Both Sides

by Gabino Iglesias

  He looked at her as his loyalties warred within him.

  Sighing, Eddie Nieves made his choice. “Goddamn it, Milly.” he stood. “I’ll point you in the right direction.”

  On the fringes of the city, up in the barren foothills, Milagros walked past garbage dumps, along dirt roads. Panteón Municipal Número 2 was pushed up against the border wall, a dusty tract of grey earth and graves. Many were open, a stack of wooden crucifixes in the corner ready for the penniless or the unknown.

  The cemetery was empty. Milagros found no one, no mourners, no would-be crossers, no coyotes. From up here, she saw Ciudad Cabral’s American Siamese sister city. It was a quiet, orderly place, surrounded by nature reserves, yoga retreats, and Instagrammable swim holes.

  Though the border wall cut through two cities, it was as if they were intent on becoming one another, like two blobs of mercury. The wall itself was old, rusting, of underwhelming height, recycled landing strips from the Vietnam War. Though it was more than iron and razor wire to the eye and to the skin, to the heart it was something else—a political equator, a socioeconomic trench, the definition between the developing and developed.

  Milagros wondered if Eddie Nieves had lied to her. There was nothing here but emptiness and mournful views. She was about to leave, when she checked her GPS device. Considering the horizon, she realized Irvin Hoglund’s ranchland was some ten miles due north—almost exactly. With renewed energy, she searched the cemetery. Amid the tombs, she found strange things. Guatemalan quetzal coins, spots of blood, shell casings, baby wipes.

  Milagros spent an hour among the dead, searching for traces of life.

  Finally, she found the empty grave. Peering into the dank gloom she noticed footprints in the dirt. Puzzled, Milagros lowered herself into the grave, cursing her age. It took her a second to get used to the dark. Then she felt it—a breeze. Feeling her way, she found the tunnel. The smell of coyote shit was strong on the warm air.

  Crawling through the snaggy hole, she squinted into the void. And there, sticking out from the “ceiling” of the tunnel was a jagged outcropping of limestone. It would have been impossible to see at night, especially scared and rushing. Reaching out, Milagros ran her finger along it. It came back caked in greyish dust. Blowing it off, she licked her finger and repeated the motion. Now her finger came back pinkish with dried blood mixed in with the dust.

  “Rudi,” she whispered.

  Milagros felt a swell of excitement, she was almost certain the boy had come through this way. But even as hope filled her, the truth crushed her: it was a pointless detail that did nothing to uncover the truth.

  Climbing out of the dummy grave, she dusted herself off and looked up at the sky. Milagros was running out of time. And she was clean out of ideas.

  Her phone rang now. The number was withheld.

  “¿Bueno?”

  “Milly, it’s me.”

  “Joe.”

  “Keeping your nose clean?”

  “You know me.” She looked down at herself and saw a human stick of chalk. Dusting herself off, she created a small grey squall.

  “Listen, I’ve been thinking ‘bout what we discussed. Now I’m gonna send you something, but I need to know that you get that it didn’t come from me. We clear?”

  Her heart quickened now. “Never been any misunderstandings between us, Joe.”

  There was a marshy silence. “Happy Independence Day, Milagros.”

  He hung up. A second later, her phone beeped. It was a voice note. Taking a breath, she pressed play and put it to her ear. She heard a metallic crackling, heavy breathing fuzzing in and out of clarity.

  —9-1-1, what is your emergency?

  —Por favor ayúdame, por favor…

  —Sir, I can’t make you out real well. Do you speak English?

  —Ayúdame, me muero…

  —Uh, la línea es mala. La línea se está cortando.

  —No tengo agua. Por favor, Dios. Ayúdame…

  —¿Cuál es su nombre?

  —Alejandro Flores Solorio.

  —OK, Alejandro. Intenta mantener la calma. ¿Dónde estás?

  —No lo sé, no lo sé... Estoy viendo cosas… Cosas que no pueden ser…

  —Alejandro? Voy a enviar agentes para buscarte, Okay? Quedase en la línea, Okay?… Alejandro? Alejandro?

  The recording ended.

