Paraíso

  I was in the clouds. The tiny town of Paraíso appeared through rents in the mist, then disappeared. The ground leveled out, and the world contracted to a twenty-foot gray circle. The mist that formed this circle swirled and roiled in a familiar way, like a part of my mind.

  A faint track led off left into the cloud forest, corresponding to Don Yeyo’s turnoff to the saddle. A little way along it, the outline of a mist-colored horse gradually filled itself in, tied by the reins to a small tree. La Paloma. The mare nickered and tossed her head gently as I rubbed her nose and then shifted her weight with a strange lurch, favoring a front foot. When I knelt to look, I could see the foot dangled limply, with blood and white points of bone showing in the mist-colored hair.

  Then I noticed reddish swollen welts along the flanks and rump. The leg must have broken where the trail was steep and rocky, maybe somewhere along the ridge up to the saddle. Marco had had to beat her hard to make her keep climbing after that. There had been no third set of footprints anywhere along the trail.

  I began to loosen the cinch to La Paloma’s saddle, rubbing the side of the mare’s neck with one hand. The mare’s skin twitched where I touched it, and she swung her head looking for a handout. Or just looking. Stamping a hind foot and blowing out her nostrils when I swung the saddle off and threw it aside, then bending her head and nibbling leaves from a low shrub.

  Her mane tickled my nose when I put my arms around her neck and laid my cheek against it. I’ll get him.

  God the Father

  She woke in dim light, not knowing where she was. “Peter?” He was somewhere around. Not far. Just down the hall. “Peter? Can you hear me?”

  Her brother and she are sitting cross-legged opposite each other in the hayloft of the barn outside Philadelphia. There’s a little hay left over from when their parents kept cows, enough to cushion them, but they’re sitting on the bare wood floor because of fire hazard. This is the summer before his school chapel burned to the ground and they took off for Mexico.

  They’re both wearing khaki shorts and tee shirts, hers white, his dark blue. In a month and a half she’ll be proudly showing him how to make a Hula-Hoop climb up her body in the middle of an August thunderstorm, her wet shirt showing off unmistakable breast buds.

  They’re sitting in vague evening light through the open loft door, which faces west. An ancient sleigh, a plow, a butter churn, scythes, pitchforks, other old implements too dim to make out off in the shadows. He’s demonstrating technique: how to roll a joint between thumbs and fingers so it doesn’t come out loose and messy or lumpy and wrinkled, big in the middle, narrow at the ends. He doesn’t tell her there’s a critical moment in this process where you just have to trust to luck.

  It comes out perfect: long, thin, straight, and tight. “Now that’s how you roll a joint,” he says with pride and relief, passing her the makings. “You try.”

  Easy enough, until the critical moment, the moment when you lick the gum and start the final roll. Keep calm, take your time. Her third try is a lot better than her first, though he seems happy to point out it’s shaped more like a barrel than a cylinder. He tears them down and pours the makings back into the baggie.

  How to take a long deep toke and hold it till the last minute, how to pass the roach, pushing it from forefinger to forefinger, then clamping it with the thumb. He shows her these things, and the roach goes back and forth between them until it’s gone.

  “Okay,” he says. The edge of the setting sun is just beginning to shine through the open loft door, backlighting her brother’s hair. The shadow of his face, and the darker shadows in the corners, are tinged with electric blue. “How do you feel?”

  “Pretty much the same.” She runs the fingers of her right hand lightly along the top of her left forearm, where the blond hair is thickest. “How am I supposed to feel?”

  “Good. Just … good.” He picks up a dried grass stem and brushes her knee with the feathery tip. “More sensitive.”

  “Well … maybe. Yeah.”

  “Actually, this stuff is primo sinsemilla. You should be flying pretty soon.”

  Neon red sunlight gradually invades the electric blue shadows. She flaps her arms like wings and giggles. “I do feel lighter. Voom. Can you really fly?”

  “Sure you can.”

  “Will you show me how?”

