Paraíso Read online

  Praise for Paraíso

  “Paraíso has a story so compelling, so sinuously told and passing strange, you feel like you can’t take your eyes off the road for a second. Wonder and dread pull you forward. You need to see what’s around the next curve.”

  —William Finnegan, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life

  “Gordon Chaplin is a brave explorer of the human heart. With his wickedly observant new novel, he leads us from East Coast to West and then south to Baja, where this strange and mysterious tale pulses with life. Paraíso probes the heart of what it is to be a sibling, what it is to know regret, how to take risks and how to forgive.”

  —Joanna Hershon, author of The Outside of August

  and A Dual Inheritance

  “Some will say of Paraíso, ‘I couldn’t put it down.’ But Gordon Chaplin’s novel is so good I had to put it down repeatedly—to think, to savor. It’s an intricate story, rich in surprises, with passages that are too well written to read just once. Entangling and then disentangling intrigues past and present, it accelerates to a dramatic conclusion on a misty mountainside, closing with scenes that—I promise you—no other writer has ever imagined.”

  —Jonathan Penner, author of the story collections Private Parties and This Is My Voice

  “A misunderstanding between brother and sister evolves through twenty years of separate adventures, from the fall of the Twin Towers to murderous surfing off the coast of Baja California, from a past of American secrets to a present of Mexican tumult and resolution in the heights—delivering you to its hard won Paradise. This is a ride you won’t want to miss.”

  —Bruce Berger, author of Almost an Island

  “This novel may be the ultimate exercise in slacker picaresque, wandering from Maine to Mexico, chronicling middle-aging rich kids for whom responsibility and consequences are side issues. Against sweet backdrops of scenery and surfing appear murder, suicide, child abuse, drugs, squalor, and sex. Readers who enjoyed being unsettled by the ending of Chaplin’s first novel, Joyride, will find even more to enjoy in the conclusion of Paraíso.”

  —Henry Allen, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism

  ALSO BY GORDON CHAPLIN

  Full Fathom Five: Ocean Warming and a Father’s Legacy

  Dark Wind: A Survivor’s Tale of Love and Loss

  Fever Coast Log: At Sea in Central America

  Joyride

  Copyright © 2016 by Gordon Chaplin

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without the express written consent of the publisher, except in the case of brief excerpts in critical reviews or articles. All inquiries should be addressed to Arcade Publishing, 307 West 36th Street, 11th Floor, New York, NY 10018.

  First Edition

  This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Arcade Publishing books may be purchased in bulk at special discounts for sales promotion, corporate gifts, fund-raising, or educational purposes. Special editions can also be created to specifications. For details, contact the Special Sales Department, Arcade Publishing, 307 West 36th Street, 11th Floor, New York, NY 10018 or [email protected].

  Arcade Publishing® is a registered trademark of Skyhorse Publishing, Inc,® a Delaware corporation.

  Visit our website at www.arcadepub.com.

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Chaplin, Gordon, author.

  Title: Paraíso: a novel / Gordon Chaplin.

  Description: First edition. | New York: Arcade Publishing, [2016]

  Identifiers: LCCN 2015050649| ISBN 978-1-62872-598-8 (paperback : alk. paper) | ISBN 978-1-62872-612-1 (ebook)

  Subjects: LCSH: Brothers and sisters—Fiction. | BISAC: FICTION / Literary.

  Classification: LCC PS3553.H2797 P37 2016 | DDC 813/.54—dc23 LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015050649

  Cover design by Laura Klynstra

  Cover photo: Shutterstock

  Printed in the United States of America

  If my sister hadn’t died in an auto wreck

  And had been taken by the injuns

  I would have had something to do:

  Go into the mountains and get her back.

  —Jim Harrison

  On the Way

  For an hour or forever the car has been rocketing along in the tunnel made by its own headlights in the desert night. The thorny scrub beside the road is as undifferentiated as a wall. The road is flat, straight, and empty.

