The combination of fear and admiration that Andres and Evelyn felt toward Gregorio would turn into paralyzing shyness in his presence. The chains with crosses dangling around his neck, his green aviator’s glasses, his American boots, the tattoos spreading like a plague across his skin, his reputation as a killer, his wild life and lack of regard for pain and death, his secrets and crimes—all of this kept them in awe of him. They talked of their terrifying brother in forbidden whispers as far as possible out of their grandmother’s earshot.
Concepcion was worried that Andres would follow his brother’s example, but he did not have the temperament to join a gang: he was too clever, too careful and timid; his dream was to head north and prosper. He planned to earn money in the United States and live like a pauper so as to save and send dollars to Evelyn and his grandmother. Later he would give them a good life in the north, where they would live with their mother in a proper cement house with running water and electricity. To get them there he would find them a responsible smuggler who would secure passports with visas and the vaccination certificates for hepatitis and typhus that the gringos sometimes asked for. Then they would leave Guatemala safely, otherwise the journey through Mexico on foot or on a freight train roof was an acid test: they would have to face attackers armed with machetes and police with dogs, or if they fell off the railcar they could lose their legs or their lives. After that, anyone crossing the US border could die of thirst in the desert or be shot by ranchers, who went out to hunt migrants as if they were hares. These were the tales told by the youngsters who had made the journey and been deported on the Bus of Tears. They returned ravenous and exhausted, their clothes in rags, but they were not defeated: within a few days, they recovered and set off once more. Andres knew one who had tried eight times and was preparing to go again, but he himself did not have the courage to do so. He was willing to wait, because his mother had promised she would find him a guide as soon as he finished school, before he was called up for the army.
The grandmother was tired of hearing Andres’s plan, but Evelyn delighted in every last detail, even though she didn’t want a life elsewhere. Her village and her grandmother’s shack were the only world she knew. She had no clear memory of her mother and no longer lived in expectation of her postcards or the occasional telephone call. She had no time to dream. She got up at dawn to help her grandmother, going to the well for water, sprinkling the beaten-earth floor to keep down the dust, fetching firewood for the kitchen, heating black beans if there were any left from the previous day, making corn tortillas, frying slices of the plantains that grew in their yard, then straining the sweetened coffee for Concepcion and Andres. She also had to feed the chickens and pig and hang out the clothes left soaking overnight. Andres did none of this: it was women’s work. He went to school before his sister to play soccer with the other boys.
Evelyn and her grandmother understood each other without the need for words, in a shared routine of repeated gestures and methodical domestic chores. On Fridays the two of them began work at three in the morning, preparing the filling for tamales. The next day they wrapped the mixture in plantain leaves, cooked them, and took them to the market to sell. Along with all the other small businesses, Concepcion paid protection money to the gang members and crooks who operated with impunity in the region; she also occasionally had to bribe the local police. Since she earned so little this was a tiny sum, but it was always demanded with threats, and if she did not pay, the delinquents would throw her tamales into the gutter and slap her around. Between this and the cost of the ingredients, she barely made enough to feed her grandchildren. If it had not been for the money Miriam sent, they would have been destitute. On Sundays and holy days, if they were lucky enough to count on Father Benito’s presence, the grandmother and her granddaughter went to sweep the church and arrange the flowers for the mass. The devout village women gave Evelyn sweets: “My, oh my, how pretty our Evelyn is becoming. You’ll have to hide her, Dona Concepcion, so that no heartless man can ruin her,” they would say.
AT FIRST LIGHT ON THE SECOND FRIDAY IN FEBRUARY, the body of Gregorio Ortega was found swinging from the bridge over the river, covered in dried blood and excrement. Around his neck was a piece of cardboard with the fearsome initials “MS” that everyone knew. Blue flies had already begun their disgusting banquet before the arrival of the first onlookers and three uniformed police officers. Over the next few hours the body began to stink, and by midday everyone was leaving, driven away by heat, putrefaction, and fear. The only ones left near the bridge were the police awaiting orders; a bored photographer sent from a nearby town to cover “the bloodshed,” as he called it (even though this was hardly news); and Concepcion Montoya with her two grandchildren, who stood there silent and unmoving.
“Take the kids away from here,” ordered the officer who seemed to be in charge of the others. “This isn’t something for them to see.”
But Concepcion remained rooted to her spot like an old tree in the earth. She had witnessed this kind of brutality before: her father and two brothers had been burned alive during the civil war in the eighties. After that she had thought no human cruelty could surprise her, but when a neighbor came running to tell her what was on the bridge, she dropped a pan, spilling all the tamale ingredients on the ground. For a long while now she had been expecting to hear that her eldest grandson had ended up in prison or died in a fight, but she had never anticipated such a gruesome ending for him.
“Come on, old woman, move on before I get angry,” the officer insisted, pushing her away.
Rousing themselves finally from their stupor, Andres and Evelyn took their grandmother by her arms, uprooting her, and pulled her away. Concepcion had suddenly aged, dragging her feet and hunched over like an old woman. She walked with her eyes on the ground, repeating to herself, “May God bless him and forgive him, may God bless him and forgive him.”