Sierra Negra , Episode 4: The Ravine

The body was found by a boy named Noé who had gone down the barranca looking for his goat. The boy came back up without the goat and without his voice. He pointed. That was all he could do.

Braulio heard about it from the woman who sold tortillas in Madero. She told him in a whisper, her eyes on the street. A body in the ravine below the old quarry. The one the Sierras used. Hands tied. Missing fingers.

He knew before she finished the sentence.

He walked to the quarry because he could not stop himself. The road was dirt and broken stone. The sun was high and white. The flies found him before he found the place. They found everyone.

The body was still there. Nobody had moved it. Nobody would. The police would come from Madero in their green pickup and write something in their notebook and drive away. That was the custom now.

Braulio stood at the edge of the ravine and looked down. Tomás was on his back. His eyes were open. His mouth was open. The two fingers that were already gone were still gone. The rest of him was there, which was the worst part. They had not shot him. They had not stabbed him. They had taken him to the edge of the ravine and pushed him. The fall had done the rest. The rocks at the bottom had finished what the fall started.

He had been alive when he went over. The scrapes on his hands said so. The dirt under his nails. He had tried to catch himself. He had grabbed at stone and air.

Braulio turned away and vomited into the dry grass. His body shook. His knees went soft. He knelt there in the sun with his hands on the ground and let the sound come out of him, a sound he did not recognize, a sound that belonged to animals.

He had known Tomás for twelve years. Tomás had taught him how to roast agave hearts in the tierra, how to know when the fire was right by the color of the smoke. Tomás had sat at his table. Tomás had held his daughter on his knee when she was small. Tomás had lost two fingers because he had tried to leave.

And now Tomás was in the ravine.

Braulio walked home. He did not remember the walk. He found himself at his door with the sun lower than it should have been and his hands bleeding from something he could not name. He went inside. Leticia was at the stove. She turned when she heard the door. She saw his face. She did not ask.

He sat at the table. The wood was worn smooth by his elbows. Thirty years of meals. Thirty years of silence. He put his head in his hands.

Tomás, he said.

Leticia made the sign of the cross. She did it the way she did everything now, automatic, a muscle memory of faith. She lit a candle on the altar where the Virgin stood among photographs of the dead. His father. Her mother. A nephew who had crossed the border and never called.

They found him in the ravine, Braulio said.

She did not answer.

He tried to leave. He tried to leave and they took him to the ravine.

The water on the stove began to boil. Leticia turned it off. She sat down across from him. She was a small woman with gray in her hair and lines around her mouth that had not been there a year ago. Her hands were still. They were always still now.

You are next, she said.

He looked at her.

She said it again, softer. You are next, Braulio.

He wanted to tell her she was wrong. He wanted to tell her that he had done what they asked. He had made the run to Apatzingán. He had watched his mezcal loaded into trucks with no markings. He had seen what his bottles carried. He had not said no. He had not refused. He had done everything.

But he had seen Tomás in the ravine. And Tomás had done everything too. Tomás had given them his fingers. Tomás had given them his silence. Tomás had given them everything he had, and they had taken him to the quarry and pushed him into the rocks.

I know, he said.

That night, Leticia called the girl in Morelia.

Braulio listened from the porch. The phone was old. The reception came and went. Her voice carried through the open window, thin and careful.

No, mija, everything is fine. Your father is fine. Yes, I know. Listen. I think you should stay there for a while. Do not come for the weekend. Do not come for the month. Stay in Morelia.

A pause. The girl's voice, distant and tinny through the speaker.

No, there is no reason. I just think it is better. Your studies are important. Yes. I love you. Yes. Your father sends his love. Yes.

She hung up. She stood in the dark kitchen with the phone in her hand. Then she came out to the porch and sat beside him.

She wanted to come, Leticia said.

I know.

I told her no.

He nodded. The sierra was dark. No moon. The stars were sharp as broken glass.

She is safe there, Leticia said.

Yes.

She is safe.

He put his hand on her leg. She did not move away. She did not lean into him. She sat perfectly still, like a bird that had learned that movement attracted predators.

Braulio lay awake that night. Leticia slept beside him, or pretended to. The house made its sounds. The wood settling. The wind in the eaves. The mule stamping in the pen. He listened for trucks. He listened for footsteps. He listened for the soft knock of a man who came as family and left as something else.

The knock did not come. Not that night.

He slept at dawn, a thin sleep full of falling.

Three days passed. Braulio worked the pit because there was nothing else to do. The agave did not know the Sierras existed. The fire did not care about partnership. The still did not ask questions. He fed it and it gave him what it gave. Clear. Burning. True.

He checked the barrels in the shed. The ones the Sierras had filled. He had not looked at them since the run to Apatzingán. He pulled the cork on one and smelled. It was mezcal. Good mezcal. His mezcal. But something else lived underneath. Something chemical. Something that did not belong.

He put the cork back. He washed his hands. He did not touch the barrels again.

On the third day, the truck came.

He heard it from the pit. The sound of an engine climbing the grade. Not a pickup. Something smoother. Something with money in it. He stood up and watched the road.

The black SUV came over the ridge and stopped at the bottom of the hill. The engine cut. The door opened.

Ernesto Rafael stepped out. He was alone. He wore a gray shirt with the sleeves rolled twice. His boots were polished dark. He looked up the hill at Braulio and waited.

Braulio climbed out of the pit. His hands were black with earth. His shirt was wet. He walked down the hill and stopped ten feet from the man.

Primo, Ernesto Rafael said.

Señor Sierra.

