by Brian Hodge
"If you say so, Meester Hannet." Junior spread his hands in a conciliatory manner. He would play the dumb mixed-breed, go along with the man and then— No, that would come later.
He shrugged and got up, moved away from the fire. He lay down in his bedroll and stared upward. It was black now that they were so far from Albuquerque. No housing developments were close by and you could see the sky as God—or the gods—had intended man to. If he craned his head back a little, he saw the darker shadow against the sky—the cliff, waiting. The stars were bright and cold, and so very distant. A leaf flew by his cheek and for a moment he started, then chuckled to himself. He was as bad as the Anglo girl.
He heard the others as they talked. Texans never spoke in low tones; their voices were loud, piercing, and they did not know the meaning of whisper.
"When y'all said we were comin' on a vacation, Ah thought y'all meant—"
"Hey, baby, don't be upset. Y'all know Ah'd never—"
"I don't like it."
"Now, don't fret yo' little ol' head, Sunny—"
"Ah'm leavin'."
"DeeDee, come on. Just stay tonight and then Ah promise y'all the biggest ol' dinner yo' daddy can buy."
"Well, all right."
"I still don't like it."
"Don't worry, Deedee," the man's voice said. "Just don't worry."
Junior closed his eyes and stretched his lips back into a smile, more a grimace than anything. These gringos were the same, all of them. They came to town and knew no one and wanted someone to guide them. One way or the other, word got back to him and he would appear, offering his services. Usually they were reluctant to trust him. But he convinced them. And he would show them—for a price. A stiff one. And when it was the last night, he would take their wallets and steal the cash. He would be gone, and by the time they discovered their loss in the morning, it would be too late. He looked like any other wino down on Central Avenue. There were too many of them to run in, so the cops would do nothing. Besides, the cops always thought it funny when the Texans got ripped off. Didn't they do that to the state, eh?
He waited until he heard them settle down. He waited even longer for their breathing to become regular. When it was at last, he crawled out of his bedroll. The fire had died down until it was little more than red embers. He moved to Tyler and hunted around on the ground until he found the thick black wallet. Inside were ten one hundred dollar bills. Junior grinned at his good luck and pocketed the money. The other man had almost as much. The girl DeeDee had only fifty dollars. The second one, Sunny, had a few tens and a five.
He grinned at the sleeping quartet, made a mocking bow and softly said, "Adios," as he slipped into the welcome darkness.
Sunny awoke sometime later, her cheek sore from the blanket, and blinked. What had wakened her? She stared around in the darkness. The fire was almost out. Maybe she should put some more wood on it. But wasn't that Mr. Montoya's job? He was, after all, the guide.
She yawned and rubbed her eyes with a fist. It wasn't her idea of a luxury vacation, but it beat walking the streets in Lubbock. Everything was free, and few demands were made of her. Hannet was impotent. He just liked to keep a girl on his arm. That she didn't mind.
The stars overhead were cold, little lights that didn't cheer her. The moon was no longer in the sky, so there was little light. The wind had risen more and as she raised her head, a strand of hair blew across her shoulders. Tyler and DeeDee were side by side in the sleeping bag. Hannet had rolled over onto his other side, well away from her, and was snoring in rippling sounds.
She propped herself on one hand and stared around.
Junior Montoya was nowhere to be seen. Maybe he'd gone off into the bushes. But as the minutes passed and he didn't return, she got more and more nervous. Maybe he had gotten lost. Maybe something had happened to him. Should she wake the others?
The wind rose and she heard it. The voices. High voices. Alien voices, sibilant and soft whispers caressed her mind. She thought of Montoya's story earlier. But that was nonsense. Just superstition. He told us that tale to make us nervous. He'd succeeded.
A twig snapped. Her head moved and her eyes strained to look through the blackness. But she could see nothing. There were lots of creatures, harmless creatures, that roamed at night. Mice and such. There isn't any such thing as a ghost pueblo and evil spirits that stare—
They called to her. Leaves stirred; there was a pattering and
Eyes stared out of the darkness at her. Round yellow eyes. Unblinking. A scream rose out of her throat as the shadoweyes crept forward.
