Dark Moon Crossing (8 page)

With a gasp of relief, I dislodged myself from the
shrieking clutch of humanity and started back to where Lupe waited. As I
passed one sheriff’s deputy climbing from his patrol car, I said, “Excuse me,
sir, is there another road to get to the Guiding…er…” I coughed away the
remainder of the sentence, regretting that I’d almost given away our covert
destination of the mission. “I mean, is there another way to get to Sasabe
other than this route?‌” I asked, nodding in the direction of the main highway.

He
appraised the situation with the crowd before fixing me with a distracted
frown. “You could take Ruby Road. It connects with another dirt road that
winds through some mighty rough country real close to the border.” He hooked
his thumbs in his belt and looked me up and down. “Personally, I wouldn’t
recommend that you travel it alone.”

I
blew out a sigh of pure frustration. From the first moment I’d decided to
undertake this project, it had been fraught with an unbelievable series of
problems and roadblocks. Was there a message here?‌

“See
that little church over there?‌” he advised, pointing to our right. “Turn left
behind it and take 3
^rd
Street all the way out to the clinic. Make
another left and then a right onto the main road. You’ll intersect with route
286 in about eleven miles. Got it?‌”

“Yes, thanks.” I turned away and suddenly remembered the wandering
bull. I retraced my steps and reported the incident. He didn’t look the least
bit surprised and, in fact, I gathered from his apathetic reaction that it
wasn’t an unusual occurrence. Oh, well. I’d done my duty.

I trotted back to Lupe, who quickly transferred her bag to my trunk and
then locked her car before jumping into the passenger seat next to me. I
didn’t say anything, but thought locking it was a futile effort considering
that the window behind the driver’s seat had a piece of cardboard taped onto it
in place of the window glass.

When we rounded the corner, her features fused into a
motionless mask of alarm. She glared at the protesters and mumbled something
in Spanish.

“What?‌” I asked her.

She slid me an uneasy glance and scrunched low in the
seat. “I was praying to God that we get to the mission without any more
trouble.”

“We’ll be okay now,” I assured her as we left the
teeming mob behind us, crossed the main street and drove behind an
unpretentious white block building that housed the New Life Community Church.
Ah, yes. This was the place where the alien abduction encounter group met.
Contacting and hopefully arranging a meeting with UFOlogist Mazzie La Casse
would be on my list of things to do this evening.

The little cemetery to our left was well kept in
comparison to the series of crumbling brick and adobe houses we passed along
the way, many of which appeared abandoned. There were piles of old cars,
overflowing trash dumpsters, a mashed-in horse trailer, and the constant din of
barking dogs standing stiff-legged in weed and junk-infested back yards.
Grimly, I thought that this was certainly not the initial view of town the
local chamber of commerce would have approved of.

When
the sign reading Arivaca Medical Clinic loomed before us, relief poured through
me. Since we hadn’t seen a single person after leaving the main road, I
allowed my tight shoulders to relax. As we passed the one-story brick
structure, I turned to Lupe with a triumphant grin. “See?‌ Home free. Where
there’s a will, there’s a way, my dad always says.”

Instead
of returning my smile, she stared straight ahead, eyes bulging with horror.
Following her gaze, I thought my heart was going to vault out of my chest.
Dead ahead of us, blocking our entrance to the main road was a bright red Dodge
4x4 pickup with monster tires. Lounging alongside were two young guys dressed
like cowboys, but the three other men sprawled lazily on the tailgate had their
heads shaved smooth as cue balls. Muscle shirts emphasized the blood-red
swastikas tattooed on their chests and arms. All had cigarettes and beers in
hand. Uh-oh.

I stood on the brake while my fevered brain sized up
the scenario in nanoseconds. Five strapping young guys, three of them
skinheads, and lots of empty bottles scattered on the ground. Add two women
alone in a car, one of them Hispanic, and the situation looked pretty dicey. I
swallowed hard, tasting the remains of the Grubstake Special in the back of my
throat.

The daring part of me wanted to climb from the car,
confront them, and demand, ‘Okay, dudes, how about moving this puppy out of my
way,’ but my uneasiness skyrocketed as they stared back at us, their
expressions of good-humored camaraderie slowly turning to menace. When one of
them reached behind and pulled a baseball bat from the truck bed, Lupe screeched,
“Kendall, let’s get out of here!”

