It is Friday night at the Chicken Cross Cantina or, as we call it, the Chicken, a roadside joint populated by Mexicanos, whites and more Mexicanos, a place that would look the same if California was a part of Mexico instead of the US of A. Mexican truck drivers can't go past the commercial zone, the area twenty miles into America from the border, so they come here. Down the highway, truckers change trailers, Mexicanos hand off to Americanos. Truckers come to this watering hole before they pick up and after they drop off. No commercial zone, no Chicken. As far as the eye can see, as far as the end of all the parking lot lights, are rows of big rigs, a truckers' tarmac. Next year they will experiment with letting truckers from across the border go all the way. Who will remember the Chicken when it is gone?
Shards of broken glass break in the gravel under my boots. Fred drops me off an hour and some before I plan to meet Hex for another end-of-the-week night here, where we drown our insecurities, secrets and paychecks in a binge of alcoholic demonstration of our manhood. If all goes well, we will stumble out of here at three o'clock in the morning, most likely with my arms around his thick neck for support-him calling me "cabrón," me correcting him, "pinche cabrón." All does not go well.
We met while working for Schultz Trucking five years ago in Pittsburgh. He liked me because I am one-quarter his kind thanks to my mother's father from Guanajuato. He is a first generation US citizen, son of Mexican immigrants. I can say that my ancestors are from Italy or somewhere Latin like that if I want, all guero.
He tried talking to me in Spanish, as if it was something I should have known because it coursed through my veins. But what coursed through his veins only trickled in mine, like a once torrid river, which, through generations and mongrel breeding, dried up into a lazy, thirsty creek.
"¿De dónde es?" He was formal, as if I was his boss, but I was only the guy who was supposed to ride with him a hundred miles to verify he finished his training.
"Tejas," I answered. "You?" My Spanish was choppy, but his English was perfect, forgiving a slight accent he had picked up from his parents.
"San Diego." He paused and looked wistfully over the horizon. "¿Tiene familia?
"I got a little sister. You?"
"A couple sisters, brothers. My parents and grandfather."
The pretense was over. Pittsburgh was a long way from home. I was a little younger, so he adopted me over time. Two years later, he married Isabel; I was the best man. But that is in the past, before he started sleeping with Cherríe, before I started sleeping with his wife.
The Chicken is dimly lit. The linoleum floors are sticky and riddled with peanut shells. The signature tangy, flame-grilled chicken is still on the menu after five years; Baltazar, the owner, hasn't stopped claiming El Pollo Loco stole his recipe. Several televisions hang from the ceiling, broadcasting ESPN 1 and 2. Lucy, who knows she's got an ass like I've never seen in her tight jeans, serves our table. She's been at the Chicken for three years, a veteran to the cause of serving us losers. Most waitresses move onto better paying and behaving clientele, but she says Baltazar treats her well.
I pull up a chair, wait for the next hand and order another pitcher for the table, my treat. I throw four tall glasses of High Life down in less than an hour. I hold more liquor than anyone at the table except Sanchez. But his father is a sad alcoholic, so he has good genes. Hex is late as usual, busy with Cherríe. Two hours pass. Empty pitchers are stacked up at the edge of the table; Robby is the only one who exercises moderation. That's a family man for you. I've lost fifteen dollars in the game and twenty-five or so dollars to the bar, but my head's bobbing up and down, swimming comfortably out in the deep Pacific, far from any shores of sobriety. Chris has most of my money; he's a good poker player. He even counts cards in his head. He could have been an engineer or something professional like that, but he doesn't stick to anything long, except poker and this hauling business. Another hour passes. The stack of pitchers rises. We tell Lucy to leave it alone, so we can watch it grow higher-our Tower of Babel. I lose a side bet with Sanchez: Oswalt fails to strike out the batter in the game our glazed eyes meander to on TV. As part of the bet, I order him a shot of mescal, including one for myself.
