Gunmetal Black

by Daniel Serrano

  I peeled my T-shirt up and looked at myself. A magnificent bruise the size of a large grapefruit had formed on that part of the chest reserved for pledges, where a child believes his heart is. The skin was unbroken. I touched it. It was so tender, I almost yelled and had to gnash my teeth to absorb it. At least I was intact.

  The knife I bought at the army/navy surplus store was still sheathed and fastened to the holster on my calf.

  I got down on all fours again and looked inside the car. Tony, the clown, faced me, his sunglasses lost in the tumble, his eyes open, but lifeless, like stars gone black. His face was stiff already in the horrified expression of his final moment. I pulled him from the wreckage and it hurt, because of my injuries, because of his, because of the broken glass. A smell of shit and piss came from the corpse. I loved him so much.

  I pulled Tony from the wreckage completely and rolled him onto his back so he could face the stars. Some of what remained of his brain leaked out of the opening in the side of his head into the wet grass. I kneeled by his body, and felt a new pain in my stomach, but I held it down with my eyes closed. I watered, but held it down. I put my mouth next to Tony’s ear, near the entry wound that smelled of gunpowder, and burnt flesh, brains, and blood. I talked to him softly and told him the things I never said. I prayed a quick prayer for his soul, then kissed his forehead. I closed his eyes for him, and kissed his forehead again. I didn’t want to leave him. He was my brother. But he was already gone.

  I stood, a little stronger, and looked around. Tony’s body was still warm, which maybe meant I had not been knocked out for very long. The killers might be close. I walked up the hill to the road, and followed the path cut by the car, where it had disturbed and upturned the earth. Nothing in either direction, except dark horizons. It occurred to me that Pelón and his brother would not take the road, since police were certain to scour the area, and they would not want to be seen out here at night, in the middle of nowhere, carrying money bags. The wreckage would not be visible to any cars on the road, so unless some helicopter searched this particular area, the wreckage would remain undisturbed and unnoticed for a while.

  I looked down the hill. Tony looked hopeless down there next to the car. Ridiculous in that clown getup. Not at peace. I looked along the line of trees that formed the edge of the forest at the bottom of the hill. I walked down the hill, searched the earth for some sign of the villains, some trail of blood or torn clothing. Footprints. Something. I found nothing.

  I walked along the edge of the trees for a spell, where the forest began, and still saw nothing. It occurred to me that they could not have made so much headway, because Pelón limped, and the crash must have injured one or both of them. I turned back until I returned to where the car and Tony lay, and it was there that I realized they must have headed straight into the woods.

  I cut into the trees, downhill, and strained my eyes in search of some evidence. The land sloped downward for a bit, then turned sharply up. It was hard to walk. Much of the land was covered by thorny bushes that grabbed and tried to ensnare you, cut you, slow you down. A fever grew inside me, and I did not tire. For the first time since childhood, I was afraid of nothing. The land sloped upward, and drew my sweat. I knew that if they came this way, the terrain would drain them. I picked up my pace, looked, and listened.

  I felt strange. I realized that I could not hear out of my left ear very well. I heard ringing, but it didn’t bother me; it didn’t discourage me. My eyes were sharp and I saw in the dark. I felt like a bloodhound. Like I sensed my prey with faculties that I never knew I inherited.

  I climbed the hill and looked, and as I neared the top, I heard something. I stopped and listened, and at first I did not capture it. I stood very still. I looked around. Then I heard it again.

  An animal?

  I listened. I recognized it now. Spanish. Coming from the right. I followed it and stopped when I saw Pelón’s white suit reflect the diffused moonlight. Pelón was sprawled on the ground, his back against a tree, his head cushioned by a money bag.

  Cabezón stood over him and argued that they needed to keep moving, that he would help. Pelón shook his head and cursed and held his leg. I saw that Pelón’s leg was broken. A dry white point of bone stuck out from his bloodied pants.

