Bulletproof Vest

by Maria Venegas

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  PARA MI QUERIDO VIEJO

  It’s no wonder that I had no father and that I had already died one night twenty years before I saw light. And that my only salvation must be to return to the place … where my life had already ceased before it began.

  —WILLIAM FAULKNER, Light in August

  CONTENTS

  TITLE PAGE

  COPYRIGHT NOTICE

  DEDICATION

  EPIGRAPH

  PROLOGUE: AMBUSH

  BOOK ONE

  1. BULLETPROOF VEST

  2. HANDICAPPED BASTARD

  3. WITNESS PROTECTION PROGRAM

  4. THE HALLELUJAHS

  5. THE GRAPES OF WRATH

  6. RUNAWAY TRAIN

  7. LOVE, SWEET LOVE

  8. WE CALL POLICE

  9. THE FUGITIVE

  10. A FINE YOUNG BULL

  11. YOU SAY JERUSALEM, I SAY PARIS

  12. THE WALL

  13. MAN-IN-THE-MOON MARIGOLDS

  14. HOUSE OF SCORPIONS

  15. COWBOY MOUTH

  BOOK TWO

  16. FAMILY PORTRAIT

  17. THE MUSEUM

  18. DUST DEVILS

  19. BLUE DRESS

  20. SHOOTING GUNS LIKE SHOOTING STARS

  21. QUELITES

  22. EL CIEN VACAS

  23. HAILSTORM

  BOOK THREE

  24. THE KIDNAPPING

  25. STARFISH

  26. BLUE MOON

  EPILOGUE: EL CORRIDO DEL CIEN VACAS

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  COPYRIGHT

  JOSE MANUEL VENEGAS

  Zacatecas, Mexico, 1967

  PROLOGUE: AMBUSH

  (Zacatecas, Mexico, 1998)

  MEXICO’S RURAL 44 IS THE ONLY ROAD that leads from the taverns of Valparaíso back to his ranch. Unless he decides to spend the night in a bordello, eventually he will be on that road. But there he is, standing at the bar, one foot propped on the chrome rail, the heel of his cowboy boot wedged against it, his hand wrapped around a beer, the músicos playing a corrido just for him.

  He takes a cold one for the road, settles his tab. The tires of his gray Chevy grip the concrete, the truck jerks with every shift of the gears. The lights of Valparaíso fade in the distance while he drives into the stillness of the desert night. The stench of a decomposing carcass fills the cabin as he pushes a tape into the deck and cranks up the volume. Drums and horns come thundering from the large speaker he rigged behind his seat, each note blasting through him as he listens to one corrido after another—to ballads of long-ago heroes, outlaws, and bandits.

  His music and the stars above are his only companions. His truck swerves freely. The headlights slice through the pitch dark and bugs fly in and out of the beams. Some hit the windshield, leaving milky streaks on the glass. He drives past the ditch where he and his buddy recently drove off the road; the truck rolled twice before hitting a mesquite, his arm pinned under the hood for six hours before anyone found them. Best to take it nice and easy, he thinks. Take it right down the middle of the road, wouldn’t want to end up kissing a tree again.

  The beams catch the taillights of a stalled blue car on the side of the road in front of the slaughterhouse. Pobre pendejo, he thinks. He idles past, noticing the car is empty. He takes a swig, and in the rearview mirror he sees the headlights of an approaching truck. And then it’s upon him, flashing its high beams in rapid succession, practically pushing him out of the way. He pulls slightly onto the gravel to let it pass. The truck flies by in a fury, and soon it has vanished around the only curve on the road between town and his home. Must be in a hurry. He reaches for his beer, but before the can touches his lips, his truck is lit up in a hail of bullets. Every muscle in his body contracts, pulling him toward the steering wheel. Hot pressure pierces his body, bullets skid across his scalp, singeing his hair. All around him glass shatters as the truck slows to a halt. The music has stopped. The speaker behind his seat is pumped full of lead.

