Home    Hardluck Thoughts    Guest Editor    Submissions    Archives

Amigo

William Tanner

Every morning except Sunday, Ernesto Garza stood on a corner two miles from the apartment he shared with his wife, his three children and his mother-in-law. He waited for work. Some days there were a dozen other men, some days less, and the faces changed as often as the weather.

Their wait started before dawn. As soon as light began to show on the horizon, the trucks arrived. Sometimes the trucks were empty of everything but tools for the job. Occasionally this would be the driver’s second or third stop, and a few men were already picked out and loaded up.

Ernesto learned quickly that the key to being selected was to look healthy and attentive, but not too much like a man; it was never good to look a potential boss in the eye. Like an angry dog, a foreman took eye contact as a threat, and if he snapped, there was no money that day. When the trucks came, Ernesto stood up straight, put on a smile – not too wide, or someone might think he was on drugs – and kept his attention on the vehicle only, as if only the job interested him. Which was, when Ernesto justified the charade in his mind, actually true. The technique worked more often than not. The trucks rolled out of Ernesto’s neighborhood laden with men.

On the day he met Amigo it was overcast and the predawn stars were hidden. The temperature hadn’t even risen past sixty by the time he left his sleeping apartment. It probably wouldn’t get much hotter than seventy-five. Every man who worked outdoors was an expert weatherman.

The chill wasn’t a problem, but rain could be. In rain there were fewer trucks. Fewer trucks meant fewer jobs. Even one missed day was a hardship. It meant missing something else later on, like food from the table.

Ernesto kept one eye on the sky. He would stay out despite the threat of rain. Some didn’t bother when the weather turned sour. Ernesto wasn’t sure how they made ends meet. Maybe they didn’t have families.

No one said anything to anyone else. They wandered around aimlessly, waiting for the trucks. On a good day, the trucks paraded in a line down the street, one after another and there was work for everyone. It grew lighter and the clouds didn’t break. This wouldn’t be a good day.

The trucks were later and fewer than anyone liked. Ernesto stood up straight. The first was a white pick-up loaded up with shovels and bags of cement. The driver picked three men, but not Ernesto.

A second truck came. The driver rolled down the passenger-side window. “¿Usted sabe cuáles es el drywall?” he asked in bad Spanish. “Anybody? C’mon, raise your hands.”

Ernesto raised his hand, but he wasn’t picked. Two men got to go. Now there were only four on the corner. The sun rose. If it got too high, there would be no more trucks and no more work.

Time passed. One of the last four meandered off and didn’t come back. He smelled like beer, anyway, and probably wouldn’t last a whole day’s work. None of the last three looked at one another. The air was tense with unspoken competition.

Another truck turned the corner at the end of the block and headed their way. It was a fancy king-cab with the words Rickman Landscaping stenciled on the side. The truck pulled a long, rust-colored metal trailer laden with landscaping equipment: two riding lawnmowers, a rack of weed whackers chained together and some gas-powered leaf blowers. Inwardly, Ernesto soured; he didn’t care for lawn work. He had allergies to grass that made his eyes water and the insides of his nose swell until he could only breathe through his mouth. But work was work.

Two men were already in the truck bed. The driver slowed to a stop. He put down his window. “I have work for three days. You want to work three days?”

Ernesto stepped forward. “I’ll work,” he said.

“Get in.”

He climbed into the truck bed. The two other men nodded to him, and he nodded back. The last couple on the corner got in, too. The truck moved on. Ernesto thought the work-crew was operating short: five men couldn’t handle all the equipment on the trailer.

The driver took them out of the city, into the suburbs where big, expensive houses lurked behind short brick walls that weren’t fooling anyone. Eventually he turned into one of these enclaves. They cruised past the gate and the white guard into a neighborhood of broad lawns and houses with three-car garages.

One of the men made a snorting noise. Ernesto looked up. It was one of the two who’d come with the truck. He was Ernesto’s age, maybe thirty, with hair just a little bit too long and a mean face.

