The Infinite

by Nicholas Mainieri

  She was so thirsty, thirsty like she had been those nights after crossing the river—and God, how the river had stunk, her uncle’s clothes reeking of it. She’d borne her gallon of water, feeling it lighten. The thirsty men all around her. Word came back that it was time to walk again. A rind of moon caught in the sunset, the world out of order. An old man didn’t get up. He lay with his head against a rock, holding his hand out to all who passed. His mouth moved, no words. His lips looked like wax, like the coagulated rings around the candles in the church grotto where Luz and her mother prayed for Papá. There was a little water left in her jug and she started for the man, but her uncle yanked her back, shouting at her. She begged him, she was crying. In some deep place she knew that the man was going to die, but it didn’t matter—she could give him what she had left. You need it, Luz, her uncle said, you alone. He dragged her, sobbing, through the Texas brush, and in truth Luz finished the water before midnight and she was still thirsty. Her uncle told her to listen for frogs. If you hear frogs, then you know there is water. But they never heard any, and Luz now wondered whether this had been meant to occupy her, to take her mind from the dying man. She still had dreams about his colorless lips, and the guilt gnarled beneath her breastbone.

  A high whining. Luz only heard it now and looked. A small vehicle was coming fast down the road behind her, a plume of dust. A four-wheeler. She could see it and the man riding it. The flat scrubland around the road offered no place to hide. He would have seen her, regardless. Acid bubbled in her throat and her limbs grew cold. She squeezed the knife handle in her fist and stepped off the road.

  The driver decelerated, finally braking and rolling to stop even with where she stood. The four-wheeler was black and streaked with mud, and a curved hunting knife was sheathed along the steering column. A headless rattlesnake was wound around the handlebars, its tail and rattle pendulous with the idling motor. The driver turned out to be no more than a boy. He wore jeans and boots and a flannel shirt, and a pump shotgun was slung across his back. Sweat glistened on his smooth face. Neat, combed hair. He let go of the throttle and rested his hand on his knee, and Luz noticed he only had four whole fingers—his middle finger ended at its first knuckle. He looked at her and then he looked at the knife. Under his gaze she felt the abrasions around her wrists, the scrapes on her fingers, the blood that had dried down her jawline. She stepped backward and raised the blade. The boy was stone-faced.

  “I know that knife,” he said.

  Luz tried to speak, but her arid windpipe seized and she could only croak. The boy stood. She waved the knife at him and shuffled farther off the road. He shook his head and removed a metal thermos from the compartment beneath the seat. He held up his four-fingered hand as if this should calm her and tossed the thermos. She caught it against her body with her free hand. The thermos was slick with condensation.

  “Water,” the boy said.

  With the thermos clamped in her armpit she twisted the cap off and dropped it and then drank until a cramp stitched across her belly. She watched the boy, kept the knifepoint raised. She tossed the thermos back and said, “Are you with them?”

  His eyes moved over her, intuiting her ordeal. “No,” he said. “I am not with them.”

  “You said you know the knife.”

  “How did you get it?” When she didn’t immediately answer, he asked if the man who owned the knife was dead. Luz shook her head. The boy turned his head down the road, toward the mountains. “I live that way. I can bring you there. My grandmother will help you.”

  Luz looked. “Can I use your cell phone?”

  “I don’t have one.” He swung his leg over the four-wheeler and beckoned. “Come on. My grandmother will be angry with me if I leave you here. She can help.”

  The muscles in Luz’s arm quivered. The knife was heavy. Her mind raced. “What is your grandmother’s name?”

  “Armanda.”

  “What is your name?”

  “Felipo.” A weary smile. “I am fifteen. I live in San Cristóbal, there”—he pointed down the road—“with my grandmother and my brother. I am not lying to you.” He patted the seat and swung the shotgun around so that it rested across his lap. “Come with me. You don’t want to stay here.”

  There was nobody else around. No vehicles. The road lay empty and still in the heat. Her clothes were stiff with salt and dirt and some rust-colored blood. She didn’t want to get onto the four-wheeler, but she didn’t know what else she could do, either.

