University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses

The Pocho as palimpsest: reframing ‘deviant’ masculinity as resistance; and, Owl medicine: a novel

(USC Thesis Other)

The Pocho as palimpsest: reframing ‘deviant’ masculinity as resistance; and, Owl medicine: a novel

PDF

Download a page range

Download transcript

Copy asset link

Request this asset

Transcript (if available)

Content
THE POCHO AS PALIMPSEST:
REFRAMING ‘DEVIANT’ MASCULINITY AS RESISTANCE; AND,
OWL MEDICINE: A NOVEL

By

CHRISTOPHER MUNIZ

A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
(LITERATURE AND CREATIVE WRITING)

December 2018

2
TABLE OF CONTENTS:

Introduction 3
Chapter One: El Pocho 11
Chapter Two: El Monstruo 25
Chapter Three: El Joto 37
Chapter Four: El Narco 64
References/Bibliography 80
Owl Medicine: A Novel 92

3

INTRODUCTION
Widely acknowledged as the first Mexican-American novel to be published by a major
publishing house in the United States, Jose Antonio Villarreal’s Pocho (1959) continues to play
an ambivalent and controversial role in the literary and cultural revision process that has been
underway within Chicano studies since the 1980s. Even with a constant reappraisal of the values
and politics that the novel seemingly advocates, Villarreal’s debut novel continues to stand in as
a sort of ground zero for the literary and cultural shifts that would follow in the 1960s and 1970s
in the form of the Chicano Movement. The setting of the novel, stretching from the post-
Mexican Revolutionary period on through the late 1930s, chronicles the often painful and
disruptive emigration and assimilation process that the Rubio family undergoes upon fleeing
Mexico and settling in the United States in the early 20
th
Century. Focusing primarily on the
experiences of Juan Rubio, the patriarch, and his only son, Richard, the narrative echoes the
sociocultural journey of Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, following young Richard as he navigates
his way between the dual worlds of Mexican and American culture into which he is born.
While written as a fictionalized autobiography of the author’s own experiences growing
up in Santa Clara in the 1930s, Villarreal’s novel, written in the 1950s, is most often recognized
for its ability to capture an important and ambivalent moment in the Mexican-American cultural
experience, giving voice to a number of issues that would preoccupy the Chicano Movement in
the 1960s and 1970s. The controversial nature of the novel has primarily been related to its
perceived (a)political aims which were interpreted as “assimilationist” (Nies 4), “embarrassing
and infuriating,” and in a general sense, “anathematic” to the nationalist and anti-assimilationist
stance of the burgeoning Chicano Movement (Sedore 240). Cooper Alarcon captures the
4
sentiment best when he cites the primary reason for the novel’s “uneasy relationship with
Chicano literary critics” was primarily due to “the novel’s lack of an overt nationalist message
and its apparent celebration of individualism over communal activism” (99).
As with many other ethnic/social groups of the era, the 1960s and 70s were a period of
ethnic/cultural identity formation for Mexican-Americans, which most notably led to the
politicized appropriation of the term ‘Chicano.’ During this time period, “Chicanos embraced
their indigenous racial identity, resisted the deleterious encroachments of the state (especially the
military draft during the war in Viet Nam), and in all other ways rejected assimilation into
Anglo-American culture” (Cutler 37). Thus, while Villarreal’s novel went out of print and was
essentially ignored upon publication in 1959, it wasn’t until it was reissued in 1970 at the height
of the Chicano Movement that it entered the broader conversation/struggle of Mexican-American
identity within the United States (Sedore, Cutler). From 1970 on, critics have wrestled with the
text on a number of levels and yet it continues to represent “the paradigmatic Chicano novel,” a
text that “subsequent Chicano novels have looked to, consciously or not, for inspiration (Saldivar
19).
Cutler locates the anxiety that the novel unleashed within a larger generational conflict
underway during this time period where “the so-called ‘Mexican-American generation’ of 1930-
1960 … was seen as the assimilationist father against which the Chicano generation rebelled”
(Cutler 28, 29). This generation was often regarded as being “bent on assimilation,” evidenced in
the formation of political organizations like the League of United Latin American Citizens
(LULAC), the Mexican American Political Association (MAPA), and the American GI Forum –
which were retroactively interpreted as attempts to prove that Mexican-Americans “were
dedicated citizens, hardworking, devoted to family and church, and heirs of white privilege via
5
their descent from Spanish colonial fathers” (Cutler 37). This critique was further bolstered by
the belief that “LULAC and MAPA taught their members to learn English, to deny their
indigenous racial inheritance, and to despise the Mexican culture that had long handicapped them
in the US” (Cutler 37).
Bruce-Novoa points to Doubleday, the publisher, for fanning the flames of this
intergenerational conflict, specifically citing their decision to “having entrusted the introduction
to the [1970] paperback edition to Ramon Eduardo Ruiz, a historian [who] criticizes Villarreal
for views inconsistent with what he sees as the Chicano movement” (Pocho 66). With the
inclusion of the disparaging introduction by Ruiz (one that would be excised from later reprints
of the novel), Bruce-Novoa argues that the 1970s reader was primed to read the novel as
representative of a generation “when the Mexican-American community, with such exceptions as
the pachucos, accepted the public attitudes of conformity and patriotism” (Luetdke 70).
In this light then, it becomes easy to see how Pocho can be read and in fact, used
politically, as a text that represents the assimilationist and regressive ideology that the Chicano
Movement saw itself rebelling against. Martin-Rodriguez notes that the historical positioning of
Pocho at the “beginning” of contemporary Chicano/a literary history in the 1970s was due to
“hermeneutical and not to chronological reasons,” furnishing critics with a foundational text to
respond to and rebel against, “thus helping set the tone for an appreciation of post-1960s
Chicano/a literature as revolutionary in form and intention” (54). Since then, the novel has since
benefitted from the cultural revision process that emerged in the 1980s, spearheaded primarily by
queer and feminist Chicano/a writers seeking to challenge the politics of the prior two decades
which they saw as placing an “exclusive focus on men as the agents of Chicano history” (Cutler
38). While the novel was critiqued for its problematic portrayal of women and its equally
6
exclusive focus on men, this new wave of criticism attempted to read the novel as a more
progressive narrative than first assumed, one in which Richard Rubio’s alienation came to
signify “not so much an individual rejection of Mexican heritage as it [did] a critique of both
Mexican and American gender ideologies that extol masculine independence and assertion at the
expense of female subordination” (Cutler 39).
Villarreal has echoed this sentiment in a number of interviews, not only refusing to call
himself Chicano but stating rather boldly that he “certainly [does] not write for the Chicano
community,” resisting and even questioning the “validity” of the term, preferring instead that his
work be “judged solely on its merit as literature” (Bruce-Novoa, Chicano Authors 42, 38). Seen
in this light, it becomes much easier to engage in the text as a “typical American story” (Luetdke
69). While Luetdke suggests an affinity with “Jay Gatsby [in that] Richard builds his identity as
best he can from the cultural debris around him” (73), Bruce-Novoa goes so far as to suggest that
Pocho was “modeled on Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man [which also] narrates a
writer’s apprenticeship” (37). While the parallels to the intellectual/philosophical awakening of a
young Stephen Dedalus are intriguing, especially in the ways in which Stephen similarly
questions and rebels against the religious and cultural conventions of the Catholic church and his
Irish heritage, Villarreal himself has stated that he imagined “Huck Finn as being a sort of
protagonist” in his novels (Sedore 243). With this insight we can begin to see how Pocho
becomes a kaleidoscope of its time, refracting and reflecting on a number of cultural themes that
were affecting American culture as a whole. Like Ellison’s Invisible Man, Richard Rubio comes
to understand how “the family, ethnic community or social brotherhood is potentially just as
tyrannous towards individual freedom as the dominant culture” (Luetdke 76).
7
If we interpret the 1950s as an era of disappointment or perhaps disenchantment with the
traditional notions of masculinity and manhood, then the gap between ‘real’ men and the
ideological construction of manhood that those men were encouraged to conform to begins to
express itself in Pocho as a paradigmatic reflection of the concerns and anxieties of an entire
culture in flux. From this realization we can begin to approach Pocho as a parallel project that is
attempting to unveil how the heterosexist standards of Chicano masculinity specifically are
disseminated, validated and reproduced by individuals in their daily lives. Such a reading
transforms the novel into a political act, one that aims its subversion at the very origins of what
would soon become an ideal model of Chicano masculinity. Thus, while the Cold War era has
continued to receive attention as a historical and spatial site of heterosexist enforcement of strict
gender roles, we can see Villarreal’s novel as attempting to bridge or perhaps even contribute to
the dominant literary currents of the era, aligning itself with what has in fact revealed itself to be
less an age of conformity and more a requisite precursor to the age of open dissent that would
follow.
While critics have failed to link this broader ‘crisis of masculinity’ to the similar and yet
culturally specific struggle of the Mexican-American characters in Pocho, in this dissertation I
argue that they are one and the same, inextricably linked in a way that must be acknowledged in
order to fully understand the ‘queer’ intentions not only of this text but provide a space for
‘against the grain’ readings of everything from 1950s horror films on through to contemporary
Mexican drug ballads known as narcocorridos . As such, while the center of this study focuses
on the construction of ethnic and Chicano masculinity specifically, it is intended to conjure the
ghostly presence of an insidious gendered binary that continues to dominate the American
cultural landscape and serves to not only to oppress non-normative people of color, but white,
8
heterosexual men as well, trapping or imprisoning them by the socially constructed roles they are
assumed to fulfill. In the 1950s, the desire for a liberation from the norms and cultural
expectations of “ideal” femininity is also well documented, so much so that when we examine
texts ranging from Sylvia Plath’s Bell Jar to Sloan Wilson’s The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit,
we can begin to see how culturally, generationally even, the attempt to question, explore and
create alternative representations of gender are relevant and perhaps even influential in the
construction of non-normative space in Pocho.
While other critics have attempted to ‘queer’ Villarreal’s Pocho, most notably Hidalgo
and Bruce-Novoa, my interest is less in recovering the novel as the “first queer Chicano novel”
or understanding how homosexuals in the novel are portrayed as “ideologically, close fellow
travelers,” than in showing how the novel specifically begins to align itself with this broader
questioning and dismantling of heteronormative masculinity and patriarchal ideology. By using
Pocho as a queer or proto-queer text, we can begin to see how the novel attempts to, and
ultimately fails in many regards, to undo and question the heteropatriarchal system into which it
is born. In this regard the novel finds a great deal of affinity with other novels and films of the
decade that implicitly and explicitly attempted to expose or exploit the underlying anxieties of a
postwar nation whose masculinity was in crisis.
In using queering as a methodology, I intend to utilize the framework suggested by David
Foster that is less interested in the homosexual intent of the text or author and more as a
“position that questions the ideologies of social construction in the first place” (118). Thus, a
queer reading of Pocho intends to not only reveal how the novel is attempting to disrupt “the
norm of compulsory heterosexuality and the negation of identity difference, sexual or otherwise”
(Foster 115), but will also reveal how the novel anticipates and lays the groundwork for a
9
broader critique of masculinity to follow in the decades to follow. For Villarreal, Pocho’s
Richard Rubio is a classic liminal figure who, in the tradition of Invisible Man, ultimately rejects
all forms of group identification after a long process of trying on different cultural ‘masks’ in his
role as detached and yet present participant-observer of numerous subcultural groups including
more recent Mexican immigrants and the pachucos. While, on the surface, Pocho can be read or
interpreted as a heteronormative text about a Mexican-American boy navigating the minefields
of sexuality and culture while growing up in the broader landscape of la frontera, this study
hopes to utilize this framework as a lens or a palimpsest where Richard’s symbolic struggle
against the harmful, insidious, and negative aspects of conformity and normativity begin to echo
across time, traces of which will serve us in our explorations of seemingly disparate texts ranging
from films like The Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954) and La Mission (2009) on through to
contemporary narcocultura in the borderlands.
While these may seem, to borrow a phrase from Chris Greer and Yvonne Jewkes,
“extremes of otherness,” I argue that it is within these extremes that scholars can begin to see
how the deviant “other” not only makes its presence known as something to be “feared, loathed,
or both,” but that it often challenges and resists this “means to maintaining an idealized self”
(20). Whether insider or outsider, us or them, man or woman, queer or straight, normal or
deviant, the following analysis is meant to guide an ongoing interdisciplinary critique that
illustrates how otherness can be embraced if not, in fact, seen as revolutionary.
As Greer and Jewkes conclude in their analysis, “[deviance] is constructed and consumed
in such a way as to permit the reader, viewer, or listener to sidestep reality rather than
confronting or ‘owning up’ to it.” As I hope to show, this attempt to sidestep “reality” only fuels
a process that Baudrillard calls “the reversibility of both destruction and production”
10
(“Simulacra…” 60). Similar to the ways in which we establish others as alien, foreign, and
demonic in order to “(re)assert our own innocence and normality,” so too do we forget that it is
often the “truly powerless, rather than the truly evil” who are often cast as “homogenized groups
of freaks, perverts, and monsters” (Greer and Jewkes, 29). This project then, aims to seek out
“those” deviants and hold them up to the light to claim them as our own while also revealing the
ways in which their nonconformity and even criminality can be reconceptualized as a way of
subverting, resisting, and drawing attention to the broader structural violence that continues to
fuel both the real and imagined violence of la frontera.

11

CHAPTER ONE: EL POCHO

Before we were Chicanos many of us were Pochos. It is doubtful any of us readily
volunteered we were Pochos. It was not a name we gave ourselves. It never
became a term of pride. Nobody ever rallied to the cry of Pocho Power … In the
strictest sense of the word, Pochos were those Mexicans who had either been born
or had grown up in California, but in time Pocho became a general term to refer
to those Mexicanos whose Mexicanness was suspect … to be a Pocho was only
slightly less worse than being a pinche gringo (Madrid-Barela 51-52)

For Villarreal, pocho-ness comes to stand in for the “generational anxiety rooted in the
apparent belief that too much education somehow ruins Chicanos not just linguistically,
culturally, and racially, but also as ‘proper’ men” (Hidalgo 12). In Richard’s case, it is not just
his educational and artistic aspirations that cause his father to question his sexuality but even
extra-textually critics have often assigned motives to Richard in a way that casts “assimilation
itself as an effeminizing process” (Cutler 22). In Cutler’s analysis, assimilation has come to be
coded as a “matter of choice for Chicano subjects,” with the rejection of assimilation a requisite
stance in the pursuit of “political resistance or defiance” (4). It is this insight that allows us to see
how the novel, read as an assimilationist tale, can seem to directly critique and reject the model
of virile masculinity that would come to represent ‘authentic’ Chicano identity in the activist era
of the 1960s and ‘70s. In the same way that Chicana feminists and queer writers have continued
to challenge and redefine the dominant narrative of Chicano literary and cultural history, so too
12
can we position Pocho as a novel that also embraces “the [traditionally feminine] role of cultural
translator long eschewed for fear of being branded race traitor” (Cutler 24).
This project is primarily realized through the characterization of what is arguably the
most polarizing character of the novel, that of the “paradigmatic hero, patriarch, and warrior,”
Juan Rubio, Richard’s father (Saldivar 14). Juan is not only portrayed as a man who is “violent,
self-assured, and prizes virility to a grotesque extent” (Cutler 50), but he is also former hero of
the Mexican Revolution who is quick to deliver “a treatise on the treachery of the Spaniards, the
glories of pre-Columbia Americans, the beauty of Indian women, and the size of Pancho Villa’s
balls” (Cooper Alarcon 112). Juan’s ethnicity and his loyalty to an antiquated code of
Mexicanness lead to his downfall in both the eyes of the reader and in those of his son. While
Juan’s portrayal at times crosses into problematic territory that seems only to reinforce
“ethnographic descriptions” that portray Mexican men “as instinctive, primitive beings that
frequently inhibit women’s nobility”(Mermann-Jozwiak 108), there is also the sense that Juan
Rubio’s hypermacho performance serves as a necessary contrast to Richard’s realization that his
nostalgic clinging to an archaic sense of “Mexicanness” is detrimental to “Richard’s search for
knowledge and meaning” (Cooper Alarcon 114). In this reading, Juan comes to stand in as a
proxy for the dominant “language of the 1960s Chicano Movement that embraced a return to
native origins as a means of redefining identity” (Nies 5). Like Chicano writers and activists
‘Corky’ Gonzalez and Oscar Zeta Acosta who “celebrate their Indian ‘blood’ after years of
repressing such identifications” (Nies 5), Juan Rubio’s longing for “pre-Conquest values” and a
sense of Mexican national identity that “conflates ethnicity and masculinity” can be seen as
nothing more than an ill-fated attempt in “resurrecting the lost honor, dignity, loyalty, and
nobility of the Revolution and, with it, ancient civilization” (Mermann-Jozwiak 102-103).
13
Still, Villareal’s “ploy of skirting with stereotypes” is dangerous territory and one that is
often misinterpreted not only as a critique of Juan’s nostalgic inability to adapt, but as a critique
of the cultural and ethnic pride celebrated by the Chicano Movement (Saldivar 14). In my
reading however, Juan’s character allows Villarreal to demonstrate, to borrow from Judith
Butler, a kind of stylized gender performance. Thus, Richard’s own gyration between the poles
of hypermasculinity and feminization reflect the terrible anxiety present in the process of
“(de)constructing the macho ideal” embodied by his father, a man who he obviously loves and
respects deeply (Sorensen 131). Rather than allow the hypermasculine, sexist, violent,
womanizing male father figure to be fully idealized or even realized as a three-dimensional
character, we are forced to see him through a nostalgic haze that is not only grotesque and
“comical” but often “reads like a bad pulp western” in its retelling of Juan Rubio’s glorious last
days in the Mexican Revolution (Cooper Alarcon 111). Villarreal seems to be saying that in
order to engage in a deep analysis of Chicano men as gendered subjects, we must first allow
them to perform their machismo on the figurative stage of the novel, so that the reader can infer
alongside Richard how the social construction of the macho male restricts men’s choices and
potential for performing masculinity in a non-heterosexist, non-hegemonic, non-normative way.
Many of these themes begin to emerge more clearly for the reader in the
contrasting queerness of the character Joe Pete Manoel. In one of the strangest passages
of the novel, 40 year old Joe Pete, an unmarried Portuguese sheepherder who has been
travelling the world indulging in sensual pleasures in defiance of his father and his role as
royal heir to an empire, has an odd and inappropriate series of conversations with the then
ten-year old Richard. Like John Rechy’s quintessential Youngman, Joe Pete is
represented as an “outcast among outcasts” not only because of his intellectual and
14
sensual pursuits, but because his own masculinity has somehow been “ruined” through
his “preference for books,” and specifically poetry, over his culturally mandated role as a
royal male (Hidalgo 3).
The queering of Joe Pete in the novel has almost less to do with his admitted
attraction to other men and his anal penetration by the “poet” husband of a woman he was
sleeping with, but instead seems to point to how any number of non-normative desires or
leanings can begin a downward spiral into which the subject can become “marked as
inherently perverse and hence unworthy of social concern” (Smith Dismantling 61).
Thus, while Joe Pete serves as an allegoric agent who reveals and exposes what Butler
would call “the phantasmatic nature of sexual identity itself” to young Richard (56), Joe
Pete’s fate is ultimately a perverse one, whether through the action of the novel that finds
him impregnating a thirteen year old girl or in the eyes of critics like Bruce-Novoa who
not only label Joe Pete “a latent homosexual” (Homosexuality 71), but also quite literally
identify him as a “perverse character in every way”(Pocho 72). What Bruce-Novoa’s
well-intentioned critique fails to acknowledge is that Joe Pete’s ‘perverse’ nature is
precisely what causes young Richard to realize that he, too, is an outcast among outcasts
and is perhaps even equally perverse in his recognition that ‘absolutes’ like love, religion,
culture, are not absolute after all. It is important to note that although Joe Pete never calls
himself “gay, homosexual, or queer” he is “coded” as queer in the text long before he
shares with Richard that he has felt attraction to men and has had at least one homosexual
encounter, apparently against his will (Hidalgo 20). A single 40 year-old man who is
educated, well-traveled, and indulges in food, art, and other sensual pleasures, Joe Pete’s
tale of how he defies his father’s wishes to pursue his dream of becoming a poet could
15
serve as a cautionary tale for the young Richard as he prepares to embark upon his own
dangerous journey.
In order to fully understand the implications of this scene and Joe Pete’s role in
the novel, it is important to understand the intricate role the notion of the activo and
pasivo play in Mexican and Latin culture. As Almaguer argues in his study ““Chicano
Men: A Cartography of Homosexual Identity and Behavior,” homosexuality in Latin
culture centers on whether or not one is in the dominant, penetrating, active role and
therefore exempt from cultural stigma or whether one is “primarily the anal-passive
individual (the cochon or pasivo) who is stigmatized for playing the subservient,
feminine role” ( 475). This anxiety comes to the fore when, after Joe Pete has been jailed
for impregnating a 13-year old girl, the police interrogate Richard about the excessive
amount of “time” he and Joe Pete spent together. The questions asked of Richard are less
about Joe Pete’s character and instead focus on whether or not Joe Pete “touched”
Richard inappropriately. Richard is preternaturally aware of the not-so-subtle intentions
of the questions being posed to him and reassures both his father and the police that all
they did was “just” talk and that, in his own opinion, Joe Pete is not “queer” or
“homosexual” (Villarreal 89).
A few scenes later, with the memories of his time with Joe Pete still foregrounded
in his memories, Richard expresses what he feels to be a natural expression of “love” for
his male friend Ricky. Depicted as a prototypical Italian youth already indoctrinated into
the heterosexist tradition of his own culture, Ricky reacts with suspicion and asks if
Richard is “queer.” Richard responds to this insinuation with such a violent and
uncharacteristic outburst that it is worth quoting at length:
16
Richard could not hear for the roaring in his heart. Everything was spoiled now.
They could be friendly perhaps, but they could never be friends again. Then he
was angrier than he had ever been. “You stupid prick!” he cried. “Oh, you stupid,
dumb son of a bitch! Stupid, stupid, stupid! You had to ruin it, you’re so dumb!
You think you’re such a smart guy, and just like that you killed one of the nicest
things we both have!” He threw his [ice cream] cone at Ricky … “Look – haven’t
you ever heard of having love for a friend, of loving people or things, without
getting dirty about it?” … Richard was amazed that he could not explain such a
simple thing (Villarreal 112).
In many ways, this interchange between Richard and Ricky echoes the thesis of Leslie
Fiedler’s “Come Back to the Raft A’gin Huck Honey” essay published nearly a decade
earlier in 1948. What young Richard seems unable to articulate is a feeling akin to the
one he had developed with Joe Pete; a kind of “passionless passion” that Fiedler would
label as “possessing an innocence above suspicion” (665). In short, as suggested by
Fiedler, the specter or threat of “overt homosexuality” that Ricky was insensitive enough
to bring out into the open was all that was needed to destroy the “innocence” of the
“camaraderie of the locker-room and ball park, the good fellowship of the poker game
and fishing trip” (665). The pursuit of the “ultimate emotional experience” of “chaste
male love” becomes an overriding framework for Richard’s life, first with Joe Pete, then
with Ricky, and ultimately with the pachuco Rooster and even Juan Rubio himself
(Fiedler 666). Only now instead of coming upon “the fugitive slave and the no-account
boy lying side by side on a raft borne by the endless river towards an impossible escape,”
17
we find young Richard and Joe Pete herding sheep and intellectualizing their way
towards an unarticulated escape from the cultural situations that bind them (Fiedler 666).
In this way, Ricky seemingly confronts the “child-like ignorance” of Richard,
bursting the proverbial bubble that Joe Pete had perhaps encouraged and built up “as if
the possibility of a fall to the carnal had not yet been discovered” (Fiedler 666). Lending
credence to this reading is, consciously or not, Villarreal’s admission that he has often
imagined Huck Finn as a kind of proxy protagonist in his novels (Sedore 243). Through
this lens, Richard and Joe Pete both come to embody Fiedler’s quintessential “boy,” the
male character who desires to escape patriarchal tyranny by running away from
responsibility, violating cultural taboos along the way. In this framework that Fiedler
would argue is ultimately a sublimated fantasy of male love, Joe Pete becomes Nigger
Jim just as much as he echoes young Emerson in Invisible Man; both figures serving as
male sirens of an alternate ‘perverse’ world where boys rebel against their fathers in an
effort to be free from the normative restrictions of socially prescripted manhood.
For Richard, like the Invisible Man, “solitude” and “unidentifiability” become
essential in navigating the treacherous world outside the socially constructed confines of
race, masculinity, and culture. Thus, Richard can be read as “a veritable Fifth Man;
anaphonic, beyond voice, out of focus, beyond attachments. He is beyond labels – neither
Mexican nor American, neither Mexican American nor Chicano,” in short, queer – and
while Sedore doesn’t explicitly link this description to Ellison’s Invisible Man, the
parallels are obvious and intriguing (255). It is at this point that Richard’s own queerness
begins to center on whether or not the reader interprets his actions as activo or pasivo.
When we see Richard consistently choosing “not to choose” (Saldivar 15) or looking at
18
things “from the perspective of the detached interpreter” (Martin-Rodriguez 49), and
embodying the “characteristic introspection and distance that make him more a spectator
of the world than a participant” (Luetdke 64), we begin to gain a deeper understanding of
how labeling Richard as a “passive victim of the individualist myths of the time” can be
conflated with assumptions about Villarreal’s own character as being “too much the
assimilationist” (Sedore 241).
This anxiety plays itself out within the text as Richard continually faces “non-
Mexicans” who “insist that he remain racially committed and dedicate his life to some
Mexican cause” (Wilson 44). Counselors encourage Richard to pursue auto mechanics or
welding, while the librarian insists he aspire to being a gardener for a rich man’s estate,
all of which Richard rejects as efforts to reconcile him to the role of “Mexican.”
Likewise, Richard spurns the opportunity offered by a boxing trainer to become a
professional boxer – “it’s the only way people of your nationality can get ahead” – and
most pointedly in the novel, rejects the offer to represent his race on “the side of law and
order” by a well-meaning police officer who points out to Richard that “there’s a lot you
can do for your people that way.” Richard’s response, that he’s “no Jesus Christ,” and
that his “’people’ [could] take care of themselves,” only increases the pressure he feels in
the conflict between what Wilson sees as Richard’s double-edged “responsibility to the
community” and that of “uphold[ing] the Mexican tradition of unwavering devotion to
family” (44). At this point it shouldn’t be difficult to understand how the activo activists
of the 1960s would interpret the pasivo/passive stance of Pocho as a rejection of the very
(masculine) values that the Chicano Movement stood for and how Richard and other
pochos like him became the “object of the Chicano/Mexicano’s contempt because he is
19
[seen as] consciously choosing a role his culture tells him to despise. That of a woman”
(Almaguer 481).
When the time comes for the Rubio women rise up and assert their newfound
“American” independence in the novel, it is met with a wild array of emotional and
physical outbursts on both the part of Juan and Richard. In what can be read not only as a
challenge to the established power/gender dynamics in the household, the women
ultimately take on an activo masculine position that threatens Juan Rubio’s psycho-sexual
identity as a heterosexual male. Richard, literally fearing for the life of his father who he
imagines will die if made to relinquish his activo position in the family, begins to almost
instinctively reaffirm “his position of male privilege” through a series of “aggressive
displays of ‘machismo,’” including slapping his sister when she fails to exit a male
companion’s car after being called to help clean the house (Hidalgo 24). Richard’s
regressive slide into his own culturally mandated position as proto-patriarch is not
enough to keep the family from disintegrating as Consuelo, Richard’s mother, “took to
gossiping and to believing her neighbors” and in perhaps the final affront to Juan’s
manhood, refuses to cook and clean for him, the “dirty house as a symbol of her
emancipation” (Villarreal 134-135). It isn’t long before Juan leaves the house which has
become increasingly nightmarish in intensity as Richard’s mother, “like a starving child
who had become gluttonous when confronted with food … abused the privilege of
equality afforded the women of her new country” (134):
Trash and garbage were on the floor; bedrooms were unkempt, with beds unmade.
On the floor of the living room, where two of the girls slept, blankets and a mat
still lay, reeking strongly of urine, because the girls still wet their beds at the ages
20
of eight and ten. Only his bed was made up, because his mother could not neglect
him. His clothes were pressed and in order in his closet … In the kitchen, the sink
was full of dishes, dirty water nearly overflowing onto the littered floor. The stove
was caked with grease, its burners barely allowing enough gas to permit a flame
to live (146).
Juan Rubio leaves the family and finds another, more traditional woman who will care
for him in a way that Richard’s mother used to in Mexico. Upon Juan’s departure,
Richard realizes “that a family could not survive when the woman desired to command”
and instead of following his father, allows himself to be elevated to the role of patriarch
in a manner that immediately fills him with horror and a longing for escape (134).
Traditionally, for both the ‘American’ and Chicana/o protagonist, the home and
the family “function as a site of resistance” and the “return to the ‘family’ [is supposed
to] serve as a vehicle of opposition to larger societal forces” (Nies 8). Pocho complicates
and problematizes this notion, not so much in its representation of family dysfunction in
the face of the broader upheaval associated with emigration and assimilation, but in its
portrayal of the family and the home as a kind of cultural prison for both men and
women. For queer writer Richard Rodriguez, writing in 1982, the symbolic escape from
the prison of his family, tradition, and culture took the form of an escape to the ‘white’
space of higher education. Referring to Rodriguez, Hidalgo argues that the “function of
education for those sons who require the space and resources to realize their queerness or
identities as non-normative male subjects” comes to be seen not only as a “way out” of
their “socioeconomic circumstances, but out of the proverbial closet and other repressive
situations” (5). Thus, we see Richard’s slide back into his expected role as father figure in
21
the household as a painfully regressive move, one that he immediately begins to regret
even as the women in his house return to their traditional roles as caregivers. Of course, it
is at this point that Richard makes his final move to break free from both his community
and his family by enlisting in the Navy as World War II begins.
Chicana feminist Cherrie Moraga cites a similar journey that echoes that of
Richard Rubio in a number of key ways. Having “realized early in life that she would
find it virtually impossible to attain any meaningful autonomy in [the] cultural context”
in her Mexican-American family, Moraga made the conscious choice to “embrace the
white world and reject crucial aspects of her Chicana upbringing” as a way to free herself
from what she saw as the “oppressive gender and sexual strictures” of her community
(Almaguer 481). The “price” she paid was “estrangement from family and a partial loss
of the nurturing love she found therein” – viewed by other Chicanos as “one of a ‘long
line of vendidas,’ traitors or ‘sell-outs,’ as self-determined women are seen in the sexist
cultural fantasy of patriarchal Chicano society (Almaguer 482). If we align Pocho, the
novel and the appellative itself, with Moraga’s experience, we can see how the gendered
cultural codes of the Mexican-American community can be utilized to feminize and
punish those who attempt to deviate from the culturally sanctioned expectations that one
is bound to uphold.
Thus when Richard leaves his broken family and community behind in order to
join the Navy, this act comes to represent how Richard (and Villarreal) seemingly
advocate the abandonment or denial of one’s own culture in some very fundamental and
profound way. While the novel is no doubt a thinly veiled autobiography of Villarreal
himself, who enlisted in the Navy at the age of 17 to serve overseas during World War II,
22
critics also take the novel’s ambivalent ending to task became Richard’s choice to join
the Navy seems to run counter to his portrayal as an individual who will reject and resist
conforming to any and all groups – be it the church or a pachuco gang. What complicates
this reading of the ending is that Richard very consciously does not join the Navy out of
any sense of patriotic duty or allegiance but does so, out of what I read as his only path of
escape from what has become an “out of control” situation at home.
Again, we can return to the American literary tradition that Villarreal is drawing
on, one where the notion of escape and “departure from the land and the willful
abandonment of one’s roots” is a familiar trope (Foster 94). What sets Pocho apart from
this traditional flee-to-the-wilderness trajectory is that the novel instead advocates a sort
of escape from the restrictive, rural environment for the anonymous space of the city or
the faceless bureaucracy of the military. For Chicano queer writers like John Rechy,
whose 1963 novel City of Night chronicles the experiences of a queer Chicano hustler in
various cities around the United States, the queer-landscape of the city becomes “more
than a place where individuals went to lose their identity, thereby cutting themselves off
from an imagined authentic culture” (Foster 96). It also transforms into a haven or safe
space to explore non-normative possibilities. Soldan echoes this notion in her analysis of
queer writer Richard Rodriguez, arguing that “Rodriguez has chosen an identity of
(cosmopolitan) Americanness precisely because it allows for the queering of identity and
the bricolage that results – instead of being dislocated, it proves quite located as a
queered version of location and identity. It is precisely because he anchors his many
identities that he escapes powerlessness, dislocation, and marginalization, and emerges
with a self-determined and integrated identity” (318). Like Rechy and Rodriguez, perhaps
23
we should read Richard Rubio’s imminent departure overseas not as a passive,
effeminate, assimilating decision, but rather as a newfound vantage point from which to
reflect and resist the cultural straightjacket he has so boldly escaped from. As Martin-
Rodriguez relates, the “point of Pocho may precisely be the absence of a fixed meaning
… he does not find synthesis or resolution to the conflicts which he is exposed; he simply
observes them and moves on, trying to ‘read’ what the world and the people are like …
his ideas fluctuate so much and become so entangled that he incessantly discards the old
ones for new rearrangements of his thoughts, thus producing unstable meanings and
values, subject to further and constant modifications” (44).
In contrast to the call of the cultural nationalist movement of the 1960s and ‘70s
that emphasized the importance of preserving the family and saving the culture from
imminent demise, Villarreal’s novel instead forces the reader to understand how even the
social construction of ‘family’ within a Mexican-American context, can reflect and in
fact reinforce outdated colonial and heteropatriarchal notions. In this space, the non-
normative becomes a threat not only to the family but to the nationalist project itself.
Perhaps Richard’s constant search for non-normative male figures to commune with can
be seen as a longing for a new kind of family, a space where the father figure is not
constituted in a heterosexist patriarchal way. Through this reading, we can view
Richard’s escape to the military as entry into a quintessentially American tradition that
calls to those infected with a “tragic loneliness known [only] to outsiders, outlaws and
those who refuse to embrace one or the other pole of traditional difference” (Bruce-
Novoa Homosexuality 72). Whether it is characters from On The Road or Invisible Man
or even characters from films like Rebel Without A Cause and The Wild Bunch,
24
Villarreal’s Pocho can be seen as a meditation on the costs of non-conformity, suggesting
an unexplored affinity with the broader cultural dissent brewing beneath the seemingly
conformist, assimilationist surface.

25
CHAPTER TWO: EL MONSTRUO
Every living being is also a fossil. Within it, all the way down to the microscopic
structure of its proteins, it bears the traces if not the stigmata of its ancestry. –
Jacques Monod
Like the horror cycle of the thirties, films of the 1950s emerged at a time in American
history where massive social transformations were transforming the very fabric of American
culture on a number of levels. Demographically, the country was witnessing the emergence and
increasing dominance of a youth-oriented market focused on young Baby Boomers coming of
age. Teenage angst became a key selling point of many films including Rebel Without A Cause
(1955), I Was A Teenage Werewolf (1957), and I Was A Teenage Frankenstein (1958);
inadvertently providing a rich symbolic space in which to explore the notion that, “here, the
monsters were not ‘the other’; but, ‘us,’ possibly in all our adolescent hormonal rage and
confusion” (Fischoff 403). The sympathetic identification with outsiders was a common theme
that linked many films during this era, regardless of genre. From roles enacted by James Dean to
Marlon Brando to the Gill-Man himself, youth-oriented narratives seemed to revel in storylines
that pitted the outsider against both literal and symbolic authority, which many scholars have
interpreted as evidence of a general cultural dissatisfaction with the “valued of middle-class
America” at the time (Wiesenfeldt 65).
Related to this, cinematic representations of the era seemed to be negotiating a ‘new’
kind of masculinity, one where actors like James Dean and Marlon Brando not only represented
the misunderstood outsider within all of us but were also instrumental in exploring a sensitive,
emotional landscape that had rarely been explored within the confines of popular representations
of masculinity. That this negotiation found an ally within the “sad, abandoned figure” of the Gill-
26
Man is not as odd as it may seem at first glance (Fischoff 424). Like many of his monstrous
predecessors, most notably that of King Kong, Creature’s unique reversal of the ‘invasion’
narrative posits him as a monstrosity that the audience was encouraged to empathize with, if only
in the most primal way. For Gill-Man is presented as a being whose home and pastoral idyll is
disrupted (invaded) by the outside world, pitting the primitive against the modern in a way that
evokes our own nostalgia for the lost womb of the lagoon. And one that I would argue reflects
the very adolescent anxieties related to navigating between the two worlds of childhood and
adulthood in a socio-technologically transformed modern environment.
In many ways, films of this era can also be read as attempts to (re)negotiate and articulate
a national identity that was under pressure to incorporate the changing role of the adolescent,
women, and the ethnic Other as well. It was a tension amplified not only by knowledge of the
A-bomb’s destructive capabilities as a weapon of war, but also as a reminder of the hideous
danger and brute, invisible power waiting to literally be unleashed from the natural world. The
natural world itself, and specifically the ‘primitive’ and ancient became suspect and symbolically
endowed with a power that was quite literally monstrous and frightening.
Harkening back to the “sympathetic monsters” of the 1930s, Jack Arnold’s Creature from
the Black Lagoon (1954) is often symbolically aligned with Frankenstein, Dracula, and the
Mummy as a one of Universal’s “misunderstood outcasts” (Fischoff 402). While other films of
the 1950s seemed intent to fan the flames of paranoia regarding the dangers of Communism and
the perils of science and technology, Creature offered a respite from the radioactive mutant or
alien invader of the era in that the Gill-Man “is not the result of any accident or ‘devilish science’
or the supernatural – he simply is, primal and eldest” (McConnell 138). It was this ambivalent
stance, this sense that the Gill-Man was, at least in part, one of “us” that audiences were
27
encouraged to reflect on the “monstrousness of humanity, and the humanity of the monster”
(Petty). It is a process that I will argue not only has an erotic or sexual element to it, but one that
specifically resonated not only with the adolescent anxieties of the newly emerging teenage
demographic, but one that also mirrored the United States’ own transition into ‘adult’
nationhood, implicitly questioning whether “our very virtues, our technological prowess and
willingness to attack, reflected potentially dangerous traits deep within us… but might only show
us to be monsters” (Rabkin 192).
Creature itself begins with an expedition into the Black Lagoon, located deep within the
Amazon, a primitive space marked as exotic, beautiful and dangerous. It is here that “self-
righteous modern science” disturbs or ‘discovers’ the Gill-Man, a prehistoric creature unchanged
since the Devonian period (Rabkin 187). It is a familiar moment in 1950s films, how “even a
well-intended search for new knowledge can destroy” – a sentiment that many films of the era
deployed as a not-so-subtle commentary on the atomic age (Rabkin 192). For scholars like
Cyndy Hendershot, the use of the prehistoric was a way for 1950s American society to not only
“mythologize” and situate the anxieties of the era within an “evolutionary context” but also
served to displace the “responsibility for and the effects of the nuclear destruction to ancient
forces beyond human control” (The Bomb 81). For other scholars, like Gonder, the increasing
prevalence and “intensification of the popularity” of the primitive in 1950s films suggested a
“deep fear concerning the evolutionary potential of humankind and the tenuous status of
civilization,” that itself masked the suspicion that “the future is really the past” and that atomic
warfare was really a harbinger of mankind’s eventual devolution into “a new Stone Age” (5).
Citing numerous examples of the “caveman” archetype in 1950s popular culture,
Gonder’s analysis reminds us how the ‘lost world’ narrative of Creature is indebted not only to
28
King Kong but also to the ethnographic film tradition that preceded them both. Ethnology as a
formal scientific study of “race” quickly adopts cinematic technology in its pursuit of what can
only be seen as the continued social construction of the non-white primitive as an ethnographic
object. Ethnographic films of early silent film history echo and reinforce what Young calls the
field’s “fetishistic” focus on “the uncontrollable sexual drive of the non-white races,” a focus
which he argues is “salaciously imagined” in the numerous popular “marriage-by-capture
fantasies” of the mid-1800s (161). When viewed through the ethnographic lens, it becomes easy
to see how King Kong and Creature not only redeploy themes borrowed from “the scientific time
machine of anthropology” but also echo “the historic exploitation of native peoples as freakish
‘ethnographic’ specimens” by science, literature, and popular culture” of the 19
th
Century (Rony
159).
In traditional ethnographic narrative, white men have evolved and other races have not;
non-whites are fixed in time and space while white men, most often scientists, possess a special
kind of mobility that grants them the ability to “traverse up and down the evolutionary ladder at
will and remain unchanged, like the various expeditions in The Lost World, King Kong, and the
Creature films” (Gonder 9). As Gonder relates, in all of these films, the ethnographic creature is
not so much “trapped in the primitive space and time as much as they are essential to it,” the very
ahistorical quality of the monster demanding that it be brought into violent contact with
modernity (Gonder 9). With developments in genetic and evolutionary theory in the 1950s
supporting the notion of “a common black ancestor” for all mankind and a discourse that firmly
situated ancient Africa as the “cradle of civilization,” long-standing notions of biological
determinism were suddenly challenged and time itself became racialized in order to
“reconfigures the racial hierarchy of white supremacy in a temporal schema” (Gonder 21, 19).
29
In the 1950s, the importance of this “racist evolutionary narrative” takes on even greater
importance due to the pressures of Brown vs Board of Education which formally desegregated
public space, allowing for the previously “prehistoric and primitive” Other to enter into contact
with the ‘modern.’ (Gonder 21). While scholars like Petty are quick to argue that as a result of
this anxiety, the 1950s audience is being positioned to read the body of the Gill-Man as “black”
in that “the social definition of blackness itself carries a long-standing set of associations with
sub-humanity, deformity and monstrousness,” I would argue that the Gill-Man in many ways
represents an even deeper preoccupation, one that instead finds its greatest fear in the recognition
that “the shapes of humanity are mutable, variable, and at some level fragile and unstable”
(Bleiler 342).
To borrow from Rony, it is at this stage that we can begin to see how the ethnographic is
essentially a study of “teratology – the study of monstrosity,” a construct that Rony traces to
nineteenth-century discourse on the parallels between the constructed and hybrid natures of
“monstrosity and taxidermy” (160). For Rony, this link to teratology is an important aspect in
understanding the development of early anthropological thought: the ‘monster,’ like the
Primitive Other, becomes of vital importance in that it could be used to study and define the
‘normal’ (160). While there are definite racial overtones, we can begin to see how the fear of the
Gill-Man is less about his perceived “blackness” and related more to his nature as a constructed
or hybrid being, a being that we are at a loss to compartmentalize or identify. Thus, the hybridity
of the Gill-Man becomes his most monstrous feature, a blurring of boundaries that may not only
code his body as “black” as Petty suggests, but more insidiously as a form of “interracial
discourse” (Rony 162). Gonder is perhaps the most explicit in this regard, seeing the Gill-Man
not only as an “evolutionary aberration” but also as the literal embodiment of miscegenation, in
30
particular as a “tragic mulatto” whose “oversize lips” liken him to “bestial Gus from Birth of a
Nation (1915), the primitive black rapist who threatens white femininity and whose actions
validate white male aggression against those of color” (8, 18).
Rather than reading the Gill-Man as “black” or even “mulatto,” it is my contention that
the real fear that the Gill-Man epitomizes is what Robert Young identifies as the perverse
offspring of the 19
th
Century “colonial desiring machine, whereby a culture in its colonial
operation becomes hybridized, alienated and potentially threatening to its European original
through the production of polymorphously perverse people who are, in Bhaba’s phrase, ‘white,
but not quite’” (159). In Young’s analysis, this “threatening phenomenon” was represented in
European colonial discourse as akin to an infectious disease, with South America interestingly
enough being cited as the prime example of the “degenerative results of racial hybridization”
(160). Evidence of this notion can be found in Edward Long’s warning to British colonists to not
follow the example of the “Spanish American,” who Long saw as having produced a “vicious,
brutal, and degenerate breed of mongrels” as the result of interracial couplings between
“Spaniards, Blacks, Indians, and their mixed progeny” (qtd. in Young 160). Aside from the more
obvious threat to notions of racial purity, Young situates the real fear of the 19
th
Century
polygenist as one of being “degraded from a civilized condition” through a process called
“decivilization” (160).
The place of women, particularly white women, within this conflict becomes especially
important. Rony and Gonder both point to 19
th
Century scientific discourse that placed white
women below men in the evolutionary hierarchy. Thus, like the racial primitive fixed in time,
white women also came to represent a different kind of “unconscious source of disorder” (Rony
174). This expresses itself in Creature as the tension between rational and primitive masculinity
31
both vying for control of “the forces of ‘female irrationality’ that threaten to drag civilization
back toward the primitive” (Gonder 14). The anxiety of the film centers on the figure of Kay, a
character who not only becomes the locus of desire and objectification for all living creatures in
the film, but whose own empathy towards the creature positions her as a mediator between the
primitive and the civilized, “a position of intense and anxious visibility” (Gonder 16). While it is
clear that she is superior to the Gill-Man and her ‘ethnic’ shipmates onboard the Rita, there is a
latent anxiety surrounding Kay that cannot be explained by the power of her sexuality alone. In
racist discourse, the white woman is the vessel that must be protected from the black interloper;
her womb becomes symbolic for the very preservation of the race (i.e., civilization). Whoever
possesses her controls the racial hierarchy and so protecting her becomes all the more urgent.
But Kay’s presence in the film does not lend itself to such a simple reading. Compared to
other models of femininity from the period (Marilyn Monroe, Rita Hayworth, etc.), Kay does not
embody stereotypical notions of femininity. She is something of a tomboy, an intellectual, she’s
‘tough’ and independent, and while not fully masculine, her gravity and boyish qualities no
doubt reflect a larger cultural anxiety around “radical changes in the status of women”
(Hendershot – The Bomb 80). It is a change that Wiesenfeldt implies is intentional, citing how
Kay’s character in the original script was transformed by Jack Arnold “from a rich heiress
financing the expedition into a junior paleontologist” (66). Thus, Kay as a scientist, a
traditionally male endeavor and one that was culturally coded as rational and masculine,
heightens the usual anxiety between the sexes, becoming an even more opaque “object of
knowledge needing to be explored, understood, and tamed” (Rony 172). In this reading, Kay’s
sympathies with the Gill-Man come to confirm her status as a coded site expressing the
“possibilities within evolution, of both forward and backward movement” (Gonder 16).
32
Jack Arnold’s films are unique in this regard in that they complicate and critique the
notion of science as a normative (masculine) social force responsible for producing social
hierarchies, moral boundaries, and, most significantly, creating identities. Arnold questions the
1950s “utopian belief in the power of science to solve all the problems of mankind” (Wiesenfeldt
59). Particularly in Creature, Arnold aligns himself with what Wiesenfeldt saw as science’s
inability to mediate with the Other even while purportedly establishing “human mastery over
nature” (69). The Other, in this case, is both the white woman and the monstrously primitive,
while two differing visions of masculinity and science are embodied in the characters of Mark
Williams and David Reed. David is what Hendershot labels a “hesitant intellectual” while Mark
is “the aggressive man of action,” a designation that saves neither from the blunder of intruding
upon the life and natural habitat of the Gill-Man in an act that the audience is encouraged to read
as an alien invasion (The Bomb 77-78).
Hendershot is particularly intrigued by David’s fear of commitment to Kay, a signal that
she reads as being suspect in the 1950s, “the man whose fear of commitment calls his
masculinity into question (The Bomb 78). While Hendershot acknowledges that his hesitancy
may be related to Kay’s intimidating status as “an educated, beautiful, and sexual woman,” I read
David’s hesitancy as the portrayal of a man attempting to negotiate a ‘new’ form of masculinity
that never quite arrives (The Bomb 80). Thus, while Mark comes off as the arrogant embodiment
of traditional masculinity and “a form of science which is only concerned with dominance and
control,” David presents a more hesitant and passive approach to the situation, hoping to “study
the creature in its natural habitat” and “learning from the creature’s difference” in a way that
suggests David’s own identity is in transition and unresolved (Jancovich 178).
33
In this sense, the lagoon becomes the perfect environment in which to symbolically
resolve these issues. The Gill-Man, half-man and half-fish, literally lives in the womb/lagoon of
his childhood. While he is able to walk on land, he is at his most graceful and comfortable in the
water, a space that Jancovich reads as being “clearly associated with the feminine” (180)
Thinking back, the film opens with a strange mix of theological and secular descriptions of the
beginnings of the world. “In the beginning, God created the Heaven and Earth” is followed by a
scientific description of “the beginnings of life in the sea …” It is here, in the “warm depths,”
that we are told life is born and the allusions to the womb only solidify once the crew penetrates
the womb-like lagoon through the narrow inlet/birth canal that the Creature never travels beyond.
In the infamous swimming scene where Kay and Gill-Man enter into a sort of balletic
dance with the Gill-Man mirroring the movement of Kay on the surface of the water, we see the
literal embodiment of Kay as the mediator between these two worlds. She alone seems to be the
only figure besides the Gill-Man to take pleasure in the water, a fact made more suggestive by
the fact that “the males literally penetrate the water, while carrying spear-guns and cameras in a
manner that is clearly associated with masculine aggression, control and objectification”
(Jancovich 179). I would argue that what is most evocative in this scene is not only the shy,
tentative nature of the creature but also the way in which Kay and the creature are doubled as
objects of desire and possession for both the audience and those onboard the ship. Within the
water, the shyness of the creature as it swims, it’s obvious enchantment with Kay and mirroring
of her body as she swims and then its tentative, hesitant and uncertain manner in which it tries to
touch her reflects what Jancovich calls a ‘childlike’ uncertainty about itself in relation to others,
particularly a sexual uncertainty” (179). The most important aspect of this scene is that it firmly
establishes the relationship of the Gill-Man to Kay, in that it not only “implies an identification
34
with her, rather than a desire to dominate her” but that his sensitive “‘childlike’ immaturity [can
be] associated with pre-phallic or pre-genital sexuality” supporting my notion of the lagoon as
womb (Jancovich 179).
McConnell is much more direct in his assessment of the scene and the Gill-Man’s status
within it: “his makeup is exactly in tune with his deep-structure function in the plot: to put it
simply, his now famous head looks like a penis. And his behavior in the film, an ambiguous
meld of canniness and sheerly instinctual reaction, is not a symbol as much as it is a hieroglyph,
an icon for the infinitely variable but single-minded urging of the libido” (139). I would argue,
that while interesting, such a straightforward reading overlooks the importance of engaging with
what Clover calls “the ‘intrauterine’ quality of the Terrible Place” – a space that is “dark and
often damp, in which the killer lives or lurks” (209). While Clover’s analysis is focused on
contemporary slasher films, the resemblance is, to borrow a phrase from Freud’s, uncanny. In
fact, Clover cites Freud in her description of the Terrible Place where the killer lives, a place that
is not only reminiscent of female physiognomy but “is an entrance to the former Heim [home] of
all human beings, to the place where each one of us lived once upon a time and in the beginning”
(209).
The creature’s resistance to leave this space can be read as a reenactment of the attendant
anxiety attached to leaving the safety and comfort of the womb especially when this space is read
as the letting go of an idealized pastoral past. On both the broader cultural level there was no
doubt a genuine fear of confronting realities that the individual did not design or choose. Human
beings resistance and fear of change is well documented and as human beings and as the
“dysfunctional” children of two world wars, who wouldn’t want to retreat to the comfort of the
past? In this light, we can see how the Gill-Man’s desire to live in the lagoon is a sublimated
35
desire to be undisturbed, for the world to remain as it was, and for, at least momentarily, to keep
the outside modern world at bay. Likewise, with the entrance/intrusion/penetration of modern
science into the collective narrative of American culture, comes a level of disruption, destruction,
anxiety, and a level of change occurring on a scale never experienced by humankind.
Thus, we see the creature’s demise at the end of the film not as “celebration of ‘triumph
of the patriarchal nuclear family’ but as the destruction of alternative or even oppositional
possibilities, not merely the loss of an earlier stage of development from which one must
inevitably grow away” (Jancovich 183). I would argue that this loss takes the form of a nostalgia
for the loss of a certain form of community, for a world that in retrospect seemed easier to grasp,
categorize, name, and in some sense, hold. In Oksiloff’s study of the early ethnographic silent
films of Germany, he identifies a similar impulse in that with the threat of “experimental
montage and such ‘foreign’ elements as sound,” the films take on a nostalgic tone that “conflates
the loss of a pure visual expressivity with the loss of a primitive culture” (177, 176). As
technological advances overtake the artists ability to engage in “pure visual expressivity,” the
impulse to preserve a “simpler culture” becomes bound “to the preservation of a prehistory” that
seeks to “act as a binding force to guard against the infringing forces of modernization” (Oksiloff
177, 176). Oksiloff notes, however, the paradox of the cinema itself as an “urban mass cultural
phenomenon,” a fact that leads him to cast film itself as a mediator between the “purportedly
separate spheres of ‘Paradise’ and ‘Paradise Lost’” (Oksiloff 176). Perhaps, as Rony reflects on
the power of film to bind audiences, “we Savages, plunged in darkness, do understand each other
(4). And while we know that in the end the Primitive “does not belong, and simply cannot exist,
in association with the Modern,” we can also see how in a dizzying way “redemption takes the
36
form of nostalgia for the pure, unadulterated Ethnographic, and contact leads not to complex
cross-cultural adaptation, but to monstrous hybridity” (Rony 132).
Like the bewildering and touching plight of the young adult simultaneously trying to hold
on and let go of childhood at the same time, we see ourselves reflected in the child-like
loneliness of the Gill-Man who seems to be in need of a bridge to the modern world. Like James
Dean as Jim Stark in Rebel Without a Cause, the film comes close to suggesting that under
different circumstances Kay and perhaps David could serve as bridges from his world of
aloneness to the world of relating the outside world. It is a sentiment that is brilliantly expressed
by Marilyn Monroe in The Seven Year Itch (1955). Filmed in 1954, there is a scene in the film
where Monroe and her date leave a movie theater that prominently displays Creature from the
Black Lagoon on its marque. Having just watched the film Monroe offers that she wasn’t
frightened of the creature at all and that all he needed was “a little affection – a sense of being
loved and needed and wanted” (qtd. in Banner 5). What Monroe expresses unwittingly is not
only the cultural desire to understand and be understood, but that our identification with the
victim and the killer often blurs in what Clover sees as “the adumbration of our infantile fears
and desires, our memory sense of ourselves as tiny and vulnerable in the face of the enormous
Other [and the recognition that] the Other is also finally another part of ourself, the projection of
our repressed infantile rage and desire” (191).

