The Boat

by NAM LE

  I glance quickly at Luis, who opens his mouth.

  The target follows my gaze and turns back toward Luis. When he speaks his voice is low and sly. What are you doing? he murmurs. His face is shiny in the gaslight. We both know you are no sicario.

  Breathing hard, Luis grabs the G3 with both hands and jams the barrel into the target's mouth. I can hear the metal muzzle clatter against his teeth.

  Ask him who is the offspring of a dog now, I say. I find myself thinking of four days ago, the calm face in front of my Glock. Ask if he will tell you that. Saliva starts to run from the target's mouth, quickly turning pink.

  I will tell you, the target croaks out, whatever you want me to! He is not a tough anymore; no soldado, that is for certain. His words are slurred because his mouth is forced half open-it moves like the mouth of Claudia's demented mother. Please, he says.

  Don't you get it? Luis shouts. The fringes of his hair drip with sweat.

  From the ground, mouth ajar, the target shakes his head. I'm sorry, he groans.

  Why are you sorry? I don't want you to say what I want you to say!

  We all watch Luis.

  I want you to want to say it.

  Okay, man.

  Okay?

  Okay, man.

  What are you going to do? He removes the gun from the target's mouth and presses it into his cheek.

  I'm going to say what you want –

  Luis's frown deepens.

  I mean, I'm going to want to say it, I'm going to –

  What are you? Luis breaks in.

  It takes a second for the target to comprehend. I am the son of a dog, he says.

  What kind of dog?

  A dog. A bitch. A dirty, flea-bitten, whore of a bitch.

  What else?

  I am a dog that is ugly, that is an imbecile, that looks like a disease-ridden rat, that smells like shit...

  You eat your own shit, too, don't you?

  For a moment Luis sounds like a gangster in an American movie I recently saw in the city. His face even carries the same sneer.

  Yes, yes. The target reaches for a piece of donut next to his face, rubs it into the dirt before stuffing it in his mouth. Claudia turns away. It is strange the things a girl will tolerate and will not.

  From a distance comes the sound of ringing bells. I move to a gap in the cardboard to check with Pedro. After a moment he shakes his head and calls out in his high voice, Gasoline trucks.

  Luis says, What else?

  His mouth full of dirt, the target says, I am a dog that eats its own shit, and drinks its own piss, and, and –

  But he cannot fully untangle his mess of words because at that moment Luis lifts his G3, flips it around and smashes the aluminum butt into the target's head. I think I hear a soft crack. For a brief moment Luis looks surprised, then he waves one finger from side to side in the manner of a parent scolding a child.

  You are lucky, puto, he says, that my friends here are full of compassion. He spits on the ground next to the bleeding head. But they will not be so full next time.

  You broke his head, says Claudia. He cannot hear you. She half-stands and shuffles over to the target – I think at first she is bending over to examine his wound-then she does something startling: she leans back and kicks him, hard, in the chest. Eduardo gets up from his knees and copies her. We know the target is still alive because his feet dance in response.

  Luis gestures at the target with his G3, then says to me, Are you sure?

  They all look at me. Their faces are flushed and full in the warm yellow light. It is strange, I think – their readiness to kill – for as far as I know, none of them has ever committed the act. This business was personal.

  As we leave, Luis picks up a plastic bag that contains two donuts. The icing on them is green and yellow. For Pedro, he explains gruffly. He likes this sort of shit.

  Outside it has turned into night. At the bus stop I ask Luis again what was the man's crime.

  A shipment of basuco, he says. Or marijuana. I forget.

  I thought you said a game of poker, says Eduardo.

  Shut up, says Luis. Shut up, you fat punk.

  ***

  MY NAME IS JUAN PABLO MERENDEZ, and I have been hiding at my mother's place for four days. People call me Ron because of the time when I was a child and, on a dare, finished a medio of Ron de Medellin and then another, and did not vomit.

