Flash Fiction: Am I My Brother’s Keeper?
Carlos and Andrés stirred early as they always did. They shared a dilapidated adobe house with one parent, two grandparents, three sisters, four brothers, five cousins, and six stray dogs with matted fur and gangrenous paws all bloody and swollen and covered in fat fleas. The abuela prepared coffee and beans for the two boys as they readied themselves in their quarters. Carlos put his mud-stained jeans and chaps on before grabbing his blue chambray shirt from the closet and buttoning it hastily over his tank top. Andrés hummed a ranchera and whittled away at a block of wood before Carlos interrupted his reverie and brought him back to the toils of the day that lay ahead.
Oye cabrón, hurry up, Carlos said.
Un minuto, hermano, Andrés replied.
Andrés grabbed his hat from the nail hanger and kneeled before the ofrenda in the corner of the room. He prayed for his deceased mother’s soul and implored God to show him the path of the righteous so that he may avoid the path of the wicked. Carlos waited impatiently while Andrés made the sign of the cross before bringing his fingers to his lips and kissing them as if he could taste the nectar of God’s abundance. He rose slowly, bowed before the altar, and said: This sickness is not unto death, but for the glory of God, that the Son of God might be glorified thereby. Carlos rolled his eyes and the two boys left the room.
Carlos and Andrés ate the coffee and beans silently. Carlos mindlessly swiped on a dating app on his phone while Andrés gazed out the window and thought of Esperanza. She was sixteen and he was fifteen when they first got together. Now, three years later, she was six feet under and he was accustoming himself to a life of hard work and privation. He still didn’t know for sure what happened. Something about how one of the narcos wanted her and she replied in the negative rather than the affirmative. Doing so will get you killed in this part of the world. In any case, Andrés’s heart was buried the same day Esperanza was.
Carlos and Andrés drove up towards the border in a Ford Bronco that gave new meaning to the word jalopy. The saguaros, yuccas, and creosotes lined the road like anxious onlookers standing at attention as Christ entered Jerusalem. The Franklins in the distance towered over the cities of the plain and the two boys could see nimbostratus forming above them and knew it spelled trouble. Some televangelist on the radio talked about how George Bush would save the Iraqi heathens from hellfire and how America would spread its democratic values around the world and how a whole lot of other bullshit related back to Jesus Christ. Andrés turned the radio off and narrowed his eyes on the horizon where he could see bighorn sheep traversing the Chihuahua – solemn pilgrims in the dayspring.
When they reached the ranch across the border about fifty miles outside of El Paso, Mrs. Everett was waiting on the front porch of the bungalow. She was wearing her blue gingham dress, her auburn hair blowing in the wind, and she looked to Carlos and Andrés like she could have been out of a fairytale or one of those princess novellas their sisters loved so much. Sure, she was thirty-two years old, but she didn’t look a day over twenty-one.
How y’all doing this fine morning, she called out to the boys.
Just fine, ma'am, Andrés replied for the both of them. How ‘bout yourself.
The boys passed their leather jackets to Mrs. Everett and tipped their hats to her in a gesture of respect and thanksgiving on their way into the bungalow. The lives of men are nasty, brutish, and short save the moments of serenity enjoyed in the company of a beautiful woman like Mrs. Everett. Mrs. Everett beamed at them and insisted that they sit down in the kitchen while she fixed something for them to eat before they trudged up to the mesa and had a look at the cattle and the carcasses of the cattle that had been torn open and eaten by wolves. Vultures circling, carrion torn asunder, who’ll pray for the dead?
Mr. Everett entered the room while the boys drank some more coffee and ate some more beans. He was a man from an earlier time, when war was conducted in flesh-and-blood instead of through drone video-cameras. Sure, no one in the States killed anyone like the Comanches used to, but that doesn’t stop them from being responsible everytime a child gets shrapnel through their brain in Yemen. At least that’s what Mr. Everett thought. Two tours in Vietnam and one in Desert Storm had taught him all he needed to know about the fallen nature of man. Thought he’d retire to the country now, tend the ranch, sit with his young wife on the veranda under the full moon.
Carlos and Andrés both stood up when Mr. Everett entered the room. Mr. Everett offered a perfunctory salutation and set about explaining the day’s work to be done on the mesa. The deceased cattle had to be hauled away before they attracted more predators and the living remainder of the flock had to be moved ten miles down country to escape from whatever pack of vermin was hunting them this time. But before letting the boys leave, Mr. Everett took an envelope from his pocket and gave it to Andrés. Inside was a crisp thousand dollars. His year-end bonus because of his hard work. Carlos couldn’t, or shouldn’t, have complained because he knew that his work ethic paled in comparison to Andrés’s. Always had and if the rules of the universe and the west held steady, probably always would too. Andrés tried to return the bonus but Mr. Everett insisted he keep it while Mrs. Everett showed them to the door.
You earned it, Andrés, Mr. Everett said. He didn’t look at Carlos.
When the two boys reached the mesa, the storm had reached them. Torrential rain poured down upon them and washed away the blood of the dead cattle. The rest of the animals cowered amongst the chaparral and rocks while Carlos and Andrés fled to the tent they had pitched on the mesa for the cattle drive. In the tent, Carlos became furious with Andrés and, in a bout of jealousy and envy, bludgeoned his head with a rock until Andrés did not speak nor move nor breathe. A whittled wooden cross protruded from Andrés’s pocket as he lay dying. When Carlos returned to the bungalow, Andrés’s bonus in his pocket, Mr. Everett asked him where his brother was.
Am I my brother’s keeper, Carlos replied.
