Cry Father

by Benjamin Whitmer

“Tell me.”

  “People die. All the fucking time, people die. They get blown up, they get set on fire. Shit happens. I’ve had that goddamn television for about two weeks now and I can’t turn it on without seeing some poor son of a bitch getting blown out of his socks.”

  “It’s all reruns,” Patterson agrees.

  “So how the hell do you pick one set of motherfuckers and decide that’s the one you’re gonna spend the rest of your life obsessing about? Waco, 9/11, all of that shit, it’s ancient history. Find some new shit.”

  “I think they’d say it’s different when it’s your own people doing it to you,” Patterson answers. “That’s what they’d say.”

  “My people, shit. I don’t even know what a Branch Davidian is. They’re about just as much my people as the people in the World Trade Center. You know how many Manhattan bankers I’ve met in my life?” Junior sticks one finger up under his eye patch and rubs. His finger comes out wet. His hand is trembling.

  “How’s about I drive for a little while?” Patterson asks, wondering exactly how long it has been since he’s slept.

  “None,” Junior continues, ignoring him. “Not fucking one. I got more in common with an Afghani goatherder than I have with a Manhattan banker. I guarantee you that. They just like finding shit to get upset about so’s they don’t have to worry about their own fucking lives.”

  “I’m not disagreeing with you.”

  “I know you aren’t. That’s why you’re up on the mesa drinking yourself stupid. You know just as well as I do that it’s all bullshit.”

  37

  immigrants

  It’s a storefront bar in El Paso, standing a couple of blocks in the wrong direction from downtown, the name, Green Gables, painted in faded letters beside the barred door. When Patterson and Junior pull up it’s opening for breakfast, and a line of old men who’d been sitting along the whitewashed brick wall are filing inside for $2.99 eggs and pork chops. They move in a busted, rubbery shuffle, like they’ve had most of their bones broken and reset with contact cement. Patterson follows them in and Junior leaves to take care of his business.

  It feels good to be somewhere new. Patterson’s never made it to El Paso before, and nothing will empty your mind like being somewhere you haven’t been. He reads the local newspaper at a table by the door, the June sun rising through the screen door. A dog that looks to be half pit bull comes over from the bar and curls up on the floor beside him. Patterson scratches his neck and misses Sancho while the old men finish their breakfasts and start to drinking beer.

  After an hour or so, Patterson folds the paper closed and takes a walk, looking for the Acme Saloon where John Wesley Hardin let himself get killed. That’s the only thing he knows about El Paso. Turns out it’s a dollar store now, but there’s a plaque: Hardin was shot in the back of the head by El Paso constable John Selman. Patterson keeps walking. It’s boarded-up burger joints and homeless men who’ve been shrunk down to nothing by drinking in the dust and hot sun. At least until he lucks on Dave’s Pawn Shop, where he sees Pancho Villa’s trigger finger, a baby vampire’s heart, a mummified dog, and a collection of Nazi mother’s crosses. He buys an old copy of Omoo and returns to the bar to read it.

  Lunch comes and goes. There’s a dark-skinned woman trying to feed an armless boy, but now and then she forgets what she’s doing and gets lost in her tequila glass. So he sits there with his mouth open for so long that his eyes tear up. Patterson watches them until he feels bad. Then he watches them some more. Then he reads.

  It’s almost three o’clock when Junior returns and sits down at the table. “We’ve got company coming,” he says.

  Patterson closes his book, carefully.

  “Relax,” Junior says. “We’ll just have a beer or two. He ain’t the kind of person I can say no to.”

  It occurs to Patterson that there are good choices, there are bad choices, and then there’s this one, which isn’t even on the map. It’s amazing the flat stupidity to which he’ll resort when trying to avoid a woman.

  “A friend of yours?” he asks.

  “You’ll love him, he’s even crazier’n Henry,” Junior says. “And I ain’t got a choice.”

  Patterson stretches and looks around. “I pictured more of the border.”

  “Trunks open?” Junior says. “Out in the desert somewhere, pulled off Interstate 10 across from the Juárez slums?”

