Night come and they no come back.
Then, three in the morning, I hear banging on the door. BANG. BANG. BANG. There was Bobo, wet like a fish, and he had Adriana in his arms. He had mud all over. Y sangre.
I say, “Where is Nick? What happened?”
Blanca came out screaming. She got everyone awake. They got towels and bandages.
I look outside and I don’t see the car. It’s still raining and the wind is still gritando.
“What happened?” I say. “Where is Nicky?”
Bobo, he was in shock, and Adriana was out out out. Blanca gave him some coffee. And little by little he talk.
Nick said they were going on an adventure. So he drive them to Utuado to una finca abandona’o up there in the mountains, I think the one that used to belong to your grandmother. Blanca knows. There’s nothing there but a little house, used to be.
Bobo say they came to the house and because the mud y la lluvia, the house, it was hanging off the side of the cliff. And with the rain and the wind, it looked like it was going to fall any second.
So Nick say he needed this suitcase that was under the house. How it get there, I don’t know. It was under the floor, but the floor was dirt, and the dirt, it change to mud, and Bobo say he saw the suitcase right there, hanging under the house on the side of the cliff.
So Nick he tell Bobo, he say, “Big boy, you go over the side and get that suitcase.” He say that he would pay him money. But Bobo no care about money, one way or the other. Money mean nothing to him.
But then Adriana, she tell him, “Please do it. Bobo, you have to do it.”
So Bobo, he look at her and he look at Nick and he say, “Okay.”
They put a rope around him and hang him down. The rain was coming down and the mud, he say, “Fue como un río.” He say, “The mud was like chocolate, but it no taste like chocolate.”
He reach and he reach and he grab the case.
“Pull me up!” he say. “Pull me up!”
And they pull him up, with the case. They get in the car, and Nick start to drive the car too fast. These roads here, they very small, and the mud was coming down all around. Bobo say he was scared.
Bobo say something hit the car or the car hit something. “Como una bofeta’ de Dios,” he say. The car, it almost flew off the mountain, but Nick turn it and it spin and crash into the side, and mud and rocks came down. Down and down. Adriana, she had blood all over, and Bobo say Nick was stuck. The steering wheel move and pin him, and his legs got stuck under the steering wheel.
Nick scream at him, “You got to get me out here, you f’ing dummy.”
Bobo say he can’t drive, and the car was sideways.
Nick yell at him and say, “Yes, you can. You a f’ing ox. Pull me out of here. Whatever it takes.”
Bobo pull and pull, but Nick, he stay stuck. Bobo keep pulling.
“You f’ing this and this,” Nick tell Bobo, “you gonna tear me in half.”
Then Bobo, he got an idea. Now you know Bobo, es buena gente. He never hurt anybody. He just no understand.
He took the shovel—my shovel!—and he push it into Nick’s legs, asi y asi, and chop them, aqui, in the meat, tu sabes? Then he pull Nick out. He pull the top and the legs stay. But, Bobo say, “He stop screaming.”
Bobo pick up Adriana in his arms, and then took half of Nick and put him over his shoulder, and then he take the legs under his arm but they drop, and then Bobo tied them together and drag the legs in the mud.
But Bobo say, “I’m sorry, Tio Luis”—he call me “tio” even though he’s Blanca’s brother—he say, “It was was too hard, muy difícil, llevandolo’” down the mountain with the rain and with the mud. “Too much.” He say he put Nick and his legs on the side of the road and covered him with banana leaves, and then he ran all the way back here with Adriana in his arms.
Ten miles in that aguacero.
Well, puedes imaginar, we had to call the ambulance and the police. There was a big mess and they went up there and they want to know what’s going on and they try to find the body but with the rain and the mud they no find nothing. We didn’t say what Bobo did because we no want him to get in trouble. Just in case.
La policia, they find the car and they say it empty. Except for sangre. They find a hundred-dollar bill in the trunk. The police come back, saying, “Who this money belong to?” and I say it must be Nick, he a big spender. They say, “You know he have a record? Do you know he was involved in drugs?”
