Saint Death

by Marcus Sedgwick

  ¿Did I conjure it? he thinks. ¿Or did she? ¿The Bony Lady?

  It’s not traveling fast, but it will be here in a matter of seconds. Nevertheless, Arturo has all the time he needs. He knows that he is on the bridge. Siggy told him that, Carlos too. He also knows that he has been on the bridge for a long time, and that, even though the truck is moments away, there is still plenty of time to get to the end.

  * * *

  Arturo stares at Margarita. Then he pulls the five hundred dollars that Carlos gave him from his pocket and shoves it in the envelope with his father’s money.

  —Margarita, for your baby’s sake, get out of here. Take this and leave now. ¡Now!

  She sees what he is looking at, the red truck, and her whole face trembles because she understands what is coming down the road toward them. Without another word, she takes the money and slides into the seat of her car and starts the engine.

  Arturo backs away, trying not to make it look like anything, that nothing is going on between them. Just a conversation between strangers, and nothing more, but as she’s about to pull away, Arturo says one more thing through her open window.

  —Tell Faustino tomorrow has come. Give him the money and tell him tomorrow has come.

  She goes.

  The pickup is twenty meters away.

  Arturo watches it come, calmly. He can see Raúl behind the wheel, he can see a couple of other guys in the back. As it rolls toward him he has all the time he needs to understand everything. Thoughts that might take a lifetime to discover, never mind to understand, are revealed to him in simple, bright colors and shapes.

  There is no escaping the truck that is coming for him; there is no escaping the end, not for him. But Faustino … Faustino can do a lot with a thousand dollars. He can give El Carnero all his money back. He can return the money he stole, and go on being a falcon for Los Libertadores. Very soon they’ll make him one of the gang; he can get money, be rich, he can even become a sicario, a hitman, and make money by killing people with that American gun of his. He could do all of that. Or he could do something else, something better.

  He could leave.

  He could pay the same coyotes who took Eva and leave, tonight. He could pay the coyotes five hundred to get to LA and take Eva away from there. With the five hundred left over he can find a place to stay while they get themselves sorted. Head north, away from the pandillas, the drugs, the killings. There might even be somewhere in the world that is safe.

  Arturo thinks about his brother, Faustino, and knows he’ll understand the message. Tomorrow has come. Faustino will know what to do. Take this chance, a chance somehow made by Santa Muerte, of that, Arturo is sure. Take this chance to run, and yes, he will need to be careful, but Faustino is not stupid. He can do it, take care of himself and make things right for him, and for Eva, and the baby.

  The baby, which might be Faustino’s, or which might not. Arturo knows it doesn’t matter. Because if there’s just the slightest chance that the baby is his, then he can be a better father to the baby like this than his own father ever was to him. He will never see his son again, he never even really looked at him, but if Faustino can find Eva and the baby, and make things work, that won’t matter. It will be good.

  * * *

  The truck is ten meters away, then five, crawling to a stop.

  Arturo realizes that the world stopped shaking and he didn’t even notice, that the evening air is tranquil and still, that nothing moves save Raúl’s pickup, and now even that comes to rest right beside him.

  Raúl leans out of the open window. A gun lolls easily in his hand.

  —¿You got the money?—he asks.

  Arturo shakes his head.

  —I was hoping you’d say that—Raúl says through his face of tattooed power. He pops the door open suddenly, but then stops, surprised. There is no need to threaten Arturo, no need for the narcos in the back, because Arturo is climbing up into the cab.

  —I guess El Carnero wants to see me. ¿Right?

  Raúl laughs. Arturo is not sure why, but it doesn’t matter. The truck pulls away from Isla de Sacrificios and Arturo doesn’t look back.

  Above him, in the dusk on the hilltop, Christ the King stands with his arms outstretched.

  UNBEHAGEN

  Arturo leaves with the second of his three visitors, driven away in a red pickup by a man with a tattooed face and an automatic pistol sitting on the dash by his left hand.

  The third of his visitors is late, he is far too late.

