Big Maria (6 page)

Flavia tried to cheer up Ricky, but sometimes optimism and aphorisms are exactly what one doesn’t want to hear. When she had run out of things to say, she would repeat how much she loved him and how she would always stick by his side. Ricky knew she meant it. He knew that it was true, but the truth hurt. He wasn’t sure he wanted her to jump off the cliff with him.

“What’re we going to do?” Ricky asked her.

“You’re going to get better. That’s all that’s important right now.” Flavia cried. She cried for most of the visit.

“I may be out a month. No job. The bus was all I had.”

“You’ll find something.”

“Lot of jobs for a one-armed man. Human slot machine, maybe.”

“That’s not funny.”

“What is?”

It wouldn’t take long before the medical bills and the lawsuits and the insurance companies and the cops began their siege. Not right away, but soon. They would wait until he was healthy before they tried to destroy him. They wouldn’t want him to trip and break his neck on the way to the gallows.

He knew that he might have to cut Flavia and Rosie loose. It wasn’t an easy thought to think. It wasn’t what he wanted, but it
might be the only way to protect them. If things went sideways, the farther his family got from him, the happier their lives would be.

Knowing this, he couldn’t look his daughter in the eye. And nothing hurt more. Rosie was too young to understand exactly what was happening, but she could sense the pain in her father’s face. Not his physical pain, but something deeper.

“Don’t be sad, Daddy,” she said, as if it were that easy.

Ricky ran his uninjured hand through her soft hair and smiled weakly. After he kissed Rosie good-bye, he whispered to Flavia not to bring her by anymore. He might deserve to be punished for everything that happened, but not like that.

Before Flavia left, she said to him, “They led full lives. It was their time. Mr. Jimenez was ninety-two.”

She was trying to make him feel better, but somehow that made it worse. These people had survived wars and hardships and their own families only to be killed by an obstinate mule deer and a panicked bus driver.

R
icky was wrong. The cops didn’t wait for Ricky to get healthier. The blues, grays, and browns of their uniforms stood out brightly against the pea-green hospital walls. The Imperial County Sheriff’s Office headed the investigation, but representatives of the California Highway Patrol, the Riverside Sheriff’s Department, and the Blythe city cops all felt the need to include themselves. The accident had happened well south of the county line, so there was no reason for any of them to be involved, but everyone wanted the chance to press their hand in the spilled blood.

He did interviews—not interrogations, he was assured—with each agency, answering the same battery of questions. For the most part, his interviewers showed little malice, seemingly sympathetic to the tragedy of the events. The CHP were the exception, displaying dollops of unnecessary arrogance. They probably perceived it as a display of power, but it came off as overcompensation.

While the doctors had worked on him, they had done a toxicology report. Marijuana had been found in his system. While it wasn’t proof that his driving had been impaired, it was an illegal substance and complicated things. The impact would be minimal if the authorities pursued criminal charges, but it would be damning in the inevitable civil cases from the injured and the families of the dead. When the lawyers and insurance people finally arrived, they would complete Ricky’s destruction that began in the crash.

The long and short of it was that Ricky was not only screwed, but there was no solution. Jail, bankruptcy, even death wouldn’t get him out of the jam. It was one hundred percent unfixable. It was hard to wish for a miracle when a miracle wouldn’t help.

F
rank came to see Ricky. The lines on his face were so deep that Ricky couldn’t differentiate between cuts and wrinkles. It didn’t look like the old guy had a scratch on him. Ricky guessed that it was some sort of mystical, indestructible River Indian mojo thing. Indians always seemed tougher than regular people.

“Wasn’t your fault, kid,” Frank said. “Worse driver would’ve gotten everybody killed. Some things just happen. Hell of a ride you took us on.”

“Thanks for coming by, Mr. Pacheco. Glad to see you’re okay, but I’m not up for company.”

“Don’t flatter yourself. I got a biopsy tomorrow on a fresh lump they don’t like the looks of. Easier to spend the night. I’m down the hall. And I told you to call me Frank.”

“Cancer?”

“Nothing new. Fighting it for years. I’m thinking I can wear it out in the late rounds and win on points.”

“If anyone can, Frank.”

“Don’t mind the cancer so much, it’s my daughter needing to take care of me. Do I look like I need to be babysat?”

Ricky shook his head, his mind heading in other directions.

