Sonora Read online

  SONORA

  A Novel by Juan Francisco Pastor

  © 2013 by Juan Francisco Pastor.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher and author.

  First Printing.

  All characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  All illustrations by Juan Francisco Pastor.

  ISBN ‐13: 978‐1494417246

  ISBN‐10: 1494417243

  Printed in the United States of America

  “In the desert

  I saw a creature, naked, bestial, Who, squatting upon the ground, Held his heart in his hands, and ate of it. I said: “Is it good friend?” “It is bitter‐bitter,” he answered; “But I like it because it is bitter, And because it is my heart.”

  ‐ Stephen Crane

  Luke 10:19 Behold, I give unto you power to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy: and nothing shall by any means hurt you.

  Mark 16:18 They shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter Page The Gatekeepers 10 La Loba 29 Symbiotic Relationships 35 A Dialectic 40 Dust The Way You Are 47 Cueva de la Murciélagos 54 Adipose Tissue 59 Heartpunch Beer 63 Entheogens 67 Stigmata 72 Green And White Tips 80 The One Who Crushes The Serpent 91 Extremophiles 97 Single Point Of Failure 102 For A Small Fee In America 114 A Postcard From The Promised Land 118 Powerball 121 Grouse Shooting In New England 128 Two Birds With One Stone 140

  You Got To Let Me Know 150 Reunión de los Jefes de Gran 155 With The Worm 159 The Stepford Trophy Wife 170 A Good Old Mexican Standoff 173 Every Girl Deserves A Party Dress 180 Already Seen 184 Cantina Latina 199 Don’t Spin The Tires 205 A Full House 209 All The King’s Horses 217 We Can Rebuild Him 221 The Garden Of The Clinica Rosaria 228 The News Conference 232 Conferencia de la Vagina Internacional 236 Gone Fishin’ 243 Desperados And Silverados 250 Dia De Muertos 254 Shepherd Of The Flock 258 So Safe That I Can Dream 263 Dust And Ash 266

  The Gatekeepers

  When the light is about to disappear all the colors

  come out. The colors hide all day from the harsh glare of the Sonoran sun. In the cool of the evening, they come out to play. The sun is setting. Not all poetry is written. Some poetry defies the semiotics and symbolism of language. Some things refuse to become symbols.

  The sandy gravel on which I lay is already beginning to cool. I can see its very top, like the shiny pate of a bald man. The full moon is rising.

  Bats flit to and fro above me, pursuing flying insects which neither they nor I can see, but which we both know are there. Most people are afraid of bats, and think they are ugly. We call them murciélago, which means “blind mouse”. The lobos begin to howl.

  My dearest friend, my closest friend, my only friend, is

  sprawled face down, about fifty feet from me, near a Saguaro cactus. We had come so far, seen so many things.

  So close, I thought. So close. So close. So very close.

  I can not get the bleeding to stop. It had happened mid‐afternoon, when the sun was still high, and the air was hot. At the first crack of the rifle, my companion had fallen. At the second crack, something hot tore through my left side. I fell to the ground because I did not want to hear the crack again.

  I was playing zarigueya, but I could not get the bleeding to stop. The flow has slowed considerably, and I have packed both the entry and exit wounds with ripped pieces of my blouse. Still, there is blood all over everything, including the Sonoran sand, which drinks it thirstily. It is starting to dry, thick and sticky, on my abdomen.

  The shots had come from somewhere near the barrier wall. An example of the “Consequence Delivery System” which is the philosophical strategy behind US/Mexico barrier and border patrol efforts. Most likely, some bored border vigilante with nothing better to do that day had fired the shots. Then he had probably gone home for some cerveza with his friends. He is probably bragging now.

  For some reason the situation makes me think of the Fairy Tale where the troll is guarding the bridge. But who is this troll? If I let him visit my country, why can’t I visit his? Could he even be one of the people that visited me? No, probably not. I couldn’t bear it if it were one of the blue‐eyed boys who looked into a scope and fired the shots at us.

  The coyotes had run as soon as the shooting had started. The coyotes promised they would get us through the barrier, over the border, one way or another, safe and sound. Now they had all our money, and we were not safely across the border. So much for the brave coyotes. At least they hadn’t raped Rosaria and I, and hung our undergarments in a “rape tree” as proof of their conquests.

  These particular coyotes are Mexican. Mexicans think of anyone south of Mexico as not quite up to par with them. They think of themselves as superior to Salvadorans, Guatemalans, Belizeans, Hondurans,

  Ricans, and Panamanians, just as

  Nicaraguans, Costa Americans think of themselves as superior to Mexicans. Of course, the Americans think of themselves as superior to everyone the Mexicans think they’re superior to. I’ve always thought it had something to do with latitude. The further north one lived, the more superior one thought himself to be. Except Americans think they’re superior to Canadians too. Maybe because of Alaska. Of course, there does seem to be a reverse snobbism. Many Canadians consider themselves above the Americans, but most likely it’s because many of them are descended from people who lost the Revolutionary War to what they considered the 18th Century’s version of ignorant rednecks, and had to flee to Canada.

