Petra's Ghost, page 21
“So, you’re saying I’ll either find my faith or lose it by the time I get to Santiago?” Daniel asks.
“I’m saying you’ll either find or lose your soul,” the hippy says as he drops his cigarette butt into a rusty tomato can, “on the last part.” He whisks away the two shot glasses and drops the Hendrick’s back in the cooler. “But the Way is full of lost souls, my man, or haven’t you noticed?”
“I thought you were the Irishman that didn’t drink?”
Ginny is standing behind him now. Her sudden presentiment knocks him off his stool and out of the spell the bartender wove around him. And it is some sort of spell, he thinks, as he rights himself with one unsteady hand. How else could he explain having just consumed three shots of gin in quick succession without fully realizing it. Ginny’s right, it’s not like him.
“I ought to get going, I suppose,” he says, straightening up. “We’re wanting to get to the next village.” Daniel starts to collect his things, drops a few more euros in the donativo jar. The hippy comes out from behind the surfboard and puts a hand on his shoulder. Leather and cloth bracelets tied in knots on his wrist slide down the mahogany tanned forearm.
“Listen, man, why don’t you come in the truck with me?” He gestures to a late-model open-bed pickup parked partially behind a wall of hay bales. “I got a buddy in Calzadilla with a nice little hotel. I can take you there, set you up. I think you’ve walked enough for the day.” He looks up at Daniel, his bushy eyebrows drawing together.
The man barely comes up to Daniel’s chest. Daniel hadn’t realized how gnome-like the guy was, must have been standing on a crate behind the bar all this time.
Ginny leans in. “Let’s go, Daniel.”
“Sorry, bro, got to listen to the missus,” Daniel says, chuckling and wrapping an arm around Ginny, a poorly thought-out manoeuvre.
She tenses and makes a face as though she would enjoy running him through with one of the teepee poles. His arm beats a hasty retreat. Somewhere in the recesses of his lit-up cerebellum, he realizes he has made a grave tactical error. He never should have gotten so heavily into the Hendrick’s with the hypnotizing little leprechaun. Chastising himself, he pulls on his backpack, yanking on the strap of the hip belt with a vengeance. It bites into his gut where the gin and the granola bar have set up for a quarrel with one another.
“Thanks,” he says, reaching over when he’s done gearing up to shake the little man’s hand. It turns into one of those overhand clasps like they did in the movie Mod Squad.
“Take care of yourself, my friend.”
“I will,” Daniel says, hurrying off after Ginny. She is already back on the trail, speeding up to go ahead of him. Definitely pissed, he assesses, even as he runs to catch up.
“I don’t like that guy,” she says. They cross to the other side of the one-lane road. The tarmac radiates heat and is buckling in places. Not one car has passed over it since they’ve been there.
“Why not?” Daniel asks her. “I thought he was grand.”
“That’s because he only had eyes for you,” she says.
“Perhaps.” Daniel had gotten a similar vibe, but didn’t have a problem with it. Neither did Ginny, he was sure. After all, she was from California. “Jealous?” he teases her, feeling lightheaded and witty, a combined illusion gin is all too famous for.
She speeds up on the hot trail and doesn’t answer him. She isn’t in the mood, he reckons, for teasing.
“I thought you said it was only two more miles.” Ginny sucks on the tube to her backpack hydration bladder, trying to siphon out a few drops. It makes a sound like a straw at the bottom of a milkshake.
“I thought you said you were fine to go on.”
Daniel had pointed out the hippy’s offer not long after they got back on the trail. They could still walk back and take him up on a drive the last of the way, he’d said. She’d been adamant in her refusal. He’s starting to wish he’d pushed the idea a little more.
“I am fine to go on. Are you?” she says sharply.
They’ve been bickering with each other for the last half hour. Tired, hot, dusty from the trail. Daniel can feel the fine grit in his mouth, grinding on his teeth. The vast meseta still surrounds them, as flat as ever, but the Roman road built through it has begun to swell and recede in a cascade of rises that test their patience as well as their endurance.
