The Man in the Field (Published)

It seemed as good a place to die as any, the man thought. Under the lone oak tree in the open field, an acre clear in all directions. Morning was coming. The dim grayish-blue glow in the sky began to show the dew-soaked grass landscape. The field was mostly flat except the gentle hills rolling away from him to the east. He assumed that’s where they would come from. Over the hill and down the slope; where he would make his last stand.

He looked down to observe his wife’s shallow breaths as she slept next to him. He had managed to slow the bleeding, but the damage was done. He found himself hoping that she didn’t wake. There was no need for her to see what was coming. To endure the final scene, her survival instincts crying out to be saved. Only to be met with the unforgiving reality that the man had already accepted: Their journey would end here, under this tree, in the not too distant future.

The man was at peace with this. They had lived a decent enough life for a time. He’d married the most beautiful girl in the town straight after school. He’d loved her every second of every day. They had a beautiful daughter and then a son that was everything that he imagined a son to be and more. What else could he ask for?

If he closed his eyes, he could see his son like it was yesterday. Eight years old playing soccer. Jesus was he fast! The fastest eight-year-old any of them had ever seen and never got tired. Ever. The man held onto that memory for a moment longer. It gave him hope.

Reluctantly he opened his eyes fearing that he would miss his pursuers decent from the ridge. The sky had brightened slightly in just those moments. He guessed it was roughly five in the morning. Soon it would be full light and the darkness which sheltered them would wane; with it their chances of survival.

His wife stirred. He recognized his daughter’s name in her mumbling. The man once again prayed for his wife to pass tranquilly in her sleep.

He saw his daughter’s face in his wife’s features. She was always the impetus one of the family. The man knew when she was very young that the small town and simple life that he had built would not be enough to contain her. Not nearly enough. He starting saving when she was just seven and their son was only two. Saving to get out, to have something better, saving for a glimpse at something that resembled an opportunity. She made him feel uniquely inadequate and unprepared, the way only a young girl with big dreams can. As a father, the man felt it his duty to let her pursue her happiness. Pursue her right as a human being to chase her dreams and it was his job to take her as close to them as he could.

Sitting there under that great tree he felt he had. At least to the best of his ability; with the cards he’d been dealt.

He promised his daughter he would get her out of the meager surroundings she’d inherited. Get her to someplace she could blossom. He had. Of course, not in the way he set out. He’d hoped to be there to see her metamorphous. He planned to watch from afar, holding his wife’s hand. Life, as was its tendency, gave him something a bit short of this. But he’d kept his promise. She was out, she would meet her abnormally fast brother and the man would make his stand; with a full heart. All the siblings needed were each other, the man told himself.

In the distance he heard engines rumbling. His pursuers were drawing closer, coming from the east as he expected. He glanced north, the direction in which, after a firm exchange and a hurried goodbye, the man had ordered his son to run. The son had about an hour head start and by himself, without dragging his dying mother, they would never catch him. Not a chance.

The engine noise drew clearer. He glanced at his wife again, cursing her for fighting her inevitable demise. He took a moment to admire her. Even here bleeding to death, without a shower for two days or a stich of makeup she was beautiful. Yet in still, she paled in comparison to their daughter. The man’s daughter was absolutely breathtaking. At times awkwardly so, like a tiger swimming in the ocean. Her beauty was the outward manifestation of her spirit’s displacement in the environment which she was born. A beauty like hers belonged in Manhattan or Paris; Rome maybe. It was her beauty that god bestowed upon her as her curse. Once of age, her friends always wanted to take her to the nearest city. With his daughter in tow they were treated like royalty. They would walk into any place without charge. Eat and drink all night without spending. The man knew trouble would come, but what could he do? She was nearly twenty-one. He’d saved only enough to secure an exodus for three and even with his son now working it would take at least another year to save enough for the coyote to take all four of them.

It didn’t take long for the wrong type of guy to notice her. In the areas around where the man lived, there were more of the wrong type of guy than the right.

One night she didn’t come home. The man checked her best friend’s house in the morning and found she too had not returned. He caught the next bus to the city fighting the knot in his stomach that grew with every passing minute. The knot of his world crumbling; of him failing as a father.

It was not difficult to track where she’d been. Everyone who’d seen her had her beauty seared into their memory. It was even fairly easy to find her once he knew who’d taken her. There was a level of bad men that didn’t need to be discreet; a level that owned everyone and everything. Anonymity was pointless at this level.

That night he was brought to a warehouse. He guessed it’s use from the countless dogs he could hear as he approached. The space smelled of shit, cigarettes and blood. With the incessant barking of the fighting canines he almost didn’t notice the two large cages in the middle of the area occupied by humans. The man rushed over, in the first cage he saw the lifeless body of his daughter’s best friend. Clothes ripped off, face smashed, a pool of dried blood had formed between her legs.

In the next cage was his daughter, a look of fire and pure darkness in her eyes and yet slightly glazed over. She saw him but was not really looking at him. Not really looking at anything from what the man could tell. More like she was watching a movie that was playing only for her over and over. Her father tried not think of what that film entailed.

She looked as if she’d fought most violently for a long time judging by the swelling in her broken hands and her blood-stained finger nails. Her clothes were also ripped but somehow still draped on her.

“I stopped them papa.” She muttered. More to herself than him. The man looked at the corpse in the next cage and was doubtful her did truly stop them but for now he was content with her being alive.

