by J. S. Brent
Arid. Land. Coarse sand, yes, because it’s got gravel in it. Tall weeds, a blue pick up truck. Men speaking in…Spanish. They’re in Spain? No, somewhere in South America. Wires, at the border. Immigrants slipping through the wires. Powder, like sugar, being sucked up by their nostrils.
The drug cartel in Mexico has his mother. He understood now, like puzzles falling into place to form a picture. The picture wasn’t good. He had recently formed a foundation that fought drug addiction and it touched certain people in power who didn’t like it. Drugs were being delivered from Mexico and had gotten past the border to the black market in America. He had hurt some big business badly for they had been able to trace them back to Mexico and shut down some factories through drug raids.
Cortes’s father died of a drug overdose when he was only seven. He had witnessed his father wither in the throes of drugs and slowly fade away until he died with a needle in his hand one bright morning, inside their dinghy, yellowing bathroom. It was a personal calling for him to fight back therefore he had supported this advocacy among all others.
Dyanela fell back into the bed and fainted. Cortes called out her name. Dyanela could hear him as though through a tunnel. Cortes lifted her from the bed and rushed her out of the hotel. A car service was hailed and he brought her to the nearest ER of a hospital. She was revived after an hour of oxygen pumped to reach her brain.
Cortes, she said when she woke up. Immediately Cortes was there beside her and he was weeping because he decided he would never let this woman go.
***
Satellite images narrowed down the search to two possible warehouses in Mexico City. When asked how he came to have the information, he simply told them he hired a private investigator.
Cortes gripped Dyanela’s hand not to disclose which one from the two images that showed up was the one in her vision. Only she would know and in this part of the rescue operation, he wanted no police interference. Police, Interpol, FBI, CIA would only fumble things up because deep inside, Cortes knew he was vulnerable to the perpetrator who seemed to have a very long hand stretching over to the US and could infiltrate any government division with its power.
They took a domestic flight from Dumaguete to Cebu and was immediately on a plane to Washington DC. In the plane, he sighed with relief. He had made certain Dyanela had no choice but to come with him. Call it emotional blackmail, a threat that he would never find his mother without her guiding the police by his side but he was able to gain her trust and assurance. So, Dyanela came along. It was his sense of control, to get whatever he wanted that came back to him. He needed her. He didn’t care where she felt she belonged. He had claimed her and now there was no turning back for her.
Dyanela watched the plains of Cebu become smaller and more pixelated, like grids in a computer. He had been teaching her how to use the computer and was amused at how far she was developing.
Dyanela watched the police manipulate the satellite system to trace the location of Cortes’s mother. Cortes watched her, each awe and expressions of delight like the lights of the screen dancing animated on her face.
Deep inside this woman’s head was a computer for the mind is the most complex computer of all. The wide range of her abilities to divine must come from some intelligent source in her brain that connected the synapses to reveal a spark of recognition. He wanted to know how her mind worked. What does go on in that mind of hers that she could cognitively seek out a missing person with such speed and accuracy no modern device could achieve. What triggers that flash of genius to know for certain what was being sought. The odds of her finding his mother, was of an unimaginable ratio. A woman, with not much knowledge of the world could find out things beyond the reach of her superficial capacity and yet she did, she did.
But when he kissed her, he felt it would be best never to send her in that realm again. She was still reeling from the last one so he decided he would never let her go through that once more. It was painful for him to see her that way because he loved her.
***
On the plane to Washington they were easily lovers blending in like everyone else. There were many Filipinas and Americans together which Cortes assumed to have had such a wondrous time together that they could not bear to part.
A white, male Caucasian who just wouldn’t put down his Texan cowboy hat kissed his Filipina lover on the lips and lingered there. The intimacy of a night lamp on a plane was unendurable for both of them, for any of them for that matter, including him.
Cortes drew Dyanela’s face to him and smiled at her with that all-American smile that Filipina girls found so irresistible. No, she wasn’t immune to his charms, Cortes thought triumphantly as she kept her face towards him. Now, what will she do? He wondered. If I kiss her in public will she shy away and close up like a fully bloomed flower returning into a bud?
Let me try, he decided and kissed her sensually, full on the mouth. She kissed him back. Let me try this one, he thought again and entered a tongue to her mouth in a passionate French Kiss. She met him with her own tongue as well.
Oh, Jesus, he sighed. It was such a long flight and he was so turned on. He could imagine himself beet red down there.
***
While they were still on the plane, suspended from everything else, he wondered if he had stolen a saint. He thought he was being ridiculously Catholic by feeling blasphemous on his end. He had researched about mystics on his laptop realizing he was so uninformed about saints, angels and the Holy Spirit.
He read about St. Therese of Lisieux. He also read about Padre Pio of Pietrelcina who could bilocate by being in two places at the same time.
