Bulletproof Vest

by Maria Venegas

  “Fine,” I say, waiting for my mother to deliver her verdict.

  “In Mexico, only whores drink,” she says, refusing to even look at me.

  * * *

  Spring semester is well under way and I’m sitting at the head of the dining room table where, on school nights, I’m a permanent fixture. Though I don’t have Ms. Flint for any classes, we meet after school twice a week and are making our way through the ACT prep book, one subject at a time. One week it’s mock essay questions, another it’s word problems. Easy to solve the word problems, simply memorize the formula and plug in the numbers: If a train leaves the station at 10:00 a.m., and is traveling at a speed of eighty miles per hour, and its destination is two thousand miles away, at what time will it reach its final destination? Speed equals distance divided by time.

  I’m plugging in the numbers when I hear the music. My pen stops moving and I strain to listen a little harder. I can’t tell exactly where the music is coming from, but the sound of the drums and horns is unmistakable—it’s my father’s music. I sit still, listening to the music as it draws near, until out of the corner of my eye I see the sheen of a black car gliding under the streetlight like an enormous fish. Its headlights are off, its tinted windows are rolled down a bit, and the music is blaring from it. Though I can’t see who is behind the steering wheel, I realize that whoever it is has a clear shot of me, sitting under the light of the chandelier.

  I jump up, hit the light switch, and run through the living room and down the corridor that leads to the bedrooms. Yesenia and Jorge are already in my mother’s bedroom, sitting in the dark and watching as the car drives to the end of the block and stops at the intersection. It sits there for a very long time before turning left and making its way around the back of the house.

  “Do you think it’s Joaquín’s brothers?” I ask.

  “It’s probably your father,” my mother says.

  “What should we do?” Yesenia asks.

  “Are all the doors locked?” my mother asks.

  Jorge and I run through the house checking the back door, the front door, the garage door, and the door that leads from the basement into our kitchen. Soon we’re back in my mother’s bedroom, listening as yet again the music comes thundering down the street. The car comes to a full stop at the end of the block and sits there with the music blasting for what seems like an eternity.

  “Should we call the police?” I ask.

  “What for?” my mother says. “What are the police going to do?” The car turns left and goes around the block a few more times before leaving.

  If a southbound train pulls out of the station in the dark and is traveling at an unstoppable speed, at which point will there be a collision?

  6

  RUNAWAY TRAIN

  HE MISJUDGES HIS SPEED, and when he hits the only curve that sits between town and La Peña, the wheels of his truck catch the gravel and it begins to roll. Within minutes, the whole town is abuzz with the latest gossip—Jose just flipped his truck at the curve. When Manuel arrives in town he hears the news and turns his truck around, thinking that perhaps he can lend his brother-in-law a hand.

  He has not seen Jose since the last time Pascuala was in town, several months ago. It was a few days before she was to leave, to return to the other side, and Manuel and Pascuala were at their mother’s house, sitting around the kitchen table when there was a knock at the front door. And then Jose was standing in the kitchen’s doorway, saying that he wanted to have a word with his wife. By then, the whole town already knew that he had taken up with a younger woman; they had been seen strolling through the plaza and the mercado, arm in arm, like a couple of honeymooners. Manuel didn’t like to meddle in the business of others, so when he saw Jose in the doorway, he pushed away from the table and stepped out of the kitchen, telling his mother that she should do the same, that whatever problems existed between Jose and Pascuala needed to stay between Jose and Pascuala.

  As far as Manuel was concerned, he didn’t have any issues with Jose. In fact, ever since he and Jose had become in-laws, they had always gotten along, had always lent each other a hand. When Jose and Pascuala had needed someone to take their six kids across the border, they had asked Manuel if he would do them the favor. Though Manuel had no desire to go to the other side, he had agreed to do it. On the day of the trip a storm was raging; the muddy water ran a foot deep through the streets and no one thought the bus was going to be able to leave, but it did.

