THE SECOND MILAGRO (n/a) Read online

  She muffled her sobs with her hand, trying desperately to hear their words. She heard only the pounding of her blood. What her eyes saw spoke like thunder.

  Daniel gave the torch a heave into a pile of glowing timbers. He said something to Miguel. Miguel laughed loud and long and clapped Daniel on the back. A congratulatory gesture. Two men celebrating a victory. A job well done.

  They were a blur to Patricia as the men all piled into the jeep and drove away. She leaned against the rocks and swallowed a scream. Her thoughts raced and darted like sand fleas, each one a minute creature, but collectively capable of causing great misery.

  Miguel and Daniel. Together with the miners. Celebrating her death. And Rachel’s. She had no doubt Max would be next.

  A short while later she limped back into the clearing where Rachel waited. The light that guided her back down the mountain had burned itself and she struggled beneath a softly moonlit sky, stumbling, disoriented and afraid that she would not find Rachel again. When she did, she sank exhausted on the ground.

  Catching her breath, she took a blackened water bottle from a cloth pouch she carried and handed it to Rachel. “I found some water,” she said.

  When they had quenched their thirst, she wet a square of cloth and began to remove black smudges from her face and hands as best she could.

  “You’ve carried the smoke back with you,” Rachel said.

  Patricia tasted the smoke and the soot. The flames themselves seemed to smoulder within her.

  “There was no one there,” she said. “No one in the cabin. I stirred around in the ashes, but I didn’t see any signs.” How could she say aloud what she had seen?

  “Good. They must have left after the explosion. I thought I heard a jeep go by.”

  Patricia started, but said nothing.

  They sat quietly for a time, then Rachel suggested they might sleep for awhile. “Don’t guess anybody’ll be looking for us now,” she said. “They probably thought we were sound asleep when the cabin blew. Maybe we’ve seen the last of all of them.” She stretched out on the blanket that Patricia placed on the ground, and curled up against the cold. “If I ever get back to my own bed, you can have Mexico. When I think how it was my idea to have that young hoodlum, Daniel, bring me up here, I faint at my own stupidity. Tell me, Patricia, does he look like the devil incarnate, too, or does he just take his orders from him?”

  Patricia sat stiffly at the edge of the blanket. A face appeared in her mind. She wasn’t sure if she were seeing Daniel or her father in her imagination. Until the image was joined by Miguel, and she could see his hand clapping Daniel’s back. She had often thought of her father as being the devil himself, and now she may have seen Daniel in that role. Or did Miguel wear the horns?

  “Oh, well,” Rachel continued when Patricia didn’t say anything. “We’ll just hope he doesn’t do anything else to keep us from getting to Max. I feel like we’ve almost forgotten why we’re here.”

  Patricia flinched as if Rachel’s words were a slap. Her focus on Max had been blurred. She had forgotten, at least for a while. It shocked her. Her mind had a new torment. For the first time in hours, her thoughts began to clear, and she considered the impossible.

  “Tell me, Patricia,” Rachel said.

  Drawn abruptly from her musing, Patricia didn’t answer.

  “Tell me what you’re fretting about.”

  “Fretting?” Patricia repeated. She sat with her arms encircling her legs, knees to her chin.

  “You’re just stalling. You know what I’m talking about. I usually can figure out what’s happening around me, but I’m more in the dark than usual here. What exactly is going on?” Rachel rose to brace herself on her elbow and faced Patricia as she spoke.

  Patricia stared at her faint dark outline and knew that those sightless eyes were directed straight into her. She started to argue, to say there was nothing to tell. She was exhausted, had no strength to talk, but her mouth seemed to move of its own need.

  “There is something,” she finally said.

  “Oh no. From the tone of your voice, I think I’m going to regret asking, aren’t I? I am not going to go back without you and Max. You can forget it.”

  “That’s not it. It’s Daniel.”

  Rachel sat up quickly. “Did you find him down there?”

  “No. He wasn’t—in the cabin.” She whispered, “Thank God.”

  “Thank God? Now you really have me worried. What do you mean by that?”

