New Dead Families

If you’re reading this, then you have found the canteen I threw over the shifting walls of this place in the hopes of giving truth to the stories passed down through the generations of fathers and sons. I do not know how we found this place or how it came to be—the women say it simply always was and then remain silent—but I am here now and know a calmness of heart and mind that I never thought possible.

I no longer thirst. The pain of hunger does not consume me from the inside out. Where once there was worry is now a soft blueness. I don’t know how to explain it better than through color.

*

When my mother had gone to bed with my sisters, my father would stay awake by the window and look out wistfully across the scrubland vista. Before he confided in me, before he allowed me to sit up and listen to him tell story after story, I assumed his drunken, vacant stares were wasted on the cacti of the hillside.

When I was old enough to drink my first mezcal, we sat at the window and let our eyes relax on the horizon beyond. Desert owls would pockmark the view every so often while a slow breeze made the thin drapes dance alone. We looked to the black horizon beyond, but never actually saw anything worth looking for.

“I knew a man once when I was young,” he said in a low voice, “who left this town whole and came back missing limbs. He rode into town atop a stubborn burro, both legs stuck fast to his saddle because he had no arms.”

I turned from the view and stared at my father. The moon shone hard and bright that night, turned his sweating face ghostly pale. Like me, he was drunk.

“What happened to the man’s arms?” I asked, disbelieving.

My father sipped more mezcal from the bottle and handed it to me. “Your mother must never know I told you of this, you understand?”

I nodded and sipped from the bottle. I had learned the importance of secrets. Those shared with mother were about how to live as a man while those shared with my father were meant to be taken as guidelines for experiencing life. My father’s secrets always came from a darker place, which is maybe why I liked them more.

“He came into town without arms. Without supplies. What energy he had left was spent keeping himself bolstered upright on his mount. I think he had hoped the burro would bring him home, and luckily, the sad, old mount did before keeling over and dying itself. . . .”

*

Before my father was my father, when he was called Anselmo, he and his friends kicked the ball around near the road leading into our village. They weren’t allowed to go farther than that, but his mother could see them all from her window. They kicked up dust as the ball skirted through the dying grass. When the ball went too far out of his mother’s eyesight, they looked back to her window for permission to retrieve it. She would smile and cock her head as if to warn the boys that she had her eye on them, but this time, she stood motionless in the window and stared past the trio. Anselmo looked at Tomas and Rodrigo in confusion. They looked at the ball and both shrugged back. As the yellow dust settled,  they noticed the approaching figure. Anselmo’s mother came up from behind them, her feet raising more dust around her, and ushered the boys back into the house after retrieving their ball.

“Go,” she hissed. “Inside, now!” She tossed the ball toward the house and turned to face the oncoming rider.

The boys scampered through the doorway and crowded the kitchen window, standing on step stools and crawling onto the counter, pushing and fighting each other for the best view.

“Who is it?” Tomas asked.

Anselmo shrugged, watching his mother stand in the middle of the road. Her dress and hair flapped in the wind, her hand covered her eyes.

“What’s the matter with you boys? Why aren’t you playing outside?” Anselmo’s father bellowed as he walked into the room. The boys turned and saw him fumbling with the strap of his suspenders.

Anselmo pointed out the window. “Mother told us to come inside. Someone is coming, but she wouldn’t say who.”

Guillermo tightened his suspender, coughed and came to the window. The boys could smell the tequila on his shirt and held their noses. His labored breathing passed through their hair, moving tufts out of place as he watched the scene play out in silence.

“Hmmph. Anselmo, get us some bowls of water. Rodrigo, Tomas . . . you boys grab all the towels from the kitchen and then go home.” And with that, Guillermo sprinted out of the house and down the street, a yellow cloud billowing behind him.

Anselmo filled up several pitchers of water from the well near the village center while Tomas and Rodrigo piled up every bit of cloth in the kitchen onto the table. Anselmo stood transfixed near the doorway and watched. Three ranchers surrounded the burro and tried to lift it off the man, whose leg appeared to be trapped beneath it. Anselmo’s mother looked on, brushing the man’s hair with her hand while she whispered to him. Did she know the man, he wondered?

