Part 5 (1/2)

”You what, now?” came the gruff, wispy old voice.

I repeated myself, and he opened the door a bit more again, and this time stepped halfway out, sizing me up with a look of guarded mistrust.

”Demetrio Vigil, eh?” he asked.

”Yes. I've only recently met him.”

”No, no,” he shook his head and jabbing his own thumb into his chest. ”I'm Demetrio Vigil. I don't know you.”

His jaws worked convulsively, as jaws will do in the absence of teeth. I could see now that he wore dark jeans, cowboy boots, and a red flannel s.h.i.+rt with a bolo tie.

”Oh,” I said. ”Then I'm terribly sorry. I've made a mistake. I met a young man from Golden last week, who said his name was Demetrio Vigil, and you're the only such person listed in the white pages.”

”Los white pages,” he repeated, running an antique hand across his scruff of white beard.

”I'm sorry to bother you.”

”Ni modo, hita.”

”Sorry?”

”Are you Hispanic?” he asked me. ”You look Hispanic.”

”Does it matter?” I asked, defensively, annoyed that older people always seemed to ask me this while people my own age didn't care.

He shrugged. ”If people think it matters, it matters,” he said. ”It didn't used to matter, now it matters.”

My spine tingled with the words, so similar to the ones Yazzie had spoken earlier. Another coincidence. Or was it? Maybe I'd baited him into saying it. Maybe I was losing my mind. I wondered if perhaps I'd hit my head in the crash, because the world seemed slightly tilted now, emotionally. I'd never been anxious before, but now anxiety seemed to define me.

”I'm Hispanic, yes,” I told him, shaking myself out of the chill. ”But I don't speak Spanish, and I don't think it matters.”

”This other Demetrio,” he said, his eyes narrowing a tiny bit. ”When did you meet him?”

”Just last week. I saw him this morning, too. I wanted to thank him for helping me. I had a crash. It's a long story. I've made a mistake, sir, so sorry. I'll just go now.”

”No, no,” he said, touching my arm. As he got closer, I smelled alcohol on his breath, and pungent, unpleasant body odor. ”I have a grandson who carries my name. Demetrio.”

I gasped a little, and my eyes widened. ”Oh? Does he live here?”

The old man shook his head solemnly. ”No. Not no more, jovencita. Ya se fue.”

”I'm sorry, I don't understand.”

”Se fue. Se fue,” he repeated, gesticulating angrily, as though saying words I didn't know, over and over, would somehow make me understand them. ”He ain't here no more. He's gone. I don't want no trouble. Don't be asking me no more questions.”

”Oh, okay. Well, do you know where I might be able to find him?”

The old man frowned, and shook his head solemnly. He took a raw, homemade-looking cigarette out of his pocket and lit it with a match ignited - to my horror - on the zipper of his jeans. He took a long drag, then jabbed the cigarette into the air to punctuate his thoughts.

”My late wife, la loca esa que Dios la bendiga, with all her rosaries and todo eso, she thought good of everybody, she'd tell you exactly where he is. She'd know. But me? I don't know nothing. I don't tell you nothing, I don't tell the police nothing, I don't tell no one nothing, that's how I am, I don't tell nothing because I don't know nothing. You understand?”

I nodded, realizing now that he probably did know where Demetrio was, but thought he was protecting him from something by refraining from sharing the information with me. I thought of mafia movies, for some reason, and the idea of loyalty to the family. I wondered if this old man were also a gang member.

”Okay,” I said, realizing this was going nowhere. I took the iTunes card out of my pocket, and ripped a little piece off the edge of the photocopy of the folk tale Yazzie gave me earlier. ”You wouldn't happen to have a pen, would you?”

”What for?” He eyed me mistrustfully again.

”I just want to give you my phone number, in case your grandson shows up after I leave.”

”He ain't showing up no more,” he said wistfully, blowing smoke at me. ”But I take your number for me, if I ever get lonely, you come see me.”