  The lady is alone in the backseat with a lot of baggage. Two boys from San Diego are in the front seat.

  They pass a road sign for a place called El Zorro y la Peña. The boy in the passenger seat takes a road map from the glove compartment and turns on the overhead light. “It’s the only sign we’ve seen for hours, and it’s not on here. It gives me the creeps. Where are we, anyway?”

  “In the middle of nowhere,” the driver says in an Orson Welles voice.

  “I mean, if we broke down out here, for Christ’s sake.”

  “They’d find our bleached bones in a year or so,” the driver says. “And they’d laugh and say ‘Three less gringos.’”

  “We’re not going to break down,” the lady says. “I know this car. The older it gets, the better it runs.” She puts out a hand and massages the base of the driver’s neck.

  “They don’t make them like this anymore,” the driver says, grinning and hunching his shoulders.

  The boy in the passenger seat just shakes his head. The car is a 1956 Mercedes Benz 220S convertible, dark green with cracked beige leather seats, peeling walnut trim, and rusty landau irons.

  They rocket along in silence for a while. Suddenly, there is a man standing beside the road waving to them. They are past him before they can see him clearly. Looking back through the rear window, all they can see is darkness.

  “Holy shit,” the driver says. “Trying to get himself killed.”

  “Maybe he’s trying to warn us about something up ahead,” the lady says. “A herd of wild ass stampeding across the road. We’re in a strange land here, don’t you think? Anything could happen.”

  “Not that strange,” the driver says. “Just a bunch of cactuses.”

  “Cacti,” the lady says. “They’re very strange. Haven’t you seen them moving around?”

  The boy in the passenger seat rolls his eyes. “He wanted a ride. That’s how they do it here. They don’t just stick out their thumb. They wave you down, like they have a right to a ride.”

  “Well, maybe they do here,” the lady says.

  “Maybe the guy’s a bandido,” the driver says. “He’s probably got a gang waiting in the brush.”

  “That doesn’t happen here,” the boy in the passenger seat says. “In Sinaloa that happens. The dope country. This is more like the frontier.”

  “I think we should go back and pick him up,” the lady says. “He’ll know where we are, at least. Plus I need to practice my Spanish.”

  “No room,” the driver says.

  “There’s room. I’ll just push this stuff over.”

  “Going to be pretty close company back there,” the boy in the passenger seat says.

  “All the better.”

  The boy in the passenger seat laughs and shakes his head again.

  “I think we’d be asking for it if we picked him up,” the driver says.

  “Well,” the lady says, “Suppose it was you, walking out there?”

  “We’d stop,” says the boy in the passenger seat.

  They drive on until the lady leans forward and whispers in the driver’s ear. He rubs it slowly. �
�Well, it’s your car. What’s the Spanish word for ‘sister’?”

  “Hermana. Why?”

  “We’ll tell him you’re our sister, okay?”

  The lady doesn’t say anything.

  “Is that okay with you?” the driver asks.

  “I’ve already got one brother,” the lady says. “I don’t even want to pretend to have any more. Besides, I’m too old to be your sister … he’d never believe it.”

  “Sure he would,” the driver says gallantly.

  The car swings onto the steep shoulder with a crackle of beer cans. For a second the lights shine on the large dark form of a cow or bull, through an arc of cactus and then up into the star-filled sky. Then they are headed back along the road.

  They drive for what seems a long way without seeing the man. And turn back again.

  Within a few seconds he is there, waving at them. They stop and back up. In the backup lights they can see him standing calmly, a lean thirtyish man in jeans, boots, a checked long-sleeved Western shirt, and a stiff straw cowboy hat. The boy on the passenger side gets out to let him in without saying a word.

  “Muchas gracias.” He smells of brilliantine, horsehair, and cigarette smoke. The lady smells of Chanel, as far as she can tell. She always travels with a bottle of it to use when she can’t bathe. She smiles and shrugs. “De nada.”

