Playing for the Devil's Fire Read online

  “You’re rich, enano,” Zopilote said.

  “Who’s talking to you, pinche puto?”

  “It’s a free country, no, güey?”

  “So I’m free to break your face?”

  Zopilote laughed. “You and what army, pendejo?”

  Mosca stepped back and raised his fists. “Bring it on.”

  I’d been friends with Mosca since the second grade. I’d never seen him back down from a fight. Most of the time he won, but sometimes he lost. He wasn’t a troublemaker. But for some reason, maybe because he was short or just because he was Mosca, people liked to pick on him.

  “Come on.” I grabbed his arm. “I’ve wasted enough time here.”

  “No, Boli.” Zopilote set his beer bottle on the ground. “Let him try, see how he likes it.”

  We walked away.

  “Chicken.”

  We stopped. “Watch out,” I said. “I’ll let him go.”

  Zopilote raised his fists. “I’m not afraid of him.”

  “Just pray I don’t find you walking alone when Boli’s not there to save your ass,” Mosca said.

  “I didn’t ask him for help.” Zopilote curled his fingers and waved his hand in an obscene gesture. “Mocos güey.”

  Mosca tore away from me and charged. Zopilote’s face twisted. He jumped back. Mosca stopped and laughed. “Yeah, that’s what I thought, cabrón.”

  “Guess what?” Mosca said as we walked away. “They put up new posters for the feria announcing the wrestling.”

  “For real?”

  “They’re all over the wall of the old brick factory.”

  “So who’s coming?”

  “El Zorrillo de León, Subministro Fox, Ruddy Calderón. And guess who else?”

  “Don’t tell me.”

  “El Hijo del Santo!”

  “Bullshit.”

  Mosca crossed his thumb over his index finger and kissed it.

  Last year at the fair, the wrestling matches had been a joke.

  All the wrestlers were nobodies, amateurs from the provinces. But now it was not only El Zorrillo de León, but also Ruddy Calderón. And El Hijo del Santo. That was huge. He was the last of the good guys. A real luchador. A legend just like his father Santo, el enmascarado de plata, the silver-masked wrestler.

  “But there’s one thing.” Mosca grabbed my arm. “The tickets are super expensive.”

  “With a lineup like that, they gotta be like a million pesos, no?”

  We turned the corner. A group of boys was running up the street. It was Raúl Guerrero and three other boys from the elementary school.

  “What do you think’s up with them?” Mosca asked.

  “They probably want to play you for the devil’s fire,” I said.

  “Yeah, they wish.”

  They stopped in front of the butcher shop where Raúl’s uncle worked. Two butchers came out on the sidewalk, their white aprons covered in blood. Raúl pointed to where he’d come from. One of the men nodded and gestured toward the plaza and went back into the shop. Raúl and the boys ran up the sidewalk and crossed the street to meet us.

  “We found a body,” Raúl said. He was panting and out of breath.

  Mosca shoved him. “Liar.”

  Raúl crossed himself. “I swear to God.”

  Mosca and I looked at each other. We had to be thinking the same thing: the body of el profe Quintanilla.

  “We’re on our way to get Pineda,” one of the boys said.

  I grabbed Raúl’s arm. “Where is it?”

  He pointed east. “The Flats. In the weeds right before you get to the dump.”

  Mosca and I ran as fast as we could. The dump was just outside town at the end of a long field where we played soccer and where they set up the feria and the circus whenever they came to town.

  The dump was always smoldering, but there were never any flames, just a long line of whitish smoke that rose like a thin string up to the sky. Most of the time the wind blew the stink away from town. But when there was no wind or in winter when the wind swept up from the east, they could smell the rot all the way to the top of Santacruz where Mosca lived.

  The field was deserted except for a few dozen vultures and crows pecking at scraps and circling the sky over the dump. By the dry weeds, a pack of stray dogs growled and barked at each other.

  We made our way across the dusty field. The dogs raised their heads, waited, then scampered away, their tails between their legs.

