THE SECOND MILAGRO (n/a) Read online

  A few minutes later, he called her into his office.

  “I am sorry, Gena. Forgive me for being rude. I am not myself.”

  She gave him a look that he knew was an agreement.

  “Is Señora Morelos a problem?” She asked.

  He didn’t see a smirking grin on her face, but one would have been an appropriate accompaniment to the question.

  “What makes you think this?”

  “Nada,” she said.

  He looked at her again, and that time, damn it, she did smirk. Patricia. He couldn’t get her out of his mind for two minutes rest. He had thought seriously about having her arrested when she left his office, but he knew it would be an outrage and she would gain from it.

  He had hoped, instead, that she would come to her senses and leave Mexico. Instead, she went to her villa in Acapulco. He had learned that she’d been trying to find a small plane and no one was renting her one. Had she been planning to fly to Real? That was a laugh, he thought. The only things that flew into there were birds, and maybe a helicopter, if you could find a landing place.

  No matter how many strings he pulled, so far he hadn’t been able to find out who was stopping her. And whoever it was, what were they up to.

  He was reacting to things he found out, not acting on what he knew was right to do. He didn’t like it.

  “Señor, why you not help her?” Gena asked, snapping him back to the present.

  He was about to ask her how she knew about Patricia when her question, which was more of an accusation, stopped him. Why? he thought, why not help her? Take her to Real, or somewhere along the way. At least then he could keep an eye on her while he worked to get Max released.

  “Gena, get me Daniel on the phone,” he said, his eyes on the instrument as if it would ring instantly. “Then, get me Señora Morelos’s phone number in Acapulco.

  * * *

  Patricia paced and slammed around the house all day waiting for Mario to send his cousin they all talked about. Rachel retreated to a quiet lounge chair, put on some head phones and effectively drowned out Patricia’s ravings. Finally, in the afternoon, Marta brought the phone to Patricia where she sat in the garden.

  “It is a call from Mexico City,” Marta said.

  Patricia grabbed the phone. “Yes?” She asked.

  “I hear you are looking for someone to take you to Real.” Patricia frowned at Marta as if she had something to do with the

  voice on the line. “Miguel? What—what do you mean?” She quickly became defensive, wondering how Miguel had heard. “I will take you there myself.”

  Patricia wasn’t sure she had heard his words right. “You will take me? You can get me to where Max is?”

  “I will do my best,” he answered.

  “What made you change your mind? Has something else happened?”

  Miguel laughed. “No. You are just a very persuasive woman. I thought about it after you left, and decided to call you. I will be there at dawn tomorrow to pick you up. Be ready.”

  “Miguel, wait. You may not can tell me all you know, but can you at least tell me that he is okay.” She held her breath.

  “I can only tell you that everything is being done to secure his release. Perhaps you want to be there when that is accomplished. Dawn, tomorrow.”

  The dial tone was as loud as a siren in Patricia’s ear. Just like that, she thought. No more answers. She still wasn’t sure she could believe Miguel, or trust him, but she certainly wasn’t going to turn him down.

  “Rachel!” She headed through the house with her news.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  September 29

  Patricia had spent the evening hours arguing with Rachel who was trying to talk Patricia out of going with Miguel. They were still at it the next morning. While she dressed, Rachel sat on the edge of the bed, her hand on the phone.

  “Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t call someone, maybe Jim, to stop you?”

  Buttoning her blouse, Patricia stared at Rachel. “I’ve given you a hundred reasons for what I’m doing and why you shouldn’t call anyone. And I can’t believe you’d even suggest calling Jim. Now, will you put down that phone and help me think if I’ve forgotten anything.”

  “How about your good sense?” When Patricia didn’t retort, Rachel added, “And that probably shows in what your wearing, too. My guess is silk pants and flimsy leather shoes. Like you’re going to lunch at the Willard Hotel instead of the mountains.”

  Patricia wove a belt through the loops of her beige raw silk pants and slipped her feet into her soft Italian slippers. “We’re riding, not walking and this is comfortable for a long ride.” She halfmumbled, “I swear sometimes you can see.”

