Joaquin was torn every which way inside. He was a passionate person, but not good at being passionate at more than one thing at a time. On the one hand, he was thinking about Daniel’s plight. Joaquin had always admired Daniel. He did not want to be him, as all of the praying and holiness seemed as if it would conflict with Joaquin’s sense of panache, but he deeply appreciated everything his cousin stood for and all of the kindnesses Daniel had ever shown him. It seemed to Joaquin now, in misty and faulty retrospect, that Daniel was soft and vulnerable, too kindly to protect himself, a saint made for martyring. He could not imagine how the older Sorias could live with themselves, knowing that Daniel was out in the desert alone. Where was their courage?
But this was not all that Joaquin was thinking about. It felt unfair to his cousin to be anything but consumed by thoughts of him, and yet Joaquin was also guiltily thinking about the radio. Joaquin had long been obsessed with radio personalities and modern music. He listened to Denver’s KLZ-FM with both resentment and hope, comparing himself to the local personalities and measuring if he could do better. He listened to the wild howl of the border blasters’ DJs—those cowboys of the high-powered stations that screamed out from just across the Mexican border, skirting American regulations through sheer force of power. And, signal permitting, he listened to the sweet fast patter of the more famous personalities of the time, like Jocko Henderson and Hy Lit. He was an ardent follower of American Bandstand, that daytime Philadelphia-based television show featuring teens dancing to the latest hits. The Sorias did not have a television, so twice a week, Joaquin rode into town with Luis and watched it on Elmer Farkas’s television before hitching a ride back home, an arrangement that had been established during the school year and had not yet expired. This program formed the basis for most of Joaquin’s hair and clothing decisions. He studied the screen diligently for evidence of fashions that had yet to reach southern Colorado (most never would) and did his credible best to duplicate them. For this progressive attitude, he received considerable ridicule from his family, which he never appeared to notice (although he did). He dreamed of a day when he would be infamous behind the microphone, Diablo Diablo, devil of the airwaves, and teens would be looking to him to set trends.
Joaquin tried to make himself think only about Daniel, but here in the box truck, the radio could not help but intrude.
Beatriz, however, had only one thought in her head. This was unusual because she was ordinarily likely to hold many thoughts in her head and, unlike Joaquin, was good at it.
The one thought was Pete Wyatt.
Over the course of the day, Beatriz had learned that Pete—he of the potentially soft elbow skin—was in Bicho Raro to work for the very same truck they were sitting in now. Her first impression had been that this deal wasn’t fair, which she almost immediately rejected as her personal bias, and then revisited when she considered that actually, after a consultation with the facts, it really wasn’t fair. The truck, after all, had been a wreck before this summer, overgrown and inoperable, and Beatriz had spent many long hours restoring it to life. Surely that gave her some claim to it. She didn’t blame Pete for this conundrum; he could not have known before making the work arrangement that Beatriz was going to restore the truck. But it didn’t erase the conflict.
It would not have mattered if the truck hadn’t been their only way to communicate with Daniel.
Annoyed at the impasse, she opened the passenger door.
“Where are you going?” Joaquin asked.
“I’m checking the range.” During the course of the afternoon, Beatriz had double-checked her soldering job on each connection—this was when Pete had glimpsed her earlier. Although there was no way to find out if Daniel and the kitchen radio were anywhere within the listening radius, she could at least do her best to cast the signal as far as possible. Both cousins were desperate to communicate with him safely.
They had their ideas of what he might be doing at that moment. Although it defied his sense of nobility, Joaquin imagined Daniel huddled in a grotto like a caveman, gnawing on the desiccated leg of a kangaroo rat, his clothing already tattered rags. Although it defied Beatriz’s sense of probability, she imagined Daniel padding silently across the dusty desert, his form the opposite of Padre Jiminez’s: the body of a coyote, the head of a man.
With a shiver, Joaquin removed the keys from the ignition. He didn’t want to stay in the truck by himself; there was something more ominous about being in a dark vehicle alone than being in the dark night with Beatriz. He made sure to snatch a bottle of water, lest he dry out in the desert (he put it inside his shirt), and also the flashlight (he did not put it inside his shirt).
Beatriz had already climbed from the truck with a radio in hand. Because Daniel had taken the kitchen Motorola, they had taken the only other radio that was in Bicho Raro. This was the one Pete had heard playing in the barn earlier. Joaquin had been anxious that the horses would somehow stampede without the benefit of the radio’s static, but Beatriz had considered the likelihood of that and found the odds acceptable. Statistically, the horses had never stampeded in her lifetime; factually, it was impossible for the radio to have been playing programming for all of those hours; statistically, the horses would not stampede in her lifetime; factually, the cousins would be fine to take it for a few hours.
Beatriz also carried a shotgun. She did not think she would have to use it, but the world seemed like a more dangerous place than it had only a few days before.
“Joaquin,” she ordered, “please point that flashlight where we’re going.”
Joaquin was caught equally between a fear of invisible wild animals and detection by the FCC, and so he alternately pointed the light where they were walking and into his palm when he felt they were too obvious to prying distant eyes. “I heard that sometimes Soria darkness will attack other Sorias, even without interference.”
“All the more reason to see it coming. Who told you that?”
“Nana.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Okay,” Joaquin admitted. “It’s just this: I saw Mama tell her about Daniel, and Nana immediately got up and locked her back door. What do you think about that?”
Grudgingly, Beatriz had to admit that Joaquin’s thesis was not a bad one. Joaquin made a triumphant noise not in keeping with secrecy.
“If you’re going to shout, you might as well point the flashlight so we can see!” Beatriz ordered.
Distant thunder made them pause.
Joaquin ran an anxious hand over his hair and cast an anxious glance at the sky. “Are we going to be killed?”
“Unlikely,” Beatriz replied.
Although the sky above them was clear, lightning was visible on the horizon: a storm, many dozens of miles away—in a place as flat as this high desert, weather was often something that happened to other people. Beatriz was not particularly worried about being struck by that storm’s lightning, although she did devote a passing thought to the antenna connected to the box truck; they would turn back to take it down if the storm got too close. A lightning strike would be potentially deadly to the station.
“Can we make the signal stop crackling like that?” Joaquin asked.