When Harris Squires told Tula, “Your friend, Carlson, must be in a lot of pain because he wants you to come to the hospital,” she knew he was lying, but the voice in her head told her to get into Squires’s big, rumbling truck anyway and go with him.
This was early the next morning, several hours after the EMTs had refused to let Tula ride in the ambulance, and after many more hours that she had spent in hiding.
The girl knew it was unwise to linger near the lake, inviting questions from the police. So she had wandered off to her tree to speak with the owls, but the owls were not calling, possibly because of all the noise and flashing lights.
Even so, she waited, sitting alone in the high limbs of the banyan, where she could observe the actions of her second patron, Tomlinson, and his friend, the large man with eyeglasses, who was speaking with police.
Tula focused on Tomlinson, who was talking to Squires. She sensed her patron ’s good heart and godliness, and also that he was angry about something. He was angry at the landlord, perhaps, who had used God’s name to blaspheme them even though they had saved his life.
Yes… the man was angry at Squires. Tula had watched Tomlinson walk toward the huge landlord, and, for a moment, she thought he might strike him. Instead, the two men exchanged loud words that weren’t always loud enough for her to hear, but she heard enough. Tula knew they were talking about her and she listened carefully.
Soon, she felt ashamed because she realized that the landlord was telling the patron about seeing her naked in the bathtub. The girl felt her face become hot, and she felt like sobbing.
No man had ever seen Tula naked before, and very few women. Sitting in the tree, she had vowed to herself that it would never happen again. Ever. Not as long as she lived-unless, of course, the voice in her head, the Maiden’s voice, told her that she should marry. But that seemed unlikely, and, even then, Tula would not want it to happen.
The Maiden had gone to her death a virgin. Tula knew this was true, just as she knew every detail of the saint’s life because, at the convent, Sister Lionza had given her books about Joan of Arc. Tula had read those books so many times that she knew them by heart.
Her favorite book was a simple volume that included only words that the Maiden had written in her own warrior’s hand or had spoken before witnesses. Tula loved the book so much that it was one of the few things she had brought with her from the mountains of Guatemala. Its entries spanned the saint’s childhood, included her lionhearted testimony at her trial and, finally, her last words as flames consumed her body:
Jesus! Jesus!
There was no intrusive scholarship in the book. No third-party guessing about what the Maiden had thought or felt.
That small book was pure, like the Maiden herself. Tula carried it everywhere and had read it so often that her own patterns of speech now naturally imitated the passionate rhythms of the girl who had been chosen by God.
Tula knew that imitating the Maiden’s style of speaking caused some people to look at her strangely, but she took it as an affirmation of her devotion. The book had been a great comfort to Tula on the journey from the mountains to this modern land of cars and asphalt by the sea.
Tula had memorized several favorite passages. There were many that applied to her own life:
When I was thirteen, a voice from God came to help me govern myself. The first time I heard it, I was terrified. The voice came to me about noon; it was summer, and I was in my father’s garden. I had not fasted the day before. I heard the voice on my right. There was a great light all about.
Soon afterward, I vowed to keep my virginity for as long as it should please God…
Tula had not been in her father’s garden, of course, when the Maiden’s voice first came. Her father had been murdered by the revolucionarios as Tula, age eight, watched from the bushes. The memory of what she had seen, heard and smelled was so shocking-her father’s screams, the odor of petrol and flesh-that her brain had walled the memory away in a dark place.
Little more than a year later, when Tula began to feel at home at the convent, the dark space in her soul had opened slowly to embrace the Maiden’s light.
Another favorite line from the book was: I would rather die than to do what I know to be a sin.
When Tula whispered those words, she could feel the meaning burn in her heart. She had whispered the phrase aloud many times, always sincerely, as an oath to God. The words were clean and unwavering, like the Maiden’s spirit. Tula could speak the phrase silently in the time it took her to inhale, then exhale, one long breath.
I would rather die than to do…
… what I know to be a sin.
Tula longed for the same life of purity, for it was the Maiden’s writing that had first sent her into the trees to seek her own visions. The Maiden, Tula had read, had often sought God’s voice in a place called the Polled Wood, in France, where she had sat in the branches of a tree known as the Fairy Tree.
Tula doubted if she would ever see France, but Florida had to be more like Orleans than the jungles of Quintana Roo.
It was strange, now, to sit in a Florida banyan tree so far from home, watching the flashing lights of the emergency vehicles. The Maiden’s visions, Tula remembered, were always accompanied by bright light, which caused the girl to concentrate even harder on what she was seeing.
