by Dan Darling
I set the new one in front of him. “Let’s get back to those birds.”
His face had taken on a droop. The skin around his lips was pale. He let some air stream out of his body and then seemed to come to a decision. His mouth and eyes relaxed and he sucked the foam from the top of the bottle. “What do you want to know?”
“Everything. I’m still not convinced you actually know much about it.”
He smiled and it looked right on him, even if it was one of those patronizing expressions people wear when a kid says something cute. “We know more than you.”
“How about you start with this ‘we’ you keep talking about,” I said.
He got a cagey look. “I can’t give you this stuff for free.”
“How about you tell me the name of your Pan-Chicano militant group?” I wasn’t sure if I’d gotten Tanis’ words quite right, but I figured it’d be close enough to get him talking.
“You’ve been listening to some mouths. Lemme guess. That Jane you chewed it up with in the zoo parking lot. Tanis Rivera.”
“I’ve heard it all over town,” I lied.
He leaned over the bar and shook a finger at me. “Don’t believe a wag of it. She’s playing every angle. No one even knows what kind of meat she’s got in this thing. She could be a fed, or she could be straight goofy.”
“So, who’re you with?” I asked.
His face went tight again and he looked at his watch. “I’ll tell you: My name’s Tony Chavez. I’m a gumshoe. I have a client and I’m looking into this thing for said client.”
“You’re a private detective? I didn’t know your type lived past the fifties.”
“Oh, we’re still around,” Tony Chavez said. “My client is a nature lover rolling in gold Krugerrands. Every time a butterfly dies, he sheds a single tear. Naturally, he’s taken an interest in the birds.”
“Sounds like my type of guy,” I said. “You should introduce us.”
“Would if I could,” he said. “Confidentiality and all.”
I was getting tired of trying to come up with clever rejoinders. I wanted to get to my trap making, and I was beginning to doubt how much I’d be able to learn from my visitor. “Simon Marchette. Know him?”
He wiped a thoughtful expression across his face. “Doesn’t ring a bell.”
“Then you’re of no use to me.” I got my broom and made a show of sweeping the broken glass clear of the pool of beer spread across my kitchen tile. Luckily, I’d caulked every seam of cabinet, bar, and refrigerator to keep Ralph’s prey from squirming to safety, so the beer wouldn’t be hard to clean up.
“If I did know him,” the little man piped up, “I wouldn’t tell you. Not without some sort of equitable swap.”
I emptied the dustpan into the garbage. “How about information on Marchette for your peashooter?”
“That’s a .38 special. It’s a classic.”
“I hear the cops have a program.” I filled a bucket with water and a splash of bleach and set it next to the puddle of beer. “They collect firearms and melt them down to make license plates. It keeps the peace and gives felons something to do with their time.”
“I’ll give you this,” he said, “but I can’t tell you anything more.”
I stopped swooshing my mop around. “Shoot.”
He leaned forward until his chest was against the bar, his pupils as big as acorns. He held his finger out and let his mouth hang open for a few seconds, as if he were looking for words. When he spoke, his voice was just above a whisper. “You’ve been seeing beasties.”
I stared at him.
He sat back in his chair, grinning and nodding. “I knew it. They’re out there, Mr. Stick. They’re real.”
“Oh yeah?” I tried to get control of my composure by doing some mopping. “I did see something weird when I was down by Elephant Butte Lake. Could have been the Loch Ness Monster. Everybody’s relocating to the Southwest these days.”
“Joke around,” he said. “Go ahead.”
I put my mop in the bucket and leaned the handle against the fridge. “I have not seen any beasties. I have seen some strange dead bodies, but nothing beyond that.”
“Let me guess. Odd teeth marks. Insect bites that don’t make sense. Blood loss. That kind of thing?”
I gave him my most non-committal look. “You saying Albuquerque has vampires on top of everything else?”
“Ha. This is America. We don’t need to import monsters from Europe. We have our own.”