  Just to amuse myself, I try to imagine a wall across the US‐Canada border, with Canadian guards trying to keep the Americans where they belong.

  Mexicans try to be Americans. They use all the profanities Americans use. They’ve discarded the good Latino profanities, the well‐cultivated maldiciones and vulgaridades, in favor of the overused ghetto profanities Americans are so fond of. If you hear someone talking, and every fourth word he says is “f‐‐‐“, then you are probably listening to a Mexican. Or, if someone threatens to shit on you, your mother, father, sisters, brothers, and everyone and everything you love, and everything holy you worship at church, and then the very church itself, you are probably listening to a Mexican.

  But what does it matter now? Maybe it would have been better to be raped, our undergarments hung in trees, than to be shot at. Does it matter if one is virtuous, like Rosaria, if one is dead?

  The sun is gone, and the moon has changed all the playful reds and oranges of the late day desert into more respectable golds and silvers. I see the first star. Then a second. Twilight. Twilight isn’t what people think it is. It is that brief period between when one sees one star and then three stars. Twilight means “two lights” or “twin lights”, and is that time during which only two stars are visible in the evening sky. It is a brief enchanting encounter between one soul and an entire cosmos that comes once each day. But let me correct that. There are really two twilight events in each day. There is a morning twilight, when the stars start to disappear because the sun is rising, and then I see three stars, then two stars, one star, no star – except our sun. This twi‐twilight in each 24‐hour period is a twin crepuscular event. That is, anything appearing or active before sunrise, or at dusk, is a crepuscular happening.

  It’s a funny thing about stars. I’ve heard learned men claim that some of the stars we see are really just the light reaching us from stars that died billions of years ago. I never believed this, but now I can relate. Moonlight emanates off Rosaria. But Rosaria
is dead.

  The things one thinks about as she lies on the desert about to die.

  In French, the word for wounded is “blessés”. The adjective “blessé” can mean injured, hurt, stricken, or bleeding. It is one of those strange sacred words that seem to have two meanings at the same time. Blessés is where the word “blessed” comes from. In Latin “sacer” can mean both “accursed” and “holy”. In Greek ”haghios” can mean both “pure” and “soiled”. So I am blessed, and Rosaria is a sacred martyr. Aren’t we the lucky ones?

  How does a poor teenage girl know such things? How does she dare to be so sacrilegious? You must be wondering.

  Rosaria was from La Ventosa, in El Salvador. I met her at the University in Guatemala City. I am from Antigua, Guatemala. She wanted to be a doctor. And I, well, I don’t know what I wanted to be. Mostly happy, I guess. It seemed so little to ask for at the time.

  Then we both ran out of money for tuition. Then we worked as maids at an inn that American college students were staying in during their semester abroad. The students told us about their homes, showed us pictures of their families. We liked the Americanos, especially a few of the boys, who looked like Greek gods with their hair like Mayan gold and their blue eyes like the Pacific. And they all smelled so good. Americans always smell so good. When the American boys were off at classes, and I cleaned the bathrooms, I used to like to smell the American soap they used, especially Irish Spring. And I liked the deodorant they used, like Gillette clinical sport. And I liked Jovan musk. And I liked Yakshi sandalwood. One time while emptying out the wastebasket in the bathroom of one of the boys, I noticed what was left of a bar of Irish Spring soap. We do not throw away bars of soap in Central America, no matter how small. We use them until they disappear. Or, if we should be so fortunate as to acquire a new bar of soap before the old one is gone, we stick the old piece to the new piece, and create an even newer, bigger bar of soap. I kept the sliver of soap, wrapped it in tissue, and put it in my aparador at home. Whenever I thought of this boy, I got out the bar of soap so that I could smell him.

  Rosaria was very shy and quiet. I wasn’t. Then the Americanos, like they always do after they’ve stirred things up a bit, went home.

  That’s when Rosaria and I decided to go to the promised land, where there were, probably, hundreds, if not thousands, of blonde haired, blue eyed boys, and maybe some of them were rich, and maybe some of them were lonely. Maybe some of them were very messy boys, and needed someone to put their lives in order.

  ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐<>{}<>‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐

  The howling of the lobos is getting louder and closer. Lobos don’t howl “at” the moon. They howl because of the moon. Lobos aren’t like the wild gatos, which can see in the dark. The lobos need a little bit of light to hunt, and night in a desert is a good time to find prey. Of course, as I can attest, with Rosaria just fifty feet away, daytime in the desert is as good a time to find prey as the night. It’s just that now the night shift is going to work.

  Even if the moon was not out, and the stars were not visible because the sky was cloudy, which it almost never is over the desert, the Sonora would not be dark, it would not be black. If black is the absence of light, or the total absorption of light, so that none of that light is ever reflected back to our eyes, how is it that we can “see” black, how is it that we can see the thing that our mind tells us is black, and how is it that that black thing can be glossy black, satin black, or flat black, and how is it that we can see a shadow in a dark alley and a black skinned man dressed in black casting the shadow?

