“No, I didn’t move anything. Why?”
“You didn’t move my backpack, or those saddlebags over there?”
“No. I didn’t touch anything. I just saw you had left your things. I worried, especially when I saw the saddle. I went right off in the direction I thought you’d gone. I was concerned about you.” His face was twisting, as if he were lying about something.
“Why are you all of a sudden so worried about me?” I asked. Our eyes met.
He broke into a wide smile and shook his head slightly. “You know, he asked me not to let you know this, but being right here next to you and looking into your face, I can’t lie to you…”
I interrupted. “Roy. The Boss asked you to check on me.”
He closed his lips, but there was still a boyish grin that couldn’t be reined in. “He did. And I said I would. And here I am.”
I didn’t say anything. Part of me felt annoyed that these two men didn’t think I could take care of myself. And another part was grateful right now that I wasn’t alone.
Kerry reached across his chest and took my chin in his hand. He turned my face toward him. His hand felt warm. His eyes reflected the fledgling firelight. “I wanted to come. I would have found some excuse to check on you anyway. I wanted to see you as soon as I could. This just gave me a reason to see you before we exchanged reports in the morning.” He released his hold on my chin, but did not take his hand away. Instead, he began gently stroking my cheek with the backs of his bent fingers.
It had a strangely calming effect. I closed my eyes for a moment and felt his tender touch. I exhaled and let tension slip out on my breath. I opened my eyes and looked into his. “I’m glad you came. But I can take care of myself. This is my job. This is what I do, and I do it all the time. Nobody has to check on me.”
He continued touching my cheek, brushing wisps of my hair back from my face. He didn’t say anything, and his eyes never left mine.
“I have something I want to say.”
He grinned. Now he was making small strokes with his thumb on my jawline and in front of my ear. “I’m listening.”
“If I have ever done anything to hurt you or offend you, I hope you will forgive me.”
His grin broadened into a big smile. “I forgive you for being so perfect and for making my heart beat wildly.” He reached for my hand and pressed it to his chest.
I held my palm against his coat, and Kerry pressed his hand on top of mine, as if to gather me into his heart. But it was my own heart that I felt beating wildly-it felt like a large bird fluttering its wings in my chest.
Kerry’s hand moved to my shoulder and pulled me toward him. I could feel the warmth of his face moving toward mine. I turned my head slightly and touched my lips to his. His hand traced my shoulder to the nape of my neck and he pulled my face closer to his, his other arm opening as he pulled me into the warm cave of his chest and shoulder.
It was just a kiss. Nothing more. But when our lips met, I felt a current of euphoria move through me and my mind became a void through which only pleasure passed, everything else forgotten except for those lips, his hand, his chest and shoulder, his arm, the smell of him, the warmth of his skin, the taste of his lips. One kiss.
I gently pulled away. “We shouldn’t be doing this now,” I said.
He sat up straight and then quickly got to his feet. “Maybe not now,” he said. “But we should definitely be doing this.” He took a long look at me, his eyes brimming with excitement. “I’ll see you in the morning.”
After Kerry left camp, I got up and stroked Redhead’s face and gave her a cold piece of carrot that was in my coat pocket. I picked up my rifle and took it back to my seat by the fire.
26
The next morning, before I went home, I drove to Agua Azuela. I hoped Regan could help me figure out what the Penitentes had to do with all the other strange events that had been occurring. But, once again, Regan was not at home. When I got to her house, I saw that her Toyota was not in the garage, so I backed down the drive, turned around, and drove back across the bridge over the rio. At the intersection between the bridge and the road, I stopped to check for traffic. Ahead and to the left of me, several cars were parked in the wide dirt turnout in front of the ancient church. Regan’s Toyota was among them. The local villagers were probably conducting their lay services in place of mass. I pulled my Jeep across the road and drove to the back of the lot near the arroyo, thinking I might snooze in my car until the service was over and then see if I could talk with Regan. But as I started to settle back in my seat, I remembered the old woman who had approached me in the churchyard after mass, insisting I come for tea.
“Why not?” I said aloud. I would go visit her and have a cup of tea while I waited for my friend.
The old woman’s strange instructions proved to be precise. After I rounded the boulder with the hand on it, I climbed up the goat path on the south slope of the mountain, and above me a few hundred yards I could see a brush arbor and an adobe casita. As she had predicted, the crone who had demanded an audience two days ago after mass was waiting for me on the portal. We had not set a date, nor had I agreed even to come, but nonetheless, she seemed to be expecting me. She waved a dish towel in her hand, motioning for me to approach. The path was steep and the morning sun was just rising over the other side of the canyon. Frost on the sage scrub sparkled like thousands of stars.
“Come! Come! I made you tea,” she said, again waving the dish towel as I stepped onto the portal. She trundled through the doorway of the adobe, and I followed. The opening was small and I had to stoop to enter her one-room dwelling. A table, crudely made from a slab of wood, with deep scars and four crooked limbs for legs stood in the center of the room, and two similar slab-and-stick chairs were placed on opposite sides of it. There was no other furniture.
In one corner, a large, deep nicho was carved into the adobe, and this housed at least a dozen santos, before which at least as many votive candles were lit. Braids of dried sweetgrass, fat cigar-shaped smudge sticks, ancient-looking green glass jars of herbs and twigs, and several dried skink pelts, which the natives used to store a baby’s umbilical cord after birth, lined an inset shelf in the earthen wall.
A shepherd’s bed grew out of the long wall, over the fireplace. These old-fashioned sleeping berths were found in many old rural adobes: a massive fireplace, used for both cooking and heating the home, was built with an adobe slab over the top, and a bed was made on this slab to keep the occupant warm at night. The bedding looked to be crude cotton bags of straw, but there was a thick, woven wool blanket folded neatly at the foot of the rumpled bags. There were no pillows or sheets.
Flanking the fireplace on the low adobe hearth stood cast-iron pots, pottery cups and bowls, and an olla-a pottery water jar-filled with water, to which a waxed dipper gourd had been tied on a thin hemp rope circling the jar’s neck. In the fireplace itself, a metal grate supported a small pot of simmering liquid, and a huge cast-iron teakettle hung from a hook, emitting contrails of steam.
“Sit! Sit! I made you tea,” she squeaked. Again I was reminded of bats when I heard her shrill, high-pitched voice. Her plain sackcloth dress and worn, curled-up-at-the-toes men’s wing tips without laces were the same as the day I had first seen her at the church.