Border Son Read online

  He would ask her to make a phone call, and the outcome of that call would determine how much longer he had to bear the anxiety of his actions. The phone call. It had popped into his mind just as quickly as had the idea of getting his uncle Felipe to go retrieve the body. A memory of something Tyler had said, way back, presented itself before him as clear as the desert sun. If there was anyone who would risk helping Tyler, it was the person his mother was to call. And if they didn’t help, then Roberto might as well just drag Tyler back out to the wasteland and shoot him dead.

  He felt a twinge of guilt, involving his mother and uncle in this. Felipe at least knew the brutality of the world, but his mother seemed to float untouched by its harsh realities. And even though they were oblivious to the peril circling around them, he justified himself by thinking that he was doing a noble deed. A deed they always wished he would do. To be a good man, not a hood, a tool of Salazar and the Cartel. Perhaps this would be the only good thing he would ever do. He couldn’t do it alone, he needed the help of others to make it happen. It just couldn’t get done fast enough.

  4

  Iglesia de Señor de la Misericordia was on the western side of Nuevo Negaldo. The church was built from river stone over a hundred years before. It had been built on the remains of the mission that the Apaches had burned down. The church stood in memoriam of the few brave souls who survived then and since, those who scratched out an existence in this barren land. The stone looked wet, its glossy tone a contrast to the sandblasted adobes, as if the building shed continual tears for her children running wayward through the streets.

  Father Felipe had spent his entire life here. His childhood spent wandering the arroyos and hillsides, his teenage years doing more unwholesome things. But once a man, he took Holy Orders and had ministered to the people of Nuevo Negaldo the best he could. The border had always been dangerous and Felipe could think of no better place to ply his trade.

  It was home.

  These were his streets, his people, and he loved them both.

  Iglesia de Señor de la Misericordia was his refuge from the violence, and it was a refuge for many in these barbaric times. Most of the regulars were old women lighting candles for hooligan grandchildren caught up in the crime of the city. Many of their men were either in the north earning remittances for their family, in jail, or dead before they had the opportunity to be grandfathers. And when they came back with enough money to return, they got out of Nuevo Negaldo as fast as they could. They would return, gather what was left of their families, and go to a place where they wouldn’t be caught in the cross fire of the rival factions.

  Felipe was old enough to have witnessed the full progression of many cholos. From baptism to altar boy to gangbanger, then a body on the street riddled with bullets. The procession of the coffin would lead out of the church to the cemetery, another life gone to the angels. He would look at the new altar boys and see in their faces the next round of sicarios and victims, and yet he carried on as a beacon of hope to whoever may come to the church for help, no matter what they might have done.

  He was not an idealist or a romantic. He knew that these boys had few options. They were the poor of Mexico and would be the illegals of America. What more could they hope for? He would pray for them, help them where he could. But he also knew they would thank him for his kindness and then inflict unmerciful harm on another the next day. He didn’t attend to them for who they might become, and didn’t refuse them for what they had done. He simply offered his assistance as it was required.

  And so it was a natural extension for him to be sitting in a dark cell below one of the chapels in the church, applying a cool rag to the feverish head of a gringo who had been shot in the back. As natural as pouring holy water over an infant’s head or the casket of a dead drug runner. They were all the same in God’s eyes.

  Roberto had called, and Felipe had answered.

  He needed no explanation, and for the most part did not want to hear one. He was human, after all, and knowing too much was always a risk to his decency. He prayed not to be judgmental, for he knew he could descend that path easily enough if he wasn’t careful. No. Better to aid the sick no matter what they might have done, all were deserving.

  Amen.

  The small cot the gringo slept on was wet with sweat, the man’s fever not abating. Something else was driving the man’s pain. Not just the gunshot, but something else. Most likely drugs, his body raging for the chemicals it was used to. Not much to be done for that but keep him cool and change the dressings. Withdrawal wouldn’t kill the man, but it would not be pleasant. It was a good thing he was rarely conscious.

  A man entered the room with a bag, and Felipe got up from the stool, offering it to him. The man sat down and began to examine the patient, and Felipe stood and walked out the narrow doorway, up the stone steps into the chapel, and closed the old wooden door behind him. The door was decorated with a large retablo of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in the furnace, a fitting cover for the man burning in the cell below.

  Felipe walked out of the chapel, into the nave of the church, and stepped to the front doors. The sky was clear and the sun was raining its light down on the city. It was a beautiful day. A beautiful day to help anyone who asked.

  5

  Roberto left Miguel at the bar and headed west on Revolución Street. The sun was beginning its descent and its rays beat down on the concrete and dust of the city. He stopped and got some food from a takeout and continued on. He slowly walked past the garage where some of his crew would hang out if there was no action to be had. He saw a couple under the hood of a car tweaking on hoses, and they looked up and he nodded back.

  He thought of walking in and telling Adan what he had done. Adan ran Los Diablos in Nuevo Negaldo. It was he who gave the orders to go up to Salazar’s that morning and carry out the execution. Los Diablos were subcontractors in violence. But just as he couldn’t tell Miguel what the score was, there was no way he could tell Adan.

