El Cantina de Plata Soledad, Mexico
August 31
There is nothing like the silence of heat.
It's a baked dead sound that coats jeans and boots and the palms of my hands or the roof of my mouth until I gag on it. The taste is dry, gritty, like the water holes in the days when no rains come. The locals call it ardientes los dias. The burning days. The days when cattle go mad with thirst and the old women whisper chants to dead saints. It's also when the sons of the ranchers and the dope farmers and the factory workers come into town in twos and threes, looking to become big time hombres in a fight.
I'll be waiting.
I've learned a lot since I left her, mostly about things I never asked to know. I know what it's like to be driven like the cattle, crazy with the desire for something simple yet vital to sanity. To life itself. It's the kind of thirst that makes me ache when I reach out to take her gloves off and she's gone. When I turn to smile at her and find only empty air. My search for her left a trail of cockroach motel rooms and cheap beer from Vancouver to Mexico City and back again. A different town or refugee centers or city ghetto every night, but never a solid clue.
Sometimes I cross paths with some of our friends in the Mutant Registration Bureau who try to brand a number into my hip and ship me to a labor camp. I make them pay for what they might have done to her. I've relearned the finer points of how to make a grown man scream and cry, how to push him to the point where he'll confess to anything. But it always turns out to be a lie. They can't tell me how to find her. How to save her. Too bad you can only kill a man once. I die twice, three times, eight times, but then again I'm not a man. Death isn't the way out for me. Just a punishment for losing her in the first place.
Believe me, I've tried. I've looked for Marie on both sides of life and in all the cracks between but still...nothing.
I also know the whispered desperation of the old women, the quieter agony in the struggle for meaning in the meaningless. When I walked away from her, I didn't think I had a choice. She accused me of playing hero, but that wasn't it at all. I was the only one who could come back alive. It saved the others, but most of all, it saved her -- at least from one type of death. How was I supposed to know that there were twenty other kinds waiting in line? That they were just as bad, if not worse?
We were both innocent back then, her in her own way, me in mine. It cost me one of my many lives. I still have nightmares about what it cost her.
After I knew I wouldn't be getting her back, my life disintegrated with record speed. I wake up screaming five times every night, her big brown eyes staring at me in silent accusation, just exactly how they looked when I pushed her away from me that night. Love. Sadness. Fear. On top of it all, a plea. Stay with me. Don't leave me alone. Protect me.
Since then, I've seen things that only add a new dimension to the nightmares. My imagination-- that I didn't even know I had-- puts her in the mass graves at the camps, the brothels in the cities, the operating tables in the labs. I hear her scream and it pushes me over the edge, and I break into a bar determined to fight every last man in the building. I want to go down hard and bleed like she bled, like she might be bleeding still.
Does she still remember that day we kissed in the church? It was right after Jeannie and Scooter got married. I took off her gloves and kissed her, and she showed me a painting of St. Francis. Said he was her favorite saint because he believed in love.
What am I supposed to believe in now?
I spent six months looking for her before the dead ends led me to this godforsaken middle of nowhere in futile hopes she had made the border after all. The only way I can describe it was like looking for a rain that will never come. After a while I realized that this was my life from now on.
Empty. Dusty. Barren.
I won't say I've given up. Just dried up.
I sit in the backroom of bars that all look the same, in greasy Mexican towns with names I can't pronounce. These are dead towns, where nobody knows or cares what I am. It's not a bad life, really. I sit and smoke my cigar and wait for the boys to come. Word's spread along the border fight clubs that there's a white man traveling the circuit who's never lost a fight. So now, I'm a test of manhood. The first would-be heroes show up in June and the last crawl back home around September. They pull up in their daddy's pickup with their good boots and a new shirt, and throw a wad of American dollars on the counter.
I beat the crap out of them, of course, but as a whole I take it easier on them than I should. Maybe I feel sorry for them, stuck in a life they didn't ask for and a world they can't escape. The sad part of it is that every one of them still has that gleam in their eyes, the notion that if anyone is going to get out, it'll be them. I wonder at times if I'd be doing them a bigger favor to go ahead and pound the foolishness out of their heads before it hurts them. Before it hurts the ones they love...
Whoa, whose world am I describing here? Theirs or mine? I'm never too sure, anymore. I never meant to hurt her. I should have told her to stay away from me. I should have made her listen. I should have walked away while it was still safe, while she could find someone else to give her everything she deserved. But to be honest, I could never swallow the thought that leaving meant living the rest of my life without seeing that face. I'm living that way now. It's like dying every day without ever getting the luxury of official death.
I finish my tequila just as the next Geronimo wannabe struts through the door of the bar. Boots clapping against the hardwood. A sweaty wad of money in hand. A sneer on a face that is barely old enough to shave much less hold up in a brawl. The money lands on the bar beside my glass. The sneer turns in my direction.
