The Lord of Opium

Seven for the seven that never got to heaven.

They found Ton-Ton taking apart a music box on Celia’s kitchen table. “He says he knows how to put it back together. I sure hope so,” said Fidelito. The box was one that fascinated him, because it showed a pirate and a sea captain crossing swords to a song called “High Barbary.” No one knew where High Barbary was, but Fidelito liked to dance to the music, slashing a stick around as though he were fighting pirates.

“If you break it, I’ll beat the stuffing out of you,” he told Ton-Ton.

“Y-you can try,” said the big boy. “Don’t look so, uh, worried, chico. I took apart all the others and th-they’re fine.”

“You didn’t touch ‘You Are My Sunshine,’ ” said Fidelito.

“That’s too difficult,” Ton-Ton said. The cowboy, the man in black, and the lady sat among a number of boxes at the far end of the table.

“Chacho!” cried the little boy as he and Mr. Ortega came in. “Look at this music box. It’s padrísimo!” He reached for “Sunshine,” but Celia blocked his way.

“I have to cook here. This isn’t a playground,” she scolded. Mirasol followed, carrying a stack of mixing bowls.

“Please, please let us stay. This is the best place in the house.” Fidelito hung on to her apron and smiled winningly.

Celia smiled back in spite of herself, but her rules were inflexible. “How can I prepare food with grubby hands all over the place?” Ton-Ton carefully put the bits he was working on into a bag. Matt and Chacho moved the other music boxes. They went to a nearby room and found a table that had once belonged to a maharaja. It was made of dark wood inlaid with ivory. Ton-Ton covered it with a sheet so as not to damage the surface.

“I haven’t seen this room before,” said Chacho.

“You haven’t seen a lot of the rooms here,” Listen said. “The hacienda is huge. Fidelito and I found—” She was stopped by a frown from Matt. “You wouldn’t like what we found, Chacho. It was full of big, horrible spiders.”

“I saw one,” Fidelito said. “It wanted to bite me.”

“Ha! That was a baby,” scoffed Listen. “The ones I saw could eat a rat for breakfast.” The little boy looked alarmed. Matt had to admire her quick mind. She’d not only stopped Fidelito from talking about the secret passage, she had hit upon the one thing to keep him out of it. She was used to keeping secrets.

Chacho had seen the “Sunshine” music box before, but he willingly watched when Fidelito wound it up. “Tell me, Ton-Ton,” he said. “Why are you taking these apart?”

“I’m trying to, uh, figure out how the microchips work. In a machine, you wind it up and it starts moving. One part m-moves the next part and so on. The parts have to be touching.” The boy laid out the bits to the pirate box in his slow, methodical way. “The m-microchips in the brain don’t touch each other and they don’t, uh, have to be wound up. But they’re still a kind of machine. Something connects them. This is my way of thinking about the p-problem.” He waved his hand at the boxes. “Sooner or later I’ll figure it out.”

No one argued with this. They were used to Ton-Ton’s dogged way of working. It wasn’t interesting to watch, however, so Matt suggested they take Chacho on an excursion to the greenhouses. The storm clouds had mostly dispersed when they got outside, and fleeting patches of sun lit up sand verbenas and primroses.

“Look!” shouted Fidelito, dragging Chacho past mango trees, papayas, and granadilla vines in the first greenhouse. “It’s like the Garden of Eden.”

“The Garden of what?” asked Listen.

“The place where our great-great-great-grandfather and great-great-great-grandmother came from. Mi abuelita told me about it. God used to walk around in it and eat mangoes.”

“Dr. Rivas says God doesn’t exist,” the little girl said.

“Dr. Rivas is a horse’s butt. Sor Artemesia says He does,” retorted Fidelito. “Let’s look at the other greenhouses.”

As Matt had expected, Chacho was overwhelmed by the flower gardens. He was struck speechless by the orchids and their strange shapes and unlikely colors. He stood in front of them for a long time, tracing their outlines in the air. He really is an artist, Matt thought. “You can come here whenever you like,” he said.

“I’d like to bring my father,” Chacho replied.

Matt’s heart sank. Eusebio was unable to appreciate anything, but Matt didn’t want to discourage his friend. “Of course. Ask Mr. Ortega to help you.”

When they had gone through the last greenhouse, Matt noticed another building in the distance. Its walls were of some sort of plastic or glass, and he couldn’t remember seeing it before. The sun came out and the walls changed from transparent to milky.