Thirty minutes later Bellacosa was having caldo de pollo, with the balero he bought sitting by his water. Colleen Rae only had one other customer and she sat across from Bellacosa at the counter as he ate. “And you know what’s sad,” she said, “is that to guys like that, I’m just the waitress. That just because this is my job and my wages depend a lot on customers, some of them who are dicks like him, they feel entitled to treat me like shit. To talk to me like I am temporarily their property. The things people think they can get away with, when they start seeing you not as a person but as their property, like they own you. You know Raquelle? A girl who works here sometimes? She’s the one I’m in a band with, we actually came down here and got jobs at this place because we wanted to see what it was like, you know. After reading all those articles about the border and the syndicates and how women are treated and everything. We couldn’t imagine, and us being women tied to Mexican-American culture, we moved here to write our second album. To feed off all the energy, even the bad energy, and to change it to something positive, to music, to rock and roll that is hard-core and hopefully means something. We have a big show on Thursday, are you gonna come?” She smiled. “I haven’t seen your friend in a while, is he still in town?”
“We haven’t been in touch lately, but I’m looking for him. What do you know about him?”
“About Paco? He’s nice. Very supportive. I gave him an advance copy of our record and he said he’d try to get it reviewed for the publication he works with.”
“What’s it called?”
“The record’s called Godiva Skydance/Bluebeard Soup.”
“Ah si? And what’s the publication he works for?”
“I forgot. He said he would bring me some issues, but I haven’t seen him. Nor Raquelle. He’s friends with her, too. You’re right, your cut just sealed right up pretty fast there.”
“Yeah, I still heal fast, for an old man like me,” Bellacosa said. “Which is surprising.”
“You’re not that old. Anyway, what does any of that mean, age?”
“What does it mean? You’re actually asking me? Okay. I think that’s what age is. Healing faster. You still get all the pains everybody else does, but everything heals faster. At least for me. I don’t know how it is for anybody else, so I’m not really sure.”
“What else?”
“What else?” Bellacosa asked, rubbing his forehead. “I don’t know. It’s harder to make friends, I could say. Or maybe that’s always hard.”
Bellacosa grabbed the stick end of the balero so that the cup dangled from the nylon string like a pendulum and held it very still over the table, moving it slowly, and keeping his eye on the cup.
“Yeah, I think that one’s always hard,” Colleen Rae said. “That’s why you hold on to the friends you got for a long time, and be good to them. Excuse me, let me get this guy his ticket. Your meal’s on me today, by the way.”
Bellacosa thought he misheard her so he didn’t protest, simply grinned as if she said something funny, and kept his eye on the balero’s cup as he dangled it over the glass of water. Slowly, the cup began spinning counterclockwise on the string, acting like a dowsing rod. Despite the scuffle, Bellacosa’s mind was still on his brother. He set the balero down, looking around at all the faces of Baby Grand Central, half expecting to see him, and wondered what would happen if he actually did.
* * *
LATER IN THE DAY, driving aimlessly, Bellacosa recalled something Colleen Rae had said. She said the problem in this world is that wolves are still murdering grandmothers and disguising themselves as them in order to convince you nothing has changed and lure you into bed, where after raping you they eat your flesh and pick your bones clean. He’d never heard a young woman talk like that, and was both shocked and impressed by her harshness and depth. He was glad to be acquainted with a strong young person like her. He’d also been thinking over the Olmec heads heist, and the madness in how many different types of heads the syndicate wars were affecting. There had been protests not only in Mexico City but also in Reinahermosa, Monterrey, Guanajuato, Miguel Alemán, and Tijuana, with people demanding social justice, reform, and for the president’s resignation. After years of gruesome violence and widespread fear, it seemed people were finally fed up and unafraid to confront the impunity in the country’s municipal and federal governments, which had gradually been hijacked by the syndicates.