37
CHAPTER THREE: EL JOTO
We jump fifty years from the world of Pocho and the Creature From the Black Lagoon to the
burgeoning Mission District of San Francisco circa-2009 to focus on the Pocho-like story of La
Mission (2009). While there is no evidence that the film was directly influenced by Villareal’s
novel, the figure of the pocho as outsider is evoked, as the cultural negotiations of sexuality and
gender, specifically an interrogation of Chicano masculinity, forms the core of the narrative.
Ostensibly a film about Che Rivera (Benjamin Bratt), a widowed, ex-con, recovering alcoholic
and all-around macho patriarch raising his teenage son Jesse (Jeremy Ray Valdez) it is when Che
discovers that his UCLA-bound son is gay that he is forced to confront his own homophobia and
masculine self-identity.
Produced and released independently by brothers Benjamin and Peter Bratt in April 2010
with wider circulation to follow via DVD in October of the same year, the film works hard to
live up to what Hidalgo calls the “queer potential” of Pocho’s Richard Rubio but is ultimately
trapped within the heteronormative framework it is attempting to deconstruct. Having grown up
in the Mission District, the real-life Bratt brothers had always dreamed of making a film there.
Peter Bratt wrote and directed the film and with his brother in the starring role as the pair set out
to tell a story that would “portray Latino masculinity in its most vulnerable state” (Herrera y
Lozano). Through the marketing of the film, we are led to believe that the film will confront
what is a taboo topic in the Latino community (homosexuality) and help the community to begin
to redefine masculinity and bring conversations of sexuality “out of the closet.”
While the film does succeed in creating an open space for dialogue and raising issues of
sexuality within a specific socioeconomic and cultural context, it ultimately fails on a number of
levels, shying away from the most progressive aspects of the project, namely that of the struggle
38
of a young Latino man coming to term with his sexuality in an ultra-macho community. Instead,
the film focuses on “exposing the vulnerability of the father’s masculinity [while leaving] a
gaping hole in exploring the vulnerability and possibility of the gay Latino son” (Herrera y
Lozano). As such, the film becomes another exercise in foregrounding and privileging the hetero
over the homo, the normative over the queer, (inadvertently?) marginalizing queer characters
throughout the film by using them as a plot device for the patriarch’s attempted redemption and
transformation rather than fully exploring the more complicated issues begging for attention at
the margins.
To be clear, this is not a critique of the intentions of the project but rather an effort to
identify and interrogate those moments where the film is communicating problematic messages
that reveal a fundamental lack of understanding of the ideological issues underpinning their
narrative. As Eve Sedgwick writes in Epistemology of the Closet, “deconstructive understanding
of the binarisms will not lead to Barthes vision of ‘utopia’ and ‘infinite expansion’ but makes
possible to identify them as sites peculiarly and densely charged with potential for powerful
manipulation” (10). There is no doubt that the filmmakers believe they are tackling the issue of
homophobia and deconstructing masculinity in a progressive way but it becomes clear that they
are unable to see how their project fails to destabilize the boundary of heteronormativity, instead
reifying its supreme status as a cultural construction through which the audience is encouraged to
identify.
Using what Andrea Smith calls a “queer interrogation of the ‘normal,’” this chapter will
center on the film’s re-encoding of “heteropatriarchy” and the “politics of normalization” that
occur in its wake. In her article, Dismantling Hierarchy, Queering Society, Smith notes that this
tendency is not only the domain of the “Christian Right” but even within “social justice groups”
39
there is a tendency to “organize around those peoples who seem most ‘normal’ or acceptable to
the mainstream,” sidelining those who “can become marked as inherently perverse and hence
unworthy of social concern” (61). My hope is that by demonstrating how this tendency manifests
itself in Peter Bratt’s film, we will be able to understand how, as a political project, the film fails
in ways that Pocho, even with all of its problematic gender dynamics, did not.
Received ambivalently by the mainstream press (Mike Hale of The New York Times
called it an “an overwrought, predictable story of an angry ethnic father”) it is perhaps not
surprising that the film has been wholeheartedly accepted and celebrated by both the Latino and
LGBT community. Nicole Murray-Ramirez of Gay and Lesbian Times called the film “one of
the best gay-themed films of the decade, ” and both Peter and Benjamin Bratt were honored by
The Wall Las Memorias Project for “expanding the dialogue and awareness of the challenges
faced by gay and lesbian Latinos in today’s society.”
Receiving standing ovations at Sundance during its debut last spring, as well as being
selected to open Outfest in Los Angeles later that year, the film has gone on to be a favorite of
the festival circuit, most notably becoming indie-distributor Screen Media’s first million-dollar
movie in its ten-year history. Other honors for the film include a Best Actor and Best Supporting
Actor award for Benjamin Bratt and Jeremy Ray Valdez respectively at the 25
th
Annual Imagen
Awards, which seeks to “honor positive portrayals of Latinos and Latino culture in
entertainment. Perhaps the grandest gesture came from the New York-based Latino Commission
on Aids which embarked on a campaign in support of the film “because it engages the painful
issues many of us face within our families, and pulls from that pain a realistic tale of triumph—
where transformation is possible and love, for others and yourself, has real power.”
40
Progressives and mainstream critics alike have lauded its perceived message, Carl
Matthes of the LA Progressive enjoying how “a loving family trumps religious dogma and social
prejudices,” while Robert Butler of the Kansas City Star downplays what viewers may see as
“yet another clichéd gay-issue movie,” instead championing the fact that “Jesse’s sexuality is
merely the catalyst for an examination of the sort of stubborn machismo that dominated Che’s
early life and that lay dormant all these years.”
Herein lays the danger of the project. The narrative is so seductively straightforward that
beyond any surface critique of its melodramatic structure or what many see as a predictable plot,
the troubling and invisible way in which the film replicates the very model that it hopes to
eradicate is elided, proving just how difficult it is to disentangle oneself from the effects of
internal colonialization, even when attempting to create what one would consider a positive,
progressive film.
In interview after interview, Peter and Benjamin Bratt are very forthcoming that the film
“is a coming-of-age story for the father, not the son. It’s Che’s redemptive path, not Jess’”
(Peterseim). Yet if the film is indeed an exploration of Che’s own masculinity then this begs the
question as to why they felt compelled to choose homosexuality as a theme at all?
“With an alpha-male like Benjamin’s character,” Peter Bratt explains in an interview with
Ajay Miranda of the Austin Vida, “he is this masculine, powerful figure who has really earned
his stripes as this bad-ass dude who can get down if he has to. And so what I found was that the
ultimate threat to that identity is having a gay son [emphasis added].”
Equally instructive in this regard is the constant distance the filmmakers and actors take
from the “gay” storyline, choosing instead to focus on “lowrider culture” or the “slamming
soundtrack” in interviews. When asked about the film’s scope in an interview with DVD vendor
41
Redbox, Benjamin Bratt responds: “It’s about the Hispanic low-rider culture . . . It’s an art-house
film with mainstream urban crossover appeal. It deals with the gay subculture but some have
referred to it as a heterosexual date movie because Che becomes romantically involved with his
very liberal African-American neighbor . . . Plus there’s a lot of humor, beautiful cars, and a
slamming soundtrack.” Shortly after this moment, co-producer Alpita Patel interrupts the
interview to point out that the film also features “Benjamin Bratt with his shirt off!” (Peterseim).
The rallying around the relatively “normal” patriarch should be self-evident at this point,
as is the film’s commitment to “the assumption that patriarchs of any gender are required to
manage and police the revolutionary family.” Returning to Andrea Smith we are reminded that
“any liberation struggle that does not challenge heteronormativity cannot substantially challenge
colonialism or white supremacy … such struggles will maintain colonialism based on a politics
of secondary marginalization in which the most elite members of these groups will further their
aspirations on the backs of those most marginalized within the community,” which in this film
take the form of women and homosexual men (“Dismantling Hierarchy” 61).

The film opens in the heart of the Mission District in San Francisco, an area best known for its
public murals on the sides of everything from churches to alleys to storefronts. The theme of the
artwork is obvious, Chicano cultura, Azteca pride – this is a politicized Latino neighborhood
proud of its roots. Che is on his way to work, walking to the hip, soundtrack funk of Curtis
Mayfield’s, “Kung Fu.” We get the point: he’s brown, he’s bad, everyone in the neighborhood
loves him, this is his domain and he is the walking definition of macho.
We are treated to a scene of two young punks who get on the bus with a boombox
blasting loud hip-hop music. Che says, “No Radio,” but Punk #1 turns the music up, defiantly.
42
Che stands as Punk #2 says, “That’s Jess Rivera’s dad, straight up OG, like serious.” Punk #1
shuts the radio off without a word as Che escorts them off the bus. The message: that’s respect.
Soon we are introduced to Che’s son, Jess, who looks like any other urban teenager
except for his backpack full of books and shy smile. A car full of “homies” are waiting for him in
front of school. They ask if he wants to cruise but he turns them down, letting them know he has
to go study at the library. Just then a white cop taps the back of the car with his baton, telling
them to move it. United in their racially prescribed space against an outside (white) threat, they
bump fists and move on.
After work, Che has a quick conversation with his sister-in-law Ana (Talisa Soto)
regarding a date she set him up on. “She was tripping,” Che says, describing what went wrong.
“I tried to be a gentleman and hold the door for her, she got all pissed off, said I was oppressing
her.”
“I told you she was political,” Ana replies.
“She’s confused, that’s what she is,” Che concludes, with his signature description of all
that is queer.
Ana’s husband is Rene (Jesse Borego) who is helping Che build a custom lowrider for
Jess in celebration of his upcoming high school graduation. Che shows Rene a sketch of the
words he wants to have painted below the mural on the back of the car: “The Best Friend I Got:
Class of ’09.” It’s obvious that this is male melodrama at its finest, with Che hinting that on their
weekly lowrider cruise through town, he’s going to let Jess drive, a sign that he is grooming his
son to take over his role as neighborhood patriarch in the near future.
We cut to a scene where honor-roll student Jess has broken into a house, pulling a
handgun on a “white boy” in a towel. Jess threatens the “white boy” for not having his “shit,”
43
violence seems imminent, but no, instead . . . they kiss, the whole confrontation staged for the
audience’s benefit (unless we are to read it as an elaborate role-playing ritual then enact every
time they see each other) in a gasp-worthy “gay” moment for those unaware of the plot of the
film.
Yes – Jess is gay and Jordan (Max Rosenak), his lover, is white. The handgun is actually
a lighter, and as Jordan lights a cigarette the talk turns to full body massages, happy endings, and
blowjobs in the car. Embedded within this narrative that serves to reinforce the stereotype of gay
men as superficial and hypersexual, is the fact that Jordan stole his mom’s BMW coupe and
credit card in order to take Jess to UCLA for orientation, ensuring that we are aware of his
dominant position in the socioeconomic hierarchy.
We are introduced to our final character of consideration in the form of the Hindu-
worshipping, women’s-clinic-working, African-American hipster, Lena (Erika Alexander).
Speaking with the refined accent of education (no ghetto slang here), Lena is confronted by Che
in a rather vicious and intimidating way for reporting him to the landlord for working on his
lowrider in the shared driveway that accesses their walk-up.
“Listen, bottom bitch, you know how long I been in this neighborhood, in this house?”
says Che. “26 years. That means after all you little hipsters and new money types get tired of
slumming it, I’m still gonna be here.”
After his skirmish with gentrification, Che retreats to his garage, the ultimate macho
man-cave. Old school pictures are on the wall alongside religious candles, and most notably, a
large poster of The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly-era Clint Eastwood flanked on either side by a
crucified Jesus and Native American dreamcatcher (aka the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit of
Chicano masculinity).
44
Jess tells Che he won’t be able to cruise that night in what has apparently become a
pattern. “Where’s Jess?” one of Che’s lowrider buddies asks. Che tells them that he’s sick with
“food poisoning.”
Of course, Jess is off to the Castro district, apparently for the first time as he says, “I
can’t believe I’m doing this shit.” Before Jordan can ply/seduce Jess with alcohol, Jess sits at the
bar staring at a reflection of himself split in two in the mirror behind the bar (a little much, yes).
Soon his shirt is off and he’s out on the floor with the rest of the gyrating half-naked male
bodies, dancing to the pulsing electronic music, and oddly enough, commemorating the evening
by taking Polaroid pictures in compromising positions all night long.
Later that night, Che comes home late, Jess curled up on the couch, an empty beer bottle
on the floor. The TV is on. Che looks at it – a gangster rap music video – he seems relieved.
Gently, tenderly, he takes off his son’s shoes and tucks a blanket around him. He spies the
Polaroid pictures and after looking through them, crushes them in horror and disgust.
The next day, Che’s friends are in the garage while he works on a car. They sit around
and reinforce the stereotypical misogynist talk that one would expect from a group of lowriding
men of color, complaining about their wives and ex-wives, one of them even complaining that
his woman is on “that whole go-back-to-school-and-work trip.”
Another replies, “It’s them motherfucking self-help books and talk shows – you see that
shit on Oprah the other day?”
“The one where the dudes stay home and the ladies work?” another replies. “It’s exactly
like the bro here says, they’re confused.”
45
Speaking of confused, Jess comes outside and one of the guys yells to him, “How’s that
E. Coli, man? Drink plenty of fluids, flush it out.” But of course what’s ailing Jess can’t be
purged.
Che confronts him about the pictures, “Who’s the fucking white boy? … Is that why he’s
man-handling you like you’re some kind of Mexican bitch? … Why does this motherfucker have
his tongue down your motherfucking throat!?”
The whole experience seems to bring on a case of food poisoning for Che as he says,
“You make me sick to my fucking stomach.” Jess picks up on the theme and counters with, “Did
being locked up make you sick to your stomach too?”
After calling him a “little bitch,” Che beats Jess and throws him out of the house in a
wild, raucous fistfight in the street.
“Did you know your godson’s a fucking joto?” Che yells to Rene. Lena drives up at just
this moment with her white friends and rushes to Jess’ side, touching his wound. Che grabs her
arm in an attempt to pull her away from Jess but she turns on Che, threatening to have him
arrested if he ever touches her again.
Che is shattered and with an unopened bottle of tequila in hand heads up to his favorite
hill to overlook the city and nurse his melancholy. Jess is taken in by his tolerant Uncle Rene and
Aunt Ana. We see them at home, Rene on his laptop (so modern), Jess reading to his cousins,
one of whom, a young boy around ten years old has an oxygen tank next to him with tubes in his
nose. After the kids go to bed, Rene jokes with Jess, “So you really don’t like girls?”
Forcing Jess out has unforeseen consequences for our patriarchal archetype. Coming
home from work, he sees that the word “faggot” has been spray-painted across his garage door, a
space that until now has been a bastion of masculinity. Lena is there, trying to clean it up. The
46
neighbors smirk and look on with disdain and disgust. His status as the alpha-male of the
neighborhood is ruined, contaminated by association, his respect stripped from him for having a
queer son.
It is at this point that Che begins to reach out to Lena in what I see as an attempt to
reaffirm his hetero-masculinity. He knocks on her door to apologize but is instead rebuked and
chastised for physically grabbing her.
“Things got out of hand,” Che pleads while Lena replies, “You know how many women I
see every day whose husbands or boyfriends give the same bullshit excuse?” She scolds him for
beating Jess and after Che once again calls her a bitch, she gives him advice in the form of “if
there ever was a time your son needed you, it’s probably now.”
In the same conversation Lena tells Che that she can identify with Jess and knows what
it’s like to “have a secret, to feel ashamed and alone and most of all to be afraid of someone that
you’re supposed to be able to trust.” The confession serves to align her with Jess’ queer status
although, while her character is still sexually ambiguous at this point, we assume it is in
reference to past abuse and not her sexual orientation – either way, her “secret” is never made
explicit.
From here on out, what began as a promising film about the relationship between a gay
son and his homophobic father gives way to an unlikely romantic subplot between Che and Lena,
Jess’ storyline and character suddenly sidelined as the film gives way to Che fixing Lena’s
broken bike and Lena baking him cookies in return (“with white grape juice instead of sugar and
canola oil instead of butter”).
While admirable in its explicit linking of homophobia to male violence against women
through Che and Lena’s interactions thus far, the film changes direction, more intent on
47
exploring the father’s redemption of his masculinity-in-crisis through a heterosexual romance
rather than exploring “the experience of those queer Chicanos who could not wait to leave their
birthplace in search of sexual and emotional freedom; those narratives of achievement, of
acquiring scholarships to study far away, of seeking professional employment in urban areas
away from what was seen as unbearably oppressive homophobia” (Contreras 10-11).
The excessive attention given to the heteronormative love story feels awkward and out of
place, not only due to Lena’s recently inscribed status as a survivor of sexual abuse (as well
Che’s “bottom bitch” epithet still ringing in our ears) but the way in which the filmmakers
themselves conflate homophobia with misogyny makes the entire sequence feel more like
external masculine wish-fulfillment then a progressive coupling organic to the narrative.
How are we to read Lena’s willingness to have sex with a man who through to the last
frame of the film never comes to terms with his homophobia? If we take Peter Bratt’s assertion
that having a gay son is the “ultimate threat” to Che’s hetero-identity, then we can see Che’s
move towards her as a symbolic effort to renegotiate his relationship with his son (the abject
feminine). In this reading, we can see the sexual act with Lena as Che’s way of attempting to
love his son and perhaps even to mimic him, using the body of the gentrified black-as-white
Lena to cross into and explore that liminal space that his son is now calling home. The sex act
then doubles as the symbolic site of failed mimicry that he attempts to enact through her body in
addition to the place where he attempts to reclaim his status as a man now that his position as
alpha-male has been threatened in the neighborhood.
No matter how you spin it, the entire sequence feels out-of-place, compounded by the
fact that what catapults them into each other’s arms is the violence of Jess getting shot, as if even
in near death his role in the narrative is as a catalyst for the reinscription of heteronormativity.
48
Wounded and asleep in the hospital, Che seems almost willing to accept his son again.
He reaches out to touch him, rosary in hand, but ultimately can’t do it. Whether it is fear of
further contagion or his hate coming to the surface is hard to say.
What is important is that Lena is there to support Che and as they are about to say their
goodbye’s back home, Lena reaches out tenderly and touches Che on the face, “I don’t know
why, Che, sometimes you just break my heart.” He puts his head on her chest and we dissolve
into a montage of their naked bodies and slow caresses, the filmmakers intent to make this scene
as sensual and sensitive as possible, the kissing of Lena’s abuse scars as the ultimate expression
of Che’s kind and gentle soul. Tears run down Lena’s face and we assume the intent is to express
her joy at being able to open up again, yet the image of her curled on the edge of the bed with her
back to Che, has her looking more like a rape victim than a woman who suddenly feels in touch
with her innermost feelings.
Meanwhile, Che has caught a second wind, rushing to Rene’s garage to resurrect his
abandoned/deflated lowrider/phallus project that he had no use for when Jess was “dead” to him.
Now that his (hetero) masculinity has been recharged and balance has been restored to the world,
we are treated to a montage of Rene and Che painting the car intercut with clips of Jess getting
better, walking and eating, bonding with his dad, laughing over car magazines.
It isn’t long until Che walks into the hospital only to see Jordan asleep next to Jess, his
arm across the bed. He slams Jordan against the wall, threatening to kill him if he returns. At that
moment the elevator doors open and Lena witnesses the scene. Horrified, she retreats back into
the closet-like space of the elevator, fading from the narrative, retreating (back) into the margins
for the rest of the film.
49
Another cycle of melancholic despair hits Che as Jess moves in with Jordan’s tolerant
and accepting family, a place where the only brown people we see are those cutting the grass and
trimming the hedges. Graduation day comes and Che has not talked to his son in months. Jess
looks for him in the crowd, Rene and Ana are there, Jordan too, but alas, no Che. Che is at home,
finally getting drunk and beating the lowrider he meant to give to Jess with a large wrench.
Months pass. Jess is at UCLA. Che becomes a shaggy, homeless looking drunk.
His moment of absolution is at hand, however, as he walks the streets, coming upon an
Aztec ceremony being performed in honor of someone who has died. Who’s died? The
homophobe Punk who shot Jess, that’s who. Che focuses in on the bereaved mother, holding a
picture of the punk in her hands, him as a little boy, so innocent. Other pictures are on display,
him as a baby, more pictures of him as a boy, no sign of thuggishness or homophobia present in
the idyllic world of the past – we understand, yes, he was human too.
Che begins having flashbacks as the music crescendos, him slapping Jess, throwing him
out of the house, punching him, threatening him. Thunder cracks and rain falls at the climax of
the ceremony. Che cries, rain on his face, everyone filmically dissolves until he is the last person
standing in the street. Looking to the heavens, into the rain, he closes his eyes.
A broken man no more, Che shaves and pours out all his liquor. He’s going to Los
Angeles to give his boy that lowrider he was supposed to give him as a graduation present. After
visiting Lena one last time, he puts on a guayabera and goes to the garage. There, Lena has hung
a pair of black dice, the kind one hangs over the rear view mirror. She has posted a note: “I hear
these are good luck.”
50
He jumps in the long phallus aka lowrider, testicular dice dangling from his hand. His
mission is obvious: to try one last time to return his son the fold of heteronormativity, to grant
him a phallus and balls so that it’s possible for Che to love himself once again.

While one could cite a “Mexican American culture [that] has invested heavily in representations
of suffering, both in a Catholic context and in a romantic sense with songs and depictions of
intense loss and longing,” it becomes quite obvious that Che is a classic melodramatic man
(Contreras 2). We are given a clue very early on in the inscription that is painted under the
portrait of his dead mother: “A Mother’s Love Never Dies.” This is the key to Che’s journey: he
will have to absorb and appropriate a mother’s pain in order to understand the true meaning of
love, in order to move forward.
For Che, the mother of the dead punk becomes yet another soul to claim as his own.
Watching her mourn, seeing her pain, he sees the world as she sees it, identifies with it, absorbs
it like a greedy melancholic beast keen on appropriating the pain of all around him. It is
interesting to note we are never allowed access to this mother, she is just a ghost of mourning, a
specter that disappears along with everyone else once our patriarch begins to cry. Even the
heavens open up at this moment, the “sacred tears of heterosexual men, [a] rare and precious
liquor” (Sedgwick 145).
Che’s suffering follows a classic Schiesari model that points beyond the narrative to the
writer, Peter Bratt, his choice in excising not one but two women (mother and wife) from Che’s
life through the “submissive representation” of death expressing his own “nostalgic fantasy” of
women as either “domesticated mothers or as dead” (Schiesari 32).
51
With a dead wife and a dead mother, the female sublime is a halo around our patriarch’s
head. The archetypal figure that he represents proves to be so powerfully seductive that Che’s
melancholia manifests itself as a “form of possessive individualism that allows one both to
publicize and to privatize one’s specific eros at the expense of other marginalized positions by a
conspicuous display of privileged subjectivity” (Schiesari 264).
Losing his mother, his wife, his son (to homosexuality), only increases the level of
“social accreditation” the narrative accords to him within the context of the film (Schiesari 29).
What becomes more insidious is the way Che begins to also appropriate the pain of Lena’s abuse
and the punk’s ghostly mother as his own.
The pain of these two women, their “grievance, or suffering is seen as the ‘everyday’
plight of the common (wo)man, a quotidian event whose collective force does not seem the bear
the same weight of ‘seriousness’ as a man’s grief,’ evident in the manner in which we linger and
dwell on the pain of Che but only briefly visit Lena’s tears or the ghostly mother’s own shape
before redirecting our gaze back to Che (Schiesari 13).
The very decision to have the story focus on his journey, to allow him to take center stage
sets into motion a dynamic that demands an “empowered display of loss and disempowerment”
that can then be inscribed as “the cultural prestige of inspired artistry” (Schiesari 11-12). Even at
his most vulnerable and “feminine” state, Che’s “excessive suffering” is legitimating within the
context of the film, while the women and queer characters remain an “oppressed and nameless
(or generic) other” (Schiesari 13).
With that said, there are moments where Che could be queered, most notably in the
queer-by-association that occurs when his son is outed. When Che’s private, masculine space is
52
vandalized with the word “faggot” it may be easy to assume it was directed at Jess but how do
we know it wasn’t directed at Che himself, his own hetero status in question now as well?
There is an exchange between the two punks and Jess at high school that could support
this reading when one of the punks, referring to the fight Jess had with Che the day before, asks
how he got his fat lip. “On his knees from his daddy,” one of his friends responds.
Then again there is the classic moment where Jordan is defiantly talking back to the
punks as they taunt him and Jess walking on the street: “I wonder if you were aware that men
who demonstrate extreme homophobic tendencies are oftentimes homosexuals themselves.” If
we are to take this literally, it has the (unintended?) effect of pointing the finger at the second
most homophobic character in the film, Che, suggesting that he himself has some latent
homosexual issues that he needs to work through.
Then of course there is that moment during Jess and Che’s fight where Jess asks Che if
he didn’t “at least try and cop a little bit of prison ass, just once.” A question which Che never
formally responds to beyond calling Jess a “little bitch” and beating him with his fists.
But in the end it’s a rather thin reading. The filmmakers are obviously invested in Che as
an air-tight macho until he begins to crack and appropriate pain from others near the end. There
is, however, an interesting “eco-queer” thread that runs throughout the film, equating all that is
new-agey and eco-friendly with the queer/feminine. This thread of thought most notably affects
Lena and Rene (although Jess does have a line about “good Feng Shui” that seems rather
indicative).
Lena’s insistence on making cookies with canola oil and white grape juice, having
mandalas on her door and a shrine to Kali in her apartment (“she’s like the Virgin Mary with
teeth”), definitely positions her in this queer space that overlaps with aspects of what we can call
53
her white-by-association symbolism. Her tone of speech, her friends, her symbolic representation
of gentrification, her new age liberalism, codes Lena in affinity with the “whiteness” that
threatens to encroach upon Che’s neighborhood, which also becomes queer within the context of
this film as the only other white character is gay Jordan.
For the first half of the film there is definitely an element of fluid (a)sexuality attached to
Lena, her work with battered women, the speech she gives about how moving it is to “witness a
woman realize just how beautiful and powerful she really is.” Still, Lena is an outsider, the
model we are looking for must come from inside the neighborhood. Jess has already been tainted
as marginal, but what about the ultra-understanding, always-in-the-know Rene? He wears a pink
shirt to graduation and it’s his idea to convert Jess’ lowrider to a biodiesel engine. In fact, during
one of the multiple scenes where Che’s misogynist friends are laying it on thick, Rene sits
quietly to the side, not taking part, reading his Biodiesel magazine with a knowing smile.
Is Rene the model of assimilation and integration we have been searching for? Is he able
to retain his masculine status and still navigate in this “new” world that Che seems so resistant
to? There’s a great moment where Rene is trying to convince Che that Jess’ sexual orientation
isn’t “such a big deal.” Che responds with the line, “You believe that shit, homie, you’ve been
living in this town too fucking long.”
Of course, the town he’s referring to is the gay capital of the world, San Francisco,
implying in some way that by being in proximity to the larger community outside of the Mission
District, Rene is starting to think like “they” do. Rene’s answer, “You may be right about that
one,” opens up a potential queer reading where Rene embodies what Tomas Almaguer has
identified as the “bisexual escape hatch,” (477).
54
In the Mexican/Latin American context there is no cultural equivalent to the modern gay
man, the Latin homosexual world divided into activos and pasivos, active and passive, penetrator
and penetrated, respectively. This binarism not only provides “an exemption from stigma for the
‘masculine’ homosexual” but also “symbolically affirms the former’s superior masculine power
and male status over the other, who is feminized and indeed objectified” (Almaguer 475-76).
Even without this explicit reading, Rene is the only character who comes close to
embodying the sense of flexibility inherent in queer space. In contrast to the chiseled physique
and testosterone-laden swagger of Che, Rene’s thin frame and effeminate mannerisms coupled
with his alignment with technology and eco-queer culture, place him within a sexually
ambivalent, liminal, bisexual place, his home the place where Jess is given support and his
struggle is honored.
But alas, the film won’t even allow us to fully embrace the wonderful model of Rene due
to his complicity becoming a mouthpiece for the subtle framework of aligning homosexuality
with being abnormal and defective. In paralleling the story of his medically “defective” and
abnormal son with that of Che’s predicament with Jess, Rene aligns himself with the colonial
mindset, homosexuality as something deviant to overlook and embrace, something to love in
spite of its perceived shortcomings, rather than as a place that exists beyond any sense of
normal/abnormal, healthy/sick, good/bad.

During the 1990s and early 2000s, working-class and poor neighborhoods in San Francisco
underwent dramatic economic and racial changes with one of the most heavily gentrified
neighborhoods being the Mission District. Thousands of Latinos were literally displaced by the
influx of highly paid (often white) professionals.
55
In this sense, gentrification becomes the perfect symbol for the filmmakers desire to
externalize the many threats facing Che’s identity and masculinity. Seen this way, gentrification
becomes code not only for “white” threat to the neighborhood but a conflation of all that
Whiteness comes to symbolize in the process: the feminization and homosexualization of the
neighborhood/home.
If we understand that “the language and law that regulates the establishment of
heterosexuality as both an identity and an institution, both a practice and a system, is the
language and law of defense and protection” then it becomes only natural that the fear of
gentrification is on one level a form of shoring up the “ontological boundaries” of the
heterosexual self-identity “by protecting itself from what it sees as the continual predatory
encroachments of its contaminated other, homosexuality (Fuss 2).
Thus, we find Che’s threats existing on two levels, the “predatory” homosexuality within
his own home being mirrored by the feminized culture of gentrification (in the guise of Lena) on
the outside and vice versa. If we dig deeper we can see that this fear of “white”
gentrification/homosexuality is essentially a fear of being re-conquered and re-colonized, Che
fears his masculinity is in danger of being swallowed whole and forced into assimilation and
integration with what is perceived as the abject Other.
For Che, his anger is multiplied not only by the fact that Jess is kissing another man but
that he is being “man-handled like some Mexican bitch” by a “white boy,” a fact that seems
more of a danger to his son than just homosexuality. Old reflexes kick in and memories of the
centuries of colonialization his people have had to endure find their way to the surface as Che
positions his son as the victim, the pasivo, why else would that “white boy have his tongue down
your motherfucking throat!?”
56
The downward motion, the image of the “white boy” forcing his tongue into the brown,
now feminized Jess, makes it only too clear whether Che sees his son as a top or bottom in the
hierarchy of this relationship.
While no doubt there are instances of “working-class Latino men [becoming] the object
of middle-class Latino’s or the white man’s colonial desires” in what Almaguer calls “class-
coded lust” (479), it is more than likely that the film is merely reflecting a somewhat skewed
perception in the Latino community that “lesbian and gay sexual orientations are a ‘white man’s
disease’ or a ‘Western sickness,’ acquired as a result of too much assimilation into the dominant
culture” (Greene 382).
Interestingly enough, what is a common perception among both African-American and
Latino communities (Burnette 2006, Marsiglia 1998, Rodriguez 1996) even extends to Arab
countries as evidenced in an ethnographic study Rudolf P. Gaudio undertook in Nigeria where
whites were “figured as the originators and primary practitioners of ‘filthy’ and technologized
sex (oral sex and condom use, respectively), while Arabs were positioned as having acquired
these practices later, purportedly through contact with Whites (44).
Using Jordan in this way only serves to reinforce the notion that gayness is a white
construct, foreign, something that can only exist comfortably within white-defined spaces like
the Castro district or Jordan’s home in Forest Hills.
Once again we find the film leaning towards a gay construct established and derived from
dominant, normal, “white” culture, as if to say that the queer sexuality of a Mission-bred Latino
is more palatable/understandable if his attraction is upwardly mobile and directed towards
someone white, educated, and rich.
57
Without detracting from the importance of the Castro district to the Latino gay
experience in San Francisco or somehow being mistaken for advocating same-race relationships,
my concern is more that by insisting on Jess’ boyfriend being white, we are limited in exploring
the rich history of the Latino gay community in the Mission District as well as reinforcing what
has come to be a familiar trope in filmic representations of white homosexuality as a predatory
and manipulative force that somehow corrupts or seduces otherwise “normal” men of color.
Aside from the fact that a shared sexual orientation does not automatically guarantee that
someone like Jess and Jordan would have much in common, without any serious exploration of
this relationship we can only conclude that the filmmakers are unable or unwilling to fully
acknowledge that queerness can be just as inherently Latino/a as it is to whites.
For Hidalgo, the “queer potential” of Richard is located in his “non-normative masculine
behavior” which she sees as expressing itself “through intimations of bisexuality, affection
towards men, alliances with known ‘queers,’ and his avid pursuit of an intellectual life as a
writer” (23). This reading especially manifests itself in Richard’s “resistance to his parent’s
expectations” as well as his personal desire for “education [and] meaningful personal
relationships with other key male figures in his life” as well as his rejection of key cultural
markers of masculinity: “sex, girls, marriage” (Hidalgo 18). In this way, we can see the affinity
that Pocho has in anticipating the revisionist movement of Chicana feminist writers like Gloria
Anzaldua, Cherrie Moraga, and Sandra Cisneros, writers and critics who took as their initial
project challenging and critiquing the “hierarchization of the genders” in Chicano literature and
culture, a space in which women were often “bound to accept their assigned role as servants”
(Foster 2). This may seem a bold claim considering that the female characters in Pocho are rarely
presented as anything more substantial than two-dimensional objects whose presence and fate is
58
ultimately left undetermined at the end of the novel. As an exemplar of feminist ideology, Pocho
fails and while even its often clumsy attempts at critiquing heteronormativity may seem
antiquated or even oddly humorous at times, the novel is still successful in presenting Richard’s
non-normative behavior and longings as a “complicated matter, with cultural, linguistic, class,
social, regional, geographical, temporal and national implications,” with a specific emphasis on
the notion that for the Mexican-American, “any variance from cultural norms made us pochos”
(Madrid-Barela 52). It is a nuanced critique that the Bratt brothers seem unable or unwilling to
acknowledge or pull off, falling instead on what Piedra calls the “bitchification” and
“queerification” of “natives” by “the conqueror.”

At this point it is easy to see how Jess’ orientation threatens “an economy built on male-female
biological reproduction,” a system that by its very nature is designed to “ensure the safe passage
of power from father to son”(Aldama - 81) What is more difficult is to untangle the ways in
which Bratt’s film can paradoxically show glimpses of a world beyond the binary and yet be
undermined by a commitment to those very same sexual and gender hierarchies in the end.
How do we account for this tendency or more importantly, how do we move beyond the
normalization of binarism and instead embrace a more fluid and flexible representation of race,
gender, and sexuality as a topography that is mutually constitutive and reciprocally informing? If
we explore the concept of homophobia and misogyny as a consequence of colonialization, we
can hopefully begin to dismantle the hierarchy of heteropatriarchy as well as expose the
mechanisms of male privilege that seem to have led to the subordination of the queer
(gender/sexuality) within contemporary Latino culture and most specifically within La Mission.
59
For Latinos, the history of sexuality is tied to the histories of conquest and colonization,
as women and men were raced, gendered, and sexualized (branded) in very specific and unique
ways under colonial rule. Looking back, “we now know that for the Euro-Spaniards to justify
their conquest and genocide of Amerindian peoples, they genitalized and made ‘perverse’ the
Other” (Aldama 91).
In classifying the colonized as feminine (pasivo), male and female alike, the Spanish
were able to limit the ability of the colonized to own and claim land under patriarchal colonial
rule. Within this framework we can see that it is not just those who identify as gay but all
colonized males who become queer to those above them in the hierarchy (Piedra 1995). Within
the contemporary Latino community, this colonial framework is then re-enacted, all threats that
refuse to “fit within the heterosexual model of power” become feminized due to their threat to
the patriarchal system to which heterosexuality owes its sole allegiance (Sedgwick 185).
For many, “machismo and hypermasculinity can be seen as reactions by men of color to
the colonial exploitation in which their masculinity had initially been questioned. Consequently,
the colonial violence ingrained in men of color is projected in sexist and homophobic ways onto
women and queers,” (Otálvaro-Hormillosa 336) the system itself the wellspring of that which
“dominates, punishes, and abuses all things colored, female, or perceived as female-like”
(Moraga 234).
Lisa Poupart (2003) argues that through the process of colonization, many Native
American communities have similarly “internalized Western power structures” inadvertently
recreating the “power structure of the dominant culture” in the process (91-2).
…we define ourselves through these constructions and subsequently participate in
the reproduction of these codes. For, as we assume the dominant subject position,
60
we often take upon ourselves definitions of the objectified, abject Other as
(portions of) our own identities and act them out in flat, one-dimensional
caricatures that mirror the dominant culture’s representations. Moreover, as we
buy into these codes, we not only apply them to our individual selves but also to
those within our own marginalized group(s)—our loved ones and community
members. (87-8)
Thus, in the act of mirroring the dominant culture within the microcosm of one’s own
communities, the ethnic macho develops as a sort of ghostly double of the colonizer’s spirit, the
bastard offspring of a colonial ruler who, in order to become “someone” of value within the
“hierarchy of power associated with colonialism” must feminize or “sissify” an Other and
subject them to your “bully behavior” (“Sissies” Piedra 371).
It is within this framework that we can begin to deconstruct the importance of naming
and how it relates to the legacy of colonialism within the context of the film. To call a man a
joto, puto or pocho is to immediately marginalize him, to place him within the realm of the
pasivo, one who has “betrayed the Mexican man’s prescribed gender and sexual role… non-men
…the cultural equivalents of women” (Almaguer 476, 481).
Almaguer argues that “the cultural equation made between the feminine, anal-receptive
homosexual man and the most culturally stigmatized female in Mexican society (the whore)” is
significant in that both “share a common semantic base” (476). To label a man or a woman a
“bitch” (or in the case of Lena who receives the special designation as a “bottom bitch”) is to
also demonstrate how the devaluation of the feminine becomes an outward display of the
internalization of the gendered and sexualized colonial binary code. The devaluation of the
feminine as the Other is extended to all who are colonized, with the masculine activo role
61
reserved for those in power in what Aldama has called the “he-who-controls-the-hole-has-the-
power model” (Aldama 92).
Thus, even within the realm of the colony, a space where all members are subject to
oppressions on any number of levels, “alternate modes of colonizer-colonized relationships”
develop where certain members “have more relative privilege (due to their gender, sexuality,
social class, and socio-political status) over groups with even less power” (Santos 96).
Using this framework we can see how heterosexual Chicanos, patriarchs like Che in
particular, exercise a degree of relative privilege from within a colonized group, even though
their power may be limited outside of their colony/neighborhood. “This type of privilege
exacerbates a colonial, patriarchal, and heteronormative oppression within the Chicana/o
community by expanding oppression,” particularly towards all that is queer (Santos 96).
In order to break out of this framework, Poupart (2003) argues that those in positions of
privilege within the colonized community “must critically examine the nature of their own
[patriarchal] privilege. They must reject constructions of Otherness and refuse to participate in
the appropriation and reappropriation of abject differences.” (97) Easier said than done, to be
sure, but a position that is essentially calling for an understanding of the complicit nature of
accepting and/or buying into the concept of a “dominant subject position” (99).
Tafoya, in her work with Native American communities, has a wonderful explication of a
model which may be able to assist us in our struggle. In the Western tradition, gender and
sexuality are seen as being “polar opposites, or different ends of the same stick. One is either/or
male or female, gay or straight. Native American concepts usually prefer circles to lines. If one
takes the line of a male/female, gay/straight, and bends it into a circle, there are an infinite
number of points. Just so, there are theoretically an infinite number of possible points of gender
62
and sexual identity for an individual who can shift and differ over time and location (Tafoya
407).
If we utilize a similar model, one based on a more fluid and flexible definition of gender
and sexuality, we can resist being forced into the dominant binaries which can become
dangerous tools of reinscription and oppression. In many Native communities, “the term two-
spirited or two-spirited people seems to be gaining greater acceptance” (Tafoya 404). In contrast
to the psychosexual model we are familiar with, the two-spirited position is more “of a
spiritual/social identity” indicating someone who “possesses both a male and a female spirit”
(404-5). Rather than being marginalized these queer figures are in fact valued as those who are
able to “see further” than others and often become “medicine people, leaders, and intermediaries
between men and women and tribal communities and non-Native people. Their greater flexibility
provides them with greater possibilities of discovering alternative ways of seeing themselves and
the world” (Tafoya 407).
In her essay “Inside/Out” Diana Fuss warns of “the tendency of hierarchical relations to
reestablish themselves. Such retrenchments often happen at the very moment of the supposed
transgression, since every transgression, to establish itself as such, must simultaneously resecure
that which it sought to eclipse . . . That hierarchical oppositions always tend toward
reestablishing themselves does not mean that they can never be invaded, interfered with, and
critically impaired” (6). It is my hope that connecting a work like La Mission to Villareal’s
Pocho, we can begin to understand the ways in which even in the midst of anti-racist-sexist-
homophobic-colonial struggles, there is a very dangerous tendency to articulate an equally
devastating form of racist-sexist-homophobic-patriarchal nationalism that only serves to continue
to subordinate those already in the margins. What is needed instead is a model that does away
63
with binarisms, and instead seeks to embrace a fuller, more flexible range of racial diversities,
human sexualities, and expressions of gender; a model that allows for the full expression of the
queer without fear of being marginalized; a place where storytellers like Peter Bratt can more
fully validate and honor the margins of the Latino community, actively redefining the cultura
and creating a new comunidad in the process.

64

CHAPTER FOUR: EL NARCO

The final figure to consider in this short consideration of deviant masculinity is the narco. A
central figure in narcocorridos (literally, drug ballads), the musical derivation of the traditional
polka-and waltz-like corrido is often dismissed and simplistically read as an archaic and
ultraviolent form of the “classic” Mexican ballad, updated only in its replacement of
Revolutionary heroes with the glorified exploits of contemporary cross-border drug traffickers.
While increased attention has been given to the genre from both scholarly and popular authors in
the past decade (Edberg, 2004; Herlinghaus 2008; Quiñones, 2001; Simonett, 2002; Tatum,
2011; Wald, 2001), the narcocorrido continues to be a site of contested meaning and
interpretation, often echoing the ongoing battle for control and ownership of the physical and
psychic space of la frontera, a space where “complexity, negotiation, and hybridity are everyday
constants” (Madrid 3-4). The narcocorrido with its embodiment of the complex cultural
negotiations of the borderlands, offers a cultural text that can enable Western studies not only
build on work of other scholars seeking to expand notions of what the “West” or “frontier” is or
can be (Campbell, 2008; Comer, 2010; Kollin, 2007) but to also place the often neglected or
overlooked contribution of norteño culture and music within ongoing discussions of postcolonial
life in the borderlands. Similar to the way in which Villareal’s Pocho serves as a postcolonial
fantasy seeking to challenge and counter heteronormative masculinity, this final chapter will
argue that the narcocorrido enacts a postmodern fantasy that serves to counter hegemonic U.S.
discourse that has historically neglected the norteño point-of-view or situates the former
inhabitants of the New Spanish frontier within an east-west paradigm that fails to acknowledge
the complex legacy of conquest that preceded the “founding” of the American West.

65
In many ways this chapter brings us full circle to where Pocho begins, in the hyper-
macho imagined past of post-Revolution era Mexico. This character of Juan Rubio, Richard’s
father, is not only Saldivar’s “paradigmatic hero, patriarch, and warrior” (14) but is the kind of
masculine archetype that Cutler describes as “violent,” “self-assured” and “prizes virility to a
grotesque extent” (50). As argued in the first chapter, this former hero of the Mexican
Revolution and his inability to move past a nostalgic sense of “Mexicanness” is inevitably and
problematically bound with a strain of machismo that is not only archaic but toxic in the extreme.
Similar to the way that the Chicano Movement of the 1960s “embraced a return to native origins
as a means of redefining identity” (Nies 5), Juan Rubio’s longing for “pre-Conquest values” and
a sense of Mexican national identity that “conflates ethnicity and masculinity” can be seen as
nothing more than an ill-fated attempt in “resurrecting the lost honor, dignity, loyalty, and
nobility of the Revolution and, with it, ancient civilization” (Mermann-Jozwiak 102-103).
But unlike the ill-fated attempt of the Bratt brothers to disentangle Diana Fuss’
‘Inside/Out’ binary in La Mission, this chapter argues that the contemporary corrido not only
operates as a narrative form of geopolitical intervention, reflection, and critique, but will also
show how those involved in both the production and consumption of the narcocorrido signify
and negotiate the meaning of the cultural myths and simulacra which it has traditionally drawn
meaning from. My hope is that by illuminating the tragically perverse, historical paradoxes that
have produced this musical form within the context of both the referential past and the present of
its making, we can begin to understand how narco-narratives can be read not only as critiques of
the free market system that seeks to regulate the numerous legal and illegal networks that
symbiotically link the United States and Mexico, but also as an artistic form that enables listeners
to symbolically situate themselves within what I argue is ultimately a hyperreal and nostalgically
66
constructed simulacrum. Using Baudrillard’s notion of simulations and simulacra as a
framework, I intend to deconstruct the narco performance, revealing how any grounding in a
rational reality has long since been replaced by a world of spectacle and empty signifiers. This
impulse may initially seem to depart from the more ‘rooted’ investment in place that cultural
theorists like Hermann Herlinghaus rely on conceptually but is one which is intended to
demonstrate the impact that globalization and late capitalism have had on notions of region/place
as well as on the often stateless subjects who are forced to navigate and reconcile the past
through the simulacra of the present.

They’ve shouted at me a thousand times that I should go back to my country
Because there’s no room for me here
I want to remind the gringos: I didn’t cross the border, the border crossed me
America was born free, but men divided it
They marked a line so I can jump it
And they can call me “invader”
And that’s a common mistake
They took from us eight states
Who then is the invader?
I’m a foreigner in my own land
And I didn’t come here to cause you trouble
I’m a hard-working man
(Translated from “Somos Mas Americanos” by Los Tigres Del Norte)
In order to properly contextualize the cultural significance of the corrido, it is important to return
to the Nineteenth Century for it is out of the literal and figurative space of the border that a
67
distinct norteño identity emerges. The roots of this enduring subaltern identity can be traced back
to the northern frontier settlements of New Spain. Isolated physically and socially from the
political and administrative center of the nation resulted in the formation of what Fernando
Escalante Gonzalbo would label as ciudadanos imaginarios or “imaginary citizens” in his book
of the same name. The resulting annexation of the northern territories of Mexico to the United
States in 1848 only exacerbated these pressures, as nearly one hundred thousand former Spanish
colonials and Republican Mexicans found themselves “doubly marginalized” in their new patria,
treated more as conquered enemies than as fellow citizens (Gutierrez 485).
It is into this space that the corrido emerges. Proliferating in northern Mexico after the
U.S./Mexican war of 1848, the corrido was a hybrid musical form that combined European
dance rhythms, primarily the polka and waltz, with that of the Spanish folk ballad. For folklorist
Americo Paredes, corrido narratives served as a form of resistance literature, testimonials that
challenged the stereotypes and official versions of history often imposed on the region from both
the United States and a pre-Revolution Mexican government. Focusing on themes of
colonization, independence, revolution, bootlegging, and border conflict, early corridos were
populated by pistol-packing bandits and revolutionary heroes (often portrayed as one and the
same), a site that many folklorists and cultural theorists have identified as a locus of identity
construction and negotiation within the discourse of marginality that the norteño experience
represented (Paredes, Ragland, Herlinghaus). The oft-cited “Corrido de Gregorio Cortez” which
emerged around the turn of the century serves as a classic example of the corrido archetype:
Cortez, a peaceful farmer, wanted for the killing of a crooked Sheriff, evades the pursuing Texas
Rangers at every turn, taunting them with his evasive abilities, only turning himself in once he
realizes that innocent people are being punished for his crime:
68
The hound dogs were coming,
Following his trail,
But catching Cortez
Was like reaching for a star.

Gregorio Cortez said:
“Why do you even try,
You can’t even catch me,
With those hound dogs!”

The Americans said:
“What shall we do if we find him?
In an open confrontation
Only a few of us will make it back.”

