The Temptation of Demetrio Vigil (2 page)

My father, an outdoorsman, would later tell me I
should have just run over the coyote. Later, he’d accuse me of
being a bleeding heart animal-lover. It was probably true – I did
love animals. I always had. I did what I could to avoid killing the
coyote. I yanked the wheel to the right, stomped again and again on
the brake pedal, and then it just happened: The BMW my dad had
given me for my sixteenth birthday lost grip with the road, spun,
and toppled end over end in a sickening crunch of metal and
glass.

It was all so fast. I remember it as a horrible,
noisy blur. End over end, tumbling off the road, down the small
rise. I screamed and tried to reach for Buddy, to hold him in his
seat the way my mom used to put her arm out for me when I was
little, but I couldn’t find him. He was tumbling loose in the car
with my phone, wallet and old paper coffee cups, round and round
like clothes in a dryer.

When the car finally stopped
rolling, it was on its side, making strange burbling sounds and
ticks, almost like a moan. The car was dead, or dying. The cold
wind wasted no time in ripping through its hull with frenzied
glee.
What fun, what fun!
it seemed to cry. The sound of the wind was like
ghosts laughing.

I dangled, a sock puppet,
disoriented. My shoulder burned. Something pierced my chest sharply
with each inhale. My hands bled, and my left foot felt like
something had taken a large bite out of it. I looked around again
for Buddy but he wasn’t in the car. The world was blurry because
I’d lost my eyeglasses somewhere in the tumult, and blood dripped
into my eyes. I wiped what I could away, and squinted, but couldn’t
see my little dog anywhere. I called his name. No response but the
wind.
What fun this is! What fun!

I suddenly remembered all those movies where the
crashed car bursts into flames moments after impact. I found the
button to release the seatbelt, and wriggled myself free. Gravity
dumped me onto the passenger door. My shoulder and back screamed
with pain.

Gulping for air, I wormed through the jagged hole
where the windshield used to be, shaving off bits of clothing and
skin as I went. I intended to run from the car, but my wounds
limited me to a stiff, slow crawl.

I blinked against the blowing snow, dragged myself
along, a rasping pant rising from my throat. My hands and knees
pressed through the snow to the frozen sand and dead weeds beneath.
I hoped there were no cacti under there, hiding. A hot agony stung
my back and shoulder with every motion. Each breath was a
nauseating knife in my gut. I was dizzy. I had to get to my feet. I
needed to find help.

I rose to my feet, slowly and with a pounding
sensation in my head. Resting my hands on my thighs, I squinted
hard and craned my neck, with some difficulty, looking for Buddy.
Stupid Chihuahua. Where did he go?

“Buddy!” I called, my voice small and gruff. He
didn’t come.

I looked toward the road, but there was no sign of
my dog, or of the injured coyote. I staggered from the car like a
zombie, amazed I’d come out of the mangled wreckage alive.

As I scanned a nearby field, I saw a small dark lump
in the snow, maybe twenty feet from the car, on the other side of a
barbed wire fence. It was the size of a roasting hen, like Buddy. I
limped faster toward to the fence, and squeezed my way through the
wires, impervious now to the new waves of pain.

Sure enough, it was he.

I’d found my sweet little dog, covered in blood but
still alive, stuck on his side, licking his chops the way dogs do
when they’re hurt, his innocent black eyes searching mine for an
answer. Had he been bad? He seemed to ask. Was I angry with him?
He’d be good now, his eyes told me, he promised.

“Oh, my poor baby,” I cried. “No,
no, you’re a
good
boy. What a good doggie you are!”

The effort of wagging his tiny tail to please me
exhausted Buddy’s reserves. His eyes rolled back into his head. He
quivered. He seemed to be in a mild seizure. It was the worst thing
I had ever seen.

In a complete panic, I remembered my smart phone.
I’d had it charging in the center console of the car, and now I had
no idea where it was. It could be anywhere. I stood and looked for
it, but my eyes were useless. There was nothing. Not the blur of a
house, not a car, not a cow. Nothing. We were on one of those
desolate stretches of highway where it is only earth and sky.

