In an instant he stood, reached under his jacket, jerked his automatic from its holster, and fired two quick shots in my general direction. But I’d known it was coming and I had my Smith & Wesson in my hand before the shooter even got to his feet.
He pumped one long spurt of blood right through the hole I’d shot in his forehead, then slumped to the barroom floor.
“Ah, Jesus, Nelson,” Hildegard spat at me. “Jesus Christ, why’d you have to do that?”
“You saw him,” I shouted, “you saw him grab his gun! What the fuck was I supposed to do?”
I watched as Maruca ran back through the beads, no doubt to vanish upstairs so she could tell the coppers that she’d missed the whole thing.
In a few seconds the bar was empty. I could hear car engines turning over and tires screeching as a half-dozen drunks and their passengers tried to back out of the dusty parking area without turning on their headlights before heading back into town, or out toward the shacks where they rented beds by the week. Hildegard was on the phone and two or three minutes later I could hear sirens coming from the direction of town.
I sat back on my barstool and finished my drink. I slapped down a few bills to cover the costs and then stood and headed toward the door.
The sirens got closer.
“Buenas noches, Hildegard,” I called out. “Say goodnight for me to Maruca.”
The dead man’s Studebaker was still parked in the dusty lot. I thought about shooting out a couple of the tires for practice, but on second thought left it.
I got in the Plymouth, turned the key, and stomped on the gas till the motor caught. As I headed down Riverside, I looked in the rearview mirror. A squad car, siren loud and red lights flashing, turned into the parking lot. I lit a Chesterfield and tuned the radio to a Mex station out of Salinas. Some Trio Los Panchos tune was playing.
It Follows Until It Leads
by Dillon Kaiser
San Juan Road
My papa died when I was a baby, shot in the crossfire between the cartel and the police.
This, I only heard from my mama, later. What a way to die, I always thought — innocent and found by a bullet not meant for you.
Mama worked the streets, but she had tried to raise me better, tried to keep me in school. It did not work. The wary respect I was given, with a gun in my hand, was intoxicating.
The police found Mama blindfolded in the trunk of a car, tied up, her throat cut. I was seventeen, and hadn’t seen her in years when this happened. By then, I had already risen from a charoliar, a wannabe, to a halcón, a lookout runner. I was twenty when I became a narco soldado, a soldier of the cartel de Arellano Felix and the right hand of pez gordo, a big boss. Arellano Felix was all I knew, all any of us knew in Tijuana. If you were ruthless, if you were smart, if you were loyal — Arellano provided.
I was ruthless, and I was smart. The loyalty? Love changes a man.
The gun on the kitchen table is not mine. Yet there it lies, insisting upon its own fealdad, its ugliness. Infecting my home. Sunlight streams through the window above the sink where Martha has set a vase of flowers and glints upon the gun. It breeds disease. And there, on the table next to my daughter Lupe’s doll, the disease spreads.
The gun is not mine. Worse, it is my son’s.
Se sigue.
“Get it away from the doll, eso infecta,” I say. Martha raises her eyebrow. Perhaps I have said a crazy thing, but I cannot think with the gun so close to Lupe’s doll. “Por favor.”
I look away. Out the window, green berry fields stretch to the hills beyond. The cultivated rows are identical to the ones I hunched over sweating and picking just hours ago. My hands still ache, the fingers throbbing and slow to uncurl unless I will them. Martha purses her lips. She lays the gun on a dishtowel, checks the safety, wraps it, and carefully sets it on the chair beside her. She glances at me, her mouth so small I fear it will not open again.
“Luis,” Martha says.
I gaze into her eyes, wide and watering. A kitchen chair creaks in protest, resisting my heavy body. I heave myself into it. This life — I’m soft now, no longer the jefe’s right hand. I’m simply Papa, and I am happy. Was happy, until this moment. I wonder how my son caught the sickness.
“Luis,” Martha says again, and sits herself beside me. My hands tremble, and I thrust them beneath the table. She sees, but I pretend she does not.
“Where did you find it?” My voice coarse and hushed.
“Out back. In the shed. I knocked over a box on the shelf. It was in the box, Luis. Loaded. I checked. You said you’d never have one again, ever.”
“I know.” I tell myself to look down. To be ashamed. Bien. Maybe I can fool her after all. Just to buy time. All I need is time to think.
“Talk to me,” she says. “Just tell me. Why?”
The sunlight washes over me, and dust floats in the empty space, at peace. In the stillness, the refrigerator rattles to life. Beneath letter-shaped magnets our pictures cover the outside: Juan on his first day of school. Me and Martha after she got her license. (The test, all in English, was a mountain we climbed together.) Juan holding Lupita after she was born (so tiny she was, and Juan, so proud to hold her).
“After that day. We needed protection, just in case.”
She shakes her head. “But loaded, Luis? It’s not like you.”
I bang my hand on the table. “So I made a mistake! I cannot make mistakes? I was a tarado, I left it loaded!”
Her eyes widen again. They have seen something terrible. They have seen the truth. My theatrics pushed too far. A gasp escapes her, and her hand flies to cover her mouth. She presses her hand tight over her lips, as if the knowledge is airborne, and if only she does not breathe she will not know. She pushes herself backward, chair scraping the floor, and she is on her feet. Not saying a word, her eyes pleading, No, no. Tears spill down her cheeks.
“Talk to him. Now,” she says.
I stand and turn from her, my boots heavy on the floor, softer on the carpet down the hall toward Juan’s room. The music from one of his video games thumps through the wall. He told us he bought the speakers, the TV, the clothes, all from the money he made stocking shelves at the grocery store after school. I wonder when he became a better liar than me.
In front of his room my hand floats above the doorknob. If I open it, I do not know what will follow me inside. But too late for that. Time now to speak to my son of death.
Se sigue.
A policeman shot Arellano at a traffic stop, of all things. Arellano drew on the officer first, and in seconds both men lay dead on the road. The cartel fell into chaos after that, the narcos like chickens running around with their heads lopped off, or roosters fighting to dominate. Allegiances formed. Killing. Choosing a side was important. And I did not choose.
When Martha told me she was pregnant with Juan, I told her to pack her things. She looked at me in shock, in doubt. We had never thought the idea possible. But her face soon hardened into stone. She would go. For us, for her family.
We went north to Watsonville, a town with a community and work for Mexicanos. Hard work, picking the fields or cleaning. But we found friends. Lived with them, worked with them. I had some money left from my old life. Not much, but enough to help us create a new life.