  All of this is irrelevant because the Sonora is never black just as it is never quiet. This is what I tell myself.

  I hoped to make my family proud of me. Make enough money somehow to be able to return to Antigua. That seems unlikely now. Antigua is a beautiful little city just 23 kilometers southwest of Guatemala City. Although it is only 23 kilometers, it takes over an hour to get there because of the mountainous roads. The best way to get there is to go through San Lucas Sacatepequez, but parts of the road are one lane. People drive crazily. Guatemalans have a fatalist view of life. They believe when it is time to die, one will die, whether one is careful about life or not. The roads have many crosses and signs memorializing people who have died on the roads. There are even places where the wreckages of cars or buses still lie rusting at the bases of mountains because it was impossible to remove them after they careened off the road and tumbled down the mountainsides. Some wrecks still hold the skeletons of those whose time it was to die.

  Antigua sits near the northern base of Volcan Agua. It is

  called Agua because there used to be a lake in the crater, which formed from rainfall. The Mayans called the volcano Hunapu, which means “place of flowers” because of the rich floral vegetation that once populated its sides. In 1541, the original capital of Guatemala, also called Hunapú, because it was right at the north base of the volcano, was wiped out when the north crater wall of Agua collapsed, and the entire lake, and a mudflow of volcanic material came crashing down the volcano’s side like a tidal wave, and wiped out the city. The city was moved to the current site of Antigua, and when Hunapú was rebuilt, it was named Ciudad Vieja, which is funny because it means “city of the old woman”. Santa Maria de Jesus is at the northeast base.

  Rosaria and I climbed the volcano once. We took a bus

  from Antigua at 4 AM one morning, a bus full of farmers with their chickens, pigs, and goats, on the bus with them, to Ciudad Vieja. Then we started our climb. At the very base of the volcano there are many terraces where coffee plants are grown in plantations that are called “fincas”. When Rosaria and I started our climb, we were accompanied by many farmers heading out to their small fincas.

  Everybody is partial, I suppose, but my personal belief is that the best coffee is grown on volcanic soil, and the best coffee grown on volcanic soil comes from Antigua. And the best coffee one gets in Antigua comes in little vials of “café nectar” that is served with piping hot cups of water, and one add as many drops of the café nectar as suits one’s taste. I always liked to add a little leche and sucar. Rosaria always liked just a lot of sucar. Supposedly, when we got older, or so we were told, we wouldn’t want it any other way than ennegrecido.

  When Rosaria and I were one third of the way up the 3800 meters of Agua’s height we left the farmers behind, and continued on our way. About two thirds of the way up, we encountered clouds. As a child, I had always looked at clouds, and imagined they were kingdoms, where angels lived, solid and substantial, but out of reach for someone like me. But really all clouds are is fog, and it condensed on the skin of Rosaria and I, and made us glisten. It was hard work, and the climb was very steep, but we made the crater before nightfall. We set up a tent. Fortunately, we had also brought sleeping bags. Even so, it was so cold in the crater at night, we had to zip the sleeping bags together, and huddle together for warmth. My father told me that snow used to fall on the peak, but I never saw it. Supposedly, that is partly how the lake formed. As we lay in the sleeping bags in our tent, we talked about how we were lying at the top of a volcano, but at the base of what once used to be a lake. Before I fell asleep I leaned over to kiss Rosaria on the cheek. It was an innocent kiss, meant only to express complete happiness. When we awoke, left the tent, and walked to the eastern crater edge, we were treated to the most amazingly beautiful sunrise we had ever seen.

  It’s experiences like this that trigger wanderlust in a young girl’s heart. It is said that wanderlust is a yearning that lies dormant until it is activated by something, some stimulus. For some reason, when you look at any couple, one member of that couple aches to be a wanderer, and explorer. The other wants only to be safe, comfortable, and at home. Whether an adventurer or explorer, or not, it is good, I believe, for each person to have one great adventure in her life. If she doesn’t, she will always secretly have regrets, and those regrets will turn to anger against anyone she feels is to blame
for her not having that adventure. In my family, my Papá was the adventurer and risk taker. My Mamá liked her home, with its pantry full, something cooking on the stove, the gatos begging for something to eat or sleeping the day away, and a fire always going in the stove or fireplace, even if it was not that cold. I think it is genetic, and the gene gets passed on, and I, for good or bad, got my Papá’s gene. Yet, in Rosaria’s family, it was the opposite. I don’t think her Mamá was ever really happy at home. Yet her Papá loved it there, loved to read and write, play music, always had a home improvement project going. So it was Rosaria’s Mamá who passed the gene on to her.

  ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐ <>{}<>‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐

  I check my good luck charm.

  "If it is so lucky, why are you laying bleeding in the

  desert?" I hear you say to yourself.

  And all I can think of as an answer is, "I'm still alive,

  aren't I? I'd call that lucky, wouldn't you?"

  My lucky charm is still there. It is a rosary with a crucifix

  and beads carved out of pink jade, and it hangs on a silver chain around my neck.