Welcome to Bordertown (54 page)

“It really is,” Alain says. “But don’t be sorry for not believing. Sometimes I hardly believe myself.”

“But now …” Ashley pauses, but she knows she has to go ahead and say it. The truth. “Now I’m afraid you won’t let me be one of you. Because I acted crazy and messed up your plan tonight.”

Alain laughs. “The Rowan Gentlemen are—all of us, to a one—mad as cats. We don’t recruit people known for making reasonable decisions. We’re all crazy and if you’re crazy, too, then I’m happy to know it.”

“Does that mean I’m recruited?” Ashley asks.

“Maybe.” He gives her a complicated smile. “If you like. But before you agree, I should tell you that those gifts—the shoes, the shawl—they were given to you with less than noble intentions.”

“You mean you wanted to get in my pants?” Ashley grins.

She expects him to smile, too, but he doesn’t. “I try to maintain a certain reputation. Incompetent. Lazy. Spoiled. And so I thought that courting a girl who cared nothing for me would fit.”

Ashley frowns. “You thought that I—”

“Love cannot be bought,” Alain says. “And you, quite smartly, distrusted me for trying.”

“And now?” she asks.

“Now I am ashamed,” he answers. “I chose both poorly and too well when I courted you. Poorly, because you saw right through my artifice, but too well, because now that I wish to declare my true admiration, I must do so knowing that you have little reason to believe me.”

“So, if you were courting me for real, there would be no presents, no dinners, no nothing?”

Alain laughs. “Perhaps I have no knowledge of courtship, false or true.”

Ashley gently bumps against his side. “Maybe I could help you learn. Why don’t you let me start by buying you something?”

He raises his eyebrows. “Buying me something?”

“It won’t be anything fancy like nine-million-thread-count sheets or exotic bath beads from the Realm,” she warns him. “I was thinking we should start small. I could buy you breakfast.”

“Breakfast?”

“Breakfast at Café Tremolo. You, me, muffins, a couple of espressos, and an ice pack for your face.”

Alain’s smile is as wide as the sunrise. “I’d like that.”

W
hen Tía Luba talks, everybody listens. That’s just the way it is for us kids, on or off the rez.

I’m getting my release from the Kikimi County Young Offenders Correction Facility, which is just a fancy way of saying juvie. I’ve been on good behavior, done my time. Studied for my classes—even got my grade nine. Didn’t mouth off to the guards or psychologists or counselors. Moved rocks and dirt around on the weekends to build character and amuse the guards. Basically, I kept my head down and my nose clean.

The guard accompanies me from the buildings to the outer gate. As we walk toward it, I get a good look at the twelve-foot-high chain-link fence with the barbed wire on top that makes a big loop around the facility. I’ve stared at it for the past eight months, but the last time I was up this close, I was on the outside being bused in from the city.

The guard talks into his walkie-talkie and the gate swings open. I step through and taste freedom.

“There’s two buses a day,” the guard says. “You missed the first one but another comes by at five.”

It’s noon. The sun’s high, beating down on the desert. It’s got to be 110 out here on the pavement. The road stretches as far as I can see in either direction. There’s only scrub and cacti.

The guard spits on the ground as the gate closes.

I start walking. I’ve got two choices: the city or the mountains. The city’s what got me in trouble the last time, so I walk northeast to where the Hierro Maderas rise tall and graying in the distance.

My baseball cap helps against the sun, but there’s only so much it can do. I can feel the moisture leaving my body. A couple of hours of this and I’ll be as parched as the dirt on either side of the blacktop.

When I hear the pickup slowing down behind me, I don’t turn around. I just keep walking. Being around people’s another thing that got me in trouble. I either buy into their crap—which is how I found myself in Kikimi—or I end up taking a swing at them. I don’t seem to have a whole lot of middle ground, but I’m working on it.

The pickup pulls up beside me and a familiar voice says, “You want a ride?”

I sigh. When the truck stops, I pop the passenger door and get in. I look at my aunt. She looks back at me, those dark brown eyes seeing everything. Her skin’s brown but still smooth. Her black hair’s tied back in a braid. She’s wearing jeans and a man’s flannel shirt with the sleeves rolled up.

“Hey, Tía,” I say as she puts the pickup in gear and pulls away. “What brings you out here?”

Like I don’t already know.

“I was interested in seeing which direction you’d choose.”

“I’m guessing since you stopped, I got that part right.”

Her lip twitches, which is about as much of a smile as I’ve ever gotten out of her. She pulls a pack of smokes out of her pocket and tosses them onto my lap. I take one out and light it with one of the matches stuck into the empty half of the pack. When I offer it to her, she shakes her head. I close up the pack and put it on the console between the bucket seats.

“So now let’s see how you do with the second part,” she says. “I’ve got a ticket to Baltimore. If you’re interested, Herbert’s got a job for you there and you can stay with him.”

