Do They Know I'm Running

thought, gabbing away in the open like that. The shippers will say you’re organizing. Then watch your life turn to hell.

“With a loaded trailer? Twelve psi, easy. Nine’s fine. What’s your speed?”

“There’s the thing. I can barely break forty on an incline if I’m towing.”

Faustino cocked an ear halfheartedly, like it was a game between teams he had no stake in. Even if he’d thought the coast was clear, he wouldn’t have climbed down, joined in. He didn’t feel much like camaraderie these days.

What he felt was ashamed-losing the house, cheated out of it, all because the mortgage broker, a Mexican, all smiles and small talk, said he was dying to give them the Latino dream. They’d found the house, fourteen hundred square feet, three bedrooms, one-and-a-half baths, nothing extravagant, and the broker had the loan, low interest going in, adjustable three years out. They signed the papers, wrote the check, moved in, no mean trick since Faustino was sin documentos. Two months later? Some guy they’ve never heard of shows up, demands an extra fifteen hundred a month, they’re already behind, says it’s to repay the short-term loan for the down payment. He had all the paperwork, Faustino’s and Lucha’s signatures right there, part of the ungodly stack the escrow officer had slid past them at the title company. That was bad enough but when the rate adjusted and the new monthly kicked in, it became too much. They’d trusted people. They’d trusted a Mexican. They’d been fools.

They lived in that humiliating trailer now, trying to get their legs beneath them again, except Godo was back from the war, body in shreds, brain not right. And Roque, who should be working, helping out. He’s gifted, Faustino reminded himself. “That boy could be the next Carlos Santana”-he was ten when they started saying that. Teachers agonizing over him at school, saying he had the mind but not the will, reading novelas policiacas during class, tapping out rhythms with his pen or just lost in the clouds. Then he met old Antonio, the retired bandmaster who played boleros at parties. That was it, like the guitar descended from heaven and spoke. Roque learned classical and flamenco from the old man, pieces from Spain and Argentina, Cuba, Brazil, and it was magical, watching him turn calm and mindful, cradling the guitar. Then, boom, he’s a teenager and it’s pickup offers, garage bands, jam sessions, sometimes with real musicians, guys who got paid, which was how he met his latest teacher, Lalo, a professor at San Francisco State. He took Roque on as a special protege, introducing him to jazz. Lucha bought him the electric so he could stand on his own among the others, prove himself. What else was there to do, let him turn out like Godo? Or worse-Pablo?

Outside, the men continued: “Motor got rebuilt with a new pump maybe ten thousand miles ago, idles and runs like a champ, just weak on towing.” Faustino resisted a smile, not just at their rough-edged English, which to his ear, even after all this time in Gringolandia, could sound like rocks tumbling inside a bucket. The way nortenos go on about their trucks, he thought, it was the same way they talked about family, sickness, politics. All you needed were the right tools, a good manual, everything would be fine. They listened to these people on the radio, Dr. Laura, Dr. Phil, hoping to fix their problems. They’re like children up here, Lucha said, they want to be told what to do, get punished but not too bad. Things are too easy, they get bored, which is why they spend so much time thinking about how to improve themselves. The divine, the invisible, death, it scares the living crap out of them, which is why they’re so noisy, so devoted to money and war and machines. Faustino knew what it meant to rely on his truck, he was no stranger to an obsession with its workings, but it was different. He knew there was no such thing as a diesel that could change his life.

He wondered what the loads would be today. Hopefully not avocados. Or bottled beer or boxes of slate tile, especially if they were packed high inside a twenty-footer. The shippers were notorious for over-packing those, so the cans were too heavy. And they knew which were which, the vessel planner had to balance the weight onboard the ship, but that kind of info never got passed on to the terminal operators or the stevedores, let alone the drivers. You could get a tri-axle chassis from the yard if you knew you’d be heavy ahead of time, but that never happened. Instead you found out only after you got your load and who could afford to wait another few hours to change a chassis at that point?

You took your chances.

Tickets for weight could cost you ten grand. Worse, if the load wasn’t just heavy but stacked too high? Might not even clear the truck yard before the thing went over on you, spend the rest of the day dealing with cops and the port people, all that paperwork. Or worse.

Trucker in Florida pulling a reefer load crushed a young model when his rig flipped, trying to dodge a wreck. Another guy right here in Oakland found out the chassis the yard crew gave him had shot brakes-same deal, swerved to miss a pileup, the thing went over on him, pancaked a Saturn wagon, whole family inside. And of course they always blamed the drivers, never the shippers. Everybody had a story like that or knew someone who did.

Faustino’s involved a load of goats.

He was carrying them to Guerneville where they were going to be used to clear brush-four hundred animals in all, stacked tight on tiered shelving in the trailer, to keep them from moving around, hurting themselves en route. None of them was more than two years old, babies almost. Faustino petted a few before closing up the back, heading out.

Right outside Sonoma, he blew out a tire on a tight turn-the rig belonged to the company, not him, he’d pointed out the wear but they’d said it was fine, go, drive. The cab nosed down with the blowout, the load shifted, the trailer went with it. Some of the goats got crushed by the shelving. Others scrambled free through the back door that busted open in the crash, dozens of them, roaming around wine country, chewing up anything they could find.

When the cops arrived they closed the trailer up again. Faustino tried to tell them no, don’t, the animals will suffocate, but they ignored him. The rest of the goats died, the ones on top smothering the ones below. Their screaming was terrible to hear.

The woman who ran the company, called to the scene, watched animal rescue pulling out one carcass after the other, bodies twisted, bloody, limp. They were stacked five deep along the roadbed like cordwood. She came to the patrol car where Faustino sat in the backseat and just stared for a moment, then broke down, cursing him.

Eight years ago that happened, Faustino thought. He still winced at the memory.

Someone started banging on his driver-side door. Glancing down, Faustino recognized one of the men from the circle who’d been yabbering all this time. McBee, that was his name.

“Better run, amigo.” He pointed back toward Maritime Street.

Checking his rearview, Faustino saw the swirling lights, the unmarked sedans speeding forward. They’d blocked the end of the cul-de-sac as well-there was no way out, except on foot.

A low-rising green lay between him and the inlet, with sapling elms and small tussocks of beach grass lining the walkway, but it offered nothing like a hiding place. Could he swim across the channel to the next berth over? Would he be any safer if he did?

The rosary and San Cristobal medallion hung there from his mirror, helpless.

“Forget the truck, Faustino. We’ll get it to you somehow. Leave the keys. Run!”

Five

GODO SAT ON THE SOFA BESIDE TIA LUCHA, BEFOGGED BY a follow-up Percocet, a Lexapro for good measure, his leg wound clean and re-dressed, courtesy of Roque, who sat across the room, patting his hands together nervously. He was eyeing his guitars as though afraid they too might somehow get dragged off this morning. Such a punk, Godo thought, no particular ill will.

The medication conjured a numb remove. Leaning forward to see past his aunt, he peered out the window, watching the muchachos line up outside the black ICE bus, surrounded by dogs and armed men. “Pobrecitos,” his aunt whispered. Poor things. Godo nodded to acknowledge the sentiment but found it hard to muster much feeling one way or the other. The meds, he thought, they drop you into this strange place, this room you know but don’t know. You get stuck.

Meanwhile, just outside the trailer, the three agents were arguing among themselves. Listening in, Godo felt certain he heard one of them say, “They want to be taken prisoner,” but that was before, the invasion, the Kuwaiti terp talking about the deserters the regiment intercepted. Ragged silhouettes scuttling along the raised earthworks