“I asked you to remember how you felt as a child. When you felt the goodness of God inside you. God is still there, alive in your heart. I asked, ‘Why do you fight Him so?’”
From the shadows beyond the fire, a man’s voice chided Tula, saying, “Next this boy will be telling us that he also speaks to the goats who bugger him! Why is he wasting our time. Go away, little turd, or I will bugger you myself!” Grinning, the man had stood and pretended to unsnap his belt.
Tula was surprised that only a few people laughed at the insult, and she was comforted by the realization that very few of these people would ever laugh at her again.
When Tula had finally left that fire circle, seven nights before, some of the adults had watched her in a silence that was a mixture of fear, awe and longing. On that very same night, someone placed a statuette of the Virgin Mary outside her trailer.
The next evening, after the day’s work was done, the matron and two neighbor women appeared at Tula’s trailer, seeking to speak privately.
The next night, a small line formed outside Tula’s door. Each night afterward, the line was longer. Some people came from as far as Indiantown, Miami and Immokalee to speak with the child who was said to be an emissary from God.
News of the unusual child traveled at lightning speed through the cheap cell phones of the Guatemalan community.
Sometimes, women and men wept as they asked for Tula’s guidance and advice. Many attempted to kneel and kiss her hand, but Tula refused their adulation, just as the Maiden had refused the worshipping gestures of her own followers six hundred years before.
“We are sisters?” Tula had questioned Jehanne, hoping desperately that it was true.
Even when you leave this life for the next, the Maiden had promised.
Tula was now more determined than ever to be equal to the honor of being chosen by Jehanne.
To every person who came to her, Tula challenged them with the same parting question: “Do you remember the goodness of God that was in you as a child? He is still there, in your heart. Why do you fight Him so?”
Much had changed since Tula had spoken to the fire circle a week before. The respect with which her neighbors treated her was beyond her experience, yet she handled it comfortably and exercised her new power only for good-to spread the word that she was searching for her family, and, tonight, to order the adults to help save her patron, Carlson, and also the landlord, Harris Squires.
Something else that had changed, Tula realized, was that she had lost her anonymity. The eyes of her neighbors followed her everywhere she went. Which is why she had waited long after the ambulance and police cars had left to finally climb down from the tree and retreat to her trailer.
She didn’t stay long, though, because the memory of Harris Squires’s words scared her. She knew the giant man would come looking for her soon. So she had gone to the public toilet, curled up in a stall and had tried to sleep.
Too much had happened, though, for Tula’s mind to relax. She fretted about Carlson-would he live?-and also regretted not speaking with the strange man, Tomlinson, who Tula barely knew but who she had immediately accepted as her second patron and protector.
Early that morning, still unable to sleep, Tula had returned to her tree to speak with the owls and watch the sunrise, she told herself. But it was really to invite that pulsing, trembling feeling into her body. As she straddled the limb, which Tula thought of as a saddle, the Maiden had floated into Tula’s body almost immediately, but only for a short time.
Suddenly, then, without farewell, the Maiden’s voice was gone. It was replaced by the distant inquiries of morning birds-the owls had remained silent-and then the sound of approaching footsteps.
Tula had been weeping, as she always did when the Maiden left her, yet she was crying softly enough to hear the crack of twigs and then a man’s voice say, “Lookee, lookee, what I see. It’s getting so I know where to find you. What do you think you are, chula? Some kind of bird?”
Tula looked down to see Harris Squires staring at her through the strange binoculars that allowed him to see in the night like an animal.
It wasn’t until the giant had grabbed Tula, clapping his hand over her mouth to silence her, that the Maiden’s words returned to comfort the girl, saying, Stop fighting, go with him. You are in God’s hands. God will show you the way.
Now, sitting beside Squires in his oversized truck, Tula said to the man, “What do you call these bracelets on my wrists? They’re hurting me. Will you please take them off?”
Squires made a noise of impatience as he drove. He had been trying to focus on his sex fantasy, but the girl kept talking.
“Why don’t you answer me?” the girl said, irritated. “I have every reason to be angry at you. Instead, I am speaking to you politely. You should at least answer when I ask you a polite question.”
Squires made another groaning sound.
She didn’t stop. “If I had wanted to run from you, God would have given me the strength. Instead, He told me to come with you. That’s why I am here. There’s no need for you to chain my hands.”
Squires was aggravated, but also surprised by the girl’s calm voice, her matter-of-fact manner.
“They’re called handcuffs,” he told her, because it was obvious that she wouldn’t shut up until he answered. “It’s a safety precaution. If you did something stupid, like open the door and jump, who’d you think would get the blame?”
“I just told you,” the girl replied, “God wants me to be with you. God must care about you or He wouldn’t have told me to save you from the alligator last night. I wouldn’t be with you this morning. Do you remember me ordering my people to help you?”
Her people? Who the hell did she think she was?
The girl had something wrong with her brain, Squires decided. Maybe she was some rare variety of retard-he had seen things on TV about kids like that. Or maybe just crazy. It had to be one of the two because of course Squires remembered the girl yelling at the crowd of Mexicans, ordering them to help him. He also remembered the little flash of hope the girl’s voice had created in him as that big goddamn gator swam toward him fast with those devil-red eyes.
