Anything You Say Can and Will Be Used Against You (28 page)

Penny Face was howling. He stood in front of his bench, one side of his body leaning heavily against the cane in his left hand, his right hand moving as though he was brushing aside cobwebs. His head arched back, the skin against his neck almost taut; he threw long agonized vowels up to the night sky.

I slipped on jeans and a T-shirt and crossed the street, wincing as my feet caught the edges of rocks and pinecones. The anguish in his voice filled every cavity inside my head with tiny, hammering fists as I drew closer. His mother-wife-sister stood behind him, her palm hovering against his waist; a too-girlish nightgown in lavender and pink swallowed her body and puddled about her feet. She looked so distressed I momentarily felt more concern for her. When he paused to take in another bellyful of air, the noise like a distant hum of an airplane's engine as his lungs filled, she said, “I'm sorry. He just goes off sometimes.” Her face was like crumpled tissue, all deep folds and crisscrossed lines.

“How do we stop him?” I asked, but before she could answer he let loose again. I shivered at the urge I felt to join him, the sheer ecstasy of being inside the howl.

And then others surrounded us, hands reaching out to Penny Face: on his arms and shoulders and back and chest. Marisela and her husband, Jose; Eva Posidas, her face wreathed in quiet intensity, braids hanging loose over her ample breasts whispering gentle words in Spanish; two men I recognized from the neighborhood, both of them slight yet muscular in the manner of men who work their bodies hard; a wasted slip of a girl from four houses down along with her mother; and Henry beside me, that husky scent of manure drifting off the hard lines of his body, mingling with the smell of the pine trees. All of them, palms flat on Penny Face's body.

I didn't join them; I watched and listened, felt time stop, swallowed inside the sound. Eventually his howls grew less urgent until he subsided completely into a hoarse, shallow panting, his eyes closed, his body slumped sideways, barely standing.

Eva Posidas looked at me, said, “No worries, Sarita,” then said something else in Spanish before she took one of Penny Face's arms.
Jose took his other arm, and they led him into the house, his mother-wife-sister following slowly behind them, her nightgown dragging in the dirt. The others quickly dispersed, their footsteps scraping softly into silence.

“Sweet suffering Jesus,” I whispered, my head still full of his voice.

“It doesn't happen too often.” A man's gentle twang came from behind me, and I pivoted to my left in a jerky, abrupt motion.

“Whoa!” Henry said, one palm out in front of him. “Uncle.”

I relaxed my fist, lowered my hands to my thighs.

“You're a jumpy one.” He too was barefoot, bare-chested as well. Several scars snaked up his belly, one down his upper right arm. There wasn't an ounce of fat on him that I could tell. He grinned. “Like your hair short.”

I stopped my hand midshoulder before it could touch my hair. “And you like to make pronouncements.”

He cocked his head sideways, his mouth open slightly, the lines around his eyes folding inward. “Aye, I suppose I do. Doña Eva has accused me of that before.” He stuck his hands deep into the pockets of his jeans and rolled backward slightly on the balls of his feet. “Here's another one, though, an easy one, if I may. That tough shell doesn't suit you.”

“You don't know a damn thing about me,” I said.

He gave a deep chuckle. “No great mystery to observation.”

“Where do you—”

“Hang on.” He took several steps backward, his eyes crinkled up at the corners. “Are you always this defensive?”

I don't know why Doris Whitehead's sly smile came to mind then, but it did. I tucked my hands up under my armpits. “Are you always this familiar?”

“Excuse me?”

“Like you're supposed to know me, that you have the right to analyze me.”

He stared at me thoughtfully. It took all my willpower to hold his gaze before he spoke. “Perhaps I owe you an apology then. This is a small town. We're used to looking out for one another.”

“I'm not like him.” I gestured back toward Penny Face's house. “I don't need looking after.”

“We all need looking after, Sarah Jeffries.” His half-smile was so unexpectedly compassionate, his look so wistful and piercing, that I felt the quick burn of tears.

“Oh, go to hell.” I turned and strode back across the street, seething with the idiocy of it all—unnerved that he knew my full name, with our conversation, my attraction to him, Penny Face and his howls, this town, my life.

