The Tower of Il Serrohe (44 page)

“
I don’t blame them. Except I’ve got a better reason.”

At this point her deadly calm voice started to crescendo into shrieking, reminiscent of a banshee being reamed out with a red-hot poker.

“
Why couldn’t you tell me you got in with the wrong crowd, did some drugs, and then tried to get away before they gang raped you or something? What’s wrong with that? I can believe that! But this stupid fantasy story shit—”

“
It’s not fantasy story shit! You know I don’t like fantasy unless it’s Anglo-Saxon or Medieval. It’s all true. I can’t lie to you; you would have known I was making shit up. Can’t you tell I’m telling the truth?”

She was at a loss for words. “You’re right, you really believe this. You’re crazy. And you want me to take the blame for it. Calling me in the middle of the fu—”

“
I had no one else to call. My little friends in Valle Abajo can’t do shit for me
here!
”

“
And I can?”

Don let her screech slowly reverberate into silence. The quiet was so complete after all their yelling and shrieking, it seemed as if they were in a vacuum.

“
You got me out of that prison. But you can’t get me out of the fix I’m in. I just
wish
it were a fantasy. But I don’t know. I wish I were crazy. I wish it were what you said about drugs and getting in with the wrong crowd.
That
I could handle. But I can’t handle the responsibility for those people back there, wherever it is. Right now, I feel them worrying: ‘What happened to Don? Is he coming back? What about the Soreyes? Will he help us? What is going to become of us?’”

Another long silence. Evidently, she was unable to form a thought to respond to this man who used to be her worthless drunkard husband, but was now stark, raving crazy.

Don broke the silence. “It’s not your fault. I don’t know. I just want to go back a year. Hell, ten years, when I had a social drink or two on the weekend. When we still loved and respected each other. But even without that, I only want my job, my students, a few friends, and an occasional beer or glass of wine. That’s all.”

Spent, he sat there.

Finally, something coherent occurred to Bess. “Where the hell am I supposed to be taking you, anyway?”

sixty six

Don watched the taillights of her car recede as clouds of dust obscured their points of red in the gray dawn and disappear as she reached the highway and headed north, sleaze-ball pulling in behind her. He turned to look at the Casita, wondering if he dared enter.

He did, half-expecting that damned bat to be hanging upside down in the corner ready to deliver a combination lecture and pep talk. There was nothing, just the still life of his rumpled bed and a few pathetic possessions scattered about.

He collapsed on his bed and, once again, slept as if he were dead until past four o’clock the next afternoon.

Getting up, he drug himself around the small interior of the Casita discovering he had few edibles in the tiny refrigerator, a quart of milk that was slightly tart being past its “sell by” date. No beer.

He dressed in clothes less wrinkled and stained than the old work clothes Bess had found in their garage. He didn’t want to look like a
homeless
drunk.

The Fairmont started right up, and he headed for the nearest package liquor store north of Rio Luna. Not planning any more trips, he bought a 30-pack, good for a couple of days.

Not one to be squeamish about certain accepted patterns or practices, he poured the warm beer into a large mug filled with ice cubes.
No need to be a British barbarian and drink warm beer, and who cares about a few ounces of melted cold water, anyway?

“
Not me,” he said to no one present.

It took only about five and a half beers to give the world a pleasant, distant fuzziness. The brief stint in jail and the overwhelming events in the Valle Abajo were like vaguely recalled scenes from a movie about somebody else. However, the unresolved issue of whether the last several days had been hallucination or real kept nagging him.

I’ve always toyed with the philosophical construct that everything outside of my mind is just a dream provided for my amusement and distraction. Only I exist and everything and everyone else does not. It could be I’m the only conscious being in the universe; if so, I would go crazy if I just existed in infinite nothingness. Or maybe God is having a lark with me, throwing things my way like Bess and her shenanigans, my days of growing up with Dear Old Dad, and this alternate universe/Valle Abajo thing.

Wonder if I’ve passed the test yet. I always want to do well on tests and public discussions whether in front of my classes, my colleagues at school, or wherever. Which means I didn’t do so well in that final short scene in Il Mote. I really didn’t want to hurt or disappoint them, but one can only kid oneself so much. And then…

And then, what? Don couldn’t shake the deep dread that it was real rather than a hallucination. Easy to excuse one’s behavior in a delirium, not so easy to excuse bad behavior if it
was
real.

Much as I don’t want to, maybe it’s time to pay a visit to Dear Old Dad. It’s been months; I’m pleasantly drunk, so I can stand it for a while.

No need to call ahead. His father, Joe, was not known to spend much time in bars late at night. Only long enough to have a couple of social drinks, rustle up a quick game of pool to earn enough money for a cold twelve pack, and head home for serious-sitting-in-the-dark drinking to end the day.

It was past nine o’clock, so he would be home now, starting his second beer of the twelve-pack. Don made his way to the Fairmont and planned how he could make it on all dirt roads to his dad’s place in Albuquerque’s South Valley. He could do it with only one short stretch of highway between here and a dirt road on the Isleta reservation.

It was still DWI if he got caught on a dirt road, but somehow, he had the half-drunk self-delusion it was safer going slow on dirt roads on a weeknight. He drove at a steady speed arriving in a half-hour at his father’s three room shack situated on a couple of acres of land owned by a cousin.

Here we are, living in sub-standard shacks. Like father, like son.

Not wanting to scare the old bastard, Don called out as he approached the door, which, even in the darkness, looked battered with worn-out multiple coats of paint.

“
Joe? It’s Don, your son. Dad? You home?”

