Bang Read online

  ARACELI ROLLS A BLUNT WITH THE TIP of her maimed finger, the gangrene spreading quickly under the nail of her index. Her nerves are shot, but in the tips of her fingers, even the gangrened index, there’s still an injured kind of dexterity with which she rolls the blunts. Once she’s finished, she licks along the seam to seal it. She puts it alongside the other blunts that lean, one against the other, in a spiraled circle inside the cup holder between her and Iván.

  They listen to the radio turned low, the Texas stations pouring in weak, full of static, over the mountains. They’re roughly halfway between Matamoros and San Miguel, broken down in a tiny tourist town west of Matamoros called Potrero Chico. The town is filled with American rock climbers and campers away for the weekend. Araceli and Iván are parked outside a sports cantina with American cable, the San Antonio Spurs playing on an oversized, digital television that takes up three quarters of the back wall of the cantina and paints the entire room in a beige, digital glow.

  Through the pitted glass of the windshield, Araceli watches the game as Iván scoops, with the blade of his knife, from the marijuana brick sliced open between his legs. He’s got a circular grinder on his knee with which he grinds the stems and buds together. Some cornhusk to stretch it the way Araceli taught him. He tries to keep his eyes on the game, but he’s so afraid of spilling the pot that he mostly listens to the static and stares at that space between his knees.

  “You know they’ll come after you for this brick,” says Iván, grinding another circle in his palm.

  “You mean us,” says Araceli, licking another blunt along the seam.

  “Who’s to say there’s not a tracking device in it?”

  “You watch too many movies,” says Araceli. “They won’t come.”

  At this, Iván huffs to himself, then says, “They don’t lose a brick and not miss it.”

  “Why does it matter now? You can go home anytime you’d like.”

  “I didn’t know,” says Iván. “I have money.”

  “I don’t need your money,” says Araceli.

  “You need medication,” he says, turning down the radio.

  “I don’t need your money.”

  “It’ll spread, you know.”

  “Then let it spread,” she says. “Maybe I can fix the damn finger myself with some tape and a bottle,” she chuckles.

  “You’d last about as long as the truck. I knew that wasn’t going to last,” says Iván.

  “Then why’d you let me do it?”

  “Maybe I wanted to get away,” says Iván, his voice softening now. “Maybe I felt sorry for you.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense,” she says. “Maybe you should feel sorry for yourself. No wife, no kids. All by your lonesome in that shitty hotel.”

  “It’s mine.”

  “Lonesome man in a lonesome house. An unmarried man after a certain age can be a bad thing.”

  “That finger,” says Iván, skirting around to the subject of her health again, “is going to come off sooner or later. I could put it under the hood of the car after we fix the carburetor. Slam it off. Kill two birds with one stone.”

  “You wouldn’t.”

  “I really would,” he says with a weak smile.

  “Then how would we make money?”

  “I could learn to roll,” he says, taking a sliver of cornhusk from the dash. “Here, teach me.”

  “It’s a secret,” she says, taking the cornhusk from his fat fingers.

  “I know how the tourists like them.”

  “I don’t understand what’s so special about them.”

  “They’re novelty,” says Araceli. “Tourists go looking for the real thing. They come to Mexico and try to find rustic. So, I give them rustic. And drugs. A winning combo.”

  “My grandmother used to smoke blunts like these,” says Iván, picking up the knife again and digging it into the brick. He watches the glow of the television inside the cantina. A trio of backpackers step inside, their pale legs covered in dirt.

  “My grandmother was the one who taught me,” says Araceli. “Where was your grandmother from?”

  “Jalisco,” says Iván.

  “Autlán.”

  “My grandmother was from Colotitlán. That’s close.”

  “About ten minutes,” says Iván with a smile now. “We could be cousins.” Iván looks in her eyes as if searching for something.

  “Could be,” says Araceli, licking the last blunt before taking a rest.

  Through the pitted windshield, Araceli watches the Spurs with Iván, whose hands have stopped working now. He runs them through his hair before putting his left hand next to hers, and she lets him. She feels the hairs on his hand touching her rotting finger. She doesn’t move it. She doesn’t move anything. The sound of the radio announcer calling out plays beneath the low huff of their stale breath. Iván breaks the silence first.

