When a Body Meets a Body
Disclaimer: I don't own El. I'm glad I don't. He frightens me.
Rating: R for dark themes and violence
Summary: El loses it completely, and is "saved" by a passing stranger.
Author's Note: The title of this chapter is part of a quote from the incredible book, Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger.
Several people have asked me if I'm making this story up as I go, or if it is planned. The answer is: a little bit of both. I do have some things planned, but I normally try not to plan too far ahead. I find that takes away the spontaneity of things if I do that. So I have a general idea of what will happen next, but mostly the story writes itself as I go along.
Thanks to my great beta, Melody!
****
Just after noon, the car ran out of gas. El let it coast over to the side of the road, and when it quit altogether, he took the keys out of the ignition and got out of the car. He removed his guitar case from the trunk and began walking along the road.
He was going to Culiacan, and nothing was going to stop him.
The day was excruciatingly hot. Cars barreled past, causing him to stagger as their heated wake buffeted him. Grit and stone crunched under his boots. He liked the sound they made, and the way they rolled under his feet. He decided he was glad he had ditched the car. From now on he would walk wherever he went, the way he had when he had first left his home and gone to seek his fortune as a mariachi. Maybe then he would be able to rediscover the spirit of adventure that had infused him as a younger man.
For a time he walked faster, his spirits buoyed by the thought of finding redemption in the physical act of walking. Every step was an atonement that brought him closer to peace. Every bead of sweat that rolled down his face was a tear he should have shed over the years.
But eventually the heat and exertion took its toll. His step slowed. His shoulders slumped. He transferred the guitar case from his right hand to his left and back again. He did not stop walking, though. To stop would be to admit defeat. And he had never admitted when he was beaten. He never had, and he never would.
To pass the time he talked to Carolina. She walked beside him, just far enough away that when he reached out for her, his straining fingers could not quite touch her. She wore a sheer gown of white that clung to the curves of her body, and white sandals. The skirt of the dress swayed as she glided along beside him. There were flowers in her hair. She was smiling.
He asked her to forgive him. He had done terrible things in his life, but he had never threatened a child until two days ago. He had never wanted to become like the men he had spent so long running from.
He had never imagined he would become soulless.
Carolina smiled and caressed his hair. When he fell, she stood before him, holding out one hand to help him up.
He walked again, weaving in loopy patterns across the road. Once he found himself walking doggedly across hardpan and grit, and Carolina gently turned him around so he encountered the road again. She made sure he followed it, reminding him that the road would lead him to Culiacan.
"And my redemption," he said.
Carolina nodded and said this was true.
She was there when he fell for the second -- and last -- time. As he lay there with his face in the dust, she knelt beside him and pressed a kiss to her palm, then laid her hand on his cheek.
He looked up at her. "I didn't mean to kill her," he said. His eyes burned, but there were no tears. "I loved her."
Carolina assured him that he was not responsible for his daughter's death.
"But he told me," he tried to say.
She shushed him with one perfectly manicured nail touching his lips. She told him that Sands did not know everything. He had been a good father. He had not gotten his daughter killed.
"And you?" El whispered.
Carolina said that she had chosen her own fate. Marquez had given her a choice, and she had chosen her husband, knowing she would die for it. There was nothing he could have done, she said.
He asked her to kiss him.
She leaned forward and the air stirred around her, whipping her hair about her head and rippling through her dress. She looked like an angel. When her lips touched his, he gasped aloud and closed his eyes.
And then she was gone, and El slept.
****
He dreamed.
In the dream he was onstage, a mariachi again. He was playing a lively song he had written himself. It had no proper name, but he thought of it as Cancíon del Mariachi. He smiled as he played. The notes sprinkled from his guitar like bright drops of silver shining in the air. The music swirled about him, reminding him of his first love.
He stalked up and down the stage, playing his heart out. He sang loudly, tossing his head and grinning. It had been far too long since he had been just a mariachi, and not a killer or a man on the run.
He wished the song did not have to reach its conclusion, but all too soon it did. He ended it with a proud flourish, and then stood there under the lights, waiting for the applause.
The crowd did not clap. They did not cheer. Only silence greeted him.
He raised a hand to his face, shielding his eyes from the glare of the lights. The moment he did, the house lights came on and he could see his audience.
Everyone had ever known was standing there. They were watching him dispassionately. He took a nervous step back, feeling pinned under the spotlight that was still relentlessly trained on him.
