By
Lee
Durango
The Katun Prophecy from the Book of Chilam Balam
Then the land is raised
And then there begins
The Book of the 13 Gods
Then occurs
The Great Flooding of the Earth
Then Arises
The Great Itzam Cab Ain
The ending of the word,
The fold of the Katun:
That is a Flood
Which will be the ending of
The word of the Katun.
“The End of the World as We Know It.”
* * *
Chapter 1
Boulder,
Colorado
The worst and most
disheartening part of waiting meant killing time. Gina stared into the winter
night, flicking the butts of smoked yet uninhaled cigarettes through the
open window and watching them fall like meteors toward earth until extinguished
beneath a crest of falling snow. Covering every imperfection in the land, the
snow disguised both the dirty and the disgusting, smoothing everything beneath
a winter whitewash. While those few shop-keeps, accomplices, and police
officers might have assumed Gina flourished in the camouflage of December, they
couldn’t be any further from the truth. For every reason she had to enjoy the
anonymity, she hated the snow for revealing her footsteps and the roundabout
way, as she saw it, it led to Miss Wendy’s halfway house. For a 16-year-old
girl, shoplifting could be overlooked once or twice but not as a regular way to
relieve boredom. Auto theft and punching a police officer only complicated
matters, even if he did claim he grabbed her boob by accident. A return trip to
Juvenile Detention sounded appropriate to the judge. This time, she was
prepared. Having dyed her bleached hair blue, she buzzed it short, no one could
grab it now! and the blue seemed to compliment her repertoire of visible
piercings in her nose, eyebrows, and tongue. To complete the image, she took up
smoking. She didn’t like it but found it habitual to bridge one lackluster
moment to the next. She could live with the bad breath.
Other girls smoked at
Miss Wendy’s, including Miss Wendy, yet she didn’t approve of them smoking in
front of her. If you must break the rules, she mentioned on a regular basis, do
so behind closed doors. Miss Wendy considered smoking to be disrespectful
during their incarceration at her bed and breakfast, although she didn’t do
anything more than complain. Long before assuming the persona of Miss Wendy,
the caretaker of wayward girls and protector of distressed souls, Irena Ipswich
had walked in their shoes and knew how complicated life felt at 16.
Shoplifting, auto theft, arson, and involuntary manslaughter all paled in
comparison to the challenges of day-to-day life of an adolescent girl. As luck
would have it, Minnesota took a much more open-minded approach regarding
recidivism than other states believing the rehabilitation of juvenile
delinquents to be the obligation of the State—at least during her first two
visits. During her third stopover for attempting to equalize life’s inequities,
which was her understanding for liberating an infrequently used credit card,
she experienced a revelation: Life was indeed unfair to the troubled and
mislead. This revelation changed her life. When she grew older, she wanted the
Government money from running the cake job of the halfway house.
Gina had slept in
better places than Miss Wendy’s boarding hole with its paper-thin walls and her
yippy wiener dogs and shot her cigarette butt out the second-floor window and
into the night. The orange embers became a distant speck against the downy
landscape. Even if she had planned to stay any longer, it wouldn’t be worth the
cost of the gasoline, as her roommate Sweet Pea had suggested, to torch the
place. She flicked the lighter, this time watching the shadows dance along the
ceiling in an uninhibited two-dimensional bohemian freedom. Releasing the
button with her thumb, the apparitions retreated into the seams of darkness,
her temporary cavern of confinement. Had she been ever felt alone, or admitted
to solitude, it was in this room. The smell of flint and butane tainted her
skin, and she wondered if she should light another cigarette. Leaving Miss Wendy’s
meant living until her 18th birthday in her sister’s basement, which wouldn’t
be bad had it not been for Stone, her sister’s husband. She and Stone, while
seeing eye-to-eye on matters of practicality, like accepting a stranger’s money
in exchange for a favor, didn’t seem to get along when it came to matters of
privacy. He enjoyed her company on a temporary basis, which, in his words,
meant a long weekend under extreme circumstance. The longer she waited, the
sleepier she grew, and the outlines on the wall grew tall and dark. Somewhere
between wakefulness and sleep, Gina thought she heard the latch click. A shadow
of a girl slipped into the room and dove face-first into the other cot. A soft
sobbing drifted into her quarters pulsating in dissonance against the recent
memory of brushed flint.
