Do They Know I'm Running?: A Novel Read online

  Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a corkscrewing tail of red flame veer out of nowhere toward his tractor grill. Samir shouted, “Down!” and leaped across the seat, shielding Happy with his body as the RPG hit, rocking the entire cab off its tires, nudging it ten degrees right, shattering the windshield. Happy felt a knifing sting in both eyes, unsure what it was—tiny splinters of glass or metal or just brittle grit and dust shaken loose from the blast. Regardless, he couldn’t see. The engine stalled. Then he heard the crackle of flames.

  “Out! Get out!”

  Samir’s voice seemed swathed in cotton. Happy’s eyes still felt raw, he couldn’t see. He was covered in jagged shards from the splintered windshield but he grabbed at the door handle, fumbled for the lever, lifted hard, felt the door give way. Tumbling out, he plummeted ten feet to the ground, almost breaking his wrist and shoulder in the fall. Samir dropped close beside him, nearly crushing his hand, then grabbed his sleeve. “Under the trailer! Stay down.”

  Happy would remember the gut-coiling nausea of his terror, the stench of cordite and burning gasoline and finally blood, the continuing gunfire sending ricochets everywhere, off the asphalt, the tires, the truck’s underframe. He thought: Why are they shooting at me—what have I ever done to them? We’re transporting baby incubators for fuck’s sake, school desks, food. Some time afterward, he would learn that the Badr Brigade and the Sadr militia, the two main Shiite paramilitary forces, were vying for control of government patronage; the attack most likely resulted from the Sadr faction hoping to undermine the Badr organization’s role in funding development. But that would mean little to him later and nothing to him now.

  How much time passed? Why could he still not see except through a shimmer of tears? The Colombians, Samir told him, were overwhelmed, too few gunmen, too many enemies, all invisible. Four of the other trucks, one by one, exploded in sheets of white flame, their crews dead or wounded or scattered. Then Happy smelled the trickle of diesel leaking from his fuel tank. It was a fuse. It was death waiting to happen.

  He began scrambling out from under the trailer. Samir dragged him back.

  “We have to get out!” Happy kicked at Samir’s hands. “The gas tank!”

  Tangled together, two halves of some comic beast, they scuttled into the crossfire and ran for a culvert overgrown with elephant grass running parallel to the road. What if gunmen are hiding here, Happy thought, feeling now an odd indifference to the idea of dying—at least I won’t be scared. His body clawed ahead, unwilling to give up yet, prodded into the tall sharp grass by Samir. Several inches of thick brackish water, foul with excrement, sat in the bottom of the culvert, while a noxious cloud of stinging flies swarmed up from nowhere. The truck erupted then in a towering fireball, an ear-splitting blast, the shock wave knocking them onto their knees in the thick black water. Nothing cohered anymore, there were just the screams of the dying clouded by smoke, flickering silhouettes backlit by raging fire, helpless shouts of cruel insistent horror or triumph, the words in English and Spanish and, farther away, Arabic.

  Samir grabbed the shoulder of Happy’s filthy shirt, dragging him up onto his feet. “I see something. Come.”

  Happy let himself be pulled along, able to see no more than a few feet ahead, the rest of the world a riot of savage form. They ran crouching, far too long a ways it seemed, Happy with his head down, afraid to lift it for fear of one lucky shot, footfalls breaking the crusted, sunbaked sand, then the screech of rust-dry hinges, a wood gate slammed open, gravel underfoot. He smelled manure, the musk of wool, the char of a wood fire. Samir dragged him through a door, sat him down in a bed of straw. “We’ll wait,” he whispered, chest heaving. “Maybe somebody radioed ahead. Maybe a patrol from Karbala will come. LAVs, tanks.”

  Happy blinked and blinked, feeling the fine sharp dust in his eyes finally milking away. Not glass, he thought, thank God for that, but he was still unable to focus. His breath rumbled inside his chest, he coughed up dust. Then Samir grew suddenly stiff, his breath stilled. His clothing rustled, the stench of shit unfurled off his clothes as he slowly rose to his feet. Happy looked up: a reed-thin silhouette in the doorway of the barn, flowing black dishdasha, a checkered keffiyeh wrapped around his head. A Kalashnikov in his hands.

