Grave of Hummingbirds (8 page)

THIRTEEN

A
fter Manco helped Rufo inside the café and the mess was cleared, Finn sat back down and waited for Sophie.

“What happened?” he asked when she returned. “Why did you go after him?”

“I’m not sure,” she said. “I wanted to apologize. The governor was rude.” She looked around. “Where is he?”

Finn shrugged and gestured to the patio doors. “He’s still in there.”

“Are you all right?” Sophie asked. She sat and searched his face. When he nodded, she showed him her hands. “Look, I’m still shaking. Something’s not right about this place.”

“I think maybe we shouldn’t have come,” Finn said. He fiddled with his knife, nervously flipping it from side to side on the stained tablecloth. When he looked up, his mother gazed back at him with a lack of presence, as though suspended somewhere far away. Or perhaps he imagined it, and she was right there with him, trying, as he was, to make sense of the man who’d shaken them out of their breakfast. Neither of them had slept much the night before, with the news crew partying till the early hours of the morning. “We should leave,” he said. “Like, now.”

Not far off, a trumpet blared, more bellow than tune. The street and the park across the square were filling with people.

“You want to leave?” Sophie said. “Thank God. I’ll be honest with you, Finn. I’ve had a bad feeling about this for a while now.”

“I can find out when the next bus is. We should probably be on it.”

“¡Hola! American boy!” Alberto called to him from behind the hedge that separated the café from the street.

“Shit,” Finn muttered as the fellow gestured him over with a jerk of his head.

Alberto smiled at Sophie, a sudden flash of white teeth and licorice eyes that transformed him from an urchin into a flirt. Not only did she smile back, she blushed and quickly looked away. Finn thought she’d gone nuts.

“You want to come?” Alberto asked as Finn approached. “You come. With me. I’ll take you into the mountains.”

“We’re already in the mountains.”

“I’ll take you far. Farther. High up.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Why not?”

Finn had no answer for him. He couldn’t say what he felt: that beneath the vivid colors, bright daylight, and constant murmur of sound, the threat of darkness seemed poised, a throat opening to swallow a pill.

He couldn’t see any adventure in climbing with Alberto. His chest constricted and suddenly, as he looked back at his mother, he could no longer see her clearly. Her edges blurred and her features disappeared one by one, as though she was being erased.

Tears gathered, bringing with them a swelling certainty that Sophie would become one of his damaged images, that he would try to picture her later but would have only this smudged memory.

“Because,” Finn said, “I’m busy. And we’re leaving.”

“You are busy. And you’re leaving. How are you leaving? There’s no bus until tomorrow in the afternoon.” Alberto glanced back at the table, where Sophie had buried her head in a book. His scorn stung. “You are afraid.”

“Afraid?” Finn snorted. “What’s there to be afraid of?”

“Your mama. You cannot go without her. You are still a small boy. Small boy!”

“Give me a break. I don’t care what you think.” But for some reason he did, and until the doctor had stopped at their table and fought with the governor, Finn had been wanting to do something, explore, anything other than babysit Sophie.

“I will show you how they catch the condor.”

Finn stared at him. “Seriously? You can do that?”

“I can. Your mother will enjoy spending the day with her book. You will come with me. The condors are not far from here.”

It took Finn all of two seconds to reach a decision. “Okay.” He’d turn back if it got too difficult. “Let me just tell her,” he said.

“Say we’re going to see Dr. Vásquez Moreno’s birds. She won’t mind that. We’ll eat with him and come back before night. Go. I’ll wait for you here.”

With a sense of disquiet that clashed with anticipation, Finn went back to the table.

Sophie looked up. “No,” she said. “Lord knows I don’t think the man is up for guests. He doesn’t seem the type.”

She closed her eyes for a moment, forcing herself to relax. “Did you find out when the next bus is?”

“Not until tomorrow afternoon.”

Disappointed, she slouched in her seat. “I don’t know, Finn. Do you think it’s a good idea?”

Who the fuck knows, he wanted to shout.

“He may warm to you. He certainly didn’t to me.” She sighed and handed him the bottle of water she’d packed in her bag that morning. “All right, go. When will you be back?”

“We may have something to eat there, but I’ll make sure it’s before dark.”

She took his hand. “Wait, Finn. If you’re uncomfortable, for any reason, don’t stay. Is your phone working?”

It was, but his battery was low. He could feel her reluctance to let him leave. He wanted to gently disengage her fingers, which had grown like bungee cords to snag his shirt and wrap around him. “It’s okay, Mom. Don’t worry. I’ve taken on tougher things than a climb up a mountain.” He kissed her, and as he moved away to join Alberto, the elastic cords stretched. He felt them give a little and loosen, but he knew, with a surprising surge of affection for her, that if he were to fall, they would tighten and catch him.

On their way out of the village, Alberto took Finn past the packed stone walls, metal panels, and railings of the livestock corrals. Finn stopped to stare at one of the bulls, whose black coat shone where the sun touched the crest of his back, his flank, a flickering ear. Shaggy hair on a big head curled onto a muscled neck and heavy shoulders. Multiple scars ran across his hide, and he’d lost the tip of one of his horns. An old warrior, he wouldn’t stand down, would brace his legs and face any onslaught, no matter what it cost him.

There was a silence about that bull, an unconscious grace, even as he shifted away from them and bumped against the railings of his pen.

“Hey, you,” Finn murmured. “What’s up?” He set his water bottle down and looked around for something to feed the animal.

“You like him?” Alberto asked. “He is beautiful, no?”

