The Bird Saviors (31 page)

    By the time he reaches Gata de la Luna's palm- reading shop the dogs lurk a block away. Jack hurries inside the door, the bell tinkling above him. The dogs creep him out, like a cloud of guilt. Like sins he has tried to forget.

    Inside, it's dark and pungent. Jack takes a seat on a wooden bench and tries to get a good look at the photo of Gata on the wall opposite her Tarot- card table, but the beaded curtain is in his way. Through the curtain he can see a middle- aged Mexican woman seated in a ladder- back chair, leaning forward to look at the cards. The sweet smell of incense makes him feel dizzy. He hasn't eaten or showered, and after walking across town, he stinks something fierce. He worries that Gata will find him too repulsive to endure. A glass fish bowl filled with peppermints tempts him, but he fights off the urge to stuff a handful in his mouth, tries to retain a shred of dignity.

    He can't shake the feeling that he's entered the lair of a
bruja.
He sits on a squeaky wicker chair and wipes his sweaty hands on his jeans. On the end table beside him sits a small box that appears to be made from alligator hide. A small, yellowed claw as a hook for the lid. He lifts the hook and peers into the box. Inside lies the bone- white shape of a raven's skull, resting upon a pair of gnarled black talons. Brown lifts the skull and stares into its hollow eye sockets. The grisly bone gives him confidence: It looks like something that could cast a spell itself. On a shelf across from Brown's chair is a large gray slab. After looking it over for a few minutes he realizes it's a dinosaur bone encased in rock.

    The beads tinkle as the middle- aged Latina woman leaves, not even glancing in Jack's direction, as if they are both here to score drugs and don't want to recognize the other in a lineup.

    The air inside the dark shop is cool. Jack has goose bumps when Gata steps through the beaded curtain.
Dios mio
, she says. You look like death warmed over, cowboy.

    Jack rubs his arms and tells her he's been sick. But I'm feeling better some.

    I hope so. You want a cure, is that it?

    No, ma'am. I want to put a curse on someone.

    A curse?

    Somebody done me wrong. I aim to make him pay.

    Oh,
qué lástima.
Gata shakes her head and leads Jack inside. She wears a low- cut white blouse decorated with embroidered flowers, long black hair on her shoulders like a black river. She sits him down and pours a cup of black tea.

    A curse is a terrible thing, she says. You can't do this lightly. A curse is only to be used to right great wrongs.

    This is a great wrong. I can't say what it is. But it's bad. Serious bad.

    Gata scrutinizes Jack's face as if reading his fortune in his shaggy eyebrows, spiky hair, and dimpled chin. He meets her gaze at first, as he's always been told to look a man in the eye and even if Gata isn't a man, she sure acts as strong as one, far as he's concerned. But her gaze and beauty make him squirm.

    It was horrible, what he wanted me to do.

    I tailor a curse for the wrong that it intends to right. I don't have some generic, one- size- fits- all wickedness to call down on him. What was it?

    I can't say.

    She keeps staring, as if trying to hypnotize him. Jack can't stand it. He turns away and meets the yellow- and- black eyes of a stuffed owl up in a corner of the room. The next thing he feels is the touch of Gata de la Luna's hands on the back of his neck.

    Relax. You've had a great pain and it shows.

    He goes squishy all at once, his lips trembling when he says, I got no job and no money and now this. I been down before but lately I hit some kind of new low.

    You stink too. Gata looses a soft, throaty laugh, patting his cheek with a warm hand.

    I know. He sniffles. I'm just in a hole. I just got to dig myself out of it.

    Come on. She tugs his collar. Come with me.

    He gets to his feet and stands there like a child at day care, waiting for directions. She takes his hand and leads him through a door and down a hallway, up a flight of stairs, and into a small bathroom with a checkered tile floor and a window looking out on a pine tree in the backyard. There's a shower cabinet and a toilet, incense holder and candles on the windowsill. She leans into the shower cabinet and turns on the hot water, shows him where the towels, shampoo, and soap are. Get yourself cleaned up, she says. And hurry. I've got people coming later.

    O, Jesus, he says. I'm so dirty you have to clean me up.

    
Es verdad!
She laughs. Get in there, she adds. You'll feel a hundred percent.

    A half hour later he's clean, wrapped in a robe, sipping from a mug of hot tea. They sit in her kitchen and she's got a fire in her woodstove. She makes him a bowl of posole and fries up tortillas for chalupas.

    He tells her the whole story as they eat dinner. She makes him stop and backtrack several times, asking who did what and why, shaking her head in disbelief.

    He wanted me to kidnap a baby, insists Jack.

    Who?

    Hiram Page. You know him? He's got a pawnshop a few blocks west of here. HP Pawns.

    I know this man. He's good for nothing. Gata stares at Jack. Eat some more, she says. You look like a scarecrow.

    Good for nothing is right. He sold me a truck and took me to the cleaners is what he did. First he made me give up my grandmother's diamond ring. Then I missed a couple payments and he repo'd me, but before that he said he'd let me keep the truck if I kidnapped this baby girl.

    Gata hisses. You don't look like the kind of man who kidnaps babies.

    I couldn't do it, says Jack. I just couldn't. So he took my truck and now I got no job and no truck and no ring neither. I'm up shit creek without a paddle. All because of him.

    This is
muy loco.
Who did he want you to kidnap?

    A little girl who lives on a ranch out west of town, off Red Creek Road. I think he's mad at her parents or something. He said she wouldn't be hurt. That they weren't even going to ask for ransom, just give her back in a day or two. But I don't know what he had planned. He's a liar, that man is.

    Gata sighs, sips a spoonful of her posole. She has three grown children, two girls who already have children of their own.