Why would the little brat try to help him? It made no sense for her to save his life after he had forced his way into the bathroom, then played around with her while she was naked.
Crazy. Yeah. She had to be.
As Squires drove, he looked at the girl, who was fiddling with the handcuffs, acting like they were hurting her skinny wrists. Close-up, she was a tiny little thing, her fingers long and delicate with dirt beneath the nails. The vertebrae on the back of her neck were visible beneath the Dutch-boy hair, like something he’d see on skinny dogs.
Compared to Squires’s own bulk, the girl was a sack of skin and bone, which Squires found galling. The weirdo was nothing but a worthless little chula, yet there was also something oddly big about her, too, the way she handled herself, full of confidence. It was disconcerting.
In a bar, Squires could flash his shit-kicker monster face as fast as any other brawler, but, truth was, he’d never felt confident about anything in his life. Not compared to the way this little kid acted, anyway.
What really burned his ass, Squires realized, was that all the women in his life were the same way. Frankie and his ball-busting witch of a mother both had that same know-it-all confidence.
No… not exactly the same, because the girl didn’t use the same nasty-mouthed meanness that his mother and Frankie both used to make him feel like a pile of shit most the time. But even though the girl was different, in her way, she was just another bossy female.
Tula said to him now, “You do remember that I helped save you. I can tell. Just now, you were thinking about the big alligator coming to eat you. But it didn’t eat you because we all helped you. So you should trust me. I’m not going to run away. I’m here because God wants me to be with you. Perhaps He wants me to be your protector every day, not just last night. It’s pos
sible.”
“My protector!” Squires laughed. “Take a good look at me, chula. Why the hell would I ever need your help?”
He glanced away from his driving long enough to touch his right bicep, which he was flexing. “You ever seen another man in your life built like me? Not down there in some Mexican shithole, you never did, I’d bet on that. I don’t need protecting from nobody because there’s not a goddamn thing in the world I’m scared of.”
A moment later, he said, “Okay, in a minute or so I’m going to pull up to a garage and I want you to do what I tell you to do.”
They were in East Fort Myers now, bouncing down a long driveway toward the river, horses grazing in a pasture to their right.
The giant man continued, “We’re gonna switch vehicles-it’s where my mom lives, but the bitch isn’t home. She’s off on some cruise someplace with one of her boyfriends. But if you see someone coming down that goddamn driveway, you honk this horn, understand? I’ll leave the truck running until I get it in the garage.”
No one came. Leaving Tula chained in the truck, Squires even took some time to go inside the house, make a protein shake and pack a bag of ice for his sore leg. He also found a pint bottle of tequila, which he kept on the seat next to him.
Soon they were on the road again, but in an older truck with huge tires that smelled of dogs and beer and the tequila the man was nipping at. His hunting buggy, Squires called the vehicle, which had an even louder engine than the truck they had left behind hidden in his mother’s garage.
Tula knew that Squires was lying about taking her to the hospital to see Carlson. But what she had told the giant was true. Even though the man had forced her into the truck-leaving her few possessions behind at the trailer park-she wasn’t going to attempt to escape. Not unless the Maiden ordered her to.
The handcuffs were heavy on her wrists, though. And Tula felt vulnerable, sitting on the floor with her hands bound, unable to see out the window. The man was a fast driver, weaving through morning traffic, braking hard for red lights. Or maybe it just felt as if they were going fast because she was on the floor and Squires had the windows open, the roar of the truck’s mufflers loud in Tula’s ears.
This was even more frightening than climbing onto the top of a freight train, riding exposed to wind and rain through the mountains of Mexico. On the train, at least, Tula had been able to watch for dangers ahead.
But not here, riding on the floor. She was unaccustomed to this kind of speed and she feared a collision. Tula imagined impact, then being trapped, unable to use her hands, especially if there was fire.
Fire terrified the girl. She had watched her father die in flames, smelled his clothes burning, heard his screams, and the vision still haunted her.
Even the Maiden had feared fire. In the little book Tula had left back in the trailer were Jehanne’s own words:
Sooner would I have my head cut off seven times than to suffer the woeful death of fire…
Tula bowed her head and began to pray, speaking in English loudly enough to be sure that the giant landlord heard her, hoping to irritate the man into action.
“Dear Lord my God, I ask in Jesus’ name all blessings on this man who is driving too fast and drinking liquor at the same time. I ask that he look into his heart and understand that he’s scaring me, the way he’s got my hands locked. Even though the police might stop us at any time and arrest him and take him to jail! Make him know I am not going to run away because I am his friend. And a friend does not leave a friend…”
The girl went on and on like that.
The louder the girl prayed, the bigger the gulps Squires took from the tequila bottle. After a while, even liquor didn’t help, and Squires couldn’t stand it anymore. He glanced down at Tula, then turned on the radio, wanting to drown out her voice. It was AC/ DC doing “Black Ice,” but it only caused the girl to pray louder.
Shit. The little brat was maddening.
