The toloache’s grip on my mind weakened as I stumbled up the road, the woman in the quiet nursery guiding me.
Look higher.
I ran through dark streets, pounded on doors, heedless of distressed voices on the other sides. Why couldn’t I remember which home belonged to the old man and woman? Go to the Rodriguez home, her voice echoed in my head, the voice of my dreams. Look up.
I looked up, slipping over seaweed, pushing through river rapids. A bright blue door, the door Marieta had opened in my dream.
“Please! Señor Rodriguez, Señora. Open the door.”
The butt of a rifle met my face, and then dropped. The door flew open and the old man pulled me inside.
“Thank goodness! I just returned from the house, but there was only the Lopez boy, passed out on the floor.”
Words tumbled from my mouth, about Marieta and the children she rescued from the cartel, about a cave, and Javier and Camila and Samuel.
Señora Rodriguez clutched her brightly woven shawl to her chest. “The cave! Of course, she would take them to the cave on the south slope, where she and Daniel played. We didn’t look there…”
“They’re going to kill Samuel. He’s at the old market.”
The old couple shared a look. Then he shouldered his rifle and slipped out the door.
“Some of our men will go to the old market, and some to the cave,” said the señora. She studied my pupils with concern. “What have you taken?”
“Toloache. It’s going to paint me, like the leoncillo.”
“Oh my. How much did you swallow?”
“I don’t know, just a bit. I threw the rest at the skeletons.”
She looked heavenward. “Good girl. Unfortunately, it gives you loco dreams, for an hour at least. Come, lie down.”
Even as she said it, I followed Señor Rodriguez and his rifle out the door because I couldn’t let the demon Aztec plant win.
“Where on earth are you going?” The Señora tugged me back into the house, but I was no match for her.
“To the cave. I have to find them.”
She gave up and grabbed her shawl. “Very well, come with me. Gringa estúpida, I can’t let you kill yourself on this mountain.”
Contrary to the woman’s intentions, her words filled me with a sense of comfort, probably because I’d heard them a thousand times. “Señora, you aren’t the first person to tell me that I’ll die on a mountain.”
Chapter 23
Screamer
When a climber takes a whipper, or a long fall, and it’s accompanied by screaming.
Hydraulic Level Five [WORKING TITLE]
Draft 1.123
© Samuel Caulfield Cabral and Aspen Kaye Cabral
SUMMITING THE SIERRA MADRES IN A CAR TRUNK
He was supposed to write mountains for her.
Caulfield twists his tied wrists. His kidnappers are really nothing more than boys, but they know what they are doing. He can’t help the wryness in the smile on his painfully split lips. Aspen was right…he’s going to end up on an episode of Forensic Crimes.
Caulfield has never seen a murder. Suicide? Yes. OD? More than once. Not surprising, considering the sketchy places he’s holed up. So the first murder he’ll witness will be his own. (Would he actually see himself die, or does one’s brain simply shut off moments before impact? Another tally mark, another corpse heaved onto the heap of fodder his brain mucks through at night.)
It’s dark inside the trunk. It’s literally pitch-black, though there’s metaphor to unearth as he bounces along, bent into himself, bound by a plastic zip-tie that cuts his wrists. Sightless. Motionless. Helpless. Wealthy, naïve Chicano American is lured into cartel country, only to become a victim of kidnapping and ransom. How cliché.
And that’s the rub of it. Not that his fingers and toes will be strewn along the 101. Man, he hates the hopelessness that sucks him under, the bipolar that pulls down an already drowning man, a concrete block tethered to his ankles that bars him from kicking to the surface. He conjures Aspen’s face, the girlish curve of her jawline, the softness of her body when he draws her close. Kick for the surface, the light.
God, don’t let it end like this. Surely you have more for me to do than write fairytales.
His wrists are slick with what he thought was sweat, but now they sting so it must be blood. The car hits a pothole and jars his spine against the underside of the trunk.
They slow to a stop.
Muffled voices, laughs, silence. A shout now: “¡¿Que pedo?” Two loud pops.
