The Devil's Bones Read online

  THE DEVIL'S BONES

  THE DEVIL'S BONES

  LARRY D. SWEAZY

  FIVE STAR

  A part of Gale, Cengage Learning

  Copyright © 2012 by Larry D. Sweazy.

  Five Star Publishing, a part of Gale, Cengage Learning.

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

  This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination, or, if real, used fictitiously.

  No part of this work covered by the copyright herein may be reproduced, transmitted, stored, or used in any form or by any means graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including but not limited to photocopying, recording, scanning, digitizing, taping, Web distribution, information networks, or information storage and retrieval systems, except as permitted under Section 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  The publisher bears no responsibility for the quality of information provided through author or third-party Web sites and does not have any control over, nor assume any responsibility for, information contained in these sites. Providing these sites should not be construed as an endorsement or approval by the publisher of these organizations or of the positions they may take on various issues.

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

  Sweazy, Larry D.

  The devil's bones / Larry D. Sweazy. — 1st ed.

  p. cm.

  ISBN-13: 978-1-4328-2571-3 (hardcover)

  ISBN-10: 1-4328-2571-2 (hardcover)

  eISBN-13: 978-1-4328-2748-9 eISBN-10: 1-4328-2748-0

  I. Title.

  PS3619.W438D48 2012

  813'.6—dc23 2011038666

  First Edition. First Printing: February 2012.

  Published in conjunction with the Author.

  This title is available as an e-book.

  ISBN-13: 978-1-4328-2748-9 ISBN-10: 1-4328-2748-0

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  Contact Five Star™ Publishing at [email protected]

  Printed in the United States of America

  1 2 3 4 5 6 7 16 15 14 13 12

  Even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart . . .

  —Aeschylus

  To Sherry, for your love and encouragement

  CHAPTER 1

  November 10, 1985, 3:15 P. M.

  Tito Cordova sat on the porch steps, staring at the barren tomato field and empty migrant shacks across the road. Everyone had left for Florida, or Mexico, to spend the winter. He hugged his knees to his chest, trying to keep warm. It had snowed for the first time the night before. The snow didn't cover the ground, just spit from the gray sky, teasing his imagination with a chance to go sledding, make snow angels, and stay home from school.

  He hated school. Hated the boys who taunted him on the playground and called him names. They called him a little wetback or a spic. The words stung worse than a fist to the face, made him feel dirty, and confused him. He wasn't a real wetback, a mojado, but the boys were too stupid to know the sense of pride the men in the fields carried with them when that word was used in their native tongue. They had swam across the big river, made their way through the desert, following a coyote like little pollos, little chickens determined to find work and a better life for their families, for their madrecitas.

  His mother had made the trip when she was twelve, a few years older than he was now. She was just a little girl, following her father and mother through the night. She had said the stars were so bright she could see her shadow dance on the spiny cactuses, and hear the snakes slithering past her feet. She was not allowed to talk for fear the migra, the Border Patrol, would find them and send them back home. A coyote had left them just inside Texas with a promise he would return with a ride, took what money they had, and was never seen again. They waited for a day, parched and alone, huddling in the shadow of a big rock. His grandfather was enraged that he had allowed himself to be tricked, but they moved on, finding work picking cucumbers, cauliflower, strawberries, and finally, tomatoes in Indiana. His mother and his grandparents, they were mojados, but not him.

  Tito knew he was different, saw it in the mirror every morning when he combed his hair. Sometimes, when he was in the bathtub he tried to scrub his skin off so it would be white like all the other kids. But it never worked, his skin just turned pink and purple. His mother would yell at him, tell him he should be proud of his blood. Even in summer, when the others came up to harvest, he felt like he did in school. His skin was not as dark as theirs, no matter how much time he spent in the sun. He didn't know the language like they did, only bits and pieces, words his mother used when she was angry, sad, or told stories of her childhood home in the mountains. He was part white, part Mexican. A gringo and a Mexican. He didn't fit in either world, no matter how much his mother insisted that he did. She could not change the color of his eyes from blue to brown, or the lightness of his hair to coal black, or the deafness of his ears when she would speak Spanish with the others.

