“My guardian angel,” Squires said in his flat voice, not bothering to attempt sarcasm. “I forgot. You were sent by God in case I get into trouble. Lucky me.”
He took another drink, and Tula could feel the anger building in the man.
Getting irritated herself, the girl turned away from the counter where she had the salsa open and had used the sharp paring knife to cut the meat into slices. “Listen to me!” she said, frowning at the giant. “I want to find my mother and brother. That’s all I care about. I want to go home to the mountains. If I’m home in the mountains, your policemen can’t ask me questions. That’s why I’ve been thinking of a way to help you.”
That made Squires snort, a sound close to laughter. “What do you want me to do, buy you a plane ticket?” he asked. “Drive you to the airport and wave good-bye? That easy, huh? I don’t think so, chula.”
Tula felt the Maiden flow into her head, giving instructions, which is why she calmed herself before crossing the room, where she placed her hand on the giant’s curly blond head. “You may not believe it, but it’s true,” she said. “I wouldn’t be here unless God wanted me to help you. He loves you. He wants you to come back to Him. You can believe me or not believe me, but you can’t deny the goodness that’s in your heart.”
The girl didn’t say it, but her recent words came into Harris Squires’s mind. Do you remember the goodness that was in you as a child?
The girl patted the man’s head as he stared down into the tequila bottle. Tula could feel Squires’s brain fighting her, but she continued, “The Maiden has told me how to help you. We must go to Immokalee and ask the people there about my mother and my brother. I have two aunts and an uncle somewhere, too. When we find them, I want you to come home with us to the mountains. In your truck, you can drive us.”
Tula looked around the room, seeing the stained walls, the carpet, a peanut can filled with cigarette butts, sensing in the next room the obscene photos staring up at the ceiling tiles.
She said, “This place has sin and ugliness all around. It’s no wonder you’re unhappy. You should leave this dirty life behind while you still can. You would like the mountains. We live closer to God in the mountains. It is cool there, even in summer, and the rains will begin soon. You can stay a week or a month. Maybe you will like it and want to build a home. The police won’t find you if we leave Florida. They can’t ask me questions.”
“Drive you clear to Mexico?” Squires said like it was a stupid idea. But at least he was thinking about it. Tula could see that his mind was working it through.
“Guatemala, not Mexico,” Tula corrected him. “It’s much more beautiful than Mexico. And the villages aren’t so dirty. Most of them, anyway.”
Yes, Squires was giving the idea some consideration because he asked, “Where’s Guatemala? Is it farther than Mexico? Mexico’s a hell of a long way.”
“I’m not sure of the exact distance,” Tula said, coming as close to lying as she could allow herself.
“But it’s farther than Mexico, that’s what you’re telling me.”
Tula replied, “What does distance matter when there are roads and you own a truck? You can drive the whole way. Or take a train, once we’re across the border. I hear the coaches are nice. I’ve never been inside a train, but I rode on the top of boxcars from Chiapas to San Luis Potosí. Three different train lines, I had to board.”
“You’re shitting me. You climbed up and rode on the top of a train when it was moving? Christ, what do those things do, fifty, sixty miles an hour?”
Tula replied, “One night, an old man told me we were traveling almost three hundred miles an hour, but I think he was drunk. It’s the way even adults travel if they want to come north. Sometimes, riding on top of the train was nice. We could pick green mangoes if the trees were close enough, and it only rained once.
“In Chiapas, though, it was dangerous. There are a lot of Mexican gangs there that wear bandannas and tattoos. At three stops, they robbed some of the men. And I think they attacked two girls who were on one of the cars behind me.”
Tula started to add that she hadn’t seen it happen, but she had heard the girls screaming. Her voice caught, and she couldn’t continue with the story.
Mentioning gangs and tattoos reminded Squires that the police weren’t the only ones looking for him. Laziro Victorino would be cruising Red Citrus the moment he heard about the alligator with a dead girl’s bones in its belly. Victorino was a little guy, but he was all muscle and attitude, a scary little shit who enjoyed killing people. Cutting them up with that box cutter of his or shooting them behind the ear and feeding them to his dogs.
