The Sixteen Burdens (29 page)

C
HAPTER
F
ORTY
-O
NE

P
ANCHITO
TOOK
THE
glass ornaments off their small Christmas tree. It was a dry and brittle carcass, a better reminder of death than of life.

The ornaments were delicate bulbs and stars, hand-painted red, green, and silver. Elsie took them from him and placed them in a box laden with tissue. They worked in silence.

Elsie was wearing a turquoise dress borrowed from Panchito’s grandmother, and it was so large on her she had to bunch most of it up one side and tie it with a ribbon.

“Why don’t you lie back down,” Panchito offered.

“I’m fine,” Elsie said. “Feeling better by the moment.”

Panchito felt uncomfortable around Elsie. At least when Gray was around the two were usually squabbling about something, and Panchito didn’t have to think about things like making conversation.

He had grown up with all adults—his grandmother, Pickford, Chaplin, Fairbanks. He was used to being the only youth, was used to being told that he was the future of the great talents. In his mind, he’d be like Superman, a solitary hero scouring the city for people to help. He hadn’t considered sharing that future with others.

“Do you think you have a purpose?” Panchito asked.

Elsie was packing a string of tinsel in an old box of Sunshine Krispy Crackers.

“Hm?”

“Mr. Chaplin says we have our talents for a purpose. That we find ourselves in this place and time for a reason.”

Elsie set the box down.

“If I do, I think it’s Gray,” she said. “I don’t know how exactly, or even why. But I have the feeling that our purpose is with him. That’s why we all ended up here, in this city. You called him a damsel in distress, and I think there’s something to that. He needs our help, no matter how much he tries to push us away.”

Panchito had considered Gray little more than a chore assigned to him by Pickford. Maybe he was wrong.

“And you?” Elsie asked. “What’s your purpose?”

“Avenging my father,” Panchito said. “At least, that’s always what I’ve thought. It’s what I’ve been planning for.”

It’s all I have.

Panchito believed that Jesús Herrera didn’t kill Pancho Villa. The man had no reason to lie; in fact, it would damage his reputation as a ruthless leader to let the secret out. So Panchito found himself with no person to focus his anger on, no one to obsess about and plot against. And if he didn’t have that, what did he have?

His purpose in life had been defined by what he was against.

But what am I for?

Panchito handed Elsie the last ornament. She wrapped it in tissue and put the lid on the cardboard box. Panchito opened an old storage trunk to pack them away, removing a stack of paperwork and old photos to make room.

Elsie spotted the pile of photos wrapped in string and picked them up.

“Are these of your family?”

Panchito nodded.

“I learned a little about Pancho Villa,” Elsie said. “I saw him on some old newsreels.”

“He came to Hollywood and struck a deal with some producers to film his battles,” Panchito said. “The agreement helped fund the Revolution. That’s how he met Mr. Chaplin.”

Elsie shuffled through the photos. Some were of their expansive hacienda, an oasis amid a starkly beautiful desert. Panchito had only the vaguest memories of it. She stopped at a photo of his father, sitting atop his horse with a giant sombrero and an ammunition belt slung over his shoulder. 

“I haven’t seen that photo in years,” Panchito said. “It used to be in a frame.”

Villa balanced a rifle in one hand and a toddler in the other: the fighter and the father.

“He looked fearless,” she said.

“He was known as
la cucaracha
—the cockroach. It’s because he was so hard to kill.”

“Who’s the child?” Elsie asked.

“I’m not sure,” he said. “My father had many mistresses. Abuelita!”

Panchito took the photo into the kitchen, where his grandmother was boiling coffee in a percolator. He pointed to the toddler in Pancho Villa’s arm.

“
Quién es?
”

Abuelita saw the photo and snatched it from his hands. She stuck it into the flame of the stove and began burning it before Panchito thought to prevent her.

“Stop! Abuelita, what are you doing?”

When he stepped toward the photo she put her hand firmly against his chest until the photo was nothing but ashes. There were already so few pictures of his father, Panchito couldn’t understand why his grandmother would destroy one of them.

“Why did you do that?
Por qué?
”

She turned her head away and waved her hands in the air, clearly upset. But before Panchito could press her further, there was a loud rapping knock at the door.

“It’s Lulu!” the little girl shouted from the other side.

Panchito returned to the living room as Elsie opened the door. Lulu sped through, then turned back to the open door.

“
Ta-da
!”

They heard steps outside and then, slowly, a sweaty and bedraggled Gray appeared.

“I told you to slow down,” he said to Lulu.

“I did!”

Gray walked into the apartment, dressed in an orphan’s uniform—secondhand clothes that were dull and ill-fitting.

Panchito watched Gray and Elsie beam at each other. A goofy grin sprung from Gray’s face like a jack-in-the-box. He quickly stuffed it back down.

“You’re awake, dollface,” Gray said.