The ranchers and Guillermo succeeded in lifting and moving the dead mount off the man. Two of the ranchers began tying its legs together with thick rope as the other led a horse over to them, tying another rope to his saddle. His mother remained low to the ground, cradling the armless man’s head in her hands as her husband looked on, unsure of what to do. The dead burro moved slow down the road as the rancher’s steed pulled it away, off to who knew where. The other ranchers lifted the man by his torso and legs and carried him to the nearest shaded area. His mother scurried back, her apron covered in black blood and dirt.

“Who is it, mama?” Anselmo asked.

She wiped her brow with the sleeve of her shirt. “Another dreamer. Another man stupid enough to think there was truth hidden somewhere out in that desert filled with nothing.” She went to the table and grabbed up the bundled cloth along with one of Anselmo’s full pitchers. She made to leave, but then turned to address Anselmo’s friends. “You boys . . . go home, stay here, your choice. Just stay out of the way and keep your mouths shut.” And with that, she returned to the fallen man who was now propped up against the trunk of a tree across the street.

*

“But I saw him with my own eyes, understand. Your grandmother wouldn’t tell me anything, but Tomas, Rodrigo and I heard the other townspeople talk. We were good at making ourselves invisible when the time called for it. Adults liked to talk above us, like we wouldn’t remember something so unusual. We were there, we saw it. We pieced it all together over the years. We’d kick the ball around like normal, but we’d whisper our theories and the things we’d overheard when no one was around.” He pulled from the mezcal again and sighed.

“What happened to him?” I asked. “Where did he come from?”

My father rubbed his chin and said nothing for awhile. I waited, patient but with curiosity burning through me, until finally he relented. “There is a place the old men speak of with a sparkle in their eyes. I know of no one who can prove it exists, but they talk as if it does. They call it Los Comederos.”

He tipped the bottle back and drank freely before returning it to me. “This place, this Los Comederos, is a town hidden away somewhere out in the desert, somewhere beyond a man’s last hope beneath the sun. They say it is a strange and intoxicating oasis surrounded by thorns and petals, rose bushes that guard every way inside like a natural wall, keeping Los Comederos safe from the outside world, from us, the world of men.”

I wondered how the people who lived there got in and got out. Did they ever leave? How did they eat? More importantly, what did they eat if they were barricaded in their own town? As if reading my mind, my father continued.

“They say it is a town filled with women of all sizes and shapes, both beautiful and hideous. These women, they are like the sirens from the time of the Argonauts, tempting men of all ages and strength to challenge the rosebush barricade and find a way into Los Comederos. The women are said to feast on the petals of the roses that grow outside, that somehow the flower keeps their bellies full and their breath sweet so that they want for nothing other than the touch and love of a man. The old men of our town speak of them as if they are the ghosts of former whores, and that no man who is allowed entrance to their village ever leaves.”

“Do the women kill the men?”

My father shrugged and smiled. “That’s a good question, and no one seems to have an answer to it. But the armless man, the one on the burro . . . he supposedly went searching for Los Comederos and claimed to have found it. When he finally awoke and his fever had broken, he told us that the thorny vines of the rose bushes attacked him as he tried to hack his way through the barrier. For every slice of his machete, another two vines would instantly appear or grow back. When he forced himself through, he said the vines wrapped themselves around both arms and yanked them from his chest, pulling them deep into their brambles.”

I swallowed hard. It seemed like something parents told the smaller kids in the village to get them to behave. A fable meant to teach.

“The armless man who returned. He told your Grampa Guillermo that he stumbled to his burro and somehow climbed atop it. When he looked back at the village, he said there was a row of women watching him, all crying. He said their tears were the color of the red roses surrounding the village and that it elicited in him such sympathy and terror that he immediately turned and fled, hoping to find help before he bled out and died in the desert.”

“Did you believe him? His story?” I asked in a whisper before taking another pull off the bottle. My head began to swim. Whether due to exhaustion or the liquor, I was unsure.

My father chuckled and shook his head. “A dying man rarely ever lies when he is on his death bed. There’s no reason to do so. And none of us had ever seen wounds as grievous as his before or after. His were not the ramblings of a man crazed with desert fever, but those of a man who was ready to give himself over to the truth that arrives riding on death’s chariot. I believe he thought he saw something, but I do not know if what he saw and what he said is the same truth.”