Hands that fall on my shoulder in the fourth hour twist and ball the shirt and old denim jacket I'm wearing into two knots. His hands and arms, like those of an angry Aztec god reaching down to bring some judgment upon me, lift me out of the chair without much effort and turn me around to face him. His eyes are bloody red with revenge, jealousy, nascent tears and drink. His nostrils flare. The lower lip of his mouth hangs dumbfounded. When he isn't upset, Hector can be a handsome man, but now, I can only read a mix of confusion about to tumult into an ugly storm of rage and smacking skin.
"Tell me it isn't true, Rich, tell me." He strains his voice, hoarse from too much practice at Cherríe's about what he's going to do, how he's going to do it when he gets his hands on me.
"You son of a bitch, let me go," I say, freeing myself from his grip, but he takes my shirt by both ends of the collar and reasserts his hold.
"You've been fucking Isabel, haven't you?"
"That's shit, you know it." I lie. I can feel his breath on my neck, steaming off hot coals in his belly. He stinks to high heaven of Cherríe's cheap perfume and liquor cabinet.
"You lie, miedra, you lie." He grits his teeth and chokes my collar.
I know it's Cherríe who told Hex. She wasted no time telling when she found out; she wants Hex to move in with her. But Hex probably sensed something three months ago when Isabel and I began sharing the same bed. I wanted Isabel, and whether or not Isabel did it at first to get revenge at Hex for Cherríe, I didn't care.
I reach my two arms inside his and break away from his grip.
"I'll kill you," he says, following me.
I turn.
"Keep your fucking hands off me and her."
It is as much a moment of pathetic, chicken-shit gallantry as it is a moment of pride uninhibited by the alcohol swirling in my head. It's true he laid hands twice on Isabel, and each morning afterwards, he crawled, begging her forgiveness, saying he wasn't himself when he hit her. And each time she threatened to leave him.
He pushes away tables and chairs and heads directly toward me, a juggernaut of tangled emotional contractions. I grab an empty bottle from a stranger's table. I swing it, my only chance. It shatters on smashing into the left forearm he raises to protect his head. There is a deep bloody cut I stare at, half in disbelief. He has been as close as a brother to me, and this is how it will end, by our collective betrayal and blood. A blow from the left, his right fist, repositions my jaw. With his still good left arm, he drives his balled up hand into my stomach, knocking the wind out of me. I swing; I may hit something. What follows can't be called a fight any more. I become a half-empty sandbag, a punching toy for Hex. I answer like a limp rag doll, thrown here and there onto bar furniture. My head hits the edge of a table. Our friends have to hold him back to prevent him from killing me.
On my hands and knees, I look up. Tears stream down his face; you would think he took the abuse, not me, that he took the swings he threw at me.
I'm helped up. Amazed I can still stand on my two feet, I head for the door. Ignoring Hector's shouts that sound more distant as I walk away, I leave unsure of where I will go. Everyone is so busy holding Hector down that no one offers me a ride. I walk slowly, trying to keep my balance by holding onto anything that may provide me support.
My mouth feels numb and swollen as I come to terms with what has happened. The sidewalk's crooked downhill trajectory and uneven, cracked concrete makes every step a potentially bad fall. It feels as if someone put a hood over my head and hit it silly with a metal pipe over and over; it's dark. My head's throbbing so much I think it's going to explode. At last, a piss-colored light, a lamppost that works. I logy and spit blood, stumble forward. My flannel red shirt is pasted onto my skin; I wipe away sweat and blood off my face with the sleeve. I stop. It's been a long walk; I took the interstate. My hands feel a hard wrinkled pole, a tree. I wrap my arms around the tree and pat it everywhere. When I think I'm holding on strong to it, I unzip my paints and drain some of what I drank from the bar. Smells like I drank ammonia.
"Whose fucking dog is that barking?" I shout, trying to take care of my business.
The dog's owner opens her door. She's an old white woman in a green robe with little gray tornados on her head, her hair in curlers. She yells, "Get the hell off my property, you psycho, before I call the cops."
"Turn off your lights, go back to bed. Can't you see there's a man here holding on to his wood? Pervert," I yell back and bark, laughing hysterically-a poor effort to disassociate myself from the present.
