I’m up for it. Even though I’ve barely worked, I need a break. His invitation lifts my spirits; I take the bus next day. Chuy meets me at the terminal, takes me to a Motel 6 in El Paso. The next morning, we cross the international bridge into Ciudad Juárez, Mexico.
Party time. We hit La Zona Rosa, the red-light district, lined with brothels. We find La Brisa, a cantina where Chuy promises the best chicas are, where we can party on the cheap. After hours of laughter, lines of cocaine, drinking beer and tequila shots, Chuy goes to one of the rooms in the back with a woman. I need to clear my head, so I tell the bartender I’ll be back and go out for a stroll.
In the first ten minutes, my nauseous feeling is gone. Besides the benefit of sobering me up, I enjoy walking and decide to explore. I walk for about thirty minutes, during which a light spray of rain douses the streets. I lift my face to the cloudy sky, rub it with my hands to feel the warm rain. It is so good, and it clears my head right up. And then in an instant, the rain comes down hard. I dash up a street for shelter, thinking I’ll wait it out under a tree or under a tarp canopy overhanging some shop. I find none, so I turn down a dirt path where the sidewalk ends and runs into wild overgrowth that opens onto a field with a bunch of footpaths zigzagging toward a grove of trees. I run for them.
I come out on the other end, stop and rest. Up ahead, I see a few men standing under a roof spotlight, which is hanging over a warehouse dock. They’re military, uniformed, armed. They’re loading the truck with bales of weed. The truck has a green tarp, with the military insignia of the Mexican Armed Forces on the door.
Shit, I think, I’ve run right into a cartel operation. I try to conceal myself, immediately turn to walk away, but it’s too damn late. They see me. I hear them talking in urgent tones, then two hurry to another pick-up parked alongside the big truck. They roar out of the docking area in my direction.
I run for my life. I flee, fast as I can. I barrel my way through brush and briars, duck into the forest, hide behind a tree, then run like hell. I hear them crashing through the brush and cursing roughly in Spanish to each other about finding me, wondering who I am, asking themselves aloud if I belong to another cartel or some street gang or maybe the American DEA. They have to catch me, they say. I need to be caught.
I run until I can’t breathe and pause to catch my breath. I plant my hands on my knees, bend over, panting. Glimmering in the night not too far off, I see the Rio Bravo, the riverborder that separates the United States from Mexico. I’ve got to make it there. I keep moving until I find a cluster of creosote bushes. That’s where I hide, crouching down in the bushes, belly against the ground, cheek to the dirt, praying until I am certain they’re gone.
Finally, I get up, walk to the river’s edge. The current is strong, the water deep. I check both banks to determine the best place to cross. I can’t swim it, I don’t have the strength. I need to rest before I attempt it.
I sit in the grass, gazing at the flowing water, feeling weak and sad, grief permeating every inch of my body with regret. Why did I ever agree to come here? I survey the field behind me, stare at the tree line on the opposite bank, try to see if anyone has followed me.
I feel the ground shake. The air rumbles, I crawl on hands and knees to the bushes. I crouch down, peer at a truck’s headlights advancing towards me. It stops near enough so I can see it’s a military truck carrying soldiers. A wave of engine heat sweeps over me. The soldiers, armed with pistols and rifles, get down, check around. They talk in Spanish and English, saying they need to find me or the boss will certainly kill one of them.
I stay balled up on the ground, in terror, until they get back into the truck, spraying dirt and rocks from their deepcleated tires, as they roar away.
The land lightens with the coming sunrise. I rise to my knees, sit on my haunches, afraid maybe one of the soldiers was left behind to watch for me. I hear a distant but nearenough train whistle. The morning mist clears. I climb a boulder halfway in the water, scan the river. I look upstream, downstream, across—everywhere. I make a run for it, sprinting for my life. I know if they catch me, I’m dead. I splash through the knee-high water, crashing into it in with a frenzy. When I reach the American side, I jog into a railyard, slide up to a train’s flat car just starting to creep, grab the side railing and lift myself onto its bed. The train speeds up. I’m freezing, my teeth clatter as I watch the distance between me and Mexico widen. I don’t know where the train is going. I don’t care. I curl into a tight ball and shiver myself to sleep.
