Dierberger

Up Before the Rest of the World 

Tuesday through Saturday, he pulls himself out of the bed at four o’clock and feels the heat of the morning, sees the ceiling fan moving sluggishly over his head, and he sighs. He reaches over and hits the alarm clock. He never hits Snooze. It is his sacred promise to himself. He starts the morning with pushups. One after the other until he hits one hundred. He brews coffee, peeks through his shattered blinds into the dark morning, tries to relax his arms. He exhales. The sleeping woman next to him seems an impossible dream of good fortune, and so does his smile. His brave smile that still looks good, even when he is tired. He looks longingly into the bathroom mirror before putting on the uniform that she has laid out and pressed for him the night before. See how the pants pleat precisely, the shirt collar pressed. Tan and plain and regal. He puts it all on. The shirt now fits tight around his chest (he has no need for an undershirt). The patch with his name on it is still fresh: Estevez, it reads. He rubs his eyes. He puts on his utility belt to the furthest notch and it presses hard against his belly. He is young, but he is tired. He pours the coffee into his thermos and kisses the sleeping woman and leaves, gets into his truck and disappears into the obscured swallow of the desert, up before the rest of the world. 

At some time or another, those cactuses drew more wonder out of him than they did now: riding with the abuelo, off to sell the cattle in Las Cruces. There was never a word from the abuelo’s mouth that didn’t come back to him later, he had realized in those dark commutes of the morning. This same highway that they’d together ridden down many times had that tendency to bring back those things. The cacti used to haunt the sides of the road like wandering spirits, trolls guarding the edges of the sacred, sand-swept highway. Once, and only once, the abuelo had let him out of the truck to take a piss by the roadside. He was a disobedient kid, though. Ran off straight up to a cactus, which loomed large and tall over his littleboy frame. He looked up at it and went out and reached his mano outwards, dispensing of all fear and replacing it with wonder just for a second, just for a second. The great structure of corduroyed green stared down at the kid like a giant of legend, smoldered at his awe. He’d touched the spike for half a second before the abuelo got a hold of him (he was quick for an old man) and dragged him back to the truck, muttering something about the holiness of the plant and cussing out the kid’s curiousness. 

There was a whole mythology to these things, he’d realized many years later, a good while after the abuelo had died. He’d read up on it. Went to the public library back in town and asked for a book on the legends of the Pueblo. They had one. Seems that the abuelo, who was decidedly not Mexican—half Pueblo Indian, or at least that was what he insisted, see—had a fascination with its folklore. He rejected all things Mexican, he’d said, even if he ended up marrying a girl whose parents were from Tijuana. Refused to show up to church, even to the kid’s baptism. The kid’s mother, the abuelo’s daughter, never seemed to let him forget about that. 

Seems that there was a tale about those fanciful green giants that lined the roadside from Las Cruces all the way down to the border and beyond. The Pueblos adopted it as many other Indians round there did: it’s said that a man, a hunter, had become prey. Upsetting the demons that dwelled in the sands of the Great Desert (how he did ain’t important), he ran deep into an oasis forestry, one that now had slipped into the sands of time, and he got on his knees and prayed to the good gods for protection. 

They helped him, but not exactly how you’d expect. They transformed the hunter into a deer. But when the demons got there, that didn’t help him much. They still went after him as he grazed on the forest grass. If anything, he looked tastier. Guess that’s what you’d call irony, the kid—now an adult Estevez—thought to himself when he read the story. The hunter-deer was just about to be eaten, about to be clenched within their jaws—when the gods mercifully transfigured him again, this time into a cactus. The jaws stopped, yanked themselves away, gushing their blood all over the woodsy floor and moaning dreadfully. They could hardly abstract the prickles that had been impaled so deep into their forked tongues. And so the demons departed, never to prowl the Great Desert again. 

The hunter, well, he stayed a cactus, even as the forest dissipated into the memories of the elders. 

 

 

In those days the border took on a personality of its own. It became like the tide, except you really couldn’t predict its ebb and flow. A Tuesday such as this could be just as bad as a Saturday. There was just no way to tell. Watch as Estevez pulls into the employee parking spaces, situated a ten-minutes’ walk from the fencing. If he leaves his apartment by 4:20, he can make that walk and be in by five sharp. He makes it this morning. In these summer months it seems the contrast between night and day grow more pronounced; as the sun creeps over the eastern quarter of the barracks, feel the bitter-hell cold give way to the radiance all over the valley. Estevez no longer shivers as he swipes his badge and slips through the heavy doors into the office. 

