The Lord of Opium (45 page)

“I thought you didn’t have homicidal impulses anymore,” said Matt.

“A few may have been overlooked,” admitted the
jefe.

“We’ve had
bichos
like him before,” said the Mushroom Master. “We treat them with love, and if that doesn’t work, we give them an extra-long Dormancy to be sure they don’t do harm when they wake up.”

As for El Bicho, he approached the Brat Enclosure with suspicion. He found the peaceful groups of children threatening, and he immediately destroyed a sand castle they had built. The children only looked at him and began building another. “Do you remember the Scorpion Star?” Matt asked him. “This is its original. When you grow up, you’ll join the scientists. You’ll be one of them and never be lonely again.”

The Bug looked at Matt as though he were a rat dropping. But he went willingly into the enclosure, and the last they saw of him, he was squatting by a pool with other children, feeding giant carp with rice balls. “Do you know,” said Matt, “his hand has started to grow back. It’s like he’s a frog or something.”

“Then he’ll fit right in here,” the Mushroom Master said tranquilly. “We admire frogs.”

*  *  *

One moonlit night Matt flew María over the sand dunes west of Yuma. They passed the ruins of the old city, a sketchwork of deserted houses and dry fields. To the south was the glow of San Luis on the border of Aztlán, and when they went close to the
ground, María gasped. “Those are bones! There are skeletons down there!”

“Cienfuegos told me about this,” said Matt. “They’re only visible under the full moon, and sometimes they’re hidden by shifting sand. Those are the bones of Illegals who tried to cross over.”

“So many,” said María.

“They’ve had a hundred years to accumulate. It’s extremely hot and dry here. El Patrón didn’t bother to send out the Farm Patrol.”

“But why didn’t their own governments stop them?”

Matt looked out over the thousands and thousands of skeletons strewn like a ghost army over the earth. “These were surplus people. They had few skills that Aztlán and the United States wanted. The governments were glad to get rid of them.”

“This must never happen again,” said María, with a firmness that reminded Matt of her mother.

“I’ve been thinking about that,” he said. “I have to fix the border so that other people can open it in an emergency. Power has been in the hands of one man for too long. But there are problems with giving people freedom. Some of them will abuse it. Both Cienfuegos and
Sor
Artemesia say it’s inevitable. Cienfuegos says he can organize the Farm Patrol into a decent police force, and
Sor
Artemesia will try to look after people’s souls. Our old, predictable lives are going to change.” He idled the hovercraft over the dunes, and it bobbed gently on a cushion of antigravity.

“I’m thinking of
not
opening the border until people adjust to the new system. We’ll soon be self-sufficient, especially if we can persuade women to join us. I’m thinking of turning Opium into a larger biosphere, or as close to it as we can get.”

“The drug dealers won’t like it,” María pointed out.

“Crot the drug dealers,” said Matt. “It will be an adventure, and it may not work, but it’s worth trying. And one thing more,
mi vida
.”

She turned toward him.

“I want to marry you.”

She smiled mischievously, so like the lady in the Goya painting. “I’m only fifteen, you know. It’s illegal.”

“I’m fifteen too, and I’m the Lord of Opium. I say it’s legal.”

“Mother will be furious.”

“That’s one of the side benefits,” said Matt. They said nothing for a while.

María gazed out at the field of bones, and the moonlight painted the world with a pale blue light. “You sure picked a weird place to propose,” she said.

“I think it’s peaceful.”

“You’ll have to bring in a real priest. I’m not going to be a drug lord’s floozy.”

“You can have ten priests if you want them.”

“You’re crazy, but okay. I accept. After all, who’s going to say no to the Lord of Opium?”

“Only the Lady of Opium,” he said, putting his arms around her.

APPENDIX

JESÚS MALVERDE

Jesús Malverde is a Robin Hood figure known as the “generous bandit” and “angel of the poor” because he stole from the rich and gave to the poor. He was supposedly killed on May 3, 1909, a day that is celebrated at his shrines. He is an unofficial saint who isn’t recognized by the Catholic Church. People pray to him for many things—good health, money, family problems, and finding a job—but he is best known as the patron saint of drug dealers, especially those from Sinaloa. There is no evidence that he was involved with drugs during his life.

Although movies have been made about him, there was never a picture of him. At some point someone made a statue of him, but no one is sure who the model was. In my book I have made El Patrón the model, as a young man. If you go to
zazzle.com
on the Web, you can find a Jesús Malverde T-shirt with the words
El Patrón
written below the saint’s image. Also on the web you can find statues, votive candles, incense,
and even Malverde cologne for that special someone.

Recently a pair of dim-witted drug dealers not only parked the wrong way on a Chicago street, they parked in front of a police station and had a statue of Jesús Malverde on the backseat. Not surprisingly, the police were curious. They opened the trunk, found more than a million dollars’ worth of cocaine, and arrested them.

THE BIOSPHERE

This information comes from Wikipedia.

Biosphere 1 refers to the entire system of life on earth. Biosphere 2 was built north of Tucson, Arizona, around 1990. It was an effort to create a complete, enclosed world where people could live forever without going outside. It was meant as a model for space exploration. It contained a rain forest, a small ocean with a coral reef, a mangrove swamp, a grassland, a desert, a farming section, and a place for humans to live. Eight people were locked inside for two years, and later a crew of seven people were locked inside. They grew bananas, papayas, sweet potatoes, beets, peanuts, beans, rice, and wheat. During the first year the inhabitants complained of constant hunger, but during the second year the crops improved. The inhabitants also had four nanny goats, a billy goat, thirty-five hens, three roosters, two sows, and a boar pig, plus tilapia fish. Beside these were wild animals and insects to keep the ecosystem going.

