Bulletproof Vest (36 page)

“I've taken down so many cabrones and I don't regret a single one,” he says, staring at the steering wheel. “As far as I'm concerned, each one of those culeros got what they deserved. Except for my brother-in-law.” He presses his lips tight, trying to dam up the impossible tears.

Each time he has a drink or two, he starts talking about my uncle, and what a fine man he was, and how he wishes he had never pulled that trigger. But no amount of regret will bring my uncle back nor restore all those hours my mother spent locked away from us, practically barricaded behind her bedroom door after she returned from burying her brother. Nor will it ease her guilt. When I was here last summer, she and I had gone to visit my uncle's widow, and my mother had broken down, saying she was sorry she had ever married that man that had ended her brother's life. Perhaps we all carry a bit of my father's guilt, but ultimately, it's he who must bear the brunt of all he's done. He may have been released from jail, but as long as he's alive, he will be imprisoned by his past. Maybe this is why he's still alive: not because he keeps cheating death but rather because life refuses to let him go—he's not finished paying his debt here yet. Perhaps only in death will he be released from his suffering. The tears are streaming down his face, and he seems so broken, so powerless to help himself, and I want to take him in my arms and hold him for a long time, as if by doing so I could untangle him.

“Manuel was a fine black bull,” he says, crying even harder. “That one, yes. That one hurts. That one will weigh on me until the day I die. But other than that.” He catches his breath and taps twice on the dashboard. “El que se chingó, se chingó.”

 

23

HAILSTORM

 

 

WE SET OUT IN THE PITCH DARK
and ride in silence under the canopy of stars. It's a moonless morning, and there's nothing but the glow of my father's white shirt guiding the way in the distilled starlight. We meander up the narrow horse trail, which is overgrown with brambles. Thorny branches reach out of the darkness and scrape the top of my hat, snag my jeans as the horse's hooves slide and clack on the rocks below. The scent of wet earth hovers in the air as we ride toward the towering obscurity. Other than the sound of leather creaking and the occasional cock singing out in the distance, all is quiet and serene, and soon the stars are fading against the dawning light.

“There's a storm coming,” my father says when we reach the entrance to the ranch at daybreak.

“How do you know?” I ask. The notion of a storm seems impossible, as there isn't a single cloud in the sky.

“See that turtle?” He points to a turtle that has crawled out of the river and so far up the incline that it's practically at the entrance. “When we were kids, that's how we knew a storm was coming. The turtles move to higher ground.”

Must be some storm, I think, judging from the distance the turtle has put between itself and the river.

We go through the usual routine: The dogs help round up the cattle, and we hitch the horse and the donkey to a tree near the corral. My father fills the troughs with salt, and I find a shady spot and make us tortas for lunch.

“Did you see Chupitos?” he asks, taking a seat in the shade next to me. “She's in there with La Negra.” He motions to the corral, where the horns are visible above the stacked stones. Chupitos is the name he has given a calf that lost its mother when I was here last summer.

She and her mother had been grazing along the river near the house when the mother came running up the hill and ran past the small church, her head bobbing up and down as if she were trying to dislodge something from her throat. The minute she reached the house, she collapsed in front of the courtyard. Her jaw was clenched and a few long blades of grass were jutting from her mouth. I watched as my father ran his fingers along her neck and tried to pry her mouth open, saying that she may have swallowed a chapulín—a large grasshopper that, if swallowed whole, can get stuck in the animal's throat or intestines. I squatted down next to her and looked into her eyes. She looked terrified, but then a calm washed over her like a passing shadow. She inhaled and never exhaled.

That evening, when my father brought the cattle into the corral, while the other calves were feeding before being separated from their mothers for the night, I had watched the orphaned calf sneak up behind an unsuspecting cow and grab hold of an udder. She managed a few chupitos, a few little sucks, before the cow realized it wasn't her calf and either kicked or head-butted her. Eventually, she gave up and went and stood near the gate. There were three blackbirds circling above the field where her mother lay. She stared in the direction of the field, but she did not bay.