Caulfield braces, ready to kick and fight and hurl his body against these punk kids because he’s not going to die in such a helpless manner. The trunk squeaks open, then a silhouette. Not the teenagers, but a man, older, slower. Caulfield squints against the blinding beam of a flashlight.
“Turn around, I’ll cut you loose.”
He knows the voice. It’s his sister’s uncle. The man lowers the flashlight beam, and under the nearly full moon, he can see him clearly. Cragged forehead, eyes drooping like a hound, at odds with the colorful splashes of flowers on his shirt, this man looks as resigned as Caulfield felt moments ago. Behind him are the two kids slumped on the ground. One moans incoherently, the other is obviously dead.
The minute his hands are free, he rips the duct tape from his mouth. “Where’s my wife?”
“Your wife is safe in the village, exactly where you left her.” The uncle’s mouth twitches at some unknown thing. He tosses Caulfield’s backpack at his feet and pulls the borrowed gun from his waistband, handle out. “These belong to you.”
Just like that, it’s over.
In retrospect, Caulfield should have said thank you, because, as surely as he still breathes, he’s face to face with a dead man. But all he says is “Why?”
His sister’s uncle lifts a shoulder as if the fact that the cartel will slaughter him for his betrayal is no big deal. “Why? Because you loved Marieta when no one else did.” He studies Caulfield as if he’s never before seen him. “You look like her. Do you think she would have forgiven me?”
Caulfield swallows. He could condemn this man for the evil he’d brought into Marieta’s life. He could tell him ‘of course she would forgive you,’ but truthfully, he doesn’t know, so that’s what he goes with. “I do not know my sister well enough to answer that.”
The uncle laughs. “Yet you and your wife ran into the mouth of a lion to save her. Why?”
“Because she’s my sister.”
“No. Because she’s you. Ah, I see I’ve caught you. No worries, you’ll have long years to ponder this.” He loops his fingers over his belt. “Just wait until you’re a father. Because that is what you are now.”
He narrows his eyes. Is this a trick?
“Do you not know we have a nephew? A little boy, just turned three. He’s yours now, you’ll find out why when he tells you his name.”
Caulfield shakes his head. “I didn’t…I don’t…”
“We saved as many as we could,” the uncle continues, as if he hasn’t just devastatingly knocked the wind from Caulfield’s body. “Now you must save him. That’s what she wanted from you, when she knew Rodriguez was dead and she would be, too.”
“But my sister…”
“Is gone.”
No. No. Oh, Marieta.
He can’t do this here. Hold it together. Find Aspen. Caulfield rests his forehead against the cold metal of the car…
The toy car. A bit of metal painted yellow in the Mexico City slum, a bright thing forgotten in a dark room, and he hadn’t seen it. Not a neighbor’s child as the grocer had assumed, and he’d assumed, and they’d all assumed. Of course. Of course his sister has a child.
A father…an orphaned nephew…. he feels the chill of a long ago Boston morning, a child’s despair built on the balcony of a five-star hotel. For his nephew, it would be humid October nights in the mountains of Tamaulipas.
Not for his nephew. For his son.
Because that
’s what he has to be, now: a father.
Denial and panic and duty battle in his broken brain like dogs pissing for the same backyard. He struggles to chase off the strays. Finally, only one dog stands.
Caulfield’s laugh is mirthless, bitter. Oh, the irony. Months of fighting with Aspen over a baby, to the near detriment of their marriage. Every sound argument he’d put forth about his mental health, his lack of dependability, his inability to parent. In the end it doesn’t matter a whit, because only a single path lay before him.
The uncle gives him his flashlight, pushes an envelope in his hand, and points him north, up the mountain. “Go find your wife and Marieta’s boy and live a long life together. Tell him about his mamá. Tell him how his uncle loved them, but not until it was too late. Say “Hijo, don’t wait until it’s too late”…
Sierra Madres Oriental
November
One month later, the southern sun baked my face. I stretched like a lazy tabby who’d found a sunny spot and half-listened to Tía Mariángel and Sofia. Swathed in bright florals, the matrons lounged on the patio of the Cabral hacienda like two potted dahlias heavy with blooms.
