David Corbett - Do They Know I'm Running

– You hear about that guy who slipped trying to pull himself up into a boxcar out here the other night?

– Guy who fell under the wheel?

– Cut him in two. He’s lying there, watching the rest of the train roll over him, screaming. Fucker finally bled to death, but man…

– You saw it?

– I was chasing the cocksucker .

– No fucking way .

– What’s more important, your money or your life?

– People, man. So fucking stupid .

– Reminds me. That Honduran girl?

– The one got raped?

– The one got gangbanged while they shot her boyfriend right in front of her .

– I heard that was cops .

– It was the fucking vigilantes, man .

– No, I heard cops .

Roque listened to this last bit and tried not to think of Lupe. She and the others had been due in town yesterday, no word from Beto or anyone else about the delay. He knew how many stops the group would have to make: Get off the bus, trek around a checkpoint, maybe miles of detour. It was anybody’s guess how long they might have to wait, hiding in the fields, waiting until the time was right, dodging God only knew how many patrols, legal and illegal-local police, state police, private security thugs, vigilantes, federales , Grupo Beta, the army, the Mexican migra; the anti-immigrant backlash here made the Minute Man reaction along the California-Texas corridor look like Welcome Wagon-then heading back to the road, flagging down the next bus whenever it happened by.

Catching Victor’s gaze, he gestured that he was heading out. Victor responded with a swacked grin and a fiddly wave.

ROQUE CHECKED TO BE SURE THERE WERE NO COPS OR OTHER ARMED men around, then headed up the block. A group of urchins materialized, begging. He’d learned the trick to saying no: nothing out loud, just a slow wagging of the finger back and forth, mysteriously effective. The kids made faces but retreated, scattering a handful of chickens pecking the dust.

He felt light-headed from sleeplessness. The picadero with its unholy stench, its meandering ant trails, its festering mattresses, it was the perfect spot for insomnia. In the long hours awake at night he’d found himself beset with increasingly shameless fantasies of Lupe, in which their lovemaking became tormented, ravenous, desperate. At times it had been difficult to know what exactly he was picturing, sex or a smackdown. What was it about this place, he thought, that caused such tormented obsessions?

He headed toward Julio’s taberna , walking distance-more to the point, in visual range of the car. Julio’s was the third and last of Roque’s distractions.

After the blinding sunlight, the dimness felt welcome. Two field workers from one of the nearby plantations nursed beers at the end of the bar, their sweat-stained straw hats tipped back on their heads. A ceiling fan stirred the air around, unable to dispel the odors of leaky refrigeration and piss. What sunlight filtered in through the quarreled amber windows dissolved in the shadowy interior, surrendering its heat, a mystery Roque accepted gratefully.

Seeing him enter, Julio broke off feeding his parrot and dug out a can of 7UP from his ice chest, setting it atop the bar for Roque.

Julio cracked a smile.- Still can’t find your way out of town?

– I’m waiting for the bushtits and trogons to show up . He popped open the icy wet can.- How are things?

Julio shrugged.- Why complain, the worst is yet to come . Returning to his stool, he swept away the bits of seed husks littering the bar beneath the parrot perch.

Roque chugged back a mouthful of 7UP, ambling to the small corner stage where a guitar and a vihuela rested against the wall. He earned his drinks and a lunch of red beans and rice by playing for several hours each afternoon, sometimes teaming up with Julio for a duet, the barkeep on the vihuela, a smaller guitar used for mariachi ensembles, tuned high like a ukulele.

Julio, an able if not quite inspired musician himself, at one point had offered to give Roque the guitar as a gift.- When you become famous, you can tell people about this place, how I saw your stardom ahead of you. And the only thing between you and fame, my young friend, is bad luck and the devil .

Julio was bearish with a soup-catcher mustache and a wild mop of curls. Mestizo by heritage-half-caste, Spanish speaking-he was courteous but wary, that instinctive mejicano reserve, at least until dusk stole the bite from the day’s heat, at which point he indulged in a few jolts of mescal chased with beer.

The night before, regaling his new talented friend from Gringolandia with the crazy mixto accent, he’d intoned:- We mejicanos take great pride in losing. We don’t just have a capacity for suffering-everyone does-we enjoy it, like the Russians . Then he’d broken into song, a ballad by the legendary mariachi Juan Gabriel, sung in a beery tenor.- I just forgot again that you never loved me .

Roque had to admit he felt tempted to take the man up on his offer, make off with the guitar, but it struck him as unseemly. Julio was lonely, bored, stuck here in Chiapas with nothing but daydreams and his parrot and a nightly drunk to amuse himself. And that would not change. Time was stuck. To that extent, Julio, like some creature from myth, seemed eternal, which meant it would be unwise to take a gift from him unless the consequences were clear up front.

Roque grabbed a chair and set the guitar in his lap, figuring he’d change things around a little today, rock out, jam on some Santana or Maná, maybe a little Aerosmith or even Steve Earle, whose tunes he’d learned from the edgier folkies at open mikes. Lalo had always told him, listen to everything, dismiss nothing; the key to creativity lies in two simple words: Steal wisely .

He got no further than tuning, though, before he sensed a sudden tension in the room. Glancing up, he saw Julio reaching beneath the bar for his bastón , a kind of billy club. Thinking that some immigrants were at the door, hoping for a handout, he glanced that direction, only to see the Chamula woman waiting there, one of her daughters by her side, the child a miniature of her mother, down to the china poblana skirt, the beautifully embroidered huipil . They both held woven baskets filled with bags of popcorn.

The mother called out: “Las palomitas, señor,” her Spanish brittle, heavily accented.

– I told you , Julio bellowed, slamming his hand on the bar, scaring the bird.- Not in here. Out!

– It’s okay , Roque said, returning the guitar to its spot along the wall.- I want to buy a couple bags off her .

As though to prompt him, the woman said again, “ Las palomitas,” her voice a kind of singsong, feigning innocence.

Julio, incredulous:- Don’t encourage these people . He reached up to stroke the parrot, soothe it.- She’s probably drunk on pox . He pronounced it “posh”-the local home brew.

– I’ll take care of it , Roque said. He gestured for the woman to back away from the door, he’d meet her in the street.

To his back, Julio said:- If she steals from you, don’t cry to me . The two field workers chimed in with a wheezy little spate of laughter.

From snatches of conversation he’d overheard at the picadero and the bar the past three days, Roque had gathered that the Chamulas were the largest, poorest, most hostile of the Tzotzil tribes in the area. He’d learned too that the name Tzotzil meant “people of the bat;” in their folklore there were ancient stories of black winged creatures who escaped from the mountain caves at night, kidnapping women, eating children, but the old folks said those creatures didn’t exist anymore. The last were seen forty years ago. This was all a grand joke to Julio and his pals. They considered the Indians layabouts, thieves, drunks, which seemed only too predictable, since they themselves were mixed blood.