Highwire Moon

by Susan Straight

  “Back where?” Michael said. “I’m goin to Rio Seco, so I can brew the medicine you want to try. And I’ll make that hundred bucks from Caveman. All I got left is forty.”

  “Cause you gave half yours to Guapo,” Hector said, and Michael only grinned.

  Hector lay down in the truck bed, his map folder under his head. Michael bent his head to Elvia. “You see the baby smoke trees, down that arroyo?”

  Elvia nodded at the small puffs of silvery gray. Michael said, “The smoke tree drops the seeds, but they have to get beat up by rushing water, like knocked into rocks and all, before they can take root. So the babies are always like way downstream from the mom.”

  She thought about his mother’s moths, about the coyote dropping palm tree seeds in the desert; this was why she’d loved him, back in Tourmaline. “So you’re saying forget Tijuana?”

  He shrugged. “I’m just sayin sometimes that’s how it’s gotta be.”

  This is a good time to tell him, she thought. About the baby. But he said, “You hear something?” He stood up. She thought she heard faint barking, hoarse, maybe a dog. “Get up in the truck,” he whispered, and when she lay down, opposite Hector, he said, “Shhh.” He paced around the clearing. She heard only the millions of cicadas.

  Elvia awoke with a start when Michael said “Hey” and poked at her shoulder blade.

  She screamed at the pain, felt a scurry of cricket feet in her belly, and sat up. Dawn made the salt cedar into a fountain of light. Michael said, “How’d you get hurt?”

  She held her breath. The feet stopped. Do you try to run away when something hurts me? she thought. Do you run like a hamster around and around my belly? A damn exercise wheel?

  “Elvia?” Michael said. “Somebody beat you up in Mecca?”

  She lifted her tee shirt, and he said, “Damn.”

  “Moths,” she said. “Are they like the ones your mother caught? For the dust on their wings?”

  He took in a sharp breath. “They’re cool. I don’t know if they’re like something real or not.”

  In the truck’s side mirror, they were small, puffy. One was yellow, one green, one blue. She let her shirt fall. She liked imagining them, hovering above the windshield, a glimmering blur. Michael said, “I heard shooting last night.”

  Hector nodded. “We’re way out here in the Chocolate Mountains. Navy gun range.”

  Michael looked east toward the sunrise and said, “Something weird out there, too. Not coyotes. Like a bird, screamin all raspy. I never heard anything like it. Stopped a while ago.”

  He started the truck and drove down the faint dirt road until they saw a dark heap in the sand, like a pile of clothes. Hector said, “Shit. La migra didn’t get him. The desert did.”

  Michael said, “Look under the cedar tree. That’s who was callin.”

  Four people lay under the branches. Elvia followed Hector and Michael to the unmoving shapes, and she saw that one of the bodies was a woman, curled on her side, her brown face pulled tight and shiny and hard as a doll’s, her eyes just as unblinking.

  god of the hearth

  “Bajanse,” the coyote hissed, and they all crouched down, motionless under the thick stand of brush that still held the day’s heat and smelled of tar and sage. Serafina breathed light and fast as a baby. She heard rustling jackets and breaking branches as another group trudged up the path to the top of the hill. Then she heard the whine of the helicopter like a wasp.

  The beams circled like lightning, making her dizzy, but the coyote said, “Don’t move.” She wanted to run, before the icy light touched her head. The running feet and whipping blades pushed dust into her nose, her mouth. You are in California. You are breathing it again. Eating this dirt, Uncle would say. Don’t move. Don’t move. The helicopter hovered at the top of the hill, and they heard someone else yell, “Bajanse!” An American. Then more Americans shouted, and Serafina shrank down into the bark of the large bush.

  But the shouts faded, truck doors slammed, and after a time, the coyote said, “Andale. Move now.” Her legs buckled from fear and the blood stung when it moved again inside her skin.

  When they reached the top of the hill, they saw the trucks receding down the dirt road. “Sensors,” the coyote said. “Migra plants them in the dirt, and somebody stupid trips them. Then they wait at the arroyo. I always wait until they’re finished. Go.”

