It’s no surprise that this soldier’s both a devotee of Santa Muerte and a Catholic. He’s conflicted, but he’s not stupid. Even the devout down here don’t always think God can save them amidst all the violence. Santa Muerte might not be able to save you, but she doesn’t promise anything, either. Prayers to her are suggestions at the best of times. Honoring her is like wearing a talisman against dying. Maybe she’ll listen. Maybe she won’t.
But when you draw your last breath she’s the one you’ll see. Everything dies eventually, and that’s the only thing you can be sure of with her. It’s like Bustillo said. There’s nothing more honest than death.
The soldier’s got that look that says he’s thinking back to when it was simple. When things made sense. The cartels were bad, the police and the army were good. But there’s poverty and low pay and too much violence and too many dead friends. And no matter how many times he tells himself he’s doing the right thing when he has to make one of those gray area choices, he doesn’t really believe it.
“Might want to see your priest, then. Lot of things weigh on a man’s soul.”
He nods, his entire focus shifting inward. I’m forgotten except as a cursory task he has to deal with. He wishes me luck and gets back into the truck to rejoin the convoy. I give it a few minutes before pulling out back onto the road. I don’t want to be too close to them. There have been ambushes against police, occasionally soldiers. The last thing I need is to get caught in a crossfire.
The rest of the drive to Zacatecas is uneventful. No speeding headlights come my way, no chatter of AK fire. I pull into the city around four in the morning. Traffic’s increased on the highway. Semi-trucks, mostly. Some commuters. The hustle and bustle of a city just waking up, getting ready to start its day.
Not everything down here is violence and drug money. It’s like anywhere else in the world. Most of the people are just trying to get by. Live their lives, find love, have families. When all I see is ghosts and death it’s sometimes a little hard to remember that.
I pull into Zacatecas proper and start looking for a place to crash. Not long before I find a hotel off the highway. Big, yellow box of a building in between two vacant lots filled with scrub brush, the only decoration a bizarre, rococo-style double-staircase leading to the lobby that looks as out of place as a wig on a pig.
I get out of the car as a hot wind picks up. It’s a short burst of blast-furnace air. Like the Santa Ana winds up in L.A., but harder, dryer. Like sandpaper against my skin. Just as suddenly it’s gone, replaced with a cooler breeze that makes more sense for the early hour.
I tell myself that it’s just wind. But I have to wonder about that. Nothing is “just” anything these days. Maybe I’m paranoid. Enemies in the shadows I can’t see. Those can sometimes be just as dangerous as the ones I can.
The wind has me on edge a lot these days. Any wind. The wind can be playful or it can be cruel. I went to a wind spirit in the desert outside Los Angeles for help finding someone not too long ago. It sees everything. It goes everywhere. It isn’t just wind. It’s Wind.
The Wind down here isn’t the same as the one up there, but the edges blur. What one knows they all know. Their needs and desires blend together until they’re indistinguishable from each other. Anger one in Alaska, expect to feel the brunt of it in the Kalahari.
The price for the information was fire. Most winds enjoy a good blaze. In the parched, dry parts of the American Southwest fire season’s like fucking Christmas. It pushes the flames along, fans them higher, spreads them across hills, down mountains, into valleys. And if people are in the way, well, what does the Wind care? It was around long before humans showed up.
But it wasn’t just any fire it wanted. It was the burning down of my home. Joke’s on it. I don’t have one. The only place I’ve considered home burned down over fifteen years ago with my parents inside of it. I own a place in upstate New York, but I haven’t been there in five years. I bounce around, keep moving. Home is as alien a concept for me as dry land is for a fish.
So of course I said yes. I figured I’d gotten off easy. At most some flea bag motel would catch fire. And then it pointed out to me that I was the new Aztec King of the Dead. It wanted me to burn down Mictlan.
Why, I couldn’t say, but I have some guesses. Mictlan’s a pretty specific thing to want to burn. That’s like asking somebody to burn down Cleveland. The Wind wouldn’t want it to burn unless it had a reason, and there are only a few that I can think of.
I have no idea how I’m going to accomplish this. May as well have tasked me with burning down Valhalla or Hell.
But if I don’t do it, it’s going to come back on me and I’m not looking forward to that fallout.
I grab my messenger bag out of the trunk and head up the ridiculous staircase into the hotel. Inside it’s clean but shabby. A front desk, some leather club chairs that look like they were salvaged off the side of the road, an air-conditioner that rattles and grinds. The smell of cigarettes and Febreze is heavy in the air. A woman in a brown, bad-fitting polyester suit coat sits slumped on a stool with her head on the counter, snoring.