The lights pulsed blue and red, exploding off the clouds, then sparking downward, rainlike, through the leaves. The lights were brighter than any Tula had ever seen, lights so piercing, so rhythmic, that they invited the girl to stare until she felt her body loosen as her thoughts purified and became tunneled.
Soon, Tula slipped into a world that was silent, all but for the Maiden’s voice-Jehanne, her childhood friends had called the young saint. Jehanne’s voice was so sure and clear, it was as if her moist lips touched Tula’s ear as she delivered a message.
It was a message Tula had heard several times in the last week.
You are sent by God to rally your people. The clothing of a boy is your armor. The amulets you wear are your shields…
Fear not. I speak as a girl who knew nothing of riding and warfare until God took my hand. We drove the foreigners away because it was His will. He provided the way.
You, too, are God’s instrument. You will gather your family in this foreign land, and free them from their greed. You will lead them home again, where they can live as a people, not slaves, because it is His will.
Trust Him always. He will provide the way for you.
Tula loved the solitude of trees. She loved the intimacy of this muscled branch that was contoured like a saddle between her legs. Once, as the saint’s voice paused in reflection, Tula found the nerve to whisper a question with a familiarity that she had never risked before.
“Jehanne? Holy Maiden? I think of you as my loving sister. Is this wrong? I have to ask.”
I am the God-light that lives within you, the Maiden’s voice replied. We are one. Like twins with a one soul.
Sisters? Tula hazarded, thinking the word but not speaking it.
Forever sisters, the Maiden replied. Even when you leave this life for the next.
For more than two hours, Tula had sat motionless in the tree as the Maiden spoke to her, providing comfort and the governing voice of God. She was only vaguely aware when her patron, Tomlinson, walked beneath the tree, calling her name, followed by the large man with eyeglasses. Whose name, she had learned, was Dr. Ford.
There was something unusual about her patron ’s friend, she realized vaguely, as the two hurried past. Something solid and safe about Dr. Ford… But the man was cold, too. His spirit filled Tula with an unsettling sensation, like an unfamiliar darkness that was beyond her experience.
The girl didn’t allow her mind to linger on the subject, and she was not tempted to call out a reply because she was so deliciously safe. Her body and heart were encased by the Maiden. The Maiden’s lips never left her ear.
Even when the flashing lights vanished from the tree canopy, Tula continued sitting because Jehanne continued to speak, whispering strong thoughts into Tula’s head.
The Maiden’s words were so glory filled and righteous that Tula thought she might burst from the swelling energy that filled her body. It caused blood to pulse in her chest, and in her thighs, until her body trembled. It was a throbbing sensation so strong that she felt as if she might explode if the pressure within didn’t find release.
You are sent to rally your people. You are sent by God…
The first time Tula had heard those words was only seven days ago, her first night in Florida. She had been sitting on this same thick branch, new to the large banyan tree.
Those words had been a revelation.
Tula had come to El Norte to find her mother and family, yes. But in her heart she knew there was a greater cause for which God had chosen her. Why else would the Maiden risk guiding her to El Norte, the direction of death?
On that night one week ago, Tula had been so moved by the revelation that, as she returned to her trailer, she had stopped to address adults who, every evening, collected around a fire to drink beer and laugh.
It offended Tula the way the adults were behaving because she feared her mother had behaved similarly after she had abandoned her own family. Even so, the girl had stood silently, feeling the heat of fire light on her face, listening and watching.
Gradually, Tula became angry. The Maiden had ordered her soldiers and pages not to drink alcohol or to sin with loose women and dice. She had counseled her followers to pray every day, and to never swear.
These adults weren’t soldiers, but they were all members of the same mountain people. They were Maya, they were Indigena, like her. And Tula knew it was wrong for them to be living drunken, modern lives so removed from the families they had left behind in the cloud forests.
Tula stepped closer to the fire. She cleared her throat and waited for the adults to notice her. Soon, as voices around her went silent, Tula let the French Maiden guide her Mayan words.
“If your children could see you now,” the girl asked in a strong voice, “what would they think? What would your wives and husbands think? I am speaking of the families you left behind in the mountains. Your real families. Do you think they are consorting with drunken neighbors, lusting after money and flesh? No. They are asleep in their palapas. Their hearts are broken and lonely from missing you.”
Tula was surprised by her own confidence, but more surprised by the angry reaction of the adults. Men sat in a moody silence for a moment, then began to jeer and wave her away as if Tula’s opinion meant nothing. The women were indignant, then furious. They swore at her in Spanish, calling her a stupid boy who had sex with animals. And the matron of the group-a squat, loud woman-picked up a stick and threatened to thrash Tula unless she ran away.
