A Land of Ash

A HARMLESS AMERICAN by David Dalglish

Javier watched her swim until she drowned.

The Rio Grande glowed majestic in the pale light of the moon. He was far from the floodlights, the big camps and the bridges. The water flowed quiet and wide, every inch of its surface covered with ash. The far side was a vast stretch of dry packed earth, whatever grass there long dead from the darkened sky. Because of how open and bare the approach, and how far they were from any nearby roads and bridges, Javier had only a spotlight the size of his fists to aim and search the waters. He hadn’t seen her, though, only heard her last desperate cry.

“Help!” she cried, and even though he spoke no English, Javier knew that universal beg. It’d only been shouted across the river a million times over the past few months. He grabbed the light, which sat on an emptied crate beside him. After a minute, he found her, a young teenage girl struggling against the current. She was halfway across, but no longer swimming. Just thrashing, flailing, fighting a losing battle. Her gasps were uneven, and every bit she drank was poison.

Javier shook his head and pulled his coat tighter about him. They always underestimated how cold the Rio Grande could be. Even in Mexico the sun was a rare thing, its warmth fleeting. Rolling down from the mountains, it was an iceflow coated with ash, and at its bottom were a thousand corpses.

When the light shone in the girl’s eyes, she stopped for a moment. It was always the same, and no matter how many nights he stayed stationed at the border, he never thought he’d get used to it. A look would flash briefly across the swimmer’s face, their tired, scared eyes filling with both fear and desperate hope. Then it’d slowly fade as they realized there would be no help, no swimmers, no ropes or liferafts. Just the dreadful noise of the waters as they swam on, fighting cold, ash, current, and darkness.

And then if they did survive, well…

Javier drew his pistol, checked the clip, and then rest it on his hip. In the end, there was no need. The girl’s thrashing slowed, and her screams for help slowly faded. The river took her, pulled her facedown southward. Javier shook his head, feeling a chill work its way up his spine.

Too cold, he thought. Too damn cold.

He smoked to pass the time, not caring that the soft orange glow of the tip might hurt his night vision. The way he saw it, the less he saw, the better. Nothing could compare to those first hellish nights after the Caldera had erupted. If the moon was covered and the stars dimmed, sometimes he’d imagine arms sticking up in the water, heads bobbing just above the surface, and the wail of the wind would seem to carry the voices of the drowning…

A thump, just to his left. He stood, knocking over the spotlight with his elbow. Swearing, he pulled a flashlight out from his pocket and flicked it on. With his other hand he grabbed his gun from the ground and then he began searching. It didn’t take long to find her. A thick log had washed up against the shore, and clinging to it was a young girl. She looked four, maybe five. It was hard to tell with such poor light, the ash clinging to her like dark snow. She was crying, sobbing a word in English over and over again. When the light of his flashlight shone in her eyes, she squinted and looked up at him.

The gun was heavy in his hand. The girl stared, just stared. Her eyes were green. Her nose was small, her ears almost like those of an elf. Crying. So small, and crying.

“We feed our own,” he said to her, as if she’d understand. He moved his finger to the trigger, remembering what he’d been trained. Never place your finger on the trigger unless you were ready to fire. Staring down at her, he wondered if he truly was ready. He aimed the gun. The girl was old enough to recognize what it was, but she only closed her eyes and clutched the log. Her feet swayed in the waters. Her skin was so pale, and her lips quivered from the cold. Or maybe it was fear.

His finger slipped off the trigger.

“Come here,” he said, offering his hand. The girl took it, and with a quick tug, he dragged her out and brought her to his station. He had a small tent, a chair facing the water, and his crate. Within the tent was a small cooler filled with clean water. He wrapped her in the blankets to his bed and then gave her a bottle to drink.

“Name?” he asked her in spanish. She stared and shivered. “Your name?”

“Leann,” the girl said, her eyes suddenly lighting up as she realized what he wanted. She rattled over a bit more of English, but Javier held a finger to his lips. She nodded and stayed quiet.

