Ben Stroud - Byzantium - Stories

“They were just sitting,” she said now, of the men in the shelter.

They hiked on. The trail bent and rose. Ahead of them the reeds and brush cleared, and in the trail’s path lay a row of painted walking sticks and colored crystals on a blanket. In front of the blanket sat a milk jug weighted with change and bills. Shelly guessed now the job of the men in the hut — to run across and snatch the goods and the day’s takings if the border patrol came over the hill. On the far side of the river a little metal boat was tied up. She discovered, too, the source of the singing.

Near the boat a man stood on the sandy bank, serenading them. He looked about fifty, wore jeans and a green shirt, and had binoculars at his eyes, alternately watching them and then turning to watch the hill, to see if anyone else was coming over. Beside the jug was a plain rock, painted with the words: The Mexican Singing Victor. Your Donations Help Buy Supplies for the School Childrens.

Shelly stopped and took a dollar from her pocket and put it in the jug. “Gracias,” the Mexican Singing Victor called across the river. It was only about thirty feet wide, and shallow. Shelly waved her hand and then looked up toward the rising canyon walls.

“Why’d you do that?” Josh said with a slight scowl.

“Why not?”

“There’s border agents in the parking lot,” he said. “The signs said not to give those guys money.”

“Please,” Shelly said, coming up to him and then passing by. Josh didn’t say anything, just stood behind, giving her room. Shelly had learned over the years how Josh hated public fights, even though it was usually he who started them. She didn’t mind the Singing Victor seeing them. But Josh wouldn’t speak, and later, she knew, if he returned to the fight in the safe confines of their car or their tent, he would say that he’d felt the man’s eyes pressing into him. When she turned around, Josh was walking with his hands in his pockets, affecting calm, and Victor was watching the hill. He’d stopped singing now that he had his dollar.

THEY HAD SPENT THE WEEK IN FAR WEST TEXAS, the Trans-Pecos, hiking the Guadalupes and then driving down to Big Bend. This was their fifth year of marriage, and the trip was to mark their return to normalcy — they’d just taken twelve weeks of counseling after Shelly had caught Josh with his chubby, moonfaced student teacher, Karleen. Shelly had come to the school to bring him dinner, a surprise, and found the two clutching each other in Josh’s classroom. They parted, and the girl seemed about to speak, or to cry, but at Shelly’s stare she ran out of the room, bumping into a desk and toppling a box of pencils. How stupid she looked, Shelly thought, that stupid girl. It was the only thing she let herself think. Already the year had been hard — Shelly had lost her teaching job because of the school district’s funding cuts.

“Three months,” Josh said before she asked. He’d sat in one of the student desks and put his face in his hands. “God, I’m sorry.”

“Shit,” Shelly said in disbelief, the hurt still welling up as she sat at another desk. “I mean, shit.”

“We stayed late putting up posters,” Josh said. He stared at his desktop. A student, Shelly saw, had carved cock into the desk and colored the gouges with blue pen. “And it just happened, and then kept happening.”

“Just happened?” Shelley yelled. “I’m supposed to believe that? One minute you’re tacking a poster to the wall, and the next you’ve got your dick inside her?”

The smell of fried catfish and hush puppies rose from the food containers in the plastic bag. “I’ll do whatever you want,” Josh said.

Shelly wasn’t sure what to say. The anger made it hard to think. It was something hot pressing against her neck and her temples, like when her mother used to grab her. “Do you still love me?”

Josh looked up at her quickly. “Of course,” he said. “Yes.”

And so they had gone to marriage counseling. The counselor had told Josh to move out of the house, that Shelly could only let him back in when she trusted him. And Josh had to keep his cell phone with him, turned on at all times so Shelly could call him whenever she wanted, to see what he was doing. Josh also had to give Shelly a full daily schedule.

“I feel like a science project,” Josh had said, trying for a laugh.

“You broke our trust,” Shelly said, her voice sharp. “This is serious. You broke it, and now you have to earn it back.”

After two months, Shelly felt he had, and asked him to move back in. By the end of the counseling, they seemed well on the path together — that’s how Shelly thought of their marriage now, following that last session, as a path going up a hill, behind which the sun was rising.

LOOKING AT THE RIVER, Shelly pictured a dotted line running down its middle.

“It’s weird,” she said, “that that’s another country over there, only a few feet away, that we can see it, can walk to it—”

“But we can’t,” Josh said. “That’s just it.” He looked over to the canyon, up the hill behind them. “I bet there’s a border agent up there somewhere, talking with the ones in the lot. You go over that river, you can’t cross back, not unless you go a hundred miles either way to a border crossing.”

She didn’t mean she wanted to go over; she was just talking. “I’m only saying it’s stupid. It’s just right there.” She looked at the brown river. It wasn’t deep — a few feet at most. “It’s nothing. I could run there and back in two seconds.”

Across the river the reeds were green, like the ones on their side, and a burro was nosing behind a tall bush, which seemed too clichéd to be true, the burro, but there it was. The four men were still under their stick shelter, and Victor was still watching the hill for the next tourists.

“I’m just saying it’s dumb, is all.”

Josh ignored her, and they walked the last few yards toward the canyon without speaking. The trail ended where a giant mound of sand spilled from the canyon’s wall. Past this the river bank turned in, closed against the cliffs, and you couldn’t go any farther. They stood there, at the bank, peering at the canyon rising above them in a tight V of red and tan stone. Beneath the usual rote fascination, Shelly felt a sudden prickle of sadness. Someday she and everything around her would lie pressed under another layer of rock, that’s what the canyon said to her.

Shelly looked again at Josh. “Come on, let’s do it,” she said, taking Josh’s hand. “Just run there and back. No one’s here except Singing Victor and his cronies.” She nodded toward the shelter.

“Why?” Josh said, pulling his hand free. “What does that prove?”

“Nothing. Just how stupid everything is, I guess.”

“I don’t want to end up in Mexican prison.”

“God, don’t be this way. Come on. We just go there and back, together.”

“But those guys,” Josh said, looking at the shelter. “I bet they’re waiting for that. They’ll kidnap us or rob us or something.”

“No they won’t,” Shelly said. “That’s stupid. Please, it’ll be like our renewal.”

“Renewal,” Josh said.

She took his hand and tried to pull him with her, but he slipped out of her grasp, and she was off, dashing across the river, the water splashing up to her knees, and then she was on the other side. She turned and looked back at Josh, standing there, mopey, and then she looked at the canyon wall, then over at the green river reeds the trail had cut through. It was strange, now, looking at her own country across the way. She looked at Victor, who was looking at her, then turned back to face Josh. Her legs were damp. The wind coming from the canyon made them feel cool. Nothing had happened. Maybe people did this every day.