Fierce Bitches (Crime Factory Single Shot) (5 page)

*

Life with the gringo was better on some levels. He was rich and kept them in clean conditions. She was taken out of brothel living and given work doing housekeeping duties around the gringo's various homes. He took them to America. They saw Little Rock, Memphis and Chicago, but less of each other. Lupe was taken out of circulation. She was exclusively for the gringo.

    A year passed in this fashion. Then one morning, men came for her as she dressed. She was taken by riverboat to New Orleans, then by another to Houston and finally by truck back to Mexico. She never heard from, or of, her sister again. She assumed Lupe was dead.

*

The first night she follows the coyotes, she isn't sure why. She has to find her son. She should head to the villages to look, but something she doesn't understand compels her to follow the dogs and find the women. Her son is capable. He was armed and has a commodity to trade now. He would probably be home before she could find him out here.

    She takes shelter during the day and tracks them in the darkness. On the second night, she finds a trail that leads deeper into the mountains and she follows it. She watches for fires and on a ridge not far away, she spots them: a cluster of small caves with lights inside. She sees people moving about. She sees the executioner walking from cave to cave not making a jingle, but accompanied by another remarkable sound, children.

    Perhaps she is delirious from the elements, but she swears Pablo’s voice is among them.

*

She was dropped off on the outskirts of a shantytown in the middle of the desert. There were maybe forty people living there, mostly women, whores like herself there for the pleasure of the guests, men who worked for the gringo, sent to avoid the authorities in America.

    She lived in a tin hut, an oven during the day, a tea kettle in the windy nights. There was a single cantina that represented the only center for commerce and socialization. The cantina owner ran the town for the gringo, often beating the men with a baseball bat for offenses like killing a Maria—a name the men gave to all of the whores, stealing, or fighting amongst themselves. More often he cracked skulls just out of boredom and because he could.

    There were trucks sent weekly to bring fresh supplies or new residents. Occasionally, the gringo sent more men to make an example of particularly bad offenders there. These times, after a public display, the bodies were driven out into the desert and dumped. There was always a telltale circling of birds the next day and coyotes in the night.

    One time only, she and two of the other Marias had taken a hike the day after a killing, following the scavengers in the sky, to find the body of a friend killed by one of the guests, and bury it. Let the mudlarks have his corpse. When the remains were found, each Maria felt they were looking into crystal balls, seeing what end surely awaited each of them. They decided not to bury the bodies after all believing that the quicker the bones were stripped by animals and bleached by the sun, the better.

    Life expectancy was not long for anyone sent to live there.

*

They discover her waiting for them in the path. She is holding a torch and walking slowly up the trail toward them. She knew they would spot her long off if she held a flame and hopefully they would not kill her in surprise.

    They surround her, pointing automatic weapons. She wonders why they had not used the guns in the raid she had witnessed. Maybe they valued stealth too much, maybe they didn't think them necessary or maybe they simply enjoyed using knives and clubs. She doesn't say anything except that she is alone. She follows their lead and they march her the rest of the way to the camp and sit her down beside a fire. She is given something to eat, and she tears into the plate of beans and flattened corn, but the guns leveled at her are never lowered.

    The executioner is summoned and she hears his heavy and distinctive stride that drags one foot. No jingle, though. This is not a scheduled appearance. He approaches from behind her and passes by, letting her get a good look at him before sitting down. He is very large, nearly six foot and probably 250 lbs. Barrel-chested, with a bulging stomach that had been all muscle at one time. His long black hair has strains of gray she can see up close and it is worn in a loose braid down his back. He dresses only in jeans and boots. His back is covered in scars that come and go in the firelight. His arms are massive and dark with tattoos of simple black hashes starting at the shoulder and going all the way to both wrists. He uses the baseball bat like a cane as he walks, dragging his right leg just a bit.

    When he turns around, she nearly cries out.

    His left eye is gone and the cheek collapsed. His jaw looks like it has been broken and set wrong. The lower half is shifted centimeters to the right, making his lips close awkwardly over his unaligned mouth. There is also age that the elements will put on you quick out here. His visage is one of melting wax; still, he is easily recognizable to her.

    "Hello, Ramon.”

    As soon as she speaks, the gasps break out. Hushed and quick, they spread around them and deep into the caves. Then all is silent. He looks at her for a long moment. Sitting forward on a canvas chair that is at odds with the natural environment, and with the heavy end of the bat planted in front of him, Ramon looks for all the world like some barbarian king about to pass judgment.

    When he speaks, it is barely audible. His mouth works in a grotesque way–his words slurred by the contortion of his face. Teeth are missing along his lower jaw and drool escapes when his lips part, but he is not mute, after all. "I suppose you think that it is yours now?"

    She does not look him in the face. The single eye roaming over her is unnerving, but she does not wilt. She nods, staring at the ground. "I suppose I do." More murmurs, then she continues. "If you have my property, I hope also that you have my son.”

*

One of the gringos had latched onto her. He'd stayed in her hut and she rarely took his money. She liked to pretend the one had nothing to do with the other. She'd found it could be an advantage to have one stay with you. Had to be the right type, though, not some psychotic who could flip out in the night and beat you to death or rape you with a bottle or burn you with cigarettes like sometimes happened.

