The Milky Way

THE MILKY WAY

word count: 2451

From space, Florida must resemble a distant phallus with a partially descended testicle from Panama City to Wakulla County. So opined Juan Mayorga as he sat on the toilet in his cramped trailer looking at a state map in a road atlas. Juan finished his business , got up, set up his tripod and primed his telescope .Through it he enjoyed the observation and study of the moon, stars and planets. He plotted their movements on a graph of the solar system, working out the trajectories and arcs through the cosmos of dozens of the tiny luminaries . Juan tiptoed through his heavenly garden nightly, cultivating and tending it quadrant by quadrant and row by row. The celestial plantings stretched out before him in a majestic maze of iridescent ions and electrons dancing in the infinite ether.

That Tuesday he suffered a blown tire on his way home from work. He pulled off the road to take a look. A police car stopped to check on him. They call it a ‘welfare check’ but it was anything but. He knew how to fix it, but that’s how cops are sometimes, there when you don’t need them scarce when you do. He was arrested for not having a valid drivers license. The cop knew Juan couldn’t get a valid license, and he knew why, but anti immigrant sentiment ran deep in Florida law enforcement. The Latino immigrant community couldn’t count on any favors or leniency from them. He was booked into jail and released on $1000 cash bail, almost 2 weeks pay. As he exited the police station, Juan felt a chill blow through him like a deadly cold wind from the upper atmosphere.

Juan came to Florida 5 years prior to work and lift his family out of poverty. His entire family was back in Mexico. There was no real labor market in his native district, just the narco mafia, small family farms, crop picking and a few factories that paid anemic wages. His father worked the local fields his whole life, sometimes for himself sometimes for a big farm and sometimes both. He loved and cared for the land through thick and thin yields, hardship and drought. The narcos did as they pleased. The shooting was relentless. Juan had to get out. These days, he longed terribly for his wife. The strain of separation was awful. He imagined that he saw her profile through his telescope in the stars of the southwest sky facing Mexico.

Already one of their children, a son, was “disappeared” - consumed, he imagined, into the constellation Lupus the insatiable wolf. He had punched-out a kid at school for squeezing his teen-age sister’s butt, bloodying his nose. The pathetic kid sicced his rabid cartel relatives on the boy. These narco wolves ate deeply into the fabric of Mexican society and culture, tearing out the hearts of families and normalizing terror as a tool of intimidation and fear. They seemed to worship death. There were thousands of disappearances of teens and twenty-somethings in Mexico each year. The moans and groans of the parents reverberated throughout Mexico.

Juan felt responsible for not being there for the boy, only 14. He soaked his pillow with tears every night and plotted his return to Mexico. He would track down and rescue the child back to safety while killing ten narcos - knowing full well that he might as well be wishing on his favorite star. The disappeared were witnesses who saw and talked. Mexico was an amazing country with a people of faith and courage, devoted to family and community, the church, hard work, helping and giving, while the narcos on the other hand sucked the life out of everything they touched.

The only constant was work. No one outworked Juan and Eduardo his brother. Eduardo came to the US a few years after Juan in search of a better life, or just survival. At home, the narcos would have coopted or killed him. Some of his boyhood friends had joined up as low level enforcers and turned into cold blooded killers. And once you joined up, that was it, there was no going back, no way out.

Eduardo had a swag and macho straight off of the Mexican highlands. He wore the native palm-colored cowboy hat and pristine leather boots as a reminder to the world of his national pride and that he was not to be fucked with. Since he arrived, the brothers were almost always together. They never lacked for day jobs and they could fix almost anything. The locals called on them on the weekends with little house and mechanical projects. They raked in lots of cash.

Unlike Juan, Eduardo was single, which freed him up to look for Spanish speaking amorcitas to pollinate with his Mexican charm. At least a few times Juan woke up to strange women cooking breakfast for all three of them. It wasn’t Latin love or worth defending unless Eduardo could share it with family. Juan showed the visitors his telescope and how to use it. He told them with a smirk that he had seen the Virgin Mary through it a few times, which he had in the vague outline of a twenty star constellation. The ladies scoffed and giggled. Once, the tripod collapsed and broke just as he said that. Juan laughed but Eduardo crossed himself and said a quick Hail Mary in Spanish.

Life was not at all bad if they ignored the cops, xenophobic insults and petty indignities. Of course every time one of them drove a car there was a risk of arrest, but they plotted out where the cops liked to patrol and took alternate routes. No one said it would be easy living in a foreign country. The USA was full of contradictions and pettiness, along with good people, haters and a mind bending array of opportunities that kept Mexicans busy finding new ways to come across the border. Juan saw the sun when it rose each day for what it was; the closest star to earth, while for Eduardo it signaled another day for saving money to eventually take back to Mexico where he would live like a Don on the hacienda.

Eduardo tended to be rash and hot tempered, which could backfire on them at any moment. The local jails were full of dashing young men from all parts who couldn’t control their tempers and went off over petty or perceived insults. Juan was more practical and urbane. There was a Jacob and Esau quality to the two, expressed in the one’s studious investigations of the stars and the other’s smoldering earthiness.

Juan kept close watch on Eduardo for fear that he would get them into trouble with his temper. Once lost, that was it, anything could happen. Like the explosion of a black hole rocks the frontiers of the universe, Eduardo could turn their lives upside down in a hurry. That it hadn’t happened yet was a blessing Juan counted almost every day.

Back on the plains of Sinaloa, the brothers tussled and ran the countryside with carefree abandon. They discovered the charms and inhaled the bliss of a bucolic Mexican childhood. Eduardo beat the crap out of Juan and laughed about it, they both laughed about it; not much blood and no broken bones.

