“Don’t listen to him, Pablito,” Marta said. “It’s his way to rant as he drives around.”
“Why do you call him Pablito?” Roberto asked Marta. “He goes by Indio now.”
“I don’t want to call him what you call him,” Marta said.
“Oaxacan, what do you prefer, Pablo or El Indio?” Roberto asked.
“I don’t mind either.” Indio shrugged. “The village was so small, I almost never heard my family name said out loud. Now, I can see that having a couple of names is good.”
In even the poorest hamlet, a family name had value. A place where it didn’t, well, Marta and Roberto weren’t willing to consider it.
“The other thing I want to tell you about this pickup,” Roberto said, “is that the outside is dirty but the engine is spotless. I will never push at the gas pedal and not feel the horses.” Already traveling about fifty, Roberto hit the gas and they felt the untapped power. “And the windshield’s clean. Always clean. If your tactic is invisibility, you need to be alert. You need to be quick and you need to see everything.”
They crowned the top of the road that spilled into downtown, which sat like a pool of dusty mercury between mountains and hills. Roberto switched lanes, braked hard, and pulled into the parking lot of a liquor store. The buildings here were brightly painted, some with murals. On the wall across from them were the words VIVA GIGANTE.
“What do you say we celebrate with some cold ones?” Roberto asked.
“Celebrate what?” Indio said.
“The fact that you are crossing people yourself now. You’ve graduated.”
Roberto drew a wad of money from his pocket.
“Allow me,” Indio said. In the close proximity of the truck’s cab, he turned to Marta. Roberto had been watching their alternated glances in the rearview mirror. Now they were face to face.
In an elevated diction, Indio asked, “What kind of beer would you like, ma’am? Tecate?”
Roberto didn’t like this. “I want Corona,” he interceded, waving the bills.
Marta shrugged; it wasn’t her fight. Indio cracked the door, stepped out of the truck, and walked into the shop.
“What’s going on, Marta?” Roberto said.
“With what?”
“The invitation.”
To him it had come out of the blue.
“You need more skilled workers,” Marta reasoned, “and he’s obviously sharp.” After a moment she added, “And I like him, he’s nice.”
Roberto had introduced Marta to many associates her age, some good-looking and some well off. Others had come by the house. But she hadn’t shown any interest and she hadn’t really dated since coming to Tijuana. Maybe it just wasn’t yet a part of her mind-set, he’d thought. Now, for the first time, Roberto allowed himself to wonder if this was the kind of guy who interested her—a cholo in baggy clothes.
“This guy? The mute?”
“He’s contemplative.”
“He’s a pollero.”
“No, he’s a coyote now, like you. Besides, you said that you liked him too.”
“I liked him as a recruiter. Now I don’t know.”
Martha tsked. “He’s good. You saw how he was with his people.”
“That’s my teaching . . .”
“Quiet. Here he comes now. That’s your beer he’s carrying—he wanted Tecate.”
Roberto turned the key and opened a set of wood doors. As they cracked open, Marta, Indio, and Roberto were promptly met by Roberto’s two young sons—one just slightly taller than the other. Each had his father’s lean face, but with toothy smiles. The boys were followed by Roberto’s wife. She was handsome with a bright and hardy disposition that was immediately perceptible. She cradled their baby daughter in a swaddle of blankets, which she lifted to her husband. Roberto took his daughter into his arms, and his wife turned to Indio.
“Welcome,” she said, smiling, and then, when Roberto failed to make introductions, added, with a wagging finger, “These two have no manners. I am Mercedes, Roberto’s wife. Everyone calls me Chedas.”
“Mucho gusto,” he said. “My name is Pablo.”
“Yes, I’ve heard about you, Pablo. Please come in.”
“It’s not a question of manners,” Roberto muttered upon entering. “Guests are here such a short time.”