After the death of El Gordo Pacheco, the mass graves of the biology students, and now the disappearance of the thirteen Olmec heads, people wanted real change. Bellacosa swelled with emotion thinking about the young people having to fight every day just to have a chance at a bleak economic future. He thought of the first man emerging from the red earth, the Border Protectors sticking automatic weapons in his face, demanding to see the first man’s papers. He felt it was he himself who was this first man from the red earth, and back to the red earth Bellacosa longed to return. He realized that over the past few weeks, for the first time since the death of his wife, he was regularly feeling down. He saw how the history of violence along the border had karmically doomed the dream of prospering and the pursuit of happiness not only for him, but for all his people, the people living along the borders of Mexico and the United States. He asked out loud what could become of his lot, now that he was old and had nothing left, now that everything was more fleeting than ever and all the old charms and haunts had turned to stone angels in the cemetery.
Bellacosa ended up driving along the edge of Goya Canal on the American side, gunning the gas as if he was to jump across a gorge. He slowed down, pulled over as the sun was setting, and got out of the old Jeep. The ground was muddy and the shrill rattle of cicadas along the embankment stabbed through the evening air like tiny ice picks. On a grassy patch he got down on one knee like the time he proposed to his wife. “Lupita,” Bellacosa pleaded to the setting sun, the orange and red clouds like a bride’s dress afire. “Lupita, mi amor, please never leave me. Please never leave me like I never left you.”
* * *
THE FOLLOWING MORNING Bellacosa put on a dark blue suit and the last shoes Lupita had bought him, a pair of very worn but polished Franco Brunis, for the occasion of Don Castañeda’s funeral. He was ready before dawn, well before the scheduled service, and decided to go to Café Charon to see if any of the old gang was there. It was a place where the clientele was made up entirely of retired, working-class Mexican-American men. The meals were cheap, the coffee was acceptable, and the conversations consisted exclusively of physical ailments and home remedies the men had discovered. The place wasn’t much, but to these men it was a sanctuary. They’d drive their families mad if they had nowhere else to go in those morning hours.
MacArthur was foggy, like it was inside of a glass bottle where somebody had discarded a cigarette. Bellacosa had the radio off and was grateful for the silence, for the empty streets. The green lights were all in his favor. He remembered rumors of an incoming South Texas snowfall, but scoffed it off and didn’t believe it. Bellacosa asked himself if it was a Sunday, then told himself it must be.
The sun was rising when he parked his car on Datepalm and Seventeenth Street, next to more beat-up-looking cars over a decade and a half old. When he walked inside Café Charon the bell hanging on the door clanked like an old guard dog with laryngitis. About fifteen men sat around at low tables throughout the small space, and a few lined up along the counter by the cash register and tip jar the employees shared. The family of young and middle-aged ladies who worked at the restaurant were always nice, and as Bellacosa found a spot for himself along the counter many smiles and nods greeted him. The men’s faces in Café Charon were old and clean-shaven, some with finely trimmed mustaches; they all wore trousers with perfect creases, western-style shirts tucked in, with only the finest hats by their side.
Bellacosa recognized Don Rodrigo by his cane, and that weasel De La Roca, who still owed him fifty in American from an old World Series bet. He saw the Aranaña waiter Cuauhtémoc ref
illing coffee cups all around, wearing a blue bandanna harnessing his thick, inky hair. Bellacosa was glad to see him still at Charon, though there were definitely better places to work in town for a young, able-bodied man.
A heavyset man with sheer white hair was having a conversation with an even older man in a maroon shirt. The heavyset man was saying, “That’s how you have it wrong, Teodoro. I remember my father used to tell us that when you’re older and you pee, to save just a tiny bit, and get a dropper from the store. In your ears, squeeze a little drop of pee, to clear all the wax out.”
“But who in God sakes would do that,” the other man responded. “Who would want to smell like pee all day?”
“Teodoro, don’t be silly. It’s just a drop or two, and you will rinse your ears afterward. Who’s going to smell like pee when it’s just a drop and then you rinse? Don’t exaggerate.”
“My method is better. Grab a little coin, it could be a nickel, could be a dime. Those two work just fine. And stick them in your ears. With the reverberation from the material of the coin, you can hear everything much better.”
