BY MIDMORNING THEY’D FINISHED THE GRAVE, WORKING IN CONCERT, even the priest pitching in. Though baked hard from the tropical sun, the ground was sandy with little rock or clay to break through. They covered their noses and mouths with bandannas against the fine coarse dust, while Lupe murmured the rosary over and over, the monotony of the prayers only intensifying the monotony of the work. Not that anyone complained. It seemed fitting that things should go slow and hard. It rendered the effort devotional. And it distracted them from the zopilotes riding the thermals overhead.
The vultures weren’t the only visitors from the sky. Swarms of monarch butterflies, migrants themselves, descended from the foothills in the southerly downdrafts. Some of the birds Roque had seen in the plates of his Peterson Field Guide made appearances here; he spotted petrels, frigate birds.
He grew numb as his shovel bit into the dirt, wondering if the pain that gnawed at his arms and the small of his back, the blisters breaking open on his palms, weren’t all conspiring to fashion a wall between what he needed to do and what he hoped to feel. In time, though, memories rose up to deliver a little shock of feeling, one recollection in particular standing out, the afternoon of his twelfth birthday.
Until then he’d been practicing guitar on loaners from friends. Then Lalo went to the trouble of stopping by the house to meet Tia Lucha, touting her nephew’s talent. “He’s a natural, senora, an intelligent ear, excellent dexterity, he learns quickly and, at least when it comes to music”-and here he shot Roque a reproving glance-“exhibits considerable discipline.” His problems at school were roundly known, though he was an avid reader-science fiction, crime stories, comics, even some precocious porn. Tia Lucha feared that deeper involvement in music would only mean more skipped classes, more trouble. Tio Faustino, though, did not hesitate. He went to the store with Lalo, asked which guitar he would recommend. Lalo would later confide to Roque that his uncle was almost obsequiously polite, as workers from his part of the world so often are with the educated, and perhaps out of pride made no mention of cost. The courtship between Faustino and Lucha was still fresh at that point and Roque had no doubt the gift was intended as much to impress his aunt as him. No one had ever spent so much money on his behalf, certainly not for a gift. Tia Lucha looked on with a miserly expression as Roque opened the hard-shell case, lifted the nylon-string guitar from its red plush bed, played a bit of “Cancion de Cuna,” just enough to piss off Godo. “Learn another fucking tune,” he moaned and Tia Lucha threatened a backhand for his cursing. Tio Faustino merely sat there with a hopeful smile, black grime beneath his fingernails from replacing the rings on his truck, his curly hair mussed, waiting for Roque to thank him.
A woodworker from a nearby village delivered a pine coffin on a mule-drawn cart and they lifted the body into it, hammered the lid shut, then lowered it into the grave using ropes. It all went too quickly for Roque to make much of his last glance at his uncle’s body. Father Luis retrieved his stole and missal from the rectory and said a few prayers that consoled no one. Lupe wept softly, hand clasped across her mouth. Roque, feeling gutted, just stared into the grave, vaguely reassured by Lupe’s emotion, tapping into it secondhand. I will miss you, he nearly said aloud, but caught himself, for he felt the sorrow welling up and knew, once he gave in, there would be no end to it. Then the priest concluded his prayers, the men grabbed their tools again and began to toss back the dirt they’d just dug, the thud of each shovelful atop the coffin like a footfall on some invisible stair.
When they were finished, Father Luis said quietly:-I’m sure we all could use something to eat. He led them into the rectory’s dining room-a crucifix and the Virgin of Guadalupe on the rough plaster wall, a modest cedar table with a white linen cloth. His tiny Mixtec housekeeper set out bowls of corn porridge called atole, tortillas with bean paste and mole, limes and salt, plus sliced fruit and a basket of chapulines, spicy fried grasshoppers. The woman’s name was Dolor and she reminded Roque of the Chamula woman selling popcorn in Arriaga. Samir wolfed down his food, Lupe fussed with hers mindlessly, Roque felt more possessed by his thirst than his appetite. No one but the priest bothered with the grasshoppers.