  “It’s all in your mind,” he says. “Just think yourself up. See? Look how high I am.” He reaches down to her and she takes his hand. “Come up here with me.”

  His pupils are enormous.

  “We’ll go a little higher now, okay?”

  “Okay,” she says faintly. “Not too far.” She’s holding on tight.

  “Here we are up in the rafters. No problem, right?”

  She doesn’t answer.

  “Okay. Now we’ll drift along toward the door. Take a look outside.”

  She tugs back on his hand. “No!”

  “Why not? Look, the sun’s almost down. Look how beautiful!”

  “Let’s stay here. Please!”

  Suddenly, she’s terrified. Of what? Out of control. She’s never felt like this before. She feels him floating away toward the open door, his hand slipping out of hers. He’s gone. She curls up in the hay, eyes closed, face toward the wall. Someone is saying something faintly, a woman’s voice, her mother’s, whispering in her ear.

  “Wendy. Wendy. Are you okay?” Her brother is back beside her.

  She just curls up more tightly. Feels his hand on her shoulder. “Oh God, I hear something horrible. Horrible.”

  “What is it, Wendy? What?” But he only sounds half present.

  “Oh, Peter, you left me up there. Why did you leave me?” Now she’s sitting up, bits of hay in her hair and sticking to her clothes. Looking into his face.

  “I didn’t leave you, Wendy. I’m right here.”

  “You are?”

  “You can see I am.” But he’s not. She can feel it.

  She sighs, puts her head in his lap, closes her eyes, and clasps her arms around one of his crossed legs. The leg is smooth, solid, and warm. If she holds on tight enough, she can bring him back.

  The cabin door opened, silhouetting a tall, thin figure in a straw cowboy hat against a gray, foggy background. “Have you seen my brother?” she asked Felipe. “He seems so close.”

  “Your brother? Why, no.” He came inside and shut the door. “Did you sleep all right, doña? How are you feeling?”

  “A little strange.”

  “Of course. What is happening to you is a miracle.”

  She took a deep breath. “And what is happening to me, Felipe? I’m frightened.”

  “Don’t be frightened, doña. You are walking with God.”

  “God is frightening sometimes, isn’t he?”

  Felipe stepped closer to stand beside the cot. “Listen, doña. Did you know that once I tried to kill myself?”

  “My God! What happened?”

  “A long time ago, in Culiacán, where I grew up. I loved a girl, and I thought she loved me, but she went with someone else. I didn’t want to live without her, so I cut my throat.”

  She touched her own throat.

  “I was down in the huerta. Somebody found me and got me to the hospital. When I woke up everything was white, the rooms, the people. I thought I was in heaven. The doctor told me that God had made sure I used a knife that was so dull it only wrecked my voice.”

  “My voice and my songs had impressed that girl and made her love me for a little while. But I couldn’t write and sing enough songs to keep her, so my voice was driving me crazy. It wasn’t good enough.”

  “Without my voice, I could see God wanted me to live for another purpose, so I began a journey to find out what it was. I arrived here in the summer, and the flowers were full of honey bees. The first man I met was a blind guitar player who greeted me as if he’d known me all my life. He told me I was alive to do good deeds and to gather honey, and the minute he said it I knew it was true.”
>
  She put her hand on his arm. “To do good deeds and to gather honey. What a wonderful life!”

  “Claro. So God was good to me, not frightening.” A small, sad smile. “Solo uno problema: it’s not so easy to do good deeds. I’ve had many failures, and I know the people laugh at me. But I keep trying, and I believe that one day I’ll succeed.”

  “You’re succeeding right now, Felipe.”

  “Do you think so?” The smile faded. “I am not so sure.”

  “Felipe.” Squeezing gently. “Felipe. I have to tell you something, and you must believe me because it frightens me very much if you don’t. God is not the father of this child.”

  “Oh yes he is, doña.” Felipe’s dark face was suddenly glowing. “I’m sure of that, at least. He is the father of every child.”

