This Day's Death Read online

  “. . . —in a southerly direction . . . 5:10 . . . six feet . . . four minutes.” “Q. Prior to the arrest, had you seen either defendant before, Mr. Daniels? A. Not that I recall.” (It was him—he followed me. The car, old. Was it him!) “Q. How many automobiles? A. Approximately four. . . . Q. How many other persons? A. At least four others, difficult to say. Q. Perhaps more?” (Yes, more: Shadows.) “Q. Do you see the said Mr. Girard in court today?” (Daniels: “Yes, sir, he’s the man in the blue eyes — . . .” But the court recorder had left that out, corrected it: “. . . —blue shirt.”) . . . “A. . . . —two feet . . . six feet.” “Q. Were you wearing glasses, Officer Daniels? A. What kind of glasses? Q. Glasses—glasses—just glasses! A. I own a pair of sunglasses—I may have been wearing them earlier.” (Earlier. It was him.) “Q. Green sunglasses? A. Green.” (Green. Steve. Why wouldn’t he want to testify? Did he say something to the cops? What? It won’t come to trial. . . .) “Q. You and Officer Jones were wearing your uniforms at that time, of course—I assume. A. No, we were not.” . . . “A. It could be waist, ankle-height. Q. You know the difference between waist and ankle-high? A. Yes, sir, I do. Q. Then give us an idea. . . .” “A. My partner went first, I went behind. Mr. Girard started to walk away—he passed me. Q. He passed you? Then why didn’t you arrest him?—why did you let Mr. Jones do it? A. I— . . . just did.” “Q. Will you draw a map— . . . A. I prefer words. Q. Draw us a map anyway.” “X.” . . . “A. Circular . . . rising from a few inches . . . cutting through . . . downward . . . no, I’d say— . . .” (A dotted line. Arrows. “. . . —in a southerly direction.” . . . “Q. . . . —you were hiding? A. I wasn’t hiding! Q. Lurking, hiding?” . . . “. . . —assuming a fact not in evidence.” “Objection sustained as to the form of the question.” . . . “A. Circular shape. . . . What I mean is— . . . Six-foot diameter. . . . What I mean to say is that— . . . A signal . . . my hand. . . . What I meant is that— . . . Twenty. . . . His right hand. . . . Officer Jones arrested Mr. Girard. . . . Forty feet. . . .” “Q. If I asked you to go there, you’d find it? A. Yes.” “A. Level . . . I didn’t mean that, I mean, yes, I did, what I meant is— . . . Actually it isn’t like that, it’s— . . . Three to four minutes. . . . —signaled . . . a hand . . . unknown persons . . . circular form . . . high-crime area . . . six-foot circle . . . six-foot diameter . . . all around . . . eastern end . . . surrounded . . . six feet . . . eastern end . . . high-crime locale . . . forty feet . . . unknown persons. . . . Forty feet.” And the X: a circle about it. And photographs—copies: the scene frozen in gray. A tangle. A map. Blue, orange, purple, red, brown, black. Green. An X there too. Black. “A. Six feet.” The X. “A. A circle.” . . . “A. Forty feet.”

  Jim’s mind is reeling. Even to him, as clearly as he’s reasoned it all, it suddenly seems a maze. But he focuses on this: “Forty feet.”

  Forty feet.

  Forty!

  ON NOVEMBER 1ST, THE DAY OF THE DEAD—IN THOSE years past when Jim and Estela were children—Mrs. Girard would gather dozens of yellow chrysanthemums. She would place them in the tub filled with water, to keep them fresh through the silent day. When he saw those flowers floating in the tub, Jim knew it was the day of death. Her eyes frozen with tears, Mrs. Girard made two giant wreaths; she rejected the imperfect flowers. The house was redolent of sorrow. In the late afternoon their father would drive them to the cemetery. Jim and Estela would remain in the car, avoiding looking at the freshly dug plots: moist brown dirt: among rows and rows of tombs—angels, saints, crosses, square stones, urns. Twisted trees, about to die too. Their father would stand outside by the door of the car, parked on the narrow road inside the cemetery. Dressed completely in black, their mother would kneel before her daughter’s grave. Kissing first the wreath, then the stone, she placed one of the wreaths against the stone. Her dark veil swirled about her in the wind—and it was always windy on that day. Then silently they drove out of the cemetery and toward the mountains, toward Mount Cristo Rey. Their father would stop the car at the edge of the desert. Again he would stand outside by the door. Jim and Estela would follow their mother with their eyes: She walked alone into the sand, a strange figure in the desert—a veiled apparition in black mourning, silhouetted against the mountains. And facing west in the direction where her son had been killed, miles and miles away from her and across the ocean, she knelt. Pulled by the wind, her veil was like a dark bird. She kissed the other wreath and placed it in the empty desert. For her dead son. Her lone pavan to death finished, they drove back in black silence, their father in front, she and the two children in back. She held their hands tighter than ever.

