Part 3: 2 - Dedication
An unveiling at the bridge
Things That Can’t Be Broken is a novel presented as a live draft, one chapter every week.
Last week: Part 3: 1 - Tuesday’s Child • A joyful surprise that binds a family
Part 3 | A Storm Blowing from Paradise
2 - Dedication
Kiko Gonzalez
August 17, 1990
Dehesa Valley, California
“Ayy!”
Kiko sputtered and brushed a twig from his face, jumping to his elbows and rustling the branch above his head. He had been dreaming. In his dream, he was in ‘Nam, standing against a wall that was beginning to crumble and fall.
He surveyed the dry hillside below the thicket where he had been sleeping since the purpling light of dawn. The only movement was a lizard skittering over a yellow rock. A crow cawed and clacked nearby, but nothing else moved, only the heat. He crawled out into the late morning sun. What day was it, Friday? Might as well go down to the shop.
A crow called again, this time over Kiko’s head. He watched it lurch to the sky from the manzanita, brushing the top of an oak before it swooped out of sight into the valley below. A glint of sunlight caught his eye. Mira! Los crows, always after the shiny things.
He hitched his blanket roll over his shoulder and began his descent to the highway. Around the first hill toward the valley, he noticed a row of cars lining the highway almost as far as the Circle K. As he watched, a couple got out of a car and walked past the long line of vehicles. Kiko hurried to the next hilltop to get a better view. Fifty or sixty men, women, and children were clustered at the west side of the riverbed before the entrance to the small bridge.
In the past few months, the bridge had swarmed with construction crews and equipment. Por qué? It seemed fine before. . . Maybe there was a crack in it. Kiko laughed out loud as he walked. Kikotito is cracked! Pero, no pinche road crew to fix this one.
He had thought they might be adding another lane, but they only made the bridge a few feet wider. They only added a pedestrian lane with a cement guardrail. It seemed like overkill. There was almost never any foot traffic on the bridge. Kiko scratched his stubbled chin. It could be handy when it rained and there was water in the riverbed for a few days. They did a good job, anyway.
After the construction crews left, the bridge had been quiet for several weeks, but now this commotion. He saw a news van. Two. He hoped it was not something bad. It was not a jumper. A jump from that bridge might sprain an ankle. A car accident? As he got closer, Kiko could see that the people gathering there were dressed nicely, most of them, like they were going to church.
The crowd parted for a man carrying a podium. Kiko had to get closer to find out what this was about. He pushed his way, quietly as he could through the dry riverbed’s tall brush and grasses, until he was under the bridge. He took off Pops’ hat and hid it behind his back, parting the branches just enough to see without being seen.
A bearded and deeply tanned man, dressed in a brightly-colored Hawaiian shirt, was standing at the podium making introductions. In a moment, the man was joined by a younger man, taller and dressed in a stylish suit that reminded Kiko of how John dressed at his gallery opening. Mira lo. I think I know that vato.
Dani’s father. Kiko had seen him on the news.
“Thank you all for coming here today,” said the tall man, “And thank you, Mitch, for—Oh, there you are.” He moved away from the microphone to embrace a slight and pretty woman with long dark hair. She was dressed in a flowing blue blouse that shimmered in the hot breeze. It’s shimmer reminded Kiko of the willowy pepper tree where he often saw the little girl in his mind.
Dani’s father introduced the woman, “Lisa Cartwright, Dani’s mom.” She stood next to him at the podium as he addressed the crowd, “I know I speak for both of us today when I tell you how grateful we are that this community has come together for us again in remembrance of our daughter, Dani.”
Por eso. Un memorial.
“Dani is right here with us today,” Dani’s father continued.
A crow cawed. Kiko spotted it sitting atop a street sign just past the bridge.
“We chose this day because it is her twelfth birthday. We’re not here to commemorate the loss of our daughter, we’re here to celebrate her birthday and to keep the memory of her bright spirit alive. . .”
The crow cawed again and fanned out its wings, drawing Kiko’s gaze for a moment. A few others also turned toward the bird. Kiko recognized Deputy Ocampo standing with two teenage girls. Ocampo had two daughters, he had shown him a picture.
Como se llamaban? . . . Rosie is the smaller one. Their names are like perfumes . . . Rosie and. . . Chanel.
There were several children in the crowd. Some must have been Dani’s classmates or friends. Kiko thought he recognized a young woman with a halo of frizzy blonde hair, standing back away from the crowd. She was one of the visitors he had seen place flowers under the tree more than once. There was sudden movement. A man was pointing. Is he pointing at me?
Kiko backed away into the brush. He moved as quickly as he could away from the crowd and kept going down the middle of the riverbed. The sand was deep and the walking slow and difficult, but he stayed below the road for a long time. He probably walked a mile, staying hidden between the riverbed’s borders of brush and grass. When he felt he was far enough away, he popped back up to the highway where the walking was easier. Nobody was around.
It was still earlier than usual when he arrived at Blackwells’. Walking around the corner of the garage, Kiko saw a Sheriff’s car parked by the office. He almost turned around to walk away. But then he heard the jingle of the office door and a familiar friendly voice yelling, “Kiko!”
It was Deputy Ocampo. “Hey, Kiko,” he said, “I thought I might find you here.”
“Jefe,” said Kiko, looking over his shoulder. “You’re looking for . . .me?”
Ocampo was smiling. He said, “No, no, Kiko. I actually thought I saw—” He cut off the thought. “There was a dedication ceremony for Dani Cartwright down at the bridge. . . . I thought I might see you there. Were you there and I just missed you?”
