The Painted Boy

by Charles de Lint

  “And you are so powerful you can force me to leave.”

  Rita shook her head. “No, but what makes you think I’m alone here?”

  Paupau hadn’t been paying attention. If she had, she would have sensed their approach, smelled the animal clans hidden behind their human faces. She could see them now. She didn’t know how many cousins, from how many clans, were standing amid their human counterparts. But there were many. And where the humans were staring at the ruin of the dance hall, talking to each other, these others stood with a cousin’s stillness, their attention only on the snake woman and herself.

  She turned back to Rita. “I am of the Yellow Dragon Clan, snake woman. You will need more than this small army to force me away against my will.”

  Rita smiled. “They’re not here to fight you. They’re here to see if you’re going to be their new protector. The one they have has served them well, but she grows old now.”

  Paupau knew who Rita meant. She had caught the scent as soon as she’d arrived in Santo del Vado Viejo.

  “You think a dragon would do a lizard’s job?” she said, unable to keep the condescension from her voice.

  Rita’s eyes narrowed. “Señora Elena is the matriarch of an old and revered Gila clan. Speak of her with respect.”

  “Because she does such a fine job of upholding her responsibilities.”

  “At least she doesn’t let her pride hide her limitations from herself.”

  Paupau bit back an angry retort. This snake woman was as bad as the child in the house where her grandson had been boarding. Brash, rude, and unhelpful. Their disrespect brought out the worst in her. But she would rise above it.

  “How is any of this my concern?” she asked, keeping her voice mild.

  “It’s not. That’s why you need to go. Both you and I know you’re too old a dragon to take a place like this under your wing.”

  And then Paupau understood.

  “You mean to have James accept the responsibility,” she said.

  “Not exactly—or at least not yet. But I think he could work out if you leave him alone.”

  Paupau gave a slow nod. “So that is why the fates sent him here.”

  “Say what?”

  But Paupau didn’t bother to explain. All she said was, “I give you my approval.”

  “Wasn’t asking for it, dragon lady. I just want you to go away.”

  “And I will do so,” Paupau said. “But I will be keeping watch on the situation. If it gets out of hand again, James’s fate will not be up to me, but to the council as a whole.”

  “Yeah, well, we’ll climb that cactus when we have to.”

  Paupau gave the snake woman a short brusque bow, then turned and walked away, back straight.

  Do me proud, James, she thought as she crossed the parking lot.

  She knew she was hard on her grandson, but she had to be. Dragons held far too much power to be allowed to run wild. But they also had to learn to wield the responsibility on their own, because in the end, they protected a place alone. She could only pray that James didn’t draw the council’s attention again. The snake woman had no idea how much worry this night had brought to her.

  - 6 -

  Not only can water float a boat, it can sink it also .

  —CHINESE PROVERB

  THE VISIT FROM Jay’s grandmother was only the first intrusion into what Rosalie thought should be the privacy of their grief. Not long afterward, a detective called reminding them to come down to the station to read and sign the statements they’d made last night. Ramon drove Rosalie and Anna to the police station, but when they were done, reporters were waiting outside. A sympathetic police officer took them out the back way. The press wasn’t as easy to avoid at the wake that evening.

  At one point the band members gathered by a side door to get a break from the crowd inside the funeral home. They weren’t there long when a reporter approached. He made the mistake of shoving his microphone in Anna’s face and asking her reaction to what had happened at their gig last night.

  “If you don’t get the hell out of here,” she told him, “you’re going to be eating that mic.”

  The reporter smiled like she’d made a joke. The smile disappeared when she lunged at him. The reporter almost fell down dodging her. Hector and Rosalie both had to hold her back.

  “You’d better go, man,” Hector told him. “She gets like this and it’s all we can do to hang on.”

  The reporter beat a hasty retreat.

  It wasn’t till later that night, when Anna had been dropped off at home and Tío was still at the restaurant, that Rosalie was able to sit with Ramon on the porch and talk to him about Jay’s journal. At first, Ramon was reluctant to read the notebook himself.

  “Please,” Rosalie told him. “I know it’s invading his privacy, but it seems to explain a lot and I really need to talk to someone about what’s in there.”

  So Ramon had a look while Rosalie hovered at his shoulder, trying hard not to be impatient for him to be done. After a while, she managed to settle down and look out into the desert night while he read. She studied the shadows across the street, wondering if Lupita was hidden there, watching them right now. Or maybe Jay was.

  It was all so impossible, but she’d seen him disappear in the parking lot, vanishing right in front of her. You couldn’t fake that.

  When Ramon finally closed the notebook, she gave him an expectant look. He smiled.

  “So what was it that you wanted to talk about?” he asked.

  She punched him in the shoulder. “Oh, you! Everything. Did you read what’s in there?”

  “You want to know if it’s true?”

  She nodded.

  “I can’t say. The hike we took is. The conversations aren’t word-for-word the way I remember them, but it’s still pretty much what we were talking about. But the rest of it . . . ” He shrugged.