CHAPTER ONE
He paced the north perimeter of the wall. Thirty paces. And fourteen back here. Around the stone bench. Now look toward the holy cross on the roof, down at your toes again, Father, and—
You are a failure, he told himself. His eyes filled with tears. "A failure," he said aloud in the loneliness of the garden. A yellow leaf drifted slowly from the branch of an elm and fluttered past him. He reached out to grab it, but the leaf shot away from him, almost as though it had its own life.
"You can't hold on to anything," he said. "Nothing. Pray; dear Mother of God—hold onto yourself, Father." The tears now ran freely down his cheeks, his flushed skin, flushed because of his desire, flushed because he couldn't let himself do it, he couldn't, he couldn't—
Christ, he wanted a drink.
He clasped his hands in front of him; they shook as though he held a divining rod. Leaves crept across the brick patio in the walled garden and the branches of the trees hanging over the wall rustled.
The sun had been shining since early morning and it was hot, too damned hot for the decent autumn he was accustomed to. But just as he looked toward the sun, long, thin clouds, almost black, slid across the sun, and everything around him became grey. A wind whispered through the tops of the pines and he thought he heard soft voices calling to him. He shivered from the sudden coolness and headed toward the building. Stopped. He had come out here to be alone, and alone he would remain. With only himself and his thoughts … and his desires.
A sudden gust of wind sent the leaves on the patio skittering past him. One caught on his pants cuff and he bent to remove it. It felt almost leathery between his fingers and he stared at its thin veins. Another gust of wind tore it from his fingers. He grimaced. The wind always blew. He didn't think there was a day since he'd come that the wind hadn't been blowing. It was the way of the mountains, so he'd been told by some insufferable wind-blown native, and he laughed soundlessly, bitterly.
He hated it here. Didn't want to be here. But he hadn't had a choice in the matter. He had been pulled—ignobly, without warning—jerked from his wonderful, loving, safe parish, brought up before the unforgiving hard-assed Bishop, accused unjustly and sent packing to this Godforsaken place.
Where the wind blew day and night and everything was covered with the goddamn dust that went with the goddamn wind.
Christ, he wanted a drink.
These were the Sandia Mountains. Just east of Albuquerque, New Mexico. And where precisely was that? Father Kevin Michael O'Dell demanded.
Where? The middle of the desert. Not a decent city around for hundreds of miles. He couldn't have been sent to some civilized place. No. He'd been booted off to the San Carlos Mountain Retreat. Mountain retreat—what a laugh! Father O'Dell's lips stretched back tautly. Read for retreat the Roman Catholic home for troubled priests. New Mexico was the dumping ground of the nation, the cesspool of unwanted clerics, those flushed away from their parishes. Everyone in the Church knew that. Everyone.
Christ, he wanted a drink.
A branch scraped along the wall. One of those ugly little sparrows no doubt. They didn't even have colorful birds here, not like back East. Nothing had color here. It was all muted shades of browns and greys and beiges, and how was he supposed to appreciate anything when he was locked day and night behind these walls?
"That's not true," he whispered. He wasn't locked in. Not physically. Just
mentally. A prison of his own making, for he wouldn't allow himself to leave the walls of the retreat, to go down into the city, to see the temptations along Central Avenue at every good and not-so-good hotel, in every grocery market, that—
Bright eyes stared at him from the shadows.
Fourteen paces, miss one, hurry up with the left foot, and continue.
Christ, he wanted a drink.
"The Mother Church doesn't approve of alcoholic priests," he remembered Bishop Sullivan saying on that terrible day. "That's why we're giving you a chance, Father. We're sending you to—"
Hell. It might as well have been hell. It was hell.
Already he'd been here two weeks, two weeks without a drink, two weeks in which his skin had stretched and dried, and his mouth had cotton in it, and he didn't feel well, didn't have any energy, couldn't do what he used to do. It was hell. All he wanted was a little sip. Nothing more. He'd be satisfied with that
Christ, he wanted a drink.
Something dark flowed across the stone patio to the statue.
His eyes filled with tears as he recalled his lovely parish in rural northwestern New Jersey. The lovely old Church. The lovely old congregation. The lovely old communion wine.
