Do They Know I'm Running? (56 page)

Regardless, it would matter only to him that a woman named Fatima Hassan with a teenage daughter named Shatha, both using forged papers and assumed names, had finally been located and interviewed at the refugee camp at Al Tanf. The pseudonyms accounted for the delay in proper identification. Fatima confirmed she was the widow of Salah Hassan, who had disappeared in the custody of the Mukhabarat when her daughter was a child. Her husband was charged with money laundering and never emerged from prison. She further confirmed, after evidence was provided, that she worked at a Baghdad brothel after her husband’s arrest, did so for some years, and that her forged identity papers had been provided by the criminal syndicate that ran the brothel and provided protection for her and the other women working there.

Asked if she knew of a Samir Khalid Sadiq, she conceded that she did; like her, he was part of the Palestinian community in Iraq. Pressed on the matter, she admitted as well that he had been a client, a particularly loyal one—obsessive, perhaps, was a better word, but his generosity not just to her but to her daughter had convinced her to look past his infatuation. She said she knew he had been a soldier during the war with Iran, was fluent in both English and Spanish, and worked for a local TV station translating news wire items or so he had always told her. After the U.S. invasion, he made a promise to help her emigrate to America. With the war’s dislocations, however, she lost touch with him.

When asked if she was aware that this same Samir Khalid
Sadiq had been the informant who had identified her husband to the Mukhabarat, she fell silent for several minutes. When she finally spoke, she said simply, “I forgave him long ago, just as he forgave me.” She declined to say more.

“We have reliable information,” Orozco announced, turning toward the cameras with that same feline smile, “that the Arab was in contact with local
pandilleros
.” Gang members. “This was how he expected to get across, with their assistance. And as I have said, one of them died here with him. We are following up on this and hope to have more arrests in due time.”

A predictable move, Lattimore thought, keep the thing open-ended, so you could draw it out until memories faded, the next god-awful whatever stole the headlines. If necessary, nail a few tattooed bozos, drag them past the cameras and call it a day.

He wondered what had become of Happy, what had become of his cousin, wondered if he would ever know or if, in the final analysis, it mattered. He turned away from Orozco and the wall of lights, murmured a path through the other Americans and headed for the door, hoping the oppressive closeness of the scene wouldn’t follow him outside as he tried to think of how he might get Godo’s body shipped back to his aunt.

COME NIGHTFALL THEY WERE STILL CLIMBING. LUPE’S BREATHING HAD
become more labored, her skin felt cool to the touch. Even with his arm around her she stumbled and staggered and nearly fell when the path veered sharply or a tree root rose up through the dusty bed of bullet-shaped acorns and dry pine needles. He tried not to use the flashlight too often. Once, though, as they’d come upon what he’d thought was a dung pile, a sudden stab of light had caused the thing to stir, then slither off—a sidewinder, coiled to strike. He’d once heard that a pregnant woman causes snakes to sleep as you pass and he wondered if he should take this as a sign. Another time, hearing the low snarling growl of a mountain
lion, he’d fired the pistol into the tree canopy, scattering birds and scaring the animal off into the underbrush.

They couldn’t stay lucky all night, he thought, nor risk so much noise. His skin tingled with imagined bugs, against which he just kept walking, arm locked tight around Lupe’s waist, their hips pressed flush, moving along the narrow twisting hillside trail like a single clumsy four-legged beast. Every ten steps or so, he switched on the flashlight, got his bearings along the path, turned it off.

The path had led them across one rise after the other, sometimes a leisurely upward grade, other times as steep as a ladder, descending only briefly before resuming uphill, to the point he would have given anything to feel the ground dropping off into a reliable, continuous downgrade. His leg muscles burned, the small of his back was a tight ball of pain. He could only imagine what misery Lupe was enduring in silence.

They’d brought no water. They’d had no time, they hadn’t known Melchior would drive them out to the foothills and leave them to run or die. Roque wondered if the man was still alive, if his act, the feigned robbery, had fooled the others. He had no such doubts about Happy. He’d heard the gunshots as he and Lupe climbed beneath the tree canopy deeper into the hills. There’s no one left but me and Tía Lucha, he thought. Me and Tía and now this one, Lupe.

