There was a lot you could get done in three days. 72 hours ago Manuel had been your run-of-the-mill Mexican gardener/painter/roofer/gutter-scraper/farmhand who also occasionally found himself in medical programs of new prescriptions that didn't kill the rats, and were therefore ready for the next level. A mere 4,000-sum minutes ago, he just started being a professional carpet cleaner for the day. From wetback to the purest evil power in three days flat.
He was a hard-worker, you had to be, or you died. That was it. You see the men, lined up along the street from the intersection with the 7-11 all the way to Home Depot bordering the highway exit ramp. Standing wasn't a crime, but it was enough to get you suspected of one, and whoever decided to be the good samaritan for the day would watch for patrols, nonchalantly calling out "la chota" or "tamarindos" to signal that everyone should start walking along the street, as if they were on there way to dominate the park on the opposite side of the highway for a family reunion.
But Manuel didn't feel like walking that day. He'd been loaned a shitty ladder by some old dame he was installing lighting fixtures for and banged his shin hard, catching his leg on the counter before the rest of him hit the floor. He already had a few odd varicose veins and managed to nail one right on so that his whole leg looked like a bruise within five minutes, and that five minutes he spent trying to apologize, "sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry" to the older lady who was saying something about the new countertop she put in only the week before, berating him for possibly knocking it off-level before it settled firmly. Because that was what was important to her. He sucked up the pain amidst the apologies, and continued to launch volleys of "sorry sorry" through the thick cloud of chidings as he tried to refocus on the fixture, getting the last fasteners on the decorative light box that cost more than he would get paid that day to install it. Didn't matter. You finished the job even if they told you to stop and insisted you leave. It was the only way to try and jangle some money out of the deal, because there was no rule saying they had to pay you at all for a job that wasn't done. No pay, no food, you die. Simple as that. He broke the skin on the tip of his fingers trying to screw with his fingers, which helped relocate to a different pain. He got the money, but received no lemonade before having to walk back home that day.
Now, when los tamarindos came around today, and he could not find it in him to take his half-purple leg and start moving it down the street. He sat on the sidewalk on top of his toolbox and stared at his knees, waiting for them to pass, and for the day to be another minute or two closer to over. The drove slow, and you could just see the dull reflection of sunglasses behind tinted windows. Manuel couldn't see this, because he was counting to thirty while carefully examining the hole in his jeans torn from the countertop incident. Then his counting was interrupted by a long drawn squeal of brakes, and that was unusual for a police cruiser. There was a lot a of money in keeping cruisers in top shape. He thought about offering to fix them as only a half joke, but knew not to speak until spoken too, as the meek might get pity so long as they put their nose in the dirt and waited for authority to kick them in the head a few times and move along with the day. When the cruiser's door opened, he knew that he wouldn't be getting any work today--as he had not the past two days before--meaning no food, and he might as well just quit wasting time and die.
"Hey. You."
"Sí."
"Hey you speak English."
"Sí. Yes."
"Can you clean?"
"Yes."
"What can you clean?"
"Anything."
"Yeah? Can you clean some carpets? You can do carpet cleaning, right?"
"Yes."
"Good. Get in and just keep saying 'Yes' and nothing else. Get in, let's go."
For your average intrusive shakedown, a list of questions containing no real importance would be asked to try to fish out inconsistencies in order to prove you were suspicious. They'd ask you who you were, who your father was, what you address is, if you had ID, what you did yesterday, what you did the day before that, what your father was doing on each of those days, if you had a cellphone on you, what its number was, who was the last person you called, if you had your Dad's number, where you were going, why you were going there, if your father would be there, and where could they find you or your father tonight. Then they would ask the same thing backwards, as a tiresome test of memory and basic English, hoping they could confuse someone into making a mistake that could classify them as 'suspicious' and warrant further questioning. Refusing to answer their 'common sense' questions would be enough to earn you a suspicious label. And that was just the way it was. You dealt with it occasionally so you could work occasionally, and on a good week you gripped enough cash to buy the 24-pack over the 12-pack and still send some back home. But if you got in a cruiser car, your time at that pick up point was over, because you would not be back on the strip waiting for a pick-up truck again because that would make you really suspicious. It means that you had somehow earned your tag as 'suspicious' and if they saw you in the same place twice after your trip to the station the next trip you'd be on was back across the border.
