“Last couple nights. One of my boys heard you were onto the kid.”
“Those were your headlights I saw behind me, on the road.”
“Didn’t need to follow you closer, I could see where you were coming. Now, get out of the way.”
“I can’t do that. And whoever you are and whatever you’ve done, the one thing you really don’t want to take on is shooting a police officer.” It could only be Taco Alvarez, but if Taco thought she did not know, maybe, just maybe, he might back off, leaving Danny for another day.
She heard a step, then another, and braced herself for action: throw the lamp, hit the ground, pull her gun—
Then came a sound that didn’t fit: a patter of rainfall on a dry night, off to the side. Erasmus? She drew breath for a warning. But before the words could leave her mouth there was a quick scuffle, then the explosion she had been dreading, deafening her and burning a black-and-white print of tree branches onto her retinas.
After what seemed a very long time, Olivia lifted her cheek off the dirt. The night had gone black. Over the ringing in her ears she could make out some high-pitched noise, a chorus of—screams—the kids, in the cave! She staggered upright, pulling her sidearm, wondering vaguely why she hadn’t been cut in half by the shotgun blast, then crashed into something that wobbled and bit at her shoulder: the pallet wall. She put out her left hand, and finally remembered: Mendez, you got a flashlight! She grabbed it from her belt and thumbed it on, holding it well away from her body; over the ringing in her ears, the screams seemed to diminish slightly.
Two steps to the cave entrance, and at the beam’s end…
The kids, pressed against the cave’s back wall, wrapped in each other’s arms. Terrified, but whole. Carlos was the only one still screaming, his eyes tight shut. The other two blinked into the light, and Mina’s lips moved, saying something.
Olivia ducked back outside. The beam skittered in a circle, catching the half-collapsed pallet wall, the smashed lantern, a dark circle of ashes, the path along the cliff—and legs.
Taco Alvarez lay stretched out with his feet toward the cave, blood in his hair, mouth agape, the fingers of one hand twitching. Her flashlight found another pair of feet: white sneakers beneath a dark brown robe.
Brother Erasmus: wooden staff in one hand, shotgun in the other. He blinked when the beam hit his eyes, but the smile on his face was beatific.
“Was he alone?” She’d snapped out the demand automatically, envisioning the psycho brother Angel taking aim at them all—but the smile did not shift.
“Alone, alone, all, all alone.”
She took the shotgun, peeled out the shells, and flung the empty weapon to the side. As she knelt to slap the handcuffs onto the groaning Taco Alvarez, the old man pulled out a minuscule flashlight and walked past her to the entrance of the cave. When she stood up again, the children were clinging to him like limpets on a rock, weeping. He somehow had enough hands to embrace all three of them at once.
Her cellphone, of course, couldn’t get a signal. Next time you drive off with a mad monk, she raged at herself, take a Department cruiser.
She couldn’t leave the kids here while she went for help. And she’d be damned if they had to sit in a car with their would-be murderer. In the end, she left Taco—cursing in two languages, hands in cuffs, feet wrapped in duct tape, and a knot the size of an egg on his head—in the gentle care of Brother Erasmus.
“I’ll send someone the instant I get in range of a cell tower. You sure you’ll be okay with him? I could just tie him to a tree.”
“Bright star, would I were steadfast as thou art, watching, with eternal lids apart.”
“I don’t think it’ll be anywhere near an eternity. Maybe twenty minutes, half an hour at the most.”
By way of answer, he placed his hand on her shoulder, and smiled down on her.
She looked over at the children, who had passed through the terror phase and were now beginning to talk in a mad tumble of words. She lowered her voice. “Thank you. He’d have pulled the trigger for sure. I should have been more careful.”
“There is no fool like an old fool.”
She laughed. “You’re right about that. The last thing he could’ve expected was an old man with a cudgel.”
“Every inch that is not fool is rogue.” In the lamp-light, the old eyes sparkled.
“Well, I thank God for that. Okay, I’d better get these three home. I’ll see you at the station.”
He merely smiled, and leaned on his staff. She gathered up Danny and his two protectors, got them across the creek dry-footed, and into the car.
When she turned back, she saw Erasmus through a gap in the trees, a dark shape in the light of the back-up lantern. A line from some summer Shakespeare play percolated up in her mind, and she murmured it into the night. “I met a fool in the forest, a motley fool.”
A mile from the cave, her phone came to life. As she made her calls, she was dimly aware that the kids had moved on from reliving their terror to speculation about Erasmus. Danny thought he was a hero in disguise. Carlos wondered if he’d just dyed his hair and painted lines to look old. But Mina, with the superiority of age and the wisdom of her sex, insisted he was an angel of God.
Olivia Mendez thought all three kids might be right.
7:51
Mina
Mina gave a last glance at the girls’ room mirror, rolled her skirt a little shorter, then shoved her makeup pouch back into her bag. A little more around the eyes than usual, but Ms. McDonald would be too busy today to notice.