Hours later I awake from my fitful nap as the train slows down. I’m so stiff I can hardly move, numb with cold and exhaustion. I slap my cheeks, rub my face. I can’t believe my eyes. I must have slept for a few hours because I see a sign that says Santa Fe, 15 miles.
The train sails past Lamy and starts to gain speed again. I leap off. I put my head down, trudge in the direction of Santa Fe. I come upon a residential community of luxury homes. The nearest one to me has its own gym, helicopter pad and landing airstrip and servants’ quarters. I’m so hungry and thirsty, I’m willing to chance going down there to find some water.
Then I decide I better not keep moving over the next hill. I stop. There’s a pond below with swans, a mansion lording over the immaculate fields where Arabian horses and Black Angus graze. There is even a teepee—not a real one, a gringo teepee used as landscape decoration.
I sneak alongside a barn-sized studio with massive paintings hanging on the walls. I sprint to the pond, conceal myself in the bulrushes, kneel and drink. I discover by sheer accident a nest of swan eggs by my right knee.
I pull out my pocketknife, grab one, cut a hole in the shell and suck the yolk. A terrible shriek shocks the morning silence, scares me enough to almost topple me. A swan screams out of nowhere, flapping angrily at me from the tall bank grass. It jabs me with her beak, nicking me with each lunge. I try to keep the hen away by jabbing at her with my pocketknife, the blade no more than two inches long, enough to warn it to stop spearing me. Then her mate charges, wings flapping and beak spiking my arms and hands. Both snip me with their beaks and, more to keep them away than hurt them, I sweep my knife across the air every time they lunge. I warn them to stay back, stay back.
My blade gives me time to run. Out of breath, I stop, look back. One of the swans is lying in the grass, white feathers stained red, the other one is making weird honking sounds, moaning like a child in its bedroom, crying for its mother, who arrives and hovers over it.
I hurry in the direction of Santa Fe. It’s hot. My throat is parched, my stomach cramping with hunger. After an hour or so I hear something, turn to see behind me a dark silhouette floating on the air, wavering in the heat-distance. As it nears, I can make out a figure on horseback galloping towards me. He wears a cowboy hat, an Ohio football T-shirt and grimy jeans. He has fashion cowboy boots tipped with silver and turquoise thread designs.
It’s pointless to run, so I stand and wait until the horseman almost tramples me, his horse’s chest shoving me back, its hooves stomping the ground. I think, What’s up with this fake cowboy, is he going to kill me or what?
He reins in the horse, pulls back its neck that arches as its nostrils spew foam and spit. He glares at me from behind aviator sunglasses and shouts, “You little sonofabitch! Why are you here? You killed my swan!”
He draws a pistol from his hip and aims it at me.
I raise my arms. “Please. I’m sorry. I was thirsty and hungry, that’s all. They attacked me. I was trying to protect myself. Please, don’t shoot.”
“You Mexicans come here, think you can do what you want. You ever hear of private property? This is my castle. You not only trespassed but you killed my swan, and you’ll pay for it, all right. Cowboy justice.”
He lassos me, pulls the rope tight, turns and half-drags me as I run to keep up. Just like the old cowboy and Indian movies with John Wayne, “Gunsmoke” and “The Rifleman,” I follow on foot behind him to the ranch house.
He locks
me in the tack-room of the barn. The first night and the next morning, he affixes some kind of dog collar to my ankles, locks it in and tells me, if I try to run, it’ll electrocute the hell out of me.
“Don’t try,” he snorts, “you’ll get a nice little jolt. You owe me; it’s time to pay back.”
In the morning, he lets me wash the blood off at the spigot beside the barn, then he has me undress. He gives me gray overalls to put on, clips another small lock to my ankle band. He then flips a switch on a hand-held remote he carries in his back pocket.
“This here little device carries enough juice to knock you flat outta of your wits if you try to run. I’m warning you, don’t test it. Now, you’re gonna pay me what my swan was worth in good ol’ American hard work.”
