He walked into a plain lobby with an unpainted cement floor under fluorescent white lights that made Bellacosa squint. There were two vending machines—one emitted a buzzing sound and sold chips; the other sold canned sodas and whirred—and four unmarked beige doors.
Taking a chance, Bellacosa opened the third door to his right. A brown-faced man wearing a greasy blue jumpsuit and headphones was eating tacos wrapped in foil over a tiny table next to a counter with a microwave. Bellacosa was about to ask him a question when the man vigorously signaled with his thumb to the next room.
“Buen provecho,” Bellacosa said to him, closed the door, and entered through the fourth door.
There was a carpeted, bright hallway with three doorless rooms to Bellacosa’s right, and at the far end was a shiny wooden door incongruous to the entire building. Out of the three rooms, only the middle one had its lights on. Inside were four men in jeans, cowboy boots, and snazzy shirts, playing cards over a low table, while a man in a brown suit held a CB radio and sat on a tall counter watching them.
None of the men directed their attention to Bellacosa.
“Buenas tardes. Is Leone McMasters in today?”
After a brief silence the man in the brown suit responded, “Yes. He’s waiting for you in his office. We know who you are. Just go in, we told him you’re here.”
Bellacosa hesitated thanking him and walked toward the wooden door, stared at the brass knob for a moment, then knocked once. When he was sure he’d heard no response Bellacosa walked in, wiggling his toes in his ostrich Wingham shoes.
“Mr. Esteban Bellacosa.”
The room was long and wide. Bellacosa closed the door behind him and walked toward Leone McMasters. He was standing behind a rectangular desk with a smooth ivory top like a giant piano key that had no paperwork or office supplies. Between the door and the desk, three separate games of billiards could have easily been going. There were no paintings along the walls, the lights were dim, and as far as Bellacosa could tell there was nobody else in the room.
As they shook hands McMasters said, “Finally, I get the pleasure of meeting the man I’ve been doing business with. Please sit down.”
Bellacosa sat on one of the two chairs in front of the desk.
McMasters had a silver mustache, and parted hair graying at the temples. He wore a navy-blue button-down shirt with brown trousers. Behind McMasters’s desk was a brown coat with an Astrakhan collar hanging from a rack built into the wall.
After the formalities McMasters said, “You’ve come for your money back, I suppose. My apologies. I have the sum here in cash, all twelve thousand, Mr. Bellacosa. I hope you don’t mind doing it this way, to avoid wire transfers, banks, and all those distractions.”
Relieved to see the pile of money laid out on the ivory table, Bellacosa was about to take it and excuse himself, when he said, “Señor, is everything okay around here? Why is the warehouse closed? Where is your secretary?”
“My staff is on leave while things are in transition here. Times are changing. I am looking at ways to expand my business.”
“The man,” Bellacosa said, “who takes care of your land out in Calantula. Tranquilino. You should know he was attacked and robbed. They took the rig you had out there last night, the one I was interested in purchasing.”
“Yes. He’s the cause of this whole misunderstanding between you and me, sir. See, Mr. Bellacosa, I wasn’t trying to stiff you. As you can see, it is me who is getting stiffed, and it was by none other than that man, Tranquilino.”
Bellacosa tossed these words around in his mind then said, “How do you mean?”
“This ex-employee of mine. The Indian that you met, sir, Tranquilino. He’s abandoned his post, betrayed my trust and my property. He took his little trailer and left. The conclusion we’ve come to is that Tranquilino sold the equipment himself for his own gain, packed up his family in the trailer, and ran. Probably up north, where it’s easier to buy immigration papers from a forger.”
Staring at the pile of money in front of him, Bellacosa found this story pretty incredible.
“I don’t know,” Bellacosa said slowly, thinking of his words. “I saw the man this morning. Thinking back on it, he looked bad. Pretty beat up.”
“And did you do anything about it?”
“Do anything?”
“Did you notify anybody, Mr. Bellacosa? Like the authorities?”
“Just you. Right now. I mean, I couldn’t. The man doesn’t have papers. They’d just send him and his family to a deportation camp without even hearing them out.”