  In the Mist

  A coppery, blue-spotted tree frog with little round suction-cup feet and a white belly sat in the exact center of a heart-shaped leaf. It didn’t move as I bent down to get a closer look into its black-striped golden eyes. I could have picked it up and held it.

  The mist did not break.

  The trail curved left, around the side of the mountain, with occasional vistas into valleys or across them to the peaks of the southern range. Silence. Had the mist muffled all sound, or was there just no sound to be heard?

  Sometimes the trail forked, and I began constructing little cairns to mark the way out. I passed the big madroño, and turned where Don Yeyo had indicated. The oak trees twisted and writhed, and I thought I might have heard a footstep or two behind me. Quick and soft.

  I strained to hear through the silence, looking back along the twenty feet of trail at gray shapes on the edge of visibility. Looking into the forest. Shivering in my thin clothes. The mist had beaded the ends of the hairs on my forearms.

  I went on, stopped, listened, went on again. And stopped again. Still silence. If there was anyone behind me, he or she was stopping too.

  I crept into a thick bush beside the trail and hunkered down. Outside the bush the mist curled … questions with no answers, a little boy standing at the door of a steamy, illuminated bathroom trying to make out what is inside.

  All I could see was a black hat. The rest was muffled, shrouded, indistinct. The soft, quick footsteps had stopped. It seemed that the hat had swiveled toward me.

  Hey, Marco, I thought. But I didn’t say anything. I didn’t move. Marco was looking right at me, probably, though I couldn’t see his eyes. Couldn’t see his face. Couldn’t make out what he was wearing.

  Maybe Marco could see me. But my shirt was khaki (a poplin safari shirt I’d bought in Montana), and it blended with the background.

  I could move, walk toward my enemy, but I stayed frozen. Then Marco turned away, took a couple of silent steps off the trail, and was swallowed up by the forest.

  How had he gotten behind me? Without the mare’s guidance, he’d probably taken a wrong turn, doubled back, and had seen the cairns. I strained my senses while occasional droplets of condensed atmosphere splatted on leaves.

  If I waited hidden and soundless, he might eventually continue on down the trail. Meanwhile, he no doubt was waiting for the same thing. Mexican standoff, though I had the advantage of a good sighting.

  After what seemed like hours, a bird trilled somewhere very close. The mist both amplified and diffused the sound, so you couldn’t tell where it was coming from.

  Claire had said I’d changed. Maybe she’d just been testing the water. No, she must have believed it, even though I hadn’t really believed it myself.

  Now here I was, huddled in the mist, trying my best to keep absolutely still so my enemy wouldn’t hear me. Talk about change. Who could have imagined, a couple of weeks ago before the attack in New York? I was sitting on my left heel, hugging my right knee—not the most comfortable of positions. My left leg was prickling and the sensation, along with a faint ache in my balls, strangely recalled my feeling for Claire.

  Suppose I had gone into her room that last night when I’d heard her tossing and turning? The man I was now would have gone without hesitation. Maybe I’d never have another chance!

  The bird trilled again. Or was it a different bird? Sounded derisive. I now had an Enemy. That was something new. That bird will eat you alive.

  My leg was completely numb. Something had to be done. I uncoiled from the bush and stepped out onto the trail. “Forget it, Marco,” I heard myself shout. “She doesn’t have what you’re looking for. Why don’t you go back and put that horse out of its misery. You have a knife, don’t you?”

  Silence. I picked up a lemon-sized rock from the side of the trail and hurled it as hard as I could at the place I’d last seen the hat. I heard it smash through shrubbery and hit the ground with a thump.

  “What’s the big deal, Marco?” I called.

  After a few beats, a light, nondirectional baritone began to surround me.

  Volver, volver, volver

  En tus brazos otra vez

  Estaría donde estés

  Yo sé perder

  Yo sé perder

  Quiero volver

  Volver, volver …

  The notes receded back into the mist, succeeded by a conversational voice. “That’s her favorite song, bro. She loves me to sing it for her. ‘I know I am lost, and I want to return to your arms again, wherever you might be.’”