  Milagros put the phone away and closed her eyes. “Okay,” she said. “Alejandro.”

  The Diódoro Latapí Migrant Refuge was high up in the hills above Ciudad Cabral—a large breezeblock structure on a street of broken shacks and lemon trees. Clumps of people sat in the shade. Some had been recently deported, others were hoping to make their first attempt soon. Many of them wore clothes baring American concepts: colleges, football teams, star-spangled banners, NYPD—as though Border Patrol would be fooled by such displays.

  The place had the feel of a ragged airport waiting lounge. Milagros heard the Spanish language in all of its multifariousness—from Paraguayan mingled with Guarani, to the beat poetry of Dominican, to the “vos” of El Salvador—a cosmos of colloquialisms heard in jokes, scoldings, tearful phone calls.

  Milagros waited in line for two hours, trying to ignore the heat as best she could. When she finally reached the front desk, she explained the situation to the woman who wrote down the name Alejandro Flores Solorio and asked Milagros to wait in the courtyard.

  Sitting on the tile lip of an old tile fountain, she gratefully accepted a cup of water and watched the mothers talk and their children play. The sky above had turned an argentite grey.

  A short while later, the woman returned and solemnly asked her to follow. At the end of the courtyard, there was an entire wall of color. Ten thousand Post-it notes, drawings, messages, prayer cards, photographs, love notes — a wall of remembrance made by those about to cross—those recording their own details before stepping into the void. Those who wished to say: I was here.

  Milagros spotted a small hummingbird sketched in pencil. Though it was no bigger than the palm of her hand, it seemed to carry every grey that there ever was. The woman touched Milagros on the shoulder before she left.

  Alone, Milagros read the note beneath the hummingbird.

  Mi nombre es Alejandro Flores Solorio. Soy de San Pedro Sula, Honduras. Tengo quince años. Esta noche intentaré cruzar hacia a los Estados Unidos para encontrar trabajo y poder ayudar a mi familia. Que Dios bendiga a todos los que pasan por aquí.

  Making this little sketch, writing this message—it was planting a flag against the hurricane of oblivion. And yet it had held firm.

  Milagros ran her finger lightly across the letters, the hummingbird. These fingers had searched in Alejandro’s pockets, touched Alejandro’s skin, his blood. Now they met his thoughts, his art. Feeling grief for a boy she had never met, she wrote down the phone number beneath his message—a 504 number. Then she left the shelter.

  Outside, it was almost dark. Milagros walked the four miles back to the border crossing. There she joined a line eight times the size the one at the shelter, snaking into the large metal shed that led into America. It was like an exhausted world record attempt at human assembly.

  Up and down the line, kids juggled for change. Unblinking junkies scoured for opportunities. Vendors tried to sell sombreros and toy donkeys painted like zebras. More men in hats and hoodies offered a last chance to cross into America without papers. A row of stores stayed open late hopeful for tourists hankering for last minute mementos. One such pudgy couple sized up Ciudad Cabral fridge magnets. The old lady waiting to make the sale watched them, oblivious as to why anyone would want to commemorate this day.

  Up on the hill in the distance, the bullring was illuminated. There was a show tonight. Little plats of orange sodium vapor from the border lamps encircled this little kingdom of steel and plastic and hope and despair.

  Milagros could see America in the distance. She looked now at the darkness of the mountains behind her—the word
of God lasting forever still barely visible in lime. A scurry of bats flitted through the darkness, far above the wall. They were from two places. They were from no places. Same as me, she thought.

  Taking a deep breath, Milagros took out her phone. It was time.

  Three thousand miles away, a woman answered her phone after just two rings. “¡Colibrí! Bájate de allí. Esa fue la última, voy en serio — ¿Aló?”

  “…Colibrí?”

  “Si, mi hijo, Rudi. El pequeño. Asi le llamamos, Colibrí. Siempre para acá y para allá. ¿Pero con quién hablo?”

  “Señora, mi nombre es Milagros Posada del Departamento del Sheriff de Aguayo County. ¿Tiene otro hijo? Alejandro Flores Solorio?”

  “Si.” She whispered.

