Chapter Twenty-Four

Lyle tried his best to calm Amanda, who was hiding under Fernando’s old metal military surplus desk with her knees pulled up to her chest and her head pressed down into them.  Lyle crouched down beside her on his hands and knees.  He could feel all the hours he’d been awake not only in his eyelids but in his knees and back as well.  He made a mental note to grab another cup of coffee when he made it back out into the kitchen.  Knowing better than to touch Amanda, he spoke to her softly, saying, “There’s no need to worry, Amanda.  I made a promise to you and I’m going to keep it no matter what.”

“I’d rather die than go with him again!” she yelled back at him through her tears.  “I’d rather die!” 

“You don’t need to worry about that, kid.” Lyle comforted her.  “You’ve done enough dying in your life.  Everybody in this restaurant is going to make sure that you finally get to live.  You let me worry about—” Lyle stopped speaking and jerked his head up when he heard the door open.  Looking over Fernando’s meticulously organized desk, Lyle’s eyes met Father Carl’s as he walked through the door then paused, as though waiting for Lyle to give him a hint as to what he should do next.  Lyle ducked back under the desk, noting the fear that had filled Amanda’s eyes at the sound and mystery of who had come through the door.

“There’s someone here to see you, Amanda,” Lyle told her calmly.  “His name is Father Carl.  He’s Maricruz’s priest.  He’s a good guy.”  Lyle had never been completely convinced of his last statement although he never had any reason to doubt it either.  Everything he’d ever heard about Father Carl from the Rodriguez family had been filled with praise, especially for how gracious he’d been toward Maricruz during her (now formerly) mysterious pregnancy, and for how well he enabled Abuelita’s addiction to all things saintly.  Truthfully, every interaction Lyle had ever had with Father Carl had been pleasant, and the man seemed not only to genuinely believe what he preached but to practice it as well.  But Lyle had always had a distrust, a prejudice really, against priests and pastors.  To Lyle they never really seemed to live life, but rather they just spent all their time talking about how other people should live theirs.  But in this moment, Lyle did have to admit that Father Carl did not have to be there, but that he had come anyway to help.  Also, the truth was that Lyle really didn’t have any idea what to do with Amanda at that point, so he was actually glad to see the priest.

Father Carl crouched down beside Lyle and introduced himself to Amanda, being careful not to get too close to her.  After Lyle did his best to convince Amanda that she could trust Father Carl, Lyle said, “Amanda, I wish I could stay in here with you, but Maricruz’s dad really needs my help bussing some tables and as you know, DB is out there.  I’ve got to figure out what the hell I’m going to do about that.  I really didn’t have time to think it out.  Whatever happens though, I promise that I won’t let that son of a bitch anywhere near you.”

Before Lyle could get up, Amanda reached out and grabbed his hand.  “Please don’t go,” she begged.

Lyle patted her hand and then gently pulled it off of his own and placed it back on her knee.  “I have to get out there.  You need to tell Father Carl what’s happened to you.  I promise you’re safe, and I think he’ll be able to help us.”

As Lyle got up, he whispered to Father Carl, “Whatever you do, keep her in this room.  The man that hurt her is in the restaurant and I don’t know what’s going to happen out there, but whatever it is she doesn’t need to be around it.” 

The two men shook hands and Father Carl held on to Lyle’s hand very tightly and put his other hand on Lyle’s shoulder.  The priest counseled him, “I know you’re not a Catholic, Lyle, but hear these words before you go out there and do whatever it is you’re planning on doing.  St. Therese of Lisieux once said, ‘Let us not be justices of the peace, but angels of peace.’  Whatever violence you do to that vile man out there won’t undo the violence he did to that little girl curled up under that desk.  Don’t let his evil become your evil.”

Oh, priests, Lyle thought.  Just like he’d always known!  They don’t know anything about real life so they just try to tell those who do know about it what they should and shouldn’t do as a part of it.  “I’ll keep that in mind, Padre,” Lyle said, dismissively, before going out the door. 

