T. Parker - The Jaguar

Erin woke up just after sunrise. She was curled up on one side of the bed with the sheet over her, still wearing her clothes from the night before. For a moment she looked out the window, saw the palms unmoving in the orange light, her mind crawling with images of the battle. She felt aged by what she had witnessed, made sadder and more fearful and better able to discern her blessings. The baby kicked and elbowed her. She also felt more determined than ever to preserve his life, to deliver him gasping and screaming into the world.

She looked out at the lightening sky and drew a mental picture of Bradley. She saw him not as a failed man but as a misled boy. Misled by whom? Still, when she pictured him and imagined what had happened to him her heart fell. The failed boy was hers and she had made a deal with him, which entitled him. But to what? He could quite easily have been killed or arrested in the service of trying to help her. He did not arrive…There are rumors of a battle with the Zetas and an arrest by the Army. She took a deep breath and calmly tried to imagine Bradley gone forever, nothing of him left but a memory and scattered evidence left behind. But she could not make this idea real. It sat out there beyond her understanding and she wondered what she would do if by some miracle they both returned home alive.

She showered and changed and when she came out Atlas had delivered a light breakfast and a large pot of coffee. She drank the coffee at the desk with the Hummingbird on her lap, scratching down the lyrics as they stole into her head.

A few minutes later Owens knocked and Erin let her in. She was dressed for travel in slacks and a smart linen jacket, and she trailed a gold-colored rolling bag behind her. A pair of sunglasses was pushed well up into her hair. “Mike needs me. Benjamin thinks it’s his idea that I go. For my safety.”

Erin felt more abandoned than she knew she should. “Your safety.”

“I’ll be back in two days.”

“I’ll be writing for my life.”

“Get the guitar. I’ll bring the coffee.”

In the tracking room Erin sat at the Yamaha and Owens pulled a stool from the vocal booth. Erin felt her way through a melody one key at a time, a bright Tejano tune, then paused. “I thought I was dead last night.”

“I did too.”

“But here we are.”

“Benjamin told me there were ten men. His men. It broke a part of his heart that his own men would do that. Of course, with what was left of his heart he executed the three who were captured alive.”

“Did he put their heads in a bag?”

“Yes, personally.”

“Listen to what we talk about here, Owens. We don’t say these things in the U.S. There we say have a great day. Or no worries. Here we say he fed a reporter to the leopards. Has an attack like that ever happened here before?”

“There was an attempt on his life a year ago. Here. Two foolish boys. Hired shooters. Nothing like last night.”

“And it was so strange, Owens. I watched them load the dead men into the vehicles. Bloody and ugly. Then when I turned away from the window and looked at the food I was hungry. More than hungry-starved. I ate a lot. It tasted so good. I even drank some wine. When Benjamin came into the room I wasn’t sure who it was, and I didn’t care. I’d given up. I was still eating. I was too terrified to be afraid anymore.”

“You’ll be home in a week, Erin. Maybe less.”

Erin found the minor note she needed and wrote it down. “One week. Eleven more songs to write, and twelve to record.”

Owens looked at her analytically. “Write well, Erin. Let the angels whisper in your ears. I’ll see you in two days.”

Erin studied her face, the black hair and gray eyes, her lovely body and shapely arms, the knife scars ringing her wrists like angry snakes.

Owens stood and took the handle of her rolling bag. “My ride’s here. Whenever Benjamin arranges my travel it’s always three armored SUVs.”

“Will you go anywhere Mike tells you to?”

Owens smiled. “Within reason. Or slightly beyond.”

“I worry about you too, you know. I don’t like or trust him.”

“Mike was hoping that his pigeons might make you reconsider him. He went to more than a little trouble to do that. He wants your friendship and trust. He adores Bradley.”

Erin considered. “I don’t understand one thing about you but I’m glad you’re alive.”

Erin listened to the smooth roll of the luggage on the studio floor. She didn’t watch Owens leave. She felt that her best and only friend had betrayed her and now the future was even more bleak. One week, she thought. Eleven and twelve. Eleven, twelve and out.

For the next hour the music came clear and fast. Two songs stormed in simultaneously, notes and words falling close together like rain. Erin scribbled the phrases and kept two separate ledgers as each grew. One was the Tejano song that had begun in her room and the other was a lullaby to the baby, a waltz, and it brought a little mist to her eyes as it wafted across the morning and into her ears, addressed specifically to her, sent from that part of the universe unknown and unknowable. The little digital tape recorder was a sound-activated wonder-simple to use and very clear on the playback.

My darling son

My darling son

On the beach

And the meadow run

Follow a dream

Follow a dream

And when you return

A man you will be

But until then darling son

You are my darling son

Goodnight to you

You and the stars tonight

Goodnight

Then suddenly the Tejano song butted in and took over, as if it were jealous of Erin’s attention elsewhere. She struck the notes of melody on the grand with her left hand, and scribbled down the words in her notebook with the other. It was a song about a young man racing home to his lover on a dark night and he’s driving way too fast, and he gets pulled over by a highway patrolman. The patrolman locks him in the back of his cruiser and gets on the radio. The song is the young man’s plea to be let go because his woman is so good and sweet and he hasn’t seen her in a very long time. The more the young man brags about her, the more astonishingly beautiful, but less believable, she becomes. But the cop lets him go and in the end the young man makes it home and she is plain and poor but in his mind every bit as lovely as he had said she was.

Time passed. She wrote and rewrote, played phrases one way and then another. She collected them all on the little recorder because sometimes you didn’t hear a jewel the first time through. It was hard to free her heart to feel the words and the stories because of the great black hole in her universe that was her captivity, and the lesser one that was her husband.

Later she saw Armenta looking at her through the window of the control room. Heriberto stood behind him with a large black rifle of some kind strapped over his shoulder. Armenta looked weary and absent as he lifted a cup of something to his mouth and gave her a slight nod. She turned back to her notepad and a moment later when she looked back for him both men were gone.

Later Armenta came into the tracking room with his accordion case and set it down next to one of the instrument booths. He was clean shaven and groomed, barefoot, in shorts and a blue wedding shirt. He wore a wide military-style belt outside the shirt, hung with phones and weapons. Barefoot and in shorts and a festive shirt he looked like a tourist arriving at a resort.

“I need to play.”

“It’s your studio.”

“Are the songs coming to you?”

“They are trying.”

“I will not be a distraction to you.”

“How can a man playing accordion not be a distraction?”