  “Señora Flores, lo siento. De verdad, lo siento de corazón.” Milagros felt a tear slide down her cheek. Her voice shuddered as she gave the woman the truth.

  There were a few seconds of silence. For a suspended moment there was only the wooing of the wind through a flimsy border wall. Then the scream of a mother. It came from the woman’s nethermost, deep from where she had given life to her son.

  Milagros hung up and began to sob. She cried for this woman she had never met. She cried for Alejandro. She cried for his little brother Rudi. And she cried for her own son, blown to pieces a world away, in another scorching desert that claimed all. Milagros cried for a long time.

  She only stopped when she realized that, through the fog of agony and death, the hummingbird Alejandro painted in his final moments had been for his little brother. In the delirium of human finality, he had seen clearly what he should cling to—love.

  Up ahead, the American couple decided on their fridge magnet. Holding up the Ciudad Cabral sombrero that doubled as a bottle opener, the woman in the ONLY GOOD VIBES tank top posed with the mystified old lady who owned the shop.

  “What’s Spanish for smile?” The husband said.

  “I dunno, honey. Just hurry up and take it.”

  The next day, Jim Fraley strolled into the Sheriff’s Department in a good mood despite his hangover. “Morning, Milly.” He rested his feet up on his bureau. “Any messages?”

  “No.”

  “Did Hanlon call?”

  Milagros stopped typing. “No, why?”

  “She managed to identify Hoglund’s stiff already—how bout that?”

  “How about that.”

  “I tell ya, we’re doing a man’s work in this county.”

  “You said it, Jim.”

  Yawning, Fraley leaned back and covered his face with his Stetson. “How ‘bout a little coffee around here?”

  “Already brewing. There’s bizcochitos in the tin.”

  “Goddamn it, Milagros. What would I do without you?”

  BUITRE

  Michelle Garza and Melissa Lason

  Nogales, Arizona 1992

  The cab of the truck smelled like a dumpster. The warm, humid air trapped inside only made it worse, an overbearing passenger who couldn’t be seen. The smells of old beer, body odor, and the remains of tacos de lengua wrapped in a greasy bag all melded together into an inescapable entity, a suffocating hand wrapped around the throat of the nuevo vato, but he remained calm.

  Tener la cabeza fría es muy importante en los negocios, mijo.

  “Dígame.” Alfonso said.

  Luis contemplated his response. He couldn’t let the older man know his intentions, not just yet. His eyes scanned the cab of the truck; he knew Alfonso would have some form of protection with him, after so many years Alfonso knew better than to trust anyone in the business, especially this nuevo vato. He couldn’t let Alfonso know he was there to collect more than just the money; he was there for his initiation.

  “Estoy aquí por la lana.”

  “¿Lana, cuál lana?” Alfonso asked, waving his hands about, his dumb act irritated Luis but he still remained cool.

  Alfonso was a wiseass drunk, a trait that dug his grave one caguama at a time over the years.

  “Tu lo sabes.”

  “No, no…”

  “Sí, yo vine para recogerla.”

  Alfonso wasn’t going to let this pinche escuincle force him to hand the money over, even though he knew he was crossing a line he couldn’t come back from. He had been skimming from their patrón, Kiki, for years, and now his number was up, but he refused to look like a marica in front of the new guy. His hand was a blur in the darkened cab of the truck, it disappeared for a second to his side and reappeared holding a snubnosed revolver, but as he began to lift it, the cocky smile on his lips fell. With age and drunkenness came a dulling of skills, a hesitation in his hand, and it cost him dearly. Luis already held his gun inches from Alfonso’s head. His eyes studied the pistol, and the engravings of a scorpion spoke to him of a man he never had the balls to fuck with. The kid holding the gun bore the same green eyes as el Güero, Alfonso swallowed the lump in his throat. He knew if this kid was the son of the legendary el Güero, he wouldn’t be shown an ounce of mercy. He pointed to the glove box as Luis took the gun from his shaking hand, tossed it to the floorboard and carefully retrieved a wad of billete. It had to be at least a grand, all rolled up and wrapped in a rubber band. It smelled of greed, of traición, and of shallow graves dug by poor decisions.

