by JJ Flowers
“JP,” Rocio said, relief plain in her tone, “what’s happening?”
“They are searching the houses one by one. There are a dozen cars now. They are probably removing the bodies. I think we are safe for now,” he lied, wishing he believed it. “I will stay awake while you sleep.”
“I can’t sleep. I’ll never be able to sleep again.”
Juan Pablo put his arm around her and she leaned against him.
They sat in a frightened silence for a long time. Juan Pablo’s thoughts kept turning in circles around the idea of escaping. He must do everything possible to keep Rocio from being caught, even if it meant sacrificing his own life. He alone had a chance of surviving an interrogation . . .
A plan emerged in his mind’s eye. If at any time it seemed they might discover their hideout, he would slip away and make his way down the hill. Once near the town, he would fire the gun. This would draw their attention to the area and away from Rocio. Hopefully, he could escape into the forest and evade capture. If they did catch him, he would say he knew nothing of the poison and had been hiding the whole time, that Mario had told him to hide in the forest. Hopefully, they would not kill him, and Rocio would gain enough time to escape.
If they could make their way down the Butterfly Pass, he and Rocio knew how to get to Guadalajara. A bus could take them to Puerto Vallarta, and another could bring them down to her uncle’s fishing village. They could do it. They would make it.
If they escaped undetected from the mountain.
CHAPTER FOUR
Juan Pablo did not remember falling asleep. Like Rocio, he would not have thought it possible, but at some point he must have. Because the next thing he knew, morning light flooded from above and he opened his eyes. Rocio lay next to him, sound asleep, one arm crooked and thrown back, her tasseled hair forming a dark halo around her head.
Muffled sounds of men talking in the meadow reached him.
He held still, listening.
He couldn’t make out what they were saying or even how many there were. He heard the words reward . . . got . . . somewhere . . . couldn’t . . . far. Other voices joined them before disappearing, swallowed by distance and the trees between them.
He thought they were gone, but no. Boots crunched over the forest floor nearby.
“Here . . . and here,” a man said. “Footsteps, no?”
“Look. Dozens of footsteps all over. It’s a goddamn tourist spot, sí?”
“He’s got to be somewhere. He couldn’t have gone far.”
They sounded twenty meters away. Juan Pablo held his breath.
“We will find him.”
“If we don’t, the Hunter will.”
“Axel says he’s on his way. The boss offered him half a million for the kill. He wants him that bad.”
“You think he’s one of the Vetas?”
“Knives and bullets, sí, but poison? It is not their way. This was that old man, acting with a partner. The old woman probably got a taste. Maybe accidental, maybe not. They probably smoked her to stop her from singing.”
Reliving the horrors of the night, Rocio made a faint cry in her sleep.
The tiny whisper of a noise played like the crash of symbols in Juan Pablo’s mind and he froze, his heart leaping as if running.
“All these butterflies, ¡Dios mío!”
“My mother made a paste out of butterflies . . . for tortillas. Good if you are very hungry.”
The boots stomped back toward the meadow.
He sat in tense stillness and minutes piled onto minutes. Maybe an hour passed, but at some point he realized there were no more voices. All was quiet against the backdrop of the soft sounds of Rocio’s slumber.
He had to pee. He had to risk it.
Cautiously, he rose from the tepee. He took a dozen steps and relieved himself in the bushes. He stole a quick glance in the direction of the meadow. No one and nothing moved, but he could not see through the trees.
Butterflies drifted in the morning sunlight, lighting on branches and soaking up the new sun, either late arriving or reluctant to leave—no one, not even his abuela, could ever say with certainty. Roosting doves cooed nearby. A couple of sparrows flew this way and that, avoiding the butterflies. (Milkweed made the butterflies taste horrible, so very few birds ate them.) A rabbit sat munching on the edge of the meadow, unmindful of the calamity that had just occurred.
