The House of the Scorpion (29 page)

“One year, during that feast, my little sisters caught typhoid. They died in the same hour. They were so small, they couldn't look over the windowsill—no, not even if they stood on tiptoe.”

The room was deathly still. Matt heard a dove calling from the roof of the hospital.
No hope
, it said.
No hope. No hope.

“During the following years each of my five brothers died; two drowned, one had a burst appendix, and we had no money for the doctor. The last two brothers were beaten to death by the police. There were eight of us,” said El Patrón, “and only I lived to grow up.
Don't you think I'm owed those lives?
” El Patrón spoke so sharply, Matt jolted up in his chair. The story wasn't ending the way he'd expected.

“There were eight of us,” the old man cried. “We should all have grown up, but I was the only survivor. I am meant to have those lives! I am meant to have justice!”

Matt tried to stand. He was shoved back down by the bodyguards.

“Justice?” said Celia. It was the first word she had spoken.

“You know what it was like,” El Patrón whispered, his strength deserting him now after his outburst. “You came from the same village.”

“You've had many lives,” Celia said. “Thousands of them are buried under the poppy fields.”

“Oh, them!” El Patrón was dismissive. “They're like cattle running after greener grass. They scuttle north and south across my fields. Oh, yes,” he said when Matt raised his eyebrows. “In the beginning the tide was all one way. The Aztlános ran north to find the big Hollywood lifestyle. But the United States isn't the rich paradise it once was. Now the Americanos look at movies about Aztlán and think life is pretty sweet down there. I catch about as many going one way as the other.”

“El Viejo was the only good man in this family,” said Celia. “He accepted what God gave him, and when God told him it was time to go, he did it.” Matt was amazed by her courage. People didn't argue with El Patrón if they wanted to stay healthy.

“El Viejo was a fool,” whispered El Patrón. For a few moments he stopped speaking. A doctor came in and listened to his heart. He gave him an injection.

“The operating room is ready,” the doctor said in a low voice. Matt was swept by an icy wave of terror.

“Not yet,” murmured the old man.

“Ten more minutes,” said the doctor.

El Patrón seemed to gather his strength for a last effort. “I created you, Mi Vida, as God created Adam.”

Celia sniffed indignantly.

“Without me, you would never have seen a beautiful sunset or smelled the rain approaching on the wind. You would never
have tasted cool water on a hot summer day. Or heard music or known the wonderful pleasure of creating it. I gave you these things, Mi Vida. You . . .
owe
 . . . me.”

“He owes you nothing,” Celia said.

Matt was afraid for her. El Patrón was capable of destroying a person who angered him. But the old man merely smiled. “We make a fine pair of scorpions, don't we?”

“Speak for yourself,” said Celia. “Matt owes you nothing, and he's going to pay you nothing. You can't use him for transplants.”

The guards stirred when they heard this. The doctor looked up from the monitor he was watching.

“When you had your first heart attack, I poisoned Matt with foxglove from my garden,” said Celia. “I'm a
curandera
, you know, as well as a cook. I made Matt's heart too unstable to transplant.”

El Patrón's eyes bulged. He opened his mouth, but nothing came out. The doctor rushed to his side.

“I couldn't keep on giving Matt foxglove, though. It's much too dangerous. I needed something that would make him sick, but not too sick. Then someone told me about monarch butterflies.”

Matt sat up, only to have a bodyguard's hands tighten on his shoulders. He knew about the monarchs. Tam Lin had talked about them in the garden, the night of Matt's coming-of-age celebration. The air had been heavy with perfumes, some pleasant, some not, from the flowers Celia had become interested in. She'd pointed out the black-eyed Susans, larkspur, foxgloves, and milkweed, and Tam Lin was stirred when she'd mentioned milkweed.
It's fed upon by monarch butterflies
, he'd said.
They're clever little buggers. Fill themselves up with poison so nothing will eat them.

Matt had paid no attention to this remark at the time. Tam Lin was always coming up with facts he got out of the nature books he read so slowly and carefully.

“I needed something like the poison in monarch butterflies,” said Celia, breaking into Matt's thoughts. “So I began feeding him arsenic.”

“Arsenic!”
the doctor cried.

“Arsenic creeps into the whole body,” Celia went on, her eyes as cold as the eyes of a snake. “It grows into the hair, it makes little white lines on the fingernails, it settles into the
heart.
I didn't give Matt enough to kill him—I wouldn't do that!—but enough to kill anyone already weak who tried to steal his heart. You've had your eight lives, El Patrón. It's time to make your peace with God.”

“
¡Bruja!
Witch!” shrieked El Patrón. His eyes flamed with murderous rage. His skin flushed an angry red. He struggled to claw his way up from the bed.

“Emergency!” yelled the doctor. “Take him to the operating room! Move! Move! Move!”

The guards rolled the bed away. The doctor ran beside it, pushing on El Patrón's chest. Suddenly the whole building seethed like a wasp nest. More guards appeared—an army of them. Two of them hurried Celia off in spite of Matt's attempts to stop them. A technician snipped off a strand of Matt's hair and retreated.

He was alone. Alone, that is, except for four burly men who sat outside the window and an unknown number lurking outside the door. It was a beautiful room, with a carpet patterned in the colors of the oasis. Matt saw the red of canyon walls, the heavy green of creosote, and a blue that was the color of the sky trapped between high cliffs. If he half
closed his eyes, he could almost imagine himself there, in the quiet shadows of the Ajo Mountains.

•   •   •

He waited. It had been morning when El Patrón was wheeled out. Now it was afternoon. The panic had died down outside, and the halls were nearly silent. The hospital went about its business without involving the prisoner in the elegant drawing room.