  The boy in the passenger seat turns and points at the lady. “Hermana. Comprendo?”

  “Claro,” the man says politely.

  “So will you ask him where the hell we are?”

  Her Spanish is rusty but serviceable. The boy’s face hangs impatiently over the seat back, his eyes shifting back and forth with the words. “He says we’re coming up on a place called Tres Vírgenes. Three Virgins. Check it on the map.”

  The boy peers at the map and finally shakes his head. “Not on here either. Where’s he going?”

  She asks again. “Piedra Negra, he says.”

  “Shit. I don’t see it, for Christ’s sake. What kind of map is this?”

  “Well, he knows where it is,” the lady says. “And when we get there, we’ll know where it is too.”

  The boy flips off the overhead light. Potholes begin to rock the car like a boat at sea, and then the road surface changes to gravel. The sound of the gravel under the wheels roars in the cab. The Mexican produces a pint bottle of tequila, which slowly makes the rounds. In the backseat, the smell of brilliantine is feeling itself around the edges of the smell of Chanel. Every once in a while a pothole will press the lady and the Mexican together and then hurl them apart. His body feels lean, hard, and warm.

  She made the bad mistake of going to bed with one of the boys, the driver, she remembers, because of the nice hollow at the base of his throat. She picked them up in a restaurant in San Quintin after their own car died, hoping they’d help with expenses (and noting the throat), but so far they had only helped with the driving. They were the cheapest Californians she had ever met.

  Anyway, they were both good drivers. And the lady has always hated to drive at night. Though she enjoys being driven.

  She told them she’d come to Baja for the ruins.

  “But there aren’t any ruins in Baja,” the boy in the passenger seat said. “There was never any civilization here at all.”

  “Well,” the lady said after a while. “I guess I was misinformed.”

  This exchange set the tone for the past twenty-four hours.

  “What does Pancho do for work, anyway?” the driver asks.

  The lady laughs at the answer.

  “What’s so funny?”

  “He said he works with his hands.”

  The lady watches the pinholed sky. The tequila bottle makes another round.

  One of the Mexican’s hands, the one nearest the lady, rests calmly on his thigh and looks like a carved, polished piece of dark wood. The next time the tequila bottle comes around she lets her own hand come in contact with it. The fact that it is warm, dry, and human makes the bottom fall out of her stomach.

  “Oh,” she says.

  “Oh, what?” the driver says.

  The lady doesn’t answer.

  “Shall we throw him out yet?” asks the boy in the passenger seat.

  “It’s all right,” the lady says. “Everything’s fine.”

  “We just want to protect your honor,” says the boy in the passenger seat. “That’s supposed to be important here, isn’t it?”

  “I appreciate your concern,” the lady says. “I do.” She feels her leg bump gently against the Mexican’s, bump again, then finally come to rest against it like a plane landing on a runway.

  The Mexican moves his leg away.

  The tequila makes a few more rounds. “Ask Pancho if he knows any songs,” the driver says. “We might as well get our money’s worth.”

  It’s a ranchero number. He’s good, a strong tenor who knows all the outrageous harmonics and flourishes of the form. They’re getting a little shitfaced, including the lady. The tequila is creeping up on them from behind. They all join in whenever they can.

  As he sings, the Mexican’s breath smells of tequila and cigarettes. His teeth look very white and clean. The hand that had been resting on his left thigh rises in the air with the high notes and lowers and spreads with the low ones.

  When the song ends, everyone laughing and whooping and congratulating themselves on the last long agonizing fall of notes hanging in the air, the hand ends up on back on his thigh.

  “That was a great song,” the driver says. “What the hell is leña de pirule?”

  “Let me ask him,” the lady said, and did.

  The Mexican answers with an edge in his voice. “It means pepper tree logs,” she tells the boys. “Pepper tree firewood. It’s about a woman.”

