by Manuel Ramos
“Tell me, boy, you think someone who is looking for a lost sister might go to the shrine?”
He smiled and exposed gaps in his teeth.
“She already has, pocho. About an hour ago. I took her myself.”
“Show me.”
“Two American dollars.”
“You said you didn’t want money.”
“That was before you wanted something.”
I gave him the two bills and I thought how that could buy me a cold beer at Nick’s.
The boy veered from the bridge and we dashed across the street. He scrambled into an alley, then another, turned back and headed to the outskirts of the town. I sweated like I had a fever, and my breath came hard and fast before we ended up in the basement of a broken-down apartment building.
We walked along a narrow concrete hallway that smelled of copal and marigolds. Candles lit the way into a dark, damp corner of the basement. Hundreds of candles. The boy kept walking, didn’t look at me, didn’t say a word.
The statute of the saint of death standing on a makeshift altar looked like the grim reaper to me. Various offerings surrounded it—food, money, photographs, pieces of clothing. There were about a dozen people standing or kneeling around the altar and they mumbled prayers that I couldn’t understand. I walked around the small room and looked for the woman who had confronted me in the diner, but the only light came from candles and the people kept their faces down and hidden behind mantillas and dusty hats. I didn’t see the woman.
I wanted to ask the boy to take me back but he was gone. Some in the crowd started to leave. I followed them down what I thought was the same candled hallway. They murmured to each other, stayed close and kept looking over their shoulders at me. They moved faster and I had to exert myself to keep up with them. They turned a corner, but when I followed, they were gone. I was in another small room without candles, without any light. I heard Spanish words and phrases and the brassy, loud grating music of a Mexican band. Then I heard words in a language I did not recognize and music that I had never heard before.
I waited. A few minutes passed, then another group of people from the shrine entered the room and shifted sharply to my left, toward an opening that I had not seen.
I said, “Wait, show me the way. I’m lost.”
An old woman wearing a black shawl over her waist-long gray hair stopped. She looked at me and said, “No hablo inglés.”
I repeated my request in Spanish but she shrugged and trudged into the darkness. I followed the sounds of her footsteps. After a few minutes I heard nothing but I kept walking in the dark, sometimes feeling my way around corners, until I found myself in the stench and heat of a deserted El Paso alley.
An hour later I was back in Nick’s, drinking a beer.
“They’re on their way to lose their cherries, across the bridge.” Nick smirked at the boys at the end of the bar. I assumed he talked to me because the underage boys were the only other people in the bar and he must have figured that he would be less susceptible to being shut down if he avoided them, even though he served them shots of tequila.
I didn’t have a response.
“They found another one,” Nick said.
“Another what?” I asked, but I knew what he was talking about.
“A dead woman, out in the desert by the wire. Cut up like the others. Been missin’ for weeks.”
“How many’s that?”
“There’s no official count. Hundreds, thousands. Like that girl the woman was lookin’ for. Missin’ for weeks.”
“How do you know that?”
He frowned. “She told me, what d’ya think? Anyway, she’s lookin’ for her missin’ sister, in Juárez and El Paso. What the hell you think that means?”
I got up to leave. “Why would she want to talk to me about that? I can’t do anything about her missing sister.”
“Come on, Manolo. You can’t do anything about anybody’s problems. Remember? You screwed that up, as I heard you explain one night.”
“Yeah, yeah. I screwed it up. So why would she want to talk to me?”
He shrugged, twisted his bar rag. “She heard about the American lawyer. That means somethin’ to some people. She heard that the lawyer hung out in the bars. She tried to track you down. She thought you might be able to help, maybe you knew somebody, maybe you heard somethin’. She had nowhere else to go, no one else to talk to.” He tossed his rag under the bar. “Dammit, Manolo, I don’t know.”
He walked over to the boys and said, “How about another one for the road?”
They laughed uneasily and moved away when he tried to put his arm around the shoulders of the shortest kid.
