Tierra y Libertad.
Revolution reinvented,
but consistently the same:
the hard labor of people at the bottom
with nothing,
nothing,
to lose.
It was only political poetry, but he couldn’t help it. It was always there carousing around in his brain. Such a nuisance. Arcangel made several trips with the wheelbarrow hauling bricks. Then he stopped to mix another slop of mortar. Rodriguez worked with a trowel quietly and carefully at one end of the long perfect wall. Arcangel wondered if it wasn’t a wall that could conceivably continue east and west forever. Labor for a lifetime.
CHAPTER 24:
DuskTo the Border
Rafaela felt Sol in her arms. She encircled him with every part of her body that could possibly touch his and rocked him there between the rows of corn. Sol squirmed; after all, it was hot, and he was slippery with sweat.
“Whatever is the matter?” Doña Maria looked on with her bundle of corn.
“I just missed him.”
“It’s been less than five minutes.”
“No. It’s been an eternity. I can’t explain it. I really can’t.” Rafaela looked back on the house and clutched the bag with the baby cooler. Terror rose in her throat again. “We really need to get back.” She needed an excuse and blurted out, “Rodriguez will be around soon.”
“Isn’t it rather late for him? Time for supper soon. Don’t forget your corn.”
“There’s only the two of us.” She grabbed three husks almost impolitely, clutching them and Sol to her breast, shouldering her bag and hurrying away.
Doña Maria trotted after them, panting, “What about your telephone call?”
“It can wait,” she waved the old woman back and then stopped anxiously. “Will you be all right?”
“Yes, of course.” Doña Maria was confused, but she said, “Bring Sol back for a little television.”
Rafaela did not know what to say. She had come home to México to be by herself, to be somewhere familiar. Everything was as she had always known it to be and yet nothing was. Had she never noticed? This elasticity of the land and of time. This sensation of timelessness, of yawning distances, of haunting fear, of danger. Perhaps it was just here, just as Rodriguez had noted, just at Gabriel’s place. And ever since the orange—that orange—had disappeared. Perhaps if she could get back to her parents in Culiacán. Perhaps if she had been able to call Bobby. And why had she taken this thing from Doña Maria’s refrigerator? There was no turning back now. Finally, she understood what Bobby always felt: this fear of losing what you love, of not feeling trust, this fear of being someplace unsafe but pretending for the sake of others that everything was okay.
Rafaela ran with Sol across the highway and into the house. With panic but firm resolve, she dumped Gabriel’s water faucets from their box and stuffed the cooler into the newspaper and foam popcorn, repackaging the whole thing. She could feel the weight of the ice and chilled liquid within, but she didn’t dare look. Adjusting Sol in the strong cradle of her right arm and the canvas bag with its boxed contents in her left, Rafaela wiped her brow on the sleeve of her cotton blouse and crossed the highway heading south toward the hotel.
At the corner of Gabriel’s property where Rodriguez had abandoned his masonry, an old man squatted against an old fig tree and slept at the side of the road. He was leaning into a large old suitcase and snoring. The dappled shade wandered over his features, moist with humidity. A snake coiled itself like a cat at his side. It was a peaceful sleep. Rafaela stared at him for a moment and noticed that he seemed strangely tangled in the wisp of a thread. It was indeed the same thread, the same line that she had noticed before running tautly across Gabriel’s property and through the only ripening orange in the grove. Perhaps the line was so thin, so transparent, he did not notice it. He did not seem encumbered by the fact. The strands wound about him gracefully, tenderly, like strands of silk hair. Rafaela peered into the man’s open palms and gasped slightly at the length of his life line. He stirred in his dreaming.
It was getting late. Rafaela hurried on to the hotel to dispatch the box. The bus would be there soon to pick up the afternoon mail.
Sol was still clinging to his corn. He ran back and forth across the tiles in the lobby. Rafaela watched him from the telephone and listened to her own voice on the message machine in L.A. What would she say to Bobby on the machine? What could she say in two minutes or less? Should she tell him where she was? How could she explain her situation? What would he understand? He must be furious with her. And Sol. Sol belonged to Bobby too. Eventually she would have to bring him back. Eventually they would have to talk this out. And there was so much to explain, so many things she needed to tell him. Suddenly she really missed Bobby; he would know what to do. But Rafaela listened to her own voice on the machine in L.A. She hung up and dialed again.
