Among the Lost

by Emiliano Monge

  Lighting a cigarette for himself, Sepelio blows tiny smoke rings and puts the box of matches on the dashboard: as he does so, he sees the car stereo and thinks perhaps music might ease the strained atmosphere between the three men travelling together. ‘You mind if I put on some music?’ Sepelio ventures, tossing the pack of cigarettes on his lap on to the dashboard.

  ‘Of course you fucking can’t,’ Epitafio barks, removing and replacing his cap several times with the hand holding his cigarette: ‘What happens if she calls and we don’t hear it? I don’t even want to hear people talking,’ HewhosolovesEstela says, exhaling another plume of smoke, and, revving the engine of the truck, he stares at Mausoleo for a second: the giant is playing with the matchbox he picked up from the dashboard.

  Striking a match and blowing it out, then another, and another, like an idiot stripping petals from a dead flower, Mausoleo hesitates between the flame and the smoke. And yet each time he blows out the match about to burn his fingers, the giant feels as though he is extinguishing the inferno of doubts blazing in his mind: he overheard the phone call between Sepelio and the man they call Father Nicho.

  As smoke continues to fill the cab — the windows of the Minos cannot be wound down, since, like the windscreen, they are bulletproof — and the three men gradually retreat into their minds, their silence, while the timeless creatures in the back of the truck, their hands bound, their feet shackled to strange weights, continue to pour forth what they carry deep inside and, in doing so, recall their past.

  Another said … ‘I am from Enseguay … and a migrant … I’ve travelled this road many times … I’ve seen a lot of terrible things … but nothing like this … This can’t be real … It can’t be happening … To have left everything for this … It can’t be true … My four brothers … My old woman … My two orange trees … I can’t believe it … All my tools … This can’t be happening.’

  Roused by the lights of a town that has suddenly appeared in the distance, Epitafio stretches out his hand, stubs out his cigarette, picks up the matches Mausoleo put back on the dashboard, grabs the pack of cigarettes, takes out another, lights it and, after coughing once or twice, says: ‘We’re only going to stop at my place for a minute … I want to drop off a couple of boxes … We’ll drop them off, say hello, and set off again … You’ll see, we’ll be on the road again in no time.’

  As HewhosolovesEstela trails off, the silence inside the cab swells and Mausoleo, who opened his eyes when he heard Epitafio’s voice, now closes them and nods off as Sepelio laughs to himself: he knows that in talking about his house, Epitafio is thinking about Estela. The woman who has just climbed out of her truck and ordered the captain to get out and come with her.

  V

  ‘Hurry up, and don’t come back unless you’ve got good news,’ Estela shouts, staring into the distance as the captain turns on the headlights of the truck: El Chorrito has turned on to a road swallowed by the darkness that leads to the checkpoint at La Cañada.

  The far-off braying of two donkeys and the bleating of a herd of goats interrupted by the rhythmic tinkling of their tiny bells fills the space with sounds like sparks that puncture the weary drone of the engines of the battered trailer trucks.

  ‘If you’re not back in half an hour, we’ll go ourselves!’ Estela warns, watching as the figure of El Chorrito melts away at the border between the darkness and the light. ‘Get back here within half an hour or we’ll go apeshit!’ ShewhoadoresEpitafio calls after him, and as she does so she hears the little bells tinkle faster, reminding her suddenly of the bells back at the orphanage: Why would Father Nicho have pretended that you called him?

  Lying fucking priest, Estela thinks as the bells are hushed then, hearing a distant howl that announces the presence of a coyote somewhere beyond the donkeys and the goats. She turns and tells the drivers to shut off their engines. The stillness of the metal hulks calms the men loyal to Estela, worries the bodiless creatures trapped in the blue pickup truck and startles the nameless in the blood-red truck, who carry on listening to the eldest of all those who have come from other lands.

  Your life lines are much clearer … Your future is obvious … You will meet the man who even now is waiting for you … Together you will have many children … and a good job awaits you … The man you have dreamed of for so many years … The job you have always wanted … You will fill crates with fruit … Your children will help you.

