TO ASHES by Richard Lange
Papá gets home from work at six and tells Miguel and his little brother, Francisco, to turn off the X-Box and put on the news. Miguel glances at Francisco with raised eyebrows, like, What’s up with that?, because the old man normally heads right for the shower to wash off the sweat and plaster dust before the family eats dinner.
The newscaster is talking about a wildfire that’s burning out of control east of San Diego. Papá shoos Miguel and Francisco off the couch and sits in front of the TV, leaning forward to watch intently. Mamá pokes her head in from the kitchen, a worried look on her face, and Miguel can tell that she’s freaked, too, by the change in routine.
“What’s going on?” she says.
“A fire at the border,” Papá replies.
Mamá walks into the living room, a dish towel twisted in her hands. “And so?”
“Alberto and Maria are crossing tonight.”
Alberto is Miguel’s cousin, Papá’s nephew. Maria is his wife. They live in the village outside Durango where Papá was born, a place so small it doesn’t even have a name. Papá drags the whole family down there every couple of years for a visit, trips that Miguel dreads because it’s hot and dirty, and the food sucks, and the only bathroom is an outhouse buzzing with flies. Alberto is cool though. He let Miguel ride his motorcycle last time they were there and took them swimming in the river. He’s only a year older than Miguel but already married, and Miguel has heard Papá say before that he was thinking of coming to the U.S.
A map flashes onscreen, showing the location of the fire. Papá points and says, “El Chango’s trail is right there. He’ll bring them that way.”
The sound of the front door opening makes Miguel jump. Carmen comes in from cheerleading practice and sees everyone staring at the TV. “What’s going on?” she says in English.
Mamá shushes her, and Papá turns up the sound. This must be some serious shit, because nothing ever gets to the old man. All he does is work and sleep, barely saying five words most days. Miguel stands there watching him watch TV and is suddenly a little scared.
Everybody tries to act normal at dinner. They pass around the chicken and rice and listen to Carmen and Francisco bicker. But, see, that right there is weird: Papá would normally shut them down with a look. Instead, he’s lost in thought, barely eating anything, big gristly fists clenched on either side of his plate. Miguel imitates Don Cheto, the funny guy on the radio, hoping to get a smile out of him, but, no, nothing.
Later, while Miguel, Carmen and Francisco are doing their homework at the dining room table, Papá makes a phone call in the bedroom. When he reappears and sits on the couch, Mamá rushes in from the kitchen to ask what he found out. Miguel leans back in his chair so that he can hear what they’re saying.
“They left Durango last week and met with El Chango in Tijuana,” Papá says, “Everything was in order, and they were supposed to call Rosa after crossing.” He’s talking about Aunt Rosa, his sister in San Diego. “She hasn’t heard from them yet.”
“Maybe they turned back,” Mamá says. “Maybe la migra got them.”
Papá shrugs. “Maybe,” he mumbles.
Francisco leans over and whispers to Miguel from behind his hand: “Are they dead?”
“You’re so fucking stupid,” Miguel whispers back, reaching out to flick the kid’s ear.
Francisco doesn’t yell or tattle or throw a fit though. Even he knows this isn’t a night for those kinds of antics. Instead, he gets up and walks into the living room and puts his arms around Mamá’s waist and buries his face in her blouse. Miguel turns back to his homework but can’t concentrate. His mind is full of hungry flames that devour the equations before he can solve them.
The cop shows up at dawn, a stocky woman with a man’s haircut. Brewer is half-awake when she pounds on the door of his trailer. He’s sweating in bed after a restless night, his mind drifting between past and present. His dead mother makes him pancakes while “How Much Is That Doggie in the Window?” plays on an old radio, but at the same time he smells smoke from the fire that glows brighter on the horizon than the rising sun.
“Mr. Brewer,” the cop calls, banging again.
“Give me a minute,” Brewer growls.
He sits on the edge of the mattress. His shoulder hurts, his knees, and pulling on a pair of jeans is all kinds of painful. He shakes a Marlboro from the pack on the nightstand and puts a match to it as he limps to the door.
“Morning,” the cop says when he opens up. She’s the same one who came by yesterday, talking about mandatory evacuations, but Brewer knows the law: They can’t force him to go; all they can do is warn him. This land, twenty acres of scrub hard by the border, is the only thing his dad left him, the only thing he has left, so he’s decided to make a stand.
“You’re up bright and early,” he says to the cop.
“I was worried about you,” she replies. “The fire’s less than a mile west of here now and burning this way. Thought I could talk you into packing some stuff, and I’ll lead you out.”
Brewer steps into the yard to see for himself the smoke rising over the hills and rolling slowly toward him. The sight dries his mouth and sets his hands to trembling, but he has to trust that the preparations he’s made will enable him to ride out the blaze. He’s cut back the chaparral to create a firebreak around the trailer, sprayed retardant on the remaining shrubs and hooked up heavy-duty hoses to all his spigots.
“I’ll be fine,” he says to the cop.
“This is the last time I’ll be passing by, and the fire crews are pulling back to the 94, so they won’t be coming either,” she says. “You’ll be on your own.”
I’ve always been on my own, he wants to tell her, but that’ll just sound dramatic. Cassius, the skinny stray that showed up a few years ago and never left, trots out of the trailer and sniffs the air, then walks over and stares up at Brewer with a worried look. The mutt was old when he arrived and is even older now, with white hair on his muzzle and a milky cataract in one eye.
Brewer reaches down to scratch the animal’s ears and asks the cop, “Will you take my dog?”
“Can’t,” she says. “It’s against regulations.”
“Well, you might as well be on your way, then. Someone must need you somewhere.”
The cop heads back to her truck but stops before reaching it and turns like she’s going to try once more to get Brewer to leave. As soon as she opens her mouth to speak, though, she inhales a bit of floating ash and begins to cough. After a couple of attempts to say what she was going to say, she gives up, throws Brewer a little wave and, still coughing, climbs into her truck and drives away.
Brewer smiles to himself. She’s actually not bad for a cop. Big old bull dyke looks like she might even be able to hold her own in a fight.
The wind has come up, and ash swirls in the air like a light snow, dusting the hood of Brewer’s pickup, the leaves of the rosebush, the surface of the water in the dog’s bowl. Brewer can see flames now, too, for the first time, bright orange banners fluttering through the smoke.
He walks into the trailer and retrieves The Complete Works of William Shakespeare from the table in the dining nook, the same battered copy he’s hauled around most of his life, ever since he realized there was more truth in one of those plays than in the entire Holy Bible. Most of his days still start with a cup of coffee and the book, him opening it at random in search of some bit of wisdom to chew on, so it’ll be the only thing he takes with him if he winds up running.
He carries the book out to the truck, then ties a bandanna around his nose and mouth, pulls on a pair of ski goggles and picks up a hoe. Cassius follows him to the firebreak, a 10-foot-wide strip that Brewer has scraped down to dirt, a kind of moat surrounding the trailer. The dog lolls in a patch of shade while Brewer attacks a Manzanita bush, widening the break even more. His hands are already covered with blisters from the work he’s done over the past 24 hours, and his back is killing him, but he can’t just sit and wait for the fire to get here. He’s let too many things run him over like that in the past.