And then they began to talk about him.
"He plays with no passion," said Lorenzo.
"His fingering is all wrong," said Quino. "He is too tense."
"He was off key," said Fideo.
"A miserable performance," agreed his father. He shook his head in disappointment. "He is not fit to touch that guitar."
"I am going to kill you," said Moco.
"That is my guitar case," said Azul. "I want it back."
"We take something away, we replace it with something else," said his brother Cesar, known as Bucho to the rest of the world.
"Que quieres en la vida?" asked Carolina. There were flowers in her hair. She was holding their daughter, who glared mutely at him in accusation.
"He doesn't want anything. He has nothing to live for," Sands said as he strolled through the audience. He still had his eyes, but he was dressed all in black, not the ridiculous outfit he had been wearing when he had met El in the cantina.
That is not true, El wanted to say, but his voice had deserted him. He had used it up singing and now he had nothing left.
They continued talking as though he was not there. They listed his faults. They insulted him. They laughed at him and his music.
"Papa's little guitarista," Cesar said. "And look at you now." He laughed.
His daughter put her thumb in her mouth and pouted.
"He got me killed," said Campa. "I should never have tried to help him."
"Hey, don't tell me," said Fideo. "It happened to me too."
"Him and his damn revenge," said the American who had tried to stop him from chasing Bucho. "I got knifed on the street because of him."
"Is anybody here not dead because of him?" asked Lorenzo.
Sands exhaled smoke into the air above their heads. "I'm still alive," he grinned. But even as he said it, bloody tears began to run down his face. His eyes disappeared, and dark red holes took their place.
In horror, El watched as blood and wounds appeared on each of the people in the audience. Bullet holes opened in Carolina's skin. Blood covered his daughter's white dress.
They continued talking as they died, telling their stories, how he had killed them. The house lights went out, and only the spotlight remained. He could smell blood and gunpowder, and faintly, the tang of dust.
"Stop," he pleaded. "Please stop."
He could hear the sounds of their bodies hitting the floor. But still the dead kept talking about him. Accusing him.
"Stop!" he shouted. He flung himself off the stage, intending to run into their midst and confront them. He would make them stop talking. He would make them shut up.
The spotlight did not follow him this time. He plunged into the darkness and misjudged the lip of the stage. He fell forward, and although it was not a long distance to the floor, he simply kept falling, and falling…
****
He woke with a start to the sound of voices. At first he thought he was still dreaming, then he realized there were only two voices this time. They were coming from somewhere over his head. He was lying down, and that was the only thing right about his situation, because he did remember falling off the stage.
The voices spoke in Spanish. "Heatstroke, maybe. He fainted."
"You're sure this is him?"
"Who else carries a guitar case around?"
"Did you check inside it?"
"Hell, no. I saw him lying there and I drove out to get you. I didn't even stop to see if he was alive."
"Jesus, Ramon, how do you get anything done?" Gravel crunched as a set of footsteps drew near. Something clicked, and he heard the lid of his guitar case being lifted.
He opened his eyes. It was twilight, almost full dark. That too was strange. His last memory was of a bright afternoon sky.
A man stood over him, just a silhouette against the purpling sky. The man was holding a gun. "Don't move, amigo."
He squinted up at the man. "Who are you?" he tried to say, but his voice was as stricken as the rest of him. He managed a dusty croak, and nothing else.
"It's him!" the second man called excitedly. "Holy shit, there's all kinds of guns in here."
The man with the gun smiled. It was not a nice smile. "El Mariachi."
El blinked. That was not his name. He had a name. If he could remember it, he would tell it to this man.
"How funny, that we should come upon you this way. My cousin was returning home from a routine trip to the fields, when he saw you lying here beside the road. He came and got me, and now here we are." The man grinned, showing a flash of very white teeth. "So much time and effort wasted. If only we had known you would come to us. We only needed to be patient."
The second man shut the guitar case. "I'll put this in the trunk, sí?"
The first man nodded. He had a thin mustache that curled above his upper lip like a calligraphy swirl. "Do that, Ramon."
El stared at the gun in the man's hand. His head was throbbing, and he felt sick to his stomach. He hoped he would die cleanly, and not slowly bleed to death while the buzzards circled overhead, waiting to pluck his eyes out.
A short, soundless laugh escaped him. It really was kind of funny. He and Sands would have a lot more in common, in just a few hours.
