an excerpt from

Allegiance

by Derek Blass

P A R T  O N E

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T H E  B O R D E R

O N E

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Blown sand stung his face like tiny darts shot from an invisible enemy. He lay prone in the desert, his tan and chocolate fatigues doing little to combat the heat that emanated through the earth. A row of ants marched just beyond his shadow, providing him a distraction as he waited for his targets to crest the hill in front of him.

He turned his head when he heard the howl of wind from his left—the incessant source of the sand. Grainy pellets struck the back of his cap and then subsided. He looked back at the hill and thought he saw the hazy outline of a person’s head, surely a mirage. With a quick snap, he pulled binoculars from a side pocket and propped up on his elbows.

Sure enough, it was the top of a person’s head, the molecules around the figure shimmering in the distant heat wave. The rest of the body appeared slowly as the head bobbed from side to side. Bushy, caterpillar eyebrows poked up. A glossy, heat-soaked face took form.

He put the binoculars down and whispered to the woman next to him, “¿Hay más?”

She put her own binoculars down and pulled the bandanna from her mouth. “Many more.” He looked back at the hill and four other people surrounded the man struggling up the incline. They all panted and struck various poses while catching their breath—hands on knees, hands behind head, crouched down with head between legs.

“Go time?” she asked.

“Let them get closer,” he answered. The group of people was about four hundred yards away. He watched them as they battled the intense heat and worked to recoup their energy. The sun’s unrelenting rays beat down on them. Their lips were chalky white and their normally brown skin was pale and sickly—initial signs of heat exhaustion.

They managed to press forward though, a testament to the oft-forgotten or unused human will. When they neared a little over two hundred yards away, he turned to her, gave a quick gesture with his head in the direction of the group of people, and picked up two jugs of water. She grabbed her bag of food and jogged toward them. He followed behind her, the water sloshing in the jugs and making balance challenging over the uneven desert terrain.

The people froze when they saw these two figures coming in their direction. A man, the same one who first crested the hill, put his hands out to his sides to get the rest of the group to stop. He stood alone, the tip of a triangle.

When they were just about to reach yelling distance from the group, they all heard a crack, like a distant tree branch falling. Both he and the woman froze. Another crack and one of the jugs of water spun out of his hand. Water gushed out onto the sand, creating a silhouette on a golden background. Then it seemed as if a shooting gallery erupted. He fell face down, the desert floor grinding against his cheek.

The lead man in the group of people waved his arms in the direction of the firing until one of the bullets connected. He screamed as his hand was ripped off. A second shot and he was silent, lifted into the air, angelic for a moment before crashing to the ground.

With the jug of water by his side, the man in fatigues grabbed the woman’s foot. She glanced at him, a look of terror in her bloodshot eyes. The bandanna had fallen off of her face, revealing her trembling lips.

The sound of firing ended as abruptly as it had started and was replaced by the crescendo of engines. The grumble grew louder until he worried they were going to get run over. Without moving his body he shifted his head to look in the direction of the engines.

Three tan jeeps bellowed across the ripples in the desert sand. He could smell trace exhaust fumes. The jeeps closed on him and the woman until the last moment. The unrefined roar of the engines deafened every other sound, including his own breathing. The lead jeep braked, spun sideways, and sent up a plume of dust and sand which enveloped them.

The crunch of several footsteps was all he could make out in the dust around them. Then, nothing but a face emerged from the brown cloud, peering at him from several inches away. A copperish-brown stream of spit shot from the person’s mouth.

“Well, look like we got two-of-’em angels.” The man couldn’t see the butt of a rifle swing up and then come down toward his own face until the last moment, which coincided with the world turning black.

* * * *

A hand pecked at the back of his head, bringing him out of one darkness and into another. Stench permeated the air. A mix of disease and bodily fluids filled his nose even when he didn’t breathe. There was no sense that air had moved in this place for decades. He must be inside. That’s when he felt the cloth wrapped around his eyes loosen and fall to his neck. More darkness—no indication of light. It was as if he sat suspended in a vast, pitch-black vat.

Click. A light barreled over his face. He threw his head back and then down, using the top of his head as a shield. The burn of the light on his eyes stayed for several seconds before fading back to black.

“Your name.” The words didn’t reach him, only their echo. As if they were uttered from some holographic voice beyond the edge of his space. He managed to choke out half an expletive before the echo reached him again, this time with a hint of force and urgency. “Your name.”

He got the expletive out, “Fuck you!” The light switched off and he raised his head. Footsteps rasped against the floor into the distance. “Hey! Where’d you go?!”

That was the last contact he had for an indescribable period of time. Unbeknownst to him, his captors waited an exact time—three days—before returning to his cell. The body can survive for a week without water at the temperature they kept him. Three days was the beginning of a breaking point, which was marked by his transition from vehement cries, to pleas, to gut-wrenching screaming, to low and long moans.

With no sense of when he was placed in the room, he also had no idea how much time had passed. His hands were tied behind his lower back, his feet bound to the legs of his chair. Initially, he contemplated breaking the chair. He gently rocked it to test its sturdiness. One of the legs wiggled. The thought of falling to his side and dislodging the leg crossed his mind, but so did the thought of being bound to the chair and stuck on his side. Somehow, being upright was critical, a last modicum of control.

The torture began with the absence of hypnotic daily events. The standing, stretching and looking out a window to see the weather that marked the beginning of days. Those involuntary acts, like breathing, violently removed from his life. All he wanted to hear was a gust of wind or the smack of a raindrop. Something to tell him he wasn’t hundreds of feet below the earth, in a chamber hardly wider than the shaft leading to it.

He screamed questions which he answered before the echo stopped.

No noises came from his captors. His eyes served no purpose. Only his nose remained on duty, and in time he was able to pick out the different bodily functions, his own and those of previous inhabitants. Oftentimes he spent hours with his head tilted back, eyes shut, briskly wafting in the smells. Without this he would have gone insane—the smell of his own shit somehow served as a ground.