The next four weeks, he has me dig post holes for a fence, lay irrigation lines and sprinklers for his acre-large garden, repair windows in his studio, cut and nail steps to his utility shed, stain wood decks, clean out a tractor trailer, pile all the trash in a truck, run the weed whacker around his mansion, trim back trees and bushes and chain-saw a bunch of logs into cords and stack them.
I tell you, it is a relief, I needed a break from freedom. I feel like I’m back at DYA or the orphanage. I have someone to tell me what to do, to feed me, give me a cot. I don’t have to make any decisions, just obey. I’m happy to be of service.
I start on the floors—buff the tiles in rooms, wash windows, polish the stainless-steel appliances. His wife, who runs some kind of art gallery in Santa Fe, has me move furniture around. I feather-dust the paintings hanging on the walls, mostly cowboys killing buffalos, wagons and homesteaders and pioneers. This guy is way over the top when it comes to wild west scenes. Photographs of Gene Autry, John Wayne, Charlton Heston and the actor Ronald Reagan are displayed prominently. Silver-trimmed saddles and lasso ropes flank the entrance, lucky horseshoes are nailed above the door. Gold-plated spurs hang from a living room viga.
Finally, after a month and half of labor, he calls me to the back patio and says my debt is paid. He offers me a chair at the table, where his Mexican maid pours me a glass of sweet tea. He explains the reasoning for the way he thinks of his place in the world:
“There was a time, a long time ago, when these gentlemen got around a table. Back in the days of chivalry. It was King Arthur’s table, and these men were brave knights in search of the Holy Grail. Every one of them knights had ponds, lakes and swans at their palaces. They believed their palace was as close to heaven as you could get on earth. When you killed my swan, you weren’t just killing my swan, Orlando, you were attacking my idea of heaven on earth, my place as my kingdom, where there is no crime, no poverty and my justice is everywhere. Nothing is out of order. This is my heaven. You see why I got so angry? You’d besmirched the mythical dimension of my life, you corrupted it with your presence, you defiled it. You understand?”
“Yes, sir,” I answer.
“Now, come here, let me take that band off. We won’t be needing that anymore, will we?”
“Thank you, sir, I appreciate it.”
“Oh, I don’t think there was any call for the law to get involved. . . . Hell, ’round here, we do it the cowboy way. Listen, Juanita is gone for the day. You Mexicans know how to barbecue—on weekends you all fill the park like cockroaches, all of you around a barbecue grill. You think you might break bread with me in a kind of mutual parting of ways? Can you make us up some of them buffalo burgers in the freezer? I’ll get the colas and ice, you go on and get a start. Call me when you’re done, I’ll be taking a nap.”
“Yes, sir,” I say.
I get the grill going, put out the mustard and ketchup, cut the lettuce, red onions, tomatoes and cheese and set plates on the table. I can’t find the buffalo burgers in the fridge, so I check the freezer in the garage. Right next to the package of buffalo burgers is the frozen corpse of the swan.
During the meal, he compliments me: “These are the best damn burgers, son. You sure know how to cook ’em.” He fills his glass for the third time with whiskey.
“The spices, sir.”
“Does ’em justice. Yep, sure does.”
We finish, and he offers me a ride to the bus station, gives me the fare. “You know, you’re always welcome to come back, work for me. I could use a good hand like you.”
“Thank you, sir. Goodbye.”
As the bus heads out of Santa Fe, south on interstate I-25, I think soon enough he’ll realize he was eating his swan. For a second I consider getting a chuck wagon, setting it up at the park on Sundays, serving up swan tacos to all my Chicano brothers and sisters; swan burritos, green-chili swan burgers.
I get off in Bernalillo. I want to walk. It’s early March and the world is beautiful. I’m so happy to smell the prairie air. I jog along an arroyo toward the four dormant volcanoes on the horizon. The sun warms the earth. It’s Sunday morning, lots of folks are in church. I’m just walking. My lungs swell with fragrant sage, the incense-scent of sand and stones. A roadrunner jitters behind a nopal, flicks its firm, whitespotted gray tail feathers.
