The Almanac of the Dead: A Novel (37 page)

Mosca kept talking. “Yeah, your mother probably told the witch. She probably said something like, ‘I wish he would just disappear,’ or something like that, you know?” They had crossed the river and were driving down Silverbell Road; Root could feel his high level off. In a minute or two, the sensation of the ground crumbling under his feet would surge through his body, and Root would need more cocaine and more whiskey. “The witch made you disappear for a second or two, just long enough for blubber ass to turn in front of you. The witch could have been right there that day. Walking on the sidewalk by the cemetery, waiting for you to come riding along. That’s how they work. That’s how it happens.”

Mosca has pulled the truck off the road under the tall tamarisk tree in the deep shade. He is talking while he is spooning out more cocaine. “It might look like just another old potbelly man walking his scabby dog. Or just another wino hobbling along on crutches. All it takes is a split second.” Root can’t dispute Mosca because he doesn’t remember. He can’t even remember the week
before
the accident. If he could only remember. Memory returns but in slow motion; the accident must have happened in slow motion, the way all his falls were in slow motion as he learned to walk again.

Mosca is still rambling on about witches as he skids back on the road. Mosca pinches both nostrils and throws his head back violently. Root is riding his high the way he imagines desert hawks ride the updrafts over the arroyos and ravines. Root doesn’t want to spoil the feeling right now. He imagines the moment as an edge polished with fine emery cloth. In the truck, Root leans out the window and opens his mouth. He remembers as a kid he tried to drink the evening air because it smelled so good.

“When was the first time you ever really saw a witch?” Root says as clearly as he can, but Mosca is lost in blasting the big pickup down the road, swerving around slower traffic, and Root has to repeat the question patiently, two more times. Mosca shoots a curious look at Root because it is the first time Root has brought up witches. Mosca smiles,
shakes his head, relaxes the foot on the accelerator, and hands Root the sack with the peanut butter jar. Root rolls up his window and reaches for the tiny silver spoon.

Mosca settles back in the seat, steering now with one hand. “I ended up in jail on account of a witch.”

“What witch?”

“The first witch I ever saw,” Mosca says. “You know I can see them. I can just take one look and I know.”

“How?”

Mosca shakes his head. His expression is serious. “I was driving down Miracle Mile. I was on my way to sentencing. My first time. I mean ‘first time’ as an adult. Anyway, I was driving and I was real nervous. I was going before the worst judge—Arne.”

“Arne’s the federal judge,” Root interrupts, but Mosca only nods.

“Now he is, but
before that,
he was a state judge. . . . I was driving down Miracle Mile and I had just made that big turn by that used-car lot across from the Motor Inn where all the whores like to stand, and I looked over at the bus stop and I saw him.”

“A witch?”

“Yeah, I saw this guy, and the instant I glanced at him, he looked right at me, right into my eyes. That’s how I knew. It’s all in the eyes. The lawyer had said whatever happens, don’t be late. But I couldn’t get over it, you know? I figure the witch probably sensed I have the ability to see things like him. Anyway, all the hair on my neck was chilled stiff, you know, and I could feel sweat just pouring off me. I had plenty of time. It was just twenty to ten by the bank clock, so I thought I would go around and take another pass by the bus stop. I was sort of scared but curious too. It was July and hot, but I could see this old man wore something black and long—I thought it was a long overcoat or raincoat. Then I realized he was wearing a long black skirt. The witch pointed at me and laughed.”

“A long black skirt? Did you ever do acid, Mosca?”

Mosca slows the truck dramatically so he can give Root the most intense gaze possible. “
I was going before Arne to be sentenced! You think I’m crazy?”

MOSCA VEERED SUDDENLY off Silverbell Road and turned onto a narrow tire track that snaked through the mesquite forest on the vacant lot behind the Safeway store. Beyond the forest was the big arroyo. The hobos and tramps rolled off Southern Pacific freight trains night and day during the cold months. Mosca was taking the sandy road so fast that mesquite branches had nearly torn off the big side-view mirrors of the truck. Mosca was high and talking a mile a minute and pointing out campsites and trees where he’d slept. He had been annoyed when Root made a joke about Mosca’s sleeping
in
a tree like a monkey and not under a tree. Mosca said all Root had to do was take a good look at the campsite under the big mesquite trees set back from Interstate 10. “Go ahead! Go ahead! Take a look!” Root couldn’t see what Mosca was pointing at. The cocaine had made Mosca impatient. “See the way they made a fort out of piled-up branches they tore off trees?” Root nodded. He could see what Mosca was talking about. It was the kind of fort he had built with the other kids in the summer down along the riverbanks. Make-believe forts where they pretended to live because they knew they could walk away anytime.

The campsite Mosca had pointed out stood apart from the other lean-tos because of the similarity and orderliness of the tents and lean-tos. Root noticed a number of the tents displayed U.S. flags.

“You want to talk about crazy,” Mosca began dramatically, “those war vets, those guys are
really
something! They call this their ‘firebase camp.’ ” Mosca was leaning against the hood of his truck fumbling to light up a joint. Root could only see a few men outside the shelters; one wore a green beret. Another wore a camouflage T-shirt and combat boots; otherwise to Root they looked like any other homeless men camped along the Santa Cruz River.

“I been inside their firebase,” Mosca said, exhaling the marijuana smoke as he spoke. “They have bunkers, sandbags, everything just like the movies. One of them even calls himself Rambo.” Mosca kicked at
empty plastic milk and bleach bottles scattered around an old campsite circle of soot-blackened river stones.