My father didn't think Chupitos was going to make it. Though Rosario was feeding her with a bottle, she had lost a lot of weight. Then La Negra, one of his best milk-giving cows, who was the descendant of one of his mother's best milk-giving cows, gave birth to a calf that died the day after it was born. He skinned the black calf, made a few holes in the raw hide, and tied it like a second skin around Chupitos. At first, whenever Chupitos approached La Negra, she was shunned, until La Negra started sniffing her and ended up adopting her.

“You should see her, she's really fat and beautiful, looks just like her mother,” he says. “If you want, when we finish eating, I'll point her out so you can take a picture of her.”

“Está bien,” I say, handing him the first torta. Ever since she was orphaned, each time I called him, I always inquired about Chupitos, would have adopted her myself if I could have.

We chew in silence, listening to the rush of the two waterfalls, which are flowing heavy with rainwater. He pulls the binoculars out of his satchel and scans the ridge on the other side of the river.

“See that white thing over there?” he says, pointing at something among the green shrubs on the ridge. “Is that a cow or a rock?” He hands me the binoculars.

Even before I bring them to my eyes, I can see that it's a rock, but still, I have a look. The only reason I know that his eyesight is failing is because recently, when I was walking past his bedroom window, I looked in and saw him sitting on his bed in a pool of sunlight. He was going through some documents, a pair of reading glasses with thick lenses resting on his nose. It had been a while since he'd dyed his hair and mustache the usual jet-black, and they both had a silver sheen to them. He suddenly looked so very old and so calm—like he was incapable of harming even a house mouse. I knocked on his bedroom door, he called out for me to come in, and when I entered, he was still sitting on his bed, papers strewn about, but the glasses were nowhere in sight.

“It's a rock.” I hand the binoculars back to him, and he slides them back into his satchel.

He finishes his torta and leans back, resting his head on a rock and saying he's going to take a quick nap before we head home.

“What if there's a reindeer under there?” I say. Two weeks before, we had come out here and had spent the morning making rock piles around the property so that the man he had hired to reinforce the barbed-wire fence would know where the wooden posts should go. “Careful,” he said, watching as I slid both hands under a rock and picked it up. “There could be some reindeer under there.” He rolled a different rock over with his boot, and sure enough, there were two blond, almost translucent, scorpions sitting side by side underneath it. Their pincers curled above their heads so that they looked like deer antlers. Seeing the two scorpions was as though he had hit a light switch—there were rocks scattered all over the grounds. “If one of these stings you, it will definitely be goodbye green mountaintops and goodbye blue skies,” he said.

“Don't they have the antidote for it in town?” I asked.

“Eeow, by the time we make it to town, we'd be stiff as a board,” he said.

He places his hat over his face and folds his arms across his chest, tucking his hands under his armpits.

“I just say a little prayer. I say, listen, cabrón, I know you're under there, but if you don't bother me, I won't bother you,” he says, crossing his legs at the ankle, one over the other. “Either way, we'll wake up here or on the other side.” He's snoring almost immediately.

I finish my torta and clean up, wrap the cheese in the cheesecloth, and put the leftover food away. I polish off the rest of the water and lean back, rest my head on a rock, place my straw hat over my face, and focus on the dots of dispersed sunlight that are filtering through the hat, trying not to think about the scorpions that might be lurking below, and doze off.

When I wake, my father and the sun are gone, and it seems that the sky itself has shifted. Gray clouds have moved in and hover heavy and low, though in the valley below, rays of sunlight are shining through the openings in the clouds, like waterfalls pouring from the sky.

“Vámonos porque nos agarra el agua,” my father says. He's making his way back from the pools and carrying the water bottle, filled to the top. “Did you see your cow?” he asks, handing me the bottle.

“No,” I say, taking a gulp. The water is ice-cold and delicious, as it always is. I can't remember when I started drinking the water, but it has yet to make me sick.

“If you want, we can walk around the corral so you can take a picture of her before we head back.”

