Wear Your Home Like a Scar, page 19
“They’re never going to find us,” I said. “We’re leaving tonight.”
I leaned down and kissed her, breathed in and tried to absorb every bit of her, held her bottom lip between mine so we’d never part.
“Do you promise?”
Behind her, I heard heavy running footsteps.
I whispered against her cheek, “Yes, I promise,” then pushed her away.
“Fucking pervert!” and a fist swung at my face.
I judged it right this time and stepped back, squared up and ready to throw. And to the side, the corner of a board peeked from the edge of my blind spot. Enormous, splintered, splattered with tar. All I knew was Darla’s scream and the hollow tinkle of glass, a Christmas ornament imploding. Glittering blood pouring from my glass eye. Concrete grated against my knees as my forehead hit the ground. Ruben screamed from somewhere. Boots in my ribs and I curled fetal. A deep grunt and the soft thud of metal on flesh. He cursed them in Spanish. Someone moaned, a thud and another thud and cursing. Then a crack like a celery stalk and Ruben’s scream turned horribly nasal.
Splinters of wood in my forearms, I felt Darla’s hand touch my back then evaporate and she screamed, “Leave me alone, you fuck.” The smell of burnt pennies, blackness everywhere. Darla shrieked and someone sucked in breath like they’d been kicked in the crotch. I rolled to my side and peeled open my good eye. The city, tinted burgundy. The color of her hair, of seeping blood. Ruben lay curled in a ball, hands covering his shattered face. One of the trolls on his back, cradling his ruined testicles.
Little Carl had his niece in a wrestling hold, dragging her away. She cursed, screamed, swung her heels and clawed at him. An oozing scrape on the back of his head. I lifted myself to my knee, wiped pebbles and cigarette butts off my face. A glob of blood fell from the socket where my glass eye had been. I grabbed the plank beside me, a triangle of glass with the edge of my pupil stuck to the front. The backside was speckled with nails and rust and tar.
The parking lot teetered under the flickering lights. Everything was flat, no depth. Flat and red. I hobbled after them, using the plank as a makeshift cane.
“Carl!” My voice was ragged. I stumbled and scuttled on my knees. “Carl!”
He swung around, hand covering Darla’s mouth. Her eyes shone bright with fear, rage, hope. Love. I felt myself smile. That’s my girl. He dropped her and she ran to me. I felt her skin on mine twenty feet away but one of the guys snatched her, using the same hold as Carl. I brought myself to my feet.
“You stay the fuck away from her.” Spit flew from his mouth.
“Let her go, Carl.” I wavered but stayed upright. Light faded in and out, entire chunks of the lot turning black then reappearing. I smirked. “Let her go and see who she comes to.”
He snarled and charged me. Somewhere in the blackness, the guy screamed. “She fucking bit me!”
I curled my finger, anchored my leg and raised the wood to swing. Carl’s eyes were diabolical. He wanted to obliterate me. Let the plank break over his skull then pounce and tear the flesh from my bones with his teeth. He was going to destroy my body and consume my soul and in another life we could’ve been in-laws.
No. Fuck that.
He wasn’t going to ruin us.
We were leaving. Tonight. Me and Darla, we were starting anew. And there was no one going to stop us.
I flipped the plank, nails out. Swallowed. Held my breath. Zeroed in on Carl’s temple. Swung.
Darla screamed my name as she ran to me. Straight into the path of the plank.
The wood hit her throat with a crunch that reverberated through my arms. The plank dropped from my hands and hit the pavement.
Then her scream was falling underwater. Her voice, our dreams, drowning in blood.
Back to TOC
The Road to Sabaneta
Gustavo’s eyes flew open as gasoline crashed against his face. It splashed in his nostril, igniting a burning sensation that spread up behind his eyes. It burned his skin, rivulets dripping down through his mustache, through his beard, seeping into his mouth.
