by Jeff Kirkham
Noah bit back his irritation with his father, buoyed up by approximately ten fingers of booze. He knew that nothing under heaven and earth could shut his father up when he got on a roll, so he didn’t even try.
Afloat on a sea of whiskey, Noah felt a confluence between the movie, his irritation with his father and the truth about his own life. He took another sip of his dad’s whiskey and watched the movie from behind the tumbler.
On the screen, young Mattie Ross explained to Marshall Cogburn: “My mother is indecisive and hobbled by grief…”
Was that what Noah had become? Hobbled by grief? If it were true—if he’d become hobbled by grief—maybe he was drunk enough to finally admit it.
“If you’d shut the hell up, we could both enjoy the movie,” Noah cut loose and shouted in the middle of Bill’s next rant.
“Well, excuse me, son. I’ll keep it to myself, then,” old Bill sulked. He poured another slug of whiskey in his glass and sat back on the couch with arms folded.
Noah knew his dad deserved better. For the millioneth time, he reminded himself that the old army Green Beret hadn’t been forced to raise him. He’d taken Noah in out of the kindness of his heart when it became clear that Noah would never fit in with his whack job polygamist family. The movie and his misgivings about his solitary life had gotten the better of him and Noah had no business taking it out on his old man.
He knew what it was that’d sent him off, and that bugged him even more. Something about the damn revenge plot, the whiskey and his dad’s blathering had broken through a dam. Nobody liked seeing things about themselves they’d been avoiding and Noah had run smack into the thing he wanted to see the least—that he’d abandoned the fight. He’d run from life and holed up in his dying cattle ranch.
As he watched the wrestling match between a girl, a Texas Ranger and an old bounty hunter play out, Noah felt himself pulled gently off the rocky crag of grief and self-doubt that’d hung him up for the last two years.
He knew he had more grit than this. He had loved and lost before, and he’d not only survived but he’d made the best of it.
1999
The Mormon Colonies,
Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua, Mexico
“I hope you understand someday, but you’re not cut out for this family,” Noah’s father explained. “The kindest thing I can do as a father is to send you to a more suitable place. There’s nothing here for you.”
“I don’t understand. You’re sending mother and I away? Just because I brought a gun to school? I didn’t even know it wasn’t allowed. I only brought it to show my friends.”
His dad stood up and looked out his office window. “Your mother isn’t going with you.”
Noah’s eyes spilled over with tears. It felt like having his guts ripped out and fed to the hogs. His father had two other wives. Why did the sonofabitch need more than that?
“Son. This life in the colonies isn’t for everyone. The longer you stay, the more painful it’ll be when you finally leave. I’m doing you a favor. I don’t expect you to understand.”
Noah had one father, three mothers, eight brothers and four sisters. Noah knew even then, he would eventually get over leaving the two “sister wives” and he’d miss his brothers and sisters awfully. But the thought of being sent away from his mother struck his heart like a thunderclap. Noah struggled to breathe.
“I promise, I will not bring a gun to school ever again. I swear, I won’t ever touch a gun, if that’s what you want,” he pleaded. Noah normally did everything he could not to cry in front of his dad, but this time, he couldn’t control it. He was sobbing so hard now, a rope of snot ran down his face.
His father looked away in embarrassment.
“I can’t go away. I’m TWELVE.” Noah stood up from the chair, gripping the armrests so tightly his kunckles went white.
When Noah had been called upstairs to his father’s office, he knew it would be bad. He’d been expelled from school over the gun. But he’d no idea that it’d be this bad. No idea at all.
His father shook his head, looked at Noah and turned away. “It’s not about the gun, Noah. You’re not doing well in Sunday School, and this isn’t the first time you’ve been in trouble.”
Noah searched his memory, sorting out the trouble he’d been caught in and the trouble he hadn’t. Maybe it was when he tried to fill the window well with water to make a pool and it flooded the basement. Or maybe it was when he scratched his name on the pickup truck fender. But all the boys in the Colonies got into trouble like that sometimes.
“I swear. I’ll be good. I’ll study the scriptures and do better at praying. Don’t send me away from my family. From my mom.”
His father shook his head, folded his hands behind his back and refused to look Noah in the eyes.
“You’ll be okay among the gentiles. I’ve made arrangements with a client across the border in Arizona. If you like guns so much, you’re going to like Bill McCallister.”
“I don’t care about guns. I need to be with my…family. Please, father. Please,” Noah implored. “Please.”
His father hesitated, glanced at Noah, and then walked out of his office, leaving him to put his feelings in order by himself. At twelve years old, Noah would be driven away from the only person he had ever loved—his mother. Maybe forever. He felt like digging out the hunting knife his father kept in his desk and stabbing it into his own throat. He was being sent to live with the gentiles, which meant he had failed his mother and everyone else.
Noah eventually choked back his tears, wiped his eyes and steeled himself to face the family. Everyone would already know that he was being sent away and their judgment of him would pile on top of his grief like pig shit on top of a load of corn husks. Already, Noah could feel the distance between he and his once-family growing. He barely suppressed the urge to run from the house and never turn back.
