Midnight Cactus

by Bella Pollen

  ‘Oh, and what makes you the tour guide?’

  Benjamín says nothing.

  El Turrón snorts. ‘Once an illegal always an illegal, huh?’

  ‘I’m an American citizen.’

  ‘Sure you are.’ Turrón laughs mirthlessly. ‘So where are you from, Mr American Citizen? Los Angeles, New York, Chicago?’

  When Benjamín doesn’t answer, Turrón turns the gun on him. ‘I said, where are you from?’

  ‘Nopalillo.’

  ‘And that’s where you’ll always be from, a shithole town in the south. You’ll never be an American citizen. Look in the mirror, border bunny; unless that’s fake tan or; your face, you’re not the right colour. Brown people work for white people. Isn’t that right, Alicia?’ He slides his tongue around my name and, despite the heat, I feel bumps rising on my skin.

  I’ve never felt threatened by a man before. Oh, sure, there’s always some guy opposite you on the underground or eyeing you up in a deserted petrol station, but this fear is corrosive and it eats away at my insides.

  ‘You pollos are all the same.’ Turrón sucks air through the gap in his front teeth. ‘You think that’s what it’s all about. To be an American citizen! For what? So you can go to the United States and scrub toilets? Me, I am proud to be Mexican. And now your friend, Señor Duval, I hear he wants to be a Mexican too. Isn’t that right, A-lic-ia? He wants to be a coyote!’ He laughs bitterly. ‘Americans!’ His mouth twists in disgust. ‘You steal our land, you use our people to clean up your mess, and now you want our jobs too.’ His voice takes on a reedy edge. ‘You think I couldn’t have dealt with your professor a long time ago?’ He strokes my cheek with the gun. ‘Oh, any time, baby, any time. But I have respect for my brother, I tried it his way first. Oh yes, and you know why? Because I have respect for other men’s work, that’s why.’

  In the back seat Benjamín’s eyes are closed. I worry the bumps and potholes are taking their toll on his wound. Panic wells up again. Why has he brought us this way? Surely it would have made more sense to head straight through Arizona? There would have been other cars then and the possibility of help. Surely anything would be better than this utter isolation? I hug the cliff wall as the track winds it way down deeper into the canyon. El Turrón seems almost as agitated as I am. ‘This way is no good.’ He leans towards the windscreen, eyes thinning as they scrutinize the blankness of the landscape ahead and suddenly there’s a flash across my peripheral vision as Benjamín makes his move.

  He yanks on the steering wheel and spins it out of my hand. The truck lurches sharply towards the edge.

  Instinctively, I grab at the wheel. The truck veers back towards the middle of the track but it’s too late, the next switchback looms at an impossible angle.

  ‘Brake!’ El Turrón yells. ‘Stop!’ The gun is so close I can see his finger begin to close around the trigger but it makes no difference. The truck has had enough. Tired and old, its brakes are arthritic and its clutch not what it used to be. It shoots off the edge with the gay abandon of an octogenarian whose dying wish to take up paragliding has finally been fulfilled, and the last thing I remember thinking is that Benjamín and I are both wearing seatbelts but Turrón is not, and though it may not seem like it right this very second, perhaps this is a very good plan indeed. Then the bottom falls sickeningly out of my stomach, the truck connects with hard earth, my head slams against the steering wheel and we begin rolling. There’s a cacophony of mashing metal and breaking glass and after that, silence.

  My eyes open to a world slanted very oddly. Instead of throwing Turrón through the windscreen, as Benjamín presumably planned, the truck has landed on its side at almost a forty-five degree angle, leaving him relatively unscathed, but trapped by gravity in his corner.

  ‘You fucking bitch!’ he says, when he sees I’m conscious. ‘¡Estúpida!’ His struggle to raise himself ends in collapse back against the window.

  ‘Open the fucking door,’ he orders, but there’s no way. I haven’t the strength. My hand drifts to my fore-head and comes away sticky with blood.

  ‘Benjamín?’ I croak.

  ‘¡Puta! !Estúpida! Shut the fuck up.’ Turrón has his gun back in his hand. ‘Open the door!’

  I can barely breathe. Dust whirls in through the broken window. Even if I could find the strength, I cannot move close enough to the door to get any leverage and Turrón recognizes this.