By the corral of the ranch
They surrounded him.
There were more than 300 men,
But he jumped through their ring.
(translated from Corrido de Gregorio Cortez, author unknown)
The legend and corrido it inspired caused the figure of Cortez to become aligned with Mexican
Revolutionary figures like Pancho Villa and Emiliano Zapata who were seen as representing men
who took the law into their own hands in order to “preserve the dignity and honor” of one’s
69
family and community in a situation complicated by “poverty, racism, and attempts by both the
Mexican and American governments to ‘tame’ the last frontier” (Ragland 124). Most
importantly, as Edberg points out, corridos of this era “were bound up in the changing landscape
of power between the United States and what had been Mexico, as they were … bound up with
images of what it means to be from the sierra, or from the tough, dry border country – images of
people who are survivors, who are wily and resourceful, who know the land, who can take
punishment, and who are not deterred by the imposition of a border” (“El Narcotraficante..”
107).
It was a theme that would carry well into the 20
th
century, particularly as the United
States began to formally regulate the flow of labor between the United States and Mexico. As
United States immigration and labor policy transformed, so too did the modern corrido, with the
thematic content of the ballads mirroring the issues of economic struggle, alienation, oppression,
drug-smuggling and increasingly dangerous border-crossing experiences that immigrants were
experiencing due to the increased militarization of the border (Ragland 145). It was a series of
themes that the Grammy award-winning Los Tigres del Norte would harness in their revival of
the corrido “as a living tradition associated with the working-class migrant” (Ragland 154). As
Quinones relates, over the span of their 40+ year career Los Tigres have not only “chronicled the
epic tale of the arrival of Mexicans in the United States” but as immigrants themselves have
“spoke to (and often for) a Mexican audience in America through songs that recognize the labor
and longings of those immigrants, often voiceless in both countries” (“10 Favorite Songs…”).
Where other Mexican groups in the 1970s began moving away from the “old-fashioned” corrido
in favor of the modern sentiments of love-ballads and cumbias, Los Tigres “brought the focus
back to the corrido and added stylistic nuances to the ensemble sound” and, most importantly,
70
locating “the characters farther north of the border and inside the United States” (Ragland 143,
154). Speaking and singing in the language of the working-class Mexican, Los Tigres were
instrumental in granting the genre two very important new avatars: the narcotraficante and the
mojado (literally “drug trafficker” and “wetback”). Songs like “Vivan Los Mojados” (Long Live
the Wetbacks) and “El Mojado Acaudalado” (The Wealthy Wetback) proved to be just as
popular as Los Tigres’ numerous narco-themed songs like “El Jefe de Jefes” (The Boss of
Bosses) and “Pacas de a Kilo” (One-Kilo Packets).
The affinity between the two archetypes was first sensed in the surprising popularity of
Los Tigres’ Contrabando y Traición (Smuggling and Betrayal). Released in 1972, the song tells
the tragic (fictional) love story of ‘Emilio Varela’ and ‘Camelia the Texan’ who are tasked with
smuggling marijuana hidden in the tires of the car they are driving. After a harrowing yet
successful journey from Tijuana to a “dark alleyway” in Hollywood, Emilio ultimately “betrays”
Camelia by announcing that they are to go their separate ways after the delivery as the “love of
[his] life” is waiting for him in San Francisco:
Seven gun shots rang out, Camelia killed Emilio,
The police only found a gun thrown away,
About the money and Camelia, nothing more was ever known.
(Translated from Contrabando y Traición by Los Tigres Del Norte)
The song was an instant hit with both men and women and struck what Cathy Ragland called the
“perfect balance of imagination and reality to make it the kind of modern-day outlaw corrido to
appeal to hundreds of thousands of undocumented Mexican immigrants whose illegal status
place[d] them outside authority and constantly on the run” (144). The song spawned numerous
imitations and half-rate sequels, giving birth to the narcocorrido genre in the process.
71
While still recording and performing their own brand of narcocorridos to this day, Los
Tigres continue to express ambivalence about the glorification of the narcotraficante lifestyle
and the violence that often follows in its wake. Most of that critique has been aimed at artists like
Chalino Sanchez who, in the early 1990s, would usher in a new wave of ultra-violent corridos
where the lifestyles of the narco and the singers began to blur. Chalino’s persona was that of one
who “actually lived” the narcotraficante life and whose image was fashioned on “a combination
of the norteña bandit hero, mojado ‘power’ identity, regional Sinaloan folklore, and his own
real-life (or supposed real-life) experiences” (Ragland 161-162). After getting his start writing
corridos for inmates, smugglers and other assorted underworld figures, Chalino rose to fame
with a series of local mixtapes “filled with graphic details of the drug world, including torture
and execution” (Ragland 162). Chalino’s legendary status only grew when he was involved in a
notorious shootout with a concert-goer in Coachella only months before he would be murdered
under mysterious circumstances in Mexico in 1992, lending credence to the notion that corridos
had become “the Mexican equivalent of gangsta rap” (Herlinghaus 87).
As performed by such groups as Grupo Exterminador and Explosion Norteña, it is hard to
fault those who take offense at the violent imagery that has seemingly become the central
element of the corrido performance. Highly popular songs like “Carteles Unidos” (United
Cartels) by Movimiento Alterado or “Los Sanguinarios” (Bloodthirsty) by Bukanas de Culiacan
pack every lyric with hand grenades, bazookas, AK-47s and even anthrax in narratives that
inevitably lead to torture and dismemberment. It is a critique that Los Tucanes frontman Mario
Quintero seems conscious of in a 2010 interview with The New York Times: “We have tried
doing some songs about drugs and violence from a more critical perspective … Nobody asks for
72
them. So we don’t sing them – songs for peace, or songs about ending violence. It’s not what the
people want to hear” (Kun, “Minstrels ..”).
It is a troubling admission and one that instantly problematizes Creechan and Garcia’s
critique of journalists and scholars who focus exclusively on negative aspects of narco-culture in
what they argue is a “lingering attachment to cultural representations of Mexico” from the 19
th

Century (32). In Creechan and Garcia’s analysis, the sophisticated organizational elements of
drug networks are often overlooked in favor of representations that “reduce Mexicans to the role
of drug smugglers and assigns them a core identity” that is “unsophisticated and superstitious,” a
stance Creechan and Garcia see as being reflected in the constant portrayal of Mexico itself as
merely a “conduit or supply route” managed by larger, more sophisticated (i.e., intelligent)
foreign powers (32, 33). This media and scholarly focus on Mexican narcocultura, they argue, is
often at the expense of other equally relevant and culturally indigenous sentiments that, as in the
case of Los Tigres del Norte’s body of work, constitute a significant portion of the norteño
cultural experience. Songs about immigration, identity conflict, political corruption, nationalism,
love, death, and existential angst are often overlooked or marginalized, leading to what Ragland
has deemed an “orientalized” interpretation of Mexican culture that not only situates the
Mexican subject in the familiar space of “the exotic ‘other’” but also one whose deviant status is
the direct result of “living within a less progressive society” (195, 196).
What is overlooked in these critiques is that narcocorridos and the cultura that they seek
to align themselves with, if not outright represent, attract audiences on both sides of the border in
a way that “resonates in the enduring cultural representations that make up [both] American
culture and Mexican culture,” particularly as they relate to the “image of men or women who are
willing to risk all against social forces that are stacked against them in the quest for respect”
73
(Edberg “El Narcotraficante” 1). Indeed, the “outlaw” is a figure that resonates with the cultures
of the American West and la frontera in surprisingly analogous ways. While a cross-cultural
analysis is outside the scope of this paper, it shouldn’t be too much of a leap to suggest that
similar to the way in which the Western both evokes and denies the role of violence used in
colonizing the West (and which has become central to discourse on the construction of the
American character), the narcocorrido’s embrace of violence in many ways gestures at the
violence already embedded in Mexican history and culture through the process of colonization.
In other words, if we are to interpret narco-narratives not only as critiques of a system
that encourages and exploits illicit labor and contraband networks but also as an artistic form that
enables listeners to “act out a fantasy” and “articulate or express an identity in the face of an
unstable geopolitical situation” (Herlinghaus 55), then similar to the way in which Baudrillard
deconstructs the film Apocalypse Now in Simulacra and Simulation, we can begin to deconstruct
the narco performance, according it a place that is as much “physical” as it is “psychical”; a
place where any grounding in a rational reality has long since been replaced by “an excessive
world of expenditure and psychedelic spectacle” (Lane 92). For Baudrillard, what is hyperreal
about Coppola’s film (and its similitude with the Vietnam War) is “the reversibility of both
destruction and production,” the film destroying to produce itself (“Simulacra…” 60). Likewise,
Chalino (and countless others) have had to kill or be killed in order to accord authority and
authenticity to the narco lifestyle and their own personal legends: “in all instances, destruction
and production are interchangeable” (Lane 92).
Cultural theorist Josh Kun points to Chalino’s death in 1992 as a turning point in the Los
Angeles Mexican migrant music scene: “Mexicans who had previously looked to gangsta rap as
a mirror of urban outrage now looked to corridos and banda; closets full of Raiders jerseys
74
suddenly shared hangar space with cowboy hats, belt buckles, and boots” (“California Sueños”).
It was a pivotal moment culturally that epitomized Baudrillard’s notion of ‘death that produces’
as an entire generation of young Mexican-Americans “began to not only appropriate musical
styles of the Mexican working-class, but also to re-signify them as symbols of their own cultural
identity” (Simonett 332). While corridos continued to be seen as privileged narratives capable of
transmitting a form of historical truth, a new generation of musicians began transforming artists
like Chalino into contemporary folk heroes in a way that unleashed a multiplicity of ever-shifting
signifiers and alignments that drew upon this cultural legacy and privileged position.
In her cross-genre analysis, Amanda Morrison notes that in the 1990s the contemporary
corrido, like gangsta rap before it, came to be driven by the “profit logic of capitalism,” with
both Los Angeles-based gangsta rap and narcocorrido labels trafficking in the “trade [of]
exaggerated, spectacular imagery of ‘life in the ‘hood’” – proudly bearing “a questionable
correspondence to reality” (394, 384). This new reality was not only a reflection of the fully
realized demographic power of the young Mexican-American in Los Angeles; it was also a form
of identity politics that allowed the Mexican-American consumer to “celebrate their roots by
listening to regional Mexican music, imaginatively allying themselves with working-class
peasants of their ancestral homeland” (Morrison 382). It is my contention that this imaginative
alliance expressed (and continues to express) itself as a dissatisfaction with the modern condition
and also functions, to borrow a term from Alicia Camacho, as a form of “migrant melancholia”
often expressed as a “poignant nostalgia for the small town idyll” (Simonett 326). This alliance is
most noticeable in the commissioned corrido market where anyone with the right amount of
money can pay to have songwriters produce a song in their honor. The commissioned corrido
serves not only in the creation of a larger-than-life, fictional self, but also “enable[s] the clients to
75
be whoever they imagine” (Simonett 330). Most importantly, by injecting their own story into
that of a culturally respected “tradition, they profit from the mythical hero image that has been
granted to important personalities” (Simonett 331). It is within this process that we can witness
the narco becoming a copy without an original, an invention or artifact evoked to replace the
actual with an imagined mask of power and agency within the complex psychic and physical
powerplay of la frontera.
Nathaniel Lewis, writing on the literary West, reminds us that “narratives invent the
place, invented the place before contact” and that the act of seizing and asserting occupational
control over the physical space of the American West only served to literalize an already
imagined set of social-spatial relations, the “empty space” of the frontier functioning as a void
onto which the dreams and desires of any would-be settler could be projected (191). Lewis sees
this act as a concrete expression of Baudrillard’s “precession of simulacra,” a period which
would eventually give way to the postwestern era in which the evocations of an imagined Old
West would express themselves just as powerfully as narcocorridos conjure up the world of Old
Mexico. Instead of the mythic original and authentic “Indian” that we find in Western literature,
we find the mythic Mexican Revolutionary and valiant farmer simultaneously simulating a
ghostly “incarnation [that] does not challenge the concept of the copy so much as induces a
nostalgia for the past, a golden age of harmony” (Lewis 208). In her study on the modern
condition of nostalgia, Svetlana Boym reminds us that “nostalgia, like progress, is dependent
upon the modern conception of unrepeatable and irreversible time, the object of romantic
nostalgia must be beyond the present space of experience, in the twilight of the past or an island
of utopia where time has happily stopped” (13). Thus, in the northern frontier of Mexico we see
the birth of an imagined world that (quoting from Lewis) “not only distorts actual history but
76
replaces it with a kind of fantasy. This fantastic world gradually intrudes on the real one until it
becomes established as reality itself – indeed, people ‘hanker’ to believe the story and what it
says about them; they want to trust this new authenticity,” unaware that they are now living in “a
hyperreal world, a simulacrum in which reality is only a copy, a set of invented images” (192-3).
Perhaps the popularity of these “invented images” for the Mexican migrant, struggling
with the feeling that their lives are unreal or inauthentic, not only take the form of a simulated
pre-industrial, pre-modern landscape, but also lend themselves to the creation of a “narco-
trafficker persona [that] exists outside of and beyond the actual life of any given narco-
trafficker” (Edberg 271). The narco “stance,” Edberg argues, is ultimately nothing more than
“larger-than-life, ritualistic theater,” a notion reflected in the perception of many Mexican-
American youth for whom the narcocorrido is not seen “as real but as a fantasy and
entertainment,” a performance that is first and foremost imbued with a “sense of play” (271,
267). Baudrillard argues that this process of simulation is directly related to nostalgia, a process
that ultimately leads to a “proliferation of myths of origin and signs of reality,” expressing itself,
for our purposes, as an anachronistic space where one may remember (mourn?) “lost history, a
place where time has stood still, an encounter that creates nostalgia for a history that never was”
(“Simulations” 12). Thus, Baudrillard’s assertion that Disneyland serves as “a deterrence
machine set up in order to rejuvenate in reverse the fiction of the real” in the United States can
be applied to la frontera: instead of “an infantile world [created] in order to make us believe that
the adults are elsewhere in the ‘real’ world, and to conceal the fact that real childishness is
everywhere,” we instead step into a reverse fantasy where the infantile, plasticity of Disneyland
is replaced by the murderous and treacherous world of the narco (“Simulations” 25). This narco
simulacrum takes on the qualities of a perverse colonial adventure, an imagined reversal of
77
history where the former northern territories of Mexico become reappropriated on multiple levels
– the Other, in this fantasy, is played by the Gringo, the Texas Ranger, the Border Patrol Officer,
and various other archetypes encountered on both sides of the border-zone. This new gaze
recenters the narrative in and of the South and asserts a new level of authority, the colonizers
now under cultural surveillance, the North now a dangerous, immoral, deceptive, and abusive
place while the South is a place of morality, respect, community, and family. In this way, history
becomes what Baudrillard calls a “retro scenario” and “desperate rehallucination of the past
(“Simulacra…” 43, 123) In the same way that “cinema plagiarizes itself, recopies itself, remakes
its classics, retroactivates its original myths,” so too do we see the unfolding of a mythos that
attempts to bury its ‘ghosts’ as well as ‘resurrect’ a historical period where the struggle of life
and death was imagined to have a level of meaning and importance not conferred in current
transnational discourse (“Simulacra…” 47, 44). Instead of Baudrillard’s conception of the
“news,” it is the narco of “the present” that “gives the sinister impression of kitsch, retro and
porno all at the same time” (“Simulations” 72). Rural elements in the narcocorrido take on new
significations as roosters become code for marijuana, parrots cocaine, goats as heroin and in
perhaps the most explicit mesh of kitsch, retro and porno, the cuerno de chivo (horn of a goat)
becomes the AK-47 assault rifle.
An interesting parallel is found in Boym’s recollections of social upheaval in the former
Soviet Union, how, in spite of the great social transformation that had occurred at nearly every
level of society after the fall of the Soviet empire, within a decade, public reflection on the
experience of communism and state repression gave way to a “new longing for an imaginary
ahistorical past, an age of stability/normalcy” (58). While the violent and seemingly lawless
world evoked by the narcocorrido seems antithetical to Boym’s evocation of stability and
78
normalcy, I contend that the imagined world of narcocultura in a perverse way evokes a world
of the familiar and echoes the longing for continuity and community in a fragmented and
disjointed world, what Boym would identify as a “defense mechanism against accelerated
change” (64). How better to articulate a desire for stability amidst the dizzying unease that the
accelerated rhythms of border passage and the social upheaval of the drug war continue to wreak
upon entire communities? What better way to articulate the complex human needs and desires
that drive people north only to find themselves trapped in the nexus of a system that demands the
utilization of cheap labor in order to operate? As Boym relates, the true “object of longing is not
really the place called home but a sense of intimacy with the world, not the past in general but
that imaginary moment when we had time and didn’t know the temptation of nostalgia” (251).
For our purpose then, the frontier fantasies as represented in the narcocorrido are in essence a
nostalgic response to the uncertainty and violence of the contemporary environment into which
the music and its community find a voice. Conceptually this echoes Baudrillard’s notion that
actual “transgression and violence are less serious [to the repressive apparatus] for they only
contest the distribution of the real” (“Simulations” 38).
Thus, the “real” scandal that the system conspires to mask through the process of
dissimulation expresses itself as a form of “moral panic as we approach the primal (mise en)
scene of capital: its instantaneous cruelty, its incomprehensible ferocity, its fundamental
immorality” (Baudrillard “Simulations” 28-29). In other words, it is capital itself that is
ultimately “immoral and unscrupulous,” a demigod that demands the death of its protagonists to
achieve a completeness that often feigns morality in an attempt to camouflage its true nature.
While violent, disturbing and often alien to those unable or unwilling to understand the context
in which pochos, monstruos, jotos and narcos are created, it is through this realization that the
79
strategies and codes of the narcocorrido ultimately builds upon the foundation that Villareal
sought to explore over fifty years ago, exposing the symbiotic relationship each of these
“deviant” figures has with the broader structural violence that continues to fuel both the real and
imagined violence of la frontera.

80
REFERENCES

Aldama, Frederick Luis. Brown on Brown: Chicano/a Representations of Gender, Sexuality, and
Ethnicity. Austin: University of Texas Press. 2005. Print.
Aldama, Frederick Luis. “Penalizing Chicano/a Bodies in Edward James Olmos’ American Me”
Decolonial Voices: Chicana and Chicano Cultural Studies in the 21st Century. Eds.
Arturo J. Aldama and Naomi H. Quinonez. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press,
2002. 78-97. Print.
Almaguer, Tomas. “Chicano Men: A Cartography of Homosexual Identity and Behavior.” Men’s
Lives. Eds. Michael S. Kimmel and Michael A. Messner. Boston: Allyn and Bacon,
1998. 473-86. Print.
Banner, Lois. “The Creature from the Black Lagoon: Marilyn Monroe and Whiteness.” Cinema
Journal 47.4 (2008): 4-29. Web. 15 Feb. 2012.
Baudrillard, Jean. Simulations. New York: Semiotext(e). 1983. Print.
Baudrillard, Jean. Simulacra and Simulation. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. 1994.
Print.
Bleiler, Richard. “The Monster.” Icons of Horror and the Supernatural: An Encyclopedia of our
Worst Nightmares Ed. S.T. Joshi. Westwood, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 2007. 341-
373. Print.
Boym, Svetlana. The Future of Nostalgia. New York: Basic Books. 2001. Print.
Bruce-Novoa, Juan D. Chicano Authors: Inquiry by Interview. Austin: University of Texas Press.
1980. Print.
Bruce-Novoa, Juan. “Homosexuality and the Chicano Novel.” Confluencia, 2.1 (1986) : 69-77.
Web. 28 Mar. 2012
81
Bruce-Novoa, Juan. “Pocho as Literature.” Aztlan, 7.1 (1977) : 65-77. Web. 2 Apr. 2012
Buell, Lawrence. Writing for an Endangered World: Literature, Culture, and Environment in the
U.S. and Beyond. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Belknap Press, 2001. Print.
Burnette, M. Michele. “Gender, Gender Identity, and Sexuality.” Sex and Sexuality. Vol. 1. Eds.
Richard D. McAnulty and M. Michele Burnette. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2006. 185-202.
Print.
Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York: Routledge,
1990. Print.
Butler, Robert W. “'La Mission,' now on DVD, has an authentic feel.” Kansascity.com. Kansas
City Star, 4 Aug. 2010. Web. 20 Nov. 2010.
Camacho, Alicia Schmidt. “Migrant Melancholia: Emergent Discourses of Mexican Migrant
Traffic in Transnational Space.” South Atlantic Quarterly, 105.4 (2006) : 831-861. Web.
10 Apr. 2011
Campbell, Neil. The Rhizomatic West: Representing the American West in a Transnational,
Global, Media Age. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. 2008. Print.
Carroll, Noel. “Nightmare and the Horror Film: The Symbolic Biology of Fantastic Beings.”
Film Quarterly 34.3 (1981): 16-25. Web. 20 Feb. 2012.
Clover, Carol J. “Her Body, Himself: Gender in the Slasher Film.” Representations 20 (1987):
187-228. Web. 17 Sept. 2010.
Comer, Krista. Surfer Girls in the New World Order. Durham: Duke University Press. 2010.
Print.
Contreras, Daniel. Unrequited Love and Gay Latino Culture: What have you done to my heart.
New York, NY: Palgrove–Macmillan, 2005. Print.
82
Cooper Alarcon, Daniel. The Aztec Palimpsest: Mexico in the Modern Imagination. Tucson: The
University of Arizona Press. 1997. Print.
Creechan, James H. and Garcia, Jorge de la Herran. “Without God or Law: Narcoculture and
belief in Jesus Malverde.” Religious Studies and Theology, 24.2 (2005) : 5-57. Web. 2
Jan. 2012.
Cutler, John Alba. Pochos, Vatos, and Other Types of Assimilation Masculinities in Chicano
Literature, 1940-2004. Thesis (Ph.D.) – UCLA (2008)
Edberg, Mark C. “Drug Traffickers as Social Bandits.” Journal of Contemporary Criminal
Justice, 17.3 (2001) : 259-277. Web. 25 Nov. 2010
Edberg, Mark Cameron. El Narcotraficante: Narcocorridos & the Construction of a Cultural
Persona on the U.S.-Mexico Border. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2004. Print.
Fiedler, Leslie. “Come Back to the Raft Ag’in, Huck Honey!” Partisan Review (1948) : 664-671.
Print.
Fischoff, Stuart, Alexandra Dimopoulos, Francois Nguyen, and Rachel Gordon. “Favorite Movie
Monsters and Their Psychological Appeal.” Imagination, Cognition and Personality 22.4
(2002-2003): 401-426. Web. 18 Feb. 2012.
Foster, David William. El Ambiente Nuestro: Chicano/Latino Homoerotic Writing. Tempe,
Arizona: Bilingual Press/Editorial Bilingüe. 2006. Print.
Fuss, Diana. “Inside/Out.” Inside/Out. Ed. Diana Fuss. London: Routledge, 1991. 1-10. Print.
Gaudio, Rudolf P. “White Men Do It Too: Racialized (Homo)sexualities in Postcolonial
Hausaland.” Journal of Linguistic Anthropology. 11.1 (2001) 36—51. Web. 20 Nov.
2010.
83
Gonder, Patrick. “Race, Gender and Terror: The Primitive in 1950s Horror Films.” Genders
Online Journal 40 (2004): n. pag. Web. 18 Feb. 2012.
Gonzalbo, Fernando Escalante. Cuidadanos Imaginarios / Imaginary Citizens. El Colegio de
Mexico, A.C.: Biblioteca Miguel Cos. 2009. Print.
Greene, Beverly. “Beyond Heterosexism and Across the Cultural Divide – Developing an
inclusive Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Psychology: A look to the future.” Psychological
Perspectives on Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Experiences. 2nd ed. Eds. Linda D. Garnets
and Douglas C. Kimmel. New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 2003. 357-400.
Print.
Greere, Chris and Yvonne Jewkes. “Extremes of Otherness: Media Images of Social Exclusion.”
Social Justice. 32.1 (2005) 20-31. Print.
Gutierrez, David G. “Migration, Emergent Ethnicity, and the ‘Third Space’: The Shifting Politics
of Nationalism in Greater Mexico.” Journal of American History, 86.2 (1999) : 481-517.
Web. 25 Nov. 2010
Hale, Mike. “Movie Review: La Mission: Father-Son Conflicts on the Streets of San Francisco.”
The New York Times. 9 Apr. 2010. Web. 20 Nov. 2010.
Hendershot, Cyndy. “The Bomb and Sexuality: Creature from the Black Lagoon and Revenge of
the Creature.” Literature and Psychology 45.4 (1999): 74-89. Web. 18 Feb. 2012
Hendershot, Cyndy. “From Trauma to Paranoia: Nuclear Weapons, Science Fiction, and
History.” Mosaic: A Journal for the Interdisciplinary Study of Literature 32.4 (1999): 73-
91. Web. 17 Feb. 2012.
Herlinghaus, Hermann. Violence Without Guilt: Ethical Narratives From the Global South. New
York: Palgrave Macmillan. 2009. Print.
84
Herrera y Lozano, Lorenzo. “Guest Post: La Mission and Latino Masculinities.”
Blabbeando.blogspot.com. Blabbeando, 04 May, 2010. Web. 20 Nov. 2011.
Herrera, Spencer R. “The Pocho Palimpsest in Early 20
th
Century Chicano Literature from
Daniel Venegas to Americo Paredes.” Confluencia, 26.1 (2010) : 21-33. Web. 20 Mar.
2012
Hidalgo, Melissa. “Soft Hands: A Genealogy of the Educational Formation of Queer Chicano
Identities from Villarreal’s Pocho (1959) to Bracho’s Sissy (2008).” Unpublished book
chapter. Cal State Fullerton. n.d.
Jancovich, Mark. Rational Fears: American Horror in the 1950s. New York: Manchester
University Press, 1996. Print.
Kinnard, Roy. Beasts and Behemoths: Prehistoric Creatures in the Movies. Metuchen, New
Jersey: The Scarecrow Press, 1988. Print.
Klein, Kerwin Lee. “Reclaiming the ‘F’ Word, or Being and Becoming Postwestern.” Pacific
Historical Review, 65.2 (1996) : 179-215. Web. 12 Aug. 2012
Kollin, Susan, ed. Postwestern Cultures: Literature, Theory, Space. Lincoln: University of
Nebraska Press. 2007. Print.
Kun, Josh. “Minstrels in the Court of the Kingpin.” The New York Times, 7 March. 2010. Web.
28 Apr. 2011.
Kun, Josh. “California Sueños.” Boom: A Journal of California, 1.1 (2011) : Web. 22 Jun, 2011
Lamble, David. “How the Mission came to the Movies.” Ebar.com. The Bay Area Reporter. 22
Apr. 2010. Web. 20 Nov. 2010.
Lane, Richard J. Jean Baudrillard. 2
nd
Ed. New York: Routledge, 2009. Print.
85
Lewis, Nathaniel. Unsettling the Literary West: Authenticity and Authorship. Lincoln: University
of Nebraska Press, 2003. Print.
Lopez, Miguel R. “Three Critical Texts of the Chicano Generation of the Eighties.” Stanford
Center for Chicano Research, Working Paper Series, no. 34 (1992) Print.
Luedtke, Luther. “Pocho and the American Dream.” Contemporary Chicano Fiction: A Critical
Survey. Ed. Vernon Lattin. Binghamton, New York: Bilingual Press/Editorial Bilingüe,
1986. 62-81. Print.
Madrid, Alejandro L. Nor-Tec Rifa!: Electronic Dance Music from Tijuana to the World. New
York: Oxford University Press, 2008. Print.
Madrid-Barela, Arturo. “Pochos: The Different Mexicans, An Interpretive Essay, Part I.” Aztlan,
7.1 (1977) : 51-64. Web. 2 Apr. 2012
Marsiglia, Flavio Francisco. “Homosexuality and Latinos/as” Journal of Gay & Lesbian Social
Services. 8.3 (1998) 113 — 125. Web. 4 Dec. 2010.
Martin-Rodriguez, Manuel M. Life in Search of Readers: Reading (in) Chicano/a Literature.
Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press. 2003. Print.
Matthes, Carl. “La Mission.” laprogressive.com. LA Progressive, 22 Apr. 2010. Web. 20 Nov.
2010.
McConnell, Frank D. The Spoken Seen: Film and the Romantic Imagination. Baltimore,
Maryland: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1975. Print.
Mermann-Jozwiak, Elisabeth. “Writing Mexico: Travel and Intercultural Encounter in
Contemporary American Literature.” symplokē, 17.1-2 (2009) 95-114. Web. 2 Apr. 2012
86
Mirabal, Nancy Raquel. “Geographies of Displacement: Latina/os, Oral History, and The Politics
of Gentrification in San Francisco’s Mission District.” The Public Historian. 31.2 (2009)
7–31. Web. 20 Nov. 2010.
Miranda, Ajay. “Q&A: Benjamin Bratt and cast of 'La Mission' on machismo, lowriders and
love.” Austinvida.com, Austin Vida, 21 May 2010. Web. 20 Nov. 2010.
Moraga, Cherrie. “Queer Aztlan; the Re-formation of Chicano Tribe.” Queer Cultures. Eds.
Deborah Carlin and Jennifer DiGrazia. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson, 2004. 224-28.
Print.
Morrison, Amanda Maria. “Musical Trafficking: Urban Youth and the Narcocorrido-hardcore
rap nexus.” Western Folklore. 67.4 (2008) : 379-396. Web. 15 Apr. 2011
Murray-Ramirez, Nicole. “’La Mission’ Best Movie of the Year!” Gay and Lesbian Times.
Uptown Publications, 6 May 2010. Web. 20 Nov. 2010.
Myers, Inma Minoves. “Language and Style in Pocho.” Bilingual Review/Revista Bilingüe,
16.2/3 (1991) 180-187. Web. 20 Mar. 2012
Nies, Betsy. “The Borderlands of the Chicano Bildungsroman: Victor Martinez’s Parrot in the
Oven.” The ALAN Review, 32.1 (2004) : 4-9. Web. 15 Mar. 2012
Oksiloff, Assenka. Picturing the Primitive: Visual Culture, Ethnography, and Early German
Cinema. New York: Palgrave, 2001. Print.
Otálvaro-Hormillosa, Gigi. “Resisting Appropriation and Assimilation via (a)eromestizaje and
Radical Performance Art Practice.” Pinay Power: Peminist Critical Theory/Theorizing
the Filipina-American Experience. Ed. Melinda L.de Jesus. New York, NY: Routledge,
2005. 327-340. Print.
87
Paredes, Americo. “With His Pistol in His Hand”: A Border Ballad and its Hero. Austin:
University of Texas Press, 1958. Print.
Peckham, Robert. “Diseasing the City: Colonial Noir and the Ruins of Modernity.” Fast
Capitalism 8.1 (2011): n. pag. Web. 18 Feb. 2012.
Peterseim, Locke. “Benjamin Bratt talks to Redbox about La Mission.” Blog.redbox.com. n.p.,
10 Aug. 2010. Web. 20 Nov. 2010.
Petersen, Kirsten Holst and Anna Rutherford. “Fossil and Psyche.” The Post-Colonial Studies
Reader. Eds. Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths, and Helen Tiffin. 2
nd
Ed. New York:
Routledge, 2006. 139-142. Print.
Petty, Miriam J. ”Passing for Horror: Race, Fear, and Elia Kazan’s Pinky.” Genders Online
Journal 40 (2004): n. pag. Web. 18 Feb. 2012.
Piedra, Jose. “Loving Columbus.” Amerindian Images and the Legacy of Columbus. Vol. 9. Eds.
Rene Jara and Nicholas Spadaccini. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press,
1992. 230-265. Print.
Piedra, Jose. “Nationalizing Sissies.” ¿Entiendes? Queer Readings, Hispanic Writings. Eds.
Emilie L. Bergmann and Paul Julian Smith. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1995.
370-409. Print.
Poupart, Lisa M. “The Familiar Face of Genocide: Internalized Oppression among American
Indians.” Hypatia. 18.2 (2003) 86-100. Web. 20 Nov. 2010.
Quinones, Sam. “Los Tigres del Norte’s 10 Favorite Songs about Mexico.” Latina. 16
September. 2010. Web. 5 May. 2011
Quinones, Sam. True Tales from Another Mexico: The Lynch Mob, the Popsicle Kings, Chalino,
and the Bronx. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2001. Print.
88
Rabkin, Eric S. “The Creature from Brooklyn: My Life and Science Fiction Film.” Of Body
Snatchers and Cyberpunks: Student Essays on American Science Fiction Film. Eds.
Sonja Georgi and Kathleen Loock. Universitätsverlag Göttingen, 2011. 187-194. Web. 12
Feb. 2012.
Ragland, Cathy. Música Norteña: Mexican Migrants Creating a Nation between Nations.
Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2009. Print.
Rigby, Jonathan. American Gothic: Sixty Years of Horror Cinema. London: Reynolds & Hearn,
2007. Print.
Rodriguez, Richard A. “Clinical Issues in Identity Development in Gay Latino Men.” Gay and
Lesbian Mental Health: A Sourcebook for Practitioners. Ed. Christopher J. Alexander.
New York, NY: Harrington Park Press, 1996. 127-57. Print.
Sailer, Steve. “Chicanos vs. Gay Gentrifiers.” The American Conservative. 11 Sept. (2006) Web.
20 Nov. 2010.
Saldivar, Ramon. “A Dialectic of Difference: Toward a Theory of the Chicano Novel.” (13-31)
1986 Binghamton, New York: Bilingual Press/Editorial Bilingüe. 1986. Print.
Santos, Angeles Xuan. “The Chicana Canvas Doing Class, Gender, Race, and Sexuality through
Tattooing in East Los Angeles.” NWSA Journal. 21.3 (2009) 91-120. Web. 25 Nov. 2010.
Schiesari, Juliana. The Gendering of Melancholia. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1992.
Print.
Schneekloth, Lynda H. “Plants: The Ultimate Alien.” Extrapolation 42.3 (2001): 246-254. Web.
20 Feb. 2012.
Sedgwick, Eve. Epistemology of the Closet. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2008.
Print.
89
Sedore, Timothy S. “Solace in Solitude: An American Adamic Alienation and Jose Antonio
Villarreal’s Pocho.” Literature Interpretation Theory, 11.2 (2000) : 239-259. Web. 27
Mar. 2012
Simonett, Helena. “Narcocorridos: An emerging micromusic out of Nuevo L.A.”
Ethnomusicology 23.2 : 315-337. Web. 20 Apr. 2011
Smith, Andrea. “Dismantling Hierarchy, Queering Society.” Tikkun 25.4 (2010) 60-1. Web. 25
Nov. 2010.
Smith, Andrea. “Heteropatriarchy and the Three Pillars of White Supremacy: Rethinking
Women of Color Organizing.” Color of Violence: the Incite! Anthology.. Ed. Incite!
Women of Color Against Violence. Cambridge, Mass: South End Press, 2006. 67-73.
Print.
Smith, Andrea. “Dismantling Hierarchy, Queering Society.” Tikkun 25.4 (2010) 60-1. Web. 25
Nov. 2010.
Soldan, Angelika and Zavaletta, Elizabeth. “Richard Rodriguez’s Writings: An Account of
Cultural Complexity and Search for Identity.” Journal of Hispanic Higher Education, 1.4
(2002) : 313-319. Web. 28 Mar. 2012
Sorensen, Lief. “The Anti-Corrido of George Washington Gomez: A Narrative of Emergent
Subject Formation.” American Literature, 80.1 (2008) : 111-140. Web. 28 Mar. 2012
Stark, John. “Invisible Man: Ellison’s Black Odyssey.” Negro American Literature Forum, 7.2
(1973) : 60-63. Web. 4 Apr. 2012
Tafoya, Terry. “Native Gay and Lesbian Issues: The Two-Spirited.” Psychological Perspectives
on Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Experiences. 2nd ed. Eds. Linda D. Garnets and Douglas
C. Kimmel. New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 2003. 401-09. Print.
90
Tatum, Stephen. “’Mercantile Ethics’: No Country for Old Men and the Narcocorrido.” Cormac
McCarthy: All the Pretty Horses, No Country for Old Men, The Road. Ed. Sara L.
Spurgeon. New York: Continuum, 2011. 77-93. Print.
Treuer, David. Native American Fiction: A User’s Manual. Saint Paul, Minnesota: Graywolf
Press. 2006. Print.
Velasco, Juan. “Automitografias: The Border Paradigm and Chicana/o Autobiography.”
Biography, 27.2 (2004) : 313-338. Web. 15 Mar. 2012
Villalobos, Jose Pablo and Ramirez-Pimienta, Juan Carlos. “Corridos and la pura verdad: Myths
and Realities of the Mexican Ballad.” South Central Review 21.3 (2004) : 129-149. Web.
30 Apr. 2011
Villareal, Jose Antonio. Pocho. New York: Anchor Books. 1989. Print.
Wald, Elijah. Narcocorrido: A Journey into the Music of Drugs, Guns, and Guerrillas. New
York: Harper Collins, 2001. Print.
West, Nathaniel. Unsettling the Literary West: Authenticity and Authorship. Lincoln: University
of Nebraska Press, 2003. Print.
Wiesenfeldt, Gerhard. “Dystopian Genesis: The Scientist’s Role in Society, According to Jack
Arnold.” Film & History 40.1 (2010): 58-74. Web. 22 Feb. 2012.
Wilson, Charles E. Race and Racism in Literature. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2005. Print.
Young, Robert. “The Cultural Politics of Hybridity.” The Post-Colonial Studies Reader. Eds.
Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths, and Helen Tiffin. 2
nd
Ed. New York: Routledge, 2006.
158-162. Print.

91
Owl Medicine: A Novel

92
Prologue
When it was dry and shriveled, colored like the stem of a mushroom, Grandpa took the umbilical
cord from the boy and buried it beneath the horse corral, wrapped in cotton, sprinkled with the
pollen of corn. Even though it was winter, the ground frozen and the air dry and full of pain,
Grandpa tried to shovel as deep as he could, his sweat rising like a mist beneath the orange
moon, the horses watching from the safety of their stalls, night-eyes patient and calm.
The ground did not give way easily, the stones and dirt beneath the snow pack having
hardened into a cement-like wall that resisted the dull edge of the shovel with every blow.
Grandpa cursed and spat and thought of waiting until the morning thaw of the sun but he knew
that Grandma and her customs would not allow it. He looked to the house, all shadow against the
ridge of the valley wall, no lights to be seen coming from within, only the low outline of where
the roof met the night sky and a thin tail of smoke from the chimney.
He felt more than heard a shape above him and looked up, the distinctive moon-shadow
of an owl arcing across the sky like a meteorite, so brief and mute in its passing that Grandpa
blinked and kept scanning the sky to confirm what he’d seen. He kept his head titled to the stars
to see if it would return. He saw a real falling star then, nothing more than a swift sharp streak of
light that flashed brilliantly as it approached the horizon and then disappeared. It was good omen
he took to offset the bad medicine that the owl had left in its wake.
He kept digging, the horses beginning to stir and grow restless and even though he had
dug a hole only half as deep as he’d planned, he stopped, a dull claw of pain beginning to dig
into his side with each inhale and exhale of breath.
He laid the umbilical cord down and placed the rest of the afterbirth that Grandma had
gathered and bound in cloth next to it. He called to Grandma’s spirits and then added his own
93
prayer of protection directed to la Virgen before placing them reverently side-by-side in the hole
and refilled the hole with the dirt and stone he had broken free. Using the flat back of the shovel,
he smoothed out the rocky mound and stomped it down with his boots before making the sign of
the cross and then turning to let himself out of the corral and off to bed.
He was almost to the back porch when he heard the horses stomping and baying in their
stalls. He rushed back, shovel overhead like a steel torch, and came upon two grey wolves inside
the corral, facing each other with teeth bared, the ground where he had just buried the afterbirth
and umbilical cord opened like a grave between them. He knew they were wolves by how high
they stood, half the height of a horse almost, their thick backs and broad shoulders in contrast to
the lean and wiry coyotes that he had expected to find. While he knew that wolves hadn’t been
seen in the valley for decades and that under any other circumstance he would marvel at siting
what the Rangers had said were beasts on their way to extinction, their presence offended
something deep inside Grandpa, a kind of unholy desecration that he would never be able to
quite put words to or make sense of even though he knew he would never speak of it or share it
with anyone from that moment forward. The phrase ‘carry it to the grave’ came to him as he
raised the shovel above his head with two hands and ran towards the corral with a high-pitched
yell. The wolves crouched low, ears down and looked his way before scattering, startled, each
heading in opposite directions into the woods, the tattered form of the umbilical cord and
placenta scattered in the broken dirt like a snake. Grandpa watched them run and just as he set
the shovel down to open the gate of the corral, a large shadow broke free from the cover of the
trees and with a deft angle towards the ground, snatched the cord with its talon-like claws before
retreating to the safety of the night sky.

94
The boy had been born with pale Spanish skin like his mother, his hair and eyes black and coarse
with the indio blood of his father. They gave him the Chrstian name Michael and as a result of
the desecrated ritual that had marked his coming into the world, Grandpa felt a certain affinity
towards him as if on some level the child knew that his umbilical cord had not made it into the
earth and was committed to never sharing what he had seen or experienced. If there was any
curse as a result, Grandpa was convinced that he alone would bear it or at least ward it off but
even as he would hold the child against his chest and wait for the calm of sleep to overtake him,
he would feel a quickening in his heart, a tightness in his breath, the memory of the wolves like a
shadow he could not escape.
He listened when Grandma held the child and whispered her own stories about her people
and her clan, the tinde, bear people and the power they had as such, people who understood
medicine, who knew mountains and streams and canyons, plants and trees, animals. He listened
and let the stories comfort him, secretly yearning for her to notice his own need of absolution and
protection. He had been raised Catholic and his own penchant for the rituals of Christianity had
often clashed with the indigenous traditions that Grandma gravitated towards. But now all that
would change as he remembered his own prayers on that unholy night and wondered where la
Virgen was and why she had forsaken him.
The first year of life for the child passed without incident and Grandpa considered him a
blessing for all the light he brought into the world. Everywhere they took him and everyone he
interacted with seemed to remark on the wonderful energy the boy carried, the strong and active
gaze, the easygoing nature that seemed to hint at a deep inner peace that contrasted with the fear
and anxiety that Grandpa felt watching him grow. They would often ask about the boy’s father,
95
Leonard, a mixed-blood Apache who had been sent to Vietnam before the boy was born and then
unexpectedly kept there for another tour of duty.
He thought of his daughter, Magdalena. Magdalena was his mother’s given name and
even though he knew his wife had hoped to name her after someone from her side of the family,
she had conceded. The gesture touched him to this day. He didn’t talk much about his childhood
but his wife knew that his mother had died when he was young and that he continued to carry a
great deal of unprocessed grief and anger as a result. She had died from pneumonia, which was
common enough back then, but once his own child was born he couldn’t shake the fear that
naming his daughter after his dead mother would somehow invite a similar fate or harm her in
some way.
Slowly, as Magdalena grew older and approached adulthood, those fears buried
themselves and slept, like old bears going down for the winter. He had thought he had conquered
them somehow, those dark thoughts and images that he held close inside. With Michael, the
wolves and the owl, it had all come rushing back again, old fears like disembodied spirits that
had reawakened, restless and hungry for blood. The feeling had become so real, so tangible, that
when they told him that Magdalena had been shot and left for dead in an abandoned cornfield,
baby Michael still in her arms, instead of crying out or asking questions or grabbing Grandma
and rushing to the hospital, he fell to his knees and drove his fists into the earth, over and over
again, cursing God until the bone began to show and the dirt turned red with his blood,
convinced that all the curses he had brought upon the family had finally found their way home.

96

MICHAEL

97

Chapter One
When he closed his eyes he could see himself there, face down in a patch of cold earth,
blood on his lip, the grit of sand against his skin. He was still just a baby and trying to cry like an
animal but his voice was too soft and the sky too empty and wide. He looked confused, big eyes
and bald head moving with the wobble of new muscles, looking as if he were struggling,
attempting to piece it all together. He lay across the arm of his mother in an abandoned cornfield,
a prairie of broken yellow stalks trembling and whispering the chant of some forgotten ritual.
She lay next to him, a tangle of hair and shadow, arm-over-head, leg flung to the side. She’d
been hit with the atomic force of a bullet and it had knocked her flat, one eye glossy wide and
unfocused, a bloodied cavernous hole where the other had been.
Behind them stood a man in a shooter’s stance, his legs spread, arm outstretched,
handgun for a fist. The barrel was smoking and the bullet-crack of the pistol was clapping its
way downriver as the man held his pose in a way that seemed as if he were exhaling all that had
come before him. And he was exhaling, a long drawn-out breath of grayness curling off the
barrel of his mouth as if he burned with some inner fire inexplicably hidden until now. He stood
there like an uncoiled snake, a sculpture of stone pride and power for all the world to see, his
face angled towards the flat horizon, autumnal light falling to the south.
He knew these weren’t real memories. The details had become blurred, the stories that
people told about that night shapeshifting over the years. In his own mind, the spirit-man who
shot his mother transformed from the wiry, tight body of a skinned coyote he saw hanging in
98
Grandpa’s shed, bones held together by muscles of rope to shotgun flashes of closed fists,
clenched teeth, a cow-skull jaw and hollow ribs bleached white by the sun. As he approached his
teen years Michael began to daydream about this would-be killer, still out there wandering the
hills, haunted by ghosts, gnarled roots and crooked skeletal figures rustling in the trees wherever
he went. He imagined a metallic thirst in his throat that no water could quench, a buzzing in his
head, war dreams and hungry ghosts trailing him the way they had his father and father before
him.
Sometimes he would close his eyes and imagine that he was back in the cornfield, still a
baby. He thought if he tried hard enough he could unlock hidden details buried in the folds of his
brain, memories that he knew were imprinted there, if only he could find out how to get them to
surface. All he wanted was a face, a clue, some detail that he could carry with him into the
world. But nothing would come to him. The smell of corn, soil, gasoline. Familiar smells to
every farmer and rancher from Colorado to the South Texas border.

When he was thirteen, Michael went to live with his father in California. The day before they
left, Grandpa had changed the oil and checked the tire pressure in all the tires on his battered but
solid Chevy Luv. There was a full camper shell on the back of the truck and Grandpa had already
packed his shotgun wrapped in a wool blanket alongside his well-worn duffel that held extra t-
shirts, underwear, socks, and two glass milk jugs that had been washed and refilled with water.
On the rearview mirror he hung a St. Christopher medallion that had been blessed by Father
Serna that morning at mass.
“He’s the patron saint of travelers,” Grandpa said when he saw Michael watching him
loop the band around the swivel mount that secured the mirror to the windshield.
99
In the morning, Michael loaded his own gear into the back, a simple duffel bag with a
week’s worth of clothes, a pair of work boots, a battery-powered AM/FM radio that he’d won at
the State Fair, and a paper grocery bag full of all his favorite caps. He wore his nice boots even
though they were stiff, as well as a striped button down shirt his Grandma had picked out for him
at JC Penney’s. In his pocket he carried a few of his favorite river stones, an 1885 dime that he’d
found by the train tracks, and a small pocketknife that Grandpa had given him on his tenth
birthday.
Before they left, Grandma burned smudge sticks of sage and sweetgrass and blessed the
truck, cleansing it, offering the smoke to the four corners of the sky as well as each corner of the
truck. She held on to Michael tightly as they hugged goodbye and when he felt tears coming on,
he patted her on the back, kissed her forehead and told her he’d be back soon, even though they
both knew that was a lie.
Grandpa drove south on I-25 with the windows down and didn’t stop until they turned
west on I-40 in Albuquerque, Grandpa pulling his first of many sodas from the cooler in the back
of the truck. In Grants, New Mexico they stopped and ate foil-wrapped burritos that held
scrambled eggs, papas, bacon, cheese and green chili that grandma had packed for them.
Grandpa told Michael how he used to drive through Grants every weekend when he worked in
the uranium mines.
“Every weekend I’d drive all the way back to Trinidad just to see Mama and the kids.”
The air in Grants was dry and hot but as they bore on towards the desert, thunderclouds and
lightning began to build into magnificent spires, castles, bomb clouds, silver-edged nightmare
shapes, mushrooms, sky fungus, roaring winds. The vergas hung off the clouds like blue-black
sheets of gauze or veil through which the eyes couldn’t see – the valleys beyond lost in the
100
black-blue of whatever storm had passed. But the rains never came, only the smell of it on the
air, the canyon storms thundering in the north, the plains clouds large and white, impressive in
their almost celestial scale, entire civilizations in the expanse of the sky, shifting shapes, moving
on like an armada of warships heading home to port.
Outside of Gallup, they stopped at a roadside stand where an old Navajo woman was
selling fry bread. She would take the raw dough and dip it in a fryer and sprinkle it with cane
sugar. “Those were my cousins,” Grandpa said with a smile. “I don’t think they recognized me.”
As they began to climb towards Flagstaff, the air began feel light and cool, the high
mountain air filled with the smell of pine and fresh rain. The asphalt was slick with moisture
here, the sizzle of tires and the smoky spray of semi-trucks passing by forcing Grandpa to turn on
his wipers.
They pulled in to a rest area and slept for a few hours as night fell, Grandpa and Michael
crawling into the back of the pickup and sleeping fitfully on their bags until a horn blast from a
passing diesel truck woke them in the morning.
They bore on, the mountains once again giving way to desert, Grandpa stopping for gas
and coffee in oasis-like way stations for truckers, tourists, and locals alike. They saw all manner
of people that Michael couldn’t help but watch and wonder what their own stories were. Light-
skinned people reddened by the sun, truckers who looked forlorn and soft in the jowls, old native
men with homemade buttons and caps advertising which war they were in, young people not
much older than himself in shirts with holes in them, glazed faraway looks in their eyes as if the
sun had caused some permanent damage to the people who lived in these in-between spaces.
Some asked for money or tried to sell jewelry which they’d pull from their pockets, old
101
unpolished jewelry that came with a story about how they lost their job, how many kids they had,
where they were headed.
They crossed the California state line and within an hour Grandpa and Michael had to
strip their shirts off and angle the side windows in to get fresh air. The sensation was more like a
blast of heat from an oven or furnace than cooling or refreshing. The heat relentless the more
they drove, sweat beading on their bellies and then drying into a layer of small white salt balls
that clung to the hairs on their arms and chest.
They stopped at a Safeway near Barstow and let the engine cool down while they went
inside and bought bologna, bread, and sliced cheese. They drank cool water from a water
fountain inside the store and when they returned to the truck, Grandpa patted the hood as if to
wake it from a short nap.
They began to descend once again across a ridge of mountains, nothing more than
shadows of black and blue and grey in the harsh light of the setting sun. As night came and the
stars came out the heat continued but now the faint smell of salt water came with it. Before long
Michael fell asleep and didn’t wake until he heard the creak and snap of grandpa’s door opening
and closing.
The first thing he remembered is looking up towards a low-flying police helicopter and
seeing palm trees. In his mind, palm trees was where rich people lived but looking down the
block and back at the house they had stopped at, the palm trees felt out of place. Down the street
there was some kind of storefront church where he could hear clapping and stomping and singing
in Spanish. Even from a distance he could see that all the doors and windows were open and
dark-skinned men, women and children dressed in all-white spilled out onto the sidewalk, a blue
neon cross announcing the intentions of those inside.
102
Palm trees dotted the rest of the street, their broad trunks painted over in some cases,
graffiti carvings and “lost dog” posters on the rest. The street itself was narrow, beer cans and
candy wrappers seeming to congregate at the base of the tall trees and in the bushes. Even the
spider webs looked dusty and frayed here.
Grandpa followed his gaze and took it all in as well. It was already past nine o’clock on a
Sunday and yet the sky seemed unwilling or unable to darken any further, the street itself alive
with a kind of restless energy as dogs barked, kids yelled, the churchgoers sang, and a black and
yellow Mustang came roaring up the street, the wild, crazed laughter of youth lingering in the air
as it passed in a haze of exhaust and dust.
His father’s house had a modest chain-link fence around it, the grass and brush kept trim,
the edges neat. Michael noticed that the grass was still yellow and thinning in places as they let
themselves in the gate, the house itself dark and silent until the porch light came on, casting long,
dark shadows behind them and a dog began to bark from somewhere behind the steel-gated front
door.
103

Chapter Two
In the early days, Michael could close his eyes and quickly conjure up visions of the rocks,
canyons, night skies, and multi-colored hue of the landscape in New Mexico. It was like a
painting and he would spend time brushing it all in his mind – stones and sky, ocotillo, pinon
trees, cottonwoods, hawks – he would think of each detail, the various hues of red that each rock
held, the way smells and colors and shapes would change depending on the weather. Rain, wind,
snow, heat, all in concert with the elements, a kind of mental map to be read and recalled as if
from a long-lost world he feared he would never find again.
Even in the midst of the city, he would try and hold the silence he remembered, the
massive expanse of the sky and the quiet reflection it seemed to invite. It was a world where the
sounds of your own steps became a metronome that threaded the fabric of each day. The soft fall
of foot against stone a beat he realized now that he had taken for granted – like a heartbeat gone
quiet. Here with airplanes, helicopters, and what he came to label as a constant crying in the air,
jack hammers crushing cement, hammers driving nails through wood, even the sound of tanker
trucks shifting gears felt like some kind of mechanical violence that he couldn’t understand.
Behind it all was a constant restless hum that would take him weeks to place as the sound of the
freeway less than a mile away.
He would try to block it out and keep his eyes closed as long as possible – holding on to
the colors, outlines, smells of home. He retraced his steps from the back porch to the corral;
conjure up the process of brushing and saddling the horses, riding them deep into the woods. But
soon, just as he’d feared, those smells and colors began to fade, and his inner vision that was
once wide and able to take in the slightest movement in his periphery transformed into a narrow
104
hyperawareness that encouraged you to look away from people when you walked in public,
when your body language resisted conversation and connection, his own body soon mirroring
that of the streets where the message seemed to be: don’t engage with me – let me pass, let me
pass – he was quickly learning these new unspoken rules of the city.
It had only been a few weeks since Grandpa had returned to New Mexico, but waves of
deep loneliness swept through him at unexpected times. Grandpa had only stayed one night,
waking Michael early the next morning while his father still slept and made him a hearty
breakfast of fried eggs, potatoes and tortillas that he’d apparently went out and bought before the
sun had even come up. His father’s dog, Cochise, was a German Shepherd mix with a dark
almost black coat on top that contrasted with the light brown flanks and white underbelly. The
dog followed Grandpa all morning but when Michael came down to eat, he sat down near his
feet and eyed him carefully.
After they finished eating, Michael followed Grandpa as he repacked his duffel bag,
brushed his teeth and combed his hair. He asked Michael if he wanted to go with him to fill up
the truck with gas and they did, finding a Circle K near a busy intersection that looked as worn
and broken as the people waiting at the bus stop and hovering around the edges. My new home,
he thought.
The gas station was next to a two-story motel advertising weekly rates, HBO, and spa
tubs. A heavyset man was on the second floor wearing nothing more than a white undershirt and
loose-fitting boxers, smoking a cigarette. The door to his room was open behind him, a tangle of
sheets and the smooth contour of a leg visible even at a distance. Michael turned away and
focused on the interior of the truck, the St. Christopher medallion hanging from the rearview, the
faded picture of Grandma he kept tucked into the groove between the speedometer glass, the
105
aftermarket oil pressure gauge that Grandpa had attached below the steering column, not trusting
the factory one that only read HI and LO.
Michael took in as much of the familiar scent that lingered in the truck as he could. It was
a smell that wasn’t necessarily pleasant but was distinct, in the way that family homes often
were. It had worked its way into the very fabric of the front seat of the truck, a mix of sweat, hay,
and WD-40 the high notes on an underlying scent that reminded him of home – his real home as
he saw it. It was a world that was about to drive away and perhaps never return. Already he
began to cling to it, long for it, hoping that it would somehow rub off on his own clothes so he
could sleep with it, wrap his pillow in and cry into.
Grandpa gave Michael a twenty-dollar bill and told him to tell the teller pump number
two. As Michael walked across the parking lot he eyed the man on the balcony smoking,
watching him, impassively, his eyes on him but revealing no emotion, no sense of recognition,
positive or otherwise. They eyed each other, Michael matching his stone-faced stare with a solid
jaw, turning his eyes defiantly only at the last minute as he approached the door. He half-
expected the man to call out to him as he returned to the car but no sound came. When he was
safe in the truck he looked up to the balcony where the man was. He was gone and his door was
closed.
Once the tank was filled, Grandpa got back in the truck and they drove back to Michael’s
father’s house in silence. Grandpa let the engine idle when they pulled up to the curb and turned
and put a hand on Michael’s shoulder.
“I’m going to miss you, mijo.”
106
Michael squeezed Grandpa’s hand and nodded in agreement. He felt a mixture of fear
and tears rising up inside but before they could break through he took a deep breath and got out
of the truck.
“You sure you don’t want to come in and leave later tonight when it’s cooler?”
“No, it’s already late,” Grandpa eyed the sky as if looking for storm clouds or other signs
of weather from the sky and the sun. “I better get going. I had hoped to leave before the sun
came up but it was good to have one last good meal together before I left. If I’m lucky I won’t
have to stop until Flagstaff anyways, it’ll be nice and cool up there.”
He pulled out his wallet, thick leather, worn, overflowing with business cards, pictures,
receipts. He fished around the billfold, flipping past bills until he came to a hundred dollar bill he
had stashed in the back. He passed it to Michael who made to refuse but Grandpa put his hand
over his and patted it softly.
“It’s okay. Save it for something you like.” Without saying anything more he looked over
Michael’s shoulder at the house and sighed. “Don’t forget to call your grandma and let her know
I’m on my way. I should get there late tonight but I’ll call her if I stop to sleep.” Grandpa shifted
the thermos of hot coffee between his legs and put the truck back in gear. “Write when you can.
Send me a postcard from the beach!”
And with that, Grandpa raised his hand and pulled away. Michael raised his hand back
and felt a different kind of sadness as he saw just how small and out of place Grandpa looked in
his beaten-down Chevy Luv, red New Mexican soil still caked on the wheel wells and and
fenders. He watched him go, hand raised until Grandpa turned at the end of the block, the sounds
of the street and city rushing in to fill the silence once the rattle of the truck’s exhaust faded
away.
107

Chapter Three
That first day alone was the hardest. The house was empty and cool, his father sleeping. Afraid
to wake or disturb any routine he had in place, Michael simply covered the plate of leftovers
from breakfast with aluminum foil before putting them in the fridge next to a half-filled jug of
red wine, carton of eggs, a tin of sardines that had been opened and then hastily covered in foil
and what looked to be a full unopened gallon of milk. He went through the cupboards after that
and tried to decide what kind of man had Ovaltine, saltine crackers, and canned beans in his
pantry and nothing else worth snacking on. Under the sink he found an assortment of dried beans
and rice and just when he was about to give up on eating anything of quality he spied the chest
freezer covered with a tablecloth in the corner. He carefully laid the tablecloth aside, popped
open the freezer, and was impressed with the sheer amount of frozen meat carefully wrapped in
butcher paper inside. He couldn’t tell if it was elk or beef or something else entirely but there
was plenty of it along with a few gallon-size Ziploc bags full of individually wrapped trout.
He finished clearing the table, rinsed and washed the dishes that he and Grandpa had used
for breakfast, leaving them out to air-dry on a dish towel next to the sink. Then he just sat and
listened. The constant hum of traffic passing in the street unnerved him as did the lumbering
drone of low-flying planes and helicopters. He heard hammering, the sound of children playing,
a fly buzzing at the window screen, and once the sound of wind through the trees.
Ah, things are the same here, he thought. At least some things. He went outside quietly,
Cochise following him eagerly. Once Michael motioned the dog forward she bolted outside and
left Michael to close the screen door shut behind him. He walked the length of the yard with dog
108
at his side, looked in the mailbox, tried to call to the birds in the trees but he didn’t speak their
language apparently as none responded.
They went back inside, Michael eyeing the photos on the walls as Cochise sauntered into
the kitchen. He could hear her lapping water from her bowl as he scanned the framed photos of
distant relatives on his father’s side. He had never been close to this side of the family despite its
size and in fact had only visited his grandmother once growing up even though she lived no more
than an hour’s drive away. In the living room was a broad mirror with an ornate wood trim that
was nearly as long as the couch beneath it. Tucked in one corner was a black and white photo
that was obviously from Vietnam, the sprawl of jungle behind ten or so shirtless young men, all
with cans of beer in their hands. His father was front and center, his hair shorter, his body leaner
than he remembered it. A picture of his mother was beside this one. It was the same picture he
had seen at home, at his grandparents. The photo was brown and sepia-toned, a high school
picture, mom looking off into the distance, her long black hair smooth, strong chin, cheekbones,
and angular nose lifted high, a faint smile on her lips. It surprised him to see her here and eased
some of the anxiety he felt, the loneliness. When the time was right he would ask his father if he
could put that picture in his bedroom, next to his bed perhaps. Or would that be seen as a sign of
weakness? Of the boy in him rather than the man he was sure he was sent here to become?
He could hear his father’s voice in the bedroom then, a deep tone that was neither
pleasant nor unpleasant. There was no anger in his voice but the distinct sound of it made his
heart race the way one would when startled by the unexpected presence of a stranger or predator.
An animal that could turn on you. He was on the phone.

