HIS NAME WAS VICTOR AND HE WAS FROM DALLAS, BUT HE WAS in graduate school for history in Austin. He told Jonah to wait for him in the square while he went to say good-bye to his grandparents, whom he’d been visiting for the Easter holiday. He returned in a green, old-model Land Rover with Texas plates. It smelled like coffee inside, and the leather upholstery was cracked. They passed a warehouse, walls striated with rust. A gas station with one pump sprawled on the concrete like a dead tentacle. A small cantina, facade painted green and yellow into an advertisement for a beer called Indio. Victor turned on the radio and let the Spanish music play real low. The country highway stretched on ahead, into the hills.
“Thanks again,” Jonah said.
Victor waved it off.
After a while Jonah spoke up. “You come to Mexico a lot?”
“A few times a year, yeah, to see family.”
“You said you’ve got research to do, too.” That face stitched onto the soccer ball.
“For my dissertation.” Victor nodded. He continued in a different timbre: “You see, history won’t allow itself to be separated from violence. Regardless of place. It’s true in Mexico, it’s true in Texas, and I’m sure it’s true wherever you’re from.”
Jonah thought about that. He recalled Davonte’s shooting at Colby’s game. Other things one heard about daily, and other things he’d seen. All of it commonplace. Kids from school, murdered or convicted of murder. A backyard barbecue—a child’s birthday party—strafed in a drive-by, all because the birthday girl’s uncle had some kind of feud with the gunmen. It had happened right around the corner from Jonah’s home. There were shootings at second-line parades, at memorial services. Luz’s father getting mugged, and the fact that it wasn’t surprising. Jonah thought of the drugs sold at school, and Colby, a good guy, who had his own role in that. Jonah sat in the Land Rover and watched Mexico slide past, and he felt slightly untethered—Mom and Pop and Bill, Dex who preferred to be alone, and Luz. He couldn’t untangle any of them from the violent place he came from. Where we all came from, or where we met. This coupling with violence, it was a truth that had always existed, just beyond Jonah’s periphery.
“It’s easy to think it’s all out of control,” the graduate student continued, clutching the wheel. “Too easy, which makes me think that’s not the right way to look at it. Still, it’s difficult to remain positive, to feel like you can have an impact. One man, when El Narco’s got such inertia.”
“You get worried coming down here?” Jonah asked. “I mean, scared. People are, like, rolling faces down streets.”
“That kind of stuff just looms so large. It’s all you hear about. But, sure. You try to be as smart as you can, but sometimes it’s not up to you.”
“Shit just reaches out and finds you.”
“Precisely.”
Jonah exhaled. “I don’t get why there’s a drug war at all.”
“Well.” The graduate student sounded like he’d begin a lecture. “We can start with the nineteenth century, when the Chinese brought the poppy to Sinaloa. Or let’s start with the hemispheric vacuum after the Colombian cartels fell to pieces. Something had to fill it. We can even make the argument that Mexico’s move toward democracy let it happen, because if there’s one thing an autocratic regime can do, it’s suppress a drug trade. But then what other freedoms have to be surrendered? A ridiculous option. And let’s not forget our American appetites. There’s money behind it all, man. Lots and lots and lots of money. An infinite engine drives this thing. Some of the cartels recruit Guatemalan commandos to join them, for instance. We’re talking about killers just as bad as they come. They’re here only for this—” Victor rubbed his thumb and forefinger together.
“What I’m more interested in academically,” he continued, “is what Mexico will become. What new shape will emerge.”
Jonah looked at him.
“From the violence, and from the idea of it,” Victor explained. “Because, don’t get me wrong, Mexico is still here—generous people and good food and the beauty of it all. You know?”
“I guess I do,” Jonah said. He knew Luz, and Luz was beautiful.
“The violence, okay,” Victor said. “We’ve got a new war on our hands; the CDG and the Zetas have turned on each other. The violence can be extreme. But what’s so unusual about that? The thing is, periods of really widespread violence eventually run their courses and peter down to the stream we won’t ever be rid of—what’s natural to us being us, if you follow. Of course, we could be talking about years and years, but that’s how it works when you look at great big whacks of history. Rampant violence regenerates its place of origin into something new. The shedding of blood doesn’t come cheap or easy, but it eventually creates even as it destroys. It’s terrible right now, no doubt. And when I say terrible, I mean worse than you can imagine. That’s why a face on a soccer ball gets a joke headline, for Christ’s sake. But Mexico will survive, and what will it become? What will it be?”
Jonah watched some flying insect flicker against the windshield. Something was off-putting about the graduate student’s opinion, and Jonah decided it was because the man had overlooked an important distinction. It was weird to think of violence as merely an idea. He thought about his brother Dex again, and Luz, and even her father. He thought about himself. And that was it: violence didn’t make over places; and it wasn’t structure or order, whatever those words meant, that got rearranged, either. The real changes happened inside, Jonah thought. Violence changed people, not places. He asked Victor: “So is that what you’re writing about or something?”
The graduate student seemed suddenly sheepish. “Yeah.”