  Manuel had taken the two seats at the back of the bus with the six kids, and by the time it was winding around the curves of the Sierra Madre Occidental mountain range, the youngest of the six, the four-year-old, had started complaining that she had a stomachache, and before Manuel could find a plastic bag for her, she had gotten sick and had set off a chain reaction. The bus had to pull over in the next town, and the driver made Manuel pay for the cleanup. While the bus was hosed down, Manuel purchased a sack of oranges from a nearby fruit stand, thinking the sweet citrus might be soothing for the kids. But once they were all back on the bus, he realized he had made a mistake—what he had thought was a sack of oranges turned out to be a sack of grapefruit.

  Though Manuel had not planned on staying in the United States, once he made it across, Jose talked him into it, telling him that in Chicago there was so much work, they couldn’t find enough men to cover all the jobs. That he could easily find work in a factory, a farm, or a restaurant, and since he had already made it across, he might as well stay and work, save up a bit of money, make the trip worthwhile. Manuel agreed to stay, and on the night after they arrived to Chicago, there was a knock at the door. It was immigration. Someone had tipped them off, saying that a truckload of Mexican men had just arrived at that house. The agents took Manuel and Jose away, held them overnight, and on the following day, they gave each a work permit and let them go. For six months they had lived under the same roof, eaten at the same table, shared the occasional cold beer on the weekends, and never once had they had an argument or even a disagreement.

  Even before Manuel reaches the curve, he can see the crowd that has gathered around the truck, which is lying on its back like a giant beetle that rolled onto its shell and was unable to right itself. Manuel pulls over, and as he makes his way toward the crowd of men that are hollering over the truck and trying to pry its doors open, just above the voices of the men, on a much higher register, he hears the unmistakable whimpering, which can only be that of a woman. He thinks nothing of it, until he is squatting down and looking through the cracked windshield. Jose still has one hand on the steering wheel, his hat is lying upside down on the hood next to him, and sprawled under and around the hat are the blond-orange dyed locks of the concubine. She stares back at Manuel, wild-eyed and sobbing; a streak of blood running from her nose cuts across her forehead and disappears into her dark roots. Manuel takes one look at her, glances back at Jose, and pushes himself to his feet. To help Jose was one thing, but to help him and his concubine, well, he’d be damned. He walks away, his cowboy boots traversing the same ground he’s just covered, as if by doing so he could erase his footprints, make it as though he had never been there.

  Ever since that day, Jose’s focus starts shifting. It’s like all the fury that had been barreling toward his wife like an unstoppable train had jumped the tracks and was now speeding toward a new destination. Almost immediately after the crash, everyone starts warning Manuel, even his own mother.

  “Hijo,” Andrea says, “don’t let your guard down with Jose. People say that he’s been making the rounds at the taverns, saying that the next time he sees you, he’s going to kill you.”

  “Ay amá, he won’t do anything,” Manuel says. “El que nada debe, nada teme.” It’s true that Manuel didn’t owe anyone anything, had done nothing to provoke Jose—or anyone for that matter—and so had no reason to fear that some imbecile might show up at his door one day wanting to collect on some outstanding debt.

  “El que nada debe, nada teme,” An
drea says. “That’s how the saying goes, but you have to be careful. They say that if you want to know the truth, just ask a child or a drunk, because they will always tell the truth. And if those are the things that Jose has been saying when he’s intoxicated, it’s because that is what’s on his mind, and once a man begins to speak his thoughts, it’s only a matter of time before his words become his actions,” she says, perhaps thinking back to when Jose had been plotting to kidnap Pascuala, as he had been talking about it for some time before he actually worked up the nerve to enlist the help of his two cousins, and set up camp at the tavern near Nico’s house.

  “That man just knocked himself out,” shouted the girl that Andrea had as her lookout, the minute his head had hit the rock.