109
Time passed and they fell into a rhythm, slowly getting to know each other and overcoming the
awkwardness of those first few weeks. Things began to move faster when his father began to
take him to the place he simply called “the shop.” Michael was unsure who owned it or if the
building had a formal name as they always came through the back alleyway, Michael’s job was
always to get out of whatever truck or motorcycle they had driven that day and unlock the gate.
Razor-wire spiraled along the top edge of the fencing around the shop and the thick chain and
medieval looking padlock always made Michael feel like he was taking part in some ritual that
had been passed down from father to son. Once inside the gate there was about thirty or so feet
of open space where cars and motorcycles in various states of deconstruction were slowly being
reclaimed by weeds, old beer cans with sun-bleached logos and large flying cockroaches that
would bounce off the steel-barred windows at night.
Leonard showed Michael how to open the doors, how to arm and disarm the alarm, where
the keys to various cabinets were, where the billy club and sawed-off shotgun were under the
counter “for any unforeseen guests or experiences,” as his father put it. Without saying as much
or putting it into words, Leonard assumed that Michael would help out and work with him in the
shop every day. It was a summer job, or at least that’s how Michael took it. Over the course of
that first summer Michael would help organize and clean the office with some days finding him
cutting the weeds in the back and others sitting by the fan inside doing nothing more than writing
out receipts for his father whenever he was asked.
The office looked like it hadn’t actually been worked in for some time, an old Dr. Pepper
can with cigarette butts snubbed out on the lid, uneven stacks of papers, books, magazines
competing for space with grease-lined manuals, bills, invoices, mail, and a dented file cabinet
that had never been emptied from the previous owner. Michael went through the files one by
110
one, each letter and form handwritten in fine, precise blue and black ink, manila folders with
cryptic language and calculations on the covers. Aguilar: Mar 72 Front A5. It would become his
favorite place to help. He told his father he was organizing or cleaning but really he was happy to
dig through the detritus of a past, a history, to piece together the story of who had passed through
here before.
There were regulars who visited, old Spanish-speaking men that seemed to know little
English although he marveled at the way his father, a rez-born Indian, held it down with them
and wondered if he had learned Spanish in the service or after. There were other workers who
did odd jobs for his father as well, lean, angular men with names like Hector and Gabriel, an air
of menace around them, a trait Michael came to associate with men and the way they interacted
with the world in places where engines and machinery were being built, taken apart, repaired,
and constructed.
And then there was Sampson, a light-skinned African-American who didn’t look more
than ten years older than Michael himself. He called Michael him “Kid Chaves” and would
always shadow box with him when he saw him.
“Watch out now,” he’d yell out to Leonard. “He’s going to be able to whup your ass in
about two or three more years!”
Sampson often traveled with another friend of his father’s, Antonio who Leonard
introduced as a close friend of his from New Mexico.
“I knew your mommy also,” Antonio said to Michael shaking his hand with a firm grip.
“I knew her before… the accident, you know.” A sadness came into his eyes and he seemed
about to say more but only squeezed Michael’s hand and followed Leonard into the back office.
111
He never asked how they knew his father and they rarely asked any questions of him
outside of asking him to write receipts or go to the store to buy soda and sandwiches for lunch.
Every now and then, Antonio would order pizza and they would stay late, cracking open bottles
of beer fresh with icy dew from the cooler he had in the back of his Bronco. Someone would
pass a lenio, the smell of weed in the air, never offered to Michael or passed his way.
The weapons were the intersection that brought most of them to the store – customers
rarely coming in for anything else, the old faded watches and stereos and rings and necklaces
gathering dust beneath the glass cases that lined the entryway. Antique clocks, coins, hedge
trimmers left from some bygone era. There were times when they were closed and his dad would
open the door for three or four guys who he seemed to know. He would give Michael the keys
and unlock the back gate so they could drive in what was inevitably a large truck or SUV.
Always the same kind of men, Spanish speaking, well-dressed but not flashy, nice boots, tight
jeans and crisp shirts, collars open to reveal patches of curly hair and thin gold chains, crosses,
and other talismans of faith, pride, and power.
There was a cool confidence in the way these men carried themselves, confidence that
started with their eyes, the way they took in everything, sweeping the room not out of fear but
out of a knowing place in the world, a place that they understood and belonged in, where
everything was in its place, even him, the young boy watching from the corner, learning perhaps
how men conduct business and carry themselves in the world.
On the rare occasion that his eyes did meet with those of a customer, there was no malice,
only a kind of softening, a recognition that his being there was part of the process too. The
warmth was only brief before the hard coolness came down again and the mask turned unmoving
and solid – returning to whatever business they had come here to conduct. Different kinds of
112
men would come by, all friends of his father’s, tattoos of smoking guns, spider webs, leaping
panthers, grim reapers, unspoken signs and symbols hinting at a secret language, a secret world
where the rituals themselves were unspoken.
Sometimes the phone would ring late at night and his father would emerge from his
room, half-dressed, grabbing the keys for the truck and the shop from the wooden key rack that
hung by the back door. He would tell Michael not to worry and that he would be back. He had to
run out for a bit. At first he thought these calls were from women and perhaps he was
embarrassed of him or embarrassed to bring them home, as if he were trying to keep that side of
his life private. But he never saw any signs of women or anyone around the house at all, he
wasn’t sure anyone even knew where his father lived or spent his evenings, as if the shop were
the only home he had. Wherever he was going, he would return close to dawn, exhausted,
collapsing onto the couch with a beer in his hand, falling asleep before it was even finished.
Once Michael had come down to the kitchen to drink some water and found his father sleeping
with a still burning cigarette in his hand, the smoke curling about his wrist like a white tendril.
He answered the phone once while his father was showering and even though it was close
to midnight, there was a long, slow pause on the other end before a man responded and said he
would call back soon. After that, his father asked him to not answer the phone if it was late and
he wasn’t around or otherwise couldn’t answer it himself.
Every Sunday he called his grandparents and the distance would be bridged momentarily.
He dreaded the quiet sadness that would follow once the call ended and kept waiting for a time
when the homesick ache would fade away but it never came. Once Michael brought up the idea
of taking a trip back to New Mexico with his father, perhaps even relocating there, moving.
113
“Too much old news there for me,” Leonard would say quickly following it with a
promise to send him to New Mexico over winter break. And so it went, father and son falling
into a routine and while they never really spoke about the past or even the future, there was a
silent, shared understanding that they were bound by blood and circumstance.
“Your grandparents did a good job raising you,” he said once, uncharacteristically as they
drove to the shop. With anyone else it might have been the start of a longer conversation but
Leonard left it at that as if that was all that needed to be said. Michael took it as a sign to mean
that he was a good boy, a good son, that he was respectful, hard-working, did what he was told,
wasn’t demanding or a bother, was a good companion. He tried to emulate his father’s
mannerisms if only to make him feel more at ease with him. Assuming that he was the company
he liked to keep. He spoke rarely, watched everything and everyone carefully, chose his words
carefully, got his haircut at the same place and same time his father did and even though his
father never told the barber how to cut his hair, Michael would choose a cut similar to that of his
father’s, tight fade on the side, long on top.
He even tried to carry his weight the same way his father did: jaw set firm, shoulders held
broad, a barely restrained aggressiveness in the way he grasped bottles, turned keys, even passed
other men on the street. Once, when they were going grocery shopping, a man had spit in a kind
of absentminded way as he came out of his car. To Michael, it wasn’t intentional but the spit
came close enough that Leonard whistled to get the guy’s attention before telling him to watch
where he spit. The man looked them over, his eyes roaming from Leonard to Michael and back
again before turning without a word or sign of acknowledgement. Apparently that was enough to
defuse the situation.
114
Other times his father’s anger would boil over, the catalyst equally innocuous, but ingited
by some unspoken code that had been broken in a language that Michael did not understand. The
very first time he saw his father lose his temper was while they were waiting in the drive-thru
line at Burger King. Apparently they weren’t moving fast enough and the car behind them
honked and yelled at them to “Hurry up, cabron!” The situation quickly escalated until both men
were out of the car and the man pulled a knife on him, a weapon that Leonard quickly twisted out
of his hands and then turned on him, punching him twice in the face before throwing into the
bushes. Blood spewed down his nose and mouth, eyes wide. Leonard held his pose, as if the
blade was still in his hand, as if to say that he had spared him, that he could have just as easily
shanked him instead of using his fists to get his point across.
The man spit a bloodied tooth into his hand, and got back in his car, forced to wait until
Leonard ordered as a line of cars had already pulled in behind him. Leonard gripped the wheel
and shook his head when they were finally able to pull away, a sigh that Michael took to mean he
was angry for his inability to control his anger. Or maybe he was disappointed at the way the
world was, the way old reflexes came back to haunt him, the way he attracted violence and
anger, forced to give it back in a kind of exchange of energy that only men like him could
understand.
It took time to come down after an encounter like that, his hands shaking, breath tight,
taut. There would be blood on his hands, shirt, pants, maybe even on the car. Michael offered to
help clean but Leonard would always say no, it was his mess, and after stripping down to nothing
and putting his clothes in the wash, he would close the door and take a hot shower, often opening
the door to let the steam out when he was finished. This was only the first part of the process as
he would then get down on his hands and knees like a penitente, naked, and begin the long
115
process of scrubbing the tile, the tub, the floor, the sink, and anywhere else he thought he might
have soiled, until the water ran clear from the sponge and there were no more faint traces of pink
to be found.
116

Chapter Four
One night, Michael dreamt of the sun rising from a molten lake, so hot that it shimmered like
golden stone, newly birthed from some unknown void below. The air smelled of ash and crushed
juniper with a sound that was like sand pouring into water, the throat of the horizon wide open, a
death’s moan perhaps, one that he quickly realized was coming from his own mouth.
Startled, Michael turned and found himself standing in a flat yellow field watching his
father, lean and strong, running towards the now setting sun on the far horizon. He was howling,
a young and carefree smile on his face. He wasn’t wearing a shirt or shoes and Michael was
startled by his swiftness, the flex and pull of muscles beneath his father’s skin. He watched him
moving, searching for glimpses of his own reflection in the DNA from which he had been
formed.
He sensed the shadow-presence of a figure next to him yet when he moved to turn to face
it, a voice whispered, “Look, his spirit is leaving his body.”
Michael returned his gaze to his father and saw a lightning flash of light run through him
abruptly and then leave, a thin cloud of soft blue left in its wake. His father fell to the ground,
flat and motionless, as if his back were a smooth stone of flesh always meant for the field.
Michael felt the weight of gravity bear down on him as he tried to move, the air suddenly thick
and heavy, his legs slow. He pushed and pulled his way forward but a kind of inner paralysis
took hold of his muscles as something large and black suddenly roared from the sky like a train,
falling towards him. He turned to face it, the iron-black shadow, its tail-end stretching behind it
endlessly. He raised his hand towards it defiantly and the shadow responded by suddenly turning
and whipsawing its way straight for his father, the force of it passing like a whirlwind of sand
117
and grass, the sky a haze of smoke. Michael felt the heat of the shadow pass him by like a flame-
ripple of motion, a trembling in the earth beneath him turned into a violent shudder so powerful
that it kicked him up and out of the dream.
Startled and momentarily unsure of where he was, Michael felt his heart hammering in
his ribs and just listened. The sheets were wrapped loosely around his legs and if he had been hot
before now he was cold; the dream still with him, lodged near his belly, his heart churning like a
piston, the thick taste of ash in his throat. The dog began barking near the bottom of the stairs.
He sat up, the blur of red near the window read 2:42. Moisture from a passing storm still
clung to the glass but it had stopped raining, the world beyond a liquid blur of city-lights and
shadows, the low idle of an engine running beneath it all. A series of knocks shook the frame of
the back door and the dog, Cochise, began to bark even more furiously, the sound metallic and
otherworldly, synthetic somehow, echoing up the stairway. Michael held his breath and listened
for any sign of his father’s presence. There was nothing, his father’s house empty and cold. A
dizziness gripped him suddenly and he had to fight the odd sensation that he was about to fall
back through to the world he’d just left behind. Forcing a breath, he slid his pants from the floor,
pulling them on as he stood up, the room dim with the shadow of clothes and furniture. He
palmed the floor until he found a shirt and slipped it on, lights still off. He stepped up on his bed
and looked out the window where he could see Sampson’s black Bronco near the alley, squatting
like an overgrown beetle. A small layer of drizzle had speckled its skin with bluish water
pebbles, the faint hint of mist rising off the hood while a thin cloud of exhaust rose from the
back. Pushing his fear down, Michael hurried down the stairs in the dark.
Cochise was near the door, bent low, teeth exposed, ears flat. Michael snapped his fingers
at her and she lowered her head, a growl still burning in her belly.
118
He tapped the switch for the back light and pulled the shades aside cautiously, enough to
see the wild-eyed face of Antonio, a friend of his father’s looking impatiently back at him. He
pulled the locks on the door, Antonio’s eyes turning towards the sound, his chest moving steady.
Cochise’s growl began to build but Michael pointed and told her to keep quiet and she did,
keeping herself low as Antonio stepped inside, an abstract spray of blood across the left side of
his arm, neck and face. He had a blue steel .45 in his hand, the veins in his forearm swollen, a
mole-like drop of blood stuck to the thick bristles of his mustache – he didn’t seem to notice any
of this; he simply looked at the dog and moved towards Michael as if he were pushing his way
through a dream, eyes glossy, absent. The dog sprang forward, snapping. Michael moved to quiet
her but Antonio hissed and she lowered herself, backing away as if preparing to jump.
“Mijo, something has happened,” Antonio said, his voice even and calm, his eyes
avoiding Michael’s own. “Get your daddy’s keys to the shop and come with us.”
A cool wave of fear mixed with adrenaline hit Michael’s legs, his knees almost buckling.
Antonio reached out and gripped Michael’s arm to steady him before impatiently putting his
hand to Michael’s chest and moving past him into the house. Cochise began to follow but
Michael called her back and the dog stood next to him, ears perched high, listening as the weight
of Antonio moved forward in the dark. The dog raised its snout and tested the air as the stairs
bent and creaked, Antonio’s breath short, the smell of his sweat still thick near the door.
He yelled down, “And we need the keys to the shop.”
“They’re down here by the door,” Michael yelled, his voice betraying him with a quiver.
Antonio returned down the stairs. Cochise barked twice and then stiffened as Antonio
bounded from the hall, a black pistol-grip shotgun that Michael’s father favored in his hand and a
box of shells in the other. He moved past Michael and turned the shells onto the kitchen table.
119
“What happened?” Michael asked.
Antonio eyeballed the chamber then slid eight shells into the shotgun one by one,
focused. He set the gun down and turned to the boy, his eyes tired. He studied Michael’s face,
patiently it seemed, as if something were hidden there, a sign or a message that only he would be
able to read.
“Where’s my dad?” Michael said, immediately regretting it, not liking the way it sounded
– soft and boyish, needy. Antonio turned back to the gun.
“Certain things you will learn as you grow older,” he said, lining up the remaining shells.
“One of them is that men do not ask questions. Everything will become clear soon enough. Now,
fill your pockets with these and take this,” he said, motioning towards the remaining shells on the
table and setting the shotgun down. “You know this one best, no?”
The boy nodded, lowering his eyes and pushing four shells into each of his front pockets
before picking up the shotgun that he and his father had spent the summer illegally hunting
rabbits in the high desert outside of Bakersfield.
“Vamos, get your shoes on,” Antonio said, looking towards Michael’s bare feet. “We are
outside.”

Sampson was sitting in the driver’s seat of the Bronco with the engine idling, the scanner on low.
Michael stepped into the back with the shotgun awkwardly across his lap as Sampson held the
seat forward. Sampson’s head was clean and bald, his skin yellow in the light off the dash.
“Kid Chaves,” he said as Michael settled into the middle of the seat and leaned forward.
“You keepin things cool?”
“Tryin to, you?” Michael asked.
120
“Always, my friend, always.”
“What’s going on?” he asked but Sampson either didn’t hear or chose not to answer as
Antonio pulled the door shut and motioned with his head forward.
They drove down street after street lined with taquerias and storefront churches before
Sampson slowed and eased past the front of his father’s shop, the hand-painted ‘East Side
Choppers’ sign his father had painted in the steel-barred window dim but visible from the street.
Antonio craned his head looking for signs of motion or activity and satisfied there was none,
motioned forward with his chin.
Sampson circled the block one more time before turning off the lights and cutting left
into the alley behind the shop, keeping the engine at a steady idle the entire time. The shop had
been a dream of his father’s for years and was the kind of business that hardcore bikers came to
by word of mouth alone. As such, all the usual signs of a proper business weren’t really there.
There was no cash register or desk, most people came through the back, parked their own
choppers amongst the carcasses of older bikes being stripped for parts, and conducted business
standing, exchanging cash for custom chrome and mechanic work.
The storm had strewn bits of branches and leaves about and as the headlights of the
Bronco cut through the bone-like debris, Michael imagined the branches snapping beneath the
tires as remnants of an ancient battlefield between tree-people and their skeletal adversaries. It
was a passing thought but one that comforted Michael somehow, his imagination having long
been a place of refuge even as he began to get older and fear the days when he could no longer
retreat there as an adult, as a man.
Antonio got out of the Bronco, unlocked the iron gate his father had welded by hand and
motioned Sampson in. Michael could hear the gate swinging shut behind them and Antonio
121
securing the chain and padlock before he opened the door and motioned for Michael to follow.
Sampson’s door creaked open and Michael left the shotgun on the seat and followed them inside.
The air was stale and musty, a mix of old sweat, grease, and steel. Antonio left the lights
off and moved quickly past the makeshift counter that held a vise, an old FM radio, and a
number of carburetors in various states of disassembly, gaskets and license plates hanging from
the wall. Sampson eyed the front door while Antonio disappeared into the office and began
opening and closing cabinets.
“When are you going to tell me what’s going on?” Michael whispered to Sampson.
Sampson turned towards him, his high cheek bones accentuated in the soft light coming in off
the street. He looked like he was about to speak when Antonio came out and asked Michael if he
knew where the silencers for the pistols were.
“They should still be in that box under the desk.” Michael waited on the other side of the
counter, watching as a few stray cars streaked past the front of the building, clouds of mist rising
and falling in their wake. He could hear Antonio opening and closing drawers.
“And the clips?” he hissed.
“In the big closet, on the bottom.”
“For the pistols? Sampson has a pistol.”
“They should be in there.” Michael wiped the moisture off his palms and onto his pants.
“Shit,” Antonio said.
“What?”
“Nothing.” He came out the office sucking at the side of his index finger. He had stuffed
a series of pre-loaded clips in his front and back pockets and had a plastic bag with what looked
like four or five more.
122
“No silencers.”
“They should be in there, want me to check?”
Antonio shook his head, motioning for Michael to follow, moving quickly past the
angular shadows of the walls and low aisles and into the cool air of the night. Michael ignored
him and went into the office, the familiar smell of his father rising up to him. There was a large
calendar on the wall, two years out of date at this point, but a large-breasted woman in a bikini
straddled a chromed-out chopper and offered up a siren’s smile that always made something stir
in him. Next to it was a picture of Michael when he was eight or nine years old atop his horse
Blackie. The picture was from New Mexico, Blackie his favorite horse that he’d helped his
grandpa raise from birth. He wasn’t sure how the picture had made its way to his father and then
why he’d put it up here and not at home but the gesture moved him just the same.
Outside, he heard the Bronco start up and quickly palmed his way through the boxes on
and around the floor of the desk before finding what he was looking for.

They drove in silence, Antonio rolling down the window to clear his throat and spit a pebble of
phlegm into the street. He rolled the window up and turned slightly towards the back seat.
“This word, desmadre, you know this word?”
Michael said he didn’t.
“You?” Antonio said, motioning towards Sampson.
Sampson shrugged his shoulders.
“Tell Sampson the story of your mother,” Antonio said.
Michael didn’t answer, a strange fear falling over him.
123
Antonio turned to Sampson and touched him on the shoulder. “This boy,” he said. “They
found him when he was a baby next to his mama. Someone had left them both for dead.”
“Leonard told me about it.”
Antonio looked surprised. “He told you they shot her in the head y then left the baby to
die?”
“It’s been awhile, but yeah.”
Antonio continued, undisturbed. “This thing, it fucked with your daddy’s head for a long,
long time,” he said, pausing to face Michael. “Your mother was a beautiful woman before all
this. Maybe it was better if she had died instead of… you know, living the way she is.” He shook
his head and then continued. “These things, they have strange ways of following a man.
Sometimes they follow him when he is sleeping and sometimes when he is alive in the world.
Did your daddy ever talk about those things he did in the war?”
“Some,” Michael answered, his voice sticking, throat dry.
“Those things in the war are the same.” Antonio pointed to his head with an index finger
gnarled with scar tissue, a swollen knuckle. He held his finger to his head for a moment, the look
on his face one of bewilderment, loss. Abruptly, he removed his finger from his head and turned
towards Sampson with renewed vigor. “This word, desmadre, it means everything is fucked.
They take away your mother, yes, but in the end they are taking away much, much more. It has
many meanings, you understand?”
Sampson nodded.
Antonio turned to look towards Michael as if he’d asked a question and was waiting for
the correct response. Michael said nothing, a hint of confusion on his face. He had picked up the
shotgun again and cradled it across his lap. The weight of it felt comforting and familiar and he
124
had the sensation of being drawn into a ritual or pact that would pass the spirit of the shotgun
from his father and to his own hands. He knew his father was dead. That was why no one would
answer his questions, that’s why all the guns, and the silent gestures and electric tension in the
air. Somewhere he knew that he was no more but part of him was still holding out, hoping that
they were on their way to see him, to rescue him, to bring him his favorite shotgun. He would
smile at him, look down on him and take the gun from him, put a hand on his head and tell him
he did good, to go home now. “Go home to your Grandpa.”
The voice was unmistakably his father’s that had whispered in his ear and he wondered if
he was going crazy. Before he could process the thought any further, Antonio turned back to face
the street. “Something happened tonight, hijo. Something bad happen to your daddy and he is not
alive.”
Michael felt his muscles go slack, his vision blurry. “What do you mean? What
happened?”
“These are the things we are trying to find out.” Antonio’s face turned sour, a look
Michael had never seen on any man, as if the muscles in his face had suddenly lost their ability
to hold the skin in place. “You have always been a good boy. Tonight we will make things right
for you.”
Antonio turned back to him but Michael avoided his eyes and looked out towards the
street, nothing but a streak of glass and rain. “They treated your daddy like a maton and this he
was not. But I am, and tonight we will make things right for you.”
Michael lowered his head, his cheeks flashing with heat. Antonio began to whisper to
himself in Spanish, a prayer maybe, turning back to the window. The shotgun had turned cold
and heavy in Michael’s hands, foreign. He set the gun on the seat at his side, his hands suddenly
125
weak and trembling. He leaned forward and placed his head between his legs. He felt blood
rushing to his temples, a sting of heat beneath his eyes. He fought it. The dizziness, his forehead
throbbing, jaw clenched tight, something deeper causing his ribs to tighten, lungs ache, his
shoulders turn hard. He wanted to move, the air in the Bronco suddenly too warm, a heat rising
in him, his back suddenly moist, the night beyond wide and empty, the voice in his head
slipping, beginning to spin, the sound of the engine, Antonio’s half-spoken prayers, his lungs
beginning to ache, a sudden urge to piss, he wanted out, he wanted to be away, to make it all go
away, see the sun, be home, lie in the grass, feel the sun, Grandma’s hand on his head, the river,
his horse, he wanted air so badly he was ready to tell Sampson to stop and jump onto the street,
but just as he sat up and tensed his legs, arms and his fist-jaw-neck, Sampson killed the engine
and let the Bronco glide to a smooth stop.
“Time to go,” Antonio said, opening the door and pulling the seat forward.
Michael gripped the shotgun with both hands and held it out as he shifted his weight
forward and onto the street. He heard Sampson checking the breech on his gun, the whisper and
click of metal-on-metal, clip sliding into place. Sampson moved around the back side of the
Bronco, checking Michael over with his eyes and giving him a nod of the head. Michael nodded
back, his eyes suddenly heavy and dry.
“When I was younger,” Antonio said quietly, his eyes on the street, the shadows, “my
abuelito on my mother’s side – they were indio like you. One summer I stayed there in their
rancho and he taught me some things like your daddy knew.” He placed a finger in the chest
pocket of his vest and scooped out a leather satchel that was worn and smooth. He held the
satchel out for Michael and Sampson to see, his palm flat and solid. “He learned this medicine
from a dream and he passed its secret to me. Mira, this medicine is from the hawk, the heart, the
126
sweet grass, and many more things that only I can know.” He opened the top end of the satchel
by loosening the binding that had been knotted tight. He reached in and pinched a small bit as if
it were tobacco and placed it on his tongue. He held the open end of the satchel towards Michael,
“This is the medicine for going to war.”
The smell reminded Michael of the mixture his Grandpa would prepare for tanning the
hides of the elk they killed during the winter. It was a sharp smell, like blood. He thought of the
last time he had talked to his father, earlier that night. Nothing seemed out of place and it wasn’t
unusual for his father to leave him alone while he went out to drink with his friends or whatever
else he did at night. Michael enjoyed the time alone, the freedom. He would watch TV and read
and listen and think. He had placed a hand on his shoulder before leaving tonight and
uncharacteristically leaned down and gave him a quick kiss on top of his head. Did he know this
would be the last time? Did he know something was wrong? Or was it just a sign that they were
growing closer after having spent so much time apart all these years? He never faulted him for
leaving when he did. In many ways he knew he was better off being raised by his grandparents
during his younger years. But now, now, things were different.
Michael took a deep breath and pinched a small jerky-like portion of the medicine. He
quickly placed it in his mouth and began to chew. It was gritty, like marrow, the taste like liver
and grass and river-stone. Michael watched as Sampson took a pinch and began to chew
cautiously, unconvinced of the ritual.
“May la Señora de las Sombras guide us tonight,” Antonio said with a deep breath,
pulling the binding tight and re-securing the knot before pocketing the satchel against his chest.
Something began to shift as Michael turned towards the street, his vision dim, then
suddenly bright as if a surge of energy had illuminated the street. They were next to a privacy
127
wall of shrubs which stood about ten feet tall. A half-block away a single street lamp hugged the
underside of the low clouds rolling by. Cars lined the street, shadows and shapes layered with
shimmering mist. A few lights were on, the houses low and squat, single-story homes with well-
kept yards, everything trim, all edges and fog. The night began to breathe and with it a feeling of
panic rose up within Michael, the gun beginning to feel heavier and heavier, his stomach starting
to burn, teeth sore.
“There’s a house up behind this one.” Sampson turned to Michael, his voice low and
calm. “We’re going in through the front door but we’re gonna have you wait outside.”
Michael turned and looked towards the house. Nothing to see except a long, dark
driveway bordered by vines and bushes. He briefly wondered where they were, what
neighborhood or city. He cursed himself for not paying closer attention but knew that it wasn’t
far from his father’s shop – they hadn’t been driving that long, all city streets and no freeway.
His guess was Montebello or Monterey Park, but what did it matter now?
Michael turned and saw Antonio watching him, his breath even and straight. Something
shifted in Antonio’s face as he profiled the boy, something Michael took as empathy or maybe
sorrow. “You kill anything that comes from inside that house. Understand?”
Michael felt his tongue, foreign and thick in his throat, no words came out but it was
apparently enough for Antonio as he turned his back on him.
“Don’t sweat shit, kid,” Sampson said, moisture beginning to bead above his lip. “Ain’t
nothing heading your way that hasn’t come through us, all right?”
“Okay,” Michael answered.
Antonio began to cross the street and Michael and Sampson followed.
128
“No matter how long we take you gotta stay sharp,” Sampson continued. “You gotta
watch the driveway, the sky, people walking, cats, whatever. I know it sounds rough but
anything moving too close after we set up has got to go. You scared?”
“I can’t tell,” Michael answered.
“You scared, but that’s good, keeps you tight.”
“You?” Michael asked, the driveway suddenly engulfing them in a shadow of black, the
air humid and thick.
“Be evil if I wasn’t.”
The driveway pushed on into even darker shadows before opening up onto a carport and
a foliage-covered entryway. Antonio paused and turned, eyes wired. “Right here.”
Sampson touched Michael on the shoulder, his face near his ear. “Stay cool, baby. We’ll
be out in a few.”
Michael nodded his head, Sampson and Antonio turning away, man-backs like black
shields. Michael watched both of them slip around the corner and head towards the house. He
gripped the barrel of the gun and felt his heart beating steady, his chest tight, a thin layer of
sweat pooling near the base of his spine.
He waited and let a few minutes pass, listening. Nothing. No doors opening or closing, no
whispers, footsteps. Nothing. He checked the safety near the trigger. Off. He clenched his right
fist around the pistol grip, the tendons in his wrist leaping like a pair of guitar strings. He turned
his head thinking he heard the bass of Antonio’s voice, a woman screaming. Nothing. He could
hear a dog barking, the sound distant and lonely. He thought of Cochise, was it her?
129
Michael surveyed the yard again, his eyes beginning to adjust to the darkness, everything
an electric blue. He could feel a heat building in his chest, the taste of blood at the back of his
throat. The sound of a car slowing in the street. He held his breath and listened.
A black Mercedes turned up the driveway, the driver cutting the lights as soon as the
back tires came off the street. Michael eased himself into the shrubbery, still standing, his feet
solid on the pavement. He placed the shotgun across his chest and watched with one eye as the
car crept halfway up the driveway before stopping. The brake lights flashed a quick glow and
then the car sat. No sound. No motion. The tint on the windows cutting any chance of Michael
making out the forms inside. He kept listening, his grip on the forearm of the gun getting tighter.
Suddenly the passenger door opened up and a stout man in a suit stepped out, the interior
light flashing on three more inside. Bull people. That was what Michael’s father would call them,
men with thick necks, blind hunger. The door shut and the bull looked up towards Michael who
held his breath and watched as the man casually placed a cigarette in his mouth; he held the pose,
listening maybe, then leaned in low to light the cigarette with a silver lighter, cupping his hand
against a phantom wind. The light of the flame was white and in it Michael could make out the
details of the man’s face, brick-flat and crooked, lips thin and white, nearly mouthless.
A pained loneliness fell on Michael. He could feel mist beginning to form on the barrel of
the shotgun as if it were an extension of his own arm, the taste of metal in his blood somehow
driving the mounting tension beneath his skull he wasn’t sure how to release. He thought of his
father’s legendary anger, the potential violence he seemed to carry with him the way a wild
animal does. There was something about the feeling that Michael knew, a revelation that he
hadn’t expected, his father somehow less strange in that instant before the medicine made his
ears ring, the thoughts in his head beginning to spit and curse in a way that had Michael
130
questioning the sorcery Antonio carried against his chest. He felt as if he was dreaming but he
knew it was all too real. The sensation of crossing a boundary, from thought to action, the signal
for his legs and arms and head to move, dazed him. Breathing. In. Then out. Sadly, he gripped
the weapon and stepped out, shotgun held high as his father had taught him to all summer long.
The bull barely had a chance to turn before the blast swept him clean from the face of the car.
Michael turned to the right and punched two shells above the low glare of the steering wheel, the
safety glass barreling in. He had a brief moment to register the scent of what he would come to
recognize as cordite, blood and burnt flesh before the back doors opened and Michael pulled the
trigger, kicking the door on his side shut, the handle of the door flying off wildly in a glittering
spiral. Michael kept moving forward, a strange intensity coursing through his being – he put two
shells through the back window, a muffled scream falling with the glass, the gun beginning to
kick a little harder. A shadow swung over the top of the car and then the sky split white, a sharp
sting catching Michael in the shoulder driving him face-first into the pavement. He fell so fast he
didn’t have time to register the shift, feeling as if he were standing at the wall of driveway
against his forehead; sand in his lip, the gun beneath him, the barrel digging into his ribcage like
a rock, white-hot, but he couldn’t seem to find his breath or move, everything tingling. He
flashed on an image of him as a baby, trying to crawl, next to his mother, the world upside down
all over again.
Slowly, his senses came back to him, an itch becoming motion, his muscles shaking as he
untangled his arms and pushed himself up, the barrel of a handgun abruptly thrust behind his ear.
It was hot and he could smell the scent of his own flesh burning but instead of the iciness of fear
he thought he would feel in such a moment, he instead felt the world coming undone, as if the
131
earth itself was spiraling off its’ axis and barreling into a place where there was no balance, no
order.
“Get up,” he heard a voice say, low and angry, confused.
Before he could respond the muffled clap of a bullet roared by and spun the shadow
before two more shots pitched the man over and down. Michael sat up, ears ringing, hands
shaking, sweat dripping from his face and back or maybe it was blood, he couldn’t tell. He raised
himself to his knees, hunched over as if he were trying to make sense of the ground beneath him
and threw up, his insides turning themselves inside out with nothing more than bile and acid.
“You all right?” Sampson asked and without waiting for Michael to answer, pulled him
to his feet, a long string of saliva hanging off his face.
From inside the house came the mute bullet-slap of hammer against steel. One. Two.
Three. The sky carrying the muffled echo as if in an enclosed chamber. Four. Five. Like stones
being crushed in the clouds. A light went on in a neighbor’s house, a shadow near the window.
He could hear someone yelling in the distance. A car alarm began to sound and somewhere close
a dog began a deep-throated bay designed to warn that danger was near. Antonio came running,
pausing to survey the twisted shadows near the car.
“Whose are these?” he asked aloud, a question for no one.
They jumped in the Bronco and drove away, the sound of the dog echoing in Michael’s
head. No one spoke. Everyone stiff, the air electric, charged with a nervous energy Michael had
never felt before. He could smell blood, taste it in his mouth, sharp and metal-like. His stomach
and throat clenched as if to vomit again but only the acidic burn of bile came up. He stifled the
urge to heave and instead swallowed it, wincing. Antonio rolled his window down, everything
beyond a fluid purple.
132
“Those men there,” Antonio said, “they worry me.”
Michael could feel a wet heat against his cheeks. Tears, he thought. He raised his left
hand and touched the liquid with the flat of his fingers.
“They worry me, but you did good,” Antonio continued, turning to watch Michael and
then reaching out to wipe the tears away from his face with a weatherbeaten thumb. “Killing is
not easy, I know. You will feel better soon, trust me. You just think of your dead daddy and that
you did this for him, it will be good. You will see.”
As Antonio turned back to face the street, a solid white fog began to grow within
Michael, sprawling out like some viral seed that had sprouted behind his eyes, deep in his brain,
threatening to bleed out from his skull and overtake all he could still see and hear, the motion of
the street, water beneath the wheels. So this is how it begins, he thought. This is the path chosen
for me.
Then, he closed his eyes and didn’t think anymore.

133
Chapter Five
They spent their days in a house he had never been in before. That morning after the killings he
had felt a fever coming on and began to shake and shiver uncontrollably. Days passed while
Antonio kept him wrapped in blankets and sheets and fed him bone broth soup and coffee.
“I’ve cured men in much worse shape than you,” Antonio said, “much worse.”
Antonio never left the house and the woman who came to visit often brought him
messages in Spanish written in butcher’s ink on the margins of old newspaper. Antonio would
read the messages in the kitchen alone and the woman would wait sadly, it seemed, a large black
mole on her cheek like a malignant teardrop she could not shake. She would help Antonio tend
the wound in Michael’s shoulder, changing the bandages and wrapping his skin with magueyes
leaves and a sweet-smelling solution Antonio prepared fresh every morning.
The house had the smell of transience, of men passing through, the odor of their journey
left purposefully behind to blur with others until the air itself seemed alien and restless. The
shades were kept drawn, a yellow cottony glow the only sign it was day. Michael’s hands would
not stop shaking. Always when the woman came she would wipe the boy’s face clean with
handkerchiefs that smelled of grease and leather. He shivered as if he were cold but it was not
cold and even though Antonio would try to get the boy to talk he would not talk, he would just
shiver and breathe, his eyes wet with tears that refused to fall.
“We are going to send you home mijo,” Antonio said one day.
Michael looked at him, confused.
“To New Mexico, with your mama and your abuelitos. These things here are too difficult
right now but don’t worry, we will make things right.”
134
They took him downtown to the train station and put him on a train with a backpack
filled with a change of clothes and snacks.
“I opened the house for your daddy’s dog to go pee,” Antonio said, pausing to slide a thin
roll of twenty-dollar bills into Michael’s shirt pocket. “But he just run out the back yard and
doesn’t come to me when I call him.”
Michael stiffened as if to stand but Antonio put a firm hand on his chest and said, “I will
find him, don’t worry. He will come eventually.”
The woman wrapped Michael in a worn red blanket she had brought from the house,
whispering a prayer to herself as she did so. When she was done she made the sign of the cross
on his forehead with her thumb and wiped his cheeks once again. She made the sign of the cross
on herself and slowly made her way past the other passengers moving their way down the aisle.
By this time the white fog and the hum beneath it had swallowed the boy whole and it
was only once the train was secure and sealed that the white began to fade and the world come
back to him. The train began to lurch in an awkward mechanical motion away from the Los
Angeles sprawl, the train’s horn wailing like a remnant from a distant past. Outside, a soft,
delicate rain covered the windows like black liquid and blurred the light in a way that made
Michael believe he was witnessing the death of something much greater than the emptiness he
felt inside, the world looking alien to him, cars and trucks with headlights like stars, the
buildings rusted and solemn. He could feel himself being watched and when he turned, there was
indeed a man across the aisle watching him, his eyes set low and deep within the bird-like skull
that was his head. He seemed to have been afflicted with some disease that had aged him far
beyond human years; his hair short and thin, his skin even thinner, as if the bone of his skull
were expanding faster than his skin could keep up with, all the meat between sucked dry. Thin
135
trails of blue webbed their way across his forehead and chin, his lips and mouth open enough to
reveal child’s teeth, minute and gem-like, the bones of his jaw angular and foreign.
“You look like someone who’s arrived in the wrong dream,” he said.
Michael tried to speak but his throat was too dry, the words tangled near the base of his
lungs. He swallowed and coughed and felt as if he could see a bit clearer, the white fog lifting in
patches, the train coming to him with its gray and red seats, plastic air, the hum of metal against
metal.
“This,” the man said, turning to look out his own window, “can feel like a dream. The
bones out there in the dirt whispering to themselves in their sleep, us in here.” He smiled, saying
the words as if they were from a famous poem or song. “Only a sleeper would consider it real.”
Michael turned away, the skin on his arms tight and cool. He wondered if he had, in fact,
stumbled into some other man’s dream, as if he’d fallen so hard he’d slipped through to another
world, a dream world perhaps, maybe even this man’s. He heard the man shift in his seat and
come near, the smell of dry earth and tobacco coming with him.
“You mind if I sit?” the man said.
Michael said nothing, his jaw trembling, insides turning cold.
“You don’t look well.”
Without asking, the man moved closer and using the edge of Michael’s blanket wiped the
moisture from the boy’s face. “Much better,” he said.
He studied Michael’s face for a moment. “Going home?” the man asked.
Michael nodded.
“Been away long?”
136
Michael shrugged, closing his eyes, the hum of the train comforting and different from
the white he could still feel stirring quietly near the base of his skull.
“I haven’t had a home to return to for many, many years,” the man said.
Michael curled the blanket tighter around his shoulders, the man leaning over and tucking
the edges around Michael’s back and pulling it high enough to cover his neck.
“Don’t mind me, close your eyes,” he said taking a deep breath.
“I’m just cold,” Michael said, his voice sounding dry, foreign to his own ears.
The man nodded. “Just close your eyes, you’ll feel better in the morning.”
The sun went down and soon the interior of the train was bathed in the light of the moon,
the world outside blue and ethereal. They moved slowly through tunnels and mountain shadows,
walls of black that separated the stars from everything below. The cars lurched from side to side,
the humans within quiet and motionless, shifting beneath their blankets like sacks of produce.
Occasionally, heads would rise up and eyes would peer out the windows in search of any sign of
destination, their bodies held prone beneath them. Sometimes they would awaken completely,
these shadows in the train; they would sit straight with wild eyes and hair and touch their
surroundings as if blind, unsure of their place in the world. Unlike Michael they seemed
reassured by the solidity of the train, the seats, the windows, the manmade marvel that powered
its way across the landscape like an overgrown creature of its own volition.
The blue-veined man next to Michael never slept. He held his hands patiently in his lap,
his eyes forward. He stood once during the night, his head held crookedly towards the blue light
of the moon. The train had rocked through tunnel after tunnel on its way down the divide and
now the desert was opening up to the sky like the palm of a great beast and the man stood there,
gripping the edge of the seat to keep his balance, swaying regardless. Michael sensed this and
137
opened his eyes, the man nothing more than a face reflecting the night sky, his gaze towards the
desert steady, the motion of the train causing him to look dizzy and unsure. To Michael, the man
looked even more alien than before, the bluish light of the night reflecting artificially off his skin
as if he were standing before a great machine and the light from its controls and dials were
instead being reflected there.
He noticed Michael watching and sat back down.
“I’ve always had a primal fear of the desert,” the man said, his eyes focused out the
window as if he could sense something moving on the dark horizon. “Evil is born there.”
Michael sat up, the muscles of his back knotted, tense. He looked out the window and felt
comfort in the emptiness of the sky. He moved his head closer to the glass in order to block his
reflection and see the stars. The moon rendered most of them invisible, the visible ones seeming
close enough to touch, a scattering of stones burning with pure fuel. He felt as if he were in the
belly of a god, the stars other cells, the sun the atomic center around which the planets moved
like electrons. He imagined traveling in a downward spiral through cell after cell of his own
body, planets as electrons, suns as protons, infinite space; a small boy inside him on another train
in another universe gazing out at the cellular landscape of his insides, atom-stars burning in the
void of the night.
“Is desert evil different than city evil?” Michael said, quietly.
The man laughed a soft laugh. “The desert will outlive the city, that’s for sure. Don’t
forget the desert was here first and cities are just visiting for a while.”
Michael thought of the Romans and Aztecs and Mayans and countless other civilizations
that had come and gone before this one. Their ruins more symbols of other worlds than actual
history at this point.
138
The man adjusted his legs and his back and found a place for his elbow on the arm of the
seat dividing the space between him and Michael. After he seemed satisfied with his position he
leaned towards Michael, his voice a whisper.
“Are you a Christian?” the man asked.
Michael hesitated, unsure of how much he wanted to share with this stranger. “My
Grandma is,” he finally answered.
“But not you?”
“My Grandpa says everyone is headed up the same mountain just using different paths.”
It came out less clear than he had remembered it, God as a shadow spirit, life-force, woven into
the very fabric of the air, shadows, space …
“And what does that mean to you?”
Michael paused, unsure how to proceed. He felt his own energy leaving him, tired. The
words would not come. “I don’t know what I believe,” he said finally.
“Ah, a philosopher,” the man said, smiling again. “It’s good to stay above the politics of
the profane.”
“I don’t know what that means,” Michael said turning to look at the other passengers. No
one seemed bothered by their conversation, an older woman and what he assumed was her
granddaughter slept peacefully across the aisle from them, both wrapped in frayed quilts, heads
propped on pillows no doubt brought from home. Bedroom pillows with soft edges and the faded
outline of unicorns, stars, and rainbow print.
“Stay away from history,” the man continued. “From words. History is the nightmare
we’re all trying to wake up from, you heard that before?”
Michael said he hadn’t.
139
“History is just words; bits and pieces of memories and hand-me-down science. Black
magic, all of it.” He began to cough deeply, straining to keep the violence of the cough at bay
with a fist over his mouth and pursed lips. Michael turned, concerned, but the man waved him
away as he took a deep rattling breath and lay back in his seat. “These things they tell us, lies.
We’re nothing more than stones. Pebbles. Maybe smaller and just as inconsequential. Our
problems, our wars, our religions. Nothing. Wind, as your people would say. Wind.”
Michael turned, annoyed that the man had become simply another white man who knew
about “his people.”
The man repositioned his legs and sat upright, stretching his neck. A soft popping sound
came from beneath his skin. He sighed aloud and looked up and down the aisle, all darkness
except for a trail of red lights that ran the length of the car. He settled his shoulders and his
elbows back into the seat, his eyes straight ahead. “When you realize that this is all there is, that
the universe has never cared whether you live or die, any of us – when you realize this, feel it in
your bones, then, all you see is evil.”
The man paused to look across the aisle towards the thinning darkness in the east. He
started to say something and then held back as if in deep thought, his chest rising and falling
patiently. “Forgive me for talking so much,” he said. “I’m getting old and everywhere I look I
see sickness and decay, death. It can wear on an old man, I’m afraid. I hope I haven’t offended
you?”
Michael shook his head, curled the blanket tighter around his shoulders and closed his
eyes.

140
Later, when the shadows were laid bare by the flame of day, Michael moved quietly to the dining
car to try and eat. The man had stayed behind, a bruise of darkness beginning to form beneath his
eyes. Since the morning light the man had not taken his eyes off the desert. Michael had closed
his own and tried to see into the man’s mind, imagine what sort of bad things he saw there, but
all that came to him was the image of a desert bird, a hawk, twisting in the wind, stone walls, a
cliff.
Still wrapped in the blanket, Michael made his way to the dining car and sat across from
a large-featured Navajo whose long black hair was held behind him in a loose braid. His face
was pock-marked and his skin was dark and thick. He had a slightly crooked nose and a scar
beneath his lower lip that was raised and smooth, pink, the color of the stones in the thin
necklace he wore.
“That friend of yours, he talks too much,” the Navajo said, his eyes on Michael,
indifferent.
Michael shrugged. “He’s not my friend.”
“Ha!” the Navajo said, his eyes lighting up. He placed a hand that looked like a slab of
meat on the table palm down. He had a wide copper bracelet with a swirl of suns and moons
etched into it. “You a skin, ain’t you?”
Michael nodded.
“Then you should know better.” He raised his hand in a way that Michael took to mean
they had come to an agreement.
“What’s with the blanket? You sick?” the Navajo asked.
Michael looked down, the smell of the magueyes sharp in his nose, the pain dull, a sense
of heat beneath his skin. He suddenly felt conscious about being wrapped in the blanket, like a
141
child and even though he knew it was juvenile, he shrugged the blanket off and pretended he
hadn’t heard the question.
The Navajo just nodded, both of them silent, Michael looking out the window, the
Navajo sucking at his teeth and watching as various people made their way past. He placed his
arm over the back of the chair next to him and spread his legs wide before he spoke, his eyes
narrowing as he motioned with his chin over Michael’s shoulder.
“That man,” the Navajo said and Michael turned, confused, but the Navajo continued,
“that man, your friend.”
“He’s not my friend.”
“I think he likes the skins.”
Michael didn’t respond.
“He tried talking to me before you came on.”
“What did he say?”
“Same things, always the same things with that kind. At first I thought he was a preacher
or something. You know, looking for lost souls, some kind of missionary.” The Navajo laid his
hand flat against the table again and let out a short laugh.
“I thought maybe he was a scientist or something – someone who worked out in the
desert,” Michael said.
“You shouldn’t be listening to a fucking word that guy says,” the Navajo answered.
“Maybe he works with missiles or something,” the image of the man alone in the desert,
awkward and frightened, came to Michael suddenly.
The Navajo shrugged his shoulders and paused to suck at his teeth again and look over
Michael’s shoulder. “It don’t matter what he does, they’re all the same; looking to kill what’s
142
inside you.” The Navajo pulled his legs close and leaned forward. “Why you think he’s asking
you about God?”
Michael shrugged.
“You didn’t think he was some kind of preacher?”
“I don’t know why he was talking to me.”
The Navajo sat back and motioned with his chin again, “You notice he don’t sleep, that
guy. Just staring out the window all night long, every time I wake up I could see his eyes.”
“Maybe he has bad dreams.”
The Navajo paused to look at Michael, studying his face. “Maybe. Maybe he’s sick in the
head.”
Like me, Michael thought.
“Not like you,” the Navajo said motioning towards Michael’s shoulder. “Those kind love
the natives. Always trying to save us. I saw him going after you and I wanted to go tell him to go
back to his own seat but I don’t know. Guess it’s not my place to be policing the preachers out
looking for lost souls.”
The Navajo laughed again before tilting his head back and raising his chin high,
stretching the skin of his neck, scratching it absentmindedly, the scar beneath his lip turning
white. After a long breath, he lowered his chin, put his elbows on the edge of the table and
studied Michael’s face. He tapped his hand against a napkin and looked towards Michael’s chest.
“Those words that man says, forget them; put ‘em far away, wherever you put those kind of
things. Young guy like you, you don’t need that shit in your head, nobody does. Guys like him,
they’re like evil spirits, no mouths to eat or drink with, always hungry and thirsty, wandering the
143
earth looking for weak souls to kill. Just because they’ve lost their own, they want to take what
they can from you.”
They sat for a bit, Michael watching the desert shift and blur outside the window, all red
stone, hard edges, the earth-rip of canyons and jagged boulders looking as if entire chunks of
land had been thrust up from below.
“There was this man,” Michael said, his eyes glassy and unfocused. “A friend of my
father’s from the war. He would have these bad dreams all the time. Didn’t even like to see my
dad after a while. He never said what he dreamed about; my dad never told me what he done
over there. Anyways, this man, his dreams were starting to get so bad he would stay awake for
days at a time because he was scared to sleep. Pretty soon his dreams would start crossing over
into his daytime world. He’d start seeing and hearing things, having full-on conversations with
buddies he knew were dead. Pretty soon he started being scared of being awake and then he'd
start drinking trying to go back the other way to escape them. That’s what that man reminds me
of.”
“Could be,” the Navajo said, eyeing Michael closely. “Something bad has to happen to
you first. Sometimes people are just born crazy, you know?”
Michael shrugged, looking out the window. The waitress came finally. Michael ordered
two eggs, hash browns and orange juice. The Navajo asked for a refill on his coffee and didn’t
say another word until he got up to return to his seat.

