Wonder Valley

by Ivy Pochoda

  The air in the smoking cabin is suddenly stifling. Tony’s stomach is doing flips. He reaches behind Britt for the door. But she grabs his arm. “Where are you going?”

  He tries to shake free.

  “You have to help me.”

  “I have to go.”

  Britt’s got him tight, digging in her nails. “That man in the video—you have to help me.”

  Tony needs air. Not the air of the King Eddy. Not the air in downtown L.A. Not even the air of Beverlywood. But the perfectly calibrated air of his house. “I can’t.”

  Britt’s drawing blood with one hand and using the other to jam the phone close to Tony’s face. “This man,” Britt points at the phone. “Oh my God, Blake—he found James.”

  It seems too crazy now. Everything—the bar, Britt, James, and now some mystery assassin. Tony wants out and home and away from all this. He manages to break free of Britt and out of the smoking cabin and back into the main room of the King Eddy, which is an improvement, but not much.

  Britt’s at his side. “You have to help me. You have to.”

  The bartender stares Tony down like he better not be making trouble.

  “Go to the police,” Tony says.

  “The police?” Britt says. “The police?” She is verging on hysteria. “I’m not going to the police. Not now.”

  “I need to get home. I’m going to Ojai.” His excuse sounds so lame, so conventional, so exactly like the reason he’d chased the naked runner down the 110 in the first place.

  “Ojai? Fuck you.” Britt shoves him and heads for the exit. She’s unsteady on her feet. And then the door opens and closes and she’s gone.

  13

  BLAKE, WONDER VALLEY, 2006

  Sam liked the boy, which was strange because he didn’t care for most people. And this should have given Blake hope that something was softening in the big man.

  But the problem remained—the kid had family close by and Blake had seen them, a pretty mom and a matching brother. Any day now the boy would run back to them or they’d come looking. Or worse, the sheriff would get it in his mind to do door-to-doors through these damn jackrabbit homesteads looking for the kid but turning up two felons instead. Then all the cop’s Christmases would come at once—snag a wanted murderer, drug dealer, armed robber and his partner when he wasn’t even looking. Blake could see it now.

  And what’s more, he hadn’t done himself any favors by giving the boy’s brother that damn pawn in some girlish display of petty jealousy about Sam and Owen bonding over the chessboard day and night. Between him and Sam and this kid who had become a barnacle on his ass, it was like they were setting off fireworks, letting the whole goddamn world know where to find them.

  Four days after the kid turned up, rain blew in. The sky was the color of shale. Lightning tapped along the mountains followed by the thunder’s boom.

  The rain made the interior homestead smell like wet dog. Sam’s stench had gone from fetid floral to downright rotten. Blake had tried to restitch the wound that morning, but the bloated, busted skin made sewing impossible.

  “Want me to help you outside, rinse you off?” Blake said.

  Sam was cloudy and disoriented from his last dose. “The fuck I’m running around in the rain.”

  Blake rolled him a beer and a can of spaghetti and watched the Samoan knock out a few pills. He could hear the near-empty rattle in the bottle. “Something’s not right with the world that we’re getting all this rain in the desert. Someone’s telling us we’re fucked.” Sam dry-swallowed his dose.

  “Some people might say rain’s a good thing,” Blake said.

  “Nothing’s going to get better for us until you get rid of your damn sneakers.”

  “Just keep taking your pills.”

  Sam threw the nearly-empty bottle across the cabin. “You know what this kid says? He says these pills are keeping me sick. He says his father believes you need to heal the spirit before you can heal the body.”

  Owen began setting up the chessboard. Blake had a mind to stomp the thing and fling the pieces far into the desert, ending the game for good.

  “Is that so?” Blake said.

  Sam slammed his beer on the ground and glared at Blake. Owen flinched. “The fuck I’ve been saying all this time? I’ve been saying my spirit’s sick. That’s what I’ve been saying.”

  “Your leg’s broke,” Blake said.

  “And now a kid comes along and tells me that I’ve been right this whole time?” He looked at Owen. “Blake didn’t tell you it was his shoes that did this to me?”

  “No, I did not.” Blake moved to the window and stuck his face out, breathing in the scent of wet desert.