  I am a sicario, a hit man, an assassin. I have been a sicario for four months, although my agent, El Padre, says that in truth I am a soldado, fighting for a cause. It is no cause, however, but my own hands that have brought death to fourteen people for certain, and perhaps another two. For this El Padre offers me a safe house in the barrio, where I live alone, and pays me 800,000 pesos a month and another 300,000 for each hit. Of this at least 400,000 pesos a month goes to my mother, who prays to her God about my delincuencia but takes the money for her medicines and her clothes and her cable TV and asks no questions.

  They call it an office job, as the sicario is waiting always by the phone. In Medellin, it is a prized thing to have an office job.

  My agent is named Xavier – I do not know his last name, for everywhere he is known as El Padre. I have never met him. They say he is a large, light-skinned man with perhaps twenty-five years. They say he is the only agent in Medellin who is permitted a personal army. I am not sure who he works for, but it is clear from the pattern of hits he has ordered that he is connected with drugs.

  El Padre has a powerful reputation. They say, when he had only six years, he was under the bed where the guerrillas came at night and killed his father, then raped his mother and stabbed her to death. The story goes that he memorized the killers' feet and their voices and their smell and tracked them down and made his revenge, one by one. The story goes that he allowed them each one final prayer and then, when they were only halfway finished, took his knife and opened their throats from behind. For this element of prayer they named him El Padre.

  But the better story is that he was present, ten years ago, when his friend assassinated defenseman Escobar for the horrible sin of scoring a goal against his own country in the World Cup. This story goes that some time later he killed this friend over a spilled drink. It is something to murder a sicario of such reputation, but to do it over such a small failure of respect – an eyebrow revenge – that is a formidable thing. They say he now has hundreds of deaths to his name.

  I have worked for El Padre for four months and have been a good sicario, a loyal soldado, never failing him until four days ago. Four days ago I was assigned a hit and did not make this hit. Of course, he is not interested in my reasons.

  According to our usual practice, he called me on my cell phone the following day to confirm the hit.

  Bueno, I said, getting up and walking outside so that my mother could not listen in. On the street I said to him, I could not find the target.

  The phone line went quiet. You could not find the target, he said. His voice was soft, like he was recovering from a cold: Maybe the information was incorrect. Sometimes it is that way... the information is incorrect.

  It had been a whole day and still I could not think of a better excuse.

  I said, Maybe it is best to wait until Sunday. We both knew that Sunday is the best day to do the business as the target is usually at home.

  You were ordered to do it yesterday.

  I could not find the target, I lied again. Maybe he will be there on Sunday.

  We have never met, have we, Ron?

  No, sir.

  You have been a good soldado, he said. I think it is time we met. This week, I think.

  Yes, sir.

  I will call you with the details.

  Yes, sir.

  I am no child, wet behind the ears. I have now fourteen years and two months. I know how things work. That there is not supposed to be contact between a sicario and his agent. I know that I have been summoned.

  * * *

  WHEN I RETURN FROM T
HE BUSINESS with Luis and the others, my mother is sitting in her dark room watching an American soap show. I quickly scan the street as I close the front door.

  I switch a lamp on for her. In the yellow flood of light I see she is still wearing her makeup and her going-out clothes. For a moment I watch her as she watches the screen. She does not blink. The concentration of her face is calming.

  Your friend called, she says, not turning her head from the TV. It is a large, forty-inch Sony model and was in almost new condition when Carlos sold it to us.

  Claudia?

  I wrote it all down, she says and gestures vaguely. On the screen a white woman with large lips is hugging her elbows and crying. I catch my mother's hand and make a show of kissing it gallantly, like I see in the old movies. It smells of fish and nail polish.

  Oh darling! I say in high-voiced English. Come back to me for I am ... embarazada ... with your secret love child! I say this last part in Spanish so she will understand.

  She shushes me and waves me away, then, as the commercials come on, she half turns and says, Do you think I should dye my hair more blonde?

  Why do you want to, dear Mother?

