And so continues the dissection of this moment, which was told to me in this very way, and whose echoes Germán Alcántara Carnero will hear on the day his oldest son is born as well as eight years later, on the hour when the first of his sons will die.
At 00:51 on January 1, 1948, in the house we entered a second ago and where Amparo and Ausencia Pascua de Ramones, Juan Ignacio el Negro Romo Hernández, and Ramiro la Madrina López Palas stand in frightened silence—a silence that separates their boss’s latest outburst from his next—Germán Alcántara Carnero commands that someone make him another cup of coffee and then goes to the bathroom, where, gazing down at the scintillant arc of his piss, he says to himself: “Why did you not just go yourself? Why, after all these years, would you leave it in other people’s hands? What were you thinking?” But, shaking himself dry, he immediately comes back with an answer: “I needed to not be seen. The very fact I’ve waited so long meant I was worried he’d get away again, that someone would see me coming again and warn him.”
In the kitchen of this house, a house of the same proportions as the other houses in Lago Seco—a single story with walls made of adobe bricks and of stone, rectangular in shape, with one door and three windows—Amparo Pascua, the older of the twins who live here, reheats the coffee she made earlier and has already served several times to the men in her living room. As it nears boiling point, she takes the pot off the heat and gives it a stir, then goes back into the living room, placing the steaming pot on the table, spilling a little on the previously pristine white tablecloth. Watching the fabric absorb the drops as the desert floor absorbs rainwater, Ausencia Pascua lets out a laugh: “Watch what you’re doing, would you? Always dropping everything.” Glaring at her twin and scraping her chair back, Amparo says, “Why didn’t you go get it then, if you were so sure you wouldn’t spill it?” López Palas, aka “La Madrina” or “the Godmother” for his habit of trying to find homes for the orphans of the men and women he kills, sits down again and says in a low voice, “Shut it, you two.”
Germán Alcántara Carnero enters the living room—lost in thought, his arms crossed and feet dragging—and pours himself another cup of coffee before sitting down. “Why aren’t they back yet?” he half-cries, looking slowly around at the others. “What could be taking them so long?” Then, at a shout: “Where the fuck are those fuckers?” The twins and El Gringo Alcántara Carnero’s underlings do not respond, leaving him to become submerged in thoughts once more: really, what was I thinking? How could I have decided to trust those animals? He slaps his legs, startling the others. I should have done this differently… what’ll I do if he slips through my hands now, and all because of my own stupid mistakes? El Negro Romo stands up and walks over to the table, and after pouring himself a cup of coffee, feels his elbow being grabbed and shaken by ourman, knocking the cup from his hand. “How long could it take to get here?” Without a word, Amparo gets up to gather the broken cup as her sister goes into the kitchen, coming back out carrying a cloth.
“Where are those fuckers?” demands ourman as he steps over the twins, who are bent down cleaning up the spilled coffee, and goes over to the window: Twenty years I spend waiting, and now I’m left waiting for those two idiots. Twenty years and all I’ve wanted is to be alone in a room with him, and what do I do? I let a couple of my men have him. Twenty years and when the time comes, I fuck it up! He sees the Pascua twins reflected in the window as they go into the kitchen. They’ll see when they get here. The second they come through that door they’re gonna see, and even as he conjures these threats, Germán Alcántara Carnero castigates himself: And what if they haven’t got him? What if Delsagrado put up a fight and they had to kill him? Or if El Trompo and El Chino are turning the screw, or if they’ve already turned it and he’s dead by the time you get there? What if they fucked up and you won’t be able to get your hands on him alive? Turning and looking around at them one at a time, ourman then turns to El Negro and La Madrina: “Get ready, we’re leaving.”
The two men get up from their chairs, at which moment the light bulbs flicker in their sockets: Lago Seco’s power network is struggling to supply all of the town today. While the electricity supply teeters, ourman looks outside to see if the streetlamps are also wavering, but instead he sees, in the light that has begun to shine steadily again, a figure moving past the window. “Was that El Cerebro?” “I saw someone, too,” murmurs Ausencia. “They’re here, the bastards!” says La Madrina, pointing to the door, which someone then begins knocking on. Amparo Pascua reacts first, dashing over to the door, turning the key and pulling it open, which feels light now that our wait is over. The silhouettes of Will and El Cerebro become bodies as they step into the light, which flickers again for a moment. They are both gasping for air, but Will, leaning on the shoulder of El Cerebro, manages to say:
“We’ve got him… we tied him up in the house… like you said.”
