Dedication
For mi padre,
from a grateful son
Contents
Dedication
Prologue
1. Sam
2. Tiempo
3. The Legend of Poncho
4. Reliving
5. Train
6. Arms
7. Snakes
8. Coil and Strike
9. Strangers in Town
10. The Legend Begins
11. The Road through Darkness
12. The Vulture’s Wings
13. Pizza
Gratitude
About the Author
Credits
Copyright
About the Publisher
Prologue
IF YOU COULD STAND STILL IN TIME, YOU WOULD FEEL IT hissing around you like wind made of sand. If you had wings made for that wind, you could soar above the swirl of history as easily as a crow circles a hayfield. You could float just beyond the edge of every now; you could spread your time-gliding wings like two cold shadows over always. Priests would shiver when you passed. Dreams would scatter. Dogs would howl. Slow ghosts would trail behind as you peered down into moment after moment, searching for your prey, searching for the one boy you had lost, for the boy who had been hidden in sometime.
If you had those wings, if you did those things, you would have a name to match your evil.
Are you the Vulture? El Buitre?
No. Nor am I. But I have seen him. Seeking.
1
Sam
THERE’S A KIND OF HEAT THAT CAN PEEL LIZARDS, EVEN IN the shade. Heat that sends every creeping thing slithering under rocks and into graves, heat that floats the crows up and away to find whatever cool whispers of mountain air might be trickling in over the painted mesas.
If you’ve ever felt heat like that, you already know that the only thing a person can do is go looking for a basement and a cold drink or an air conditioner with enough courage to rattle and hum and battle the sun without so much as a minute to rest.
On those days, days like today, when even the cacti would be crying in pain if it didn’t mean losing their water, the boys of St. Anthony of the Desert Destitute Youth Ranch were actually happy. Because when the sun was in a killing mood, there could be no chores. And when there were a dozen boys and no chores, they would pour into the Commons—the mostly empty concrete-and-cinder-block building where they did their reading and resting and recreating when the sun was down or deadly. Then Mr. Spalding would unlock the Ping-Pong table and turn on the old pinball machine and fill two coolers with ice and Cokes and open the little library of paperback westerns and science fiction comics. And if Mrs. Spalding was feeling pleasant, they would even allow a little music on the old record player.
At SADDYR, those boys hoped for 115 degrees in the shade like most kids hope for Christmas. And if you lived there, you would, too.
Twelve-year-old Sam Miracle was tipped back in an orange plastic chair, perched as still as a stone. His desert-blond hair had been chopped short, but it was fighting back. He had a colony of freckles scattered across his lean sun-dirty cheeks that looked like little brown ants who had finally given up trying to keep his face clean. Stare at Sam for longer than a few moments and you’ll see that he might be young, and his skin might be smooth, and his teeth even whiter than the sun could make them, but he didn’t seem young. Sam was more like something new made from very old things. Timber fence posts sunbaked to rot. Tangles of barbed wire more rust than steel. Boots cracked and dry and missing soles. Things once useful now with usefulness lost. He didn’t look like those things . . . he felt like them.
“SAM!” THE NAME HAD BOUNCED ALL AROUND THE ROCKS, thrown by the voices of eleven different boys searching eleven distant places.
Sam hadn’t felt himself fall in the heat. But his head had ached when he’d finally opened his eyes and the bright sky above him had come into focus. And in the sky, dark wings, descending in a circle. Three pairs. Black.
Vultures.
The scabby bald birds had shrieked and hopped as they’d touched down on the boulders around him, assessing his weakness.
A flying stone had sent the biggest bird tumbling in a squalling, flapping cloud of feathers. And then a long boy with broken glasses had hurled a boulder and kicked the next bird all the way out of Sam’s range of vision.
“Here!” he had shouted. “He’s here!”
Ten more boys had followed, urgent and angry and lofting stones after the disappointed vultures. Sam had been lifted and carried back to the ranch, where he’d been propped in his orange chair and filled with fluids. And after much scowling and irritation, Mr. Spalding had declared the workday over due to heat.