“Morning,” Walterman’s saying to him. He looks tired. His eyes are bloodshot with exhaustion. 

“Long night?” says Estevez. 

“Shit, yes.” Walterman pours coffee into the stained white mug for an undisclosed time. “Long night…” 

“What happened?”  

“You know. Patted down a guy who was packing something. That was a whole thing. He had a piece on him, too.” 

Estevez shakes his head. 

“Happening more and more.” 

“Sure is.” Walterman blows along the rim of his cup. “You know…” 

“Yeah?” 

“I’m getting too old for shit like this. For tackling a guy down, you know?” 

“You did it alone?” 

“Well, no. Took three of us. Mucho grande, this guy was. I’m just saying…well, I’m getting too old for it, buddy, that’s all.” 

“Yeah.” 

“You’re young.” Walterman now eyes him down with a vague sense of promise. “You got some energy. Don’t agree with me.” 

“I’m not. Just sympathizing.” 

“Good, good.” Walterman grabs his tin lunchbox and begins to exit. “Oh, another thing…” and he turns on his heels. 

“Yeah?” 

“Picked up a couple of things. A woman and her kid, I think. They’re down in B7 if you can do me a favor and run over and do that shit for me at some point today.” 

“I guess I can,” Estevez says. 

Walterman shoots him with a finger gun. 

“Thanks, buddy,” he says, “I’ll see you tomorrow.” 

 

 

They’re in the back corner of the holding cell, with the sweatbeads now shining brightly on their brown foreheads. She’s got that furrowed brow of concern permanently plastered across her weathered face. She’s young, not much older than Estevez. The kid’s squatting on the floor, crossing his arms, apparently unrepentant. Enter Estevez with a clipboard. 

“Good morning,” he says. He’s greeted through the bars with blank expressions. He sighs. “Buenas dias,” he qualifies. The woman looks at him and frowns a little. 

“Habla ingles, senora?” Estevez wants to know.  

“Habla espanol?” she mutters back. 

“No…pues, un poquito.”  

The kid spits on the concrete floor. He shifts a little and lets out a low groan. Estevez notices. 

“Esta bien?” he says, nodding. 

“No se,” she replies quickly. “No se.” 

 

 

Estevez, for his part, thought often about the abuelo when he was at work. In some ways, he was taking part in the abuelo’s dreams of separation. The abuelo had hated going down to the border, avoiding it like some pagan force of evil. Used to spit on the ground when it was mentioned. Estevez figured that he was doing something noble, standing on the edge, defending his pais with vigor from the invaders. That’s how it felt somedays. Somedays it was quiet, though, and on those days, he’d walk slowly along the fence line, feeling the overbearing sun beat down on him and force him to reconsider his life. Back home she wanted him to get out of it. Take a job back in Las Cruces as a security guard, a bouncer. He was big, strong. He had many good years left in him, she said. She was right. 

He doesn’t get to eat lunch until twelve-thirty or so. Up against the walls of the office, he usually leans with Drescher, who also is accustomed to a late lunch. Both guys are famished by the time they eat. Drescher eats slow and talks factually. A Texas transplant, he’s always spitting something like it’s profound: 

“You do the rounds in the Bs?” Drescher wants to know through a full mouth, the crust from the sandwich dangling from his lips. 

“Yeah.” 

“Anyone interesting?” 

Estevez shrugs. He scrapes with a fork at the tin of his tuna can. Drescher swallows. 

“There’s someone,” Estevez says after a minute. “A woman and her kid.” 

“Hm. How old?” 

“The mom or the kid?” 

“Both.” 

He shrugs again. 

“Maybe early twenties. Kid is seven, maybe.” 

“Yeah? What’s interesting about ‘em?” 

“Nothing. I think she was just pissed that I didn’t speak Spanish well enough.” Estevez spits. 

“I reckon a lot of ‘em are.” Drescher takes his hat off and wipes away the sweat from the sweltering sun and gazes philosophically down the distance into the endless fencing, “Seeing you. They probably get all excited like you’re gonna understand them. In more ways in one, you know?” 

“I know. My wife got me this uh…CD thing, you know? Last Christmas. Something to learn with. It’s like thirty-five hours of content, you know?” 

“Yeah? How’s that working out for you?” 

“It’s still sitting in my glovebox. Haven’t taken it out of the wrapping yet.” 