  The sound of his breathing fills the cabin and a warm stream runs down his face and neck. Through the cracked side mirror he sees the headlights of the blue car flick on. Two men with machine guns emerge from the ditches on either side of the road, run through the beams, and jump in. Tires screech as they speed off in the opposite direction. Pinches culeros, he thinks, watching their red taillights vanish in the distance.

  He prays to the Virgen de Guadalupe, to the Santo Niño de Atocha, to San Francisco de Asís, to any saint who will listen. It might be hours before another car comes down the road and already the blood is collecting inside his shirt, his right arm growing numb. He stares at the keys, still in the ignition, reaches for them, turns them slowly and, to his surprise, the truck fires right up. It’s a goddamn miracle. He reaches for the scorpion gear knob, manages to shift into drive, and soon he’s clearing the curve and drifting home.

  The sounds of creaking metal and shattered glass fill the truck’s cabin. He turns left onto the dirt road that leads to La Peña. The truck picks up momentum on the downward slope and wobbles violently as it rolls over gullies left behind by the flash floods of the rainy season. It flies past the Virgen de Guadalupe shrine and, in his mind, he makes the sign of the cross: up, down, left, right. His truck glides into the river, crawls up the slight incline on the other side, and clears the entrance to La Peña. But he’s lost speed on the ascent and his focus is fading while the pool collecting in his shirt keeps growing. The truck inches past the small limestone church; the bell sits quietly in its tower above. The entrance to his courtyard comes into view. His right arm slips off the steering wheel, and the truck veers off the dirt road, crashing into a cinder-block wall. The hood flies open and sends hot steam hissing into the cold night. He drifts off, comes to; he pushes the door open and slips into unconsciousness.

  There is a distant barking, which seems to be traveling through a long tunnel toward him, then claws are digging into his shoulder, wet tongues sliding over his face and neck. He opens his eyes and his two dogs are standing on their hind legs; he swings at them and falls out of the truck. A cloud of dust envelops him when he hits the ground. He pushes himself up and leans into the truck. It takes all his might to pull the weight of his body toward the house. Staggering, he goes up the dirt road, past the two eucalyptus trees where the chickens sleep, past the encino woodpile he recently chopped, and then he’s at the courtyard gate, pushing it open and stumbling past the parakeet cage, the propane tank, the half rubber tire filled with drinking water for the dogs, the plants arranged in large rusty tin cans along the cinder-block wall, until he reaches the blue metal door of the house and collapses.

  In the early hours of dawn, while the chickens are still tucked away in their trees and the chill of night lingers in the air, Doña Consuelo, the elderly woman who lives on the other side of the dirt road, goes out for her morning walk. She adjusts her headscarf and leans on her cane as she makes her way toward the small church, her Chihuahua prancing alongside her. She turns the corner and there it is, pressed up against the wall, like a metallic bird shot down from the night sky, its carcass riddled with bullets. In the driver’s-side door alone, there are over forty holes. The windows are shattered, the door still ajar, the seat slick with blood, and the rumors start circulating: Jose is dead. Pumped full of lead. His truck completely destroyed. By the time the news sweeps across the desert, crosses barbed-wire fences, travels north, and
makes it to the other side, there are conflicting stories.

  * * *

  “Hey, did you hear about Dad?” my sister Sonia asks when she calls me.

  “No,” I say. I’m at work, trying to decide on what to order for lunch. “What happened?”

  “He got ambushed,” she says. “Apparently there were two guys with machine guns.”

  “Oh.” I continue browsing through the menu. “So, is he dead?”

  BOOK ONE

  1

  BULLETPROOF VEST

  (Chicago suburbs, 1987)

  THE FIRST GUNSHOT snaps me out of my sleep. I lie in bed and stare at the two blinking red dots of my alarm clock: 12:35 a.m. It’s Thursday night and my father has been playing cards with the neighbors. I can almost see the eye of the gun following its target, and then the second and third shots ring out. Something is different. Whenever he drinks and fires his .45, it’s always in rapid succession, four or five bullets following one another into our front lawn or out at the night sky.

