ONCE UPON A WISH
RICHARD POCHE
Copyright © 2015 Richard Poche
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PROLOGUE
The man did not have time to look surprised. His eyes registered the long silencer attached to the gun in Hernan's hand. Before he could react, the force of the gunshot snapped his head back. He landed with his knees splayed underneath him. Blood pooled on the ground. Hernan wondered how it could be so easy. Nickles did not even look at him. Running by as if Hernan did not exist, straight through his hill of leaves.
“Mexicans are invisible around here,” he remembered Nestor telling him. “Use that to your advantage.”
He did.
He and Nestor scouted the area the day before. They saw the man named Nickles jogging through around this time. He matched the photograph they were given. Nestor liked to see the target ahead of time. Hernan could care less, but they had rules—conditions that needed to be met to keep them from getting caught. Hernan understood rules and now the job was done.
A female jogger turned the bend and headed straight for him. Hernan looked up and saw that he had a witness. Pushing buttons on her iPod, she did not see the carnage in front of her until she came upon the dead body. She froze in place. Hernan had the gun pointed at her the moment she came on scene. The bullet ended her doe-eyed look of fear.
Tall and reedy, Nickles ran at a gazelle-like pace that belied his age. Hernan ran the moment through his head a few times, but Nickles’ jogging speed did not match what he visualized. Things always slowed down in Hernan’s head when it came time to pull the trigger.
***
Nestor looked in the rear-view mirror, fingering the raised scar that ran down the left side of his face. He had no time for self-pity, unless he caught his reflection in a mirror or window. He had a large, hook-shaped nose, broken in a street fight, but the bushy eyebrows that met in the center of his forehead made him the butt of jokes growing up. Even his own mother called him “El Feo,” Spanish for the “ugly one.”
The name stuck.
Hernan looked like a little kid in the oversized green jumpsuit.
A rabbit scurried by and hid in a bush, frightened by the sound of his blower.
“Come on, Hernan! The job is done. Get back here.”
He surveyed the houses on the trail. The homes were the closest things to the houses featured on his favorite show, “Housewives of Beverly Hills.” He loved television and reality shows in particular. He could not wait to get home and plop in front of the boob tube. Still learning the language, he learned a lot just by watching TV. Nestor warned him that too much of it would make his brain rot. Still, he noticed that Nestor watched more shows than he did and somehow managed to remain smart.
Hernan shut off the leaf blower and began jogging toward the truck. He jumped into the vehicle and they sped off. Nester looked back at the trail and saw ducks sitting across the bay waters.
Hernan stared out of the window as they crossed the Park Street Bridge and entered East Oakland. He noted that the tranquility he had experienced was broken. A cacophony of noise greeted him as they entered the residential area. Car stereos, blaring horns and sirens blasted his senses.
“You all right?” Nestor asked.
“I want to feed the ducks,” Hernan said after a few moments.
***
They shared an apartment on 35th Avenue in Oakland's “Jingle-town” district. Hernan did not mind. They lived above a woman who sold Colombian food out of her dwelling. When they had extra cash, they would treat themselves to her authentic dishes.
Hernan sat transfixed in front of the window. A plate of rice and beans coagulated on a paper plate in front of him. Nestor shoveled the last of the pupusas into his mouth, watching boxing videos on Youtube. He noticed that Nestor had not touched his food.
“Food is getting cold, amigo,” Nestor said.
“If you want it, take it.”
Hernan stood up and slid the paper tray in front of Nestor.
“I'll save it,” Nestor said, closing the tray.
Hernan turned on the television and flipped the channel to a show called, “Chopped.” The head chef berated a female aspirant. The man humiliated the girl for turning in a sub-par dish.
“You see,” Nestor complained. “I hate that.”
“What?”
“Mira,” he continued. “You see how he's criticizing the girl? That's the attraction of the show. Why it is so popular. Watch, he will go one by one and criticize all of them. The producers know the audience won't sympathize with the contestants. They'll side with the guy doing the abusing. Everyone who watches this show is abused at work. So when they get home, they get a vicarious thrill by living through the guy doing the abuse.”
The camera turned on another contestant. The head chef ripped into the young man, insulting his food and his personality.
“See!” Nestor said. “It is part of the show. He gets a power rush from picking on people who think shit of themselves. And by watching it, so do we.”
Hernan just looked on in silence. The female contestant came back on the screen. Vulnerable and doe-eyed like the woman he killed earlier.
“There was a girl there,” he said.
“I saw.”
“I killed her.”
“You had no choice.”
Hernan shrugged his shoulders.
“Never break the rules, amigo! No matter what. Never break the rules. We talked about this. You did the right thing.”