  Jim remembers that now, as he looks out the window of the den at the yellow flowers. The day is permeated for him by an awareness of death. Only the edge of the sky is still blue, the sun a smear of gray locked by the dust.

  On the desk, the papers, all the sheets pertaining to his arrest, are gathered. Containing no action themselves, they chronicle so much of tumult; yet: so paradoxically neatly in the numbered lines, numbered sheets. He looks at the telephone. For a bewildering, resented instant Jim wonders this: What is Daniels doing now?—as if in some vastly unwelcome way the two lives are connected beyond the few moments of angry contact.

  The telephone rings. This time Jim extends the seconds of expectation, letting its sound continue.

  Ellen Maxwell, Lloyd’s wife: “Is your mother any better, Jim?”

  “About the same, Ellen.”

  “Did the woman from Employment get there?”

  “Yes. She’s— . . . fine. Thank you very much.”

  “Good. Actually I’m calling to ask you to dinner tonight. If your mother is well enough for you to leave her,” she adds.

  “I don’t have to be here,” Jim says quickly, rejecting the idea that a time would—could—come when he would keep some dreadful vigil with her. “I’ll come to dinner,” he says firmly, to shape the rest of the day about that affirmation.

  “Of course, bring Barbara, if you like,” Ellen says predictably.

  “I’ll ask her. But I think she’s going to be busy,” he adds, knowing she’ll say no. Though there has never been any overt hostility between Lloyd and Ellen and Barbara, there is a coolness. For long, Barbara hasn’t accepted their automatic invitations, and this is clearly fine with them.

  A knocking on the door of the den. Miss Lucia calling him to lunch.

  “Have you looked in on my mother?” Jim asks her.

  “Yes, of course, oh, several times; but she’s still— . . . asleep. The mind gets weary, it has to rest— . . .”

  Jim eats quietly, looking down into his plate. The food is good, but he’s not hungry. Ordinarily he would have asked this woman to sit with him; but if she does, that will only emphasize the fact that his mother isn’t at her usual place across from him at the table: an absence almost palpable. (He imagines: Her hand quivering toward her head, her heart; the spoon tinkling nervously against a glass.)

  “I just got here today,” Miss Lucía explains. “From New Mexico—and that terrible restaurant. I went to the employment office immediately—I left my suitcase under a chair while I spoke to the lady in charge.”

  Apparently she wants, in her illogical way, to cheer him with conversation.

  When the telephone rang again, it’s as if the sound had originated within Jim’s cluttered mind. Alan. Los Angeles. There won’t be a trial— . . .

  Miss Lucía offers quickly to answer it. Jim hears her: “Oh, yes, doctor. I’ll call him.” A pause. “But I’d like to say this, doctor: You must place all your intelligence to work on this poor woman’s case; read up on all your books—the most current, there have been many advances in medicine these recent years. For my part, I’ll help you all I can; and when— . . .”

  Trying not to smile, Jim took the telephone from her.

  “Who was that?” Dr. del Valle asks in disbelief.

  “We’ve got a lady working for us,” Jim says. “For a couple of days
at the most—until my mother is okay.”

  “Whoever she is, she sounds crazy,” Dr. del Valle says.

  “I think she is—at least a little,” Jim agrees.

  “Did the tank get there?”

  “Yes—but it didn’t seem to help her.”

  “It always has before. Let her try it again.”

  Impossible to tell him that he knows it won’t work—that it’s merely another of her weapons. “Maybe she should go to the hospital again— . . .” Jim says cautiously, anxious for the doctor to encourage him to resist the recurrent waves of panic.

  And he does. “It’s the same this time as all the others, isn’t it?”

  “Yes—but longer.”

  “There’s no reason to put her in the hospital.”

  Jim returns to the kitchen. Miss Lucia startles him by saying: “I studied to be a movie star. In Mexico.” She looks at him, clearly imploring him to accept her statement. Like a child wanting to be believed, no matter how outrageous the story told.