The cream-colored doublewide home, which looks like all the others at night, is somewhere in this neighborhood. I walk onward another half hour. I find it and knock on the door. At this ungodly hour, most people are asleep.
"Espera, espera," Isabel shouts. She appears in her night robe. I want to cry, but I hold back. By her gaping mouth and wide eyes, I gather my pulpy face is going to take a long time to heal.
"Ritchie, qué pasó, Ritchie?" she says and runs into the kitchen, returning with a damp cloth.
I shake my head, look down in shame and give no immediate answer.
I haven't moved from the entrance. She leads me to the living room, sits me down on the couch and starts to swab my face with the wet rag. She's weeping, wiping.
"Hector?" she asks.
I don't have to say anything. She knows.
"We're leaving," she tells me. Cries, laughs-these are unimportant. Resolve and determination are. She has decided to leave Hex as promised.
A moment of doubt flashes across my mind, but I know she's serious. It has never been a matter of if we would leave together, only when. Her mother is living with her older sister; she doesn't have to worry about anyone but herself now.
"I will get my things. Clean yourself up in the bathroom," she says in her authoritative voice with eyes still wet. Resolve and determination. We are on the same wavelength.
In the yellow-stained imitation porcelain basin of the hallway bathroom sink, crimson swirls with tap water into the drain as I try to clean myself up a little, act sober. There's a big gash on my left check, a cut on my lower lip. My right eye is swollen and almost as big as a plum tomato.
When I find her in the hall of his house, their house, paid for by her work with her sister and the tens of thousands of miles Hex drives, she's wearing jeans, an Izod jacket over a flower print shirt, and the tennis shoes she goes to work in. Her raven hair, which typically undulates like dark waves over her shoulders, is tied back in a pony tail. Even though she isn't trying, she is still sexy Isabel. Even though she can't bear the children Hex wants, she has the kind of hips and curves men trace with their eyes. I trace them now. And even though she isn't smiling now, when she does smile, one end of her mouth curves up more than the other, teasing with a secret I still haven't discovered.
For a moment, I think I see my reflection in her big brown eyes, the me that isn't beaten so bloody up. I am a stranger in their house. Isabel is prepared for a trip that will make her even more of a stranger here.
The raised lamp in the backyard casts a mellow yellow glow like a halo on my truck parked underneath it. Fireball Two is my call sign on the CB; Fireball One was my father. Detailed flames against midnight black start from the hood and reach across both side doors-a bona fide chariot of fire pulled by nearly six hundred horses under the hood; I put every last penny of the money from my parent's will into the work. God bless their souls and forgive my sins. I lift myself slowly into the cab, muscles aching, with plans to drive off and rescue both of us. Isabel comes out, a traveling bag in one hand and a pillow off their old couch in the other. She comes to a standstill under my window as I look down at her. She has a concerned, frowning look, lips pursed and brows scrutinizing.
"Aren't you getting in?" I ask, worrying something has changed. Second thoughts, third thoughts even, are inevitable.
"Move over. You can't drive like that."
I stare at her for a moment unsure of what she's asking me to do. She opens the cabin door on my side and hands her bag to me to stow away in the back compartment.
"Scoot over," she says, her feet already on the first stepping rail up. "Look, you're still bleeding from your head." She points.
I place the palm of my right hand to my wound and find blood. I slide over to let her come up. She reaches over to pull out a white shirt from her bag.
"Put this on your head," she says. "Like this. Don't let go. You have to keep the pressure."
She takes the pillow she brought with her from the house, puts it over the seat and sits down on it to raise herself enough to see over the dashboard. She turns the key I have waiting in the ignition and shifts gears. Like an experienced driver, she pulls out of their lot and drives down the street I stumbled up earlier. I remember that on many days Hex took Isabel on jobs he had cross-country-Isabel did much of the driving.
"Where are we going?" I ask, a little disconcerted by her taking over the wheel but still following her instructions to hold her balled up shirt above my right eye.
"To the emergency room," she says, "you need stitches. Do you think you can really drive the way you look?"
I don't protest; she's driving. Who will remember what happened at the Chicken when it is gone?
© 2007 by Benjamin Arda Doty.