For a girl with an almost equally
truant past, Sweet Pea reminded Gina of a meerkat with her narrow hips, short
arms always tucked against her small breasts, and dark circles surrounding her
eyes. Had Sweet Pea not agreed to the escape, Gina would have questioned her
loyalty. A naturally mistrusting person, Gina sought the friendship of
misanthropes such as Sweet Pea despite their tendency to wander off when
challenges mounted. Everyone deserved a second chance, in Gina’s opinion, and
sometimes a third or fourth depending on the circumstances. Gina turned on the
table lamp revealing her black pants and cropped top from earlier that evening,
the day before, and the day before that. Miss Wendy may not have cared about her
girls’ personal hygiene—she hadn’t cared about her own—as long as they didn’t
stink, and if they did, everyone knew the rules: Miss Wendy would hand wash
them. Gina thought she enjoyed bathing
them a little more than she should have. Miss Wendy rarely encountered any girl
she couldn’t manage after a few days of enforcing the rules of her house.
Posted in each room for her borders, the rules served as a reminder of
acceptable and unacceptable behavior. While no one ever read them, Miss Wendy
strong-armed them into existence. Gina hadn’t been an exception, and she didn’t
like to read.
Even in the dim wattage
bulb, something shined on Sweet Pea’s face. When Gina sat up on the cot, she
made out the darker than usual outline of her roommate’s eye. Sweet Pea held
her head still before burying it in her pillow. The black eye made her cheeks
look rosy in contrast.
“Did you even get the
keys?” Gina said.
A muffled answer came
from deep inside the pillow. “No.”
“Damn, girl.” Gina said, cracking her knuckles. She
grabbed the girl by the wrist hoisting her to her feet and caressed her cheek.
“We’re leaving.”
“Gina, no. It was an accident!”
“We were leaving
anyway. This just speeds up the process. We’re outta this dump.”
“Where will we go?”
“Maybe my sister’s.
Really don’t care. We’re going now, and the Wonder
Princess has spoken.”
Sweet Pea rolled her eyes.
Long before Stone and Gina’s sister met with the
Judge on her defense, she went by the nom de plume of Gina the Wonder Princess.
A valiant and seemingly representative title, or so she believed, of the things
she discovered in her almost 16 years to be important. The idea came by way of
a late night cable show where the host, a particularly pious man, in his words,
ranted about the need for a children’s role model. “I understand the children.
I understand you have no one to lead you. I understand you are the next lost
generation of souls. I understand….” Of course, Gina understood what he
meant; she perceived his message as a literal interpretation as fate
guiding her to find this channel, one she would typically speed by in a fit of
late night Telecablevision, and become the role model for children.
Despite the hindrance of her present shoplifting indictment, she would begin
her intermittent fulfillment of fate as role model as soon as she emerged from
her first trip to Miss Wendy’s Boarding House for Wayward Girls. But children
like color, children liked super powers, of which she had none. Even her hair,
which at the present time had been bleached white, lacked panache. She had no
costume, no mentor, no radioactive consequence with an alien entity with which
to attribute her powers of role model. Unless she could count her first
encounter with Miss Wendy. At a smidge over five-foot and a 300-pound frame, Miss
Wendy and her orange hair personified everything evil like a scary clown
painting. Gina and her fate stood alone in the presence of Miss Wendy, her evil
captor with her rules, wondering what cruelty in the world had led to this
cataclysm and wondering how this menace stood in the way of children
everywhere. In that instance, Gina assumed the guise of Wonder Girl, which had
been used, and she added Princess because she liked the way it sounded. Gina
the Wonder Princess lived! Or, would live after the ensuing detainment.