  Sometimes Tito was so lonely he thought of running away, of stowing away in the back of a pickup truck and picking grapefruits in the bright Florida sunshine with the rest of the families. But there was nowhere to go. He knew nothing of the work, of the world beyond the little town they lived in. There was no family of aunts and uncles, no grandparents, they had died long ago. It was just him and Momma once winter came on. And José Rivero, the field boss at the tomato plant, that his momma hated. She said he had traded his beautiful skin for a white heart.

  Other times, he dreamed of going back to the village of his mother's birth, where winter did not exist and the volcano, Juanconi, slept among the peaks of the mountains. Where the thick forests were filled with creatures he could not imagine, and birds every color of the rainbow flew effortlessly, with joy, as they sang from morning until night. Vendors sold tamales on the street corner, and in the spring the whole town gathered to celebrate the Passion with a big pageant, a representación. It did not sound like such a sad place, and many times, Tito had asked his mother why she left if it was so beautiful there. A question she answered just like everyone else did when he asked: “To come to the other side. To come to paradise.”

  He pulled himself up from the porch, and walked to the front door. He knew it was locked. All of the doors were pulled tight; he'd tried to open them three times already.

  His mother was not home and he didn't know where she was.

  The lady came yesterday, just like she came every month. She brought them medicines, and always on the day after the lady visited they went into town and bought groceries. His mother had sent him to his room, but he heard their voices grow loud.

  The lady always looked at him with sad eyes, but he never felt like a poison apple around her. His mother said the lady was a bruja, a witch, a healer, but she could not heal the wounds in their house. He knew they were arguing about him. They always argued about him. This time seemed different though, and he was afraid. After the lady left, his mother went to her bedroom and closed the door. He could hear her crying, saying the rosary over and over again. A pot of menudo simmered on the stove until he went to sleep. He could still smell the spicy stew in the morning.

  When he awoke and prepared to leave for school, his mother looked sick, like she hadn't slept all night. Candles flickered on the small altar in the front room, a tall votive with the face of the Virgin of Guadalupe the brightest of all. A statue of Christ stood over a picture of his dead grandparents, arms stretched out, a forlorn look on His face. Other statues of saints dotted the shelf, Saint Joseph with a long white beard, st
anding next to a pale Saint Martin. These were the only men in the house, ceramic and plastic, molded in eternal sadness and the promise of forgiveness.

  Tito had never known his papá. From the time he was able to ask, his mother told him that his father was dead. “Was he Mexican or a white?” he would persist.

  She would answer only that he was dead.

  “Is he buried in Mexico?” Tito asked when he was old enough to understand what dead meant.

  Silence was his answer, a cold turn to the kitchen where she would create a task of some kind to avoid him, or go to her room and say the rosary.

  “Dead. He is dead.” It was all Momma would ever tell him about his father. His questions fell flat, changed the air between him and his mother for hours. Tito was left with nothing of his father to see in his mind—no pictures, no name, just a ghost with blue eyes that stared back at him from the mirror. A man without a face, a voice, or a shadow. He searched for eyes like his own in every crowd, in every stranger's face, wondering, hoping, wishing that he could find someone to call Papá.

  His mother hadn't said anything about leaving, about not being home after school. She just hugged him and cried as the bus honked its horn. Before he turned to run up the road, she had stopped him, took off her St. Christopher's medal, and shoved it into his hand.

  “You will need this, Tito,” she had said. “My papá gave it to me when I was a chica, and it is rightfully yours.”

  The medal was cold to his touch. Her name was etched on the back of it. Esperanza. It meant hope, and that had always made Tito smile. When he placed the medal around his neck, he felt sad even though he didn't understand why.