The man caught Ernesto watching. His mean face turned into a friendly one. He smiled. “Fucking white people,” he said amiably.

Ernesto blinked. The other man nodded firmly and returned to staring off into space. The rich folks’ houses cruised past. Ernesto couldn’t think of a reply.

The truck stopped on a cul-de-sac where only one swollen brick house stood. Ernesto saw a matching pick-up, this one without a trailer, waiting for them. A crew of Latinos spilled out. These men wore blue uniforms with their names stitched on breast patches. They looked deeply unhappy to see Ernesto and the others.

Their driver killed the engine and got out. He pointed at Ernesto’s group. “You see these guys? They’ll work for half what I’m paying you. So you keep on grumbling.”

Ernesto cringed inside, but work was work. The men in uniform helped those who weren’t to get the gear ready. The rider mowers were a privilege; only the regular workers got those. Ernesto strapped on a weed whacker and went where he was told to go.

He edged lawns along driveways and curbs for the rest of the day. With all the bits of dirt and grass in the air he was a clogged and sneezing mess in a matter of minutes. Eight hours later, without a break for lunch or a drink of water, he was dead on his feet.

The gear was loaded up. The men in uniforms returned to their truck, and Ernesto’s bunch returned to theirs. He saw a thin woman with shorts peek out of her front door at them, and then emerge to move quickly to her parked Hummer. Once again, the man with the changeable face made a snorting noise.

“She’s afraid to come outside,” the man told Ernesto. “Like brown is catching.”

“Right,” Ernesto replied stupidly. He didn’t like saying it, but he didn’t want to stay silent again.

The man extended a hand. “They call me Amigo,” he said.

“Ernesto.”

The truck started moving. They made no more conversation after that. The wind buffeted Ernesto, but at least it cleared his sinuses. By the time he disembarked, he could almost breathe again.

He got cash from the driver for the day’s work. “Don’t spend it all in one place,” the driver said, and laughed before he put the window up. Ernesto pocketed his money and walked away. Work was work.

***

Ernesto was the only one to go out with the crew all three days, along with the man called Amigo. Each shift took them to another enclave at the edges of the city, where absent owners expected their lawns to be well cared for. Ernesto wondered if they even noticed how nice everything looked.

On the third day, the foreman gave Ernesto a plastic garbage bag. “You’re on shit patrol,” he said.

“I don’t understand,” Ernesto said.

“Shit,” the foreman told him. He waved his hand vaguely. “Around here they want their dog shit picked up. Go to it.”

Ernesto had no gloves, and the foreman didn’t offer any. He did what he was told, and picked mierda off the grass wherever he found it.

This neighborhood had no fences. He wondered how anyone could tell where their space left off and their neighbors’ began. How many of these people owned dogs, and did the animals just wander and crap wherever they wanted? In fact, he saw no pets at all, but there was plenty of scat to collect.

Shortly after noon, clouds gathered and it rained. Work on the lawns stopped. Ernesto and a few others took shelter under a tree. His back hurt from bending over, and his hands felt greasy no matter how many times he wiped them on his work pants. He was glad of his stuffy nose, because he knew he smelled like crap.

Amigo joined him. The man looked at the neighborhood, now shrouded in a gray pall of rain. “People ought to pick up their own shit,” he said at last. “You think?”

“They have money.”

“Money doesn’t mean anything,” Amigo replied, and he made the now familiar snorting sound

“I wouldn’t pick up shit if I didn’t have to,” Ernesto said.

“But would you make somebody else do it?”

Ernesto considered. “I guess not.”

The foreman’s truck was parked along the curb. The man ate a thick sandwich behind the wheel. Ernesto heard the thump of music from the radio seeping through the glass, audible even over the drizzling sound of raindrops. The man ignored his crew.

Amigo watched Ernesto. “I know you wouldn’t,” he said. “Because you’re not a pendejo. You work for a living. These people… fuck them.”

