Haze rises like swamp gas in the capital, and Lupe can smell the exhaust swarming up around him from the traffic stalled on the Avenida La Reforma. The tourists are sweating as they head for the restaurants and shops or back to their hotels to stay in for the night. A man pushes past the others, hurrying, late perhaps. Sweat stains his fine shirt, darkening the fabric under the arms and down the back.
“It’s a hot one,” Hector mutters. He does not sweat, even though his charango lies flat against his back as he walks, the wood gleaming, the strings reflecting silver-white in the dying light.
Enrique pushes his guitar back, but it is too big to lie flat. It flops to the side after he has taken a few steps, the woven strap worn and faded and barely connected to the instrument. “So it’s hot. So what?”
They have been together too long to waste words. But Lupe knows they can’t remain entirely quiet. Silence is worse than death.
And they should know.
Despite the coldness that pervades his body, Lupe can still feel the setting sun on his face. He can hear the sounds all around him as the tourists come out to find dinner in this safe place that the city has carved out for them. The Zona Viva: the Lively Zone. It makes him laugh—in all of Guatemala City, it is the only zone he and his two friends can travel, yet they are far from lively.
He touches the patch that covers his left eye, knows the once-white cloth must be filthy. A childhood infection cost him his eye, but the stains are from falling face down in the dirt—from dying face down in the dirt, shot through the side as he played at a wedding. Shot with his friends, as they got ready to play the latest Hoyt Axton song from the North. A song they’d practiced over and over, but they never played at that wedding.
They have never played it since, either. They tried to play it, after they first woke and pushed themselves up from the dirt only to find that, even though they were walking around, their bodies were still lying on the ground. Once they got over the shock, once they realized they still had voices and ghostly instruments that responded to ghostly fingers, they tried to play the Axton song. But they discovered that they could only play music someone else had asked them to play in the past—back when they were still breathing.
Over the years, they have tried to play other things, and when they do, their fingers brush strings that will not vibrate, their lips move but no sound comes out. It is frustrating, and every time it happens Lupe gets a sensation of something larger at work. He suspects that if he could just play something of his own choosing, something no one has requested, he’d be free of this place. And free of the two men who were just nice guys he played guitar with, not anyone he would have wanted to die with or spend this non-life with. He wants to tell them both that they could be free, but he can’t, because his mouth refuses to put the thoughts into words. They probably know, though. They aren’t dumb, even if he does most of the talking and planning—whatever planning there is to be done by a dead man.
They get to the spot where they will cross the many lanes of La Reforma, and Lupe grabs Enrique, pulling him back. There is no reason to stop Enrique. They can cross at any time; the cars will go right through them. But Lupe hates it when they do that. He likes to walk with the people, not through them. He likes to pretend that he is still part of their lives. That he still has a life.
They pass the tree-lined strip of grass in the middle of the Avenida, and Lupe sees an old Mayan woman napping against one of the trees. She stirs and opens her eyes and sees him. Really sees him. She sits up with a gasp, looking around wildly and earning concerned stares from the tourists. Then she seems to relax, and she leans back against the tree, as if she never saw Lupe in the first place.
Her power is apparently weak, only active when she lets go. To truly see Lupe and the others, she would need to have great power at her disposal. To do more than see, to call them, would be extraordinary. It has only happened a handful of times over the years since they died.
Yet Lupe suddenly feels himself being called.
“This one is strong,” Hector says, obviously feeling it, too. He lifts his charango. “I hope not like the last one. I wanted to beat him over the head with this.”
Lupe remembers. It would not have done any good. The man was no more tangible to them than they were to him. The only thing they shared was the music he wanted them to play.
“It is not a man this time,” Enrique says.
Lupe nods in agreement; he can feel the power of this one. Feminine power. Dark and light, both. If it were colored, her power would be red and yellow. Bright. Very bright. And she is calling them without realizing it. She wants music. It is not a spell, though. She is a bruja, but one at rest. They are being called…on a whim. She has eaten; she drinks coffee; she wants music. Her power is such that they are drawn to her solely to make her evening more pleasant.