Chedas frowned. The older children were used to meeting strangers, and greeted them with just mild curiosity. For the Oaxacan, however, the house must have been something of a wonder. From the outside it looked like a regular, if not more substantial, suburban home. But to the right of the entry stretched a dim hallway with a surprising number of closed bedroom doors. It drew no comparison with his family’s one-room shack, or the solitary space he inhabited in the Zona Norte.
Roberto divined Indio’s curiosity. “This first bedroom is mine and my wife’s,” he said. “It’s not the biggest, but I find it easier to be close to the front door. The nearby rooms belong to the children and the family. The others are for the clients.”
“How many rooms are there?” asked Indio.
“Would you believe that we started with three? But now I am ashamed to say. It seems obsessive.”
“I couldn’t tell from the outside.”
“No? That’s good,” Roberto said. He gestured toward the light-filled hallway to the left of the entry. Chedas and the children passed through. Marta was no longer with them. Indio followed his host as the house opened into a living room to the right and, to the left, a kitchen that stepped down onto a backyard. An older woman was busy at the sink, and next to this was a squat, clay bread oven.
Roberto touched the arm of the woman at the sink and introduced her—loud enough for Chedas to hear the formality of his speech—as his mother, Lupita. She offered a nod in the reserved country way.
A large portrait mounted on a kitchen wall dominated the room. Set in a gilded frame, the photograph presented Marta sitting straight-backed with her hands in her lap. She wore a traditional white blouse that parted at the neckline, revealing defined and sleek collarbones divided by a smooth jugular notch. The slight swell of her bust was covered in pleated cotton and embroidery. Her bare arms were sinewy and strong. As a child, she had known the out-of-doors—a condition also responsible, possibly, for the tiniest of freckles across her nose. But it was her eyes, looming equally dark and bright like a variety of minor gem, and the thick and ropey braid of her hair draped over her right shoulder—a deep brown epaulet—that distinguished her status as ranchero royalty. If the portrait had been staged by the baby of the family to please her parents and bolster the family’s claim to a dignified, pastoral heritage, the effect had been realized.
From the kitchen door, Roberto and Indio could see the lady from the portrait, now seated with an old man at a picnic table under the shade of a stately ficus tree. As they stepped out into the yard, Marta watched. The man had been reading aloud from a newspaper but as Indio approached, Marta tapped the man’s arm. He looked up.
“Father,” she said, “I would like you to meet an associate of Roberto’s. His name is Pablo.”
“It is a pleasure to meet you, sir,” Indio said.
“Oh, and you as well, son,” he said, setting the paper aside.
“Father, why don’t you show Pablo your garden? I’m going to help Mother.” Marta turned to Indio. “He’s very proud of his piece of Sinaloa.”
“You can see everything there is from here.”
Marta stood. “Well, tell him what you have growing,” she said, walking off to the kitchen.
“You have potatoes,” Roberto offered with a wave.
“I have broccoli, carrots, cabbage, radish. Different things, depending. Right now there is some lettuce and cilantro. Soon I’ll plant corn.”
Roberto’s cell phone rang. Excusing himself, he rose, and stepped off to a corner of the yard to take the call. California’s Central Valley harvest was coming on, and it was a busy time.
Marta and Lupita were visible at w
ork in the kitchen, and Roberto stood close enough to the men to catch a phrase here and there. The patriarch was a fantastic storyteller, a natural gift the man had possessed long before he could read. Roberto knew this because his father had taught himself to read and write from his own children’s primary books, even as he aided them in their schoolwork. When Roberto observed the old man with the newspaper, it was not a terrible leap to wonder how much of it he was reading, and how much he interpreted from clues on the page. But Roberto knew well the story now entertaining El Indio—a parable that varied only in its purpose. When Roberto was young, things were quite difficult. But with a keen mind and a string of fortunate years, his father doubled and tripled the size of the ranch and the family prospered. By the time Marta grew into a lithesome girl, what was required of her wasn’t work so much as chores. One Saturday Marta petitioned her father to let her attend a party. He agreed on one condition. At sundown, the livestock returned to the pens to feed. All that was required to keep them in for the night was to shut the livestock gate. Marta’s father asked her to return early from the party and close the gate. She promised. But on waking the next morning, the family discovered the gate open, Marta asleep, and their animals feeding on a neighbor’s corn. Later, the neighbor sent an invoice for the damaged crops.
