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
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.
DANNIE
She had been harboring the irrational hope that Arn would show up at the vigil. The vigils were hers now, something he’d lost in the breakup. Fitting, because they’d been hers to begin with. There were only three of them now. The vigil group had withered week to week before Dannie’s eyes but she still didn’t know how it had come to this — only three. The college-age girl looked so tired, her face all shadows. And then there was the arrogant man with the pin-covered coat. Both of them had cast strange looks at Dannie when she’d walked up and settled in without Arn. They knew they’d never see him again.
Part of the parking lot had been repaved. When Dannie had first shown up the smell had been overpowering, but now she was used to it. She felt lightheaded. When the time came to leave no one moved. Usually the vigils ended naturally, the vigilers a unit, a herd, but tonight someone was going to have to lead. Dannie hoped she could count on the other two vigilers to show up next week and the week after and the week after, but counting on people was foolish. Worrying about being alone seemed to be a good way to wind up alone. Dannie wondered if the others were hoping she’d stay like she was hoping they would, and she wondered if they felt weak for hoping that, for needing someone else to be alone with.
MAYOR CABRERA
He still had his high school football helmet. He’d never turned it back in — had stolen it, if you wanted to put it that way. The helmet was silver with a green facemask. His high school, over near Golden, had been poor and still was. You could tell the high schools with money by their soft sod fields. Mayor Cabrera’s school had a gridiron of mown weeds.
He remembered the bus rides, wondering if he would be a different person in Albuquerque or in Santa Fe. He got to return kicks for a season, when the little slick guy broke his collarbone. Mayor Cabrera always went around the first tackler and through the second. That had been his method. The coaches had always pointed Mayor Cabrera out as an example of heart and toughness, never as an example of speed or agility or power.
Mayor Cabrera was sitting in the basement of the motel, his palm pressed against the cool dome of the helmet. He recalled the feeling of waiting for a kickoff, rocking leg to leg in the calm before the tornado. He remembered getting prepared mentally to enter that closed circuit of chaos, wondering if the chaos, that particular return, would be on his side or against him. And then he thought of Margot, a girl who had taken a liking to him junior year and who would rise to her feet in the stands and cheer Mayor Cabrera’s name in the quiet before the ball was kicked. Mayor Cabrera remembered being embarrassed by that, by Margot cheering for him. He could remember fearing looking over and making eye contact with her more than he feared being smacked by a linebacker with a fifty-yard head of steam. This girl Margot had made it where she and Mayor Cabrera were lab partners when they dissected frogs, and he had clammed up and barely said a word to her, standing right next to her for two entire class periods, tiny organs on display in a tray in front of them. This girl had intimidated Mayor Cabrera to the point that he could not discern whether she was pretty. Now, in his memory, with her heart-shaped face blooming up from a turtleneck in the stands, she was angelic. Mayor Cabrera had been frightened of her, and when she’d given him a letter just before Christmas break professing her affection he had made no acknowledgment. He never, in fact, spoke another word to her. In the spring they didn’t have any classes together and eventually Margot wound up dating another boy and then during senior year she moved away to somewhere unfathomable like Minnesota. There’d been Margot and then there’d been Mayor Cabrera’s wife, some years later, and now there was Dana — the three women Mayor Cabrera would never stop thinking about. Margot had knobby little knees and Mayor Cabrera had always marveled that she didn’t fall over when she walked. She had seemed both wiser and more naïve than Mayor Cabrera, back in high school, sage yet also silly, but it was just that she hadn’t been afraid. He had no idea what had happened to it, the letter. He kept everything, but he didn’t have that letter. He could still see the handwriting, which wasn’t cursive but was still bold and loopy.