Bulletproof Vest (15 page)

“You're under arrest sir,” said short and round.

“For what?” he said.

“Indecent exposure,” said tall and slim.

“Indecent exposure?” He roared with laughter. There was something about the way the fed said this that made it sound as if he had been caught exposing himself to passersby. He went to push past them, mumbling something about since when had it become a crime for a man to answer nature's call, but they pounced on him, dragging him down, grappling with his flailing arms. He was aware of the ground rattling against his cheek as the trolley approached, could feel the weight of a knee against his spine and the wooden handle of the ice pick pressing into his hipbone. He struggled to break free, but the knee dug harder, and between the thrashing and the grunting, the ice pick rolled out of his pocket and onto the ground. He reached for it, grasped the smooth worn wooden handle, and, in a single motion, turned and rammed it into flesh.

Sparks rained down from the wires as the trolley came to a screeching halt. Even in the dark, he could see the frozen whites of the eyes, the fed with the ice pick in his neck staring back at him. He pushed himself to his feet, shoved past the passengers that were filtering off the streetcar, and broke into a sprint, the other fed already yelling for someone to stop that man, but no one dared, and soon he was running along the cobblestone streets, past midnight revelers and parked cars. The first blast shattered a windshield as he went by. He picked up the pace and started zigzagging as more blasts rang out, breaking car windows and mirrors, and all the while he could almost feel the bullet that would pierce his skull, sever his spine, or fracture his heel. He reached an intersection and turned right, then left on the next, and right on the one after, until he had cornered himself and was running toward a dead end. Up ahead, the bullets were already hitting against the brick wall, demolishing the brown and green jagged glass that lined its top edge. He crossed himself and in a single leap, grabbed onto the sharp edge, felt the glass slicing his hands as he pulled himself up and over. Even before his feet hit the ground on the other side of the wall, he was already running.

There is nowhere for him to run now. He sits up, draws his knees to his chest, and wraps his arms around them, his back pressing against the coolness of the cinder-block wall as once again he goes down the list of possible snitches. He dozes off and wakes to the sound of footsteps coming toward his cell. Soon the plate of muck will come scraping across the floor, he thinks, but instead there is the jingle of keys, and then the sound of metal sliding over metal as the heavy door falls open. It's dark out, and they lead him onto a bus bound for the border. The bus is filled with other Mexican men who are being deported for one reason or another. They all wear the same bright orange jumper, their hands cuffed and resting on their laps. An armed guard boards the bus, and they pull out of Denver in the dark hours of predawn.

Sixteen hours later, they reach the border. The bus barely comes to a full stop when already it's surrounded by patrol cars. Two Mexican feds board the bus and stand guard at the front.

“Ismael Córdova,” one of the feds calls out. A man stands, walks to the front of the bus, and is escorted away.

“Miguel Ramírez,” the same fed reads from a list, and again a man stands and is escorted off the bus.

“Jose Venegas,” the fed calls and no one moves. The fed glances at a piece of paper in his hand, and then looks at the men, scanning their faces as he makes his way down the isle, the scent of tobacco trailing in his wake.

“Jose Manuel Venegas,” the fed hollers, from the back of the bus. A few men cough and handcuffs clank, but still, no one stands. Then again the boots are moving toward him and he watches them pass out of the corner of his eye. When the fed reaches the front of the bus, he turns to face the men, examines the piece of paper in his hand, and the other fed leans in and whispers something to him.

“Armando Gutiérrez,” he calls out.

Slowly, Jose stands up, rising to meet that borrowed identity under which he has lived for the past four years. The other men turn to look in his direction as the fed walks toward him.

“¿Cómo te llamas?” the fed asks.

“Armando Gutiérrez,” he says.

A wicked grin spreads across the fed's face, fanning his black mustache over his exposed yellow teeth. He flicks his wrist and the sheet of paper he's holding flips open. Jose follows his gaze and there, on the paper, he sees his own eyes staring back at him. In the photo, he's wearing a white cowboy hat and sporting a full beard, but there is no denying that it's the same face. Under the photo the caption reads,
Wanted for murder in Zacatecas. Considered armed and dangerous.