  Samir spoke quietly in Arabic to the man, an old farmer perhaps. Or one of the gunmen? In the time it took to say a rushed prayer, some bargain was made, exchanged in whispers. Happy would know only that the man withdrew. Samir sat back down. “I told him we wanted nothing, we would say nothing.” Happy chose to believe, sitting in silence until the churning roar of Hueys flying low echoed from the south, relief from Karbala. They left the barn behind and ran crouching back the way they’d come, through boiling smoke and the cries of the dying, waving their arms in the rotor wash and its choking storm of dust.

  GODO LISTENED TO HIS COUSIN’S TALE, MARVELING AT HOW LANGUAGE told you nothing. It was the tremor in Happy’s voice, the haunting emptiness in some words, the sloppy quick clutter of others, that gave him away. You can’t make up that fear. And for the first time in a long while, he felt the two of them were truly kin.

  “Seems to me,” he said finally, “you need to know more about what went on with this farmer, this gunman, whatever he was. You could call down, have Roque hand your guy the phone, put it to him.”

  Happy glanced up from behind his hands. “If he lied to me back then, why not just keep lying?”

  “Got a point.”

  “He’s down there with Pops. With Roque.”

  Godo’s eye strayed to the clock. A little past ten now, still two hours until Tía Lucha would be home. A migraine was ticking away behind his eyes. “Yeah.”

  “What should I do?”

  Good question, Godo thought, watching as the walls inched inward a little, then inched back. He decided not to mention it to Happy. “He wants to get to the States. He’s not gonna fuck up Tío Faustino or Roque, not while they’re his ticket.”

  “What about once they’re across? When he doesn’t need them anymore?”

  Godo kept an eye on the walls, checking for further insolence. “Seems to me you’re gonna have to catch them just south of the border, right before they cross. Deal with it then.”

  ROQUE SLEPT NEAR THE DOOR, LUPE ACROSS THE ROOM, BOTH curled up on the concrete floor, nothing but newspapers and flattened cartons for comfort, the air close and hot. At some point in the interminable night, the lizard finally chose his path and vanished from the wall.

  Rafa had locked them in, saying he’d be back around daybreak. They’d arouse too much suspicion, he said, trying to cross in the middle of the night. He parked the Corolla in the service bay, so no one could hot-wire it, and come morning Roque and Lupe would drive it through the checkpoint, then continue on several miles to a roadside chalete run by a woman named Chita. There they’d wait for Humilde to appear after a nightlong trek with Samir and Tío Faustino in tow. Simple, Roque thought, lying awake, picturing ways it could all go wrong.

  He kept coming back to Tío and Lupe. Was she really the tragic cause his uncle made her out to be? All that talk about sucking Arab cock, she said it so breezily—and hadn’t Lonely called her a putilla, a wannabe whore? She wasn’t just a singer with stars in her eyes, gulled by her own ambition. She had other talents, talents Lonely got bored with, though not so bored he wasn’t willing to sell them to somebody else.

  Regardless, there was something broken inside her, something she’d tried to mend with fury. It made her a wild card. Maybe she’ll try to run, he thought, maybe she’ll want some sort of payback, a way to get even or maybe she’ll just turn the rage on herself, roll into a ball, settle in for her fate. There was no way to tell.

  A kind of homesickness came over him, not for Rio Mirada or Tía Lucha but Mariko, and yet the dishonesty in that seemed clear soon enough. You just want to get laid, he thought, and the feeling gave way to something else, a kind of emptiness, as though his heart had become a grave and in the grave was bur
ied what he’d once considered love. What is it we want, he thought, that we try to find in a woman? Especially a woman who isn’t fooled, who won’t buy into the usual bag of tricks. Secretly we want to be seen for who we are, the rest is just show. We want love, not praise. And yet that seemed a recipe for weakness, a shortcut to failure.

  And, he reminded himself, failure’s not an option. Everyone is so proud of you.

