When she stepped out, she reached up and pulled down the metal shutter that rumbled like a freight train, and the store went dark.
I swept the front, locked the door and walked to the back. The place was a mess, but at least Lucio was already wiping down the counters. “Before you sweep,” he said, “start with the wood scraps.”
“I know, I know.” I grabbed the broom and started at the corner where we usually piled the wood for the oven.
Lucio leaned over the counter and raised the volume on the radio. A woman’s sad, high-pitched voice belted out a ranchera. The music reminded me of my mother. I was beginning to hate that music.
Lucio dumped all the leftover bread in a small plastic bin. Then there was a knock on the back door.
It was a group of about a dozen kids, all of them niños pobres like the ones who begged at the plaza and picked trash from the dump. Lucio let them inside and they formed a neat line along the wall. At first they were quiet, hiding their hands behind their backs, staring at me with their big dark eyes. They smelled of dirt and rot. One of the older boys nudged a younger one and they looked down at the floor, shuffled their feet.
“Buenas tardes,” Lucio said.
They all spoke at the same time, saying they were doing well, thanking him, promising they had been good. One of the boys said his mother had been praying for Lucio.
Lucio ruffled his hair. “Tell her thanks.” He wheeled the bin with the bread closer to the door and dropped three bolillos in the boy’s bag. “There you go, mijo.”
“Gracias, Señor Lucio. Que Dios lo bendiga.”
Each kid told Lucio some anecdote of the good they had done. They updated him about their families. Lucio dropped a few bolillos into every bag. One girl even kissed his hand the way we sometimes kiss the priest’s hand.
After the children left and he’d shut the door, Lucio saw me staring at him. “What?”
“You just give the bread away?”
“They’re hungry.” He wheeled the empty bin to a corner.
“But are we allowed to do that?”
“Allowed by whom?” He leaned over the counter and turned off the radio.
“I don’t know, my father?”
“He knows. Sometimes he comes back here and helps.” Lucio grabbed his morral and turned off the light in the storage closet.
“He never said anything about it.”
“Why should he?”
“I don’t know, he—”
“Listen, mijo. Your father was a good man. Don’t think—”
“Was?” I cried. “You think he’s dead?”
Lucio bowed his head. “I don’t know, mijo. I don’t know what to think anymore.”
“I don’t want him to be dead.”
“No one wants that. Certainly not me, Liberio. Down here,” he said and tapped his chest, “I wish there was something I could do. I just don’t know what.”
“Me too,” I whispered. “I feel so…” I wiped the tears from my eyes. “…lost.”
He nodded and rested a gentle hand on my shoulder. “Courage, mijo.”
At least he didn’t tell me to be patient or have faith or that everything was going to be all right. I went to the front and double-checked the locks on the register and turned off the lights. When I met him at the back door, he looked sad, guilty.
“You know,” I said, “if Santo were here, he could help. He could find them.”
“I know.”
“Did you hear they found a leg by the Yonke?”
He nodded and switched the light off. Then he reached over the altar and extinguished the flame of the veladoras with his fingers. We stepped outside into the alley. It was getting dark. Dogs were barking across the street and further down the road.
“Do you remember what kind of shoes my father was wearing when he left for Toluca?” I asked.
“It wasn’t his leg. Paquito told me it had to belong to a short man.”
“But my father wasn’t that tall.”
“He was taller than most.”
There was something gentle about the way Lucio said things. I had so many questions for him. I wanted to know more about my father. I wanted to ask him about what the owner of El Centenario had told me. Sometimes I felt as if I didn’t even know him. My brain was flooded with so much information. And yet it was also full of holes. There were so many things I didn’t get. And things I was afraid of knowing. It was so complicated I couldn’t sort any of it out. I just stared at Lucio’s dark eyes and his messy gray hair spilling along the sides of his old straw hat and the halo of the street light behind him. I wanted to hug him.
“Come on.” He touched my shoulder. “We both need to get some sleep so we can be sharp in the morning.”
