After pinning the worry doll to her T-shirt, Tula went to the kitchen, where she found cans of beans and salsa and meat but no tortillas. There was a can opener, too, and plates, and a cheap little paring knife with a bent blade, but sharp.
“You need food, that’s why you feel so tired. I’ll cook something,” Tula said to Squires as she carried a pan to the stove. A moment later, she said, “We have a gas stove at the convent, but I can’t get this one to light. Unless I’m doing it wrong.”
Squires blinked his eyes, seeming to hear her for the first time. It took a while, but he finally said, “You’re a nun?”
“Someday, when I’m older,” Tula replied. “I am going to dedicate my life to God and to helping people. My patron saint is Joan of Arc. Have you heard of her?”
After a few beats of silence, Tula added, “I am modeling my life after the Maiden. That’s what the people of France called her, the Maiden. But to her friends, she was called Jehanne.”
“The gas isn’t on,” Squires said to the girl but didn’t get up from the chair. His indifference suggested he didn’t care about food. But he did appear interested in the convent Tula had mentioned because, after several seconds of silence, he said, “You live with nuns? No men around at all, huh? That’s got to be weird. Not even to fix shit?”
“The convent is where I live and go to school. I work in the kitchen, and the garden, too. That’s how I learned to speak English and to cook using a stove.”
Tula had been twisting the dials for the burners without success. Now she was searching the walls, looking under the stove, hoping the man would take the hint and make the gas work. He needed food, not tequila, and Tula wondered-not for the first time-why so many men preferred to be drunk and stupid rather than to eat hot food.
The giant took a sip from the bottle and told her, “I was raised Catholic. I used to be, anyway. But then all that stuff about priests cornholing little boys-and the goddamn Pope knew about it ’cause he was probably screwing boys himself before he got old. Little boys are in big demand in the Catholic religion. That’s probably the problem with you. You’ve been brainwashed by all that sick Catholic bullshit. Why else would you pretend to be a boy?”
Tula wondered if Squires was trying to upset her, give himself a reason to get angry again and shoot her. So she changed the subject by saying, “I’ve been thinking of a way to solve your problem. I don’t want you to go to jail. There’s another way, I think, to keep the police from arresting you.”
That surprised the man, Tula could see it, so she added, “I believe you when you say you’re not a murderer. Just looking into your face, you couldn’t do something like that-not by yourself, you couldn’t. I don’t want to tell the police what I saw. That’s why I’ve been thinking about this problem.”
“My guardian angel,” Squires said in his flat voice, not bothering to attempt sarcasm. “I forgot. You were sent by God in case I get into trouble. Lucky me.”
He took another drink, and Tula could feel the anger building in the man.
Getting irritated herself, the girl turned away from the counter where she had the salsa open and had used the sharp paring knife to cut the meat into slices. “Listen to me!” she said, frowning at the giant. “I want to find my mother and brother. That’s all I care about. I want to go home to the mountains. If I’m home in the mountains, your policemen can’t ask me questions. That’s why I’ve been thinking of a way to help you.”
That made Squires snort, a sound close to laughter. “What do you want me to do, buy you a plane ticket?” he asked. “Drive you to the airport and wave good-bye? That easy, huh? I don’t think so, chula.”
Tula felt the Maiden flow into her head, giving instructions, which is why she calmed herself before crossing the room, where she placed her hand on the giant’s curly blond head. “You may not believe it, but it’s true,” she said. “I wouldn’t be here unless God wanted me to help you. He loves you. He wants you to come back to Him. You can believe me or not believe me, but you can’t deny the goodness that’s in your heart.”
The girl didn’t say it, but her recent words came into Harris Squires’s mind. Do you remember the goodness that was in you as a child?
The girl patted the man’s head as he stared down into the tequila bottle. Tula could feel Squires’s brain fighting her, but she continued, “The Maiden has told me how to help you. We must go to Immokalee and ask the people there about my mother and my brother. I have two aunts and an uncle somewhere, too. When we find them, I want you to come home with us to the mountains. In your truck, you can drive us.”
Tula looked around the room, seeing the stained walls, the carpet, a peanut can filled with cigarette butts, sensing in the next room the obscene photos staring up at the ceiling tiles.
She said, “This place has sin and ugliness all around. It’s no wonder you’re unhappy. You should leave this dirty life behind while you still can. You would like the mountains. We live closer to God in the mountains. It is cool there, even in summer, and the rains will begin soon. You can stay a week or a month. Maybe you will like it and want to build a home. The police won’t find you if we leave Florida. They can’t ask me questions.”
“Drive you clear to Mexico?” Squires said like it was a stupid idea. But at least he was thinking about it. Tula could see that his mind was working it through.
“Guatemala, not Mexico,” Tula corrected him. “It’s much more beautiful than Mexico. And the villages aren’t so dirty. Most of them, anyway.”
Yes, Squires was giving the idea some consideration because he asked, “Where’s Guatemala? Is it farther than Mexico? Mexico’s a hell of a long way.”
“I’m not sure of the exact distance,” Tula said, coming as close to lying as she could allow herself.
“But it’s farther than Mexico, that’s what you’re telling me.”
Tula replied, “What does distance matter when there are roads and you own a truck? You can drive the whole way. Or take a train, once we’re across the border. I hear the coaches are nice. I’ve never been inside a train, but I rode on the top of boxcars from Chiapas to San Luis Potosi. Three different train lines, I had to board.”
“You’re shitting me. You climbed up and rode on the top of a train when it was moving? Christ, what do those things do, fifty, sixty miles an hour?”
Tula replied, “One night, an old man told me we were traveling almost three hundred miles an hour, but I think he was drunk. It’s the way even adults travel if they want to come north. Sometimes, riding on top of the train was nice. We could pick green mangoes if the trees were close enough, and it only rained once.
“In Chiapas, though, it was dangerous. There are a lot of Mexican gangs there that wear bandannas and tattoos. At three stops, they robbed some of the men. And I think they attacked two girls who were on one of the cars behind me.”
Tula started to add that she hadn’t seen it happen, but she had heard the girls screaming. Her voice caught, and she couldn’t continue with the story.
Mentioning gangs and tattoos reminded Squires that the police weren’t the only ones looking for him. Laziro Victorino would be cruising Red Citrus the moment he heard about the alligator with a dead girl’s bones in its belly. Victorino was a little guy, but he was all muscle and attitude, a scary little shit who enjoyed killing people. Cutting them up with that box cutter of his or shooting them behind the ear and feeding them to his dogs.
Squires had heard the stories and he had seen a couple of the V-man’s snuff films. The teardrop tattoo beneath the dude’s eye was so weird it was scary.
What Squires hoped was that Victorino would run into Frankie, who might well kick the shit out of that vicious little wetback. Or vice versa. Either way, it was okay with Squires. He hoped he never saw either one of them again in his life. He was sick of the whole goddamn business.
A question formed in Squires’s head as he reviewed his predicament: Why the hell did he have to stay in Florida?