Drowning Tucson (24 page)

So Güero wanted to make sure Jaime was ready, because once they stepped onto the other bank of the San Pedro, it would be too late to stop, and it would be us or them.

Jaime thought for a moment, flicking the blade in and out, feeling the sweat run down his back. Yeah, it’s them. It’s them who aren’t ready. And he stood up slowly, straightening his back, and took his first step toward the other side of the river.

Jaime tuned in to his surroundings. He felt each pebble scrape beneath his foot, heard coyotes howling somewhere in the mountains, watched the moon cast shadows in front of him. He flipped the blade of his knife out over and over, holding it at his side, shuffling along the riverbed toward the waiting truck. They reached the other side and
scrambled over the edge of the bank, clutching at roots and rocks and whatever else could help them get over the top of the river.

The smell of truck exhaust lingered close to the ground where Jaime pulled his body over the side of the riverbank. The others followed, scrambling up the riverbed, then standing to brush themselves off. The truck was only a few feet off. Luckily, it faced away from them, so they crept over to the back of it on their hands and knees. Güero whispered a three-count and they all ran toward the cab, racing to get to the truck before the passengers inside noticed they were being attacked. Güero reached the passenger door first and ripped it open, pulling on a young man wearing a baseball cap. The kid yelped in fear, half choking on the seatbelt caught around his neck. Is this one, Güero shouted, and Jaime, not entirely sure yet, said yes, that’s one of the fuckers, and he watched as Güero beat the bastard over the head while he pulled him loose from the seatbelt and threw him to the ground. Chuy and Peanut were yelling and cursing, trying to get the driver’s door open. The driver threw it into gear and peeled out of the gravel parking lot, the passenger door swinging wildly as the truck turned onto the road.

FUCK, YOU LET ONE OF THEM GET AWAY screamed Güero. Jaime didn’t care. He didn’t want to waste time so he grabbed the boy squirming beneath Güero’s knee and dragged him to his feet. Yeah, you are one of them, aren’t you? You took Sammy and beat the shit out of him behind Buena, and the boy shook his head, tears dropping onto the front of his shirt. Who … no, I didn’t do anything … I’m sorry, stammering to save his life, but only making things worse because Jaime was running on nothing but nerves. Güero punched the terrified guy in the breadbasket and said you fucked with the wrong vato, homie. I heard you don’t like us wetback, river-hopping Mexicans. The boy shook his head hard enough for his neck to pop. Jaime said let’s get him away from here before his friend comes back. It took all four of them to drag the boy down into the river, his terror giving him a surge of strength.

They dragged him through the riverbed and walked east to a saguaro standing amid a cluster of yucca and ocotillo plants. Strap his ass to this thing, Güero told the other Kings, ignoring the cries of their victim.
Güero punched him in the Adam’s apple so he couldn’t speak, left him gasping for air and unable to cry out as the needles of the cactus pierced his clothing, the barb on each needle burrowing beneath his skin and taking hold of muscles and tendons as his captors pressed him harder into the cactus. They tied rope around his wrists and pulled his hands behind him, around the trunk of the saguaro in a way that seemed impossible, felt impossible, too, when his arms popped from their sockets.

Look at me, Jaime said, pressing the guy’s head into the cactus, the needles breaking off inside his scalp. I said look at me, you fuckin piece of shit. But the boy couldn’t focus on Jaime. His body twitched, trying to fight against the sting of the needles.