Enrique looks angry. Or Lupe thinks he is angry. Even after thirty years, it is hard to tell what Enrique is feeling. Alone of them, he did not die instantly, and the struggle is still on his face. He lay in the dirt, blood draining slowly out of him, while the others waited until finally he, too, crossed over. He has looked sour ever since. Not that he was a thing of beauty before with his rotted front teeth and bad skin. But his eyes used to sparkle. Now…now his eyes are dead. Deader, even, than Enrique is.
“I hate tourists,” Hector says, glaring at the people who walk right through him as they head for their rooms in the big hotels that lie at the other end of the Zona.
“You hate everyone,” Lupe mutters.
“I don’t hate Enrique,” Hector says with a sour smile.
It is a slap to Lupe, and he takes it without comment. Somehow, they think this is his fault that they are trapped together. Not alive. Not fully dead. No peace, just this endless wandering.
As if he makes the rules? He can’t even spell the rules out, whatever they are. This is not his fault. It may not be anyone’s fault. It may just be what is. It may be what happens in this mysterious land when you die just as you’re about to play a new song. He does not know.
“Look,” Enrique says, making the sign against the evil eye as he points with his other hand at the trees over the restaurant they are being drawn to. Eight crows sit in the branches, not cawing, not moving, just there.
“They guard her.” Hector crosses himself.
“They may just be waiting for scraps. It is a steak house.” Lupe does not know why his friends still fear the unknown. It would be pleasant if, after years in this life that is no life, they could stop seeing evil in everything that is strange. Or do they view themselves as evil, too? Do they view their endless rounds of the Zona as evil? Is it evil to be occasionally seen in the still of the night, to be heard by anyone with the gift to listen as they play their music from the grass of the Avenida?
But as they walk into the restaurant, as the woman looks at them, Lupe knows that Hector is half right. The woman is not evil, but the crows, descending in a rain of black, cawing as they settle on the open windowsills, do seem to be guarding her.
He sees an old dog sitting at the door separating the small outer dining room from a bigger room where a poetry reading is going on. The dog does not take his eyes off the woman except to glance at Lupe and his friends, as if he may try to attack them if they move wrong in her presence. Animals can always see them, sometimes even like them. This one, clearly, does not.
“You play?” The woman’s voice is tripping with delight at their appearance as she speaks in their tongue. But Lupe can feel her power, and it is from the North. She does not think in Spanish, but in English.
He answers back in that language, easily, even though it has been years since he last spoke it. “What do you want to hear?”
She says, “El Condor Pasa,” and at first he thinks it is the only song she knows that she thinks they’ll know, too. But as they play, he feels her spirit rise to soar with the music. As high as the Andes, those mountains far to the south in another place where magic covers the land.
As they play, he feels their music rise to soar with her spirit. Hector gasps, his fingers rushing over the strings of his charango, playing a harmony line that is almost discordant—improvising as he has not done since he died. Enrique smiles wide, not bothering to hide the gap in his mouth.
She watches them, probably taking in the state of their clothing, the dirt that stains every part of them. She does not seem to notice the blood, but it is dried and old and may only look like more dirt in the candlelit room. And they are facing her, have not turned their backs so that she can see where the bullets went in or came out through their sides or lodged in their spines—Lupe feels the metal pieces that slammed into his ribs and lungs and heart moving for the first time since the soldiers interrupted that wedding with their machine guns and curses.
The dog whines, crawling closer. She looks at it, smiling as she snaps her fingers. It abandons crawling, leaping up like a pup to rush to her. She pets it, lets her fingers linger on its head as the music goes on.
Lupe realizes the crows are dancing, hopping up and down, wings outspread. He thinks he sees colors trailing from the ends of their feathers. The night turns brighter, and he sees the stars zip across the sky in time with the music he and the boys are calling forth from their instruments. His voice has never sounded stronger, Enrique’s guitar never more resonant. And Hector…Hector’s harmony sends chills down Lupe’s spine.
He cannot remember the last time he felt the sensation.
