by Sam Hawken
The jailor came close to the bars. He took out his can of mace and motioned to the rear wall of the cell. “Move it,” he said in English. Sevilla was unreadable.
Kelly backed away and the jailor opened his cell. He turned around when he was told to turn around and put his hands behind his back as he was instructed. The jailor cuffed him and led Kelly out to where Sevilla waited. Kelly looked into Sevilla’s eyes and saw nothing.
“Two,” Sevilla told the jailor. He walked behind so that Kelly couldn’t see him.
Out in the passageway Kelly finally saw the far end and the gleam of sunlight from a window out of sight. The jailor marched him forward and prisoners watched him pass by. Every cell was crowded with three and sometimes four men. Where there was no bunk space, prisoners had bedrolls on the meager open floor.
“Hey! Hey, gringo, go fuck yourself,” someone called out, and men laughed.
A heavy steel door ahead was painted green, but rust showed in deep gouges across its surface. The jailor made Kelly rest his forehead against the door while they waited for a guard on the far side to open the locks.
The cinder blocks and the whitewash didn’t change when the cells were gone. Instead of barred doors, steel portals with judas holes stood sentinel. They were stenciled with numbers. Kelly saw four of these before they reached the one marked 2.
Kelly held his breath when the jailor opened this door, but on the other side was a space akin to his cell. The bunks and the toilet and sink were missing, replaced by an ugly wooden table bolted to the floor and two chairs secured the same way across from each other. A short metal rail adorned the table on each end. The jailor cuffed Kelly’s left wrist to one.
“Sit,” Sevilla told Kelly. Kelly sat.
Overhead lights banished every shadow from the room. It was a square and ugly space, every pit and scrape on the walls and the table under a surgeon’s lamp. Kelly saw lines on Sevilla’s face that he had never seen before. When Kelly looked at his hands, he hardly recognized them.
“Gracias,” Sevilla told the jailor. He let the man close the door and lock it. They were alone together, except for a video camera mounted high in one corner, a gray metal shoebox with a black eye.
Sevilla followed Kelly’s gaze upward. He nodded slightly and then sat down on the other side of the table. A wrinkled manila folder went between them. Sevilla folded his hands over it. He said nothing.
“Who’s watching us?” Kelly asked at last.
“Does it matter?”
“I guess not.”
“You had your chance to talk to me alone, Kelly,” Sevilla said. “You never took it. Now whenever we speak, someone else will listen in.”
“Local police?”
“It’s complicated,” Sevilla said. “The locals made the arrest, but the state police will lead the investigation. There is a task force for these things.”
“A task force?”
“Yes. And a special prosecutor. This is very serious, Kelly. You don’t seem to understand how serious it is.”
“I do understand.”
“If you say so.”
“You’re in this task force?”
Sevilla shook his head. “No. I deal with drugs. I am here as a courtesy only. Because I asked to be.”
Kelly found it impossible to sit comfortably with one wrist chained to the table. He found himself leaning on his trapped arm, but the angle was wrong and it made his shoulder hurt. Straightening up was no better. “Why would you ask that?”
“I have my reasons. And I want you to know I asked to be there at the arrest, as well,” Sevilla said. “I wanted to make sure you were taken in without any problems. Accidents happen.”
“I think they did,” Kelly replied. He touched his face. When he touched his teeth with his tongue, they were definitely loose.
“No. You’re still alive.”
“Why would they kill me?”
Sevilla opened the folder and held it up. Kelly saw the photo inside and retched. He snapped his head to the side before a rush of sour vomit surged into his mouth. Kelly spat and shut his eyes tightly, but the image flashed on him again and he was sick a second time.
“Take it away!”
“This isn’t the only one, Kelly.”
“I don’t want to see that!” A patch on Kelly’s arm was warm and wet. His belly churned wildly. He gripped the table-rail with his left hand and his leg with the other. His eyes stayed shut. “Put it away.”
Kelly didn’t look again until he heard the folder whisper closed. Sevilla folded his hands over it again and Kelly shivered. Once more Sevilla’s expression was dark and unreadable, his eyes lidded. He hardly seemed to breathe.
