Awakening From the Golden Sleep

by Daniel Wetta

Javier liked to be quiet when he first arrived from work. But after a couple glasses of wine he began to do what Ana loved best: He told his stories. Ana would focus, listen, remember and learn. She liked to grab the chair beside her father. Then she would watch the faces of the guests as he charmed them with the many histories of characters he had met in his interesting life and the stories of the world leaders whom he knew through the numerous biographies which he had read.

  On one such Saturday night, Ana first learned about the dark side of Sinaloa, the state in Mexico in which she lived. Before then, she had experienced Mexico as a world of sunny beaches; steep lush mountains; fiestas with loving families; funny friends and laughter; open homes; bull fights, baseball; spicy foods; fruits; vegetables; mass on Sundays; intrusive, but caring, nuns and priests; and the loving protection of Jesu Cristo and the Virgen de Guadalupe. She spent hours playing with Barbie dolls, those passed down from her sisters, plus new ones. She rode bicycles with the boys and girls in the neighborhood. She visited her mother’s sister three doors away by traveling across the rooftops of the closely spaced homes on the street. She entered a rooftop window into her aunt’s treasured attic. Along with her sisters, she talked her father into shooting off fireworks in the street during impromptu block parties. Always, always there was music. Her mother had put her in piano lessons. Two of her sisters played guitar, and another played keyboard. All sang into the microphone which amplified their voices through the keyboard's speakers. Music played everywhere on the streets: from the cars, from the radios and boom boxes, and from the television sets tuned to programs of dance contests. In Ana’s childhood world, the only dark experience was the occasional episode of a boy or girl in the neighborhood being mean to her.

  But shortly after the car accident with the produce stand, Ana’s father talked to her about a family that lived just a couple of blocks away. He commanded that she must never go near their house, and, if possible, she must have as little to do with the children who lived there. He was very sorry to tell Ana about this, he said, but, in truth, it could be very dangerous to associate with them. Ana knew the family slightly. There were a boy and a couple sisters, their mother, and their father who never seemed to be home. She knew the boy the best, that he attended a different private school from her, that he was a year older, and that his name was Arturo.

  “I don’t know them very well, Papa,” Ana said, “but why?”

  Javier was sitting next to her on a sofa, and he put his arm around her shoulder. He said, “Arturo’s father engages in an illegal business, and he is wanted by the authorities. He hides and works in la sierra, the mountains nearby, with many other men. They carry guns. Arturo’s father is a man who has dangerous enemies who might even want to hurt his family living in the neighborhood. This is one of the reasons why we see the trucks from the Mexican army driving in the neighborhood so often. They patrol to make sure there is peace in the area and to show themselves so, hopefully, there will be no trouble.”

  Ana could not conceive such circumstances, but, afterwards, she felt very afraid to venture on that block. When she discussed this with her playmates from the street, a couple of them verified that their parents had said similar things: that the man was a narco chief and that his business was to make and sell drugs to the United States. Worst of all, reported one of the older boys, the drug gangs in la sierra nearby sometimes went to war with each other. They not only killed one another, but at times they came to the city to kidnap or kill their enemies’ families.

  Ana did not even know what drugs were, but the thought of dangerous men arriving on her street, in her nice world, to kill people put her in weeks of nightmares. Her mother and father would come to her room and try to reassure her that there was little danger.

  Then, on one of the Saturday nights when their house was filled with more than the usual number of guests, Ana heard her father begin a story after he had relaxed with a little wine. It turned out to be a story that gave Ana more insight into the kind of man her father was.

  Ana made herself small in a chair to the right and slightly behind Javier, so that he did not notice that she was there. Had he known, Ana thought, perhaps he would not be telling the story. She knew her father well. They were kindred spirits. She had an intuition that she should just be very quiet because she was about to hear something important. Javier was talking to three men sitting near the end of the table. Ana’s sisters, mother and some ladies were in an animated and loud conversation just beyond.

  Ana listened as Javier told the men, ”There was a young man who used to come to my store in the years just before I met Lili. This boy was the son of a policeman, and he had ten brothers and sisters. When the boy was around twelve, his father was killed in a gunfight with some narcos, and the family mostly fell apart. The mother did her best to feed and provide for the children, but they were destitute, and the boy, named Fernando, pretty much had to live in the streets. He came into the store occasionally to use the bathroom and to wash up and sometimes to drink the water from the sink.

  “When I realized what was happening with the young man, I gave him some clothes from time to time. I had known and had respected the boy’s father. Sometimes I hired Fernando to do jobs around the store so I could give the boy some money without it seeming like a handout, and so the boy would value himself. When I think back on it, I believe I became a mentor to him.

  “But his father got killed because he took bribes from the narcos, and a rival gang became aware that he was on the payroll of their enemy. They ambushed him.

  “When Fernando turned fourteen, one of the local Sinaloa cartels sucked him into their service. He was a boy who had no money and no real future other than the glimpse of one that I could show him. The future I showed him meant being on the streets and working hard to build a better life. But the narcos put serious cash in his hands along with an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle. They made Fernando feel like a man and led him into the mountains.

  “One day, about nine years later, I looked up and there was Fernando, fully a man, handsome in a tough looking way! I smiled at him and he hugged me. He said he needed to make some major purchases. He led some men, he explained, and they worked in the mountains. Life was hard up there and it was very cold. He needed blankets, comforters, sleeping gear, heaters, and heavy coats. He needed to equip several hundred men. He had ongoing needs because there was much turnover of his personned. He said that he wanted me to have his business because of the kindness and loyalty I had shown him as a child.

  “This moved me. I remember fighting back some tears. I asked Fernando what did he need now, and I told him I would supply him and be able to price according to quantity. I did not want to know any information other than the requisition for the orders he would have. And so for years I accepted some rather large orders from time to time from an agent of Fernando who would come from la sierra. The orders would be filled and delivered to a warehouse in the city, and I knew nothing more than that.”

  Ana saw her dad make a theatrical pause and sip some wine. Then he continued, “But I heard rumors occasionally. I knew that Fernando rose in the ranks of power and survived many battles with rivals, with police, and with the army. One day I heard that Fernando was the boss of the bosses, el jefe, in the Sinaloa cartel. Throughout the state, there were stories about Fernando running rampant. A consistent one was that Fernando, who had had many women and children in his life, had married one of these ladies in the church, and she provided him his legal family. He wanted this wife and children to have the kind of life that he never had: one with the finest things and the best education that money could buy. So he set them up in a nice neighborhood here in Mazatlán with body guards in the house. He even had undercover body guards who followed his family when they went out, and the family never realized their presence.

  Ana listened, her heart pounding, and then Javier revealed what made the hair on Ana’s arms stand up: Fernando’s family lived in the house just a couple blocks away and on
e of his children was Arturo!

  It was at this point of the evening, when Ana was reeling from the bombshell of this revelation, that her sisters came running up to their father along with some boys who were in the house. They excitedly begged Javier to shoot off fireworks in the street. Javier loved to do that. He always had a supply. Feeling like he had put his listeners into a depressed mood, he agreed that it would be fun. So he roused up Lili and her friends to get everyone in the house to come outside and and watch a little show.

  Itl took a few minutes for Javier to go to his closet where he stored the fireworks. He pulled out some of his best aerial rockets along with the firecrackers and sparklers.

  Ana was so relieved to have something else to think about that she bounded out to the front of the house and found some girlfriends. She stood with them beside the street and waited for Javier to emerge. Soon everyone was outside. The guests lined the front porch and the sidewalk in front of the house. Javier emerged with some boxes. He pulled out the sparklers, which he gave to the younger children, and and lit them. Their parents encouraged the children with