Disappeared

by Francisco X. Stork

  Sara watches him breathe. There’s no need to say anything else.

  There is something about walking in the silence of the night with only the stars to light your way. It’s as if solitude finally feels right. Sara watches Emiliano ahead of her. His walk is different than before their afternoon rest stop. He seems fragile and vulnerable for the first time. She’s held herself back from continuing the conversation they had under the tarp. It’s clear that the words she spoke are working inside him like some kind of abrasive—eroding the old, she hopes, and making space for something new.

  Emiliano stops. In front of him is the east-west road. They step on it and walk toward the place where it ends. His calculations took them to the exact spot they wanted to go. He lets Sara catch up with him. If they can walk a couple more hours, the trip tomorrow will be easier. But Sara is in pain. He can tell by the way she’s been limping and dragging behind him for the past three hours.

  “Let’s find a place to sleep and rest your feet for a while,” he says.

  “I’m okay, really. Let’s keep going.”

  “No. We’ll stop. We’ve done more than what we planned on doing the first day. We need to find a place far enough from the road that no one driving on it will see us.”

  “I can keep going,” Sara says again. But she’s glad that Emiliano does not believe her.

  Two hundred yards from the end of the road is a declivity on the ground made by some past torrential rainstorm. Emiliano spreads the tarp on the pebbly surface and hands Sara a thermal blanket. From here, they cannot be seen by anyone driving on the road when they are lying down or even sitting down. Emiliano gives Sara one of the six bean burritos he is carrying.

  “Doesn’t look all that appetizing, does it?” Sara says, looking for the edge of the cellophane wrapping. “What time is it?”

  “Around ten,” Emiliano says, glancing at the stars. “If we sleep for five hours, we can walk a few hours before it gets hot tomorrow.”

  “This has been one of the longest days of my life. It’s gone on forever.” Sara takes a bite of the burrito. “Is there anything worse than cold beans?”

  When they finish eating, Sara fishes out the other long-sleeved shirt she’s carrying and puts it on. She carefully spreads antibiotic ointment on her blisters. There are three of them now, a new one on the right heel. The two on her toes are red and raw. She puts her socks back on and looks over at Emiliano to see whether he plans to sleep with his boots on. He’s taken them off.

  “Should I sleep with my shoes on?”

  “It would be better if you let your feet breathe.”

  “What about scorpions and tarantulas?”

  Emiliano is lying face up with his backpack for a pillow. “If you feel something crawling on you, just keep still. Nothing’s going to sting you if you don’t panic.” He sits up, turns around, and digs in one of his backpack’s pockets. He gives Sara two small, thick rubber bands. “Put these over your pants, around your ankles, so nothing goes up your leg.”

  Sara looks at the rubber bands with horror, then grabs them and places them just above the hems of her pant legs. She pulls her socks up as far she can and puts her shoes back on. Her feet can go without breathing for a few nights, as far as she’s concerned.

  They lie there gazing at the sky without speaking. Every time Sara looks up, there are different stars. Are the stars moving or is the earth moving? Or both? The whole mess of creation is just one constant never-stopping dance. It’s dizzying. For a moment it feels as if she’s going to fall into the void above, and she grabs the edge of the tarp, but then she remembers the scorpions and folds her arms like Emiliano. It’s cold.

  “Settle down,” Emiliano says. He sits up and puts his thermal blanket on her.

  “What about you?”

  “Shhh.”

  A few minutes later she hears him snore. She turns on her side and watches him. It’s like when they were children and shared a bedroom. Whenever she felt afraid, all she had to do was remember that Emiliano was there. She knew that as the older sister, it was her responsibility to be brave, but it was his presence that took away her fear. A little while later she feels herself sinking into sleep.

  In his dream, Emiliano is driving the Vespa with Perla Rubi holding tight to him. He feels the wind on his face and Perla Rubi’s warmth on his back and he’s happy, so happy. Then he hears a scream, and when he turns around, he sees Sara tumbling onto the road. The scream came from Sara. Then a heavy weight slams into his chest, and when he opens his eyes, he sees one of the men from the black car—the one with a brown hat. He has a boot on Emiliano’s chest and is grinning. For a moment, Emiliano hopes that the man and the grin are part of the dream.