  Florencio whispered to her in Mixtec what was said in Spanish. She could understand the coyote some of the time. She walked behind Florencio, the darkness like the inside of a shuttered room. They moved along dirt roads, through ravines that left Serafina breathless with fear. The steep crumbling banks, the branches catching on her shirt—she remembered everything now from the last time, even while she walked. A hole torn in Florencio’s jacket let a patch of white tee shirt show through—a ragged floating star. She tried to follow it.

  They hiked for hours and hours without stopping, upward through forests. She smelled pine resin under their feet. The dirt road was littered with branches and stones. “Where are we?” Florencio asked once, ahead of her, and she heard the coyote laugh.

  “Where I take you, indio,” he said. Then, after a time, he said, “Los Pinos.”

  Even in the blackness, she was afraid of the eyes. Like before, in California. She was afraid every moment she moved. She wanted a room again, a room she could never leave. If she found Elvia, and found a place, she might never go outside the door.

  Except for corn, she thought, trying to comfort herself. She was so hungry her stomach felt as small as the mano between her breasts. I would grow corn in the back yard, behind a fence, where no one could see me watering the plants. I wouldn’t need anything else. Tortillas and masa and atole. I would have a chicken for eggs.

  She stumbled on a root in the path. Her head hurt, a stabbing pain. She was afraid of the eyes of la migra, of eyes that might be hiding in the gullies or caves. She was afraid of the coyote, Ramon, when he stopped and stared at them all, then listened in the darkness. Once more they heard people running, after they’d crossed a highway like a river of black asphalt. They ducked down in the brush near the road, smelling urine and trash and stagnant water, and they heard a radio. Static, harsh, and spitting. When it was quiet again, Serafina looked at Florencio near her, his eyes like wet black stones, his mouth open. The coyote seemed to know where he was going. “Walk,” he said to them again. “I never get caught. They look for you indios all the way to Temecula, and I never get caught. Go.”

  On the highway above them, a lit sign read SANTA YSABEL 29. She could read santos’ names.

  They didn’t talk all night, only grunted when they tripped on stones or passed under thorny manzanita on a thin trail. They headed into brush so dry and heavy that she smelled the fragrant oils on her sleeves after she pushed through the branches. The night grew cool, paler, and she could see Florencio’s back more clearly than the star patch.

  “Tiñū’ú xíní,” she whispered to him once, and he looked up. The stars here are the same as they are at home, she thought. But not as bright, as if the air is different.

  The coyote’s thin, papery face floated beside her suddenly, and he gestured for Florencio to pass, then the Tiltepec men. Jose and Jesus and Guillermo. Their eyes were on the trail. The coyote said, “Speak Spanish, india. You better not complain.”

  She was silent. He said, “The one with three fingers isn’t your husband. And the others aren’t your brothers. Verdad?”

  Serafina kept walking, hearing him just behind her. “You aren’t married. Answer me.”

  She took a breath, trying to remember the right Spanish pronunciation. “Where are we?”

  “We are still in Los Pinos. We will sit down for a minute and eat. Then walk again. Wherever I tell you to walk.”

  His voice was soft behind her. She smelled ashes now, old smoke hanging in the air. She saw a
small clearing ahead, a flat place inside the trees. He knew where they were going. He said, “Sit down and give everyone some food. Ten miles to Descanso.”

  They sat on stones blurry in the slight haze of dawn. Serafina passed around the bolillos and pan dulce. The coyote sat apart and shook his head when she offered him food. “I don’t need to eat,” he said. She watched the men leave one by one to pee. She chewed her dry roll, drank the water Florencio offered. The coyote took something from a small bag, and then he bent over a match flame.

  She saw the small glass pipe. Like the one Larry and Warren had passed between them, she thought suddenly, the same tiny red ember that glowed strong with sucked-in breath. She remembered how Larry’s eyes had been clear and kind, his mouth twisted in a smile, his frame stretched over the couch while she cleaned sometimes. But when he smoked outside with Warren, his body and eyes and mouth and anger moved constantly, like restless dry wind.