  I drew my knife and moved toward them, slow and careful not to step on any twigs or rustle any leaves. I saw everything in silver under the increasing wattage of the moon. I snuck behind a tree, right next to them. I could smell them. Their heat, the aroma of their sweat, the stink of their evil. I wondered where Cabezón’s gun was. Certainly, he didn’t have it out. I figured it must be tucked into his waistband. Pelón was incapacitated. The knife was in my hand, long and sharp. I listened as the brothers spoke Spanish.

  “We have to tie it with something,” said Cabezón. “We have to continue.”

  “That won’t solve anything,” said Pelón. “The pain is too great. We are cursed.”

  “I’ll go find a doctor.”

  “Not even a babalao can help us now!”

  Cabezón said, “Stop it with your voodoo!”

  “We sealed our fate.”

  I jumped from behind the tree and rushed. Cabezón must have been descended from warriors, because he turned in time to see, then threw his forearm up to block me, which worked, because our forearms knocked into each other like two clubs, preventing me from stabbing him in the neck. He slapped me with his other hand in a way that he must have practiced on palm trees in Puerto Rico, because his hand was rough and hard, and the force was so powerful, it knocked the rest of the hearing out of my left ear. I went down.

  Cabezón reached in his waistband for the gun handle, but I flung my right leg, caught him on the knee so that it snapped like a piece of hickory. I dove as Cabezón collapsed next to a fallen tree. The gun was in his right hand. It slammed against the trunk of the tree, and I was on top of him before he could raise it again. My left was on Cabezón’s wrist, pressing it against the bark, trying to snap his forearm, so he would drop the weapon. Maybe it was instinct, but Cabezón used his other powerful hand to dig into the bruise on my chest, even though he could not see it under my T-shirt. I screamed, swung the knife down with fury, and drove the blade through Cabezón’s forearm, nailing him to the fallen tree.

  He cried, “¡Maldiiiitoooo!!!” and the Magnum flopped out of his hand. Cabezón kicked and threw his free arm and legs like a cockroach that’s been hit with the spray, trying to get to the knife handle, but I was on top of him with my knee in his neck. I pulled the knife from his arm and tossed it out of anybody’s reach. Then I jumped for a rock that was about the size and weight of a heavy bowling ball.

  Pelón said, “Eddie, no!”

  I dropped my knee into Cabezón’s chest before he could get himself up, and brought that heavy rock down upon his head. Again. Then again. Then again, as Pelón cried out and reached. The skull only cracked loud the first time. After that, each blow sounded like a thump. Cabezón’s head became soft with every shot, like wet earth. Every time I lifted the rock, his face shone in the platinum moonlight and he looked more deformed, until the final blow, when he no longer looked human. He was transformed into a toupee-wearing monster. It was as if that rock revealed what was underneath. I rolled the rock into the dark downhill.

  Pelón crawled onto his brother’s corpse and howled.

  In Spanish he said, “Look at what we did! Look!”

  I jumped and grabbed the knife and the gun, but Pelón was not after those. Instead, he cried so deep, so hard. The sound was almost unnatural. It infected me. I fell to the ground next to the brothers and cried. I wept so hard it wrenched in a way that had nothing to do with the physical world. Pelón and I sobbed together, almost in harmony. After a time we subsided to just quiet llantos. The trees swayed and creaked in the breeze.

  Finally, Pelón spoke: “I knew this day would come. I knew it that day we killed your father.” He rubbed his face, his eyes. He nodded as if looking at a kal
eidoscope of his life. “La bruja. She tole me. She say, ‘The evil you seek you must not do.’ ‘Why?’ ‘The seeing eye will make you pay.’ I say, ‘Give me protection.’ She laughed and said, ‘There is none. The truth shines in the dark.’ ”

  Pelón looked at me. “Eddie, when I saw you between the cars that day, you was just a little boy, and you saw what I did. I knew you was never gonna feel right until you collect.” He rubbed his hands together. “I tole the bruja, ‘I saw him. I saw the eye. Can I cut it out?’ She tells me, ‘If you use you own hand, it will multiply your suffering.’ So I waited. I looked for you when you got big. I found you and I pulled you in. I wanted you with me, where I could watch you. I brought you into this work, praying, making offerings that somebody else would take care of you. A homeowner. A cop. Another títere. If somebody could just catch you where you don’t belong and shoot you. Or maybe you kill somebody in a robbery and you go away forever. I wanted you to disappear from this world.”

