Each of Us a Desert

by Mark Oshiro

I heard the snarling first, then the screams that echoed from the already noisy crowd. I risked a glance back. I shouldn’t have. El sabueso—the same black-and-gray one from two days earlier—leapt up and bit at the throat of a man who had crossed its path while entertaining passersby with card tricks. He dropped the cards to the ground, and his hands shot up toward el sabueso to block it, but too late. There was a tear, a spray of red, and the man clutched at his throat as he thrashed on the ground.

  By the time I stopped looking, he had stopped moving.

  I kept my head up as we ran, held back my own tears and my own terror, and I forced Emilia forward while she repeatedly jerked me toward the oncoming sabueso. We passed a recess in the brick-and-stone wall of a building to our right, and a few people were tucked into it, smoking cigarillos, and they called out to us in slurred accents, asking where we were going. One of them stepped out into the road to continue flirting, and then el sabueso was on his leg, and we kept running, ignoring the sounds of death behind us. I pulled Emilia into an alley and she thrust her hand out and tried to stop herself on the wall of the building.

  “It hurts,” she gasped, clutching at her stomach with her free hand. “It’s like something is trying to tear me apart if I go the wrong way.”

  “We have to hurry,” I said, then stole a glance back, and it gained on us, its maw and horns stained red with blood and gore, and at the end of the alley, la ciudad lived on. It continued, unaware of what Julio had unleashed inside it. We burst out onto another busy calle, full of merchants peddling trinkets, ropa, and food, and a man with skin the color of the desert sand led a large white horse across the road.

  The idea was terrible.

  I had to do it.

  I ran toward the horse, and el sabueso poured out of the alley behind me. I gripped Emilia’s hand and I led her directly in front of the horse, spooking it, and as I had hoped, it reared up and whinnied loudly, causing its owner to curse at us in an unfamiliar language.

  As its front legs fell back to the ground, the horse saw el sabueso bearing down upon it, and it rose again, tried to strike la bestia with its hooves, and it worked. El sabueso growled at the horse and went for one of the back legs, then darted out of the way. But it was a futile thing, and suddenly, el sabueso was on the horse. It tore into flesh, and its snout was now deep into its body. Blood and entrails spilled to the dusty road, and bile surged into my throat.

  I had never heard a horse scream. I won’t forget it.

  It became easier to run, knowing that el sabueso was busy, and the farther we got from them, the less Emilia tugged me in the opposite direction. My head had started to pound, but I refused to give up. I couldn’t let Julio get her.

  We ran. We twisted around people, we ignored the people shouting at us, and we ran.

  I had been betrayed, hadn’t I? Used for Emilia’s own end, used to get her to safety, and she didn’t care. She wanted me for what I could offer, just like everyone else back in Empalme.

  What was true? What was merely a story? Was Simone even real?

  I had come so far and fallen right into the same pattern all over again.

  Why did I care so much? I had known Emilia for less than a day. She had just lied to me and put both of us in danger. I wanted to leave her behind. I entertained the thought: El sabueso wasn’t after me. I could cut away from Emilia, disappear into the crowd, and it would be over. I didn’t need her. She needed me.

  But I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t make a decision like that. It felt wrong, yes, but …

  Julio was real. His power was real. And someone had given it to him.

  There had to be someone to take my power away.

  And maybe I could use Emilia back in order to get what I needed.

  Emilia tugged me toward the left, tugged me hard, so hard I nearly fell over. “This way,” she said, and I yanked on her arm, my frustration finally overflowing.

  “No!” I yelled. “We can’t double back.”

  “I’ve been here before!” she said, and the fury welled up again.

  Another secret? Another story she’d failed to tell me?

  But there was no time for interrogations or for my anger. She quickly guided me to the east. “I know a place,” she huffed out as we ran, “where the smell should hide us.”

  What did that mean? Did she know something about how el sabueso tracked her that she wasn’t telling me?