  The loading of the groceries had been a mere pretense, a lure, because Andrea had been onto him all along. She knew he was at the tavern with his men, and it was precisely because Manuel was with them that Andrea had insisted that they wait, that they spend the night at Nico’s if they had to, because God forbid that man overtake them on the road and end up hurting Manuel—or worse. Since the day Jose had laid eyes on her daughter his presence upon them had been relentless, with him on the boulder, and then the endless serenades.

  “That man is obsessed with your daughter, Andrea,” her mother said, looking up from her knitting, when they heard the drums and horns coming from across the river for the umpteenth time, “and nothing good can come from an obsession like that.”

  Had Andrea’s husband still been alive, he would have put Jose in his place, but he had been killed when she was thirty years old, leaving her with six kids to raise on her own. Though she probably heard the shot that took his life, she paid it no mind, as guns went off in those parts at the same frequency that cocks sang out at dawn. It wasn’t until she heard the door to the courtyard swing open and heard the footsteps, which were not those of her husband, that she knew something was off.

  “Bacilio, is that you?” she called out from the kitchen, where she was pouring tea for the kids. There was no answer. “Well, if it’s not Bacilio, then who is it?” she said, wiping her hands on her apron as she stepped outside, and then the messenger was telling her that her husband had just been shot in front of the dry goods store. She went running, not realizing that her kids went trailing after her.

  When she arrived at the store, a crowd had gathered in front of the stoop. Her husband was lying on the ground and a dark pool was spreading around his head. Andrea dropped to her knees and took him in her arms. He had been shot in the face, and though his eyes were still open, she knew he could no longer see her, nor could he see as, one by one, their kids arrived on her heels, and the way Pascuala had begun to tremble as the dark pool crept closer to her bare feet. Four men helped Andrea carry the body back to the courtyard, and there they hosed him down and changed his clothes while they waited for the coffin to arrive. In the morning, they loaded the coffin onto the carriage and took it away, buried under a mound of white flowers.

  “Is mi apá really never coming back?” Juan, who was five years old, asked her every night before going to bed, and every night he got the same response, and every night he cried himself to sleep. Manuel, however, was eleven, the eldest, and he had taken his father’s death with a manly resolve.

  “Let’s go feed our father’s horse,” Manuel said to Juan, on the morning the carriage took the coffin away. Ever since Andrea’s husband had been killed, Manuel had been her constant companion until he married and started having kids of his own, and it’s precisely on the day that Manuelito, Manuel’s son, marries his sweetheart at the civil court, that the two of them are making their way down calle Atotonilco, when they run into Jose and his friend Ricardo.

  “This is my brother-in-law,” says Jose, throwing his arm around Manuel and introducing him to Ricardo. Though Jose has been drinking for three days straight, with barely any food or sleep, he’s surprisingly coherent.

  The two men shake hands, and Jose invites Manuel and his son to join them for a drink. Manuel declines, saying they have business to attend to and must be on their way. But Jose insists, telling Manuel that even though he’s no longer with his sister, there’s no reason why they can’t still be friends. Manuel relents, agrees to join them for just one drink, but Manuelito talks his way out of it, and heads back home.

  “So, Jose tells me that you’re from Santana,” Ricardo says once they’re inside the tavern.

  “Así es,” Manuel says.

  “I was at some horse races there a few weeks ago and lost a good bit of money,” Ricardo says, removing his cowboy hat and carefully placing it on the surface of the bar. “Then, just the other day, I found out the races had been fixed.”

  “I wouldn’t know anything about those races,” Manuel says. “I wasn’t there.”

  “But you’re from Santana.”

  “That is correct.”

  “So you must know something,” Ricardo says.

  The bartender pours their drinks and once they’ve finished the first round, Jose buys another, and by the time the bartender pours them the third round, Manuel’s family is already making their way along the winding cobblestone streets, past the local businesses as they close for the evening. Because even though Manuelito had started walking back home, soon enough he was running through the copper light of the setting sun until he reached the house, out of breath and shouting for his mother and sister, saying that they had just run into Jose, and he had taken his father with him, and then the three were rushing back up calle Atotonilco toward the only tavern at that end of town.

