As Fulgencio kicked down the door, Juan Grande, the eldest of the three brothers, fumbled with his gun. His three small children and wife huddled behind him on the bed, sobbing in terror. The brother’s shot grazed the brim of Fulgencio’s hat before his gun tumbled to the red tile. Dropping to his knees, Juan Grande scrambled for his gun, pleading. “¡No me mates, Ramirez! Don’t kill me, Ramirez!”
Fulgencio’s black boot rammed into the brother’s throat, crushing him into the floor amidst the whimpers and squeals of his offspring. “Cover their eyes,” Fulgencio instructed their mother as Juan Grande shakily raised his pistol, aiming at Fulgencio.
Fulgencio preemptively knocked the gun from Juan Grande’s hand with a swift kick from his shiny black boot. Deftly recovering the weapon, he slammed its hilt against Juan Grande’s forehead, knocking him unconscious.
“Take me to Elsa Alasan,” he reminded his elderly guide.
Nodding grimly, she stepped around her son’s inert body and continued through the room down another long hallway.
Fulgencio peered through green and black shadows. He stepped deliberately through clouds of smoke, ducking into hidden corners to avoid taking heavy fire, the old woman still firmly in his grasp. Emerging behind the yellow light of blasting fire, he heard waves rising up from the depths of his memory, strolling barefoot in the shallow water on a starry night at the nearby beach with Carolina decades ago. He heard the distant whisper of her soft lips brushing against his ear the night he showed her El Dos de Copas, during a brief visit the summer after his first year in college, before they’d gone off and ruined it all. “I love this place, Fulgencio,” she had said, her golden eyes muting the stars above, surrounded as they were by broad mesquites and tall wisps of grass, bathed in pale moonlight, strands of golden hair softly caressing his cheeks. “If you wish, someday we can live here, you and me. Forever.” Forever rang in his ears, drowning out the cries of anguish around him, and suddenly, the familiar sound of the surf rose within his blood, filling his head with foaming white noise and Nahuatl, words which, for the first time, he understood. Altia. Altia, he heard. Sacrifice. Sacrifice.
Not feeling the onerous weight of the massive kitchen pantry door, the Abuela Guerrero pointed at with a timorous skeletal finger, he handily pulled it off its rusted hinges and hurled it over his shoulder. Not surprised by the panic in El Johnny’s soul at his discovery, all Fulgencio could hear at that moment were the words altia . . . altia . . . altia, the chants of a bitter woman roaming the beach at midnight for over a century, adding saltwater to the waves as she wept tears for her lost daughter. Not thinking of anyone or anything else, only Carolina, only forever, his head tilted for a moment in puzzlement as he gazed down upon the trembling figure of El Johnny, the killer of his godson, the kidnapper of his goddaughter. Johnny was emaciated from drug abuse, sweating profusely, and desperately clasping a gun in his tremulous hands. Altia . . . altia . . . altia. Sacrifice, La Bruja’s chants echoed over the breeze, traversing the lands along the Rio Grande. Sacrifice. He didn’t have much time to think about it, although each second seemed to last an eternity. He wasn’t sure if she meant for him to sacrifice himself or to sacrifice El Johnny. But surely, if part of his curse had always been to undermine himself by giving in to his emotions, then it didn’t make sense to keep doing the same thing.
Elsa Alasan crouched behind her captor, sobbing, her simple white dress scuffed, soiled, and ripped, streaks of blood marring her once-pristine legs. Not even noticing the blade that had bounced off his back as he stood there, the knife the Abuela Guerrero had deviously acquired while gliding through the dark kitchen, Fulgencio found himself awash and insulated within the white noise tide rush of his slow-motion journey through oblivion.
Fulgencio angled his gun toward the cowering El Johnny. Altia, altia, the chants kept washing over him. Sacrifice. Sacrifice.
“Drop your gun, or I’ll kill her,” El Johnny gasped, thrusting Elsa against the wall and shifting his aim, jamming the gun against her temple.
Fulgencio knew if he fired, there was a chance El Johnny might get off a bullet and end his goddaughter’s life. Altia . . . altia . . . altia. He yearned to sacrifice El Johnny’s life in sheer vengeance for El Chinito’s. He yearned to unleash the decades of fury pent up in him by emptying his gun’s magazine into this depraved criminal’s chest. But he knew in his heart, he was not a killer. He was a healer. And in that moment, he knew what he must sacrifice.
“Altia,” Fulgencio spoke, watching El Johnny’s eyes widen in confusion. He abruptly stepped between the crazed drug runner and Elsa Alasan.
Shielding her, Fulgencio closed his eyes as the explosion shook the cramped pantry. Smoke seared his nostrils. He pictured Carolina, wishing her to be his last living thought. He braced himself for the pain to rip through his innards. But nothing came.
As his eyes opened, he was greeted by a macabre smile carved across El Johnny’s shocked visage, his eyes like shattered saucers held together by their inert contents. Blood oozed from the corner of El Johnny’s mouth as he slid to the floor, a smear of crimson trailing behind him on the wall. El Johnny’s gun had backfired, piercing his chest.
La Abuela Guerrero, her mouth gaping in awe, stared at Fulgencio for what seemed like an infinite moment and then crumbled to the ground, her heart giving out.
Elsa collapsed into the safe haven of Fulgencio’s arms as they finally found themselves alone in the kitchen. As he ushered her hastily out of the house, eluding the ongoing melee between El Chino’s men and the Guerrero loyalists, he wondered what Carolina was doing right then. Was she thinking of him in the darkness of her worthless husband’s house while he was out betraying her with some two-bit canteen-loitering puta? Were the beads of her perpetually dying mother’s borrowed rosary clicking in her hands, susurrating novenas for forever?
Outside in the cool night air, a silver cross gleamed, floating high above a staff anchored firmly in Brother William’s ethereal hand. The Brother’s arms opened wide, his black robes swirling around him like enveloping clouds of smoke, embracing Fulgencio and Elsa, then sweeping her away to safety, away from the blazing house, still popping with gunfire.
Fulgencio turned and faced the hacienda, waiting for El Chino and his men to emerge. When they finally did come running, chased by the gunfire of a seemingly endless slew of defenders, he grabbed El Chino by the arm and spoke to him hurriedly as they dashed to their horses, “You can’t live here anymore. We have to get you, your wife, and Elsa across the border tonight. This family will kill you, they’ll hunt you down and kill you all, unless you go to America.”
Back at Las Lomas, Elsa and her mother packed hurriedly as El Chino momentarily resisted Fulgencio’s recommendation.
“How can we leave now, after losing so much while fighting for our land and our honor?” El Chino asked.
“Times have changed,” Fulgencio urged. “You’re an old-world criminal. You made your living honestly and only crossed the law when shooting scum who looked at your wife the wrong way or cheated you at poker. You’re a man of honor, not a drug runner adrift without a moral code. These lowlifes will stop at nothing to hurt you and your wife and daughter. Seeking refuge in America is the only way to keep your family safe.”