Hernan got up and walked to the bathroom. He began washing his hands and looked at himself in the mirror. Nestor's eyes followed Hernan to the bathroom and then turned his attention back to the television. The competing chefs were in a face off, completing their dishes.
“Come see this!” Nestor said.
Glass smashed and crashed in the bathroom. Nestor rushed over.
Hernan sat on the toilet, staring at a bloodied right hand. Glass from the cabinet mirror lay shattered on the ground.
“Dude,” Nestor said. “What the fuck are you doing?”
“She looked like my sister,” Hernan whispered.
“What?”
“The girl. She looked like my sister. She had the same eyes. It was like I was murdering her all over again. It was like that word you used…Vicarious. It was a vicarious moment.”
Nestor looked down at Hernan's bleeding hand.
“I have some band aids, amigo.” Nestor rummaged through the medicine cabinet and took out the strips. “You can't go running around hitting mirrors every time something bothers you. Understand?”
“She was nice.”
“Nice! You didn't even know her! How the hell do you know she was nice?”
Hernan did not bother to explain. He could not tell Nestor that there were certain things he could see in a person's face.
“Don't let your emotions get the best of you,” Nestor smashed his fist into his palm. “That is one of the rules and you just broke it. Do you understand?”
Hernan slumped further down the toilet as if he were a scolded puppy.
“You break one of the rules in the field and we'll both fuckin' die. The rules are what keep you safe. The rules are what keep me safe. How many times I have to explain this to you?”
CHAPTER 1
Smuggling people across the border sucked. Nestor hated it. He shielded his eyes from the hot Mexican sun and wiped the sweat from his forehead. The weed fields ahead seemed to go on forever and after four hours everything looked the same, one big patch of dirt and dry grass.
Smuggling had to be the most dangerous occupation in the world. High-paying, yes. Dangerous, hell yes. But respectable? Hell no.
There were four women and four men with him in the middle of what can only be described as nowhere, in the early stages of night. They still had three miles left to the border, but if you started too close, you were playing Russian roulette with three chambers loaded. The ages of our haul varied from the late teens to the mid-fifties.
The youngest, a nineteen-year-old girl named Flora, looked like a girl that Nestor had a crush on in his aborted youth. She had short skinny legs and wore a low cut violet colored blouse. Her green eyes sent his mind wandering. Fantasies of being the kind of man that she went for if only he had enough money.
“What happened?” she pointed at the scar that lined his face.
“Phosphor burn.”
Her face scrunched up and she made an “ewww” sound. Feeling self-conscious and judged, he made a decision to give her the cold shoulder.
Leaving her in the rear of the group, he walked away. He fingered the ridge on his scar. He wished there were magicians who could really make things disappear.
Nestor picked up the pace but the journey began to take its toll on his group. They had reached the forest and Nestor knew it wouldn't be long but the terrain became rougher. No longer on a beaten path, the terrain proved to be filled with rocks and they had to cut across a few steep inclines filled with nothing but dried up trees and weeds.
A man named Marcos hurried his pace and began walking alongside Nestor.
Nestor waited for him to speak for a few minutes but the man said nothing.
Marcos was probably the only man in Mexico that would be judged uglier than Nestor. He had dirt in his wrinkles, a giveaway of his day laborer origins and multiple black heads around his eyes and cheeks.
“How much further?” he asked.
“Almost.” Nestor walked away.
Marcos grabbed him hard and spun him around.
“Almost is not the answer I want to hear,” he said. “We are thirsty. We are tired. And it is hot.”
Nestor didn't like Marcos the moment he laid eyes on him. He saw fifty years of disappointment in the man's face, bloodshot eyes that hadn't so much seen it all but expected the worst.
“We already discussed this,” Nestor said. “This is not a vacation. You knew that when you contacted me. I forewarned you of a long and dangerous journey. You said you didn't care. Now you want to give me shit for things turning out exactly the way I spelled out for you. Idiot! Either you are following me or you're not. No fucking refunds.”
Nestor pushed Marcos aside and trudged forward. The rest of the group stood waiting for him. A middle-age woman named Veronica looked at him with sorrowful eyes.
“Almost there,” he said.
They descended a steep ravine and saw a long stretch of train tracks.
“Won't be long now,” Nestor said with a triumphant tone to his voice. His enthusiasm seem to spread to the rest of the group as some walked ahead of him, following the rail tracks.
He met some good people during his treks but he kept them at arm's length. Invariably, they would tell him their stories of hardship and he empathized with each one. He heard horror stories of border patrol agents killing his people for sport. Stories of them getting trapped in the poorly constructed tunnels and being buried alive. Stories of young women raped and sold into white slavery were a common occurrence.
