Жанин Камминс - American Dirt

And then it happens so quickly. She steps forward abruptly, swings the pistol up, and points it at her sister’s would-be rapist. Carajo. This is not what El Chacal expected, not really. He steps after her, reaches toward her outstretched hands. ‘Soledad.’

She swings it toward him for only a split second, but it’s enough to convince him to freeze. She settles it swiftly back on Lorenzo, who’s no longer smirking. He raises his hands in front of him.

‘Yo,’ he says, and perhaps it was going to be I’m sorry.

Soledad pulls the trigger, and Rebeca watches without any reaction at all. She doesn’t wince or jump or gasp. She doesn’t look away. Soledad would like to shoot him again and again. She imagines bullet holes in todos los agentes in Sinaloa, imagines Iván’s brains splattered on the ceiling above her, and she’d like to keep shooting Lorenzo forever. She doesn’t even need to leave the desert now because the satisfaction of standing here shooting is all she needs for the rest of her life. It feels like a buckle in time, like hours or years pass while she stands there holding that gun. So then it also feels like a slow-dawning realization she has, that she might yet use one of those bullets for herself, and in so doing, join Papi, but then she wonders if she can still make it to Papi, to the good place where he is. She looks at the gun in her hand, and sees it there at the end of her arm as if from a great distance, and as she watches, it turns slowly toward her, so the hole where the bullets come out is nearly facing her. But there are other hands covering hers now, strong and gentle, and together, all four hands point the gun toward the ground. El Chacal loosens the grip of Soledad’s fingers and untangles the warm chunk of metal from her grasp.

When Soledad finally looks up from her hands and settles her eyes on her sister, what she sees in Rebeca’s face is a mirror of what she feels inside herself. It’s a nothingness. It’s the blankness of that painted sheet blowing free in the hot desert wind. There is no joy, no relief, no regret, no disbelief. The sisters clasp hands and walk carefully back toward the cave, picking their way among the stones and the spiky plants with their eyes wide open.

El Chacal stands over the body. Guilty. It’s not the first time one of his pollitos has died in the desert. Hell, it might not even be the first time today. But this one he could have prevented. He knows he’s responsible. He makes the sign of the cross over the corpse, but it’s God he addresses. ‘Perdóname, Señor.’

They have to break camp quickly in case anyone nearby heard the shot. When the coyote returns to the cave, the migrants are already dressing in their dry, stiffened clothing. They’re distressed, especially the two boys. Beto shakes his empty inhaler and takes a hollow puff, but they can all see the skin sucking into the depressions above his collarbones with each breath. He leans over and plants his hands on his knees. He closes his eyes to concentrate on deep, slow breathing. Marisol rubs his back.

‘Is he okay to move?’ El Chacal says. ‘We have to move.’

Marisol leans down to Beto, the sleeve of her blouse making a small curtain for him, like the one a nurse might draw around his bed, were he in an emergency clinic in Tucson. Beto doesn’t answer, but with his eyes still closed, he nods. Marisol gives El Chacal a thumbs-up. ‘He’s okay.’ Beto’s breath knocks like a rattlesnake.

The sisters move mechanically to dress themselves and pack their belongings. Their expressions are impassive. Marisol and Nicolás fall into helping them, zipping their backpacks, readying their shoes. The two silent men stand outside, apart. Slim and David look grim-faced and waxy. The confirmed death of one among them has forced them to contemplate what they’d heretofore managed not to consider too closely: That their brother and son, their uncle and father, may have by now met a similar end. Or no, not a similar end, in fact. A much worse one.

They probably made it out of the canyon, by Ricardín slinging his arm around his tío ’s strong neck. Perhaps they fashioned a splint so they could stagger up from ledge to ledge, and climb out of the gorge. Maybe Ricardín was able to tolerate the pain of walking, somehow, another mile on that smashed and gnarled leg. Surely they drank their reserves of water on that journey, however long it took them, hot and exposed beneath the bald desert sun. Maybe they were able to save a few mouthfuls for the end. If they made it as far as the Ruby Road, while the sun sucked all the moisture from their bodies, how long were they able to last there, on that unshaded dirt, while they waited for someone to find them? How long does it take for a person to dehydrate and die in the Sonoran Desert? What happens when your body becomes so thirsty it no longer follows basic commands like keep going , wave your arms, call for help . Don’t close your eyes. Wake up. Wake up! Are you aware, when your companion falls into the dirt beside you, when his body can’t take another step? Can you feel your own kidneys shutting down, your liver failing, your skin shriveling onto your bones? Can you feel your brain cooking inside your skull? Or do you lose consciousness before all that?

Mercy.

The coyote tells everyone to move quickly. He pulls the sheet from its nails and wraps it into a ball. He knows he will never return to this place again.

Lydia is not sorry Lorenzo is dead. Neither does she feel bad that Soledad was the one to kill him, beyond whatever emotional fallout that truth might one day have for the girl she’s grown so fond of. But she does worry that something vital may be broken inside herself, because Luca is suitably upset, but for her, it seems like death – even sudden, violent death – may no longer have the capacity to shock her. It’s a fear she needs to press like a bruise, to test its tenderness. Both of Luca’s heels are wrapped with Band-Aids and fresh socks, his boots tied snugly to his feet, and he’s holding Rebeca’s hand. The magic that exists between those two billows up and covers them like a force field. His presence reanimates Rebeca, erasing her blankness and filling her in with a trace of color. That energy, in turn, calms Luca, and returns him to himself.

‘I’ll only be a second,’ Lydia says to El Chacal as he stuffs the colored sheet into his pack. ‘I need to see him.’

‘Wait,’ the coyote says, and then he bends into the space where Lorenzo had been sleeping. His discarded T-shirt is there, his shorts and shoes. El Chacal reaches into the pocket of the shorts and pulls out a black canvas wallet with Minecraft characters on it. There’s a scritch of Velcro as the coyote opens the wallet, but there’s no ID inside. He’d been hoping for something he could leave with the body, because that act of identification is the smallest kindness, and one El Chacal can afford to give. Still, maybe someone will recognize the wallet, which will remain intact long after the skin is gone, long after the flesh is entirely scavenged or decomposed. Bodies disappear with astonishing speed in the desert. It’s helpful to find some personal item near the bleached bones. He hands the wallet to Lydia. ‘Just leave this with him,’ he says.

When El Chacal returns to his packing, Lydia notices the cell phone, too, tucked inside one of Lorenzo’s expensive sneakers. She picks it up. Luca watches her, but he’s calm now, with Rebeca. She nods at him, and then climbs up the outside of the cave to where Lorenzo’s body is still fresh in the dirt. It feels wrong to see him like this. Not only dead, but also without clothes. It’s embarrassing to see the vulnerability of his bare chest. His eyes are open, and Lydia thinks about closing them, but she doesn’t owe him that. She doesn’t want to touch him, but she nudges his bare foot with her toe and watches his leg react. It wobbles and settles. He’s really dead. And still she feels nothing. She stands so her shadow falls across his face and says a Hail Mary. She says the Fatima prayer, she tries.