by Matt Whyman
My mother once told me this had been Alberto’s way of coping with the loss when it finally came, so I never raised the subject again. I figured he’d grown out of it, but now I saw how alive he looked with a gun in his hand. It was as if he had found his calling somehow, a chance to follow in his father’s footsteps – even though his old man had conjured up that path from his deathbed.
‘Alberto,’ I said finally, and waited until I had his full attention. ‘Do you know what you’re getting into here? This isn’t like the old days. We don’t have heroes any more, apart from on the pitch.’
‘Listen to you, Senor Sensible.’
‘I just can’t believe some guy paid you to take his gun.’
‘Why not? He didn’t ask me to use it. I’m just minding it for him, I guess.’
‘Why couldn’t he stash it, same as any gangster?’
‘Who says he’s a gangster, and anyway what would you have done, huh? C’mon, Sonny, I didn’t have much choice. I showed up at Galán’s like I’d been told, got shown into the back room and there he was. Sitting at the table with a coffee and the early edition of El Colombiano. I was only in there for a minute or so. He asked if I wanted to make some easy money, and just came right out with the gun before I could answer. He told me all I had to do was prove I could be trusted to look after it. I couldn’t exactly walk away, but then I didn’t have a problem with staying. I just see the fifty bucks he lays down next to the piece, already I’m thinking about how I can spend it.’
‘El Fantasma,’ I said to myself, chewing on the nickname. ‘What is he, some kind of spook?’
‘That’s not our business,’ Alberto said with a shrug, ‘but let me tell you, I never heard a man speak in such a whisper.’
5
The woman peered at us from behind the toughened glass. Alberto had just dropped the money into the hatch for her to draw through, but something stopped her from collecting it.
‘What’s the matter?’ he asked talking like a tough guy. ‘They’re dollar bills. Dead presidents, every one of them.’
She held his gaze for a moment longer, then sighed and took the money. She gave us some funny looks still, along with a lot of pesos in spare change and two very precious tickets.
‘I cannot wait until next month!’ Alberto practically danced away from the box office. He even kissed the foil-stitched slips before handing one to me. We were going to see Nacional for the very first time. It would be the opening fixture of the season. What’s more, we were playing Medellín rivals, Independiente, which meant it would be more like a fiesta than a football match. If all the Feast Days could be rolled into one, and the saints were given a soccer ball to celebrate, this match would be it. The city would go wild, and I could not wait.
‘I’m not letting mine out of my sight,’ I said, as we rattled down the steps outside the stadium.
‘Don’t keep it in your hot little hand,’ Alberto joked. ‘The ink might run.’ He was wearing a money belt under his vest, and patted it now to show me where he had just put his own ticket for safekeeping. He had found the belt some weeks before, lying in the street. It was empty, of course, and the clasp had taken some fixing from where it had been ripped from the previous owner. I had told him anyone dumb enough to wear such a thing deserved to be robbed, and back then he’d agreed. Now he had been paid to carry a gun. Like the tickets he had just bought with the money, Alberto couldn’t afford to let it out of his sight. Watching him fuss with the belt one more time, I figured it had gone to his head.
‘Alberto, that sticks out a mile. You could be robbed.’
‘Not if I get to it first,’ he said, and used his fingers to fire off some imaginary shots. ‘Come on, let’s get a taxi home.’ I was about to remind him that the money wouldn’t last for ever, but Alberto was already on the sidewalk with his hand raised high. ‘I want to visit the florist and then on to see Mamá. I never bought flowers for her before. You should do the same thing, Sonny. I’ll lend you the cash if you like.’
I stayed outside when Alberto walked in with the lilies. The factory where his mother machined pillowcases for a living wasn’t much bigger than Galán’s store. It was south from our block, further downhill, with a grille across the window that was too high for me to peek inside. Alberto had said his mother would most probably cry and he didn’t want anyone else to see that. I waited there with my back to the wall, cupping my eyes from the sun. After a minute, however, I had to turn – not because of the glare but all the shouting that had just started up. Alberto left like a grenade with a stuck pin. He slammed the door shut behind him, his face and ears flushed red. ‘I should’ve just showed her how I got the money,’ he spat, his voice pitched high as ever. ‘That would’ve shut her up.’
