by Glenn Ball
He also remembered the lessons of his trip from Oaxaca to the frontier….
********
After travelling several days by bus to the north of Mexico, they had all learned how the system worked. It had not been cheap hiring a coyote in the first place. Seven thousand US dollars was the going price. For him it had meant saving all he could for two years, and even then, he came up a little short. The coyote told him not to worry about it. He would find a way he could make up the difference. That was something he had come to regret.
They had travelled by bus, carefully guarded by their guide. At first, he assumed the guide was there to make sure they were safe from being caught by the authorities, and that everything went smoothly. Although that was part of the truth, he also came to learn that he was being guarded like property, like the victim of a kidnapping.
They traveled by less known roads. Whenever they were stopped at a “retén” (military/police checkpoint) they were all on pins and needles, except their guide. He always had a contact to slip something to that sent them on their way. Every few hours they also stopped for the passengers to relieve themselves. It was consistently at some deserted point, so no questions would be asked.
Those pit stops were often the cause of an inner turmoil for Pedro. There had been two women travelling with them. Their guide usually harassed one or the other of them at these stops, sometimes actually raping them. They were apparently making up what they owed for going cheaper than the full price, though he guessed it was clearly not part of the original agreement in their minds by the way they fought and scratched at first.
They had a few stops on their route north, where their guide was replaced with a new one, and they were granted a short night’s rest. Although these stops should have been refreshing and interesting, seeing a new city, purchasing a couple of needed items he had forgotten to bring along, Romero soon discovered his expectations were way off.
During these stops they were kept under close guard, mostly under lock and key. The rooms were dark, with thick concrete walls shutting them in. The rooms had a musty odor from staying shut up most of the time. Mold was actually growing on the walls. All food was brought to them, and they were not permitted to wander around. He felt like a prisoner.
But what disturbed him even more was the treatment of the two women. They had a separate room from the men, but the guides invaded that room. He could hear the screams of the women as they fought off their violators to no avail. They may have thought that with the changing of the guard the raping would come to an end, but it only got worse.
He felt badly for the women; he felt worse for the treachery it revealed of their handlers.
When he was growing up, his father had always cautioned him to safety in the boat when they took people out into the deep waters. He would say before they went out, “Now look son, these are customers. They are paying us to take them where they have to depend on us for their safety and well-being. Never betray that trust!”
All these people travelling with him were paying customers who were merely looking to better their lives, making their very existence vulnerable to these men in order to achieve those goals. They were in deep waters, and their “protection” came from criminals who violated all forms of trust making the innocent into the prisoners.
One day when they were in dry terrain, in the middle of nowhere, their bus stopped. It was a retén, or so he thought. There was what appeared to be a platoon of soldiers with a chain forcing the bus to stop. As he got a better look, he realized that though they were dressed in fatigues, they were definitely not soldiers. Four came inside the bus carrying arms. Two stayed vigilantly watching from the front of the bus with Uzis, while the other two carried their pistols searching through the bus for those they would take. They demanded documentation and hauled three of the men out with them. One of them he knew had paid a much cheaper rate than he, and now he saw how the man was “making up the difference”. He supposed the other two had done likewise but didn’t really know.
That was the last he saw of them. He later learned that their fate would be worse than death.
********
“But Pedro, don’t be angry with your father! We don’t know if he even made it across, or even if he is alive.
“He may have been kidnapped and serving as a slave and unable to talk to the outside world. Or he may have been killed, God forbid!”
He could hear his mother pleading with him like it was yesterday.
He was only twelve when his father left them for the US... “I’m going north,” he said, “where I can earn a better living for the family. I may be gone a few years, but it will be worth it. You’ll see.”
He never saw his father again. Once his father had reached the border all communication stopped. He could never understand how his father could abandon them like that. It was like they meant nothing to him, just garbage to be discarded.
Each night he heard his mother crying, and his bitterness and anger toward his father grew. His mother would hold out hope that somehow, he would return to them. “If he was kidnapped, he may still get free! I hope he is alright!” She would say.
Pedro would secretly scorn her for believing such stupidity. It was obvious to him what had happened: his father had left them and started another family up north. It happened all the time. His father had been no different from all those other scumbags. He hated him.
Till now…. Now, he wondered what had really happened to his father.
Rocking in the darkness of the trailer he wondered what would happen to him when the truck arrived at its destination. Having come up about five hundred dollars short of the going price for coyotes, it would be his turn to “make up the difference”.
CHAPTER 4
Attic
Susanna Perle Valencia was a tall and attractive blonde with an athletic figure. She was well into her thirties but didn’t look a day over twenty-five. She always dressed fashionably and favored frilly things.
Nevertheless, she considered herself a country girl and loved the fact that they lived out in the boonies. They never had to lock their doors, worry about car thefts or anything else of the sort. And it was so peaceful sitting in her rocking chair in the early morning, looking at the mountains and forests that came begging at her doorstep.
