This Love Is Not for Cowards

by Robert Andrew Powell

  One last check of the locker room. Whisky climbs onto a bench to see if anything hides on a top shelf. A stray watercooler is spotted in a far corner. Whisky drags it into the showers, where he overturns it to pour melting ice cubes down a drain. Whisky flips the cooler upright, carries it to the bus and then returns for a truly final inspection. That appears to be it. Everything is accounted for.

  Save one last detail. The Indios’ equipment manager pulls four tape strips off the concrete wall, freeing the Virgin of Guadalupe. He folds her tapestry down to a small square, which he tucks into a travel bag. During the game, the wax in the tall glass melted from white to clear. The glass’s embossed image of the Virgin glows orange and blue and gold, translucent, incandescent. Whisky leans over. Quickly, without ceremony, he blows out the candle.

  Chapter 7

  Fear

  After the game, the Indios sit for a late meal back at the Courtyard by Marriott. I join them, warily, feeling uncomfortable the whole time. Nobody talks. Nobody at all, about anything. Hotel management, experienced in the rhythms of traveling soccer teams, has prepared spaghetti and chicken cordon bleu, two soup options, cottage cheese, raw eggs, raw vegetables, and salad with ranch dressing. It’s already after midnight, but players stow apples and individual-serving boxes of Frosted Flakes in the pockets of their suits in case hunger strikes before down. I sit at a round table with the coaches, Pepe Treviño on my right. I want to express some support, but I sense it’s best not to break the silence. Nobody says a word. I twirl spaghetti onto my fork, spearing a small hot pepper off my plate before putting it all in my mouth. The Indios needed a win, could have earned that win—should have earned that win—and have just plain failed. These boys are doomed. The end is neigh. “If we go down, we’ll be stained as players,” Marco told me before the season started. He sits at a table not far from me, among seven of his teammates. All of them stare at their plates, their brows furrowed as if contemplating stain-removal strategies. After only fifteen minutes I stand up, say my first words, “Buen provecho,” and race back to my room.

  I run six miles the next morning along a strip of Wal-Marts, McDonald’s, Kentucky Fried Chickens, and American car dealerships. Where is this Mexico I’ve heard so much about? When I return to the hotel, the team has started its own training. Pepe Treviño and his staff have elected to squeeze in a workout in the hotel’s modest fitness center. Coco Giménez grinds his old bones into a treadmill sprint. Edwin and goalkeeper Christian navigate a Universal apparatus. A platoon of six Indios crunches out sit-ups, alternating with push-ups and jumping jacks. Marco climbs out of a bent semicircle of a pool not much bigger than an actual kidney. In the back parking lot, near where the team bus idles, everyone else circles lap after lap.

  By breakfast the Indios feel better. The San Luis disaster is behind them, even if only by half a day. The Indios have not yet been eliminated. The next opponent, Atlas, doesn’t look too imposing. And before they play Atlas, the schedule calls for two days of training at a hilltop resort outside Guadalajara. Sunshine, no distractions, no other obligations. Should be a good time. Before the bus drives off, we stock up on sodas and snack foods at an OXXO convenience store, looking much like El Kartel on the road to Monterrey, minus the shoplifting and the alcohol. Gabino, the traveling secretary, offers me a chocolate chip cookie when I take a seat next to him on the bus.

  We roll through 190 miles of sunbaked central Mexico. Farmers’ fields stretch from the interstate to brown mountains off in the distance. Tufts of green grass mix with shocks of wild wheat. The occasional cactus breaks things up, along with ramshackle roadside cantinas and ranchers stepping their potbellies into pickup trucks. I count skinny cows. Gabino fiddles with the antenna on a portable television replaying yesterday’s biggest game, Cruz Azul losing to América at Estadio Azteca. We’re trapped on the bus long enough to screen three and a half feature films: Slumdog Millionaire, The Bank Job, half of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (which is interrupted because nobody likes it), and all of the Will Smith vehicle I Am Legend, an apocalyptic film about a virus that turns the residents of New York City into zombie vampires.