Drescher laughs. 

“Yeah, I know,” Estevez says. 

A silence fills the valley. An overhead caw of a vulture. 

 

 

There was an overcorrection, the abuelo thought, when his only grandson went and married a first-generation Mexican girl. Maria, her name was. She was of Tijuana stock, just like the in-laws. Hated that. Hated that, made it clear in annunciated English to his grandson. He didn’t show up to the wedding, even though his wife did. He would’ve hated it anyway, the old woman assured Estevez and Maria, the two of clasping each other in nuptial ecstasy, her hair long and black and shining, his tuxedo shirt down several buttons, chest sweat glimmering in the hanging lights. The mariachi band played all night long. Maria’s parents paying for it all. They insisted on it. Her father broke his back as a plumber, all the way from Las Cruces, up to Albuquerque, Santa Fe, and everywhere in between. Saved for a whole year for this event. 

The abuela, she looked on all of it, all the joyousness and laughter and just smiled and apologized twice, even slipping into: 

“Lo siento, mis hijos. Lo siento. I love you. He loves you.” 

Estevez touched her cheek that night and promised her he knew. The abuelo and abuela both died shortly thereafter. 

Maria was always insistent on Mass attendance, even when the two first found each other. She always wore a mantilla veil, attended obligatory days; Estevez didn’t see so much as her upper thigh before they got married. And he got the job at the border just a few days after the wedding. Ain’t that just the way, he thought to himself, when he got up before the rest of the world for the first time. She lets you sleep with her and you’re gone before she wakes up. 

But Estevez never minded the church thing. See how they move across the sidewalk, into the mission-style building with them bells chiming. The faithful are gathered in. Attendance thinner and thinner by the year. There’s been a new priest in the parish for about four months now. He’s rather young, not much older than Estevez himself. There’s a renewed pep to his genuflections. He speaks flowingly, articulately. He holds up the circular bread with such attention, reverence. There’s a glitter in his eyes as he distributes the Body. All of the women love him, Estevez imagines. Maria sure does. 

He greets them all afterwards, standing outside neath the bells, his green cassock flowing through the desert wind. Maria insists, for some reason, that this Sunday is the one to go talk to him. She holds his arm and points to her esposo. The priest says he recognizes Maria from the parish festival several weeks ago. Her tamales were excellent, reminded him of home. He shakes Estevez’s hand enthusiastically, thanks him for what he’s doing at the border, knows from experience how hard it is. There’s a slight tilt in his accent. So close to American…so close….  

“I crossed myself when I was seven,” he’s saying. “I know it’s hard. It’s hard work. I know what you have to put up with…I know it’s only gotten harder.” 

Estevez nods and nods. 

“Thank you, Father. Thank you…I—” 

“How’s your Spanish?” the priest cuts in. 

“Huh?” 

“How’s your Spanish?” 

“Oh. Um…” Estevez laughs nervously and defers to Maria, who tries to plod along carefully. 

“Esta tratando…” she says, “poco a poco.” She grabs his arm and Estevez tries to smile. 

“Well, good…we need more Spanish down there.” 

They offer a Spanish Mass on Saturday and Sunday evenings at the church right there. Maria begins insisting that they go, says that they could go together Saturday evenings right after Estevez gets off work. She proposes this idea as they hop into the truck in the church parking lot. 

Maria tells him it’ll be a good way to practice his Spanish. Estevez just shakes his head and tells her that he gets enough practice at work already. He starts the truck and they drive home. 

 

 

It was in 1967 when the abuelo bought his first patch of land. Nineteen acres just south of Alamogordo. He swore then that the desert would swallow him up—that one day he’d just lie on a bed and die there in the old ranchhouse, watching as the overwhelming sun would sink into the rocky horizon and disappear into the earth. Right when the benevolent gods came out at night to protect the wind.  