Ernesto Rafael smiled. It was the same smile from the porch. The same smile that meant nothing.

You heard about Tomás.

Braulio said nothing.

That was not my doing. That was Alfredo. My brother has a temper. He does not understand that some problems require patience.

Tomás was a good man, Braulio said.

He was a man who wanted to leave. You cannot leave this. None of us can leave this.

Braulio looked at the SUV. The windows were dark. The tires were clean. It was a vehicle from another world, a world of climate control and leather seats and men who killed from a distance. He thought of Tomás falling. He thought of the rocks.

What do you want?

Ernesto Rafael stepped closer. He smelled of soap. Clean soap. Like a man who had never touched dirt in his life.

I came to tell you that the partnership is no longer an offer, Primo.

It was what Braulio had known was coming. It was what he had felt in his chest since the moment he saw the flies over the ravine.

I made the run, he said. I delivered the load. I did what you asked.

You did. And now we are partners. Your stills produce for us. Your mezcal carries our name. You will make more. Much more. We have buyers waiting. We have routes established. The bottles will have labels. The labels will have a story. The story pays.

Braulio looked past him at the sierra. The pines. The ridges. The sky that went on forever. It was the same sky his father had looked at. The same sky Sergio had looked at. The same sky Tomás had looked at, falling.

And I do not have a choice, he said.

Ernesto Rafael tilted his head. The gesture was almost kind.

You always have a choice, Primo. You chose to be alive.

He turned and walked back to the SUV. He opened the door and looked back.

I will send a truck on Thursday. Fill it. We will send more agave. You will make more. This is how it works now.

He got in. The engine started. The SUV turned and disappeared over the ridge, leaving nothing but dust and the smell of soap and the sound of Braulio's own breathing.

He went back to the pit.

He worked until his hands bled. He worked until the light failed and the stars came out. He worked because if he stopped, he would have to think about what he had agreed to. What he had not agreed to. What had been taken from him either way.

Leticia came out with water. She stood at the edge of the pit and watched him.

They came, she said.

Yes.

She waited.

I am making their mezcal now, he said. My stills. My name. But it is theirs.

She did not cry. She did not scream. She looked at him with the dead eyes of a woman who had buried too many people to be surprised by another grave.

Then I will stay, she said.

Braulio looked up at her. The word stay meant something he did not want to hear.

The girl is safe in Morelia, Leticia said. She will not come back. Not until this is over.

And when is it over?

She did not answer. She turned and walked back to the house. The light from the kitchen door fell across the yard and then disappeared as she closed it behind her.

Braulio stood alone in the dark. The pit was open. The fire was dead. The agave waited.

He thought about the run to Apatzingán. The roads he had taken. The checkpoints he had passed through, not stopped at. The men at the warehouse who had looked at his mezcal and nodded. He had seen their faces. He had seen the labels. He had seen where the bottles were going. Not just to Mexico City. Not just to New York. To places where the mezcal would not be mezcal anymore. It would be a cover. It would be a lie. It would carry what the Sierras put in it, and his name would be on the bottle.

He thought about Tomás, who had tried to leave.

He thought about Sergio, who had said no.

He thought about his father, who had been shot in the back of the head in Apatzingán and nobody looked.

He thought about the girl in Morelia. She was safe. That was something. That was the only thing.

He walked to the shed where the barrels sat. He pulled the cork from one and drank. The mezcal was good. It was his. It was not his. It burned going down.

He stood in the dark shed with the barrel in his hands and listened to the sierra. The wind in the pines. The distant sound of a truck on the mountain road, too far away to matter.

The truck was coming on Thursday. He would fill it. He would make more. He would be what they needed him to be.

But he was thinking about something else now. Something that had started in his chest the moment he saw Tomás in the ravine. Something that grew in the dark like the roots of the agave, slow and patient and deep.

On Thursday, the truck arrived at dawn.

It was a flatbed with canvas sides. Two men he did not know. They did not speak. They loaded the barrels. They drove away.

Braulio watched them go.

The sierra was quiet. The birds were starting. The sun was climbing over the ridges. It was going to be a hot day. A good day for the agave. A good day for the fire.

He did not go to the pit.

He went to the house instead. Leticia was at the altar. The candle for Tomás was burning. The Virgin looked down with her painted eyes, patient and silent.

I am going to Madero, he said.

She did not turn.

For what?

To buy wire.

She turned then. Her face was unreadable.

What kind of wire?

The same kind they used on Tomás, he said.

He walked out before she could answer.

The road to Madero was empty. The sun was high. The dust rose around his boots. He walked because walking was something he could still do, something that belonged to him. The mule was in the pen. The truck was gone. He had nothing but his feet and his hands and the thing growing in his chest.

He thought about what he would do when Ernesto Rafael came back. Because he would come back. They always came back. The partnership was permanent. The mezcal was theirs. The wire was waiting in a coil at the hardware store, cheap and strong, the same alambre every man in the sierra used for fences and gates and the bodies of men who tried to leave.

He thought about Sergio in the grave above the pueblo, looking out at the lake.

He thought about Tomás at the bottom of the ravine, his hands reaching for something that was not there.

He thought about the girl in Morelia. She was safe. That was the only thing that mattered.

But he was thinking about something else too. Something he had not told Leticia. Something he had not told himself until now.

He was not going to fill the truck on Thursday.

He was not going to make the run to Apatzingán.

He was going to do what Sergio could not do. What Tomás could not do. What his father had been too tired to do.

He was going to fight.

The thought was a match in dry grass. It spread. It burned. It lit everything.

He walked faster.

To be continued...