Bulletproof Vest

by Maria Venegas

“I thought I saw something down there.” He slides his gun into the back of his belt and I’m glad to see it gone. I hand the binoculars back to him. “On a clear day, you can see all the way to Jalisco with these,” he says. Jalisco is the next state over, where Mary lives with her husband and kids.

  “What happened to that tree?” I ask.

  “It was hit by lightning,” he says, turning to look at the tree, and explaining that Salvador, his brother, had just ridden up here when a storm broke out. He got off his horse, tied it to the tree, went into the shack, and he probably hadn’t even cleared the doorway when lightning struck the tree and killed his horse. “Had it hit a few seconds sooner, it probably would have killed Salvador too,” he says.

  “How was he killed?” I ask, because I knew that his brother Salvador had been killed when he was twenty-two years old, that it had happened right around the time my brother Salvador was born, hence the name.

  “Him and another guy liked the same muchacha,” he says as he starts making his way back down the incline and we follow. “So they already had it out for each other, and then one day they got into it, and ever since that day, Salvador started saying that the next time he ran into that fulano de tal, they were going to kill each other. Then about a month later, they were both at a rodeo up in Las Ajuntas, and sure enough, the minute their eyes locked, they pulled out their guns and shot each other.”

  “And they both died?” I ask.

  “Ey,” he says. My mother once told me that after Salvador was killed, my father often woke in the middle of the night, pushed the blankets aside, and stumbled out into the courtyard where he wailed out loud until dawn.

  When we reach the corral with the two houses and the salt troughs, a sea of horns is visible above the stacked stones.

  “There are a lot of cows missing,” he says after doing a head count. After his father died, his younger sister and her husband had moved all the cattle to their ranch, and when he was released from prison, he had gone over to their place one day and said he was there to pick up his father’s cattle. His sister wasn’t there, and her husband had tried to put up a fight, but had thought better of it.

  “How did you know which cows were your father’s?” I ask.

  “They were branded with his fierro,” he says. “There were only about twenty or twenty-five left, they had already sold most of them off. I brought them back here and bought a nice bull, and little by little I started replenishing the herd.” He speculates that he now has about a hundred cows, and I can’t help but think that he is living up to his nickname—El Cien Vacas, a nickname he’s practically had his whole life. Though I’m not certain of how he ended up with such an odd nickname. “When I first came back here, everyone thought that it was only a matter of time before I drove everything into the ground, but God has helped me to thrive. Everything I do, all of this, it’s all for you guys, for my kids,” he says, glancing over at me, and I sort of feel sorry for him, because deep down he must know that we don’t need any of this. He points out the different cows he’s given to each one of my sisters, along with whatever offspring they’ve had, and then he points to a calico-colored cow with long, gray horns and says that one is for me.

  “Thanks,” I say, and can’t help but wonder what he would do if I decided to take my cow back to Brooklyn with me.

  Martin and I find a spot under the shade of a tree and pull the food from the leather satchels, make three torta sandwiches, and offer the first one to my father. We chew in silence, and it’s so quiet that when a hawk flies by overhead we can hear the steady beat of its wings flapping.

  “If you guys want to make the two p.m. bus, we should be heading back soon,” my father says when he finishes his sandwich.

  “What time is it now?” I ask.

  “It’s probably around nine-thirty,” he says, glancing up as if measuring the distance between the sun and the horizon. “If we leave here by ten, we should be getting back to La Peña around one.”

  We clean up and he takes us on a hike along the creek, says he wants to show us the waterfall and the freshwater spring. The waterfall is nothing but a sheet of water streaming down the gray slate and trickling into a small pool below.

  “You should come back in the summer, during the rainy season,” he says, kneeling next to the pool. “That’s when everything is green and beautiful and the waterfall is full.” He scoops some water into his cupped hands and drinks it.

  “You drink that water?” I say. “Isn’t that dangerous?”

