Pacazo

by Roy Kesey

  Blood streams from my nose and I run, watch his brake lights, hope they will darken, hope he will want a full tank, reach the stoplight red again and I run out into the road, cars swerve and screech and already he is gliding oh motherfucker pulling away from the pump, swinging around and back onto the Panamericana. I watch him go. Another car just misses me. It is a taxi as well, large and white and it slows, stops, backs toward me.

  I enter and point. There is pain drilling in my head, my shoulder, my ankle. The other taxi reaches the river and turns along the malecón. We follow, and my nosebleed ceases. I ask the taxista to close in, tell him that I rode in the other taxi just moments ago, left an important book behind.

  The driver nods, straightens his back and leans forward, accelerates. The rain has thinned. My shirt and pants are soaked with rain and sweat and blood. We parallel the river rising now again. A red light at Sánchez Cerro for both our taxi and his, but we slow too late for me to reach him. Green, a distance, and the current tears at what is left of the Old Bridge, the twisted beams, an ornate lamp sticking up from the surface.

  Four more blocks, the Bolognesi Bridge, and here traffic sits thick. The other taxista is stopped several cars ahead, has his signal on, intends to cross the river. I pay, step out, push forward through the rain, and there is a policeman on the bridgehead. He holds up his hand to the cross-traffic, waves the cars on the malecón forward.

  I begin to run and the old yellow taxi advances slowly and if there is any pause I will make it to his door, will open it and enter, will be only a passenger, will direct us out into the desert but there is no pause, the taxi swings onto the bridge and I stop, the light green at the far end of the bridge and I will not reach him in time. I jump through traffic to the curb and the white taxi nears again. He nods when he sees me, slows and there is a roar, a roar that fills my mind or the world, a scream and the policeman stumbles toward me, rolls and crawls and the bridge shudders, twists, an eruption of steel and cement and great white plumes of water and the bridge is gone.

  Men and women stumble as they run. I am on the ground, do not remember falling. Blood pours again from my nose but there is no force now like that which lifts me. I walk onto the bridgehead. There are ten or twelve cars in the water. Within seconds they have disappeared beneath the surface.

  A few of those who ran have returned. The policeman stands beside me, pulls off his boots and strips off his uniform, grabs my arm as though we are both to dive. I shake free, watch him fall flailing and right himself midair, watch him swim, strong firm strokes toward the river’s center.

  And I look across at the far bank. An old yellow Tico is stopped by the side of the road. Its emergency lights flash on and off. Its driver stands at his edge. I kneel, work through the policeman’s clothes, find his holster, and it is empty.

  41.

  AGAIN THE BUS BUT ALONE, again the river but now continuing east, only half an hour away if the reports were correct and the World Cup begins in three days. Many of my students wish to discuss nothing else. I am expected to have strong opinions about the United States’ team and its chances, sometimes pretend to have them, and for class we watch films picked at random from the video library.

  The Andes, clearer and clearer as we near. Not a hawk but litter. All license plates seen since the fall of the bridge have been wrong, but insofar as the story is true, Sarita Colonia will help. She must. It is her job to help, or would be, and I returned to the market, bought a new galvanized tub, keep it locked for now in my closet.

  A dead cat on the side of the road and crows tearing at its abdomen. I wish I had kept the corpse of the hairless dog, as perhaps it truly is some sort of cure. Prayers, prayers. Certainty, yes, in all its many forms, but I do not know how this is to be accomplished.

  Socorro no longer works on Sundays and my house still stinks of paint so Mariángel is at Karina’s. I dropped her off with something that appears to be a lavender toolbox but is in fact filled with materials for decorating one’s hair. The twins were delighted. Karina shrugged, said they would all be fine and a hundred yards ahead there is a police car on the side of the road.

