Bang Page 5

  Lalo remembers wondering if there was anything left for him here. Of course, he thought about going north. Making some easy money to send back home. At one time he thought he might save the farm, might save his aging father who was dying of heart failure. And it wasn’t until a silver truck rolled up at the ranch gates one day that he saw a glimmer of hope in the boots of a man who stepped down onto the dirt of their field. A man who promised Lalo anything if he was only willing to carry a gun.

  Looking down at Cuauhtémoc’s blood, Lalo thinks about those boots coming out of that truck. He knows what’s going to happen to Cuauhtémoc if they can’t ransom him. Lalo knows it won’t be a quick death, but a body is a body and he needs one. One more for the day. One more, and put this boy out of his misery.

  Just then, Lalo thinks of his daughter. Thinks about that thing his grandfather used to tell him: the descendants of traitors are still traitors. He hears those words as he kneels down to put his face close to Cuauhtémoc’s before prying his jaw open with his fingers to examine his teeth.

  Cuauhtémoc wakes to the sound of the road in his head, his temple pressed to the van’s gritty floor. His first thought: I want to go home. His second thought: I’m dying of thirst.

  There’s tape over his mouth. He couldn’t drink even if he tried, but that doesn’t stop him from thinking about water passing through his body, ice cold streams of it falling down into his belly.

  He’d panic if his adrenaline weren’t shot already—too much of it in his system from the pain. He’s almost numb now. Just the sound of road in his skull again and his own thirst that occupies his mind and lets him know he’s still live.

  He tries to scratch an itch on his nose. In this way, he finds that his hands are zip-tied behind his back. Cuauhtémoc rolls onto his belly, starts to panic now. A metallic taste coming from his gums. His thirst is replaced by a tightening at the top of his wind pipe. A small, hyperventilating hiss is all the noise he can muster, like that remarkable noise cattle make once they know they’re being led to slaughter. Cuauhtémoc remembers that noise from the summers of his childhood—this in the time before his family left for Texas—on that farm of his uncle’s just outside of San Miguel in Chihuahua. Within the sound of his own bleating voice he can see, against the dark of his eyelids, his father as a young man, ankle-high in rivulets of blood that stained his skin so deep it became a kind of rust he could never wash off. In those days, when his father and his uncle slaughtered cattle, Cuauhtémoc remembers that his father could do nothing but talk of Texas, daydream about that new life as if the mere soil of the United States would wash the bloody rust from his skin, make him a shade lighter with that indoor job he so coveted. Within that sound of his own voice, Cuauhtémoc can see his father at the end of those killing days, his bloody fingertips tapping out the rhythm over the arms of a wooden chair to those jazz records—John Coltrane, Chet Baker, Thelonius Monk. American sounds falling on his ears like news long delayed to a prodigal son out there wandering but always wondering about home. Cuauhtémoc thinks that’s how his father saw himself—as an American first, an undocumented immigrant second. And at this he thinks back to the crash, feels the pain in his bones. How did I end up here? He wonders and feels his own skin rusting with dried blood. He thinks about his father. He thinks about his brother. He thinks about that shame and fear resonating now in the hiss at the top of his throat.

  At the far side of the van’s bed, he sees dusty light piercing its way in through the cracks of the doors. At least it’s still daylight. Some hours have passed, he thinks. Not too long. Don’t fight it. He drifts in and out of consciousness. He succumbs to the burn of his thirst and lets his soul lie in that place for a while, his skin thirsty for air.

  They drive for hours until they reach a town called Potrero. Midnight wind brings sound in on its breeze. From this dusty little town’s one good juncture, the trickling noise of sulfur springs bubbling black at the spillway under the town’s one rusty bridge. Under the awning of the rodeo corral, just beyond the town cantina, there’s the sound of whistling laughter that breaks from the wet lips of the men and women inside. Then comes the sound that silences the cantina: the grinding pull of the diesel engines revving down the road, past the juncture, past the cantina, across the town’s one rusted bridge, into the swinging gates of the rodeo corral, into that place the locals call the killing field.