There were occasional brushes with the cancerous narco culture; as when a pick up truck carrying masked men toting large guns rolled past and their parents crossed themselves and kissed Our Lady of Guadalupe the patron saint of Mexico hanging ‘round their necks. Eduardo once stole a bicycle. The avuncular local police chief caught him with a warning that if he did it again he would make sure the narco bad boys came and got him in the middle of the night. Eduardo was full of mischief but he wasn’t stupid; the law breaking stopped.

The Friday evening after Juan’s blown tire, the brothers went out. It was their custom to go out to eat Friday nights and have a few beers, maybe a shot or two of tequila. They forgot about their families back in Mexico for a few hours and lived it up American style. One drank the shots and the other drove. Juan put his astronomy gear away; Eduardo got dressed in clean clothes with a Mexican flavor. The work week was behind them. The phone would ring plenty tomorrow and Sunday with offers to work odd-jobs for cash, but for now they were at ease and at peace with smiles on their faces and money in their pockets. The sun had set and the full moon was on the rise in the southeast sky as they headed out. If this is what it meant to be Americanos, they were in.

In the car, Juan pointed out several details about the subtle color changes on the surface of the moon and the light vs the dark side. He visited the moon almost every night through his telescope, whispering his observations to his wife as if she was there with him in the cramped trailer. The depth and breadth of the cosmos reminded him of her every time he looked skyward; her eyes were there watching and protecting him and lighting his way.

The brothers laughed and cussed in Spanish when Juan compared the two sides of the moon to Eduardo’s temper. Eduardo listened and stored the information in case he needed it at (or on) a later ‘date’ for charm purposes. They quibbled a bit about which restaurant to go to; there were so many good ones to choose from in the land of plenty. They settled on a spot where Eduardo liked the way the women looked and looked at him. He also liked the way his boots bounced off of the hardwood floors with a clean smart click.. Eduardo took out his comb, took off his cowboy hat and combed back his jet black hair as they made their way across town. .

The place was full.. Plates clamored, waiters and waitresses hustled back and forth; and table talk and voices mixed in English Spanish and a few other languages. The food was quite good, though not as good as back home. Eduardo ordered a spicy mole over boneless chicken with plenty of side dishes and of course beans and rice. Juan preferred the pulled pork stuffed poblano peppers. Limes for squeezing onto everything adorned the borders of both dishes.

The waitress was pleasant and solicitous; and they enjoyed some polite banter with her. After a few beers and a few shots, Eduardo - the designated drinker - was ready to tip her well. They were both generous, a common Mexican trait readily brought out on a weekend after a few drinks. He left her a $20 bill. The waitress threw a parting look of gratitude and approval at Eduardo as they got up to leave.

On the way out, a drunk white guy made a move as if to challenge the men. He appeared out of nowhere swaying like an aimless asteroid. Juan kept walking towards the exit but Eduardo wanted a word with him. His jaw stiffened a little and his complexion began to darken. Seeing the prelude he feared, Juan grabbed Eduardo hard by the arm. He didn’t say a word; he just pushed him from behind away from confrontation and towards the exit while holding tight to his left arm, the side where Juan knew that Eduardo kept a knife in his front pocket for protection. It was all over before it started.

The following week their trailer was robbed. They were both out working. The cash was gone; Juan made the costly mistake of leaving the money at home instead of locking it in a safe or in the trunk of his car. He wasn’t sure if someone without a social security number could open a bank account and never bothered to check.. It could have been an inside job by one of their weekend cash paying customers; they just didn’t know. They debated calling the cops, which ultimately they did because , said Juan, “that’s what you do when you are robbed in this country.” The cops came to take a report and ended up tipping off immigration authorities to two Mexicans with a lot of cash living in a trailer. They were profiled as drug dealers and that was that.

The evening before the theft, Juan scoured the heavens for novel sitings while performing general maintenance on his celestial garden. It was not a normal night in the cosmos. Jupiter ducked oddly in and out of his telescope and the rings and rivers of Saturn wouldn’t settle into his sights. Stars from out of nowhere crisscrossed his scope on their way to other galaxies, leaving him cross and cross eyed. In hindsight he wondered if he might have missed a clue or two to some impending disruption or turmoil about to break loose on him and Eduardo.

In the following months Juan and Eduardo sat in immigration jail. It smelled bad and there was nothing to do, which for these two guys was a slow torture They ate the crap served to them and were bored out of their minds. Their only way out was to sign a voluntary deportation document, or somehow break out. A lawyer told them not to sign, that she could get them bailed out for $10,000 each but it would take a few more months. They did not want to sit a few more months in confinement. Plus where would they get that kind of money? It wouldn’t change their status anyway, just postpone the inevitable.

Juan called his wife in Mexico, his guiding star. She would know what to do. She told him to sign the document and come back to her, enough was enough. So he did. They both did, both with sour tastes in their mouths about their profiling and false arrests.

On the way back to Mexico via government boat across the Gulf, Juan and Eduardo were blanketed in shimmering translucent stardust. Shooting stars and a meteor shower rained down all around them into the water. Noone on board but Juan and Eduardo witnessed this voluptuous atmospheric outpouring. Juan cried tears of joy that he would soon see his wife while Eduardo reached out over the sea to catch the shooting stars and stardust.. They were, for now, giddy, almost uncontrollably happy to be going home. They put their arms around each other’s shoulders and sang sad Mexican love songs that everyone back home knew by heart into the starry night.