1250067146 (N) by Vincent DiMaio

Author:Vincent DiMaio
Language: eng
Format: mobi, azw3, epub
ISBN: 9781466875067
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

‹ SEVEN ›

Secrets and Puzzles

We’re all tangled up in the puzzles of life. We accept there are mysteries we cannot answer, but we go looking for answers anyway. So we put the puzzle pieces together endlessly, then disassemble them endlessly. We always have, and always will. Death offers us a lot of puzzles, too, but I think death’s mystery is in what we can see, not what is hidden. The clues are always there for us to find whatever answers we seek. It’s not unnatural to look and wonder … it’s unnatural to walk away.

WHEATLAND, WYOMING. THURSDAY, JULY 5, 1984.

Martin Frias spent the day after the Fourth completely alone, aching in body and spirit.

A running argument with his girlfriend had started a few days before, and it was still simmering. She didn’t want to be around him, so she drove the kids to the park in town that afternoon, just so she wouldn’t have to put up with his crap. He fell into a funk, half sorry, half pissed.

Martin had sneaked into America from Mexico in 1979, looking for work. He found his way to Wyoming, where there were plenty of jobs and a man could hide in plain sight. In 1981, he met Ernestine Jean Perea, freshly divorced and now raising her four-year-old daughter alone. They were both in their early twenties and were both desperately seeking a safe place to land.

They rented a green-and-white single-wide trailer on a dirt road, on the other side of the railroad tracks, in the badlands southwest of Wheatland, Wyoming, a prairie farm town. Martin found a good job at a local quarry. He was a hardworking guy, soft-spoken and serious. Although he was only about five-foot-nine, he was wiry and strong. He’d even been a promising baseball pitcher as a boy in Mexico.

Martin’s boss liked him, and when he was working—when the money was coming in—life was good.

But things hadn’t been right for a couple months, since Martin’s right arm had nearly been torn off by a rock crusher. The first surgery on his arm had gone badly, and now he was drawing only worker’s comp while his corrective surgery healed.

His right arm was useless in its sling, money was scarce, and he could do nothing but sit around the trailer, drink cheap beer, and watch TV all day while Ernestine took care of their three rambunctious preschool kids. He complained about her drinking. He complained about her cooking. He complained about her friends. He complained about everything. It drove her nuts and she threw it all back at him, with the same hostility. Her temper often flared, like the time long before Martin when she’d stabbed her ex-husband with a screwdriver. This time Ernestine told her mother she was planning to take the kids and move out. In fact, she’d already stored some of her possessions in her mother’s Cheyenne garage.

So after the Fourth of July, still stewing, Ernestine trundled the kids to the town park, where she met some friends for a picnic.

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