Tula had stood her ground, looking into the woman’s eyes as she approached. Tula was unafraid, for, in that instant, she experienced something strange. She sensed the Maiden melding into her body, bringing with her a heart so strong that Tula felt a profound and joyous confidence that she had never before experienced.
“Sisters?” she had asked the Maiden.
Yes. Even when you leave this life for the next.
Tula had doubted the promise at first but now she knew they were Jehanne’s own true words.
As the matron drew near, Tula had smiled, saying softly, “Strike me if you wish, but I will only turn the other cheek. First, though, tell me why you are so angry. Do you hate me for what I said? Or do you hate me because what I said is true?’
The matron had sworn at her and swung the stick in warning but then stepped back because Tula did not flinch. Still smiling, Tula had said to the woman, “Do you remember the goodness of God that you felt as a child? He is still there, in your heart. Why do you fight Him so?”
That stopped the matron, and she listened more closely as Tula told her, “You came to El Norte because you love your family. God knows that. It is the same with everyone here, is it not? Only you know how painful it is to be a mother or father who cannot afford food for their children’s table.
“But do you also understand how hurtful it is to lose your mother in exchange for a bundle of pesos sent weekly from the United States? Children need their parents more than money or food-that’s why I’m here. I have come to lead my family home.”
Then Tula had asked the woman, “Who did you leave behind? A son? A daughter?”
The woman’s expression transitioned from anger to uncertainty. “What business is that of yours, stupid child?”
Tula was aware of the Maiden inside her, exploring the woman’s thoughts, but the Maiden did not share what she was learning.
“You left behind a husband and children,” Tula guessed, feeling her own way. “You planned to return, but here you are. How many years has it been?”
It took a full minute before the matron spoke, but she finally did. “Two children,” the woman replied, sounding weary now and a little unnerved. “Our first child, she died, so there were three, not two.”
The woman looked at the group as she added, “I must stop saying that I have only two children. My third child, her name was Alexandra, but only for nine days. She is with God now. I should have told you this.”
Tula had glanced at the man with whom the woman had been sitting and knew he wasn’t her husband. The woman was an adulteress, but Tula did not say it. For some reason, she felt kindly toward the woman despite the woman’s sins and respected her sadness.
Instead, Tula said, “You are a good women, I feel that is true. It has been several years since you have seen your family, yet you have not abandoned them. I know I’m right, I can see God’s own goodness in your eyes. You are a devoted mother. How many times a month do you send money?”
The woman replied, “Every week, I cash my check at the Winn-Dixie, then pay cash to the Western Union clerk at the cigarette counter. At Christmas, I send three checks. In four years, I have never missed a week. Even though my husband has taken another woman, I still send the money.”
As an aside to the adults the woman added, “I’ve heard that my children now call this new woman mother. It is something I have been ashamed to share. I don’t know why I am telling you now.”
When Tula reached to place her hand on the matron’s shoulder, the woman shrugged the hand away, getting angry again-angry not at Tula but because she was so close to tears.
“Leave me alone,” the woman said. “We are adults, we’ve worked hard all day in the fields. Now we are relaxing, what business is this of yours? Go play with your little penga instead of harassing good men and women.”
“Maybe you know my family,” Tula had pressed. “My mother’s name is Zabillet. Here, people call her Mary. My brother’s name is Pacaw, but sometimes Pablo. He left home six months ago. I have two aunts and an uncle in Florida, too, but I don’t know where.”
The woman seemed to be paying attention as Tula added, “My mother came to El Norte four years ago, when I was only eight. Like you, she sent money every week. There is a phone booth outside the tienda in our village, and every Sunday night I was there, waiting, when she called. Two months ago, though, my mother stopped calling. And the number to her cell phone no longer works.”
“It’s because of the coyotes and the field bosses,” a man sitting nearby explained. “They control us by controlling our telephones. Everyone knows that, unless you’re stupid. You must be stupid. Why does that surprise you?”
Tula replied, “It doesn’t surprise me. Not now. Not since I’ve learned how the Mexican coyotes cheat us. They charge us pesos to come to El Norte. Then they charge us dollars to provide us with work and a place to sleep, and a telephone that they can disable at any time. But when my mother stopped calling, I knew something was wrong.”