I left Nick and his dingy bar and his ugly reputation and swore that I was done with all of it. I had walked about two blocks when I saw her. She leaned against a brick wall, the side of a building that housed a mercado where every week tourists spent thousands of dollars on useless souvenirs and phony mementos.
She cringed when she saw me.
“I can’t help. I don’t know anything, anyone.” I used my hands to help my explanation.
She cocked her head. Her face was smudged with the tracks of the tears that had finally flowed.
She reached into her thin jacket and waved a small gun. I shook my head and put my hands in front of me, but she pulled the trigger. The shot made me jump, then I fell to the ground. The pain in my shoulder wrenched my torso. I twisted on the grimy sidewalk.
I gurgled one word: “What?”
“No hablo inglés,” she said. She dropped the gun and walked away.
I sat up, but dizziness bent me forward and I slumped to the sidewalk.
The hospital released me two days later. I left El Paso and returned to Denver.
When it snows, my shoulder aches, and I smell copal and marigolds.
TEXAS AFTERNOON
The back of his neck itched from the sun. He scratched but the rough skin of his fingers did nothing to help.
The summer haze made him squint. Heat vapors wiggled against the horizon. His hat slumped around his ears, and his horse moved to the torpid rhythm of the desert—slow, steady, dying. The pistol hanging from his belt was hot to the touch. He considered using it one last time. The long ride had to end.
A ray of light from the top of the dune pierced his eyes. He slipped from the horse and rolled to a boulder. Streaks of pain ran from his lungs to his groin. Dirt filled his mouth. He pulled the gun.
“Mateo! Surrender or you die today! Vamos a matarlo.”
He smiled at the broken Spanish. Did they think he didn’t understand? They wanted him dead, that’s all he needed to know.
“Aquí ’stoy. Come and get me.”
He licked his cracked lips. Breathing burned his lungs. A broken rib when the crazy horse kicked him. Spooked by the gunshots, but what an animal! Ran until her heart gave out.
He aimed his pistol at the light. He waited to see their hats.
Mercedes. Carlos. María. His memories had become names only. He could not see their faces anymore, or hear the music in their voices. He prayed their names to himself a hundred times a day. He chased their ghosts as the men chased him. Outrunning the men through the arroyo, then the hills, and now the desert. He shouted the names and heard the lonely echoes and believed that he had lost his mind.
He had enough. He stood up.
“¡Ya basta!”
The first shot exploded the dirt in front of his ragged boots. The second whizzed by his ear. He fell to his knees before the third one tore through his shoulder. He dropped his gun and shouted his memories.
He heard a rattlesnake’s warning, a hawk’s squeal, the hot wind gasp. He opened his eyes. Blood soaked the remains of his shirt.
He struggled to his feet and stumbled to the dune.
The blood of three men streamed over sand and rocks. Across the ridge he saw the Comanches. They laughed at him, turned their horses and disappeared below the haze. He picked up a dead man’s canteen and pour
ed water down his throat. He choked, sputtered, coughed. He prayed the names of his memories.
WHEN THE AIR CONDITIONER QUIT
When the air conditioner quit, Torres shot it. The bullet bounced around the machine’s innards like an insane pinball.
“I don’t have time for this shit,” he said.
Juanita rushed into the room. “Jesus! What the hell was that?”
“Damn thing’s broke. I put it out of its misery.” He laughed the horse laugh that she hated. Sweat already flowed down his back.
The gray dented machine sported an ugly hole in its side. It hung crookedly in the window. A thin spiral of smoke rose from its louvered vents.
“You dumb son-of-a-bitch. Now what’re we gonna do? It’ll hit a hunnerd again today. You think of that before you pulled the trigger?”
“I tole you it’s broke. Useless. You said it yourself.”
“I said it was goin’ out. Big difference.”
“Well, it went out. It stopped. Nothin’ but hot air comin’ from it. Stinkin’ up the place. You must’a smelled it.”
“So you shot it? Are you crazy?”
He grinned at her and scratched the back of his ear with the barrel of the gun. “You don’t even have to ask, do you?”
She flipped him the bird, returned to the kitchen. At least her fan moved the cooked air while she cleaned a pot in the sink.