  Jair Garcia sits a few rows behind me on the bus. He last played for Atlas, traded to Juárez when the Indios rose to the Primera. He hasn’t exactly enjoyed the change of cities. I’ve heard him moan about dust from sandstorms blowing into his house; lifting up a glass reveals a clear ring on a table covered with brown grit. Jair is the father of three kids. He’s married to a woman so tall and striking it’s a bit unsettling to stand near her. On the flight down from Ciudad Juárez to Mexico City, I watched Jair slowly flip through the front section of the newspaper El Sol de México. No one else on the team read the front pages. Most passed around only the sports sections of the better papers out of Mexico City. King Alain N’Kong controlled Wayne Rooney on his PlayStation portable. Music pumped through Marco’s noise-canceling headphones. Yet Jair read an article about President Felipe Calderón, who had again visited Juárez to apologize one more time to the mothers of the students massacred at that high school party. Jair lingered on the Calderón article for several minutes before turning to the next story, a roundup of every murder in Juárez from the day before.

  In the movie I Am Legend, Will Smith’s wristwatch beeps just before sundown. It reminds him to get off the streets immediately. Blood-hungry zombies come out at night. When his watch beeps, Smith hurries home, bolting every door and window in his house, and waits out the darkness curled in his bathtub with his dog and a high-powered rifle. Night is when bad things happen in his city.

  “That’s exactly the way it is in Juárez,” Jair tells me after we step off the bus. “You stay off the street at night. You’re home with family.”

  I KNOW TO stay in at night. I’ve learned. Yet I still get caught out sometimes. Running errands with a friend one afternoon takes so long that the sun has set before we’ve checked everything off our list. When we finally finish, I spring for dinner at a taqueria on Oscar Flores Boulevard. The restaurant isn’t crowded, but it isn’t empty, either. A family takes up the table next to us: two young girls in puffy pink coats, a mother and a father, and a small boy more interested in a crumpled ball of paper than in the food cooling in front of him. This isn’t so bad, I tell my friend. There are still families eating out at restaurants, at night.

  “No, Robert,” my friend says. “There was a shooting here less than a year ago.”

  It never ends. Everywhere in Juárez knows violence. My reporter friend at El Diario, looking for a place to eat after finishing a story, couldn’t find a restaurant where there hadn’t been a slaughter. This burrito stand over here? Seven killed in October. That seafood place? Two killed last month. The low-rent steakhouse down the block? Two more killed only a week ago. She ended up driving back to her house, where she cooked her own food in the only place she felt safe.

  I drive home from the restaurant on eight lanes of traffic slicing between endless strips of convenience stores, shopping malls, and other restaurants, many of which are closed. A truck of federales zooms up behind me, blinking headlights. Get out of the way! But there is nowhere I can go; I’m boxed in on both sides. Blink. Honk-honk. Get the fuck out of the way. Shit. Okay. I must swerve to my right, into the maybe fifteen feet of space between a car and a school-bus-like rutera. I go for it, wedging myself in there and downshifting because the car now in front of me isn’t going as fast. I pray the bus won’t crumple my back bumper. The federales pull even with me. One cop aims his assault rifle at my window, at my head. These guys shot a student in the back at a peace rally near the university. In the back. At a peace rally. And they got away with it. The federales have complete immunity. They wear navy blue uniforms and carry weapons and zoom around in fleets of hulking GMC trucks doing whatever they want. They no doubt noticed my Colorado plates. Am I now on their radar? They’ll hunt you like a deer, brother. Have I won their attention because I didn’t get the fuck out of the way at a time when getting
out of the way wasn’t possible? They terrorize, these cops.

  I exit onto Avenida de la Raza, another main street. I stick to the major arteries on purpose. My dim lights catch a flash of human leg. The leg belongs to one of two men darting into traffic. I slam my brakes to save their lives. The driver of a small white car behind me slams on his brakes, too. I brace for an impact, but the white car manages to stop in time. I recall something Marco Vidal told me: that while auto insurance is mandatory in Mexico, if you get in an accident there’s nobody to call. There’s nothing you can do. I start up, I stop. I start up again, I slam on my brakes again. Eventually I arrive at the intersection of López Mateos. I want to turn left, so I flip on my blinker. The turn signal is red, though the go-straight light remains green. I’m stopped, very scared some car behind me might want to go straight. (Street signs and traffic lights are as relevant in Juárez as the No Smoking signs in bars.) Here comes a big SUV. The driver lays on his horn. Oh, no. Please brake. Please don’t hit me. Fuck. Another conflict. I have again drawn attention to myself, though I’m doing nothing wrong. I weigh my options. Before the light even changes, I turn, taking my chances, hoping I can successfully split the cross-traffic, which I do.

