Mules:: A Novel

by Jarred Martin

  “It does seem strange. But we don’t have a lot of options. He’s offering to help us, I think we should let him.”

  “Yeah, let him help us. Let him take us to a motel. Tomorrow we can call him and get the tow truck, get your car. But we don’t need to stay with him.”

  Neesha looked at the stranger. “Is there a motel or someplace you could take us to?”

  He looked insulted. “A motel? You think that would be better than staying with me? There aren’t any motels around here. Besides, I think you’d get into trouble if I left you alone. But my offer is this: you come with me tonight, I help you leave tomorrow. Or you stay here and figure it out for yourself. I’d choose the first option if I were you.”

  Neesha thought a moment and sighed. “Well, that’s not much of a choice. But, okay, it looks like we’re coming with you.”

  “Excellent.” He smiled.

  Neesha looked over at Els. She was clearly unhappy about having to rely on this stranger, but Neesha knew she would follow her wherever she went.

  The stranger held out his hand. “My name is Seve, by the way.”

  “Hi, Seve, I’m Neesha, and this is Els.”

  “Okay, Neesha and Els. I’m glad to meet you. I think we’re going to have a lot of fun together.”

  “I’d settle for a hot shower and a quiet place to sleep.”

  “We can have that too,” he said.

  They picked up their bags and walked through the bar. The bearded man and his friends were still at their table and they lowered their eyes as Seve and the two Americans went by.

  Out in the parking lot, the drunk was snoring, passed out under the stars, over the sparkling shards of glass.

  Seve pulled out his keys and unlocked the trunk of a black Lexus, a vehicle that was as distinct among the old pickups and beat-up cars as his wardrobe was among jeans and plaid shirts.

  It was new and surprisingly clean for something driven on dirt roads.

  “This is yours?” asked Neesha, staring into the heavily waxed finish, the black paint gleaming in the night.

  “You love it, don’t you? I can tell. It’s why I bought it. Women really like this car. It’s very sexy.”

  “It’s alright,” Neesha shrugged.

  Seve smiled at her from around the side of the car. “It’s just alright?”

  “Yeah, it’s alright.” Neesha reached for the door handle and Seve hit the LOCK button on his key chain before she could open it. “What the fuck, man?”

  “I can’t let you ride with me.”

  “What? Why not?”

  “I don’t think you appreciate it. All you can think of to say when you see this beautiful machine is ‘it’s alright?’ I think you can do better than that.” His grin widened, Neesha could see he was trying to be playful, flirting. She really wasn’t in the mood after the night she’d had, but she played along anyway. What the hell.

  “Okay.” She reached out and ran her hand slowly over the edge of the hood. “What do you want to hear? Should I tell you that this slick black beast looks like it has the power of a herd of wild stallions, but the comfort of a luxury car on the Orient Express. It perfectly balances the line between sophistication and performance. Refined, yet powerful. Let’s hope the seats are absorbent, because just standing next to this sexy motherfucker is giving me a major wet-on. How’s that?”

  There was a loud CHUNK as Seve hit the UNLOCK button.

  Neesha opened her door and saw a white pitbul sitting in the passenger seat.

  “That’s Karlstad. He’s my buddy. Watch out, he’s a killer,” said Seve climbing behind the wheel. He grabbed the dog around the collar and pulled him out of the seat. “Go sit in back, Karlstad.” The dog climbed into the back seat beside Els he sniffed her and then curled up next to her.

  “He seems like a sweetheart to me,” said Els as she stroked his head. She looked closely at his face, a mass of scars barely visible beneath the white fur. “Oh my God, he’s all chewed up. What happened?”

  “He gets in fights,” said Seve, not bothering to turn around. “But don’t feel sorry for him. Like I said, he’s a killer.”

  They pulled out of the parking lot and sped away down the dirt road, windows down, blaring awful Mexican rap, a feeble clone of urban American culture that it seemed no other society could attempt without coming off as desperately cornball.

