She’s made it clear that she needs him to listen carefully. It’s hard for her to talk now, so Kyle leans in and puts his ear over the cup of the oxygen mask.
“You have to promise,” she whispers, a cracked cymbal rasp, shattered and terrified and brave, so brave. “You’ll take care of her.”
“I will,” Kyle says, shaking. “I promise.” He can’t imagine how he’ll do this without Krista. He can’t believe what’s happening. He can’t believe he can’t save her. The bands explode in his head into a final pummelling unison, and he recognizes the opening bars of “Last Light,” first song proper on Converge’s You Fail Me, his favourite track on the record, which he’s been listening to a lot lately.
“Always,” Kyle says, his voice breaking.
“It’s going to mean giving up some things,” Kris says.
“I know,” he says, blood clanging in his ears, a righteous screaming wounded animal roar. “I know.”
He turns onto a dark road that winds up through wooded slopes. The trees are thick on either side. The lake is just up around the bend about two hundred yards. He pulls over into a clearing, kills the engine and the headlights. The air is crisp and clean, and there’s a faint scent of woodsmoke on the wind and a burbling brook nearby. He climbs out, his breath steaming in the cold, and opens the back door. He unbuckles her seatbelt and steps back and — hating himself for it — waves his hand.
“C’mon, Soo-bin.”
She climbs out into the night, boots crunching on the brown leaves.
He squats and looks her in the eyes — big eyes, dark as tea in a black cup. There are fortunes there, tellings beyond what he has the ability to read. This, finally, is his problem: What else can he do for her? How does she fit? How is she at all comprehensible? The truth — I want to save her, she reminds me of my daughter, but I can’t, I can’t risk it, because she is not my daughter — is too banal, too horrible for Kyle to contemplate. Justice? Where? In what universe does she get handed over to anyone else, anyone good, and not draw all kinds of attention, some politician using her as a campaign platform, some cynical commentator preaching the girl’s plight as a harbinger of moral decay? How does that not all boil down to himself and to Abby?
And does Soo-bin even end up any better off? In what scenario is she most likely to be free, really free, for as long as possible?
Kyle can give her the chance to run, to adapt. It’s the best act of mercy he can manage.
He’s cycling through all this, tattooed arms perched on burning thighs, when she turns and goes. Just starts walking toward the trees, as if she’s saving him the trouble of anguishing over it. There’s purpose in her walk as she strides away in Abby’s plaid Wellingtons and Barbie parka. A certain grace. He supposes she understands that she might as well get comfortable. Kyle watches and listens, half expecting the girl to dissolve into the evening mist before his eyes.
At the edge of the trees, though, she stops. For a second Kyle wonders if he’s got it wrong — if she’ll turn around and run back at him and make him say it out loud, needing to understand his tone even if she doesn’t know the English words: I’m leaving you here.
Instead, she pulls off the parka and lets it fall down around her ankles in a marshmallowy pink heap. He’s about to protest, when he sees it: the striped, bushy tail hanging from the base of her spine, protruding just above the hem of her track pants. For a distended second, it wavers like a lazy pendulum — then, answering his disbelief, twitches, a quick flick, as if to cast a spell. Soo-bin turns and gives him a curious look, black eyes rimmed with coal-dark smudge. Kyle opens his mouth to speak — say, What are you? Say, I used to be better — but before he can utter a word, she’s darted off into the trees, the crackle of broken twigs prickling his ears, the grey spirit of a split moon hovering over the treeline.
Kyle squats there on the wet, rotting leaves, taking in the dense weave of branches from behind a blur of tears. With the ghost of Krista’s voice murmuring in his ear something soft, something about Andy Dufresne and the warm place, he hauls himself up to get back into the truck and crank some hardcore as loud as it will go — loud enough to blot out the cracking in her voice, the wheeze of her dying breath, the flick of the cargo girl’s tail, and whatever other echoes haven’t fled him yet, even though he knows the music will never work that way again.
Little Flags
“I believe this is where the battle for civilization is being fought. I really do.”
