Storm Frontby lamardeuse
Author's Note: I'm going with my previous bit of Reyes biography from one of my earlier stories, House of Mirrors, in which she fills in some family history: "Tony's in Arizona, but yeah, my parents are still in Galveston and so is my sister. I've got some aunts and uncles near San Antonio."
This is before I found out the show was going with the raised in Mexico angle, but I still think it fits. Perhaps the kids emigrated and her parents moved to be near the kids, or they were American citizens to begin with, or what you will. I believe there's more fluidity back and forth in US immigration/emigration patterns than is generally imagined. For my purposes, several family members now reside in the States.Language note: I tried to keep the Spanish in this to a minimum, since my knowledge of the language extends only slightly beyond ordering competently at the Taco Bell. My apologies to anyone remotely connected with the culture if I have made any mistakes.
I returned from Galveston in time to see the mountain catch fire.
When I was eight, we made our first trip to the States as a family to visit Crazy Uncle Tomàs. Of course, no one called him that to his face, except my brother Tony, who enjoyed alarums and excursions even more than was normal for a healthy child. It was the first thing out of his mouth as he launched himself from the station wagon, his feet barely touching US soil before he was scooped into my uncle's arms.
Tomàs had been lucky enough to be born in America, which meant he was lucky enough to eat at McDonald's, own an almost new car, and be drafted into the Army to fight in Viet Nam. He disembarked from the Freedom Bird in California after his tour and vanished, reappearing three years later in my mother's kitchen. She had always been his favourite, and he hers; when he was wounded outside of Bien Hoa she felt it, a swift pain in her leg that dropped her like a stone. She tells me I kicked right then, as if to inform her I wanted out of her unpredictable body.
Quickly he became our favourite, too, when he visited us for Cinco de Mayo or Christmas. The toys or candy most children had a right to expect from a doting uncle didn't accompany him, but whenever held it against him. After all, he was one of us, racing over the fields with legs magically shortened to match our strides, laughing with us when he tumbled in a heap of liquorice-scented children. I now know he barely made it out of the sixth grade, but to my cousins, my siblings and me he was, and still is, the wisest adult we had ever known, for he had discovered the secret few of his advanced age understood: it was a hell of a lot more fun being a kid than a grownup.
I was hoping he could impart a little of that wisdom to John when I deposited him in Tomàs' silent care and headed to Galveston for a couple of days to restore my balance with the help of Mama and Pop. I needed to clear my head of the scars in him, visible reflections of his inner landscape. More importantly, he didn't need my emotion right now, and until I left his sight it was all I could do to keep from wrapping myself around him and never letting go.
In Mama's kitchen, all was as it had been. My parents spent part of the year in Texas now to be close to the grandkids, and I found strength in the energy she imparted to the air around her rather than the well-worn knicknacks adorning the counters. She didn't fret when I broke down just inside her threshold; she understood I had been saving it up.
When Pop came back from the grocery store, he accepted my presence as if I had never left home. He smiled at me and nodded, and went to start preparing the okra, rice and shrimp for supper. I practiced breathing in, then out, fighting fresh tears. They always knew when to speak, and when to give their children the comfort of familiar things.
Soon, too soon, I was back on the 10, headed west to San Antonio and John Doggett. And then, I caught the sunset hitting the cliffs that held him, and felt an overpowering need that startled me. Tony, Fina and I all called it Tomàs' Mountain, but it wasn't strictly his. An old Army buddy of his had a huge ranch in the Texas Hill Country outside of Uvalde, and had deeded my uncle a parcel of land sufficient for hunting and fishing, and for being alone, to belong only to him until his death. I never did discover the source of the debt for which the land was payment; I never asked, and he never volunteered the information. War stories were not told at our bedtimes.
I drove up the dirt road to his main cabin, my rented SUV negotiating the ruts and turns easily. Tomàs had another dwelling further up on the mountain that he used only in the dry weather, as it was inaccessible when the rains washed over the hills. As I pulled up, he walked out to meet me, and I noticed for the first time that the years were starting to exact their price. Until now, he had always seemed younger than any of us.
