An Excerpt from The Vinegaroon Murders

By James A. Mangum

Part I - Chapter 1

The Santero

Her eyes half-closed; her lips slightly parted; the look of pure ecstasy. How long has it been? How long has he worked for this? How many times has he run his hands up and down her flawlessly smooth body? That look of rapture. So perfect, so peaceful, so permanent. La Virgen de Guadalupe: the carving is finished at last.

Part I - Chapter 2

The Sheepherder

Manuelito smells death. Muerte. Although he is only seventeen, it is a smell that has become all too familiar in his life. And death has come to him in many forms: coyotes, an occasional golden eagle, on rare occasions wild hogs, but more often than not, dogs. Packs of semi-wild dogs. They are a sheepherder’s worst enemy. During the last eight years of Manuelito’s watch, they have killed hundreds of his sheep. Dawn is breaking and the smell of death is in the air. But today it is different. And as yet unseen. It is May 15.

By nine o’clock, with the West Texas heat already building, Manuelito discovers the two bodies. A man and a woman, entwined in a death embrace amongst the rocks. They are covered with vinegaroons. Manuelito calls the vinegaroons alacranes del diablo. Devil scorpions. Although he has walked the forty-square mile Galvan Ranch thousands of times over the last eight years, he has seen a vinegaroon only twice before. And only at night. Now he sees dozens of them scurrying over the dead couple, pinchers gnashing and whiptails thrashing. Here in the light of day, they are frantically searching for something.

Manuelito mumbles, “Dios sabe lo que hace,” makes the sign of the cross and starts to cry.

Part I - Chapter 3

The Sheep

Daniel, the goatboy, is walking the red dirt streets of Dos Cruces. He is smiling, as always. He is thinking about his new baby goat. If Daniel had religion, the baby goat would be Baby Jesus. He worships the little one.

Daniel is on his way to the santero’s workshop. Taz, the wonderdog, is leading the way, as always. This has been their daily routine for some time now. Ever since Jamey Maxwell became Miguel Veras’ — the santero’s — apprentice. This has made Daniel even happier. This has made Taz, Miguel Veras, and Jamey Maxwell less sad. Da lo mismo.

Evil is close to Daniel now. It brushes his shoulder, blows in his ear. Daniel is oblivious to it, though. This makes Evil crazy. This makes Evil mean. Evil hates Daniel. Pero, Dios no les dio alas a los alacranes. God did not give wings to scorpions. Or did He?

Taz has his left ear cocked, nose in the air. Taz is aware.

Part II – Chapter 1

The Seraph

Jamey Maxwell is dreaming of angels. Seraphim, Cherubim, Thrones, and Dominions. And, of course, the Fallen Ones. He recognizes almost every face. His sweet Josie. Julie, so beautiful. Connie Lee, but…where are her eyes? Luther and Dwayne. No Chango though. Marisol smiles at him, but she’s been crying. He wants to tell her it will be okay, but he is unable to speak. He awakes, choking.

The dreams — the nightmares — come every night now after a year of sweet respite. He fears working with the santero is not helping things. This is irrelevant of course, because God chooses to project these images into Jamey’s dreams. You humans would call it brainwashing. And what Jamey is seeing is not actually Seraphim, Cherubim, etc. He could not survive that experience. He is seeing a diluted, sanitized, humanized version of angels. Something he can live to tell about, if he chooses to. I doubt that he will. Jamey no longer speaks of his conversations with God or of his visions. He wants to appear somewhat normal. He wants to live in the real world again. Fat chance.

How do I know all of this? Well, let’s just say that I am one of God’s messengers. A Watcher. An angel if you will. What theologians, especially Jewish theologians, would call a Seraph. But let me get this straight up front. Ancient Hebrew prophets, particularly Enoch, defined the nine choirs of the heavenly hierarchy and they were surprisingly accurate with one major and a few minor exceptions. Seraphim are not the highest order of angel. Oh no. Quite the opposite in fact. Here is the true ranking (at least as far as humans can understand it) from highest to lowest: Cherubim, Thrones, Dominions, Powers, Virtues, Principalities, Archangels, Angels, Seraphim. There you are. I’m at the bottom of the celestial food chain. For a human comparison, let’s just say that my name is Shyanne and I live in a trailer park in Del Rio, Texas. And let’s just say I work as a barmaid at the Come On Inn, Highway 90 West, on the outskirts of Del Rio. Just trying to give you something to wrap your mind around.

Several other things before we get on with this story. First, I will speak to you in the human vernacular. I love speaking human. I will use slang, I will use Tex-Mex, and I will use expletives. Lots of expletives. I like them…a lot. I will talk to you on your level. And you don’t have a clue just how low that is. But we Seraphs love you anyway. I will speak to you of the big picture. I will speak to you of the small picture. The minutiae. I love the minutiae. With humans, it’s where “the rubber meets the road.” How’s that for some human vernacular? I will speak to the trifles of your lives; the trifles that you, as God’s creations, have inexplicably created for yourselves: love, hate, sex, murder, longing, desperation, religion, jealousy, greed. We can call all of this “An Angel Goes Slumming.”

Second, at times you will perceive my thoughts and words to be contradictory. “Perceive” being the key word in that sentence. I suggest you read between the lines. Or not. No le hace. Who are you to judge contradictions, anyway? After all, your entire lives as humans...your raisons d’etre…are nothing but contradiction. In the art of contradiction, you are the masters. I, just a rank amateur.

Third, guardian angels exist, but not in the way humans imagine. You would not want to see them. Visualize every monster under the bed or in the closet when you were a child rolled into one and on steroids, acid, and crack cocaine. They are not really angels. They are a separate species. This is why they are not included in the nine choirs. What apes are to humans, guardian angels are to angels. They are dim-witted, irrational, unpredictable. They cannot tell the good guys from the bad guys. The universe would be better off without them, but what can I say? It’s God’s will. Don’t bother trying to understand it.

And finally, speaking of God’s will, there is only one mortal sin in God’s eyes and it’s not included in the Ten Commandments, Bible, Koran, Torah, or any of your so-called sacred writings. It’s the one thing mankind has never gotten, to mankind’s eternal detriment. The one mortal sin, the one that God never forgives, is presumptuousness. Specifically, presuming to know God’s will. Because He doesn’t always know it Himself. God does not like to be second-guessed. So, a little hint before we continue with this tale: if you have a bumper sticker on your vehicle that reads “In Case of Rapture, This Car Will Be Unmanned,” I would suggest you invest, ASAP, in a razor blade scraper and remove said bumper sticker. And, oh yes, if you actually believe said bumper sticker, I would suggest you invest, ASAP, in a frontal lobotomy. Never forget this point. Now to the story.