Squires had heard the stories and he had seen a couple of the V-man’s snuff films. The teardrop tattoo beneath the dude’s eye was so weird it was scary.
What Squires hoped was that Victorino would run into Frankie, who might well kick the shit out of that vicious little wetback. Or vice versa. Either way, it was okay with Squires. He hoped he never saw either one of them again in his life. He was sick of the whole goddamn business.
A question formed in Squires’s head as he reviewed his predicament: Why the hell did he have to stay in Florida?
The answer was simple: He couldn’t think of a single goddamn reason.
Not the way things were now. Almost everyone he knew was an asshole or a drug dealer or a crackhead killer like the V-man. The girl, Tula, was a weirdo Jesus freak, but she had hit the nail on the head when it came to the life he was living. It was a dirty life. It made him feel dirty—Squires could admit that to himself now that he was on the run from a murder rap. So why not make a change before it was too late? Maybe going to Mexico wasn’t such a bad idea.
He said to the girl, “I drove to New Orleans once and it took me twelve hours. How much farther is the border? I think you have to drive clear across Texas, too.”
Squires placed the tequila bottle, then the revolver, on a magazine stand, and sat up a little as he tried to picture the geography of the southern United States. In his mind, everything south of Texas was just a hazy design, with curves and bulges bordered on both sides by oceans.
“First,” Tula reminded him, “we must go to Immokalee and ask about my mother. I’m not going home without my family. People call her Mary. Mary Choimha. Or Maria sometimes, too. She lived at your trailer park for a while, that’s why I went there first.”
“Every chula in Florida is named Mary or Maria,” Squires said. “I can’t keep track of everyone who rents at my place. You Mexicans are always coming and going.”
Tula said, “Then you lied to me. You said you had met her, that you could take me to her. You told me that at the trailer park last night.”
Squires shrugged. “So what? We’re not all perfect like you.”
“You would remember my mother,” the girl insisted. “She’s very beautiful—much prettier than me. Carlson said, last year, he saw your wife talking to my mother. That she gave my mother a cell phone . . . or maybe you gave it to her, Carlson wasn’t sure. But the phone stopped working two months ago, which is why I came here. My mother would have called me if her phone was working.”
Squires told the girl, “I don’t have a wife, especially not the bitch you mean,” as he leaned back to think about what he’d just heard.
The information was disturbing. All kids thought their mothers were pretty—Squires all too aware that he was a rare exception, because his mother was a chain-smoking witch. But why would Frankie give Tula’s mother a cell phone unless Frankie had something to gain?
Squires had given dozens of cheap phones to Mexicans, the cell phones that charged a flat fee with a limited number of minutes. Usually, he gave them to men who were good workers—and it was always for selfish reasons: It was a way of controlling the guy, make him indebted, and a little scared, too, that the phone would be taken away or the service canceled.
Christ, Frankie had run so many Mexican girls through the hunting camp and their double-wide at Red Ci
trus, he would have needed a calculator to keep track.
Was it possible that this kid’s mother was one of the chulas Frankie had used? Squires considered the girl’s age, which would put the mother in her mid- to late twenties, Mexican girls being prone to marrying young.
The possibility was too upsetting, though, and Squires decided that it wasn’t something he wanted to think about. He stared at the girl intensely for a moment, then looked away, suddenly aware there was something eerily familiar about the girl’s eyes and high cheekbones.
“Why would you listen to that crazy old drunk, Carlson?” Squires said to the girl. “I don’t want to hear any more about your mother. Understand?”
Aware of the man’s sudden mood change, Tula said, “Let me fix you some food while we talk. You need to eat for strength if we’re going to drive to Immokalee.”
The man laced his fingers together—Tula had never seen hands so huge—and sat up in the recliner. He was trying to remember how many Marys and Marias he or Frankie had screwed or used one way or another. But then felt a withering guilt descending, so he stopped himself. Instead, he let his mind shift back to the girl’s idea about leaving Florida.