  López Mateos is congested tonight. I get into the right lane, preparing to exit onto my side street, which is coming up quick. A car falls in behind me. To avoid pissing him off, I drive too fast over a monstrous pothole. Thunk! There goes my alignment. I barely slow down to turn onto my street, not illuminated tonight with working lights. I drive in the dark to my apartment building, where I lock my car in the lot. I’m sweating. I’m rattled. Some nights I want only to barricade myself behind my security door.

  Other nights, I can’t stay in. I break curfew in Juárez more often than I should. My apartment is stuffy and dark and at times can smell like sewage. There are only so many evenings in a row I can lie alone on my couch watching the Channel 44 news or, to work on my language skills, watching a telenovela in Spanish with Spanish subtitles. I’ll walk around my neighborhood, critically grading the security measures of each house. Is that wall tall enough? Are three lines of barbed wire overkill? Is that fence electrified? I pause at each of the many For Sale signs. Most of the houses for sale remain dark at all times, their occupants not waiting for an offer before moving somewhere else, most likely to El Paso. I listen to ambulances and police sirens wind closer and then fade in intensity as they rush farther away. A yellow haze of air pollution gives the few streetlights that still work a cinematic glow. The air is thin in Juárez, but there’s no shortage of atmosphere.

  Sometimes the military stops me. They patrol the neighborhoods at night, slowly cruising the side streets in their trucks. The soldiers wear body armor and helmets and carry automatic rifles like the federales. But they are not federales. They wear green instead of blue. Their big trucks are painted green, too. They see that I am alone. I am walking at night, which nobody does in Juárez. A flashlight shines in my eyes. All the soldiers in the truck—there’s maybe a dozen of them—aim their guns at my chest. Four of them leap out to confront me. I raise my hands over my head. When instructed, I move my hands onto the hood of the truck. I spread my legs and am frisked. I do whatever is asked. A soldier rifles through my wallet. Another soldier finds my passport and pulls it from my jacket pocket.

  “What the fuck are you doing in Juárez, gringo?” he asks. I live here, I say. This is my home. He doesn’t buy it. It makes no sense, me being here. What am I doing outside at night? I’m just going to a bar to watch a boxing match, I reply. The great Manny Pacquiao is fighting. The match is taking place in Dallas. Marco had planned to watch it in person. He bought tickets for both a flight and the fight. Yet he’s too embarrassed by the Indios’ record to show his face in his hometown. He canceled the trip, opting to watch the match while barricaded in his house. I want to watch it with other boxing fans, which the soldiers can understand. They admire Pacquiao. They wish they could watch the fight, too. I’m handed back my passport. They keep a beam of light trained on me as I walk off, making sure I head in the right direction.

  That would be north on López Mateos, toward the border. I pass a crowded Blockbuster Video. A chain that’s obsolete in the States survives in Juárez because entertaining at home remains the option almost everyone chooses. “This has really brought my family closer together,” a maquiladora owner told me, arguing that there’s an upside to the violence. Indios media assistant Adir Bueno celebrated his birthday by renting a karaoke machine and singing songs in the salon of his father’s big house. I don’t have a house, or a family. Staying home alone gets old. So I continue walking, passing the Poker strip club, a seedy joint where you can order shockingly attractive women out of a catalog they keep behind the bar. Wherever in the world the woman is—Quito, São Paulo, a seaside resort in Uruguay—they’ll ship her up. Poker is where young, jittery men will tip away two thousand dollars in a night, money they’ve just been paid for their first professional kill—something they tried because it seemed easy, because it seemed exciting. They pulled off the job, no problem—it was easy—only to find their sinful wages unbearable, hot in their hands. They can’t touch it, the money. They can’t shake the backseat screams from the victim as they drove him out to the desert. They can’t believe the line they’ve just crossed.