When he pauses to empty the sweat pooled inside his goggles, he notices that the flames have moved closer and that the smoke has gone from black to pink as the sun has risen. A fire department plane on its way to drop the load of water in its belly onto the blaze roars low overhead, and Cassius sends up a pitiful howl.
“What are you bawling about?” Brewer yells at the dog, then blows his nose into his bandanna. The snot comes out black, and when he spits, that’s black too.
Miguel watches Mamá while he eats his Froot Loops. She’s making bacon-and-egg burritos for him and Papá to take with them. Papá sits across the table, sipping a cup of milky coffee. The old man shook Miguel awake half an hour ago and told him to get dressed, they were going to look for Alberto and Maria.
“What about school?” Miguel asked, but all Papá said was, “Don’t wake your brother.”
The old man is bringing him along to translate. After all these years he understands English pretty well but still can’t speak it. Hearing him try embarrasses Miguel. At Home Depot or the DMV or on parent-teacher night, he bites his tongue when the old man struggles to put together a few awkward sentences, then steps in and talks over him at the first sign of confusion on the face of whoever he’s addressing.
“You have to let him try,” Mamá always says afterward. “How else will he learn?”
“It’s easier,” Miguel replies. “People don’t have all day.”
Mamá wraps the burritos in aluminum foil and slides them into a plastic grocery bag. Papá looks up from his coffee and smiles at her.
“Don’t worry,” he says.
She shakes her head in reply, tight-lipped, her eyes puffy. Miguel realizes that she’s been crying.
“I’ll take good care of your baby,” Papá continues. “I promise.”
A bit worried himself now, Miguel asks Papá how he plans to find Alberto and Maria.
“You just do as I say,” the old man snaps.
When Papá comes to a decision, he sticks to it no matter what, putting all his pride behind it, and this stubbornness makes Miguel uneasy. He remembers the time the old man took him and Francisco fishing in a friend’s boat. They motored far out into the ocean, and the weather suddenly turned bad. Dark clouds crashed into one another overhead, and the tiny boat was bucked by wind-whipped waves. The frightened boys began to cry and begged Papá to turn back.
“Don’t you trust your father?” he shouted at them, insulted. “I know what I’m doing.”
He didn’t, though, not at all, and they ended up running out of fuel and nearly capsizing before another boat picked them up. To this day the old man won’t admit that they were in any danger. When he tells the story, it’s only to joke about how scared the boys were. But he was scared too. Miguel saw it in his eyes when the engine stopped and when the lightning flashed and heard it in his voice as he recited a prayer under his breath.
When Miguel walks out the front door of the house a few minutes later, Papá is checking the oil in his truck in preparation for the trip. “Did you bring a coat?” the old man says.
Miguel holds up his letterman’s jacket. He’s doing varsity track this year and is close to breaking the school record in long jump. A couple more inches, one good trip off the board, and he’ll have it. Mosco, the family’s Chihuahua, barks at him and bounces around his legs.
“Don’t let him out,” Mamá calls through the bars covering the living room window. The yellow stucco on the house is crisscrossed with gray concrete patches where Papá has repaired cracks. He keeps saying he’s going to repaint but never finds the time. Mamá has had enough of his promises and calls the house “The Pride of El Monte” just to piss him off.
Miguel holds the dog back with his foot while he steps through the gate in the waist-high chain link fence, then quickly yanks his shoe away and slams the gate shut. He walks to the truck and climbs in on the passenger side. The burritos on the seat beside him give off a greasy smell that fills the cab.
He’s going to miss a history quiz and track practice today, but what’s most fucked is that he was supposed to cut sixth period and sneak with Michelle to her cousin’s apartment, where she swore she’d finally give it up after a whole month of dry humping and hand jobs. It’d be his first time getting laid, something he’s been thinking about since he was, like, 12. And Michelle is fine, too, not like Lupe, that beast his homie Rigo got with last year and still brags about. Fucking Papá, though, is going to ruin everything.
The old man slides behind the wheel and starts the truck. He raises his hand to Mamá, and she raises hers to him. Miguel puts in his earbuds and turns on his iPod. As soon as they graduate, he and Rigo are moving to Tucson to work as trainers at Rigo’s uncle’s gym, and Michelle might come along too. He can’t wait.
He sleeps most of the way down to Tijuana, and even when he’s awake pretends he isn’t so that he doesn’t have to talk to the old man. They park on the American side of the border in a dirt lot next to a currency exchange place. Papá hands him one of the burritos and unwraps another for himself, and they eat sitting on the tailgate of the truck. A battered train rolls past, its boxcars covered with graffiti, both Spanish and English: El Solitario, Led Zeppelin, Kim Is The Shit.
The walk to the crossing is a short one, past the McDonald’s and the trolley stop, up and over a bridge spanning the freeway. Soon Miguel is pushing through the turnstile in the tall iron fence separating the two countries, and, just like that, the cars are dustier, the pigeons rattier, the music louder.
Papá goes to a taxi stand and negotiates with a driver, a fat dude in a cowboy hat. Miguel has trouble keeping up with what’s being said. His Spanish has never been very good, and he forgets a little more each year. The driver leads them to an empty cab, and the old man sits in front and tells Miguel to get in back. The fat dude climbs in and taps his horn twice at the other drivers lounging at the stand before squeezing into the traffic headed into town.
The fire reaches Brewer’s place around nine. It barrels down the hill fronted by a twenty-foot wall of flame. The dry grass hisses as it burns, and the oily shrubs explode, sending up showers of flaming shrapnel. The willows and cottonwoods lining the creek that runs along the western edge of the property wither and go from green to orange to black.
Brewer stands at the break in goggles and bandanna, hose in one hand, rake in the other. His eyes sting from the smoke, and it’s impossible to draw a deep breath without coughing. The heat increases as the fire pushes closer, and the exposed flesh on his forehead feels tight enough to tear.
If he thinks of all of it at once, pauses to acknowledge the intensity of the blaze, the heat, the choking smoke, he’ll cut and run, he knows it, and die in a futile scramble for safety. So instead he focuses on individual flames and wayward sparks, moving from task to task, head down, humming that damn song, the one about the doggie.
An ember sails across the break on a gust of wind and lands in a clump of dead weeds. Brewer drags the hose over and douses the flare-up, then spots another and soaks that too. He replaces the doggie song in his head with Hamlet’s soliloquy, “To be or not to be . . .” Not his favorite speech, not his favorite play, but something he memorized as a young man because even the roughnecks he worked with in the oil fields recognized it as something fine and would reward him with whiskey and backslaps when he stood, desperately drunk, and recited it in those long ago bars that were their only respite from day upon hellish day on the rigs.
He’s up to “the rub” when a sage bush inside the perimeter catches fire and ignites a mat of brittle grass that stretches all the way over to where his truck is parked. By the time he pulls the hose into position, the ground beneath the vehicle is on fire. His legs shake as he squeezes the pistol-gripped nozzle and aims the stream of water at the flames. Two of the truck’s tires explode, but he manages to extinguish the blaze before it does any more damage.
