Red Lightning (4 page)

“What I want to know, Tess—”

“—The freakin'
pollos
didn't show, Ed. I don't have anyone with me.” I look toward the mountains so he can't see my eyes. I don't know how much longer I can stand up. How much longer my heart can possibly beat. The granola bar has awakened a giant, and the giant is
roaring for food and is thrashing, thrashing, thrashing, and if only I can stay calm a little longer. “They didn't show. I was at the right place. I waited for three days. They didn't show. So I came here. The end.”

A flash in the air—Ed and Libby share a glance of something deep like a river, an energy, something big enough to send out a flash of feeling, and it startles me.

“Wait, what . . . you—” Ed starts, but Libby interrupts him with a palm that flies up, a shake of the head,
no
. “We can't talk about this now. Let her take a shower.”

I glance back and forth, trying to figure the energy out. “I came here,” I finally say into the silence, “for three days. Then I'm out of here. Heading east this time, actually. Gonna disappear into the flatlands of the middle of this country. But stay three days with you guys, that's what I wanted. If you'll have me. If not, I'll take off now. No one is with me.”

“Tess, Tess, Tess.” Ed has recovered and puts his hands in his hair and rubs his scalp. “We can't have that sort of thing around here. We have a
child
, we have
Amber
—” He throws his hands in the air. “You never understand the gravity of anything! We can't have someone who is involved in trafficking here.
Comprende
?”

“Well, so, that's what I'm saying. I'm done with it. I just came for a short visit. And then I'll leave.” I hear the shake in my voice, feel the tremor up my spine. I hear also what I am not saying, which is: I did that run for Amber. To leave her a bit of money. To leave a small evidence of my existence. But I couldn't find the damned people, and I never got paid, and now I have to disappear for good without leaving her anything at all.

Libby and Ed stare at me, and I stare at my feet, shift my weight. Finally, Libby says, “I have no idea what to do with this . . . and I gotta change Kay's bag . . . and I gotta get to work. I just can't—”

Ed's hands are still at his temples, rubbing. “I'll do Kay's medicine. You go.”

The world is so heavy, my body so heavy, my eyelids so heavy. My feet hurt, my mouth hurts, my bones hurt, and the world is spinning, and my mind is retreating away from my body, moving into the sky. I feel my body sink down, lean over, sideways, feel the gravel under my cheek. I close my eyes.

                    
In the Beginning and Once Upon a Time,

                    
there was baby girl born in the

                    
Kingdom of Colorado,

                    
a sweet child named Tess.

                    
Who grew up and each year got more messed up,

                    
perhaps because of slaps and screams

                    
or alcohol

                    
or the boyfriend or two (boyfriends of the mother, that is) finding ways to open her up

                    
or because she was not strong enough to keep her chin up in this life.

                    
This Tess became a pirate. A land pirate.

                    
Then she sailed to a place and she saw something that killed her.

                    
And that's when

                    
Tess one day found herself looking down at herself instead of inside herself.

                    
At the End, of this particular story,

                    
Tess had to go.

                    
She had gotten surrounded.

                    
Had to surrender.

                    
But this girl, Tess, had already begat another girl named Amber.

                    
And Tess wanted to tell her goodbye.

I dig my fingers into my arm in order to try to come back, but I keep my eyes closed. At first there is silence, and then murmurs that do not involve me.
Go on in to work, Libby. They need you. I'll deal with this. I'll figure something out . . .

Get her some food, at least . . . a shower
.

I'll call you. Let me see what's going on here
.

Let her sleep . . .

I'll call you . . . A doctor?

We'll talk later today. Let's just leave her here at the house for now. There's nothing she can really do
.

We can't leave her alone with Amber. Can you be here when she gets off the bus?

I open my eyes to see Ed holding Libby's head to his chest, his head bent so he can whisper in her ear, hers raised to whisper back, and if ever there was a position of love, that is it.

I slap the gravel, hard, with my palm, to stop my inside voices: I want the vocalchord voice. I do not want them to see how bad off I am. “I'm not going to hurt or kidnap Amber,” I hear myself say. “If you could just let me rest.”

“Go,” Ed says firmly to Libby. “I'll work it out. I'll call you.”

I hear the truck door slam, the pebbles of the driveway crack and snap, the murmur of retreating tires. When she's driven off, Ed gets on his hands and knees so that his head is right across from mine. I think that maybe he'll reach out and touch my head and bless me, but he does not. He waits until I open my eyes and look at him. Stare, stare, blink. A good coupla minutes go by. Finally, he props a water bottle
next to my face. “Drink this. Do you or do you not need a doctor? Answer me now.”

“I do not,” I say to the pebbles in front of my mouth. “I need sleep and food.”

He nods, agreeing with me. “I am trying. To. Find. Lovingkindness.” Then, “Oh, Tess, you can't—” Then, “Say something, anything, to help me find some warmth. I'm human, too, Tess. With my own limitations. I can see you're suffering. But you've also caused so much of it . . .”

I don't move my head from the gravel, even when my ear and jaw hurt from the talking. “Ed. I've got a side to the story. And it is influenced, in part, by you. The good comes from you. I'm helping the immigrants start a new life. Right? Like you once did. You taught me.” The scrape on my cheek is opening up from the movement of my jaw, but still I don't move. “So, Ed, for example, I always dropped off water and tennis shoes whenever I was in the middle of nowhere. Because, you know, you and Libby . . . last time I saw you, ten years ago, you said to . . . you know, act like a human because I was dealing with humans. They're not just
pollos
, chickens who need to be crossed by the
coyotes
, they are individual lives, with loves and dreams and stories. You told me that once. I remembered.”

