Drowning Tucson (39 page)

The roar of the mob that had been music to Rudy the newlywed’s ears finally subsided, and the air pulsed with the overwhelming silence of anticipation for more words from the mother whose daughter’s life had been so wrongfully stripped from her and yet so poetically avenged, just one word, a directive, a cry of pain, a call to arms, anything, and the people would have immediately been behind this woman who held undeniable power in the words she had not yet spoken.

Even the governor, listening to the speech on the radio as his helicopter sped toward downtown Tucson, found himself holding his breath and silently praying she would have the prudence not to utter any word that might incite the crowd, praying that she could stave off the dormant wrath of the mob in front of her just long enough for him to get there and free this Alejandro Santiago. To free the same man whose actions had single-handedly turned the country upside-down and transformed downtown Tucson into a wasp’s nest of parents ready to strike at anything they deemed a threat to their young. The same young who were beginning to feel uncomfortable with the deep silence and lack of movement in a mob of people who had, up until this point, been frantic with action. The same young who heard far off in the distance the first strains of music coming from Rudy the newlywed’s Good Humor truck, which was crawling through the blocked traffic, navigating sidewalks, and squeezing around parked cars and makeshift lean-tos that forced him, on occasion, to drive over the lawns of municipal buildings.

He drove his van over curbs and past deserted roadblocks and fruitless detour signs, pushing onward toward his goal of delivering his frozen confections to a swarm of famished and heat-stricken people who would undoubtedly welcome him. Yes, they would make him enough money that he’d be able to retire early and move down to Sahuarita with his wife and the three kids they were planning to have. These images of his early retirement brought waves of happiness to Rudy the newlywed because he’d invested every last penny he and his wife owned to stock his van with as much frozen cargo as it could bear. He even added two additional freezers in the back and one more in the front, where only two days earlier a passenger seat had been. The night before he had painstakingly washed every inch of the van’s surface, repainting over some of the faded price stickers with his wife’s fingernail polish, cleaning the radio antenna and the cracks around the headlights with a toothbrush, washing and polishing the exterior until it sparkled like an ice sculpture, then vacuuming the interior. He stood in the dining room for his wife, who took her husband’s measurements and made adjustments to the uniform for the thirteen pounds he’d gained in the short time they had been married, letting out the waist of his polyester
slacks a half inch on each side, then sewing in tiny pie-shaped pieces of elastic so that the pants would fit perfectly, allowing a little give for the slight swelling in his stomach after a meal and the subsequent shrinking once his food had been properly digested. After she had made a couple more slight alterations to his uniform, she carried his work clothes with the tenderness of a midwife to the bathtub and delicately hand-washed each item—the white cap that resembled a short order cook’s, but looked much more professional on her husband, like he was the pilot of a luxury jet; the slightly thinning oxford button-down shirt that she starched heavily each night and then hung on a plastic hanger in the kitchen doorway, where the breeze that swept beneath the back door always managed to have his shirt dried and crisp and smelling like the purified desert air after a rainstorm by the time the sun came up; the red bowtie that gave her husband’s uniform an approachable touch; the newly repaired pants; and the red argyle socks that matched his bowtie and offset some of the blinding whiteness of the spotless uniform that gleamed as brightly as the Good Humor van. When her husband stepped into it that morning and leaned out the driver’s door while he warmed the motor, he took off his hat and waved it above his head as if leaving for a great voyage, a search for treasure in the desert from which he would return wealthy. The image of Rudy waving so happily from the door of his ice cream truck engraved itself onto his wife’s mind as she turned to begin tidying the house, where, at random intervals throughout the morning of her husband’s journey downtown, the sepia-toned image of her Rudy distorted and shifted in her mind until what she saw was a faded portrait of them both waving goodbye to their friends and family as they boarded an ocean liner on a three-week cruise to reap the rewards of hard work, smart investment, and frugal spending.