A smile spreads on Germán Alcántara Carnero’s face and his veins throb with the excitement of a child opening presents. So we’ve got him at last, he thinks, clapping his enormous hands together.
Will, clutching the glass of water Ausencia has brought, goes on between deep, heaving breaths: “He didn’t even… bring anyone with him… He wasn’t expecting anything… You should have seen his… face!” Ourman’s smile broadens, creasing up his face, and a hundred noises detonate across his body, like a firebomb hurled against a wall: deep, guttural laughter first and foremost. The men and women all turn their heads, slack-jawed, fearful. They have heard their boss laugh many times before, but never like this—it is like a flock of caged birds crazily beating their wings. Stepping—or rather skipping toward them, Germán Alcántara Carnero goes over to Will and El Cerebro and, in a gesture even more shocking, gathers them up in an embrace, asking: “Did you check to make sure there was no one outside?” Then, gulping back his smile: “You had a good look around in the streets, right? And the rooftops and the cars and the bridge and the gully, and the end of Calle Caprichosa?” he insists. The two men cower: “El Trompo checked the house,” says Will in a low voice, “the rest of us checked outside, a little…” “The thing is,” says El Cerebro, “we came through town, so we couldn’t have checked any of the outskirts or Caprichosa”—instantly realizing he should have kept his mouth shut.
Unfurling his arms like a vulture unfurling its wings, Germán Alcántara Carnero hurls both men to the ground and bellows: “I told you to come around the outside of town! I said not to go through the center. And why? So you wouldn’t be seen, and so you could check that exit off Caprichosa!” “But we wanted to hu-hurry,” says Will, frightened. “The priest didn’t come as early as we thought he would, and look at the time now…” “We didn’t want it to get even later,” says El Cerebro, “we thought you’d be getting pissed.” (A chuckle from the Pascua girls at this.) “You told us not to be late…” “But I also said I didn’t want anyone seeing you coming! Didn’t you stop to think why you weren’t driving, or why I sent you so early?” insists ourman, flailing his hands around. “There’s no way you weren’t seen. No way. And someone will have gone and told his men and, since they aren’t anywhere near as dumb as you two, they now know what’s happened. It’s all gone to fuck, and it’s all your fault!” Turning and glaring at El Negro, he says: “Go out and get the car. Honk when the engine’s warm. Someone’s going to have come and rescued him, just you wait!” declares El Gringo Alcántara Carnero, turning back to the two men who arrived a few moments ago: “You two better hope and pray I get my revenge.”
“You get ready, too. You’re coming with,” ourman says to La Madrina when he hears the car honking out in the street, and the two men whom we will now follow leave the house—leaving the sisters still chuckling at poor bewildered Will and El Cerebro. Germán Alcántara Carnero, pushing La Madrina into the car, takes a deep breath of the night air—the fireworks make him think of burnt gunpowder—and, getting in, slamming the door shut, bellows at El Negro to put his f
oot down. “If we take San Felipe,” says El Negro, “it’s a straight shot from here.” But ourman isn’t listening, he’s thinking: What if they’ve gone back up into the mountains? What if I don’t get to lay a hand on him, again? In Germán Alcántara Carnero’s mind, the fear that he will not be able to have his revenge—a revenge he’d thought within reach—expands, becomes huge, and, in the manner of all obsessions, leaves room for nothing else.