Juan Pablo watched the small creature come suddenly upright. He heard the Humvee’s engine before he saw it. He ducked behind a tree just as it roared into the meadow. He pressed himself against the trunk.
He shouldn’t have left the safety of the tepee.
Men jumped out of the black Humvee.
“Okay. We need to find the bastard before the Hunter.”
“No matter what it takes. You four follow the trail at least fifteen kilometers. Keep your eyes open. He’s in there somewhere. The birds will be flying all day.”
The chorus of “yes, boss” sounded like the grunts of livestock.
“We’ll drive back around and head up from the other end. If we don’t find him today, we should meet halfway somewhere before midnight and we will set up camp. Then reverse our course in the morning. We’ve got a roadblock at the other end, so he is trapped. Let’s go.”
Four men set off on the trail. Juan Pablo inched his way behind the tree as they marched forward. The other men returned to the Humvee. The giant vehicle started and turned back to town.
Juan Pablo waited until he heard no sound in either direction before he quietly, stealthily made his way back to the tepee. He slipped inside, only to find Rocio upright, staring in terror, as if he was the banditos.
Rocio fell on him with a hug. “When you weren’t here, I was—oh, JP.”
Rocio’s greeting took him aback. She was trembling with fear.
He told her what he had heard.
“How long will they be searching for us?”
“Days, it sounds like,” Juan Pablo said. “He said the helicopters, birds, they call them, were coming back, too.”
Rocio grew more anxious still. “We will have to stay hidden like this . . . for—”
“Two days maybe,” Juan Pablo finished for her. “But Rocio, Rocio,” he said her name twice for emphasis, “it will be all right. When they give up searching for us, we can make our way out. Sí, they have a roadblock at the end of the trail, and if it is still there when we reach it, we will have to find a way around it. But then we can hitch a ride to Guadalajara and take a bus from there.”
Rocio turned the plan over in her mind.
Juan Pablo didn’t mention this mystery Hunter. He was scared enough for both of them.
They discussed the danger for over an hour before Rocio confessed she had to pee. Juan Pablo slipped outside to make sure it was safe. No one moved in the meadow. He gave a brief whistle, signaling that it was clear before standing guard while she hurriedly relieved herself.
Once back in the tepee, Rocio began organizing the packs so they would be ready to leave as soon as it was safe. They had eight bottles of almond milk. Elena believed almond milk was much healthier to drink than regular milk, not to mention cheaper, and both she and Mario kept a huge supply on hand. Juan Pablo had the smart idea that since almond milk and water weighed the same, they should fill the water bottles with the almond milk.
He shot a prayer of thanks for this gift now.
Additionally, Rocio had packed a large jar of peanut butter, a stack of tortillas, a loaf of bread, and two apples. Juan Pablo found a box of cereal, two carefully wrapped hard-boiled eggs, and three bananas in Mario’s pack. Because his abuela had been ill for a week, Juan Pablo had not found much to bring, even if he had been able to think straight in the aftermath of finding his abuela gone. Besides the milkweed seeds, he only had a canister of hemp seeds his abuela always sprinkled on his food for added nutrition.
Stomachs rumbling, Rocio used Juan Pablo’s knife to spread peanut butter and hemp seeds on a tortill
a for each of them. They each ate an egg. They split one of the sodas they’d been saving in the tepee for a special occasion.
Once full, they lay down as best they could in the small space.
The long wait began.
If they could somehow take away the fear, it might have been like any other free afternoon. He and Rocio lay side by side in mutual silence. Any sound might alert a bandito to their presence.
Thoughts of his abuela crept into this quiet.
The idea that the old woman no longer walked the earth seemed impossible. How he loved her and she him, showering him with enough love to make up for a missing mother and father. Whenever they parted, she pulled him close and reached up to kiss his forehead. To his abuela, hugs were a miracle medicine that all people needed and no one got enough of and she happily dispensed this remedy to everyone.