  “I can see why people leave,” he says, almost in a whisper, his eyes watching the giant television now. “It’s all glossy over there. Look at that court. Look at those players. In everyone’s head a full set of straight teeth.”

  Araceli pulls her hand away to start on another blunt. That jangling feeling in her nerves again. She feels Iván closing in on the space between them, the console creaking under his weight. He descends on her like a ravenous animal hungry for a meal.

  She opens the door to break the moment. She licks the blunt and slicks it behind her ear. She takes the hem of her dress by her ankles and pulls it up to make a pouch, carrying all the blunts she’s made in front of her like a girl carrying blueberries in her dress. She hops from the car just as she feels Iván’s breath, hot and wet on her ear. The earthy, cloying smell of alcohol and sweat and marijuana ash in the dark desert heat.

  “You wait here,” she says to him and closes the distance between her truck and the Americans, their white teeth gleaming in the digital glow above them.

  Araceli makes nine hundred dollars. A little over five hundred from the backpackers, another hundred from a French-Canadian couple, and the rest from the tenants of the hostel where the French-Canadian couple is staying: a pair of brothers who can’t find coke but settle for weed; a group of eight hikers too drunk to realize what they’re buying; a lonesome punk rocker from Mexico City’s Tabacalera neighborhood who has been camping in Potrero for weeks writing a screen play; and a girl from Austin who couldn’t afford Europe.

  That night, Araceli uses the hostel showers and brushes her teeth. Iván sleeps in the driver’s side of the truck. Araceli sleeps in the truck bed, out in the open and dreams of her sons.

  In the morning, she goes to the dingy internet café attached to the hostel. At the back of the café there’s a pregnant woman sitting behind a fold-up picnic table with a fat monitor resting on it. Next to the pregnant woman, a cheap percolator brewing more condensation than coffee. The machine rests on a red, plastic taquería stool with Coca Cola written up and down the legs. Between the legs of the stool, a ten-liter jug of Epura brand water and an industrial tin of Kirkland’s coffee. There’s a laminated sheet of paper next to the machine that lists the prices:

  Coffee: 10 pesos

  Cream: 2 pesos

  Sugar: 2 pesos

  Pornography: 30 pesos/ 30 minute limit

  Internet: 15 pesos/ hour, 10 pesos/ 30 minutes

  Araceli carefully considers the list. She wonders if you can’t access pornography through the internet for ten or fifteen pesos. She wonders if there’s a private computer they use for that. Thirty minutes is very quick. Or is that long? Who knows?

  “Can I help you?” says the woman behind the desk.

  “A coffee and thirty minutes—internet, thirty minutes, I mean.”

  The pregnant woman takes a Styrofoam cup from the tip of a stack beside the CPU. She points Araceli to the nearest computer, which has a box of tissues next to it.

  “Not pornography,” says Araceli. “Internet.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” says the woman playing du
mb, “I have a bad ear.” Without asking, the pregnant lady puts both cream and sugar into the Styrofoam cup.

  “Just black, please,” says Araceli.

  “I already put it in,” says the woman.

  “Fine,” says Araceli and plops down in front of the computer next to the pornography computer before scooting one more seat down for good measure.

  “Large coffee fine?” says the pregnant woman.

  “The smallest you have,” says Araceli.

  “I only have large cups, I’m sorry. It’ll be twelve pesos.”

  “But it says ten right here,” says Araceli, pointing to the sign.

  “Pues, no,” says the pregnant lady, her face full of mock anguish as if it physically pains her to correct her own mistakes.

  “Fine,” says Araceli, seeing the woman is unwilling to bend. She peels out a blue twenty-peso note from the small pocket in her dress. “Here’s twenty now,” says Araceli. “Stop fucking me over and I’ll give you the ten when we’re done.”

  The pregnant woman does the math in her head quickly, her eyes rolling to the corners. “Pues, no,” says the lady again, her face full of mock-anguish.

  Araceli looks at the clock. Three minutes already gone by.

  “Pues, sí,” says the pregnant woman.