He bit off a corner of his lip when the hunger and dehydration began to toy with his will.

Somewhere deep in the onyx fog around him a sound was created. He stopped breathing at once. Even the sound of his heart could drown out something that faint. He turned his head left and then right, having determined sometime in the last few hours that his left ear, indeed, was his best ear. Then there was a click and he could smell body odor, not necessarily pungent or offensive—manly.

“Hello?” he whispered.

“Your name,” replied the voice, like a robot programmed to deliver those two words and nothing else.

He screamed and started to wail, thrusting alternate shoulders forward and back. “You! You!” he sobbed. “You…”

Patiently, calmly, the voice reiterated its request, “Your name.” The persistence made him want to vomit. Then the voice quadrupled its output, “That there was three days. Next time, four!”

“Okay!!” he spat, a mixture of tears and saliva. “Cruz Marquez!”

Wooden chair legs chattered across the cold floor. Cruz heard a grunt and then creaking of the chair as the man settled in.

“Some water, please,” Cruz gasped, trying to conserve what felt like precious few remaining breaths.

There was a click and then the man said, “Reach out directly in front of you.”

“My hands…”

“That’s right,” the man recognized with another grunt. He untied Cruz’s hands and held the canteen out. “Right in front of you again.” Cruz’s hand met the smooth aluminum body of a canteen. “Drink ’er slowly,” the man added.

The water filled chasms in Cruz’s tongue, which seemingly soaked up the water before it could reach his throat. The impulse was to gorge on the water, not knowing when the next bit would come. But, his body could not tolerate the water in any quantity greater than a slow flow, the normally innocuous liquid having become harmful. Cruz set the canteen down on the floor when he was done with the arduous task of drinking.

“Better?” Cruz nodded his head. “Name is Arnold Lampert. I’m fifty-eight years old, ’bout five-foot-eight, one hundred and sixty pounds. Graying hair, and I don’t mind ’em. That’s just how the shit goes.”

“What? Why are you telling me?”

“I served in the military, Nam. Marines. Whooo-ahhh! Just a grunt, a private, nothing special, but we saw the most. The jungle spread out from our dirty fingers in that place. Spent three years there, then the next thirty-two years working civilian jobs, ’cause I was too messed up in the head,” he said. “Military had no use for us after the war, ya know? Worked as a bartender in various Wisconsin holes, tryin’ to get back some of Nam’s glory—the whores, the drugs, the booze. Spent a long time doin’ that and other easy-access jobs. Insurance agent. Car salesman. Realtor.”

“Then the early two thousands hit and ya know what I started to see? More of y’all,” he seethed. “Country started to go to piss. Was used to dealin’ with the blacks. Hell, I fought and boozed and fucked next to ’em in Nam. Then all of a sudden your Mexicans were in my insurance office, asking me if I spoke Spanish. Mexicans at my car dealership, speaking their spic around me while I sat in the backseat for their test drives. First it was just something I noticed, and it gradually became something I hated, something to be dealt with. That’s why I started all this around ya—Allegiance.”

“Why?”

“Why tell you? Maybe it’s that you’re my captive, subject to my whims, including tellin’ ya ’bout certain personal aspects of my life. Maybe it’s I wanted to give ya some illusion of control. If ya know something ’bout me, ya can create judgments, definitions and categories. Maybe it’s ’cause you’re blind and I wanted to paint myself in your dull, useless eyes.”

“Since we’re doing introductions…”

“I know who you are. There ain’t a Minuteman who doesn’t know you, not if I have any say in that. Cruz Marquez, social activist, lawyer, non-practicing at this point, defeater of the great Sergeant Colin Shaver.”

“That was Raul, not me.”

Arnold grunted. “Sure, in the end, but ya ended him before that, with your work on that trial, with your publication of the video.”

“I disagree.”

Which is your right,” the man said, his words beginning as soon as Cruz’s fell off. “Ya know where you’re at?”

“In a hole with some smooth-talkin’ honk.”

“Ouch! A hole, of some sorts. Geographically though, you’re eight hundred feet inside the Mexican border. This is our deprivation room. I designed it, a room carved out by hand at the end of an eight-hundred-foot passageway. Serving as reclamation of our border.”

“A hidden room in the ground is the best you can do—speaks volumes.”

“Squatting on foreign land is not easy, Mr. Marquez,” Arnold said, some agitation building in his voice. “Except…except if it’s your kind, ain’t that the truth?”

“What do you mean, my kind?”

The legs of the chair chattered and Cruz could feel breath against his cheek. It was well-scented, fresh, and unexpected. His eyes were beginning to recover some of their utility, and he could make out the vague contours of Arnold’s face. A strong brow hovered above two eyes which sunk back into darkness. His face reappeared at the jaws, which jutted out sideways and seemed to be moving, grinding from side to side.

“I know ya want to reach out and grab me, take my neck into your hands and press down with all your strength, crushing my larynx. I’ve done it, it’s not easy. Definitely not for someone where you’re at.” Arnold got even closer. “Your kind—don’t play dumb, Mr. Marquez. You Mexicans, Hondurans, Guatemalans, El Salvadorans, Nicaraguans. The fuckin’ pit of the world, throwin’ up into our country. You know what I mean. How come ya don’t send some goddamn Argentinians over, at least they got a speck of European blood. But no, we get the workers, the indigents, the burnt crust of an old piece of bread.”

Cruz let his head fall to his side, not prepared to engage in a philosophical debate after three days without food and only recently having received water.

“Nothing, Mr. Marquez?”

He raised his head, “Give me some food, water, and let me out of this dungeon if you want to talk about immigration policies.”

Arnold emitted a burst of choppy laughs. “This is far from over, Mr. Marquez! Once I leave ya for another three days, you’ll understand why what I’m doing to ya is a favor!”

Cruz could tell that Arnold stood up, the scrape of his feet moved in the opposite direction. “No, wait, I’ll talk…”

“It don’t matter,” Arnold called back over his shoulder, now at the exit of the panic room. “This process is just startin’.”