I hit the door lock, shoved the car into reverse, but
almost jumped out of my skin when a figure loomed behind us in the rear-view
mirror. I pulled my foot off the gas so fast, the car hopped like a rabbit and
the engine died. Before I knew what was happening, the stranger began pounding
the trunk of my car with his fists. “How many goddamn beaners have you got
stuffed in here, huh?‌” he shouted, following his question with a string of
racial slurs and expletives targeted at Hispanics.

What should I do?‌ Just back over him?‌ My hesitation
cost me. Before I could decide my next move, the others had surrounded the car
like a pack of coyotes encircling their prey.

“Do
something!” Lupe screamed, clawing at my shoulder. “Get us out of here!”

I wanted to, but surprise and fear held me immobile
while two of the guys gleefully poured the remainder of their beers onto my
windshield. With wicked smiles plastered on their youthful faces, they then
proceeded to lick the foam off while the other four pounded on and rocked my
car from side to side. One of the muscle-bound skinheads, with a wild and
dangerous gleam in his eyes, brandished the bat at Lupe and shouted his
intentions to slay all wetback invaders. As her terrified screams grew louder,
in a strange sort of way I felt removed, like I was in a scene from a gang
movie. Above the babble of voices I kept waiting for someone to call, ‘Cut!’
Looking back, I can convince myself that their bluster was mostly for show and
that they never intended any real harm other than to scare the crap out of us.
But, at that moment, I was unsure.

Somehow,
I willed my inert limbs into action and rolled the window down a crack. “You
morons better back off! I’m calling the sheriff right now!” With trembling
hands, I fumbled in my purse for my cell phone and made certain the guy in the
black Stetson with his face squashed grotesquely against my window, saw me dial
911. They couldn’t know that the ‘no service’ message was still blinking.
Goddamn worthless device.

One of them shouted a warning to the others and they
tossed the beer bottles into the air and sprinted for the truck. Hooting and
hollering like cowboys at a rodeo, they piled into it and shook their clenched
fists at us before disappearing around the corner in a cloud of dust.

In the breathless silence following their dramatic
exit, Lupe and I exchanged a look of stunned horror. It took several minutes
for me to regain my composure and, as my erratic breathing and thundering
heartbeat began to subside, it was not lost on me that my association with Lupe
had now made me a target of the animosity that prevailed in this highly-charged
atmosphere. Word spread swiftly in small close-knit communities. There was no
question that inquiries on my part regarding the disappearance of her relatives
would place me on the wrong side of prevailing sentiment. This latest
demonstration of hostility was unlike anything I’d ever experienced before in
my life and it shook me to the core.

I turned to her. “You okay?‌”

Pasty-faced and visibly shaking, she nodded and spat,
“
Hijos de puta!”

I’d picked up a couple of Spanish phrases in the past
six months and recognized this one as highly uncomplimentary. For Lupe, who
rarely swore, it revealed her extreme distress. And who could blame her?‌
“Still want to stay?‌” I asked, thinking that we’d already wasted almost two
precious hours of our short trip. “Or should we get the hell out of here
now?‌”

She pressed fingertips to her eyelids for a few
seconds then said with a catch in her voice, “I can’t. I can’t leave until I
find out what happened to Gilberto.” She paused and turned to face me, her
eyes glistening with unshed tears. “But…I also don’t want you to have any more
trouble with these…stupid bigots. I was wrong to bring you down here into this
awful situation.”

It was indeed awful, and I had a feeling things could
get even worse, but I had no intention of breaking my promise to her. There
was no point in dwelling any longer on the incident, so I started the engine
and turned onto the main road. We traveled in glum silence for a few miles and
then in a move designed to lighten the mood, I flashed her a playful grin. “Why
do you suppose these guys all want to look like Humpty-Dumpty?‌”

Her
mouth sagged open. “Who?‌”

“Humpty-Dumpty.
You know. The shaved head thing?‌ It’s supposed to be intimidating, but I
think they look kind of silly, don’t you agree?‌”

She
seemed to be thinking it over and finally edged me a sly look. “The big guy,
the one that looked like a moose?‌ I especially liked the earrings he was
wearing, didn’t you?‌”

“Loved
‘em.” It was heartening to see the tense lines around her mouth relax. The
rest of the trip to Sasabe was uneventful. Pushed by the steady wind, the
milky glaze of clouds that had coated the sky all day was breaking up into lacy
puffs of white. As we skimmed along the recently patched two-lane road, a
bright golden nugget of late afternoon sunlight peeked through and I felt my
spirits lifting. When we swung onto Route 286, I wondered if the craggy
collection of tilted buttes to the south of us lay in Mexico. We couldn’t be
too far from the border at this point. Several large yellow signs announced
that we were entering the Buena Vista Wildlife Refuge and a smaller one
advertised that the Rancho de la Osa Guest Ranch was only a few miles ahead.

