Chapter 12
Fourteen years ago…
Hernán lay sprawled on the floor of the store, flipping through a Richie Rich comic book. He was seven.
The door jingled, but he ignored it. A man called out for Juan. Hernán knew his tío had gone to the outhouse with a magazine under his arm, and would be gone a while. He kept turning pages while the man walked the few aisles, calling again for Juan.
“I got your cases of soda here,” he yelled out.
And then the man stood there above Hernán. He seemed huge. He was thick-bodied, with a stained white t-shirt and dirty jeans.
“Where’s Juan?” the man asked through yellow teeth. The smell of beer and cigarettes came off his unwashed body. Hernán just pointed to the back and looked down at his comic book.
The man didn’t move. and Hernán knew there was something very bad about that.
“Pretty like a girl,” the man drawled. “You here alone?” He looked around quickly, leered, and dropped one hand to squeeze his crotch as he reached for Hernán.
Colin took Hernán’s trembling hand in both of his own and kissed the joined fingers. “We know,” he said. “You don’t have to tell us the details.”
Hernán shuddered but sent a questioning look across the table. Sofia nodded her agreement with Colin. “Okay.” He exhaled raggedly.
Later, the man told Hernán, “Shut up with that crying. You say anything, and I’ll tell ’em you begged me for a lick. Everyone will know you’re a fag.” The outhouse door banged shut just then. The deliveryman turned and walked out the front door of the store.
Hernán didn’t know what to do, but he found a rag and wiped off his face. Even at seven, he was sure being a fag was a very bad thing. Abuela told him all the time.
Still scared and shaking when he got to the house in the Las Margaritas neighborhood, he stood in the kitchen door, trembling. Abuela looked up from the pot she stirred and gave a snort when she saw Hernán. “You’re crying again? Weak little boy. Men don’t cry.”
He should have known better, but it came out then, about the man in uncle’s store. Her eyes just got meaner and meaner. She beckoned Hernán closer and he went to her. She was his grandmother, after all. He was supposed to mind her.
She made him hold out his hand, and then grabbed it in her own. Right into his face, she said, “I knew you were a fag,” and rapped his knuckles hard with the spoon, hot from her cooking. Hernán tried to pull away, but she was too strong. “Just shut up about it.” Rap. “You weren’t hurt, not really.” Rap. “Talk about it and everyone will know I’ve got a fag-boy here.” Rap. “I’m not living with that shit. You hear me?” RAP.
After, Hernán did everything he could to hide whatever it was about him that told the man and his grandmother he was a maricón. But he didn’t really understand how they could tell. He walked stiff-legged. He stared at the ground. He smiled when the boys around him talked about girls.
For years, he hid behind carefully constructed walls and he thought he had succeeded.
Eleven months ago…
To that day, Hernán didn’t know what he’d done to attract the attention of the Cuernos del Diablo gang. He was twenty and walking home from college one afternoon in San Marcos when he spotted the group of young men lounging near a bus stop. He didn’t even need to see their tattoos to know who and what they were.
Two of them had been in high school with him, though a year behind. Both were skinny and wore sleeveless shirts with tight jeans ripped at the knees. The biggest of the idlers was older, maybe as much as twenty-five, and a stranger to Hernán. His red t-shirt looked like a sausage casing around his thick belly, chest and arms. He had on black jeans and white sneakers, and lounged against a wall with one leg propped on the bricks behind him, smoking a cigarette.
Hernán looked at the three of them, and then quickly down and away.
The leader laughed crudely and called out “bicha.” The other two picked up the taunt. Hernán ignored them, but it only seemed to inflame the hoods. “Hey, pretty girl, gonna suck my big dick?” the large one shouted. Hernán’s knuckles suddenly ached, and he could smell again the dirty thing that man in the store had rubbed on his face.
He ran. His weakness was apparently a red flag to madden the bull, and the gangbangers gave chase.
He sprinted for nearly fifteen blocks, dodging through crowds, turning corners so fast he almost fell into traffic. Behind him, he could hear the Cuernos closing in. His throat hurt and his pulse raced faster even than his feet. Someone on the street cursed as Hernán shoved him out of the way, the gangbangers nearly on him. Any second, one of them would grab his backpack and jerk him to the ground.
He tried to stay on the busiest streets because he knew—he just knew—if he were trapped in an alley, what would happen to him would be so much worse than that day in his uncle’s shop.
