David Corbett - Do They Know I'm Running

The weapons had raised an eyebrow or two during the day, as had Samir’s accent. Roque had an accent too, of course, but his was easily explained.

– The only thing special about our problem , Roque said, is that the people we paid to get us to the States have been unable to protect us. Their competitors, their enemies, whoever it was out there on the road last night, they’ve been after us almost from the start. And yet, from what I know about how things are down here, there’s nothing really special about that at all .

The priest dipped another morsel of bread in his chocolate.- The government is secretly in league with the Americans. It uses the federal police and the military to push back against the waves of people surging up from the south, who are doing nothing more than voting with their feet. And if the gangs rob the migrants or murder them? If the vigilantes or the paramilitaries torture them, then turn them over to the authorities? Nothing happens. It’s become a criminal system, there is no other word for it. Everyone is dirty .

He brushed a trail of crumbs from the tablecloth into his palm, scowling as he dusted them into his empty coffee cup.

– I believe I may know someone who can help you. He’s an American who lives up the way, a bit of a character, very storied life, if I’m to accept as true all he’s told me, which is probably foolish. My point is, I think he could find some way to be of assistance . He smiled abstractly, peering over the thick black ledge of his glasses.- If, however, I have read the situation incorrectly and you simply want to continue north on your own, you are of course free to do so. But I must warn you, the guns are a mistake. They will not protect you. One way or another, they will betray you .

THEY HID THE PICKUP IN THE RECTORY GARAGE AFTER FATHER LUIS drove off. Come nightfall they’d drive it back down the coastal road a ways and push it over the first convenient cliff.

The issue of the guns was seemingly resolved when Samir claimed only a pistol and one of the Kalashnikovs.- You have not had to survive what we have , he’d told Father Luis.- I mean no disrespect but prayers would not have saved us. And I am a man who prays . The priest had countered that if they were caught with weapons at a checkpoint they wouldn’t be sent back to where they’d started, they’d be packed off to jail-and a Mexican jail was nowhere a foreigner wanted to be. Nor could it be known he had guns at the church. Ever since the teachers strike two years back, there were paramilitaries roaming the countryside looking for subversives. Goons and off-duty police murdered at will: organizers, activists, journalists, including an American. The governor boasted an army of thugs and everywhere he went violence broke out, invariably blamed on his opponents. Priests were always suspect, especially those who, like him, served the pinches nacos -the fucking Indians.

– If someone finds weapons here, they will burn this church to the ground. Too bad for whoever happens to be inside at the time .

And so it was decided another grave needed digging, a shallow one, into which not most but all the guns disappeared.

Once the work was done, Dolor showed them to a washroom with a large tin tub, a cake of lye soap and a bucket of well water, asking for their clothes; she would dissolve the blood with hydrogen peroxide, then wash everything and hang it out in the sun. Lupe had only blouses and underwear to change into and so hid herself away in a spare room after washing the blood from her hair, sponging the rest of her body clean, handing up her filthy clothes. The old woman hefted the tub out into the yard and dumped the dirty water, then refreshened the bucket from the well and gestured for Samir. He was even worse off, only the clothes on his back, rank from weeks of relentless wear; once he had a chance to scrub the grime off his body, he modestly handed everything he’d been wearing through a gap in the washroom door. Roque went last; he stripped, passed his clothes to the housekeeper, then went to the tin washtub and began to lather his hands with the knife-cut square of grainy soap.

From his spot on the floor where he sat naked, arms folded across his knees, Samir said, “I have been thinking about what we discussed before, what to do from here, who to trust. Even if the priest links us up with this American he knows, we still have to get across the border. Without money, that’s impossible, unless we stay with our original plan. That fee is already paid. And no offense, I understand you are grieving, but there is one less among us now. They can hardly complain. Perhaps they won’t even make us hand up the girl. It’s possible, you know.”

Roque glanced over his shoulder as he lathered his hands. The Arab was chewing on his thumb, worrying it like a bone. “You’d do that?”

“Let me tell you something, I have never wanted harm for that girl. Never. I just accepted things as they were. I understood I had little control of my fate. The same is true for her, so which of us is free to weep?”

Like that’s the issue, Roque thought. “You said you’d lost confidence in the salvatruchos.”

“They can’t be expected to foresee everything or protect us from every evil. Who knows who those men on the road were?” He inspected the reddened horn of his thumb. “Maybe they were El Chusquero’s, maybe they were Mara Dieciocho, maybe they were police or soldiers or just common thieves.”

Roque gripped the edge of the washtub, looking down into the water murky with soap scum. “I won’t agree to handing Lupe over. I was against it before but now, no, it’s impossible. Not with my uncle… It’s bad enough I failed him, I can’t fail her too. His ghost will haunt me the rest of my life.”

Samir chuckled. “So you’re one who believes in ghosts now.”

“You know what I mean.”

“You think I don’t understand how you feel? Let me tell you something, I too suffer the loss of your uncle. He was a very kind, very hopeful, very brave man. I see his son in him, him in his son. I know, I know, they are very different too but I see the similarities. I will miss him-yes, as little as I knew him, I will miss him. And I think I know enough about him to guess that he would also not want to know that by refusing to honor our promise, we have condemned my wife and my little girl, Shatha, to the misery of their life in Al Tanf. They will die there. It is only a question of when.”

We all have to die someplace, Roque thought. “I’m sure he would’ve felt for your wife and child. But he expressed to me a particular concern for Lupe.”

“That is the choice, yes? Lupe or my family. Obviously, my choice is clear. And not because I am heartless. Should you become a husband, a father, you will feel what I feel.”

“You know,” Roque said, turning around so his nakedness faced the Arab’s, “when I was waiting in Arriaga, I heard that it’s not just evangelicals making inroads down here but Muslims as well. Not so much here in Oaxaca but farther south, Chiapas, in the mountains. Mosques have been cropping up more and more the past few years, that was the gossip anyway, teaching Arabic to Chamula kids who don’t even know Spanish yet. Maybe you could come back here with your family, settle in the hills, teach. Life could be worse.”

Using his shoe, Samir crushed a furry red spider crawling toward him on the cement floor. “That is always easy for the other man to say.”

“It’s better your family stay in that camp?”

“Given everything that’s happened, you honestly believe I would want my family here? Would you bring yours?” He scraped the spider’s remains off his shoe. “Sure, why not? You’d be closer to your uncle’s grave.”