"I hear you never been beaten, hombre." They all say the same thing. "Nope."
Not by some kid in fake Levis and a cheap cotton shirt. Just by a girl with eyes darker than anything I've ever seen, more human than humanity will ever be. She took me down using nothing more than a smile. She sucker-punched me with a beauty I had never seen before, then finished the knockout with a love I thought I'd never know. But where is that love now? The beauty? Lost, in a very big, very angry world and I've run out of places to look.
My fingers tighten on the glass as the Mexican keeps talking. "I'm here to change that, gringo." I shrug. "Why not."
I peel off my shirt and follow the kid out back. No, I'm not gonna take it easy on this one. Not today. I'm gonna hit him hard and fast and show him exactly where fancy dreams end up. He'll thank me someday, when he's all grown up and jaded enough to fit into the rest of the world.
But I'm not really thinking about the boy or the fight. I see her face every time I try to swing a punch. The smack of my fist striking his flesh mutates into the sound of her scream. I close my eyes to escape only to see her clinging to my shirt, fingers digging into my bones, screaming in my face that she needs me to stay with her. That she doesn't care what they do to her as long as I'm there ... and then I push her away...
It takes me fifteen minutes to score a simple knockout.
When it's all over, I walk back to my hotel room with the kid's blood on my skin and one hundred dollars in my pants pocket. I'm sick of this joint. Time to hit the road again, find a way to the next dead end. The next town that I'll only remember as a Place Marie Is Not.
I get halfway down the road before I realize I paid the clerk twice the cost of the room. For a minute, I think about going to get it back, but I end up walking on. I can get more money. All I have to do is hit one of the big fight clubs in Mexico City, and I'll have all the cash I need. Maybe someone will have heard of her there. I can't shake the illusion that I'll turn around in a cage fight and she'll be sitting at the bar watching me, just like the first time I saw her.
/C'mon, baby, tell me where you are. You're still out there, I can feel it. Come to me in a dream, give me a vision, and I'll follow you anywhere, no matter the cost. I'll even let them brand me and lock me up, if that's where they've got you. But you gotta give me something. This vague hope is killing me even faster than the momentary belief that you're dead. Or maybe that's just it. Maybe all I'm feeling is a ghost./
I leave the town without a second glance, but the blood is still on my hands and the tequila is still on my breath. I still see every detail of her eyes. The image burns, burns my mind as I walk three miles into the desert. I stand like the Geronimo kid stood in the bar and face the storm over the mountains.
Purple thunderclouds hover above the horizon, hurling white tomahawks of lightning to the desert floor. The thunder pounds a war dance against the stillness. If I try hard enough, I can almost smell the rain. But it won't reach me. I get all of the thunder and the lightning and the chaos, but none of the softness. None of the hope.
I take my gun out of my duffel bag. By now it's becoming a ritual. Death can be both a religion and an addiction when you can get as much of it as you want and keep on coming back for more.
No more pain, not tonight. No more thirst, no more darkness. No more being alone. I'll shatter into sparks against the sky, free until my body heals and pulls me back to earth. By dawn, I'll be on my way to the next town. The next fight.
The next step in the futile race to outrun myself.
I remember the first time it really hit me that I'd lost her. I couldn't handle it. I broke into a fight club just inside the Canadian border and started hitting everyone within reach. Once they started hitting back, I quit. I wanted to take a beating, wanted it hard and fast because maybe the pain would push her from my mind. Once they were finished, they threw my body into the snow behind the building. I don't know how long I lay there, watching the snow turn red underneath me and spitting up blood and crying for the first time in my memory.
Somehow I convinced myself that it would get better in time. That I'd find a way to move on, to live without her. That it wouldn't hurt.
My fingers slide along the metal to embrace the trigger. I speak my thoughts aloud because maybe, just maybe, she hears me.
"I'm gonna tell you a secret, baby...."
Click the safety off, push the barrel against my heart.
"It always hurts."
Squeeze.
Double Violin Concerto: Logan
You'll never be able to remember it exactly as it happened; the events refuse to correlate in straight lines and neat rows, but insist on surfacing one piece at a time, glinting like flecks of gold drowning in oil. You snatch up one to find it is of yesterday; the next is the same day a year ago. Pain isn't linear to you, it's spatial. There is no simple beginning and simple end, but rather endless variations on degrees of guilt and loss. In between it all, you even remember the happy time. That hurts most of all, like the ache of your teeth when you eat something much too sweet.
You collect these fragments of past and hide them in the palm of your hand, clenching them tightly beneath metal-laced fingers to make sure no one can pry them away. You go back and count them when you are alone at night, touching each one to reacquaint yourself with its unique ridges and textures. Sometimes the edges are sharp. Sometimes they draw blood. The greatest clarity comes when you are neither dead nor alive, awake nor asleep, but somewhere in the middle, waiting for your body to heal from your latest rage. You'll have plenty of time tonight. You felt the bullet pass clean through your heart. Even before you closed your eyes, you knew that this time it would be worth it. This time you got a good fix, a rush that will set you free. You knew because you heard her violin.
