Dead Head

by C. J. Skuse

  ‘I’ll play a song for you,’ I said. Her tired face brightened, briefly.

  ‘Kids, come on,’ she said, suddenly on her feet, ‘vamos, we must go.’

  ‘Awww,’ they all whined, right on cue.

  ‘But if he knew about her,’ I started to say, ‘he might—’

  But Paco appeared at the patio doors – not so close that he could hear us talking, but close enough to make Celestina drop her voice.

  ‘He has several bastard children, all over this town. He does not care for any of them. You cannot appeal to Paco’s soft side, señorita, trust me – he does not have one.’

  I was upstairs changing later that evening when I heard gunshots – a rapid tuttututututututututututututut. When I followed the noise downstairs, I found Paco standing in the centre of the lawn and all around him clouds of dust and a tangled mess of petals, leaves and stems. He’d shot my flower beds to smithereens, barely a single stem left standing. I followed his gaze towards the perimeter fence where he’d placed a line of tin cans, undisturbed.

  ‘Oops,’ he said. ‘I missed.’

  I went back inside before I could say or do anything.

  He called out, ‘You angry with me, chica? Look what I did to your flowers!’

  I reached the patio doors, taking deep breaths, before looking back at him. ‘Not at all. That’s the great thing about flowers, Paco. They grow back. Every single time.’ And I smiled at him. Genuinely, like a Sweetpea would.

  It was only when I got into the house I started muttering about what a massive piece of shit from an undouched arsehole he truly was.

  I kept thinking about Celestina and the strength she had to muster every fucking day she turned up at that house, having to get her work done before his BMW rolled up. How every single time she looked at her little girl’s face, she saw his smile staring back at her.

  That was a mother. The shit she put up with. Ugh. I could never. I would never. But maybe I should in the world of New Leaf Me.

  The children didn’t seem that concerned about the Mexico Plant Massacre when the scene greeted them in the garden the next day.

  ‘We will help you mend them, señorita,’ said David.

  ‘Yeah, we help you!’ echoed Mátilda, toy trowel raised in the air.

  ‘Where are the new seeds?’ asked Saúl. ‘We can plant even more.’

  And they did. We ordered more plants, raked over the chaotic massacre of torn stems and shot leaves, and sifted out shell casings, building a compost heap at the bottom of the garden so they could nourish the new ones. We planted more seeds in the seed trays and added rooting powder to the younger plants we could save to give them a fighting chance. Out of chaos, we grew, we nourished and we took care of. We did it without anger, revenge and without anybody getting killed. It was so simple.

  It was a whole new look for me. I was happier when the kids were around. I’m always happier around kids or animals than I am around adult humans. There’s always a side to adults. Always a price to pay.

  Tenoch seemed happier too, especially when his arm was fully operational again. He laughed more, joked more. Sometimes we’d sit out on the terrace together, watching the sunset or picking herbs or peppers for that night’s dinner which he would be making from scratch – some nights pozole or menudo; other nights alambre with corn tortillas. We’d chat like we were related – easily and honestly.

  ‘Did you ever kill anyone you didn’t want to?’ he asked me.

  ‘No,’ I said. And I meant it. ‘At the time, I wanted to.’

  ‘I’ve only ever wanted to kill in revenge. It was my job, that’s all. If my boss said, “Kill your friend, kill your wife,” I would do it.’

  ‘You killed your wife?’

  ‘No, luckily I never had to. But I would have if they had asked me.’

  ‘So what were you, like, a hitman or something?’

  ‘Yeah. A hitman.’

  ‘How many people did you kill?’

  ‘About a hundred.’

  ‘Whoa.’

  We continued the conversation over dinner. We tried to make the effort some nights to turn the TV off and lay place settings with separate cutlery for befores and afters, salt and pepper and glasses of local wine.

  ‘That is where you and I aren’t the same,’ he said, slurping up his soup. ‘You always wanted to kill, I had to or else I would be killed myself.’

  ‘Dog eat dog.’

  ‘Our cartel built schools, medical practices, gave people jobs, homes. We were loved. But also, despised.’

  ‘Who by?’

