“That’s not true,” I say. This is something she’s been telling us since the day he left—“your father never loved you guys.” And for years I let her say it, absorbing those words, until I believed them. He never loved me, and I’m okay with that, I don’t need his love anyway—so I thought. But now I’ve seen the way his chin quivers each time he drops me off at the bus station, each time we say goodbye, and perhaps we’re both hyperaware that any one of those farewells could be our last. I know that he loves me and I refuse to let her, or anyone, take that away from me. “Whatever happened between the two of you, happened,” I say. “But he loves me. I know he loves me.”
We sit in silence in the line of traffic, exhaust and dust coming in through the open windows. If she could have had it her way, I would have never come back to see my father—none of us would have. Even Salvador had been down to see him recently, and when he was here, my mother had complained that she had hardly seen him, as he had spent most of his time shuttling the concubine to and from the hospital in the next town over. He had taken her to have an operation so that she might walk again, which was possible, since her spinal cord was not damaged and she still had feeling in her legs. Though the operation had gone well, she had not healed properly and was still in a wheelchair.
We are crawling past the livestock supply store when I see his red truck go barreling along the shoulder, driving against the flow of traffic on the other side of the road before cutting across the parking lot and sending a cloud of dust rising in his wake.
“There he goes,” I practically shout. “Follow him.”
“I’m not following that viejo,” she says, keeping her gaze straight ahead. We go back and forth, me telling her to pull over and she refusing to do so, until I start gathering my grocery bags, and when she sees that I’m about to jump out of the Jeep, she pulls over.
“You better hurry up, or I’m going to leave,” she says.
I zigzag around cars and trucks and make my way across the parking lot, gravel crunching under my flip-flops as I go. I watch him step out of his truck and then stand there, holding on to the door as if he were catching his breath. He’s reaching for something on the seat when I come up behind him.
“Quiubo, Don Jose,” I say in an exaggeratedly deep voice. He turns around and when he sees me, a big smile spreads across his face.
“¿Cuándo llego?” he asks, throwing his shoulders back and attempting to stand tall, though he’s still holding on to the door.
“Apenas,” I say, setting the bags down on the gravel and giving him a hug and a kiss on the cheek. He pats the middle of my back with his free hand.
“How’s your hip?” I ask.
“It’s coming along,” he says. “I was wondering what happened to you. I just called Sonia this morning, but she didn’t know anything.”
I tell him how I had flown into Mexico City and had spent a few days visiting with a friend of mine, a journalist who lives in New York but spends his summers in Mexico City. How I had missed the overnight bus the day before, and so had had to wait an extra day, and had gotten into town just in time to come to the mercado with my mother.
“Your mother is here?” he says, stretching his neck up and scanning the cars behind me.
“Yeah, she’s down there near the river,” I say, and pick up the groceries, tell him that he might as well take them with him, and that I’ll be out tomorrow.
“Oh, why tomorrow?”
“Mi amá says she’s leaving for Chicago, so I’m going to spend the day with her.” I place the bags inside his truck, on the floor in front of the passenger seat, and notice the cane next to the gearshift.
“Is that your cane?” I ask.
“They gave it to me when I left the hospital, but I don’t like to use it,” he says. “If my body grows accustomed to it, my hip might not heal properly.”
“Maybe you should get rid of that horse,” I say, pointing out how this is the second time El Relámpago has nearly killed him, and how is it that the saying goes? Three’s a charm?
“A la tercera es la vencida,” he says.
“That’s right,” I say. “Well, I better go before mi amá leaves me.” I give him a quick hug and ask if I can borrow his cell phone, because I may be receiving a call on it. Before leaving New York, I had submitted a short story to a British literary journal that had expressed interest. Since I knew I was going to be in Mexico, and more or less off the grid, I had e-mailed the editor my father’s cell number in case they needed to reach me.
He hands me his cell phone and I run back across the parking lot. Once I’ve crossed the road, I turn around and see him making his way to the supply store. His hands are clutched in fists on either side of him and he’s moving slowly. With each step he takes, he looks as though he is apologizing to the gravel for treading upon it.
His cane is nowhere in sight.
* * *
A few days later, my father and I are kneeling shoulder-deep in the weeds that are sprouting like a green wildfire inside the horse run. A yellow plastic bowl sits between us.
“Is this a quelite?” I ask, holding up a weed I’ve just yanked from the ground. There are several plants that are very similar to quelites and he had told me to be careful, as some of those plants are poisonous.
“Those leaves are too round,” he says, taking one from the bowl and handing it to me. “You see how the leaves on this one are more jagged?” I inspect it. “And notice how it has a slightly red hue underneath and around the edges? That’s how you can tell it apart from the others.”
I’d never heard of quelites, but when my mother and I were at the mercado, I almost bought a bunch. The woman selling them had explained that they were a type of wild green, similar to spinach, but even more nutritious. “Don’t waste your money,” my mother said. “Those grow all over the place in La Peña. When you get out there, ask your father to show you.” They really were everywhere, sprouting along the side of the house, around the stable and the corral, and all along the edge of the dirt road that runs up to the mesa. I cut a few more, throw them in the bowl, and notice a woman who is carrying a basket enter from the other end of the horse run.
