~*~
Art pulled into the parking lot above Sun Bowl Stadium in El Paso, pushed open the door and straightened the wire coat hanger he’d gotten from a laundry cleaning store on North Mesa just a few minutes earlier. The itch inside his walking cast was enough to make him consider tearing off the cast with a tire iron. But he saw the cleaners and whipped into their drive-through where the cute cashier was kind enough to give him a hanger when he explained the reason.
He left a small curl in the wire tip, like a beckoning finger, and measured the wire’s length against the cast so he could scratch the itchy places right down to the bone if he needed to. Art folded the wire to a manageable length before sliding it inside the cast. It went easy, since the swelling had lessened in his ankle and foot. He pushed the wire down fast, as the itch reached the stage of putting a grimace on his face, and found the spot, about the size of a quarter. He worked the wire vigorously, and …ahhh.
As he moved the wire, he found a spot in the quarter-sized itch that was the spot, and when he scratched it with the curled tip, the pleasurable relief was so intense he made an “oh” sound as he exhaled. That made him chuckle.
Art left the wire inside the cast as he leaned back in the seat. The itch started to develop again, so he used the tip of the wire, going right to the spot like a scalpel-wielding surgeon to relieve it.
A white, three-year-old Acura pulled into the parking area as Art gave his itch one more good scratch. His informant, Sixto Cruz arrived, hopefully with good news. Art left the wire in the cast and covered the exposed six inches with his pants leg as he exited his sedan. If it itched, he could scratch. “Hola, Sixto.”
Sixto emerged from the Acura, having to unwind his long, angular frame from the vehicle. He said “I should be driving a pickup; this car is like a shoe box.”
“Nobody recognizes you in the Acura. They expect you to be in big vehicles, like a dually.” Sixto walked over and they shook hands, with Art looking up at the informant’s six-foot-eight height.
Art said, “You got some good news, I hope.”
Sixto looked around, making a full three-sixty, and stopping at the southern view where he could see across the Rio Grande, the canal, the fences, and the roads into Mexico’s barrios, where the poorest neighborhoods in Northern Mexico covered the dusty landscape like colorful rubble piles. He said, “I think so, but you have to tell me what it means.”
“I’m all ears, unless you have pictures or videos, then I’m all ears and eyes.”
“I’ve got both.” He went to the Acura and opened the trunk, returning with a small DVD player and an unlabeled DVD. He put it on Art’s car hood, pushed in the disc, and said, “I videoed this after talking to a guy works for me sometime. He thought it might be worth money, so I drove out and took this.” He pushed Play, on the small viewer and both men watched the screen brighten.
The camera work was shaky, and Sixto’s voice on the DVD sounded hushed and nervous as he spoke. The image showed an eighteen-wheeler truck out in the middle of a sandy, greasewood and mesquite area on a dirt road, somewhere near the base of the mountains rising behind Juarez where the large white letters painted on the slope read:
Cd. Juarez
la BIBLIA es
la verdad
LEELA
While filming, Sixto said, “They are in the truck. You will see in a moment.” He added, “The men are armed, so I will not get closer than this.”
Two men walked to the rear of the trailer and opened the doors. Two other men stood inside, and the four of them moved two wing-like things, each about eight feet long. The wings balanced on their edges and four propellers were on the top edge of each one.
Another man walked into view carrying a small laptop. He typed on it with one hand while holding the bottom of the laptop with the other.
The propellers started, and the two odd-looking aircraft rose to a height of twenty feet, where they hovered. The man with the laptop tapped a few more keys, and the vertical wings turned horizontal as the propellers changed angle. When the two craft were level, they flew off across the desert.
The film ended. Sixto said, “What you think of that?”
“It had guns, too, didn’t it?”
Sixto nodded, “On either side of the propellers.”
“Who do they belong to?”
“My guy, he said they are with a new group, some bad men. So you tell me what this means. Are we gonna have a bigger war here in Juarez? The last one’s still hanging on, and we lost many many people.”
“I don’t know. You have any idea where those things flew to?”
“No. I heard some shooting in the distance about ten minutes later, machine guns.”
“Were you still in the brush?”
“No, I drove out of there, but had my windows down and I couldn’t going fast on those roads, too many ruts. It sounded like out toward Anapra, maybe around Christo Rey.”