Drought Read online

  One was much taller and bulkier than the rest, in a soiled gray hoodie. As Tyler cautiously made his way toward the front of the store, he was standing with his back to him, blocking the center aisle. But when as Tyler came closer Maria lifted up her head from the blanket and gasped out, ‘Tyler!’ and it was then that the big, tall hoodie turned around and saw him.

  He was Hispanic looking, with a broad flat nose speckled with blackheads and frog-like eyes, but even under his hood Tyler could see that his hair had been dyed a dark shade of ginger. Tyler approached him with his baseball bat raised.

  ‘Hey now, bro, you must be Tyler! The knight in shining armor, come to rescue the damsel in distress! What you aiming to do with that bat, bro? How about I stick it up your ass? How about I stick it up your ass sideways?’

  Tyler lunged forward but the hoodie immediately seized the bat and wrenched it out of Tyler’s hand. He tossed it to one side, and then he reached out and snatched at Tyler’s T-shirt and pulled him in so close that Tyler could feel his spit on his face when he spoke.

  ‘You know what they call me? Big Puppet, that’s what they call me. And you don’t want to find out why.’ Tyler could smell marijuana on his clothes and a strong, sour body odor.

  Tyler twisted his head around and looked down at Maria and his heart thumped even harder. The hoods had pulled up her flowery cotton dress until it was bundled up under her neck, like a scarf. Then they had cut off her bra and tossed it to one side, and dragged her pink cotton panties down around her ankles. Her figure was boyish, tiny-breasted and narrow-hipped, with dark brown nipples like dates and a little black soul patch between her legs.

  ‘You can’t do this,’ said Tyler, although his throat was constricted with fear.

  ‘What do you mean, bro? We can do anything we like, and who going to stop us? Not her poppa. He dead. How about you? You going to try to stop us? I don’t think you got it in you, bro!’

  Big Puppet cackled in Tyler’s ear, hah-hah-hah-hah! and then he shoved him away, so that Tyler stumbled and fell heavily against the shelving, bringing down a noisy cascade of aerosols and cans of polish and kitchen scouring pads. He managed to regain his balance, but as soon as he did so, his left sleeve was snatched by another hoodie, and yet another gripped his right shoulder, so that there was no chance of him getting away.

  ‘Do you see what we have here, brothers?’ Big Puppet called out, stretching out both of his arms as if he were a preacher. ‘What we have here is a fine piruja quinsenãnera, and she’s going to be good to us, aren’t you, baby? You going to be good to all of us!’

  ‘Let go of her!’ Tyler shouted at him, hoarsely. ‘She never did anything to you! Let go of her!’

  ‘You so right, bro,’ said Big Puppet. ‘She never did nothing to me. But here today, with the situation being what it is, we can put that right, can’t we? Now she can do something to me. Like give me a little mamada.’

  He stepped over all the cans and packages that littered the floor until he was standing right over her. She stared up at him, wide-eyed. ‘Tyler,’ she whispered, but both of them knew that Tyler was powerless to help her. Big Puppet unfastened his belt-buckle and then popped open the fly buttons of his low-slung jeans. He scooped out his brown, half-erect penis and lasciviously rubbed himself, swaying his hips from side to side as he did so.

  Tyler struggled and pulled and tried to tug himself free, but the two hoods were holding him too tight, and the one who was gripping his shoulder punched him hard in the side, right under the ribs, bruising his liver. He had never known anything hurt so much, ever, and his mouth was flooded with bile and half-digested cereal.

  Big Puppet pulled his jeans halfway down his thighs, and then he sank to his knees next to Maria and held out his stiffened penis. She shut her eyes and closed her mouth tight and turned her face away, but one of the hoods who was holding her down took hold of her head and forced her to turn back toward him. Big Puppet grinned at her wolfishly and then he pressed the dark purple head of his penis right up against her lips. She stared up at him in fear and disgust and fury, and still kept her mouth resolutely closed, but he reached down and pinched her nostrils between finger and thumb.

  ‘Let her go, you fucking animals!’ Tyler shrilled at them, almost choking on his own sick. ‘Let her go!’ But the hoodie punched him in the liver again, and this time he doubled over in pain, with tiny white sparks floating in front of his eyes.