Sam rolled his neck. There was a little patch of dried blood in his hair from today’s collapse out on SADDYR land. And it itched. Like crazy.
Sam’s plastic chair was just beneath a badly painted mural made up of St. Anthony of the Desert—a bald man with a beard that looked more like a waterfall of noodles—alongside the giant words that Mr. Spalding thought were inspirational.
BE SADDYR!
S is for SAINTLY!
A is for ACTIVE!
D is for DILIGENT!
D is also for DETERMINED!
Y is for YESNESS!
R is for RESPONSIBLE!
Sam turned his head to the side and ground the itchy scab spot against “R is for RESPONSIBLE!”
All around Sam, the little rectangular Commons echoed with the violence of Ping-Pong, laughter, and the bloop and ring of the pinball machine. Two of the boys were rotating through Mr. Spalding’s antique disco records—squeaking one quick beat to a stop only to start up another nearly identical one.
“Sam?” Peter Eagle, the tallest and toughest of all the Ranch Brothers, pointed his Ping-Pong paddle at Sam from across the room. His dark hair looked like midnight polished into glass, and his eyes were volcanic even when he was happy. “Need a drink? More water? A Coke?”
Sam shook his head just as Peter spun away, smacking his opponent’s stealth serve back across the net without looking.
“Ha!” Peter slapped his chest with his paddle. “Nothing sneaks past this! Nothing!”
Barto, long and lean, set a stack of tattered comics on the floor beside Sam and adjusted his broken and rewired glasses.
“You okay?” he asked. “Need anything else?”
“I’m good,” Sam said. “And thanks for today.” He managed a smile. “I’ve never seen anybody kick a vulture.”
“Yeah, you have,” Barto said. “But those birds were bold today. Glad they didn’t tear out any chunks before we found you.” Barto sniffed. He was always serious, his lips too tightly pursed for smiles. But he had helped Sam out of trouble more than anybody. He picked two comic books for himself, patted Sam’s shoulder awkwardly, and drifted off into a corner.
Sam looked down at the comics. He had already read every one of them a dozen times—mostly retellings of classic novels. And his favorite fat paperback was already spread wide on his knee. Sam knew the adventures of its misunderstood outlaw hero well enough to flip to his favorite sections by feel, and most of his daydreams echoed scenes in the book, but he couldn’t read anything right now. His mind was slipping away. Slowly and gently at first, and then, once it was free of the ranch and the Commons and the moment . . . it raced.
Sam’s eyes trembled, wide and unblinking, leaking water down his freckles. Most boys who let their minds wander end up looking even dumber than they did moments before—limp faces and sagging jaws, droopy eyes and droopy lips always in danger of drooling. But Sam’s face didn’t go slack. His jaw tightened. His freckle-stained cheeks shivered just enough to worry anyone who might be payin
g mind. He might still be sitting right there in the Commons, but Sam Miracle was lost all over again.
OVER THE COURSE OF ITS SEVENTY-YEAR HISTORY, SADDYR had been home to a total of 144 Destitute Youth. Of those, fully a third had grown up and gone to prison or had died while committing some kind of crime. Of the twelve current residents, only Peter was truly bad—already having burned down a gas station. His best friend, Drew, was mostly bad—already having wished that he could burn something down, too. But all the boys were . . . difficult.
If you asked the Spaldings, they’d tell you that Sam Miracle was the most difficult of all. The most difficult ever. Yes, skinny Sam Miracle. He never fought. He wasn’t loud. He was young. But he was still the worst boy they had ever agreed to guardian in nineteen years of agreeing to guardian absolutely any boy the state of Arizona might be willing to send them (along with a check).
And when they said Sam was the worst, they weren’t wrong.
For starters, Sam’s mind was off. Away. Lost. Often. He’d forget to drink water while he was working. He’d forget to blink in the sun. He had to be fenced like a cow or he’d wander off into nowhere and helicopters would have to be called. Sam Miracle had daydreams so powerful, and they carried him so far around the world, that when his mind finally wandered home again from the other direction, he didn’t always recognize himself. And his body wasn’t always where he’d left it.