"Hola,Tío," I murmured, as he pulled me into an all-enveloping hug.
"Querida," he told me, kissing me on both cheeks. We separated, and I held back my questions, but my restless shifting from foot to foot betrayed me. He smiled, a slow, knowing smile that had me blushing. "He is breathing still. Wait."
"Where is he?" The words tumbled out without my consent.
Tomàs moved his head, indicating the hill. I stared at him. "But there's a big storm forecast for the next twenty-four hours." Above us, the sky was cloudless, but weather changed with vicious swiftness here.
"I told him there might be floods. He stayed." My uncle spread his hands in the gesture of a man who has accepted the power of fate. "You will go," he said, not questioning. "It is time for him to return to your kitchen."
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
When the first fat drops of rain splotched my windbreaker, I knew we would not be heading back down the mountain this night. Luckily, I was only a quarter mile from my destination, and the worst of the climb was over. The hill formed a sloping lateau here, and Tío's cabin was at the highest end, near the head of a natural spring.
Still, it took me a good twenty minutes before the structure appeared through the trees, by which point I was drenched through. I didn't think to pack any wet weather gear on this trip. I didn't think of much when I first heard John was missing. Presumed dead. Oh, hell, enough.
I smelled wood smoke, but there was no evidence of it coming from the chimney in this downpour. Scanning the forest, I saw no sign of him outside the cabin; of course not, I admonished myself. What idiot would get caught in this? My knees went liquid as I knocked on the door. Suddenly I felt an urge to run.
The door opened inward to reveal a face less battered than I remembered. The swelling around his eyes had diminished, and the evil marks just at the edge of his hairline were fading slowly. But my gaze was drawn from these signs of pain when his smile broke.
"Monica," he told me in a voice matching his expression.
My breath took a short holiday from my body, then returned long enough for me to croak, "I'm here."
He threw the door wide and I stepped in on weakened legs, tired from climbing yet charged with adrenalin. I wasn't sure what sort of reception I would get, but somehow this was harder than an outright rejection. I distracted myself by taking stock of a place I hadn't seen in twenty years. The cabin Tomàs had made with his own hands was a simple one-room dwelling dominated by a large cast iron stove for heat and cooking. The plumbing was an outhouse fifty feet into the woods and a bucket for hauling water from the spring. There was a bed with a feather mattress, a wooden rocking chair, a chest of drawers containing essentials and clothing. Rough-hewn shelves covered an entire wall, holding mostly poetry: Burns, Neruda, cummings, Stevens, Angelou, books well loved.
I didn't realize I'd started shivering until I felt the touch of his hands on my shoulders. They burned through the windbreaker and the cotton sweater underneath to mark my skin. The shivering kicked up a notch.
"Better get out of these," he murmured. "I've got some clothes I picked up in town." His hands released me, and he returned a few moments later with a plaid shirt and jeans. "I know these are too big, but.."
"They'll be fine. Thanks," I nodded. Moving closer to the heat of the stove, I unzipped the sopping jacket, then drew the sweater over my head, not in the mood for coy 'turn-your-back' games. Besides, neither of us was in any shape for such things. Were we?
"There," I announced brightly after a couple of minutes of awkward fumbling with wet cloth and buttons. I turned toward him, pasting a smile on my face.
"I was just about to make dinner," he said, his eyes darting to the stove. "Water's starting to boil. You like macaroni and cheese and Vienna sausages?"
"I've never been able to get enough," I drawled.
"Yeah, well, I offered to give your uncle something toward my keep here the past few days, but he didn't say anything. You suppose a gift certificate to the grocery store in town might – "
I shook my head. "You don't understand. We're family."
"Yeah, but I'm not."
"You became family the minute I brought you here."