I heard him laughing uncleanly as he disappeared back into the house and shut the door. I stood stupidly for a moment, wondering if he were coming back. Just as I was about to leave, however, he returned, with a dull, thick pencil, the kind a child might use in the early years of school. I could hear canned laughter coming from a television inside the house. My mom had told me about how huge numbers of people in New Mexico were illiterate, and I wondered if this was one of them. I'd never known any illiterate adults.

I scribbled my cell number on the sc.r.a.p of paper, along with a note thanking Demetrio for all his help, wrapped it around the gift card, and handed them to the old man.

”Please give this to him, if you see him,” I said.

”I won't see him,” he said. ”But I think taking this is the only way I'm going to get you to go away so I can get back to watching my stories.”

I stood in shock at his rudeness, and watched his smile spread slowly across his face.

”Ay, hita, that's the problem with you fancy people, you don't got no humor.” He reached out and squeezed my arm before examining the sky with his milky eyes. ”The weather lady, she said more snow coming. Be careful. They're no good, these roads up here.”

”I realize that,” I said with a shudder, but decided against going into details about my crash with a crazy, drunk old man who clearly enjoyed playing mind games with me. I turned to walk back to the Land Rover.

”Thank you, sir,” I said over my shoulder. ”Take care.”

The old man did not return my goodbye before slamming his door shut.

I hurried back to the Land Rover, disappointed and trembling with cold. The sun was low behind the mountains now, and darkness would set in soon. I realized then that I'd allowed myself to become a little hopeful about seeing Demetrio again, and it disturbed me because the hope felt the way it does when you like a guy. Like like him, like that. After talking to Kelsey the attraction I'd felt for Demetrio had surfaced. I was generally pretty good at controlling my emotions, but not now. Now I felt a bubbling in my gut, b.u.t.terflies, at the thought of seeing him again. It was subtle, of course. This desire hadn't been conscious, and I'd never betray Logan in any way. Not consciously. Not in real life.

I sat in the car for a couple of minutes, letting it warm up a little before I began driving. To pa.s.s the time, I took out the paper Yazzie had given me, and began to read it. I got no further than the first lines before my entire skin had risen up in goose b.u.mps, and a sick sort of thrill pierced my gut.

In Cochiti, the cacique had an only boy (”grandson probably”). He never went out. He didn't know the country, nor how to hunt. He only knew how to sing.

I stopped reading because it was only a coincidence, that's all. Nothing more than that. I stuffed the story back into my pack, cranked up the stereo, and put it all out of my mind. I drove along the dirt roads, toward Highway 14, and tried to forget about Demetrio Vigil, and the crash, and Saint Anthony, and the Cochiti boy - all of it. I was making mountains out of proverbial molehills. It was ridiculous to let my imagination run wild like this! I had to get hold of myself.

I was doomed, however, to failure because as soon as I got to the hill with the small adobe church on it on Highway 14, I saw the younger Demetrio Vigil after all. He was walking casually through the snow on the shoulder of the roadway, as though impervious to the biting cold. My heart raced at the sight of him, and my cheeks blazed because, quite simply, he looked great. Very handsome, in that dangerous, forbidden way of his. Carefree, peaceful, serene, boyish and almost innocent, because he didn't realize he was being watched. He had a black bandana tied beneath his baseball cap. His neck tattoos exposed to the elements. His toolbox swung from one hand, and with the other he pressed some sort of animal - a cat, maybe? - to his body, carrying it like a baby. He appeared to be...singing.

At least he was singing, until he spotted me behind the wheel of the slowing Land Rover, pulling over next to him on the shoulder of the road. At that point he stopped singing, and smiled in an amused sort of way. He strolled toward the car with great confidence, and waved - as though seeing me here were the most natural thing in the world.

As though he expected me.

I got out of the car to walk toward him. He stood grinning and waiting for me.

”Hey!” I said, stupidly, waving like a moron.

”Hey, mamita,” he said, c.o.c.king his head a little to one side and checking me out. ”What a coincidence.”