  “Maybe Juárez,” Patterson says. “Juárez would’ve been nice.”

  “Nice, hell. You wouldn’t even see it coming in Juárez. El Paso is one of the safest cities in the United States. Juárez is a goddamned slaughterhouse.”

  “How is El Paso one of the safest cities in the United States and Juárez a slaughterhouse?”

  “El Paso’s an immigrant city,” Junior says. “Immigrant cities are safe.”

  “But the immigrants are from Juárez, right?”

  “Yeah, but Juárez ain’t an immigrant city.”

  Patterson gives up. “So who’s your friend?”

  “You’ll know him when you see him,” Junior says.

  38

  disneyland

  Patterson does know him when he sees him, there’s no doubt about it at all. It’s sometime around dinner and a construction crew has come in off work. They’re pounding pitcher beer and yelling at each other in Spanish when he walks in wearing a Border Patrol polo shirt. Everyone goes suddenly silent as he pulls off his sunglasses and folds them shut, his blond hair swept breezily off his tanned forehead. “Junior,” he says, walking to them.

  “Carmichael.” Junior returns. “This is Patterson.”

  “Patterson,” Carmichael says, and drops into his seat. He’s somewhere in his thirties or forties, but his skin is so clear it’s hard to tell. He looks like he’s spent the better part of his life preserved in Vaseline.

  “You really Border Patrol?” Patterson asks. He knows he probably shouldn’t be asking questions, but he can’t help it.

  “Remember the Alamo!” Carmichael yells. Every head in the bar snaps around. He flashes his badge and they all return to what it is they were doing. “I’m fucking with them. I wouldn’t bust them on a bet.” He sighs happily.

  “Isn’t that your job?” Patterson asks.

  “On the clock.” Carmichael shrugs. “These’re the only things keeping us free, these places.”

  “How do you figure?” Patterson asks.

  “Think about it,” Carmichael says. “You’re out on the street, you’re on somebody’s radar all the time. And you’re always breaking the law. You know why?”

  “Why?”

  “Because there’s too many of ’em to even count. There’s laws about everything. Smoking. Eating. Mattresses. Even crossing the street. You know how many laws apply to you in Mexico when you need to cross the street?”

  “No idea,” Patterson says. “I’ve never been to Mexico.”

  “None, that’s how many. In Mexico, if you need to cross the street, you cross the street. They figure if you’re a fully functioning adult you can probably make it across a street without state intervention. That’s freedom, son. And it ain’t here. Here they’ve got things like jaywalking ordinances. If you can think of anything more insulting to your freedom I’d like to hear it.”

  “I’ve thought about it.”

  “Think you could name all the laws you’re subject to? Right now at this very moment?”

  “No,” Patterson says. “No idea.”

  “Fuck no, you can’t. Nobody can. You couldn’t follow all the laws if you tried. You can take it from me. I can’t even name all of them. If somebody wants to put you away, they don’t have to invent a reason. They can just scan through the law books, find one or two you’re breaking, and there you are, you sorry son of a bitch, you’re in jail. Because they’re always watching you. You can take that from me.”

  “They hate us for our freedom. That’s what I heard.”

  “Horseshit,” Carmichael says. “That’s the thin
g about Mexicans, we hate them for their freedom. That’s what all those peckerwoods down on the border with their rifles and their lawn chairs are protesting. That somebody has the right to just act like they’re free. To go wherever they want, freely. Drives them bugshit. I know, I have to deal with them.”

  “So why is here free?” Patterson asks. “Why this bar? It’s in this country, subject to the same laws as everybody else.”

  “No it ain’t.” Carmichael shakes his head. “Nobody’s watching here. You’re invisible. None of these fuckers even exist. They can come and go and nobody even notices. Nobody wants to notice. This country hums along on the simple fact of them not being noticed.”

  “They’re free because they don’t exist?”

  “Exactly. There’s nobody watching them, and when you’re in one of their shitholes, there’s nobody watching you. With them it’s almost like you’re living in America.”

  “You really do love your job.” Patterson’s a little impressed.

