Sweet Nothing (20 page)

Brewer 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 looking for someone.”

Maybe, maybe not. Regardless, the man is close to toppling over 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, take a break,” Brewer insists.

The man limps 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.

“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?”

“Get 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.

“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 why. A gringo 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, asks why he never thinks of anybody but himself. If that's true, Miguel wants to say, why isn't he home right now, hooking up with Michelle, instead of out here chasing ghosts around the 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 plan 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 from the ground and crumples it between his fingers. Dude lives like a caveman out here. It's hilarious. And this beer: fucking Natural Light, fucking welfare swill.

“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 hiking pole and a knapsack containing a bottle of water and a windbreaker.

Papá sips his beer, thinking it over. Miguel can tell 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 it 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 three a.m. 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 guiding 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 fifteen minutes hollers back, “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 feels for the kid. When he was that age, Dad would tell one of his stolen jokes and Mom would laugh and Brewer would want to bite his tongue off. Their blood was like poison in his veins.

He stops for a second to sip 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 draws his Glock and points it.

“Halt!”

“It's just me,” Brewer says, waving his hiking pole 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 nervous. 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 twenty 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 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
pendejos
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.

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'll go on 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, a 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 a stick up 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. 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 mouth dries out. 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 says. “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.”