by Sunil Yapa
The necessary numbness, the cold core of watchfulness, and the problem of remaining a person yourself, a person who cares. A person who feels. A person who does not hate.
And then, as it sometimes happens, this man of good faith was given a gift. There was his mistake standing in the crowd. Standing there in black with a white T-shirt rolled to the shoulders and her hair piled atop her head. A black gas mask covered her face, but he knew who it was. The girl from this morning. He saw her singular presence, the singular mistake that started it all. Dear God, thank you. And he thought, I will fix this. Praise the Lord in his infinite goodness, and forgive me if I was wrong. But I will fix this. I see my mistake and there she is and I will wipe this mistake from the books.
I will get this day back on track.
A dignity they did not deserve—that was my mistake.
Look, there she is, he thought, and the anger seemed not the point at all anymore. “Thank you,” he said because the sight of her—his mistake standing there in the crowd—had filled his heart with a simple gladness. With a deep-welled gratitude.
If he couldn’t have his son, at least he could have his city back.
30
Victor was out. John Henry was out. They were both of them out of lockdown and Victor was still standing there rubbing his shoulders and wrists, feeling a surprising mixture of relief and pride, while John Henry stood arguing with King about something Victor didn’t understand. He didn’t mind. People weren’t pissed at him. In fact, just the opposite. They were gathered around him massaging his shoulders and legs. Men and women congratulating him. Looking at him in a way nobody had ever looked at him before. It was surprising how good it felt to be out. How good it felt to suddenly realize he wasn’t out; he was in. He had passed some test he hadn’t even known he was taking.
Standing there just feeling good when his father came stepping through the crowd like a nightmare come to life. A black poncho billowing around him like a shroud.
In his right hand, his father held a small can of pepper spray the size of a tube of toothpaste. His thumb resting on the trigger. He was looking at King and headed straight for her. He had the strangest look on his face, a look of such anger Victor wanted to run, wanted to heed instinct and flat out disappear, but that’s not what he did.
What he did was he lifted his feet to move—to step in front of his father—but his legs, weak from the hours of sitting in lockdown, buckled beneath him. He took one step and collapsed like a puppet suddenly without strings. A body falling toward the storm cloud that was his father.
“Hey,” Victor shouted as he fell. “Hey now! She’s a medic.”
The Chief didn’t even hesitate. Didn’t even look. Just let loose with the spray, and Victor falling, calling out, caught the spray in the face as he tumbled toward the ground. John Henry realizing what was happening in the same moment, in the air then, too. Trying to catch him, and his father, did his father just pepper-spray him? What did Victor expect? It was an automatic reaction of muscle memory and speed. But did he recognize me? I don’t know. I don’t know. He is a cop right now, not your father. But did he know it was me?
Victor’s eyes exploded. His whole face attacked by a wall of heat. He was on his hands and knees, blinded, hands reaching out for something, anything, and there seemed to be a pile of bodies. Everything was arms and clothes and legs. His eyes like hot coals in the cave of his sockets. He wanted to tear them out. He couldn’t see. His hands in front of him, the fucking pain, you are not prepared for it, the fucking suddenness of the heat, the intensity. Everything was pain and fallen bodies. He felt the armored boots of a cop. Pulling himself to his feet, his hands claws grabbing at the plastic of his father’s poncho. Twisting away the pain. Victor tried to call out, tried to let his father know that it was his son. But his throat was a wall of flame, no sound but the animal body crying out its pain.
Everything seemed to be moving slowly. He could hear with an almost supernatural clarity. His father grunted, surprised by this body groping at his feet. Victor could hear him breathing, a sound so familiar it just cracked him at the core, his father snoring in the other room, his father’s grunts lifting a bag of mulch for the garden, and oh god, who knew there was so much pain possible in the world? Victor heard his own hands twisting in the poncho, heard his hands grabbing at the plastic. He heard the scrape of his father’s boots on the pavement. He heard the creaking of his gear. And he wanted to say, Dad, Dad, it’s me, but his throat was closing down. He wanted to say, Dad, I have so much to tell you.
