The Painted Boy (10 page)

I knew the desert started up just at the end of the block. That’s where Tío’s street, Calle Esmeralda, meets Redondo Drive, and it’s where the Vulture Ridge trailhead begins, one of a dozen or so trailheads from which you can go hiking into the southern part of Hierro Madera National Park. But in the two weeks I’ve been here, I never once walked down to even just have a look. I figured there wasn’t much to see.

Besides, I’m a city kid. We were always too busy with the restaurant to go for Sunday drives. Sitting on Tío’s patio, and lying in my bed at night, I can hear the coyotes, and that’s about as close as I ever got to the desert. But now, standing here at the trailhead with Ramon, I’m stunned by its beauty.

For one thing, there are wildflowers everywhere. Ramon names them—pink fairy dusters, yellow brittle-bush, red desert globemallow, and Indian paintbrush—until it just sounds like a poem he’s reciting. Even the cacti have flowers. When I seem surprised, he says, “Why shouldn’t they? Their ancestor was the rose, which is why she’s the Mother of the Desert.”

Like I said, he knows a lot about everything.

The trail starts easily enough. It’s a gentle slope going up into the foothills. But then it starts winding back and forth on itself and the incline gets steeper and steeper. We stop once in a while to catch our breath and take in the view—though I think Ramon does it more for my sake than his. He’s in great shape. But under Paupau’s tutelage, I’ve practiced endless breathing techniques and special exercises for flexibility and strength, and I have no trouble keeping up. When Ramon realizes this, we don’t stop unless there’s a particularly spectacular view, like the one of the city spread out in the valley below us before we take the trail to Vulture Ridge on the other side of the mountain.

At one point a pair of red-tailed hawks rides an updraft near the trail’s edge. Ramon grins and lifts a hand to them.

“” he calls to them.

I smile and give them a wave, too. I get the
ping
inside my head that tells me they’re more than the birds they seem to be.

“Paupau—my grandmother,” I tell him, “likes to think that we’re all brothers and sisters—animals, birds, people.”

“Makes sense to me,” he says. “Out here it’s aunts and uncles, though you hear the animal people called ‘cousins. ’”

My gaze goes to the hawks, distant now.

“But those birds—” I begin.

“Wouldn’t be animal people,” Ramon says. “I mean, they’re probably not born with enough cousin blood in them. They’d be part of a . . . I’m not sure what to call them. There’s this group of men—Yaqui and Kikimi, some Mexicans—who drink mescal tea and meditate until they can slip their human bodies and rise up on hawk wings. We call them
mescaleros
—or just the uncles.”

“So you can sense the difference between regular people and . . . um, animal people?”

He shakes his head. “No. Though everybody’s supposed to have some faint trace of the old animal blood in them.”

“Then how did you know those hawks were . . . what did you call them?”

“
Mescaleros
. And I didn’t. I just give that greeting to any red-tailed hawk I see out here in the desert.” He grins and adds, “Don’t look so disappointed. Look around you. The world’s still full of magic.”

We’ve come off the mountain as we were talking and are walking along a ridge about the width of a country road. The ground drops suddenly on either side and the view is stunning. On the right, the Hierro Maderas march into the distant horizon. On the left, the valley holding Santo del Vado Viejo is spread out like a Navajo blanket displaying jewelry.

I stand there for a long moment, mesmerized by the view. I have never in my life seen anything like this. We’re so high up that turkey buzzards are circling below us. I think of sharks, drifting deep under the ocean’s surface, then remember what Rosalie told me. I turn to Ramon.

“Rosalie says this was all an ocean once,” I say.

Ramon nods his head. “That was long, long ago.” His voice is no more than a thoughtful murmur. “But I’ll tell you, sometimes when I’m walking down there in the desert, I think I hear waves and the songs of the fossilized fish, slowed down by the weight of stone and dirt and time, but an echo’s still there.” He shoots me a quick look before he adds, “Once when I was hiking up a dry wash south of the city, I swear I saw the ghost of a giant longfin dace swimming away from me.”

Then he laughs. “You must think I’m a complete space cadet.”

“No, I think it’s cool.”

He lifts an eyebrow.