  ‘Los federales for one. And the army. And people whose loved ones we killed. I never felt good about the extortion side of the business. We had to come down hard on working people – decent people. I have done things you would not like me for. But if the order was given, it was their kids or mine.’

  ‘You killed kids? How many?’

  I lost him in a trance for several moments before he broke free of it and returned to his soup. ‘Too many. Eat your greens.’

  It was always there, at the Hacienda – a sense that I couldn’t quite relax. I had a nice house, a garden, all the sunshine I could want, daily companions in Celestina and her children and a body beginning to heal itself and which I was looking after with regular helpings of green vegetables and fresh fruit smoothies.

  But there was a growing sense that bad times were never far away. That something terrifying could happen at any moment.

  It may also have been my hormones.

  And herein layeth the problem – because where there be hormones, there be’eth Rhiannon. Always there, under the surface, watching, waiting, for anyone to piss her off. It didn’t matter how much surgery I had on the outside, on the inside, I was much the same. And men like Paco brought out the worst in me.

  Take the night when I was minding my own business watching TV in the living room. Tenoch was on a call in his office and I’d been sitting there icing my homemade cookies on a lap tray watching an episode of Ramsay’s Hotel Hell – the one with the ghost, Gordon’s apple pie recipe and bedsheets covered in spunk – when they came in, Paco and the Chipmunks. He took the remote off my arm rest and chucked it to Arturo who stole two cookies and slumped on the sofa, switching over to The Santa Clause on Sky Christmas.

  To be honest, any break from overpaid basketballers high-fiving piss-easy goals or snarky barbs from grey-haired Miami divorcees was welcome. Problem was, they didn’t shut up the entire film.

  ‘His ex-wife a tasty piece of ass. Why they divorce?’ said Ming, stealing three of my cookies and making a triple-decker sandwich from them before posting it in his mouth whole.

  ‘Here we fucking go,’ I muttered.

  ‘Why his kid not want to spend Christmas with his mom?’ asked Stuzzy, scratching his junk, already on his fifth cookie. ‘He not like Judge Reinhold?’

  ‘Oh, he was the guy in Beverley Hills Chihuahua, yeah? He funny,’ said Ming, who always sat on the floor for some reason.

  Paco took Tenoch’s armchair, aka The Throne. ‘So he not the real Santa Claus, he a toy salesman, right?’

  ‘Where did that fuckin’ ladder appear from?’ said Paco.

  ‘There no way you could get a full-grown man down that chimney. And what about the houses that don’t have chimneys? How does he get around all the houses of the world in one night?’

  Stuzzy googled the number of houses in the world on his phone. ‘It not possible. It not possible.’

  By this point steam was emitting from my ears. ‘OK it’s not possible, you win. This film is a farce.’

  ‘Why he grow a beard? And get fat?’ said Ming.

  ‘BECAUSE HE’S FUCKING SANTA CLAUS, ALL RIGHT?’ I erupted, and the lap tray and two remaining cookies flew across the room and every lizard and rat in a twenty-mile radius scarpered. ‘HE KILLED THE LAST SANTA CLAUS AND READ THE CARD ABOUT THE SANTA CLAUSE AND NOW HE’S GOT TO BE THE SANTA CLAUS BECAUSE THAT’S THE SANTA CLAUSE. WHAT’S SO BLOODY FUCKING DIFFICULT
TO UNDERSTAND!?’

  They all sat there, open-mouthed, except for Paco – he was laughing. A lot. After that they all stayed silent, for a long time, until near the end of the movie when Ming ill-advisedly piped up with:

  ‘So he was the real Santa Claus all along? I not understand this movie.’

  I walked out, and I kept walking, with Paco’s shrill laughter ringing in my ears the whole time. I strode across the terrace, through the hole in the fence and down into the ditch and all the way through the field to the place where I’d buried the men. I lay down, breathing deeply for several minutes, until I had returned – back to life, back to reality, back to myself.

  And I felt so stupid. That wasn’t a moment to let Rhiannon fly. Why had I done it? Knee-jerk response. She was always there – caged. Primed. But no more. I couldn’t let Paco win. I had to be better. Take the higher ground, like Celestina had. Even if I knew, damn well, that surgery might be able to change my appearance, but it couldn’t touch my soul.