  But they are not. Emiliano tries to writhe away from the pressure bearing down on him, but the man presses his foot harder into his chest. Next to him stands the man with the black hat, pointing a pistol at Sara’s face. Emiliano sees a roll of gray duct tape in the hands of the brown hat. He struggles again to get himself free from the man’s foot, but the man moves the sole of his shoe to Emiliano’s face.

  “Relax,” the brown hat tells Emiliano.

  It is early dawn. How could he have overslept? Ever since he can remember, he has been able to wake up without an alarm whenever he wanted. What a time for his internal clock to fail.

  “It’s okay, Emiliano,” Sara tells him.

  In one movement that seems almost too graceful for a man that big and heavy, the brown hat lowers himself to place one knee on Emiliano’s face. Before he can recover from the shock of the pain on his ear and cheek, the man has grabbed Emiliano’s hands. He wraps duct tape around the wrists first, then the ankles. Finally, he cuts a smaller strip and places it over Emiliano’s mouth.

  “Why are you doing that?” the man holding the gun on Sara asks. “Let’s get what we came for and get it over with.”

  Emiliano understands that the man on top of him is in charge. Why is he getting tied up and not Sara? The brown hat pats Emiliano’s pockets. He takes out the silver pouch with the cell phone and smiles gently at Emiliano, as if he had a bet with himself that Emiliano would be carrying the phone and he won. The man stands up and puts the cell phone in his pocket.

  “Great,” the man holding the pistol over Sara says. “Hey, Lester. Let’s finish this and get out of here.”

  “What’s your hurry?” the brown hat says, his eyes on Sara. He takes the pistol from the man with the black hat. “Go put the backpacks in the car.”

  For the first time, Emiliano sees their faces clearly. The man with the black hat is Mexican, but he speaks perfect English. The man who was on top of him, the one in charge, is white and American. Emiliano makes a mental note of his name: Lester. Lester is calm and steady and clearly comfortable with a pistol in his hand.

  Sara sits up and rubs her throat. She looks at Emiliano next to her. She can tell he’s trying to tell her something with his eyes. What? That quick flick of the eyebrows. What does that mean? Go away. Move away. Is that it?

  “There’s no need to hurt him,” she says to the man with the brown hat.

  “No?”

  “You got what you were looking for. Just go.”

  “Actually, we’re not done.”

  “Come on, Lester. Can we just get it over with?” the man with the black hat says, holding a backpack in each hand.

  “Go ahead. Do what I told you. Put their backpacks in the back of the car. See if you can find any papers or pictures in there.”

  The man with the black hat heads to the car, shaking his head and mumbling to himself.

  “I’ll do whatever you want me to do if you let him live,” Sara says to Lester.

  Lester looks at her and then at Emiliano and back at Sara. He motions with the pistol for Sara to stand. She turns for one final look at Emiliano. It’s all right, she tells him with her eyes.

  As soon as Lester and Sara walk away, Emiliano pulls the rosary from under his shirt. The tape is wrapped around his wris
ts but his fingers are free. The cross on the rosary is made from some metal that is thin and sharp. Emiliano knows because the cross has stabbed him in the chest a few times while they’ve been walking. He grabs the cross with his thumbs and begins to rub the sharp corner against the tape. Slowly, the tape begins to tear.

  Sara climbs out of the gully where she and Emiliano spent the night, Lester behind her. The man with the backpacks is ahead of them, walking toward the car.

  “Where are you taking me?” Sara notices that Lester has lowered the pistol.

  “Someplace.”

  “And my brother?”

  “He’ll find a rock and cut himself loose in a while. I’m going to let him live just like you wanted me to.”

  She turns to see the grin on the man’s face. “I want you to leave my brother’s backpack. He’ll need water.”

  “He’ll be okay if he heads back where he came from.” Lester points with his chin in the direction of the Rio Grande.

  “Lester, right?”

  “You can call me Les if you want.”

  “I don’t think you really want to do this. You don’t need to do this.”

