Jonathan Nasaw - When She Was Bad

“Que?”

“Loco -that I was loco en la cabeza?” She twirled a forefinger at her temple.

Fano was shuffling his sandals again, looking like the man in the TV commercial whose wife had just asked him, Does this make me look fat? “He just say you very…disturb?…about what happen, and everybody very worry about you.”

“What if I asked you not to tell him I was down here?”

“Por que?”

“If I tell you, you have to promise you won’t tell Uncle Rollie.”

The shoulders of Fano’s denim workshirt rose in what might have been either a shrug of agreement, or a let’s hear what you have to say first.

Lily took a deep breath. “Okay, here’s the thing-I didn’t come down here alone. I’m here with my boyfriend. Uncle Rollie doesn’t like him-he’ll do anything to keep us apart. And if he finds out we’re here, there’s no telling what he might do. He might have him arrested, or put me away in a mental hospital, or both.”

She leaned closer, locked eyes with him. “Please, Tio Fano-haven’t you ever been in love?”

The clearing was nearly dark by now, the redwoods outlined black against the greenish glow of the sky. “Si,” he said softly. “Very much.”

“Tell me.”

He was staring directly at Lily, but no longer seeing her. “One day they came to our village,” he said, his voice steady, a distant look in his eyes. “Men with guns, men with big…” He shoved the air with both hands palm forward, bent upward at the wrist. “How you say, empujatierra ?”

“Earth movers-bulldozers.”

“ Si, bulldozers. To knock down our village. I say you cannot do this. Their head man, he say who are you, the jefe, the big chief? I say I am alcalde of this village. Bueno, he say, an’ strike me”-he mimed a diagonal blow with a rifle butt-“here.” He pushed his hair back from his temple to show Lily the scar. “I wake up under a pile of dead bodies with the smell of gasolina in my nose. Lucky for me, after they light the fire, they leave for the next village. Only I am left alive. I crawl from under the pile, but there is no water to put out the fire, because when they knock down a village, they also destroy the village wells, so nobody can build a village there again.

“So I start to pull the bodies off the pile. Then I find mi esposa, my wife. She was very much embarazada- ” Lily was confused for a second; then he traced the curve of a swollen belly in front of his own flat stomach, and she remembered that in Spanish, they used the same word for embarrassed and pregnant. “I said my last prayer that day-that mi querida, she was already dead when those men, they cut the baby out from her stomach and throw it on the pile.”

Darkness had crept over the canyon. High in the redwoods, an owl hooted, deep-toned and trembly; a throaty roar in the distance reminded Lily that there were still plenty of mountain lions left in the barranca. She didn’t realize she was crying until Fano reached out and wiped a tear from her cheek. “Senor Rollie, he coming down Monday to meet with the man from PG amp;E to see how much money it cost to run the electricidad in from the highway. So a gift of two days, three nights, that is all that is in my power to give to you and your querido. Accept it with my love, por favor.” Fano bowed formally from the waist, then turned and started back across the clearing to the waiting mule.

“Gracias,” called Lily.

“De nada, mija,” he said over his shoulder, and at that instant, four things happened in such quick succession that afterward Lily would remember them as occurring simultaneously:

She heard a loud popping sound behind her; something invisible zzzz’d past, disturbing the air; a cloud of birds rose up startled from the trees; Fano threw up his arms as though overcome by a sudden urge to shout hallelujah.

Then, as Lily screamed and the cloud of birds wheeled off angrily into the dusk, Fano dropped to his knees, swayed there for a moment, and pitched face forward onto the bare ground.

“Irene, I’m not taking you with me,” said Pender. The two were seated across from each other at the round maple-topped kitchen table, under the rose-pink glow of a stained-glass chandelier shaped like a tulip. “It’s much too dangerous.”

After her shower, Irene had changed into a pair of roomy black cargo pants with plenty of loops and snaps and pockets, a navy pullover, and a pair of black-on-black Chuck Taylor high-tops; her damp hair was wrapped in a high towel turban. “Wrong, wrong,” she said, making two check marks in the air; she had just finished her second cup of high octane dark roast. “One: you have to take me with you-otherwise I won’t tell you where they are, not that you could find it by yourself even if I did. And two: you’re exaggerating the threat level. Lyssy’s frightened and confused, but he’s not dangerous.”

“Oh really?” Pender’s big bald head, rosy in the glow of the chandelier, wagged stubbornly from side to side. “Try telling that to Mick MacAlister.”

“That was self-defense. If MacAlister hadn’t gone for his gun he’d still be alive-you told me that. But as far as shooting someone in cold blood? If Lyssy were capable of that, we’d both be…” Her voice trailed off as a new possibility occurred to her. “Oh, no! Please say it ain’t so, Pen.”

“Okay, I’m lost.” He spread his hands helplessly. “What am I supposed to say ain’t so?”

“That you were planning to just…gun him down. Sneak up on him and gun him down. That that’s why you don’t want me there this time around-you don’t want any witnesses.”

Pender had to force himself to keep his eyes trained on hers. “I’m not saying that’s not an option-I mean, if the opportunity presents itself. But if that looks to be the safest way to get Lily out of that cabin unharmed, your being there or not is not going to make a difference one way or the other.”

“But it will!” Irene exclaimed. “I can talk to them-they’ll listen to-” Then, with a sinking feeling: “Hold on, Pen-I never said anything about a cabin.”

“Not until now. But don’t feel bad-I was about seventy-five percent sure when you said I couldn’t find it on my own anyway. I’m thinking, that’s got to be out in the wilderness someplace-which would account for why they ransacked your kitchen. Then I remembered about…what did Lyman and Dotty call that place? El Guard-o, something like that?”

Irene’s fingernails dug painfully into her palms. Don’t be too hard on yourself, she thought-he’s a cop, this is his metier. “Please, Pen-I owe it to Lily to be there. If I’d fought for her a little harder in the first place, she wouldn’t be in the situation she’s in. I let that child down once-I won’t do it a second time.”

On the off chance she was bluffing, Pender countered with a bluff of his own. “You’re not leaving me much of a choice,” he said, slowly removing his cell phone from his pocket. “I have to call in the cops- they’ll be able to figure out where the cabin is.”

“No!” Irene raised her voice for the first time. “If you bring in the police, it’s going to be Bonnie and Clyde all over again.”

“We don’t know that.” Even more slowly, Pender’s sausage-thick fingers drew out the antenna. “There are plenty of nonlethal alternatives-tear gas, flash-bang grenades, Tasers, rubber rounds. Deadly force is always supposed to be a last resort in these situations.”

Irene sneaked a peek at Pender over the rim of her half-empty cup. Between the cold shower and the hot coffee, she was starting to feel more like herself again. And more critically, to think like herself again. “Okay, well, you’re the expert,” she said. “If you think calling the police is the best thing to do, who am I to question you?”