David Corbett - Do They Know I'm Running

She brought herself up short in the middle of an unpleasant laugh. “No, you don’t. You just like the way it sounds.”

“Why are you insulting me?”

“I’m telling you the truth. If that’s insulting-”

“The truth? Agents busted into our trailer today, looking for my cousin. They almost got into a shootout with Godo, I mean they were this close , okay? Then, way I hear it, my uncle got chased from his truck at the port, run down like a crook. He’s been hauling loads there five years, suddenly he’s a security risk, the fascist fucks.”

“Things are different now. You know that.”

“My uncle’s in a cell someplace. At least, that’s the best I can hope for. But in a few weeks, maybe less, he’ll be on a plane to El Salvador, not much me or my aunt or anyone else can do about it. And we kinda need Tío’s cash input at the moment. Money’s kinda tight.”

“Maybe it’s time you thought about a job.”

The tone, he thought, so snide, so bogus. “Okay. You’re right. I should go.”

“And not come back.”

“You don’t mean that.”

“I don’t? I said it-I can’t take this, okay?” A tear scrolled down her cheek. He reached out to hold her but she tore herself away. “Get out!”

“Why are you-”

“Get! Out!”

She looked around, saw the empty wineglass on the floor and stooped to pick it up. Cocking her arm, she readied herself to hurl it.

“Put it down.” He turned and without looking back walked out the front door. She slammed it behind him but didn’t turn the lock. He wondered at that, lingering on the porch. Shortly he heard it, coming from inside, not the sound of weeping, something else, something much different, a sudden thick crashing, the splintering hollow thud of earthenware smashing against wood. By the time he snuck back in, came up behind her in the long narrow hallway, she was ankle deep in clay shards, face in her hands, shoulders heaving. And then the shelves were bare, he thought, the words sounding like a line from a fairy tale.

He picked his way through the debris, noticing how the fresh-grave smell was even more pronounced now, wrapped his arms around her, whispering her name as he nuzzled her hair. Listening to her shallow sobs, he thought: But this was what you wanted, right? Someone somewhere crying.

Hours later, when he rose from her bed to head back home, he asked himself what it meant, to bed this woman he cared for so much when she wouldn’t look at him, when even during sex the tears didn’t stop-unable or unwilling to climax, turning away from him as he pulled out short of climax himself, burying her fist in her mouth and her face in the pillow, steeled to his presence but no longer demanding he go.

ROQUE SLOWED TO A JOG AS HE NEARED HUNTINGTON VILLAGE. Fog drifted off the wetlands, hazing the streetlamps. The screech of a blue jay answered a distant car horn.

He wondered if the agents had come back hoping to wrap up the prior day’s business, snatch the few stragglers who’d eluded them-like Happy, who hadn’t been seen anywhere around here since, Christ, when, two years ago? The prospect of a confrontation, ordered to show ID, forced splay-legged against the chain-link fence with its thorny bougainvillea, it momentarily distracted him from what had just happened with Mariko.

He’d meant to comfort her; she’d remained inconsolable. The woman who made him feel smart, capable, a lover, a man, she’d peeled back the layers of his ego to reveal a whole new level of fuckup. He felt out to lunch, dishonest, guilty. He felt eighteen.

His chest heaved from the run as he peered through the fogged-in darkness, edging toward the trailer-park entrance, checking for sedans, clean-cut cops in bulky raid jackets. The maze of trailers sat quiet and mostly dark. The air smelled of pine and sewer muck. You go back soon, he told himself, you make sure she’s okay. You stay until she talks to you.

The tinny clamor of wind chimes grew louder as he neared the trailer; he saw lights up front. Tía’s awake, he thought, one more thing to tweak his guilt. Godo would be too, of course. I’m gonna catch hell, he thought, for leaving him alone. Okay. Fine. Unlocking the door with his key, he eased it open, stepped inside. Glancing at the breakfast nook, he stopped short.

“Close the door,” Happy said.

He was sitting next to Tía Lucha at the kitchenette table, his face bearded and stern, looking like a saint from some old Dominican prayer card. The beard was new. Always lean, he seemed gaunt now, eyes bulging from their sockets like small black plums. The rest of his face composed itself into a wary, tight-lipped scowl and his body seemed coiled, ready to bolt or lash out. He wore jeans, work boots, a plaid flannel shirt. His black hair was cropped short.

“Where the hell did you come from?”

Happy’s long-fingered hands clutched a mug of Tía Lucha’s Nescafé, which he raised halfway to his lips before answering. “That’s a long story.”

“When did you get here?”

Tía Lucha piped in:- He’s been back almost a week .

Roque was stunned. “You knew?”

– Of course not. Why would I keep something like that from you if I knew?

She seemed dazed, even fearful, an effect enhanced by the day’s first smears of thick white makeup, which gave her face a clownish unreality. Her glance darted between Roque and Happy, her gifted if irksome nephew, her marido ’s fugitive son.

Roque said, “I meant no offense, Tía.”

She rolled her eyes. Happy downed the last of his coffee.

Roque said, “Does Godo know you’re here?”

Happy turned in his seat to get out. “We had our chat.” He rose and offered a grateful nod to Tía Lucha. To Roque, he said, “Walk with me.”

“I need to check the dressing on Godo’s leg.”

Happy glanced back down the hall toward Godo’s room. “It can wait.”

OUTSIDE, THE FOG LINGERED. HAPPY HIKED UP THE COLLAR OF HIS shirt. “You forget how cold it gets here,” he said, walking briskly toward the gate, hunched forward. He cast an impatient glance over his shoulder, urging Roque to keep pace.

Once they were out on the river road he turned north, one wash of headlights after the other spraying his back as the morning’s first traffic made its way toward Napa. He ignored the cars or trucks as they rushed by but Roque could tell from the dock of his head as each one passed that he was noting who was inside.

Several hundred yards on he turned off the gravel roadbed into the parking lot for a small weatherworn strip mall-a cash-only car repair, a discount mattress outlet, a combination panadería/tienda/envío de dinero . If not for the raid the day before, clusters of bleary men would already be gathered in the parking lot, trying to stay warm as they waited for contractors to swing by, collect them for a day’s work. Happy headed for a battered Ford pickup scalloped with rust, bearing Arizona plates. Climbing behind the wheel, he said, “Get in.”

As Roque closed the door behind him, Happy lit up a cigarette, the rubbery match flame hollowing his features. After shaking out the match and exhaling a long plume of smoke, he turned to stare across the pickup’s cab with a strangely menacing sadness.

“Been spending your nights boning some broad twice your age. How’d that happen?”

Roque felt the blood drain from his face. “Who told you that?”

“Who says I needed to be told?” Happy tapped his ash through the window vent. “Tell me, Roque, your vieja , when she takes you into her bed…” He affected a throaty purr.

“Fuck you.”

“Watch your mouth.”