  Seve looked over at Neesha in the passenger seat, the faintest gleam of attraction in his eye. “Did you mean what you said earlier? About the car?”

  Neesha smiled at him and then she broke into laughter. “Oh, honey, that’s from a commercial.”

  Seve laughed too. “Americans. You watch too much TV.”

  “Yeah, it’s the cultural touchstone. My English professor says it killed literature.”

  “Do you like to read?”

  “Fuck no. If there was anything worth reading they would have turned it into a reality show by now. Besides, all the best books are already movies.”

  SIXTEEN

  Her fingers were splayed, stretched above the piano keyboard. They came down and her left hand landed in an octave position, fingers one and five straddling every note between B3 and B2 while her right hand fingered the melody. The keyboard, an innocuous grin, silent beneath her fingertips. The only sound a dull tapping of dead keys while the bench creaked beneath her. She pounded her fists against the keys, neglecting chord or scale, desperate to produce any sound at all. She closed her eyes in frustration and when she opened them the keyboard had changed.

  The ivory had yellowed and grown narrow, crooked and asymmetrical, coming to uneven jagged ends, the ebony keys had sunk in to become gaps of decay. The smile was not so innocuous now. Now this piano was sharp. Every note was sharp and none of them were natural.

  The piano roared: a grisly rumbling sound like the earth splitting apart.

  She leaped back, knocking over the piano bench, but there was nowhere to run.

  The sharp notes had her. The keys bit into her. Hot blood splashed over the yellow fangs as they wrapped around and bit into her side. An explosion of sharp pain a few inches above her hip, teeth digging into the excess fat there. The teeth were chewing, boring into her.

  Somewhere the Moonlight Sonata played and she screamed.

  Eliana came awake, half conscious, the room spun in spirals of nausea all around her. She felt a surge of vomit rising and she shifted heavily to one side to let it out. Someone had placed a plastic bucked beside her bed and she emptied her stomach into it and it hit the bottom with a sickening wet splatter.

  She rolled over onto her back again. The light was too much, it was the only thing cutting through the roiling haze that had enveloped her. She shut her eyes.

  For a long time she didn’t know where she was.

  She was in bed, that was where she was.

  What bed?

  Not your bed.

  No, this bed was not hers.

  But it was a bed. She was sure of that.

  Pain. There was pain now. It was the dullest of aches calling from someplace far away, but the more awake she came, the louder the pain screamed. It screamed at her until she wanted to cover her ears, but that was not where the pain was. It was coming from her side.

  Where am I?

  Her hand trailed down her body to the source of the pain, maybe if she could find it she could push it back down so deep inside of her she wouldn’t have to feel it anymore.

  She heard the lion roaring. Her father’s lion. It was the sound of her piano in a dream she had already forgotten.

  She felt along her side with delicate fingers.

  She was more and more awake now, groggy. She felt drunk, but it was a very bad kind of drunk, a very sick feeling drunk. Her mind was numb and her body felt beat up.

  Her exploring fingers brushed against something sticking out of her side. A familiar sensation, stiff bristles growing out of tender flesh.

  She didn’t open her eyes, couldn’t open her eyes to look. The
light.

  She had felt this before. When she was little she cut herself. She cut her leg playing in a ditch. The brown water had washed the blood away and she had stared down into the deep gash, fascinated by the pink pulpy flesh that was just beneath her. Then the wound filled with blood again and she started crying.

  They closed it up. That’s what this felt like, stitches. She remembered the skin where the stitches had gone into her like shoelaces, it had turned hard and dry, itching, and then a scar.

  This was like that, on her side. But there were too many. When she cut her leg she had maybe four or five stitches, now it felt like there were hundreds, poking up harshly through her flesh.

  What did they do to me?

  It was swollen. A huge hump of something she couldn’t bear to touch. Something bulging inside of her. Under her skin.

  They put something inside of me and sewed me back up.

  My God what did they do to me?

