Arbo laughs.
Marcos grabs the knife out of his bag. “I’m going to cut up some bushes to hang in the tree, to give us more shade. Look for any other stuff around here we can use.”
“I’ll help you carry it back,” Gladys says.
They walk off in the direction of some roundish shrubs.
Arbo and I briefly scan the area, then turn back to each other with empty stares. There’s nothing lying around that we can put on the branches. It’s the floor of a desert.
“If we emptied the bags, we could hang them on the tree,” Arbo says.
“Great idea,” I say. “Let’s do it.”
I’m standing next to my pack and Arbo’s, so I begin removing the few items we have left in them. Arbo walks to Marcos’s bag and does the same.
“What the hell is this?” Arbo asks, and it occurs to me for the first time that none of us have ever been in Marcos’s bag before.
He’s holding a large coffee can and peering inside. He pinches a piece of plastic and pulls. Dark coffee grounds spill into the sand below as he draws out a clear plastic bag and holds it toward me with one hand.
“Is that what I think it is?” I ask.
“What else could it be?”
The list is short. The bag is stuffed with tightly knotted brownish clumps that look like shriveled-up herbs. I’ve never seen anything like this before, but I have a solid guess as to what it is. I’m sure some people at our school would be very familiar with this stuff. But I’m not, and I’m pretty sure Arbo isn’t either.
“It’s in coffee. That’s what they use to hide the smell,” Arbo says. “It’s marijuana. It has to be.”
He gapes at me as though I’m supposed to confirm this. I gape back.
“Why would he have mota?” Arbo asks.
“I don’t know.”
“Do you think he’s smoking it?”
“That looks like a lot to smoke,” I say.
I walk toward him and grab the bag. It dwarfs my hand. I quickly understand why it was hidden in the coffee—it reeks, like a skunk. I wrinkle my nose and look at Arbo. He doesn’t look shocked anymore. He’s moved way past that. Veins bulge in his neck, his fists ball up, and his eyes burn hotter than the noon sand.
“I’m going to kill him,” he says.
“Let’s not—”
“What? You think this is okay?” He snatches the bag from me and wraps both hands around it, as if he’s strangling the contents.
“No. Hell no. Of course not. But we need to—”
“No, we don’t need to do anything. This is why you don’t have a mom or a dad anymore!”
I don’t respond. He’s right. I’m upset too. It’s disgusting. But Arbo looks deranged beyond reason. I fear this situation is about to get uglier than we can afford.
“I don’t understand. How could he even look at this stuff after what happened? How?”
“I don’t know. I’m with you. I’m on your side.”
“Good, because I’m going to punch him.”
“Don’t punch him.”
“Why?”
“Because we need to stick together.”
“And what happens if border patrol finds us now? We don’t go back to Mexico. We go to prison. You know who’s in prison? Narcos. How long do you think we’ll last?”
“And how long do you think we’ll last outside prison in Mexico?” I ask.
“That’s not the point.”
“Then what about this: How long do you think we’ll last out here on our own? We tried that one already.”
“Stop standing up for him!”
“I’m not. Calm down. You’re not thinking straight. Let’s talk, not punch.”
He pushes me. Hard. I fall backward.
“Screw you! Screw all this! Screw Mexico! Screw narcos! Screw Marcos!” He takes the empty coffee can and hurls it at the tree. It ricochets off the trunk with a hollow bang.
“Hey! What’s going on?” Marcos asks, hobbling toward us with Gladys chasing behind him.
“I don’t know, Marcos. Why don’t you tell me? ¿Qué es que está pasando?” Arbo dangles the plastic bag in front of him.
“Why did you go in my pack?”
“Are you kidding? Yeah, that’s the real question here.”
“You don’t know what you’re doing.”
“What? I don’t know what I’m doing? Why the hell are we in this chingado desert to begin with? It’s because of this crap! This! This is why. And now we find out you’re part of it?”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Then tell me what I am talking about. Because this sure as hell looks like a bag of mota to me.”
“It is. And we need it.”
“Marcos,” Gladys says. She’s standing behind him, gazing at the bag. “That’s yours?”
He looks at her, then back at us.
“What are we going to have when we get out of here? Huh? What? We’ll be in another country. We won’t know anybody. We’ll be illegal. We’ll be broke. This is to get us started. We sell it and we’ve got something.”
“No!” Arbo shouts. “This is what started it!”
“So at least we can use it to help us.”
Arbo slaps his own face.
“Oh my God. This is what you were doing in Sonoyta. You were buying drugs. You were buying stuff from the same hijos de putas who are trying to kill us.”
“No. That’s my point. I was selling them.”
“What?” we all say, nearly in unison.
He looks down and shakes his head, as if in regret. Regret for having told us this, not regret for having done it.
“I bought it when we were at Ortíz’s house. I snuck out one night and got it.”
Even Arbo is stunned silent by this.
“You left the house and went back into town?” I ask.
“You have to know when to break the rules.”
“Wait, how did you buy it? You had money to buy drugs, and you let Sr. Ortíz pay for all that stuff he bought us?” I ask.