“You gonna tell me what they are so I can laugh you out my front door, up my stairs, into your car, and out of my life?”
“I didn’t come here to give you the dope,” he said. “I came to tell you: steer clear. This is not your business. Stay away from the dead birds. Stay away from the Minutemen. You work with them, and you become the enemy of my client.”
“Your client, the tree-hugger?”
“My client, whoever or whatever they may be, is powerful. My client represents a lot of people interested in this bird business. You get on the wrong side―you get on any side―and you’ll be in Dutch so deep even you won’t be able to see out.” His face became grave. “My client is Mary Poppins compared to the people you’re mixing it up with―Typhon Industries and their muscle, The Minutemen. They’ll use you, and when they’ve gotten everything they can out of you, they’ll toss you in the trash. Or worse, they’ll find you a nice dark cell where habeas corpus don’t apply. Rubbing elbows with them is bad enough. But join ’em at your peril.” He got up and walked to the door. “Consider this a friendly warning.” He held out his hand.
I retrieved the gun from the freezer, dumped the bullets in the trash, and hovered the gun above his palm. “Which side is Marchette on?”
“He a friend of yours?” Newspaper Man asked.
“What if he is?” I said.
He gave me a sad smile. “He’s on the wrong one.”
I dropped the gun in his hand and locked the door behind him.
Making flytraps took up the rest of my afternoon. I started by cutting the tops from a few two-liter plastic cola bottles. Figuring they’d need the camouflage if I was going to hide them around the Typhon Industries complex, I painted each bottle brown. Then, I boiled some sugar and water, filled each bottle a quarter of the way full, and stuck the tops inside each bottle, nozzle down. This would make it easy for flies―or whatever mysterious mutant fly-wasps happened by―to crawl into the trap, but once they fell into the mixture within, it would be difficult to escape. I put the traps on my patio to cool, wedged against the side of the house with bricks so the wind wouldn’t blow them around. An hour later, I brought them in, added an equal measure of pig’s blood, and lined them up in my fridge.
I had a plan: catch a few horseflies in the mountains. But hearing what Tony had to say, it seemed small-time, like a guy watering his flowers as a tidal wave looms over him.
he next day, I drove out to the East Mountains before work. I put a couple traps in the northern part of Las Huertas Canyon, near bends in the creek where the water stood still and brackish. I saved the last two for the Typhon Industries facility. A clump of protesters chanted at the main security entrance. Their collective breath hung like thought bubbles in the winter air. They held handmade placards with peace signs and catchy phrases and exclamation points. They were attractive young activists in hipster clothing with curly hair and sunglasses. I stayed the hell away from them.
I drove around the perimeter of the facility, looking for a dumpster outside the secure area. I didn’t find one. However, I did find a stream that ran downhill from the mountains, under a razor-wire fence through a channel cut into the ground, and directly into the uppermost building―the one with the domed roof that could open. From what I could tell, the architects had gone out of their way to erect the structure precisely in the path of the water. The stream wasn’t big, but during the monsoon season, it would swell with runoff. The architects must have either had a good reason to put the buildin
g there or been drunk on creative power.
I put the last two traps along the banks a few yards outside of the security fence that spanned the stream. I masked them with some brush. It was worth a shot.
The University sat between the mountains and the zoo. I hadn’t heard from Melodía since our most recent fight. I figured I’d drop in on my way through the city and try to make things right. Throw myself on the floor and grovel a little. It was the way our friendship worked.
Her lab was locked, but a line of light gleamed under the door. When I knocked, something banged within, like a cabinet door slamming shut. Then the room went quiet. I knocked again with authority. More silence. I pictured her sitting in her white lab coat, quietly waiting for me to leave. I wondered if Melodía did this whenever anyone knocked on her door. The thought made me want to apologize even more.
“Hernandez!” I bellowed. “It’s Stick. Open up.”