“Seriously,” I tell him. “Like I said, my grandmother’s always saying how everything’s connected. All of us on this world. And the past and the present, too.”

“That’s what the Kikimi say, too. They don’t have words for ‘past’ or ‘future’ or ‘now.’ According to them, it all happens at the same time.”

“You mentioned them before. Who are they?”

“The local Natives. They got relocated to a rez north of where we are right now, but they used to live all along the banks of the San Pedro.”

“Which is a river with no water.”

Ramon smiles. “Wait till the rainy season. It runs so high then that we often get some serious flooding.”

“That’s what Rosalie told me.”

“Stick around long enough,” he says, “and you’ll see.” He hefts his backpack and swings it onto his shoulders. “We should get a move on. You’re going to love this next view, but it’ll still take us a while to get up to it.”

He points to a peak that doesn’t seem so far away, but I’ve already learned how deceptive distance can be. It looks like it’s maybe a fifteen-minute hike, so that means it’ll probably take a couple of hours.

“You coming?” Ramon asks.

I realize I’ve been daydreaming. Giving him a quick nod, I trot over to fall in step with him as we follow the contour of the ridge to where the land starts to rise again.

“I can see Rosie’s pretty fond of you,” he says after we’ve been climbing for awhile.

“We’re just friends,” I tell him. “Really.”

He laughs. “I know that. Rosie and me, we’re tight. I don’t have any worries there.” He waits a moment, looking away to the horizon before turning back to me. “But I get the sense she’s . . . disappointed in you.”

I sigh.

“You don’t want to talk about it, that’s cool,” he says.

“It’s not that. It’s just . . . she thinks I can get rid of El Tigre. That I can get rid of all the
bandas
.”

His eyebrows go up in surprise, but all he says is, “Can you?”

“No. I don’t know. It’s hard to explain.”

He waits, but while I like him, I’m not about to start talking about dragons.

“Well,” he says when he realizes I’m not going to continue. “You ever decide to give it a shot, you can count me in. I hate those freaks.”

See, that’s the way he is. That’s what makes him so cool. Something comes up and he just makes the decision. He does the right thing without having to think about it. I wish I could be like that, but I don’t even have the first clue about what the right thing is that I should be doing.

We walk awhile longer in silence until finally I have to ask: “Aren’t you even curious how a kid is supposed to be able to shut down a gangster and all his
bandas
? Because I sure am.”

Ramon shakes his head. “If Rosie thinks you can do it, then I do, too. I’m guessing you’re just not ready yet.”

“How are you supposed to get ready for something like that?”

“Beats me. I’m just a musician—what the hell do I know?”

It’s a couple of hours later before we reach the vantage point that Ramon wanted to show me. The air feels thin up here, but it’s so damn clean it doesn’t matter. I can’t remember ever tasting air this clean. We’re on the very top of the sky, away from all the pollution and crap, and every breath I take feels like it’s purifying me. And the view . . . if the view from the ridge was something, this one’s almost impossible to take in. We have the mountain at our back, while in front of us, its brothers and sisters spread off into the horizon, tall and majestic, with a sky above that’s so big it doesn’t have an end.

“Isn’t this the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen?” Ramon asks.

I stand there mesmerized. He’s right. It’s totally amazing. But the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen? There’s another picture in my head, but I’m not about to tell Ramon what it is.

“Okay, give,” he says. “I can tell you don’t agree. Tell me one thing you’d rather be looking at.”

I shake my head.

“No, this pretty much beats any view I’ve ever seen before,” I tell him.

“Except for . . .”

“Give it a rest,” I say with a smile.

“Nope. Not until you tell me. Because if you know something better than this, I want to go see it.”

“You’re going to think it’s stupid.”

“No, I won’t.”

I sigh. “Okay. How about every time I look at Anna?”

I can’t look at him. It’s worse when he laughs. But then he punches me on the shoulder and I know he’s not laughing at me. He’s not laughing
with
me—because I’m not laughing—but at least he’s not laughing at me.

“If you feel that way,” he says, “why don’t you do something about it? Ask her out, man.”

“No. She’s totally not into me that way. It’s . . .” I hesitate, then give a mental shrug. “It’s got to do with this whole business of how I’m supposed to be able to take down the
bandas
and clean everything up.”