“No. I know a guy who did me a favor. He gave it to me to take across the border and sell. I’ll send him some money when I sell it, and we’ll keep the rest.”
“You’re nothing but a narco cabrón,” Arbo says.
“No. I’m not. I did it once. For us. What do you think paid for everything you have right now? Every drop of water, every bite of food. Everything that keeps us alive out here. That!” He points to the bag. “I sold some in Sonoyta so we didn’t have to use Ortíz’s charity. And so we’d have some cash if we got in trouble. Did anybody refuse it then? No. You shut up and took it. So I’ll sell the rest when we get across, and guess what? You might not want to, but you’ll shut up and take it again, because we’ll have nothing, and we’ll need it. It’s for us.” He points again to the bag. “This is the only thing we’ll have.”
“It all makes sense now,” Arbo says. “I couldn’t figure it out. You’re why they attacked the party. And you weren’t even there. Did you know it was coming? Is that why you went outside?”
“Screw you!”
“Screw me? I’m serious. Anybody else have a better theory? Why else would they hit a quinceañera? Carmen’s quinceañera? A fifteen-year-old girl who did nothing wrong! It’s because of you and your narco friends and this…crap!”
Arbo rips open the top of the bag.
“Give me the bag.”
“Hell no!”
“It’s mine.”
“Yours? You want to know what belongs to you? Blame. For all of this. I never liked you, but I never had a good reason before. Now I do. I hate you.”
I know I should tell Arbo to stop, to let it go, but I can’t. He’s acting out exactly what I’m feeling. With each revelation, I’m more disgusted t
han before.
Arbo takes the bag and shakes the mota out with wild swings of his arm. The wind, so warm it’s easy to forget it exists, scatters the falling pieces.
“No!” Marcos shouts. He dives for the bag.
Arbo slips out of his path, moving deftly, in a way he seldom does. He kicks the dirt below him to spread the debris even farther.
“What the hell are you doing?” Marcos says, frantically trying to capture the pieces on the ground. “This is all we have!”
“No, no, no! This is why we have nothing! Why don’t you just go off somewhere and die like everybody else did because of this crap.”
“Stop, Arbo!” Gladys yells. “He was just trying to help us.”
“Help?”
“I know it’s not right, but he was doing it for us.”
“You’re as crazy as he is. Listen to me. We wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for him. He’s why we’re orphans. Don’t you get it?”
“You know what? Screw you. You’re wrong. I know why it happened,” Marcos says.
“All of a sudden, you know why. And it wasn’t you? Right.”
“It was your dad. He was in with them,” Marcos says, looking Arbo straight in the eyes.
Arbo charges for him, barreling into his chest head first. Marcos tumbles backward, landing on one of our remaining four-liter jugs of water. Arbo crashes on top of him.
An explosion of water rockets out on both sides of Marcos. Arbo, either oblivious or blinded by rage, helicopters his arms, sending a barrage of blows downward, which Marcos blocks with his forearms.
“Enough!” I yell. This is what I feared—only worse.
I spring toward them to pull Arbo off, but before I can get there, Marcos lands a punch in Arbo’s left eye.
Arbo screams and rolls off Marcos, landing in the wet dirt.
“My eye! You punched my eye, you pendejo!”
“You idiot. That was our water! Screw you! ¡Chinga tu madre muerta!”
Arbo springs to one knee, to vault back toward Marcos. I try to hold him down, but I can’t. My efforts send him sideways. He tumbles into Gladys, knocking her to the ground.
She screams as she falls. “Please stop!”
“Now look what you did!” Marcos says. He’s pointing at Gladys, at the flattened plastic jug of water, at the weed, everywhere. He rushes to Gladys’s side.
“Look what I did?” Arbo asks.
“Yeah, you, you fat freak!”
“How is any of this my fault?”
“Congratulations. You just killed us all.” He grabs a chunk of wet sand and squeezes it.
“You landed on it!”
“Because you pushed me onto it!”
“Are you that stupid?” Arbo asks.
“Stop! Now! Stop!” Gladys shouts.
We all go silent and watch as the dirt between us morphs from wet to damp to simply discolored. The sandy ground soaks up our life before our eyes.
“If you hadn’t brought that mota, none of this would have happened.”
“Shut up. Why don’t you ask your dad why all this happened?”
Again, Arbo tries to go for him, but this time I’m able to hold him down.
“Take it back,” Arbo says.
“No. You know why? Because it’s true.”
“Whatever. You’re nothing but a liar. Vete a la chingada, mentiroso.”
“Did you ever wonder where your dad got all the money for that nice quinceañera? For the ice sculpture? For the band?”
“From hard work, but you wouldn’t know anything about that.”
“No. From narcos. Ortíz knew it too. Do you remember when he came back with the newspaper with all of our pictures? Remember how he didn’t have the article that went with it? You know why? Because it connected your dad.”
“You’re lying,” Arbo says.
“Am I? Pato, you remember seeing me and Ortíz arguing, right?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s why we were arguing. I found out the truth when I snuck away, and then I started thinking about that paper. I asked him if he knew. He did. The whole time. And he didn’t tell you. He didn’t want you to think of your dads that way.”
