Border Son Read online

  It slowly dawned on him that that was why he was driving down to New Mexico.

  It wasn’t the mystery. It wasn’t anger toward the two thugs who came close to maiming him at his shop. The men who had ransacked his house. It was the memory of that feeling.

  “Remember Denver.”

  That was why he was driving. The heart moves faster than the mind, even for a man who thinks himself made of stone.

  A ten-hour car trip alone is as good as any psychotherapy that can be bought.

  He was driving to Nuevo Negaldo because his son was lost and needed his dad. What else could that line have meant? Who else but Tyler could have said it? After all these years, a simple phrase had pricked his conscience and awoken him to his duty.

  And thus he drove to whatever he would find.

  The country was dotted with scrapyards surrounded by aluminum fencing, filled with cars from previous travelers of histories past. Abandoned homesteads where people had tried to put down roots, thought better of it, and moved on. Cacti freckled the yellow plain as far as the eye could see, sotol plants shooting their stems into the sky like spears.

  By late afternoon he drove into El Paso. A river of concrete and steel flowed from the south and broke against the Franklin Mountains. Somewhere the border cut through the sea of buildings. He filled up on gas and some food, found the border road into New Mexico, and drove west.

  It felt as if he had left the world of man behind him as he continued on into the borderlands. The road was pristine blacktop devoid of any sign of civilization, as if the asphalt was laid down just to prove that man was greater than nature and not for any realistic utility. To his left he could occasionally see the vehicle barrier running beside him that provided the only indication as to where the US ended and Mexico began.

  The miles went on.

  He passed by several border patrol vehicles parked in the scrub and pullouts. He checked his rearview to see if they would follow, but they never did.

  He checked the clock, the miles, his gas gauge, and kept driving.

  As the sun started skirting the western hills, he thought he saw some signs of life up ahead and came to a crossroads. There was a single-pump gas station and he pulled in to top off his tank. He went inside and grabbed some snacks, handed some cash to the old Mexican behind the till, then asked how far it was to Hurtado.

  “Eh?” the man said.

  “Hurtado . . . how far to Hurtado?”

  “Hurtado? Hour.”

  “An hour?”

  The man nodded and handed back change.

  Ed went back to his truck, got in the cab, and opened the atlas. He traced his route and found where he was. Another twenty minutes west and then he would have to turn south. He assumed that it would be the next road he came to. It was getting dark and he very well could miss it, so he took off at a more urgent speed.

  He found the road, turned south, and after what seemed like too long finally caught sight of some distant lights. He saw a sign that said HURTADO, 3 MILES, as well as a warning that a border checkpoint was coming up. He arrived and his cramped legs and back almost jumped for joy.

  There wasn’t much to show for Hurtado, New Mexico. Several trailers and cinder-block homes were laid out on dirt street grids to one side of the north-south road. On the eastern side was a building that looked like an old train depot for a rail service that had disappeared a century ago. Several cars were in the parking lot, and a lighted sign hung from a rusted pole that said La Casa de Irma. He slowly drove past it, and on his right he saw the Plaza Motel.

  Ed pulled in, went inside, and got a room from an attendant who was surprised to have another visitor. He went to his room, used the bathroom to freshen up, and then walked over to the restaurant in hopes that the mysterious voice that went by the name Ibanez was there.

  22

  Ed walked into La Casa de Irma and looked around. There were a couple people scattered about, finishing up meals and drinks and conversations. It had the appearance of closing time, but a voice called out to him from the kitchen to have a seat and help would be on the way. He went to an empty table close to the door and sat down. He fiddled with the condiments in the chrome centerpiece as he waited.

  A woman approached who walked as if she had been standing all day. She was dark and attractive, and when she smiled, her eyes disappeared behind thick lashes.

  “Can I get you something to drink?” she asked.

  “Beer, whatever you have,” Ed said.

  “Anything to eat?”

  Her voice sounded exotic to his midwestern ears. Perhaps it was the exhaustion of the long drive, the adrenaline depletion of the past twenty-four hours, or the fact that he was still a man, middle-aged as he was, but still a man, but the woman before him captivated him like a dream. He picked up the menu and refocused himself, ordered a sandwich, and she walked away.

  When she returned with his food, he asked her the question that he had driven hundreds of miles to ask.

  “I’m looking for Ibanez?”

  The waitress’s eyes widened for a brief moment, then looked around at the other tables to make sure that everyone was minding their own business. The woman opened her mouth to speak but then turned on her heels and darted for the kitchen. Ed watched her go and sat staring at the door that the waitress ran through. He didn’t know what might emerge from that opening and he braced himself. But the woman returned, appearing a bit more composed than when she left. She looked at Ed and quietly spoke.

  “I am she. I am Camilla Ibanez.”

  “You the one who called me?”

  “Yes.”

  Camilla stared at Ed, examining him, her face tired yet youthful. They seemed caught up in a moment of silence that neither knew how to get out of. Ed had followed her instructions, but she apparently had no more to give.

  “Well, I’m here,” Ed said.