He gives a slow nod. “I can see how she’d want that. You know her brother was killed by the
bandas
, right? She’d want to see them go down more than any of us.”

“It’s not that she thinks I can do it,” I tell him. “It’s that she thinks it’s all bullshit. Or if it’s not bullshit, then it freaks her out.”

“What are you talking about?”

“It’s . . . I don’t . . . oh, hell.”

I sit down on a rock. The landscape frees me. Staring out at the vast display of the mountains, I can tell him the whole thing. About Paupau, the mark of the dragon appearing on my back, what happened when I first got here, meeting with El Tigre, everything.

He sits down beside me and doesn’t interrupt.

“Is that why Anna calls you the Painted Boy?” he says when I’m done.

“Yeah, it’s really ha-ha.”

He gets more serious. “So you don’t think you’re ready?”

“Ready? I wouldn’t know where to start.” I study him for a moment before I add, “How come you believe me?”

“I didn’t say that I did.”

“But you’re not calling me out on it.”

He shrugs. “What would be the point? I know there’s weird crap in the world.” He smiles. “You know, like the
mescaleros
and the ghosts of long-dead fish. But whether I believe it or I don’t, that doesn’t change the fact that you’ve got to deal with it.”

Like I said, how can you not want a guy like this for a friend?

“So there’s that,” he goes on, “and I can’t do anything about it, but Anna . . . come on, man. Have you told her how you feel?”

“I never get the chance. She always makes sure we’re in a big group where I can’t even start.”

He laughs. “Yeah, I can see her doing that.”

“And besides, just look at her. She’s way too cool for a guy like me.”

“Bullshit. Yeah, she’s all glam onstage, but that’s not who she is. Or it’s only part of who she is.”

“Maybe. But when she
is
on that stage . . .”

“Let me tell you,” he says. “She’s serious about the music and she’s no showboat. She listens to what’s happening around her and serves the song. Sure, when it’s her turn to step up for a solo she lets it all out, but that doesn’t make her too cool or special—not the way you’re thinking.”

He stops for a moment, then goes on, “Let me put it another way. People think we’re special up there on the stage, but we’re the same as everyone else. What makes us different is only that we get up there and play out our dreams. Do you get what I’m saying?”

“I guess. . . .”

“Because if your dream is to be the damn best car mechanic or plumber, and you work at it every day, then you’re special, too.”

“Easy to say.”

He shakes his head. “I’m serious, man. You have the balls to follow your dreams and you’re living the beautiful life.”

“Which makes me . . .”

He laughs. “Well, I don’t know about all this dragon crap, but you’re one damn fine cook.”

I don’t say anything, but he won’t let it go.

“And that means,” he says, “that you’re cool enough for her. But you’ve got to tell her how you feel. You can’t write the movie in your head and then get pissed off because she’s not following the script. Or maybe she’s following it too well, considering you already wrote the bummer ending.”

“You make it sound easy.”

He shakes his head. “Laying your heart out there is never easy, man. Doesn’t matter if it’s getting up onstage or telling somebody how you feel. Maybe you’re going to blow it. Maybe you’re going to get hurt. But you can’t not try. What the hell kind of way is that to live?”

“Safe,” I say.

“Unhappy,” he corrects me.

I nod. “Okay. I get it.”

“So maybe she’ll shoot you down,” he says, “and you’re still going to be bummed. But maybe you’ll hit the jack-pot.”

“How’s that?”

“Maybe she’ll say, ‘Sure, let’s do something together.’”

“Maybe,” I say and we leave it at that.

The rest of the day we just talk about how it was growing up—me in Chinatown, him in the barrio—and he tells me about the land. What the plants are called, what they’re good for. The wildlife. Names the birds we see. I saw a lot of this stuff in the little guidebook I read on the bus coming down, but seeing it up close makes it real like a book never could.

By the time we get back to Tío’s house I’m glowing from both a bit too much sun and the great time I had. That night I sleep deeply and dream I’m back in those mountains, but this time I’m like one of the
mescaleros
that Ramon was telling me about. I’m riding the winds high in the thin, cool air, sailing effortlessly above the peaks. When I wake, I can’t remember if my wings were a hawk’s or a dragon’s.