And now, Miss Wendy, her nemesis, had assaulted her
roommate. Putting on her leather jacket and tossing an imitation black leather
backpack over her shoulder, Gina pulled the meerkat of a girl with her darker
than usual ringed-eyes to the door. Gina pressed her ear against the wood,
listening for anything that might be lurking in the hall and especially Miss
Wendy.
“What do you hear?”
“Shh.” Gina said. The courageous Wonder Princess
began to emerge from the thin teen. Blowing her twitching fingers like a
safecracker, Gina grasped the doorknob and eased the door open like a magician.
“How did you…?”
Gina winked at the girl. “Hairspray and electrical
tape.”
Sweet Pea examined the electrical tape over the
latch. “After taping the latch, what’s the hairspray for?”
“Come on. There’s no going back now.” Gina said
standing in the doorway. She looked down the narrow hall at the closed doors.
“But there’s one thing I gotta do first.”
“Gina, no” Sweet Pea
said in a whimper. “Let’s just go.”
“We need those keys.
And while I’m at it….” She eyed the doors in the same way one would want to set
free the wild animals in a zoo. And then there was the matter of the zookeeper.
With a slinking Sweet
Pea in tow, Gina marched down the hall with her leather jacket creaking and her
rubber-soled shoes squeaking with every step. Tonight wasn’t about silence,
although Gina wasn’t exactly sure what it was about. Something tugged at her
heart telling her to leave, telling her if she ever wanted to change the course
of her life, she had to leave tonight. Who listens to their heart? Gina the
Wonder Princess stopped in front of the first bedroom door. “I know this will
be hard on us, Sweet Pea, but I promise to get you and the rest of the girls
out of here. We can all start over, or at least we can go someplace warmer.”
“Gina, I don’t know
about this.” Sweet Pea said, looking at the door; this would be the second time
in her short stay they would be replaced. After her own charge of check fraud
by a minor, in two months she would be released—unless unveiled as the Wonder
Princess’s accomplice—the contemporary Robin, Kato or Mr. ___. She prepared to
close her eyes, after having learned the last time about splintering wood. Gina
stood in front of the first door, her furrowed brow and twitching eyebrow
piercing meant another three months onto Sweet Pea’s time.
Time meant nothing to the 16-year-old who could in
no way fathom any concept longer than “back when I was a kid” just a few years
before. She could not clearly recall the incidents of ten years ago and those
of fifteen years ago seemed ancient history. Even the turn on the century
almost 13 years before, the end of the world, the Armageddon and ensuing
apocalypse, proclaimed by religious
fanatics, came and went without incident other than personal embarrassment to
those who claimed the foreknowledge. Thirteen years later, no one remembered
these false prophets’ names. Gina’s attention existed in only in the here and
now of adolescence; as much as she wanted to rescue the girls, she would become
paralyzed by her own rescue. Breaking one door opened another: good, bad, or
indifferent. She squared off her stance, and with a deep breath, she drove her
wiry leg through the latch sending splinters into the air and Sweet Pea’s hair
and the door handle into the plaster wall. The two girls inside, startled from
sleep in their own presumably lumpy cots, looked at Gina then burrowed deep
into their blankets.
“Get up! We’re busting out of here!” Gina said,
committed to her action and moved to the other side of the hallway waylaying a
repeat performance to another door. “Grab your bags! Chop, chop!”
A final door
stood at the end of the hall. Tacked above an aluminum sign that read BEWARE
OF DOGs (an “s” had been added after the word “dog” in squiggly permanent
marker), a handwritten note scribbled on a brown grocery bag warned
YOU BETTER
HAVE A GOOD REASON
In a handwriting only slightly
improved from the “s” on the dog sign. To enter, to knock, to interrupt Miss
Wendy from her ghastly and unspeakable nightly beauty routine, whatever the
lengthy steps involved, meant never being able to walk through the hallway of
broken doors again without significant penalty. No one would fault her for
leaving without saying a special goodbye to Miss Wendy, and in fact, it would
probably have been a wiser choice. Gina stole another glance at Sweet Pea’s
heavy shiner, which had swollen the eye partly closed, and cracked her
knuckles. Gina heard a whisper from above.
