Ariel's Crossing - Bradford Morrow [14]
“Down in a minute.”
Kip liked the casual rhythms of the Montoya family and wondered what ironic angel bothered to direct him here. He glanced at his scratched hands and broken fingernails, still filthy though he had washed them. Must stink like a bosque skunk.
“Where you from, Bill?” Marcos sat down, displaying, like his father, an indifference toward the stranger’s dishevelment, and asking his question while he read yesterday’s Albuquerque Journal.
“Originally?”
“Is there any other place a guy can come from but originally?”
“Marcos,” Sarah warned from the adjacent pantry.
“That’s a pretty good question,” Kip answered with a skewed but sincere smile that had the effect of making him look more unwell.
“See?” he told his mother, hoping to hide the fact he didn’t quite know what to make of this William. “No offense.”
“None taken. Besides, I’m the one who should apologize for crashing your morning. I’ll get out of your way as soon as I can.”
“You haven’t crashed anything and there’s no rush.”
Marcos studied the stranger’s glazed, meaning-filled eyes before returning to his coffee and rustling the paper as if to brush away the need for further talk. Poor dude. Doesn’t need to be pushed to get where he’s plainly going.
The front-page article was illustrated with murky colored photographs of walkers on the road to Chimayó. They estimated thirty thousand made the pilgrimage to the santuario during Holy Week, from as far away as Grants, Belen, El Rito. A few faithful had even walked from distant Alamogordo, down in the Tularosa basin where Marcos’s uncle Delfino lived. Marcos wondered, Don’t these people have work to do? and meant to mention this, but Sarah was speaking. More questions.
“You have family around here, William? Is there somebody you’d like me to call?”
“Nobody, no.”
“You were over at Chimayó for the services? Lot of people from out of town this time of the year.”
“So I saw.”
“I was there. Walk every year. I’m not much of a Catholic, but I always feel better for having done it.”
Marcos said, “Look, Chimayó was a holy place for the Indians long before Santo Niño knew his halo from a hole in the ground,” watching Kip tentatively eat a biscuit, noticing he was missing part of the little finger on his left hand. Old warhorse, he’d clearly seen his share.
“There must be somebody somewhere who’s looking for you?” she pressed.
Kip resisted, feigning an amateurish amnesia, shrugging his shoulders and moving his head slowly from left to right. Sarah missed this small spectacle, but Marcos didn’t. “He’s not sure, I don’t think.”
“Let William speak for himself.”
Marcos quietly got up to leave. Time to help Carl exercise the horses anyway.
“Thanks again,” Kip said.
“No problem.”
Kip passed the rest of that day sleeping in a guest-room bed, dressed in a pair of Carl’s pajamas, having vomited breakfast on his wet legs and feet as he showered in a bath whose walls were lined with festive Mexican tilework. That evening he managed to sit at dinner beneath a hammered-tin chandelier with the Montoya family He succeeded in keeping himself out of their conversation both as topic and as participant. Sarah tried to engage him once or twice, asking could he use another helping of posole, had he gotten some rest? She mentioned again that she wanted him to consider letting a Los Alamos doctor look him over.
Once more Kip refused, but though he’d begun to contemplate his escape, he started seriously to doubt whether it would be possible. “I’m really feeling much better now,” he said, settling on his face as healthy and robust a look as he could manage in the hope it would camouflage his dishonesty.
It didn’t. His eyes were tainted as trophy ivory, his face pleated with threadlike wrinkles, his tongue blanched. Kip looked worse after cleaning himself up and napping all day than he had when Sarah first stumbled upon him. He offered to help clear the dishes, but Carl said he had it under control, take it easy. Excusing himself, Kip returned to his room. Alone, he could smell his illness, taste its rot, like an animal licking