Thirteen Senses (24 page)

Lupe was so mad that she wanted to scream, and so scream, she did! The rooster next door answered Lupe's screams, and then
Chingon
began barking, too!

AND IN CORONA
—some seventy miles to the northeast—Doña Margarita could see with her heart-eye what was going on with her family.

Oh, ever since they'd left their beloved mountains of
Jalisco
the Devil just kept thinking that he could have his way with them but she wasn't about to let the Great Lucifer have his way. She and her people had been fighting with the Forces of Darkness since the dawn of time and so these battles of Creation were nothing new to her.

Sweeping down into Carlsbad in the daylight, Doña Margarita now took on the form of the big red rooster that lived next door to her son's little rented house. She burst out of the chicken coop with a flutter of wings and started through the orchard to get the Devil, who was once more tempting Lupe with his toys of fear and doubt. She wasn't her father's daughter for nothing. Oh, she was ready for battle, as she now came calling and prancing between the trees on her she-rooster legs.

GETTING TO KENNY
'
S GARAGE
, Salvador was out of breath and his feet were hurting. He hadn't run barefoot in years, and the soles of his feet weren't tough anymore.

Immediately, he tried the big garage doors, but they were locked, and Kenny never locked his garage doors. Carlsbad was a little village and everyone knew everyone, and so no one locked their doors. Hell, half of the people in town didn't even take their keys out of their cars, day or night.

Turning around, Salvador suddenly saw that there stood Kenny right behind him with his 30/30 Winchester in hand.

“Good morning, Kenny,” said Salvador, feeling his heart up in his throat. The old
gringo
looked mad as hell.

“Good morning, Sal,” said Kenny, lowering the rifle.

“I, ah, came over to see you,” said Salvador.

“Good, I've been waiting,” said Kenny,” 'cause I ain't putting one hand on your car 'til we talk.”

“I see,” said Salvador. “So you found them?”

Kenny laughed. “Hell, Salvador, them bullet holes are pretty hard to miss. They're as big around as cannon holes, damnit!”

“Yeah, you're right,” said Salvador, “they're .45 holes.”

“Shit,” said Kenny, pulling on his big nose. “What did you do, Sal? Kill someone? There is blood all over the inside of the trunk.”

“Damn,” said Salvador. “I forgot all about that. But, you see, I was hauling a dead pig for a barbecue and—”

“DAMNIT, SALVADOR!” exploded Kenny. “Don't give me that kind of HORSESHIT! It's been too long a night for me, wondering if I'm abetting a killer, or not!

“Sal,” Kenny continued, “you're going to have to be straight with me, if you expect me to be in this thing with you. Hell, I don't know, maybe the son-of-a-bitch needed killing! Maybe he'd been terrorizing your mother and your people . . . I don't know. But damnit, you got me into this thing by bringing your car to me, so now you've got to be straight with me, Sal! And right now, DAMNIT!”

The old man was boiling mad and waving his 30/30 all around. Salvador had never seen him like this before. He breathed and calmly looked at Kenny very carefully for a long, silent moment. “Then you haven't been to the law, eh?” asked Salvador.

“Hell, no!” snapped Kenny. “But I'll tell you, it's crossed my mind more than once.”

The skin on the back of Salvador's left hand began to itch. And he could feel the itching start up the whole of his arm and dig into his left armpit. He put his left hand to his teeth, scratching the itch. No, he wasn't going to let fear panic him.

“Okay,” said Salvador, “I'll be straight with you, Kenny. In fact, I'll be more straight with you than I've ever been with any man, Mexican or
gringo.”
The itching stopped. He felt good now. The Devil hadn't gotten hold of him.

“Good,” said Kenny, “I'm ready. Let me have it, Sal. But first, damnit, come on in and let's have a cup of coffee and a shot of whiskey. My mouth has suddenly gone dry. I've been up two nights thinking about this damn situation!”

“But why didn't you just come by and get me?” asked Salvador.

“Because, damnit, Salvador,” said Kenny impatiently as they went inside of his place, “you're on your honeymoon, and you're a good man, and so I, just, well—hell, a man only gets one try in a lifetime to make a home, Sal, and so I wasn't going to ruin that for you!

“Besides, you brought me your car in good faith, and that showed a lot of trust in me, man-to-man, and so I wasn't going to sell out that kind of trust to the law. Remember, I was married to a Mexican woman for years. I know how you people get treated. Once the law is brought in, you don't got a fucking chance!”

Going into the kitchen of his little place behind the garage, Kenny immediately reached under the sink and brought out a gallon jug of boot-leg whiskey. It was Salvador's product. Sometimes Salvador paid Kenny for his services in bootleg whiskey instead of cash.

“Well,” said Salvador, after they'd had a shot and were waiting for the coffee to heat up, “first of all I want to tell you, Kenny, that, well, I really appreciate you not going to the law. You're a good man, Kenny, the best, and—”

“Sal, DON'T BLOW SMOKE UP MY ASS!” barked the old man. “Just tell me what the hell this is all about!”

“Well, okay,” said Salvador, “simply, I brought a man across the border and . . . and, well, I shot those holes in the trunk so he could breathe.”

With great deliberateness, Kenny now reached for the jug, then slowly, ever so slowly, he served himself another good-size shot. “Shit,” he said, “normally I just drink from the jug. So why in the hell am I now serving myself drink by drink?”

He took the shot glass in his huge, thick hand. He was trembling, he was so upset. “Nope,” he said to Salvador as he neatly shot the whiskey down his throat, then wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, “sorry, Sal, but that's still a hard one for me to believe. Just too nice a vehicle to be shooting bullet holes through it.” He shook his head.

