Rattlesnake & Son Page 8

  “How long?”

  “Maybe one day, maybe two, we’ll see.”

  Marley smiled.

  “As long as you’re back by Friday for school,” Luna said. “Although you could be sooner than that if things don’t work out.”

  If things don’t work out. I didn’t like the sound of that.

  Denise appeared by our side with a packed suitcase and another six pack of Sheep Springs mineral water.

  Marley hesitated as Luna gave him a hug. “Okay, Mom.”

  After Luna released her hug, Marley took the water from Denise. He nearly dropped it. This kid couldn’t hold onto anything. “I don’t know if I should hydrate so much. It makes me—”

  “Don’t worry, son,” I said. “Even though it’s a two hour drive up to Albuquerque, we can stop along the way.”

  Chapter 9

  Jakku

  Luna went over our itinerary and my contact info before we left, inputting it into her phone, as well as Denise’s. I felt like she was my probation officer, as opposed to my ex-wife. I expected her to put both of us on GPS ankle-monitors, so she could follow our every move.

  It was almost three in the afternoon when we left T or C on our leisurely one hundred fifty-mile drive north up Interstate 25. At seventy-nine miles an hour, it should take us less than two hours.

  For our late lunch, Denise handed us the best burritos ever created. Luna had billed them as hundred-dollar burritos, and they were well worth it. Had Denise gone around the world to forage for the finest farm-to-table ingredients, and then had rocket scientists mix the perfect pico de gallo in the lab?

  Marley was amazed by the vast horizon along the interstate, but had a slight case of agoraphobia––a fear of wide open spaces. He had spent the last few years in suburban Westchester County, New York where he couldn’t see more than a hundred yards in any direction. Here it seemed he could see all the way to Arizona on one side and Texas on the other. Today, New Mexico’s bright blue desert sky was bigger than any big sky in Montana.

  “Didn’t you come this way to get here?”

  “No, we flew to El Paso. Someone drove our car from New York.”

  “I’m so used to it, I don’t even realize how amazing it is out here,” I said.

  “Are there any signs of intelligent life here?” he asked, as if he was Mr. Spock. “Are there any trees at least?”

  “We don’t need no stinkin’ trees,” I said, quoting the bad cop from The Treasure of the Sierra Madre.

  “We don’t need no stinkin’ blades of grass either,” he said. “I saw that Humphrey Bogart film with my mom one night.”

  I put my hand on his shoulder. Damn, I loved my son. I felt his pulse slow down a beat or two. My pulse slowed down as well.

  Thirty miles up the road, he saw the exit for the Santa Fe Diner and its two gas pumps and three crumbling mobile homes. Other than the diner itself, I couldn’t tell which, if any, of the structures were still habitable. A few hundred yards back was a marker for the El Camino Real, the royal road. I didn’t think there was anything particularly royal about this stretch of road. It was pretty real however.

  “That’s not the Santa Fe, is it?”

  “Not even,” I said, doing my best imitation of Luna’s lilt. “That’s not even a semblance of the real Santa Fe. Hopefully, I’ll take you to the real one.”

  “I’ve never been there,” he said. “Not that I can remember. It’s the ‘city different,’ right? Then I’d fit right in.”

  Before I could do the dad thing and tell him to embrace his differences or something like that, I saw him wiggle under his seatbelt. I did the calculations on two empty bottles of Sheep Springs mineral water.

  “Well, you’re going to see this Santa Fe,” I said.

  At the last instant, I swerved to take the exit and he hurried inside the diner. A sign warned that the restroom was for customers only.

  “You got to buy something,” a crusty old man told me. I didn’t know that he had a shotgun under the counter, but I had no reason to think he didn’t.

  “What do you want to drink?” I yelled to Marley.

  “A coke. I love coke!”

  I bought an overpriced coke. Did they have to fly it here by rocket?

  Unfortunately, when we got back in the car, I drove over a pothole and he spilled his drink all over the dashboard.