There was an incautious rattling of a chair as it scooted over a wooden floor and the sound of someone bumping into a metal cabinet. The door creaked open about four inches.

“
Don? You little son of a bitch, what are you doing here? I’m right in the middle of something—”

“
Yeah, I was too, but I thought you might want some company finishing off the twelve-pack. And I’m not a ‘son of a bitch,’ I’m the son of a bastard!”

Joe emitted a raspy, beer soaked laugh. “¿Tu eres el intelegente? Yeah, I forget your mother was a fairly decent woman. Too bad you didn’t know her. Entre.”

The door opened wider as a feeble yellow light came on from somewhere in the cave-like interior. Don walked in bracing himself for the odors of stale beer and sweet-sour farts the result of beer, refried beans, and green chile.

“
Geeze, Dad, couldn’t you leave a window open?”

“
Why should I? The smell of my own farts doesn’t bother me. Vete a la casa si no te gusta.”

“
Yeah, well, I’ll get used to it, so I’ll stay for now. Besides, I’ve got news.”

“
Oh? ¿Que Paso?”

“
Bess kicked me out.”

“
About time she woke up and vi que perdedor te has hecho. How she could stand some smartsy-fartsy college
pro
fessor, I have no idea.” He laughed, almost choking, which called for a healthy draught of beer.

“
Oh sure, you’re so damned smart, you can’t keep a woman long enough to get her in bed any more, so don’t get too high and mighty,
Father
.”

“
Mierda consigo lo que necesita cuando lo necesita. I’ve been married three times and had girlfriends beyond count. You’re just getting started. Right now, I’m between women. Need to conserve my strength and build up my resources. That last woman nearly dried my balls up. Yo cree que nunca se hallara satisfecha. I’m better off without her or any other woman right now. But…” Another beery laugh and burp punctuated his determination to return to full potency.

“
What a crock of shit. I know from experience that the more beer, the less ‘getting it up,’
Father.
”

“
Yeah, maybe for prissy
pro
fessors like you. Es un marravila que no estas sin verga. Anyway, you came to drown your sorrows and get a little compassion from your father. So what happened, and how can I be of service?”

Don’s loud laughter continued until it became hysterical. He knew his father was being terribly ironic, but it sounded so sincere a bystander would take it as an honest fatherly offer.

“
You’re good, Dad. I gotta hand it to you. I don’t want to talk about Bess anyway. I’m dealing with it. What I want to know is more about my mother and great-grandmother, Teresa.”

“
Teresa? ¿Esa bruja viega? What for? Getting all sentimental about your roots or what? You never knew her, count yourself lucky.”

“
I’d like to know a few things, not a full family history.”

“
Bueno, shoot, though I can’t remember much about her. About your mother, I can tell you more. Aqua hasta to ofreso una cervesa.”

“
What took you so long, Dad? You must remember your manners.”

Joe barely strained himself to pull a can of beer from the twelve-pack and hand it over to Don. “So, go ahead, what do you want to know?”

“
What was great-grandmother Teresa like?”

“
She was pretty demanding. She wanted to be sure I measured up before I married her precious granddaughter. I had to put on a few airs around her: you know, be polite, don’t drink in front of her, manners, Todo esa mierda. I wanted your mother so badly, I went along. But after a while, when we were married, that old bag got bossy.”

“
But other than that? What did she do besides raising kids?”

“
Oh, bueno. She was a curandera. A lot of the old folks thought she had magical powers—”

“
Really? Why did they think that?”

“
Hell, I don’t know. All I know was she was muy bien con yerbas y teas. She could cure almost anything except…” he held up his beer and chuckled. Joe closed his eyes and leaned back in his chair causing it to groan and creak so much Don thought it might disintegrate, leaving Joe flat on his back.

“
Anything else? Any weird stories about her and her… travels?”

“
Travels? Shit, she was a poor woman unless you count all the pollos, frijoles, chile y papas the village folks gave her in payment for her services. It wasn’t like today. Now, she could set up an operation in some kind of folk medicine clinic and hacer una matanza.” Joe chuckled to himself thinking about lost opportunities to make some real money.

Don thought about this.
OK
, I’ve had too much to drink to be doing this, got to keep my cards close to my chest.

“
Sorry, that wasn’t what I meant. I mean did she go to other places around here?”

Joe frowned thoughtfully. “No. Well, once her husband got that old Model A pick-up, she learned to drive it, so she could visit her ‘patients’ whenever she wanted.”

“
Dad, I heard she had some little place over on this side of the river north of Rio Luna.”

“
O si. Hell, I’d forgotten about that.” He tapped his head. “A few brain cells have died in the service of beer and a little vino. Yeah. She had this little shithole place in a field right under a big old cottonwood. She called it her little sanctuario. I don’t know why she had it. I understand she had talked her husband into buying it for her as a wedding present. She spent a lot of ‘alone time’ there, even when I knew her.”

“
Interesting.”

Joe looked at Don as if he had just realized he was there. “What in hell is this about? Why all the interest—”

“
I just got to thinking about, well, the past, family, shit like that when I got kicked out of the house. I ended up in this casita over north of Rio Luna. It seemed familiar somehow. I thought of the stories about mom, her sisters, and their mothers… and great-grandmother, Teresa. I think this little place used to be her ‘sanctuario’ as you called it.”

“
How would you even know about it?”

Uh-oh. Now what?

“
Oh… my aunties, Lupita and Shirley Marie. Especially Auntie Lupita
used to talk about Teresa when I would stay with her. You know, while you were ‘sick.’”