“Maybe we should take a break,” Daniel says, looking out over the horizon at the Camino disappearing over the next small hill, and the next and the next.
“We just took a break.”
“Well, maybe we should take another one.” He pulls his pack off roughly and throws it down on the ground, and a grey dirt cloud flies up into his eyes. He turns away, rubbing them with both his fists. Once recovered, he opens the ties of his pack and pulls out the guidebook, flipping through it hastily. The pages make noisy protest in his hands. The pleasant calm of the Hendrick’s in his body has long worn off and left him with an angry rot in his gut. He’s not at his best.
“I don’t know what you think you’re going to find in there,” Ginny says, throwing her own backpack down. “It’s not like we could have missed Calzadilla. There’s been nothing for miles.”
Daniel ignores her, running his finger along the yellow dotted trail in his guidebook. He still can’t figure out where they are. They’ve crossed a couple of muddy streams on their way, but nothing big enough to warrant an entry on the map. They’ve been walking for so bloody long. They really should be there by now. He narrows his eyes inspecting the map, the sweat dripping down the back of his neck, convinced something will make sense if he just looks long enough.
Ginny throws off her own backpack and sits down hard on the gravel path, her back to him. “I hate this part,” she says under her breath.
Daniel looks up from the guidebook. “What do you mean, ‘this part’?” He closes the book in his hands with a snap, raises his voice a bit. It would echo if there were anything for it to bounce off. “What do you mean, Ginny?”
“Nothing,” she says, still not turning around to face him.
“You said you hated this part,” he reminds her. “Like you’re after doing it before.”
She doesn’t answer him. He throws the guidebook back in his pack, cinches it closed again.
He takes a step closer to her. “Have you?”
“Have I what?” she says, standing up, brushing the gravel residue off her hiking pants.
“Have you walked it before, so?” he says, grabbing his pack and slamming it on his back. The loose sternum straps slap him in the chest. “Like the Englishman said?” He’s not sure how it really matters. Who cares if she walked it before. Although it seems strange that she would lie about it. The possible deception fuels his rising temper. The last week has taken its toll, just as the Roman road has.
“Are you going to believe what that asshole says?”
“Are you after giving me a straight answer?”
She sighs and then tries to reason with him. “Listen, Daniel, you’re hot, we’re both exhausted. It can’t be that much farther. Let’s just keep —”
“What’s that?” He’s looking past her, ahead on the trail. A shiny twist of silver winks at them from atop the next hill. “Is that a water pump?” he cries out. The metal spigots are usually marked on the map with a blue F for Fuente, fountain, but he hadn’t seen any when he consulted the guidebook. The prospect of water for his swollen tongue diverts him from his interrogation of Ginny. He begins marching toward the twinkling flash. Ginny follows him at a distance.
As they approach, it becomes more and more apparent that this is not a Fuente, too low to the ground and the wrong shape. When they get close enough, they stop. Ginny warns him quietly.
“Don’t touch it, Daniel.”
“What the fuck is this, Ginny?” The shiny pan with the fitted top sits in the middle of the road like an untripped bomb.
“I don’t know, Daniel.”
“You don’t, do you?” he says, spinning around to face her. He is seething with anger now. He would spit on the trail if he had any saliva left. “It’s a dove pan, Ginny. What the hell do you think a dove pan is doing in the middle of the Camino?”
“I don’t know, Daniel,” she says again weakly.
“I’ll tell you what. It’s here because I told you about it. And either you’re some sick bitch or …”
“No, Daniel, no … I didn’t …”
She’s starting to cry now, but he can’t bring himself to care. His rage lifts him up, carrying him away.
“Did someone put you up to it? Was it that gobshite, Gerald? Pay you to try and drive the pathetic grief-riddled Irishman mad, did he now?” It all makes sense. Gerald could have arranged for this whole little charade, the woman following them, Ginny. All just designed to drive Daniel off the edge so Gerald could take control of the business and sell it out from under him. He looks down at the covered pan and then turns to Ginny, challenging her with his eyes. She still cries with what he firmly believes to be crocodile tears.
