The Bird Saviors (30 page)

The motel manager, Denise, aka Fufu, sits beside him on the

worn dog- brown sofa, her dirty- blond hair mashed flat on one side and a mess of split ends catching the late- day light like an alcoholic halo. She wears a loved- up look on her pie- pan face, half a lazy smile on her lips, sweetly swollen now and asking for more. Elray tells himself that he has to quit this woman but he just can't. She won't win a mother- of- the- year award but then, nobody's perfect. Her virtue is prickly as cactus but her nipples are like velvet sombreros.

    He knows himself to be a career criminal, lovewise. When he sauntered into the lobby an hour before, he was all business. He rang the bell on the counter and when she appeared, he said, Afternoon, ma'am. Sheriff said there were municipal violations taking place in the Buffalo Head and told me I better ride over to do some undercover work.

    He did, did he?

    He did.

    But Fufu was the one who pulled his belt loops and led him toward the inner office, walking backward, unbuttoning her blouse, saying, Perhaps I was going over the speed limit, Officer? She licked her lips and slid her hand down her shirt, popping the snap buttons one by one. Is there anything we can do so that little old me doesn't have to pay some nasty old fine?

    O, sweet Lord, he said. You do make it hard to uphold the law.

    From the lobby came the babble of Diego, Fufu's eighteen- month- old, penned in a plastic crib with mesh walls. He tugged at an electronic mobile of airplanes. The batteries were dead and, after a few minutes of batting the arms of the mobile in a circle, he yanked it loose. Soon he busied himself with methodically taking apart the wings. Meanwhile, in the back office, on the ratty brown sofa, his mother bit Elray's ears and squirmed in his lap like she was getting a tooth pulled without anesthesia.

That afternoon Elray is called to investigate the firebombing of an adult bookstore. He walks out to untie Apache, drowsy with the late- afternoon heat and the lingering of Fufu in his blood. The wind has picked up since morning. A high- pitched whine follows his every move as he puts his boot in the stirrup and swings onto Apache, patting her neck and telling her he's sorry to be moving in weather like this but he has a job to do and he can't sit on his ass in the back office of a motel fornicating all day.

    The air is colored a dim brown, a khaki haze making the sun up high no stronger than a streetlight at dusk. The wind buffets a wall of grit and paper trash into which Elray rides, down the alley behind the Buffalo Head Inn, beside the train tracks. Apache nickers and bucks her head, cantering sideways as he urges her into the stinging murk. Migrant squatters living in the boxcars go about their business, some of the children waving, the women pretending not to see him. A couple of kids not more than nine years old each push a shopping cart full of recyclable cans and bottles, an old desktop computer monitor atop the mess, its cables and wires hanging like robot tentacles.

    He skirts a newly formed shantytown of illegals and refugees, labeled by a bright red, white, and green banner stretched between two telephone poles that sports the legend aquí empieza la patria. The squatters are mainly Latinos from the East and South, construction workers and laborers who have left the suburbs of Georgia and Florida. Left or been chased out. The South is driving out its Mexicans, by hook or by crook. All the extra work has dried up, the locals saying it's now returning to a place that looks halfway like home. Or a halfway home for a fallen world. A small crowd of smiling boys trots beside Apache, chanting,
Monedas, por favor! Monedas, para comida! Por favor, señor!
Tenemos hambre!

    They want coins for food.

    
Lo siento
, says Elray. Apache clops on the pockmarked pavement. Sorry, kids. I got a job to do here.

    They don't respond. A half- dozen boys reach up their hands, pleading, P
or favor! Monedas! Monedas!
One of the boys shouts,
A
dónde va?
He stands in Apache's way. The boy is maybe thirteen years old, his hair cut short and jagged, one eye swollen as if from a punch. He wears a bandanna over his mouth, a Texas Tech hoodie.
Dame la pasta!
he shouts, scampering backward, holding a tree- branch spear, its tip whittled to a sharp point. He makes as if to stab Apache, shouting,
Le falta permisión pasar!
The horse doesn't stop but slows, raises her head, and nickers. Elray gives a slight tug on the reins. He pats her neck as she sidesteps, avoiding the boy.

