The Temptation of Demetrio Vigil (25 page)

“Oh, no,” I said, in a panic.

Before I knew what I was doing, I was up out of my
seat, shrugging back into my jacket and backpack, hightailing it
toward the door, against every school rule, and with the eyes of a
dozen newly minted enemies upon me.

♦

“
Maria!” cried Yazzie.

I ignored her, and sprinted out the door, down the
steps, and around the building, toward the playing fields. I ran
and ran, and soon saw Buddy tripping along happily toward the
road.

“Buddy!” I screamed. “Stop! Stop!”

As usual, he turned to acknowledge
my voice and command with a smile, and quickly returned to his task
of suicide by car.

“No!
Bad
dog!
Stay
!”

He ignored me some more, stopping only to sniff a
tumbleweed that had recently been showered, one assumed, by the
steaming effluvium of some other canine.

“Stop right now!” I shrieked, sprinting faster now.
The cold air made me cough, and fogged my glasses, but I kept
running. When I got to within ten feet of him, Buddy seemed to
realize that resistance was futile at last. He curled his body
toward me, simpering, and dropped to his back, apologetic.

“Bad dog!” I said again, as I reached him.

Buddy wagged his tail and flattened his ears against
his head to let me know he meant it.

I scooped him up into my arms, and
kissed him. “You bad, stupid, crazy little dog!” I kissed him
again. “What is
wrong
with you?”

Buddy licked my chin, as though
“loving Maria” were the correct answer. Perhaps it was.

“Where have you been?”

I was so happy to have him back, I almost couldn’t
stand it. I cried and laughed, and snuggled and cuddled him. I was
so involved with this emotional reunion that I almost didn’t notice
Demetrio standing between a couple of evergreens, at the far end of
the field, watching.

My face lit up at the sight of him in his baggy
jeans and parka, and head bandana with sparkly studs in each ear.
He looked as fresh and inappropriate as a gangsta rap video. He
smiled back, though with trepidation. I ran to him, dog in my arms,
and flopped against him. He smelled like ozone.

“I’m so happy to see you,” I told
him as I melted into his embrace. “You’re
real
. How is it that I can feel
you?”

“It just is. I can’t stay,” he said. “I’m happy to
see you too, mamita, but I gotta jet.”

“Just tell me how you’re real, if you’re not.”

“I’m real. As real as you are. I just wanted to
bring Buddy back, and ask you to meet me this afternoon,” he said.
“We’ll talk then. I’ll explain everything, if I can. There’s a test
you have to do.”

“What kind of a test?”

“A ceremony. Sort of a blessing. I can’t explain it
now. They’re coming.”

I turned back toward the library, and saw what he
saw: a line of people standing at the other end of the playing
field, coming after me. Yazzie was among them, as was Kelsey. They
watched me standing with my arms around Demetrio, a small black dog
between us. Their faces betrayed grave concern. In the trees above
them, crows cawed.

“Wait! I have something to ask you.”

He waited, impatiently.

“Were you in my dream the other night? With the dark
room, and the candles?”

“No,” he said with a naughty grin.
“You were in
mine
, though.” He reached out and drew a triangle in the air with
his finger. “Obtuse, equilateral, Pythagorean, scalene,
isosceles.”

“How?” I asked breathlessly, my heart racing. It was
amazing. Exciting. There’s no way he could have known about the
triangle in the dream unless I’d told him, which I had not.

“You better get back to class,” he said. “You have
an angry mob on your tail. Meet me at the church, after school.
Skip dance. We have to do it early. I’m sorry. I’ll never ask you
to miss it again.”

“Okay.” I clung to him, but he was stronger than I
was, and managed to peel my arms off of him. I waited for him to
kiss me, but again he backed away, quickly now, avoiding my eyes. I
tried to follow him, but he cut me off with a fierce look, and a
stern shake of his head.

“Later,” he said. “Like I told you, I want to, but I
can’t.”

I faced the field, and began to walk toward the
library, and the crowd of people. As I returned to them, carrying
my tiny dog that had been whisked off in the jaws of a monster
coyote the night before, fresh from what must have looked like me
making out with one of the hoodlums Logan had apparently posted, I
had to think of a lie to tell them, and quickly. I hated this.