Yet, they were willing to risk all of this to come to the USA.
Nestor did not want to tell them the truth. If most Americans lived lives of quiet desperation, he thought, what kind of life would a Mexican national have?
“Dios Mio!” Veronica froze in place about ten yards ahead of the group. Nestor ran in front of the rest of the migrants and gasped as he saw the dead bodies. Bodies strewn amongst nothing but small cacti, a few ragged bags and shallow fire-pit, looked strange. The kind of thing you watched on American television. Serial killer kind of shit.
Piled up on top of each other like dead chickens, flies buzzed furiously around the human carnage. Nestor heard about drug traffickers massacring migrant camps, but never actually saw one. Two headless bodies lay near a smoked out campfire.
“Be quiet,” Nestor commanded as he hid behind the nearest bush. Wilfredo, came up next to him, paranoia etched across his face.
“The Zetas?” he whispered.
Nestor shrugged his shoulders. Violent enough to be cartel work, sure, but he heard of a vigilante police group returning the same favors in the area.
He put his fingers to his lips to shush the group. Straining his ears, he heard muted sounds of a man crying. He followed the sound. Nearing the furthest corner of the camp, he saw a man clutching himself and shaking.
Sobbing quietly, the man pounded his thigh with the butt of a .38 caliber handgun. A young woman with her head blown off lay in front of him.
The man bolted up and marched toward two dead bodies lying next to the beheaded ones. He shot one of them multiple times and the corpse spasmed with each bullet. Throwing the gun down, he ran his finger through his hair and rubbed his eyes as if trying to clear his head. He mounted himself on the dead man's stomach and began pummeling his face with his both fists.
Blood geysered onto his face. Out of breath, he stood up and looked at Nestor.
Something in the young man's face made Nestor think he could reach him. He put his hands up and tried to look as non-threatening as possible.
“Amigo,” Nestor said. “What happened?”
The young man looked down at the blood that covered his body. Shaking like a wet dog, he tried to stop himself from crying but couldn't.
Nestor played detective on his own. The guy that received the post-mortem pummeling had a red bandanna around his neck, as did a few other corpses. They were part of a gang that started killing off the group when they produced no money. Or perhaps they were kidnapped and used as a bargaining chip.
“What is your name?” Nestor asked.
“Hernan,” the young man said.
“Nestor.” He thought about extending a handshake but ruled it out. “Your whole family?”
“All I had.” Hernan's eyes were wet and useless.
Nestor got up and kicked what he believed to be the lead Zeta. The limp body convulsed with each hit. He kicked it again, harder. He wanted Hernan to hear the ribs crunch.
“I am not like them.”
Hernan nodded in understanding.
“You're welcome to come with us. Going to California, right?” he asked.
Hernan nodded.
“We're about a day or two away,”
The members of his group circled around the young man. Veronica offered him a bottle of water and Hernan got up without saying a word. Nestor followed him as he walked back over to the dead woman.
The young man stared down at the corpse. His lips trembled with his sorrow.
“We have to go now,” he said. “If we had a shovel, we could give her a proper burial.”
Hernan knelt down and fingered her torn dress. Turning sideways, he rolled her on her back. Bite marks covered her bloodied breasts with deep bruises on her thighs.
Nestor looked around for a blanket to cover her, knowing that he would not find one. He took a poncho off one of the dead bodies and covered the young woman.
“We are going to California,” Nestor continued. “I assume you were too. Whatever happened here, I can see you are good with a gun. We could use an extra hand.”
Gunfire sprayed the camp. Everyone took cover.
One of the bullets pierced Marco’s skull. He fell to the ground, tendrils of smoke rising up from the hole in his head. Nestor grabbed Hernan by the wrist and ran toward the bottom of the hill. Crouching down, he saw each member of his group rolling down the slope.
“There was one more,” Hernan said as they took cover behind a rock. “I was waiting for him to come back.”
“Later.” Nestor tugged Hern
an by the wrist but the young man wrenched himself out of his grip.
“Hey!”
Hernan did not listen. He marched back to the camp like a man drawn by a voodoo spell.
Nestor remained behind the rock. His fellow travelers peered over their own rocks as Hernan took out his own gun.
They cringed as they heard the gunfire. An exchange of a few short bursts followed by two final last shots.
After a long moment, Hernan walked back over to Nestor with his pistol in hand.
“I'm ready to go now,” he said.
CHAPTER 2
The sound of Hernan crying woke Nestor. He lay on his side awhile, hoping the sobbing would go away. Maybe the young man would somehow work things out and would be okay by morning.
Five minutes was enough.
He walked over and put his hand on Hernan's shoulder. The young man reached out and hugged him.
Once Upon A Wish : Book One Page 1