Both Sides

by Gabino Iglesias

  “¿Limpiaste tus pantalones?”

  “¡Cállate!” Luis smiled in embarrassment, he felt himself loosen up a bit as the tension faded. He tried to push his father’s memory to the back of his mind and focus on the job ahead.

  “Te pareces a tu papá. El era mi amigo por muchos años.”

  His mother had always told him the same, both when she was happy and feeling sentimental, and when she had too much to drink and hated his father for the heartbreak he left behind. Luis was his father’s twin in appearance, a thin güero with pale eyes and skin. His actions were like a mirror to his father as well, hot headed, stubborn, both men who refused to give up something once they set their mind to it, destined for either great triumph or incredible failure. Luis wanted nothing more than to be his father’s mano derecha his whole life but he would never get the chance.

  “Tu nuevo nombre deberia ser Guerrito o Alacrancito.”

  Luis sighed, it was a subject he had been meaning to approach, maybe that explained his father speaking to him so much, it was his conscious reminding him to ask Güero’s closest friend how he disappeared.

  “¿Que pasó con mi papá?”

  Pancho flicked his cigarette out into the street and motioned for Luis to join him in the car.

  “Tu papá estaba…”

  “¿Estaba? ¿Entonces, está muerto?”

  “No se, pero el desapareció, y en el negocio eso es una mala senal.”

  Luis nodded, he knew Pancho was tiptoeing around the truth, like everyone did. His own mother wouldn’t say the exact words tu padre está muerto, pero todos lo sabían, Güero was dead. The sack of money Kiki had offered them was proof enough, Pancho secretly giving Luis his father’s prized pistol and whispering to him to hide it from his mother, it all added up.

  “Te lo prometo, encontraremos la verdad.” Pancho said.

  “Gracias, Pancho.” Luis said.

  It didn’t make him feel any better to have Pancho promise to find the truth, he was sure the old man already knew it but refused to speak it out loud.

  “Concentrémonos en el Buitre, y después…”

  “Si, después de este jale.” Luis spoke trying to hide his disappointment and frustration.

  Pancho left Luis to sit in the car while he gathered more intel. He walked across the street to the same tienda where Luis had escaped. It was one of Kiki’s spots, a place where he knew the phone had yet to be monitored by la chota. He wasn’t gone long when he came sprinting back to the car, face twisted into the visage of a hungry animal.

  “¡Pinche ladrón, hijo de su puta madre!”

  “¿Qué?” Luis asked, drawing his gun as Pancho climbed behind the wheel.

  “¡El Buitre se robó mucho dinero de Kiki!”

  Pancho drove like a maniac as he explained how Buitre’s shack was found burned down, and how Kiki’s secret stashes in the desert had been discovered. So far, one had been pilfered, but there was a second very close to their location, it was hidden beneath an altar to Malverde in Nogales, Mexico. Only a handful of people knew the locations of Kiki’s stashes of billete, and one of them was Fransisco who was already linked to Buitre. Kiki was no idiot, it was clear Buitre was trying to flee, and needed a fortune to escape the reach of el patrón. Kiki needed Pancho and the nuevo vato to provide protection to his stash and capture the pozolero if he came to pick it clean, like a carcass.

  The altar was visited on occasion by those loyal to the legendary Malverde, the poor, the downtrodden, those hasta el cuello con las drogas y los carteles. Ellos traen cigarillos y wisquicito, le lavan la cara con agua bendita, rezan por su bendiciones y su protección. The narco-saint was celebrated by those in every barrio, en muchos paises, en todo el mundo. The guard was accustomed to strangers showing up at all hours but he knew the face of Buitre, he had unloaded a few corpses at the pozolero’s shack in the past, he was ready to blow a hole through his cabeza, or shoot him right in his nariz, it wouldn’t be hard to miss.

  Buitre sat in the van, from a stinking cooler he pulled out his dinner, a fetid assortment of organs he had scavenged from the corpses strewn in his shack before setting it on fire. The cooler didn’t have any ice in it, he didn’t require his meal to be fresh—actually, he preferred it wasn’t. He lived up to his name, he fed off the dead, ate the meat from their bones and burrowed in the maggot ridden flesh of the deceased. He ate feverishly, knowing it would give him the strength to accomplish what he came to do. The sack beside him moved, he grabbed it and threw it in the back of the van. It bounced and landed next to another sack, it fell open and Fransisco’s head rolled out. His clouded eyes stared at Buitre, his cracked lips parted and an unearthly whispering came out.