“No. Please, no.”
Gina believed the sound to come from above,
however, when she listened closer, it was Sweet Pea whispering from behind her.
“Gina?”
“It’s gotta be done.”
“Gina, no. Don’t give her a reason to kill you,”
She had pushed Miss Wendy, Gina thought, but she
wouldn’t really kill her, would she? Doubts entered her mind, and she rolled
her neck to relieve the tension in her shoulders. She had to do this before she
could leave, she had to do it for Sweet Pea and the other girls, and after
breaking three doors, a fourth door seemed inconsequential. Her stars were in
motion. If Miss Wendy wanted to give her trouble, she deserved pain. Time to
rumble.
“She won’t kill me. She can’t kill the Wonder
Princess.”
Squaring off again, Gina the Wonder Princess kicked
in the door sending Miss Wendy’s sign fluttering to the ground. It took a
moment take in the surroundings and then a smell filled her nostrils. The
combination of wear and tear of the old house and twenty plus years of
dairy-scented flatulence from the 300-pounder begged her eyes to water. Gina’s
body twitched in spasm from the aroma until she acclimated to the odor,
scanning the room for the car keys and the orange-haired bully who refused to
pick on someone her own size—if there was someone her own size. She found her
target in the chair in front of the Telecablevision with the volume turned all
the way up. On the classic movie channel, the screen flashed with Neo and
Trinity blasting away at the Matrix with overwhelming firepower of Hollywood
proportion. Miss Wendy sat too close to the box ruining her eyes, as her mother
might say—if her mother cared after leaving her in a box for the wolves. Oozing
from her recliner, she reached her chubby, non-complimentary-orange fingers
back into the bag of imitation Cheese Crumbs and rotated her cigarette to the
other side of her mouth to down another handful from the bag. Miss Wendy
greeted her unwelcome guests almost waking the geriatric dachshunds at her
feet.
“Goddamnit, Gina. You know the rules, ‘No leaving
your room after lights out.’ ” She quoted, ash bouncing from the cigarette onto
her dirty robe. “Your sister’s gonna pay for that door.”
“You’re not going to hurt anyone ever again.”
“What are you talking about?” She said, prying
loose from the chair.
She gestured with her head to the black eye. “The
girl.”
Sweet Pea nudged her in the back. “Uh, Gina…”
“Not now.”
Miss Wendy took a step closer. “Her eye? She did
that herself.”
“Right.”
“…with an ice-cream scooper.”
“My hand slipped, Gina.” Sweet Pea said with a
shrug. “I was hungry for ice cream. You know how hard ice cream can freeze…I
tried scooping and bam! Right in the eye. There’s more strawberry in the
fridge….”
When one looks back to the mistakes one made as a
youth and wonders if they could go back would they, Gina would question this
moment years later. Not now. Like the FBI breaking into the wrong house, she
felt committed. Besides, she still wanted Miss Wendy’s car keys.
Gina stared her victim down. “Too late, chubby.”
“Too late for what? For you to kiss my big, hairy butt?”
Miss Wendy said making a smooching noise. “Come on Wonder Princess. Give me a
kiss.”
For a moment, Gina considered kissing her big,
hairy, butt, as it might be easier to apologize, to say it had been a mistake,
and she would fix the door, or buy a new one in the morning. It wasn’t until
Miss Wendy laughed, sending ash caroming off her chest, did the thought exit
Gina’s mind, and she stood her ground. Had they been in the old West, the clock
chimed high noon. Gina squeezed her hands into balls and Miss Wendy’s orange
fingers twitched in defiance, the cigarette dangling from her gummy lips.
“You don’t want any of this, Gina. Go back to your
room.”
Small amidst the shadow of her rotund captor, Gina
rolled the barbell in her tongue from one side of her mouth to the other and
dropped her backpack to the floor. “You wish.”
“That’s why you’re here, Gina. Your attitude. And a
little shoplifting. And a little auto theft. And punching a police officer.”