“Don’t call me that,” Elsie said, but she was smiling.

“Do you think you’ll be OK?”

She nodded.

“I think so. I have bouts of dizziness, but it’s been getting better.”

Gray turned to Panchito. He cleared his throat a few times and his eyes kept drifting toward the floor.

“Do what you want with the Eye,” Gray said. “But you can’t meet with Atlas. It’s a trap. He means to kill you all. To take all of your powers.”

There was an apology somewhere in there, even if Gray hadn’t said the words. It was good enough. Panchito pulled the Eye from around his neck and put it on the coffee table.

“Then we’ll destroy it.”

“What about your plans to avenge your father?”

Panchito couldn’t spend the rest of his life trying to restore Pancho Villa’s honor. If he did, he would remain stuck in the past, like that photo. Maybe it was just as well that Abuelita burned it.

Someday he would seek out his father’s killer, but for now he had to invest in the people around him who mattered, the ones who needed him.

“The eagle doesn’t waste time hunting flies.”

Panchito thrust the Eye across the table to Gray.

“Let’s do whatever it takes to save Mrs. Pickford,” Panchito said.

Gray took the Eye in his hand.

“I have an idea. It’s going to take all of us.”

“I’m in,” Panchito said without hesitation.

“Me too!” Lulu shouted.

“We’ll see about that,” Elsie said to her. “You can count on me as well.”

“What about Chaplin?” Panchito asked. “Are we going to try to free him?”

Gray’s face became suddenly ashen. For a moment he seemed unable to speak. When he opened his mouth, it was as if he couldn’t get the words to come out.

“I have some bad news,” he finally said.

C
HAPTER
F
ORTY
-T
WO

T
HE
NEXT
TWENTY
-four hours were a riptide of grief, out of which Gray couldn’t pull himself. Elsie picked up on everyone’s sorrow and, combined with her own, it created a powerful cocktail of despair. She would unintentionally pulse everyone with sadness, making them even sadder, which she then picked up on again. It was a vicious cycle, a cyclone of anguish they were unable to escape throughout the long night.

When nothing improved by the next morning, Gray did what he did best: He put up his walls and blocked out Elsie’s emotion. The sadness closed in on him from all sides, but he held it back long enough to get everyone except Elsie out of the apartment. She needed to be alone so that she could calm and compose herself.

Panchito went downstairs to clean up from the fire and salvage cookware. Abuelita agreed to take Lulu to see
Susannah of the Mounties
, the latest Shirley Temple film. That left Gray free for the errand he was dreading.

Gray had broken out of Elsie’s cycle of sadness by thinking of Farrell, by drawing up angry memories of the man’s condescending expressions, his nasal voice, his cloying smell, the endless cocktails.

And that’s when it had struck him.

He arrived at the Emory Partridge Home for Boys, found the kitchen door unlocked, and walked in, stopping by the pantry. It wasn’t yet lunchtime, so the boys were still at work in the printing room. Gray slunk up the steps to Farrell’s private loft space. He found the man there in a plush leather armchair, a Bloody Mary in one hand, flipping through the
Saturday Evening Post
with the other.

If Farrell felt surprised to see Gray back, he played it cool.

“I knew you’d be back,” Farrell said. “There’s nothing out there for a diseased creature like you.”

Gray walked up to Farrell face to face, close enough to make his skin crawl. He stared into the man’s eyes.

“You look healthy as a horse,” Gray said.

“I’ve been out with a dreadful flu. Not that
you
would care.”

Gray removed Newton’s Eye from his pocket. He held it up.

“I need you to make a replica of this. Immediately.”

Farrell looked at the Eye, then at Gray.

“Me? I’m no woodworker. What makes you think I
can
?”

“It’s easy,” Gray said, “You just need to sand down a block of wood to the right shape and hollow it out. The brass rings on each end should be simple enough. You’ll need something for the glass insets, but a pair of eyeglass lenses should work.”

Gray stared pointedly at the thick, heavy eyeglasses on the nightstand.

“I think you
can
,” Gray said, “because it’s no different from making a wooden toy, and you’re the best toymaker there is.”

He tossed the Eye to Farrell. It landed in his lap. There was no danger of him using it, and he didn’t understand its value.

Farrell shifted uncomfortably, a man caught red-handed.

“Even if I
could
,” Farrell said. “What makes you think I
would
?”

Gray removed from his pocket the full bottle of Worcestershire sauce he had snagged on his way in, the one he almost knocked over yesterday. The one that had been empty the previous night.

“This is why you
would
.”

He smashed the bottle on the ground. The sauce was thick, shiny, and dripping in the wrong direction. The bulk of it splattered upward and hit the ceiling.

Farrell leapt to the floor, cutting his hands and tongue on broken glass as he desperately tried to lick up whatever liquid remained. When it was gone, he looked up, eyes as wild as a morphine addict. Gray’s stomach turned.