*

My father died of dehydration from cholera a year later. Mother had taken over his job working with the field hands in order to keep my sisters and I fed in his absence, but she collapsed and died from heat exhaustion only a few months into the work. My sisters and I took her place in the fields until they all married off or moved away to livelier places. I continued farming agave and plowing the few fields arable enough to feed the town. I was alone, but I managed.

The work was long and hard. We began each day as the sun rose, and ended as it said goodbye. Father’s friend Rodrigo and I labored together, which made the work better as good company in the trenches is necessary to keep one from slowly going crazy. We kept each other honest and well fed. Without the work, his family would crumble, his bloodline would dry up and wither away. If there was ever a time that Rodrigo needed extra, I would give what I could, something I knew my father would do as well. When I was in need, he would return the favor. There was no scorecard, no tally of debts owed between us as we both knew it would all be repaid eventually by the other when possible.

Spades and shovels nearby, Rodrigo and I sat within the shade of a tree near the field. Its thick trunk allowed us both to lean back against it together and see the expanse of our town and the road that split through its middle. A rare breeze shook the limbs above us as we stared out into the cloudless blue sky. Our shirts puffed up and out as our sweat cooled, if only briefly. We sat in silence, enjoying the respite from the work. We usually never talked during our breaks, as the company was enough to sustain us.

“Manuel,” he muttered that afternoon, shaking me from a quick nap. I looked at him and saw him nod in the direction of the road. A lone figure came trotting down the road on a healthy palomino. He stopped just outside of town and Rodrigo stood, covering his eyes. “No,” he whispered to himself as he left the shade, heading toward the rider.

I stood, brushed off the back of my pants and remained in the shade, shifting my weight from foot to foot. The rider spied Rodrigo, reined the horse off the road and came trotting down into the field, kicking up clouds of dust behind him. Rodrigo walked quickly, waving his hat in the air, hollering joyfully at the rider who, I could see even from this distance, had a brilliant white smile that glinted in the noonday sun.

The rider dismounted and embraced Rodrigo, the two men spinning around as if dancing while the horse nuzzled the ground, looking for brush to graze on. I left the comfort of the shade and joined the two men.

They spoke rapidly and laughed loudly, hands clapped against each other’s shoulders. “And who is this?” the rider asked, nodding in my direction.

“Manuel, come here. This is my old friend Tomas. He knew your father as well. We were all friends long before you were ever born.”

“This is Anselmo’s boy?” he asked, looking me up and down. “Ah yes. Your father’s eyes are there, all right. The ears too,” he said, lifting my hat off my head, laughing. “How is your father these days?”

“Dead from the cholera,” I replied flatly. It was not a subject I enjoyed talking about, much less with strangers.

Tomas’ face darkened. “I’m sorry to hear that. He was one of my dearest childhood friends. We had big plans when we were younger. He’s part of the reason I came back, though I suppose it is a nice kind of serendipity that you may take his place.

I nodded, not knowing how to respond.

“Are you married?” he asked me.

“No.”

“Are you engaged?”

I shook my head. Tomas’ face spread out into a grin. “Yes. Serendipitous indeed, then.”

Rodrigo cleared his throat behind me. “No . . . you found it?” he asked in a strangely reverent voice.

Tomas smiled again. I had to shield my eyes from the gleam.

“I found it.”

*

That night, the three of us sat around Rodigo’s dinner table. I said very little through the meal as the men exchanged stories about the lives they lived apart from one another. My stew of iguana meat and meager vegetables went cold quickly. I found myself plunging the spoon into its oily depths and stirring, eating little. Rodrigo had become more of a friend to me than some of the other boys my age in the village. Perhaps because I’d been forced to work the fields earlier than most. But now I felt like an outsider, watching the two men share inside jokes as their stews went cold because they’d simply forgotten to eat.

When the meal was done, I helped Rodrigo clean up the mess. Tomas leaned back in his chair, patted his belly and stared out the window. Rodrigo rinsed out our bowls and dinnerware while I took to wiping the table clean of all the random scraps and splashes.

