Part 2: 6 - Rattling Place
Kiko finds little peace
Things That Can’t Be Broken is a novel presented as a live draft, one chapter every week.
Last week: Part 2: Chapter 5, At the Door • Butterflies and an unwelcome surprise
Part 2 | History is a Pile of Debris
6 - Rattling Place
Kiko Gonzalez
June 13-14, 1988
Dehesa Valley, California
Kiko slung the blanket roll over his shoulder, ducked around a fence post, and started up a steep trail away from the little highway. The sun was lowering. Whispy clouds promised a beautiful sunset to come, de colores magnificos. He quickened his pace. Passing over the second hill, he looked down at the organized and manicured Allen Haven Ranch below. It was always clean, no basura; even the manure pile was neatly raked. And me with no skis! He chuckled, remembering the faces of his nephews, how they would laugh together. Ski Bandini Mountain. Pinche commercials.
He reminded himself not to laugh out loud. Sometimes a horse would see or hear him as he walked along the hill above the ranch, and it would snort, or jump and perk its ears at him. He always loved to see the horses, but he didn’t want to scare them, so he took a trail south, away from the ranch. As he rounded the hill, a metallic glint caught his eye. A Sheriff’s car was parked at the fork of the road, next to the big pepper tree. Por que?
The clouds were turning pink by the time he reached his latest favorite mesita. It was not a true mesita, only a flatter spot near the peak of the hill, but it was just enough space. The daylight was reaching its end. A stream of sun filtered between the boulders to the west, where it lit the tips of wild oat grass waving in the evening breeze. Muy bonita. He sighed, setting his blanket under a manzanita for later.
Walking out to the mesita, he faced the open place in the sky where he knew the North Star would soon appear. He unwrapped his lifeline from its pouch on his belt. The simple bamboo and seed-pod rattle was the key to his hold on that thin thread of sanity everyone else seemed to take for granted. Without it, he feared he would drift into the abyss that was always calling to him.
Sitting cross-legged, knees at acute angles, black cowboy boots sticking out from his jeans, Kiko lifted the rattle up to the sky as if to toast the moon and stars. Then he lowered his hands and began to shake a slow rhythm. Ksh-Ksh, Ksh-Ksh, Ksh-Ksh. Slowly, his mind unwound itself to become one with the soothing sound. Peace settled over his body as the cool night descended, but it did not last.
Kiko’s eyes suddenly widened, and he peered hard into the dimming landscape. A face appeared, its tiny nose only inches away, a child’s brown eyes staring back into his own. Little Maricela? No. This was not his niece; there was no play in this face. It was an angry face, too angry for an otherwise pretty little girl with light skin and long dark hair. The girl was standing right in front of him and also standing by the big pepper tree near Allen Haven Ranch. But when he turned his head away and back again, there was no one there at all—no girl, and of course, no tree.
He rubbed his eyes and inspected the sand where she had stood. Where had he seen that face, before? She had seemed so real, but there were no footprints. There would have been footprints even if she crept up on him and crept away, which she couldn’t have done anyway, could she? His heartbeat lurched into high speed.
“Kiko, you’ve gone over the edge, vato!” He dropped the rattle into his lap and squinted into the pale darkness. He saw nothing around him but the tangles of brush, the glow of granite rocks, and the sky sprinkled with stars. He returned to his rattling and tried again to clear his mind and slow his racing heart. The girl was not there. But she had been there, hadn’t she? He had seen her.
Without warning, Kiko’s mind spun him away into a dark damp place. He was back in uniform, a soldier on a pass into hell, approaching the entry of a dingy bar, under corrugated metal, beyond the edge of Saigon. The organic wet smell of the jungle was overwhelmed by smell of piss, and vomit. Kiko tried desperately to come back to the present. He opened his eyes wider, but the harder he fought the memory, the more impossible it was to escape. He rattled harder, rising to his feet.
The twin girls stood before him, side by side against the wall near the bar’s doorway. Rain thundered on the roof, their brown eyes were hopeful, their smiles wide and genuine. They stood shoulder to shoulder on thin brown legs with round knobby knees, and long toes in muddy plastic foam chanchlas much too big for their feet. He saw his own brown hands in a slow fog; he felt the dull snap of a chocolate bar breaking in them. The girls reached out with slender fingers to take the treat, their delighted eyes shining. Then Bug came from behind him with his snide, “Hi girls.” The girls looked down, shyly waving fingers near their waists in polite submission, their smiles replaced by unease. The metallic drumming of heavy rain on tin increased in his head, as if it were all happening now.
Bug slapped his shoulder as they passed the girls and entered the bar, “Giving dessert to my dessert, eh Kiko?” The crawling returned at the back of his neck, tensing his shoulders, and bringing a wave of nausea. Bug grinned and taunted him through big white teeth, “What’s that look for, Cabron? You know I’m kidding, right?”
Kiko struggled to bring the slow rhythm back to his rattling, to let go of that clinging memory before it swallowed him. He stamped and swayed until the desert brush surrounded him again. Dust ascended, coating his pointed black boots. It gathered in the creases of his jeans, the smell of ground sage, clean granite, and clay dust finding him again. He raised his hands to God, to Mother Mary, and to The Superman, among the stars. He dipped his hips lower and spun a crooked circle, humming and rattling away his thoughts until there was nothing but the rhythm and the slow dance—the stars, the moon, and the rattle. For hours, he pushed his body to move with the turning earth. He breathed the rhythm and gripped his rattle like a drowning man clutching at the end of a thrown line. Time slipped away into the dark.