That had been the beginning. A sip here and there. On the sly. Nothing much at first. But then a sip hadn't been enough. He'd needed more. Demanded more. And he'd found more. Occasionally—and he was big enough to admit it—he had been a little late for the mass. But not often. Not really. Not at first. A few minutes, what did they matter? He could still say it. It wasn't like he had to chant in Latin. That had all been swept out years before. He could still speak fairly well, without the faintest trace of a slur in his words.
It had been that Mrs. Franklin Wells. She had been the one who had denounced him, the one who had gone to the bishop, the one who had led the committee to remove him from his position. He was sure of it, even though the Bishop had never said.
He wasn't a drunk, he thought indignantly.
Christ, he wanted a drink.
"A small nip now and then," he whispered. The leaves rattled on the limbs, mocked his words. Fourteen paces and two more, and he half-stumbled across a raised brick, and then—
"I'll be blunt with you, Father," Bishop Sullivan had said as he leaned forward in his chair. He had steepled his fingertips and gotten the most pious expression on his thin face that Father O'Dell had ever seen on anyone. Probably practiced it before a mirror. "If you don't dry out, you'll be kicked out of the Church. It's that simple. You have no other choice. Give up the liquor—or give up the Church."
He loved the Mother Church. He had served her faithfully ever since he'd found his vocation when he was sixteen. For fifteen years now he had been a good priest, a well-loved priest. Everyone had praised him, had said he was the ideal priest. But then he had stumbled, just as surely as he had stumbled across that brick. Just that once—and they were animals, his parishioners, waiting for the smallest flaw, the tiniest weakness, waiting for him to fall to the ground and when he was down they were ready to rush at him and tear his throat out. Animals, each and every one of them. Hypocrites. They had baked pies for him and asked after his mother when she was still alive, had sent him birthday cards, and what did it matter after all? They had just been waiting.
Animals. He pulled his lips back. And tasted the salt of his tears.
Christ, he wanted a drink.
"Mother of God, please," he said aloud, talking to himself, "help me." His hands twisted together. He heard the voices calling to him, the voices of temptation, seeking to lure him, to take him away from the Church. "I want to serve you," he said. "I want to. But it's so hard. So very hard. Because of the demon."
Demon rum? He almost laughed. A cliché.
You're all washed up, Father O'Dell, one part of him asserted. Washed up on the shore in a sea of booze. Alcoholic flotsam.
Christ, he—
No more drinking, the Bishop had said. No more. He couldn't go without it. He couldn't take it. He had gone years without notice, years that had slipped by. Why had he started drinking?
It was school. He hadn't liked the seminary, and the boys had been boys, for all their priestly devotions, and they'd tasted whiskey and wine and beer. After his investiture his drinking had steadied. But he was lonely and unsure of himself, and so young, he'd thought, when he looked at the other priests. And his mother got sick, and inch by inch she died, protesting all the way, railing against man and God—what-sort of God allowed this? he had wondered as he stared down at her cancer-ridden body, and he drank more in his sorrow. Her heart was strong, and she lived, even though her mind was fading and her body was racked with pain. Through months, years, she lived. Then finally she died. With a curse on her lips. She cursed God, cursed the doctors and nurses who had slipped the tubes into her and kept the oiled machines humming, cursed the Catholic faith in which she had been born and which believed that rational suicide was a mortal sin for one's soul. And she cursed him. Because he had been a priest. Because he had prayed over her. Because he had prayed for her release, prayed for her recovery. Because he had served the God she now despised. Because he hadn't stayed with her day and night, minute by minute in her last agony.
Christ, he wanted a drink.
What sort of God had he been serving all these years? What sort of God allowed the misery that the world faced each day? Allowed people to live like animals in inner cities, allowed them to starve till their eyes were big and bulging, their ribs sticking out, their bellies distended?
"God?" His voice was a hoarse whisper.
No one answered.
Except the low whispering voices that mocked him, that laughed at his disbelief, that cajoled him, that lured him. Their sibilance filled his head, forced him to look at himself, to see the absurdity, the futility.
