The Enigmatologist (31 page)

“You don’t need American history to go to Walgreens,” the
sheriff said.

Jimmy turned away from his uncle and toward the parking
lot. He crossed his arms, making the tattoo of Burt Reynolds’s face pout.

“Jimmy,” John said, feeling sorry for him, “thanks for
letting me borrow your car. It’s really cool of you.”

“Ah, no worries, bro,” Jimmy said, sticking his fist out,
waiting for a bump. “I’m just glad someone around here appreciates the
classics.”

John rolled his eyes, then gave Jimmy a fist bump.

“Just take it easy with her, okay. This bitch has a
turbo-charged V8. You
gotta
watch her, bro, or she’ll
get away from you.”

“So, no street racing?”

“No. Hey.” Jimmy started laughing. “Dude, you almost got
me.”

“I’ll get it back to you soon. A couple of days. A week at
the most.”

John’s cooler sat on the Trans-
Am’s
front seat, his bag on the floor. John unzipped his bag and started going
through it. Everything was still there, even his cash.

John opened the cooler.

“Shirley made you some sandwiches,” Sheriff Masters said.
“And we packed you a couple of sodas.”

John closed the cooler, caught the reflection of neon in
the side mirror. When they arrived at the hotel that morning, the neon sign was
off, but now it was dusk and the sign shone like it did when he’d checked into
The Sagittarius Inn, arrived in Las Vegas, New Mexico, a town unmolested by
coincidences.

“Ernesto, that sign, where’d you get it?” John asked,
thumbing over his shoulder to the neon centaur.

“Oh, that thing,” Ernesto said, pointing at it with his
whole hand, fingers fused together by age. “It came with the place. I was
gonna
change it but it cost too much. Plus, the fella I
bought the motel from said it’d attract a
lotta
good
customers.”

“You remember his name? the guy you bought it from?”

“Not really. That was a long time ago, back in ’73. He was
an Indian fella, I can tell you that much.”

“Wasn’t Jonathon
Deerfoot
, was
it?”

“Yup,” Ernesto nodded. “That’s it. How’d you know?”

“I have family that knew him.”

John thanked Ernesto for his hospitality, and thanked
Jimmy again for letting him borrow his car.

“John, let me walk you to that car a Jimmy’s,” Sheriff
Masters said. They walked to the driver’s side, out of earshot of the other
two. “I went by Professor Gentry’s place this afternoon. The tire wall had been
knocked down, the trailer was burned out.”

“Meth lab. I knew it,” John said, smirking. “He’s out at
the trailer park with his new girlfriend. I’ll get word to him somehow, tell
him to hide out for a while.”

“Hey,” the sheriff smiled, “when you get back from Denver,
why don’t you work for me. It’s just a matter a time before Jimmy shoots
himself in the foot.”

“Thanks, but I think there’s already plenty of work for me
to do.”

“Alright. Well, it’s a standing offer. Just be safe
driving home, okay?”

John got in the car. The windows were already rolled down
and Sheriff Masters closed the door for him.

“Don’t worry. I’ll be fine,” John said, putting the gun
under the driver’s seat.

“Alright. Hey, give me a call in a couple a days, when you
figure out when you’re coming back.”

John turned the key. The engine of the 1977 Trans-Am
vibrated underneath him, roaring like a defiant memory. It was why Jimmy liked
the car. When it was dormant, the car looked like the punch line to a joke
about New Jersey, but it hid a power only hinted at by the gold phoenix painted
on the black hood.

John drove to the edge of the road and stopped and stuck
his hand out the window, flipped them off. He stepped on the brakes and the gas
at the same. The tires spun and smoked. Jimmy shouted something, but the
squealing tires muffled his protest. Finally, John took his foot off the brake.
The car fishtailed a little and John sped out of the parking lot, leaving two
black streaks on the Las Vegas street.

The
road was empty, except for the occasional semi. The car roared under John and
Jimmy’s Judas Priest tape flipped sides as he sped past fence posts. A hawk
circled above a field, searching for something invisible to John. He turned up
the music, hoping thundering drums, crunching guitars, and a bird-like male
falsetto would infuse him with a sense of
badassery
,
make him feel aggressive and invincible. Driving away from the motel, watching
the sheriff wave, seemed to drain him of his energy, and he began to yearn for
Las Vegas, New Mexico in a way that he never longed for Denver, or Boulder,
like it was where he really belonged, home. Everywhere he had lived, he felt
out of place, whether it was growing up in Denver, going to art school, or
working for Rooftop. John had assumed it was because he didn’t have a father,
even though his mom and Rooftop tried to compensate. But the reason he felt
isolated was because he truly wasn’t like anyone else. During late night dorm
room sessions, ten kids piled into a room, passing a bong, the conversation
constantly returned to how they always felt different from the other kids at
their high school. In those moments, John felt a greater distance between them.
Because, unlike the girl who blew glass vampires, or the guy who sculpted a
clay Bob Costas with boobs, John truly was
all the lonely
and alienating adjectives his friends used to characterize themselves. He just
didn’t know how extraordinary he was.

