by Frank Bill
With a baked hide and a cast-iron jawline, Ernesto told Manny in a matter-of-fact voice, “When we left the regime, I took what I wanted, knowing I’d never be accountable for it. Thought maybe one day it would be of use.”
With black bandanas over their heads, Chub and Minister squeezed Manny’s shoulders and spoke at the same time, “And that day has come, big brother.”
Looking to the truck bed, Ernesto asked, “And of what use are these scavengers you’re hauling around like burlaps of grain?”
“That’s what we will be transporting. They’re our bait.”
“Bait?”
“For the King, they carry his weight.”
Ernesto’s eyes went dental-floss thin. “Weight? You mean drugs?”
“Yes, drugs. We need to find someplace without attention. Get them rigged up with the explosives.”
Ernesto smiled. “Manny, my friend, there is no length of harm I would not endure or commit for you.”
“Nor I for you, brother, nor I for you.” And Chub told him, “We should get before someone gets curious to our actions.”
Manny nodded. “To the border.”
Each piled into their vehicles, shifted into gear, and headed down the scorched road while eyes watched from the cantina.
* * *
The sun leveled behind the massive expanse of dirt that climbed, wilted, and dropped as far as their eyes could take them. One man after another stepped across the corroded strands of barb that separated the two territories.
Taking to the open space of heat, the peasants wore faded and hole-pierced ball caps, their locks at odd inches. Wrung by fear and stink, they mustered the packs that held in them bricks of marijuana laced with a sharpening-stone-sized piece of C4. Manny carried the cassette-sized box that would signal each of the plastic’s detonation just as he and Ernesto had done when an obstruction needed moving or ordnances needed banishment.
They’d studied several maps, Manny, Ernesto, Chub, and Minister, explaining to Cotto as they inked terrain, coordinates, and miles to be taken by foot what they were doing, knowing in the recesses of their minds, as they walked with hunter-green packs walling their spines with water, ammo, and other supplies of need for their trek, where they’d go and how long and far they’d navigate by booted foot with pistols clipped down their sides, keeping eyes abound, searching the distance for the unwanted shapes while heat baked moisture from their pores. Manny’s crew kept themselves blended in with the others. Wearing ball caps and ragged denim, they wrung up next to one another like germs to flesh. Each carried a jug of water brought by Ernesto and tied to their waists or their packs.
Several days by foot is what it would take them, until they were within two miles of the pickup location, then Manny’d dial the number in the phone, give the heads-up to the person who’d phone the drivers to navigate them to a safe house and then to the Midwest for work—at least that was supposed to be the plan. But Manny knew better.
Dark surrounded the travelers as they made their first stop for rest when they entered the hills, below a ridge of stone walls that’d been eroded by weather and hardened by time. Peasant walkers sat or leaned on rock with their weighted rucks, men, women, and children who chewed fear of the unknown, trying to imagine their inhabitance within the foreign surroundings. Working the jobs spoiled Americans would not, for a weekly wage that was more than they’d earn in a month south of the border.
“Siéntense. Siéntense,” Manny told them, motioning with one hand while holding a flashlight with the other; Cotto stood by his father, without a hint of smile, his thoughts trashed with images of his mother’s insect-infested torso and the man who’d robbed her from him, but not her memory.
The men sat, shielding their families, afraid to make eye contact with Manny. “Don’t hold any concern of danger for me. I will get you to safety. This I promise.” Pointing to the men’s packs, Manny told them, “But when I tell you to drop your rucks, you drop them. Disperse. Comprenden?”
He was laying the salt lick. Offering them a hint of trust. A warm hand in a cold environment.
Each peasant looked at the other, then made eye contact with Manny and said at the same time, “Sí, sí.”
Trust, it was the first thing Manny had preached to Cotto. If men trust you, see what lengths of sacrifice you’ll offer or go to for them, they’ll die for you. Even if it’s a lie.
Ernesto, Chub, and Minister walked the perimeter in search of unwanted movement. Ernesto came light-footed to Manny. “In the distance, I see lurkers signaling with lights.”