Amigo’s face went from friendly to angry to blank. Speaking his mind seemed to empty something behind his eyes, so that he fell to watching the rain without another word. The other day laborers paid the man and the conversation little mind. One had fallen asleep and the other listened to a pocket radio with tiny wires trailing from the buds in his ears.

Ernesto looked at a tree nearly fifty yards away. The uniformed Rickman Landscaping workers huddled together, staring sullenly at nothing. Not a single word ever passed between Ernesto and those men, or with any of the other day laborers. An invisible barricade existed between them that not even common toil could break down.

“You know what I think?” Amigo asked suddenly.

“What?”

“If they’re so worried about shit, I think we should shit on them.”

Amigo stood up.

“What are you doing, man?”

       “You’ve got to stand up for yourself. We’re not animals.”

With that, Amigo marched out from beneath the tree and onto the broad expanse of the nearest lawn. Ernesto shot a look at the foreman’s truck, but the man noticed nothing but his sandwich. Within moments, Amigo was drenched, but he didn’t seem to care.

Ernesto wanted to call Amigo back, but he didn’t want to catch anyone’s attention by shouting. He watched Amigo loosen his belt and then drop his pants in front of the big house. He squatted. When the inevitable happened, Ernesto had to turn away.

When he was done, Amigo hauled up his pants and walked calmly back to the shelter of the tree, heedless of the rain. He grinned broadly. “How’s that?” he asked.

“What the hell is the matter with you?” Ernesto demanded. “What if one of those guys over there turns you in?”

“You think they give a damn? They’re only worried about losing their jobs. They hate these pendejos as much as we do. Trust me, if they thought they could get away with shitting on the lawn, they would.”

“Jesus and Mary,” Ernesto said. He was trembling, though he’d done nothing wrong. “You’re crazy. You know that? Crazy in the head! What if somebody saw you?”

“What can they do? Fire me? There’s a thousand lousy jobs around for what we get paid. Besides, you know white people can’t tell the difference between us; all they see is brown.” Amigo sat down with his back to the trunk of the tree. He was still smiling. “Relax, man.”

Ernesto fell silent. He held his hands to keep them from shaking. By the time the rain stopped he was better, but he could not look at the spot where Amigo squatted in the rain without feeling a sharp pang of misplaced guilt. Still, he told no one. He finished off the day and went home.

***

On Saturday Ernesto got a job cleaning up a work site: collecting scraps of broken wood, scattered nails and other bits of construction detritus that the construction crew left behind. It paid better than all three days doing white people’s lawns with Rickman Landscaping. By Sunday, Ernesto imagined he’d never see Amigo again, but when Monday came around, so did the landscaping truck. Amigo was in the back.

Ernesto pointedly directed his attention away from Amigo. He watched storefronts and gas stations roll by. He counted the number of Starbucks they passed. When white people came close to the truck, he saw that the drivers never looked his way. It was like the truck and the men aboard were a void that must be avoided at all costs. He thought about what Amigo said: all they see is brown.

“You going to ignore me all day?”

They were headed back to the same gated community where Ernesto passed his first day with Amigo. Up ahead he saw the massive green bulk of a wood-chipper setup.

“Hey, you. Wake up!”

Ernesto finally looked Amigo’s way. “I’m not looking to get in trouble.”

The truck slowed. It looked as though they were going to cut branches and brush today. Wood chippers were loud, but loud was all right. “You let these people break you, then you stay broken,” Amigo said. “Remember that.”

Ernesto nodded, but he tried not to pay attention. The truck stopped. Everyone got out.

The foreman had a laminated map, and he wrote on it with crayon. He didn’t bother learning anyone’s names; he used numbers instead. Ernesto was three, as in, “Three, you go over to these hedges and trim with Four. Comprende?”

Amigo’s number was four. They were given noisy hedge trimmers with long rows of interlocking metal teeth that chewed wood like taffy, but nothing to protect their ears. The uniformed Rickman workers set about mowing lawns, edging and blowing as always, while the day laborers took on the heavy work.