They came to another rock face, rising like a wall from the truncated path. Flipping on the flashlight briefly, he saw exposed roots and small rock ledges that might provide a fingerhold here, a foothold there. He would have to feel for them in the dark. The bluff extended indefinitely in each direction, there would be no getting around it that he could see. It rose only twenty feet or so, hardly an impossible climb.

Switching off the light he turned to Lupe.—
What do you think?

His eyes readjusted to the dark as he waited for her reply. He
could just make out the lines of her face. Though quick, her breath had settled into a rhythm and her left arm hung limp, the shoulder of her shirt crusted with blood.—
I can try
. She licked her parched lips.

—
You can hold on to my belt, watch where I put my hands and feet
.

She flexed her left hand, testing its strength, wincing.—
Let’s hurry
.

On again briefly with the flashlight—he mapped out his strategy in his mind’s eye—then off. He reached for the highest root he could without jumping, dug into a crevice in the rock with his toe, waited for Lupe to grab his belt, then hoisted himself up. Catching his balance, he felt for the next exposed root, got his hand around it, found a second foothold and pulled himself up again, this time feeling Lupe’s weight until she scrambled for her own hold below him.

—
You’re okay?

—
I’m fine, yes
. The words a hiss of air against her teeth.—
Quick. Please
.

He patted and pulled his way upward, until finally his hand reached the top of the bluff. He searched the ledge blindly, hoping for another root to grab hold of, only to encounter a scaly scuttling thing. Before he could pull back his hand the poisonous sting flared down into his arm like a streak of molten wire. He shouted in pain then said,
“¡Bajo! ¡Bajo!”

They tumbled to the bottom, her first, him on top, tangling up as they tried to scramble to their feet. His hand burned, he shook it as he reached for the flashlight, flipped it on. The wounds were small but deep, two of them, vaguely parallel. A spider not a scorpion, he thought, probably a tarantula. It would be painful, not dangerous but he couldn’t imagine trying the climb again—he doubted his grip would hold, especially with Lupe’s added weight, and for all he knew there was a nest of them up there, not just one.

—
Let’s wait here a moment while I think things through
. He cradled his bad hand, chewing his lip.—
Maybe there’s another way
. But he knew there wasn’t. They could try their luck, slash through the trees, see if somehow, somewhere, they stumbled upon another path down the mountainside. But if such a path existed why would this one be here—who forged dead ends up the sides of mountains?

He tried the flashlight again, looked left, looked right, saw only the dense forest and the mountain wall, the twenty-foot bluff that might as well be a mile high. His hand felt afire, his whole arm had turned weak but the pain was only half of it. He remembered his Day of the Dead benedictions with Tía Lucha, her steadfast conviction that her sister, his mother, lay just beyond a veil of incomprehension—someday they would all gather together again, laugh, sing, weep. When young, he had believed, not so much now. But maybe that wasn’t the point. Could there possibly be anything waiting beyond death that would be so much worse than this?

He heard a rustling off to his left. Another mountain lion, he thought, or the same one, it had been tracking them all along. That’s how it will happen, he thought, a predator smelling the blood. He moved the flashlight to his left hand, his good hand, then drawing Melchior’s pistol from his belt with his swollen aching right. He didn’t know how many bullets were left.

To hell with being seen, he thought, turning the flashlight on and pointing it at the noise, discovering not a mountain lion but a small raccoonlike face protruding from the broad-leafed greenery—immense and probing eyes, a whitish snout, a long curling tail like a monkey’s. A coatimundi. He’d never seen one except on nature shows. They stared at each other for a moment, long enough for Roque to believe he heard someone say the single word: Here.

To Lupe:—
Did you just say something?

She stirred from a daze.—
No
.

The animal withdrew into the underbrush and Roque puzzled at that, wondering why he’d not seen a way to escape in that direction before. Here, he thought, remembering the voice, unable to place it, following its direction, breaking through the scrub and pointing the beam of the flashlight down into a deep and narrow ravine, terraced with rock, dotted with scrub and spindly trees, opening at the bottom into a densely overgrown blackness.

Only then did he remember the dreams, especially the second, that night at Rafa’s service station before they crossed from El Salvador into Guatemala—the image of his sickly mother beckoning him forward, the tarantula.