  Fifty yards farther on are two more police cars, and a section of highway shoulder that is now a parking lot. It has been four days since Beatriz Silvana Cordero Huarcay entered a given taxi. I had thought the scene would be empty or nearly so, thought it a plenitude of caution to dress the way reporters dress on television, to have brought a clipboard, but all these cars and beyond them dozens of persons, some uniformed and others not. My knapsack, my camera, a pen tucked into each pocket. I make my way up the aisle and ask the driver to stop. He asks why. I look at him. The bus stops. It is a quarter of a mile back to the relevant patch of desert. By the time I reach it my clothes are thick with sweat.

  A slow first circle. Oreja de león, the tracks of a chanto, and if I approach the police here they will send me away. Angolo, palo verde, and no shreds of cloth. No paper scraps, no bloodstains. Nothing, and nothing.

  I approach the shortest reporter, lift my clipboard, ask if he has heard anything new. The man looks at me. He scratches the side of his face, tells me he’s too busy for chitchat. I apologize, edge away and on to the next. This man is old and stooped, and I stoop as well. He asks which paper I am with.

  - El Mercurio, I say, and do my best to look Chilean.

  He tilts his head to one side.

  - Santiago or Valparaíso?

  - Santiago.

  - I was just talking to Yáñez. How come they sent two of you?

  - Who?

  The man’s eyes scan my shirt, and then he smiles.

  - Okay, friend, he says. Okay.

  He walks away. In the middle distance another man looks up. Yáñez, surely Yáñez. Already a failure, and many-colored: the credentials I lack, the information, my shoddy attempt at the accent.

  Another circle, wider. No flecks of paint, no plastic shards, no tooled wood in any form. Perhaps it is only that I am out of practice but nothing and nothing and the pointless clarity of the air, the sharp gray lines of the Andes, they would have saved Pilar but were no help to Beatriz.

  Back toward the highway, and another reporter. I smile, ask if she has come across anything of interest. She looks at me and walks away.

  - Stupid bitch, says someone behind me.

  I turn. Yet another reporter. He does not look abnormal, shakes his head, and so do I.

  - I fucking hate that fucking bitch, he says.

  - No shit, I say. She’s the stupidest fucking cunt I ever met.

  I go and stand beside him. He is staring at a candelabra, sketching its thorns. I nod and jot what will seem to him to be notes.

  - Too bad about those footprints, he says.

  I agree, say that I wish it had been otherwise.

  - So it goes, he says. Maybe they’ll get lucky, find some more.

  - Here’s hoping, I say.

  He looks at me, keeps looking, the wrong amount. I frown at the candelabra thorns, squint at his drawing, shrug. He is still looking at me. I frown again, ask if he has heard any projections as regards the perpetrator’s mindset.

  - Who are you? he says.

  I do not know the names of any more newspapers in Chile and am on the verge of telling him the truth but even to me it would sound unlikely and suddenly I am sure: he believes that I am the murderer, here to revisit the scene. I nod, turn, walk away. Ten steps along I look back and he is approaching the nearest policeman. I step into a thicket of some plant whose name Reynaldo never taught me, the thorns pull and I hear footsteps, push through the bracken and the thorns catch and hold and I push harder, into a clearing and beyond it is a wall of apuntia through which they will not follow, the heavy swaying around me and the spines scratch and tear but do not drive in except one and another and now I stand and hear nothing. Blood drips from my forehead into my eyes. The spines in the flesh of my arm and they ache and I squeeze at them and prod and they will not come out but at home there are pliers
and knives.

  Then a thought. It may be a time before I can search here unhindered, but I know somewhere else. The clues there will be old but unsullied. Abominable thought, horrific, possible though I do not yet know how, and help will be needed. I crouch, find five stones, set the four largest in a tight square and the fifth on top: if nothing else a cairn for Beatriz Silvana Cordero Huarcay.

  Lunch done and salve on my scrapes and I kiss Mariángel and go but Fermín is on the front steps. His bicycle is cleaner than seems feasible. He is already speaking of Casualidad, of a telephone call and further healing but this is not a day for Fermín. I tell him that I am very pleased for whatever the news might be and give him fifty soles.