I could almost feel her hesitation, as if it were a quality of the chill basement air.
“Stick?” she asked finally. Her voice broke. She sounded miserable. I felt guilty for forcing myself on her and glad that I’d dropped back into her lonely existence.
“It’s me,” I said.
Her feet tapped across the lab, and she opened the door. She wore a white lab coat with her long curly hair splayed across the shoulders. The fingers of both hands twisted themselves into a clump in front of her stomach. The side of her face that could hold an expression looked anxious. Her lips were thin and gray. “What are you doing here?”
“Can’t a friend stop by to check on a friend?”
“Of course.” She stood, her body stiff, blocking the entrance to the lab.
“How are you doing?” It was a question strangers asked each other.
“I’m fine.” Her eyes kept running away from my face.
“I’m sorry about our argument. The things I said.”
“I don’t even remember them.” She spoke to the middle button of my shirt.
“Well, I’m still sorry. I hope you’ll forgive me.”
She shook her head. “There’s nothing to forgive. I’m sorry too.”
This was usually the point where she’d invite me in and we’d waste a few hours yapping away like a couple of normals. Instead, she gave our shoes a close inspection.
“So, any revelations about the birds?” I asked just to make conversation.
She shrugged her slender shoulders. “I’ve hit a dead end.”
“Too bad about those specimens disappearing.”
She stood there.
“They might have led you somewhere.”
“Yeah.” She closed the door a few inches. “Well, thanks for stopping by.”
“You’re still mad at me.”
She sighed. “I’m not. All is forgiven. I’m tired, I have a lot of paperwork to do, and I just want to go home and take a bath.”
“Do the paperwork in the bath,” I said.
She forced her mouth into a smile and showed that to me for a second or two. It looked like hard work. “Goodbye Stick.”
“Alright,” I said.
She shut the door in my face.
I walked away. Something had changed. Melodía and I were the kind of friends who laughed or shouted or argued or quipped―but we were never cold and distant.
When I was almost to the stairwell, the lab door opened down the hall.
“Stick!” I turned. Melodía had taken two steps through the doorway. I waited. She took a few more steps. It looked as if her feet had been cast in cement. “I wanted to tell you―” She moved her mouth, but no words came out.
“Tell me,” I said.
She shut her mouth and took a deep breath. “We need a change. We can’t keep living life the same way, year after year.”
I hated change. She knew that.
“You can’t keep working the same job forever. Doing the same things every day.”
“In fact, I can.”
“I’m looking to change my life,” she said.
“Good for you. I can’t wait to see the new you.” She opened her mouth but, again, no words came out of it. I thought maybe I’d been too gruff. “I like Melodía the way she is. She’s been the same since we were in college. I’ve devoted my life to that person. I’m happy with her. I’m happy with my own life. Why change?”
She breathed heavily and some angles creased her brow. “I’m done with the way things were. Nothing has gotten better in my life. Everything has stayed the same, only I’m older. They tell you that as you get older, your life gets better. I’m tired of living in the basement of the Biology building. I’m tired of eating microwaved meals alone. Stick, I’m tired of you and me. Our friendship. It hasn’t evolved.”
Evolution was overrated. I was pals with beings that hadn’t evolved in millions of years. They were fine the way they were. “Just to be clear, what are you saying?”
“I’m saying, take that job.”
It took me a minute to figure out what job she was talking about. When I did, my face swelled with blood.
“With the Minutemen,” she said. “For the change. It’ll get you outdoors. You’ll meet new people. It’ll break up that stupid routine you love so much.”
“They’re a gang of vigilante racists,” I said. “You’ve got more Chicano ancestry than I do. What the hell is wrong with you?”
“They’re not after Chicanos―or Mexicans either. They’re after lawbreakers. And I think working with them could open up a whole new side of you.”
