The Up-Down (15 page)

 

 

4

Late the following afternoon, Pace stopped at a roadside fruit stand to buy oranges and cherries. He stood next to his 4Runner and read the hand-painted sign:
NARANJAS, MANZANAS, CEREZAS
. Wind, dust, high clouds, beanfields. This felt and looked like what he expected Mexico to feel and look like. A short, portly, young woman wearing a brown dress with a thin, green rebozo around her shoulders, was stacking apples at the counter. A boy, about three years old, wearing only a faded red T-shirt, no pants or shoes, was pedaling a blue and white tricycle back and forth in front of the stand. Where were the flies? Pace expected flies but there were none; probably because the wind was blowing the stench of fertilizer or raw manure in the opposite direction. He was thinking about last night's dream: the jaguar, or puma, following the woman reminded him of Sailor, his lanky, loping gait; and the female had long, glistening black hair, like Lula's when she was young.

The little boy fell off his tricycle and started crying. The woman came around from behind the counter in a hurry, brushing against a small pile of apples, causing them to spill onto the ground. She was yelling, “Arriba, mijo! Arriba!” And she was laughing until two black Cadillac Escalades sped by with assault rifles firing from the rear passenger windows. The woman's face went dark and her shawl flew off as she ran toward the boy, shouting, “Abajo! Abajo!” before countless bullets tore into the fruit stand. Pace froze. He was still standing after the Cadillacs were gone. The boy was wailing, his tiny body covered by his mother's. She was not moving. Her last two words had been arriba and abajo, up and down.

Pace removed the boy and held him until he calmed down, then placed him in the front passenger seat of the 4Runner and buckled him in. Amazingly, his vehicle had not absorbed a single round. Pace found a few empty burlap sacks on the ground behind the counter of the fruit stand and used them, as well as her green rebozo, to cover the woman's body. He then drove himself and the boy back to Saltillo and took him into the Hotel Río Salado. Pace told the manager what had happened and he instructed two maids to take care of the boy. He asked Pace if he wanted him to notify the police.

“I've been told that in Mexico it's never a good idea to call the police,” Pace said.

“The men who killed the woman must be narcotraficantes,” said the manager, “drug runners, probably Los Zetas. They were shooting at the fruit stand for their amusement, and she got in the way. The police and los narcos have an accommodation. I will call the local authorities if you request it, but, unfortunately, I do not think the police will do anything other than to cause you delay, and, perhaps, to cost you money.”

“What about the boy?”

“If he has family, we will find them. Do you wish to pass the night here, Señor Ripley? There would be no charges.”

“No, gracias. Thank you for taking care of the boy.”

Pace headed north. He would stay in Monterrey, then re-cross the border at Matamoros into Texas. There was nothing more for him now in Mexico. He turned on the radio and dialed in an American news station. The Vatican was considering the possibility of baptizing extraterrestrials.

 

 

5

The first call Pace made after he got home was to Terry and his father. Oscarito, Jr., answered the phone at his service station and told Pace that his wife was in stable condition and was expected to be able to leave the hospital in a few days. She was at Bay St. Clement Baptist but visitation was restricted to family members. Oscarito, Jr., thanked Pace for his concern and then passed the phone to his son, who wanted to know why Pace had come back so soon.

“Well, Terry, I ran into a situation just south of Saltillo that pretty much soured the trip for me. I'm all right, but there was an incident where a woman got murdered for no good reason and it literally turned me around. There are good people in Mexico but the country's kind of out of control, I guess. I'm not saying I won't go back there some time, just this isn't the time.”

After assuring Terry that he would supply more details about the shooting when they were next together, and telling him how glad he was that his mother was recovering well, Pace rang off. He sat at the kitchen table in his cottage, drinking peppermint tea. It was almost noon and frost was still on the ground. Three blackbirds were pecking at something in the grass next to the driveway in front of Dalceda's house. Pace recalled an old saying from his childhood: If you see blackbirds on the ground in January, it will snow. There were a few days left in December, so perhaps, he thought, snow will fall sooner.

The fact that the young woman who died at the fruit stand protecting her little boy shouted in Spanish the words for up and down could not have been a coincidence. Or could it? Had it been a sign, or a warning? Did the episode have any meaning regarding his search for the Up-Down? Pace was in a quandary. Perhaps it was foolish to attach significance to such a horrendous event, which had nothing to do with his being there. But why had he not been shot, too? Bullets were whizzing everywhere: How could they all have missed him? Pace realized that he was crying. Tears from his eyes were falling into the teacup.

He stood up and walked outside. The blackbirds ignored him, continuing their pecking at what Pace could now see were the remains of an opossum. He had not cried since Perfume James's funeral. He was still in shock, he realized, from the incident in Mexico. When in danger, Pace remembered, possums often feign death, in the hope that their pursuers or adversaries will lose interest and leave them alone. When the shooting at the fruit stand started, Pace had not had time to even think about playing dead; yet, unreasonable as he knew it was, he felt guilty that he was alive and the woman was dead. At least her child had survived.