He spat it to the cement floor, fighting against the urge to puke, then shook his head to clear his vision. Two men stood before him in the garage, Nazario holding the rusted metal gas can while Heriberto, their teniente—his lieutenant—leaned against a rickety wooden table, cigarette between his lips, idly examining a car battery and jumper cables. Gustavo guessed he’d passed out after an extended shock. He wondered if they’d make that mistake again.
“You know it’s actually the fumes that burn, not the liquid?” Heriberto said. Everyone called him el Tuerto on account of his only having one eye. He was generic narco: big belt buckle, gaudy shirt, red snakeskin boots that matched his Monte Carlo parked outside. “Most people don’t know that.”
“I’m pretty sure everyone knows that.” A spray of gas flew from Gustavo’s lips when he spoke.
“I always liked those scenes in movie, where the bad guy pours a line of gas from the car and drops a match on it.” El Tuerto shook his head. “Never worked when I tried it.”
Gustavo clenched his eyes, as much to keep the gasoline from stinging them as to avoid looking at the car battery the teniente was caressing. “I don’t know what else you expect me to say.”
El Tuerto looked up, fixed his eye on Gustavo without saying a word. The glare spoke loud enough.
“I don’t have the bag,” Gustavo said again. “I haven’t even been here long enough to know how to steal it, but I wouldn’t anyway because everyone from Laredo to Matamoros knows you don’t steal from el Tuerto.”
“And yet you did.”
“You’re asking me to prove something that never happened. You can’t prove a negative.”
El Tuerto sprung forward and pressed the jumper cables against Gustavo’s chest. The electricity slammed through him, thousands of tiny teeth chomping down on the flesh inside his body, chomping down in some way he didn’t understand and shouldn’t be possible, the muscles in his neck strung so taut he swore they’d snap and his head would loll forward and he’d choke on his tongue.
And as abruptly as the pain started, el Tuerto stepped back.
Residual electricity thrummed through Gustavo’s body. Steam wafted from his torso.
They had been at this for twenty minutes. Twenty minutes wasn’t a long time, except when a sicopático ran enough energy to power a heavy-duty work truck through your body. Maybe lifetime narcos, Marines, sadists, people like that could hold out long, but Gustavo wasn’t like them. He was a kid from Hebbronville, Texas, population 4,500, and a poli-sci grad from A&M. Big fan of dubious Discovery Channel documentaries. But still, he knew the next time el Tuerto came at him would be the last.
El Tuerto pushed words through his teeth.
“Then where is it?”
Gustavo felt a bead roll down his temple, unsure whether it was gasoline or sweat or blood. He wondered how he was going to get out of this as much as how he’d gotten into it in the first place. The stupid things you do for love, was all he could come up with.
That aside, as he sat in this disused garage, bound to a metal chair by two high-ranking members of the Gulf cartel, he knew there was only one thing he could say to have any hope of making it out of there with most of his limbs. And so he went soplón, let the name of his best friend roll off his tongue like a careless swear.
“On the road to Sabaneta. That was the last time I saw Richard. If you want your bag, you need to find him.”
Richard and Gustavo had met in middle school. Both of their families had moved to town that August, which meant neither of them knew anyone else in school. It didn’t help that they were both scrawny and brown and impressively fast—given that they had to flee the other kids so often—so they stuck together, banking on strength in numbers. From that respite, friendship bloomed. Weekend nights spent in the basement, strategizing Magic battles, watching BSG and The X-Files and, for some reason Gustavo could never understand, The Crow, Part II.
Although that had been nearly fifteen years ago, Gustavo could still remember those nights in excruciating detail. The way Richard’s hand would linger as he was laying down a card sequence. The way Gustavo would watch Richard in the TV screen reflection and how, when it cut to commercial and the screen went black, Richard would catch Gustavo looking. But instead of looking away or punching him or What are you staring at, marica? he would simply stare back, impassive, searching.
Three times, they practiced kissing under the guise of being prepared for their dates with hot girls that would inevitably be coming soon, but Gustavo felt the façade slip a few tenuous seconds after their lips touched.