Yet the worst of the memory found its way back. He was helpless to block it. He was trudging back to his tent at the unit’s camp, stumbling drunk and stoned in the dark, the ground slippery with wet leaves. He tripped over a log that wasn’t a log. Lightening split the dark for half a second, just long enough to glimpse a girl’s face, slick with rain and smeared with mud, a string of black hair joining the stream of blood from her mouth. Eyes staring, hands outstretched to . . . Lightening. The other girl. Dead. Both twin girls were lying in the leaves, dead.
His heart clenched. Anxiety flooded his veins with useless adrenaline. Bug had saved his life, had pulled him from the mud after the shell exploded and the walls of the hut collapsed on him and his best bro, Jake. Kiko would have drowned in oozing soil and blood, smothered under Jake’s body . . . Maybe he should have, but Bug didn’t give up. He found him and somehow pulled him from the muck, screaming in protest. He dragged him back into this world.
But there was always something wrong with Bug, a broken vein of something foul under the surface, leaking slowly. Kiko knew this all along. But after the collapse, he owed the man his life. Did Bug kill those girls? He could never be sure. Yet the feeling he could have prevented their deaths, if he had only paid attention . . . The regret never really left him.
Kiko’s head pounded behind his eyes at the same rhythm in which his feet pounded the earth, knees rising up, falling down, one by one. His left hand lowered to the earth, scooping up handfuls of dust, which he scattered to add to the cloud raised by his boots.
“Kiko!” said a girl’s angry voice. It echoed, bouncing between his ears. It was that same little girl, a flash of her face vivid again before him. When he closed his eyes, he saw the twins, angry for his failure to protect them. When he opened them, the American girl was glowering.
“You know it wasn’t him!” She shouted. “You know!”
He dropped the rattle and crossed himself, “Chingow.”
This was the end. They said he was loco, now he knew it was true. “Who are you? Leave me alone!” He shouted back at the boulders, the dust, and the empty sky.
He picked up the rattle from the dirt. Pleading up to the few stars he could see, he began to stomp his feet so hard to the beat of the rattle, the vibration traveled from his boots up his spine, all the way to the space above his eyes, and against the brim of Pops’ hat. A chorus of whistles reverberated within his skull, calling him back. His friend John’s face was gentle before him, also guiding him. His memory traced the lines and bright colors of John’s artwork, clean and fresh against white gallery walls, soothing him as he rattled and stomped. The dance went on until the sky began to purple in the east.
Only when the light broke through the horizon did Kiko drink every drop of water in his canteen and collapse onto his blanket under the sheltering limbs of the manzanita. Pops’ hat beside him, he pulled his denim jacket over his face, its embroidered roses blooming with the rising light. Finally drained of all thought, he slept.
It was almost noon when Kiko awoke with a start, his mind on fire, his stomach reeling. He grumbled, flinging the jacket from his face. The girl he saw last night, he had seen her on the TV in Jerry’s office when he punched out at Blackwell’s yesterday. She was missing. Sheriffs were looking for her. But in the picture on the news, she was smiling, her arms around a horse, so Kiko had not recognized her in the angry face of the girl he saw. There was a Sheriff’s car by the pepper tree, yesterday. “Ah, pendejo!”
There was no question. He was sure. Kiko rolled up his blanket quickly, fastening the strap. He knew who took this little girl. Kiko crossed himself, kissing his thumb and raising it as he hurried, “Por favor! Don’t let me be too late!”
He pulled a handful of sage from a nearby bush and rolled it between his hands, breathing in the astringent scent and rubbing it into his face and hair as he scooted down the steep trail. When he reached the highway, he strode faster, stopping only now and then to put out his thumb for every car that passed. They all passed. It took him an hour to get to Blackwell’s Garage. But as he rounded the corner, he saw it. The rig was still there, black and shining. The jeweled crown of the “Imperial Transport” logo in white on its door.
A white-haired man in a stained blue jumpsuit popped out from behind a wall of tools, “Kiko, I wasn’t expecting you this afternoon.”
Kiko spoke quickly, “Hola, Jerry! Mira, that black rig is still here. Was there a problem with it?”
“No, it’s running great. But the driver never came back. Can you believe it?” Jerry said.
Kiko breathed, trying to be patient, as Jerry continued, “I had to call the company. I guess the guy split on them. They’re sending another driver to pick it up on Friday. I’m charging for a week of storage.”
“Do you remember that green car that picked him up when he dropped the rig?” Kiko asked.
“Nah, I don’t think I saw it.” Jerry leaned over to fill a paper cup from the water cooler, handing it to Kiko. “You look kinda grey, Kiko. There’s a banana on my desk. Yours if you want it.”
“Thank you, Jefe,” said Kiko, grabbing the fruit and filling his canteen at the water cooler, “Any chance you could give me a ride to the Sheriff’s station? I’ve got to get there fast.”
Next week
Part 2 | History is a Pile of Debris
7 - Guilt and Ice Cream
Behind-the-Scenes Extra
The image featured with this chapter is one from the same set as the one I used for the digital cover the novel. The photos were taken near the top of a treacherous unpaved mountain road east of Chula Vista, California. I’m no professional photographer, but I find the complexity of this image distracting, in a good way. My mind loves to wander into the tangle of dead branches in the foreground, the long leaves of grass floating into it, and yes, that is the ocean far in the background beneath a layer of clouds. You can’t really tell here, but I know that just past the prickly-looking branches in the upper right corner, is a beach, the sunset sparkling in the water of a retreating wave.
This is escalating! I love that you’re able to weave a story with multiple characters!