T W O

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The gleaming edge of the razor sparkled. Martinez tilted it back and forth, watching the overhead light reflect on the bathroom wall. The feeling gathered like a storm cloud in his chest. He put the razor to his wrist, shaking again. He pulled the blade away and the indent filled with sluggish drops of blood.

Nothing existed around him. The littered floor, used toilet paper rolls, magazines, food. He had spent so much time in the bathroom. It was the only noble place for him to do it. The easiest place for everyone else. They could just come in, pull his body out, spray cleaner on the white tile floor and walls, spruce up other parts of the house and sell it to a cheery couple looking to expand for their first baby. The inevitable rattles of death, the messiest parts of the transaction, all squeegeed away. Considerate to the end.

Martinez had been trapped in that bathroom for months, as that feeling gnawed its way through his resistance. It owned him.

T H R E E

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Sandra listened to the deputy sheriff’s words like they were a eulogy. Five days had passed since Cruz was last seen. She knew he was in the desert, where he had spent so much time since the trial of Sergeant Shaver, which had concluded with a thud. Cruz trying to escape the results of his subsequent investigations into Sergeant Shaver and the depths of his crimes.

The months following the trial were the most difficult, as Cruz received death threats on a weekly basis. Voicemails, emails, notes left under the windshield wiper. He eventually decided to take a hiatus from his practice, which initially flourished with the notoriety of the trial. They moved into an old home in the Mexican desert, and Sandra received permission from her news station to serve as a visiting reporter on the local Mexican news station.

Slow, rhythmic nights, chilled morning breezes, and sunsets that burned the sky mellowed Cruz out awhile. The fickle celebrity spotlight altered its gaze and he returned to the crevices of normalcy. Then the sonar pulse hit him, like a wave of energy that had traveled hundreds of miles. The drive to do more hit him—never fully gone. Excursions into the desert began as hushed visits, too short to be noticeable, until Cruz was returning just as dawn broke.

Sandra asked him where he went, but he just shrugged the inquiries off and fell asleep. One night she feigned sleep and waited for the covers to stir. They didn’t. After waiting several minutes, she was startled by Cruz standing next to the bed, wobbly, with a hand buried in his hair. A breeze through the open French doors pulled the delicate smell of flowers into their room and shook Cruz from his sleepwalk.

She squinted her eyes until they were barely open and waited for Cruz to make his next move, which was toward the closet to sleepily step into his hiking boots. The weight of the boots triggered recognition of his surroundings, and he swiveled his head to look at Sandra. She kept still, and he slid out of the room.

Under the covers, Sandra was prepared for the hike. Several years of marriage and a hot summer night were enough to keep detecting hands away. The front door made its usual creak when opened and Sandra eased out of the bed in that direction. She looked through the glass in the front door, a sliver of the moon refracting into her face. Cruz was nowhere in sight. She shouldered open the door and was met by the symphony of nocturnal bugs.

A three-foot-tall stucco wall surrounded the house, separating them from the wash. The cackle of coyotes dismembering a fallen rabbit often launched out from that wash, twenty seconds of audio chaos, disappearing as quickly as it appeared lest the coyotes give their location away for too long.

Cruz’s silhouette was visible well in front of her. The moon’s pale white light turned him into an inky blob, cutting a direct course into the nether of the desert. Then he stopped, lifted his head to the invisible scent waves moving throughout the world and began a more diagonal path. Wonderment crept into Sandra’s mind. Was he sleepwalking? Was he meeting someone out in the desert, some secret, sandy affair? A red-dressed woman, idling by a midnight oasis, waiting for Cruz to arrive and ravage her.

He stopped again, this time not lifting his head but staring intently. In a slow and smooth motion, he knelt down and then came to rest on his stomach, propped up and focused on the black tidal wave in front of him. Sandra moved closer, until she could see more detail in Cruz’s apparel. She took cover behind a cluster of saguaros, whose symbiotic desert shrubs created a green veil lightly illuminated by the moon. She hid there, periodically poking her head out from the cover to determine Cruz’s position. He hadn’t moved and was still gazing into the nothingness.

She sighed and switched from a kneeling to a sitting position. An owl broke the still night with a soulful scream. Sandra looked out toward Cruz again and jumped back when she caught him looking right back at her. She peeked out again, and he was still looking at her. She swore his mouth was moving, and after a dreamy interval where her vision was not enough to confirm her apprehensions, Cruz made an abrupt, almost violent gesture at her to come in his direction.

The urgency of the movement overcame her and she placed her hand on a saguaro to stand up. A stifled whimper escaped from her lips and then she scurried to Cruz’s side. She held her hand out to Cruz, which had several embedded spines. He grabbed her by the wrist and began yanking out each spine while tears ran down her face. She bled and burned, but could not object to the efficient removal.

“You touched a saguaro,” he whispered. She nodded and he went on, “There is a champion saguaro a quarter of a mile from here. I touched it once—I know your pain.” He pulled the last needle out and turned his attention back to the desert in front of them.

Tiny stones littered the ground and jabbed into Sandra’s softest spots no matter which way she tried to get comfortable. She wondered how Cruz remained so still, but then saw that he was outlined by the same stones. Sandra quietly swept the offenders away from her body, creating a bare patch to lie down on. Through her fog of tears, the desert remained motionless in front of them. The expansiveness so visible in the day turned into claustrophobia in the pitch-black night. A sea of stars glimmered above them, bringing a soft luminousness to the harsh desert features.

Then the obvious question spilled from her mouth, “What the hell are you doing out here, Cruz?”

He ignored the question, enveloped in his singular focus on the desert. A mind-numb trance, all thoughts falling before the eyes, ears and nose. Every data point registering in a web of sense registry. Sandra’s mouth began to form its next question, but Cruz quickly placed his hand on her back and pressed her farther into the ground.