  “You better be glad I can’t or I’d be tying you to the bedpost right now.”

  “Or hiding in the car with your bag all packed?”

  They both laughed.

  “That’s an idea, though,” Rachel said. “Why don’t I go along?”

  Patricia sank onto the bed and put her hand over Rachel’s. “You know I have to do this, and you know I need you here for me, don’t you?”

  “If you say so.” Rachel turned her hand upwards and the two hands entwined.

  “You’ve got to keep Jim off my back and be here if there is news of Max. And you’ll need to keep calling Annie and making sure she’s all right and hasn’t gotten wind of what’s happening to Max.” She squeezed Rachel’s hand.

  “She told me to quit buggin’ her. I think she’s getting like Max. Too damned independent. Knew I shouldn’t have let the two of them play together when they were kids.”

  “That’s right. But you were a bad influence on me, so we’re even. Tell her Aunt Pat sends her love.” She got up and slipped her purse strap over her shoulder.

  “Well,” Rachel sighed, “Since I’m going to be relegated to telephone duty, when will I hear from you?”

  “Everyday. Promise.”

  The two women embraced quickly. Patricia struggled to close a bulging Gucci bag, then set it alongside a large canvas pack. Roberto would carry the bags to the street.

  Miguel drove up at the first light of dawn in a dirt-encrusted jeep that looked like a tank. He was dressed in plaid shirt, jeans and boots. A Mexican cowboy except for a baseball cap that he whisked from his head at the sight of Patricia and Rachel.

  Although they had never met, Miguel embraced Rachel like a long lost friend, Patricia left the two of them and went to the kitchen to get the basket of food Marta had prepared for them. When she returned to the sala, Rachel and Miguel were in a heated conversation. She supposed Rachel was reading him the riot act on taking care of her.

  “I’m ready,” she interrupted them, giving the heavy basket to Miguel.

  Rachel was quiet until all was placed in the jeep. She hugged Patricia tightly, then extended her hand to Miguel. He took it lightly in his. Then, without a word, he took her hand and placed it against his cheek. Rachel lightly touched his features, her fingers moving swiftly. When the moment was over, she withdrew her hand, nodded her head and smiled. She gave Patricia one last hug and said, “You had better call!”

  Acapulco was just coming awake. Along the Costera, native fishing boats were being unloaded after a night at sea. Vendors were taking cloth coverings from their hut-like shops, which were stocked with everything from iguanas to T-shirts. A few joggers ran

  LINDA RAINWATER along the beach. The sun peaked over the cross on the mountain above Las Brisas as they turned at the statue of Diana and headed over the mountain toward Mexico City.

  The jeep felt like a buckboard as they dodged potholes, bounced over concrete topes, and swung left to right along the road to Chilpancingo. The valleys and mountains were emerald green in their lush summer growth. Coconut palms whipped their heads in sudden gusts of air. Clouds gathered. It would rain again soon. They crossed the Papagayo River. It rode its banks high, threatening villagers hawking their wares to the few who traveled this road in September.

/>   Between towns it was quiet. It would have been peaceful had the trip been for another reason and had she been with someone else. Neither one of them offered to make conversation. It was as though they had been ordered not to talk, as if breaking the silence would be a deed that would not go unpunished. She felt no need to talk, no need to question Miguel about what he was doing. Somehow, she was confident that he knew. She admitted to herself that she didn’t. A deeply rooted quivering told her she was scared. Afraid for Max, for herself, afraid of the future, and of the past. She tried to force herself to think positive thoughts. She called up images of her son and made herself dwell on the stories each told. Lulled by steamy heat, she rested against the seat, hovering between thoughts and dreams.

  It happened fast. Swirling, swishing air was the first warning, barely bringing her from the edge of sleep. Then her head whipped forward and back as if she were on a carnival ride. Miguel threw his arm across her shoulder and neck to brace her.

  The road turned to dirt and brush. They bounced to a stop. The only sound, trailing horn blasts.