  I continue past the Rio Grande Mall and the offices of El Diario and an incongruously bright Chevrolet dealership. I pass a couple of heavily fortified hotels. About a mile from my apartment, just beyond the General Hospital where they bring shooting victims the other hospitals refuse, I enter the Pronaf District. It’s a once-hopping nightclub zone. Marco used to party here when he was single, before the owner of his favorite club was shot in the head. Only a few bars remain, but it’s amazing how crowded they are. It’s strictly locals, hundreds of young Juarenses who, like me, have to get out of the house, absolutely need to be around other people. Marco, with a wife and a name to protect, parties only at home nowadays. If he’s not watching a fight, he’s usually playing poker with Maleno Frías, Edwin, Jair, and other friends on the team.

  I choose randomly between two pool halls: Pockets, which is larger and looks crowded, and Club Oxido, which seems newer. I choose Oxido, for no real reason. I watch the fight. I drink a few beers, too, walking home afterwards without incident. It’s not so bad in Juárez, I conclude. I’m glad I went out. In the morning I flip on the news to see technicians lugging heavy black plastic bags. The bags look like garbage, but inside them there are the bodies of four people murdered while watching the fight—at Pockets.

  I should stay in. I keep going out. I hit the Liverpool Bar on Friday nights with El Kartel, drinking with Ken-tokey and Mike late into the night, usually ending up back in the Pronaf District for cigarettes, cerveza, and ska—ska?!—at Fred’s Bar, home of a disco dance floor straight out of John Travolta’s youth. When Ken-tokey’s girlfriend, Sofia, turns twenty-one, she throws a party at San Martin, a still-popular cantina near the Free Bridge, very close to the statue of Lincoln. The cantina is a landmark of sorts, historically popular with the tourists who no longer visit. It’s my first time in the club, and I’m pleased to see it remains crowded. Mariachis roam a hall grand enough for an Oktoberfest. Good music pumps out of the stereo system. We drink a lot and have a lot of fun, and I again conclude it’s not so bad in Juárez. Two weeks after the party, eight people are shot in the cantina. Three of the victims die. One week after that, the cantina opens again for business.

  I don’t go back. I try not to be bonehead stupid. I never visit this one hopping bar in El Centro called Nuevo Sinaloa. As in the Sinaloa Cartel. I have walked around El Centro at night, though. I sometimes order beers in the bars that lack an obvious cartel association. El Centro’s safe, I once assured a friend. My friend showed me a fresh bruise on his head. He’d been mugged in El Centro just one night earlier. Maybe I don’t get touched because I’m a gringo. Maybe I’m doing a good job keeping my head down, walking the line. Mo
re likely, I’ve just gotten lucky. I know that the best place to be, the safest place, is in my apartment, behind the iron bars protecting my windows and the four locks that fortify my front door. I know this. I’ve learned.

  VILLA PRIMAVERA IS a resort hotel operated by the University of Guadalajara. It sits on a mountain thirty-five minutes outside the city, a world away from urban congestion. Seventy-five acres of rolling forest rise and dip until they fall in with other mountains on the horizon. Patches of spring flowers color wide fields of green grass. Cool, thin air carries notes of pine and dandelion. The view is best from the swimming pool, a cinematic platform ringed by long and thin evergreen trees that remind me of fountain pens. When we first pulled in, I jokingly called this place the Eagle’s Nest. Now, as I start my morning with a glass of fruit juice in the restaurant that overlooks the pool, as I take in the forest and distant farmers’ fields and the mountain view accurately advertised as “tranquil” and “beautiful,” it might be more fair to say I’m in Mexico’s version of Tuscany.

  We’ve got two nights here, and altogether two full days. The hotel operates in partnership with a high-end sports club, located within walking distance down a winding road. The sports club features an Olympic swimming pool complete with a high-dive platform. There are basketball courts and squash courts and tennis courts, including a tennis stadium for championship matches, should Rafael Nadal ever stop by. Inside a clubhouse, rows of free weights gleam alongside their attendant apparatus. Hardwood studios serve dance classes and yoga poses. The Indios are training among the six regulation soccer fields carved like terraces into the mountain slope. The fields are green and manicured and are not located anywhere near a working cement plant. They do not smell or taste like the battery acid the Indios are used to. I think we’ve landed in soccer heaven.