Not only that, but he had trouble digesting any food that hadn’t been canned and he tended to throw up when people made him eat it anyway.
But worst of all, the bones in Sam’s arms had been shattered and fused again so tight at the elbows that he couldn’t even touch his own chest, let alone button a shirt or brush his matted light hair. Sam was used to pain, so he was hard to scare. Threats and punishments were no use at all. And he never complained, which made Mrs. Spalding sure that Sam thought he was better than everyone else, especially when he’d laugh or smile his crooked dimply smile for no reason at all.
And then there were the extra state inspections.
And the extra visits from the therapists.
And the reprimands every time the Spaldings lost him.
And the way the other boys all cared for him. Yell at Sam and eleven others would stop everything and become very difficult indeed.
Beyond all that, Sam Miracle wasn’t much different from you or me or any kid his age. Take away your family, your memories, your bendy elbows, and then pop you in the desert for a couple of years, and your daydreams might become just as powerful and important to you as his were to him.
Leaning back in his orange chair with a paperback on his knee and rigid arms hanging at his sides, Sam stared across the noisy Commons and out through the rippling heat beyond the sliding glass door. His eyelids fluttered, and his breath quickened. The veins in his neck jumped with his heart, like twin snakes beneath his skin. And just like that, he was gone.
SAM WAS RACING LOW THROUGH A DITCH BESIDE A HIGH road. He was inches taller and a layer of muscle heavier, and a heavy revolver slapped against his thigh with each stride. His leather jacket flapped loose behind him, and his pumping, fully flexible arms were painless in the sleeves—as cool and smooth as liquid. He puffed sweat off his upper lip. Tall grass lashed his hands. He shot over a cactus carcass and dry stones rolled beneath his weight as he landed, but he was too quick to slip. And he was too quick for the big truck bouncing along the rough road above and ahead of him. Too quick and too low to be seen by the guards with rifles in the back.
At a crossroads up ahead, the ditch ran into the gaping dark mouth of a culvert, wide enough to channel flash floods beneath the roads, but dry for the moment.
Sam drew his weapon. Leaping sage and dodging boulders, he aimed up at the truck’s rear tire, and he fired. Rubber exploded. The truck swerved. The two guards braced themselves. Unseen, Sam disappeared into the dark tunnel below. And he accelerated.
In the dark, rattlesnakes buzzed surprise, but Sam was already past them. Gritting teeth and dripping sweat, Sam erupted back into the light and scrambled up out of the ditch just as the truck . . . no, the truck was gone . . . just as a stagecoach pulled by a team of black foam-flecked horses thundered past.
The desert was gone. Redwoods towered above one side of the road; a cliff fell away on the other, stretching its bony slope down hundreds of feet to the sea.
Sam had changed, too. He was smaller, he was wearing a scratchy old poncho, and he was straddling an old motorcycle with a rickety sidecar. The motorcycle roared, spewing up a plume of dust and gravel, and Sam shot forward after the stagecoach.
When he was beside the rocking stage, Sam hopped up on the motorcycle seat, balanced for one terrifying moment, and then jumped.
The motorcycle wobbled, rolled, and flipped off the cliff.
Sam slammed against the side of the stage, slowly pulling himself up by the door handle. Inside, a girl with long straight blond hair was bound and gagged and hanging from a hook like meat.
Millie.
Anger pulsed through Sam’s whole body when he saw his sister. But Millie didn’t look afraid. She looked angry, too. Angry at Sam. But why? She shook her head. She yelled into her gag. And then she slid her feet toward the door and kicked. The door swung open, whipping Sam out over the cliff, over the tiny explosion of his motorcycle impacting far below him and the lines of tiny waves waiting to eat it, and then slamming Sam back against the stage. He didn’t fall. Gasping, he grabbed onto the luggage rack on the roof, and then pulled himself up on top of the rocking stagecoach.
A cowboy with a big white mustache stained mostly yellow was already twisted around beside the driver. He was holding a short shotgun with two barrels, and it was pointed right at Sam’s middle.
“Darn it,” Sam said.
The cowboy smiled. And then he fired.