  She sat down behind Felipo and he told her to hold on. She placed the knife along his ribs under his arm and said, “If I see the narcos’ house I will stab you.” She hoped he didn’t hear the tremor in her voice. He snorted and throttled up, and as the four-wheeler leaped forward Luz almost fell from the vehicle. The big silver knife tumbled from her grip and she squeezed Felipo around the waist. She glanced, wind filling her ears. The silver knife glared in the road like a sliver of sun.

  2

  THE ROAD RAN THROUGH LAND POPULATED BY A HERD OF THIN, bug-eyed steers. They entered a wide gulch, the slopes of the hills rising at either side. Maguey and other scrub plants. A campsite of nylon tents and parked dirt bikes. They crossed a muddy creek on a stone bridge. Deeper in the hills, the pueblo of San Cristóbal terraced up the slopes on switchbacking dirt trails. A solitary church bell rang, a bright sound.

  A pack of dogs burst from a copse of evergreens and ran out into the road, a slobbering mesh of snapping teeth, and Felipo accelerated past them. An anvil-shaped escarpment, dead ahead, sheared off the sunlight. They passed a store with a canvas awning. In the gravel lot, a boy sitting on the lowered tailgate of a truck waved.

  Felipo turned up a path and parked alongside a small brick home. Behind the house, two horses hung their graying muzzles over the top slat of their pen. A small barn and shower stall. A gas generator chugged, and Luz smelled the greasy exhaust. The fumes twisted into her guts. The dead snake swung from the handlebars, its red severed neck. Felipo was saying something about the horses, and Luz tried to stand but nearly fell. Her head weighed a thousand pounds. The world around her ran like melting wax. “My head hurts,” she managed.

  She leaned on Felipo as he helped her through the front door of the house. The aroma of ground corn and woodsmoke. Felipo called out for his grandmother. It was hot inside the house, and Luz’s stomach churned. Once, she had gotten drunk with Jonah and Colby and felt like this, and she’d thrown up in the kitchen at Jonah’s and was embarrassed, and where was he now? “I need a phone,” Luz said to the older woman waddling toward her. The woman squinted through glasses and took Luz’s face in her hands. “I need a phone,” Luz said again, and then she fell to her hands and knees and vomited water and bile onto the floorboards. “I’m sorry,” Luz wheezed.

  Felipo and his grandmother helped her up. “It is okay, dear,” the old woman said.

  “I’m really sorry.”

  “Quiet now.” The grandmother smiled, warm. “Everything is okay.”

  “I need to call my father, and my—”

  “There will be time.” She began to lead Luz somewhere. “Let me help you.”

  She took Luz down a short hallway into a bedroom with a mattress on the floor. A crucifix hung on the wall. A vanity that looked like it came from a much larger home took up most of another wall. Holy santos huddled on the windowsill. The old woman lit a candle among them and whispered something about or to San Judas Tadeo.

  Luz watched herself in the mirror, a stranger staring back. She was filthy and red-eyed. More blood than she had imagined was dried down the side of her face. Felipo’s grandmother filled a basin with water from a clay pitcher, wet a cloth, and helped Luz clean her face. She dabbed at a spot over Luz’s ear. Pain darted and crackled.

  “You hit your head very hard,” the old woman said.

  “I’m sorry,” Luz again said, not really knowing why.

  “You should rest. There will be time to take care of everything.”

 
The old woman gently prodded Luz toward the mattress and blankets. She didn’t want to lie down. She needed to call her father and she needed to call Jonah. But the blankets looked nice, and Luz was so, so tired.

  “You have nothing to worry about,” the grandmother said.

  When Luz lay down, her heavy head seemed to anchor her to the mattress while the rest of the room orbited around her. For the first time she noticed the little boy holding on to his grandmother’s skirt and staring at Luz from around the old woman. His big, dark eyes. He didn’t speak, he only stared.

  The old woman took his hand and turned. “Come away, Ignacio.” The boy watched Luz even as he left the room.

  Luz closed her eyes and tumbled into a dream about the boy. No. A boy very much like him, but different yet. This boy had blond hair, like his father. He wandered from place to place, knocking on doors. At every door he knocked they told him, You don’t belong here. They told him, You don’t belong anywhere.

