Bulletproof Vest

by Maria Venegas

  “The last time you left, I saw your father. He was moping around, and I said, what’s the matter, Jose? Your daughter left because you were drinking, didn’t she? And I told him that he ought to be ashamed of himself. I did. I told him just like that. I said, shame on you, Jose. Whenever your kids come to visit, even if you get the urge to drink, you have to resist it. You have to respect your kids. You’ve already put them through enough. That’s what I told him, don’t think I didn’t,” she says. “He sort of just listened to me, but he didn’t say anything. Your father might be what he is, and has done what he has done, pero eso sí, he has never disrespected me. On the contrary, after he was released from prison and came back here, he told me that as long as he was alive, no one was going to come bother us, and it’s true. Just take a look around at all these abandoned homes, and all of their owners living on the other side, and do you think anyone is going to come try to break in? Nunca. And it’s because of your father, because he’s there, and everyone knows what he’s capable of.”

  The music comes thundering across the dirt road and she glances toward his truck.

  “Well, there he is,” she says. “But you know why your father is like that? It’s because of his parents, because they never reined him in, never gave him a good word of advice. On the contrary. I’m going to tell you a story, and this is something I saw with my own eyes and heard with my own ears. Don’t think it’s a story that someone else told me, it’s something I witnessed myself,” she says. “Ya ve que your father’s parents used to live in this house?” She motions to the house next door to hers. “Well, when they were still living here, one day your father came running home from school and he was crying. He must have been about seven or eight because he wasn’t much taller than this gate. I saw him go flying by, and his mother was outside chopping onions on a butcher block, and he went running up to her, threw his arms around her legs, and buried his face in her skirt. ‘What’s wrong?’ she said, prying him off her. ‘Why are you crying?’ She demanded to know, and the poor thing, he was crying so hard he could barely catch his breath, but he managed to tell her that some older boys had been pushing him around. I think that was around the time when they had started calling him El Cien Vacas, because he had taken to bragging that he had one hundred cows up at his father’s ranch. Well, believe me when I tell you that she grabbed the knife she had been chopping the onions with and handed it to him. ‘Pues ve, y chíngatelos,’ she said. Those were her words. ‘Pues ve, y chíngatelos.’ Imagine, your own mother handing you a knife and telling you to go mess someone up? Well, that is exactly what she did, and the boy just stood there gasping and staring at the knife in his hand, and well, there he is now.” She looks toward his truck, from which the music is still blaring. “How much longer are you staying?” she asks.

  “I’m not sure. Maybe another four or five months,” I say, though I’m leaving by the end of the week. I could probably just tell her the truth, but I think it best to be cautious, figure that if anyone is getting any clever ideas about kidnapping me, if the word gets out that I’ll be here for several months, they might be more inclined to take their time about it. Rosario had recently told me about the Hernández brothers, how among the three of them, they owned half the businesses in the next town over. Their father disappeared and then they received a phone call. They were given an amount and a deadline. When the money failed to arrive by the given date, they received a package—inside was their father’s finger. They scrambled, sent the money, and imagine, to be out half a million dollars and for what? They never saw their father again. “How were we supposed to know he was diabetic?” was the only apology they got from the kidnappers.

  My mother had also told me about the son of a señora she knew. He had just arrived from the other side driving a brand-new truck, and the SUVs stopped him in the outskirts of town. They took his truck away and then drove him out into the middle of the desert, where they stripped him of everything and beat him within an inch of his life. They had left him for the vultures, but a few days later he resurfaced in town, wearing nothing but his bruised kneecaps and his shattered pride. He was one of the lucky ones.

  A different señora’s son had also disappeared, and when she failed to come up with the money, the kidnappers called and told her that if she ever wanted to see her son again, she could go fish him out of the reservoir. She wanted to give him a proper burial, so she hired a professional diver to retrieve his body. The diver returned wide-eyed, empty-handed, and speaking in incomplete sentences, saying he didn’t know which one to bring back. “There are so many bodies down there,” he told her.