  “You okay?” Miguel’s arm still bound her to the seat.

  “I think so. What happened?”

  “Crazy bus drivers,” he said, gradually moving his arm. “They race the road from Acapulco to Mexico. It is a game. We were lucky to have some place to go.”

  “He passed right on the curve,” Patricia said, her voice quivering.

  A silver bus rounded the next hillside, close on the bumper of a small white car.

  Miguel wiped his arm across his brow. “They will play cat and mouse all the way to Chilpancingo.” He put the jeep in gear and started easing forward. “Maybe you better not watch.”

  As if he had ordered her to do so, she looked out. Straight down. They had stopped inches from a three or four hundred foot drop. She closed her eyes and didn’t breathe again until the jeep had eased back onto the road.

  “Thank you,” she sighed.

  “De nada.” He said. “I guess you never rode buses in the States. It is a great thrill to ride this one to Chilpancingo. You should do it sometime.” His smile softened the sarcasm she knew lay behind his words.

  “Maybe I should,” she answered, and shut her eyes against his stare. She leaned her head back as if to rest. She felt dizzy, her thoughts a broken kaleidoscope. He still thought she had always lived a rich life. He knew nothing of long, tortuous bus rides. He knew so little about her. She was beset with images of a bus whirling by and of the dream she’d had the night before. She tried, but couldn’t fight the memories.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Alabama 1962

  She drove away that January night with Pa’s scream echoing in her mind. When she got to Talladega, she sat in the car down the street from where she’d lived since she was seven.

  She watched Jeff and Elsie leave together in an early morning hour. It took her only a few minutes to pack her clothes in an old Army duffel bag of Jeff’s, get the money she had saved, and the one possession she could not leave behind. The china doll her mother had given her.

  She drove out of Talladega without looking back. When the car was almost on empty, she parked it on a street in Heflin, a town near the Georgia border, and walked to the bus station.

  An hour later she was settled into a seat toward the back of a Trailways bus with a ticket marked Washington, D.C. She had no plan beyond riding the bus that far.

  When a police car passed the bus, she slid down in the seat, wondering if they were looking for her. She could be put in jail for hitting her pa, and running away was like stealing from the McFalls. Her cheeks burned with the shame of knowing they had been paid to keep her. And when she thought of what her father had done, tears flowed freely.

  At one of the numerous stops the bus made, a heavy set woman shoe-horned her way into the seat beside her. After a few miles, the woman spoke.

  “Gracious child, if you’re gonna cry all the way up the road, you’re gonna need some hankies.” She fluttered a large white cloth in front of Dorothy’s face.

  After blowing her nose soundly, Dorothy folded the soiled cloth and looked at the woman. “Keep it,” she said and smiled, face framed by gray-black strands of hair escaping a red hat.

  Dorothy tried to get comfortable in her small space, leaning more against the soft shoulder of the woman than the cold wall of the bus.

  “Looks like we’re both traveling alone. I suppose we ought to introduce ourselves. My name’s Dorsey Mayren Hicks. Just call me Dosey.”

  Dorothy looked into twinkling brown eyes set into what seemed a dough face, sculpted by amateur hands. “My name’s—my family used to call me Doe,” she said.

  “Well, lordy. Don’t we make a pair. Dosey-Doe.” The woman howled and slapped her heavy thigh.

  A man looked over his seat, frowning. The two covered their mouths and snickered until they wore down their laughs.

  “That’s more like it,” Dosey said. “Hate to sit next to a sulk all the way home.”

  “Where do you live?”

  “Washington, D. C.” The woman said proudly.

  Dorothy couldn’t believe her luck. She’d have to sit and listen to this woman all the way to the end of the line.

  “I’ve been visiting my daughter in Tallapoosa. And her daughter, my grandbaby.”

  The woman’s voice had a little catch in it, like she was going to cry, so Dorothy didn’t ask any questions. Anyway, she didn’t want to hear about families. She shut her eyes and feigned sleep, hoping the woman would tire of talking.