  “Por favor, déjame morir…”

  The voice was like the scratching of dry tree limbs on a windowpane, the words no longer produced by lungs and breath, they came from the spirit world—a barrier which was hard to communicate through, unless you were gifted like el Buitre.

  “Déjame morir…por favor.”

  “Cállate.” Buitre ordered the head.

  He climbed over the seat and opened the other sack, his abuela’s head was hidden in it along with a few others. Hers was basically fleshless, except for a few areas where the skin was as hard as leather. He stared into her eye sockets and waited for her to speak to him.

  “Apúrate.”

  “Casi listo.” Buitre answered and returned to feasting.

  He could feel the flesh empowering him, granting his body the strength to carry out the heist. It was the way his gift worked, he was more than just a cannibal, his powers were charged when he fed on the carcasses of men, and the voices of the dead and their secrets were more easily revealed after feeding. For the first robbery, he ate only the arm of some headless corpse left behind by the Sinaloa cartel. He filled a bag with lana and hauled it away, it was a test to see if he made it out alive, but this time he meant to fill his van full of stacks of billete and through the hidden tracks of the desert he’d drive into el gabacho to the new life awaiting him. He binged on the contents of the cooler until he could feel the rotten flesh and maggots almost tickling the back of his throat. He belched loudly before forcing Fransisco’s head into the sack with his abuela’s, then he grabbed his pistol and stepped out of the van, carrying the sack like Santa Claus. He was a vulture, a scavenger of the dead, and la calaca was his bride.

  Buitre crept into the warehouse through a side door, his eyes keen in the darkness. The altar was lit by a multitude of candles, the statue of Malverde was adorned with the many tributes of his followers, a king of the suffering bejeweled and bathed in holy water. Beneath the statue rested what Buitre came to claim, a hollow recess in the altar filled with bags of dinero would be his ticket to a new life away from Sinaloa and Kiki’s perros, the American dream. The guard looked anxious, Buitre stayed in the shadows and pulled a knife from his belt. He moved silently until he was within reach, his eyes strayed to the altar and silently he asked Malverde to guide his hand. The guard wasn’t expecting a blade to his throat, or that the last thing he’d see in the living world would be his blood decorating the walls and the unblinking eyes of Malverde with a rain of crimson. He spun weakly and his dying hand squeezed the trigger a single time.

  Pancho and Luis parked across the street. The young man felt a strange static moving up his arms.

  Esta noche sabrás la verdad.

  “Vámonos.” Pancho ordered at the sound of un disparo.

  Luis drew his father’s gun and followed Pancho into the warehouse. The scent of death hung in the air, and many of the candles had been snuffed by the shower of blood. The guard lay in a gathering pool of red, his eyes blinked once but Luis was certain it was just the misfiring signals of a dying brain. Pancho was jumpy and ready to kill anything moving, Luis could feel a strange sensation radiating from the older man—fear.

  “¿Dónde esta ese hijo de puta?” Pancho whispered.

  “Mira.” Luis po
inted out a second, smaller pool of blood.

  “El esta aquí.”

  A gunshot from the dark brought Pancho to his knees, un disparo en las tripas. He gripped his stomach and screamed while he fired in return, each blast ricocheting wildly inside the steel building. Luis fired his pistol as he ran for cover behind the altar, but caught a bullet in the hip as Buitre and Pancho emptied both of their weapons in an attempt to kill each other. Luis brought his hand to the wound, a wave of intense pain made him vomit a mouthful of tacos de canasta onto the dirty floor. He fell forward onto a filthy sack and held his breath in an attempt to keep silent. The smell of it over powered him and a movement within it caused him to flinch. He couldn’t scramble away from it, his pain held him still.

  “¡Mata al traidor!” A thin whisper urged him from the sack.

  Luis shook his head and despite his agony he dragged himself away from the altar and the stinking sack.