The rough edges and boulders of Arizona gave way to the smooth hills of north New Mexico as
they passed towns with names like Villaneuva, Tecolote, Wagon Mound. The shrubs began to
hug closer to the earth and the trees seemed like roots hanging from the ceiling of another world.
144
The light from the east illuminated the yellow grass and hills that seemed to disappear off the
edge of the earth, the horizon fading into the gray-white wash of morning sky. He could hear the
wind kicking at the train, a faint howl near the edges of the windows, the emptiness alien, feeling
as if he’d passed through some porthole during the night and was just now coming through to the
other side. His Grandpa had once said that there is no death, only a change of worlds and this is
how he felt; the sensation of slipping through, beneath, crossing an imaginary threshold, it was a
feeling he couldn’t shake.
In his mind he imagined returning home on his horse, Blackie, pausing along the ridge
above the cemetery, his grandparents’ home in the valley below, a hard layer of snow beneath
him, mist in the air, the horse and his breath small plumes of heat. He imagined watching the curl
of smoke drifting lazily from the chimney, a hawk circling in the sky, the horse beneath him
quiet and calm. He would lean down and rub the horse along his neck and feel life there, beneath
him, around him. Instead, in the train, a sense of panic gripped his chest, his eyes going blurry,
the veins in his head suddenly swollen. He wanted to rest. He wanted to let go of his muscles and
tendons and bones, hunger, he wanted to let it all go and become nothing. No thought, no
motion. He felt moisture on his face again. Tears, he thought. He brought a hand to his face and
they were indeed tears.
“Are you a holy man?” he could hear the blue-veined man say.
“No,” he answered.
“Shhh,” his Grandpa’s voice said. “Just sleep.”
“I’m not,” Michael said. “I’m not.”
“Leave him be,” said the Navajo. “Just leave him be and let him go on his way!”
145
He could hear the high-pitched whistle of the wind around the edges of the window
frames, the wooden door groaning with the sky. He closed his eyes, smelling the earthy smell of
his Grandpa’s jacket, the smooth palm of his Grandma against his skin. The snap and pop of the
fire as he lay there, lost in the blizzard of white, blind to the world around him.

146
Chapter Six
They poured cold water on him and he seemed to come to. His eyes were still glazed as if he
were sleepwalking. Grandma smiled at him but he could not focus on her. The smells came to
him then, familiar smells of candles, sage, cedar ash and a recently cooked meal, bacon perhaps
or fried potatoes. The smell of the blanket Grandma had wrapped around him had a mix of
human smells that he instantly knew were of his own people, of his grandparents’ home, a smell
he had carried with him to California in the form of a pillowcase that he had haphazardly used to
pack his t-shirts in. Especially during those first few weeks after Grandpa had left him there,
alone with his father for the first time, he would pull the pillowcase from his backpack, bury his
face in it and inhale deeply, a mixture of sorrow and longing opening up inside him as he
counted his blessings and sent prayers of protection his grandparents way.
Now he was here, at his grandparents, in front of the fire, his Grandma’s own prayers
nothing more than soft whispers on her lips as the fire crackled behind her. He tried to sit up but
his muscles only trembled and gave way to a deep slackness that he relaxed into and embraced.
The tendons themselves seemed to give way, as if the rigidity in his muscles were separate from
his conscious control somehow, some deeper intelligence determined to keep him together,
bound tight like ball of muscle and bone to ward off any further attacks or pain. He twitched
momentarily, afraid that if he let go entirely he’d slide off into nothingness that his spirit-self
would somehow slip through the physical materiality of his body.
“Just sleep, Michael,” his Grandma said. “Just close your eyes and sleep.”
And so he let go and fell into a deep and restless sleep filled with dreams of his father’s
war, the rush of projectiles, the flash and concussion of heavy explosives, the whistle of shrapnel
through thick rain forest canopies of trees and gnarled underbrush. He felt heat against the skin
147
of his face, the air buzzing with the hot metal of shattered shell casings. He felt himself moving
through the thick and humid shadows, the underbelly of a jungle that seemed to breathe all
around him. He felt himself slipping, the sense of something horrible and ungovernable undoing
the world beneath him, within him; miles and miles of water and jungle and earth belched up into
canyons like liquid, fluid. He could feel everything moving, time, he couldn’t make it stop, a
sense of panic as he continually pressed forward, all of it pressing forward, motion, motion, time
passing and passing, irretrievable.
“I think I am dying, Grandpa.”
“Shhh,” his Grandpa said, stroking his forehead. “Now is not the time to die, just sleep.”

Even before he opened his eyes he knew where he was, the earthy, human smell of his
grandparents’ home rushing back to him along with flashes of the night before. He realized he
was lying on the floor near the fireplace, wrapped in his favorite wool Pendleton, the jagged
lightning-and-phoenix inspired design of the blanket gave him the look of a cosmic spirit-child.
He imagined the way he looked curled up there in front of the fire, wrapped in a design meant to
invoke the four directions with Thunderbird, bear, buffalo, and elk spirits interwoven as guides
or guardians. He looked to the fire and imagined that he had been spit smoking from the womb
of the flames, belched from within and onto the floor of his grandparents’ home, smoking in the
heat of his own afterbirth. He let the image play out and then listened, the whisper and pop of the
fire, the steady tick of a clock the only sounds he could hear.
He thought of the blue-skinned man and the Navajo and wondered where they were. If
they were still on the train, eyeing each other from opposite ends of the boxcar. Or perhaps
talking now, breaking bread in the dining car and discussing the boy, his future, and what they
148
saw in him. More likely, he thought, they had moved on entirely, each consumed by their own
stories, their own narratives, stepping from the train into their own onslaught of people and
paths, choices, intersections and the constant maneuvering between inner and outer forces,
seeking a balance between intimate pain, private pleasures, and the shell of motion that drive us
forward until death.

Agapito was old and thin, his face like the land itself, dark brown skin crossed by deep valleys
and canyons, edges worn smooth by sun, snow and rain. Michael could feel his hand on his
forehead, the skin thick and callused, warm. He turned Michael on his back and forced his limbs
flat, unwrapping the blanket from his arms and shoulders.
“The owl outside,” Agapito said, looking up towards Michael’s grandparents, “is the
boy’s father.”
“Leonard,” Grandma offered.
“Leonard,” Agapito nodded. “I think he has passed and he has come back because things
are not right for him on the other side and he cannot sleep.”
“This is what’s bothering the boy?” Grandpa asked.
“Perhaps,” Agapito said, moving his right hand to Michael’s shoulder and then to the
center of his chest. “Perhaps his father, but I think this one has been made sick by the ghost of a
white man as well.”
Grandma moved towards the window, listening for the owl, looking out even though
there was nothing to see, the night a wash of black and blue.
“The owl was talking in Jicarilla,” she said. “It sounded like he was saying, ‘I’m a
Mescalero.’”
149
“Ha!” Agapito laughed, his smile loose and toothless. His eyes shone like dark stones as
he shook his head and then lowered it. “The owl does these things sometimes.” He sat back and
began to remove his jacket, revealing a dirty denim shirt, the edges around the collar frayed. He
motioned towards Grandpa and Grandpa went to the door and brought Agapito a battered green
suitcase and set it flat next to him.
“Abrelo porfavor, my fingers grow tired this time of year,” Agapito said.
Grandpa unlatched the suitcase and opened the lid, a wide variety of trinkets and
medicine inside, candles and leather satchels, a large crucifix and a bundle of feathers. Agapito
rummaged through the satchels for a moment and found the one he was looking for.
“Mama,” Grandpa said. “Do you have the things for Agapito to work with?”
Without turning to look at the men, she moved off towards the kitchen and returned with
a small bundle in her hands. She laid it out near Agapito and unfolded it, the bundle nothing
more than a black handkerchief rolled around a small silver cross.
“Here,” Grandpa said, unclasping his knife from his belt and handing it to Agapito.
Agapito reached out with a slight tremble in his hands and held the small hunting knife,
deerhorn handle, sheathed in leather. He looked at it and set it next to the cross. He opened the
satchel at his feet and dipped his thumb inside. His finger came out black with ashes and he
made the sign of the cross on Michael’s forehead.
“My wife had an experience with the owl once,” Agapito said, sorting the items in his
suitcase as he spoke. “She was walking alone and she saw a person wearing black clothes
coming towards her. He was only about a hundred steps away but when he came closer suddenly
he changed into an owl and flew right at her.” He paused to set a series of satchels out on the
floor. “It tried to sit on her head but she fought with it, yelling and screaming until it flew away. I
150
worked in the mine then, so I didn’t come home until it was time for supper, but when I got there
she was still shaking and crying and I was scared for her because there wasn’t anyone who knew
how to cure the owl sickness anymore. My Grandma was the one who used to know such things.
She was the one we would have called on but she’d been killed by the Mexicans a long time
before all this happened.”
Agapito reopened the satchel of ashes and dipped his thumb in. He smeared a circle of
ash on Michael’s chest and the top of his head. He pulled the satchel closed and set it back in the
suitcase.
“I always had a strong memory,” Agapito continued, “so I thought about the things my
Grandma would do. I had always watched her and kept her ceremonies in mind anyways because
I knew since I was a boy that I was to be a healer too from a dream my father had. So when this
kind of sickness happened to my wife, we sat down and we prayed. I held her and closed my
eyes and I could see it all clearly; not all at once, just one piece at a time, like a puzzle, or a
dream you wake up from and it comes back to you throughout the day, one little piece at a time. I
told my wife to lie down and did some of the things I will do here tonight. The power has to
accept you for it to work and it did, so together we made her well again.”
He lay a thin rectangle of rolling paper on his thigh and spread it with the thumb and
forefinger of his right hand. From one of the satchels he pinched a small amount of tobacco,
laying it on the paper. He placed the satchel back in his suitcase and continued rolling the
cigarette with a level of control that belied his age, the earthiness of the tobacco strong and
pungent.
“The owl ceremony and the Enemy Way are almost the same, no difference,” Agapito
said, patiently tightening up the cigarette. “In the old days, if the father was a warrior and the
151
mother was with child it was always good to perform a ceremony for the child when it was born;
the death and killing from the man are carried even in his seed. You carry the ghosts of those you
have killed and these can be passed on to the child as well.”
They were silent for a moment, Agapito’s breath deep, labored.
“It is the same when you are being called to the other side,” Agapito said. “Maybe that is
where our owl comes from, no?” He smiled. “Or maybe he is just an owl. Either way the boy is
sick.”
Grandpa moved around Agapito and took a long splinter of wood from the kindling pile
and lit the end of it in the fire. He moved sideways with the splinter and held the flame out near
Agapito, who placed the cigarette gently in his lips and puffed three times until he was satisfied
the end of the cigarette was lit. Grandpa blew the flame of the splinter out and set it with the
kindling.
“People aren’t the same anymore,” Grandma said. “It’s hard to get them together even for
a proper ceremony.”
“Ay,” Agapito said, nodding his head. He watched Grandpa sift the coals and lay fresh
wood on the fire, and then he motioned for Grandma and Grandpa to sit on the opposite end of
Michael. They did. Satisfied, Agapito inhaled deeply and blew a thin cloud of tobacco smoke
towards the east wall, curling between Michael’s grandparents. He leaned down and inhaled
again, the cigarette burning like an ember, and blew across the face and chest of Michael.
Agapito bent low. “I can see something there, on his head and there, near his heart,” he
said quietly as if he were afraid it would be frightened by his voice. He laid the cigarette down
and opened another satchel laid out near the suitcase. He used his left hand to dip and smear
152
yellow pollen across the top of Michael’s shoulders. Michael’s eyes opened, glossy, the eyes of a
sleepwalker.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, cautiously sitting up.
“He wakes,” Agapito said pulling the satchel closed.
“Grandpa?” Michael said, looking around the room, confused, uncomfortable.
“Acuestas mijo,” Grandpa said. “Agapito’s here to make you feel better.”
Michael watched the shadows on the far side of the room as if he were looking through
the walls.
“Let me get him some water,” Grandma said.
“No, I’m not thirsty,” Michael responded, turning towards her, his eyes still wide and
unfocused. “Just cold.”
“Cierra tus ojos,” Agapito said, patting the floor. “Rest your head a bit longer.”
Michael lay down, closing his eyes and nodding his head. “I’ve missed you.”
“We’ve missed you too, son,” Grandpa said, tears in his eyes.
Agapito opened the satchel of ashes again and turned it so a small handful of ash poured
out. He closed his fist and shook it over Michael, starting at his feet and moving up towards the
top of his head.
“Let no one come back from the east to bother this boy ever again,” Agapito said quietly.
He turned towards the window where Grandma had heard the owl and said, “You who have done
this. Please leave us and never do this again.”
He stood slowly and moved to the top of Michael’s head and said, “The downy feathers
of the owl must not come back to harm this boy again. Stay away from this boy altogether,
because you are the one that also has harmed him.”
153
He turned towards the fire and continued aloud, “This boy doesn’t want to eat. He has
something on his head and his heart, therefore do not allow anybody to come back here to harm
this sick one. You are able to restore him as he used to be. For your own sake and his, help him
to get up and be strong again.”
Agapito walked towards Michael’s feet and faced the wall. “I speak to the north and I call
on the darkness. Make this boy strong and help him to eat again, give him life and never do this
to him again. Let him live to an old age in this world.”
Agapito sat near the fire, still facing Michael, and began to sing in a language that had
long since passed from the earth, the syllables passed down from generation to generation, until
even Agapito only knew the sensation that they stirred within him and not their meaning.
Convinced of their healing power, that the syllables strung together in this way stretching back
hundreds of years communed with unseen forced or aligned and unlocked celestial forces,
Agapito sang as loud as he could to each of the directions, calling on them to listen. Towards the
end of the fourth song he closed his eyes and sang so loud that the air itself seemed to vibrate, his
voice coming from deep within his body, the room fluid with the vowels and cadence of the
song, as if its origins were from the bones of Agapito himself.
Once the last song was finished, Agapito lowered his eyes and with a shaking hand drank
from the cup of water that Grandma had placed beside him. When he spoke again, his voice was
hoarse and weak. “By tomorrow morning may all evil disappear and go to the east. May all the
sickness that was above the heart go to the west and from now on let him eat and sleep in peace.”
Agapito’s voice was raspy now and Grandpa could tell the old man was tired. Agapito opened
his eyes and breathed deeply, his eyes soft and moist. He held his hand over the fire and smiled.
“It’s cold tonight,” Grandpa said.
154
“It gets colder every year but I know that it is just my bones.” Agapito kept his eyes on
the fire.
“Should I make a bed for you?” Grandma asked.
“No, no, I should go,” Agapito said. He took the black-handled knife Grandpa had given
him and he covered it with ash. “Keep this under the boy’s head to protect him. Tomorrow we
can finish the ceremony and the evil should leave him. Feed him after his bath in the morning but
make sure he stays away from tongue or liver. You have burned his clothes?”
Grandpa nodded.
“And who was the stranger who was here?”
“We didn’t ask his name,” Grandpa said, “he was a puro indio though. He helped us get
him home and off the train.”
Agapito nodded to himself, gathering his satchels and placing them gently in his suitcase.
Grandpa stood up and moved to the door. “Let me go warm the truck,” he said.
Agapito nodded, pulling his jacket on and standing. “When he feels better,” Agapito said,
“and looks strong enough make a sweat for him.”
Grandpa said he would.
Grandma stood and held her hands at her side. “Where’s your cap [SPANISH]?” she
asked.
“In the truck,” Grandpa said.
“Put it on before your head gets cold.”
He nodded and quickly opened then shut the door.
Grandma walked to the doorway stiffly and put the porch light on. The dark stillness of
the sky made the soft glow of the lamp seem small. Even so, it didn’t take long for moths to
155
emerge from the void like sentinels, as if they had been waiting patiently all night long for this
moment, restlessly banging themselves against the porch light and circling the shadows they
each cast off on their own.
She watched as Grandpa walked towards the truck with an awkward stride, stiff from
sitting so long. She kept watching, expecting an owl to swoop from the sky like a shadow and
carry him off. She helped Agapito to the door and watched his eyes focus on the darkness
outside. He sensed her watching him and smiled.
“There’s nothing to be afraid of,” he said.
“But death has been following him his whole life,” she said.
“Death is following us all.”
Behind them, Michael called out his father’s name in his sleep.

In the dream he was alone in a world lit by the electric blue of a night-sky aglow with the early
light of a half moon, thousands upon thousands of stars. He was in the middle of a tall grassy
field calling to his dog, Cochise, who had run ahead and disappeared in the shadows. He didn’t
know where she was. He walked slowly, the brush underfoot a steady slide of fabric. The ground
was angled towards the moon and the grass of the plain felt like prairie grass, long and lazy,
swaying softly with the midnight breeze. Ahead was the black tangle of trees that marked the
edge of a forest. He could hear a voice calling to him. It was his father’s. He was sure of it. He
stopped to listen but all he heard was the wind whispering through the grass. The forest shadows
were solid, motionless. The tops of the trees were lit by the moonlight, surreal and blue, the
angle and arc of branches like waves cresting and breaking free from the ocean of shadows
below, frozen in place, stiff, skeletal.
156
“Michael,” the voice called. “Where are you?”
The voice confused Michael and for a moment he wondered if he himself was the one
who was lost. He called once again for Cochise, sensing she was near. Shadows began to speed
beneath the grass. The whirl of flurried motion, the anxious scurry of small animals, black, swift,
low to the ground, little stone eyes watching him, the tinny white reflection of stars, his own
shadow embedded there against the sky.
He turned to look in the direction the creatures were running, the field angling down
towards a horizon he could not see, the absence of light suggesting a deep canyon or cavernous
valley. In the sky beyond he could see the flash and kick of lightning, the sound dull and distant
like gunfire, the din of war. He turned and began moving towards the forest, the grass beginning
to rise and fall like a tempest around him. He pressed forward until he was beneath the shadow
of the trees, pausing there in the boundary between meadow and forest. He let his eyes adjust to
the thin light beneath the forest canopy and listened. The wind wasn’t able to force its way
through the trees and all was silent, the air inside the forest cooler, different, like the breath of
some huge beast pulling in, then out. He had the peculiar sensation that he was looking into a
cavern of stone rather than trees. He could almost discern a maze of paths like the insides of
what he imagined an anthill or wasp nest to be – frozen corridors, hallways that bent and curved
and double-backed on themselves, no sky or direction, the lair of an animal maybe, a labyrinth
that descended deep into the earth.
“Michael,” the voice called again, a sharp whisper, the way he’d called to Cochise. “Up
here.”
157
Michael turned towards the voice and saw a shadow high in a tree, the figure lean and
strong. He could almost make out the features of the face; a younger man than his father but
maybe it was him, as a young man.
“Dad?” Michael called, his voice betraying him with a slight tremble.
“You gotta help me,” the voice called.
“Have you seen Cochise?”
The figure shot forward from one branch to another, resting on its feet. It came closer,
leaning out towards the light. His face was still hidden by the shadows but he was sure of it now,
it was his father.
“Come closer,” the voice called, “where I can see you.”
Michael stood where he was, the sound of the dog barking, echoing from the interior of
the forest somewhere. His father turned his head towards the sound and then towards the sky.
The light bounced off the lens of his eyes, twin golden moons. He blinked, first one eye then the
other, inhuman. Michael backed away.
“Come here,” the voice called, impatient. “Tell your Grandpa, he’ll know. Tell him I
need Blackie, otherwise I’m no good here.”
“I don’t believe it’s you.”
“You don’t have to.” He fell from the tree to the ground in a crouch and stood upright,
taller than Michael remembered. “I’ll keep coming back until everything’s made right.”
Michael began to back away.
The shadow ran straight for him and leapt into the air, pulling its legs beneath it and
tucking its head into a curl; a graceful arc of motion, the transformation so complete and
instantaneous that Michael only had time to duck as the creature swung overhead, an owl’s
158
haunting cry splitting the night as its wings trembled in a single motion of thrust. Michael turned
to watch it glide away, to see if somehow there were some other sign waiting for him there,
something recognizably his father’s or his own. There was only sky. The emptiness of it. A
thing-ness devoid of depth, substance. He could hear it breathing or maybe it was his own breath,
he wasn’t sure. He knew he was asleep and that he would soon be awake and yet he knew that he
was in a special place and because of that he did not want to leave. Staring into the sky, feeling
the wind and the grass and the trees around him, he knew that he had seen the spirit of his father.
Ash began to drift down from the sky like cosmic debris settling from above. He called once
more to Cochise, but she did not come.

159
Chapter Seven
He woke early the next morning, the sun beginning to pale the sky in the window to the east. The
fire had died down in the night until it was just glowing coals, remnants of flame hissing and
snapping with a breath that seemed all their own. The image came to him of how he and his
cousins would ask Grandma to make their bed next to the fire to keep warm in the winter,
transfixed by the yellow-flamed faces grimacing, dancing, whispering songs to them in a
language they felt they once knew but had since forgotten.
But now, there were only the simmering coals and the silent coolness of the house. He
rolled over on his side, slowly, keeping the weight off his shoulder and then sat up and stretched
his eyes wide, the dull ache of his neck and shoulder turning sharp with pain. He took a deep
breath and stood, his small, thin body unfolding like he imagined an old man’s would, tendons
and muscles pulled tight as if a brittle dryness had settled down deep within his bones. He was in
long underwear and a frayed white t-shirt that looked like Grandpa’s. Already he could see
where his Grandpa had come and gone, an empty coffee cup and the morning paper still on the
kitchen table that was only a few feet beyond the couch. The small light over the oven was on
and from the kitchen the sound of the coffee maker hissed and gurgled, the smell earthy and rich,
familiar.
He looked down the hall to his grandparents’ room, the door closed, no light beneath the
sill. Grandma must be sleeping, he thought, and then took a small splintered log from beside the
fireplace and carefully placed it atop the coals, pausing to rub sawdust from his hands before
leaning in and blowing on the heat to make the coals snap and pop, hiss red, before the edge of it
caught with flame. Satisfied, he surveyed where he had been lying. How long had it been? The
pillow was soaked through with sweat and the wool blanket still held the shape of his form, as if
160
it were a shell or soft cocoon he had broken free from. He touched the edge of a glass of water on
the table near his Grandpa’s favorite chair and knew that his Grandma had placed it there in case
he should wake in the night, thirsty and dry. He took the glass and drank from it greedily, even
though it was warm and tasted of smoke. He looked around at the empty room once again and
felt a tinge of sadness as he realized that his Grandpa had most likely been driven out of the
house due to his sleeping on the living room floor. On any other day, his Grandpa would have
been there, in his chair, drinking coffee, reading the paper, waiting for the sun to come up so he
could open the curtains and warm the house.
Memories of the train ride began to push themselves forward, the Navajo, the blue-
skinned man. He shook it off, unwilling to piece it all together now, afraid of what other
memories would begin to rise from the world he had left behind. Instead, he looked out the
window; Grandpa’s truck was gone, the slope of the dirt road that served as their driveway
climbing towards the horizon, the misty glow of switchgrass on either side swaying softly in the
wind. Beyond that the dark bruise of the Sangre de Cristos spread towards the western sky, a few
stars still visible beyond their jagged, snow-capped peaks.
Gathering his clothes, pulling on his boots and then borrowing an old corduroy jacket
from the closet, Michael left the house and braced himself against the sharp coolness of the
mountain air. He walked stiffly to the stables where his Grandpa kept their three horses, eyeing
the sky which looked and felt large and real – so unlike the dreamworld that he had been trapped
in that he almost felt an electric joy at the realization that he was alive, walking in the daylight
world, breathing the air of his ancestral home, stepping across the very same stones and dirt and
brush that he had played in as a child. He looked out towards the field beyond the stable and
161
knew that his Grandpa had buried his umbilical cord out there somewhere, the reason he would
always return to his place, no matter how far he wandered in the outer world.
The front door of the stable was open and it was obvious that Grandpa had been here too,
signs of fresh hay and water having already been cropped by the horses. Michael turned the light
on and the horses all turned when he stepped in, snorting and shaking their heads.
“That’s right,” Michael said softly, running his hand along the head of each horse as he
passed, scratching them behind the ears. “I missed you too.”
There were six stalls but only three horses remained, the others having been sold off or
dead from old age. His father’s horse, Blackie, was his favorite, if only for the way she held her
head high, like an old war horse from a half-remembered world where men stormed across
mountain passes and windy plains in search of monsters and glory. Stormy and Pepper were
there too, the twins that he had helped raise from birth, both of them unpredictable and skittish
from the start, a temperament that his Grandpa had often attributed to their status as twins.
“In the old days,” Grandpa had said, “we would’ve had to kill one or the other due to the
people believing twins are a sign of bad things to come.” It was an omen that seemed to fulfill
itself when Stormy threw Michael’s father when he was trying to break her, fracturing his collar
bone and earning her the status of the most dangerous horse in the county. Of course, eventually,
Grandpa would break her but it was only Grandpa that the horse would allow on its back and
even then, Michael was always afraid that she would come home alone, trailing her reins behind
her with Grandpa nowhere in sight, broken by the side of the river somewhere up the canyon
where he liked to take her to fish.
Thankfully, that vision had never come to pass and as he passed each horse, he was
surprised at how much history he knew of them, how intimately their own lives had become
162
intertwined. He hadn’t raised Blackie but he remembers the day she came, a thin and awkward
looking yearling that Michael’s father had been given in trade. As far as Michael knew Blackie
was his father’s favorite as well, if only for the way she contrasted against the other bays and
chestnuts they owned at that time. Now that his father was gone, he knew she would have a
different meaning to him. A way of connecting him to the man, the dream made that much clear.
He wondered if he should fear her? If somehow her father’s spirit could turn the horse against
him in the glittering world. What did he want with her anyhow? The fear came back to him then,
the residue of the dream with his father and the dark presence of death that continued to rise up
like an acrid bile at the back of his throat. He let the fear run its course, an electric trembling that
he short-circuited by stroking Blackie’s chin and resting his head on her broad nose.
When the feeling had passed, he led Blackie out of her stall, first brushing the dust out of
her hair and then picking her hooves one by one. He took a gray saddle blanket, folded it in half
and laid it on her back before awkwardly heaving his father’s leather saddle onto her back with
his good arm.
“Sorry about that,” Michael said to the horse, who had balked a little. He patted her down
to reassure her and reminded himself to take it slow, his arms and legs heavy, weak. He walked
outside to the apple tree near the barn and gathered a handful of small, green crabapples in his
hand before walking back in, Blackie watching him thoughtfully with her head low. He saw
Stormy and Pepper eyeballing him so he threw them each an apple before tucking the rest into
his jacket, Blackie turning and sniffing, pulling her lips back and snapping at him but Michael
only pushing her face away.
“Not yet, you don’t.”
163
He eased the bridle over her head and then set about attaching the buckles. When it came
time to cinch her he palmed an apple which she eagerly jawed from his hand. He pulled one
buckle, adjusted the stirrup and saddle and then handed her two more apples, patting her tummy
at first gently and then a little harder.
“Go on, suck it in,” he said, waiting until she breathed out before tightening up and
finishing the cinch.
The sun was beginning to come on strong now, flooding the walls of the stable with its
white light and stirring the leaves of the trees. Michael mounted the horse and with a nod to the
twins who looked on forlornly, they sauntered towards the road.
Now that the sun was in sight, a hazy mist was rising from the ground, coaxed from the
earth by the heat, the trunks of trees steaming like stone columns thrust from the world below.
The thought of another world beneath this one made Michael smile, reminded him of the games
he would play as a child, the stories he would tell himself, imagine. Of wars and battles fought
with spirits and ghosts, of the killing of great beasts, of discovering rich golden treasures. He
breathed in the air deeply, Blackie shooting a quick snort through her nose as if in response, the
horse’s breath a plume before them, his own breath warm and smoky against his face. A chill ran
through him, the dull ache in his shoulder suddenly hot and then cold. He cursed himself for
forgetting a hat and pulled the collar of the jacket up and tighter around his neck. Holding the
reins with one hand, he pressed his thighs tighter, comforted by the sensation of Blackie’s
muscles pushing and pulling in a steady motion beneath him. They crossed the cattle guard that
separated his grandparent’s property from the county road and then crossed to a small opening in
the fence that led first to a meadow and then the mountains proper beyond that, state land that
had yet to be claimed for anything other than raw wilderness.
164
They passed a yellow diamond-shaped sign, pockmarked with buckshot that signaled
they were entering a “no hunting” zone. It was a sign his Grandpa had once pointed to in passing
as “the last outpost of language,” a moment so small and inconsequential he doubted his Grandpa
even remembered it but all these years it continued to stick with him and right itself every time
he saw the sign.
Soon, the horse and rider fell into a primordial rhythm, a hypnotic churning of the horse’s
legs, rider leading horse but horse leading rider too, it seemed, always anticipating where they
were headed, man and horse navigating the ruts in the trail from the rains before sidestepping
over a small ditch and veering off onto an old familiar path that looked unused and reclaimed by
underbrush. The forest loomed ahead, thick trees – pine, cottonwood, aspen – shimmering green,
orange and red like a wall of precious stone, refracting the early morning light.
This was the true city of gold those Spaniards were looking for, Michael thought.
A sense of calm came over him. The world seemed sharper to him now, sharper than he
remembered. The way the leaves glistened, the stones beneath them, flecks of grass holding
quicksilver pebbles of dew. He drew strength from the rocks that rose around him, the earth
beneath him as old as time itself, human-time anyhow, the spirits of ancient rattlesnakes and
dinosaurs sleeping beneath the stars long before mankind arrived. He imagined his father as a
boy walking through these same hills, thinking these same thoughts, along this very same trail,
and his Grandpa before him. He remembered imagining that he was child of the forest – prince
of a civilization hidden just beyond the trees, in some distant valley lost to time. He remembered
reading how dinosaurs once lived here, lions, and camels, mythical creatures who were still out
there in the hidden caverns beneath the lakes and stones, biding their time before they returned to
the glittering world. His Grandpa would tell him stories of the monsters that used to roam the
165
earth, The-Great-Fear-Who-Walks-Alone, Those-Who-Slay-With-Their-Eyes, He-Who-Kicks-
Off-Cliffs, creatures that lived out beyond the shifting sand dunes, a place of blue moons and
green suns, black snow. Even now, as he and Blackie began to ascend from the plain and into the
mountains, he knew in some way he was simply reenacting the rituals of those who came before
him. Perhaps all men were destined to reenact the rituals of their fathers, hunting, fishing, killing,
all ways of seeking communion with the forces of nature, the fear of monsters masking a fear of
knowing that the world is ultimately unknowable, unmanageable, indifferent, humans nothing
more than hairless monkeys floating through space on water and stone. That’s what his father
would say, anyhow. He loved that phrase, “hairless monkeys.” It was a phrase he seemed to use
when he was at his lowest, whenever his faith in the world seemed to give way to something
darker, more sinister. He used that phrase a lot.
Thinking of his father, something hollow opened up in him, the anxiousness of time
slipping, the earth reeling on its axis once again catching him by surprise. His right ear went
numb and then started to ring. He tugged at his earlobe and then nudged Blackie forward,
ducking to avoid the low branches of a fir and then pausing atop the first ridge. He looked back,
his grandparent’s house now small and lonely looking, a thin trail of chimney smoke marking its
position on the horizon. Just beyond that, a hawk had risen above the coolness, an angular kite of
gold in the sunlight, rising and falling.
He turned and they continued on, down this time, towards the dry river bottom, sandy
swirls marking where trails of water that had no doubt coursed their way through only days
before. As they crossed, Blackie’s hooves sunk, the sand giving way to mud beneath. Michael
pulled back and together they made their way towards a place where the ground seemed firmer,
stones and pebbles having settled, a small stream of water still trickling through. He let the horse
166
drink and took out his own thermos and drank from it. He eyed the mountains on either side of
the canyon, rising like stone sentinels, sentries perhaps, guarding the way. A thought came to
him then, a memory that the view had dislodged from the past and he dismounted, wrapping
Blackie’s reins loosely around a low branch.
He crossed the stream and silently moved towards the sun breaking over the opposite
ridge, the midmorning air beginning to shift, a heat rising in his cheeks. He came upon a familiar
blackened tree, split by lightning, small light green branches shooting up from the ground
between. Not far from the tree was a clearing, a small circle of rocks, a half fire-blackened log
washed over with sand and thin yellow weeds. How many nights had he spent here by a small
fire listening to the sounds of the forest, watching and waiting for the sun to rise? It had only
been last summer yet to Michael it was as if it was a memory from another life he had lived.
Once he had turned thirteen, his Grandpa had let him disappear for weeks at a time into the hills.
Grandma wasn’t pleased at first but as Grandpa explained it, it was a rite of passage for all young
men, a strange desire that had to be heeded. He would sleep beneath the stars or under the
primitive canopy he’d built from branches, leaves, earth. His Grandpa would stop by every few
days, saying nothing to imply concern, acting instead as if he was just passing through, bringing
food, spending the night sometimes, telling his own stories of boyhood. It had been a warm
summer and soon Michael gave up on clothes, choosing instead to strip himself bare, smeared
with mud and grass, making his way every dawn towards the crest of the nearest ridge like a
stone savage from some bygone era, waiting for the sun to come up. He made up his own arcane
rituals, created his own songs, he sang to spirits entirely of his own making. He had no horse
then. Choosing instead to walk into the mountains with nothing more than a hunting knife and
backpack of food. He spoke to the birds, one red-tailed hawk in particular who seemed to be
167
watching over him, in a continual spiral over his camp, calling out to him it seemed as each day
came to an end.
He looked up then, to see if the hawk was still there, half-expecting it to be circling there,
the same as it always had. But there was nothing. He kicked at the stones he had patiently
gathered to surround his fire, remembering how he had begun to imagine the ways in which each
stone had a spirit trapped inside, a voice that he had hoped would speak to him, reveal some
secret insight into the nature of the world. They looked bland and plain now. Common stones.
Again he tried looking at the forest to see it as he had in the past. Something had changed.
Perhaps the light was different, although he knew that it was something much deeper than that.
Agapito would say that his eyes had changed. He tried to remember one of the power songs he
had sung then but it didn’t come to him. Instead, he heard Blackie blow and with one last look to
the sky, turned and walked away.

They rode parallel to the riverbed until they came upon a pair of railroad tracks, twin iron rails
cutting through the center of the valley, a stout wooden trestle bridge spanning the gap of either
side of the canyon. Michael and Blackie made their way forward, up one side of the canyon and
then over the tracks, Michael dismounting to walk the horse across so she wouldn’t turn a shoe.
He stood there a minute, on top of the tracks, letting his eye follow the rails until they
disappeared around a ridge some miles off. He thought of how strange and orderly they must
look from above, how the birds must have marveled at them so long ago when they were first
laid, how they must still marvel at them now. The geometric sense of purpose and order they
seemed to bring. His Grandpa despised any sign of civilization when they went riding, the high-
tension wires and asphalt roads no doubt ruining the illusion they were both chasing, that they
168
were still people of the past, that this was still their land, that their passage through it was
anything but fantasy. To his Grandpa, the faces of rock lining the highways and train tracks that
cleaved through the mountains were like open wounds, empty space that he prophesized would
one day be washed over and refilled, reclaimed. For Michael, the train tracks, especially the train
tracks, belonged. They seemed a part of some greater order in a way that the highway with its
patches and holes, worn-out lanes and weather-beaten guardrails didn’t seem to. To Michael’s
eyes, this bridge, with its rich smell of creosote and iron, was like the majestic ruins of a
collapsed civilization, a temple built for some forgotten god. The trains themselves, passing in
the night like a herd of wild horses, calling out with their haunting and baleful sound – nothing
more than a ghostly echo of a world that no longer was or would be.
They walked the tracks for a while and then Michael remounted and led the horse high
atop the ridge, slowly navigating the trees and branches that seemed to have grown sharper,
longer than he’d remembered. Once he thought he saw a bear but it was only the dark grove of a
chokecherry bush. He saw it as a sign that a bear would soon come visiting and he said, “Hello,
Uncle,” as his Grandpa had taught him out of respect. The thought crossed his mind that he
should have brought a shotgun, especially this time of year, with poachers beginning to scatter
and bears still coming down to forage for food. But the thought of the weapon brought on the
smell of Sampson’s Bronco, the cordite and blood all coming back to him in a wave that made
him pull up quick on the reins and look back the way he’d come.
For a moment he thought he’d lost his way, the trees unfamiliar and foreign to him. He
eyed the ridge and soon a familiar pine tree called out to him, the shape of it like an old friend.
He’d only truly been lost once in his life, last summer, the summer of his wandering. He had
been hoping to surprise Grandpa with a bird or a rabbit that he had killed on his own for dinner.
169
The day, which had started out calm and temperate, had turned on him, a freak lightning storm
barreling in from the north, driving him deeper and deeper into the valley in search of a safe
place, away from lightning-rod trees and yet sheltered from the rain. The darkness was what
scared him the most, the air crackling with electricity, the sky splitting with fingers of flame, the
smell of sulfur and burnt wood in its wake, frightening yes, but the utter darkness that followed
was even more disorienting and terrifying in a way he’d never expected. He had crawled beneath
a large thistle and when the storm had passed, it was already night. With no tools or wet kindling
to make a fire, he wandered in the direction he thought he had come but the darkness was too
thick, no clouds or moon to navigate by. Instead, he returned to the bush, stripped his clothes,
hung them to dry and dug beneath the largest tree he could find until he found a layer of dry
leaves that he then burrowed beneath, waiting for the daylight to come, delirious with cold.
Sometime in the night, the rain stopped and yet Michael could hear the unmistakable sound of
water trickling. He hadn’t had water in a full day, only briefly opening his mouth to the sky for
moisture in the night, too frightened and tired to do more than that. As the dawn came he circled
the clearing, trying to locate the source of the water but always returned back to the bush he had
slept under. As the sky turned brighter, he saw a small opening in the earth near the root of the
bush that seemed to give way to some larger, darker opening.
It was a cave and using a large fallen branch as a shovel, Michael hacked and kicked at
the opening, wet earth falling away to reveal the jagged mouth of a root-lined cave. Even now,
the memory of it all seemed like a dream, like something he made up. The air had been stale and
heavy with dust and the smell of old earth. The bones of a small animal with bits of fur still
clinging to the edges lay curled into a ball at his feet. But it was the walls, prehistoric walls that
hadn’t seen sunlight in hundreds upon hundreds of years, that suddenly began to reveal their
170
secrets in the mid-morning light: ancient paintings, handprints, apparitions out of bad dreams;
semi-human and superhuman beings with horned heads, broad shoulders, short limbs and
massive bodies that tapered to spidery legs; sinister and supernatural figures, gods from the
underworld perhaps, hovering in space or dancing, standing solidly, weapons in hand – clubs and
swords – some faceless, others with large, hollow disquieting eyes. They were demonic shapes to
Michael, they might have meant protection or a threat to strangers – a warning that one was
entering a land of horned gods.
He stayed there as long as he could, knowing he was in a powerful place, a place that
even his father and Grandpa had not known about. Hunger finally drove him out, hunger and the
sense that the sun was quickly disappearing, the secrets of the cave being lost to shadow.
Wanting to return, to find his way back, he tried to memorize the details of where he was, the
way the trees and rocks looked, the shape of the ridges, the mountains themselves. He thought
perhaps he was near Agapito’s rancheria but when he ascended to the nearest ridge and surveyed
the land below all he saw were foreign trees, an unfamiliar ridgeline that was devoid of the tell-
tale sign of woodsmoke, no highway or service road off in the distance. In that place, the
canyons had been so deep that the shadows themselves were blue. Even now, looking back, he
had no idea where he was and no way of knowing how to get home. That night he had wandered
through another rainstorm, with no stars or moon to guide him, and only a blind panic driving
him forward until he collapsed in exhaustion near a large cottonwood tree, the one that always
signaled to him how close he was to Agapito’s. Sure enough, there in the sky, had been the thin
trail of woodsmoke from his morning fire. It was the same tree he had come to now and as he
watched the hawks wheeling overhead, he looked out into the forest, remembering the cave and
all the awe and mystery that last summer had held. He tried to imagine which way and how far it
171
was to that deep blue canyon and yet there was only overgrown brush, not even a game trail to
hint at a direction. Mountain ridge after mountain ridge cascaded towards the horizon, wilderness
as far as the eye could see. Maybe it had all been a dream, just as he had hoped his father’s death
and the bloody aftermath had been. But he knew it wasn’t. He eyed the wilderness one last time
hoping to spy a path, even an invisible sign from a bird or a hawk pointing the way, but he knew
those days were past that his eyes had indeed changed and that world was already cut off to him
forever.

172
Chapter Eight
Agapito’s ranchería was scattered along the base of a small mesa; wooden fences splintered and
twisted, feral chickens and goats roaming the yard, the house itself low to the ground and dark,
the insides lost in shadow. A hand-built stone wall lay in disrepair alongside a rusted-out single-
horse trailer, the tires gone flat and reclaimed by earth and weeds long ago.
It was mid-day now and the sun was roaring down from space with a savage and holy
light like something ageless, out of time, eternal and mute in the sky. Sweat had soaked through
Michael’s shirt, his back and underarms darkened with the moisture, his jacket having been
rolled and bound behind his saddle long ago. He kept his eye out for dogs but either they were
just as old and tired as he imagined Agapito to be or they were off in the woods too busy to
notice rider and horse approaching. The goats stood their ground for the most part, moving
begrudgingly if it seemed they and the horse were about to collide. The chickens on the other
hand, scattered and cried out as Blackie strode through with her head low, the promise of fresh
hay and water pulling her in.
Michael called out to the house, dismounting near the corral and leading Blackie to the
shade of an empty stall in the stable. The rest of the stalls were empty save one that housed a
tired-looking burro eyeing them cautiously from the corner. Michael grabbed a pitchfork off the
wall and scattered a healthy serving of hay for Blackie before filling the trough with fresh water
from the well.
Agapito was already on the porch, watching him. “Who’s that?” he called out as Michael
made his way towards the house.
“It’s me, Michael, Andy’s grandson.”
173
Agapito watched him, shielding his eyes from the sun. “Come to the porch where it’s
cool. I’ve been wondering how you’ve been. How are you feeling these days?”
“Not so good,” said Michael as he made his way to the porch.
“Not so good? You’re head still tangled?” Agapito said, reaching out to take Michael’s
arm.
“I guess, been having lots of dreams.”
Agapito seemed to wait for more, watching Michael closely. “Well we can talk and see if
there’s anything else we can do,” he said. “But first we should eat, that okay with you?”
Michael nodded and then a voice called out from inside the house. “Ma!”
“Ma’s not here, Joanne, go lay down,” Agapito yelled back.
A small, wiry woman with gray hair shuffled her way to the doorway wearing a
checkered dress with lace trim, pink sweatpants, and large, clunky orthopedic shoes. Her hands
and fingers were crooked, twisted, opening and closing unnaturally, obsessively it seemed, the
skin where her eyes should have been was pinched and puckered, her teeth crooked and yellow,
worn flat.
“Have you met my daughter, Joanne?” Agapito said.
Michael shook his head.
“Joanne, this is Michael,” he spoke loudly as if she would understand him better.
“Andrés’ grandson.”
“Get out!” she said.
“Joanne,” Agapito said.
“Go home!”
174
“You go home,” Agapito said and began to laugh, looking towards Michael. “Go inside,
Joanne.”
She stood near the door, listening it seemed, grinding her teeth, pigeon-toed, moving her
head side to side gently, and then whispering some half-spoken language under her breath as she
turned away. Michael watched her uncomfortably from the porch.
“She was born that way,” Agapito said, watching Joanne shuffle back inside. “They say
the whirlwind makes people that way – that or sleeping in the grass where a wolf or a coyote
once slept; makes the mind lose its senses, twists up the body but I know it’s probably something
else.”
“She doesn’t have any eyes?” Michael asked.
“No, no eyes,” Agapito said opening his mouth wider, all gums.
“What happened?”
“I don’t know, mijo, I used to think there was some message there but I stopped looking
for it a long time ago.” He let out a loud laugh again. Michael tried to smile.
From inside Joanne called out to no one, “I fall.”
“Yes, I remember,” Agapito called back wearily, his gray eyes never leaving Michael’s.
“I cry.”
“Yes, we all cry sometimes,” Agapito called back, winking at Michael and then turning
and motioning towards the door. “In the heat, everything folds in, curls up to stay cool. Let’s do
the same and go inside until later when the rains come, yes?”
Michael nodded and followed him, holding the door.
Inside, it was cool and dark, a small red candle at the base of a small shrine of various
totems the only light he could see at first. The smell struck him next, a smell that was part bacon
175
fat, sweat, woodsmoke, old fabric and the distinct smell of cat piss even though there were no
cats that Michael could see. Agapito limped ahead, hand on his bad hip, the story coming to
Michael of Agapito being thrown from a horse when he was a young boy. It was a story his
Grandpa told him when he would first go riding with him in the mountains in hopes of reminding
Michael that there was no such thing as a safe horse. This horse, the one that had thrown
Agapito, was a family horse that all the children rode. While out riding, something, a snake
maybe, spooked the horse and it took off running – Agapito unable to stop it until horse and rider
barreled into an irrigation ditch, fracturing Agapito’s hip in the process. The horse was
apparently unharmed and was found nearby eating grass. Agapito’s father had taken the horse to
Albuquerque and auctioned him off shortly thereafter.
“You don’t mind if we leave the lights off do you?” Agapito said, opening the wooden
slats of a window shade, the room suddenly filled with white light, dust motes curling in the heat
of the sun as Agapito searched first the counter and then the kitchen table until he found what he
was looking for, a box of matches. Grasping the box, he then closed the shade roughly, plunging
the room into darkness again.
“It stays much cooler this way,” he said as he lit a gas lamp on the kitchen table. “At
night I open the windows and let the breeze in, but it’s too hot right now and there’s no
electricity out here, only the generator which I save for the winter.”
As his eyes adjusted to the dim light Michael could make out a small woodburning stove
on the opposite wall. Next to it was a loose pile of firewood and wood shavings that marked a
trail across the floor in a haphazard fashion. Without asking, Michael took up the broom near the
stove and swept the shavings into a pile and then scooped them into the stove which had gone
cold but still smoldered with red coals. He blew on the shavings until they caught flame so they
176
wouldn’t smoke and then closed the door and eyed the few pictures nailed to the wall. The
largest picture was a portrait of a woman he assumed to be Agapito’s wife. The picture had
apparently been taken some time ago, the frame and print already beginning to yellow, a process
no doubt accelerated by its proximity to the heat of the stove. Michael had a vague memory of
meeting her once. He was only a small boy then, on an errand with his Grandma and the memory
came to him of a tall ghostly woman, silent and pale, sharp cheekbones and a thin nose, stern-
looking, the kind of woman Michael associated with religion or school. Looking at her picture
now, hands folded in front of her formal dress, her almost regal bearing, it made Michael
question how she had ever made it through the winters here and what had brought her and
Agapito together in the first place.
“She didn’t want to have any more children with me after Joanne,” Agapito called,
watching Michael. “I don’t blame her, I guess,” he shrugged. “You know when Joanne was born,
the doctor’s didn’t think she would live that long. Six years, they said, six years at most. Look at
her now, almost forty-two years old! She’ll outlive us all, won’t you Joanne?”
Joanne stomped her foot and looked away, continuing to whisper and then grind her
teeth, the sound like a low sawing.
“When she was born, she came out like a malformed calf, sideways, all legs and arms wet
with blood and afterbirth. She even had a little coat of fine hairs on her. I guess we were lucky
we were in town then, Magdalena, my wife, she almost died giving birth to her. Started bleeding
right there in town and had to take her to the hospital. They didn’t like me much there, I guess. I
think they think it was my fault somehow that Joanne came out the way she did.”
177
Michael said nothing, continuing to sweep woodchips and dust into a small pile,
watching Joanne who had retreated to the far shadows of the room, looking off, it seemed,
towards a room in the back of the house.
“Come, sit,” Agapito called. “Leave that be for now. I have a lady who comes up to clean
for me once a month, she can take care of that.”
Michael finished sweeping and scooping the pile of debris into the woodstove before
sitting near the light of the lamp while Agapito warmed old tortillas, beans, and acorn mush over
the blue flame of a propane stove. Joanne did not eat with them and Michael did not question
Agapito as she shuffled close to the table and seemed to be watching Michael or perhaps sensing
that he was in what he imagined to be her seat.
“You’re next Joanne,” Agapito said, scooping the food on his plate with his tortilla and
then licking his fingers. “Just be patient.”
After they had eaten, Agapito rinsed the plates with water from a glass pitcher and let
them soak in a large plastic bowl. He then sat Joanne at the table and tied a long cooking apron
to her neck and set out her plate, complete with fork and spoon that she tapped on the table a few
times but then set down, apparently preferring to use her fingers to cup the food into her mouth.
“She was better about using her spoon and fork when her Mama was alive,” Agapito said,
watching her. “Go on Joanne, show Michael you know how to use your spoon.”
She called out for her Ma again and then picked up the spoon awkwardly and began to
eat slowly, the beans and acorn mush dripping onto her chin and apron.
“Come,” Agapito said, picking up the lantern and walking towards the door. “She’ll be
fine, we can talk now.”
178
They left Joanne in the darkness, Agapito turning down the lantern once they were by the
light of the door.
“Wait for me on the porch, there,” he said, motioning for Michael to sit on one of the two
battered and weathered wooden chairs that he imagined the old man and his daughter to sit in
every evening.
When he returned, Agapito had his small green suitcase by his side, the same one he had
used during the owl ceremony at his grandparents. He opened it away from Michael and
retrieved a feather, a braid of sweet grass and a small metal lighter.
“We burn this to let the Great Spirit know that we are close by and that we are going to
talk about important things,” Agapito said, lighting the edge of the sweet grass until it began to
smoke. Whispering to himself Agapito raised the smoking braid up over his head and then to the
four directions, using the feather each time to fan the smoke out and around. Watching Agapito,
a dark feeling came over Michael and he knew he was wounded in a way that would never allow
him to be whole again. Watching Agapito burn the sweet grass in the light of day opened up
something in him, an anger of some sort, anger mixed with sorrow at the emptiness of Agapito’s
ritual, a loss of faith in it, the hollowness of the gesture and the smell of cat piss and Joanne
grinding her teeth all coming down on him like a heavy weight of doubt and disbelief all at once.
“So,” Agapito said, turning to him, the expression on his face shifting in response to
whatever he saw there in Michael’s own. “What’s wrong?”
Michael was silent. He could tell that all of the color had drained from his face. It was as
if he had realized that his father had been right all along, that we were nothing more than hairless
monkeys shouting and screaming into the darkness as the rock we were on sped round and round
the sun. Michael said nothing.
179
Agapito was patient and quiet in return. He waited, it seemed, until Michael’s breath
steadied itself, before he spoke again. “You said you been having dreams?”
“About my father, yeah.”
“And what does he say?”
Looking off towards the clouds that were building in the west, Michael told him the story
about the horse, Blackie, and the way in which the spirit of his father said that he needed her
somehow to make things right, to be complete. He did not tell him about the way in which his
father resembled an owl or the fear that he had of meeting him again in his sleep. The thought
came to him suddenly that he did not want to talk about spirits or ghosts or signs anymore. That
he was done with it. He suddenly felt like leaving, like he had made a mistake in coming here, to
Agapito’s but to leave so suddenly would be disrespectful and rude.
Agapito sat with his eyes closed for a long time, so much so that Michael thought that he
had fallen asleep. “This thing with your father, it is an old custom,” Agapito said finally. “When
my Grandma died my Grandpa killed all her horses, broke all her pots and burned down our
house! They don’t do that anymore, it’s supposed to keep you happy on the other side. Your
father is just bothering you, perhaps he was not a good man in this life, maybe he had to do some
bad things in the war that followed him here and this is what is keeping him from resting
properly. Many of the warriors used to haunt the villages in the old days, demanding that their
bodies be buried in the blood of their enemies so that they could have strength on the other side
to wage war and kill. The people would do this for them, burn possessions, not out of fear but
because they wanted them to find their own way on the other side. They thought it was the only
way to sever their ties with the living. This thing with your horse, maybe you heard these stories
180
somewhere, someone talked to you about it when you were a child, maybe this is just a dream,
not a vision.”
“I’m tired of this talk of dreams and visions.”
Agapito continued on, seeming to not have heard Michael. “Maybe this is your spirit’s
way of telling you to return to the old ways, to lose yourself, in a way, to time. The past is the
past. To visit the graveyard too much is dangerous, unhealthy. You risk ending up there
yourself.”
They fell silent. Agapito watched the goats cropping the grass. A crash came from inside
the house as Joanne yelled, “Get out!” once more to the shadows. Agapito seemed to once again
not hear and continued on, “I know what you are feeling. You are feeling the same way they felt
when the monsters roamed the earth. The-Great-Fear-Who-Walks-Alone, The Horned
Destroyer, these were the things we feared then and maybe we still fear them now, beneath these
other things in this world.”
“Agapito, I’ve heard these stories before,” Michael said, a now familiar panic causing
him to stand up.
“Let me finish,” Agapito said, holding Michael’s arm and standing next to him. “You
have heard me talk about unity and harmony, how we are all connected in a way that leaves
nothing to chance, nothing to be left over, nothing unused or unaccounted for, all the parts
making up the whole of this thing we are experiencing as life and the universe. Why do you
never ask me about evil? This has a place too. The universe is a dangerous place and certain
things emerge wherever there is disharmony or imbalance. Every human being, no matter how
good he is in this life, has an evil side which can become dangerous enough to do harm to the
living if not controlled.”
181
“Agapito, I’ve heard these things before, there is no meaning in them for me anymore.”
“Ay, boy . . . this is not you talking. Perhaps we need another ceremony.”
“I’m through with rituals.” He could feel the anger rising up in him again, a frustration he
couldn’t name. “I’m tired of trying to read the signs of every bird, every tree, as if the universe is
talking some secret language to me.”
“Perhaps this is your father talking,” Agapito muttered more to himself than to Michael.
“Don’t talk to me about my father anymore,” Michael removed Agapito’s hand from his
arm. “I should leave before the rains come.”
“What do you want from me? Why did you come here?” Agapito’s face seemed to
change then. Gone was the wisdom and knowledge and glow of an old medicine man connected
to the deepest secrets of the universe and in its place was the tired, pale, features of an old man
who held no secrets.
A chill came over Michael. “I don’t know, Agapito. I should get back.”
“These scars you carry inside, every man has them in one way or the other,” Agapito
called after him as he made his way to the stables, the words, the language like a wave that
Michael couldn’t escape.
“No more talking, please.”
“Maybe this is your path,” Agapito continued. “To face death. To walk with it by your
side. It is said that some men are approached by death – it is very powerful magic. Perhaps you
must make peace with death. Win him over to your side. Tame him. Appease him. He will
become your spirit-animal. Make your peace with him for when he comes for you, you will be
able to recognize your old friend and smile and feel peace, knowing that you have lived a good
life.”
182
Agapito was still standing there on the porch when Michael set out with Blackie. “I’m
sorry Agapito,” Michael said but Agapito only shook his head.
“Wait here,” Agapito said. “I have something for your Grandpa.”
Michael sat the horse and waited as told, watching the sky turn gray. He unrolled his
jacket and put it on, the afternoon air turning cool. When Agapito returned he had a small leather
satchel in his hand with a drawstring on top that had been pulled shut and knotted in an intricate
pattern. He handed it to Michael from the porch and then held fast to his hand.
“I cannot know what lesson it is you have to learn,” he said, his voice trembling, tired.
“The things whispered to your spirit in the dark are only for you to know. I can only tell you
what others have gone through before, what doors they have walked through, how they lived,
how they died. Nothing more.”
Michael thanked him again, tucked the satchel into the inner pocket of his jacket and set
out towards the tree line without looking back.