To Cortes, Dyanela was such a mystery to him and so solemn and fragrant that she reminded him of rose buds her mother laid down at the feet of Mother Mary at Santuario de
Nuestra Senora de Guadalupe in Mexico city. It was a trip he indulged his mother once and only once because he hated looking back. His mother and father’s ancestors were from Mexico. His grandparents immigrated to the US during the Liberation of WW2.
***
After meeting with the police, they were both driven to the airport where his jet had landed. It was a fine craft with the most luxurious interior design and lining. He wanted to impress Dyanela and she was even though she was exhausted. She slept on the bed while he watched her as he downed a fine whisky. Their destination was LA, where he grew up, where he kept his most personal possession, a house secretly built for his own private sick joke, where he could be alone with himself and laugh it all off.
Now he was going there because it was the safest place to leave Dyanela. The house had now become an ironic, organic entity in its own right. It would welcome her and the place would become alive with her presence. Already, he had sent for Sistio to meet her there and be her housekeeper and companion while he went away.
Dyanela stirred and tightened her blue sweater about her. She shivered. Cortes went over to her and sat down beside her.
“You have been drinking.” She stated. “No, Cortes. Do not go to Mexico. Stay with me wherever you are leaving me.”
“What do you see? Am I going to save my mother? Will I die there?”
“I cannot see anything. Don’t go.” She pleaded.
“I have to.” He replied and kept her face into memory. “If I die tomorrow I will make certain that my mother will be alive to come back to protect you.”
“You will save your own mother for me?” Her eyes grew wide and were mad. She tore at her hair in frustration. She began to weep and embraced him.
“But if I do come back, it will be only to introduce you to my mother as my bride-to-be.” he answered reassuringly. “Tonight you are officially my fiancée. My mother will come back with a ring on her finger. I will ask it from her and give it to you.
“I don’t understand. How can you be my fiancée if you are gone?”
“Because I will come back.” He solemnly promised and kissed her forehead. “I will come back.” He echoed again.
<
br /> ***
There was no other way to go beyond the border to Mexico without being conspicuously found out except through the wires. If the military guards at the border catches him, he would have to bribe them with a bag of sugar fine, grade A cocaine. Coca.
Cortes used the night to camouflage his entry to Mexico. He literally slipped through a wire at the edge of the US border. He was given instructions by a private team he formed to create a rescue plan for him to save his mother on his own.
The team found a wire fence that was 80 percent advantageous to him. They drove him to the spot and gave him a pistol.
Beyond the wire, the team left him unceremoniously. Out of the wire, he slung his backpack and walked through the wilderness, drinking water along the way. His aim was to find the nearest road before the sun was up because the heat would be unbearable and he had to travel light. The team had turned on maps and precise computer images over which specific road was nearest the wire he crossed. A man would meet him there.
It was noontime before he reached the road. All around him was dry land with tumbles of weeds and drying shrubs. His water was almost out. Even his water was calculated to sustain him. The terrain became an animated horizontal vision due to the heat wave. He was getting burnt with the sun’s rays passing through the layer of the long sleeved shirt he wore.
In a well calculated synchronized effort, the truck arrived and a man remained seated behind the wheel not looking at him. Cortes entered the front of the pick-up and said: pasar. The man revved up his engine and together they sped their way to Guadalajara in complete, focused silence.
***
The man gave him thermal goggles. There were readings of human activity in the warehouse. Five persons were inside. One was seated on a chair in another room away from the rest. That was his mother.
Cortes waited for night to fall. The brilliance of the stars reminded him of recent memory. He brought Dyalena to his house in Los Angeles. They were driven there in a sealed black limousine.
The house was built with cool green limestone with a profusion of lush birds-of-paradise flowers. There was a large pool surrounded by limestone and was fed by a waterfall. It was a house that was made as a shelter away from the California heat. He liked its overcast of shadow. It reflected him, entirely, someone who worked behind the shadows to achieve what he wanted.
Dyanela entered his home and it was the most momentous point in his life. She made his home special, the way he always suspected it would be despite continually mocking it, throwing things at it, despising it. The house was him, his hidden self, that part of him that was long, agonized and tortured.
They went to the bedroom and he was immediately tearing off her blouse, hungrily tasting her skin, beneath the neck and above her breasts. She gave him her breasts and he sucked them each with the deference of time. She moaned and he looked up at her. He laid her down in the cool white sheets, pulled down her undergarment and entered her with such urgency.
They moved together as though in a timeless dance. Finally they looked at each other and decided to have an orgasm to be one. And then they parted ways.
In the limousine, while being driven to a secret room in the heart of LA to meet his team, he realized he had learned how to say goodbye. She had been sleeping when he left her. Her brown skin was luminous and bright beneath the white sheets, her eyes shut like an original angel he had never seen before in any churches.
Goodbye, mi amor.