“What
does
osa
mean?‌” I asked Lupe.

“Bear,”
she answered in a distracted tone. We’d only traveled another mile when she
shouted, “There!” Pointing towards a strange-looking fence constructed of
stones and old truck tires, she directed, “Turn right on that dirt road. The
mission is maybe half a mile from here.”

As we buzzed over a cattle guard and headed towards
the foothills to the west, my stomach growled. How could I be hungry again so
soon?‌ Was it the pristine air and wide-open spaces, or perhaps being removed
from all the daily pressures of work?‌ Whatever the reason, I found myself
wondering where we were going to find dinner out here in the middle of nowhere.
I had a few sodas and apples in the cooler, but that wasn’t going to cut it.

“Is
there a place in Sasabe to eat?‌” I asked Lupe, carefully avoiding the carcass
of a dead skunk lying in the middle of the road. The lingering stench of its
perfume had us pinching our nostrils for a few seconds as we crept past.

She
turned to me, looking uncertain. “I don’t know. The last two times I was here
the Sister was kind enough to let me eat in the kitchen with some of
her…guests.”

I
caught her meaningful glance. “Sounds good to me.” I was looking forward to
meeting this woman. And although I had mixed feelings about her questionable
motives in regards to her assistance of undocumented immigrants, I could not
deny that she must possess a heart of gold to risk the possibility of arrest in
order to carry out her convictions.

“There it is,” Lupe announced, pointing towards a
white cross perched on a red-clay roof. It was just barely visible above the
thick fields of ironwood and mesquite. Her pinched expression and tightly
clasped hands conveyed her growing agitation. I could hardly blame her. What
news awaited her?‌ Would this lost child confirm her worst suspicions?‌

I
turned right into a rutted driveway lined with unevenly spaced boulders and got
my first look at the whitewashed walls of the Guiding Light Mission. Enclosed
behind a fence fashioned from the long spiny branches of the Ocotillo cactus,
the simple Spanish-style building, adorned with a gracefully curved bell tower,
stood alone and rather forlorn-looking in the middle of a weed-choked dirt lot
flanked by a few thirsty-looking palo verde trees. But my eyes were drawn to
the rambling house to the right of it. It was painted the brightest, most
garish pink color I’d ever seen. And the paint looked fresh. To our left, the
hulking remains of several abandoned cars of early 70’s vintage lay in a jumble
of trash beside a dilapidated garage that housed a dented brown Bronco. The
only other dwellings were three tiny sun-bleached shacks on the north side of
the church.

I parked the car in front of the wide arched doorway
of the mission and got out. What a godforsaken place to build a church, no pun
intended. There were no other houses in sight and the place looked abandoned.
“Are you sure she’s here?‌” I asked Lupe, as we trudged through the gate.

“She’s
probably in here,” she replied, pulling on the brass handle. The ancient
hinges emitted a grinding squeal as the carved wooden door opened and a draft
of cool air welcomed us inside the sanctuary. It took a few seconds for my
eyes to adjust to the dim light filtering through smudged stained-glass windows
and falling in multi-colored slats over the dark rows of low wooden pews.

“Sister Goldenrod?‌” Lupe’s called out, her voice tentative.

There was no echo and the sound of her words vanished
as they left her lips, almost as if the thick adobe walls had absorbed them.
She called again, but there was no response. Lupe’s brows dipped in concern.
“How strange. She’s knows I’m coming today.”

We backed out the door and I pointed to the garage.
“Is that her Bronco?‌”

“Yes.”

“Well, she’s obviously around here someplace.” I
grinned at her. “Why don’t you check out the Pepto-Bismol house and I’ll look
over by the garage.”

“Okay.”