John adjusted the rearview mirror. The town had vanished
from it, finally blown to dust. On the empty highway, he had also been
enveloped by the desert, surrounded by dried grass and barbed wire fences.

He had been driving for about a half hour when he sensed
it. Sagittarians nearby. It was faint, not as strong as it was in the trailer
park, but he still felt it, felt them. He pulled onto the shoulder, got out of
the Trans-Am, and walked down the road, trying to find them, like a human
divining rod searching the desert for an underground spring.

John walked through the culvert, toward a fence and the
field behind it. A slight breeze carrying the smell of sage and dead grass. The
sensation increased every second, growing in John, like they were getting
closer. John didn’t need to look for the Sagittarians. They were looking for
him.

A fencepost had been uprooted and the barbed wire had been
snipped and coiled. He stepped through the opening, then ran into the field.
Brittle grasses snapped under his Chucks. Clumps of dry dirt broke and joined
soil. John ran over yellow grass and rock to a spot far enough in the field
that the road became a dark line against the golden ground. He sent his
consciousness exploring, trying to find the Sagittarians that had caused his
body to vibrate with awareness.

There were seventeen Sagittarians in the field. Their
impression was different from
Leadbelly’s
and the
Elvises
’. They felt like warm, red swirls. They surrounded
him, but remained distant. John sensed them moving in independent circles, like
they were pacing. Or stalking. Then one crept toward him.

The sky was cloudless. The sun was setting behind John,
but the field was still lit and false, silver pools shimmered on the ground.
From one of these mirages, something emerged. It was a blob breaking heat
waves, gradually shaping itself into something resembling a human. As it got
closer, John distinguished features, long hair, a dress, hips, a distinctive
saunter.

Rosa.

She floated toward him out of the desert, out of a dream.
He ran toward her and when he reached her, they paused awkwardly for a moment.
John smiled and reached out to her, but pulled his arms back. Rosa looked at
him, raised her eyebrows expectantly.

He clutched her dress and pulled her in and kissed her.
She put her arms around him, kissed him back. Then she just hugged him, resting
her head on his shoulder. He moved his arms, wrapped them around Rosa’s waist,
but they shook with excitement and he concentrated, stilling them. And gently
held her.

She raised her head from his shoulder and smiled. Her
smile filled John with a warmth and joy he’d never felt before, and he didn’t
want to let go of her, a once-in-a-lifetime find.

“So, does this mean we’re boyfriend girlfriend?” he asked,
looking into her deep brown eyes.

“That depends,” Rosa said, “how do you feel about dating
an older woman?”

“How much older are we talking? not four hundred?”

“How old do you think I look?”

“Not a day over perfect.”

“You’re so cheesy,” she said. “I’m one hundred and
sixty-three, if you must know.”

“So you’re a cougar?”

“I am not a cougar,” Rosa said.

“I don’t know…” John said, teasing. “You did seduce a
younger man.”

She rolled her eyes.

“So, seriously. Are we boyfriend girlfriend, or what?”

“What do you want us to be?” Rosa rested her arms on his
shoulders and smiled up at him.

“You can’t tell? I was practically all over you at lunch
the other day.”

“John.” Rosa tilted her head. “I’m one hundred and
sixty-three. Men have been hitting on me since the 1880’s. Trust me, you were
not all over me.”

“That makes me feel better.” A small yucca plant, the
sharp brown leaves at its base, grew a few feet away.

“John, look at me.” Rosa grabbed his head with both hands.
“I came all the way out here to find you. You think I’d do that for someone I’d
just slept with if there wasn’t something more?”

“So, you’ve been with other guys?”

“Oh my God, John. Are you listening to me?”

“How many are we talking here? five, ten, twenty.” John’s
eyes widened. “More? More than twenty?”

“I’m trying to tell you I love you.”

John started laughing.

“You’re such a shit,” Rosa said, slapping his chest.

“I talked to Louisa,” John said. He didn’t want to bring
it up, but there was something he needed to tell Rosa.

Rosa pulled away and turned her back to him. John put his
hands in his hoodie pockets, stretching its front, making him slouch. He
noticed Rosa was barefoot.

“You didn’t need to do it, you know…” he said, “use those
pheromones on me. I mean, I know Louisa asked you to. How fucked up is that, my
great-great-great-grandmother has to hook me up. Still, you didn’t need to do
it.”

“I didn’t want to,” she said, biting her thumb. “I just
wasn’t sure if you…”

“Hey.” John put his hand on her shoulder. “I wouldn’t
change anything, being with you. You know, so much of my life hasn’t turned out
the way I thought it would.”

