Beyond This Point Are Monsters

Chapter Eighteen

She awoke before there were any sounds from the kitchen below. In the half-light she dressed quickly in her ranch clothes, jeans and sneakers and a cotton shirt. When she opened the drapes to crank the window shut against the coming heat, she could see Tijuana in the distance, the cathedral gradually turning from dawn-pink to day-yellow, the wooden shacks clinging grimly to the sides of the hill like starving children to a teat. She could see, too, part of Leo’s ranch. Something was burning in one of the fields. The column of smoke rose thin and gray, a signal of despair.

She left the house by the front door to avoid waking Dulzura. The tomato fields teemed with the hungry birds of morning, but on the other side of the road the mess hall and bunkhouse were empty and silent, as though no one had ever lived there and nothing had ever happened. North of the mess hall were the acres of canteloupe where the migrants were at work, bodies bent, heads lowered and hidden under identical straw hats. None of them looked up or sideways; the direction of survival was down.

Jaime was late this year in harvesting the pumpkins for Halloween and the field was strewn with big orange heads. Although no faces had yet been carved on any of them, Devon felt that they were watching her, a hundred toothed grins and sets of geometric eyes. In the sky above her a vulture circled looking for carrion. Alternately flapping and floating, he kept coming closer and closer to her as if he thought she might lead him to something dead — a small dog by the side of the road, a woman wet from the river, a young man bleeding. She turned with a little cry, half rage, half grief, and began walking rapidly back to the house.

Dulzura, barefooted, was at the work counter measuring out coffee. “Mr. Ford called,” she said. “I went upstairs to get you and you were gone.”

“Yes. What did he want?”

“He left two messages. I wrote them down.”

The messages, printed in large careful letters, were on a sheet of paper beside the telephone: Meet Ford in court 1:30 for judge’s decision. See morning paper page 4A and 7B.

Above the story on page 4 there was a picture of a car smashed beyond recognition, and another of Valenzuela in uniform, looking young and confident and amused. The account of the accident was brief:

The other newspaper item was a box ad on page 7. It offered $10,000 reward for information on the whereabouts of Robert K. Osborne, last seen near San Diego, October 13, 1967. All replies would be kept confidential and no charges of any kind would be pressed. The numbers of a P.O. box and of Mrs. Osborne’s telephone were given.

She put the paper down and said to Dulzura, “Valenzuela is dead.”

“I heard it on the radio,” Dulzura said, and that was Valenzuela’s epitaph as far as she was concerned.

During the morning Devon called Leo’s house half a dozen times before getting an answer at eleven o’clock when he came in from the fields for lunch. He sounded tired. Yes, he’d heard the news about Valenzuela and Carla — one of his men had told him — but he didn’t know about Mrs. Osborne’s advertisement or about the time set for Judge Gallagher’s decision.

“One-thirty this afternoon,” he said. “Do you have to be there?”

“No, but I’m going to be.”

“All right, I’ll pick you up—”

“No, no. I don’t want you to—”

“—about twelve-fifteen. Which doesn’t leave much time for arguing, does it?”

She was waiting when he drove up to the front door. Before she stepped into the car she glanced up and saw the vulture still circling in the air above the house. He was riding so high now that he looked like a black butterfly skimming a blue field.

He noticed her watching the bird and said, “Vultures are good luck.”

“Why?”

“They clean up some of the mess we leave behind.”

“All they mean to me is death.”

Once inside the car she couldn’t see the bird any more, but she had a feeling that when she returned it would be there waiting for her, like a family pet.

Leo said, “I haven’t heard any details about Valenzuela’s death, or Carla’s.”

“The newspaper called it an accident and that’s how it will go down in the record books. But it won’t be right. He was drinking heavily, they were quarreling, the car was going more than a hundred miles an hour — how can all that add up to an accident?”

“It can’t. They just don’t know what else to call it.”

“It was a murder and a suicide.”

“There’s no proof of that,” Leo said. “And no one wants proof. It’s more comfortable for everyone — the law, the church, the survivors — to believe it was an act of God.”

Devon thought of Carla telling the judge earnestly about her jinx — “Like if I did a rain dance there’d be a year’s drought or maybe a snowstorm” — and of the last time she’d seen Valenzuela outside the courtroom. He was standing alone at the barred window of the alcove, somber and red-eyed. When he spoke his voice was muffled:

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Osborne.”

“What about?”

“Everything, how it’s all turned out.”

“Thank you.”

“I wanted you to know I hoped things would be different...”

She realized now that he’d been talking about himself and his own life, not just about hers or Robert’s.

“Devon.” Leo spoke her name sharply, as though he’d said it before and she’d failed to hear it.

“Yes.”

“Whenever I see you these days we’re in a car or some place where I can’t really look at you. And we talk about other people, not about us.”

“We’d better keep it that way.”

“No. I’ve been waiting for a long time to tell you something, but the right moment never came around and maybe it never will. So I’ll tell you now.”

“Please don’t, Leo.”

“Why not?”

“There’s something I should tell you first. I won’t be staying here.”

“What do you mean by ‘here’?”

“In this part of the country. I’m putting the ranch up for sale as soon as I can. I’m beginning to feel the way Carla did, that I have a jinx and I must get away.”

“You’ll come back.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Where will you go?”

“Home.” Home was where the rivers ran all year and rain was what spoiled a picnic and birds were seagulls and hummingbirds and swallows, not gaviotas or chupamirtos or golondrinas.

“If you change your mind,” he said quietly, “you know where to find me.”

Her brief reappearance in court was, as Ford had told her it would be, merely a formality, and the moment she’d been dreading for weeks came and went so fast that she hardly understood the Judge’s words:

“In the matter of the petition of Devon Suellen Osborne for probate of the will of Robert Kirkpatrick Osborne, said petition is hereby granted and Devon Suellen Osborne is appointed executrix of the estate.”

As she walked back out into the corridor tears welled in her eyes, not for Robert — those tears had long since been shed — but for Valenzuela and the girl with the jinx and the orphaned child.

Ford touched her briefly on the shoulder. “That’s all for now, Devon. There’ll be papers to sign. My secretary will send them on to you when they’re ready.”

“Thank you. Thank you for everything, Mr. Ford.”

“By the way, you’d better call Mrs. Osborne and tell her the court’s decision.”

“She won’t want to be told.”

“She must be, though. That ad has put her in a very vulnerable position. If she knows Robert has been officially declared dead, she’s not so likely to pay some con artist ten thousand dollars for phony information.”

“Mrs. Osborne has always been quite practical about money. When she buys something, she gets what she pays for.”

“That’s what I’m afraid of.”

Devon telephoned from the same booth she’d used two days previously. This time Mrs. Osborne answered on the first ring, a sharp impatient “Hello?”

“This is Devon. I thought I’d better tell you—”

“I’m sure you mean well, Devon, but the fact is you’re tying up my line and someone might be trying to reach me.”

“I only wanted to—”

“I’m going to say goodbye now because I’m expecting a very important call.”

“Please listen.”

“Goodbye, Devon.”

Mrs. Osborne hung up, hardly even conscious that she’d told a lie. She wasn’t expecting the call, she’d already received it and made the necessary arrangements.