“There was nothing more you could have done. And from the looks of you—wrapped up like Claude Rains—if any punishing is going to happen, that switch has already struck ass.”

“An arm don’t feel like nearly enough.”

“Arm and a leg is more traditional.” Frank put his hand on Ricky’s good shoulder. “You’re a kid. The hell of it will pass. I done horribler things than you, and I’ve given up on the guilt for those sins long ago. Can’t blame yourself for accidents. That’s why they’re called accidents.”

“Tell that to the people I killed.”

“You didn’t kill ’em. They died. Different.”

Ricky looked toward the window in an effort to dismiss the old man. The blinds were half closed. There was no view. Frank finally took the unmistakable hint.

“I’ll be by tomorrow. If you’re not too glum, we’ll play cards.”

“I don’t want to see anyone. You understand?”

“I understand. See you tomorrow.”

T
he irresponsible combination of painkillers and Wild Turkey kept Harry in a medicated haze but didn’t stop his rising boredom. In an effort to liven things up, he roamed the halls in a borrowed wheelchair. He liked the sounds a hospital made: robotic beeps, low moans, foul-mouthed nurses, screaming children, crying mothers, and strange interludes of disquieting silence. It calmed him to hear everything as he floated above it all.

Passing an open door, he spotted Ricky. The big kid was all bandaged up. It didn’t take Harry long to do the math. There had been a bus crash. The kid owned a bus. Holy hell. Talk about a bad week. Hospital scuttlebutt put the current death count at five.

Harry rolled into the room. Ricky gave him a blank stare.

“What do you want?” Ricky asked.

“Passing by, saw you. Didn’t expect to see anyone I knew.”

“What happened to your face?”

“Long story,” Harry said. He reached for his missing earlobe and touched the soft gauze taped to the side of his head.

“The wheelchair?” Ricky nodded.

“Just lazy. I can walk, kind of. Toes is broke, so my balance is wonky. They’ll heal though. What about you?”

“Mostly my arm. Everything else is supposed to heal. Everything except my life.”

“I’d say, ‘at least we got our health,’ but I’m not that much of a jerk.”

Ricky almost smiled, but he pushed it down.

Harry looked over his shoulder, dug at his side, and pulled out his half-empty bottle of Wild Turkey. He took a quick pull and held it out to Ricky. Ricky reached over his body with his good arm, took the bottle, and swigged deeply. They passed it back and forth in silence.

“How about a pull for an old man?”

Ricky and Harry turned to see Frank in the doorway. He wore jeans and a hospital scrub for a shirt. The skin of his neck hung loose without a collar to support it.

Ricky handed the bottle to Frank. He lifted it to his nose, closed his eyes, and let the piquant burn hit his nostrils. He took a short pull. With his eyes still closed in bliss, he handed the bottle to Harry.

“How’d the surgery go?” Ricky asked.

“The piece they cut looked suspect to them. Told me to stay the night. Want to run some tests. Tell you right now, I know what that means. Been living with cancer long enough to know my pluses and minuses.”

“Sorry, Frank.”

“Tough news,” Harry said. He didn’t know why, but he immediately liked the old Indian.

“Thanks. Name’s Frank.”

Ricky spoke up. “I’m sorry, this is Shitbur…I don’t know your real name.”

“Harry.”

Frank and Harry shook hands. Frank stepped back and let out a short burst of a laugh.

“What’s so funny?” Harry asked, already laughing a little himself.

“Look at us,” Frank said. “You never seen three sadder sumbitches. Ricky wrapped up like a ’gyptian mummy. Harry, you got a metal nose and a face like a jack-o’-lantern in January. Me, I might be pretty on the outside, but I got homicidal lumps uglying
up my insides. What’s so funny? Not a goddamn thing. Laughing so I don’t cry.”

Frank let out a big laugh as he grabbed the bottle of Wild Turkey. He took a swig, spit-taking half of it over the front of his hospital scrub.

Even Ricky laughed.

B
y the time the sun went down, Harry, Ricky, and Frank were solid drunk. Drunk and edging toward maudlin. Ricky had enjoyed that first laugh, but it didn’t take long for his guilt to convince him that he didn’t deserve even brief happiness.

After they had discussed their various injuries, an uncomfortable silence filled the room. Not knowing each other and having nothing in common beyond their misery, none of them could figure out what to say. They wanted to feel a sense of camaraderie but didn’t know how to accomplish it.