  She had imagined Larry returning to the duplex. Was he relieved that they were gone? Had he grinned and gone back to the red place, Colorado? Or had he found Elvia in the parking lot or a hospital, fed her hamburgers, told her Serafina was a bad mother?

  Serafina let the crumbs fall from her fingers. The coyote stared at her. He ate smoke.

  When Florencio came back, the coyote grinned at Jesus. “Where are you going?”

  “To piss,” Jesus said, hesitantly. The coyote laughed.

  “Where are you going here in el norte? To work, chingaso,” he said.

  The men were quiet. The coyote said, “Algodon? Fresas? Naran­jas? Uvas?” He pointed a different way for each, a cigarette now held in his fingers. Cotton. Strawberries. Oranges. Grapes. Serafina watched Florencio.

  “Do you even know?” The coyote’s voice was fast now, harsh. “Or you’re just going to wander around? Hope you find work? Shit. Everyone from Oaxaca is here. From Zacatecas and Nayarit and Michoacan. You better know where you’re going if you want money. You, payaso?” He pointed the cigarette at Florencio.

  “Naranjas,” Florencio said finally, glancing at Serafina. She knew he didn’t like to talk. He said you couldn’t trust anyone once you were here.

  “You say you been here before,” the coyote said. “Where did you work?”

  Florencio rested his hands on his knees, like he was displaying his nubbled skin on purpose. “San Diego. Santa Barbara. Santa Maria. Guadalupe.”

  “En Mexico?” Guillermo said. Serafina knew he hadn’t been here before.

  “No. In California,” Florencio said.

  “Guadalupe?” Guillermo whispered. “A city here?”

  “Yes. Fresas.” Florencio looked at the coyote.

  “Fucking fresas,” the coyote said. “I’m so tired of playing cat and mouse with la migra. Every day. If los gabachos don’t want you Oaxaquenos to pick the fresas, why did they plant so many this year? Fucking stupid to run around like this. Hiding. They want you to work your pinche indio asses off anyway. They must eat fresas every fucking day.”

  It was quiet for a time, the men only chewing and smoking. Serafina felt their eyes on her when she handed them the last sweet bread. She didn’t sit down again. In the yellow light dropping from the trees, she saw now the burned grass and earth beneath their feet. A fire had swept through this place. The soil was charred black, the tree trunks webbed charcoal.

  Serafina stood up then, and walked carefully the other way, far from the men’s voices. She paused to hear if anyone said her name. No one did. When she reached out to steady herself against a blackened tree, the puzzle-bark smelled acrid, and she thought suddenly of the gods her mother and uncle had always prayed to outside—clouds and sun and wind. All the santos’ names had just rolled off Florencio’s tongue. San Diego. Santa Barbara. She remembered now. California was full of saints, all dead, the green freeway signs like their tombstones.

  Dizzy, she made her way to a charred pine tree near a steep cliff. She didn’t want to pull down her jeans anywhere near the men. Serafina felt the barrettes sharp against her leg. She touched the blackened bark, bent down, and relieved herself. Then she zipped the jeans with clumsy fingers, turned and saw the two faces, mouths stretched open, gaping, empty eye sockets staring like little black caves.

  She screamed, over and over, and Florencio came running. The burned men lay tangled in the pocket of earth between the tree and the cliff. Their skin stretched tight and black over their bones, shiny and hard as the tree bark. Their faces were silver in the morning light, like metal masks.

  The coyote said behind her, “Campfire got out of control last month. The whole mountain burned. They got caught sleeping. Or they were just stupid. Stupid indios.”

  Florencio took her wrist and helped her over the stones. He stayed close behind her when they began walking. “Don’t worry,” he whispered. “We are closer now. We are almost there.”

  She didn’t answer. Her feet throbbed inside her shoes, and with each step, pain knuckled up her back. Descanso, he had said. Someone had given these places Spanish names so long ago. Everywhere. Descanso meant rest. Soon they would rest.

  “Answer me,” he said, behind her again. Florencio was just ahead, ducking through the brush. The coyote’s hand twitched the end of her braid.

  “I am going to my brother,” she said. “Florencio is his compadre.”