  Araceli takes the cup of coffee from the ladies’ hand, swishes it around and downs half of it in three gulps. The lady sticks around a while, watching Araceli log on before she goes back to her perch behind the fat monitor at the picnic table, measuring water with a small Styrofoam cup from a bottle.

  Araceli does not use Facebook but she knows what it is. She’s seen her sons use it a thousand times. She knows how to Google “Facebook” and then her sons names and then “Harlingen, TX,” because that’s where they live. She learned that much at the Harlingen public library, where they taught her how to Google anything.

  She finds Uli’s profile first—blocked—before she makes it to Cuauhtémoc’s. Her eyes tear at the sight of him. His profile picture is of him in front of the Pawnee. His flat head is covered by the borrowed AOPA cap Sampson, the grove boss, gave him. Cuauhtémoc’s wearing his father’s shades, Ray Ban knock offs from the 90s. His last update was in late May. Nothing from him since. Her heart sinks.

  She looks at the horizontal bar across the middle of the window. If his page is up, he still has to be alive, she thinks, but she knows that logic is flawed. She scans his page. His likes, his music, his favorite books. Reading these things comforts her in some small way. He’s still preserved, if only digitally. He’s still alive. Of course he is. No internet in San Miguel—that town is barely standing. At least that’s what she’s heard. They barely have utilities. That must be it. That’s why he hasn’t logged on, she thinks.

  Araceli clicks around. Cuauhtémoc’s favorite music: RINNO. His favorite books: Catcher in the Rye, Hank the Cowdog, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. His favorite teams: The Houston Rockets. Dumbass, thinks Araceli. Fucker’s never even been to Houston. And it’s then, in that thought alone, that Araceli begins to lose it.

  She chuckles at first, a quick huff that blends into a heavy exhale before she makes a gasping, hyperventilating wheeze. The pregnant woman jumps up from her seat, looks at the screen over Araceli’s shaking shoulders, first to make sure she’s not looking at pornography before moving to the computer on the far left to retrieve the tissues.

  “Some tissues? Some water?” the pregnant woman says to comfort Araceli, putting the tissues in her face now.

  “How much for water?” asks Araceli.

  “Five pesos small cup. Seven pesos big cup. But don’t worry, the tissues are free.”

  Araceli thinks about it for a while before she says, “Big cup.” She’ll treat herself, she thinks. The woman walks away. She wants to take a swig of her coffee, but she can’t even keep her mouth closed. She bawls. Her mind goes wild.

  Araceli switches back and forth between the windows at the top of her browser. Cuauhtémoc’s page, Uli’s page—still blocked.

  On the Facebook homepage, in the right-hand corner, Araceli sees the signup form: First name, last name, e-mail, password, birthday. Do I have an e-mail?

  “Your water,” says the pregnant woman, coming up behind her now. She places the box of tissues beside Araceli again, the Styrofoam cup of water in front of her.

  “I’m fine with the water,” says Araceli.

  “Are you okay, miss?” asks the pregnant lady, her face full of anguish.

  Araceli looks from the screen to the woman’s belly, avoiding her face altogether. She must be seven months along. Eight maybe. Enough to feel the baby kick. Araceli remembers what it was like when she first became a mother, when she first felt it kick. That’s the last time she lost a child. Miscarriage.

  Please leave me alone, Araceli wants to tell the woman, although the woman’s voice helps somehow. It’s soft. Genuine.

  “I will be,” says Araceli, “once I figure out how to get an e-mail. Can you help me do that?” says Araceli. “Can you do that for me? Can I pay you to get e-mail?”

  “E-mail?” says the woman, surprised, her anguish deepening. She’s confounded by the question. Who doesn’t have e-mail? “Yes,” she says.

  “Yes?” says Araceli to confirm. “You help me?”

  “Yes,” says the woman. “You pay. I help you.”

  Araceli can only send a friend request to her sons. By time that’s done, Iván has already gone off on foot with a wad of bills in his shirt pocket, his boots popping gravel as he walks toward the one lonesome grease shop at the end of the strip to look for a second-hand carburetor.

  Everything in this town seems to be connected to something else: the internet café connected to the hostel, the restaurants connected to the cantina and the grease shop is no exception. Its leaning structure of corrugated tin and wood connected to a Pemex station with two pumps and an air hose.