I watched Tomas fumble around in his bag. He pulled out a bottle I knew well, the same kind of mezcal my father used to let me drink with him. I thought of him sitting at the window, staring out across the barren landscape and mumbling drunkenly late into the night. My chest went cold, my body numb. I missed my father terribly and the mezcal was a not so gentle reminder of this.

Tomas popped the top and poured out three glasses. “You drink, yes, Manuel?”

I nodded, trying to keep my face placid as he slid the glass my way. Rodrigo, finished with the dishes, and returned to the table. They raised their glasses, clinked, and spoke together:

“Here’s to virtue, here’s to sin,

Here’s to the old great mother of men,

Here’s to the women, the daughters and lovers

Here’s hoping we die with one under the covers.”

They gulped their drinks and refilled them before mine was half gone. It had been years since I’d last drank; I had lost my taste for it since my father had passed. I had seen what happened to those lost in drink, and with my sisters having married or moved off to larger towns, I didn’t want to end up in the same trap as those sad souls. It didn’t take long for me to feel the effects, lightheaded the way I’d been the first time the liquor passed my lips, but I continued drinking and watched the older men imbibe until the bottle was empty.

Rodrigo soon stood up from the table, weaving and spilling his drink across the floor as he sang slurred songs from his childhood. I recognized the melodies only because they were the same ballads my father used to sing for my sisters before bedtime. I caught myself humming along, wrapped up in the memory. Tomas’ fingers fidgeted in rhythm with the singing as he sat back, eyes closed and swaying his head.

The singing stopped shortly after as Rodrigo lost control of his glass. It fell to the floor and his legs crumpled beneath him. He leaned back against the wall and began singing again. Neither I nor Tomas moved to help him, knowing it was just the drink and nothing more serious.

“Is he always like this?” Tomas asked me.

I shook my head. “I’ve never actually seen him drunk before.”

Tomas got up from the table and swept up the broken glass near Rodrigo’s feet. I grabbed a blanket from the next room and placed it next to Rodrigo. I watched from the window as Tomas emptied the broken shards of glassware outside into a community bin far from the house. The night had fallen, starlight dotting the desert horizon. Woozy and a little sullen, I sat at the window and stared up at the moon, not quite full, outlining what little landscape lay beyond. Rodrigo began snoring loudly in the corner, curled up on his coat like a child. Tomas, still seemingly sober, came inside and pulled up a chair next to me. He sighed as he sat.

“I see so much of your father in you, Manuel. An older version of the boy I used to know when we were young.”

I said nothing, but turned to face him. His eyes had glossed over, turned back in on themselves, journeying through a distant memory.

“You know of this place Rodrigo and I talk about, yes?”

I turned my gaze back outside. “Father and I used to sit at our own window drinking mezcal. Once the family had gone to bed, he’d tell me stories of women that survived on eating rose petals and the souls of men.”

Tomas chuckled. “Not quite the souls, but close enough to the truth.”

“He told me about the day you left. The man with no arms riding into town and collapsing. Did that actually happen?”

Tomas’ face darkened. “It did. And that wasn’t the last time I saw your father. It was soon after that incident my family left weeks later. I tried like hell in my adolescent way to fight my mother’s choice to pack up and leave.” He sighed and sipped from the bottle again. “I don’t remember when he and I became friends, but for as long as I could remember he was always by my side. We made plans early on to leave this village together, along with Rodrigo of course, when we were old enough. That, unfortunately, did not happen.”

We sat in silence for awhile, letting the midnight breeze wash over us through the open window. Tomas opened up another bottle of mezcal from his bag, and we shared the bottle back and forth.

“Anselmo was a good man. Rodrigo and I believed we would never find another friend like him again. I can’t speak for Rodrigo, but I know that has remained true for me. He was to join us on this excursion should we ever go. I think it fitting that you should take his place. If you’re interested, that is.”

I took a swig from the bottle and swallowed hard, thinking. Tomorrow would be a new day and I would either wake with a headache and trek out across the desert with them, or I would work off the hangover in the field without Rodrigo. The choice seemed simple enough. Perhaps it was just the mezcal speaking on my behalf. I shrugged and spoke matter-of-factly.

“My sisters are married or have moved away, growing their families far away from here. Both of my parents are dead. I have nothing to live for, nothing to die for, and there is no future here, only the past. I have never left this village and I have yet to know the touch of a woman, much less the love of one, though I have thought of both often while toiling in the fields beside Rodrigo.”