  The walk, and nothing, and nothing, and Arantxa is waiting. There are so many reasons why she might be but I do not ask, instead follow to her office. I sit down and she looks at the top of her desk and moves several papers from one side of it to the other and frowns and moves them back. She opens her mouth and then closes it, twice. She says that in an hour there will be an emergency staff meeting, that I am in charge of finding a free classroom and gathering all available professors.

  Under other circumstances I would ask for additional details. Today I comply, or attempt to. Only a third of the evening-shift professors can be bullied into coming in early, but the coordinators agree to go, and the room Eugenia assigns me is small enough to seem full even with these pallid numbers.

  The emergency meeting begins. Its topic is film. Arantxa has brought guidance sheets and photocopies. Beginning today, she says, all professors intending to teach lessons entailing the use of film must hand in their Video Lesson Plan Objective Sheet and three Video Lesson Exercise Templates no fewer than twenty-four hours in advance. She does not look at me as she says this. Instead she hands out a Sample Video Lesson Plan Objective Sheet and three Sample Video Lesson Exercise Templates for our future reference. Then she asks if there are any questions and does not wait to hear them.

  Furthermore, she says. Furthermore, every video in the video library has been assigned a level corresponding to one of our course levels, and no video may be used at any level other than its own. Furthermore, when checking out a video, one must first sign the Video Registry. Furthermore, videos may be kept out for a maximum of forty-eight hours. Furthermore, Spanish subtitles may no longer be used at any point in any capacity. Furthermore, all illegally copied videos have been removed from the video library, and no illegally copied videos may henceforth be introduced.

  It is unlike Arantxa to lean so heavily on any given conjunctive adverb. She stares at us as if about to ask for questions once again, but asks for nothing. Furthermore, she says. But there is nothing more to say. She tells us to get back to work and walks out the door.

  This meeting might instead have been a confrontation, was thus a gift of sorts from Arantxa to me. To the cafeteria, and a slow coffee. Out and along the path but then quick movement underfoot and the crunch of small bones crushed.

  I lift my foot. Underneath is a lizard, dead. It is three inches long, with thin brown and black stripes down its sides—the smallest species on campus and harmless to the best of my knowledge. I have never been so close to one before and there is nothing less likely than this death, not given their speed and agility, so there is hope, always hope, always.

  Into class. My students ask why I am smiling but telling them would not help. The new video policies can have no bearing on a lesson planned before they existed and so I feed the cassette into the VCR. I stand back and wait. The video does not play. The cassette has snagged somehow.

  I fiddle and nudge and nothing and now there is knocking at the door: Dr. Macalupú, head of the chemistry department. I ask him to what I should attribute this interruption. He looks at my students, at the floor, asks if I know Reynaldo’s address in Lima. I tell him that I know nothing. My students smile at the phrase. Dr. Macalupú stares at me, thanks me, thanks my students, apologizes and exits.

  The cassette will not play or eject regardless of the buttons I push or the order in which I push them. I turn the VCR off and tell my students to write an essay on the failings of technology, an essay of any length and style. My students are no longer smiling but nod or appear to.

  The Cup, begun. Shouting from everywhere, at times joyful and at times less so. My friends now root for South American teams they hated months ago, cheer Brazil’s victory over Scotland and Chile’s tie with Italy and tonight Karina has come to my house to talk but there is another, more urgent need: the fair, I say.

  Karina had not heard that the fair was in town. I tell her that it opens tonight, that it will have all the foods one expects at a fair, and the rides one expects, and the games of skill and chance. Many or most of the taxis in Piura will at some point pass the entrance, and I do not add this information.

  She sits down beside me on the couch, says she does not wish to go. I tell her that the candied apples and corndogs of the Lake County Fair were the highest of high points each summer in Fallash. She does not believe me though it is nearly true. I tell her that taking one’s girlfriend to the fair is simply what is done and she laughs too sharply, somehow knows that I never took anyone. She pats my hand, speaks of dust and noise, of crowds and sweat. I stand and tell her that it will be very enjoyable and that I would welcome her company and that I am leaving.

