The Infinite

by Nicholas Mainieri

  “Remember this young lady?” Oziel asked.

  The cords stood out in Cicatriz’s neck. He began to cough, and Oziel shoved his head away. Oziel turned to Luz and pulled something from his waistband. It was the knife, the silver knife with the Chichimec designs, that Luz had dropped in the desert. It was now sheathed in a simple leather scabbard. Oziel held the knife out to her. “Would you like to have this, a memento of the occasion?”

  Luz stared at it. Her mind was fuzzy and she was very tired.

  “Take it,” Oziel urged, pressing it into her hand. Then he looked at Felipo, squinting into his disfigured face. “You are in good hands, young man.”

  Luz led Felipo to one of the vehicles. Cecilia was sitting on the bumper, smoking a cigarette. Strands of black hair stuck to her forehead with sweat. Her rifle was propped next to her. She stared somberly at Luz approaching, and Luz nodded back, but Cecilia didn’t respond. No. Cecilia wasn’t looking at her. Luz followed the woman’s gaze. The sicaria and Cicatriz were looking at each other. Cicatriz laughed to himself, rueful, and lowered his face.

  After Oziel’s men had recovered what stolen product was left, he ordered them to load Cicatriz and his followers—both the dead and alive—into one of the SUVs. Then he produced a set of car keys and jingled them in front of the women’s faces. One of the whores shivered and cried, saliva stringing from her mouth, but the other was stoic. Oziel gestured toward the bodies of the dead women. “I am sorry for your colleagues,” he said. “Unavoidable. I do, however, have a proposition for you two, should you care to avoid joining them in the corner of hell reserved for whores. Would you like to hear my proposal?”

  The crying woman was hysterical, shaking. The other stared at Oziel. He jingled the keys again. “These,” he said, “belong to your van over there. The two of you will drive back to Saltillo. Go as you are. You will tell every soul along the way that Cicatriz is finished. His men are dead. There is now no question—this plaza is mine, as it has always been. You understand me?” The stoic woman glared and the sobbing woman nodded. A narco bent and severed their bindings. Oziel dropped the keys to the dirt. “Now. Go.”

  The sobbing woman got up and ran toward the van. The other scooped up the keys. The van came to life and drove away, and Oziel turned to Luz and smiled, as if seeking her approval. Felipo leaned heavily on her, and she opened the door to the unoccupied Suburban and helped him in. One of Oziel’s men exited the house and threw a red plastic jug aside. He struck a match and tossed it through the doorway, and flames began to eat up the house.

  7

  MORNING BROKE RED OVER THE MOUNTAINS. THEY HAD stopped at a crossroads where a decrepit arena hulked. Rusted scaffolding. Warped wooden grandstand. Around the arena’s upper limit, old streamers flicked like dried eel skins. An aluminum sign over the clay parking lot depicted a matador dodging a bull, all in faded graphics and rattling in the wind. In the distance lay the jumbled haze of a city.

  Oziel’s men dragged the dead renegades from the back of a vehicle and arranged the bodies on the clay of the arena’s lot, just off the highway, where they would be seen by travelers in and out of the city. Next they made the three surviving members, still naked, stand in a row next to the corpses. The men were bound around the ankles and wrists. Cicatriz leveled his gaze at Luz and Felipo where they stood, the boy leaning against her. Cecilia placed a silver pistol in Oziel’s hand, and he walked to the first of the surviving narcos. The man’s softer spots jiggled.

  “Get a hold of yourself,” Oziel told him. “You made the choice that brought you here. Surely this possibility did not escape you.” Then he raised the pistol and shot the man through the forehead. Blood and bone and brain matter spurted, slopped to the clay, and the man collapsed in a heap alongside his dead comrades.

  Felipo jumped. The report ricocheted in tinny fragments off the ancient bullfighting arena and vanished out into the waste.

  The next narco in line tried hopping away but fell almost immediately. Oziel groaned and gestured. Two of his men came forward and hauled the man to his feet. Oziel gripped the man’s shoulders and squared him up. He gestured toward the arena. “Think of the strong creatures that must have died in this place. Draw inspiration from them.” And he shot the man through the forehead as well.