“Hmph! ‘We’ live in the boonies.” The exclamation escaped her as she mused over her marriage.
Her husband Adam Valencia Dominguez was the most capable man she had ever known, and that was saying a lot. With an extremely muscular physique he was six foot two, or one eighty-eight as he would say. His cut cheekbones exuded strength. His black eyes were alert and commanding, with thick black hair and tanned skin that could withstand the desert sun. As much as she loved to nestle in his powerful arms, she hated that he was almost always gone.
She could see peaks in the far horizon. She wondered just how far away Adam was. His missions were always a secret by order of the military. Perhaps that was the reason she had told him she couldn’t take it anymore. If he wouldn’t leave the military, he would have to leave her. “The next time you go out that door on a secret mission, don’t bother coming back!” Her words still echoed in her brain as if it had been yesterday.
The day he had left on his current mission, she wasn’t speaking to him. That had been several weeks prior. As so many times before she wondered if he was still on his mission, or if he had been killed. There was never any way to know, since his missions varied from days to the better part of a year, and communication was rarely permitted. But this time another worry nagged her: had he decided to take her up on her ultimatum and left her for good?
The creaking of her rocker magnified the momentary eerie silence. The air felt heavy with moisture.
Now that they had been apart for some time, she regretted that ultimatum. She wanted him back in her arms more than anything. It was the very fact that she wanted that so badly that made her hate these missions he would go on.
The horiz
on seemed so far away. Mountains magnified the distance, stretching the horizon far beyond what the curvature of the earth normally permitted. Those mountains stood menacing like a barrier that kept her permanently from her husband Adam. Black clouds were racing down those mountains like an avalanche and came plowing toward her like a conquering army of barbarians raising dark smoke under their horses’ hooves.
The darkness and downpour upon her heels, Susanna escaped into her house. The rumble of thunder made her insides tremble as she quickly slammed the door against the wind and rain behind her.
The door reverberated in finality from her past: It was the last thing she had heard from Adam as he walked out of her life.
Silence…. Loneliness oppressed her like a capturing army binding a helpless woman to carry her away as a slave, powerless to resist her conquerors.
She felt her strength seep out of her as she melted into the door. Her tear-filled eyes squinted as if into the flash of a camera as the room lit up around her. It startled her. The door actually jarred, and then vibrated with the rumble of thunder that followed. She stepped away from the door.
“The patio doors,” she exclaimed, as she rushed to the glass doors in back, worried that the rain would come flooding in. She quickly shut the doors. Puddles formed on the patio. Intrigued by the kamikaze flights of raindrops that gave up their lives to splatter on the pavement, she stared. Her vision blurred.
The rain outside magnified the silence inside the house. It felt so empty, so hollow, with no morning smile, no caress, no one to talk to or with which to plan the day, nor to share the evening. She was alone. It was a pain that ran deep in her life. A tear fell helpless from her eye. She crushed it. She would not permit herself to cry.
Trying to drown the silence she turned on her radio. “Also, in the news: two more cases of the virus they are calling ‘zika’ were reported in Florida yesterday. In both cases the patients are in intensive care, leaving the doctors baffled at the virulence of this particular strain.” Immediately she shut the radio off again. The news was depressing.
“I need someone to talk to,” she thought. Her mind immediately went to her dad. “I haven’t spoken to him in weeks.”
Puzzled, she looked about. “Where did I leave it?” Eyes shut, she stood pondering. She had not taken it outside because it was about to rain.
The living room was dark, with lamps off and no windows. Dim lighting turned the walls gray, like prison walls. The sofa, her favorite spot to relax in the house, was but a faint blue shadow. It looked like a block of granite marking someone's grave.
There was a roll of thunder as she entered the room. Her cell phone winked at her from the end table. There was a message from her dad. Just her luck…he had called while she was outside and with the rain, she had not heard the phone.
She would call him back, but first she checked the message….
“Hey honey, this is Sky. I’m just calling to let you know I’m heading into the wilderness to make camp and scout the area for the survival course I told you about. I’ll be gone for a week or so. If you need to reach me, I’ll have my sat phone with me, but only for emergencies please. Love you. Say hi to Adam for me.”
She dialed him immediately, but his cell phone was out of service area. She sighed. He was the one person she felt she could confide in, and now he was gone too.
From the time she was a little girl he would find a way to make her feel safe and loved. “Reach for the Sky,” he would say, then pick her up into his six-eight frame, far from the troubles below. Sky Van Horn was strong and adroit. Raised by such a father, Susanna kept high expectations for the man that would replace him. With Adam she’d found the arms to continue to shelter her now that she was grown; she’d thought. But he was failing her.
Suddenly there was a splitting crack of lightning. The screen on her smart phone flickered. “Oh great, the lightning must have hit the cell tower,” she grumbled. “I almost lost my signal.” She felt more isolated than ever.
