Send Down the Rain Page 6

  I pulled over. “What?”

  “Ants are biting me.”

  “Where?”

  “My backside.”

  I guess if you’re not expecting a seat heater, it can throw you off. I pushed the button twice more, turning the seat heater to low. I tried to explain, “The seat has a heater in it. You can control it here.”

  She sat on her palms. For the next twenty minutes she touched the button and raised or lowered the seat temperature, finally settling on medium. After a quiet ten minutes, her face flushed red. She rubbed the back of her neck and a giggle broke loose. It was the first time I’d heard her laugh. It was beautiful. I also heard relief.

  I DROVE SEVERAL HOURS through Marion, Union Mills, Rutherfordton, and finally exited the back roads at Tryon onto I-26. We drove south a short while to I-85 and turned southward yet again toward Atlanta.

  The kids slept while Rosco stood guard.

  As we put the mountains behind us, she opened up. Her parents had owned a small restaurant. Made tortillas from scratch. She’d waited tables. Graduated high school. College wasn’t an option, so she married one of their customers. A man she loved. He’d given her two children. She’d helped him in his dental practice. Learned the trade of a hygienist. He’d taught her to suture. He was a good man. Often didn’t charge for his services. That endeared him to many. To others, it made him a target. He was robbed and shot in the street in front of their home while she stood on the doorstep, the kids at her feet. They’d seen the whole thing.

  At the funeral she’d met a man who pretended to be something he was not. Said he was a diplomat and businessman who traveled freely into the States. Had a home there. Offered to take her away from all that and bring her here. She decided out of a broken heart. A bad decision. They’d been paying for it ever since. They’d been in several states. Lived in multiple migrant communities. Cement block homes. Rats. Roaches. Scabies. They had gone hungry, cold, and been left alone a half dozen times. Juan Pedro had beaten her three times. The last was the worst.

  She explained about the cookshack, the shootout, the climb up the mountain, and how she’d waited for his eyes to move side to side. She’d herded the kids into the snow and cold and darkness. She did so knowing that none of them would see the light of another day. When he woke and found them—and he would—she knew he’d kill the kids while she watched and then drag her back to Mexico and give her to his men. They’d kill her over the days that followed. She didn’t have a plan, but she was pretty sure that was Juan Pedro’s, and he was just a day or two from acting on it.

  I pulled over at a Hilton Garden Inn and paid for two rooms. We ordered dinner and had it delivered to our rooms. Watching them smear tomato paste across their faces, I was again amazed at the amount of food those kids could put away. After five pieces of pizza, Gabriela whispered something to her mom. The only word I could make out was “cream.” Catalina hushed her and said, “No.” A few minutes later Gabriela whispered a second time. Catalina responded in much the same way, though this time with a stern top lip.

  Admittedly I can be slow on the uptake. “She want some ice cream?”

  Catalina waved me off and did that windshield wiper thing with her index finger. “No.”

  Minutes passed, but when Gabriela moved to the window and stood staring down at the red neon sign of the Wendy’s next door, I put two and two together. “You sure?”

  I RETURNED WITH FOUR large Frosties, and the sugar rush, mixed with the fat of the pizza, brought with it a pretty heavy crash. When I shut the connecting door to my room, the kids were sound asleep. Rosco lay on my second bed. He had sunk his muzzle into a Wendy’s cup and was pushing it around the bed trying to lick the bottom. When he lifted his head, the cup covered his entire mouth. I stretched out on the bed and he curled up next to me, resting his head on his paws, licking the sides of his face. I spoke both to him and to me. “No, I have no idea what I’m doing.”

  A few minutes later, I heard a quiet knock.

  I’d been afraid of that.

  Catalina pushed open the door and sat across from me on the opposite bed. The kids were asleep. She was almost wearing a terry cloth robe she’d bought today. It was draped across her more than tied, so it wasn’t tough to tell that she wore nothing underneath. The light of the bathroom showered her legs and body. Her dark, shiny wet hair hung down, covering half her face. Her eyes were staring more at the floor than me. Her silence, and posture, said what her mouth did not.

