The Jaguar's Children (15 page)

 

At the end, this man Pablo was living and dying all in the same moment, and still he kept going—

 

As the sun rose he sought the shade of a shrub and there knelt in final prayer for the dying; then he laid himself down with feet and face to the eastward, made the sign of the cross with a pang over the absence of consecrated water, and composed himself for the end. There—and this was his clearest concept, unreal though it be—with the rising of the sun he died, and his body lay lifeless under the burning rays, though his innermost self hovered about, loth to leave the material husk about which the buzzards waited patiently. The sun swung across the shimmering vault, and darkness fell; in the chill of evening some vague shadow external to his Ego stirred and then struggled aimlessly against chapparal and cactus along the most trying stretch of El Camino del Diablo. Sometimes he felt half alive and wrung by agony of severing spirit and flesh; oftener he felt that the naked body was pushed and dragged and belabored and tortured by something outside; he knew its voice, tried to cry out in protest or call for rescue, but did not feel the voice his own. So the night dragged on and on, until at early dawn the vague consciousness knew itself near the camp with the certainty of relief, and was dimly surprised at the bellowing break in a final call.

 

They found him this way, on the seventh day, by the roaring sound of his breath—this man Pablo whose body was dying all around him, who kept going without knowing if he was alive or dead or dreaming in between. But in here, we have no trail to follow and no one is finding us. So how do we keep going? In the morning my mother makes the fire from nothing, only by blowing on the gray ash. You can't see it from the outside, but the fire is in there waiting for someone to notice, waiting for some reason to burn again. Waiting—en español “to wait” is the same as “to hope”—esperar. Besides chingar, esperar is the other official verb of Mexico, and it is what I do for you all this time—all these hours and days and words. Te espero, AnniMac.

 

Fri Apr 6—19:07

 

But what if there is no hope? And what if your patience runs out the same as water? You know what kept this Pablo Valencia alive all that time, besides the dream of drinking? The dream of putting a knife in Jesús who abandoned him. And what if he is right—that hate is stronger than hope?

Maybe you did something once and when you looked at it after, you could not believe you were so stupid. Or that someone could do such a thing to you. I cannot believe Lupo can just throw us to the coyotes. I cannot believe I owe money to be in here and that my father may have to pay Don Serafín, the same man who sent his son to die. I cannot believe Don Serafín is partly Zapotec and has lived in Oaxaca his whole life and that my father looks up to him like he is on God's right hand. For this I condemn Don Serafín—for taking all our money and sending us, his own people, into such a disaster. I condemn Lupo and I condemn those coyotes whose names I don't even know. What if hate is stronger than death and I live to find them all, one by one like that killer in
The Godfather
, my father's favorite movie.

But even if I find them, even if I could kill them, it will not begin to pay for what they did to us in here—so many chingaderas in one small place. Now those maletóns made me their compadre, their accomplice—just by living so long in this situation you will not wish on your own enemy. For this I condemn them all. I condemn myself and I condemn César. This was César's idea to go in the truck—to stand up at the wrong time, to give me his phone and all that it holds.

Fri Apr 6—19:29

 

In Altar there was a lot of waiting—for me and César almost two days. Most of the time, César stayed in Lupo's choza and spoke to no one, only writing things into his phone. In the evening we sat outside Lupo's garage drinking beers and talking until it got too cold. At first we talked about nothing—cantinas we knew, old ones like El Farolito where they used to have the best pechuga before they renovated it for the tourists, and La Casa del Mezcal where they serve green oranges on the side with the gusano and pass the bottles through the air, and he told me about a knife fight he saw once. When I asked him about newer places like Nuevo Babel or La Biznaga he said he'd never been there. This was strange to me because that is where an educated person like him would go, especially if he had money. This is when I understood better that the accident with the taxi was simply one more story in César's house of misfortunes. I pressed him then. “You're hiding from someone,” I said. “That's why you came back to Oaxaca.”

