Bulletproof Vest (32 page)

The battle continues to rage in front of the small church, while in the distance, along the dark ridge, lights from other ranches are coming into focus. Out there where a pair of eyes could be watching the glow of the fire dance across our faces. Normally, we don't stay outside past dark. Once the chickens have tucked themselves into the branches of the eucalyptus trees and the sun has gone down, we go inside, lock the doors, and stay put until morning. I hook my index finger in the rubber band holding my ponytail and slide it off, let my hair fall freely around my shoulders.

“Why are they fighting like that?” I ask. My father is now down on one knee, rearranging the logs in the fire. “Maybe it's a sign,” I say.

“Yeah, maybe,” he says. “Maybe La Huesona is on the loose, desperate to take a few more souls before the year ends.” He rolls a thick log into the fire. “Only a few hours left,” he grunts as he centers it in the burning pile.

Maybe he's right. Animals are always the first to know. When I had been here for the holidays last year, the dogs had howled all through the night, and then in the morning, we found out that the ninety-two-year-old woman who lived across from the church had died at dawn. My father and I had gone to the service, and afterward we followed the procession, the truck with the coffin and the one with the musicians guiding the way to the cemetery. As we idled along, the drums and horns seemed to be pounding in my chest.

“With the music, you kind of get the urge to cry, huh?” my father said, staring out his window.

“Ey,” I said. When I had first gone to the cemetery on the hill I had stood at the foot of my brother's grave, staring at his name carved into the stone, and had hardened against it, had refused to shed a single tear. “Did you guys have music at Chemel's funeral?” I asked my father, and he said there were so many people at Chemel's funeral that by the time the truck with the musicians reached the plaza in town, cars were still pulling out of La Peña. We drove along in the procession and I could feel him staring at my profile, and then I was fumbling around for my sunglasses, as if they might be able to dam up the tears that had been years in coming.

“This log should last us all night, or at least until the New Year,” he says, taking his seat. “Encino. Great wood. I chopped it myself. It doesn't burn down as fast as the others.” He glances at me and follows my gaze out to the rumbling that is now moving around the back of the house.

“I think one of those dogs is in heat,” he says. “That's why they're all worked up.” I lean back into my chair and take a sip from my rum and Coke. The dry heat from the fire feels good on my bare arms. “You see those three stars?” he asks, pointing at the Big Dipper. I look past the clothesline and electrical wires that hang above. “When we were kids,” he says, “we used to call those Los Reyes Magos.”

“Over there,” I say, “they call those the…” The word eludes me. It's like this sometimes. I can't find the right word in Spanish and hesitate. “It's, um, it's like the small pot or pan,” I say. “Or like the big spoon. See how the three stars are in a row? How they seem to form a handle?”

“Uh-huh,” he says, and though his face is still turned toward the sky, he's giving me a sideways glance, a one-eyed squint.

The sky is filled with stars, thousands of them sitting around the moon, waiting for the New Year to arrive. A small piece of raw meat clings to the clothesline above. A few days ago, a cow broke an ankle and had to be put down. My father had salted the meat that didn't fit in the freezer and hung it on the clothesline to be dried by the sun. Raw meat hung like laundry in the courtyard for two days. He reaches up, plucks the piece off the clothesline, and throws it into the fire.

“I made that rope when I was in prison,” he says, pointing at the clothesline. It's a yellow rope that's tied to an extension chord that is then tied to the water-well post. “That one and the pink one I tied to your saddle this morning,” he says.

“They teach you how to make rope in jail?” I ask.

“They teach you how to do lots of things,” he says. “If you pay attention, you come out knowing more than when you went in. I gave those ropes to my father, when he came to visit me to tell me they had sold the house in the plaza and deposited the money in an account for the lawyer that was working on my case.”

The dogs have worked their way around the corral and are now barreling down the dirt road toward us, the snarling louder and louder as they approach.

“Maybe we should go inside,” I say.

