Ryan
Crossing the border into Mexico in my rusty old Mustang was easy. The border patrol dude at the checkpoint asked for my passport but hardly glanced at it. As usual, the border cops let people out of the US without much of a problem. I better not lose my passport while I’m in Mexico, though, because entering the US is another issue altogether.
I drive my car through Mexico feeling like I’ve abandoned everything I’ve ever known. I’ve never driven this far into the country before. At first the buildings and roads look just like what we have back in Texas.
As I drive farther, things start to change.
I look out the window and see people with carts selling eggs and buckets of fruit on the side of the road. One guy wearing overalls and a cowboy hat is selling avocados as big as a grapefruit. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised considering that Mexico is the avocado capital of the world.
The weather is the same as in Texas. Heat permeates through my windshield from the brutally hot sun, a stinging reminder that my air conditioning has been out since I bought the thing. I suddenly long for the cold Chicago winters. It’s too damn hot here and I feel like I’m gonna melt. Staring out the window, I watch in fascination at the lone tumbleweeds rolling over the land like little runaway straw bowling balls.
I follow the detailed directions Mateo gave me and end up at a bar called Mamacita’s. I look down at the directions, then at the bar. Yep, this is the place.
Stepping out into the hot sun, I take in the town. It’s got everything, from small grocery stores to taquerias and shops.
As I cross the threshold into Mamacita’s, all eyes turn to me. My entire body is on alert as I scan the clientele. The place resembles an old-time saloon you’d see in the movies, complete with rugged guys playing cards and others getting plastered at the bar. It doesn’t escape my attention that a handful of them are wearing pistols, but I’ve gotten used to that since I moved to Texas. In Chicago, you don’t see guns unless it’s on a cop or you’re unfortunate enough to find yourself smack-dab in the middle of a shoot-out.
“Hey, Ryan. Come over here!” Mateo calls out from the corner of the bar. He’s sitting with a few other guys who are glaring at me as if I’m some narc. “Glad you came.” He checks his watch. “You’re early. I like that.”
“Where’s Camacho?” I ask him.
“Whoa, slow down.” Mateo waves over a female bartender. “What do you want to drink, Ryan?”
“I’m good.”
“Sit down,” he says with a grin. “Relax awhile.”
“Listen, man. I’m not here to relax; I’m here to train.” I gesture to the half-empty bottle of beer in front of him. “If you want to give me directions to the gym, I’ll go myself.”
He sits back in his chair and crosses his arms. “You, my friend, probably have the biggest cojones out of everyone I know.” He nods to a beefy guy sitting across from him. “Including Chago over here.”
“Why?” the guy named Chago asks.
“This guy challenged me to a boxing match,” he explains. “And won. That’s more than any one of you could do.” Nobody disagrees. “So now I’m taking him to Sevilla for a chance to train with Camacho.” Mateo downs the rest of his beer before slamming the empty bottle on the table. “Let’s go, Hess. I’m a little plastered, so I’ll let you drive.”
In my car, Mateo rocks out to some kind of Mexican rap music as he directs me on which way to go.
“You sure you know where we’re goin’?” I ask as he motions for me to turn off on a dirt road leading to the mountains.
“Sí, amigo.”
“You know I don’t speak Spanish.”
Mateo shrugs. “You’ve got to learn at some point. You’re in Mexico now. Pay someone to give you lessons.”
“With what money?” I think of the two hundred and sixty dollars I have in my pocket, my entire life savings after I shelled out money for a cheap-ass cell phone. “I’m almost broke. If I don’t get a fight soon, I’ll be out on the streets damn quick.”
“I already told you. You want to be the best fighter and make dinero, you’re not gonna do it training in the US,” Mateo says. “You want to be the best, you train with the best. Even if Camacho doesn’t train you, stick with me and I’ll find someone here in Mexico who’ll take you to the top.”
“Why are you helping me?” I ask. “You don’t owe me shit, Mateo.”
“The truth?”
I nod.
“Because you beat me at my own game. Not many people can do that.” He looks out the window and gets serious. “And because I heard your stepfather’s a dick and you might need someone to look out for you. Like a brother.”
“You’ve been checkin’ up on me?”
He takes his sunglasses off his shirt and puts them on. “Yep.”
We keep driving. After a while, the towns are spread apart and we’re passing smaller towns with few if any resources. Seeing these poor towns makes me think back to when we were on public assistance for a while. Mom didn’t work and we got by on cheap crap food.
But it was food.
And it was free.