César picked at the label on his beer bottle. “Let's get over the line,” he said. “Then maybe I'll tell you.”

But already I think I knew the reason—the problem for César was knowing which god to serve. Because in Mexico there are so many, even in a little town like Altar, and each one demands a different kind of sacrifice. Besides the church of Guadalupe, there are other shrines and chapels made by the people for all these pilgrims. I saw one for Jesús Malverde who is a real man—our own San Narco. Dead now, por supuesto. He tells the gospel from the New World and many people pray to him, especially los narcotraficantes. But San Narco is not as popular as la Santísima Muerte. I must tell you, AnniMac, in these days there are many saints who are giving up on God—and even life—and going into business. You know why Guadalupe and Juquila are so important to us indios? Because they are morenas too. Well, Santa Muerte is no color at all. She is only bones so she looks like everybody—everybody who is dead, and I can tell you she is the only virgin you're ever going to see smoking a cigar. She has Death's big scythe in one bone hand and in the other she is holding the world like an Aztec priest holding your heart, but someone painted this one big like an eye looking right back at
you
. There were many offerings at Santa Muerte's shrine—flowers and seeds and fruits and tequila and candy and incense like you see at shrines all around Mexico, but here also was a small knife, some bullets, a Cadillac medallion, a bloody T-shirt, a can of Red Bull—and lots of money. People give money to saints all over Mexico, but in Altar, Santa Muerte is the only one who does not accept pesos. Maybe the coyotes learned it from her.

Santa Muerte is new for these times, AnniMac—new for NAFTA. You can say she is our Santa NAFTA Muerte because many people turned to her in the nineties when the dying started in the pueblos—so many leaving and never coming back, and then the maquiladoras closing down because the jobs went to China, and the fence is being made and the laws are being passed, and the narcos killing more and more and more until it is like a war down here. It was the same for us when Cortés came—the distance between Hope and God and Death growing smaller and smaller until it is impossible to tell one from the others. This happens, I think, when new gods battle the old and too many prayers go without an answer.

I told you of some saints who have given up on God and gone into business, but in Mexico now there are also businessmen who are becoming saints. Right in our own cathedral is a shrine to San Charbel, the patron saint of Mexico's richest man, Carlos Slim. Many Oaxaqueños believe he is getting some special assistance from San Charbel, and if Charbel is making such billions for Carlos Slim maybe he can make a little something for the rest of us too. Charbel's statue is only small and must share a chapel with Guadalupe, but you should see the offerings there now. Some people say it is not San Charbel the people are praying to but the billionaire San Slim, and this is his great cleverness—not only is Slim the faithful servant of San Charbel, he is also the faithful servant of Telmex'telcel, the Aztec god of communication. We all worship him here. I was worshiping him myself until I ran out of minutes. These are the times we live in, where the Spanish god of Jesus and the ancient gods of Mexico and the modern gods of business are harder and harder to tell one from another. But I'm telling you, AnniMac, it has always been this way. And maybe this is the other half of our destiny together—not only to be the United States of Améxica, but to be One Nation Under Gods.

You can add your own.

If we asked César what god he would add, I'm sure he would say Juquila, but he must also say SantaMaize and this is the problem for him. SantaMaize is a big and powerful seed company with shrines all over the world. Their specialty is the corn and they are sending their hallelujahs everywhere these days. But hasn't it always been like this, new gods coming in to challenge the old? Because that's where the real power is—in the old gods—water, lightning, fire and war. SantaMaize understands this very well and it is why they are so interested in the corn. It is not only the Spanish god performing miracles now, SantaMaize is doing it too. And one of these miracles—el Milagro de SantaMaize—is even in the Oaxaca Codex, a story for these times. Ever since the strike, pieces of it have been appearing around el centro on the walls and buildings. Our Governor Odiseo calls it graffiti, but it's not. It's the story of our people and of the gods they serve and the battles they must fight again and again for all time. Odiseo and his men try to clean it off and paint it over, but the story keeps bleeding through.