High school changed everything. Richard’s dad was a hulking man, the founder of a private security firm who had contracts at every bank in Jim Hogg County and several in the surrounding counties. His favorite party trick was to call over Richard, using some diminutive slur, and plop his massive hand on Richard’s head and pick him up, like one of the cheap toys won from a claw machine at the skating rink. But that only lasted so long, because in the middle of freshman year, Richard’s genes finally kicked in. By the start of sophomore year, Richard had put on seven inches and nearly fifty pounds. When the high school’s running back broke his leg during a quarry-diving incident, Richard was talked into the position. His fast feet quickly made him a star player—Texas royalty. His father’s hand went from the top of his head to his shoulder, presenting him to everyone he’d meet.
Their weekends hanging out were curtailed on account of practices and games and team obligations. But twice, Gustavo came into the locker room to grab something when he happened on Richard standing in the shower. Gustavo instinctively hid his gaze, but gradually raised it to see Richard standing there, eyes on his friend, water running down his body, exposed. Not exposed, Gustavo had thought. Something closer to inviting.
Richard was in a roadside motel off Route 83 outside Sabaneta, not far from Laredo and within spitting distance of the border, sitting at a chipped formica table with two rival Zetas and a duffel bag full of coke between them. The lamp above them spilled a cone of jaundiced light into the dim room.
“Why you bring this to us?” said the one on the left. His neck was the same size as Richard’s bicep, but all sinew and gristle.
“I heard you could be reasonable,” Richard said, nodding his head between the two of them. He had trouble keeping eye contact with either of them, that blank, dead-eyed stare passing through Richard and scouring everything inside him. “And that you appreciate your people, give them a bump when they prove themselves.”
“Your man only keeps an eye out for himself,” the man said.
Richard barked out a laugh then quickly bit it back.
“My friend say something funny?” the slab of muscle said.
Richard shook his head. “No, sorry, it’s just…Tuerto only has one eye.”
“I know,” said the man. “I took the other one. He’s lucky he got off easy.”
Richard swallowed hard, nudged the duffel bag toward them. “I just want what I deserve.”
The two leaned close to each other, exchanged a few words. After a minute, the scrawny one examined the bag one last time before standing up.
“We’ll talk with our man, see what he says.” He flicked his chin at Richard. “We’ll be back in an hour.”
The two ambled out of the room without bothering to close the door behind them, the bright Texas afternoon flooding in through the crooked jamb, like a jaw broken and not set correctly. Richard leaned forward in his seat, fished out his phone from his front jeans pocket. Five messages from Gustavo over the last three days, each a variation on the previous, but increasingly frantic.
Where’d you go?
Dude, what the hell happened?
Richard, you pinche pendejo, what the fuck? Call me now.
Why is Tuerto looking for me?
Richard. Please.
He tossed the phone on the table, grabbed the soft pack from his shirt pocket and pulled out a smoke with his lips, smoked it near to his knuckles.
“What am I doing? I’m taking my life in my hands, just like you keep saying,” he said to the empty room a couple of minutes later. “I’m taking what I deserve.”
He chained a second smoke from the cherry then flicked the butt through the door, arcing through the space before landing next to a cactus by the parking lot. Richard folded his hands behind his head and waited.
Gustavo flexed his fingers, still bound behind his back, trying to keep blood moving. He rolled his head around, loosening the muscles that had grown tight. El Tuerto had left more than an hour ago with Ángel, one of his sicarios, which meant that, even if they had to pick up another sicario, they should be getting close to the motel any time now. He hoped it was just the two of them, as three would’ve made the plan more difficult, but it should still work out. He hoped, at least.
Nazario sat in a folding chair across from him, scrolling through something on his phone, occasionally coughing out a laugh.
“So I’m just supposed to sit here till Tuerto and Ángel get back? I already told them everything.”
Nazario mumbled some semblance of an answer without looking up.
“You know I don’t have the bag. I’ve never carried hierro so I’m not going to shoot you. There’s no reason to keep me tied like this.” He shook his hands, as if for emphasis.