“Well,” Leone McMasters said, looking bereaved, “unfortunately that’s the reality of the situation. It’s better we don’t implicate the law. Between us, Esteban, I am a believer in people. And though a lot of crooked politicians don’t want us to hire illegal immigrants, I like to invest in these people and give them opportunities. Unfortunately, you often get stiffed. Maybe I believe in people too much. Here is your money, Esteban, and thanks for understanding. As a businessman yourself, you are familiar with the X factors in this trade. Especially along the border.”
McMasters got up, grabbed the coat with the Astrakhan collar, and put it on hastily to walk Bellacosa out. When they reached the door Leone McMasters extended the sleeve of his coat and said, “Feel the texture of this leather here, Mr. Bellacosa. Do you feel that? It’s the skin of an African lion. Isn’t that interesting to you?”
Not knowing how to respond, Bellacosa nodded, and made it out the door with the twelve thousand in cash, his fingers barely having touched the leather of the coat.
* * *
AS HE DROVE AWAY from McM Imports, Bellacosa felt slightly put off by what he’d heard, but grateful to have the money.
He deposited the cash at his bank. Holding the transaction receipt, he sighed a hosanna of relief and drove to one of the only places he considered sacred in South Texas, the cherry orchards in the town Colinaroja. Surrounded by the blossoming, marble-like fruit, he shined his ostrich-knee Wingham shoes. When he finished, Bellacosa came to the conclusion that Tranquilino stealing the machine and running away didn’t add up. One look at that Indian, he thought, and you’d know him incapable of committing any crime, especially against a powerful American citizen like McMasters. Tranquilino and his wife were both considered illegals and would have nowhere to go if they ran off. Plus, aside from the freak problems Bellacosa had witnessed on the land, it didn’t look like Tranquilino led too bad a life there. He was able to support his family and live on the property rent-free. If he ran, where would he go? It’s not like he could just park that rig or trailer anywhere. And his chickens, where would he park his chickens?
Paranoid that the cash had turned to sand, Bellacosa checked his account balances in three different cash machines—because one could never be too sure, especially when it came to businessmen in South Texas, especially after the events of this day and what Ximena saw of his future in the grounds, along with everything she said about the Ancient Egyptians and the pyramids, but in the printed bank statements everything came out solid.
SIX
Across the Rio Grande, shortly after midnight off the shoulder of the road to Linares, a dark Explorer that belonged to the Reinahermosa police department had wrecked and flipped upside down, covered in mangled and butchered meat. Half a cow’s bleeding body crushed the driver of the vehicle; the other half remained on the road as cars sped by, some of them honking and nobody stopping to help. The back windows of the Explorer were shattered and the men remaining inside were unconscious or dead and covered with pieces of cow innards and glass.
A kilometer and a half away, a disheveled, barefoot man limped low to the ground like a lame coyote through a shantytown, where completely destitute people lived in small huts made of cardboard, scavenged wood, car parts, and old furniture. As he crept through, various dry, scaly hands reached out to touch him, one of them refusing to let go of his ankle until he stomped hard on its wrist. The barefoot man’s b
loodied clothes were in tatters, and the thinning hair from his balding head was a mess. He moved like a spider with two missing legs, and his mouth was sewn shut in the traditional headhunting manner, with the huarango thorns stitched in the cicatrix pattern.
He reached the Rio Bravo, where the half-moon reflected like an ingrown toenail, and waded quietly into the water, unaware he was so close to the Rio Grande and the first border wall on the Mexican side. He reached the deep end and grunted heavily as he was rushed away by a current, his nose gushing with the polluted water and struggling to breathe. His emaciated body managed to push through a crack in the underwater spillway along the border wall, where the Rio Bravo merged with the Rio Grande.
A Border Protector truck sped by along the edge of the American side, flashing its blinding white beam at the figure in the river. The officers could be heard laughing as they fired a few rounds at him and he plunged deep into the brown and stone-gray turbid waters. An underwater current pushed him along and the collar of his shirt got hooked on a floating log, which spun around, and he was suddenly on his back, facing the phantom moon.
