Stalking Moon

by David Cole

  Rey started to look it over and then saw another bike in the corner.

  "Is that what I think it is?"

  "Reymundo. What the hell you gonna do with a '79 Mexican Policia bike, eh?"

  "Perfect," Rey said to me. "Everybody over twenty years old will know this is a police bike. They'll leave us alone. Grandee, this bike's got to be hot."

  "Ay yi. I was going to send it to a guy in Arizona. Get it across the border. Will sell for ten thousand up there. I don't know, I don't know..."

  "Eight thousand," Rey said.

  "Oh no. Even for you, even to get out of the trouble of getting it across the border, eight is nowhere near large enough."

  Rey knelt to look the bike over.

  "Pretty scratched up."

  "Spray cans, wonderful inventions. Any color, just sand things down to bare metal, lay that good color straight on."

  "Kinda dirty. Somebody obviously went down on it, just laid it on the dirt and let it slide until it stopped. One brake lever's bent but looks operational. Tires are weather-checked, still enough tread to get us where we want to go."

  "Where's that?"

  Rey took some tools, straightened the sissy bar behind the seat, and checked for anything else that might be loose from the slide. When Rey tried to crank the engine, El Grandee checked around for a battery, since the one in the bike was dead. After several attempts, the engine started. Rey got the carburetor adjusted with some fiddling.

  "Pipes are loud."

  "It's a Harley, Rey. What Harley isn't loud."

  The headlight and brake lights worked, and even though it was burning oil, Rey was satisfied. I held out eight thousand dollars in hundred-dollar bills.

  "There it is."

  "It's not enough."

  "It is what it is."

  "Eight isn't enough. Go nine. Look. It's got a hand shift. That was rare, back in '79, you didn't see no hand shift."

  "Grandee, this is no fucking cow auction."

  "Tell you what," El Grandee said. "Sweeten the pot here."

  He dug into an old cigarillo box and removed an unsealed packed of decals that said POLICIA DE SAN LUIS POTOSF.

  "Put them on the saddle bags, that make you look like what you want? I've even got a whip antenna. 'Course there's no radio, but hell, you got that antenna. And look. A police foot siren. Police odometer. Eight seven. That's the bottom. I counted out the money and we left.

  The Cocospera mission was sixty kilometers from Imuris, the road winding back and forth up a mountainside and frequently crisscrossing the Magdalena River. Down below the bridges I could see the old tracks, where travelers had to ford the Magdalena.

  With both of us riding on a totally unfamiliar vehicle, Rey had some trouble balancing the Harley for at least twenty kilometers. Then he rapidly grew familiar with the clutch and throttle and remembered how to lean into a curve while compensating for my weight. By the time we hit the mountain road, he was averaging sixty kilometers an hour, at times reaching one hundred. He also learned to ignore my panic as I wrapped my arms tighter around him.

  Nuestra Señora del Pilar y Santiago de Cocospera.

  Years ago, a continent away, I'd seen the Sphinx. I barely remember the long body, the head, the broken-off nose. My strongest impression was that it reminded me of the wind-eroded sandstone wonders of Utah. The Cocospera mission had that same look. A massive building fallen into disrepair, abandoned a century and a half earlier when Apache raiding parties finally drove out the last of the Franciscan fathers.

  "Horses," Rey said, as we dismounted from the Harley and wobbled a bit on unsteady legs. "That's what killed this mission. Horses."

  "Wind," I said. "If we'd ridden another fifty kilometers, I'd be worn down also."

  "Spanish conquistadors. Brought horses. Apaches learned how to ride, learned how to raid from their strongholds all over Sonora."

  "Forget the history lesson. Let's find Jonathan's van."

  But despite holding no services, the mission was far from deserted. The nearby desert floor was crammed with a tour caravan of some fifty Airstream trailers, and nearly a hundred people were gathered in front of the mission. Piped scaffolding rose over forty feet, protecting the facade.

  "Father Kino and the Jesuits built a simple mission in the seventeenth century," a tour guide was saying into a bullhorn. "What you're looking at was added by the Franciscans another century later. This scaffolding was erected in the '80s by the Instituto Nacional de Antropologia e Historia."