  * * *

  Faustino tried to drive west, to Janos, where he hoped to borrow the money from a distant relative of Eva’s mother who runs a flower shop there. It was a long shot anyway, one he never got to try. His piece of crap car died in the desert not even halfway there and he’s spent the day walking back to Juárez, a journey that could have killed him if he’d tried it in the heat of the summer. He tried to thumb a lift from the few cars and trucks that went by, but no one stopped, leaving him to hobble on, toward the city, coming in from the west, a way that takes him right up Rancho Anapra.

  It’s there that Margarita passes him. She hasn’t seen him in years, but she knows it’s him, the limp making him unmistakable even from a distance.

  She pulls to a stop beside him, waving at him frantically, telling him to get in. Faustino is too tired to be surprised, but when Margarita hands him an envelope with a thousand dollars, he knows that Santa Muerte has protected him once more. As Margarita hurriedly tries to explain what has happened, Faustino crosses himself, and thanks the Skinny Girl for looking out for him. As if further proof were needed, Faustino sees where Margarita and he have met: right outside Doña Maria’s house.

  Faustino starts to ask her to take him to Chaveña; there is still time to get back to Libertad and restore this thousand dollars to its brethren, before El Carnero comes tonight, but then, Margarita is telling him something else.

  —¡Faustino!—she says.—¡Listen to me! Arturo is in some kind of trouble. He needs money.

  —Yes, I know—Faustino says.—He needed a thousand dollars to save my stupid skin. But we’ve got it now. I’ve got it. It’s all okay.

  Then Margarita explains why it is not okay. She tells Faustino what she knows about the mess Arturo is in. She tells him about the message. She tells him about the red pickup truck that just rolled down Isla de Sacrificios.

  —¿What?—he asks.—¿You’re sure? ¿A red Toyota?

  And when Margarita nods, Faustino feels things sliding out of his grasp, rapidly.

  —We have to go there—he says.—We have to go back.

  Margarita shakes her head.

  —Faustino, I’m scared.

  —¡We have to go back! ¡Now!

  Still Margarita hesitates.

  —Faustino, I have a baby at home. She needs me. She—

  Faustino waves his hand at Doña Maria’s house.

  —You can stay here, if you like. Just let me have the car. Or I’ll walk.

  He starts to get out of the car, and Margarita puts her hand on his shoulder.

  —¡No! Okay, we’ll go. Get back in. We’ll go.

  * * *

  They drive the short way to Isla de Sacrificios, fearing what they will see, dreading that Arturo will be gone, terrified that the red pickup will still be there.

  It isn’t. It’s gone, and so is Arturo.

  They get out of the Jeep to be sure, and check inside the shack.

  Nothing. Half a pack of calavera cards lying on the floor, a slight smell of burning plastic from the stove. The bed.

  They stumble back out into the twilight of Anapra. Margarita stares at the dirt at her feet, Faustino cannot draw his eyes away from the tiny shack where his brother has been living in the time they have been apart.

  —They’ve taken him—Margarita says eventually.

  —Then he’s already dead.

  They stay that way for a long time, not speaking, as the night comes on and the darkness deepens. A stray dog wanders
past, sniffing for the boy who lives in the jacal. The air cools.

  Finally, Faustino stirs. There is no easy way to pretend to himself that he is doing the right thing, the sensible thing. But in the face of Arturo’s death, that seems less important, and the only thing that matters now is tomorrow.

  —Margarita, there’s a cattle market just down the road west. Right on the border. ¿Do you know it? ¿Could you take me there?

  She nods.

  —¿What are you going to do?

  Faustino opens the door to the Jeep, and as he’s getting in, he’s thinking about his friend.

  —I’m going to do what Arturo wanted me to.

  BEWEGUNG

  Arturo is not dead, but he is dying.

  They have hurt him very badly. They have not finished with him yet.

  That is yet to come, and there is still time to look away.