  He felt uneasy on the street, just as uneasy as he had in the bar, as if at any moment somebody would jump out and put a bullet in his head. He wasn’t scared of dying; he had seen too much of it to be spooked by the mystery of death. What made him nervous were all the things the Cartel did to people who crossed them before they killed them. Nuevo Negaldo was littered with the evidence of their cruelty.

  Roberto liked the feeling of others averting their eyes, changing their pace, stepping aside, when he walked down the streets. But these same people would look the other way if the Cartel decided to make an example out of him. A bullet would be a quick death and he would make sure that was how he would go out. He put his hand behind his back, beneath his top-buttoned shirt, and felt the grip of the pistol lodged in his belt. Ready at a moment’s notice.

  He was quick with a gun and had practiced more than any other cholo in Nuevo Negaldo. It was accuracy that mattered, not volume. All these other suckers held their guns like they did in the movies. Not him. He was fast, steady, and accurate. He was the Doc Holliday of the Nuevo Negaldo thugs. It’s why Adan kept him on tap for work like this morning’s. When the Cartel gave Adan an order, Adan knew that he could count on Roberto to get it done.

  But now he had crossed Salazar even if Salazar hadn’t realized it. If Tyler survived the wound that morning, Roberto could not say he messed up. A gunman who could not kill a man at close range was of little use to anyone. Adan would have his hand forced to have Roberto removed.

  And Los Diablos had no retirement plan.

  Bored and wound up, he headed to the cinder-block home he shared with his mother. She was at work across the border and sometimes didn’t come home until close to midnight.

  He walked in and locked the door behind him. From the refrigerator he grabbed a drink, placed a chair facing the door, and sat down. He pulled out the gun and rested it on his leg with one hand, tipping the bottle with the other, watching the door.

  He would not let them take him.

 
; And he was going to make sure they weren’t ever going to take him by surprise.

  The curtain on the barred window by the door moved slowly with the gentle breeze from outside. He could hear the voices of kids playing soccer in the alley two doors down. Their playing spoke of an alternate reality in the streets of the border town.

  His nerves were slowly settling as he rocked in his chair, the time moving on from the incident of the morning. After an hour, he pulled his cell phone out of his pocket and called his uncle.

  “Hola,” said a familiar voice on the line.

  “Did you do the pickup?”

  “Yes.”

  “Alive?”

  “Yes.”

  “Hidden away?”

  “Yes. It is safe from sight.”

  “Bueno,” Roberto said and hung up the phone.

  He stood and walked to the window, careful not to expose too much of his body to the glass in the event a shooter outside was waiting for a chance, but the street had emptied out as dusk set in.

  His mother would be home in a few hours. He would ask her to make the call tomorrow.

  6

  Camilla Ibanez drove her old Honda toward the border crossing, idled in line for almost an hour in the late morning light, and then headed up to the restaurant she worked at in Hurtado, New Mexico. The US side was vastly different than the Mexican side, as if all the Americans who were able to had fled the little town, leaving behind just those who were bound by the immobility of their trailer homes. Nuevo Negaldo, south of the border, was a large concrete and tin community of thousands of Mexicans, Hurtado on the north scarcely more than a few hundred.

  Camilla had spent her whole life moving between the two countries. Her mother had given her a tangible gift at her birth, having delivered her in an El Paso delivery room, making Camilla a dual citizen simply by being born a few miles north of the border. Growing up, she had crossed the border every morning for school and eventually work, but always returning at night to her home in Mexico. She had lived for a year in El Paso, but the cost was too expensive compared to Juarez and she found herself moving back in time. When Roberto was born, she made sure she was north when he was delivered.

  Eventually her mother got sick and moved back with family in Nuevo Negaldo, and Camilla followed her, Roberto in tow. In her mind’s eye she thought that it would be better for Roberto to grow up away from Juarez, but it seems that bad mojo is not bound to large cities alone.

  She pulled into the parking lot of the restaurant just before noon and locked her car. She would spend the next twelve hours feeding border patrol agents and medical tourists, each with their own interests in the crossing. She had her regulars that she enjoyed seeing, some on each shift, and some of the old folks once a month when their prescriptions needed to be renewed. Her Mexico supplied more than illegal narcotics to the drug-crazed Americans. There were plenty of gringo baby boomers in search of affordable pain relief as well.

  To her, though, it mattered little.

  North of the border she could earn a bit more, the tips in US currency carried more weight, and she liked the simplicity of American business. She had no idea if the owner of the establishment had to pay the Cartel protection money, but she knew that she didn’t have to kick in any of her wages for the service. Once back home, the money would stretch considerably farther and she lived rather comfortably. It just was the way it was, and had been her whole life, that most days she passed through the routine without thinking too much about her course in life.

  Get up, go to work, drive home.

  And worry.