  "The van," I said. "Let's find the van and get away from these people."

  "Let me ask you," the guide shouted. "Anybody have a corn tortilla around here? Not so likely. You see those women by the side of the road, making the large, paper-thin flour tortillas? They're using flour. Not corn. Father Kino taught people to plant wheat. They've been doing that for centuries. Wheat and livestock, that's one of Father Kino's legacies to the people of the Sonoran Desert."

  "Over there." Rey pointed. "That bluish van, looks like a delivery van."

  Behind the Airstream trailers I could make out the tail end of the van. We got back on the Harley, circled the crowd and their Airstreams, and parked out of sight.

  "Locked," he said.

  I picked up a large stone and flung it through the windshield.

  "Jesus, Laura."

  "I just want to get in there."

  "Yeah, but why not through the door. It's a helluva lot easier."

  He raised a triangular slab of sandstone and slammed the pointed end into the driver's side window. Running the rock around the window frame to scrape away the remaining glass, he reached inside and opened the door.

  The back of the van had been converted into a camper.

  Two narrow bunk beds ran along the passenger side, unmade beds, with green sheets and lightweight cotton blankets lying about haphazardly. A drop-down table was set into the opposite wall, with two Naugahyde seats built to face the table. In the back I could see a combination shower and toilet stall.

  "What are we looking for?"

  "One thing I don't see. Whoever lived in this van."

  "You go back to the mission. See if there's a caretaker. If you can, find out where they took Jonathan. When they took him."

  "And you?"

  "I don't know."

  "You think there's something in here that can help us?"

  I slumped into one of the chairs, fingering odd bits of paper taped to the wall. After a few moments, Rey left me alone. Nothing I could see had any relevance to me. Workers' broadsides, union announcements, all in Spanish, told their activist tales without my even being able to comprehend them. Every square inch of available floor and shelf space was filled with stacks and stacks of Xeroxed handouts, fliers, booklets, pamphlets.

  Just in front of the toilet and shower combination, a small tabletop folded down from the van wall. A journal lay open, all entries in Spanish, the last entry from five days before. I kicked something under the tabletop and pulled out a small wooden box. Sitting on the lower bunk bed, I opened the box top and dumped the contents on the mattress.

  My past spilled out.

  A copy of the picture of my father on a rodeo bronc. Right arm ready to swing like a machete. From the depths of my memory came the Life magazine photograph of the beheaded Indonesian guerrilla.

  I turned the picture over.

  Jesus Christ!

  And there I was with Jonathan in front of his stolen pickup.

  I couldn't even remember when the picture was taken. Barely fifteen, I looked so impossibly young and innocent I could not, I tell you, I could not remember ever being that way.

  Newspaper clippings of AIM events. Pine Ridge. Pictures of the dead FBI men.

  Everything I looked at I turned face down. I didn't ask for and did not want the memories, but had to look at everything. And then I found them.

  Two pictures of Spider.

  One when she was six or seven weeks old. We'd been running from BIA police, somewhere in So
uth Dakota or Minnesota, no, it was the Badlands. Some guy from Iowa was playing with his new Polaroid, posing his wife until she got annoyed, and so he asked us to pose and gave us the picture.

  At least I'd seen that one. The other picture was of a woman in her early twenties. On the back, Jonathan's almost unreadable scrawl with a red ballpoint pen.

  spider—22nd birthday 4488 Lexington Avenue West Hollywood

  Underneath this in pencil, he'd written something else.

  La Pintoresca(?) Pasadena (?)

  Tall, model-slim, model-beautiful, brown hair cut very short and neat. I couldn't make out the color of her eyes, but I could trace the shape of her cheekbones, her mouth, her nose, her neck. I just couldn't make out how this woman could be Spider.

  How she could be my daughter.

  Clutching the picture, I climbed out of the van and went looking for Rey.

  He saw me, started to say something, and noticed the picture.

  "That her?"

  "Yes."