  Pelón shook his head. He lifted his cane, turned the handle, and slowly pulled a long, shiny stiletto concealed within the rod. I leapt to my feet and tightened my grip on the knife and the Magnum.

  Pelón let the stiletto reflect the moon. “I could have used this on you at any time. But I know it was pointless against you.” He resheathed the knife and tossed his cane away from himself. “My brother didn’t believe me. The armored truck? When I signaled that the police were coming so you all go inside? There was no police. I knew they had another guard inside the truck. I wanted you to be the first to go in and catch that bullet between the eyes. You was always the first inside. Remember? And you were supposed to go first that day too. But you never went. Instead”—Pelón held up his claw—“I lost pieces of myself as we went along. You was always destined to be the cacique.”

  Pelón pointed at his brother’s corpse. “And now you see? You see what happens when you don’t listen to the voice of God?”

  “Why did you kill my father?”

  Pelón shook his head. “My brother and me, we had this plot. We buy properties and torch them. You father, he was the fireman. He started the fires and we collect the insurance. He wanted a bigger piece. So my brother and I, we decide we hire somebody else.”

  “That’s it?” I said. “That’s why he died?”

  Pelón said, “Is there an answer that’ll make you satisfied?”

  Neither of us looked at each other. Neither did we look at the corpse. We just stared into the dark earth.

  Pelón said in Spanish, “Everything comes to an end.”

  I made eye contact with him. “Yes.”

  He looked at the gun in my hand. “At least leave me a final dignity, Eduardo. You can take the money.”

  “That isn’t what I came for.”

  Pelón looked me in the eye again. “I know. But you and me is even now. Arrepiéntete. Repent.”

  I stood over Pelón. The gun was in my hand. He was on his knees now next to his brother, waiting, eyes pleading. I paused. Then I turned the handle toward him, and handed him the gun. I waited. Pelón did not shoot me.

  I sheathed my knife, and began down the hill, in the opposite direction of the point where I entered the woods. Five minutes later I heard the shot crack and echo across the dark silence. I paused for a second of grief over Pelón, which surprised me. Then I hiked and I sweated, and it was all woods, trees, thorny bushes, and soft, moist leaves underfoot.

  I came upon a group of deer as they watered themselves at a stream, and froze. They stood in place, in silence, and watched me. They stopped drinking and stared at my strange form. I stared at theirs in a standoff of mutual wonder. Suddenly, without warning, the deer exploded into a sprint. Agile movements that barely touched the earth. They vanished into the darkness.

  I dropped to my knees at the edge of the water and saw my reflection. So much blood had flown in the car and next to that fallen tree that it was all over me, all over my face, my T-shirt. I stuck my head in the water and washed my face and drank. The water was cold and flavorless and I drank until I was full. I felt tired, but I continued. After a long time the forest began to change. The edge of it became purple. The sky became purple, then violet, then red, orange, yellow. I headed east, and after another long time I found a clearing, and then a road.

  In the early-morning mist I came upon a home at the edge of a suburb. I watched from the bushes as the family left for a day at school and the office, and was relieved that the husband was a large man, about my size. I let myself into their home through a kitchen window that faced the backyard and put on a flannel shirt and a hat and sunglasses that belonged to the man of the house. I watched the car in the driveway next door for twenty minutes.

  Relying once again on the shit I learned on the streets of West Town, I walked out the front door, went straight to the car as if I owned it, jimmied the door open using a bent wire hanger from the house, hot-wired it, and drove myself toward Chicago. I found the Loop FM and left it there. They played a classic about rock and roll itself, by Neil Young, and when he launched into a guitar solo, I knew that Little Tony was with me on that road.

  EPÍLOGO

  I have worn lots of white for almost a year now. Chiva is my teacher. He helped me since I got here, like I knew that he would. Everyone needs family of some type.