  It was not the body of Enrique Quintanilla. It was a woman. She was lying face down. And she was naked. She was missing the fingers of her right hand—just had five red stumps with white bits of bone at the end. But there was no blood. It must have been what the dogs were biting at. She had long black hair. Her skin was pale and tight against her swollen body. It had a weird shine to it like oil. Flies were crawling all over her back and ass and between her legs. It stank of rotten eggs and shit.

  It was the first time either of us had ever seen a naked woman. We just stood there, hands over our nose and mouth, staring at the strange nakedness, at her ass and arms and her wide thighs.

  “She’s…dead, right?”

  I nodded, but I really had no idea.

  “Who is she?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. We were breathing fast, sweating, staring.

  “You think we should turn her over?”

  “What about Pineda?”

  A group of men and women were heading toward us from the row of small wood and cardboard houses that lined the field. The dogs kept watch from a short distance, waiting.

  I don’t know if it was because the woman was naked or because she was dead or if it was the foul stench of rot that mixed with the burning trash that came and went with the breeze, but suddenly I realized something really ugly was happening. A fire burned in my throat. This wasn’t like when we found el profe Quintanilla’s head. This was worse.

  Just as the group arrived and gathered around the body, Captain Pineda’s little Chevy turned off the road and bounced up and down as it cut through the field, its lights flashing like wet fireworks. When he arrived, he pushed everyone out of the way. One of his men covered the body with a white sheet. He waved us off and ordered the women to take us away because this was unfit for children. Then he picked up a rock and threw it at the dogs.

  3.

  I knocked on the door of my grandmother’s bedroom. I was always the one who had to get her to come to dinner. It was never easy. I opened the door slowly. She was sitting in her rocking chair, facing the open window, a Superman blanket over her lap. “Abuela?”

  “Yes, mijo?”

  “Mamá told me to come get you. Jesusa’s serving dinner.”

  “I’m not hungry. Gracias.”

  “Come on.”

  “Thank you, but I’m not hungry.”

  “Ay, Abuela. You know she’s just going to tell me to come back and tell you that you have to come.”

  She was rail thin. Her white blouse hung on her bony frame like a blanket. She had small dark eyes and thin lips. Her translucent skin was crisscrossed with wrinkles like cracks on dry earth. She wore her long gray hair pulled back into a bun set with a big ivory comb.

  “Abuela, por favor.”

  This was how it was. She didn’t like coming to the table. She didn’t eat. She just sat in that rocking chair all day, staring out the window, dreaming of who knows what because the window looked out to the small patio where there were just a few plants in pots and cans and a few rows of laundry line where our maid Jesusa hung our clothes to dry.

  “Abuela?”

  She nodded slowly and raised a delicate hand. “Be an angel and help me up then.”

  We walked into the dining room together. Jesusa came out of the kitchen. She was a small, dark Indian woman from the sierra in Oaxaca. She’d been with us since before I was born. She was quiet and rigid and didn’t let me get away with much. Somewhere, though, in all that toughness, there was a little soft spot. She went aroun
d the table and served soup and quesadillas and green salsa.

  No one spoke. Even Gaby didn’t say a word and she was a chatterbox. She brought home all the gossip and always went into painful detail about everyone and everything.

  Something was going on.

  I thought my parents were angry. I thought maybe if someone said the wrong thing, they would lash out. It was so quiet I could hear our spoons touch the bottom of the plates, my father’s slurps. They were the same sounds we made at every meal, but they were amplified by the silence—the chewing and swallowing. Even the fabric of my father’s sleeve as he reached across the table for a tortilla made a soft noise like a sigh. I closed my eyes. For a minute, I thought I even heard my mother’s heartbeat.

  “She was jealous,” Abuela said suddenly. “She was jealous about my date with Carlitos. That’s what started it.”

  My father glanced at my mother.