  "Let me see."

  He did the same thing I'd done, running his index finger over the face.

  "Beautiful."

  "Hardly looks like me."

  "Got your eyes, your neck. Even got the slope of your nose, the way your face indents below the forehead and comes out onto the nose."

  He handed back the picture.

  "Did you find a caretaker?" I asked. "Anybody who knew about Jonathan?"

  He nodded, looking troubled.

  "And? And?"

  "The worst possible thing for us."

  "They took him a long ways away? To the US? To Mexico City?"

  "Not that simple."

  "For god's sakes, where?"

  "The central Nogales jail. It'll be a nightmare just getting in to talk to him."

  28

  "Quien es?" the man said, stumbling into the filthy interrogation room. By habit, he looked down, not wanting to confront anybody, not wanting to be beaten again. Rivulets of partially dried blood ran from his left temple down the side of his face.

  "Jonathan?"

  He started to look up, but couldn't raise his eyes above the boot level of the two policia standing against the door at full attention. Trying to stand, he grimaced, holding his ribcage and sinking painfully to the stained concrete floor.

  "How much to leave us alone?" I asked the guards.

  "One hundred," one said.

  At the same instant the other said, "Two hundred."

  "Here's two hundred each. Go outside."

  They hesitated.

  "You gave them the money too quick," Jonathan murmured. "You didn't bargain. Now they want more."

  "Fifty dollars each," I said, "when you come back in half an hour."

  "Fifty dollars is worth only ten minutes."

  "Half an hour. If you make no noise, if you don't once open the door, I'll make it seventy-five each. That's all I've got."

  One of them extended his hand, and I put four hundred-dollar bills in his palm. They left. I heard each of the three deadlocks turn, then a metal bar slam into place across the outside of the door.

  "Jonathan?"

  Without moving his head, he raised his eyes to look at me, frowning.

  "Who are your "You don't remember me?"

  Something in my voice caught his attention. His whole head came up.

  "I can't focus. Can you wipe the blood out of my left eye?"

  One of the guards had left a half-empty bottle of spring water. I moistened a piece of my tee and gently blotted around his eye socket. He rotated his arms and legs as well as he could against the restraints, twisted his torso and neck back and forth.

  "Nothing broken?" I said.

  "Not yet. Who are you?"

  I finished cleaning him up and stood back, then lowered myself until I could look him straight in the eye. Recognition came very slowly, as though he was forcing himself backward in time, year by year, but just hadn't quite imagined he'd have to go that far back.

  "Kauwanyauma?"

  "Yes."

  "Butterfly? Is that you?"

  "Yes."

  "I forget ... what's your other name?"

  "Laura."

  "My god. Did they arrest you too?"

  "No, Jonathan. I found out you were here, I came to see you."

  "Bad move. You'll never get out of here once they find out who you are."

  "They won't find out. I told them I was an immigrant legal aid lawyer from Tucson. Told them I was making a tour of Sonoran jails to talk to American prisoners. Actually, I don't think they cared about that. I bribed my way in here."

  "Leave. Now. Before he comes."

  "Who?"

  "One of those guards is calling him now."

  "Who?"

  "Don't know his name. A man from Mexico City."

  He tried to sit up straighter and grimaced with pain, grasping his ribs.

  "I think they broke something in here. Do you know why I'm in here?"

  "For smuggling. That's what I thought."

  "Smuggling? I don't do drugs, I don't smuggle drugs."

  "Women."

  "I've helped a few women. Basta Ya has sent some women into safety with the sanctuary movement. Is that why you think I'm in here?"

  "Yes."

  He smiled to himself.

  "Well. I'm glad some of them made it across. Got out. Got free."

  "You don't know about LUNA?"

  "Luna? The moon? Is that a code word I'm supposed to know?"

  "The chat rooms? You don't know about that."

  The steel bar on the other side of the door crashed back. The deadbolts were unlocked. One of the guards stuck his head inside.

  "You got a few minutes, gringita. Then watch your ass. He's coming."

  "Who?"

  The door slammed shut.

