The Rest is Weight (UQP Short Fiction) (15 page)

Prospect

When the storms look like they’re over, Poppa sends me down to the wash with an old frypan and a paintbrush, a couple of glass jars and a packet of his cigarettes. I fumble them all in my hands before I settle on pockets for everything except the frypan, which I swing alongside me like a mechanical arm. The clouds and the earth broke with each other hours ago but I can still hear them yammering on the horizon beyond the low cragged hills that mark our fence line.
You be careful, son
, Poppa said.
You get back here first sign of rain.

I pick my way through drowned flower heads that cling to the mud like a skin. I look for loot. The wash flushes everything downstream and we are thrifty through long breeding like the cattle who survive here. Poppa sends me down after every flood and this is a big one. I know I’ll find something. I hurry to the water.

I like going down to the wash. I like to watch the desert fill its belly overfull like a hobo at his first dinner in weeks. I like the grey-brown water sliding hard and fast over the pebbles, the way I’m suddenly surrounded by noise. The water sounds like it’s alive and the birds always go crazy for it.
When the rain comes it changes the world for weeks after: first the flood pushes everything around and then the growing comes. Everything overdone and wild for a while before it all starts to die over.

The best thing I found last year was a suitcase: a small cardboard case with a few photos and baby clothes inside. It wasn’t damaged too bad but Poppa made me burn it in case it had diseases. The photos were all of Mexicans. I kept one of an old Mexican lady. She looks serious and round like a hot air balloon weighted down by all her clothes. Miguel down Pallets Road found a cooler full of beer once, floating along like a little blue boat, and got it before it tipped. That was after the last big rain like this, three years ago, when we were still neighbours. Before he went off to college somewhere and forgot about Prospect.

Miguel went to study law because he said there wasn’t enough good lawyers. I said how do you know they didn’t all start good, and he threw a bottle top at my head. Poppa says there’s no law here but finders keepers and if you can defend your land it’s yours to keep. Miguel should know that. His mama brought him over that border in the eighties. He was just a little kid back then and he says he don’t remember anything about it.

It’s funny to think of Miguel as a Mexican – I mean, he is, but as one of those Mexicans that pour over here every day. They say there are hundreds of them in the desert at any one time. They move by night and in groups, lead by guys who know the trails. They call those guys coyotes. I hear them sometimes but I’ve never seen them. One time last winter I thought I heard voices right in our back field speaking Spanish and laughing. I looked out my window but there was no moon and I couldn’t see any lights out there. I guess they don’t use flashlights if they’re hiding from the law. They say those coyotes can just about see in the dark.

I get down to the edge of the river and I squat on my heels to pan for minerals, filling the frypan and brushing it out the way I was taught. I call the wash a river now because it’s flowing fast, wide and brown, but a few days ago it was just a dry gravel bed. I can see from here where they put that fancy new radio tower that’s supposed to be looking for Mexicans, but Poppa says it doesn’t work. The government put that there last year and everyone says it’s just for show. Even if it did work I don’t know how they can use that thing to tell the difference between the illegals and us. Half the folks round here are from Mexico anyway, even if they’re not Mexicans any more. The rest of us are American, I guess. Miguel said it’s the Californians that don’t want all those Mexicans coming in, because they take the jobs. Down here we don’t care so much if they cross into our land – there’s no jobs to take. There’s too many come through for us to bother about them any more. And they’re all headed somewhere better anyway.

I can see a patch of bright purple fabric dancing in the water upstream from me. I watch it for a minute as it turns and makes its way towards me. At first I think it’s just a rag or something, but I soon see it’s bigger than that. I grab a long stick off the ground and I reach across for it. The fabric is heavier than it looks and I can’t get a hold on it. The water drags it away.

I take a cigarette out of the packet and hunt around in my pockets for the matches, but it turns out I forgot them. I stand up and stretch my legs, enjoying the brief chill that hangs in the air above the river and cools the backs of my knees. In a couple of days this air will be thick as sweat again and the clean smell of the wash will be replaced by the stink of its retreat. The stink of the cattle bones and rotten weed and who knows what else it leaves behind. But for now the air is crisp and clear, like the world’s fresh-born.