  Hearing the barking of the dogs warning the coyote: Don’t come near!, ShewhoadoresEpitafio turns back to the dark road, scans for the figure of El Chorrito in the sea of shadows that drowns the beams from her headlights of her huge truck and, unable to find him, chokes back the warning that has been straining at her gritted teeth: half an hour, no more!

  But having already opened her mouth and already loosened her tongue, Estela mutters: ‘Fucking Nicho … What were you doing making that up? … What do you get out of it?’ Then, turning back to stare at the convoy she is leading, ShewhoadoresEpitafio shouts to her men: ‘Better be on your guard!

  ‘Everyone needs to be on the alert!’ Estela says, and, making her way back to the spot where her men and her battered trucks are parked, she adds: ‘Have your weapons at the ready … You never know, they might appear out of nowhere!’ Just as Estela’s cry dies away, the coyote howls again, farther off now, but this time no dogs bark: the coyote has announced its departure.

  ‘What the fuck are you still doing in the trucks?’ Estela roars a minute later, and to her men the roar is like a brutal shove in the back: they had not realised that their boss wanted them out of the trucks. ‘All of you, get behind a rock!’ ShewhoadoresEpitafio orders when her men are standing on the rocky sierra: ‘They could show up here, all guns blazing!’

  This word, blazing, violates the soulless creatures still sprawled on the floor of the blue truck and the godless still caged inside the red truck, their legs swinging back and forth, breaking up the circle they had formed around the old man.

  Don’t pay any heed to what you hear … Nothing is going to happen to us here … I don’t see any fires up ahead … I don’t see or hear any shots being fired in the air … Come back over here to me … You give me your hand … Nothing is going to happen here … I swear … Please, everyone, stay calm!

  Fucking bastard Nicho … I knew you were up to something … I should never have gone to the orphanage! Estela thinks, curled up behind a rock and, watching her men hunker or crouch down, calls out: ‘No one fire, even if they show up firing … Don’t shoot unless you see me shoot first!’

  Two minutes pass and then, from the distance, comes the braying of the two donkeys, the bleating of the goats and the howl of the coyote is now so far away that it is difficult to distinguish the howl from the wind, which suddenly whistles across La Cañada, surprising the men clutching their weapons: El Chorrito, who is approaching the checkpoint he commanded until recently, the soldiers who were reassigned here only yesterday, and ShewhoadoresEpitafio, who hugs her knees against the biting cold swept in by the wind. But as she hugs herself, the only thing Estela can do is remember Epitafio’s arms around her.

  Why do I only want you to listen to me when I decide? … I should have phoned you already … I should have told you: told you that something strange is going on! Estela thinks and, hugging herself harder, she adds: But I don’t want you listening to me only when you decide … If I call you, you’ll never learn to respect me … You won’t listen to what I need to say. You won’t hear what I have to tell you about Father fucking Nicho.

  The wind whipping across the sierra grows strong as Estela tightens her grip on her knees, drawing from the rocks the sounds and the voices of the creatures who years ago lived in this place and now are merely dust. This stony, deep and icy song sharpens the senses of El Chorrito, who, moments earlier, reached the checkpoint at La Cañada, of the officers greeting him, of the men clutching their weapons and of ShewhoadoresEpi
tafio.

  I need to tell you what’s going on with us and what’s going on with Father Nicho … but first I need you to call me, to realise that I haven’t told you, Estela thinks, relaxing her embrace and rubbing her arms in an attempt to bring back the warmth the wind is leaching from her body: I want you to call me … to call and realise that when it is you who calls, I’m different … though who knows whether you’ll listen when I tell you that that bastard Father Nicho is up to something … that he’s not the man he used to be.

  I said as much today and you didn’t listen to me … I don’t want to go to El Paraíso … That’s what I said and it was as if I hadn’t said a word … You’ve never listened when it comes to that fucking idiot … ‘Why would you listen now that he’s changed,’ ShewhoadoresEpitafio mutters angrily and, though she cannot know it, her words put a snake on its guard.

  The snake slithering between the rocks stops and curls up as it hears the woman threatening: ‘You never fucking listen when it comes to Father Nicho … Certainly not that he’s changed … as though there’s something between the two of you … as if nothing has happened.