He shifted his feet, then finally nodded. "Okay. I'm just not used to..." Trailing off, he moved abruptly toward the shelf and picked up a can. I didn't press him to finish the sentence.
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
"That's eighteen points?"
"Read' em and weep." He still looked skeptical, so I began counting, pointing at the cards as I went. "Fifteen-two, fifteen-four, two runs are – "
"All right. I believe you."
Smirking, I added the round to my total. Tomàs had no particular need for a cribbage board up here, so we used a scrap of paper to keep score. "One hundred twenty-six. That's the game." Turning the sheet over, I wrote "M" and "J" in block letters at the top. "Now for the tiebreaker."
"Monica, how come I remembered?"
I did not look up, couldn't. "I'm not sure. I'vethought about it, and..."
"What?"
Shrugging, I managed, "Well, there could be several causes."
"None of those other guys have recovered their memories, have they?"
I shook my head. "I talked to Dana about it, and she offered to have you checked out by a neurologist friend of hers – "
"Dammit, I don't need my brain dissected, I need – you. Look at me." Biting my tongue to keep from betraying my churning emotions, I met his gaze. "You know why I remembered my life and the others haven't."
I blinked. "So do you," I grated.
For a few seconds, I listened to the sound of his breathing, then: "It has something to do with these – powers, doesn't it?"
"That's my current theory. Along with the corollary that I was the catalyst."
His eyes narrowed as he replayed that horrible day. "You had to tell me about Luke. It wasn't your fault."
"That's not what I mean."
"Then what do you mean?"
"I mean that this psychic connection that you and I – " I took a deep breath. " – that I've been pushing you to develop, was probably the reason you were able to recover the way you did. Maybe you were able to hold something of yourself apart from that monster when he drained your mind, or I effected some sort of transference when I found you. Either way, you have no one to blame but me." Once it was out, I was surprised to find I felt nothing at all, as if I had been the one wiped clean of all memory.
He stared at me for a few moments, his eyes searching my face. "You think I wanted to stay the way I was? You think all that stuff I said afterward was just macho bullshit?"
The harshness of his voice jump-started my heart again. "No, I – "
"Listen this time, and listen good." He gulped air. "I would rather remember all the pain I've ever felt, everything, than to forget one instant of my son's life. When I think that could have been lost forever..." He screwed his eyes shut, then rose abruptly, moving to stand facing the woodstove.
I jumped to my feet, then stood frozen, not knowing what to do. Oh God GodGod.... "John, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry."
He spun toward me. "And stop saying you're sorry!" he barked. "'Sorry' doesn't mean a damn thing. You can't help it if you believe the things you do. You can't blame yourself for something I would have wanted myself. You also can't blame yourself for not finding him in time."
I felt as if the floor was crumbling beneath me. "Wh-what?"
His mouth quirked into a grim line. "Yeah, that's the pot calling the kettle black, isn't it? But I know you feel it, that it's always at the edges of our – whatever this is. You have to let go of that, Monica. If it's absolution you're looking for – "
"It's not your place to forgive me! Or God's!" I dimly recognized the sound of my own voice raised to a screech as emotions I never even acknowledged clawed their way to the surface. "Only Luke can do that...only..." And then I crumbled along with the floor.
He reached me before I fell.
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
"Your uncle told me a secret about you."
"Mmm." I was in that nether region between sleep and wakefulness, comforted by the warmth of him against my back as we lay on top of covers on the feather mattress. His arm singed my stomach through the plaid shirt, but I welcomed the burn. It reminded me we were both here. Above us, the rain on the metal roof was the heartbeat of a thousand souls seeking entry.
"You liked to climb trees in your birthday suit and wail like Tarzan."
" – 'wuz four. Sue me."
"I don't suppose you'd do that for me sometime."
It was ironic, my fuzzy brain mused. I was convinced I was going to come up here and rescue him. "Fat chance."
The last conscious sensation I had was the feel of his lips against my hair.
END
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