This was the case with the Sorias and Beatriz. They grew more upset and said more things to both cousins while Beatriz merely listened. The more she listened, the more distressed they became, and the more distressed they became, the more she was certain she could not truly make them feel at ease with her decisions. She did not know how to apologize for a rule that she had broken after considering the risks, because although she understood why they were angry, she still was not sorry that she had done it. She understood only that she could not tell them this truth or they would be even more upset.
“Don’t you want things to be different?” Joaquin said finally. He was only sixteen, but in this moment, he was the Joaquin he would become instead of the Joaquin he was. He was the man who would be Diablo Diablo in a bigger city, a voice to pilgrims in the night. “We spend all of our time hiding in our houses when we see a pilgrim walking by! We see them suffering and we say nothing! We smell Marisita’s cooking and we are too afraid to even tell her that it smells delicious! We starve! We starve of—of everything because we are too afraid to eat! Look at us, all standing here, because we’re afraid of them. That’s why you’re here, right? Fear!”
“And where is your cousin Daniel, Joaquin?” Rosa demanded. She had not called him anything but Quino since he was a child and now he recoiled from his true name, although any other time he would have welcomed it. “We are not afraid because we are cowards.”
Antonia said, “Do you think we love him less than you? He is our son. He is our Saint.”
The grief in her voice was no greater than the grief any of them were feeling.
“We thought,” Joaquin said, and stopped. He could not be logical and even-tempered. “Beatriz, you tell them.”
Beatriz said, “We think the radio is making a difference. Jennie made progress yesterday after listening to the radio; she can speak in lyrics. Tonight’s program was for the twins. If they are changed by the radio, and we are still safe after broadcasting, then we’ve found a way to help heal them without causing danger to ourselves. We could help pilgrims move on so that they would not fill Bicho Raro for so long.”
“We’re building a lodge,” Michael said.
“We would rather have a lodge than our children turned to darkness from stupid risks,” Antonia added.
Beatriz persisted with the most important part. “We thought if we found a way to help pilgrims, we could find a way to help Daniel.”
Now everyone was as silent as Beatriz ordinarily was.
“Beatriz,” Francisco whistled, sadly, finally—but she didn’t want his pity; she had merely been stating the truth.
“Daniel wanted us to think harder about this,” she said. “He wanted us to think about why we do the things we do.
“Hand me the keys,” Michael said. “To the truck.”
“But Daniel!” Joaquin protested. “He’s listening. Remember the message?”
They all remembered the message. Now it was agonizing to all of them.
“Please,” Joaquin went on. “We can’t stop or he won’t have us to listen to. He’ll be alone.”
Judith began to cry softly, over the impossibility of it.
Michael held out his hand. “I’m thinking about my family who are not yet lost and that includes you, my son. Now give me those keys and do not make me take them.”
“Please,” Joaquin said again, and he, too, was near to tears.
The sound of his voice and indeed all of their conversation was nearly drowned out, however, by the commotion of owls. Every Soria there knew what the birds’ carrying on meant: They were whipped to wildness by a miracle. The family searched the sky and the ground for the source of the owls’ enthusiasm, but they saw nothing but darkness.
“Joaquin,” said Michael. He did not want to carry out his threat of taking the keys by force, but Joaquin had not moved to give them, so he started toward him. At the last moment, Beatriz stepped in front of Joaquin and relinquished the keys.
No one felt particularly victorious. There is no joy to be had in defending inaction and fear.
The owls soared over the family into the night and Bicho Raro fell into an unusual quiet. A feather floated past Beatriz. She could have caught this one, but she did not stretch out her hand.
Out of the quiet darkness, two figures approached. They were silhouetted by the bold light of the truck headlights. Every Soria ceased what they were doing to watch them approach, because a process of elimination proved that they must be pilgrims, and they were.
“Stay back,” Antonia warned them. “You know better.”
But the pilgrims kept approaching. It was the twins, Robbie and Betsy. All of the adult Sorias recoiled. The night felt dangerous and unusual, and it seemed like anything could happen, even pilgrims attacking them with their very presence, intentionally violating the taboo.
“Don’t worry,” Robbie said.
“We’re just going,” Betsy said.
“Going where?” demanded Antonia.
“Home,” Betsy replied.
Because they were no longer pilgrims.
Days before, when Pete had arrived, the girls had been tangled together by a snake that wouldn’t allow them to live separate lives. Now the snake was gone. Instead, they were merely girls standing side by side, close, but not close.
“You killed the snake,” Joaquin said.
“No,” Robbie replied. “Well, kinda. We decided to, together, but as soon as we decided to, it just …”
“Disappeared,” Betsy said. “While the owls went crazy.”
Their decision to work together to be apart had set them free.
“It worked,” Joaquin said. “Beatriz, it worked.”
And this was yet another miracle the Sorias had not witnessed for a very long time: hope. All of the Sorias, Beatriz and Joaquin included, immediately found their eyes drawn to the Shrine where Daniel used to be. Where Daniel should have been.
Michael handed the keys back to Beatriz.
Buildings are not very good at remembering the people who once occupied them.
The high alpine desert around Bicho Raro had more than its fair share of abandoned buildings, and Marisita was slowly working her way through them. Every time she thought she had searched all of the buildings within easy distance of Bicho Raro, she found another one. They came in all shapes. There were collapsed barns, of course, like the one the Sorias scavenged wood from, and old mining towns like the ones Pete and Beatriz had chased Salto through. There were equipment sheds and well houses. But there were also real houses, scattered homesteads, substantial cabins with porches and forgotten histories. Marisita was always shocked by how little she could learn about the people who had lived in them, even though some of them had been neglected only for a few years. Fabrics and rugs faded to colorlessness, glassware and knickknacks got smashed, and scents disappeared. She had heard that houses like these used to be lived in by families who were bought off by logging companies or terrorized into leaving by white ranchers, but she had no way of knowing for sure. She found it depressing, how fast memories were replaced by rumors. Tragedy left behind such subtle artifacts.
Marisita climbed through yet another empty house the day after the radio station had stopped being secret. This one had a front door (sometimes they didn’t), but it was missing the knob. Scavengers, both human and animal, had already had their way with the interior, so only a few featureless chairs remained, knocked on their sides. There was no bed, but it would have been a good place to seek shelter from the cold overnight.