THE BATS: A NOVEL CHAPTER
(For previous chapters, go to writingunchained.substack.com and click on Archive)
8.
LIANA TOOK A STRAW shopping basket from a kitchen nail and looped it over her shoulder. Leaving the house by the front door, she crossed the garden and dragged open the high entry gate, shooing the dogs back in.
The lake shone in the midday sun. A tall boy in a leather jacket she had taken for a neighbor the day before stood against a wall, cradling a mobile, watching her. He had a flat, pitted face and thick ears that curled. She walked to her car at the foot of the dirt lane and checked that the doors and trunk were locked. Then she turned and walked past the boy, who followed her with his eyes, nodding to whatever was coursing through his earbuds.
Each step along the path to the village lay deep in sense memory: passing the boarded tannery where the neighbors bred fighting cocks, claws scratching the asbestos laminate roof as they strutted; warm maize aroma from the tortilla maker, discs dropping off the conveyor. It was cold in winter in her blue uniform, she remembered, backpack loaded with government school books, Beatriz sending her and her brother off with hot atole corn drink and a sweet roll, their parents flaked somewhere in the house, together or alone or with others.
She reached the high colonnade bordering the plaza. Sunday noon, and the market was in full swing. Ranchers in jeans and polished boots stood on the running boards of their pickups, banda music with jumpy tubas pumping from stereos. Sweet smell of fresh-baked churros, acrid aroma of tripe on an open griddle.
“Goodness, Blondie, is it you?” croaked a wizened flower lady with plastic buckets of irises, tuberoses and gladioli, offering a snaggletoothed smile. Liana selected an array of white lilies, to which the crone added green leaves and lagrimas, baby’s breath.
She bore the arrangement to the municipal building at the corner of the plaza. Armed police cordoned the entrance, two open pickups full of masked federal soldiers parked nearby. She saw, at the foot of the building, a black ribbon, a cross, a geranium in a tin, and a stack of dried bouquets laid like firewood. A circle of dark blood still stained the stones. Beside a framed photo, someone had inscribed the beloved teacher’s name: Virgilio Suárez Castañon.
Above, scrawled on the wall in black spray paint, a fresh graffito said: Milenio.
As she stepped forward to lay the lilies, a federale wearing a black ski mask placed an Uzi across her chest.
An old woman passed, murmured something, then crossed herself.
Liana stared the soldier down until he stepped aside and let her kneel and place her bouquet.
Walking away, she saw few men who were not old or young, army or police. Boys stood before noisy videojuegos in the telephone kiosk where her father used to shout into a heavy black receiver at his theatrical agent before house phones were available in Tezcatlan. Next door at the telegraph window, women in shawls waited to receive money wired home by the village’s absent men.
In the unlit general store she bought candles against the outages that beset the house in the summer rains, as nobody ever replaced the old fuse box. She bought light bulbs, matches, and a stick of Chinese borax chalk to kill cucarachas. “You’re back,” said the proprietor, a somber man called Chuy who used to go on about his youth as an indocumento in Fresno.
Liana Altos, daughter of El Caminante, the gringo loco whose wife drowned on the lake of Tezcatlan and who was now dead himself.
Outside, she stepped among little pyramids of avocados, tomatoes, citrus on colored oilcloth. Shaved cactus ears, spiny red garambullo fruit. She selected red peppers, onions, limes and cilantro, placing them deep in Beatriz’ straw bag. Eggs, milk, queso ranchero, tortillas, a half kilo. “Spicy!” a woman cautioned, ladling salsa into a plastic bag. As if Liana didn’t regularly forage San Francisco’s Mission District for chiles serrano, keep a separate salsa pan at home so it wouldn’t burn Richard’s pale lips.
“Liana!”
Shielding her eyes, she saw a woman beckoning from the corner of the plaza. She was squeezing oranges into glasses, two small girls wrapped around her legs. As Liana neared, the woman dried her hands on her jeans and gathered Liana in an embrace.
“Tania,” Liana said, laughing. “Qué milagro.” She gripped Tania’s shoulders and gazed at her.
Tania jabbed a green straw in a colored glass. “Here, take it.”
They sat on a bench sipping fresh juice while Tania’s girls occupied themselves with a puppy. Across the plaza, colliding musics baffle the air: thumping norteño CD’s, a children’s marching band, church bells.
“So where do you live now, chica? Tania asked.
“San Francisco.”
“Ah. Do you ever see Flaco?”
Liana smiled. “No.”
Everyone was Skinny, or Fatty, had a nickname, breaking down the Castilian appellations. So did every narcotraficante: El Barbie, El Chapo, El Piloto. Liana realized Tania must imagine San Francisco to be a village like this. Or maybe San Francisco del Rincón, a town in the next state.
Tania had run off before graduation with a boy named Ramón from the next village, crazy in love. Now she was round and tanned and wore old sneakers, made juice in the plaza. Liana wondered if these children were by Ramón and if he was still around, or if he lived and worked somewhere in California, perhaps, like she did, and if he ever came back.
A pack of noisy boys crowded past in crisp new football jerseys, shorts and sneakers.
“Who paid for those?”
“The only people with money around here.” Tania nodded towards the municipal building and the soldiers. “You heard about maestro Virgilio?”
“Si.”
“Ay, hermana.” Tania searched for Liana’s eyes. “So are you here to stay?”
“I have no plan,” she said, surprised to hear herself put it that way. She nodded towards Tania’s girls. “Ramón’s?”
“Si.”
“Where is he?”
Her shoulders slumped. Tears filled her eyes. “They took him for a ride. They said they were going to offer him a job. It’s been two months.”
Liana put her arm around Tania’s shoulders.
“You wait, that’s all you can do,” Tania said.
Two horses and their riders sauntered along the north side of the plaza, passing a pair of shuttered blue doors with a hand-lettered sign that said El Clave Azul.
“Tania, I need to find Miguel Ángel.”
“After they killed maestro Virgilio he closed the bar. Try his house.” As Liana stood to go, Tania reached for her hand. “Liana, if you see Ramón, tell him to come home.”
“I promise.”
Crossing the plaza, she passed a familiar man by the bandstand with bent, useless feet who played the harmonica jovially and well for change. So many broken people, she thought, yet she’d never seen an able-bodied man beg in Mexico. She dropped coins in his hat.
“God will reward you,” he said hoarsely, interrupting his own refrain.