Lyle walked out into the kitchen, leaving Father Carl and Amanda in the office, but not without leaving the door cracked and glancing back through the window, wishing he could stay in there with her.  He knew, though, that the place he needed to be was not curled up with her having a good cry but out in the dining room keeping an eye on DB.  He finally took off his coat and then pulled his flannel shirt up in the back so he could tuck the gun under it before putting on the white apron Fernando had given him earlier.  He then poured himself a cup of coffee and gulped it down as fast as he could, grabbed a plastic basin, and finally headed out into the restaurant’s dining room.  As the swinging door shut behind him, he heard the bell above the front door ring and watched as four young men, who had to have been Umberto’s buddies from the gym, walked in.  He, and everyone else in the restaurant, couldn’t help but pause from whatever they were doing to watch them as they took off their coats.  The bulky foursome, who must have all been in their early to mid-twenties, were made up of two white guys, one with a shaved head and the other with long blond hair pulled back in a pony tail, a Mexican guy with spiky jet black hair and a pointed goatee that made him look like some kind of conquistador, and what Lyle couldn’t help but assume must have been Rocky Ford’s only black guy.  If these guys aren’t on steroids, Lyle thought, they must spend twelve hours a day at the gym over in Pueblo or lifting Chevy Cavaliers down at the car lot.  Lyle watched as Maricruz rushed over to them and seated them at the vacant table that sat strategically between the man who he assumed to be DB and the front door.  She lingered for a moment, explaining something to the guys and glancing over at DB several times before going to check on a table of city workers taking a break from clearing the streets.

As Lyle checked out DB, his blood being turned up to a simmer within him, Lyle heard a familiar voice call out, “Hey, Lyle!  Over here.”  Lyle looked over at the booth from where the voice had come and saw that it was Rick.  What was he doing here already?  And then Lyle saw that Rick’s wife, Jacqueline, and their two boys were with him as well.  What in the world is going on here? 

There was part of Lyle—a strong part—that wanted to walk over and punch Rick square in the nose.  How could Rick have kept that secret from him all those weeks?  How could Rick continue to keep the secret from his own family?  But there was another part of him—equally as strong but much newer to Lyle’s demeanor—that still wanted to walk up to Rick and give him a hug.  After all, Rick had practically put his life on hold to help Lyle sober up.  If it hadn’t been for Rick, Lyle would at the very best be drunk and alone, at the very worst dead and buried.  Lyle decided to save his anger for DB and walked over to Rick and shook his hand.  

The two friends exchanged greetings and then Rick said, “Originally I was going to come over by myself, but my family had a bit of cabin fever and wouldn’t take no for an answer.  So we came early for lunch and then we figured we’d stick around long enough to celebrate your 90 days sober with you, buddy.”  Rick smiled.  “I am so proud of you.  That’s a big milestone, man.”

Lyle couldn’t help but smile at Rick, but then he also couldn’t help but say, “I thought you wanted to talk to me about something, though”

“Oh we can talk about that some other day,” Rick responded, and then looked across at Jacqueline, who was a friendly brunette, with a darker tone of skin than Rick and attractive in that minivan-driving dental hygienist kind of way, whatever that means.  Lyle had met her a couple times and she always seemed really interested in asking him questions about rodeo, like it was some kind of exotic sport from overseas even though she could have gone to a rodeo several times a year right there in Pueblo.  She was a good person as far as Lyle could tell, and she certainly didn’t deserve to be lied to, but that wasn’t Lyle’s business to deal with.  The truth of the matter was that Rick was a good person too; at least he’d been good to Lyle.

Rick’s wife joined in the conversation, saying, “We can stick around a little longer today, Honey, if you two guys need to talk.  We don’t have anywhere else to be.”

Rick’s voice sped up a little when he responded, “It’s really private stuff.  They do call it Alcoholics Anonymous for a reason, you know.  We’ll just chat about it maybe after the next meeting.”