  He could think of nothing to answer.

  “But I’m a good houseworker, too,” she says.

  “Yes,” he agrees gently, getting up, anxious to leave the table. He feels his mother’s absence acutely, so acutely that he goes into her bedroom.

  The oxygen tank watches him through the eyeless mask: His mother’s illness stands there. He looks away: at her cherished figurine on the dresser—the boy and girl under the sheltering umbrella. Sees the withered flowers.

  His mother’s eyes are open. She looks so incongruously pretty, her cheeks flushed pink.

  Miss Lucía has come in with a tray for her, carefully set. “Please,” she exhorts her, “try to sit up so I can give you something to eat. If you don’t, the Virgin of Guadalupe can’t help you—God allows only logical miracles. Prayer is good for the soul, but we must also take care of the stomach.” And typically crazily: “I studied to be a nurse, Señora Girard. In Mexico. The stomach has—. . .”

  But his mother rejects the food.

  Suddenly he ached for her. For her being sick. What will happen to her if I— . . . And this strange thought: What is the cop’s mother like? The sudden thought of Daniels, charging him with anger, mysteriously renews his adamancy not to give in to his mother’s demands, demands not verbalized now but screamed silently by her every gesture and non-gesture, every sigh which proclaims her illness and clamors for attention.

  Miss Lucía reaches for the bottle of alcohol next to the bed. With it she dampens a small towel nearby and places it softly on Mrs. Girard’s forehead.

  Does she really share my mother’s sadness, so quickly? Jim wonders of Miss Lucía. Or is she trying desperately to ingratiate herself so she can stay? Who would have her for long—so crazy?

  The doorbell rings.

  A man and a woman are at the door. Each carries a small briefcase, a cross embossed on each. Like gray diplomats, both are dressed in black suits; both are tall, thin, gaunt, bony, in their late forties. Their eyes are dark, hard, angry, remorseless. Bearing no relation to the rest of their features, smiles slash their faces. Looking that much alike, they are certainly brother and sister, if not twins.

  The man and the woman nod. “The Reverend Robles,” the man introduces himself in heavily accented English, “and my wife—Mrs. Robles.” Evidently they expect Jim to know them, at least to recognize their names.

  “I don’t know who you are,” Jim says, in Spanish, disliking both. Instantly he knew they are of that perfervid, strict, wandering breed of militant religionists obsessed with punishment and the devil.

  “Your wife—Mrs. Girard—she called us yesterday; she made an appointment for today,” the woman said, also in heavily accented English.

  “I’m not married,” Jim said in Spanish.

  “But Mrs. Girard— . . .”

  “She’s my mother,” Jim said. He left them at the door. The woman looked at him severely. Miss Lucía has come to stare at them hostilely.

  Apparently his mother was aware of the conversation at the door. She’s trying to sit up.

  Apprehensively, he says: “A man and a woman—Robles—they say you called them. I’m sure they’re wrong, Mother.” He speaks in a tone deliberately meant to negate the presence—the acknowledgment—of any illness.

  “I did . . . call . . . them,” she says slowly. She’s managed to sit up, is opening a drawer of the small table beside her bed. An orange card.

  He takes it. It’s crudely printed. On its front, in Spanish: “CURAMOS. We cure.” There is a drawing of a woman in bed, obviously ill, being ministered to by a man and another woman. Between them, in outline, is the ghostly figure of an insipidly benign Christ. Though his hands are raised in benediction, he seems to be blessing not so much the sick woman as the man and the woman ministering to her. Beneath the drawing are the words, also in Spanish:

  “WE CURE THROUGH THE DIRECT INVOCATION OF CHRIST! OUR LORD! LORD OF THE WHOLE UNIVERSE! Attention! Don’t throw this Card Away! It is Of Interest to you in Your Need! A Light to Illuminate your grave Problems! A Salve to cure your Illnesses! Have you Despaired of doctors? The Bright Light of God shines on AMELIA and CARLOS ROBLES! Workers through Christ! Lord of the Whole Universe! Consultations at Home. At all Times. Call— . . .”

  At the bottom, in large, black, clear letters: “DO NOT HESITATE TO CONTACT US, WE ARE OF YOUR FAITH!”

  Jim has seen similar cards left in their mailbox.

  “I’ll tell them it’s a mistake,” he says quickly.

  “No—I want . . . to see them,” she said inevitably, each word punctuated by a heavy inhalation, held, released as a sigh.

