, you go with him.” Celina’s voice.

  Angel quarter turned. Now Celina had a dark red denim jacket over a brown skirt, a matching bandanna tied around her hair.

  “Him,” Celina repeated, nodding toward the stocky man. “Ramón. He take you away.”

  “Okay,” Angel said. “Thanks.” But when she turned around again, Celina was gone. Was that Abuela standing at the back in a baseball cap?

  At the end of the brief service, Ramón took Angel’s arm and put it through the arm of a plump woman in a dark shawl. “Together,” he said, and took the woman’s other arm. The three of them walked out with the crowd and made their way to a maroon crew-cab with livestock rails. “Get in back.”

  Angel had kept her head down the entire walk, but once inside she scanned the parking lot. Scotty’s pickup sat just inside the entrance, facing the line of departing traffic. He could see each car.

  “Get on the floor,” Ramón told her.

  No way Scotty could keep track of everyone leaving the church and know how many people were in each vehicle. He wouldn’t be able to recognize Abuela’s family dressed differently. But the car? Before she knelt she looked at Celina’s Ford. It was empty, by itself now, at the far side of the lot. No one was walking toward it.

  9

  Ramón’s house was on a paved lane heading south off Dillon Road, not far from Abuela’s. It sat in a thin grove of trees and ocotillo among different smaller cactus that made a garden of sorts. A climbing rose followed a trellis over the front door. The outside wood was painted a celery green and the door and windows were trimmed in white. A home. A real home. Angel couldn’t stop looking.

  “Stay in till I check,” Ramón told her, walking around the truck to help the plump woman get down from the cab.

  The woman had been smiling on the walk out of the church. Now her forehead was creased, mouth set. “¿La pistola?” she asked him.

  “Don’t worry, cara. I’m just going to the mailbox. See what I see.”

  The woman glanced at Angel, before going inside.

  Angel imagined they must all hate her for bringing this trouble. They could get hurt, and if some of their people were here illegally, they couldn’t afford to have police nosing around for any reason. Well, she was sorry. She was nothing but trouble.

  When he returned, Ramón was serious but not unfriendly. He opened her door and gave her a hand out. “Looks clear,” he said, sweeping the area to the northwest. “I was him, I’d probably search la iglesia, then cruise Dillon to see if somebody let you out. After that, whatever. He don’t want policía, right?”

  For the first time Angel wanted to tell. He killed my mom. But then what? What could this man do? Telling would just drag him in deeper. His wife would hate that. “No,” she said. “You saw him there in the camo truck?”

  Ramón nodded.

  “He’s kind of outside the law. In lots of ways. And … he’s mean. And dangerous. Really dangerous.”

  Ramón held the front door for her. When she stopped inside the entry hall, he led her into a shadowy living room. Old-fashioned furniture, mostly dark green, cushy, matching couch and big chair with one of those things you put your feet on. Old-timey lamps turned down dim, a low table, and some other soft chairs like the fancy ones at Salvation Army.

  His wife walked in with a pitcher of gray stuff, looked like lemonade. Said, “Sit.”

  It had lemon in it but it was different somehow, sweet, tangy, and Angel felt like she could drink a gallon without stopping. She made herself put down her nearly empty glass. She wanted to take off the oversized shirt and pants but knew she would feel weird doing that in front of them.

  His wife seemed to sense what she was thinking. “Bathroom’s in there,” she said, pointing to a hall.

  Angel got up and left, came back barefoot carrying the borrowed clothes. “Tonight if you could take me to the bus station I’ll get out of your hair,” she said. “You don’t want to get mixed up with Scotty.”

  “I was him, I’d have an eye on the bus station,” Ramón said.

  His wife glared at him, like, Let her go.

  “He can’t be everywhere,” Angel said.

  “He smart, though, right?”

  Angel nodded.

  “So what’s he gonna do? After cruising around hoping to get lucky.”

  Angel knew but she didn’t want to say.

  Ramón looked at her. Steady.

  Reminded her of the way Abuela looked at her.

  “So he’d go back to the Gomez place?… Make them talk?”

  Angel nodded.

  “Good thing they ain’t going to be there.” He got up from the big chair. “Reminds me. I got to call Hector. Get him to water their stock.”

  “Let me use your phone.” Angel was up and walking toward him.

  “No.” Ramón’s wife. “No phone.”

  “She’s right, uh, what’s your name?”

  “Angel, but I won’t tell them about you or the Gomas family. I’ll have them meet me on the road.”

  “Gomez, but you use this phone, 9-1-1, they come here. That’s the way it works. They track the caller. Always. We don’t want blues around here asking questions. Don’t want INS checking people that help us.” He turned back to the phone. “Sit for a minute, let me do the animals and then we’ll figure this out.”

  Ramón’s wife had gone back to the kitchen. Angel could hear pots or skillets clank and silverware rattle. Her stomach growled.