  I don't know, she says. Maybe it will make me look younger.

  Younger? You already look young. In the streets, people do not think you are my mother. They think you are my sister. My mother has heard this before but still her face beams. I continue: They say, Is she your sister? And I say, Are you joking?

  Tonto! she cries out. I go into the kitchen to get some panela from the large urn. You should learn from your friend Xavier, she calls out.

  Xavier?

  I feel a tightening in my stomach, like the tightening when you walk into a room with your weapon ready and the target is not there. Then I think, I am stupid to feel surprised.

  He has nice manners on the phone. Who is this friend? He said you are lucky to have a mother such as me.

  He said that.

  I add milk to the panela and bring it out to her with some Saltina biscuits.

  We need more candles, she says absently. They say there will be another blackout tonight.

  What else did Xavier say? I ask, putting the tray down, but the commercials have ended and my mother is once again lost to her soap show.

  I pick up the notepaper next to the phone. She has written down an address in her large, girlish writing. It means nothing to me. For a moment I consider telling her to turn off the TV and start packing once more, but already, I know, it is too late. My only hope is to meet with him tonight. I put the paper in my jacket, my heart beating pâ pâ pâ from what I have just heard, and bend over the chair to kiss my mother's forehead.

  Outside, I catch a bus to Aures. Claudia's house is the old cement one painted blue, halfway up the hill.

  She turns from the large window when I arrive and says, Buenas noches, guapo. I am calmer now. The night air has cooled me. Claudia comes and lifts her hand to almost touch my face, then lets it drop. She knows I do not like to be touched around the head.

  Let's go to the park, she says, like a question.

  I nod. I am watching her. The window gap behind her is bigger than her whole body, and the dark openness is somehow beautiful; it is rare that any window in this city is not nailed up with grilles or latticework. Behind the window is a sheer drop of twenty meters into a marsh of mud and rocks and rubbish.

  We walk up the hill together. The night air is cold and clean. All this time I am thinking about Claudia's window, and how it used to be filled with glass until one day her mother came home from the market, pulled the glass pane so far back the wrong way the hinges broke, climbed up onto the ledge and stood upright before throwing herself out. Even then, she only managed to ruin the right half of her body.

  We arrive at the spot. It is dark. Ever since I showed it to Claudia she thinks of it as our spot, but in fact I prefer to go there without her. It is high, above the barrio, past the reach of the electricity cables, at the top of the hill where there are fields of yellow ichu grass and you can feel the wind from all four directions. Recently I have come here every day to sit in the long grass and sometimes drink or do the basuco. From this place I see the deep, narrow, long valley where the city of Medellin lies, cradled by mountains. The tall buildings rising out of the middle. I see the nameless streets, carreras running one way and callés the other. And in the evening I see the streetlights come on, running in gridded patterns until they reach the mountainsides where they race up and spread out until all the barrios that surround the city shimmer like constellations.

  It is like that tonight, everything upside down. The stars are under us and above, a sky like dirt.

  So you are really going to Cartagena? Claudia says.

  Yes.

  Why?

  Why? To myself I think, To see the ocean. But I say, What did you want to talk to me about? I have important business tonight.

  What business?

  There is no reason not to tell her. I say, I am meeting with my agent.

  So it is real, she says. You have been summoned.

  I am silent. Everywhere around us is the whine of grasshoppers, and farther away the noise of people and machines sounds to me like the wash of the ocean. From far enough away everything sounds like the ocean.

  There is a night bus to Tolii from the Terminal del Norte, says Claudia.

  I shake my head.

  I know about Hernando, she says. Everybody does.

  What do you know?

  She opens her mouth as if to speak, then stops. Then she says, The contract placed on him. By your agent.

  You do not know everything, I say.

  I watch Claudia's face carefully and it is hard, the face of a soldado with its thin cigarette mouth.

  I must ask my agent for leave, I explain. Or he will find my mother.

  Claudia pauses briefly. How is she?

