The sheriff, Johnny someone, turned to Melanie with an expression that told her clearly he considered her at fault for having been on the scene of an accident in his district.
“Did you see the car fall on Demo Aguilar?”
She felt rather than heard the collective holding of breaths.
“No, I was beside my car. I only heard it fall. Heard him scream. Then everything happened so fast,” she said casually.
She could tell the townspeople suffered the tension of waiting for her to expose what had really happened, to reveal the presence of one healer—destroyer—named El Rayo, who carried the force of lightning in his hands. They hadn’t helped him, but neither did they want the sheriff to know he had been there. She didn’t have to ask why; she knew the answer. Teo wanted it that way.
“She was buying gas when the Chevy fell off her jack onto Demo,” the elder of the two checker players said.
“The Chevy was on your jack?” Johnny asked, his bushy eyebrows pushing upward.
“No, no, Señor Sheriff,” Pablo corrected. “It was the jack of Demo’s, but she broke.”
Melanie looked at the attendant with new respect. This broken, ignorant speech routine was an act. She’d heard him speaking perfectly understandable English just a few minutes’ earlier.
“The car, she fell on Demo. We thought he was dead. That was when we called you. But the car, she didn’t kill him. No. See for yourself. We lifted it off him. Now he is fine!”
The crowd murmured assent and pushed Demo forward to show the sheriff the faint remains of his once near-fatal wounds. Melanie was struck by how adroitly Pablo had turned the sheriff’s attention from her. The townspeople obviously wanted no mention of El Rayo to reach the sheriff’s ears. If it weren’t for the warning she could read in almost every pair of eyes, she might have wondered if she hadn’t imagined the entire episode.
But it had been real. And what she had seen in Teo’s eyes and had felt in his touch had also been real. Too disturbingly real. If they didn’t want her to talk about him, she would play along, but they couldn’t stop her from talking to him.
The sheriff wrapped up his futile investigation a few minutes’ later and departed into the early night amid much good-natured assistance from the men in the crowd, who helped him extricate his vehicle from the mud.
Melanie was about to ask Pablo for help regarding locating Teo Sandoval when she happened to catch a glimpse of her son in the back seat of her rented Buick. His entire entourage of movable objects was bouncing around the interior of the car like a mobile without strings, like leaves snared by a whirlwind.
She ran to the car and tried opening the back door. It was locked. She called to Chris, but he didn’t hear her; he never did when he played this way. Another thing to thank the PRI for, she thought as she wrenched open the driver’s door and lunged over the back seat to grab his shoulder. He started and turned, a sunny smile lighting his lips. Objects fell like heavy rain, clattering on the dash, the seats, the steering wheel.
“Chris, honey. Please don’t dance anything for a minute, okay? Try very hard. Listen to me. People are here. Don’t dance. Okay?”
Chris shook his head solemnly. “No dance.”
“That’s right. No dance.”
She backed out of the car, keeping a finger pointed at Chris to reinforce her point. She knew the gesture was largely in vain, for like any three-year-old, memory was only a vague dream and soon he would be lured into the delight of making the items move once more. As always, she knew she could punish him to make him remember to refrain from making things dance, but that seemed the ultimate of cruelties, to punish a child for what came most naturally. It would have been like punishing Mozart for writing a symphony or Einstein for fiddling with physics.
She quickly surveyed the group rounding the gas station corner. They were looking at her curiously, but not with undue questions; they had apparently only seen her race for her car and were now watching her with anticipation for her next unusual move.
All except Pablo. He had seen Chris, had seen the bobbing objects. She recognized the fact in his wide, fearful eyes, in the hand hidden behind his back, no doubt making the finger-and-thumb sign against evil.
“No dance, Chris,” she murmured, still holding her finger up in the air. “Don’t you dare dance now.”
Suddenly lightning rent the blackening sky, blinding her, turning the universe into a jagged gash of blue and red. A monstrous clap of thunder followed before she could even catch her breath. As if the sky itself were angry, huge drops of water pummeled the ground and the people standing numbly in the already sodden driveway of Loco Suerte’s gas station.
When Melanie’s eyes cleared, she saw that as one, the group had huddled together and were now swiftly clearing the area. Within seconds, for the first time since the metal-crunching crash, the place seemed as deserted as when Melanie had first arrived. Again, except for the gas station attendant.
He remained where he’d been before the lightning and thunder. His eyes were on the inside of her car. On Chris.
“You have to help me,” she said urgently.
He turned his eyes toward her. She couldn’t quite read the expression on his face, but instinctively knew it wasn’t unpleasant or even fearful. If anything, she thought she detected sorrow there. She lowered her guard a notch and found she was right. But she didn’t dare relax her protective walls long enough to probe deeply into the reasons for the sorrow. Teo Sandoval was out there somewhere, and she was all too likely to unconsciously seek and link with his mind. And this would be too dangerous now, he’d read the strange feelings she was already harboring about him.
“Just tell me where I can find him,” she said. When he didn’t say anything, she added, “Teo Sandoval, can help me with my—”
“He’s like Teo was,” Pablo interupted quietly, lifting his chin in the direction of the car, and the child inside. “When he was a boy, Teo was like that. God, how I remember.”
Whatever it was he remembered, it wasn’t pleasant, nor was it a comfortable memory. As if Teo were there now, and angry over being discussed, the sky again exploded in light and sound.
“Then you can see I need his help,” Melanie said. She felt tears welling in her eyes. The sudden thunderstorm was frightening and she’d come too far, been searching too long. She felt she had no reserves left. “Please, tell me how to find him. Please help me.”
The attendant looked over his shoulder at the dark, rain-drenched woods, and then back to her. Even through the rain she could sense his indecision, his worry.
“I won’t tell anyone about him,” she said urgently.
“I wasn’t thinking that, señora,” he said.
“Please…”
“Those people that took Teo all that time ago. They hurt him badly, I think. He never talks about it.”
“They are the same people that want my son,” Melanie said quickly, holding back a sob.
“Are they following you?” he asked quietly.
Melanie suddenly realized where his questions were leading. “No,” she said. It was a half lie. They were following her, but according to her prescient dreams, they hadn’t found her yet.
Pablo looked at her for a long moment, perhaps attempting to weigh her words for their truth.
She added urgently, “They want my son. They want to use him, just like they did Teo.” Even to herself, her voice sounded desperate, confused. She took a deep breath and added fervently, “But Chris is only a baby.”
“He’ll refuse you,” Pablo said flatly.
“But he knows what those scientists will do to Chris,”