Manuel knew the hinderance in store and counted it as one more day with no work. You took it with the same patience and acceptance that it took for most people to stand in incredibly long lines. And it was about as aggravating. It just meant he would have to find a different section of town to stand in now, toolbox in hand, as the days dragged on.
At least, that's what it would be if he'd been found as suspicious, but this was different. No officer before would ask if you spoke English. They would just assume it because you had to, and they knew it. This was different. Manuel went along with it, no outward reaction to the uncommon development, moving along with the steps presented much like an animal being willingly herded into a pen. His mind, however, was racing to think of what comes next.
"You said you speak English. How much English."
"A little."
"Not that much? How much is not that much."
"Speak some English."
"Yeah? But not that much English, right?"
"Yes. Just a little."
"Fine. Convinced me. Just don't ask questions, do the job. How much is it for carpet cleanings?"
"Seventy-five is good."
"We'll do that. Make it one-hundred if you do it without talking and do it fast."
"Yes."
Manuel was by no means a dumb man. You never let on how much you actually know, it retains a bit of your power to know more than you let them believe. Picking up the odd word in a fast-paced discussion can tip you off if the occasional bad day-employer is going to cut your pay right before they drop you back off, or if they are going to ask for something more they didn't agree to. And really you couldn't be dumb when you had to be a master of ten different professions upon request. If someone needed a sink fixed, you were a plumber. If someone needed drywall torn down, you used to be a construction worker. If someone needed help butchering cows, your father used to own a farm and you've been doing it since you were twelve. Manuel had a carpet cleaner in his hands before, and you just make it do what it's supposed to. An easy enough job for a skilled-unskilled laborer, but one that most people didn't want to do. That doesn't explain why police officers are getting him to do it, and insisting he not talk as he does. Best case scenario at this point is that there is some kind of narc program recently put in, where they will actually take him to rat any of the other corner workers for pedaling drugs in addition to cheap labor, and the carpet cleaning is just an innocent enough ploy to lull a false sense of security.
By the time they arrived at wherever they were going, Manuel was let out of the back and he saw that the sky was grey, the temperature dropped a few degrees, the wind picked up, and he didn't give a fuck about any of that. An immediate survey of the surroundings saw that there were six trailers forming a semi-circle end-to-end like a train that was never meant to move.
"Alright. Get that stuff outside of that one then go in and clean the floor."
Manuel could only give them a glare for about three seconds before realizing that is all they would say and all he could stare. He had his own suspicion raised, but couldn't see well enough to get their names.
He had heard about things like this before. When he saw there was a not a rented cleaning machine, but a bucket with chemicals and sponges, he knew most likely what this job was. It was something best just to put your head down and do, before there was a reason for someone else to clean up his blood.
He slowly loped over, grabbed the bucket, and didn't look back at the two officers. If they were going to shoot him before or after there wasn't that much he could do about it. Just focus on the work. You had to work and eat or die.
Blood was the only common stain harder to get up than red wine. Without a powerful cleaning unit spinning brushes at 100rpm, it would have taken about as many times long to do it by hand. This blood was thick and there was plenty of it. Manuel tried not to let his brain or bowels get the best of him. It had sunk down into the fibers far enough that he would need more than a whole bucket full of bleach if it were normal blood. More than only the bottle in the bucket. And this was not normal blood.
