David Corbett - Do They Know I'm Running

“We’ll catch a bus at the nearest town up the road, head for Mexico City. We’ll catch another bus there for Agua Prieta.”

“We’re sitting ducks on the bus. If those really were cops back there, soldiers, paramilitaries, whatever, word will spread. They’ll be looking for us everywhere. On a bus we have nowhere to run.”

“You asked my solution, I gave it to you. You don’t like it…” He shrugged.

“We can call Victor, back in Arriaga, he might-”

“Who does he know we do not know ourselves? I bet he was bought off. They probably want his skin because we are not already dead.”

“You think he betrayed his own, betrayed Beto.”

“Let me tell you something, this kind of animal we’re dealing with? We paid all that money for nothing. When the gangsters take charge, everything turns to chaos. Trust me, I have seen it with my own eyes. We would be fools to stay with them.”

Despite his fury, Roque felt encouraged by this turn. If Samir was giving up on the salvatruchos down here, maybe he’d given up on making the connection with El Recio in Agua Prieta as well. That meant Lupe was free. After all, they were dead. Their bodies were back there on the road, burned to cinders in the Corolla. “You saying we’re on our own?”

“I am saying we need to be careful. We need-” He winced, something in his eye. He rubbed at it, face naked with fatigue. “Honestly? I have no clue what we need.”

Lupe reappeared, trailed by a man in street clothes, not a cassock. He looked younger than Roque expected, more trim and fit too, though he wore perhaps the world’s nerdiest pair of glasses. He headed straight for the truck bed and glanced down at the wind-rucked tarp. No one said anything. Up close, the man’s face told a more complex story. He had wary eyes and a sensual mouth but a strong jaw, a fighter’s misshapen nose. His thinning brown hair curled around his ears and he had an educated air, though with a worker’s ropy musculature and rough hands. Finally, he looked up and met Roque’s eyes.- He was your uncle?

Roque glanced toward Lupe, but she looked away rather than meet his gaze. Turning back to the man, he nodded.

– We can bury him here if you like. Preparing him for transport elsewhere, to be buried in the United States, let’s say, will take time. And the involvement of the authorities .

He paused there, everyone conceding what he declined to add.

– I’m Father Ruano, by the way. Or Father Luis. Whichever you prefer .

– I think it’s fine, we bury him here . Roque’s voice was so hushed he had to repeat himself.- I’ll let my aunt know where she can visit the grave. We can visit it together… His voice trailed away, as though heading off to find some truth in what he’d just said.

– All right, then . The priest backed away from the truck, pointing vaguely toward the cemetery.- If you carry him behind the church, I will get the shovels. We will have to dig ourselves. That’s not a problem, I assume .

BY MIDMORNING THEY’D FINISHED THE GRAVE, WORKING IN CONCERT, even the priest pitching in. Though baked hard from the tropical sun, the ground was sandy with little rock or clay to break through. They covered their noses and mouths with bandannas against the fine coarse dust, while Lupe murmured the rosary over and over, the monotony of the prayers only intensifying the monotony of the work. Not that anyone complained. It seemed fitting that things should go slow and hard. It rendered the effort devotional. And it distracted them from the zopilotes riding the thermals overhead.

The vultures weren’t the only visitors from the sky. Swarms of monarch butterflies, migrants themselves, descended from the foothills in the southerly downdrafts. Some of the birds Roque had seen in the plates of his Peterson Field Guide made appearances here; he spotted petrels, frigate birds.

He grew numb as his shovel bit into the dirt, wondering if the pain that gnawed at his arms and the small of his back, the blisters breaking open on his palms, weren’t all conspiring to fashion a wall between what he needed to do and what he hoped to feel. In time, though, memories rose up to deliver a little shock of feeling, one recollection in particular standing out, the afternoon of his twelfth birthday.

Until then he’d been practicing guitar on loaners from friends. Then Lalo went to the trouble of stopping by the house to meet Tía Lucha, touting her nephew’s talent. “He’s a natural, señora , an intelligent ear, excellent dexterity, he learns quickly and, at least when it comes to music”-and here he shot Roque a reproving glance-“exhibits considerable discipline.” His problems at school were roundly known, though he was an avid reader-science fiction, crime stories, comics, even some precocious porn. Tía Lucha feared that deeper involvement in music would only mean more skipped classes, more trouble. Tío Faustino, though, did not hesitate. He went to the store with Lalo, asked which guitar he would recommend. Lalo would later confide to Roque that his uncle was almost obsequiously polite, as workers from his part of the world so often are with the educated, and perhaps out of pride made no mention of cost. The courtship between Faustino and Lucha was still fresh at that point and Roque had no doubt the gift was intended as much to impress his aunt as him. No one had ever spent so much money on his behalf, certainly not for a gift. Tía Lucha looked on with a miserly expression as Roque opened the hard-shell case, lifted the nylon-string guitar from its red plush bed, played a bit of “Canción de Cuna,” just enough to piss off Godo. “Learn another fucking tune,” he moaned and Tía Lucha threatened a backhand for his cursing. Tío Faustino merely sat there with a hopeful smile, black grime beneath his fingernails from replacing the rings on his truck, his curly hair mussed, waiting for Roque to thank him.

A woodworker from a nearby village delivered a pine coffin on a mule-drawn cart and they lifted the body into it, hammered the lid shut, then lowered it into the grave using ropes. It all went too quickly for Roque to make much of his last glance at his uncle’s body. Father Luis retrieved his stole and missal from the rectory and said a few prayers that consoled no one. Lupe wept softly, hand clasped across her mouth. Roque, feeling gutted, just stared into the grave, vaguely reassured by Lupe’s emotion, tapping into it secondhand. I will miss you, he nearly said aloud, but caught himself, for he felt the sorrow welling up and knew, once he gave in, there would be no end to it. Then the priest concluded his prayers, the men grabbed their tools again and began to toss back the dirt they’d just dug, the thud of each shovelful atop the coffin like a footfall on some invisible stair.

When they were finished, Father Luis said quietly:- I’m sure we all could use something to eat . He led them into the rectory’s dining room-a crucifix and the Virgin of Guadalupe on the rough plaster wall, a modest cedar table with a white linen cloth. His tiny Mixtec housekeeper set out bowls of corn porridge called atole , tortillas with bean paste and mole , limes and salt, plus sliced fruit and a basket of chapulines , spicy fried grasshoppers. The woman’s name was Dolor and she reminded Roque of the Chamula woman selling popcorn in Arriaga. Samir wolfed down his food, Lupe fussed with hers mindlessly, Roque felt more possessed by his thirst than his appetite. No one but the priest bothered with the grasshoppers.

Once the housekeeper collected the plates and fled to the kitchen, Father Luis looked around the table, registering each face as he enjoyed his dessert, dipping a hunk of soft white bread in a cup of Oaxacan hot chocolate.- You are not the first migrants who have landed on our doorstep in serious trouble. Perhaps I’m mistaken, but I can’t help imagining you have a special problem . He lifted one of his hands; unlike Roque, he’d suffered no blisters.- I do not need to know what it is. I would, however, like to know if I’m vaguely correct .