The Boys from Santa Cruz

6

The sun is low over the ocean when the old man’s surprisingly robust old heart finally ceases to beat. Asmador (he used to have another name, a human name he can no longer remember) presses his ear against Brobauer’s chest to be sure he’s dead, then gathers up his things and hides behind an elephantine live oak at the edge of the clearing to wait for the vultures.

And wait, and wait. The problem is that the corpse is too fresh, the process of putrefaction not advanced enough to attract the attention even of a Cathartes aura, which is able to detect the presence of a single molecule of cadaverine within a ten-mile radius. However, leaving the body to ripen into carrion on this hillside overnight is not an option. Vultures rarely scavenge after dark, and he hasn’t gone to all this trouble just to feed some mangy coyotes.

But the wind begins to shift as the sun sinks lower, swinging around to the south and carrying with it the faint, sickly sweet scent of decay. Asmador’s low forehead furrows, his nostrils twitch, and his unhandsome face takes on an expression of sheer animal cunning. Legs bowed, arms swinging, he snuffles along through the woods, bent double with his nose nearly to the ground, until he’s traced the odor to its source: a dead opossum hidden in a tangled thicket.

Its lips are drawn back in a snarl, revealing worn and yellowed fangs; its pelt writhes with oat-colored maggots. Asmador picks up the reeking carcass by the tail and carries it back to the clearing, lays it atop the dead lawyer’s chest. Retreating behind the live oak again, he sniffs his fingers-there’s something about the smell of carrion that he finds calming.

The sky is on fire to the west, and the sun has flattened itself against the vast, blue-gray horizon like a crimson-yoked egg sizzling on a griddle when the first turkey vulture comes swooping in low over the hillside. Its wings are raised in a shallow, dihedral V, and its body tilts unevenly from one side to the other. It lands clumsily, its powerful black wings beating backward, and takes a compensating hop, looking for all the world like a gymnast trying to stick the landing at the end of a vault.

Instead of rushing in, the vulture circles the funereal offering unhurriedly, with a mincing, high-stepping gait, its red head cocked suspiciously to the side. Then the arrival of a second vulture galvanizes the first one into action. Interposing itself between rival and prize, hissing and grunting angrily, it spreads its wings to make itself appear larger as it backs slowly toward its intended supper.

That’s right, thinks Asmador, peering out from behind the tree, his cheek pressed against the rough, elephant-hide bark-you chase dat dirty baldhead out of de town.