by Billie Letts
“Whoa. ‘Bisabuelo’?”
“What you call father of father of father of son?”
“Oh, great-grandfather.”
“Right. My greatest grandfather performed in Mexico. So did mi bisabuela, uh, greatest grandmother. Then they come with four babies to circus in U.S.A. But three babies died from the big disease. Very big.”
“Flu? The Spanish flu?”
“Sí. But remember this, Fate. Flu come from Spain, not Mexico,” Juan said defensively, then waited for affirmation of his opinion before continuing.
“Okay. I understand.”
“Good. Everywhen something go wrong, people scream, ‘The Mexicans did it! The Mexicans did it!’” Juan used the high-pitched voice of an angry, frightened woman, making Fate grin.
“So your great-grandfather worked in the circus. In Mexico and in America?”
“Oh, he was good aerialist. Traveled all over U.S. with the Greatest Show on Earth.”
Fate’s eyes showed the impression Juan’s remark had made on him. “You mean Barnum and Bailey?”
“Barnum and Bailey. That’s right.”
“Wow.”
“Then Mr. Barnum died, big changes. My greatest grand-father and wife go to Ringling Brothers with only one baby, my grandfather Julio, who become great aerialist. He married my grandmother Sim. Mama Sim. They had six childrens and—”
“Six?!”
Smiling, Juan said, “Mexicans love to make love.”
“Were all six aerialists?”
“No, no. Only two. Brother-and-sister act. Very popular, but Great Depression hurt much the circus, so the big family all worked at circus, taking up tickets, juggling, selling palomitas de maíz, popcorn. See, my English not so bad, huh?” Juan was lost in some old memory for a moment. When he returned to Fate, he smiled. “The others did what they could do to make money.”
“Hard times.”
“Yes. Very hard. Magda, who did aerial act with her brother? She killed during a show. She flied . . . flewed?”
“Flew.”
“She flew without net when they doing a difficult exchange. Big act. Paid good money. My papa, Raynoldo, was her partner, her brother. He never ever talk about the accident.”
“Maybe it hurts him too much to remember.”
Juan got quiet again for a while, leaving Fate to wonder what he was thinking. Finally, he said, “My papa got married at nineteen. Gabriela, my mother, was just a girl. They had four kids, boom, boom, boom. I’m the youngest.
“By then, my family owned some land, some animals, so started their own circus. One ring, then two, now five. Vargas Brothers Circus. Five rings. Wait till you see. Where to look first? Here?” He pointed out the driver’s window. “There?” He gestured out the passenger’s window. “Five rings, all at same time.”
“And you became an aerialist like your father, grandfather, and great-grandfather.”
Draco suddenly popped up, standing on her hind legs, her paws draped over the back of Juan’s seat, and barked once.
“Uh-oh. Lutie needs something,” Juan said.
And he was right. She was awake when Fate turned to check on her.
“I have to pee,” she said. “Real quick.”
After two stops in New Mexico—one in Gallup, the other in Albuquerque—Juan decided that they’d had enough for one day on the road. And as tired as he was, he could only imagine how Lutie must have felt.
Each time they’d stopped and helped her to the bathroom, he’d thought they should have followed Rosa and Hector’s advice and put off the trip for a few days.
And as much as Juan dreaded going back to Oklahoma, his reluctance growing stronger each hour, he knew if he didn’t go then, he wouldn’t go at all. Ever. Best, he finally decided, to get it over with. Not only because of the boy and his sister. But what he, Juan Vargas, faced back home.
About a hundred miles shy of Clovis, he rented one room with two double beds at a Days Inn. After he and Fate helped Lutie into the bathroom, she took a shower and changed into a nightgown, then limped to bed holding on to Juan’s shoulder. By the time he gave her the pain pills, she was hurting so much that she gritted her teeth.
He waited until her pain subsided, then said good night.
“Where are you going?” Fate asked. He had assumed Juan would be staying in their room.
“Sleep in the car,” he said. “Right outside your door. If you need me, knock on the window. I can be here fast as this.” He snapped his fingers to indicate his speed.
