The Lord of Opium

El Patrón craved land because he liked owning things, but he had chosen to neglect vast areas of it. For purely selfish reasons, the old man had preserved what the rest of the world had destroyed.

Matt felt too restless to stay in bed. He went in search of Waitress, but she was nowhere to be found. With nothing better to do, he went to the garage and found Daft Donald playing chess with Mr. Ortega. “I want to get out. I don’t care where,” he said.

The two men had an odd relationship based on their disabilities. Daft Donald couldn’t talk and Mr. Ortega couldn’t hear, so they worked as a team, with Daft Donald scribbling notes on a yellow pad of paper he always carried with him. Mr. Ortega translated it into speech. The music teacher was also very good at reading lips, and you could carry on an almost normal conversation with him. Now he suggested visiting the guitar factory.

Matt had often been to the workshops, though not with Mr. Ortega. One building was reserved for making pottery. Long ago El Patrón’s mother had gathered clay from riverbeds to make pots in what was then Mexico. She had also woven rebozos on a homemade loom, and so there was a cloth-weaving shed too. Matt sometimes wondered about this shadowy person. In a way she was Matt’s mother too, and he tried to imagine the woman behind the smell of wet clay and the sound of shuttles.

These craft eejits, Matt realized now, were implanted with a milder form of microchip that preserved their skills. They were well fed and housed, for they were not expendable like the workers in the fields. Some of them, Mr. Ortega said, had been there for many years. Daft Donald waited in the car with a comic book when they went inside.

The guitar factory was a beautiful building copied from something El Patrón had seen in an old English movie. It was meant to be one of those charming country homes where gentlemen drank tea while their ladies played the harpsichord. It was completely out of place here. The English garden suffered in the dry desert air and was overrun with flower-eating lizards and bugs.

Inside were racks of harps, oboes, zithers, sitars, drums, and every other kind of instrument that had taken the old man’s fancy. In one room was a piano. A group of eejit boys were singing German folk songs under the direction of an elderly choirmaster. They were no older than Fidelito, and their voices had the high, pure sweetness of children.

Matt’s favorite room, and El Patrón’s as well, was full of guitars. At a large table the master craftsman worked alone, for the task was too demanding for lesser hands. At the moment he was sanding a piece of African mahogany, making it as soft and smooth as skin. The man himself was not unlike a tree stump you might find in a forest. His body was thick, with a barrel chest and sturdy legs. The expression on his face, as he bent over the table, was as concentrated as a tree knot, and his large, sloping nose was pure Aztec.

At first glance the man’s fingers seemed too clumsy to produce such works of art, but the results of his labor stood against the walls. There was row upon row of the most beautiful guitars in the world. Musicians everywhere coveted them, and El Patrón sometimes gave them to his favorites.

“Vaya con Dios, Eusebio,” said Mr. Ortega. “May you go with God.” The guitar maker kept on sanding.

“You know him?” asked Matt. He had watched the guitar maker for years, but no one had ever given him a name. Like most eejits, he was referred to by his occupation.

“He was my compadre. We crossed the border together. Like an idiot, I wanted to be a big star in Hollywood and he . . . ” Mr. Ortega paused. “Eusebio has always been happy doing exactly what he is doing now. He came with me for friendship, and look where it got him.”

Wsssss went Eusebio’s sandpaper as he polished the wood.

“The Farm Patrol shot me with a stun gun. Here.” Mr. Ortega pointed to his ear. “In that instant the world vanished, the world for a musician, I mean. It made me stone deaf.”

“What happened next?” said Matt. He had never had such a long and personal conversation with his music teacher. In fact, the man hadn’t seemed to like him much.