  Maria held her breath for as long as she could, but her eyes were bulging and it was obvious that she couldn’t keep her mouth closed any longer. She arched her back in desperation and tried to turn away, but the hoodie who was keeping her head still had his fingers dug deep into her scalp, and she couldn’t move without tearing her own hair out. She opened her mouth and screamed for air, and as she did so Big Puppet forced the side of his left hand between her teeth.

  He leaned forward and stared her directly in the eyes. ‘You listen to me, baby. You going to be good to me and you ain’t going to bite. You understand me? I feel your teeth in my pirula just once and I’m going to cut off your teentsy little tits and take them home and feed them to my pet piranha.’

  There was a howl of laughter from the rest of the hoods but Big Puppet’s expression was deadly serious. Tyler could see Maria staring back at him, and she didn’t blink once.

  ‘Just give me one nod for yes,’ Big Puppet told her.

  There was a long pause, and then Maria nodded. Big Puppet took his hand out of her mouth and patted her cheek and smiled. He turned around and grinned at all of his fellow hoods and held up both of his thumbs. ‘In the war of man versus spitch, man won!’

  He knelt over her, with his knees in her armpits. She closed her eyes and reluctantly parted her lips but then he gripped her jaw between finger and thumb and pulled it downward, opening her mouth wide.

  ‘Gaaaaaggh!’ she choked, as he lifted his hips and forced his penis as far down her throat as he could. She retched, and bucked up and down, but the four hoods who were holding her wrists and ankles kept her pinned to the blanket, and Big Puppet relentlessly thrust himself in and out of her mouth, grunting as he did so.

  Tyler looked away, his chin still smothered with bile and bits of breakfast and his eyes so crowded with tears that he was almost blind. He had never felt so powerless, or so weak. The hoodie who was gripping his shoulder said, ‘Hey, dude! You’re missing all the action! Look at that baby suck, dude! It’s like she’s swallowing his whole fucking pitote! Hey! I got to get me some of this!’

  With that, he released his grip on Tyler’s shoulder and started to unbuckle his belt. He pulled down his jeans and stepped out of them, and then pulled down purple spotted shorts. He stripped off his hoodie so that he was wearing only a black T-shirt and sneakers, and then he dropped on to his knees on the blanket, in between Maria’s thighs.

  Big Puppet turned his head around and said, ‘What the fuck you doing, K-Bomb?’

  ‘Riding the bitch seat!’ K-Bomb retorted, and the two of them whooped and high-fived each other.

  The two hoods who were holding Maria’s ankles levered her legs even wider apart, and K-Bomb pushed himself into her, his T-shirt riding up at the back, his narrow white buttocks jerking up and down like a dancing marionette. Tyler tried not to look, but if he turned his face away it was just as bad, because he could still hear Maria gagging and the hoods panting and ‘oh-yessing!’ and saying ‘here it comes, baby! Ready for this, spitch?’

  He didn’t know how long it went on. It seemed like hours. All he knew for sure was that the shadows slowly moved across the floor, and that each one of the hoods took Maria in turn, and some of them twice. She lay on the blanket as if she were dead, her body jiggling from side to side only because one of the hoods was thrusting himself into her. They no longer had to hold her down, because she made no more attempts to struggle or turn away. She simply stared at the ceiling, her arms and her legs spread wide.

  They no longer had to hold Tyler, either. He kne
lt between the shelves, his head lowered, numb with shock and overwhelmed with his own helplessness.

  ‘That’s it, bro, time we split,’ said Big Puppet, at last. ‘K-Bomb, you want to take all them bottles of water out to the truck? And all them smokes, and all them six-packs, and all those bottles of liquor. And grab some of them Hungry Man dinners, and some of them pizzas, but none of them fucking pineapple ones.’

  He approached Tyler and stood over him, his fly buttons still undone. ‘Pretty girl that, bro. She your girlfriend or something? You want to take better care of her, know what I mean? You wouldn’t want eleven other guys fucking her, would you? I wouldn’t let that happen to my girlfriend, no way.’

  Tyler lifted his head and looked up at him. He would never have imagined it possible to hate another human being as much as this. He was trembling uncontrollably, right on the verge of jumping up and trying to tear the hoods to shreds with his bare hands. He knew, however, that he didn’t stand a chance against them, and that they would almost certainly kill him, if they weren’t going to kill him anyhow. He stayed where he was, kneeling on the floor, saying nothing.

