Tears of the Trufflepig: A Novel

by Fernando A. Flores

  “God damn.”

  Two men dressed like conjunto players with AKs perched over the scientists like gargoyles on a desecrated church, looking mean. Unlike the chubby man’s golden goose, their AKs were the color of old, rusted bumpers. The scientists were scraggly and disheveled, like they hadn’t bathed in days. Some looked sleep-deprived, and others wired with energy to the point of spontaneous combustion. They didn’t make eye contact with the armed men or one another.

  Bellacosa was wheeled into the room with the Trufflepig, and he heard a voice say, “Do we have this one’s information?” as if it came from a poltergeist floating in the air.

  “We do. Chivo has it.”

  In the room, Bellacosa noticed something he couldn’t see from the outside. It was an image, as if torn from a magazine, of a pyramid, taped to the wall they had him face. The pyramid was illustrated and it was unclear whether it was Mayan or Egyptian.

  A young man with dark green rings around his eyes stepped toward the poltergeist carrying a small wooden box with a leather wallet, keys with rings of the Eiffel Tower and El Angel de la Independencia, a lighter, and a pack of Herzegovina Flor cigarettes. His hands were shaking and suddenly he blurted, “I can’t do this anymore,” and dropped Bellacosa’s belongings on the floor.

  This jolted the composure of the men with guns, and they swooped down on the young scientists as if ready for a standoff.

  “Chivo,” yelled the young man at the lower elevation in the main room, “chingado, don’t do this.”

  The man with the golden goose pointed the weapon at the two scientists who had wheeled Bellacosa in. The Trufflepig sat at the cushioned stool and had that clear, milky residue dripping from its eyes. The bearded scientist wiped the residue away with a red cloth. Lying there, the Trufflepig was looking into Bellacosa’s eyes. Things were starting to become very real for Bellacosa now.

  Two armed men grabbed the scientist named Chivo. The poltergeist assumed the body of another young scientist with a thin mustache, coming to Chivo’s defense: “He’s tired. You haven’t let him sleep for three days. He doesn’t know what he’s saying—”

  “I’m tired, yes,” Chivo said. “I’m tired of everything. Let them kill me, Marcos. I’d rather they kill me than do this again. Why do they still have us doing this? Putting the Trufflepig against these criminals, doing their dirty work for them, why? He’s just gonna die. That’s it. Big surprise. What’s fucking scientific about this? Why don’t they do it themselves? Why do we have to do it?”

  The chubby man pointed the golden AK at Marcos and asked, “Qué dice? Qué dice?” The chubby man lost his patience, slapped Chivo with his open hand a few times, and asked again, “Qué dices, pinche mierda?”

  “Leave him alone,” Marcos yelled in Spanish. “He needs rest, we’ve been working very hard for you.”

  Without warning, Chivo lunged at the chubby man with the golden AK like a wild animal deprived of red meat, but it was of no use. The men with rusted AKs grabbed Chivo and forced him down on his knees, and the chubby man hit Chivo many times on the head with the handle of the golden AK. Chivo lay motionless on the ground with his head bleeding. The short, chubby man wiped the blood from the golden AK on the leg of Chivo’s bodysuit and told the armed men, “Put him in the freezer.”

  The two armed men dragged Chivo away. Just then, a couple of Border Protector officers walked into the main room with their weapons modestly holstered, like sentries assessing a situation. They crossed their arms and surveyed the frantic mock hospital room. The chubby man with the golden AK turned away from them and yelled, “Órale, a trabajar,” to nobody in particular, and the scientists’ attention was back on the Trufflepig and Bellacosa.

  A scientist placed his arms under Bellacosa’s shoulders to lift him slightly. Another scientist carrying pills in a plastic cup squeezed Bellacosa’s face to make him take them. In his drowsiness, he resisted as much as he could, then Marcos returned with an oblong plastic tool that opened Bellacosa’s mouth wide, and they all watched him swallow three orange capsules one by one. The men with the rusted AKs smiled and nodded, showing their crooked, dirty teeth. One of them winked at Bellacosa and the other made exaggerated kissing sounds.

