by Johnny Shaw
Snout turned to me, smiling. “Hey, Jimmy.”
“What’s going on?” I asked.
“They said they’re taking the girls. Buck Buck told them they weren’t. That’s about where we’re at.”
“Don’t shoot no one. Let me get Tomás on the horn.”
He answered on the first ring.
“Those girls are mine,” Tomás said in lieu of a greeting. “They’re part of the package.”
“That wasn’t part of our deal.”
“True, but taking them with you wasn’t either.”
“They’re people, not property.”
“You still don’t understand. It used to be cute, now it’s irritating.”
“They’re nobody’s property. They’re teenage girls. Messed up, damaged girls. You’re not taking them without a fight.”
“If not them, I’ll find others.”
“And if those girls were in front of me, I’d stop you from abducting them too.”
“What do I get in return?”
“Nothing. This isn’t a trade and I’m not asking for a fucking favor, Tommy. I’m telling you that we will fight if your men try to take these girls. That’s what I’m telling you. You can decide to do whatever the fuck you want with that information.”
Tomás said nothing for a few seconds. He sighed. “It’s so much easier in Mexico. I don’t know why I’m so hell-bent on doing business north of the fence. More pain than it’s worth.”
“It’d make things easier for me, too, if you stopped.”
“My abuelito would never talk to me again if something happened to you. Not that he’s talking to me now,” Tomás said. “Hold on.”
Ten seconds later, one of the armed men answered his phone, listened, and yelled a few words in Spanish to the other men. They stowed their weapons, got in the SUVs, and drove away, kicking up dust and gravel.
Tomás came back on the line. “It’s done.”
“We’re done, Tommy,” I said. “I can’t associate with you anymore.”
“That makes more sense,” Tomás said.
“I’ll always be grateful for your help bringing Juan home.”
“Raise him well. You’re a good man, Jimmy. Even a bad man can see that.”
Tomás hung up. And while it had been necessary to sever that tie, it still felt like I had lost a part of my past. But Tommy had been gone a long time. Only Tomás fucking Morales remained.
Buck Buck and Snout walked to where Gabe and I stood on the deck.
I slapped Snout on the back. “You looked good out there, Snouter. Like a real badass.”
“I’m going to buy a cowboy hat,” he said.
They hopped onto the deck. It collapsed under the combined weight. The girls jumped off the edge, a couple rolling on the ground. They dusted themselves off and laughed as we dug ourselves out of the wreckage. When Rudy came to the front door, he couldn’t have looked more disgusted.
Before I went back inside to see how the treaty negotiations were going, I wanted to have a powwow with the girls. Chola had become their de facto leader, stepping up in the heat of the moment.
“Those narcos were here for us, yeah?” she asked. “What did that cost you?”
“A friend. But the friendship was dead. We just hadn’t buried it yet.”
“You going to turn us over to the cops? Social Services?”
“The responsible me says I should, let them sort it.”
“You don’t seem so responsible to me.”
“If I let all you go on your own, some other bad shit is going to happen. I know you ain’t lost kittens, probably more worldlier than me, but I’m thinking I shouldn’t be letting you wander stray.”
“You make that call, put us back in the system, they drop me back in foster care.” Chola nodded at the other girls. “They send them back to their fucked-up houses, fighting off weird uncles, pervy fosters, or maybe their own dads. Parents who don’t give a shit. We’re not on vacation. We took off for a reason.”
“If I let you on your own, where do you go? What happens? If all the choices are shit, what do I do with you?”
“They can stay here.”
Both Chola and I turned to see Rudy climbing down from the stack of timber that was once his deck. “I can use help around the place. Fix this deck, for starters. Can’t do much more than feed them, keep them alive, maybe find a few girls work in town. Clean out the old Airstreams out back, call in some favors. I got the room. Looks like they’ve been helping each other, even if they been fighting. That’s more of a family than real family. Why break them up?”
“You ain’t thought this through. Big responsibility,” I said. “And you weren’t exactly father of the year.”
“You ain’t the decider. They are,” Rudy said. “Yeah, I was a bad father. My boy hates me. And’s got every right to. The things I remember doing were bad, but the things I don’t remember, they’re the ones that hurt most. I still learn about bad I did when I was drinking. I can’t fix the past, but I can do something right now.”
“There’re ten girls here. Can you handle that?”
“I can try.”
Buck Buck and Snout stepped forward. Buck Buck said, “We can’t take any of them in, but we can find work for a few of them. Decent pay. Irrigating’s been getting in the way of our training.”
I didn’t ask.
Rudy said, “I ain’t saying they live here forever. Most of ’em won’t want to at all. Just give them time to figure things out. If it don’t work, you can come up with something else then.”