“Help me!” I cried, as loud as I could, my voice
cracking. I tasted the bitter metal of blood, spit it out. “Hello!
Help us!”

I stood at Buddy’s side and waited. No sound came
back. Not even an echo. My words were absorbed completely by the
snow.

I knelt again, shivering and suffering, but focused
on Buddy. My mother, an attorney and city councilor with her eye on
the mayor’s seat, had long accused me of being too compassionate
for my own good. The hail stung my cheeks as I scooped Buddy’s limp
body into my arms. I worried I’d hurt him more by moving him, but I
couldn’t just leave him to freeze. I returned to the fence,
struggled through the wires with my dog cradled protectively in my
arms.

I lurched toward the road and
wandered along its shoulder, my pain numbing to a low, hollow throb
all over. I tasted more blood. The ankle gave way when I put weight
on it. I grew dizzier, faint. The hail blurred my already dismal
vision, pelted my open mouth as I wheezed. If only a car would
come, just
one car
. But none came.

After a minute or two of helpless waffling, I
realized that to survive I’d have to get myself back to Golden, and
pray that someone was home.

I limped back to the car, which had not exploded, to
see if I could find my coat, phone, glasses. I found my eyeglasses,
a little twisted but still in tact, in the snow and picked them up,
wiped them on my sweatshirt, and shoved them back onto my face.

My parka tangled with the steering wheel. I tugged
it loose with great effort and excruciating pain, draped it over my
shoulders, Buddy in my arms beneath. The dog’s breaths were shallow
and inconsistent. I tried to be brave, braced myself for the
painful journey. I assured Buddy everything was going to be okay,
but my voice broke with fear.

As I turned toward the road, a dark gray blur loped
across the highway and disappeared. Yellow eyes. I rubbed snow from
my glasses, and tried to get a better look at it. I saw nothing,
but heard a howl. It wasn’t the sorrowful wail of an injured
animal. It was something much, much worse. When you grow up in the
foothills, on the outskirts of Albuquerque, as I have, with cats
you cannot bear to keep imprisoned inside, you learn what coyote
calls mean. I had lost three cats to the desert predators in my
lifetime. I recognized this sound.

It was the manic, wild yipping that called the rest
of the pack to feast; it signaled an impending kill.

♦

I hunched against the wind, staggered along in the
snow, and tried to escape being coyote dinner. I listened to the
echo of the celebratory wail of death, coming from all directions
around me, and felt the hairs at the base of my head rise up.

I had to keep moving, to escape
the animals watching me from the bushes. They were small, but they
were strong, and in the winter, starving. They would take what they
could find. I knew the hot red scent of my freshly spilled blood
was carried to them on the wind, and that they, desert sharks,
would soon begin to circle.

I focused my attention on the road
again, only to find my path blocked about ten feet away, by a young
gangster-looking guy. My dad, who grew up in the South Valley but
likes to brag that he “escaped,” called this kind of guy a
vato
, or a
cholo
. My friends and I
called them homies or Gs. I didn’t think anything could have made
me feel more afraid than I already was, until I spotted the
unlikely gangsta in my way.

He stood perfectly still, arms crossed, staring at
me. The defiant set of his jaw seemed to dare me to pass him. He
wore baggy dark jeans, unlaced beige work boots, a puffy black ski
jacket and a black ski cap with a skull and crossbones on the
front. He was probably somewhere around my age, maybe a little
older, with what might otherwise have been a sweet baby face - a
pretty face, for a boy, with long lashes and full lips - if not for
the gang tattoos all the way around his neck, and the hard,
streetwise look in his eyes.

The sight of him was so unexpected, my pain so
great, and my assumption that he was a criminal so strong, that I
screamed, in a voice muddled with cold and blood: “Please don’t
hurt me! I don’t have any money! It’s all back there, in the car! I
don’t have anything you’d want!”

His tough expression melted into a look of cool
concern. He uncrossed his arms and started toward me.

“Hey, don’t be screamin’ like that, girl. Calm down.
I’m here to help you.”

“Stop!” I held my free hand up, trembling. “Don’t
come any closer. I, I know karate.”