The first time I saw el Milagro de SantaMaize in the Oaxaca Codex was last fall on Calle Cinco de Mayo near the intersection with Chapultepec. How could those artists know, but they told the story of César's situation and just like all of us here, his story begins with the corn—one beautiful stalk painted on the wall with the ears fat and ready for picking. It is not only Chia Pets and bobblehead saints and megachurches and migrantes that come from Oaxaca. All that corn you have up there for your sugar and whiskey and cereal and gasoline? That came from us too, and César told me this himself—corn is the most valuable crop in the world, but not everyone values it the same way.

It is this knowledge and the proof of it that César carries with him. For César and for all of us this journey is more than going to another country. Many of us fail and some of us die. Even if you make it you may never see your home again, and that is another kind of dying. Not all of us understood this, but I think César did. On that last night before we got in the truck he bought two singles of tequila and six Tecates and he told me about el Milagro de SantaMaize. It was the last time we talked and I wonder now if he saw this coming, that those things he said were for him some kind of confession.

 

Lupo's garage was set back from the highway in a sandlot with cement walls and broken glass on the top. On the side facing the road was a solid metal gate wrapped with concertina wire. Lupo told us we would be leaving around midnight so me and César waited outside by ourselves against the wall of the garage, sharing a piece of cardboard for a seat. César had his jacket zipped to his chin and I had my sweatshirt, but even with the hood it was not enough so I sat as close as I could to César without him knowing I was doing it for the heat. The moon was growing smaller and now it was just a crooked smile in the dark, hanging over the lights in the parking lot. On the edge of town where the desert began, tall cypress trees stood out against the sky and beyond them rose the mountains of America, la via dolorosa where migrantes found and lost their way. I had been looking at them for two days. In the afternoon those sharp ridges turned from brown to red and a blue haze gathered at their feet, but now all that color was gone and in its place stood a black sawblade with stars twinkling between the teeth.

As we sat there drinking and talking, we watched people like us coming and going in trucks and vans, many more than in the day because on the border, night is the time for travel. Here and there against the walls, groups of fifteen or twenty migrantes stood waiting, shuffling their feet, a couple of them smoking or looking at their phones. There were even some children, standing with their colored backpacks like they were waiting for the bus to go to school. Every few minutes a truck or van would pull in for gas and sometimes Lupo would come out and talk to the driver. You could tell by how the vehicles rolled from side to side in the potholes that most of them were filled with people or other heavy things. Sometimes an empty truck would pull in and one of the groups would get in and drive away, heading for the Sásabe crossing and the long walk into America. All around us was dusty and busy and everyone was for sale to somebody. Except for a sex club, never before was I in a place that felt so empty and so full of wanting at the same time.

César opened his single of tequila so I opened mine, and after raising our bottles to el Norte we drank them down. “What's the first thing you're going to do when we get across?” I asked.

“Fuck my brains out,” said César. “Which reminds me—I've got more time on this.” César reached into his back pocket and pulled out a phonecard. “You can have it.”

I took the card from him and I wondered who he had called. “It worked OK?” I asked.

“Worked for me.” He was smiling.

“You look happy,” I said.

“I haven't seen my girlfriend in a long time and she's coming to meet me.”

“Where?”

“What, you want to watch?” He laughed and slapped my knee. “Get your own.”

I was missing Sofía very much, but things had been difficult for us since I left the university. She was still there studying for her degree and she already had a job in a hotel. The last time I called her she said, Maybe next week, but I knew what she was really saying.

“OK, OK,” I said to César. “But where are you going after we get across?”

“It's better if you don't know.” César let out a long breath and leaned his head back against the wall. “Just a few more hours.”

 

I must say to you, AnniMac, that I wonder if César's girlfriend is you. I searched in his phone, but there is no Anna or Anni or AnniMac anywhere but the directory.