Squires had thought of traveling to Mexico many times. Most of the big steroid manufactures were there because it was legal to make and sell gear. Hell, the place was bodybuilder heaven. In fact, Squires’s first supplier, before he got into the business, was an Internet place called mexgear.com. Mexgear’s shit was good to go, and they had good prices. Squires had bought Test C, Tren, EQ and Masteron from the online Mexicans there for less than fifty bucks a vial, and they’d always thrown in some extra gear if it was a big order.
The fact was, he didn’t need Frankie to continue his steroid operation. He could set up an underground lab just about anywhere, plus he spoke English, unlike the Mexgear guys, which always made it a pain in the ass to deal with them.
Speaking English was definitely to his advantage, Squires decided, even in Mexico. Most bodybuilders were Americans or lived in Europe, so it would be a smart way to expand and maybe make a lot of money. He couldn’t wait forever for his rich mother to die.
“Go to Mexico for a few months,” Squires said aloud, testing the idea on his ears.
He looked toward the little kitchen as if he’d just awakened from a doze. “I don’t need any food. Not now. But I could us a little pickme-up. Come with me—I’m not taking my eye off you for a second. If you want to cook, that’s up to you. Here, I’ll show you how to turn on the gas.”
Tula watched the giant get down on his knees and open a cabinet beneath the sink. He told her, “There’s a red knob under here and an emergency-cutoff switch. But first check and make sure you turned the burners off or one spark and this whole place could go up.”
Squires stood, the trailer creaking beneath his weight, and Tula followed him out the door, past the peeping baby egret that she had placed in a box after feeding it water and a few drops of condensed milk with an eyedropper. Squires had refused to help her catch and mash up minnows from the pond, which is what Tula believed that baby egrets ate, but maybe later he would.
Or maybe the mother egret, which was still flying around, occasionally landing near the box, would figure it out and bring the fledgling some food.
A few seconds later, Squires removed two padlocks from the homemade-looking wooden building. He lifted a steel bar, and soon Tula was inside a dark space that smelled of chemicals and propane.
When her eyes adjusted, she saw a row of gas burners on a counter that were connected by hoses to tanks beneath. It explained the propane smell, just as shelves filled with bottles and stacks of paper filters explained the odor of chemicals.
“What do you make here?” the girl asked Squires.
“You ask too many questions. Forget you ever saw this place, that’s my advice to you,” the man replied as he touched a switch, neon lights flickering overhead. That done, Squires took a pack of syringes from a drawer, then opened two small boxes that contained rows of unmarked vials.
Out here, the propane burners had steel manual lighters, like lanterns the girl had used. She stood against the wall, out of the way, as the man put a pot of water on, flame low.
“I always heat my vitamins first. It’s cleaner, plus it shoots smoother,” he told the girl as he loaded a syringe with oily-looking liquid from three different vials, then dropped the syringe into the water.
“I got a shot once,” Tula said, pleased they were having a conversation. “A doctor came to our village. He was British, I think, but still a nice man. The needle was a vaccine for mosquito bites, he said, not vitamins.”
“Vitamins keep me strong and healthy,” Squires replied in a tone that told Tula he was lying about something, she wasn’t sure what.
Fascinated by what she was seeing, Tula watched as the man stripped off his shirt, then rubbed what smelled like alcohol on his left shoulder. Never in her life had she seen such huge muscles. Squires really was a giant. He looked as if he had been carved from stone, gray stone, the sort her ancestors had used to build pyramids.
“I saw a movie once in Guatemala City,” Tula told the man, aware of a strange feeling in her chest. “My father took us, my brother and me. The movie was about Hercules, the strongest man in history. He was so strong that he pulled down marble columns and defeated the Centurions who killed Jesus. But I think you are stronger than him. You are much larger.”