Torres tucked the gun in the waistband of his sweat pants and covered it with his T-shirt. He needed a drink.
“I’ll kill somebody if I stay here,” he said to the stuffed owl. He rubbed his hands through his hair. “I’m taking the pickup into town,” he shouted. “I’ll be back for supper.” He looked in the direction of the kitchen.
“Good riddance,” Juanita said. “Don’t kill any tractors on your way. Or mailboxes. Damn things might shoot back.” She laughed and shook her head.
Torres laughed, too. That’s what he liked about Juanita.
She almost added that he should look for a job, but the smell from the air conditioner cautioned her and she bit her tongue. He did what he could, she reasoned. What with the recession and all.
The pickup practically drove itself along the rutted dirt road for the five miles into Dexter. Torres hummed along to Hank Williams, Jr. “All my rowdy friends have settled down . . . ”
He had money for a few drinks. Robbie Claxton, over in Roswell, finally paid him for the briefcase of weed from Albuquerque. Took him long enough. Juanita didn’t know he’d been paid but he’d work it out with her. Tell her, “I’ll put somethin’ away for a new air conditioner, get that dog you want and then we’ll see what comes up.”
The bulge of his wallet pressed against his butt. Five hundred dollars for a day’s worth of work. Not even work. Driving, mostly. Watching for cops, staying cool, under the radar. Picking up and delivering the package. Nothing to it. Life should always be so easy.
He rubbed the American flag tattoo on his right bicep.
For a hot minute he thought about making a run to the border. In the old days, with five hundred bucks in his pocket, he would’ve disappeared for a week. Easy to do in El Paso, Juárez. The things he’d seen, no one believed. Some of it he wanted to forget.
He drove along quiet South Lincoln Avenue until he saw the faded sign that years before blinked “Bar” and then “Café.” These days it stuck on “Bar.” He stopped on the patch of soft asphalt that passed for a parking lot.
The Hi-Way offered nothing more than beer, strong whiskey, air conditioning and a jukebox with country and Tejano music. That was enough for Torres and the four other customers.
“It’s like a ghost town out there,” he said to Cole, the bartender. “I didn’t see nobody.”
“Too damn hot,” Cole said. “And there’s no work. It’s been so dead I’ve been thinkin’ of stayin’ closed until the weekend.”
Torres adjusted to the semi-darkness by squinting. He ordered a shot of whiskey and a beer back. He chugged the shot, sipped the beer. When he caught Cole’s eye, he ordered another shot. The second shot lasted longer than the first.
By the time three empty beers sat on the bar he’d forgotten his promise to be home for dinner.
“Hey, Torres. How’s it hangin’?” Claxton’s younger brother slapped him on the back. Torres flinched under the sting of the slap. Dickie smelled like cigarettes and whiskey.
“Hey, Dickie. What you doin’ round here? I thought you was away at school.”
Torres moved his whiskey closer. Dickie was a big kid, like every Claxton. Had that wild red hair they all carried. Quite a coincidence to run into Dickie Claxton. In the Hi-Way, of all places.
“That’s for suckers. I got more important things to do, know what I mean?”
“Yeah, sure. You here with Robbie?”
“Nah. On my own. Just checkin’ out the scene here in beautiful downtown Dexter. These Dexter women are good ole country girls, you know?”
“Yeah. I guess.” Torres didn’t see one woman in the bar.
Dickie laughed. Torres tried to laugh but he choked on his beer. He knew about the rape charge and getting tossed from New Mexico State. Everyone knew. The paper made it front page news. No one brought it up, not to Dickie or his brother, that was for sure.
Torres finished his beer. He decided to leave. He opened his wallet to lay money on the bar. Dickie grabbed his wrist.
“Hey, where you goin’? The party’s just started. You need to catch up. I’m way ahead. Let me buy you a drink.”
Torres twisted his arm from Dickie’s grasp. “I gotta go. Juanita’s waitin’. There’s some work to do around the house.”
