It is time.
“Fucking A, man.” He forced himself to look away from the dancers, tried to stand but his legs gave way beneath him. With a grunt he crashed back into his chair. Laughing, the girls darted up to him. This time all three struck him, hard enough that he gasped, then ran off, calling out to one another in words he couldn’t understand.
But if their words still made no sense, their motions did. It was like he was watching some bizarre shadow play: the three girls shades of someone else, someone he should remember, someone he knew—it should be easy. And why was it he couldn’t get to his feet no matter how he tried, why couldn’t he escape them? Because now, instead of striking at the butterflies, they struck him, their little hands much more forceful man you would think, their nails piercing him like tiny beaks. The cords they wielded like whips, and lashed—but gently—at his cheeks and shoulders. When he struggled to avoid their touch, they would only laugh the more, in high sweet voices. Then one might pluck at his jacket, while another would take his hand in hers and kiss it, her tongue sliding across the ball of his thumb before her sharp teeth sank into the flesh there and he cried aloud.
Baby Joe shut his eyes. His head throbbed, his heart hammered in his chest as though someone pounded him mercilessly.
“No!”
At the sound of his own anguish it all came back to him. The field, and Angelica weaving in and out among the trodden-down grasses, her bare legs streaked with dirt and sweat. He could see where her heels had left small indentations in the dust, and smell the sweetness of dried vetch and clover she had crushed in her passing. A few yards away from her the bull watched, stolid and unmoving as Baby Joe himself. But now Baby Joe knew, and understood, and surely the bull never had.
It is time.
A howl as he struggled to get to his feet. Again the girls laughed, but there was no mockery in their voices now. Instead they were gentle, even soothing, as though they had tired of their play and were ready now for some more serious pastime. They gathered round him, their hands surprisingly strong as they grasped his arms and drew him forward. He tried to shake them away but it was no use—they were too strong, he was too drunk, too exhausted to fight. About his head the butterflies weaved their own tipsy patterns in the air. A spicy scent surrounded him, something else remembered from his childhood. Crushed coriander seeds and sandalwood and katol incense, the bite of sour orange pulp in his mouth. He felt himself being lowered to the floor, the girls’ hands everywhere upon his body—cheeks, forehead, arms, chest—their touch warm and smooth and dry. When he blinked the air seemed filled with snow, but then he saw that it was not snow but a sort of colored dust like pollen. His hands were coated with it. He brought a finger to his lips and tasted honey; looking down at the floor he saw that it was littered with the broken wings of butterflies, grey and colorless. Their scales filled the air, atoms of rust and violet, and settled like ash upon his cheeks.
Before him the girls knelt with arms extended. From their open hands dark cords slid to the floor, rustling. Their mouths were moving, he could not hear them but it didn’t matter anymore; he knew he was dying. And suddenly he was no longer afraid: not of the girls, not of anything, not even of those thin brown ropes, which he now saw were moving, sliding between the girls’ fingers and up along his legs. The sight should have terrified Baby Joe, but it did not. Instead he felt an odd exultation, a sense of imploding tension and release that was almost sexual. He knew he must be delirious.
Snakes, everywhere he looked there were snakes, slender brown vipers with triangular-shaped heads and tongues like split twigs dousing at the air. They slipped beneath the fabric of his trousers and flowed across his bare legs, and their touch was like the girls’, warm and dry. As though desert sand was being poured onto him, slowly and with exquisite care, as though he was himself a serpent, sloughing away an old lifeless skin and wriggling through the dust.
The girls were still there, he could see them through slitted eyes. Only they no longer looked like bull-leapers or legong dancers but like people he knew. Angelica was there, which did not surprise him, but he felt no rancor toward her, no rage that she had somehow caused Hasel’s death. Because Hasel was there, too, his ruddy face exploding into laughter when he saw Baby Joe—
Hey, man! What took you so long?!
—his embrace joyful as he reached for his friend. And there was someone else—Oliver, Baby Joe knew it must be Oliver though there was something different about him, he had changed somehow but it was all too much to take in, this mad exalted freedom, the sheer joy and unexpected delight of it all, nothing like what he had expected!
Hands were everywhere now, he could no longer see but he could feel them, pulling away his jacket and tearing open his T-shirt. Something bit at his left nipple; he shuddered and moaned at the sudden pain, and knew it must be one of the vipers. Its teeth piercing his flesh and then the slow surge of venom beneath the skin, like a wave building as it rushed through him. The pain came again at his left breast, but he was beyond that now. He was beyond them all, excepting only Hasel and the woman waiting behind him, her eyes laughing and her mouth forming his name as she took his hand and he knew at last what it was all about, there had been a mystery to it all along, serpents and bulls and a woman he had foolishly feared; but then he was lost in Her embrace, Her arms closing about him and his heart bursting with joy as She took him and he was Hers, Hers at last.
CHAPTER 19
Fire from the Middle Kingdom
ON THE PATIO AT Huitaca Angelica stood. It was evening of a day so hot that all the small things of the desert had retreated to their lairs: rattlesnakes and Gila monsters and scorpions coiled beneath the burning stones like hidden treasure, with their gleaming black carapaces and jeweled eyes. Above the Devil’s Clock lightning spiked the darkness. The bolts looked like cracks in the desert sky, but only Angelica knew what lay behind them.
She was alone now. Kendra and Martin had left earlier that week, Martin to return to California, Kendra to prepare for college in September. Kendra had never gotten over Cloud’s death. Her relationship with Martin soured, she grew teary and slept too much and refused Angelica’s offers to help her attend a grief workshop. Finally word came from Bennington that she would be able to start there as a freshman after all. The next day she told Angelica she was leaving, and the day after that she was gone. Martin split the following afternoon.
“You want me to, like, recommend someone to take my place?” He leaned across the hood of his Jeep, his white-blond hair falling into his eyes. “I mean, it’s probably not so cool for you to be out here all by yourself, Angelica. That cougar could still be around—”
Angelica smiled. “Sunday will be here.”
“Sunday!” Martin snorted. “Like Sunday’s gonna save you if something happens—”
“Nothing’s going to happen, Martin,” Angelica said soothingly. She tousled his hair and let her hand rest on his shoulder. He was so beautiful, beautiful things always made her yearn to possess them and it would be so easy, just a few moments alone and then…