Border Son

by Samuel Parker

  Ignacio had a cell phone in his hand. He put it on the ground and smashed it. He had called in to the American authorities the route and destination of the other two trucks. The two men headed back to Mexico.

  It was a big risk, no question about that, but a score this large could be done no other way. They had to go back. The others in the caravan would be arrested, spending months getting deported; the police would showcase their seizure; Tyler and Ignacio would have escaped being captured.

  They would face consequences. A beating more than likely. Questioning. More beating. But in time, they would be back on the trail with their meal ticket stored away in the New Mexico desert for the right time to cash in. They were going to be richer than they ever dreamed of. They just had to be patient, endure the anger of Salazar, wait for the right opportunity.

  But what did they know? Ideas cooked up by addicts seem genius to impaired minds.

  Salazar allowed no mistakes. There were too many young men in Mexico waiting for the chance to get in the game, and when Tyler and Ignacio came back to Nuevo Negaldo, Salazar dispatched them quickly. They were dead men. They were dead men as soon as Tyler had turned off trail. They should have just kept driving and never turned back.

  Tyler was dead . . . until he had heard Roberto’s voice in his ear. “Listen. I am going to shoot you. You will not die. It will hurt like hell, but fall forward and don’t move. It is the best I can do.”

  Tyler grabbed a stick from the table, lit it with the candle, and ignited a small votive. He wasn’t Catholic, but perhaps the sentiment he had for Roberto would float up anyway. The statue of the lady above the table seemed to mourn in the flickering light.

  42

  At the hostel, footsteps came down the hall an hour after Edward returned from the bathroom and the observance of the alleyway murder. Someone walked up to the door and turned the handle. It was locked, but a key was inserted on the other side and the door swung open. Two men were in the hall. Ed, still shaken from the grim scene he had witnessed earlier that night, sprang up from the bed and pressed against the far wall.

  Two men . . . just like back home. The larger of the two, both in height and weight, hung back watching the entryway. The other came straight in. Despite the darkness, Ed could see the one who entered was wielding a pistol, his white tank top practically glowing in the dark as he moved across the room.

  “Miguel, wait out front,” the man said, his gun pointed right at Ed’s forehead. “You . . . sit down.”

  The man named Miguel stepped back into the hallway, closing the door behind him. Ed could hear him retreating down the hallway and the flight of stairs. Ed obeyed the order and sat in the corner chair. It creaked when he sat down, sending a bolt through his nervous system.

  The man walked over to the window and looked outside, searching for something. He then turned to face Ed.

  “You Kazmierski?”

  Ed nodded. The man’s hand didn’t shake. The gun was motionless. Ed stared up at the barrel. He wondered if his eyes would register the flash before the bullet would punch his brains through the back of his skull. Would he even realize anything happened?

  “You listen. Tomorrow you will go to Iglesia de Señor de la Misericordia. You will do everything that Felipe tells you. Everything. If you don’t, I will kill you and Tyler. You do what he says. You understand?”

  Ed nodded again.

  “Say it!”

  “I understand.”

  “Good. You will stay inside this room until you are summoned. You understand?”

  “Yes.”

  “You leave this room and I will kill you.”

  “Yes.”

  “What?”

  “I mean . . . I understand.”

  “Okay,” the man said, returning his eyes to the window and the street below.

  As if by some force of will, Ed asked a question.

  “Are you Roberto?”

  “That’s the last time you say my name, gringo,” Roberto said, turning to Ed and pressing the gun barrel against his forehead. “You never say it again.”

  This time Ed acknowledged the order with his eyes.

  “You saved him, didn’t you?” Ed said.

  Roberto stepped back and looked at Ed. With frustration frothing from some hidden wound, Roberto returned to the window and punched the wall with his other hand.

  “I committed suicide is what I did,” Roberto said.

  “Why?”

  “Why didn’t I kill him?”

  Ed waited.

  “I don’t know. I’ve been asking myself that question the past couple days.”