  My sister Sonia is the first out of bed. She hears someone coughing, as if choking, outside her bedroom window. She goes outside and walks around the side of the house, follows the red streak along the white aluminum siding. My father is leaning into the wall, just below her bedroom window. He’s covered in blood, his gun still in his hand.

  “Escóndela,” he says, handing his gun to her. The gun is still hot to the touch. She takes it and helps him inside.

  By the time I step out of my bedroom, he’s standing in the middle of the living room, slightly swaying forward and back. He’s looking right at me but his gaze feels as if he’s looking at me from a distant mountaintop. My mother is next to him, in her white slip, pressing a towel under his chin.

  “You’re bleeding to death. You’re bleeding to death. You’re bleeding to death,” she says as the towel becomes saturated and thin red lines stream down her arm and onto her white slip. She pulls the towel away and readjusts it.

  There is a gash under his chin that’s about two inches long. Thick blood flows from it and runs down his neck. His white undershirt is already soaked. On the hardwood floor beneath him, there is a dark pool forming and inching closer to my bare feet. He’s mumbling something about that pinche pendejo—how he knows someone put him up to this. But with him, all those culeros go in circles, like dogs chasing their tails. How he’s not going to rot in jail because of that son of a bitch.

  “Salvador!” he yells for my brother as he pushes past my mother and stumbles through the dining room, bumping into the china cabinet and making everything inside tremble. He disappears into his bedroom, shouting orders for Salvador to pull his car around the back.

  Salvador does as he’s told, and by the time my father emerges from his bedroom, red and blue lights are already flashing through every window in the house and dancing across his face. He goes out the back door, climbs over the chain-link fence, and crouches through the neighbor’s backyard. Salvador is waiting on the next street over, sitting in the car, engine running, lights off. My father climbs into the backseat, lies down, and Salvador drives off. There is a flurry of screeching car tires and police sirens all around our house.

  “Dios nos tenga de su santa mano,” my mother prays out loud.

  Soon, the sirens are fading in the distance, while out there on Route 45, Salvador is flooring the car, speeding through red lights, and swerving around traffic as a swarm of flashing lights and sirens is closing in on him. My father yelling the whole way for him to step on it, telling him not to stop, no matter what. But up ahead, a row of police cars is blocking the road, and officers stand behind open doors with their guns drawn. Salvador hits the brakes, throws the car into reverse, but before he hits the gas, a police car skids to a halt behind him. There’s a voice bellowing from a megaphone, demanding that he put his hands where they can see them. He lifts his hands from the steering wheel and raises them slowly, watching as four officers with guns pointing at him move in, shouting for him to step out of the car.

  “I need to get my father to the hospital,” Salvador says, motioning to the backseat with his head. “He’s bleeding to death.” An officer shines his flashlight on my father, who is lying unconscious, his clothes soaked with blood. A police escort takes them to the nearest hospital, fifteen minutes away.

  An hour later, my younger brother and sister and I are outside, leaning into the chain-link fence next to Rocky’s doghouse. Even though it’s nearly two in the morning, it feels like the middle of the day. Police cars with flashing lights sprawl from our driveway, lighting up the entire block, and all the neighbors are out. The Colombian woman who lives across the street stands on her stoop with her hands resting on her daughter’s shoulders. The elderly white woman who lives alone in the three-story house next to the Colombians’ watches from behind her screen door. The five little blonde girls who live next door are on the other side of the chain-link fence, still in their pajamas, lined up beside their mother, their fingers gripping the fence, and staring wide-eyed at us. A few officers scan our front yard with their flashlights, searching under the picnic table and around the mulberry tree near the driveway. Mateo and Julio, who live up the street and are in my class at school, stand on the other side of the yellow tape. Mateo waves at me, I wave back. Salvador ducks under the yellow tape and is stopped in our driveway by a man who has a camera strapped around his neck.