A step back, a clattery breath, and out of the corner of his eye he sees that the old oak that shades the trailer, a tree he should have cut down years ago, would have if he hadn’t been moved by its gnarled dignity, is suddenly aflame. He’s soaked its branches half a dozen times since hearing of the approaching fire, but the air itself is thirsty in this parched place, so, despite his precautions, the tree is dropping burning leaves onto his home.
He climbs onto the picnic table next to the trailer and sprays the roof and the branches above it, which are laced with orange flame. He’s making progress, but then a blazing limb gives way with a loud crack and crashes down onto the trailer.
Brewer hops off the table and retrieves the rake. Hooking the limb with the tool, he yanks repeatedly in an effort to dislodge it. The stubborn tangle of smoldering branches comes loose all of a sudden, throwing him off-balance, and he falls backward and brings the limb down on top of himself. He scrabbles wildly to get free of the burning cage, then snags the limb with the rake and drags it across the yard.
The fire is lapping at the break on all sides now, and the intense heat ripples the air, giving the blaze the ghostly quality of something seen through an old, warped windowpane. Thick, black smoke rolls over Brewer in choking waves, and the sharp pop and crackle of flames chewing through the chaparral plucks at his nerves. He opens his mouth to yell, to prove he’s still here, but only a ragged cough comes out.
Next time, I let it burn, he thinks, and staggers toward a new flare-up that’s bloomed inside the perimeter.
Papá and the taxi driver talk like old friends as they zip past concrete-and-cinderblock dental clinics, auto-repair shops and 24-hour pharmacies. All the buildings look like they’re either half-finished or on their way to falling down, and music blasts out of every open door. A man in a dirty chicken suit dances in front of a restaurant, beckoning passing cars.
The stink of burning trash in the air makes Miguel nauseous. Or maybe he’s carsick. He tries concentrating on the CD dangling from the rearview mirror of the cab, watches it twirl and flash, but that only makes him feel worse.
They turn off the pavement onto a deeply rutted dirt road that leads up a steep hill past shacks pieced together out of cardboard and corrugated tin, scavenged wood and plastic tarps. It’s even more pitiful than Durango. Look at the garbage piled in the street. Look at the women washing clothes in a muddy stream. Vatos with tattooed faces bend to peer into the taxi as it passes, and the driver locks the doors.
The cab stops in front of a house that’s a little nicer than the rest, with four solid walls and glass in the windows. A satellite dish perches on the roof like a vulture, and a new gas grill takes up most of the dirt yard. Papá climbs out and knocks on the door. A woman clutching a naked baby answers and talks briefly with the old man, stepping outside to point down the road.
The cab driver turns in his seat to address Miguel. “You like L.A.?” he asks in English.
“It’s okay,” Miguel replies.
“I live there 10 years,” the driver says. “I like the money, but Mexico is better for me.”
Miguel doesn’t understand how that could possibly be.
Papá returns to the cab and tells the driver to go to the end of the street and make a left. They stop again, in front of a windowless concrete building with a Corona logo painted on the side.
“Cuidado,” the driver says when Papá gets out of the cab. Careful. Miguel gets out, too, because he’d rather be with his father than the driver if something goes wrong.
The only light inside the building comes from a dozen strands of Christmas bulbs strung across the ceiling. Their blinking reveals a glass-doored refrigerator stocked with beer and a wooden shelf lined with bottles of tequila. The place is a cantina of some sort, judging by the white plastic tables and chairs scattered about. A little man in a red apron is sitting on an overturned bucket next to the refrigerator. He stands when Miguel and his father enter, his eyes full of questions.
The only customer is a dark-skinned drunk in sweatpants and a Chivas jersey who looks to be asleep in his chair.
“Chango,” Papá calls out to him.
The drunk squints at the old man, drinks from a bottle of Modelo, then lets his chin drop to his chest again. Papá walks over and kneels beside him, grabs the arm of his chair and shakes it.
“Que pasa?” El Chango mumbles without lifting his head or opening his eyes.
The old man asks about Alberto and Maria, explains that they were supposed to cross last night. It’s difficult for Miguel to hear what he’s saying because he speaks so softly, almost whispering into the coyote’s ear. A fly buzzing around the room is louder than he is.
El Chango frowns and shakes his head, eyes still closed. He reaches out and tries to push the old man away. Papá’s face hardens into a mask Miguel has never seen before. “Listen,” he says. “You know El Teo, right?”
The name is a mystery to Miguel, but El Chango has heard it. He opens his little red eyes and looks Papá up and down.
“You better talk to me, or you’ll soon be talking to him,” the old man says.
El Chango grunts and licks his thick lips. He tugs at his jersey and has another sip of beer. “We set out at dusk,” he begins, then slurs out the story of how he led Alberto, Maria and two other pollos, young boys, across the border and up into the scrubby hills of the U.S. side. He knew about the fire, could see the orange glow of it in the distance as they trudged along, but that seemed to him a good thing. The border patrol would be forced to pull back, and the crossing would be an easy one.
The wind, though, fuck, who can predict that? It changed in an instant and sent the flames racing toward them. El Chango hurried the pollos along, but the pregnant girl slowed them down. When the smoke thickened and sparks began to fall like burning rain, the group insisted that they turn around. El Chango climbed to the top of a hill and looked back the way they’d come to see if this was an option, and, mother of God, he couldn’t believe his eyes. A sea of fire now blocked any retreat.
There was nothing to do but keep moving, to try to stay in front of the flames. This proved to be impossible though. The conflagration moved too quickly. The fire finally overtook them in a steep, narrow canyon, roaring and spitting like some bright, burning beast, and El Chango lost his nerve. He and the boys abandoned the pregnant girl and her husband and sprinted up the path, not stopping until they no longer felt heat on the backs of their necks. Upon reaching the railroad tracks that cut across the desert there, they sat and waited for over an hour, but nobody else appeared out of the inferno.
El Chango hangs his head and weeps when he finishes, and Miguel is embarrassed by the tears. He hasn’t cried in years and is sure he never will again. He stares at the Modelo bottle as the man sobs. The Christmas lights turn it red, then green, then blue.
Papá pulls a map from his pocket and thrusts it at the coyote, demanding that he show him where they crossed. El Chango wipes his eyes with his palms, squints down at the map and points to a remote area east of Tecate.
“The same trail as always?” Papá asks.
El Chango nods.
“Okay, then, let’s go,” Papá says to Miguel, and for once Miguel is happy to obey one of his orders.
Brewer sits at the picnic table and drinks a celebratory beer. His property lies charred and smoldering all around him, but he’s saved the trailer and the truck, the pump house and the propane tank. Not finding much fuel here, the fire passed through quickly and is now crawling toward Calexico and Mexicali. The smoke has mostly cleared, except for a few white snakes still writhing over shrubs that haven’t yet burned themselves out.
Brewer’s hands were slightly scorched fighting the fire, his wrists and forearms. He rests a plastic bag filled with ice on the blistered skin. His eyebrows are gone, too, burned away, and some of his hair, but nothing that won’t grow back. All in all he’s proud of having stood his ground.