A melody that is clean, sharp on the edges, classically rigid, but diffused by the warmth she brings to every song she plays. She pours herself out through her fingertips, into the bow, across the strings, dripping from the instrument to pool on the ground around her feet.
(Marie is by the lake.)
Charles anticipated your question, again, a small smile on his face. A smile that was older than he should have been.
You could close your eyes and find her just by the sound of her finger dances, but you want more than a melody. You want to absorb every piece of the afternoon, to stain it across your soul in vibrant color. Scarlets, oranges, yellows, the colors of trees burning with life even as their leaves drop to the ground in layers of ash.
(We're all glad you've chosen to return.
I've only been gone two months, Chuck. Not like I was leaving permanently.
Perhaps you should consider it.
Kickin' me out so soon?
Certainly not. This will always be your home, but I fear it will not be a safe place much longer. I trust you've seen the news?
Why do you think I came back?)
The wind splatters the colors across the sky like finger-paints in swirls of leaves and bending branches. It smells of earth, of rich dirt and rotting leaves and bonfires. Of Marie. By nightfall, the chill will deepen and bring out an early frost. The clouds will freeze; more leaves will die. But you do not think of that. You are too close to her to think of that.
(Sometimes I believe Eric may have been right about them after all. We shall have to wait and see.
Do you think they'll pass it this time?
Yes. Can't we do something to stop it?
We will try. Now go, find Marie. Enjoy this weather while it lasts. Winter is coming early this year, I believe.
Why do I get the feeling you aren't just talkin' weather?
Now you are starting to understand.)
A step farther, another, and you can see her through the trees. She is on fire like the leaves are on fire, hair blown like a scarf in the wind, her lips set in a firm line as her eyes stare out into something you can't see. Her hands are bare. Unashamed. The fingers a blur of white across the bow and strings. Her gloves are neatly folded on top of the violin case.
You smile. She remembered.
She doesn't see you, at first. She is intoxicated with her music, and you are intoxicated with her, and for a moment you almost walk away. To break abruptly into the sound seems almost a sacrilege. Screaming in a church. Cursing in a prayer.
But you can't help it.
You step out from the trees. You don't say a word; she sees you now. The music dies. You wait for her reaction, wondering how you would react if she left for two months then appeared again from nowhere. She grins.
(Hey stranger.
Two months and I'm a stranger?
The deal was two weeks, originally.
I kept in touch.
A redeeming grace.)
Her eyes sparkle the way they do when she teases you.
(So what brought you back to the fold?
I missed Scooter terribly.
Ha. That'll be the day.)
This is it...you're going to say it right now. But what are you going to say? The moment is upon you but the words have gone. He wonders if she knows what Charles knows, what he knows. If she feels the inevitability, creeping up her spine, cold spider legs against the nerves.
Of course she does. But that is not the truth you came to discuss. There will be time for that. Now is time for ... You can't.
(Violin sounds real nice. What is it?
Bach. Double Violin Concerto. Me and this other girl in my music class auditioned for a state honors recital and this is the piece that got us in.
Congratulations. I've always wanted to go to one of those.
Liar. It's formal. You break out in hives at that word.
I'll wear a tie and my good jeans and we'll call it even.
So why did you really come back? I thought you said you had a solid lead this time.)
You've been moving closer to her as you talk, and now you need to touch her. Your fingers curl around a piece of hair that's blown over her eyes.
(Didn't work out like I thought it would.
Was it really the lead or was it the fact that they're going to make it legal to burn numbers into our skin?)
A wince, yours, at her honesty. When it all breaks down, she can take reality a lot better than you could. You fight it. She drinks it down black, straight, without cream or sugar or any other denials.
You wrap your arms around her, pulling her close enough to whisper in her ear. She smells of a strange mix of perfume, black coffee, and oranges. Or maybe you just think it is oranges because her sweater was orange and you had your face buried in it.
(I came back because there was something you had to know.
What? I already know that we're not going to win this one. I already know that.
I came back because I love you.)
You expect her to laugh, or smile, or maybe even cry a little, but she pulls back enough to look you in the eye and you don't see anything.
(You never had to tell me that. I knew.
And so?
So what?
So is it just me?
No, I'm pretty much in up to my neck in it too.
I want to hear you say it.
Now you sound like Scott.
Humor me.
I love you.
Good.
Good.)
And you hold her by the lake until the sun falls and the frost comes to drive you both inside.
The Wolverine & Rogue Fanfiction Archive
Barely Legal Since 2000