He sometimes thought she knew as much as Google. She often made him read his science textbooks or the science section of the newspaper out loud, feeling enormous pride when a scientist or group of researchers discovered something she already knew.
It seems odd, Abuela, how much you love science.
The old woman chopped vegetables from the garden for dinner. I do indeed. What a great mountain of knowledge scientists collect! Have you ever noticed, Juan Pablo, how this mountain of knowledge keeps growing? One unlocked mystery leads to ten more mysteries in the cosmic geometry of infinity.
Stories, too, she loved to listen to stories. Almost every night of his life, when he finally tucked his violin away, he and Abuela and sometimes Rocio, too, read together. At first, when he was younger, she was testing his reading ability in English, but later, it was just to enjoy a good book.
Images of his abuela played through his mind’s eye: the old woman tossing her head back and laughing, not a small sound either, but a big, booming noise that defied her elf-like size; the wrinkled face beaming with pleasure at the conclusion to any difficult piece he played well; the comically prideful look that appeared whenever she cured a person.
I am amazed you understand what they are teaching at your age, she said once after watching him listen to a Khan Academy math tutorial.
It is not even hard, this one. The professor makes it very simple.
You are very lucky, Juan Pablo. Being smart is the second greatest gift.
What is the first?
Kindness.
And she was kind. Their neighbors and children and the multitudes of tourists: rich and poor, young and old, happy or cross, his abuela always answered people with a warm smile and a good word. Time and again, he watched comments from his abuela, even just one, lift people up. Even strangers warmed to his abuela, and always seemed to reach out to touch her, as if for luck.
Abuela, why do people always touch you?
I am very close to the Sky People.
Most of all, he loved how much his abuela loved him.
Rocio must have noticed his tears, because she slipped her hand in his.
“She will always be with us. We will be carrying her with us all our lives.”
Nodding, he squeezed her hand. It sometimes seemed as if they owed everything that was good inside to her large and special presence in their lives. Their love of music and books, animals and forests. Even this, that he and Rocio spoke in English, owed itself to his abuela. From his birth, the old woman insisted he know English and Spanish both. She had convinced Rocio’s mom of the same. Much of his abuela’s medical education had been in English and she was very fluent. She insisted her grandson’s English would be perfect; he would not just be fluent, but as comfortable in English as Spanish. Why she insisted was a mystery; she claimed only that language was nourishment for the human brain, like water to a thirsty flower—and the more the better.
Mornings until twelve were the English hours, the rest Spanish time. Yet, as they grew up, feeling special, Rocio and he only spoke English together. They could trade secrets with impunity. They watched almost all movies in English. They Googled only English, but they read books in both.
“I didn’t tell you what Abuela said. Her last words to me.”
“What?”
He told her the strange tale of their last conversation.
Rocio lifted up on her elbow. “America. She wants you to go to America?”
“Sí. She said to follow the butterfly path to Baja to Tijuana and into California. She said I must reach Pacific Grove by summer’s end. The last thing she said was that he will be waiting for me there.”
Rocio’s eyebrows drew together. “Who will be waiting for you?”
“I don’t know.”
“Your father?”
For reasons he did not know, his abuela did not like talking about his father.
I know all about my mother and her music, and I know she died giving birth to me, but what about my father, Abuela? What was his name?
Dr. Juan Laves.
My mother named me after him? He was a doctor?
Not a medical doctor, but the other kind. A scientist. She met him right here, when he came to Rosario to study the butterflies and she was visiting.
Maybe he is still alive. Maybe we can find him, Abuela? Maybe he has a Facebook page.
Strange emotions crossed his abuela’s face. Go ahead. Try if you want to.
He tried off and on for years, but there was no trace of any doctor by that name. He even searched obituaries online, even though his abuela said that American hospitals never let people die, even when their spirit has transitioned to the sky. The American hospitals often kept dead bodies hooked up to machines that breathed for them and kept an illusion of life. People paid companies that paid the hospitals to maintain the illusion. Americans, she felt, were a very clever people, but often wasteful of their riches.