“But you’ve been in the car all day. You need to stretch out, get comfortable. Don’t you think—”
“My Matilda is plenty comfortable, Fate. Besides, she loves me.” Juan laughed and slapped Fate on the shoulder.
“Juan, if it’s the money, we can pay some of it.”
“No, little man, I got money. I just like the outside.” He opened the door, but before he left, he said, “Hasta mañana. Early.”
As soon as he was gone, Lutie said, “Fate, put that bottle of water here on the nightstand.”
“Sure. How you doing?”
“You just told the Italian guy we could help him with the price of this room.”
“Yeah. I have a little more than thirty dollars.”
“Have you forgotten about the six hundred bucks in my purse? I told you about that, didn’t I?”
“Yeah. The toothpaste commercial.”
“Then—”
“Lutie, I might as well tell you now, I guess. But please, please try to stay calm. You’ve been in bad shape; getting upset won’t do you any good.”
“What are you talking about?”
“The money, Lutie. It’s . . . well, it’s gone.”
“Gone? What do you mean, ‘gone’?”
“I’m so sorry.”
“Did you lose it?”
“No.”
“Did I? Maybe in that friggin’ car wreck?”
“You weren’t in a car wreck.”
“So how did this happen?” She held up her splinted fingers, held out her arms, both cut, bruised, and bandaged, pulled her hair back to reveal the silver dollar–size bald spot where her widow’s peak had been, then brushed back the thick mane on the side that she used to try to hide most of the stitches running down her cheek. “If it wasn’t a car wreck, how did I get so messed up? Huh?”
Ordinarily, she would be in a rage now, arms flailing as she stomped around the room, stopping from time to time to make a point, using every cuss word she knew while making up a few new ones, and throwing a shoe or a Coke can, whatever was handy at whoever was in her line of fire.
But she was too weak now, too sore and immobile for a rage. All she could manage tonight was a feeble bluster, and even that lacked the familiar Lutie force she could call up without hesitation or real provocation.
“You were beaten, Lutie.”
“Beaten? But you told me I’d been in a wreck.”
“No, for some reason you thought you’d been in a wreck. Dr. Hector said it was a substitution for what really happened, something you weren’t ready to face. He said it might be best to let you believe that for a while. Until you were stronger.”
“Beaten? Who did it?”
“Two kids. One of them was named Rodney. I think they intended to kill you.”
“Oh, God. I . . . yes, I remember.” She let her body go limp— a gesture of defeat and the result of Percocet. “He took my purse, pulled me out of the car by my hair, then . . . That’s all I can think of. The rest is gone.”
“Good.”
“Good? Fate, are you crazy? We had over six hundred dollars.” She was beginning to slur her words now. “We had a chance—”
“No, I meant that it’s good you don’t remember the rest. I can’t see how it would help you right now to remember all they did to you.”
Suddenly, she began to tremble. Believing she was having a chill, Fate grabbed another blanket from the closet. “Was I . . . was I raped again?” Even as she w
as drifting into the fog of the drugs, she couldn’t let go without knowing. “Was I, Fate? You have to tell me the truth. You have to.”
“No, Lutie, you weren’t raped.” He spread the blanket over her from chin to toes. “But why did you say ‘again’? Have you been raped? Ever?”
Lutie’s lips formed a word, but she issued no sound as her eyes slid shut.
“Please answer me, Lutie. Have you been raped?”
“Just a bad dream. I guess.” She gave herself up to an artificial sleep then, a sleep only drugs could produce.
Fate paced the floor awhile. When he was certain Lutie had gone under, he slipped out the door, easing it shut behind him.
He found Juan on the hood of the Lincoln, leaning back against the windshield while he smoked a cigarette and gazed at the sky.
“What are you doing?” Fate asked as he boosted himself onto one of the car’s fenders.
“Looking for answers.” He pointed to the sky.
“Finding any?”
“Nope.”
“Did you know that the star closest to our sun is Alpha Centauri?” Fate asked.