Ernesto and Amigo walked across the back yard of a three-story house. The owners had a pool, an in-ground hot tub and an outdoor dining area, complete with gas-powered brick grill. Crossing the lawn was like crossing a fútbol pitch.

“Look there,” Amigo said. He pointed toward the house.

Ernesto looked. He saw a fluffy white cat emerge from a little door at the back of the house. The cat glanced around briefly, and then meandered over to some bushes. “It’s a cat,” Ernesto said. “So what?”

“All this space and they have a cat? What the fuck is the matter with these assholes? This is a yard for a dog, my friend. But dogs aren’t dainty enough, you know? Dogs are too real.”

Amigo’s observation didn’t make any sense to Ernesto, but he didn’t want to try and sort it out. He only shrugged. The hedge they were meant to trim was a solid wall of greenery at the far end of the house’s massive lawn. He went to work. With the noise from the trimmers, at least he didn’t have to listen to Amigo talk.

***

They trimmed the hedge and then moved on to the next thing. At one point, Amigo threw a rock at the fluffy white cat and missed. Ernesto was glad to leave the cat behind. Eventually they were separated, Amigo to collect clipped branches for the chipper and Ernesto to blow cut grass from the sidewalks. His allergies were in full effect.

The blower and the chipper were so loud that Ernesto didn’t hear Amigo calling him at first. Finally Amigo tapped him on the shoulder. He turned around. Amigo grinned again, the same way he had when he squatted on the lawn that rainy day. “¡Mire esto!”

Amigo held up the fluffy white cat. It struggled to be let go. Tracks of bloody red were carved on Amigo’s forearm. He laughed out loud.

“What the hell? Put that thing back!”

“I fucking hate cats,” Amigo declared.

“Listen, you have to—”

Amigo marched away to the chipper. In his other fist he clutched a batch of leafy branches. When he drew close, he put his hands together. The cat was almost hidden in his grasp. A Rickman worker manned the machine, but wasn’t paying attention.

Ernesto ran. “No! Amigo, no! Don’t do that! For Christ’s sake!”

He was fifteen feet away when Amigo tossed cat and branches into the chipper. Both vanished instantly, drawn in by a pair of rotating grinders that gave no preference to things dead or alive. Ernesto screamed, but all this did was make the worker by the chipper look at him; the man didn’t see the cat go in, and he didn’t see the gobbets of red and fatty white that spewed out the far end into the bed of a waiting truck.

“What’s the matter with you?” the Rickman worker asked.

Ernesto couldn’t form words. The racket of the chipper was deafening, but he still heard Amigo’s riotous laughter. “The cat,” Ernesto managed. He pointed at the chipper. Other workers came closer, some bearing fresh bundles of branches. He saw the foreman coming, too. “It was the cat in the….”

The foreman’s face was red. “Are you high? Drunk?”

“No, no, no.” Amigo was still laughing behind him. “There was a cat.”

“I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about! Either get back to work, or take your pay and walk home. And that goes for the rest of you! Get to work!”

Fresh branches were fed into the chipper. The machine made a horrible buzzing noise and spat out a load of wood pulp, this time without chunks of animal in the mix. It was as if nothing had ever happened, except for Amigo’s laughter and the heart-squeezing sickness that threatened to turn Ernesto’s stomach inside out.

He had no choice. He went back to work.

On the truck headed home, Amigo said, “It’s just a fucking cat, my friend. Who cares about a cat?”

Ernesto made no reply.

***

He picked at dinner and went to bed early. He managed to drowse before Martita slipped in beside him.

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

Ernesto put his arm around Martita’s bare shoulders in the dark. Just touching her made him feel better, but it didn’t stop the endless replay of the cat’s death in his mind. How quickly did it die? How much pain did it feel? He did not want to think about it, but he couldn’t stop.

“You don’t want to talk to me?” Martita asked.

“It was a long day,” Ernesto replied. “All that grass in the air… I could barely breathe.”

“You’re going to have an asthma attack, or worse,” Martita said. “You should try to find something better, something regular.”