  “¡Pancho!” a gruff voice hailed the sicarrio.

  “¡Chinga tu madre!”

  “Que lástima, no te quiero matar, pero ahora tengo que.”

  “Ven acá, puto.”

  Luis gathered his strength, and forced the pain aside enough to stand up. He lifted his pistol and fired it, Buitre tumbled backwards over an empty steel drum. Luis hobbled to Pancho and helped him to his feet. Pancho was searching his pocket for bullets to reload with when Buitre reemerged and shot Luis through the shoulder and thigh. His father’s gun fell out of his hand and slid across the floor. Pancho pushed Luis to the ground and took a second bullet to his abdomen; he dropped beside the nuevo vato. They were both badly injured, and as Buitre came to stand over them they could feel the cold breath of la calaca stealing their consciousness and suspending them darkness.

  Luis awoke, Pancho was already conscious and spitting threats at the pozolero. Luis tried to move, but found his arms and legs were bound. Pancho was hog-tied in torturous position, but he writhed like a worm to break free while Buitre gathered black bags from the destroyed altar to Malverde. A sledgehammer leaned against the wall, and all Luis could envision was crushing Buitre’s skull with it. The pozolero was bleeding from the side of his neck, a deep wound that should have been fatal.

  “Sabía que te me hacias familiar, muchacho.” Buitre spoke as he pulled Güero’s gun from the back of his pants.

  “¡Hijo de puta!” Luis screamed.

  “¿Yo?” El Buitre pointed to Pancho, “El es un hijo de puta, y un traidor.”

  Buitre dropped the black bag he was carrying and stood over Luis.

  “Sabes quién mató a tu padre?”

  Luis went silent as Buitre pointed to Pancho.

  “¿No me crees?”

  “¡Mentiroso!” Pancho cried.

  “Pregúntale a tu papá.” Buitre smiled and hobbled over to the sack behind the altar.

  He emptied it on the floor and five severed heads rolled out, their eyes wide and their mouths open. He picked one up by its light brown hair and sat it before Luis, who choked back a scream as vomit rose in his throat. Güero’s pale eyes were clouded in death, and skin clung to his high cheekbones, but it was clearly him. There was a jagged hole in his forehead, the mark of his execution.

  “¡Mata al traidor! ¡Mata a Pancho!” the head of Güero spoke.

  “¿Quién, papa?”

  “¿Puedes escucharlo?” Buitre marveled.

  The look on his face confirmed that he could. Buitre knelt beside Luis and began untying him. He placed Güero’s gun in the young man’s hand.

  “Somos iguales,” Buitre whispered, “Los muertos conocen todos los secretos si escuchan.”

  “¿Cómo pudiste, Pancho?” Luis asked.

  “¿Qué? ¡No es verdad!”

  Luis realized Pancho couldn’t hear the voice of Güero, but the pozolero could. It was no madness, it was real. Güero was speaking the truth of his death.

  “¿Cómo, Pancho? ¡El es tu major amigo!”

  “¡No fui yo!”

  “¿Si no estabas involucrado, por qué tuviste su arma?” Luis asked.

  Pancho fell silent, he couldn’t explain why he would have Güero’s gun if he wasn’t there when he was killed.

  “Estaba siguiendo órdenes, hijo. Lo siento mucho.”

  Luis didn’t tremble, even in the intense pain his heart was overcome with. He lifted his father’s gun and pulled the trigger. A bullet hole in the right eye marked Pancho’s end.

  “Vámonos.” Buitre said.

  “¿A dónde?”

  “¿Quieres venganza?”

  Luis looked to his father’s head and nodded.

  “Pancho es sólo un perro, tu quieres al jefe.” Buitre answered and pulled a knife from his belt. He began cutting Pancho’s head from his neck. “El nos diré como.”

  Luis sat in the back of the stinking van, lodged between bags of money, a bloody cooler and a sack of severed heads. He had no idea what the morbid pozolero had in mind but if it meant avenging his father he would do it, even if it meant becoming a buitre himself.

