Angel Baby

by RICHARD LANGE

  “Keep still,” Malone says.

  The man crouches to examine something on the ground, then stands again. After another glance their way, he turns and climbs back down into the canyon.

  Luz raises herself onto her elbows, but Malone stops her from sitting up.

  “Not yet,” he whispers.

  She watches the spot where the man disappeared. Her attention wanders after a few minutes, the sleepless night catching up to her. A tall clump of grass sways in the breeze with undersea gracefulness, and she drowses staring at it. Suddenly, she’s back in the bedroom of Rolando’s house. He wants to show her a knife he bought, joins her on the bed, and mimes stabbing someone. She snaps back to attention, angry with herself for drifting off.

  “This is dumb,” she says. “He’s not coming back.”

  She scrambles to her feet and slaps the dust off her shirt.

  “Come on.”

  Malone glares at her, irritated, but then stands himself and picks up the backpack.

  They continue across the plain, jogging at first, then walking. Coming upon a trail worn into the hardpan, they follow it without discussion, like water grateful for a channel. Luz lets Malone lead because he seems to have some notion of where they’re headed. She hopes she’s not giving him too much credit.

  The trail takes them to a set of train tracks on a raised bed. They climb to stand on the rails, which run forever in both directions. On the other side of the tracks is a dirt road. To the left, it parallels the tracks until it fades into the distance. They follow it to the right, where it turns to enter a copse of willows and cottonwoods.

  It’s at least twenty degrees cooler in the shady grotto formed by the overhanging branches, and the road dips quickly to cross a small but noisy creek. Luz kneels beside the stream and splashes water on her face while Malone lowers his mouth to the trickle for a drink. After one swallow, he spits and grimaces.

  “Not good,” he says, warning Luz away.

  She notices a paw print in the mud, then another, and another. The track crosses the creek and continues up the other bank before disappearing into the thick undergrowth. She reaches for a rock, imagining some animal preparing to pounce.

  Malone is lying on his back with his eyes closed like he wants to stay here all day. Luz tosses the rock so that it thumps on the ground next to his head. He sits up and stares at her.

  “What’s your problem?” he says.

  “Let’s go.”

  He gets up but then sits again and lowers his head between his knees.

  “What’s wrong?” Luz says.

  He leans over and vomits into the bushes. Luz scoots away until she’s backed against a tree. Her own stomach kicks when the sour smell reaches her. He’s probably just sick from the heat, but what if it’s something worse? It makes her angry to think that this bum, this surfer boy, has so quickly become her only hope.

  Malone wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. He’s pale and sweaty but still grins when he says, “Got any gum?”

  “Can you go on?” Luz says.

  He dismisses the question with a wave of his hand. “I knew a football player in college who puked before every game,” he says. “He claimed it was his body getting rid of fear.”

  “Well, you must really be scared then,” Luz says.

  The rumble of an approaching engine drowns out the warbles of the birds and the hiss of the breeze through the leaves. Luz sits stock-still, trying to pinpoint where the sound is coming from, but Malone jumps to his feet. He snatches her up with one hand and grabs the backpack with the other, then pushes her in front of him to a fallen tree lying on the bank of the creek.

  They step over the trunk together, and Malone pulls her to the ground so that they’re both hidden behind it. The feeling of him lying on top of her starts her hands shaking. She can’t stand being pushed, being held down. Too many bad memories.

  The noise is louder now, the vehicle definitely coming closer. Luz’s cheek is pressed to the dirt, but she can see under the tree to where the road crosses the stream. A Border Patrol truck roars into the grove and skids to a stop straddling the creek. The driver, a short Latino in a green uniform, steps out and stands facing their hiding place as he unzips his pants.

  “Not in the water, man,” another uniform calls from inside the truck.

  “Fuck off,” the first agent says.

  He pisses long and loud, all the while staring up at a squirrel cavorting in the branches of a cottonwood, a chittering gray spasm anchored by an angry plume of tail. Luz’s panic gets the best of her, and she tries to squirm out of Malone’s grasp. He holds her tightly, whispering “Shhhhhh” until she settles.