  He drifted off into fitful sleep and the dreams that came to him seemed slight, disjointed—except one, which echoed back to another dream, the one he’d had at Mariko’s house all those weeks ago. Again there was twilight, a gun blast, the snarling dog. And yet the sense he was carrying something priceless, something he’d have to fight to keep, had changed. He saw his mother standing a little ways ahead. Her hair, usually long and densely matted in her pictures, was cut short like a nun’s. She looked sickly and frail. The face, however, was unmistakable. He tried to call out but the sound caught in his throat and that was when his mother—or whoever, whatever she was—pointed to a dusty leather bag at his feet. A ridiculously large and agile tarantula pushed its way out from under the unbuckled flap, scuttering toward him.

  He shot up blinking, felt the scaly presence on his neck, brushed the lizard off.

  A throng of golondrinas chirruped in the trees outside. Not to be outdone, a rooster crowed. Roque rubbed his neck as he rose from his bed of cardboard to peer out through the sooty cob-webbed window, hoping for some trace of daylight.

  RAFA APPEARED WITHIN THE HOUR AND UNLOCKED THE DOORS. THE dream had left a residue, a sense of defeat, and Roque feared what he might do if trapped inside any longer. Lupe didn’t stir at first and only rose once Roque backed the Corolla out of the service bay, her hair mussed, her eyes piggish with sleep as she clutched the plastic bag of new clothes.

  Rafa told them it would be best to cross the border early, before the guards working the day shift settled into their routine, but Roque got the feeling he just wanted them gone. Lupe dropped into the passenger seat, the better for appearances, he supposed, though he imagined she’d want to climb in back once the border was cleared, fall asleep again. He had a pretty good idea she’d be sleeping a lot in the coming days.

  The clouds were a steely blue-gray and fat with rain, the air fresh but muggy. Twice in twenty minutes a quick thrumming shower fell, whipped by crosswinds, the downpour stopping as suddenly as it began. If that’s the worst of the weather, he thought, Tío and Samir shouldn’t have too bad a slog. Still, he wondered what shape and frame of mind they’d be in after trekking through pathless rough all night, rain or no rain.

  The landscape was rolling windswept bluffs covered with tall brown grass, not unlike the foothills of Northern California, except there were more trees and he recognized none of them. He had no idea what bugs or other critters lurked out there, nor did he know if bandits were a problem. It was Humilde’s job to steer clear of such things, for which he’d been paid through Lonely, part of Happy’s end, the up-front fee. Roque had their pocket money with him, locked inside the glove box, a little less than three hundred dollars cash, enough for food and gas, they hoped. If Tío Faustino got jacked, he’d get jacked for nothing, not that that would change the experience much.

  Taking a turn too fast, Roque braked hard to miss a stalled truck sitting square in the road. The back end got away from him on the slick pavement, the car fishtailed as he overcorrected and Lupe sucked in a scared breath. Finally he got the car square, passing the breakdown, accelerating away, a knee-jerk fear of robbery. He watched as the truck grew small in his rearview. Pay attention, he told himself, heart clapping inside his chest.

  A little farther on the terrain flattened out, broad fields extending for miles to either side of the highway. Scrawny cows grazed in the cane stubble amid bolts of sunlight and roaming pockets of cloud shadow. Shortly he spotted the Puente Jorge de Alvarado ahead, the bridge that spanned the Río Paz.

  Trucks pulled over onto the side, engines idling, waiting for a signal to proceed across the bridge to inspection, while young women in aprons went driver to driver, selling refrescos and fruit juice and pan dulce. The atmosphere was genial. Roque’s heart raced.

  Once past the line of trucks and across the bridge he entered the rustic customs plaza and headed for the inbound lane marked “Tráficos Livianos,” intended for cars. Lupe undid her hair, shook it out, sliding a little closer in her seat. They’d discussed none of this. She leaned over the center console, draped an arm around him and rested her head against his shoulder, the better to hide her bruises. It was all show—they were a loving pair, they’d tangled recently, he’d knocked her around, just to remind her who spoke and who listened. A man other men would understand.

  The immigration agent waved the car forward. He was short, dark, muscled like a wrestler. Roque had the registration out—it was in his name, arranged by Lonely—and his passport. Lupe listlessly fished around in her pocket for her Documento Unico de Identidad, handed it to Roque, then once again buried her face sleepily into his arm.