“Less than three hundred meters from your apartment,” Sevilla said. “Just a little dirt on her grave.”
The little room moved. Kelly held on. His nose burned with the stink of vomit. “Oh, fuck,” he said.
“Partially burned,” Sevilla continued. “Raped. Las dos vias. Her piercings were yanked out: the tongue, the nipples, the—”
“Why the fuck are you telling me this?”
“Because you did it, Kelly. You did these things to Paloma. Don’t you remember?” Sevilla pushed the folder across the table. Kelly recoiled from it. “Look at the pictures if you don’t remember. For everything you did to her, Kelly, there are a dozen men in this building who would kill you like that.”
Sevilla snapped his fingers. Kelly flinched. He wanted his mind to be blank, but it was not blank; something fire-blackened and mutilated and chewed by animals rushed in and filled the space between thoughts until the thoughts were crowded out completely.
Kelly did not even notice when Sevilla stopped talking, or how long there was silence. The manila folder lingered on Kelly’s side of the table, one corner dangling. Kelly didn’t want to touch it. At last he did, and shoved it back at Sevilla. “I didn’t do that.”
“Did you rape her first? Or was it Estéban?”
“Shut up.”
“I don’t know how a brother could rape his own sister, but it’s happened, Kelly. This wouldn’t be the first time. Were you high? Help me understand, Kelly. Was Estéban high, too?”
“Shut your mouth, just shut your fuckin’ mouth!”
“Is that why you decided to go back to the needle, Kelly? You just couldn’t take it anymore? Tell me: was it easier to do those things to her after you tore her tongue apart, Kelly? She could still scream, but at least she couldn’t talk right. She couldn’t say your name when she begged for mercy. When you set her on fire, she was still alive.”
“I’m gonna fuckin’ kill you if you say another goddamned word,” Kelly said. He didn’t look at Sevilla when he said it; he couldn’t raise his eyes from the table, from the folder, to the man on the other side.
They were quiet a while then. Kelly shivered though it wasn’t cold, his bare feet flat on the concrete floor. The heat was leached from him. He could have shed more tears, but this time they didn’t come no matter how much Kelly wished. Tears would cloud his vision and then, even if Sevilla opened the folder again, Kelly would see nothing.
“I would never hurt her,” Kelly said finally.
“You’ll have to forgive me, Kelly, but that’s something they all say.”
“It’s true.”
“That’s something they all say, too.” Sevilla stood up from the table and took the folder with him. He went to the door. “And they say something else.”
“What?”
“They say please, Kelly. In the end they all say please.”
“Don’t leave me here.”
“Buena suerte.”
TEN
THEY KNOCKED KELLY’S LOOSE TEETH out and he choked on his own blood. With one holding him over the table, another punched Kelly in the kidneys until his back was a mass of unbroken pain.
His head went into a sack and the sack into water. A metal basin the size of a baby bathtub was as deep as the ocean. In the end, Kelly heard nothing but his heart
beating in his ears, slowly and more slowly.
Men stripped off Kelly’s shirt and whipped him with electric wire. Alcohol on bare meat was white-hot agony.
A fat battery and copper-toothed clamps set his flesh ablaze.
Strangled with a wire.
Burned with a lighter.
Kicked in the corner.
Why did you do it?
Where did you do it?
When did you do it?
Begin again.
ELEVEN
KELLY HEARD THEM ARGUING IN THE next room: Dennis yelled at the men from the athletic commission and they yelled back at him. The dressing-room shower smelled like chlorine and half-dead mildew and perspiration. Kelly had the hot water on, but he slumped into one corner and the spray went into another so that all he got was a drizzling spatter and lungs full of steam. He was only half undressed, but his head wasn’t there and he couldn’t finish the job Dennis started.
Dennis yelled about piss-tests, but the men from the athletic commission didn’t need a piss test to know Kelly was unfit to fight. He was flying on a dose of heroin that should have worn off a long time ago. Or maybe he injected too late in the day. Or maybe he shouldn’t have injected at all. Or… he lost the thought.