  Roberto moved across the room, opened the door, and looked down the hallway. Content once again that nobody was listening in, he closed the door and returned to his previous surveillance spot.

  The gunman’s body seemed to slowly relax. The muscles in his neck softening, the tension in the jaw slackening. Ed watched the transformation and could feel his own anxiety start to dematerialize. This was the man who started this whole affair. He would not have brought him down to Mexico just to shoot him in a dirty hostel. The man was wrestling with some inner demon, and Ed waited for him to talk.

  Roberto moved close, so close Ed wanted to back up. He lowered his voice as if the room itself were an enemy, waiting to hear his betrayal. Softly, so softly, he said, “I was arrested in El Paso several years ago. They took me into the jail, processed me in. I had done it before, so I wasn’t thinking. And when you don’t think is when you stop breathing. They sent me into the holding area and I looked around for any of my crew. I saw two of my brothers on the far wall and they saw me. I walked across the room.

  “Suddenly, I get knocked over by this white guy. I mean, out of nowhere he slams me from the side and I hit the floor. All I’m thinking at this point is that that gringo is as good as dead. I look up at him but what I see in his face isn’t anger, but pure pain. Behind him was another guy, blood splattered on his face. He had shanked this gringo in the back. But I realized, that knife was meant for me.

  “It happened all in . . . like . . . slow motion. Tyler dropped to the floor, blood flowing everywhere, the shiv still sticking out of his back. I get on my feet, and start beating on the other guy until the guards show up and tear me off him.

  “They take Tyler out to the hospital or something.

  “I mean, he saved my life. I have no idea why. Maybe because he was alone in there and thought he could curry favor with me. Or maybe he thought he’d die and be out of jail that way. I know no one else in there would have taken a knife for me. Not even my crew.

  “So I’m left there trying to figure out why he would have done it.

  “A couple days later, he’s back in the block. He comes in looking like he’s half dead. My crew sees him, and I tell them to make sure that Tyler doesn’t get messed with. He’s not one of us, but we are going to make sure that he doesn’t get jumped, you know what I’m saying.

  “Goes on like that for a while. He was getting out, so I told him if he needed some work, I could hook him up in Nuevo Negaldo when I got out. Didn’t hear from him for about a year. Then he comes looking for me and I hook him up with some runs across the border. Nothing better than having a whitebread American in your pocket. And that was it.

  “He’s off doing his thing until about a week ago.

  “Word goes around that a big load went missing. Salazar is freaking out. He presses down on all of us to find out what happened, but no one knows anything. I bet Salazar was getting squeezed by El Aguila.”

  “El Aguila?” Ed asked.

  “He’s the boss. The real boss. Salazar just runs the plaza here in Nuevo Negaldo. This load . . . it must have been something, because they are all freaking out. A couple days later, me and Miguel get a call to do some work. So we drive over and pick up the stooges. Simple job, but then I see it’s Tyler . . . and . . .”

  “And?”

  “. . . and I make a stupid choice.”

  “You sa
ved him.”

  “I owed him. At least that was what I thought. I owed him. Turns out he’s the one who was making the run. He is the reason the load is lost, and Salazar wanted him dead. It’s Tyler’s luck I was the one picked for the job.”

  “Luck.”

  “Curse more than anything. Felipe picked him up after we dumped him outside of Nuevo Negaldo. And now it’s your turn to get him out of Mexico. I’m square with Tyler now. I see him again, I’ll kill him this time.”

  Ed sat in the chair and let the whole story process in his mind.

  Roberto put the gun in his belt and walked toward the door.

  “Remember, gringo. Tomorrow you will go to the church. You will do everything that Felipe tells you. Everything. If I see you again, you’re a dead man.”

  Roberto walked out of the room, shutting the door behind him. Ed was left shaking in the dark stale air of the Mexican hostel.