  She guided me, and I didn’t want to, but I followed. We dashed down an alley, came out near a building that had to have been some sort of school. There were children playing outside it, and they laughed and cheered at us as we ran. My heart leapt at the thought of el sabueso finding one of the children, but we cut around a large fountain spewing water high into the air, and the moment passed.

  But then the screams broke out behind us. Had an attack happened?

  Emilia was now sobbing, stumbling step after step as we ran, leading me farther east, past more buildings that leaned into la calle, as if they were waiting for us to fall and would crumble upon us once we did. The effect was disorienting, and I swallowed down my nausea, the stories, the terror.

  She pointed toward a nearby structure. “¡Allá!” she cried, and she slowed, for an instant, and I had to pull her along. “It’s calling to me, el sabueso,” she sobbed. “Please, keep moving. Get inside the gray building!”

  The stench hit me first, and I coughed hard and spat on the ground, nearly pitching forward. It was the worst thing I’d ever smelled, something bitter and sharp, and tears sprang to my eyes.

  “Get inside,” Emilia ordered, then stuck a hand over her mouth. “It should mask my scent long enough.”

  Long enough for what? “But el sabueso—”

  “Just go!” she screamed.

  I did what she asked.

  The building was tall, not so high as most of the others, but still bigger than everything in Empalme. I didn’t recognize the substance it was made out of; it was like smooth mud, but a pale, pale gray. I had my hand over my nose as we pushed through a wooden door and—

  People.

  There were people here.

  A woman stood up, her clothing in tatters, her hair patched with gray, and she raised an arm to me. “No, you cannot just—”

  She stopped.

  “Emilia?”

  The door slammed behind me, and Emilia rushed past. “Chavela, I’m sorry for the intrusion, but we need to hide.”

  Chavela shook her head. “Emilia, chica, we can’t—”

  The others—children, adults, an elderly couple—crowded around Chavela as there was a loud pounding at the door. I cried out in alarm, and it all happened so fast, so terribly fast. Chavela yelled something at the others—in a language I had never heard, the words quick and clipped—and they scurried away from her. A tall man with his hair in multiple tight, dark braids lifted a board in the floor, and they all disappeared below.

  Pound.

  Pound.

  Pound.

  “Emilia!” yelled Julio, and I heard el sabueso throw its body against the door again. “You cannot escape us!”

  Emilia’s burlap bag slipped off her shoulder, and as it hit the ground, its contents spilled out across the floor. Clothing. Dried fruit. Her canteen.

  The axe.

  Emilia began to take steps toward the door. “I can’t stop,” she sobbed, and it looked as though she was fighting her own body, her own willpower. “I can’t stop it.”

  I dropped my pack and fell to the floor, my knees banging against the wooden boards. I went for the axe and gripped the wooden handle as the door burst in.

  As light spilled into that giant room.

  As Chavela called out something in that language of hers.

  As Emilia cried.

  As I scrambled to my feet.

  I ran forward.

  El sabueso charged.

  Snarled.

  Growled.

  Opened a mouth stained red with the life of others.

  Leapt up o
ff the ground.

  Aimed for Emilia’s throat.

  And I aimed at it.

  The axe landed between el sabueso’s shoulders, bit deep into muscle and tendon through the dark fur, and la bestia shrieked as I slammed it to the ground. It tried to stand up, but its front legs no longer worked. Julio was motionless, silent, and he watched as I placed a foot on el sabueso’s head, right between its horns, as it whimpered and snapped at me, and the axe was in the air again, and all I saw was Manolito’s panic on his face, before he tried to escape his terrible fate, and when I brought it down, el sabueso went silent. Blood sprayed on my huaraches.

  It trembled.

  It went still.

  And Julio burst into a rage.

  The axe clattered to the ground, and Emilia did as well. The spell was broken, the magic gone, and I watched her wilt and deflate before me. Julio wailed and dropped to el sabueso, now in pieces, and his voice was tortured. “What have you done, puta?” He dropped the head to the floor. “Do you know what this cost me?”