  Big Puppet turned away, but almost immediately he turned back again and pointed at Tyler and said, ‘You know something? We ain’t been fair to you, bro.’

  Tyler didn’t answer. Whatever Big Puppet was talking about, he didn’t like the sound of it.

  ‘No, we ain’t been fair you at all! K-Bomb! Joker! Buzzy! We ain’t been fair to this poor guy! We all been taking a piece of his girlfriend and never let him have none! Like disrespectful or what?’

  Tyler opened and closed his mouth. His throat was so dry that he could barely speak. He swallowed twice, and then he managed to croak out, ‘She’s not my girlfriend.’

  ‘That’s not the point, bro! Like, she ain’t our girlfriend neither! But there we all was, taking a piece of her like, and you didn’t get nothing! That’s just not respectful! We got to put that right, bro!’

  ‘What – what do you mean?’

  Big Puppet beckoned to K-Bomb and between them they took hold of Tyler’s arms and heaved him up from the floor. He could barely stand, and his knees kept giving way, but they kept him on his feet while the hoodie called Buzzy came forward, grinning, and unfastened his belt. Tyler tried to collapse on to the floor, but Big Puppet and K-Bomb wouldn’t let him drop. Buzzy levered off his sneakers, and then he dragged off his jeans and pulled down his white Calvin Kleins.

  ‘Come on, bro!’ Big Puppet urged him. ‘It’s your turn now!’

  Big Puppet and K-Bomb manhandled him into a kneeling position between Maria’s wide-apart thighs. He could see Maria staring at him dully, but all he could do was stare back at her. To his shame, his penis was sticking up erect. He couldn’t imagine why, unless he had been aroused by fear and humiliation and embarrassment.

  ‘Don’t mind a little cream pie, do you, bro?’ Big Puppet asked him. ‘Come on, now, get in there, my man, have a little chon chon, enjoy yourself !’

  Tyler tried to twist himself free, but K-Bomb wrestled him back down on his knees. Big Puppet said, ‘Hey, güey, don’t tell me you’re refusing this fine young lady I’m handing you on a plate right here? If you’re refusing her, maybe you think she ain’t good enough for you, and if she ain’t good enough for you, then maybe we should just dispose of her. Joker – go find that shotgun. I saw some shells there, too, right under the register.’

  Joker went around the counter and came back with Mr Alvarez’s sawn-off shotgun and a cardboard box with three or four pink shotgun cartridges in it. Big Puppet said, ‘Load it,’ and Joker ejected the two spent cartridges and pushed in two fresh ones.

  ‘Now, take her out,’ said Big Puppet.

  Joker pointed the shotgun at Maria’s head. Maria turned her head away and closed her eyes tight, but she didn’t utter a sound.

  ‘Look at her,’ said Big Puppet. ‘I think she even knows what a worthless spitch she is.’

  ‘Stop it!’ said Tyler. ‘Please! Stop it! I’ll do it!’

  Big Puppet smiled at him and patted him on the head. ‘Glad you saw the light, bro. Glad you saw the light!’

  Tyler leaned over Maria and guided himself into her with his hand. After a few seconds, Maria opened her eyes again and looked up at him. He kept up a slow, persistent rhythm, trying to be as gentle as he could, but all he could see in her expression was a weary disappointment, as if she were saying you too, Tyler?

  ‘Come on, bro, get your ass moving!’ said Big Puppet. ‘What’s all this sloppity-slippety-slop? You supposed to be the knight in shining armor, riding to the rescue! How about you ride a little harder to the rescue?’

  Tyler could feel himself shrinking inside her. He tried to keep going, but he simply fell out. Big Puppet said, ‘What’s happening, bro? Don’t tell me you a faggot or something? Don’t go for girls?’

  Big Puppet stood up. He was clearly bored with this game now. He took the shotgun from Joker and pointed it directly at Tyler’s face. He held it so close that Tyler could smell the burned cordite from the shot that had killed Maria’s father. He started to cry. He couldn’t help himself. He had wanted to be brave but it had been impossible. There were too many of them, eleven against one, and now they were going to kill him. He had never imagined that his life would end this way, kneeling on the floor in some neighborhood store, with his head blown off his shoulders,

  ‘Dad?’ he sobbed: but at that instant a police siren let out a high, weird whoop right outside the store, and Tyler saw red flashing lights shining against the window.