  “Leña de pirule,” said the boy in the passenger seat in a thoughtful voice. The Mexican adds something more.

  “What?” the driver says.

  “Pepper tree wood is very smoky.” She feels the blood in her face and is grateful for the darkness. “It makes people cry when it burns. It’s lousy firewood.”

  Nobody says anything for a little while. The boy in the passenger seat finally repeats the phrase. The Mexican clears his throat and looks at his knees.

  “He really does think you’re my brothers,” the lady says. “Amazingly enough.”

  “Good,” the driver says.

  “So, now I want you to tell him the truth.”

  The boy in the passenger seat starts to laugh. “Why don’t you tell him yourself? You know the language.”

  “Okay, then I want you out of my car. He can drive.”

  “Jesus!” the boy in the passenger seat says in mock horror. “You’d make us get out here?”

  “Just tell him the truth,” the lady says. “The truth will set you free.”

  “The hell with it,” the driver says. “It doesn’t make any difference to me.”

  “How about a deal,” the boy in the passenger seat says. “We tell him we’re not your brothers, you keep us abreast of everything that goes on back there. Kind of a play by play.”

  “All right,” the lady says.

  During the next series of potholes, as if by accident, the Mexican’s hand comes to rest on the seatback behind her. She can sense it as if it belongs to her. She lets a pothole jostle her inside shoulder against the Mexican’s chest and the hand drops gently onto the other shoulder. She can feel each finger through her wool jersey. Her own hands are clasped together between her thighs.

  “What’s happening back there,” says the boy in the passenger seat without turning around.

  “Nobody back here said a word.”

  “Oh, come on now …”

  “All right. He just put his arm around me.”

  “Aha,” says the boy in the passenger seat. “And what’s his hand doing?”

  “Nothing. Just lying there.”

  Silence. In a few minutes he asks again. “What’s his hand doing now?”

/>   The lady doesn’t say anything.

  “God damn it,” the driver says.

  “It’s … lightly caressing my left shoulder.”

  The driver hits the wheel with his hand. Then he slams on the brakes and stops the car. “That’s it. Tell Pancho the ride’s over.”

  The lady can feel the Mexican’s hand freeze. In front of her, the heads of the two boys are also motionless. The headlight-lit road continued straight on.

  “Now it’s just lying there,” she hears herself saying, “but I can feel each fingernail.”

  The driver rips his door open and gets out. He goes around to the passenger side and motions to his friend, who gets out too. He tilts the seat back and leans in. “Vámonos, Pancho.”

  “Come on, don’t be silly,” the lady says. “His name’s Rogelio.”

  “I don’t care what his name is,” the driver yells. “Tell him to get the fuck out, or I’ll drag him out.”

  “Calmantes montes,” the Mexican says. “Pájaros cantantos y alicantes pintos.”

  The lady covers her mouth to stop a laugh, but it bursts out through her fingers. At the sound, the driver pulls his head out of the car and straightens up outside. “You’re going to laugh when he insults me?”

  “He didn’t insult you. Here’s a literal translation: ‘Take it easy, baby. Singing birds and spotted snakes.’”

  The driver silently walks away from the car. She can hear the boy from the passenger seat: “I don’t believe this.” When she pushes her own seat back up and squeezes out, the shadows of the two boys are huge and indistinct under the stars.

  Her laugh is absorbed by the space around them. “Shall we start all over again?”

  “Gary?” says the boy who’d been in the passenger seat. “We just can’t—”

  “It’s either Pancho or me, Scott,” Gary says. “That’s how it is.”

  “Gary. Do you know where we are? This isn’t the place for this.”

  “Go on with them if you want to, Scott. Sooner or later somebody’ll come by. I’ll catch up with you in Cabo.”

  “Jesus.” The lady can see Scott’s head bow and swing. “I … just … do … not … believe this. Will you tell Rogelio to get out now?”