The song finally ends. The woman sips her coffee, smiling. The poetry readers do not miss a beat; they cannot hear the music. But a cat steals in from the outside, then another. They jump up on the windowsill, and the crows scatter, only to settle again on other windowsills less close to teeth and claws.
“Bruja magnifica,” Hector whispers, and he takes his hat off, holding it over his heart.
Lupe thinks Hector might ask the woman to marry him. He glances at Enrique, who is also staring at her with something that approaches worship. She is not beautiful, but she shines with an energy that is a mix of her own power and the power that lies hidden in the soil of his country. Where she and the land touch, there is a glow as if a greater magic is being drawn out.
“Who are you?” Lupe asks.
“Just a tourist.”
But he knows she is much more. He gets closer, and she does not flinch away as most do who can actually see him in all his dirt-stained glory.
“Sorrow lies in your path.” He is not sure why he has said it. But he sees it now, rising up before her. Like the rain of crows, only he realizes she loves the crows. But she will not love what happens to her. She will barely survive what happens to her.
But she will survive. And he thinks that it will not just be her own power that saves her, but the power of this place, of old dogs who bark like pups and crows that dance with falling stars. And cats that jump down, bored when nothing else happens.
She laughs, calling the cats to her, but they ignore her outstretched hand. The dog noses it, as if trying to make up for the cats’ disregard.
“Dogs are like men; cats are like women,” she says.
“I have always thought so.” Lupe smiles at her, and when she smiles back at him, he wishes he could hold her just once, to know what the glow around her feels like.
“You said sorrow?” she asks, and her voice is resigned as if she expects tragedy in her life and will not fight it, will almost welcome it. No wonder his land loves her.
“We all have sorrow.” He feels the need to take away her future, to give her a nicer one. Hector and Enrique have moved closer to him, their instruments pushed to the back to keep them out of the way, and they nod, as if sorrow is something you can elude like rain, by raising an umbrella or just staying indoors.
“Have you seen sorrow…?” She trails off, is frowning, and he realizes she does not know his name. And wants to.
“Lupe.”
“The wolf. I like wolves.” She pats the dog and he whines happily.
Lupe wants to know her name but does not ask her. There is power in names, and she is a witch. She will know this.
“My name is Amanda.” She may know it, but she obviously does not care. And he senses that her power is not in her name. Her power is in every pore of her skin, every cell of her body. Her power, which will not stop the sorrow, which will not stop her pain.
“I have seen sorrow,” he says. He has seen everything that can be seen in the Zona Viva, both bad and good. But mostly bad. At night, when everyone is home safe, there is no safety for those with no homes. Lupe and his friends watch and do nothing because there is nothing they can do. “I have seen the entire world in my days. What have you seen?”
“I saw a white horse on the Avenida today.” She looks up at him. “There was a man, dressed in old-fashioned clothes, riding him down the grass. No one else looked.”
“Perhaps you see what others do not notice.”
“Perhaps. Then again, it is hard to miss a white horse prancing in the middle of a residential zone.”
“This is Guatemala. People turn their eyes away from many things. Both beautiful and horrible.” Like a white horse or the white dress of a bride being torn apart by machine-gun fire, the pale satin streaked red, then brown once it dried and the soldiers went away. Lupe and his friends only got as far as the service area. They only made it to where the cars were parked. They should have been able to hide there. To survive. But the soldiers found them, and no place was safe that day. Not even a dirt-packed driveway behind an expensive house in the Zona Viva.
“You will play something else for me?” she asks.
He nods. “What would you like to hear?”
“What would you like me to hear?”
Hector and Enrique pull away.
“No,” Lupe says, “you must choose the song.”
“Why?” She is looking up at him, and he is powerless to look away, locked in by her light brown eyes. Eyes that seem to turn green and then gray as he stares at her. “Why, Lupe? Why must I choose?”
“It is the way. We only play what others want. I do not know why.”
“What happens if you play what you want?”
He wants to tell her what he suspects, but he cannot get the words out. He can hear Hector and Enrique behind him, trying as well, sounds coming out of their mouths, but not words, not sense. He finally can only say, “I don’t know.”