  He had eased into the back of the school bus, ignoring the glares of the white boys, avoiding their feet as they slid them out to try and trip him. His mother walked to the middle of the road and waved until he could not see her any longer. She had never done that before. Tito waved back as hard as he could so she would see him. He wanted to make the bus driver stop and let him off once she had disappeared, but he knew he couldn't, so he sat down in the last seat and pulled his jacket over his head so the other boys could not see the tears welling up in his eyes.

  Now, the sun was starting to fall from the sky and it would be dark soon.

  He was hungry.

  The thin blue jean jacket he wore wasn't keeping him very warm, so he started to pace back and forth across the porch, jumping over his school books, turning back and jumping again. There was nothing else for him to do. The nearest neighbor was half a mile up the road and Mr. Jacobson didn't like him or his mother too well. He figured if it got dark and she wasn't home yet, he'd walk down the road anyway and ask Mr. Jacobson if he knew where his mother was.

  Unconsciously, Tito touched the medal around his neck. He rubbed the face of the saint softly and shivered. “Momma, where are you?” he said out loud.

  He heard a car coming up the road and a flicker of hope warmed his face. The road was gravel, and sometimes in the summer you could see a dust plume long before you saw the car, but not today. The car had appeared out of nowhere. He stopped jumping and eyed the road.

  The car was moving very slow. He knew immediately it was not his mother's car. For a moment he was relieved, almost happy at the prospect of being rescued.

  As the car pulled up in front of the house, the driver flipped on its high beams. Tito was caught in the light, standing twenty feet in the car's path.

  He strained to see inside the car, but he was blinded, stunned like a raccoon in the road.

  The door opened and he saw a man stand up, while another person stayed in the passenger seat. All of his relief and hope faded.

  He backed up against the house, wishing he were like one of those moths that blended into the bark of maple trees. The same scary feeling he'd had last night after the lady stormed out of the house flooded his whole body. His mind screamed at him to run instead of just standing there, but when he tried to move, his stomach clenched so tight he thought he was going to vomit the ham sandwich he'd had for lunch. Sweat beaded on his forehead and he was afraid.

  He couldn't scream for help. His voice was stuck in the base of his throat.

  The man moved closer, saying his name over and over again, calling him a little wetback bastard.

  Tito started to run. He ran so fast that he thought he was going to be able to jump up into the sky and fly away. But he was not fast enough. He could feel hot breath on the back of his neck and hear the hate in the man's voice as he was wrestled to the ground and dragged to the car.

  “Please Momma, come home!” he screamed. “Please come home!”

  CHAPTER 2

  August 21, 2004, 4:34 A. M.

  A dog barked outside the bedroom window, distant, but close enough to force Jordan McManus to open his eyes. He hesitated to move—his arms and legs were tangled in the sheets with Ginny Kirsch's body. She had her back to him, their bodies molded to a perfect fit, their fingers still entwined, though the pressure and force of hanging on to each other was gone. Her breathing had returned to normal and they both had been silent as they drifted in and out of a dream world, in and out of the past, fifteen years before, when their love was new. The dog's sudden alarm put a final end to making love, and to the start of a gnawing feeling in the pit of Jordan's stomach that he'd just made a big mistake.

  The past slipped away quickly for Jordan as he began to pull away from Ginny. The familiar touch they once had for each other no longer existed. It had vanished over the years when they'd see each other on the street, both married to someone else, their lives separate, but bound by the closeness of the small town they lived in, by the connections they still shared. Jordan's marriage had ended a year before, and Ginny's was, and always had been, more than a little rocky. This was the first time in nine years they'd let themselves cross the line, touch in any way beyond a knowing, longing glance.

  “I've got to go,” Jordan said. Ginny opened her eyes halfway, as if she didn't believe him. His police radio sat on the nightstand, silent except for a steady low-level buzz. The window was open and a pair of sheer white curtains had been pulled aside and fastened to the wall with a thumbtack. A fan sat on the floor, aimed at the bed, blowing warm muggy air over the sweat-soaked sheets. The small bedroom at the back of the fourteen-by-seventy-foot trailer was as hot as a jungle at noon.