“No one’s going to hire me for anything,” Ernesto said. “I don’t speak enough English. I don’t have any education. I’m better off waiting for the trucks in the morning.”

“Mama says that once the littlest is in school, she’ll find some work. We’ll have enough money for you to go to school then.”

“That’s in two years.”

“Think about it,” Martita said.

Ernesto squeezed his wife. For just an instant he forgot the cat. Now it was back again, but if he could drive the memory away once, he could do it again. “I’ll think about it,” he said.

“Good.”

They slept. At midnight, Ernesto awoke with sweat soaking through his t-shirt. He didn’t recall his nightmare, but he knew it had to be the cat. Martita snored quietly beside him, while Amigo’s laughter echoed in his memory.

“You’re crazy,” Ernesto whispered to the dark bedroom.

He didn’t sleep again.

***

That day the Rickman Landscaping truck didn’t come, and though the truck meant regular work, Ernesto was happy. He took a job painting rooms in a business park. The next day he put down tile in the kitchen of a new house. The kitchen was bigger than the entire apartment he shared with his family. The day after that, he rode a cherry picker and trimmed the tops of tall trees on a residential street. With each job, the memory of the cat, and Amigo, faded.

Ernesto got a good job on Saturday, moving chairs and tables at a conference center. The foreman paid well and let the crew go early. He had time to play with his kids and have a real meal. He retired to the couch to watch fútbol on television. When someone knocked on the front door, he barely paid attention.

“Ernesto,” his wife called, “there’s someone here for you.”

It was after seven. Ernesto frowned. He got up. Amigo waited at the door.

“Hey,” Amigo said, “where you been, man?”

Ernesto felt the muscles in his neck turn to stone. Even his voice was stiff: “I’ve been working.”

“Me, too,” Amigo said. He smiled easily and looked to Martita. “Your husband works like a mule.”

“Do you want to invite your friend in?” Martita asked Ernesto.

“No!” Ernesto replied with more force than he intended. A quizzical look passed Martita’s face. “No, that’s all right. We’ll go out for a little while. Maybe we can get a beer.”

“Ernesto never goes out,” Martita told Amigo. “He saves all his money.”

Amigo smiled again, but his eyes were glittering cold and dark. “He’s a good man. I’ll buy for him.”

“Go on,” Martita told Ernesto. “You can watch fútbol anytime.”

Amigo waited at the front door for Ernesto to get his shoes on, not setting a foot beyond the threshold. He watched Martita walk away with the same flat expression. The good humor he showed before was vanished.

Ernesto closed the apartment door behind him. He walked twenty feet with Amigo and then stopped. “I’m not going anywhere with you,” he said. “You’re crazy. You understand? Sick in the head.”

“Is it true what your wife said? You never go out?”

“Don’t talk about my wife. You don’t belong at my home.”

Ernesto wanted to ask how Amigo found him, but a part of him didn’t want to know. He was glad the children were inside washing up for bed. Amigo wouldn’t see them, and they wouldn’t see Amigo.

“You need to get laid, my friend,” Amigo declared. “Get some fresh panocha. Your wife is fine, but it gets boring with the same old thing.”

Ernesto felt ill just talking to Amigo. He stepped back from the man. “You stay away from me. Don’t come here again. I don’t want to hear your shit.”

“Mire esto,” Amigo said. He dug in the pocket of his paint-stained jeans and came up with a wrinkled Polaroid. When he held it out, Ernesto flinched. Amigo laughed. “Go ahead and look at it. You’ll like it, I promise.”

He didn’t want to take it, but finally he did.

“What do you think?” Amigo asked.

Ernesto saw the face of a white woman with blonde hair, a cut over her eye and one cheek badly bruised. Her eyes were puffy from crying and searched desperately in the lens for mercy. A stained cloth was stuffed into her mouth, secured with clear packing tape.

“Recognize her?” Amigo asked Ernesto. “From our first day, man. She thought she was too good to come outside when we were working? Oh, come on, you have to remember.”

Ernesto’s mouth was suddenly arid. “What did you do to her?”

“What do you think?”