“Don’t do it, Daniel,” she says, her voice pleading. What an actress. And he’d almost fallen for it. Such a fool he’s been. He reaches down and lifts the lid of the pan, throwing it off the side of the raised road into the cracked earthen field below.
The charred white feathers of the still bird inside flutter as a coward of a breeze blows over the crest of the hill.
“The hell with you,” Daniel says. “The hell with all of you.” He steps around the glittering pan and carries on walking the trail, leaving Ginny and the dead dove behind.
When Daniel finally makes it into Calzadilla de la Cueza, he walks right past the municipal albergue with its communal quarters and checks in at the local hotel. He tells the proprietor that the guy with the Hendrick’s and the surfboard bar sent him and receives a hearty welcome he sadly has no stomach for. After drinking copious amounts of bottled water at supper, he moves on to the bar and spends so much time there he doesn’t get up to walk the next morning. Instead, he lies in the bed of the boutique hotel and drifts in and out of a fitful sleep, thrashing on the expanse of white cotton sheets, boundaryless after the familiar containment of his sleeping bag. He awakes to a pounding headache sometime after lunch, its origin as likely from heatstroke as his trip to the hotel bar. Getting dressed and swallowing a few Aspirin, he takes the richly carpeted staircase down to a more modest lobby restaurant in search of coffee and Wi-Fi.
“You better watch it or you’re going to become a stereotype, Daniel.” Angela arches one disapproving eyebrow at him from the screen of his phone. “There is only one thing more cliché than a grieving Irishman, and that’s a hungover one.”
“Stop, Angela.” Daniel downs half of a bottle of water he ordered with his café con leche. “I’m not needing this now.”
“Fine. Whatever you say. Far be it from me to ever tell my brother when he’s being a right pillock. But tell me, what does your friend Ginny have to say about this new alcoholic side of yourself?”
“She’s history,” he tells her.
“Why?”
Daniel tells her everything. About the first sighting of the woman in the corn, his encounter in the cemetery and the nunnery. Ginny’s ridiculous explanation that the dead spirit of her friend was following them. He’s grateful there’s no one in the restaurant to listen.
“Jesus, Danny, you really were out in the sun too long,” she says.
He doesn’t tell her about the dove pan. It is too personal and too fresh. Instead, he tells her about his suspicions about Gerald. How it was all an elaborate con so he could take control of Daniel’s portion of the firm then sell out to pay off his gambling debts.
“I think he hired that other one, and Ginny,” he says, spitting out her name over the table. “I’m sure she’s lied about all she had to say for herself. No doubt she’s not even from California or even the feckin’ West Coast.” He takes a sip of coffee with steamed milk and feels the caffeine wash over key regions of his aching brain. When he takes his forehead in his hands and closes his eyes, he ends his tirade with a final admission less aggressive in tone but more damning for his spirit. “Sure, I just can’t believe she played me like that, Angie.”
“Daniel,” he can hear Angela say, treading lightly with him. “I talked to Gerald.”
His head jolts up from the table, knocking the smartphone over from where it was propped against the napkin canister. He picks it up quickly and shouts into the video feed, “You talked to Gerald?”
“I’d had enough of Cynthia’s wailing, so I tracked him down myself. The wanker’s in Atlantic City with some youngster with a soap opera name, works in your office.”
“Kendra?” Daniel asks in disbelief. Their receptionist. She couldn’t be more than twenty years old, straight out of community college. The kid was so young she probably still had placenta behind her ears.
“Aye, Kendra. Didn’t she make a play for you once?” Angela asks.
She had, when Petra was in the hospital. A few women had at the time. There are few things more magnetic than the loneliness of a grieving widower before his wife has had a chance to die.
“He appears to have won back all the money he owed and then some,” Angela continues. “Living it up like a king he is now, if you want to believe him. No wonder Cynthia was upset. I’d have him strung up by his clackers myself.”
“Jesus.”