  “She hates you.” I realized I didn’t have to shout.

  “That’s bad talk, bro. Be reasonable.” There was a rustle in the bushes twenty feet away from where I’d hurled the rock. “She didn’t have to have my baby, you know.”

  I walked slowly toward the sound. “Come out and talk it over.”

  A low laugh that made the back of my neck tingle. “I think you got my message the last time. Go back to New York and leave us in peace. You’re the one she hates. What did you do to her, anyway?”

  I hurled a second rock and heard it smash through the thick, damp foliage. There was no answering rustle, no further sound. I yelled and charged blindly into the cloud forest until the vegetation stopped me.

  My enemy was lost. I’d forgotten that. But I myself had been told the way.

  Run as fast as you can. Go now!

  Back on the trail, I ran steadily for what felt like a mile through the mist, then jumped into another thick bush. And waited, panting, trying to see. But there were no footsteps, no shapes.

  Running, walking, listening, running again. Surely by now I should have gotten to the open place in the forest with the big rock. But the trail seemed to be curving around a shoulder and rising. Impossible! But yes, it was rising, the mist was clearing, the vegetation was thinning, and then I was above the mist on a rocky slope with nothing above me but a towering crag standing out in hallucinatory relief against a dark blue cloudless sky. No plants, no birds, no life of any kind. Like the face of the moon.

  Where I’d Like to Be

  In a shed not far from the cabin, Felipe had showed her a wooden tub made from oak slats and shaped like a barrel laid on its side and cut in half lengthwise. He filtered his honey into this tub. It held the entire summer’s supply, infused with a special herb that allowed it to age without crystallizing and to develop its unique sharp flavor until he bottled it and hauled it down to be sold. The tub was about seven feet long and four feet wide.

  “It’s very tranquilo, isn’t it?” Felipe had said, as they stood on the filtering platform looking down into the golden depths. “Sometimes I just look for a while, and it makes me calm again.”

  “I know what you mean.” But she wasn’t sure she did.

  She’d heard him continue in a low voice: “This is where I’d like to be. When my life is over. Do you think it’s possible?”

  He’d been staring at her when she turned. No smile. Do you think it’s possible? “Why, of course, Felipe,” she’d said as lightly as she could. “What a wonderful idea!”

  She had read somewhere that Alexander the Great had had himself embalmed
in honey. So it was definitely possible. An unsettling image came into her mind of Felipe floating peacefully and weightlessly in his final resting place, preserved down through the centuries. And smiling.

  ***

  Now it was early afternoon, and Felipe was off tending his hives. A warm slant of sun through the window touched her lower leg. She ran a hand over her belly: it felt extra large and sensual in a strange way. She thought of Felipe’s strong brown hands. Raging hormones.

  Are you sick? You’re sick, aren’t you?

  Her brother did feel close. Suppose he never saw the letters to him she’d written in her journal. Suppose she never saw him again. She should have brought her journal with her. There was nothing to write in up here; she had nothing but one change of clothes, a toothbrush, and the film canister.

  It was time to leave. She was feeling more and more certain that she and Felipe should not be alone together here for another night. They could get down at least to the rancho before sunset if they left now. “Felipe,” she called. “Felipe!” With relief, she heard his steps on the wood slats leading up to the door.

  Opposites United

  A watery sun had burned off the mist by the time I’d doubled back down and found the right trail, though shreds of it still hung in the top branches of the pine trees bordering the meadow. The edges of the meadow were set with white beehives, and the air buzzed lazily. Swallows cut back and forth over the knee-high yellow grass, and two blue-black ravens croaked and preened beside a stream.

  There was the little shed with the chestnut horse tethered outside, and there was the cabin. I walked toward it cautiously, up the stairs, listened for a second, and pushed open the door into a dim room. A slant of light showed a wooden cot with someone sitting on it cross-legged, knees covered by a colorful Mexican blanket.