  • • •

  As we passed Exit 156 for Lemitar, he saw The Promised Land billboard over the wrecked mobile homes. “Why is that here?” he asked. “Who promised the land to whom?”

  “It’s the land that was promised to the Israelites in the bible, right here, six miles north of Socorro.”

  “Really?”

  “No, it’s something else. I have no idea. I’ll look it up the next time we come here.”

  I hummed the Bruce Springsteen song “Promised Land,” and was surprised that Marley could sing along with the chorus. “Mister, I ain’t a boy, no I’m a man, and I believe in the promised land.”

  “I sure hope the promised land isn’t in Lemitar,” he said.

  Once we hit the Albuquerque city limits, and its modest skyline, he became impressed by how much Albuquerque had grown and shrunk at the same time. He had lived here until age two, and surprisingly, had vague memories, but they were memories from a sick child’s perspective.

  “Everything seems so small,” he said.

  “How much about Albuquerque do you remember?” I asked.

  “Just a little, in my dreams,” he said.

  It was just after five in the afternoon when we stopped to pick up the mail at the main post office on Broadway near downtown. For some reason, I always got a lot of mail on Saturdays, and I hadn’t picked up the mail yesterday. Albuquerque’s Broadway was no “great white way.” The building, with its brutalist architecture and surrounding barbed wire, felt more like a medium security prison than a post office. Did post office officials want to protect the building from a terrorist attack, or just prevent someone stealing the junk mail? If someone took one of my “notices of hearings” out of my mailbox, would they have to cover the court for me?

  I always got a bad feeling here, ever since I received the paperwork that separated me from my son. I held my breath until the box opened.

  “Are you okay?” Marley asked.

  “I’ll be fine,” I said. “I have mailbox anxiety.”

  “Is that a real thing?”

  “It is to me.”

  When I didn’t get mail, I’d say NFM, No Freaking Mail. I used to swear loudly of course, but after a dirty look from a postal worker who threatened to take away my mailbox if I caused a disturbance, I went with “freaking.”

  Maybe that was why they had the barbed wire, they were scared of people like me with mailbox anxiety, and that it was contagious.

  I opened the box with my key. “NFM,” I said to Marley, after explaining with the polite explanation what the letters meant, and started to turn away.

  “Are you sure?” Marley asked. “Check the back.”

  I put my hand in the box again, and all the way at the back I found a small orange index card. My heart beat faster, and I was surprised to find three large envelopes clogging up the back of the box. I tore them open by the narrow counter next to the small window.

  The first envelope was from court in Albuquerque. One of my few private clients, Chuy Villalobos, had picked up a new misdemeanor and a felony probation violation in Albuquerque, and court was tomorrow, Monday. Next, I had another probation violation in Tucumcari on Tuesday, the next day. Worse, I found a Notice of Hearing that I had a jury trial in Las Cruces on Wednesday.

  “Didn’t you know about that case, Dad?”

  “Vaguely. It was a case that had once been number ten on the docket, and those never go. Apparently, it is now number one, number one with a bullet a
s they used to say on American Top 40. I feel like number two if you know what I mean.”

  He laughed. “You’re funny, Dad.”

  “I’m back on the breakdown docket,” I said.

  “What’s that?”

  “I take over the cases of lawyers who had a nervous breakdown or whatever. I often get appointed by the court without much notice. Eventually I’ll have my own breakdown and a new lawyer will take over cases from me. Somehow, I haven’t broken down yet. And once I get a case, it’s mine for life if I want it. If the case comes back, and the client re-offends, the people can hire me privately.”

  “But how can you defend someone who’s guilty?”

  “Ah the question. Just because someone is charged with a crime, doesn’t mean they’re guilty. I never know when I get the case. The state has to prove their case beyond a reasonable doubt.”

  “Sounds like fun as long as I’m not the one on trial,” he said. “Can I come with you?”

  “I’ll ask your mother.”

