In a pause in the programming, Jennie blurted out, “As I walk along, I wonder what went wrong.”
All eyes landed on her. No one knew at first why the moment felt unusual, but slowly, they began to suspect that it was because no one had prompted Jennie with any words. She’d just said it. The pilgrims looked from one to another, replaying the conversation, trying to remember if any of the others had said that phrase.
Finally, Betsy asked, “Did you say that on your own?”
“Did you say that on your own?” Jennie echoed, but she nodded furiously.
After a long night of watching the other pilgrims being closer than they had ever been before, Jennie had wanted desperately to prompt Tony to talk about what had brought him here to Bicho Raro and how such a funny and loud person found himself stranded as a giant in the wilderness. Jennie had tried to string these words together from scratch, failing, as always, and then, finally, she had burst out with the rhyming couplet.
“How did you say that on your own?” Padre asked.
“How did you say that on your own?” Jennie asked. She looked helplessly to Tony, certain that he, of everyone here, would understand what had happened. Earlier in the evening, he would have merely responded to this appeal of hers with a snappy comeback of some kind, but now he looked at her hopeful expression made haunting by the porch lights, and he genuinely wanted her to have accomplished something that night.
Tony said, “Can you say it again, doll?”
“As I walk along, I wonder what went wrong,” Jennie said.
This exchange astounded all of them. Not only had she not repeated what he’d said, but she had once again said something entirely different.
Things were changing.
“God moves!” Padre Jiminez cried, but Tony waved an impatient hand in his direction.
“Lyrics,” Tony said. “It’s lyrics from ‘Runaway.’ ”
“Someone else’s words,” Marisita remarked, “but not when they say them! Can you do another one?”
“Can you do another one?” Jennie echoed. But then she struggled for a long moment, frowning, trying to think, trying to conjure words where there had not been any just a moment before. Then she said, “No matter how I try, I just can’t turn the other way.”
“Connie Francis,” Tony said. “ ‘My Heart Has a Mind of Its Own.’ ”
“Well done, Jennie, well done! This is progress!” Padre Jiminez said, clasping her hands in his. She repeated his words, but gladly.
“I reckon you could say almost anything you need to say with lyrics,” Betsy said.
“I don’t know about that,” Robbie said.
“It’s progress!” Padre Jiminez said again.
For a minute, no one spoke. There was no music, either, because the radio programming had come to an end. But nonetheless the air was noisy with optimism and cheer, every pilgrim buoyed by just one pilgrim’s success. Then an owl hooted sleepily, woken briefly by the distant promise of Jennie’s second miracle, and they all remembered how late it was.
Jennie peered up at Tony, and he realized he was, somehow, being consulted for wisdom. He said, simply, “You’re gonna need to listen to the radio a lot more.”
When Beatriz, Pete, and Joaquin arrived back at Bicho Raro, everything was quiet and dark except for the soft noises of owls that had begun to gather again. All of the pilgrims and the bonfire had burned out and quieted. Joaquin crept away to sneak back into the camper, a process that was possible only if he moved very slowly; it took an hour for him to accomplish it from beginning to end.
This left Beatriz and Pete standing in the cold night, gazing at Bicho Raro.
It is surprising how a strange place can change with just a little familiarity. When Pete had arrived in Bicho Raro not very long ago, the chilly night had felt full of eerie and unfriendly entities. The structures had seemed less like houses than outcroppings, none of it welcoming. But now it merely appeared to be a sleepy collection of homes, a friendly port in the vast dry sea of night. The whispers he heard were merely the owls on the rooflines; the shivers over his skin were merely from being so close to the desert and to Beatriz. He knew the bed waiting for him was only the floor beside Padre Jiminez’s bed, but he didn’t mind it.
It is surprising, too, how a familiar place can change with just a little strangeness. Beatriz had lived in Bicho Raro for her entire life and she could have navigated it in full dark. She knew all of the sounds and smells and shapes in it, and she knew how this invisible dark felt when it curled between the buildings to sleep. She knew that many people were frightened by Bicho Raro after dark, but night here had always been a comfortable time for her, a time when her thoughts could stretch into the quiet without anyone else’s voice intruding. But tonight, her home seemed strange and awake, every board and every nail and every shingle sharply visible in the dim lights, all of it marvelously distinct like she had never seen it before. It was as if she was afraid. Her head wasn’t frightened—her thoughts proceeded quite as usual. But her heart felt as if it was—it was racing.
But she did not think she minded it.
Pete said, “I’m nearly finished with the stage.”
“I saw,” Beatriz replied.
“Do you think you would like to test it with me?” Pete asked.
He held out his hand, and Beatriz thought for a moment before taking it. Together they climbed onto the amber-brown dance stage and walked across the boards into the very center. They stopped and faced each other.
“I don’t know how to dance,” Beatriz admitted.
“I don’t either,” Pete said. “I guess we’ll figure it out.”
Beatriz took his free hand and put it on her waist.
“It’s cold,” Beatriz said.
“It is,” Pete said.
He stood a little closer to her so that they were warm together.
“There’s no music,” Beatriz said.