It was a noble experiment, but the scientists soon discovered that it wasn’t easy duplicating what Mother Earth does. They found, for example, that trees need wind in order to grow strong. The soil bacteria produced more carbon dioxide than expected, and most of the vertebrate animals and all the pollinating insects died. The cockroaches did well, though. They always do. The
scientists also forgot that when you bottle people up together, fights break out. Secret food caches were discovered. Supplies were smuggled in, and half the participants weren’t on speaking terms by the time the experiment was over.

You can visit Biosphere 2 today, in the town of Oracle, north of Tucson. It is run by the University of Arizona, and they conduct tours. It’s used as a research facility, but people aren’t locked up in it anymore.

THE HEALING POWER OF MUSIC

Oliver Sacks, a great doctor, has written a book called
Musicophilia
. It is about the deep way music affects people and how it can reach those who have had strokes, amnesia, and Alzheimer’s disease. If you go on YouTube and enter “Alive Inside” or “Old Man in Nursing Home Reacts to Hearing Music,” you will see an amazing demonstration of this. Henry Dryer, age ninety-two, suffers from dementia and is in a near-complete stupor. The nurse puts earphones on his head and plays the music of Cab Calloway, the old man’s favorite. Immediately, his eyes light up. He sways to the beat, sings, and remembers who he is. The effect wears off, but for a while after the music has stopped playing, Henry Dryer is awake. It is a deeply moving scene and one that I found almost too heartrending to watch. I used it in the book for Eusebio and Mirasol.

THE MUSHROOM MASTER

There really is a Mushroom Master. His name is Paul Stamets, and he runs a company called Fungi Perfecti in Washington State. His specialties are mycoremediation and mycofiltration, ten-dollar words for “cleaning up the soil using mushrooms.” He wrote a book called
Mycelium Running: How Mushrooms Can Help Save the World.
It’s very good, but very demanding, and you need to know a lot of science to understand it. But you can go to YouTube and look up “Paul Stamets” and “6 Ways Mushrooms Can Save the World” for an eighteen-minute description with pictures.

You can also Google “Paul Stamets,” “Going Underground,” and “the Sun” for an interview that gives a simple, but fascinating description of his work. If you’re really interested, you can go on his company’s website,
fungi.com
, order a chunk of wood full of spores, and grow your own mushrooms.

JOSÉ CLEMENTE OROZCO

In my opinion, José Clemente Orozco was the greatest artist Mexico ever produced. He grew up during the Mexican civil war of the early part of the twentieth century. What he saw gave him a lifelong aversion to politics. As a young man he contracted rheumatic fever, which gave him a permanent heart condition. On one of his early jobs he mixed chemicals to make fireworks to sell on Mexican Independence Day. The chemicals exploded. He lost one hand, part of his hearing, and the sight in one eye. Now picture this: We have a young man missing a hand, an eye, part of his hearing, and with a heart so weak he has to rest every few minutes. He wants to paint huge murals on the sides of walls. And he does! And they’re good! Whenever I feel like whining about my problems, I think about Orozco. I have made him one of Chacho’s ancestors.

THE GHOST ARMY

Long ago my mother-in-law told me this story. If you fly over the sand dunes near Swakopmund, Namibia (which is in southern Africa), on a full moon night, you can see a vast field of skeletons. They are only visible on full moon nights. She thought
they were horses used by German troops during World War I. The curious thing is that each horse (or mule—they were there too) has a bullet hole in its skull.

The truth is this: The animals belonged to South African troops battling the Germans. There was an outbreak of glanders, a fatal, highly infectious disease, and the ship carrying the vaccine was wrecked before it could reach the army. To keep the other horses from being infected, the soldiers killed 1,695 horses and 944 mules. It must have been a traumatic thing to do, because the men were fond of their animals. But they had to do it to save the rest. This happened in 1915, and today, almost a hundred years later, the skeletons are still there. I found this image haunting and used it at the close of
The Lord of Opium
.

PARADISE

The setting for
The Lord of Opium
exists. It is the two towns of Portal and Paradise in the Chiricahua Mountains of Arizona. Portal contains the Sky Village, consisting of small, private observatories. It also consists of a small town with a library, café, and post office. I live in Portal. Higher in the mountain is Paradise, and between them is the American Museum of Natural History Southwestern Research Station. This is where I put El Patrón’s mansion and hospital. Near it is the oasis, although I placed it south of Ajo in
The House of the Scorpion
.

This area is a Sky Island, a unique setting where many different species of plants and animals can survive. Half the animal species of North America live in our Sky Island. We are also on a major drug smuggling route for the Sinaloa Cartel.

NANCY FARMER
is the author of nine novels, including
The Ear, the Eye and the Arm
and
A Girl Named Disaster
, each a Newbery Honor Book, and
The House of the Scorpion
, winner of the National Book Award, as well as being a Newbery Honor Book and a Michael L. Printz Honor Book. For somewhat younger readers, she has written a trilogy inspired by Norse mythology:
The Sea of Trolls, The Land of the Silver Apples
, and
The Islands of the Blessed
.

Nancy Farmer lives with her husband in the small town of Portal, Arizona, which is one of the settings for
The Lord of Opium
. Visit her online at
nancyfarmerwebsite.com
.

A RICHARD JACKSON BOOK

Atheneum Books for Young Readers

SIMON & SCHUSTER | NEW YORK

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ALSO BY NANCY FARMER

The House of the Scorpion

The Sea of Trolls

The Land of Silver Apples

The Islands of the Blessed

A Girl Named Disaster

The Warm Place

The Ear, the Eye and the Arm

Do You Know Me