Earl Sampson ambled along the border, thumbs jammed into his belt, fingers crabbed around a huge brass belt-buckle shaped like a San Antonio rose. Two newsmen from the Daily Star followed him, one crouched behind a camera, the other, the reporter, poking a long microphone toward Earl’s face. Earl had pushed real hard to get these clowns out to do a Fourth of July story on his new Border Hawk drones. He’d given them the complete sales pitch: design based on a golden eagle. Lightweight carbon-fibre wing structure. Only model that won’t frighten local birds. It wasn’t until one of the drones had actually helped nab a wetback that they’d finally bit. Earl wasn’t about to waste the opportunity. He paused and flashed his best public smile, the one Helen had always said shone like the grille of an oncoming truck.
“Right here, along this border. Sure, we can build a wall — build the biggest wall you ever seen! And we’re doin’ it! Mile by mile, we’re building it. Just like we designed, engineered, and put to the sky these state-of-the-art UAVs. I mean, take the fella they caught out in Las Cienegas just yesterday. Our Border Hawks spotted his heat signature from thirty-two thousand feet, just shy of three miles from the point of apprehension. Lord Almighty! Lopez, he said his name was. Well, they’re all Lopez, aren’t they?
“But my point is, you really want to fix the border problem? What you need is vigilance. Vigilance and will! And it ain’t me I’m talking about, neither. My sunset’s not so far off. What I’m doing is trying to ignite the spark of nationhood in the hearts of the youth.”
On cue, Earl drew from his back pocket a miniature flag, black plastic wand glued with a nylon flap dyed with the stars and stripes, white cardboard label etched with tiny lines of text dangling from a string tied to its blunted spike. From the sidelines, one of his deputies, Ollie, spied the flag and leaned down to whisper to a wee pigtailed girl at his side, who skipped over to Earl and looked up at him with eyes as wide as a Colorado sky. As though conferring a blessing, Earl pressed the toy flag into the little girl’s palm, squeezing her fingers around its holiness.
“This is my kind of nation-building, see? With each flag I pass on to kids like this little peach right here” — Earl patted the girl on the head — “maybe it helps ’em know what it means to be an American. What God-given rights they have, and why we can’t let the illegals take those rights away from them. Not to mention the jobs! Mark my words, this country is being invaded.”
He swung his arm in a wide arc across the scrubland that lay beyond the razor wire, the desert rolling down to the stricken cartel strongholds below the Rio Grande that disgorged the desperate and ambitious in equal measure toward Earl’s watchful eye.
“La Reconquista. It’s on the way. Bolivar, Pancho Villa . . . that revolutionary spirit is bleedin’ up through the border like a coming flood.”
He turned his face and stared straight into the camera, smile cranked up to chrome-plated eighteen-wheeler, pedal to the metal.
“I’m just doin’ what I can to stop it.”
Every year, leading up to the Fourth of July, the American Shield received thousands of letters of support from across the country. They poured in by mail, by email, some delivered by hand, and from each one Earl Sampson, proud founder and president of the Shield, selected a pithy excerpt, which he then had printed on a white cardboard label and tied to one of the little American flags from his stockpile, thereby imbuing cheap Chinese product with a dose of real American sentiment. He would then, in person whenever possible, place each flag in the dirt along the border fence b
etween Cochise County and the Mexican hinterland. There were thousands of them, planted as far as you could see, a beautiful force field of red, white, and blue fluttering against the bleached landscape. On one part of the wall, near his ranch, the flags had been pinned up and arranged to spell out the words Earl Sampson held as his personal creed and mission: SECURE THE BORDER. STOP THE INVASION.
Earl could see the slogan from the bay window in his living room, as fine a view as any cowboy could ask for. Same as every evening, he saluted the words and the dusky sky behind them, then sank down into his leather recliner and sighed. Tonight he was extra tired from smiling for the cameras all day, and was looking forward to kicking back for the night. He liked the old westerns, Gunsmoke and Rawhide and The Virginian, and now with his new streaming package he could watch them all the time.