“Buenas tardes,” she says, giving me a nod as she walks past. My father tilts his hat, looks up, and when she sees him, she stops in her tracks.
“Jose? Jose Manuel, is that you?” She clutches her basket. “I thought you were dead.”
“Dead?” he says. “Where did you hear that?”
“In town,” she says. “Everyone was saying that your horse crushed you, left you lying by the river.”
“People are saying that because that’s what they would like, to see me dead. But as you can see, here we are, alive and kicking.”
“Ay, Jose, that’s not true,” she says, trying not to laugh.
“If it were up to the townspeople, I would have been dead years ago,” he says. “But the good thing is that it’s not up to them, but to God. The day He decides your number is up, a fly could land on your shoulder, kick you, and that would be the end of that corrido.”
She laughs and glances back at me.
“Is this your daughter?” she asks.
“Ey, she’s visiting from the other side.”
“That’s good that you come spend time with your father,” she says. “How do you like it here?”
“I love it,” I say, though I don’t trust my Spanish enough to try and explain why. To say how the sky here feels immense compared to New York, or how I love getting dirt under my fingernails because it makes me feel closer to home. Or that I love spending time with my father, how each day I spend with him feels stolen, like maybe he’s tricked destiny, keeps cheating death, just so that we can have a bit more time together. I’ve begun to think that maybe he is indestructible—that he just might outlive us all.
“How long are you staying?” she asks.
“I’m not sure. Maybe five or six months,” I say, though I’m leaving in four weeks, but I think it best n
ot to let anyone know what my plans are. When classes were winding down in May, I’d heard about a jailbreak at the Zacatecas Federal Prison. In the dark hours of predawn, a convoy of SUVs had pulled into the prison’s parking lot, and within five minutes had driven away, taking fifty-three inmates with them—all of whom were believed to be members of the most ruthless drug cartel in Mexico. I hadn’t thought much of the jailbreak at the time, and though nothing in town seems out of the ordinary, stories of people being picked up by SUVs and vanishing are already surfacing everywhere. Even my mother had warned me to be careful before leaving for Chicago.
“Five or six months?” she says, “that’s a good amount of time.” Her eyes come to rest on the bowl. “You guys are picking quelites, huh?”
“Ey,” my father says. “When this muchacha got here a few days ago, she said she wanted to pick quelites, so I brought her out here. ¿Cómo ve?”
“Está bien,” she says. “You just have to be careful. Some of these plants are poisonous.”
“Yeah, that would be rough,” he says. “Imagine? To spend the morning picking quelites, just to go and kick the bucket by the end of the day.”
She starts laughing, hugs her basket to her chest, and says she must be on her way.
“That woman is a widow,” my father says the minute she’s out of sight. He tells me that she’s from Tejones, the small neighboring ranch that sits on the other side of the river, and when she was first married, one of her daughters fell into the water well. “She was small, must have been about two or three years old,” he says, glancing over his shoulder as if to make sure the woman is gone. “Then her husband jumped in to save the daughter, and he drowned too.”
“They both drowned?” I practically shout, because I was expecting the story to have a happy ending, not suddenly take a turn for the worse.
“Ey,” he says. “They went together.”
“What an idiot,” I say. “Why didn’t he use a rope or something to anchor himself?”
“Who knows? I guess in the moment, he panicked, wasn’t thinking clearly.”
I throw another bunch into the bowl and he reaches in and pulls out a weed, shoots me a look.
“That’s kind of funny, that that woman thought you were dead, huh?”
“Ey,” he says. “People ask me all the time if I have a pact with the devil. They say, no Jose, you’ve escaped death so many times, how do you do it? You must have a pact with the Other One. But I tell them, it’s just Diosito that watches over me.” He throws another bunch into the bowl. “That’s probably good enough,” he says.
I squat down next to him and he reaches up and places one hand on my shoulder. I grab onto his elbow and help him to his feet. He grunts as he pushes himself up. I pick up the bowl and we make our way back to the house, walking slowly, his hand holding on to my shoulder for support.
“When El Relámpago left me by the river, my leg was turned so far out that it looked like it wasn’t even attached to me anymore,” he says, taking a moment to catch his breath. “I knew I was hurt, knew I shouldn’t move, but I dragged myself away from the water because I also knew that if the rain continued, it was only a matter of time before the river grew and gave me a free ride to the other side.”
22
EL CIEN VACAS
HE SITS IN HIS TRUCK, music blaring, eyes fixed on the horizon where gray clouds are burning like embers against the darkening sky. Earlier, we had gone to a mechanic’s to pick up a minivan my father was having fixed. The mechanic had just returned from Oaxaca, from visiting his wife’s family, and had offered us a cup of mescal that his father-in-law had made. It was super smooth and I had stopped at one cup because I could already feel it warming my veins, but my father had had a few more. “You have to be careful with this stuff, Jose,” the mechanic had said when we were leaving. “It has a way of sneaking up on you.”