He lost consciousness and saw a river of charcoal, and from it floundered a gust of powdered bones, the sainthood of hunger turned inside out into a giant fish, fish, what are you, the man thought in a deep well that may have been a dream, a dream or death itself, which is also a dream, inside of which we die, and suddenly there are panthers again and it is easier when the sky is made of thorns, the ground is made of thorns, he spotted a cave dweller and grabbed a stone, heard a language resembling Latin, saw shadows on a dark wall like an intravenous puppet show, the light emerging from the throat of that great, cosmic laugh, another universe sucked away and recycled, never has the dirt illuminated like it did in the beginning, never have horns emerged from the ground like when all the animals started dying, blood all around the mouth as if the Creator had forgotten to add one, and with a fine razor pierced a slit with an indifferent expression, bloody teeth, brown water, flesh blue not from frostbite but from the piercings of the huarango thorns, the man heard chants, prayers, and his sons running around like when they were children, felt the worms already biting his intestines underwater, that polluted water dripping like a cascade down his face, he was a drowned man, never remembered leaving the river.
* * *
DOWNSTREAM, driving carefully along a poorly lit section of the American side, a Border Protector truck was making the rounds at the tail end of a night owl shift. The officer was alone, thinking about a documentary he’d seen on Arctic wolves, when he noticed by the drop of the river embankment something like a whirlpool opening up in the mud. The smoky, muddy water in the whirlpool slithered and reflected the gray twilight in a perfect circle that dazzled the Border Protector officer. He pulled the truck over and left the motor running as the river groaned like a sleeping animal having an unsettling dream.
Cautiously, suspecting part of the embankment was breaking off into the Rio Grande, the officer approached the whirlpool and clicked on his flashlight. The light revealed a puddle of hundreds of earthworms squirming in a frenzy, like a rotting wound in the ground. The officer got in closer. The sight was fascinating and repulsive to him. Then he let his flashlight wander toward the clustering giant cane, the trash and sediment buildup, and clearly saw the paleness of cold flesh, a torso, one human arm pulling itself out of the water.
The Border Protector officer’s first instinct was to draw his gun, but pressing his thumb against the holster’s buckle he decided against it. He looked toward the river’s western darkness and didn’t see signs of the other Border Protector truck monitoring this sector.
Caring little about muddying himself up, the Border Protector officer worked hard to help the man out of the river embankment. The officer then sprawled the man out on the ground and made sure he was still breathing. Under the moonlight the officer studied his face. For a moment he thought there was a tarantula trying to crawl out of the man’s mouth. When he looked closer with his flashlight the officer recognized the huarango thorns sewn in the cicatrix pattern, clasping the man’s mouth shut.
* * *
THE BORDER PROTECTOR OFFICER drove the truck along the river toward the monitored opening on the second border wall. The officer stationed there noticed his dirty uniform and said, “What happened here?”
“I slipped in the mud.”
The officer working the gate shook his head and laughed. He hit the buzzer, a section of the border wall opened lethargically, and the truck drove through.
* * *
AT THE STATION the Border Protector officer told his supervisor, “I’m driving the truck home tonight. Had a little accident out there and don’t wanna dirty my car up again, like last time.”
“That’s okay, Angelo. Just don’t drive it out of uniform.”
“Of course. See you tomorrow.”
* * *
IT WAS A COUPLE OF HOURS until dawn in a ghost town named Los Alfaros. Angelo, the Border Patrol officer, turned off the truck’s headlights as he pulled into an unmarked, badly paved road. He’d hacked the truck’s receiver, which tracked the movements of the truck, but made sure it was really disconnected one more time. Before he knew it Angelo spotted the brick house by the side of the road, slowly pulled in through a clearing in the brush.