Sounding impatient, another man said, “We were enjoying ourselves before you interrupted. Now you stand here, asking rude questions. Our Indigena sisters and brothers arrive in Florida every day, but we don’t ask their names. We mind our own business. If you have lost your mother, go to Indiantown and ask the Indigena there. Or go to Immokalee. It is only an hour’s drive in a truck.
“If your mother is in Florida,” the man continued, “the Maya of Immokalee and Indiantown will know-there are many thousands of us in those villages. Now, please get out of my sight. I did not work all day in the sun to have my beer interrupted by a disrespectful child who criticizes his elders.”
Immokalee.
Tula had heard of the town, of course. It was one of the last places her mother had lived prior to her disappearance. Tula had heard of Indiantown, too. Everyone in Guatemala knew of these villages because they were the largest Mayan settlements in Florida. In these places, Tula had heard, the Indigena sang the old songs and spoke the ancient language, not the bastard tongue of the Mexicans.
Tula said to the man, “I appreciate your advice, but you are wrong about me being disrespectful. I said what I said, but the words are not mine. You do not understand who I am. Look at me closely, perhaps you will.”
“The nerve of this mericon!” one of the men chided. “He is a dirty little faggot. See how he poses and struts, as if he is more important than his elders?”
“Doubt me if you wish,” Tula said in a firm voice, “but I will not listen to your profanities. Look at me. Don’t just use your eyes, use your heart also. I have been sent here by my patron saint. I am unworthy, just a stupid child. But I am also an instrument of God. So be careful how you speak to me.”
There! She had finally said aloud what she had never had the courage, or conviction, to share with anyone. Tula was afraid for a moment how the people would react.
She could feel the adults looking at her, their faces suspended above the fire as brown as wooden masks worn at festival time in the Mayan mountains. As the men and women stared, Tula felt her body transforming as she stood erect, chin angled, and she wondered if the adults would correctly perceive the changes that were taking place within her.
It was something that Sister Lionza had been teaching Tula at the monastery, the art of projecting thoughts-the first hint that the nun was preparing her for membership in the Culta de Shimono.
Thoughts are energy. Our thoughts are sparks from God’s eyes. Devote your thoughts to an image. Picture that image with all your heart. Soon others will see, with their eyes, the image that lives in your mind.
In Tula’s mind, as she posed by the fire, she envisioned a precise picture of herself the way she yearned to look. Her jeans and ragged shirt were armor molded to her body by firelight. The amulet and medallion that she clutched were now a glittering shield.
Yes, Tula decided. The adults saw that her body had been transformed. A few of them, anyway. It was in their eyes, both respect and wonder. She felt sure enough to say, “I’m only a child from the mountains, but I have been transformed by my patron saint. Don’t be uneasy, don’t be afraid of my strange dress. The Maiden speaks to me and she speaks through me. She provides me words for you that I believe are words from God.”
Voices around the fire muttered, asking about the Maiden-what did the name mean?-while Tula continued speaking.
“The Maiden has told me that this land will never be our home. Our home is in the cloud forests of the mountains. It is in the jungles where our ancestors built pyramids that rivaled the greatness of Egypt. She has told us to think back and remember our home. And the love we have for it. It is true that we do not have shiny red pickup trucks in our yards. Or televisions with large screens. But what good is a red truck when it cannot drive you to your family?”
Tula sensed emotion in the people her words touched just as she could also hear the whispered grumblings of those who did not see or believe-men mostly, but also a few women who got to their feet, speaking insults and a few whispered profanities.
The matron, however, was not among them. She had stared at Tula with glistening eyes.
“You speak to God?” the woman asked. “How do we know you are not lying?”
Jehanne had been asked this same question many times by her inquisitors, so Tula used the Maiden’s own words to answer.
“I do not speak to God. He speaks to me. Any other way would be improper. Who am I? I am a poor, stupid child. The voices that direct me come from Him. I believe this truly in my own heart. I am his instrument; only a messenger instructed by the words of my patron saint, the Maiden.”
The woman, near tears, replied, “I don’t know why I believe you, but I do. It must be true, for you looked into my heart and told me what I was feeling. I miss my children. I miss my village, and the cooking fires and the odors of my girlhood. What did you say to us about God being in us as children? I can’t remember your exact words-”
“I asked you to remember how you felt as a child. When you felt the goodness of God inside you. God is still there, alive in your heart. I asked, ‘Why do you fight Him so?’”
From the shadows beyond the fire, a man’s voice chided Tula, saying, “Next this boy will be telling us that he also speaks to the goats who bugger him! Why is he wasting our time. Go away, little turd, or I will bugger you myself!” Grinning, the man had stood and pretended to unsnap his belt.