She took a last toke on the cigarette and dropped the cigarette in an orange
pop can, sending a small stream of smoke twisting out the top. “You’re lucky
you’re too young to go to jail.”
Miss Wendy’s words took hold of Gina.
“He…grabbed…my…boob. Besides, we’re not in Minnesota anymore—I don’t play drop
the soap, sister.”
“If you did, maybe your mother would have kept
you.” Miss Wendy said. She gestured to Gina with stubby, orange fingers. “Bring it on, Wonder Princess.”
If
anyone could attack like a swarm of gnats, Gina the Wonder Princess could and
weighed little more. Sweet Pea headed for shelter behind the recliner before
her roommate paid for their abrupt interruption. From her vantage point, it
appeared Gina hadn’t realized her underdog status. She sidestepped a card table
holding a basket of dirty laundry and an ashtray filled with butts. Miss Wendy
didn’t follow. She took two steps and flipped the table over, which motivated
Gina to test her luck. She mounted an assault and dove for the fat woman. On
the Telecablevision, Neo and Trinity dropped the last of the guns to the marble
floor and stormed the elevator. Gina hadn’t been as fortunate and Sweet Pea
dared not watch—much. If Gina kept Miss Wendy occupied, she could pilfer at
will.
On
a table next to the recliner and a bag of Cheese Crumbs, she spied a ring and
some dingy gold bands. While they didn’t seem to be worth much, unless they
were antiques instead of simply old, she couldn’t be sure. To play it safe, she
crawled around the recliner to the table to pocket the jewelry. A lamp crashed
to the floor, and Sweet Pea turned to see it was meant for her. Her stick of a
roommate followed bouncing off the sumo-esque landlord then sailing over the
couch into the plaster wall. If Sweet Pea had ever wanted to help her roommate,
it didn’t show, and she couldn’t afford fighting, getting hurt, and missing the
keys. She scanned the room; if she found anything else possibly of value, her
time would be well spent. A dish whizzed by crashing against the wall next to
her, and Gina pointed to the coffee table. “There, there—oh, shit!”
Two
sausage-like hands grabbed her from behind the couch and hoisted her into the
air. Gina lay outstretched in the air, twirling, staring at the ceiling, and
feeling weightless…the world seemed to wait for her…to land, which came hard
and woke the old dogs that scrambled for another place to sleep. From her angle
on the floor, she could see the keys on the coffee table just out of her reach
and rolled onto all fours. Something with the grip of a monstrous squid wrapped
around her ankle. She hollered for Sweet Pea. “The keys! Get the keys!”
On
the coffee table sat a modest stack of money, mostly ones, from the Saturday
Bingo down at St. Anthony’s, an almost empty pint of Jack Daniels, and keys
attached with an old twisty bread tie. Sweet Pea estimated the gaps in Miss
Wendy’s spinning and crawled for the table. Ducking low, she swiped at the
money spilling the jack and sending the keys tingling into the fray. Miss Wendy
stomped over the top of them still spinning the Wonder Princess before tossing
her into the floor. Sweet Pea lunged for the keys.
“Where are you going?” Miss Wendy said, glancing
down.
“Just out—”
“I don’t think so, honey!” Miss Wendy took a swing
and grabbed Sweet Pea by her collar.
The bread tie and keys glistened in the middle of
the living room and a little dog ran to fetch the new toy.
Sweet Pea pointed to the dog. “Hey, Gina! The dog!”
The wiener dog, keys in mouth, bolted into the
kitchen where a second wiener dog followed. Gina rolled over to all fours to
follow. A sharp pain shot across her shoulder blades and into her lower back.
She hadn’t been a durable punching bag for Miss Wendy. She limped after the
dogs.
“Here wiener, wiener, wiener….”
The dogs sat on the linoleum next to their doggy
door to freedom.
“You wouldn’t want to go outside in all that snow
now, would you?” Gina said, inching closer. Fat and happy, one dog whose belly
hung close to the floor, inched to the door. The more athletic of the old
dachshunds attempted to beg, sitting up with the keys in its mouth looking
happy to play with anyone.