  One of the officers makes his way over to us, pointing his flashlight along my mother’s zucchini and tomato garden, which sprouts along the chain-link fence that separates our house from the small blue house next door where six Mexican men live. The men are questioned by police, and we watch as they reenact the scene around their picnic table: how Joaquín lunged at my father with a knife, was pushed away, came at him again, swinging from left to right, finally lodging the knife under my father’s chin. My father pulled out his gun and shot him once. Joaquín stumbled back, fell down, got up, and lunged at him again. He was shot two more times.

  “Hola,” the officer says when he reaches us. He gets down on one knee and points his flashlight into Rocky’s doghouse and peeks inside. Rocky starts growling. “What kind of a dog is it?” he asks.

  “A Doberman,” Jorge says.

  “Is he friendly?”

  “Sometimes.”

  He turns off his flashlight and stands up.

  “What’s his name?”

  “Rocky.”

  He picks grass particles off his pants.

  “Is Jose your father?”

  “Yeah,” we nod our heads.

  He looks at us, presses his lips tight, and draws a deep breath. His nostrils flare.

  “Is he nice to you?”

  “Yeah,” we shrug.

  “Except when he’s drunk,” Yesenia says.

  “Yeah, then he can be kind of mean,” says Jorge.

  The officer glances at him, at Yesenia, then back at me.

  “Does he ever hit you?”

  “No … yeah … sometimes,” we overlap.

  “Only when we’re bad,” Yesenia says.

  He looks at her, crosses his arms, and throws his head back, as if he’s counting stars.

  “You wouldn’t happen to know where his gun is, would you?”

  My brother and I both shrug.

  “Sonia took it,” Yesenia says, “and…” I reach behind her and pinch her arm. She falls silent. The officer looks at her, then at me, and says that if we know where the gun is and don’t tell them, we could all be in big trouble. He follows us into the house, where other officers are in the living room, looking under couch cushions, behind the television, inside the china cabinet, and under the dining room table.

  “No vayan a decir en dónde está la pistola,” my mother mumbles when we come into the house.

  “Amá, ya saben,” I say.

  “Ni se les ocurra decir nada de las otras pistolas,” she says under her breath.

  “What did she say?” the officer asks.

  “Nothing,�
� we say, making our way to Sonia’s bedroom.

  He picks up her pillow and there is my father’s .45, black and heavy and resting on the paisley sheet. He pulls out his walkie-talkie.

  “Murder weapon has been located,” he says into it.

  Soon there are more officers in the room. One of them is wearing white latex gloves. She picks up the gun and drops it into a clear plastic bag. We follow them back into the living room, where other officers are standing around. “Murder weapon has been located” is leaping between the static of their walkie-talkies.

  “Does your father keep any other weapons in the house?” one of them asks.

  We tell him no, though inside the closet, behind the dining room table, there is a steel trunk filled with rifles, handguns, and machine guns.

  The following day, Salvador is quoted in one newspaper and described as a neighbor, not related to Jose Venegas. The headlines read: ARGUMENT OVER BEER LEAVES ONE MAN DEAD, ANOTHER CRITICALLY WOUNDED. According to the papers, the whole thing had started over an argument about who would drink the last beer. I never trust anything I read in the papers after that. We knew it had nothing to do with beer. Joaquín probably hadn’t even finished unpacking his belongings in the house next door when already men at the local taverns were warning my father to watch his back, to not let his guard down with his new neighbor. Even one of the men at my mother’s church warned her. He was the manager at a photo-framing factory, and he had overheard the workers, who were mostly Mexican men, talking about how someone had hired Joaquín to kill my father.

  Hard to know who or why as my father had left a handful of enemies back in Mexico. For all we knew, it may even have been the three brothers who had killed Chemel, my eldest brother, six months before. They must have known it was only a matter of time before my father went back down to Mexico looking to avenge his son, and so perhaps they thought they should strike first. Or maybe they had heard about the phone calls my father had been making, offering to trade one head for another—you do this one for me, and I’ll do one for you.