The Ends of the Earth

by Lucius Shepard

  A crowd was gathered by the door of Echeverría’s bar, which meant a country girl was riding the wire. The child some farmer didn’t have enough money to feed, and so he’d sold her to Echeverría. A brown-skinned girl stripped naked, silver electrodes plugged to her temples. Her brains frying in a smoke of pleasure as she danced a herky-jerky path across the floor, and men touching her, laughing as she looked blindly around, trying to find them. Later when she slowed down, they’d take her upstairs and charge heavy for a short time. If he’d been smart, Chapo thought, he’d have sold the gringa to Echeverría. But the wire…that was where he stopped being part of the red glow. He didn’t understand why, but he just couldn’t hand her over to that fate.

  A poster with the gringa’s photograph was plastered to Echeverría’s wall. Blond hair and angel face. It didn’t do her justice, didn’t show how her eyes were. At first glance they were blue, then green, and then you saw they were all colors like fire opals, with flecks of emerald and gold and hazel. Special eyes. Beneath the photograph, big black letters spelled out her name: Anise. Just like a gringa to be named for something you drink. Even bigger letters offered a twenty-five-thousand-dollar reward. Everybody was looking for her now, and no way Chapo would be able to move her until things calmed down.

  “Hey, Chapo!” Rafael pushed out of the crowd and came up beside him. Big chubby guy with jowls and brown frizzy hair. He was always hassling Chapo, not for any real reason, just for something to do. “You oughta see inside, man!” he said. “They gotta sweet little lady ridin’ tonight!”

  “Fuck it!” Chapo popped another upper. “I don’t go for that shit.”

  “Least she gonna have fun,” said Rafael, and grinned. “Least she goin’ fast…not slow like you.” He pointed to Chapo’s shirt pocket, his pills.

  A flash of chemical fury, and Chapo knocked him back with a slap. Rafael rubbed his mouth, and a knife materialized in his hand. “Okay,” he said. “You like it fast? You got it, man.”

  Everybody was staring, wanting it to happen, and the pressure of all those black eyes made Chapo feel a little loose, a little casual about his life. He started to go for his own knife, but thought about the gringa and held back.

  “C’mon with it, man!” said Rafael, dancing back and forth. “C’mon!”

  “Maybe later,” Chapo said.

  Jeering whistles sounded behind him.

  “What’s the matter, Chapo?” Rafael grinned and made passes with the knife, lunging close.

  Chapo half-turned, then swung his shopping bag, heavy with cans of fruit juice; the bag struck Rafael in the jaw, and he came all unhinged, falling facedown in the dirt.

  The whistles broke off, and as the crowd dispersed, laughing, a couple of them stopped to spit on Rafael.

  Out on the edge of the desert, the edge of the Crust, that’s where Chapo lived. A white stucco ruin with no windows, no doors. Inside, he waited a minute to make sure nobody had followed. Each of the window frames held a rectangle of golden stars and blue darkness.

  When he was certain he was alone, he went into the back room. It was piled with rubble. He kneeled and knocked three times on the floor. Waited another minute. Then he lifted a heap of rubble that was glued to a round metal plate almost the size of a manhole cover. Lowered a rope ladder that had been concealed beneath the rubble. He climbed partway down, eased the metal plate back into place. “Okay,” he said, climbing down the rest of the way.

  A match scraped, a candle flared. Two candles. He made her out against the rear wall, sitting on a stained mattress, her legs tucked under her. Grime streaked her face, and her golden hair was getting stringy. She wore jeans and a torn white blouse.

  “Got you some fruit,” he said, holding up the shopping bag. “Some juice.”

  She didn’t appear to register what he’d said. The hollows in her cheeks had deepened, making her look older…with that wide mouth, like a model in some fashion magazine. But he figured she wasn’t much over eighteen. Nineteen, maybe.

  He set the shopping bag beside her and sat a couple of feet away. The candles cast tiny dancing shadows on the dirt. Dark wings fluttered behind his eyes, making the room dimmer: the uppers playing tricks.

  “Please,” she said wearily. “Won’t you help me?”