  “It means, I’m glad he wasn’t hurt, wasn’t in the cabin.”

  “Well, of course, you’re glad. I am too, I guess. Hey, there’s more to this, isn’t there?”

  Rachel’s voice slid off into the night as Patricia’s mind drifted far away. It seemed hours before she spoke.

  “Remember the baby? My baby?”

  “Max?” Rachel’s voice spoke more than a one word question.

  “No. The baby I would never talk about. The one I was pregnant with when I left Alabama. You knew about it.”

  Rachel nodded. “Yes. Dosey slipped one day when I came to visit you. You were sick, the flu, I think. She said something about you hadn’t been ‘laid up’ since the baby came. You and Tomas hadn’t been married long and no one knew you were pregnant with Max, so, yes,” she smiled.

  Patricia smiled back at her. “Dosey thought I would be angry, but I was glad she told you.”

  “Well, that was all I knew. You never told me anything. I knew it died, so I understood why. When I left that day, I asked Dosey what happened to your baby. She muttered something about “poor child” and said I wasn’t ever to ask such questions again. I was never to mention it to you. She sounded terribly grave and threatening. I didn’t pay Dosey much mind in those days, but she got through to me then.” She cleared her throat. With a half-laugh she asked, “Why are you dredging up that ole soap opera?”

  “Because it didn’t . . . he didn’t . . . he didn’t die.”

  Rachel’s hand reached out with a jerk in Patricia’s direction, missing her. Her pale arm glowed in the moonlight. Patricia looked at it. The two sat motionless, like the stones around them. For a moment their breathing could not be heard and sounds of cicadas brushing their spiny legs filled the air.

  Patricia relived in a moment the night her baby was born. Felt intensely the finality of the birth, the relief at Dosey’s words. Those words. What had Dosey actually said? Her pain-tortured mind had thought Dosey said the baby was dead. Or was it just that he was gone? Had she really heard a baby cry? She thought it was in her dream.

  She could remember something about Carmina was going to take care of it. She’d thought they meant the burial. Dosey had said it was for the best. Patricia knew she remembered that right. What exactly had Dosey meant? Days had gone by before she had been herself after the birth. By that time, Carmina had left for Mexico. Why had she never questioned Dosey, Patricia chastised. It was an easy answer. She never had wanted the baby. She had been so afraid to have it, afraid of what it would be. Her father’s child, a reminder of her horror. At sixteen it had been easy enough to wish it away. Dosey and Carmina had made it possible.

  So much had become clear tonight. Carmina’s fear of her. Her attempt at keeping Daniel from seeing the deformity of Patricia’s feet. And above all, Daniel had her father’s face. With a sigh of acceptance, Patricia knew. There was no other explanation.

  “He?” Rachel finally said.

  “Carmina worked for Tomas at that time,” Patricia continued as if the monumental revelation she had just made were only a footnote to her tale. “She and Dosey must have decided it would be better for me if I thought the baby died. They also decided that Carmina would bring him to Mexico to raise.”

  “Carmina! Did she tell you this? How do you know that?”

  “I know. Because I know Daniel is my son.” Tears filled her eyes and sobs dammed her throat.

  “Daniel?” Rachel said the name with a mixture of reverence and disbelief. Then she sh
ifted abruptly, rose up on her knees and slapped her thighs. “His feet. It had something to do with his feet. And yours. That’s what you and Gena were talking about, what Carmina didn’t want Daniel to see, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes. I’m afraid he inherited a peculiarity of my family. Webbed toes.”

  Patricia waited for the laughter, but all animation drained from Rachel’s face and she bit her lower lip, then slid over until they faced each other, knees touching. She seemed to be looking straight into Patricia’s eyes.

  “My God,” Rachel whispered on expelled breath. She put her hands out and brought them together gently, catching Patricia’s face between her palms. She moved her thumbs slowly, spreading lines of tears until Patricia’s cheeks glowed with a wet sheen.

  Leaning over, Rachel rested her forehead against Patricia’s. “My little friend,” she said softly, and then pulled Patricia’s face down to her shoulder.

