Dove Season (A Jimmy Veeder Fiasco) (27 page)

“You do what you do. Shit, give you credit. Didn’t even give me a chance to call you. Hadn’t figured the ransom shit and all that, but here I fucking am. Fucked in the fucking desert. You got over on me.”

“What made you think I had money?” I said.

Alejandro shrugged.

“Do I look like I have money?”

“You’re white, ain’t you?”

“You aren’t dumb. Might act it, but you got a better reason.”

Alejandro smiled at me. “I know fucking farmers. Farmers hate taxes. Always got cash. Need cash to pay illegals, so you make a couple of hay deals maybe. Keep as much shit off the books you can.

“That
puta
got money off you. Don’t know if she blackmailed you, if she stole it, whatever. She got your money. She got it, I can get it. Anyone got eight grand cash sitting around, they got to got more.”

I froze.

“Jimmy?” Bobby asked.

I held my hand straight out to Bobby without looking at him. My body was stock-still. I lowered my hand, walked to the quad, and got my shotgun. I broke it open and checked both barrels.

Alejandro smiled at me. “She worked you. A fucking
puta
.”

“And you’re a fucking punk,” I said and hit him in the face with the stock of my shotgun. He landed on his side in the sand, his shoulder audibly dislocating. He yelled in pain. I put the barrel of the shotgun to his head.

I turned to Bobby. “He killed Yolanda.”

“Do it,” Bobby said.

Alejandro mumbled at my feet, and then he started laughing. I kept the barrel of the shotgun a few inches from his head.

“Something funny, asshole?” I said to him.

“I didn’t have to kill her. She would have given the money. I could’ve just took it. Didn’t even need the money really. I wasn’t even supposed to be there. Went to give Tomás a message. Saw her across the street.”

I interrupted him. “You think I give a shit about why you did it or what happened? I ain’t the police or some fucking detective. I don’t care why or how or any of that shit. All I care about is that you killed her. That she’s dead because of you.”

“You ain’t going to shoot me.” It was a statement.

I didn’t answer. I didn’t need to.

“I’ll wait by the bikes,” Bobby said, turning and walking through the thick sand.

“You can’t do it. Go with your friend. You ain’t hard enough to kill no one.”

I glanced over my shoulder, making sure that Bobby was out of earshot. “I’m going to let you in on a little secret. Something no one else knows.”

I took a breath, not sure if I was ready to say it aloud.

“I killed my father.”

I waited until his expression changed in acknowledgment that I wasn’t bullshitting.

“I killed my father. And I loved him.”

Alejandro said, “I should have…”

I pulled the trigger.

I didn’t push the quad driving back through the dunes. Bobby drove the dirt bike at my side, maintaining whatever pace I chose. When I slowed, he slowed. When I sped up, he sped up. Bobby stuck by my side, no matter what.

Driving slowly along the crest of a dune and staring out at the starlit inclines of sand, I tried to convince myself that I was on another planet. A planet of nothing but sand like the movies they shot out there. A different planet. Because on earth, I had killed two men. I had traveled all over the world, but it wasn’t until I came home that men died by my hands.

It took me a minute to get Pop’s face into my mind. It’s amazing how quickly something that familiar fades. Luckily the image that came to mind wasn’t the drawn features of his disease, but the laughing countenance of Big Jack. The Big Laugh. It made me smile. What had he said? You can’t save a man’s life. You can only postpone his death. Or hurry it along.

Then the thought of Yolanda rushed in there. Unfortunately, it was the sight of her at the bottom of the cistern. Alejandro had taken her life far too early. For nothing. For no reason. For that alone, I felt little guilt for what I had just done. He had destroyed a life, and that impact was going to carry down to Juan. I took from him what he took from her. It was simple.

And now I was going to try to undo some of the damage by looking after Juan. It wasn’t a matter of responsibility. I had no problem shirking those. It wasn’t out of duty. It was Pop’s mistake, not mine. It was simply that I could do a tiny bit of good. If I made the effort, Juan could have a chance. A life. He could have opportunity. For all the shit that went down, he deserved at least that. I couldn’t save the world, because I didn’t give a shit about the world. I gave a shit about a handful of people, and Juan was now one of them.

In the distance a flat surface exposed itself in the starlight. Something angular and out of place in the sand. There weren’t supposed to be corners in the dunes. I squinted at the shape, trying to make it out.

I turned to Bobby and said, “Does that look like a fort to you?”

But he couldn’t hear me over the sound of the engines, pointing a finger at his ear. When I turned back, I could no longer find the shape in the sand. Just as well. Some things were meant to be buried.

Like a good friend, the desert keeps its secrets.

The aroma of wet grass filled the air. The alfalfa smelled sweet and good.

I walked the row the full half mile, looking out at the expanse of three-inch-high grass. The growth looked even with no thin spots. It still had some time before the next mow, but I was doing my best to be attentive to my new vocation. Still getting my farming legs beneath me, I found that I could be incredibly protective of my crops. I doted on them when all they needed was time to grow. I wasn’t comfortable calling myself a farmer yet, but I was doing the work and I could see myself doing it for a while.

It was the first day under ninety degrees since I’d been back. The Imperial Valley had skipped fall and made a dash right to winter. The hot, muggy, and buggy days had passed. Finally the desert climate shifted to the kind of weather that brings the snowbirds down from up north.

Walking the field, smelling the hay, and feeling the sun, I couldn’t imagine being anywhere else. It was a strange feeling. I wanted to be there. I wanted to see this all through.