Ricky finally found the link.

“Frank knows where there’s a gold mine,” Ricky blurted out.

“What?” Harry had dozed into his drunk and hadn’t quite absorbed what the kid said.

“Well, he doesn’t know where it is, but knows how to find it. Kind of.”

“Did you say ‘gold mine’?” Harry turned to Frank for confirmation. Frank’s nod sat Harry up straight.

“Fat Mary Mine,” Ricky said. “Ain’t that right, Frank?”

“Big Maria. The Big Maria Mine.”

“What are you talking about?” Harry asked.

Ricky laid out the abridged version of Frank’s grandfather’s story. In his drunken state, he got all the dates and names wrong, elaborated on some of the events, and just plain made up a few details. But for the most part, he got the gist of it. Frank was too drunk to correct him, not remembering all the details himself.

“You bullshitting, old man? Or is this on the level?”

“Only know what I know. What my grandfather told me. Truth be told, he may have lied. My grandfather was a bullshit artist. If he didn’t outright lie, he was sure to have made up some of it. To an Indian, a good story is more important than any kind of truth.”

“You believe him though?”

“I believed all his stories, even the ones I knew were lies. If you don’t believe a story, why listen.”

“I need odds. What’s the over-under that he was telling the truth? Forty percent? At least about the gold and the maps and all the important parts.”

Frank gave it some thought. “Fifty-fifty. Maybe closer to sixty-forty against. This is from the man that claimed to have ridden with Hi Jolly’s Camel Corps.”

“I don’t know what that is.”

“You never saw
Hawmps!
?” Ricky cut in. “Where’s your history? Ain’t a lot of heroes from out here. Hi Jolly rode camels for the Army. They got a memorial out near Quartzsite.”

“Don’t care. Back to the gold.” Harry’s hands shook from impatience.

“He could’ve rode with Hi Jolly.” Ricky’s voice was mostly slur. “When was your grandfather born?”

Harry raised his voice. “Nobody cares. You’re saying a coin flip on the gold, though?”

“Give or take,” Frank concluded.

Ricky started laughing. His second really good laugh since the accident.

“What’s funny? This is serious,” Harry said.

Ricky had trouble getting words out. “You’re going to look for that gold, aren’t you?”

“Maybe,” Harry said sheepishly.

“You got to admit it’s kind of funny.” Ricky tried to stop laughing, but couldn’t.

“No, I do not.” Harry stood up defiantly but fell back in his wheelchair and decided to orate from there. “I got nothing. Less than that. And it just so happens we have this conversation? That’s fate. It’s important to recognize these moments. Chances. Opportunities. You don’t react, it passes. Times when not doing something is stupider than doing something stupid.

“You’re a kid. You’ll have other chances. I ain’t old like Frank, but I ain’t young neither. All that’s left for me are long shots and bad gambles. I start turning my back on the two-hundred-to-ones, I might as well pack it in, buy a nice couch and a big stack of pornography, and wait to die.”

Ricky stopped laughing. “Sorry. It’s the thought of actually doing it. A treasure map hidden in an underwater ghost town that will lead you to a lost Indian gold mine. That’s like the back cover of a Hardy Boys book. It’s a little ridiculous.”

“Ridiculous just means that nobody else has tried.”

Ricky drained the remaining drops of Wild Turkey, and the three men talked about gold for the next half hour until Frank and Harry went to their respective rooms to pass out.

R
icky gave Rosie a big hug. Standing at the back door of Anna’s spotless town car, he squeezed her against his chest with his one good arm. He dug his nose into her hair. It smelled like baby shampoo and applesauce.

“When are you coming, Daddy?” Rosie asked, but the tears in her eyes told Ricky she knew the answer. Kids were smarter than grown-ups gave them credit for being.

“Soon.” Ricky looked away. He hated lying to his baby girl.

She held out the frayed corner of her torn blanket. The faded swath was all that was left of the well-used blanket that she’d had since birth. Rosie called it Manta, the Spanish for
blanket
. Ricky couldn’t remember who taught her that word. Probably Anna. Girl and blanket had been inseparable until about a year before. She didn’t carry it anymore, but dug it out when she was scared or needed comfort. Ricky struggled to reach for it with his dead, withered left arm.