  SEVENTEEN

  Els woke up in a guest bedroom on the second floor of a massive hacienda with the sheets and bedspread wrapped around her legs. She hadn’t slept well. Sleep had never come to her easily, even in a place as comfortable as this. She sat up and looked at Karlstad, who had wandered in some time during the night and climbed into bed with her. He lifted his head and yawned before laying it back down again.

  She got out of bed and put on a soft cotton robe that was hanging on the closet door. Last night Seve had said that his home was no resort, he was right, she thought, glancing out the window that overlooked an elaborate courtyard and pool, this was much nicer.

  Karlstad followed her through the halls, toenails clicking against the tiles. They went downstairs and she had to explore a bit before she found Seve and Neesha in the kitchen.

  Seve was wearing an apron and using a spatula to poke at a skillet of peppers and eggs.

  Neesha sat at the kitchen island before a half-eaten plate of toast, staring intensely into the screen of her phone.

  “Good morning,” said Els, taking a seat across from her. “How’s your knee?”

  Neesha didn’t look up from her phone. “Oh my God, he has wifi. I don’t think I’ve ever gone this long without checking my Twitter feed.” She pointed to her plate. “There’s toast too. I didn’t even know Mexicans ate bread. I though they only ate tortillas, or whatever. But look, bread!”

  Seve turned his attention away from the skillet long enough to shake his head disapprovingly, “That’s what happens when you get your view of the world from Speedy Gonzales cartoons. If you looked up from your phone, I bet you’d be shocked to discover that the person talking to you right now isn’t wearing a bandoleer and a sombrero.”

  “What’s a bandoleer?” asked Neesha, pointedly not looking up from her phone. “I know it’s something you wear, but what is it? Like sandals?”

  “Ask your friend, she seems smart,” said Seve. “She probably knows enough not to think of Mexico as a nation of landscapers practicing for the big leagues in America. Someday, Lord. Someday when I can afford a rake and a hoe of my own. . .”

  “Don’t listen to Martin Luther Califa over there,” said Neesha. “Like his rich ass ever raked anybodies yard. Do you know what a bandoleer is?”

  “It’s a belt that you wear across your chest,” Els explained. “It has rifle ammunition. Although modern rifles have high capacity magazines that make bandoleers unnecessary.”

  “I’m impressed,” said Seve.

  “She grew up on a farm, that’s how she knows stuff like that. She told me she could milk a cow without using her hands, too.”

  Els’ face turned red. “I never said anything like that. I didn’t grow up on a farm, either.”

  “Too bad,” Neesha shrugged. “He’s rich. If he would have believed you maybe you could have got some jewelry out of him.”

  Seve set two plates of peppers and eggs in front of the girls and sat down next to Neesha.

  “I don’t want any, thanks.” Said Els. She pushed the plate away. “When can we leave?”

  Neesha and Seve exchanged a look.

  “We’re not,” Neesha said, she brought a forkful of eggs up to her mouth. “At least not right away. Seve has offered to let us stay here. Isn’t that nice?”

  “That’s right,” said Seve. “Stay as long as you like. You’re my guests. Anything you want, it’s yours.”

  “What about the hotel?” Asked Els.

  “Fuck the hotel. Seve said he would give us the real Mexican experience. That sounds better than getting drunk by a pool in some fenced off green zone for rich people for the next two weeks, doesn’t it?”

  “Not really, no. Since when are you interested in the ‘real Mexican experience,’ anyway? You haven’t had a single nice thing to say about this country since we got here.”

  “Probably since the rich guy asked me to stay in his mansion. Look around you. This place is fucking baller. How could you want a single room in a hotel, that we have to share, mind you, instead of this?”

  Els frowned deeply. “What about your car?’

  “We’re going to go get it after breakfast. Right Seve?”

  “Yeah. I already called the guy with the truck, he said we can use it. We can take the car to a mechanic and body shop and have any damages fixed. It won’t cost you anything.”

  “But why?” Els asked. “Why are you doing all this?”

  Seve shrugged. “I get lonely? And why not. I’m a nice guy, you know? You seem fun. We’ll have a good time, I promise.”