Tomas remained silent, as if knowing I had more to say.

“If I stay, my day remains the same. I wake, I work, I eat, I sleep. If I go with you and Rodrigo, I leave my old life behind in the hopes of exchanging it for a new one, something with adventure and the unexpected, something my life has desperately needed for some time now. But Rodrigo, he has a family to take care of. . . .”

“Rodrigo understands the risk. He’s his own man. He’ll make his own decision.”

“So . . . when do we leave?”

Tomas gave a tight-lipped smile and passed me the bottle. “Tomorrow. We’ll make preparations in the morning so that we can leave immediately.”

*

My father once told me that a man becomes one with the shifting sands of the desert when he is thirsty and tired. He feels the parched expanse deep inside him. His throat aches from labored breathing, with no reprieve from the heavy sun above. The desert, she is a terrible lover—hot and full of life during the day, cold and bitter in the moon-soaked evenings, at least when the moon decides to come out to play. We walk in silence through the elements, hoping to find another that completes us in some manner. Others search for someone to love and hold them until the dark dissipates and the morning brings word of new hopes and desires.

And yes, we were thirsty for all of it. We searched for both water for life and that sweetest nectar for living: the touch of a woman. Not just any touch, not just any woman, but one who had been built up from ageless stories. I cannot say what stories my compatriots had been told by their fathers or their father’s fathers, but my own spoke of the smooth curves of cinnamon skin unblemished by the desert sun’s harshness. Here we were, trudging through the desert in search of the things our fathers could only talk about in whispers.

Tomas dispensed random tips on how to survive in the desert: how to slice open a cactus and sip of the water collected inside, how to watch the way the wind shifted the dunes and, without a compass, how to continue navigating the ever changing landscape via the sun’s position. These were new concepts for me, things I soon realized my father should have taught me at a young age. Perhaps he simply didn’t know them either.

Our first days beneath the scorching sun weren’t as bad as I expected, but we soon began to take on an odor, the stink of our sweat flowing freely from our pores and then sticking to us as night fell.

We spent the second week stumbling beneath the desert sun, followed by numerable shivering nights beneath a leering desert moon. Our lips were cracked and bleeding, having not packed enough water. Either we prepared for the journey poorly, or Tomas had led us astray. More than once I believed I heard him mutter to himself about a missing landmark or an unusual trio of interwoven cacti that we had not seen yet. My foul mood soured, but I remained silent and plodded along despite my worries. Perhaps these older men knew more than they let on.

I could feel my belly tighten, my concentration wavering without the sustenance to press on with sound mind. The sun seemed hotter with each passing day and, soon, Rodrigo slumped over and fell into the sand face-first. Tomas and I stood over him for awhile, checking his pulse and rubbing what little water we had left across his face and skin. Tomas placed his fingers on Rodrigo’s neck a final time and shook his head. He stood, and I fell to my friend’s side. The last person in the world I really knew had left me in the desert with this stranger.

“What do we do?” I asked through silent tears.

Tomas looked up and out across the landscape, grimacing. He cursed quietly. “We leave him. Grab his supplies so that may carry on. We are not able to take him with us, so we must let the desert take him as its own.”

Uncomfortable with this decision, I began to strip Rodrigo of his belongings. Surely there must have been some way to bury him, but by the time I finished rummaging through his supplies, I realized the shifting sands would swallow him up for us. I don’t know that I would have been able to summon up the energy needed to bury him properly and continue on to Los Comederos, which made leaving him to rot in the sun even worse. I was disgusted at my selfishness in that moment.

With heavy hearts and darkened faces, we pressed on through the climate, nearly losing each other several times during dust storms that arrived without warning, blowing sand against our sunburned faces and arms. The collective mood of excitement had been whittled down into a pure, joyless need for respite from the weather. Weary nights of unenthusiastic arguments gave way to days of backtracking across shifting dunes, each one appearing to be the same as both the next and the one previous.

Several days later, we saw something new far off on the horizon. A shimmering dot on the horizon, it made us second-guess our eyes in the hazy heat of the day, made us wonder if we had finally completed the stories of our fathers, found an ending for the nighttime fables of our youth. Despite our biting thirst, despite our empty bellies, we quickened our pace, neither of us voicing the possibility that we were being fooled by a mirage. We wanted to believe.

