Leon Uris - A God In Ruins

He had done it all, from picking cotton in Texas to doing prison time in Canon City. He did it by being a roustabout, by smuggling on the border, by boiling booze, by selling peyote.

His early primitive drawings were of the usual Mexican rage against exploitation, and he worked to become one of the nation’s foremost portrait artists and sculptors. Although he was always thought of as being Mexican, he was actually third generation American. His only marriage was to a fair, blond Minnesota girl who died of breast cancer and left him with a six-year-old daughter.

Her death settled his wild ways, and for the sake of Rita he found Troublesome Mesa.

Maldonado’s home had become a sort of sanctuary for the high school

children of the area. He spun rapturous tales, he

sang and played the guitar, he had lots of nudes on his walls and

pedestals. For years Maldonado was an in-and-out figure at the

University of Colorado, where he taught to small groups, at random,

about an array of worldly subjects. He was a Colorado

((. yj treasure.

Rita helped Quinn up the back porch steps. Mal flicked on a light for them. “What you got there, Rita?”

“Quinn O’Connell.”

“Quinn, you look like a yard of dirt road.”

“I’m all right. I mean, I’m not hurt. I mean, I’m hurt but I’m not hurt .. . nothing’s broken or anything.”

Rita unlaced his shoes, gave him a big robe from the hot tub, and ordered him to take a shower. Each time the icy fingers brought him closer to awareness, the whap from Dan hit him again. All right, he told himself, pull it together.

“I’d better call your home,” Mal said a few minutes later.

T\T “

No.

“What do you mean, no?”

After a time he said, “We had some words.”

“I’m calling him. If Rita was out in this weather, I’d want a phone call no matter what had transpired.”

Everyone knew, Quinn thought, that Mal was an artist with an eccentric leaning. He heard Mal’s muffled voice from the next room.

“You’ll stay with us tonight. Eaten?”

“I wouldn’t mind something warm.”

As the soup brought chilled nerves and circulation back to Quinn, he came out of his half-frozen trance.

“Did you know I was adopted?” Quinn asked.

“I didn’t know,” Rita said.

“Nor I. You didn’t just find out tonight?” Mal asked.

“No, I was about ten.”

“We’ve only been in Troublesome seven years. Quinn, if I had known something like that, I personally would have confronted your parents. Your mom was in it, too.”

“Nobody knows anything about my birth parents. The Church is all mixed up in it: secrets, lies, God’s will.”

“Well, that’s Church business. A priest once brought me back from hell. Win some, lose some. You’re too beat to talk.

Stretch out. I’ll sit with you and maybe sing a little song or two.

Quinn’s head fell on Mal’s chest, and he sobbed softly and allowed himself to be walked to a guest room, wishing at this moment for his dad.

He was damned near asleep by the time Rita turned down the lights, lit a candle and a night-light in the bathroom. Mal sang about a poor little dying dove. As he drifted, Quinn thought, where do the Mexicans get their magnificent voices?

Mal set his guitar aside and looked at Rita with a bit of apprehension. She adored Quinn, always had. At thirteen and counting, those galloping ovarian changes inside her—no way. Quinn would never take advantage of his lovesick puppy, despite her attributes.

Last summer Rita had tried to have Mal do a nude study of her. What the hell, they skinny-dipped with those who would and took hot tubs in the altogether. But as she posed, Mal couldn’t even look at his daughter. Both artist and model began laughing until they were hysterical. He burned the beginnings of the sketch and told her to come back after she’d had a couple of kids.

“I’ll be turning in,” Mal said.

Rita fished for some kind of permission.

“Why don’t you sit with him for a while? Make sure he’s out for the night. Something terrible must have happened.”

“Thanks, Papa,” she said.

Oh, Quinn .. . flower of my heart .. . why is it you have never noticed me? Don’t leave our valley, Quinn. If you do, I’ll die .. . You’re going to belong to me someday, and I’ll take care of you. Nothing will ever hurt you again .. .

UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO, BOULDER

The result of maternal rage happened fast. When Siobhan left to take her mother and sister to Europe, Dan got the message.

He prayed. He offered penance. He paid. He confessed. He felt like the dumbest cop in the universe.

He spoke by phone endlessly to Father Scan.

“Now, Dan, God’s finances are in relatively good order. You have got to make the gesture to Quinn.”

“I was thinking of sending him a Mustang—“

“Send yourself instead.”

Dan had felt badly for some things he had done as a cop and a Marine. Bullying from behind his stripes. In the past, a slap on the back and the problem was over.

But now:5 It sat like an undigested cabbage under his heart, day and night.

Siobhan brought her son a used Jeep and set up a moderate but ample bank account for Quinn to rent his own apartment. Enfolded by a peaceful campus unlike Kent State, he danced through two years of humanities courses, still wondering, as one is apt to do at that age, where the road was taking him.

The sting of the fight with his father faded somewhat, until the day that Dan entered a Boulder bar where Quinn worked one day a week covering for a pal.

Dan strode to the end of the bar, took a stool, and shoved the cowboy Stetson back on his forehead. “I’d like to talk to my son. If there was a million ways to say I’m sorry, I’m saying them now.”

“Coors?” Quinn asked.

“Lite.”

“You, Lite?” Quinn said.

“Fucking doctors.”

As Quinn wiped the bar, Dan’s hand shot out and covered Quinn’s. Quinn looked into a face that was beyond pleading.

“I’ll be off my shift in an hour,” Quinn said. “Why don’t we try the steak house?”

By the end of the evening, Quinn had forgiven him and Dan’s face instantly gained color. “Thank God, we’re not like an ordinary Irish family to carry something like this to the grave. You set up okay?” Dan asked.

“Yeah, I went for a two-bedroom apartment. Professor Mal don ado comes down every two weeks to teach an arts ethics course. He camps out at my place, pays part of the rent.”

“Professor? What do you mean, professor?”

“Well, Dad, go into a gallery, any gallery, and tell them you want a Reynaldo Maldonado.”

“I’ll be damned. I thought he was just painting naked women down there.”

“He does those, too.”

“I’ll be go to hell. Are you after coming home, Quinn? It’s been a long time, over two years.” “I want to,” Quinn said with a shaky voice. “I uh, have lots of friends here, sometimes a new girlfriend.”

“I see what you mean. Christ, kids are advanced these days. I mean, shacking up isn’t any more sinful than drinking a beer. That’s part of my problem, son. It’s hard for me to equate my, you know, squeaky-clean life with all this stuff going around. I mean loose women, the kind you don’t marry.”

“We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it, Dad.”

It worked somewhat. Quinn didn’t come too often and brought home a girlfriend even less frequently. Quinn and the girl of the moment usually jeeped up to Dan’s Shanty, a lonely cottage on the ranch at the tip-top of Ivory Pass by some hot springs. On those weekends anyone standing close to Dan could see him look up the hill to Dan’s Shanty and hear him emit a gurgle of displeasure.