  ‘The window!’ He shouts. ‘Use your feet.’

  I hold on to the seatbelt with one hand and grab the leather strap with the other, laboriously turning my body until it’s possible to reach the side window with the soles of my sneakers. The shattered glass gives way easily.

  ‘Now get out,’ Turrón orders. Totally compliant, I plant a foot on the central divide, and, hanging on to the leather strap for dear life, terrified of falling onto him, unclip my seatbelt. I get my feet through the window and drop down onto the desert floor.

  I think about running, but Benjamín lies unconscious in the back of the truck and, besides, my legs are shaking. ‘Open the door,’ Turrón shouts again and I open it. Noisily, he begins his climb out. Blood spots through my trousers. Something sharp is cutting into my thigh. My fingers close around Duval’s arrowhead, still in my pocket. I work the sharpened end upwards until it pokes between my index and middlefingers, then ball my hand into a fist. Turrón lowers himself stiffly to the ground. The left side of his face is swelling grotesquely. His ear is torn and bleeding. ‘Fucking bitch,’ he says. His eyes are burning and I know that right now, with this man, anything can happen.

  He takes a step towards me and I lash out. The tip of the arrowhead slices open a long red line across his face. He looks at me in astonishment, then fury. He grabs my hair and twists it round in his hand, dragging me away from the truck, and my fear becomes a solid thing. It rises up from my stomach and collects in my throat. I turn my head and retch it out on the desert floor, but there is nothing there, just saliva and bile. Turrón regards me with distaste.

  ‘Wipe your mouth. WIPE IT!’

  I use my sleeve. I find a scrubby-looking plant on the ground and focus on it, trying to look as submissive and unthreatening as possible. Turrón wrenches my head back by the hair. ‘You stink.’ He mashes something against my mouth. When I turn my head, he slaps my face. My teeth clamp down on my tongue and my jaw opens involuntarily with pain. Turrón seizes his chance and presses the square of nougat into it. I gag, then with rising panic feel myself choking. Irrationally, I have a vision of Jack and Emmy spitting out the sweets in Chavez’s office and I know it’s because they’re fussy and unwilling to try anything new, but the idea that my brilliant children sensed something I did not makes me smile. Turrón doesn’t like the smile. His hand whips across my face again and this time I go down on my hands and knees.

  It’s not the fear and it’s not the pain, it’s the claustrophobia of utter helplessness that’s so unbearable. Turrón’s knees are concrete blocks on my legs. He squeezes my breasts and I go berserk. I claw at his arms, twist my neck from one side to the other, try to headbutt him. When he clamps his hand over my mouth I grab at the soft flesh with my teeth. He screams and snatches his hand away. I jab at him with my elbow, jerk my knee into his back. Something connects and his balance wavers. For an incredible moment I think that I can get him off me, that I can beat him, then the adrenalin drains away and, with it, the last of my strength. He growls something, pinning me down tighter. I feel his body hardening and I know with absolute certainty that I am going to be raped.

  I start pleading then. Unconnected random pleadings. For mercy, for my children, for him not to hurt me. He puts the gun in my mouth and after that it all becomes about survival. My world shrinks to him and me. I acquiesce, go soft. Everything to do with rape I will accept and will therefore ignore; the pain, the crushing weight of his body, the dirty fingers scrabbling inside me. It’s the smaller things I’m aware of, the sting of dirt in my cut lip, a stone under my head, the grate of
the metal against my teeth; and I can’t help it, I think of Estella and I wonder how hard she fought for her life and her child.

  ‘¡Pinche, puta!’ Turrón is swearing. He wants my trousers down now but he doesn’t know to depress the elastic clips at the side. He takes the gun out of my mouth and fumbles with the small button at the top, but he can’t undo it. The buttonhole has always been tight. Frustrated, he raises his arm again, a great swinging movement. The sun glints off the metal in his hand. I turn my head away, and I try to think that death is only pain, it’s only pain. I wait for the blow, but it doesn’t come. Instead a shadow passes across the sun as the weight is dragged off me, and unexpectedly I experience a strange insecurity. The two men are flailing in the dirt close by and I feel a sort of weary anger directed at Benjamín because it’s no longer as easy as acquiescing any more. My world has broadened again to include the three of us and this means I must take action, help Benjamín in some way, but then I realize that it’s Benjamín’s arm and not Turrón’s raised high and poised. Down it comes, again and again and again and again. The rock in his hand glistens with blood. And he is not my Benjamín but some freakish creature, lips drawn back in primordial animal rage, and still the rock comes down, smashing skin and bone until Turrón’s face begins to disappear altogether in a mess of gristle and blood and I’ve never seen anything more frightening in my life.

