Dove Season

by Johnny Shaw

  “Yeah, Bobby. I got the joke.”

  I rounded a shack about to hit the main drag when I spotted Alejandro. He had two vatos with him, both of them short and thick with shaved heads. All three carried baseball bats. I could also clearly see a revolver in Alejandro’s waistband. I ducked back behind one of the shacks before he saw me and held out an arm to stop Bobby. He poked his head around the corner and then ducked back.

  “You were right. Fucker brought a gun,” Bobby said. “Total puss move.”

  “Those cholos are probably packing, too. How we going to get to my truck?”

  “I’ll decoy. Let them see me. They’ll chase me. I duck ’em, and bingo-bango, I meet you at your truck.”

  “That’s your plan?”

  “I wouldn’t go so far as to call it a plan.” Bobby smiled. “But that’s what I’m going to do.”

  I glanced back around the corner. Alejandro was talking to the two young men who had followed us when we first entered the colonia. They pointed in our direction, and before I could duck back, my eyes met the stare of one of Alejandro’s men.

  “Fuck” summed it up.

  Bobby didn’t hesitate. He jumped right into the main drag, middle fingers flying. “Órale, maricón! Chinga tu madre,” he hollered, and then he took off in the opposite direction down the muddy road. Alejandro and his two men whizzed past a few seconds later. Unfortunately, one of the men glanced my way. He stopped and yelled some breakneck Spanish. The other vato stopped. They both turned to me with sadistic smiles. Alejandro, oblivious and focused, continued after Bobby.

  I took off, winding quickly through the narrow paths and praying I didn’t slip in the mud.

  I glanced over my shoulder. They were behind me, but I had put some distance between us. The smaller problem was that I had no idea where I was going and whether or not a dead end was in my future. My makeshift plan was to try to make a wide circle back to the main drag. As long as they chased me as one unit, I had a chance. If they split up, I’d have to slow down to avoid being ambushed.

  The bigger problem was that I was a smoker with no endurance. Also, I was out of shape and extremely hungover. I couldn’t run much farther without passing out. After forty yards I had a stitch in my side, my lungs burned, and I had a vinegary taste in the back of my throat. I told myself that if I survived, I would get a gym membership.

  I needed to hide. I needed to blend in. I needed a weapon. I needed to not be there.

  I turned a corner quickly and found the first open doorway. I almost brained myself on the low entrance, but I ducked quickly into the small board and mud structure. Thankfully, it was empty. One entrance, no back door, no windows. I leaned against the wall, waiting for my two pursuers to pass. Sweat dripped from my face, stinging my eyes. My heart raced like a dying bird’s. I gulped in air, close to hyperventilating. I scanned the room for anything useful. A shovel leaned in the corner.

  I heard the two men rush past, their breathing heavy. I counted to five, grabbed the shovel, and ducked my head out the door. Rather than going back the way I came, I followed them for a few steps. If I were them, I would split up soon—one of them continuing forward while the other headed back.

  Shovel plus surprise beats bat. At least in theory.

  I found a good hiding place and waited. The space between the two small structures gave me enough cover to avoid being seen while giving me ample space to swing the shovel.

  Two gunshots cracked sharply in the distance. Bobby. What had I gotten him into? I could already hear him telling me that he had gotten himself into this on his lonesome. That he was a grown man and he wasn’t my responsi-fucking-bility. But if he got hurt? That would be too much.

  I hadn’t realized how much standing in an alley waiting to attack another human being with a farm implement could increase one’s introspection.

  Footsteps approached, walking not running. Not footsteps really, but the sucking sound that boots make when they’re pulled from mud. Slow, cautious steps. I gripped the wooden handle tightly, knuckles turning white. I didn’t realize I was clenching my jaw until I felt the pain in my teeth. I tried to relax, but the situation didn’t allow it. I didn’t want to turn the corner and reveal my position just yet. I needed surprise. I had to rely on my hearing. I held my breath and closed my eyes.

  One step. Another. Then nothing. He had stopped. He was listening too. Had he heard me? Had I made a sound? Had I moved? I kept completely still, icy sweat leaking from every pore. My right leg shook uncontrollably. I felt on the verge of losing control. I heard him spit. He was close. But was he close enough?