SAM JERKED AND HIS ORANGE CHAIR ALMOST SLIPPED OUT from under him. He blinked quickly, exhaled slowly to steady his breathing, and then forced a long yawn until his frantically beating heart began to normalize. Finally, he shrugged up his shoulders one at a time to grind his cheeks dry.
Just one more thing about Sam. Your daydreams probably end well. Sam’s never did. But he didn’t really mind. After all, one moment ago, his arms had been working great.
Sam swallowed and looked around the room.
Things had quieted down a lot while he had been stage chasing, and his overheated Ranch Brothers had settled down onto the cool concrete floor all around the room. The music was off. No ping. No pong.
“Hey,” Sam said. He looked around. The boys all looked back.
“Anything interesting?” The boy asking had long legs crossed tight beneath him, sharp eyes, a tangle of curly dust-colored hair on the top of his head, and hands crisscrossed with ugly scars. His name was Jude, and when he wasn’t competing with Sam for comic books, he was writing. He had a thick rumpled stack of pages in his scarred hands now, and given the tone of the room, Sam knew that Jude had just been reading one of his stories to the group.
“Anything?” Jude asked again. He dug a pencil stub out of his pocket.
Sam shook his head. “Just . . . stuff. Are you reading a new story? Did anyone try to wake me up?” Sam looked at Peter. The burner of gas stations had his veined arms crossed and his eyes shut. Drew Dill, the number two villain on the ranch, was seated beside Peter. He was only slightly shorter than Peter, but he was darker and broader and his head was shaved.
“You know you don’t just wake up, bro,” Drew said. He might not have burned down any gas stations, but Drew had chopped off his own pinkie finger on a dare, and the little stump on his left hand was a grisly reminder to the boys never to dare Drew to do anything.
“I’m sorry, Sam,” Jude said, shuffling papers. “Let me catch you up.”
“No,” said Peter. He didn’t even open his eyes. “The rest of us are waiting.”
Jude looked from Peter to Sam.
Sam shrugged. “Just keep going. I’ll figure it
out.”
“It’s about our redheaded fools,” Peter said. “That’s all you need to know.”
Jimmy Z and Johnny Z both grinned. They were twins, redheaded, almost always sunburnt, and just one year older than Sam.
Jude cleared his throat, tapped his papers together on the floor, and commenced reading.
“Jimmy and Johnny Z had always been the quietest of the Ranch Brothers, at least until a fight broke out. In a fight, they became two wild, roaring redheaded storms—true sons of thunder—flurries of feet and fists and teeth. But how could an average outlaw know that just by looking at them? And Peanut McGee was definitely a below-average outlaw . . .”
Jude continued, but Sam drifted away, looking around the room at all the listening boys who were leaning back against the walls or sitting cross-legged on the floor. Jude had written stories for all of them. All but Sam.
Flip the Lip was leaning against the pinball machine. He was stocky, and when he wasn’t mouthing off, he was chewing his lower lip. There was blood on it now. He said he started doing it to stop himself from grinding his teeth. In Jude’s stories, he was the fast-talking, knife-throwing, futuristic son of a sewer pirate. Barto was tall and bent, and the only boy with glasses—broken and wired together again more times than anyone could count. Jude called him Bartholomew Whig in his stories, an inventor of magical machines. Barto pretended to hate it. His long fingers were never still, and he was braiding wire into some kind of wreath while he listened to Jude.
Two scrawny blond boys were quietly playing a bizarre card game behind Jude as he read. Both boys had cards tucked behind their ears, cards pinned down to their necks with their chins, and they’d stripped off their shoes and socks to hold fans of cards between their toes. And they were taunting each other with silent snarls and exaggerated goon faces. Matt Cat and Sir Thomas. Matt had a face like a lumpy biscuit, but Sir T had features as sharp as creased paper. The two of them were completely ridiculous, but even they had gotten their own stories from Jude. Even worse, he had officially named them the smartest boys on the ranch. They argued constantly, even in Jude’s stories, but they also solved every puzzle, unraveled every mystery, and invented complicated and impossible games that none of the other boys found interesting.