  43

  It was around noon the next day when Ed heard a subtle knock on his door. He walked over and pressed his ear to the wood, but could not hear any other sound in the hallway. Cautiously he turned the handle and pulled the door toward him. Peering outside, he looked down the hall, and then toward the floor where he saw a small boy in dirty clothes and an even dirtier face. The child looked up at him with hollow eyes.

  “Felipe,” the boy said, as if it was the only word he knew.

  Ed nodded in understanding, stepped out into the hall, and closed his door. He followed several steps behind the boy as they went down the stairs, through the empty lobby, and out into the street.

  The guide turned down the alley and Ed followed. He looked up and saw the window for the bathroom, its glass cocked out on a hinge, its interior hidden from the street by the simple law of geometry. Ed walked on, his eyes moving to the ground and the wall opposite his hostel. He could see piles of garbage and what he was sure was a boot and a leg sticking out from under the bags. The ground seeped with moisture, either from the trash or the body or both.

  His nighttime reassurances to himself that the man in the alley was not dead quickly vanished. He stumbled as he tried to process it all. He looked up and the boy was at the end of the alley waving him on. Had the boy seen it? Did he know of the corpse he had just walked by, or had he ambulated around so many in his short life that they no longer were cause for a second look?

  “No, and you didn’t see anything either.”

  The boy kept walking, his eyes down but his pace sure and steady. The streets were filling with the noises of the day, and Ed did his best to keep up. After several turns and crossings, the boy ran past a gate and into a church. Ed followed the boy inside.

  The cathedral opened up before him and he couldn’t keep his eyes from drifting upward into the large expanse. The beauty inside, the result of centuries of devotion, contrasted the living conditions outside in Nuevo Negaldo. Down the middle aisle, Ed could see Felipe walking toward him.

  “Welcome.”

  Ed nodded solemnly.

  “Follow me, I will take you to him.”

  Exchanging one guide for another, Ed followed the priest across the tile, past old ladies coming and going, until they came to a side chapel. Felipe went to one of the walls, grabbed the edge of a giant piece of artwork, and pulled. A door swung open, and the two men went down the steps to the cell. There in the small room, lying on a cot, was Tyler.

  “I will give you some time,” Felipe said, and he disappeared back up the stairs. Ed wished that he would have stayed. He had no idea how to begin this reunion, and so he did the only thing that he could think of. He said nothing.

  The small boy left the church and walked out toward the sidewalk. He placed his hand over his brow and searched the street. He saw a man seated in the shade outside a liquor store and ran over to him. The man looked up at the boy. The boy held out his hand and the man gave him some change.

  “I was told to bring a man here.”

  “Gringo?”

  “Yes.”

  “From where?”

  “From the hostel.”

  “Is he inside?”

  “Yes,” the boy said.

  The man gave the boy another couple coins and shooed him away. The boy ran off in the opposite direction of the church.

  “Good.”

  The man stood, dusted off his pants, adjusted his hat, and pulled out a cell phone. He told the person on the other end that a man from the hostel had been taken to the church. The same hostel Roberto and Miguel had been tracked to the night before. The same church where Roberto’s uncle was a priest. The line went dead, and the man disappeared into the streets of the city.

  44

  Tyler stood.

  He had changed since Ed had last seen him. His face had a weathered look, like too much mileage had been put on in too little time. His left shoulder was bandaged, the rest of his torso was bare. The skin was reddened not only by the wound but by many years in the sun. Tattoos slithered their way up his right arm in different designs until they reached his neck. There they sprouted more branches and ran down his chest. Not one large piece done in an exuberant expression but a gathering of ink over many years. Tyler had become a grown man. The memory of his boyish face and body were being overwritten by the person standing across the room. His hair was cropped. His son looked tough.

  His eyes were cold.

  As cold as the space and the silence between them.

  “Dad,” Tyler grunted. His posture was entirely unwelcoming.

  Ed had tried to prepare himself for this meeting, not knowing if he would feel anger, disgust, disappointment. However, the feeling that came over him was altogether surprising.

  He felt sad.