Once Kelly wouldn’t have played with anything stronger than tequila for thirty days ahead of a fight, then three weeks, then two. After that, if he could play games with the piss-tests — buying clean stuff or pulling a warm-piss switcheroo — he did. Just make it to the ring clearheaded, even when that meant making it to the ring less often. Kelly had enough money that he didn’t have to fight all the time, anyway.
Doors slammed and there was more yelling. Kelly plucked at his T-shirt, cemented to his skin with water. This wasn’t the best high he ever had. He was confused and too many sensations were coming at him at once: the tile, the water and the noise. His favorite part about the high was lying still and listening to his blood rush, driven by a heartbeat that was so steady and so slow. But here he couldn’t have that.
“I don’t give a fuck,” Kelly tried to say, but his tongue never worked right when he had a heavy dose in his system. He slumped over some more, felt his cheek touch the wall and rested a while.
Eventually there was quiet. Kelly may have dozed. When he opened his eyes again, shadows moved outside the shower. His hands were awkward, but he found a way to push himself and he climbed the tile wall until his feet were flat beneath him. He left the shower on behind him.
Dennis had his back to him. He packed away his things: the tape, the enswell, the swabs and little vials of 1:1000 adrenaline mixture. Before a fight Dennis always laid out his kit to check each thing. Being a cutman was serious, as serious as fighting and maybe more. Dennis’ shoulders tensed when Kelly stumbled over his hi-top boxing shoes and collided with a padded bench.
“Denny,” Kelly said. This he could say. His shin hurt now. He sat on the bench. “Hey, man. Denny, man.”
“I got nothin’ to say to you, Kelly. We’re quit.”
“Listen…” Kelly began, but the words were slippery. How much did he shoot? When did he shoot it? The details weren’t only foggy; they were gone completely. Kelly blinked and worked his mouth as if to tease his voice out. “Listen, Denny.”
Dennis turned on him. The old man’s round face was red from shouting, his eyes from crying. His cheeks were blotched up. “Don’t talk to me, Kelly! I can’t stand fuckin’ listening to you when you’re high. Not a word. Not one more goddamned word. I said we’re quit, so we’re quit.”
Kelly leaned back without knowing whether there was anything behind him to catch his fall. The wall pressed him from behind. He breathed deeply. Outside the shower the air was cooler and it stirred him a little. Cool air like that could put him to sleep. His eyelids drooped. “It was an accident.”
“I could fuckin’ kill you,” Dennis said. He put his back to Kelly again. “How dumb do you think I am, Kelly? How dumb? Stub my toe, that’s an accident. What you are… it breaks my heart.”
Dennis teleported across the room, or maybe Kelly blanked for a second. All of Dennis’ things were packed away and the bag gone — no, it was by the door — and Dennis was suddenly there above Kelly, blocking out the light. A corona burst around Dennis’ head. Kelly’s brain shuddered. He was coming down finally, really coming down.
“Denny,” Kelly said.
“It ain’t the money,” Dennis said. His hand zoomed in and out of Kelly’s vision, abruptly larger, then smaller, then gone and then back again. Kelly’s eyes drifted unfocused. He was acutely aware of Dennis’ skin, but the old man’s eyes were impossible to see. “It’s the waste, Kelly. Do you even know what’s wastin’? Time. You’re wastin’ my time, Kelly. Hell, you’re wastin’ your time. You ain’t gonna live forever.”
“I don’t want to live forever,” Kelly said.
“That’s good, because you won’t.”
Dennis was gone. Kelly stared at the light overhead. Dennis was back. Kelly felt paper pressed into his hand.
“What is this?”
“That was your life, Kelly.”
A door closed. Kelly tried to read the notice from the athletic commission, but the chinaloa shut all that out; he saw shapes and colors and sometimes he saw the air moving, but words were a jumble.
“Denny? Denny, come back.”
Kelly’s fighting trunks were still laid out for him. His robe was beside them. All of Dennis’ things were gone. When did he take them? Dennis was just there, right? Kelly heard him talking. The shower was on. Dennis must be in the shower. Why was he taking a shower?