I inhale deep lungfuls of prairie air, the inhalation a divine blessing from the llano. I think back to the weeks spent at the cowboy’s kingdom. He was, for all his weird beliefs, a decent man. I can explain such men in a way that I cannot explain Lila. She goes deep. He is shallow water. She’s a vast ocean. I walk straight through the prairie grass and weeds. Walking out in the middle of the prairie makes me feel all alone in the world, but the loneliness isn’t the kind that hurts.
My mind goes all the way back to my boyhood, before the orphanage, when I used to go with Grandpa to take the sheep to the village pond where they would drink and graze on the lush grass. I’d walk around the pond all day, seeing all kinds of frogs and minnows in the water, hawks in the branches. I’d even see coyotes come up, sniff around. Other times, some of the ranchers would show up with their horses, other kids would play on the swings and slide with me. We would chase each other, play tag, hide-n-seek, sometimes roam the dirt roads around the village. The quiet was so heavy it defined everything one touched, smelled, saw. All the kitchens were filled with silence. The roads brimmed with quiet. The trees slept. The dust slumbered. The air put away its guitar, slept in a corner in a small room. Men and women napped, dreaming of their youth, lost loves, their losses. The spirits of young men and women who had passed on before their time walked arm in arm down the street or sat on porch swings watching us playing at the pond. The silence understood where pain came from, knew the scar that slashed across the face of a marine back from war, knew the young girl’s first period, her yearning to sneak away to the pinball arcade to meet her boyfriend from another village, understood why the priest should have never been a priest. The silence kissed the small ears of a newborn in its crib, swaddled in home-sewn baby quilts, the kind of silence that the past, that shimmered in the locket or ring given a young child by grandparents after their passing. The silence unfolded the silk cloth, once again allowed the eye to look and cry, the silence carefully folded itself around each flower and handed it to the heart like a lover’s bouquet. Silence floated in the blood of mothers, fathers missing their grown children. It never punished you, you sat and ate with it under a tree as it told you a story of the girl you liked, of the mother gone, of the beautiful morning, the afternoon visit by relatives from the big city. Silence never aged.
With such a silence all around me, I skirt thawing rattlers on the road with a childish, catch-me-if-you-can delight. I dash swiftly up hills and sprint down, distend my chest to its full capacity, breathe in the whole prairie. I count the cedars and junipers, stare as if I will never see them again. Scrubbrush claws my legs, jackrabbits spring across arroyos, the sun sketches light and shadows on the ground. I love my sweat-soaked T-shirt clinging to my chest. My knee aches, the sharp pins of pain stab at my ankles as I kick through the sandy arroyos.
After a while I get back on the interstate, hitchhike a ride into Albuquerque and go to Ca
milo’s. He still isn’t home. There is another addict sleeping in his room. When I ask where my brother might be he directs me to a motel on East Central Avenue. I find him there, drinking with a Navajo woman. Both are on a binge. I ask about the money, he says he spent it.
Back at the orphanage, I was friendly with some of the nicer nuns. We played cards, strolled, talked, laughed. Among the kids, I had countless friends. I ran away when I wanted to experience the free world. From time to time, I got to see my grandparents. At the orphanage, there was so much joy in the festive holidays. During Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter, the whole world lit up with laughter, toys, smiles. I shared stories with dozens of kids, felt their kinship, made my first deep bonds with other human beings. I heard some of the greatest stories, too, played basketball and soccer. Nothing was given to me unearned, it felt good to feel freedom pulse in me, to be left to my own instincts, to fill myself with wonder, to go to bed marvelling at life in all its richness and diversity.
And now in late March, I’m back in Burque, whose streets are broad and bustling. I feel a sense of awe as I sign up for school. I rent a room by the university, in an area called the student slums. I share the house with other students while I attend night school to get my GED.
The first week in April I get my acceptance letter. I buy a rusted junkyard scooter I nickname Mosquito and ride up and down Central filling out applications at burger joints. I nail a job at a wood yard stacking and cutting logs. One afternoon, as I am going back home I see this chick strolling casually and I pull up beside her. Over the sniveling staccato of the muffler, I ask as casually as I can, “Need a ride?”
She turns, gives me a long up-and-down appraisal and takes her time articulating every word with cavalier contempt: “I wouldn’t ride that if it was the last ride on earth and I was stranded in the middle of the desert.”
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