Learning the ropes of the family business ain't easy. Especially when those ropes are usually used to string up your enemies.
Welcome to the show, little nephew.
Welcome to the show, little nephew.
Avian Theories by Isaac Kirkman
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As the monsoon rains pummeled down, Marcus’s uncle, Antwan,
navigated the Cadillac slowly through the barrios, as they made their way to
the outskirts of the city. Marcus sat silently. Each time he caught his uncle
beaming at him with pride, he would glance up at the mirror to make sure his
own face remained cool.
It was his fourteen
birthday, his coming of age party, his initiation into the family business.
He took a swig from the pint of cognac; a slow burn spread
through him. He wiped his mouth and settled his hands upon the duffle bag in
his lap. His uncle smiled, took a few more turns into a dark area fortified
with cacti and mesquite trees and turned off the car.
As they stepped out of the Cadillac and into the rain,
Marcus held tightly to the duffle bag while his uncle put his arm around him.
All night Antwan spoke of teaching him what his own uncle had taught him: the wrist twists for hot dice games; the right application
of boot pressure to collapse clavicles; that Santa Muerte could answer the
prayers God wouldn’t.
And, above all, he would teach him that emotion
and women were more destructive to money than silverfish.
They made their way past the walls of mesquite
trees into the moon-lit clearing. Before them bound and gagged, their captive
kneeled, his face swollen into abstraction. Marcus’s older cousins, dressed in
black masks and hoodies, surrounded them.
Antwan motioned for his nephew to open the bag
and set up. Marcus bent down, removed from the duffle bag a makeshift gag made
from adjustable leather straps and a hunter's bird caller, and handed it to his
uncle. It was designed so when a person was gagged and screamed, the only sound
heard was that of a bird.
The cousins took turns grabbing their own bird
callers from the duffel bag and proceeded to spread out into different corners of
the perimeter. That way, any out of sight neighbors would assume the racket
was a flock of migrating birds fleeing through the rain.
While his uncle called the man’s family, Marcus
stood between the bloody figure and the open trunk of his cousins’ car,
straining to focus on the man’s face. The cognac had his vision contorting. As
his uncle calmly said hello into the receiver, Marcus’s eyes slid from the
man’s face, a kaleidoscopic of blood and swollen meat, down to his jersey that
covered his thin torso.
Which is when he realized their victim was no
man. It was a boy. His classmate, Miguel.
His uncle spoke softly, his voice quivering with
restraint. “Our associates have your son and if you do not have the money in an
hour we will kill him. You think a kilo can just disappear without being
noticed?”
Antwan turned the cell phone camera on, pressed his thumb
over the speaker and handed it to his nephew. “Now, here is your moment. I need
you to keep the camera on him,” he said, showing his nephew how to point and
shoot. “Keep your hand steady. And make sure you cup the top of it with your
hand, enough to keep the lens dry but not so much you block it.”
Marcus pulled the hoody over his head, softly sweeping
his hair as he did it. He took the cell phone from his uncle. Marcus bent
down and positioned the camera phone so Miguel and his father could see each
other.
“Say hello to your father,” Antwan said, removing a
hammer from the bag.
Miguel, face too swollen to see, choked up at the sound
of his father’s voice. He sobbed, “Dad, Dad, please help me, please…”
Antwan snatched Miguel by the throat and bent his face
down into the mud. “That’s enough,” Antwan said. “Anymore and I shoot you.”
As Miguel rose up Marcus wiped the mud from his face with
his hand and began to strap the bird call gag around him. Through swollen slits
Miguel stared at his captor, eyes widening in recognition and silent pleading. Marcus
paid no heed as he clinched Miguel’s jaws together just as the boy tried to
speak, leaving only a wheeze whistling through the binding. Then Marcus
connected the leather straps around the sides of his face and tightened it
around the back until the notches fit snugly.
On cue with the boys’ avian whistle cries, the cousins
synchronized their bird callers. A flock had landed. The first blow of the
hammer shattered Miguel’s knee into pieces, the second, into dust. A cacophony
of bird screeches swelled up through the lightning-ruptured sky.
With each blow to Miguel, Marcus’s muscles wrenched
tighter, his knees sinking deeper into the mud, his hands though remained
steady.
Only when Miguel’s body collapsed and his face
amalgamated with the wet earth did the blows stop. On the tiny screen Miguel’s
father was folded into a tear-shaped prayer, his hands thrusting stacks of cash
forward. When Antwan took the phone from his nephew’s hand, the weight of the
universe was lifted. Marcus legs felt weightless, but his arms felt like spires
rooted in concrete.
His uncle spoke into the phone: “I am glad we could come
to an understanding, a car should be arriving any minute.” He snapped the
fliptop closed, rolled Miguel’s unconscious body over and removed the gag so he
could breathe.
“You did good, Marcus,” his uncle said. “I’m proud. Your
Pops would have been proud too.” He flashed a smile at his nephew while he
briskly got his things together.
As they left the scene he wrapped his arm around Marcus.
“Don’t worry about the clean-up, your cousins have that taken care of.”
Enthroned in moonlight, they made their way to the
Cadillac. Marcus got in, uncertain whether he felt stoic or numb, while his
uncle, started the car, clearly feeling jubilant. “So where you want to eat?”
As they pulled away, his uncle turned up the music, and Marcus watched the path to the clearing disappear. As it grew distant, he heard a single gunshot echo in the valley and the sound of birds crying out.