Part of me wanted to go back and tell his mother that I would talk some sense into him, but I didn’t dare upset Alberto any more. I followed him up the hill, struggling to stay with him. It was close to midday, and the heat had already pushed most people inside. The volume always dropped at this time of day, apart from the dogs and parakeets, which is why we both picked up on the fact that a motor was slowing behind us. I glanced over my shoulder. It was a green Dodge that had seen better days, though the throb and growl from under the bonnet made it clear this was a muscle car. You could always hear them coming in this city – standard issue vehicles with a beast of an engine packed inside. A plastic Madonna hung from the rear-view mirror, along with one of those freshener things that sometimes made me feel sick. The driver had the window down already, and as the Dodge drew level it seemed that he was looking right through both of us. It was only when he called out to Alberto that I realised one eye looked a little dead.
‘Jump in, hombre.’
Our street smarts told us to ignore him, even though he was cruising right beside us now. We weren’t dumb. A stranger offers you a lift for no reason, he wants to interfere with you, hold you to ransom or murder you – sometimes one after the other.
‘Alberto,’ the man barked, ‘do you hear?’ My friend swung around at this, still moving with me but looking less sure of himself. ‘I don’t know you, man.’
‘Boss wants to see you. He says to bring the heat you’ve been minding.’
Alberto stopped, as did the Dodge with a rasp of the handbrake. I hung back as my friend went across to him, feeling awkward and uneasy. The driver was way into his fifties, and looked as worn out as his car. He was wearing a short-sleeved shirt with pelicans and palm trees on it, but his mood was far from sunny. He spoke a few words to Alberto, jabbed a thumb over his shoulder and my friend just left me there on the sidewalk.
‘I’ll see you later,’ he said, ducking into the back seat. All the fury in him from that row with his mother had gone now, and I wondered if I should go fetch her. I waited for him to roll down the window, thinking he might tell me to fetch help, but all he did was look out at me.
The Dodge moved off with a lurch, quickly gathering speed. I watched the car make the corner, Alberto looking straight ahead, and then the street was empty again: silent but for a barking dog and a crappy radio coming out of an open window.
People always say that springtime lasts for ever in Medellín, so when the hot days hit, the city simply stews. My clothes clung to my skin that afternoon. Even the walls inside our apartment looked like they were close to breaking into a sweat. The place was exactly the same as all the others in the barrio: one big room divided by curtains and screens. I had gone back there to fix up something to eat, and just knew that Uncle Jairo was in before opening the door. I had heard him hawking and spitting up phlegm from the street, which didn’t do much for my appetite. My mother was shopping for groceries, so he said, which meant he was free to hassle me about where I’d been and what I was doing with my life.
I sliced up a mango and took it to the window ledge with some salt and a fork, but wasn’t in much of a mood to talk. I kept telling myself not to worry about Alberto. He knew what he was doing, just as I was sure I could’ve t
aken care of myself in the same situation. I was a bit put out that I hadn’t been invited along for the ride, which is why I wanted to finish eating without being hassled by my uncle.
‘Your poor mother.’ That was what he always came back to, like he wasn’t mostly to blame for the fact that she had to work twice as hard to keep him. ‘Did she bring you into this world just so you could depend on her for food and a place to sleep? I think not, Sonny. Jesus Christ, look at you!’