  “All you men from Santana are the same,” Ricardo says, polishing off his drink. “Nothing but a bunch of cowards.”

  “Ya,” Jose says. “Let it be.”

  “Let it be?” Ricardo says, grinning. “You’re the one who has it out for this cabrón, not me.”

  “I don’t care who has it out for who, gentlemen,” the barkeep says. “Take it outside.”

  The three men step outside, and when Manuel’s family arrives, the argument over the horse races that may or may not have been rigged has escalated, and a small crowd has gathered. Jose’s gun is in his hand, and Ricardo is holding Manuel’s arms behind his back.

  “Here is your man,” yells Ricardo. “Suénatelo.”

  “Jose, put your gun away,” Manuel’s wife says. “You’ve had too much to drink.”

  Through bloodshot eyes, Jose stares at Manuel’s face, a face that is so much like Pascuala’s face—the face that had kept him nailed to the boulders behind her house for years, waiting and hoping that she would step outside so that he might catch a glimpse of her face. There’s no reaching her now. Each time he calls the house and she answers, the minute she hears his voice, she slams the phone back onto the receiver.

  “Suénatelo,” Ricardo yells, and a unanimous gasp escapes from the crowd as Jose raises his gun and aims at Manuel’s face.

  “Don’t do it, Jose,” Manuel’s daughter says as a few curtains from nearby windows are pushed aside.

  “Suénatelo,” Ricardo says.

  “Te vas a arrepentir, Jose, te vas a arrepentir,” Manuel’s wife says, tears already streaming down her face.

  He lowers his arm, though their voices rage on around him like an irredeemable argument. Do it. Don’t do it. He has two choices now. Either he pulls the trigger or he walks away, but how do you walk away from a man you’ve forced to stare down the barrel of your gun? Half the town, it seems, is now standing around, waiting to see what he will do, whether or not he’ll have the nerve to pull the trigger, or had it all been nothing but talk?

  “Are you or are you not a man of your word?” Ricardo yells, and in a single motion Jose reaches over, removes Manuel’s hat, and places it on his own head as if saying, You won’t be needing this anymore. He lifts his arm, aims his gun at Manuel’s face, and fires a single bullet.

  * * *

  “Imagine? When would Manuel have ever thought that your father would repay him the
way that he did?” Tito, my grandmother, would ask me, years later. “When Manuel took you kids to the other side, he had not planned on staying, but your father talked him into it, and so he stayed and worked for a bit, and once he came back here, one day he told me, he said, ‘Mamá, you should see, over there men work cleaning tables, cooking, and washing dishes. Over there men are doing for money what they would never do in their own home. It’s disgusting,’ he told me. Manuel believed that the best thing for a man was to work his own land, and he was right. He saved up enough money to buy a tractor, and after he came back, never again did he return to the other side, nor did he want to. When would my son have ever thought that your father would go and do what he did?

  “The bullet hit Manuel right here,” she said, pointing to the nook above her top lip and in between her nose and left cheek. “It broke through his front teeth and lodged itself in the back of his head, where it exploded. Had it not been for his family being there, my son probably would have bled to death right there on the street. But the thing that helped him was that his wife and daughter picked him up right away. Manuelito was there also, but the minute the gun went off he ran away, because God forbid that Jose turn the gun on him—he had already threatened him, don’t think he hadn’t.

  “They flagged down a car and drove Manuel to the nearest hospital, two hours away. The doctor there took one look at Manuel and told his family that they should take him home, because he already knew. But how could they take him home? They had to try and so they took him to the hospital in San Luis Potosí in an ambulance. Ya ve que San Luis has some of the best doctors in the world, supposedly? Once there they hooked him up to so many tubes and monitors, even his food had to be fed to him through a tube because he couldn’t chew. My son was in so much pain. ‘Mamá,’ he said to me one day, ‘if you were to take a hot coal and place it on my skin, it would be nothing compared to the pain that I feel.’