  Inside, the shop is all dusk. Slants of light break from the warped tin roof not flush with the plumb-line of the wall. In the far left corner of the structure, a spiraled, compact fluorescent bulb shines over two men sitting on top of the remains of a transmission, their glassy eyes shifting toward Iván’s direction where, momentarily, he blocks the flood of daylight by standing in the threshold.

  Iván steps inside and the daylight floods past him. He sees both men now dressed in dark green Pemex jumpsuits, here and there patches of oil and light coffee stains. Each of the men carries a plastic mug of steaming coffee in his hand, the mechanic closest to Iván slinging his mug low by the handle with the cup at a tilt. He approaches Iván, tossing the entire cup into a forty-gallon barrel full of red rags.

  He pauses in a slant of light that cuts his torso in half before saying, “What can I do for you, sir?”

  “I need a carburetor,” says Iván, scanning the floor.

  “What make?”

  “I think it’s a Ford,” says Iván.

  “We’ve got the part then,” says the mechanic. “You bring it here, and we’ll fix it up.”

  “I can do it myself,” says Iván.

  “We don’t sell parts, understand?’

  “We’re mechanics. We fix,” adds the other fellow in the back.

  “How much?” says Iván.

  “Twelve hundred.”

  Iván, feeling the wad of bills in his pocket, thinks about it for a second. They could afford it, but Iván thinks of a number to counter them with. “Eight hundred,” he says.

  He watches the gears whir behind the young man’s eyes in front of him. He sees his hard face break a little.

  “Pues, no,” says the boy. “Eleven hundred. It’s a fair price.”

  Iván knows it’s not but he’s eager to get out of town. He neither says yes nor no. He simply says, “You’ll have to tow it here.”

  “It’s downhill,” says the partner from the back of the shop, still resting on the transmission. “We can do it.”

  “You can do it,” says the
mechanic to his companion. “I’ll take him to the waiting room. Keys, sir?”

  Iván looks confused. “It doesn’t even crank,” he says.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” says the mechanic. “But if it doesn’t crank, then how are we going to steal it? You have to trust us, mister.”

  “I actually wasn’t thinking that,” says Iván.

  “I’ll take you to the waiting room. This way, mister.”

  Iván would help if his back wasn’t killing him. He wants to sit down. He needs to sit down. Fuck it, he thinks before throwing the keys to the guy sitting on the transmission.

  As the boy passes, Iván takes some peso bills from his shirt pocket. “Five hundred now,” he says, “and the remaining six hundred when it’s fixed.”

  The young man smiles, takes the bills and runs down the one lonesome stretch of road in town. Araceli’s truck is the only one parked in the road. Iván wonders how the young guy knew which way to run. One road but two directions. He imagines the people who live here take note of everyone who comes and goes. What did his grandmother used to say? Pueblo chico, infierno grande. Small town, big hell.

  “This way,” says the young man in front of him, waving with his hand for Iván to follow him through the sundry bottles of Coke and Topo Chico and Pemex oil jugs scattered here and there toward the exit at the back of the garage. Behind it, an open field with a single cow and its calf grazing among lawn chairs sinking into the wet sand. The smell of dung. The smell of diesel from the gas station too.

  “Didn’t think you could raise a cow out here,” says Iván.

  “Can raise a cow wherever,” says the mechanic, taking down a pair of clay mugs from two nails in a slab of particle wood hanging off a bolt in the corrugated tin wall.

  From a blue HEB bag hanging from another hook and bolt in the shed, the boy produces a jar of Nescafé, a jar of powdered chocolate and a jar of clear cane alcohol in a Tamazula bottle. In one clay mug he pours a capful of Nescafé, a capful of powdered chocolate and a swig of cane alcohol. He does the same for the second mug, screws all the jars back up and moves over to the cow pissing a steady stream over a patch of sandy earth. The cow drinks from a trough as the calf nurses on her. With a flat palm, the mechanic shoves the slant of the calf’s head, pushing it away from his mother. He takes a knee under the cow and pulls the slimy teat from which the calf had been sucking and gives it a long, hard squeeze. A stream of frothy milk sloshes into the mug. A gushing, brown effervescence spills into the next mug as the Nescafé and chocolate dissolve.