Lyle gave Rick a bit of a stern gaze and then looked over at Rick’s wife.  “Oh, don’t worry, Jacqueline.  I know what he wants to talk to me about anyway.”  Lyle then turned and looked at Rick again and said to him very slowly, “I do know what you want to talk to me about, Rick.”  Lyle leaned in a little closer to his sponsor and said it again, this time in a kind of whisper.  “I know.”  Rick went stiff and sat back as far as he could in his seat, his face losing its color.

As Lyle walked off he turned around and smiled at Rick.  “Regardless, though,” he said.  “I am glad you’re here today, Rick.  I owe you my life.”  These words seemed to bring life back into Rick as well.

Lyle made his way over to a dirty table and busied himself clearing it, all the while keeping a close eye on DB, still racking his brain for what he should do.  He knew he couldn’t do to DB what he deserved, which was a severe beating followed by being pushed out a third story window and then drowned in the Arkansas River.  Actually he could do that to him, but that worthless piece of cow shit wasn’t worth spending life in prison for.  But somehow he had to make him pay in a way the cops couldn’t. 

As Lyle carried his basin filled with dirty dishes past DB’s table, DB called out to him, “Hey, pal, I’ve been waiting forever for my damn food and that wetback waitress hasn’t filled up my drink.  What the hell kind of shithole restaurant is this?”

Lyle gripped the basin’s handles so tightly pain shot through his hands and into his forearms.  Maybe now was the time to do something.  At that moment, though, Benny poked his head out of the kitchen’s swinging door with a smile on his face, looking as though he just wanted to check out all the busyness of the day.  Damn it! Lyle thought.  Umberto and Miguel are supposed to keep him in the kitchen.  “I’ll check on your food, Sir,” Lyle said to DB, feeling like he could puke at the use of the word “sir.” 

“You better,” DB snarled at him.

Lyle shuffled Benny back into the kitchen and then saw what had distracted Miguel and Umberto from keeping watch over Benny.  They were both leaning over a plate of food on the other side of the kitchen.  Lyle turned Benny away before he could see the thick, snotty, string of spit that connected Umberto’s mouth to the inside of what had to be DB’s burrito special.  Lyle had to look away as well when Miguel did the same thing to the refried beans.  Lyle had seen a lot of disgusting stuff in his life.  He’d birthed calves and castrated bulls but there was something about the sight of a loogie that had always made him want to lose his breakfast.

When Umberto and Miguel walked over to Lyle, they couldn’t contain their laughter.  “Hey,” Umberto said to Lyle, “it’s nothing compared to what that sick bastard did to Amanda but at least it’s something right?” 

Lyle couldn’t argue with that, and he also couldn’t pass up the opportunity to be the one to deliver the phlegm flavored burrito to DB.  After finding out that Fernando had driven one of the snowmobiles home to get the car as well as Veronica and Abuelita so they could eat lunch and stick around for Lyle’s sobriety celebration, Lyle reminded Umberto and Miguel that they were supposed to be keeping an eye on Benny.  Lyle then smiled at the three of them, picked up the plate, and said, “Bon appétit” as he carried the tainted plate out into the dining room filled with a sense of satisfaction.

When Lyle walked out into the dining room, he saw that Tina was delivering the food to Rick’s family and that Maricruz had finally relented on her stall tactic and was filling up DB’s glass of Coke.  As Lyle approached with the hot plate, he saw DB put his hand on Maricruz’s rear end and not just squeeze it but cup it from beneath.  Lyle felt like his temples would explode as he yelled out, “Get your damn hands off her!”  But before he could make it over to the table Maricruz had already punched DB in the nose, making him fall backwards in his chair, bouncing his head off the tile floor.  He wasn’t knocked out, but he was groaning and holding his hands over his bleeding nose.  

“You stupid whore!” he yelled at Maricruz again and again.  “I’ll kill you!”

As Maricruz shook her hand from the pain, Lyle sat the plate down on the table, and walked around to check on Maricruz.  “You okay?” he asked her.

“That scumbag grabbed my ass,” she said.

“I know,” Lyle said.  “I saw it.  I was coming over here to defend your honor but it looks like you handled it yourself.”  Lyle and Maricruz smiled at one another as DB tried to get up. 