I can see the purple rag still floating off downstream and I decide to follow it. I’m thinking I’ll catch up to it easy, but the water’s moving fast and I soon have to skirt a bank of slippery mud by clambering over a rise. I lose it then, but track my way downstream anyway just to see what the water’s done to the land. The bed of the arroyo shifts a little every year as the flood shoves the sand around and carves its signature into the rock. The McGills’ fence is down and one of their horses is out. He’s standing across the other side of the wash and he bares his teeth at me when I pass. I wave at him. There’s nothing else I can do. The water’s too high to cross here and old McGill will come down soon enough. Round here we look after our own fences.

I have to push my way through a web of prickle bushes and into some long grass and I’m glad I have the stick so I can whack the ground for snakes as I go. They usually come out after the rain, but I don’t see any. Eventually I come up the slope against a crook in the arroyo where I can see a way ahead. There’s a tree that’s half knocked down, bent over in the middle with its branches over the water as if it’s looking to see why its bed is so wet. There, suspended in a fork of those branches, I can see the purple cloth. Part of it is getting sucked underwater by a weight. A weight I can’t help looking at now.

Border Patrol come down here all the time. They even let me ride in one of their trucks once, but not the chopper. There’s two Black Hawks they got and they can fly just as low as they want to. It’s supposed to scare the Mexicans out of the bushes. It scares the hell out of me sometimes. When they come on our land we bring them water or sometimes beer if it’s a hot afternoon, and I sit with them and watch what they do. Mostly they stare at the horizon and brag. That Ant McGill is a border patrolman since he finished high school last year. He says it’s better than the marines. He says they catch twenty a day just off of our half-dozen properties, flushing them out of the mountains like spooked rabbits. He whooshes his hands when he says this, and he grins.

I clamber down the side of the arroyo to the water’s edge where the tree fork is pinned like a wishbone stuck in a throat. I shed my shirt and I sit down to unlace my boots. There’s no sense hurrying now. No sense at all.

I wade out, hanging onto the tree as I go, testing the depth of the water with my stick. When I get to it I brace myself against the trunk to yank at the purple t-shirt. The weight is heavier than it looks and the fabric tears in my hands. I
have to get my arms under the body and twist it around.
I don’t mean to look in her face. I don’t want to take in her gaping
eyes, her dumb open mouth, the flies. She looks about twelve, maybe younger. Under the shirt I can see the little tits starting to grow and I get a feeling in my groin I have to swallow.

She doesn’t smell bad. She hasn’t been dead long enough. But I gag anyway. She’s a bit bloated. Must be from the water. I can see she’s torn her skin at the neck and chest, probably from the rocks on the way down. The wounds aren’t bruised. They can’t have hurt her. She must have been dead already. The coyotes haven’t got to her yet, the wild dogs I mean. I cover my mouth until I know I won’t throw up. The wall of the arroyo is probably too steep with a load. I turn her back around and grab her by the clothes so I don’t have to fetch at the raggedy skin. I fold her over my shoulders like a sack of feed and start to carry her upstream.

It’s hard going. The water’s strong, it’s still in flood, and I can’t help thinking how much easier this would be when it dies down tomorrow. But at the back of those hills I can hear the thunder fussing, and I think Poppa was right. I don’t think we’ve seen the last of the rain.

As I wade, I start thinking about McGill’s horse and how I wouldn’t go tell him his colt was out. He’d only get pissed at me for interfering. If it was our fence line where the wire was broke it would be a different story. But I start thinking maybe the horse could get caught up in the busted fence. Maybe he could get his leg broke and have to be shot. I start worrying about the horse so much I almost forget the Mexican. Then I remember Ant used to ride that horse and that gets me thinking about Border Patrol and the way they talk. Sometimes when Poppa’s back at the house and I’m sitting with them they talk to me like I’m one of them. I asked them once what they do with the Mexicans when they catch them and they said some of them go to jail, but mostly they send them back.
We shove em in a truck
, they said,
drive em over the border and leave em there. No use pushin em further. Most of em gonna try again anyway.