At the counter, behind him and to the right, were two men Bellacosa didn’t know. Their names were Macario and Leopoldo, and they were giving each other tips on indigestion.
“I’m going now three years doing it,” Macario said. “With my bicarbonato de sodio. First thing in the morning, well before you put anything else in your stomach, mix a tablespoon of baking soda in a plain glass of water. Stir it up. Drink it all in one go, and that’s it. It will clean your organism right up. You’ll see. And just so you know, sexually speaking, I haven’t been better with that since around the time I got married.”
Leopoldo responded, “That will never work with the kind of stomach I have. Yes, Macario, we are both immigrants, but the way we digest is rooted in different places. I take what I call La Combinación Perfecta. Which is a tablet of multivitamins for gentlemen over fifty-five. Some vitamin C. And a combination of vitamin B25 and B12. I haven’t had the mildest cold going on ten years now.”
Then a thin man, the only one wearing his hat indoors, interrupted and said, “Why don’t you men try a piece of garlic. That way you don’t have to go to the pharmacy and put all those chemicals in your body. Just cut up a piece of garlic and take it with a spoonful of honey, so it goes down better. The garlic dissolves in your blood and kills all your bad intestinal bacteria.”
All three of them nodded as their coffees were topped off by Cuauhtémoc.
Bellacosa accepted a refill himself and finally read the chalkboard breakfast specials. It felt good to be there.
* * *
DON CASTAÑEDA’S SERVICE was held at Gonzalez Funeral Home. It was a modest turnout of mostly older folks; the casket was pearly white and matched the suit he’d be buried in. To Bellacosa, it was a shock to see an old man dressed in white, and he asked himself if he’d ever seen a depiction of an elderly angel. He clasped hands with the widow and kissed her cheek. She was dressed quite elegantly and took people’s condolences with teary eyes full of affection. Bellacosa had taken a seat toward the back when a middle-aged lady walked into the chapel. She wore a black hat with a veil, a black dress, and loud high heels. Bellacosa sensed right away it was Castañeda’s estranged daughter he’d heard about. When the widow saw her, the daughter wailed, and held the old woman’s hands as the rest of the guests looked down or were also overtaken with emotion. Bellacosa felt he couldn’t be around any longer and walked out, dipped his fingers in the basin of holy water and crossed himself, feeling the coattails of death walk beside him. He made it to the old Jeep and drove away.
Bellacosa lit a Herzegovina Flor and decided to listen to the news network to get death out of his mind. There was an interview with Senator Tim Haugher about immigration, and he was saying, “The argument isn’t about the Border Protectors and their reach broadening with this merger, but how American tax dollars are getting spent. Now, with this measure, the United States will have the power to send troops into Mexico and make sure our borders are secure by starting the lookout within the region, by making sure the immigrant infiltration doesn’t spread here—”
“But, Senator,” the host interrupted, “what about reports, and the eyewitness accounts? After the first border wall and the second border wall, built from coast to coast, and after the proof that nothing is keeping people from crossing into this country, how can you insist that any of these extreme tactics are necessary? And what about the controversial third border wall proposition? Why does the government continue to throw money into the Border Protectors, and its operations, in the five years of its existence that have produced zero positive results?”
“Danielle, that’s an inappropriate and uncalled-for attack on your part—”
“Senator, unfortunately we are running out of time, but one more question. What is your opinion on the reports that the immigrants, who came into this country not knowing English or Spanish, the ones anthropologists have dubbed descendants of the lost Aranaña natives, have actually arrived from within the country, appearing in the Ballí Desert from a yet-to-be-discovered underground tunnel?”
“Danielle, as you know, especially with the way things are now, we always have those crackpots claiming the supernatural as a legitimate source. I don’t take any of these claims as valid, and I’m sure my colleagues and most of the American public can agree with me on that.”
“Senator Tim Haugher, thank you for your time. This is Danielle Esperanza, going to commercial break. We’ll be right back, South Texas.”
