Bulletproof Vest (37 page)

When I told my father about the SUV, he said it was probably just some norteño making his way to visit a relative farther up the mountain. Maybe it was a norteño, or maybe he was trying to downplay my fears, same as he had done with the wild animal. Still, after seeing the SUV, I stopped jogging on this road, stuck closer to home.

Soon we are descending the rocky trail and I'm relieved to be getting off the mesa, to be on lower ground.

“Here comes the rain,” my father says, when we clear the back entrance to La Peña.

Even before I turn around, I hear it. All along the mesa raindrops are exploding on the dirt road where we just were, and as the wall of rain moves toward us, the water is bouncing off the trees along the ridge, then off the cornstalks in the fields, as it draws near. My father clears the gate to the corral and rides up under the aluminum shed. I dig my heels into the horse's sides but he continues to walk, taking his time along the stacked stones though the mist is already blowing past us. Just as the horse reaches the gate and turns to enter, the sound and fury of the storm overtakes us. Rain and hail the size of Ping-Pong balls come crashing down, hitting us head-on.

The horse starts jerking about, turns away from the hail, and surges, attempting to bolt for the river. He almost rips the reins from my grip, but I hold tight, and then his neck is thrashing and he's moving backward, and there's nothing I want more than to be back on solid ground—but it's too late. I think about sliding my feet from the stirrups in case he rears—wouldn't want to get dragged along the rocks like my father, who is yelling something from under the tin shed, his voice so faint it's as though he's yelling from the edge of a distant shoreline. Muddy waters are raging all around us; the minute the hail hits the ground it vanishes below the surface of the water.

“Bring him in,” I hear my father yell. I pull on the reins and try to turn the horse toward the gate, but the minute he turns, hail pelts his forehead and sends him thrashing.

“I can't.”

“Make him.”

“You come and get him,” I yell.

The horse is jerking and trying to break free, and it feels like the ground itself is moving as the brown water goes rushing by. This is how it happens, I think, this is how easy it is to slip away. I have to remind myself to breathe, to stay calm, because if I start to panic, the horse will panic, and whether I like it or not, we are now in this together. I reach out and run my hand slow and steady down his strong neck.

“O,” I say, in a firm tone, as hail continues to crash down all around us. “O,” I say in a voice that resonates in my chest. “O.” Again I run my hand down his neck. He bows his head and I loosen the reins to give him space. “O,” I say, “O.”

I see my father's black cowboy boots come splashing through the muddy water. He pulls the leather strap that holds the hitching rope to the side of the saddle and the rope uncoils, falling freely, half of it vanishing into the water below. He grabs it and pulls the horse along the stacked-stone wall, through the gate, and into the corral, like a mighty ship giving us a tow. I duck to clear the tin shed and once I'm under it, the storm takes on a different sound. It's somehow louder—metallic as the hail hits against the tin roof. The minute my feet touch the ground, I want to drop to my knees and kiss the soil.

“We almost made it,” I say, though I realize he had timed it perfectly. If my horse had been moving just a little faster, we would have beaten the storm. We're both soaked and stand side by side, looking out at the rain and hail.

“At least now you'll have a story to tell the others when you get back to the other side,” he says, shooting me a smile, the excitement of the storm dancing in his eyes.

*   *   *

Two weeks later, after having spent a week in Chicago and another week in Maine visiting Abigail's mother, with whom I've forged a friendship, I'm back in New York. Since the day I left, he had been calling. It's Saturday afternoon, and I finally buy an international phone calling card, find a shady spot on a bench in a community garden in Brooklyn, and call him back.

“How was Chicago?” he asks.

“It was nice.” I inform him that I had given everyone the cheese he sent. On the day I left Mexico, we had driven to the house of an elderly couple that, according to him, made the best cheese in town. He had asked me to pick out one cheese wheel for each of my siblings. “Guess what?” I say.

“¿Qué pasó?”