  “And what would your daddy say about my poisoned soul?” Sam asked.

  “That it’s fatal,” Blake said.

  “I’m not asking you.” The big man was staring at the kid.

  “He’d say you need a cleansing or a realignment.”

  There was a break in the storm, but to the south another thicket of clouds was massing over the Pinto Mountains.

  “Well,” Sam said to Blake, “you better take me there.”

  “The fuck I’m taking you to the father of the runaway we’ve been harboring.”

  The big man pounded the floor, scattering the chessmen. His eyes were glazed. His pupils minute. The kid was probably right about one thing—those pills were beginning to poison Sam.

  They needed wheels. They needed out of the desert. They needed to put distance between them and the kid before he ran off home.

  BLAKE WAITED ON THE WET SAND UNTIL DARK. HE COULDN’T WATCH another goddamn chess game. He couldn’t take any more of Sam’s comments about his shoes, about how he’d made the big man’s spirit sick, or how he’d better hoof it to Owen’s dad’s clinic.

  He was going to get Sam on the road bad leg and all. If he had to break his promise about perping to do so, so be it.

  When it was dark enough for Blake to make his move, he took the boy’s BMX and cased Wonder Valley for a truck, figuring if you weren’t at home out here by nightfall, you weren’t coming back for a while. Because where the fuck would you be in this whole lot of nowhere? About three miles away he found a vintage Ford pickup, orange and chrome detail, sitting in the carport of a dark, tidy ranch. The truck was a little snazzy for his taste—the kind of fetish ride that stuck out—but way easier to hot-wire than these damn keyless entry cars everyone was driving.

  He kept the lights off as he rumbled back to the ranch. The truck had a throaty diesel chug that Blake was sure was booming all across Wonder Valley to Twentynine Palms and farther.

  The lights were on in the cabin, which was a disappointment. Blake had been hoping that he might somehow sneak the big man out without waking Owen. Not that it was likely he’d get a 270-pound man with a busted, infected leg out of that cabin without making noise, but it was worth a shot. There was no chance of that now. No chance he’d even be able to get on the move once those two were bent over the chessboard.

  Blake cut the engine. He’d give them two games. After that he was running the show.

  When he entered the cabin, he saw the chessboard pushed to one side. Sam was sitting up, his broken leg out to one side. Owen was crouched down in front of him, his hands on Sam’s busted calf. He was muttering something under his breath. The sight of the boy’s hands on the big man’s leg—his sweaty little palms on Sam’s infected flesh—turned Blake’s stomach. He felt he had stumbled onto something grotesquely intimate.

  “The fuck is going on here?” Blake grabbed the boy by the shoulders and pulled him back. He let go and Owen tumbled into a far corner of the cabin.

  Sam’s irises were ink black, large and roving. “He’s healing me.”

  “Is that right?” Blake said.

  The kid got up, brushed himself off.

  “Now back off and let him finish the job,” Sam said.

  “Don’t tell me. You feel better already?” Blake said.

  “How
the fuck would you know how I feel?” Sam said. “You’ve done nothing to help me. Up to me we’d already be at this kid’s place so his dad could get to work.”

  “Jesus.” Blake kicked the chessboard. The fuck hadn’t he done to help Sam—jacking a car, boosting pills, cooling his heels while the big man played chess with this kid. “Jesus,” he repeated, scattering the chessmen as wide as he could.

  He could feel Owen at his back, waiting, just waiting for him to step aside, like he had every right to be there.

  “Be my guest,” Blake said.

  The kid crouched down and put his hands back where they’d been.

  “And what is this shit you’re doing exactly?”

  Owen looked up from Sam’s leg. “It’s what my dad does. I’m pulling out the bad energy.”

  “And he showed you how to do that?”

  The kid didn’t respond.

  Blake nudged him with the toe of his sneaker. “And he showed you how to do that?”

  “Ask anyone around here what my dad can do,” Owen said.

  “I don’t see anyone around here.”

  “Shut up and let the kid work,” Sam said.

  Blake watched them for a bit until he was sure that the boy wasn’t doing anything more harmful—or more helpful—than mumbling nonsense under his breath. Sam’s eyes started to close. He fell back on the mattress.