“You're not Armando Gutiérrez,” the fed says, still grinning. “You're Jose Manuel Venegas and you're wanted in Zacatecas for the murder of Manuel Robles.”

He's dragged off the bus and escorted to a patrol car. They switch out his handcuffs for a much heavier pair. A long chain connects the cuffs around his wrists to a pair of ankle cuffs, and once he's in the backseat, they bolt the chain around his ankles to a metal rod that runs beneath him. There's no room to stretch and a fifteen-hour drive looms ahead. Two feds climb into the front seat. The last light of day is fading in the sky when they pull away from the border, and by the time they are snaking around the curves of the Sierra Madre Occidental, night has fallen.

By daybreak, they're already in the state of Zacatecas, descending into the valley of Valparaíso. It's Sunday, market day, and traffic crawls along the dusty two-lane road that leads into town. There's a new gas station on the outskirts and cars and trucks are lined up at the pumps. The sidewalks are crowded with people carrying bags from the mercado as they rush past. At El Pollo Feliz, the chickens rotate on the rotisserie in the window, juice and grease dripping, making his mouth water.

The plaza is alive with Sunday morning commotion. The patrol car pulls up in front of the steps that lead to the prison. It hasn't even come to a full stop and people are already staring, whispering behind cupped hands, and pointing. The man flipping tortillas at the taco cart ducks his head out from under the awning and looks right at him. He mouths something to the men and women who are standing around his cart, washing down taquitos with ice-cold Coca-Colas and Jarritos. A few heads turn and glance in his direction. The door swings open and all the scents and sounds from the plaza flood the car. Grease hisses on the skillet and the relentless bell of the paletero sounds out all around him, while under the shade of the gazebo, men stand with one foot propped on the shoeshine stand, eyeing him as one of the feds unlocks the cuffs around his ankles. The heavy chain rattles as it falls away from his feet.

“Vamos,” the fed says.

It seems the entire plaza is watching as he steps out of the car, and a shock shoots up his spine as gravity takes him down.

“Puta madre,” he mutters as his knees smack against the cobblestones, his body curling in on itself.

“Levántate,” one of the feds demands, giving him a slight nudge with his boot.

He tries to push himself up, but every muscle in his body is spasmic and again he collapses onto the cobblestones—the same cobblestones where he and his cousins played at las encantadas when he was a kid. Not much has changed in the plaza since then. The cathedral still sits next to the prison, the livestock registry across the way, and the house with the pink limestone arches that once belonged to his grandfather still stands on the south end of the plaza. When his grandfather passed away, he left the house to his parents, and for all he knows, at this very moment, his parents are somewhere just on the other side of the arches. The news of his extradition has probably already reached them, traveling faster by word of mouth than in a rickety patrol car. His only hope of not living out the rest of his days in prison is the promise his mother made, all those years ago, when he was twelve years old and shot a man for the first time.
If you should ever land in prison, we've got money.

The two feds reach down and grip him under his armpits, one on either side. They count to three, hoist him up, and drag him up the stairs, the cuffs around his ankles hitting against each limestone step all the way to the top.

 

10

A FINE YOUNG BULL

(Zacatecas, Mexico, 1950s)

 

FIDEL HAD SPENT A SMALL FORTUNE
on his bull, and had been inquiring around town since the day it went missing. It was a handsome red Angus with a solid square frame, a wide muzzle, and a scrotal circumference that practically guaranteed prized offspring for years to come.

“I think the Venegas boys have a bull similar to the one you just described up at their father's ranch,” someone in town informed Fidel.

The Venegas boys may have been opportunists, but they were not thieves, and the minute they had seen Fidel's bull grazing on their property, they recognized their good fortune. If they could get the bull to breed with La Negra, one of their mother's finest and best milk-giving cows, they might end up with a fine young bull to breed with their herd well into the future. They rounded up the bull and La Negra into a stacked-stone corral that was built into the side of the ridge on one end and concealed by the eucalyptus trees that grew along the creek on the other. Had La Negra not turned out to be a bruta, their plan might have worked beautifully. Instead, for two days, they had watched as each time the bull attempted to mount La Negra, he was greeted with her long sharp horns.