“Cassius,” he shouts. “Get your ass out here.”
He last saw the dog cowering under the trailer right before the fire descended upon them. A tickle of worry makes him bend to peer into the animal’s hiding place.
“Cassius?” he calls again, but detects no movement in the shadows.
He tells himself the mutt is fine. Probably holed up somewhere else on the property, still too frightened by the smoke and flames to come out. He forces his mind to move on. There are plenty of other issues to be dealt with. The power is out, for example, and since it might be days before repairs are made, he decides that dinner tonight will be the T-bone he’s been saving in the freezer, with ice cream for dessert. He’s in the middle of a mental inventory of the rest of the contents of the refrigerator, dividing it into stuff that will spoil and stuff that won’t, when a watery uneasiness once again creeps up on him.
“Cassius?” he shouts, before finally figuring out what’s bothering him: No birds. They’ve all disappeared in the wake of the fire, and the quiet is unsettling. No ravens bitching, no doves courting. No finches, no jays, no quail. There’s only the wind now, and the distant whine of an engine coming closer. Brewer cranes his neck to look down the road and sees a cloud of dust. Probably the lady cop, expecting the worst. Won’t she be surprised. He stands and tucks in his shirt, straightens his collar.
It’s not the cop who drives into the yard, though, it’s the Sharp brothers, a pair of former Marines who still favor high-and-tights and camo. They live near Lake Morena with their wives and kids, get by as handymen, and, under the mantle of patriotism, spend their spare hours patrolling the border in search of illegals. The deal is, they’re not allowed to detain the wetbacks or confront them in any way, only to radio their location to the Border Patrol, but Brewer suspects there’s some wink-wink nudge-nudge going on around that.
Steve is behind the wheel of the Jeep, Matthew in the passenger seat. The only way Brewer can tell them apart is that Steve has tattoos and Matthew doesn’t. Nice enough guys, but he isn’t looking to get any friendlier with them than he already is. He can’t help wondering about the essential qualities of folks who get their kicks fucking with the poor and desperate.
“You made it,” Steve shouts.
“I wasn’t sure for a while there,” Brewer replies. “Goddamn thing almost seemed to have a grudge. How’d it go at your place?”
“No problems,” Matthew says. “The crews kept it south of the 94.”
“So everybody got lucky. Good. Say, you didn’t happen to see that old dog that hangs around here on your way in, did you?”
“Nope,” Steve says. “He run off?”
“No, no,” Brewer says. “I just haven’t seen him in an hour or so. Where you guys off to?”
“Ah, you know, looking for trouble,” Steve says. There’s a scorpion on his neck, and rattlesnakes coil up both arms.
“The coyotes are for sure gonna take advantage of the fire,” Matthew says. “They’ll be bringing across as many pollos as they can while everyone’s busy.”
Brewer notices a couple of shotguns in the backseat of the Jeep, and both men have Glocks on their hips. A bit excessive for “observers,” but then again, Brewer can’t imagine that snitches are too popular out there in no man’s land.
“Well, hey, take it easy,” he says.
“You good?” Matthew says.
Brewer has two ruined tires on his truck and only one spare, but he’ll worry about that tomorrow, walk up the road to where he can get a signal on his phone or hitch into Calexico. It’s always been like that: If he can do for himself, he will.
“I’m good,” he says.
Steve backs the Jeep out and whips it around toward a dirt track that leads to the border, and Brewer is suddenly beat all the way down to his bones. He calls for Cassius a few more times, then walks to the trailer and pulls himself up the step to get inside. Everything hurts when he lies on the bed, everything’s against him. Not even a bird left to sing him to sleep.
The little town of Campo is full of fire trucks, and firefighters in helmets and heavy coats wander in and out of a convenience store and commiserate in the parking lot under a sun made sickly by a pall of ashy smoke. More smoke roils in grubby billows on the horizon.
A highway patrolman manning a checkpoint steps out into the road in front of Papá’s truck and waves him to a stop. He asks to see identification, and Papá hands over his green card and driver’s license. The cop bends to peer in the window at Miguel and says, “You too.”
Miguel slides his California ID out of his wallet. Anger and embarrassment keep him from looking the cop in the eye. The guy is barking at them like they’re a couple of wetbacks. He shuffles through the cards, examining them perfunctorily, then passes them back.
“Habla ingles?” he says.
“I do,” Miguel replies.
“The road ahead is closed because of the fire,” the cop says. “You have to go back the way you came.” He makes a chopping motion with his hand. “No mas driving. Fuego.”
Miguel translates for Papá, who mumbles “I understand” in Spanish and backs the truck up. They turn around and drive maybe a half mile before the old man pulls over at a wide spot in the road and shuts off the engine. Miguel’s heart sinks when Papá steps out of the truck, grabbing a red fleece jacket and the bag containing the rest of the burritos.
“We’ll walk,” he says.
“For real?” Miguel replies. He’d hoped that the old man had given up and that they’d be back in L.A. in time for his rendezvous with Michelle.
“Bring your coat,” Papá says.
Miguel clutches his letterman’s jacket to his chest. “No way. It’ll get messed up.”
“Why did I pay so much money for it if you’re not going to wear it?”
“Not out here,” Miguel says.
Papá hisses angrily and walks back to open the toolbox in the bed of the truck. He pulls out a couple of plastic bottles of Coke, drops them into the bag with the burritos and sets off in the direction of Campo, expecting Miguel to follow. Miguel wonders what would happen if he didn’t, but then jogs to catch up.
“Do you even know where we’re going?” he asks.
“A road up here leads to the border,” Papá says. “We’ll start there.”
A hundred yards further an overgrown jeep trail shoots off to the south, not much more than tire tracks worn deep into the hardpan. Miguel and the old man follow it over a series of low, scrub-covered hills and down into a sandy wash that then becomes their path for a time. When they finally clamber out of the gulley and onto a rocky knob with a view of the surrounding terrain, Miguel pulls up short, shocked by what he sees.
The fire-ravaged wasteland in front of him extends all the way to the horizon, a nightmare landscape of blackened chaparral and still smoldering oaks. Ash swirls in the hot wind, whipping around the charred skeletons of Manzanita and sage bushes, and newly exposed boulders thrust up from the scorched plain like broken teeth.
Miguel watches a trio of buzzards circle in the hazy sky above the burn zone, then drop suddenly and disappear. Going after a dead rabbit. A dead coyote. Worse. Papá’s crazy. They’ll never find Alberto and Maria alive. If the two of them were out here when the fire passed through, they’re nothing but smoke now.
“Papá,” Miguel begins, ready to say what he’s thinking, but the old man cuts him off with a wave of his hand.
“We’re going on,” he says.
Miguel can’t believe how stupid this is, but it’s no use trying to reason with him. The guy can barely read, and his writing looks like a little kid’s. He still believes in ghosts and good luck charms and still gets on his knees every night to pray. Puro Durango, man, puro naco. He passes Miguel a Coke and tells him to drink. Miguel drains the bottle and tosses it out into the devastation. Tucson, he thinks. Eyes on the prize.