Only a raconteur could weave a comic tale from such a thread. Yet with the slightest nuance, the father’s intent varied: sometimes to depict himself as a man who could afford to treat his animals to the neighbor’s corn, but often to paint Marta as decorative and feckless. Maybe, in this instance, the tale was meant to warn Indio of her nature.
Lupita soon stepped out with a plate of cueritos snacks, salsa, chili pepper, and limes. Marta returned with four open beer bottles and joined the men at the picnic table. She caught the gist of the conversation and immediately contested her father’s rendition. Indio questioned the father on aspects of the story Marta disputed. In his body language and talkativeness, Roberto saw Indio changed. He wondered if this was what happened when one plied a wanderer of the fence line with food and drink.
Roberto’s call went long. But he soon found himself remembering an incident that had occurred not long after the episode with the livestock gate. From a distance Roberto happened to observe Marta saddle a pony. Her head didn’t reach the animal’s withers. But the girl pulled herself to a mount, anyway—then she galloped, and horse and rider jumped the very gate she’d failed to close a week earlier. And two things struck him: one, that Marta had developed such a skill at all, and two, that she seemed to harbor no concern for a boundary of any kind. Was she forgetful, or defiant?
After Marta came to Tijuana to live, she expressed a desire to accompany Roberto on his rounds. He said no. She refused to accept this answer and pointed out that his trade accommodated women, and had even made a few infamous. He wouldn’t budge. Over a number of weeks, Marta nagged and cajoled and finally, becoming angry, she demanded to know why he would not allow her into his confidence.
Roberto said, “Because I can’t trust you to close the gate.”
The reference stung.
It didn’t, however, curb Marta’s desire. She made herself useful by hosting and managing the clients who stayed at the house. On one such occasion, when Roberto was out making preparations for a crossing, an important mayordomo and his workers began to drink heavily on the patio. They became rowdy and then disrespectful. Marta knew that the mayordomo, as the informal boss of migrant workers on a large-scale farm, held a lot more leverage than an average migrant. But she put her foot down anyway. She said, “Men, you need your wits about you. No more drinking or you won’t be crossing tonight.”
The campesinos laughed off the threat and turned their bottles up—sending out for more alcohol. When it was clear that they weren’t going to stop, Marta walked into the house, entered the guest quarters, and, on her own accord, hefted all of the farm workers’ things out to the curb. Then she called for two taxis. When they arrived she asked the drivers to load the bags and instructed them to drive this group to the river—one way only. She re-entered the house, stepped out to the patio, and finding the men flat drunk, she informed them that their ride to the border was already waiting outside, and that they needed to hurry. The men filed out and jumped into the cabs, which lurched through lamplight, past street dogs, and into the dusky night.
Roberto, who returned prepared to load up his clients and move out, discovered a house empty save the family. “Where are my pollos?” Roberto asked. Forthright and with a clear conscience, Marta described what had happened, and added that his clients could be found down by the river, should he choose to look for them.
Roberto enjoyed the little episode; it showed decisiveness and pluck, elements he could use on the job.
“Mother,” Marta hollered toward the kitchen, “some music?” A minute passed. Then the low piping of La Sonora Dinamita rose from the house. The father huffed.
“She always plays Roberto’s favorite,” Marta complained openly, even as her brother rejoined the group. “I prefer mariachis. They’re perfect for every occasion—parties, weddings. Even a funeral. When I die, I want mariachis. Not in black either—I want them dressed all in red.”
“I would like one single horn player,” said the father. “And I want him to play ‘Una Flor para Ti.’”
This time, it was Roberto who huffed.
“What would you like played at your funeral, Pablo?” Marta asked.