“Head count?”
“Two by my count, one in the north, one in the east.”
“Any vehicle movement?”
“None that I’ve spotted.”
“How far?”
“Several hundred yards.”
But Manny kept his eyes peeled also. “There is at least one following us.”
Lifting his eyebrows with surprise, Ernesto questioned, “And you know this how?”
“Through my field glasses, I noticed a small glimmer, a shadow of human with something of reflection, glass or silver, when we stopped to drink.”
“What do you make of it?”
Manny smirked. “I’ll let you know.”
Manny turned to the peasants, glared at each man, and turned back to Ernesto. “I’ve assured these people we’d get them delivered.”
Ernesto said to Manny, “And you’re a man of your word.”
“We need to keep distance from whoever it is, pretend we’ve no idea they’re here until we have to do what we were trained to do.”
Ernesto nodded. “I’ll keep lookers on them, you rest a bit longer and I’ll check back with intel.”
Manny nodded back.
Cotto looked to Manny, he’d a 9 mm holstered down his waist. Twisted the lid from a plastic milk jug of water. Took a sip. Recapped it. Asked Manny, “You think these people Ernesto speaks of bring trouble?”
“Any time man, woman, or child treks across the desert alone there is concern for trouble. Stay close to me, my son, stay close.”
One of the peasants, a man whose jaws held pits and eyes irritated by allergies, approached Manny. “Thank you, sir. I appreciate what you do. Your honesty.”
Manny offered a hand. “Refer to me as Manny.”
The man reached. “And I am Ricco.”
They shook and Manny spoke, “You come to the U.S. for work?”
“Sí. Sí.”
“What is your skill?”
“Agriculture. NAFTA,” he said, “it came with a promise of better wages. Only thing it did was cut all good earnings throughout Mexico by two dollars on the hour.” Ricco held up his index and middle fingers. Smacked them into his left palm as he rocked back and forth. “The paper that was signed destroyed any worth our crops once had.”
Manny nodded. “No choice but to go north.”
Ricco nodded, too. “Sí. Sí.”
“More jobs. Better money.” Manny paused. “Go to the country that robbed you and your land of its yield.”
One of the other peasants said, “And now we have the cartels. They offer work. Good wage. But life expectancy is zero.”
Manny chuckled. “And who is the biggest customer for the cartels?”
Ricco and the others all looked at one another, lost. Manny said, “The U.S. It’s a conflict of interest, to kill the drug war, to eliminate the cartels, it would be to destroy Mexico’s economy and even much of South America’s, because that drug money is funneled back to the south.”
“And how do you know of such facts?”
“I worked for the government in Guatemala’s intelligence, I know the ins and outs of all economies and their downfalls.”
Chub and Minister returned. Chub asked, “Where is Ernesto?”
“He’s on watch. Spotted lights several hundred yards away.”
“To the east?”
“To the east.”
“What is the plan?”
�
�We wait and see what Ernesto tells. See if they’re holding positions or combing the desert for walkers.”
“Think it’s border patrol?”
“Not this far out. More than likely landowners.”
“Regulators of territory.”
“Yes, and you know as well as I the rumors that plague this land and those who own it.”
“They shoot first with no questions asked.”
“Many family members take the risk to come to America, only to disappear and never be heard from again.”
Ernesto returned, heavy in the lungs for air, telling Manny, “I think we should move on.”
The weight of water, ammo, and concern rang with their steps over the land as they moved amongst the bite of desert cold through the night. Keeping the peasants to the center, Cotto and Manny took the rear, where Manny could keep an eye on the tracker behind them. Ernesto and Chub led with Minister in the center, each of them blending in. Every so often they looked to their maps, swung out to a rougher, longer route, keeping distance while being very much aware of the small lights off to the east flickering every so often. Trying to distance themselves from the signaling, letting each other know they’d spotted nothing, as it was the same blinking pattern every twenty to thirty minutes.