The stream gets rocky in the part just around the bend. The walls of the arroyo are still too steep to climb so I put the Mexican down on a rock and try to drag her through the difficult part, sometimes pulling her by the armpits, sometimes lifting her over. When I have to lift her up over my head, the water from her clothes drips down into my eyes and I can’t see where I’m going. She’s a lot heavier than she looks. I lose my balance once or twice. Just when I think I’ve made it past the rocks I slip badly on some mud at the bottom of the stream and land on my face with the Mexican’s body on top of my head. I throw her off and wallow into the water to get the thick mud off my arms and face. It already stinks like the leavings. I wipe the mud off my face with muddy water and look back. The light is starting to fade but I can still see the tree where I pulled her out. I’ve hardly covered any ground at all.

Then I curse because I remember I left my shirt back there, and my boots, and I’m crazy if I think I can walk home in the near dark with a dead girl and no goddamn boots on. Poppa’s always telling me don’t curse in front of girls. Laying on her side in the mud, her face away from me, the Mexican looks like she’s asleep. I can’t think what to do. I can’t hardly think at all any more. I have to leave her here. I have to just leave her here and figure what to do. I look around at the clouds, and I decide it isn’t gonna rain again. Not tonight.

I run back for my shirt and boots, pull the boots on, tie the shirt round my waist and climb back over the rise. I pretend I can’t see the thunderheads hovering in the distance. It’s getting late, that’s why it’s getting dark. I cut through the long grass until I come back to the place where the girl is lying. I clamber down and drag her out of the mud and up to dry ground, out of reach of the wash. I pull her under a tree and leave her there.

I run alongside the wash until I get back to the place where I left the frypan and paintbrush. There’s no gold in the pan, of course. There never is. All the good minerals were mined out of here years ago. Miguel used to say all the gold’s gone to California too. Poppa still thinks he’s gonna come across a nugget one day and all our problems will be solved. So he sends me down after every flood, but nothing ever changes.

My heart’s beating hard now from running and I go through my pockets for a cigarette, remember I forgot the matches, give up and turn for home. The rumble in the sky could be thunder, could be a helicopter, could be nothing but the inside of my head.

Ant McGill told me there’s too many people around here who protect the Mexicans. He said they’re all criminals. Most of them are carrying drugs and that’s why they never have
id
. He said the women only come here to be whores. I asked him what they do when they find a dead one. How do they find out who they are if they don’t have any
id?
He said they send them back like they found them. They let the Mexican cops worry about it. Mostly they never find their people. It’s their own fault, Ant said. They already chose to leave their people behind. He grinned and leaned down to talk into my ear, his breath stinking of tobacco and coffee. Some of them we don’t send back right away, he said. Some of them little Mexican girls. At the time I was certain he meant the live ones. But now I’m not sure.

I get back to the house just in time for supper but I’m covered in mud so I have to shower first. My hands are steady under the hot water. I get the mud off but I don’t feel a whole lot cleaner after. Poppa doesn’t ask but I tell him I fell in the river. He doesn’t say a word, just raises an eyebrow and turns back to the cooker. We eat corn bread and bacon for supper and the corn bread’s fried in bacon grease and the smell of it makes me feel like I’m going to throw up again but I don’t say anything and I hold my breath to swallow and I get it all down.

Poppa pats me on the shoulder as I go to bed, as if I’m a working animal, as if I have done a fair job. I lay down in the dark with my eyes open for a while. Then I turn on the lamp next to my bed and lay there for a while more with the light on listening to the thunder outside. It’s set to moaning like an old dog. Finally I pull the photo of the old Mexican lady out from under the lamp. Maybe she has the same features, but they all look kinda the same. The girl’s dead eyes looked more like the dead eyes of an animal than the living eyes of another person. I’ve only seen animals dead before. I put the old lady back and turn out the light and I go to sleep.

I dream I am hiking the trails through the back country down near the border. Hot hills and ocotillo. The sun on my back. Mexican garbage all over the place. A shoe worn through, an empty juice bottle. Corn chips and Red Bull. A tiny pink schoolbag. I’ve never seen them and I don’t see them in the dream, but wherever I go I see their traces along the trails. In my dream the trash gets thicker and thicker until it’s piled so high I can’t get through. I push and push but I can’t get through. When I wake up it’s raining again. It’s raining again and I don’t move.