“Nah. If we go inside, we'll fall asleep,” he says, perhaps thinking back to last year when I had picked up a bottle of red wine and made us a filet mignon and mashed potato dinner, and by the time midnight arrived we were both passed out. “It's nicer here, by the fire. We can have a few drinks, a bit of a plática, and after the New Year arrives, we'll go inside and iron our ears out.” He looks at my bare arms, my ripped jeans. “You want to borrow a jacket?”

“No, I'm fine,” I say, taking a gulp from my cup.

“Do you really want to go inside?” he asks.

“Maybe,” I say.

“Well then, we should put out the fire,” he says.

We sit in silence for a while. I stare out past the dirt road, past the house where both he and I were born, and can't help but feel like we are being watched. I sit up and face him.

“What if someone shoots us?” I ask.

His whole body turns toward me.

“No, no, mijita,” he shakes his head. “¿Qué pasó? Don't think like that.” He reaches into the fire, grabs one of the logs, and flips it. “No one is going to come bother us here, not at this hour, not just any pendejo would come near here,” he says. “Besides, it's the holidays, everyone is too busy celebrating.”

Everyone is busy celebrating—celebrating and drinking; drinking and celebrating—all day long men have been knocking them back at the rodeos, the cockfights, the horse races—the sun beating on their eyelids, vision blurring, old conflicts rising to the surface. It's during the holidays that tragedies seem to happen around these parts. It was on Christmas Eve, twenty-two years ago, that my brother was shot, fell facedown in the river, and drowned. My mother had recently taken me to Las Cruces and I had stood near the river's edge, watching the frigid water rushing over the smooth stones. His sweetheart's house still sat on the boulder across the way, but she was long gone, married and living on the other side. For years I had blamed my father. Had blamed him for convincing my brother to come back here, for keeping him just a little longer, just until the holidays, but how could he have foreseen what was coming?

“Do you know what ever happened to the guy that killed Chemel?” I ask.

“Ouh, a ese méndigo cojo, yo mismo me lo chingué,” he says, staring into the flames. “After I came back down here, I went looking for him in the prison but was informed that he had been transferred to the federal prison in Zacatecas, so I drove there, and they told me that he had been sent to a mental institution in Guadalajara. I took the overnight bus to Guadalajara, only to find that he had been released, but I kept the word on the street and waited, knowing that sooner or later that son of a bitch would have to turn up,” he says, taking a swig. “Then I heard he was living near the border, in Mexicali, working as a paletero. There was a tavern he frequented, and I was told that if I were to show up at said tavern on any given weekday between such and such hours, he would be there. I recruited two others, and we drove up there. We found the tavern and sure enough, there was that méndigo, sitting at the bar and having a beer as if nothing had ever happened.”

“And you recognized him?” I ask.

“Sí, cómo no, méndigo cojo,” he says. “One of the men I was with went up to him and put his arm around his shoulders. “Hola, amigo,” he said. “Do you remember me?” The méndigo shook his head, saying no, he did not. “You might not remember me,” the man said, leaning in a bit closer, “but I'll bet you remember Chemel Venegas, don't you?” he said, pressing the barrel of his gun into the méndigo's ribs, right through his coat pocket. It must have been at that moment that the son of a bitch realized his past had caught up to him.” He polishes off his drink and tells me that the cojo didn't even bother putting up a fight. He went quietly.

This isn't the first time he's told me this story. Over the past few years he's told me the same story, and each time the story is exactly the same—almost verbatim, and there's something about its exactitude that makes it seem a bit too polished, like he's recounting a story, not as he witnessed it, but as it was related to him. And what does it matter whether he killed that cojo, or had someone do it for him—nothing will ever bring my brother back, nor erase the nightmares that have haunted me for years.

“No, está cabrón, mijita,” he says. “If anyone ever took one of my kids like that again, in such a cowardly way, or hurt one of you, even, I'd go after them, and I don't care who tried standing in my way—brother, father, sister, mother—I don't care who, they'd get trampled all the same.” The other two brothers had skipped town when he returned, and years later he heard that they had both died, car accidents or something like that. After he was released from prison and came back here, he had kept an eye on their father. “That's all you really have to do,” he says. “Just watch their moves, know what doors they're going in through, and which ones they're coming out of, and then when they least expect it.” He shrugs. “That man eventually died of a heart attack,” he says. “Who knows, maybe he knew I was watching him and he got so scared that he croaked.”