  When her body had given up the last wracking sob, Patricia lay with her head in Rachel’s lap. Her face ached, her eyes felt twice too large for their sockets. Memories had clashed ruthlessly against reality and slowly numbed her thoughts.

  She seemed on the verge of sleep when she realized there was one more thing to tell. It wouldn’t take strength to do so, quite the contrary, if she had any, she would use it to keep from telling. Rachel would want to know, and she couldn’t stand the thought of Rachel kidding her about some beau doing her wrong, or worse, ask if Daniel was Tomas’s son. So she began to tell the whole story.

  When she had finished, the first hint of dawn scrolled across the sky. “I’ll need you when I have to tell Max. Maybe when I talk to Daniel.”

  “I’ll be there. You know,” Rachel said. She stroked Patricia’s hair.

  “Yes. I know,” Patricia answered. “Of course I do.”

  “Then we can get some rest. Nobody will be looking for us now. They won’t be looking for ghosts.”

  As they huddled beneath the blanket Gena had given them, a breeze found its way around the boulders and swirled dried leaves and the lingering scent of smoke around them.

  The question now, Patricia knew, was what would she do, that is, if she got the chance to do anything. Was Daniel really responsible for trying to kill them in the cabin? Did he know who she was and hate her for it? How could she blame him. Whether he was good or bad, she was now pulled two ways. Like a mother of two sons would be, should be?

  Daniel. Max. If they all lived through this, there would be a time of reckoning. Max might hate her. Daniel would for sure. She argued with herself about which son had more cause.

  Ghosts. The word echoed in Patricia’s mind and she prayed that she and Rachel would be invisible to Miguel and Daniel until she could get to Max. Then she would find the strength to confront whatever reality the two of them represented.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  October 2

  Miguel pulled the jeep up to the railed gate at La Paloma hacienda in Potrero and honked the horn loud. A young boy, barefoot and sleepy, ran out of a small shack, quickly loosened a chain, and swung the gate open. Miguel sped across the cattle guard and up the drive to the home of his friends, the Randels.

  He bounded out of the jeep through rising dust, Daniel in his wake. By the time they reached the front door, it was open.

  “What in the world are you two doing out so early?” Rita Randel, still dressed in her nightclothes, red hair waving like a flag, was clear-eyed and enthusiastic to see them. “I’ll get some coffee and tell Carlos you’re here.”

  “No need.” Randel stood in a doorway, pulling his shirt on, his belt hanging loose at his waist. A wiry little man, he moved with grace, even half-asleep.

  “Sorry to wake you, mi amigo,” Miguel said.

  “It’s okay. Been wondering what happened to you. Where’s the woman we were supposed to keep for you? We got word that the situation had changed.” He sat in a chair and laced on boots.

  “It is a story much too long to tell now. But, I need your help. Again.”

  “You know you have it. What can I do?”

  Rita returned with steaming coffee. The men drank guietly.

  “We had some trouble up at the cabin. Some of Jorge’s men.”

  “That the same bunch shooting up the town yesterday?” Carlos asked.

  “Probably,” Miguel agreed. “I think they were looking for me and Mrs. Morelos. Maybe they were the ones who shot at us on the road. Maybe not.”

  “Did they bring the boy?” Rita interrupted.

  Miguel looked at Daniel, and sighed. “No. The miners do not have Max.”

  “They let him go?” Carlos asked.

  “The truth is, they only had Max for a few days. The army took him. We have not told anyone because the officials have not said when he will be released. You understand.”

  “Well, that’s good, isn’t it? That means you can tell Mrs. Morelos that Max is safe.”

  “Rita,” Carlos smiled at his wife, “We’re not in the U.S. The army is not always on the right side down here. Does that explain your sad face, Miguel?”

  “You are too smart, mi amigo.”

  “Well, what happened at the cabin?”

  “Jorge must have told his men that Señora Morelos was hiding there. A couple of the hotheads blew the place up.”

  Shock elongated the man’s face. “Was anybody hurt?”

  “No. Thank God. And Daniel and Gena. They got Señora Morelos and her friend out the back window, but Jorge doesn’t know it. He and his men won’t be looking for her now.”

