As I changed, I checked my phone messages. One was from a state biologist whose name I had heard, but I’d never met. Her name was Emily Marston.
Emily—common nicknames included Emma, Milly and Em. Probably because it had been a month since I’d had a serious date, I wondered if any fit.
“Dr. Ford, in the morning I’m leading the necropsy on the alligator that was killed tonight. Since we’re working at the park station on Sanibel and since you were involved, I thought you might like to join us. But only if you’re interested personally. This is not an official request.”
I found the woman’s voice attractive, and her last sentence an alluring addendum that was, at once, both welcoming and dismissive.
Yes, I was interested.
I made note of the lady’s name, her number, the time of the necropsy, then went out the door after slipping a little Kodak pointand-shoot camera into my pocket.
As I did, my mind returned briefly to Tomlinson’s assertion that the bodybuilder Harris Squires was responsible for the Guatemalan girl’s disappearance. Was there even a small possibility that he was right?
I’m a careful man—particularly when a child is involved and when my own conscience is on the line. I gave it some more thought.
“Every paranormal receptor in my body is convinced that the guy grabbed her,” Tomlinson had told me, or something close to that. It summarized his entire argument. Everyone else at the trailer park had told us that she disappeared at night all the time. If they weren’t worried, why should we be? But just in case, while I was at the necropsy tomorrow morning, I decided I’d make sure Tomlinson went back to the trailer park to dig around.
EIGHT
WHEN HARRIS SQUIRES TOLD TULA, “YOUR FRIEND, CARLSON,
must be in a lot of pain because he wants you to come to the hospital,” she knew he was lying, but the voice in her head told her to get into Squires’s big, rumbling truck anyway and go with him.
This was early the next morning, several hours after the EMTs had refused to let Tula ride in the ambulance, and after many more hours that she had spent in hiding.
The girl knew it was unwise to linger near the lake, inviting questions from the police. So she had wandered off to her tree to speak with the owls, but the owls were not calling, possibly because of all the noise and flashing lights.
Even so, she waited, sitting alone in the high limbs of the banyan, where she could observe the actions of her second
patron
, Tomlinson, and his friend, the large man with eyeglasses, who was speaking with police.
Tula focused on Tomlinson, who was talking to Squires. She sensed her
patron
’s good heart and godliness, and also that he was angry about something. He was angry at the landlord, perhaps, who had used God’s name to blaspheme them even though they had saved his life.
Yes ... the man was angry at Squires. Tula had watched Tomlinson walk toward the huge landlord, and, for a moment, she thought he might strike him. Instead, the two men exchanged loud words that weren’t always loud enough for her to hear, but she heard enough. Tula knew they were talking about her and she listened carefully.
Soon, she felt ashamed because she realized that the landlord was telling the
patron
about seeing her naked in the bathtub. The girl felt her face become hot, and she felt like sobbing.
No man had ever seen Tula naked before, and very few women. Sitting in the tree, she had vowed to herself that it would never happen again.
Ever.
Not as long as she lived—unless, of course, the voice in her head, the Maiden’s voice, told her that she should marry. But that seemed unlikely, and, even then, Tula would not want it to happen.
The Maiden had gone to her death a virgin. Tula knew this was true, just as she knew every detail of the saint’s life because, at the convent, Sister Lionza had given her books about Joan of Arc. Tula had read those books so many times that she knew them by heart.
Her favorite book was a simple volume that included only words that the Maiden had written in her own warrior’s hand or had spoken before witnesses. Tula loved the book so much that it was one of the few things she had brought with her from the mountains of Guatemala. Its entries spanned the saint’s childhood, included her lionhearted testimony at her trial and, finally, her last words as flames consumed her body:
Jesus!
Jesus!
There was no intrusive scholarship in the book. No third-party guessing about what the Maiden had thought or felt.