  The chubby man with the golden AK stood mesmerized by the Trufflepig as a young scientist reattached the sensors on its green skin. It was no bigger than a football helmet or a pumpkin, and its stumpy tail wiggled as its eyes teared with the gelatinous liquid.

  Marcos wiped the Trufflepig of the residue and snapped his fingers at Bellacosa to make sure he had his attention. As another scientist attached sensors to Bellacosa’s head and torso, Marcos said, “We gave you a very potent dose of ground peyote. What you saw happen to the man that was here before you—pay no attention to that. And what you heard our friend say, don’t listen to any of that, either. That gangster died because he committed evil and his subconscious got him back. You’re not going to be able to move anymore, but don’t worry about that. I have to say, nobody has survived this test yet, but we’ve had nothing but the worst kind. Cold-blooded killers, people like that have different chemicals in their brains, their bodies. Committing unrepented sin knocks our chemicals off-balance each time, unless we do something about it. We are monitoring your heart rate. Remember now it’s all in your mind. We are leaving you alone in the room with El Grillo Cri-Cri here. Don’t be afraid of him. Where you’re going, you’ll learn more about him. Please tell us about it when you come back.”

  Marcos, remembering the pyramid illustration, stepped aside and tapped it with one finger in rapid succession. “Pay attention,” he said. “Try to remember what you see. Watch for any old monuments. Like this. Any structure at all that looks ancient to you. We’ll be here to hear about it. And find it together. Don’t worry. We’ll be watching from right out there, through that window.”

  From the window in the room, one of the young scientists wearing a headset and looking at a monitor signaled everybody with a thumbs-up. All the armed men and scientists except for Marcos exited the mock hospital room.

  “All right,” Marcos continued. He stood over Bellacosa as he lay there in a reclining position, and looked into his eyes. Marcos tried to think of something he hadn’t told any of them before, words of consolation or warning or behest. But he could think of nothing except Chivo, his close friend the armed men had beaten and dragged away, and his face quivered.

  “What’s his name?” one of the scientists outside asked.

  Marcos had grabbed Bellacosa’s wallet and pulled it out of his bodysuit pocket, opened it.

  “Esteban Moises Bellacosa Dolíd,” Marcos said.

  “No way,” the same voice outside replied, as if being put on. “Is he Aranaña?”

  “I don’t know. Doesn’t look it. Who can even tell any of these things anymore? What does he look like to you?”

  “He looks Basque,” a different voice said. “Not from around here, for sure.”

  “What kind of surname is that? Usually these guys are named Garza, or Rodriguez, with first names like Lalo, or Chema.”

  “He looks more mojado than any of us put together,” said a scientist who’d been crying. “This guy ain’t Basque or anything, he’s clearly Mexican as fuck, with a Mexican-as-fuck name.”

  It was difficult to laugh, but a few of the young scientists laughed, and so did the men with guns, though they didn’t know why.

  “Mr. Dolíd,” a female scientist outside the room said, as everybody quieted and tempered themselves to the present situation. “First off, God be with you, sir. Please forgive us for this. These men are making us work this way for bad Border Protectors. And the man who owns this lot. We are treated as their slaves. All we want is to have a fair chance at life. The opportunity to be with our families and to fall in love and have a future. But please, if anything happens to you, sir, don’t haunt us. Atone for your sins now if you have them, whatever that means to you, spiritually, or scientifically. But if you don’t, that’s fine,
too. Remember the Trufflepig, sir, because you’ll be dreaming its dream. Don’t be scared. And if you have to haunt somebody, please haunt any of these evil men—”

  “Qué dice esta vieja?” one of the men with the rusted AKs said.

  Marcos signaled for her to wrap it up. He tried to think of something to add, then just patted Bellacosa’s leg, patted the Trufflepig on its body, and left the room, closing the door behind him.