Dad, I’m here. Dad, stop.
Dad, I’m home.
The unbearable briefness of moments. The moment, in some ways, he had returned for, and here he was, mute. His throat was closing. He let go of his father’s poncho to claw helplessly at his own neck. Then, from the air above his head, he heard the thin high whisper of a baton. The baton of an officer who was protecting the Chief. The Chief being pulled away.
Dad, did you know it was me?
The baton collided with Victor’s body at the base of his neck. His head rocked back. Flung into the air, he heard the silence of the pavement waiting for his heavy idiot’s head.
And who was there to greet him in the darkness?
His mother, her feather earrings swinging to and fro and her arms outstretched?
No.
His father, off-duty wearing sweats and reading the paper at the kitchen table?
No. Not him either.
The American girl in Bolivia begging change with her bowl and her dog, the girl he had wanted to kick in the head?
Yes. There she was. The girl to whom Victor had given his last twenty dollars, the girl he had sat down next to on the oil-stained curb and together watched the passing traffic. The girl he had talked with until the lights of the buses were the only lights left sweeping through the darkened station, the girl whose body and dog he had slept between later that night in a dingy hostel with a brothel making the noises a brothel makes in the rooms above them.
His body connected solid with the ground. His head hit the pavement and grew dark as though punctured and leaking light, and Victor curled warm with her body at his back, and him drifting like a leaf on the breeze of the dog’s easy sleeping breath, his arm slung around its neck. A small moment of peace in what had been a long and stupid road. A family of sorts.
Of course, when he woke in the morning, everything was gone. Girl. Dog. His backpack and all its contents. His heart and all that might have once cared because, yes, he had finally learned it for himself. Care too much and the world will kill you cold.
31
King stood and watched as John Henry dragged Victor’s limp body through the intersection, his arms locked firmly around the boy’s chest. She had a sort of daydreamy feeling, this detached feeling you get when you see a car crash happening as you walk down the street. A slowing down of time as if she were somehow smaller than herself, standing just an inch to the left or right of her own body.
“John Henry,” she said.
Was it a story she could tell? How they had traveled for three days from Guadalajara, riding in the back of bouncing pickups with other migrants heading to the border, changing trucks in small towns, the small clustered houses where they took on food and water and gasoline, and she wanted to talk but the men were silent, and the closer they got the more difficult the journey, more difficult than she had ever imagined because the silence and the guilt and the fear, and because always, the growing knowledge of her own willful ignorance—her anger and arrogance. What had made her think this would be easy?
John Henry cradling Victor’s body in the circle of his arms.
John Henry saying, “I know it hurts.”
John Henry saying, “King, I could use your help over here.”
Could she tell him how near the end of the third day, late in the afternoon, Ignacio banged on the cab of the pickup, and they stopped.
“We get down here,” he said.
She loo
ked around in surprise. Barren desert. The sun dipping toward a rag of mountains between sky and earth and nothing but scrub grass and powdered bone dirt in between.
“Here?” she said.
“Here.”
“But this is nowhere.”
Could she tell him how they arrived at the river at nightfall? Ignacio and his son and her, three dark figures with their hands held flat above their eyes as if to shade the sun, three dark silhouettes like paper dolls cut from sky, staring across a river at the United States.
Could she tell him about the river? How it was a cold black rush carrying branches and the odd piece of trash: a Styrofoam cup, a torn bag attached to a branching stick, flotsam spinning circles on the eddying current. An ominous sort of silence to the thing.
Could she tell him how she stripped down to her bra and underwear on the bank as the boy stole shy glances? How she hadn’t showered or bathed in three weeks and her skin felt gritty with worn-in dirt, how her clothes and pack went into the trash bag, how she was thinking of the weight of the gun, thinking of the panic in Guadalajara in which she had bought it, and now that she was here, standing at the river, so close to home, she no longer wanted it—could she tell him she had never wanted it?