  Bowing at the window, the agent reviewed the documents cursorily, then gazed in at the couple. His eyes lingered on Lupe, a stare so intense Roque wondered if she’d stuck out her tongue. Seconds passed. Finally she glanced up, offered a drowsy smile.

  Roque studied the burly agent’s face. It was a knot of dark-skinned folds and creases, studded by onyx eyes, almost princely in its homeliness. He was taking too much time. I should ask if anything’s wrong, Roque thought, but he couldn’t get his mouth to form the words. Keep smiling, he told himself, ridiculous advice, sure to fail. Maybe he wants a bribe. No, disaster. Sit tight. It’s a trick, the silence. A ruse. Wait.

  Lupe squeezed his arm. “Amorcito,” she murmured sleepily.

  Still, the guard waited. Then with a brisk jolt he returned the documents, stepped back, waved the next car forward.

  Roque put the car in gear and pulled away.—Stay put for just a minute more, till he can’t see us.

  Lupe said nothing, still clinging to him gently and he fought back the stir of a mindless erection. They passed the line of merchant stalls along the roadway, the vendors selling Mayan handicrafts, watermelons, lightbulbs, socks. He checked the mirror, saw the agent growing smaller, occupied now with the next car in the queue.

  “Okay,” he said at last.

  Yawning, she lifted her head, unwrapped her arm from around his shoulder and settled back in her own seat, hands folded between her thighs, listing against the door.—Next time, she said, don’t just sit there like a fool. Check your hair in the mirror, jot down your mileage, pick your teeth, chew your nails—anything. He was waiting for you to say something stupid.

  —He was looking at you, your face.

  —Because he knew it would put you on edge. You’d get protective. You’d fuck up.

  —Well, I didn’t fuck up. Here we are. On our way.

  —Lucky us. She nestled tighter against her door.

  He returned his focus to the road. A chain of jagged mountains loomed to the north, necklaced by immaculate clouds. A boy led a trio of coarse-haired goats along the roadbed.

  He reached for the radio dial, hoping he could catch a signal. Nearly three hundred kilometers separated them from the capital but maybe there was a station to be found. He started venturing through waves of static, ghostly chords and plaintive melodies rising and fading, never quite coming whole. Finally a throaty alto came through clearly, Ana Gabriel, a mariachi tune: “Hay Unos Ojos,” There Are Some Eyes. It was one of the traditional songs he’d played for his uncle and the others at Carmela’s.

  Lupe turned her head.—Wait. Keep it there.

  It was a Mexican folk waltz in the habanera style, with Cuban and Creole touches. The lyrics were poignant if overwrought. Lupe settled back into the wedge of her seat and the door, humming softly along, closing her eyes again. When the final verse rounded to a close, she sang along softly:

  Y yo les digo que mienten,

  miente
n Que hasta la vida daría por ti

  And I tell them that they lie, they lie

  That I would even give my life for you

  Roque had almost forgotten how much her voice moved him, the husky sensuality, the simplicity. So suited to ranchera, all that betrayal and pride, love’s misery, survival’s regrets.

  —I’m sorry for the way I’ve acted these past two days.

  He felt stunned. After a moment, he managed:—I just figured you were angry. And scared.

  She gathered up her hair in a ponytail, held it one-handed.—Scared? Yes. But what will anger buy me?

  That didn’t really seem the point, he thought. Emotions weren’t currency. You couldn’t trade them for better ones, no matter how badly you might want to. And who was she kidding, she’d been angry as a hornet.—If you don’t mind my asking, what made Lonely … He let the question trail off gently, a prompt.

  —Fuck me up? Who says he needed a reason?

  —I just—

  —I got pregnant.

  Roque dodged a slung-back horse grazing in the roadside grass.—Why beat you for that?

  —Why do you think?

  Lonely’s not the dad, he thought, he tuned her up because he was jealous. But how did they know who the father was? A girl balls more than one cat, she can point the finger where she likes, at least until the baby pops out. Then again, maybe they didn’t have sex. Maybe Lonely couldn’t.

  —I don’t know enough about the two of you to think much of anything.

  She looked at him like he’d sprung a third eye.—What do you mean “the two of you”? Me and Lonely. You really take me for that kind of skank?