  Ramón returned and pulled the ottoman close to her chair. “Bus station’s a bad idea.”

  “So take me to the police.”

  “I could take you close by. Drop you off. But I don’t know that that’s so good. You got to think it through.”

  Angel hadn’t thought it through. Hadn’t thought anything through. She just ran and hid. That’s what she was good at.

  “Do it. I’ll go help Carmen. Be back in a couple of minutes.”

  Angel was a little stunned. No grown-up had ever told her to think.

  * * *

  THE WALLS HAD PICTURES. A photograph of Ramón younger and thinner, in a unifo
rm. A painting of a tall black mountain rising out of a desert plain. Over the serving board, a photo of cactus blooming. There were shelves with books and plates standing up so you could see colored drawings on them … She made herself stop.

  Okay, go to the police and they ask her about Scotty and she tells them he killed her mom last night. Was it last night? No, two nights ago. And buried her. Angel can show them where, but he’s probably moved her by now. And she tells them he captures turtles and eagles and sells guns. And Angel describes his truck and they get a guy to draw Scotty from her description. And she takes them to the trailer and they go after him. So what’s there to think … oh. What would they do with her? Where would she wind up? Juvie? Foster care?

  She’d been in foster homes. Both of the times her mom had gone to rehab and once when her mom served sixty days for soliciting. The first place had been run by a twisted family who tried to make each kid take psych meds so they could get more money from the court. Another, the family’s own son, a ganged-up sixteen-year-old, kept hitting on her whenever they were alone. The third, the Millers, were nice enough, but eleven kids in a three-bedroom house made a zoo.

  She’d spent a couple of nights in juvie when she’d run away and wouldn’t tell the police her name or where she was staying. That was scary. Neither the guards nor the other girls would leave her alone. And what if this time the foster father was another man like Jerry or Scotty. She couldn’t face it. She held her fists to her eyes to keep tears back.

  10

  The smell of roast meat made her light-headed. Her stomach twisted and she tried not to be sick. She walked to the front porch for some air.

  “Hey. You hungry? Cena. Dinner. Come eat and then we’ll figure this out.” Ramón had put on another shirt, light blue, short-sleeve, again with the snaps. Made Angel wonder: was it just style or was there a purpose to it?

  She followed him in through the living room and watched him sit at the head of a dark wooden table covered with steaming dishes of rice, and beans, and chunks of a green-gray vegetable she couldn’t identify. There was a mound of meat on a platter in the center, and to its side, a small bowl of shredded white cheese, a heavy tripod bowl of salsa, and a round basket covered with a thick cloth napkin. Tortillas?

  “You like carnitas, right?” Ramón smiled and tucked his napkin in the neck of his shirt.

  “Uh, I don’t know,” she said, feeling a small edge of queasiness return. Angel had no idea where she was supposed to sit. Where was his wife? And had she ever seen so much hot food at a table? That somebody actually cooked?

  “Why don’t you sit here,” Ramón said, patting a place on his right, “and Carmen will be in with the limón. You liked it, right? Lime and pineapple? Better than Pepsi!”

  His wife came in shortly carrying two icy pitchers of the lemon drink. When she was seated, Ramón closed his eyes, clasped his hands, and said a brief prayer of thanks, before passing Angel the basket of tortillas. The beans followed, then the meat, and so on till her plate was impossibly full. “Muy rico,” he said, smiling and pointing to the food. He and his wife both dug into their plates and began to eat without conversation.

  * * *

  AFTER DINNER Angel’s stomach felt like a watermelon. She hoped she hadn’t overdone it.

  Ramón had cleared the table with Carmen after telling Angel to wait for them in the living room. In minutes both of them were seated on the couch across from Angel. “So, qué pasa?” Ramon said. “What have you been thinking?”

  Angel was distracted by his wife. She sat a foot away from Ramón, hands clasped over one knee. She had not looked at Angel but her face wasn’t angry or condemning or any of the things Angel would expect. Her face was calm, as if this difficulty was one more in a life of many. One more situation to deal with and be done. The woman was beautiful in a way, like the statue of the Virgin that Angel had seen in the church. Beautiful and strong like Abuela. These women were nothing like her mother, who had been thin and pretty in spite of the broken nose that never healed straight. Her mother, all need and drama.

  Ramón interrupted her thoughts. “You have family?”

  Angel shook her head.

  “Nobody? Nowhere?”

  Angel looked at the floor. She really was an alien.

  “So, what you want to do?”

  “Go. Leave. Somewhere he’ll never find me.”

  Carmen looked at her then. As if she was imagining what it would be like to be chased by someone awful.

  “No police?” he asked.

  “I guess … uh, not yet, maybe.”