By the time he’d sat up, though, the four muscle-heads had come over and surrounded him.  The guy with the shaved head crouched down and challenged DB, “Go ahead, asshole.  Get up.  I dare you.”  While he was saying this, the black guy was digging the heel of his shoe into DB’s blood covered hand, crushing it against the floor.

“What do we do now?” Maricruz asked, still shaking her hand.

Lyle thought for a second.  Finally the answer had come to him.  He just needed to be honest with everyone and rely upon their sense of Western justice.  This was southeastern Colorado right?  So he started to untie his apron and then he stood on top of a chair, scanning the room filled with shocked and silent diners.  “You all saw what happened,” he said to them all.  “This sleaze bag grabbed this woman’s rear end and she was completely justified in breaking the bastard’s nose.  Are we all in agreement on that?”  Everyone nodded, including the city workers, Rick’s family, the ladies from the bank, the teenagers who’d been shoveling out the theater, Tina, and Miguel and Umberto who had come out of the kitchen when they heard the commotion.

“Now something else you all need to know,” Lyle added, “is that this excuse for a human being is also a child molester who takes advantage of little girls and makes money off of letting other perverts have their way with them.  We know this for a fact.”  Lyle saw looks of disgust on every shocked face in the room.

“Now, we do plan on turning him over to the police,” Lyle continued.  “You can rest assured of that.  But we all know how that goes, don’t we?  They may not be able to prove their case or they’ll decide to let him go to get some big fish above him.  All the while those little girls will go without justice.  He’ll end up back on the street doing it again and those girls will have to live knowing that this hell-bound sack of shit is out driving around in a big rig trying to hunt them down.  Now some of you have daughters, I’m sure.”  Lyle paused as several folks nodded their heads.  “What would you do with someone who sold your little girl’s innocence to every three hundred pound pervert with thirty dollars in his pocket?  Don’t you think he should have to pay for what he’s done?” 

No one answered Lyle, but all of them looked away and sat in silence.  Finally one of the city workers, a gray haired foreman looking type wearing a bright yellow vest over his flannel shirt stood up and said, “I’ve got three girls at home.”  He looked around at everyone in the restaurant.  “If someone ever defiled my girls I don’t even know what I’d do.  So I think it’s about time we all leave and just forget what we’ve seen and heard and give these folks some privacy to do whatever needs to be done.”  He leaned over and took one more bite of his lunch and then grabbed his coat and motioned for his coworkers to follow him out. 

All the other diners did the same, but as Rick and his family approached the door, Lyle heard Rick say to his wife, “You three need to go ahead and go home without me.  I need to stay to try to keep Lyle from doing anything foolish.  He’s come too far to throw it away like this.”  Rick’s wife argued with him but finally relented, resigning herself to the fact that he could not be convinced to abandon Lyle. 

Maricruz called out to Miguel to call the house to try to convince their father to stay there longer and told Tina to take Benny up to the apartment through the back door.  Lyle walked over to the front door and locked it, turning the sign from “Open” to “Closed” as a couple of the bodybuilders lowered the blinds. 

DB, who had blood covering his nose, mouth, neck, and hands had finally been allowed to sit up, although he was flanked on both sides by the long haired blond guy on one side and the guy with the goatee on the other.  Lyle pulled up a chair and sat down in front of DB, who tried to hop to his feet to lunge at Lyle but was quickly and violently returned to his spot on the floor by Umberto’s two friends. 

“Do you remember a little girl named Amanda?” Lyle asked, staring intently at him.

DB wiped blood away from his mouth and answered, “Hell yeah I do.  I put it to that little slut everyday and I made a lot of money off that cooze too.” 

The instant those words exited DB’s mouth Maricruz kicked him as hard as she could in the ribs.  DB responded by coughing blood out onto the floor and then smiled at Lyle through his blood soaked teeth.  “You’re little spic girlfriend there better hope I never get a hold of her.  There’s a lot of guys who will pay double for a foreign piece of—”  Maricruz kicked him again, this time in the chin.