Ernesto’s hand twitched and the picture fell to the ground. He stooped quickly to pick it up. He looked at the image. His insides were knotted. He didn’t remember her, and couldn’t recognize her anyway from this blurred and awful photo.

“You want to get some?” Amigo asked. “Call it my apology to you.”

His heart beat so quickly that he couldn’t fill his lungs. First he nodded, and then he managed to say, “Okay.”

“Let’s go.”

***

They drove only a little while in Amigo’s battered yellow car. The man lived less than ten miles from Ernesto’s apartment, in a collection of single-floor units laid out like bungalows, but with the rotten, broken-down atmosphere of a tenement. Clotheslines dangled with clothes. A bicycle with no front wheel lay rusted on the sidewalk, abandoned. Piles of plastic garbage bags rested against the side of the unit nearest the street. Some of the bags were split, their contents spilled like innards onto the concrete. Ernesto saw two men, one Latino and one black, sitting in a battered Chevy. The black man held a 40-ounce bottle of malt liquor, half-empty, and his hand hung out the window.

“This way,” Amigo said.

The apartment was mostly just an open room covered with a layer of filthy, dark-brown shag carpet. Trash was strewn everywhere: empty cans, food wrappers and beer bottles. A tiny kitchenette reeked of spoiled food. Amigo had no bed; the woman was tied down onto a naked mattress by rope and bungee cords.

When they entered, the woman awoke. Her eyes rolled and she screamed against her gag. Amigo closed the door and locked three deadbolts. Ernesto stood frozen, wanting to be sick or to scream himself when she looked at him.

The woman was badly beaten, even worse than the photo showed. Her bare breasts were riddled with bite marks and bruises. The inside of each thigh was practically black. There were cigarette burns on the flat expanse of her belly.

“Home again, amor,” Amigo said cheerfully. He tossed his keys on a folding card table littered with sacks of old takeout and a few newspapers. The apartment stank of mildew and urine.

Ernesto looked for the telephone. He didn’t see one.

The woman writhed on the mattress as if she were on fire. Amigo kicked her in the side. Ernesto put a hand over his mouth. “She’s fucking stupid as anything,” Amigo remarked. “But she gets wet good enough. And if not, I have some cooking oil.”

He knew that he had to move, or at least say something, but Ernesto was paralyzed in every way. If he opened his mouth, he knew he would vomit. The woman on the mattress fell still after being kicked, but her eyes were still in motion, flicking from Amigo to Ernesto and back again.

“You want a beer or a fuck first?” Amigo asked.

Say something, Ernesto told himself.

Amigo looked at him with his diamond eyes, hard and crystalline. “Hey, are you going to pussy out on me?”

A thought resolved with painful sluggishness. Ernesto looked at the woman and she at him. He felt as though they were of the same mind at least for an instant. It was enough to make his mouth work. “Cerveza,” he said. His voice was raw.

The moment passed. Amigo grinned. “Okay, then.”

Amigo went to the half-sized refrigerator of the kitchenette. On the mattress, the woman strained against her bonds again. The flesh of her wrists and forearms was raw. Ernesto managed to take one step in her direction before fear brought him to a stop. Perhaps there was a telephone in the back room.

“Beer,” Amigo announced. He opened the bottle and presented it to Ernesto.

Ernesto accepted the beer with numb fingers. He looked down at the woman. She pleaded with her eyes.

“You ever ass-fucked a white woman?” Amigo asked.

Ernesto reversed his grip on the bottle. Cold beer spilled over his hand. He smashed the bottle over Amigo’s skull. Shards and foam exploded in every direction. Amigo reeled, but kept his feet. “What the fuck?!?”

Ernesto smashed into the other man. The broken neck of the beer bottle was still clutched in his fist. They drove back against the kitchenette, and Amigo’s ribs hit the formica edge of the counter. Ernesto felt bone give away.

They lurched around the open space, colliding with the card table and then the wall. Ernesto punched on the inside. The other man used his knees. Ernesto took a knock in the balls and fell in agony.