  Trust me, I’m a man. She’s beautiful. And I’d be lying to you if I told you that the thought had not crossed my mind. I may be old, but I’m not that old. Problem was, I’d seen the damage we people do to one another. I’d done some myself. Soul-wounds are scars on the inside, etched with permanent ink.

  I sat up. “Catalina, you don’t need to . . .”

  She said nothing. The robe falling slightly more off one shoulder. The fact that she’d not moved told me that her experience with men had taught her more than my words. And what I’d hoped was getting through to her, was not. I patted her knees. She’d shaved. Her skin was soft. “Why don’t you go get some sleep?”

  She lifted her head, pulling her hair behind her, and then sat up straighter, causing the robe to fall completely off her shoulders. This was getting more difficult. She made no effort to cover herself. “You don’t find me beautiful?”

  “No, ma’am. Never said that.” I rubbed my neck.

  One end of her lip turned up. “Your face is red.”

  “I reckon so.”

  She probed. “And?”

  “I’ve seen bad men do bad things. This would fall into that category.” The flickering bathroom light danced on her skin.

  She pointed at my chest. “You?”

  I nodded.

  She waited.

  “I’ve known men like me to take advantage of women like you.”

  “What kind of woman am I?”

  “The kind that needs a little help getting out of a bad situation.”

  “What’d these men do?”

  “Took what they wanted. Disappeared when it was over. Leaving the girls worse off.”

  “I don’t mind.”

  “You might not now, but one of these days you’ll meet a guy, fall in love, and he’ll fall in love with you and those two kids in there, and when you open up and try to give him your heart, you’ll find a scar made by my knife. It’s the nature of this.”

  “How do you know?”

  I stared at the radio. “I just know.”

  She rested her hands on top of mine and studied me. Finally she kissed me on the cheek. Oddly, it wasn’t sexual. It was gratitude. Something in the same shade as trust. She stood and held the robe at her hips. One last chance. I tried not to look but it was difficult. I laughed. “You’re not making this easy.”

  She turned, “Good night, Mr. Jo-Jo.” She closed the connecting door behind her.

  I whispered, “It’s just Jo-Jo.”

  10

  Catalina said her brother lived in a community of workers on the west coast of Florida, south of Tampa. She’d been there once before but it was daylight and Juan Pedro was driving, so trying to find it in the dark might be tough. To find him, we’d need to get there either early before they left for work, or closer to dark when they returned.

  We pulled out of the hotel parking lot just after four a.m., drove about thirty minutes, and started looking for a migrant community without a formal name. Sunup came and went and we were still looking. We stopped at a diner for breakfast and then made sandwiches on the tailgate for lunch. My problem was not Catalina’s internal GPS. Her compass was pretty good. Our problem was finding a community that by its very nature didn’t want to be found. We drove close to three hundred miles in ever-expanding circles while not traveling more than fifty as a crow flies. Finally, after winding through some farmland, clear-cuts, and a couple of miles of dirt roads, we stumbled upon it.

  Catalina pointed and spoke excitedly in S
panish. Rattling off a hundred words in six seconds. I wiped my forehead and rubbed my eyes. The edges of my vision grew fuzzy so I checked my blood sugar, but my numbers were normal. That meant something else so I forced myself to methodically count telephone poles.

  The road led to a collection of trailers, campers, tents, and lean-tos in need of a match and some gasoline. Several trailers were half-charred from long-ago kitchen grease fires, split in two from the flames, long since abandoned. Trees had flattened a few, and then the trees were used as firewood. Only the trunks remained. Many were covered in blue or gray tarps, and based on the sight of buckets and basins strategically placed to catch rain, few had running water. Communal cook fires were enclosed in cement blocks and large jagged pieces of stainless steel and iron. Rusted, wheel-less cars sat on blocks. Unburnt trash was piled in mounds. Used refrigerators. Dishwashers. Baby strollers. The wheel of a tractor trailer, absent the tire, had been turned on its side and covered with a grate—serving as a charcoal grill. The ground was sandy white coquina mixed with sections of mud in areas of high traffic.