  I was about to call Luna, but didn’t want to talk to her on an empty stomach.

  • • •

  My home was off Exit 234, in the nice suburb of Sandia Heights. It had been my mother’s home and looked a lot like the Luna Landing, without the high tech.

  Before I could stop him, Marley hurried to the bathroom, which still lacked a floor because of the mold. He didn’t even notice.

  “This was my grandmother’s house for a while, right?” he asked.

  If he hadn’t kept up with me, he certainly hadn’t kept up with my mother. My mom had moved out after Dad died in the bedroom, and it sat for a few years during the real estate bust until I took over the mortgage.

  I had the place cleaned regularly by a cleaning service, although they couldn’t clean up the mold damage in the bathroom.

  He hurried to the refrigerator and was disappointed to find only an old bottle of milk that had since expired.

  “Your mother said I had a substance abuse problem when I went shopping.”

  “A substance abuse problem?”

  “I never got the right substances at the supermarket—milk, orange juice, or whatever. She hated anything with calcium. She said it tasted like chalk and disputed that it was good for her bones. I always tended to abuse or neglect the substances when they were in the refrigerator.”

  He did find a Coke in the back, and that was good enough substance for him.

  “I like the energy here,” he said as he walked around the house, possibly inspecting it for mice and ghosts. Other than the bathroom and a single mouse hole, the place was in good shape. I still had the six stylish chairs my mom had bought for me for my first apartment, when I was a public defender. I had finally grown into them and they looked perfect here.

  Marley sat in one, and I realized that this was my first house guest in a very long time. I sat in one of the other chairs. “I never knew this place had energy.”

  “Those mountains look like the Organ Mountains, if the organ got flattened by a steam roller,” he said, looking out a window.

  “They’re called the Sandias, which means watermelon. They become the color of watermelon right at sunset.”

  As if on cue, the granite hills began to turn pinker. Maybe not all the way to watermelon, but at least the color of the hills could credibly be considered “peach.”

  “Watermelon? I’m hungry,” he said. He opened the empty refrigerator. “You don’t have a Denise, do you? Someone who cooks and cleans for you?”

  This kid was spoiled. Maybe a military-ish school would be good for him. “I make my own dinner. Well, I make my own dinner reservations. What are you in the mood for?”

  “After our little adventure on the island, I’m in the mood for seafood. And then you’ll call Mom about taking me to the courthouse, right?” He was so excited about the idea that he tipped over the chair when he got up.

  • • •

  At seven, I took him to Sandiago’s Grill at the Tram, a seafood restaurant a mile away at the base of the Sandia Peak tramway. At nearly seven-thousand-feet in elevation, the place boasted a sunset view of the lights of Albuquerque. I had avoided the tram ever since we had an ill-fated dinner with Luna and her half-sisters right before our rattlesnake wedding. Still, at seven thousand feet above sea level, Sandiago’s was far above the rest of the choices.

  Marley had changed into a white polo shirt with a logo of a first-person shooter I had never heard of that was part of the cratercross universe. Call of Crater, or something like that.

  “So, you want to design computer games some day?” I asked.

  “I guess so. I sure can’t play them.”

  I could see why. Marley’s poor hand-eye coordination repeatedly spilled the salsa. It flowed down over his shirt, like bloodstains.

  I bent over the table and wiped off the stains with water from my glass. “Like new. Your mom will never know.”

  “I like it up here,” he said, undaunted. “New York was too big, and T or C and Cruces are way too small. Albuquerque is just right. Like Goldilocks.”

  “Albuquerque is a Goldilocks city in a lot of ways,” I said. “It’s not T or C, but it’s not Tokyo either. Maybe you can start coming here on weekends.”

  “I don’t know. I really don’t want to go to that school in the middle of nowhere.”

  I nodded. “What was your mom thinking?”

