Pepe Salazar lived as a “wetback” in Houston Texas in the 1990’s. That was when he was bouncing from one low-paying job to the next.
He never seemed to have enough money to sufficiently help his family — also illegals — or buy big sacks of food, or buy his girl friend presents or take her to the gringo restaurants she fancied.
He spent considerable time in Houston’s Sharpstown Mall shopping center wishing about all the good stuff for sale. He kept passing an Army enlistment office every time he came in off the street. Sometimes he stopped to study the ads the sergeant in charge changed every two weeks.
One early mid-day, the very well-pressed sergeant came out and said hello.
Pepe was studying all the sleek hype in the window and on the wall behind the sergeant’s desk.
“Morning,” he said to Pepe. “Quiet day.”
“I hardly ever see anybody in the office.”
“Later,” the sergeant smiled. “In late afternoon. After work.”
He nodded at some of the illustrations hyping the good things the armed forces offered. Status after learning the keen, tough stuff in basic training. The chance of advancement. Hype.
One afternoon, after a bad day mowing lawns for a fellow Mexican who had his own lawn-tending business, Pepe stopped to talk to the Sergeant. A man of persuasive ways.
Pepe got his ego revved by being physically tough during basic training. He was a leader in calisthenics. He flexed the muscles in his arms when he told me this much later. Pounded his stomach muscles. But he found it difficult to smile.
He had gotten married during leave before shipping out to Iraq. When he’d been reported missing, his wife had given their infant child to her mother and disappeared into California.
When Pepe got back, got free, he took the kid. Awfully tiny. Pepe held her with nervous care. Got instructions on feeding, changing diapers. The works. Some from books. A ton from friends and relatives.
At the same time he dreamed Iraqi dreams. Always watching for the enemy. Amazingly, he did well with the kid. But carrying her instead of a weapon was weird.
He read to her from books he had studied while he was recovering from his wounds in his hip and back. Books a generous educated doctor loaned him. And conned him into studying. They, with the doc’s help, clarified a lot of stuff that stomped through his head early in slow recuperation. The Doc questioned Pepe as he worked on the grenade wounds.
The books, once Pepe settled down and stopped bitching, proved to be fine stuff.
But “back home,” he had to interview baby sitters while he tried to get used to being away from IEDs, etc. Had to check out the girls without scaring them. Some tried to come on to him. That seemed weird, though earlier he would have found the sex side just fine.
He was still on leave. There were armed force classes about coming back and not beating your wife, other relatives, smashing up the furniture, driving crazily. It was boring, and well-meaning, he guessed.
Old friends asked him civilian questions. He answered them in what he believed to be a civilian way. But he wondered what he’d do when he got redeployed. That was inevitable.
His mother, who thought he should have given the kid to her, spent time just outside Houston, and at the eastern edge of San Diego with one of Pepe’s aunts. They both thought he should give the kid to them to care for. After all, they had taken care of him — more or less — raised hefty families.
The kid and Pepe had odd conversations in a language they gradually made up. Pepe wondered if it meant anything to her. He had named her Yoli, short for Yolanda. A name that didn’t belong to any one else in the family. And he read to her from material the Doc had given him.
He was proving — he thought — that at such moments for the two of them the known world hardly existed. As an author said, “...days became simply the spaces between dreams.”
But as he knew, the fresher reality resting in his mind outlined the swiftness of serious combat. Three shots. Swiftly a pair to each side of the chest, one fine-aimed to the head. Instantly, it’s over. A slamming shock, too fast for pain.
Pepe later reminded me of that time. It was when the growing sensation of a dead end in himself — with the exception of the relation with Yoli ‘— began to weigh on him heavily. It was during this time of being emotionally bankrupt, that Pepe began more seriously to try to write. And oddly one of the failed babysitters, who had gone to school in San Diego, became his junior tutor. She soon also became a friend of his mother. Just before Pepe was redeployed. More noise in Fallujah, it was said.
He made both his mother and the babysitter promise to take vigorous care of Yoli. The kind of care he had demonstrated. Including the book reading.
Faster than he’d hoped, Pepe getting shot at. “It’s that nearest house north of the road,” somebody yelled. “It’s an IED factory the Lt. says”
“Let’s kick ass.” Pepe, a Corporal shouted. He put down the note book in which he’ was writing to Yolli and friends. He grabbed ammunition, grenades, his AP-15.
His squad and two others got to the house, blew their way in. Pepe was firing at the enemy dodging from room to room. He was grinning, he told me later, splitting his thinking between killing the people firing at him and Yoli.
Dangerous combat mixture.