  I rushed to Emilia’s side, lifted her up from under her arms, and her relief burst into me, set my heart racing again. How can I feel that? Why is she open to me, so vulnerable?

  Emilia coughed, spat on the ground in front of her father. She wiped at her face, stood up straight and tall, no longer leaning into me for support. “Is that all you care about, Papi? How much this cost you?”

  “Watch your mouth, mija,” he shot back, and he took a step toward the two of us. “Or I’ll bury you.”

  Chavela appeared suddenly, placing her body between us. “I need you to leave,” she said to Julio. “This is not your home.”

  “I take what I want,” he said to Chavela. “And I’ll take your life, too.”

  He raised his hand up, as if he was going to take Chavela’s story. Emilia sobbed and moved behind me. But Chavela did not wince, did not react. “Go ahead,” she said. “You wouldn’t be the first man to hurt me.”

  His arm dropped. His patchy facial hair twitched about his face as he frowned, and I could see him working something out. He had not expected resistance. He never did. Emilia’s story roiled up within my gut, and I doubled over as it thrust barbs inside me. I choked, nearly spat it out then. All her emotions poured into my body: Her fear of Julio. The pain he put her through. Her intense loneliness.

  I stood upright, my eyes blurred by tears, and Julio was still there, examining me. His face—all those angles, all that hatred—was familiar to me, as though it were part of a long memory of mine. But it was Emilia’s memory, layered into my own through her stories.

  I was terrified of him.

  The force of this fear trembled throughout my body as he continued to stare at me. “What is wrong with you?” he said.

  Chavela put a hand on my back. “Chica, do you need agua?” she asked, her voice soft and concerned.

  “Emilia,” I choked out. “Where is she?”

  “She left you.”

  My gaze snapped up to him. He was smiling.

  I spun around.

  There was no one there.

  This space was so much larger than I had realized, and I searched the room, desperate to find Emilia, to see her shadow, to see anything. There were sleeping rolls scattered around, cooking supplies on the southern edge of the building, some tools hung on the walls to the east. Most of the place was bare.

  And Emilia was definitely not in sight.

  “You’re lying,” I said, using Chavela’s arm to keep myself steady. “She wouldn’t.”

  “She ran away, like she always does,” he said. “She is a coward.”

  No. Impossible. Why would she leave me here?

  “You were a friend of his, weren’t you?” Julio stepped forward.

  I shook my head and moved back, Chavela at my side. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  Another step toward me. “Manolito. Did you like what I did to him?” He grinned, and his mouth turned up in a sinister curl.

  He unsheathed his blade, one of the smaller curved ones that his men always carried, and it shone in the bright light cascading in from the open door behind him. “I don’t like liars,” he said.

  “Señor, please,” Chavela said. “Just leave. Leave this place. Déjala en paz.”

  “You know what’s wrong with this world?” he asked, moving closer and closer. “You all wait. You wait for someone else to solve your problems. You don’t want to take a chance and—”

  He was so certain. So lost in himself.

  So he did not see the shadow fall over the open doorway behind him.

  He did not see the axe raised up and to the side.

  It whisked through the air.

  It landed in his neck.

  His eyes went wide.

  His tongue lolled about in his mouth.

  His hands went up to the blade now buried deep in his flesh.

  He ran fingers along the edge.

  Felt the blood leaking out of the torn skin.

  Then he pitched forward, and Chavela and I screamed as his body hit the ground hard, and he twitched there as el sabueso had, and she stood there, a shadow in that brilliant light, and she panted.

  He tried to roll over.

  He stilled.

  His life leaked out.

  And Emilia walked over to her papi, her face a cold mask, and she ripped the axe from Julio’s body, ignored the spray of blood, then looked up at the two of us.

  “Emilia…,” I began.

  “Don’t,” she said. “Just help me carry the body out.”

  She set the axe aside and grabbed his legs, dragging him toward the door, and Chavela and I silently followed.

  Julio was dead.