Earl shifted his gut and wiped a palm across his Stetson-greasy head as the TV glowed on, the sound of canned gunshots filling the room. It was important to be settled just right, before he called in Valentina.
In his mind, he called her his Only — as in, his Only Exception. To the boys who dared give him a look, he said the same thing every time, smiling at maximum throttle: “A girl as doggone pretty as that transcends the national interest, wouldn’t you say?” In those words were contained all the ones that Earl Sampson didn’t need to speak aloud: that he’d founded the Shield with money from his own goddamn pockets, and the Shield’s guns were his guns, and Helen had been gone over a year now, so the wise thing was to shut the fuck up unless you wanted to spend a night discussing the matter with Earl’s five German shepherds. And the boys would all nod and shrug and let it go — because you couldn’t argue: Valentina was one pretty little prize. Svelte and young, with skin the colour of mocha chocolate. She’d been with him for just about six months now, shipped up from Nuevo León by a Coyote he’d got friendly with, and although she cleaned the house and prepared meals, her chief concern was to bring Earl his daily after-work glass of Pappy Van Winkle, and to otherwise help him relax and shrug off the tension born of battling the tidal wave of migrant blood that threatened to engulf his beloved country.
On the table beside him lay one of his testifying flags — Keep Up the Good Fight! America for Americans — and next to it, a little brass bell. Earl picked up the bell and gave a sharp ding. “Valentina, darlin’?” he shouted in singsong drawl. “It’s time!”
She came at his call, resplendent in a dress of purple lace, carrying a silver tray laid with a single tumbler frosted with cold and filled with cherry-dark bourbon. Her eyes were black as opals, her frame as petite and light as a bird’s. There were times when she looked mute, ignorant even; but Earl knew what kind of fight the girl had in her. She’d been a prickly cactus at first, but he’d taught her the ropes, soon enough.
“Well don’t you just look adorable as all git out tonight,” he said, pinching her behind. “So kind of you to bring me my little drop of medicine in such a punctual fashion.” He took the glass from the tray and brought it to his lips with a satisfied slurp. “Did you see me on TV today? Then you know how tired my poor bones are. Yes, indeed, another tough day for old Earl and his brothers of the Shield.”
Valentina stood still beside the chair, staring down into the silver tray held out flat in front of her. Earl looked up at her face. He liked the girl, for real. After Helen had passed, he’d found that no time patrolling the border, no amount of rifle practice, not even the affection of his beloved dogs could stop the day from coming to that hollow point of loneliness, just Earl and Rawhide on the TV, him getting up again and again to fill his own whiskey glass even though the bourbon wasn’t any help, either. The house empty, the bougainvillea in the big pots dying because it had always been Helen who tended them. The hollow, it was nothing like Earl had ever known before. It made him feel old and strange and weak, and those weren’t feelings he could tolerate, not with the mission he was on. And so he’d brought Valentina into the house on the down-low, not sure exactly what her role would be, but knowing he’d find a way to make use of her, all the same.
Earl smiled at her, not his semi-truck smile, but a gentler one. He was strong — loved being strong — but any man had times when he needed a break from the bluster. Every man needed someone to talk to, to share pleasures with. Her being Mexican . . . well, everyone had a tragic flaw. He’d asked the Lord for His forgiveness.
And anyway, sometimes, lying in bed at night waiting for the desert moon to sink, he wondered if he might not be doing a good thing with it. Although he would never admit it out loud, didn’t even like to say it to himself, when he looked at Valentina, he knew deep down that he could never stop them. The ones crawling across the desert, they had heart — but that wasn’t even it. What they had on their side, which he could never stamp out, was a longing to reach America, to taste its riches and know the real meaning of freedom. How could you talk someone out of a dream like that? How could you even blame them? They’d keep on coming, thick and hungry as a locust plague, just as long as the States kept shining its beacon out over their hardscrabble lives. Hell, half the country was already Hispanic. Although Earl would remain vigilant, would stand by his banners like a good warrior, he could see full well that the old America — the one that loved Rawhide and Gunsmoke and The Virginian like he did — was getting as thin as the cheap Chinese nylon on his little flags.
