Keys of Babylon (7 page)

Maria looks around. It's fresh air, she laughs. Good Arizona air. You're just not used to it.

Larry's paralysed down one side. He used to give the staff hell but soon realised where the power lay. She's had to promise Chernowski that the night nurses take his father's mobile away. Before that he would ring at all hours, describing his nightmares. Recently they've started giving him an 8 p.m. Temazapan that sends him off till morning.

Now, Larry, says Maria at last. I'm going to break my pledge. My pledge with myself. I'm going to tell you my story.

Behind his shades she cannot tell if the old man is listening. Sometimes he's spot on, talking about Obama or the gangs in Phoenix. Sometimes he's drifted right away.

We came north, she says. Out of the desert. We stood on a hill and could see Rocky Point. See Puerto Penasco glittering in the distance. Right then, on that rise, we thought it was the Promised Land.

We had been walking for five days. The three of us. Juan, me, Juanita. Coming from somewhere you've never heard of. The sand was like flour, but there were tracks to follow. Keep north, everybody told us. Keep the idea of the ocean, the ocean air on your left.

So far, so good, we thought. We hadn't even used much water. So we spent one more night in the rocks and got a lift on a farm truck the next morning, hauling watermelon. We were dropped at the seafront, as the fish stalls were opening. Juan bought fruit and bread and we ate it with the pelicans, the fishing boats all coming back with the night catch. Hey, you listening Larry? You listening?

But it's impossible to tell if Larry's listening. Maria decides he is.

There was a man we were supposed to meet. He was called Vincente and he was right on time. He bought us coffee. But we were all surprised by Penasco. There were Americans in the street and tall cranes across Cholla Point. They were building apartments all over the peninsulas.

Why not stay here? I asked. There's work. But Juan was for pushing on, as we'd organised with Vincente. Juanita said we could even catch the bus to Sonoita, and cross there, but that's the free trade area and it's full of army and police. So we had to do what Vincente said. It was like a pledge. As if we'd signed a paper. Oh we were good Mexicans. Good Mexicans always do what they're told. We had to go across El Gran Desierto del Altar.

Below them the Goliath laundry truck is delivering. Bags of dirty linen are stacked at the sides, waiting to be hefted on. All those pissy sheets, she thinks. Those bloody, shitty sheets.

She shuts her eyes and lets the sun press her down. Her mother used to scatter camomile flowers in their washing at home. As a girl she had pressed her clean underwear to her face and discovered a garden. Here, the cottonwood bark is rough and grey, its dead leaves at their feet. She sits with a dying man, telling her story. Telling her story in the country of Goliath.

Vincente drove us north-west. Into the Pinacate and the volcanoes. There were eight of us now, but we stayed together. Our little group. I was with Juan. Juanita was coming too. Vincente looked at us as if he had something important to say. Then he turned away. We never saw him again.

They had told us to walk at night but that was crazy. Yes, any fool can read the stars but no one can walk that country in darkness. There's lava sharp as glass. There are craters that cut your shoes and are hard to climb down, climb up. And that darkness is total darkness. Juanita was terrified.
Los Indios
, she kept saying. She thought we'd meet indians who would scalp us. Now that scared the others. Only Juan laughed and put his arm around her. Chucked her chin. There's nobody out there in the Altar, he laughed. Only the ghosts. But that scared everyone too. Country people believe in ghosts.

But we also knew the stories. About the people who died trying to cross the border. About the fools who were looking for gold. Everybody talked about that big nugget someone had found. The biggest nugget ever. So there was gold in the desert. There were old mines we could explore. One man with us had even brought a shovel. He didn't carry it long.

Yet Juan was determined to go and where Juan went, I did. We were together. At night we'd lie rolled up in the same blanket. One dawn I remember, I woke and Juan wasn't there. He was standing on the crest of the dune, looking west. The sand was smoking around him. He called us to come and see the Pacific Ocean. We all stood there and gazed out. From that dune, pink in the first light. Pink sand all around. Shadows behind the rocks like pools of ink.