  His boot sloshed as his next step landed. I swung the shovel and watched the blade arc at arm’s length. It gained speed as it reached the corner and I stepped out. In the fraction of a second he had to react, his eyes bulged in surprise. He was taller than I had thought. The shovel connected flat with his shoulder. The blade turned on impact and cut through his cheek, slashing the meat of his face. Blood sprayed with the path of the shovel, absorbed and lost in the mud at our feet.

  The man’s feet slid from under him and he landed hard on his back. He still grasped the bat in one hand, the other hand reaching for the flapping gash on the side of his face. I stood over him, ready to hit him again. He let the bat roll from his fingers and held up his hand in surrender.

  “No más?” I asked.

  He nodded, bloody bubbles rather than words exiting his now-misshapen mouth.

  Looking away from what I had done, I noticed laundry hanging from a line nearby. I grabbed a small dish towel from the line and handed it to the prone man. He held the towel to his wound.

  A noise turned my attention to the end of the narrow road. The other vato stood thirty yards away. He was breathing rapidly, taking in the scene before him. His eyes fixed on mine.

  We stared at each other. Literally, a Mexican standoff.

  The man at my feet hit me in the knee with his bat. The nerve. He knocked me to the side, but not down.

  “Fuck you,” he gurgled in English.

  I stood up straight, my weight shooting sharp pain through my knee. The man at the end of the row put his head down and charged like a rhino. I kicked the man on the ground in the side on principle, and then I took off. At least now I was going toward my truck. Even if a berserk man with a baseball bat was chasing me.

  I ran maybe fifty yards before my knee screamed. That wasn’t going to work. Fuck it.

  I turned and stood my ground. Shovel versus bat. Advantage bat, but I didn’t have a choice.

  The man kept coming full steam, bat over his shoulder like a battle-ax in a Frank Frazetta poster. I grabbed the handle of the shovel wide with both hands, holding it like a quarterstaff and preparing to parry his blow. He reached me, swinging the bat. I feinted a block, sidestepped him, and let him sail past me, hitting nothing but air. For good measure, I hit him in the back with the flat of the shovel as he passed. It pissed him off more than it hurt him, but I had to take what I could get.

  He turned and we circled each other. One good swing and he’d be able to break the shovel in half. I had reach, so I took a couple of quick jabs at him with the blade of the shovel. He easily knocked them away.

  I had brawled enough in my lifetime to know that violence didn’t have to be emotional. Some people got angry. It took away their focus. This was a fight, so I thought about fighting. The mistake too many people made was that they thought about the end of the fight instead of the middle. The middle of the fight was where the end happened.

  I found my answer. I was going to use my weakness to my advantage.

  He took his swing. I held up the handle of the shovel, letting him hit it dead center. The handle broke in two, splintering the wood. While he was at the end of his swing, I brought one half of the handle down on his foot. The sharp splintered end sank deep into the top of his shoe. He screamed as I brought the shovel blade up quickly and connected with his chin. He dropped to the ground, conscious, but in too much pain
to care about me anymore. When he reached for his foot, I could see the tip of the wood sticking bloody out of the rubber sole of his boot.

  I had learned my lesson. I didn’t stick around to help.

  Four flat tires. At the time I found no amusement in the unavoidable irony of my now worthless truck in front of the rainbow wall of tires of La Ciudad Perdida.

  Bobby wasn’t waiting for me. With two downed attackers in my wake, I didn’t think it prudent to stick around. I took a quick breather, taking just enough time to quell the rising sick in my esophagus. Filled with adrenaline, my heart raced and my head sang. After a minute and with my faculties under control, I lit a cigarette, threw up, and limped west into the heart of the city.

  I turned back to my truck, not expecting to ever see it again. What was the life expectancy of an abandoned truck in a Mexicali slum? My guess, two hours or night, whichever came first. Driven off or stripped, the city would even eat the bones. I was going to miss that piece of shit.