  Bellacosa was face-to-face with the Trufflepig. The sensors made it appear electric, and there was something in the creature’s eyes that absorbed him. Bellacosa swayed and immediately pulled back and turned a dark corner, where he fell into a sandy, catatonic state. The lights in the phosphorescent room blinked, and in the lightning flashes of darkness he felt a globular presence floating, and bright blue radiation. To his left there was a raft with huddled sailors. About a hundred yards to his right were the remains of a ship sinking into a coffee-colored ocean as a storm cackled and thunder clapped. There was a skull within a cloud looking down at him and the sailors. The survivors on the shore knew they were due for a longer, more painful death, stranded on a barren island. Bellacosa felt the pasture of his breathing, took some deep breaths of dandelions, sunflowers, of cattails by the lagoon, breaths of grapefruit orchards, then exhaled everything in a liquid breeze. Bellacosa, feeling the horror of complete freedom, saw his memories and life lessons run away from him, hand in hand down a hill. His memory was now the memory of all living things, and in a musky, chrome fog he saw the hourglass figure of a woman approaching. She carried a basket on her head and wore a thin dress like the skin of a tiger. Looking closer, Bellacosa concluded she was a beauty. As her body shook itself of the static fog, Bellacosa saw her face and head clearly. Instead of a human head this woman had a Trufflepig over her shoulders, like she’d emerged from a hieroglyphic on a pyramid wall. The Trufflepig sat on her neck, its four stumpy hooves dangling, reptilian skin like tiny switchblades sprouting from its pores. Bellacosa knew, suddenly, that this woman’s body was the Trufflepig’s body; that the woman was the Trufflepig. She had an eagle’s beak, and a sharp, thin tongue.

  Bellacosa said to himself, “This is Lady Eve.”

  Then he said, “I emerged from the red mud. I am Sir Adam.”

  Hand in hand they walked into the capsicum fog.

  FIFTEEN

  Bellacosa awoke to footsteps and a blender. A loud replica in the living room was playing Spanish network news about the food shortage riots in Jasper, Illinois, and Sacramento, California.

  Lupita knocked on their bedroom door and said, “Órale. Get up already.” She was licking yogurt from a large wooden spoon and wearing a purple bathrobe.

  Bellacosa showered and dressed for work, slipped on a pair of white Velcro tennis shoes that were easy on his feet, put the replica on mute, and joined his wife and teenage daughter for breakfast.

  Bellacosa had huevos revueltos with corn tortillas, Lupita had yogurt with granola, and Yadira barely touched her cereal and stared into the screen on her tablet.

  “Yadi, c’mon, what can be so important on your tablet this early in the morning?” Bellacosa said in a low voice.

  “What?” Yadira responded.

  “See, you can’t even listen to me, you’re entirely unaware of your surroundings. All of you kids of your generation, I don’t know.”

  “I’m not doing anything wrong. Mom, tell him I’m not doing anything. I’m just doing the same thing you guys are doing, which is catching up on the news. I hate watching the replica, I prefer to read it the old-fashioned way, on my tablet.”

  “I’m driving you to school this morning,” Bellacosa declared.

  “What, why? That’s totally unfair, what did I do? You guys promised I could take the car every day from now until graduation. You’re not being fair. Mom, would you tell him he’s not being fair, please?”

  “He has a point, Yadira. We’ve told you many times, no phones at the table.”

  “But I wasn’t even on my phone. I was reading the news on the tablet. You guys are staring at the replica while we sit here. What am I supposed to do? Just eat my sad cereal and look at your faces?”

  After breakfast, Bellacosa drove his daughter, Yadira, to MacArthur North High School in the MacroStar Ultra, his loyal work van of many years. Yadira clenched her teeth the whole way, and when they pulled up to the school she hopped out and slammed the door shut without uttering a word.

  As Bellacosa drove away he lowered his window and lit up a cheap Windjumper cigarette. There was no stereo in the work van and Bellacosa whistled an indistinct, melodic tune.

  He passed a bearded man selling walnuts in sandwich bags at an intersection, and Bellacosa waved a no-thank-you gesture. The bearded man threw him the peace sign as he drove away.