  “I been thinking,” Ramón said, rubbing the mark his hat made on the side of his head. “Me and friends. We could make a bunch of calls. Pay phones. We could—”

  “You can’t,” his wife interrupted.

  “No, listen. She tells me where it happen, a bunch of us report it. Sheriff has to check it out.”

  Angel remembered the grave. The trailer. No way Scotty could get rid of all the evidence.

  “It was just a dirt track,” she said. “The first one that goes left, down from Abuela’s.”

  “Past the Gomez house, left toward the hills, toward Joshua Tree?”

  “Yeah, at the edge—”

  The phone rang and Ramón left to answer. When he came back, his face was dark and his hands were fists.

  “All the stock. Your truck guy. Must have just missed him. Shot everything. Cow, pig. Hector says they all bled out in the corral. He’s not sure what to do.”

  Carmen had bowed her head and covered her mouth with her hand as Ramón spoke, but now she turned to him. “Tell him to save meat and bury the rest. Tonight. Before somebody sees, tells la policía.”

  Ramón nodded. Left to make another phone call.

  When he came back, Carmen had been thinking. “I’m gonna call the padre,” she told him. “Get the phone tree going. Tell everybody watch out.”

  Ramón touched her arm as she stood and watched her as she left the room. He sat heavily, made the couch groan.

  Angel studied him. Forty or fifty. She wasn’t good with older people’s ages. His short sleeves showed thick arms, rough hands. Maybe he was a little fat but mostly he looked solid. Like he could lift a car. His face was lined, weathered, with slabbed cheekbones and strong jaw. If his eyes hadn’t been kind, he’d have looked almost scary.

  “You’re gonna need a good plan,” he said. “Can’t make no mistake with this guy.”

  * * *

  BOTH SAT WITH THEIR OWN THOUGHTS several minutes before Angel spoke. “You could drop me in Thousand Palms or Cathedral City. I could hitch someplace. Arizona, maybe.”

  “Where?”

  “I don’t know. Anywhere.”

  “This guy, what’s his name, he got friends?”

  “Scotty. I don’t know. I think so. Maybe not friends but people who buy from him, people he sells to. He knows this area pretty well.”

  “So he might have conocidos, partners, watching out. You got to get some distance.”

  “I could work. Get a job.”

  “You got skills? Experience? You got a Social card? How old are you?” Disbelief on his face. “Somebody gonna hire a kid? By herself? How you gonna even get a room?”

  “I could waitress.”

  “You ever done that? Any job?”

  Angel shook her head. Looked at her torn jacket and jeans. “I could do it. I just have to get some clothes.”

  “Hell, girl, clothes are the least of your problems.”

  In the silence that followed that remark, Angel remembered her inventory back at the trailer. Earring, five-dollar bill. Right. No serious money. No clothes. No skills. She didn’t even have shoes anymore. She had nothing worth nothing. Time to give up. But she didn’t think Scotty would kill her fast this time. He’d act out on her. She couldn’t face it. More foster care? She couldn’t face that either. She struggled not to break in front of Ramón.

  After a minute he spoke again. “System could probably he
lp. The cops protect you. Hook you up to services. Find you a place to stay. Go back to school.”

  Angel shook her head. There wasn’t any help. Ever. She bit her lip. Can’t think like that.

  “So what you gonna do?” he asked her.

  Die, she thought, and this time she couldn’t hold back. Through a haze of tears she could see Ramón, sitting, hands clasped, watching her, but he didn’t get up or touch her. She was grateful for that.

  * * *

  WHEN CARMEN CAME BACK TO THE COUCH, she looked tired. “Celina’s carro. He burned it.”

  Ramón looked at her. Didn’t speak.

  “Right at the church. In the lot. Nobody saw till the gas explotó.”

  “Blew up? Catch anything else?”

  She shook her head. “Padre said, just the car.”

  “Huh.” Ramón put his arm around his wife. “Maybe we all gotta get some rest,” he said, looking at Angel. His eyes narrowed. “No. If we rest, you run, right?”

  Angel avoided his eyes.

  “Okay, so let’s figure this out.”

  Ramón settled in again with Carmen and each of them folded their hands in their laps and waited for Angel to speak.

  In spite of how bad it was, Angel smiled to herself. Good luck being told what to do by these people. Tío, Abuela, Ramón … they were always waiting for her to talk. Pretty different. Every day her mom had asked Angel what she should do, and every time she would start talking again before Angel had a chance to answer. And she didn’t even notice. Her mom would talk about herself 24/7 unless a man told her to shut up. So why did Angel keep missing her so much?

  “I need to get away. Out of this area. That’s the thing … the only thing.” Angel was staring at the bookshelves, thinking. “Arizona was a stupid idea. I don’t know anybody there. Really, I don’t know anybody anywhere, so any place away from here will do.”

  “Momo up here, or has he gone back already?” Ramón asked his wife.

  She shrugged.