  “That’s what I’m doin’,” he said.

  “No, I mean won’t you help me get back.” Her voice broke, and he hoped she wasn’t going to cry again.

  “I keep tellin’ you,” he said. “Your papa’s offerin’ too much money. There’s guys lookin’ for you all over. They see some fat ol’ lady, and they go peekin’ under her dress to see if the fat’s for real. We’d never make it to Immigration. And you know what happens if somebody catch you? They gonna tease you, touch you…touch you here.” He tapped his chest. “And then they say, ‘Hey, why don’t we taste some of that ’fore we score the money. ’ And once they start, they’ll give everybody a taste, and pretty soon there won’t be enough left to be worth no reward. That’s how it goes in the Crust. People don’t think ahead.”

  “We could call the police,” she said. “We…”

  “The police! Shit! They even worse. They hold you awhile to jack up the reward. Maybe they send your papa a finger or somethin’. And when they get the money, they do you the same way. You be patient, and I’ll get you out.”

  She stared at him a moment, hopelessness in her face. Then she reached for the shopping bag.

  Sitting hunkered on the dirt floor of the cellar, gazing into nowhere, Chapo thought about the crossing. He’d been wanting to cross a long time, wanting some of that Stateside money. And Moro had given him a chance. Moro had owned one of the tubes that spat threads of light and punched holes in the red glow. Holes that spread to door-size, lasted a few seconds, and then closed tight. In a single night they had stolen more money than Chapo had ever seen, and as they’d headed back to the crossing point, they’d seen the girl through a storeroom window, bound and gagged, lying on the floor. She’d been kidnapped by one of the Stateside gangs, and they were working out ransom with her rich papa. Moro had said to take her. At the crossing point, Chapo and the girl had gone through first. They’d squatted beside a dumpster, waiting for the others. But the others hadn’t come through. Chapo had thought he heard a scream, but it had been hard to tell what with the hum and sizzle of the border so loud. Realizing the others were never going to show, he’d dragged the gringa to her feet and they’d made a run to Chapo’s house. It had been almost dawn, the streets empty, and they’d been lucky to make it even then.

  “Chapo?”

  And maybe he should sell her. What the hell was he doing helping her? If things were reversed, she wouldn’t help him. He was just a beaner to her. Just trash.

  “Chapo!”

  He looked up. She was smiling: it was a fake smile, but he was glad to see it. “Yeah?”

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I know you’re trying to help. It’s just…I’m scared, y’know.”

  Chapo made a noncommittal noise.

  “You can sit over here if you want.” She patted the mattress.

  “I’m okay.”

  “You can’t be comfortable,” she said. “Come on, please. It’ll make me feel better.”

  “All right.” He crawled over to the mattress and sat on the very end. She gave a teasing laugh, told him he could sit closer, and kept talking.

  Three days without a shower, and she still smelled sweet. Out of the corner of his eye he peeked at the tented-up sliver of her blouse. Her breasts weren’t very big, but he could tell they had a nice shape. He could stand a taste himself. They said it was all the same, but she’d feel different. Her body full of lazy afternoons and expensive sugars. Plush and springy, a Cadillac ride. He’d sink forever into blond flesh.

  She edged a little nearer, saying she was cold, and he knew what she was doing, what was going to happen. Then her face was close to his, lips parted, dazed-looking, and she said, “Oh, Chapo…Chapo!” And her tongue was
darting into his mouth, and his hand cupped the underside of one of those breasts…soft. The kind of softness that makes you dizzy, tipped with its little hard candy.

  Like a fool, he pushed her away.

  “We can do this,” he said, his breath coming hard. “We can do this, but I ain’t gonna take you out ’fore I think it’s safe.”

  Disappointment and humiliation flooded her face.

  What was the matter with him? Why didn’t he just grab her and peel off the shell and pluck out the meat. That’s what he wanted. But maybe not, maybe with her he wanted it real. Something he could never have. “You gotta be patient,” he said.

  “Patient!” She spat out the word. “For how long? Until you find some way to use me?”