It was too cold outside to cry. Two of the blackbirds took off; the one that remained strutted around the carcass a couple of times before pulling at the possum's tail. Pace went back inside the cottage. He decided to write a letter to the family of the woman who died, to tell them how heroic she was, that her selfless, final act saved her son's life. He would mail it to the manager of the Hotel Río Salado and ask him to please see that it was delivered into the proper hands. Pace thought it was important that the boy know of his mother's bravery and her sacrifice. He regretted that he could not write the letter in Spanish.

That night, Pace dreamt again of the jaguar and the woman, only this time, after the pair had been running for a while, the woman turned to look back at the bounding feline but he was no longer there. She stopped running, and Pace woke up. He looked out the window. It was not yet dawn and snow was falling.

 

 

6

It was unseasonably warm the morning of Pace's 80th birthday. This was July weather, not October's. Marnie Kowalski had called at six a.m. from New Orleans to wish him a happy birthday. She was sixty-four and already up and baking; in fact, she told Pace, she was about to open a second bakery, in Uptown, near Tulane, called Magdalena's, in honor of her mother, whose cake and pie recipes were the foundation of Kowalski Cake & Pie Company in the French Quarter.

Pace was on his second cup of coffee, reading a revised translation of Proust's
La Prisonnière
, and was in mid-passage wherein Morel is being excoriated for his detestable behavior, when the sound of tires crunching gravel in his driveway forced him to stop. An old Ford pick-up truck parked between the house and the cottage, and a tall, slender, teenaged girl got out of the passenger side.

“This is it, Daddy!” she shouted.

A well-built black man of average height came around from the driver's side and stood beside the girl. Their mutual resemblance was unmistakable. Pace went out to greet them.

As soon as the girl saw Pace, she smiled and said, “Mister, do you remember me? I'm Gagool Angola, and this is my daddy.”

Pace walked over to her, nodded his head, and said, “I most certainly do, Gagool. You're all grown up now.”

“I'm seventeen.”

The man came forward and extended a hand.

“I'm Rangoon Angola.”

“Ray-Ray,” said Pace, and shook hands. “My name is Pace Ripley.”

“Gagool has told me many times how kind you were to her when she run off.”

“He made me grilled cheese sandwiches and hot chocolate.”

“I been in a correctional institution, sir, been out now six months, and she be after me to find this place and thank you for your help in her difficult time.”

“I didn't really help your daughter so much, Mr. Angola. I did feed her, though.”

“A couple times,” said Gagool.

“Would you like to come inside?”

“No, thank you. We're on our way to Atlanta.”

Pace looked over at the old pick-up.

“You sure that truck will make it to Atlanta?”

“Drives better than it looks. I got a job waitin' on me there.”

“Daddy's a minister in the First Ethiopian Church of the Queen of Sheba. He's gonna preach and I'm gonna sing in the Daughters of Zion choir. I'm a good singer, good as Beyoncé. After I finish high school in Atlanta, I'm goin' to New York or Hollywood, get on a talent show, make records and perform all over the world.”

“I hope you do, Gagool. As I recall, Ray-Ray, you were up at Pee Dee.”

“Yes, sir, for ten years.”

“My daddy did time there, too.”

Rangoon Angola shook his head and said, “It's a painful place to be. If it ain't been for me findin' the path taken by the Queen of Sheba followin' her hook-up with King Solomon, I might still be lost in the desert.”

“Daddy's a Son of Sheba.”

“Sheba had a son by Solomon,” said Ray-Ray, “therefore, we who spread the words she heard from Solomon are also sons.”

“Probably better these days to be in Atlanta than in Ethiopia.”

“The founder of First Ethiopian, the Reverend Doctor Mandrake Ammanadib, handed down my instructions when I was a captive. My destiny is written, as is yours.”

“Mr. Ripley,” Gagool said, stepping toward him, “do you mind if I give you a hug?”

“Of course not.”

She embraced Pace and kissed him on the top of his head. Gagool was now taller than he was.

“Thank you, Gagool. Today is my birthday, and I couldn't imagine receiving a better gift than seeing you happy and reunited with your father.”

She pointed over at the porch on Dalceda's house and said, “Remember when we sat on the swing and my legs were too short to make it go, so you did it?”

Pace laughed and nodded.

“That was the last time I was happy for a long time,” she said.

Rangoon Angola and Pace shook hands again.

“I'm glad you've found your way,” Pace said to him.

“We all of us hold swords,” said the soon-to-be minister of the First Ethiopian Church of the Queen of Sheba in Atlanta, Georgia.

As Gagool and her father drove away, it occurred to Pace that Ray-Ray had referred to himself when he'd been in Pee Dee as a captive, which, of course, was the title in English of the story of Proust's that he had been reading when they arrived. Pace was reminded of a confusing movie he had seen many years before,
Orpheus Looks Back
, in which a detective investigating a murder says to his partner, “There's no such thing as a bad coincidence.”

A bluebird landed a few feet away and looked at him.