“I’m big enough,” Noah convinced himself. “I’m going to show them. I am big enough.” Noah bent over, wiped his nose on his shirttail, straightened his back and walked out of the office with red-rimmed eyes steady as a prizefighter.
Noah’s dad had left the house after the movie, still sulking over his son’s reprimand. Nothing made old Bill more butthurt than having someone point out that he talked too much. Still, Noah felt guilty for having opened his mouth.
After offending his old man, Noah had stopped drinking the whiskey and by the end of the show, sobriety crept up on him. Still holding his tumbler--filled with water from the sink--he stood on the porch and watched his dad pull away from the ranch in his old Land Cruiser. A part of Noah wanted to call him back and apologize, but the conversation would probably cost them both too much. A man got only so many words in any given day, and Noah had run dry.
Despite the screw up with his dad, the rope around his gut had loosened, maybe for the first time in two years.
Since Leah and Katya died, he often found himself marooned on Fuck-it Island. Some days he could barely get his ass out of bed to feed the cattle. He’d been the furthest thing from a wussy—riding bulls in high school, working cattle his whole life and hammering out PT circuits six times a week with his old man. He’d even coached the high school football team back before the girls died.
But with the death of his family, it had felt like a mesquite stick punctured his fuel tank. All the gas had dribbled out of Noah, and he’d been running on fumes these last two years. Some days, the lowing of hungry cattle had been all that stood between him and lying in bed staring at the ceiling all day.
Standing on the dark porch with a glass of water and the stars burning overhead like a billion distant souls, Noah discovered that he cared. He cared about his dad. He cared about all those dipshits running around scared out of their minds in California. Hell, he even cared about himself.
The time had come for his first conversation with Leah—the first one since she’d left him to join the stars.
“Hey Babe. I sure as hell miss you,” Noah spoke
into the black night. The fist in the back of his throat rose, turned into a palm, then became a caress. Tears sprung up in the corners of his eyes.
“I guess I’ve been a prick about this, haven’t I? I had you all to myself for five years and that mighta been five more years than I deserved. But I got to have you with me on this porch all those mornings and I got to have you in my bed all those nights and that was more than I probably deserved. And it was sure as hell enough.
“So I’ve been wondering, Babe. What’s next?... I could off myself. That’d get me heading toward wherever you and Katya are up there, but that doesn’t feel right.
“I’d love to know--if you could spare a minute sometime--what’s my next play? I’m lonely. I’m just a dumb cowboy, but I’ve got you and Katya up there on my side. That’s gotta count for something. I’m willing to bet my life on it.”
Noah raised his glass to those billion souls and he picked out two.
“Goodnight, my lovelies.”
Chapter 8
Tavo Castillo
Rancho Santiaguito, 65 Miles outside of Hermosillo, Sonora, Mexico
Detroit burned on CNN. For the hundredth time, Tavo struggled to understand Americans. Even though the lights were on in Detroit, people were rioting over “Fair Power” to other inner cities that weren’t getting their share of electricity. Cities thousands of miles from Detroit.
Power was out in Los Angeles, Washington D.C., Atlanta and several other large cities, and those idiots were also rioting. But Detroit rioted because of the idea that inner city poor people in other states weren’t getting power while rich people in the suburbs supposedly were.
Tavo sipped a beer as he watched the insanity on the big-screen TV, in the family room at the survival compound in Sonora, two hundred miles north of Los Mochis.
The absurdity on CNN reminded him of a joke he’d heard about Oprah Winfrey, supposedly the richest African American woman in the world.
“What if Bill Gates woke up one morning and all he had was Oprah Winfrey’s money? He’d throw himself off a building and cut his throat on the way down, screaming ‘What happened? I can’t even put gas in my plane…’”
What if America woke up one morning and it had Mexico’s money?
Hypothetically, America would be just fine. America’s food production would still stand. They’d still have the finest infrastructure the world had ever seen. There wouldn’t be any reason for the trucks to stop running, the trains to stop delivering or the ships to stop dropping shipping containers at the ports. America could dial back to being like Mexico and scrape by until they figured everything out. After all, nobody starved in Mexico. Not even in the worst of times.
But that wasn’t what Tavo saw happening on CNN. America was throwing a fit. Like a rage-drunk child, America punched itself in the face and ripped off its clothes, just one night after their power grid began having problems.
Tavo knew what he wanted to do next, but it’d be better if his guys thought they’d arrived at the conclusion on their own.
“Good evening, Papi” Sofía put her hand on his shoulder and kissed him on the head. Tavo turned down the news with the remote. He’d heard her helicopter arrive thirty minutes before—a big military bird—but she must’ve taken time to clean up before coming to find him.
“Any trouble with flights?” Tavo asked.
“No. I got into Hermosillo okay, but things were a little scary at the airport. I decided to get a ride from my military friends instead of trying to über.”