To my mom I was someone she had to deal with and feed, not someone she wanted. When I was eight she started leaving me alone so she could go party all night. In junior high, there were times she wouldn’t come home the entire weekend, leaving me to fend for myself. I’d watch TV, blaring it so I wouldn’t have to hear any scary noises outside our trailer.
“Shit,” Mateo blurts out.
I glance in my rearview mirror. A police car is behind us with its lights on and the officer is motioning for me to pull off the road. We aren’t near any towns and few cars have passed us as we drive, so I wonder if this is legit.
Mateo says, “It’s cool, Ry. Let me do all the talkin’.”
I slow to a stop and see two officers step out of the squad car. One is heading for my side. I keep my hands on the wheel as the officer approaches, and grip the wheel tighter when I notice he has a hand on the butt of his gun.
Damn, this is not good.
When he takes his gun and holds it at his side, I mumble under my breath, “I think he’s crooked, man.”
“You think?” Mateo says sarcastically. “Dude, they’re all crooked.”
“If he asks me to get out of the car and pulls a gun on me, I’m gonna disarm him before he realizes what’s happening.”
Mateo holds his hands up. “Whoa, don’t get all vigilante on me, Hess. Trust me. We’re fine. More than fine.”
“Hola, amigo,” the officer says.
“Mi amigo no habla español,” Mateo responds. “El viento está cambiando de dirección oficial, y estamos en el lado correcto.”
I have no clue what Mateo is saying, but I can tell the officer is backing down the more Mateo talks.
The officer says, “Dile a tu amigo que quiero dinero en efectivo.”
Mateo taps me on the shoulder. “Give him a hundred bucks, Hess.”
I blink twice. “A hundred bucks? Are you fucking kidding me?” I mumble.
Mateo shakes his head. “Nope. Sorry, man. They want a hundred to let us go.”
“But I didn’t do anything wrong.”
“Consider it an entry fee into Los Reyes del Norte’s territory.”
I quickly realize that it doesn’t matter if I did anything wrong. Some cops straddle both sides of the law here. I reluctantly pull out my wallet and hand the cop a hundred, leaving me with only one-sixty left to my name.
The officer nods. “Pásale, pero ten cuidado,” he says, then taps the hood of my car twice before walking to the police cruiser.
Mateo leans back in the passenger seat as if it’s a cushy recliner in his living room. “We’re good.”
“Good? Dude, I’m out a hundred bucks. I’m not good. What did you say to him?”
“I just told them you’re a boxer from the US who’s training here for the summer.”
“And who’s Los Reyes del Norte and how is this their territory?”
“You ask too many questions, Hess.”
I’m on a roll and am not stopping now. “Is Los Reyes del Norte some kind of gang?”
“Yeah. A new movement of young guys calling themselves the Kings of the North and they’re recruiting like crazy. They’re so powerful if you don’t do what they want they’ll fuck you up.” He shakes his head. “You gotta learn how things work around here, Hess. You’re a white boy with Texas plates in the middle of Mexico. That makes you a target. Besides, white boys from the US have a reputation for carrying cash.”
“Not anymore I don’t. If Camacho won’t take what I’ve got after I pay for a place to stay, I’m screwed.”
“I got your back,” he assures me.
We pass a bunch of big ranches set between the mountains. Some of them have guards at the entrances, another stark reminder that parts of Mexico can be full of rich people with power and poor people struggling to survive. I guess it’s kind of like Texas, or even Chicago, where people on one block live in million-dollar brownstones and on the next block live in housing projects.
“We’re almost there,” Mateo announces a half hour later as he directs me through a small town with one store and a bunch of old stucco buildings with colorful Mexican architecture.
“The houses here are cool,” I tell him.
“Yeah.” Mateo gestures to a couple of old men sitting on chairs outside their little houses. Mateo waves as we pass, and they immediately recognize him and wave back. “The guys who live here either work in the fields or retire here because nothing happens. Sevilla is kind of an oasis in the middle of the mountains. It’s under nobody’s control . . . for now.”
“How’d you find it?”
“My abuelo, my grandfather, lived here when he was younger. See that building over there?” he asks, pointing to a warehouse with a couple of cars parked outside. “That’s the gym.”
After parking I grab my duffel from my trunk, ready to start my life here. I’ll stay and train until I can move up and make some money fighting before heading back to Texas. The more I learn, the better chance I’ll have of getting fights.
I need to stay focused, because I’m not going back to Texas the same way I came here. A loser.
