Round Rock - Michelle Huneven [91]
He’d been so good for so long now: sober, well-intentioned, consistent in schoolwork, meditation, AA, returning phone calls and library books, paying taxes, getting his teeth cleaned. The list could go on forever, yet the women he loved still left.
DRIVING across the bridge, who did he see but that man who’d asked him for a ride to Rito. He was walking at a good clip, his jacket flapping.
Lewis pulled over and rolled down the passenger window. “Want a lift?”
“Great, thanks.” The man climbed in the car. “I’m staying just a few blocks away.” He extended a hand. “David Ibañez.”
Lewis shook hands and introduced himself. “You live in Rito?”
“Tijuana. But I grew up in Rito.” said David. “On your drunk farm, as a matter of fact. You know the farmworkers’ housing on the west end?”
“Yeah! I worked in one of those bungalows. What do you think about your birthplace turning into a drunk farm?”
“I love it. One of God’s great jokes. And much better than having it subdivided or paved into an industrial park. I only wish I’d gotten sober there.”
“You always could, you know.”
David laughed. “I’m not sure I have another recovery in me. Bleeding from the eyes kind of got to me the last time around.” He wore a nubbly sport jacket and, under that, a purple knit vest with iridescent hairs and a band-collar dress shirt: beautiful clothes, undoubtedly expensive.
“You sober long?” asked Lewis.
“Seventeen years.” David pointed to a Chinese restaurant. “Take a right here, please.”
David’s destination was a small house on a treeless block. Lewis parked and, suddenly loath to relinquish the company, turned off the engine. “What do you do in Tijuana?”
“I work in alternative medicine. I guess you’d say I’m a healer.”
“You mean, like, hands-on healing?”
David lifted his hands. The fingers were long and tapered, the skin an even brown. He flipped the palms up, showing pinker skin with creases like lines depicting rivers on a map. “I use my hands some,” he said.
“I always wondered how someone knows they have the power to heal. You just discover it one day?”
“It’s more an affinity than a power,” said David. “And I grew up in the Mexican healing tradition. My uncle’s a curandero and he always said I had el don, the gift for it.”
“And you can actually find jobs doing it?”
“Hospices, holistic health clinics, rehab centers, you name it. A lot of curanderismo is very helpful in treating alcoholics and addicts.”
“Really?” Lewis had an image of cravings being pulled from the body, hand-over-fist, like thick orange yarn. “How so?”
“Oh, Western doctors constantly misdiagnose certain conditions as flu or depression when it’s actually susto, a disease of fear that’s epidemic in addicts.”
Lewis promptly experienced a surge of fear himself; maybe he’d never been properly diagnosed. “How do you know if you have it?”
“The symptoms are similar to depression—weight gain or loss, lethargy, irritation, volatility. But susto also means loss of soul, and that’s what makes it so much more helpful a description than depression. People with susto have lost any sense of true or higher self. They react to things only out of fear or guilt or shame.”
Lewis tried to keep a keen interest out of his voice. “What’s the treatment?”
“Herbs to relax. Conversation to examine the fears. A ritual to cleanse the person and reconnect them to both a higher power and a firmer sense of self.”
“Well, I could probably use some of that myself.”
“Come on in.” David smiled and nodded toward the house. “I’ve got time. I’ll give you a barrido—a quick, ritual sweeping. Fix you right up.”
“Better yet …” Lewis articulated the idea as it occurred to him. “Why don’t I drive you up to Rito? It’s a great day. I don’t have anything to do.”
“Oh, I’ll rent a car. I’d just thought if you were