Before him a bus stood at the corner, its door open. The driver reached for the lever to close up, and Hernán cried out, “Wait! Please!” He stumbled up the metal steps of the bus, scraping his shin badly. His heartbeat thrashed in his ears and his lungs heaved as he saw over his shoulder the door close in the face of the Cuernos chasing him.
The bus quickly pulled away from the curb. He looked up at the driver, barely able to stand on his quivering legs. Quietly, the driver said, “Calm yourself. Then you can come up and pay me.”
Hernán muttered “gracias” and slid into a seat. The bus headed in a different direction than Abuela’s house, but that was okay. He was safe.
Except the initial chase turned out to be just a beginning. The next day as he left college, he saw a Cuernos leaning against a light pole. It was one of the kids who used to go to his high school; no doubt he’d recognized Hernán as well. Hernán joined a group of teenagers walking down the sidewalk. Though they looked at him strangely, they didn’t abandon him.
Then it was the leader of the little group of hoods. He sat on a bench at the bus stop across the street. When he caught Hernán’s eye, he spread his legs wide and slid to thrust his groin forward. Hernán turned around and went back into the school. He ended up sitting in the gymnasium while cheerleaders practiced, so he couldn’t be caught alone.
Day after day it continued, and Hernán ran out of ways to hide. Finally he told Abuela he was sick and couldn’t go to school. She snorted and said, “What do I care? You’re too old for school anyway. Get out there and find a job to pay me back for the food you eat.”
He stayed home that day and the next, until it had stretched to three weeks of hiding. Abuela complained loudly and often he was a lazy ass. He should get out of her way and either go to school or go to work.
Unwilling to abandon college yet, he finally dared to venture back. Two more weeks passed when he saw no Cuernos. He began to breathe more easily. Perhaps it was finally over.
He was wrong.
One evening, having grown complacent, Hernán stayed late after class to catch up with work he’d missed. He talked to a teacher for a while, and then went to the library until the librarian told him she was closing up.
He looked through the front doors of the school, and realized his mistake. There were no other students or adults around he could trail behind for protection. Still, he saw no trace of the gangbangers. It had been weeks since he last spotted them. Maybe he was safe.
He walked down the street toward his bus stop, pivoting his head left and right warily. His bus pulled to the curb a block away and he began to hurry.
“Maricón,” he heard in his ear. Before he could turn to see who said it, he felt the most surprising pressure in his side. It was like he’d been punched, though that didn’t seem quite right. He gasped and stumbled into a run that carried him right up the steps of the bus.
The driver’s eyes widened strangely as Hernán flashed his pass and swung toward an empty seat. The bus pulled away very fast and he fell back against the plastic-covered cushion.
A woman across the aisle from him had a hand to her mouth as she stared at his waist. Hernán looked down and tried to remember when he’d changed shirts. He was sure he had just been wearing white, but now he could see only red. It looked wet, and he suddenly grew nauseous.
Pulling the shirt out of the way, he saw blood pulsing out of a hole in his side. He put his hand over it to stop the bleeding. A jet of warmth spurted against his fingers, just as the pain set in.
The bus driver apparently pulled over at some point and got the attention of the police. A policeman applied pressure to the wound until they got him to a hospital, where doctors rushed him into surgery.
He woke up when he heard his sister praying. The ache in his side was terrible. He could see a few other beds lined up near his.
“Is this a hospital?” he asked, and his voice sounded like gravel. His throat was sore.
Brijith looked up from her rosary when he spoke and jumped to her feet. She leaned over him. “Yes, Nán. You’re in the hospital. You were brought in yesterday.”
“What happened? Was I in an accident?”
“You were stabbed. The bus driver saw the whole thing. A Cuernos did it.” Hernán was silent, but Brijith continued, “You had two surgeries already, and they have to do another one later today.” Her fifteen-year old eyes widened with concern. “You nearly died, Nán.”
“Does Abuela know?” he croaked, and Brijith nodded.
“She was here last night for a while, and told the doctors to call her if they need her.”
Hernán rolled his head away and passed out again.
Recuperation took a very long time. He ended up having four surgeries and even then, the doctors couldn’t save more than half of his left kidney. In between operations, the police came for a statement. Abuela stood in the room like an iron pillar, arms crossed, glaring at him.
