“Okay,” Chad replied after thinking for a moment, “I’ll consider it. But I want to know you’re dealing in good faith. I’d like to see the plane and meet the pilot.”
“Certainly.” The mayor thrust out his hand. “You can’t blame us for falling in love with you and your little family.”
Chad accepted the handshake. Just touching the mayor’s hand felt like consenting to a communicable disease. Damned politicians. It was always a mind-fuck with those guys.
Salt Lake County Fairgrounds
Salt Lake City, Utah
Francisco stared out the window of his luxury motorhome. A Latino woman, probably Mexican, carried two buckets of brown water from the Jordan River. A little boy followed, stopping occasionally to squat down to look at rocks or bugs, then scampering to catch up.
This could be a scene from Ciudad Juarez in the early eighteen hundreds. We have regressed more than a hundred years in two weeks, Francisco thought, watching the woman.
The history of the moment weighed on him. This land, which he had begun to think of as “Northern Mexico,” would be defined by great men who rode a wave of power to justice.
Francisco didn’t think of his father very often. His papa had died before Francisco became a man—taken by an industrial accident at the recycling center where he worked. When Francisco became a great man—a great revolutionary—his father would be proud.
Again, it felt like the Fates touched the chords of his mind. The import of this moment resonated in his soul. Francisco had been placed here, with an army at his command, like Francisco Pancho Villa. He knew he possessed the vision and the intellect to accomplish something historical. The decisions he made now would make history, perhaps for all time.
Someone knocked, the RV door rattling.
“Come in.”
Bastardo, the lieutenant he had placed over the fairgrounds, entered the RV with another man behind him. “Buenos dias, Jefe. This is Alberto Romero. He’s a maintenance manager for the Jordan Valley Water Company.”
The men shook hands, an interesting exchange because, two weeks ago, a respected man like Romero probably wouldn’t have been caught dead with a felon like Francisco.
“Señor Romero brought me some ideas about what we can do to improve the conditions for our people. We have some problems that are causing people to leave.”
“What kind of problems?” Francisco grew impatient. How could minor problems with the camp compete with planning the upcoming offensive against Oakwood? But Francisco respected Bastardo’s opinion, and he owed him consideration.
Alberto Romero answered, “The Jordan River collects almost all the surface pollutants from the Salt Lake Valley. People here are drinking the raw sewage of everyone defecating near every stream, river and canal in all of Salt Lake. Almost everyone drinking water out of the Jordan River is sick here, no matter how much we filter or boil it, because the water is heavily polluted. We would have to fully distill it to make it close to safe, and distillation requires an enormous amount of fuel and effort.”
Bastardo chimed in because he could see Francisco becoming frustrated with the bad news.
“Francisco, we’re also running out of wood to boil water or cook food. We’ve torn down every wood building on the fairgrounds and all the homes around us. I’ve done an inventory of our food and we have about two weeks’ supply of food. We’re feeding about three thousand people right now. So far, the caca still goes down the toilets, but I don’t know how long the toilets will keep working. Mister Romero says the sewage will soon start to back up and overflow.”
Romero, used to being the expert, continued with the thought without allowing Francisco to comment. “The sewage is already backing up in parts of the city, and that’s partially why the Jordan River’s more polluted than normal.”
“So what do you suggest?” Francisco interrupted. He wanted solutions, not problems.
“I recommend you abandon this camp,” Romero said.
“Hijo de puta,” Francisco swore. “Where would we go?”
Bastardo could see his boss losing patience, so he took over the conversation. “We could move closer to the mountains. We could get away from the city, maybe a rural town near a stream where we can get clean water, where we can grow food in the spring. We have the laborers: farmers, mechanics, builders. If the world keeps going this way, we can grow food and trade it with the city. Soon, food will be the only money that matters. We can control the food, Francisco. The Latinos are the only people in the valley who still know how to work with their hands.”
Francisco and Bastardo’s friendship went way back, all the way back to when they were snot-nosed teenagers stealing bikes downtown. He and Bastardo were O.G., Original Gangsters. Two of the first Norteños in Salt Lake City, they had founded Los Latigos together. He owed Bastardo, but this conversation was trying Francisco’s patience. He had a war to win.
“Where would we go?” Francisco asked again.
Alberto Romero opened a map from his back pocket. “We’ve picked three possible towns. Each one is close to Salt Lake City. Each one has a year-round stream. And each one has grain silos that should be full this time of year.”
Bastardo took over, sponsoring the idea, even though he knew it was a hard sell. “Francisco, the town of Malad is just an hour north of here. We can join the town and control the I-15 Freeway, maybe even charge a toll for anyone driving through. Or south of here, we can go to the town of Nephi. It has a stream coming out of this mountain, here.” Bastardo ran his finger down the canyon that supplied ground water to Nephi.
“Or we can join the town of Tremonton,” said Romero. “It’s closer to Salt Lake and grows maize—corn for cattle. All of these places are clean, and we could easily move in and offer a deal to the townspeople: work with us and we’ll provide security and labor.”
“Think about it, Francisco. We could have an entire town for Latinos, a place where we make food for the whole region, from Salt Lake City all the way down to Saint George. The only people in this city who know how to work nowadays are Latinos. Work is our weapon. We could own everything. We could trade food for land, food for buildings, food for houses. And food will never be worth more than it will be worth over the next year. The white people will trade everything they own for a little maize or wheat in the coming weeks. We would become rich and it would be honest money.”
His words were pregnant with an unspoken truth between them. But Bastardo couldn’t say it with a stranger in the room. At our age, shouldn’t we be living honestly?
“Give me the chance to talk to these towns, Francisco. Let me see if they’ll work with us. Every one of these towns is being overrun with people fleeing from Salt Lake. We can protect the towns from being flooded by starving people. Los Latigos can handle security—man their roadblocks. We can bring them the medicine we’ve captured. We can provide labor for the fieldwork come spring. I just need two days to talk to them and strike deals. Two days, Francisco.”
Bastardo looked up from the map, praying Francisco would see reason. He knew Francisco planned to attack another neighborhood soon. If they were ever going to retire from the thug life, this would be the time.