Chapter 13

It was while we were eating at McDonald's, at the intersection of Rio Bravo and Isleta, that I thought of something I'd meant to ask on Friday. "Hey, C, what's your opinion of curanderos?"

She chewed a bite of Big Mac before answering. "I am not prepared to abandon traditional medicine, Darvin," she said, "but neither am I ready to dismiss everything they do out of hand. I am sure some of their remedies are harmless bits of folklore, but though I have witnessed no miracles, I have heard sufficient, and sufficiently consistent, anecdotal evidence that I believe that at least some of the potions involved actually do have a beneficial effect."

I stuck a couple of fries in my mouth, remembering when I heard the answer that I had in fact already asked the question. Sometimes remembering what I managed to remember is tough. "Healing people with weeds?" I said. "That sounds like the old bit about the eye of newt and toe of frog, or whatever."

She smiled a little. "It does, somewhat. Nevertheless, there is some theoretical validity, if nothing else, to the curandero phenomenon."

"How so?"

"Tell me, Darvin – what is penicillin?"

"You mean besides an antibiotic?"

She nodded.

I thought, and then it came to me. "It comes from a kind of mold."

"Precisely. You'll remember that the story of Alexander Fleming's discovery of the drug has him noticing that where this contaminating mold grew in his Petri dishes, the bacterial cultures had died back. What we have then, is a modern 'miracle drug' which, at least initially, derived from a natural source. Shall we then deny the potential efficacy of other natural remedies?"

"You got a point there. But as much as I hate the impersonal, mechanized nature of modern medicine, I have trouble with the notion that someone boiling some weeds and bottling the result can cure me of what ails me."

"You are wise to be wary – not all tinctures from a curandero's kitchen are guaranteed efficacious; some may be merely neutral, achieving results by the placebo effect, and some may be positively harmful, though I am not cognizant of any such. But there are centuries of experience behind today's practitioners, and it is inevitable that occasionally there will be true curative properties in some of their preparations."

"True, true ... you know, you sound like a scientist sometimes."

"I sound like a woman in love with the sound of the language, you mean – I know many words, but were I to enter a laboratory I would be helpless. I would require a lowly lab technician to help me find the door again."

I grinned at her. "It ain't often that you run into something you can't do better than the one who taught you."

"And perhaps if I were to return to school, and pursue a scientific education, I could become a researcher worthy of note. But I have no such plans; I shall remain a scientific tyro who can confuse her husband with her vocabulary."

I snorted. "I ain't any more confused than I was yesterday," I said. "I know you, C – you studied literature and finance, or economics, or whatever it was."

"Yes, but you write poetry – and have never attended college in your life."

I shrugged at that one. "Them that can, do. Them that go to college ain't necessarily them that can. I kept telling myself for years that I wanted, someday, to study poetry formally, but I've been about as successful with it as the poets I know who've studied it or even teach it, so I've give up on that notion.

"And you're the lady what balances the checkbook."

She returned my grin, holding her Coke in her hand. "I have seen your efforts at financial labors. How you became wealthy before you met me is one of the wonders of the world."

"Oh, God didn't intend me to go broke is all," I told her. "I had no idea what I was doing, and I still don't know what I was doing. I just managed somehow to put the right amounts of money in the right places to get me a good return."

"Certainly I would not have recommended a number of your investments, Darvin," Cecelia said. "But for you they've worked well – not, perhaps, as well as those I would have chosen had I known you in those days, but very few of them have proven to be unprofitable." She regarded me over her burger. "How did we get from curanderos to finances so quickly?"

"We got to talkin' 'bout how you was smarter than me."

She giggled. "I am not smarter than you are, Darvin – merely much better at sounding intelligent. You usually sound like you failed English, but just now you sounded like you dropped out of school before you entered it."

"Yeah, but I paid for lunch, so you gotta put up with me."

"No, my sweet husband – I choose to tolerate you, warts and all, because I love you. Your purchase of our food today is not a factor."

"Well, in that case, gimme back what I paid for your lunch."

"Surely – when you can wrest it from me by force."

I took a drink of Coke. "Well, I won't see that money in this lifetime."

Cecelia's smile launched ships in the middle of the Arabian desert. "Oh, you might see it, Darvin. But your grimy little paws shall not touch it, for it is mine. However, since you possess a few dollars of your own, I shan't worry about your poverty."

"Poverty my left foot. I disremember just how much I got, but I do know it's up there. Between us we're in the double digit millions, I know that much." I looked around. "And we sure don't look it."

"I am not aware," Cecelia said, "of any other bona fide millionaires who eat at McDonald's, drive filthy Blazers – and it is, Darvin, beginning to resemble that old truck you used to take me on dates in – drive filthy Blazers, I say, or buy jeans at Wal-Mart and music at Hastings."

"On the other hand," I said, "I don't know of too many millionaires who care so little about the fact that they're millionaires. Bein' rich lets me live how I want to without havin' to worry about where the next light bill's gonna come from. That's all the money means to me."