  Worry about Roberto. That was a full-time job in and of itself. She loved her son, just as much now as when he was born, but the worry racked her body like the pains of birthing the boy. She had done her best to raise him right, to raise him good, had prayed to the Blessed Mother to keep him straight, but somewhere along the road he had decided on a different path. A path that she imagined but never asked about. She did not want to know what he did, the things he did, the sins he committed. She did not want to lose the image of Roberto that she kept locked away in her heart.

  But she worried.

  She knew that one day he would not be there. That she would arrive home and she would be told that he was dead. That he was missing. That he was the one lying in the plaza, bullet ridden, or thrown onto Revolución Street dismembered and disfigured. Like so many mothers of Mexico, she worried about her son.

  And so when Roberto had asked her to do this task for him, that what he was asking her to do was a “good thing, Mama, please,” what could she do but concede, in the hopes that her son was doing the right thing. For the first time in a long time. And she had noticed a look in his face when he asked, not the cold stare of a man who had seen wicked things, but a subtle pleading of the eyes that reminded her of ages past.

  So she agreed.

  After the lunch crowd, she looked up at the clock and saw it was 1:35. This seemed like a good time to do what Roberto, her son, had asked her to do.

  Camilla walked to the back room and picked up the phone. She pulled from her pocket a note and punched in the number written on the paper. The phone rang several times and she was ready to hang up when it was picked up.

  “Hello?”

  “Yes,” she said, her English touched with a Spanish accent. “May I speak with Mr. Kazmierski?”

  “This is him.”

  “Good.” Camilla looked down on the paper and began to recite the script. “This is concerning your son, Tyler. He needs you in Hurtado, New Mexico, as soon as possible—”

  “Now wait a second—”

  “Check in to the Plaza Motel, and come to La Casa de Irma when you arrive. It is the restaurant across the street. Ask for Ibanez,” she finished, putting the paper down.

  “Please . . . wait . . . ,” the voice said.

  Camilla listened, her breath filtering down through the mouthpiece.

  “What is this all about? I haven’t heard from Tyler in years. Who is this?”

  The questions kept coming. Camilla raised the paper to her face again and prepared to speak the line that Roberto had written on the bottom of the page. She had no idea what it meant, but he had told her to use it if the man she called doubted her.

  “Remember Denver . . . It’s like that. Please come.”

  She hung up the phone before the man on the other end could question her about the comment.

  Camilla walked back to the dining area and started prepping for dinner. Her mind kept going back to the conversation she had with Roberto, about this man Tyler he mentioned, about the man’s father who needed to come down and pick him up. He had assured her this was a good thing, a noble thing, not one of his hoodlum rackets, and thus she agreed to help him out. But placing the call had unnerved her, as if she was participating in a secret meeting of criminal minds.

  Now, she just had to wait for a man to arrive asking for “Ibanez” and let Roberto know. For now all she had to worry about was doing her work and making it through the day.

  And Roberto. She always worried about him.

  7

  There is a fate worse than shunning.

  The old-world religious orders would turn their eyes from the offending member, excluding them from their community. It is an active gesture. A physical turning, a forcing from sight of the person who has violated whatever covenant may have existed. To do so means, at the least, acknowledging the existence of the person.

  But to progress further to the point where the mind’s eye no longer sees the individual, where memories can no longer be recalled, where the conscious self has no twinge of recollection when the face is presented before it, this, the Great Erasing, is death to the guilty.

  Even Cain was remembered.

  Was marked for remembrance.

  Exile is better than being tossed onto the scrap heap of oblivion.

  But for all intents and purposes, this was the realm to which Edward Kazmierski had pushed any and every thoug
ht of his son Tyler. His mind did not connect the past to his daily life, and each day would securely seal the vault of memory one more notch. Life went on.

  He got up, went to work, came home, went to bed.

  That was it. All was done without thought of his progeny.

  But now with one phone call, it had all come rushing back.

  He hung up the receiver and walked out the front screen door and sat on the front porch, his chair leaning back as he stared out across the farm fields that his family had owned before his father sold out. This was his father’s land, and his father’s before him. But in the new America it would never be Ed’s.

  In the sale, the family had kept the house. Ed had used his skills and some of his father’s money to open the appliance shop in Jennison, Kansas. It was located on the west end of Main Street, next to a Dairy Queen that kept more unreliable hours than Ed did. His was the last building you would pass before hitting the high prairie that would eventually become Colorado.

  Ed’s own young family moved in when his parents went to live out their years in Tampa. But the serenity of a new family in a country house didn’t last long and withered like crops in a drought.

  One day Sally, Ed’s wife, left for a better life out in California without bothering to tell anybody where she was going. That had been it. Ed got a call from the school that his son hadn’t been picked up. He left the shop, picked up the boy, and drove home to find the place abandoned. A note on the kitchen table simply told Ed that Sally went west, that he should not bother following her, and to tell their son that she loved him but had to go and find herself.

  This empty house became their new normal. Then a few years later, Tyler was gone, and a new kind of emptiness became Ed’s reality.

  And then today, the phone rang.

  The call unnerved him more than he could have imagined it would. Today was the first day in a long, long time that he had thought of Tyler. Ed tried to count the years. His son must be twenty-six now.