The boxing club is dark and smells like old, stale sweat. The familiar sounds of fists hitting bags and the grunt of guys pushing themselves to their limit permeate the air. I scan the place, attempting to assess each fighter’s punch and stance. Most of them are staring at the white boy who once again finds himself the minority. It’s no different on the Texas border, where there’s a strong Hispanic community.
There’s one ring in the middle of the gym where a tall dude is coaching some short guy with skinny legs. “Hit my chest,” he’s saying. “As hard as you can.”
I hold back laughter because this dude has no fucking clue how to train. Hit my chest as hard as you can? Is he kidding? While the short dude has protective headgear on, the tall dude has no mitts or gloves and looks like an amateur himself.
“Dude, seriously?” I say to Mateo. The other guys at this place look like they’re hard-core fighters. The two in the center ring are a fucking joke.
Mateo shakes his head and leans in close. “Don’t ask,” he says so nobody else can hear. He doesn’t need to worry; the acoustics in this place suck. “Wait here. I’m gonna go find Ocho, the manager.”
While he disappears out a side door, I watch as the short kid in the ring tries to throw punches. At one point, he falls to the ground. I can’t help but laugh.
The kid glares at me. “What’s your problem, gringo?” he growls at me, frustrated, as he grabs the ropes to pull himself up.
“The problem is you hit like a girl,” I tell him.
“Eso es porque soy una idiota.”
He yanks off his headgear and focuses on me.
Damn.
The dude is a girl. And not just any girl. It’s Dalila.
Her dark eyes are piercing through mine and she blinks a few times in surprise. There’s no doubt in my mind that she remembers me from the concert. I’m trying not to focus on the sheen of sweat that’s covering her flawless, perfectly tanned skin.
Her hair is a mess, though. I guess at one point it was in a neat ponytail, but now it’s falling down her face with the hairband still holding on to a small clump that refuses to be set free.
“Who the hell are you?” her pseudo-trainer asks.
One thing I know about dealing with fighters, especially ones with overgrown egos, is that you hold back information. Be a mystery, so they’re always wondering what you’ve got up your sleeve. It gives you a little advantage, in and out of the ring.
“I’m nobody, man,” I tell him.
“Obviously.” He says something in Spanish, some kind of insult, but I don’t give a shit. He can insult me all he wants. Maybe this guy is Lucas, the dude she was missing the night I met her.
My skin is as thick as leather. Actually more like bulletproof glass.
Dalila brushes the wayward strands away from her face as she turns from me. She’s doing a good job of pretending she has no clue who I am.
While I wait for Mateo to come back, I step closer to the ring to watch the poseur resume “training” her. She’s got a determined look on her face as if she’s trying to prove something.
“You’ve got to keep your elbows in,” I call out to her.
They stop and look at me.
“Don’t you have somewhere else to be?” her pseudo-trainer-slash-boyfriend asks me. “Like building a wall or somethin’ like that.”
I put my hands up. “Just thought she’d want some pointers from someone who knows what they’re talkin’ about.”
“What did you say?” He stands next to Dalila as if he’s claiming her as his. I don’t tell him that I’m not looking for any distractions, especially from a bossy girl with major control issues.
I shake my head. “Nothin’. I didn’t say anything.”
The dude points at me. “Keep it that way.”
While I don’t mind getting into it with someone, I need to rein it in. I’d like nothing better than to fight this blowhard, but not now. Especially when I see a glimpse of a nine millimeter sticking out of an open bag on the floor.
I’m not looking to get myself shot, at least not on my first night in Mexico.
I step away from the ring and head for Mateo, who just came back with some old dude by his side.
“This is Ocho; he runs the place. He says Camacho hasn’t been here in a few days, but will probably show up at some point.”
“What the hell am I supposed to do until then?”
“Listen, I talked to Ocho and explained your situation. I got him to agree to rent one of the back rooms to you. You can live here and take showers in the locker room while you train. He wants a hundred fifty for the month. Up front.”
“A hundred fifty?” That’ll leave me with ten bucks left over. “I don’t know, man.”
“It includes access to the gym, twenty-four hours a day. What do you want me to tell him? He don’t speak a word of English.”
Oh, hell.
In a matter of hours, I went from having hundreds in my pocket to a measly ten bucks.
“I don’t have a choice. I’ll take it.” I don’t even know how I’ll be able to secure a trainer here for a measly ten bucks. What if Camacho never shows up? This sucks.
“Hey, Mr. America!” Dalila calls out.
I stop and turn back to find her leaning over the ropes as she motions me back to the ring. Her sultry lips turn into an inviting grin, making me feel like I’m about to be lured into a trap. “You think you’re so good at fighting?” she asks. “Why don’t you show me what you got?”