Randy White - Night Vision

“You’ll see,” Tula insisted. “Jehanne is right about the churches tonight. We will find people there who can help us. And that woman-Frankie? Even if she is evil, you and I have nothing to fear.”

By the time they’d spent a couple of hours in Immokalee, with its Circle Ks, tomato-packing warehouses and migrant housing, Squires had stopped trying to figure out how the weird little Jesus freak had gotten so famous among all these Mexicans who came out of the woodwork to see the girl, once word got around that she was in town.

Squires knew that the chilies back at Red Citrus had built some kind of voodoo-looking shrine to Tula. Why? He had no idea. But how did these Mexicans know about the girl way out here in cattle-and-tomato country, sixty miles from the Gulf beaches and his trailer park? Christ, Tula had been in Florida for only a week or so. Now here she was with strangers fawning over her like she was some kind of damn rock star.

Something else that surprised the man was that the Maiden-whoever the hell she was-was right about churches being open on a Wednesday. Not all, but a couple.

More likely, though, credit went to the strange little girl who heard voices but sat quietly, hands in her lap, during the twenty-mile drive from the hunting camp to this city linked to the outside world just by train tracks and a winding road.

The only time Tula had stirred was once when they passed a state trooper’s car going the other way. When the girl saw Squires’s knuckles go white on the steering wheel, she stroked his forearm and said, “If a policeman stops us, don’t worry, I’ll tell them you’re my friend. And that we’re looking for my mother. They’ll believe me. Know why? Because it’s the truth.”

Squires had tried to catch the news on the radio, hoping for an update on the dead woman they’d found. It was also in his mind that Tula could have been reported missing and that the cops might make the connection.

Hell, for all he knew, Frankie had blown the whistle on him herself, once she discovered that all their cash missing. Blame the dead girl’s body on him, that would be easy enough for Frankie to do-and maybe even try to prove it, the bitch was such a good liar.

But no luck with the radio-there were only FM stations out here in the boonies. So Squires decided, screw it, he would just go with the flow and stick with the girl. He couldn’t make himself kill his crazy little eyewitness, so maybe he was better off joining her. For now.

At the edge of the Everglades, the open highway became Main Street, with palm trees and gas stations, and lots of small brown people, some of them woman, wearing what looked like colorful blankets. And lots of scrawny, bowlegged Mexican men, too, wearing straw cowboy hats.

At a supermarket named Azteca Super Centro, Squires turned right past Raynor’s Seafood amp; Restaurant, then drove backstreets, zigzagging through a residential area, because that is what the girl told him to do.

The man had never been in a town so small with so many wetback churches. Iglesia Bautista Jesucristo. Pentecostal Church of God. Evangelica Redimidos por la Sangre de Jesus. Amigos en Cristo.

It was like being in a foreign country, the names were so strange . A lot of Spanish praying went down on this plateau of asphalt and lawns bleached brown by the Florida heat, the entire city opened wide to an Everglades sky above.

Not all of the churches were busy, but a couple were, with parking lots full-pickup trucks and rusting Toyotas-church doors open, with people inside singing hymns or shouting out wild words in Spanish.

Squires could hear all this, as they idled along in his truck, windows down. A few blocks later, they came to an adobe-colored brick building with a tin roof, Iglesia de Sangre de Cristo, and the girl told him to pull in. She’d start here.

“I’m staying in the truck,” Squires said, giving Tula a look that told her Don’t bother arguing. “But remember this: If you try running out on me, there’ll be hell to pay. That ain’t a profanity, it’s a promise.”

Tula stared at him a moment, the door open, her wounded expression asking the man When will you ever learn?

Then she jumped down to the ground, a girl not much taller then the truck’s tires, saying, “If the priest will let me, I’m going to talk to the congregation. I would like you to come in and listen. I wouldn’t feel as nervous if you were with me. Please? I can speak in English for you. Most of them will understand.”

Squires shook his head, and kept his eye on Tula until she was inside. After half an hour, though, he did get out and peek through a window, because it seemed strange the way people off the street were suddenly hurrying across lawns to get to the church. The place was already packed, but more people kept coming, some of them chattering on their cell phones, excited expressions on their faces, as they jogged along.

What Squires saw through the window caused him to wonder if Frankie had slipped some Ecstasy into his fresh batch of steroids, the stuff he’d just injected.

That’s how surreal the scene was.

What he saw was Tula, the skinny little girl dressed like a boy, standing at the altar, speaking Spanish in a strong voice, as the priest-a fat little dweeb with no hair-looked on adoringly. Which caused Squires to think maybe the asshole really believed Tula was a boy. But the priest wasn’t the only one giving the girl his full attention.

Sitting squashed together on wooden pews, some of the women were bawling silently into hankies, moved by what the girl was saying. And a line was forming near the altar, Mexican men with farmer’s tans, short little women-some on their knees-apparently waiting to meet the girl when she was done speaking.

But why? Squires moved to a window that was closer to find out.

It made no sense, but what the people wanted to do, he discovered, was kiss the girl’s hand, or hug her, or maybe ask her to say a prayer for them, which Tula appeared to do several times, touching her hand to a person’s head while she muttered words toward the ceiling.

My God, even the priest got in on it, hugging the girl while she touched his dweebish bald head and said something that Squires was close enough to hear but couldn’t understand.

Dumbass, the man thought to himself. Why the hell didn’t I ever learn Spanish?

It was frustrating hearing but not understanding, especially because he was trying to figure out why the girl commanded such respect from so many adults, all of them strangers.

Maybe Tula sounded smarter in Spanish. That might explain it, which caused Squires to spend some time weighing the possibility. It had to be true, he finally decided. In English, the girl came off as pretty damn strange, maybe even nuts. In Spanish, she must have sounded a lot smarter.

Right or wrong, it gave Squires a funny feeling to witness how famous the girl had become. He guessed it was something to be proud of, hanging out with a celebrity, even if the girl’s fans were all Mexicans.

What he was witnessing was impressive, Squires had to admit it. Being with a celebrity was new in his experience, unless he counted Frankie, which he didn’t of course. Fifteen years ago, Frankie had been a minor bodybuilding star-Miss South Florida U.S.A. once and Miss Vermont Bodybuilder three times in a row-which the bitch never stopped reminding him when they got into arguments over which steroids were best for different kinds of cycles.

But being with Tula, the strange little Jesus freak, was an entirely different experience. Squires had never seen anyone look at Frankie the way these adoring people kept their eyes glued to that little girl.

Yeah, sort of proud-that’s the way he felt. And he would have continued watching if a few tough-acting Mexicans-or were they Guatemalans?-hadn’t slipped out the church door to give him their hard-assed beaner glares.