***
Night landed. Cortes and the man laid down on the hard ground in silence. So far, they have been doing nothing but monitoring the activity inside. It was time. He gripped his pistol. The man motioned to move with him. In this final act, he decided to diverge from the plan formulated by his team. There are just things, things you know about deep in your gut, he realized.
He gestured to the pick up. Esperame, he told the man who shook his head. Cortes shook his head back. The man sighed and walked away.
He slid down the slope where they had been hiding and broke his pace at a tree. He pulled his pistol and raised it up to the level of his mouth. He kissed the gun and rubbed it with his hand. He knew how to use it. He had known how to use it even as a teenager in the streets of LA trying out all sorts of things: drugs, wine, kissing girls he knew he wouldn’t fuck anyway and best of all, computers. He started out liking porn, got excited about it and began tinkering with the computer itself which belonged to a classmate. From there he found the path to power and dreamed big. He learned how to use a gun from street wars or just reveling in town. He used to hate his mother, his life, school, LA, their house and women.
He waited behind the tree. The warehouse door was just a few paces from where he was. Earlier, some men would come out to piss on the ground, to bring out pizza boxes or to bring sacks of supplies to the blue truck parked beside the warehouse. They measured every activity the men made. Now he was absolutely certain one of them would eventually come out to do something.
The metal door opened and a man emerged with a bottle of beer.
This was going to be easy, he sneered through gritted teeth. The man swigged on his bottle and vomited on the ground. He sped down the remaining slope towards the man. He punched him on the face, swiped the bottle of beer from him and crashed its rim with the tip of his gun. He then twisted the man’s arm and locked him in a tight grip from behind.
In one sweeping motion Cortes slit the man’s throat. He did this in a matter of minutes, with the door still open. No one saw him do it.
Cortes strode inside the warehouse. The men inside stood up. Before they could even think what was going to happen he shot each of the men straight to their chests. It left them gagging and struggling to get their rifles. One of them reached for his rifle but Cortes walked towards him in timely precision, pulled the rifle from him and shot him in the face. He turned about, to face the others and gave each of them a strong, blasting shot in the head that finished them off at pace with his nanosecond time watch.
The door to his mother’s room was locked. He blasted the digital lock with the rifle and entered the room.
Alicia was huddling by a corner, her fading grey hair was so distinct she was almost unrecognizable to Cortes. Mama, he called out and ran to her.
Cortes!
They walked past the bodies of men, past the blood that streamed beyond the bodies and walked deep into the night. He knew there could be more of them to come so he hastened his mother up the slope. She was limping a bit so he carried her in his arms and ran towards the pick-up truck where the man waited.
The pick-up truck was revved up to join other vehicles in the safety of a road. Cortes and Alicia ducked when lights of vehicles came close to them.
For the rest of the night the man drove them away from Guadalajara in Jalisco, towards the check-point at the US border.
When the sun came up over the brown hills, they finally arrived. There, the team had assembled, waiting with the police. A sole entry was opened for them. The man speeded up and drove the pick-up truck straight towards US territory.
Once inside, the man stepped on his brakes and his truck stopped with a resounding hiss.
I love you mama, he kept telling her in between kisses on her forehead. I love you mama. Te quiero mama. Te quiero. You are safe now.
An ambulance was waiting for them and Alicia Ancheta was taken inside and made to lie on a bed. Cortes climbed in with her. The doors of the ambulance were shut leaving him inside with the doctors and nurses. He kissed her hand and brushed her hair away from her face, fondly speaking to her: I’m sorry it took me so long.
Cortes! Cortes! Alicia held his bloodied hands in a tight grip and fell into a deep sleep.
***
Cortes opened his eyes and was blinded by the light. He had almost forgotten what had just happened.
He was lying down on a hospital bed with a monitor clamped on his finger. There were sounds of people in the nurse’s station near his open door. He could also hear t
he monitor’s beeping beside him.
The daylight streamed into his room, warming him with its rays. The light played on the clean, sterile floor. He struggled to pull out the clamp on his finger. Free from the thing, he sat up on the bed and realized he wore a hospital gown. He stood up , walked towards the window and wondered where he was.
Cortes heard her laughter. Dyanela, he intoned deep inside himself.
Then he heard his mother’s laughter and everything came back to him: the rescue, the long, anxious drive away from Guadalajara with his mother in his arms and the entry to US territory.
Cortes walked on his bare feet out the door trying hard not to make the nurses notice what he was doing. His body ached but he longed to see the two beloved women in his life.
In the next room, he found them. Dyanela had made a wreath of flowers and had placed it on her mother’s head. His mother looked at herself in a hand mirror and was laughing as well.
“You look so beautiful, Alicia.” Dyanela said while brushing his mother’s hair.
Alicia laughed again, finding joy again in the presence of this most wondrous gift his son could ever give her at this moment in time. A woman whom she was certain, his son would never let go.
Cortes smiled perceptibly and relished the moment before he entered the new life ahead of him with his family.
The ring of his mother glittered on the table by the bed.