    
Escuchame, muchacho,
says Elray.
Soy la policía.

    
No me importa
, says the boy. You listen to me, he adds in English. I am king of this street.
Soy el rey.
Give me five dollars and you pass.

    More boys gather as he speaks, massing behind him. All wear ragged clothes and hold baseball bats, pool cues, or tire irons. They wear bandannas as face masks, like a ragtag group of child outlaws with no trains or banks left to rob.

    Apache flares her nostrils and pins her ears. Elray strokes her neck and pauses, staring down the little gang. He tells them he can't be paying five dollars to pass every street. It's his job to patrol this road. They're in his way.

    You little gang o' pissants had better move, he says. Now. While I'm still smiling.

    It's early evening, a bite of coolness already in the air. Behind the boys a woman burns scrap two- by- fours in a campfire, the orange flames casting the boys' shadows across Apache. The tang of wood smoke smarts in Elray's eyes.

    
No puede tocarnos
, says the boy. Five dollars or you do not pass.

    Elray asks his name.
Dime tu nombre, rey.

    
Me llamo
Balthazar Cardenas.
Eres estupido si no lo sabes.

    Some of the other boys laugh. Most don't. Apache shakes her head and does not want to go forward. The crowd is over twenty strong. Some have machetes.

    
Pues
, Balthazar.
Quieres conocer la carcél?

    He shrugs.
No tengo miedo. Tengo amigos allá!
The campfire flares as the cooking woman stokes it. The sharp air smells of diesel exhaust and wood smoke. One of the boys takes off running and several are talking so softly Elray can't make out what they're saying. Balthazar's face is lost in shadow.
Somos reconquistadores
, says Balthazar. T
enemos hambre
, he repeats. You got some food, horse cop? he adds in English.

    
Claro
, says Elray.
Hay tortas en los cojones de mi caballo.

    Balthazar jabs his spear and strikes Apache's nose.

    The horse flinches and snorts. A boy grabs at the reins as another leaps into the air and reaches for Elray's pistol in its holster. Apache veers to the right, knocking one of them to the ground, and the boys scamper backward. They hurl rocks at horse and rider. Apache rolls her head back and twists to turn around. Elray struggles to control her, and before he has time to pull his sidearm, he hears a sharp sound and suddenly feels dizzy.

    The boys are shouting, throwing chunks of loose asphalt from the potholed road. Elray's forehead is wet and warm, and his right eye feels funny, buzzing and gone dark. Apache wheels around and bolts away from the group, into the shaggy lawn of an abandoned apartment complex, before Elray manages to regain control. Sitting astride Apache with only one eye working, he pats her neck to calm her, passing a Dumpster littered with old mattresses and stinking plastic bags of trash. His heart pumps wild and fast. Right eye swollen shut and face streaked with blood from a scalp wound. Like a cyclops he is, and will be, and will have to explain how he's been bested by a gang of junior high
re
conquistadores
, bless their black hearts.

    He rides on, taking the back route to the Buffalo Head Inn, wiping blood from his face, holding his gauze face mask over the wound and pressing hard to staunch the flow. He passes beneath the buffalo and cowgirl lariat of the neon sign. He dismounts and ties Apache to the breezeway pillars outside the office. His ears yet ring and his head buzzes.

    Inside the office Fufu says, O, good Lord. What happened to you?

    I had a run- in with some troubled youths.

    She shakes her head. You look like hell. She goes to the back office of the motel and returns with a bottle of hydrogen peroxide, rubbing alcohol, Band- Aids, and gauze.

    Sit over there on the sofa. I think that lamp gives me the best light to clean you up by. She stares at him a moment, then adds, You're downright gory, you know that?

    My hands are still shaking, says Elray. He holds one out. That's a hell of a thing, a cop's hand shaking.

    Fufu pats his back. I know the idea of a horse cop sounds romantic and all, but I think you might be more of a target than anything else.

    I was attacked by a gang of kids, he says. He closes his eyes and lays his head against the sofa arm in the lobby. They must've been twelve, thirteen years old, tops.

    I heard the council wants to get rid of that crowd. They're planning to burn down that shantytown asap, says Fufu. She puts a rag at the top of the alcohol bottle and turns it upside down. Out the window a family of illegals passes by, riding a hobo wagon made of an old pickup bed pulled by a burro.