  “Dangerous?” he says, leaning back on his heels and looking up at me, at the water bottle in my hand. “This water is probably cleaner than the water in that bottle,” he says. “This is the same water you used to drink when you were a kid.” The sunlight is reflecting off the surface of the pool and sending ripples of light shimmering across his face. “You guys should try it,” he says.

  “You want to try the water?” I ask Martin.

  “No, thanks,” he says.

  I hand him the water bottle, kneel down, and reach into the pool. The water feels delicious—ice-cold. I scoop some into my cupped hands, lower my head, and lick.

  “It’s good,” I say, and again my father is eyeing me as if he were trying to recognize me.

  The ride back is much faster and hotter, and by the time we get home it’s nearly 1:00 p.m. My father unsaddles the horses, and while he takes them back to the corral for watering, we carry the saddles into the storage room. Ropes, harnesses, and horseshoes hang from nails on the cinder-block walls. A large bag of dog food sits on the limestone floor next to a sack filled with corn kernels and one filled with pinto beans. There are six steel trunks stacked on top of each other and leaning against the wall. A small wooden saddle sits on the floor in front of the trunks and two wooden cheese presses sit next to the saddle. It takes all our energy to hoist the horse saddles onto the cheese presses, like my father told us to do.

  “I’m beat,” Martin says, collapsing onto the bed.

  “Me too,” I say, crashing next to him. We stare at the wooden beams above; the tin roof snaps under the heat of the afternoon sun. If a scorpion were to fall from the rafters now, we probably wouldn’t even have the energy to try to dodge it.

  “You know what would be great right now?” Martin says. “An ice-cold beer.”

  “I’m starving,” I say.

  “Me too,” he says, inhaling and letting out a long exhale. “If I closed my eyes, I’d fall asleep,” he says.

  “I can’t feel my legs,” I say.

  The dogs are in the courtyard drinking water from the rubber tire. The water was frozen over when we left this morning—but is completely thawed out now. I hear the sound of his spurs scraping across the courtyard.

  “Listos?” He is standing in the doorway and holding a coiled rope. “If you guys want to make that two p.m. bus, we’ve got to get going.”

  “There’s no way in hell I’m getting on a bus,” Martin tells me.

  “Is there a place that sells cold beer around here?” I ask my father.

  “Only in town,” he says, inspecting the rope in his hand. “If you guys want to wait and catch the bus tomorrow morning, we can drive into town and grab a bite. There’s a rotisserie that sells whole roasted chickens, they’re delicious, really nice and juicy. We can get one to go, pick up a six-pack, and eat back here. But it’s really up to you guys. Whatever you want to do is fine with me.” He scans the wall behind our heads, pretending not to notice that we’re spent, and it dawns on me that he knew it all along—knew there was no way we were going to be on that bus.

  * * *

  We want to make the 10:00 a.m. bus, so we get up early the next day and pack our bags. Martin and I are in the kitchen boiling water for Nescafé when my father comes in carrying four brown eggs and places them in the basket on the table with the rest of the eggs. When we lived in the Chicago suburbs, he had found a farm that would sell him eggs. He always claimed that eggs from a farm were better than the store-b
ought ones, though back then, I was too young to care or understand what the difference was.

  “Can I take that small wooden saddle that’s in the storage room?” I ask.

  “I still use that one sometimes,” he says. “But if you want, after you guys eat breakfast, we can go down to the other house. There are two wooden saddles out there that I don’t use anymore.”

  “What other house?” I say.

  “The one we used to live in before we left for the other side,” he says.

  After breakfast, we follow him down the slight hill on the other side of the dirt road. The scent of wood burning fills the air, and there is something so familiar about that scent, though I can’t place it.

  “What’s that smell?” I ask my father. “The wood burning, what type of wood is that?”

  “Encino. It’s the same type of wood Pascuala used to cook with when we lived here,” he says.

  “She cooked with firewood? Where?”