Then she saw them. Three dark-skinned people, alert-looking, not knowing what country they scampered through, but understanding that this was day six of their trip from Chihuahua and that if they weren’t already in the United States, it was surely imminent. They stopped, and one of them lifted a jug of water from the ground. For the first time, Sandra was able to make out a little box above the floor of the desert. She looked at Cruz, who continued his unwavering gaze, like a young child enraptured by the unbalanced ballet of moths around a light.

This is what Cruz had been doing when he was captured, according to the deputy sitting across from her. He was detached, relaying facts in a slow plod, enunciating each syllable with brutal precision, to avoid any accusation that he possessed emotions—positive or negative—as to what she was going through. Ticking off known facts, probable offenders, possible outcomes. Divining, forecasting, reiterating, connecting. Never committing to a conclusion. A la carte policing.

“What are you guys going to do?” she asked the deputy sheriff with some frustration.

“Nothing we can do, as much as we would want to. We have combed the desert and found nothing for five days. Studies show that after the first forty-eight hours, our probability of success decreases to fifteen percent. A quick chill.” She looked at the man. His face was nearly free of wrinkles—in fact, his face hardly moved. He had dark black hair, medium length and plastered to his forehead.

She plucked her purse off of the ground. He meticulously tapped the sides of the stack of documents in front of him on the desk.

F O U R

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Psychosis became his friend in the dark. The man, Arnold, had left his hands free. This wasn’t necessarily good. Idle hands, without a properly functioning central computer, did strange things. Hair tugs, scratches. They developed tics. Their shake was an anchor in this world, a reminder that the normal bounds of physics existed somewhere in the room.

Cruz paced off the dimensions of the room. Side to side, top to bottom. Diagonal. Concentric circles. Twelve by twelve. He searched the walls for seams, handles, loose bricks, fake books on shelves. But they were maddeningly smooth to his touch. A perfectly square room without an exit, as far as he could tell.

The perfection of the construction exhausted him. With some sort of defect, the room would develop so much more character. The flaws could somehow connect him to the outside world, some evidence that his fellow man had been here, toiling underground just like him. Instead, he was in a relentless cube, spinning, until he finally relinquished and let the madness spread. Everything about his resistance to that moment had been grounded in control—control of the situation, control of his mind, control of his environment. The slowly rotating vortex of our lives, which when stopped reduces its owner to a mess of fear and uncertainty.

He gave in and it was so much better.

The sound of clicking came from one of the walls around him. He couldn’t move anymore. The body had relinquished long before the mind. Lights flooded the room and Cruz could hardly close his eyes. He saw someone standing next to him through the fuzz of his eyelashes.

“Come on, drink some of this.” It was Arnold again. When Cruz didn’t respond, he leaned down and poured some water onto his mouth. Cruz’s lips pulled back to his teeth and he sputtered water onto his face. “Drink it.” Cruz shook his head. This wasn’t real, it was another mind game. He had been through this before, a thousand times over and over. Arnold bringing him water. Arnold bringing him food. Arnold escorting him out of the room.

“I’ve got some food for you too, here…” He hooked his arms under Cruz’s and lifted the upper part of his body against the wall. It wasn’t difficult, Cruz had lost significant weight since being captured. All of his water weight was gone, and the skin around his bones looked shrink-wrapped. His face was drawn in, gaunt, replacing the healthy luster and strong shape it had before.

For the next two hours, Arnold got Cruz to hold down some water and food. He opened his eyes and looked at Arnold, then at the room. A manageable amount of light was on. The room was constructed of concrete; the walls were painted black and had long, diagonal scratch marks all over. His own waste covered the floor. The shame of that, with someone else present in the room, was still real. Perhaps one of his last normal feelings. Arnold pulled something from his army jacket pocket. It glimmered and before Cruz could determine what it was, he felt a pinch and his head rolled onto his shoulder.

Somewhere deep in the medicated darkness, Cruz heard himself say, “Didn’t have to do that.”

* * * *

Sandra stood in front of the house. What a sad state of disrepair. Weeds overran the front yard, newspapers crowded the front porch; the only square of grass was yellow and sucked dry by the sun. She straddled the newspapers to reach the front door and rapped on it three times.

“Martinez?” she called out.

There was no response so she knocked again. She tuned her ears to the inside of the house, but heard nothing. A sense of uncertainty crept up as she stood in front of the house, not knowing whether to stay there. She grabbed the doorknob and tested to see if it was locked. It turned, but she had to force the door open.

Stench greeted her first. Piles of clothes, food wrappers and paper covered the entrance to the house. The last moments of a fight with depression are almost always accompanied by a deluge of papers—invoices, letters from friends and family, bill collectors, junk mail. The nonsensical tedium of documents that go unattended in those stages. The smell, something Sandra had never encountered before, made her eyes tear up and burned the inside of her nose. There was no clear path in front of her as the only bare patch on the floor was around the door’s arc.

She wobbled as she stepped onto pudding-like piles of objects. Some were firm, others the heel of her shoe went right through. The most discomforting part of the situation was quickly becoming the fact that Sandra did not hear any sounds other than her own. No television. No low-level buzz of a refrigerator or other kitchen appliances. She finally made it to the living room, which seemed to be the epicenter of the junk collection. Two halls emptied there, so it only seemed natural that all of the refuse would make its way to that location. Sandra stood there, trying to catch her breath through her mouth and beginning to expect the worst. Although, one smell she did know was the smell of a dead body, and that wasn’t something her overwhelmed nose picked up on yet.

The walls were covered with yellow and brown stains. Filth multiplied in an environment like this. Sandra teetered on another pile and had to put her hand on the wall for support. She touched something damp and gagged. Light filtered out from underneath a door to her left and she heard labored, heavy breathing.