  The white van stops short of the far gate by the awning, where the rodeo spectators might sit, and Lalo hops out and opens the back door. An old man, blindfolded and gagged, steps from the passenger side of the van. A teenaged boy hangs the canvas strap of a little league baseball bag around the old man’s neck and leads him hobbling toward the center of the corral. Once there, Lalo unzips the bag and takes out a rusted chain and a machete.

  “This one first,” says Lalo.

  All eyes are on the old man.

  At Lalo’s direction, the teenaged boy pulls the tape from Cuauhtémoc’s mouth with his skinny, sticky fingers. Cuauhtémoc’s face is bloated. Every tooth throbs inside his head. There’s blood in his mouth but he’s too dry to spit, his lips stuck together, his whole mouth shut closed. He runs his tongue across the inside of his cheek. Rough and raw inside. The metallic taste of blood. He lets his tongue roll into the groove where his molar used to be. He gathers enough moisture to spit, but it comes out too aspirated, too thin. A sliver of tooth dribbles onto his chin.

  The boy hoists Cuauhtémoc up by the shoulders and cuts the zip tie around his wrists. The feeling comes flooding back to his fingertips, as tingly and numb as they may be, and he can barely stand the pin pricks in his skin, first slow, and then wild like a swarm of ants. He feels his knees crick, the blood pouring back down into his legs. His heart quickens. Everything is bright. A shot of cortisol to the heart. He thinks about running, but he doesn’t trust his legs.

  The old man is staring at the machete stuck upright in the ground.

  Of all things Cuauhtémoc thinks about just then, he remembers when he and Uli were little and how they would stave off boredom in the groves with this one question: What is the worst way to kill someone? Cuauhtémoc remembers he would always come up with the worst ones, the ones that were scarier than ghost stories, the ones that made him wonder about himself—if he was sane or not.

  There’s one time that he told Uli that the worst way to kill someone was by lowering them into a pile of ants. Another time he told him it was by dropping him off a highway bridge. How many times had they talked about this over a cool glass of Coke at odd hours of the night when neither of them could sleep?

  The old man opposite Cuauhtémoc goes for the machete. Cuauhtémoc can faintly make out the tattoo on the back of his bald head. A she-devil holding a rifle. The old man lifts his machete and touches the sharp edge with the tip of his finger. He moves toward Cuauhtémoc and lifts it.

  For Cuauhtémoc, everything is a blur after this. He remembers a tremor, a thin line of red and then shock turned to rage turned to action. Cuauhtémoc looks down to his arm flayed just above the elbow. And here comes the pain, finally, as he’s been expecting it all along. A surgical kind of pain, cold and precise.

  The old man swings again. This time Cuauhtémoc tumbles out of his way toward the ground, and the swing misses. There’s a percussive racket between his ears and then the burning squeal of the machete blade slicing the air. Cuauhtémoc catches the small of the blade close to the handle mid-flight with the palm of his hand. The blade slides across Cuauhtémoc’s tendon. White heat in his nerves. He grips the machete with a bloody, clenched fist. The old man’s knuckles go white around the handle. Their muscles tense but neither of them move.

  At this point, the old man knows he’s going to die because though he’s uninjured, his energy is fading. And when he finally loses grip of the machete, he runs. He jumps a giant puddle of stagnant water and trips on his forward momentum when he lands. For Cuauhtémoc, that image is burned into his memory forever—a dying man jumping a puddle just to
keep his feet dry. And then Cuauhtémoc is upon him.

  There are no reservations for Cuauhtémoc, at least none that he might remember. If he remembers anything, it’s the look on Lalo’s face as he unzips the old man’s skin with the edge of the blade, the man’s flesh pouring out into the open air, expanding from under his skin like so many saturated sheets of dyed, wet cotton. There’s an ashen look in Lalo’s eyes as the natural order of his life comes undone, the very unraveling of it an omen as dark as his own shame.

  In that moment, Cuauhtémoc watches Lalo moved by the old man’s death. He watches Lalo shudder as the old man’s voice ricochets from the one good hill in town, though the rattle of his throat carries on much further than that.