Jaime pulled out the switchblade. He and his victim watched mesmerized as it quivered for a moment in Jaime’s grasp and then, pulling his arm along with it, dove at the midsection of the young man lashed to the saguaro cactus, his back bleeding from countless needle punctures. The knife struck again and again. It slid through the flesh of Jaime’s victim, a boy who had, only moments before, been planning out his future with his friend in between drags on a joint. Got accepted to U of A, you know, the land of milk and honeys. Girls everywhere—from California to Florida—ripe for the taking. Sunshine sweeties. Girls with real tits and trimmed bush and everything we ever dreamed about. Bitches outnumber the guys three to one. Slapping hands, passing the joint. Not thinking of Sammy’s death. That was old shit now. No one had asked any questions. They never mentioned it. His thoughts were on all the women in the world and all the fucking and the booze and the romps through the desert, and mountains, and swimming naked in Sabino Canyon. He thought about everything except the possibility of someone actually coming back to avenge the death of that mousy little queer, Sammy. He paid no attention to the cactus surrounding him, never thinking that in a few moments he’d be tied to one of them, its needles tearing into him, plucking at every tissue of his body, his back an infinite cluster of pain, burning and pricking, but worse, burrowing still farther into his body, taking root, sucking out his moisture, his life. But that was only half of it. He watched Jaime flip the blade but could not comprehend the click of the switch and the metal, a menacing silver smile,
grinning at him and charging toward his stomach. And when it finally and effortlessly pierced his stomach, sliding through skin and muscle, the boy realized he no longer felt the pain in his back. And then the knife was gone, and the pain in his back returned. Then the knife returned, confusing the boy, whose body was a swirling mass of nerves screaming at his brain, his mind unable to process the pain, growing sluggish, watching Jaime who stood in front of him screaming, slobbering, stabbing. He wanted to lay his head back and look away. To close his eyes and die, but he could only watch the knife come at him again and again. Could only wonder how long it was going to last. Wanted to pray, but knew there was no point.

The knife was alive with fury. Jaime didn’t want it to stop, but was still surprised by how it kept going. Jumping at the body in front of him. Hungry for blood, searching it out like one of those sticks for finding water buried in the ground. His arm was sore from stabbing over and over, from hammering away at the boy’s stomach like a punching bag. The kid was actually deflating before his eyes. He’s fucking watching the whole thing. Just watching it. He isn’t crying or anything. Like he knew I was coming. Like he’d been waiting for me the whole time. Jaime watched the knife continue to punch holes in the shirt and come away with blood on it. He kept stabbing while he looked around at the other guys. They don’t want me to stop either. They can’t make me stop and they know it. They can’t stop the blade because it needs to be fed. He looked to them and then back to the knife. So many holes. So much blood, it was hard to imagine what was holding his victim’s entrails in his torso. Jaime’s hand was covered in blood. His sleeve was saturated from the elbow down, clinging to his arm.

A thousand holes later, Jaime looked up from his hand and saw Sammy’s killer in front of him. Their eyes met and the knife stopped, buried in the stomach of the killer tied to his green prickly cross. Jaime felt the kid’s ragged breathing against his knuckles. He leaned forward, the knife cold in his fist, and laid his head on the shoulder of the dying teenager, then vomited down his back with so much ferocity he felt some of it splash off the cactus and splatter his face. He closed his eyes and saw Sammy smiling and hugging himself as he walked down Jaime’s driveway
in the middle of the night, and then he retraced his journey to Tucson, cactus and brush and tumbleweed and dust devils and cars and highways slicing through the dusty skin of the desert, and up to the home of Señor Gutierrez and into the shadowy dining room where the old man sat in silence, staring at the wall, blinking tears out of his eyes and stirring his cold and pasty plate of albóndigas, waiting for Jaime to walk through the door and apologize for being late, to tell him he’d been held up over at a friend’s house or gotten lost in some unfamiliar part of the city so he could pat Jaime’s hand and say everything’s fine, everything’s fine.

Everything is fine, thought Jaime. Finally. I finally got one of them, and now the others will know I’m coming. They’ll look over their shoulders now, worried for their lives. The warm, bloody stomach in front of him finally stopped moving, and Jaime opened his eyes and backed away from the slumping lifeless body, unaware he had been grasping the knife the entire time his body was pressed against his enemy, until he let go of the handle and looked at his hand, then to the three men standing around him. He turned and walked back to the car.