  My mother, I think, who I had assumed was safely hidden. She is glad I have been home, I say. Four whole days. I continue to watch Claudia. Excepting the business today, in the tigurio.

  But she ignores me. Instead, she says, And you – how do you feel?

  It is a question only a girl would ask.

  Feel? I say.

  She is right, though. Tonight, of all nights, I should feel something. If I think about it, then I am scared, yes, and sad, but it is as though that person who feels is someone other than me. In truth I sit here and I do not know what to feel. In truth I come up here to feel nothing.

  The last time she asked me that was at Carlos's funeral, six months ago, at the Cemeterio Universal. It was the first death in our gallada. Everyone agreed he had died well. Then, too, I did not know what I felt standing before his grave. The hole was so small-he was never big, even though of us all he had the most hair on his legs and chest. My head was full of voices. One voice said, You should be crying, the other said, I want to, I want to, and behind both I could see myself, the fresh dirt on the mound, the bouquet of fake flowers, the statuettes of Marias and angels bobbing above the streets of headstones; I could hear the singing of birds and smell the plumeria and then feel the tears come, fake tears, watching my body and my hands so clearly as they moved, as through polished glass.

  It is like that now; I am watching myself and it is like I am watching a different person.

  You want to do some basuco? Claudia asks, reaching into her bag.

  I have to go, I say to her.

  Then I will come with you, she says.

  ***

  CHICAS, THEY ARE A DISTRACTION from the important things, and as Luis says, sometimes to go between the legs of a chica is more dangerous than walking under a bridge in a strange barrio. As for Claudia, we used to go together, as far as that goes. I am fond of her but in truth I would not call her a friend. There is only one I would call my friend, and that one is Hernando.

  Hernando used to be the head of our gallada, if such could be said, although nobody would have admitted it. (Especially not Luis, who had the same
age.) There were more of us then, perhaps twelve, and Hernando organized the mocds and arranged with restaurants and market sellers for food in return for protection. The children he sent cleaning windshields, shining shoes, juggling machetes, minding cars, making sales. The older ones he organized to steal cigarettes, flowers, and gum for the children to sell. Only a few of us did the serious robbery. We worked only for ourselves. After my father's death, my mother and I struggled for money and it was Hernando who helped us survive: he took me into the gallada and taught me all the techniques – how to run the tag team, when to wear the private-school uniform, how to spot marks, such as those gringos who go to ATMs with laundry bags and conceal their bills in dirty socks. I learned quickly, and soon Hernando chose me to work with him on all the big scores.

  When the others were not around, Hernado talked differently to me. Sometimes he liked to watch people going about their business, particularly in crowded places, at times when we were supposed to be doing recon. Once, in a plaza at noontime, he pointed to a farmer at a market stall, then a man at a construction site, and asked if I thought they were happy.

  I don't know.

  What about them?

  I looked where he pointed.

  They are probably happier, I said, half jokingly.

  Pah! He spat on the parched grass. The suits, they are richer, yes. He turned back to the construction worker, lean and black-skinned and slow-moving in the heat. He thought for a moment, frowning all the while, then said, But to work with your hands, and to work with others – that is real work. He spat on the ground again. He had told me once that his father was a farmer in the west country – it was after I had told him about my own father, the details of his unforeseen death – but since then, the past had never been discussed between us.

  It may not make a man happy, he said, but at least there is honor in it.

  In that way, too, he was different. While most of the gallada was concerned with buying the new things, Hernando talked to me during those three years about happiness and honor – even about politics – about a future unconnected to money.

  Then the day came, seven months ago, when we became brothers. We were all playing football in a park on the edge of the city. Hernando was one of the better players and looked like a bronze statue in motion. Someone kicked the ball off the field. It went a long way, then stopped at the leg of a man sitting on a stationary motorcycle. The man got off his bike, removed his sunglasses, and kicked the ball – in the opposite direction – into the traffic away from the park.