He's back on one knee, adjusting the logs in the fire, and I can't help but wonder what he would do if I happened to show up here one day with the dog of dogs that found me passed out in the basement. A ride out to the ranch—beyond the reach of any antidote, and fifty scorpions in his pants ought to do it. I polish off my drink, and stand up.

“Is there any more left?” he asks, grinning at me, a glint of the fire in his eyes.

“Yeah,” I say, taking his cup. “I'll go make us two more.”

The minute I step away from the fire, the cold air grips me. Night has fallen and so has the temperature. I make my way to the kitchen and hit the light switch. The single lightbulb covered with a layer of grease and dust dangles from the black cord that's slung over the wooden beam. The fried chicken Rosario and I made earlier sits in a large, green plastic bowl on the table with a cheesecloth draped over it. Grease is already seeping through the fabric. Since the day I arrived, two weeks ago, he kept mentioning how he had a taste for that fried chicken from the other side, how he hadn't had it in years, how he used to eat at the fried chicken place all the time, and how even the side dishes weren't bad. I went into town, downloaded the KFC recipe off the Internet, bought two chickens, two bottles of Crisco, a few potatoes, and some greens: fried chicken with two sides.

I grab the bottle of rum from behind the white, rusty metal cabinet where I stashed it earlier and mix two more drinks. This was the deal we made when he arrived slurring and glassy-eyed, pulling his red truck right into the courtyard as Rosario and I were finishing frying the chicken. She had gone to bed, and I agreed to have a few drinks with him, celebrate the New Year, as long as he gave me the bottle, let me be in charge, monitor how much more he drank, make sure he didn't have too much, black out, forget where he was—who he was with.

I hear his truck door slam shut and expect to hear a corrido come blaring through the house, but the music never comes. I mix our drinks, making mine a double, his a lot weaker, and head back outside. He is sitting in front of the fire, right where I left him, as if he had never moved. I hand him his drink and sit down; he takes a sip.

“Uouh, this doesn't taste like anything,” he says, taking another swig. “It tastes like pura Coca-Cola.” He eyes me. “Did you put anything in here?”

“Yeah,” I say.

“No parece.” He grins and glances at my cup. “A ver,” he says. “Let me try yours.”

I hand him my cup and he takes a gulp.

“A jijo!” he coughs. “Did you put the rest of the bottle in here?”

“There wasn't much left.” He takes another swig. “Are you sure you don't have another bottle stashed somewhere?” I ask.

“No, that was it,” he says. “And the only reason I had that bottle is because I ran into a buddy of mine in town and he gave it to me, wanted me to go with him to the cantina, but I told him one of my daughters was in town, and that we were going to spend the New Year together.”

I take both cups. Empty my drink into his, then pour it all into mine, back and fourth I go, mixing the two together, then hand his cup back to him. El Lobo comes up and nudges my elbow. I pet his head, run my fingers down his neck; it's wet, sticky. I set my drink down and run both my hands down his neck, then hold them to the fire. They're covered in blood.

“Se lo chingaron,” he says, looking at the blood. He walks over to his truck, which is parked right behind us, comes back with a flashlight, gets down on one knee, and aims the beam at Lobo's neck. I hold Lobo's head still—there's a deep gash about two inches long on his neck, oozing thick blood. “They ripped his tumor off,” he says, pointing at the spot. “Right there he used to have a bump and now it's gone,” he says, being careful not to touch it, not to get blood on his hands. “That's good.” He stands up. “Now I won't have to cut it off.”

I press my finger gently against the gash. Lobo yelps.

“He's bleeding a lot,” I say. “Shouldn't we take him to a dog doctor or something?”

“He'll be fine,” he says, grimacing at the blood. “You should wash your hands.” He points the light toward the gray slate sink.