“Martinez?” She opened the door halfway and saw Martinez in the tub. The terror of the scene amplified by the contrast between the white tub, toilet and tile floor and the blood running all over it. Martinez was slouched to his left, his hair hanging over the edge of the tub. It was stringy and long. Every few seconds a drop of blood fell from his ring finger into a pool on the floor. Sandra’s first instinct overcame her and she rushed into the bathroom. Her left foot created no resistance as it flew out from under her. The ground rushed up and met her before she could grab onto any support. With a thud, she landed on her shoulder and lay there in Martinez’s blood.

The long, dark hair fell across his chin and obscured his mouth. Sandra was only a foot away from his ashen face. She looked up at him. His eyes were lifeless, mucous ran from his nose. A beard with an energy and being of its own covered the visible parts of his face. Tears filled Sandra’s eyes to see him like this. Then he blinked.

“Sandra…”

F I V E

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Octavio contemplated a marshmallow horseshoe floating in his milk while the news trudged on in the background. He flicked his spoon with a deft, aggressive motion and whisked the bloated cereal piece into his mouth. The family’s old couch creaked as he changed positions to lie on his side. His mother came into the living room and posed there, hands on hips, the eternal conflict between parent and late teenager blazoned across her disapproving face.

“Te vas a vestir así?”

“Mom, this is how I dress. And don’t speak Spanish to me.”

She puffed out air and transitioned to broken English, “Those pans are too tigh’, they look li’l jean for girls.” His mother’s accent always carried over to English in the strangest way. All of a sudden she sounded like a gay guy from Miami. He egged it on.

“Besides the pants, everything else is okay, no?”

“Ayyy, que no! Esa camisa…” She stopped because he held a finger up, foreclosing the possibility of further Spanish. “That shirt, black with a death skull? Que te pasa? Are you so sad an’ so deprimido that you had to show the world today? What you so sad about, my little boy?”

The expression on his face changed as the tables turned, his mom teasing him now. No longer doling out the sarcasm, and always sporting the insecurity teaming in his nineteen-year-old character, he scowled and waved his mom away.

“Tienes que vestir como un hombre! You go to the university, no more kid dress for you.” With that salt thrown on the open wound, his mother seemed satisfied that she had carried another argument.

He caught the tail end of a sentence from the television, “…the first country in Latin America to legalize gay marriage.” His mom sauntered back into the room, punch-drunk from her recent win.

“Esperate, mama,” Octavio said with a raised hand. She stopped and tracked his gaze to the television. The anchor changed to another news story and he switched his attention to his mom. It was as if the anchor held up a mirror to his face. Held it up to the world. Octavio never imagined that a country in the clenched hand of Catholicism would take a step like this—a step against intolerance and for humanity.

The television rattled his train of thought again. “A nationally known figure for attacking corruption in his state, Cruz Marquez has now been missing for nearly a week.” Octavio had seen this man’s face before. Crisp, penetrating eyes and jet-black hair flashed at him from the television. “…his last known location was in the desert of…” Most often, Octavio saw him in interviews, advocating for some sort of social justice. Nothing over the top, but his eyes hardly concealed his smoldering passion. Octavio liked the way his face hardened when discussing vital issues. As if to brace against the critics, the retort, the counterattack.

A higher power placed this man on his screen at this exact moment, to stimulate a certain region of his brain which moments ago dealt with his mom’s guilt trip. If Cruz Marquez was fighting, then he should be doing fighting too. Uplift and inspiration quickly replaced the emotions related to his mom’s guilt trip. The youth’s ability to turn on a dime.

“Mama…I’m going to the desert.”

The youth’s propensity for making rash decisions.

S I X

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Cruz saw his lap; then his head bounced off his chest and rolled back behind his shoulders. The fuzzy edges of the world and his mind began to collect and focus on his surroundings. With a groan, he saw it was a different room. There was a presence behind him, and as soon as he felt it, Arnold spoke.

“It’s time to test resistance.” The recent food and water had helped Cruz regain some of his physical strength, but his mind was not his own anymore. The shock of the kidnapping, the extreme sensory isolation, and the food and water deprivation stripped his core away. It annihilated the probing mind that once existed. All he could think of was obtaining more food and water. The now familiar cracking lips, depleted of all moisture, were returning. His stomach cried out for nourishment, a cry previously muted when all of his systems nearly shut down. Survival became his singular purpose.

“We live in the middle of lies, Mr. Marquez. Illegal immigrants contribute to our country. Black people don’t have higher rates of crime and lower abilities to be educated. Gays can serve in the military. Women successfully runnin’ corporations and even runnin’ the world.” Arnold stayed behind him, these thoughts slowly falling from his mind to his mouth and out into the room. “The question ya gotta ask yourself is how did things change so fast in the past fifty years? Did things change? Do ya really believe that the dominant race in this world for the last thousand years rolled on over? Ya stupid enough to believe that?”

“Y’all forced us to rule a different way is all, Mr. Marquez. Unfortunately, the days of holdin’ y’all down looks like it’s over. That was the easy way, for everyone. Both sides knew their places. Now, it’s a cat-and-mouse game. We give as little as we can, but enough to keep y’all idiots satisfied. And, ya know the crazy thing we’ve found out? It’s ma proof that none of y’all were ever supposed to be the dominant race. What we’ve found out is that y’all are so used to being the inferior race that with the little we give ya, the crumbs pushed off a table, you’re happy. Sure, y’all get angry sometimes, fight back sometimes, but those bits of resistance are so small and isolated we usually just ignore ’em.”

“But, some of us think the game has gone a cow’s tit too far. We do got gays in the military, and every other fucking place ya can imagine. People do believe blacks can be educated and civil, noncriminal citizens. We do have women runnin’ important institutions and companies in this country. And finally, for your people,” Arnold started as he moved to lean on a wall and study Cruz’s profile, “we do have a shit-ton of illegal immigrants in this country.”

“Why me? I’m nobody.”

Arnold picked at a hangnail before responding. “Been waiting for that question. Why you? You were in the middle of the desert, helping illegal immigrants live through that shitty trip.”

“But I’ve seen you guys do the same. You give them water and then turn them into ICE.”

