Part 16 (1/2)

Two young men from Los Cerrillos lost their lives in a tragic fatal alcohol-related crash on NM Highway 14 over the Christmas weekend. They were Hilario Gallegos, 19, and his half-brother Demetrio Antonio de los Santos Vigil, 18. Both young men were reputed gang members...

”No,” I said, softly. I gulped for air, and felt dizzy. I read on.

Both young men lived in Los Cerrillos with relatives. Neighbors and friends expressed shock at the deaths, but at least one person who knew the young men said he was not surprised, as both young men had allegedly been involved with gang and drug activity.

The grandfather of Vigil said the younger brother was an outstanding singer and ch.o.r.eographer, and that he graduated with honors from Santa Fe High, though at press time the Journal could not confirm this. Friends say Vigil had expressed interest in leaving the gang, and was working as a veterinary a.s.sistant in Santa Fe to save money to attend St. John's College in the spring, where he hoped to major in world religions and philosophy. He also gained entrance to Stanford and Princeton, where admissions officials say his essay about leaving gang life moved them to tears. Alcohol and drugs are believed to have been a factor in the accident, according to state police...

There were two photos of Hilario Gallegos with the article. He was every bit as good-looking as Demetrio, though without any of the warmth or intelligence in his eyes that his brother had. I punched Demetrio's number into my phone, but he didn't answer. I tried again, and again, and there was still no answer. I texted, and got nothing back.

I would not be ignored.

I called my dog over to me now, and held him tightly.

”Come on, Buddy,” I told him, adjusting the cone so as to be slightly more comfortable. I got up from my desk and went to my closet to find something suitably warm to wear in the middle of nowhere on the coldest night of winter thus far. I stuffed some pillows in my bed to make it look like I was sleeping there, in case my mother awoke from her drunken stupor and found her way to my room. Unlikely.

I knew I needed sleep to excel at final exams, but something in me told me that could wait.

”We're taking a drive. There's someone we need to talk to.”

iPod and cell phone in pocket, with a flashlight I appropriated from the garage, I headed off into the night, in my jeans and recklessly applied layers of s.h.i.+rts and sweaters that either looked bohemian or ridiculous. There was a very real chance I had achieved both. Buddy tagged along at my heels, limping with his little cast, yet overjoyed to be going on a trip at last. I suspected he had felt abandoned by me over the weekend. I lifted him into the Land Rover, and closed us inside. It was about 12:30 a.m.

Shortly before 1 a.m., we arrived in Golden. I wasn't sure of what to do or where to go at first, so I simply parked at the church, turned off the lights and the car, closed my eyes and hoped for a sign. I was afraid, but not as afraid as I'd been before I understood, at least partly, what was going on. Now, I felt some semblance of control over my life. He was dead, but he was nice.

After a while, I had the urge to go to the descansos. The crosses that someone had erected for Demetrio and his brother. I was filled with a crazed bravery that made little sense to me, fueled in part by anger and disbelief. Why hadn't he told me? That was easy, I reasoned. Because I wouldn't have believed it, just like I didn't entirely believe it now.

I drove to the crosses, grabbed the flashlight and my dog, and jumped down into the cold dark of night. Somehow, knowing the cross on the right belonged to someone I knew and loved made it not nearly as creepy as it had been before.

I remembered the first time I'd met Demetrio, and the way I'd joked about the crosses, the strange look that had come over his face then. Of course. I'd been joking about death, and bragging about how I'd skirted it, when he himself had not been so lucky. But how? How was any of this possible? I knew that there was a scientific explanation. He'd even begun to tell me, and it had made sense, to a point. Something about the Golden Ratio.

I walked to the descansos, with Buddy s.h.i.+vering in my arms. The blackness of the frozen night was complete, but for the weak cone of illumination from the flashlight. I stood and stared at the crosses, and tried to feel something. Anything. I tried to conjure Demetrio up from the blackness, but nothing came.

”Where are you?” I called out into the night, softly at first and then repeated with more volume. ”Where are you?”

Nothing.

”I get it,” I cried, loud, a desperate sort of courage coming to me. Overhead the stars twinkled coldly, by the millions, so very many stars. Dizzying billions. Smears of stars. We didn't have stars like this in the city.

”So you're dead, big deal,” I screamed. ”I'm not scared, okay? You don't have to hide from me anymore. I believe you. I want to understand you.”

I waited, and soon enough heard something rustling in the pinon trees nearby. My pulse jumped in my chest and began to bombilate against my sternum like the wings of a trapped bird. My mouth was heavy and dry; my nose numb from the cold. I realized that what I was doing could be incredibly stupid. What if he wasn't good? What if he was a morboso, like the plumber had said? What if he wanted to eat my soul? But I also know what I felt for Demetrio, and how I felt around him. I trusted him.

”I'm here, Demetrio. Let me see you.”

It sounded absurd as it came from my lips, but it was what it was. The world as I'd understood it before was gone, something new and aberrant having taken its place. ”Please don't be afraid of me. I won't fear you if you won't fear me.”

The rustling grew louder, as though something were moving through the frozen scrub gra.s.s and crunchy snow toward me. I was excited and petrified both, with the possibility of seeing him again, and touching him. I wanted to ask him all sorts of questions about life and death. I needed to understand, as a scientist. I smiled to myself, and Buddy, responding as he often did to my own body language, panted and wagged his tail and twirled in circles in the snow.

