T Parker - The border Lords

The mother spoke in rapid Spanish and the camera wobbled dramatically. Hood heard the curandera answer in a strangely low and disapproving voice. Though it was much clearer than the audio of his cell phone, Hood still couldn't understand her words.

Father of all days defend this girl from the venom of evil so that she may live to be an angel… Mother of all nights defend this girl from the poison of the devil so that she may live to be an angel…

He said the sentences again and again.

Offscreen the curandera spoke in the background, and although again Hood could not make out her words, her voice was low and trembled with foreboding.

Offscreen the mother answered her in an anxious tone.

No! said Sean. No water for her. No agua!

The curandera hissed something and Sean turned and ordered her to shut her foul old mouth. His eyes were crazy black, and Hood saw almost nothing in them of the man he had known. He was sweating badly. Daisy looked away from him.

Hood was surprised by the enormity of the change in Sean, as revealed by the good video monitor. Only a small fraction of it had registered over the tiny screen on his cell phone.

Ozburn turned back to the girl and set the plastic bag on the bed and pressed one of his great rough hands to the girl's forehead. He kept repeating the two sentences. Gradually the girl's eyes closed. He prayed on, the same words, the same cadence, his voice growing softer and slower until Hood could barely hear it. And still he prayed.

A minute or two later Ozburn removed his hand from the girl's head. Her eyes were still closed and her face was peaceful. Her chest rose and fell in the rhythm of sleep. Offscreen the curandera muttered something accusatory.

Ozburn reached back and claimed the recorder. He turned it on the girl, zooming in close to the wound on her neck. The swelling had gone down and the skin was reddened. Hood could see the mark the stinger had left, much like a bee sting. Ozburn put the cooling sack of cucumbers back over it.

Ozburn panned the room and settled the camera on the curandera. She spoke to him in Spanish now and for the first time Hood could both hear and understand her words.

— Why did you come to Agua Blanca?

— People talk of you. I'm suffering and I want you to make it stop.

— Your suffering will stop when it is finished.

— Tell me what it is.

— It lives in the caves of your blood.

The curandera moved to the vanity and pulled the dress from the mirror.

— Bruja, said Ozburn, swinging the camera away from his reflection.

Witch, thought Hood.

The curandera reached up and grasped one of the snake heads on her scapular. The camera came in on it. Hood saw the glazed eyes with their vertical pupils, the enlarged nose scales, and the pits through which these vipers could sense the body heat of their prey. He was impressed by its size, though the many others were easily as big. He'd seen his share of rattlesnakes in and around Bakersfield but rarely had they been more than five feet long, as these snakes had once been. Most of the rattles separating the heads were blunt rectangles, at least two inches long. The curandera held it up to the camera, a matter-of-fact expression on her dark, wrinkled face.

— You two look a lot alike, lady. You must have a hundred of those heads.

— Come with me, white devil. I will show you how your suffering will end.

— Let's do it, bruja.

Hood's scalp crawled as the picture faded to black.

A moment later the girl appeared, sitting up in bed with a bowl of soup in her lap and a spoon in her hand. She looked at the camera shyly, then blushed.

Ozburn narrated:

Two hours later. Silvia slept for almost two hours and woke up hungry. I will still not allow her to drink water in my presence. As you can see, the wound is nothing now but a very small mark. The Lord has acted again through me and in my humble amazement I am content and Silvia is cured.

The camera zoomed in close. Even the once-reddish patch at the sting site was gone. All that was left was the small pinprick of the stinger.

Then Ozburn swung the camera down and walked into the next room where the scorpion was still trapped under the glass bowl. He reached down and lifted it and the scorpion raised its pinchers and tail and scuttled backward. Ozburn's harness boot crushed it into the dirt floor. Daisy sniffed the boot toe.

— Curandera! Apurate!

Hood made Agua Blanca by afternoon. It sat along a potholed asphalt road, ten miles below Tecate. The buildings were rectangles of blue and yellow and pink and green, and the speed bump gave Hood and his SUV a sharp bounce.

He bought two orange soft drinks at the mini-super Ayala and asked about the curandera. The clerk told Hood that she lived at the far end of town, on a dirt road that began at a green ice cream stand and a white pharmacy. He said to drive west one hundred meters and look for the driveway marked by a hubcap and some flowers. He said the curandera had saved a girl from scorpions.

Hood stopped at the ice cream stand and got two deluxe Popsicles, one coconut and one orange. He turned right and crunched down the wide dirt road. Half a mile later he saw the hubcap with the spray of plastic flowers long blanched of color by the sun. The driveway was not quite wide enough for his Durango so the manzanita branches streaked its flanks. The house was a pale green cinder-block rectangle with a water tank on the roof.

She stood in the doorway as if she had been expecting him. He climbed down from the vehicle with the drink bottles in one hand and the Popsicles in the other and swung the door shut with an elbow. They spoke in Spanish.

— Good evening. I'm Deputy Hood.

She peered at him, face darkly lined, eyes fierce but steady. She was short and wiry and wore a black dress to her ankles and red slip-on sneakers. Her scapular today was made not of rattlesnake parts but of dried peyote buttons interspersed with plastic Telmex calling cards with action pictures of famous soccer players on them.

Hood held out the Popsicles and she took the orange one and a soda. He explained that he wanted to see what she had shown to Sean Gravas, the man who had filmed her healing of the stung girl, Silvia. She motioned him into her home. The floor was swept recently, broom marks on concrete, and there was a propane oven and a three-burner stove and a sink and a poured concrete counter. She opened her bottle and handed the opener to Hood.

— He is a white devil.

— He is a sick man.

— Silvia is strong.

— Sean is weak. I want you to take me where you took him.

— It is ten minutes to drive.

It was a thirty-minute drive. The dirt road that wound up past the curandera's house soon narrowed to a twist of ruts. Hood straddled them in the big SUV. The sun was lowering now and there was a pink tint to the mesquite and madrone, backlit by the sun. They cast blue shadows on the tan desert sand. The curandera threw her Popsicle stick and wrapper out the window and a minute later the soda can.

Finally the road ended in a fan of uphill paths that looked more traveled by flash floods than by humans or animals. The curandera put her hand on the door pull and Hood parked and shut off the engine. He came around to her side and she started up a trail through the dry brown brush. Hood got his Glock from the toolbox in the back and clipped the holster to his belt, then locked up the vehicle and caught up with her.

She led the way, walking briskly. Lizards hugged the rocks for the last warmth of sunlight. They climbed for a few minutes, then walked downhill into a stand of scrub oak and greasewood. Hood smelled the spring and saw the foundation of a small house that had been destroyed, now just a black smudge upon the earth. There was a rock chimney. Beyond the foundation scattered sticks and rusted swatches of chicken wire lay half-buried in sand.