David Dalglish: A Land of Ash

The gun was heavy in his hand. The girl stared, just stared. Her eyes were green. Her nose was small, her ears almost like those of an elf. Crying. So small, and crying.

“We feed our own,” he said to her, as if she’d understand. He moved his finger to the trigger, remembering what he’d been trained. Never place your finger on the trigger unless you were ready to fire. Staring down at her, he wondered if he truly was ready. He aimed the gun. The girl was old enough to recognize what it was, but she only closed her eyes and clutched the log. Her feet swayed in the waters. Her skin was so pale, and her lips quivered from the cold. Or maybe it was fear.

His finger slipped off the trigger.

“Come here,” he said, offering his hand. The girl took it, and with a quick tug, he dragged her out and brought her to his station. He had a small tent, a chair facing the water, and his crate. Within the tent was a small cooler filled with clean water. He wrapped her in the blankets to his bed and then gave her a bottle to drink.

“Name?” he asked her in spanish. She stared and shivered. “Your name?”

“Leann,” the girl said, her eyes suddenly lighting up as she realized what he wanted. She rattled over a bit more of English, but Javier held a finger to his lips. She nodded and stayed quiet.

Javier looked about, feeling panic claw at his gut. He’d helped a survivor. On his watch, someone had made it across. It didn’t matter her age, or how little food she’d eat and water she’d drink. If someone found out, he was in deep shit. What to do? What could he do? Perhaps he could find her a safehouse back at town, but even leaving his post could get him disciplined, if not shot. Deserters, even momentary ones, had become the equivalent of war criminals in the eyes of the Mexican people.

Light flashed over the outside of his tent, faint and distant. Javier swore, his eyes scouring the tent.

“Bed,” he said, pointing. Leann climbed atop, seeing his fear. He shook his head and pointed underneath.

“Hurry,” he told her, not caring if she understood or not. His bed was a simple cot, the space underneath it narrow, but she was a small girl, with a hint of starvation on her bones. Hoping she could hide herself appropriately, he bolted out of the tent and made for his chair.

“Javier?” called a voice. He felt his gut tightened. He knew who approached, and it was the last person he wanted to see at that moment.

“Yeah, Sergio?” he asked as he sat. His heart thudded as Sergio neared, walking along the edge of the river. He realized the spotlight still lay on the ground. He was just bending over to get it when a hand touched his, also reaching for the light.

“Holy hell,” Javier said, jerking his hand back. Up came the spotlight, spinning around, and then resting on the crate. Sergio stared at him, an eyebrow raised.

“Something wrong?” he asked.

Sergio was a skinny man, dark-complexion, his hair thick and black. From their many talks, Javier knew he was intelligent, cold, and dedicated to his post at the border with belief bordering on fanaticism. The river was his church, a gun his bible, and he baptized the dead in its waters with a frightening intensity.

“Just startled me is all,” Javier said, trying to keep his voice sounding bored.

“What happened to your light?” Sergio asked as he picked it up and then sat down atop the crate, the light resting in his lap. He shone it across the Rio, looking, watching.

“Bumped it with my elbow,” he said.

Sergio nodded. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a cigarette.

“Something is probably wrong with me,” he said as he pulled out his lighter. “Half the world’s choking with ash, and here I am blowing more into the wind. Shame that Yellowstone wasn’t full of nicotine. We’d have people running toward it instead of our beloved land, climbing their own fences just to get our death sentence.”

He inhaled, the tip flaring orange in the night. Javier scratched at his neck, using it as an excuse to turn toward the tent. It was too dark inside. He couldn’t see the bed.

The silence stretched for awhile as Sergio enjoyed his cigarette.

“Real quiet lately,” Javier said, trying to make conversation.

“Almost makes me sad,” Sergio said. “Were you here at the beginning?”

“Acuña,” Javier said. “I was at the bridge.”

Sergio chuckled.

“ Rayos , you’ve seen worse than I. What was it like?”

Javier reached over and grabbed a cigarette from Sergio’s pack, then held it out while he waited for the lighter. Memories floated before his eyes as the tiny flame sparked. Thousands of people charging the barricades, some with firearms, but most with nothing but clothes, suitcases, and their young ones. Gunned down, all of them, yet still they’d rushed ahead, as if driven on by a greater terror than bullets could bestow. Finally one of the generals had given a last, desperate order. Cars and civilians still flooding across it, they’d blown the bridge to hell and watched it topple.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Javier said as the cigarette finally lit.

“I was down by Matamoros.” His eyes seemed to twinkle in the light of the cigarette. “The water’s thin there. Hardly any makes it to the ocean. Once heard some gringo say that any drop that makes it to the great blue is wasted. Makes you wonder if god unleashed Yellowstone on them all to teach them a lesson, one gigantic lesson written in ash on the U.S. chalkboard. What we do to the earth don’t mean shit compared to what it can do right back to us.”

He shifted positions, trying to get comfortable atop the crate. The light went from resting on his right leg to his left.

“Anyway, being so shallow and the land so flat, this meant people thought they could swim across. We barricaded the bridge with so much barbed wire and sandbags, most decided they’d try their luck with the water. So our commander, real tough ass named Miguel, he starts lining us up along the edge, just like a firing squad. That’s what we were, too. We waited until they were close, and I mean close. You could see the fear in their eyes, smell the mud on their clothes. And then we fired. And fired. Almost thought I’d run out of clips, and I was taking my time, too, not being wasteful like the others around me.”

“Sounds like it was awful,” Javier said.

Sergio shone the light at his face, and when he winced at the brightness, he plunged back into darkness. The light shone past him, toward his tent, then back to the water.

“You look pretty pale,” Sergio said. “You need something to drink?”

“I’m good,” Javier said.

Sergio shrugged.

“You’re not even close, by the way. Awful doesn’t begin to describe it. They were walking across the river by the end. The bridge of the dead, some wiseass near me named it. Name stuck, too, until later that night we destroyed it with dynamite. Just like Acuña’s bridge, we had to topple it to protect our families.”

“You ever think what it’d be like to be on the other side?” Javier asked as the wind picked up, cold and full of dust. “Try to think what it’d be like to be so scared you’d rush headfirst into gunfire? To be so scared you’d walk across the dead, all while guns are firing and people are dying?”

His cigarette dwindling, Sergio tossed it into the river and reached for another.

“You can’t think like that,” he said. “You ever think how much food they’d eat when they got here? How much water they’d drink? For every one we shoot across the river, ten die of starvation back in Mexico City. You can’t think of them as harmless. They’re victims of nature, not us. Hell, blame god if you want. He let the fucker erupt in the first place.”