Juan said, “Do you know that star is more than four light-years away from our Earth?”
“Well, did you know that if you started on a trip to Alpha Centauri when you were just a baby, and traveled ten thousand miles per hour—”
“That after passing nearly fifty thousands of years, you would be only halfway to there,” Juan said.
Both man and boy studied each other then as if they were looking at a specimen of life rarely seen on Earth.
And perhaps they were.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
TYPICALLY, LUTIE WAS the last one to crawl out of bed, growling and grumbling her way through her morning routine but always finding ways to make everyone within earshot miserable. But not today.
She got up before Fate, washed her face, brushed her teeth, and dressed, all without waking him, even though every movement brought fresh pain to some part of her body. Then, energy spent, dressed in jeans and T-shirt, she crawled back into bed.
For the next hour or so, she slept fitfully. Awake, bits and pieces of the beating she’d taken played and replayed in her memory. Asleep, her dreams reconnected her to the porn film, pulling up images of herself, first with Ebony, then with Lingo, images that bled into more dreams, each driven by greater shame and humiliation than the last.
She was relieved when Juan tapped at the door, waking Fate. A new day. Fresh. Clean. Untouched.
But given the right time, the right circumstances, she knew she’d find a way to screw it up.
After Fate unchained the lock, Juan came in balancing a tray of doughnuts, bananas, and hot chocolate.
“Sorry to wake up you, but we got another far day. Not so long as yesterday, but far.”
“How long?” Fate asked.
“I think a little less of five hundred miles. How’re you feeling, big sister?” She didn’t speak but tried to smile, an effort that caused her mouth to hurt. “Not ready to running a marathoner yet, huh?”
“Marathon,” Fate said.
“My English professor,” Juan said to Lutie while he cocked his head toward Fate. “How ’bout some breakfast?”
Fate took a doughnut for himself, then offered one to Lutie, but she closed her eyes, turned her face away.
“Where’d you get this stuff?” Fate asked as he reached for another doughnut.
“Down in the lobby. Free. A breakfast continental, they call it.”
Fate let that one go. He didn’t want to throw too much at Juan too fast. His abuse of English had been going on far too long to improve much.
“Have you gave her morning medicine yet?” Juan asked Fate.
“No, I just got up.”
“So, I will do now while you eat.” Juan dug around in the plastic sack until he came up with two bottles. He shook out one blue capsule, two white. Lutie swallowed them by sipping bottled water through a straw. Drinking directly from a container was impossible because of the stitches in her lip.
When she finished, Juan put his hand to her forehead. “You feel some warm, Lutie. Maybe you have the fever. I call Dr. Hector now.”
Juan spoke Spanish after he reached the doctor, a way—she believed—that was meant to keep her in the dark. Ordinarily, she would have pitched a fit, would have demanded to know why she was left out of a conversation about herself. But she was too tired, her mind too foggy, to jump into the middle of that fight.
After the call, Juan went to the car and returned with a box containing more medical supplies. After he filled a syringe, as the doctor had instructed, he injected Lutie in her hip. Odd, she thought, that she felt embarrassed when Juan had her lower her jeans and panties, considering that only days earlier she’d been filmed naked, acting her part in sex scenes that left her feeling dirty and degraded.
Minutes later, she was only slightly aware of Juan re-dressing her wounds before being helped to the car with Fate on one side, Juan on the other. And in the last moments of her consciousness, she felt Draco’s tongue lick her hand before she bedded down beside her.
Lutie was still out when, a hundred miles down the road, Fate was wrapping up his tell-all to Juan. He hadn’t left anything out: being abandoned by their father, then living with Floy until she died. Stealing her car to get to Las Vegas, learning their dad was dead, living on the streets, getting free meals when they could. Just trying to survive.
When he finished, Juan took a firm hold of Fate’s shoulder and gave it a squeeze.
“Life has not dealed you good cards. Not yet. But I’m—”
“Dealt,” Fate corrected. “Life hasn’t dealt. See, dealt is the past perfect form of the verb deal.”