  Ed could tell she was sizing him up. “Yes. I was just expecting . . .”

  “What?”

  “I’m not sure. Usually the people my Roberto deals with do not look like you.”

  “Like me?”

  “Middle-aged white guys with bruised faces.”

  “Oh.” Ed didn’t know what to say.

  “I just . . . well, I heard Tyler was gringo, but I still was not expecting . . .”

  “You know Tyler?”

  “Yes. Well, no. I have heard about him. Roberto has talked about him.”

  “Roberto?”

  “My son.”

  Ed stared up at Camilla. He waited for her to continue. But nothing more was said.

  “So what now?”

  “I’ll let Roberto know you came.”

  “And then?”

  “I have no idea,” she said.

  Ed studied her face. She was telling the truth. She had no idea what this was all about besides passing a message between people. She became aware that she was standing over his table for far too long and went over to assist the other patrons. He drank his beer, finished his sandwich, and left money for the bill. He stood and walked to the exit, catching her eye as he reached for the door. She gave him a look, one of both concern and comfort, a look of reassurance that she would bring him more information soon.

  He walked into the night, across the empty desert street, and back to his room at the Plaza Motel.

  23

  Camilla closed up the restaurant, got in her car, and drove south toward the border checkpoint. She passed the Plaza Motel and tried to figure out which of the three vehicles parked out front was Edward Kazmierski’s.

  A couple miles down the road, the lights of the border crossing illuminated the interior of her car and she passed without incident. She drove down Revolución Street, the city calm as if holding its breath. She arrived home, parked her car in the rock drive, and made her way inside. The world was dark and she could hear the music of a cantina several blocks away, but her street was quiet with the silence of decent people locked behind closed doors.

 
Once inside, she turned on the small lamp in the corner, which revealed a small open space bordered by a tiny kitchen. There was a couch, and a television, with bedding stacked neatly against the wall.

  She was never sure if Roberto would be there, his body sprawled out on the old piece of furniture, but in her heart she always hoped that he would. Better to be here than out there doing the things that she knew he did but did not ask him about.

  She placed her bag on the floor, took the dinner she had brought with her from work into the kitchen, and prepared a plate. The dim light shone across the space and illuminated her face. She prayed for blessing, crossed herself, and began to eat.

  Soon she heard steps coming toward the front door. They were slow, as if the person had been working all day in the heat and each step up was done out of sheer force of will. The person turned the handle and opened the door.

  Roberto.

  He came inside, closed the door quickly, and locked it. He parted the curtain, looked out into the street, and backed away from the door. She watched as he stood there, a tremor in his body as if he was waiting for the devil to come charging through the door.

  “Roberto,” Camilla said with a stern voice.

  He jumped and turned on her, his cold stare softening when his eyes met hers. His posture softened and he came over to give her a kiss on the cheek.

  “Hello, Mama,” he said.

  “I have food for you.”

  “I’m not hungry.”

  She ignored him and handed him a plate.

  “Sit down, here.”

  He complied.

  “He came today,” she said.

  Roberto froze. The anxiety on his face looked about ready to break his jaw. The utensil in his hand hit against the plate.

  “He did?”

  “Sí.”

  “What did he look like?”

  “Like any other gringo. Out of place.”

  “That’s not what I mean, Mama. Did he look like he will go? Go to Felipe?”

  “I don’t know. But he came this far. That is a good thing, right?”

  Roberto nodded. The tension in his body was palpable. Camilla stood and put her arms around her son. She felt his shoulders soften as he relaxed in his mother’s embrace.

  “Alright,” he whispered as he stood and started pacing. His mother watched him. “Alright . . .”

  She waited, giving him space, which he appreciated. His own voice in his head couldn’t handle another speaker.

  “Do you know where he is?”

  “Yes, he is staying at the motel in Hurtado.”

  “Will you give him a message?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. Tell him to meet Felipe at two at La Terraza.”

  “I will.”

  Roberto looked around the room. They had lived here his whole life. This small apartment was his childhood, his existence. His mind raced to what would happen if they ever found out he had betrayed them. What they would do to his mama. Their lives splattered against the walls and floors.

  It had been a stupid play. He should have just killed Tyler. What was he to him anyway? Why had he felt so duty bound? But now he was here, with his mama, envisioning their own execution if Tyler’s father would not go and take his son back home, away from the eyes of the Cartel.

  Roberto’s pulse was racing when he felt his mother’s hand on his back.

  “Son . . . ,” she whispered.

  He turned. She saw the worry in his eyes.

  “I am proud of you.”

  “Why, Mama. What could you be proud of?”

  “For trying,” she said. “For trying, at last, to do the right thing.”

  “I’m not sure I did the right thing.”

  She hugged him and could feel the fear coursing through his body. She held him, remembering the times when he was little, before all his bad decisions had led him to places she never dreamed he would go in her worst nightmares. “I believe you did. Trust that you did.”

  He stepped back and looked at her. “Did he look like he would help?” he asked again, looking for any sign of hope.