“Sometimes, when the cameras are around, or when ICE is there. Don’t confuse our organization though. We’re a different type of Minutemen. Not that pansy, bullshit once-a-month border campout to get on television. We’re on that border, automatic rifles in hand, body armor, full camo, ready for the real illegals. The drug runners, gang members.” Arnold stopped wrestling with the hangnail to focus on Cruz as he spoke. He returned to his seat and clasped his hands. The room was bare except for the desk and two chairs. A single overhead light blasted rays that bounced around the room into Cruz’s eyes.

“The answer to your question is wrong place, wrong time. I was surprised when I found out who ya were though. Which gets me to my next point. We was already looking for ya.”

“Looking for me?” The words fell sluggishly out of his mouth. A dense shroud still entrapped his mind. The brutal transition from six days of total blackness to this luminescent room. It was as if he was a stranger to himself. Parts, largely the basic, cognitive parts, were functioning at a diminished capacity. Cruz’s next question was honest, and the surprise genuine because of his current state. “But, I wasn’t hiding.”

Arnold couldn’t help but laugh. “You’re right, Mr. Marquez. That was sloppy. We knew where ya were. We were looking for the right time and place to…collect ya.”

Cruz nodded his head in apparent agreement with this distinction.

“Ya took something very valuable from me,” Arnold said. His tone changed, as did his posture. The casual, relaxed pose was exchanged for a rocky, stern look. “A valuable person.” Cruz glanced up when the pause seemed to extend for too long. Arnold was demanding his attention. “Aren’t ya gonna ask who?”

Cruz shrugged his shoulders, “Who?”

“Colin Shaver.”

The name elicited a chuckle from Cruz. His face lifted into a smile and Arnold’s dropped in proportion. “That fuck,” Cruz slurred out.

With cat-like precision, Arnold bounded over the desk and slammed Cruz onto his back. The impact wrenched most of the air in Cruz’s lungs out, and the rest was being held in by Arnold’s clenched hand around his neck. “That fuck was my progeny, ya worthless shit. I found him. I turned him from a worthless thug into a commander.” Cruz’s face was beginning to turn blue, his eyes bulging from the pressure. “And your scaly brown ass killed him.” Arnold released his neck and Cruz wheezed in a long breath.

After several seconds, Cruz managed to say, “It was Raul.”

“That cripple was just the last domino. Ya set the whole game into motion.” Arnold was slightly out of breath and got off of Cruz. He grabbed the top of Cruz’s chair and tilted him back up. Two deep thuds, like someone banging their head against the wall, sounded from the only door to the room. Arnold circled back to his side of the desk before directing the person to enter.

A man came in, dressed in black and white digital camouflage, and holding fingers up to his face to indicate a number. “Ah,” Arnold said, “Number Twenty-Three.” The man stood silently next to Cruz, wisp-like and occupying some region between the living and the dead. All parts of his body were covered by the camouflage except for his rain-cloud gray eyes.

“Take off your head gear, Number Twenty-Three. I think you two may just surprise the shit out of one another.” Number Twenty-Three had not looked at Cruz yet, and removed his headgear before doing so. Cruz looked up at the man, who had oily, black hair. There was a deformity on his face; his right cheek was actually indented. The skin there was thin and taut, indicating some kind of prior trauma.

The men sensed knowledge of each other. Their minds told them they had faced each other in some form at another time in their respective lives. Number Twenty-Three was the first to recognize Cruz, but he gave no indication other than a gleam in his eyes. He waited for Cruz, whose rusted mental wheels were just starting to turn. The image of a home, Shaver’s home, coalesced in his mind. That night when they stormed the home, he had seen a living ghost.

That’s when Cruz made his first quick movement since being removed from the black room. He did a double-take and analyzed the face. But, the face would not have been enough. It was the eyes, and the look, the energy of death that buzzed from the edges of this man.

“Tyler?”

The other man’s mouth twitched. Muscles that in a normal person would have generated a smile.

S E V E N

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Sandra trailed the ambulance by inches as they raced through stoplights, traffic and city streets to the hospital. The crackle of Martinez’s nearly dead voice had sent Sandra into a panic. A panic to find her cellphone, and then a panic to open the phone and dial with bloodstained fingers.

She saw the entrance to the emergency room and screeched to a stop behind the ambulance. The paramedics hopped out and walked quickly to the back of the vehicle—they never seemed stressed enough. At Martinez’s house they asked her a series of questions which seemed entirely irrelevant.

“When did you get here?”

“Who cares, he’s dying.”

“Are you hurt?”

“No, that’s his blood. He’s dying. Do something.”

“Has he ever done this before?”

“Who fucking knows!” she wanted to scream.

Their calm agonized her. She wanted all of them to scream together, to pull their hair out and carom off of barricades in the street as they disregarded all notions of caution and care.

“Get him to the goddamn hospital,” came out of her mouth on two occasions. Both times were met by another question. Perhaps the paramedics thought that since Martinez had lasted this long, another ten minutes wouldn’t change a thing.

Finally, they loaded Martinez into the ambulance and imbued some urgency into their drive. Or, it could have been the thrill of driving a multi-ton van through busy streets and intersections like it was a slalom course. Either way, they got to the hospital quickly. Once there, they whisked Martinez away behind a set of discreet white doors, leaving her alone with no sounds and a slightly acrid smell in her nostrils.

The hospital was relatively clean. As portals to the next world, they should be, she thought. Those discreet white doors behind which lies an eternity of nothingness. A single smudge on those doors and the fourth curtain drops—leaving angst and confusion that death can happen under those conditions. That passing is anything but pure. In reality it rarely is anyway, Sandra realized. Covering news, she had seen the drunken teenager behind the wheel with half his head torn off. The young girl found in low, boggy water, the victim of an everyday abduction. The old man who shit himself when the heart attack pounced on him, smothering his chest and sucking the life out of his eyes.

