Do They Know I'm Running

Lonely snatched the bag from him, peered inside. “?Cuanto?” How much?

The kid, tottering foot to foot, reached behind to scratch his back beneath his shirt. “Dos cientos, mas o menos.” Two hundred, more or less.

Lonely glanced up, met the boy’s eyes. “?Mas o menos?” He lashed out, slapped the kid’s face, then launched into what felt like a full five minutes of insulting venom, accusing the boy of stealing, skimming off the protection take that had been collected by other mareros in shakedowns of the city’s bus drivers. The boy stood there and took it, valiant in his way, verging on tears but never giving in. Lonely made to slap him twice more, but settled for just watching him cringe. He asked three times, shouting finally, how much did he steal? The boy answered, “Goma,” nothing, his voice a little weaker, a little less convincing, each time.

Finally, Lonely ended with: “Te gusta hacerte el suizo. Consigo mi dinero, lelito.” You like to play dumb. I get my money, you little fool.

He waved the boy out with disgust. Once he was gone, Lonely turned back to Roque. “What the fuck you looking at?”

Roque collected the Martin, switched to an open D tuning, adjusted the mike down to chair level. His hands were shaking. Get it together, he told himself as he recued the video. Figuring Lonely and his boys for secret sentimentalists, like most punks, he laid on the schmaltzy rubato as he strummed a flamenco-style rhythm track, complete with backhand flourishes and syncopated thumb slaps on the guitar’s spruce top. Gradually, the pulse in his neck stopped throbbing.

He followed up with a muted arpeggio pattern on the Strat, echoing the bass line but elaborating on it too, giving it an edge, a little extra momentum. When it came time to solo he built it in Dorian mode like Santana in “Evil Ways,” the off-kilter minor jarring at first then jelling, almost medieval in its eerie drift, but full of bite and heat. After one particularly aching lick he could sense it, the gravitational turn, every eye and ear in the room drawn to him and him alone, and he finished with a series of slowly ascending arpeggios ending in a scream.

Finally, he gestured the girl over again and readjusted the mike-stand height. He wanted to ask her name but knew better. Using the Strat, he played the vocal line he wanted her to follow, no words, just nonsense syllables or open vowels. The thing had enough verbiage as is. He let the girl know it would be okay if she improvised a little, even though he’d be echoing her on the guitar. Using the effects pedal, he bought himself a little distortion, a touch of phase delay, some sustain, then recued the track and said, “?Listo?”

She nodded. He counted it off.

By now the track seemed full and solid, all that was lacking was the haunting high notes, the skin-tingling wail of the bruja. The girl obliged, getting it instinctively, her voice throaty but pure. He was impressed. The only problem was, at the high end of her range, she trended flat. He tried to get her pitch to lift by echoing her notes on the guitar, a howling whisper tracking her vocal line, but either she’d never had to blend before, meaning she’d never sung harmony, or she was too scared to hear him.

Once the track was over she glanced at him shyly, fingers twined. He bit back a grin at her girlishness and again caught himself staring at her face, the two punctuating moles on her throat. He told her how much he liked her voice, how rich the tone was, how gutty the timbre, but he wanted to run through the thing again.

– This time, he said, visualize the notes in the air, like balloons, aim for the top, let your voice skim along the upper surface. Understand?

She swallowed nervously. Nodded.

He recued the track, met her eye, counted off.

They ended up doing four more takes before she nailed it, pitch and all, at which point Roque couldn’t hold back his smile anymore, if only from relief. It had been fear after all, tightening her voice. Each time, he followed her improvisations, the same harsh keening whisper in echo, riding the sustain, occasionally jumping a fifth or an octave, then settling back in, note for note. The melody spoke of longing, heartbreak, cold regret, which brought a wistful gravitas to the cocksure gangster bullshit. It made the mareros look like men, something they’d botched ridiculously on their own.

But the really marvelous thing was watching her face change as she sang. She winced on anything above an A, clearly still limited by the bruise and gash on her cheek, maybe other wounds he couldn’t see, but her voice turned that pain into something clean and nameless. She knew what it meant to suffer, and not just a crack across the jaw. Her face surrendered to it.