Squires found all her talk about God disturbing, an upset he felt in his belly. Truth was, he didn’t want the girl to talk at all. Even if he didn’t make his fantasy come true by raping her, he still had to kill her when they got to the hunting camp-what choice did he have? And the more she talked, the more girlish and human she seemed, which Squires didn’t like.
It irked him that she had brought up the gator attack to make him feel guilty. She was just making it harder for him, using guilt like a weapon, which is the same thing that Frankie and his mother did on a daily basis.
The realization that this little girl was no different provided Squires with a sudden, sweet burst of anger that immediately made him feel better about driving her to the hunting camp, where he was going to get her drunk, get her clothes off and have some fun.
“Why can’t you just sit there and shut up,” he said to the girl as he screwed the top back on the bottle. “Do you want to see your drunken friend, Carlson, or not? I’m trying to do you a favor! So instead of whining about your wrists and asking God for a bunch of stupid favors, you should be thanking me for going out of my way to help you.”
“But what will the policemen say if they stop us and see what you’ve done to me?” the girl replied, sounding more like an adult than a girl. “Or if we get in a wreck and the ambulance comes? They’ll see that you’ve handcuffed me and take you to jail. How will God be able to help you in jail?”
Squires said it aloud this time-“Shit!”-as he turned hard onto a shell road, then parked behind some trees in a chunk of undeveloped pasture, where he removed the girl’s handcuffs.
It was probably a smart thing to do, because it was midmorning now, he had to pee, and if the girl was going to try to run an empty pasture was better than a 7-Eleven or some other place where strangers could see.
But the girl didn’t run. When Squires returned to the truck, he yanked Tula up onto the seat beside him, and said to her, “There! Happy now? You got no more excuses for whining.”
It didn’t shut her up, though.
“You should wear your seat belt,” the girl reminded him when they were on the road again. “God cares about you. You keep forgetting. And if you got hurt in a crash, what would happen to me? I have no money and no extra clothes.”
“Do you ever think about anyone else but yourself?” Squires snapped.
A few seconds later, he said, “God cares?” and managed to laugh, although it wasn’t easy. The suggestion that anyone cared about him was idiotic. His head ached from too much tequila, last night and already this morning. And Frankie was pissed at him-yet again. Someone must have called her from the RV park last night when the cops arrived because the woman had left five messages on his cell between ten and two a.m. The last message was a rant so profane that Squires had deleted it before getting to the end.
“I ask you to do one simple thing and you completely fucked it up-as usual,” Frankie’s message had begun, and then it got nasty from there.
Well… that was enough of Frankie’s bullying ways, as far as Squires was concerned. He had had it up to here with the woman’s bullshit. That’s why before leaving Red Citrus he had cleaned out all the important stuff from their double-wide just on the chance he could summon the nerve to leave and never see that bitch again.
The important stuff included bags of veterinarian-grade pills and powder that were in the locked toolbox in the bed of his hunting truck. And also about sixty thousand cash from steroid sales, which was in a canvas bag bundled with rubber bands along with the Ruger revolver. The whole business was under the driver’s seat, safely inside a hidden compartment that he had made himself using hinges and a cutting torch.
Frankie was mad now? Christ. The woman would go absolutely apeshit when she realized the money was missing.
Squires was also worried about Laziro Victorino, the badass Mexican with the box cutter and teardrop tattoo under his eye. If cops found a piece of a woman’s body inside an alligator from Red Citrus, the V-man would know instantly it was one of his prostitutes and he was going
to be pissed. Someone would have to pay, because that’s the way it worked with the Mexican gangs.
You kill one of them, they killed two of you. That’s why Victorino made snuff films. To remind people.
First person the V-man would suspect was him and Frankie because everyone knew they had a thing for videoing Mexican girls, sometimes as many as three at a time. They were videos that Frankie posted on her porn website but also sold to Victorino’s gangbangers, which was another way she made money when she wasn’t dealing gear. Not that Squires and Frankie ever appeared on camera. No, the videos were for profit but also a way for Frankie to have fun behind the scenes.
Mostly, though, Squires was worried about the dead alligator. What would cops find in her belly when they cut the thing open? That would probably happen this morning, from what he had overheard the Wildlife cops saying. That reminded Squires to switch the radio from AC/DC to a news station.
In Florida, a dead alligator that had eaten a girl would be big news.
Even with the radio loud, it was hard to think his problems through. It was because the weird little Bible freak never shut up. She asked questions about the truck’s air-conditioning. And the CD player, then about his iPhone, which was plugged into its cradle next to the gearshift. It was like the stupid kid had never been out in the world before.
The girl also kept giving him updates from God.
This God talk was getting old.
“Think back to when you were a child,” she was telling Squires now as she sat upright beside him, looking at something near the gearshift-his iPhone, maybe. “Do you remember how safe you felt? Do you remember the love and goodness you felt? That was God’s presence inside you. And He is still there, so why do you fight him so?”
They were on Corkscrew Road, driving east through bluffs of cypress trees, past orange groves and grazing cattle, toward Immokalee, the gate to his hunting camp only half an hour beyond that little tomato-packing town.
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