By the breach of morning, the sky came upon on them with an oceanic glow of silence. Tired and weary eyed, Manny realized what they’d entered, what the signaling of lights had been doing, corralling them to this location, an area littered by crunched plastic bottles and jugs, discarded clothing, shards of jackets, socks and pieces of rag lay strewn about as though a tornado had ravaged the land, decried any trace of human that might have once existed. It was too late.
The air tapered with the piercing of sound and the rear of a peasant’s skull dispelled in chunks of hair, bone, and brain gore. Painting everyone around him to the ground with chaos, panic, and wild eyes.
Leaves overturned and mashed with the memory of that time and the sounds of what Cotto hunted now, twigs freshly broken and the hints of female tarred over the deep inhale of mossy air. Keeping his distance, Cotto tracked and spied upon the Sheldon girl, her scents clinging to his recognition, even though she was without bathing, her salty skin still held the hints of something soapy, a lotion-scented vapor masked by dread, exudation, and this crazed countryside of the ungodly. Still, it was female.
Cotto viewed her panic through telescopic glass: her cutting strides through the brush, being grazed by briar, marred by tree limbs that swelled her pigment when she ran, trying to get a grasp on direction until she collapsed to her knees, the gasp of lungs gripping for more air, quick glances in all directions. She sat gathering her wind, covering her mouth to silence her entwined cries of rage, depletion of oxygen, and all that she’d embarked on like a sudden collision at a traffic light.
Her inhale slowed its pace as her lungs wheezed less and less. Tears were wiped on the hem of her shirt, composure was gathered, and she found her footing, began to walk quickly, using curves of rooted tree to guide her balance until she took to running once more.
Yes, Cotto thought, yes. Lead me to this Van Dorn the same as a feral animal does to its burrowed young.
Every so often she’d slow or stop, glance around, keep watch to her left, then right, then behind her. Listen for the sounds of tread mashing over the leaflets and twigs, everything that coated the earthen woods.
Kneeling, she’d study the indentions within the land, how it had somersaulted, been disturbed or disrupted. Sometimes it was outgrowth from the shoed hooves of Dorn’s mule, Red. Other times a branch or the mold the two’s weight had left. It was assurance that she was following him. Then she’d take off on a jaunt, leap over the fallen circumferences of rot.
Cotto adjusted the rounded focus of his binoculars. Drew the Sheldon girl closer. Studied her every movement, the expand and depletion of her sides, her mannerisms within the woods that enclosed her. How she sniffed the air, touched things broken or out of place, how she calmed within the vegetation the farther she traveled. This girl knew the land. This is something that will be of great use, he thought to himself as he pulled his vial of powder from his pack, snorted quick and hard, gilled each nostril, tasted the drop of drainage falling down his throat. As he bared his teeth, the rush shadowed over him as he watched her nearing the Blue River that ran a glassy green with hints of brown below her. Watched her walk the road. Kneel to its left flank, finger the ground. Her prints sinking into the shapes left by the trespass of mule. But still no Dorn.
Cotto imagined his young soldiers becoming cunning and knowledgeable like Dorn and Sheldon, surveying the land, how to live from it. Survive. Knowing how to battle and maneuver with ease. Help map and rule. The very thought of these two transforming the young into hardened warriors clenched within his frame an unknown excitement. An addiction to rule.
Sheldon came to a T. Jogged left. Went toward the river. Down an embankment of rock, of assorted colors of smooth stone. Whites, muds, flints, and rust. She studied the water’s flow. Searched the opposite side, her head jutting up and down. With the glare of diamond-like sight, Cotto could see what the Sheldon girl was studying, taking in where Dorn’s creature had traveled upward, similar to the deer that had been tracked down the hillside, up past the small cut, and made it back up the hill at an angle. They each possessed a great trait, skill to be passed onto others. To hunt and yield what is feasible. Necessary with little or no time. Quick to react during times of duress.
When next Cotto looked at the Sheldon girl, she was gone.