“Gabriel?”
“Rafaela. I’ve been waiting for your call today.”
“I’m sorry. Doña Maria’s phone was occupied. Her son, Hernando—”
“I see.”
“Rodriguez has been working on the wall on the south side of your property. He’s very upset.”
“Why?”
“The wall does not seem straight. At least the last time I saw it.”
Silence.
“But I don’t think you want him to do it over, do you?”
“What will it cost me?”
“Gabriel, maybe your property is not straight. I don’t think it’s Rodriguez’s fault.”
Rafaela heard Gabriel change the subject to hide his exasperation. “Did the faucets arrive?” he queried.
“Yes. How much did you pay for them?” Rafaela wanted to know.
“Enough.”
“They’re made in México, you know.”
“Can’t be.”
“Gabriel, what is the Tropic of Cancer? I mean I know what it is, but what is it?”
“A line. An imaginary line.”
“Gabriel, I’m afraid.”
“Why?”
“Doña Maria’s son Hernando. Do you know him?” Rafaela asked.
“No.”
“He’s an importer/exporter I think. Oranges and something else.”
“Is this important?” Gabriel seemed to ask in his reporter’s tone of voice, then more anxiously, “Is he bothering you?”
“I overheard a conversation. About—”
“What?” Gabriel coaxed.
“Body parts. Kidneys for a two-year-old. Do you think . . .?” Rafaela clutched her throat. Her thoughts were unspeakable.
“What?”
Rafaela heard the screech of the car tires outside before she saw the shadow of the black Jaguar. She spoke quickly, “I’m sending you a package. I was afraid to look. Maybe it’s nothing, but maybe—” She had only seen the man’s eyes. He had only seen hers. But she could not be sure what eyes could betray. “I’ve got to go. Maybe we’d better tell Bobby. Would you?”
“Raf—”
Rafaela ran across the lobby, swooping upon Sol and scuttling with him toward the back exit. She ran through the crumbling brick patio and between the refuse of junk cars hidden behind. Where to go? Her heart raced in panic. Why had she taken the thing? Gabriel’s place would not be safe, but it was the only place she had. Perhaps she should gather their belongings and close up Gabriel’s house. She and Sol could flag down the next bus to Culiacán or even Tijuana. Perhaps.
Her eyes searched the most lush part of the terrain for a hidden route toward Gabriel’s place. Scanning the horizon, she saw Rodriguez’s unfinished wall, the fruit trees, and the orange tree at the edge of Gabriel’s land, even the broken trellis of wild roses and a portion of the house. But it could not all be this close to the hotel. Even without the burden of Sol in her arms, it was at least a twenty-minute walk, and yet Gabriel’s place seemed to be creeping up, step by step toward the hotel.
And then Rafaela saw him: the old
man with the large old suitcase and the transparent strands of silken thread wound about him. The thread glistened in the now waning light as if wet, but the old man seemed oblivious as he stepped with his slow but sure gait. Rafaela ran towards him. “Señor, where are you going?”
“To take the bus. I hear it stops at that hotel.”
“Where will you go?”
“North.”
“Culiacán?”
“Farther.”
“To the border?”
“Yes.”
Rafaela looked back. Indeed the bus with its Tres Estrellas de Oro was trundling up the highway. The black Jaguar remained parked before the hotel. “The bus is here. Such a coincidence. We are going that way too.”
Rafaela followed the old man, up into the bus on the skirts of the tangled threads. The bus was already full except for two seats at the very back next to the toilet. She could see the hotel manager bringing the mail bag. Her box must certainly be in there. As the bus pulled away, she turned to look out the window. A man was running toward the black Jaguar. His eyes were obscured by expensive dark wire glasses which he now removed. Rafaela saw his eyes and hugged Sol close to her in the seat and leaned against the old man.