When I got home, I went straight to my parents’ bedroom and checked my father’s closet. There was a pair of clean cowboy boots, plastic flip-flops, unused sneakers, and a pair of nasty, old leather huaraches. No dressy shoes, black or brown.
Maybe he wore brown shoes, not black. I sat on the corner of the bed and tried to remember his shoes. I remembered him wearing his boots at church. I remembered him in his sneakers. He’d gotten into a health kick a couple of years ago. Every evening after dinner he’d go walking with my mother, but it didn’t last and the sneakers were abandoned in the back of the closet. And the flip-flops. I remembered him standing on the side of the lake in Tequesquitengo with his shorts and no shirt and flip-flops. And I remember him telling me the huaraches had belonged to his father. He’d said he kept them as a reminder of how poor they had been.
I had no memory of dressy shoes. It was as if someone or something had erased the memories. And suddenly, I was gripped with a new and horrible fear: What if I forgot my parents? If they never came back, would I forget our vacations in Acapulco? And the time we went horseback riding in La Marquesa. Or when my father punished me by having me wash his car—and then, when he came out to help me, I accidentally sprayed him with the hose and we laughed together for like an hour. Would I forget my mother’s smile and how she touched my cheek whenever I was sad? The way she calmed my father when he got angry at me. Or when she came into my room after Gaby and I had an argument and told me not to pay too much attention to how angry I was, but to focus on how much I really loved my sister.
And her smell. Oh, her smell. I was already forgetting her smell.
12.
The following Friday, I met Mosca outside the Minitienda so we could go shine shoes together, but I didn’t want to hit the plaza again and have to deal with Joaquín and his friends. I suggested we check out the cantinas.
My father didn’t allow me to go into the cantinas, especially El Gallo de Oro. It had a bad reputation. So we went into La Gloria, just down the street from the Minitienda. I was surprised at how small it was on the inside. I’d heard all kinds of stories about it, so I imagined a big place, kind of like Zopilote’s parents’ restaurant—big and wide open. La Gloria was dark with small brick columns and a cupola-like ceiling where cigarette smoke hung like thick blue fog. There was a long wooden bar at one end and a few square tables set around a broken fountain where someone had put a big stuffed toy, a panda with a black cowboy hat. It looked ridiculous.
I followed Mosca and avoided eye contact. The men sitting at one of the tables closest to the door sounded real drunk, arguing about an actor in a movie and whether he had been the same guy they had seen somewhere in Mexico City. They slammed their glasses and bottles against the tabletop. Everything about them was loud and exaggerated—their gestures, their laughter, their drunkenness.
The cantinero, a big ugly man with thick sideburns and a Pancho Villa mustache, kept his little beady eyes on us as we traveled from table to table.
“I’ll take that side.” Mosca pointed to the left. “You go that way and take the back.”
I weaved between the small tables, pointing at shoes and looking for gestures from hands or eyes, watching for a nod. Sometimes the drunks smiled at me, but no one no
dded. I thought of all the times Mosca bragged about shining shoes at the cantinas as if they were a goldmine. I was striking out big time. It was just me, the sound of drunks and the strange stench of stale liquor and Pino floor cleaner. Then, as I came around the jukebox, a tall man sitting alone gestured for me to come.
He was a gentle-looking man, about my father’s age. He had light brown eyes, almost yellow, and his hair was slicked back with pomade. He had the dimples and lines of a person who liked to smile. A long thin scar ran from the bottom of his chin to the side of his lip.
He leaned back on his chair and stretched out his legs, exposing a fine pair of boots. I set my box down and got to work. The boots were of caiman leather and had the backside of the animal running along the front of the boot. At the top, a pair of claws gripped both ends so it looked as if the boot was half animal. They had to be handmade. I had seen all kinds of caiman boots before, but never like this, with such careful attention at how the leather and the animal blended into the boot. If I ever got rich, I thought, this was going to be the first thing I’d buy: a pair of custom-made caiman boots just like these.