  “You can stop this shit now,” Blake said.

  “It’s working,” Owen said.

  Blake picked up the chess handbook off the floor and dragged his bedroll out to the fire pit. If chess was all it took to get back into Sam’s good graces, he figured he’d better get studying. He pulled out his penlight and cracked the book. But the narrow pinpoint of light bouncing over the black-and-white diagrams and the small print made his head spin. And he slept.

  BRUJO. BRUJO.

  Blake’s eyes snapped open to the sound of Sam’s voice. He couldn’t have been out for more than half an hour.

  Brujo.

  It was the worst of the big man’s curses, his most evil condemnation.

  Brujo.

  His mother, for instance, who had abandoned him for a rich Texan, or so he said. His uncle who stole from him and lashed him with a rope.

  A scream followed—not Sam’s but the boy’s.

  Blake flung open the cabin door so hard he ripped it off the hinges. Blood spatter streaked the floor and dripped from the wall.

  “Brujo!” Sam cried.

  Blake glanced at the big man’s leg. His bandage was oozing as usual, and his calf was the same mottled purple-green mess, but there was no fresh blood. It took him a second to dial in Owen huddled in the corner, bent over his arm.

  “Brujo,” Sam said. His voice was distant and foggy, now an old man’s wobble. “He tried to steal my soul.”

  “He what—”

  “In my sleep, he tried to steal my soul,” Sam said. His eyes were rolling back. “So I cut him. Here to here.” He traced a line from underneath his elbow to his wrist.”

  “I—I—I . . .” The kid was stuttering.

  “His hands were on me. He was stealing my soul. He was pulling it out through the wound in my leg.”

  Blake coaxed Owen out of the corner and turned his arm over. Blood had soaked his T-shirt and the top of his jeans. The cut was bad, two flaps of skin pulling away from each other and exposing parts of the boy he didn’t need to see. This kid wasn’t dying on Blake’s watch. He wasn’t dying on account of Sam’s delirium. He wasn’t fucking dying period.

  Blake took off his shirt and wrapped it around Owen’s arm. “Let’s go,” he said.

  “Where—”

  “Hospital.”

  “No,” Owen said. “I want to go home. Take me home.”

  14

  REN, LOS ANGELES, 2010

  Monday came in loud with the sound of semis booming up Sixth and the slow roll of garbage trucks kicking up an even worse stench than what already hung in the air. The streets were up early, banging with the rattle and clatter of shopping carts being loaded and pushed away before the cops or the red shirts came.

  Ren had slept, if you could call it that, jerking awake each time someone passed too close to his square of sidewalk. He was up before the rest of the camp listening to Laila’s sandpaper cough and foggy breathing.

  The sun was still hanging back when his mother unzipped her tent, poked her head out. She hurried to the curb, doubled over, hacking and rasping, spraying the sidewalk with blood. The fit over, Laila wiped her mouth, straightened the bottom of her sweatshirt.

  Ren shifted on his box.

  “What?” Laila said, catching sight of him.

  “What’s wrong with you?”

  “This damn air is what’s wrong with me.” Laila waved her hand in front of her face like she was searching for unpolluted breathing room. Her voice was tight and raw.

  “That’s it?”

  “What’d I just say?” Laila patted down her wild, puffy hair. “Now how come you’re asking questions before I’ve even got my day started? That’s what they taught you in that place?”

  That place. Even living out here on the streets she was too good to admit that Ren had gone to juvie.

  Laila ducked back in her tent leaving Ren to his box and backpack. Eventually she emerged and began taking down her camp. “You just sitting there?” she said, giving Ren a side-eye.

  “I’m figuring shit out,” he said.

  “Well, take your time then. But I’ll give you some advice. The missions aren’t going to feed you before nine, but the cops are going to shake you out before that.”

  “How come Darrell and the rest of them aren’t moving?”

  “A cocktail of stubbornness and longevity.” Laila finished with her tent and stashed it behind Darrell’s shopping carts, between which he draped a tarp to provide cover while he slept.