  I had forgotten about the stench, how the heat seemed to press up against us so fiercely. Chavela had one arm, I had the other, and the three of us dragged him through the dirt. To the east. Toward the source of the smell.

  There was a large pit, dug deep out of the earth, and I watched as a man upended a large waste pot over the edge, and the contents tumbled down the side, into the depths below. It was deep enough to fit an entire home. There was so much refuse piled at the bottom, and insects buzzed and flew all around it. I coughed again, and Chavela raised her free hand to make Emilia stop. We set Julio’s body on the ground, and then she dug into her tunic until she produced a small glass vial. “For the smell,” Chavela said, and she put a couple of drops on her finger, then approached me. She dabbed it under my nose, and an intense floral scent invaded me, made my eyes water. She did the same for Emilia.

  Emilia took a breath, then gestured with her head. “In he goes,” she said.

  Maybe I should have protested. Or said anything. But my body and my mind were numb, unable to fathom what I had witnessed. So I did as I was told. We set Julio on the edge of that pit, and Chavela backed away. She grabbed my arm as I moved toward Emilia.

  “No,” she said. “Let her do it.”

  I watched as Emilia stared down at his lifeless body. She didn’t say anything, and her face was as unreadable as ever.

  She put her foot on his torso.

  She kicked out.

  And he rolled down, his arms flopping about, and he landed facedown in a pile of human waste and refuse.

  Emilia stared at him, then walked back to the building we had come from. I couldn’t move, stilled by my own confusion. She came back out, the body of el sabueso cradled in her arms, and she tossed it over the side, and it rolled down to meet Julio’s body. Her clothing—already filthy from her journey—was now covered in blood and remains, stark flashes of red that stained the fabric. She spun quickly and made for the gray building once more, her hair following behind her.

  She looked eternal and terrifying.

  Chavela took my hand and led me inside. My eyes went up to the ceiling, to the long blocks of wood that crossed above me, to the high windows that allowed light into the place. Chavela let go and headed back to the removable board in the floor, stomped
on it three times. “Navarro! It’s Chavela,” she shouted. “We’re safe now.”

  I looked for Emilia. Where had she gone?

  They came aboveground. The tall man with the long braids was first, and he knelt to help the others up. A couple of children came up next, and I realized that they were twins, and I thought of Los Gemelos, and it seemed so very long ago that I had walked between those saguaros.

  “What is this place?” I said as Chavela approached me, a canteen of water in her outstretched hand. I took it and drank the cool water down, then sniffed. The smell was not so bad indoors, thanks to the floral oil that Chavela had given me, but the glory of Obregán seemed to have skipped over this place. I was reminded of the homes that had been abandoned over the years in Empalme, and a memory struck:

  Emilia. Cowering in rags in one of those empty homes.

  “It’s where we live,” Chavela answered, and shook me free from Emilia’s story. “El olvidado.”

  “El olvidado?” I took another drink from the canteen. “I don’t understand.”

  “Obregán is a big place,” said Navarro. “And some of us fall through the cracks. No familia. No homes. No one to catch us.”

  “How is that possible?” I asked, and the people who had been hiding beneath the floor spread about, going back to their lives as if nothing had happened. “You have no one? Nowhere else to go?”

  “Life is complicated, chica,” said Chavela. “I came here with my family years ago. They’re all gone now. Dead, or moved on.”

  “I came here for work,” a man said, his face folded with wrinkles. “It dried up. I found my way to this place.” He gestured around him.

  I heard a boot scuffle on the ground, and Emilia was there, standing in the door her father had destroyed. She stepped forward into the space, out of the bright light of day. Her face was drooping with exhaustion, her gaze far in the distance, in another world, in another time.

  “Emilia?” I stepped toward her, a hand outstretched. “Do you need help? Can I clean off your clothing?”

  She gazed down, examined the mess, pulled it back and forth, then looked back up to me. “It’s stained,” she said, her words clipped. “Ruined.”

  I took another step. “I know. Can we help you?”