The Lord of Opium(76)

Matt looked down at his hands. “Most of them don’t live that long. I’ve improved their food, but something about the massive dose of microchips slows down their ability to grow.”

“Let’s go somewhere else,” Fidelito shrilled. Daft Donald took over and drove them toward the Ajo hills. They left the opium plantation and went up a road that hadn’t been repaired for a long time. Summer rains had washed out holes, and rocks had rolled down the hillsides. After a while they came to a turnaround and stopped.

Daft Donald wrote on his yellow pad: Car won’t go farther. We walk. Good picnic spot ahead.

Matt thought they weren’t far from the oasis. He hadn’t told the boys about the place, and he guessed that Daft Donald didn’t know about it either. He was reluctant to reveal its presence, because it was a secret shared by him and Tam Lin, and the man’s spirit was still there in some way. The only person who wouldn’t disturb this fragile connection was María.

“¡Ay, que padre! This is great!” said Ton-Ton. They had come out into a little valley. A stream flowed through the center, rippling around boulders and pooling up here and there into pockets of water stained brown by leaves. Water striders skated over the surface, making diamond patterns of light on the sand below. Rock daisies and desert stars bloomed along the bank, along with pepper grass that Fidelito picked off and chewed.

A scruffy brown animal with a long tail stood up abruptly and twitched its long nose at them. Ton-Ton reached for a rock, but Matt held his arm. “It’s a coati. They’re not dangerous.”

“Looks like a big rat,” said Ton-Ton, fingering the rock. The beast decided it didn’t like the visitors and loped off with a rolling gait. Its fur was untidy, and its tail had been chewed on. It paused to scratch its butt lavishly before moving on.

“¡Hombre! He looks like he’s been up all night drinking,” said Chacho.

Next to the stream was a smooth, flat rock, and here Daft Donald unpacked the basket he’d been carrying. He put out sandwiches, cupcakes, oranges, and bottles of strawberry soda. “I remember this!” said Fidelito, grabbing one of the bottles. “We drank it when we escaped from the plankton factory.”

Chacho turned away. Matt knew he was remembering the boneyard, and it wasn’t something he wanted to recall. The boy quenched his thirst from the stream instead.

A small stand of cottonwoods provided shade, and the wind blew through the leaves with a dry, rattling sound. “Do you hear those leaves? Tam Lin used to say—” Matt stopped. He wasn’t sure he wanted to talk about Tam Lin.

“He was l-like your father,” Ton-Ton remembered. “Where is he now?”

Daft Donald scribbled on the yellow notepad before Matt could answer. He was at El Patrón’s funeral.

“Oh! I’m sorry!” the big boy said.

Daft Donald wrote again. He was my friend. He saved my life.

“How did he do that?” asked Chacho, who had gotten used to the bodyguard’s way of communicating and was as comfortable with it as Mr. Ortega.

I was at the funeral too. Tam Lin told me not to drink the wine.

“Why did he drink it?” Chacho asked.

Daft Donald paused for a moment before answering. I think El Patrón had given him a direct order when they discussed the funeral. Tam Lin couldn’t disobey.

“Microchips,” concluded Ton-Ton. The bodyguard nodded.

Matt was overcome by such a feeling of desolation that he trembled. Tam Lin had not committed suicide as Celia had thought. He’d been murdered as surely as if El Patrón had held a gun to his head and fired. It was the same mindless compulsion that made Cienfuegos unable to disobey a direct order or to flee the country or to comfort a little girl. Matt imagined Tam Lin holding the fatal glass of wine and knowing exactly what it would do.

He bent his head and started sobbing. He couldn’t stop. It was like Listen’s night terrors, except that he knew what was going on around him. Chacho and Ton-Ton put their arms around him, and Fidelito looked up into his face with something approaching panic. “Please don’t cry,” he said. “Your padre was a great hero. Heroes, well, they don’t live so long. But they’re muy suave, and we all admire them.”

The little boy’s inventive attempt to console him got through to Matt. He shivered and wiped his face on his sleeve. “It’s okay, Fidelito. Tam Lin was a hero. I should remember that.”

“Hey, we all lose it sometimes. Remember when Jorge was rolling bread crumbs at dinner?” said Chacho, recalling the sadistic Keeper at the plankton factory.