Do They Know I'm Running

his seat, watching as Beto pulled back the bar’s narrow tin door and vanished inside.

A weather-worn poster for Zayda Pena, a singer, was tacked up to the bar’s outside wall. Roque recognized the name from news reports. She was one of a dozen or so musicians on the grupero scene, Mexico’s version of country-western, who’d been murdered the past few years. Some of those killed had recorded narcocorridos, ballads touting the escapades of drug lords, a surefire way to piss off rivals. None of the murders had been solved. As though to drive that point home, somebody’d shredded the poster with the tip of a knife to where it looked as though a giant cat had come along to sharpen its claws on Zayda’s face.

Glancing over his shoulder, he caught Lupe disentangling herself from Tio Faustino’s arm, stretching, yawning, finger-combing her hair. You’re such a sap, he thought, mesmerized. At the same time he realized he could be looking at the next Zayda Pena. You pay for the company you keep. And yet when somebody walks up, says he loves your act, tells you he wants to bankroll you, turn your dream into your future, knowing as you do how hard you’ve worked, how few musicians catch a break, how many give it up or lose their way, is it really such a sin to say yes? Is it really a sign of virtue to shrink away, turn down what, for all you know, is the last real chance you’ll get?

The door to the bar opened again but it wasn’t Beto who emerged. A wiry man with a burdened slouch and artfully slicked-back hair stepped out into the street and rummaged a cigarette pack from his hip pocket. As his match flared, Roque got a glimpse of his features: less Mayan, more mestizo, with strangely bulging eyes like the clown Chimbombin.

But that wasn’t the troubling part. This wasn’t California. The guy didn’t need to step outside to grab a smoke.

Roque eased his hand toward the gearshift, ready to slam it into drive, leave Beto behind if need be, waiting for the bug-eyed stranger to make a sudden move.

Beto strode out of the bar and past the other man without a glance. The passenger door opened, the overhead light flared on, the door slammed shut. He just sat there in the dashboard glow for a moment, his exotically handsome face a mask.

Finally: “They’ve got checkpoints all over the inland roads. Strange. Usually they focus on one, the others are clear, switch it around every few days. We have to keep on the coastal route all the way through Oaxaca, past Puerto Escondido.”

It took a second for the name to register. Roque said, “That’s where the boats run by El Chusquero-”

“Tell me something I don’t know.” Beto leaned over, checked the gas gauge, then glanced up and finally noticed the bug-eyed man with the greaser hair. “What’s this turd want?”

Finishing his cigarette, the stranger tossed down his butt, crushed it with his boot and shuffled back inside the bar.

Tio Faustino edged forward. “You think that gangster-Captain Quintanilla, El Chusquero, whatever he’s calling himself today-you think he has something to do with closing down the inland roads? Maybe he’s paid somebody off. Maybe he has connections inside the military here, or the police. There could be somebody waiting for us up ahead.”

Beto stared at the bar’s tin door. “No. Fucking coincidence, that’s all. Bad luck.” Reaching his arm out the window, he slapped the side of the door hard three times. “Come on. Let’s move it.”

A FEW MILES OUTSIDE OF TOWN THEY ENCOUNTERED THE INFAMOUS wind, notorious for jackknifing trucks. The barrancas below were a graveyard, Beto said, not just the semis but the cars they dragged with them over the cliffs. Tio Faustino took the wheel. Despite a hairy sideways jolt now and then, he kept the Corolla on course, whistling under his breath to soothe his nerves, then asking Lupe to keep him awake with a song or two. Stirring herself from her inwardness, she resorted to the usual repertoire, “Es Demasiado Tarde,” It’s Too Late, coming first, sung sotto voce, almost a whisper, then “El Camino,” The Road:

De lejos vengo yo a verte
a conseguir lo que quiero
Aunque la vida me cueste.

I’ve come from far away to see you
to get what I long for
Even if it costs me my life

They passed through Salina Cruz hours before dawn but the city was already stirring, the refineries bristling with light, bakery trucks roaming the streets. The road out of town followed the coastal hills for miles, the winds again rocking the car back and forth as Roque huddled against the door, trying to grab some sleep.

As they passed a dirt lane a pair of headlights flashed on, then a pickup eased out onto the road behind them, followed by a second pickup trailing the first.

Beto turned around in his seat, looking back through the rear window. “If you can pick up speed,” he told Tio Faustino, “it might be a good idea.”

Samir wiped at his nose with the back of his hand, a fear reflex. Lupe glanced over her shoulder, her face both brightened and shadowed by the oncoming headlights. Following her eyes, Roque could make out the silhouettes of men standing in the first pickup’s truck bed, clutching the railing along the sides with one hand, weapons in the other.

Tio Faustino accelerated, taking the switchbacks fast and tight, hoping to lose the pickups that way-they’d have to slow down at each sharp turn or risk losing the men holding on in back. But even with his best efforts, come every straightaway the two small trucks made up lost ground, though the second seemed to lag seriously behind the first. Finally the crack of gunfire, bullets whistling past.

“You gotta outrun them to the next roadblock,” Beto told Tio Faustino.

“How do I do that? How far-”

“I don’t fucking know”-Beto pounding on the dash-“just go.”

The highway dropped toward the beach and they passed into a sudden mass of fog. Tio Faustino braked, cranked down his window, leaned out to see the course of the pavement, guiding himself that way as he tried to maintain some speed. The road rose again suddenly, curving inland, the fog thinned and he hit the gas, hoping this was his chance finally to gain some real advantage. Then the road hairpinned back toward shore, he touched the brake as he entered the turn then accelerated, hugging the curve, only to see through the mist, once the road straightened, the outline of a something massive in the middle of the road. He got out the words “pinche putos” before everyone slammed forward from the impact and the cow barreled over the hood, shattering the windshield with the sound of an exploding bomb, continuing over the roof. The car fishtailed, careening off the road in a spin and nearly tumbling over as the wheels dropped into a rock-strewn culvert just beyond the asphalt, slamming hard to a stop. Every head snapped in recoil. Tio Faustino’s face came away from the steering wheel bloody.

Beto brushed off shards of glass with one hand while the other slammed the door, “Go! Go! Go!” But Tio sat there dazed, blood streaming from his nose, a deep gash along his cheek.

Gathering his wits, Roque said, “I’ll drive,” but he barely had his car door open before the first pickup cleared the bend. The cow’s carcass remained twisted across the road, the driver turned sharp to avoid it, almost tipped over, then overcorrected and this time sent the small truck tumbling, the men in back still aboard as the thing went over, crushed before they could jump free. The pickup rolled over and over, ending with its wheels in the air. An eerie stillness followed, just hissing steam, the wind rushing through the hillside grass, the surf below.