The abuela was not happy with the purchase. She wasn’t a city girl by any measure, though she did remember her times in Tijuana as a little girl with a happy longing for the bustliness, but still, a ranch was where you went to die, she told him. He wasn’t an old man when he bought it, either. Only fifty-four. But the kids had moved down to Las Cruces, and their daughter already had one on the way, and the abuelo decided that it was time to realize some dreams of his own. When the kid came to term, he went and visited his grandparents quite often. In the summers he’d stay with them. And at night, sometimes, when the kid couldn’t sleep he’d walk out into the small living room leading out to the screened-in porch that protruded from the south wall of the old house. There, in the early morning darkness, the abuelo would be there, smoking from a pipe thoughtfully, rocking in that creaky rocking chair, looking out onto the pure blackness and unforgiving cold of the desert night. Looking at all the flat, all the way to the Border. In the dim single lightbulb overhead, the abuelo would read straight from some book on the Pueblo people and the myths and the legends. He had the book, fixated with it, really—stood it on a little stand on top of the mantle of the fireplace. Said it contained all of the secrets that he had left to figure out, and that Estevez should read it too. He always said that. 

And the screened-in porch was his addition to the house. It was undervalued, you know, so he bought it with some cash to spare. He insisted on a screen. Insisted on it. The abuela felt it was excessive. Why did he need it? 

“Because,” he’d crack a rare smile there in his rocking chair, “it keeps the goddamn bugs out. Isn’t it obvious?” 

 

 

Saturday again. He walks into the lounge, and Walterman stands there, flashing a cracked, sad grin and tells him about what’s transpired the night before. Remember that boy and his mother from last week, remember that? Boy’s gotten sicker. He was already sick. But now he was puking all over the cell, all over the floor. 

“What’s the holdup on the alien numbers?” Estevez wants to know. 

“I don’t know.” Walterman shrugs. “I thought you put those together last week.” 

“I filed ‘em.” 

“Well, shit, I don’t know,” the old man says, stirring the creamer into the coffee with the little wood stick. “Talk to Duramus about that one.” 

“I could.” Estevez pauses. “Why’s it always gotta be me?” 

“What?” 

“Why’s it always gotta be me that deals with this?” 

Walterman just lets out his deep-belly chuckle. He grabs his tin lunchbox and observes the steam rising from the cup. Still fixated with its warmth, he shrugs without looking up. 

“I’m just the night help,” he says. 

The onsite medics were stretched too, too thin. Budgeting, they tell them. Estevez, seven years on the job, has never seen it so bad. Never seen them all so tired, the crossers or the catchers. All of them. He goes just as his lunch hour begins, down the sterilized halls, through the brightness of the sun streaming through the austerity of the corridors. He arrives.  

The kid’s been given a little red bucket. He’s curled himself up, contorted on the little bed. She leans against it, crosslegged on the floor, tired. There is a deadness in her eyes that wasn’t present even last week. She looks at Estevez, through the bars, with surprise as he arrives without a clipboard in his hand. 

“Buenas dias,” he says to them. She glares back. 

“Hola.” 

“Esta bien?” he nods at the kid. She just shakes her head. 

“Esta enfermos?” 

“Si.” 

“Esta vomitando?” 

“Si.” 

“Fiebre?” 

“Si, si…” she insists. Her brown eyes are wide. 

“Okay, okay. I understand…yo entiendo, get it? Okay.” He begins to turn, walk back. 

“Senor…” she coos gently from behind him. He stops. 

“Voy a almorzar, okay?” 

“Senor…” 

“Wha—que? 

“Ayudar. Ayudar…” she says. “Ple—please. Okay?” 

“Voy a ayduar, yeah? Voy a ayduar.” He keeps walking and goes to meet Drescher for lunch. 

 

 

“When’d they cross?” Duramus is gnawing on his sandwich, only half paying attention. Estevez stands halfways from the door of the office to the large desk, stacked heavy with paper and files. The older man is tired, those glasses postured on the edge of the nose, behind him in the window you can see it all—the grand veranda facing out onto the Line, where they’re all pouring in… 

“I don’t know. Tuesday last week. I submitted the paperwork to you on Wednesday.” 

Duramus looks up at him and nods slowly. He drums his fingers against the desk. 

“I’m sure it’s here somewhere…” 

“Yeah.” 

“I’ll find it when I get time…” 

“Okay.” 

“So the kid’s sick?” 

“Very.” 

“So what…you’re not gonna get the guys down…” 

“You and I both know…” 

“Yeah, yeah, yeah.” Duramus holds his hands up. “I know, I know. But we’re stretched thin…you know that we’re so—” 

“I know, I know.” 

“So what the hell do you want me to do?” 

“I want you to approve the alien status for both of ‘em so I can do it myself.” 

He snorts. 

“When’d you become a doctor?” 

“Not that. Take the kid up to Las Cruces to see somebody.” 

“How the hell you gonna pay for that?” 

“Figure it out, I guess.” 