The old man turned to her and smiled. “The boy likes corn I see.”
“Yes.” The three ears of corn fell into her lap. She still had them despite everything. “Would you like one?” Rafaela handed him an ear as if it were very natural to travel north with raw corn.
The man opened his luggage. “Thank you. It will keep my orange company.”
Rafaela peered into the strange mess of his suitcase, an assortment of colorful costumes, steel cable, hooks, books, and papers. The words on a flyer caught her eye: The Ultimate Wrestling Championship: El Contrato Con América. No holds barred. El Gran Mojado meets the challenger SUPERNAFTA. The suitcase should have been extremely heavy; yet he carried it as if it were filled with air. As he said, the orange was neatly confined in a bed of clothing to one corner. He placed the corn next to it. Rafaela knew the orange as she knew the face of her child. The strands of the line extended from two ends of the orange, reaching out of the suitcase, tangling about Arcangel, and slipping across the bus, through the windows, and across the land. On either side of the bus, the landscape was continually familiar to Rafaela, as if they were moving but not moving. To the left, Gabriel’s land and the unfinished wall stretched and slid along, never leaving the bus to its northern destination, like a child clinging to its mother’s skirt. The Tropic of Cancer, she whispered to herself, tentatively touching the delicate strand protruding innocently from the suitcase. She looked at the old man for an answer, but his eyes turned under their heavy lids toward a sleeping dream.
Eventually, the dusk settled in its graying tones across everything, and behind, the black Jaguar followed but never caught up.
CHAPTER 25:
Time & a HalfLimousine Way
The line was dead. I tried to reconstruct the conversation onto my notepad just as I had heard it. What I said. What Rafaela said. It was a dumb conversation; hardly worth it. Something in her voice made me take it down. Like the reporter I am. There was something there to decipher. It wasn’t because throughout the hassle of the day, hers was the only call I really hoped to get, craving her voice—that touch from the south. I knew the thing in her voice wasn’t her affection for me. But in the end she said maybe we should tell Bobby. We tell Bobby what? Well, I could fantasize, but as Emi would say, it was all crap. No. Something in my guts told me Rafaela was in trouble.
At the same time I wanted this excuse to rush down south, I had to admit my resentment at the timing. Big stories were breaking all around town. My homeless series was practically spread all over the front page, not to mention the freeway canyon. And my homeless conductor was conducting. The news never stopped; it just kept coming twenty-four hours a day. It seemed that for every hour I worked on it, there was another half-hour hidden away that I had to catch up to. Time and a half. If I could punch a clock, I could make some real money. In this case, I was under time compression. The news stretched; time compressed. Meanwhile, I followed Buzzworm like a beagle, sniffing into every campfire, car, hovel or the remains of, every stewing pot in every soup line, every ring of shopping carts, every newspaper bedding.
“Les Miz à la L.A.,” Emi called it. “Like they spilled out the Shubert. If only they could pack ’em back in.”
“These are real people,” I reminded her pompously.
“Real people paid sixty a pop to see unreal people.” She pointed at the TV. “If you don’t mind the commercials, you get to see real people here for free.”
“It’s obscene.”
“Which? Paying or not paying?”
“Both.”
“You’re such a purist. You think people should only get the news by reading it.”
“You think news is entertainment.”
“It isn’t?” Emi smiled her smile. “Gabe, you want it to be like B-complex stress vitamins or eating veggies.”
“The stuff of informed responsible decision making. Citizenship.” It was disgusting. I sounded like MacNeil/Lehrer.
“That’s not news, Gabe.”
She was right. News was the spice of life. The thing that broke up the day. News was change. Gossip. I loved news. I worked for news. I lived news. News was my life. Who was I kidding?
“Hey.” Emi remembered something. “When I said Les Miz, I wasn’t being facetious you know. Seriously.”
“I know.”
“About the singing?”
“Yeah, I was down there. They’re all singing, humming. I mean it’s sporadic, but yeah. Homeless singing, harmonizing. Something.”
But later in the day, Buzzworm was more emphatic: “There’s a goddamn choir down here!” he reported.