Finn hesitated. “Why is he in here, on his own?”

“He has a temper, this one. He takes no shit from anyone. That’s how it should be. When the younger bulls start with him, he doesn’t give up in a fight. He will be the one to carry the condor in the fiesta.” He didn’t seem to notice Finn’s dejection. “Say something to him in Spanish. I don’t think he speaks English.” He grinned.

Finn didn’t need words, though, as he reached out, opening to the animal, searching for a meeting place, his mind recalling with dread the sculpture he’d seen at the market. The bull’s sensibility rose toward him, filtered through the soft blow of air out of flaring nostrils. It warmed the palm of his hand.

Alberto threw a fistful of muddy grass.

The animal snorted, lowered his head, and drew his foreleg along the ground.

Alberto leaped onto the lowest rail of the pen. “Do you want to see how wild he is? Give me this.” He tugged at the sleeves of the sweater tied around Finn’s waist, leaned over the bars, and waved it. He swung his hips from side to side, clattering the gate, flapping the heavy wool a few inches above the animal’s nose. He shouted something and flicked the sweater at the eyes that burned into him.

Finn hated bullies, and for the most part, they rarely messed with him. In a fight, he usually came to someone else’s defense, and he’d never had to use his fists. He could generally get away with talking a bully into boredom, if not exhaustion.

Alberto was being a jerk, but given his target, Finn had to devise a new strategy.

The bull drew his head to one side and carved the shimmering air with his horns, thrusting his head between the top metal railings and dislodging them. Stuck, he couldn’t back up. Heaving, twisting, scraping, and snorting, he struggled to free himself, and Finn felt the echoes of clanging steel reverberate through him like electric shock.

“He’s beautiful, and he’s stupid,” Alberto shouted. “Look. Look what he’s done.”

Finn breathed through a bewildered fury, ambushed by the bull’s need to annihilate a threat that was incomprehensible to the animal. For a time it felt as though they were both trapped, sharing the same disorientated space. One common heartbeat sent tension surging into every muscle. The strain in his jaw hurting his teeth, he closed his eyes. But instead of retreating, he stepped in close.

Untangling his consciousness from the bull’s, Finn calmed down; it was no good if both of them were incoherent. Under the snorts of outrage, he heard the throb of an anxious pulse and the flurried breath of confusion. He reached out to touch the gleaming coat and, in his mind, took the bull to a world bigger than the confines of his corral and the concerns of domination and defeat. Most of what he said was nonsense, a flirtation with words and the way they sounded: mist and mystery and mountain ghosts, the colors red and green that the animal would never discern.

The bull pushed back, a strong force overpowering a lighter one, but as Finn stroked and whispered, unraveling the knots of confusion, the muscles jumped under his hands, slowly subsided and calmed, until Finn and the bull balanced out, equal forces achieving stasis.

Finally, a slackening, drooping, acquiescing head relaxed into Finn’s arms.

With a twist and shove, he disengaged the poles from where they’d been anchored against the lower railings. The bull backed away with a sideways tilt of his head and recovered his dignity in a corner where a chestnut tree shaded a small patch of packed earth.

Alberto stepped forward. “You have a way with animals,” he said. “Like Dr. Vásquez Moreno. You’re lucky.” He tossed Finn’s sweater back at him. “Put it on. It will be cold. Or you can keep it tied around your waist like a girl.”

Reluctantly, Finn pushed his arms into the sleeves and dragged the soft wool over his head.

Now and again, until the corral was out of sight, he looked back over his shoulder as he and Alberto headed for the straggling cottages at Colibrí’s end and crossed the bridge. He switched off his cell phone to conserve the battery, then turned his attention to the peaks ahead of them, wondering how a condor might be snatched from such a huge sky.

The rocky cliffs above them threw stony ropes of narrow ground toward the village. Alberto moved ahead, sure-footed and nimble, but the paths were steep and, more than once, Finn tripped and stopped to catch his breath. Each time he was tempted to give up, Alberto turned to watch him with fierce, critical eyes, and Finn forced himself to keep going. As they climbed, nausea crept up on him and his head began to ache.

Alberto said nothing and moved quickly. A blinding sun moved slowly with or against them, hiding occasionally behind rearing cliffs and overhanging rocks. Paths gave way to boulders, and ragged edges jutted away and toward them, scraping Finn’s hands, pushing aside his hip, prodding his ribs. In the punishing altitude he coughed and coughed, a dry, convulsive rattle that water couldn’t soothe.

He tried to enjoy the way his muscles were being tested. It was a change from ballet and he relished the exertion. But the higher they climbed, the more aware he became of something else, something more than the challenge pulling him up toward the peaks. From somewhere nearby, a plaintive cry reverberated off the rock walls.

“Did you hear that?” Finn asked, panting and hoarse.

Alberto stopped, placing his hands on an overhanging ledge for balance. “What? Can you hear something?”

“Sh. Listen.”

The cry rose all around Finn, turning him cold and stiffening his joints.

“I’m going back,” he said.

“What’s the matter?” Alberto asked and stepped down. “I hear nothing.”

Finn scanned the creeks below and the towering rock face ahead. The scream echoed inside him now, moving through his veins and making his heart pound. “I’ve had enough,” he said.

Alberto quickly clambered down, cutting him off to prevent his descent. Finn’s sneaker slid across loose stones and gravel, and his knee gave way as he scrabbled for a foothold. He reached out wildly, staring down in horror at a vertical drop he’d been too afraid to examine on their way up. They had covered more distance than he could have imagined.