Sofia squinted at her appraisingly. “I like the earrings.”
Mina did, too, although they were heavy, and so cheap they’d probably give her an infection. “You ever think of getting other piercings?”
“Like, nose or something?”
“Tongue, lip, belly button. Tit.”
Sofia giggled. “Yeah, right. My mom would lock me in my room until I was forty.”
“That reminds me.” Mina snaked her hand down to the bottom of her bag to feel around for her phone.
“Checking in with Mommy?”
“Sucks, I know.” Sofia had a big family. Even after Gloria, she tended to take them for granted. Mina had her parents, period.
Mina’s fast-moving thumbs picked out a text to her mother.
Heading to class now no sign of terrorists or gangsters yet, luv m.
7:52
Olivia
There were times Olivia regretted being a cop. Oh, not the job itself—other than when she had to clean up some horrible thing one human being had done to another, or keep awake on her third shift in a row, or sit surveillance with an exploding bladder. And she always found she drank more on nights when she’d had to ravage some harmless citizen to tears in an interrogation.
No, it was the easy relationships she missed. Bad enough to go to a party and be introduced to a woman you’d busted for prostitution, or wheel your grocery cart past a guy behind on his child support, but she’d bet that secretaries and bus drivers didn’t get that moment of hesitation when a new acquaintance heard what you did, or when a long-time friend started to dish the gossip and then realized that she shouldn’t tell you.
Take Linda. She liked Linda McDonald, but there was something about her husband the woman didn’t want Olivia to look at too closely. Not long ago, that would have been a red flag to Olivia’s bullish nature. Even now, her first impulse was to dive in and dig it out, friendship be damned. However, Olivia Mendez had been a cop for long enough to learn that to survive the job, a person had to find a balance. Loneliness was corrosive. Sometimes, what people were hiding could remain hidden, without the world coming to an end.
Her fallback position now was: trust, but keep your eyes open.
The students were beginning to move toward their homerooms, the breezeways emptying with the approach of first bell. Her uniform made it unnecessary to chide anyone against running, as each and every student instantly dropped into a sort of race-walk when they cau
ght sight of her, mumbling a greeting as they scurried by. To give them a break, she went into the library to see how preparations were going—and there, speak of the devil, was Gordon Hugh-Kendrick, arranging plastic spoons on a cheap paper tablecloth.
Did she imagine the brief flicker of alarm, as if checking the surroundings for escape routes?
And if she had seen it, so what? Lots of good people still had reason to be wary of cops. Trust, but keep your eyes open.
“Hello, Mr. Kendrick.”
“Please, call me Gordon.”
“And I’m Olivia.”
“How are things going, Olivia?”
“So far, so good. You?”
“I have narrowly averted calamity by locating a packet of artificial sweetener in the far reaches of the staff cupboards. Thus ensuring that our guests may die of some terrible cancer, but years from now and not on school grounds.”
“That’s all we can hope for.”
He held up a cup. “Coffee?”
“Maybe later.”
“The speakers were asked to come at 9:30. I give the croissants until 9:32, if you’ve got your eyes on one of those.”
The man was as open and friendly as a stay-at-home dad, she thought. Or somebody’s granddad, finding a purpose to his retirement. “Thanks for the warning. Okay, well, see you later.”
She moved away before she could see a look of relief on his face, and went back out into the breezeway, where all the kids and most of the adults bounced away like reversed magnets. Nothing like an armed cop to make even the innocent look around for the trouble.
Maybe she should take her uniform away to the furthest reaches of the school and let the kids have their last few minutes of blowing off the morning’s steam. Once she was formally introduced, with the other guest speakers during the assembly, her badge and duty belt would become a sort of costume. The kids would relax.
So she sent Linda a text to let her know where she was going, and walked away, down the circuit of chain-link fence that separated the playing fields from a road on the west side, an apple orchard on the east, and the seasonal creek at the back. Not that the fence meant much. It wasn’t even continuous, since the school grounds were public property on weekends. The only section that would slow down a determined five-year-old was the hundred or so feet between the baseball diamond and the apple orchard’s storage yard. The mowing crew regularly came across used needles.
But then, she supposed that the uniform she had on was largely symbolic, too, when it came to enforcing the law.
7:59
Linda
Linda hung up the telephone and checked her cell for the text she’d heard come in: from Olivia, saying that she was walking the perimeter. She stretched out an arm for the next call slip—and nearly knocked over the box of flyers she’d spent the night fretting about. She shook her head, stood up rapidly enough to bash her thigh on the corner of the desk, muttered dire threats at her stockings not to run, and limped into the office with the flyers.
Mrs. Hopkins, having stemmed the worst of the tide, glanced up as Linda popped into her realm.
“I forgot to give you these—the extra Teacher Memos you wanted? To give the volunteers?”