Tula was surprised that only a few people laughed at the insult, and she was comforted by the realization that very few of these people would ever laugh at her again.
When Tula had finally left that fire circle, seven nights before, some of the adults had watched her in a silence that was a mixture of fear, awe and longing. On that very same night, someone placed a statuette of the Virgin Mary outside her trailer.
The next evening, after the day’s work was done, the matron and two neighbor women appeared at Tula’s trailer, seeking to speak privately.
The next night, a small line formed outside Tula’s door. Each night afterward, the line was longer. Some people came from as far as Indiantown, Miami and Immokalee to speak with the child who was said to be an emissary from God.
News of the unusual child traveled at lightning speed through the cheap cell phones of the Guatemalan community.
Sometimes, women and men wept as they asked for Tula’s guidance and advice. Many attempted to kneel and kiss her hand, but Tula refused their adulation, just as the Maiden had refused the worshipping gestures of her own followers six hundred years before.
“We are sisters?” Tula had questioned Jehanne, hoping desperately that it was true.
Even when you leave this life for the next, the Maiden had promised.
Tula was now more determined than ever to be equal to the honor of being chosen by Jehanne.
To every person who came to her, Tula challenged them with the same parting question: “Do you remember the goodness of God that was in you as a child? He is still there, in your heart. Why do you fight Him so?”
Much had changed since Tula had spoken to the fire circle a week before. The respect with which her neighbors treated her was beyond her experience, yet she handled it comfortably and exercised her new power only for good-to spread the word that she was searching for her family, and, tonight, to order the adults to help save her patron, Carlson, and also the landlord, Harris Squires.
Something else that had changed, Tula realized, was that she had lost her anonymity. The eyes of her neighbors followed her everywhere she went. Which is why she had waited long after the ambulance and police cars had left to finally climb down from the tree and retreat to her trailer.
She didn’t stay long, though, because the memory of Harris Squires’s words scared her. She knew the giant man would come looking for her soon. So she had gone to the public toilet, curled up in a stall and had tried to sleep.
Too much had happened, though, for Tula’s mind to relax. She fretted about Carlson-would he live?-and also regretted not speaking with the strange man, Tomlinson, who Tula barely knew but who she had immediately accepted as her second patron and protector.
Early that morning, still unable to sleep, Tula had returned to her tree to speak with the owls and watch the sunrise, she told herself. But it was really to invite that pulsing, trembling feeling into her body. As she straddled the limb, which Tula thought of as a saddle, the Maiden had floated into Tula’s body almost immediately, but only for a short time.
Suddenly, then, without farewell, the Maiden’s voice was gone. It was replaced by the distant inquiries of morning birds-the owls had remained silent-and then the sound of approaching footsteps.
Tula had been weeping, as she always did when the Maiden left her, yet she was crying softly enough to hear the crack of twigs and then a man’s voice say, “Lookee, lookee, what I see. It’s getting so I know where to find you. What do you think you are, chula? Some kind of bird?”
Tula looked down to see Harris Squires staring at her through the strange binoculars that allowed him to see in the night like an animal.
It wasn’t until the giant had grabbed Tula, clapping his hand over her mouth to silence her, that the Maiden’s words returned to comfort the girl, saying, Stop fighting, go with him. You are in God’s hands. God will show you the way.
Now, sitting beside Squires in his oversized truck, Tula said to the man, “What do you call these bracelets on my wrists? They’re hurting me. Will you please take them off?”
Squires made a noise of impatience as he drove. He had been trying to focus on his sex fantasy, but the girl kept talking.
“Why don’t you answer me?” the girl said, irritated. “I have every reason to be angry at you. Instead, I am speaking to you politely. You should at least answer when I ask you a polite question.”
Squires made another groaning sound.
She didn’t stop. “If I had wanted to run from you, God would have given me the strength. Instead, He told me to come with you. That’s why I am here. There’s no need for you to chain my hands.”
Squires was aggravated, but also surprised by the girl’s calm voice, her matter-of-fact manner.
“They’re called handcuffs,” he told her, because it was obvious that she wouldn’t shut up until he answered. “It’s a safety precaution. If you did something stupid, like open the door and jump, who’d you think would get the blame?”
“I just told you,” the girl replied, “God wants me to be with you. God must care about you or He wouldn’t have told me to save you from the alligator last night. I wouldn’t be with you this morning. Do you remember me ordering my people to help you?”
