After a few hours of work, Pete realized that there were sounds coming from within the barn that could not be accounted for by the storm, the horses, or Luis’s snores. Following the sounds to their source, he discovered a low crawl space with a door in it. On the other side of the door, standing in the rain, was Michael Soria, Joaquin’s father.
Michael was working. He had not yet been told about Daniel, but even if he had been, he would have still been working. Ever since he had lost so much of his family to the incident with the German and the child, all he did was work from the moment he opened his eyes until the moment he closed them, taking his meals standing up and saving all of his non-negotiable body functions for the two minutes before he retired to bed. He was a very old-fashioned kind of person. Many people mistook Michael for Joaquin’s grandfather. He had already been quite old when he’d had children, and he appeared even older than he was because of his beard. Ever since the incident with the German and the child, he had stopped cutting both his hair and his beard and instead allowed them to grow as long as they wanted. Now both were so long that he had to wrap each up into a knot he secured with bands, one at the nape of his neck and one at his chin. Because his bones troubled him so much from all of his age and all of his work, he would unknot his beard and hair when he climbed into bed and, spreading it out, he would lie on top of it and find that it was the only thing that eased his aches and pains.
Here was a thing he wanted: to work. Here was a thing he feared: that he would become too feeble to work.
When Pete heard Michael, he was repairing the barn foundation in the rain. A scourge of pocket gophers had arrived at the beginning of the year with only two purposes: to make more pocket gophers and to dig their home directly beneath the barn. They had been so successful in the first pursuit that Antonia’s dogs could now subsist entirely on a diet of slow pocket gophers, and they had been so successful with the second pursuit that the barn foundation now tipped precariously, weakened by a network of gopher sitting rooms. Michael had previously performed a temporary repair by filling the holes with Rosa’s failed, rock-hard milk cakes, but the holes had outgrown Rosa’s baking habit and now he had no choice but to rebuild it properly.
Pete surveyed the situation and formed an opinion. “Need a hand?”
Michael surveyed Pete and formed an opinion. “It’s raining.”
“Yes, sir,” Pete agreed. He joined Michael in the rain, and together they worked side by side until their clothing was as soaked through as Marisita’s. They reached the end of the section Michael had hoped to finish that day, and wordlessly they began the next. They finished the next day’s section and began on the next. And so on and so forth until they had repaired the entirety of the barn’s foundation and it had stopped raining and the sun had come back out again and they both stopped to rest their hands on their knees and look at what they had done.
“You’re Josefa’s boy,” Michael said finally.
“Nephew, sir.”
“You’re here about the truck.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good,” said Michael, which might not seem like much of a reply, but put together, was more than he’d said to most anyone for years.
“Sir, do you mind me asking—” Pete began. “Do folks mostly come here for miracles?”
“Why else would they come out here?” This statement was not as dour as it sounded; Beatriz was not the only one in Bicho Raro who could be strictly pragmatic.
Pete gestured to the land around them. “Because it’s pretty.”
The desert preened and Michael regarded Pete anew. One compliments a man when one compliments his chosen home, and Michael felt nearly as good as the desert about Pete’s words. Kindly, he said, “You better get into some dry clothes now.”
Straightening up, Pete finger-combed his rain-flat hair into its usual style. “Soon. Got to pick some beetles first. See you later, sir!”
He left Michael standing there by the side of the barn, sheering off hard left to avoid a shadow he thought might be Beatriz, and then threw himself back into beetle picking. Ordinarily, Michael would have also thrown himself directly back into work, but for the first time in a very long time, Michael stood there for a full five minutes before beginning his next job, just watching Pete start on his next project. Humans have always been fascinated by mirrors, after all. Michael had never seen from the outside how it looked to work constantly to avoid feeling, and he could not look away.
That night, Beatriz and Joaquin went out in the box truck with a renewed purpose. Before, the identity of their desired audience had been nebulous, distant. Now, in light of the day’s events, all of their audience was wrapped up in a single person. Daniel Lupe Soria, their beloved cousin. Daniel Lupe Soria, their cherished Saint. Daniel Lupe Soria, lost in darkness.
“This one goes out to Daniel, if he’s listening,” said Diablo Diablo. “Some light for your darkness: This is ‘There’s a Moon Out Tonight’ by the Capris.”
“There’s a Moon Out Tonight” began to croon, although there was no moon out that night. Diablo Diablo’s pretaped voice remained inside the back of the box truck as Joaquin, the body of Diablo Diablo, sat in the cab of the truck with Beatriz, listening.