The other woman at the high counter turned, and Linda’s heart sank. “Good morning, Señora McDonald, I wonder if—”
“Ah, Señora Rodriguez, so good to see you. Going to be a gorgeous day, isn’t it?” Linda took care not to pause for breath—if the Señora got a wedge into the space between words, she would use it to drive home her inevitable list of reasonable and vastly time-consuming suggestions. “Sorry I can’t talk, I have a million things to do, I’m sure you understand—maybe you’d take charge of this for me?”
Her distraction succeeded. As Linda retreated inside her office door, she saw the woman reach for a sheet from the box.
Her door closed; the 8:00 bell rang.
Career Day, at Guadalupe Middle School.
TEACHER MEMO—
GUADALUPE MIDDLE SCHOOL CAREER DAY
Remember, all Period 1 classes focus on “The Dream.” Encourage students to consider a career’s satisfactions, how they think the job would make them feel.
Period 2 focuses on “The Practical”: Could I make a living? Would I have a good home life and live where I wanted? How much would the training cost? Etc.
Both Period 1 and Period 2 written assignments are due Friday.
Period 3 is the assembly. I will try to dismiss early. All students have classroom assignments for Periods 4, 5, and 6—the complete list is posted outside the office. Please discourage students from trying to make changes in their classroom assignments. If they have problems, send them to the office.
PERIOD (TIME)
ACTIVITY
1 (8:00–8:50)
Writing assignment: the Dream
2 (9:00–9:50)
Writing assignment: the Practical
3 (10:00–10:50)
Assembly (multipurpose room)
4 (11:00–11:50)
Speakers I
Lunch (11:50–12:40)
Lunch
5 (12:40–1:30)
Speakers II
6 (1:40–2:30)
Speakers III
Thanks to everyone who has worked so hard to make this year’s Career Day a success!
Linda McDonald, Principal
8:00
The morning bell echoed down the breezeways, hurrying the last students toward their first-period rooms. In the office, Mrs. Hopkins took out her pad of admit slips for the inevitable trickle of students with business too urgent to finish before the bell. Back at her desk, Linda picked up another telephone slip. In the school entranceway, Tío pulled a broom out of his cart.
The hallways quieted; an abandoned basketball rolled out from under a picnic table at the end of B Quad. Inside thirty-one classrooms, teachers expert at the herding of cats turned their restless adolescents toward an honest contemplation of dreams.
8:01
Gordon
Gordon stood outside the library, head lifted, as the buildings around him fell slowly quiet. It was a moment he cherished whenever it was offered, this sensation of a school full of children settling to their futures. Some days it didn’t come. He hadn’t expected it today, when the hallways were bustling with adults and excited kids. But here it was, a rare and undeserved gift. Gordon Hugh-Kendrick, surrounded by the sweet and ephemeral beauty of a generation, feeling old and tired.
Feeling, too, that his presence here was a blight on the landscape. What kind of school deserved a man who’d worked for a gang of mercenaries?
He might have grandchildren this age, had Jasmin lived. Three decades ago, he had barely noticed the child’s sex on the coroner’s report—but the older Gordon got, the more present that missing piece had become in his life. He never spoke of it, even with Linda, but his unborn daughter was often there in the corner of his eye, at the edge of his mind, in the figures of his dreams.
It also amused his English spirit to reflect that those theoretical grandchildren of his could have had skin even darker than those settling to their desks around him.
8:03
Mina
Mina fiddled with the end of her black braid while her homeroom teacher droned his instructions about the assignment. Really, why didn’t he just say, “Write a one-page essay about your dream job”? But she waited until he’d finished, then flipped her braid back over her shoulder and clicked open her pen.
Dreams are easy. Reality is hard. Still…maybe this essay could help with the hard reality, since it would be a thing she could hand her parents, the next time that discussion came around.
AN AMERICAN GIRL’S DREAM
Forty-three years ago, a little girl escaped Iran with her mother and her baby brother. She was too young to understand why her world had ended, too young to know why her father wasn’t with them, why her mother kept crying, why she wasn’t allowed to talk to anyone on the cars and trains and planes they
went on. All she knew was, her room, her toys, her parakeet—that life was gone.
Everything but her mother and little brother.
They went to a place where people made noises that sounded like talk but had no words. And just when some of the noises started to become words, they went to another place where the people made noises. This happened a third time before they stayed long enough for the words to develop in her mind and she could reach out to strangers at last.
My mother was this poor refugee from a rich background. She grew up in London and met my Brazilian father during a riot, when they both took shelter near a police constable armed with nothing but a stick. They married and came to America, a country where bad things may happen, but where good people can still speak up.
Hearing these stories in my childhood taught me that there are two strong things: language, and the law. With one, you can reach out to strangers. With the other, you can try to protect them.
My dream in life is to bring the two together.
8:03
Brendan
Brendan’s phone had pinged as he was biking down the main road, so he’d stopped, legs straddled as the cars flew past, to read Jock’s text:
You sure? When?
At least Jock wasn’t blowing him off (not right away). Brendan sent back:
Let you know
When he’d reached school (almost on time) he checked it again and found:
Standing by.