  An hour later, Angie picked me up at the only landmark I could find on the west side of Mexicali. A McDonald’s on Avenida Yugoslavia. I used loose change to buy something called a McNifica. It looked like a Whopper and tasted like septic waste. I left a series of messages on Bobby’s voice mail. I still hadn’t heard from him when Angie drove me back over the border into Calexico.

  “What’s going on? Where’s Bobby? What happened to your truck?”

  “I don’t know where Bobby is. My truck is gone,” I said, trying not to snap at her from my frustration. “Give me a bit. At least until we get to the house. I have to think. I have to get things straight in my head.”

  “Until we get to the house,” she said, obviously unhappy.

  “I need to call Buck Buck. I was going to call information, but I don’t know his first name. He’s always just been Buck Buck. I know his last name is Buckley. Do you know?”

  “I don’t want to be a smartass,” Angie said, “but I think Buck Buck is his real name. Did you try it?”

  I gave her a look and called information. Sure enough, Buck Buck Buckley was in the fucking book. I called and left a message. In the age of cell phones, I still had to wait. “Buck Buck, it’s Jimmy Veeder. Grab your brother and head to my house. Bobby’s in trouble. If you got a gun, bring it.”

  Angie gave me a sharp look.

  I stopped her. “I know. When we get to the house, I’ll explain everything.”

  Back at the house, I didn’t explain a thing. Instead, I went straight to the hall closet and took out Pop’s shotgun for the second time since I’d been back. I rolled the functional antique Winchester out of the Mexican blanket. I cracked it open, both barrels empty. Snapping the break-action back into place and feeling the weight of the shotgun, I felt invincible. I found a box of shells on the shelf in the closet. Bird shot, but it would have to do. I would have preferred a couple of deer slugs. I wrapped the shotgun back up and headed for the door.

  Angie had watched me without a word, but she grabbed my arm as I tried to pass. “You better tell me what stupid shit you’re about to do.”

  “Bobby’s in trouble,” I said.

  “Bobby is always in trouble,” she said with no humor in her voice.

  “Angie, I got him into this.”

  “And now you’re going to get him out? That’s not a plan. You said you didn’t know where he was. What are you going to do? Until I know exactly what’s going on, you’re not taking my truck anywhere. Especially not Mexicali with a shotgun.”

  I pulled my arm away, but had no argument.

  She continued. “At the very least, wait to hear from Buck Buck and Snout. Don’t do this alone. Tell me what happened. Bobby’s usually the last guy who needs saving. Think about it. Think about Bobby. Put the shotgun back. We’ll wait. I don’t know what’s going on, but running out of the house with a gun and no plan isn’t going to help him.”

  I said nothing for a minute.

  “Fucking Bobby better be okay,” I finally said, defeated.

  Angie took the shotgun and shells from my hands and walked them back to the closet.

  I didn’t know what to do with myself. When I have a task to accomplish, I have focus. But when things are unsettled, I am completely lost. I contemplated taking a shower, but the thought of Yolanda’s body floating in the cistern kept me filthy. This kind of waiting was torturous, but Angie was right. Reacting wasn’t good enough. I needed to think.

  I put a bunch of ice cubes in a Ziploc, grabbed a beer and my cigarettes, and sat on the living room floor with my back against the wall and the ice on my knee. Angie silently brought me a coaster and an ashtray. I hadn’t even known there were coasters in the house. She sat across from me and waited silently.

  I needed to figure out what to do about Bobby. Should I have stayed? If I had, what would I have done? Angie was right again. Bobby was much better at taking care of himself than I was. But those gunshots. He could be trapped in La Ciudad Perdida, shot or dead. I needed to call Tomás.

  In all that, tickling at the back of my brain was a little Mexican kid named Juan. Ill-prepared to get my head around Pop having a son, I tried to keep my mind on Bobby. But the kid kept creeping in there. That face. Those eyes. Did Pop really have a son other than me? It was crazy. Couldn’t be. I had to find his relatives. Relatives other than me. If I was a relative. What a fucking mess.

  It finally sank in. Angie was right. I couldn’t do this myself. I needed help. All the help I could get.

  “You ready for the whole story?” I asked her.

