Grito, La Canaria, Marco, they all knew about the Mass, but only Marco came, and he stayed in the back of the church, tucked away from my abuela’s sight. None of them has spoken Alexis’s name since.
* * *
Someone was shouting, but I heard it through water. The sharp grass was slick under my skin. The scent of goats and rotting grapes. I’d fallen asleep outside Marco’s villa, in the grass, but I was wearing clothes, expensive ones. I remembered stumbling through the villa with Marco, laughing, and how he smelled like the horse when he buttoned up my new shirt, linen with tiny abalone buttons. But it was morning, and a woman had hold of my hair and was pulling me through the grass.
“Puta, puta, puta,” the woman mumbled. She dragged me across the courtyard to the front of the villa. “My house is full of putas.”
I pulled myself out of groggy half-sleep and grabbed her wrist and bit it. My tongue tasted her gold bracelets. She was shorter than me. When she slapped me, I saw Marco in her face for a moment. A face he’d always tried to hide, blooming without shame on hers.
I pushed her to the ground and ran out the open gates of the villa. Marco and Grito were crouched in the doorway of the hut just outside the villa’s walls. Marco held a bright red little-kid backpack clutched to his chest. A clump of green oaks hid them from the courtyard.
“Cosme, please,” Marco whispered through the wooden door. “You have to let us in. They’re crazy—I swear they’re going to kill me this time.”
Behind the door of the hut, I could hear soft breathing and the scratch of callused hands on unpolished wood, but no one spoke.
“Please, Cosme. I know you hate me, but you hate them even more.”
“Marco!” screamed the woman who had dragged me. Through the green oak branches, I could see her standing with her legs wide and swinging a heavy piece of wood. A man joined her. His bald head glistened with sweat.
“Marco, you maricón!” the man screamed.
“Joder, Marco,” I whispered. “Are those your parents?”
“Unfortunately, yes,” Marco said.
“What’s the matter with them?” Grito said.
Marco turned away from the door to study the two figures delicately lit by the rising sun. They were dressed in fine country suits, their bodies small and compact, like an atom before it splits.
“I didn’t think they’d come back so soon. I’m not really supposed to be here,” he whispered. “The last time I saw her, I told her to take her facha money and shove it up her ass.”
“You said that to your mother?” Grito said.
“You see that thing she’s waving around?” Marco whispered to me. “That’s what she smashed my head on. Can you believe my mother dragged me all the way down the stairs to the altar before I woke up? San Sebastián’s head woke me. A fucking tête-à-tête.”
“You get back here, Marco Francisco!” The woman waved the outstretched torso of San Sebastián through the air.
Behind us, the door of the hut swung open. Grito and Marco slammed down face-first onto the packed dirt floor.
“Thank you, Cosme, thank you,” Marco whispered.
We crawled in the door, not daring to rise up in case that woman saw us. She was small, but I was scared because Marco was.
“Cosme, they’re crazy,” he said. “You saved my life.”
The room was dark and I couldn’t see anyone. The shutters were open only slightly to the purple dawn. I smelled old bacalao and drying rice. In the corners were rough bunks, but the lumps in them lay still. I couldn’t tell if they were blankets or someone listening.
“Who are these comemierdas?” The voice floated out of a corner. Once my eyes adjusted, I could see a young man—the same one who’d been drinking in the yard when we pulled up the night before—leaning against the wooden shutters. He struck a match and lit a cigarette. Grito breathed in deep and fast behind me. My head pounded. I couldn’t remember seeing La Canaria after watching Marco on the horse.
“Who?” Marco said. He was standing up, though he was still crouched, his head tucked protectively under his shoulders.
“Them.” The young man pointed at me and Grito with the lit cigarette.
Marco looked back at us, confused. “They’re my . . . you know—”
“They’re not from here.”
“No,” Marco said.
“I’m your only friend around here, eh, Maria?”
“Yeah, Cosme,” Marco said. “For a long way.”
Cosme eased the shutter closed with his shoulder and turned on a kerosene lamp.
“My parents are already out working.” He nodded at the empty cots on the far side of the wall. “The babies won’t say anything unless I tell them to.”
Four heads raised out of the cots, dark hair matted against flushed cheeks.
“I knew they weren’t sleeping,” I whispered to Grito.
“Shut up,” Marco said.
“What’d she say?” Cosme said. “She your girl?”
“Yeah, ah, no. Yeah, yeah, she is,” Marco said, and he put his arm around me.
“Who is he?” I asked Marco.
“I can hear you,” Cosme said.
“All right,” I said, and removed Marco’s arm from my shoulder.
Cosme was younger than us but his face was burned old by the sun, and his hands were too large for his body. He looked like the boys who would come help my abuelo when he could no longer tie the ropes around the sheep gates or carry the stacks of hay from the stable.
“May I?” I leaned into Cosme and he handed me his cigarette. I held his gaze and blew out the smoke, struggling not to cough. I didn’t know what was in the cigarette besides tobacco, but the smoke was a porcupine needle racing to my heart. He smiled slightly when he saw that I wasn’t going to flinch. “Are you going to help us out of here?” I asked.