  “Where are they?”

  Daniel and Miguel looked at each other.

  “On the way to Real, no doubt about it,” Miguel said. “And that is why we need help. We had to leave with Jorge to keep him from being suspicious. When we went back, there was no tracing them in the dark. Too much area to cover. Now I have to get into Real. They are two resourceful women, that is for sure, but we need eyes. Can you get some of the men and women and station them outside the tunnel? I have some photographs of Patricia you can distribute. The other woman should not be hard to spot; she is blind.”

  “A blind woman?” Rita’s eyes widened. “How did she—”

  Miguel gave Daniel a quick look.

  “I brought her here,” Daniel said, sharply. She was going to call the FBI if I did not. If they found out the army had Max, he would have to disappear to quiet the story.”

  “I told Daniel to bring her when he could not persuade her to wait. We thought we would be able to keep her safe here with you and Patricia. After the problem last night, I told Daniel to take the blind woman on to the cabin and to find Patricia and keep them both there. Now they are gone.”

  Carlos laughed heartily and poured himself more coffee. “Well, Rita, my dear, looks like we would have had our hands full with this little lady.” He stared at Miguel. “Noticed you called her ‘Patricia.’ When do I get to hear more?”

  Miguel walked to the fireplace and pretended to warm his hands. “We must find them,” he said, turning to face the others. “I am afraid she is still in danger. There are others, besides the distraught miners, or the army, who have reason to harm her. Patricia was traveling alone, disguised like a peasant, when Daniel found her. The hope is that the two ladies will continue on to Real. They will be safer moving with the peasants. That is, as long as we watch over them. The festival is in two days. We don’t have much time.”

  The Randels moved closer to each other.

  “That sounds ominous,” Carlos said, reaching up to pat Rita’s hand that rested on his shoulder. “We’ll get the people together. Where will you be if they spot her and what do you want them to do?”

  Miguel and Carlos outlined a plan. When everything was settled, Daniel was to stay in Potrero and help bring the people to the tunnel, then he would meet Miguel in Real.

  As they walked out to a breaking dawn, Carlos clapped a hand on Miguel’s back. “Some day soon, my friend, I have to hear the rest of the story about ho
w you two guys were outfoxed by this little ol’ American businesswoman and her blind friend. In the meantime, we’ll all do our best to keep them safe. I look forward to meeting the woman that lights up your face like this.”

  Miguel’s only answer was a grunt.

  * * *

  Jim Mainland paced his room like a caged animal. He ticked off the days in his mind and found it difficult to accept that it was Monday morning. He thought he would be headed back to Mexico City or D. C. by now, his weekend at the beach in Zihuatenajo over.

  What he had not counted on was being thrown to the sharks. He rubbed the back of his head where a lump the size of an egg still throbbed. His attempt to get out off the grounds Sunday night had left him unconscious for hours.

  He had suspected that he wouldn’t be allowed to leave as he had planned, but he’d played out the weekend as if nothing was wrong. Swimming, flirting with the bikini-clad girls.

  Mealtimes were not much different from that first afternoon. The Chief, Catera and Perez chatted away in Spanish, ignoring him. He had learned little, but he was glad they didn’t know he understood them. He had heard them say they were still looking for Patricia. She had given them the slip, evidently, but they still expected her to show up in Real, where they would be waiting for her. After his attempt to barge his way out, he’d been confined to his room.

  The idea of these crooks taking over the mines made Jim’s legs weak. He sat down on the end of the bed. In the United States a maneuver such as this, disguised as a legal agreement, wouldn’t last in court long enough for the judge to don a robe. Mexicans lived by a different set of rules.

  If he lost the mines, he had no doubt he’d lose the construction project, too. These three racketeers had no intentions of letting him succeed with Tomas’s plans. They’d just take the idea, the plans, the land, and get rich themselves.

  Thoughts of all the money he owed set off a jackhammer against his skull. One thing about crooks in Mexico, they openly dealt with their enemies. The “boys” in Virginia would be waiting for him in some dark alley when he least expected it. The hammer sank into his brain.