Send Down the Rain(6)

Juan Pedro knew it would be tomorrow or the next day or maybe even the next before they figured out that the driver of the truck was not in the building. He turned, slung his rifle over his shoulder, and motioned for Catalina to move up the hill. She didn’t argue. Didn’t hesitate. She simply picked up Gabriela and followed Diego, who had begun trudging up the steep, snowy trail. The trail marker read Woody Ridge Trail. She’d never been here, but based on the way Juan Pedro kept prodding, she had a feeling he had. With the echo of muffled gunfire below, they climbed for a mile, their feet slipping more with every step. Soon the grade grew so steep they were pulling on tree limbs and bushes to help their ascent. Freezing rain blew sideways.

An explosion rang out from below. Fire raged where the building had stood. Juan Pedro smiled again. Now it would be a week or two or maybe never before they figured out that he wasn’t inside it. He lit a cigarette, spun the brass lighter in his hand, and laughed quietly.

Diego stumbled and Catalina caught him as Juan Pedro smacked the back of the boy’s head. Catalina pleaded for rest through chattering teeth, but Juan Pedro pointed farther upward. He directed them around a small outcropping of rock and then back into the trees, where they came upon a natural break in the granite. Beneath an enormous rock outcropping was a cavelike space large enough to park two or three pickups. Someone had piled firewood and dried evergreen branches in the corner. Juan Pedro quickly lit a fire.

Catalina and the kids hovered near the flames, their shivering growing more intense as they warmed. Catalina helped the kids strip out of their wet clothes and settled them between the fire and the granite wall. She used long branches to hang their wet clothes against the rock wall, added larger logs to the fire, and circled the growing base of coals with rocks that would hold and reflect the heat. Staring at her two terrorized and exhausted children, shadows from the flames flickering on their faces, Catalina made up her mind: a bad death would be better than this living hell.

Because sleep could get him killed, Juan Pedro had trained himself to go without. When he did sleep, he did so in one of two dozen shipping containers strategically placed throughout the Southwest. He could lock them from the inside out, and something about locking himself in convinced his subconscious that he’d be safe. But if he’d been awake several days and couldn’t get to one of his trailers, he’d take something, a powerful narcotic, to knock him out for a few hours. Something that would medically override his system and force his instincts to shut down.

Catalina’s problem was that she never knew when he would do this. Like everything else in his life, when and what he took was secret. Juan Pedro was a master at controlling information. It was what made him valuable. Given that, she never really knew when he was asleep or just pretending. She couldn’t even trust his snoring. The only signal she’d ever been able to trust was the sight of his eyeballs moving back and forth beneath his eyelids. But he would usually cover his eyes with a hat.

Juan Pedro had been keeping himself awake for almost five days. Catalina knew he couldn’t keep this up much longer. He had to get some sleep. And in all the hurry, he’d left his hat in the truck. Catalina made the fire as warm and inviting as she could. Juan Pedro yawned, walked outside the cave, and studied the worsening conditions. When he came back, he laid his backpack flat across the entrance to the cave, lay his head on the pack, cradled his rifle in his arms, and closed his eyes.





3

I sat with my legs dangling. Roll of white paper spread beneath me. Shirt off. Young doctor listening through his stethoscope. Degrees and diplomas covered the wall.

“Breathe.”

I did.

“And again.”

Another breath.

“One more.”

He placed his hand on my chest and tapped it with his other hand. Same on my back.

“You’ve been short of breath lately?”

“A little.”

“A little or yes?”

“I live at thirty-five hundred feet.”

“Did you feel this way when you moved there?”

“No.”

“How long have you lived there?”

“Ten years or more.”

“How long you been feeling this way?”

“Couple.”

He pointed at the antacids on the table. “How long you been taking those?”

“Long time.”

He frowned. “And you’re just now coming to see me?”

“Didn’t seem important.”

He crossed his arms. “At one time you were strong as an ox, weren’t you?”

I weighed my head side to side. “I can pull my own weight.”

“Except lately.”

I didn’t respond.

He hung his stethoscope around his neck. “What you’re feeling is not indigestion.”

“What is it?”

“You probably need a few stents. But I won’t know until I look.”

“Any hurry?”

He seemed surprised by my question. “That depends.”

“On?”

“If you want to live.”

I nodded.

He baited me. “You seem like an educated man.”

I sucked through my teeth. “Never finished high school.”

He crossed his arms and gazed at me skeptically.