“Denny, I don’t know… help.”
He made it from the bench to the shower. The water was on, but Dennis wasn’t there. Kelly turned back toward the room too quickly and his knees went wobbly. He sat down hard with his legs sprawled.
“Denny? Denny, I need you.”
He didn’t want to, but he cried. Getting up was too hard and his brain wasn’t thinking right. He felt everything too much because the high was wearing off all the clean gears and sticking. Dennis gave him something… there it was on the floor: a yellow sheet of paper, a form marked with pen scribbles. Confused, confused.
“Denny, I’m sorry.”
Beer helped. Kelly bought a case of Red Dog and drank one after the other in the parking lot behind the wheel of his old gray Buick. Beer killed the headache that always came after a long high, cleared up the fog and took the edge off the world. He spent time drinking, not sleeping. When he saw a cop eyeing him for loitering, he moved on.
Three times Kelly used a pay phone to call Dennis’ number, but the old man wasn’t home or wasn’t answering. Kelly wanted to be angry, but he could muster it only for a little while and then he was sad again. There was no more of the heroin to put feelings out of his mind, and the little Mexican who sold Kelly the stuff dealt only at night.
It was too bright to drive around. Even with sunglasses on, the sun was too much for Kelly. He parked in the shade of a coin-op car wash and watched the traffic go by. He didn’t know the town or the things to do, and anyway tourist hangouts weren’t what he needed; Kelly didn’t want people in his world right now.
The beer was all gone. Kelly dozed with the motor running so he could keep the a/c going. When the fuel light went on, he tooled for a while instead of gassing up. Maybe he was daring the car to die.
He paid cash for a full tank and used the pay phone to call Dennis again. A dozen rings went without an answer. Kelly cursed and pounded the phone with the receiver until the plastic cracked and the handset fell into two pieces. Inside the gas station Kelly bought another six-pack of something cheap. He drank one in front of the pump and cracked a second for the drive.
Eventually he had to go home, he knew, but Kelly kept circling neighborhoods he didn’t know, driving down nameless streets. He was alone here. No one could see him when he was in his car.
The floorboard in front of the passenger seat was littered with empty can
s. Kelly finished another and let it fall. He steered the Buick with his knees while he popped the tab on the next. On his left were a bunch of businesses all jumbled together the way bad Texas zoning let it happen, and on his right were streets with houses and trees and lawns. He saw kids on bikes or playing in sprinklers. Up ahead a railroad crossing cut the road diagonally and the lights were flashing. There was no one up ahead.
“Come on,” Kelly said. He didn’t see the train, but now the safety barriers dropped. He was annoyed. The brake was an imposition. Kelly balanced the beer on top of the steering wheel and goosed the accelerator. “Come on, come on.”
A side street split from the main road and ran parallel to the track. Kelly saw some kids in the grass on the shoulder, idling with their bikes, watching for the train he still didn’t see, seven- or eight-year-olds needing entertainment on a Saturday.
Fifty yards away and the train appeared. Kelly touched the brake and then let off. He angled for the side road. The sign said YIELD. He passed the kids at forty-five miles an hour with the clanging of the train signal filtering through the closed windows, the sound of the Buick’s engine and Kelly’s thoughts.
Impact came just past the turn. A bicycle transformed into a tangle of rubber and metal on impact and tumbled across the hood. A pedal struck the corner of the windshield and cracked the glass.
“Goddammit!”
Kelly heard children shrieking and the train horn blowing. He swerved and the bicycle fell away. He lost his fingertip grip on the beer can and it hit the dashboard spraying foam. The Buick skidded, the wheel alive under Kelly’s hands. Kelly stomped with both feet, got the brake and the gas. The engine revved and the wheels screamed. He came to a stop across two lanes. The Buick stalled.
His crotch was soaked. Kelly smelled piss. He struggled with the door and when he got it open he tumbled onto the blacktop. The kids were in the street. The mangled bicycle was thirty feet away. The train churned past on steel wheels, heedless of it all. Kelly’s eye drifted back to the children, how they gathered around and how the shrieking hadn’t stopped, and how they concealed nothing.