  “Well, I screwed up at my public magnet school in Westchester, I was in the high honors program and special ed at the same time. Some magnet. Then we moved, and she thought I needed structure. Do I really need structure?”

  “A little. Is that why she is against home school?”

  “She was on the fence about home schooling, but after I got picked up on the shoplifting charge she decided on Caldera Academy. It was that or juvenile prison according to her. Can you think of any place else I could go?”

  “See that?” I pointed out the campus of Albuquerque Academy, which was still visible on the other side of the oasis of the Tanoan Golf Course. “Maybe we can get you transferred there, to Albuquerque Academy, the best school in the state. You seem creative, and they would be able to nurture someone like you.”

  He smiled. I was no psychic, but I had said the words he most wanted to hear. “And I can live here with you?”

  I sipped my water. “Well, we’d have to talk to your mom about that. But I could homeschool you informally, I suppose, for the next few days, just to check it out.”

  “When do we start?”

  “We have already begun,” I said.

  Once it was totally dark, and the last of our sopapillas had been pillaged, Marley slumped in his seat. It had been a long day, but it was barely eight o’clock. He seemed have the most energy at twilight, and then his energy level set with the sun. I walked him to the car.

  “It’s like we’re in outer space,” he said as we drove down from Sandiago’s, pointing to the lights of the city. “It looks like a galaxy far, far away.”

  “The beginning of Star Wars which came out before you were born.”

  “Like I said, I like old movies and old music. It’s like I was born out of time.”

  Once inside the house, he went into the moldy bathroom and I heard him fiddle with a bunch of pills. I shouldn’t have been surprised that my son was on major medication for his many health issues. He’d had a transplant, after all. He probably took a few other meds for his psychiatric issues as well.

  After he was done, I went into the bathroom. Luna had created a pill organizer for him, which was on the counter, and it listed all his meds and when he should take them. Considering I often represented pill poppers in my practice, I worried that he was taking the wrong pills at the wrong time. Maybe, I didn’t want to take over as a co-parent for this boy.

  If he was going to stay here, I would definitely
have to take care of the mold. I had let it linger far too long. One guy who did the estimate had said it might even be extraterrestrial.

  When I returned to the living room, Marley had got back into the stylish chair, and held on for dear life with one hand as if he was afraid he would tip it over again. With his other hand, he had somehow manipulated the on-demand button, so we could get a film for free, even though it wasn’t in my library. He chose The Force Awakens, one of the newer Star Wars films. He had wanted to see The Empire Strikes Back, but I didn’t want to open the whole “Luke, I am your father” can of worms. Whenever I heard those words I thought of Dew and her late father, Sam Marlow, who used to recite those lines to each other as part of a weird ritual.

  In The Force Awakens, the heroine, Rey, lived in the desert world of Jakku. “Jakku reminds me of T or C, without the lake,” he said.

  “I suppose that makes Albuquerque more like Mos Eisley, wretched hive of scum and villainy in the first film.”

  “No, my mom would say that Albuquerque is like—” he looked at me and I instantly knew where he was going. It wasn’t psychic, it was just us.

  “Mos Eisley adjacent,” we said in unison.

  Although he liked the film—which he had seen three times already—he started to fade once Rey left Jakku and made it out of orbit. Unfortunately, this episode was the one where Adam Driver’s character killed his father Han Solo, played, of course, by Harrison Ford.

  Thankfully, Marley was fast asleep before that happened. I lifted him from the stylish chair and carried him to the bed in the guest room.

  Mos Eisley adjacent sure sounded a lot better than Jakku.

  Luna called and woke me up at midnight. “How is he doing?”

  “He’s fine,” I said.

  “What are you guys going to do tomorrow?”

  Why was I so nervous about telling Luna that I needed to take Marley to court? Because I didn’t want him to see me lose and then tell Luna so I would never see him after Friday. That was why.

  I didn’t want to frame this as a question, although that’s how it ended up. “I have a few court settings the next few days that just came up. Do you mind if I take him to court with me?”