  He keeps smiling. “You like to talk, don’t you?” He motions with the gun for her to keep walking. Sara sees the man with the black hat taking money from Emiliano’s backpack.

  “Please don’t do this,” Sara says. She stops and turns to face Lester. “If you let me live, I won’t tell anyone. No one will know you let me live.”

  “Oh, they’ll know.”

  Sara sees Emiliano climb slowly out of the gully. He puts his index finger on his lips and then motions with his hand. Sara turns around and walks. “Tell me what you want me to do.”

  “I’ll tell you, all right. Don’t you worry about that.”

  Emiliano is halfway between the gully and the man with the gun. The other man is behind the open trunk of the car with Sara’s backpack. Lester is holding the pistol in his right hand. Nothing will work unless he drops the pistol. Emiliano sees the man by the car look in his direction. Now or never.

  The man by the car shouts as Emiliano runs as fast as he can. He feels the thorns of a cactus rip through his foot but he doesn’t stop. He jumps onto Lester’s back just as the man begins to turn. He kicks Lester’s hand with as much power as he can muster and the pistol flies toward Sara. Now Emiliano wraps his right arm around Lester’s neck and uses his left hand to tighten the chokehold. Lester coughs, twists, turns, and bends like a wild horse.

  “The gun. The gun!” Emiliano shouts at Sara.

  The man with the black hat is running toward them, waving his own pistol. Lester pummels the side of Emiliano’s face with his fist. Sara lunges for the pistol on the ground but the other man kicks it away. She falls to her knees, the pistol just out of reach.

  “Shoot him!” Lester stammers, coughing and spitting. He turns so that Emiliano’s back becomes a broad and easy target for the man holding the pistol. Lester is so tall that Emiliano’s feet dangle in the air. Sara looks up and sees the man’s hand tremble, trying to take aim, and just as he’s about to press the trigger, she smashes her fist as hard as she can between his legs. The pistol goes off as the man drops it and folds over in pain.

  Sara turns, still on her knees, afraid of what she will see. Lester is lying facedown with Emiliano on his back. She looks for the dark red of blood on the white of Emiliano’s shirt but doesn’t find anything. Lester’s gun is lying next to her. The man who fired the shot is holding himself, grimacing. She picks up both pistols and walks toward Emiliano. Lester is not moving, but Emiliano still squeezes his neck harder and harder.

  “It’s okay,” Sara tells Emiliano. “I have the guns. You can let go.”

  There’s something like a growl coming from Emiliano’s mouth. His eyes are tightly shut, his jaws clenched.

  “Emiliano, let go. He’s passed out. Emiliano, don’t. Let go.”

  It takes a few moments for Sara’s words to reach Emiliano’s consciousness. The man underneath him is still breathing. He can feel a trickle of air on his forearm. If he lets go now, the man will live. This is the man who was taking his sister away, who told his partner to shoot Emiliano in the back. Why should he let go?

  Sara looks to make sure that they are safe from the other man. He’s running toward the car, maybe to get another gun.

  “Emiliano, don’t kill him, please. You don’t kill people. You’re a Jipari.”

  The words sound silly, but they work. Emiliano loosens his grip. He sits on the man’s broad back, resting, panting.

  The sound of a motor starting reaches them and they both look toward the road. The black car is heading west in a cloud of dust.

  “Our backpacks” is all that Emiliano can think of saying.

  “Is he …”

  Emiliano flips Lester over on his back with difficulty, places two fingers on the side of his neck. “No,” he says, standing up. “I cut the flow of blood to his brain so he fainted. He’ll be up in a few minutes.”

  “Look.” Sara points to a widening dark spot on the ground beneath Lester’s right leg.

  Emiliano kneels and tilts Lester on his side. He sees a small hole in his pants, stained with blood. He tears at the hole with two index fingers. Blood, almost black in color, is trickling slowly but steadily out of an orifice not much wider than a shirt button. The bottom half of Lester’s leg falls loose, connected to his thigh only by skin and a couple of tendons. “The bullet blasted the whole knee. It went out the other side. There’s no bone joint to hold the leg.” Emiliano lifts the leg and lets the calf and foot dangle in the air for Sara to see. She turns her head away.