Dads.
I sink back.
Marcos continues. “So I promised him I wouldn’t tell, unless I had to. Congratulations. Now you know the truth. How’s it taste? You want to talk apologies? You owe me one. Your family got mine killed, cabrón. Which is kind of appropriate, given that you just finished us all off.”
“You’re lying,” Arbo says again. Tears stream down his face. It’s hard to tell if they’re from the hit, or the accusations.
“I think you know that I’m not,” Marcos says.
My mind is awash with memories, all gushing in at once, like pieces of a puzzle it’s trying to assemble. Do I believe this? Can I believe it? Our fathers started their own construction business several years ago. They built houses. I visited them on job sites. I saw them do it. Could they have done both? Houses and drugs? I try to remember if I ever heard my parents have a single conversation about problems with money—I can’t.
“The paper said my dad too?” I ask.
“Yeah. I’m sorry.” Marcos looks at me. I can’t look back. I can barely look at anything right now. The world is spinning. I want to throw up.
“They weren’t selling drugs,” Marcos says. “The paper said they did projects for the gangs…construction work…to hide drugs, secrets rooms and things like that. They got paid not to ask questions and not to talk. I guess they broke the rules. That’s all I know.”
I don’t want to believe it, but the way he tells the story… It sounds credible.
I think back to what Sr. Ortíz said when he talked about his son, Diego.
Knowing what he was is a curse…
It’s my biggest regret…
It spoils the memories…
Then I think about the care he took to tear our pictures out of the paper. It would have been much easier to grab the whole page, or the whole paper for that matter.
Sr. Ortíz knew.
It’s as if every recollection I have of the past several years is suddenly discolored. When I was younger, I never had books. We went to the library. But over the last several years, my parents bought me a book a month. A new book. Any book I wanted.
I remember asking my father a few times on weekends if I could go to work with him. He always had an excuse. The last time, he gave me money for me and Arbo to go to a movie instead. I never questioned it. It never occurred to me to wonder why I couldn’t go to work with him or how he had the money. I just took the cash.
I even think back to the “surprise” my dad had alluded to the night of the quinceañera, which he said wasn’t really a surprise but “news…a change.” What was it?
They were in business with the narcos. And something was changing…
I’m crushed. I was just beginning to accept that my future had been stolen from me, and now I’m being robbed of my past.
Gladys looks toward me. I can’t meet her gaze. Not now. This is too much.
Carefully, Marcos grabs the flattened jug and guides the tiny puddle that lingers on top of it into one of our empty bottles. It’s enough for a few sips at most. Then he begins scouring the desert floor and collecting—piece by piece—what’s left of his marijuana.
“I’m not going with you if you bring that crap,” Arbo says.
“Well you know what? It doesn’t much matter anyway. We’ve only got two liters of water left.”
“Then leave it.”
“Or what? You’ll throw me on top of another bottle?”
Arbo moves to stand. I put my hand on his shoulder and stop him.
Marcos continues to gather the mota. “I’m bringing it. If we get out of here, somebod
y has to take care of us.”
“I’m serious. I’m not taking a step with you. And neither is Pato.”
They both look right at me. It’s a moot point. We only have two liters of water. But if all this really did start with mota, I don’t want it to end with mota too.
“I’m with Arbo,” I say. “No drugs.”
Marcos turns to Gladys, as if we’re picking teams.
“Leave it, Marcos. We don’t need it.”
Marcos stands and chucks what he has out into the void around us. “Fine. But don’t complain to me if we get out of here only to starve to death on the street.”
• • •
The problem with this fight is there’s nowhere to go to calm down. Our options are to roast on our own beneath a fiery sun or to cram ourselves into a small patch of shade and swelter under the tension of being together. We huddle in an explosive mass. Limbs drift in and out of the sun and our bodies shift as we chase the slow-moving shadow beneath the tree. Nobody speaks. It’s better this way. There’s nothing good to talk about.
The reality is that we were in trouble with water before this ever happened. We were already going to run out. But this is devastating. Instead of relishing a sip every now and again, we suffer. We watch the sweat roll off us like blood dripping out of a mortal gash. Soon, it will run out, and so will we.
Sr. Ortíz’s children wrote about wells, but we haven’t seen any yet—wet or dry. We’ll either have to find water, or… There’s really not another option. We have to find water.
And as if this isn’t enough, there are other problems on the horizon—one of them, quite literally. The mountains to our right continue to push us north and ever so slightly west. We think we need to track to the east to hit Ajo, but we have yet to find a good place to turn. We’re hoping for a break in the mountains, but that’s all it is. Hope, which seemed easier to hold on to before all of this.
I think Arbo is sleeping, but suddenly he turns to me. A dark blue lump swells below his eye, pressing it partially shut. He whispers, “Do you believe it?”
I nod my head.
He turns away as if I’ve thrust the final blade in his chest. I wish I could have lied to him again.
I lie awake for a few hours, until my circling thoughts finally exhaust me and I sleep.
The Border Page 15