I walked back slowly to my truck. My piece-of-shit Mazda. The one I had been forced to abandon in Mexicali. In a frightening display of his reach, Tomás had retrieved my truck from a Mexicali chop shop’s maw. When I saw it parked in my drive, it sent chills through my body. The stock gearshift knob had been removed and replaced with a scorpion in clear resin and there was a small statue of the Virgin Mary glued to the dash, but that was the only evidence of its absence.

I took my time and picked up the occasional rock that had no place on the beautiful dark soil of my farmland. I placed the stones in the front pocket of my jeans. I’d give them to Juan when I got home. Currently rocks were his favorite toy. For all the brightly colored plastic shit I bought him, a few scraps of wood, a cardboard box, and a pile of rocks was all he needed to entertain himself for hours. Simple tastes. Like me. Like his father.

That’s what I called myself. His father. Not just on paper or for simplicity’s sake, but that’s the role that I was trying to fill. I was trying to be everything my father had been for me.

Tomás had helped me with all Juan’s paperwork. More official than the real thing, he had promised me. According to the birth certificate, Juan was born in the same Brawley hospital that I had been born in. I was listed as the father and Yolanda as the mother. Once we had the birth certificate, all the other paperwork fell into place. No one ever doubted it. After all, the kid looked like me.

I hadn’t found any of Yolanda’s relatives in Guadalajara yet, but I hadn’t given up looking. I was considering going down there and poking around. That was, if I could convince Bobby to join me on another misadventure.

Bobby and Griselda were still going strong. While she had to have guessed that something not quite legal had gone down, she never asked. Yolanda’s murder eventually went into the “Inactive Investigations” categorization. Officially unsolved to this day. At least, on paper.

I buried Yolanda next to Pop in what I had learned was a plot Pop had bought for me. It hadn’t been a practical purchase or a morbid one. It was the product of some kind of three-for-two deal that he had gotten when my mother died. Yolanda would forever be on one side of Pop, my mother on the other. I think he would have liked that. The two women that he loved. And although I didn’t really know either of them, I was convinced that they would have gotten along and liked it, too.

My cousin Mike got me up-to-date on the farm and the status of the crops. He helped a lot at first, but I was close to the point that I was pretty much on my own. Pretty much. With his help and Bobby, Buck Buck, and Snout, I almost had everything under control. It amazed me how much time my friends were willing to give. No matter the time or task, their usual response ended up being either a shrug or something along the lines of “You’d do the same for me.” In the city people bitched when you asked them to help you move. Out here a neighbor would help you shovel shit for eight hours without batting an eye and still pick up the tab when you went to dinner.

Angie had been staying at my house a lot lately. We were taking it slow, but quickly enough that we were having fun. She acted like it was to help me with Juan, but there was still something very strong between us. I’m not sure if our history made our relationship stronger, but it made both of us feel like we’d already made it through the tough part.

Nobody had asked or said a word about Juan. Maybe there was gossip floating around, but nothing had gotten back to me. I had shown back up, gotten myself a Mexican three-year-old, and nobody cared. Luckily, most people are so involved with their own lives that they couldn’t care less about mine. It didn’t matter, because once most people met Juan, they fell in love. He’s a funny little guy.

The biggest surprise was that I hadn’t thought once of leaving. That was a first, but there wasn’t another place that gave me the people or things I had in the Imperial Valley. It was home, and it was where I needed to be. I chose my responsibilities and loved every one of them. I don’t think I’d changed, because I don’t think people can. But I’d learned to enjoy what I thought I couldn’t.

I drove my truck into the circular driveway of my house. Angie and Juan stood up from the sandbox that I had made for him. Angie dusted the sand off her shorts, watching Juan run to my truck on his stubby little legs. He was on me the moment my feet hit the packed dirt. I grabbed him under the arms and lifted him high above me. His laughter filled the air. He had Pop’s laugh.

It takes a rare friend to take the time to read an early draft of a first novel. I couldn’t have finished this book without the support and feedback of Michael Batty, Jim Furgele, Greg Eliason, and Pete Allen. Thanks, guys.

A big Inca thanks to Jaime Arze for not only reading the book, but making sure that I didn’t embarrass myself with my ninth-grade Spanish.

I was very fortunate to be a finalist in the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award competition in 2010. There are far too many people to thank individually. But from the judges to the voters to the Amazon staff, I could not have gotten this book published without you. Thanks.

Thank you to Alex Carr and everyone at AmazonEncore for taking a chance on this country boy.

To Richard Drew, I have never given you nearly enough recognition or thanks for your quiet, yet constant support. So here it is. Thank you. Everything that you’ve done for me has not gone unnoticed or unappreciated.

Mom, your love and support are a constant that I rely on every day. Sorry for all the swearing in the book.

And finally and forever, the love of my life, my wife Roxanne. You are my best friend, favorite critic, and biggest fan. I would be nowhere without your love, understanding, and friendship. I truly love our adventure together.

Dove Season
was written at Beulahland in Portland, Oregon.

Photograph by Roxanne Patruznick, 2011

Johnny Shaw was born and raised in the Imperial Valley on the Calexico/Mexicali border. He received his Master of Fine Arts in screen-writing from UCLA. In addition to his work as a screenwriter and playwright, he owns a used bookstore and teaches writing. He lives in Portland, Oregon.
Dove Season
is his first novel.

Visit Johnny at
www.johnnyshawauthor.com