  I go to the kitchen. Socorro is gathering her belongings. I remind her that she agreed to stay late. She pauses, sets her purse down, walks to Mariángel’s room without looking back.

  I wait for a moment at the front door, but hear nothing. I step to the street and stop the first taxi that comes by. The driver is young and broad-shouldered. Then Karina is beside me, looks at me and shrugs, takes my arm.

  It is a moment before I understand that she has guessed what I mean to do, has decided to come regardless, is now part of the search. A great sad angry evil happiness surges in my chest. I was not aware of wanting this but oh how I clearly did and do.

  In ten minutes she knows as little as I can usefully tell her and the traffic is no longer moving though we are still three blocks away. We walk, and the final block is packed four deep with taxis. We check all likely plates and I scan each face. The honking, it never ceases, becomes symphonic.

  As we near the entrance, Karina stumbles. I help her to stand. The exhaust fumes, so thick here, the heat, and I carry her to the gates. She laughs as I set her down, thanks me, says that she is fine and she is lying and there is work to be done inside.

  The crowds are very thick as is the dust. I buy candied apples and again we stand, we eat and watch, we eat. Karina smiles at the taste, nods. Again we walk, and there are many rides, far more than I had thought. We walk from one to the next and I scan the faces of all the men in line.

  When the first circle is complete we start another. Then a face almost perfectly right. The man is in line for the Ferris Wheel. I come closer, closer. He has his arm around a young woman’s waist. Now he sees me, steps toward me, asks why I am staring. His voice is impossibly high-pitched. I nod, thank him, pull Karina past him and away.

  A moment later her hand goes limp in mine. I turn, and she is looking at the ground. It is not sickness but sadness, I believe. I check the rides around us, and there is one, an immense metal disk, that appears to be sufficiently solid for someone of my height and weight.

  I buy our tickets, and the line is not long. When our turn comes we climb the stairs to the platform, step onto the disk, sit down and hold to the railing though there is not yet any movement beneath us. Others climb on as well. They are mostly young girls talking very loudly.

  When the railing is half-lined with people the door closes, becomes simply more railing, and the ride begins slowly, accelerating, spinning and the young girls laugh and shout. The disk tilts as it spins and I do what I can to hold on and the air is edged with laughter that slips toward shrieks, toward screams. There is faster spinning and faster and no laughter now, the tilting and spinning and sha
king, and a girl across the disk is the first to fail, let go, tumble to the center of the disk and there one might stand if one were young and agile and strong but she is only young, strives to her feet and falls and rolls back into her friends, hits their legs and they fall as well, are swept to the center and the disk spins still harder, the twisting and spinning and tilting now violent and I think of nothing but holding to the rail, willing it not to break. The screams spin and twist and tilt and there is only the need to hold, to hold, and at last the disk begins to slow.

  For a time we must sit on a bench, Karina and I. It is difficult to believe that the railing held in spite of me. When we can stand and walk we buy more candied apples, and then cannot eat them, want to but cannot.

  Another circle. No faces I need to check twice. Little or no difference in smell between this fair and that of Lake County. A third circle, and there are no other rides I trust so instead at Karina’s urging we try the games: three of skill, two of chance.

  I work through twenty soles attempting to win a stuffed animal of any type or size. At last she takes the squirt gun from my hand. She wins the next horse race, chooses a Tasmanian Devil and looks at me, hoping. I lift it happily. I say that it is time.

  She nods, looks down and perhaps I am losing her. I put my arm around her heavily. She accepts it and perhaps I am not losing her. Outside the fair again we stand and look together, the taxis, the license plates, there are hundreds, they come and go and we watch, each one, carefully.

  42.

  BLACK.

  A slithering of armor down a hill.