Gina moved slowly. “Good boy, good little wiener….”
She could almost reach the keys.
“What are you doing to Sherman and Mr. Peabody?”
Miss Wendy interrupted. “Leave them alone!”
Gina lunged for Mr. Peabody. “Gotcha!”
“No! Got you, Wonder Princess!”
The dog squirted out of her grasp, and Gina fell
backwards pulled by the collar of her now asymmetrically-hanging jacket. Sweet
Pea reclined next to her muttering a steady stream of “ouch, ouch, ouch.” Gina
latched onto her backpack as she slid out the front door. Small pieces of
splintered door caught in the fibers of her pants. Sherman and Mr. Peabody
wagged their noodle tails, and Miss Wendy toted them, with a gradual wobble and
the squeak of her dirty brown Birkenstocks along the tile, passed the broken
doors with girls hiding behind remnants of pine shards.
“Goddammit, Wonder Princess. When are you ever
going to learn? We go through more damn doors around this place.”
Zeroing in on the last broken
door, she dropped the girls inside. Gina had floor burns on her elbows.
“You’re sister’s gonna pay for these doors,” she
warned again. “Go to sleep!” She slammed the door closed, watched it bounce
open, and shook her head.
For a moment, the two stared at the ceiling, Gina, in
pain, and Sweet Pea just waiting for the bits and pieces of Miss Wendy’s door
to close.
Sweet Pea rolled onto her back staring up at the
ceiling. “Great idea, Wonder Princess. Did you get the keys?”
“No.”
“All that and no keys?”
“No.” Gina said, sitting up. “I’ll go back.”
“Are you crazy? We’re lucky she didn’t turn us into
dog food.”
Gina rubbed her neck and tried to stand up. Her
last fall must have bruised the bottoms of her heels and her knees, and her
legs, no matter how spindly, could barely carry her weight. She used the cot to
pull herself up. “We can’t get far in this snow without them. I don’t want to
let you down. The bright side is her door is already open.”
A breeze rolled through the room sending snowflakes
into the hall.
Sweet Pea, equally battered and bruised, leaned
back to let the light wind cool her face. A moment later, she wondered why she
felt a breeze. “Gina, did you forget to close the window?”
Gina looked over to the window. She too had been
enjoying the breeze. “I didn’t think so, I mean I always close it when I’m
done.” She couldn’t remember.
“What’s that?”
Beneath the open window on the sill, Miss Wendy’s
keys, still tied with the old twisty bread tie, appeared to be placed carefully
so they could not be missed.
“The keys?” Gina said. “You don’t think Mr.
Peabody….”
They limped over to the window staring at the
string, as if the invisible hand that had placed them there would grab their
hands if they took the bait. Gina grabbed the keys without further hesitation,
holding them in her hand not wanting to let go.
“I’ve got the keys,” Gina wheezed and jingled the
string. “Not sure how, but that isn’t important anymore. Let’s go.”
“Gina, something is wrong. There ain’t no fire
escape out there. Keys just don’t fall out of the sky.”
“They couldn’t have fallen,” not to have landed in
that position, Gina thought. She eyed the ground outside the second floor
window not seeing any footsteps, neither man nor wiener dog, and retreated from
the window to grab her backpack. The winter air no longer felt refreshing.
Hoisting the bag reminded her of the ache in her back and shoulders. Once she
made it to her sister’s house, Stone would have something to put on her back.
“I said let’s go—before they disappear.”
Sweet Pea rolled her eyes and rubbed her neck.
“Great.”
“Off to my sister’s place. She’ll put us up. Come
on. You’ll like Stone, her husband. He used to play football—not the sharpest
crayon in the box.”
“I don’t know, Wonder Princess…”
“Wonder later. Let’s go.”
The two looked down to the ground.
“That has to be twelve feet,” Sweet Pea’s eyes grew
wide.
