The House of the Scorpion (46 page)

“A Safe Horse,” he said.

Soon he was moving through the fields as he had done so many times before. Some were misted with the bitter green of opium seedlings. Some dazzled his eyes with the glory of full-grown poppies. A faint, corrupt perfume hung in the air.

Matt saw the first laborers. They walked slowly, bending
down with tiny knives to slash the seedpods. What was he going to do about them? He was their lord now. He was the master of this vast army.

Matt felt utterly drained. Somehow, he'd expected everything to work out. He'd expected himself, María, Tam Lin, and Celia to someday be happy together. Now it was all ruined.

“You fool!” he shouted at the vanished Tam Lin.

Could the eejit operation be reversed? Even with a restaffed hospital, it might take years—that is, if Matt could lure doctors to Opium after they found out what had happened to the last batch. He'd have to get rid of the Farm Patrol. They were felons wanted in countries all over the world. He could tell their police forces to come and get them. He would have to hire other, less violent men to replace them because the eejits couldn't exist without orders.

It was an overwhelming problem. He'd need to hire another army of bodyguards. Wealth such as Opium possessed lured criminals.
Always choose your bodyguards from another country
, whispered El Patrón.
They find it harder to make alliances and betray you.

Okay
, thought Matt. He would ask Daft Donald about it tomorrow. A pack of Scottish soccer louts sounded about right.

He gave the horse a drink and made his way into the mountains. A clear blue sky cast its light over the oasis. The sand next to the water was marked with animal prints, and the metal chest was still hidden under the grape arbor. Matt rummaged through it until he found Tam Lin's old note.

Deer Matt
, he read.
Im a lousy writer so this wont be long. El Patron says I have to go with him. I cant do anything about it. I put supplise in this chest plus books. Yu never know when yu mite need things. Yor frend Tam Lin.

Matt folded it and put it into his pocket, along with a flashlight for when it got dark. He made a fire and warmed his hands as he listened to the sounds of the oasis. It was too cold to swim.

He would dig up the poppy fields and put in normal crops. Once the eejits were cured, Matt would give them the choice of returning home or of working for him. He would help them find their children.

Matt sat up straight. Of course! Chacho, Fidelito, and Ton-Ton! He could invite them to live with him. He could imagine Fidelito's wide-eyed astonishment.
This is really yours?
the little boy would cry.
You're not making it up?

It's all right
, Chacho would say, refusing to be impressed. Matt could give him his old guitar. Mr. Ortega could teach him music. Ton-Ton could have his own machine shop. He could maintain the equipment Matt needed to create his new farms.

He could invite María to stay—and hope that Esperanza was busy somewhere else. María would love reuniting the eejits with their children. And they could have picnics and ride horses, and she could keep as many three-legged cats as she liked.

Matt looked up at the sky. Sunset wasn't far off. The light was turning gold, and sunlight shone through a gap in the mountains and made a bar of radiance on a wall of rock just beyond the oasis. Matt saw something dazzle.

He jumped up and ran to the spot before the radiance slipped behind the mountains. When he arrived, shadow had almost hidden the mark, but he saw, in the red light of the setting sun, a shining scorpion. He pressed his hand against it.

Slowly, silently, a door opened in the cliff. Matt felt the rock. It wasn't stone after all, but a clever imitation. The door revealed a dark passage going down into the earth. Matt shone the flashlight inside.

The floor glittered with gold coins. Farther on were weird statues that might have been Egyptian gods. Matt lay back against the cliff, breathing hard. It was part of El Patrón's dragon hoard. It was the first of the underground chambers that stretched all the way to El Patrón's coffin and his attendants.

Around the old man were bodyguards to protect him in the shadowy world of the dead. There were doctors to attend to his health. Mr. Alacrán could entertain him with matters of business, and Steven could offer opinions about the farming of poppies. There would certainly be an opium farm in El Patrón's version of heaven. Felicia, Fani, and Emilia could admire him from tables covered with moro crabs and caramel puddings.