Root had listened to Mosca before on the subject of homeless white men. Women and children were different, Mosca maintained, and the war veterans were different too. But the rest of the grimy white men who lived on the streets Mosca called “hobos” and “tramps”; they had no excuses except laziness and they liked to sleep under cardboard in a city park. Mosca knew they liked to sleep in the street because he himself had lived on the streets for a couple of years even when he could have gone to cousins or to other relatives anytime he wanted.

Mosca said he used to get an incredible high off transient living. He claimed it was really a great high—street survival. “Almost as good as coke!” Root laughed out loud. He didn’t care if Mosca got upset. Mosca was crazy. Mosca was leaning against the hood of the truck, fumbling to light up a joint. He was still talking about living on the street. It was the “accomplishment,” Mosca said, the accomplishment of survival all on your own, without any help, that’s what made Mosca high.

“Well, you don’t feel it right away,” Mosca says in response to Root’s laughter.

Mosca stopped to spoon coke up both nostrils, then passed Root the vial. Mosca squatted by the truck, then rocked back on the heels of his cowboy boots, both eyes closed. The rush made Mosca smile. “Okay,” Mosca says dreamily. “What I mean is—you learn it’s not so bad. It’s not the end. You learn you can do it.”

When they got back into the truck, Mosca purposely made a wide turn so they could pass close to the war veterans’ camp. Mosca was talking a mile a minute about the nut who called himself Rambo and the big black man who was his lieutenant. “You ever talk to any of those guys?” Mosca went on before Root could answer. “Those guys are scary. War taught those dudes all
kinds
of bad shit! I like to hear them talk. Demolitions, night attack—” They were speeding down Silverbell Road and Mosca was laughing. Mosca thought it would be really funny if they ever got hold of a little dynamite and a few rifles. Homeless war veterans attacking the country they had defended so many years before. Mosca thought it would be the funniest thing in the world.

Mosca shook his head violently and waved both hands in front of him. Root was amazed the truck did not veer off the road. The white men on the street were genetically defective. Mosca was certain of it. Take mass murderers for example. They were always white men with
educations and good jobs, even families. Symptoms of trouble never came in time to stop the slaughter. There was a lot of evidence these days, Mosca said, that the mass murder of family members might be a scientifically desirable outcome in the certain cases where the entire family was hopelessly defective. The healthiest family member killed all the others. Look at the survivors of the death camps in Germany. They had carried death with them like an incurable fever. All Germans had been infected by the Nazis—even the poor Jews. Mosca blamed all the violence in the Middle East on Israel. Each time a Palestinian child was shot by Israeli soldiers, Hitler smiled.

Root shook his head. “I never get over what a fucking racist you are, Mosca.” Mosca does a “Who me?” routine, but goes right back to his theory. According to Mosca’s theory, the battered and murdered children are the offspring of defective parents who instinctively kill their own offspring because none in their line is genetically fit to continue.

Root had watched Mosca a thousand times: Root watched as the rage gathered, and then Mosca erupted in a fury of words—his rage and indignation blazing like automatic rifle fire. Mosca’s foot would crunch the accelerator and his hands would twist the steering wheel savagely, and the big Chevy Blazer would go skidding around corners, fishtailing into the straightaways. It had been during these berserk rages that Root had seen how he and Mosca the Fly would die. Not in a rain of bullets from the DEA or local narcs; not even shot in the back by one of Calabazas’s nephews. They would die maybe even this next minute because Mosca had noticed cars and pickups carrying the middle-aged couples, mostly white people but with a scattering of Hispanics and blacks. They were the low-level civil servants and clerks: the meter readers and delivery-truck drivers who had risen to managerial level by obeying the rules, written and unwritten. Mosca became outraged by the suck-ass expressions on their faces. They were the puritans who believed they were the chosen, the saved, because they were so clean, because they were always so careful to obey every rule and every law. Every yellow and red light was one of their lights, and Mosca plowed through full speed, scattering vehicles at intersections, while he raved and ranted about the churches, rotted with hypocrisy.

Root had learned the only way to stop Mosca’s outrage over the faces in the cars on the street was to get Mosca’s attention on something that delighted or amused him. Root pretended to be indifferent to the screeching of brakes. Root knew Mosca did not want any response from
him. All that mattered to Mosca was getting it off his chest. A reply from Root or anyone might interrupt the flow of outrage. Mosca used to laugh and agree with Root that he did have enough hate and homicide in his heart to last all of them a long long time.

The dumb faces were so full of self-righteousness after church that Mosca wanted to slit their throats. What good would that do? If they had been to Holy Communion, Mosca would be sending them straight to heaven, Root pointed out. But Mosca was pounding his fists on the steering wheel and shaking his head violently from side to side. “Look at their faces!” Mosca had shouted as the big Blazer veered head-on at the car Mosca was pointing at. Root had looked and seen puffy white faces, middle-aged female and male, frozen in stupefied horror. Mosca had whipped the truck back across the center line at the last possible moment.

After Mosca left, Root opened a beer and sat for a long time in the dark thinking about the system and how it worked. Calabazas liked to talk about Root’s great-grandfather and the other white men in Tucson. “You can read about it if you don’t believe me. What they did. The whites came into these territories. Arizona. New Mexico. They came in, and where the Spanish-speaking people had courts and elected officials, the
americanos
came in and set up their own courts—all in English. They went around looking at all the best land and where the good water was. Then they filed quiet title suits. Only a few people bothered to find out what the papers in English were talking about. After all, the people had land grants and deeds from the king of Spain. The people believed the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo protected their rights. They couldn’t conceive of any way they could lose land their people had always held. They couldn’t believe it. Some of them never did. Even after it was all over, and all the land and water were lost.”

Root was still sitting in the dark when Lecha came in. “I hired a nurse,” Lecha said. The taxi was waiting in the driveway.