I say, “I don’t know about that, I no see him ten, fifteen years.”
They say, “We check. He been coming to Puerto Rico every year, sometimes four, five times.”
That was a surprise. “I don’t know why he never visit. He’s a good guy,” I say.
Anyway, they took away the car. They never found your cousin, God have him in heaven. La finca is gone, it go off the mountain and into the trees and everything up there disappear.
Adriana, she decide to move to Florida. Everybody’s going there now, everybody’s leaving. It getting empty around here, tu sabes? Bobo, he move with her. She say he save her life. She say he her hero. Imagine.
Anyway, she got a nice house over there. She got a new car. They send us pictures all the time. They keep in touch. They send us a little something now and then, tu sabes? We got a new refrigerator, a TV set, air-conditioner in every room. I got a new truck, but I still have to get on the line for gas sometimes.
They tell Blanca and me to come to Florida. “Move here.” But we can’t leave, no. This is home, tu sabes?
Yeah, it’s still hard here, tu sabes? Still hard. We still have to use the generator. Doña Olga Tañón is still here, shitting all over the place. But, you see, everything going to be okay, si Dios lo permite. Right? And your Titi Blanca, she can make cake anytime now for you.
So when are you coming to visit?
Back to TOC
OLD PENDEJO
Not too long ago, I hated that dog with all my heart.
I was just back from the war, about two months, still feeling like I was cleaning sand out of my ass. I had come home with a bum ear, a bum leg, and the shakes. All in all, I was feeling pretty useless. Especially to my family. We were in a tight spot, with our tiny sheep ranch that had but two sheep. Dad was long gone, my brother Jorge was deep into the meth, my sister had married off, was living back in Mexico. Ma tried to hold our family together. She kept saying the sun always had to shine again sometime. But I could see in her eyes that things looked bad even to her.
The dog just showed up one day, probably looking for scraps. I saw my brother out front, playing tug-of-war with it with an old rope.
I told him, “Jorge, get that pinche dog outta here before it gives you rabies.”
“It’s a great dog,” he said, but I could see it was nothing but a rangy mutt, big bald patches of skin on it. Maybe its great grandma was a border collie, maybe, but the apple had fallen far from the tree.
“It’s a mangy dog,” I said. “It’s gonna bring fleas into the house.”
“Could be a great sheep dog,” he said.
“We ain’t got but two sheep, brainless,” I said, but he ignored me. Didn’t matter. I figured the dog would figure out there wasn’t any pet chow here soon enough and then it would move along to the next sucker.
I limped to the truck and drove out to the edge of our property. Did a perimeter patrol. We lived outside of Mason, in Texas Hill country. Really pretty land. At least it used to be. You could go fly fishing one day, count wildflowers the whole next day. Now most of it was dry, unkind, not pretty. Can’t keep up good land without good workers.
It was only a little while before the bank would come take it anyway, pretty or not.
The stupid dog would move on, sure enough, I thought. We didn’t need another belly to disappoint.
Next morning the pinche dog was still around, sitting on the steps back of the kitchen door, ears up like i
t was expecting something. I walked over, and it scooted out of my way, its curled-up tail between its legs. But it didn’t have that look that most dogs do when they’re letting you know you’re master. Its body was wiggling, but that dog still had this sparkly look in its eye, like it was playing me for a fool. I didn’t like that. I gave it a good kick off the steps.
But I hit it with my bad leg. Dang. Bolt of pain ran up my knee and to my skull. I caught my breath, limped to the barn, and yanked the door wide open. I hollered at Jorge, “What’s that moth-eaten mutt still doing ’round here?”
Jorge hit ’bout as high as the ceiling when I came in. “Marco!” The meth’ll make you jumpy. “Marco! Good morning!”
He was pacing around, then he sat down, rocked from side to side, then got up and paced again.
“Don’t be feeding that damn dog, guey,” I told him, “or it’ll never leave.”