  “Come on,” she said. “After what we saw in the parking lot . . . how can it not be true?”

  “Just because one impossible thing is true doesn’t mean they all are.”

  She frowned at him. “But you’re the one who’s always talking about the spirits of the desert and everything.”

  He gave her another smile. “I didn’t say I don’t believe what he wrote.”

  She raised her fist but he caught it before she could punch him again.

  “We have to be reasonable here,” he said.

  “Nothing about this has anything to do with reason. That’s what I’m trying to figure out. There’s got to be something we can do to find Jay and help him.”

  “I don’t think so,” Ramon said. “It’s amazing and wonderful to find out for sure that the world’s so much bigger than we thought it was a few days ago. And we can think and wonder about it all we want. But our part’s done. Stuff like dragons and animal spirits don’t have a whole lot to do with our lives here. It’s like a storm passed through the barrio and now we have to pick up where we were before it hit. But the magic’s not ours. We got to see it, but now it’s gone.”

  “Jay’s our friend,” Rosalie said. “We can’t just pretend he never happened.”

  “No, but we were only a part of his life for a moment. He . . . all this stuff has just moved on.”

  “But—”

  “And it’s dangerous,” Ramon said. “Look what happened to Margarita.”

  “That wasn’t Jay’s doing.”

  “No, but we could have all died in what followed, and that was Jay’s doing.”

  Rosalie shook her head. “I’m not giving up on him just because it’s scary. I’ve found ways to work around the danger of living here, and I’ll find a way to work around what’s going on with Jay, too.”

  She gave him a fierce look and he had to smile.

  “I kind of thought you’d say that,” he said.

  “Then why were you arguing with me?”

  “I wanted to make sure you knew exactly what you were getting into.”

  “That’s a
big part of the problem,” she said. “We don’t have any idea, really. Where do we even start?”

  “We can try looking for Lupita.”

  “Right. We’ll walk around in the desert and call her name.”

  “Maybe the uncles can help us.”

  “I’m not drinking mescal tea to have visions,” she said.

  Ramon shook his head and smiled. “I was thinking more of just talking to them.”

  A big crowd gathered in San Miguel Cemetery for Margarita’s funeral. Family and friends, kids from school, fans wearing Malo Malo scarves, holding flowers and pictures of Margarita. Rosalie stood behind Margarita’s family along with the band and their friends. Everyone wore black. She wondered what life was like for kids who didn’t grow up in the barrio, kids who hadn’t been to as many funerals as she had in her seventeen years. Mama and Paulo. Kids from school who had the bad luck to get caught up in bandas business. Neighbors in the barrio who were in the wrong place at the wrong time.

  There were too many dead.

  She’d worn this black dress too many times.

  There were a couple of news vans parked outside the cemetery. Occasionally, sunlight winked on the lens of a camera, but no one tried to intrude. Considering the dark looks Anna kept giving the camera crews, they’d be smart to move on before the funeral was over.

  Rosalie looked away, returning her attention to the service. She had trouble focusing on Father Ramirez’s words, but the tone of his voice was soothing and she took what comfort she could from it.

  Given the circumstances, the day was obscenely beautiful. Clear blue skies, the sun bright, but it wasn’t too hot. It was Margarita’s favorite kind of day. The kind of day when she would try to get everybody to skip school and go out into the desert. Oh, how Rosalie wished she were here now, leaning over to whisper in her ear, “This is way too depressing. Let’s go visit the cacti.”

  Rosalie’s gaze lifted past the priest to where the Hierro Madera Mountains rose up from the eastern horizon. But then something closer at hand caught her attention.

  Standing a hundred yards away, half-hidden by the tall cross rising above a grave, was a familiar figure. Jay stood with his arms wrapped around himself, his hoodie hanging low over his eyes. She didn’t know how anyone else would feel about him being here, but her heart lifted to see that he was safe and cared enough to pay his respects.

  Beside her, Ramon could tell that something had distracted her, but before she could point Jay out, he vanished. It was just like the other night in the parking lot. One moment he was standing there by the cross, the next he was gone.

  Ramon leaned closer until his mouth was by her ear. “What is it?”

  “Nothing. I’ll tell you later.”

  After the service, Margarita’s father came over to them. He pressed Ramon’s hand.

  “” he said.

  Ramon ducked his head, his gaze on the ground. “”

  “”

  Ramon raised his gaze. “”

  “”

  “”

  Rosalie gave them a sharp look. She’d never even considered that any of the band members might want more vengeance than Alambra’s death. Why would they? They weren’t gangbangers. That wasn’t the way they lived their lives, spinning in circles of violence. But she could see from Ramon’s face that he’d been considering it.

  How could he have kept it from her? How had he kept it from her?

  “” Margarita’s father said.

  “”

  “”

  “” Ramon asked.

  “”

  Ramon sighed. He looked away from Señor Vargas, anywhere but at Rosalie.