  When I rolled the window down, the smell told me that the plastic-wrapped buildings in the rear were outhouses. The strong smell of human waste brought with it a wave of nausea. Between Catalina’s rapid-fire speech and the putrid smell, I switched objects and started counting trailers rather than poles. It didn’t help. My heart was already pounding in my ears.

  The place was empty. Not a soul in sight. We drove around to a trailer with Leasing Office spray-painted on the side and sat there as the truck idled. I was a little hesitant to let Catalina walk in and ask around. If somebody came looking for her, I didn’t want her to register her face, which would get noticed on anybody’s radar. Catalina was beautiful in a place absent beauty, and because of that she stuck out like a sore thumb. But we both knew that whoever was inside would never talk to an older gringo with gray hair around his ears asking about a Mexican man who wasn’t legally here in the first place.

  Across the park an older, bowlegged lady walked out of her trailer and carefully walked down the steps that led to and from her trailer. Judging from the way she was using the stick in her hand, she couldn’t see too well. I drove over, and Catalina stepped out and quietly spoke to the older woman. The woman nodded, finally smiling, exposing toothless gums and white, fogged-over, cataract-filled eyes. She patted Catalina on the arm and shoulder. Then she pointed toward the rear of the lot. Catalina stepped up into the front seat and we drove around back looking for a bright-blue front door and something about a few pink flamingos.

  Catalina’s brother’s name was Manuel, followed by four other names. She said it so fast I couldn’t follow her past Manuel. We found a trailer with a blue front door. The owner hadn’t bothered to lock it, because the doorframe was rotten. And he, or some previous owner, must’ve had a thing for yard-art flamingos. Twelve perched atop the roof. Five lying down. Seven standing.

  While we stood there snooping around, a forty-person yellow school bus swung wide in front of the trailer park and slowed to a stop, followed by a massive backfire. I felt the sweat trickle down my back and tried to focus on a single spot.

  It was too late. My head was already spinning.

  Seventy-odd people wiggled out of that bus. All shapes, sizes, and ages. Men. Women. Children. They scattered to some thirty different trailers. Most carried machetes. As the crowd thinned, a short, stocky man with an ear-to-ear smile ran toward us and then hugged Catalina, who was hugging him back. He looked to be in his early thirties. Dark, tanned skin. Hardened hands. When he shook my hand, the meat in his palm told me he had never been a stranger to hard work.

  They laughed, hugged again, and talked excitedly. A thousand words a minute. Moments into their conversation, his face turned serious. The two began nodding and she spoke in hushed tones, talking as much with her hands and pointing at me. Finally, Diego showed Manuel the knife hanging on his belt. Manuel looked at me, then back at Catalina, and she nodded.

  Manuel took off his straw cap and spoke in broken English. “Gracias, mi amigo. For mi familia.” He paused, trying to find the English. “Must you please stay for dinner.”

  Catalina said Manuel had been in and out of this trailer for several years. He rented it depending upon harvest. We were lucky to catch him, as the crops around here were about picked and he was a day or two from leaving with some of the other men for Texas and Louisiana.

  I walked behind the truck and sat on the tailgate with Rosco. He wanted out of the bed of the truck, but given the umpteen dogs running around, I figured he was better with me. He thumped the edge of the truck bed with his tail and whined in my ear.

  At one of the fire sites, several women started making tortillas. Off to one side, a man was carving strips of meat off a side of beef. The beef had been freshly butchered; it was still draining blood. The man’s hands were red up to the elbows and the meat pink and crimson.

  While Catalina talked with Manuel, Rosco and I watched from the stable safety of the tailgate. Diego and Gabby played with several other kids who, as best I could understand, were second or third cousins once or twice removed. At a second fire a few feet away, a woman poured half a five-gallon bucket of peanut oil into a large pot and set it on the side of the fire to warm.

  The kids, now about a dozen in total, began kicking a soccer ball. Around the fire. A large man, bare-chested and muscular, stepped out of the trailer next to us and spoke in a harsh, rapid tone to the kids. Pointing his finger. While the kids moved their game off to the side, he walked to a woodpile between our two trailers and, swinging his machete, began chopping bigger limbs into smaller and placing them in a pile next to the fire. He worked at a fast and determined pace. At one point, a few of the chips flew over and into the bed of the truck. I stretched out, closed my eyes, and tried to imagine the taste of the fajitas.