I wondered if she and Rex, who had never gotten along, had secretly started dating and pouring stupidity into each other’s heads. “I’m leaving now. I’m going to assume that you’ve been drinking too much formaldehyde and it’s gone to your brain.”
“Take the job!” Melodía yelled at my back as I walked away. “It’s the best thing for you!”
I held up my hand in a backward wave without turning around.
The next day, Thursday, I tried to work like nothing strange had taken possession of my life. I put a handful of crickets in the terrarium of the African spur tortoise hatchlings. They were herbivores. I worried for five long minutes that my python had escaped before I recalled she’d been sent to Colorado. I left a delivery of frozen minnows on a delivery pallet for six hours. By the time I remembered them, the whole back room smelled like the beach on a hot day.
After work, I drove to my father’s house. I found him standing over the stove as usual, but the place smelled like chicken, mole sauce, and homemade corn tortillas.
“Son,” he said without looking up. “Have a cold beer.”
I helped myself.
He pointed his wooden spoon at a small bowl of lime wedges. “Squeeze one of those down the neck.”
I opened the beer and pushed a lime into the bottle. The sharp scent that misted up smelled like spring. “Chicken. What’s the special occasion?”
My father blinked up at me. He smiled. The flesh of his neck and cheeks tightened and his old man skin gleamed from a fresh afternoon shave. I liked seeing it. We didn’t go around grinning all the time in my family. “Happy birthday, son.”
I hit my head on the ceiling. “God damn,” I growled. I’d missed my own birthday. That meant I’d signed the wrong date on every form that had passed over my desk that day.
“Don’t cuss,” he said. “It’s a happy day. You’re a year older.”
“Nothing too happy about that.” I rubbed my skull.
“It means you’re wiser, and it means that you’ve given one more year of your life to the world. Each year on my birthday, I think about every good thing I’ve done in my life. I do it until I fall asleep. I never get through the whole list.”
My father could nod off in the middle of writing a grocery list. He had a talent for it.
“I haven’t done that much,” I said.
“Think about every animal you’ve fed over your whole life. That’s a lot of animals.”
“Yeah. And every
animal I feed eats something else. It’s a regular smorgasbord of death.” I swigged beer zinged with lime. I swigged again, and the beer was gone.
My father eyed the empty bottle. He turned back to the chicken simmering in thick brown sauce. “Something’s bothering you.”
“My birthday’s bothering me. Why’d you remind me?”
He folded the mole with his spoon. “Little Rex would have let you know. He never forgets birthdays.”
The old man was right. Rex celebrated birthdays like he was fighting battles. He attacked them furiously. The previous year, that of my 37th birthday, he’d arrived at my house before I left for work in the morning. He made pancakes. I didn’t eat pancakes often. They were an Anglo thing that had never really become part of my personal culture. But I ate them that day, and they were fine. We washed them down with Irish coffee. In years previous, during my crazy twenties, we’d spend birthdays drinking some of the cheapest tequila the city had to offer in some of the rankest dive bars in America. We’d rambled through the streets and scared the traffic. We’d slurred words at any woman who would listen. We’d woken the day after and prayed for the reprieve of death from hangovers that felt like they’d last forever.
My dad held a bottle dimpled with sweat. I took it. “Wait a little while before you drive.”
“Don’t worry,” I said.
“Supper will be ready in ten minutes,” he said.
I went into the living room and turned on the radio. It was set, as always, to my father’s Mexican polka music station. I came back to the kitchen, leaned against the wall, and drank my beer. We stood while he cooked. Men in the radio pumped their accordions like they meant business. My father doled the chicken mole out on piles of tortillas, which we carried them to the living room and ate. It was a routine birthday dinner with my father. He was asleep before I’d even set my plate down.
A strand of spider silk hung in a far corner of the room, undulating in a current of air too gentle for human senses. Curves traveled up and down its length in a rhythm neither chaotic nor patterned, graceful and ghostly. It stirred with the spirit of this world incarnate.