    The advantage was a perverse play at domestication and companionship. They spoke often late into the night. Though they shared no words, she felt there was a spiritual understanding between them. His tones were usually troubled and she countered with soothing ones of her own. She would stroke his hair and sing to him, the same songs Lupe had comforted her with. She whispered her secrets to him while he slept and when he was awake she assured him, "Everything's going to be alright." No overlap of language could have substituted for the communication they shared.

    On the night she confessed her pregnancy to him, he looked at her with an intensity that pleased and frightened her. She knew he had not understood her words and she didn't repeat them with gestures so that he would follow, but he had obviously understood the importance of what she had shared.

    When he set the plans in motion for them to escape, he put himself at risk for her. But in the escape he had killed one his friends. Without hesitation he had sacrificed him because he knew that he would slow them down. And when she looked into his face that was dirty with the blood of both enemies and friends, she knew that eventually she and their baby would slow him down too.

*

They bring her son to her. Pablo looks healthy and unshaken. She smiles, knowing he is a strong boy. The women, her former colleagues, the Marias of the desert, fawn over her son, who had spent the last few days playing with their own children. Some embrace her. Others just nod solemnly when she looks at them. Some of their faces, she begins to recall. They are not old now, but they were never young.

    She understands their life without having to hear the story, and she agrees with the myths they have inspired. They are vengeful spirits; people who’d ceased to exist long ago and become instruments of destruction.

    She clutches her son to her, and looks Ramon in the eye. Ramon, the cantina owner, as shepherd to this gaggle of murderers and father to these many children is a hard concept to grasp. She remembers him as a cruel man. She sees him now that way, too, but there is a difference. Merciless, but not sadistic, is perhaps the best distinction she will come up with.

    Ramon speaks. “Be grateful for the life of your son and go.”

    “I have traveled a long and dangerous journey to reclaim my property.”

    Ramon smiles and slobbers on to his chin. “You want me to give back to you what you stole from me all those years ago?”

    Now she does look him in the eye. "Ramon, you can not stand here and tell me I did not pay for everything I took and more. Not in this company."

    Some of the women nod solemnly.
    He signals for the vinyl sack and when it is placed at his feet, he opens it. It is full of clear bundles of white powder, heroin sent from the gringo and entrusted to Ramon to sell and administer in the shantytown. She and Pablo’s father had taken it and all the cash they could recover from Ramon’s safe when they had fled. Now, Ramon lifts one of the small bags and examines it. “What use do you have for this?”

    “The usual.”

    “And who would buy this from you? Who would do business with you? Who would have use for this who would not simply kill you and take it?”

    "That is my concern."

    “What will you purchase with this?”

    "Freedom.”

*

She remained grateful to Pablo's father, but the fear of what he would certainly eventually do overcame her fondness for him and she killed him before Pablo was even born. She took the money they'd stolen from Ramon's and bought passage out of the country, then she had buried the drugs in the desert, thinking one day, she may return for them when they would serve her and her child.

    She lived on the stolen money till her after her boy was born, then put it away and found herself a pimp. A woman without means, raising a child alone would be an easy mark for bandits.

    Everything she did was for her son. For the future, despite the past. In open contempt of the present, she told him from his birth, he was precious and would be taken care of. Everything would be alright. One day he would be free of the lot she had drawn, it was a promise.

*

On the next daybreak, they set out. The woman and her son—now accompanied by guides who will deliver them through the mountains. These women, these Marias, whores that could not be bought ever again, had become skilled survivalists and killers. They entertain the woman with stories of their children, their victims and the life they have made for themselves.

    They never speak of the time or of the place they had shared. It is something that needs no refreshing. The things that happened there spawned everything that has come since and no other explanation is needed for what any one of them has become. They make observations of her son. He is clever. He is brave. If they see resemblance to his father, they keep it to themselves. Chances are they don’t remember him anyway. Just another gringo. Just another predator escaped.

    They travel together for three days. Before parting ways, they enter a village and make supply purchases as well as buying bus tickets for the woman and her son. The town’s people watch them curiously and give them wide berth wherever they go, but they are treated well and there seems to be routine to the transactions.

    At the bus depot they are approached by an elderly woman. She takes the palms of the nearest Maria and whispers something to her. Then she slips something into her cupped hands and kisses her forehead. The Marias watched her go before revealing that the woman had given them a photograph of a young man and a pouch full of pesos.

    The woman inclines her head to the pouch. "What is that?"

    The Maria holding the money says, "A gesture."

    "Of what?"

    "Appreciation."

    "And who is that?" Meaning the photograph. "A relative?" She doubts it as she asks. The picture does not look friendly. The subject has arrogance present in his mouth and eyes that she has seen many times before. The look as she remembered it generally preceded violence or verbal abuse, at least. She has a feeling that the subject is not long for the world.

    "A man." The Maria's voice is detached and matter of fact, as if describing any common object. A man, a tree, a house. There is no further explanation coming or needed.

    "A bad man?"

    The Maria does not even look at her. "That's a redundancy.”

*

Her son has not spoken during the days after leaving the Marias, but it does not worry his mother, she knows that he is only reserved. When they are on the bus with their supplies and package safe between them, he lies across his seat and puts his head on her breast.

    The bus begins to move. She scans the passengers for potential trouble and finds none. The young men traveling only have eyes for pretty women and the older ones would understand the steel in her hand if not in her gaze. The driver turns on a music box that hurls frenzied swirls of horns and guitars punctuated by laughing singers and radio static at them. The shocks on the bus are either shot or should be. She is jostled about, constantly knocking her head on the window, but none the less sleeps better than she has in weeks.