The Dead Women of Juarez

inked in darkness.

It hurt to move, but he sat on the side of the bunk and removed his shoes. He put them side by side, neatly, the way Gaspar had done. His bare feet picked up the slight vibration of the living structure; hundreds of moving bodies translated through the concrete to something Kelly could feel, like trembling. One foot felt more than the other. A part of Kelly realized his injured leg would never function properly again, and strangely knowing that didn’t bother him so much.

“I’m sorry for everything,” Kelly whispered aloud. His voice was scratchy and it hurt to speak. Once more he didn’t recognize himself. “I’ve been an idiot. I’m sorry.”

Kelly put his hand on his knee as though he were touching the head of that poor dead boy in the street, or Paloma in her sleep. His fingers trembled. He was crying again.

“I didn’t think about it… everything. I know that’s not enough, but it’s all I got. And I’m not gonna be the one who fucks things up anymore. I promise. I’ll make it right somehow. If God’ll let me, I’ll make it right.”

He used the bunk to help himself stand, and from the bunk to the wall. He forced himself to walk the six feet from front to rear three times before collapsing into the bunk again, his flesh soaked in perspiration. His heartbeat surged and fluttered.

A locked door opened and heels rang on cement. The inmates didn’t stir. The jailors patrolled the block hourly, sometimes alone and sometimes in pairs, the sound of their passing like a great ticking clock. Kelly panted on his bunk. He waited for the shadow to pass in the half-lit passageway beyond the cell door.

The man came to his cell and stopped. Kelly recognized the older cop’s frame — broad shoulders, big head and thick neck — by shadows alone. The cop said nothing, but Kelly heard him breathing.

“I didn’t do it,” Kelly said, but the words faltered. He tried again. “I didn’t do it.”

Keys jingled and the cop opened the cell. He didn’t close the door behind him, but Kelly couldn’t run even if he wanted to; he was dying on the inside, broken up and going nowhere. When the cop stood over the bunks he seemed ten feet tall and Kelly only a child.

“I… I won’t say I did it.”

Other figures gathered at the door of the cell. They were also quiet and the cellblock refused to take a breath. Kelly knew if he called for help he might as well be alone; the policeman wasn’t there and the others weren’t there and every cell was completely empty because the prison was deserted.

“Fuck you if I say I did it.”

Kelly didn’t see the bat, but of course the cop must have had it all along. Wood connected with his flesh and Kelly felt meat and bone give away. His jaw was broken, his mouth filled with fresh blood. Pain had color and texture. Kelly put his hand up and had his wrist shattered. He turned to put his back to the worst of it, but the cop dragged him out of the bunk and onto the floor of the cell where kicks and blows followed one after another until Kelly couldn’t tell them apart.

He waited for the bell to ring, but the referee never noticed when time came and passed. Kelly grabbed for the ropes and someone stepped on his fingers. The roar of the crowd was the rush of his blood in his ears. ?Delo a la madre! ?Delo a la madre!

How would Denny get the bleeding to stop? There wasn’t enough time between rounds to bring down all this swelling. He was broken and the ref should have stepped in, but they were letting it go on and on. Ring lights beat down and faces outside the ropes were twisted and shadowed. Paloma was there. Esteban was there. The little boy was there with his shattered bicycle beside him. And Denny in the corner shouting for one more round, Kelly, you can make it one more round?

On his back he saw Captain Garcia with his cut-down baseball bat dripping with crimson and spattered with it himself, but bringing the weapon up and down again and again and again bringing hurt so deep that it didn’t even register anymore.

A prayer was a bubble of blood on busted lips. Begging was a murmur. When Kelly reached up, he raised the same mangled hand as a crushed child on the street as the train thundered by. And then all he heard was music, and Eliseo Robles singing for Ramon Ayala and the Brave Ones of the North as if from far away:

Un rinconcito en el cielo

Juntos, unidos los dos

Y cuando caiga la noche

Te dare mi amor…

PART THREE

Padre

ONE

WHEN RAFAEL TEODULO SEVILLA Adan was young he chose beer and tequila as his poisons. These things were cheap and readily available and they got the job done, which was all a man could ask for. Over time Sevilla developed a taste for blended whiskies, especially Johnnie Walker, and now it was all he chose for himself.

Drinking was something he did alone, not in a bar. And because Sevilla did not drink at home, he did it in the only place he felt comfortable: behind the wheel of his car, parked outside his front gate.

Little houses were crowded up against one another here, but shielded by whitewashed concrete walls, wrought-iron gates and burglar bars. If Ciudad Juarez had any constant at all, it was those bars, always whispering nowhere was safe, nowhere, nowhere.

The sun went down, but the heat lingered. Sevilla sat in the darkened car with a bottle of Johnnie Walker between his legs, swigging directly from the neck when the urge struck him. Tonight it was Red Label because he hadn’t enough cash for Black Label. The flavor was good enough, and the end result the same.

Sevilla did not drink in the house because his wife forbade it. Smoking and drinking were things to be done elsewhere, not even in the tiny courtyard outside the house, where Sevilla could touch both walls with his extended fingertips. Liliana didn’t begrudge anyone their vices, not even her husband, but she could set a line against them beginning at her front gate.

It was time to smoke. Sevilla put down his window and lit a cigarette. He flicked the ashes into the street. When drunk, Sevilla was fascinated by the shifting pattern of burning tobacco at the end of a smoke. His legs had long slipped into a comfortable lack of sensation, as if his body were falling asleep apart from his mind. He let his head lay back against the rest. His eyes slid shut and forgot about the cigarette until the ash nipped at his fingers.

Sevilla cast the butt out the window. Lights were on and he heard music and voices. His house was black and silent. A young woman in a maquila uniform walked past Sevilla’s car down the middle of the cracked road and Sevilla’s heart ached. Another pull on the bottle of Johnnie Walker put things in better order.

He watched the woman in his rear-view mirror until she vanished out of sight. No one bothered her, or so much as called to her. Sevilla wondered where she lived; he didn’t remember seeing her before. That was the problem with Juarez: the faces were always changing.

Sitting no longer appealed to him. Sevilla swished the last of Senor Walker around at the bottom of the bottle and then poured it out the open window. He got out carefully and locked the vehicle up. Thieves wouldn’t bother Sevilla’s car; even teenage joyriders passing through got the word that this was a policeman’s house. Graffiti marked the garden walls and even the garbage cans of his neighbors, but none marred Sevilla’s. This, along with a badge and a gun, was a privilege.

He was gentle with the squeaking front gate even though there was no one at home. At the door he fumbled with his keys in the dark and caught a whiff of himself in the process: he smelled of drink and sweat and stale