  “Looks like we’re stoppin’ here in Villa Rica.”

  Dorothy stretched and looked out the window at more unfamiliar surroundings. She thought she might find another seat and looked around for an empty one.

  “May’s well stay put, you know,” Dosey said, seeming to read Dorothy’s mind.

  “Why?”

  “More people’ll get on. You might wind up next to some ol’ boozer that’ll have his hand on your leg before we get goin’.”

  The woman couldn’t have said anything more convincing to Dorothy. Whatever her discomfort, she felt protected with the woman between her and everybody else. She snuggled back into the seat and the warmth of the red coat.

  Over the hours, Dosey talked more about her family.

  While she listened, Dorothy created a new family for herself. Mostly she embellished on the story she had told Rachel. The loving parents killed in an accident. Now the aunt she lived with had died. No brothers or sisters. She was on her own. She told Dosey what little she had to.

  They changed buses in Atlanta and Dorothy stayed close to Dosey through the maze of the Atlanta bus terminal. She had never seen so many people in one place.

  Back on the bus, which was an express and wouldn’t be stopping in every little town, Dosey slept and Dorothy thought about her future. Working in a diner, cooking for someone, cleaning house. These were her choices. She knew nothing else. If she didn’t finish school, she would never have any other choice, and how could she do that and work?

  Over and over, her thoughts came back to Rachel. Her friend. Maybe, she would get in touch with Rachel someday. But what would she tell her? That question and the idea of being on her own were like stone walls that rose in front of her. Impenetrable, unscalable.

  At the few stops the bus made, Dorothy and the woman got off for food or to walk around. After many hours it seemed that they had been traveling together forever. To get her mind off Rachel, Dorothy asked, “You’ve been visiting your granddaughter? How old is she?”

  “She’s goin’ on seventeen.” Dosie’s voice lowered with the words, and Dorothy wondered if she should have asked about her.

  “Why, she’s just a year older—” she stopped herself quickly. She shouldn’t tell this woman she was only fifteen. She’d probably turn her over to the law. “—than my friend Rachel,” she finished, with what she hoped was only a moment’s hesitancy.

  Dosey looked at her, red hat bobbing.
/>   “She must still be in school, then. Your granddaughter,” she stuttered out the words.

  “No,” Dosey said softly. “She can’t go to school anymore. She’s just had a baby.”

  Dorothy had known girls who were forced to quit school because they got pregnant, but most of them got married. She’d see them with their husbands and the baby and envy their little family.

  The woman was silent for a while. Finally, she said, brightening, “The prettiest little girl you’ve ever seen.”

  “I’ll bet her and her husband’s happy then,” Dorothy said, wistfully.

  Dosey’s eyes searched the young girl’s face, then looked past her to the fast moving landscape beyond the window. The dark eyes glittered like wet coals.

  “She ain’t married.” A heavy sigh lifted and lowered the lapels of the red coat.

  “I’m sorry. I just thought—”

  “I know. It’s shameful. I wanted Franny to have a weddin’, a husband. Her mother did, too. She was heartsick till the baby came, now I guess she’s all right with it.”

  “What happened to the father?”

  “Oh, he’s off in the army somewhere. He talked fast and smooth to my Franny the night before he left, promisin’ all sorts of things he had no intentions doin’. Just like a man.” She grunted. “Franny figured if they were goin’ to be married, it was no harm in doin’ what he asked. Wanted her to ‘prove her love.’ He sure proved his. Proved he didn’t have none. Not for poor Franny.” The red hat shook back and forth.

  Dorothy’s spine pulled up and straightened; her attention caught, riveted. “He must not’ve been a very good man. Did they know each other a long time?” That wasn’t the question she wanted to ask. It cowered in the back of her mind and wouldn’t be put to words easily.

  “No, not long. He was just home on leave.

  “And they only, I mean, just the night before? Just that one time?” The words tumbled out of her mouth.

  “Why, honey, you know that’s all it takes to get pregnant, being exposed.”