That small book was pure, like the Maiden herself. Tula carried it everywhere and had read it so often that her own patterns of speech now naturally imitated the passionate rhythms of the girl who had been chosen by God.
Tula knew that imitating the Maiden’s style of speaking caused some people to look at her strangely, but she took it as an affirmation of her devotion. The book had been a great comfort to Tula on the journey from the mountains to this modern land of cars and asphalt by the sea.
Tula had memorized several favorite passages. There were many that applied to her own life:
When I was thirteen, a voice from God came to help me govern myself. The first time I heard it, I was terrified. The voice came to me about noon; it was summer, and I was in my father’s garden. I had not fasted the day before. I heard the voice on my right. There was a great light all about.
Soon afterward, I vowed to keep my virginity for as long as it should please God ...
Tula had not been in her father’s garden, of course, when the Maiden’s voice first came. Her father had been murdered by the
revolucionarios
as Tula, age eight, watched from the bushes. The memory of what she had seen, heard and smelled was so shocking—her father’s screams, the odor of petrol and flesh—that her brain had walled the memory away in a dark place.
Little more than a year later, when Tula began to feel at home at the convent, the dark space in her soul had opened slowly to embrace the Maiden’s light.
Another favorite line from the book was:
I would rather die than to do what I know to be a sin.
When Tula whispered those words, she could feel the meaning burn in her heart. She had whispered the phrase aloud many times, always sincerely, as an oath to God. The words were clean and unwavering, like the Maiden’s spirit. Tula could speak the phrase silently in the time it took her to inhale, then exhale, one long breath.
I would rather die than to do ...
... what I know to be a sin.
Tula longed for the same life of purity, for it was the Maiden’s writing that had first sent her into the trees to seek her own visions. The Maiden, Tula had read, had often sought God’s voice in a place called the Polled Wood, in France, where she had sat in the branches of a tree known as the Fairy Tree.
Tula doubted if she would ever see France, but Florida had to be more like Orléans than the jungles of Quintana Roo.
It was strange, now, to sit in a Florida banyan tree so far from home, watching the flashing lights of the emergency vehicles. The Maiden’s visions, Tula remembered, were always accompanied by bright light, which caused the girl to concentrate even harder on what she was seeing.
The lights pulsed blue and red, exploding off the clouds, then sparking downward, rainlike, through the leaves. The lights were brighter than any Tula had ever seen, lights so piercing, so rhythmic, that they invited the girl to stare until she felt her body loosen as her thoughts purified and became tunneled.
Soon, Tula slipped into a world that was silent, all but for the Maiden’s voice—Jehanne, her childhood friends had called the young saint. Jehanne’s voice was so sure and clear, it was as if her moist lips touched Tula’s ear as she delivered a message.
It was a message Tula had heard several times in the last week.
You are sent by God to rally your people. The clothing of a boy is your armor. The amulets you wear are your shields ...
Fear not. I speak as a girl who knew nothing of riding and warfare until God took my hand. We drove the foreigners away because it was His will. He provided the way.
You, too, are God’s instrument. You will gather your family in this foreign land, and free them from their greed. You will lead them home again, where they can live as a people, not slaves, because it is His will.
Trust Him always. He will provide the way for you.
Tula loved the solitude of trees. She loved the intimacy of this muscled branch that was contoured like a saddle between her legs. Once, as the saint’s voice paused in reflection, Tula found the nerve to whisper a question with a familiarity that she had never risked before.
“Jehanne? Holy Maiden? I think of you as my loving sister. Is this wrong? I have to ask.”
I am the God-light that lives within you,
the Maiden’s voice replied.
We are one. Like twins with a one soul.
Sisters?
Tula hazarded, thinking the word but not speaking it.
Forever sisters,
the Maiden replied.
Even when you leave this life for the next.
For more than two hours,
Tula had sat motionless in the tree as the Maiden spoke to her, providing comfort and the governing voice of God. She was only vaguely aware when her
patron
, Tomlinson, walked beneath the tree, calling her name, followed by the large man with eyeglasses. Whose name, she had learned, was Dr. Ford.