  Els looked at Neesha, eating eggs, careless, oblivious really. She wasn’t happy about this new situation. After all they had been through in the last two days Neesha seemed almost eager to put herself in even more danger. She wished she could explain it in a way that Neesha wouldn’t shrug off and tell her she was just being a wet blanket. Everything about Seve set alarms off in her head. There was something sleazy about him, his attitude, the way he flaunted his wealth. If she couldn’t see past it and Els wouldn’t be able to make her see it, then she had no choice but to try and protect her.

  “So?” asked Neesha. “What do you think?”

  Els wondered briefly if Neesha had slept with Seve after she went to bed last night. She put the thought out of her mind.

  “You said last night that you weren’t ready to leave, remember?” Neesha offered.

  “Yeah, I guess I did,” said Els. “So it looks like we’re staying.” She tried not to sound as defeated as she felt.

  Neesha squealed with delight. She dropped her fork and reached across the kitchen island to put her arms around Els. “We’re going to have the best spring break ever. You won’t regret it.”

  “I hope that’s true.”

  EIGHTEEN

  Two hours later they were in an ancient tow truck with peeling paint and huge spots of rust that spread out like an infected wound, heaving along the desert road near where they lost the car. They got the truck from a shirtless man whose bulging belly sagged below his waistline. He seemed drunk and the collection of empty beer cans in the yard outside his mobile home confirmed it. When he spoke, it was in a roaring slur but mostly he communicated with hand gestures while Seve explained why they needed his truck. Once a woman wearing only an oversized undershirt poked her head out the trailer door to yell at the fat man and he cocked the can of beer he had been drinking back as if he were preparing to throw it at her, but it seemed unlikely that he would be willing to part with what was left in the can, even in anger. Seve must have trusted the fat man, because he left his car with him.

  They bounced along, windshield pointed to the sun which, even before noon, was blazing and pushing the inside of the cab toward oven temperatures.

  This is the real Mexican experience, Neesha, thought Els. We’re roasting alive, hope you’re getting a thrill.

  Seve slowed the truck down when they got to a spot both girls decided looked familiar.

  “It’s definitely around here somewhere,” Said Neesha, a stiff hand act
ing as a visor against the sun as she squinted, scanning the dust for a sign of a her car.

  He turned the truck off the road and the ride became that much more uncomfortable as they drove out into the desert. They road for a long time without seeing anything familiar, long enough for Els and Neesha to both second guess their navigation, or maybe the endless flat desert had simply swallowed the car up, anything was possible.

  And then suddenly. . .

  “This is it,” Neesha called out. “This is the ditch where we crashed.”

  Seve slowed to a crawl and drove along the edge of the ditch. The car was nowhere to be seen.

  “Are you sure?” asked Seve. “A lot of this can look the same, especially at night.”

  “Yeah. Stop the car. Look! Thats where we ran off. Right there. The ground’s all fucked up where we crashed.”

  Seve stopped the truck. They got out to examine the spot. The ground was indeed fucked up and there were discernible tire marks leading down into the embankment. They got out and Els found a broken shard of the bumper in the ditch, the scratched and unmistakable shade of red was evidence that the car had been there. But the question was: where was it now?

  Neesha had to sit down, it was either that or collapse onto the desert floor. She leaned back on the floorboard of the truck with her legs hanging out the door, cradling her head in her hands as she was suddenly assaulted by a barrage of questions she couldn’t begin to answer- among them: How the fuck am I going to get home? How the fuck am I going to explain this to my parents? She thought she might remember putting her passport in the glove compartment, but she couldn’t be sure. She wondered about all the other things of varying degrees of importance she had left in the car. She couldn’t imagine what had been left behind. Her response to all this was a low, defeated, “FU-UCK.”

  Els listened to her moaning inside the cab. She didn’t know what to say to Neesha. She had a momentary instinct to tell her everything was going to be all right, but she was having a hard time deciding what aspect of this actually was all right.