Bulletproof Vest (16 page)

With a single leap he turned the horizon right side up and then all four limbs were pumping as he sprinted along the river, swatting low-hanging branches while gunshots rang out behind him. He reached the waterfall and scaled down the slick face of the slate next to it. His overalls catching and tearing on thorny branches as he descended. Down he went, slipping and sliding on the moss until he landed in the mouth of the waterfall. He didn't know how to swim and was carried in the current, kicking and clawing like a drowning cat, breaking the surface now and again and taking a mouthful of air, the muffled blasts still roaring through the trees above, and then again he was under—air and water, water and air. It seemed his life had been reduced to two choices: death by water or death by gunfire. The river raged around him, but he managed to break the surface and stay afloat long enough to realize that he was drowning in a river that was barely knee deep. Coughing and cursing, he dragged himself to the muddy bank, and soon he and Salvador were running side by side along the ravine.

Even before they reached the house, they could see their mother in the courtyard, struggling to hang a soaked wool blanket on the clothesline while their father sat beneath the shade of the tin roof, leaning against the adobe wall, cracking toasted pumpkin seeds between his teeth. Jose was running barefooted, holding a sandal in each hand, Salvador limping along next to him. Their overalls were torn, mud-streaked, and soaked, their faces scraped and beet red from the sun and the chase, and before their parents could ask what had happened, they were already talking over each other.

“It was Fidel,” Salvador said, bending over and gripping his knees when he reached the gate.

“He came looking for the bull,” Jose said, trying to catch his breath. “And,” he inhaled this word.

“He shot the dogs,” Salvador said, throwing his arms up in the air.

“And then,” Jose said, exhaling and pressing his right hand into his side.

“He started shooting at us,” they practically shouted in unison.

“That son of a bitch shot at
you
?” their mother asked, glancing back at her husband.

They nodded their heads.

“And what did you do?” she asked.

Jose and his brother cocked their heads and looked at each other, as if this was a trick question.

“We ran away,” they said, wrinkling their sunburned noses.

With a single thrust of the hand, their mother pushed the wool blanket aside and stood glaring at them.

“That culo de fuera doesn't have a sliver of land to drop dead on, and you're running away from him?” she said, taking two steps toward them. They both scurried away from the gate. “What will people think? That I'm raising a house full of cowards?” And with that final word, she sliced through the air in front of her with her right hand and held it midair, as if to make sure the boys got a good look at it, at her missing thumb—a reminder that she had lost it, not because she had run away, but because she had stayed and fought like a man on the night that two imbeciles had taken her husband by surprise. She and her husband had been at a wedding where he had exchanged words with two men, and when Belén and her husband were saddling up to leave, the two men had descended on them, shooting at her husband, and since Belén always carried a gun, she had shot back at the men and had managed to stave them off, but had gotten her thumb blown off in the shoot-out.

If there was one thing Belén could not tolerate, it was a coward. Though she stood only five feet tall, she was a fighter. She was born on the eve of the Mexican Revolution, in the spring of 1910, and had grown up in a war-torn country. When she was a child, a man had come to their corral and shot her brother, and when the man tried to escape, Belén's mother slammed the gate on his horse's face. The horse reared, the man was knocked unconscious, and before he came to, her mother had climbed the stacked-stone wall, dropped several heavy stones on his head, and crushed his skull.

“Ya, vieja,” her husband said in his singsong voice, brushing pumpkin seed shells off his trousers. “That will teach them not to be messing with things that don't belong to them. I'll have a word with Fidel. Ya. Leave them alone.”

“Leave them alone?” She glowered at him—he who was the biggest coward of them all, a coward for not having had the cojones to ask for her hand. Instead, he had taken her by surprise near the river. She had been scrubbing clothes near the water's edge, and by the time she heard something rustling in the bushes behind her, it was already too late. His arms reached out from the bushes, wrapped themselves around her small waist, and before she knew it, she was being dragged through the dirt and up the hill, where an abandoned adobe shack sat among the huisaches. She elbowed and cursed at the tall white man and managed to break away, break into a sprint, but at six feet two inches, his long legs easily overtook her. He hoisted her over his shoulder, held her knees tight against his chest, her rib cage grinding against his shoulder blade, bone on bone, as he carried her to the shack. “No son of mine will grow up to be a coward,” she said. “Nunca.” She practically spat this final word at her husband's feet before turning and disappearing into the house.