  “In the kitchen, in the wood-burning oven,” he says, and it dawns on me why, when I was sitting in front of a fire in the south of Spain, the scent of the wood burning had conjured my mother so vividly that the space around me became infused with her presence. I waited for the feeling to pass, but it lingered like a prolonged déjà vu. Like a faded memory insisting I remember it.

  “Is that your daughter, Jose?” His neighbor calls out when we are crossing in front of her courtyard. She’s an elderly woman wearing a wide-brimmed straw hat, an apron, a long skirt, and dark wool socks pulled up to her knees. Smoke is billowing from the chimney behind her and her Chihuahua is barking next to her.

  “Ey,” my father says.

  “A ver,” she says, drying her hands on her apron and making her way to the gate. “Which one is she?” she asks, squinting at me. Deep grooves are carved into her sunburned face.

  “Maria de Jesus,” my father says.

  “Maria de Jesus,” she says, smiling at me. She has no teeth, only two yellow ones on the bottom that make her look like she has an overbite. “So you’re one of the younger ones,” she says, glancing over at Martin. “Is this your husband?”

  “No,” I say. “He’s my boyfriend.”

  “How long are you staying?” she asks.

  “We’re leaving today,” I say.

  “So soon?” she says. “Didn’t you just arrive a few days ago?”

  “Ey,” I say.

  “That’s too bad, pero bueno, at least you came to see your father,” she says. “I’ve known your father since he was a boy, no, lies, I’ve known him since before he was even born. His parents used to live in that house.” She points to the small adobe house next door to hers. “I remember when his mother was pregnant with him. He used to kick her so hard that she would say he must have the devil in him.” She looks back at my father. “Right, Jose, that’s what your mother used to say?”

  “Ey,” he says. His mother was a petite dark-skinned woman who had come to visit us in the Chicago suburbs when I was about six years old. She insisted that I sleep with her, which always frightened me because my mother had told us that she was a bruja—had been practicing Santería her whole life. A few times she had fallen off the bed in the middle of the night, and then she would wake the whole house screaming for my father, saying that the brujas had come and carried her off the bed.

  “That’s the house where your father was born, and you probably were too, right, Jose? Wasn’t this muchacha one of the ones who was born in that house?”

  “Ey, that’s where her umbilical cord is buried,” he says, looking toward the house, which has a small front yard that has been overtaken by tall weeds and is surrounded by a stacked-stone corral. He excuses himself, saying that we’d best be going or we might miss our bus.

  We make our way to the gate and he untwines the rusty metal hanger that holds the wooden gate to a post. We follow him through the tall weeds, and he pulls out a skeleton key and turns it in the keyhole to a heavy green wooden door, and gives it a slight push. The door swings open, sending a layer of dust rising from the limestone floor before hitting against the adobe wall. Inside the air is cooler and thick strands of dust-covered spider webs hang from the wooden beams above. Portraits of saints and outdated calendars hang from the whitewashed adobe walls. A metal bed frame is pushed up against the far wall. There’s no mattress, only the exposed rusty springs. Wooden crates filled with old horse harnesses, saddlebags, and farming tools are piled up in the corner. Next to the crates are two identical wooden saddles.

  “Who slept in this room?” I ask.

  “We all did,” he says. “Pascuala and I slept there.” He points to the metal frame. “And over here,” he says, motioning toward the crates, “there were two beds. Chavo and Chemel slept in one, and all you girls shared the other. This is the room where you were born,” he says.

  I stare at the frame and can’t help but think that I may have been born on that very bed. I feel as though I’ve traveled not back to Mexico, but back in time. Like I’ve opened a time capsule and have stepped into a place where time has stood still for centuries. Years from now, my mother will tell me that on the morning I was born, my father had just returned from taking the cattle to the river and she was already in labor. He went down the road to get the midwife, was gone a mere fifteen minutes, and by the time they returned, it was already too late. Her water had broken and I had come out riding on the tail end of that wave. Hard to believe this dark and dusty room is where I drew my first breath.

  “This is the room where I was born,” I tell Martin, who is standing behind me, observing the portraits on the walls.