  RGV Uniforms was located in dirty downtown by the overpass, near the airport. Despite the occasional landing or takeoff, it was a quiet, calm morning, and Bellacosa thought he heard birds chirping in the palm trees. He saw his assistant Diego’s beat-up Murciélago parked out front. Bellacosa was glad the young man was already there: Diego was strong and hardworking, had come from a good family in Puebla famous for breeding the best fighting roosters. Diego had moved to the States when his family fell on tough times after Mexico’s economic collapse, with the plan to train roosters the traditional way, like he’d learned back home. But nobody bothered to tell Diego the cockfighting business had been outlawed in the States a long time back. Diego found out the hard way, when the FBI raided a cockfighting ring out in La Feria and took his rooster and his money. Luckily, Diego got away and wasn’t sent to work at one of the many deportation camps. One day he walked into RGV Uniforms asking for any kind of work, and Bellacosa sympathized with Diego, trained him in the craft of screen-printing. That was three years ago, and Bellacosa had been fair to Diego in his wages, wasn’t a crook like most business owners in South Texas. Diego got ahead in his life, had a wife and a baby boy on the way. It was all thanks to the contracts Bellacosa had acquired with the independent school districts, who needed his uniforms. If it wasn’t for them, Bellacosa and Diego would really be in trouble.

  They had a contract for Cantú Elementary due at the end of the day, and Bellacosa felt confident they were ahead of schedule, with Diego already working on it.

  Bellacosa walked into the shop and saw the strong young man on the ground, as if he’d fainted, paperwork scattered around him like plucked, broken wings. The cash register was open and all the money inside gone, except the coins. Bellacosa crouched toward Diego. He didn’t know exactly how to check his vitals, but as soon as he touched Diego’s neck he came back to and exclaimed, “Qué onda, güeyes!”

  “Are you okay, Diego?”

  “What happened?”

  “What happened, Diego?”

  “What is this?” Diego said, picking himself up.

  Diego swung his fists as if getting in a brawl with invisible drunks and unaware of Bellacosa’s presence. Bellacosa got out of his way and watched him swing until, panting, Diego stopped himself and recognized his boss. Bellacosa heard a distant ringing, as if from a bell tower in a phantom cathedral.

  Moments later, Bellacosa got the coffeepot going as Diego sorted out the paperwork on the ground, feeling confused and embarrassed. They locked the doors to the shop and Bellacosa listened to Diego’s story.

  A group of men had forced their way in when Diego opened. They didn’t take anything because the money was still in the safe and Diego told them he didn’t know the combination.

  “They kept asking about you,” Diego said. “They knew your name and about your family. They mentioned the name of my wife and knew her age and that she was pregnant. That’s when I got upset. Two of them grabbed me and the one doing the talking laughed. I don’t remember anything after that, just you waking me up, patrón.”

  “They didn’t say why they came here?” Bellacosa asked.

  “Not that I remember. They did also mention your brother.”
<
br />   “My brother? Oswaldo?”

  “Oswaldo, that’s the name.”

  “What did they say?”

  “I don’t know. I can’t remember, patrón.”

  Diego was shaken up. Bellacosa insisted he go home for the day and get some rest, told him he could finish off the Cantú Elementary contract and deliver it himself. Although Diego protested, he eventually gave in, thinking of his wife’s safety.

  Diego said, “These are the kind of men who go around now all the time in my village causing trouble. They are nothing but talk holding a machete or gun, but wouldn’t last a round with one of my roosters.”

  * * *

  CANTÚ ELEMENTARY had changed its mascot in the middle of the semester, after the school board and community vote went through, and in the back of the shop Bellacosa skipped lunch to finish screen-printing one hundred and eighty dark blue T-shirts. The T-shirts had an illustration featuring the new school mascot—the Trufflepig—along with the school’s name in silver print. In the illustration the Trufflepig was charging like a bull and screaming, its eyes angry, almost possessed, and Bellacosa finished the shirts without giving the creature much thought.

  At one point he heard a strange, gurgling sound from outside, and staring at the design on a medium-sized shirt he imagined for a second that it had come from that Trufflepig illustration.

  Bellacosa delivered the shirts to the administration building of Cantú Elementary after boxing them up and loading them in the MacroStar Ultra. The people there were nice, for school administrators. They seemed unaffected by the odds stacked against them in trying to teach the youth of today—these kids would steal your wallet if you dropped your guard.

  Bellacosa thought of his daughter on the drive back to RGV Uniforms and admitted he’d been harsh with her in the morning. He was disturbed by Diego’s earlier encounter. He feared the sins of his youth had caught up to him, and asked himself, if they knew so much about Diego, what could they know about him?