    Hold on, now, she says. This will hurt for just a sec. She dabs the wound on his forehead with the alcohol rag, cleaning the blood from it. She uses a butterfly bandage to close the wound and says she thinks that will do it, no need for stitches. Elray flinches at the sting. Hush, she says. I'm almost done. Once his face is clean, she makes a square eye patch from the roll of gauze and tapes it into place.

    There, she says. You can tell them it's just laser eye surgery gone wrong.

    Elray winces. You know what? I'm thinking maybe it's time for a new career path.

T h e  d a y  h e  f e e l s  h e a l t h y  enough to stand on his worthless two feet for more than a few minutes Jack Brown leaves his shotgun shack and heads across town to Gata de la Luna's. He's on a mission to buy a curse. He doesn't care how much it costs. It will be worth whatever the cost, even if he has to sell his soul. If Gata will buy it.

    The worst part about walking is the utter humiliation. Walking across town you might as well wear a sandwich sign shouting, loser. You know you're no longer scraping bottom but living in it. You stare up at the light above, a world beyond your touch, the light of the Normal World. You're in a dark and stinking hole. Nobody cares.

    People with jobs pass you and cringe. They stare as if you're some kind of hitchhiking weirdo they want to identify later on the Crime Watch segment of the nightly news. Or they ignore you like a plague victim who might infect the rest of the healthy population. Which is not far off the mark.

    Walking down the cracked sidewalk, heading west, Jack Brown doesn't know what to do with his hands. He feels like a goon swinging them as he walks. When he puts them in his pockets, it's like he's got something to hide. His feet hurt. Cowboy boots aren't meant to hike crosstown. The friction chafes a blister on his heel by the end of mile one.

    Beneath the interstate he winds his way through a village of cardboard- box shanties and overpass dwellers. They seem like extras from an apocalypse survival film. Through the bands of weak shadows and jaundiced sun he passes, stepping over sleeping rag folk who clutch galvanized pipe in blackened nails for protection. Already his body stinks from a cold, unhealthy sweat. Jack realizes now these are his people: He even smells like them. A bearded misfit in a smeared and filthy hoodie stares out at him with yellow eyes.

    Yo, pretty boy, he calls out, you got some spare change for a vet?

    Jack Brown hurries on, ignoring the catcalls of the box people. He imagines a curse that makes Hiram Page impotent. Better yet, a curse that makes his penis shrivel until it's a small, limp thing no bigger than a Vienna sausage that breaks off, to his howling dismay. A curse that makes his tongue swell until he can't close his mouth. A curse that paralyzes him from the neck down. Or only his eyeballs can move, darting back and forth.

    You take my truck and think you'll get off scot- free, do you? You try to use me and stab me in the back? You're going to get what you deserve, is what you're going to get.

    Traffic rumbles and honks and hisses. Jack finds himself admiring and sizing up the vehicles, the grace of this one's chassis, the girth of that one's exhaust pipe. What he would give for fine upholstery to sit on, a steering wheel to grab. Kias, Toyotas, Ford pickups pass by like a parade of what Jack would like to drive. A vintage Thunderbird pulls into the Loaf 'n Jug at the corner of 4th and Evans. A bald dweeb gets out and starts to pump gas. Jack tells himself it should be he driving that car, not some fat, bald fart.

On the back side of a Walgreens parking lot, a scraggly mutt

sidles up to Jack and sniffs his leg. Jack gives him a pat and rubs his ears. The dog wags his tail and tries to jump up and lick Jack's face, but Jack pushes him off. Go home, he says.

    Jack turns his back and cuts across the parking lot to Evans, heads south. He refuses to look around, but soon a little white terrier trots ahead of him and the mutt chases it, both of them stopping to roll and nip at each other on a nearby lawn. Jack Brown keeps moving, feeling absurd. The dogs wag tails as he shouts and cusses at them to go home. It's as if he's taking these two strange dogs for a walk. He worries that they'll follow him too far and not remember their way home. If they even have one. He picks up a rock and throws it halfheartedly at the black mutt, who skips to the side, wagging his tail.