A woman came out from behind the doors. A petite, blond woman in light blue scrubs with a ponytail that mimicked the perk of her breasts. This could not be death himself, she thought. His sense of irony could not run this deep. They would not send this ray of blinding white happiness to tell me Martinez is dead. That would have to be the fat, sloppy nurse. And, yet, what better way to deliver disaster than with a cheerful, round face.

“You came here with Mr. Martinez, correct?”

“Are you even a doctor?”

The woman’s eyes squinted and her face puckered into a half-grimace, half-smile. She put her hand on Sandra’s forearm. This was death.

“Of course I am. Been a practicing doctor for two and a half years.”

“How is he?”

“Ohhh, he’s stable now,” the little blond thing answered. A sigh of relief escaped Sandra. “He lost a lot, and I mean a lot of blood,” the woman said while shaking her head with a disbelieving ponytail. “But, you found him just in the nick of time. You can visit him now if you want.” The doctor gestured with her head at the white doors.

Sandra hesitated. The doctor just took off. Sandra instinctively followed and used her shoulder to prop open one of the doors. The doctor was about to disappear around a corner. Sandra bit her lower lip and scurried to catch up.

“He’s in here, miss,” the doctor said with an open hand leading the way.

She straightened her skirt and walked into the room. Martinez was connected to tubes which swung up from his body to a system of IV bags. Thin, insulated wires connected him to monitoring machines. A faint beep sounded in what seemed like a regular, healthy manner. Sandra noticed there was no tube in his mouth. Tube in the mouth meant serious, very hurt, coma, near death. A machine controlling breathing—that’s a sure sign of death. She was relieved not to see that tube.

Martinez, suddenly aware of another presence in the room not poking him or adjusting something around his body, let his head fall to his right.

He repeated his last word, “Sandra.” This time he said it with a flicker of happiness. The death rattle was not present.

Sandra went into attack mode. “What the hell are you doing, Martinez? Suicide? I called Carmen. She told me you two haven’t been together for four months? When were you going to tell us?”

The word “us” reminded both of them of Cruz. Martinez asked, “Where’s Cruz?”

She hadn’t intended on breaking the news to him that quickly. Referring to Cruz was an error of habit. So she lied, “He’s working out of state.”

“Bullshit. He wouldn’t miss me dying.”

“Don’t be so goddamn vain, Martinez,” Sandra said as she took up a seat next to his bed and crossed her legs. “You almost died alone, in a tub wearing filthy chones, don’t you ever forget that.”

“Where is he? Where is Cruz?”

“Why do you care so much, Martinez? It wasn’t like you let either of us know when you were checking out.” He turned his head from her and held his arms up. White bandages covered the cuts on his wrists, which were horizontal to the veins. “You did it wrong.”

“I know.”

“You didn’t cut lengthwise. You did it for attention.”

He put his arms down slowly and pulled the covers up to his shoulders. It was a vulnerable act, certainly out of the ordinary for him. She stood up and poured them both a glass of water.

“Get your act together, Martinez,” she said into the cup of water, her scowl curling its waxed edges.

He coughed on the first sip of water. “Realize that I almost died…”

“By your own hand. There’s no forgiveness for that in our culture.”

“Where’s Carmen?”

“Your Virgen? She’s the last one that’ll forgive you in this state. The way you were…”

Martinez slammed the cup of water down on his nightstand. He eyed Sandra for several seconds before saying, “Where’s my wife, and where’s your husband?”

Thanks for that, Sandra thought to herself while scanning the mound of unkempt, out-of-shape brown mess in front of her. Martinez was back.

E I G H T

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“Ir al desierto?!” Octavio’s mom exclaimed. “Al pinche desierto?!”

They stared at each other for a few, long seconds. This was the first time he had ever heard his mom swear. It caused a small change; a ripple in her normally flawless facade. His perspective correspondingly changed, and simultaneously gave him the courage to say, “Yes, to the desert.”

You can’ be serious, Octav. You just nineteen years old. I make your food, clean your ropa. What you know about the world? It’s ugly, mijo. You not ready.” She cast a stern look in his direction. Being told no wasn’t the way to persuade him—she should know this by now.

“I’m going. I’m needed.”

His mother deftly changed her tact. “You are needed here, with your mama. I need you to be my little hombre, go to college, help your mama.” She repeated the tenderized version of “mother” to underscore her feelings.

“Mama—mom. You love me, I know that. But if you loved me, you would know that the life you have led, and the dreams that you have for me are not right. We can wake up at any moment in our lives and be someone else, be the person we always wanted to be. If I stay here with you, I will never be that person. No way, not me, mama.”

The red, apple-shaped contours under her eyes quivered, as did her fluorescent red lips. He knew this was the inevitable result. Octavio also knew that this moment had loomed on the horizon for years. Husband and father had abandoned them both nine years ago, leaving a single mother to raise an unruly ten-year-old boy. And here he was, breaking this woman’s heart all over again. Leaving her desolate, robbed of her child. To create and nurture something only to see it lift high on the first breeze that passed through her already empty house.

Octavio watched her eyes puddle with tears and his stomach turned. No hardened attitude could face down her sadness. For a moment he reconsidered his decision. And then he was packed, driving fourteen hours straight through the night and into the next morning. Staring at a girl with dirty blond hair, spinning like a pulsar, a singularity, thousands of tons on the tip of a needle in the direct center of her head. A beauty, power and fluidity unimaginable. She stopped spinning with a kick in the ice and her hand raised in the air like a serpent dangling in front of its entranced victim.

Fourteen hours of driving, no air conditioning for the last three hours, and he needed to stop somewhere cool. Somewhere he could empty his protesting bladder and get some food. Somewhere he could get a momentary break from his companion on the trip—his best friend, Wayne Pravo. The ice skating rink was the only structure they had seen for miles, and he wasn’t going to chance another few miles.

His gray shorts hung low, revealing a sliver of black underwear. Octavio’s face had taken on the pasty color of long road trips. He was grimy, pale, malnourished and sleep-deprived. Watching this girl, this bright center of the micromoment, while looking like a homeless pedophile. He came to the desert and ended up in an ice skating rink.