The old man pulls up the neck of his T-shirt to cover his nose and mouth, and they set off across the burned desert. Miguel’s shuffling feet raise a plume of dust that drags behind them like a tail, and he hopes the border patrol notices it and forces them to turn around. If they’re still following a trail, Miguel can’t see it, so he watches the old man’s back, goes where he goes.
Fifteen minutes later they reach the border fence, a 10-foot-high barrier constructed of panels of corrugated steel, Mexico on the far side, the U.S. over here. They stand on the wide dirt road that fronts the fence, and Papá points out where someone has burrowed beneath the panels to create a series of tight passages between the two countries, shallow depressions worn smooth by all the bodies that have squeezed through them.
“Those are El Chango’s,” he says.
“How you came in?” Miguel asks.
“Sometimes.”
Miguel would ask what he means by this but knows he won’t get an answer. Papá never talks about his past beyond the few stories he tells of growing up poor, stories that are supposed to make Miguel and his siblings feel lucky for all the things they have. Miguel knows that the old man moved to L.A. when he was 20, met Mamá the next year and had him a year later. There are photos of all that in Mamá’s albums. And he knows that the old man lived in TJ for a while before that.
“What did you do there?” Miguel asked him once.
“What everyone did,” Papá replied, and that was all Miguel could pry out of him.
The wind picks up and whistles through the gaps in the fence. The old man points to a burned hill on the U.S. side and says, “That way.”
Miguel spits, hikes up his baggy jeans, and again follows his father into the desert. If he’d known they were going to be hiking around out here all goddamn day, he wouldn’t have left his music in the truck.
Seventy years old. Someone, some kid, taunts Brewer with this in a dream: “You’re 70, man.” Brewer denies it, but it’s true. Born July 5, 1940, in Licking Springs, Missouri. Henry Brewer Jr., only son of Henry and Jan Brewer. Born at home because they couldn’t afford a hospital, and no money is also why they left Missouri soon afterward, staggering West.
Dad loved movies – could quote the stars and sing the songs, could laugh or cry on cue – so Hollywood was the goal. It took ten years to get there, with stops in Tulsa and Houston, Denver and Phoenix, that place in New Mexico with the wasp nest, a dusty motel in Vegas. Dad sold cars to pay the bills, sold houses, sold hamburgers. The man could sell anything. He had the right smile, the right spirit. And Mom was his little helper, always there with an encouraging word and a hug, always ready to unpack when they hit town and load up again when it was time to move on.
Brewer? Well, he figured out early on that he was just along for the ride, one more item to be checked off the list before they drove away: Keys returned, car gassed up, boy in backseat. If he ever resented this, he can’t remember. These days the past seems like a fuse that was lit the moment he was born, one that now burns faster than he can run.
What he does know is that Hollywood didn’t work out and that Dad never got any closer to the movies than buying a ticket every Saturday. But that was fine because Mom kept right on ironing his shirts and laughing at his jokes and rubbing his head when it hurt, saying, “Do that thing from Gunga Din again.” They were more in love than any couple Brewer has ever known, and they barely noticed when he joined the Navy at 18 and moved away for good.
Out of spite he went the other way across the country: Phoenix and Dallas, Gulfport and Miami. He didn’t have Dad’s charm, though, so he had to get his hands dirty. He put in 12-hour days in factories and on oil rigs, pounded nails and welded steel. And he didn’t have Mom to come home to either. There were women, sure, and men, but nothing that lasted. As soon as anyone opened up, he panicked. Their secrets and sadnesses were like a layer of grease on his skin, rank and suffocating. He always felt best driving away from the last place and toward the next one.
He only brushed up against love once: New Orleans, 1965. A bartender named Charlie Wiggins. He’d have come off the road for that boy if such a thing was conceivable back then. They were friends, lovers, one soul in two bodies, flesh the only wall between them. Charlie liked Shakespeare too. They’d get drunk and read the plays together, the big death scenes – Romeo and Mercutio, Othello and Desdemona – and both end up weeping. A thing like that can’t last though. There’s a law somewhere. An icy road, a sudden curve, a tree – that’s how Charlie went.
And then time flew. The men around Brewer married and had kids and grandkids. They Christmas-shopped and mowed lawns and cried at their daughters’ weddings. Brewer opens his eyes and stares at the wall of the trailer. Seventy years old. He was vain when he was younger, too proud of his strong arms, his handsome face, his thick cock. But all that’s gone now. Damn the quivering jowls and sagging belly, damn the muscles that ache for no reason. He was also proud of his solitude, how even in a crowded room he was still somehow so beautifully alone. And now? Well, he’s still alone, but lonely, too, lonely like never before. So damn also the heart that can’t forget.
Oh hell, he scolds himself. Get up, old woman. You fought for this life this morning, now get up and finish living it.
Papá recalls the general direction of El Chango’s route, but the trail itself has been obliterated by the fire. Miguel follows the old man up one rocky hill, then another, then another. When they crest the third, Papá turns to look at where they’ve been, points to the first hill, and says, “That one. I’m sure of it now. We have to go back.”
Frustrated protests boil up in Miguel’s throat, but he falls in behind his father without another word. He’ll drop dead before he complains again. He’s as tough as the old man, tougher even. Younger, stronger. He plods along in his father’s wake, his mind a hateful whirl. His feet hurt, and the dust makes him cough, but he’s determined to outlast the old man and laugh in his face when he finally stalls.
They reach the top of the first hill again, almost an hour wasted. Papá crouches on top and squints at the smoking horizon in search of landmarks that have escaped the flames. Miguel is sure it’s hopeless. Everything around them has been burned. After a minute or so, though, the old man stands and points out a notch in a ridge up ahead.
“There,” he says.
Bullshit, he’s lost, but Miguel follows him silently. They descend and walk toward the ridge. Fifteen minutes. Twenty. The rhythmic CRUNCH CRUNCH of their footsteps is hypnotic, and Miguel has visions of Melanie naked and of all the things he’s seen in pornos that he wants to do to her. He almost bumps into his father when the old man stops suddenly and raises his hand.
Something big and black is lying on the ground in front of them, the burned carcass of an animal. Something horned and hooved. A shimmering blanket of flies peels away as they approach, revealing gory rents in the charred flesh where other animals have already begun to feed. Miguel averts his eyes, and they make a wide detour around the remains.
Papá asks for the Coke, and Miguel hands him the bottle. The old man unscrews the cap and drinks.
“That’s the last of it,” Miguel says.
Papá looks up at the sun, then down at his watch. “Another hour,” he says. “After that we’ll turn back.”
A few minutes later, as they’re making their way across a plain dotted with thickets of charred chaparral, Papá stumbles and goes down hard. He pops to his feet quickly, ignoring Miguel’s outstretched hand, but grimaces and almost falls again as soon as he puts weight on his right ankle.
Miguel helps him sit, then watches as he unlaces and removes his paint-spattered work boot. The ankle has already begun to swell, and when Miguel moves the foot, the old man endures it, but with gritted teeth.
“Son of a bitch,” he mutters under his breath.