  Benjamín falls off the body, his eyes closed. When I crawl towards him, I feel like I am rising up and stepping out of Estella’s dying body. Benjamín tries to hold me but collapses sideways against the rocks, and shivering uncontrollably I take him in my arms as though he were one of the children. His heart is pounding, his every breath rasps through burning lungs, and how much time we stay like this, together against the rocks, the sun beating down on our heads, I have no way of telling, but I do know that in this moment there is a large part of me that would stay forever. Then I cough. My throat feels like sandpaper. I try to find enough moisture to swallow but there is none and some spark of a warning connects.

  The metal of the truck is scalding to touch and any hope of finding shade quickly fades. The temperature is higher in than out, but the bottle of water is there, loose in the corner, still half full. I grab it then crawl over the seats and feel around in the flatbed for the plastic tote – the one bought by the old Alice, a girl who had broken down with her children at night on a mountain road with no provisions and wrung her hands in horror. Now, I do not allow my hands to so much as shake as I separate the lid from the base. Inside lies salvation of sorts. No hats, no satellite phone, no sunscreen and no more water, but a snake-bite kit, two Powerbars, a flashlight, bandages, a box of Band-aids and half a dozen sachets of antiseptic.

  I stuff half the provisions into pockets, knot everything else into the sleeves of my shirt and climb out of the truck. A half litre of water. I swill it round the bottle. It will not do. Doggedly, I cast around for a stick then lever up the bonnet. I no longer look at the workings of the engine as though it were some architectural model for the Pompidou centre. I know my spark plugs from my pistons. I know my alternators from radiators and radiators have water in them. I remove the cap and then I remember. Sailors go crazy from drinking salt water, those jail escapees hiding in the desert had died drinking anti-freeze from a car radiator. Anti-freeze in the desert. The irony strikes me, of course, but my sense of humour is not up to dwelling on it.

  Benjamín is where I left him. He looks grey and near to death himself. I give him as much of the water as I dare and force the Powerbars down both our throats. This time he makes no protest as I undo his shirt and unravel the bandage. The wound has opened up and is oozing blood and pieces of liverish-looking clots. I press the squares of antiseptic wipes against it, wondering how Benjamín could have possibly found the strength to beat a man to death and praying he has kept enough in reserve to carry on, because sooner or later that’s what we will have to do. My shirt provides some shelter over our heads but the sun bores contemptuously through the thin cotton and after a while I give up and sit there, waiting for Benjamín to recover.

  I’m dozing when the noise wakes me. A hiss, a crackle. A rattle? I open my eyes with a start, thinking I must have imagined it, then I hear it again, and this time louder. The third time has me jumping back, sick with a whole new fear. The warning rattle is coming from somewhere close and Benjamín stares in horror at El Turrón’s inanimate form. ‘El diablo,’ he breathes and crosses himself. The crackle is more insistent now and I freeze. I can see nothing, but I imagine everything. The evil coil, the head held aloft – and I know enough to keep absolutely still; but the next rattle has Benjamín babbling, ‘La serpiente del diablo se ha despertado,’ and it dawns on me it’s not the snake he’s frightened of, but the more dreadful possibility of El Turrón raised from the dead.

  ‘Benjamín, shhhh, it’s okay.’ I try to calm him.

  ‘Noh, it’s the devil,’ he insists, and right then, as though having received its cue from the wings of a theatre stage, comes a man’s voice.

  ‘Habla,’ Benjamín shrieks. ‘¡El diablo habla! He is the devil, Alice, yo lo juro.’

  ‘No, Benjamín! No.’ I grab his hand. ‘It’s the radio!’

  He stares at El Turrón’s body then back to me.

  ‘We have to turn him,’ I say.

