Sunil Yapa - Your Heart Is a Muscle the Size of a Fist

John Henry cradling Victor’s body in the circle of his arms.

John Henry saying, “I know it hurts.”

John Henry saying, “King, I could use your help over here.”

Could she tell him how near the end of the third day, late in the afternoon, Ignacio banged on the cab of the pickup, and they stopped.

“We get down here,” he said.

She looked around in surprise. Barren desert. The sun dipping toward a rag of mountains between sky and earth and nothing but scrub grass and powdered bone dirt in between.

“Here?” she said.

“Here.”

“But this is nowhere.”

Could she tell him how they arrived at the river at nightfall? Ignacio and his son and her, three dark figures with their hands held flat above their eyes as if to shade the sun, three dark silhouettes like paper dolls cut from sky, staring across a river at the United States.

Could she tell him about the river? How it was a cold black rush carrying branches and the odd piece of trash: a Styrofoam cup, a torn bag attached to a branching stick, flotsam spinning circles on the eddying current. An ominous sort of silence to the thing.

Could she tell him how she stripped down to her bra and underwear on the bank as the boy stole shy glances? How she hadn’t showered or bathed in three weeks and her skin felt gritty with worn-in dirt, how her clothes and pack went into the trash bag, how she was thinking of the weight of the gun, thinking of the panic in Guadalajara in which she had bought it, and now that she was here, standing at the river, so close to home, she no longer wanted it — could she tell him she had never wanted it?

John Henry dragging Victor, King following. He deposited him on the curb on the far side of the Sheraton, leaned him against a newspaper box. John Henry lifted his arms over his head and stripped his sweater and pressed it to the back of Victor’s bleeding head and laid him down. The Chief, it seemed, had lost his taste for violence. King didn’t see him anywhere. He had sprayed the kid and then disappeared into the crowd, heading for the glassed lobby of the Sheraton looking like he was going to be sick. But King knew he would be back.

“John Henry, we got to go.”

“Baby, I’m a little busy here.”

She had told him about Vail, hoping arson was kind of sexy. A badge of honor and a proof of your commitment. Except not exactly. And maybe not among everyone. It wasn’t exactly a nonviolent technique, was it? Burning down a ski resort.

What about sighting a gun on a man’s chest and squeezing the trigger with a cold slow breath? What about watching a man flop in the sand and bleed out a mile from the border? Would John Henry think that nonviolent?

Victor curled on the concrete in a fetal position, legs pulled in a fishhook, his chest rising and falling rhythmically. Gasping great lungfuls of air and pawing at his eyes.

King told him to quit it. She didn’t have time for this.

Victor stopped touching his eyes and looked at her mulishly through the swollen slits. He coughed once, twice, whole chest heaving, and then went back to rubbing at his face with the heels of his hands.

She wanted to tell him. Wanted to tell John Henry how she reached into the zippered pocket of her pack there on the dark bank of the river and pulled out the gun and shells.

Wanted to tell him how Ignacio backed away, asked what she was doing, and she replied, “I don’t want this anymore. I want to give it to you.” Wanted very much to tell him how the man waved his hand, dismissing the idea, and said, “This is not a good thing to have or give,” and how much she agreed though she did not say.

Explosions rocked the intersection. Tear gas looping in the street. People running in twos and threes, bandannas pressed tight to their mouths as they ran.

John Henry saying, “Don’t touch your eyes.”

John Henry saying, “I know it hurts.”

John Henry saying, “You’re going to be all right.”

That detached feeling in her body as if she were floating just above herself, just watching.

More than anything she wanted to confess, wanted to tell John Henry every detail she had never told a single soul. How she offered Ignacio the gun by the barrel. But how it was the boy who stepped forward instead and took it from her hand.

“Be careful,” she said. “It’s loaded.”

The way the boy held it flat in his palm, testing the weight of it, then gripped it and lifted it and sighted across the river.

“Blam,” he said.

The harsh warning tone in his father’s voice when he said, “Give that back to her.”

Wanted to tell John Henry the way the boy looked at his father curiously. How the gun remained extended at the end of his arm as he said again, “Blam.”

Wanted to tell him, too, about that daydreamy feeling like she was watching a movie about what she was actually doing in the here and now. It was a confusing, scary feeling — becoming a piece of your personal history even as you lived it. As if she were already at home and here came her face edging across the TV screen, and look, there was John Henry cradling Victor’s head in his lap and she heard his voice saying, “King, help me,” but it sounded like it was coming from the distant end of a long narrow hall.

“I have to go, John Henry.”

“King, please. I can’t do this by myself.”

Oh god, how she wanted to tell him. How the man and the boy waded into the water, then were out ahead of her, already lost in the dark. How the river gurgled coldly around her body, pulled at her bra, ran through her underwear, the coldness of it a shock she felt all the way to her spine, the current fast and hard, the sky as dark as a vault above her, the gun in the bag tied to her wrist and the current tugging, wanting it, it seemed. How she stroked with the other hand and gave good strong kicks with her legs, breathing evenly through her nose as her mother had once taught her, long ago in the murky waters of some backwoods lake.

Long, long ago. When she had been a girl she was no longer.

Could she tell him how her heart was a slow steady throbbing in her chest? How the dark shapes of trees finally appeared and she stumbled the last few feet to shore? How she pulled herself from the water and stood with her hands on her knees, panting and shaking, the garbage bag hanging heavy from her wrist? How surprised she had been by the rush of gratitude, the sudden deep relief she felt to feel American mud between her toes?

Out front of the line, three cops were hacking at the crowd, working as a team and moving into the block. Tear gas drifted acrid over the huddled heads as the cops clubbed and sprayed, as they dragged people, arms bent and cuffed, through the street to the waiting buses.

“John Henry,” she said. “We—”

“I’m not leaving.”

Could she tell him how she did not hear them and longed for their sound, not their talking but the sound of their swimming, the dipping arms, the errant splash as their legs broke the surface, the hissing vacuum of the river around their bodies, sucking them downstream?

How she heard nothing, only her labored breathing and the water sliding quietly along the shore? How she picked her way carefully through the brush, shivering and listening and hoping?

How a sudden blaze of light swept across her face, and she fell flat to the ground, instinctively buried her face in the dirt, seeing the pebbled dust, the rough bark of the pines, the low thorny scrub brush washed in a harsh white light?

How she had crawled on all fours toward the cover of bushes, thorns poking at her hands and elbows, still in her wet underwear?

How she stopped and rose up behind a dense clump of brush, a slick of conflicting emotions turning slowly inside her, the inner reaches of which she did not want to plumb because on top was not just the dumb animal gratitude of returning home, but that familiar foreign fear twisting around her insides like a coil of razor wire, icy to the touch.