Lyle looked up at Maricruz and said, “Maybe you should go upstairs, Mari.  You don’t need to be involved in this any more than you are.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” Maricruz assured Lyle.  “We’re in this together.”

Rick spoke up from where he had been pacing behind Lyle’s chair.  “Lyle, I think we just need to call the police and let them handle this.  This isn’t right what you are doing here.  You just need to call the police and tell them the truth and let them handle it.”

Lyle stood and turned toward Rick, towering above him.  “Now, Rick, you’ve been a big help to me over these past three months,” he said.  “I’d be dead without you.  But I do have to say that I’m not about to stand here and listen to you talk about telling the truth.  How many times could you have told me that you were Benny’s father?”

Rick started to answer, but Lyle wouldn’t let him.  Instead he continued, “How many lies have you told to your wife and your kids?  And you have the nerve to talk to me about the truth?  About what’s right and wrong?”

“You’re completely right,” Rick said, holding his hands out as if to block a hit while backing up a few steps.  “You’re right that Maricruz and I had an affair but that was years ago and she and I both decided that we’d keep quiet about it so as not to ruin other people’s lives.”

“You mean so it wouldn’t ruin your life, Rick.  Ain’t that right?” Lyle asked pointedly.  “What about Benny’s?”

“I’ve done my best to help out with Benny,” Rick defended himself, alternating between looking at Lyle and at Maricruz.  “You don’t know how it’s eaten me up all these years, how many times I sat up in the middle of the night staring at a bottle of gin wanting so badly to crack that thing open and drink it all away, drink myself to death.  But somehow every night I stayed dry because in spite of my sins I had faith that somehow it was going to work out for Benny and for Maricruz.  That’s why I helped you, Lyle.  I helped you because in you I saw the answer to all those nights of prayers cried out over that unopened bottle.  I’m nothing to Maricruz but a bad memory, Lyle.  And I’m sure as hell no father to that little boy.  You’re the one for Maricruz.  You’re Benny’s father, Lyle. You’re the man he needs in his life.  So don’t let that boy down again by acting out this Old West vigilante justice fantasy of yours.  Call the police, Lyle.  Just call the police.”

Lyle thought for a moment and then spoke.  “Rick, I hear what you’re saying, and I even kind of understand where you’re coming from, but in regard to that piece of shit over there on the floor, you have no idea what you’re talking about.  Rick, that girl I found out there in the stolen car out in the middle of nowhere in a blizzard told me all kinds of things that this wicked son of a bitch did to her and what other bastards have done to her too.  That girl is going to have to live with that for the rest of her life.  That girl can’t go to sleep without being visited by that prick right there.  She’s back in the office talking to Maricruz’s priest all the while hiding under a desk, shivering, and crying over the fact that this bottom feeder over here is in the same building as her.  What am I going to tell that girl if the police just let him go?  How’s she ever going to feel safe?”

When DB heard what Lyle had said he gargled out, “You mean that little slut is here?  That girl is my property and she owes me a shit load of money.  Bring that little—”

Umberto walked up and stood over DB, interrupting him by saying, “Enough talk already.  I say we get around to really beating the shit out of this guy and then we call the police after we get our story straight.”  Umberto looked around at everyone who was nodding.  “Now that my sister’s had three turns, who wants to hit this asshole next?”  They all waited to hear an answer.

“Let me do it,” they finally heard from a quivering sixteen-year-old voice, speaking from the open kitchen door.  Everyone, including Lyle, looked up to see Amanda standing in the doorway, hands shaking and eyes swollen from crying.  In one of her quaking hands she gripped a large meat tenderizing hammer she’d grabbed from the kitchen.  Behind her stood Father Carl, his face covered by an expression of sheer terror.

“This is madness!” Father Carl called out.  “Madness!  I’m calling the police.”

“You do whatever you have to do to make things right,” Amanda said to him as she continued to walk slowly toward DB, tapping the hammer against her hip.  “And I’ll do the same.”