The Almanac of the Dead: A Novel (80 page)

Seese had taken a big drag on the hand-rolled cigarette and closed her eyes for a long time before she spoke. Sterling could see something was bothering Seese because she seemed exhausted and distant on the lounge chair, intent on sucking and inhaling the pot as deeply as possible. Sterling had begun skimming leaves and dead moths off the surface of the pool. He thought it might make talking easier for Seese.

Seese said she was feeling strangely exhausted by typing Lecha’s old book or manuscript or whatever it was. Sterling thought Seese looked close to tears. Sterling had done a great deal of thinking about Seese: her pain did not recede because she was a mother whose child was lost. But Sterling had hoped maybe typing all the mess of old notepaper scraps and shreds of cards might help Seese, by occupying her mind with the stories or old reports or whatever Lecha wanted Seese to type.

“I dream all night about pages I typed the day before, except they aren’t the pages I’ve typed, they are pages I
dream,
but when I awake, the dreams feel they are real even though I know they are only dreams.” Seese was staring into the water at the deep end of the pool. “When I sit back down at the keyboard, the real manuscript page reads completely differently than in my dreams.”

“You are working too hard with the old papers,” Sterling said gently. He did not want to add to Seese’s trouble by giving bossy advice. He wanted her to know he cared with no strings attached. If and when Seese wanted him to know about the dreams, she would tell Sterling; it was that simple. Sterling was grateful he was no longer suffering from bad dreams. Now when Sterling slept, he remembered no dreams at all the next morning.

“I wonder what is bothering Paulie.” Sterling had decided that maybe focusing on someone else’s problems might help Seese get her mind off the sadness.

“Men in love,” Seese said, and Sterling thought she sounded bitter. “I never figured them out at all. I mean, the thing with David and Eric and Beaufrey.”

Paulie watched Mag almost constantly as milk began to fill her teats. Paulie was no longer Ferro’s shadow, available in an instant for Ferro’s orders. Ferro telephoned the kennels, and with a throat tight with fury, Ferro demanded to speak to Paulie. Paulie never said more than “yes” or “no” over the phone.

Thirteen puppies had been born a little before dawn. By the time Sterling had arrived at eight o’clock, Paulie was already pacing nervously outside Mag’s kennel, stopping frequently to look inside the doghouse. Sterling had seen no headlights at three
A.M
. as he had previous nights. Ferro had not come home.

Paulie had actually touched Sterling’s elbow briefly, but Paulie’s voice was still sullen. He ordered Sterling to take a good look. What did Sterling see? “Puppies.” Sterling started to feel nervous because Paulie had never looked at Sterling so directly before. The pale blue eyes were bloodshot and distant. He ordered Sterling to count the pups, but Sterling pointed out, the red dog growled each time she heard Sterling speak and was growling then as Sterling spoke. No way could Sterling count Mag’s puppies.

Paulie had already counted them three times himself; he just wanted to be sure the total was correct. The number had upset him a great deal: thirteen. Thirteen puppies were far too many. They had almost burst open her belly; now they were about to devour her, to eat her breast by breast. Sterling was horrified at Paulie’s description of the pups eating their mother; but when he checked, all he had seen were layers of little tails and little legs, and pup heads bobbing and weaving. Sterling didn’t know much about dogs, but he told Paulie the dog and her puppies looked okay to him.

“You don’t know anything about dogs,” Paulie said matter-of-factly. Paulie had spoken with such vehemence, Sterling had wholeheartedly agreed with him. Never argue with a crazy man, old Aunt Marie used to say.

Sterling had been pushing the wheelbarrow past the corrals when Ferro had come blasting up the long driveway ahead of a cloud of dust. Ferro had skidded the Blazer to a stop at the kennels and leaned on the
horn until all the dogs were barking and howling, even the red bitch. But Paulie had not come out of the kennels, so Ferro spun the wheels and kicked gravel all the way up the hill to the house.

FERRO DID NOT LIKE the way he was feeling even when he was high on coke. He knew he had to do something about Paulie. Ferro knew he was obsessed with Jamey, but he wanted to work it out before Jamey realized what power his smooth, blond thighs had over balding, fat men the wrong side of thirty. Ferro had never felt the lust so strongly or the jealousy so quick in his blood. Jamey had appeared one fall day as Ferro was cruising the university for the tanned, blond jocks in their skimpy satin gym shorts. What else was the University of Arizona famous for?

Ferro had never had one as gorgeous as Jamey. Ferro had no trouble finding boyfriends while he was in his teens and twenties. He had never been good-looking, but when he was younger there had been a smoothness to his skin, and a roundness to his face that, coupled with expensive Italian shirts and leather trench coats, had won him almost any boy he had wanted in Tucson. Ferro had had a Porsche since eleventh grade and “income from the family ranch” as he delicately put it to the handsome country-club boys. But the big meals, all the imported beer, and weekends with his lovers at the best hotels had made Ferro fat. By thirty, Ferro was thick around the belly and the face. Ferro took no chances. He made sure the young, handsome men rode in the Porsche and consumed grams of coke so he already “owned” them before he ever brought them to his bed. Afterward Ferro took extra precautions to dump the boy before the boy dumped him. Paulie of course didn’t count as one of the “boys.” The “boys” were clean and elegant and from the white upper-middle class. Paulie was hardly more than a gardener or a chauffeur in hire to the household. Paulie was a convenience; similar to a valet or bodyguard.