FOURTEEN
Washed in the blood of the noon hour, Bellacosa reached Calantula County listening to Peruvian folk songs on the radio. A chord of regret had struck him at the funeral home, once again, about the Aranaña man that worked for Mr. McMasters, Tranquilino. He vividly recalled how childlike his fear was, the cuts along his face, his black eye, and the bruises around his neck.
I must be out of my mind now or something, Bellacosa thought. Why didn’t I help that man and his family on the spot? I was wrapped in my own business, with the 7900 Rig, and didn’t even notice a situation when it was happening in front of me. I must be selfish like everybody else now, chingado. I am old but not that old that I’ve stopped thinking of others.
He tried to remember every detail about their two encounters: the chickens, the ants, the boy with the basketball jersey, his young wife behind the screen door, the black van–turned–chicken coop, the tank with poison strapped to his back, Tranquilino’s dream of making the land functional again and selling naturally grown onions. He asked himself if Leone McMasters could really have been more directly involved in the whole thing.
Bellacosa then thought about Ximena’s cups where she’d read his grounds, what she said about attracting energy and harnessing it, about what his life had become in so short a time span. He couldn’t believe he was driving all the way back out here for an Indian, an Aranaña, no less. Fuck it, he thought. I’m an Indian, too.
He noticed a new sign posted on the road reading “Farm Road 151.” Bellacosa pulled his map out from under the seat and didn’t see the road labeled anywhere.
When he got to the plot of land where Tranquilino and his family lived, Bellacosa didn’t see the doghouse-sized mailbox parallel to the road. He pulled over, stepped off the old Jeep, and heard the whirring of machines and the hollowed yelling of men at work. There were a score of workers in hard hats and vests laying a huge foundation on the property, big enough for a mall or warehouse. Cement trucks were scattered and feeding the ground mixed cement like giant insects pumping sugar out of their bellies. A couple of men in white shirts and hard hats stood outside a small beige trailer reading an architectural plan and holding the wide scroll open together. Fifty feet away from them, another man was surveying the workers by a sign that read “McM Construction.” There was no indication that anybody had lived here, nor that it had once been farmland. The men discussing the scroll spotted Bellacosa and both waved with cu
riosity at him.
Bellacosa felt deep remorse for whatever fate Tranquilino and his family were now suffering. He was convinced it couldn’t be good.
Bellacosa waved back to the men. He stood there for a moment and asked himself if he’d made a mistake and driven to the wrong spot, but it wasn’t possible. This was definitely the land the ants had escaped to, where the chickens once ran loose after a storm, and the 7900 Rig disappeared.
He only got more curious, and he walked back to the old Jeep and drove toward the direction of the gate where the military truck had been stationed, outside the house where he and Paco Herbert had the clandestine dinner. It seemed like years had passed since that happened, but it’d been less than a week.
There was no gate at the entrance to the driveway that led over the hill, and Bellacosa stared at the ground before him with the vehicle parked. He clenched the steering wheel until his knuckles turned white, clicked his tongue like an ancient call of the wild. Then Bellacosa put the old Jeep in gear and drove in. He remembered there had been gravel paving the way, but it was missing; the ground was packed in cold and hard under the mesquite trees shaped like giant vultures.
He parked at the clearing as he’d been instructed during his visit, got out of the old Jeep, and gazed into the distance, looking for the old, shapeless house that seemed to come out from the darkness like a whale with its mouth wide open.
Bellacosa didn’t see it. In its stead was a sign similar to the construction site one: “McM Properties.” He walked in plain day over the granite walkway between the parking clearing and where the house used to be. Over to his far left, he spotted a couple of small shacks resembling slave quarters in the antebellum South. They had faded blue trim around the windows and appeared quite sturdy. He looked again toward the spot where the house had been located and saw only a patch of trampled grass and scores of compact haystacks scattered in no particular fashion throughout. The 7900 Rig was also nowhere to be found.
Tears of the Trufflepig: A Novel Page 14