Amigo staggered dangerously. He touched the back of his head and his fingers came away slick with blood. “¡Cojeda tú tú asno perra!”

Raw pain surged through Ernesto’s testicles. And then Amigo was on top of him, striking with hard, angry fists. A punch bounced Ernesto’s head off the carpeted floor. He saw brilliant spots of light.

“I’ll kill you,” Amigo shouted. “I’ll fucking kill you!”

Ernesto lashed out blindly. He took a blow in the face and his nose broke. He connected with Amigo again and again, but the assault didn’t cease. Then he felt his fist strike something swollen in Amigo’s ribs. The man howled and suddenly his weight was gone.

They were side-by-side on the floor. Ernesto clambered atop Amigo and punched. He punched until his hands were raw and Amigo’s face was a savage, bloody mash. He punched until Amigo stopped moving. He punched until Amigo was dead, and when the man grew still, Ernesto collapsed over him.

His skull felt bloated and with his eyes closed the floor tilted. Opening them didn’t help at all; the filthy room whirled and twisted out of true. He couldn’t smell anymore because his broken nose was full of blood. Somewhere he heard a fist on a door, pounding behind a shouting voice he couldn’t understand.

Ernesto crawled first. He left Amigo’s corpse behind. He found a wall and steadied himself against it. Getting to his feet was torture. Pain screamed through his head every time he moved. He was half-blind from agony by the time he staggered to the mattress and the woman.

Her bonds were too complicated for his fingers. Ernesto found a box-cutter with the blade already open. The metal was brown with crusted blood. He heard the pounding and the shouting again, but it took all his attention to put edge to bungee cord and saw. He was going to pass out soon. It was inevitable.

The cord gave way and the woman’s hand was free. She swatted at Ernesto. Her fingernails caught him in the face and raked skin from over his brow. Ernesto barely felt the pain. “No esté asustado,” he mumbled over and over. He didn’t recognize his own voice. “No esté asustado.”

Ernesto sagged. Everything swam. He tried to find another rope, or another stretch of taut elastic, but he cut the woman in the side instead. He squinted against gathering blackness at the edge of his vision. She shrieked against her gag and the shouting came again and there was the sudden crash of splintering wood and sunlight spilled into the disgusting apartment and someone hit Ernesto over the head so hard that he fell face-first over the woman and knew nothing else.

***

“Mrs. Spady, I want you to take your time. Look at all the men, and then make your decision. If no one looks familiar to you, that’s okay, too.”

       Carlene Spady stood with her lawyer on one side and a police counselor on the other. The bruises on her face had faded after seven days, but the cut over her eye was still swollen and livid underneath a translucent dressing meant to protect the stitches. She searched the faces of the seven men in the lineup. “They can’t see me?”

“No, ma’am. You’re behind one-way glass.”

The counselor put a reassuring hand on Carlene’s arm, above the cast that enclosed a broken wrist. “Just relax. You’re safe.”

“It’s him,” Carlene said at long last. “Number six.”

“Number six, step forward.”

In the line of Latino men, the one bearing the corresponding number did as he was told. He looked stricken beneath the harsh lights of the lineup.

“Are you sure that’s him?”

“Definitely. He was one of them. I remember seeing him working on the lawns, too.” Carlene shuddered. This time both the counselor and her attorney offered comforting touches.

“Number six, step back.”

“What now?” Carlene asked.

“That’s the man we suspect, Mrs. Spady. His name is Ernesto Garza. He’s a day laborer: not much education, roamed around a lot before he settled in the city. We figure he was in on it with his friend – kidnap, rape, all of that – and then they fell out. It happens sometimes with these types.”

“I don’t know why they even let those people in the country,” Carlene Spady said. Her voice was unsteady. “They need to be locked up on their side of the border.”

“We’ll lock him up on our side of the border, Mrs. Spady. Don’t worry: this time we got him.”

Copyright(c) 2006 by William Tanner

Home    Hardluck Thoughts    Guest Editor    Submissions    Archives