  Around me swirled rapid conversation in Spanish, the occasional waft of the outhouse when the wind swirled, the rhythmic echo of wood being chopped, and the sight of the butchered cow. I was dangerously close to needing to leave.

  In truth, I was beyond that.

  In a few short moments, the park had transformed from a silent and empty mud hole to a thriving, noisy community. Everybody had a job and knew what it was without being told. Behind me the chopping continued. Across from me the butcher was boning out the ribs off the beef. Blood covered his hands like gloves. I lay back, counted kids, adults, dogs, flamingos. I pulled the mint ChapStick from my pocket and covered my lips and the edges of my nostrils. Just across the fire sat the elderly blind woman. I slipped a card from my pocket and studied her features. Cataracts. Hunched shoulders. Crow’s feet. Gnarled hands. Toothless gums. Bowlegs. Stained apron. She was a study in mileage.

  A soccer ball rolled into the vicinity of the fire, bounced off the pot of peanut oil, sloshing it, and then rolled toward my truck. Gabby, who was faster than most and that included many of the boys, followed it. Barefooted. She bounced past the peanut oil, nudging the pot, and then hopped over one side of the fire en route to the back of my truck to retrieve the ball. The chopping behind me stopped but not the noise. The muscular man behind me turned toward Gabby, pointed at her, and began speaking loudly and with greater emphasis and irritation. Then he moved toward her with great speed. Gabby picked up the ball and froze, her eyes growing wide. She tried to dodge him but he hooked her with a massive arm and snatched her up, and she dropped the ball. He lifted her so fast, her hair whipped back and forth from the movement. He spoke with animation and irritation.

  Then I heard Gabby cry.

  A few moments later, I found myself lying on the ground between the trailers with that big man between my arms. He was limp. A rag doll. A group of men had circled me, each wielding a machete pointed at me. But standing over me was a woman—holding a machete—and pointing it at all of them. Speaking loudly and in a language that was not mine.

  Coming out of it is always tough. A few seconds of knowing nothing. The onl
y thing I knew to do was keep my mouth shut and wait. Eventually the fog would clear. And in the meantime, don’t let go of whatever I had hold of. I may not remember why I was holding it, but at one time I must have had a good reason. I shook my head, my eyes focused on both Gabby and Diego, who were standing behind the old woman, looking at me. The limp man in my arms was breathing, and blood trickled out of a busted lip. I sat up, looked around at all those people looking at me. Catalina had straddled me and was speaking fast and forcibly in Spanish, pointing that machete at all those men.

  After I sat up, Manuel knelt at arm’s length. “Señor—” He looked concerned. “Are you okay?”

  I thought before I spoke. “Yes.”

  He offered his hand to help me stand.

  The man in my arms began regaining consciousness. I sat him up next to me. Catalina shooed the group of spectators and they returned to their jobs. A few minutes passed while they let me dust myself off. Somebody brought the muscled man an orange soda, and he sipped it while leaning against the trailer. A pretty good bump was rising on his forehead. Catalina tended to him and whispered words I couldn’t hear. He nodded and glanced at me around her body.

  Manuel sat with me. Saying nothing. I needed to know. “What happened?”

  Manuel reconstructed the last few moments with both his hands and broken English. “You jump on Javier. Like cat. You and him wrestle. Fight. Then he go to sleep.”

  I pointed at Catalina. “And her?”

  “Javier good man. He grabbed Gabby just as she was about to step in the hot oil pan. Just trying to keep her safe. He was tickling her when you . . .”

  “I thought I heard her crying.”

  Manuel shook his head. “She was laughing.”

  I put the pieces together. There was no good way to fix this.

  Javier stood, steadied himself against the trailer, and then smiled and laughed at the men in a circle around him. He said something in Spanish, patted me on the shoulder, and Manuel laughed. “What’d he say?”