  3

  A RATTLE SHOOK, SHOOK, SHOOK. SNAKES COILED IN THE BED with her, their scales not slimy but rough against her legs. They warned her, rattling: she’d fallen asleep in the wrong place—but she couldn’t move, and she woke with a start to a headache harpooning her from temple to temple. The little boy, Felipo’s brother, stood at the foot of the mattress, shaking the rattle severed from the dead snake. Candles flickered among the santos on the windowsill. The boy turned and ran from the room. Luz wrapped her arms around her knees.

  Calm down. We’re okay here. The cut over her ear throbbed. Felipo’s grandmother had set a change of clothes out for her, a pair of slacks and a linen shirt. She put them on. They were roomy but clean.

  Something smelled good. Places had been set at the kitchen table. The little boy, Felipo’s brother, sat at the table and examined the rattle. The grandmother turned from the stove and pulled out a chair for Luz.

  Luz thanked her again and added that she should get in touch with some people who would be worried. “I could call, or even e-mail them if there is a computer nearby.”

  Felipo entered, bearing an armload of wood for the stove.

  The grandmother asked, “Does Rafa’s have a computer?”

  He set the firewood down and said he didn’t know. When Luz inquired further, he explained that Rafa’s was the store they’d passed on the road into the village. “I can take you there after dinner. If no computer, somebody will have a phone.”

  “I’d like to go down there now, if that’s okay.”

  “There will be time,” the old woman said. “First you must eat, you must drink.”

  Luz’s stomach groaned and she knew she must also be dehydrated. She sat, drumming her fingers on the tabletop. The little boy was watching her. When she asked him his name, he scrunched his face and shook the rattle.

  “He is mute,” the grandmother said.

  “Oh. I’m sorry.”

  The old woman turned, wiping her hands on her apron. She smiled at Felipo’s brother. “It is okay, yes, Ignacio?”

  Ignacio nodded once, very adult, and returned to scrutinizing the rattle. Their grandmother set bowls down on the table in front of them. A stew of snake meat, potatoes, and corn. They bowed their heads and the old woman uttered a quick prayer, mentioning Luz and her deliverance along with the gift of their supper.

  They ate and drank in silence. The stew was spicy, good. The grandmother asked Luz about herself. Luz cleared her throat. “I was on my way home to Las Monarcas, to my own grandmother’s.” She told them she had lived in America for the previous six years.

  Felipo snorted. “You should have stayed there.”

  “Felipo,” the old woman hissed.

  “Sorry,” he said, spooning another bite.

  “Las Monarcas is only a couple hours east from here,” the old woman said. She smiled. “We will get you to a bus in Monclova in the morning.”

  “Thank you.” Luz didn’t wish to tell them anything else about her circumstances, but she looked at Felipo as she remembered: “You knew that knife. How?”

  A glance passed between him and his grandmother. He looked at Luz and shrugged and lowered his eyes. “Everybody knows that knife.”

  4

  FELIPO WALKED WITH HER TO THE STORE AFTER DINNER. THIN moonlight. Stars thicker than she’d known in years. Down the road, the store floated in a hazy sphere of light. Banda music crackled from speakers. There was a lone lamp on a telephone pole, as well as a string of white Christmas lights wound into the flowering branches of an anacahuita near the store. The music pumped from a boom box sitting in the truck bed. A couple danced casually, each of them holding a brown bottle of beer. Elsewhere a group of men sat in a circle, playing some kind of game. When the song ended, Felipo got the dancing man’s attention. He came over, grinning, and Luz felt his eyes creep over her.

  “Good evening.” The top snaps of his shirt hung open. He wore silver and turquoise jewelry. Rafa, the store owner. There was a phone with which she could dial internationally. “It is an emergency?”

  “I need to reach my papá in America.”

  Rafa’s eyebrows bumped. He adopted an engineered forlorn look. “That will be an expensive call.”

  When Felipo saw Luz’s face fall, he said he’d cover the cost. Luz thanked him.

  “Very good.” Rafa flashed white teeth. “This way, please.”

  They passed by the men circled on the ground. They were sitting around something. One of them jolted and the others laughed, jeered.