“…they found her purse and identification cards in a plastic bag by a hotel dumpster. Her jacket and shoes were in a ditch south of Nuevo Laredo.”
“But no body? Are you sure she’s…you know?” Tía Mariángel had a habit of dancing around uncomfortable words.
“Yes, quite sure. She wouldn’t abandon her child in a cave. At least, Samuel says she wouldn’t.”
The wind carried the pungent fragrance of neglected mangos that had ripened and rotted on their branches, and smoke. In the hacienda’s garden, Alonso and Tío Tomás dragged overgrowth into a burn pile. Though the Mexican Feds’ presence was felt all over this part of the country as they rounded up cartel remnants, the two men still kept watch like sentries defending their castle, each with a gun tucked beneath layers of sweaty, dusty work clothes. I’d only met Tomás a handful of times, and his shy demeanor had led me to the erroneous conclusion that he was apathetic. But then I learned he stockpiled firearms in his pantry, concealed in empty cereal boxes (I suppose that’s what one did when cartel thugs attended your street festivals). Some people were all bark and no bite, but not Tomás. The man was pointblank tenacious.
As the women chatted, I paged through the browning sheaves of paper which Samuel had dug from the bottom of his grandfather’s desk and manically scribbled upon. He then paced between shelves of dusty old books, where Cabrals before him had fretted over hacienda expenditures and college lectures. He tried to process all that had changed in the past few days, months, even years, but a saturated sponge can only absorb so much before water dribbles back into the bucket. As the first rays crested the hills, he jerked on his tennis shoes and tore out of his family’s hacienda to force his body and mind into submission.
I hope he took the gun. Nostalgia panged for the days of my old friends Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum, the meddlesome (but nonviolent) paparazzi. I longed for our home in Colorado, but all that I’d drawn comfort from had been stripped and splintered and twisted into something unrecognizable. And now, here in Mexico, we’d landed in the vortex of a massive criminal investigation whose fronds reached deep into the Zacatón Cartel.
Long story short, we wouldn’t see the Rockies anytime soon.
“But we really know nothing about her, do we?” continued Mariángel.
“We know Samuel tried to help her. We know he loved her.”
I curled into the chair and caught a moment’s rest, having nothing to add. Marieta was gone...
Señor Rodriguez and I found the children in the cave, just as Camila Flores had instructed. Four of them, ages eight to three, filthy and freezing, huddled together in little more than a giant hole beneath a rocky overhang, concealed by curtains of butterfly vines and brush.
I’d squirmed through the entrance on my stomach (still reeling from the toloache, but the hallucinations had receded). When my flashlight beam bounced over their frightened faces and gleaming black eyes, I cried out in horror and relief.
“It’s okay, you are all right,” I assured them, though I couldn’t possibly know if it was okay, and if they’d be all right. “I am Marieta’s sister.”
Watchful, they inched toward me and Señor Rodriguez, who had wiggled his arthritic joints into the cave behind me. Marieta had smuggled them from the back of a semi at a station not far from here, the oldest child explained, brought them food and water and blankets, and anything else they needed, until she could safely move them out of the Sierra Madre Orientals and into the care of ‘the good people.’ But she hadn’t returned for nearly a week.
They asked many questions: Were their loved ones looking for them? Could I help them go home? Even why my temple bled, but they did not ask what happened to Marieta.
They didn’t need to. If she were still alive, she would be here rather than me.
One of the children—a boy, perhaps three or four—cautiously scooted closer as the children told me their names. His fingertips brushed my shoe, the lightest of touches, as if testing whether my sneaker would burn his skin. He moved into the beam of my flashlight. Señor Rodriguez gasped. Then he lurched toward the boy and embraced him. To my surprise, the boy did not fight but went limp, a possum playing dead.
“You are Daniel’s,” the old man lamented as he rocked the startled boy. “As sure as I know my own face, you could be no other’s. My grandson! I have not seen you since you were a baby.”
I squatted low to meet the boy’s eyes. “What is your name, hijito?”