“The thing is, Daniel, he told me the corporation pulled out. The one that was so hot and bothered for your outfit. They retracted their offer right after you left for the Camino. Bought out your man in Newark instead, Bara— something or other.”
“Baracon,” he says, with the inflection of a sponge. He knows Steve, the CEO. They used to play squash. He holds up his sister’s Skype image, her contour and colouring so like his own. Her expression mirrors back a conclusion that he is only slowly coming to. “What are you saying, Angela?”
A disgruntled teenager comes into the empty restaurant and drops a bucket on the floor with a crash, starts to mop up. The acrid smell of disinfectant washes across the tiles of the restaurant and into Daniel’s nostrils, making him wince. His sister speaks to him from the palm of his hand and eight hundred miles away.
“I’m saying whatever reasons that girl may have to try to drive you mad, Daniel, they’re her own.”
CHAPTER 13
Calzadilla de la Cueza to Portomarín
DANIEL STEERS CLEAR OF the Roman road after that. The guidebook allows for more than one route out of Calzadilla and beyond. He chooses the dreary dirt path next to the autopista rather than chance the open meseta again. A new wind has blown in from the mountains, bringing with it more seasonable weather. He is back to needing a jacket in the morning more than a broad-brimmed hat.
Cars fly past him, rustling the barren shade trees planted at unnatural intervals. Beyond this, the vegetation struggles to cling to the flatlands, burnt up and pollution stunted. It is a drab box-top world sliced in two identical hemispheres by an asphalt ribbon. Only the occasional Formica-riddled roadside café breaks the pattern, or an abandoned bodega with a door locked tightly into its sparsely grassed dome. Fellow pilgrims are scarce although he does bump into the mother-daughter team from his shared dinner at the schoolhouse. The two offer polite but strained Buen Caminos followed by stilted small talk. He takes the hint and moves on. They must feel confirmed in their earlier assessment of a lover’s quarrel, given Ginny’s absence. This annoys him though he is grateful they didn’t ask where she is. Mostly because he doesn’t know.
The Camino eventually leads him to a nondescript municipal albergue, where he stays the night, keeping to himself. The room he shares with four others opens out onto the street, and he stands and watches the late-afternoon pilgrims trickle in as he hangs his wet clothes on the veranda. After a time, when he can no longer convince himself he isn’t looking for someone, he turns away.
After a poor sleep, he gets up and does the same thing again. He is back in the rhythm he had when he first started walking the Camino, the daily physical hardship of hundreds of lonely steps, the cyclical search for shelter and a place to wash off the dirt from the road at the end of the day. He eats when he can and finds inconspicuous and inventive places to relieve himself when needed. This, despite seeing a sign at one of the crossroads that showed a defecating stick man with a line drawn through his crouched linear body. The hell with them, Daniel thinks, wringing out his wet wool socks that night. If they don’t want a man crapping on the Camino, then they ought to build some public lavatories.
By the time he makes it to León, he is a walking automaton, unable to appreciate the charms of the capital of the province. Instead, he is needled by its seedier side. Comic-strip lions with addled faces point the way to Santiago instead of scallop shells and gilded arrows. Buskers on the sidewalk sell Saint James fridge magnets and Blessed Virgins that glow in the dark. One vendor has T-shirts fanned out on the pavement like cards, each emblazoned with a cartoon character in a blue pilgrim cape, walking staff in hand. A man stops dead in front of him to pull a beer-bellied Homer Simpson from the deck. Daniel moves to get around him and hits the oncoming flow of pedestrian traffic. People bump into him and knock his backpack about.
Crossing a pedestrian overpass surrounded by cloudy Plexiglas, he gazes out across the sprawling city as through smoke. He can see the parade for San Froilán snaking its way through the downtown core in honour of León’s patron saint, a former hermit never seen without his familiar, a tamed wolf carrying saddlebags. Beyond his lupine sidekick, San Froilán is famous for epic journeys of faith that earned him a bishop’s ring. Too often, Daniel thinks, the biographies of saints read like a cross between Tolkien and a teen vampire novel.