Cosme turned to Marco. “Where’s the other girl? The one with the tits?”
Grito looked at me but didn’t say anything.
“Maybe she left with the Americans,” Cosme said.
“Where’d they go?” Marco said.
“They headed out when Her Majesty came in screaming. Took all the cars.”
“Where?”
“They always go to the city when the dons get here. Stay out of Her Majesty’s way.”
“She’s our friend,” Marco said.
“I bet she is.”
Marco had never used that word before. None of us had. It was too corny, too soft. It wasn’t our own, like he was reading from a card our grandmothers would send, covered in lace and flowers and the clasped hands of Christ praying. Condolences for a beloved friend. But Marco using the word made me wonder. We’d all entered something that night in front of the fire, but had we entered the same place or all crossed through our own separate doors that slammed shut behind us? I didn’t know whether our words meant the same thing to one another anymore.
“I’m going to Gijón,” Cosme said. “I know some people there we can stay with. You’d like them.”
“What does that mean?” Marco said.
“They have drugs. They’re not a bunch of pigs.”
“We’re trying to get to Madrid,” I said. “Gijón is in the opposite direction.”
“Don’t want to be late for the hotel check-in, Mosca?” Grito sneered.
“Catch the train to Madrid there, then,” Cosme said. “It’ll be easier to find a cheap one in a city.”
Gijón. I traced the name in my mouth. Alexis hadn’t called from there. It was not on the list of cities.
“What do we need you for?” Grito said.
“I have a truck that’ll get us to the station,” Cosme said. “No one will come out here to pick you up now that they’re here. I don’t think you can all fit on Marco’s horse.”
“We’ll go to Gijón,
” Grito said flatly. “Sounds like a good time.”
* * *
Cosme took a back road toward town, gravel the whole way, sometimes slipping into the brush and almost bouncing down a hill. Even early in the morning, the dust rose through the open windows.
“You’ve got quite a family, Marco,” I said.
“You don’t have any idea who he is, do you?” Cosme said to me, one hand on the large wheel of his rusty truck. I was packed between him and Marco in the front seat. His hand grazed my thigh each time he shifted gears.
“They know who I am,” Marco said.
We were silent, looking out over the scrubby trees in the purple light. Grito sat in the open back. He fidgeted, tapping his fingers against the broken back window.
“Stop it,” Cosme said.
Grito pounded his fists against his thighs. We bumped over a low row of scrub. Finally he spoke. “Are you really that dumb, Mosca? Why don’t you tell her, Marco? Since she can’t figure it out herself.”
Marco kept looking straight ahead. “What do you want, Grito?”
“The house, the money, the fucking peasant at your beck and call—” Cosme swerved the truck to throw Grito on his back, but he wouldn’t stop. “You really can’t figure it out, Mosca?”
“What the hell are you talking about?” I said.
“He’s not talking about anything,” Marco said.
“Oh, yes, I am. I’m talking about Marco’s famous father. Even us lowlifes have heard of him. Don Lara—the Butcher.”
Marco flinched.
“Is that true?” I said.
Cosme grinned. “You stupid fucks.”
“I knew it,” Grito said. “I knew it the whole time!”
Marco was silent, staring out the window at the dust the truck kicked up.
“Jesus Christ,” Grito said slowly. “You’re the fucking snitch.”
Marco turned back to face him for the first time. “Shut the fuck up. I don’t talk to the police.”
“You’re the reason the police were after us—out of that whole crowd, they were only looking for us.”
“I didn’t tell them anything!”
“You didn’t have to. They’ve probably been following you for years. Making sure the precious Butcher’s son doesn’t get too roughed up while he plays revolutionary.”
Marco’s face was white and he was shaking. He couldn’t speak. He couldn’t deny it.
When we got to town, Cosme pulled his truck underneath a mulberry tree and yanked up the parking brake. “What did you come back for, anyway?” he said.
Marco jumped out of the truck, clutching the red backpack tight under his arm. “I had to get something of mine.”
* * *
The train slowed once we left León Province and entered Asturias. Whenever we stopped in a town, swarms of striking workers pressed against the windows. In Oviedo, the crowd wouldn’t step off the rail, and instead of stopping, the conductor drove through them. They hurled rocks and glass bottles. A man’s shirt caught on the car. He was stuck for a moment and we all watched, but the cotton tore and he tumbled away from the rails. The remains of his shirt rippled over the glass, a red flag, as the train picked up speed.
“Should we be on this?” Marco said.
“Believe me,” Cosme said, “you don’t want to get off here.”
Marco had kept the secret from all of us, especially Alexis. Alexis might have forgiven the wealth, the peasants, but not certain family tendencies. An aptitude for torture, a relish. Alexis believed too much in blood to forgive Marco for what his father was known for and what he would therefore consider his true inheritance. The Butcher’s son, that he could not forgive. So Marco had lied. The Butcher was famous but the name Lara was common enough to not connect Marco to him. In the same way that you’d never confuse two homonyms, never even consider them alike unless they were placed together on a dry blank page.