I worked a combination of dark brown, tan and clear grease into the leather. I wanted to be faithful to the original color. The boots were not scuffed or mistreated, but they were dusty and had lost their luster. They were my first shine of the night. I was going to make it the best.
I glanced at the man as I worked, but he wasn’t paying attention. He just sat, leaning back on his chair, his eyes fixed on the entrance of the cantina, one hand resting on the table, fingers loose around a shotglass of tequila. His other hand lay against his belt, just to the left of his stomach.
When I finished, he didn’t look at me or at his boots. His eyes remained glued to the front. He smiled like a blind man—not looking but knowing—and reached into his pant’s pocket with his fingers. That’s when I saw the gun, a chrome-plated, escuadra automatic with a mother-of-pearl handle and the emblem of Mexico embossed in gold. He stretched his hand out and gave me a rolled-up fifty-peso bill.
I dug into my pocket for change, but in a deep mellow voice, he said, “Keep it.”
Mosca was in the middle of the rowdy group we’d passed when we first walked in. He was squatting at the head of his box, leaning over, his arms moving back and forth with the brush, polishing a man’s boots.
I stood a little ways away. There was no one else in the cantina that we hadn’t approached. The men beside me were leaning forward, their heads almost coming together near the center of the table. They talked quietly of someone who was in prison somewhere. They had accents from the north, Nuevo León or Chihuahua.
“¡Niño!” The cantinero yelled. He was leaning over the counter, staring at me. “You done?”
I nodded.
“Go on then.”
Outside it was a crisp night, cool and clear and very dark. I set my box down and leaned against the stone wall. A while later, Mosca walked out swinging his shoeshine box back and forth as if he was getting ready to throw it into the street.
“How’d it go?”
“Fifty varos,” he said, and held up the bills. “And you?”
We crossed the street. “The same.”
“See, didn’t I tell you? Let’s go to El Gallo de Oro.”
“No. I’m good.”
“We can clean up.”
“That man had a gun, güey.”
“So? People have guns.”
I stopped walking. “Maybe he was a policeman, you know, working undercover.” I was thinking of my parents. If he was a cop, he might help me find them.
“No chingues, Boli.”
“Why not, it’s totally possible.”
“You watch too many Santo movies.”
“You watch them too, cabrón.”
A pair of headlights moved slowly down the road in our direction. Mosca looked at me. I was scared, not of the car, but the whole scene. I suddenly wished I’d never gone inside La Gloria.
The car making its way down the hill was a black Chevy Cheyenne double cab pickup with tinted windows. As it came level with us, it stopped. The driver’s window slid down and we got a whiff of cigarette smoke and vanilla.
“What’s going on, ¿muchachos?”
“Nothing,” Mosca said.
The driver was an older man with thick eyebrows. I didn’t recognize him, but I’d seen the other two men hanging out with Joaquín.
The driver grinned and nodded toward La Gloria. “You been shining shoes in there?”
We looked back at the cantina with its narow awning, bright neon sign and a lone bulb illuminating the wooden door.
The driver pushed his hat up with the tip of his thumb. He wore a thick gold watch. Then he leaned forward and checked the rearview mirror. “Tell me, did you see a tall man in there?”
Mosca looked at me.
“Had a scar on his chin?” the man asked.
I nodded.
“Is he alone?”
I looked at Mosca, and then at the man. “I guess, yeah.”
The driver smiled. He put his hand out the window. On his finger he had a heavy gold ring with the letter D embossed in cursive. We shook hands. When he let go, he left a piece of paper in my hand.
“What’s your name, ¿hijo?”
“Liberio Flores.”
“Thanks for your help, Liberio.” He waved his index finger at me. “I’m going to remember you, amigo.” Then he leaned back on his seat. The window buzzed up and the car moved slowly down the road toward La Gloria. On the right corner of the back window was a sticker of Tweety Bird.
Mosca and I stared at each other. Then I looked at the paper in my hand. It was a hundred-peso bill.