Suddenly, the rustling grew louder, and was accompanied by a terrible, horrible low growl, followed by the wet, nasty sound of chops being licked. Big chops. I looked up and saw a pair of yellow eyes s.h.i.+ning at me from the darkness.

Before I knew what was happening, an enormous, rabid-looking coyote - the one I had seen next to the Land Rover Friday night, I was certain of it - leapt out from the darkness, snarled menacingly at me. It s.n.a.t.c.hed Buddy in its muscular jaws before leaping back into the blackness. It happened too quickly. I had no time to react.

Buddy was gone.

”No!” I screamed, devastated. I ran a short way into the darkness, but realized I was too slow. I saw a shadowy outline of the thing lope across the land, fast as a jaguar, and it was gone.

”Buddy!” I wailed. ”No!”

He'd looked like a ragdoll in the beast's jaws, just dangling there. Was the coyote Demetrio? Why would he take Buddy?

”Bring him back! Don't take Buddy! We don't want to hurt you! We come in peace!”

I listened, but heard nothing.

”Buddy!” I yelled, hot tears percolating in my eyes. I was in an agitated panic now, unsure of what to do, punis.h.i.+ng myself with guilt for having brought Buddy out here in the middle of the night. What was I thinking? He weighed nine pounds. He had injuries. He was no match for a predator. It was quite possible, I realized in horror, that the coyote was just that, a coyote, not a spirit or trickster, just a hungry carnivore who'd happened across a lucky domesticated meal.

”Oh, dear G.o.d,” I cried, tears flowing coldly down my cheeks. I had to do something. Anything. And fast. ”Dear G.o.d, help me. Please help me.”

I ran back to the Land Rover, climbed in, and sped back to the church. I drove all the way to the top of the scrubby hill this time, crus.h.i.+ng weeds and bouncing over small boulders, dispensing with the formality of the empty parking lot, putting the hearty Land Rover to some sort of practical use for once. I parked, and jumped down, leaving the headlights on high, s.h.i.+ning down upon the desolate ruins of a house. Something in my gut told me I was in the right place. I'd get Buddy back by coming here. I knew it. I don't know how I knew it. I just knew.

”Demetrio!” I cried, at the top of my lungs. ”Demetrio! Come out! Let me see you! I need your help!”

I waited, starting to hyperventilate in my state of terror and important purpose. My voice rose to a powerful shout.

”I saw the newspaper stories about you! I saw the news videos. I know what happened to you, and I'm really, really sorry. I am so terribly sorry. I know who you were, and I know about your brother. I wouldn't bother you now except something just grabbed Buddy and took him away, and I need your help to get him back. Buddy's helpless.” I broke down sobbing.

I fell to my knees now, in the emptiness of the night. I was foolish, screaming alone into an empty house without a roof, a ruin whose walls crumbled in all around it. If my mother could have seen me then, she would have locked me away and shoved Lexapro down my throat. I was losing my mind. Maybe my mother had a point. I'd lost it, hadn't I? I wasn't the girl she knew anymore. I hardly even recognized myself. It was senseless, all of this. Nonscientific. Impossible. I beat my fists weakly against the frozen earth, and I wept - for Buddy, for myself, for mysteries, for the imperfect nature of religion and science, and all the myriad ways they failed to intersect.

”They took Buddy,” I lamented. My voice faded to a normal volume, then grew weaker. ”All because of me. I was hoping you could help me. I don't know. I want him back. I love that dog.”

I heard more rustling, and braced myself, scared. I didn't want more coyotes - though if one came and carried me off now, it was what I thought I deserved for sacrificing my beloved dog, and disrespecting my poor mother.

I lifted my eyes, and looked around. Still nothing. No one. Just an endless black, ceilinged with stars.

”Demetrio Vigil,” I warbled, tears seeping from my eyes, my nose starting to drip. ”I don't know how it is that I see you, and feel you, or how it is that you smell so good to me, and make me laugh so hard, but I know one thing, one crazy thing.”

I stood up now, sniffling and delirious, and stumbled back to the car, with an inexplicable urge to turn the lights off. Let the coyotes take me, I thought. Let them get me.

I cut the lights, and closed the door, standing next to the car in the night with my arms stretched out at my sides. I listened for a moment, to the near complete silence all around me. For a moment, I felt Demetrio's presence. I cannot explain precisely what the sensation was, because it was sensed with something beyond the five senses humans normally engage. I knew he was there, as surely as I knew my feet were cold.

”I don't know much,” I said, softly now, to the darkness. ”But I do know that I think I love you.”

The rustling returned, and this time, as my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I could make out the silhouette of a dog, too fat and puffy to be a coyote, just at the edge of the ruined house. A Chow-Chow?

”Bring him back,” I said to the shadow. ”Buddy never hurt anyone.” I reconsidered my statement, and smiled to myself. ”Well, you know. Except a few stuffed animals and ankles, but he thought it was for love. You get a dog snipped, you think that sort of thing is going to stop, but it didn't. I don't know. I guess some urges are just too strong for most boys.”

I heard a faint and faraway tinkling of bells at this, like a wind chime crossed with a human voice, coming from very nearby and yet sounding as though make from a very great distance - the way an old radio broadcast might have sounded, crackling from a speaker near your ear. It seemed to come from a tree just a few feet away. I turned my head to look at it, and to my astonishment, saw those same sparkler-like lights I'd seen Friday night, moving faintly though the branches. They flared quickly, and died out, leaving me with nothing but the disquieting possibility that I had not seen them at all.

Meanwhile, down by the ruined house, the shadow of the animal began to move toward me with alarming speed.