The strong gusts of wind rushing around the side of
the little church whipped my hair into a tangled mass and stirred up little
puffs of dust behind Lupe as she walked across the sandy parking lot. I took
off towards the garage and spotted another structure behind it that I hadn’t
noticed on the way in. The long one-story building looked as if it might once
have been a stable. There were piles of rubble everywhere, including the
remains of several other dwellings with only the stone chimneys standing. Had
there been a whole community here at one time?‌

As I wandered among the glass and trash-strewn
foundations, the significance of the piles of blackened timber and charred
remnants of furniture penetrated fully. I ran my finger along what looked like
the remains of a mangled steel window frame and it came away blackened with the
sooty evidence that there’d been a fire here and it appeared to have been
fairly recent.

The deep silence surrounding the whole place was
disturbed only by the moan of the incessant wind. I doubled back towards the
garage and followed a pair of rolling tumbleweeds into the three-sided
structure. There had been a fourth wall at one time, but it lay to one side,
collapsed into a heap like giant dry matchsticks. Inside, against one wall,
cardboard boxes of all sizes and shapes were piled high. I stepped closer to
investigate but froze in my tracks when a terse voice behind me ordered, “Stop
right there and turn around real slow!” Cha-chunk! The unmistakable sound of
a shell being chambered turned my insides to mush.

Hardly daring to breathe, I did as the voice bid and
found myself staring down the barrel of a shotgun. To my amazement, the bearer
of the weapon was a pint-sized woman wearing a grimy ball-cap turned backwards
over a haystack of graying blonde hair. Well, who was this?‌ My voice seemed
to have deserted me as I gawked down at her, dumbstruck by her odd appearance.
I had a height advantage of a least a foot, and the situation might have been
comical except the deadly expression in her hazel eyes told me that she meant
business.

“I’ve warned you people about trespassing on church
property,” she growled, aiming the gun right at my nose, “and I damn well meant
it.”

My muscles tensed when she waved the barrel within
inches of my face. Jesus, she had her finger on the trigger. Better say
something, I urged my frozen vocal chords. “Ma’am, if you’ll let me explain….”

“Shut
up!” Her sardonic grin revealed a row of uneven yellowed teeth. “Back to
finish the job, huh?‌ Very clever sending a woman in plain clothes instead of
the usual assortment of thugs. But you’re not fooling me. I know who you
really are.”

I
swallowed the lump of fear clogging my throat. “Who do you think I am?‌”

“Sister Goldenrod! What are you doing?‌” Lupe’s sharp
inquiry and the thud of running footsteps sent a wave of relief pouring through
me. Sister Goldenrod?‌ Not exactly the way I’d pictured her. My brother Pat
would have pronounced her facially challenged, but for me, the combination of
her irregular horse-like features and pudgy body rekindled memories of my
childhood toy Mrs. Potato Head.

The
woman’s gaze flickered to Lupe as she sprinted into the garage, and then swung
back to me. “I caught another one of these damn undercover Border Patrol
agents snooping around here again.” She shoved the barrel against my right
shoulder. “I ought to wing her just to make my point.”

Wide-eyed
with fright, Lupe gasped out, “No, wait! This is Kendall O’Dell. She is my
boss. She’s here to help me find my brother and my uncle.”

The
woman’s bushy charcoal brows, badly in need of plucking, dipped lower. “What
do you mean she’s your boss?‌”

“She’s
the editor. You know, from the newspaper where I work.”

The
woman fired her a look of outrage. “Are you nuts?‌ You brought a goddamned
reporter with you?‌” She grabbed Lupe by the arm and shoved her out the door,
snarling back at me, “You! Don’t move an inch!” Walking with an odd crab-like
gait that rolled her body from side to side, she squired Lupe towards the
rusted-out remains of an old Pontiac where someone had spray-painted the side
of it with the warning: THIS IS PRIVATE PROPERTY! IF I CATCH YOU HERE I WILL
SHOOT YOU. Wished I’d noticed that sooner.

The sheer relief of not having a loaded shotgun
pointed at me left my knees softer than overcooked noodles. I’d certainly had
more than my share of adrenaline for one day, I decided ruefully, leaning my
body weight against a pile of empty crates while I assessed this very
un-ministerlike woman whose girth almost exceeded her height. Trying to
picture her in the pulpit preaching to a congregation strained my imagination.

Now out of earshot, she proceeded to give Lupe a
thorough dressing down. I could tell by the pointed finger jabs in my
direction that she was discussing my fate.

A
full five minutes passed before they turned and began walking back towards me.
I pushed to my feet. The look of cautious expectancy on Lupe’s face indicated
that she had prevailed, but Sister Goldenrod was still evil-eyeing me as they
re-entered the garage.