Kiko looked around nervously, “No. . . I-I didn’t know about it.”
“Well, you should have been there,” said Ocampo. “You would have been welcome. Anyway, I wanted to thank you. You were a lot of help with that investigation.”
Kiko felt his heart sink. His eyebrow raised under Pops’ hat. “Como? Dani was already dead when I came to you.”
“You lead us to the killer,” Ocampo said, then quickly added, “But. . . the others. You’ve helped a lot, getting kids to safety. Kristy. And little Jonathan, he was so young we might never have found him without your help.”
Kiko pointed to his hat, “Ah, Jefe, I only try. I try to live like The Superman.” He shook his head slightly and looked down at his boots, “No siempre, pero, I try.”
“Well,” Ocampo shifted his weight, “My girls were there with me at the ceremony. I would have loved for them to meet you.”
Kiko’s eyes lit and he smiled open-mouthed, “They’re bea—I would have liked that.”
Ocampo stuck out his hand, “See you around?”
Kiko gave him a firm handshake. “Vamos a ver, mejor no, unless it’s for something good.”
“Of course. Yeah,” Ocampo smiled and nodded. “Thank you, Kiko.” He waved, radio chirping, as he returned to his vehicle and drove away.
When Kiko went into the open garage, he found the whiteboard already half-full with last-minute weekend drop offs, mostly maintenance. When he asked Jerry if he had heard anything about a memorial for Dani Cartwright down by the bridge, he said, “Oh yeah, it was on the news when I came in for lunch. They put up a plaque. Such a sad story, that girl’s murder. I think about her every day when I pass by Blue Haven Lane. Now the bridge, too. Can’t help but pray that asshole’s burning in eternity.”
It hit Kiko hard when he heard that from Jerry. Even the old man was haunted by Dani’s murder. As he worked, tuning the rigs, Kiko’s mind circled his heart like a turkey vulture over a dead thing. No matter what he did, he would never be able to wash it away.
The twin girls’ bodies on the wet jungle floor. I could have done something. Little Dani Cartwright. I failed her. I knew. I could see the evil on those men before it happened. Los hijos de putas. I could have gone to Ocampo sooner. De algún modo, I could have stopped them.
It was Dani who sat with him almost every night when he came to rattle on the hill behind Blue Haven Lane. He had come to look forward to her silent company. She would appear, hovering at a short distance, like an unsure cat. And it was he who put her there, by his own inaction. It wasn’t right that he should take comfort in her presence, but he did.
The sun was getting close to the tops of the hills when Kiko left Blackwells’ for his evening rattle. On the way back down the highway, he thought to stop at the bridge. A shiny new rectangle of bronze was attached to the flat end of the cement guardrail.
The crow, if it was indeed the same one, was still there at the end of the bridge, looking down at him from atop the street sign. Kiko had never bothered to walk past the bridge to see the front of the sign before. Now he was curious. It was yellow, with a symbol of a horse and rider. This explained why the walkway was so wide, and the guardrail. It was a crossing made for horses.
Kiko took a closer look at the bronze plaque at the end of the guardrail. There was an image of a little girl hugging a pony, and under it were the words:
In Memorium
Dani Marie Cartwright
August 17, 1978 - June 10, 1988
“God forbid that I should go to any heaven in which there are no horses.”
~ R.B. Cunninghame Graham
The crow was leaning over the plaque, despite Kiko’s presence. It kept pecking at the new bronze. “Shiny, huh?” said Kiko. “You can’t steal that one, crow. It’s bolted down.”
The bird looked straight at him, turned its head, and pecked at the bronze one more time before it flew off. Pájarito loco.
Kiko walked faster, the darkness had a hold of his throat already, even in daylight it was hard to breathe. The sun was not far above the hilltop now. If he did not get back to his rattling spot before the sun went down, the dark might suffocate him.
As he walked up Blue Haven Lane past the shimmering pepper tree and into the hills, he thought of Dani. No heaven without horses. Maybe that was why he never saw her too far from that old horse ranch. Pobrecita. There were no horses near there. Not anymore. Not for years.
Next
Part 3 | A Storm Blowing from Paradise
3 - George
Behind-the-Scenes Extra
As I’ve been writing new chapters, I’ve been going back to the beginning and reading them aloud as a voiceover/podcast. It’s very informal and I’m definitely not ready to print any voice-actor business cards anytime soon. I’m mostly doing this to help anyone who has trouble reading it in the app or in their email—for any reason. Don’t worry, if you would rather listen than read, it still counts as reading.
Giving the chapters a midpoint read-through also helps me to keep in mind the beginning of the story while I continue from the midpoint. For example, I found some additional foreshadowing of a crow in Chapter 12 that I had forgotten I included. It came in handy for this chapter as a way to lead you through.
I’ve also learned that, even having grown up in a very hispanic and Spanish-speaking border city, pronouncing Spanish correctly does not necessarily come naturally to me. I’m equally bad at pronouncing Spanish as I am Scottish. For example, the word carnicería gave me fits. Despite that helpful accent over the last “i”, I wanted to make it rhyme with “cafeteria” —so gringa.
Even with the accent trouble, while I appreciate the automatic AI voiceovers that come with the Subtack app, I believe my readings are just a little better. Sorry Substack, you do try.
As always, thank you so much for reading!
Don’t forget the ‘likes’, ‘shares’, and ‘comments’ —they make me smile!
Very moving.
Finally caught up! I really like the chapters with Kiko. He provides such a unique perspective!