After the struggle in the shack, she had arrived back home in her torn and mud-streaked dress. A date was set, but due to the struggle she was unable to wed in a white wedding dress—the coward had taken that rite of passage from her, and for that she would forever harbor a deeply rooted rancor toward him.

“Never again do I want to hear that you are running away from anyone,” she said, emerging from the house, carrying two of her husband's pistols, and handing one to each of her boys.

“Ya, vieja loca,” her husband said, and she turned and silenced him with a single glance.

Jose stared at the shiny .22 caliber pistol in his hand, taken by how beautiful it was. He had never shot a pistol before, and only once had he shot anything with his father's rifle. It was a clear and windless day, and he was up at the ranch when he heard the rattling sound coming from the treetops. He thought it would pass like it always did, but instead it grew more intense and though the wind was not blowing, he felt a cool breeze on the back of his neck. When he turned around, he saw it, coiled up on the boulder behind him. He aimed the rifle at it and fired a single shot. The blast ripped the rattlesnake in half, and long after it had stopped writhing on the boulder, its tail was still going, and it was then he realized that the trees did not rattle.

“Next time someone shoots at you, let them have it,” she said, looking at the boys. “Anyways, if you should ever land in jail, we've got money.” And with a huff she turned and vanished into the house.

It was really Timoteo, her father-in-law, who had money. His house sat on the southern end of the plaza in town and took up an entire city block. It was a two-story, eight-bedroom house with thick adobe walls that were lined with limestone, so it kept the heat in on those cold winter nights and stayed cool on blistering summer days. Fig and pomegranate trees thrived in the courtyard, and red bougainvillea sprawled up and around the staircase. In the rear of the courtyard, heavy wooden doors led to the corrals and horse stables, which spanned three blocks deep, and in the front of the house, two pink limestone arches stood tall and proud, facing the only other buildings in the plaza—the cathedral, the judicial building, the livestock registry, and the prison.

Had there been a bank, it probably would have sat on Timoteo's end of the plaza, right on his property. But there was no bank in town, and those who had money kept their gold and silver coins hidden inside clay jugs or wooden trunks. On Sundays, when the town filled with people coming from the nearby ranches to the mercado, Timoteo sat in front of the two limestone arches, a trunk filled with coins next to him, and those who were less fortunate stopped by for a chat and a small loan—a deal that was sealed with nothing but a handshake.

It was also Timoteo who had had the foresight to purchase a family plot in the cemetery on the hill on the outskirts of town. He owned several properties, including the four-hundred-acre ranch with the freshwater spring and the two waterfalls, where Fidel had surprised the boys. And he too owned the house in the old hacienda of La Peña where Belén and her husband lived. It was in La Peña that Belén had given birth to eleven kids. Jose had been her sixth and most difficult pregnancy. He'd kick at the walls of her abdomen with such force that it sent her reeling. “This kid has the devil in him,” she would say each time she felt the force from within. Of the eleven kids, four died in infancy, two boys and two girls, and of the seven that survived, Antonio, as the eldest, felt that defending his younger brothers' honor was his God-given duty.

A few weeks after the chase, Jose and Antonio were riding back to La Peña from the ranch. It was noon and they were traveling along the river, staying close to the shade to keep the sun from biting their shoulders. Fidel was from Santana and had just set out in the opposite direction, hugging the shade along the ravine as well, and on the outskirts of Santana, their paths collided.

“Quiubole,” Antonio said, throwing his head back and staring down the long ridge of his nose at Fidel, who was roughly his age.

“Buenos días, Antonio,” Fidel said, pulling on his horse's reins and glancing over at Jose, who was a sorry sight.