He laughed - not in a cruel way, but with pity. He
stopped coming toward me, pulled his jacket’s collar up higher on
his neck, and watched the sky for a moment before gazing at me
again with strong, steady brown eyes.

“Karate?” He shook his head as though he felt sorry
for me. “Won’t do you much good with them massive injuries.”

“I’m fine.” I was so weak I could barely stand.
“Just leave me alone.”

“You’re hurt, bad.”

He had a certain way of leaning into his hip, and of
pursing his closed lips, and holding his head back and to one side,
that sent a chill to my marrow. He looked dangerous. My knees
wobbled, and nearly gave out.

“I
am
hurt.” I began to cry, in fear
and pain, like an insane person. “But I don’t want to die. Please
don’t kill me.”

“Pssh.” He bucked his head slightly with a concerned
look in his eyes. “I ain’t gon’ let you die. I’m here to help you,
I said. I’ll stand right here ‘til you ain’t scared no more.
Deal?”

His deep voice crested and fell with a rural New
Mexican rhythm. He was tall and well built, with smooth brown skin
and large, dark eyes that turned down a little at the outer edge.
His cheeks and nose were red with cold.

“Trust me,” he said. “If you can.”

One hand was in his pocket; I worried he had a gun.
In other, which bore no glove, he carried a metal toolbox. I did a
double take. What was that for? Dismembering girls?

“Please don’t hurt me.” I was so cold, so very, very
tired. Energy drained out of me. A stiff numbness began to set
in.

“Shh. I seen the accident. Don’t be talking so much.
Conserve your energy.”

He came to my side.

“There was a coyote.” I pointed to the road
nervously. “It made me crash, and now I think it wants to bring its
friends to eat me for dinner.”

A look of worry came over him. He scanned the road
past his shoulder suspiciously, pushed his lips tightly together,
then turned back to me. “You’re wasting time and energy talking.
Let me help you. There’s not much time. The cold will get you if
you don’t let me help you.” He moved closer, and reached to open my
jacket. I stumbled back, pain and nausea undulating through me. I
began to fall, and threw up a little.

“Listen to me.” He held me up, kept me from falling.
His eyes connected intensely with mine. “This is important. You
gotta trust me. We don’t have time for fear right now.”

“What are you trying to do?” I wobbled on feet I
could no longer feel. Again, he caught me by the arm. His grip was
hard, nonnegotiable.

“The
dog
. That’s all. Your dog needs
help.”

He opened my coat gently, and took Buddy from me.
The dog was limp, unconscious, tongue lolling out. My jacket was
soaked with blood. I was freezing, the dog’s small heat gone from
me now.

I whined. “Please be careful. He’s really hurt.”

“He’s okay. No worries.”

He folded his legs beneath him, and sat on the
ground, in the snow with Buddy in his lap. He opened the tool kit
and, horrifyingly, pulled out a syringe.

“What are you
doing
?”

“Helping him, mamita, what’s it look like?”

“You can’t just give him a, a, a shot!” I began to
hyperventilate, and a sputtering cough gripped me. “You’re not a
doctor! Give him back. What are you doing with a syringe?”

“Relax, dang,” he said. “I take care of animals all
the time. It’s a painkiller. Back up off me, girl. Everything gon’
be fine. I promise.”

I watched, helplessly, as he injected Buddy between
the shoulder blades.

“Omigod omigod omigod omigod.” I chattered.

He ignored me, ran his hands over Buddy’s legs and
body, with his eyes closed and his forehead creased deeply. He’d
stop in a spot, hold his hands there for a moment, and then move to
the next; wherever he’d been, the wounds seemed to spontaneously
stop bleeding. I realized then that I might have hit my head. I was
probably hallucinating this whole thing.

I fell silent for a moment, then
whispered, “How did you
do
that?”

“Do
what
, mamita?” He looked
bored.

Buddy opened his eyes then, saw me, and moved his
tail weakly.

“That
!
How did you
do
that
?”

“It’s what country boys do. I got skills.”

He took his coat off, laid it on the ground at his
side, and placed Buddy on it - bundling him cozily.