Her people? Who the hell did she think she was?
The girl had something wrong with her brain, Squires decided. Maybe she was some rare variety of retard-he had seen things on TV about kids like that. Or maybe just crazy. It had to be one of the two because of course Squires remembered the girl yelling at the crowd of Mexicans, ordering them to help him. He also remembered the little flash of hope the girl’s voice had created in him as that big goddamn gator swam toward him fast with those devil-red eyes.
Why would the little brat try to help him? It made no sense for her to save his life after he had forced his way into the bathroom, then played around with her while she was naked.
Crazy. Yeah. She had to be.
As Squires drove, he looked at the girl, who was fiddling with the handcuffs, acting like they were hurting her skinny wrists. Close-up, she was a tiny little thing, her fingers long and delicate with dirt beneath the nails. The vertebrae on the back of her neck were visible beneath the Dutch-boy hair, like something he’d see on skinny dogs.
Compared to Squires’s own bulk, the girl was a sack of skin and bone, which Squires found galling. The weirdo was nothing but a worthless little chula, yet there was also something oddly big about her, too, the way she handled herself, full of confidence. It was disconcerting.
In a bar, Squires could flash his shit-kicker monster face as fast as any other brawler, but, truth was, he’d never felt confident about anything in his life. Not compared to the way this little kid acted, anyway.
What really burned his ass, Squires realized, was that all the women in his life were the same way. Frankie and his ball-busting witch of a mother both had that same know-it-all confidence.
No… not exactly the same, because the girl didn’t use the same nasty-mouthed meanness that his mother and Frankie both used to make him feel like a pile of shit most the time. But even though the girl was different, in her way, she was just another bossy female.
Tula said to him now, “You do remember that I helped save you. I can tell. Just now, you were thinking about the big alligator coming to eat you. But it didn’t eat you because we all helped you. So you should trust me. I’m not going to run away. I’m here because God wants me to be with you. Perhaps He wants me to be your protector every day, not just last night. It’s possible.”
“My protector!” Squires laughed. “Take a good look at me, chula. Why the hell would I ever need your help?”
He glanced away from his driving long enough to touch his right bicep, which he was flexing. “You ever seen another man in your life built like me? Not down there in some Mexican shithole, you never did, I’d bet on that. I don’t need protecting from nobody because there’s not a goddamn thing in the world I’m scared of.”
A moment later, he said, “Okay, in a minute or so I’m going to pull up to a garage and I want you to do what I tell you to do.”
They were in East Fort Myers now, bouncing down a long driveway toward the river, horses grazing in a pasture to their right.
The giant man continued, “We’re gonna switch vehicles-it’s where my mom lives, but the bitch isn’t home. She’s off on some cruise someplace with one of her boyfriends. But if you see someone coming down that goddamn driveway, you honk this horn, understand? I’ll leave the truck running until I get it in the garage.”
No one came. Leaving Tula chained in the truck, Squires even took some time to go inside the house, make a protein shake and pack a bag of ice for his sore leg. He also found a pint bottle of tequila, which he kept on the seat next to him.
Soon they were on the road again, but in an older truck with huge tires that smelled of dogs and beer and the tequila the man was nipping at. His hunting buggy, Squires called the vehicle, which had an even louder engine than the truck they had left behind hidden in his mother’s garage.
Tula knew that Squires was lying about taking her to the hospital to see Carlson. But what she had told the giant was true. Even though the man had forced her into the truck-leaving her few possessions behind at the trailer park-she wasn’t going to attempt to escape. Not unless the Maiden ordered her to.
The handcuffs were heavy on her wrists, though. And Tula felt vulnerable, sitting on the floor with her hands bound, unable to see out the window. The man was a fast driver, weaving through morning traffic, braking hard for red lights. Or maybe it just felt as if they were going fast because she was on the floor and Squires had the windows open, the roar of the truck’s mufflers loud in Tula’s ears.
This was even more frightening than climbing onto the top of a freight train, riding exposed to wind and rain through the mountains of Mexico. On the train, at least, Tula had been able to watch for dangers ahead.
But not here, riding on the floor. She was unaccustomed to this kind of speed and she feared a collision. Tula imagined impact, then being trapped, unable to use her hands, especially if there was fire.
Fire terrified the girl. She had watched her father die in flames, smelled his clothes burning, heard his screams, and the vision still haunted her.
Even the Maiden had feared fire. In the little book Tula had left back in the trailer were Jehanne’s own words:
Sooner would I have my head cut off seven times than to suffer the woeful death of fire…
Tula bowed her head and began to pray, speaking in English loudly enough to be sure that the giant landlord heard her, hoping to irritate the man into action.