183

Chapter Nine
The shadows came first, the sun retreating behind gray clouds, the air thick and still with an eerie
silence. When the first drops of rain began to fall, Michael sat the horse and looked back. He’d
felt bad about leaving the old man like that. It was either that or embarrass himself with some
outburst of emotion that he couldn’t contain, something that he would later regret and have to
apologize for. Already he could hear Agapito and his Grandpa talking about his visit. He knew
he would have to apologize no matter what.
He eyed the sky once more, the clouds fat and menacing, a dark bruise of purple that
deepened the further west he looked. The wind began to whistle through the tops of the trees and
already he could hear the low rumble of thunder building deep within the vaults of the sky, the
sound like stones being crushed or eaten by the belly of some ancient god.
Without warning, the horse shivered and then spun quickly, spooked by something in the
trees. Michael squeezed his thighs and held the reins tight, his eyes scanning the treeline for any
sign of movement. His own heart raced and he leaned in and patted Blackie on the neck,
soothing her with a whisper.
“What’s wrong?” he said, seeing nothing but the deepening shadows and trembling
leaves of the trees. Then he saw it, too, out of the corner of his eye. It looked like the shape of a
man darting from one tree to the next. Michael’s own breath tightened as he spun the horse
towards the motion.
“Who’s that?” Michael yelled out but the sound of his own voice frightened him,
betraying his fear, small against the immensity of the forest, falling dead in the trees. Blackie
184
snorted nervously and he could feel the hair on her mane rising up, nervous. Michael patted her
neck and eyed the treeline. The distant but familiar pop of a shotgun echoed dully across the sky.
Blackie trembled restlessly as Michael held the reins tight, listening to the report of the
weapon echo and fade. He kicked Blackie forward as the sound of gunshots rang out again,
closer this time. Blackie pulled up and raised her ears at the same moment Michael sensed more
movement off to his right. He had the uneasy feeling of being watched.
“Who’s that?” Michael called out and immediately regretted hearing his own voice, a
strangers voice almost, child-like. The rain really came on then, large thick pellets of water, the
sharp flash of light and then the cordite smell of ozone following in the wake of its thunder. He
kicked Blackie up faster and he could feel her fear as another crack of lightning cut close enough
to startle them both, the horse nearly throwing him from the saddle. He turned down away from
the ridgeline and even in the rain he thought he heard gunshots behind them. He tried to cut up
and across a small ridge but immediately knew it was a mistake, this section of the forest having
been blighted by beetles or some other form of rot. Fallen trees and splintered branches covered
the ground like oversized matchsticks, slick with rain now, causing the horse to balk and step
awkwardly. She nearly slipped on the rotten trunk of a tree before catching herself and then
frantically scrambled up the side of the ridge, her hooves clacking against a large outcropping of
rock before she lurched forward throwing Michael face-first into the dirt. His teeth clattered in
his skull and his right ear began ringing, the sharp flash of red as his head hit the ground.
He didn’t have time to register the impact as Blackie immediately thrashed about and
bellowed a guttural, haunting moan. Michael stood slowly, hunched over, trying to catch his
breath, scanning the trees, unsure whether the cracking sound he heard was a branch or even the
report of a pistol shot. He moved towards Blackie who had still not been able to right herself. He
185
could see her trying to stand and then thrashing about, foam flecking her chest and mouth. Then
he saw it, her foreleg snapped clean through the skin, bone like a jagged claw reaching up and
out to the world.
He heard a whimper go out from his own lips and knew he was in trouble. He cursed the
rain and slipped in the mud, trying to grab the reins and stay behind her so she wouldn’t kick
him. He could hear the distinct sound of gunshots again. He knew that night would be upon them
soon and without a weapon he was useless to try and stand ground against whatever or whoever
chose to visit them in the night.
Moving towards her backside, Michael knelt down to calm her. He patted her head and
whispered in her ear, held on when she tried to stand. “Shhh,” he told her. “Just relax.” She
resisted at first, shaking her head and trying to pull herself up with her good legs. Michael held
on and eventually he could feel her giving in to him, hearing his voice, the touch of his hand
calming her, bringing her back. When she seemed to accept her fate, he rested his head on hers,
calming her, stroking the flank of her neck. He could feel her breathing slowing down, labored
and ugly sounding in the rain. Her eyes rolled and again she tried to stand, this time throwing
Michael clean off her until the weight of her body came down on her leg and she collapsed
awkwardly on her side, red blood-stained mud caking her face. She snorted and shook her head,
eyes pleading with Michael it seemed. He knew he had to get Grandpa, he was the only one who
would know what to do.
“I’ll be back,” he said, approaching her with hands out once again. “I’ll be right back, I
promise, you just hang tight.” Now he was cursing his luck but he knew that his luck would only
get worse the darker it got. Michael surveyed the land, taking a mental picture of it so he could
find his way back, in the dark if he had to. The sensation of being watched came to him again but
186
he shook it off as paranoia and after watching the trees for movement he decided he was better
off moving himself. He could hear Blackie bellow and struggle to get up behind him, but he
looked back only once and already she was lost to the trees and rain.

187
MAGDALENA

188
Chapter Ten
When she was younger she would dream of water. It was an unusual dream to have in a world
where boys and men dreamt of eagles, hawks, snakes, lightning, thunder… According to the
elders most girls did not have power dreams and so these night-visions as she called them
brought a fair amount of attention and tension to her family. It had been a long time since a
woman or girl had power in her family and so it was celebrated in a cautious way as her mother
knew that power in a woman, without guidance, could lead to madness, insanity, or at the very
least being cast to the edges of town, forgotten and without child.
The dangers were the same for boys, the young men, but the power that seemed to flow
through them was tangible, concrete, something to be contained. Water power was, by its very
nature, amorphous, unbound, powerful in a way that went beyond language to the sacred fabric
of the universe itself. The energy that thrummed in the night sky or miraculously bound flesh to
bones was the same energy that lived in the dark recesses of water – a thingness you could put
your hands through, that you could ever completely grasp and yet something that you could
drink, in fact needed to drink, the same way the earth drank all of us in in the end.
But we are getting ahead of ourselves here, this girl, Magdalena, named after her great-
Grandma on her father’s side, was tall and thin, her long, black hair always bound in a thick
braid that ran the length of her back. Her cheekbones were high and eyes a dark almond brown
that reflected flecks of green at certain angles in the sun. Her eyebrows and eyelashes were long
and black giving her the appearance of wearing makeup when she had none. She was considered
beautiful, calm, untroubled, never at war with the world the way her five brothers seemed to be
at every turn. Her mother said it was the water that spoke to her and her father would often
counter that like water she was to be feared for if she ever broke the way her great aunt Nana had
189
broken, the fury unleashed would be unlike anything anyone, even the elders, could contain. He
always tried to joke about it when he would say these things but his laugh revealed a tremor that
Magdalena knew to speak a deeper truth. As she grew older, she kept his words, his half-hearted
warnings, inside her like a feral secret to be nurtured and fed.
The boys in town sensed all of these things on a sort of primal level and while they
definitely saw her as attractive, they rarely approached her or included her in their adolescent
games of teasing and taunting, the mating rituals of youth that seemed to pass her by. She was
considered a good girl by her teachers and her family, always polite and attentive to the needs of
her parents and grandparents. Her laughter, when it came, was like a blessing from the gods, a
wave of energy that preceded her and often lingered long after she had gone. And yet, the boys
still repeated the rumors they heard their parents sharing around the dinner table; that she was to
be a medicine woman and that this kind of woman was not fit to be a wife, that her power would
overpower that of any man who slept with her and lead to an early death. Her mother and father
watched all this from afar, unsure of how to guide her or offer her advice as deep inside they
feared her too.
These dreams she had were of water, ice, rivers and lakes. This, in itself, wasn’t unusual
as all people dreamt of all manner of things but the water dreams never seemed to stop. When
she was five or six the dreams came with a regularity that began to worry her mother. Every
morning she would ask what kind of dreams came to her in the night and Magdalena would tell
her mother stories of swimming her way upstream like a fish, muscling against wild river
currents in search of a giant waterfall.
“And what were you to do once you found the waterfall?”
190
“Once I found it I held it in my hands, put it in my pocket, hiked to the tallest mountain in
the world and then poured it into the sky.”
As she got older, she kept the details of the dreams to herself, dreams of alien worlds
where ice rippled and cracked across the surface of planets and moons for hundreds and
thousands of miles; where stars burned with a cool blue flame and comets raced through the
heavens as fiery ice-bound masses seeking to collide with some distant ocean through which they
could work their life-giving magic.
As she reached puberty, she saw blood as a life-source not draining from between her
legs but as a sign that she was rich with nutrients and, like a river, her banks would often
overflow. She knew she had power to give but there was no one she trusted to share her dreams
with as even the elders began to eye her with suspicion the older she got, the shape of her body
changing, the curve of her hips and her neck suspect somehow as signs of an impending
womanhood that was to be feared. And still the dreams came, birds made of mist, the soil
whispering to her, rattlesnake dreams where canyon walls would call to her wanting to hear her
stories in where the walls were wet and slick with moisture, the slow journey from root to the top
of a cottonwood tree a world she knew too well.
Outside, she saw the clouds as her friend. The rivers like a distant lover, the winter snow
like an old friend. The power spread like a warmth between her legs sometimes and other times
she felt it like an aching, a tenderness in her breasts, a sudden flash of heat in her hands, in her
face, as if the power was rushing through her body seeking release or union. She didn’t know
whether love would bring her union or death, a union she imagined that would cause herself to
explode in a vapor cloud of mist that would fertilize whatever ground was beneath her and give
rise to a magnificent tree that would stretch broad and wide, higher than any tree the earth had
191
ever seen, its upper branches lost in the mist of the sky, the heavens, stars like little nests from
which comets were born.
But none of this came to pass. The dreams came less and less; she became more and more
a part of the glittering world and people began to forget about the little girl who had the power of
water running through her veins. The voices seemed to soften, go quiet, her parents alternately
relieved and saddened to see it go. In bed at night mother would whisper her sadness at the
passing of this power that had made their bloodline special, even if only for a little bit. She
wondered if it were something they were wrong to fear. Father would remind her that the power
would always be lurking somewhere beneath the surface, like a shadow or a ripple on a lake that
comes and goes with the wind.
Magdalena began to keep a scrapbook made of thick cardboard and construction paper.
She would cut out newspaper articles and paste them next to flowers and four leaf clovers, moon
landings and assassinations living side by side with clippings of war, floods, murder,
kidnappings. After every harvest season she was drawn to the shattered corn fields outside of
town, the rattling of dried stalks like the chanting of the ancients whispering secrets to her in a
language she could almost understand. The moon began to fascinate her then and she would
draw it with a surprising amount of care and detail, pencil-sketches of lunar valleys, craters,
shadows, ridges, and caves that began to look more and more like the smooth-blasted landscape
of her half-forgotten dreams of a world beneath the rivers and sea.
No one talked to her. Not other girls. Not boys. Not even her brothers who seemed to
violate the personal space of everyone they came into contact with. Eventually her brothers grew
into men and moved away. Her mother became withdrawn and quiet as well once her father got
sick and stayed on the couch in the living room, his eyes always half-closed and his frail body
192
lost in the pile of well-worn quilts and shawls on top of him, his oxygen machine hissing and
pumping beside him, trying to battle through the black lung that doctor said he contracted in the
mines.
With the sickness and the oxygen tanks came a young man, a boy really. His name was
Leonard, his family name placing him as someone from the Red Valley River side of the county.
He was younger than she was, only by a few years, but he didn’t seem to know or let on that he
knew that she’d once had powers. He would come by the house in a battered yellow pickup truck
once a week to check on the oxygen levels in the tank. Whenever one was running low he would
go out to the truck and with one arm swing a full tank over his shoulder and lumber into the
living room with an ease that caught her eye. He was lean and angular in that way that boys
turning into men are. That moment where their bodies begin to transform and offer up a glimpse,
a shadow of the man they will become. His jaw was solid, teeth crooked; the skin on the ridge of
his nose sunburnt and freckled. She liked the way he moved more than anything; a kind of fluid
motion to his walk that she imagined made him a good hunter. He never looked at her and yet
when he opened his mouth to speak to her father she could hear the river in his voice, the
familiar cadence of water falling from cliffs, ice cracking and falling from the sky, stones being
turned and churned deep beneath the rivers of magma underneath the crust of the earth. All of
these things and none of these things came to her, the images and emotions she felt being torn
loose, like a glacier breaking free, shearing off into the deep blue primordial sea from which it
was born, waiting to receive it like the cool embrace of the lover or the dark and vicious bite of a
mother eating its own.

193
Chapter Eleven
She knew she was different somehow. She had always felt like the town she grew up in was too
small and never enough for her restless spirit. Her father had given her lots of freedom and even
though she was in the middle of eight brothers and sisters she was seen as special by relatives
and strangers alike. She had jet black hair, pale skin, and dark, sharp eyes. She was neither the
youngest nor the oldest but somehow she saw this as a blessing in disguise as she received the
best of both worlds, her curiosity and devotion to mama and papa, her love for her grandparents
in particular no doubt shaped her. She was spoiled by Grandpa Ray who gave her her first sucker
after her first teeth had grown in. He let her sit in the front of the car before it was time and even
gave her special gifts that he would tell her not to share with other siblings.
He had passed when she was twelve due to a heart attack while out hunting pheasant as
he would often do alone in the early fall. It wasn’t unusual for him to leave before the sun came
up but when he didn’t return by late afternoon, the family knew something was wrong and her
uncles and brothers went out to search for him. She had wanted to go along as well, convinced
that her special connection to him would allow her to sense where he was and if he was hurt.
They told her no, to stay back and help take care of her sisters and after the men had left and the
house lay quiet with an empty restlessness, an anger rose in her like a slow burning ember that
gradually burned hotter and hotter before bursting into flame.
The sight of her aunts, cousins, mother, and grandmother all simply waiting, the meaty
smell of deer stew simmering alongside the acrid smell of the coffee pot having run dry proved
too much for her and so without saying anything to anyone, she put on a jacket, wrapped her
neck in a scarf and left.
194
Without any sense of where she was going, Magdalena crossed the fence that marked the
edge of her grandfather’s property and began to climb towards the open wilderness beyond. The
sun was beginning to set by then, the air turning cool, her breath beginning to show as mist
before her as she walked. The hills behind her grandfather’s house were criss-crossed with
animal trails and others that had been carved out by motorcyclists and four-wheel drives. She
followed the dry riverbed for a while before cutting back towards the setting sun when the sandy
banks began to curve north.
Without warning, an ocotillo bush began to thrash violently, an anguished bleating from
within as a wiry ram suddenly kicked free of the thorns and bound off like some horned stallion,
twisting and bucking its head before disappearing into the growing shadows. She made the sign
of the cross and watched it go, the sweat on her neck beginning to cool, a small shiver running
between her shoulders. She pressed on and came across an old bent man wrapped in a blanket,
resting against a large stone, staff in hand, a small flock of goats around him, murmuring to
themselves as they mulched the weeds. At first she thought that he was sleeping, the way his
head angled down, the blanket pulled tight against his head like a shawl. She eyed the setting sun
once again and knew that the old man and his sheep were quickly running out of time.
“Don’t worry about me, I live just over the ridge,” a voice called out from within the
folds of the shadows. “Almost home, but what are you doing out this way?”
“I’m looking for my Grandpa Ray,” she said, her voice feeling small and quiet in the dry
air. “Was that your ram?” She continued with a wave in the direction she had just come from.
She could see now that he had stopped to smoke a cigarette, the bright red glow of it as
he inhaled offering her a brief glimpse of milky blue eyes nestled in the folds of his weathered
face, watching her.
195
He shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t hear too good, mija,” he said, shrugging again and
cupping one hand to his ear half-heartedly. “We are just going for a walk.”
She thought about saying more but instead just nodded and walked wide around the
goats, the herd shifting nervously as she passed before regrouping with heads bowed.
The old man sighed and raised a hand as they passed. “That is a good sign,” he said
motioning towards the bush where the ram had broken free. “A good sign,” he repeated. “You
don’t see too many wild rams out this way anymore. If only that bush was burning I would go
back to church and give up smoking.” He laughed then, a phlegmy guttural sound followed by
him spitting in the dirt and raising his hand again. She raised a hand back and then continued on,
the ocotillo and grass giving way to the craggy edges of trees and roots, stones the size of houses,
and jackrabbits running before them. She kept on long after the quarter moon had crested the
horizon and the coyotes and long hoot of an owl scared her into returning home. Her
grandfather’s body would be found the next morning, face up by the side of a trail, shotgun still
in his hand, a crooked smile on his face, as if he were just tired and had fallen asleep under the
shade of a tree.

She kept a journal. She clipped newspaper articles from the paper and carefully arranged them in
a scrapbook made of rough brown cardboard paper that she then sewed a leather spine to. She
would use rubber glue and liked to save big news items, the landing on the moon, assassinations
of world leaders, but oddly these were interspersed with news items about long forgotten wars,
protests, deaths. She made the paper with the school jazz band once so that was in there, her
holding a clarinet in her hand, her long black hair held fast in a long thick braid.
196
When she was younger you might think she was plain but as she got older her almond
shaped eyes and strong angular nose came together in a way that was beautiful. She was one of
those people who move through the world with ease, the old and young alike drawn to her – and
yet she never seemed to need or want anything from anyone in return. She loved to read Nancy
Drew mysteries, did well in school, and was one of only five students from North New Mexico
selected to take part in a week-long Youth Leadership Conference in Denver for “promising
future leaders of America.” As such, she was the first in her family to leave town for any
extended period of time unless you count her oldest sister who had moved to Germany with her
husband who was stationed there after joining the Army.
She was the first to have African-American friends in a world where the only black
person anyone had known was Mr. Jones who owned the tire shop on the edge of town. The
black women that she befriended in Denver were loud and unapologetic in their likes and
dislikes. They were quick, sometimes crude, but always full of love and laughter in ways she
imagined she could never be. She knew they saw her as a “hillbilly square” but she also
suspected they secretly envied her and her ability to move through the world with a level of
confidence that the other women in the program seemed to lack. They took her under their wing
and made her their own; they were kind and generous but also defensive and suspicious of the
outside world, especially of men who had hurt them or their families in the past.

She returned from Denver more restless than ever, convinced that she was destined for greater
things than her cousins and siblings. She began to write down all the privileges that her male
cousins, relatives, and brothers were given one by one until she had a list of nearly fifty items
ranging from “hunting alone” to “driving the car into town.” She began to consciously shirk
197
household duties, at first “forgetting” to wash the dishes or clothes that were her usual chores,
and eventually outright telling her mother she didn’t have time for such things. Horrible fights
would follow and soon she began to feel shunned by both her family and the larger community.
One night, she gathered her younger siblings and had them listen and watch while she cut her
braid in one crisp cut before cropping her bangs and the rest of it. The kids laughed and said she
looked like a boy and she laughed with them, pretending her braid, bound on both ends with
leather ties, was a snake, chasing them until they screamed in a mixture of fear and joy.

Her parents both feared her and feared for her, unwilling to disown her and yet displeased with
the way she would often behave cruelly towards them, filled with resistance and a level of
defensiveness that her mother feared would lead to her downfall. Her mother labeled her
impatience and short fuse to her being attracted to the darker side of her power, all that was left
was that she would threaten those that would cross her. She feared for the allure of brujeria.
It came as no surprise when she left town shortly after her nineteenth birthday,
presumably to Pueblo where her cousin said she had been talking to a boy she had met there. She
never told anyone where she went or what she did or saw. She was gone forty-eight days, never
calling or writing until one day she just returned, suitcase in hand, a look on her face that her
mother attributed to the power of a world determined to put you in your place. They didn’t like
seeing her this way either, as if the world had broken her or blunted the sharp edges of their wild
and powerful girl.
While she had been gone, her father seemed to have aged a decade, the skin on his face
gone loose, the bones of his shoulder blades and chest beginning to show through, looking like a
shrunken man in clothes that no longer fit him. The week she returned the family received news
198
that Papa had cancer in his lungs and it had spread throughout his body. They said to prepare for
the worst. Now it was the women who cried and hugged and cleaned and cooked while the men
would stop by with sorrow and worry etched into their brows, quick to accept a cup of coffee but
just as quick to leave.
This time Magdalena did not resist staying behind, vowing to care for him, to nurse him,
the very role she despised, taking care of others like a maid, feeling trapped, as if this was
expected of her, as if the gods had trapped her somehow, had won in their efforts to beat her
down. On the outside, she was pleasant, smiling, eager to please, all signs of the old
impetuousness seemingly a phase she had went through or a necessary part of her growth into the
woman she was to become. Mother never asked her about her time away from home, what she
had seen or done or who she had been with. She figured if she had wanted to talk about it she
would and besides, there was a deeper part of Mother who feared reawakening whatever beast
had taken hold of her. Here was the daughter she had hoped for, helping her with dishes,
cleaning, caring for the children, for Papa who quickly became bed-bound, the steady push and
pull of the oxygen tank next to him. Here was the daughter who didn’t see such things as a
burden but as part of the daily cycle of living, to be celebrated, to be embraced.
But inside, Magdalena was drowning, suffocating, fighting for air. She harbored fantasies
of escape but to where? And then Leonard came, delivering oxygen, lean and muscular. It was a
slow burn on her part, determined to not fall for a man or grant any power to anyone outside her
own family. But he won her over, gradually, slowly. He would come the same time every week
and while the time it took to switch out machines and ensure that Papa’s portable tank had
enough oxygen to get him to the doctor’s office and back, he would make her laugh, make her
feel at ease. Offer up a glimpse of a life beyond the walls of her home, his arms and back tan, the
199
vigorous pull of his muscles as he lifted and pushed and pulled reminding her of her own father
in his youth, when he was healthy. She knew she was in trouble when she began to think of him
between visits. She wondered what he was doing, where he was, who he was with, what his life
was like outside, out there.
Her father’s health turned worse and soon he became home-bound with a catheter and
diapers. She washed him daily, stripping him down for a sponge bath, her and her mother lifting
him and rotating his body, changing and washing the sheets, letting them hang to dry in the sun,
as if some power could be captured there and brought inside. Still the bed sores erupted on his
back and his hips like angry open wounds, signs of the cancerous fire burning inside.
On the second week in October, when the day approached for Leonard to come she found
herself being preoccupied with the way she looked, what she was wearing, even the way the
house smelled, even knowing that disease and decay were smells that he was no doubt used to in
his line of work. She wondered how many other homes were harboring the sick, how many
homes he visited in a day, in a week. She made sure Papa had his hair combed, thin as it was,
crisp sheets, the front room vacuumed and all the kids’ toys put away. As the truck pulled up she
waited patiently by Papa’s side, determined not to be too eager, to be the one to open the door
but instead of Leonard’s soft voice calling out to Papa, she instead heard the loud and harsh
Spanish-accented boom of a stranger telling Mama that Leonard called in sick and he’d be taking
care of the oxygen that day.

200
ANTONIO

201
Chapter Twelve
He’d never had luck with women so it didn’t bug him too much when the pretty girl with short
hair shined him on, but goddamn, he thought, she is a beauty. Even with the uneven scissor-cut
she’d given herself to look like a boy or who knows what kind of city style she was after, that
aquiline nose with just a hint of freckles and those big doe-like brown eyes got him.
More than just her features though, it was that look of anticipation and perhaps even a
little desire he saw when she turned to face him. It was only a brief moment, her eyes expecting
someone else he could tell, her mouth open as if to speak or say something, a laugh or a joke
lingering on her face, but the moment was so brief, her eyes flashed on him, took him in, one leg
shorter than the other, oxygen tank over his shoulder, sweat stains under his arms. The light
turned off inside her then and he felt whatever warm spirit she had no doubt conjured to greet
Leonard leave the room when he smiled and said hi.
He would tell Leonard all of this later, about how the daughter no doubt was expecting
him, that she had been expecting him, that he actually felt a little bad that he had let her down
that way. Leonard only smiled and laughed, listening but also not giving any of his own feelings
towards the girl away.
“Man, let me take over your route if you’re not going to do anything with it,” Antonio
said. They were unloading the empty tanks and lining them up to be refilled for the next
morning. Even empty the tanks weighed a solid twenty-five pounds, Antonio only able to lift one
at a time due to his leg, Leonard carrying two at a time, one on each shoulder.
“I don’t get it, a guy like you always getting the looks from the girls pero all you do is
work.”
202
Leonard laughed, “Girls are trouble, brother. You’re better off getting you a good hunting
dog.”
They both laughed and joked but inside Antonio felt a familiar mix of pain, jealousy, and
longing. He knew he was no match against Leonard. He watched him unloading the tanks every
day. Saw the way he interacted with customers, with their co-workers, even the old-timers who
just came by to shoot the shit. He seemed to have been blessed with a smooth confidence that
made it easy for him to get by in the world. Even Antonio felt calm around him, like there was
some deep inner well of tranquility in him that vibrated outward in waves. He was centered, that
was it, he was centered and grounded and connected in a way that Antonio had always wished to
be but knew that he wasn’t. At least not yet.
Leonard didn’t give up his route and as far as he could tell he didn’t make a move on her
either. One afternoon he saw them together at Safeway, Magdalena’s warm eyes and liquid
laughter capturing his attention. He watched them from afar as Magdalena led the way through
each aisle, Leonard following with the shopping cart like a dutiful husband, marking things off
the shopping list as she placed them in the cart.
The next day, at work, Antonio tried to casually bring up seeing them in town shopping.
Without a pause, Leonard told him that the girls’ older brother had been drafted and was off to
Vietnam so the mom had offered to pay him an extra twenty bucks a week to take them into
town to run errands.
“How do I get me a gig like that?”
Leonard just shrugged.
“Promise me if you can’t make it one week you just send me instead.”
203
Leonard agreed and he kept his word, sending Antonio one week out to Magdalena’s
house but much to Antonio’s dismay, only the mother went into town that day, Antonio spending
most of his time trailing her to the doctor’s office and pharmacy before going shopping with her
leading the way and him trailing with the cart like a dutiful son.
Each night, he would go home and look at himself in the mirror, cursing his parents for
passing on their soft bellies, weak jaws, and ruddy, uneven complexion. He wondered about his
ancestors and what kind of people they were to continue propagating as long as they had.
According to family lore they were all borderland thieves and hustlers, smugglers of people and
contraband goods. He had always thought his uncles were joking when they called his great
grandfather a horse thief turned revolutionary in Mexico but now he wasn’t so sure where the
truth ended and legend began. He knew the rest of the town looked on his family on his dad’s
side like trailer-dwelling drug dealers. The reputation was mainly due to two older cousins of his
nicknamed Trouble and Sickness, who did, in fact, transport cocaine between the border and
Denver. He had tried to distance himself from that side of the family as much as he could but last
names carried just as much meaning here as they did in Mexico and who your relations were
often boxed you in for better or worse.
He knew the draft would never come for him, his short leg a birth defect that had
disqualified him from joining the Marines when he had turned eighteen. Still, he decided to do
better, to be better, to dress better, to exercise and eat right, to “walk a righteous path” as the
priest would often say at Sunday mass. He read books on self-mastery and persuasion and came
to realize or at least believe that his strength was not on the outside but within.
That same year he and his family had to return to Chihuahua for the funeral of his
youngest tio on his mother’s side. He was only twenty-two when he passed and he was known as
204
Paquito even though his given name was Francisco. While his parents said that he had been
killed in a hit-and-run accident while walking the dirt roads home one night, his cousins told him
that he had been caught chasing another man’s wife and that he had been kidnapped, beaten with
a pipe, then left for dead beside the road.
It was on the same trip that those very same cousins, Lupito and Juan, both from
California and both older by only a few years, had taken him first to a whorehouse in Juarez and
then to a palm-reader who convinced him to begin praying to la Nuestra Senora de la Santa
Muerte if he wanted to win the heart of the one he was in love with. He bought a small figurine
of the hooded skeletal figure that was meant to evoke the familiar figure of la Virgen but instead
of Jesus’ mother, the robed figure was a skeleton with an owl at her feet, numerous charms,
seeds, and symbols carved and entombed of the bottom of the figure, encased in wax. He was
told which prayers to say and how to supplicate la Muerte. She also told him that he had a knack
for making money and he should focus his energies there.
He returned to New Mexico with renewed vigor and his very first day back he drove into
Santa Fe and bought an all-black Ford F-100. He buried himself in work then, no longer
gossiping with Leonard about the girl, every night lighting his candles, burning sage, and saying
his prayers to his statuette before going to sleep. Months passed like this, and just as he began to
think that his prayers had gone unanswered, that his truck had become a hollow symbol of his
own inadequacies, Leonard pulled him aside and let him know that his number had come up and
that he was headed off to Vietnam.

205
Chapter Thirteen
Things changed for the better. Antonio played it tranquilo and took over Leonard’s route and his
side gig taking Magdalena and her mama shopping every Thursday night. He purposefully tried
not to come on strong and as time began to pass it was obvious that she was with child. At first
this hurt him, stung him, really. He felt like la Muerte was playing tricks with him, teasing him
somehow, or that he wasn’t living up to his end of the bargain he had made with her.
But Magdalena’s laughter would always put those fears at ease, as weeks turned into
months and she began to open up to him about her fears of being trapped there, of the pain of
seeing her father waste away, the stress that was eating away at her mother’s own health and
looks. She told him about who she used to be and what kind of vision she had for her future and
how none of it had come true. He never asked about Leonard but she would always bring him up,
describing the letters he wrote her about the places he had been, the people he had met, where he
was going next.
“Are you worried he will change or be different when he comes back?” Antonio asked
once.
Magdalena sat there a long time looking out the window, the low throttle of the engine
the only sound to be heard. He thought he had offended her or that she would cry but instead she
held her belly, “I expect him to be different, but I don’t know what that means for me and my
son.”
Antonio worked hard to fill the void of Leonard’s absence. He feared that all of the
progress he made with her in Leonard’s absence could vanish once the baby was born or once
Leonard returned. He pushed those thoughts out of his mind, determined to be the one she turned
to, the one she would come to rely on to take care of her and her unborn child. He didn’t care if it
206
wasn’t his kid, that only made him feel more noble and on the right path. He stood tall and proud
when people began to mistake them as a couple and he as the father of the child. He became
Magdalena’s only form of easy transportation, rearranging his work schedule around her doctor’s
appointments.
“Daddy, don’t you want to come in and hear the baby’s heartbeat?” the nurse said once,
and he stood up looking to Magdalena, heart leaping in his chest and then crashing down as she
told the nurse that he was “just” her ride and not the father of the child.
Still, he was convinced that she was falling for him. He could listen to her talk for hours
and she often did, looking far off, as if she were glimpsing a vision of a different world or an
alternate life and relaying it back to him. He came to believe that he was her only link to who she
used to be. He told her his plans to move to California, his cousins and his uncles there
promising him work. He never asked her for anything and in the end, she came to trust and rely
on him. But people began to whisper and disapprove, most notably Magdalena’s younger sister
Nancy who began to complain that she was being forced to take on the care of their father now
that Magdalena was out all the time.
“It doesn’t feel right,” he overheard her telling Magdalena as he waited to pick her up one
night. “You should be home resting and what do you think people say when they see you two
driving around town eating ice cream while Leonard is off fighting the war?”
Things turned ugly after that with Magdalena and Nancy screaming, the mother getting
involved and even the old man sitting up on his bed trying to say something but only succeeding
in coughing up blood.
Two weeks later the baby was born. He held the baby. They called him Michael. He
imagined it as his. With the baby in his hands he could see the life he had always wanted, could
207
feel it so close to him. He could taste it. He knew it was wrong to pray for Leonard’s death or at
the very least to never come home but that’s what he did. He lit his candles, recited his prayers,
and praised la Santa Muerte for interceding on his behalf and making Magdalena and now her
newly born son his own.

208
Chapter Fourteen
She told Antonio that Leonard had stopped writing. No calls came in. Together they read the
papers expecting to see his name there among the dead but there was nothing. Antonio visited
Leonard’s father to ask if he’d heard from him and he told him that he’d called the local
recruiting office and after lots of back and forth and checking records and more phone calls they
confirmed that he had indeed been discharged and shipped home.
“We have no control over discharged soldiers once they are on American soil, sir,” the
voice on the other end had told him.
Magdalena worried that someone in town had told him things, the rumors that her sister
had warned her about. For months after the baby was born there was nothing, no word.
Gradually, she began to imagine him dead or missing. She began to think of what came next. She
began to give up hope of a life with him, outside of here. Instead, there was Antonio and his
stories of California and the new life that awaited him there, that awaited her and the boy there as
well if she wanted to go with him. She did want to go, but not like that. Days and weeks passed
and the idea began to gnaw at her. She began to dream again, to hope for a new life, for an
escape.
Antonio arranged things with his uncle in Los Angeles and was told to be there in a week
to start working for him. Determined to regain her power and independence with her son at her
side, there was part of her that wanted to use Antonio to get her to California, to help launch her
into a new life, but she knew such moves would come at a cost, with strings attached even
though she tried to make it clear as often as possible that she was not interested in him. Not like
that. That night, the night before her birthday, she resolved to stay and find her own way. To do
209
things the right way, relying on a man, any man seemed doomed to fail and she was determined
to go it alone.

Her birthday came and Antonio arrived early to take her and the baby out for lunch at the
Holiday Inn and a drive through the mountains. With fall approaching, the drive through La Veta
was a local tradition in that the winding highway carves a path high above the alpine line all the
way down through to the brilliant oranges and reds of the aspens. Crystal blue lakes that would
soon be turned to ice beckoned to them as they wove through the countryside, sharp rays of light
flashing between the white trunks of the aspen trees. The sensation was like traveling through a
kaleidoscope, the baby asleep, Magdalena wondering if she should wake him to see.
Later, they stopped near Monument Lake to relax under the shade of a cottonwood and
listen to the sound of the wind in the trees, the waves rolling across the rocks, against the grassy
shoreline. Antonio had brought a blanket just for this moment, a small cooler of snacks and
sandwiches that he had prepared himself and cut into little squares.
“Tomorrow is the big day,” Antonio said after some time had passed. “Have you decided
what you and the baby are doing?”
He watched Magdalena’s face turn the way it had turned that very first day in her father’s
home when she was expecting Leonard but instead it was him. She glanced at him and then
looked away, her jaw more firm now.
“I can’t do it.”
“Tomorrow is so soon, I know. My uncle – “
“I don’t think we’re coming at all.”
210
Antonio looked off at the lake in silence, both of them lost in thought, the baby cooing
softly in his sleep. To Antonio, the silence itself was rejection and his thoughts filled the void,
hurt and confused. Why not me? What’s wrong with me? He wanted to ask but knew that such
questions would only push her away as it had others before her.
“It’s Leonard, isn’t it?” Antonio said finally.
“No, it’s not that at all.”
“It is, and that’s okay. He’s never coming back. Just come with me and I will raise the
boy as my own. Every boy needs a father.”
“He has a father.”
“You know what I mean.”
Magdalena stood, gathering the baby and eyeing the skyline and setting sun. “Come on,
it’s getting cold. We should be getting back.”
Antonio shook his head and waited for her to move before folding the blanket and
gathering up the remains of the apples, grapes, cheese and crackers he had bought just for this
moment.

The drive down took longer than he’d remembered, the long shadows of night quickly
approaching even though it was only five o’clock. He turned on his headlights and soon both
Magdalena and baby were asleep. He drove on in silence, pulling over only once the lights of
town came into view and her home was just a quarter mile over the ridge. How many times had
he pulled in here by the corn to just listen and think? To gather his strength and rehearse his lines
before going past the bridge and turning right into her father’s property? Too many times to
count.
211
He watched them, mother and child. The profile of Magdalena stirring a familiar longing
in him. He watched the boy as well, his features already changing, his nose flat and broad like
his father’s. Antonio turned away and wondered where Leonard was and what had become of
him. He got out to piss, the distant sound of an owl calling to him as he stared up at the moon
and hooted back at it. Behind him the baby began to cry. Magdalena called out, “Where are we?
Why are we stopped?”
“Just a little piss stop, senorita.”
“This isn’t funny, Antonio.” He realized he was in the shadows and that she couldn’t see
him, only the soft hiss of his piss hitting the undergrowth near the canals. He turned back to the
corn and as he finished and zipped up he heard the door of the truck open and shut behind him.
“Hey, where are you going? I was just taking a piss.”
She said nothing, the bundle of the baby in her arms, her stride wide and long.
“Magdalena, please. Your house is right there, I didn’t want to wake you.”
He began to jog towards her to catch up, she quickened her pace. He reached out and
pulled at her shirt, she spun on him then and drove her fist straight into his nose, an explosion of
white blinding him before he felt the blood dripping off his face.
“Fuck!” he said, in disbelief more than anything.
From far off he heard the distinct sound of a rifle going off. One. Two. Three times. He
turned to it, wondering who was shooting and at what. When he turned back he saw her there,
face down in the dirt, a small black pool of blood beginning to ease out like oil from her skull.
The baby began to shriek like an animal. Antonio turned and ran.

212

LEONARD

213
Chapter Fifteen
He flew straight to San Francisco from Okinawa and while he was warned to expect throngs of
angry hippies waiting to spit on him when they landed, he was instead accosted by the sharp
loudness of the terminal, the bright lights and hard edges, long hairs and suits, miniskirts and
short bobs, the overpowering sweetness of perfumes and colognes still unable to mask the smell
of decay and death that he could make out in the air. Here, it was an antiseptic death, he could
see that now. Out on the streets he could feel the restless energy that had become familiar to him
in big cities in Asia. He could see the lean, speedy energy coming off the heads on the corner in
waves, eyes darting, coyote-like snouts and dilated eyes, searching, seeking, hands fumbling,
trembling, half burned cigarettes on hand – yellowed nicotine-stained fingers and ashy lips – a
kind of raw hunger that frightened him more than any VC kid he’d come across. Here death was
masked as seduction.
He took a piss in the terminal and then once on the street asked a brown-skinned long-
hair for a cigarette. He couldn’t tell if he was a Skin or a Mexican and after he looked him over,
saw no flash of recognition there or if there was it was buried deep down in the glossy pit he
called eyes. He repeated his ask, obvious that there was nobody home, that there was something
deeper than just the casual gloss of drugs he’d seen so many times before. It was as if he’d
blunted the very essence of what it meant to be human, had transformed himself into a meat
machine with nothing more than an animal instinct left, a raw hunger driving the body forward,
lust-lust-lust, like a zombie.
Something clicked, some recognition, and the kid nodded a cool smile and tapped out a
stick from a pack he pulled from his front pocket. He motioned to light it but Leonard waved him
off and pulled his own Zippo from his jacket and hurried towards the line of cabs waiting on the
214
curb, feeling out of place, afraid to be seen or recognized for who or what he was. As he ducked
in and shut the door he kept expecting a voice to call out to him, yell for him, as if he was
escaping something he shouldn’t be, as if he has left as a deserter or some paperwork he filed
wasn’t filed correctly, his being sent home all a big mistake. As if he would be recognized as a
killer, by all the blood on his hands, the ghosts around him sending signals to those who could
see that he was not to be trusted, not clean, no longer human himself.
As the cab pulled away he turned and saw the long-hair watching him. Their eyes met
briefly and a look came across his face that seemed to say, I know you, I know what you are.
Leonard turned away and the memory came to him of a kid they had captured in Vietnam and
brought back for intel. The kid, like many of the Vietnamese, reminded Leonard of his cousins.
Little brown-skinned boys who looked out on the world with wild and defiant eyes. The
longhair thought he was putting on a hard show, but there all Leonard saw was blunted and dull.
He doubted they were of the same species anymore and a vision flashed of a future world where
each bloodline had evolved into different creatures entire. The real savages were at home, he
knew that now. Perhaps he had always known that but now, more than ever, the thought hit him
like a hammer as if confirming a suspicion he’d had about the world all along.

The first thing he did in the motel was strip down and shower, letting the hot water run as hot as
it could while he scrubbed his skin raw with a washcloth, a mix of old soil and dried skin
sloughing off at his ankles, his back, under his balls. When he had dried off and opened the
bathroom door and window to let all the steam out, he examined his body in the mirror. It was
the first time he had really looked at himself in close to a year. It was a body he didn’t recognize,
his skin a map of pain, every scar its own memory. It was as if his body had become a separate
215
entity, a thing of its own that held its own secrets, narratives, and stories about what had
happened to it and when. He was accustomed to seeing it on other bodies, dead and alive. Like
the lines that only a palm-reader could make sense of, he was always trying to decipher, decode,
and read the stories that others carried on their skin, in their gait, in the slow way they held their
legs, how they stood, how they died, what story wounds told, he’d find himself staring at the
disemboweled like a crazed prophet trying to read the future there, the way witches used to kill
goats and read their innards.
He thought of the airport in San Francisco, the smells. A mix of fear and impatience
mixed with the sour scent of decay. How could that be? The people smelled different here, he
had expected that, but he realized in only the few hours that he had been Stateside that it was not
just because of what they ate, that was part of it, sure, but he could smell their sickness, see it,
feel it, even if they couldn’t see it themselves.
He left the motel in the morning wearing only a white undershirt and his standard issue
green pants. He walked over a few blocks to the fashion district and tried on various clothes,
civilian clothes, polyester shirts, corduroy pants, all of it feeling unnatural and alien. Men with
hairy chests and gold chains competed for his attention as he walked past each storefront. One
called him a “G.I.” and invited him in, offering a military discount to help “wipe that jungle
smell off you.”
After buying some simple shirts and jeans and a new pair of boots and a belt, he went
back to the motel and ran a bath. He’d bought cigarettes, a bottle of Hennessy and alone in the
room with the lights off, windows open, he soaked in the water and listened to the sounds of the
streets. It was peaceful almost. The sound of cars moving past, people talking quietly, laughter. It
was a steady hum that comforted him, kept his thoughts at bay, almost lulling him to sleep until a
216
car began to idle outside the door, the smell of exhaust overwhelming, the music turned up loud,
enough to hear the cardboard-like woofers rattling in the door. There was yelling then and
Leonard couldn’t help but sit up, tense. He couldn’t make out if it was angry yelling, fear, a
fight. He became frustrated that the signs weren’t clear here, yet. Loud laughter followed, a mix
of male and female voices, someone sounded like they were pounding on the hood of the car.
Glass broke. Leonard closed the window but the air became unbearably hot and humid. He
dressed and left, happy to be out in what passed as fresh air, no sign of violence in the street as
he had expected. He eyed the kids hanging off a long Monte Carlo, the music blasting, the smell
of marijuana and beer thick as he passed by.
“Where you going, man? You want another hit?” one of them called out and Leonard
thought they were talking to him but a voice answered from beside him, startling him.
“Can’t do it, man, I got to go pick up Betty in an hour.”
The rest of the walk was the same, all jive talk and people trying to turn you on or turn on
you, sizing you up, waiting to take what you got.
He knew he didn’t want to go home to New Mexico, that much he did know, but he also
knew he didn’t want to be here in the city – he couldn’t stay here. So the next day he went down
to a used car lot and bought the only motorcycle they had on the premises for one thousand
dollars cash.
He drove down the coast to Los Angeles, intending to look up a buddy who said he had a
pad in the canyons there and that he could crash if he didn’t have any place to stay when he got
out. He said it was a ranch but had also called it rustic and Leonard knew that white people had a
strange idea of what living rustic meant so he had no idea what to expect.
217
When he would stop to get gas he would eye the pay phones. He thought of calling, even
just to let everyone know that he was okay but that he wasn’t coming home just yet but
something stopped him, some fear of opening that connection up. Fear followed by anger,
resistance.
It was a bad scene down there in L.A. Everyone strung out on hash, acid, speed, little
teenage girl runaways, looking lost and far out but in no need or hurry to be rescued. He could
see the vultures circling and their bones had already been picked over, those still standing like
corpses, shriveled husks of what once passed as youth and desire.
Motherfuckers seemed so… careless. Was that the word? Fucking one month ago to the
day he’d been in Saigon trying to make it through each day as they waited for orders to ship out.
Keyed up even in the streets in order to fend off death, having been on both sides of the sickle,
the giver and receiver of death, what I give I can take away, the weapon is my sentence, out there
in the trees, the will of the world and men became intertwined into a kind of sick madness, a
disease that infected the roots of the earth itself, everything and everyone was suspect. The
jungles, the villes, maybe even here in the World on the streets, in your own home, within your
own family, sooner or later someone would be touched by the angel of death and snatched out of
his mortal coil the way an owl snatches an unsuspecting mouse right off the desert floor.
He thought of the old chiefs. Today is a good day to die. Every day he woke up he tried
to believe that, to feel as if all of his debts had been paid, that everyone knew how he felt about
them and if he left the earth, he would leave nothing undone. But that was never the case, doubts
and misgivings about his life would gnaw at the edges. When your time comes to die – it may be
today – it may be tomorrow – or years and years from now – don’t be like those whose hearts
218
are filled with a fear of death – those who weep and pray for a little more time to live their lives
over again in a different way. Sing your death song and die like a hero going home.
Today is a good day to die. He used to repeat that to himself every day, every patrol,
every night, every breath, as if he were keeping some ancient language of warriors alive. Today
is a good day to die – but he knew it wasn’t – the armor of his man-flesh, skull-face weaponry
wasn’t enough to hide the fear deep down inside, the knowledge that it was somebody’s turn to
die today, that no one woke up this morning prepared to die, saying to themselves, today is the
day I die. He didn’t want it to be him.
So he killed and was good at it. The funny thing about killing is when you’re good at it,
they send you to kill some more and sooner or later everyone else along for the ride is either
dead, dying, or crippled while you keep slogging forward through the mud and the guts and the
shit, untouched, blessed with magic powers that they believe some ancient god has bestowed
upon you.
“You been doing that Ghost Dance again?”
“When you going to share that medicine with the rest of us?”
“What kind of voodoo you do to keep the bullets away, boy?”
Everyone died and it began to seem as if he was charmed, untouched. Paradoxically,
people became afraid of him, of going out with him, as if the good luck had been all used up on
him and there wouldn’t be any left to go around to the others. No one wanted to ride with him
into the belly of the beast because they knew that when it came down to it, he would ride out the
other side unscathed, alive.
One time, it was no laughing matter – a white guy – scared out of his mind by what he’d
seen, blood, brain matter, guts still on his shirt – cornered him, convinced he had a secret that he
219
was refusing to share – not even native medicine but some training that somehow he’d missed.
The point where a weapon was pulled and Leonard had to hold him down until he could be
carted away, frothing at the mouth. Another time they thought he had made a pact with the devil
and was some kind of male witch – that he was actively working on the side of evil, helping the
devil harvest lost souls... it didn’t help that the Captain encouraged this type of behavior – telling
him in front of everyone that he saw him as the Hand of God, releasing heathen souls of their
earthly burdens. Bullets were his salvation.
He had a little shrine he’d started building, quite by accident. He prayed to a little plastic
statuette of Santa Maria he’d found in a Catholic market in Saigon. Soon he started putting
bullets all around it for her blessings before he went out into the field. Someone told him about
Kali, the goddess of skulls, and his shrine began to change with handwritten receipts,
paraphernalia that had hidden, secret meaning to him being scattered around it, a small toy he
found in a village, the necklace he’d removed from a dead woman on the side of the road... As
the year went on he would begin to offer fingers, ears, pictures he would find on dead bodies of
the enemy. He would burn them and started performing his own rituals and exorcisms that he
made up from half-remembered myths and rituals he had seen others enact as a boy. Soon he
began performing ceremonies on other soldiers – they asked him to – at first it seemed like a joke
but then more and more were convinced that he was the reincarnation of an ancient hero who had
come to liberate and kill the giants, pound a way out to the next world.
He would exorcise the fear out of them – let them say their peace – a kind of final
confession and final rites – inevitably they would die like the rest but he never promised
immortality or bulletproof amulets – only a kind of purpose and peace with passing. It was all
black magic for sure but after a while Leonard wanted no part of it, convinced it would be his
220
undoing, that he would invite destruction from the gods for his hubris. As he neared the end of
his second tour he only wanted to be home where he could be free to listen to the wind through
the trees, birds calling in a language he could understand, the sun familiar and not this alien,
relentless sun beating down on his back no matter where he walked. Bearing down on him like a
silent witness or force of judgment.
He thought of his son often. How old would he be now? Would he know him as a father?
Would he be afraid? Able to sense the death at his fingertips, in his heart, around him like a
cloud? Would he be able to protect him from death in the end? From pain? Was he charmed the
way he was or would he bring death quicker to his doorstep as he seemed to do to so many
around him?
He started in on the coke and the pills and one night after a three-day bender he looked in
the mirror, having let his hair grow out, his eyes bloodshot, red-rimmed and raw. He saw a
stranger again, zombie eyes staring back him like that brown-skinned longhair at the airport. He
left the next morning, telling no one, opening up the throttle on the bike until the hazy heat of the
sun had turned the world in his side mirrors an apocalyptic red. In his mind he imagined the hills
on fire, four-story tall flames licking at the sky as he raced towards the old world he once knew,
the world behind him like a bad dream of stories that had yet to be told, or perhaps those which
had already passed, leaving him and the others in its wake.