For the first time since she had met Harris Squires, a pleasant smile appeared on the man’s face. In that instant, Tula could see how the giant must have looked as a little boy. He had been a sweet child, probably, maybe a little shy. It caused the girl to wonder what had happened in this man’s life to make him mean and to do dirty things such as take photographs of naked women.
Squires replied, “Hercules, no shit? Well, it’s all about living clean and using the right vitamins,” as he plunged the needle into his bicep and emptied it.
He wasn’t done. He used two more syringes—one to load the steroids, a second needle to inject—and pinned a darker oil into the cablelike muscle that angled from his neck to his shoulder.
“Dianabol,” Squires said, sounding dreamy and satisfied, rolling his shoulders. “By God, I love a big hit of D-bomb. I don’t need any food now, I’m good to go.”
Tula watched the man, wondering what that meant as he added, “It’s twenty-some miles to Immokalee, but I don’t expect there to be much action on the streets. Not on a Wednesday. But if that’s what you want, let’s do it.”
Tula felt a thrill as the Maiden came into her head again, instructing the girl what to say next.
“We’ll go to the churches,” she told Squires. “On a Wednesday night, people will be praising God and singing. We will find people there who might know about my mother.”
Squires was shaking his head. “Where do you come up with this crazy crap? People don’t go to church on Wednesday nights, not even Catholics. Unless it’s to play bingo or some kind of shit. At least, they didn’t back when they made me go.”
“The Maiden speaks to me,” Tula told him, interested in the man’s reaction. “If she says it’s true, then it will happen.”
Saying it, the girl felt as if she was sharing a secret with Squires, something that increased the weight on her chest and gave her an odd sensation in her abdomen. It was a warm feeling, standing close enough to the giant now to touch her head briefly against his elbow just to see how he reacted.
This time, he didn’t yank his arm away. So Tula took another chance by placing her fingers on the man’s huge wrist as she told him, “We can trust the Maiden. Whenever I need guidance, she is always there for me.”
It felt strange to the girl, her fingers on a man’s skin, but Tula decided that she liked it.
Squires turned off the burner, then the lights, before padlocking the door closed. As they walked toward the RV, he said, “The Maiden ...? You mean that saint you mentioned? Don’t ever tell a shrink what you ju
st told me. They’ll throw you in the damn loony bin. Which is probably where you belong.”
“Joan of Arc is my patron saint,” Tula said, her voice firm. “She does speak to me. Usually at night—that’s when the visions come to me.”
Irritated, Squires said, “Night visions, too. You’re even screwier than I thought. Listen, I don’t want to hear every damn detail. You talk too much.”
“But it’s true,” the girl said. “I see things that will happen in the future. Sometimes I see things during the day, too. But it’s better if I’m alone. For me, sitting in a tree is a nice place.”
Remembering that the girl had spied on him from a tree caused Squires to feel the dianabol he’d just injected accelerate to his temple, vessels throbbing. It created a blooming chemical anger in him, and he clenched his fists as he reconsidered what was happening.
Why the hell was he being nice to this crazy little chula? He brought her out here expecting to strip the girl’s clothes off, then have some fun. The little brat could send him to Raiford Prison if she wanted. At the very least, he should kill her.
It’s not too late. I can take her out to the pond, shoot her in the back of the head, then drive to Mexico on my own. I don’t need her. Why put up with any more of her crazy talk?
But from the sick feeling Squires got just thinking about it, he knew he couldn’t do it. Maybe later but not now. The reasons had to do with the girl’s irritating kindness ... and also the haunting familiarity of her face.
Even so, it pissed him off the way this know-it-all wettail kept chattering away, so Squires decided to shut her up by saying, “I don’t want to burst your bubble, chula, but that Joan of Arc bullshit, it’s all just fairy-tale crap. You’re talking about the girl who carried a sword and dressed like a dude? It’s total bullshit.”
Instead of waiting for the girl to answer, he continued, “She’s a goddamn cartoon character, for Christ’s sake. Like Santa Claus and the Easter bunny. The Disney World people probably came up with that Joan of Arc stuff. What in the hell ever convinced you that she talks to you?”
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