Deep brown peered at me beneath thick, matted hair. A grimy finger slipped into his mouth. “Samuel,” he mumbled around his finger.
“Of course you are.” My voice cracked. “I would know your face anywhere, Samuel, and I am very, very happy to meet you…”
“And Samuel believes it was she who called him in Colorado? It could have been anybody!” Mariángel’s high-pitched voice pierced my thoughts, pulled me away from the soft glow of an oil lamp and back to the hacienda patio.
“We’ll never know, I suppose. But Samuel and Kaye are safe. The children were found and returned to their families, and that’s the important thing.”
Samuel still held fast to his belief that his sister called him just before she was killed. I thought it was someone involved in the ransom plot, Camila Flores, perhaps, but I wouldn’t try to convince him. He needed the comfort of those last words, distressing as they were.
I arched my back into the dusty wicker chair to ease the knots. Though we’d never tell Mariángel, the guest room mattresses were so thin, it was as if we slept on bedsprings. Samuel called it quits after three nights and dragged a blanket to the floor.
“Join me.”
I wavered, not wanting to insult Tía Mariángel’s hospitality.
“Join me, please.” His words were as soft as a caress. I crawled off the mattress and tucked into his warmth. His lips found the curve of my shoulder. “I’m sorry I misled you, that night in La Vereda. I wanted you out of the way, and I chose convenience over candidness.”
“It was pretty high-handed. But I do have an ugly stubborn streak, so I understand.”
He rested his head against my sternum, listened to my heartbeat. Every warm breath tickled my skin. He sighed. “In the end, I only accomplished a betrayal of your trust.”
“It’s forgiven.” I swept his thick hair from his forehead, kissed his bruised temple. “And I am truly sorry about Marieta. You just wanted to help her.”
In his grief, Samuel’s only reply was to lace his fingers with mine and lose himself in my body. As sweat and tears mingled, I held him and whispered words of love, and life, and forgiveness.
It had taken time to forgive his deception, though I knew why he’d done it. When Samuel had stumbled into the Rodriguez home that night in La Vereda, after Javier freed him, puffy-eyed and bloodied, shirt shredded as if he’d been mauled by one of Alonso’s leonc
illos, I’d let him have it.
“Mother!” (I slapped his arm). “Cliffhucker!” (Another slap.) “Friggin’ hamster balls, Samuel!” The effects of the toloache still lingered, so my words were fuzzy and not-at-all stinging (though I’d earned enough street cred that night to drop an F-bomb or two).
He gently secured my flailing arms and held me. He offered no apologies, but I didn’t expect him to. He searched my limbs, assessed my injuries. He brushed the new gash on my forehead, as if he could erase it with the pad of his thumb. My vision wavered, and I worried he was a ghost of that awful concoction.
“Are you dead?” My voice was laced with wonder (and strong hallucinogens).
A pause. “Are you drunk?”
“No!” I shoved him away. “I’m poisoned.”
After a closer study of my muddled state, he looked to Señora Rodriguez.
“The curandero gave her toloache.”
“Good God!” And that was all he said, though he embraced me a little tighter.
It wasn’t until later, when the toloache ran its course and both Mexican and U.S. Feds combed every inch of La Vereda, did we share our stories. Samuel reread the letter Javier had shoved into his hand. He passed it to me.
“Look at this. I’m still trying to process it.”
I devoured the hastily-written words…
Señor Cabral,
I may not have the opportunity to deliver this letter. Assuming you are still alive, here is what you need to know:
Your sister slipped under the border and sought you out in Colorado because she hoped your money would buy Daniel’s freedom. But after she met your wife and friends, saw your happy life in Colorado, she chose not to place you on the cartel’s radar. She loved you; how proud she was of her talented, successful brother. She left Colorado and returned to her work with Anti-Trafficking International, and to her son, who was in Camila’s care. I agreed to keep an eye on you, in the event someone had followed her. (Our safety has been precarious since Daniel dropped the Zacatón data bomb. Rodriguez was a radical, and I admit there was no love lost between us.)
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