  I tell Doña Consuelo that I’d best be going, as it’s getting dark and I still need to bring the donkey to the corral and give him water.

  Even before I reach the donkey I can see that all four of his legs are entangled in the rope. He’s jerking about and I approach him slowly and run my hand down his neck.

  “O, o,” I say in a deep voice, the way I’ve heard my father talk to the horses. I untie the rope from the mesquite and pull it down, over, and through the thorny brambles. “O, o,” I say, as I lean down and untangle the rope from around his front hooves. He nudges my head, his wet breath in my ear. I do the same around his hind legs, careful not to get too close, wouldn’t want him to give me a swift kick and send me clear to the other side. Once the rope is loose enough, it slides off and falls onto the ground.

  I walk him across the dirt road. The last of the chickens are tucking themselves into the branches of the eucalyptus trees. The music grows louder as we approach the truck and then recedes as we walk past. I cut the donkey loose inside the corral, grab the hose, and while I’m filling the trough, El Negro comes running out of the roofless room that used to be the church, and in a single leap, he’s on top of the stacked-stone wall and running along its edge. El Negro is my father’s newest dog. He’s a broad-shouldered black Labrador mix that seems to have a wild strand in his genetic makeup—as if he had been crossbred with a panther or a mountain lion. He usually accompanies me on my morning jogs. Crossing in front of the neighbor’s house has always been an ordeal, since their three dogs are sure to come running out onto the dirt road, looking to lock jaws with whatever dog I’m with.

  El Lobo had stopped jogging with me altogether, just so he wouldn’t have to cross in front of their house, I assumed. But El Negro was different. The first time the neighbor’s dogs had come snarling at him, he had stopped in his tracks and turned to face them, the hair on his lower back and his tail rising as if from static from a passing cloud. The three dogs carried on, but not one of them crossed over onto the road. El Negro had crouched under the barbed wire and resumed his stance inside their property. He strutted up to the dogs, one at a time. Each one barked with less gusto as it curled its tail between its legs and lowered its head, until there was silence. He ran a lap inside their enclosure and peed on the only tree on their property before rejoining me on the dirt road, tongue dangling, tail wagging. If he hadn’t reeked of skunk, I would have dropped to my knees and thrown my arms around him.

  A few days ago, while we were jogging on the dirt road along the mesa, I had heard some growling piercing my music. When I lowered the volume and turned around, El Negro was locking jaws with a large gray dog in the middle of the road.

  “Negro,” I yelled, whipping a rock at them. It had gone skidding across the road and pelted the other dog on the ribs, startling them enough that they both stopped and looked in my direction. The other dog looked like a German shepherd. He had a long snout and ears that stood straight up, and it dawned on me that he was a wild animal of sorts, as we were nowhere near any houses.

  They broke into a sprint. The animal disappeared into the field, and El Negro came running up to me. I thought that was the last we’d see of him, but still, I cut my run short, turned down the music on my iPod, and started jogging back home. A few minutes later, I heard its howls piercing my music again. I pulled my headphones from my ears and turned ar
ound. There was nothing there. The dirt road stretched long and empty behind me. I continued jogging at a steady pace and again came the howling, then I saw it in the field. It was about fifteen feet away, running parallel to us and keeping at our pace.

  “Chucho,” I grunted, throwing a rock at it. And it fell back, but then once more it was in the field, howling and trailing us. I whipped another rock, and it slowed, fell back. Each time it got too close, I’d launch a stone, until it finally vanished into the field.

  “That son of a bitch followed you?” my father said when I got home and told him what happened. He and Rosario were still in the corral, milking the cows. He said it was probably just a coyote, though Rosario insisted that it must have been a lobo, as it was unheard of that a coyote would get into it with a dog. My father shot her a look and she fell silent. “Tomorrow you should take my gun,” he said, “and if that cabrón rears its head again, just blast it right between the eyes.”