“Very well.” She looks down at the dog, over at the crows, then back up at him. “I want you to play what you want to play.”
He is confused for a moment by the way she has phrased it. He thinks whatever holds them is, too, because as he reaches for his guitar, he feels a resistance. A resistance that gives way. “Do you know Mister Hoyt Axton?”
“I’ve heard of him. I can’t say I know his work.”
“There is a song…” Lupe is already starting the strumming, and the music they would have played at the wedding begins slowly, the gentle sound giving way to something stronger, faster. It is clear she does not know the song, but her smile is pleased as they lose themselves in playing it for her.
Lupe strums, hearing the higher notes of Hector’s charango behind him, the special harmony they wrote for Enrique’s guitar. It is beautiful. It is the most beautiful thing he’s ever heard. He thinks Mister Axton would be proud of them even if the crows do not dance this time and the stars do not fall in time with their song.
But it is all right. Because the world begins to shift and turn, and then it spins around him until all he can see is Amanda, somehow not spinning. Wearing sorrow like a cape of crows, but smiling now, as she frees them.
The song is coming to an end, and they make the finish bigger than they would have at the wedding, because it is the last song they will ever play together. Amanda closes her eyes, sitting motionlessly in the sudden silence that is broken by the squeal of the microphone from the other room, where another reader of poetry is droning on, oblivious to the poem that has just ended.
“That was beautiful,” she says.
Lupe wants to reach out for her. The barriers at the edges of the Zona are falling, and he can tell they are finally free, yet all he wants to do is protect this woman. He senses Hector and Enrique putting their instruments away, but they don’t walk off. They don’t move closer, either, with their hands out, as real minstrels would, asking for a tip. They just wait.
“It was an almost perfect night,” she says. “You have made it perfect.”
“It was an honor to play for you.” The words are older than Lupe, hark back to when minstrels gained prestige by the stature of the person they played for.
“It was an honor to listen.” Something in her smile tells him she knows she will be last person to ever hear them play.
“Good night.” He forces himself to turn, is escorted out by the dog. The crows fly up to the tree as he and Hector and Enrique walk onto the paving stones on the patio. He stops but his friends keep going.
She looks up, sees him standing there, and lifts one hand in a gentle wave. And still he does not move. Not until she looks away, staring down at her coffee cup as if trying to release him. “Go,” she finally whispers.
He nods and walks on. He sees his friends ahead and hurries to catch up, rushing through people without it bothering him anymore. They walk to the end of the Zona, to the Obelisk, where they are normally stopped. And as they pass the barrier, the land seems to let go of them, and they begin to drift up as if they are balloons let go by a child in the park.
“Finally,” Enrique says, closing his eyes as he starts to disappear.
Hector says nothing, just smiles as he, too, closes his eyes.
Lupe keeps his eyes open, watching his friends become harder and harder to see. He looks back the way they came, sees a streak of white on the grass. There is a prancing horse with a man on it going down the Avenida. The horse is keeping time with a young woman who walks back to the hotels at the other end of the Zona, a young woman who is followed by eight crows flying high in the sky, looking out for her. Crows that, as he watches, turn into rainbow Quetzales, their turquoise tails flying out behind them like rare gemstones.
Lupe can tell he is disappearing, and he strains to see the birds, but it is hard because they have changed back into crows, and their ebony feathers disappear against the night sky the same way he imagines he does.
The woman looks up at them, then over at the horse, which seems to prance with more energy. She smiles, and it is a smile that invites sorrow to do its worst.
“Amanda,” Lupe murmurs as he feels something light and wonderful enter what is left of his body. It is the same light he felt pouring into her from his land, pouring out of her into the music. It is everything strong and good; it is everything that survives.
She looks up to where he hangs in the sky. He must be nearly invisible, like a teardrop caught in a spider web.
She whispers, “Good luck.”
Lupe does not question that he can hear her, or that she can see him lift his hand in one last wave. Here, in his land, sorrow is everywhere—but so is magic.