“She must have lost the address. I’ll have to check. You got the passport and visa?”
“I hunted everywhere.”
“The guest room, Renata!”
“Especially there. I have no idea where they are.”
The Texan shut off the high-octane pump and was now filling his tank with low-octane. A chemist. His wife leaned out of the office. “You want anything to drink, Grover?”
Grover focused on the gas pump. “No thanks.”
“Scott?” Renata asked.
“I was thinking. I could get out of Mexico on the Harley-Davidson.”
“Long trip.”
“West to Villahermosa in one day. Another to go north to Tampico. And then on the third day Matamoros and Brownsville, Texas.”
“Whatever,” she said, plainly bored.
“Look, this is hard on me, too.”
“Oh, shut up! You are so self-centered, Scott! You haven’t even asked how your father is! And all he thinks about is you! Have you given a thought to what you’ve put him through?”
“Unfortunately, he’s used to it.”
“Well, I’m not,” she said, and hung up.
It’s the parable of the prodigal son, isn’t it. There was a cattleman without cattle who had two sons, and the kid brother went to his father and asked for his inheritance, and his father divided his estate between his sons so he wouldn’t go crazy with worry. And not many days later the one who thought much of himself gathered everything he owned and took a journey into a far country, and there he squandered his inheritance in wild living. And when he had wasted everything, he began to be in want, and he took a job in the fields feeding swine. But when he came to his senses he said, “I will get up and go to my father, and will say to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven, and in your sight; I am no longer worthy to be called your son; treat me as one of your hired hands.’” And he got up and went to his father. But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him, and felt compassion for him, and ran out and embraced him and kissed him. Luke, chapter fifteen.
Eduardo and his family went to Mass with friends on Sunday and afterward watched an orchestra play on the plaza of the parish church. When his friend was hauling Eduardo and his family back home in his truck, Eduardo saw a joven who he thought may have been Renaldo Cruz, hitchhiking out here on the highway.
Enraged at hearing that, I flung myself right past Eduardo and I got hotter as I high-hurdled through the jungle, some juvenile part of me trying out the old Tarzan number, I have had it with you, buster. But when I got to the house, what I saw was my Harley-Davidson at the foot of the hill, and I knew it was not Renaldo but Atticus up there in the casita, holding things in his hands, assessing and gauging and gumshoeing, figuring out exactly how his son died, as if that knowledge would fill in all that was otherwise missing.
Went up the hill the hard way, through high weeds and pepper trees, nothing to recommend it as a hill to look down, a stroll to take, no pretty postcard view. And when I achieved the house, my father was scrabbling down the fall-off above the cove with my shotgun like a staff in his hand, and he was getting out on a precarious gray lintel of stone to fetch from magenta oleander one of Reinhardt’s Cole-Haan shoes. You haven’t felt such heartache, seeing that sixty-seven-year-old sleuth, wholly out of his element, hunting one more clue, one further explanation, as if that were the hidden value x that would solve the algebra of his boy. And then an intuition caused him to fire a look
up the hill at me and shade his fair blue eyes from the hard glare behind me. “Who’s there?” he called out, and I retreated from him, fearing he’d seen my face, heading in full gallop down the hill’s far side and helter-skeltering into the tangles and forget-it of jungle before I finally turned and saw Renaldo Cruz out there with us like some Aristotelian unity, himself in a fast sprint back to the highway and likely into town.
“We need to talk to him,” Eduardo told me. “Renaldo needs a big healing.”
Late that Sunday afternoon we got hold of Eduardo’s friend’s truck and went to the Pemex station, and I heaped a handful of coins by the public telephone as Eduardo tried Alejandro Cruz in the Resurrección directory. Alejandro had no idea who Renaldo Cruz was. Andalesía Cruz failed to answer, as did Armando. We huddled there inside the booth, my left ear firmly pressed to the handset, as Eduardo dialed again. Cecilia Cruz told Eduardo that Marcelino, no relation, might have a cousin by that name. Marcelino’s phone was disconnected. We tried Emilio Cruz and Heriberto Cruz—no answer—and finally heard from Leticia Cruz that Renaldo was indeed her cousin, but she hadn’t seen him since Easter. She thought he was staying with his uncle, Rafael. Eduardo flipped a page and hunted a Rafael in the directory, found none, and asked if Leticia knew how we could find him. She said he owned the Bella Vista bar.
“Boystown,” I said.
We dialed that. Rafael was there. Yes, Rafael admitted, Renaldo Cruz was his nephew. And then he volunteered that Renaldo was in Dallas, working at a car wash.
Eduardo held his hand over the phone’s mouthpiece and whispered in Spanish, “He’s lying.”
“No fooling.”
Eduardo got back on and told Rafael that the reason he was calling was that he too worked at that car wash and there was a shameful mistake on Renaldo’s paycheck, he was paid way too little, his boss was so embarrassed about it that he’d begged Eduardo to be sure to get the money to Renaldo so his boss would not feel dishonored. Embarrassment and dishonor were far from my own experience of corporate America, but Rafael Cruz seemed to buy it and he gave Eduardo precise directions to his house in the barrio.
“Oh, so he’s here?” Eduardo asked.
“Sure, for you,” Rafael said.
We went there. The house of Rafael Cruz would probably have been a fixer-upper in el norte, but in Mexico it was far finer than I was used to, floored, hot and cold running water, in the dining room a highly glossed table and eight chairs and the familiar print of da Vinci’s Last Supper, in the front room inherited chintz furniture, a picture of His Holiness kissing a child, a side table arrayed with family photographs, and hanging over the sofa a trite, ornately framed, black velvet painting of a toro and toreador in the fine execution of a veronica. Rafael’s wife held the door for Eduardo and me, and softly took Eduardo’s offered hand. Eduardo took off his Padres baseball cap and said something polite and soothing as I heard him give his name as Nicuachinel, he who sees into the middle of things. Mrs. Cruz then asked, plainly in awe, if Eduardo was a shaman.