“I guess this is as good a day as any to be eighty years old,” Pace said. “Isn't it, Daddy?”

 

 

7

Often when Pace reflected upon his life, he thought that nothing of real significance had happened; at least insofar as his actions were concerned. Not that he had not gone out into the world and looked around, he had, and come into contact with all kinds of people, both good and bad. But had anything profound occurred by the fact of his having existed? Who but himself could even consider the gravity of such a question? He was convinced that in terms of merit he had fallen short; the world could have easily gotten along without him, as it soon would, anyway. Surrounded as he had been by so many people who ostensibly were invested in an ontological belief system, he never could buy a word of any of it. He did, however, finally understand that the Up-Down was the house he lived in, and always had. Why had nobody ever told him? When he spoke to Sailor or Lula, he expected them to answer, he really did. So what if they were dead? That woman who died during a tornado holding a frying pan in her hand; the young mother gunned down at the fruit stand; Perfume James when the roof fell in; Dr. Furbo with a hypodermic needle in his ankle; Rhoda Gombowicz dismembered by men, not the gorillas she chose to live among. What was intelligent about such a design? The Shoshone knew: We are all of us trapped in the Up-Down. Perhaps I did die when I fell off a cliff in Wyoming, Pace thought, or when the hunter in the orange hat shot me through the back and the heart; maybe that's why I was unharmed by the barrage of bullets in Mexico, because I was already dead, and only now am I beginning to accept it.

 

 

Part Seven

 

 

1

Pace still wrote occasionally. Having long since completed his book about Sailor and Lula, he added now and then to his memoir. It was odd, though, how the ways in which he remembered individuals varied greatly depending on his mood of the moment. At times these characters seemed to him larger than life, so colorful and exciting they must have existed only in his wildest imagination. Other times, these same people appeared in a dimmer light: sad or pathetic rather than exuberant or heroic. The magic of memory was undependable, erratic at best. Age certainly had something to do with it. Now an octogenarian, Pace remained stubborn in his pursuit of accuracy in depicting persons he had known. The world would continue to change but the dead could not; therefore, if any of them were to be remembered and written about, it was imperative that he resist the temptations to either mythologize or unfairly disparage.

Pace was fortunate that his health was good enough to enable him to continue living independently. His eyesight had not deteriorated appreciably since a measurable decline three or four years before. He could read in daylight without glasses; it was his night vision that suffered, so he avoided driving after dark whenever possible. Tercero, as he preferred to be called now, was a great help to Pace maintaining the Delahoussaye property; and Tercero's wife of two years, Angelina, came out from Bay St. Clement three evenings a week to prepare Pace's dinner and make sure he had the necessary household goods and toiletries. Pace complained that Tercero and Angelina were overdoing it, but in truth he enjoyed the attention and their company.

He never had gotten back to Mexico, nor had he heard from Gagool Angola since her brief visit with her father en route to Atlanta. Pace occasionally checked out television shows such as
American Idol
and their ilk in the hope that Gagool would appear, but either he had missed her or she was still singing exclusively with the Daughters of Zion. Marnie Kowalski called every week or two, just to make certain Pace was above ground, as she liked to say, never failing to remind him how fond of him she was and always would be. A day did not pass that he did not think of Perfume James; their lightning-like liaison had burned a mark on him impossible to ignore or erase, not that he wished to do so. Pace likened it to one of his favorite old horror movies,
Mark of the Vampire
, with Bela Lugosi. Perfume had bitten into his soul, she was in his blood, so part of her would always be with him.

When the small grays arrived, Pace was not surprised. It was in late August and the air was warm even at three o'clock in the morning. He had not heard their spacecraft land, but he assumed it was in a clearing in the woods on the other side of Dalceda's house. Several of the visitors were gathered outside between the house and the cottage. Pace observed them through his bedroom window. The grays were each about five feet tall. They did not have mouths but Pace heard them talking, making squealing sounds, regularly gesturing with their extremely long arms and three-fingered hands. Their two eyes were very large, covering a third of their faces, but never blinking; they had no eyelids. There were two holes on either side of their heads, which Pace guessed were auditory components. No visible genitals; wide, partially-webbed feet; protruding bellies; smooth, unwrinkled rumps.

The squealing conversations continued for the better part of an hour. Pace was not sure exactly how long the grays were there because he fell back to sleep, and when he woke up at six-thirty, they were gone. Pace dressed and walked over to the clearing. There was a deep, circular impression in the ground, and many branches of the surrounding trees had broken off. The only other evidence of the aliens' presence that Pace could find were a few semi-webbed footprints in the dirt next to the steps leading up to Dalceda's house.

Pace camped out on the porch of the house for the following five nights, hoping that the grays would return, but they did not. He remained confident they would, though, and hoped he would be there when they did. Pace did not tell Tercero or Angelina about the spaceship landing, and did not bring to anyone's attention the signs in the clearing; nor did he write about the event. If Sailor had been alive, Pace would have told him. His daddy would have camped out on the porch, too.