Javier looked about, feeling panic claw at his gut. He’d helped a survivor. On his watch, someone had made it across. It didn’t matter her age, or how little food she’d eat and water she’d drink. If someone found out, he was in deep shit. What to do? What could he do? Perhaps he could find her a safehouse back at town, but even leaving his post could get him disciplined, if not shot. Deserters, even momentary ones, had become the equivalent of war criminals in the eyes of the Mexican people.

Light flashed over the outside of his tent, faint and distant. Javier swore, his eyes scouring the tent.

“Bed,” he said, pointing. Leann climbed atop, seeing his fear. He shook his head and pointed underneath.

“Hurry,” he told her, not caring if she understood or not. His bed was a simple cot, the space underneath it narrow, but she was a small girl, with a hint of starvation on her bones. Hoping she could hide herself appropriately, he bolted out of the tent and made for his chair.

“Javier?” called a voice. He felt his gut tightened. He knew who approached, and it was the last person he wanted to see at that moment.

“Yeah, Sergio?” he asked as he sat. His heart thudded as Sergio neared, walking along the edge of the river. He realized the spotlight still lay on the ground. He was just bending over to get it when a hand touched his, also reaching for the light.

“Holy hell,” Javier said, jerking his hand back. Up came the spotlight, spinning around, and then resting on the crate. Sergio stared at him, an eyebrow raised.

“Something wrong?” he asked.

Sergio was a skinny man, dark-complexion, his hair thick and black. From their many talks, Javier knew he was intelligent, cold, and dedicated to his post at the border with belief bordering on fanaticism. The river was his church, a gun his bible, and he baptized the dead in its waters with a frightening intensity.

“Just startled me is all,” Javier said, trying to keep his voice sounding bored.

“What happened to your light?” Sergio asked as he picked it up and then sat down atop the crate, the light resting in his lap. He shone it across the Rio, looking, watching.

“Bumped it with my elbow,” he said.

Sergio nodded. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a cigarette.

“Something is probably wrong with me,” he said as he pulled out his lighter. “Half the world’s choking with ash, and here I am blowing more into the wind. Shame that Yellowstone wasn’t full of nicotine. We’d have people running toward it instead of our beloved land, climbing their own fences just to get our death sentence.”

He inhaled, the tip flaring orange in the night. Javier scratched at his neck, using it as an excuse to turn toward the tent. It was too dark inside. He couldn’t see the bed.

The silence stretched for awhile as Sergio enjoyed his cigarette.

“Real quiet lately,” Javier said, trying to make conversation.

“Almost makes me sad,” Sergio said. “Were you here at the beginning?”

“Acuña,” Javier said. “I was at the bridge.”

Sergio chuckled.

“Rayos, you’ve seen worse than I. What was it like?”

Javier reached over and grabbed a cigarette from Sergio’s pack, then held it out while he waited for the lighter. Memories floated before his eyes as the tiny flame sparked. Thousands of people charging the barricades, some with firearms, but most with nothing but clothes, suitcases, and their young ones. Gunned down, all of them, yet still they’d rushed ahead, as if driven on by a greater terror than bullets could bestow. Finally one of the generals had given a last, desperate order. Cars and civilians still flooding across it, they’d blown the bridge to hell and watched it topple.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Javier said as the cigarette finally lit.

“I was down by Matamoros.” His eyes seemed to twinkle in the light of the cigarette. “The water’s thin there. Hardly any makes it to the ocean. Once heard some gringo say that any drop that makes it to the great blue is wasted. Makes you wonder if god unleashed Yellowstone on them all to teach them a lesson, one gigantic lesson written in ash on the U.S. chalkboard. What we do to the earth don’t mean shit compared to what it can do right back to us.”

He shifted positions, trying to get comfortable atop the crate. The light went from resting on his right leg to his left.

“Anyway, being so shallow and the land so flat, this meant people thought they could swim across. We barricaded the bridge with so much barbed wire and sandbags, most decided they’d try their luck with the water. So our commander, real tough ass named Miguel, he starts lining us up along the edge, just like a firing squad. That’s what we were, too. We waited until they were close, and I mean close. You could see the fear in their eyes, smell the mud on their clothes. And then we fired. And fired. Almost thought I’d run out of clips, and I was taking my time, too, not being wasteful like the others around me.”