  He got angry, then. “What you think? You think I couldn’t make money off you now? Dumbass bitch! I take you down to Avenida Juárez tonight, if that’s what you think. Sell your skinny butt till it’s wore down to gristle.”

  She aimed a slap at him, but he caught her wrist and shoved her away. She scooted to the end of the mattress, waiting for him to attack. For a second, he thought he might. But all he did was to repeat, “You gotta be patient.”

  “How long?” she asked, looking hopeless again.

  “I dunno. A few weeks…that is, if your papa don’t raise the reward.”

  “A few weeks.” In her mouth it sounded like forever.

  He couldn’t figure why he wanted to save her. It might be he just wanted to save something, to see if anything could be saved. But that wasn’t all of it. Trouble with words, they shrank your ideas to fit, and made you think they were what you’d meant.

  She turned her face to the wall, curled up tight.

  Chapo doubted she could last a few more weeks. One day she’d do something crazy, try for the border on her own. He could tie her up, drug her. But she’d get loose. Even though she cried, he could see she was strong. But her strength wasn’t the kind that counted here in the Crust.

  “Maybe there’s a way,” he said.

  She didn’t react. Probably didn’t believe him.

  “I’ll check it out tomorrow,” he said.

  She mumbled something that he didn’t catch.

  What a goddamn fool he was!

  He didn’t want to sleep, so he did another upper. Something scrabbled in the shadows, then was still. The candles guttered low, and light seemed to be collecting around the gringa, burying her under a heap of yellow glow like an enchantment. Her breath deepened. Now and again she moaned. He studied the way the denim clung to her ass. Sleek, perfect curves. An ass Made in America. Chapo wondered what it had cost, what secrets had gone into the manufacture. And he wondered, too, what dreams were crowding that golden head. Even her nightmares would be beautiful.

  The upper kicked in, and Chapo leaned back against the wall, feeling the crazy bounces of his heart, a mean wash of thoughts seeping up from the red glow of his blood.

  Anise, he said to himself. What a stupid fuckin’ name!

  Like Chapo, Herreira lived on the backside of the Crust. An old, old man with sheet iron over his windows and big locks on his doors. He owed Chapo, owed him big. Two years before, a merchant named Ibáñez had taken Herreira’s granddaughter in exchange for paper he held on him, and Herreira had asked Chapo to steal the paper, so his granddaughter could get free. They hadn’t talked price, but Chapo had trusted Herreira to work something out. He’d broken into Ibáñez’s house, and Ibáñez had caught him. Chapo had opened the merchant’s belly with a knife. Afterward he hadn’t been able to put a price on the man’s life, and he’d told Herreira that sooner or later he’d need something. Now the time had come, and he needed the old man’s jeep, his maps of the desert. He’d drive the gringa across the desert to the Pacific resort of Huayacuatla. There she’d be safe.

  Herreira’s face was as wrinkled as tree bark, and his hair was wispy and white. But his back was unbowed, his black eyes clear. He didn’t much care to risk his jeep, but a bargain was a bargain, and besides, he didn’t use it anymore. It was painted white to blend in with the hardpan of the desert, and was kept in an adobe building barnacled onto the rear of the old man’s house. Herreira spread his maps on the hood and showed Chapo the hiding places, how he would have to drive during the night, and by day hide the jeep and sleep in the big rocks that stuck up from the desert floor. Herreira had once been a smuggler, bringing guns from the coast into the Crust, and he told Chapo it was very dangerous to make the crossing.

  “They spot you, man, and that’s it.” He drew a finger across his throat. “You got no place to run. It’s luck if you make it, and the odds ain’t good.”

  “What are they?” Chapo asked.

  “Sixty-forty, your favor. If there’s no moon, a little better. But there’ll be a moon for you.”

  Chapo studied the map. The border was a crooked red line, and he imagined himself living there like a roach in a crack. Sixty-forty odds. It seemed no worse than what he usually faced.

  “How ’bout gas?”

  “You gotta extra tank,” said Herreira. “Enough to cross the desert. Three nights drivin’. But you’ll need more when you head up into the hills. There’s a village”—he pointed—“here. San Juan de la Fiebra. Know ’bout it?”