Juan said not even Cortez had seen such a sight. Not even Cortez and his horses and his iron army had glimpsed what we did then. Juan was our hero now. Juan was our conquistador with cracked lips on a sand dune red as fire. Juan pointed with the ocotillo stave he'd fashioned with his machete. And we all looked where that stick pointed. Where Juan told us to look. We did what our leader commanded. And that leader was Juan who the Indians or the ghosts or the
jaguares
would never catch.

We had this silly dream, the two of us. We would live in LA and take the train to Union Station every day. I'd become a teacher and Juan an engineer. And one day, coming home together, talking so much, we get on the wrong train. And we end up in Hollywood, and as we're walking across Sunset to Vine, we see Raquel Welch and Martin Sheen just ahead. And Raquel drops this envelope she's carrying – the script for
Bandolero
! Or something like that. And Juan picks it up, and yes, we've saved the day. So they take us for cocktails to the Brown Derby. And they think we're so cool that they want to stay in touch.

It was Juan drove us on. He had maps. He seemed to know the way. But how could that be? We came from the same little town, far away. We studied English together. There were eight of us. Then there were seven. One of the other men just disappeared. I didn't even know his name. Then there were six.

You know, there are legends about the heat. It's hot now, here at the Sunset. But nothing like the Altar. They said this boy, from Guadalajara, got lost in the
gran desierto
once. He was trying to make the crossing. He said there was no space for him in his city. Even in his own home, no space. So many children. He was desperate. They said that to keep cool he pushed his head into the sand. That his brains boiled.

I've heard people laugh at that story. But those people have never been in the Altar. Maybe our companions who vanished turned back. They were good people, honest people. They believed in God. We used to hear them praying in the darkness. They shared their water with us. One of them carried the water in a calfskin on his shoulder. Walking behind him I used to watch that water on his back, as if there was an animal writhing there. How soon it became just an empty sack.

Maria touches Larry's brow.

Time to go in, senor. They're making supper. No garlic. No chilli. And no steaks for you. Sorry. But yeah, Larry, we could have died. Nearly did too. My tongue was fat in my cheek. It felt like a stone. Juan used to cut cactus open and we'd hold our mouths against the wet insides. Suck the shreds.

Then it all gets misty. Like it used to up in Flagstaff in the rains. The mists right down over the trees. But misty in my mind, Larry. We were in the organ pipes, you know, real cactus country. Trees of knives we used to call them. They were razor sharp. Twice as high as Juan. Maybe we strayed into the Barry Goldwater Airforce Base. We could see the military in the distance. And at night we heard their dogs. Juan had the maps and by then it was just the three of us again. Juanita in the blanket, too. Me in the middle of course. Juanita was crying and Juan tried to comfort her. He gave her extra water, his water, while I kept a little black stone in my mouth. Sucking on a piece of volcano. A little hummingbird is what he called Juanita. That's when I knew.

At the end, Larry, they were chasing us. Getting close. We crossed a highway in the evening and there was a white pickup, bouncing over the rocks. First up a dirt road. Then where there was no road. It had a floodlight mounted on the top and I watched that light swing everywhere. A lighthouse in the desert.

And I thought, why are they trying so hard to stop us? Like we are really bad people. But we're not bad people. We'll work. We'll go to Yuma and spray pesticides in the polytunnels so people can have lettuce. Those crazy Americans who want lettuce in the desert? We'll do that for them. We'll scrub their filthy toilets in the Tucson Arena. We'll bring the trays of nachos and Monterey Jack to their seats. Just so Americans don't have to do it. But please tell me why are they trying so hard to stop us?

I looked at that beam sweeping the rocks. I could smell the mesquite around me, we'd been chewing it. And every inch of me ached and ached. I had cholla scratches all over. Every patch of my skin. There was a prickly-pear needle in my wrist. Look, there's the scar. Those thorns were like fish hooks, Larry. I know how a fish feels. I see the girls now who pierce themselves with studs and rings and I can't believe it. I have to turn away. If you've been in the cholla, you don't do that.