The ash gray cat, crouched in the open doorway of my house, pulled her upper body slightly away and hissed as I came up the steps. I thumped my foot on the floor as I opened the screen door; she skittered inside. I slammed the door, and we both retreated to our corners, glaring.

“What is your damn problem,” I said. I sat on the bed cross-legged, lit a cigarette, and watched her, her shoulder and hipbones sharp, long edges. She was prickly, independent, mercurial. Not a lovable bone in her body.

I stretched out on the bed, closed my eyes, and tried to think about nothing, but Henry's half-smile hovered around every corner. Doris Whitehead's comment floated up from what seemed years ago:
Betcha got him confused half the time
.

Fuck you, Doris. I shoved back hard against the memories, put my fingers in my ears, squeezed my eyes tight, hummed fiercely in the back of my throat to erase the sight of Gwen's stupefied look when I told her I was turning in my two weeks' notice; Ricky's quiet, “I figured it'd come to this sooner or later,
cher
, you leaving me”; Doris Whitehead's grim, “Won't be anything left for us to worry about”; the soft whisper of my name that had woken me every night since Vince had died.

I hummed louder, white spots dancing in front of my eyes, and suddenly there was Penny Face's howl echoing faintly under my own noise, like the edges of a tune you can't quite remember. I stopped abruptly. Was this the talking to angels that Isael and Luisa had mentioned? If so, it was not a happy conversation. Perhaps the old man had it right after all, that angels looked down on us not in compas
sion, not raising their voices in glory or grace or even redemption, but in despair, keening at our hateful ways, our guilty, tattered souls.

 

At the end of September, the fellow I'd been hired to replace was cleared to return to work. I figured I was looking at another week or two of employment at the most when my supervisor called me into the office. But he surprised me, offering to extend my temporary position through the holidays. I didn't hesitate. Eva Posidas patted my cheek when I asked about renting the house for another three to four months. “It's the way it must be,
m'ija
.”

Perhaps it was the cooler weather, perhaps it was accepting I'd be here awhile longer, but I had a sudden burst of energy that manifested itself in a desire to clean. I'd never been one to spend much time worrying about sparkling counters, clean floors, layers of dust, streaked windows, or grimy buildup. Now, suddenly, I wanted this house clean. I woke up early on a Saturday morning, drove to the local grocery, and bought a mop, pail, broom, sponge, stiff-bristled brush, plastic gloves, and a whole slew of cleaning products.

I'd just drawn a pail of hot water when Eva Posidas appeared at my door holding a handful of rosemary. “The smell,
es bonito
,
si
?” She raised a fistful to my nose. “This you,” she crushed and rolled several leaves in her palms, “and put on
ventanas
.” She scattered some across a windowsill. “Cleans it all out.”

“
Bueno
.
Gracias
, Doña Eva,” I said, wondering what “it” the rosemary would clean out.

She stood in the middle of the room, one hand folded against her waist, and looked around carefully. I watched her warily. She made me uncomfortable, as if she was one step ahead of me, although ahead of what, I wasn't sure. For a moment, I saw her resemblance to Isael. “You fix this up.
Pinta.
Paint, that's the word? Something pretty. Do what you like.”

There is a beauty in the simplicity of cleaning; you focus on exactly what is in front of you. As with most anything, there is a correct way to proceed, a way that minimizes the effort and maximizes the outcome. Like cleaning your gun or preparing your uniform. Buy the best tools and clean more frequently than you think is needed.
Change out your bullets every three months. Use a toothbrush, real bristles. Don't buy the cheap gun-cleaning kits. Splurge on good gun oil and find a cloth diaper. Wipe the dirt off your shoes with an old T-shirt—never paper towels—apply saddle soap with a cotton rag, then black polish mixed with your own saliva, then use a good, soft brush to bring each shoe to a full shine. Clip the loose threads on your uniform; iron the trouser and sleeve creases sharp. Use Brasso—just a touch or it will turn green—for jacket buttons and badge, name plate, sharpshooter and precinct pins. Do it right, and you lose track of time; you lose track of yourself. You are the task and nothing more.