  “Will he die?”

  Lester starts coughing. Emiliano and Sara stand back. They wait for him to open his eyes and then for his eyes to focus. He grimaces as he tries to sit himself up, but the leg can’t respond to his commands. He falls back on the ground, recognizing Emiliano first and then Sara.

  “Where’s Joe?” he asks through gritted teeth.

  He hasn’t felt the pain yet, Emiliano thinks.

  “He took off in the car,” Sara tells him.

  Lester gives a little nod as if to say that was to be expected.

  “We should go,” Emiliano says to Sara in Spanish. “His friend will be back with help soon.”

  “He’s not coming back.” Lester’s words are barely audible. The man apparently understands Spanish. He moans.

  Now he’s starting to feel the pain.

  Lester’s chest begins to heave and he covers his eyes with the crook of his arm. Sara and Emiliano let him feel miserable in private for a few moments. Then Sara pulls Emiliano a few paces away.

  “Can you stop the bleeding?”

  “He was going to kill you. God knows what else.”

  “Emiliano …”

  “He told his friend to shoot me. That bullet has my name on it.”

  “Emiliano, we have to do something.”

  “Sometimes you sound just like Mami,” he says grudgingly. He walks back to Lester, who is on his side, writhing and moaning softly. Emiliano taps him on his butt with his bare foot and realizes for the first time that he’s also bleeding. There is pain deep inside his left foot. He looks at Sara’s feet. She has her shoes on. Emiliano can’t remember whether he put his boots inside his backpack last night, like he sometimes does to keep the critters out. If he did, he’s as good as dead. He can’t survive out here without shoes.

  “You think you can walk on one leg?” Emiliano asks the man.

  Lester shakes his head. “I can’t even move it. The bullet busted my whole kneecap, didn’t it? God, it hurts!”

  Emiliano looks over at Sara. Does she really want to help this man? He steps over Lester’s body and starts to walk toward the gully. He walks slow, planting both feet firmly on the ground. He doesn’t want to limp in front of Sara.

  “Emiliano …”

  “I’m going to get the tarp,” Emiliano snaps back. “We need to drag him to the gully, wh
ere there’ll be some shade. We need to stop the bleeding somehow. See if we can keep his sorry ass living a little longer.”

  Sara can’t keep herself from smiling. She walks over to Lester and kneels next to him. “I don’t know that much about first aid, but the more you move the leg, the more the blood spurts out.”

  “We were using those … bullets that … burst on impact.”

  “Stay calm,” she says. He opens his eyes for a second to look at her with something that resembles embarrassment, like a child who doesn’t want to be seen crying by his playmates.

  Sara remembers the disgust she felt toward him as they walked away from Emiliano, after she told him that she would do whatever he wanted. It was all that she could think of saying to save her brother’s life and her own. It made her sick to imagine this man touching her. Now the disgust and anger come back to her, but she forces herself to touch his shoulder through a monumental effort of will.

  Her touch quiets him. He stops moving. He shuts his eyes as if her kindness is too painful for him.

  In the gully, Emiliano looks at what is left of their equipment. Two thermal blankets. Sara’s water bottle, half-full. And best of all, his boots. Mami’s prayers, Sara would say. What else is left? The knife with a miniature compass that Linda gave him, and his and Sara’s hats. Emiliano sits on the ground and looks at the bottom of his foot. He clears the blood away with a sock and finds the four places where the thorns pierced his sole. He puts on his socks and boots. A foot fortunately does not bleed much, and the pressure from standing and walking will help stop what little bleeding there is. As for the pain that is now shooting all the way to his ankle, all he can do is ignore it.

  Emiliano and Sara roll Lester onto the tarp and drag him to where the gully levels out, then through the gully until they reach the deepest shadows, where they spent the night. They find two rocks, which they use to elevate the leg. The man’s blood drips steadily to the ground. Sara takes the pouch with Hinojosa’s cell phone out of Lester’s jacket. She remembers Elias carried his cell phone in the same pocket of a similar jacket. That seems like ages ago. She places the cell phone pouch on top of a rock nearby.