Miguel stands and pulls his phone from his pocket. No signal.
“I’m going up there,” he says, pointing at the ridge. “To call 911.”
“No,” Papá says. “I’m fine.” He holds a deep breath and yanks the boot past his ankle. When it’s all laced up, he struggles to his feet and grabs the plastic bag. “Let’s go,” he says.
He’s in pain, Miguel can see it. Without a word he moves up beside his father and drapes the old man’s arm around his neck.
“You’re taller than me,” Papá says, like he’s never noticed before.
“Didn’t take much,” Miguel replies.
The old man looks ridiculous when he grins, ash all over his face, sweat dripping off his nose. Miguel pulls his arm tighter and starts toward the ridge, forcing him to work to keep up.
The hot, dusty climb to the notch exhausts both of them. They rest on boulders when they get there, look down into the valley on the other side. The fire burned through here too – the ground is still smoking in places – but somehow a small patch of land was spared. A weathered trailer, an old truck, a couple of sheds, even a bit of green grass.
Miguel is thirsty. His tongue sticks to the roof of his mouth, and he’s lightheaded. He reaches into the plastic bag for the empty Coke bottle.
“I’m going for water,” he announces.
“Wait,” Papá says. “Let me think.”
“What’s there to think about?”
The old man squints at Miguel, hesitant, then stands and holds out his hand.
“I know what you’re up to,” he says. “You’re not leaving me out here for the vultures.”
Brewer is about to set out in search of Cassius when he spies some sort of godforsaken fire-spawned beast hobbling and scraping down the road toward his place. Two heads, three good legs, filthy clothes, bloodshot eyes festering in blackened faces. A man and a boy, Brewer realizes as it gets closer. Illegals who managed to escape the flames. The wets normally avoid his property, maybe sneak on to use his faucets now and then. If these two are coming right up the driveway in broad daylight like this, they must be in trouble.
Brewer drops his walking stick and daypack and picks up the machete he was using earlier to hack away burned brush. He feels a little safer with it in his hand.
“Hola,” he calls out.
The kid holds up an empty soda bottle. “Can we get some water?”
Brewer points to a spigot with the machete, and the kid walks to the faucet, leaving the man he’s with to stand unsteadily on his own.
“Speak English?” Brewer says.
“I do,” the kid replies. He twists the handle on the faucet and holds the bottle under the stream of water that gushes out.
“Picked a bad day to cross, didn’t you?” Brewer says.
“Cross?” the kid says.
“The border.”
“We’re legal,” the kid says, irritated. “We’re just looking for someone.”
Maybe, maybe not. Regardless, the man is going to topple over soon without the kid’s support. Brewer motions him to the picnic table. “Have a seat.”
The man shakes his head. “Is okay,” he says.
“Come on,” Brewer insists. “Take a break.”
The man glances at the kid before limping to the table. He sits facing outward on the bench, bows his head and rubs his eyes with his palms, exhausted. The kid finishes filling the bottle and brings it to him. The man drinks deeply, then hands the bottle back to the kid, who finishes off the water.
“What happened to your foot?” Brewer asks the man.
He starts to speak, but the kid talks over him. “He sprained his ankle. Can we have more water?”
“As much as you want,” Brewer says. “How long you been looking for whoever you’re looking for?”
“My cousins,” the kid says. “A few hours. The cops wouldn’t let us drive any farther.”
The man scolds the kid in Spanish, tells him to keep his mouth shut. The kid snaps off a retort before crouching at the faucet again.
“He your dad?” Brewer asks.
The kid nods grudgingly.
Brewer walks to the picnic table and holds out his hand. “Henry Brewer,” he says.
“Armando Morales,” the man replies. They shake, and Brewer turns to the kid.
“Henry Brewer,” he says again.
“Miguel.”
“Sorry I mistook you.”
Miguel shrugs, doesn’t reply.
Brewer scratches the silver stubble on his chin. Father and son way out here on some sort of rescue mission, searching for family. That kind of devotion makes you look back at your own record. He sits down with Armando at the table and asks where they’re headed, has Miguel translate. Armando is reluctant to say, mumbling something about a canyon that Miguel has to ask him to repeat twice before he can put it into English.
“I know every canyon between here and Calexico,” Brewer says. “Maybe I can help you out.”
Armando is interested but still wary, and Brewer understands. A white man like him asking questions must set off all kinds of alarms.
So suddenly this Henry Brewer is all up in their business. Miguel’d like to tell him to fuck off, because he’s pretty sure Papá was about to admit defeat and head back to the truck a few minutes ago, but now the old man is all revved up again, showing Mr. Brewer the map and making Miguel repeat El Chango’s story of last night’s crossing.
When Mr. Brewer goes into the trailer for a better map, Miguel reminds Papá what he said a while ago about one more hour. The old man lays into him, says they’ll be home soon enough and asks why he never thinks of anybody but himself. If that’s true, Miguel wants to say, then why isn’t he at home right now, hooking up with Michelle, instead of out here chasing ghosts around the fucking desert?
Mr. Brewer comes out carrying three beers. He sets one on the table in front of Papá and offers one to Miguel. Miguel takes it without asking the old man if it’s okay and walks over to look at a partially burned tree hanging over the trailer. Let the old man and Mr. Brewer see what kind of plans they can make without him translating.
“The canyon I think you’re looking for is about two miles away,” Mr. Brewer says.
“Okay,” the old man says. “We go.”
“Yeah, but that ankle.”
Papá stomps his foot twice. “We go.”
Miguel picks up a singed leaf off the ground, crumples it between his fingers. Dude lives like a caveman out here. It’s hilarious. And this beer: fucking Natural Light, fucking welfare brew.
“I’ll walk you there,” Mr. Brewer says to Papá.
The old man is confused. He looks to Miguel for a translation.
“He wants to come with us,” Miguel says.
“I was going out to try to find my dog anyway,” Mr. Brewer says, pointing to a walking stick and a knapsack containing a bottle of water and a windbreaker.
Papá sips his beer, thinking it over. Miguel can tell that he’s taken a liking to this fool and wants to believe that he knows what he’s talking about. He’s not surprised when, a few minutes later, the old man says, “Okay, but we go now.”
Mr. Brewer disappears into the trailer again, then pokes his head out seconds later and calls for Miguel. “Take these to your dad,” he says, handing over a set of aluminum crutches.
Miguel carries the crutches to the old man, but holds them just out of his reach. “If this isn’t the right canyon, we give up and go home,” he says.
“Fine,” Papá replies. “But you better show this man respect.”
Ha, Miguel thinks. Old people are always talking about respect. They demand it from everybody but don’t give to anyone.
Papá tucks the crutches under his arms and takes a few tentative steps.
Brewer has hiked this whole area, followed every Jeep road, tried every trail. He doesn’t play golf, doesn’t care for casinos, so walking is how he uses up his days, how he wears himself out and earns his evening whiskey. Sometimes he thinks he quit working too soon. He slept soundly when he was on a job, never once woke at 3 am with a hundred pounds of sadness resting on his chest.