* * *
It was dark by the time we arrived in Gijón. The train eased into the station, a mess of wires and cement on the edge of the city. The scent of the sea hit us, but no water was visible. The sky hovered low and clouded, air dense with fog. We walked through the narrow streets. Our feet slipped on cobblestones slick with centuries, and picked up clumps of dried rice—the remnants of someone’s wedding in the empty trash-strewn streets. A feria had just passed. Pink and green streamers hung between the buildings, carrying secrets to those roofs still too sturdy in their foundations to hunch toward one another. Julio Iglesias leaked out of a high apartment window, competing with a recording of Lolita singing a lonesome flamenco on the opposite side of the street. Both sounds floated high above us. Grito kicked a paper devil mask over the cobblestones until it became too waterlogged and melted apart in a puddle.
“I thought you said they lived near the train station,” Grito said to Marco.
“That’s what he said,” Marco mumbled back. He kept the backpack tight under his arm. In it was the money he’d taken from his parents’ house; he’d bought our tickets with it, and who knew how much more he had. Marco wouldn’t speak to Cosme directly, but I could tell he felt under Cosme’s power, following him through a strange city in the dark. This shift was new, though they’d known each other all their lives. It reversed something that was as familiar to them as the feel of their own tongue in their mouth. A foreign limb in a too-small cavity: Neither knew what to do with it.
“Are they your family?” I asked Cosme. “The people we’re looking for?”
“No. Just friends. Young people. That’s why they’re hard to find.”
He made a quick turn, and I glanced back to make sure Marco and Grito followed.
“How long have you known Marco?” Cosme asked me.
“A few years. We went to school together.” I didn’t know Cosme and I certainly wasn’t going to tell him the truth.
“And he never told you about his home? Or his parents?”
“We don’t talk about those things.”
“What do you talk about, then?”
Marco and Grito, a ways behind us, stopped, staring down the street to where the city disappeared into the sparkling water. I couldn’t tell if they could hear us or not.
“We talk about music, politics.”
“Nothing personal, then. What are you looking for?”
I’d been scanning corners and the hidden curves of water pipes, looking for a familiar arc of spray paint, not even knowing that I was.
“Nothing,” I said. We kept walking up smaller and smaller streets with no view of the water. The buildings closed in on us. The scent of stale pork and grilled sardines.
“That is what is personal,” I said finally. There was no trace of Alexis’s tag that I could locate. Why should there be? And what difference would it make? Gijón wasn’t on the list, and what did the list mean, anyway?
“Not your family?” Cosme said. “Who do you live with?”
“My abuela.” It was the first time since I’d called her at the station in Casasrojas that I’d thought of her. Not about the way she moved after Alexis disappeared but about her in the present, as she must have been at that moment. A life can be built entirely around someone, and then a new life is made without her in it. Her saints, her prayers, and her lace, the jars of old oil stacked neatly by the sink. She opened her black lace fan only when she was angry, in one movement, forcing the flowered cloth to bring her new air. She endured the heat otherwise. I had to forget her; remembering her was remembering what I’d done by leaving. The space I had made was not one for remembering, for staying still, jaw slack with want in the solitude of lifelong grief. It was hurtling ahead, no reason, no sight.
I thought of her smell and her weight on the worn linoleum floors. The farther I moved from Casasrojas, the less I could keep what I wanted hidden from rising up. But I could not picture her. I did
n’t know if she was angry, fanning herself by the closed shutters or kneeling in prayer in front of the shrine with the old marzipan box filled with a lifetime of funeral cards, her rapidly moving lips almost grazing the rosary beads. In Casasrojas, her reactions formed in front of me into layers of glass, each stained a different color, piling on one another as I climbed the stairs to our apartment, until they were thick enough to be real and I opened the door to her.
But I could not see her then, walking through a new city with a stranger, though I tried. Maybe I had betrayed her so much that I had killed her, this creature who raised her eyebrows and flared her nostrils every time I moved. But I hadn’t killed her. She lived. The movement of her palms unknown to me was much worse. I knew what Grito would say if I called her, and I didn’t think I could keep it from him. Anyway, what would I tell her? The list of cities swirled in my throat.
“Where are they?” I said. Cosme stopped walking. The street was empty except for two pigeons. A balcony window opened above us, and an old woman turned the crank that brought in her laundry. “They were behind us.”
“Maybe they ditched you. They ditched the other girl.”
“Maybe you don’t know where you’re going.” I stopped looking down the blind alleys and faced Cosme. His eyes were just visible in the flickering light from a streetlamp a block away. “Maybe you lost them on purpose.”
Cosme grinned and stepped closer to me. I had my arms behind my back. I reached until I could feel with my fingertips the damp stone of the building surrounding us. A strip of torn poster plastered on the wall grazed my shoulder.
“And if I did, what would I do now?” he whispered.
I could smell the inside of his mouth and the sweat from the collar of his jacket. “Nothing,” I said.
He stepped in closer. “Why’s that?”
“You’re not who you’re acting like you are.”
The Sleeping World Page 7