  “Yo recuerdo a tu papá…”

  “¡Cállate!” Luis ordered Alfonso who was now beginning to snap, his tough guy façade thinner than an eggshell, cracking under the pressure of la calaca breathing down his neck.

  Luis couldn’t blame him for turning into a nena, he knew other men who did the same when they were staring down their own deaths.

  “Por favor, no me mates.”

  Luis knew he’d promise him everything under the sun to be spared a bullet in the brain, and the borracho did, but he was already blocking Alfonso’s pleas out, his words became a garbled whisper, the incessant hum of a bobito in his ears, one Luis meant to squash.

  No escuches, mijo. Los muertos son unos mentirosos.

  “¡Yo vine por la lana…y tu vida, puto!”

  Aprieta el gatillo, es fácil.

  This time he would make his father proud, he wouldn’t look away. He would pull the trigger.

  The city of Nogales had yet to replace the many broken parking lot lights, the truck was cloaked in darkness but for a single flickering yellow bulb. It was in the middle of the barrio on the edge of town, a place forgotten by everyone but those who struggled to live there and the ghosts trapped in limbo roaming its streets. The silhouettes inside were hardly distinguishable but Pancho and Martín had watched Luis climb into Alfonso’s truck, they sent him there to do their bidding, órdenes de arriba. They watched as the short conversation took place, and laughed as Alfonso began waving his arms around.

  “Mira, el mentiroso de Alfonso,” Pancho said quietly, and Martín smirked, they were aware of the old drunk’s over-animated way of speaking.

  “Como una pinche gallina.” Martín said and flapped his arms like a chicken trying to fly.

  They knew, at that moment, Alfonso, the thief and traitor, was more than likely wishing he could fly away from Luis. The air outside their car windows felt heavy, the swampy humidity of a monsoon was building outside and the faint growl of thunder came to greet them from the night like a hungry predator.

  “Odio pinche Arizona, odio gringolandia.” Pancho complained, he hadn’t been happy with his reassignment to Arizona, a tour of duty encompassing a four-year stint in the land of güeros. He wished he was still back in Culichi. He lucked out by receiving a call from Luis, his replacement. Kiki agreed when he learned of the nuevo vato’s bloodline, so Pancho had to train the new kid before he could return to his beloved Sinaloa, which involved testing his bravery, to see if he could kill. If he could, then he would be putting a few traidores tres metros bajo tierra.

  “Llorón, aquí no es malo. Aquí hay güeras, billete y poder. Yo soy feliz aquí.”

  “¡Pero la comida es una mierd
a!” Pancho said.

  “Aprende a cocinar, marica.”

  Martín went quiet as Pancho held a finger to his lips, they looked to the truck, to Luis performing his first job and walking through a doorway that, to all newcomers, was big enough to drive a bus through, but when they turned to exit it would shrink to the size of a fly’s asshole. The monsoon brought streaks of lightning across the sky, and Pancho could feel la calaca gliding along on its dusty winds. In a momentary flash from the gathering storm, the cab of the truck was lit and they could see Luis holding his gun to Alfonso’s head, his arm didn’t tremble, it was steady. Luis was thin and the shadows cast on his young face, the deep hollow of his green eyes and high cheek bones, his face looked like a skull before everything went black again—el rostro de la muerte. Martín crossed himself and watched as the cab of the truck lit up, and though it was faster than the hot white crackling of spider-webbing lightning, time stood till and the vision of Alfonso’s head bursting—the brutal force of the bullet blasting through the front side of his head and emerging in an explosion of brain matter and skull fragments, a red mist hit the windshield—was imprinted in Martín’s memory.

  Luis stepped out of the truck and walked back to climb into Pancho’s Cadillac. Martín could smell the blood and gunsmoke and death hanging on the nuevo vato—and, like the smell of a night at the prostíbulo, it wouldn’t wash out his clothes or off his skin or out of his soul easily. El primer asesinato cambia un hombre. Luis would be marked forever.

  “Buen trabajo, muchacho.” Pancho said.