Big Maria (27 page)

It was the cleanliness that gave it away. It was all too new. It usually only took the desert a matter of weeks to age a thing. The sun, the wind, the sand, all merciless. The only age these buildings showed was a new kind of old. Like seeing the seams of the latex on an actor’s old-age makeup.

“Let’s take a look around. Find some water. Anything else useful,” Harry said.

“Don’t push it. Get in, get out,” Frank said.

“Ain’t nobody around, Frank,” Harry said. “And I’d rather get caught than die from thirst.”

Ricky jumped in. “Place ain’t big. Got to be water somewhere.”

They led the burros through a wide door into one of the buildings and tied them up. The burros seemed pleased with the shade. As a reward, Ricky gave each of them a PayDay candy bar, which they downed without chewing.

The three men walked down the freshly paved street, each carrying as many empty water bottles as they could. Their eyes darted around for any sign of movement. They had to rely on their eyes, as the artillery fire drowned out most sound.

Inside the next building they found a big open space with a kitchen. The faucet yielded no water and the stoves no heat. It was like an Iraqi model home.

Next to the building was an outhouse that had no smell. Harry peered down the hole and took a big whiff. “Sucker’s fresh. You fellas look around. I’m going to christen this barge.”

“Grab the toilet paper when you’re done,” Frank said. “Miss July chafed my backside.”

Harry smiled. “Two rolls. Now you glad we came to town?”

“I’ll be glad when we’re at the mine. Until then I’m sticking with ornery.” Frank gave Harry a wink to tell him there were no hard feelings. “Enjoy your shit.”

A
fter a failed door-to-door campaign to find water, Ricky and Frank were ready to give up. Each interior was no different from the one that preceded it. The same faux-weathered furniture and nonfunctional fixtures.

“Got no reason to believe that if we keep looking we’re going to find anything different,” Frank said.

At that moment, the artillery fire in the distance stopped. They both jumped. They had become so accustomed to it that the absence was jarring. But it wasn’t replaced by silence. It was replaced by what sounded like giant pots and pans clanking together. Ricky and Frank turned toward the sound.

They watched with horror as an M1 Abrams tank rolled through the intersection thirty yards in front of them. A perfect parade side view of a vehicle they had only seen in movies. It was beautifully frightening. As quickly as it had appeared, it was gone.

Frank and Ricky ran as fast as their battered bodies would take them.

H
arry sat on the Army-issue toilet seat and wiped his ass with the Army-issue toilet paper. He was going to have to break it to Frank softly that the Army TP wasn’t any less abrasive than the magazine. Maybe the government thought a sore ass made a meaner soldier.

His thoughts were interrupted by gunfire. Automatic weapon fire, to be precise. It was so loud, so close, that it sounded to Harry like it was inside the outhouse with him.

Being in the single-most defenseless position, Harry did the only thing he could think to do. Panic. Losing all control of logic and filled with small-animal terror, he pulled up his pants and pushed at the outhouse door. It didn’t budge. He threw his body at the door, coming close to dislocating his shoulder.

He screamed through tears. He was trapped. The gunfire drowned out his wailing. It sounded like a war outside. He decided to hide in the outhouse rather than attempt an escape. Only one hiding place in an outhouse. He looked down into the deep hole where he had just deposited a considerable load.

“Why do I always end up covered in shit?”

The door swung in quickly, hitting him in the back and almost knocking him into the hole. He caught himself. He threw his hands over his head and turned. “Don’t shoot. Don’t shoot.”

“Time to go,” Frank said to Harry, grabbing him by the shirt and pulling him out of the outhouse. Ricky stood over Frank’s shoulder.

“They’re shooting” was all Harry could get out.

“Fake bullets. War games. Army’s on the other side of town playing soldier. We can’t get shot, but we can get caught. Got to get back to the burros. Hide and pray.”

Harry nodded stupidly, still in a daze. He reached back to the outhouse and grabbed the two toilet-paper rolls. He wanted to salvage whatever pornography he still had. He stopped and swung the door open and closed. “I get it. It opens in.”

T
hey made it back to the room with the burros without incident. That was about the best news they could report.