  Inside the store, the shelves bore crates of soda pop and bags of chips. Behind the counter, a curtained portal seemed to be the entrance to Rafa’s home. The phone sat on the counter next to the register. Rafa opened a cooler and handed an unlabeled brown bottle to Felipo. The boy cranked off the top and sipped the beer. Luz went around the counter to the phone, recalling the sparse calls to her father when she was a child. Her mother waiting for his calls in between. He had even sounded far away, voice thin in the earpiece. Luz lifted the phone. Rafa remained, smiling. Felipo nodded, holding the beer. “I’d like to be alone,” Luz said. “Please.”

  “Of course,” Rafa intoned, bowing his head, and they left the store.

  She dialed her father’s cell, her chest stitching tighter with each digit. It didn’t even ring, the cold computer voice of his voice mail toning. If he had answered, she would have tried to keep her voice tight. She would have been angry, and then she would have been sorry. It would not have gone well. But now she heard the beep and reigned it all in: “Papá, it’s me. Everything is okay. The car broke down in Monclova and I couldn’t reach you until now. I’m in a hotel. They think the car will be ready again tomorrow, or they’ll put me on a bus. Will you please call Abuela and let her know?” She paused, thinking about telling him she loved him. “Okay,” she said, and hung up.

  She lowered her face and closed her eyes and breathed. She could hear the men laughing outside. She began to dial Jonah’s number, but stopped and hung up the phone when a cold feeling spidered up her legs. If he answered her call, she’d begin to cry. She wouldn’t know what to say. She decided she’d call him once she was in Las Monarcas, with her grandmother, once there was nothing extra to make him worry.

  Luz left the store and found Felipo and Rafa hovering over the shoulders of the men on the ground. The lone woman sat on the truck’s tailgate, kicking her feet and drinking her beer.

  There was a length of rope circled on the ground in the midst of the men. Some of them leered at Luz as she approached. A rough-looking bunch. Each of them had a hand pressed flat on the ground just inside the rope circle. One of them held a glass upside down in the center. A brown scorpion flailed under the glass, trying to scramble up the inside of it. The man counted down from three, and then he lifted the glass. The scorpion, claws raised and tail flexed, spun and shot toward a set of fingers. The man yelped and yanked his hand from the circle before the little scorpion could get to him. The others laughed, high, nervous cackles. Another one pulled his h
and away. The objective seemed to be to keep one’s hand in the circle longest. Luz watched. There was something about that inescapable loop. Something about the hands of the men reaching, coming and going as they pleased. She found herself rooting for the scorpion to sting one of them. Felipo nudged her and jerked his head in the direction of his home. Luz nodded. He finished his beer and gave the bottle back to Rafa, and they walked from the lot. Rafa said something by way of a farewell but Luz didn’t listen, and she could feel his eyes on the back of her neck.

  They returned through the dark up the hill to the house. “Did you get a hold of the right people?”

  “Yes,” Luz said.

  Felipo turned to her in front of the door. “You can have my bed tonight. I’ll share with my brother.” Luz started to protest, but he raised a hand. “It is okay. And tomorrow we will—” But he stopped talking, eyes on something over her shoulder. She looked, and he said, “Shit. Oh, shit.”

  The vantage from the slope allowed a view down the road. A vehicle approached, coming fast. Its manifold roof lights swung and bounced like the beams of some exploratory ship. And Luz remembered the knife, the big silver knife etched with the Chichimec designs, lying and shining next to the tire tracks on the road to San Cristóbal.

  5

  AN HOUR LATER, THEY HALTED NEAR THE TOP OF THE ESCARPMENT. Monclova burned far out on the plain, a red-orange grid, like the earth’s crust had cracked with geometric precision. Immediately beneath her vantage, down in the darkened gulch where San Cristóbal lay, the lights were sharp: Rafa’s store, a few warm window frames, and the high beams of Cicatriz’s Jeep—diminutive now—where it was parked near Felipo’s home.

  It had been his grandmother’s idea that they take the horses and flee up the mountain trail. There was little doubt that Rafa or one of the others by his store would confirm Cicatriz’s suspicions, and there were only minutes to spare. Las Monarcas would be a day or two away by horseback, the grandmother said, and Felipo could get her there. “Our family knows Cicatriz better than most,” the old woman said to Luz, “and so you must go, now.” Luz didn’t understand, but there wasn’t time for clarification.