“You have forty-eight hours,
Mr. Partridge
.”

By the time he got back to Olvera Street, Panchito had come back upstairs and Elsie seemed stable. The two were playing an uninspired game of race horse rummy.

“Where were you?” Elsie asked.

Gray sat down.

“Have you ever seen the
Maltese Falcon
?”

He shared the idea he had gotten while visiting Howard Hughes. If the replica was good enough, it could be the key to rescuing Pickford.

“I don’t mean to be the wet blanket,” Elsie said, “but how do we know she’s still alive? There’s no point in risking our lives if she’s dead.”

Gray had been pondering this for some time.

“I got a way I think we can tell,” he said. “I gotta make a trip to the hospital.”

Panchito and Elsie exchanged a look.

“Sorry,” Gray said. “I mean
we
gotta make a trip to the hospital.”

“That’s better,” Elsie said.

Panchito left a note for his grandmother and the three hopped a bus to the Los Angeles County General Hospital. It was northeast of Downtown, across the river on a low hill.

“Who are we visiting?” Elsie asked as they got off the bus.

“Pickford’s driver,” Gray said. “He’s handsome.”

Elsie raised a mocking eyebrow.

“Handsome?” she teased.

Up close the hospital was a concrete monster, a monolith with narrow windows, like arrow slits in a castle battlement.
They asked directions at the front desk but were told by a nurse that patient information was confidential. So they found a doctor with a clipboard, which Panchito thrust out of his hands. Gray picked up the clipboard and scanned the names while Elsie calmed the doctor’s suspicions.

“There’s only one Edward on that list,” Gray said, after the doctor left. “He’s in a private room six floors up.”

Minutes later they were in front of the room, looking inside. Gray saw the feet of a man sticking out from a bed, but he was surrounded by five nurses, who were all hunched over him.

We’re too late.

Gray ran up and muscled his way in-between two of the women. Edward was sitting up in bed, very much alive. He had a bandage on one side of his head but he looked fine otherwise. Gray saw beams of energy shooting from his face.

“So I hit him square on the nose,” Edward was saying, “but not before another one jumped through the passenger window and cracked me on the head. I was in a coma for a week.”

The nurses all
ooh’ed
and
ahh’ed
. Edward caught sight of Gray. The smile dropped from his face.

“Ladies, you must be sick of this story. I tell it twenty times a day.”

“We’d never get sick of your stories!” said a small, mousy nurse.

“Tell it to us again,” a plump nurse said.

“I need some rest. Go do some work or something.”

The nurses just stood there.

“Go on! Get!”

Edward shooed them as if they were sheep getting sent out to pasture. He waited until they had all left the room before turning to Gray.

“Atlas got her, didn’t he?”

Gray nodded.

“You’re supposed to be on the other side of the country,” Edward said.

Gray shrugged.

“I’m taking the scenic route.”

Elsie and Panchito entered the room. Elsie walked straight up to the bed and stared at Edward with big, vapid eyes like the zombies in that movie they had watched at Chaplin’s.

“Hello, I’m Elsie Avery.”

She held out her hand, but Edward pushed it away.

“Oh, please. I could be your grandfather.”

Gray looked at Elsie. She had melted for him, fast as an ice cream cone during a heat wave.

“Elsie, look away,” Gray said.

But Elsie continued to ogle the man’s dimpled chin as if she’d never seen one before.

“She used the Eye on you, didn’t she?” Gray asked.

Edward nodded.

“I was her first experiment. A few years back.”

“You’re Edward!” Panchito exclaimed, as if seeing him for the first time. “I thought she got a new driver. I thought you died!”

Edward stiffened at the remark.

“I’m only fifty-eight.”

“Yeah, but, come on. You used to look pretty bad.”

“I wasn’t that bad.”

Panchito raised his brow skeptically.

Elsie rested her elbows on the bed.

“You should be a movie star.”

Gray grabbed her arm and pulled her off.

“I could have,” Edward said. “But I stayed loyal to Mrs. Pickford. Is she hurt?”

“She’s alive,” Gray said.

“How do you know?” Panchito asked.

Gray pointed to Edward’s face.

“I can see his energy,” Gray said. “But it’s not really his. When Lulu and I went to see Howard Hughes, he saw part of you in Lulu, as if a fraction of your talent had overlaid hers.”

“Yuck,” Panchito said.

“If Atlas had given Mrs. Pickford the kiss off, I’m pretty sure every person she gave her talent to would revert back to their original state. Meaning, Edward here would be ugly. Sorry Edward.”

Edward touched his smooth face, as if to assure himself it was still there. At that moment, Gray saw the rays of energy flicker, and for a split second Gray had a glimpse of the original Edward, a haggard man with a weathered, wrinkled face. His energy was fading.

“We have to hurry,” Gray said. “I think she’s dying.”