  “But it was not my fault. Father arranged the whole thing,” Abuela went on, “because Carlitos is the son of Jorge Tizapa. He runs the terminal at the end of the port. It’s true, they are very wealthy. But I do not care for him.” She pouted. Then she nodded and whispered, “He’s a dandy.”

  “Mamá,” my mother interrupted. “Please, not tonight.”

  Abuela ignored her and looked at me as if I were someone else. “My father thinks he can control me.”

  “Esperanza,” my father said. “Por favor.”

  “What?” She stared at my father. “What ever happened to that boy from Xalapa, what was his name?”

  My mother tapped her fingers against the table real slow like the second hand on a clock: tap, tap, tap, tap. I guess she’d had enough. But I don’t think my abuela had any clue of the tension in the room. She went right on with the tale of her sister’s unchaperoned adventure in Veracruz in the 1950’s. We’d all heard the story a dozen times. When she finished, she placed her hand on mine and smiled. “How is it at the university?”

  She was crazy. Ever since my grandfather died, she’d been forgetting things and talking of the old days as if they were happening right now. That’s why we ended up moving into her house. We used to live in a big house near the highway, but she refused to move in with us so my father sold it and we moved in with her. Her house was just like a lot of the other houses near the plaza: old with thick walls and small rooms, a patio in the center and iron bars on the windows. It wasn’t bad. Gaby and I had our own bedrooms, but we had to share the bathroom with Abuela. The living room and dining room were connected through a big archway where all the family stuff like pictures of my first communion, Gaby’s quinceañera, my parent’s wedding photos, and an old black and white picture of my grandfather with his big mustache were displayed with my grandmother’s collection of porcelain saints and a big pink conch shell sculpture my mother bought as a souvenir from one of our vacation trips to Acapulco.

  Abuela always refused to eat. She only drank coffee with milk and sugar. Most of the time she asked to be excused so she could return to her room. And the only time she ever left the house was on Sundays when we went to church. I liked her because she laughed. In her old age she’d discovered a secret joke that made her happy. I hoped that when I got old, I’d find the same joke because most of the old people I knew were always cranky and mean.

  “I didn’t tell Papá that I had already met Dorian,” Abuela went on. “He was taking photographs on the malecón.”

  Dorian was my grandfather. He started the bakery, Panadería La Esperanza, which now belonged to my parents, and where Gaby and I worked whenever we weren’t in school.

  My mother sighed and rolled her eyes. She tapped her fingers against the table: Tap. Tap. Tap.

  “I was with Isis,” Abuela went on. “We had just had a nice café at La Parroquia and were taking a stroll along the Plaza de Armas. It was a beautiful afternoon. The military band was playing in the gazebo. When we came to the malecón we saw Dorian with his big camera on a wooden tripod. The boy who was helping him was someone Isis knew. His sister worked as a maid at her house.”

  “Mamá,” my mother complained. “Please, your food.”

  Abuela stared at her plate. “But I’m not hungry.”

  “Not again.” Tap. Tap.

  Abuela shrugged and turned to Gaby. “I would just like a coffee with a little milk, please.”

  “You have to eat something, Mamá. You’re skin and bones. Please.”

  “But I am not hungry. A nice little coffee would do me well.”

  Tap. Tap. “Jesusa!”

  Jesusa came into the dining room. “¿Sí señora?”

  “Bring Doña Esperanza a coffee with milk.”

  “Liberio,” my father said. “I need you at the panadería for the next couple of days.”

  “But I have to—”

  “You have to nothing.”

  “Papá, I need to shine shoes.”

  “The only thing you need to do is be at the bakery. Lucio needs help.”

  “But the feria’s coming and—”

  “Liberio.” His tone was firm. “I am not asking you. I am telling you. I need you there. I gave Leticia the week off.”

  “So? She works at the register. All I ever do is clean.”

  “Don’t talk back to me.”

  Jesusa came out of the kitchen with a cup of café con leche.

  Abuela’s eyes followed the cup as if it were filled with gold.