  “Fuck yes. I love every one of these little son of a bitches. Those who think they’re protecting America by keeping these people out, they’re full of shit. There ain’t no America left in the places they’re protecting. Their fucking malls and their fucking crosswalks and their fucking subdivisions. Freedom’s something that’s been designed out of those places.”

  “That’s been my general impression of malls,” Patterson says.

  “That’s because you’re a thinker. I could tell it by looking at you. Malls are prisons. They are. They’re prototypes for the concentration camps. You can believe that. They make it look like they ain’t because they control your mind.”

  Patterson laughs out loud. Now he’s truly impressed.

  “It’s true,” Carmichael says. “And you know the worst part?”

  “Tell it to me.”

  “Here it is,” Carmichael says. “They’re using your own imagination to control it. That way you won’t use it yourself to imagine something better.” He points at Patterson with his beer. “That’s why Disneyland is there, to hide the fact that it’s the rest of America that’s the real Disneyland. Just like prisons are there to hide the fact that it’s the rest of the society that’s the real prison. That’s a quote.”

  “You’re one of the people building the walls,” Patterson says. “It’s you, boss.”

  “True. True.” He nods.

  “I read somewhere that there are more atheists in the Catholic clergy than anywhere else in America,” Patterson continues.

  “Also true,” he says. Then he says to Junior, “I like this one. You can bring him along anytime.”

  “Good,” Junior says. “And at some point I hope one of you two dipshits will let me in on what the fuck you’re talking about.”

  39

  horse. shit.

  It’s exactly the night they deserve. They drink beer until Junior gets bored of beer and starts cutting lines of cocaine on the table. There are women, too. Brown-skinned women. Not really flocking to them, but circling Junior, anyway. Patterson starts to wonder about the virtues of an eye patch for himself. Junior, for his part, seems to be ignoring them. Which Patterson is mostly glad of.

  “Where are you from?” Carmichael asks Patterson.

  “The San Luis Valley,” Patterson answers.

  “See, I know about the San Luis Valley,” Carmichael says. “There are energy vortices in the San Luis Valley.”

  “There are what?” Patterson says. It’s one of the girls distracting him. She’s wearing a blue blouse, sloping down over her like a waterfall.

  “Energy vortices,” Carmichael says. “Why you think there are all those churches? They got Buddhist retreats, Hindu temples, all of it.”

  “That’s being free, too?” Junior says. “Being up on Patterson’s mesa?”

  “You tell me,” Carmichael says. “You’re up there nearly as much as he is.”

  Junior leans forward and snorts a line through a rolled-up five-dollar bill. He straightens, wiping his nose on the back of his hand. “How’d you hear that?” he asks. “About the energy vortices.”

  “It was on a radio show,” Carmichael says. “I used to have to run up to Denver almost as much as you do, at least when I was starting out. And you ain’t the only one to get bored with I-25.”

  “Brother Joe,” Junior says. “Please don’t tell me it was Brother Joe.”

  “You’ve heard it,” Carmichael says.

  Junior shakes his head and descends for another line. Patterson tries not to watch him too hard. It’s nearly impossible. Patterson could use another line himself.

  Then Carmichael says, “I met him.”

  Thoughts of cocaine and brown-skinned girls, they both flee Patterson’s head.

  “You met who.” Junior tosses the rolled-up bill on the bar table. “Who did you meet?”

  “Brother Joe,” Carmichael says. “I met him.”

  “Horse. Shit.”

  “You want to hear the story?”

  “Yes,” Patterson says. He picks the rolled-up bill off the table, snorts a line. “I most definitely want to hear that story.”

  40

  mason jars

  “I was coming back from Denver last fall,” Carmichael begins. “It was a weekend trip, and my wife had taken the kids to her parents. I didn’t have much to get back to El Paso for, and you know how it is once you start driving up there. So I made it to Fort Garland and decided, fuck it, I’ll keep driving. And I did, right through Alamosa, into the Rio Grande National Forest, then up into the San Juan Mountains. I figured I’d find a cabin and rent it for the weekend. It had been a good trip to Denver, but it’d almost gone wrong. I was in need of a little time away.