Salvador closed his eyes in concentration. What more could he do? He'd told the truth. And then, suddenly, with his eyes closed in concentration he saw it all so clearly. “Kenny,” he simply said, “did you notice that the holes go from the inside out?”

Kenny shook his head. “No, I didn't,” he said.

“Well, let's go look,” said Salvador. “You see, I had the trunk lid open when I did it, Kenny.”

“Yeah, now that you mention it,” said Kenny, pulling at his big nose with his huge workman's fist again, “I did notice something odd about those holes. But damnit, Salvador, that story still doesn't hold water. Who the hell could be that valuable, that a man would shoot bullet holes in his own car?”

Salvador took a deep breath. Here, for a change, he was telling the truth, and he was having a hard time getting someone to believe him. It really was like his mother always said, people were more ready to accept a lie with a good story behind it than the truth told to them straight on. Truth really could be a wildcat not easily housebroken.

“He was Chinese,” said Salvador.

Hearing this, Kenny burst out laughing. “Now let me get this straight, for a Chinaman you shot your own car? This is what you're telling me?”

“Yeah, Kenny, that's what I'm telling you,” said Salvador, and here he held, not saying another word. For what could he say, the Chinese weren't considered to be worth anything in this country.

And also, if Kenny now did believe his story, this was even more dangerous, because the smuggling of Chinese was a much bigger crime than bootlegging. And so if Kenny did believe him, then he'd just given Kenny the rope to hang him with a federal crime if he ever decided to go to the law.

“A Chink?” said Kenny, grinning.

“Yes, a Chinese doctor,” said Salvador.

“Well, I'll be,” said Kenny, grinning even more. “I never thought I'd be in a position to be helping the Chinks.”

“Yeah,” said Salvador, “and his people needed him real quick. There's a sickness in Chinatown and they can't tell the authorities. They're afraid that they'll just round 'em up and kill them all, like they did in Los Angeles a few years back, and bury them in that pit out by Pasadena.”

Kenny nodded. “I know the story well. Remember, we met working in a rock quarry.”

Salvador nodded. “Also, with my brother, Domingo, in prison in San Quentin, they now owe me a favor.”

“I'll be damned,” said Kenny. “Small world, eh?” He smiled. “Hell, I was about fourteen when I met my first Chink. It was in a mining camp in Colorado. I was just about dead and he fed me and helped me through a bad winter. He had all these great stories of working all over the West. He'd come from China at the age of fourteen—same age as me at that time—but when I met him, he was old and he'd never married or had any friends after he got separated from his people. Shit, these Chinks have had it worse than Negroes. At least the slaves were brought in with their women, too.”

Kenny paused for a moment, then added, “But you didn't kill anyone, right?” And he looked Salvador straight in the eyes, but then, before Salvador could answer, Kenny changed his mind and quickly added, “No, don't tell me. Hell, I already know more than I need to know. We never had this conversation, as far as I'm concerned. But I'm sure glad to do my part in helping the Chinks. That old man saved my live.”

“You're helping,” said Salvador.

“Good,” said Kenny, getting to his feet. “So now you want me to just patch up those holes, do you? I really couldn't find anything else wrong with the car, except it needs service and cleaning because of all that cactus and brush you were dragging underneath it. Must've been one hell of a chase.” He grinned. “I hope the pay was good, Salvador, 'cause you knocked the shit out of that vehicle!”

“It was, Kenny, like I said, he's an important doctor, and they needed him up in the—”

“Nope, don't tell me. Like I said . . . we never had this conversation,” said Kenny. “Come on, the coffee's hot. Let's have a cup.” He was much better now.

“All right, but then I need to go home,” said Salvador. “Hell, I just ran out of the house barefoot without giving Lupe any explanation.”

Kenny burst out laughing. “You sure as hell like living dangerously, is all I can say,” said Kenny, serving them each a mug of steaming hot coffee. “My wife almost cut my balls off one night 'cause I'd been gone too long for her taste. These Latin women, man, an
hombre
needs to sleep with one eye open, I swear! Finally, I had to leave her. Almost cut my dick off on another night,” he added, laughing.

AT HOME
, Lupe was in the kitchen, chopping vegetables with a knife. All her life, as long as she could remember, she'd watched her mother chop vegetables and make
tortillas.

Finishing with the vegetables, Lupe put them in a bowl in front of her, and she began to hum. She had a dozen rolled-up balls of dough to her left on the counter. Taking the first of these little fist-sized balls, she began rolling the ball of dough out on the cutting board with the dark hardwood rolling pin that her mother had given her when she'd been a little girl. It was the same hardwood rolling pin that Lupe's grandfather, Leonides Camargo, had given to her mother for making
tortillas
when she'd turned nine years old, and then her mother had given to her when she'd turned seven so she, too, could make
tortillas.

That day, her mother had taken Lupe aside and explained to her that she was no longer a child. She was seven years old now, and so from this day forth she'd have to start working and behaving herself like a young lady, a rosebud on its way to becoming a full rose, or bad things could happen to her.

“
Porque, mi hijita,
there are many dangers for a young girl in this life,” her mother had explained to her. “Just as there are many dangers for a deer or a bird in the wild. And so a smart mother doesn't hide these facts from her daughter's eyes, but, instead, opens her daughter's eyes to these dangers so she'll be able to see and be able to take care, just as the deer takes care of itself from the lion and the birds of themselves from the hawk.

“So I'm not saying these things to frighten you or cause you not to enjoy your life,
mi hijita,”
her mother had said to her, “but on the contrary, I'm saying these things to you so you can be aware of your surroundings, then you can enjoy life to its fullest!”

Then her mother had reminded her of all the girls from their village who'd been stolen and raped with the awful Revolution, but—thank God—not one of her sisters had come to such a fate.