  Chiva gave me a new identity, a new name. He was always good at the paper crimes. He fell back into that as soon as he got down here—there’s lots of business here for anybody who is good at forging documents. So Chiva hooked me up.

  Criminal record? Gone.

  Prison record? Nonexistent.

  Work history? Steady. Just ask Social Security. Turns out I’ve been paying into it since I was sixteen. At least that’s what their records show. I’m a new man, but not a newborn. And the IRS is very satisfied. No problems with my account. Even my credit is good. I’m still a Puerto Rican. I have an American passport. I even got a clean driving record, so my insurance rates are nice and low. It’s the fresh start that everybody dreams of.

  One thing was weird: looking at my own death certificate. I figured it was necessary. A crafty detective might ID Tony’s body, run his sheet, look up his old case files, find that I was his codefendant on the armored-car heist, discover that I had been released a month before the casino job, and figure me as a prime suspect for the guy in the gorilla suit. It was also possible, though not likely, that they would lift a print off the Magnum. If any of that ever happened, I needed the trail to me to lead to a finding of SUSPECT DECEASED for the case file.

  Chiva showed me the forged death certificate for EDUARDO SANTIAGO ROSARIO and the medical examiner’s report.

  I touched myself in the ribs. “Why did it have to be that I was eaten by sharks?”

  Chiva said, “No body to present, no body to dig up and test against DNA or dental records. You just certified dead. Nobody know where to find the tiburones that ate you. Besides,” he said, “a dramatic guy like you? I couldn’t just take you out with the flu.”

  I can’t say here what my identity is. But I will reveal that it takes some getting used to, people calling me by a different name. It can be frustrating, although mostly it’s all right.

  Of course you can’t erase memory. A person’s more than just the record of who they are. That’s why I’m in atonement now.

  Chiva instructs me on how to hollow out the shell of the drum. There are very specific tools and techniques. It’s firm, but somehow gentle, the way he does it. He shows no frustration with my rough hand, though I’m sure it offends him.

  I pay attention and try to do it the way he tells me. I get lost in the act and mostly I think of nothing, or I think of the things I’ve learned since I got here, and it feels like I am studying something, I’m training, I’m growing, I’m learning, I’m becoming, my life has a purpose.

  Sometimes I think of the past. How much I lost. How close I came. I think of Xochitl often. She caressed me in those final days, and she was right that we had been
kind. I will always be grateful.

  Xochitl was at the motel after the heist, like I asked. I ditched the car downtown and caught a train, changed trains, changed cars, changed directions even, then switched to a bus and walked part of the way with the baseball cap I stole from that house pulled low over my face. I kept the shades on in case my mug shots had been on the news. When I finally made it to the motel, I was so tired, I could barely knock on the door. Xochitl waited inside.

  She pulled me in and shut the door behind me. I collapsed on the bed. Xochitl looked nervous and stood over me.

  “Are you all right?”

  I didn’t have the energy to really answer. But no, I was not all right.

  “I’m scared,” she said.

  “Don’t be.”

  “Was that you?”

  “What?”

  “In the news?”

  “What’d they say?”

  “Some guys stole money from a casino.”

  “Anything else?”

  “They got away.”

  “What makes you think it was me?”

  She didn’t answer.

  I sat on the edge of the bed. “Don’t believe everything you see on TV, Xochitl. Put it on.”

  We watched the midday WGN news. The reports were of a daring Halloween heist on a casino boat. They had video stills of the three of us: Tony, the clown, up on the blackjack table, Cabezón, the lion, with his shotgun, and me, the gorilla, giving orders. Nobody was hurt. Brian, the kid who maneuvered the dinghy, was interviewed on camera. He said at first he was afraid, but the guy in the gorilla suit was “real polite.”

  Police scoured the area. I knew it would be no time at all before they found the skid marks where we went off the road, found the wreckage and Tony’s corpse, found the bodies in the woods. The bloodhounds would find my scent and it would lead them to the house where I stole the clothes and the stolen car report from next door. The car itself would then turn up downtown.