“Hmm.” He begins tapping again. He leans back into his desk chair and, sighing heavily, he turns round and gazes into the horizon beyond. Down below in this tower you can see the fence from both sides. You can see em slipping by, up top, over and under and through. He stares this all down and mutters something about never seeing it this bad, never this bad. He turns and looks at Estevez. 

“You got a copy of your paperwork?” 

“I filled it out fresh.” 

“Fine. Give me that.” 

 

 

What a tremendous swallow of pride it must’ve been for the abuelo to go down to Guadalajara in those final months to try and get that tumor cut up and shrunk. He had no other option left, and he took the last of the cash that he kept underneath the rotting floorboards of the ranchhouse and he headed down there in the truck. He thought, perhaps foolishly, that if his life could be at all extended, maybe he’d start to change it. It was on that ride down, Estevez often liked to think, that the abuelo started to ask for forgiveness into the silent air. Now with the abuela gone, and her blue rosary beads dangling from the stem of his rearview mirror, he thought that maybe his grandfather would finally surrender to the absurdity of the desert. All the sands and the useful myths and the cold night had finally revealed to him all they promised: that was nothingness, no further experience, growing drier and drier like the green giants on the sides of the highway all the way down to Guadalajara.  

Estevez thinks about this as he looks in his own mirror, casting a glance back to the woman and the kid. The boy’s wrapped up in a white towel that his skin is almost as pale as. Estevez is glad for the extended cab. They’re crouched in the back, both of them looking at him with fear in their eyes. Estevez wants to say something about them staying in Mexico if they wanted to see a doctor for cheap, but he doesn’t. 

The evening is settling over the trek back up to Las Cruces, and Estevez drives so not to have his encounter with the darkness in the desert. And he thinks he can hear the abuelo up somewhere, or down somewhere, laughing. 

 

 

Watch as that white wafer is raised, glimmering in the orange pentecostal refractions of the stained glass behind the altar. Placed above the small crucifix affixed, the glass is bright and brilliant in the dancing afternoon sun. The dove inside gazes down promisingly at the Hispanic congregation, and in particular down at the host, which absorbs the afternoon light as it is held between his holy hands, held and lowered back into its golden chasuble. It is cracked, broken, consumed reverently in pieces. Estevez and Maria stand, her hypnotically waddling forward, her scarf flittering in the air conditioning draft, and him, thinking about the smell of her hair and the conversation beforehand. 

He’s not picking up a single word. He didn’t even have time to change out of the uniform when he got off work and into town on time. As they slipped into the sacristy, there’s no shortage of stares from all of them. All of them, eying down Estevez in the tan uniform that just about matches his skin tone. Some stares of distaste. Others with fear. 

“Cuerpo de Cristo,” the priest says, nodding at him. His eyes are filled with musicality as he meets Estevez’s eye. They hold a stare just a bit longer than the others. 

“Amen.” 

Slipping out. The cell phone strapped to his work belt remains painfully silent. He told her to call him if anything changes. 

The priest is situated in his usual locale in the front circle of the church. Maria spies him and steers her husband over. 

“Padre. Como estas?” 

“Ah, Maria. Buenas tardes.” 

She then casts a look over at Estevez. Deferring it. 

“I got something to run by you, man…” he’s saying. Maria nods on and taps her foot. 

“Yes. How are you?” 

“Good, padre…heh…good.” 

“Good to hear.” 

“Yeah. Well, I got these people, right? People I met at the border…and the kid’s sick. Not chronically, you know…but I just—well, I got them released and I brought them to the hospital uptown and was wondering if there’s a place you—we—could put ‘em up in. Maria and I—would take them in if we weren’t so limited on space at the apartment…” 

“I’m sure we could figure something out. Set them up with a family here at the parish or something…you’re far from the first to ask about getting a family put up somewhere, thanks be to God…” 

They shake hands. Estevez is exhausted as he and Maria climb into the truck.  

“That wasn’t so bad, was it, chico?” Maria wants to know. 

“I guess not.” 

“That’s what we do before offering a stranger woman and her kid a couch that we don’t have…” 

“I didn’t think it would be a big deal for you…”  

“We’re struggling just like they are…” 

“Not as bad as they are…”  

“Who’s gonna pay at the hospital?” Maria demands. “Hm? Who? Us? Your insurance…?” 

“I don’t know. I’ll talk to Father about that too.” 