  While Laila was packing, Darrell had emerged and was sitting in his camp chair, a fat black book open in his lap.

  “My kid can stash his box for the day?” Laila asked.

  “I’m not going anywhere,” Darrell said. He pulled out a pen and put it to the paper.

  Ren craned his neck to see what was on Darrell’s pages.

  Darrell glanced up like he was fixing to tell Ren to mind his own. Then he spun the book round so Ren could see. “My masks,” he said. He thumbed the pages, showing a flipbook of masks—some African, some Native American, some Asian. Then he turned the book over and fanned through the pages in the opposite direction and a whirlwind of faces passed by. “My faces. Down here everyone’s got both. I’ve filled seven books since I came downtown. It’s my routine.”

  “I’m taking a break from routine,” Ren said. Eight years in lockup. Eight years of the same wake up, the same lights out, the same hour of exercise, the same damn meals in the same damn order.

  “You’re what now?” Laila asked.

  “All I’m saying is, I’m living unregimented for a while,” Ren said.

  “Unregimented?” His mother spat the word out like a fancy food she didn’t have the taste for. “Seems like that sort of living is what landed you in trouble in the first place.”

  That and the fact that Laila and Winston didn’t pay heed to anything he did, just turned him loose and hoped for the best.

  “You should listen to Darrell. They had a show of his stuff over at the community arts center and at the Skid Row Museum.” Laila strung her large white purse over her chest. “I remember you doing some drawing when you were a kid, always locked in your room with crayons. Too bad you messed shit up for yourself. You could have done something with that-all.”

  Who was she to know what he did? Just because he was trapped in juvie didn’t mean he didn’t put marker to paper, didn’t mean his imagination died along with his freedom.

  “You still draw?” Darrell asked.

  “No,” Ren said, which was a half-truth. He didn’t draw. Never had. He painted—paper, walls, roll gates, anything that would h
old still long enough for one of his pieces, his blowups, or tags. There were buildings and stores all over his old hood in Brooklyn that bore his artwork, places people paused in the middle of their everyday business to take a long look, to consider all the mad color on their streets. Go back home, he wanted to tell Laila, see what-all I didn’t do with my gifts after I got out.

  “Draw or don’t draw,” Darrell said. “All I know is you need a routine.”

  “No need,” Ren said, “since I’m not sticking around.”

  “Where are you going?” Laila said.

  “Home,” Ren said. “Both of us.”

  Laila crossed her arms and shook her head. “Not that nonsense again,” she said. Then she picked up her big white purse. “I’m out. Darrell’s not the only one with a routine. I got to go to the clinic and pick up my scrips.”

  “Because why?” Ren asked.

  Laila gave him a look that told him to quit it with the questions. She adjusted the strap of her bag and headed north toward Fifth, leaving Ren behind.

  THE NEIGHBORHOOD WAS FULL ON AWAKE NOW. PEOPLE WHO’D CAMPED on the out-of-the-way corners kept their tents up. But on the main thoroughfare of Seventh and the surrounding side streets, all the overnight living was gone. But just because tents were down it didn’t mean the hood was calm. In fact, the streets were filling. New folks had arrived at the missions waiting for food, then spilling out onto the streets, getting in the way of buses and cars.

  Ren didn’t need a routine but what he did need was a plan, a way out of this hood with Laila, or, worst case, without her, but he hoped it wouldn’t come to that. The bus back would run them about one sixty each, give or take. More cash than he could hustle in a few days’ work—because that’s longer than he could imagine hanging around these streets. But a phone call, that he could hook up for free. Get Laila’s cousin on the line, the one who let fall that his mom was out here in Los Angeles. Get her to understand the situation. Get her to send some cash. Get Laila to listen to reason. Problem was, Ren didn’t have a phone. But Flynn did.

  So here was the plan. Wait the day out. Wait for Laila to come back from that business she called her routine. Tell her they were taking a walk, a break from the dark heart of Skid Row, that they were going to breathe the somewhat cleaner air of downtown. They’d go to the Cecil, wait in the air-conditioned lobby—fuck the clerk who would tell them to leave—until Flynn showed. They’d borrow his phone. Maybe even ask to borrow his room until they could work this shit out.