  Cicatriz was last. He held still, watched Oziel. Cicatriz’s body was lean, almost starved looking. A small dark tattoo on his pectoral. Very little hair. He seemed young, and Luz supposed that he was.

  “And here we are,” Oziel said. “Forgive my lack of ceremony, Juan Luis. I am merely glad to get this over with.”

  Luz heard shuffling and glanced to see Cecilia pivot away from the scene, leaning against the Suburban and watching the red valley.

  Oziel raised the pistol to Cicatriz’s sneering face. But he did pause, dropping his arm and spinning. “Wait!” he exclaimed. He strode to Luz and Felipo, extending the pistol by the barrel to the boy. “I am happy to let you finish this. For what he’s done to you.”

  Felipo lifted his weight away from Luz. He glanced at her. His swollen and purple face, his one visible eye.

  “Truly,” Oziel said, “it makes no difference to me who pulls the trigger at this point.”

  Felipo took the pistol, held it in his hands. It gleamed. Luz watched. I have imagined it so often, Felipo had said, how it must have happened. His parents dead on the ground outside his home. He gripped the pistol and limped to his cousin.

  Oziel followed close behind Felipo and said, “You see, Juan Luis. You are nothing, and you will soon be nothing forever, and no one will remember you.”

  Felipo raised the pistol. The sign over the parking lot creaked and rattled in the wind. Felipo extended his arm, aimed at his cousin’s face.

  Cicatriz licked his lips. He spoke to Oziel, words quick and high. “I am nothing, but so are you.” Felipo’s arm was shaking and he didn’t pull the trigger.

  Oziel turned to one of his men and held his hand out. The man placed another pistol in it.

  “I won’t be alone,” Cicatriz said to Oziel. “Nobody will care for you when you are gone. What you’ve done will be swallowed along with all the rest. You—”

  Oziel stepped around Felipo, who was still leveling the silver pistol at his cousin’s face, and shot Cicatriz through the temple.

  Cicatriz crumpled. Felipo’s arm dropped.

  Luz could see the blood soaking and thickening into the clay, a red halo. She watched it near the toes of Felipo’s boots and she wanted to scream at him to move, but the words were stuck. Luz swayed on her feet, and she put her hands on her knees and took a deep breath and stared at the ground.

  Oziel was saying something. Apologizing to Felipo. Luz felt a hand on her back. It was the boy. She straightened and he put his arm around her shoulders. “I couldn’t,” Felipo wheezed.

  “I know,” Luz answered.

  Oziel returned the two handguns to their owners. He drew a jackknife from the pocket of his slacks and locked the blade open.

  “I will tell you why Juan Luis was wrong.” Oziel pointed at the corpse with the knife. “I will tell you why we are not going anywhere. The hand where the dollar originates may be hidden, obscured by agencies and borders and skin color, but that dollar does end up in our hand.” He held out his palm to demonstrate, splaying his fingers. “You see, the hand where the money originates hides. It is complicit, but it protects itself, cowering. It is afraid of dirtying itself. But my hand? Well.” And then he bent over Cicatriz and went to work with the knife.

  Luz averted her eyes. It took Oziel a while. He straightened, yanked the piece of skin free, and kicked dirt onto the red-faced corpse. He exhaled, resolute. A narco came forward with a cooler, and Oziel placed the trophy inside. He spread his arms like a magician, the sun glistering on his wet palm, on the wet blade. Then he went over to an old hand pump next to the arena and opened the flow, rinsing his hands and face under the torrent. He returned dripping and grinning.

  Oziel addressed
the men: “You know the drill.”

  The narcos disappeared into their vehicles and drove away, leaving Luz and Felipo, Oziel and Cecilia behind, with the corpses in a swirling of red dust.

  “I feel like a new man,” Oziel proclaimed, opening the door to the remaining Suburban. “Shall we?”

  8

  A STATUETTE OF LA VIRGEN WAS GLUED TO THE DASH OF THE Suburban, and a wooden rosary swung from the rearview. Luz hadn’t noticed either before. Cecilia parked on the road into San Cristóbal, and Oziel told Luz they’d wait where they were.