  “You can’t control that. You can only keep trying to do the right things.”

  “I think it’s too late for me. This might be the only time.”

  “Don’t say that, Roberto.”

  “The world doesn’t reward doing right, Mama. You know that.”

  She looked at him. She had had him for a moment, and then he was gone again.

  24

  What did he know of Mexico?

  Nothing.

  Ed looked out the window of the motel room, down on the paper map of Nuevo Negaldo that he held in his hand, and back outside. The sun high, reflecting off the steel roofs and cars, illuminated the otherwise empty desert landscape. To his eyes, the road south looked like one long concrete serpent slithering between jagged terrain. But somewhere down there, a line was drawn. A border.

  He strained a bit and thought he could make out a fence, a wall, some demarcation line, but more or less it was his imagination filling in the blanks of a wide-open horizon.

  Here on the US side, he felt at ease, but when his thoughts drifted to Nuevo Negaldo, he could feel the tension in his chest.

  What did he know of Mexico?

  Camilla Ibanez had slipped the envelope under his door that morning. He watched as she crossed over the road to the restaurant and disappeared inside. In the envelope was a note saying to meet a man named Felipe at a place called La Terraza. There was a map with a circle around the location. On paper, it looked innocuous. In his imagination, he was journeying into a war zone.

  Ed and his wife had vacationed in Cancún one year after saving up for an excessively long period. He would say that he had been to Mexico when people asked him, but it was as authentic and all-encompassing a response as if a traveler visiting New York City said they saw America.

  Growing up, he had worked a summer in the fields with the migrant workers who came up from Sinaloa by the truckload. They had kept to themselves, a mysterious band of laborers. They worked hard and then drove south when the fields were harvested. Ed never went back, taking next summer’s work at a warehouse in Wichita that was air-conditioned. He often wondered if those same caravans went back to the same fields. Were they there now, all these years later?

  What did he know of Mexico?

  Just stories.

  Singular, well-placed stories.

  Ed heard of the drug war, the Cartels, the killings, the violence. Nuevo Negaldo was one of several border cities hemorrhaging bodies every day. However, as he looked south toward the mystery of a strange land, it was impossible to believe that everyone in Mexico was complicit in atrocities. The lights from Nuevo Negaldo hinted at a city that was alive with noise and movement. Of restaurants and bars, music and parks and shopping. Mexicans were not just migrants or Cartel sicarios, just as Ed was an American but not an ignorant imperialist.

  But why was he afraid? Why did gazing south of the border fill him with apprehension?

  The sounds around him, even though he was on US soil in Hurtado, were as foreign to him as if he had landed on the moon. The dry smell of the high desert, the language filling his ears as he walked back from the motel to the restaurant again, was anxiety inducing. He was the minority. He was the outsider, and for Ed, this was not his usual view on the world.

  He knew that once he crossed the border, he would be a sitting duck. Unable to speak Spanish, unable to navigate apart from the printed-out map of the location. A wrong turn would put him into the bowels of Nuevo Negaldo with no way to ask for help. And who would he ask? The police?

  He had heard stories.

  But was it all the police? Or were the stories extrapolated from single anecdotes to paint with a wide brush?

  The notion of standing on a street corner with a paper map in hand, trying to decipher where to go, would be like putting a sign around his neck that said “Rob Me Please.” He looked down at the map again. He was doing
his best to memorize it: across the border checkpoint, five blocks south, turn right, three blocks west, zig this way and then that. He tried to remember the backstreet names, but the string of consonants and vowels were run together in a way that his memory could not record them.

  Standing here contemplating his journey, the only thing he knew of Mexico was that it made him afraid.

  25

  Ed walked out of Hurtado, south down the two-lane road toward the border crossing. It was a tin carport enclosure buttressed on both sides by the tall border wall. Cars were backed up single file coming north, passing through the scrutiny of US customs and the prying noses of a K9 unit. The path into Mexico was clear, as if he was the only one on earth that morning with an interest on the other side of the border.

  As he walked, he felt the nerves start to grip his stomach. West on the horizon, out past the two cities, the land would have looked unchanged for miles upon miles, had it not been for the high metal wall. This artificial barrier in the wilderness. He was about to cross over into a world so foreign that every cell in his body told him to stop.

  He kept walking.

  Nuevo Negaldo, the Mexican sister city to Hurtado, washed up right against the wall, its stucco and brick buildings appearing as debris swept up in an ocean of desert and deposited against the steel structure. He could not read the signs.

  Ed walked under the tin awning, followed the sidewalk, and before he knew it, he was on Mexican soil. Two army soldiers leaned against a railing, their automatic weapons slung against their green fatigues, talking to each other. Neither one seemed to give him any notice. Ed kept walking until the checkpoint was behind him. He continued down the sidewalk, past the northbound traffic jam.

  The doors to cantinas and trinket shops were open. Peering inside, Ed saw empty cement rooms with random plastic chairs, wooden bars filled with sweating bottles, and locals preparing for whatever customers might come in that day.