—
We’re going this way
. He gestured with the flashlight for Lupe to follow. They would scoot down the rock ledge into the crevasse, come out somewhere lower on the mountainside, take their chances that way, forge a path of their own through the forest if need be.

—
I’ll go first
. He got down on his haunches, tucked the pistol away, clutched the flashlight. The drop was long and steep and he could almost feel himself tumbling head over foot but he kept his weight back, plummeting like a sled. He crashed into tree roots and nettled plants, sharp outcroppings of rock, finally hitting bottom with a crunching thud.

He bounced up, fearing he might be bitten by something unseen, then pointed the flashlight up the cluttered rock face. The beam caught her peering fearfully over the ledge.

—
It’s all right
, he called upward.—
Follow the light down
.

It took her a moment to get into position and when she rocketed down it seemed for a moment she too might begin to tumble head over heels but she stiffened into a blade, continuing down. At the bottom he broke her fall and the two of them hurtled recklessly into nearby scrub. Dazed, they untangled themselves, rose to their feet, swaying.

Roque pointed the flashlight toward the mouth of the ravine.—
This way
.

There was no path to follow, no way to tell the right direction, an excellent plan for getting lost, but he focused on one tree and then the one behind it, fashioning as straight a line as he could, taking heart from the downward slope of his footfalls and figuring once they were off the mountain he’d get his bearings. Maybe they’d still be in Mexico when that happened, if so they’d somehow turn themselves north and go. It was the best plan he had now. An idle touch of Lupe’s shoulder revealed the wound was seeping again. Her breath came in coughing gasps more often, her steps fell heavy, she tripped and staggered to keep up, sometimes gripping his belt.

Time dissolved. The minutes dragged like hours and the hours collapsed into minutes. He heard only the rush of blood in his ears and the crunching monotony of his footsteps, hers behind him, the chafing rustle of her breath in her throat, interrupted now and again by the yipping barks of unseen coyotes. He couldn’t pinpoint when it happened, but the oaks and pines gave way to mesquite and paloverde and tormented Joshua trees, the earth turned a coppery red in the flashlight beam, thickets of spindly ocotillos and tall agave spears rose up from the desert floor. For the first time in hours he realized how cold it was, his shivering a kind of irritated happiness, forcing him awake.

In the distance he saw a pinpoint of light—maybe from a house, maybe a church. It remained unchanging and he set his course by it, keeping it always in sight, increasing his pace.

They came to a barbed-wire fence—the border?—struggled through it, shirts snagging, and ten steps beyond she finally collapsed, falling first to her knees then her side. She winced from pain and curled up, teeth clenched, rocking, trying to will herself into numbness he thought as he stood over her, grabbing at her wrist, her arm, telling her to get up, please, try. He barely recognized his own voice. To the east, dawn smeared a cold white line along the hillcrests. A raven soared overhead, black against blue,
tilting wing to wing in the tumbling wind. In the distance, a lone mule grazed in the scrub.

—
You have to get up. We’re almost there
.

She said nothing, struggling to find some purchase, gathering strength, pulling herself to her knees. Hooking her good arm around his shoulder, he hoisted her the rest of the way up but her eyes rolled back, her knees buckled. He nearly fell, dragged to the ground after her, but he redoubled his hold and pulled her upward, leaning her body against his.—
Let’s sing
, he said,
something we both know. The way you sang for the bikers, you were so beautiful, so brave. You’re my hero, know that? You’re so much stronger than me. Come on. We’ll sing
.

In a tuneless whisper he flailed at the melody—“Sin Ti,” what else?—butchering the lyrics. By the time he realized a dog was barking he’d been registering the sound in the back of his mind for a minute or longer—like the wind, the cold, and yet a haunting reminder too of his dreams—twilight, the stickiness of blood, the barren plain. Something precious he’d have to fight to keep. He redoubled his focus on the old sad song, on her dragging steps, her sliding weight. He could see it now in the dawn light, a sprawling ranch-style house. The dog was lurching at the end of a chain, frothing as it barked. He opened his shirt in order to get to the gun. The one last thing in his dream not yet revealed: a gun blast. But he didn’t want to shoot the dog, wanted no harm to anyone or anything now. He wanted only to stop, rest, have someone look at Lupe’s shoulder, clean and dress the wound. And after? That was impossible to picture.