He leads the way, calling for Cassius every so often, and Armando and the boy follow. Armando keeps a good pace on the crutches. The actual trail used by the coyotes zigzags through the hills and runs up and down brush-choked ravines, but since Brewer and the pair he’s leading aren’t trying to avoid the authorities, they can walk the first mile on a good dirt road, to where the steep, rocky canyon Armando described climbs to the railroad tracks on the outskirts of Campo.
Brewer checks over his shoulder often to make sure the man and boy are keeping up, and after 15 minutes hollers back to them, “Still with me?”
“Yes. Good,” Armando replies.
The boy says nothing. He’s not happy about traipsing around the desert and can’t hide it. The disdainful looks he was giving his father back at the trailer would have led to blows between strangers. Brewer can identify with the kid though. When he was that age, Dad would tell one of his stolen jokes and Mom would laugh and he’d want to bite his tongue off. Their blood was like poison in his veins.
He stops for a second to take a sip of water and consult the map. The sun long ago reached its peak and is now sliding swiftly toward the horizon. Armando and the boy will have to hurry if they’re going to check the canyon and get out by dark.
The Sharp brothers’ Jeep is blocking the road when they round a bend. Both men are outside the truck, Steve studying the burned landscape through a pair of binoculars, Matthew drinking a beer. Matthew spots them before Brewer can holler a greeting, and fear blanks his face. He drops the beer, draws his Glock and points it.
“Halt!”
“It’s just me,” Brewer says, waving his walking stick over his head.
“Who’s that with you?”
“A couple of friends.”
Steve’s pistol is out now too. The guns don’t frighten Brewer, but the men holding them make him a little nervous. Still, he ambles toward them, a big smile on his face.
“What is this, the OK Corral?” he says.
“Levante tus manos,” Steve shouts at Armando and Miguel.
“Come on now,” Brewer says, but the brothers ignore him. Steve orders Armando and Miguel to lie on the ground, facedown, and father and son do as they’re told. Brewer reaches out to grab Matthew’s arm as he steps out from behind the Jeep and moves toward the prone figures.
“You’re over the line,” Brewer says, but Matthew shakes off his hand and continues to advance, his gun swinging back and forth between Armando and Miguel. Brewer has to hold himself back from going after him, from ripping the Glock out of his hand and shoving it in his face to let him feel what it’s like to be on that end of it.
Matthew bends over Armando and pats him down, then slides the man’s wallet from his back pocket and flips it open.
“License and green card,” he announces. “Looks legit.” He fingers a bit of cash. “And something like fifty bucks.”
“Leave it,” Steve barks.
Miguel hands Matthew his ID. Matthew glances at it, then drops it into the dirt and walks back to Brewer and Steve. “I thought we might have a hostage situation,” he says to Brewer.
“Is that so,” Brewer replies.
“What are you all doing out here, with the fire and everything?”
“None of your fucking business,” Brewer says. He turns to Armando and Miguel. “You can get up now.”
The pair stand slowly, brushing dirt and ash off their clothes.
“What’s got you sideways?” Steve says to Brewer.
Brewer doesn’t answer. He motions to Armando and Miguel. “Let’s go.”
“Border Patrol woulda done the same,” Matthew says, holstering his gun.
Brewer touches Armando and Miguel on their backs as they pass by, a signal to hurry. Armando’s crutches squeak rhythmically. He and the kid squeeze past the Jeep and keep walking. Brewer waits until they’re well on their way before starting down the road himself.
“Actually, you should be thanking us,” Steve calls after him.
“Horseshit,” Brewer says without turning around.
The fire burned hot here. Not even the blackened bones of the trees are still standing. It’s as if a bomb exploded, leaving only scorched sand and bare rock. Brewer concentrates on this, the destruction, the smoke still billowing in the distance. He’ll not pause to lament the cruelty of man. Better to keep running with that as a given.
Miguel’s foot hurts, a blister on top of his little toe, and he’s hungry too. He checks over his shoulder again, worried that the men in the truck may be following, but the road is clear. It’s funny: He’s lived in the city all his life, and out here is the first place he’s had a gun pulled on him. It’s funny, too, how Mr. Brewer keeps apologizing. The dude acts like they’re going to sue him for what happened.
They eventually leave the road for a trail that weaves through burned scrub oak and Manzanita before depositing them at the mouth of a narrow canyon already deep in afternoon shadow. Papá and Mr. Brewer consult the map and agree that this is the route taken by El Chango.
“I guess I’ll go up with you,” Mr. Brewer says. “Seeing as how I’m already out here.”
“So let’s hurry then,” Miguel says, eager to get this over with. The men act like they don’t even see the sun, virulent orange through the smoke, sitting just a hand’s width above the hills to the west. Miguel decides to lead the way to try to speed them up. He tightens the laces on his sneakers, blows a clot of black snot from his nose and sets off.
The trail is a pale scar running up the middle of the canyon floor, and at first the going is easy, the route fairly level. But then the canyon narrows, and the trail begins to climb. Papá has a hard time of it. The crutches keep slipping, and he falls farther and farther behind. Mr. Brewer hangs back to help him, but Miguel stays out front, still hoping to set a good pace.
Everything in the canyon burned. The chaparral, the grass. Miguel bends to pick up a stick off the ground, and it crumbles in his hand. The trail eventually spits him out onto a sandy flat. The canyon dead ends here, in a hundred-foot wall of rock, but the trail continues, zigzagging up the wall in a series of steep switchbacks. Miguel turns to check the men’s progress just in time to see Papá go down on one knee and Mr. Brewer step forward to lift him to his feet again. It’s going to take them forever to climb out of here.
Miguel kicks at a pile of burned wood. Once, twice, three times. A blackened skull is dislodged and rolls across the flat. Miguel backs quickly away from the pile as he realizes that what he took for wood is bone. A leg that ends in a melted shoe. A clawlike hand. The canyon walls close in, and his tongue swells to fill his mouth. He turns and races down the trail toward Papá and Mr. Brewer, stumbling when he reaches them, falling and sliding painfully across the ground on hands and knees.
“They’re up there,” he gasps. “Dead.”
“You sure?” Mr. Brewer asks.
Miguel nods.
The three of them make their way to the flat together. Miguel hangs back when Papá and Mr. Brewer approach the bones. He doesn’t want to see them again. Papá tosses his crutches aside when he reaches the pile and kneels beside it, reaches out to run his fingers over the remains.
Miguel stares down canyon, following the trail back to its mouth. He imagines the fire funneling up toward Alberto and Maria, their fear when they realized they wouldn’t be able to outrun it, their pain as the flames enveloped them. A shiver runs through him. He doesn’t want to die. Ever.
The sky overhead is now a deep blue streaked with pink and orange, and the first stars flicker weakly against it like they might still go out. Papá and Mr. Brewer discuss what to do next. Mr. Brewer says he’ll hike out by himself. He thinks he can reach the highway before full dark and bring back help. But Papá shakes his head when Miguel translates this.
“I’ll bury them here,” he says. “It’s nobody’s job but mine.”