Outside, the gunfire continued. The mortar fire on the mountain started again to the east. And the metal grind of tanks rolled through the streets. They knew they were the sounds of pretend war, but they weren’t any less enveloping and frightening than the real thing. Especially for civilians in a piss-poor hiding place.

They didn’t have a choice. Waiting was their only option. If Frank, Harry, and Ricky tried to leave Baghdadville, they would be seen on the open plain. They had to make do with where they were and what they had. Suck or no suck.

The stairs leading to the second floor were wide enough for the burros. The men tugged on the reins to get the beasts to climb the steps, but the animals would take a step, think better of it, and back up, forcing the process to start over. It was as if God was directing an amateurish and perverse interpretive dance through the burro.

There was so much noise it was impossible to gauge its direction. There was no close or far away. Only loud and louder. The mortar on the mountain was the farthest but the loudest. It was like drowning in sound. Underwater without a sense of up or down.

Harry sat on the fifth step of the stairs pulling at the reins of the immovable burro. The animal’s neck stretched, but its feet remained rooted to the floor.

“I’m going to kill you. I’m going to chop you into little donkey pieces. Climb these stairs.”

“Maybe we should leave them down here,” Ricky said.

Ricky had tried to help by pushing the burro’s ass. But the first time the burro threatened to kick, he backed off. The pain in his ribs reminded him how stupid it was to stand behind a burro.

“We don’t get them upstairs, might as well stay down here, too. They find the burros, won’t take another minute, they’ll find us,” Frank said.

“They got to want to go,” Ricky said, reaching into the burro’s pack. He pulled out a handful of candy bars.

Ricky opened up a PayDay and held it in front of the burro. It tried to take a bite, but he pulled it away, walking backward up the stairs. The burro didn’t move for a few seconds, as if it knew it was being tricked. But its desire for candy outweighed any insight a burro was capable of, and soon both burros were standing on the landing of the second floor happily eating their peanutty reward.

With the burros as hidden as they were going to get, the best Harry, Frank, and Ricky could do was sit on the floor with their backs to the wall. Adrenaline dip, the heat, or plain boredom, it could have been all three, but within fifteen minutes the three men were sound asleep.

While outside, the war raged on.

R
icky woke to the sound of voices. He froze. How long had he been asleep?

He turned. Frank and Harry slept soundly.

The voices were close, but how close?

Frank let out a sharp snort that sounded like the first tug on the cord of a chainsaw. Ricky put his hand over Frank’s mouth. Frank’s eyes opened in brief confusion. When he locked eyes with Ricky, he calmed. Frank woke up Harry in a similar fashion.

The gunfire had died down, though occasional bursts could still be heard. The voices grew from murmurs to words. Getting closer. But not as close as Ricky had first thought. Outside the
building. Not inside. Not yet. Two voices, but no way to know how many people.

Ricky closed his eyes, held his breath, and listened.

“Quit dragging your ass, Larios. Why you always last? Is it a Mexican thing?”

“I’ll show you a Mexican thing,
pendejo
.”

“I’ll pass on that.”

“Let’s find a place, dig in. I’m tired of all this walking.”

“That what you going to say to Hajji? Don’t shoot me, bro. My feets hurt.”

“Fuck you, Gung Ho. You really think we going to learn something today going to keep us alive over there? If we ain’t learned it yet, we ain’t gonna.”

“Ten minutes. But only if you got a cig for me.”

“Done. I know how much you brothers love menthols, but alls I got is Marlboro Reds. Man smokes.”

“I got your man smoke.”

Laughter followed. The two talkers and two other men. Four men total.

Upstairs, the three men and two burros listened to the boots on the concrete floor below. The men entering the building.

Ricky’s stomach turned pukey. His skin quivered. Curious, one of the burros took a step toward the stairs. Ricky rose and tiptoed to the burro. He pulled a candy bar out of his pocket and fed it to the animal. The other burro took a step forward. He neighed, but it was drowned out by a fortunate volley of gunfire. Ricky took a deep inhale and quickly found another candy bar.

The voices continued below.

“You going to see your lady before we ship out?”

“Coming out Wednesday. You?”

“Wednesday, too. With my boys. Going to take them to the old prison in Yuma.”