Jamey did not mind if Paulie stayed on as the bodyguard and chauffeur
for Ferro. Jamey had always held out for certain of his “old dear friends,” and now Ferro was exercising his right to keep “a dear old friend.” Jamey thought Ferro was too possessive and had encouraged Ferro to keep Paulie, although Paulie hated Jamey. Ferro took care the paths of the two men never crossed. Ferro had rented the town house so Paulie would never see Jamey. Zeta and Jamey had been indifferent about meeting one another so Ferro had let it drop.

FERRO HAD ALWAYS been a sullen, distant child, but Zeta had seldom ever had to correct him or speak to him about anything he had done. Jamey or Paulie made no difference to her. Zeta told Ferro it was his own business whom he slept with. Ferro worked hard. He sat up all night on mountain ridges, in the wind, or in the rain, because drops in bad weather were risky enough that the law did not expect them then. Ferro had ridden horseback when it was 108°, gathering the skinny cattle to drive across the border at the bitter-water windmill. Later he and the two Papago cowboys had wrestled the skittish Mexican steers, to retrieve plastic packets of cocaine taped under their bellies. Zeta never argued. Ferro earned his leisure time. It was his money.

Ferro had savored Jamey’s silky, smooth skin, imagining he, Ferro, was a captive. A victim of homosexual rape by lovely, cruel Jamey, who had immediately abandoned him. At first Ferro had waited for the kiss-off: Ferro would telephone and get a busy signal, the unreturned calls and unanswered messages. But Jamey had seemed oblivious to all the wobbling jelly-fat Ferro so much despised and abhorred about himself. Gay men especially hated fat, but not Jamey. Jamey loved to be “crushed” and “smothered” under Ferro’s body, and Ferro had felt Jamey lovingly poking his big cock into Ferro’s creases and folds of fat.

Ferro had never wanted anything, any high, any drug, the way he wanted Jamey. He had begun to think about Jamey at all times of the night and day.

Even when Jamey did not bother to go to his classes, Ferro had not been able to get over the awful feeling that Jamey would find a new lover on campus; someone who was blond and slender, and blue eyed as Jamey was. Jamey did not need money, but he was always ready to buy coke at a discount for himself and friends. Ferro could not stop making comparisons between Jamey and a runt like Paulie. Paulie had a grimy white face and the close-set eyes of a rodent. Paulie had wandered in like a stray dog that got fed and had stayed. Ferro had never wanted Paulie. Paulie had only been there to work for them—Ferro and the old woman, Zeta.

Jamey was Ferro’s opposite, yet somehow they were equals. Jamey was as blond and willowy as Ferro was swarthy and fat. Jamey’s diet consisted of raw fruits and vegetables chased down with expensive champagne and Ferro’s top-line cocaine. The foods Ferro ate and drank disgusted Jamey. Pure cocaine in moderation was not as bad as rich food or heavy whipping cream, Jamey said. Ferro had been open-eyed from the start. He knew he got the young pretty men because he spread around the cocaine. That was no mystery.

Jamey was Ferro’s opposite in temper; not a nervous bone in Jamey’s smooth, white body. Roll over, lie back grinning, take another snort. Jamey wanted nothing more in life than that: to snort and fuck all morning and all afternoon. Ferro had been through hundreds of boys, and he had immediately seen Jamey was too good to be true. The catch with Jamey was his taste in friends. Because of these “friends,” Jamey could not be trusted. A few of Jamey’s friends were actual Tucson cops, but most of them were like Jamey and only liked to dress up like cops; uniforms, even nurse’s uniforms, aroused them. Ferro found uniforms of all kinds disgusting. Jamey dressed like a cop for poster photographs and for videotapes and movies. Jamey’s friends called their calendar-publishing company Cop Cakes. Cop Cakes advertised all the calendar pinups were actual law enforcement officers. Ferro laughed and tossed the old Cop Cakes calendars on the floor. They could put out better pinup calendars themselves. Ferro wanted to finance his own pinup calendar. No cop or nurse uniforms either. Ferro did not trust Jamey’s friends, especially not the faggots who got hot when they wore a pig’s uniform.

A calendar would only be the beginning. The family business was about to consolidate. Now Zeta’s computers had completed projections designed by Awa Gee. Zeta’s computers were telling them to sell out because the wholesale price of cocaine worldwide was about to take another “nosedive.” Ferro hated Awa Gee and his stupid puns, but the gook son of a bitch was a master at invading or destroying enemy computers.

Calendars and publishing would be just the beginning. Ferro had been bored with the routine for years; he had begun to hate the endless driving all night on back roads, alert and tense for any sound, waiting and watching, for low-flying aircraft blinking tiny Christmas-tree lights to signal without detection. How many hours had Ferro and Paulie waited for donkey pack trains or teams of backpackers to emerge from the desert, uncertain whether the border patrol who took the bribes remembered which night the crossing was to take place. As long as the wholesale price of cocaine had stayed up, smuggling had been worth the danger and boredom; but not anymore.

Ferro would not forget the balloon trips they’d made with cocaine shipments. They had had a close call on one of their last balloon flights. Their balloon had been caught in a whirlwind as it was descending, and Ferro had seen how fragile the balloon was, how any strong wind might rip the nylon so the balloon collapsed into itself.

With their “guest ranch” business, hot-air balloon cruises along the border had been the perfect cover for moving large parcels. But after their near-miss with the whirlwind, Ferro had seen color photographs of a balloon crash in Albuquerque. The balloon and basket were on fire; tiny human bodies dangled from ropes as one body fell high above the Rio Grande. Later Ferro had lied about the reason he no longer used the hot-air balloon. But Ferro had kept dreaming over and over, he was dangling at the end of a long rope; all above him there were sparks and cinders and smoke from the fire engulfing the balloon.