There’s a man in the city who knows about birds and shapeshifting, but he’s old, too.
And he helped Andrew once before.
The kind of help you can’t pay back, and you can’t ask other favors after.
Back to Chancho and his ashen face.
“What’s wrong?”
“Saw something messed up this morning.”
“You’ve seen plenty of messed-up shit.”
“Not like this.”
“Not like what?”
“You wanna see?”
“No. Yes.”
They walk through the employee room. An AK-47 leans in the corner looking insouciant.
“State police brought it in; I’m supposed to clean it up. They took the muerto, left the deer. Effing big effer. Look at this pinché deer.”
First he’s looking at the car.
The crumpled, dirty mess of a car.
Now he looks at the beast stoppering the hole where the windshield should be.
It is an effing big effer of a pinché deer.
Two hundred twenty-five pounds or better. Fifteen points or more on the rack, if the rack were intact. But it’s not. It’s through the windshield of the Saturn that clearly also hit a tree. The stag is practically fused into the car.
“You can see where they had to cut the poor dude out on this side, cut part of the deer’s horns off, too, where they were through him. All the way through him. Look at this seat.”
Andrew suppresses the urge to gag.
“But this is what I don’t get…”
Now he points at a hole in the deer’s rear shoulder, another flowering out of the back of the neck.
“Bullets. Homeboy shot this deer. Probably through the glass, but the glass is gone. They took the gun, too. He had it in his hand. They asked for pliers to get it out, that’s how tight he had it.”
Andrew tries to process this.
“Yeah, I know. Messed up. But look at this…”
His strong, brown finger indicates a broken headlight, blood, fur.
“And this.”
Muddy hoofprints on the roof, scratches on the door.
“More than one deer,” I say.
“Yeah, and it’s the tree that crunched in the front end, not the deer. Not this deer.”
“He didn’t hit this deer?”
“Nah. He hit another deer. Wrecked his car. Then deer come along… Maybe more than one. Look… hoof-ding, hoof-ding. Coming out of the woods and going at the car, looks like. Then the big boy came like a cannonball, ran through the effin’ windshield so fast it broke it and put its horns through his heart. Even though he shot it, shot it good. Look.”
He points again at the lethal bullet wounds.
“This is brujo stuff, isn’t it?”
Andrew touches the car.
“Isn’t it?”
Andrew nods.
Brujo stuff of the first order.
Slavic forest magic.
And very, very strong.
Then it happens.
A young man appears, pale, speared by the deer, writhing in his seat. He wears aviator sunglasses; blood comes out of his mouth, makes bubbles every time he says the word please. He says it several times.
Chancho can’t see it, is still examining the hoof and antler gouges in the Saturn’s finish as if they were a rude hieroglyph that might explain how such things happened in the world.
The ghost starts to swell up.
Take it easy, Andrew thinks. I see you.
THEN HELP ME
The pallid young man puts the phantom of his gun in his mouth, pulls the trigger impotently, coughs blood all over the gun, and cries.
Help me
How?
It shivers. Points the gun at him. Spasms its fist as it pulls the trigger. Nothing happens, but it shoots Andrew several times, then Chancho, then itself.
Get Them.
Who?
Them, it wheezes.
Becomes frustrated that Andrew doesn’t understand, begins to get tired. New ghosts get tired easily.
It vomits black liquid all over itself and fades away.
The dead deer jerks, kicks.
Chancho jumps, crosses himself.
The stag deflates a little, lies very still, won’t move again.
Andrew rubs his temples.
“Headache?”
Andrew smiles, shakes his head, closes his eyes.
“I’m in trouble, Chancho. Bad trouble.”
Chancho nods.
“I told you not to eff with this stuff anymore. ¡Cabron!”
Chancho hammer-fists himself in the thigh, looks angrily at Andrew.
“This is from before, Chancho. From before I met you.”
“Yeah, but you’re still in it. Don’t you see? It’s why they can get to you, still. Get out of it.”
“It’s not like that.”
Chancho throws his arms up.
“No, it’s like this,” he says, indicating the wreck, the improbable deer, the bloody seat.
Andrew nods.
“I’ll stay away from you until this is over. After I help you clean this up. This isn’t your mess.”
“Nah, go home. You’ll get in the way. And don’t stay away after. Just quit with the books and the chingada brujerías.”
Andrew laughs a little, still rubbing his temples.
Looks at Chancho.
“I’ve noticed that you say very bad things in Spanish but not English. Why is that?”
Chancho pauses.
“Because I’m American now. Them other words are in my blood. I can’t help it. But I got to start over with American.”
“Ah,” the magus says, clearly unconvinced.
The bigger man walks over, encircles Andrew with a mighty arm.
“I’ll ask the boys to stay around,” Chancho says. “I’ll pray, too. Get some Jésus down here.”
If only.
Andrew doesn’t know if there is a Jésus, and, if there is, whether he was God or man.
If he was a man, though, he must have been a user.
Water into wine sounds really.
Fucking.
Good.
68
Early evening.
The doorbell rings.
As Salvador is engaged in the garden, Andrew opens the door himself to find Arthur Madden and Mrs. Simpson standing on his porch, Mr. Madden panting somewhat more than usual, Mrs. Simpson smiling broadly and holding a paper plate covered in tinfoil.
“Good evening, Mr. Blankenship,” she says, her massive, jacketed bosom forming a sort of brooched cliff. “Sorry to drop by so late. I hope we’re not disturbing you,”
She’s doing the talking so Arthur can catch his breath.
“Not at all.”
He thinks quickly, trying to remember if he has anything controversial lying about in the living or dining room.
He thinks not.
“Would you like to come in?”
Now Andrew sees why the older Jehovah’s Witness is huffing and puffing so much—a produce basket and two full grocery bags stand on the porch behind them. The climb up the drive is nearly too much for Arthur without sacks to carry, so these really tested the poor geezer.