And Tam Lin? Matt took out the note again:
El Patron says I have to go with him. I cant do anything about it.

“You could have done something about it,” Matt whispered. “You could have said no.” He stepped away, and the door slid shut again. He ran his fingers over the surface. He couldn't tell where the opening had been, but he could find it again with red light.

Late that night Matt sat by the fire and smelled the good mesquite smoke as it spiraled up into the starry sky. Tomorrow he would begin the task of breaking down the empire of Opium. It was a huge and terrifying job, but he wasn't alone. He had Chacho, Fidelito, and Ton-Ton to cheer him on. He had Celia and Daft Donald to advise him and María to be every-one's conscience. He also had Esperanza, but he couldn't see a way out of that.

With everyone's help, it would get done.

You can do it
, said Tam Lin from the darkness on the other side of the fire.

“I know I can,” said Matt, smiling back.

This book drew more on my childhood than any of the other books I have written, and therefore was more difficult to write. When I was finished, I couldn't face a sequel. I wrote the Trolls trilogy as a kind of vacation. Since then, I have been collecting ideas and exploring places for the sequel's setting. I can't discuss a book before I write it, not even with the editor, but I can tell you that the working title is
God's Ashtray
.

The House of the Scorpion
takes place on the Mexican border. The exact location lies between Yuma and Ajo. The Devil's Highway runs along the southern border of it. The oasis was originally meant to be the Quitobaquito oasis south of Ajo, but the description is actually of another small lake in the Chiricahua Mountains. This is because the following adventure happened.

It was Christmas Day. Harold and I had been given permission to cross the Barry M. Goldwater bombing range. I wanted to look at the Quitobaquito because I hadn't seen it since I was a child. I needed to see whether my memories were correct.

To cross the Barry M. Goldwater bombing range, you have to watch a half-hour video and promise not to pick up any grenades you find lying around. You promise not to sue the U.S. government if a pilot bombs you by mistake.

It was a cold, clear morning. We saw the border patrol, also known as La Migra, hiding in various places in the hills. Christmas is showtime for La Migra with all the illegal aliens going back and forth to visit family. Jet planes occasionally streaked overhead. It wasn't long after 9/11 and we were gearing up to invade Iraq.

The road deteriorated as we drove toward the oasis. Suddenly, as we struggled through deep sand, we saw a man lying in the road. Harold is from Africa and always assumes the worst. He thought it was an ambush. He thought the man had been left out as bait, and that if we stopped we would be attacked by people who wanted our car.

I looked through the binoculars. The man was shaking as though he had a high fever. I asked Harold to stop some distance away. My plan was this: I would walk ahead and if bandits appeared Harold was to drive over them. He's much better at these things, and besides, my eyesight is terrible.

The man kept saying,
“Agua . . . agua . . . ”
He wore very light clothing, and the temperature had been below freezing the night before. I gave him a bottle of water. He kept raving and shaking, but eventually he recovered enough to make sense. He'd been part of a group of eight men being led by a coyote, or illegal guide. The coyote had abandoned them when the border patrol attacked in the middle of the night. The men had run in all directions and were probably all lost. José, our new acquisition, was trying to walk to Phoenix. He thought it was twenty miles away, but it was really more than two hundred miles. José had a poor sense of geography as well as direction.

Now came the problem of what to do with him. I wish people could be given time to make ethical decisions, but that almost never happens. There we were and there was José. We couldn't leave him behind to die. We couldn't take him back to Mexico because the road beyond disappeared completely under sand dunes. I made a quick decision. I loaded him into the back seat and Harold drove back to Ajo, swearing at me most of the way for getting him into this mess.

We left José at the edge of town with a bottle of water, a chocolate bar, and twenty dollars. I'm sure the border patrol found him quickly, because he didn't look remotely like a U.S. citizen.