  Friday, 15 March – Hacienda Santuario

  Paco

  Paco’s mother, father, and all the ancestry that spawned him

  Paco’s chipmunks, Ming, Arturo and Stuzzy, who seemingly have only three ‘jobs’ they do for Tenoch – eat my Pop Tarts, shit and snore

  Kings of Leon for not enunciating any of their lyrics

  Bono

  The nose job was my last surgery and the one I’d been dreading the most – not because of the inevitable pain, but because it marked the final step. After my recovery, I would have to leave the Hacienda. That was always the plan. And every day it became harder to contain my capricious inner self.

  I got pissed the night before and my mouth did not taste good the next morning. I was coming to the conclusion that I couldn’t handle my drink and I’d already arrived at the conclusion I would never drink mezcal again. My vomit could outpace a bullet train.

  Celestina gave me the doggiest of looks as we’d passed each other on the stairs – her with her mop and bucket of suds.

  ‘I think I got most of it in the bowl,’ I mewed. ‘I can clean it later?’ but she still batted her eyes and headed for the bathroom on a slosh of water.

  I attempted a small bowl of cereal to settle my growling stomach. Paco was already at the Hacienda ‘doing a job for Tenoch’. He didn’t even say hello, just sauntered into the room, flexing his muscles in his too-tight vest and sliding his iPhone across the kitchen island. A news article. The headline:

  SWEETPEA SISTER ATTACKED ON DOORSTEP BY CRAZED FAN

  ‘The fuck?’ I said as he attempted to take back the phone.

  ‘Oh, you wanna read it, do you?’ he said, snatching up the phone and holding it away. ‘You wanna read about your sister? What’s it worth, huh? What’s it worth, Rhiannon? What you gonna do?’

  His breath stank of those tarry cigars and as I reached up high for the phone he pressed his hard chest against me like we were playing basketball.

  I pulled back, seeing it was clearly turning him on. I walked away.

  ‘That laptop’s encrypted, remember?’ he said, sliding the phone back onto the countertop. ‘Go on. Look at it.’ He held up his hands in surrender.

  BBC News – SWEETPEA KILLER’S SISTER ATTACKED ON DOORSTEP BY CRAZED FAN

  Thursday, 7 March 2019 STAFF REPORTER

  THE SISTER of serial murderer Rhiannon Lewis, who is wanted in connection with the murders of thirteen people, has been attacked at her home in Vermont.

  Seren Gibson, 34, had been receiving as many as twenty-five phone calls a day from a woman claiming to be her sister Rhiannon, and has had her home broken into twice in the last month.

  Lieutenant Linda Cordell of Vermont State Police says stalking has high penalties in the state. ‘This woman thinks she has a responsibility to punish Mrs Gibson for informing on her sister. She says she is speaking to Rhiannon Lewis who is telling her what to do – to call Mrs Gibson, go to her house, to make her paranoid and to eventually, cause her physical harm.

  ‘We do not believe Lewis is in contact with the assailant but we are taking this case seriously. She is now the subject of a restraining order and cannot go anywhere near Mrs Gibson, her husband or her children.’

  When asked about the rumour of the woman turning up at her daughter Mabli’s school and trying to collect her, the Lieutenant was similarly non-committal.

  ‘We are working closely with Mrs Gibson and her family to ensure their safety and that the maximum punishment is exercised should the subject break the terms of the order.’

  Mrs Gibson was unavailable for comment last night.

  ‘You got some serious fans, chica,’ he said, sitting down on my still-warm breakfast stool and picking up my spoon. He finished the bowl and tipped the dregs into his mouth. ‘Did you tell them to go after your sister?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Do you want them to do that?’

  ‘What’s it to you?’

  He took my bowl to the sink. ‘Nothin’. I heard a rumour your sister called the cops on you. If it were me, I’d want her fuckin’ barbecued.’

  ‘I’m not you.’

  ‘So you forgive the bitch for what she did?’

  ‘I didn’t say that.’

  ‘But you don’t want her dead?’ He sat back down on my stool.