It was as if his father never really existed.
Are you sure my father is Juan Laves?
That was his name.
Only later did he realize how very unlikely this was—that his father was a Mexican-American butterfly scientist. His abuela must have made it up. Maybe she didn’t know his real father or maybe she hadn’t approved of him. He didn’t know.
What was he like, Abuela? All I know about him was that he was a scientist who studied butterflies.
Your father was cheerful, very tall, and smart, like you.
How do you know he was smart?
There were many letters surrounding his name.
Abuela, be serious. How did you know he was smart?
He loved your mother’s music as much as he loved your mother.
What else do you remember about my father?
What else, what else, she repeated. He liked to sing to the butterflies.
Sing to the butterflies? Like I play my violin to them?
No, not like that. He sang to the butterflies because they were the only creatures that didn’t mind hearing the sounds his voice made.
He laughed then. Abuela, you are teasing me. Sometimes I cannot tell what is real and what you imagine is real.
Perhaps it doesn’t matter. What is reality but a collection of beliefs, one after another, piled on top of each other, like sentences in a book. When you turn the last page, you realize very few were true, but somehow the whole created a picture of life.
Unfortunately, his abuela sometimes made no sense like that.
“I think she made up my father. Probably because the reality is too painful.”
“To tell you the truth,” Rocio confessed, “my mom and Abuelo always suspected this. They, too, thought the story of the butterfly scientist was—”
Juan Pablo motioned for silence as he abruptly sat up.
“Is it the helicopters again?” Rocio asked.
Juan Pablo shook his head. “Worse. It’s a dog.”
The distant sound of a dog barking drew closer.
“A search dog?” Rocio asked. They were fans of Animal Planet shows and they had once seen a show on search dogs. It showed how certain dogs could trace a scent over mi
les and miles, finding missing people, outlaws, or in a disaster, dead people.
Maybe the Hunter used a dog to search out his prey.
“If it is, we’re in trouble.”
Fear returned to Rocio’s face in an instant.
“I’ll lead them away,” Juan Pablo said.
“No, no,” Rocio protested. “You could get hurt. And if they find you—”
“I will just tell them I don’t know anything. I’m just a teenager. I’ll say Mario did it. Probably they won’t kill me. But you, Rocio.” Their eyes met and the horrible knowledge was acknowledged. “Different story.”
He would not think. He would just do what he had to do.
Determined, he slipped outside of the tepee into the warm spring morning. He tucked the revolver in his Levi’s and took off running.
He made out the sound of a dog, men shouting behind it.
He sprinted along the edge of the meadow, heading down the mountain. Going faster now, he ran until he reached the forest on the other side, away from the tepee. He stopped, breathing faster now, waiting a moment to catch sight of the dog. The dog needed to pick up his scent, and not Rocio in the tepee.
A crow squawked above, lifting into the air. Two sparrows joined the black bird just as a German shepherd–type dog burst into the meadow. The dog picked up a scent and circled the meadow nose to ground. Round and round he went in ever-tighter circles. The dog quickly came to his abuela’s grave where he stood alert and sniffing. He suddenly looked up, straight at him.
The dog leapt into a run. The chase was on.
Juan Pablo ran down the forested hill. Dried leaves and branches crunched underfoot. He half slid, half stumbled. The barking was so close. Thinking the dog would tear him to bits, he looked up into the trees for a branch to climb. There was nothing he could reach. Breathing hard and fast, he raced down the hill. The dog sounded closer and closer still.
Juan Pablo stopped and turned around.
He ignored the drone of a beehive above. No time to spot it now.
Paws to the ground, the dog stopped too, barking like crazy, staring, looking as if he was about to pounce. But he didn’t. He just stood there barking at him.
In a moment’s inspiration, he remembered once a Middle Eastern tourist had stood at the plaza, terrified by little Tajo. Tajo’s hair lifted and he barked uncertainly.