Manuel opened up some of the agents and started scrubbing around on the floor. The officers stood at the rear of the trailer and talked quiet in the back, watching through the doorway. They'd occasionally raise their voice and ask if it was coming up, and ask if he could go any faster. His response was always "Yes". As he scraped at the shaggy carpeting, it was impossible to quiet his thoughts from trying to find answers to unasked questions. It was a skill of laborers like him to never betray emotions through expression, unless it was a mimicry of someone else's jovial laugh to offer a false "me too" for whatever the person they were being indentured to that day found funny. The officers, however, weren't as good as he was at covering up nervousness. He hadn't looked directly at them, save the three seconds outside, but when one called out and tossed him an extra sponge and water bottle, Manuel could see their faces were more contorted in worry as they watched him from across the trailer. It was obvious they had done something they shouldn't have, and were using an anonymous, exploitable--and if need be erasable--kind of labor to clean up the evidence of their mistake, whatever that may have been.
Manuel knew ostensibly they didn't want to be close to where he was cleaning, for whatever traceable evidence could be accidentally picked up like hair or blood drops. That made sense. They couldn't get a cleaning machine either, as it would be on record and linked to them. Also obviously why disposable labor would be preferred. In the cases of things like this before, two officers of the law and one Mexican without his papers, brutally maiming or murdering someone who was probably white could only have one conclusion. It was pretty flawless in its simplicity, all things considered. Though they could have very well bought some mechanic's uniforms and done it themselves, if that were the case, but the alacrity they picked Manuel up with and the rush to get it done said something more. All these thoughts flickered like fire through Manuel's mind but it wouldn't deviate the task at his hands. His bruised leg hurt from being hunched over on his knees. He kept scrubbing. He knew this was something more than a bit of foulplay. The blood was thicker than it should be.
Los tamarindos were obviously getting uneasy, and he just keep doing as he was told, hoping the worker's adage of working until it's done if you have a hope of getting paid would still hold out as true, and allow him to be alive with that money in hand, whether he cleaned the blood or not. He just wanted to be home, or back on the curb. Somehow he knew there would be no leaving anytime soon.
Those chotas were letting a degree of panic start to show through. While his skill in English wasn't great, Manuel picked up some things like "did it too soon" and "it's not going to work" and "we should have waited". He was now convinced he was exactly where he shouldn't be.
"Is that fucking carpet clean yet."
"Yes."
"No, not just 'yes', is the, the stuff… is it really fucking clean or not."
"Yes."
"God dammit, wetback son of a… look, just go look okay?"
Manuel heard the officer approach. He kept on brushing.
"Oh shit, you are fucking kidding me."
He had seen that even though Manuel had been scrubbing away, there was no difference in the leaked red liquid.
"Shit. Shit, shit, shit. You said it was getting clean. Shit."
" . . . "
"Okay, so, you said you know how to clean carpets, why isn't it clean?"
*brushie brushie brushie*
"Why isn't it clean!?"
"You need more bleach." He overstepped his boundaries in speaking, but playing dumb wasn't being a good answer this time. "The stain, is in the low part of the carpet so you need bleach first then you need the white powder."
"Bleach… so this isn't good enough," he motioned to the bucket, "then what is?" The officer was close enough to talk but it seemed like his skin was reeling backwards from the spot he was standing. It appeared to take great effort to raise his hand and point at the tub of chemicals Manuel was given for the job. "And what kind of white, powder, what's white powder?"
Officer J. Sander--Manuel caught his name--had not taken off his sunglasses the entire time and was sweating. But the name was not the indication Manny wanted. Sander retreated back to where his partner was fiddling with some book, repeating to him the request for white powder. The air in the trailer was humid and now turned desperate. The other officer decided that the white powder must be an abrasive salt-based cleaner that his sister once used on some kind of gravy spill.
Sander looked to his partner. "Alright. It'll only take one of us to go get this stuff, it's just--"
"Do you think we could just cut up the carpet? Or burn it, or--"
"Are you fucking crazy? We can't go near that, and to burn it!? Do you know the consequences for doing something, anything against--"
"Okay, okay fine just get the cleaner, quick we can't just stay here all day without others coming by."
"I don't think this is a good idea. I am staunchly opposed to continuing trying to do what isn't working, we need to figure a different way out of this."
"Right, and what do we tell the others? We failed in correcting our own mistakes? Can you imagine the punishment on top of what we must already do?"