“Your shack, you mean? That place needs a lot of work, bud. What could you possibly do that would fix it?”
“The air conditioner’s been actin’ up.”
“You know about air conditioners? I thought you was a roofer. What the hell you know about air conditioners?”
Dickie stepped away from the bar. He stood over Torres, at least six inches. His eyes fixed on the wallet.
Torres shoved the wallet in his back pocket. The movement lifted his shirt and Dickie saw the gun. Dickie shuffled back to the bar.
“But if you gotta go . . . ” Dickie’s voice trailed off.
“Yeah. I gotta go. Maybe next time.”
“Whatever.” He turned to Torres. “Robbie paid you? I was supposed to do that job for him, you know? But Robbie couldn’t wait. Your good luck, eh?”
“Do what I have to. Need the work. Your brother will have more for you. He always does.”
“Yeah. Maybe.” Dickie stared down his beer bottle.
Robbie was okay, a good guy really, but Dickie was over the edge.
Torres walked out of the bar into the blazing sunshine. He swayed from the booze and the heat. The daytime glare blinded him. He stopped to get his bearings. Someone stood behind him. He tried to move out of the way. A fist slammed into his kidney. Torres fell forward on the asphalt. The gun slipped out of his pants.
“The wallet. Or I kick your face in.”
Torres struggled but Dickie’s boot dug into his throat. He pulled the wallet from his pocket. Dickie snatched it. The younger Claxton stepped back, hesitated, then punched Torres on the chin. He walked away, easy and slow.
Torres rubbed his jaw, tasted blood. He picked up the gun, aimed it at Dickie’s back. He flashed on the air conditioner.
A shadow crossed his face. Robbie Claxton blocked the sun.
“You ain’t gonna do that, Torres. Give me the gun. I’ll get your money back.”
Torres handed over the gun. Robbie held it like it was a glass of water and he didn’t want to spill a drop. He moved quickly after his brother.
Torres sat on his haunches.
The Claxtons disappeared around the corner of the bar. Torres heard shouting, a few grunts. He thought he should do something. The empty street stretched away from the building. A white haze of summer light beat down on him.
He jerked hi
s head when he heard the gunshot. A dog barked across the street. No one came out of the bar.
Torres stood up. He leaned against his pickup, his hands in his pockets, his mind locked down. Robbie stumbled into view. Blood oozed from his chest. His bloody hand held the wallet.
“Take the goddam money and go home.”
Claxton fell to his knees. Blood quickly covered his shirt. Tires squealed from behind the building. Torres ran into the bar and hollered for Cole to call 9-1-1.
He ran back outside followed by the bar’s customers. He did what he could but Robbie Claxton was dead by the time the ambulance screeched into the parking lot.
The cops arrived at the same time. They ran around for a few minutes before they settled into a routine. One cop crossed the street and knocked on the door of a house. The cop in charge questioned the men from the bar. He paid special attention to Torres.
“I had a drink,” Torres told him. “When I was getting into my truck, Robbie come around the building, bleeding.” The cop took notes as Torres talked. “He must’a been in a fight in the back. I didn’t see anyone else. I tried to stop the bleeding but it didn’t do no good. Got blood all over my hands.” He showed his hands to the cop.
“You got some on your lip,” the cop said.
Torres rubbed his chin and lips with the back of his hand.
“I knowed this guy since high school,” he said. The cop nodded.
Torres didn’t say anything about Dickie, nor that Dickie drove a red F-150 with chrome wheels. How could he explain five hundred dollars?
The ambulance men loaded the body on a stretcher and covered it with a blanket. A dark red stain flared over the white cloth. The men lifted the stretcher. Torres watched his wallet fall like a wounded bird dropping from the sky. One of the ambulance guys picked it up and handed it to the cop. The cop thumbed through it. “This Claxton’s?”
“Don’t know,” Torres said. “Didn’t see it before. It was on him, right?”
“Under him. No money or I.D. Looks like he was robbed. I’ll give it to his widow.”
An hour later the cop said Torres could leave. “I hope you get the guy,” Torres said.