“Will you now?” She crosses her arms. “Will you now?” Estevez starts the truck and they begin to head home. Then she points at the phone on his belt.  

“Well?” 

“Huh?’ 

“She even call yet?” 

“Not yet.” 

“Hm.” She casts her stare back out to the passing townscape. The evening sun strikes the strands of her hair and her eyes are suddenly bright and pretty and southern. Back before the border. Hopeful. The sun blazes and so does her faith. He reaches over and puts a big hand up her thigh and up her skirt. 

“Bonita,” he mutters. 

She pauses, snorts with a hint of a laugh and looks at him. 

“Don’t start…” 

 

 

Hotter than hell that night. Estevez lays awake in the summer night heat. The air conditioning clatters, the window are tightly shut, but he figures he’ll step outside a second into the deep dark black. This time of year the air is dry and earthy. The sand swirls around itself in conscious attention. Even in the middle of the town, he feels alone and distant, an outlaw without language, color, creed, or border. He has become a man unto himself. 

Reaching upwards he climbs out of bed, makes a passing glance to the sleeping woman and walks out onto the balcony overlooking it all. Instead of the usual buildings there is nothing but the vast desert of which he often dreams. There is darkness and more darkness. The empty, vacuous beckon of the wild. The obligations have left on time. You are free and you have nothing but the sand and the giant cactuses and your own feeble imagination to go on and play with. 

He sits, entranced with this new veranda. Above him the moon shines in a bright crescent. The stars are limitless in number and in distance. He is nothing, and he is up before the rest of the world. 

Accompanying him on those twin rocking chairs is the abuelo, who has taken a comfortable seat to his right. Estevez looks over, gazes at the old man that haunts and jibes him continually. The silver hair and the angry eyes, wrinkles crawling across the face, the pipe drifting from the yellowed teeth. His tongue flicking out all pernicious like a rattlesnake under the sandy floor. The abuelo hisses and curses quietly to himself. He rocks back and forth and shakes his head and wonders about it all. 

“What do you want?” 

“Thought I’d keep you company.” He spits. “Seeing as you’re up so early.” 

“I don’t sleep much anymore.” 

“No, no, you don’t, do you?” 

“No.” 

“Let me ask you something.” The abuelo’s eyes are emblazoned with the starlight. “You like your life?” 

“No.” 

“Good. That’s good. I didn’t either. At least we agree on something.” 

“I guess…Abuelo, I—” Estevez starts. 

“Why you call me that? You know I hated it when you called me that.” 

“Grandpa, then—” 

“You don’t get it, do you?” 

“Get what?” 

“You could’ve liked your life. But you cared too much. Cared too much about them ghost stories. Cared to much about the land and what it means.” 

“I don’t know if that’s true.” 

“No? Then what do you make of calling me ‘grandpa,’ then?” 

“I don’t know.” There’s silence. The abuelo produces his tobacco pouch and begins shoving more into the pipe. He lights it. 

“I don’t know, either, buddy,” he sighs and exhales the smoke. It contorts into an abstract shape. “I just figured that one day this would all make sense—” 

“Let me call you by your name, then,” Estevez insists. “Jorge Enrique Simon Gonzales…” 

“That name doesn’t mean shit to me anymore. It shouldn’t mean shit to you either. It doesn’t mean anything. I’m nothing. I always was.” 

“Am I nothing?” 

The abuelo turns and looks him down hard for a while. The smoke glazes the hazy distance between them. 

“Maybe.” 

“Maybe?” 

“Depends on what you want, buddy. Those Mexican doctors fucked me up—” he points to his pauchy stomach. “You want to be associated with them?” 

“I don’t know.” 

“There it is. You don’t know anything, so you’re better off not believing anything. Take it from me, buddy.” 

“Alright.” 

“Those ghost stories from the desert? They’re useful. Real, practical. Useful. Don’t be getting any other fanciful notions from them, you understand?” 

“Yeah.” 

“Good man.” 

A silence. 

“Am I…doing good at the border?” 

“I don’t think the border is any good. Never was.” 

“Why do you hate it so much? Why do you hate yourself? Why do you hate me?” 

The abuelo shrugs, looks longingly into the desert sky above. 

“Can’t hate anything I don’t think is true.” 

“Your father’s half Mexican,” Estevez says slowly. “He came across. He came across…” 

“I should’ve never told you that. I don’t have any father. I don’t have anything. I don’t exist anymore.” 