Matt finished the tea and ate all the cookies. He felt utterly exhausted. Everything had been turned upside down, and he didn't know whether El Patrón's death would mean safety or exactly the opposite.

Matt studied his arm and wondered at the arsenic that lurked inside. Would mosquitoes die if they bit him? Could he kill things by spitting on them? It was an interesting thought. Matt discovered that no matter how terrified he'd been at first, it wasn't possible to stay terrified. It was as though his brain said,
Okay. That's enough. Let's find something else to do.

Matt thought about María instead. She was probably back at the convent. He didn't know what she did there, aside from eating chocolates and sunbathing naked on the roof. What a crazy thing to do. What an
interesting
thing to do. Matt's face turned warm as he thought about it. He'd seen paintings of fat, naked goddesses from Rome in his art classes. He thought they were nice, but no one ran around like that in real life. Or did they? He didn't know how people behaved in the outside world.

Anyhow, María had gotten into trouble for it. Matt felt feverish, but it wasn't surprising, being full of arsenic as he was. He wondered what other stuff Celia had tried on him from her garden.

The door swung open. Mr. Alacrán strode in with Tam Lin.

For an instant time froze. Matt was six years old again, lying in a pool of blood with Rosa plucking fragments of glass from his foot. A fierce man had burst into the room and shouted,
How dare you defile this house? Take the creature outside now!

It was the first time Matt had realized he wasn't human. The fierce man had been Mr. Alacrán, and he had the same expression of loathing on his face now as he looked at Matt.

“I'm here to inform you we no longer need your services,” Mr. Alacrán said.

Matt gasped. That meant El Patrón was dead. No matter how often he'd thought about it, the reality came as a blow.

“I—I'm sorry.” Silent tears began to roll down Matt's face. He could keep himself from blubbering, but there was nothing he could do about the grief that welled up inside.

“I imagine you are,” said Mr. Alacrán. “It means we no longer have a use for you.”

Of course you have a use for me
, Matt thought. He knew as much about running Opium as Steven. He'd studied the farming techniques, the day-to-day problems of water purification and food distribution. He probably knew more than anyone about the network of spies and corrupt officials in other countries. Years of listening to El Patrón had given Matt a feel for the Alacrán empire no one else could possibly have.

“Have it put to sleep,” Mr. Alacrán said to Tam Lin.

“Yes, sir,” said Tam Lin.

“What do you mean?” cried Matt. “El Patrón wouldn't want that! He had me educated. He wanted me to help run the country.”

Tam Lin looked at him in pity. “You poor fool. El Patrón had seven other clones exactly like you, each one educated and believing he was going to run the country.”

“I don't believe it!”

“I have to admit, you were the first one with musical genius. But we can always turn on the radio if we want that.”

“You can't do this! We're friends! You said so! You left me a note—” Matt was knocked down by a blow that made him see stars. No one had ever struck him. No one was allowed to. He crawled to his knees, holding his jaw. He was even more shocked by the person who'd done it.

Tam Lin.

Tam Lin was an ex-terrorist. He'd been responsible for the deaths of twenty children, and maybe it didn't even bother him. Matt had never considered that possibility.

“You see, lad, I'm what you call a mercenary,” said Tam Lin in the lilting voice Matt had come to love. “I worked for El Patrón for donkey's years—thought he'd go on forever. But now I'm out of a job, and Mr. Alacrán has been kind enough to offer me another.”

“What about Celia?” whispered Matt.

“You don't think she'd get away with the game she played? By now she'll have been turned into an eejit.”

But you told her about the monarch butterflies
, thought Matt.
You let her walk into the trap.

“Can you finish up here? I've got work to do,” said Mr. Alacrán.

“I'll dispose of the clone, sir,” said Tam Lin. “I might need Daft Donald to help me tie it up.”

He called me a clone
, Matt thought.
He called me an “it.”

“Remember, I want you back for the wake tonight,” said Mr. Alacrán.

“Wouldn't miss it for the world,” said Tam Lin with a twinkle in his lying, treacherous eyes.

D
aft Donald held Matt firmly, and Tam Lin wrapped him in duct tape. The bodyguard slung him over a horse as he exchanged greetings with other members of El Patrón's private army, lounging by the stables. “Where are you taking it?” a man called.

“Thought I'd dump it next to the eejit pens,” Tam Lin replied. The man's laughter was lost in the drum of horse's hooves striking the earth.

This animal was different from the Safe Horses. It was faster and less predictable. It even smelled different. Matt, with his nose pressed into its hide, was in a good position to know. Safe Horses had a faint chemical odor, but this one reeked of sun and sweat.

Matt suddenly realized what Tam Lin meant by dumping him next to the eejit pens. He was going to be thrown into the yellow ooze at the bottom of a pit. The horror of it, the unfairness
and treachery of almost everyone he'd ever known, made Matt's blood pound in his ears. But this time, instead of fear, he felt a surge of pure animal rage. He deserved to live! He was
owed
this life that had so casually been given him, and if he had to die, he would struggle until the very last minute.

Matt tested the tape holding his arms and legs. He couldn't move an inch.
Well then
, Matt thought,
I'll have to wriggle and squirm my way out of the sludge pit.
He saw the earth fly under the horse's hooves. His stomach bounced painfully against its body. This creature didn't run as smoothly as a Safe Horse.

Finally, it slowed and Tam Lin lifted Matt down. The boy managed to jackknife his body and drive his head into the man's stomach. “Ach! Ye pee-brained ninny!” swore Tam Lin. “Look about you before you do a stupid trick like that!”