“I’ve done that. Cooler than you’d think. Takes like an hour. Can’t kill a day, but it’s educational and shit. Wouldn’t’ve wanted to be a con back then.”

“You hear that?”

Ricky was pretty sure he was going to throw up. He stroked the neck of the burro and waited for the sound of boots on the stairs. Frank and Harry sat resigned to their fate, both of them shaking their heads in disgust. Nothing left to do but get caught. No excuse or flash of cleavage was going to get them out of this speeding ticket.

The burro took a step away from the stairs. Its hooves clopped on the hard floor. To Ricky, the steps sounded like explosions.

No voices from downstairs, but the distinct sound of a rifle being engaged. Then all hell broke loose.

T
he mad cacophony of gunfire and yelling sounded like a thousand people fighting in a closet. Boots shrieked and skidded on the floor. The words, mostly four-letter, echoed in shouts. At least six distinct voices fought for dominant volume above the pounding report of assault rifles.

The volume was so abrupt, Ricky felt like he had been socked in the stomach. He wanted to cry and puke and run at the same time.

When the ruckus and gunfire finally stopped, it was followed by laughter.

“I think we’re all dead.”

More laughter and a few playful fuck-yous.

“I’m calling bullshit on you, fucker. You shot me after I killed you. Where’s our observer?”

“Taking a leak. How we going to tally this?”

“That was fucking nuts. My ears are still ringing. Can’t hear a fucking thing. Why didn’t you dumbfucks wait until we were outside?”

“We didn’t know you were in here.”

“Sure we did. It was strategy. You trapped yourselves. If we’re the insurgents, we’re going to motherfucking insurge.”

“Why couldn’t it be like regular laser tag without the sound? My head is pounding.”

“Supposed to ready us for live fire.”

“What the fuck do we do now? We’re all dead.”

More footsteps.

“What the hell? You couldn’t wait until I was done pissing?”

“Some fucking observer. All you observed was your wang.”

“Let’s head back. Maybe the monitors on these things can tell us who killed who when.”

“I definitely killed you, fucker.”

“Zombie kill. You killed me from beyond the grave.”

And with that, the soldiers left. Their voices, laughter, and boots grew fainter.

Ricky swallowed the bile in his throat and turned to Harry and Frank. They both shrugged.

“They’re gone,” Ricky whispered.

“Even the US Army can’t mess with our destiny,” Harry said.

“Dumb luck,” Frank said. “Nothing but dumb luck.”

“You say tomato.” Harry laughed. “Eventually you’re going to see. Destiny, luck, fate, three sides of the same coin.”

“A coin only has two sides, Harry,” Ricky said.

“Heads, tails, and the side. Sometimes a coin lands on its side.”

R
amón tapped Bernardo’s head with the tip of his boot. Bernardo grumbled and swatted lazily at the foot but didn’t wake up. Ramón stepped on one of his brother’s fingers, slowly putting pressure on it and grinding it into the hardpack. Bernardo woke abruptly, squinting up at Ramón and pulling his finger from under his foot.

“Why step on fingers?” Bernardo put his finger in his mouth, immediately removing it and spitting out dirt.

“Worky is gone,” Ramón said. “I looked all over. In the rocks. Up there. Over there. I thought he was taking a dump, a squirt, but I am now sure he bolted, because...” Ramón trailed off, chewing the inside of his cheek.

Bernardo sat up, knowing the news was bad. “Because why?”

“Because unless you have candy in your pocket, he left with all the food. And some of the water. And the good flashlight. And my baseball cap. And some other stuff.”

“Did he take the
mota
?”

Ramón shook his head. “It is in the bag I use as a pillow. So there is a bright side.”

Bernardo nodded. “Does
she
know?”

“About the weed or Worky?”

Bernardo stood up. “I better tell her.”

M
ercedes listened to Bernardo with a surprising amount of control. When he was done, she clapped her hands together loudly, rose, and collected what was left of their supplies.
“Let’s catch that thief. Can’t have gotten much of a head start. Only been light for an hour.”

She dropped to a knee and ran her hands along the dirt and gravel. She sucked a finger and held it in the air. She closed her eyes and sniffed loudly. Finally, she picked up a small stone, popped it in her mouth, rolled it around, and spit it out.