“Well, mariachis seem good. But I would want them to play a special corrido about an average guy who leaves his village without any idea where he will end up. He is simply collaborating with chance. He sees jungle. He sees mountains. And he arrives in a strange city where, by some piece of magic, he meets very special people who take him away in an invisible pickup truck and he finds himself at a fiesta eating cueritos and drinking beer and making up bullshit songs to be played at his funeral.”
The group laughed.
“I change my mind,” said the father, slapping the picnic table. “I want that same song played at my funeral, because, really, it’s about me. I left my tiny village in Sinaloa, you know, a place I’d never left before, and I ended up in this strange city, eating these snacks, too.”
“Father,” Roberto said, “you were a fifty-year-old man, and I drove you myself, and I told you where you and Mother were going—to a house I prepared for you.”
“The story is the same,” he said.
Setting a tray of uncooked meat on the table, Lupita asked Roberto about the grill. “Oh, yes, of course,” he said. “Indio, help me set this thing up.” They retrieved a charcoal grill from around the corner of the house and pulled it close to the table. Roberto grabbed a bag of briquettes. Indio lifted the lid and removed the grate.
“So, how many pollos are you crossing?” Roberto asked him.
“A few here and there.”
“I hear you crossed eight one night.”
“Yes, we crossed eight.”
“If you crossed eight, you can cross sixteen. What’s the holdup?”
“Bicycles, man, they’re hard to come by in the city.”
“Marta could help you with that. She’s very resourceful.”
“Roberto,” his mother called from the kitchen. “There is somebody here to see you.”
Roberto stepped out of the backyard. He was gone awhile, and he returned to see his wife and sons at the table, as well. It was normal for the family to want to gather, and he hated for the unpredictable nature of his work to affect it, but this business couldn’t wait. “I have some things to take care of,” he announced. “Get the grill going. If I’m not back soon, save me a plate.”
The group said their good-byes. And Indio manned the barbecue.
Roberto was absent for longer than he would have liked. And he returned to a house that was full of music and light. In the kitchen he stumbled upon Indio. Laughter erupted from the patio.
“What are you doing?” Roberto asked.
&nbs
p; “Amigo, just helping out a little,” Indio said.
“Listen, I’ve been wanting to talk to you. I have more business than I can handle; it takes me away from the family. You’ve proven that you are more than an average pollero. I need someone like you in my organization. What do you say?”
“Gracias for the compliment.” Indio touched his chest.
“So what’s your answer?”
Indio took a breath. “You know better than I that there are no friends in this business. I would rather remain good friends, because, well, who knows?”
Roberto scanned Indio’s eyes. They appeared a bit glazed. Maybe he was simple, the Oaxacan, and Roberto had misread him. Roberto could only assume that Indio meant no disregard. It was a matter for another time.
“I respect the way you conduct your business,” he said. “We’ll keep our friendship.”
“Thank you, Roberto.”
“Now let’s finish that beer.”
Roberto stepped out of the kitchen and Indio followed. The group was still chatting and laughing. The kids ran about. Tiny white Christmas lights filled the ficus like sparks. Paper streamers radiated from the tree to the house.
“There he is,” said Marta, beaming at her brother.
“What’s this?” asked Roberto. “So lively.” He could see that he’d missed a special little party. Then Indio rounded the table and sat with Marta, their sides touching and their arms dipping below the table in a way that suggested the holding of hands. Roberto sat slowly—he’d missed something indeed. He looked at Chedas, who smiled, and then to his father, who merely shrugged and raised his brows in bemusement.
Roberto hoisted his beer and reached across to Indio. “Well, bottoms up, brother.”
Later, Roberto admitted, “That moment actually affected me quite a bit. My sister and I had been inseparable partners. But I held my feelings in. I saw a beautiful little twinkle in her eyes, an expression I had never seen before. In the coming days, as well, Marta became a different woman. She laughed and sang and made jokes with the whole family. The more time that passed, the happier she looked.”
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