The sun began setting before we arrived, and we decided to set up camp for a final night. Our meager supplies had dwindled down to morsels of little taste and not much else. We spoke to each other in grunts and nods. Too tired to speak and too worried to bring voice to our doubts, we agreed to take turns keeping an eye on the anomaly that lay another day’s travel away, hoping and praying that it would not disappear with the arrival of starlight while we slept. I fell asleep that night wondering how we would make it back to civilization if we had simply fooled ourselves into believing this place existed.

The next morning, we woke. Tomas had let me sleep the entire night. As near as I could tell, he hadn’t moved at all, completely enraptured by the shimmering vision ahead of us. Dark circles shadowed his sunken eyes and he was slow to move once we were ready. Exhaustion had wrapped both of us in its embrace, but we didn’t have much farther to travel, so we pressed on.

By mid-afternoon, we stood at the edge of a village ringed in rose bushes covered in thorns as long and sharp as knives. The bushes themselves were chest high and several feet deep. Even if we’d had the strength to do so, neither of us would have been able to jump over without seriously injuring ourselves. We knew we had arrived and smiled at each other, our cracked lips cracking further, blood trickling out in tiny rivulets, turning us ghastly in appearance.

We gazed up at the buildings within, noting the lack of dust and sand. Everything seemed to pop with color, gleaming with a crispness the desert shouldn’t have allowed. Soon, movement from within caught our gaze. A slow trickle of women emerging from the buildings, slow enough to appear to be floating across the ground toward the vegetation protecting them and keeping us out.

We stared at the women congregating on the other side as the desert whipped itself around us, sand attacking every inch of exposed skin. They were of various kinds of beauty: tall, short, round, thin, light skin, dark skin, all with lips as red as sunset. There was an air to the brambles, as if they would only part and allow us entrance if we were willing to give up all our secrets, whispered each and every one past our lips into the waiting ears of the women beyond. A broken town of sirens in a sea of sand.

I looked back at Tomas. We were both tired, both thirsty, both ready to fall to our knees and sleep a single restful night in shelter, but his eyes gleamed with something different, some other hunger having taken over. I turned back to the women, each of them adorned in loose-fitting fabric that billowed in the wind, revealing little about the bodies that lay beneath.

I raised my hand in greeting, squinting against the sun. I could feel it burning my face in places that had burned already, a deep heat that sank painfully below the surface. None of the women smiled or moved. No flicker of anything registered across their faces as they stood like living statues, waiting for us.

I heard Tomas gasp from behind me. At my feet, thorny vines began to snake and move of their own accord, slipping out of view to create a dirt pathway into the village. I looked up and still the women had not moved, refused to give any hint, but I took this moment to believe I’d been allowed into the village.

Slowly I walked, each step labored. The blisters on my heels and arches burst, leaking fluid throughout my socks, but still I hobbled through the open expanse, looking to either side as if expecting the brambles to change their mind and swallow me whole after tearing my body apart.

After what seemed an eternity, I stepped beyond the brambles and into the village. There was no breeze, but it was cool and mausoleum quiet. The scree beneath my boots crunched with every step I took toward the woman before me. She lifted her arms as if to receive me and put them on my shoulders, pulling me in close. I could smell the roses stronger here, as if their fragrance emanated more from the woman than from the blossoms. Her skin glowed a soft brown in the sunlight as she tilted her lips up to my ears and whispered.

“Give me the skeleton, I’ll make it a person. Give me the idea, I’ll make it truth. Give me the heart, I’ll make it a lover. True pain resides inside you like a dark sun in need of shine. Give me your hand, and I’ll give you mine.”

She released me from her touch and held out her hand. Without a thought, I took it and let her lead me away from the brambles, away from the swirling dust that towered beyond the roses behind us. I turned to look at the face of Tomas, and found that he had disappeared without a sound, swept up in a rising storm of swirling dust. I could no longer see the desert beyond. No cries of outrage, no joyful salutations, just the wind scattering the desert into new places, settling into new dunes meant to hide the village of Los Comederos again from the wandering eyes of men.