  “” Margarita’s father asked. “”

  Finally, Ramon cleared his throat. “”

  But even Rosalie knew that when it came to the gangbangers the violence would never end.

  She and Ramon stood silently as Señor Vargas returned to his family. They watched the group walk across the cemetery to the waiting cars.

  “When were you going to tell me?” Rosalie asked.

  “I don’t know,” Ramon said.

  “You weren’t going to tell me, were you?”

  He finally turned to look at her. “I didn’t know what I was going to do. Maybe nothing. But if I did figure a way I could get back at the Kings, I couldn’t bring you into it.” He held up a hand before she could speak. “You have a large and forgiving heart, Rosie. How could I ever make you a part of anything like that?”

  “I have no forgiveness for the bandas.”

  “No, you wouldn’t. But you wouldn’t strike against them, either.”

  There was nothing Rosalie could say because he was right.

  “You agree with Anna, don’t you?” she said instead. “You think Jay should have crushed the bandas when he had the chance. You think he should have killed them all.”

  “I believe that, when he went to meet El Tigre,” Ramon said, “he didn’t know how.”

  “But now?” Rosalie asked when he didn’t go on.

  “Let me put it this way. If the whole membership of the Kings had been inside the music hall when it collapsed and they’d all died . . . I wouldn’t be unhappy. And if there was a button I could push that could still make that happen, I’d do it.”

  He looked away to the mountains and signed the shape of the cross, forehead to chest, shoulder to shoulder. Rosalie took his hand when he was done.

  “Maybe I’m worse than you,” she said, “because I think I’d do the same, but I wouldn’t ask forgiveness for the evil thought.”

  Ramon sighed. “Oh, Rosie. What are we doing, living in this place?”

  “I can’t leave,” she said. “This is my home. It was my parents’ home. If I abandon it to the bandas, then they will truly have won. I can’t let that happen. I won’t.”

  “I know, I know. But days like these are hard.”

  Rosalie nodded. She looked at the TV crews on the other side of the fence, filming people leaving the cemetery.

  “Those vultures don’t make it any easier,” she said.

  Ramon followed her gaze. “Let’s hope none of them try to interview Anna again.”

  “Why are they even here? Who turns on their TVs to watch people grieving?”

  “I think the reporters are hoping for more,” Ramon said.

  “More what?”

  He shrugged. “You know. Drama. Like if the Kings showed up.”

  “Not even they’d be that stupid.”

  But then Rosalie caught sight of someone on the other side of the cemetery fence. At least she wasn’t wearing gang colors.

  “I take that back,” she said. “I can see Maria—over there, past the TV van.”

  “What’s she doing here?”

  “I don’t know. I’m going to go talk to her. Could you keep Anna busy?”

  She didn’t have to explain why. If Anna saw someone connected to the Kings here today, she’d go ballistic and the TV cameras would get all the dramatic footage they could want.

  “Sure,” Ramon said.

  Rosalie waited until she saw that he’d caught up with Anna and the others. When she did start for the gates, she held back so that they’d go through
well ahead of her. Once outside, she walked along the parked cars to where she’d seen Maria. She half expected her to have vanished—not quite the same way that Jay had, but gone all the same. Yet when she came around the side of the TV van, Maria was still there, leaning on the hood of her old beat-up Buick.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked.

  “Once upon a time,” Maria said, “Margarita was my friend, too.” She held up a hand before Rosalie could speak. “No, don’t start in on how it was my choice. You have no idea why I hooked up with the Kings and you never bothered to ask. You just cut me off when the deal was done.”

  Rosalie took a steadying breath.

  “Okay,” she said. “So why did you join the Kings?”

  Maria shook her head. “Now’s not the time to get into that—not with Margarita fresh in the ground and the trouble that could be coming.”

  “What trouble?”

  “Right now it’s mostly between Flores and the Kings. Guys like Cruz and Switchblade—they’re El Tigre’s lieutenants,” she added. “Anyway, they want payback for what happened to Alambra, but Flores says—”

  “Wait a minute,” Rosalie broke in. “Payment for what happened to Alambra? He killed Margarita.”

  “After she dissed the Kings.”

  “Oh, for God’s sake.”

  “I’m not saying everybody agrees,” Maria said. “I don’t. And neither does Flores. He’s already pissed off that Alambra broke the truce with your China Boy—which I’ve got to say, nobody can understand. What’s so important about him?”

  “Ask Alambra.”

  Maria gave a slow nod. “So it’s true. He did use some kind of weird brujería on him.”

  Rosalie kept quiet.

  “Okay,” Maria said. “So maybe he’s a player, and that’s why El Tigre wants to keep the peace with him. But the Kings aren’t happy. Flores told us that if he wasn’t already dead, he would have killed Alambra himself. And the same goes for anybody else who wants to cause trouble for any of China Boy’s allies. But I think maybe one of them’s going to decide to take a run at El Tigre, and the way they’ll do that is by going after one of you and forcing his hand.”