Chapter 2: Quinceañera
Neón e iridiscente,
es la experiencia interior
con la que me desanimo
de interactuar.
Neon and iridescent,
it is the inner experience
with whom I am discouraged
from interacting.
5:35 pm Lunes, Mayo 15, 1954 (CDT)
Rascar Pablo, Jalisco
Carlos walked the desert with his guitar slung across his back. His shift was almost over. It wasn’t even his night to be out on patrol – he volunteered. But even out on the barren desert he could find no peace. He saw his sister’s face in every moonlit dune, and each gentle breeze brought with it her voice. That his father blamed him for what had happened to his younger sister Rocío was gut-wrenching. Tears rolled down his tan complexion and beaded off his mustache.
“Is this what I came here for? To cry?!” he shouted at the seamless blanket of stars overhead. “Para llorar?!”
A tumble weed skipped by and he attacked it, stomped on it violently, ground it into the sand, but felt no better. He pulled from his pocket the two buttons he’d been saving – the most potent succulent known to all of Jalisco. He hesitated, stared at them in the palm of his hand, wondering if there were any way he didn’t have to eat one. There was no way he could attend his cousin Ana’s quinceañera in such a state, so he ate one and returned the other to his pocket. He turned into the wind and pressed back toward Rascar Pablo, where home was, and where the fiesta awaited.
Within a few minutes he could feel the fantastic medicine seep into his blood. After twenty, he began to emanate neon and iridescent bats. They fluttered and danced about him, flickering like star-bursts as they flapped their little wings.
He walked along, swatting away the ones obstructing his vision, when something growled at him from behind. He turned on his heel and drew his pistol. A giant mastiff leaped at him. He cracked off three slugs – one of which tore through the hound’s thorax, throwing it off its trajectory, killing it.
Examining its corpse, the first thing he noticed was the spiked collar around its neck, which meant that it was not from Jalisco, but from Katatòn, a far away and dangerous place whose king, Maximilian, a descendant of the House of Habsburg, was a known enemy of Rascar Pablo. His heart raced as he thought of the implications, pumping more of the medicine through his veins. One of Maximilian’s scouts must have been close by, the capturing of whom meant the possibility of learning their location.
Ever since the incident one year prior, in which Carlos’s younger sister was abducted along with eight of her schoolmates, by some of Maximilian’s men, locating Maximilian’s stronghold was a priority.
Carlos staggered along the tracks of the giant mastiff when the rest of that night’s patrol rode up – some in an old pickup and some on horseback. They were all armed with rifles, their faces covered with paint and bandannas.
“Carlos,” shouted one of them. “Vamanos! La quinceañera!”
Carlos had to swat away some of the neon bats to see who was calling. It was El Tunco, the patrol leader.
“No, Jefe,” said Carlos, pointing to where he had left the carcass, “that mastiff has a studded collar – it belongs to a scout!”
The patrols climbed down and, against the howling wind, went over to where Carlos was pointing. They searched the entire area and found nothing.
“No hay nada.” said El Tunco.
“Cómo chinga? I just downed a giant mastìn, Jefe,” said Carlos, still swatting neon bats out of his face, “it had a collar.” He too went back over to where he left the slain mastiff, but there was nothing there.
“Fucking pendejo,” snapped El Tunco. “you’re high again. Just get in the truck!”
Ana’s fiesta was extravagant. There was a band with a guitar and a mariachi and patrons were drinking and dancing about a bonfire. All of Rascar Pablo’s big clans were there, including Carlos’s family. His mother wore an embroidered cotton blouse decorated with delicate bead work. His father wore a collared shirt – also embroidered – tucked into denim jeans. His sombrero was decked with beads and feathers, his polished belt buckle, in the shape of a human skull, inlaid with turquoise and obsidian.
Guerreros estrellas and brujos del sol – men and women from both of Rascar Pablos’s elite mechanisms – attended and wore traditional garb. The brujos wore cotton studded with intricate, psychedelic bead work, and they wore their long black hair in thick braids, covered their heads with feathered headdresses and their faces with black mud and devil’s root. The gerreros wore their dark ponchos, snake skins and studded leather, decorated with the skulls of desert predators. Their hair was also long, but unbraided, and dangled chaotically over heavily tattooed faces. They carried rifles and machetes, and some had pistols.
Even Don Orión, the youngest to ever become a shaman, was there to celebrate Ana’s coming of age. He sat in a corner, tightly concealed by guards. His incessant finger snapping and rocking back and forth meant he was there only in body.
Carlos watched his parents greet Ana with hugs and gifts from the other end of the gathering. Growing up, Ana had been like a younger sister to him and Rocío. Since Rocío’s abduction on Carlos’s watch, he’d hardly been able to face her. He looked down at the tattered green flannel he had on. He could have dressed nicer, he thought. Feeling overwhelmed, he went to the bar and started shooting tequila. After five or six shots he felt something unexpected – a desire to dance. Though it had been years since he danced, he let it all go, and joined the cyclical flow about the bonfire.
The medicine was still running strong. The neon bats radiated like mad, and in more colors than ever.
“Nice bats,” commented one of the many women who were dancing.
Carlos was dumbstruck that she could see them. “I’m Carlos,” he said to her, “mucho gusto.”
“Isabel,” she said.
Her dress was tight, but traditional. Heavily beaded buckskin wrapped firmly around her and extenuated her irresistibly feminine hips. Carlos took her hand and showed her what he could do. They danced as if they were the only two there, and before long they had gained an audience.
“Who is this?!” came the voice of a young man.
“We’re just dancing,” said Isabel, twirling in and out of Carlos’s arms.
Carlos regarded the man. He was huge, and painted like a gerrero.
“Problema?” asked Carlos.
“Sí, pendejo,” said the man. “That is my girl.”
“I’m not your girl,” said Isabel.
Carlos tore a bottle of mescal from the grip of a bystander and rapped it across the jealous young man’s temple. The man keeled over and flopped once like a fish before going motionless. The entire fiesta went silent. Carlos could feel the judgmental stares. Normally it would not have bothered him, only, Ana was among them, and her look of disapproval was unbearable.
Carlos raised the bottle in a toast, and shouted drunkenly, “Ana! Feliz Navidad!” Just as he began to gulp it back, the young man got up and right hooked him, and knocked him out.