“What would you say?” I asked. “Gospel? Revival?”
“If you wanna call Beethoven’s Ninth revival. More like the Mormon Tabernacle I’d say. Weird. I heard even the goddamn Triforium is playing it.”
“What do you make of it?”
“What do I make of it? People living in abandoned luxury cars, creating a community out of a traffic jam. There’s already names to the lanes, like streets! South Fast Lane and North Fast Lane. Limousine Way—that’s the off-ramp at Fifth. There’s dealing down here! There’s a truck could be a Seven Eleven. Got everything—beers, Cokes, even nuke you a burrito. Only thing missing’s the lottery tickets. FIRST A.M.E. feeding people on the right shoulder southbound at Olympic. Hey, get this. Somebody found an espresso maker; I got a latté for fifty cents! Get us a Versateller down here, and we’re cookin’! And this singing. People busting out singing. Just busting out. Some guy over here on top of a Maserati singing like he was Pavarotti. Meanwhile, the fire on the two ends of the freeway is creeping in. Saying that the blast tapped a natural pocket of gas below the freeway. Can you confirm this?”
“I’ll look into it.”
“Goddamn Eternal Flame. Ain’t never gonna blow out. You talk about hot! Smoke covering everything like a big black tent. Is this hell?”
“Are you asking that rhetorically?”
“Balboa you fool! Hell yes!”
“Hey, what about this orange crush?” I interjected. “What’s the scoop on the ground?”
“Word is oranges were supposed to be just a form of transport. Squeeze those babies and reconstitute. Sells with a slight orange zest.”
“How much you figure came through?” I queried.
“Truckload at most. But who’d a thought it could be that toxic? Principle’s imaginative, but acidity enhanced the poison. Sorta like fugu, that poison blowfish sashimi.” I was always amazed by Buzzworm’s savvy. He continued, “Bit of poison gives you a rush, see. Time goes by, and it gets stronger. Packs a bigger punch exponentially, shall we say.”
“Guess they didn’t figure.”
“Not at all.”
“Looks like transportation got crossed,” I added.
/>
“Looks like. Maybe even some DOUBLE-crossing.”
“Who’s involved? Who’s the originator?”
“That’s just it. Looks like it’s C. Juárez and company.”
“Damn. One hundred and one ways to move shit.”
“They’re moving on that meeting. It’s México City or nowhere. Tomorrow soon enough for you?”
“Timing couldn’t be worse,” I groaned.
“Like I said, it’s your call. But what about my man Manzanar?”
“He approved my copy, not that he liked it much.”
“Is that so?”
“Said I wrote it with my head, not my ears.” I was feeling hurt, but Buzzworm wasn’t going to commiserate.
“I know what he means.”
“Whaddya mean you know what he means?”
“You can’t hear his music, can you?”
“What’s that got to do with it?”
“Way I see it is this. Manzanar used to be a doctor. Now, he’s a kind of witch doctor. He sees and hears things nobody else can. What he’s doing up there is a kind of interpretation. You can’t write about what you can’t see nor hear.” Buzzworm waxed philosophical.
“I gotta go up there and conduct?”
“Maybe.”
“Bullshit.”
“Look at it this way. Homeless are like the dead. You the medium. We gonna talk through you, Day of the Dead like.”
I thought about this. “I don’t do magic, Buzz.” Like Emi said, I was strictly noir.
“Don’t feel bad. Neither do I. Besides, don’t need magic for no Pulitzer.”
“Where’re you calling from?”
“Car phone in a gold Mercedes. You just line up and take your turn.” Buzzworm paused. “Now I wanna know if you got your info. So where is the LAPD? Where’s the National Guard? What’s the fix on this? This ain’t a riot yet, but in this town we all know people value their cars above their spouses. Can’t last forever.”
“Seems like they’re concentrating on the fire first. When the fires go out, you’ll all look like Custer’s Last Stand.”
“Don’t think there’s not some thinking down here ’bout this. At the very least, they’re gonna jumpstart these vehicles and make a move.”
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