Is that what happened? The mescal had snuck up on him? I had driven the minivan back home, following him on the main road, and he had stopped and picked up a six-pack before driving out of town. We hadn’t even reached the curve when he had already slowed to a crawl. This is probably the reason why he had survived so many crashes. Whenever he was drinking and driving, he drove so slowly that he might as well have been pushing his truck home. When we pulled up in front of the house, he had killed the engine, but the music was still blaring and he refused to get out of his truck. Rosario had taken one look at him and had gone inside, as if saying, he’s your problem now.
“Apá,” I call to him, but the music swallows my voice before it even reaches him. He’s looking straight ahead to where the donkey is tied to the mesquite where he left it in the morning. Though the donkey has gotten itself entangled in its own rope, I can tell my father is not looking at him but beyond him. He seems lost in his thoughts, in his music. Does he even remember that I’m here? I reach over him and grab what’s left of the six-pack off the seat, and notice the empties scattered on the floor of the truck. He doesn’t budge. I pull the keys from the ignition, and the minute the music stops, his head jerks up, as if he had just fallen asleep behind the wheel and has suddenly come to. His bloodshot eyes slide in their sockets, shift toward me, and refocus.
“Why did you turn off the music?” he mumbles.
“Because. It’s getting late. Come on. Let’s go put the donkey in the corral. He’s all tangled up down there.”
“How did he get down there?”
“You put him there. This morning. Don’t you remember?”
He shrugs, reaches for the ignition, and realizes he’s still holding a beer in his hand. He polishes off what’s left and throws the can on the floor. It clanks against the other empties, and he starts feeling around on the seat next to him.
“What happened to my beer?” he asks.
“I put it away,” I say, though I can feel the weight of it dangling from my index finger.
“Go bring me my beer,” he says.
“Apá,” I say. “If you don’t stop drinking, I’m going to leave.”
He glances at me and looks like he’s about to say something, but his face puckers up and he turns away. I had left once before due to his drinking. He had gone into town in the afternoon to run errands, and then at about 2:00 a.m., I had awoken to the sound of the drums and horns approaching from a distance. It was like listening to the fury of some long-ago nightmare drawing near. I should have never come back to this place, I thought then, as every molecule in my body stood at attention, listening as he pulled up in front of the house, knowing that it was only a matter of time before the first blast, and I’d wished with all my might that I could vanish. But there was no escaping. The only way out was through the courtyard, and what if I happened to step outside as he fired the first bullet? I might not be as lucky as him.
I had lain in bed staring into the darkness as one after another, his corridos came booming into the bedroom—the same corridos that had kept me up for hours when I was a child. I still knew them all by heart. The stories of men rigging railroad tracks and hijacking trains; men driving cargo across the border, only to discover that someone had put the finger on them; men who had faced the firing squad without ever betraying their dignity; men who had surrendered their life for the love of a woman; men who had fought in the revolution and died defending their country; men who had saddled their horses and set out with the first light of morning, riding full stride across the desert, not stopping to rest until they reached the border; men who took the gamble, took the law into their own hands—some won, some lost, and others lost it all.
After sitting in his truck for about half an hour, he peeled back out and left, his music fading in the distance as he went. When he still wasn’t back in the morning, I packed a small bag, thinking I’ll be damned if I’m going to wait around here for him to show up and turn my day into a living hell. I set out on foot, crossed the river, and waited for the 9:00 a.m. bus on the main road. I stood under the shade of the mesquite, trying to shake the sting of hi
s betrayal. It was the only rule, the unspoken rule—if he got drunk, I would leave. But then again, we had shared a few drinks here and there, so maybe the rule had been tarnished. Perhaps the exact spot where the line was drawn had begun to blur. I had taken his cell phone with me and had gone to Tito’s house, and for the next two days he was calling from Rosario’s phone morning, noon, and night. I had ignored his phone calls, then on the third day, he had Rosario send me a text: Chuyita, where are you? Your father says he is sorry. He’s not going to drink anymore. And where are you so he can go and pick you up. I let one more day pass before calling him back.
He’s staring at the steering wheel now and tears are streaming down his face.
“Apá, let’s go inside so that you can eat something,” I say. Food—this was my mother’s trick. She knew that if she could get him to eat something, he would lose his appetite for alcohol and pass out soon enough.
“Orita, orita, orita,” he mumbles. He reaches for the keys and realizes they’re no longer in the ignition. “Let me listen to one more song,” he says.
“And then you promise you’ll come inside and eat?”
He nods. I hand him the keys and go around the back of his truck, squat down, and stash the six-pack inside El Negro’s house before making my way across the dirt road, toward the donkey. Doña Consuelo is outside watering her plants.
“Your father has been drinking again, hasn’t he?” she says when I’m crossing in front of her gate.
“Ey,” I say.
“I heard the music and that’s how I knew. What are you going to do? Are you going to leave again?” I’m surprised she knows I had left before, though it seems everyone knows everything about everybody around here.
“No, it’s getting late, I’ll probably just stay here,” I say, though I don’t tell her that I feel somewhat responsible for this. That I should have knocked that cup out of his hand the minute he finished the first mescal. His tolerance is obviously not what it used to be. When he was younger he could go for two or three days without stopping.
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