He puts his hand gently on my skull, on my greasy matted hair. “Yes, Tess. And there are kind people, and there are
dangerous
people. You know that better than I. You're dealing with people who kill. And you come here, to your own kid's home? I'm worried because you've often been so naive. I need to know the status. Anyone pissed at you? Is anyone coming after you?” He pulls his hand away. “Sit up, Tess. Get up off the driveway.”

Brainspeed, please. Find a multisplendored lie. The chunks of gravel in front of me are beautiful: blues and grays and whites. “I'm done. I brought no trouble. I'm really done.” I can hear the dream in
my voice, from the crazy place, from the fluid nature of being nearly gone. “But you know, Ed? I did something smart,” I singsong. “I remember lying to Lobo, he's the
coyoteprimero
. I told him I was from Oklahoma, from a town called Normal, and that's why I was so messed up—get it, that sad joke? And that was ten years ago, when I was first getting started. Slade might guess where I am, but that's okay because he's a good man, a little like you, actually, sometimes doing things for the right reason. I've been homeless since . . . I don't know . . . last spring. No one knows where I am. That was really going to be my last job, Ed. I wanted to be done with that life. I just needed one last bit of money for a new start.”

“This Lobo. He really doesn't know where you are? There's no way he can track you?”

“I'm not
stupid
, Ed.” And now I can hear my voice rising to a higher pitch. “Who knows what happened to that group of people? I'm sure someone picked them up. I don't know. Probably they got to Denver. And the drugs got to Lobo. No one knows where I am. No one is after me. So just tell me. Can I stay for a few days or not?”

Ed's face flashes a reluctant storm. “I just . . . don't understand how you can be so unkind, Tess.” His voice is calm but somehow still full of rage. “You abandon your sister and your baby and your mother, and you don't keep in touch
at all
? Except postcards once every two years proclaiming you're alive? Do you understand the things you set in motion? By your neglect? The things you didn't do? Never a birthday card to Amber. Never a Christmas card. You know how that made her
feel
, what trouble it has caused?” He stands up with a grunt, brushes off his knees, throws his arms out and walks in a tight circle, and then comes back, facing me. “It's just that I think your core is
rotten
in ways I don't understand. I know you had it bad, Tess. But that's not an excuse for leaving Amber, for ditching immigrants in the mountains, whatever you've done that landed you
here.” He stops, looks to the sky as if begging it for patience, exactly like Libby did earlier, and it occurs to me that she learned this from him. He glances at the Buddhist flags and does some deep breathing. “Man, you are the only person on Beautiful Planet Earth who could get a rise out of me. I don't usually—” and here he stops and puts his head in his hands again and breathes. “I don't want to be the one who threw away the chance for you to meet Amber. I don't want that hanging on me. I suppose you should.” He breathes in. “Look, I need to bring in the bee boxes, I need to check on some neighbor's animals, I need to fix some fence, but I'll make sure I'm home in the afternoon. Libby is one of the few nurses still over in town these days—that town is dying—and if she doesn't go in, then the people get no help. Do you see? Do you see that she has to go because she's got a responsibility? Because there's no one else to do it? Like raising a child?”

“I came to say thanks—”

“I'm going to leave you alone till this afternoon. Sleep and eat and drink and shower. Amber will get off the bus at three forty. I'll talk to her, and if she's willing, I'll let you guys hang together.” He nods, agreeing with himself. “I'm thinking aloud here as I go. Are you listening? You will be kind and considerate of her feelings before you consider your own. You will sit down or take a walk and ask her about her life. You will not talk of
pollos
and
coyotes
. If she wants you to leave, I'll take you to the bus station over in Lamar. If she wants you to stay, we will all have dinner together. You will explain to her why you never sent a birthday card or a Christmas card or anything. You got it?” He pulls out a wallet, crams some bills under my arm, where they're pinned down from the breeze. “If you want to leave earlier, here's some money for the bus.”

“I got it.” And then, “Ed? That's what . . . I came here for. No one has asked
why
I came—”

He throws up his hand like he doesn't want to hear. He walks
away from me, opens the door of an old green Harvester truck. “You came because you didn't have anywhere else to go.” He turns his head over his shoulder to say this to me. “There's nothing much here to steal, so don't even bother looking. There are twenty more bucks in my sock drawer; take it if you want it. Make yourself at home, though. Eat. Take a shower. Put on some of Libby's clean clothes. We have to truck in water, though, so take it easy. Strip at the door in case you've got lice or bedbugs, then take your clothes to the burn barrel. You look . . . lousy.”

I roll over to my back. “The clouds are pretty from here.”

He climbs in his truck, backs out, walks back, reaches down, touches my forehead. “I'm just noticing—how much pain are you in?”

I move my face so I can look at his eyes. “I feel great. I don't need a doctor. I just need sleep.”

His hair lifts a fraction in the breeze. He reaches out his arm. “Ringo is in the truck. I'll take him with me. Let me help you up. Go on inside.”

“No, I want to get up on my own.”

He sighs. “See, you think you're being tough right there. But really, you're being selfish. That, Tess, is what is so hard to forgive about you. You don't want to give me the peace of mind that you're safe inside. I can't very well just leave you lying here in the hot sun in a gravel driveway. Help me out, here.” He regards me. So for his benefit, I push myself to my hand and knees, and then, slowly, stand. The world tilts a little, my feet start pulsing with their ache. He puts the water bottle in my hand, nods approvingly.