John Henry dragging Victor, King following. He deposited him on the curb on the far side of the Sheraton, leaned him against a newspaper box. John Henry lifted his arms over his head and stripped his sweater and pressed it to the back of Victor’s bleeding head and laid him down. The Chief, it seemed, had lost his taste for violence. King didn’t see him anywhere. He had sprayed the kid and then disappeared into the crowd, heading for the glassed lobby of the Sheraton looking like he was going to be sick. But King knew he would be back.
“John Henry, we got to go.”
“Baby, I’m a little busy here.”
She had told him about Vail, hoping arson was kind of sexy. A badge of honor and a proof of your commitment. Except not exactly. And maybe not among everyone. It wasn’t exactly a nonviolent technique, was it? Burning down a ski resort.
What about sighting a gun on a man’s chest and squeezing the trigger with a cold slow breath? What about watching a man flop in the sand and bleed out a mile from the border? Would John Henry think that nonviolent?
Victor curled on the concrete in a fetal position, legs pulled in a fishhook, his chest rising and falling rhythmically. Gasping great lungfuls of air and pawing at his eyes.
King told him to quit it. She didn’t have time for this.
Victor stopped touching his eyes and looked at her mulishly through the swollen slits. He coughed once, twice, whole chest heaving, and then went back to rubbing at his face with the heels of his hands.
She wanted to tell him. Wanted to tell John Henry how she reached into the zippered pocket of her pack there on the dark bank of the river and pulled out the gun and shells.
Wanted to tell him how Ignacio backed away, asked what she was doing, and she replied, “I don’t want this anymore. I want to give it to you.” Wanted very much to tell him how the man waved his hand, dismissing the idea, and said, “This is not a good thing to have or give,” and how much she agreed though she did not say.
Explosions rocked the intersection. Tear gas looping in the street. People running in twos and threes, bandannas pressed tight to their mouths as they ran.
John Henry saying, “Don’t touch your eyes.”
John Henry saying, “I know it hurts.”
John Henry saying, “You’re going to be all right.”
That detached feeling in her body as if she were floating just above herself, just watching.
More than anything she wanted to confess, wanted to tell John Henry every detail she had never told a single soul. How she offered Ignacio the gun by the barrel. But how it was the boy who stepped forward instead and took it from her hand.
“Be careful,” she said. “It’s loaded.”
The way the boy held it flat in his palm, testing the weight of it, then gripped it and lifted it and sighted across the river.
“Blam,” he said.
The harsh warning tone in his father’s voice when he said, “Give that back to her.”
Wanted to tell John Henry the way the boy looked at his father curiously. How the gun remained extended at the end of his arm as he said again, “Blam.”
Wanted to tell him, too, about that daydreamy feeling like she was watching a movie about what she was actually doing in the here and now. It was a confusing, scary feeling—becoming a piece of your personal history even as you lived it. As if she were already at home and here came her face edging across the TV screen, and look, there was John Henry cradling Victor’s head in his lap and she heard his voice saying, “King, help me,” but it sounded like it was coming from the distant end of a long narrow hall.
“I have to go, John Henry.”
“King, please. I can’t do this by myself.”
Oh god, how she wanted to tell him. How the man and the boy waded into the water, then were out ahead of her, already lost in the dark. How the river gurgled coldly around her body, pulled at her bra, ran through her underwear, the coldness of it a shock she felt all the way to her spine, the current fast and hard, the sky as dark as a vault above her, the gun in the bag tied to her wrist and the current tugging, wanting it, it seemed. How she stroked with the other hand and gave good strong kicks with her legs, breathing evenly through her nose as her mother had once taught her, long ago in the murky waters of some backwoods lake.
Long, long ago. When she had been a girl she was no longer.