There was something unusual about her
patron
’s friend, she realized vaguely, as the two hurried past. Something solid and safe about Dr. Ford ... But the man was cold, too. His spirit filled Tula with an unsettling sensation, like an unfamiliar darkness that was beyond her experience.
The girl didn’t allow her mind to linger on the subject, and she was not tempted to call out a reply because she was so deliciously safe. Her body and heart were encased by the Maiden. The Maiden’s lips never left her ear.
Even when the flashing lights vanished from the tree canopy, Tula continued sitting because Jehanne continued to speak, whispering strong thoughts into Tula’s head.
The Maiden’s words were so glory filled and righteous that Tula thought she might burst from the swelling energy that filled her body. It caused blood to pulse in her chest, and in her thighs, until her body trembled. It was a throbbing sensation so strong that she felt as if she might explode if the pressure within didn’t find release.
You are sent to rally your people. You are sent by God ...
The first time Tula had heard those words was only seven days ago, her first night in Florida. She had been sitting on this same thick branch, new to the large banyan tree.
Those words had been a revelation.
Tula had come to
El Norte
to find her mother and family, yes. But in her heart she knew there was a greater cause for which God had chosen her. Why else would the Maiden risk guiding her to
El Norte
, the direction of death?
On that night one week ago, Tula had been so moved by the revelation that, as she returned to her trailer, she had stopped to address adults who, every evening, collected around a fire to drink beer and laugh.
It offended Tula the way the adults were behaving because she feared her mother had behaved similarly after she had abandoned her own family. Even so, the girl had stood silently, feeling the heat of fire light on her face, listening and watching.
Gradually, Tula became angry. The Maiden had ordered her soldiers and pages not to drink alcohol or to sin with loose women and dice. She had counseled her followers to pray every day, and to never swear.
These adults weren’t soldiers, but they were all members of the same mountain people. They were Maya, they were
Indígena
, like her. And Tula knew it was wrong for them to be living drunken, modern lives so removed from the families they had left behind in the cloud forests.
Tula stepped closer to the fire. She cleared her throat and waited for the adults to notice her. Soon, as voices around her went silent, Tula let the French Maiden guide her Mayan words.
“If your children could see you now,” the girl asked in a strong voice, “what would they think? What would your wives and husbands think? I am speaking of the families you left behind in the mountains. Your
real
families. Do you think they are consorting with drunken neighbors, lusting after money and flesh? No. They are asleep in their
palapas
. Their hearts are broken and lonely from missing you.”
Tula was surprised by her own confidence, but more surprised by the angry reaction of the adults. Men sat in a moody silence for a moment, then began to jeer and wave her away as if Tula’s opinion meant nothing. The women were indignant, then furious. They swore at her in Spanish, calling her a stupid boy who had sex with animals. And the matron of the group—a squat, loud woman—picked up a stick and threatened to thrash Tula unless she ran away.
Tula had stood her ground, looking into the woman’s eyes as she approached. Tula was unafraid, for, in that instant, she experienced something strange. She sensed the Maiden melding into her body, bringing with her a heart so strong that Tula felt a profound and joyous confidence that she had never before experienced.
“Sisters?” she had asked the Maiden.
Yes. Even when you leave this life for the next.
Tula had doubted the promise at first but now she knew they were Jehanne’s own true words.
As the matron drew near, Tula had smiled, saying softly, “Strike me if you wish, but I will only turn the other cheek. First, though, tell me why you are so angry. Do you hate me for what I said? Or do you hate me because what I said is true?’
The matron had sworn at her and swung the stick in warning but then stepped back because Tula did not flinch. Still smiling, Tula had said to the woman, “Do you remember the goodness of God that you felt as a child? He is still there, in your heart. Why do you fight Him so?”