What she doesn’t say is I’m turning eighteen next month. The next time I get busted, I won’t be going into juvie. Instead I’ll be going into the adult prison system, which for my people is pretty much the biggest rez in the country.

“What’s the job?” I ask.

“Well, you won’t be stealing cars.”

I nod. “I’d like that.”

“If you screw this up …”

“I won’t,” I tell her.

I probably will. So far it’s been the story of my life. I can see in her eyes she’s thinking the same thing. But I’m willing to give it a try and she sees that, too.

Her lip twitches again.

“We’ll make a man out of you yet,” she says.

It’s a ways to the rez. I reach over and turn on the radio, moving through the bands till I get the tribal station. Her lip twitches a third time. She must be in a really good mood.

*   *   *

Uncle Herbert lives like he’s still in the shadows of the Hierro Maderas. He’s got a basement apartment that smells of piñon, sweetgrass, and cedar. He’s eating Indian tacos and beans and flatbread that I have to admit taste as good as anything I ever had
back home. And he still makes his coffee the way we do on the rez, water and coffee all mixed up in the same pot. Doesn’t matter how well you strain it, you’re still picking grounds from between your teeth, but seriously? I can’t think of a better way to start the day.

He was a medicine man back on the rez, but he left when the war of words between the traditionalists and the casino crowd got too heated.

“If we were supposed to fight over possessions like white men,” he told me, “the Creator would have made us white men.”

Except now he lives here in Baltimore and works as a foreman for a company that provides the setup gear for conventions and shows. Go figure. I feel like telling him he’s living like the casino crowd except he’s poorer, but keeping my mouth shut’s been working pretty good these days, so I keep it to myself.

The work’s easy. It’s hard, sweaty work, but you don’t have to think—that’s the easy part. We just follow the floor plan that the organizers give us. We haul in all the tables, chairs, and podiums, set up the bare bones of the booths, build stages—whatever they need.

Uncle Herbert’s got a solid team. They’re mostly Mexican and black. They aren’t afraid to work and they love Uncle Herbert to a man. It was like that back on the rez, too, which is why he left. People were ready to go to war if he just said the word. He knew if he stayed any longer, he’d end up doing that and he didn’t want anybody’s blood on his hands.

“Do you miss it?” I asked as we drove home from a job one night.

He’s got this old Ford pickup that’s held together with rust and body filler, but it runs like a charm. Me, I’m still saving for a ride.

“I miss the quiet,” he said, then looked at me and grinned. “And I miss living on Indian time.”

Having spent the eight months before I came up here following an institutional schedule, I’m used to getting up early and being on time. But I gave him a smile and nodded.

“I hear you,” I said.

Uncle Herbert goes to bed early—pretty much after dinner. I’d maybe get bored, but I fill my time. I’m trying to teach myself wood carving. I don’t have any tools except my jackknife, but wood’s cheap and I’ve got all the time in the world to learn. Uncle Herbert doesn’t have a TV, just an old radio that someone left on the curb. He tinkered with it until he got it working again, so I listen to Public Radio while I work on my carvings. Little bears and lizards and birds like Hopi fetishes except they’re made of wood. Sometimes I go to the corner bar and nurse a couple of ginger ales while I watch a game on their big screen.

*   *   *

We get all kinds of gigs, but the ones that give me the biggest kick are where the people all play dress-up. Since I got here, we’ve done two sci-fi conventions. The setup’s no different than it is for any other kind of convention, but if you hang around the back halls of the hotel, you can watch them walking around like spacemen and barbarians and everything in between.

Seeing grown men and women dressed up like their favorite characters just puts a smile on my face. It reminds me of the powwows, where everybody trades in their jeans and Ts for ribbon shirts and jingle dresses. For a couple of days they get to step out of their lives and be the people they wish they were.

But the sci-fi conventions have nothing on our current job. At this FaerieCon pretty much
everybody’s
in costume, from the organizers to the people working the tables in the dealers’ room. Some of the guys working the faerie theme look like walking shrubs, in cloaks with leaves sewn all over their shirts and pants,
and masks that look like they’re made of leaves and tree bark. There are a lot more girls, too—pretty girls with sparkles in their hair and faerie wings on their backs.

“Man,” Luther says, “I’d like me a piece of that.”

He’s checking out an Asian girl wearing leather with lots of buckles, high boots, and a short skirt. Her top hat’s got brass buttons all over it and what looks like a weird pair of binoculars resting on the brim. And of course she’s got wings.

I nod like I do when anybody says something to me. I find when you do, people pick the response they want, so you don’t have to actually say anything.

“She looks good,” Luther says, “and she knows it. Wonder what she wears when she’s not playing dress-up?”

I shrug.

“Yeah,” he says. “Doesn’t make much difference. Girl like that, she doesn’t even see a guy like you or me. But she sure is hot.”

I go get another table from the dolly.

*   *   *