“Remember how you had to keep driving me into town to use the Internet?” I say. He had driven me to an Internet café a few times, and while I checked my e-mails, he had sat in the chair next to me, asking exactly how e-mail works.

“Ey,” he says.

“Before leaving New York, I had submitted a short story to a British literary journal,” I say. “And while I was in Mexico, I had been e-mailing with the editor. Then, when I was in Chicago, they e-mailed me saying they are going to publish my story in their upcoming issue.”

“That's good,” he says. “Did you happen to see Maria Elena when you were in Chicago?”

“Ey,” I say.

“Did she say when she's coming back to Mexico?” he asks.

“She was supposed to drive back down a few days ago,” I say, but perhaps he should call her because she always says she's going to do one thing and then does another.

“So,” I say. “Guess what the story is about.”

“Sabes,” he says. “What's it about?”

“Well, you know, it's kind of funny, because I never used to talk about you, or the past, but then when I got into this writing program, I started writing about it, and do you remember when everything happened with Joaquín? Well, I wrote a story about that,” I say. “¿Cómo ve?”

There is a long silence on the other end.

“And guess how much they're paying me for it,” I say.

“How much?” he asks.

I give him the figure.

“A jijo,” he says, “that's great.” I can practically hear the smile spreading across his face. “No, there are so many things that have happened to me, you have no idea. Next time you come down, you should bring a notebook, and I'll tell you some stories, and then you can go back, write them out, and make another billete for yourself.”

“That sounds good,” I say, thinking that when I go back down for the holidays, maybe I'll take him up on his offer. Bring a notebook and a tape recorder, even.

“¿Dónde dejó la juska?” he asks.

“You still haven't found it?” I know this is why he has been calling so much since I left—he hasn't found his gun, though I imagine he and Rosario have turned the house upside down looking for it. After he gave it to me, he never asked about it again, and when I was leaving, Rosario asked me to leave it with her, and I almost did but thought better of it. They had not been getting along, and what if she got some bright idea and turned the gun on him? Or what if he ended up doing something to her? On the day I left, I had taken it from under my T-shirt pile, wrapped it in a cheesecloth, placed it in a black plastic bag, and stashed it underneath a light-blue photo album inside one of the trunks in the storage room.

“I haven't really had time to look for it,” he says.

I tell him where it is, though he will never see that gun again. Two days later, the men in the SUVs arrive and kick down his front door.

 

BOOK THREE

 

24

THE KIDNAPPING

 

 

THEY HAVE BEEN WATCHING HIS MOVES
, keeping tabs on the road that runs in front of his house, and earlier that day they saw him and Rosario climb into his red truck and drive clear out of town. When he returns in the afternoon, he pulls into the dusty lot where the mercado is held on Sundays. Rosario waits in the passenger seat, while he goes into a cell phone store. He's in the store for a mere ten minutes, but by the time he steps back out into the slanted rays of the afternoon sun, everything has shifted. Blinds have been drawn in nearby stores, the sidewalks have emptied, doors have been locked, and most of the cars that were parked near his truck vacated the scene when the black SUVs rolled up.

He makes his way across the lot, scrolling through his phone when the sound of gravel crunching under his boots stops him in his tracks. It's not the rhythm of the gravel that is off but rather the absence of familiar sounds. Missing is the laughter—the shrieking and yelling of kids playing a makeshift soccer game in the lot. Gone is the rustling of bags, of people rushing along, running afternoon errands. Even the incessant bell of the paletero has been silenced. Nothing but the echo of a dog barking in the distance fills the space around him. He looks up and notices the SUVs stationed on either side of his vehicle. Though it's the sight of the man sitting next to Rosario and grinning at him from behind the steering wheel of his truck that sends the gold caps vibrating against his teeth so that he can practically taste the metal. He's standing still but hears the gravel shifting, footsteps approaching from behind, as if his own shadow had sprung to life.

“Vamos, viejo.” There are two men with machine guns standing on either side of him.