  The agent finishes with a grunt, then zips up and slides back into the truck. He revs the engine a couple of times before climbing out of the creek bed and turning to follow the road along the tracks. The sound of the motor fades away.

  When the birds begin singing again, Malone rolls off Luz, and she stands and paces the clearing until she feels human. This takes some time. There’s a part of her that can’t bear to be touched by a man. It goes back to the day she left her mother’s house for good.

  She was thirteen, lying in bed, watching TV. Her mother came in with some guy, some fat pig in a dirty shirt, a customer. Luz sighed and turned off the television, got up to go for a walk like she always did while Mamá took care of business. This time, however, Theresa stopped her, told her to sit.

  “This is Ramón,” she said.

  “So?” Luz said.

  “He wants to get to know you.”

  Luz understood immediately what her mother meant. A trembling started deep inside her, and to this day it’s never quite gone away.

  “Look,” Mamá said. “How much do you give for rent here? How much for food?”

  Luz couldn’t speak.

  “I’ll tell you,” Mamá continued. “Nothing and nothing.” She gestured at the pig, who scratched his belly and licked his lips and looked just like a man who would pay to fuck a little girl. “This is Ramón.”

  Ramón stepped up to the bed and reached for Luz, put his fat, sweaty hands on her cheeks, and smiled into her face.

  “Don’t worry,” he whispered. “I’m very gentle.”

  Luz tried to pull away, but he held her tighter. She lashed out like an animal desperate to escape a trap, pummeled him with fists and feet until he released her, then sprang up, pushed past her mother, and ran out the front door.

  For the next couple of weeks she bounced between the homes of various friends. Another fight with Mamá, she told them, too ashamed to reveal what had really happened, and they fed her and lent her clothes like they had every other time she’d run away. But this time was different. This time she wasn’t going back.

  One of her friends had a cousin visiting from the U.S., an eighteen-year-old marine named Victor. Luz noticed how he looked at her, and it gave her an idea. She told the kid she was sixteen and flirted hard with him for the few days he was in town, let him tongue-kiss her and stick his hands up under her blouse. The poor pendejo fell for her like she knew he would and was almost in tears at the thought of leaving her behind when it was time for him to return to San Diego.

  “So take me with you,” she said, putting tears into her own eyes.

  That night he hid her inside the toolbox in the bed of his pickup and managed to sneak her across the border. They checked into a motel afterward, where he planned to celebrate their success by fucking her for the first time. Luz jumped up off the bed as soon as he dropped his pants, though, and locked herself in the bathroom and refused to come out.

  “What’s the matter?” the kid asked through the door.

  Luz began to cry for real then, blubbering out the truth: “I’m only thirteen.”

  “No way,” the kid said.

  “I swear,” Luz replied.

  Victor was upset at being played like that but eventually calmed down. He put his pants back on and was kind enough to drive her to the bus s
tation and buy her a ticket to L.A.

  “I’m gonna come looking for you in five years,” he said. “See if you’re still pretty.”

  It was a nice thought, but Luz never heard from him again.

  Something stirs in the bushes, making her jump. Nothing, just a bird. She shakes off the past and refocuses on Isabel. Malone is now sitting on the log with his head in his hands. If he’s not ready to move, she’ll have to leave him behind.

  “Are you going to vomit again?” she says.

  “Nah, nah,” he replies, pushing himself up and grabbing the backpack. “Let’s do it to it.”

  Luz takes the lead now, sticking to the road, eyes and ears alert for more vehicles. Her mouth is full of dust. She spits weakly, and the wind blows the gob back onto her shirt. As she trudges along she replays the shootout in the canyon. Freddy betrayed them for sure, but she’d bet Rolando was also somehow involved. The thought sends a shudder through her and makes her walk even faster.