  "Listen. Jonathan." I took out the photo of Spider. "Where is she?"

  "That's why you came here?"

  "Yes. Where is she?"

  He croaked with laughter, one of his lips splitting open as he tried to grin.

  "Turn." Licking blood from his lip, grimacing. "Turn picture over. Date?"

  "It just says 22nd birthday. No date. Two addresses."

  "Two years ago, I think. No. Three. Somewhere in LA, I think."

  "West Hollywood and Pasadena."

  "Oh. Yeah. I went there. West Hollywood. Lots of Russian immigrants."

  "You know about the smuggled Albanian women?"

  "Yeah. Helped them, I think. Hard to think back that far."

  I took out my Palm Pilot.

  "You don't talk in chat rooms?"

  "What's that? Some computer thing?"

  "You're not LUNA?"

  "You keep asking me if I'm the moon. I'm not. Just ... I'm just..."

  The door flew back with a crash, and Hector Garza entered, arms akimbo, dressed in full military cammies and wearing a visored hat with the insignia of the Mexican National Police.

  "You're a fool," he said to me. "Come."

  "Jonathan!"

  The guards pulled me toward the door.

  "How do you know this man?" Garza said to me.

  "Sanctuary," I answered.

  "Fools. Smugglers of dissatisfied women. Come out of there."

  "Jonathan!" I cried again, but the guards wrenched me through the door and one of them slammed it shut and locked it.

  "He's an assassin," Garza said. "Are you here to get him out?"

  "Yes."

  "Not possible. Not with the charges against him."

  "What charges?"

  "That's Señor Johnny. Basta Ya. That stupid fool, he put out a bounty on the drug cartel. Payment of ten thousand dollars to anyone who killed a cartel leader."

  "Which drug cartel? I don't know what you're talking about."

  "Any cartel. There are three here in Nogales."

  "He'd never do that, never pay for somebody to be killed."

  Garza waved to the guards to release me. Placing a hand firmly on my upper
left arm, he steered me out of the jail onto the dusty street. A white Chevy Suburban with heavily tinted windows was parked at the curb, the motor idling to keep the aircon going. A uniformed officer opened the rear door, and Garza motioned me inside.

  "Where are you taking me?"

  "You won't be harmed."

  "Am I under arrest?"

  "If I arrested you, if I threw you into one of our jails like that man in there, how would you ever find the money for Señora Medina?"

  "Then where are we going?"

  "To school. Get in."

  "I don't want to get in."

  "Don't beg for your life, woman. Just get in."

  "My life? You want me to get into a car with you and you're talking about my life? I won't go."

  I tried to kick him, but he swerved aside effortlessly, struck my extended leg, and knocked me to the ground, and in the same fluid motion bent to offer a hand to help me get off the dirty sidewalk.

  "Get in. It's time for a learning experience."

  We climbed into the Suburban and settled on the middle row of seats. Behind me another uniformed officer sat next to a terrified Mexican woman, a handcuff on one wrist with the other end of the handcuffs locked onto a metal D-ring bolted to the floor.

  "Where are we going? What school?"

  As we pulled away from the curb, I saw Rey on the motorcycle, arguing with a women selling snow cones from a pushcart.

  We drove into a huge dump.

  Mounds of trash, with people picking through everything. The Suburban drove to the far end of the dump, where a bulldozer was covering trash with dirt. Nobody was there. The bulldozer moved back and forth, creating a shallow depression about fifteen feet long and the width of the dozer blade.

  We stopped. Everybody got out. Garza held a handkerchief over his nose.

  The other woman was led twenty feet away from the Suburban, next to the bulldozer. Without any warning, the officer holding her arm drew his pistol and blew off the back of her head. She fell gracelessly into the rubble. The bulldozer operator maneuvered his machine behind her, hooked a chain from the back of the dozer, and wrapped it around her legs. He dragged the body into the bottom of the depression, streaking the rubble and desert sand with a wide swath of blackening blood. Unhooking the chain from her legs, he ran the dozer out of the depression and immediately began covering her body with dirt and trash.