  Chapo nodded.

  “Well, you can deal with ’em…sometimes. You get past ’em, and it’s only a few hours to Huayacuatla.”

  Again Chapo wondered why the hell he was doing this. It didn’t feel smart or even the good kind of reckless. But he pushed the question aside. Why didn’t matter. He was committed, and maybe it was just in him to do.

  “Bring the jeep back,” said Herreira, dead-serious. “Don’t sell it if you get across.”

  “How you know I’m plannin’ to come back?”

  Herreira’s laugh was sneering. “Shit, Chapo! Where you gonna go? You just like me, you border meat.”

  “Maybe,” said Chapo.

  “Maybe, my ass!” Herreira scowled at Chapo. “You bring that bitch back.”

  The first night.

  They drove south from the border. The hardpan glowed white. Every once in a while they passed huge desert rocks, indigo under the moonlight, smooth depressions in their sides like dimples made by the pressure of enormous thumbs. The shadows of smaller things—stubby cacti and little rocks—were so deep and black, they hid the objects that cast them. Chapo was tense. He could feel the blazing pinpricks of the stars on his back. The engine noise and rattles were too loud for talk, and whenever the gringa wanted to stop and pee, she had to shout. Sometimes he’d catch her looking at him, and she would smile. Not a fake smile, but one that seemed to be trying to engage him, to give him encouragement, to say something friendly, and he would nod in response and think about the smile, and then his thoughts would be worn down by the engine noise, and he would just drive.

  Hours like that.

  An hour before dawn he came to the first hiding place, a mountainous rock that showed chalky pink under the brightening sky. There was a niche in the southern face large enough to hold the jeep, and after parking it there, he covered it with brush. They crawled up to a depression, almost a cave, from which they had a good view south and east. The gringa was excited and wanted to talk, but Chapo told her to sleep. Later, he said, it might be too hot to sleep. She drank a little water, chewed half a tortilla, and wrapped herself in a blanket. He had bought her a clean blouse—blue, with a pattern of white hibiscus—and when she turned in her sleep and the blanket slipped down from her shoulders, he could see her nipples pushing up the clingy material. He watched them rise and fall, not thinking, just watching, feeling mild arousal, until he began to get drowsy.

  When he waked he couldn’t remember having fallen asleep. Sweat was crawling down his sides, and the desert was rippling with heat haze; he thought he could hear the heat humming, but the sound was in his head, and after a second it switched off. At the base of the rock stood a green barrel cactus. He could have sworn it hadn’t been there w
hen he’d parked the jeep. There were supposed to be brujos in the desert: could be the cactus was one of them in disguise. He glanced around and found the gringa watching him.

  “Good morning,” she said cheerfully.

  Her good spirits annoyed him. “Yeah, mornin’.”

  His mouth tasted like shit. He did an upper and washed it down with a sip of water from the canteen. Shook his head to clear away the cobwebs. He reached into his hip pocket and pulled out his wrist-watch. It was nearly one o’clock. Six, maybe seven more hours of daylight. He wished he’d slept longer. That same old question of what he was doing here cropped up in his mind: the desert seemed a bad answer.

  “Want something to eat?” she asked.

  “Un-uh.”

  His automatic jabbed into his back; he reached behind him and eased it from his waistband, laid it beside his leg.

  The gringa’s eyes widened, but she made no comment. After a minute she said, “Do you wanna talk or something?”

  “What for?”

  “Just to pass the time.”

  He had another sip of water. “Yeah, sure…all right.”

  She waited for him to start, and when he didn’t, she said, “Why didn’t you think of this before? The jeep, I mean. It doesn’t look like it’s going to be too hard.”

  He didn’t want to tell her what Herreira had said about the odds. “I dunno.”

  “Well,” she said impatiently. “I’m glad you did think of it.”

  They were silent for a while, and then she said, “What do you want to be?”

  “Huh?”

  “What do you want to do with your life? I’m studying to be a dancer.”

  “You don’t gotta study to do that. Dancin’s just somethin’ you learn natural. In the bars and shit.”

  “I mean formal dance.”