The lights were off in Señor Gutierrez’s house when Güero dropped Jaime off in front. Jaime stood and watched the car drive away, then turned and walked through the yard and up to the door, where he paused and looked at his hands. They were shaking. But he wasn’t scared like he thought he would be. Instead, he felt like he had grown a foot taller in the two hours it took them to drive back to Tucson. He was proud he had finally done it. Made a plan and stuck with it, that’s what I did. But there was something else present now. Not quite disappointment or defeat. It felt like being rescued from drowning in the ocean only to be pulled to the shore and deserted with your lungs still full of water.

It wasn’t shame. He knew he should be ashamed, but did not care. This was his own brand of justice, an old-fashioned type that used to rule these lands. It was desert justice. So, no, he wasn’t ashamed.

However, the burden of vengeance he had been carrying had not lifted. He wanted a second opinion. He needed to tell Señor Gutierrez.

He turned the doorknob carefully, not wanting to disturb the old man, whom he figured would be asleep this late at night, probably
thrashing around in his bed. But he was sitting at the dinner table, his hands on either side of his plate. A pot of albóndigas sat in the middle of the table, and there was an empty plate where Jaime should have been. Rudolfo did not turn to look at him, did not even seem to notice Jaime was late. He acted like he had only just sat down to dinner a few seconds before Jaime had come into the house.

I did it, Jaime said. He blurted out the news as if he was simply stating the time. He sat across from Rudolfo, looked at the old man, and listened to his oxygen tank clicking. Me and some of the guys went down and paid a visit to Sierra Vista. Jaime was getting excited.

Rudolfo did not speak. He only listened and, with every word, felt a flaming sphere wedge itself in the back of his throat. His eye started throbbing again.

Now they know I’m not playing. When they find that prick in the river they won’t get a decent night’s sleep again. They’ll only come out in the daytime.

The eye was really going now. And Jaime was jabbering, playing with his spoon, twirling it between his fingers. Yeah, they’ll look over their shoulders constantly. Oh, when they’re together, they’ll pretend it doesn’t bother them. Like his death was an accident. A fluke. But they’ll wonder who’s next and that’s perfect. Sammy’s laughing his ass off. I just know it.

Rudolfo pushed his chair back, grabbing at his eye, this goddam twitching is too much. The entire time Jaime was telling him how the night had gone—how they had taken the fuckers by surprise and managed to take one of them out, as if the boy they had just murdered was an unwanted kitten they dumped somewhere on the outskirts of town—the pulsing beneath his eye had grown worse. He was certain Jaime could see it, but the kid was still too fired up because he rambled on and on about how sweet it was to see the look on that fucker’s face when he realized—when he finally
knew
—he was going to die.

He didn’t plead, Jaime said, he only closed his eyes and let the knife come to him.

The kid’s done something I never had the nerve to do. He’s finally done it. Got back at those sonsabitches—

You should’ve seen this guy, roped to a cactus, and he
knew
he’d fucked up—

Rudolfo’s eye pulsed along with the inflections in Jaime’s speech, getting faster, more excited, beating inside his eye socket like a kick drum. It was worse than maddening, it was terrifying. This is it, Rudolfo thought. If I don’t put a stop to this once and for all—

—saw he was outnumbered and probably shit his pants—

—he can’t see it. How can he not see?—

—Güero and his boys fucked him up a bit before I could—

Rudolfo pushed his chair back from the table. He stumbled to the bathroom in the middle of Jaime talking. Then Jaime was yelling.

BLOOD ALL OVER—-WE GOT HIM.

Jaime waved his blood-soaked sleeve around like a victory banner. Rudolfo slammed the bathroom door behind him. His eye slowed. Stay calm. Cold water on the face will take care of it. Use a washcloth.

Jaime stood at the bathroom door knocking and asking, hesitantly, Señor Gutierrez, are you okay? Inside, Rudolfo was desperate, haunted by so many things now he had to confide in someone or he knew he’d go crazy, so he asked Jaime to clear dinner and set the table for tea.