We walked quickly away and turned off on Calle Lealtad and didn’t stop until we came to Avenida de los Recuerdos.
That’s when we heard the gunfire.
The following morning when I walked into the kitchen Gaby stared at me as if I was a zombie in a Santo movie. “What happened to you? You look like you haven’t slept in weeks.”
“Leave me alone,” I said.
Abuela took my hand. “What a marvelous day for a picnic. Glorious. I have always said, ‘In Veracruz the weather conspires with love.’”
I rolled my eyes. Every nerve in my body was coiled up and ready to snap. I sat at the table and sunk my face into my hands. I kept seeing the silver gun in the man’s belt, the man in the truck, smiling, all the gold, and the owner of El Centenario telling me he didn’t know my father. It all merged into an intricate net—my parents, Rocío Morales, the leg, the gunshots at La Gloria. I wanted to erase everything.
Jesusa served me a plate with a couple of molletes with extra cheese and a glass of orange juice. “How do you feel, pues?” She placed her hand on my forehead.
“I’m fine.”
Gaby gathered the stack of folders on the side of the table. The papers looked important, like official documents with stamps and seals. She shoved them into her school bag. “I need you at the panadería before noon. No excuses today, okay?”
“Am I going to have to be there all afternoon?”
“Yes.” She mocked me, tilting her head from one side to the other. “You’re going to have to be there all afternoon. It’s Saturday.”
“It is Saturday!” Abuela announced like she’d just discovered a treasure. “Everyone is invited. We will drive together to the park. My mother has hired musicians. It will be a memorable party. I only wish I would have known ahead of time so I could invite Dorian. But I suppose that is how things go sometimes.”
“Would you like some more coffee?” Jesusa asked Abuela.
“But they’re setting up for the feria,” I said. “Mosca and I—”
Gaby raised her hand. “Enough, Boli, I don’t want to hear it. I need you at the bakery. We’ve been through this, right?”
“But—”
Jesusa smacked my shoulder and waved a stubby finger at me. “Your dog did his business in the patio again.
I’m not cleaning up after that beast.”
“God, why can’t I get a break?” I cried.
Jesusa served Abuela another coffee. The old lady took the cup in both hands and held it up to her nose and smiled. “In La Parroquia, the tradition is to tap the side of your cup with a spoon if you want the waiter to come and add milk to your coffee.”
“For the tortillas and the milk.” Gaby handed Jesusa a few folded bills. “And please, please go to the market and buy some vegetables for the next couple of days.”
Jesusa nodded. Gaby took her bag with the documents and was out the door.
“It all happened on the same week,” Abuela continued. “You would have never guessed it from the weather.”
Jesusa served herself a cup of coffee and sat. Her black almond eyes were on me. She knew. Or she didn’t know, but worried about something that was written all over my face.
I wanted to find out what happened at La Gloria. It had something to do with Joaquín and the new people in town. I was sure of it. Even Father Gregorio couldn’t convince me it wasn’t true. It was the same people: Joaquín’s men. No one in town flaunted their wealth like that—all the gold. The guns.
“We stayed,” my abuela went on with her monologue.
Jesusa walked out of the kitchen.
“I don’t know, there is something about the sun and the humidity and the soft breeze with its sweet smell of jasmine and bananas. Dorian always says the wind brings the smells of New Orleans to Veracruz.” She laughed and set her cup down. “I thought it was only a romantic notion. But when I think of it, it could be possible, no? I mean why not?”
“Abuela,” I said, “is Veracruz really that great?”
“Ay,” she rolled her eyes and flailed her thin hands back and forth across the table as if she were trying to swat a fly. “It’s paradise, mijo. Everyone knows everyone. Society in Veracruz, well, we have our place. You would love it.”
Maybe she was on to something. Maybe it was that place where everything was peaceful, where people were nice to each other, where it was all palacial buildings and neat coffee houses like the ones she always talked about. Maybe it was the kind of place where no one ever disappeared.
Playing for the Devil's Fire Page 8