  I’ve never before touched a corpse and I’m scared to do it now. The man’s dead. I know he’s dead, like the dog on the road had been dead in spite of his red satanic eyes, but somehow El Turrón’s presence seems no less threatening now than in life. Gingerly, we push him over. No longer depressed by the weight of his body, the radio is mute. I ease it from the pouch on his belt and allow him to roll back without once looking at the mess of his face.

  Like a miner who’s stumbled upon his lost pan, Benjamín examines the piece of equipment in his hands, fiddling with the volume and switching between different channels.

  ‘Wait.’ I stop him. ‘What are you going to do?’

  ‘Duval has a radio.’

  ‘Yes, but so does every man with the Border Patrol.’

  ‘There are good men with the Border Patrol, Alice.’

  ‘What if those aren’t the ones they send?’

  Benjamín holds the radio limply on his stomach, then leans back against the rock and closes his eyes.

  Infuriatingly, I start crying then, just one or two small careful tears before I remember about conserving water. ‘Why did you crash the truck, Benjamín?’ I ask pitifully. ‘Why here? There’s nothing here. Nobody will find us.’

  ‘Don’t cry, Alice,’ he says helplessly. He hesitates then depresses the speak button.

  ‘Benjamín, no . . . don’t!’ I try to grab it.

  ‘Toribio Romo,’ he whispers into the rubber grille, ‘Santo Toribio Romo. Come to us.’

  ‘Benjamín, what are you doing?’ I look at him, scared that the sun has already baked him dry of all lucid thought.

  ‘Toribio Romo,’ he intones. ‘Come to those in need.’ And this time I remember. Duval’s murdered cleric, the patron saint of lost migrants. Holy illegal alien smuggler.

  ‘We will go to the place only Duval knows. There is water there. Duval will find us there.’

  ‘What if he doesn’t hear?’

  ‘He will hear,’ Benjamín says, struggling to raise himself. ‘But now we must walk.’

  I follow Benjamín. Foot after foot, eyes trained to the ground, watching for cactus, watching for snakes. My heart beats unnaturally fast, my head throbs in time with some imaginary clock which ticks by the seconds, the minutes, the hours. How long have we been out here? How long since the children left? How long can we walk without water? The blisters come quickly. At first I stop and take off my sneakers and stick the small strips of Band-aid onto the raw skin, but they keep rubbing off and after a while there seems little point in bothering.

  Information runs through my head, jumbled, conflicting. People can survive for days without water – dehydration can
kill in hours. You should walk at night when it’s cooler. Except at night the desert belongs to its creatures, scorpions and tarantulas the size of a man’s fist. The thorns of the ocotillo will tear through your flesh like razor wire. Inside cactus there is life-saving water. I have a flash of Nora’s Mexican leaning against the tree, his blackened lips and tongue lacerated by spikes. I see Emmy’s pale face in the back of the car, speeding further and further away. Is it possible that my children are asleep in the vacuum-packed safety of their aeroplane? Is it possible that elsewhere in the world life could really be that normal?

  The time passes, the heat intensifies. We walk, we rest, we walk again but nothing ever gets any closer. The mountains taunt us in the distance. Behind us the desert stretches out, infinite and unchanging. My throat is dry. It feels as though something is caught in my windpipe. I try to swallow but it gets harder and harder. Every so often Benjamín fiddles with the radio and I whisper along with him. ‘Santo Toribio Romo. Hear our prayer. ¡Ayúdenos!’ Once in a while he turns and I’m comforted to see his face, so achingly familiar to me now. He peers at me questioningly and I reassure him with a smile but it hurts to talk, so we don’t do it very much and soon it hurts to blink. I rub at the grit in my eyes then I realize there is no grit in them, they’re just dry, out of moisture, out of tears.

  We’re zigzagging now, heading down deep into another arroyo, which means sometime soon we will have to climb out again and every muscle quails at the thought. There are black specks in front of my eyes. When I dare to look at the sun it sizzles angrily back at me like a burning cigarette tip.

  Finally, I sense a break in the rhythm. Benjamín has stopped. Ahead of us, balancing on a rusting tripod of legs stands a blue tank with the word Agua painted on the front. I have a moment of wild joy, and then I see them. Bullet holes. Dozens of them.

  Benjamín says nothing, so neither do I. Instead I try the radio again but now there’s no static, no noise, nothing.