  “But what I didn’t count on was how dark it gets up there. That’s what got me. There’s no kind of cell phone signal, neither, not once you get in the mountains. So I started to get a little weirded out. Which meant I started making turns. Like there has to be a house up here somewhere, right? Somebody I can ask where I can get a room for the night? Then the side roads were dirt, and I was getting really worried now. I couldn’t see shit. And I looked down and I only had a quarter tank of gas left.

  “That did it. I made it up to the top of this rise, and there was a place to stop, like a pull-off. So I stopped. Fuck it. I can wait until daylight when I can see something, I figured. Try to make my way back then.”

  “I’ve been lost up there,” Patterson says.

  “Not me,” says Junior. “I ain’t been lost once in my whole life.”

  “Right,” says Carmichael. “So anyway, when I came awake the sun was up. So I looked around, kind of like you will when you wake up in a strange place, trying to figure things out. You know how it is.

  “And then I almost shit myself.

  “There was somebody standing outside my car. Just the shadow of a man, standing there haloed in the light through the passenger’s-side window.

  “I sat up, put my hand on my gun, and rolled the window down.

  “ ‘This is where I come to watch the sunrise, too,’ the man said. He was a big one, wearing a Carhartt jacket with a beard down to the bib of his overalls.

  “Well, I hadn’t really noticed the sunrise at the time. Just the goddamn sun. So I suppose I blinked around some.

  “ ‘Life is a great sunrise,’ the man said. ‘I do not see why death should not be an even greater one. Nabokov said that.’ ”

  “What book’s that from?” Patterson asks.

  “You read enough Nabokov to know the difference?” Carmichael asks.

  “I read,” Patterson says.

  “You gotta do something at his age,” Junior says.

  Carmichael chuckles. “I asked him the same thing. And you know what he said? He said, ‘I don’t know. I found it on the internet.’ Then he reached in the front pocket of his overalls, took out a bag of tobacco, and began to roll a cigarette. ‘Are you lost?’

  “ ‘I was trying real hard to be, I guess,’ I said. I
looked up and down the road. None of it looked even remotely familiar. ‘I think I might have made it.’

  “ ‘Where are you coming from?’

  “ ‘I need to get back to the San Luis Valley. If I can get there, I can figure out the rest.’

  “The man shook his head. ‘I stay away from the valley,’ ” he said. “ ‘Too much happens there. Do you know where you are?’

  “ ‘I don’t have the slightest fucking idea.’

  “ ‘You can give me a ride to my house,’ the man said. ‘I can give you directions.’ ”

  “You saw his house?” Junior says. “Brother Joe’s house? Henry’d have an aneurism.”

  “Who’s Henry?”

  “He’s a fucking groupie, that’s what he is,” Junior says. “Don’t worry about it. Keep going.”

  “All right.” Carmichael nods. “I did see it. And I don’t know what I expected. Probably something like a tar-paper shack. Definitely not the log cabin we ended up at. It was beat up, for sure, but it had levels and gables and decks and all kinds of shit. Like one of the McMansions you find down south of Denver, in Castle Rock or Lonetree.

  “But when we got out of the car, Jesus. Just at the edge of the stone walkway from the turnaround up to the house’s front door there was this heap of something covered by a blue tarp. And the smell coming off it, it was like nothing I ever smelled in my life.

  “ ‘It’s coyotes,’ the man said. ‘I cover them up so none of the helicopters that’ll fly over will see them. When they stink bad enough that I can smell them in the house, I burn them.’

  “ ‘I think you’re about there,’ I said.”

  “ ‘We’ll see,’ he said, and he led me up onto the deck, where there were three mangy dogs sleeping by a porch swing and shriveled rattlesnake skins nailed to the posts. Then he opened the door, and I got exactly what he meant. There were all these Mason jars filled up with all this disgusting shit. Shit that looked like baby thumbs and little fetuses suspended in some kind of fluid. And the lids on the jars were all bulging up like they were gonna blow. I felt my whole body heave.