  BAD NEWS FRIEND

  THE NIGHT OF THE CRASH, Araceli dreams she’s a fish. She can breathe underwater. She can look up to the silvery surface where the air meets the waves. She can see stars. Beyond that, darkness.

  She’s jolted from sleep by five raps on her trailer door. Araceli thinks three knocks are friendly, but five knocks mean business.

  Each knock is measured, equally spaced apart. Before she can shake the sleep from her head, she knows there’s a cop at the door.

  She’s not dizzy anymore, but her head aches. There’s dried blood on her upper lip. She looks at the duct tape over her bedroom door. She remembers the pesticides made their way into the house last night. She only vaguely remembers everything that came after she fainted.

  The knocks come again, only this time they don’t stop.

  Araceli bolts from her bed to the bedroom door. She rips the tape off, pulls the door open. She goes to the bathroom window that looks out to the front of the trailer. She spots a police cruiser parked beside the pickup. Her suspicions are confirmed.

  On the porch steps, the shadow of a man wearing a Stetson hat.

  “Fuck,” she says to herself. Fuck is her favorite English word—she knows every grammatical usage of it. She knows you say it when the cops come. Cops are never good. Cops deported her husband. She thinks of a way out of this. She looks behind her.

  “Uli!” she hisses between her teeth, her voice splattering against the bathroom tile and then out into the hallway. She knows Uli speaks better English than his older brother, whom she brought to Texas too old. She knows the cop won’t suspect Uli of being undocumented—nobody does. He can explain his way. She calls his name again. Nothing.

  “Cuauhtémoc!” she hisses. No response.

  Five knocks again. Then the sound of her own blood beating hard in her ear.

  “Sheriff’s Department,” shouts a man on the other side of the door.

  Araceli freezes in the bathroom hallway. And before the Sheriff can knock again she’s at the kitchen window, her right foot hobbling behind as she stutter-steps across the floor.

  “Fucking Cuauhtémoc!” she hisses. “Uli—fucking Uli.”

  That usually gets their attention. She waits. No response from either of them. She swings around on her bad foot to square herself with the window above the sink before unlatching the heavy pane.

  She clacks the window up and climbs onto the counter, looking out into the orange groves. I can make it, she thinks. If she can’t, then she’ll get caught, which wouldn’t be so bad. She feels a little pang of shame at the excitement of possibly being deported. She would miss her sons but she would be able to live her life the way it used to be—before she met her husband, before she made a family for no other reason than it was the thing to do. To leave the trailer would mean a new life beyond the milk jug in the road. A life of no fear, no hiding. Deportation wouldn’t be so bad, Araceli thinks.

  “Fuck it,” she says to herself.

  She gets her arms out first and then her torso before the sheriff rounds the corner of the house, the heels of his boots clomping up chunks of wet earth. Araceli feels his eyes on her.

  “Ma’am, that’s about an eight-foot drop, head first. I’d say if you’re resigned to break every bone in your arms you can go for it. Otherwise you can climb back in the window and open the door. Either way, we’re gonna talk. Not to alarm you or nothing. I just need to talk with you.”

  Araceli sizes up the sheriff from way up in the window. He’s a small man for his booming voice, although he’s big around the waist. Ashy brown hair, brown eyes. His leather belt squeaks under his paunch as he shifts his weight from one foot to the other.

  “No hablo inglés,” she says to him, her torso hanging out the window.

  “Será bien,” says the sheriff.

  Fuck, she thinks.

  It’s only a few moments before she pulls herself in from the window to open the door. She pours a cup of dehydrated coffee from the percolator that’s timed to go off at 8:00 every morning. It’s 9:20 on the coffee maker’s clock. She figures a cup of coffee will smooth things over. “Common misunderstanding,” she practices in English under her breath. She’s heard the grove boss say that before. She sets both feet on the ground and starts for the door. She unlocks it, shoves it open just as the sheriff rounds the house again and makes his way up the ramp.

  “Some coffee?” she says in broken English. “Common misunderstanding. You know?” she says confidently.