He sticks his finger down into his sock, fishes around, and comes up with a square of green paper, a hundred-dollar bill folded small. He holds it out to Mr. Brewer. “Thank this man for his help and tell him he has my gratitude,” he says to Miguel. “Then tell him to go home. He’s done enough.”
Mr. Brewer pushes the money aside. “I’m staying,” he says.
“Take it,” Papá says in English. “Please.”
“Let’s get to work.”
They go back and forth, but Mr. Brewer won’t be swayed. The old man finally relents and puts the bill away. He picks up the bag containing the burritos and passes it to Miguel. “Share with him,” he says, nodding at Mr. Brewer, then walks to a spot near the bones, kneels, and begins scooping a hole in the sand.
There are two burritos left. Miguel unwraps one and offers the other to Mr. Brewer.
“You go ahead,” the man says. “I had a hell of a lunch.” He carries a bottle of water to Papá and makes him drink before crouching to help dig.
Miguel thinks maybe he shouldn’t eat either, that it’s some custom the older men know and he doesn’t, but his legs are shaking, and he feels like he’ll pass out if he doesn’t get at least a little food in his stomach. He eats only half of his burrito, though, barely anything, and wraps up the rest and puts it back in the bag.
The men are knee-deep in the grave when he finishes. Papá waves him off when he offers to help, but Mr. Brewer says he could use a break. Miguel replaces him in the hole and begins digging alongside his father.
Papá chuckles and says he can’t believe it. He jokes about how Miguel has always hated having dirt on his hands, how even as a baby he’d run to Mamá when he got the littlest bit of mud on himself and cry and cry until she lifted him to the faucet and scrubbed his fingers clean. It’s not funny to Miguel though. Why don’t you look at me now, old man? he thinks.
Papá refuses to take any breaks, but Miguel and Mr. Brewer switch off every few minutes. The ground beneath the sand is rock hard, so they pull the rubber tips off the crutches and use the crutches like jackhammers to bust up the soil. They work silently except for an occasional grunt or exhaled curse. Sweat runs down Miguel’s face, and he licks his lips to taste it. Neither Papá nor Mr. Brewer admits to noticing when night falls, so Miguel doesn’t comment either. The three of them continue digging in the dark.
Miguel is resting, lying on his back on a pile of freshly excavated dirt with his eyes closed, when Papá declares that they’re finished. The hole is five feet deep. They chopped a step halfway up, which the old man and Mr. Brewer use now, Miguel pulling them the rest of the way out.
Papá sits for a while and drinks some water. He’s covered from head to toe in dirt that’s turned to mud wherever he sweats. He rinses his mouth and spits.
“I need you to bring the bones to me in the hole,” he says to Miguel.
Miguel’s heart stops.
“I can’t,” he says.
“Why not?”
“I can’t touch them.”
“It’s your family.”
Miguel doesn’t respond; he’s crying too hard. Tears and snot and deep, deep sobs, all of a sudden, out of nowhere. He’s ashamed, but also angry. It’s not normal, what the old man is asking. This isn’t Mexico.
Mr. Brewer pats him on the back. “It’s okay,” he says, “I’ll do it,” then walks over to the pile.
Miguel watches the men work. Mr. Brewer passes the remains to Papá, who stands in the grave and carefully lays them at his feet. Five minutes, and they’ve finished. Papá climbs out of the grave, and he and Mr. Brewer sit down to rest. Miguel feels like crying again. He and the old man will never be the same with each other, he knows. This day will forever stand between them.
Swallowing his grief, he walks over and begins shoveling dirt onto the bones with his hands.
“Wait, mijo, I’ll help you,” Papá says.
“I’m fine,” Miguel replies, his voice too loud in the nighttime silence of the canyon. And then there’s only the reassuring hymn of his breath and the grateful sigh of earth returning in darkness to where it belongs.
It’s close to midnight when they finish refilling the grave and stand over it for a minute with bowed heads. Brewer realizes that he’s forgotten all the prayers he ever knew except the childish ones, “Now I lay me down to sleep” and such, and decides he’s fine with that.
Miguel is ready to walk out tonight, says he’ll carry his dad if he has to. He’s got school tomorrow, a track meet. Brewer argues the other side, pointing out how tricky the switchbacks will be for Armando on crutches, especially with no flashlight. Better to hunker down here until dawn, when it’ll take half as long to make the climb and be a lot less dangerous. Miguel’s face falls when Armando decides to wait, and Brewer hates to see him disappointed. He’s a good kid.
“A few more hours,” he says to him.
The boy turns away, doesn’t want to hear it.
The night is plenty warm, and there’s food and enough water if they go easy on it. The three of them sit on the ground with their backs to the canyon wall, and Brewer smokes a cigarette. Lights twinkle in the distance. A ranch in Mexico, on the other side of the fence. The silence is so profound – everything that might make a noise having fled or been burned – that the distant roar of a jet passing high overhead makes them all look up.
Armando and Miguel stretch out on their backs, fingers laced behind their heads. Their breathing slows and deepens. Brewer won’t be able to sleep without whiskey – that’s the way it is these days – but he’s perfectly content to sit and watch over the man and boy and wishes them peaceful dreams.
The stars do their dance for him, wheeling around a bright sliver of moon, and after making sure that all the constellations that he knew as a boy are still there, he divides the sky into quadrants with an eye toward counting. Choosing a section, he begins: one star, two stars, three. He hopes that Cassius made it home, pictures the dog waiting for him when he returns to the trailer.
After an hour he dozes off and finds Charlie Wiggins fishing in a river that he knows but can’t name. His old friend draws his rod back, then snaps it forward, sending his lure into a dappled pool in the middle of the stream. Brewer is in heaven watching him. If this is forever, he thinks, I’m fine with it. Suddenly, though, the light changes. The sun on the water burns brighter and brighter until Charlie is nothing but a silhouette against it and Brewer is no longer able to distinguish his features. He reaches out to pull his friend into the shade with him, but no go. He wakes with a handful of sand and a too-familiar ache in his chest.
Armando has removed his jacket and covered Miguel with it and is sleeping with his arm wrapped protectively around the boy. Brewer is long past pondering how his life would have been different if certain things had happened or hadn’t, but seeing father and son like this, he can’t help but wonder about all that he missed that might have eased his way.
False dawn comes and goes, and the night seems somehow darker, colder, longer. Brewer is restless. He stands and walks, joints popping, to the edge of the flat, looks down canyon, then up toward the switchbacks they’ll climb in the morning. A pale blue glow limns the east wall of the canyon, and the mound of sand marking the grave slowly becomes visible. The boy was 17, the girl 16. They died in each other’s arms.
But, alack, he was but one hour mine, Brewer thinks.
“You and your poems,” Charlie Wiggins once said, lying beside him on a steamy summer evening in a room they shared.
Me and my poems, Brewer thinks now, and somewhere, way off in the unburned distance, a bird wakes and sings.
Richard Lange is the author of the story collection Dead Boys (Little, Brown and Company, 2007) and the novel This Wicked World (Little, Brown and Company, 2009). His work has appeared in The Sun, The Iowa Review, The Best American Mystery Stories, and as part of Atlantic Monthly’s Fiction for Kindle series.