  ‘There are other people more deserving of that outcome than her.’

  He snickered. ‘Is that a threat?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  Paco didn’t respond to that, just left the room, nodding. He wasn’t done though. He had another trick parked up his sleeve to needle me with and it came later that day as he drove me home from my four-hour nose job. There weren’t enough painkillers in the world.

  ‘What happened to your baby, Rhiannon?’

  My head throbbed all over and my voice was croaky. ‘None of your business.’

  ‘She called Ivy, yes?’

  ‘Say what you’re gonna say.’

  ‘I was just asking.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because. We are friends, yes?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well, what are we?’

  ‘We are nothing,’ I spat, resisting the urge to sniff up my nose plugs. ‘You are a vaginal polyp. The pus in a festering boil. A cancerous tumour. And the sooner you’re cut out, the better.’ It would have sounded a lot more threatening if my voice hadn’t been so whispery,

  ‘Your baby’s going to die without you, without her mother’s milk,’ he sang after me in his strange, immature way.

  He was like a live-in troll. He’d say anything for a reaction. And as soon as I realised that, it became easier to ignore him. Don’t feed the trolls. Pretend they don’t exist. They hate that.

  I didn’t look in the mirror until I got up to my bedroom – I looked as though I’d been on a skid pan with Stuntman Mike. The surgeon had broken my nose for the procedure so I had chronic head pain, puffy eyes and purple bruising around the centre of my face for two weeks. I peeked behind the compression tape to see if the swelling had gone down – I kept doing this so that was probably why it took longer to heal. My nostrils had to be packed out with gauze plugs and I lost my voice completely for a few days because of the breathing tube they’d shoved down me during the op. I was so tired, all the time, and they recommended that I sleep upright which didn’t help matters.

  The boys didn’t recognise me when they first saw me that following morning. Saúl wouldn’t even come into my bedroom.

  ‘It’s OK, I hurt my nose so I had to have it mended,’ I told him. ‘I won’t look like this forever.’

  ‘Does it hurt?’ asked David, gingerly sitting down on the edge of my bed.

  ‘Yeah. Like a son-of-a-fuh— …yeah, it’s pretty painful. Mucho dolor.’

  ‘When will we see your face again?’ asked David.

  ‘I have to go back to the doctor’s office in a few days and have this stuff taken out of my nose. And the nose cast can come off in two weeks. But I’ll still be a bru
ised for a while. I miss being able to sniff.’

  Mátilda climbed up onto the bed and with the lightest touch kissed the tip of my nose. ‘Bésalo mejor,’ she said. Kiss it better.

  Paco took a different approach.

  ‘Hey, Rhiannon, nice face. Imma have to stop drinking soon cos I sure as shit don’t wanna see two of that!’

  ‘Hey, Rhiannon, you fall out the ugly tree again this morning?’

  ‘Hey, Rhiannon, I’ve eaten taco meat that looked better than you.’

  But I had to Bruce Lee this shit and not have an emotional reaction to every little thing. I had to breathe and allow shit to pass me by because my anger was his fuel and I had to starve that fire.

  I tried to take my mother’s approach – Go through the motions. Pretend she’s not there. Ignore, ignore, ignore. Maybe she will grow out of it soon.

  But he didn’t.

  It got to the point where I thought my face would look like that forever – a mangled, swollen, purple mess of tiny eyes, enormous nose and incurable agony. But as long as I stayed away from Paco, I knew I could ride the storm. Aside from having to endure the aftercare trips to the doctor’s office to remove the packing and have my stitches taken out, I could live my life, grow my flowers, chow ibuprofen and give my body all the right foods it needed to heal.

  In short: I started looking after myself. I started looking after my mind too. Tenoch got me into meditation – ten minutes every morning.

  ‘I’ve done this every day for forty years,’ he told me as we sat cross-legged and facing each other on the lawn one morning, early, as the sun was rising. ‘To have a healthy body, you must also have a healthy, calm mind that will help you make the right decisions.’

  He bored the arse off me going on about the importance of the breaths and mindfulness but some things still got through.

  ‘The more you do it, over weeks, months, years, the more space you will create in your mind.’

  ‘What do you mean, space?’