Ariel's Crossing - Bradford Morrow [146]
He refused to take the manila envelope they proffered, saying, —Why don’t you gentlemen just tell me what you want?
Graysuit said, —If you’ll just read these materials carefully. Do you have an attorney, in other words a lawyer?
—I know what the word attorney means. Do you know what the word necropolis means?
The men looked at each other, thinking, Here we go.
—Didn’t think so.
—Mr. Montoya?
—A town of dead people is what it is.
—Mr. Montoya.
—Thanks to you and the people you represent, me and my wife live in a necropolis. All these towns along the basin, except Alamogordo, where your people live, are necropolises. Ghost towns complete with walking, talking ghosts. I count myself one of them.
—Well. If you don’t have an attorney, I think it would be advisable for you to contact one. There are some very fine lawyers—
—Soon as anybody’s kid is able to walk, he walks right out of this dump, thanks to you. That’s how a necropolis works.
—Fine lawyers down in Alamogordo, or El Paso. Go over the offer here with an attorney. I think you will find the proposal very equitable.
—You just think you think.
The officer looked at his wristwatch. He’d run into this bullshit before, and he never enjoyed it. He was young, with a pate shaved balder than a newborn’s. The flamboyant mustache waxed into small corkscrews, a style from another century worn in this one by his colleague—who now held a document file out in front of him—did little to disguise that man’s youth, either. These were mere children themselves, Delfino realized, marionettes whose wires were pulled by yet others dictating this little local cataclysm, folks who had very probably never even been to Tularosa.
—You think and you believe, he finished.
The same shotgun that presently stood behind the door had stood on that other day, decades ago, just out of sight, and for a moment Delfino had considered reaching for it. Quite the surprise that would have been. Ended things right then and there. His argument wasn’t with those two, however, but with puppetmasters he would never meet. He recalled accepting the folder from the outstretched hand, thanking the men—himself suddenly possessed of politeness—and shutting the front door of the house, a house that looked just like the houses on either side of it, houses in turn resembling houses that stood on either side of them, and so on down the block, which paralleled some emaciated trees whose leaves rattled as ever in the sugary gypsumed air.
No leaves rattled here, but the sun brought with it a light breeze, warm and heavy, as the day took hold. The four rangers had fanned out and closed the distance between them and the stead to a quarter mile, give or take. Marcos was up, came out and stood beside his uncle. He saw the figures climbing the rocky rise, too. “Your call what we do,” he said.
“What we do is have some coffee.”
“Good, fine.” Marcos mixed the instant and handed the cup to Delfino.
“Something about Ariel I ought to tell you,” Marcos said.
“In a bit.”
“It’s important.”
“What?”
Marcos reconsidered what he was about to say. She could very well speak for herself if she chose. “I’ll be back.”
His uncle sipped the rotgut coffee, which tasted to him, at that moment, delicious. Best coffee ever passed his lips.
Bearing another cup in two hands, Marcos returned inside to where Ariel lay, still asleep, hair cascading over her face, mouth ajar, her blanketed body curled into a C, like a sleeping cat. How easy it would be to love her. Even though, as he was learning, her life was anything but easy to figure. She was beautiful,