Ariel's Crossing - Bradford Morrow [87]
“Does he pay in person?”
“By post.”
“What’s the return address?”
“He doesn’t give one anymore, I’m afraid.”
“Is there a home address on the checks?”
“Certified bank check, anonymous as it gets.”
Ariel frowned.
“Like I say, I think he’s throwing away good money keeping all that in there. We’re in business to make a living, of course. But it seems a shame to see somebody wasting forty dollars a month for no good reason.”
“I agree, but he must have some attachment to it or else he’d have let it go. It’s my responsibility now.”
“What happens when I get the payment from him?”
“If there’s really no return address on the envelope, then hold the money. If there is, send it back to him.”
“And tell him what?”
“Tell him Ariel has come to claim him.”
A dozen red roses, stems rubber-banded, wrapped in a pretty cone of plain white paper. Another dozen, and a few others. Five bouquets altogether for Delfino, who, having paid more for these roses than all the other flowers he’d bought in his entire life, carried them into the cemetery near Chimayó, where he laid them, pausing on a knee at each of the weathered headstones of his mother, Kayley McDougal Montoya, and Gil Montoya, his father, and at the resting places of his grandmother Emily Montoya, and Juliar Montoya, 1839–1899, his grandfather these almost hundred years deceased, the man who’d inherited Pajarito from the de Peñas of Nambé. In Agnes’s honor, he set the last bouquet beside a grave whose headstone was so worn that the name and dates had been erased. The dead don’t mind sharing.
Late that afternoon he returned from Chimayó in high spirits about his visit to Rancho Pajarito. Marcos had grown into a fine young man. Carl could be proud. Sarah was as good a woman as ever walked the earth. Delfino himself, however much he admired Pajarito and all Carl and Sarah had done with the place, felt that he, too, had gotten it right years ago when he chose to set out on his own into the world. One could make the case his life hadn’t unfolded quite the way he envisioned, but Agnes and he had experienced much happiness withal. He wouldn’t trade one moment with her for anything, though he would forever regret that she and he had only so briefly shared the home they’d built together in the shadow of the Oscuras. Could have been better, could have been much worse. The roses were laid on the graves, the world spun on like an oblivious toy top.
That second evening at dinner, Delfino’s sister-in-law broached a subject she’d brought up before. That he consider moving back to Nambé. While he figured Sarah would suggest this—why should he go on living alone in Tularosa when he could be among people who loved him?—he hadn’t prepared any viable response.
“Christ knows,” his brother grumbled, “you might even make yourself useful for a change.”
“I don’t want to be useful any more than you do.”
“Don’t worry, I’m not. Ask Marcos.”
“He’s not, Uncle Delf. Kip and I could use some more muscle around here,” Marcos said, knowing he often wound up the fall guy in these verbal jousts between the Montoya brothers. He was game, though, why not?
“You be the brawn, I’ll be the brains,” Carl went on.
“This dump’s headed into the ditch with that kind of setup.”
“You’re too weak to even steer it into the ditch. Marcos, never mind. Bad idea.”
“That’s enough,” said Sarah. “I’m serious.”
“Sarah’s serious, watch out,” Carl said.
“I know she’s serious, you know why? Because she’s the only real brains over here.”
“If that’s the case, why did I go and marry your brother?”
They laughed, Kip along with them, and Franny, though both saw this was family banter, intimate and breakneck, and knew to stay clear.
“Because you were too smart to marry a dusty desert mule like Delf here, is why. Like that self-portrait photograph he brought.”
“She just likes older men,” said Delfino.
“Shit. Mature, more like,” said Carl.
“Very old men,” Delfino said.
“Refined.”
“Legend in his own mind.”
“A seasoned stud.”
“Broke-down