John Brandon - A Million Heavens

Sometimes the wolf could withstand a series of full days without a song and sometimes he grew demented and out of control after only a few hours. He struck again, a dog and cat who lived next door to each other. The owners of the animals were not on speaking terms, but the pets were close. The wolf had broken their necks and flung their bodies under a shrub. Again he had not eaten his prey. At first look, the dog, an Australian cattle dog that for some reason had never grown to full size, and the cat, a massive tabby, looked to be cuddling, taking a nap.

The owners were two old men who’d worked in the turquoise trade and had each coached many youth baseball teams. Once, they too had gotten along famously. They were both lifelong bachelors. The cat was named Bonnie and the dog Clyde.

The council meeting. Lofte had always scrimped and jiggered, but this year a lot of items would be plain neglected. No further magic could be performed on the numbers. There hadn’t been a security patrol or volunteer fire crew for some time, but now they would have to close the recreation center. There once had been a commercial alliance that spruced up the main drag every couple months. There once had been a parents’ alliance that stewarded the baseball diamond.

Mayor Cabrera had not gone to see Dana last night, the second appointment he’d missed. It had been two months since he’d had his troubles with her. He wondered if Dana thought he’d met someone, that he’d given Dana up for some other woman. Maybe she thought he was having money problems, as if that would’ve stopped him from visiting. He would’ve robbed a bank, if it had come to that. It was seeming more and more farfetched, the notion of Mayor Cabrera driving to Dana’s villa and propositioning her. Washing his car, slapping on cologne, knocking on her door and looking her in the eye and asking her to fully retire and become his woman — the idea seemed childish. Dana didn’t love him. At least at this point she respected him as a customer. Mayor Cabrera couldn’t have Dana think of him as pathetic. That just wasn’t something he could live with. If his dream of being with Dana was what had caused him to go to his sister-in-law when she needed him, then good had come of his falling for a professional lady. He could think of it that way. He’d only seen his sister-in-law four or five times and her spirits had already risen.

“Hidey there, Mayor,” said one of the council members. “You with us?”

The town council consisted of four members. One was Lofte’s lone lawyer, a guy who always wore a polo shirt and always carried a tape player with headphones for listening to books on tape. One councilman was a kid in his twenties who was a single father. He drove his daughter to Albuquerque every day, to a fancy school. The kid was awaiting a big settlement because a surgeon had messed up one of his hands. There was an elderly councilman who was a crack shot and had a range set up on his property. If you showed up at his house and asked to shoot, he’d lead you around back and load up his arsenal of old rifles and let you have at it, no questions asked. The last member of the council was a middle-aged woman who was loud and grating, but if you knew the facts of her life you couldn’t help but root for her.

The council discussed the wolf. The town’s pet owners were in a lather. This was a problem something could be done about, unlike the budget. Maybe they could have a vote about it, a town vote. People loved that, when they got to decide something local and immediate. The youngster with the daughter said he knew a guy who sold these rigs that turned regular fences into electric fences. If you had a chain-link fence you could spend eighty bucks and hook up this box that ran a current. The kid presented this information, like most things he said, as an idea to be only lightly considered, a jumping-off point.

“What about the people with wooden fences?” Mayor Cabrera said. “And what about the pets themselves? The very pets we’re trying to protect could get harmed.”

The old man didn’t know why they didn’t set traps. Bait them with ground beef. You’d get a few coyotes collateral damage, but so what. The lawyer wondered what the proper channels were. Wolves were protected, no doubt. Maybe the state would tranquilize and relocate it. The tutor-woman said that in the old days people would’ve looked after their own, bundled up in a rocking chair on the porch, shotgun at the ready. To be honest, she added, she didn’t give a shit about people’s goats and cats. She didn’t like when people treated animals like they were family. In truth, she was rooting for the wolf.

Mayor Cabrera hadn’t told the council about Ran. He hadn’t told anyone at all. He didn’t like keeping secrets, but he didn’t want folks to get their hopes up and also didn’t want to deal with people who’d resist having an enormous off-brand church moving into the area. Mayor Cabrera of course resented that some stranger from another state would determine whether Lofte survived. He felt like he should be doing more to secure Ran’s favor, but he wasn’t sure what. Maybe he was supposed to fly to Iowa with a detailed proposal, a sales pitch that pointed out the myriad attributes of North Central New Mexico. He didn’t have that in him. Not these days. He was also keeping the whole thing to himself, he knew, because if it didn’t work out it would seem he’d failed. It would seem that the town had expired not due to population atrophy and dwindling tourism, but because Mayor Cabrera hadn’t been able to close a deal. Mayor Cabrera didn’t want to fail, nor did he want to perform a miracle. Honestly, he didn’t even want to come to another of these meetings. The council had moved on to another topic and Mayor Cabrera again wasn’t paying attention. In a few minutes it would be break time and Terry, the old guy, would pour everyone a small cup of the lemony liqueur he was never without.

The fact that Mayor Cabrera had only recently gotten it together to do a proper Internet search on Ran was a testament to his lack of presence when it came to mayoral concerns. During one of the many slow moments at the motel, he’d gotten the lobby desktop fired up and typed Ran’s name into a search engine and browsed about a dozen relevant links. What he’d gleaned, and he couldn’t tell if the information pleased or dismayed him, was that Ran was unconnected from any serious wrongdoing. He didn’t seem to have ever been to prison, didn’t seem to have made anyone mad at him, didn’t seem to have fled from anywhere. He’d changed his haircut and clothing style, but people did that. He’d changed church denominations — people did that too. What he was, it seemed, was determined. He was a leader. A talented, capable leader.

Cecelia had filled a whole tape, front and back. The latest song was about souls who spoke the same language, and how when those souls were close to each other they could finally see that they’d been banished to a foreign locale for years, alone, squinted at, and now they were home. You could say parakeet or bedpost, viper meat or dry toast. Everything was comprehended. The song talked about clouds being born, which happened when all the winds in the sky spoke the same dialect. The last line was, When it’s about to rain, I know I know you .

Cecelia was tired of missing Reggie over and over in the same way. She was tired of sloughing on and off the same sadness, no progression, no control. It was all apprehension when a new song arrived now, no joy. The songs were hollowing Cecelia out. They were relentless. They’d proven their point. Each song was beautiful in flight, but they had no regard for the wear they were causing as they landed, song after song, on the same strip of Cecelia’s heart.