“Hello,” I called as cheerfully as I could, when I
got within earshot of my class, all of whom apparently found my
mental breakdown much more interesting than the controversy
surrounding photorealism in art.

“A ghost,” whispered Yazzie, her eyes filled with
tears, as I passed her. She stared at the figure of Demetrio as he
stalked across the field toward Adelante. “He’s got a golden 4th
aura. A good revenant. I knew it.”

“I’m sorry. I brought my dog to school,” I mumbled,
even as I stared at her in wide-eyed shock. “Silly me?”

Yazzie composed herself, wagged a finger at me
sternly, looking around her at the other teachers and students.

“You are going to the office with
me right now!” Yazzie practically shouted this information, clearly
a performance for the benefit of the others. “Everyone else, back
to the library. I’ll be back as soon as I get this disobedient
Maria to the headmaster’s.”

Kelsey looked back at me over her shoulder, with a
worried look, as she walked with the rest of the class back to the
library. Yazzie clipped ahead, trying mightily to look like a
normal, strict teacher type. In the end, she looked like a witch
trying to belly dance.

“Maria,” she said, loudly, “you of
all kids should know better.”

I came to walk next to her, Buddy happy in my arms,
oblivious to everything but the crows in the trees.

“I can explain,” I told Yazzie.

“Shh,” she said, conspiratorially, looking about to
make sure no one was within earshot. “I know. I get it.” She spoke
in a low voice. “I’m not taking you to the headmaster. We’re going
to my office.”

“What? Why?”

The flock of the crows seemed to be following us,
and Yazzie noticed as surely as I did. One in particular seemed
bigger than the others, in charge. It had yellow eyes, and seemed
to be smiling as it swooped down toward us and then soared back
into the sky. I felt I’d seen it before somewhere. We walked clear
across the campus, and the bird followed overhead, doing its dance,
cawing a laughing sort of caw at us, enjoying itself.

“Morboso
,” Yazzie grumbled, sizing up the large bird, stopping in her
tracks in the center of a school courtyard when she’d had enough of
its teasing.

“What?” I asked, aghast. “How do you know that word?
That’s the plumber’s word.”

“Don’t look it in the eyes.”

“The bird?”

Yazzie ignored me and, muttering, burrowed through
her large hobo handbag, retrieving from it a wooden slingshot and a
rock the size of a large marble. With amazing dexterity and speed,
she loaded the rock into the device, and shot it at the crow,
narrowly missing the bird yet managing to relieve it of a few tail
feathers.

“Be gone,
ánt’įįhnii
!
”
she screamed, loading another rock
and launching it toward the creature as it winging away in a panic,
and then another, until is was gone.

“What are you
doing
?” I cried.

“Protecting you.” She grabbed me by the arm. “Let’s
go inside.”

“You look
insane
,” I told her, as I followed
her into her office.

“Ask me if I care.”

“I’m guessing not.”

“Correct.”

Yazzie sat down at her desk, and waited for me to
sit in a nearby chair.

“Do you have the story I gave you?” she asked.

I had worn a different jacket, and besides which had
left it in the library in my haste to save Buddy from traffic.
Yazzie produced another copy of it, yellowed and torn as the first,
and instructed me to read it aloud, for her.

“Do I have to?”

She put her hand on mine. “I know you think I’m
nuts, okay? I know that’s what you all think of me. But I see a lot
of Changing Woman in you. Okay?”

“Who?”

“The great Goddess. I see her in you. This is a
changing season for you. Do not be afraid of the Blessing Way, when
it comes.”

“The what?”

“The ceremony.”

“That’s what he just told me. He wants me to go to a
ceremony later today.”

“Good! The sooner the better. You should go. You
have the feel of Kindreds. I picked up on it right away.”

“What is a Kindred?”

“He’ll tell you. Read me the story.”