“But you do…you do…you exist for me…” 

“If you want me to…” 

“But you…you have a name. You have a reason…” 

“Not me. You might. Not me, buddy.” 

“No, I—” 

“Not me, buddy.” His silhouette begins fading, sloping backwards into the unknowable blackness of the balcony. “Not me…” 

“No,” Estevez protests, “I—” 

“Later, buddy, later…we’ll talk later…” 

He disappears. The chair keep rocking, the fragrance of smoke still in the air. 

And Estevez wakes, startled, far too early for a Sunday morning. 

 

 

And concurrently around that time in 1967 that church in the center of Las Cruces underwent a much-needed renovation and expansion. The parish of Cristo Rey gained a new gathering space on the west side of its façade, along with increased bathroom spaces and an attached gymnasium for the burgeoning parish elementary school. Underneath it there were a few new offices made to accommodate the growing staff. In the shift, the provisional family shelter adjacent to the boiler room grew underutilized and forgotten. Cobwebs now consumed its dank corners and the ventilation breathed warm and stuffy in its darkness. The sets of bunkbeds now lay dormant, with their nylon-lined mattresses gathering dust. Directly above the room sat the altar. Above the altar sat the tabernacle. And in the tabernacle sat God, smiling fondly upon the inhabitants of the room. 

And on those walls, signatories and messages and conjecture, all penned by the generations of residents that sought shelter within their premises—perhaps for a night, or perhaps for six weeks. 

And now, watch as the priest switches on the lights of the room and they seem to obey, with an electric hum reverberating throughout the concrete walls. They step in, the mustiness overwhelming them in waves, like the deep secret of the building getting let out in a warm whisper. Enter behind the priest the woman, the kid, and Estevez, who admires the walls in childlike awe. 

“I’d forgotten that Father Elfriede had told me about this room,” the priest is saying aloud in Spanish. “I couldn’t tell you the last time that it was occupied. I know it was used a lot for situations like yours a long time ago.” 

The kid, still pale as a ghost but walking steady now, peruses quietly and gazes up to the ceiling, with its welcome blankness and cracked brick. The pipes snaking feebly out of its gaps. 

“Hijo,” the priest says to him. “Que piensas?” 

“Es ok…” 

“Si?” 

“Si.” 

The woman stands off to the side and takes it all in indiscriminately. The kid trots five paces forward and sits on the dust-encrusted lower bunk. It squeals under even his miniscule weight. 

“Es mejor que la frontera, si or no?” 

“Si.” Maybe the hint of the smile. 

“Bueno, bueno.” The priest nods. “Todo el tiempo que necesites…” 

Estevez, though, he’s off on the other side of the room, still fixated on the wall. He has found something. 

Down below his waist, at a child’s height, a scrawl. He crouches down and squints. A name. In all capital letters. Faded away by time, but there. A common name. Common enough to be a coincidence: 

JORGE GONZALES 

Maybe it was and maybe it wasn’t. Didn’t matter now. 

 

 

He wonders frequently about a lot of things. In particular, he wonders about that hunter in the story. Why was he doing what he did? Did he even like it, out there in the desert all day tracking down the elks and the rams? Did he have a family, and if so, did they ever hear from the hunter again? Were there any thoughts left after he had transformed and then transformed again, this time as a simple cactus that now lurks on the side of the highway? Was he to be there forever, watching nothing and thinking nothing and believing in nothing, nothing but fleshy green and water filling his insides? Would those prickles ever dwindle? Seems that there’s no point in protecting a spirit that can’t speak for itself anyway. 

Such questions were unanswerable, he had concluded long ago. One thing he knew for sure, though, was the fact that the sun still beat down on that cactus, just as it did on everything else, and maybe one day he’d go out there to the desert and find the one that that hunter’s spirit was entrapped in and do it homage, for certainly, the hunter would appreciate that. Maybe only then could that spirit find rest.  

What a terrible thing it must be, he thought, that here he was complaining about being up so early when those cactuses never slept. They saw the night and they saw the day. And they never seemed to tire of it. 

Sam Dierberger

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About the Author

Sam Dierberger is a senior at Rockhurst originally from Hanover, Minnesota, majoring in English and Economics. In addition to being the author of two unpublished novels, he has also released an album of original folk music, Them Who Haunt, in the summer of 2023. In his free time, he enjoys writing, amateur film criticism and table tennis. He'll attend Law School at Creighton University beginning in Fall 2024.