Perdido. Rick Collignon
mud and snow. He had never heard such a story, and he thought that beneath the village he could see with his eyes was something else. He thought that maybe the next day, after he made sure the roof on his house was sound enough to hold the weight of snow, he would walk back to his neighbor’s house.
Across the creek and not far from Telesfor and Will’s places was a baseball field with high weeds in the outfield and stones mixed with dirt in the infield. Once each week, the field would be ringed with vehicles and there would be a game, always between the same two teams. For a long time, the noise of engines and of men who had drunk one beer too many bothered Will. But after a while, he got to like it. He liked hearing the kids rushing through the cottonwoods along the creek and the voices of the women calling out to them. Finally, he walked over one night and borrowed a glove and saw what it was like to have a ball fly so far and then fall into his hand.
But Will didn’t feel like playing baseball tonight. He felt tired after doing nothing all day but taking a long drive in the rain with Felipe. The clouds had moved out by late afternoon, and the sun had come out in a haze of mist. By then, Will was sitting in a chair against the south side of his house watching the sky grow dark. The voices at the field had quieted down, other than an occasional yell, and he could hear truck engines revving and pulling out.
It was nearly dark when Felipe drove over. His truck pulled into the drive and hit the ruts hard, headlights shooting everywhere. Felipe pulled up and parked alongside the house.
“So,” he said, one arm hanging out the open truck window. “I thought you’d be over at the field.”
“I didn’t make it.” Will pushed out of the chair and went over to the pickup. “Who won?”
“I don’t know,” Felipe said. “I don’t keep score. Your girlfriend was there.”
“Lisa?”
“Yes, Lisa. How many girlfriends do you have? She asked me where you were. Then she stayed for a little while and left.”
Will let out a long breath of air. “I guess I should have walked over,” he said.
Before Will, Lisa had been with a friend of Felipe’s named Pablo Padilla. On his head the day after he stopped seeing Lisa was a large bandage. Pablo told everyone that he had fallen off his roof and landed in the woodpile, but the story Felipe heard from Elena was that Pablo had called Lisa something he shouldn’t have, and when he turned away to drink from his beer, she hit him with a board. Felipe tapped his fingers against the side of the pickup. He thought that if he had a girlfriend like Lisa Segura, it would be dangerous to let her sit by herself at a baseball game and grow angry. He also thought that if Will wasn’t smart enough to know this, why should he tell him?
“What time do you want to leave in the morning?” Felipe asked, smiling a little.
“The job’s off,” Will said. “I called the woman after you dropped me off and gave her a guess over the phone. She said she didn’t think it would be that much and since her brother put on shingles once, maybe she’d let him do it.”
Felipe grunted. “I told you,” he said.
“I’m going to go see Lisa in the morning. After that, maybe I’ll come by your house. If you’re not doing anything, we could see your father’s neighbor.” It was dark now. Will could just see Felipe’s face through the shadows inside the cab.
“The girl on the bridge,” Felipe said. “I should be careful what I say to you.”
“It’s a good story, Felipe,” Will said. “I just want to hear the end of it.”
Two
WILL WALKED THROUGH the door of Felix’s Café at seven A.M. and the place looked to him as it did every other morning. The same group of regulars was crowded noisily at one table in the middle of the room, and off to the far side, by himself and as still as stone, was Felix García. Felix had suffered a stroke two years earlier, severe enough to prevent his ever again flipping an egg or spitting in the beans, which is what he used to say gave his frijoles their special flavor.
Will had heard that on the morning of Felix’s stroke, he and his son, Pepe, were preparing beans with garlic and cilantro when Felix turned to Pepe and, without any expression on his face, said, “Your mother’s breasts, hijo, are the reason I cook so well.” As Felix had always been a quiet man with little sense of humor and his wife, who had been dead for nine years, had not seemed to possess especially remarkable breasts, what Felix said startled not only Pepe but everyone in Guadalupe when they were told. After saying this, Felix’s eyes rolled back in his head and he fell to the kitchen floor, where he lay on his side with his face pressed against the linoleum.
Pepe now cooked alone in the kitchen. Each morning, he would dress his father and they would walk together to the café, where the old man would sit all day by himself. Will no longer came to the café as often as he once did, but when he did, he would glance over at Felix, whose eyes were always open and staring, his shoulders now frail and hunched, and Will would wonder about the last words he had spoken and what was going on now inside the old man’s mind.
The conversation at the large table quieted when Will came through the door. About half the men had just come off their shift at the copper mine. The other half were there to talk until the coffee drove them outside to work. Will nodded and then went to their table when Lloyd Romero waved him over. Lloyd took Will’s hand and pulled it close to his chest. The man sitting next to Lloyd said good morning and moved his chair over to give Will room.
“Qué pasa, Will?” Lloyd said. “I haven’t seen you in a long time.” The table was littered with coffee cups. Cigarette butts smoldered in the ashtray. “Where’ve you been?”
Will knelt down beside the chair, his hand still in Lloyd’s. “We’ve been busy, Lloyd.” He looked toward the kitchen. “Did Lisa come in this morning?”
“You get that job across the valley?” Lloyd asked, pulling Will’s hand closer to his chest.
“No. It didn’t work out. It’s too far, anyway. Five hours on the road.”
Lloyd looked across the table. In a loud voice he said, “I remember Will the first day he came here. He stops me out on the highway and asks, ‘Is this Albuquerque?’” The guys across the table smiled. One of them said, “How’s it going, Will?” Will shrugged okay.
“I tell him, ‘Yes, this is the outskirts of Albuquerque,’” Lloyd went on, “’the rest of the city is over the hill.’” Lloyd looked back at Will and squeezed his hand. “You remember, no?”
“Yes, Lloyd,” Will said and smiled. “I remember.”
What he remembered was driving down the highway nearly twenty years ago and running into Lloyd Romero at a gas station. When he asked how far it was to the next town, Lloyd told him to get his ass out of here, that Guadalupe didn’t want people like him around. A couple of miles down the road, the engine in Will’s truck blew. He had sat on the side of the highway wondering what to do next until finally he walked back to Guadalupe. Eighteen years later, he was still in this village and had come to think he would never leave.
“You know, Lloyd,” Will said, pulling his hand free and standing up, “you haven’t changed since that first day we met.”
Lloyd laughed and put his hand on Will’s arm. “You’re okay, Will, you know. Come by my house later. We’ll drink a few beers.” He scraped his chair back and stood up, rattling off a string of Spanish Will didn’t understand. The men at the table laughed and then gathered up their cigarettes and hats. They threw some coins on the table, nodded good-bye to Will, and headed out the door.
Will sat down at a table by the window. The sun had not yet risen above the mountains. He looked out on the highway and, beyond that, on most of the village of Guadalupe. The town sat in a small valley, the road rimming it on the west and the Sangre de Cristo mountains to the east. Houses and sheds and old corrals were scattered