  “Amazing,” he says, taking the room in. “Man, you are so lucky that your parents left this place when they did.” He puts his arm around me. “Can you imagine if you had been raised here?”

  He’s right. By simply having crossed the border, I had leaped ahead generations.

  * * *

  When we arrive at the depot, people are already boarding. We pull our backpacks out from the back of my father’s truck and throw them under the bus next to plastic crates tied with rope, boxes bound with twine, and vinyl bags sealed shut with duct tape. I sling the blue duffel bag that has the wooden saddle in it over my shoulder and we get in line.

  “You should put that with the luggage so you don’t have to carry it the whole way,” my father says.

  “That’s okay,” I say. “I don’t want it to break.”

  A man has parked his fruit cart in front of the depot; cups filled with sliced coconut, mango, papaya, and watermelon line the front of his cart. He squeezes a fresh lime onto one, sprinkles it with chili powder, and hands it to a woman. They both seem oblivious to the flies and bees swarming around them.

  “Do you want a fruit cup for the ride?” my father asks.

  “No, thank you,” I say, as the line moves forward. I’m aware of how everyone is stealing glances at Martin.

  “Um, cómo se dice, ‘it was nice meeting you’?” Martin asks.

  “Gusto en conocerlo,” I say.

  Martin turns to face my father and repeats this line. They shake hands, my father gives him a nod, and Martin boards the bus.

  “Ándele pues, mija,” my father says as the last few passengers squeeze past us and onto the bus. “You know that whenever you want to come back, my home is your home.” He suggests I take his address and phone number. I grab a notebook and a pen out of my straw bag and jot down the address for La Peña. It’s the same address where I used to send my brother’s letters. The same address where Sonia had sent my father the letter I never meant to send—years from now, Alma will tell me that when they had first moved in with him, after having one too many drinks, sometimes he would start crying and saying that his own daughter had sent him a letter saying she wished he was dead.

  “I’ll write to you,” I say, though I know I won’t.

  “I’ll be waiting for your letter.” A faint smile flashes across his face. His eyes glaze over, his chin starts quiver
ing, and he presses his lips tight, forcing the tears to recede. “We should try and keep in touch while we still can,” he says, “while we’re still alive.”

  We give each other a quick one-handed hug, and our faces brush past one another. His cheek is at once warm and smooth, yet rough with stubble. I give him a nod and board the bus, take the seat next to Martin, place the duffel bag on my lap, and I’m already having a hard time drawing an easy breath. His sudden display of emotion caught me off guard. I thought we would shake hands, go our separate ways, and that would be the end of it. But the sight of his chin quivering shattered something inside of me.

  The bus pulls out of the depot and I lean over Martin to look out the window. My father is still standing in the gravel lot, holding a red handkerchief. We catch each other’s eye, and I wave at him. He waves back. The bus pulls away and he’s left standing in a cloud of dust. I start fumbling around in my straw bag for my sunglasses and put them on, because no matter how hard I try, I can’t force my tears to recede.

  Martin hands me a wad of toilet paper, takes my hand, and the minute we clear the last speed bump on the edge of town, the bus gets a flat tire.

  17

  THE MUSEUM

  FIVE YEARS LATER, I return to visit him. I fly to Chicago, and from there I drive down to Valparaíso with Roselia and my mother. By then, my mother is spending most of her time in Valparaíso with my grandmother. We stop off in Real de Catorce on the way, an old silver mining town that Martin and I had talked about visiting, though we had never gotten around to it. After I’d been in New York for a year, I had found us a one-bedroom apartment, and for yet another year I had waited for him. But something always seemed to come up with his band—they were recording another album or doing one more tour. I finally called him and told him I had booked a flight to Chicago for the weekend and needed to speak with him.

  “About what?” he asked.

  “It’s nothing,” I said. “Really, I just need to speak with you in person. That’s all.” I could have said, “It’s been two fucking years.” I could have said, “My feelings have changed.” I could have said any number of things, but back then I was unable to articulate something I could barely admit to myself.