“Next time,” I say, not knowing that in two weeks, my cow will be dead.

We untie the horse and donkey and sling the leather satchels over the neck of the saddles.

“Why don't you take the donkey,” he says. “It'll be easier on your knee.”

“Let's go back the way we came.” Since his hip is still recovering, he rode the donkey and I rode the horse. “My knee will be fine,” I say, stepping into the stirrup and kicking my leg over Chemel's horse saddle.

He hands me the rifle, and I sling the leather strap over the neck of the saddle. We never bring the rifle to the ranch. He usually brings his gun, tucked into the back of his belt. But on the day that he had one too many mescals, he had ended up giving me his gun and saying that I should hold on to it. I assumed he had gotten the urge to shoot it off in the house but thought better of it—what if he sent a bullet through his bedroom door and I happened to be on the other side? Since the day he handed it over, he has not asked about it, probably too ashamed that it had come to that.

On the way back, the horse and the donkey move at a swifter gait, and by the time we clear San Martín, the clouds seem to be at war with one another. From the four corners of the earth—north, south, east, and west—cloud formations have risen and are now merging overhead, snuffing out the last rays of sunshine. A rumble rips through the clouds above, and then a bright whip cracks down against the mountains as if trying to make them gallop. Lightning bolts are crashing down in the nearby ridges and fields, and each time one hits, the horse surges forward, breaks into a trot, catches up to the donkey, but soon falls behind again.

“Make that lazy horse move faster or the storm is going to catch us,” my father yells back to me over the roaring wind.

I loosen the reins and dig my heels into the horse's ribs, but he ignores the soft rubber of my Merrell hiking boots. When I arrived, my father had asked if I had a different pair of shoes, something less chunky and less likely to get caught in the stirrup—just in case. Another bolt comes crashing down somewhere behind us, sending a flash across the back of my father's white shirt. Again, the horse picks up the pace, its head turning from side to side as if trying to figure out where the next bolt will hit.

“Maybe we should pull over and wait,” I say when we catch up to my father.

“Wait for what?” he says, turning to shield his ear from the wind.

“For the storm to pass,” I say.

He holds up his index finger and waves it back and forth. We ride on, and we are making our way along the dirt road on la mesa when two young men come riding full stride across the field toward us, the wind billowing in their button-down shirts.

“Ándele, Don Jose,” one calls out over the wind. “Hay viene el agua,” he yells, his eyes lingering on the rifle as they fly past.

A purple bolt snaps out of the gray clouds and spiders into five smaller threads that crack against a nearby ridge with so much force that the air itself seems to tremble. Again the horse is galloping, and I start doing an inventory of everything that might attract the lightning to me—the rifle, the bridle parts, and the stirrups—all metal.

“What if we get hit by lightning?” I ask my father, when we catch up to him.

“Pues, si nos toca, nos toca,” he says, as if he's accepted his fate. If it's our turn to go, it's our turn to go. He glances over at me, and stops. “A ver ese rifle,” he says, holding out his hand. I pass him the rifle and he slings the leather strap across the donkey saddle, asks if I want to throw on the poncho, but since we're almost at the horse trail that leads down to La Peña, I tell him I'll be fine.

We continue on, and when we reach the horse trail, El Negro takes off, sprinting ahead of us back to the house. Must be some storm, I think, as El Negro is not one to scare easily. Though, ever since the scuffle with the wild animal, he never jogged with me again. It was as if he knew that whatever was lurking out there was sure to take him down. I never saw the animal again, but just the other day I happened to look back, and in the distance there was a cloud of dust rising from the dirt road and a gleaming SUV was barreling toward me. A brand-new SUV on that road, at that hour, was so out of place that before I knew it I was racing along the dirt road until I reached the horse trail. I dropped down into the rocks and thorns and waited, listening to the whir of tires as they approached on the road above, and the whole time my heart was beating in time with my thoughts: Please don't stop. Please don't stop. Please don't stop. After the tires passed, I waited several minutes and then sprinted back home.