  She smiles too big. She feels embarrassed of her teeth. She thinks that it’ll be her first time being deported. Not bad for almost fifteen years here. She knows people who have had it worse. Deported the first day on the job or deported right after a child was born.

  The sheriff takes his hat off before entering Araceli’s home. He sets himself down in front of Araceli’s own cup, which she sets out every night on the Formica table before going to bed. Araceli pours the cup in her hand into the one in front of him. The sheriff smiles a little and then nods.

  He hangs his hat on his knee, the underside of the table scarring the felt around the Stetson crown as he rocks his boots back and forth over the blue carpet, his leather belt squeaking.

  The sheriff is quiet. Araceli wonders what business he has here. Maybe something about Eugenio, her husband, she thinks. That has to be it. The thought of it makes her sweat. She thinks if he were going to deport her and her sons, he’d have come with more people. So, it must be Eugenio.

  “Some milk?” she says, breaking the silence.

  “Just black, thank you,” says the sheriff, grasping Araceli’s cup now between his fingers.

  “Sugar?”

  “No, thank you.”

  Araceli sits in suspense at the other end of the Formica table.

  “I’m going to speak slowly,” says the sheriff, “so you can understand. Understand?”

  “Yes, I understand,” says Araceli.

  “Just a few questions first.”

  “Okay,” says Araceli. “Few questions. Okay.”

  “First things first: Do you know where the grove boss might be? According to my notes, it’s a man by the name of Sampson?”

  “Sampson gone.”

  “Where to? How long?”

  “Two week. Vacation. I no know where.”

  “Is that his hangar out back?”

  “I no know hangar.”

  “Airplane. Avioncito.”

  “Yes. Airplane.”

  “When was the last time you saw your sons?”

  “I no understand,” she says, struggling with the English.

  “Hijos,” says the sheriff.

  “Two hijos,” says Araceli.

  “Where?” says the sheriff. “¿Dónde?”

  “Here,” she says. “Birthday anoche.”

  “Whose birthday?”

  “Little son. Uli.”

  “Last night?”

  “Anoche,” she says to him. A sinking feeling creeps into her belly.

  “Is there wrong?” she asks him.

  Araceli doesn’t hear much after that. Just words. Plane. Crash. Night. Not Found. She collapses into her seat at the Formica table, the sheriff across from her. The puppy jumps up on his lap, licking at his fleshy hands. Araceli stares at the vein
s on the back of his hand. She looks at the dog’s blood-stained mouth. She feels her own dried blood still on her upper lip from her nose-bleed the night before. She wipes the blood away with the back of her hand.

  “Not found,” Araceli says, “not same as lost.”

  The sheriff nods, which gives Araceli some hope.

  In his broken Spanish, he explains the plane’s emergency location transmitter had been bleeping on the mayday frequency through the night. The NTSB couldn’t tell where it’d crashed, on which side of the border, that gray zone made up of dried riverbed and ranches—all private property.

  “Bien difícil para encontrar. Really complicated to get to, you understand?” says the sheriff to Araceli.

  Araceli nods that she does.

  “Have you heard from them?” he asks her, switching back into English, speaking slowly.

  “No,” she says.

  The sheriff takes his hat from his knee and puts it back on his head. She thinks he’s going to go, but he stays in place at the table, nursing his coffee with one hand and rubbing the puppy with his other, his big leathery palm over the crown of the dog’s head.

  The sheriff stares out of the kitchen window as if looking for something in the highway. Araceli feels a certain anger toward him just then. For all of the trouble he’s gone through to get here, he doesn’t seem as concerned all of a sudden. Araceli is angered at his presence, at the fact that he’s still here, at the way he anchors himself like he belongs here, at the fact that he does. His country, not hers.

  Araceli wonders what he’s searching for if not her boys. Or her husband. She wonders if he’s trying to comfort her but can’t find the words. She keeps sitting at the table with him because it’s rude to let someone sit alone. But she wishes he’d leave. She needs to act. She needs to do something right now. Go find her boys, go fix the truck.