A groan from the backseat put a temporary halt to their conversation.
“Is she awake?” Juan asked.
Fate took a look at Lutie, who was sleeping soundly. “No. Maybe she’s just dreaming.”
“I’ll check fever again when we stop to eating. You hungry?”
Fate shook his head. “Juan, how did you keep up with us? Back in Vegas? You were always just where you needed to be when we had trouble. How did you do that?”
“I have crystal ball,” Juan said, grinning.
“No, really. Like what were you doing at that construction site where we hid on our first night in Vegas?”
“You mean one being builded on Harmon Avenue?”
“Yeah. Why were you there?”
“Had a job. Night watchman.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Nope. Had a cot on floor three. Seen you come in, seen Lutie turn car lights off. Watched you give the place the one-over.”
“Once-over.”
“Then you decided for Lutie to parking. Good place, too, ’cause that Pontiac hided from the street.”
“Then you’re the one who dropped rocks on our car.”
“I know when construction crew come, they call police and haul you to juvie, put you in system. I figure anyone work too hard to be not seen, need help. Besides, I would lost my job if boss founded you there.”
“And the note? About parking at the library. That was you, too?”
Juan nodded.
“Then how did you find us when we moved into the Gold Digger Inn?”
“Ah.” Juan tapped his head. “Detective work. Rodolfo Acosta took over.”
“Who’s Rodolfo Acosta?”
“Famous Mexican actor. Always play detective.”
“Okay, but how did you keep up with us?”
“I think, ‘Now, Rodolfo, where would two kids go if they ascared, but had no money? Cheap place, but room with door and locks.’ Did not take long for this detective to come up with answer. Gold Digger Inn. Cheapest motel in all Vegas. Dangerest but cheapest. So, me, Rodolfo, and Draco find your car. Case closed.”
On hearing her name, Draco’s ears perked up, causing Juan to reach back and rub the rottweiler’s head. “My detective dog.”
; “But why did you do all that for us, Juan?”
“All what?”
“The warnings, the notes, food . . .”
“Why not?”
“You’ve been on the streets for a long time, long enough that you’ve seen a lot of people in trouble. Even kids. Did you help them the way you’ve helped us?”
“I try. Sometime I can. Sometime I can’t. Help not always what peoples want. Sometime running-away kids just keep running. Sometime peoples crazy. Sometime they ascared of law, might be to thinking I taking them to jail.”
“So you try to help them because . . .”
“Paying back. I tell you this story. My friends, Rosa and Dr. Hector, going every week to clinic on bad side of town to help homeless who sick, hurt, need medicine, doctoring. One night, Rosa saw me there on sidewalk. Filthy, drunk, old blood on my face, head. Clothes got stink with sick on pants, hair got bugs. No peoples want to touch me.
“But Hector and Rosa touch me, take me to center for detoxing. Month later, Hector come for me. Take me to their home, Rosa feed me, give me clean bed, and they take me to meeting.”
“What kind of meeting?”
“Meeting for drunks, meeting for dopers. Give me book to read, let me hear stories by peoples like me. All stories different, but same. We drink, try to quitting but drink more. Again and again. But in meetings, we learn we cannot to quitting by ourselfs. Need help from Higher Power.”
“Is that God?”
“Maybe God, maybe Buddha, Muhammad, Creator, Virgin Mary mother of Jesus. Maybe just friends or all peoples in meetings trying to help each others. Listen: Dios déme la serenidad para aceptar las cosas que no puedo cambiar, el valor para cambiar aquellas que puedo, y la sabiduría para reconocer la diferencia.”
“What does that mean, Juan?”
“I asking for courage to be changing things I can change. Like you and big sister.”
“But me and Lutie, we aren’t drunks or addicts.”
“Not yet. But you live the streets in Las Vegas, can do bad things to you. Make sick your mind. You try to be better peoples, then one day you give up. Juan do not wants that for you and big sister.”
“So you are helping us because . . .”
“Paying back.”