Finally, Nazario deemed him worth looking at. “Who knows what your kind will do. Try to overpower me to do…whatever.”
Gustavo sucked in his lips, nodding to himself. “My kind, eh?”
Nazario sighed and clicked off his phone, annoyed. “Mira. You’re lucky Tuerto’s all enlightened and shit. Accepting all kinds. Me? I would’ve bounced you out. I could smell it first time I saw you.”
“Cause you know so well what cock smells like?” Gustavo tried his hardest to swallow his smile, knowing it wouldn’t do anything but piss off Nazario, which might bring more rounds of the car battery. Nazario stared a hole through him with those dead, burning eyes. Gustavo refused to break eye contact, knowing he was already pretty well screwed but that would just make it worse.
Then Nazario lunged forward, fist cocked back, ready to smear Gustavo’s nose across his face.
Gustavo flinched, pulling back as far as he could, his eyes curling shut.
Nazario laughed, already sitting back in his seat and on his phone.
Goddammit, Gustavo thought to himself.
“Pinche marica,” Nazario said in a low voice.
Things got easier when Gustavo went to college. He made friends who were interested in politics and history, people he could talk to on a real level, even met a couple of boys late at night—in a safe, hidden place. And Richard, his high school glory didn’t translate to much more than second-string to a future NFL draft pick. But Richard wasn’t content with second-string anymore, not after tasting the spotlight. He quit the team and turned that frenetic energy to partying. First on weekends. Then Thursdays too. Then most days. Classes became optional, then occasional, then vestigial. After all, it was hard to sit through a Western Civ survey class when your head wouldn’t stop spinning.
On three nights—of which Richard would claim the next day to friends he was blackout drunk and had no recollection of what happened after the party—those boys Gustavo met were Richard.
It was during one of those nights that Gustavo introduced Richard to cocaine.
Gustavo had started with Adderall, to help him study for exams. That led to cocaine, in order to let loose after those exams were done. Since his college career was quickly going to shit, Richard needed something to occupy his time. One night at a party, he met a guy—Ángel, the one who was now tracking him down. They started talking and within twenty minutes, he saw an opportunity to make a move. He snatched that opportunity and ran, same as he’d done on the football field. His nights were spent in the driver’s seat, going between towns, Ángel riding shotgun, a bag of coke or money hidden in the trunk’s false bottom.
Every time Gustavo saw Richard, he showed off a new watch, new Gucci shoes, shared a bottle of way-too-expensive Whistlepig. He offered to make an intro for Gustavo, try to bring him in. Seriously, güey, he’d say, gesturing around Gustavo’s apartment, at the card table covered by a cheap tablecloth and mismatched seats someone in the complex had left by the curb. Let me talk to my man.
But Gustavo wavered, unsure he was ready to take that kind of step.
Until the night Richard called late, drunk, asking Gustavo to meet him at a local bar. Gustavo’s heart betrayed him, trilling at the request, thinking maybe the time had finally come. He passed by the mirror on his way out, pausing a second, his eyes examining his hair, wondering if it’d look better up, then told himself to stop being stupid.
Richard sat hunched over the bar, cupping a tumbler of liquor. Another full one sat before the stool beside him, ready for Gustavo. He told himself to calm down.
“Thanks for the drink,” Gustavo said as he sat down. He took a sip and immediately recoiled. “Is this brandy?”
A wry smile crept across Richard’s mouth. “You remember when we drank half my dad’s bottle and filled it with iced tea so he wouldn’t notice?” He shook his head. “I was so sick the next morning. You had to hold my hair back so I didn’t puke in it.”
“Because you refused to cut it. God damn, that was an awful look.”
“Your frosted tips weren’t much better.”
Gustavo shrugged, conceding the point as he took a mouthful of brandy. A chill spread through him. “So what happened?”
Richard threw the rest of his drink down his throat, ordered another. “Stupid shit. Someone who was supposed to have my back didn’t.” He looked up to Gustavo. “It almost cost me. For real, I almost died because they didn’t have my back.”