My uncle was all smoke and no fire. He just kind of smouldered day and night. He certainly sounded like he was all burned out on the inside, the way he cursed and coughed and wheezed. We shared some family features – same build and untamed pride – and you only had to look at our saucer ears to see that we were related. But that’s where the similarity stopped. His skin was paper-thin and ashtray grey, while every bone in his body seemed to be a source of misery when he moved. OK, he had breathing difficulties, but it was his bitterness about it that caused the most suffering. Sometimes I wondered if the man had a good word to say about anything. If he wasn’t bitching at me he was moaning about los americanos – who he blamed for his lot in life. It didn’t stop him from watching their soap operas and sports, but he always did so like it was a punishment, not a pleasure.
‘Know your enemy,’ he once advised me. ‘Even if you have to learn to live with it.’
Uncle Jairo had come here to stay when I was five, at a time when he could barely speak because of what had happened to his lungs. He had been working in the south of the country on a coca plantation. To him, like most labourers, the crop was just that: a bunch of leaves bound up with twine that paid for their food and lodging. What happened to it afterwards was not his business, but the Americans didn’t see things that way. They had pledged to destroy such a crop at source since it began to arrive as a powder on their street corners.
The attack happened close to harvest. My uncle had been appointed to check for weed and signs of infestation: anything that might harm the coca leaf. The plantation clung to a steep slope, almost a ravine according to Jairo who always liked to talk it up. He claimed that working there could cripple even the fittest, most upright men, but that’s not what he blamed for his condition. According to his account, he had noted the distant drone but didn’t react until a machine gun woke up the valley.
He knew there were nests around here, set up by his employers, but had never expected to see so much gunfire spit from the trees. As the shots rattled out all the birds in the valley took flight, but it was too late for Jairo to follow. By now the incoming noise was almost upon him, and peaked when a small aircraft sprung over the ridge. It banked low across the plantation, before pulling up and turning corkscrews into the sky. Shocked and in a spin himself, my uncle had taken a moment before registering the drizzle that fell in its wake. It had an oily feel between his thumb and forefinger, he said, and a strong chemical smell. That’s when he came to his senses, covered his mouth with his shirt and ran. Every worker in the plantation did likewise, but it was too late to escape. All of them came down from the fields with streaming eyes and a cough some said could never be cured.
That day, word was that the Americans had destroyed a dozen plantations in the region: spraying each one with a pesticide many call poison. The coca lords simply moved deeper into the mountains to start again, but Jairo didn’t join them. With his health doomed, he had no choice but to turn to his closest family member for support. He made his way to Medellín, a journey from hell so he claimed, only to find his brother was no longer with us.
Uncle Jairo looked very different back then. When he crouched to shake my little hand, I even thought my father had returned. It was his explosive coughing fits that made me wary, but they were enough to persuade his sister-in-law to take him in.
Before his arrival, our neighbours had considered my mother to be widowed. Maybe they just pitied her predicament, but still they treated her with due respect. All that changed, however, once my uncle began to eat his meals at the head of our table, and went on to share her bed.
I would lay down my life for my mother, as any son should, but I would do nothing for the man who stole her heart from his very own brother. Such is the shame he brought to our house that my grandparents and several cousins disowned us completely. I just wish I could’ve done the same thing. Instead, he became all we had. At first it was his wheezing lungs that scared me, but even after I conquered that he remained a monster in my eyes. The weaker Jairo became, the more he saw me as a threat to his place in the home. Mostly I could switch off from all the hassle he directed at me. But the afternoon Alberto took off in that Dodge, as I worried about my friend and even what I had missed out on, my uncle got right under my skin.
‘The way you run away from your responsibilities, Sonny, it’s an insult to the family name.’ That was what he said, almost spitting the words over my plate. I looked up, found him picking his ear. ‘You’re so like your father, I guess that’s no surprise.’
I didn’t know what he meant, but I still kicked back my chair and reminded him that he had no right to speak like that here.
‘This was my house first!’ I snapped, squaring up to him now. ‘It doesn’t matter how long you’ve been here, you’ll always be the uninvited guest!’