  Dim light from the bathroom softened the cracked wood paneling that covered the walls, a jumble of half-empty perfume bottles on the dresser at the foot of the bed, and the pile of dirty laundry that lay in front of the open closet. There was nothing Jordan could see through the window that made him think anything was wrong beyond the walls. It was just a feeling. The kind you learn to trust when you wear a gun and a badge. A dog doesn't start barking at four-thirty in the morning for nothing.

  “Can't you stay a little longer?” Ginny whispered. Her deep blue eyes were wide open, masked with a hardness he did not know.

  “No, I'm still on shift.”

  He reached to the floor and grabbed his boxers and uniform pants. His shirt was by the door, next to the dresser. Somehow, he'd managed to lay his utility belt and 9mm Glock on top of the dresser without knocking over any pictures or perfume bottles. His socks and shoes were lost in a pile of clothes that had not found their way to the laundry pile, tossed in an anxious, heated moment without any regard to where they'd landed. He was really in no mood to go on a scavenger hunt for his uniform through the mess on the floor. The fog was lifting from the drunkenness of his desire for Ginny's body, and he was surprised to find it had left a sour taste in his mouth.

  “Like anything's gonna happen,” Ginny said, sitting up. “It's been a long time, Jordan.” Her voice was scratchy and weak, like she'd smoked a pack of cigarettes in the last ten minutes.

  “No, I've really gotta go.” As quickly as the dog started barking, it stopped. Silence returned beyond the window, almost oppressively—even the crickets stopped chirping. All Jordan could hear was the fan whirling
a million miles an hour and his heartbeat racing at the same rhythm as the blades of the fan. This was more than a trip back to his teenage fantasy world—the land of no consequences, the pleasure palace of new experiences. It was a fall. A headlong dive into home base when it was obvious the game was over a long time ago. He took a deep breath and headed for the bathroom.

  Ginny reached out to touch him, to stop him, but it was a half-hearted attempt. Her hand fell back to the bed, and she closed her eyes and exhaled. Contempt was already spreading between them. Love for them had never been easy outside of the bedroom.

  Jordan wanted a cigarette, but they were in the police cruiser parked a block away, hidden behind the Sunoco station that had been closed since they were kids. He relieved himself, washed his face and hands, and avoided looking in the mirror or at Ed Kirsch's razor and shaving cream that sat on the side of the iron-stained sink. There was barely enough room in the bathroom for him to bend over and pull on his boxers and pants. He immediately felt closed in, trapped, suffocated by the smell of another man's after-shave. He washed his hands and face again to try and regain his senses. It didn't help.

  This time, though, he caught a glimpse of his reflection in the mirror when he looked up. Like his mother, Jordan had sandy blonde hair, and wore it cut close to his skull, exposing a thin line on each side of his head, a pattern of baldness already genetically predetermined. A faded three-inch scar zigzagged under his right eye, nothing more than a blemish now that his skin had tanned from the hot summer sun. The scar was too difficult to think about, and for the most part, he rarely noticed it. He kept the memory of the scar hidden away in a dark and unreachable place in his heart, in a dungeon of anger he'd fought most of his life to keep bolted and locked.

  He had his father's blue eyes—a misty blue that always held a hint of sadness, like dusk settling onto the horizon after a perfect summer day. If he could change anything about his appearance it would be his eyes. He saw nothing but betrayal in his father's eyes, and now, in his own. Jordan always swore he'd never be anything like his father. But he'd failed to live up to that vow when he slipped into bed with another man's wife. The door to the dungeon was cracked open, and the old rage made his head throb—he looked quickly in the medicine cabinet for a bottle of aspirin. He closed the mirrored door as soon as he saw a needle and a small wad of aluminum foil stuffed behind a half tube of toothpaste, and hurried out of the bathroom.