“Sounds like it was awful,” Javier said.

Sergio shone the light at his face, and when he winced at the brightness, he plunged back into darkness. The light shone past him, toward his tent, then back to the water.

“You look pretty pale,” Sergio said. “You need something to drink?”

“I’m good,” Javier said.

Sergio shrugged.

“You’re not even close, by the way. Awful doesn’t begin to describe it. They were walking across the river by the end. The bridge of the dead, some wiseass near me named it. Name stuck, too, until later that night we destroyed it with dynamite. Just like Acuña’s bridge, we had to topple it to protect our families.”

“You ever think what it’d be like to be on the other side?” Javier asked as the wind picked up, cold and full of dust. “Try to think what it’d be like to be so scared you’d rush headfirst into gunfire? To be so scared you’d walk across the dead, all while guns are firing and people are dying?”

His cigarette dwindling, Sergio tossed it into the river and reached for another.

“You can’t think like that,” he said. “You ever think how much food they’d eat when they got here? How much water they’d drink? For every one we shoot across the river, ten die of starvation back in Mexico City. You can’t think of them as harmless. They’re victims of nature, not us. Hell, blame god if you want. He let the fucker erupt in the first place.”

“Yeah, but sometimes, the women, their children…”

Sergio snapped his lighter shut and sucked on his cigarette.

“They all eat. Rationing only goes so far. And no matter what we did, our own would sneak them food. The weak-hearted will give them water, share their scraps. It’s like too many don’t see the winter coming, see starvation waiting like a lion to devour us all. You know what people will do when they’re hungry? They’ll kill one another. Father’s will butcher their neighbor to feed their own kids. Mothers will smother babies to end their suffering. We’ll become a warzone, a country of graves.”

He shifted the floodlight back to his other leg.

“Even scared, wet little girls will steal if they’re hungry. There’s no such thing as a harmless American, not here, not now. They’re no longer from the land of the free and the brave. They’re from the land of ash, and its citizens are dead, all dead. They just don’t know it yet.”

Javier stood and used his fists to pop his back. As he sat back down, he shifted his hip and let his hand rest on the hilt of his gun.

“Sure you don’t need a drink?” Sergio asked, nodding toward the tent. Javier shook his head. Sergio shrugged. “Suit yourself.”

He resumed searching the waters with his floodlight. Every now and then a corpse would float along from further upriver, and his light would linger, waiting, making sure there was no movement.

“Got to be careful of the floaters,” he said.

“I’ve been at this as long as you,” Javier said.

“Never can be too careful, though. You hear about David?”

Javier’s fist tightened, unclipping the gun from his holster.

“No,” he lied.

“It’s a shame,” Sergio said, discarding the second cigarette. “He helped a boy cross the river when he thought no one was watching. Turns out he was a relative of some sort, didn’t hear what exactly. Nephew, maybe, all the way from Chicago. Not sure I buy that, but whatever. They executed them both two days ago, right in the middle of the town. Didn’t even waste a bullet. They used a rope, a maldito rope.”

Javier held in his shudder.

“Real shame,” he said, his eyes locked on the river, fighting an impulse to glance over at his tent.

“What we have to do. What we all have to do. I keep hearing whispers, how the winds may shift and bring all those clouds our way. We’ve been lucky for now, but it could change. Any day they could come, and we have to be ready. We have to be strong.”

He stood, setting the light back down atop the crate. His right hand rest atop the hilt of his gun.

“I’m thirsty,” he said. “Mind if I steal one of your waters?”

“I’m all out,” Javier said, staring up at Sergio. The man turned, and their eyes locked.

“You sure? Maybe I should go look, see if something turns up hiding.”

“It’d be a bad idea,” said Javier.

“It was from the start.”

They both drew, but only one gun fired. Javier was the faster. In the light of his muzzle, he watched Sergio stagger back, a bloody hole in his chest. His knees locked, and then he fell, just another body floating along the Rio Grande.