The next day I asked a park ranger what we should have done. He said we should have left José with water and phoned the border patrol. We didn't have a cell phone, however, so that advice wouldn't have done us any good. I still don't know whether I did the right thing. In the old days, when I was a girl, you could overlook a few people sneaking across the border. Now there are thousands of Josés, and since 9/11, the rules have all changed. Harold, by the way, refused to take me back out into the desert in case we met the seven other men. I never did get to Quitobaquito Oasis and had to use the description of one in the Chiricahua Mountains for the book.

Why did Tam Lin have to die?

Tam Lin's death upset a lot of readers. I don't like killing a character, but sometimes the story requires it. First of all, Tam Lin had served El Patrón for too many years. He had been involved in many of the old man's crimes and couldn't escape paying for this. Tam Lin himself knew that he was guilty and that was why he chose to stay with his master at the end. He also admired El Patrón the way you might admire a volcano. Sure, it's destructive, but it's also magnificent.

El Patrón's last wish was to take his entire family with him into the grave, probably because he considered them his property. He was to be buried with all his wealth in a secret place, like an ancient god-king. People like that can't bear the thought of other people's freedom, or of letting anyone else inherit their belongings. This kind of thing happens more often than you might think. When Hitler killed himself, he insisted that his followers, his followers' small children, his newly married wife, and his beloved dog be poisoned as well.

Tam Lin followed El Patrón's orders because they would bring down the Alacrán drug empire. He died because he wanted to atone for the wrongs he himself had done.

There's another reason why, as an author, I had to let Tam Lin die. He is a powerful authority figure, someone who has taken the place of the father Matt never had. Matt cannot become the true ruler of the country of Opium as long as Tam Lin is alive.

Are any of the characters real people?

Characters are based on one's life experiences. They are almost never portraits of a single person because an author can get sued for libel. When I first started writing, my fingers itched to do wicked descriptions of some of the swine I found around me. And I did portray a teacher who was mean to my son in kindergarten. This was in a short story published in Africa. Harold, my husband, lectured me about it because he's a lawyer. He understood the kind of legal trouble I could get into. I worried for several months after the magazine came out. The African literary community is surprisingly small and it's possible for news to travel around, but the teacher never found out.

Since then I have been careful. But some of the characters in
The House of the Scorpion
are based on real people. First, let's discuss Celia. When I was twelve years old in Yuma, Arizona, I played hooky for an entire year. I spent the days with a friend called Angie. The truant officer never searched for Angie because he didn't know she existed. She was what is now called an Illegal. The truant officer also didn't search for me because I was hiding out in Angie's territory.

We played on the banks of the Colorado River. We crept along the edge of the hobo jungle below the train bridge. Trains from California slowed as they approached the station, and men would jump from freight cars onto the sand beneath. We could see the smoke of their campfires rising above the salt cedars. Sometimes we climbed an old guard tower at an abandoned prison nearby. It was cool and shaded. We could look down on the ruined, stone cells and the prison graveyard, which had been partly washed away. Then we picked our way carefully under the shadow of the train bridge. The route was important because the shore was dotted with quicksand.

In the middle of an open space was the hotel where Angie's mother lived. It was a gaunt three-story building that wobbled around on the mudflats like a rotten tooth. Angie's mother was usually asleep, but sometimes she roused herself enough to buy us cokes from a machine in the hallway. The room was filled by a double bed and a large picture of Jesus with His heart pierced by five swords. Sometimes we opened the door at the end of the hall for fresh air. It looked like any other door, but beyond was a sheer drop to the river below. This was used to get rid of troublesome visitors.

Angie's mother became Celia in the book. As you can see, the whole feel of the area around Yuma was used in
The House of the Scorpion
. It was a fairly lawless place in those days. Heroin, rather than marijuana, was smuggled across the border and there were many Illegals who came to work in the fields. People mostly looked the other way because there weren't the vast numbers that flood across the border now.