  * * *

  To begin with, El Carnero smiled, in just the same way he had over the calavera table from time to time. Raúl had pulled Arturo from the truck, through the tumult of El Alacrán, and then into a room behind the bar, where it seemed El Carnero had his own private shrine to Santa Muerte.

  As Arturo was brought in, El Carnero turned away from some devotion he was making to the White Sister. There she was, once more, and Arturo could see that she was still staring at him, still never once blinking. El Carnero’s shrine was somehow different than Doña Maria’s. Here, there were two tables; a long one right up against the wall, covered in a black cloth. Upon that table stood glasses of water, tequila, and beer. Plastic roses, carnations, and cempasúchil placed in empty beer bottles. Trays of money, little round dishes with packets of weed and wraps of coke nestling in them. There were three small figures of the girl herself, each with a different color of robe: one gold, one black, one red. Otherwise, the figures were all the same: the scythe in one hand, the world in the other.

  In front of the long table was a lower, circular one, again covered in cloth, this time red, and it was on this table that the main figure of Santa Muerte stood. She was finely made, from plaster, her dress of green, and, again, the scythe and the world held out.

  Around her, on the floor, on the wall behind the tables, in fact everywhere, were other figures, bewildering. Arturo saw them all. He knew what some were: prints of Jesús Malverde, paper cuts of La Catrina. Then there were figurines of Apache and Sioux warriors, a row of little wooden owls. A statue of Buddha. Dozens of candles, in a rainbow of colors.

  El Carnero stood, the bottle of Rancho Viejo still in his hand, and Arturo saw what he had been doing: topping up a glass of tequila placed at the Skinny Girl’s feet.

  —She likes to get drunk sometimes—El Carnero said.—Just like the rest of us. ¿Right?

  Arturo said nothing. He wondered whether she had helped him at all. He wondered whether he would have been better ignoring Faustino’s pleas for help, his insistence that Santa Muerte would save them.

  Then El Carnero set the bottle down and came over to Arturo.

  —You know, I never expected you to find the money.

  Arturo nodded, still saying nothing, and all he could think was, Let it be quick, let it be quick, let it be quick.

  El Carnero pulled a couple of chairs into the center of the room. He sat, and pointed at the other chair.

  Arturo looked at the chair. He stayed standing.

  El Carnero raised his eyebrows for a moment, then shrugged.

  —So you might want to ask me what this is all about—El Carnero suggested.

  Arturo still said nothing.

  El Carnero sighed, but the smile was long gone from his face now.

  —I am offering you a choice—he said.—I will wipe your debt to me, wipe it clean. And all you have to do is something for me, Eduardo Cardona. El Carnero.

  Arturo’s head tilted fractionally. His eyes narrowed.

  —¿What?

  —I want you to work for me. I always need more guys, so that’s what I’m offering, but as I said, I am offering you a choice. So the first option is, you can work for me. I can tell you’re a smart kid.

  He didn’t say what the other option was. There was no need. Raúl stood in the corner of the room, and Arturo could hear him breathing, could feel his heat. Arturo knew he had reached the other side of the bridge, and Siggy was right, it had been a dangerous time. It had been a long and dangerous journey, but Arturo had made it. There was no danger anymore. He looked ahead. He saw the life that was being offered to him; he saw the money. He saw the power. He saw the cars. He saw the drugs, he saw the fighting. He saw the torture and the executions. He saw women to be used as objects. He saw his father, and the life he had chosen. He saw it all, and then, from nowhere, it was replaced by something else, something worth much more than all the money and power in the world. Finally, he understood what he had been looking for; he understood what everyone has been looking for since they were pulled away from the universe, away from one-ness, and left to manage on their own, as individuals adrift in civilization. He realized how we squatted around campfires in dark caves, he knew how we were alone, everywhere alone. He knew how we made promises around those campfires, promises in which we agreed to be as one, in order that we should not be alone. How we made prints of our hands on the walls of the caves, prints to seal the promises. ¿But will we keep those promises? thought Arturo. That’s the question. ¿Can we?

  Arturo stood, still as the world, and there is time, still, to look away.