I did as she told me. It was a fable from the local
Cochiti Indian pueblo, about a boy made fun of by all the other
boys in his village. He ends up leading a successful hunt through
his smarts, and the boys who mocked him become the outcasts. The
boy becomes the leader after the grandfather dies. Etc.

“And?” I asked, when I was through.

“There is meaning in this, for you.”

“I don’t understand it.”

“Be strong, Maria. It will make
sense. Take the right path now, and you will triumph in the
end.”

“And what if I don’t take the right path, by
mistake?”

“The morboso knows who you are, and where you are,
and who your friend is. Taking the wrong path is a bad idea.”

“Kelsey?”

“The one who thinks I never remember her,” said
Yazzie. “She is marked. I’ve sensed this. That is why I try not to
draw undue attention to her.”

“What does that mean, that she’s marked?”

“Perilous. Very dangerous for her.”

“Are you
sure
?”

“The morboso watches her. If you take the wrong
path, she will be the one to pay.”

“I don’t understand.”

“That’s how this morboso do things. Go to your
ceremony. Do as the revenant boy instructs you. Listen, here,” she
touched her solar plexus. “The heart knows. This is a wonderful
journey you’ve set out upon. If you do it right.”

“And if I don’t?”

“If you don’t, I am sorry to say someone probably
will die.”

“Kelsey?”

“I cannot say.”

I sat in shock, not knowing whether or not to
believe her.

“Now,” she said. “Let’s both pretend we never had
this talk. You will go back to class, tell everyone it was all
cleared up and you will never take your dog to school again, even
though we know you didn’t bring him here. The revenant did.”

She ran her hand over Buddy, with half-closed
eyes.

“He has been there,” she said, looking mournfully at
my dog. “You poor, dear creature.”

“Where?”

“To the Very Bad Place,” she said with a horrible
shudder. “He dragged him there.”

“Demetrio?”

“Is this your ghost’s name? Demetrio?”

“Yes.”

She shook her head vehemently.
“No, not him. Demetrio would never do that. I painted all of this
last night, it came to me. This is my medicine, painting. This is
my way of knowing things. The one who took your dog to the other
side, he is the
enemy
of your ghost. He is a
chindi
.”

“My ghost has an enemy?”

“A
chindi
enemy. Yes. Very much so,
yes. But he thinks this is a friend.”

“Who is he, this enemy?”

“I do not know his name, only that
it is - let’s see. I think they behave as very close friends, as
brothers. Demetrio is unaware of the true nature of this chindi.
Blind to it. Be very careful of the morboso, the chindi. Now, let’s
go from here and not speak of this again today.”

♦

Hours later, after miraculously getting
through my finals in spite of my racing mind, I parked the Land
Rover in the otherwise empty lot at the church on the hill in
Golden. I was astonished upon opening my car door to find Nutmeg,
the revived Tramway Boulevard Chow, waiting for me there, smiling
with her wet black eyes, wagging her tail. I set Buddy on the
ground next to her. The animals sniffed each other’s rear-ends in
greeting, making me grateful - and not for the first time - that I
wasn’t born a dog.

I looked around, and didn’t see anyone else around.
I did notice, however, that the door to the church was open a
crack, as was the usually padlocked gate leading to the
graveyard.

Finished “greeting” Buddy’s nether regions, Nutmeg
pawed the frozen pebbles on the ground as she tended to do when she
wanted me to follow her, and with a quick glance at me over her
shoulder, set off at a trot toward the gate. Buddy gamely followed
her, his tail held high with confidence that he’d just conned a new
female into joining his expansive harem. I brought up the back of
this odd parade of creatures, curiosity and dread battling for
dominion of my emotions with each footfall. My cell phone vibrated
in my pocket. I assumed it was my mother, who’d been calling me
frantically almost since I’d left school. I hated that she was
worried, but right now I could not concern myself with her. I had
bigger issues at hand. I reached into my pocket, and turned the
phone off.

I entered the darkness of the sacristy, and was hit
with a thick, musty, papery smell, an earthy smell. The air was as
cold inside the building as it was outside. My eyes quickly
adjusted to the change in light, and I was soon able to make out
the small room. It was much changed from the last time I was here,
in that it was occupied.