  She walked with Felipo into the ravine where the village lay. A hot afternoon. Crickets droned in the brush. They crossed the stone bridge and passed Rafa’s store. The village was quiet. A face hovered in the shadowed opening, vanished. Alongside, on the wall of the store, a black C with a white slash through it had been painted.

  “It is over,” Luz said, but the words felt insubstantial.

  The boy bowed his head and tears slid through the dust on his face. “What now?”

  Luz couldn’t tell if the question was for her. Regardless, she didn’t think she was capable of providing an answer. She put her arm around him as they walked. “Thank you for everything,” she whispered.

  Up the hill, the doors of the small chapel opened and the priest exited, wearing a red stole. The scant congregation followed. There was no music, no joyous babble. The small bell tower stood silent. Luz waited with Felipo in the road as the families dragged their feet past, eyes downcast and repentant. Felipo tugged Luz’s wrist and they went to wait on the front step of his house.

  His grandmother arrived hand-in-hand with Ignacio. The old woman saw them and let go of the boy’s hand and covered her mouth. But she smoothed her face as she neared, wrangling her emotions and burying them down and out of sight.

  A small noise escaped her throat when she hugged her grandson. She didn’t ask what had happened, and she didn’t seem surprised, either. She seemed relieved, somehow. She reached for Luz’s hands. “I am sorry, dear,” she said.

  Luz shook her head, a lump in her throat. “I am. I am sorry. Whatever wrong turn I made, I would not want to live had it led to—”

  “Hush,” the old woman said. “Often, the wrong turn is the only route offered.”

  Felipo went stiffly to a knee and embraced the mute Ignacio. Their grandmother asked Luz to come in and rest, to pray with them. But Luz told her she couldn’t; she had a ride home waiting for her. Last, she told the grandmother that Cicatriz would never hurt them again.

  The old woman closed her eyes and turned her face to the sun. “My grandson, then, has come to the end he designed for himself.”

  Luz walked out into the dusty road. The parishioners still passed in silence. She raised a hand to Felipo and his family. “Thank you,” she said.

  The family went inside. Ignacio reached and took his brother’s hand, and the door closed.

  Luz returned through the village. Nobody looked at her. The villagers walked with hands clasped, contemplating sacrifice. Luz moved beyond them all, across the stone bridge, and onto the last stretch of trail, where she was alone. The insects sang. She was sweating in the still heat. She put one foot in front of the other. A peace settled into her, a peace like she’d not felt in weeks.

  9

  THEY FOUND THE HIGHWAY AGAIN AND TACKED EAST, THREADING out of the mountains and slaloming between acres of rolling scrubland and pasture. Hills on the horizon. What had taken two days on horseback with Felipo took a couple of hours by SUV. Luz didn’t speak, and neither did Cecilia while she drove. Oziel made phone calls and drummed his fingers on his knees.

  Cecilia took the turnoff toward Las Monarcas, and the town appeared—a collection of shimmering structures among sun-soaked foothills. The sicaria pulled the Suburban over to the side of the road and parked. Luz could see the dome of the church. A silver radio tower. The place had been her home, and it would be again. Somewhere in there grew the monarch tree, but in her memory this was the only detail in a picture that had been all but scrubbed blank. Las Monarcas was there, right there, but it didn’t move her. She had spent years assimilating to another place, after all, which meant effacing her home’s context—her former life.

  “I hope you don’t mind if we let you walk from here,” Oziel said.

  “That’s fine.”

  “You seem less than happy.”

  “I’m all right.”

  “Luz. Permit me to say something before you go on your way.”

  “Okay.”

  He took out his cigarettes and lit one. He smoked and tapped the yellowed filter and smiled. “You are a special woman, Luz. Like she is.” He pointed to his niece. Cecilia didn’t turn to look. Oziel went on. “I can feel your potential. Welling up, searching for an outlet, like a spring in a mountainside.” He exhaled smoke and let his arm hang out of the open window. “What I am saying is, though I do not know your history, I can see that going back to this home of yours is not the best thing for you. Particularly if you have not been back in a long time.”