“Tuck and roll. Let’s go!” Gina zipped her jacket
and tossed the backpack to the ground. It dropped below the surface of the
snow, which had to be close to a foot deep. “That’s a good sign. Soft landing.
Remember, tuck and roll.”
“You first.”
Gina looked out the window. Although twelve feet
never seemed very high when looking up, looking down made her grimace. She slid
onto the ledge.
“All right. Plenty of snow,” she looked to the
buried backpack and repeated, “plenty of snow.”
After a couple of quick breaths, Gina the Wonder
Princess leapt from the window. “Wonder Princess away!”
Sweet Pea closed her eyes with a grimace when Gina
hit the ground, slipping in the snow and forgetting to tuck and roll in a
reasonable sequence. The impact looked painful.
A weak voice drifted up from the snow mound.
“I’m…okay….”
“Whatever, Frosty the Snowman! Good luck, Wonder
Princess!” Sweet Pea hollered, waving with the St. Anthony’s bingo winnings in
her hand and closed the window.
On the ground, Gina felt to cold snow outline her
motionless body. Some had slipped under her jacket and melted into her
underwear. Opening her eyes, she stared into the peaceful December sky. Snow
fell softly and absorbed the sound around her like a room full of yarn. When
she didn’t move, her back didn’t hurt. She would leave in just a few more
minutes after the pain subsided into a frozen concoction of spinal slush.
Inside her hand, she still held Miss Wendy’s keys. The bread tie left an
indention in her hand.
An old man hovered over her, perhaps 80-years old
and ill-equipped for the weather. The snow had masked his arrival. A startled
Wonder Princess sat up, her back not yet frozen and in pain, trying to back
away from the stranger.
“Yes.” Gina lifted her arm. “I think so.”
“You have found the keys?”
“You left the keys? Yes, yes, I have them.”
“Good. Now get going. And no questions. I tire of
questions unless they are of the variety I have not yet heard. Is that so much
to ask?” he spoke toward the sky.
“How did you,” she started, pointing towards the
second story window.
“I have heard that one. Ah, the multitude of
combinations and I wind up in the snow.” He laughed. “Leave, Miss Gina.”
“How did you—”
“That I have also heard. Now, go.”
The old man put his arm around her to ease her
toward the car.
“Thank you.”
At first suspicious of the old man, Gina judged him
to be too feeble to cause her any harm or bother her. He wore a coat made of
thin fabric and his straw hat barely covered the threads that once sprouted
from his head. His worn leather sandals, made for some other climes, lacked the
warmth and the traction necessary for a snowy Colorado night. He began to
shiver.
“Yes, that is very good now. But I am here to warn
you.”
Gina stepped away from him. “What?”
“Do not be afraid of me, young one.” He said,
nodding slowly. “I have come here to warn you. Beware the Blue Jaguar—”
“Miss Wendy has dachshunds.”
“—for to evoke his name is to end time.” He said.
Gina smiled with sarcasm on her tongue. Yet,
something told her to listen. “End of
time?”
“Yes, young one.”
“What does that mean? You can’t be serious.”
“If only I could not be more serious, is that
right? My American is simple, and you are do not speak Portuguese or Latin?”
She nodded no.
“Española?”
Again, no.
“That leaves us only American.” He said.
He pointed and his fingers looked
narrow in the cold, as did Gina’s, but even she carried more weight on her
small frame. The old man seemed to lean like a willow when the wind blew. His
frailty left her searching for his car, but she saw only Miss Wendy’s. “Where
are you from? May I give you a ride?”
He looked at the small girl, barely a palm leaf
bigger than he and wondered how it should be the Blue Jaguar, who only breathed
truth, led him to her. “Thank you, very kind of you. You have a good heart—I
can see that now.”
Gina wrinkled her forehead.
“Go, I will be fine.” He said. “The snow is cold,
but refreshing. I will find you again. Go now, please?”
She began toward the car and turned around to see
his strange face. So many lines, so much trust. Whether the snow had landed on
his face or he had been crying, she couldn’t be sure.
***