  Immediately, there was a mad scramble for the door. Big Puppet threw down the shotgun so that it clattered and bounced across the floor and then he barged his way toward the door, too, pushing his fellow hoods out of his way. From the parking lot outside, Tyler heard a cop shouting out, ‘Stop! Hold it right there! Stop! All of you!’

  He reached over and picked up the shotgun. All he could think of was Big Puppet forcing himself into Maria’s mouth, and taunting him while he did it, and making him feel completely emasculated. Now he had a chance to get his revenge for Maria, and Maria’s father, and to show Big Puppet and all the rest of these punks that he was a man, and an angry man, too.

  He pulled open the door and stepped outside. A silver Caprice was already squealing away from the parking-lot in a cloud of burned rubber. Big Puppet was about fifty feet away, running toward a red Toyota pick-up. Three other hoods were close behind him, but Tyler didn’t care if he hit all of them. He raised the shotgun, but as he did so a cop yelled, ‘Drop it, kid! Drop it! Drop it, or else I’ll drop you!’

  Tyler hesitated. His hesitation was long enough to allow Big Puppet to clamber into the pick-up, followed by the other three hoods. They roared off along West 33rd Street with the passenger door still swinging open.

  Tyler was left alone, standing in the doorway of Dan’s Food & Liquor.

  Two cops came toward him, crouching slightly, both of them pointing guns at him. He raised his left hand as a sign that he was surrendering, and then he bent down and carefully laid the shotgun on the ground. He had some fragmentary memory of a movie in which a criminal had dropped his shotgun on to the sidewalk and it had gone off, prompting the cops immediately to shoot him.

  ‘Assume the position!’ shouted one of the cops. ‘Face down, arms and legs spread!’

  ‘Officer – I was only trying to stop those guys from getting away.’

  ‘I said, assume the position!’ the cop almost screamed at him.

  Tyler lay down on the hot, gum-speckled sidewalk. One of the cops came up and picked up the shotgun, while the other gingerly pushed open the door with his shoulder and checked inside the store.

  There was a moment’s pause, and then he called out, ‘Rick! We need back-up! Plus a bus and a meat-wagon! We got ourselves a dead guy in here, plus a two-six-one by the looks of it!’

  ‘Don’t you move,’ said the cop who was standing over Tyler. ‘Don’t even fucking breathe, you got i
t?’

  FIVE

  When Martin walked around to the back of the Murillo house, he found the whole family sprawled out under the shade of their verandah.

  The four younger Murillo children were lying in a tangle of arms and legs on two rusty recliners, looking hot and lethargic. Mina the youngest was three and the oldest Mikey was eleven. On the steps next to them sat their twenty-one-year-old half-sister Susan. She was wearing a sweat-stained yellow dress, unbuttoned at the front, and she was flapping herself with a folded-up newspaper.

  Santos, their grandfather, was sitting in the far corner in monotonously creaking rocking chair, sucking at an unlit stogie. He was dressed only in a T-shirt and red-striped boxer shorts and a Panama hat.

  ‘I rang the doorbell,’ said Martin.

  ‘We heard you, Wasicu,’ said Santos, in his dry, cracked voice. ‘We figured it was you, and if it was you, then you would know where to find us. If it wasn’t you, then you would go away and leave us in peace. Today is too hot for answering doors.’

  ‘Is your water off here, too?’ asked Martin.

  ‘Since this morning,’ said Susan. ‘I can’t do the laundry. I can’t wash the kids. All we have left to drink is half of a bottle of Dr Pepper. I went to the store for water and soda but the store is closed, and somebody had busted open the soda machine and stolen all the soda. I mean, like, what’s happening, Martin? When are they going to turn the water back on?’

  ‘I’m sorry, Susan, I don’t have any idea. They’ve set up a special team of people to deal with the drought, and they’ve been shutting off the water by rotation. First one neighborhood, then the next.’

  ‘You don’t know for how long?’

  ‘Forty-eight hours each neighborhood, that’s what they told me. But I can’t tell you for sure. It may not be as long as that.’