“Why would I trust some old dude out in Bumfuck I don’t know? You could be a freak,” Chola said.
Rudy walked to his truck, took something out, and walked back. He handed Chola his truck gun. “I get out of line. Shoot me.”
The girl looked at the gun. “Okay.”
“I only got one rule,” Rudy said. “No swearing.”
“Shit,” Chola said. “It’d be easier if you just wore earplugs.”
Becky climbed down the remains of the deck as I was about to go back inside.
“Do you have a cigarette?” she asked.
I handed her one and lit it. “How you doing?”
“Needed a break. Julie makes me so angry. I’m glad she’s safe, but I can’t help it. I’m wondering if someplace else is better for her. Not jail, but there’s got to be places. I honestly don’t know who that is in there and what I’m going to do with her when I got her back home.”
“She knows how much trouble she’s in. She’s playing tough, but she knows.”
“It’s a messed up thing, threatening your daughter to come home. Like it’s so bad. I feel like I lost my little girl the moment she ran away.”
We smoked in silence. When I was done, I crushed the last cigarette underfoot that I ever planned to smoke, handed her the rest of the pack, and went back inside.
“Okay, so you’ll go back home,” Bobby said. “But how do I know you’ll stay? That you won’t leave again?”
The negotiations appeared to have reached a civil pitch during the Mexican standoff outside. It was nice to see some calm amid the chaos.
“Where am I going to go?” Julie said. “You said it yourself. You convinced me.”
“You’ll have to stay out of trouble. There will be rules and repercussions.”
“And in a year and half, I’ll be eighteen and I can do what I want.”
“Exactly. That’s all we’re asking. And hell, you might find that being a normal teenager suits you.”
“I don’t really like what other teenagers do.”
“What about your drawings? I’ve seen your art,” Bobby said. “It’s amazing. You could do something with that. Go to art school. Learn about painters and drawers and stuff.”
“Artists don’t make money.”
“Are you kidding me?” Bobby said, “Picasso was like a gajillionaire. He’d pay for expensive meals and cars by drawing scribbles on a napkin. That’s badass.”
“You ever hear the expression, ‘starving artist’?”
“Money ain’t everything. You like drawing?”
“It’s okay.”
“Then keep doing it. Not everyone’s got your talent. Maybe you can apply to colleges next year. You’re smart.”
“We can’t afford college,” Julie said. “We’re poor. I told you. Every time there’s something I want, something to do, we don’t got the money to do it.”
“That’s all excuses. There’s scholarships and loans. I went to college.”
“Really?” Julie said with a smirk.
“Why doesn’t anyone believe me?” Bobby said. “If college is what you want, we’ll figure out a way.”
“What about my money? The money I made?”
“You’re splitting it with the girls outside. They earned it too. I’ll keep your share safe until your eighteenth birthday. How’s that?”
“And then I get it back and can do whatever I want?”
“That’s right. You will be released from your rigid sentence of staying with your caring mother in a safe and loving home. Life is so hard for you.”
“We could’ve made so much more,” Julie said, more to herself.
“It’s time to go home,” Bobby said. “You don’t have any other choice.”
TWENTY
Real life doesn’t come beautifully wrapped with a bow on top. Most events usually look more like a three-year-old’s attempt to wrap Mommy’s gift. Crinkled and torn paper, too much tape, and covered in glitter and stickers. But it isn’t for the lack of effort or the love put into the thing. Some people just can’t wrap for shit. No matter how hard people try, there will always be limits beyond our control, a ceiling to our influence and our ability.
Julie returned home to Indio without any more struggle or drama. Becky and Russell established strict ground rules and kept a close eye on her. From what Bobby told me, it looked like Julie was making an honest effort at both school and home.
Gabe brought Angel over regularly so they could draw together. And so he could hang out with her, I’m sure. Love made us all do crazy things, including not giving up on the people who betrayed us.
I got invited to Julie’s seventeenth birthday. It was a quiet affair. Julie didn’t invite any new friends. She stayed reserved, but friendly, most of the night. None of the nastiness, but a distance that made me wonder where her mind was.
Three weeks after her birthday party, Julie ran away for good. Bobby and Becky never heard from her again.
Becky contacted the authorities and went through the motions to get her back, but I think she had had enough. There wasn’t any chase left in her. At seventeen, Julie had essentially emancipated herself and as difficult as it was for those that cared, she was where she chose to be.
With the money from Plaster City, we were able to hire tutors so the girls could get their high school diplomas. Not all of them hung around, but the remaining six worked hard, inspired by the realization that this was their shot.
