Free The Temptation of Demetrio Vigil by Alisa Valdes Page A

valleys of
wrinkles. Two tiny eyes, filmy with cataracts and the size of hard
gray pebbles, perched far back in sunken sockets. A smell of
mothballs, stale smoke, hot cooking oil, corn tortillas and
insecticide wafted out, making me cough.
    “Hello!” I called, trying to sound cheerful in spite
of my feeling like a complete and utter fool.
    “What do you want?” came the reply, in a hoarse old
voice with a trace of a Spanish accent to it. “You selling
something, I don’t want none of it.”
    “I’m sorry to bother you, sir, but I’ve come here
hoping to find a young man named Demetrio Vigil. Google said he
lived at this address.”
    “Who did?”
    “Google.”
    The door opened a tiny bit more now, and the face
stuck itself into the space between us, scowling with a hand cupped
to his ear.
    “You what, now?” came the gruff, wispy old
voice.
    I repeated myself, and he opened the door a bit more
again, and this time stepped halfway out, sizing me up with a look
of guarded mistrust.
    “Demetrio Vigil, eh?” he asked.
    “Yes. I’ve only recently met him.”
    “No, no,” he shook his head and
jabbing his own thumb into his chest. “ I’m Demetrio Vigil. I don’t know
you.”
    His jaws worked convulsively, as jaws will do in the
absence of teeth. I could see now that he wore dark jeans, cowboy
boots, and a red flannel shirt with a bolo tie.
    “Oh,” I said. “Then I’m terribly sorry. I’ve made a
mistake. I met a young man from Golden last week, who said his name
was Demetrio Vigil, and you’re the only such person listed in the
white pages.”
    “Los white pages,” he repeated, running an antique hand across his
scruff of white beard.
    “I’m sorry to bother you.”
    “Ni modo, hita .”
    “Sorry?”
    “Are you Hispanic?” he asked me. “You look
Hispanic.”
    “Does it matter?” I asked, defensively, annoyed that
older people always seemed to ask me this while people my own age
didn’t care.
    He shrugged. “If people think it matters, it
matters,” he said. “It didn’t used to matter, now it matters.”
    My spine tingled with the words, so similar to the
ones Yazzie had spoken earlier. Another coincidence. Or was it?
Maybe I’d baited him into saying it. Maybe I was losing my mind. I
wondered if perhaps I’d hit my head in the crash, because the world
seemed slightly tilted now, emotionally. I’d never been anxious
before, but now anxiety seemed to define me.
    “I’m Hispanic, yes,” I told him, shaking myself out
of the chill. “But I don’t speak Spanish, and I don’t think it
matters.”
    “This other Demetrio,” he said, his eyes narrowing a
tiny bit. “When did you meet him?”
    “Just last week. I saw him this morning, too. I
wanted to thank him for helping me. I had a crash. It’s a long
story. I’ve made a mistake, sir, so sorry. I’ll just go now.”
    “No, no,” he said, touching my arm. As he got
closer, I smelled alcohol on his breath, and pungent, unpleasant
body odor. “I have a grandson who carries my name. Demetrio.”
    I gasped a little, and my eyes widened. “Oh? Does he
live here?”
    The old man shook his head
solemnly. “No. Not no more, jovencita . Ya se fue .”
    “I’m sorry, I don’t understand.”
    “Se fue. Se fue ,” he repeated, gesticulating angrily, as though saying words
I didn’t know, over and over, would somehow make me understand
them. “He ain’t here no more. He’s gone. I don’t want no trouble.
Don’t be asking me no more questions.”
    “Oh, okay. Well, do you know where I might be able
to find him?”
    The old man frowned, and shook his head solemnly. He
took a raw, homemade-looking cigarette out of his pocket and lit it
with a match ignited - to my horror - on the zipper of his jeans.
He took a long drag, then jabbed the cigarette into the air to
punctuate his thoughts.
    “My late wife, la loca esa que Dios la bendiga ,
with all her rosaries and todo
eso , she thought good of everybody, she’d
tell you