“We need the radio.”
But the station had long since gone quiet, and Diablo Diablo had long since turned back into Joaquin.
Pete put his voice right by Beatriz’s ear so that his breath warmed her skin, and he began to sing. It was nothing extravagant, just Patsy Cline sung in his low and uneven voice, and they began to dance. It was very quiet. No one else would have seen if not for the desert. But when the desert heard Pete Wyatt singing a love song, it took notice. The desert loved him, after all, and wanted him happy. So when it heard Pete singing, it rose a wind around them until the breeze sang gently like strings, and when it heard Pete singing, it provoked the air to heat and cool around every stone and plant so that each of these things sounded in harmony with his voice, and when it heard Pete singing, it roused Colorado’s grasshoppers to action and they rubbed their legs together like a soft horn section, and when it heard Pete singing, it shifted the very ground beneath Bicho Raro so that the sand and the dirt pounded a beat that matched the sound of the incomplete heart that lived in Pete Wyatt.
The sound of this roused the Sorias from their sleep. Francisco looked out of his greenhouse and saw Pete and Beatriz dancing, and he missed Antonia. Antonia looked out the window of her house and saw Pete and Beatriz dancing, and she missed Francisco. Luis the one-handed took out his future love’s box of gloves from beside his bed and counted them. Nana reached for the photograph of her long-dead husband. Michael had been sleeping rolled up in his own lengthy beard, but he woke up and returned to sleep rolled up with Rosa instead. Judith looked out her window and wept with happiness to see her sister happy, and Eduardo wept, too, because he always liked to dress to match his wife when he could.
As she danced with Pete, Beatriz was thinking that perhaps this was what performing the miracle felt like for Daniel. The sensation inside her felt like it came both from inside her and from someplace very much outside her, which was impossible and illogical and miraculous. If Daniel had been there, he would have told her that this was because holiness was love, but he was not, so she had to merely won
der if she finally understood her family a little better.
Pete was thinking that he liked Beatriz’s quiet, watchful ways, and he was thinking that he liked the way that she felt, and he was thinking that he could feel his heart, but not in a bad way. He realized that he had been wrong to think that joining the army or starting a moving company would satisfy that hole in his heart. He had thought he had lived a happy life, but now he understood that he had only ever been content. This moment was his first moment of true happiness, and now he had to readjust every other expectation in his life to match it.
They both felt more solid than they had before, although neither had realized they had not felt solid enough before.
When they stopped dancing, Pete sweetly kissed Beatriz’s cheek.
Beatriz took Pete’s hand and held his arm still. Then she put her thumb right on the inside of his elbow. It was just as warm and soft as she had thought it would be when she first saw it. Her thumb fit perfectly.
“How about …” Pete started. “How about I don’t take the truck until all this business with Daniel’s darkness is over with?”
Beatriz considered. There were many ways that Daniel’s darkness could end, some faster than others. If they didn’t need to drive out into the desert to reach Daniel, they didn’t need the truck. She could find another way to make Joaquin a radio that could be hidden in a hurry. It was very fair. Too fair. Because—“That could be a long time.”
“I know.”
She put a hand on his gentle cheek. “I think you did a good job on this stage.”
“Thank you,” he replied.
You can hear a miracle a long way after dark, even when you are dying.
Daniel Lupe Soria curled in the blackness and listened to the slow but urgent movement of a far-off miracle slowly drawing closer. It was miles off, days off, maybe, but it was so quiet out here that there was nothing to interfere with his listening. He was so thoroughly a Saint that all of his body still responded to the call. His lips were already forming a prayer for whoever this pilgrim might be. He was halfway through a prayer to make himself more pure of mind and body before he remembered that he would not be performing this miracle. Daniel would not be anywhere near Bicho Raro when this pilgrim arrived. He didn’t know what the pilgrim would find when she or he reached Bicho Raro. He didn’t know if Beatriz would perform the miracle despite her misgivings, or if Michael might return to the position of Saint after nearly a decade away from it.
He didn’t even know if it was still night.
His eyes were closed, but it didn’t matter. It would look the same if he opened them.
Everything was darkness.
It had been nothing but darkness for many hours. After he had left the message for Marisita, he had begun to put distance between himself and the words, in case she or his cousins were tempted to find him. All the while, his vision had been narrowing, those black curtains closing on either side. He could not help blinking again and again, as if he would clear his eyes. But the darkness came on relentlessly. The creature that he had sensed before was still following him, too, although Daniel had not caught a glimpse of it. Now he could not shake the idea that the creature itself was taking his vision.
A few hours after Daniel left the message behind, his fortune had run out. By that time, his vision was gray and gritty, and so was his mouth. His limbs were heavy. When he found a barbed wire fence blocking his forward progress, he wasted uncountable minutes walking alongside it, hoping for a gate to pass through. But this was wild country and there was no need of gates, so the only way was through. This would not have been such an ordeal if he had been able to see, but with only starved light coming from the fast-setting sun and with only starved light coming to him through his eyes, it felt to him as if every inch of the wire was thorned. The spacing between the strands refused to make sense. His pack with its water and food in it snagged on one of the thorns as he tried to tug through, and when he retreated to ease the tension on it, the bag fell from his shoulders. It seemed impossible for it to have gone far, but his hands could not find it in the murk. His blind spider eyes brushed up against only grass, and more wire, and posts, and then again grass, and more wire, and posts. Knowing that he could be within inches of it without finding it made his search even more agonizing than it might have been.