Once the housekeeper collected the plates and fled to the kitchen, Father Luis looked around the table, registering each face as he enjoyed his dessert, dipping a hunk of soft white bread in a cup of Oaxacan hot chocolate.-You are not the first migrants who have landed on our doorstep in serious trouble. Perhaps I’m mistaken, but I can’t help imagining you have a special problem. He lifted one of his hands; unlike Roque, he’d suffered no blisters.-I do not need to know what it is. I would, however, like to know if I’m vaguely correct.
The weapons had raised an eyebrow or two during the day, as had Samir’s accent. Roque had an accent too, of course, but his was easily explained.
– The only thing special about our problem, Roque said, is that the people we paid to get us to the States have been unable to protect us. Their competitors, their enemies, whoever it was out there on the road last night, they’ve been after us almost from the start. And yet, from what I know about how things are down here, there’s nothing really special about that at all.
The priest dipped another morsel of bread in his chocolate.-The government is secretly in league with the Americans. It uses the federal police and the military to push back against the waves of people surging up from the south, who are doing nothing more than voting with their feet. And if the gangs rob the migrants or murder them? If the vigilantes or the paramilitaries torture them, then turn them over to the authorities? Nothing happens. It’s become a criminal system, there is no other word for it. Everyone is dirty.
He brushed a trail of crumbs from the tablecloth into his palm, scowling as he dusted them into his empty coffee cup.
– I believe I may know someone who can help you. He’s an American who lives up the way, a bit of a character, very storied life, if I’m to accept as true all he’s told me, which is probably foolish. My point is, I think he could find some way to be of assistance. He smiled abstractly, peering over the thick black ledge of his glasses.-If, however, I have read the situation incorrectly and you simply want to continue north on your own, you are of course free to do so. But I must warn you, the guns are a mistake. They will not protect you. One way or another, they will betray you.
THEY HID THE PICKUP IN THE RECTORY GARAGE AFTER FATHER LUIS drove off. Come nightfall they’d drive it back down the coastal road a ways and push it over the first convenient cliff.
The issue of the guns was seemingly resolved when Samir claimed only a pistol and one of the Kalashnikovs.- You have not had to survive what we have, he’d told Father Luis.-I mean no disrespect but prayers would not have saved us. And I am a man who prays. The priest had countered that if they were caught with weapons at a checkpoint they wouldn’t be sent back to where they’d started, they’d be packed off to jail-and a Mexican jail was nowhere a foreigner wanted to be. Nor could it be known he had guns at the church. Ever since the teachers strike two years back, there were paramilitaries roaming the countryside looking for subversives. Goons and off-duty police murdered at will: organizers, activists, journalists, including an American. The governor boasted an army of thugs and everywhere he went violence broke out, invariably blamed on his opponents. Priests were always suspect, especially those who, like him, served the pinches nacos-the fucking Indians.
– If someone finds weapons here, they will burn this church to the ground. Too bad for whoever happens to be inside at the time.
And so it was decided another grave needed digging, a shallow one, into which not most but all the guns disappeared.
Once the work was done, Dolor showed them to a washroom with a large tin tub, a cake of lye soap and a bucket of well water, asking for their clothes; she would dissolve the blood with hydrogen peroxide, then wash everything and hang it out in the sun. Lupe had only blouses and underwear to change into and so hid herself away in a spare room after washing the blood from her hair, sponging the rest of her body clean, handing up her filthy clothes. The old woman hefted the tub out into the yard and dumped the dirty water, then refreshened the bucket from the well and gestured for Samir. He was even worse off, only the clothes on his back, rank from weeks of relentless wear; once he had a chance to scrub the grime off his body, he modestly handed everything he’d been wearing through a gap in the washroom door. Roque went last; he stripped, passed his clothes to the housekeeper, then went to the tin washtub and began to lather his hands with the knife-cut square of grainy soap.