She could hear the rain on the roof. It was coming down hard. She dragged her feet to the sofa and deflated into the cushions. She slouched, her eyes glued to the ceiling, staring blankly at the void.
Funny, she had always dreamed of having a home. Now her warm and cozy dream home swallowed her like a tomb, sealing her off from the world of the living.
Memories of Adam haunted her, as she half laid on the sofa with her head reclined. They had spent many hours together in this room over the years. It almost felt like he should come walking in from the hallway at any minute. Her mind was drifting, oblivious to the room around her. Her eyes began to shut. Conversations from her past were floating in her head, like echoes from another room. Her husband was speaking to her from the hallway. He was coming toward her. She could hear his steps: flump, flump, flump. They were getting louder. Something made her jerk up straight in her seat. It was the form of a man standing before her. She blinked, trying to see more clearly. Her eyes were blurry from being closed. She had thought she had seen Adam but realized she must have just dozed off.
There was a thumping on the roof. It sounded almost like footsteps. It was that tree branch rapping on the roof again, the one that spooked her on windy nights.
Thinking about the roof reminded her about finishing the attic. She had been meaning to clear out the last few boxes. This would be an ideal time for it.
Fifteen minutes later she was in the attic with her sweats on. The pounding rain on the roof hurt her ears a little as she stepped inside.
She had always loved the attic's design. It was hidden away from the rest of the house by a walk-in closet. The closet was by the landing on the second floor, but the door to the attic was inside the closet. To get into the attic, all one had to do was walk to the back side of the closet where the door was. It was a normal door, so hauling things in and out of the attic was easy; there was no ducking necessary, nor ladders or steps to deal with.
Aesthetically, she had always liked the hidden quality of the attic. But now that she was alone, she liked that quality for another reason: it gave her a sense of security, knowing she had an impregnable hideout should she ever have an intruder in the house.
Another thing she liked about the attic was that it was made up of two levels, an upper and a lower level. The lower level was even with the second floor. It was spacious, with a high ceiling and a solid floor, and contained only the items requiring accessibility. Most of the junk was kept out of the way on the upper level, which had stairs leading up to it from the first.
She had come up to the attic with a particular stack of boxes in mind. She walked to the stack, and lifted the top box, setting it on the floor. For its size it was rather heavy. It was a box of papers and letters. It would take forever to go through it.
There were four more boxes in the stack. She lifted the next box from the top and set it on the floor by the first one. It had photo albums and a few keepsakes in it. Perfect…pictures of her family would cheer her up.
She sneezed as she set the first box clumsily back on top of the stack, making the stack tilt as she bumped it with the bottom of the box. She would fix it later. She was eager to get out of the attic. It had a dusty smell, plus the sound of the branch rapping on the roof was making her uncomfortable.
She carried the box with the albums to the closet, where she set it down, then turned to close the attic door. Whoops, she almost forgot the attic light. She flipped the switch, and began to shut the door, when she realized she was in total darkness.
That was odd. She wasn't surprised the hall door to the closet had swung closed. That was normal. But she could have sworn she had turned the closet light on before going into the attic. Oh well, it must have burned out. She could put another bulb in later.
In the pitch black she could not see the pair of eyes of the man hiding behind the coats that were hanging in the closet. He was dead silent and still as the wall behind him that he pressed up against.
She started to reach thr
ough the attic door for the switch to the attic light but hesitated for a moment. With the door almost shut, the thumping of the branch sounded like footsteps in the attic. It gave her the creeps.
She shut the attic door and made her way through the closet with the box in her hands. Something brushed against her elbow. It felt like a man's arm.
She tripped on a man's shoe, dropping the box.
Falling face forward, she heard something pop above her as her chin hit the box. She landed hard.
Something grabbed her leg. Her blood raced, as she scrambled over the box to the door of the hallway.
With a voiceless squeal she pushed the door open, clenching the edge of the door with her right hand as she squeezed past it into the hall.
Already in the process of slamming the door she stopped, let out a sigh, and waited a moment for her pulse to slow down, telling herself that she needed to get rid of Adam’s old clothes. One of his suits had fallen on her leg when its plastic hanger popped.
A few minutes later she was sitting on the living room sofa with the box in front of her. The room looked brighter. She had turned on all the lamps. It was amazing how much safer she felt already, just by getting some light in the room.
On her lap was a family photo album. It was open to a picture of her and her sister standing side by side when they were young girls. Susanna looked like a toothpick in the picture, accentuating her sister's pudginess. They had always been close. They would talk for hours into the night, whispering about the husbands they would marry, and the homes they would have. Those had been happy times, yet she had never appreciated them till they were gone. She was always waiting for the day when she would marry and have a family of her own. How she missed her sister.
She turned the page and saw a photo of her mom and dad. They had been a happy couple. She never remembered them fighting like she and Adam had.