  Too much a product of a profoundly superstitious Mexican Catholicism, she would not have called them if she had known they were Protestants, Jim knows. Protestantism is too naked, too stripped of beloved ritual adornment for such Mexicans: saintless, bare churches containing not one single entreating Virgin Mary. Certainly the stark man and woman waiting outside know very well the inherent rejection of Protestantism among most Mexicans—and that accounts for the ambiguous “We are of your faith” printed on their card.

  Thinking them brother and sister—and Catholics: In her anxiety to be well, his mother called them, Jim feels certain. And he glimpsed a shade of her despair. Pity overwhelmed him, the war evaporated. Christ, I don’t give a damn what fakes they are if they can help her! he thinks, knowing also that in the state she’s in it would be a mistake to deprive her of their presence.

  Miss Lucía is still standing before them at the door, as if intending to block their entrance.

  “Come in,” Jim says to the two.

  They march into the house. In step.

  “Are you sure you want to see them, Mother?” Jim asks, going ahead.

  “Yes,” she says pitiably; “they’re good Catholics . . . and they can . . . cure illnesses doctors have despaired of.”

  Now in the bedroom, the man and the woman look like stony morticians about to prepare a corpse.

  Intending to retreat back to the den, Jim remains instead in the living room, as if he must stay ready to protect his mother from these two strangers. Miss Lucía follows the two into the bedroom. There’s whispering for long moments. Then: booming: as if a needle had dropped on a record:

  “Heed the Word of God!” Carlos Robles exhorts.

  Amelia Robles says: “Trust in Him! He is The Way! We will: Draw Out the Evil!”

  He hears his mother: “San Judas Tadéo, ten piedad de nosotros— . . “Saint Jude Thaddeus, have pity on us!” Her voice was quickly charged with renewed vigor, perhaps in anticipation of a religious frenzy to expel her illness. Still, it’s the voice he recognizes as her sick voice: bruised, quivering—the spell not broken, no; its symptoms merely becoming oral. “San Martin, aid us— . . . !”

  Carlos Robles interrupts her: “No, no, not false saints, there’s no hierarchy in heaven. None: But: God! He: Alone!”

  Miss Lucía echoes with insistence: “Saint Jude Tha
ddeus, have mercy on us! San Martín— . . .”

  Not even having heard the man’s denial of them, Mrs. Girard continues with her beloved Catholic prayers: “Dios te salve María, llena eres de gracia!” “Hail, Mary— . . .”

  Amelia Robles: Impatiently: “Not Mary—call on Jesus—Jesus and God. You shall Not worship images!” she warns.

  Miss Lucía insists: “Hail Mary, full of grace!”

  Carlos Robles: “My Lord is a stern judge. Illness is: Punishment for: Sin! Think, think! There is: Grave sin here! Cast it: Out!”

  Mrs. Girard, her voice tense but clear—hearing the man for the first time: “I can’t see any— . . .”

  “Look back!” Amelia Robles commands.

  And Miss Lucía: “Hail Mary, full of grace— . . . Saint Jude, Saint Anne, Mother of Mary, San Calletano, San Martín de Porres, Saint— . . .”

  Carlos Robles: “There is: Grave Sin!”

  Mrs. Girard: “I’m trying, and I don’t see any grave sin!”

  Carlos Robles: “Oh, we have all Sinned gravely—though Some of Us are cleansed by the Lord. Yet others are Black with Sin!”

  Amelia Robles: “Find the Sin! Then: Wrench it from: Your Heart! Cast It:”

  Carlos Robles: “Out!”

  Amelia Robles: “Into:”

  Carlos Robles: “The Blackness. And— . . .”

  Amelia Robles: “. . . —with it will go:”

  “Evil!” Carlos Robles finishes, as if he and his hideous wife are involved in a monstrous duet. “God is purifying you through suffering and illness!”

  “I’ve been a good wife,” Mrs. Girard pleads. “And a good mother; I’ve sacrificed— . . .”

  Jim gets up.

  “Think!” shrieks Amelia Robles. “This illness you spoke of, this strange illness, this strange, strange illness—God’s Judgment: He is: Punishing You!”

  “A good wife, a good mother!” Mrs. Girard repeats.

  Miss Lucía, as if to exorcise the devil from this man and this woman: “Hail Mary, full of grace— . . . Saint Michael, San Judas, San Martín de Porres, Blessed Saint Anne, Mother of Mary: Drive away those who pose at goodness in order to scare the ill!”