Animals. All humans were animals. God was an animal. No one was human. No one. He laughed again—loudly, the sound echoing. He was getting silly. If he had a drink, he'd be okay. He'd be steady enough. Yeah, that would do it. Just one drink.
He wiped his hands on his jeans. His fingers plucked at the grey sweatshirt.
"God," he asked quietly, "where are you? Why did you leave me? Why did you leave my mother? Why did you desert us?" The tears fell freely, soaking his shirt.
Why wouldn't God answer? Why was He so reticent? He thought, in the past, that he had heard God answer him. But perhaps that had been delusion. A religious delusion. Part of his vocation.
Vocation? A joke. He had no vocation. He'd chosen the Church because he was scared of life, scared of the prospect of having to look for a job in the real world, scared of sex. Unlike many of his brethren, he was still a virgin. He had touched neither man nor woman, nor did he intend to. But he had touched the bottle. That had been his downfall.
Intemperance.
He remembered reading about Carry Nation and her axe-wielding forays into the saloons of a century before, and smiled.
He heard a bird trilling somewhere in the trees; it was a pleasant sound. A small chipmunk hopped along the top of the wall, stared at him with bright eyes, and he stopped to watch it. He glanced back at the cross, breathed deeply of the fresh crisp air, and a tightness swelled in his chest.
How could he doubt? How? There was a God. But He couldn't be explained. Not rationally. Not by him anyway. He wasn't a Jesuit. He knew, he felt, there was a God. It wasn't God who did this to man. It was man himself.
And he had a second chance—an opportunity to renew his belief, to sort out his problems, to work them out and to return a new man.
He could still hear the coaxing voices, but he pushed them away; he wouldn't listen to them. He strode to the statue and stared at her. Mary. She stood, peaceful and serene, in a brick niche. Her blue robe had been freshly painted and her lovely face bore the slightest of smiles. A smile for him. And her eyes, brown and compassionate, seemed to meet his. She knew of his problem, of his struggle, of its resolution.
; He smiled broadly and fell on his knees in front of the statue.
Claws clicked on the patio.
"Dear Mother of God," he began, but got no further when something sharp seized him from behind. He whirled on his knees and screamed.
They eased out of the shadows of the bushes, flowed down the trunks of the trees, and covered his head, his chest, his arms. Father O'Dell threw himself around the patio in agony as the razor-like teeth tore into his clothes and skin. Blood streamed down his face, into his eyes, and he screamed as part of his scalp was lifted from his skull.
"Jesus, Jesus!" He plucked at the demons with his hands, and teeth bit down, severing his right forefinger. He stared at the white bone protruding, the blood pumping, and pain assaulted him. He groaned and writhed on the brick patio. Nothing he did would remove them … the demons.
He hadn't been faithful enough. He was being punished for his disbelief.
God had sent them. Satan had sent them. Someone had sent them. Someone … something…
He was so numb now. Could barely move. He lay in a pool of blood and realized, without caring, that it was his own. His clothes were sticky, and he lifted his hand and stared into the yellow eyes of the creature there. His hand dropped and he stared up. He could see the statue of Mary. She was still smiling, still serene. Still plaster. That smile had been painted on. That was all. She didn't care. God didn't care. He didn't care.
Only the caressing voices cared. He shut his eyes as the teeth and claws reached for his throat.
CHAPTER TWO
Trumpet notes, tinny and sharp like needles, exploded from the tape-decks in the painted vans and low-slung cars. Competing mariachi music battled for the supremacy of the airwaves while raucous laughter beat a counterpoint. Every so often a high squealing giggle punctuated the blurred noise.
But no one listened. Not really.
Timmy Gallegos, just nineteen and much too thin for his age and height and with the scraggly beginnings of a moustache that he carefully cultivated daily, watched Ned Tafoya demonstrate his new car. It was a '78 Seville, painted an electric blue. Inside, blue shag carpeting covered the walls, the dashboard and the shelf in the back window. Huge foam-rubber dice dangled from the rearview mirror, while the steering wheel, chrome and just shined to perfection, gleamed in the autumn sunlight. At the moment the back end of the Seville bounced up and down, and the ring of Chicano men around it whistled appreciatively.