Then that boy did something he’d been doing a lot of lately: Bawling, rivers of tears.
“Please, Marco. I ain’t got nothing here. My girl left me and took my kids. And Speedy’s run off.”
Speedy was our collie. Now Speedy, she had been a beauty. Smart dog. Good sheep dog. She went for a long walk months ago and hadn’t come back. Very smart dog, I tell you what.
I could see the skin of Jorge’s face was dry and scratched. His cheeks were already concaving from whatever the meth did to you.
“Listen. Listen,” he said, getting up and then sitting back down. “I didn’t get to go to school. I didn’t get to go to the army. That’s all you. On top of that, you’re Mom’s favorite. She looks at me like I’m another piece of furniture. So let me keep the stupid dog!”
My brother never was one to make a whole lot of sense. But I figured he was saying the dog made him happy. At least it wasn’t going to kill him, like the meth.
“Fine,” I said. “Keep the stupid dog. That’s all we need.”
Jorge didn’t show for supper that night. Afterward, Mom and me sat in the living room, watching the news. She had her after-dinner bourbon next to her and was doing her knitting. The TV said Los Angeles was under martial law. Something about the flu getting out of hand, not enough inoculations. You hear the same thing every winter.
Mom looked up from the TV and said to me, “How you like that supper, son?”
She’d made ropa vieja and refried beans. It was pretty darned good. A world better than rations.
“It’s great, Mom. Just like you always make it.”
“Well, that just about finished that last groceries we had. You’ll have to go to market end of this week.”
“How’s our credit?”
“We’re still in good graces, gracias a dios,” she said and knocked on the wood of her chair.
Then she handed her glass to me. “Top me off, por favor.”
I got up, got her bourbon, and refilled her glass. Then I finished up my supper. In New York City, they declared a state of emergency.
I had the dream again. We had just got ourselves out of a bag of dicks. We were booking away from this village, making good time in a haze of sand and dust. I was sitting in the back of a recon, watching the village shrink away. That’s when we must have hit it. An explosion so loud it was the last thing my left ear would ever hear. I went tumbling, feeling things break in my body. I was on the side of the road, one arm curled under me, my other hand opening and closing on the dirt.
I woke up in the corner of my room, blankets tangled around my leg, covered with enough sweat to soak my shirt and shorts.
Lord, I hated that dream.
Well, it was about time to wake up anyway.
I hobbled downstairs and found my brother curled around that dog on the couch. You could see the ribs easy on both of them. I went to wake Jorge, when the dog bared its teeth and me and growled at me. That son of a bitch.
“Wake up, guey!” I said, bouncing then tilting the sunken cushions with my good foot so the danged mutt and my brother rolled off the couch and hit the floor. “Time to go to market.”
Waiting in the truck, I saw Jorge was bringing the dog along, helping it into the back.
I waited till Jorge was in the truck.
“I bet you named him already?” I said.
“That I did,” Jorge said, drumming on the dash like it was a conga.
“So what you name him?”
“Pendejo,” he said.
“Pendejo.” I laughed. “What the hell for?”
“It’s the only thing he answers to. “Get out here, Pendejo!’ ‘Sit, Pendejo.’ ‘Fetch, Pendejo.’ ‘Old Pendejo’ is his full name.”
The dog was wagging its tail at us, like it knew we were talking about him. There was almost an eat-shit grin on its face. Pendejo was not a nice thing to call someone, even a dirty-looking, curly-haired, mangy dog. But I guess the name kind of fit.
When we pulled into the Super S mart, there were a mess of cars and trucks parked outside. People were coming out with two or three shopping carts apiece, hauling away food, water, supplies.
We passed Mr. Perez loading the back of his 4x4.
“Morning, Mr. Perez,” we both said.
“Marco. Jorge. Seems like new deliveries didn’t come this week and won’t be coming next week. Better stock up now, boys.”
We said our thanks, found a parking spot, and went inside the store. The dog would’ve followed us—it wanted to be wherever Jorge was—but my brother got some rope and tied it up in our truck bed.