For, a second Jairo looked stunned, even when he climbed to his feet. I just stood there and let him rise over me, amazed that I had silenced anyone, if only for a moment. Then I took a punch to the side of the head and ran for the door before he could see how much it had hurt.
Alberto was the only person who never judged me. When some of the kids in the barrio once dared to suggest my mother scratched a living by selling her body to businessmen, he straightened them out right away. It didn’t matter that he sounded like Mickey Mouse with a bad attitude. It was his presence that persuaded people to leave it alone.
‘You got something to say to my friend,’ was all he had to say. ‘First you clear it with me.’
Alberto had issues of his own at home, but nobody poked fun at his family. I felt safe being with him, and wished he was around as I headed out into the heat. I was mad with my uncle, but I couldn’t go back inside now. Not until my mother was home to keep the peace between us.
It wasn’t the first time Jairo had hit me. My uncle liked to use his fists when words failed him, which they often did when his lungs let him down. I took a whack from him most days, but this was the first time I had earned it by standing my ground. It left me feeling shaken but surprised at myself. Just like when Alberto and I had left Galán with a body in the back room.
I drifted for a long while, wishing my ear would stop stinging. Eventually I wound up watching the game going on in the cage behind the pool hall, and that took my mind off things. The cage was supposed to be for basketball, but the hoops had been stolen long ago. It wasn’t that great for soccer, either, what with clumps of weeds in the cracks, but the high fencing made up for that. A lot of guys from the market liked to come out here when they could, which meant a never-ending game took place with players coming and going all the time.
Nobody asked me to join in, of course. I could’ve shown them a trick or two had they given me a chance, but to them I was just a kid: some nobody on the wrong side of the fence, chewing at his thumbnails and kicking up grit. Alberto would know to look for me here, but after an hour I grew tired of waiting. I figured Galán would know where he was, but as I reached his store I found I couldn’t bring myself to enter. One glimpse through that door was enough to spook me, and I walked on by with my head down.
I was cross at myself when this happened, and all the more determined to make my mark on the day. That’s why I decided to make sure I had some money in my pocket before I looked for my friend again. It wasn’t hard to earn a few pesos, no matter how bad things got around here, especially if you had a skill. Like most boys my age, I knew how to strip a motorbike for spare parts. It was just a question of asking around at the market, and making a nuisance of myself un
til I got the work I wanted. My hands were filthy by the time I tracked down Alberto, but I had some coins in my pocket to show for it.
As it turned out, my friend needed to clean up more urgently than I did, while the cash he had to show me simply took my breath away.
6
‘It’s done now.’ This was all he would say when I asked where he had been, and even then he refused to look me in the eye. Alberto had answered my knock at the door, and then walked right back into the kitchen area with my question chasing after him. I found him standing at the sink, with his back to me.
‘Man,’ he muttered next, ‘I need a smoke.’
‘I can buy some,’ I said brightly, and dropped my stash of pesos on to the table. Alberto had the sink tap running and was scrubbing at something with a nailbrush. He was still wearing that money belt of his, his vest all caught up in it at the back. When my coins hit the surface he glanced over his shoulder, but didn’t seem as pleased as I had hoped. I asked him what he wanted: Hidalgos or Lucky Strike? Alberto said either would be good, and some cigarette papers for the grass he had in his back pocket.
‘You got dope?’
‘Is what I just said, dumbass.’
‘Alberto …’ I trailed off there, tipped my head to one side. ‘Is everything OK?’
One time we had made a delivery to the airport for Galán, and earned ourselves a ready rolled reefer as a tip. Our contact there said he could always help us out on that front, and even some powder if we were interested, but we never went back for more. Alberto had been eager to fire up the joint on the way home, but after a couple of hits he let me smoke the rest. It clearly hadn’t gone down well with him, and I quickly realised why. Now here he was inviting me to get some papers so we could both feel quietly sick all over again.
Alberto reached for a dishcloth, and I pressed him to explain what was going on.
‘It’s a gift. No big deal. What else could I do? Say no?’