He knew what she was thinking, because he was thinking it too. If he told the police about the gangbangers and the way they had been taunting him, they would ask why Cuernos thought he was a homosexual. The police then would know about him. And he read enough news to understand a fag was not someone the police would waste their time protecting.
“I don’t know why they attacked me,” he said. Abuela nodded grimly behind the backs of the policemen as he added, “No, I don’t know who they were. I didn’t get a look before I was on the bus.”
The police snapped their notebooks closed, seemingly disgusted by the whole thing. A lone stabbing on the streets of San Marcos was not unusual or even interesting. The older of the two policemen was fat, sweaty and smelled of onions.
“Probably another initiation,” he said. It was the same tone in which another man might have said, “Boys will be boys.”
The younger officer, Martín Alba, was slender and handsome, and had kind eyes. He glanced at Abuela and his partner before saying to Hernán, “We’ll file the report and see what turns up. The driver gave a good description of the attacker.”
Later, Officer Alba came back to Hernán’s room alone. He pulled a chair next to Hernán’s bed. “Look, I get you’re scared of Cuernos. Everyone is. But that’s why we have to do more. Do you see? Every time they get away with hurting someone like you, it just encourages them to do more. If you know anything, anything that could help, please. Tell me.”
The expression in his eyes was earnest and hopeful. Maybe it was the painkillers in his system, or Alba’s handsome face. Maybe it was because he wanted Alba to be right, that if people fought back enough Cuernos could be curbed.
“I went to school with two of the men who have been following me.” He gave Alba their names.
The hospital discharged Hernán far sooner than his doctors advised because Abuela refused to keep paying. “He’s just laying there on his ass,” she screeched. “He can do that at home and won’t cost me so much money.”
Back in his own bed after weeks of the hospital, Hernán lay carefully to protect his sutures from the most recent operation. He stared out the window. He could hear Abuela on the phone, yelling at his father to send money for his goddamn son’s surgeries because she wasn’t going to pay it all. He closed his eyes.
His uncle Juan came to see him, bringing comic books even though Hernán had outgrown them. His aunt came with three of his cousins. When he had healed enough to move around, his sister asked in a whisper when he was going back to school.
“I don’t know. I might not,” he told her, and it felt like getting stabbed again. He didn’t know if Cuernos would still be watching for him. Maybe they thought he was dead, but maybe not. He secretly hoped he’d learn Officer Alba had found a way to stop them.
Instead, Juan came into the house one night, highly agitated. He ignored his mother and went right to where Hernán sat on the sofa.
“What did you do?” he asked gruffly. “Yesterday I heard Officer Alba and his partner picked up two guys and charged them with the assault on you. This morning, they found Alba’s body. They blinded him, and then…”
Juan shook his head, unable to continue. Abuela narrowed her glare at Hernán. “His partner hasn’t been seen all day. Nobody knows if he ran or if they got him too. Did you talk to the police, Nán? Is that how they made the arrest?”
Hernán looked back and forth between his uncle and his grandmother. “I…he asked for the names. Alba. He said we had to fight back.”
With a disgusted snort, Abuela returned to the kitchen and began to slam drawers. Brijith huddled in the doorway to the living room, her face pale and eyes round.
Juan sank down next to Hernán, shaking his head. “No one can fight. Don’t you know that? Cuernos are into everything these days. They have people who work for them in the police and other places. They can’t let anyone oppose them. You see? If they had Alba’s name, it’s only a matter of time until they know you talked. They’re going to come for you, too.”
Brijith began to cry. Hernán’s side ached and his head swam. Maybe the gang didn’t know yet exactly which house he lived in, but it was only a matter of time. He wasn’t safe there. Maybe Brijith wasn’t safe. They would come in and they would finish what they started with the stabbing.
Even if he went to his uncle’s place, or any of his cousins’, it wouldn’t be hard to track him down. Cuernos del Diablo were everywhere. Gay people disappeared every day, and no one cared. There was no place he could go in San Marcos to stay safe.
“Wh-what do I do?”
Juan looked out the window and tapped his fingers against his thigh frantically. “I don’t know. Anywhere in El Salvador, they’d probably find you.” He returned his gaze to Hernán, eyes sad. “Maybe…”
“What?” Hernán prompted after the silence stretched.
Juan stood and paced the living room. “I don’t know if it would be enough, but I can think of only one place to go where Cuernos might, just might, leave you alone. The United States.”