block is 40 ft long.
There are, on average, 132 blocks per mile. The total number of blocks is 25,080.
Reportedly, each block cost $3000.00 to make. The total cost of the wall was therefore $75, 240, 000.00 and change.
Rumor has it that the government started building the pieces to the wall years before the epidemic in San Antonio-not as a means to quarantine a city, but to keep the Mexicans from jumping the border.
“Mommy, what's Mr. Wilkerson doing?”
Connie was on her belly, face pressed against the living room window, looking at the house across the street.
I got down on my belly next to her and nudged her playfully in the ribs. Even in late June, I'd still been able to manage a smile.
Looking through the window, I saw Bob Wilkerson hanging black bunting on his front door. Further down the street, two other doors had bunting on them, but Connie hadn't seen them yet.
I watched Bob Wilkerson. His shoulders were stooped, his walk slow. Even from across the street I could tell his eyes looked swollen and dead.
I wondered if it was his wife Susan or one of his two sons.
“What's he doing, Mommy?”
How could I explain that to her? My God, how?
“Honey, that black ribbon means he's lost somebody he loves very much.”
“Who?”
“I don't know. Maybe Mrs. Wilkerson. Or maybe Bobby or Anthony.”
“How did they get lost?”
I drew in a breath through clenched teeth. “They died, honey. That's what the ribbon means.”
She thought about that. Turned it over in her mind the way bright children do when they discover something strange about the world. I wanted her to be free of that knowledge. I wanted her to be five years old, untouched by the horrors of the world. But at the same time I knew that was both unpractical and unwise.
“He looks sad, Mommy,” she said.
“He is, honey. Very sad.”
“Does the ribbon make him feel better, Mommy?”
“I don't know, honey.”
Connie watched Mr. Wilkerson. Watched him watching the bunting.
She turned to me suddenly, and in a conspiratorially quiet voice, she said, “Mommy, I don't think it does.”
Somebody sent me a forwarded email a few months after the wall went up. It showed a picture of one of those bumper sticker ribbons, like the ones that say SUPPORT OUR TROOPS, only this one said REMEMBER SAN ANTONIO.
I thought about my job at the Scar, thought about all those bodies crammed into unmarked mass graves, and I thought, Ain't that a great notion. Remember San Antonio. How quaint.
Chunk was raised by his maternal grandmother, a woman about one-third his size, but twice as tough. She took a big black boy who was destined to become yet another east side gangsta thug and whooped his ass daily until he'd finally had enough and joined the police department.
On a brutally hot morning in early June, we were called away from the Scar to the Medina Health Clinic on the east side. Chunk's grandmother was there, dying by slow strangulation. The inside of her lungs had been scorched by acute respiratory distress syndrome, and her body was being eaten alive by its own immune system. Her skin was covered in blisters, and as she moved, feebly, upon the floor of the hallway, for every inch of that small clinic had been packed with the dead and the dying and the grieving, the blisters popped. She made a crackling, popping sound as she rolled over to say goodbye, and the sound reminded me of a child playing with bubble wrap.
That woman, that great, good soul, had become yet another canvas upon which H2N2 had painted death.
Later, we stood on the white brick steps of the clinic, not speaking, for there were no words up to the task.
Chunk couldn't afford a grave site, or even a coffin. He dreaded taking that beautiful woman to a mass grave at the Scar.
Billy made a coffin, his first.
That evening, as a warm breeze blew through the oaks near the back of our property, Billy and Chunk hacked into the ground with picks and shovels.
Chunk's voice faltered during the prayer. Billy finished it for him.
At that moment I thought of the deer I wrote about in my journal, and the rather cryptic message that death is not all there is, and I remembered what it was that I had to tell Connie.
It is not so horrible that we die. The horror is when we allow the fact that we must die to rob our lives of meaning, for they do mean something.
Even in the quietest moments, they mean something.
Chapter 9
I got to the Scar early the next morning, but Chunk was already there. He was on the phone, muttering and grunting.
When he hung up, he wasn't happy.
“What's wrong?”
“I spoke with the sergeant in charge of security at Arsenal Station. Kenneth Wade's truck hasn't moved since yesterday when he arrived to escort Dr. Bradley.”
“Oh.” That is bad news. “What about Treanor?”
“That was him on the phone.”
“And?”
“Nothing. He hasn't heard from Wade, either.”
That really was bad news. Chunk had the same sinking feeling in his gut that I had in mine, I could tell. We'd investigated a cop once before, a 20 year veteran who got drunk and ran over his neighbor with his truck, then dumped the truck and tried to call it in stolen. Making that arrest had been one the worst assignments of our careers, almost as bad as the Scar.
“So, what do you want to do now?” I asked him.
“Let's go to Arsenal first. Then we can go into the GZ and try to find that van.”
“Okay,” I agreed. “But today, you drive.”
On the way to Arsenal Station, Chunk had to steer with one hand and wrestle with his surgical mask with the other. They never made the tie straps long enough for big guys like Chunk, and the thing was always threatening to pop off his face.
Finally, when he got it to where it was comfortable, he said, “Okay, Kenneth Wade.”
It was the opening move in an old game between us, but one that we hadn't gotten to play much since we started working at the Scar.
“Kenneth Wade and Emma Bradley are lovers,” I said. “But they have to keep it under wraps.”
“Why?”
“Maybe it's bad for her at work if their relationship gets out. Them being lovers would explain why Bradley called and requested him yesterday morning. Even after the fight.”
“Maybe. But why the fight?”
“Wade doesn't care if the others know. He's drunk. He's horny. He wants to go back to her place for some fun.”
“Why wouldn't she go? Because she's not happy with the way she looks naked?”