221

Chapter Sixteen
Once when he was a boy Leonard had gone fishing. He was only eight or nine but his father and
mother had always given him free reign so long as his chores were done. The nearest neighbor
was two miles away and his horse, Blackie, was his to care for and feed and part of that caring
was making sure he was walked, moved, driven, the horse seemed to love it. Scratching at the
dirt with his hoof and bowing and nodding his head when he sensed they were going on an
adventure – on a little journey. Once saddled and brushed Leonard set off for Box Canyon and
the little La Veta lake as they had called it above the pass near the two twin trees that Leonard
had always considered guardians of the valley.
Once through the canyon and its long morning shadows, the air moist with the coolness
of last night’s rain, it was dryer on the other side, less vegetation, the sun already in full blaze,
the coolness he was cursing only moments ago an old friend that he wished he hadn’t scorned as
the heat began to cook his skin now beaded with sweat.
At first it was a welcome sensation, the warmth reminding him of how the old loved the
sun because it warmed their bones – his own grandfather had gathered volcanic rock over the
years, stones that looked alien and unfamiliar, deep blacks and reds and mottled moon rocks
filled with pock marked holes where the heat had escaped and bubbled up out of whatever lava-
mud pool it had formed. Grandfather had collected these stones and build a small wooden box
that he would place by the easternmost window in the winter – opening the curtains and sitting
there with the sun – to loosen up his shoulder he would say, to warm his bones which he said
were always cold no matter how hot it was outside.
222
But those stones, long after the sun, low on the horizon, had already moved past the
window to the west, kept their heat and would radiate it, the heat would remain like distant
memories, whispers of the world they once came from, the stones themselves warm with
nostalgia, dreaming of an unformed liquid world in which they were free, bound with the heat
and the light.
They themselves aglow, giving off heat and light in rivers and lakes and streams and
oceans of lava rushing, rushing towards a coolness in which they would be hardened into their
current form.
Leonard thought of all this as he and Blackie slowly made their way down into the pass
where little La Veta lake was nestled, her shores overgrown with tall grass and milkweed, insects
and butterflies, trout being draw to the surface to feed – to shimmer like razor blade flashes of
light before returning to the deep. The lake itself was deep, a steep cliff falling off right at the
edge, echoing its past as a volcanic lake, built in the valley of a crater. It was deeper than anyone
knew, the story telling of how it would go all the way to the center of the earth if you could hold
your breath that long [tell a story that he remembers being told as a kid – a tale of a boy who held
his breath to find the bottom but never returned… ]
He imagined it as one of the pathways through which the ancestors had emerged from the
underworld, the world below flooded and now overflowing into the glittering world in which he
sat, a small pole, fishing line, hook and sinker as a bridge to the sky of the nether from which his
people had been born.
For bait, he would use grasshoppers that he caught or dig up thick, fat earthworms from
the rich, black soil near the shores. Once he tried to hook a beetle but the smell was so repugnant
223
he retched and gagged and had to spend a half an hour washing his hands and digging into the
soil to try and rid himself of the scent.
When he felt the heat of the day come on he moved Blackie who was steadily, happily he
thought, munching on the tall grass, making progress slowly around the north side of the lake.
He moved her to the south where there was still shade and even old snow from the winter still
clinging to the ridge of the mountain above. It wasn’t good snow, not the kind you could scoop
and eat, melt and drink, old snow was that snow that had been dried from the inside out almost,
the good water long gone; only this shell of snow that was now brown and crusted along the
edges with dirt. But still, it meant the air was cool there and when the wind would blow down
from the peaks in the afternoon he would once again curse the cold and long for the heat. But for
now he was content to nap under a small tree and listen to Blackie chewing, pulling at the grass
and weeds, the sound of a jet way off in the sky somewhere even though he couldn’t see any
vapor trail. The sound like a low flame burning – lost in time and space.
Being an alpine lake there were no massive cottonwoods surrounding the water – only
stones belched up from the center of the earth, massive boulders where little animals scurried and
hid upon approach. There were still a few junipers…
In those days, Leonard would carry a flute he had carried with him. His uncle who was a
full-blooded Apache would carve them and sell them on the rez. He would play it and the birds
would sing and whistle in response. That was the trip he found the meteor rock. He didn’t catch
any fish – it looked like they were spawning as huge, giant, fat, cutthroat brown and rainbow
trout would swim aimlessly round and round the edges of the lake, seemingly in a daze, or a
forced march, some kind of underwater trail of tears as he’d put the bait right in front of them,
big fat juicy worms which they would ignore and move past. He had never seen so many fish
224
before, up close to the shore like that. He made a spear out of a long stick, the edge honed sharp
into a spear tip that he would then try to impale the fish with.
Even though they looked lethargic and half-asleep in their stupor, they moved quickly
when they saw the stick coming – darting away, kicking their tails once or twice to distance
themselves from his shadow before falling back into their lazy pace.
The meteor stone was near the edge of the south shore, half-hidden by undergrowth and
mud but it was the way it caught the light of the sun that caught Leonard’s eye. Something was
different about it, the light seemed to shimmer off the stones around it but that stone seemed to
swallow the light and pull it into it somehow. Using the stick, his makeshift spear, he managed to
dig around it and loosen the earths grip on it. Once he could move it freely he leaned down and
with the quick image of the Lost Boy rising from the depths to grab his arm and pull him in, he
quickly used the fingers of his right hand to get a firm grip on its underbelly and pulled it to the
surface.
The first thing he noticed was its weight – it was heavy – dense – thick, the core of some
meteor perhaps – star-fire blazing and burning all around it as it sped through the universe only
to come crashing down here in this lake who knows how long ago.
For many years there were no fish in the lake and he wondered if it was because of this
stone or another like it – if the heat that had followed in its wake or emanated from its core, held
over from its cosmic journey through the sky, had boiled all of the life out of it or poisoned it
with its alien minerals and interstellar dust.
Of course, he knew it could have come here hundreds, if not thousands, of years ago,
belched up from the core of the earth just as likely as it been tossed from the center of the
universe, the birthplace of stars.
225
Only a shadow of its former size, no doubt, Leonard washed it in lake water ad while he
got the mud off and expected it to be shiny, there were only a few small hints of whatever metal
core it was that had caught his eye. The rest was dense black stone – burned and melted – fused
into an almost obsidian glaze of metallic prehistoric stone unlike anything he’d ever seen. He
held it with both hands trying to sense its power – he placed his ear to it to see if it vibrated
differently than the other rocks. And even though it was still daylight and the first star wouldn’t
be out for hours he looked up to the sky as if to see from where it had come – to whom it could
be claimed – where it belonged or called home. Was this spit from some distant galaxy where
two planets collided or had this chunk been spiraling its ways through the universe since it all
caught fire and exploded in the first coming so many worlds ago.
He saw it as a restless spirit unlike the rocks around it – content to sit and watch time
unfold – to carry rattlesnake dreams and whisper to each other when the world had gone to sleep.
This meteor rock was pain and fire and as he bundled it in his bag, Blackie pulling away and
nervous, whether sensing it was different or just a sign that it was almost time to go, that the
shadows were getting long, he didn’t know. Either way, he saw it as a sign, a dark harbinger of
thigs to come, things that would come to pass in his own life. He would reflect back on that rock
for many years wondering where it was – who took it when Grandfather died – it would sit there
lodged in his memory the same way it was lodged in an elevated, celebrated position amongst
Grandfather’s other volcanic stones. He would show it to all visitors – look at what my grandson
found, he would tell them, he claimed it had healing powers, or at least eased the arthritis in his
hands and writes when he held it, sat with it, staring out the window at the winter sun, believing
the stone connected him to another world.

226

Chapter Seventeen
He went home thinking it would be peaceful. Instead, nothing was the same. Goddamn dogs that
everyone lets run free. Too much wilderness. It didn’t feel like home anymore, too many
similarities between Vietnam, babies crying, old men and women walking by the side of the
road. Just another village to be razed.
He spent the first night sleeping on the floor. In the daytime hours he watched the tree
lines, was always waiting for someone to come. He knew it was irrational but he couldn’t shake
the feeling that a crew of brown-skinned boys with no shirts would come sauntering out of the
woods with rifles, machetes, and two-way radios strapped to their belts. He kept waiting for
someone to come, something to happen, waiting for the sound of choppers to announce his
extraction. He felt his engine running hot, on the edge of overheating, panic setting in. He’d
catch his teeth rattling sometimes, his leg shaking. He’d walk the county roads and feel the eyes
of snipers on him. He’d tried hunting but he must have spooked the game for all he saw was
wild, untamed dogs, broken down rusted cars in fields, old adobe houses, abandoned roofs
collapsing in, car parts and rusted engine blocks in backyards overgrown with weeds, license
plates nailed to walls, muddy boots set outside by the back door.
He went to town but that was no better, feeling exposed in open spaces, eyeing the roofs
of buildings. Strange people everywhere. He realized he was on the other side of the coin now
and felt something like empathy for those he left behind, for the villagers looking to the trees
every morning, never knowing when the storm would turn your way, when the Americans would
come, the VC, what kind of death they would bring in their wake, how you would die and when.
Or maybe today was just like any other day and it would just pass you by, even if you knew that
227
somewhere out there death, pain, loss of life and limb was being dealt out unabated. Before they
were waiting on him to come, on him to bring destruction to their home, their village, their town.
Now here he was, waiting, pistol tucked under his shirt. Waiting for something to happen but
that something never came.

His past memories came and went like quicksand, with no linear narrative – just impulses,
images lurching up from his subconscious. He’d never been one to follow religion, native or
otherwise but he knew he’d lost his faith. He’d spit every time he’d pass St. Peter’s, it’s wooden
cross raised high on the spires, the mountain sky as its only backdrop. Where is your god now?
He’d hear himself mutter, unsure of where the voice came from or what it meant. Antonio used
to joke that the only times he felt close to the holy spirit was when he was drunk or high. He
laughed at the memory and wondered what kind of spirit stood with him now – an unholy spirit
no doubt since he had lost his ability to make any sense of his visions, dreams. If anything, he
felt confused by this place he used to know so well. All manner of ritual and ceremony had lost
its meaning while he was gone. All that was left was the mish-mash of half-remembered dreams
and movies swirling through his head.
The sound of crickets would set him off sometimes. He’d flash back to that other place,
that other world he came from. He remembered how some people would get moved by killing.
Not just enjoy it but be moved to tears by the experience of it. For him, it was a mixed bag.
Especially with the old and the young ones – they always looked native to him. It would fuck
with his head every time. Little girls especially got him, little Vietnamese girls with their long
hair and almond eyes – that’s when he would flash home – that’s when he would flash the other
way.
228
But it was complicated. Every kill he made, it made him feel better – stronger – more
powerful – cured him somehow like some twisted, dark medicine. He knew it made no sense but
twenty-six kills in was like cheating death twenty-six times. He’d take ears and wear them on his
belt, looped like leather keys – it made him feel good, powerful, as if he had the totems of the
gods, as if he were divine himself, at some crossroads between the living and the dead. In his
mind they connected him to an older time when one would take scalps. But even then, when he
tried to connect it to something holy, he knew, somewhere inside, it was crazy. He’d tried to
bring the ears back with him to the States, kept them in a leather billfold hoping one would
mistake them for dried mushrooms or pig ears. The MPs had a nose for that shit and made him
toss them before boarding that first plane.
He knew something wasn’t right, all the hard liquor he was drinking, the pot he was
smoking, the pain killers and pills he was popping. He knew on some level he was trying to self-
medicate, numb it all down, keep it all under control. Anesthetize the wound. They would chop
heads off and put them on a pole with an ace of spades in their mouth. They’d buy packs of cards
by the brick and toss everything but the ace of spades. It became their calling card long before
the Rangers paid some professional printer to print up proper decks with their hand-designed
insignia on it. There was something oddly religious about the ritual, about cards in the mouths of
decapitated heads. Again he thought of the long history that preceded him, men killing men and
looking for rituals along the way. All the way back to the caveman times he could sense the
power that violence seemed to spark in men’s hearts and minds. No creature more creative about
destruction than his fellow human beings. And now here he was, back home, his wife dead, a son
he ached for and yet feared getting next to. Afraid of infecting him and those around him with
the sickness that he felt weighing him down.
229
Some nights, he would leave the house and hide in the trees, hiking by moonlight with
only a rifle and an aluminum canteen filled with whiskey. He’d find a tree and just sit under it
until dawn, waiting for the shadows to move, to hear the sound of metal on metal, the snap of a
twig, the chatter of approaching sappers. Sometimes he missed it so much …
At first he tried to heal himself. Tried to piece together half-remembered rituals from his
childhood, rituals he’d seen performed on other men returning from war. Men like his uncles
who had served in Korea. But everytime he tried, lit a smudge of sage, started a fire, began to
call out the songs, his voice felt hollow, the spirit would leave him. He’d feel shame. He was no
holy man – he had no right to pretend to ask for such power – maybe his dreams were just
dreams – he was tired of looking for meaning in every bird call, every whisper of the wind. If the
universe wanted to speak to him it would have to do so in a language he understood.

230
Chapter Eighteen
“There was this period there towards the end – like, once it started it was hard to turn it off. We
were all on this kick and it just sucked us in for weeks at a time – we were stone killers – zombie
motherfuckers – I don’t even remember us talking to each other after a while, all of us like this
goddamned 20-legged killing machine in the jungle. It got to where I preferred my machete over
my gun. We’d get r&r and I’d start feeling this darkness come over me, this crazy urge to kill
hookers and shit, even when we weren’t in hot zone – I couldn’t trust nobody. I was so fucking
paranoid, I almost killed an NCO once who came up on me too fast in the dark. Not in the field,
mind you, but in the fucking city, at a titty bar. That was when I knew something else had taken
hold of me and I had to get out before that devil smashed me against the rest of the world.”

“There’s a clarity there. When you’re faced with death, it becomes a real life. There’s no faking
it. The real you comes out in the open for the whole universe to see, you dig? War has special
power like that, it’s very very seductive. There’s this kind of heightened sex all along the edges
of war zones, at the bars, women feeding off the frenzied energy, boys trying to shake the feeling
that death is only a day or two away.”

“At night you hear things – sounds in the jungle that you can’t tell where or what they’re coming
from – things moving – trees and bushes and shit settling, that’s how I started to think of it –
you’d just hear shit settling – and it took me a long time to develop the ear to hear the difference
between a tree settling in and a monkey picking through the underbrush and a man, another
human out there, with a heart and lungs and sweat giving him away. But yeah, you’d hear things
231
out there, at night – but then you hear things in here, in your head, and that’s when things start
getting tricky.”

“It becomes this high you can’t imagine. Nothing you put in your body or nothing you put your
dick into can bring that same feeling on. Authorized killing. That’s what I’m talking about.
Authorized motherfucking killing. Our CO was obsessed with the body count so that’s all we
were thinking of and that’s how we started to see each other – all humans. As bodies. Body
counts on someone’s wall. You look at someone and all you saw was the blood and guts and shit
and tears that you knew could be squeezed out of them any day now. Some sick shit, you know?
Just seeing each other as these things – not humans with spirits and all that – but fucking
monkeys, apes – another fucking body to count. And then they send you back to the world in a
fucking day. For real, a fucking day. One day I’m knee deep in mud, blood and guts and the next
thing I know, I’m taking a shower and this fucking E-4 is telling me I have to cut my hair before
I can get on the plane. What the fuck am I supposed to do? Just forget? Turn it all off?”

“People back home can’t understand this. They shouldn’t be asking us how this can happen.
How this will continue to happen again and again. Everyone knows how this happens – it’s in
our DNA – somewhere in there every human being alive has blood on their hands. Your
ancestors – somewhere in there – there is murder – human-on-human murder – it’s why you’re
here today. The strong kill the weak, that’s how it works. History is shaped by organized murder,
by the will to kill. Pushed far enough we all have the capability to kill – give yourself a month,
you’ll see – people back in the world’ll be shocked to see what you and the rest of your boys are
going to be up to, what you’re capable of. All those folks back home – they’ve just never been
232
put in the right circumstance, that’s all. They hide it all beneath this veneer of society and law.
But us, out here, outside of what anyone can consider a proper moral context, it’s easy to get
confused. Personally, I think it’s a beautiful thing. The poets knew this – how moral certainty
vanishes in the face of war. It’s only from a distance that you anyone can judge me. You’ll see,
you’ll know soon enough. It will all come crumbling down, these invisible walls that hold it all
together – soon they’re going to fall, any day now, and we’re going to see what kind of monkey
you are beneath those clothes.”

The voices carried on inside his head, some of it real and some of it born out of the dreamscape
that he seemed to be disappearing into more and more each day. Most of the voices he could
recognize but others came from somewhere deeper, starting out as voices and then blurring into
dreams.

“The darkness can be your friend – there is no need to fear it – it can take you places, teach you
things, if you let it. It took me down luminous rivers on large rotting rafts and barges – I saw
strange birds flying overhead and the eyes of other creatures emerging from the murky water. I
traveled down the river where twisted houses sat on shores filled with dark men – shadow men –
who wouldn’t come outside – just whispers. I could tell they were whisphering about me – they
held heavy spears and weapons by their side – women cooked large pots of gristly meat – animal
skins and carcasses, trimmed, gutted, hung out to dry by the light of the moon. The men wore
loincloths and streaks of paint on their arms and faces. A few mangy dogs lay around outside the
circle of men, watching them and watching me, low growl in their throat, one of the dark men
was my father. I waved to him but he just spat on the ground and watched me pass by.”
233
Chapter Nineteen
He thought back to the first time he left. How good things were before he went off to war. He
meant to tell her why he stopped writing, that it had nothing to do with her or the boy. Things
had just gotten complicated for him, that was all. In his mind he was able to explain it away but
then he got here and she is gone, the baby just an infant being raised by his grandparents. Things
changed for him then.
When he was younger he was angry at the Angry Drunk Indian that everybody with a
swinging dick seemed to become. He wanted something different, something more. When the
draft came along, the military seemed to be one way out for him, something he could use to build
a bridge to another place for Magdalena and the boy. But now that none of that came to pass, that
things had instead turned much darker than he’d ever imagined they could, he felt paralyzed,
frozen. Unable to move unless it was towards the bottle and the surface excitement that each bar
and whore seemed to offer. But inevitably, with the morning sun, no matter where he was in the
world, no matter how drunk he had gotten the night before, it would always come rushing back.
One day, the voices were too much for him and so he saddled up his motorcycle and
drove. The whiskey wasn’t working anymore but he had sure put in a good effort and after he got
about an hour outside of town, pulled over and slept the sleep the dead and the drunk sleep. No
dreams. No fears. Only darkness.
He woke to the sound of cattle chewing grass. His bike was on its side and for a moment
he wasn’t sure if he’d had an accident and was just now coming to. He tried to sit up, the heat of
the sun bringing back the spins. He remembered having to piss so bad that he simply pulled the
bike up to the side of the road, coasted it into the bushes and then hopped off like he and his
234
friends used to in the old days on their bicycles, just to see whose would coast the farthest
without a driver.
He rolled to his side and heaved up last night’s chili cheese fries all over the red dirt, the
sting of bile and stale whiskey causing him to curse the tears that came from his eyes. With his
head down, saliva hanging off his lip like a rabid dog he looked back towards town, towards the
boy and all the life that he’d know there. The thought of returning made him even sicker,
bringing on another wave of nausea, stomach clenching like a fist until there was nothing else
left to give.
Without looking back, he lifted the bike, brushed off the weeds and shook his head at the
scratch he’d caused to the tear-drop gas tank and chrome exhaust. Satisfied that the damage was
only cosmetic, he angled the bike toward the highway, leaned in and kick-started the engine
before opening up the throttle and heading back the same motherfucking way he’d just come
only a few weeks earlier.

At first he had no idea where he was headed but soon found himself being pulled towards Gallup
and a Diné brother named Chachu he knew from the war. He drove all day and on through the
night and waited until midday to call him from a payphone. Chachu was more than happy to see
him, and even though he was worse off than Leonard, living in a one-bedroom trailer overrun
with cats, they had been through things together and had a bond like a brothers. Brothers in
blood.
Things began moving fast. Over the next few weeks they drank, fucked, snorted and
fought everything in their path. They were in the Navajo Inn every night. Chachu gave Leonard
his own key and both would often be gone for days at a time depending on whether or not they’d
235
found a woman or been picked up on public vagrancy. One time, Chachu was gone for nearly a
week and returned with a hospital band on his wrist and a baseball-sized knot on the side of his
head that earned him the nickname “pumpkin” from there on out. It was an epic bender that was
barely going on six weeks when Chachu turned up dead in a ditch outside the Navajo Inn. The
police said he’d been hit by a car but that’s what they always said when they found a skin frozen
stiff in his own blood by the side of the road.
A woman with three kids showed up after that claiming she was Chachu’s woman and
two of the three kids were Chachu’s as well. She wanted to move in and Leonard let her after
stashing the bag of pills that he knew Chachu had under his bed in the gas tank of his bike. He
wandered around town for a few days, taking in new bars, something inside of him wanting to
keep the ride going just a little bit longer, keep all that noise and chaos scratching at the door of
his mind at bay.
He thought of Michael in those days, without Chachu there to keep him occupied. He
almost thought of hopping on the bike around and heading back. He knew no one would care or
even notice. Men took off for weeks and months sometimes and picked up where they left off.
He thought about writing to him as well but what would he say? What could he say? It was better
off if he never knew his father, he reasoned. Better to stay away, to keep the bad spirits from
infecting him as well.
It took a proper beating from some cowboys to get him on the road again, some good ol’
boys taking a crack at him while he was taking a piss behind a bush on Aztec Road. He’d been
hit in the head with a bottle, a deep gash in his scalp that he stitched up himself in the gas station
restroom with a bottle of vodka and a sewing kit. His eyes stayed bloodshot for days with dark
circles underneath looking like they’d been painted on. He began to worry that he was bleeding
236
out internally and apologized to the now dead Chachu for calling him a pumpkin just in case it
was his spirit playing mischief on him from the other side.
By the time he arrived back in Los Angeles the black had turned to deep purple and then
red around the edges, the rawness in his eyes looking no more out of place in the streets than
everyone else hopped up on something. He shot through the city and headed up PCH towards the
canyons. The whole scene had been shut down by then, no sign of his friend, nothing but derelict
shacks populated by heroin addicts, speed freaks and runaways.
He knew Antonio was here, knew he told him to look him up and call him when he got
in. But every time he’d look at himself in the mirror, one eye beginning to go crooked, skin and
teeth going bad, and a strange uncontrollable twitch in his jaw that was wearing his teeth down,
he just couldn’t do it.
He wrote home, aimless letters filled with lies about rejoining the service and being
shipped abroad. Every few days he’d write a letter home pretending he was in a new city, a new
country, a new adventure. He never put a return address on the letters so he didn’t know if any of
them reached his son.
His money started to runout and the VA said he needed a permanent residence for him to
keep getting his government checks. His motorcycle went missing, towed or stolen, he never
knew. For all he knew he just forgot where it was parked. He began to visit homeless shelters,
surprised to find other vets there, other men like him, running from things they didn’t know how
to articulate. He walks the city and rides the bus when he can. From downtown to Long Beach to
Santa Monica in an endless loop until he finally felt at the end of whatever rope had been let out
for him. It took him two hours to convince someone on the docks to give him a dime to make a
call. He smoked the last cigarette he had, watching the ships come in off the port in San Pedro
237
and called the number Antonio had written down for him which he’d kept snug behind his
driver’s license in his wallet.
The phone range twice before Antonio picked up the phone.
“Help me, brother,” was all Leonard could say.

238
MICHAEL

239
Chapter Twenty
He took the bus back, it was all he could afford – a three-day journey that made him feel the
darkness all around creeping in. Perverts, drugged-out runaways, lost old women, and scared and
frightened children, each aisle like a strange cave which animals had burrowed into. He could
see the fear in the eyes of women with their children as they boarded and walked down the aisles
looking for open seats. He imagined they were all running from something, an escape of some
sorts. That angry men would storm the bus at the next stop and yank them from their seat by the
hair until the doors closed and they and their stories were lost to the wind.
But that never happened. There was a strange, quiet civility in the shared confines of the
bus. An internal law and logic that seemed to defy common sense. There was only one driver and
he was just that – a driver – not a police officer or force of superhuman strength or nature. How
fragile it all seemed, out there, in between cities with nothing but open fields, sky, and darkness
as far as the eye could see. The entire bus could disappear and none would notice – rape, murder,
or worse – was there worse? – seemed capable of unfolding at any time.

Drunk cowboys and Indians alike got on and off the bus at every stop until they hit Flagstaff. As
they moved closer to Phoenix, the people changed, more Spanish-speaking Mexicans and poor
whites.
One dark-skinned man offered Michael a swig from his flask but Michael declined,
leaving him with a sour look on his face. Later, a young boy around his age got on, lanky hair,
unwashed clothes that were less about being poor and on the streets than an affected style. His
curly chair and brightly colored bracelets made of various colored string gave him the look of
Michael imagined was a new kind of hippie.
240
The kid sat next to the man who had offered him a drink and similar to the way he had
offered him a swig from the flask, the hippie kid accepted and together they drank it all until it
was dry, silent at first, but then slowly becoming louder and louder. Bursts of laughter and
garbled language rose up and bounced sharply off the interior walls of the bus, before turning
quiet and conspiratorial, their mouths moving but Michael unable to understand what they were
saying – what they could possibly have in common. Loud, braying laughter would erupt again,
the kind that came from the belly, and despite himself, Michael found himself smiling when the
driver yelled back to them to keep it under control.
This helped, for a while. But then they went to the restroom together, the driver watching
intently. When the door closed he pulled the bus to the side, nothing but open desert beyond and
sauntered back with a small billy club in his hand. Everyone in the bus craned their heads to
watch and wait, silent in anticipation themselves.
A surprised laugh escaped as the driver turned the lock and forced the door open. The big
man lumbered out first, the driver swiftly and quickly hitting him over the head and then the
back of the neck. He went down like a bag of loose stones.
“What the hell, man?” the kid said but the driver just stuck the club under his chin and
gave him a stern look. That seemed to be enough.
“Get your stuff.”
“I don’t have any stuff.”
“Then get his things and wait outside.”
“I’m not with him.”
“Get his things and wait outside,” the driver repeated.
241
The boy did as he was told, the driver watching him and then pulling the man by his arms
down the aisle until he was at the top of the steps. With a loud grunt he shoved and pushed the
dark-skinned man down the stairs, a loud groan escaping from his mouth as he rolled free and
onto the side of the road.
“What the hell, man?” the boy whined, the man’s jacket and bag in his hand. Michael
thought he was about to get a scolding even and the boy seemed to be waiting for the same but
without warning, the driver got back into the driver’s seat and shut the door.
“Hey,” he heard the boy yell. He started hitting the side of the bus. But the driver put it
into gear and just like that, they were gone.

When they arrived in the city it was night, a motionless heat rising from the earth, the sky
smelling like ash and smoke, the wild fires burning in the mountains to the north nothing more
than a reddish glow. He had heard other passengers gasping as they came near it on the pass,
flames visible from the freeway as they crested the divide and began barreling down the pass
towards the city proper. He felt his left ear plug up then, an uncomfortable muffled feeling that
he thought would relieve itself once his ears popped at lower elevation.
Michael slept and when he woke up, the glow of the fires had been replaced by metal and
concrete buildings rising up into the mist of night sky, tops lost in the clouds, restless shapes,
bodies shuffling in and out of the shadows, the bus terminal bright with fluorescent lights, loud
noises, sighing brakes and the rumble of engines. People shouting. His ear had never popped and
the pain came in waves of heat, the sensation like a corkscrew turning, a high-pitched ringing in
his ear nearly blinding him with pain when they pulled up to the depot.
242
He waited for the other passengers to disembark before standing, dizzy and off-balance.
He raised a hand to the bus driver as he exited and then opened and closed his jaw, began
tugging at his ear in hopes of opening it up and letting all the pain out.
He did all this, realizing that he looked like a crazy person after. He stood taller and
looked around to see who was watching him. The only one turned his way was a stooped over
man in a torn flannel shirt and oversized shoes that looked like they had been heated and
reheated to the point where the soles had become malformed and twisted, bent, giving him the
appearance of some broke down clown. The man tugged at his own earlobe and waved but
Michael only stared him down until he turned.
He closed his eyes and took a deep breath, his heart starting to race. Ever since he left
New Mexico he had been visualizing what he would do when he got to the city but now that he
was here all of those plans and visions seemed to disappear. He knew he wanted to find Sampson
and Antonio, he wanted to look for his dog, his house, he wanted to make things right, find some
answers but as the busses pulled in and out of the depot and thick clouds of diesel exhaust hung
in the air, he had no idea what to do next. Nothing looked familiar. He had imagined he would
arrive in the daytime and would just ask someone which direction east was or try and hitch a ride
but now things were different. He felt eyes on him, strange men eyeing him, weighing their
options.
He knew it was too late to find Sampson and yet he also did not want to stay in the
streets, he wanted to get as much distance between him and bus stop area before the sun came
up, as if he would be trapped here with the rest of the lost, homeless souls, somehow sucked in,
or forced to confront and deal with the brutal physicality of the streets. No, there was time for
that. He just wanted to move – but which way?
243
Numerous motels lined the streets, their frontsides overflowing with trash and people
spilling onto the streets. The thought of being holed up in a room seemed to him an even more
dangerous proposition. In the open he could scream or run if someone tried to rob him. Plus, he
had been sitting in the cramped confines of the bus for the better part of two days. He wanted to
walk.
The strange man on the street had turned towards Michael again, eyes expressionless,
flat. Michael walked back to the terminal, intending to find a driver. A fight had broken out
between two drivers. He listened and watched as the two men pushed and shoved and pulled at
each other’s shirts up revealing their undersides, pale white and brown flanks, bellies full,
bruises and scabs, ass cracks. When it was all over the now disheveled drivers seemed to have
lost their fire, and together, breathlessly, began to turn everyone away, telling them they couldn’t
spend the night in the terminal. In this they were united. Michael called out to one of them as he
made to move towards the street, asking which way he should head out, the bus driver telling
him he was better off catching a taxi but if he had to head east he should turn right once he’s
outside and on the street.
Michael walked with the crowd, poor women and children with ratty luggage, some
waiting on the curb, looking down the street as if waiting for a ride or even a sign as to where to
go next. Predators in the form of men were across the street – watching – trying to affect a pose
of just casually being on this street at this time of night as the wounded began streaming out from
the terminal. They looked them over, each one trying to size up for what purposes the other
could serve. Human labor and service.
He followed a woman who spoke Spanish – she seemed resolute in her mannerism, her
children following dutifully – as if she knew where she was going, as if this was a place she was
244
familiar with. Michael realized that he too was eyeing the crowd, sizing them up, seeing who he
might follow or rely on – the stories their bodies told, what they wore, how they held themselves.
One of the children dropped a child-sized purse no doubt filled with trinkets and toys,
candies perhaps, maybe even snacks. Michael called after them and brought it back. He thought
maybe they would see him as a good person, maybe even offer to feed him or take him in for the
night. The mother only pulled the children closer and eyed him with a suspicion that bordered on
hate and anger, as if he had already attempted to violate the child. He backed away and let the
distance between them grow.
He turned back to the terminal and eyed the gate where the busses came in and out, the
man with oversize shoes was gone and so he waited and watched. Bodies moved past in a kind of
late night daze. The air smelled of diesel fuel and was heavy with a dangerous electric energy.
He turned and began to walk, avoiding the shifting shadows of the sidewalks, bodies and eyes
watching him as he moved past. He kept expecting someone to call out to him, to challenge him,
but none did and so he kept his eyes forward and kept moving, away from the city, the masses of
people thinning out briefly but then growing once again.
As he continued to walk his eyes became more and more adjusted to the shadows. He
saw the bodies then. Bodies in motion, slapping, shifting, squirming, scratching, rubbing, the
flesh of their arms and necks flashing in the light, the low murmur talk of conspiracy, whispers,
whether to each other, to themselves, or at him he did not know. He kept moving, the details of
their faces lost to the darkness, only the occasional red glow of a cigarette or glass pipe being lit
revealing downturned eyes, pockmarked pores glistening with sweat. There were carboard box
homes and young and old men and women alike were out in the streets watching him. He kept
his eyes low and when people talked at him he affected a kind of mute numbness, what he
245
considered to be the way an insane person would walk or hold himself. It worked or was
believable as no one bothered him and soon he was on the train tracks, only a few ghostly bodies
around the edges. He came across a group of men crouched around a small trashcan fire. Luckily
he spied them soon enough that he could cross to the other side of the tracks, eyeing their bottles
of beer, shaved heads, tattooed bodies. He tried to blend in to the shadows but they saw or sensed
some weakness in him, something that marked him as not belonging, as not being one of the
walking dead. They yelled something and threw an empty bottle at him that shattered when it hit
the ground, spreading into a thousand shards. Someone began to laugh and then soon a barrage
of bottles came flying out of the sky, seeking to find purchase on his body. He kept his eyes
forward, walking faster but not breaking into a run as glass rained down around him. He braced
to run, eyeing the fence line for a quick exit or escape in case they decided to give chase and
hunt him down.
The bottles stopped flying, insults and laughter still trailing him as he turned the corner
and then convinced he was out of their sight, began to run until his lungs and legs gave out
beneath him. He knelt in the shadows of a dumpster catching his breath, feeling for the bills he
had tucked in his front pocket. Looking around to make sure no one was watching he quickly
plucked the bills from his pocket, peeled one off and then transferred the rest to his socks, tight
against his ankle.
He kept walking, ear throbbing with an inner fire that seemed to be spreading to his
forehead and shoulders, sweat beginning to moisten his clothes, a sticky, itchy sensation
burrowing into his skin. Soon signs of other humans on the road began to disappear until he was
the only one on the roads except for the cars. He began looking for a dark corner he could curl up
in until morning came. There was a large hole in a fence that led to the back of an abandoned-
246
looking warehouse, and while he was still wary of being inside, he saw it as his only option at
the moment, exhaustion and thirst taking him over as well as the leftover nervous energy from
adrenaline starting to wear off.
He climbed through the fence, the top edge snatching at his collar and leaving a long, red
scratch. And then he waited, listening and looking, broken windows, the damp smell of mold and
mildew, piss in the dried up foliage on the outside, newspapers and trash that had been blown in
faded and twisted in the shadows. He didn’t have a flashlight so he closed his eyes as Grandpa
had taught him and let his eyes adjust to the darkness, his night vision activated. He pushed the
partially open door in a few more inches, the sound of it on the floor cracking with a damning
echo. But nothing stirred, nothing moved. He went in around the door and while he could only
make out the dim outline of shadows, half-doors and walls, he didn’t go in any further, sitting
with his back on the door, falling into a restless sleep.

247

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Towards dawn his ear opened up like a shotgun, a popping so loud that it startled him awake.
Sounds rushed in. He could hear crickets calling and before even opening his eyes he could tell
the air was different here, thicker somehow, heavier, smoke, ash, diesel fuel, the sound of
helicopters, the swift acceleration of cars, a kind of low rumble beneath it all that he imagined as
motion, a root tone that wasn’t an earth tone but something else entire. Like being in the belly of
a factory or a machine-shop – a metallic, man-made beast that had swallowed him whole.
Somewhere, something was spinning, in motion. He could hear the faint whistle of it, the sharp
report of a horn, diesel truck brakes sighing, and oddly enough, the call of birds. The sun wasn’t
fully up, only what his Grandpa would call the Twilight Beings would be out, the ones who lived
between the day and night, spirits returning home to sleep after a long night of haunting while
the daylight beings prepared for a new day under the sun. That gray space where their two paths
crossed was where he was now. If there were forces at war or in conflict, the passing of the night
into day was like a truce, an armistice, where the dead were allowed to bring back the living into
the long night of the soul.
Somewhere he could hear pipes opening up and water rushing through. Buzzing wasps
began to stir in a paper-like nest that hung above the door – slowly moving, carefully stretching,
the first rays of light catching their wings. Even farther on he could hear the humming of a lathe,
growing more and more shrill until it became the silvery note of a bell. That was the sign he was
looking for apparently as he stood up then, bones and muscle and sinew all tight from being
wound up on the floor. It wasn’t a good sleep and his body trembled, even more tired than when
he’d laid down the night before, the fog of sleep still clouding his thoughts. Hovering between
248
worlds all night, slipping back and forth from memory to dream, jolting awake, listening, alert,
unconvinced that he was safe or alone, the nagging fear that if he let himself fall into deep sleep
he would be discovered or exposed.
It wasn’t that he was afraid of injury or pain or being confronted or robbed – he just
wanted to be alone – no people – no voices – if he didn’t have to speak again the rest of his life
that would be fine as well.
Thinking this, he opened his mouth and yawned – dry, ugly breath, a kind of dusty film
on his teeth that he tried to lick away with his tongue but only made it even more dry with spittle.
His jaw popped as if the tendon had been wound tight through the night. His teeth ached and his
stomach growled, the first pangs of hunger he’d felt since he’d arrived. Thirst.
On the street, he heard dogs howling as the rumble of a train passed followed by the
sharp report of its horn. The sensation was like waking up not knowing that the world was
ending, the apocalypse was already upon us, dogs howling at the calamity on its way and the roar
of the train not a train at all but the sound of the leading edge of a ball of flame engulfing all in
its path.
He saw a large bay door open where the machinery sound had been coming from – men
in goggles and frocks, workman’s boots and gloves shaping and bending wood, metal, industry.
He watched a man working the lathe and became hypnotized by the careful deliberate motion of
one who had practiced his craft. When he finished he looked up at towards Michael, startling him
as if he had somehow imagined himself invisible, an observer. He turned away but wondered
how he looked to the man, what he saw, hair and clothes askew, wrinkle of sleep still on his face,
his eyes, he wasn’t dirty yet so he didn’t think he looked homeless but he was definitely headed
that way. Only a few more nights like last night, sleeping on floors, sitting on park benches and
249
bus stops, he knew it was only a matter of time until his jeans cracked and caked with the grime
of the city, diesel exhaust and dirt and sweat all merging into the feral human smell he associated
with wild humans on the streets. Was there any coming back from such a condition? Or was it
like a door you passed through and never returned, invisible to cars passing by and the city lives
behind closed doors?
He needed to come up with a plan and find a place to stay – get off the streets before it
was too late and he became one of “them” – he saw then how easy it was to fall, just a short fall
and yet an impossible climb back up into the glittering world that operated alongside it. How thin
the line that separated people passing by in cars, working behind glass doors and lobbies, driving
home to beds and kids and families, roommates even, in the suburbs and valleys, elevators up to
higher floors, looking out over glass windows, he saw then how easy it was, for anyone, to fall
from that world, to spiral out of the invisible fragile web that held it all together – their world
with invisible rules and forces… He shook his head, already he was separating himself from the
world – like a binary he had cracked and now stood between.
The pull of the streets and its promise of true freedom, invisible rivers and networks of
information in motion, like watching the beast move, truly he was at the underbelly of it all and
saw it all spin past in a mechanized blur of smells, bodies, and motion. For a moment, he thought
he grasped some sort of essential truth about how it all worked, about the reality behind the
illusory reality society lived in. What would it take to lift the veil for everyone? What sort of
cataclysmic apocalypse would wash it all away and return them to their true nature? To deal with
the natural world one on one – no barrier of soft cloth, stone walls, air-conditioned air, electricity
to separate you, to make you forget that the universe yawned its jaws wide open every night and
lay bare the true depths of our existence – all in the sky – for all to see. How long had roofs and
250
light shielded us from this truth? He looked up then and imagined himself as an ancient, the
towers of Babylon stretching high towards the night sky, the truth beyond those towers only for
him to see, ponder. The hand of God reaching out, prepared to destroy, smite, wipe the earth
clean.
Beneath it all, he smelled the ocean and remembered how, in the mornings and evenings,
the sky would thicken with mist, fog rolling in , heavy with the air and smells of the ocean, the
coast, a kind of dull sweetness, tender edges, a coolness that he welcomed but one that was more
implied or felt rather than stated. That was his favorite time, before the sun laid it all bare and
stripped it clean of all illusion, revealed the dirt, the wrinkles, and the cracks. You couldn’t hide
flaws from the flame of the sun, and like a rat scurrying from hole to hole, that’s how he planned
to cross the city.

When he was a child, he had a fear of large machinery, crowded roads, traffic jams, loud voices,
all seemed to frighten him in some primordial way. The modern world was terrifying to him –
not just to be feared – avoided. That feeling came back to him as a low-flying plane came
through the clouds, the underbelly of the plane lit by the luminosity of the city. He paused to
watch it pass, the entire scene feeling surreal in a way that could never be possible back home;
flying machines, glass buildings, people strapped into cars whose headlights stretched for miles
upon miles, the elevated freeway bridges they passed on taller than the tallest buildings he’d ever
seen in his village. The bridges alone looked like they had been built by giants, remnants of an
ancient people, a great civilization that was now in ruins.
As the plane turned and the sound of its engines ramping up began to shriek in his ears,
the image came to him of a prehistoric bird emerging from the clouds, as if he’d always been
251
here and somehow gotten lost in time – he wondered if perhaps an ancestor of his had in fact
stood here and seen a similar sight, the image so awe-inspiring that it burned an imprint onto his
DNA – an ancient memory encoded or etched into his very genetic structure, some strand of
DNA suddenly thrilled to come alive with recognition of an old memory, stirring it from its
slumber, some pterodactyl-like creating roaming the night sky – or was it the premonition of a
not-so-distant future, some unlived and half-remembered prophecy of a world in ruins, a people
on the move as the earth reclaimed the oceans, land, and skies? He imagined it as a new dark age
where humans would live in the shadows and marvel at the remnants of this world, an advanced
civilization and its secrets lost to time, no electricity to power its devices, access its memories,
no one knowing how to build, construct, or recreate those objects which had passed through the
veil to the other side, literacy kept alive by some monastic cult deep in the mountains. Pieces of
texts, scattered narratives, half-truths and lies, fictions and reality mixing into a blur of language
and half-remembered dreams, their only link to the old world.

He fell into a rhythm, confident now in the direction he was headed. The sound of his shoes on
pavement kept time with his breath and the metronome of his heart. He kept walking, waiting for
the light of dawn which never seemed to come, the city sky keeping the horizon in a perpetual
anticipatory glow. When it finally did arrive it was unmistakable, darkness lifting like a veil, the
city coming to life. Half-awake and drifting into exhaustion, Michael kept walking until he found
a bush that offered solace. Climbing past the thorny exterior, ignoring the scratches and protests
of his now bloodied skin, he curled up and fell into a fitful sleep where more than once he woke
up sweating with a scream or yell caught in his throat. Once he thought he heard someone crying
252
out, yelling to him, but it was only his own voice echoing back at him, his own muffled scream
that had cut loose from his throat only moments before, lost in the cacophony of the city.
In one dream he was trapped and chained to a desert mountain – by whom or what he
couldn’t remember. There was only the sensation of thirst, the sun beating down on him, the skin
of his back beginning to bulge and boil, blister. Raven-like blackbirds were watching him from
barren trees impassively, a lone hawk barely visible far in the heavens, drifting on invisible
currents of air and waves of heat. In the dream, the blackbirds descended from their perches on
the trees and began hopping closer. Michael seemed to call out to the hawk, first quietly and then
as loud as he could as the yellow-eyed birds moved in, one large and fattened blackbird leaping
up onto his chest and pecking at his eyes until they came loose and fell from their eye sockets,
dangling there, covered in a thin film of body fluid and blood, that was the signal that announced
to the other birds to move in – a frenzy of wings and bird-shrieks as Michael opened his mouth
to call out, to scream, to curse them and scare them away, the hawk suddenly turning its head,
hearing him. With a graceful arc, the hawk turned a half circle before pulling its wings in tight
and diving towards Michael. The lesser birds scattering in fear, heads down, eyes turned, wings
held tight, chattering to themselves, tails tucked in like dogs, as the golden hawk pulled up and
landed on Michael’s chest. It took in the scene with its steely eyes, face motionless, that stern
high-cheekbone look of his ancestors. The sharp angle to his mouth, regal way of holding his
head, he seems to survey the damage, eyes punctured, leaking fluid, held by thick, slippery
cords, nerves that trailed into each eye socket and disappeared into the skull. Blood red and rich,
almost purple, pinched skin where the eyes once were, looking like an old man before his time.
Michael opened his mouth to thank him, to heap praises upon him as one would a demigod or
spirit guide but as soon as he opened his lips to speak, the hawk snatched his tongue, severing it
253
in one swift movement before turning and flying off, pink muscle of tongue from Michael like a
coiled serpent. The sound of the ravens cawing rose up in praise, a cackle like laughter as the
blood began to rush in, warm and moist, a moan emerging from his throat as the frenzy of
feeding began in a blur of black feathers, yellow eyes, and the corkscrew pain of a bird plucking
at his ear trying to dig past his ear canal and eat what’s inside.

254
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
He woke feeling as if his limbs were like the gnarled roots of an old tree or the crippled body of
one of the twisted people, those who the elders say had sat in a bear’s footprint or lay in the grass
where the coyotes lay. As he untangled his limbs and looked skyward he saw a crack running
through the ceiling like a bolt of lightning. He could hear pigeons in the rafters cooing and
cawing and see that the edge of the roof had collapsed, a hole in the ceiling revealing the inner
frame of the building, wooden studs and rusted nails. He sat up, the unmistakable coppery smell
of blood near some kind of altar, dust motes and feathers falling in the still air of the sun. He
could see fur and nothing more. An old sacrifice that had gone cold, the blood around it
blackened and congealed. Whatever it was it was killed a long time ago. He could see goat horns
on the wall, a rusted blade, a sickle maybe or a scythe. Behind the altar there was a hand painted
wooden crucifix of Jesus in a familiar medieval pose, head tilted down in humility. Someone had
altered his mouth, made just the right touch of a smile on his lips – a subtle edit that made him
look deviant, deceptive, menacing even, as if he were hiding something, a secret. I’ve been a bad
boy.
Michael tried to stand the pain in his ear had returned, doubled through with enough force
to make him dizzy. His eyes blurred and both of his ears began ringing with the high pitch of the
lathe. He pulled on his earlobes to see if that would help relieve the pressure and then he saw her,
watching him. Off in the shadows, not in a deceptive way but as if that were her usual place to sit
and he were the one intruding upon her. The small amount of sunlight coming in through the roof
was not quite reaching her but it illuminated the inside of the building enough for him to see that
she was dressed in all black, unsmiling, eyes patient and wide. She wore a long black tunic with
a hood but even though the hood covered most of her head he could see that she had a
255
disproportionately large head, unnaturally triangular, bald across the front, with thin wisps of
long reddish hair curled around large ears.
“Don’t be afraid,” the woman said, her voice surprising deep. “When we found you, you
were wounded and with fever. I have given you something to ease the pain, to help you sleep.” A
dizzying panic set in, he said nothing but only tried to make sense of the feathers on the floor.
She followed his gaze and seemed to recognized how strange it all must have looked through his
eyes. “Machado will come later to sweep. We don’t come here as often as we used to – we were
surprised to find you here.”
“What is this place?”
“It is a place for communion – nothing more.
He tried to stand again but the throbbing in his ear caused him to turn to his side, buckle
over. Without a sound or effort on her part, she was beside him, the mixed smell of herbs and
sage, something darker, richer underneath it all coming from within the folds of her clothes. She
cradled his head with her hand, thin and pale, he could feel the heat coming off her, that’s how
close she was and yet her hand was cool, soothing. He tensed up, resisting her touch at first but
then gave in, resting his ear on her hand, the cool palm of her other hand on his cheek. How long
had it been since he’d been touched? Held? He thought of his mother, briefly, his desire for her
to hold him, how many times had he laid his head on her lap hoping she would reach out through
her sickness and stroke his hair, trace the outline around his ear? But she would only moan and
cry out, a foul smell of spit and food coming from her mouth no matter how much they brushed
her teeth and tongue. Her gnarled hands twisting and flexing in their eternal motion, teeth
grinding – once she even kicked him – an unconscious reaction that he knew to not take
256
personally but still, it hurt him deeply nonetheless. That was when the distance began, when he
began to shut the doors inside his heart.
So he gave in, his head on her lap, turning him softly, cooing to him like a baby, looking
down into his ear and sucking at her teeth – tsk tsk tsk – she told him she could see microbes, evil
little devils burrowing into his head. She lit a candle and brought it near, as if to shine light
inside. Michael stiffened, worried she was about to pour hot wax into his ear but instead she
blew it out and continued blowing, the smoke and smell of melted wax washing over him as she
continued to work her thumb in a circular motion along the ridge of his jaw just beneath his ear.
He felt the heat then, a warm sensation spreading from his ear to his throat, the pressure on his
ear canal easing, popping, sound rushing back in. She continued to massage his jaw and face,
tracing the outline of his features, the ridge of his nose, the bridge of his forehead, the back of his
neck. He felt his body loosening, his eyes closing and then suddenly opening wide as he noticed
two jackal-like dogs watching him, one black and one yellow. Large, misshapen dogs with eyes
like coyotes or wolves and thin, angular heads. Startled, he sat up, a wave of shame and
embarrassment coming over him as if caught in an act of intimacy and arousal.
He began to scan the room more carefully now, looking for exits, a way out. The sun had
changed position in the sky and he could make out the interior better. It was a church, or at least
intended to be some place of worship. It was in ruins yet obviously still used, the interior
fragmented and decayed, windows busted, stained glass replaced with colored foil, the vaulting
blistering. Water stains had dried like trails of tears down the sides, tracing the concave angle of
the roof, the roof itself now sagging in places, threatening to collapse altogether. Scabs of skin-
like plaster peeled off the walls like dried skin. He noticed the partially eaten corpse of a dead
cat, the remains of mice. He looked again at the altar with its crude crucifixion of Christ hanging
257
there on a cross. He now took the smile to be seductive. Christ the Seducer. Scattered around the
altar were what he took to be tools of divination: bones, dice, seeds, sea shells, coins, a tortoise
shell painted with ornate and strange symbols.
He was about to ask about the dogs when there was the unmistakable sound of a key
turning in a lock, a deadbolt sliding open, and then the slow labored push on the other side of the
room. The dogs took no notice of it, their eyes on Michael, their breathing heavy and labored.
The woman turned towards the sound, untroubled. “Ah, here is Machado.”
From the shadows walked a small Peruvian looking man. Dark-skinned and bony with
thick wavy hair. A blue rosary hanging around his neck caught the light as he crossed the room,
his face coming into view, his left eye droopy and moist, his arm on the same side curled slightly
beneath him, as if he’d had a stroke or injured it when he was younger.
She sat taller then, motioning to the dogs, “And now it is time for these ones to eat.” At
the sound of her voice the dogs stood up, stiff in anticipation, their eyes following her as she
stood and moved to the altar. She lit a series of candles, another hideous looking Christ figure
coming into view, this one with a virile member projecting from a nest of horsehair between his
legs. With a quick flick of her wrist, the match went out and she made the sign of the cross. On
the altar was a small bowl of small wafers, the consecrated host that Michael remembered from
when his Grandpa had taken him to church.
“You can’t have those until you do your First Holy Communion,” he had said, instead
asking the priest to bless him. No wine or host for the unitiated.
The woman raised a wafer to the sky, reciting the words to some ritual Michael could
only hear bits of. “…we break this bread… the body of Christ… Amen.” Then, instead of taking
the wafer into her mouth as he had seen the priest do, she broke it in two and gave each half to
258
each dog who took the host with their tongues and swallowed it all in one movement. It wasn’t
much but apparently it was enough as she waved them off and looked to Machado whose own
eyes were studying Michael.
“And you,” she says to Machado. “What did I tell you about staring at people like that?
“He is the one I told you about, the killer.”
“He’s no killer.”
“He is!”
“Even if he is he is forgiven in the eyes of the Lord, isn’t that right, child?” she said
turning towards Michael and letting out a playful laugh. “And what is your name, child?”
“Michael.”
“Ah, Michael, the dragon slayer. Guardian of the flaming sword. I am Rosemary.”
She moved towards Michael awkwardly as if her movements were predisposed to a
certain hesitation and gracelessness that she masked by moving slowly. She leaned in close to
Michael once again, placing her palm against Michael’s forehead.
“The fever is still there, drink this.” She poured water from a metal pitcher into a tall
glass and motioned for him forward. Michael raised his hands to hold the glass but she shook her
head disapprovingly and instead held the cup to his mouth pouring it, pausing only to let him
breathe in between gulps.
“To be possessed is to become the horse of the god that rides you,” she said, “but you are
not possessed, you may be a little mad, but even that is nothing to worry about – there are
different levels of madness and yours is most likely divine.” When she was satisfied that Michael
had finished drinking she wiped the rim of the cup and set it down. “This is too much, too much
talk, you need sleep. You are going to die for a while – or rather you’re going to feel like you’re
259
going to die – but then you will wake up and see things with new eyes. As my father would say,
the way is made difficult with cruel beasts and ravening birds – but if you don’t sleep, the real
demons will come alive. So sleep. I will return.”
“Should I get more water?” Machado said.
“Yes, water and ice, we will make him a bath.”
Machado leaned on a broom and watched her with his hand on him still. “You should
sleep, boy,” he said. “I had a fever that I didn’t take care of and it used to give me bad dreams,
like my intestines were trying to come out of my ear. When they came to pick me up it was as if
my bones had gone soft, like mold in the building.”
Rosemary watched Machado patiently, like a parent almost. “We call those earthquake
dreams.”
“Yes, the earthquake came not too long after that.”
“Go now, I will stay here with him.”
“And tell him stories?”
Rosemary laughed, “Yes, stories. Which is your favorite?”
“The one where the rain dried up and all the people died.”
“Food,” Michael said.
“The one about food?”
“When can I have some food?”
“Ah, you are hungry! That is a good sign,” she stroked his hair lovingly. “We will eat
soon. The food is not here. First you must sleep.”
260
“First you must tell stories,” Machado called as he opened and closed the door. The dogs
looked after him and listened as he locked the bolt into position. When it was silent again they
crossed the room to rest at Rosemary’s feet.
“First I must tell stories,” she said smiling.