The crushed powder that he sniffed was heightening his reaction to detail. Blinking hard and fast. Looking again, he watched her drift into the movement of the rippling water. Crossing at a knee-deep point. Watched her straddle the river, make it to the opposite side, her pants clinging to her legs as she wrestled through the outgrowth of weeds, briar, and small trees that wormed and curved. Then she scaled the grade. Reached its summit. Disappeared once more. Cotto lowered his binoculars, came quick from the road, waited by the stream, eyeing where to enter, then crossed and made his way up the mound of expired vegetation. Felt the heat in his joints and tendons, the burn of the climb.
At the top, with his heart binding and unbinding behind sternum bone, he reached one hand after the other to limbs, lifted himself up, and scaled an oak tree, perched hawk-like on a limb. Looked for the Sheldon girl. Seeing her in the far, but also hearing the silent unknowns. Crows. Sparrow. Red or gray squirrel. Marbled tans and whites of rabbit or deer.
There was the distant echo of gunfire that rimmed the land. Then nothing. Followed by another shot. Then silence.
The Sheldon girl slowed, took in the area, searched for camouflage, found a small enclave within the ground, and burrowed into the leaves to hide. Cotto waited for her to move. His mind a concaving rush of colors wilted and worn, colliding with daylight that began to shift its hue until darkness absorbed the entire forest.
Cotto switched his binoculars to night vision. Came down from the tree. Walked. Took careful steps to where the Sheldon girl lay. Moved as though he were a ghost. Kneeled beside her. Rested a hand down on her neck. Took in the rhythm of her breath that pushed from beating heart and expanding lungs. Calm. Lax. Unlike the jittering of his. Letting his sight adjust to the ravenous surroundings of wilderness that was nothing like his homeland. Feeling the build and dissipation of frame, an increase in pulse, her lids began to flutter, her arms jerked, the stomp of blood circulating within sped up, and she opened her eyes. Rose from the indention within the earth in a pant of suffocating fear.
But Cotto was gone.
By morning, Cotto sat vein-eyed and wired awake, holding the vial of powder. Tied himself to the tree that he’d climbed up. Watched Sheldon rise. She studied the woods, then took to the land once more. Came down the hillside above where Cotto’s men had been slaughtered. Where the deer had been gutted. In the rutted road the Sheldon girl kneeled to the patches of stain, glanced around. Took in a t
ree where a hand had been nailed, or what was left of the hand, blackened by heated rot and engrossed by insects.
Watching from a distance, Cotto smirked at this warning. His warning. He’d had one of his men nail the instrument for touch to the tree. Sheldon moved from the road, walked quickly. Cotto followed her stride for almost an hour. She stopped at a property line. Crossed an acre or more of field that once held nutriment but was now parched. From a tree, Cotto watched her bend, run her fingers over something in the field. Indentions of hooves, Cotto thought, a marking to let her know Dorn had traveled this direction. His nerves were tense. Where was this Dorn? Where and how did he keep distancing himself? He was like a fable, leaving traces of story but no shape.
Through the binoculars, Cotto took in her walking with concern from the field. Sheldon hesitated as she passed what looked to be two dogs or what was left of their bloated and scattered remains. Bone, hide, and graying bowels. She continued toward the monstrous home that sat on the opposite side. Studied two vehicles with hoods ajar. Parked in the faded driveway like monuments from a forgotten era with jumper cables intestining from one to the other.
From afar, Cotto was irritated, taking in the Sheldon girl’s nervous approach. There was no Dorn as she walked toward the mule that lay upon its side. Butchered. Her hand covered her mouth. It was Dorn’s mule, Red.
“An ass,” Cotto said under his breath. “Where is the one who rode and led you about?”
Sheldon looked to the porch. Viewed the strewn bodies, some blackened by blood, opened up by a sharp utensil or broken by gunfire. Adrenaline built within Cotto as he took in her cautious steps amongst the flies collecting and circle-eighting around the mule. Display yourself, Dorn, show me you’re a living, breathing warrior.
Sheldon stepped to the bodies that planked the porch like a house of real-life zombies. She seemed to have no fear, or little of it. Or maybe it was the desire to find Dorn.