  She nodded. “Let me grab a couple more beers.”

  So I laid it out for her. I told her everything. From the beginning. From Pop’s request, which she knew about, to Yolanda’s body, to this trip to Mexicali and the possibility of Pop having a son. The only thing I left out was how Pop died. That would always be mine.

  It took about a half hour to get it all out. The storyteller in me kept wanting to embellish, but I did my best to keep to the facts. By the time I finished, the room was dark. Angie stared at me, expecting more or absorbing what she’d heard, I’m not sure.

  “Fucking shit” was Angie’s response. “What in the holy hell are you going to do?”

  “Exactly,” I said.

  At that moment, the door swung open. The bang of the door against the wall resounded throughout the big room. In the fraction of a second I had to react, I pushed Angie behind the couch and grabbed the poker next to the fireplace, the only weapon within reach.

  I rolled into a crouch, ready to attack.

  In the doorway Bobby laughed at me. I didn’t recognize him at first, covered from head to toe in partially dried black mud, but his machine-gun laugh was unmistakable.

  “You scared the shit out of me,” I said. I put the poker back and helped Angie up to a sitting position.

  “Are you okay?” I asked her.

  She nodded and then looked up at Bobby. “What the hell happened? You smell like a colonic.”

  Bobby shrugged. “Long story. Dude chased me. Took a couple of shots. Missed, obviously. Shit, I haven’t been shot at since I was a kid. I got all serpentine. Bobbed and weaved. Kept to the nooks, ran through the crannies. Ditched him, but I was hell and gone west. Part of Mexicali I ain’t never been before. Only found one way to get back. At a shitball tamale stand, I hooked up with some illegals taking the plunge and rode the waves of the New River.

  “I guess that wasn’t as a long story as I thought.”

  I was surprised to see Griselda walk in past him. She continued the story. “The Border Patrol caught him as he climbed out of the river. Because of all the pollution and disease coming in from Mexico, agents won’t go anywhere near it. They just sit on the bank and wait. Catch the ones they can. Double-thick rubber gloves and surgical masks. It’s a nightmare. But apparently, Bobby was big enough to be a keeper.”

  Bobby added, “Couldn’t stop puking. Pretty sure I puked up a corndog I ate in junior high. River smells like a baby shit o
melet. La Migra gave me a ton of hassle. Thought I was a smuggler, a terrorist. Figured I couldn’t be up to no good. They had that look in their eyes. The one they get right before they tonk you with their Maglite and perform a cavity search. I called fuck this and got them to call Gris ’cause she’s all legit and could vouch for me. She worked her magic. Got me released.” He winked. “I don’t think she hates me.”

  Griselda punched Bobby on the arm.

  She turned to me. “Bobby said you’d explain. I need to know exactly what’s going on. I need you to be straight with me. This is a murder investigation. If you’ve withheld information, I need to know. Why was Yolanda at your father’s wake? I don’t want to get too cop on you, but I need everything that has happened and what you’re planning to make happen or what might happen. We’re on the same side.”

  I looked at Bobby.

  He shrugged. “I wouldn’t fuck with Gris. I’m going to hose off. Scrub some of the encephalitis off. Sounds like you two are overdue a chat. You can trust her, Jimmy,” Bobby said. “Oh, and Gris, that’s Angie. Angie, Gris.” He closed the front door behind him. Angie and Gris half-smiled at each other.

  I turned to Griselda. “How much did Bobby tell you?”

  “I didn’t bother to listen. Can only believe so much of what that troublemaker says. Start from the beginning.”

  I looked out the window and watched a buck-naked Bobby hosing himself off on my front lawn. He spent an inordinate amount of time on his genitals. Both Angie and Griselda followed my eyes. Their laughter broke some of the tension, and I retold the tale for the second time in an hour.

  “You know what the old campesinos say.” Tomás spoke evenly on the other end of the phone. “The gopher digs the hole. The snake eats the gopher. Then the snake lives in the hole. The owl eats the snake. His turn in the hole. Finally, the rain comes. It drowns the owl. The animal, it doesn’t matter. They live. They die. Only the hole remains.”