“O, o,” Jose said, pulling on his horse's reins as it jerked about as if trying to shake a fly off its back. The horse had just been broken and wasn't used to having a rider on its spine, or the taste of metal pressing on its tongue. “O, o,” Jose said as he slid around in the saddle, his toes protruding from the stirrups, halfway out of the sandals that had a piece of twine looped through the buckle to keep them from falling apart. He had managed to fix his sandals, but his overalls had been unsalvageable and he was now wearing an old pair of Antonio's jeans, which were two sizes too big and were held in place by a brown leather belt. The gun his mother had given him was tucked into the belt and already bothering him, pressed against the small of his back.

“I hear you're a real tough guy with those who are younger than you,” Antonio said, leaning back in his saddle.

“They shouldn't have stolen my bull,” Fidel said.

“Stolen?” Antonio said, trying not to laugh. “It was your bull that roamed into our property. If it wasn't such a handsome animal, I may have put a bullet in it myself, skinned it, and roasted it over an open fire. What do you think of that?”

“I don't let my cattle roam free,” Fidel said, glancing over at Jose. “I think someone may have opened the gate to my corral.”

“Are you calling my brother a thief?” Antonio said. “You do know what they do to cattle thieves around here, don't you?”

“Look, Antonio, I don't want to have any problems with you…”

“Let me tell you what the problem is, Fidel, just so there aren't any misunderstandings,” Antonio said, flicking his hat up and leaning forward in his saddle. “The problem is you chasing my brothers down the river and shooting at them as if they were a couple of dogs. That's the problem.”

“Oh, come on, Antonio. I was just trying to scare the scoundrels,” Fidel said. “You think if I had really wanted to hit them, I wouldn't have?”

“Who knows,” Antonio said. “Word around town is that you're a pretty bad shot.”

“Is that so?”

“Word around town is that you couldn't hit your target if it was two feet in front of you,” Antonio said, grinning.

Fidel may have been a bad shot, but he was quick on the draw, and before Antonio had the chance to fire a single bullet, two shots rang out around him. Jose's horse had never been in such proximity to gunfire and it reared with such force that it ripped the reins from Jose's grip and took off at full stride toward the mountains. One of the bullets missed, but the other hit Antonio's white mare in the forehead, cracking through her skull and piercing her eardrum, before flying out her ear and burying itself in Antonio's right arm. Antonio's gun went off only once, when it hit against a rock before disappearing into the river. Heavy with blood, his mare went down; she slumped forward and her front legs gave way as her neck craned, sending a ripple through her spine and her body crashing down, pinning Antonio's leg under her weight.

“O cabrón, o,” Jose said, using that deep manly voice that still wasn't his own. He managed to regain control of the horse and by the time he turned it around, his heart was already throbbing in his ears. From afar he saw Antonio struggling next to his mare, a pool of blood spreading around them. He watched as Fidel aimed his gun at Antonio and cocked the trigger—and what should he do? There was no time to think. He tightened his grip on the reins, reached for the .22, aimed at Fidel and unloaded it, firing four shots in a row. With each blast, the space around him filled with a loud ringing sound that drowned out the beating of his heart.

Two of the bullets missed, but the other two hit their mark and left Fidel dangling from his horse.

*   *   *

“Did Fidel die?” I asked my father, the first time he ever told me this story. We were riding through Santana, near the same ravine where the shooting had taken place. His story was always the same—he was twelve years old, it had all started due to a misunderstanding over a bull, and his mother had handed him that first gun.

“Imagine,” he would say when he got to the part where she had handed him the pistol. “My own mother.”

Though the shooting had happened over the weekend and nowhere near the school, he was expelled because of it. His teacher had tried to argue on his behalf, saying that he was a bright student, and surely expulsion was not the answer. But the school's directora would not hear of it. A boy who was capable of shooting a man was capable of anything. And what if he decided to bring his gun to school? He could be a threat to the other students, and this was a risk the directora was not willing to take.