  He faced El Carnero, and El Carnero smiled his smile, thinking that Arturo was going to say yes. Yes, I will work for you.

  —No—said Arturo, and he knew there was no danger anymore because now everything would happen just as he knew it would. He could be the man that El Carnero wanted him to be, but he knew he had not crossed the bridge to become that man; a man who would only add more horror to the world, more pain. Instead, he chose the path that had been revealed to him only this morning, as he stumbled from El Diván, and he knew there was no danger anymore.

  El Carnero stared at him, silent. Raúl had stopped breathing, for the moment, and into that silence, Arturo said his last words.

  —I want to belong to something. But not that. Not that.

  * * *

  They beat him. First El Carnero, laughing as he threw his punches, while Raúl held Arturo tight, but he soon got bored, and hobbled back into the heaving night of the bar. Then Arturo was left alone with Raúl, who beat him with a crowbar, and kicked him when he collapsed to the ground. There was no need even to tape his hands. Then Raúl found a hammer, and a knife, the kind of knife used for slicing open packs of meat, and he set to work.

  When he was done, he wrapped Arturo in a sheet and threw him in the back of the pickup. He drove out into the city to the border and there he dumped the body on the bank of the river. He was about to drive away when he saw that Arturo was still moving.

  * * *

  He is not yet dead, but very soon it will be too late to look away.

  Though there is nothing to fear, there is pain; unimaginable pain. Arturo’s body screams as it perishes, though his own screams stopped long ago; there is no energy left for that; he feels almost nothing. He is covered in his own blood, his body is broken and destroyed, he cannot see, though Raúl has not yet managed to destroy his mind. The final thing to arrive in Arturo’s mind is an image, a picture from long ago, of three handprints on the school wall. He remembers he chose red paint to cover his hand. As he lies on the ground, his arm twisted out in front of him, it seems to Arturo that the red paint has returned. He remembers promises made.

  Raúl stands behind Arturo, looking down at the shape in the sheet by the bank of the river, wondering if it was some trick of the light that made him think he saw movement. He takes a half step back as the shape moves again, and then, somehow, Arturo manages to pull the sheet off him, and roll to one side.

  Raúl raises the gun, pointing at the back of Arturo’s head.

  Forcing his bloody hand
against the ground, pushing himself up on a shattered arm, Arturo manages to get to his knees, wavering, unsteady, heedless of the terrible bursts of pain that return with every movement.

  Behind Arturo is Juárez; the laboratory. Juárez, the ultimate goal, our final destination; the logical conclusion to the world we are making, and look away if you want; it’s there nonetheless.

  In front of Arturo is the river, the fences, and El Norte, all waiting to watch the end. Arturo sways on his knees, his hearing fading and failing, and then he opens his arms; somehow his arms are outstretched, but they are not outstretched because they are nailed to a cross.

  * * *

  There is a terrible sudden roar and the shaking world breaks in two. Through the cleft pour the writhing gods of old, who circle Arturo, wanting the blood they have come to witness, and Arturo does not disappoint them. He has become one of the dirty saints now, an unwashed martyr, a grubby sacrifice, and it is time, la hora de la hora. Only yesterday did he wonder whether he wanted to destroy something, or create something, and now he knows for sure that it is both; he just had no idea that the thing he would be destroying and creating would be himself. Yet just as predicted, he dies the death he was looking for. He dies, his body in motion one last time, and he dies for many reasons, for many people.

  He dies for Santa Muerte, although, at this, the culmination, she is not here to watch. It’s all the same to her; they all come in the end, they all do.

  He dies for his friends, Carlos and Siggy, and now he understands the thing that El Alemán once said: when you cross a bridge, there is always a price to pay.

  He dies for Faustino. He sees his friend out there in the desert, tonight, running toward a new life in America.

  He dies for Eva. He sees one last flash of that night, the night she came, and he remembers what was so funny when he undressed her: Mickey Mouse on her underwear, and he thought, ¡My God, we’re just children! ¿When do we stop being children?