  “You’re the man of the house,” my father said. “You need to take your responsibilities seriously. You need to spend more time helping around here instead of hanging out with that Esteban, shining shoes like a common street boy. You’re not poor.”

  “But I need to make money. El Hijo del Santo’s going to wrestle—”

  “Please, Liberio,” my mother said. “Do as your father tells you.”

  “Maybe if you paid us—”

  “¡Ya basta!” My father slammed his spoon against the table. “The panadería puts the food on our table and the clothes on our backs. You’re doing your part, Liberio, and that’s final.”

  “It’s not fair.”

  “Life is not fair.” He waved his finger. “It’s about time you realized that.”

  “But Papá—”

  “End of conversation.”

  “He was taking a photograph of one of the large freighters,” Abuela said.

  Gaby grinned. I couldn’t tell if she was trying to make me feel better or rubbing it in.

  “He allowed us to look through the camera,” Abuela went on. “We had to cover our heads with a black cloth. The image appeared on the glass. It was very clear, but it was upside down.”

  My mother actually smiled. “How’s your coffee, Mamá?”

  Abuela glanced at her cup, at my mother, and then her eyes wandered around as if she’d been pulled out of a dream. “Good. It’s always good.”

  My mother reached across the table and placed her hand over hers. “I’m glad.”

  After my parents left the table, I looked at Gaby. “What’s their problem?”

  She shrugged and turned to the living room. She had her priorities. Her telenovela was going to start.

  Later that night, I was lying in my bed reading Super Luchas, my favorite wrestling magazine, when I heard my parents in the living room. I slipped out and tiptoed to the end of the hallway. My father was sitting in the big chair where he always sat. My mother was standing, leaning against the couch.

  “I don’t understand, why her?” my father said.

  “That girl was a tramp, Alfonso.”

  “Por favor, Carmen, don’t call her that.”

  “I’m not saying she got what she deserved. It’s a terrible tragedy. But—”

  “But what?”

  “Quiet down, you’re going to wake up the children.”

  He lowered his voice. “Rocío Morales was a human being. She was a lovely girl. She did not deserve the judgment of the community. And certainly not this—”

  Rocío was Leticia’s
cousin and the daughter of Ignacio Morales. She was real pretty. She always dressed like a model in a magazine and smelled of perfume. My mother never liked her, probably because she didn’t go to mass and hung out at the cantinas, La Gloria and even El Gallo de Oro.

  “Leticia said she was seeing a man from Michoacán.”

  “That’s impossible,” my father said.

  “Oh, and how would you know?”

  “No, no. I don’t. I just thought she was seeing someone else.”

  “She probably was. I’m sure she slept with half the town.”

  “Enough, Carmen. Besides, I don’t see how all this is connected.”

  “Alfonso, you need to wise up, mi amor. What happened to Enrique Quintanilla was not just any crime. Enrique was too much of an activist. Did you think we would be immune forever? The whole country is infected.”

  “What I’m saying is that we don’t know anything for sure. Nothing like this has ever happened before.”

  “And until six months ago we didn’t have a four-lane highway passing by our town, going from the coast, through Michoacán, and straight into Mexico City. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say the governor built the damn thing to make it easier for his amigos to do their dirty business.”

  My father shook his head. “In the morning, I’ll go see Ignacio and offer him our condolences.”

  “Dios mío, I can’t imagine how he must feel. Alfonso, if something like that ever happened to Gaby—”

  “No, don’t think that way. After I see Ignacio, I’ll go to the municipal building and see if Captain Pineda has any idea what’s going on.”

  “I’m worried for the children,” my mother said.

  “They’ll be fine.”

  “I’m sorry?” She stared at him. “Two murders, and Rocío Morales. Just because you—”

  “Carmen, please. Stop.”

  “And there’s no school for the next two days.”

  “They’ll be at the bakery.”

  They fell silent. My father stood and went to the end of the room and poured himself a drink.

  “You’re staying up?” my mother asked.

  “I don’t think I can sleep right now.” He took a drink and whispered, “Poor Rocío.”