I hadn’t seen this kind of chaos in the store since the last round of big tornadoes we had a few years back. The shelves were near bare, and there was no beer left at all.
We were just about finished loading the back of the truck, the damn pooch Pendejo watching us the whole time, wagging its smartass tail. It had chewed through the thick rope Jorge had tied it up with. Some chops on that dog.
Jorge went up front to start the truck. That’s when I heard him yell.
I looked around the side and saw one guy punch my brother square in the face, knocking him back, then pull him out of the cab. Another guy right was behind that guy with a crowbar. It was the Diaz brothers, Ty and Brandon. Local roughhouses. I went to move, but the pain that shot through my leg stuck me in place.
That’s when the dog jumped them. It had gotten to the roof of the cab without my seeing, and from there it landed right into Ty’s chest with its paws, pushing him back and away from Jorge. Brandon took a step toward him with the bar, but Old Pendejo flashed its teeth and growled like a bear and stood its ground. Jorge lay twitching on the ground, dazed and bloody.
Brandon swung the crowbar, but the dog was faster, and leaped high and bit the air—so close to Brandon’s face he must have felt the breeze.
“Whoa! Villalobos. Back your dog off,” Brandon said. “Thing’s probably got rabies.”
“What you want, Brandon?”
“We just want the truck, Marco. Just give us the truck.”
“Get your own goddamn truck.”
“Ours broke down. We gotta get gone out of town.”
“I ain’t letting you. And sure enough this pooch ain’t letting you.”
“Hell with this,” Brandon said, and he dragged his brother up and they got out of there. Pendejo kept up his barking and growling the whole time till they were out of sight.
I helped my brother up, and we both got the dog into the cab. Then I hit the gas.
If we’d had to go toe to toe with the Diaz boys, well, it wouldn’t’ve been hard, but it wouldn’t’ve been easy, what with my leg and all. I had to admit the dog impressed me, I tell you what.
“That Old Pendejo’s full of fight,” my brother said, beating the conga again on the dash. “And you wanted to get rid of him.”
“Good boy, Old Pendejo. Good boy.”
We both laughed. It was good to laugh with my brother again.
On the way back to the house, Mom called my cell and told me she’d go
ne over to Mrs. Coleman’s, who’d taken ill. Mrs. Coleman had two daughters, both of whom had moved to the coasts soon as they were old enough, so she had no one to take care of her. Mom was always doing stuff like that for people.
It was before noon, and my brother said he didn’t feel like looking over two scrawny sheep. I guess his laziness was catching because I didn’t feel like doing much of anything either. Maybe it was because my knee was throbbing. Maybe it was because Mom wasn’t around for the first time in a long time, and so it felt like we were kids who had the run of the house.
I said to my brother, “You want a beer, Jorge?”
“Say what? It’s not even noon, bro.”
“I’m getting a beer.”
“Hell, then get me one, too.”
So we sat drinking beers in the living room, me in Pop’s old chair, and Jorge in Mom’s, and Old Pendejo cleaning hisself on the rug in front of us, making these disgusting licking sounds.
“I wish I could do that,” Jorge said.
“Don’t you think you should get to know the dog a little more, guey,” I said, and we both got a kick out of that for a while.
Jorge broke into a bag of chips and ate them like a starving man. “Chips,” he said. “Chiiippps,” between and during bites.
After a few beers I told him I was worried about Mom.
“She’ll be all right. Mrs. Coleman still has her old shotgun she used to scare us with as kids.”
“No, I mean, Mom, Mom’s getting older, and this ranch ain’t got the legs to go much longer.”
“It’s pretty much past dead, you ask me.”
I looked at him. His body seemed melted right into the chair. He looked even more useless than I felt.
“I’m worried about you too, Jorge.”
He laughed. “You got your own problems. Let mine be mine.”
We didn’t say nothing for the longest time after that. Just drank beer after beer. The TV was on, but there was no picture and no sound.
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