Bobby surprised everyone by taking in Lety—formerly known as Chola. He acted like it was no big thing, he had the space and maybe he could learn some things about teenagers to help him when his other daughter reached that age. It was a good deal for both of them. Lety got a place to stay where she could concentrate on her studies. It kept Bobby’s drinking in check as he played the part of the responsible grown-up. And with a couple of the other girls helping with the land, he was able to get to Riverside more often to see his daughter.
He was making the effort, but he wasn’t perfect. A Mavescapade arose now and again, back to the more manageable monthly schedule. I only heard about them later. True to my word, Plaster City was my last Mavescapade. And while Bobby and I saw each other—morning coffee, baling hay, the Holtville Carrot Festival—we both had become homebodies, much more focused on the real lives we had built for ourselves.
Bobby played it straight with Griselda. He told her everything that had happened. She got understandably pissed, but admitted that if we had told her, she would have shut us down. Griselda seemed genuinely impressed that Bobby took in Lety. A lot of girlfriends would be suspect of their boyfriend taking a sixteen-year-old into their home. Bobby’s new attempt at honesty must have been working.
The Riverside County Sheriff’s Department never found Craig Driskell’s killer. They never would.
In the week after our rescue, the front page of the Imperial Valley Press had stories about the massacre in Plaster City. Five bodies had been found hanging from the catwalks of the gypsum factory towers. The speculation played on the public’s fear that the drug wars had made their way to the Valley. Almost no truth in any of the articles, but that sold a lot of papers. And while it was investigated by every branch of law enforcement, to the best of my knowledge, nobody was ever charged.
But the Spanish whispers in Morales Bar and the underside of the Imperial Valley told a more complete story. The rumors and theories about Tomás Morales and his death squad skirted far closer to the truth than any legit news source.
I went back to Plaster City two weeks after our adventure to look around. The entire area had been cleaned and scoured. Back to its blinding white purity.
With five bodies displayed publicly, I wondered what happened to the others. Maybe one day, some hiker or gold prospector in the North Yuha would stumble on some mass grave. But it would be hard to associate them with Plaster City. There are thousands of bodies in this part of the desert, from drifters to illegals. Like Buck Buck had said, when you’re walking in the desert, you’re walking in a graveyard.
When I went to Morales Bar, I was always tempted to ask Mr. Morales about Tomás. But I don’t think he would’ve known anything. Tomás was no longer a part of either of our lives.
Russell took me and Juan back out to the dry wash east of Plaster City to shoot off rockets and look for shells. The look of sheer joy on Juan’s face as he pressed the button and the rocket launched in the air will be forever one of my fondest memories. It reminded me that I didn’t feel wonder nearly as often as I did as a child.
Juan still had a lot of questions that he wasn’t ready to ask. It frustrated him. We talked about it in brief installments, him absorbing his short, but dramatic past in small bites. Someday I hoped it would all make sense to him.
One night after putting Juan to bed, I found one of Pop’s old bottles of wine in the cellar. Nine times out of ten, they turned out to be vinegar. Surrounded by irrigated fields, the basement regularly flooded, the moisture rotting the corks. But this time, the gamble paid off. The wine was perfect.
I brought Angie a glass and we sat outside staring at the view from our backyard, rows and rows of lettuce. It’s actually prettier than it sounds.
“It’s good to be home,” I said. “I can’t think of anyplace I’d rather be right now.”
“Me neither,” Angie said, and then her voice got serious. “But there’s something we have to talk about.”
“Uh-oh. What?”
“Is there something you want to tell me?”
“No. I don’t think so.”
“I found some butts in the ashtray of your truck when I was looking for some change. Were you smoking when you were in Indio?”
I was caught and I knew it. So instead of answering Angie’s question, I countered with a question I had already planned to ask.
“Will you marry me?”
When she stopped laughing, I got my answer.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Painting by Roxanne Patruznick
Johnny Shaw was born and raised on the Calexico/Mexicali border, the setting for his Jimmy Veeder Fiasco novels, Dove Season and Plaster City. He is also the author of the Anthony Award–winning adventure novel Big Maria.
His shorter work has appeared in Thuglit, Crime Factory, Plots with Guns, and numerous anthologies. As the creator and editor of the fiction magazine Blood & Tacos, Johnny regularly brings the thunder.
Johnny lives in Portland, Oregon,
with his wife, artist Roxanne Patruznick.
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication Page
CONTENTS
START READING
PART ONE
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
SEVEN
EIGHT
NINE
TEN
PART TWO
ELEVEN
TWELVE
THIRTEEN
FOURTEEN
FIFTEEN
SIXTEEN
SEVENTEEN
EIGHTEEN
NINETEEN
TWENTY
ABOUT THE AUTHOR