“I could’ve sent a car for you,” Tavo said. His daughter definitely shouldn’t be taking an über from Hermosillo to the ranch. Nobody in Sonora knew their family controlled the three largest cartels in Mexico. That was one downside of being a ghost. Nobody knew enough to fear him.
Sofía’s access to the military—a helicopter, no less—snagged in his mind. She had been the only person to know he would be in Antigua, Guatemala the day of the Kaibil strike. Like an invisible mosquito whining in his ear, the thought of Sofía betraying him would never quite leave him alone, but he hadn’t been willing to confront it directly either.
“Who’d you have to blow to get a helo ride?” Tavo asked, already regretting the coarseness of the words.
“Papi! ¡Que verguenza! Shame on you!” Her huge hazel eyes narrowed and her face reddened. “Why would you say that? Are you angry with me?”
Something in Tavo’s chest broke loose and sank, but his mind caught it, reminding him that he would’ve feigned innocence too if he were her. It was the age-old question of kings and Greek gods—is my child a threat to my throne?
“I’m sorry, mi amor. The news has me on edge,” Tavo said. Nothing could’ve been further from the truth. The news enchanted Tavo with dreams of vast opportunity.
She sat on the arm of her father’s chair. “Are you worried about your business? If this keeps up…” she nodded at the riots playing out behind the news commentator on the screen, “there won’t be money for narcotics. There won’t be money for anything.”
Then there will be no reason for you to try and have me thrown in jail, his mind barked.
While she tittered about the news, building a case for this as an opportunity for him to leave the drug trade, he mentally ticked off her motives for wanting him in jail.
So she could have power over his syndicate.
Maybe all this innocence she pretended was a cover for her own sociopathy. Maybe she was his progeny in that way too. Maybe power, in and of itself, fed her the way it fed him.
So she could free the family of the stink of drugs.
Maybe she was just another aristocrat like her dead grandparents. Maybe, she preferred him hidden away in another country, leaving her and her mother to take possession of the money he had earned.
So she could gain retribution for what he had done to her mother.
Tavo knew that his wife despised him for what she’d become in the shadow of his disinterest. She had been the town beauty, with suitors calling on her home like doves to the pea fields. Tavo swept in, captured her, then locked her in a life of lies. Once he’d secured his association to her respected family, his interest in her elementary intellect and lusterless imagination waned. As the romance starved, her waistline grew. He became the dashing man married to the frumpy, former beauty. Sofía never accused him of crushing her mother’s dreams, but she worked tirelessly to redeem what had been stolen. Sofía dedicated her young life to making her mother happy. Tavo suspected that Sofía resented him for selling her mother on a life of bounty only to watch her starve for attention. Maybe that had been why Sofía hadn’t yet married. Maybe she carried her mother’s wounds. Maybe Antiqua had been payback for what he’d done to Isabel.
“Papi. What’re you going to do?” Sofía interrupted his grinding thoughts. Tavo tilted his head, casting free from the paranoia that’d seized him.
He motioned to the muted news program. “I’m waiting to see how this plays out.”
“Nonsense. I know you. You have plans on top of plans. You don’t wait.”
Tavo smiled and leaned his head back in the chair. “The Americans might need help. I can’t imagine their government failing, but I can’t imagine it maintaining for long without reliable electricity, either.”
“And their army?” she asked.
“Most of the American soldiers on American soil aren’t full time. The majority are doing military service for school tuition or a paycheck. I’m not sure how much different the army is from any other government job.”
“How would you help if their government fails?”
Tavo pretended to consider the question. In truth, he had decided long ago. “We could help restore order. Keep the criminal element under control.”
Sofía snorted. “With your own criminal element?”
Tavo took a deep breath. “Do you have a better plan?”
She shook her head.
Beto interrupted them, charging into the family room, projecting inten
sity like a lion closing in on his prey.
“Los Negros have taken the archbishop. Let’s go get him back.”
“Whoa…” Tavo considered the implications. Fortune might be serving him an opportunity. “Are you saying that the Los Negros gang rolled up the archbishop?”
“Yep. And the vicar and several padres. They’ve got them in the state offices across from the Señora de la Asunción Cathedral. There are only thirty Los Negros, give or take. Let’s get our gun on, brother. I’ve got thirty Caballeros Templarios standing by.”
Beto had been the instigator of the “Caballeros Templarios” movement among their drug soldiers. When they’d begun training drug soldiers to become commandos two years back, Beto had argued for a faith element to the training. He pitched it as a way to control the men—and a much less expensive way to extend influence than paying the men top dollar. To Tavo, it’d seemed like a harmless salve to the rumbling conscience of Beto and the commandos. It made drug running feel more Catholic, which couldn’t hurt. “Templarios” had become organizational shorthand for drug commando. With communications crumbling and control of his men becoming less and less reliable, Tavo hoped the Templario thing would help maintain cohesion. It couldn’t hurt.
Tavo nodded to Beto. “Okay, hermano. But let’s do this right. Call in your Templarios and let’s flex our muscle.”