Our clothes were rags. We'd all run in different directions. What we had agreed, if we split up, was to wait till morning, then look around. So that's what I did. I could see a water tower in the distance, hear traffic on the blacktop. I searched everywhere. Then waited, looking out. But the others didn't come. Juan and Juanita, they must have been together. If they weren't, one or the other would have showed up.

That was it. I'd made the crossing. But I was on my own. On my own in a foreign country, Larry. Somehow we'd crossed the border but there was no sign on the ground to tell us that. The heat was the same. The thorns were as sharp. I watched an eagle overhead. It must have crossed that border twenty times a day. And you know, right then, I didn't care if they caught me and sent me back. What could they do? Take me to Sonoita and put me over the white line?

Yes, I could speak some English. Yes, I had a little money left. Hadn't lost my hat either. But I knew Juan was with Juanita. She was pretty. Like a cactus flower. Not like me with my big feet, my desert boots. Juan was with Juanita and my mouth was full of ashes. Maria touches Larry's brow again.

Okay, let's go in. That's my personal DVD for you. Enough for now, I think.

The next afternoon Larry is not so well. He sits in his armchair with head down. A mummy in a tartan blanket. The Rocky Point film is playing again, ‘The Breeze and I' filling the room.

Such longing in that music, she thinks. But a yearning for what? How the chords cascade. For two minutes she allows the old-fashioned organ sound to swell the hollow of the heart.

On the bed is a scattering of CDs, a talking book of
The
Grapes of Wrath
. But there are no real books or magazines in the room. Since his second stroke Larry has difficulty co-ordinating his eyesight. He can see well enough but cannot follow print.

Maria turns the volume down, glances at Mrs Chernowski outside Sonia's restaurant in Gila Bend. That day Mrs Chernowski did not touch the complimentary salsa but chose instead two little white hens' eggs that came from the battery farm. With toast. With coffee which proved too strong. A flan, no, a
crème caramel
, that she enjoyed.

Wasn't it today the Chernowskis moved into their new home in Anthem? Frank had told her about Anthem years earlier. ‘A new community for vibrant seniors.' I'll stay in the trees, he said.

The city replanted the barrel cactus and saguaros around Anthem. But not the rotten ones, the dead ones, the colour of old men. Those were dangerous cactus that could topple and kill. She's seen a man once drive a Grand Am straight into a dead saguaro. It exploded into splinters. The whole tree, pale and bone hard, came up by the roots.

Maria can visualise the house in Anthem now. It's too big. There's too much space between all those houses. Outside is an empty street that will stay empty all day, and in the kitchen a refrigerator full of food the Chernowskis will throw out. All that lettuce in its polythene. Even though the blinds are pulled down, the chrome on the four toilet seats gleams in the desert light. Outside in the mailbox are national magazines that will never leave their envelopes, on the kitchen pinboard the couple's medicine regime in a laser-printed grid.

Hey Larry, Maria says. Look at this. She takes a towel off a casserole dish.

Yo. A present. For you. It's steak. But not like you mean. You know you can't chew steak. And I can't afford fillet. But you can eat this. Try a mouthful.

She tucks a napkin under his chin and offers the spoon. The old man stares. Then he takes the food and chews. Soon he looks ready for another taste.

You see. It's good. We know it as
nopalitos
. Little bits of meat. And onion. And
tomatillos
. And
jalapenos
. And
cilantro
, Larry. Fresh cilantro. I've heard it called Mexican parsley round here. And garlic. And, guess what, Larry. Cactus. That's right. Pieces of prickly pear. Ever eaten prickly pear before? That's why they call this
nopalitos
. All this food grows wild here, all over the Sunset lot. Over every hillside. Be a shame if we couldn't do anything with it.