The man with the curling mustache smiled again. "Something is funny?"
El nodded and wheezed.
"I am glad you think so," the man said.
Cousin Ramon came back. The man with the gun said, "Tie his hands." To El he said, "Do not move. I have waited a long time for you, and I have no desire to blow your head off now, but I will do it, if you give me no choice."
El went very still.
Ramon knelt beside him. "Roll over."
He tried to obey, but his body was too heavy. In the end Ramon shoved him onto his side and then onto his stomach. His hands were yanked behind him and tied with thin twine that cut into his wrists. "It's tight," Ramon said. "He won't be getting loose."
"Good," said the man with the mustache. "Get him up."
Ramon had to tug and haul on him to get him upright. El did not fight, but he did not help, either. He didn't think he could, anyway. His limbs felt loose and quivery, and his head throbbed with rotten pain.
When he was on his feet, he swayed. Ramon caught him and kept him standing. It took several tries to get his voice working. "You're not going to kill me?"
"All in good time," said the man with the mustache. He smiled thinly.
"What are you going to do with me?" he asked. Not that he had any doubts. He just wanted to hear the man say it out loud.
"You owe me and my people a large debt," said the man. "It will be quite some time before it is paid in full." He smiled again.
El nodded.
Ramon walked him toward a white pickup truck. His hands were already going numb from being tied so tight. "There's a lot of people going to be happy to see you," Ramon whispered in his ear.
There was a time when he would have thrown his head back, breaking Ramon's nose. He would have made a bid for freedom. Today he did nothing. He was empty inside of all desires. Sick red heat throbbed in his head. He let Ramon walk him forward, and he did nothing about it.
He heard the rustling behind him, and he tensed, but he did nothing to stop the blow. The gun butt fell on the back of his head, and his knees came unhinged. He collapsed to the dirt.
The last thing he saw was Carolina. She was staring gravely at him, and her dress was fluttering in the wind. There were no flowers in her hair.
****
This time when he regained consciousness there were many men staring at him. Their eyes shone with greed. Several of them fingered the rifles they held in an obscenely romantic manner. El's stomach turned over, and for a horrible moment he thought he was going to be sick all over himself.
It was still dark out, but the hacienda was well lit. The white pickup truck had pulled into the middle of the courtyard. He was on stage again, but this time he didn't know his lines.
Ramon had been riding in the back with him. Now he stood up and with a well-placed kick between his shoulder blades, he knocked El out of the truck and onto the dirt.
Some of the men laughed. Most shifted uneasily.
The man with the mustache got out of the truck. He walked around it and looked down at El. "Welcome to my home," he said.
El groaned and struggled up onto his knees. He wanted to stand, but he didn't think he could. Nor did he think they would let him. They wanted to see him kneel.
"Yes, my home," said the man with the mustache. "I trust by now you know who I am."
El nodded. This was Carlos Alvarado, leader of the cartel that had Culiacan in its grip.
Alvarado favored him with a thin smile. Then he turned to face his men. "Practice patience, I told you. Some of you scoffed. Some of you disbelieved. Like you, Pablo." With unbelievable speed, he pulled his gun and shot a man standing near the pickup's headlights. The man clutched at his chest and crumpled to the ground.
"Some of you," said Carlos Alvarado, "were thinking to betray me."
The men stood up straighter now. A few began to sweat.
"But I have delivered for you!" Alvarado said loudly. He gestured with his hands as he spoke, and whenever the barrel of the gun was pointed at a man in the crowd, that man would blanch and cringe back.
"Here he is," said the leader of the cartel. He walked up to El and grabbed a handful of El's hair, holding El's face up for all to see. "The great El Mariachi."
A respectful silence fell over the courtyard. El was not sure if it was aimed at Alvarado, or at him.
"And let me say it now, so everyone can hear," Alvarado said. "So no one can use the excuse--" his voice changed now, climbing into higher registers, "that nobody told me!" He sneered at the men standing in the courtyard, and let go of El's hair. "This man belongs to me. I have bought and paid for him in blood. No one lays a finger on him that I don't know it.
"But," Alvarado held up a finger, although no one had even pretended to speak out and interrupt him. "There is a debt to be paid, and you can be sure that I will receive everything that is coming to me."
He turned to look at El, and he smiled.
And El, who had been drifting on the surface of life for so long he barely remembered what it was to feel again, shuddered at the sight of that smile.
******
