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.