  I laughed it off, saying that with my luck I’d probably fall down and end up shooting myself. Though after that day, my jogs were not as serene as they once had been. From then on, I was more vigilant, kept the volume on my iPod a bit lower, and looked behind me every once in a while just to make sure I wasn’t being tracked.

  Once the trough is full, I turn off the water and head back to my father’s truck. He’s still sitting in the driver’s seat, pounding his chest, engrossed in a conversation with someone whom he seems to see standing there in front of him. Rosario has told me this is something he does when he drinks. He’ll lock himself in his bedroom and from the other side of the door she can hear him carrying on and talking to someone.

  “Apá,” I say over the music. He glances at me, and I notice the tears streaming down his face. “Come on, let’s go inside. Let’s go eat.”

  He cries even harder when he sees me.

  “No, mijita,” he says, turning away. “You’ve no idea how much I’ve suffered.”

  The first time I heard him say this, I wanted to say, oh, yeah, well what about all the heartache you’ve caused others? What about all the families you’ve destroyed, all the kids you’ve left fatherless? My uncle alone had eleven kids, most of whom still lived in the area. And though they’ve always been pleasant to me, they are the reason why I don’t like going into town with my father, am always wary of running into them while gallivanting around with the man who killed their father. Joaquín also had two or three kids back home. “Those poor kids,” my mother kept saying. “Imagine, having their father come back to them in a body bag?” She had even collected a donation at her church to help with the shipping arrangements.

  “So many cabrones have tried to take me down, but they just haven’t been able to.” He raises his eyebrows and nods as if agreeing with himself. “With me, they just go round and round in circles like dogs chasing their own tails,” he says. “I am Jose Manuel Venegas, El Cien Vacas, and if anyone has a problem with me, they know where to come find me. The minute any cabrón shows up here, we’ll go at it, fast, and we’ll see who’s left standing. Right, mija?” He looks over at me, and his eyes almost look green against the red veins. There is a deeply rooted sorrow in them, and I can’t help but think that perhaps his anguish is the sum of all the pain he has caused.

  “Apá, it’s just you and me here. Stop talking about killing people,” I say, though I know it’s his pride talking. The pride his mother instilled in him so long ago. I had never heard about her handing him the knife, but each time he told me about Fidel, and how she had handed him the pistol, telling him to never back down from anyone, he’d always look at me and say: “Imagine? My own mother.” That had been such a defining moment in his life, and though he could look back on it now and see how twisted it was, he was unable to rescue himself from it. His stories were his identity—his pride and his pain.

  “Come on, it’s getting dark. Let’s go inside,” I say, though I can tell he’s not listening. His thoughts have drifted off with the music. He can probably still hear his mother singing his praises from beyond her matrimonial grave. You never run away from a fight. Even if you know you’re going to get your ass kicked, you stay and you fight like a man. Had we not had our mother countering his voice, who knows where we might have all ended up?

  “I’ve taken down so many cabrones and I don’t regret a single one,” he says, staring at the steering wheel. “As far as I’m concerned, each one of those culeros got what they deserved. Except for my brother-in-law.” He presses his lips tight, trying to dam up the impossible tears.

  Each time he has a drink or two, he starts talking about my uncle, and what a fine man he was, and how he wishes he had never pulled that trigger. But no amount of regret will bring my uncle back nor restore all those hours my mother spent locked away from us, practically barricaded behind her bedroom door after she returned from burying her brother. Nor will it ease her guilt. When I was here last summer, she and I had gone to visit my uncle’s widow, and my mother had broken down, saying she was sorry she had ever married that man that had ended her brother’s life. Perhaps we all carry a bit of my father’s guilt, but ultimately, it’s he who must bear the brunt of all he’s done. He may have been released from jail, but as long as he’s alive, he will be imprisoned by his past. Maybe this is why he’s still alive: not because he keeps cheating death but rather because life refuses to let him go—he’s not finished paying his debt here yet. Perhaps only in death will he be released from his suffering. The tears are streaming down his face, and he seems so broken, so powerless to help himself, and I want to take him in my arms and hold him for a long time, as if by doing so I could untangle him.