“Hurry! Didn’t you hear?” shouts ourman. He has dwelt on this particular vengeance for so many hours. “If I say put your foot down, the one and only thing I want you to do is put your fucking foot down.” Germán Alcántara Carnero is a man who, for many years now, has dedicated a considerable portion of each day to conceiving of a way to torture and kill Delsagrado befitting the immensity of his anger. “It won’t go any faster,” says El Negro, swerving. “But San Felipe will be quick, they’ve only just laid new asphalt there.” The engine of the car leading us to the house where El Chino and El Trompo await accelerates, and when they’re exactly halfway there, ourman glances out the window and up at the fathomless sky—the moon’s brilliance engulfs that of the stars and drops a silvery layer over the mountains around the basin of the Mesa Madre Buena—and caresses the bullet he took in the chest and the chain he ripped from Delsagrado’s neck several years before.
“El Negro was right,” La Madrina blurts out, leaning forward from the backseat. “They repaved this whole street the other day. We’ll fly there now.” But though spoken directly into his ear, Germán Alcántara Carnero does not hear; he has gone back to the day when he took Delsagrado’s chain from him—the same day his gun jammed and this priest put an end to Anne Lucretius Ford’s life. No gun is going to jam on me today. If he’s still even there, I’m not taking any chances, I’ll do the job myself. “Nearly there yet?!” “Nearly there,” says El Negro, willing the car on. “Really close,” says La Madrina, willing it on as well.
El Negro, overcome with excitement, pushes down on the horn. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” rages Germán Alcántara Carnero, turning and hitting him about the head. “They could be there waiting for us. Dammit, I already told you all of this! Now there’s going to be a gunfight, and it’ll all end with some other bastard shooting Delsagrado down, just you wait. You’d better pray some other bastard doesn’t take him down instead of me!” Rubbing his ear and pointing his chin forlornly at the couple of remaining streets, El Negro apologizes, saying: “There’s no one around, though.” “I don’t give a shit what you think you can or can’t see. Don’t talk to me, and don’t make a fucking peep when you pull up outside.” “We better not stop right outside,” says La Madrina, poking his head forward. “Why doesn’t El Negro head over to the left, and we get in through the side,” adds this man, but El Gringo Alcántara Carnero, one block away from his destiny now, will not be swayed. “You are going to pull up right outside, and I’m going to get out first.”
Meanwhile, inside the building we recently departed, the Prieto family—father, mother, and children—along with El Trompo and El Chino, are startled by the sound of tires and a car engine out in the street. Moving furtively forward at a crouch, almost like ducks, the men who a few minutes ago knocked Delsagrado unconscious cross the living room, unholster their guns, push aside the blind with a broom handle, and peer out. “It’s the boss and La Madrina!” cries El Chino. “And El Negro, too,” says El Trompo, looking out as well. El Chino López stands up and unlocks the door—while El Trompo Trápaga dashes over to Delsagrado’s chair to bring him round. Ourman bursts in and El Chino hastens to say: “We got him tied up in the chair. Didn’t touch him after that,” slams the door shut, before El Negro and La Madrina have a chance to make it in after him, and crosses the spaces in an instant. Even with Delsagrado here in front of him, he still somehow dreads losing him, all his great clouding misgivings remain—and for a moment he cannot remember the thousands of ways he has devised to end the life of this priest who rose up against the world almost thirty years ago and who rose up against him a decade after that.
Pushing past El Trompo, Germán Alcántara Carnero stops before the chair in which they have propped Delsagrado—who is still unconscious—reaches out an arm, and yanks out the cloth stuffed in Delsagrado’s mouth. Delsagrado comes to feeling like his innards are being torn from him, and is met with the awful sight of ourman, who slaps him in the face with the bloody cloth before brandishing the chain hanging from his fingers. “Well now, time to find out if god is really on your side, eh? Let’s even give him a minute’s head start, yeah?” Beset with laughter now, Germán Alcántara Carnero swings the bullet and chain around, counting each turn: “One… two… three…” and so on, all the way to sixty, at which point, grinning, he takes a dagger from his other pocket and says: “But look who has showed up though. Look who is going to get a good look at your soul now… Or if maybe there’s no such thing, eh, maybe you’ve been tricking everyone, maybe you’ve been lying to the people of this town and this plain?” Unlike in years to come—years following the tragedies that will befall the family of ourman and the woman he first encountered in the town square of Lago Seco and more recently encountered giving birth to bornsickly—on the day in which we currently find ourselves, January 1, 1948, Germán Alcántara Carnero does not believe in the existence of a soul, or indeed in any sort of afterlife aside from the prospect of his body being feasted on by worms. He does not believe these things because at this moment, as the sun rises over this very high plain on which we find ourselves, he has not had his life and his beliefs shaken, or rather upturned, by the deaths of those dearest to him, deaths he may not escape by simply upping and leaving, as he did after the death of his youngest sister in his youth.