"I am just saying, there must be something else--"
"Well I don't know what that is! So I am going to go and buy the greatest strength industrial cleaner in a can that doesn't leave a paper trail to me, or anything else that could lead back here. So until there's another way, shut up, stay here, and make sure no one else comes."
After a small agreement of times, Sander walked out. Manuel had stopped scrubbing.
The remaining officer moved closer to look at the unchanged rust colored stain. "Why won't this get clean, and why did you stop?"
Manuel saw he was being addressed by M. Rodriguez. Without confirming until this point, Manuel was still sure of there being a Spanish heritage line in one or the other, though both had indistinguishably colored skin, meaning that the ancestry would have been farther back, but was no real surprise in the circumstances when he finally made the link.
"I need more water." He purposefully leaned on the falseness of his overtoned accent as he spoke. "Is no good to have cold water, need hot water."
Rodriguez impatiently directed his weary-looking hired hand outside to dump the water about fifty feet from the trailers in the woods. When Manuel brought the bucket back, the officer found that the current trailer was lacking in the ability to produce any water warmer than tepid. He loudly announced that he would go to the next trailer and see if they had hot water there, and that Manuel was to stand right fucking there until he got back.
That gave him only about thirty seconds, a minute if he was lucky. He ran.
Manuel burst into the trailer's bedroom and slammed the door shut. Jumping the puddle of blood, which he had only been washing around the entire time knowing the officers wouldn't get close enough to notice, he stood before the closet on the opposite side of the bed, and fiercely rolled the sliding door.
A horrid wave of stench belched out immediately, and two severed arms were jostled from their place on the altar inside, falling to Manuel's feet. A gaunt face stuck on a spike had been stripped of eyes, nose, and mouth--it's gaping holes and maw crusted over with dark black secretion. Symbols drawn on the walls included many pointed stars, something in the shape of a goat's skull, and many repeated mantras in what looked like an older version of Spanish, though being written in dripping blood made the words illegible. The arms had originally been on shelf and fixed into a holding position around tattered brown book, the cover showing no words. Despite the place it occupied, the musty tome was in excellent condition. A cape was draped almost comically about the lower cubby of the altar's shelf, where the organs would be resting in slow decay.
He murmured a quick prayer as if he had always known it under his breath, "He sido convocado, tómame como tu demonio," then reached in beneath the cape, drawing out what may have once been the large intestines, but was now more like a wet dead snake, and turned to face the opening bedroom door as Rodriguez came in.
"WHAT THE FUCK DO… shit no, NO!"
With a twist of his arm as if he was cracking a whip, Manuel lashed out with the rotten intestine and caught Rodriguez on the shoulder, severing it off with the stink of burning acid following on the backdraft. A shrill scream drowned out the sound of the second stroke Manuel leveled horizontally, entering and exiting at opposite hips. The terror-pain cry subsided slowly, and Rodriguez fell in half.
When Sander returned, Manuel was sitting out on a folding lawn chair. Knowing something to be amiss, he approached at a quick pace, grocery bag from Home Depot in hand, demanding to know where his partner was and why the filthy wetback wasn't still inside cleaning the damn stain.
"My name is Manuel… " He didn't rise from his chair.
"I don't give a shit what your fucking name is spic, get back in the trailer and--" Sander was slow to notice. Something strange. Manuel no longer had the whites of his eyes.
"…but you may call me Dévos."
"I, what… no. No, no fuck no you WHAT! Where is Rodriguez, where--"
"You have done appalling work in attempting to conceal your mistakes. You can choose now to continue your servitude to extend into yet another life, or you can die here and now." His accent was thick, but spoken with perfect diction.
"No… no, no… "
"You will work tirelessly, and you will be tortured, and you will continue to work. You will work harder than ever before, or you will die. That is the way it is. Which do you choose?"
"I can't just… no, no… "
"First, you will clean the blood of your failed sacrifice with your own sullied hands. You will, of course, loose your hands in doing so, but this is the price you will pay for hiding your incompetence. Then… I think I will need to feed."
"No! No! NO!"
The demon smirked showing yellowed and pointed teeth, "Work or die. Admirable and awful in its simplicity."