    Tell me more, she says. Why would he do such a thing?

    He wouldn't tell me much, but she lives with her grandfather. I saw him. Scary old graybeard is who he is.

    This is
la verdad
? You swear?

    On a stack of Bibles. The man told me to do it and when I didn't, he took my truck. That's why I had to walk here. And that's not even the worst. His nephew, he killed a man. And got away with it.

    Gata shakes her head and hisses through her teeth as Jack tells the story. I saw him do it, he adds. I swear to God. He shot that trucker dead.

    Who knows about this?

    Hiram Page knows. He even hired that dipshit to be his body

guard. It's his brother's kid and some kind of cousin to me, I guess. But he acts like his shit don't stink.

    
Pues, bien.
What kind of curse you want? Blindness? Impotence? Financial ruin?

    What about all three? asks Jack.

    Gata shakes her head. Don't get greedy. A curse is a dangerous thing to wish upon anyone, even a
cabron. Y
ou will pay a price for a curse. More than you think.

    Well, I don't have much money, says Jack. I might have to owe you.

    That's not the price I mean. There's a price that goes beyond money. Gata reaches over and taps Jack's chest. The price of your soul, maybe.

    You want me to sell my soul to buy this curse?

    You cannot sell your soul for such a thing, but you must pay for it somehow. Nothing in this world is free.

    You're telling me. Money is how I got into this mess.

    Gata closes her eyes as if dissolving into a trance. Her face resembles that of a stone idol, cryptic and remote. Jack starts to speak and she holds up one hand to stop him, eyes still closed, as if she's attempting to commune with the dead and the phone is ringing. The darkness of the room blurs her features, the lines of her neck erased, the wrinkles at the corners of her eyes lost in the shadows.

    Jack stares at her breasts and wonders what it would be like to nurse them. A fly buzzes against a window. It's late afternoon by now, and in the shadows of the kitchen, Jack notices the gaping nose hole of a human skull on a shelf above the window- unit air conditioner. Did the owner of that skull sell his soul too? And that's all that's left of him now, a trinket? The moment he glances back at Gata she has her eyes open wide. Go now, she says. It is done.

    Jack's mouth hangs open for a moment. Gata rises from the table and pushes her coal- black hair over her shoulders.

    What kind of curse is it? asks Jack.

    It's the right kind, says Gata. Now go. We must not speak of it anymore.

After Jack Brown leaves her shop, Gata stands beside the window and watches him walk away, followed by a pair of dogs. She taps her long red fingernails against the sill. She fixes herself a cup of strong tea and massages her temples.

    Is that fool lying? She doesn't think so. She remembers hearing about that hijacking on the news. That's bad trouble, prison trouble. And why would the pawnbroker want to kidnap a little girl? The world is inscrutable and infested with evil. What if it were her baby, or her daughter's? She sips her tea and watches traffic on Northern Avenue, most of it headed west, the direction of HP Pawns. George Crowfoot would like to hear about this. Plus his friend Elray.

    Before long she's on the phone and telling the world.

    Don't worry, Papa, says Ruby. She presses a cool, wet washcloth to his forehead. Don't worry about any bears.

    Have you burned the garbage? If they eat the garbage they'll expect food from you.

    We can't burn it, she says. It's locked in the shed. Like always.

    They'll rip the shed doors off. You have to burn it. It's the smell. They'll come for the smell.

    The wind is too high for a fire. We can't go outside, Papa. The dust is too thick.

    It's the end of the world, says Lord God.

    Ruby squeezes out another wet washcloth and replaces the one on his forehead. I hope not, she says.

    Hope doesn't make a difference.

    I thought you always told me to have faith? Aren't hope and faith the same thing?

    Lord God closes his burning eyes and grimaces. Faint light from a gap in the curtained windows softens the wrinkles and furrows of his face. The tendons and windpipe in his throat resemble loose roots beneath his pale, slack skin, covered with gray stubble. The dome of his skull seems a talisman, his eye sockets stark rings of bone. From beyond his bedroom door comes the sound of his granddaughter crying.

    What's Lila doing here? I don't want her to get sick.

    Mama had to work. We talked to the hospital and they think

Lila's immune after being around me and not getting the fever. They think she's safe enough.

    Who's taking care of her?

    Ruby hesitates. She wants to lie but can't think of anything convincing. Her father is always able to smell a lie.

    My friend is here, she says. He's good with Lila and he's watching her while I take care of you.

    Your friend?

    Ward. The bird scientist.

    Lord God breathes roughly, his hollowed eyes staring into space, into Ruby's future without his presence.

    What kind of man is he?

    He's a good man.

    How can you trust Lila with a stranger?

    He's not a stranger. He's the man I've been working for, remember?

    Since when?

    I've been counting birds for him.

    That doesn't make sense. Counting birds.

    Yes, it does. How else would you know how many there are?

    That's like counting motes of dust. It's impossible.

    No, it isn't. They're bigger than that.

    This man in there with Lila. What does he do for money?

    I told you. He counts birds.

    Lord God twists his head and makes a face. That's ridiculous. He's a fool if that's what he does for a living.

    Hush, Papa. He's a scientist. He's studying bird populations.

    What kind of job is that?

    He's an ornithologist. The birds, they're a sign of other things. They're dying out.

    Lord God chuffs. I could've told you that. Without no counting.

    Well, that's what he's doing. Being exact about it.

    The birds are a sign, yes, sir. A sign of things to come. But science won't help us. Nothing will.

    Hush, Papa. I have to go now. I'll be back in a while with some tea, okay?

    Don't worry about me, says Lord God. I'll be gone soon.

    Don't keep saying that.