“Dear Lord my God, I ask in Jesus’ name all blessings on this man who is driving too fast and drinking liquor at the same time. I ask that he look into his heart and understand that he’s scaring me, the way he’s got my hands locked. Even though the police might stop us at any time and arrest him and take him to jail! Make him know I am not going to run away because I am his friend. And a friend does not leave a friend…”
The girl went on and on like that.
The louder the girl prayed, the bigger the gulps Squires took from the tequila bottle. After a while, even liquor didn’t help, and Squires couldn’t stand it anymore. He glanced down at Tula, then turned on the radio, wanting to drown out her voice. It was AC/ DC doing “Black Ice,” but it only caused the girl to pray louder.
Shit. The little brat was maddening.
Squires found all her talk about God disturbing, an upset he felt in his belly. Truth was, he didn’t want the girl to talk at all. Even if he didn’t make his fantasy come true by raping her, he still had to kill her when they got to the hunting camp-what choice did he have? And the more she talked, the more girlish and human she seemed, which Squires didn’t like.
It irked him that she had brought up the gator attack to make him feel guilty. She was just making it harder for him, using guilt like a weapon, which is the same thing that Frankie and his mother did on a daily basis.
The realization that this little girl was no different provided Squires with a sudden, sweet burst of anger that immediately made him feel better about driving her to the hunting camp, where he was going to get her drunk, get her clothes off and have some fun.
“Why can’t you just sit there and shut up,” he said to the girl as he screwed the top back on the bottle. “Do you want to see your drunken friend, Carlson, or not? I’m trying to do you a favor! So instead of whining about your wrists and asking God for a bunch of stupid favors, you should be thanking me for going out of my way to help you.”
“But what will the policemen say if they stop us and see what you’ve done to me?” the girl replied, sounding more like an adult than a girl. “Or if we get in a wreck and the ambulance comes? They’ll see that you’ve handcuffed me and take you to jail. How will God be able to help you in jail?”
Squires said it aloud this time-“Shit!”-as he turned hard onto a shell road, then parked behind some trees in a chunk of undeveloped pasture, where he removed the girl’s handcuffs.
It was probably a smart thing to do, because it was midmorning now, he had to pee, and if the girl was going to try to run an empty pasture was better than a 7-Eleven or some other place where strangers could see.
But the girl didn’t run. When Squires returned to the truck, he yanked Tula up onto the seat beside him, and said to her, “There! Happy now? You got no more excuses for whining.”
It didn’t shut her up, though.
“You should wear your seat belt,” the girl reminded him when they were on the road again. “God cares about you. You keep forgetting. And if you got hurt in a crash, what would happen to me? I have no money and no extra clothes.”
“Do you ever think about anyone else but yourself?” Squires snapped.
A few seconds later, he said, “God cares?” and managed to laugh, although it wasn’t easy. The suggestion that anyone cared about him was idiotic. His head ached from too much tequila, last night and already this morning. And Frankie was pissed at him-yet again. Someone must have called her from the RV park last night when the cops arrived because the woman had left five messages on his cell between ten and two a.m. The last message was a rant so profane that Squires had deleted it before getting to the end.
“I ask you to do one simple thing and you completely fucked it up-as usual,” Frankie’s message had begun, and then it got nasty from there.
Well… that was enough of Frankie’s bullying ways, as far as Squires was concerned. He had had it up to here with the woman’s bullshit. That’s why before leaving Red Citrus he had cleaned out all the important stuff from their double-wide just on the chance he could summon the nerve to leave and never see that bitch again.
The important stuff included bags of veterinarian-grade pills and powder that were in the locked toolbox in the bed of his hunting truck. And also about sixty thousand cash from steroid sales, which was in a canvas bag bundled with rubber bands along with the Ruger revolver. The whole business was under the driver’s seat, safely inside a hidden compartment that he had made himself using hinges and a cutting torch.
Frankie was mad now? Christ. The woman would go absolutely apeshit when she realized the money was missing.
Squires was also worried about Laziro Victorino, the badass Mexican with the box cutter and teardrop tattoo under his eye. If cops found a piece of a woman’s body inside an alligator from Red Citrus, the V-man would know instantly it was one of his prostitutes and he was going to be pissed. Someone would have to pay, because that’s the way it worked with the Mexican gangs.
You kill one of them, they killed two of you. That’s why Victorino made snuff films. To remind people.
