When he heard the cruisers’ doors open, Juan vaulted over the deck’s wooden railing and dashed across the weeds and fallen branches of the back yard. Juan heard the insane bedlam of the multiple sirens at full volume and the loud, excited voices of the cops.
Juan was a fast runner. He cruised easily through the woods, dodging the rampant branches and the fallen limbs. Behind him angry voices shouted: Stop, stop, stop. The motherfucker’s over there. Get him.
Juan was in another world: he imagined he could outrun these heavily uniformed, clumsy men and make his way over the small hills of the dump and speed through the woods toward the ocean three miles away and then swim in the Atlantic to his real home thousands of miles to the south. He had the advantage, he thought, of strength and speed and fear and dreams.
But then he stopped. He was afraid. His blood throbbed. He shouted, “Here, here I am.”
An angry voice screamed: “Don’t move. Don’t move. Let me see your hands!”
Juan saw the shapes of at least six men twenty yards away in the chaotic undergrowth of the woods, all converging in his direction. He saw, too, the glint of sunlight on pistols and rifles. The branches cracked under their feet.
“Show me your hands! Show me your hands!”
Juan held out his hands.
Two of the men rushed at him, knocking him to the ground. His face was pushed into the newly fallen leaves. His hands and arms were pulled up behind him. Pain seared his back and chest. One of the men held a pistol against his temple. He smelled the odor of dirt and fallen leaves. Plastic handcuffs locked around his wrists. He was yanked to his feet. Pieces of leaves and dirt hung from his face and nose. Stumbling, he was pushed from behind toward the police cruisers, their lights flashing regularly, swiftly, all bedlam.
As he approached the lead cruiser, he saw every feature of Joan Richardson’s rigid face. The window was open half-way. There was no curiosity or hatred or concern in her expression. She was impassive. For a moment, he expected her to help him, given all that had happened between them over the last half-year-the times when they drank iced tea on the pool terrace or when she worked with him in the garden, and the quiet hours inside the house when Brad and everyone else were away.
He wasn’t able to look at her for long, or to find out whether she would help in some way, because as he was pushed toward the cruiser a truncheon struck his back near his kidneys, forcing him against the door of the car. His nose and mouth smashed into a window and began to bleed. He tasted the blood. A man with red hair, his hat off, leaned near him and shouted in his ear, “You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be held against you. You have a right to a lawyer. If you can’t afford a lawyer, you’ll fucking get one for free, you spic.”
Juan’s head was pressed so forcefully against the window that he couldn’t say anything. He was choking. He was less than a foot away from Joan Richardson. A cop yelled, “Is this him?”
She shook her head up and down: the silent yes.
Juan was jerked away toward another cruiser. It had a wire mesh between the front and rear seats. The rear door opened. A powerful hand on the top of his head pushed him down and into the cruiser. A woman in uniform sat to his left. She held a wet towel and wiped his face to clean off the blood and dirt. She didn’t want his face smeared with blood or visibly bruised when he was led into the red brick Southampton police station, where television news trucks would be filming him on the short walk from the cruiser to the door of the station. The police had already announced his arrest and he had already been endowed with a name.
Juan the Knife.
10.
Mariana’s favorite work at the supermarket was stacking cans. With the gift of her agile hands, she loved removing them from the cardboard boxes in which they were delivered and placing them in gleaming, colorful rows along the shelves for all the world to see. They formed a bright mosaic.
Mariana was in the second aisle arranging the oval-shaped cans of sardines when Alfonso, a man with a limp whom she sometimes jokingly rebuffed when he tried to kiss her, approached. He spoke in Spanish: “Juan’s been picked up.” Fear washed over her like a sudden infusion of cold water. Picked up: to her and all the people she knew, the words meant you disappeared, you entered the endless maze of prisons and detention centers. No one ever returned from a pick up.
Mariana walked to a storage room at the rear of the store, put on her hooded sweatshirt, and picked up her small knapsack. She left nothing behind; she knew she would never return. In the clear autumn air, she made her way through the curving, quaint heart of the village, passing the Sag Harbor Cinema with its big 1930s-style marquee, the antique stores, the stone-and-brick library with its green dome, and the stately houses along Main Street. At the end of the Village, where Main Street became the old turnpike and the houses became more and more run-down, she broke into a trot. The ranch house was less than a mile away.
Mariana stopped when she came close enough to see the house. Three police cruisers and a large van were in the driveway. She was afraid, almost panicked, as she had often been when she sensed that immigration police were poised to arrest her. As soon as she saw men carrying Juan’s bicycle out of the house, she knew what she had to do. She walked back to the village, went into the library, found the bathroom, and stayed there for the two hours until her children would arrive on their school bus at three. It was the first day of school in the new year.
When the bright yellow bus came to a halt at a corner several stops before her children’s usual drop-off place, Mariana held the door open and said to the woman driver, who recognized her: “I want my kids. We walk today. It’s nice out.”
The boy and girl strapped on their colorful knapsacks, looking happily at their mother. They were smart, outgoing kids, well-liked in the pretty grammar school in Bridgehampton. When Mariana told them they were not going home, they became quiet. She said they were going to Celia’s house. They referred to Celia, a 65-year-old kindly Salvadoran, as “aunt” even though she was not related to them. Celia’s house was closer to Bridgehampton and the Montauk Highway than Mariana’s now-abandoned ranch house.
Over the next three days, Mariana and her children stayed inside Celia’s neat home. Mariana kept the newspapers away from her children, who read English fluently. The radio and television were turned off. Every time they asked about Juan, Mariana said that he had returned to Mexico. They, too, she said, would soon be in Mexico. It was home. Their grandmother lived there. It was always warm, she said, you never needed any winter clothes. Life would be better there.
The old Buick station wagon stopped in the driveway of Celia’s house. Clutching an oversize leather bag, Mariana and her children climbed into the third row of seats because the first two rows were crowded with Mexican men who were also on their way to New York. Wide-eyed, the children stared at Main Street in Bridgehampton, where some of their young friends lived, as they passed through the beautiful village.
The windows of the car were tinted so darkly they were almost black. They drove cautiously west toward the city, never above the speed limit and never below it. The driver wanted to avoid the attention of state police cruisers.
11.
“Mrs. Richardson, I need you to help us more.”