  THE LAMENT OF THE

  VEJIGANTE

  Cynthia Pelayo

  My father taught me to believe in monsters. Most monsters are malevolent, but there’s one monster—a saint—whose presence has blessed me with the reminder that we are neither from here nor there. We are Puerto Rican, our island home exists as one of the three points making up the Bermuda Triangle, a supernatural place where some things just cannot be explained or reasoned.

  One of the earliest memories I have as a child about being Puerto Rican is my father taking me to downtown Chicago to the Puerto Rican Day Parade. I remember I could barely see the glittering, colorful floats, even sitting atop his shoulders, because there were so many people waving flags. Red and white stripes, a blue banner and a single white star. Cheers and car horns roared through the air. Whistles and the sounds of motors revving. Those people screamed with such feverish joy as they waved that flag. Even though I was too young to even be in school at that time, I knew deep within me that I was a part of that thunderous joy, that I was a part of something more, something greater than myself.

  When my father brought me down off of his shoulders I faced a demon, and my life forever changed. It was dressed in bright, bold colors. Like a clown or a harlequin, it stood there with a theatrical command. Its clothes bore flashes of glitter and dashes of gold. An elaborate, flowing costume of red and orange silk. Ruffles and bells lined its collar and sleeves. Its face was a fantastical horror of long horns that jutted out from its temples and adorned its head. A crown of horns. A sharp beak, and a wide-open mouth with pointed teeth mocked me. Then the demon bowed, and it struck me softly with a rattle.

  I screamed.

  I ran, dodging through the crowd, pushing past people. Screams and blaring car horns followed me. Then, it was as if all went still. I found myself on the street. When I turned around, I finally saw it. The parade floats that stretched down Columbus Drive. No one moved. Parade goers stood still. The floats stopped. When I moved to turn around, to see where all eyes were directed, I saw a splash of red on the asphalt. My father placed his hands on my cheeks and turned my face away.

  “What happened?” I asked. “Are you okay?”

  He didn’t answer.

  As my father led me away from the parade route I asked him about the monster.

  “What was that?”

  “El Vejigante,” he answered.

  I didn’t know what it was and I didn’t care what it was. “It hit me!” I snapped.

  My father got down on his knees and looked me in the eyes. “That’s good. That’s very good, because that means he blessed you with good luck, and strength. He’ll protect you. Always.”

  That early memory also mixes and melds with another memory, of our Independence Day celebrations. On the Fourth of July, my parents would host a large cookout for family and friends. We would wave sparklers, and shoot Roman candles into sky. The boom of illega
l fireworks kept us all giddy and awake throughout the night. This was another day of joy, another moment of celebration, another day of identifying, of belonging to something greater than myself, because this was America, and I was an American, and because of that, I felt pride.

  Eventually, my mother stopped hosting Fourth of July cookouts. Instead, we would visit my cousin’s house. I remember visiting them on one Fourth of July, and I found it so odd that they weren’t just watching Spanish television, but that they were so engrossed in it. They knew the language and that world, and I did not. In the evenings at home, my brothers and I watched programs like Knight Rider, V, Quantum Leap, Alf, MacGyver and The A-Team. I couldn’t understand anything people were saying on the programs my cousins watched, and I felt so disconnected from them. My aunts and cousins would make fun of me for not understanding, and then ask my mother why I didn’t know Spanish. My mother would brush it off with some empty, non-threatening excuse. I knew the real reason: because my mother had grown to resent Spanish. She grew to blame our identities on all of our struggles and pain. She grew to blame Puerto Rico for everything bad that had ever happened to us. So, at home my mother would stress, “In this house you speak English.”

  And so it went, we were Puerto Ricans who did not speak Spanish. Eventually, we were Puerto Ricans who did not go to the Puerto Rican Day Parade. We were Puerto Ricans who did not visit Puerto Rico. We were Puerto Ricans who didn’t even own a Puerto Rican flag.

  When my cousins moved back to Puerto Rico, my mother spoke about it like they would surely regret their decision. My cousins spoke about moving back to Puerto Rico like there was no better way of life. Chicago was dirty. Chicago was unsafe. Chicago schools were overcrowded. In Puerto Rico they could speak their language. In Puerto Rico they could be outside without the fear of a rogue bullet tearing through the air searching for a target. In Puerto Rico they could be successful.