  The road swings around the base of a hill, and the landscape changes abruptly. A fire burned through here recently, leaving in its wake gray ash, scorched boulders, and the skeletons of oaks and sagebrush and spiny yuccas. Barbed wire still clings to the charred posts of a fence defining some boundary in the midst of the desolation, and the blackened chassis of an abandoned car lies rusting in a ditch.

  Luz hurries through the blight, but Malone lags behind, plodding along with his head down. Luz doesn’t dare risk shouting for him to hurry, but she’s not willing to slow down either. When the road curves again and she loses sight of him completely, tension builds inside her, agitation on a slow boil. She decides she’ll wait for him up ahead, where the way straightens some.

  An unexpected sight greets her when she reaches the spot: A hundred feet further on is an expanse of unburned ground with a couple of trees and a bit of green grass growing on it. A sunbaked trailer sits on the property, a few sheds, and, most important, an old blue pickup truck. Her frustration is suddenly washed away by a rogue wave of joy, and she thinks this must be what it’s like to be saved.

  Malone feels as if he might puke again. Counting his steps in order to keep his mind off it, he places one foot in front of the other and attempts to get a rhythm going. He smells smoke and then notices the burned landscape he’s now walking through. It seems like a trick, some blasted vision brought on by heat and thirst.

  Luz runs up the road toward him, motioning for him to stop.

  “There’s a trailer,” she says when she gets close.

  “How far?”

  She points back the way she came. “There. Right there.”

  They creep around a bend and come upon a dilapidated aluminum Airstream sitting on a green island in a sea of black and gray. Malone goes first as they approach it and keeps a lookout for any sign of the residents. You’ve got meth labs out here, Nazi bikers, drug runners, coyotes—all kinds of outlaws who are serious about being left alone.

  A dog the color of sand rockets out of its shady haven beneath the trailer to charge them when they turn into the driveway. Malone raises his foot, ready to fend off the animal, but the gristly old mutt stops short, plants its paws, and howls its guts out.

  “Cassius!” a man’s voice shouts. “Quiet!”

  The dog returns to its lair, and a geezer in filthy jeans and a T-shirt advertising a liquor store appears in the doorway of the trailer. What’s left of his white hair sticks straight up on his head, and a cigarette dangles from his lips.

  “Howdy,” Malone says, hand raised in greeting.

  “Howdy,” the old man says.

  “Our car broke down,” Malone says. “Do you have a phone we could use?”

  What good a phone is going to do them, he doesn’t know. It’s the first thing that came to mind is all.

  “Broke down?” the old man says, a suspicious squint crinkling the thin skin around his blue eyes. He waits with his hands on his hips as Malone and Luz draw nearer.

  “Overheated, most likely,” Malone says.

  “Whereabouts?”

  Malone gestures vaguely. “Ten minutes away. We just need to call someone to come get us.”

  “I have a cell phone,” the old man says. “But you have to go up to the highway to get a signal.”

  “We’d appreciate it if you’d let us use it,” Malone says.

  “No problem.”

  “And if you could spare some water, too, that’d be great.”

  The old man points him to a hose attached to a pipe sticking up out of the ground. Malone walks over, sets down the backpack, and turns on the spigot. The water gushes so hot at first that he spits out his initial gulp, but the stream soon cools, and he guzzles until he sloshes.

  “Don’t be such a pig,” Luz says.

  She drinks daintily when he hands her the hose, like a cat lapping milk.

  The old man is sitting at a rickety wooden picnic table shaded by a partially burned oak. Malone lowers himself onto the bench across from him, but Luz remains standing, radiating impatience.

  “When was the fire?” Malone asks the old man.

  “Couple weeks back.”

  “Looks like it was a close call.”

  The old man chortles. “Scary as hell,” he says. “The flames charged over that hill there fifty feet high, roaring like a semi.”

  “Wow,” Malone says.

  “Yeah, wow,” the old man says. “I fought them off with that hose you were drinking out of, if you can believe it. Came real close to getting crispy-crittered.”