  A sadness for the man standing before him.

  As if by revelation, Ed realized that without much consideration, he had a part in ushering this person into the world, a world that was more brutal than he had ever realized a week ago. His mind wondered on the thought. He had turned his back on his son, not to fend for himself in a paradise, but to scrap for subsistence in a thunderdome of barbarity. What other outcome could there have been? Where else could Tyler have gone when the doors of his home had been shut to him?

  But to harbor guilt would have been disingenuous. At the time, what else could he have done? His son was a parasite slowly leeching the life from him, his resources, all that he had worked for. He had convinced himself that life would be better without his son.

  Ed stood motionless just inside the door, not wanting to move forward but not retreat either. He was paralyzed by not knowing what to do.

  Tyler’s gaze bore a hole right through him.

  For an eternity, the two of them lay stranded on the shore of conversation, not knowing how to swim into it.

  “Are you alright?” Ed asked. It was the only thing he could think to say.

  “For now, I guess,” Tyler said.

  “Your arm . . . you able to use it?”

  Tyler flexed his hand. There was a slight muscle spasm in his jaw. “Yeah, I can still use it.”

  Ed nodded and looked around the room.

  “What are you doing here?” Tyler said.

  Ed began to answer but found that he had no words.

  “I didn’t think I’d ever see you again,” Tyler went on. “I figured that was the way you wanted it.”

  “That’s not how I wanted it.”

  “When I called you from El Paso, that was the impression I got.”

  “I didn’t know what to do, Tyler. I couldn’t keep on bailing you out.”

  Tyler grabbed his shirt from the floor, started to put it on. Ed knew he couldn’t begin to imagine what Tyler had experienced since he had left home, but it was obvious that time had been rough on his son. Fights, jail, drugs. It had all mixed together to put an edge on Tyler that made him look and feel dangerous.

  “It worked for Mom, just forgetting about us. I figured you decided to do what she did.”

  “That’s not what I was doing.”r />
  Tyler moved back to the bed and Ed took a step back. Tyler smiled as he sat down and started putting his shoes on. He seemed to take a little bit of pleasure in unnerving his old man.

  “Listen. I’m not looking for some heartwarming moment here. I don’t know why they called you. I don’t know what they said to you that got you down here. This doesn’t really change anything. But here you are, and if you can help me get out of Mexico, fine. But if you want a hug, that ain’t going to happen.”

  “Why did you tell Roberto about Denver?”

  “What?” Tyler said.

  “Denver. That was what they said on the phone. They said to remember our trip to Denver. “

  Tyler just stared at him. Something was connecting behind his vacant look. His stone eyes softened for just a moment. “Doesn’t matter.”

  “It does. Why did they mention it?”

  “It’s nothing. Roberto probably just remembered a story I told him, used it to convince you that he was legit.”

  Ed’s shoulders slumped. Had he read too much into it? “That’s it?”

  “That’s it,” Tyler said, standing and walking toward the door. “Now, Felipe has a way for us to get out of here. Let’s find him and get this over with. Then you can go back home. Chalk this up as another mistake.”

  Tyler walked past him and out into the church. Ed turned and followed, wondering if it was just that.

  45

  Felipe led Edward and Tyler to the back of the church, through a side chamber where there was a door leading behind the building. He unlocked it and pulled it open, the sunlight flooding the dark space. The opening led out onto a dusty courtyard enclosed by a large stone wall. At the west end, there was a gap in the wall with a drive leading out to the main road. Idling in the cloister was a rusty pickup truck, its tailgate down, its bed filled with all manner of debris. A piece of plywood had been put across the wheel wells, which left a smuggler’s pocket hidden below all the junk. The driver of the truck had walked down the alley, his back to the alcove, to have a cigarette. It was obvious that he was deliberately ignoring the goings-on in the courtyard behind him, letting the priest put whatever he wanted into the back of the truck. Camilla’s words came back to Ed: “You must mind your own business here. We do not see anything.”