“If she doesn't take him by the end of the day, we're going to have to let him go,” Jose said, watching as La Negra locked horns with the bull yet again.

“Ey,” Salvador said.

Salvador was a few years younger than Jose and always went along with whatever his older brother wanted. They were sitting on the corral wall, under the shade of the eucalyptus trees. The leather satchel with the gorditas their mother had packed early that morning sat on the wall between them. Jose reached into the satchel and pulled one out, bit into it, and from the foot of the wall the two dogs eyed his hand, panting and salivating, as a thin thread of orange grease ran down the side of his arm. He and Salvador sat in silence, chewing and listening to the whisper of the waterfall behind them, watching as, again, La Negra turned and locked horns with the bull.

“Méndiga vaca,” Jose said, wiping the grease from his arm on his denim overalls, though the dogs were no longer fixating on his hand. They were standing erect and eyeing the dirt trail that led up and behind the ridge, a steady rumble already building within their chests, until it erupted and they broke into a sprint and disappeared around the incline.

“You think someone is there?” Salvador said.

“Probably just a coyote,” Jose said, as he reached up, grabbed a low-hanging branch, and pulled himself to his feet. He steadied the rubber soles of his leather sandals on the wall and stretched his neck up, eyes scanning the line of the ridge above.

“Maybe it's a wild boar,” Salvador said, jumping off the wall and walking toward the trail. The dogs had gotten into scuffles numerous times with the boar that lived in the cave that was tucked into the boulders on the other side of the ridge.

“Nah, boar at this hour?” Jose said, still scanning the ridge, where the barking had turned to growling until the first blast put an end to it. The gunshot was so loud that it sent the bull and La Negra scampering to the other end of the corral. There was a second blast, a whimper, and then nothing but the sound of the rushing water below.

“¿Quién anda ahí?” Jose called out in an exaggeratedly deep voice. The same guttural voice he used when herding cattle or breaking horses.

There was no answer, and then he saw three dogs come around the stacked-stone wall. They stopped and sniffed at the base of the eucalyptus beneath him, and he didn't recognize a single one. He glanced at Salvador, who was standing with his arms stiff at his sides, staring wide-eyed at something behind Jose. When Jose turned around, he saw Fidel making his way around the corral, his horse concealed by the wall so that Fidel appeared to be floating.

“Quiubo,” Fidel called out, as he pulled on the reins and brought his horse to a full stop. Fidel had a deep and manly voice, and at twenty-one, he was already a married man with his first child on the way.

“Buenos días,” Jose said in a voice that sounded as if it had been squeezed from him. He was still clutching the branch with one hand, the gordita turning to mush in the other.

“You boys didn't happen to see a large red bull roaming around here, did you?”

“Nope,” the boys answered in unison.

“Well, that's odd,” Fidel said, glancing toward the creek and scratching his beard. “Because a little bird told me that you boys have a bull up here that looks an awful lot like the one I'm missing.”

The boys shrugged.

Fidel dug his spurs into his horse and again he was floating along the edge of the wall, and for each step Fidel's horse took forward, Salvador took three steps back.

“Run,” Jose heard Salvador whisper from behind him, but he couldn't move. His eyes were darting from Fidel to the bull, the bull to Fidel. Back and forth they went like a pendulum. “Run, you idiot.” Fidel cleared the shade, cocked his head, following the line Jose had so clearly drawn with his gaze—and there standing next to the black cow was his bull.

The first blast hit the tree next to Jose and sent a shudder through him that shook the gordita clear out of his grasp. The mush soared through the air and hit the ground, where it was instantly devoured by the three dogs. The second blast severed the branch Jose was holding on to and sent him flailing, his hand still gripping the branch as his body swung forward and back, so that it looked like he was swatting at a swarm of bees. His sandals slipped off the rocks and the blue sky shifted as he fell backward.