  A chipmunk sneaks across the grass to drink from the puddle beneath the spigot. Cassius shoots out from under the trailer to chase it off. Malone runs his fingers through his hair and tries to figure out who to call. Not Freddy, that’s for sure. Maybe it’d be better to ask the geezer to drive them to the nearest town where they can catch a bus to San Diego.

  “So it’s only you?” he says to the old man.

  The man’s smile fades.

  “Why?” he says. “You planning a robbery?”

  “Come on,” Malone says. “I was just wondering how someone out here all alone all day would occupy himself.”

  The old man shrugs, still wary. “I hike. Read a little.”

  “Oh yeah?” Malone says. “What do you like to read?”

  “Westerns,” the old man says. “Spy books. They’ve got paperbacks two for one at a store in Calexico and let you trade them in when you finish. Shakespeare.”

  “Shakespeare?” Malone is about to say when the old man flinches and raises his hands over his head.

  Malone turns to see Luz pointing the silver-plated .45 at the guy. Hot as he was before, he’s that cold now, like someone doused him with a bucket of ice water.

  “We want to buy your truck,” Luz says to the old man.

  “And I guess I’m selling,” the old man replies with acid in his tone.

  Malone gets past his shock and steps in to take control. Luz has decided their next move by bringing out the pistol, but he needs to make sure the transaction goes smoothly.

  “It’s not like that,” he says to the old man. “We’ll pay you a lot more than it’s worth.”

  “Still called stealing,” the old man says.

  “It can’t be,” Luz says. “We’re paying you.”

  “Put that away,” Malone says to Luz, gesturing at the gun. She lowers it but keeps it in her hand. He reaches inside the backpack, pulls out a stack of bills, and flips through it. All hundreds. He tosses the money onto the table in front of the old man.

  “There’s five grand there,” he says.

  The old man doesn’t acknowledge the cash, just reaches into the pocket of his jeans and drops a red plastic keychain with one key on it onto the table.

  Another thought hits Malone, and he reaches into the pack again.

  “And here’s”—he counts out a few loose bills—“a thousand more for your phone.”

  He sets the bills down next to the stack, tucks them under the abalone shell
ashtray when the breeze ruffles them. The old man shakes his head and chuckles wryly.

  “I suppose you want me to go in and get it for you too,” he says.

  “If it’s not too much trouble,” Malone says.

  “Oh, hell no. No trouble at all,” the old man says with sarcastic solicitousness. He pushes himself up from the table and turns toward the trailer.

  Luz nudges Malone between the shoulder blades.

  “How do you know he doesn’t have a gun in there?” she whispers.

  Malone beats the old man to the door but lets him enter first. The trailer is cluttered but tidy. There’s an institutional, almost military orderliness in the way the canned foods are stacked on the counter of the tiny galley kitchen and the flower-print throw pillows are propped against the armrests of the sofa. Down a short hallway Malone sees a neatly made bed, and the air even smells good, like oranges.

  The old man grabs a phone off a table and hands it to Malone.

  “I’m sorry about this,” Malone says.

  The old man shrugs. “Who steals my purse steals trash,” he says.

  “Things aren’t going well for us.”

  “And now they’re not going too well for me either.”

  Malone follows the old man out of the trailer and has him sit again at the picnic table. Luz stands at the edge of the oak tree’s lacy shade, looking like she’s about to pop. Now that they’ve got the truck, all she’s thinking about is going.

  “It’d probably be best if you just counted that money and kept your mouth shut,” Malone says to the old man. “You don’t want a visit from the guys we’re running from.”

  “Whatever you say, boss,” the old man replies.

  His attitude is beginning to irritate Malone. The way he’s acting, like they’re a couple of idiots whose antics amuse him to no end, reminds him of his dad.

  He picks up the backpack and walks to the truck without another word, Luz on his heels. The door groans when he opens it, but the interior of the cab is as tidy as the trailer was. He slips the key into the ignition and twists it. The engine strains once, twice, then turns over as Luz slides in on the passenger side.