there was something in her eye, something that scared me. I felt like I could see all the way down into her soul. And there was nothing there. She was already gone. How do you explain things like that? Anyway, it was the last time I ever saw her alive.
Roque reached out for his shoulder, thinking: Sin ti. Without you.-You don’t need to tell me any more, Tio.
– Please, Roque, let me finish. He smeared the heels of his hands across his face.- The government caught up with them near Tenango. The soldiers used guns and machetes. Twenty- eight people, mostly women and kids, butchered. By the time I made it back there, vultures were picking the flesh from the dead. Dogs were carrying bones away. Some of the women had been sliced open like iguanas when you harvest the eggs. You saw shoes, clothes, schoolbooks scattered all around, some of it charred black, because the cowards tried to hide the evidence by burning it. A few mules were still alive, torn up by gunfire or shrapnel, some with their guts hanging out. The braying, it was hideous. We shot them just for the silence. I found Celestina facedown in a clump of chichipince. You’re not a boy anymore, I don’t need to spell out what they did to her.
Roque felt paralyzed.-Tio-
– I was such a loser compared to her. I fell apart, became worthless as a soldier, a father, a man. I knew that if I didn’t get Pablo out of the country, he might get captured when I did, then he’d get sold to some family abroad. There was quite a racket in that back then. My superiors knew that too, finally they just told me to go, leave, head for the States, I was no good to the frente anymore. I was no good to anyone.
There was a group of people, a few nurses, a professor, a couple reporters, all marked for death and they were heading north, with plans to end up in Los Angeles. I went with them, bringing Pablo. But I couldn’t stay, too many people around MacArthur Park just reminded me of what had happened. I had a friend working in the Napa vineyards, he said I should come stay with him, his wife could help with Pablo. And so I ended up in Rio Mirada. A few years later I met Lucha-and you, your brother.
Roque wished for something to say, anything to ease his uncle’s heart, if only for a moment. But all he could come up with was:-I’m sorry.
Tio Faustino looked up, eyes glassy and vacant.-No, Roque. I didn’t tell you all that to make you feel guilty.
– I meant-
– You were kind to listen.
– Tio-
– I’m a silly, sad old man. He hefted himself from his chair.-
The moonlight, it makes me morose. And with that, yes, we should head off to bed. He turned to go in but then stopped, gazing one last time across the glimmering lake.-“We are the artificers of our own history,” they said. A morbid chuckle.-Whatever the hell that means. He wiped his face again, then gripped Roque’s arm, squeezed.-I am so proud of you, you know? So gifted. So thoughtful. Everyone says so.
ROQUE STAYED UP LATE THAT NIGHT, UNABLE TO GET HIS UNCLE’S story out of his head, wondering how people survive such things. He sat beneath the mango trees, strumming gently as Carmela’s exotic flowers filled the warm night air with their fruitlike scents: Arrayn Silvestre smelling like limes, sapuyulo like oranges. The full moon had waned, the yard was dark.
About midnight he heard a car slow and stop at the bottom of the hill, the motor died, a door opened and closed. He listened for footsteps, heard none, went back to playing. Then he sensed it, someone nearby, before hearing the twig snap. Turning toward the sound, he watched as Sisco ventured slowly forward, hands plunged into the pockets of his baggy pants.
“Hola, chero.” The kid rocked on his heels, a kind of mocking uneasiness.
Roque thought he smelled drink, but something else too, vaguely chemical, like ether or ammonia. “Why did you park down the hill?”
“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”
“Is something wrong?”
“Fuck yes something’s wrong, puto. It’s been, like, almost three weeks.”
Roque put the guitar down, for fear Sisco might try to grab it from him, smash it against a tree, just to make some senseless point. “I don’t have anything to do with that.”
“Fuck you don’t.”
“My cousin won’t even talk to me about it. The money, it’s in his hands.”
Sisco pivoted a little in place, like he was trying to find something to kick. He began to cough, couldn’t stop himself for several seconds, his chest rattling with phlegm.
Roque wondered at Sisco’s life here. He’d heard stories about other DPs-deportees from the States-thinking in American slang, living in Spanish, the culture a fading reactionary echo of some fictive golden past, with a chafing revolutionary undertone. The DPs were the hip outsiders, the hopelessly lost but strangely successful: reggaeton deejays, concert promoters, hair stylists, tattoo impresarios in a country that put you in prison for flashing your ink. The DPs had cache, if no real rank. They were, hey, Americans. Roque couldn’t imagine Sisco in such company. What was his gift? Sulking, back talk, hanging around. He’d soon be on the way back north to some street corner. Or else get shot dead right here.
The kid finally collected himself, got control of his cough, and the words uncoiled from within him as though off a spool. “Okay, fuck me, what I’m saying-hear me out, chero-what I’m saying? Next time, it won’t be me standing here. Am I getting through? It’s gonna be Lonely. And he don’t like you. He thinks you wanted to snag his bitch. Look, look, just listen, a’ight? Lupe? She’s fine and all but she ain’t like his chorba or nothin’-not even, not close. But you put pussy in the room, the smell gets on everybody, know what I’m saying? So he’s got this thing for you now, he don’t like you. He don’t respect you. You’re fool material. So get this shit together. It’s finance, man. Plans been made, the money’s supposed to be, like, in hand, in place, what-the-fuck-ever, we ain’t seen shit, and it’s a fucking problem. Get it done. Make a call. Or you can kiss that sorry old man you call your tio goodbye, ’cuz he ain’t goin’ no place.”
HAPPY SQUINTED AGAINST THE SUNLIGHT, NURSING HIS LAST cigarette of the pack. Forklifts roared forward and beeped backing up, bearing pallets of shrink-wrapped bananas, plantains, mangoes and melons from long-bed containers, delivering them to the panel trucks abutting the loading dock. Hard hats-blue, white, yellow-bobbed everywhere like gumballs; the workday hustle kicked into gear. With the concrete floor still wet from its morning hose-down, every footfall slapped or screeched.
Secretly he envied these men, honest work, honest pay, if there was such a thing. At a glance he could pick out at least half a dozen he suspected of being illegal, drivers especially, like his old man. Ironic, since at that very moment there were enough feds nearby to arrest half of Richmond.
“Your guy’s in love with his fucking phone,” Vasco said, glancing for the thousandth time at his watch. “Feels like all I’ve done since you talked me into this is wait.”
“If I’ve already talked you into this,” Happy said, “what the fuck are we doing here?”
In truth, everybody was getting itchy, unless he had a badge. Happy’d heard that morning from his father in San Pedro Lempa that the mareros were suddenly jacked with impatience, leaning hard now, popping up in the middle of the night, wanting their money, ready to pull the plug if it didn’t get wired down yesterday. And Vasco just got greedier the longer Happy stalled, the greed made him edgy, his edge made him an impossible pain in the ass. But Lattimore worked on government time, which seemed to have only three gears: Stalled. Stuck. Backwards.
It wasn’t like they had to wire up the warehouse. The feds had used it before, their favorite snare, home field, hidden video everywhere. When stings weren’t in play, the company that actually owned the place used the cameras to guard against employee theft-“shrinkage,” they called it. Even the office was miked, everything go. It