  ‘Fucking bastards,’ Estela grunts, then suddenly stops herself and addresses herself to someone else: from Epitafio she moves on to Father Nicho, and, in doing so, her voice rises as she spits the words. ‘Fucking bastard … I knew you’d grow tired of me … as if I’d never seen you lose interest in others.’

  Among the rocks up in the sierra, while Estela continues to mutter to herself, the snake constricts the knot it has become, shakes its rattle and probes the air with its tongue.

  ‘Fucker … I knew you’d betray us sooner or later!’ ShewhoadoresEpitafio grumbles. ‘So what betrayal have you got in store today? … What the fuck have you been plotting?’ Then she jumps to her feet, having heard the ominous rattle of the snake. Estela feels a shudder run down her spine as she scans the dark ground for the snake, but carries on talking to herself: Where are you planning to betray us, you evil fucking shit?

  It’s bound to be at the checkpoint up ahead, Estela concludes and, unable to see the snake, turns as slowly as she can. Evil son of a bitch priest … ‘This is what we get after all these years?’ ShewhoadoresEpitafio murmurs as she continues to slowly move away from the sound of the coiled creature on the ground about to lunge at her: ‘I said it to Epitafio a thousand times … but you think that with us everything will be different!’

  By the time the rattlesnake falls silent again, Estela has once more changed the person she is addressing: I told you until I was sick of telling you … in the end, he’ll toss us aside, too! But then, realising that the threat is imminent, she puts even Epitafio from her mind and, quickening her pace, she yells to her men: ‘It’s a trap … The checkpoint up ahead, it’s an ambush!’

  Meanwhile, at that same checkpoint, El Chorrito is explaining to the officers on duty what Father Nicho told him back at the orphanage and what he repeated a moment ago when El Chorrito spoke to him — he has just hung up his phone. He said it would be better not to keep her too long … keep her waiting, waste her time, but not too much, the captain says, toying with the cable of his phone, coiling it around his fingers just as the words are coiled around his tongue, then he reiterates: no need to make her waste time too much time when they’re wasting her time.

  ‘He told me he spoke to his men a little while ago,’ El Chorrito adds, untangling the cable as he tries to disentangle the words in his mouth. ‘That he’s already talked to his men and that they’re on time … That they will be there on time, so you should let her through. Take your time, but let her through. Then, dragging his gammy leg up to the barrier where he spent so many years in command, El Chorrito regains his composure and his fluency and says: ‘Now go and hide and make like there’s no one here … as if I got here and the place was deserted.

  ‘You have to make sure she gets through after you hold her up,’ El Chorrito says again, glancing back at the path that led him to this place, peering into the black darkness, straining to hear the hum of Estela’s Ford Lobo or the two pickup trucks towards which ShewhoadoresEpitafio is now running, ranting: ‘What the fuck? … Did you hear what I said?

  ‘We’re going to head over that way … ‘I’m not going to let myself be fucked over by that bastard,’ Estela growls and her voice brings the men springing from their hiding places behind the rocks and dashing across the rocky path: ‘We’ll show those sons of bitches! We’ll ambush the traitors that Father Nicho sent here!’ Estela shouts, and this time it is the nameless who hear her words.

  Don’t be afraid … Nothing is going to happen to us here … Pay no attention to the shouting … Just stay here, side by side … Don’t let your hands tremble … What I see in your hands is destiny … You too will live for many more years yet … You too will find a new life over there … on the other side.

  Little by little, the voice of the eldest of all those who have come from other lands soothes the soulless huddled in the blood-red pickup: but in the pale-blue pickup, there is not a single word to calm the bodiless still lying on the floor, who now begin to tremble as they hear Estela’s voice in the distance: ‘Get back into the fucking trucks … He was planning to set a trap for us … Well, we’ll show him what we think of his trap!’

  Watching her men, who, having darted between the dark shadows are now climbing into the battered trucks, ShewhoadoresEpitafio says: ‘I want every man in position with his weapon at the ready … We’ll go in all guns blazing! We’ll annihilate them.’ Then she walks back to her huge trailer truck, thinking: It was a fucking stupid idea to hang around here … I should have realised what was going on.