They escort him into the backseat of one of the SUVs, where a woman is waiting for him.

“Hola, mi gallinita de oro,” she says, her chapped lips parting in a grin and revealing her rust-colored teeth. The sour stench of alcohol exudes from her. He recognizes the rifle she's holding between her knees. It's the same rifle that has hung above his bed for years, the same rifle with which he had blown the head off a rattlesnake when he was ten years old. The woman snatches his cell from his hand and searches his pockets, pulling out his red handkerchief and his worn leather wallet. A man climbs into the seat on the other side of him and the convoy starts moving. The SUV he's riding in follows his truck onto the main road, and by the time they clear the last speed bump on the edge of town, they have already removed his boots and tied his ankles and wrists together. “Who's Norma Venegas?” the woman asks as she scrolls through his phone.

“She's a niece,” he says.

“She's not your daughter?”

“No, she's a niece.” They fly past the slaughterhouse where two other SUVs are sitting in the shade under the mesquite.

“A niece?” She narrows her eyes on him. She's not a bad-looking woman. Early forties, most likely, though a scar across her cheekbone, dark circles under her eyes, and her rotting teeth seem to age her beyond her years. “What's the name of your daughter, the one who owns a gas station in Jalisco?”

“I don't have any daughters in Jalisco.”

She rams the butt of the rifle into his kneecap with so much force that it sends a shock through his injured hipbone.

“Don't play smart with me, viejo.” She tells him they are well aware he has five daughters, and word around town is that one of them lives in Jalisco and owns a gas station, so what is her number?

“I don't know where you're getting your information from,” he says, though perhaps they've gotten it from him, because even though businesses have started closing early and everyone goes home before dark, locks their doors, and stays put until morning, the taverns are still open. And though they have lost a few regulars, he has carried on as he always has. He's not one to hide from the SUVs or anyone for that matter, especially not in his own town. He has continued frequenting the taverns, and after having a few drinks, it's inevitable—he will start boasting about his five girls and how successful they are, how each one has made a small fortune, and with no help from a man at that. “I don't have any daughters in Jalisco,” he says.

“What about your daughter who lives in Nueva York, what is her number?” Again she's scrolling through his phone.

“I don't have any daughters living in Nueva York.”

“Who's the girl who was just down here visiting you?”

“She's just a niece,” he says, bracing himself to keep the weight of his body from barreling into the woman as they fly around the only curve on that road between town and his home.

“Another niece?” The woman smirks at him before ramming the butt of the rifle into his other kneecap. “What is her name?”

“Maria de Jesus,” he says, and again she's scrolling through his phone, though he knows she will never find that name, or any of their names for that matter. He has all five numbers saved under their nicknames: Chuyita, La Flaca, Chela, La Vickie, Sonita.

Up ahead his truck slows and turns left onto the dirt road that leads up to La Peña. He watches the woman go through his wallet as the SUV he's riding in also turns left, and then they're bouncing along the dirt road, over the river, up the incline, and through the entrance where the dilapidated limestone pillars still stand. She pulls out a piece of paper and a few loose bills. There's a name and a phone number scribbled on the paper.

“Sonia salon,” she reads out loud, as she places the bills in her breast pocket. “Who's Sonia?”

“That's my daughter,” he says.

“Your daughter?” she says, grinning so big that he catches a glimpse of the gold caps on her upper molars. “And what does she do?”

“She works in a beauty salon in Chicago.”

“Isn't she the owner?”

“No, she just works there,” he says, though he can tell that she's not buying it.

Even before they pull up in front of his house, he notices that the minivan he picked up two weeks before is gone, and that his house has been broken into. His bedroom door is scraped, bent, and slightly ajar. Two men help Rosario out of the truck and into her wheelchair. The woman gets out of the SUV, lights a cigarette, and walks a full circle around Rosario before stopping in front of her and asking what is the name of the viejo's daughter, the one who owns a gas station in Jalisco?