When the last take was over, Sisco let go with an almost lovelorn sigh: “Que vergon.” Fucking great. Chiqui’s rubbery tattooed face twisted into a garish smile. Only Lonely held back. He got up, tugged his Dickies straight, adjusted the sag. “Let’s take a break, light up a blunt. Maybe a couple more run-throughs after that.”

Roque set the Strat back gently in its chrome stand. “I’ve come a long way. I’d like to see my uncle.”

The room went still. Lonely offered a scornful smile. “Yeah, we’ll get to that.”

Roque thought about the boy, the beating he had coming. “Look, you do another take, it’ll just be different, not better. Right now, it’s the best it’s gonna get. Trust me.” He knew not to come on too strong, naysay the guy with his boys right there, not to mention the girl. But he couldn’t afford to let himself get conned into wasting more time. He tried to sound obliging but not cowed. Let the sadistic prick be the good guy, he told himself, a trick perfected growing up with Godo. He picked up his knapsack, making a point not to glance toward the girl.

“Believe me, I’ve been there when it got to be take after take, till everybody’s beat and confused and bored. Once in a while, maybe, you can make decent music that way. You’re so exhausted you’re almost dreaming your way through it. But, you know, it’s luck if that happens. As it stands? You’re gonna blow people away, no joke. Now-I know my uncle’s gonna be worried, okay?”

THEY REACHED SUCHITOTO AT TWILIGHT. AFTER THE SQUALOR OF LA CHACRA, Roque was unprepared for the cobblestone streets, the sleepy architecture, the colonial-era buildings with their eye-slamming colors, a shock of red here, a soothing turquoise there, warm fat yellows in between. A statue of Don Quixote fashioned from scrap metal jousted with a chalk-white cathedral. Plump sirvientas in pale blue livery, their hair pinned up, cradled infants and glanced down from wrought-iron balconies.

In the distance, Roque could see Lago de Suchitlan, the lake nestled among rolling hills bronzed by sunset. At the edge of the city they took a ferry-in truth, little more than a small tented barge-crossing to a village called San Pedro Lempa.

Sisco drove down a street of tidy but nondescript shops and houses, past a high foundry wall of arched red brick, then turned left onto a dirt lane that curved up a wooded hill, stopping in front of a yard surrounded by a tall thorny hedge, shaded by mango trees. Beyond the passageway into the yard, the house resembled virtually every other Roque had seen, cinder-block walls, tin roof, but it seemed larger than most, almost palatial, even though the guttering light beyond the curtains suggested kerosene lamps or candle flame.

As Roque prepared to get out, Sisco made his first remark of the trip. “In case you’re curious-the mamita? Her name’s Lupe. Girl is fucking fly, no?”

It couldn’t be a good thing, Roque thought, knowing any more about her. He forced a shrug. “Pop the trunk, I’ll get my bag.”

As he grabbed his knapsack Sisco sidled alongside. A flip smile played across his face, made all the more unnerving by the red glow of the taillights. “Mejor un bombon para dos,” he said, “que una mierda para uno.”

It was the first time he’d spoken more than a word or two of Spanish: Better a candy for two than a piece of shit for one. Roque felt his mouth go dry. No matter what he responded, it would get back and that could only harm the girl. Lupe.

“It’s not my concern,” he said finally. “I’ve got enough on my hands as is.”

Sisco drove off in a spume of exhaust and Roque stood there, watching the taillights disappear beyond the first hill. Rewinding the whole miserable situation in his head, he wondered how badly he’d misjudged things.

Turning back toward the fenced-in yard, he called out, “Tio?”

The stillness didn’t feel threatening, just empty. He wondered if he hadn’t been stranded, no one around, a little revenge, courtesy of Lonely, who’d seen right through his feigned indifference for the girl. Then a rustling stirred from deep within the house. Shortly a tiny woman appeared in the doorway, Indian braids, a simple white blouse that matched her apron, a long dark skirt. She carried a flickering kerosene lamp.