  “You’re going if I take you to the truck.” His voice was pleasant and soft, like a priest’s murmur near the altar. “You’re going to fuck me a hundred times first, if I want you to. If I fucked you and then cut your throat, no one would know. No one would even find you for a year. Like those two back there. And when they found you, they wouldn’t give a shit.”

  Serafina didn’t let herself stumble. She watched each foot, then glanced up at the men ahead. Florencio had stopped now, had turned his face toward them. She could see the slash of his teeth through his breathing-hard mouth.

  “When we get to Descanso, we have to stop. For the heat. And wait for the truck. You can sleep. And dream about what I’m going to do to you later. Because there’s nowhere for you to run. If you leave the trail, you’re going to die. I want you to dream about that.”

  She walked. All this time, she had dreamed about Elvia. Milk and cloth and the sweetness of the skin on her neck. The sweat stung her eyes. She couldn’t think of Elvia because it made her soft and weak. A little animal. She had to think only about the trail, about the man behind her. How would she live if he hit her in the head again? What if he hit her in the same spot? Her temple would collapse like a sugar candy skull. When the coyote threw her onto the ground, what could she do so he wouldn’t hit her?

  He was probably right. She was alone. These men wouldn’t help her. None of them was her husband, or brother. She didn’t look at Florencio’s back. She didn’t look at his hat. She stared at the trail five feet in front of her. The coyote passed her easily, not touching her braid, and began to whistle.

  The truck was not here, in Descanso. They were in a clearing at the summit. The mountain air was so thin Serafina felt dizzy.

  The coyote, so angry now that his neck was suffused with red, stalked around the packed dirt where Serafina could see that people had camped many times before. A trash heap was piled in the trees, and the remains of several fires were scattered in the sandy field. His friend was supposed to meet them here with ten more pollos and the truck, he muttered. They must be in Santa Ysabel. Twenty more miles. Fuck walking. They would wait here, through the night.

  “Make something to eat,” he yelled at Serafina, pointing to the battered nopales near a boulder. He tossed a knife onto the dirt. Serafina cut the green cactus, scraping off the spines, trying to calm herself.

  Elvia had gotten tiny thorns in her finger, that last day. When Larry and his friend Warren had come home, Serafina was cleaning nopales, moving the knife blade over the tiny red spines, shirring off the needles to leave the pad
s green and smooth, dappled with blind white dots. She loved few things more than this motion, this skin like a baby’s, this comforting heap of food that grew anywhere, even here.

  Larry’s eyes were paler green than shorn nopales. He’d been so angry that day, when Serafina was cooking the cactus, when Elvia said in Mixtec that the thorns hurt her. Larry threw the keys, like a metallic dragonfly. “Get a life. Speak English. Drive to Taco Bell.” Warren had laughed, after his thick red fingers reached inside her blouse, brushing her breasts and pulling out her money. Larry spun a cactus pad out the duplex door like a green plate.

  Serafina glanced up at the coyote, who was impatiently watching her finish the nopales. He picked up the knife and snapped it shut. Florencio built a fire to roast the cactus on sticks. Serafina sat near the flames, watching the sun drop into the far bushes.

  The coyote was thirsty. He drank much of the water. Then he said, “I need the money now. Before the truck comes. Because then we have to leave in a hurry. Give me the fucking money now. Let’s go.”

  “Five hun—” Jesus began.

  But the coyote said, “Give me what you have. All your fucking money.”

  The men gave him folded bills. He walked over to Serafina and said, “Come here.”

  “She—” Florencio stood up, and the coyote pulled a black gun from his waistband.

  “Come here,” he said again.

  When she was in front of him, he grabbed her by the braid and said, “This is how you move los indios. By la reata.” She didn’t know the word, but he used her hair as a leash, pulling her head so sharply she felt her cheeks shiver like gelatin. He pushed her into the brush.

  They came out in another ravine, steep walls of sand and a large cave where rushing water had scoured out a shelter. Blackened stones set in broken circles meant people had camped here, too. The sun had faded to gray shadow. The coyote’s mustache was thick and black as burned rope. He jerked her around by her braid. She pulled out her roll of dollars and gave it to him.