“John.” Rosa spun. She folded her arms across her chest,
put her weight on her right leg, raised one hip, the classic disgruntled
girlfriend pose. “You’re only twenty-three.”

“Yeah, I know. Most people say that when they’re like, I
don’t know, forty. But I’m saying it now. When I finished school, I thought I’d
be designing crosswords for
The Denver Post
or something. When people
asked me what I did, that’s what I told them, that I was a puzzle maker. Even
when I was sneaking around photographing people doing it, I’d tell myself,
‘I’ll be a professional puzzle designer soon and none of this will matter.
It’ll be a funny story for the talk shows.’”

“There are a lot of crossword designers on talk shows?”
she asked.

“I was going to be the first. At least, that’s what I told
myself. Now I don’t know. After everything that’s happened, what I’ve learned.
I’m not who I thought I was. And who I am is not what everyone wants me to be.”
John found the little box containing his hesitancies and misgivings. He added
one more article to it before tucking it back in its nook.

“Who do you want to be?”

“All I know is when I look at you, you’re the only thing
that makes sense. In a weird, drugging-me-to-sleep-with-you sort of way.” John
moved to adjust his glasses, forgetting he’d left them in the trailer park. “I
guess what I’m trying to say is, I love you. I fell in love with you the minute
I saw you.”

She smiled and put her arms around his neck.

“Okay, you can stop talking now,” she said, kissing him.

“So,” John said, “does this make me your boyfriend?”

“Actually, I think you’re more than that.”

“Huh?”

Rosa beamed at him.

“Something’s different about you,” he said. John reached
out with his consciousness and was suddenly aware of more Sagittarians, not
just Rosa, and not just the sixteen watching them. He put his hand on her
belly. It was like a lake, a calm surface with hyperactivity underneath. Life
working.

“Holy shit! You’re pregnant!”

“Yeah.” Rosa smiled. Even though her belly was flat, she
rubbed it like she was in her third trimester, cradling what was gestating
inside.

“Is it mine?”

“Yeah, silly. Who else’s could they be?” Rosa said,
nodding, her smile widening.

“I don’t know? What about
Leadbelly
.
Surely you and he…”

“
Eww
. No. Gross.”

“Wait. Wait.” John fluttered his hands like he was trying
to shoo away confusion. “Did you say ‘them’?” He put his hand on her stomach
again and noticed something else. There wasn’t one child growing inside her,
there were nine.

“Really, nine?”

“I know this is sudden,” Rosa said, “and overwhelming, but
we won’t have to do this on our own. It’s really common with us.”

“Nine kids? That’s a lot of diapers.”

“I know nine kids seems like a lot, but we can deal with
it.”

“This is just…I didn’t expect this. I though we’d hang
out, go to the Sizzler or something. Then have kids.”

“Actually,” Rosa said, stepping backward, “you know what?
You don’t need to do anything. I’ll be with my people. We’ll raise them. I
shouldn’t have expected you to…”

“I’m making Louisa baby-sit. That’s all I’m saying,” John said,
laughing. Rosa laughed and John saw them chasing nine kids around the yard,
teaching them to tie their shoes. He pictured her bringing their children a
birthday cake with one candle that they collectively blew out. He imagined Rosa
standing next to him in a football stadium, cheering when all nine of their
children’s names were called and a procession of
Abernathys
collected their high school diplomas. He saw his children marrying, having
nonuplets
of their own, John and Rosa eventually being like
Louisa, several ‘greats’ preceding their names. Holding Rosa, feeling their
children squirming inside her, John knew that a lifetime of exhaustion and
worry, laughter and delight, awaited him. There was just one thing he had to do
first.

“So, you’re headed back to Denver?” she asked, looking at
her bare feet.

“Just for a couple of days. I have to get my mom, grandma,
and Roof. Louisa says she has a place for them in the trailer park. Then
there’s my dad. I
gotta
take care of that.”

“You’re going to rescue him?”

“I have to. He’s my dad.” John shrugged his shoulders.

“I’ll come with you, help you find him.”

“Louisa’s already got people on that. You’ve got our kids
to take care of.” John put his hand back on her belly, wrapped one arm around
her, and kissed the side of her head. He lowered his voice. “Don’t worry, it’ll
just be a couple of days. Then we can just be together.”

She wrapped her arms around him and kissed him.

“Hurry back to me.”

“I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

John put his forehead against Rosa’s and whispered, “I
love you.”

Rosa leaned in, kissed him again, and whispered.

Rosa walked backward, her hand slipping from his. Her eyes
glistened like she was verging on crying. She wiped her eyes then spun and ran
into the desert. Louisa said Rosa had been waiting longer for them to be
together than John had, for years, and now she’d have to wait a little longer.
Watching her run away from him, John choked back his tears, and promised
himself she’d never cry again.