It was gone.
Daniel did not have enough sight left to find a new source of water, so he instead felt his way to a large bush. He moved beneath it as slowly as he could to be sure he was not displacing an unseen snake, and then he curled there. It was not much, but it would be some shelter from the sun when it came out next. It would at least keep him from dehydrating as quickly, and after he died, it would take longer for the birds and foxes to find him.
Now that he was no longer trying to move, he had enough energy left to be surprised that this was how the darkness would kill him. It seemed mundane and inappropriate for a Saint to die from lack of water rather than from an epic battle for his soul. Daniel had expected that the Soria darkness would be virulent and hellish, not ordinary and wasting. As he lay in the dry scrub, he began to doubt that he had been a good Saint after all. Perhaps, he thought, he had been doing a disservice to the pilgrims. Perhaps another Soria could have freed them from their darkness faster or better. Perhaps he had been just a man playing at God.
“Forgive me,” he prayed, and his heart felt a little lighter.
As the stars had come out that night, he had turned on the radio, waiting—hoping—for Marisita’s voice to come out.
“Forgive yourself,” he told the air.
But Marisita had not forgiven herself and so she had not come onto the radio to tell her story. He’d had to settle for Diablo Diablo, which was still a comfort. He laughed and winced as Joaquin read one of Daniel’s old journal entries about his time as a hell-raiser, and he sang and sighed as Joaquin played some of his favorite songs. Around the time that Jennie was realizing she could speak using lyrics, Daniel had cast his eyes up to the sky and realized the stars had vanished for him.
The radio fell into dull static as Joaquin and Beatriz stopped transmitting.
The creature clucked. Daniel was now entirely in darkness. He curled more tightly around himself and hooked his finger into the divot in his skin where the hailstone had marked him a sinner.
When things are dark, we cannot stop our minds from running wild, and so it was with Daniel. He could not prevent his thoughts from galloping to a future where Joaquin was the one to find his body. And then his mind advanced even further to when Antonia and Francisco and Rosa and Michael would be forced to see another Soria who had fallen prey to his own darkness. Daniel was no fool: He knew he was loved, and he knew how love can become a blunt and relentless weapon at death. They didn’t deserve this pain a generation later. And Marisita! Hadn’t she suffered enough? She was already doubled up with guilt, and she would easily take the blame for his death, even though it was all on Daniel.
And of course Beatriz. She would be made the Saint; he knew it was true—Michael would never be persuaded to take on that role again. She would do it, and she would not complain, but it would be a prison for her.
The idea of his family’s suffering tormented him, drowning out the dryness in his mouth and the blackness in front of his eyes. Instead of praying for himself, his cracked lips formed words for them instead. “Mother—”
But it was not a mother who answered.
Pebbles skittered against pebbles, and the smell of crushed sage came to Daniel. Something large was moving toward him. He heard the cluck of that creature again, and then a flap—he guessed correctly that whatever it was had wings. It was flapping farther from him, driven away by whatever approached. But not too far away.
He heard breathing. Creaking.
Daniel sat up then, but he was too dizzy to defend himself, even if he had been able to see. Something clasped his throat. Rough hair strayed across his cheek. Breath panted across his face. Daniel imagined a
horse-haired monster, a devil’s plaything finally come to finish him.
Another hand clasped over his jaw. Daniel gasped.
Water poured over his lips and into his ears. He was so shocked that he coughed on it at first. It trickled over his cracked lips and down his throat and onto his chest and it felt so good to be wet after being so dry that he could not believe he was not dreaming it, except no dream can feel as good as a drink of water when you are dying of thirst.
His relief melted, though, as he revived enough to worry that he had been found by a Soria.
“Who are you?” he asked.
Damp fingers pressed his useless eyes and smeared water and grease on his chapped lips and poured more water into his mouth. Three different voices muttered in three different languages. He could have never guessed who had come in answer to his prayer, and he may not have been able to guess it even if he had been able to see, because it was a form of miracle of the kind that even a Soria did not normally experience. The spirits of the wild men of Colorado—Felipe Soria, who had killed the sheriff for his femurs; Beatriz’s financier, who had hung himself with his own beard; and the German, who was a fox as of the time of his death—had come to him.
Who knew why they came to him then and not before or after. Perhaps they were atoning for the sins of their lives. Perhaps Daniel’s prayer was fervent enough to call them from wherever spirits lingered. Perhaps they were just passing through on their way to another traveler in distress and stopped to aid Daniel along the way. For whatever reason, they let him drink until he was full.
The financier found Daniel’s canteen and the German filled it and Felipe Soria put it in blind Daniel’s hand.
“Zwei Tage Wasser,” the German said.
All the Crooked Saints Page 17