The youth’s distractions.

N I N E

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Cruz almost choked on what little spit he had remaining. “You died, on that damn street. The SUV ran your ass over!”

The black SUV, ya mean?” Arnold asked with playfulness in his voice. A dog spinning in the sun with a squirrel in its mouth. Glorious. Cruz could only look at him. Arnold burst out laughing. “That was ME!” Tyler was dead…supposed to be dead, Cruz thought. Tyler couldn’t be standing there.

Cruz pounded his fists on the desk and laid his head in between them. The reverberations from the pounding bounced around the room. Tyler’s upper body shook. Cruz wanted to reach over, grab Arnold’s head and turn it into a pulpy melon.

“Wow,” Arnold went on, “priceless. Shoulda recorded this! I think there’s a camera in the viewing room ova there.” Arnold lifted his head and delivered the next thought with an uncanny seriousness, “Let’s pray to our good Lord it is recording.” Then he burst out laughing again.

Cruz shook his head, hardly able to grasp the intricate weave of deception.

“Is he bent yet?” The first words from Tyler. His voice was high-pitched, raspy. A snake’s hiss through pale pink lips.

The smile dissipated from Arnold’s mouth. “Watch what ya say in front of our guest, Number Twenty-Three. He still has a long way to go. In fact,” Arnold said while holding his arms out, “as a guest, I believe we owe him a tour, ri’?”

“A tour of the hanging room—just like all of…”

Arnold was at his throat before he could finish the sentence. “Where’s your sense of surprise, Number Twenty-Three? You’re like a fucking four-year-old, blabbering all my secrets away.” He mocked Tyler with a dancing and talking puppet hand. “Best thing to do? Shut up and help Mr. Marquez to his feet.”

The request was pointless, however, as there was no chance Cruz could stand up. Tyler had to carry Cruz. Their faces close to one another. Cruz turned and stared at Tyler. Analyzed the milk-white skin and slate-gray eyes that looked like they were picked from a rock quarry. Total lack of empathy in those eyes. An incurable malaise drove his every step.

T E N

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The decision to pack up and leave seemed natural to Octavio. Someone ten years his elder would have balked. Someone twenty years his elder would have been rendered a blob of fits and starts, nervousness and concerns. Someone thirty years his elder would simply have discarded the notion with a backwards wave of a hand.

“You said we was gonna go to the desert.” This decision to bring his best friend with him seemed natural and sensible at the beginning of the trip. Now, not so much. Octavio dropped his head and pulled his hoodie over his face. Fucking Wayne. Li’l Wayne. Wannabe. Fuck me for bringing him.

“Yo, bro, this ain’t the desert. There’s fuckin’ ice, man.”

Octavio turned his shoulders slowly until just his left eye cast a stern look at Wayne. “This is the desert. I told you, I had to stop somewhere to go to the bathroom!”

“Sooo, you came to the desert to go to Canada. What’s wrong with you, dude?”

Now Octavio swung all the way around. “Listen, Wayne. First, you’re white, and honestly, it makes me uncomfortable to feel like I’m whiter than you. Just talk normal. I listened to doo, and bro, and playa, and cuz for thirteen out of fourteen hours. We grew up on the same block. I know you. I know fraud. You’re an Italian, far from your people on the East Coast, but not a banger. Wayne Pravo. That’s your name; sit in that for a second.”

Wayne gave Octavio the old roll-up drawbridge middle finger.

“That’s childish,” Octavio said with a sigh. The public skate was just beginning. The lights dimmed accordingly and a fast-paced hip-hop song belted around the rink.

“Look—Octavio Jesus Terranueva—look who coming.”

A mama hippo was charging them. Trailing close behind was the figure skater he had been watching. The woman coming after him was large, but agile. She squeezed sideways through parents watching their children struggle to lace up skates without taking her eye off of him. This charging monster marked her arrival with a series of grunts and puffs. Short, curled hair hardly fit on her massive head. Her cheeks were crimson from the effort. Arms and legs were like short pipes with stubby fingers. A healthy stomach and side flanks provided a resting area for her arms, which she appeared ready to swing.

“Why you watch my Mona?” She sounded Russian, or generally Eastern European.

Octavio had stumbled backwards by this point, until his knees hit on the child-height benches that lined the rink and he fell to a seated position. “Who’s Mona?”

The woman reached the point where the tip of her finger could flick the hairs on Octavio’s upper lip. Her face was blotchy and spotted red. Some sort of musk-like odor followed her. A green, low-quality cotton dress clung onto her various folds, always at the risk of exposing her upper thighs. Red nail polish flashed as she gestured in front of him. Like a Christmas ornament from hell.

Octavio leaned to his right to peer around this monster at Mona. “Who’s Mona?!” She slapped the side of his face to regain his attention. “What you look at!!?” She turned around and Mona’s cheeks blushed red. A breathless tirade of Russian words spilled from her rounded mouth. Mona clattered a few steps backward in her ice skates, but then apparently regaining her Russian sense of pride, stopped backsliding and stood up straight, her chin lifted high.

Now that Mona was not eclipsed by the woman, Octavio was able to get an even better look. She was everything her Russian counterpart wasn’t. Slender, but not skinny. Her navy blue figure-skating costume revealed long, sinewy legs—albeit, covered in nude stockings. A ponytail and bangs played around her boxy face, and then she smiled at him, briefly, minute, one tenth of a second of revelation, because her guardian flipped around to glare at her at the second tenth of that second.

“Baba, the glass around the rink is clear for viewing.” Her voice was clear and the words were well-enunciated. Crisp and matter of fact. Like a crystal glass ringing without the reverberations.

“Not just viewing. I see him doing. That is different glass. Showing the peep.”

Mona let out a shriek and then doubled over laughing. Baba looked confused, and more frustrated as Mona continued to laugh. Her control and authority over the situation was eroding. Octavio glanced at Wayn