The story she told was of a man, a priest who traveled around Mexico building churches. “A
noble enough pursuit. The problem was that everywhere he went, after every church he built,
drought would come with him. He would say, it is because of the evil deeds of the people in this
land, that is why the ground is dry and no rain falls. He called himself an Angel of God and told
the people that the church was like an eye that allowed God sight in a land where He had
previously been blind. Now your wickedness will be laid bare before the heavens with
retribution soon to follow, he would say.
“Unless… unless they sacrificed and worshipped in the old ways. Some thought the
drought was meant to dry up sin and sinner alike, and when the rain returned it would wash it all
away. He saw himself and his building of these simple but elegant churches as a parable among
parables, as parable come to life, as a disclosure of things revealed, each church was unique,
different from the others and yet no one ever saw him work from any plans, never draw
anything, write anything down, as if it were all in his head, some kind of divine inspiration. He
believed that God was speaking through him – he was the vessel – I’m just a worker of the Lord
he would say, I am the whitewashed tomb, filled with the bones of the dead, the person who is
alive is not in this body – it is beyond this body.
“Well people didn’t like this as you can imagine. It wasn’t just the words they didn’t like,
that they could live with. They were used to such talk from men. They wanted the rains back.
261
Maybe if he had stayed on as a priest or built a following things would have turned out
differently for him in the end but no, in a village, my village actually when I was just a young
girl, the people pulled him from his sleep, tied him up in the center of town and using the stones
of the church walls, one by one, they stoned him, threw them at him, the men using hammers and
other rocks to crush the big ones into small pieces so the children could throw them too. This
was hard work – it took days and days – his bloody face, his bruised body, pieces of his scalp
missing, until someone finally landed that magic shot that cracked his skull just enough for the
blood to pour out right out like a river. It was right above his temple – pop! - down his face it
came.”
She turned her face to the sky and opened her palms, as if to pray, instead calling out in a
mocking high-pitched voice, “My Lord, my Lord, why hast thou forsaken me?”
The yellow dog twitched in his sleep and the woman leaned over and scratched behind its
ears. “And then… the rains came. Washed his corpse clean, the stones of the field now
pockmarked with his blood stains. We called it the Campo de Heroes Olvidados. But that would
come later. First we let the birds and dogs feed on him before the insects made sure his bones
were clean. Then we returned home to our huts, our villages, our beds, lit our fires, wondered
what kind of calamity or curse would fall upon us if that really was a child of God, how swift
retribution would be and in what form it would come? Pestilence from the east? Fire raining
down from the sky? Men from the north, men from the south? Would murder, rape, disease be
visited upon my people? I was just a little girl then, see, those were my thoughts. I had thrown
stones just like the others. We were starving, perhaps even a little mad with thirst and hunger. It
hadn’t rained in so long; even the dogs were too skinny to eat. Their rib-bones would show
262
through and they would fight with one another, eating each other. We began to hide the babies,
the children from them lest they take one for food.
“Pregnant women saw their stomachs shrivel away in size and die. Dust babies were
born, wombs ran dry and plans were being made to begin killing and eating the sick and the
dying, if not the dead – all because this man, this so-called holy man had come from the
wilderness to save us, to preach to us, to build the eye of god and his temple in the midst of our
wickedness – to punish us for our sins. Instead all he brought was pain and a new kind of hell on
earth.
“When the rains came the next morning we couldn’t believe it. For once in a long time
we felt we weren’t strangers to the world. As if we had uncovered or unlocked some key that
shaped the very nature of reality itself. It was as if ancient memories of sacrifice and human
blood, the power of such things, had reawakened, returned, and had become familiar again. As if
we’d all been there before.
“A saying was born then: you are a killer or a Christian.
Michael stiffened then, wild-eyed, paralyzed and yet wide awake. He tried to move, to
speak, but nothing came.
“I told you he was a killer.” Machado had returned and looked down upon him.
“Maybe,” Rosemary said, looking him over, hand caressing his face. “Maybe he is. Either
way the medicine has a hold of him now, he won’t be able to tell us.”
“Finish the story, Mama.”
“There is nothing left to tell. Killing that priest reawakened things in us, ancient longings.
We began to see how rain, clouds, wind, lightning, the cracking of furniture and wooden panels,
flies and other bugs, even these dogs, carry messages, signs.”
263
She stroked the dogs now, both of them rising up to greet her, their misshapen snouts
pressing into her, smelling her before turning to Michael and nipping and licking his hands, his
face, his nose. Inside, Michael began to cry out and then scream but nothing came out of his
mouth, his body frozen, disconnected from consciousness.
Rosemary continued talking: “In the old days you could tell your bad dreams to a lump of
clay that you could dissolve in water or make a doll that you could then burn. Later it became
livers, lungs, hearts, stomachs, gall bladders, intestines, even the bones themselves – the skull
especially – you could speak into the ear of a ram about to be slaughtered, ask your question,
confess your sins, seek the identity of someone who was unfaithful, who wronged you, the killer
in your midst, then you would examine its entrails for signs, answers, blemishes.
“But that was my world. Secrets that were once only hidden are now lost, records
destroyed. I piece together what I can. My father came to be a preacher of sorts after all that. He
would speak of Grandfather Cain and the Diviner, the first Catholic Pope on earth. There was the
first priest to the gods of the fields and grain. The Fifth Patriarch. The Jade Emperor. But all
these names mean nothing to me now. I look to my dreams for answers but they are not there.”
The dogs circled the altar and put their heads down. She watched them and was silent for
a long time. Machado waited patiently near the door, broom in hand, listening.
“When he died, my father, I washed his feet with my tears – a gesture I thought he would
appreciate – but instead I was reprimanded by the nurse, she said, ‘Sister, you are gloriously ill.’
That’s what shook me the most, I guess. I know they thought we were backwards or strange.”
Her voice shifted then, as if she were speaking to an imagined congregation who had come to
hear her speak: “Ring the bell, close the book, quench the candle, ye who have known Christ,
abandoned Christ, ye now enter outer darkness.”
264

“It was all lies,” she said sadly, her voice returning to a whisper. “All of it. But I knew
my work was here – in the city and in cities like this. In the city you can bury the dead, gather the
rubble, rebuild the houses and have a living community rise up out of the ruins of whatever
calamity came before. That is the magic of the city. One feels that isn’t so here, though. This is a
strange city. Like Sodom and Gomorrah. If I had the means I would build a sign and post it far
out east on the freeway. It would say: ‘Ichabod: the Glory Is Departed’ just as it was written so
long ago.”
She stood up then, her voice rising once again. “One day this city too shall be swallowed
by the desert upon which it was born and they will ask, ‘What great tragedy has befallen this
place and all who lived there?’” She laughed then, startling the birds in the rafters who spread
their wings and took flight out the crevassed ceiling, the dogs rising up and howling at them. She
watched the birds go and then looked around as if seeing the inside of the church for the first
time. When her eyes fell on Machado she pressed her lips together and nodded. “But you’ve
heard this all before.”
“I know these things, yes.” Machado said, watching from across the room. “The water is
ready now, do you want me to give him a bath?”

Michael woke in a different room, the air cool and fresh. It was still dark and his mind was still
fuzzy, drugged no doubt. He stood up easily though, whatever pain he had in his ear now gone.
He looked into a makeshift mirror that hung beside the bed, a sliver of broken glass taped to the
wall. His hair had been slicked to the side, combed, his body washed and now he was in an ill-
265
fitting suit, the edges of the collar frayed. He looked around the room, a small candle burning
beside the cot that had passed as his bed for... how long? He had no sense of how much time
passed. The thought came to him that this must be Machado’s room.
He took the candle and opened the door, again surprised as he had expected it to be
locked from the outside. He walked down a long hallway lined with doors, trying the handles, all
of them locked save one. He turned it slowly, unsure of what he would find on the other side,
also being conscious to not alert anyone to his movements. It was a bedroom, lit only by
candlelight, an extravagant bed with a ruffled top sheet the only detail he could make out. Just as
he was about to close the door and move on he saw movement, something in the bed stirred,
something which took the form of an ashen-faced woman, naked but for a pair of silk green
stockings.
The memory came to him of advice he’d received from his grandmother. She’d told it to
him as a young boy when all he would read was fairy tales and stories of adventure: “Whenever
you confront an old woman, give her a kiss, comb her hair, she will reward you.” He always
thought he would come across such a woman in the woods, the ugly lady, the witch, but here she
was in front of him, in the city, and not quite as ugly as he had imagined, and yet frightening in
her appearance and her bold demeanor. Maybe Machado, the droopy eyed hunchback was the
one he was supposed to supplicate. Maybe he had gifts to bestow? In the end, he did nothing but
back away and close the door quietly turning to find Machado watching him with a loose grin.
“Come, I want to show you something,” he said, tugging on the sleeve of his arm.
Michael followed him, Machado walking before him without fear. Was he a prisoner or not?
Who were these people and what did they want with him? Without warning, Machado paused,
266
leaning in to Michael’s candle and then blowing it out leaving them in darkness. Michael moved
to speak but Machado whispered, “Shhh, let’s try not to wake him.”
There was the sound of keys, a bolt being slid free and then the sound of Machado
grunting as he leaned on a door that slowly opened, the frame of it at least twelve feet tall and
eight feet wide. Michael had never seen such a door but before he could ask about it he saw by
the dim candlelight within a larger than life man at rest on a monstrous bed. Even though it was
bigger than any bed he’d ever seen, the bed seemed to be groaning under the weight of the man,
the poles bowed and buckled, the makeshift mattress ripped at the seams, a damp, foul animal-
like scent emerging from the room like the pen of a wild creature.
“Gravity holds him down in pain,” Machado said then. “The rest of his kind have killed
themselves or been killed – some are back east in the Himalayas where the effects of gravity are
less powerful. This is why we stay. Do you see now?”
He turned to Michael whose face registered in disbelief.
“This is impossible, I know. It cannot be real, I see it on your face. I, too, felt these things
when my father revealed these secrets. Come, touch, he is real.” Machado took Michael by the
hand and sat him near the giant. Taking Michael’s finger, he traced the scar tissue on the giant’s
knuckles – ancient tattoos faded to the dirty bluish-grey of veins. The giant’s breath came in
slow, uneven waves. Groaning, as if he were trying to lift his head but couldn’t. His eyes, big
stone-like eyes turned to Michael, pleading, in pain, suffering.
It was Rosemary’s voice who sounded next, “It was then I came to see the universe like a
vast prison whose innermost dungeon is the earth, the scene of our daily lives.” She stood
directly behind Michael and put her thin hand on his shoulder. “This world is the underworld and
is itself the realm of the dead. Do you see? There are worlds we do not know – other worlds even
267
within our own – places where giants, satyrs, and elves populate those secret places. Leftovers
from previous histories, before Eve was given to Adam the demon Lilith was conceived in
Adam’s dreams and from her sprang secret places and beings. Perhaps we are Lilith’s children
and there is another world where the holy offspring of Adam and Eve populate the world.”
Machado stood up and casts shells on the table, the sound like the clatter of bones. “All
lies,” he said gathering them hastily from the table and dropping them back into a pouch tied
around his belt.
In a sudden show of strength the giant pulled Michael closer as if to whisper something to
him. Michael leaned in, the smell of dead mice and cats on its breath but no sooner did he come
close than the giant opened its mouth and water came pouring out in a waterfall of motion that
knocked him into the next dream world and the next, a cascade of visions and images pulling
him under as if he had fallen off the edge of a cliff and plunged deep into a lagoon with such
force that his clothes had been ripped from him, birthing him onto the broad back of some sea
creature that then flung him onto shore where his mother was waiting. She was beautiful, just
like in the pictures at home, from before. She seemed to want to say something but when
Michael went to her she ran. He followed her into the tangle of jungle around the lagoon, fearing
he’d lost her, scrambling and calling out until the foliage gave way to a clearing with his mother
in a white robe in the center by a small fire ringed by stones. Without a word, small stout and
powerfully built men emerged from the treeline, eyeing him. He turned to run but they chased
him down, tied him to a pole with hemp ropes and brought him back to the clearing like a wild
pig they’ve brought to slaughter. His mother was nowhere to be found, the fire gone cold. There
was a notched groove in the earth, in the middle of the ring of stones that they angled him
towards, the wooden pole sliding in with ease as it swung upright, the grip of gravity pulling him
268
down, his skin shrieking wherever the rope had bound him and then the fire began to burn. At
first it was a slow burn but then it quickly began to pick up in intensity, the men watching, his
mother now with them, expressionless as the flames licked and nipped at his skin, peeling off
layer after layer until he was free and leaped into the air and flew away like a bird, an owl.

269
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
The morning was deceptively cool and overcast, a light mist falling. In New Mexico it would
mean snow or a storm on the way but here, he knew it would burn away and transform into heat.
He is convinced his fever broke in the night. Still thirsty and dazed, his clothes moist with sweat
and mixed with the mealy undergrowth beneath the trees and bushes he had called home. He felt
as if he was walking the way one would following a primal catastrophe – like Noah after the
flood – the world a new place…
The streets were filled with refuse, garbage cans overturned, feral dogs and cats watching
from the shadows, heads down when you turned their way. Even small dogs seemed menacing,
as if they too were somehow cast out of another world where their kin felt of a different breed.
Here, all was angular, ribs showing, fur tangled and matted, scarred ears and snouts, eyes sharp,
even the sad-looking ones , heads and tails down low, eyes looking at you sideways, defensive, if
you got too close they would turn on you, wincing, expecting a blow of some kind – fending off
any aggression, whether from fellow beast or man. Baring their teeth at the sun if it was too hot.
He passed beneath elevated freeways, their pillars rising out of the earth like giant Babylonian or
Assyrian temples – the ruins under which a future generation would live and marvel at the giants
of the past. Even the busses seemed tired and exhausted here, their brakes and machinery
grunting and exhaling like overgrown beasts brought in from the wild and domesticated to carry
men on their backs, in their bellies. To Michael they moved like prehistoric creatures lumbering
through the city, burdened by the strain of gravity.
Everywhere he turned, faces were marked with looks of dislocation, weariness,
desperation, afraid that if they stopped or slowed down too much they would be crushed by the
relentless machinery on which the city turned. His own clothes felt stiff. His skin itchy. Restless.
270
He wanted to not only tear his clothes off but his skin, as if what was what was bothering him
was much deeper than the surface. He wanted to dig into his ears, behind his eyes, unearth the
birthplace of the unease that he was determined lay somewhere deep in his bones.
Another day turned to night and shapes of humans emerged from the shadows, walking
and standing under the thin, starved trees that grew beside tower-block apartment complexes.
Some call out to him in Spanish but once they realize how poor his Spanish is they ignore him,
turn away, disapprove of his presence even, as if he is feigning his place in the world, a cultural
imposter. He began to have the sensation that people begin were looking through him, that he
was becoming less and less visible the farther he walked. He knew it was impossible, that the
people he saw an hour ago didn’t telephone ahead to let others know he was on his way, an
imposter, this young boy who looks like us but is not one of us, he is headed your way, he is no
one. Save your breath, ignore him. Don’t waste your time.
He kept looking back to see if he was being followed but he was not. He followed the
signs and the storefronts and kept waiting for some sign of recognition, something to jog his
memory, to tell him he is close. Soon the neighborhoods began to change, mountains becoming
visible through smog-mist, different kinds of plants and trees, less trash, actual homes with yards
and cars and trucks in front. He could go whole blocks with no other sounds other than the sound
of his own feet. The rhythm of the city was different here. He knew he was getting close.
He drank water from a fountain outside a church and then stopped a half block later to
stare at his reflection in a shop window. Looking back at him was a homeless man, a runaway
maybe, a homeless teen boy. Angular cheekbones, chin more defined than he remembered,
hollow eyes, hair tangled and matted like the dogs from downtown.
271
Once, he thought he spied his dog, Cochise. It was just a glimpse of fur and the long, lean
body of a German Shepherd but he was convinced it was her and chased it down, block after
block until it scurried under a bush and bared its teeth at him. It was not Cochise but still Michael
waited and followed it when it emerged from under the bush, tail between its legs. Every time he
called to the dog or crossed to the same side of the street it was on it moved away, turned and
eventually broke into a full sprint and was gone.
He continued to head east towards the horizon that began to show signs of the sun. City
busses continue to pass by and he is tempted to get on one but is unsure where it will go, afraid
he will fall asleep and be taken even further into the sprawl, lost all over again, perhaps even lost
forever. No, it was better here on the street. Up there in a bus he might miss something, some
small sign or clue that he was near where his father used to live, where he and Antonio had holed
up after the killing.
Traffic picked up again, people on the streets, the busses rammed with people on their
way to work, standing room only, the heat blast of exhaust and earth-rattling vibration as they
pass by unnerving somehow, as if it were another sign that he was not welcome here. And so he
kept walking… eventually falling into a rhythm – a hypnotic pace that kept his deeper thoughts
at bay. At times he would catch himself talking out loud and would be embarrassed, even if no
one were around. He wondered if this was how crazy begins. If this was how one descended into
homeless crazy territory – as if it were an affliction that fell upon those who began to walk and
lost their way.

He found his father’s home on the third day, knowing he was in the right place when he
recognized the gas station that his father always said was the cheapest on this side of town. Then
272
it was the streets themselves, details he couldn’t name but the sense that he was close and then
there it was. The windows had been boarded over, a large sign on the lawn that said “Probate”
had fallen sideways and was half covered by mud. Down the street he could hear a church
service in session, the unmistakable sound of singing, the call and response of choir and
community.
He circled the block a few times before jumping the padlocked fence and circling round
the back. The grass had turned yellow and died off and giant chains and padlocks held fast the
doors, the windows boarded over and nailed to the frame back here as well. He tested the chains
and thought about going to the market and stealing a crowbar to peel back the wood on one of
the windows but decided against it. What was the point? That wasn’t what he was here for and
he was sure all the belongings had been emptied out by now. The tool shed door hung wide open,
the shelves empty save for a book of wooden matches and a half-empty can of WD-40 he found
in one of the drawers. He took it as a sign and waited until nightfall before gathering up as much
loose dry brush as he could and piled it all against the back door. He went back to the shed and
one by one removed the shelves and stacked them against the back wall of the house. Satisfied,
he lit a match and then held it to the open nozzle of WD-40, the lubricant catching fire and
shooting a stream of flame that Michael then set to the edges of the shelves until they began to
burn.

He hid in the tree across the street, the warm liquid glow of flames signaling that the fire had
took. It was still only in the back yard and the flames hadn’t spread as quickly as he’d hoped. He
wondered if he should have used gas but how would he buy it and transport it here without being
suspicious? It didn’t matter as the flames suddenly doubled and then began licking the edge of
273
the roof, bursting through to the front, neighbors coming out onto the street now and the distant
sound of fire trucks on their way to put out the flames.
As a crowd began to gather, their eyes on the flames and the fire trucks pulling up.
Michael eased out of the tree and stood with the crowd, listening and watching. A strange sense
of relief spread over him when the roof began to cave in. He said a silent prayer to his father, “I
hope this releases you on the other side” and then saw Sampson in the crowd watching the house
burn. He had grown out a small beard and was heavier around the neck but Michael knew it was
him. Sampson must have sensed him watching him for he turned and locked eyes with Michael
before quickly turning and walking away.
Michael followed him, keeping his distance. Without looking back Sampson reached the
end of the block, turned the corner and was gone. Michael picked up his pace to close the
distance, worried he would lose him for good but as soon as he came around the corner,
Sampson grabbed him by the throat and spun him to the ground in one swift move.
“What the fuck, that really you Chavez?” he said, loosening his grip but keeping his fist
cocked.
“Yeah, it’s me.”
“Well, what the fuck you following me for looking like that? You gonna get yourself
killed, if you don’t watch it.” He backed off and pulled Michael up by the front of his shirt. “You
shouldn’t have come back, man.”
“I need to find Antonio.”
“That your work back there?” Sampson said, nodding towards the fire. Michael didn’t
say anything. “I haven’t seen Antonio since all that bullshit went down. I told him I didn’t want
274
no part of killing and that’s exactly where that motherfucker went with things. I got kids now. If
it wasn’t your daddy that got burnt I would’ve just passed.”
“I just need to find him. It’s not even about my dad anymore.”
“Let it go, youngblood. Just stay away. I don’t know what he’s into or who he’s hanging
with but it’s best for both of us to stay away.”
“What about the lady? The one with the mole?”
“Claudia? Shit, I don’t know.”
“Just take me to her and I won’t bug you no more.”
Sampson eyed him carefully, before nodding and motioning for him to follow. “I’ll drop
you at the house but no promises beyond that. I don’t know if she knows where he is or where
they buried your dad or what. That what you looking for? Your daddy’s body?”
Michael didn’t respond, only followed Sampson to a light blue Chevrolet. He paused
when he got to the car, eyeing Michael up and down. He popped the trunk and pulled out two
oversize trash bags. “Make sure you put this on the seat, man. Can’t have you getting in my car
like that.”

Sampson pulled onto the freeway and headed towards downtown, the outline of the city rising
high towards the faded glow of the skyline. They drove in silence, the green glow of the dash
outlining the angular features of Sampson’s set jaw, his eyes ahead. Michael knew he was doing
this against his will. In the back seat was a car seat, a teething ring on top of a washcloth, and a
half-empty bottle of milk.
Sampson rolled down the window once they pulled off the freeway and let the smells of
the city in, a mix of moisture and exhaust. He cut left on Rampart and then rode the lights all the
275
way down until the city began to flatten and the sidewalks began to fill with dark-skinned
people. Sampson pulled into an ARCO gas station and left the engine running. He motioned to
the right, “You go down that road about three houses in. It’s the one with the broke-down van in
front of it unless someone done towed it away.”
“You’re not coming?”
He sighed, “This has nothing to do with me anymore. This is all you. I told you I got a
family now. I loved your dad like a brother but I’m hoping, no praing, this is the last time we’ll
ever see each other again, you dig?”
Michael nodded and moved to open the door.
“Hey, hold up,” Sampson said, leaning to one side and pulling out his wallet. He opened
the billfold and counted out three twenty-dollar bills. “Get yourself cleaned up for real and get
back home. Babylon ain’t no place for a youngblood like yourself.”
He folded the bills and held them out to Michael. When Michael reached for them,
Sampson pulled them back slightly. “And listen, like I said your dad was good people but don’t
go telling anyone you saw me or that it was me that brought you here. And if you see me again,
especially if I’m with my family, my little girl, you don’t know me, we don’t know each other,
far as I’m concerned that dude you kicked it with was nothing more than a ghost, you got it?”
Michael nodded. Sampson passed the bills over and nodded towards the street.
“Go on, now. Don’t go getting yourself killed over some stupid shit.”
Michael closed the door and heard the door locks click as Sampson pulled into the street
and gently drove away.

276

He watched the house for a day and a night. He tried to find a tree to perch in but it became too
cold at night and he was forced to descend and curl in the heart of a bush, still shivering all night
long, listening to the sound of cars passing and falling.
He woke once, thinking he was in the desert, under the stars, the blue-skinned man from
the train tending the fire with a long branch. “Hello, old friend,” he said flashing his baby-sized
teeth. But that was just a dream. In the morning, with his eyes still closed, he smelled coffee and
imagined he was back in New Mexico. He knew he wasn’t but held onto the daydream for a
moment, visualizing Grandpa sleeping on the chair, the fire having burned down to coals and
ash. He imagined getting up and blowing on them until they sparked again. Added more wood,
poking and moving the ashes until the flames caught again. He fell asleep again then, the smell
of woodsmoke still on his clothes, ash falling from the sky. He knew he needed water or food but
didn’t want to move, afraid he would miss a sign, some movement in the house that would signal
someone was home. He learned the rhythm of the street, the city around him, falling into a kind
of trance with it, short, shallow breaths in the morning, frantic roller coasters of motion,
onslaughts of starts and stops, a fit-like kind of energy that rattled on until night when a kind of
smoothing out settled in and stretched through the darkness until dawn when it started all over
again. Over and over hours passed, day turned to night, night turned to day, the house frozen in
time, no motion inside or out as his body began to swell, feel large and alien to him, the meat of
his legs and arms weighing him down, pulling him closer to the earth, as if he had grown
overnight or been a sleep for years and only now woken up, his body continuing to grow in his
slumber. Or maybe gravity was heavier here, the air itself like a palm-print of pressure on his
277
chest. He imagined standing and the world curling around him differently, matter itself rippling,
shifting and moving as he passed, not quite a giant, but large and wide moving the precise
conscious movement of a full-grown man.

When he saw that the porch light had been turned on, he stood up, legs unfolding like a new
colt’s and allowed himself a piss in the bush. The smell was rancid and the stream thick and
yellow. To his ears, the hiss and steam coming off him was loud enough to hear across the street
so when the blinds on the window moved revealing a sliver of motion and light from inside, he
paused mid-stream and held his breath. Satisfied that his position had not been given away, he
continued to piss and then stood stone still against the trunk of a tree, hoping to blend in to the
shadows. A single bird seemed to cry out to him from the branches above.
Unlike New Mexico it never really grew dark here – the sky reflecting back the city glow
in a kind of perpetual false dawn that tricked even the roosters into crowing at all hours of the
night. But since he had been watching the house he hadn’t heard a single bird and so he thought
that this one was special, was asking for help maybe or just calling to see if anyone else was
there. Maybe the bird had fallen asleep and awakened when Michael did, unsure of where he
was, frightened, afraid that all the other birds had died in the night, fallen from the trees, corpses
littering the ground, and he was the only one left. Michael followed these thoughts, shivering,
falling in and out of his own restless delirium until deep in the night when a mid-size diesel
cargo truck with dried mud splatter across its fenders stopped in the middle of the street and then
reversed in to the driveway. He saw the flash of brake lights and then heard the sound of the
cargo door opening followed by hushed voices in speaking in Spanish. He saw a line of men,
perhaps women as well, the shadows didn’t reveal much more than the outline of bodies quickly
278
moving from van to house. Within the span of no more than five minutes, the bay door shut and
the truck pulled away.
He watched it go, brake lights flashing at the intersection before it turned and was gone.
He waited. Still no motion. Only silence. Not even the bird. Michael wondered if the truck had
scared it away. He waited for what felt like hours until the sky began to lighten with the coming
dawn and then with a reflexive look both ways before crossing the street, pulled his jacket tighter
and crossed the street in a jog, slowing only when he was near the front door.
The porch light was still on, moths swirling and banging against the glass cover, the only
sound Michael could hear. He moved closer and opened the screen door, leaning in to listen,
hearing only the dull murmur of a tv or radio. He knocked a tentative knock and then stepped
back into the light, letting the screen door close gently. When there was no answer, he knocked
again, this time rapping his knuckles on the screen door which bounced and amplified the sound.
He worried it was too aggressive but again stood up straight in the light, in full view of the
window if anyone cared to look outside.
The sound of the TV went mute, the light of the screen still flashing from within. He
thought he could smell bacon, tortillas, potatoes. Something sizzling on the stove. He turned to
eye the street, knowing that this was around the time old Chinese people would begin their
walks, arms swinging, stopping to swing their legs, sometimes even walk backwards.
The blinds moved noticeably and he braced himself for the door to open, but instead, he
heard a hiss-like psst from the corner of the house. He turned and a bushy-eyed man he had
never seen before was beckoning him to come over, out of the light, into the shadows on the side
of the house. He looked as if his shirt had been hastily put on, no shoes covering his feet. He
279
motioned again for Michael to come over, to follow him perhaps, and then turned his back on
Michael and began walking away.
Michael paused and then followed, stepping carefully, arms up and ready so he is not
taken using the same trick Sampson used on him. Still, no sooner does he round the corner than
the man is at him, one hand grabbing a fistful of his shirt and the other on his throat, turning him
and pinning him against the wall. With his knee on Michael’s groin, the man raised his left
elbow until his forearm was across Michael’s neck. With the other hand he quickly patted him
down, front of the chest, down the back, around the waist, grabbing Michael’s knife and pulling
it from its sheath in one fluid motion. He looked at it and then slid it into his back pocket. He
released Michael then and pushed him towards the street, speaking a rapid-fire Spanish that
Michael could not comprehend.
“No entiendo. Soy Michael, Leonard’s hijo. Donde esta Maria? I’m looking for Maria ,
she knows me.”
The man slapped Michael hard across the face. “No, Maria,” he said, palm raised and
ready to strike again. “Go, get out of here.”
“Tell her I’m just looking for Antonio, nothing more.”
The man paused and took Michael in.
“Leonard es mi padre.”
“What do you want with him?”
“I just need to talk to him, that’s all.”
“He is already spoken for, but you, you’re alive so leave while you can.”
280
Michael went to say something in response but this time the man punched him squared in
the stomach, Michael crumbling into a ball, gasping for air. The man stood over him and spat,
the spittle spraying across Michael’s face. Without another word he turned and went inside.
Michael stayed curled there, his stomach a knot of pain, his throat still tight and unable to
pull in enough air. After some time had passed and Michael was able to take in a deep breath
without any pain, he stood up, crossed the road and sat on the curb. The sun came up and people
passed him, some looked but most kept their eyes forward and said nothing. Michael could see
the blinds moving on the house. It wasn’t until a police car sped by with its sirens at full-bore
that the door finally opened and Maria came out with a paper grocery bag in her hand, the top
folded over.
She was the same as he remembered her, small and heavy-set, her hair pulled up tight in a
bun that was beginning to show signs of gray. He watched her come, her eyes down. He knew
she was being watched so he just stood up and waited.
“You should not be here.”
“That’s what everyone keeps telling me but I have no where else to go. Please, just help
me find Antonio and I will leave.”
She handed Michael the bag, her eyes looking up the street. “Just take this and go – it is
all I have of yours.”
Michael took it and moved to open it.
“Ah-ah, not here. You open later, ok?”
Michael nodded.
281
“What do you need with him, anyhow. Just go,” she looked back at the house nervously.
“You are making things very difficult for us here. Is no good to attract the eyes of the people.
Please mijo, just leave. Bad things will happen to you if you stay.”
“Bad things have already happened to me. What else is there? Just tell me where Antonio
is and I’ll go.”
She pursed her lips, disappointed and angry. She shook her head and returned back to the
house, the door opening before she even got to the porch and closing softly after she had went in.
He held the bag tightly in one hand and then watched as the porch light went off, having been on
all through the day.
Michael sat on the curb and opened the paper bag. Inside were two aluminum foil
wrapped burritos that he could tell from the smell were filled with eggs. Below that was his knife
wrapped in a handkerchief, a small ivory-handled pistol that he took to be his father’s and most
notably an urn that no doubt held his father’s ashes. There was a small sticky note with an
address placed across the top that Michael quickly snatched and put in his pocket before waving
at the house and walking away.

282
ANTONIO

283

Chapter Twenty-Four
When Leonard returned, Antonio took that as a sign that it was okay for him to leave town. After
Magdalena had been shot, guilt had haunted him, as if he had brought the misfortune down upon
her, as if his desire had attracted the wrong kind of darkness. That night, after jumping in his
truck and driving home, leaving Magdalena and baby Michael by the corn field to sure die, he
swept his Santa Muerte altar into a large plastic trash bag, all of it, all the medicine and sage and
incense and pictures and of course the little figurine herself. Part of him still feared her and her
power and so he wore the same gloves he used when riding horses to touch everything, taking
care to not make eye contact with la Senora. He thought of burning it all but thought that could
be misconstrued the wrong way with the police still trying to piece together who had shot
Magdalena and why. He knew they would never figure it out. There had been a murder a year in
the city as far back as he could remember with only one actually being solved by detectives from
Santa Fe.
Instead, he drove to the dumpster behind Montgomery Ward’s and tossed the bag inside,
hoping that it would find its way to the dump soon. He had packed his things, just clothes and
toiletries, and stopped by Leonard’s house to let him know that he was leaving to California, to
his uncle’s who had promised him a job. He brought along a twelve-pack of beer and together
they drank it on the porch, in silence for the most part, listening to the cicadas and crickets
calling in the night. He made sure to write down his uncle’s number and told him to come stay
and work whenever he was ready.
284
“There’s plenty of work for both of us there and I’ve seen you work, I can vouch for
you.”
Leonard said nothing about work or California but only thanked him for helping out and
taking care of them while he was away. Leonard knew that to the outside world, the sense of
dread and panic that had been spiraling through his insides since that fateful night were somehow
seen as signs of mourning, of being hurt, and upset, caught just as offguard by the killing as
everyone else had been when the news spread through town, when Magdalena’s dad had called
him and told him to come to house, “Quick, something bad has happened, mijo.” It was that term
mijo that made him break down, a term of endearment but also one usually reserved for family,
as if Magdalena’s dad had begun to think of him as a son.

So he left and found a new life in California. A new life where money began to replace his need
for companionship, money and a growing sense of power. He looked in the mirror every night
and saw himself transforming from the boy he was into a man, growing into himself, starting to
fill out, the women starting to notice him, Mexican women anyhow. He found himself
approaching the new life he had always imagined and regretted tossing his altar back in New
Mexico.
He knew he would do anything to find success and he quickly took to the family business
in California, a trucking company that his Uncle’s had famously built from scratch using the G.I.
Bill after the Korean War. At first they had Antonio in the office, doing paperwork and
answering phones, filing. But as time went on and trust began to build, Antonio found himself
being part of the darker side of the transportation business, one that no doubt involved the
transport of people, stolen cars, and weapons and drugs. It was never outright stated that way, but
285
as Antonio became privy to the inner workings of things he began to see the kinds of people that
would only come at certain hours, those who paid in cash, who had “special requests” and whose
invoices were strangely cryptic.
It didn’t take long for Antonio to begin to work outside of the office, often being asked to
collect payments or arrange special shipments that he was instructed to “not ask questions
about.” He listened and talked only when talked to. He was good at making friends and soon
began to develop a reputation as something of a ladies man, even if the ladies who often chose
him were older and divorced.
But still there was that nagging sense of insecurity, that feeling that he was wearing a
mask or pretending to be someone else, to live some other way of life. He thought he was
smarter than the others, especially his cousins whose only redeeming qualities that he could see
were thick forearms and menacing chins. He was never sure what his uncle’s had them do but he
came to resent them and their cliquish nature. They called him family but Antonio wasn’t invited
to the back-door meetings and had once even been left behind to “tend business” while the entire
family went to Mazatlan on holiday.
Piles of envelopes filled with hundred dollar bills would pour in and soon they began
paying drivers in cash only. They put Antonio in charge of paying the drivers and he began to
skim a little cut off the top, something he explained to the driver’s as an extra tax in case in case
the IRS got a little nosey. No one questioned it, the money was that good.
It was around the time that Leonard arrived in Los Angeles that Antonito came to work
for the family. Antonito, a name that immediately put Antonio on edge due to its similarity to his
own, was less a doppelganger and more a full-blown nemesis. He came straight from the rancho
and spoke the same rough-edged Spanish that his cousin’s did and seemed to know where all the
286
best whores and whorehouses were in Los Angeles within a week of arriving. Beyond that, he
seemed to see right through Antonio, or at least make him feel like he knew him, from before.
While they put Leonard to work at a chop shop after finding out how mechanical he was, they
left Antonito to work the yard, managing the loading and unloading of trailers.
Antonito befriended the drivers in a way that Antonio did not. Before Antonito came, pay
day for the drivers consisted of picking up their envelope and going out on their own in search of
a good time. With Antonito around, pay day became a day of celebration right there on the
grounds. Antonito would bring in booze and girls and turn up the music loud, all of it an affront
to Antonio’s own sense of propriety and what a business, legitimate or not, should look like.
But maybe that was what was needed as the driver’s had begun to grumble about the tax
and the way that he would hold himself above everyone there. It was a weakness that Antonito
seemed to sense and began to exploit; making fun of the lop-sided walk that Antonio thought he
had cured himself of with an extra insole on his left foot. It had been years since someone had
made fun of his appearance and when he saw Antonito affecting to sound like him, stand like
him, and walk a crooked walk while asking for a “health tax to fix my shortened leg,” rage built
up within him to the point that he told the jefe, his Uncle Memo about the transgression.
In this world, family is the blood that binds and in the same way a brother is closer than a
nephew, a nephew is closer than a cousin. And so, Uncle Memo, broad-bellied with a chest full
of curly hair that he loved to show off by leaving the top three buttons on his shirt undone, called
them in for what he called a “family meeting” with his own sons, Antonio, and Antonito present.
“This thing between you two is bad for business, it’s bad for morale,” he told Antonito
with a look of disgust on his face. “This thing you do, making fun of his disability, maybe it
287
makes the drivers happy, maybe it doesn’t, I don’t know. That is my dead sister’s kid,
entiendes?”
Antonito nodded, hat in his hand, looking down at the floor, shoulders slumped. A weak
posture that Antonio thought was all show, knowing how he liked to strut with his chest out,
shoulders back, and head held high no matter what the circumstance.
“He’s an asshole,” Uncle Memo said, motioning towards Antonio and laughing.
“Everyone knows this. Since he was a little boy he was like this. But he’s family… and you are
not. So this puts me in a difficult situation because assholes or not, I like both of you. But my
own father had a way of dealing with this kind of thing. He read the Bible and was a big believer
that envy took root in the eyes while a wicked mouth was the result of a tongue. I can’t have you
walking around here without an eye or a tongue though right?”
Everyone laughed except for Antonio who looked surprised when Uncle Memo pulled a
pair of needle-nosed pliers from inside his desk and threw them on the table.
“Instead, Antonio here will just take two of your front teeth – you choose which one,
mijo. I don’t want to hear any shit-talking about family again, ok?”
“Jefe, please.”
Uncle Memo waved him off and walked out, his sons, Antonio’s cousins, holding
Antonito down by shoulders and then gripping his jaw and holding his mouth open. They
motioned towards Antonio who watched his Uncle Memo leave the room. He picked up the
pliers, his hands moist with sweat, and then slowly, painfully, twisted the top two teeth of
Antonito until broke free in a burst of blood that the cousins quickly stopped by stuffing a
handkerchief in. Throughout it all, Antonito didn’t flinch, didn’t cry out, didn’t move.
288
“He took that shit like a man,” they would say on the streets. Antonio could see and hear
it already. Imagining Antonito holding his head high, chest out like a rooster, his missing two
front teeth a sign of his prowess, a reminder that he talked shit to the boss and won.
Instead of feeling satisfied or filled with relief as he had imagined, Antonio left defeated.
There was no begging, no crying like a little bitch, nothing that he had hoped for. This was a
world that was still alien to him, one that he knew he could never full be a part of. That night he
called on Leonard and Sampson and convinced them that the Jefe had asked them to do a
collection on an unpaid bill. They both agreed to back up Antonio, to be the heavies as he called
it. He gave them each a thousand dollars cash and then drove them to the house in San Gabriel
where Antonito stayed. By the end of that night, Leonard would be dead and Antonito missing.

289

MICHAEL

290
Chapter Twenty-Five
The house was easy to find. With the address Maria had put in the bag and the money that
Sampson had given him, Michael had called a taxi, gave him the address, and made him first
stop at a gun shop address he’d ripped from the payphone yellow pages. He had him wait while
he bought a small box of .32 bullets for the pistol before continuing on to the address Maria had
given him.
When they came to the street, Michael had the driver pass the address and circle the
block before having him pull into a liquor store parking lot and leaving him there. It was mid-day
when he arrived and so he went out behind the liquor store where he was sure no one was
watching him and palmed the gun that was in the bag. He was sure this was the pistol that his
grandfather had given to Leonard, the one he promised to one day give to him. Now here it was.
He opened the chamber and magazine and put six bullets in before putting the rest of the box in
his back pocket. He then tucked the pistol in his pants near his belly, re-sheathed the knife
around his waist and then hid the bag with his father’s urn and ashes under the trash dumpster,
confident that he would be back to retrieve it tonight.
Again, he waited until night fell before approaching the house, a small two-story home
surrounded by a chain-link fence, the weeds having overtaken the grass months ago. He eyed the
front, walking up to the porch and hearing nothing or sensing no motion inside circled around the
back where he came across Cochise tied to a chain. The dog rose up with the tremor of old age
when he entered the yard, an old steel bowl for food and one for water, both empty, overturned
nearby. There was no telling how long she had been chained here, the hair on her back ragged
but thin enough to see her ribs showing through. She moved to bark but only a dry coughing
291
sound came out and as Michael rushed to her, she began to shiver and then closed her eyes and
went stiff.
Michael shook her, putting a hand to her chest and belly, no sign of movement or motion.
He felt tears coming on but ground his teeth down until he was sure he was going to crack his
own teeth and turned towards the house. The back door beckoned like a black hole, the door
having been broken off the frame and hanging there ajar. There were no lights on inside, only
darkness.
Michael pulled the pistol out and edged towards the door, easing it open with his knee
before feeling around inside the door for the light switch. A foul smell of rotten food and trash
came from inside the kitchen and something scurried out of sight as the lights came on. It was
obvious that rats or mice had worked their way through the cereal boxes on the counter, the
cardboard edges grooved with teeth marks and the unmistakable black droppings of a rodent
mixed in with the remaining bits of packaging about. A molded over soup pan sat on the stove,
apparently unappealing to whatever creatures had been roaming here.
He kept moving through the house, one room at a time, turning on each light. The home
was cleaner than he expected but relatively barren. There was a picture of his mother and him as
a baby on the wall that he stopped to eye before continuing up the stairs.
A door was open at the top of the stairs and inside Michael could see a lamp that had
been turned on its side, the bulb having melted a hole in the cover. He could see a leg and a foot,
jeans and boots and as the full room came into view it was obvious that there had been a
struggle, broken glass and blood on the floor, Antonio snoring with his back against the wall,
legs splayed, a gun in his hand and a deep black stain that had spread across his abdomen and
onto the floor. Blood.
292
In the opposite corner he saw the body of another man, head rocked back in a pose of
ecstatic pain, jaw open, two front teeth unmistakably missing. His ankles and wrists had been
bound to a chair with rope but his face had been melted, burned beyond recognition, nothing
more than scar tissue, an IV rack at his side feeding into the vein in his arm, two muted nose
holes for air. On the floor next to him was another body, this one with part of its scalp hanging
off its head like a matt of coagulated hair, some head wound that had long since passed opening
up his insides and letting it all out.
Antonio began to cough and Michael turned on him. His eyes were still closed the cough
seemed to come from some deep place inside that shook his whole body. One eye opened then
and lit up with recognition.
“Michael? Is that you?”
Michael said nothing, moving towards Antonio and kicking the gun out of his hand.
A look of confusion crossed Antonio’s face and then a broken smile. “I have been
dreaming of this moment my whole life. I never thought it would be you walking through that
door though… You have come to find out how your daddy died, verdad?”
“Did you kill my mother?”
“This? This is what you want to know?” He laughed then, a quick burst of laughter that
filled with fluid and turned into a ragged cough. “I did not kill your mother, I love you and your
mother like my own. Please, help me up, we have to go.”
Antonio motioned towards Michael but Michael didn’t move. He thought of Cochise’s
body outside, of the door and the kitchen. There was no telling when this had happened or who
would return soon to investigate.
“Just one sip of water and I will tell you everything.”
293
Michael backed away and into the bathroom. There was no cup so he upended a bottle of
mouthwash and then refilled it with water from the tap. He moved back to the room slowly, half
expecting Antonio to be sitting up straight with a gun aimed at him but no, he was in the same
position, eyes closed and snoring again.
He went to him and nudged his head with the mouthwash bottle. Antonio’s eyes opened
and looked out at him, glossy and dim.
“Ah, mijo, you have returned. I thought you would leave me here to die.”
“It’s still early.”
He held the bottle to his lips and drank greedily, in oversized gulps that made him arch
back and groan before rolling onto his side and vomiting, the water coming up in a frothy spray
of vomit mixed with blood.
“This is no good,” he said. He pushed himself upright. “But that feels better.”
Michael kept his distance only watching. “Who are these men?”
“That one,” Antonio said motioning towards the bound figure. “He is the edgeless face.
He is that way because of me. And the other? When someone strikes me on the cheek, I do not
turn the other way, not like other men. I strike them down with a thunderbolt. They are the ones
ho helped to kill your daddy – they kill one of mine, I kill them all – women, children y todo –
that is why it has come to an end like this.”
“And my mother? Were you the one who shot her?”
“Mijo, I might have been your father. I always saw you as my son. Did I love your
mother – yes – desire her? Who didn’t? But she loved your father and so I live with that. I live
with that even now – I am not evil. How can you ask me something like that? I would have
raised you as my own son. We thought your daddy was missing in the war – we were certain.
294
She was going to start over again here with you, in California. But the gods had other plans I
guess. That bullet must have followed your daddy all the way from Vietnam.”
He thought then of his dream of a man haunted by ghosts, gnarled roots and crooked
skeletal figures rustling in the trees wherever he went. Was it his father who carried that metallic
taste in his throat, buzzing in his head? Was it really the restless ghosts of war who had trailed
his father home and brought this upon all that he cared about?
“I’ve made a mess out of my life. All I ever wanted to do was to be good for you…” His
head drooped low, his jaw snapping shut and then opening again, like a silent gasp for air. “Help
me get this man out of here. Take me home with you.”
Michael passed his eyes over the scene once again.
“Everybody wants the scars without bleeding first. This is what I know best, I don’t know
how to be anything else.”
In the corner, the edgeless face murmured. It was trying to speak, restless. Michael took a
good look at him then. His eyes, mouth, and nose burned away, ears melted down to nubs. It was
hard to tell the front from the back, a hairless raw and red ridge above holes like huge puckered
pores that he took to be eyes.
Michael placed the pistol back in his waistline and walked downstairs as Antonio began
to moan. Under the moonlight, Michael found a shovel in the tool shed and began digging a
grave for Cochise.

295
Epilogue
The owl had become a problem. At first it was a nuisance, a thing for the women to be afraid of,
its late-night hooting like an ancient ghost come back to life. But later, after a month or two of it
feasting on field mice and the like it decided to take up in a tree overlooking Grandpa’s
henhouse. The first night he knew it had moved in was right after the full moon when the hounds
had went crazy barking at the shadows in the trees. Grandpa went outside expecting to find
coyotes sniffing around the hen house but instead he saw the long black shadow of the owl pass
between him and the moon, like a winged specter that was watching him, pacing him as he
walked. He kept half-expecting it to swoop down and snatch his hat if not outright digs its talons
into his shoulders in an attempt to carry him off.
He checked the locks on the pens, hushed the dogs and then went under the roof of the
porch and waited, eyeing the sky the whole time. He wanted to see if it would return and after
about a half hour or so when it didn’t he went in and slept.
The next morning he saw that Ol’ Red, his favorite rooster had been decapitated
sometime in the night. He knew it was the owl, what else could it be? The locks on the cage were
still secured and the owl had no doubt swooped down as Ol’ Red strutted out the door to greet
the morning sun. The fact that he’d only taken off with his head was a sign that Grandpa took to
mean Ol’ Red put up a fight, probably twisting and turning and digging his talons into the owl’s
underside before he met his end.
Over the course of the next week it took two hens, a rooster, and attacked one of the
dogs. He didn’t tell his wife about it, knowing that she would see it as a bad sign, an omen that
would require old Agapito to come out of the hills for a ceremony. Still, he figured he’d better do
something about it before it attacked one of the horses or god forbid the grandkids and so he
296
loaded up his hunting rifle and carried a fishing chair far from the house, opposite the henhouse
and the tree, and waited for nightfall with nothing more than thermos and a flashlight. When his
wife asked where he was going and what he was hunting, he told her he thought he saw signs of
coyotes coming around again and with her blessing he went into the late evening light and
prepared to wait. He thought it would be a long night, prepared to stay up until dawn if needed,
but right at the edge of day when the sun disappeared behind the ridge of mountains to the west,
right when the whole world hums with that afterglow of a long, hot day, he saw it take flight
from the tree.
It was larger than any bird he’d ever seen and the wingspan on it must’ve been at least six
foot across. The sight of it dropping from the tree like a bushel of hay and then opening up its
wings before it hit the earth and swooping right on up and over him to the sky was a sight he’d
never quite be able to describe to anyone the rest of his years. It touched him, moved him
somehow, and yet it didn’t take long for that old fear to come roaring back as it angled towards
the feedhouse and pulled up with a level of control that amazed Grandpa. It perched there, a dark
silhouette against the rapidly fading light of the sky, a sentinel from another world, or a
harbinger of evil yet to come.
Grandpa pulled the rifle up to his shoulder, peered down the scope and let off three quick
rounds, the first missing entirely, the second catching a piece of the roof and startling into the
flight, the third hitting it square just as its wings opened, Grandpa swearing he could hear the
bullet hitting home like it had hit a side of beef. The shadow turned sideways and the owl fell out
of sight with a cry.
Grandpa turned on the flashlight and ran as fast he could towards where he’d last seen the
owl, praying he didn’t turn his ankle in a hole or get bit by some sleeping rattlesnake that he
297
woke. He turned the corner of the feedhouse and began walking more carefully, sweeping the
flashlight in a wide arc until he saw feathers and blood. He hadn’t killed the owl outright, the
animal pulling itself through the underbrush in search of shelter, leaving behind a trail of blood-
stained grass. He knew killing owls was illegal but eyed the feathers that had fallen from it as
well, knowing that they were prized for medicine.
Finally, he caught up to it, the animal beginning to shudder, having turned on its back and
facing him, its eyes and face mute with the indifference of nature. There was no pain registered
there but Grandpa knew it was dying. He didn’t want to shoot it again and he didn’t want to get
any closer so he just sat and waited, knowing that if he left it the coyotes would carry it off. He
thought of the year before and the way the wolves had fought over Michael’s umbilical cord and
the owl that had stolen it from both of them. He wondered if this were that same owl, if this were
some sign he should be heeding or prepared to read. He knew that he would bury it and tell no
one about it, say he found some owl feathers underneath the tree, sell them to Agapito maybe to
do his medicine with. Until then, the owl watched him, its chest falling and rising steadily,
Grandpa drinking from his Thermos while he waited for it to bleed out.

Abstract (if available)

Linked assets

University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses

Conceptually similar

PDF

Earth, sky, and morning light: naturalism in Proulx’s Wyoming Stories

PDF

Korean American han: forgotten histories, haunted spaces

PDF

The monstrous city: urban sprawl, Los Angeles, and the literature of the fantastic

PDF

“Where beasts' spirits wail”: the Great War and animal rights

PDF

So funny I forgot to laugh: the female comedic voice in contemporary American short fiction

PDF

Mercy and metaphor: the empathy era and its discontents

PDF

The connoisseur of pain: a novel; and, A new and sharper vision: sensuous aesthetics as theological immersion in Terrence Malick's The tree of life, Thomas Kinkade's landscapes, and Ron Hansen's ...

PDF

Becoming multiple: cyborg aesthetics and the inversion of horror

PDF

Blue‐collar, white‐collar: Raymond Carver's and John Cheever's versions of the American (anti) pastoral (a critical study); and, Beyond the lights and other stories (a short story collection)

PDF

Americans abroad and not Constantinople

PDF

Take me with you: critical encounters with sex work literature

PDF

Claiming our space

PDF

In defense of “prose”; and, Concrete flag

PDF

Authority and the failed justification of evil in Cormac McCarthy's Blood meridian, or The evening redness in the West

PDF

Translation: three contemporary metaphors (a critical musing on the profession); and, Guises: stories (a short story collection)

PDF

Between homes: moving house in the Victorian novel and popular culture; and, Heroine (poems)

PDF

The intimate estrangement of poetry, drama and opera

PDF

From Prutkov to Kharms: tracing nonsense in the Russian literary tradition

PDF

The pantoum across the Pacific: the circumnavigation of a poetic form; and, Why can’t it be tenderness (poems)

PDF

Synthetic form and deviant transcendence: interfaces between 21st c. poetry & science; & In the crocodile gardens: poems

Asset Metadata

Creator Muniz, Christopher Michael (author)

Core Title The Pocho as palimpsest: reframing ‘deviant’ masculinity as resistance; and, Owl medicine: a novel

School College of Letters, Arts and Sciences

Degree Doctor of Philosophy

Degree Program Literature and Creative Writing

Publication Date 10/07/2020

Defense Date 08/29/2018

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag ethnic literature,Fiction,film,identity,Literature,masculinity,OAI-PMH Harvest,race/ethnicity

Format application/pdf (imt)

Language English

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

Advisor Bender, Aimee (committee chair), Handley, William (committee chair), Saito, Leland (committee member)

Creator Email chris.muniz@insomniac.com,cmuniz@usc.edu

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-c89-75908

Unique identifier UC11668801

Identifier etd-MunizChris-6805.pdf (filename),usctheses-c89-75908 (legacy record id)

Legacy Identifier etd-MunizChris-6805.pdf

Dmrecord 75908

Document Type Dissertation

Format application/pdf (imt)

Rights Muniz, Christopher Michael

Type texts

Source University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

Access Conditions The author retains rights to his/her dissertation, thesis or other graduate work according to U.S. copyright law. Electronic access is being provided by the USC Libraries in agreement with the a...

Repository Name University of Southern California Digital Library

Repository Location USC Digital Library, University of Southern California, University Park Campus MC 2810, 3434 South Grand Avenue, 2nd Floor, Los Angeles, California 90089-2810, USA