An unexpected calm descends on ourman as he flicks open the knife and begins admiring the blade. Speaking softly—“Let’s see if it’s in there, why don’t we, if you showed up today with your soul”—he chuckles and, flipping the knife around, plunges the blade into Delsagrado’s throat. Delsagrado blanches, and he begins to shake, eyes swiveling around, and a series of incomprehensible coughing noises issuing from his mouth. “Something you wanted to say?” Germán Alcántara Carnero says in his best mocking voice, before glancing up at his men and then grabbing the priest by the hair, pulling the blade from his trachea and, raising it high, plunging it back in once more—once, twice, again and again and again. And though Delsagrado has begun to convulse, he manages to speak a few words that rob ourman of his smile. “What’s that? How dare you speak of her!” The priest, who will be dead in a few lines, smiles or tries to smile and, mustering all of his own rancor, thrusts his own particular dagger into the very core of ourman, who registers with astonishment the pernicious last words of Ignacio del Sagrado Sandoval-Íñiguez Martínez: “Again a woman… an end… a day… a child. A family… starting after… after…” Separating the head, still spewing blood, from the rest of the body, Germán Alcántara Carnero hears something out in the street and, ashen, barks at his men: “Ready yourselves, you two, we’re leaving.”
Then, watching his men go over to the door, he repeats: “Again a woman… an end… a day… a child. A family… starting after… after…” He repeats the words, feeling that, with them, Delsagrado has somehow succeeded in violating Anne L. Ford once more, this time with words he will remember for the rest of his days—though they will take on an entirely different meaning on the still-distant afternoon when the first of his children is born—the afternoon, that is, in which this chapter began.
Disappearance, Escape
May 27, 1911, and another knot in our account of this life—a knot in which, at the hour when the sun beats down on the backs of men across the Mesa Madre Buena and the earth succumbs to the drowsiness and slowness that succeed spring, Germán Alcántara Carnero hears a sudden whistle and stops swinging his mattock. Puzzled, ourman, still a boy at this point in our story, turns and gazes over his shoulder, and when the whistle cuts thro
ugh the air again, the three mangy dogs that were sleeping on the ground nearby rouse themselves, sniffing the air for a smell that is yet to reach the boy—the smell of a smudge coming down over the scrubland, where the heat from the earth meets the heat dropping from the incandescence that is the sky at this time of year.
He looks at the horizon, which is very clear, and sees the smudge as it continues to advance over the scrub. It’s been so long since we’ve had any kind of wind, thinks Germán Alcántara Carnero. Two, maybe three weeks and not the tiniest gust, he thinks, casting his mind back as the smudge continues its approach, gradually growing into a silhouette. The whistling man whistles again, calling to attention the men, women, and children hereabouts, who all leave off their work and, like Alcántara Carnero, stand and wait. The local landowner—the lord and master, that is, of these lands and of all the people in them—approaches on his mare, a thousand swirling starlings following in his wake. A solitary cloud crosses the sun—brief respite for Germán Alcántara Carnero as he wonders what orders they’re about to be given.
The cloud’s fleeting shadow, as fleeting as the words I am writing here, moves across the plowed field, across the plots in which seeds have already been sown, and then over the path along which the horse—whose glinting owner we will refer to as lordandmaster—is trotting. Eye drawn by the glints coming off of lordandmaster’s clothes, ourman—whom we will be better off calling ouryoungman, though in truth he isn’t even quite a young man yet—does not notice his dogs rousing themselves until they set to barking. “Quiet, you three!” he says as the lordandmaster whistles again. But the dogs continue to bark and whine, and, leaning down, he kicks one of the beasts in the neck and the other on the snout: “I said quiet!”
The Arid Sky Page 7