That weekend, I was the task. Every inch of the house fell under the onslaught of my heavy-duty sponge: the walls, the ceiling, the window and door frames, the wood floors, every faucet and fixture and light. I cleaned the windows with newspaper, which I vaguely remembered my mother doing long ago. I worked late into the night, and when I finished on Sunday, I felt a satisfaction that made me grin. I took a long, hot bath and slept hard: no whisper, no waking in panic, no dreams. The ash gray cat reappeared on Monday morning as I was getting ready to leave for work. She stepped gingerly across the floor, her nose sniffing the ground with every step, her tail flat out behind her.

“Careful,” I told her. “I might get it into my head to give you a bath.”

The following Friday, with Marisela's permission, I took Isael and Luisa to Esai's Hardware Store to help me choose paint. We selected a light yellow for the walls and soft white for the trim. With some persuasion from Luisa, I bought a small can of tomato red for the one wall in the kitchen because, as Luisa said, “Kitchens should be happy places, and red is happy.” I stayed up late that night taping the floor-boards and window trim, using a ladder Jose had lent me, and slept hard again until first light.

Luisa and Isael showed up at 7:00, ready to help. By 8:00, Luisa was bored and spattered with yellow; by 9:00, Isael had wandered off. By noon, I'd finished three walls and my wrists and shoulders ached.

I heated up my frying pan, dry, and cooked three tortillas, one at a time, until they puffed up tiny brown spots, flipped them once, and added asadero cheese and thin slices of green chiles. Rolled them up,
slapped them on a plate, grabbed a beer from the refrigerator, and went out to the back stoop where I sat and ate, cheese dribbling down my chin, the beer cutting the heat from the chiles. The damn cat wandered up from wherever she'd been hiding and studiously licked the plate clean.

It was a glorious day—crisp and bright, not a cloud in the sky—and I was happy in my sense of accomplishment and exhaustion. I lay back against the concrete and let the sun cook me into a dreamy daze. Only the rough whine of dirt bikes up behind my house and a lawn mower puttering somewhere down the block prevented me from falling completely asleep.

I don't know what snapped me back. But suddenly I was in my body, conscious of my skin, alert, heart rate thumping a bit quicker from a small jolt of adrenaline. I sat up quickly, eyes blinking against the rush of sunlight. And then I was on my feet, throat tightening, knowing something was wrong even before I could process the information.

Isael cleared the small hill behind my house, head down, legs churning. He looked up, saw me, opened his mouth, and I was running toward him even as my name came in three short gasps of air from his mouth.

I met him halfway. The panic on his face, the smears of blood and dirt on his hands and shirt, settled the dread deeper in my stomach.

“Luisa,” he said. “Hurt.”

“Show me.”

She was in a ravine the next hill over, just off a trail. Her head lay wedged between two rocks; one leg rested on a clump of grass at an impossible angle.

“The boys on the dirt bikes,” Isael said, his voice thin and quavering. “They knocked her over.”

“Was she conscious at all? Awake? Moving?” My fingers searched for a pulse. None.

He shook his head. “We weren't supposed to be here.” His voice was choked with suppressed sobs.

She wasn't breathing either. I ran my fingers quickly over her
body: a good gash where the bone had broken through her leg, a deeper wound on the back of her head, but how deep or big, I couldn't say because I wasn't going to move her head if I could help it. At least the blood wasn't pooling; that was a good sign. Unless the weight of her head was holding in the blood.

“Okay.” I turned to Isael and gripped his upper arm hard until his eyes focused on mine. “Not your fault. Understand?” He nodded slowly, sniffling back tears. “Good. Now go get help, have them call the police, an ambulance. Bring them back here.”

“Mamma and Poppa are gone.”

“Go to your
guelita
's, a neighbor's. Use the phone yourself if you have to. 911. You know the address, yes? Understand?”

He nodded more quickly, turned, and ran.

I pulled three large rocks out of the way, bruising my knuckles and tearing a fingernail, and knelt down beside Luisa. The leg wasn't bleeding much; neither was her head from what I could tell. I moved her head only slightly to arch the neck, wincing as I did, hoping I wasn't causing any more damage, praying I wasn't condemning her to a life of paralysis. If she lived.

I pinched her nostrils closed and lowered my mouth to hers, then remembered to check inside first: a two-fingered swipe and no obstructions. I hesitated. Was it five breaths and two compressions or two breaths and five compressions? I searched back through muscle memory.