Could she tell him how her heart was a slow steady throbbing in her chest? How the dark shapes of trees finally appeared and she stumbled the last few feet to shore? How she pulled herself from the water and stood with her hands on her knees, panting and shaking, the garbage bag hanging heavy from her wrist? How surprised she had been by the rush of gratitude, the sudden deep relief she felt to feel American mud between her toes?
Out front of the line, three cops were hacking at the crowd, working as a team and moving into the block. Tear gas drifted acrid over the huddled heads as the cops clubbed and sprayed, as they dragged people, arms bent and cuffed, through the street to the waiting buses.
“John Henry,” she said. “We—”
“I’m not leaving.”
Could she tell him how she did not hear them and longed for their sound, not their talking but the sound of their swimming, the dipping arms, the errant splash as their legs broke the surface, the hissing vacuum of the river around their bodies, sucking them downstream?
How she heard nothing, only her labored breathing and the water sliding quietly along the shore? How she picked her way carefully through the brush, shivering and listening and hoping?
How a sudden blaze of light swept across her face, and she fell flat to the ground, instinctively buried her face in the dirt, seeing the pebbled dust, the rough bark of the pines, the low thorny scrub brush washed in a harsh white light?
How she had crawled on all fours toward the cover of bushes, thorns poking at her hands and elbows, still in her wet underwear?
How she stopped and rose up behind a dense clump of brush, a slick of conflicting emotions turning slowly inside her, the inner reaches of which she did not want to plumb because on top was not just the dumb animal gratitude of returning home, but that familiar foreign fear twisting around her insides like a coil of razor wire, icy to the touch.
Tear gas wafted around their ankles and climbed their legs. John Henry kneeling in the gutter, saying, “You’re going to be all right, kid. You’re going to be all right. Everything is going to be all right.”
She heard the sound of a bank alarm. An electronic wailing that wouldn’t quit. She heard grumblings of motorcycles and looked over her shoulder and saw cops navigating the crowd on black-and-white Harleys.
She was dreaming. She was in a dream. A woman praying a mixed-up Buddhist mantra going, “Jesus Lord Om God Help Us.”
&n
bsp; “Jesus Lord Om God Help Us.”
“Jesus Lord Om God Help Us.”
Could she tell him what she had seen from where she hid?
Ignacio and his son on their knees in the dirt, the older man with his belly and scarred arms, his son looking like the boy he was, shivering in his wet briefs, fifteen feet away or more, and still she could see the water dripping from their hair, the look of terror in their eyes.
A lawn chair sat empty in the clearing, a pickup parked off to the side, illuminating them in the stark glare of its headlights. An old man stood halfway between the truck and where they knelt. He held a shotgun in his gnarled hands. It was leveled at their chests.
Could she tell him how the blood was pounding in her ears? How the shape of the gun was distinct through the plastic of her garbage bag?
How the old man stepped out of the light, opened the door of the truck and leaned in, and she heard the squawk of a CB radio and how for a moment he was just a dark form fumbling in the cab, the shotgun leaning against the door, and the man and the boy motionless, their kneeling bodies throwing long shadows across the dirt to climb distorted into the trees?
John Henry trying to clear Victor’s eyes.
“John Henry, I can’t stay. I can’t do this.”
Could she tell him the way the boy looked at his father in absolute fear? How she saw the question on his face? How Ignacio made a motion with his head, barely perceptible, as if to say, no, wait, and the way the boy turned and his eyes flicked to where she was rustling in the bushes and their gazes met, and she saw the knowledge of the gun so clear in his look, and then the truck door slammed and the old man was walking back into the light?
She watched herself watching herself as John Henry struggled to open Victor’s eyes, struggled to clear them with the Maalox solution from a water bottle, and she thought of John Henry and his alcoholic father. His stories of the factory where they had worked the line together. John Henry and his father, slicing hogs together, stepping through the blood together, wiping their faces with gut-soaked gloves, and talking Work, and talking God, and his father telling him he loved him and he had to get himself out of this factory—this man now supporting the boy’s head and trying to pour the milky solution that was meant to ease the burning.