He hated to know it, would hate it until the day he followed Helen into the arms of the Lord, but looking up at Valentina, such a lovely dark thing, gave him a thread of solace to hold on to. The whiskey swirled round Earl’s head, and he thought: If they have to come, at least let ’em be like her.
“Now,” he said. “Let’s make sure I can recuperate in time for the fireworks shows tomorrow!” He took another swig of Pappy. “I know you don’t love this part as of yet, although I’m hoping you’ll learn, eventually. You know I’m always telling you to trust me. You’ll see it in the end — you’ll thank me for everything, for giving you a place here. Even for puttin’ some savings aside for you instead of letting you send it all away on that needy family of yours. Yes: remain in the care of Earl Sampson, my Valentine, and perhaps one day you’ll come to know the fullness of pride and pleasure that America at its best can truly bring.”
Earl heaved back and kicked up the recliner to emphasize the point.
“Maybe having watched that fella on the TV yesterday, the one we picked off a mile or so from Route 82, will drive home just how lucky you are to’ve landed here. It ain’t nice to say it, but you know as well as I do that you could’ve ended up out there in the desert, feedin’ the buzzards.” He eased his polyester-panted legs a touch further apart and chuckled. “You know I consider you a special case. I’d hate to think of you back out there, staggering around in the dust and dark.”
Without a sound, Valentina placed the tray down on the side table and came to stand in front of Earl.
“That’s it. And mind, no mischief, now,” he said. It was the thing Helen had always said to him before he headed out for border patrol. He’d learned it in Spanish for Valentina.
“Ninguna travesura. Old Earl’s had a hard day.”
Only she could comfort him. When a terrible fever came over him and he’d lain drained and sweating for days in the shadowed adobe room, their mother had quailed and wept and prayed to God for his recovery. But it was Valentina who’d stayed by his side, stroking his damp hair away from his eyes, whispering stories about the promised land to soothe him to sleep.
Javier wished, for a hundredth time, that she were with him now. The blue desert stretched out behind him, miles of brittle mesquite and cracked skulls and chittering rattlesnakes; but nothing was more terrifying than the crest of pink on the horizon, the blush of day. Nighttime was shadowed and tense, but the days were a crazed scramble through unbearable heat and light, easy pickings for La Migra’s patrolmen and the assault rifles they aimed from the backs of their armored pickups.
His vision blurred with th
e delirium of sleeplessness. The air was already thickening with encroaching heat. If she was here, she could put her hand on his forehead to cool it with her touch. Say, Javi, you’re almost there.
It was over a year ago that his sister had left Monterrey to go north in search of work. For a while, she’d sent money back, three hundred American dollars a month, transferred through Western Union. Then, without warning, it had stopped. His family waited, hoping to hear word, hoping the money would start coming again. But nothing came.
Javier, the closest to her in age, insisted on going after her.
“How will you find her?” his mother said. “She could be anywhere. She could be in Canada by now. She could be dead.” She wept, cursing the Americans and their money, cursing Mexico for needing it.
Javier knew his sister wasn’t dead. They shared an interior language forged in those long nights when she stayed by his bedside, when they dreamed together of other places, magical futures. He could feel her whispering somewhere up past the Rio Grande. “Don’t worry, Mama,” he said. “I know she’s alive. I’ll find her.” What he left out was the darkness he could feel, the sense that his sister was somehow being choked, that she was alive but death was close to her.
Valentina, he thought. What sickness has you?
The sun rose into a sky striped with clouds like long clawmarks. Javier slouched down behind an outcropping of cactus and orange stone, taking what rest he could before the morning was fully upon him. He looked out to the distance. He’d been walking for three days. Yesterday’s supper had used up his last bits of food. He had only a half bottle of water left, which he brought to his mouth for a few sparing sips. He had to be close: there was no other way to think.
Different Beasts Page 4