  As she climbs into the Ford Lobo, Estela turns her head, surveys the convoy and calls out: ‘We’re not even going to stop … When we get there, we shoot anything that moves!’ Then she turns the key in the ignition and floors the accelerator, silently repeating to herself: Bastard fucking Nicho … You don’t give a shit about all the work, all the years we gave you.

  A roar of engines trails the convoy following Estela and, in its wake, the dust stirred up by the tyres slowly settles, like a wave just beginning to swell: with every metre, the Ford Lobo and the two battered pickups accelerate, and from inside comes the clack and clatter of shotgun cartridges.

  Alerted by the rumble of the engines, the dogs who were barking at the coyote scrabble to their feet and begin barking into the wind, which is blowing ever stronger. ‘That’s it … blow as hard as you like … cloak the convoy in a dust storm,’ ShewhoadoresEpitafio says, just as El Chorrito sees the distant convoy bearing down on him, and those stationed at the checkpoint seconds earlier search for a rock crevice to swallow them up.

  What am I going to say to her now? El Chorrito thinks, raising his arms and frantically waving them in the air as the wind sets the dust dancing in the wake of the trucks closing in at breakneck speed that must surely brake soon. ‘How the hell am I going to convince her there was no one stationed here?’ mutters the man who is only skin and bone, just as Estela thinks: I forgot about that fuckwit!

  ‘You have to be mixed up in this plot … You must have cut a deal with Father Nicho!’ Estela mutters, and, as she draws closer to El Chorrito, wonders whether she should stop or run over the little shit, who is still silently thinking to himself: How am I going to convince you? … How can I explain why I hung around for so long if there wasn’t a soul here?

  ‘You’re working for the fucker Nicho … How could you do this to Epitafio?’ Estela whispers, still unsure whether to speed up or stop: a split-second before she crushes the captain, who has closed his eyes and steeled himself, she makes her decision and slams on the Ford Lobo’s brakes. Then, throwing open the door and jumping down, Estela says: ‘What the fuck is going on?

  ‘What the fuck are you doing?’ ShewhoadoresEpitafio repeats, pacing up and down as the two pickup trucks screech to a halt: the men clutching their weapons jump
down, too, and the voiceless, in the pale-blue pickup, are thrown across the floor. The timeless in the blood-red pickup, however, grip each other’s hands and manage not to lose their balance as they listen to the oldest among them.

  My judgment tells me … You will know just vengeance for what has happened … Listen to what I have to tell you … My words offer you a great verdict … Though the time is dark and you can see nothing … the sun will rise for you and a sprawling valley of glorious years will open up before you.

  While her men scatter, and the dust raised by the trucks mingles with the dust whipped up by the wind now lashing the checkpoint and the soldiers who ran off to hide, Estela walks towards El Chorrito: ‘What the fuck is going on?’

  ‘It’s deserted.’

  ‘What the hell are you on about?’

  ‘There’s no one here.’

  ‘How can there be no one here?’ Estela asks as she reaches the captain, silently thinking: Hijo de puta.

  ‘I’ve been over every inch of the place, and there’s no one here,’ El Chorrito insists, while a voice inside him whispers: She doesn’t believe a word.

  ‘I don’t believe you … There has to be someone in one of the huts.’

  ‘I couldn’t believe it either,’ El Chorrito says. ‘They must have left this afternoon … It sometimes happens with new recruits.’

  ‘It sometimes happens?’ ShewhoadoresEpitafio takes a step forward, forcing the captain to recoil.

  ‘They get scared in the night … I’ve seen it before.’

  ‘You’ve seen it before?’

  ‘It’s not easy, getting through the first night,’ says the man all skin and bone, and once again he hears a voice inside him: That’s it … keep going … She’s starting to believe you. ‘It gets dark and they want to leave … They probably didn’t have a captain or a lieutenant with them.’

  ‘They wouldn’t be hiding around here somewhere?’ Estela says, her eyes boring into El Chorrito, and, taking another step forward, she orders her men to shoulder their weapons.