Angelo turned the truck off but left the ventilators running, got out, walked a jagged caliche path to the brick house. It had a narrow chimney and the place was small, no more than twenty by twenty feet, but standing in front of the door Angelo felt himself the wanderer at the steps of a great cathedral. He knocked three times, and shortly afterward an old man with a bald head dotted with liver spots answered the door. Both of them stood in silence, then the old man opened the door a little wider. Angelo saw there was a lantern and two cups of coffee on a small table inside. A shadow above the lantern billowed, shrank, then an old woman was under the threshold with the old man, staring at this Border Protector in a muddied uniform—both of them knew it could only be bad news.
The old man helped Angelo carry the cold, disheveled, emaciated man with the stitched mouth inside the small house. They set him faceup in front of the kindling in the fireplace, where the old woman prayed beside his body eight times. Angelo and the old man stood by the door watching this. In a mortar made out of volcanic rock the old woman mixed herbs along with lemongrass, melaleuca clay, native kapok, and tickweed, and using a pestle mashed them to create a gray paste. She knelt with the mortar and an empty bowl next to the sprawled man. The old woman covered her brown, calloused fingers with the gray paste, then rubbed the muddy concoction over the man’s sealed mouth and the huarango thorns. Then, as if plucking fleshy flowers from the ground, the old woman began unstitching the huarango from the man’s lips. Dark blood oozed from the wounds and, mixed with the gray paste, covered half the man’s face, his pale neck. The old woman’s fingers dripped with blood before the growing, heckling fire.
* * *
BELLACOSA AWOKE at dawn but stayed in bed for a few hours staring at the wooden ceiling, trying to read the knots and grain patterns on the wood like an ancient Sanskrit text. After showering, Bellacosa opened a can of ethically grown tuna, drained its juice into the sink, and with a fork ate it right out of the can. He inserted a cassette in the tape deck of Rubinstein playing his nineteen favorite Chopin nocturnes. Most recently, he’d been revisiting a boyhood memory that took place in Reinahermosa. Bellacosa’s father passed away early in his childhood, and left him living, along with his mother and Oswaldo, in a room without plumbing near the city’s center. Bellacosa was sent out to work at seven years old, and he remembered clearly now Don Jaimito, the old, good-hearted carpenter who made him his first shoeshine box out of leftover scraps of wood from his shop. He remembered the mint-colored houses in Calle Zenaida, La Rotonda Michoacan, where the unemployed bolero musicians would gather in the evenings to smoke their cigarettes and play standard folk songs from their youth. Sometimes an anonymous lady woul
d bake them polvorones or empanadas that the children ran by and snatched from the trays when they were busy belting out songs like “Caballo Azul,” “Amorcito Corazón,” and “Tu Rostro en la Madrugada.”
One of those musicians (Bellacosa couldn’t remember his name, Jonathan, Jacobo?) was paying for his daughter to take piano lessons at the conservatory. This was a regular topic of conversation, and the other musicians would inquire, “How are your daughter’s lessons? What tunes does she practice? Who can she play?” One day in a chance encounter the carpenter Don Jaimito sent word with Oswaldo to call on his older brother, that he could use some help at the shop, and when Bellacosa arrived the old man amiably gifted him the shoeshine box, along with a brush and a rag. He said it belonged now to Bellacosa to go around the town square and earn some pesos to give his mother and contribute to the household. Remembering the details of this moment made Bellacosa laugh, because though these memories were among the cruelest in his heart, they had somehow become his most precious, the ones that revisited him like ghosts, taking him for a stroll in the graveyard, reading aloud the names on the headstones.
On the run back home to show his mother that day, after cutting through an alley, he saw that an upright piano had been set up at the rotunda. A girl in a yellow dress sat playing. She had freckles on her light brown skin and her hair was in braids. The unemployed musicians, smoking Hombre cigarettes, were gathered around her, along with Oswaldo and strays from the neighborhood, listening attentively to the young girl’s impromptu recital. Oswaldo, lulled by the music, didn’t even turn when Bellacosa called his name to show off the shoeshine box. Bellacosa was too young and excited about the shoeshine box to appreciate that musical moment, but many years later he remembered this encounter, upon hearing a piano tune on the radio written by Chopin and played by Hauke Hottinger, which transported him to that time in his boyhood.
Tears of the Trufflepig: A Novel Page 6