  He waited for a response, but she didn’t say anything.

  He continued, “I predict that you will be unsatisfied unless you can find some venture that actively challenges you and your being, therein offering the opportunities you will require for constant vindication. You are like us.” He pointed to himself and to his niece. “It will be as I said to you when we met. There is no going back. There is no such thing as being along for the ride.”

  Luz let his words wash over her. “Thank you for helping me with Felipo. I just want to go home.”

  “Very well.” He sighed. “Do me this favor—” He produced a blank business card and wrote a phone number on it. “Call in the event you need something more.”

  Luz put the card in her pocket but didn’t say anything. Cecilia turned her head and briefly nodded good-bye. Luz opened the door and got out.

  “Ah!” Oziel said. “Do not forget this!” He was holding out the large silver knife in the leather sheath.

  Luz looked at it for a moment, then numbly reached and took it. She rolled it up in the army sweatshirt and put it under her arm. She shut the door and started off. The vehicle turned and pealed away behind her, clawing through gears. It was gone soon enough.

  10

  SHE TRUDGED UP THE INCLINING COBBLESTONE, WAITING FOR some unremembered image to flare. A girl whined past on a four-wheeler and Luz stepped aside, nearly putting her foot into the crevice of the narrow, deep rain channel between cobblestone and sidewalk, and there it was. She once sat at the front gate of her grandmother’s, during a downpour, thinking of her father who was so far away, and she watched the rainwater flood the channels and course down the street itself like a river.

  The low buildings hedged in the street, smashed up against one another, and staggered up the grade, creating a steppe of rooftop laundry lines and flowerbeds. Sunlight twisted through the glass shards embedded in wall tops. The street flattened into a roundabout holding a dry, moldering fountain in its center. A bald man sat on the fountain’s rim and sang through his mustache, singing for the empty street.

  The street climbed toward a T in front of the Spanish church with the tall, varnished doors. Its dome shouldered the sky, and pigeons lined the crossbar of the copper cross at its apex. A woman who seemed as ancient as the building sat on the steps, palm held out and head bowed. Her eyes were hardly open and her thin lips quivered with indecipherable whispers. Luz remembered her mother waking her and dressing her on Sundays, then leading her down the street. Her mother always pressed a few pesos into the beggars’ palms, and it confused Luz—her father had left because they needed money. But her mother would take her into church and they’d sit, waiting for Mass, and Mamá would recite the parable about the camel and the eye of the needle.

  Toward the east the street dived eventually from sight, and within the bounded scope of the Las Monarcas rooftops the plain arced toward the horizon. To the west the street climbed higher, and
the bisecting streets climbed higher yet, north, into the hills. The homes, blue and yellow and red, seemed to stack atop one another. The monarch tree, Luz figured, was somewhere in that direction.

  Squashed paper cups littered the street, empty soda bottles. Luz realized she’d missed the recent Passion parade. Memory swarmed, thick as the monarch clouds. She remembered the parades of her youth, standing gravely with Mamá. She knew that the church, inside, would be quiet and smell of incense. She recalled the dioramas situated within the entranceway, little glass-encased visages on pedestals. The scene at Golgotha and the Last Supper and the martyrdoms of various saints—Sebastián lashed to a tree and pincushioned with arrows, Esteban bloody and broken in the street. Above the altar, Christ would be hanging crucified in a gleaming, realistic replica. His blood had seemed perpetually wet. All that holy violence—she was made to know it even as a child. And Luz recalled the alcove that housed the iron framework of candles flickering in red glass. Luz and her mother used to go to the grotto after Mass for her father. We lit candles for you, Papá, so far away. She had stared at those flames dancing solitary in their glasses and prayed, as hard as she was able.

  But that had been a long time ago, and Luz was tired, too tired to go into the church and see what, if anything, had changed. She turned from the steps and from the beggar woman and walked uphill, toward her grandmother’s. She was thinking about opposing yet simultaneous worlds. The knowledge she had now versus the knowledge she used to not have, for instance. That as a girl she could kneel and pray for her father, while he, unaware, slaved on a scorched rooftop.