  “Manuel was a fine black bull,” he says, crying even harder. “That one, yes. That one hurts. That one will weigh on me until the day I die. But other than that.” He catches his breath and taps twice on the dashboard. “El que se chingó, se chingó.”

  23

  HAILSTORM

  WE SET OUT IN THE PITCH DARK and ride in silence under the canopy of stars. It’s a moonless morning, and there’s nothing but the glow of my father’s white shirt guiding the way in the distilled starlight. We meander up the narrow horse trail, which is overgrown with brambles. Thorny branches reach out of the darkness and scrape the top of my hat, snag my jeans as the horse’s hooves slide and clack on the rocks below. The scent of wet earth hovers in the air as we ride toward the towering obscurity. Other than the sound of leather creaking and the occasional cock singing out in the distance, all is quiet and serene, and soon the stars are fading against the dawning light.

  “There’s a storm coming,” my father says when we reach the entrance to the ranch at daybreak.

  “How do you know?” I ask. The notion of a storm seems impossible, as there isn’t a single cloud in the sky.

  “See that turtle?” He points to a turtle that has crawled out of the river and so far up the incline that it’s practically at the entrance. “When we were kids, that’s how we knew a storm was coming. The turtles move to higher ground.”

  Must be some storm, I think, judging from the distance the turtle has put between itself and the river.

  We go through the usual routine: The dogs help round up the cattle, and we hitch the horse and the donkey to a tree near the corral. My father fills the troughs with salt, and I find a shady spot and make us tortas for lunch.

  “Did you see Chupitos?” he asks, taking a seat in the shade next to me. “She’s in there with La Negra.” He motions to the corral, where the horns are visible above the stacked stones. Chupitos is the name he has given a calf that lost its mother when I was here last summer.

  She and her mother had been grazing along the river near the house when the mother came running up the hill and ran past the small church, her head bobbing up and down as if she were trying to dislodge something from her throat. The minute she reached the house, she collapsed in front of the courtyard. Her jaw was clenched and a few long blades of grass were jutting from her mouth. I watched as
my father ran his fingers along her neck and tried to pry her mouth open, saying that she may have swallowed a chapulín—a large grasshopper that, if swallowed whole, can get stuck in the animal’s throat or intestines. I squatted down next to her and looked into her eyes. She looked terrified, but then a calm washed over her like a passing shadow. She inhaled and never exhaled.

  That evening, when my father brought the cattle into the corral, while the other calves were feeding before being separated from their mothers for the night, I had watched the orphaned calf sneak up behind an unsuspecting cow and grab hold of an udder. She managed a few chupitos, a few little sucks, before the cow realized it wasn’t her calf and either kicked or head-butted her. Eventually, she gave up and went and stood near the gate. There were three blackbirds circling above the field where her mother lay. She stared in the direction of the field, but she did not bay.

  My father didn’t think Chupitos was going to make it. Though Rosario was feeding her with a bottle, she had lost a lot of weight. Then La Negra, one of his best milk-giving cows, who was the descendant of one of his mother’s best milk-giving cows, gave birth to a calf that died the day after it was born. He skinned the black calf, made a few holes in the raw hide, and tied it like a second skin around Chupitos. At first, whenever Chupitos approached La Negra, she was shunned, until La Negra started sniffing her and ended up adopting her.

  “You should see her, she’s really fat and beautiful, looks just like her mother,” he says. “If you want, when we finish eating, I’ll point her out so you can take a picture of her.”

  “Está bien,” I say, handing him the first torta. Ever since she was orphaned, each time I called him, I always inquired about Chupitos, would have adopted her myself if I could have.