FELIPO WALKED WITH HER TO THE STORE AFTER DINNER. THIN moonlight. Stars thicker than she’d known in years. Down the road, the store floated in a hazy sphere of light. Banda music crackled from speakers. There was a lone lamp on a telephone pole, as well as a string of white Christmas lights wound into the flowering branches of an anacahuita near the store. The music pumped from a boom box sitting in the truck bed. A couple danced casually, each of them holding a brown bottle of beer. Elsewhere a group of men sat in a circle, playing some kind of game. When the song ended, Felipo got the dancing man’s attention. He came over, grinning, and Luz felt his eyes creep over her.
“Good evening.” The top snaps of his shirt hung open. He wore silver and turquoise jewelry. Rafa, the store owner. There was a phone with which she could dial internationally. “It is an emergency?”
“I need to reach my papá in America.”
Rafa’s eyebrows bumped. He adopted an engineered forlorn look. “That will be an expensive call.”
When Felipo saw Luz’s face fall, he said he’d cover the cost. Luz thanked him.
“Very good.” Rafa flashed white teeth. “This way, please.”
They passed by the men circled on the ground. They were sitting around something. One of them jolted and the others laughed, jeered.
Inside the store, the shelves bore crates of soda pop and bags of chips. Behind the counter, a curtained portal seemed to be the entrance to Rafa’s home. The phone sat on the counter next to the register. Rafa opened a cooler and handed an unlabeled brown bottle to Felipo. The boy cranked off the top and sipped the beer. Luz went around the counter to the phone, recalling the sparse calls to her father when she was a child. Her mother waiting for his calls in between. He had even sounded far away, voice thin in the earpiece. Luz lifted the phone. Rafa remained, smiling. Felipo nodded, holding the beer. “I’d like to be alone,” Luz said. “Please.”
“Of course,” Rafa intoned, bowing his head, and they left the store.
She dialed her father’s cell, her chest stitching tighter with each digit. It didn’t even ring, the cold computer voice of his voice mail toning. If he had answered, she would have tried to keep her voice tight. She would have been angry, and then she would have been sorry. It would not have gone well. But now she heard the beep and reigned it all in: “Papá, it’s me. Everything is okay. The car broke down in Monclova and I couldn’t reach you until now. I’m in a hotel. They think the car will be ready again tomorrow, or they’ll put me on a bus. Will you please call Abuela and let her know?” She paused, thinking about telling him she loved him. “Okay,” she said, and hung up.
She lowered her face and closed her eyes and breathed. She could hear the men laughing outside. She began to dial Jonah’s number, but stopped and hung up the phone when a cold feeling spidered up her legs. If he answered her call, she’d begin to cry. She wouldn’t know what to say. She decided she’d call him once she was in Las Monarcas, with her grandmother, once there was nothing extra to make him worry.
Luz left the store and found Felipo and Rafa hovering over the shoulders of the men on the ground. The lone woman sat on the truck’s tailgate, kicking her feet and drinking her beer.
There was a length of rope circled on the ground in the midst of the men. Some of them leered at Luz as she approached. A rough-looking bunch. Each of them had a hand pressed flat on the ground just inside the rope circle. One of them held a glass upside down in the center. A brown scorpion flailed under the glass, trying to scramble up the inside of it. The man counted down from three, and then he lifted the glass. The scorpion, claws raised and tail flexed, spun and shot toward a set of fingers. The man yelped and yanked his hand from the circle before the little scorpion could get to him. The others laughed, high, nervous cackles. Another one pulled his hand away. The objective seemed to be to keep one’s hand in the circle longest. Luz watched. There was something about that inescapable loop. Something about the hands of the men reaching, coming and going as they pleased. She found herself rooting for the scorpion to sting one of them. Felipo nudged her and jerked his head in the direction of his home. Luz nodded. He finished his beer and gave the bottle back to Rafa, and they walked from the lot. Rafa said something by way of a farewell but Luz didn’t listen, and she could feel his eyes on the back of her neck.
They returned through the dark up the hill to the house. “Did you get a hold of the right people?”
“Yes,” Luz said.
Felipo turned to her in front of the door. “You can have my bed tonight. I’ll share with my brother.” Luz started to protest, but he raised a hand. “It is okay. And tomorrow we will—” But he stopped talking, eyes on something over her shoulder. She looked, and he said, “Shit. Oh, shit.”
The vantage from the slope allowed a view down the road. A vehicle approached, coming fast. Its manifold roof lights swung and bounced like the beams of some exploratory ship. And Luz remembered the knife, the big silver knife etched with the Chichimec designs, lying and shining next to the tire tracks on the road to San Cristóbal.