First person the V-man would suspect was him and Frankie because everyone knew they had a thing for videoing Mexican girls, sometimes as many as three at a time. They were videos that Frankie posted on her porn website but also sold to Victorino’s gangbangers, which was another way she made money when she wasn’t dealing gear. Not that Squires and Frankie ever appeared on camera. No, the videos were for profit but also a way for Frankie to have fun behind the scenes.
Mostly, though, Squires was worried about the dead alligator. What would cops find in her belly when they cut the thing open? That would probably happen this morning, from what he had overheard the Wildlife cops saying. That reminded Squires to switch the radio from AC/DC to a news station.
In Florida, a dead alligator that had eaten a girl would be big news.
Even with the radio loud, it was hard to think his problems through. It was because the weird little Bible freak never shut up. She asked questions about the truck’s air-conditioning. And the CD player, then about his iPhone, which was plugged into its cradle next to the gearshift. It was like the stupid kid had never been out in the world before.
The girl also kept giving him updates from God.
This God talk was getting old.
“Think back to when you were a child,” she was telling Squires now as she sat upright beside him, looking at something near the gearshift-his iPhone, maybe. “Do you remember how safe you felt? Do you remember the love and goodness you felt? That was God’s presence inside you. And He is still there, so why do you fight him so?”
They were on Corkscrew Road, driving east through bluffs of cypress trees, past orange groves and grazing cattle, toward Immokalee, the gate to his hunting camp only half an hour beyond that little tomato-packing town.
Because of what the girl was saying, Squires’s mind slipped back to when he was young-he couldn’t help himself even though he tried-and he was surprised to realize that the noisy little brat was right.
Truth was, he really had felt different as a child. He had felt safe and full of kindness, unless his witch of a mother was screaming at him, calling him a “worthless little bastard” or saying, “You’re even stupider than your faggot father!”
It was strange how things had changed since he was a kid. Maybe because of the tequila, or maybe because of the guilt the girl had caused him to feel, the realization struck Squires as important. He took a swallow from the bottle and let his mind work on it until he thought, I’ll be goddamned. What the brat says is true.
Somehow, the world and his life had become mean and dangerous and dirty.
How? When had it happened?
That was a complicated question that took some time. The man wrestled with the issue as he drove. Had it started when he’d first discovered tequila and weed? Up until then, he’d been kind of a quiet, shy kid.
No… no, that wasn’t the reason he felt as shitty as he did right now. His life had really taken a turn for the worse when he met Frankie. That was almost four years ago, him being twenty-two at the time, Frankie thirty-eight but still with a body on her. And the woman was a regular hellion when it came to games in bed.
Sex-Frankie was addicted to it, and not plain old regular sex, either. The woman liked it rough, sometimes violent enough that Squires’s nose and lips would be bleeding when they were done-once even his dick, which was having problems enough of its own because of the way steroids affected it.
The woman liked hurting her partners, especially if they were female.
Yes, it was when he’d met Frankie that things had really begun to change. That’s when his life had switched from living a hard-assed guy’s life, hanging out with other bodybuilders, to living a life that was small and mean… yes, and dirty, too.
It was strange thinking about stuff like that now while driving to his hunting camp, where, until that instant, Harris Squires had fully intended to punish this noisy little freak by raping her.
But damn it. Now all this talk about God was deflating his enthusiasm, not to mention his dick. Worse, it was adding to his gloom. It threatened to bring back the withering guilt that kept welling up about accidentally murdering that Mexican woman.
Trouble was, unlike with the Mexican woman, Squires had no choice about the girl. She was an eyewitness. She had to go.
Because it made him mad thinking about what he had to do, he said to the little brat, “Do you have any idea how crazy you sound? You’re in the United States now, chula. In Florida, they’ll throw you in the loony bin for saying crazy crap like that.”
Reaching for his iPhone for some reason, the girl replied, “Where are we going? I know you’re not taking me to the hospital. You can trust me, so why not tell me? It’s always better to tell the truth.”
“Why, because God is watching us?” Squires laughed, pushing the girl’s hand away. The time on his iPhone, he noted, was 10:32 a.m. They still had to get through Immokalee, another hour of driving ahead of them.
“If God really is watching,” Squires told her, sounding both angry and serious, “the dude had better perform one of his miracles pretty damn quick. Or it’s out of my hands, chula. Hear what I’m telling you?”
Because of the caring, wounded expression that appeared on the girl’s face, Squires added, “No one can blame me. What happens next, I can’t control. And that is the truth.”