“Fine girl you have. Not like her friend who had to be taught some manners.” The shrill voice cut through the air like whip. The mongrels stopped their barking. “I’ll pay you handsomely for her… she will be mine only. Not for my men like her friend.” The evil man said. The money was presented immediately and without preamble by one of the workers. More than he had saved in the thirteen years since he’d started.

“You won’t want to do that, sir.” The man started, “Due to her boyfriend.”

The evil man let out a full throated laugh. It sounded like nails on a chalk board. Some of the dogs whimpered.

“You think I’m afraid of her boyfriend?”

“No, no” The man answered, “I think you need her boyfriend… He’s a customs agent; in the booth.” The man stated flatly never breaking eye contact. “She can drive anything across… he will wave her through. A useful connection for a man of such.... varying business interest such as yourself.”

"What do you know of my interests?"

The man looked down, knowing better than to respond.

The evil man paused for several moments.

“And if you’re lying or she fails?” The evil man asked.

It was the father’s turn to laugh.

“She knows what would happen to her mother, her brother, me… She’s seen it.” The man said gesturing to the body of the best friend.

The evil man battled shortly between his desires to possess the young beauty and the obvious financial gain of a free pass through the boarder. In the end the money won. Always did.

The man and his daughter rode back in silence. Quietly acknowledging what the man and his lie had done. He’d put his whole family up as collateral for her performing a task she had no chance of completing.

When their small town was on the horizon the man broke his silence to explain to her a plan. A plan that for all its good intentions, simply led him here. To this field; to this fate.

Once the daughter’s face had healed the visit came. A slimly looking individual with a car loaded with hundreds of pounds of drugs and papers to get her across. She did exactly what her father told her. Ditching the car on the side of the road half a mile out from the boarder and walking across using the papers they provided. It didn’t take long for goons to show up at the Man’s house looking for his family. They found the house deserted. That same morning, with his daughter already across the border, the man and the money he'd saved, paid the coyote for three. Just enough to take him and the remainder of his family on the trek across.

The man hoped that he would be out of cell phone range by the time the evil man thought to call all the local smugglers. No such luck existed where the man was from.

His heart sank to his knees when he heard the coyote’s phone ringing. Once again, the man’s choices were none.

The smuggler took his last breath amongst the tall grass on the path to more. The coyote was far from alone. Rather he simply another body, in the valley between nowhere and somewhere.

On foot, without a guide, the evil man’s henchmen closed in swiftly. They tracked the entire group for more than a day. Scattering them into a blind dash for freedom. The consequences of being born in the wrong geography chased them. The sounds from the jeeps and ATV engines ever present in the background. Until suddenly they just stopped, and a lone metal sign attached to a wooden post declared to them that they had traveled into a world that was the antithesis of the one they’d left. A world where you could make your own destiny. At least that’s what the man believed.

It was a belief he held for an ignorantly blissful thirty minutes as the man walked with his wife and boy, the sun beginning to set to their left. A belief that was ripped from him in the same moment a shot ripped through one of his fellow freedom seekers some forty yards away.

The migrants had picked up new pursuers. “Minutemen” they called themselves. The man had heard of them but supposed it was just a myth. Why would any ordinary citizen take the time to hunt his wife and child?

The man watched from hiding as they rounded up or shot the others. What struck him as odd, was how similar the group he had escaped and the new group he avoided were. Even down to the All-terrain vehicles they rode. Where the man was from, evil hunted and killed for money, power and control. These new pursuers did it for sport. The man could not decide which one was more frightening; which one was more inhumane.

The man’s family managed to slip away with the help of the night, but it was not without cost. He glanced at his wife again. All night he’d been filled with the memory of the one who shot her: Soaked in the headlights of the ATVs, wearing a black helmet with a light-colored shirt. On the shirt he saw an odd looking flag.

Fortune had given them more time, allowed them to escape. Permitted the man and his son to drag his wife to this tree. A beautiful place for her to rest and for him to accept his lot in life.

At last the man caught sight of the inevitable. Headlights paused at the top of the hill. The man stayed motionless, watching them swivel their heads on craned necks until eventually one pointed in the direction of the tree; his great oak. The rider with the strange flag was the first to hone-in. The man could see the shirt clearly now. It was a red square that made the flag, blue strips with white stars within going from corner to corner forming an “x” in the center.

The man was pleased when the strange flag rider accelerated first; leading the pack. In this land of justice perhaps a sliver was left for him.

Without the hill muffling the sounds, the engine noises grew louder. The man’s wife began to stir. He kissed her lips, then put the gun to her temple and pulled the trigger.

“Via con dios mi Amor,” he uttered, “Contigo pronto.”

The bark of the tree exploded over his head from a bullet. The man scrambled to the other side of the oak to take cover. His back against the rough trunk he listened to the engines grow louder. Closing his eyes he took slow, deep breaths to steady himself.

A vision played in the darkness behind his lids. Before him, his unusually fast son was running into his sister’s arms. They would know what to do; he’d gone over it.

He took another breath as the engines grew even louder. The vision skipped forward. Both of his children had spouses now; and kids. Oh far too many kids! The man smiled, one was even named after him. The man opened his eyes still smiling, assured what he saw was their fate. He basked in the success of his life. Short, as it was rewarding. Only one thing left.

The man quickly shot out from behind the great tree, positioning himself on one knee he lined up his gun sights. This seemed to surprise the pursuer with the peculiar flag. The rider hesitated for a second but a second was all the man needed. He took aim right at the intersection of the “X” in his unusual flag shirt and squeezed the trigger.

Published in "The Opiate Magazine Winter Edition 2021"