Rudy the newlywed was imagining a similar picture as he drove closer and closer to his goal, failing to notice the shocked and offended looks from pedestrians, who couldn’t believe someone could be so insensitive as to drive an ice cream truck through the the city so soon, and Rudy drove on, nearly to the courthouse where the now-quiet mob was awaiting a word from Mrs. Santiago, who’d fallen silent upon realizing the volatile nature of the horde of people in front of her, and she wanted
so badly to speak, to shout out vengeful phrases for all the parents who had ever lost a child and for all those who would lose children in the future, but suddenly, in the moment that the crowd ceased its yelling and the children began to hear the first far-off notes from Rudy’s van, Carmella Santiago had a moment of clarity and finally noticed the cluster of microphones on the podium before her, and she counted them silently and realized that there were forty-three of them, which was forty-two too many, and she looked up and into the unblinking eyes of the cameras staring back at her, expecting, demanding that she make something happen, and the scope of the tragedy drove itself into her chest and she silently swore to herself never to utter another word, that she would wait until her husband was released, no matter how many years that might take, and the silence grew deeper and the grounds of the Pima County Courthouse became a vacuum into which no noise entered except for the strains of Rudy’s ice cream truck, still only heard by the hungry and overheated children who clutched at their parents’ legs and began tugging at the hems of mother’s skirt or father’s belt, looking at one another and verifying that the universal sound for ice cream was indeed a reality and not some sort of twisted hallucination put on by the adults who were acting so strangely today, and Rudy continued to maneuver around the many obstacles that stood between him and the thousands of people he and his wife had watched on television that morning, knowing these people had so hastily appeared in the city of Tucson that there was little chance they had thought to bring snacks to cool their children, most of them probably hadn’t even thought to bring hats, which was why he also had a small rack of Good Humor sun visors he intended to sell in addition to the ice cream, the ice cream that would offer these people a moment’s reprieve from the oppressive heat—yes, ice cream makes people happy—and as the sight of the courthouse’s mosaic dome appeared amid the various downtown buildings, it took every drop of his resolve not to break the unspoken ice cream man’s code against speeding, even though he knew there were no children to accidentally run over because they were all with their parents, he had seen them being clutched by their parents on the news while the reporters asked questions and speculated about the outcome of the tragic events that had unfolded
in this once peaceful desert town, which had therefore tainted yet another profession in which parents entrusted their children to men who only abused that trust, as had also happened in the backrooms of churches or during the naptime at a daycare or after a victory at a Little League game when the coach took the boys back to his house for pizza or during choir practice for the Tucson Boys Chorus, and yet here was another group of people who had to serve penance for the actions of one of its brothers—having just returned from their Mexican honeymoon when they schemed together about the great opportunity presented by the growing throng of protesters downtown, the likes of which hadn’t been seen in Tucson ever and was such a grand opportunity that both Rudy and his wife knew it would be foolish to ignore this chance, it would be ludicrous to pass up the opportunity to take the money they had received at their wedding and use it to stock the van to capacity and dive headfirst into the good fortune that had befallen them, and blinded by a shared dream, they focused on the screen filled with people, and they noticed the hotdog stand that always stood across from the courthouse fountain was providing the people with some food, and a VW minibus sold grilled cheese sandwiches and steaming plates of watery spaghetti, but nobody was seen holding a Bulletpop or a push-up or a Fla-Vor-Ice, and so they agreed while lying in bed two nights after Alejandro Santiago blew the head off of his daughter’s murderer that it was an untapped opening created for them—it’s a great tragedy, yes, but people still need to eat, even sad people—and they went to the bank together to withdraw every last cent to purchase hundreds of pounds of ice cream, which Rudy carried with him now as he neared the fringe of the gathering and saw that his goal was so close, less than two blocks away, so he adjusted his hat and turned the music up slightly and relaxed his neck muscles by rolling his head and then drove the final block and a half at a slow pace while the faces of children peered from between and behind their parents’ legs and Rudy searched for a good spot to set up shop, within view and easy walking distance of each one of these potential customers, and the music from his speakers brought happiness to his heart as it did each time he heard it because of the fond memories he associated with the tinkling cheerfulness of ice cream music and smells, the same smells that drifted into the
crowd of protestors, tickling their noses, tempting their senses, the smell of cream and fruit and summertime and laughter wafting through the crowd and finally settling in the nostrils of Carmella Santiago, whose position afforded her a view to the farthest reaches of the crowd, which was where her eyes darted, searching, glaring, trying to locate the source of that cursed smell that had assaulted her before she had time to identify and acknowledge such a commonplace and delightful smell, and the cameras recorded the shifting of her eyes back and forth and the way they widened as the music of Rudy’s truck drew closer and became louder and mocked the silence that enveloped the plaza, and the people who stood watching Carmella, their hearts breaking with hers as they understood the blasphemy of those sounds and smells disrupting the sentiments of the group, but they didn’t react, they continued to watch as Carmella searched for Rudy’s truck, and the very moment she spotted the shiny white van, the source of the jingly music and lovely smells, the dreadfulness of her poor daughter’s fate came crashing down on her anew, and she watched in horror as her child’s murderer was free while her husband was imprisoned, unaware that at that moment reality had slipped completely from her grasp and she broke her vow of silence less than three minutes after she resolved in her mind to never speak again when she whispered the words
it’s him,
and the microphones in front of her carried the sound over the airwaves of the entire country to the ears of millions of listeners,
it’s him,
words barely conceived and released before they were transmitted and translated into other languages as they crossed the borders of this country into others,
it’s him,
she said, and the governor threw down his headphones and knew he’d failed to reach his destination on time, down there on the courthouse lawn where the crowd turned to face Rudy’s Good Humor van, and in the front seat the unwitting man who thought for the briefest of moments that he had hit pay-dirt realized at the last second, when it was too late to run, that the mob rushing toward him had no intention of buying anything, that the people didn’t have the look he was used to seeing—the unadulterated longing of children who craved something cold and sweet, the look of only minor annoyance the parents often gave him for showing up at a time that was financially inconvenient—but instead what Rudy saw was the
fury of unbridled revenge in their eyes and he searched desperately for an escape, but there was nowhere to go unless he wanted to run over the crowd, leaving dead bodies in his wake. He frantically tried to locate a cop to flag down, but there were none to be seen. There was no help. He was trapped. So Rudy the newlywed threw his truck into park and crouched down on the floorboard, thinking what a shame and baffled at what he might have done to provoke the mob as his truck began to shake, picturing his wife waiting for him back home and saddened that she’d spent all that time on his uniform when it wasn’t even going to make it through one day.

The scene from above was too much for the governor to bear, so he motioned for the pilot to turn around and muttered fuck these madmen. Maybe we should pray for plague.

When Rainbow came upon a dead body lying in her path, she did what people often do—provided the body doesn’t belong to a relative or friend. She stopped, held her breath, and bent down to rifle through the dead man’s pockets.